Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
And Moses said, “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”
And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses, Moses.”
And he said, “Here am I.”
And he said, “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
I wonder what another shepherd in that desert might have seen at a distance. He would have seen Moses with his flock; he might have seen Moses suddenly change direction to look more closely at something. Perhaps he would even have seen Moses take off his sandals. But would he have seen anything unusual about the bush? If that other shepherd had happened to approach the same spot on a later day, would he have felt anything different about that spot? I doubt it – the vision was not meant for him; the Lord had departed.
But if Moses ever returned to that place, I don’t think he could have walked past it obliviously. I think he would have treated it with reverence. If he happened to be accompanied by anyone else, and pointed out the spot to his companion, can you imagine that he would have laughed and said anything like, “Oh, yeah – that place. That’s the place that got me into this whole mess. Maybe I should snip off twigs from that brush and sell them to the children of Israel! Ha ha ha! It would pay me back for some of the trouble they’ve put me to! Ha ha!”
Something becomes sacred because of its association with the divine. The Sacred Grove is sacred to us because of what happened there in 1820. Abraham Lincoln called the cemetery at Gettysburg “hallowed ground” because of the lives sacrificed there for a cause Lincoln and his listeners believed in. Temples are holy places because the profane world has been excluded, making space for us to approach God.
Objects and ideas as well as places can be sacred: an object intimately associated with a deceased loved one is no longer used for its original purpose, but is put carefully away, to be brought out at contemplative moments to inspire tender feelings and cherished memories. Sacrament trays and cloths are, or should be, treated carefully because of their association with that holy ordinance. Temple robes are not displayed where they will be mocked.
Bad behavior does not affect the holiness of places or things or ideas: Loud laughter and reckless movement today cannot affect what happened in the Sacred Grove almost two centuries ago; using a sacrament cloth as an ordinary tablecloth at a ward dinner would not disqualify its use again at the sacrament table.
But I submit that while the objects and places themselves are not affected, we ourselves are. The person who plans his next day’s business strategy instead of fully participating in temple rites, the person who visits a memorial and laughingly imagines it as the setting for a superhero adventure, the person who carelessly sends to DI the tiny booties that his grandmother had kept wrapped in tissue for three generations, has lost his sense of the sacred. Not only is he trampling over sacred ground that day, but he numbs himself to future appreciation of other sacred times and places and things and ideas.
Much of online Mormonism has been obsessed with the pictures of Joseph Smith’s seerstone released earlier this week. Blogs, newspapers, Facebook – it’s everywhere.
Most of that attention, I suggest, is misguided. You’ve read the jokes and seen the memes – please don’t repeat them in comments here. The laughter from Latter-day Saints has usually been meant in good fun, I know, and the mockery from outsiders is no worse than you would expect.
I can’t help wondering what this reception is doing to us, individually and as an online community. I don’t know quite what the stone meant to Joseph, or more than the barest outlines of how he used it. I haven’t had time to think about what it means to me – while I have of course heard of seerstones and their use, these pictures suddenly make it more real, and I need to consider.
But I have confidence in Joseph Smith as the Prophet of the Restoration. I believe in the Book of Mormon as holy scripture. This stone – wherever it came from, however it was used, whatever it means – was intimately associated with both the Prophet and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. It has been preserved and protected and kept private by a long line of men whom I sustain as prophets, seers and revelators.
Whether or not the stone itself is sacred, it is associated with sacred events. Laughing about replicas to be sold at Deseret Book, substituting Cadbury eggs in the images from the newly released Joseph Smith Papers book, replacing objects in profane images with pictures of the seerstone, all show a disrespect for the sacred that extends beyond the stone to the events themselves. Will people who laugh this way, even if they mean no harm, even try to understand what the stone meant to Joseph Smith?
These are the first pictures of this stone that the Church has ever published. Will our lightminded reception in this case encourage the Church to open other items to public view?
Okay, my preach is at an end. We’ll go back to history now. And in the next few days I hope to have a decent post about the new book and the printer’s manuscript itself – you know, the other 974 pages of the volume, beyond the two pages of photographs that have garnered all the attention. This isn’t just another copy of the Book of Mormon, you know.
Amen!
I waste more time than I should on the internet, but I was fortunate to miss the pictures and posts you referred to. I can more easily avoid them. I have been thinking some about this stone, about tools we need, about physical objects we hold onto, and about tasks we need to accomplish.
