Mormon Myth…?

As many readers as this blog know typically during this epidemic of reserved Fridays is my washday. It's a great day to do my wash and get ready for my weekend just hanging around the apartment since are still stuck right in the middle of this epidemic. Friday is also a great day because it's the day that I I have staff command for the usual which means I'm usually done with my program by 8:30 AM which if I am quick I can get to the laundry start my laundry in hopes that I can get the whole thing done by 12 noon. One of the benefits of Friday laundry is that NPR has a number of interesting shows a like to listen to what being Radio West and of course the perennial Science Friday. I heard the teaser for the show this week and it was about the miracle of the seagulls intruded to talk about that particular event but even more interestingly they spoke about Mormon legend versus Mormon myth versus history, real-life history are what really happened.

This whole history thing is bad enough often revealing the dark side of Mormonism ie. the massacres of Native Americans in the Utah area. On this week show where was the customary history professor from local heathen school University of Utah and then a Mormon history professor type from the renowned BYU. First let me reiterate in short in short, the Miracle Of The gulls. The second year the pioneers are in Salt Lake Valley they are swarmed upon by huge crickets and as they battled these hard shelled insects whereabouts are saved when flocks of seagulls flocked around gorge themselves with the crickets and when puked about in the great Salt Lake or something. I'm a believer, I always believe this happened but both professionals indicated that the incident probably never happened or at least not in the way that it is described and probably not at all but that it was a faith promoting story to build a local myth. Both of these professors agree this is probably what happened. The BYU guy quite floored me by promoting these ideas. Talk about myth or legend and the different kinds of myths and their uses. I have to say I was disturbed.

The LDS church/Ward that I was raised in the first six years of my life there is a huge painting on the side of the wall the chapel of these poor benighted pioneers men women and children beating this not Elsberry crickets as they could looking and joyous relief as these large white trash birds descend on the hordes of crickets. I would stare at this painting for hours and just marvel. I totally believed, the talked about the myth of the miracles of Joseph Smith. I believe that all the miracles, the huge ones like seagulls, elders receiving mysteriously a parish badly needed shoes and apparel shoes disappearing from a shoe shop owned by the elders uncle. Though they did not say I got the feeling this is true of the big ones to the visitation in the sacred Grove, the visitations in the field and the Prophets bedroom one morning when he was but an adolescent. I so strongly believed in the power of faith and my bad luck that if I didn't take stimulus measures of being unworthy that I myself would be subject to visitations from the big boys to bring about the Lords work. How embarrassing I am. I'm so concrete. And I must say I was a bit warned for my buddies in the book club I belong to a writing group. One is a fairly renowned individual in this local culture being a religious writer and the other is a bit of a Catholic/Christian theologian who had no problem with actual versus myth. I always held tight to the “rod”. Even now my rational side declared to myself that everything's a myth everything is a lie I have a hard time supporting that thought process. This is like playing poker at the big boys you got the whole mortgage on one dealt hand and if you don't have the cards you need to be SOL just as if you support science and intelligentsia and in fact the myths and legends are fact been quite literally you bet the farm…