It’s my understanding that the purpose of this girls camp is to become family and build Zion. And I wanted to say good grief. Do you know what you are getting into? Perhaps not. So I consulted a few experts in family life. I asked children.
My four year old friend Charlotte tells me that being in a family is hard because “Once the baby is born, you can’t give it back. My mom says so.” People are terribly needy! They demand so much of your time, attention, and patience. And family demands it for all of eternity. And guess what: it’s not just that they’re needy. They can be mean, too.
After a long afternoon of bickering, I asked my boys to say something sincere and kind. Mustering all the generosity he sincerely felt in the moment, my three year old closed his eyes as tightly as he possibly could and announced, “I like everyone I can see right now!”
But do you know what really makes family difficult? The biggest stumbling block to establishing Zion in our homes? It’s that more often than you would like to admit, you are inconvenient. You are less kind than you ought to be. You are not just living among imperfect people. You are one of them.
About a year and a half ago, my husband was in Northern Ireland interviewing people who had been involved in the peace process there for a documentary. It was an incredible project and opportunity, except that it stranded me at home in rural Idaho in the middle of winter with two very active little boys while I was pregnant. I was sick. I was tired. I was so overwhelmed. And it was bedtime.
Things weren’t going well. I begged. Then I bribed. Then I threatened. Then I shouted. Then I finally got everyone in bed. And as I was turning to leave for some much needed alone time, my six year old called out to me:
Clarence: Mom, I think you’d better apologize.
Sarah: What do you think I should apologize about?
C: You hurt my feelings.
S: I’m sorry for hurting your feelings. I care about you very much.
C: Yes. I think you care more often than you are frustrated.
My family is easily the most refining part of my life. My relationships with my husband, children, parents, siblings, and in-laws have been humbling, baffling, beautiful, and sometimes painful. They have taught me things about myself I would have preferred not to know: that I am more irritable than I imagined, more likely to snap when I am overstimulated, and less naturally patient than I hoped. Navigating that has taken intentionality, effort, sacrifice. It has forced me to become someone different—and I have needed to be forced. And even so, I mess up. Often.
So who am I to stand here and say it is good but not enough to simply love your own family. Christ asks us to widen the circle. He has already called every person here your sister—including people you do not know, do not understand, and may never become close friends with. Even people you do not particularly like or want to call kin.
That is a daunting assignment. So I want to tell you four stories to explain just how difficult this project is.
Here’s the first:
THE ARMY
Nearly 3000 years ago, the kingdom of Israel was at war with the kingdom of Syria, and an army was coming to attack the prophet Elisha. The servant saw them and was (understandably) terrified. But when the servant alerts Elisha, he is (also understandably) baffled that the prophet doesn’t even try to run. Elisha realizes he doesn’t see the situation accurately, so he prays for the servant, whose eyes are opened, and he sees hosts of angels present there to protect them. They that be with us are more than they that be with them, Elisha observes powerfully and serenely.
That’s typically where we stop this story. But do you know how it ends? For years and years I assumed that the angels probably just absolutely obliterated the bad guys. But that isn’t what happens. The approaching army gets desperately close. Elisha prays again, and the entire troop is blinded. And then Elisha leads them from his little prophet outpost to the middle of Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel. The army followed behind him, groping their way forward in the darkness. When they arrive, the gates close behind them.
And there stood the army, trapped, blind, and hopelessly vulnerable. The king of Israel asked Elisha if they should slay them all. But Elisha says no. You should feed them.
So their sight is restored and the king orders food to be brought to them. But it’s not some crusty bread and water that’s brought out. Instead, the bible describes a feast of great provisions shared between the warring armies. And that is remarkable. The armies put down their weapons and come together around a table. For the first time, everyone begins to see the situation more like God sees it—not simply as good people and bad people, conquerors and conquered, but as brothers and sisters sharing a meal. And when the Syrians returned home, that army never came to battle the Israelites again.
And the peace lasted…for an entire verse. Because one verse later, another Syrian army besieges Samaria. And eventually, the Kingdom of Israel fell. The Kingdom of Judah followed. And the family of Jacob was scattered.
Why is Zion so hard? Because no one has ever done it! Scripture is full of stories of people trying and then failing to build Zion, from the Israelites to the Nephites to the Lamanites to the Jaredites to the saints in Missouri. You can make Zion real for a day, but that doesn’t mean it will last for eternity. Or even through the next verse.
