THE HOLINESS OF HOME

You wouldn’t know it unless I told you. You would not know that we have an altar in our family room, right in plain view. I’ve written about it before. That altar and I had a nice visit to the Antiques Roadshow back before the millennium turned, where they filmed the appraisal they gave us. It was estimated to be worth roughly fifty times more than I paid for it. But that is not where the value lies.

After they turned off the cameras, there at the Salt Palace where the show was filmed, I commented: “You never know when you’re going to need a good altar.”

A church historian once told me that we would one day have to worship in our own homes, and that sacred ordinances generally done in other holy places would be performed at home. That altar became part of my home preparedness. Besides, it looks perfect with my décor. 

A few years ago I purchased an original bronze sculpture of Jesus Christ from our friend, J. Kirk Richards. It was a gift for Dave’s birthday. It sits atop that altar, in front of the swinging pendulum of a wall clock. (I think it’s symbolic. Time is inconsequential to Him.)

Two days ago, on a Sabbath in March, we gathered around our kitchen table, a little cluster of aging Latter-day Saints. My sisters Sherry and Libby, our friend Leslie, Dave and me. We lifted the heavy bronze Jesus from his altar place and placed on its velvet surface a small pitcher of water and a piece of crusty bread our six-year-old Beth had made with me last week. The small pitcher has the mark of Joe Bennion, the potter, on it. My friend Joe stamps his pieces with a simple symbol which means Holiness to the Lord. I filled the Bennion pitcher with water from the deep seated artesian well I draw from almost weekly near downtown Farmington. Pure, clear water filtered by the earth itself. The bread I placed in a terracotta butter dish we had bought in England when our son John finished his service in the England Bristol Mission. I covered this simple Sacramental feast with the soft white linen napkin given to me by Dave’s Grandma Roy when we left the cottage on Mackinac Island for the last time. Everything about this setting was symbolic.

I sat at the table with my sisters and accompanied on guitar a hymn, Love at Home. Libby offered a family prayer of thanks and pleading. And then the true symbols came to light. 

David knelt at the altar and spoke the words of the Sacramental Prayer, first in Italian, then in English. It has been 44 years since he returned from his mission to Italy. Every Sunday, for the past 44 years, he has voiced in his mind the Sacramental Prayers in Italian as the priests in our wards spoke them in English. When it came time for Dave to speak it aloud, it came out in Italian. He paused and apologized, fanning the pages of the Book of Mormon to find the prayers in English. 

“No,” we pleaded, “Don’t stop.”

Libby reminded all of us that in a reverential way this small act represents our spiritual solidarity with our Italian brothers and sisters who are suffering deeply with the effects of a worldwide Coronavirus pandemic.

It took less than five minutes for us to shift our little altar, break bread and bless it, and partake. Such a little piece of time for such a monumental thing.

But, of course, time is inconsequential to Him.

Jor Bennion, the potter, shows his stamp,
an ancient Hebrew symbol meaning
Holiness Unto the Lord.

Kirk Richards
and his
Cristus