Joseph Smith's Dreams VII

Dreams of Beginning, Part Three
28 April 1830

Joseph has trouble falling asleep tonight. The constable who arrested him sleeps with a musket by his side and his feet against the door. The constable tells Joseph he is doing so in case a self-appointed jury comes tonight to hold a trial with tar and feathers. For some reason, Joseph does not finds the constable’s kindness entirely comforting.
Joseph sleeps only fitfully, and has three dreams:

In the first, he goes to court and is not allowed to swear on the Bible, because the judge refuses to believe that he believes in it. He argues with the judge, who has the face of his father-in-law, but gets nowhere. He takes Emma out of the jury box and walks away with her into the woods, knowing that they will hold his trial without him and wondering how badly it will go.
In the second dream, Joseph can’t hear any of the testimony because a pack of dogs is barking loudly outside the window. Josiah Stoal testifies, and Joseph can’t hear a word. Polly Harris testifies, but Joseph can’t tell what she’s saying. The man who took away their farm in Vermont is testifying and the dogs are getting louder. The judge issues a verdict, but Joseph can’t hear it. Joseph can’t hear anything but the dogs.
In the last dream, Joseph goes to court and finds that God is the judge. Joseph’s legs turn heavy. He remembers drinking too much with some friends when he was sixteen, saying things about their neighbors Christians ought not to say and laughing too hard about them. Joseph’s lawyer is late. Joseph tries and tries, but though he’s sure he’ll feel much better when his lawyer arrives, he can’t remember his lawyer’s face or name.

Joseph Smith's Dreams VI

Dreams of Beginning, Part Two
16 April 1830

In his dream, Joseph stands in the middle of a great field of wheat. Emma is beside him, and there is no one else in sight, maybe on earth. He reaches out and runs his palms across the grains. He can taste something in his mouth: touching this wheat tastes like honey. He wants to tell Emma about this, but when he looks at her, he realizes she already knows: that’s why they’re in this field. The sun is warm, and the wheat is high, and he knows that it’s time for the harvest.
Then Joseph’s father is there and Joseph Knight is there and they ask him how to cut the grain gently so the honey taste won’t go. And Joseph says: I don’t know how; I’m still young; you’re the experienced farmers. He says to his father: you taught my brothers how to cut the wheat, and they taught me. He looks at Joseph Knight and says Didn’t you teach your sons?
Touching the wheat never tasted like honey before, they say to him.
Emma smiles, and the light behind her hair says Hurry. He looks back to the wheat, and it says: Don’t worry. People have done this before, long ago, longer than your father’s fathers know.

Joseph Smith's Dreams V

Dreams of Beginning, Part One
6 April 1830

It’s a beautiful spring day. Joseph and his father are walking up a steep hill. The farther they walk, the steeper the hill becomes. The tools in Joseph’s hands grow heavy. His father begins to get ahead, Joseph is afraid he will not be able to keep up. Joseph drops the tools and increases his pace. The slope gets steeper and the grass gives way to rock. Joseph has to half-climb, half-walk to keep moving ahead. He can hear his father’s feet against the rock ahead, but he can’t see much at all anymore.
Joseph stops hearing his father. He’s worried about him, and increases his pace. Joseph’s lungs burn. His hands sting as they grasp the rocks, but he has to get to his father, has to make sure he’s still alive.
Joseph makes it up the steepest part of the trail and sees his father and brothers at a flat space ahead, standing in the shadow of a wall of rock too steep to climb. We’re ready to cut, says Alvin. He looks at Joseph, says: Do you have the tools?
Joseph’s heart sinks.
It’s all right, says Hyrum, we’ll just use our hands. When Joseph reaches out to tug at the rock, though, he leaves a red mark. His hands, lacerated from the climb, are bleeding.
William gets angry. He slams his fist against the rock. He storms off down the hillside. Samuel goes to talk him down. Hyrum follows, hoping that when William calms down, he can talk him into coming back.
Joseph and Alvin follow at a safe distance.
Then there’s a strange sound behind them. Even without them, a rock has been cut. Joseph sees it in the distance, and it’s stirring. He turns to Alvin in excitement, but Alvin looks worried. He says it’s getting bigger. He says it’s coming toward them. Joseph begins to run—he thought Alvin was running with him, but soon he notices that no one is beside or behind him, though Hyrum, Samuel, and William are still ahead. Joseph runs as fast as he can down the rocky slope, and he catches up to Hyrum. The rock is bigger, and they can hear it rolling closer and faster. It makes a dull roar and they are nervous. They catch up to Samuel and the rock is closer now, and sounds like it’s gaining speed, and nervousness inches toward terror.
They run faster than is safe down the hill, turning over their control to the slope itself, letting it hurtle their legs in ever-faster circles downward, now they run abreast of William also and the rock is still closer they can feel its presence at their backs and any moment now, Joseph thinks, the slope will become more gentle again and perhaps the rock will slow down—but no, it’s still steeper and perhaps becoming steeper and it’s steep for as far as their eyes can see and then they are running with the rock, in the rock, and Alvin and father are there in the rock with them and perhaps they will live the rest of history locked in stone.

