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If we don’t laugh, we cry. http://www.wheatandtares.org/16279/mormons-so-cray/ Ah, yes, as if the whole trek thing isn’t crazy enough on it’s own. Many of us have been in those same kinds of meetings. Thanks for the chuckles! 😆 Bless you for this. I can almost hear a new musical from this. Hmmm. Quote:how the girls could fall over, presumably in a strong wind, exposing their unbloomered nether regions to the priests and teachers. If a really strong wind occurred, the girls could be tumbling around like jacks, all over the place, their thighs exposed for all to see and possibly worse! So the girls have to wear bloomers that are essentially pants (scrubs or pajama bottoms are recommended)
I…can’t…stop…
😆 …laughing…We really are psychos…aren’t we?
…I mean, a peculiar people.
:eh: My girls did the trek and nobody was rolling around in the wind with legs up in the air, burying dolls, and purposefully suffering. They did wear a bonnet though. I think they got enough out of it if you just have them pull a handcar a bit up a hill. They get the idea. The best thing from the trek was that whoever their mom or pa for the trek was…they pretty much stayed pals afterwards with those adults.
Not going to lie, I, like the author in the footnotes, was also disappointed this was not a Star Trek thing. Having watched and listened to some of these cray cray type situations before, I am both exasperated and mildly amused.
Quote:the modesty ranter pointed out that it was important for the kids to experience hardship as the pioneers did
That may be one of the tent poles to Mormonism. Suffering means you’re doing something right. Suffering
moremeans you just traded something good for something better. :crazy: These treks happen in the summertime right? Lol.
They should probably include some sort of lead lined flak jacket requirement just in case one of the priests shows up with a pair of x-ray specs.
Quote:What “we so cray” moments have you had in Mormondom?
On HC Sunday our assigned dude related a story about a business trip that he had went on. He let the people he was visiting know that he jogged every day and that he needed to set aside some time at the end of the day to go running. One of the people he was visiting piped up and said that they also jogged and asked if they could accompany him. The problem… the coworker was female. He related that he thought about how he didn’t want to be seen with someone of the opposite sex that wasn’t his DW so his response? A curt “I jog alone.” I assume curt because he was reenacting some of the interactions and “I jog alone.” was said very forcefully. I looked at DW in my best wtf face and all I could get out of her was “I jog alone” in her best Billie Joe Armstrong impersonation.
I get the guy’s point and his concerns but I couldn’t help but think what that woman must have though of his response.
Quote:Suffering means you’re doing something right. Suffering more means you just traded something good for something better.
:crazy: No joke a YW in our ward said that same thing in a testimony. The more it hurts, the more it’s right. I stepped out for a drink of water after that.
Quote:I get the guy’s point and his concerns but I couldn’t help but think what that woman must have though of his response.
WWJD? Oh yeah, I remember he often had one on ones with a woman by himself. There was the dead girl, the woman at the well, and then there’s that whole resurrection thing. Not to mention the Mary and Martha moments.
I laughed until I cried 😆 – and then I just cried.😥 The worst part for me is that so much of this is based on a terribly flawed interpretation of scripture. (1 Thessalonians 5:22 – “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”) Seriously, the way so many members misinterpret that verse is abominable.
Sometimes, I want to deadpan in my best Inigo Montoya voice:
Quote:I do not think that verse means what you think it means.
I forgot one more example. It wasn’t the craziest thing ever, but when I worked for Amex some of the execs would do these new agey retreats with meditation and different things. Anyway, pretty much our whole leadership team had gone to these, and I was at the second level training. In a previous session. one of the other leaders, who is Mormon, said that he couldn’t participate in one of the activities because it was against his religion, and since they knew I was also Mormon, the trainer pulled me aside respectfully to ask if I needed to skip the activity. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was objectionable, so I participated. It was OK. Not my favorite activity or anything, but whatever. Back at the office I pulled my colleague aside and asked what it was that he thought was against our religion. He said because it was in mixed company (although a group) in a hotel room (really, it was a suite) in the evening. I laughed and said, “Oh, that didn’t even occur to me that it was any big deal.” I mean, one guy was 65 years old, plus some middle aged women like me, and maybe one other guy. There was no whiff of impropriety at any time. He kind of laughed about it, too. He said it was kind of a knee-jerk reaction. I guess my knees don’t jerk in the same way.
