Wine to Water

"Unknown Allegory . . . " by Brian Kershisnik

Holiness is in the eye of the beholder. As I took the sacrament yesterday, I thought about how Jesus turned water to wine, and Joseph Smith turned it back into water. Both acts were, I think, gestures toward acknowledging the holiness of common things.

The thing is, Jesus turns water to wine every day. “I am the true vine,” He said. Wine is water which has passed through the vine. Jesus is the Creator. This is what He does. He breathes miracles. Everything He touches turns green and buds and blossoms and changes. He can change hearts and souls. Of course He can make the extravagant, impossible move of generating fifteen firkins of the finest, holiest wine from six regular barrels filled with liquid made of two parts hydrogen for each part oxygen. Of course.

But the theology of Joseph Smith is one which acknowledges that so can man. Harold Bloom, that old poetic-religious atheist, called Joseph a religious genius, and I think his genius lies in his vision of mankind as holy and of the universal availability of sacred experience. The revelation that changed wine back into water is found in the Doctrine and Covenants. The historical background for section 27 reads like this:

Revelation given to Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Harmony, Pennsylvania, August 1830. In preparation for a religious service at which the sacrament of bread and wine was to be administered, Joseph set out to procure wine. He was met by a heavenly messenger and received this revelation, a portion of which was written at the time and the remainder in the September following. Water is now used instead of wine in the sacramental services of the Church.

What the angel actually said, using the words of Jesus, was this: “I say unto you, that it mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory—remembering unto the Father my body which was laid down for you, and my blood which was shed for the remission of your sins.” Eat donuts or tortillas, but think of me, and it is sacred. So yesterday I ate store-bought white bread and drank water from the tap, and I remembered Jesus. And it was a sanctifying sacred experience. Think of the implications: holiness is what you find in your pantry at home. It is what you water your lawn with. It struck me and stayed in my mind this week the way the water looked as it came out of the hose onto the sunbaked lawn and dirt. It was perfectly clear until it reflected back the high sun and became a resplendent glory, the rounded edges of water looking liquid and eternal before they sank into the earth and became just mud and wet yellow grass. Holy mud and holy yellow grass.

Wine is holy, yes, but there’s a holiness in water, too. Simpler and more ubiquitous, but perhaps no less exquisite. It is the stuff of rain and tears. Something to swallow the pills. Walk into the world and listen to the swallows spill their songs to the clouds, harbingers of holiness. And see the miracle. Taste the wine in the water.

Newtown

Could it be that the snow this morning might mean that even sins as scarlet as this new Adam’s may be made white? How can twenty small names, so sacred and so beloved, be scattered so easily, so quickly to the breathy wind? And six. And two. I have spent two days heartbroken and hurting in a world of holiness.

I have held my children close, have read with them and snuggled with them and have picked up scattered shards of light that I had left lying around, unnoticed until these two days. The way Ellie washes up to my ankles and then my knees like a rising tide. Oliver’s voice, telling me stories and singing me songs in his bed because I am too tired to tell them to him. Lydia’s rampant imagination. Her secrets and her crushes and her conspiracies. She is becoming a woman. Ellie’s habit of looking up when the family or the congregation has broken into song, a knowing look on her face, evidence that she came from a world of music.

Last night as I thought of those parents and all those children and the angels who were not fast enough, not strong enough, not here enough, I put my hand to Emerson’s chest as he lay next to me in bed. He is five, and his heart flutters and then thumps steadily as a five-year-old heart should. He bounces and shouts, and his exuberance is impossible to contain, and I love him. And I ache. And I pray. And I hope. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”

Waiting for Aslan

I finished reading the Chronicles of Narnia to my two oldest tonight. “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be,” Aslan tells the children after they have run without tiring deeper and deeper and higher and higher into existence. What a line. The fourteenth century Sufi poet Hafiz wrote, “God wants to see / More love and playfulness in your eyes / For that is your greatest witness to Him.” So happy as I mean you to be. Gentle Lucy replies, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” Aslan says, smiling, “Have not you guessed? . . . The dream is ended. This is the morning.” The real story begins then, the undying story in which every chapter is better than the last, perhaps the story Lucy read a fragment of in that magician’s room in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the one she “never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.”