I’m in the middle of reading a book about the translation of Egyptian hierogyphics, Linear B, and Mayan. These translations were long, complicated processes, some of them involving modern high speed computers. But they also involved stones, like the ‘Rosetta.’ And there are others waiting to be translated, if anyone wants to try.
I also thought of the children’s movie “Dumbo” in which a character believes he can fly because he possesses a magic feather. When he loses the feather, he discovered that he never actually needed.
So I suspect that the stone is just an ordinary stone, important only because of its association with important people and things, not because of its inherent properties. No scholar is going to use it now to translate one of those afore mentioned untranslated scripts. But that doesn’t mean that Joseph Smith didn’t very much need it at the time.
God provided Joseph Smith with a method he could comprehend to carry out a necessary task. I hope He will also provide me with the tools I need to carry out the tasks I have been assigned. And I hope that I can recognize and value those tools.
Amen! This stone was kept for a reason. I believe the early Saints and Leaders felt is was sacred not by its nature but the part it played in the restoration of the Gospel. The Ark carried objects deemed sacred to the Moses and those that followed him. We mocked what we don’t understand. This stone is our past and is an instrument of God used by a living Prophet and Seer. I for one am excited to see it. Those that witnessed Brother Joseph use it to translate the BoM or other things prove to me that he translated not wrote these things, ergo a Prophet. What an exciting time we live in.
My wonder is whether, in fact, this is THE seer stone. So far, it seems as if references are couched in general ways, leaving some doubt as whether in fact the stone in question is actually the one used by Joseph or some other stone that made it’s way into the hands of early church leaders. I was also hoping to read more of Joseph’s own words with respect to his use of the seer stone, and I haven’t run across those writings, yet. Only vague references in the scriptures and his contemporaries. It’s not all that important, but even the October Ensign article isn’t very informative about the use of the seer stone. Anyway, I assume if leaders thought enough of it to keep it safe all this time, it has sacred significance, whether it was the actual stone or not.
Thank you for your thoughts on this topic. I see a need for more patience, more love, more understanding on both sides of this issue. Some people are experiencing pain over a loss of faith, and at times that manifests itself in ways that can be interpreted by others as ridicule and mockery, when from the perspective of the person experiencing the pain, they see it as humor. Perspective is the key to understanding, but it is difficult if not impossible for humans with emotions and limited mental capacities to take a step back from our own emotions and try to understand others.
I’m trying to understand my fellow Mormons on both sides of issues like this. With social media and its sensationalist tendencies I frequently get frustrated with narrow-minded behaviors as I’m sure we all do. I believe the best way to combat this is through demonstrating a level of charity towards everyone. This is difficult because at times I really want to just tell someone how wrong they are, how hurtful their opinions can be, how uninformed and unenlightened their ideas are. Yet I try to hold back, and to find something about that person that I can identify with. To let them know that they are important to me personally.
This is very difficult, and I frequently fail in my efforts. But when I am successful, I feel like I’m making a small difference. I doubt that my methods will change the world or have any widespread impact on society. I don’t know why I try to do things this way, other than it seems right to me, somewhere deep inside. Sorry for pontificating so much.
I just wanted to let you know that even though I’m not a regular poster on your blog, I follow your posts and comments on this and other blogs from time to time and I really appreciate your work. I’m also a contributor to the book you’re writing. Thanks for all your efforts in our community!
IDIAT, the introduction to this volume reports instances where Joseph declined to speak publicly about his use of the interpreters (either this stone, or the “spectacles” found with the plates). There simply isn’t a lot more detail available than what you’ve seen, certainly not in Joseph’s words either directly recorded or spoken to and recorded by others.
There is no doubt that the stone in these pictures is the one that Joseph used in the translation. Its provenance and very early description are solid.
As you state,” bad behavior does not affect the holiness of places or things or ideas”. What it does do is reveal to both us & to the Lord where we stand. Temple ordinances can be found online, but that does not diminish their sacred character, although it speaks volumes about those who failed to honor the covenants they made. The older I get, the more I realize that the adversary likely knows of all things sacred already; he simply does not comprehend their sacred nature…much like those who with loud laughter mock & disrespect items & places & ideas that should be reverenced.
Very good thoughts Ardis. I agree that our treatment of holy and profane things affects us personally much more than the things themselves.
