Comments on: God’s Acre

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:43:51 +0000

Pffffft!

By: Ray

Ray — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:21:33 +0000

#6 – Thank you, Ardis. I was really worried you wouldn’t – and then my life would lose all meaning.

By: Stephen M (Ethesis)

Stephen M (Ethesis) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:44:36 +0000

but rather grew indignant when his religion didn’t adopt his politics

That is a lesson for our times as well.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:15:40 +0000

I love the poem, Mark, thanks. Gibbs’s defection was chiefly over politics (he was one who didn’t let his religion inform his politics, but rather grew indignant when his religion didn’t adopt his politics), but once the disaffection had taken good hold, both MMM (you may know he wrote one of the first scholarly histories of it) and polygamy became burrs under his saddle.

(I’m sorry for the delay in posting your note. The link caused it to be caught in the spam filter; I’m trying to tweak that filter to allow two or three links before kicking in.)

Maurine, you’re a sister cemeter-o-phile. We’ll forgive Ray for his more mundane view, won’t we?

By: Maurine

Maurine — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 04:41:04 +0000

Ardis, I love the way Gibbs wrote about the serenity and peace of the cemeteries, and that “each grave contains a history of buried love, ambition, and hope.”

I can sit by my parents headstones in Centerville, Utah, and by looking around, see seven generations of my family: my 2nd great-grandmother, great grandparents, grandparents, parents, brother, niece, and two grand-nephews. I have wonderful memories of each one, including the ones I never met, but know them from their histories.

kevinf: I also believe in my heart that even though the spirit is gone from their bodies, it can stay close by. When I was editing a great-grandmother’s diaries for publication and I had questions about her life or her feelings, I would go to the Salt Lake cemetery and sit by her grave for hours, talking to her. I always came away with a new idea or place to research.

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:19:47 +0000

Ardis, fwiw, I am a country boy at heart. I was raised in a little Utah town, where I could walk a few blocks from my house and be in the orchards. I love the peace of the open land; I have come to tolerate the city.

I agree with the basic sentiment expressed in this post, but I don’t like the “cities of the dead” any more than I like the “cities of the living”. I want to be buried privately out in the open, not in some city with other bodies crowded around me. If we really are resurrected literally out of our graves, which I personally doubt, I want to come forth where I can stretch while doing so – not where I need to be careful to avoid bumping into others popping up around me.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:55:28 +0000

I’d never thought of it that way, kevinf. My first reaction is that since we practically alone among all people treat the body as truly sacred, even the body in the absence of the spirit might tend to make a cemetery sacred. And I always think when I visit graves that *this* is the place where Mom and Dad will rise in the resurrection, and *that* is the scene they will first see again, which also tends to make me think of the cemetery as a sacred spot. And, too, I’m rather attracted to the rituals of death (not because I’m a ghoul, folks, but because tending to matters related to death makes me feel like I’m participating in age-old human affairs, the most basic forces of life — I have almost no opportunity to connect to the other great moments of human life, birth and marriage, so I feel a keener sense of my humanness near death) so cemeteries are important to me.

But there is definitely something to your reaction, too. Certainly the western cemeteries I see, except for the oldest sections of the very earliest ones, seem business-like and efficient with their almost identical and flat, ground-level stones, the utilitarianism of an office building converted to a church instead of the inspiration of a gothic church or New England chapel built especially for that purpose.

You’re making me think. On a Friday afternoon, of all things. Thanks.

By: kevinf

kevinf — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:32:24 +0000

Ardis, do you think that the LDS theology of the literal resurrection removes some of the holiness and reverence for cemeteries? I’ve pondered this in the last few years since both of my parents died, and my wife’s mother died. I remember so vividly seeing my mother’s body in the coffin at the viewing, and knowing “she is not there”. What we so revere and remember in life is lacking after death, and the promise of the resurrection is that we will be like we were, once again. I have a picture of my Mom from before I was born, standing by my Dad’s old 48 Chevy, scandalously showing off a bit of her knee. That’s what I anticipate her looking like when I see her again.

When I go to visit their graves in Utah, I’m reminded of the absence of life. I find the current preferred practice of having flat to the earth headstones somewhat cold. In the older cemeteries with the multitude of different standing headstones, at least you got some sense of the individuality of the lives thus represented. It’s a sad sacrifice to the efficiency of a big tractor mower.

By: Mark IV

Mark IV — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:24:30 +0000

Gibbs is an interesting guy, and your forthcoming biography sounds like the perfect fit. I'll look forward to it. Did MMM have anything to do with his disaffection? This account of his visit to the Provo cemetery reminded me of Longfellow's poem, In the Jewish Cemetery at Newport.