For the past year or so, we’ve been reading these books together. My children lose interest a lot, but when Aslan shows up, they are all attentiveness. They love that Lion. So do I. For weeks after I saw the film version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I read my scriptures differently. I saw Jesus as the muscular, brawny, humble, gentle God-man that He is. I sensed His hidden, muted power.

When Lucy and Peter and Edmund and their friends ran up a waterfall at the speed of a unicorn without tiring, my kids’ thoughts turned to the resurrection. They trust absolutely and implicitly that death is not the end of life and that it’s not something to fear. They have been close to those close to death. When Julie’s grandfather died, Emerson was very small. For days after Sandy passed away, my small son would run into the room where he had stayed, calling, “Gampapa!” They know we’ll see him again. They sense the sense in that, the truth that life is too holy to ever really end. They often ask if we’ll see someone we know and haven’t seen for a while in the resurrection. Or someone from the scriptures. Or even from movies sometimes. “Does everything happen again in the resurrection?” Lydia asked one day. “What do you mean?” “I mean, like will I be a kid again? Or a baby?” “Well, I don’t know. . . . I think we’ll have a perfect knowledge and maybe a perfect memory. So maybe it’s something like that . . . .” When I was trying to teach Emerson to ride his bike without training wheels, he fell. “I don’t want everything to happen again in the resurrection!” he wailed, “Because I don’t want to fall off my bike again.” Well, if that’s the worst thing he’s experienced . . . .

As we were reading the last chapter of the series, Emerson said, “If I’m going to die, I just want to die soon. But if I’m not going to die, then I just want to not die.” I was a little confused, but Lydie caught his logic. “Yeah,” she said, “because I want to see what it’s like from Heaven, but I kind of want to stay here. Because Dylan’s here.” (Dylan’s the boy who almost kissed her once at lunch). They don’t fear death. It is another bright adventure, a foray into the radiant unknown. I’ve thought about this idea quite a lot myself—when I want to die and why. Because it’d be nice to be alive during the Millennium, but you’d miss out on the Spirit World completely. I’m not sure if this is really what I want, but it might be lovely to die with Julie two days before Jesus comes again in a cloud and in glory. We wouldn’t know the experience of being changed in the twinkling of an eye. But if our kids were still small, we’d be able to raise them in Millennial peace, we as glorified beings, and they as translated children. That is, if we died without them. We could be a whole glorified family. But I think it’d be nice for them to have some earthiness to them still. And then Julie and I would be able to experience disembodied-ness, to know what it feels like to have been physical and then to lose it. We’d be able to see what spirits see and know what they know. But the disembodied, they say, view death as a bondage. There are certain things that come with physicality. Like kissing. As I knelt across the altar at the temple the other day and heard words spoken of the morning of first resurrection, I imagined that bright morning enjoying the party but wanting to sneak off to some corner apart in this bright universe to be alone with Julie—to hold each other and kiss again like new lovers, like newlyweds. Yes, yes, the party is fine. Yes, yes. But that first resurrected kiss. Ah.

And then, we’d reunite with our kids in the air. They’d come flying to the beaming warmth descending from the east. Their bodies quivering with joy. The very air singing. We’d fall on each others’ necks and weep and kiss and join the dazzling song. Then we’d descend to the newly renewed earth and raise them in a world without sin. What will that look like? These are the sorts of questions Lewis gets at in these books. What will all this really look like?

