If We Knew ...

Aftergrove

Had you known, would you’ve stayed there,

Light still beading on your skin?

Your Grove now templed, a nave, your forever green April sanctus—

to leave is to begin.

    Barely a boy, bruises yet to form, how slow you must have stepped, dew still

clotted to your shoes.

They were so Beautiful, so . . .

. . . yet first there was the dark,

it too spoke your name.

Your tongue to stone, petrified.

Only your mind could cry “Father.”

Beyond these trees, child, past the fence there, through town and to the west:

Untold fires, hours and years of hard . . .

. . . your heart of glass to sliver and crack and shatter,

            somehow still to shimmer.

’til June of Forty-four, when again, at last, a pillar . . .

            - Scott Livingston

 BYU Studies, Vol. 49, No. 4, 2010, p 155

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If we knew all the details of our lives before they unfolded, would we "stay" and go through with it? In pondering this I think about the wonderful gift of the gospel, of Heavenly Father, Christ, and the Holy Ghost who help us with the journey. 

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The poet is referring to Joseph Smith and the experience he had with the Father and the Son in the Sacred Grove. If Joseph Smith had known about the persecutions and martyrdom to come, would he have stayed in that grove and accepted the mission given to him? I am thankful he stayed and did what he was asked to do. 






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