As for improving behavior within our church community, I can’t think of a better approach than simply setting an example and patiently hoping that others will follow. As one example, my wife and I recently struggled to instill a sense of reverence in our children when we visited the sacred grove. Sticks were thrown, voices raised, races run – pretty much what you’d expect from young children. The saving grace was realizing that I’d likely acted the same when my parents took me there as a child. The best I can do now is to model what I teach and trust that someday they will calm down enough to understand.
As for improving behavior outside our community, I would similarly proffer that we first model the behavior we wish from others. Too often we mormons (myself at the forefront) are guilty of ridiculing or treating lightly what is holy to other faiths. Whether it is Catholic relics, depictions of the prophet Mohammed, or even candles for saints – as was mocked in a recent general conference – most of us have room to improve. And hopefully as we do so, others will follow the golden rule.
This brings to mind something i’ve wondered for years: What is “loud laughter”, anyway?
I doubt it’s simply laughing loudly—but i’m a bit uncomfortable with the idea that it’s simply mockery. I think it ties in a bit to the discussion that’s going on here, though, but i can’t quite put my finger on exactly how.
(And i hadn’t seen the commentary surrounding the seer stone pictures, so i went ahead and googled for it all, and i didn’t find anything vicious, so i don’t think that stuff rises to the level of whatever it is, either. Or maybe i’m just callous and beyond feeling. Either way, i suppose.)
There’s another element in our reactions to an object some one or some event has deemed sacred. In a seminary class years ago, the seminary teacher tenderly displayed a Book of Mormon that had belonged to Pres. Kimball. The teacher clearly had strong feelings around the object, and other classmates in awe approached the book like a holy relic. I did not have those same feelings of awe. I firmly believe Pres. Kimball was a prophet of God, but I did not have the same emotional/spiritual reactions others so clearly displayed. I had a similar experience years later when I was at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem years later. So many fellow LDS students were weeping at the place, overcome by the Spirit. I felt nothing and wondered if I was spiritually broken. Days later I had an amazing spiritual experience sitting in my dorm room reading the scriptures. I wasn’t broken, I just interact with the Spirit according to a language that God knows I understand better.
For many members, interacting with physical items associated with our spiritual heritage can be amazing spiritual experiences (hence the museums, reenactments, historic sites, replicas, etc.). Not everyone will have the same reactions, though. We can still treat sacred objects respectfully, even if they do not inspire the same feelings in ourselves.
Thank you, Ardis.
And thank you LauraN for that great example.
Well thought and expressed. Amen, Ardis.
Mary Ann,
If it’s any comfort, BYU professor Dan Peterson is of the opinion that the garden tomb is not Christ’s tomb.
Mary Ann, I used to live in Upstate NY, so I visited the Palmyra church history sites many times. I had similar experiences, where everyone around me was ‘feeling the spirit’ in the Sacred Grove or in the Joseph Smith home while I noted the local flora and fauna and the historical details of the house. I had my spiritual experiences at home while reading the Book that Joseph translated. That’s just how it works for some of us.
(Also, the best way to insure that I won’t have a spiritual experience is to assure me that I’m about to have one.)
The seerstone is fascinating, I think, because it’s so far removed from modern Mormonism that it creates a level of discomfort. Many (including me)respond to discomfort with humor. (e.g. lame jokes at scary movies).
I appreciate the reminder that lightminded remarks about the sacred are inappropriate.
I look at the stone with a sense of reverence, too. I am so very proud of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
I hope your reference to Deseret Book selling replicas was intended as humorous — oh, I hope so…
I have thought a lot about “loud laughter” over my years of temple attendance. I’ve been in situations where a fun conversation with family members or friends have caused me to laugh myself to tears, but I’ve never considered that to be within the realm of “loud laughter.” I don’t feel the definition is any one thing either, but I do believe there is a threshold that would take the laughter into that realm. Some examples: if the laughter is in mockery or it is due to lack of self control (inebriation in its various forms comes to mind) or is profane or springs from a conscious desire to harm, then the laughter falls under the category of “loud.” From what I read from Ardis’ description, this seems to be occurring in certain instances. There’s nothing wrong with humor, but just like anything else humor can be good or not so much.