One Saturday I was reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the kids. I would usually read at night to Em but we were getting to the part in which the White Witch kills Aslan, and I wanted to read it in the daytime. So Lydie joined us. She had read part of it before with Julie but couldn’t remember much, so Em and I caught her up. I was impressed with how much my golden-haired boy had retained. (Tonight as we finished the last chapter, we read about how they approached the green hill and saw the tops of trees whose leaves were silver and whose fruit was golden. Emerson told me, “Silver is kind of like gray, but it almost has sparkles in it.” Lydia asked, “Dad, do you like silver or gold better?” I told her I like silver because it is the color of my wedding ring and my ring reminds me that mom and I will be married forever. Emerson told me he likes gold better because his hair is golden.)

Emerson could tell his sister the whole story. And they get the idea that Aslan is a symbol for the Savior. Anyway, I was reading the part where Aslan goes to be sacrificed, and I was telling them that Aslan was stronger than the White Witch and stronger than the giants and dwarves and hags and cruels and spectres and everything there. I wanted them to know that Aslan only got killed because he let them kill him, just like Jesus. “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels.” A Roman legion was six thousand soldiers. That would have been something to see: seventy-two thousand angels against a few men and boys with swords and staves. But the gentle, compassionate, powerful Son of God walked into their violent embrace. But as I was telling the kids all the people that Aslan was stronger than, Emerson looked at me wide-eyed and asked, “Is he even stronger than you?” Good to know that in his misperceptions, I am strong. (A sidenote on that note: One night I was reading the Sermon on the Mount to my kids, and I was telling them that I think Jesus is the best teacher who has ever lived, that I love the way He teaches. Emerson looked at me in wonder and asked, “Is he even a better teacher than you?” Oh, yes. Almost as strong as Aslan, and almost as good a teacher as Jesus. That’s me, Emerson’s dad. I love the misperceived world from his good son’s eyes.)

I finished reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader a few months ago to Lydia and Emerson. It was a holy experience. I started crying as soon as Reepicheep throws away his sword, and I pretty much didn’t stop until several minutes after we finished the last page. While I was reading, Emerson sat up suddenly and pointed excitedly at the ceiling. “I see a cliff that the people jump off onto a bridge! And a penguin going off the bridge!” Lydie examined the ceiling and declared that she saw the same thing, except the cliff. Emerson clarified that the cliff went all the way up to the wall. Then she saw it. And another penguin. When we got to the part in the book where Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund they will not return to Narnia but will come to know him, Aslan, by another name in their own world, I turned with tears running down my cheeks to Lydia and asked, “Do you know what that name is?” All choked up, she replied, “Yes. Jesus.” Then she started to sob. When we closed the book, she curled into me and shook with sobs. Emerson stood up and looked at the two of us in tears. “I’m the only one who doesn’t have to cry for joy,” he said, and he ran downstairs to find The Silver Chair. Lydie and I lay snuggling each other and sniffling a little. I kissed her forehead and told her, “I love you.” She choked back in a small voice, “I love you, too.” Then, to make sure I heard it, she said it again, this time a little louder. A holy experience.

We watched Prince Caspian one night when Julie had to work. You remember how it ends with that sad, lovely song by Regina Spektor as Susan and Peter tell the Narnians goodbye for the last time—Aslan has told them they will not return. It’s a wonderful sadness captured in song and story. Just the right sadness. Well, as we were walking upstairs to brush our teeth, Emerson, all choked up says, “I’m just so sad that Susan and Peter will never go back to Narnia.” “I know,” I tell him, and he begins to sob, a heartfelt, sympathetic, wonderful, cathartic cry. I look at my small, sensitive child and my heart dances with gratitude. He is a boy after his father’s heart. How I love him.

I have loved reading these books with my children. The process was an exercise in waiting for Aslan. So many apparently mundane moments. And then the arrival of the Lion. A glint of mane, a scent, a sense. I think our lives are like that—we live sensing there is always something more, waiting for Aslan to breathe on us, to sing, to roar. We hurt inside and hurt each other and hurt ourselves, but then the Lion comes and none of that matters. Our broken pieces are picked up and somehow, miraculously mended. We follow Him, a parade of joy into a city of light. This is the morning.