Quote:Back at the office I pulled my colleague aside and asked what it was that he thought was against our religion. He said because it was in mixed company (although a group) in a hotel room (really, it was a suite) in the evening. I laughed and said, “Oh, that didn’t even occur to me that it was any big deal.” I mean, one guy was 65 years old, plus some middle aged women like me, and maybe one other guy. There was no whiff of impropriety at any time. He kind of laughed about it, too. He said it was kind of a knee-jerk reaction. I guess my knees don’t jerk in the same way.
This paints some beautiful pictures in my mind. Thanks for the imagery.
🙄 hawkgrrrl wrote:Back at the office I pulled my colleague aside and asked what it was that he thought was against our religion. He said because it was in mixed company (although a group) in a hotel room (really, it was a suite) in the evening.
I believe that there is value to “gaurdrails” as defined as personal standards that trigger long before anything that might be considered sin or problematic. The key is to understand 1) that these are personal for you and do not make you any better than someone else, 2) that these should never be imposed on others and 3) that they should be somewhat flexible for individual circumstances and open to adjustment as necessary.
I also fully understand that we go way overboard on this as Mormons collectively. Often with some authority figures personal guardrail becoming a new expectation/rule in the church with little or no consideration for personal circumstances.
Roy wrote:I also fully understand that we go way overboard on this as Mormons collectively. Often with some authority figures personal guardrail becoming a new expectation/rule in the church with little or no consideration for personal circumstances.
…and the guardrails to the guardrails to the guardrails.
Sometimes our guardrails keep us so far away…we can’t even remember what we’re guardrailing anymore. But they make for great testimony meeting stories on how faithful we are!!
Hawkgrrrl wrote: Quote:…but it seems that the craziest person in the room gets the most say in how things are done.
This! Why do the sane ones fold?
Ann wrote:Hawkgrrrl wrote:
Quote:…but it seems that the craziest person in the room gets the most say in how things are done.
This! Why do the sane ones fold?
The sane ones get worn down.
Group discussion ventures close to someone’s pet topic so they get revved up. The sane ones spoke up in the past but sometimes the more adamant turn to contention to get their way. The sane don’t want to fight over it because they don’t feel like it’s worth it. Meetings that should have lasted 30 minutes start to get close to the two hour mark. The sane get worn down. It becomes a game of “yeah, yeah, can we just get out of here?!?!”
If you want to override crazy you have to be just as crazy on the opposite end of the debate. Most don’t want to bother.
I’ve seen meetings get bogged down by 30+ minute conversations about exactly where on the table the centerpieces should be placed in the upcoming activity. Seriously.
That’swhat happens when you get crazy on both sides of the argument so most people let the most passionate (often deemed craziest) person get their way early on. They want to avoid the time sink. Ann wrote:Hawkgrrrl wrote:
Quote:…but it seems that the craziest person in the room gets the most say in how things are done.
This! Why do the sane ones fold?
I also feel that it is ok to say stuff that is seen as more faithfull. One can get away with testifying that JS was the most perfect person ever (except JC). I seem to remember reading from SWK that he felt that boys should not expose their chests for modesty reasons (i.e. no “shirts vs. skins”! I have no idea how this would apply to swim attire!
😮 ). We actually glory in tales of people paying tithing above basic human necessities. Anyway I could express these opinions in church and even if people do not agree with me exactly it passes the “faithfull” test and is not moderated.OTOH, I have been cut off and admonished in an SS class for asking “Is it possible that the young Jesus was just acting thoughtlessly?” or “If spiritual death is to seperated from God and we are not in his presence now – would it be accurate to state that we are spiritually dead in our mortal state?”
This is not to say that oppossing viewpoints cannot be expressed. However, we talk all the time here at STtayLDS about how in order to be successful doing so one should be careful in wording and presentation, have church credibility of being active and faithful, and picking the right moment and context (i.e. usually in a one on one conversation and not in a group).
It is very difficult to be the one arguing that JS had some serious character flaws or that we might relax about how much skin our young people reveal or that a family might be wise to take dire financial situations into account before deciding to give tithing.
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