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I just finished Sheri Dew, Amazed by Grace. I don’t hate it nor do I wish to dismiss it. What came to me most as I read- was I now speak and hear traditional LDSness – as a foreign language.
It wasn’t always so, and it really hits me when I notice it. I miss the old language, I wish I could have both, I even get a little tired of the other language. So as I read this book – I find myself at war with the crisis. The why’s, the how come’s, the why can’t everyone have a same page experience.
Do I appreciate the learning I receive? Yes, but I hurt for all of us as I listen to the Foreign Language’s we use to communicate that will never be connected.
Interesting thoughts. They touched me. I feel like I have a similar experience. I think one of the saddest things about this faith crisis for me is I feel like Mormonism is my spiritual language. But now I’m learning a new one and losing the connectedness I had with Mormonism. I’ll always “speak Mormonism” so to speak. It’s in my blood. It’s my native language. But I’m losing the fluidness of speech and it will probably continue. I don’t think I’ll ever lose all of it. And just like languages, there are things that can be “spoken” in Mormonism that don’t exist in other languages. And there is much in my new language that there’s no translation for in Mormonism. I think that’s why I couldn’t begin to articulate my beliefs to my mother if she ever asked. There’s no answer she could understand without improper translation.
Mormonism in print and language quit working for me years ago. I became hyper aware of the constant repetitive nuanced ways that the Church has to say “all is well, God is aware, and all happens for a purpose”. That Pollyanna view quite working for me. I have especially grown to despise Mormon-speak in print. I call it Print as I refuse to call it Literature.
Even now, after so many years, I cannot read books written in that language. I find myself reading something in Mormon-speak and I start feeling rage and anger. Why rage and anger? It feels ike all my life’s problems and trials have been dismissed as earthly challenges that I should be grateful for. I feel dismissed.
Scriptures bring me solace and comfort, but not printed material from the church. This duality bothers me. I want to feel uplifted by the printed material of my religious culture.
So many people on StayLDS wrire of reading about various GAs, and LDS books. I just don’t read any of it — and I read a LOT of books. I go back to scriptures, to Torah, to anything that isn’t written in Mormon-speak.
Recently, I donated to someone who will be writing a book about LDS Women. I believe in her cause .. Yet I am afraid of the final printing.
AP wrote – Quote:I just don’t read any of it — and I read a LOT of books.
Me too, I have purchased some progressive Mormon books, but any standard ones come as gifts. This one was a gift. I knew before I read it that I had changed enough to be challenged by it, I just forget how much the gap has widened, and for familial and close LDS friend conversations it gets tough.
My parents were here and my dad noted there were no Ensign’s around. Because I haven’t shared my transition with my family, they worried that I didn’t have the materials I needed. I explained I could get them online, but I don’t think that did the trick.
This whole danged experience is a whopper. Because of years of Christian training, I can’t help but wonder what the purpose of this is supposed to be. Often times I can let it go and not worry about it, but sometimes it perplexes me.
Being bi-lingual is hard – especially when dealing with people who aren’t. It’s even harder when practice lags. I used to be fluent in Japanese, but I no longer am. I simply stopped practicing for too long a time.
My bookshelves lightened up these last two years. It was cathartic to let so much go. I still understand the language, but I speak it less and less. mom3, I often compared the phenomenon to mathematics… and you want to talk about being out of practice. 
In college I took a course on numerical methods. The whole goal of the class was to get us thinking about how we solve problems. The way we solve problems can help us converge on an answer or diverge away from it. In that class there was lots of “you used a good method there but you introduced lots of rounding errors, when you apply your next method your answer is going to be way off.” That’s an oversimplification, I’m doing my best not to bog people down with the details. Think Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory giving his version of Uchtdorf’s Matter of a Few Degrees talk but using terms that are more familiar to Sheldon.
The name of the game in that class was approximating something that couldn’t be solved outright. They took us through the history of math. It was interesting, you could see how each method people invented over the years converged on more accurate answers. Calculus was fun. It made you ask the question: “why the hell are we spending so much class time on antiquated methods that only approximate answers when calculus
givesus theanswer?” Hopefully that’s when you back away and realize that calculus has its limitations. I’m sure I’m speaking a foreign language right now but there’s my parallel. I hope you stayed awake this long.
There was value in learning the old methods. They were foundational. They were also an exercise in learning how to invent new methods to better approximate solutions to problems that can’t be solved with “symbolic computations.”
Even the calculus that we were using to arrive at “the” answer still relied on addition (subtraction), multiplication (division), doers (undoers). It really wasn’t an either or proposition, the new language built upon and required a working knowledge of the older language.
That’s how I view the phenomenon. When I step into church maybe I can’t talk the Euler method, maybe I have to work entirely within the scope of the Taylor series. It’s putting on a different hat but all hats seem to have the goal of doing their best to approximate the solutions to the problems of life. limited by their respective set of rules of course.
I’m not saying one method is better than another, just that there are methods. Learning the thought processes behind each method can be beneficial, enrich your own thought processes. I suspect many of us have exhausted exploring the Mormon mindset, it can be far less compelling to study than a mindset that’s more fresh to us.
mom3 wrote:My parents were here and my dad noted there were no Ensign’s around. Because I haven’t shared my transition with my family, they worried that I didn’t have the materials I needed. I explained I could get them online, but I don’t think that did the trick.
😆 Another language barrier.Um, dad. I’ve got every conference talk going back to 1970 on my cellphone.
Burn the witch!
It’s not just a Mormon problem – think of all the other groups in society that do this. I’ve been involved in many (non-religious) societies, groups, businesses etc, and it happens in all of them. Note some of the bizarre language used in advertizing or alternative healthcare for example.
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