The Water's Edge

Friday night I held Eleanor’s small, perfect, pajama-clothed body against me to warm her and to be warmed by her as we stood outside on a rooftop and listened to human beings pour music out of their insides and out of their (mostly stringed) instruments. Ellie watched wide-eyed and happy. She cooed and sang and I felt her small head vibrate under my warm hands which perched atop her head in the attitude of blessing, covering her ears to muffle the sound and offering what heat or fire I could. The songs they sang were mostly about light and water. The water ones washed around my thoughts:

Now Jordan’s banks they’re red and muddy,

And the rolling water is wide.

But I got no boat, so I’ll be good and muddy,

When I get to the other side.

And when I pass through the pearly gate,

Will my gown be gold instead?

How many times did ancient Israelites cross the river Jordan into a new life, an unknown? Joshua’s priests, hoping against hope that this swelling spring river would stop when the soles of their feet hit the wetness. As a heap. Those priests carrying their precious ark got a little wet, a small splash on the robes, but the others passed over dry-shod to the unknown of those high walls of Jericho. A new life. Utterly different from the wilderness they had just left. Of course, their fathers had passed through the waters as well. From slavery to freedom. From relative comfort to uncertainty, too. And Elijah crossed that same river to board his chariot of fire, off to a life of certain light. A new and different ministry. But he left behind poor Elisha to pick up the mantle and cross back—lonely, confused, uncertain. He walked into a world of miracles, though. They usually did. And then the Savior walked into that river a carpenter’s obedient Son and walked out the very Son of God. Well, or so it seemed to His mystified neighbors.

And there was this song: Wade in the water. Wade in the water, children. God’s gonna trouble the water.

A man sat by the pool of Bethesda—the pool of the house of mercy—waiting for an angel to trouble the waters. Troubled waters bring healing. But the waters came to him. A woman sat by a well, cracked like the worn jar in her hands. The Son of God said to her, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” How? You have nothing to draw with. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” This woman spoke with the embodiment of Living Waters. The waters had come to seep into and soothe her broken soul. “Give me this water.”

So, then, just this: Maybe the water meant so much because I had come to that music from the baptism of a student of mine—a bright, glistering, good young woman who has waited a long time for this. It was good for us to be there. Baptism is a death and a birth at the same time. Every crossing of the waters is. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” But this burial is into life itself, not in earth or under stone, but we are immersed in water, enveloped in life. “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Newness of life. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” To die into living waters and to emerge transformed. The very air is different.

I don’t know the quality of life we will enjoy in the next world, but I feel somewhat certain that it will be life “coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.” There will likely exist certain parallels between this life and that—for life is life. But we will glow. We will know. Life elevated. Death will be a birth into a newness of life. Resurrection always follows a passing away.

So, too, I suppose that the quality of Shain’s life will change dramatically after being immersed in that font of living water. She will breathe differently. When she came mewling into this world and screamed her first breath of mortal air, she began to experience something unparalleled in her existence. From the light of God into this diffused, slanted earthly light. But now embodied. Able to hold a hand and to hug a friend. To smell the wispy fresh-washed hair of an infant. That former life surely held its glories. But without dying to that life, I could never have experienced this.

For the past two days, I have bathed in a flow of Spirit and words. I love living apostles and prophets. My heart has hummed and sung and glowed. This new life. This new life.

When I was born, I was given a new name and a family. Every birth provides these gifts. My name identifies, distinguishes, and associates me. Shain too received a new name at baptism. She took upon her the name of Jesus—distinguished from the darkness of the world by her new relationship with the Light of the World and associated with the fellowship of the Saints. This is a family of open arms. She will stumble as she begins to walk in newness of life. She will stutter as she speaks with the new tongue—the tongue of angels. But she will grow up in this new life. She has come to the water’s edge. And she has crossed. I have come to the water’s edge now several times. Every crossing brings death, cleansing, and a resurrection to newness.

