Visiting professor of religion, Susan Easton Black (pictured top), shared a message of the significance of motherhood using many powerful anecdotes from the life of a young prophet in her remarks at a BYU–Hawaii Devotional held Tuesday, July 7. Through her passion in studying church history and genealogy, Black was able to recount many instances where a mother had an important influence on the life of Joseph F. Smith. As the sixth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and son of Hyrum Smith, Mary Fielding Smith raised a son who, despite having to grow up rather quickly through many hardships, was profoundly affected by the women in his life.
"If you are going to be a mom in this life, be the best—because you know you never know who is going to grow up in your home," said Black. "If you are going to be a dad and you really want your name to be remembered for generations and generations forever and honored [as was Hyrum's prophetic promise], well it is pretty simple, you choose a great woman to be that mother in your home."
Black explained that after losing his father at a young age, young Joseph received many responsibilities within the household of a very determined widowed mother. Mary trusted her son and charged him with living the truth that his father had died for in Carthage. After succeeding in taking her family west across the country to Salt Lake and arriving before a discouraging captain that had urged her to turn around, Mary gave ten year old Joseph responsibilities that of twice his age. He built her a house, stood up for and protected his sister, and managed three acres of potato fields. When the Bishop was willing to forgive the Smith family taxes, Mary had Joseph hold him down while she unloaded her potatoes into the tithing barn.
After his mother died, Joseph was called to a mission. Black asked, "Where do you send a 15 year-old kid to learn further lessons of life? To give him the confidence so that he would not be like the waves of the sea that James talks about, tossed to and fro; that he would be tough and strong because he knew who the Lord was… The answer was to send him to Hawaii! Where else would you send him? Send him to Hawaii where people knew how to love and people knew how to serve."
It was there that Joseph became extremely ill and was nursed back to health by his second mother, his "Hawaiian Mother" named Ma Manuhii. To Joseph, she was mama. "Mary Fielding passed the baton to [this Hawaiian woman] and her job was to keep him well," explained Black. "Her job was to help him get the language. Her job was to teach him about love and service and things that had been missed through the cracks."
Joseph was very tied to his heritage. According to a Black, he took a "nowhere job" in the Church Historical Department so that he could stay "after hours and reading about his dad and about his Uncle Joseph." It was because of Joseph's heritage that Brigham Young sought him out to give Joseph the blessing, as Brigham himself was surprised to learn, in which Joseph was placed in the Quorum of the Twelve at 28 years old.
In her remarks, Black described a statue depiction of a mother holding a seashell over her three kids (pictured left). Entitled Maternity, it is found at the very top of the fountains on the Hawaii Temple grounds. Black explained, "To me it represents a mother who has prayed for the blessings of heaven, and the blessings from heaven, for her, is the rain that now falls. She has captured these blessings. She has captured so many blessings that it now spills over to the next generation. … It flows not only to her current generation, but to the next, and it goes down, cascading down to the next pool, and to the next, and the next until, finally, it goes out into the ocean and then literally fills the whole earth."
"I hope you have learned that being a mom means that you have got to be confident and resolute," said Black. "You need to know who you are and that the Lord loves you and that he loves your family and that you need pray and to hold out so that those blessings of heaven fall in your seashell, and they not only fall on your kids but to the next generations. I hoped that you have learned to live a life worthy of your Father in Heaven—that you are going to listen to those parents and honor them."
—Top Photo by Ian Nitta—Bottom Photo by Susan Easton Black