Jackpot! Our own Treasure Chest

JACKPOT!!!

             This weekend, some three people or more will win big in the National Lotto Mega Power Ball Jackpot sharing over half a billion dollars. As a Latter-day Saint I do not buy lottery tickets because it is a form of gambling.

            I’ve got my own jackpot, my own treasure and so do we all.. “What?” You say.

As bees go in search of their “treasure” each day, they return to the “treasure house” or “hive” and communicate the source of the pollen to others. Now the other bees in the hive can go directly to that same treasure of pollen. That initial bee returns and reports about the treasure using their God-given gift of quantum physics and angles via its waggle dance upon the hive. We have a treasure to share with others also and it is seen in the grand design of our skies and we are in communication with the Grand Designer just as the bees are.

            As stated in the Bible Dictionary, the light of Christ fills the "immensity of space" and is the means by which Christ is able to be "in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things." It "giveth life to all things" and is "the law by which all things are governed." It is also "the light that quickeneth" man's understanding.

SCRIPTURE: “Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—the light which is in all things…even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.”

--Doctrine and Covenants 88: 6-13.

THE LIGHT VS THE DARKNESS    

This BEE now lives in the desert near the city of Tucson. When I first moved here, I thought it was really dark at night. There were few streetlights. Was this safe? I started asking around and found the answer. For years, in order to comply with requests of local astronomers and the Kitt Peak Observatory, Tucson's outdoor lighting code has called for the use of lights that are dim compared to the fluorescent bulbs that illuminate some cities. Then there are the areas that have virtually no streetlights at all.

Tucson  located in Southern Arizona is one of the best places to get up close to major observatories, where mountain ranges lift huge telescopes closer to the sky, and the arid climate offers many clear nights.

One of Arizona's best known astronomical sites, more than 60 miles west of the city is Kitt Peak National Observatory, the world's largest collection of research telescopes: 23 optical telescopes, including the world's largest solar telescope, and two radio telescopes.

[National Optical Astronomy Observatory]

Kitt Peak National Observatory, part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, hosts a diverse collection of astronomical observatories for nighttime optical and infrared astronomy and daytime sun studies. Kitt Peak is 56 miles southwest of Tucson in the Schuk Toak District on the Tohono O’odham Reservation

A part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the site was chosen in the late 1950s, when light pollution from Tucson, with a population of around 200,000, was limited. Now the city has expanded to more than a million people, but astronomers still come from all over the world for Kitt Peak's facilities. For the public, it's one of the most accessible observatories — visitors can drop in any day of the year except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.

Another nearby location features the observatories on Mount Lemmon. At 9,157 feet, it's the highest peak in the Santa Catalina Mountains, which stretch across the north side of Tucson includes SkyCenter, one of several sites operated by the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The SkyCenter complex, formerly an Air Force radar base, now is home to half a dozen large telescopes.

Mount Lemmon SkyCenter

“Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together,” in Trifid Nebula, says NASA on its Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site. Mount Lemmon SkyCenter staffer Adam Block took this photo using the 24-inch telescope in the photo at bottom. 

 Two more observatories a few miles away on Mount Bigelow. (The largest, which has a 61-inch mirror, was used to survey the moon for the lunar landings.)

Mount Graham International Observatory

[Photo courtesy of University of Arizona]

Mount Graham International Observatory, northeast of Tucson, is the site of the Large Binocular Telescope, named for its two 8.4-meter mirrors, visible here with the telescope’s housing, about eight stories high, open.

MY LIFE ON KWAJALEIN - PERFECT FOR VIEWING THE STARS

          In the early 1990's my family lived on Kwajalein Island, in the Marshall Islands, where my husband was the head of department overseeing the IT portion of the non-military mission of the US Army base located there. Below is a map showing the location of this tiny island the southern most island of the world's largest atoll, Kwajalein Atoll. The atoll lies in the Ralik Chain, 2,100 nautical miles (3900 km) southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii, at 8°43′N 167°44′E.

Located midway between Japan, Los Angeles and Australia

         The island is only a 1/2 mile wide and just two and a half miles long. The ocean just one mile off the western coast is over two miles deep. It is the perfect place for star gazing because of the clear nights with no nearby light pollution. This is a photo at sunset of some missiles entering the skies north of the Kwaj Atoll where major radar tracking stations are located on many islands. No we weren't in any danger. The atoll is over 100 miles long and it really is not close to anything large just the small islands of Micronesia.