Alma Mater

("Halo Repair" by Brian Kershisnik)

When I was a young boy, my mother read to me every night. She sang the world to me. She told me the stories that created my being. Every act of mothering is sacred. And every mother is a minister in the highest, holiest sense of the word, because every mother spends her life immersed in brilliant charity. When the Savior walked this lovely, dusty, weary, green planet, He elevated seemingly insignificant acts of service to a godly level. “But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11). I still marvel at the gentle selflessness my mother appears to have inherited from her mother, and I stand astonished at the greatness of my wife’s mother-soul—her willingness to give of herself, to gift her time, her love, her strength. How many of a mother’s everyday activities are exalted because they are the shadows of the very actions of the mortal Son of God? How often have I watched my wife wash small feet and thought of that last night Jesus spent with His closest friends in that warm upper room?

Often I’ve seen her bending over a bathtub to perform sacred ablutions for my lithe, holy children.

I saw the world anew today

Holiness written on every forehead
First morning
Morning stars
Morning songs of praise

My wife bathed my three holy children today

Anointed their heads with shampoo

Washed them with water

Clothed them in towels

Draped like robes

Oh, the holy

And I have watched four times in stunned powerless awe as she gave birth. That act seems as close to the saving act of the Atonement as anything I’ve ever witnessed. To suffer and to bleed so that another might have life. Isn’t that the very essence of Christ’s offering? David O. McKay, that gentle prophet whose devoted love for his wife Emma blessed the whole church, once said, “Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. Though it carries the woman close to the brink of death, motherhood also leads her into the very realm of the fountains of life and makes her co-partner with the Creator in bestowing upon eternal spirits mortal life.”

Each mother has offered her body—has experienced discomfort and disfigurement and deep pain—so that others might live. Thinking of this one day, I wrote this poem. It’s called “Stretchmarks.”

Something holy happened here;

something sacred slept.

a luminescence brought to light—

premortal promise kept.

She wept, and as she strained,

in pain, to introduce to earth

pre-resurrection miracle:

this angelsong-bright birth.

Motherhood is not always popular, praised, or applauded in contemporary society. But it seems like Jesus’s priorities are more often than not at odds with the attitudes and foci of the world and culture that swirls around us. The things that matter most seem to be the quiet, simple things of everyday life: stories and songs and laughter and family and kindness and the beauty of the world and the lives of little ones. I suppose that motherhood ranks fairly high among these gentle, lovely, holy things. Neal Maxwell once said, “When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time. The women of God know this.”

So much of a mother’s life may seem uninteresting and unimpressive. But those who have eyes to see perceive. She is a healer. She is a creator. She is a teacher. When you think about what the Savior spent His mortal life doing, it seems like He did a whole lot of what I watch my wife do every day, and what I took for granted almost every day of my growing up years. He fed people. All the time. How often have I sat down to eat a meal that appeared on my table as if by miracle? Every meal offered by every mother at every table every night is a holy thing. Every meal is a chance for communion, a nourishing, a grace.

Even all the laundry that piles up and smells and needs to be folded and returned to closets. Even this is holy. Clothing in scripture is a symbol of covenant. And Jesus Christ was the first one to provide clothes for the newly distraught and naked Adam and Eve. One day our robes will be washed white in the blood of the Lamb. Until then, praise be to the mothers who keep us covered. The Hebrew word for cover, kaphar, is also the word translated as “atonement.”

When the Divine Mind sought for a perfect metaphor to express the love and devotion of the Savior for the inhabitants of this bruised, broken, blessed world, He came up with this: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” He is the mother hen who would gather her chickens under her wings, who would give herself for the life of her brood.

As I snuggled you this morning in our bed,

I snuggled, too, two other hearts you made.

The one, our son, lay between us,

His fevered heart pounding.

I felt it through his unzipped pajamas

And thought of David and Absalom.

