Sacred Moments, Sacred Places

The Sacred Grove at the Smith family
farm in Palmyra, New York.

About a year and a half ago, I went with my family to the Sacred Grove at the Smith family farm in Palmyra, New York, where in 1820, God the Father and his son, Jesus Christ, appeared to a young Joseph Smith, the first step toward restoring Christ’s church to the earth. Walking into the grove, I already believed Joseph Smith’s story, so I wasn’t expecting to have a spiritual experience. The experience I did have further sanctified that place for me.

The origins of my testimony of Joseph Smith’s divine call to be a prophet trace back to a youth camp (Especially for Youth or EFY) that I attended before my senior year of high school. My parents had raised me as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so I had grown up hearing the story of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, but the conviction that it was true hadn’t sunk in yet. I believed it — or it would be more accurate to say that I wanted to believe it — but I couldn’t say that I knew that it was true. And I wasn’t sure how I could ever know it. I hadn’t been there in 1820, and all I had to go on was Joseph Smith’s word.

The theme for that year’s EFY was the early history of the church, with a special focus on Joseph Smith. Many of the classes were about Smith, his life, his teachings, and his role as the prophet of the Restoration. One day late in the week, I was lying on my dorm room bed during a break and my friend in the room next door started listening to a poppy church song — the kind designed to appeal to youth — about Joseph Smith. All of a sudden, a wave of emotion enveloped me and everything I had learned about Joseph Smith that week filled my mind. It was a transcendent spiritual experience, and ever since then I have been able to say that I know that Joseph Smith was the prophet that he claimed to be.

That testimony, stemming from that special experience, has carried me in the years since — throughout my years as a missionary, through times when life was more difficult that I had anticipated, and when doubts have creeped into my mind. I knew it was true on that day because God communicated it to me through his Spirit. And since it was true then, it is true today.

My motivations for visiting the Sacred Grove were more historical than anything. They were the same motivations that would cause someone to visit Independence Hall in Philadelphia. And just as no one doubts that the Declaration of Independence was signed in Independence Hall, I had no doubts that the First Vision occurred in the Sacred Grove. So, I didn’t think that I needed any testimony affirming experience.

It was very early spring, and a snow storm had just blown through. We were practically alone in the whole grove, our shoes crunching in the spring snow. Suddenly I realized that the hymn “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer” started playing in my mind. I say “playing” because I hadn’t thought of the song before that moment and it seemed to have settled into my brain of its own accord, like when you wake up with a song you recently heard on the radio in your head.

With that song as impetus, I began thinking of that spring day almost two hundred years ago, about the young boy who was confused about what God wanted of him, and about the prayer he offered up in childlike faith, expecting to receive an answer. I thought about the answer to his prayer, and about how that answer has completely shaped my life and made me the man that I am. And I thought about how grateful I am for that answer, that prayer, on that day.

Tears started to roll down my cheeks. I was filled with emotion. God was reaffirming to me, through his Spirit, that Joseph Smith’s account of his First Vision is true. From that moment, the Sacred Grove didn’t just have historical significance for me, but it had personal significance. It is sacred not just because of the experience that Joseph Smith had there two hundred years ago, but because of the experience that I had there a few months ago.

The writer Noa Jones, in an essay about sacred Buddhist sites, wrote that “these places have power because of what happened here.” Sacred events do tend to sanctify a place, but not all of those events are in the ancient past. The sacred events in our own lives sanctify the places where they occur. These places can be as disparate as a simple college dorm room, or as universally significant as the Sacred Grove. They can be as transcendent as a temple, or as quotidian as our own homes — and I think that creating the kind of home where sacred events can happen is the best way to make it temple-like.

God is still active, still communicating with us, his children. We can all have sacred experiences, if we will open ourselves up to them. And there are places all around us that are just waiting to be sanctified.