This is the place. Or is it the place? How many of you, I wonder choose to live where you live? Would you rather live somewhere else? Maybe the traffic is bad outside your house, maybe you don’t get on with the neighbours, maybe you hate the weather but is it so easy to move? We have jobs and family that tie us to an area and can’t just move to another country so easily. But look through the entire course of history and people have always been on the move; searching for better opportunities, fleeing persecution. You only have to look at the news of recent weeks to see the thousands fleeing war torn countries, pitched up at Calais, desperate to live in peace, to protect their families, their homes destroyed, prepared to get onto crowded boats risking their lives, clinging to lorries, parting with money to organized gangs offering to help. Migration is not a new thing. It never will be.
When I studied American history at university I was fascinated by the movement of people across the States and one group in particular: The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints. They were the largest migration in US history and 70,000 arrived in Utah from Illinois, having trekked across the Rockies, a journey of 1300 miles arriving on 24th July 1847.
It was a society conceived in the nightmares of 15 year old Joseph Smith. Living in New York in 1823 he was disturbed by an angel Moroni telling him that all previous religions were fraudulent and was told to unearth some gold plates in the forest of New York and translate them. This became the book of Mormon. The church grew but they were persecuted. They claimed to be the 13th lost tribe of Israel and said that Jesus had visited the Americas. They were thrifty people and opened banks and their belief in polygamy resulted in accusations of them being adulterers and they were persecuted for their beliefs, moving on to Illinois where Smith was shot.
A new leader Brigham Young took over and led his people over the Rockies stopping at the Salt Lake basin flanked by the Wasatch Mountains. Brigham Young was very ill but leaned out of his wagon, told the driver to stop and looking ahead of him declared ‘this is the place.’ Of course he didn’t realise it was on a fault line but buildings after 1975 have been built using seismic technology. The city was planned on a grid system, the roads wide enough for a team of oxen to turn without the use of foul language. The Mormons were a hard working family focused people and still are. Unemployment is the 2nd lowest in the USA. The university is the only one in the country where students come out married in large numbers and Utah is now as the bee state because Brigham Young wanted the pioneers to be as busy as bees.
It is with great nostalgia that we look back upon this great migration of people; free to travel, free to move on and pursue their religious beliefs in peace without further prosecution. In today’s world that doesn’t happen so easily. Governments have rules, space isn’t so freely available.