No wonder that father wept so.

Thank you for giving me a love like this.

The other heart, smaller, faster, fainter—

Still beating like bird wings under the umbrella

Of your strong, stable, mother-bird heart

What a blessed child to have you for mother.

Life within life. Light within light.

All these loves within the love we share.

On our kitchen counter,

The evidence of your bright hands’ work:

Sustaining bread, children’s homework, and

This paper profusion of hearts.

Symbol of your life-giving, love-quickening power.

Four times I have watched in utter powerlessness as my wife has performed the ordinance of childbirth: the desire to help, the inability to do. Just as the Father had to allow the Son to suffer alone on the cross, the gift of agony that brings life is a solitary struggle. The mother is alone with the babe to be born, the new universe to be brought forth.

Her scream was a song

As she sang you to light

People speak of birth—almost flippantly—as a miracle

Almost like a magic trick,

With a wave of a wand

And Voila! See it!

But if you’ve seen it,

You know it's not like that.

It is a miracle in the most expansive sense—

A grace

A mercy

The miracle is your mother—

The pain she bore to bear you,

The grace she gave to give you air:

Divine means of help or strength

Every father knows the impotent vigil

Of prayer and powerlessness

Hope in a power beyond

Trust in lovingkindness

Love for the one who sacrifices to give life

How many times is Jesus likened unto a mother

In scripture?

No better image.

An Apology

Tonight as we ate dinner, my wife said to me, “Don’t you think your post about vegetarianism was a little bit sacrilegious?” “Sacrilegious?” I asked. “Or blasphemous,” she said, “What’s the right word?” I began to feel uncomfortable. She said, “Maybe it’s just me. . . . You know me; I never even finish a book, except the scriptures. And I wouldn’t read those if they weren’t scripture.” This is true. My wife is one of the most spiritually sensitive people I know. She has no stomach for violence or distastefulness or darkness in media. She refuses to allow into her being anything that would offend the Holy Ghost. She will put down a book at the first taste of anything that is not virtuous, lovely, or praiseworthy. So, I trust her. I changed the last paragraph of that post. I will ask her if I should change more. And I apologize to anyone who might have been offended by my words. “Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.”

I think I should also say this: I don’t propose to propound much doctrine here. Sacrilege and blasphemy was certainly not my intention; maybe whimsy. But then whim can be pretty sacrilegious, I suppose. You probably remember that passage from “Self-Reliance”: “I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.” Apparently all whim is not entirely whimsical. So, please accept my apology.

And know that I realize many of my capricious musings about God and the world may be entirely wrong. Theologian and pastor Brian McLeron writes, “We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry.” I look forward with great earnestness to the day when I will learn how wrong I truly was. I think God will absolutely surprise and delight us with how low our estimation of what He has prepared for us really is. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor yet entered into the heart of man.”

That said, I guess I should contradict myself, write a little doctrine (as I understand it), and let you know how holy and beautiful I find the whole idea of sacrifice in the Old Testament. I love the procession from sin offering to burnt offering to peace offering. These happened in a specific order for the ancient Israelite. We must first offer up our sins (made possible only through the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which all other sacrifices prefigured), we repent and turn from darkness to light; then we offer up the whole animal: burnt offering as ultimate consecration; and finally we sit down at peace with God to enjoy a meal of communion together. “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.”

True Laughter

“Mom, you wanna hear my true laugh sometime?” my four-year-old son asked my wife this morning. I asked him what a true laugh was. He told me that you cross your arms over your chest and then someone pushes on your stomach. Then you laugh your true laugh. I like that in his mind this was a promise of some future event. For me this is something special to anticipate. The true laugh—a future revelation, something like glory—“the glory that shall be revealed in us” that Paul talks about—something so poignant and so powerful, so heartbreaking and so healing, that we can’t quite abide it yet. But “the vail shall be taken away” and the laugh that moves us, makes us, will be heard.

