The Truth Of My Day

  On one of the flights I sat by the window and watched the horizon of the setting sun. I wrote: The sun runs away, chased by the darkness. It takes all the light with it, abandoning us to the night like a neglectful parent. It pays no heed to the needs of man, even as it sustains us each and every day of the year. It's the reason we have a "year" at all. But the sun is an optical illusion. Because it never moves across the sky. It doesn't come up and then go down. We move circle it, not the other way around. It doesn't change color every time it slides across the horizon, either. It's basically a figment of our illusion. It's our master, without it we are nothing - unable to exist. It's not "our sun", it's our star! These are my musings at 30,000 feet, as the sun appears to slide down the horizon line like a glowing deep orange egg yolk from a cosmic chicken. This was going to be another epic trip. First we were flying from Florida to Ne...

  Day 1 of our trip and here I am in New York! We arrived in the morning and went to the Sacred Grove. Why are some secluded woods considered holy and revered? Because this was The Beginning. What happened among some trees in the year 1820 is the reason Joseph endured decades of trials to build a church.  This is the place. This where a teenage boy decided to go into the woods to be alone with God and his faith and his questions. On his family's farm of 100 acres. I wanted to do the same. I told my husband: This is the kind of place you go to hear God call your name. And tell you He has great things in store for you. For our flight to New York we were up in the clouds for most of it. Clouds were below us, and above us. At one point the sun was shining in and the clouds were so bright that I put my sunglasses on. It made me think of Joseph Smith and his "first vision". I've read about it many times. After feeling doomed to destruction first, he called upon God. There w...

  How many times did I get emotional on this 12 day trip? I'm not sure. But my eyes almost leaked twice while in Kirtland.  Once was while I was in the visitor center, which is a short drive from the temple. We went there first. The tour started with a 24 minute movie about what the Saints went through to build the temple there. There was one part where Joseph Smith heard another person speak of their struggles, and he said with such conviction: After much tribulation comes the glory. And it struck me because we first went to Palmyra, and then Independence, then here. Joseph gave everything he had to building this Church up. He was persecuted so severely his entire life. He was a farm boy who was asked by God to lead others in sacred things.  We have it so easy. Like running water, for one thing. And electricity. We have heat all winter long without having to haul or chop any wood. We went to see the Joseph and Emma house, a short walk from the temple. Looking out the win...

  When I write a blog I try to consider who I'm writing it for.  This blog is a deep dive for my friends and family who know what Adam-ondi-Ahman is. The next post will have the details that anyone could appreciate, but this one will only be special to certain people. You know who you are.  I feel deeply blessed that my husband put together a summer trip that started in New York at the Sacred Grove, which is close to Hill Cumorah and other awesome historic sites. It was a terrific launching pad for the lift-off at Adam-ondi-Ahman. It felt like the first part of the trip was a countdown to going to this sacred valley in Missouri.  When is a valley not just a valley? When it's a place I've heard of for decades, and sung about in a Church hymn. We drove for an hour on the Missouri roads surrounded by unending green trees soaking up the July sunshine. We came to a fork in the road, gravel to the right or the left? We went to the right, and we stopped at the first place t...