THE WOMEN
But a few thousand years later, Latter-day Saint women in Utah tried again anyway. They were going to establish world peace. They organized what came to be called “Peace Day.” Thousands of Utahns attended parades, talks, and demonstrations. The women wrote poems and editorials, attended international conferences, and were praised by world leaders for pioneering one of the most organized and effective peace movement in the world. Looking at the minutes, you get these amazing details about tablecloths, centerpieces, colors, and flags (which is how you know it was run by the Relief Society). But you also get stunning excerpts from the sermons. Ruth May Fox, a former general YW’s president, spoke at a Peace Day gathering at the tabernacle. She entreated the thousands gathered there as well as the rest of the world(!) to nurture greater brotherly love. To care for one another, to abstain from violence.
And then guess what happened? World War 1. The movement failed. Peace Day is no longer recognized in Utah or within the church. The movement died out. And the same women who wore out their shoes and voices advocating for international peace watched as their sons and grandsons received draft notices and were shipped off to war.
Why is Zion so hard? Because the world is really big and complicated. And even with the best tablecloths, and centerpieces, and sermons, what hope do we actually have against all the machinery of war, bombs, and governments?
My grandfather was drafted. He served in the airforce during the Korean War. He was a true, dyed in the wool patriot. But he was also an incredibly gentle person. And whenever the topic of the war came up, he told me there was so much he saw that he wished he could unsee.
I think the rest of his life was, at least in part, a project of striving to build a better world than the one he witnessed during the war. As long as I knew him, he kept his representatives’ contact information on his refrigerator so he could weigh in on issues that mattered to him. He served generously and broadly throughout his community. He was a true peacemaker, like his mother, who attended Peace Day as a child. So perhaps the peace project did not disappear entirely.
So often, building Zion feels like one step forward and two steps back. But goodness has a longer shelf life than we imagine. Christ can consecrate even our imperfect and incomplete efforts, carrying them into lives and generations we may never see. My grandfather’s commitment to building a better world was shaped by his mother’s, who was shaped by her mother and Ruth Fox and so many women striving to build a new world. And you and I are shaped by all of them. We are the future they never lived to see.
THE WITNESS
But it is terribly hard to build Zion before you can see it. I mentioned that my husband was in Northern Ireland last year collecting interviews from people who were involved in the peace effort there to end the Troubles, which was a period of intense violence and conflict across the region. This is where he met Harold. Harold was a Methodist minister who, along with a catholic priest, was chosen to witness the IRA disarm and destroy their weapons. In his interview, he describes the process of putting down weapons as an act of imagination. That it’s an effort of persuading people of a world where you no longer need bombs and ammunition to keep your family safe. He told a story of trying to persuade a paramilitary member to lay down his weapons and embrace the new peace. The man snapped, “You are asking me to believe in a world I have never seen.”
Harold recognized that fear. He had heard it before in the Bible. Poor Thomas, who was asked to believe in a Jesus who was resurrected, in defiance of all the evidence of his eyes and experience. He couldn’t. And when Jesus appeared before him, he did not condemn Thomas for doubting. But he did say, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Harold Good paused. He turned to my husband. “Blessed are those who believe,” he repeated.
Why is building Zion so hard? Because it’s trying to create something you’ve never seen before, and which all the evidence of the world around suggests is actually impossible.
We may not be living in the heat of the Troubles, but we do not have to look far to realize that we do not live in Zion. I have frequently felt overwhelmed by the depth of the unkindness and vitriol in the world and online. And Zion has felt impossibly far away. And if you have ever felt the same, that’s all right. Because Christ did not abandon Thomas in his doubt and despair, and he will not abandon you in yours. We do not build Zion because we are naturally patient, peaceful, or perfectly faithful. We build it because Christ keeps finding us and teaching us to see again.
THE FACE
Harold was asking people to imagine their enemies differently. That sounds noble when the conflict is far away. It becomes much harder when the person you are trying to see differently has wounded your own family.
A few years ago, my husband and I filed a lawsuit, which made me feel absolutely incredulous. How did a nice girl like me get into a big mess like that? Filing a lawsuit felt utterly foreign to me. I had spent so much of my life believing that good people avoided conflict. But I’ve come to believe sometimes building Zion and protecting a family means standing up and calling for change.