Jesus, who we know wept, said, “Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.” So there may well one day be a scripture that reads, “Jesus laughed.” Maybe it’s in the lost book of Enoch.

I think he does laugh, because laughter is holy and beautiful. Heber C. Kimball said of God, “I am perfectly satisfied that my Father and my God is a cheerful, pleasant, lively, and good-natured Being.  Why?  Because I am cheerful, pleasant, lively, and good-natured when I have His Spirit.  That is one reason why I know; and another is ― the Lord said, through Joseph Smith, ‘I delight in a glad heart and a cheerful countenance.’  That arises from the perfection of His attributes; He is a jovial, lively person, and a beautiful man.” How’s that for a fitting description of the Man of Holiness?

I learned something about God’s laugh one day when I was pretty newlywed. We went camping with my wife’s family, and as we sat around the campfire my sister-in-law (who’s deeply funny, a soul with a good appreciation of humor) was making my father-in-law laugh. My father-in-law’s laugh taught me about God. He has this joyful, deep, rolling, booming, wonderful laugh. I thought, “God must laugh like that. Surely he does.” Shortly thereafter we had a message on our answering machine from my father-in-law. We had recorded something that made him laugh. The message was of him laughing for a good thirty seconds. I saved it and would replay it when I felt down. When it got erased on accident, I felt I had lost something of value.

I’ve thought a lot about how a perfect person like Jesus must have a perfect sense of humor. He must be wonderfully funny.

A third-century BC Egyptian creation myth says, “When [God] burst out laughing there was light. When he burst out laughing the second time the waters were born; at the seventh burst of laughter, the soul was born.” The Egyptians knew something of the creative power of laughter. It engenders joy in others—an infectious spreading of light. And it brings things and people together.

Last semester I had a class with three special needs students—all really bright and good and all. One day, one of them, Seth—a kid made of light with a great lisp—made a comment that delighted me. Delighted: “I liked last time’s lesson.” “Yeah?” “Samson.” “Yeah.” “I can imagine you growing out your hair like Samson and getting really strong.” “Oh.” (Pause) “I’m not calling you weak. . . . You’re . . . [he takes in my twig-like arms, averts his eyes, and tries to swallow the lie] . . . strong . . . [decides he better not lie in seminary] . . . in faith.” The class erupted into laughter, and it brought us together. We loved each other more after that.

One of my favorite sounds in the world is my wife’s laugh. My life is a quest to make her laugh. Her laugh is like a sudden summer rain that refreshes and cools the world and reflects the world drippingly anew. It’s like a flight of pelicans off the coast of California. It makes you catch your breath. It’s hard to describe. The best is to laugh with her. Therein is communion.

And then there’s my children’s laughter. My three-month-old daughter has begun to laugh. She seems to sense that there is something in it having to do with communion. She’ll look you in the eyes with her dark-bright stare and laugh tentatively, just to see if it works. When you laugh back, she laughs harder. Surely something so lovely will take place in the eternal worlds.

The fourteenth-century Sufi poet Hafiz wrote:

Now let’s get down to the real reason

Why we sit together and breathe

And begin the laughing, the divine laughing,

Like great heroic women

And magnificent

Strong men.

The other night I was tucking my children into bed, telling them a story. I hit on a gag that made them laugh. And I used it over and over. I couldn’t get enough of hearing their laughter. We snuggled and laughed. For me, it was the real reason. It was heaven.

I came home from work today to find the older three of my four children watching “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.” They were laughing with such merriment, I just stood to let it wash over me for a minute. When I got upstairs I found that my two-year-old, who has a manic, wild sort of laugh and an almost-constantly-smiling face, and who is made of thunder and lightning and sugar, had taken a tub of Vaseline and smeared it all over the guest bathroom—floor, sink, mirror, faucet, walls. And we have a guest coming tonight. But I had a hard time putting a stop to the laughter. So I cleaned it up.

