Incoming!

The Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS), also known as the Mormons, have decided to start an ad campaign.  According to a local news article, the Rochester, New York area has been selected as one of nine cities to test their ad campaign. The commercials primarily feature people who state their interests and hobbies and mention that they're a Mormon as well. I'm not sure if it's important to their campaign or not, but Rochester is near Palmyra, New York. Palmyra is essentially where the Mormon faith started. Joseph Smith had a farm there, and that's where he discovered the plates. He translated the language on the plates, which became the book of Mormon. At a later time, he moved to Utah, which is the seat of their faith. If you are in the area, it's interesting to learn about it, whether you're Mormon or not. You can take a tour that goes through his house and the rest, and you learn a good bit in the process about what Joseph Smith was like and the struggles he had surrounding the plates. You can also walk in the Sacred Grove, which is a beautiful forest. Not that I'm a Mormon or am going to be, but I rather like some of the story around their faith, and have had good experiences. Years ago, I spent some time in Utah on business and made a good friend there who gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon, and we had some interesting conversations about Spiritualism and the Mormon faith. Now that I live in Rochester, I've been on the tour of the farm, and it was interesting. My perspective is that it was all about/through mediumship. The angel Moroni's visits, whether they were actual-physical or not, were perceived through mediumship. I'd say the same for the translation of the plates. This doesn't invalidate or cheapen the Mormon faith in any way, actually, it rather validates it. For those of us who are not Mormons, think of it this way - there is another religion besides Spiritualism which was founded in the United States, and this one has mediumship right at it's core too.  Kinda cool. As far as the commercials go, considering they're for a religion, they are pretty decent, they really are. But I'm already starting to feel like I'm under mortar fire in Afghanistan. Turn on the radio, and within minutes, you've got incoming! Turn on the tv, you've got more incoming, almost as fast! If they start emailing, facebooking, and tweeting me too, I'm gonna have to do something about it. What, I don't know. Maybe I'll just hide under my desk in my home office, eat MRE's, sneak drinking water from the nearby bathroom sink when I don't think they're looking, and wait it out until they go away for a long while....