(Tidbit: My adoration for Carmen Sandiego even prolonged clear into my senior year of college, when I was taking a clogging dance class, and for our final exam we had to split up into groups to choreograph our own 2-minute dance routines for a big end-of-semester recital. In a hushed tone I had calmly suggested to my group one day that the Carmen Sandiego theme song could be a cool idea for our routine. To my pleasant surprise, everybody loved the idea and we ran with it. After almost a decade, I still own my clogs.)
"Carmen Sandiego Word Detective" is a play on the Tower of Babel event in ancient world history, and the result of peoples' languages becoming jumbled. It's been a really, really long time since I've played my Carmen Sandiego game, but I think the point of it was to circumnavigate the globe by stopping at country after country to find where the missing pieces of the once-organized English language blew away to, and stitch the language back together by figuring out how the proper grammar, syntax, and spelling all have to be, and by doing so -- mission completion upon mission completion -- you eventually save the English-speaking/-writing world from permanent obliteration. The countries/missions I remember the best are when I had to go inside Nefertiti's dangerous cobra-infested tomb in Egypt, and way up high into a lofty jungle treehouse in Tanzania to solve some sort of crazy puzzle before a beautiful yet deranged explorer/safari lady with long brown curly hair and yellow clothes barged in on you with her whips made of . . . more snakes.
At any rate, I hadn't thought about this game in such a long time, until just a few nights ago. I was studying from my Book of Mormon. As I'm sure I've mentioned before in this blog, I love listening to the LDS.org narrator as he reads the scriptures to me. Being read to is my fav. I try to listen to at least one chapter per night, and at the end of each chapter, I write a quick little something about what the chapter made me think of.
Some of my earliest recollections in life are living-room scenes of a tiny version of Alison having family scripture study with her mom, dad, brothers, and sisters. Those of us who were old enough to read all took turns reading aloud. Even the itty-bitty baby brothers who were like...five or something...took turns sounding out the words of the verses. (Wow, I had never written down this memory before. This is tugging at my heartstrings quite a bit.)
Even way back then, the Ether chapters (which are located towards the close of the full Book of Mormon) were extra special to me. As a little Primary kid in church, whenever we'd discuss the adventures of Jared and his brother, I'd always unfailingly find myself feeling so fascinated.
But a few nights ago -- last week -- I was listening to the guy read to me, and upon his wrapping up of Ether chapter 3, I quickly assessed myself because I sensed I was curiously and suddenly feeling something pretty big: in this moment I was realizing that it now was not just my mind and heart that were fascinated by what I had just heard. It was more like......ALL the rest of me was fascinated. It's like, even my BONES and my blood...my hair and hands and feet... my eyes, my senses... my future and my past... the full-monty-of-me of every moment, every frame, of the duration of my existence -- from start to finish -- was fascinated. And convinced. Convinced with literally every.single.fiber. of my being, that what I had just heard from this portion of the Book of Mormon -- and thus all the portions of the Book of Mormon -- was honest-to-goodness truth. (This most recent General Conference also made me feel this way, in the moment, which actually had never happened to me before. Haha, so is this whole post basically just coming across as enigmatic, or what? Sorry.)
Even now, nearly a week later, I still can't stop thinking about the Ether chapters -- particularly #1-3, and especially #3. It started with mention of the "great tower" and how the brother of Jared (c. 2200 B.C.) prayed to the Lord that He wouldn't mess up his and his family's and his friends' words, so that they could all continue understanding each other.
And then the next chapter talked about Nimrod, and so I looked up "Nimrod" to remind myself whom that referred to, and I re-learned he was a king and a great hunter with whom the Tower of Babel is heavily associated.
And, naturally, I thought about "Carmen Sandiego Word Detective" and the mighty, complex, and destructive Babble-On Machine.
I am fixed upon the idea that the Tower of Babel story is one that possibly most of the world knows about. I am sure that hundreds of millions, and likely billions, of earth's population knows about it. But I wouldn't be the first to tell you that the Book of Mormon is FULL of accounts of ancient peoples which not "possibly" but definitely most of the world doesn't know about. But here we come to these specific chapters in Ether, and we land upon none other than...drum roll please...the Tower of Babel. Lately I've been pausing now and then to ponder just how astoundingly amazing I think it is that the Book of Mormon contains an actual, very personal record of real people who were THERE. There at the tower. There, experiencing very real fears and anxiety regarding the possibility that their vital modes of communication could be irreversibly confounded, unless by God Himself.
And a lot of opposers of the Book of Mormon say that a young, foolish Joseph Smith made the whole thing up. That it's nothing but a compilation of fibs and fables. But, oh my goodness, do you even realize how much insane and insanely-longwinded effort would have to go into writing a fictitious book *that* lengthy and detailed, from scratch? When you're only 22 years old, and you're not that educated with a hearty academic background, and the World Wide Web would not come into existence until 162 years later?
There are 142 years between Joseph's day and my day. I hold a high school diploma, a college degree, and a decade of full-time businesswoman life under my belt. And I have virtual endless access to libraries and internet tools. And I didn't even really know who Nimrod was until like four days ago. And so I not only highly doubt, but know for certain, that Joseph did not "make up" the Book of Mormon. The writings already existed. They had to have. They are the compelling journalings (not a word, but it is now) of real people who already existed. They are strong testimonies of people who already lived. These people personally testified that what they were writing was true, and every time I read phrases like "these sayings are true," a powerful witness tells me in my soul that they are, indeed, true. And mine is not the last attestation among Book of Mormon-readers you'll ever talk to -- millions of others have received the exact same witness.
