April 5, 2009
Today is General Conference which means we stay home and are considered members in good standing even if wearing pajamas while listening/watching our General Authorities speak to us as an entire church community. I suppose this could seem a little strange to those not of our religious persuasion accustomed as they are ‘to a steady as she goes’ routine in regard to their meetings who might possibly see our activity (or lack thereof) on some Sunday’s as a peculiar way of worship. There’s nothing new in that thought as we Mormon’s have been pushing the envelope of Christian belief/thought, and thereby tweaking the respective noses of all other Christian faiths, since our beginning. (I,of course, would never do this as I was raised with the understanding that to be truly ‘up’ in the morning required being dressed and to be seen in one’s night dress was considered a ‘tech indecent. In the home of my girlhood one absolutely never appeared in one’s bed clothes, even if covered by a house coat, outside one’s bed room, with an exception being made for a trip to the bathroom and that only in the middle of the night with the lights off. Of course I am exaggerating here as I don’t think I ever had a house coat when I was at home not that that really mattered as I never needed to get up in the middle of the night then either. The point being that it was a total anathema to my parents to not have their children fully dressed from the moment they got up to the moment they went to bed. Old habits die hard and to this day I still find myself cringing when I go out to get the paper of a morning wearing my housecoat even though I am much more covered than if were wearing a swim suit which is perfectly okay when swimming even though very little is left to the imagination. Go figure.)
I like General Conference. I always have. I find it comforting to hear these good men and women, who are our leaders, give advice and counsel on how to live a more Christlike life. I feel like the spiritual side of me has been given a much needed refreshing, a spiritual renewal after the battering it has taken since the previous Conference six months earlier. General Conference actually involves two days worth of meetings beginning on Saturday. Here in Utah where all sessions, except the Priesthood Session on Saturday evening, are televised which is a treat, if you are L.D.S or a real pain in the keister if you are not and are denied access to favorite programs that are preempted by channel 5 which happens to be owned by the church which allows them to eat the loss of revenue to the station and provide this service for church members who are still a majority in the state of Utah. In all honesty I must admit that only about 60% of the state is LDS, now, which means the ire against the ‘dominant religion’, as we are fondly referred to by those not of our faith, ratchets up a notch or two higher for a few days. Oh well, as a line from a family favorite says, “wot can’t be ‘elped must be endured” (see HTTP://oldpoetry.com/opoem/14021-Marriott-Edgar-Albert-s-Return if interested in where this line originated.)
If our ‘Dear Leader’, He Whose Name Must Not Be Mentioned can tell an elected representative, “I Won” as the reason why no ideas but his are to be considered in passing legislation that affects the whole country, then in that context perhaps it is easier to understand, “We were here first”, as a justification for a few eccentricities that could be a little unnerving to those who arrived after Brigham Young looked down into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake and stated, “This Is the Place” and no, there is absolutely no truth to the claim by some members that he really said, “This is not the place. Drive on to California”. The descent was made down the difficult rocky ridge that would take these Pioneers to their new home. What must have been their thoughts as they first saw a place so barren that no one in their right mind would want to live there. The land was deemed so worthless by Jim Bridger, a mountain man who had traveled extensively all over the inter mountain west which gave him a pretty good idea of what could or couldn’t be done in terms of settlement that he offered to pay a thousand dollars for the first bushel of corn grown in that benighted area. Brigham Young, who was never one to pass up a challenge where money was involved, took Bridger up. It was not an easy task they had set for themselves as they darn near starved to death those first few years. Of course the ‘Saints’ dream of finding an isolated spot no one else would desire was brought up short by the ever westward expansion of our nation to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. It turned out that they were smack dab in the middle of the weary miles between civilization to the East and the growth that was to take place in the West. Salt Lake City literally was to become the ‘cross roads of the West’ a stopping off place where the exhausted wagon trains could be refurbished.
These were hard times for the Saints who believed they could beat the odds and make the desert blossom as a rose. The following prophecy was made by Heber C. Kimball of whom it is said, “No man, perhaps Joseph Smith excepted, who has belonged to the Church in this generation, ever possessed the gift of prophecy to a greater degree than Brother Kimball. Although not at all pretentious, he was somewhat celebrated among his acquaintances for his prophetic inspiration. The prediction which he made soon after the arrival of the pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley, that the destitute Saints would soon be supplied with clothing, and that ‘States goods’ would be sold in Salt Lake City as cheap as New York, seemed almost unreasonable at the time it was uttered. Its fulfillment, however, by the unexpected influx of gold-seekers, making their way to California, and anxious to lighten their loads by selling their goods at almost any price, is now a matter of history. (While hunting for the above quote I came across the following which you may find interesting as well. Google Prophecy of Heber C. Kimball to Sister Amanda S. Wilcox. This was given in 1856: ‘Yes, we think we are secure here in the chambers of the everlasting hills, where we can close those few doors of the canyons against mobs and persecutors, the wicked and the vile, who have always beset us with violence and robbery, but I want to say to you, my brethren, the time is coming when we will be mixed up in these now peaceful valleys to the extent that it will be difficult to tell the face of a Saint from the face of an enemy to the people of God. Then, brethren, look out for the great sieve, for there will be a great sifting time, and many will fall; for I say unto you there is a TEST, a TEST, a TEST coming, and who will be able to stand? (Source: Orson F. Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball, pp. 446-7)
The above is not at all what I intended to write when I began my musings on General Conference. All I’ve ended up saying, and that rather obliquely, is that those who came later to join their labors with the Saints need to cut their LDS neighbors some slack when Conference time comes around. This is a concept that works both ways and when done with consideration for others beliefs makes for a state with a great ‘diversity’ of citizenry which can delight and enrich all who live here.
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