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.

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?

Mystery and Communion

Paul insisted that we see through a glass darkly. I recently saw a picture of an old Roman mirror. It looked like a frying pan. Almost no reflection, no gleam. But one day something like scales will fall from our eyes and we will see as we are seen and know as we are known. That’s a promise, and one fraught with vivid hope for me. Communion can seem fairly elusive in a world in which every person is a mystery. Sometimes it feels like we love and interact and hardly even know each other, barely brushing spirit shoulders with these luminous beings which surround us on every side.

Certainly, I believe that communion is possible; I have experienced it from time to time—that sort of mutual understanding that surpasses words. On a bench in the temple just before my wife and I were married. When laughing with another person at some shared humor. In moments of joint gratitude.  Or singing hymns; I have looked around on more than one occasion with a sort of shock to realize that all these people with all these different lives are singing the same words and (roughly) the same melody, our breath and prayers intermingling, weaving themselves into a sort of mystical brilliance that lingers for a moment in the air above our heads.

But I live so often in the world of my own thoughts that I have been startled on more than one occasion to look over at a passing car on the freeway to find someone looking back at me. Our eyes meet for an instant, and I realize, “I don’t know you. I probably will never know you. But you woke up today inside your mind, and your life matters to you as desperately as mine matters to me.” And then we will speed off to our various destinations; within minutes I am consumed by whatever is occupying my mind, the center of my own universe.

I have often longed to know a person better. My own children are mysteries to me. I sometimes go into their rooms to watch them sleep, wondering, “Who are you?”

My grandmother passed away early yesterday morning. I had a hard time sleeping the night before, knowing it was coming. She was one of the sweetest, gentlest, most patient, longsuffering humans I ever met. And I loved her, admired her, named my daughter after her. They say that when you get old and sick your façade crumbles and you are left with the real you, the essential, core soul of you. Often people become irritable or discourteous when they lose their filters. But my grandma became more serene, more pleasant. She had strokes for years and years and gently endured it with a quiet smile. As my cousin and I talked at the poolside where our kids splashed and screamed yesterday afternoon, it hit me that I didn’t really know my grandma. I spent a good deal of time at her house and remember her giving me cinnamon flavored chewing gum as a child. I have distinct, colorful memories of her home and of her lemon tree and her backyard. But she was always just a presence, my grandma, kind and generous and soft. I didn’t have the wisdom as a child see her as a person, with real feelings and a life of her own, dreams and adventures and failures and heartbreak. She was Lutheran until she met my grandfather. She thought he’d make a good Lutheran. She made a great Mormon. She was a hostess, a social hub in her southern California ward. She loved the outdoors. And, I don’t really know what else. I am sort of excited to go to her funeral to hear the old stories from those who knew her best, but even so I imagine she’ll sit smiling on the other side of the veil, listening and realizing that no one really knew her.

But one day I will walk through that veil. The veil will be rent, just as it was when Jesus died. And something will give. Mysteries will be revealed. I will know. I will know people. In some ways, I can’t wait. In others, I am glad to delight for the time being in the holy mysteriousness of my wife and children, of my grandfather (whom I would like to get to know better), of all these walking enigmas whom I love but may never really know in life.

(The picture is "Woman With Infant Flying" by Brian Kershisnik)

The Temple

Mary Oliver asks in a poem, “Where does the temple begin? Where does it end?” It seems an apt question. There is so much that is sacred in existence and in human interactions. One day I came from receiving ordinances in the temple—where my heart burned with real joy—to my home, where that morning I had spent some time in my young sleepless son's bed and where I was honored to tuck that same four-year-old son, Emerson, into bed. That is a sacred ritual of story and song and communion, and my heart burned with the same light. I wrote this poem. It’s called “Friday at the Temple.” Hineni is what Abraham answered when God called him, and Samuel, and Jesus.

Friday at the Temple

I have known angels,

have seen them in all shapes and sizes—

sometimes silhouetted in the distant streaking sun,

flitting lithely as swallows in spring.

But more often I have known them up close,

slender, stern, portly, pleasant.

They have laid hands on my head—

sometimes hands heavy with the weight of glory,

sometimes a touch so light and brief it could have been a passing fly,

stopping for an instant in benediction on my skull.

Either way, it has been a blessing to be ministered to

in that way: washed with light,

anointed with luminescence,

clothed in brilliant radiance.

This morning as I snuggled my young son in bed,

I fell asleep, awakened to the sound of his voice:

“Dad, did you say Hey Em?”

No. “I thought I heard someone say that.”

Maybe it was an angel, I told him.

He got quiet for a minute, and I lay back down.

When he next spoke, his face was close to mine,

his bright eyes shining. “Maybe it was Jesus,” he said.

Maybe it was. I should have told him to answer, Hineni.
Here I am.

(The picture is called "Untitled (Angels)" by Brian Kershisnik)