Holy Places

Sherrie Manwill Boren grew up in a Utah home full of music — singing with her father while he played guitar, falling asleep to her mother's piano — and earned a BYU degree in piano performance. When the Church invited hymn submissions in 2019, she felt drawn to a phrase in the Doctrine and Covenants: 'Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved.'

But she wanted the hymn to teach something harder than recognizing a holy place — she wanted it to teach how to make a place holy. She drafted ideas, stalled, and set the whole thing aside.

One week before the submission deadline, Boren woke around 4 a.m. with words and music running through her mind. By sunrise, the first draft was complete. 'It was like the Lord had taken the little ideas,' she said, 'and put them together for me.'

The three verses move through three kinds of holy places — the temple, the home, and the human heart — ending with preparation for the Savior's return. Years later, the Church's music committee asked for revisions; she resisted at first, then embraced it, learning, in her words, that revelation can be a starting point rather than the final form.

Released February 13, 2025, as hymn #1026 with a tune named MANWILL — her own family name — the hymn had already been proven by events: during the COVID-19 closures, when meetinghouses went dark, its teaching that homes and hearts can be holy places stopped being theory.

Boren has a second hymn in the collection, 'Look unto Christ' — making her one of a small circle of writers with multiple entries in the new hymnbook.