Showing our Beliefs in our Creative Efforts: some thoughts

Something our class visitors said on Thursday really struck me.  One of them said something to the effect of: Non-mormons are getting rich off of The Book of Mormon Broadway musical, but a church member would have been afraid to title a musical that, thinking it would turn people away.  We're paying for that reluctance because other people are using The Book of Mormon and maybe not portraying us in a way that we would like.

Can you see the truth in this?  When we fall silent about the church, in our creative efforts or in our conversations online and  offline, other people come in and say what we wouldn't say, how we wouldn't have said it.

As I looked for more possible sources of social proof for the Mormon badge project, I ran across this NBC interview with Matthew Bowman, a church member and religion professor at Campden-Sydney College.  The interview was to discuss misconceptions about Mormon doctrine in the song "I Believe," from, you guessed it, The Book of Mormon musical.  I think Bowman did a great job of explaining our beliefs and clarifying the problems in the song.  Check it out: http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/23/13436403-true-or-false-how-accurate-is-the-book-of-mormon-song-i-believe

I think it is really important that members engaged in creative efforts periodically include evidence of their spirituality in their work, and as appropriate, include positive and accurate portrayals of the Church.  As a poet, I guess that means I should try more often to include spiritual themes in my work.  Here is a preliminary attempt that I wrote for my poetry workshop class last week.  Feedback appreciated.  This poem is definitely in beta. :)

Tools of His Trade

Ellis Clark Dyck

In a moment carved from heaven’s timelessness,
Jesus walks alone, barefoot
down miles of gold paving stones,
past fresh snowfall mansions glittering
in the ubiquitous, source-less light,
to his workshop.

It’s a small house, diamond bright,
except for the unadorned cedar door,
which he opens, entering with a smile
for the golden light lofting
a million motes of sawdust
and for the scent of cedar,
maple, and rosewood rising like incense.

Here, the tools of His trade,
the bronze headed chisels, the hand adze
and hand saw, the bow drill and brad awl,

the whetstone waiting for His hand.

He goes to the work bench, begins
again the work of carving and shaping.

With the adze he planes timbers from Lebanese cedars
for a fishing boat that could have carried him
over the choppy waters of Galilee,
on a day when sunrays burned his neck red
and squeezed sweat from his temples and back,
a miraculous day of living that the Gospels forgot.

Reaching for a mallet to pound a plank in place,
he thinks briefly of the Roman nails,
how he gave up his hands
long before the cross,
forsook Joseph’s sunlit workshop
for the fishermen and tax collectors

and well women who would follow Him.

He does not regret His trade,
 but as he prepares to leave, brushing
sawdust and shavings from his clothes,
he wills his omniscience to ignore
a single curl of cedar
clinging to the hem of His robe.