HEARTS TOWARDS ZION

Originally, I was crafting a post in my head about transformation, about how my internal life has been changing over the past months. I've been distracted from this mission, however, by the demands of daily life, by my little children, by the packing up of my house, the seperation of things, by living in the moment, and mostly by this book I have been reading that has been sucking up the spare time I would have spent writing.

Today I had a flash of insight, though, about something I have been thinking about regarding the story I am reading. The story (Devils Gate, by David Roberts) is a historical account of the Mormon emigration to Salt Lake City, mostly centered on the plight of recent converts who dragged poorly built handcarts 1300 miles to get to their "Zion".

There's a lot I could say about this story. There is a lot I have said about this story, actually. What I want to focus on, though, is what has both impressed me and bothered me about these people I am reading about. Most of the people in this story were from England or various other places nearby there. They were converted to Mormonism by disciples of Brigham Young, who sent his people over there to obtain more souls for his recently settled-on piece of land in Utah. In the short amount of time between their conversion and their persuasion to board vessels that carried them overseas, then trains that took them from New York to Iowa City, then their overland journey through the wilderness of the west, they became so strong in their faith that that it was enough to carry them through a journey of incredible hardship. When they faltered, they relied on this faith to get themselves back up again and keep them moving. When members of their party were dropping to death from starvation and exhaustion, they prayed over it, they asked their God for strength. They honestly believed that reaching Salt Lake City would be akin to reaching their land of milk and honey, that Zion lay just ahead on the horizon.

Part of me wonders, especially after reading some of the gritty details of their grueling journey, how they could have been so sold on this idea that it was enough for them. I marvel at the fastness of their faith. Along the way, their brethren was dying alongside them, and yet on they marched, hearts set towards Zion. I wonder why they just didn't give up on the idea of reaching Zion, and how hard it must have been for them to believe there was something good waiting for them at the end of the journey on the dark winter nights where they trudged on, surviving on such small rations that surely would have made any one of us living in this day and age cry and give up after one days worth.

And yet...is there that much of a difference between that faith and ours, in mine? Sometimes I wonder how I got to be such a polly-anna optimist. When things get hard, when things don't seem to be working out, there is this part of me that is just convinced that Zion is right around the corner. I haven't always been this way, though. I think there are times I have been, and that perhaps that was my natural tendency, but that was something I lost in the past dozen years or so. A number of times during those years my heart was heavy and despondent, with the attitude that things would never turn around, that my life was shit and would always be that way. I felt like giving up a lot, even as recently as last year, my optimism grounded to a halt. I didn't have much emotional strength to "rally the troops" and convince myself that "this, too, shall pass".

I have beat depression, or maybe I was never really depressed. Well, I do think I was, during some of those times, but I do remember having an epiphany at one point, after a terrible low, that the one thing that combats depression and sadness is Hope. When you are really, truly down, though, it is hard to have that hope that things will get better. Once I realized Hope was the anti-depressant, I tried to focus on that when things got difficult. It is hard to hang on to that, though, when you can't see yourself out of a hole, when you look around and all you see is the darkened edge.

I am so far past that now, though. Now my heart is soaring and it seems like nothing can really get me down. I can see it in my responses to things, situations that maybe last year would have seemed a calamity, but now are easier to recover from. I can feel the difference in the emotional center of my chest, where there is just calm and light where there was heaviness and darkness before. I feel like I was "saved", not really in terms of my "salvation" necessarily, but in the way that my entire internal landscape has shifted back to this trust and faith that things will work out, that there is something Good in this life. There are times now where I feel bliss and joy, feelings I haven't had in so long that it makes me feel like a kid again, or takes me back to times long ago where I felt this way and then had forgotten what it felt like.

Sometimes in my responses to situations now, I feel some of what these emigrants must have felt, with the blind certainty that somehow I will make it to the land of milk and honey, that soon, just around the corner, Zion will appear, and there will be much rejoicing. I think I understand their heart's compass a little more as I question my own and find it pointed in hope's direction.