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Time of the Rose |
| Written by John Wells | |
| Saturday, 01 March 2008 | |
Chapter 1 The First Power It was late October 1994 in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. The doorbell rang and I immediately went to the front door to open it. There upon my surprise were two of the loveliest Mormon missionary sisters. The younger one had the book of Mormon in her hand and was offering it to me while the older sister spoke of its contents. Again, I must stress that both of these girls were exceedingly fair to look upon. They were in their early to mid twenties and I was instantly infatuated with whatever they had to say. They wanted me to take the book. They were so elated when I did so. They also wanted to me to read the scriptures to learn how I could have the Holy Spirit as my constant companion and be greatly blessed for all of eternity. Looking upon these sisters, I could not resist their generous offer. I took the book and also gave them one of my business cards which had my name and phone number on it. Over a few weeks, I read what I could in the book. There were many stories of persecution and bloodshed. I did not find the book to be spiritually divine at the time, but then, I did not really know what to look for. I did not know that the blessings came from within. I was expecting to see outward manifestations. A few weeks passed by and I had put the book of Mormon and the sisters farther back in my mind. But one day, when I came home from work, my roommate informed me that the sisters had stopped by to see me. He said they were looking for me, and he also elated that the older girl was a 'babe'. Well, my roommate did have good taste in that area. For me, it was true. The older girl, sister Rose, was indeed like a young Heather Locklear. She was an absolute barbie doll from what I remember when I saw her for the first time. The sisters phoned me that evening, and we arranged for a get together on the next Saturday morning. Saturday came. I answered the front door, and there they were, but more specifically, there she was: the sister the baby the angel the mother the Rose. Oh my God, the way she looked at me with her baby blue eyes. That moment seemed to suggest that I could marry her, that she was my blessing from God. I really believed this was my destiny with her. It was just the way that she looked at me as if she were saying, "you finally found me." I invited the sisters in to the kitchen and directed them to the dining table where the three of us sat down and asked how everyone was doing. You have no idea how much of a delight it was to have these beautiful girls in the house and in my company. And they were there for me, like something you might imagine as angels descending from the radiance of heaven. After awhile, we began to speak about God, or as they called Him, our Heavenly Father. I could see that they really believed in God and had some kind of relationship with Him that I knew very little of. We talked about praying and how it can be a powerful tool for making things better. Sister Rose suggested that we have a prayer just for the experience and the practice. I accepted the invitation, and because I was already so infatuated with her, I took her hand in mine with the other sister, Sister Morrison, and we began to bow our heads in sacred unison. Sister Rose spoke the prayer and this was a prayer directed at me: that I should grow in the love of the Lord and develop a strong relationship with Him. As she spoke the words, I felt myself really go deep into the emotion and thought of her prayer. She had a gift. Her prayer was so sincere. The tone of her voice made me feel as if I were with her, as if we were together at the throne of God in heaven. In my mind, we were a long ways away from the kitchen table. And even at the end of the prayer, when we were all silent for a time, I told her that it took me sometime to find my way back here with them Such was the depth of her prayer. What a great faith she had. It was raw and pure and clean and Holy. I sincerely believed that she could tap into that Divine Source and make things happen, as if she was indeed some kind of emissary with powers granted to her goodwill. All she had to do was ask. And I also believed by the time our first meeting had ended, that this was just the beginning of a beautiful relationship I would have with her, a relationship which I thought at the time was granted to me by my Mother whom had passed on to the 'other side' and was giving me my soul mate. Chapter 2 The Brain Change I was well on my way to being in love with sister Rose. Just that one meeting with her (and sister Morrison) and the changes inside of me began. I was living for her, getting stronger each day, believing that in our next meeting, our destiny together would become even more certain, more absolute, more explicitly, the truth. Yes, everything I state here is my perception of the whole experience. It is wired into me. There is nothing here that I am confabulating, like in some romance novel. I lived these experiences with sister Rose. I felt them in my heart and I kept believing it will happen. One of the greatest changes I experienced was in my abilities to make music. Before meeting sister Rose, I had what could only be seen as fragments of music. I had nice little guitar and piano licks. They were all like beginnings of songs. They were fun to play, but they seemed separate, and I could never build