Joseph Smith's Dreams IV

Dreams of Completion, Part Three
19 April 1829

Moroni appears, in the dream, over Joseph’s teenage bed. Joseph has to be quiet, because all his brothers are sleeping around him, but Moroni speaks as if no one else were there at all.
Joseph—he says—where are the pages?
Joseph doesn’t have to look under his pillow to know they’re not there. He’s lost them. He’s lost them, and he wants to make excuses or even lie about it, but he’s standing in the presence of an angel. An angel who died in crushing loneliness to preserve the book Joseph has just lost.
I’ve lost them—again, says Joseph. He can’t look Moroni in the eye. I’ve lost them again and God, who knows my family is good at losing everything, should probably just find someone else to do his work this time.
No, says Moroni, No, it’s far too late for that.
So what do I do? says Joseph. Is there another book?
Just one, says Moroni, but it’s not the same. Like the Israelites in Moses’ day, you lost the law God wanted to give you. You couldn’t stand my father’s book, so all that’s left for you is mine.
Then Moroni rolls up his sleeve and Joseph sees for the first time that carved and scarred into his arm are the characters of the old language. Joseph’s eyes sting then and he understands at once that it’s because their surfaces are turning into stone, crusting over hard into an inescapable Urim and Thumim.
So when Joseph looks up he can’t help but read the Lamentations of Moroni, can’t help but read the unthinkable wars to come in the last days, when death falls like rain from the sky, and as a copy of the book is carved into Joseph’s mind he screams and he screams and he screams.

And he is still screaming when he wakes up and Emma is holding him tight, as if he were about to die, and Emma is desperately whispering to him that it’s all right it’s all right it’s all right.

Joseph Smith's Dreams III

Dreams of Completion, Part Two
12 April 1829

Joseph and Oliver are standing at a desk over the manuscript. It’s evening, but the room is burning hot, no, boiling hot—the thick, wet heat of late summer and Joseph’s clothes stick to his body and sweat streams down into his eyes as he looks at the lamp they’ve translated by and though something inside of him presses a NO against his lungs and chest, Joseph reaches out to snuff the lamp—he can’t stand the heat—and gathers up the pages to carry outside and into town, to the printer’s.
The last light of dusk disappears quickly, now that the lamp’s been put out, and it begins to grow cold. Joseph is wearing a coat, but the wind picks up and stings the sides of his face, punishing him for his youth, for not being able to grow a good protective beard.
Joseph turns his head away from the wind and with a sinking sensation realizes maybe that’s why it happens, why he doesn’t see it: as soon as he turns his face, the wind races and begins to steal the pages from him, tearing them one by one from his hands. He clutches the rest close to his chest, but the wind still pries them from his arms. He wants to run after them, but he can’t because there’s a thick mist, a darkness to both sides of him, and now the wind blows it over him and there’s only five pages left.
Joseph realizes his only chance is to keep pressing forward, to put one foot in front of another until he makes it to the printer. Now the wind tears another pages out of his arms, tears it so violently from him that he can hear it rip apart in mid-air, or else against the branches of some tree he can’t see in the dark. He steps forward and it’s COLD there’s cold running water filling his boot with muck and silt and Joseph has to turn the other way as the wind steals another page. Three left. Three, and he doesn’t know which way to the printer, so he just runs until the wind knocks his whole body off balance and he falls hard on his side and loses a page—so that there’s only one left when he opens his eyes and sees that he’s fallen into the printer’s shop.
There’s no wind here. It’s eerily calm, and it’s dusk. Joseph is still lying on the ground, so the printer, in his work apron, walks over and extends his hand towards Joseph to help him up.
The printer is Martin Harris. Joseph hands him the last page, only to realize that it isn’t a page from the Book of Mormon at all. It’s a revelation for Joseph and Martin from last year, and fresh shame breaks out across Martin’s face when he sees it.

