path(s)

O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One. Remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for man is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for he cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name. 2 Nephi 9:41

I don't usually write about church, or about scripture, or about spiritual things on this blog. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I don't talk about them very often. But this scripture has been stuck in my head since Sunday. They used it in Gospel Doctrine to talk about the straight and narrow way we must take to come to Christ. It was a good lesson, but there was a phrase that seemed more important to me, at least right now: Remember that his paths are righteous.

Paths. Plural. Multiple paths. There is only one way, but there are multiple paths. Because God has multiple children, individual children. He's not going to set us all down the same path. He's going to give us our own righteous path.

I just said good-bye to four of the most important people in my life, people that I didn't know three years ago. They're the four poets I've been in workshop with the most. Three years ago, I was still mad that I wasn't in a PhD program, mad that I was living in Chicago, mad that these poets weren't the poets I had worked with before. And now I can't imagine my life, my writing, without them. Tonight we sat in my apartment, ate pizza, talked, and read poetry. It was a perfect night--even with the humidity and the thunderstorm and the flickering lights and the sirens going past my window. It was a moment when you know that this was the path you were always meant to be on.

I've said it many times on this blog--I don't know what comes next. But I can see where I've been, and I know that my life has become amazing. I can only hope that this path continues forward.