upon any one of them to produce even a pop song. Then, after meeting sister Rose, a very radical thought occurred to me: Why don't I just take all of the licks and little melodies I have and start grouping them together to see how it sounds? In other words, integrate my existing material into songs. Put the fragments together. Play them one after another in a duration of three to four minutes and call that a song. Surprisingly, this did work, and because I had practiced playing these little hooks for so long, I was accomplished. The only new thing I had to remember was which of my fragments to play and in which order they should go. The experience was truly amazing. I really did not know where to stop when I began playing this way. Some of my songs were over six minutes long, and of course, along with the music came the lyrics. The book of Mormon in certain places is very rich in prose. Combine that with the beauty of sister Rose and my love for her and I had things I wanted to sweetly express to her heart. My music was my mode of carrying this off. I was sure that this was eternal love, a love which God made for us to develop and enjoy. I believed that this would be my new life: I would marry sister Rose and I would be a pop star. I'd just be making music and loving my wife. I was destined for greatness. That would be my life. Oh what happiness is when love steps into the room. Chapter 3 The Lasting Power That first meeting with sister Rose brought me down to a level of great calmness and humbleness. I was grateful to my heavenly father for this new opportunity, this new way of being. We shared this intimacy. We were gentle with each other. The sisters began to phone me regularly during the weeks ahead to say hello and see how I was progressing with my reading of the book of mormon. They said they were praying for me and they said I should keep my eyes open for the spirit and its blessings. I concluded that I had already received my choicest blessing in the form of sister Rose. I kept on saying to myself that God wants me to have her and he will arrange for our relationship to grow. Sister Rose was and is a gift from my recently deceased mother. This is what I firmly believed again and again every time saw her, every time I thought about her. Many nights after I had finished my day job of washing windows, I would go into my room and set up my musical equipment to practice and rehearse the growing number of songs I was composing weekly. This began in late December 1994 and (fast forwarding) to about May of l995, I really started to take off. I would get everything up and running at about 8:00p.m. I would play through a set of maybe seven songs and this would take me up to about 8:45p.m. I imagined that someday soon I would be performing to live audiences and so I was tweaking my private sessions, setting small spaces between each song and counting my mistakes which on average was about three for the entire performance. Again I must remind the readers that this was not of a choice I was making. This I believed was a calling from God. I was here to make music and love sister Rose. A new door had opened and it was opening wider each day. Many of my songs were about her and my love for her. The idea was to get together enough songs to make a C.D. and then to tour and promote my music. My dreams were grandiose. This was because God was backing me, and it was sister Rose who was inspiring me with her prayers, or so I thought. The second meeting with the sisters was more of a confirmation that sister Rose and I were meant for each other. I remember when we first began to all sit down at the kitchen table, sister Rose gave me that look with her eyes that seemed to say, "yes it is going to happen. We are going to be married. We are going to be together. We just have to be patient and follow His plan." The second meeting turned out to be the second to the last time I would see sister Rose in the flesh. Just a few days after our meeting, I received a phone call from her on a late Thursday afternoon. She said her missionary work had finished and she would be returning home in about a week, but she would come and say goodbye before she left. I understood her situation, but I also wanted to make certain that we had a future together. I said to to her quite softly, "but sister, we have some unfinished business to attend to." And in a voice so yielding, so soft, so feminine, so loving, she whispered, "yes..............I think we do." For me, that was the capper. I had no guile in my mind to think that she was teasing me, or just being nice, or saying something to appease me. The book of mormon is the truth. God is the truth. Sister Rose is the truth. She arranged to come and see me one last time on the following Monday evening. When the time arrived and I opened the front door, there she was, and this was no ordinary appearance. For there on the porch on this very cold night, she stood, gazing at me in a stunning sky blue dress with no overcoat. How could I ever forget that moment. It was like she was Snow White, the little Mermaid, or some other Disney like character gracing me with her genuine beauty. The sister, the baby, the girl, the mother, the angel: it could all be known as I looked into her eyes. Then that moment was gone. The phone began to ring. I was ready to invite her in. She said she could not stay as there were people in the car waiting for her. And so it was goodbye for now. I was still hopeful. A few weeks passed, and I decided to write Sister Rose a letter. She responded quickly stating that it was kind of awkward readjusting to her being back home again, but she was happy. She said she bought a brand new Suzuki Swift and she was having fun with it. She said to keep in touch and that she would be my forever friend. A few months passed, and I could not get her out of my head. In fact, I did not want to. As I reported earlier, I continued to develop my music, believing that it would only be a matter of time until God would put us together again. