Moses in Utah

Moses would have had a confusing time in southern Utah. Not only is every bush burning, but every rock and cliff face is on fire. The divine voice is everywhere in this extraordinary place. Moses’ question, “Who are you?” would have had a thousand answers echoing off the canyon walls.

When I first drove into Utah, at forty-six, it was a burning bush moment. After one look at the red rocks, the cobalt sky, the silver sage, I said, “I will be back.” I had no idea what I meant.

At that point, I was living a life I held dear, raising the beloved 10-year-old boy with me. I ran a business I enjoyed much of the time. Was in a relationship I cherished, a house I loved. Life was full of complications and challenges, as all lives are, but also rich and rewarding.

I was living roles that mostly worked for me at that point: mother, partner, lover, friend, daughter, creator. Living by rules that I either accepted willingly (be a good mother) or tolerated (keep up with paperwork). Some I hoped to transcend (be nice all the time).

I saw that more and more rules were falling into the hope-to-transcend category. But it took ten years for the full roar to come through — I’m done! And another few years before I left a lot of it behind. 

Now I’m here in Utah. I’ve driven through several times since 1997 but never stayed long enough to wander through the canyons day after day. Smelling the deep, spicy, earthy scent of sage and juniper. Having shadows from high, fluffy, bright white clouds wash over me. My feet kicking up puffs of red dust as I walk. Watching the bushes and rock walls burn.

When I was little, I wondered why God chose a bush. Why not a tree? A mountain? A gigantic rock? I’d never seen a desert where trees can be almost non-existent and bushes rare enough to make them extra holy. But there are tons of towering rocks.

Perhaps God was trying for scale. The God of the Old Testament seems undecided about his methods. Tyranny? Accessibility? This approach to Moses combined the two, laying an enormous burden on him from a lowly bush..

I’ve never had much truck with this God, the one with the personality of a Bronze Age warlord. Vengeful, ferocious, unpredictable in both rare moments of tenderness and much more common moments of mayhem.

But I will say this for him: those tablets had ten, just ten, pretty straightforward rules. A little self-serving, but overall, he did a good job of keeping it simple.

Then came Leviticus, an entire compendium of laws, 247 of them. Not content with that, various parts of the Old Testament added another 366 rules. Jesus reduced all this to two. But everyone ignored that part, because then Christianity began its own list, building on the earlier ones.

Catholicism, the tradition I grew up in, had a lot of rules. The culture of the suburban 1950s had their own set. My parents had a bunch to add to that. All of this made the squealing, giggling, mud-flinging, part piglet, part goddess energies of young girlhood seem dangerous.

So I began to invent rules myself. I was a firecracker as a tiny girl, but after six I wasn’t a rebel. I wanted to be loved by my sad mother, not free of her. Love and safety seemed to lie in adopting the roles others asked of me. I stepped into my own shackles and turned the key.

Some of those roles — mother, sister, friend — made life worth living, even with their inevitable ups and downs. Some — daughter, good girl, caretaker — weighed heavily. Caretaker took over my life once my youngest sister was born, when I was ten, and my mother went to bed, lost and depressed. It was the hardest of the roles to bear. And, since I defined myself by it, the hardest to allow myself to release.

If we are lucky and live long enough, many of us can leave some of our roles and rules behind. Our children grow up. The aging parents we cared for have passed beyond us. We leave work behind, houses behind. We go out into the desert, into the fires of southern Utah.

The question changes. We have spent many years loving, caring, tending to all the ‘you’s’ in our lives. Now, when we see the burning bush, we take off our shoes, approach, and ask, “Who am I?”

Like God, we answer, ‘I am who I am.’ I am simply me. And now, after all this time, that is enough.

There are more pictures of Utah in the Utah landscapes gallery.

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