“How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty!”
It’s silly to make the
argument—there were countless other factors—but historians who know the Sioux
Indian wars often point at a Mormon cow as the cause for a half-century of horror
on the Great Plains. It was August, 1854, when that cow, belonging to a Mormon
party moving west, wandered into a Brule camp and was killed.
The owner demanded restitution. Lt.
John L. Grattan, who had little to no experience with Native tribes, insisted
on arresting the killers and led a group of 30 infantrymen to the Brule village.
When the culprit refused to turn himself in, Grattan turned his howitzers on
the people. Chief Conquering Bear was killed with the first volley, but the what
seemed impossible happened—the Brules wiped out the entire detachment and the Sioux
Indian wars began.
Nonetheless, when I read this
all-time favorite psalm, strangely enough, it’s the Mormons who come to mind
because when I consider their grand narrative—the long overland trek from
Nauvoo, Illinois, to the basin of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, a pilgrimage
that began in 1846, eight years before that wandering cow—I think I feel at
least something of the exuberance that marks this very precious psalm.
The story of the Mormon exodus is
a purely American story, just as Mormonism may well be the first truly American
religion. From 1846 to 1869, 70,000 Mormons traveled west to a place where they
believed—and they were right—they could live in peace and freedom, protected
from persecution they’d suffered wherever they’d lived before. Hundreds, even
thousands, pulled handcarts, walking the entire 1300 miles.
But they had a goal, a destiny. They
wanted a place to worship, a place to live their own pious vision. That shared
goal, I’d guess, gave them the strength and dedication, the sheer will to endure
every last horror the plains and mountain passes could throw. Along the way,
they even improved the trail, knowing others would follow.
Daily life was strictly
regimented; chaos and in-fighting would be the death of them and the enterprise.
Each day they read scripture, prayed, and sang together. It was a massive,
dangerous, difficult pilgrimage, and it was unbelievably successful. Once safe
in Salt Lake City, their incredible journey became a story they could tell—and
do--for generations.
The incredible joy that rises from
Psalm 84 does so, I think, from similar long and difficult pilgrimages,
exacting journeys of faithful believers to beloved places that are both “of
this world” and of the next, a wagon train of worshippers on their way to a
city that is, in a way, celestial.
“How lovely is your dwelling
place,” the psalmist writes, almost as if he were, in effect, wordless. Sometimes
I wish I could feel that kind of ecstasy about the weekly worship I attend, but
I don’t believe we’re talking about similar rituals. What evokes the delight
that makes this hymn ring through the ages is pilgrimage, in the oldest sense of that word’s usage, a vivid and
exacting spiritual journey.
A dead cow is even part of that
pilgrimage, an altogether too human story of religious aspiration and,
gloriously, finally, of arriving. That’s why I think, somewhat enviously, of
the Mormons.
If it’s difficult to find yourself
in the triumphant joy of the singer in Psalm 84, consider the Mormons. Imagine
their joy.
Then try this. Consider this vale
of tears—consider the depth of human sadness--and then imagine the loveliness
of a dwelling place in a warm eternal sun. That too can make us sing.
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