AH! So anyway, let me hurry up and explain to you a little more in depth how Ether chapter 3 made me feel the other night. Like I said, the narrator had just finished up reading it to me. And I zoomed so fast down memory lane to the era when my parents were training me to pray all by myself. When I was really little, either my dad or mom would come downstairs to my room and kneel beside me at my bedside and guide me in what words I could say to my Father in Heaven, until I felt confident to do it on my own. Comparable to how a more experienced biker takes time to train you to detach yourself from training wheels on your bicycle.
My bed: it was phenomenal. My grandfather built it. I still don't know anyone else in all the world who's ever had a bed like mine. It was like a bunk bed, but for only one person (the top bunk), and it was built into the wall. Or built out of the wall. It was like...stairs made up of wall, that led upward to more wall material that was in the form of bed. Um, wow. Hard to describe in words. Do you maybe get the picture? Talk to me in person someday, and I'll perhaps be able to explain better with my hands, hahaha.
After prayer time was done, I'd sit on my bed -- sometimes just in the middle of the day on a Saturday or after school on a weekday -- and I'd just sit on the mattress and talk to Jesus. I had this photo of Him pinned to my wall above where my head lay at night......
......and I'd just sit there and talk to Him, out loud, imagining that He wasn't just a picture, but that He was someone in-the-flesh I was literally sitting next to. I did this dozens of times. Audibly it always just sounded like a unilateral conversation, but under the layers of what the human senses can detect, He was talking back to me. In my heart, I knew He was listening. I knew it. He was fully aware there was a gangly, tall-for-her-age, dark-eyed, dark-haired, quirky adolescent girl sitting atop her bed, talking to a 5x7" paper image of Himself, and He listened to every word she had to say. I've told no one in the universe about these chats I had with Him in my youth. Not until now. You, reader, are in the first audience that I've ever told. :)
In Ether 3, this very, very, very same Jesus Christ is the Christ who visited with the brother of Jared nearly 4,000 years ago. The brother of Jared spent who knows how many tedious hours of moltening (I guess, in scriptural context, would be a word) sixteen stones out of a larger rock, crafting those stones to be "white and clear, even as transparent glass," and I'm sure the process would have been full of much spiritual reflection along with the meticulous handiwork.
A necessary journey was soon to be made across the raging sea for Jared and his loved ones, and the type of vessel that would bring them all across the sea was pretty much a fully-enclosed barge, and there were to be several of them, and none of them could have windows, thus making them be very dark inside, and this sentence is full of comma splices, and so the brother of Jared presented these sixteen (16) stones before the Lord and said:
"....touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness; and they shall shine forth unto us in the vessels which we have prepared, that we may have light while we shall cross the sea.... Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this. We know that thou art able to show forth great power, which looks small unto the understanding of men."
And so the Lord, Jesus Christ -- the very same one who sat with me on my bed and talked with me and listened to my sometimes-hour-long schpiels about whatever -- reached out His hand (first with only His hand visible) and touched each stone with His finger, which made the stones all light up, so that they could essentially serve as extremely awesome night-lights inside the pitch-dark barges.
And the brother of Jared (okay, so his name was Mahonri Moriancumer, but since nobody can say that name five times fast, we stick to calling him "the brother of Jared" hehe) flipped out and fell over! Like, for real fell over! And then every single verse from this point onward is now basically my favorite verse in all scripturedom, including these two:
"And the Lord saw that the brother of Jared had fallen to the earth; and the Lord said unto him: Arise, why hast thou fallen? ....And he saith unto the Lord: I saw the finger of the Lord, and I feared lest he should smite me; for I knew not that the Lord had flesh and blood."
And what cracks me up here is how the brother of Jared knew for sure that the Lord had power to do honestly anything, which of course would include the power to annihilate anything, anyone, or anyplace, without having to provide to man any visual of lifting a finger. And yet, here comes His finger into the brother of Jared's view, and all of the sudden he is deathly afraid. Does this scenario reflect how we, in our day, sometimes are? Do we fear the arm of flesh, and the concrete things we can see with our eyes, more than we fear He who is omnipotent and whom we cannot see with our eyes? I dunno. It's just so interesting to me!
Anyway, so what's so fantastically beautiful to me is the part where Jesus Christ shows His whole self unto the brother of Jared, due to his great faith and firm knowledge that Christ is "a God of truth" who cannot lie.
Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, pages and pages prior to this, it talks about people hearing a voice that pierces the soul straight to the very center. When I heard my LDS.org narrator read these next three verses, my soul felt similarly pierced:
"Behold, I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters.
"And never have I showed myself unto man whom I have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast. Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image.
"Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh."
YOU GUYS. This was really happening! This really happened! This was Jesus Christ who, for the first time in all the history of this planet, had never before revealed His physical self -- in person -- to any other person on the planet. The brother of Jared was the first, in this awesome, awesome setting.
This was Jesus Christ essentially saying, "I really am going to come to this world to redeem mankind, and this is what I will look like." (And now, in my mind, almost every Christmas carol about the Savior somehow ties perfectly into this.)
And it was this same Jesus Christ whose portrait hung on the wall above my bunk bed in the basement of the house I grew up in. The same Jesus who is my personal close friend, whom I have always counted as a dear friend since before I can remember. I talk with Him. He talks with me and walks with me. I pray to Heavenly Father in Jesus' name. His Father is my Father.
I just really, really love that all of this is true, and I'm so THANKFUL that all of this is true!
The end. This may have been my longest blog post yet. I've been sitting here for houuuuurrrrsssss typing!