There’s something vulnerable about laughing, too. It’s a sort of unveiling of the soul. Maybe that’s why I have to wait for the true laugh in me to be revealed. I need to let go of all self-consciousness and sense of self-importance. I need to let go of masks and defenses and facades and let myself laugh. Because life is a sort of sacred hilarity. One day the laugh behind it all will be revealed.

And when I am that laugh, I hope that those who remain behind on this world of sadness and delight will feel it in part. I hope there’s lots of laughter at my funeral—because I have lived a life of joy and connectedness and humor and glee. I hope there’s something real and human to laugh about—that the stories will be funny. And the laugh that I am will join the chorus of raucous, gentle, holy laughter. It will be nice, don’t you think?

Memory as Revelation

This evening I was shucking corn with my two-year-old son (“shucking corn”—that’s something you should hear my two-year-old say; you should pretty much hear him say anything; his bright, laughing eyes and water-clear voice dazzle me). And suddenly a ray of memories shone down: the first time I shucked corn. I was maybe six or seven, sitting on the lawn outside my best friend, Cache’s, house. His mom sat on a chair and taught me how to shuck corn and peel off the strings. I remember being concerned about the strings. She sang songs: “Go Tell Aunt Rodie” and “There’s a Hole in the Bucket.” It was the first time I had ever heard those songs, and they were strange and interesting to me. Music stirs memories like almost nothing else. Songs can transport me.

Another time this week memory came like revelation. I was driving home with my family from my grandmother’s funeral in California and it was raining outside and suddenly (that’s the word—suddenly) a smell came from outside. It was a mixture of summer rain and road and maybe air conditioning and something else. But it smelled just like a t-shirt I loved as a kid. I hadn’t thought about that t-shirt for years. A bright yellow Bart Simpson shirt. Man, I loved that shirt. Steinbeck writes, “The memory of odors is very rich.” And that is true. To this day certain smells convey me in time and being to another, earlier version of myself. The smell of fall and books brings back-to-school butterflies. And there’s this smell, a mixture of heat and meat and street that takes me to Mexico, to the feelings of my mission. The smell of dead dog takes me there, too, but with less fondness.

I’ve often wondered what heaven will smell like. Maybe honeysuckle. We had a honeysuckle bush outside my door when I was a kid. We have one now. Heaven might smell like that. Or my wife’s cinnamon rolls. That’s a smell I could abide for eternity. Or just summer rain. Or babies’ hair. Or caramels. I think the land of Canaan was said to flow with milk and honey because those are the ingredients for caramel—the flavor of paradise. Forget Wonka’s chocolate river; heaven’s rivers run caramel.

I’ve thought a lot about the power of memory. Just before he died, Jesus told his disciples that he would send a Comforter. Then he tells them that the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, will bring all things to their remembrance. So memory is a form of revelation, the way it overtakes us and seizes us and spirits us away. Memory, like music, is evidence to me that I have a soul, an inexplicable foray into the eternal. Linear time is so once-centered, but memory brings a sense of timelessness: a moment can return, and with it a whole series of emotions and feelings. The connectedness between remembering and feeling seems evidence of the holy nature of memory. God's voice can speak to me through memory. I believe that. Often it’s the memory of mortal joy—as we spoke of memory one day in a class I was teaching, one student told me of a tree she used to love and how she wept when they cut it down. There was genuine feeling in her telling. Her memory sparked one in me and I was taken to the orchard across the street from my childhood home. There was this tree that had this almost-throne at the top—three prongs of a branch all growing out then up. I would sit up in that seat on top of the world and feel mighty, brave, and gleefully alone. Another student told me of a day in Oregon when she played all day at the beach with her cousins and they found this sort of platform. It was heaven for her. It was a heartbreakingly lovely memory of human happiness, the kind of thing I think we'll look back on with great affection in the next life. The best memories usually involve communion—laughter and love and all that. But we remember pain, too, that we might have the wisdom to enjoy. Well, it’s a remarkable thing.