As for the “spiritual experience” aspect that has been mentioned. My second trip to the Sacred Grove and Palmyra was taken when my sons were small (3 and not quite 1) and my wife was a convert of about 5 years. My first trip there was as a 15-year-old with a “whatever” attitude, so I thought this time (as a returned missionary and a husband and father) I was going to have a major spiritual blow-out (my wife, unbeknownst to me at the time, felt the same way). We spent 2 days in the area visiting all the main stops (and just walking around the town)–and, as we left, I realized I had felt … nothing. No crying, no thunderbolt, no choir of angels. It was on the drive back to New Jersey (we were visiting her relatives) that my wife mentioned to me that she had also felt nothing while expecting to have a similar spiritual epiphany. As we talked, we realized that the reason we hadn’t felt those things was because we didn’t need to. We already had a testimony of what had happened there. What we came to understand was there had been an underlying sweetness the entire time during our visit–we just hadn’t noticed it because we were looking for the spectacular.
My point, in what is now becoming a book :), is that I think we, as members, sometimes get so caught up looking for the overwhelming that we can miss the still, small, peaceful reassurance that comes far more often than the spectacular.
The seerstone made me think of this by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
I love that! I love that the seerstone gives a “voice of truth out of the earth.” I love that the voice of God can be heard on the banks of an ordinary American river or from an ordinary chocolate-colored rock. I love that the seerstone is so ordinary, and yet so extraordinary. To me that is a cause for joy rather than cynicism.
I’m really interested in the printer’s manuscript. I’m glad that you were able to be there at the press conference. And, thank you for your feelings about the seer stone. Where ever there are sacred things, Satan is there prodding people to belittle and degrade and laugh. That doesn’t mean that we should join in.
My kids and I were talking about this tonight, and I told them that I didn’t particularly need to see the stone. It’s hard to explain why — It’s not going to do damage to my testimony if I see it (and yes, I’ve caught glimpses here and there unavoidably on FB). Dunno. I like historic things and documents. But this doesn’t seem to have much appeal.
A timely post, Ardis — much of the the online response is rather unseemly. At the same time, it is predictable, so a portion of the frustration over the predictable response should perhaps be directed at whoever decided to publish the photographs of the seerstone. They’ve already published “official” photos of temple garments at LDS.org. What’s next, a published “official” transcript of the temple liturgy itself?
I also agree with The Other Clark (#13) that seeing the stone displayed so plainly does create a level of discomfort for many. Perhaps some of the humor is a function of that discomfort rather than simply an urge to indulge in religious mockery or religious self-mockery. This isn’t a defense of those reactions, just an attempt to understand them.
I think both in the case of garments and the seerstone, releasing a photograph serves the useful purpose of demystifying them for the public. Without it, the imagination can run wild about how weird it is.
Cue the spooky music. “Magic Underwear. Woooooooooo. Magical Rock. Weird!”
There’s a lot less bizarre about an undershirt and longish boxer briefs than what people imagine when they mock “magic Mormon underwear.”
The actual significance of the material objects to those who use/used them remains, but when people can see how prosaic the objects actually are, it removes some of the baggage of oddity that leads to derision and ridicule.
Thanks, Left Field. You have twice in this thread said things better and more diplomatically than I might have.
To those who offer potential explanations for the “humor” with which the ideas and images of the seerstone are being treated in some quarters: you may very well be right as to the cause. That, however, does not address the point of this post: The kind of humor we saw for a few days — it seems to be passing now — was sometimes cynical, sometimes ridiculous, making light of the stone and by extension (and sometimes explicitly) disdaining Joseph Smith, his prophetic status, and the Book of Mormon. Sacred things/ideas will of course withstand any amount of disrespect … but the sensitivity to the sacred by the jokesters can’t help but be blunted.
It isn’t the “why” that concerns me, but the “therefore.”
Perhaps, though, if we ask why people make cynical comments about the seerstone* we should simultaneously ask why, for example, the meme that trinitarianism is silly and makes no sense at all,** along with some resulting jokes about how “confusing” and all it is, has stayed around for so long in Mormon culture.
I’d say we (meaning humans, not just Mormons) tend to use humor as a way to deal with things that challenge our view of the world. This can be mean-spirited, yes, but i really do think that it’s usually completely innocent but can easily be perceived as mean-spirited by those at whose expense the humor comes.
* Did i just miss the worst of the reactions when i went looking? I didn’t see anything even near as bad as i would have expected.