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. The meetings with sister Morrison continued. She brought with her sister Peck, another delightful creature a few years younger than sister Rose, as well as sister Schneider, an older woman whose duty was to accompany the sisters when they were meeting with single men as myself. This was my way of keeping in touch with Rose. The sisters would sometimes receive a note from her stating her well being, and the sisters would pass the information on to me. The readers might be anxious to know how I was progressing with the mormon studies, and I can say that so far, everything was falling into place. I attended a church meeting in February. Everyone was nice and cordial. There were even a few of the members who gave me invites to their houses for dinners....NO! not really. I did not know the members and they were not anxious to know me. I remember saying in a future letter to Rose, that if I looked like Brad Pitt or a puppy dog, I would easily be received with open arms. It is a strange mixture: love and religion. Here is how I see it. If you have a great love for God, then you will not need or even desire a love for a Rose, a woman, a man, anything that is earthly. If you have a love for God, then you have overcome your need for human love. Love is pity and nothing more. But human love...if you get it, it truly is the Time of the Rose, the time of your life, so go ahead and live it and express it as many ways as you can. Human love is the greatest illusion to be seen when we are not in love, when we look back at what was supposed to be the real thing... which was only for a moment. And don't we want it again and again! .... The next Sunday in February brought snow. Church services were cancelled. Now, sister Morrison would be leaving and a new sister would take her place. Things were quickly changing by mid March. Things were not the same. The magic of sister Rose began to dissipate. I began having doubts about our future relationship. I wrote a few letters to her and received no reply. Then one day in May, after I had sent a letter the week before, I received mail from her. Oh it was exciting to see her handwriting on the envelope, and a great hope filled me that she might say that she was not letting me down, that maybe she just had some things to do before she could get back to me. But when I opened the letter and began to read its contents, I knew something was wrong. The letter that she sent me was almost identical to the letter I received from her in early February. She said exactly the same things about her readjustments and her new car. Why would she do this? Was she sending me some kind of encrypted message? I read and reread the letter but could not find a clue. I did not think it was over. I thought there might be some kind of screening process done by certain members of the church. If she could not write and express herself the way she wanted, this was fine. I would, in turn, tell her everything in my heart. Then, if members were overseeing her correspondence, they could see that my love for her was true and I willing to risk fully opening my heart to them as well as to her. And so over the next few months, I put together the music. What a happy time that was. I was caught up in the spirit of making the music happen. It was a special time working non stop for many hours, living in the moment. I had practiced all the songs many times. I had the sounds and sound quality at studio level. All I had to do was record and get the right take which usually happened the first, second, or third time. I put my whole heart into it. When I was finished, I decided to send not just a copy but the master tape of my finished project to sister Rose. I wanted to show her that I was putting her first, and that my destiny was laying in her hands. Yes, right at the time when Alanis Morisette was so creatively musical, when she had unleashed all of her child, teen, and young woman emotional melodies into universally acclaimed talent, so too was I giving sister Rose my everything. This was a once in a lifetime expression. It was my time to give it and I did. .....And I never heard from sister Rose again. One day a few years later, I spoke with some other missionary girls. They said that sister Rose married the male missionary whom had first studied with her before she was a member. I had met him, and he had encouraged me to keep writing sister Rose when I was not receiving anything from her through March to May 1995. And so, you might be asking, what is the point, what is this lasting power? All I can say is that It is there. It is not as strong as it once was. It cannot move me even one tenth as it once did musically, but it is still there. I call it Absolute Presence. It is the name of my C.D. but you won't hear it unless you find sister Rose...because she has the master tape. Copyright 2008 John Wells |
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