Joseph Smith's Dreams II

Dreams of Completion, Part One
6 April 1829

It’s the same dream as last night. The manuscript is finished, and Joseph gives it to Oliver to take to the printer. Joseph waits in a room made of oak on a chair made of pine. Oliver doesn’t come back. Joseph begins to grow nervous, he paces. Oliver doesn’t come back. He’s been gone too long, think Joseph, maybe he’s turned the pages back into gold, then melted them down and sold them.
No. Joseph turns and sees Oliver sitting in the pine chair. Oliver’s head is in his hands. He’s moaning. What is it, Oliver? says Joseph. What happened?
I fear I’ve lost my soul, says Oliver. Oh Joseph, I’ve lost the manuscript—all of it. The whole thousand and one pages.
Joseph realizes, of course, that it’s his own fault. He realizes now that before Oliver left for the printer’s, when they were so happy to be done, Oliver asked if he could show the manuscript to his wife. NO said the Spirit--but such was the mood of swaggering celebration, such was the sweet remission in the long ache of translation that reached down into sockets of Joseph’s eyes, that Yes he said Show her the plates, show them to anyone.
And now Oliver had, and it was Joseph’s fault that she had taken the pages from Oliver’s hands and in front of his face she had burned them, all of them—except one, which she would keep and change to prove the book a fake if Joseph ever produced it again.
It was Joseph’s fault, but anger still rose hot in his throat against her for the burning. He walked straight up to her—yes, she was there in the room! her back turned toward him, her face to the oak wall. He grabbed her shoulder, and turned her toward him—but try as he might, he could not see her face.

Joseph woke in a cold sweat. He tried to calm his heart by telling himself slowly again and again: Oliver doesn’t have a wife.

New Series: Joseph Smith's Dreams

A long time ago, I started a thread called Church History Thursdays. Unfortunately, due to the complicated nature of the posts, I didn't keep that tradition going for long. In its place, I'd like to offer a new series called "Joseph Smith's Dreams" over the next few months. With each fictional dream, I'll attempt to imagine what some of the pressures on Joseph Smith might have felt like. As always, I'd appreciate your comments/questions/reactions.


Joseph Smith's Dreams: Introduction

When he’s awake, he sees angels, finds hidden records, stands face-to-face at least once with the Father and twice with the Son. When he’s awake, he sees Eden somewhere between white and native civilizations, hears words streaming out of the mouth of God, feels the weight of apostles’ hands on his head by a riverbank. When he’s awake, people press around him—some hungry for the Spirit, some thirsty for his blood—and he loses himself sometimes in the whirlpools of their words. When he’s awake, plagues sweep the nations, earthquakes roar—he can almost see the Second Coming and he’ll close his eyes and imagine the Son of Man in red when the mobs cover his body in hot tar.

So what is left for this Joseph-son-of-Joseph to see when he sleeps?

Maybe, on the banks of the Mississippi, drained by blessing the sick while camped in a malarial swamp, Joseph’s eyes slam shut like a Missouri prison and he dreams nothing at all.

Maybe, looking out at the moon from a second-story cell in Carthage, the dreamlessness of his sleep is a sweet respite.

But maybe, just maybe, there is no calm between the stormy days of this life. Maybe Joseph dreams every night.