I’ll spare you the details, but there were individuals who had harmed my family in profound ways that we are still recovering from. After several major newspapers picked up the lawsuit, I realized I had never seen the defendants’ faces. Our encounters had happened shortly after COVID, when everyone was masked. So I searched online and found a photograph of one of them. It was a photo from St. Patrick’s day. She was in a bar, raising a glass, flanked on either side by a few friends. This was someone who, truly, had absolutely wrecked my life for a time. And there she was. Smiling, glass in hand, celebrating a holiday with friends.
Why is building Zion so hard? Because people hurt you. And not just hurt your feelings or should have communicated better or really ought to apologize. People hurt you in ways that really matter.
Looking at the picture, it occurred to me that in the media storm that followed filing our lawsuit, perhaps one of the friends in the photograph called this woman. I chewed on that. It took a few weeks before I realized, “I hope so.” I truly hope that when everything went public, when the subpoena was served, when a video surfaced that made her look quite cruel, someone called her and said, “Today must have been a really hard day. Let’s grab dinner.”
I am no less passionate in my advocacy. I do not excuse her behavior, and I do not believe she was innocent of wrongdoing. But it helped to remember that she was human. Imagining her surrounded by people who loved her made it easier not to hate.
I am grateful for a gospel that gives me courage to imagine something better. I trust in a Christ who died for me and for every face I would rather turn away from.
…
A blinded army. A movement of women. A witness to peace. A face in a photograph. These stories are separated by thousands of years and oceans, and they represent vastly different kinds of conflict. But in each of them, I see the same difficult invitation.
Building Zion—becoming a family—is at least partly an effort of imagination. It’s a project of looking again, or looking harder when your inclination is to look away. It’s praying for courage to see the humans you don’t know well or don’t really like with kinder eyes. It’s having a vision for a new world, a new possibility that isn’t here yet. It’s stepping forward into the darkness towards a new city. It’s learning to see people as God sees them—beloved children, precious souls, sisters, brothers.
This work is older than Elisha. Your mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers have attempted it in an infinite number of homes and hearts. And after all these centuries and attempts, we still haven’t done it. We do not live in Zion.
I realize that sounds pretty depressing. But I want to be clear about the situation, because this work is about to become your work. You inherit an unfinished world. But you do not inherit only our failures. You inherit every attempt your mothers and grandmothers made to apologize, include, protect, forgive, feed, welcome, and begin again. You inherit our mistakes, but you also inherit our courage. And you are beginning to add your efforts to ours.
Perhaps building Zion this week will not look spectacular. It may look like noticing who is walking alone. Saving a place at the table. Avoiding gossip. Apologizing. Asking a sincere question of the girl you don’t always get along with. Believing that one awkward act of kindness can become a single nail in the construction of a world you have never seen. It sounds simple, but it’s work. Often ugly work. Because building Zion is really hard. And it takes work that looks a lot like vulnerability, and patience, and forgiveness, and all the basic things that we all wish we were better at.
That’s the project. And so I’m standing here, telling you the cost, and then asking you anyway, will you try? Will you carry this work forward? Become kin. Build Zion. It’s a huge ask.
Because I’m not just asking you to believe in a world you’ve never seen before. I’m asking you to build it. And I ask it knowing that you will make mistakes too. You will sometimes hurt people you meant to love. You will sometimes discover that your kindness was mixed with pride or that your patience ran out too soon. Then you will have to apologize, repair what you can, and begin again.
But I promise you this: you are not obligated to build Zion alone. Jesus is already at work in the world, and he is asking you to walk with him.
And I promise you this: you are not obligated to finish the work. You are only asked to try. You are only asked to keep caring, even when you are frustrated.
So sisters, join the project of generations. Grope your way forward through the darkness. The angels are there, just beyond what you can see. And they are cheering us along with every kind word, every effort at compassion, every stumble towards forgiveness and sisterhood and Zion.
And do you know what I see when I try to imagine Zion? A feast of great provisions. Christ has set the table, laid out the plates. There is enough room for all of us and more. And as we eat, we will raise our cups together. And we will be flanked by family on every side.