The Poem
You’re Moses bro; you never get to stand
upon the promised land. The blood you shed
will tickle your sticky toes until you breathe
your final breath. So taste the dust which blows
around you now and lick its humble pie
encrusted mustache from your upper lip—
so sowed, the seeds of anger’s sophistry
become your final supper. Chew the time!
The Curse
Moses never made it to the promised land. Even as the children of Israel entered it, God kept Moses out. Disputes arise over why Jehovah’s champion was denied his victory lap. If the LDS Bible Dictionary is any indication, Mormons care less about this because we’re supposed to believe Moses never died, but was translated. We claim the Old Testament author of Numbers just plain got it wrong. One fable is as good as another. Many (most?) scholars doubt Moses ever existed.
Still, speaking in terms of creative writing fodder, I enjoy grappling with the idea of Moses—the heroic liberator—being deprived of the very thing to which he devoted his life: obtaining a promised land. Why would I enjoyed it, you might ask. Simple: it’s a great story. Even Presidents Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks love a good tragedy full of violence. Or have they disavowed The Book of Mormon?
What would it be like to be Moses in this moment? Would it be like George Washington being forced into mandatory retirement following his victory at the Battle of Yorktown? No presidency or political relevance? Or let’s stick with fable. This would be like Rocky never being allowed to return to Philadelphia following his victory over Clubber Lang in Rocky III. Or…
Perhaps this is similar to rich and famous men who lost their storied careers to #metoo scandals. I mean, if you read the actual Old Testament, Moses was a rough authoritarian. Eat your heart out Captain Moroni. You ain’t got nothing on Moses. He must have left a trail of jaded folks hoping to cancel him.
I suppose this tragic character arc speaks to a principle of existence all would-be champions face. To win the great battle, the champion must lose something. The champion secures the victory for his people, but inadvertently, becomes ineligible for his own prize. Why?
To be humbled and contained. Moses must never become so beloved and revered he supplants Jehovah in the people’s hearts. God will never let you become your own Babel. Or maybe he will, because look what happened to Babel’s builders.
As a storytelling device, that works for me. Reading it as a fable, I am brought back to loving the otherwise ugly Exodus story. In wrestling with evil, the champion becomes stained by it. He is left tarnished and impure in some indelible way. Infected with evil’s darkness, he is deprived entrance into the Celestial Room of the temple. If Brigham Young had succeeded in building an official state of Deseret, we might say similar things about Joseph Smith.
The Moses in Us All
If you wish to pull the sword from the stone, to raise up Thor’s hammer as your own, or for Mormons, to don the holy spectacles and breastplate, and see great things kept hidden, you must pay a dear price, extremely dear. Careful what you wish for. Like celebrity and wealth, getting to break the seal on some closely-held god prize will change you and separate you from those you love.
To be Moses, you must tarry alone in high places, sneered at by the people you fought for and in behalf of. True, you will have felt the rush of being in the room where it happened. You will know what it is like to see the bush burning, the staff turning into a serpent, the river’s water turning red, and the sea parting at your bidding. But, you will also remember the sickening sensation of another man’s body going slack and lifeless beneath you, of seeing Egyptian children killed for your benefit. And when you make the very rocks bleed, there will be no joy.
It came to pass, the hero stood on a hill overlooking a river valley. It was, at a glance, a good land. The crisp, clear breeze wafted over and up the rise to torment him. He could see the promised land. He could feel the promised land. On the wind, he could smell and even taste the promised land. But he will never touch this promised land.
The hero feels reminded of how fleeting it all is. The ground trembles beneath him, lifts him up a couple inches and then drops him back down with a small thud. Or is this his heart becoming erratic? He looks over to the promised land, hears laughter and joyous chatter threading faintly up through the breeze into his ears. They do not speak of him. Do they even think of him? Do they fail to appreciate how their current prosperity owes to his efforts?
They did not love you, hero. They were infatuated early on, when their parents told them your story at bedtime, or on Sunday morning or Monday night. But 40 years of road tripping have given them the urge to cancel you.
Yet, perhaps they have their own curse, for they have not reached their promised land. They reached yours. They will come to hate you for leading them to an imperfect place where pain still exists. And one day, they too will look across a valley stinking with covetousness, to behold their promised land occupied by their ungrateful children.
The Cycle Continues in the Latter Days
Now we have a cycle. Storytellers love cycles! Good money in writing cycles! One day we will all gaze at a place we will never go. To build a promised land takes a lifetime at least. And even if we succeed in crafting it before dying, our children will look around and see something which is more us than them. They will rebel, seeking to change or transcend our dreams. What an insult!
Never mind our dreams, I say. Let the young be the young. Be humble enough, gracious enough, not to spoil the youngsters’ party. Let them eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow they become the heroes in a tragedy. Tomorrow, they become us. And if you ever thought that becoming you would be a great outcome…? My, my, what pridefulness!
Wheat & Tares 
Thoughtful essay; thx for posting this. I have wondered whether Moses would much care about the final act of his 40 years of leading the stateless Israelites; I see him just saying, “Well, OK; I’m so tired I care not.”
I wondered about the ‘sewed’ term in your poem. Does it refer to seeds being ‘sown’ – i.e. scattered upon the earth to become next year’s crop?
Hi, Raymond. Thanks for reading and responding! Interesting take on Moses. I had not considered the burnout angle, but it would make sense. Elijah seems to have gone that route for example.
I confess the “sew” was initially a typo, one I suspect I’ve done before. But your reading of being sown works for me. I definitely mean it in the sense of a crop-reaping metaphor
Hi Jake, I’ll spin this differently than you probably intended. Instead of “let the young be the young” I’m going to say “let anyone who wants to be young be young.” Can we make Moses a cautionary tale instead of an unavoidable curse?
One of the regrets – tragedy is too strong – of my life is that I let others decide what’s best for me, at least to some degree. The decisions I made were safe, and to be fair, have resulted in a stable and financially successful life. However, I just turned 50, I have some disposable income and time, and the kids have left home. I’m in better physical shape than I was in my 20’s (difficult to be fit if you’re studying every waking moment) and by golly I’m not going to be Moses left wondering why I wandered the wilderness only to die on the outside looking in.