** It does totally make sense, it just relies on different foundational assumptions than Mormons tend to work with.
This statement has haunted me since I saw it. We all react to these things differently. I am reconsidering some of my associations related to Mormon history because of the lack of respect and reverence shown. We live in a world of instant proliferation of our every thought via the internet. Not enough consideration goes into these kinds of things on the part of too many. Thank you for this timely and important reminder.
I’m not asking “why.” I don’t care about why. I likewise don’t care whether it was innocent or mean-spirited. Ya’ll are welcome to discuss the why and how if you want to, but that interests me not in the slightest. I don’t care *why* or *how* — I care *that*.
kevinf, you get it. And while I haven’t responded individually to most comments, many others of you get it, too. Thank you.
Maybe i wasn’t as clear as i had hoped to be, then—yes, i am interested in *why*, including whether it was intended as mean-spirited or not, but i’m interested in that as a way of getting at whether there really is a *that*.
Yes, there is a *that* in many cases. I’m just wondering whether there’s a *that* as frequently as we often perceive. It’s really easy to perceive something completely innocent—or worse, something where it’s a perhaps inartful attempt at starting a conversation—as mean-spirited or as mockery or as whatever other negative thing when it deals with something the perceiver holds sacred.
And doing that means that an opportunity for dialogue may be lost.
Is isn’t that you haven’t been clear, David B; it is that as often as you or anyone else drags this post in a direction that obscures its primary point, I will drag it back.
Profaning the sacred — treating the sacred as just another mundane topic for laughter on Facebook or elsewhere — dulls a person’s ability to appreciate the sacred. In this case, neither the sacredness of the Book of Mormon nor Joseph Smith’s prophetic role is harmed in the slightest; the harm is only to those who make light of sacred things.
Okay, got it—and complete agreement with the main thrust of it (that “treating the sacred as just another mundane topic…dulls a person’s ability to appreciate the sacred…[, and] the harm is only to those who make light of sacred things”).
We just need to be cautious in our judgments about what is actually profaning (probably better: attempting to profane) the sacred—what we perceive as such might well not actually be doing that.
You’ve had your say, David. Best to move along now.
Thank you for this post Ardis. Last month I visited Palmyra and Kirtland I was overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude for those (both LDS and non-members) who have worked to protect and preserve these sites. Places and objects that are part of our history are important and sacred. Seeing something tangible brings to life the scripture or historical books we have read. They help us connect with our past and should be treated with reverence and respect. I appreciate your wise words!
Perhaps the current emphasis on the Sabbath Day and the sacrament will help renew our sense of the sacred.
Thank you for this post, Ardis.
I have a few more thoughts, if I may, about seerstones.
Growing up, I was often told that a seer is someone authorized to use a seerstone. From my understanding of seerstones, they were venerable and (metaphorically) weighty instruments, perhaps like a king’s scepter or a judge’s gavel. At least within a religious context, nothing to be sneered at or discomfited by. I never for a moment associated a seerstone with magic or superstition or the occult any more than I would have associated a church or a rosary or a torah scroll with such things. I suppose I had heard of a “peepstone,” but never equated it with a seerstone, and even back in the day, Joseph Smith distinguished between the two terms.
I have not imagined a seerstone to be magic any more than a scepter or a gavel or a rosary is magic. No doubt a king can reign without a scepter and a judge can call court into session without a gavel.
Sometime perhaps in the last fifteen years, I started hearing of the association of seerstones with magic and superstition, often freely using the term interchangeably with “peepstone.” That kind of talk was startling to say the least, given the context in which I had previously encountered the idea of a seerstone.
A seerstone to me is not an object of veneration, but it certainly carries different associations and connotations than it obviously does for some others.
Regarding the discussion about the meaning of “loud laughter,” I was recently reading the book “Two Years Before the Mast” which was published in 1840. In one section the author describes how the demeanor of a ship’s crew changes after a crew member dies at sea by saying “There is more quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone.” I checked Google’s Ngram Viewer, and it shows that “the loud laugh” was a much more commonly used phrase in the 1770s and from 1820-1850 than it is now. I found several religious books from that time period that disapprove of “the loud laugh” along with other vices. These references may originate from a line written by the famous poet Oliver Goldsmith in “The Deserted Village” (1770) that refers to “the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.”
So, in sum, in the 19th Century “the loud laugh” or “loud laughter” seems to have had been associated with vice and sin.
Rolyat, very helpful. Thanks for that.
Terrific post.
Thanks, Rolyat—good to learn that.