Two years ago (the first week of September), I gave this testimony immediately after having seen the 2017 solar eclipse. Since I failed to record it earlier, this is just an estimate of what I had said. It'll be important for other posts I have coming down the pike (the "How to Keep People in the Church" series).
I had gone down to Greenville, SC to view the event on August 21, 2017. You can read all the gory details here. During my testimony I gave the ultra-condensed version. I had been planning the trip for years. I could have stayed in my home city of Winston Salem, NC, which was in the 95% eclipse zone, but that wasn't good enough for me.
In order to catch 100%, I took the day off from work, spent almost 4 hours driving down with my family, and then we saw it. Pictures and video don't do it justice. It was magical -- like a 3-D paper origami moon covering the prettiest corona you could ever imagine with its strange red/purple light. It was like nothing I had seen before, or will rarely see again.
The trip back was slightly worse. I-85 was a parking lot, so we used the back roads. It added more than a hour to a regular trip, but it was fun.
I had several Winston Salem friends who had made similar plans. A few took the trip to catch that last 5%, and some stayed behind. That last contingent went outside shortly after lunch and caught as much as they could. They put on their solar glasses and had a fun time. Most of the sun's face was covered except for a small sliver. It was an experience for them, ... however ... they never saw the corona. They missed out on the full magic.
I know this, because, as soon as the first tiniest speck of the sun's surface appeared (the Bailey's Beads as captured by my friend in the picture above), there was instant heat, and we could no longer see the corona, and we had to put our filtered glasses back on.
Now, take a moment to see it from the stay-at-home point of view. I got to hear it from one of my work friends as we all went out to eat lunch at Mama Zoe's. About half of us had gone down to SC, and the other half had stayed.
My one stay-at-home friend said, "I had a blast. Yeah, I know I was planning to go down, but I ultimately decided not to go, because I would have to drag my family through hours of traffic just for a 2-minute show. We had 95% totality, and it got down to a sliver, and it was cool. In hindsight, I'm glad I made the right decision. I got to see it, AND I didn't get stuck in traffic."
Then as you may expect, I and my went-down friends tried to explain what he had missed out on, but he would have none of it. Even though I had seen one of the most spectacular events of my life, I found it very difficult to put into words -- to explain it to someone who really only experienced a small portion of the event.
As we gained up on my stay-at-home friend, he got more defensive and started implying that we were stupid for going down in the first place and that triggered me. I said, "I saw the corona with my own eyes, and nothing will ever take that away from me. It was worth the trip." And that pretty much ended the discussion forever.
I know we could have handled the whole situation better, but I couldn't help seeing some important analogies.
The solar eclipse at 100% totality represents the "true" Gospel. Being able to see the corona is like seeing the full Truth.
All churches have a portion of Truth. Among all the Christian denominations, roughly 95% of the doctrine is the same. (If we include non-Christian religions, there are still some similarities. But I stuck with Christianity in this testimony to keep it simple.) We all believe that Christ can save us from sin, which is by far the most important piece of doctrine.
People tend to stay with the church with which they were raised, because to them, that 95% is good enough. There isn't much incentive to search for other churches, because there is a sense that they all believe the same things with minor differences between the denominations.
But in our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), that extra 5% makes a big difference. We can see what other people are missing. It's difficult to explain to them exactly what it is, but we know this extra knowledge. I'm grateful for what I've learned, and no one can ever take it away from me.
I said those last words to a room of other members of our church, but I'd like to slightly modify it for my non-LDS readers. There is always room to learn more knowledge. Even in my church, it's believed that more truths will be revealed later (Article of Faith #9). Even though I'm satisfied with the doctrine of my church, I am also searching for further truth, including frequent studying of other religions.
Because ... well ... it's worth the trip. Having Truth is good and helps to put things in proper perspectives. It helps us to see beautiful things that we would otherwise miss.
I would like to end by comparing the above eclipse analogy with at least two talks given at General Conference in October 2017 -- the very quick version. In those two talks, the eclipse was given as an example of the moon being a small thing, yet covering up a large sun. The moon represented distractions in our life that are small, yet big enough to keep us from seeing the light. You can similarly cover up the entire moon by holding your little thumb in front of it.
Though, this is a cool analogy that was used twice independently, I like mine better. Theirs make the eclipse sound like a bad thing. But to me, the corona was the beautiful part to see. It's there all the time, but we can never see it. The surface of the sun is the "distraction," and the moon was the small means that could cover up the distraction long enough for us to see the sun's true nature.
But sure ... two different ways to look at it. Either way, cool eclipses make for cool analogies.
