a boy walks into a grove: on moving

This week I drove across the country with my siblings, who are the best people ever and drove over 2,000 miles just to drop me off in Boston. (And are currently driving back to Utah!) The last day before arriving, we stopped at the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, NY, a forest behind Joseph Smith's childhood home where I (and other Mormons) believe he saw God and Jesus Christ when he was only 14.

Sitting there, in that holy wood, I was struck by the radical fissure that vision produced in Joseph's life. One day he is an ordinary farm kid--curious, walks with a limp--, the next day he sees God with his own eyes. Sure, he had to grow into his prophethood, he definitely didn't understand where the vision would lead him, but he was fundamentally changed. In his own words, "I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it" (Joseph Smith-History 1:25). He took a risk, sincerely asked God intending to act on whatever he learned, and was never never the same.

I feel like I have walked into a grove. And right now, that feels like a really stupid choice. I'm sitting in a huge city where I know a grand total of three souls, miles and miles from friends and family and my mountains and a valley I know as well as my own body, where I spent the better part of 24 years building a life that I walked away from in a matter of days.

But. This is my hope:

That it is exactly in the moments of complete disjuncture that God imbues the world with his power. A boy walks into a grove. A man travels to Damascus. A virgin sees an angel. A family leaves Jerusalem.

A man and a woman walk out of a garden. And nothing is ever the same.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe it's Not Meant to Be: On Becoming Dr. Nielson

Backbones, Meds, & Continuance: Hope in 2022

¡Bienvenidos!