Insight

Written 5-2011
Trailing Clouds of Glory do we Come

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

My view on life has been pretty positive lately, and I’ve been a bit proud of my thoughts and ponderings. We hear about the Plan of Salvation every week and every day. I know it to be true, but I have never thought of birth as something that could be mourned. I feel like I’ve had those feelings: the feeling that this life made me leave “God, who is our home.” This poem beautifully articulated this thought and notion, and gave room for me to think further on it. I feel like Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are my best friends, but I don’t think that I’ve mourned leaving their presences. I’ve been indoctrinated about the Plan, and this life, but have thought less about the previous life than I should have. I always figured that I would someday remember the things that happened before the veil, so why ponder upon them now, when I have other things to experience and learn?

The way this poem made me feel changed my ideas somewhat. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t the reason for art to change the way we think about things? Aren’t we meant to grow, stretch, and seek? This poem made me seek: this stanza makes me seek. Sometimes pain is a way to grow- we are meant to come unto the Father with a broken heart and contrite spirit, so maybe the soreness of heart that comes from pain in art can be good for us. This poem made me think about how, when we are born, we fall asleep to our true potential. We forget our Father, our siblings, our Mother, and our purpose. It seems such an odd thing that we are meant to be re-taught these things by imperfect humans. We trail clouds of glory, with each step forward we lose the glory we had before, and have to gather new fluffs of it elsewhere. We leave our childhood home, where God is, and go forward to find Him in our grown-up spiritual mansions. I cry at this: I cry at the thought that I left the nest of safety to come here. I cry that I am still so safe even with the veil between us, Father and I. This little girl has to grow up, and this poem led me to the tiniest bit of understanding on who I am, and where I stand with God. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy.” Maybe, probably, surely. But, in my adulthood, Heaven can lie in me, and with me rather than around me