Paul wrote this for sharing on Facebook and Twitter, and has given permission to have it posted here as well.
Last week I went into the Family History Library and came out with an unexpected find—the baptismal record of “Tom, Brother Churches black man.” Tom has been on my mind ever since.
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Continue reading Tom: “Enough to Cause the Angels in Heaven to Blush”
William and Marie Graves were baptized in 1911. They could not go to the temple in life because they died so long before a revelation in 1978 would have made them welcome. They were endowed by proxy in 1982, because the Church eventually provides temple ordinances to members who died without having completed them – but William and Marie were not sealed as husband and wife because the membership form in use in 1911 did not state that they were a married couple. That last ordinance in their behalf was completed on Friday, 24 June 2016.
I tucked the card with their names on it inside the pocket of my suit coat as Beth and I headed to the temple. The sealer would say their names today, inside the sealing room inside the temple. He would say their names and we would remember them, people whom I have never met but whom I have come to admire, respect, and love through the trace fragments of their lives. I only know them through the historical shreds of evidence that they left behind—crumbs that they dropped along the trail of life leading from Oakland, California, to a Mormon church in Georgia where Marie intended to introduce her friends to her chosen faith but was rebuffed with a racist dismissal by a coreligionist. Back in Oakland, they kept dropping the crumbs of life along the way: at the pulpit in testimony meeting, in the pew at the same congregation that Armand Mauss attended as a child, in the ten and fifteen cent donations Marie made to the Relief Society, in a letter to Heber J. Grant chronicling the racism that confronted Marie in Georgia—the crumbs that allowed my friend Ardis to breathe new life into their story in a way that only she knows how. It was a story that captivated me the first time that I heard it and stuck in the corner of my mind so much so that when I read Armand’s memoir and he mentioned “an elderly black couple named Graves” in his childhood congregation I had to ask Ardis, “could it be the same couple?”
Continue reading Guest Post: Inside the Sealing Room Inside the Temple
It was a brisk morning when I climbed into the saddle, squished between the saddle horn and my dad. We didn’t have enough horses for everyone to ride their own. I was the youngest and smallest and so I rode double with my dad. My brothers took off in other directions to look for cattle. My dad and I rode up the draw between the mountain and the fence line, keeping our eyes peeled for any sign of cows and their calves. Occasionally my dad spurred the horse into a trot and maintained an energetic pace.
I loved horses when I was young and couldn’t get enough of riding them—that is until I got bucked off one day when my horse inadvertently stepped in a gopher hole as I raced my cousin across the red sand of northern Arizona. The gopher hole spooked my horse so that he reared up and threw me off. I landed on my back, somehow underneath the horse, looking up at his powerful underside with his hooves dancing around me in what I only remember as a blur. I was unhurt, but shaken and only got back in the saddle at my dad’s insistence; my tears and strong protest couldn’t persuade him otherwise. In theory, riding again so quickly after getting bucked off was supposed to calm my fears and keep me riding. It didn’t work. I was skittish around horses for years after that and no longer volunteered to ride. Riding became more of a chore for me, laced with uncertainty and fear, than something I wanted to do for enjoyment. It was also a source of tension between me and my dad. I lost esteem in his eyes that day; I felt it. I wasn’t tough like he expected and I wasn’t the cowboy he wanted me to be. His frustration was occasionally strong enough to get me back on a horse, but it was never pleasant. I couldn’t shake the fear of those blurry horse hooves dancing around me and I couldn’t shake his disappointment either.
But on this cool and pleasant morning at least there was no pressure to ride on my own because we only had three horses that day. So I rode with my dad. I felt somewhat a sense of relief because I did not have to prove anything; I was just along for the ride. His frustration at my lack of resolve, however, was sometimes kept only slightly hidden beneath the surface—and sometimes it burst through. As we rode along on this particular morning, he kicked the horse into a trot again and then slowed into a rapid walk. I can only think that it was the combination of the bracing air and the jolting stride that caused my nose to start to run. I didn’t have a tissue or a hankie handy, so in proper boy fashion, I started to sniff.
Community has always been more important than the individual in Mormonism. From the nineteenth century to the present Mormons have bound themselves together in biological and adopted families, sealed themselves across time and space to their kindred dead, and replicated the familial structure on a congregational level with “ward families.” As Sam Brown puts it in his wonderful new book, First Principles, “our relationships matter as the fundamental building blocks of the cosmos” (p. 104).
It is within this context that I was deeply saddened this week with news of a dear “sister’s” diagnosis with terminal cancer. My wife and I both cried as we reflected on the way in which this particular bright light in our ward cosmos has impacted our lives over the past nine years. I know similar stories play out in Mormon congregations across the globe. For me, these relationships are the best part of my life as a Mormon.
“Sister P’s” diagnosis gave me good reason to reflect on my relationship with her and to type my thoughts in a letter. I share it here in the hope that Sister P’s light and legacy might spread a bit of cheer this holiday season and beyond.