Saturday, June 20, 2009

Come to Cumorah!

This is the Hill Cumorah, the site where Joseph Smith found the Golden Plates (which lay hidden deep in the mountain side). This has gotta be a strange thing to come across for those that don't know much about the Latter-day Saint movement. There you are driving along the highway looking at all the greenery and the occasional hill and all of the sudden there's a clearing and a giant golden trumpeter atop a stone pedestal. Sara and I, being lovers of roadside attractions, would definitely stop and see it. And we did. There's a little road that takes you all the way up the hill and a parking lot right next to the monument, which saved us from all that hill climbing exercise. I chased Zoe around as she worked out 4 hours of wiggles, while Sara made us some trunk sandwiches.

Our time spent on that hill was phenomenal for me. I'm not really the sort of guy that goes to a place like this with any expectations of being overcome by the spirit, I think that for this reason when it does happen it means a lot to me. Boy did I feel the spirit on this hill. I don't want to confuse the peace and serenity of wide open spaces with the spiritual residue of miraculous past events, but there truly was something special felt there. The hour we spent on that hill was a great and needed reminder that the heavens truly are still open and modern-day revelation is alive and well. My left brain is gigantic and often performs lengthy audits on my right brain, which causes me to take far too many long looks at how nutty the whole Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates story actually is. At the same time though, logic tells me that a God that personally guided His children in the past must continue to do so now. I know that the events that ocurred on this hill actually happened because I've had hundreds of spiritual confirmations that prove to me that they did. I am so glad we spent some time on the Hill Cumorah.
By the way, I love how Zoe's monkey back pack fits so well into our family pictures. The picture up there is probably the only one ever taken with all four of us looking at the camera.

1 comment:

Brooke said...

Wow, you guys travel a lot! That's great. I loved being at Hill Cumorah when we went to visit.