Our "quarters" on the island were located on the lagoon side and just a few hundred feet  from it. We would watch the most gorgeous sunsets I've ever seen. When it was the time of the full moon we could go out the front door walk about twenty feet and look to the right to see it rising and look to the left to see the sun setting. This was because of the long distances involved over the ocean with an unobstructed view. It was always a sacred experience even though I was thousands of miles from the temple.
The Cosmos and the Temple
          In Hugh Nibley's "An Intellectual Autobiography" an introductory chapter from  1978 book "Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless" he shows us the path he has taken among the ancient scrolls and texts that have recently come into our lives. He says that these writings , ancient and forgotten legends and traditions of Abraham match the Joseph Smith version very closely. Other learned divines for 60 generations have argued that the scriptures just don't seem to put it all together...the mysteries of Who we Are and What We are Doing Here. Nibley says this, This is where the Temple comes in. Without the Temple any civilization is an empty shell, a structure of custom and convenience only." ..."For thousands of years the stars have gone on sending us their hints, broadcasting unlimited information if we only knew it; now at least we are reacting to a narrow band on the informational spectrum, putting clues together in a way the Ancients never did. But also we are beginning to suspect that there were times when the Ancients reacted to another band of the spectrum which is completely  lost on us. THE TEMPLE, AS THE VERY NAME PROCLAIMS, IS A PLACE WHERE ONE TAKES ONE'S BEARINGS ON THE UNIVERSE." --page xxvii
          "There was one thing every student of the past has overlooked: here at our doorsteps among the Arizona Indians lies the world's best clue to the spiritual history of the race; nowhere else on earth will one find the old cycle of the Year Rites still observed in full force and unbroken continuity form the beginning." He was referring to the Hopi people who have kept alive a language and culture which preserved the practices and beliefs of our own ancestors from prehistoric times until the nineteenth-century industrialism severed the umbilical cord. Here the clues are both exhilarating and depressing, hopeful and sinister as nowhere else." --page xxv

     The other day on PBS I watched a special on the ancient Anasazi ruins in Chaco Canyon, Arizona.
The amazing conclusions were so perfectly understandable when viewed as a temple oriented experience that it took my breath away. The intimate and exact alignment to the sun at the equinox, and the various stages of the moon's path were reflected in the concrete structures and walls of many buildings over many miles.

Anasazi Pueblo Bonito ruins at Chaco Canyon

Several nights ago I watched another documentary on the observatories of the ancient Mayan people in the Yucatan. Orientation to the skies and to the stars is found in the ruins of temples in Egypt, Machu Pichu in CuscoPeru pictured below:

(The Intihuatana stone is one of many ritual stones in South America. These stones are arranged to point directly at the sun during the winter solstic) 

Stonehenge and other stone circles in England also telling the story of  the sun and moon and other planets in our universe. These remnants of temple ruins and annual year stories are found all over the world. 

Abraham learns about the sun, moon, and stars in Chapter 3 of the Book of Abraham in our Pearl of Great Price.

SCRIPTURE: "It is given unto thee to know the set time of all the stars that are set to give light, until thou come near unto the throne of God." --Abraham 3:10 

          Then God tells the story of His plan of Creation to Abraham in Chapter 4 with the explanation of man's part in it. This is such a treasure for the understanding of our place in the universe.

SCRIPTURE: "And the Gods organized the lights in the expanse of the heaven and caused them to divide the day from the night; and organized them to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years; And organized them to be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so."

--Abraham 4:14-15

          We have been promised that in the latter days that all things will be restored and hidden things will be revealed. The prophets have all focused on the temple and the message that they specifically were supposed to impart as part of their earthly mission. They wrote these things down and we have them as our scriptures. They have hidden treasures of knowledge within them, but we must dig for these treasures. We must desire that God will open the understanding of our minds with the Light of Christ.

          This BEE is returning to the important book of Isaiah as a genealogist to report where you can look to find the hidden treasures in his writing that I have found. I hope you can stay with me as we wander from one pollen laden flower to another in search of the light and truth there. I will dance my heart out at the hive to communicate where the sources of this treasure are buried within the scriptures.