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I haven’t been around much recently, mostly because I had (with lots of help from here) come to a pretty balanced equilibrium with my faith and activity in the church. But this weekend was pretty awful.
I went to what was supposed to be a “calendaring” ward meeting. It really was some kind of program called “Hastening the Work”. The bishop presented a spreadsheet with categories: Potential Children Baptisms, Convert Baptsims, Aaronic Priesthood ordination, Temple Recommends, etc. He had a potential number, and a “goal for 2014” number for each category. For many of them he had a list of names on the back. Then the priesthood leader (never were any of the females in the room addressed) talked about what a realistic goal for whatever category was. No talking about individual needs, just how many people can we get to do what we want them to. And if you are all done with your ordinances, nope, you obviously have no needs. Move along. It was so impersonal, it was so number focused, it was so ignoring of actual needs and desires of anyone.
The bishop in sacrament meeting got up and flat out lied about a youth in our ward who has cancer that the ward has been fasting for. He said the doctors can find no trace of his cancer and can’t explain it. It just isn’t true. What really happened is that he had a complicating infection that has been cleared up, and now can proceed with further treatments.
Also, even though I am the Relief Society counselor over teaching, he called and sustained a new teacher, that wasn’t the name we had submitted, and that he decided on without even giving me a heads up.
Then we had a high council speaker. As he was droning on he got around to how shameful it was that women can’t do pull-ups. Men are just naturally stronger, and even he, being old and out of shape can do a pull up, what is wrong with women in the world today? Not only did this upset me (and other women in the congregation), but my daughter was so upset she had to leave. What the heck?
Relief Society was the first lesson from the manual about God the father. I made a few comments about service being a way we can feel close to God, but they were brushed aside in favor of typical pray and read scriptures answers.
And lastly we had a service project sign up that is helping a local church assemble meals for the needy. On the one hand, I am happy that the ward is finally participating in some sort of service. On the other hand, shouldn’t we be a leader in providing service? Why is this such a new concept?
I really have been wanting to be a part of the church in hopes that I could help it be a better place, but days like yesterday make me feel so hopeless.
Wow that is a pretty bad day! I can somewhat relate yesterday the HC gave a talk on how to follow the prophet and every word he said made my blood boil. I just wanted to throw rotten fruit at him. I think we just have to remember that the good days outweigh the bad days and when the bad days happen to go ahead and vent to someone because then we’re not holding on to the anger and bitterness As people on this site can attest, don’t get me started about hastening the work. Oh it’s nibbler again with his HtW tirade. 🙄 At least it’s good that I’m self aware about my problem.
Maybe the bishop was a victim in that game where you whisper something in someones ear on one side of the room and people take turns whispering it to their neighbor and you end up with gibberish at the other end of the room.
ROTFLMAO at that high counselor. I don’t laugh to trivialize what he said, but rather there comes a time where that’s all I can do when placed in certain situations. Laugh… because the alternative is to get angry or depressed. How in the world did women doing pull-ups come up?
Also… I bet you could do pull-ups better than I could.
:angel: I’m very sorry, hopefully it will stand as an outlier and not the norm. nibbler wrote:
Also… I bet you could do pull-ups better than I could.I doubt it, I and uniquely bad a pull-ups. My daughter isn’t that great at them either, but she can run a sub 7 minute mile, and taught herself to climb 5.10 rock grades.
*SIGH* :thumbdown: Sometimes, people are their own worst enemies. Sorry you had that kind of day.
I also wonder if the Bishop heard things through the mill and really believed what he said about the member with cancer. I wouldn’t assume he lied – which means he knew what he said was inaccurate. I can see easily how that might not have been the case.
As for the service, I mean this seriously: Celebrate the start of something good. Complaining because something good finally is happening is a sign of bitterness leaking over into things where it need not be. This is something that is within your control, so work on celebrating a good thing.
rebeccad wrote:The bishop in sacrament meeting got up and flat out lied about a youth in our ward who has cancer that the ward has been fasting for. He said the doctors can find no trace of his cancer and can’t explain it. It just isn’t true. What really happened is that he had a complicating infection that has been cleared up, and now can proceed with further treatments.
Yeah, this story had obviously been embellished somewhere along the line. Whether by the bishop or someone else who then told the bishop is uncertain. I can just imagine someone getting up and whispering in the bishops ear and then the bishop clearing his throat and saying, “correction: the cancer has not diminished but the boy is in good spirits and is thankful for your prayers and fasting on your behalf.
😆 I think of all those old stories about people being healed in the days of JS and then I read about Emma being rebaptised to heal her sickness – it heals her – and then she is sick again the next day. It makes me feel that healings might have been just as rare and exceptional back then as they are today.
rebeccad wrote:And lastly we had a service project sign up that is helping a local church assemble meals for the needy. On the one hand, I am happy that the ward is finally participating in some sort of service. On the other hand, shouldn’t we be a leader in providing service? Why is this such a new concept?
I actually really like this. There was an article in the Ensign a few months back about interfaith service. It said that two common problems Mormons tend to have in interfaith service are to be more focused on getting the service done than getting to know the fellow servers and taking over the service project. So on this one I see the glass as being half full.
So sorry about your bad day. I know how that can be. Let yourself feel it and then try to remember some good things that have happened recently. I’m trying to follow my own advice. They just rearranged our ward boundaries and DH and I feel like we got left in the ward with mostly the people we don’t identify with (read: don’t like very much) and we’re pretty bummed about it. We still have the same bishop who is a very nice and spiritual person, but he’s about as TBM as they come. He just kind of operates on a different plane than everyone else. I would NEVER be able to discuss my feeling with him. He just wouldn’t get it.
I’ve never watched the clock so much at church as I did yesterday. It was almost painful. Soooo, today, I’m trying to see the good in the people who are still in our ward and remember how incredibly charitable our bishop is. Hope it works for me and hope it works for you too
🙂 I also had a really meh Sacrament Meeting yesterday. Two LONG talks (with no intermediate hymn), and one that included recitation of some facts about the decline of modern society that just didn’t need to be used. There really are some things that are true that aren’t useful and shouldn’t be shared in Sacrament Meeting. On the bright side, I spoke after the meetings ended with the person who gave the talk with the unnecessary facts and explained that I liked his talk overall (which I did, when I weeded out the details I didn’t like) but was very uncomfortable with some specific facts he used – and I told him why. He thanked me for the input and said he hadn’t considered that perspective at all. He’s a good man, with a great heart; he simply didn’t realize how using those stats sounded, especially in that setting.
Last Sunday was “a good day” – I even blogged/posted about it: http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5043&p=68715#p68715 Yesterday was not. We had HC too. When he started the talk with a rebuke about late arrivals (if you’re not in your seat at ten to ten then you should consider yourself late) I nearly walked out. I even leaned down and said to the kids “right, that’s it… we’re leaving.” My 9-yo looked delighted!
I then realised I had a lesson to teach, was feeding the Elders and was trying to represent a certain view of the world and showing it could work. I tuned out as he then went on in a “general authority voice” (think Richard G. Scott) about sin and repentance. It sounded so much like an audition from General Conference that I was expecting to see an apostle hiding at the back assessing him.
Gospel Principles was a bit frustrating. Several “absolutist” comments from new members/elders and had to keep moving an Irish investigator away from his “catholic-griping” while a couple of other people kept bringing the conversation around to their awful in-laws (while I tried to teach them that they were their spirit siblings too!).
Priesthood just annoyed me. JSF wrote a letter in 1948 to his son saying he had never had a vision of the Lord. But the teacher and class members kept referring to it as “at this stage he hadn’t seen him” or “this was before he was prophet and he hadn’t seen the Lord yet.” I wanted to point out that he never claimed he had, that no apostle had made this claim for over 100 years (I think Lorenzo Snow was perhaps the last one).
I mentioned this to a friend after the class quietly. He smiled and said, “thank goodness. Imagine the minefield and embarrassment if our leaders were frequently claiming visits by deity/angels. My colleagues think we’re mad enough already.”
Good point…
Some days are just like that. In our ward, sacrament meeting was okay – not particularly inspiring – but not one of those cringe worthy Sundays when I hear Twilight Zone music in my head. I spent most of the time reading scriptures. (I recommend Romans 14 – loved hat yesterday!)
Then I taught my Sunday School class and a member of the new stake presidency popped in for a visit. I was teaching atonement theory as it relates to the nature of God. Not exactly in the Come Follow Me outline. He just kept looking thoughtful and saying, “I’ve never heard this before.” {shrug} I’ve got the references so if he has any questions, he knows where to find me. LOL.
RS was kind of ‘meh’. The teacher is an adult convert who, although she’s been a member for decades, seems to have brought a Southern Baptist hard line mentality with her. She always makes comments which reveal her to be a very black/white thinker. The lesson was on Jesus Christ and she spent a lot of time at the beginning almost defiantly explaining that it’s just fine not to have an experience with Christ because even if we don’t, we
know… [fill in the blank]. It felt like she was trying to bolster the Joseph Fielding Smith’s prophetic call more than anything and it was a bit off-putting. I think it would have been better to just read the quote from the manual and then reaffirm that there is just as much value in believing, hoping, and exercising faith as in “knowing”. All in all. It was okay.
I think the bishop was purposefully deceptive. If asked, I’m sure he would say that he didn’t say he was cured, and he’s sorry if he gave that impression. What he did say is that “blood tests are cancer free”. That is very good news it means he is able to receive a further treatment. But to most people, it sounded like he was saying he was cured.
Really it is days like this that make me question if I can balance all of this.
rebeccad, Those are tough days. I get what you are saying. I don’t have any words of encouragement other than to say that there are many good people and many good teachings in the Church, they just don’t always shine through the clutter on days like that.
mackay11 wrote:
Priesthood just annoyed me. JSF wrote a letter in 1948 to his son saying he had never had a vision of the Lord. But the teacher and class members kept referring to it as “at this stage he hadn’t seen him” or “this was before he was prophet and he hadn’t seen the Lord yet”….Since we’re all sharing, I’ll go next!
Then in priesthood the lesson went the same direction as MacKay’s, with the caveat that our quorum started with the assumption that JFS was NOT an apostle when he made the statement. I had to look up the date to add any weight to my view that being an Apostle does NOT require the ministration of JC.
Sigh…
rebeccad wrote:Really it is days like this that make me question if I can balance all of this.
I feel like this every. single. week.
Yesterday was our Stake Conference and I spent the morning in bed playing Candy Crush and eating treats with the kids. It felt much more meaningful. Wonder how I would explain that to my local leadership.
The Hastening the Work may do me in. Sorry it stunk!
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