- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
They released our Bishop a while ago. Some of you know he thought a lot of me and wanted me back in leadership. He is the kind of person who really sees the good in people; a lesson for me and lots of others. He even hinted he wanted to hire my for a sales position if I was willing to move into the Mormon corridor where he’s moving his business. The man they called in his place will likely just leave me alone. He is the husband of a woman who hurt me deeply years and years ago. And was 30-50% of the reason I’m here on StayLDS now.
Anyway, back to the Bishop just released. He made a comment that many members have closets. He commented that some of the closets have locks on them. Others have stuff in them preventing them from being fully active. Others are active and have closets with shelves. He recommended that people get rid of the shelves and empty the closets.
Clearly his objective was to get people back active and TR holding again — a reasonable goal for an active Bishop.
But it got me thinking — the things in my closet are simply memories of experiences that have made me who I am. They are like the high school yearbook now, and getting rid of that stuff doesnt’ change who I am or what those experiences made me. Is it realistic to simply expect us to shuck those past experiences related to hurt (whose edge is gone, but the memory has influenced our world view)? Can you just empty the closet and remove the stuff off the shelves?
For me, the answer is to simply leave it all there, but move on to new experiences. You can throw away all that stuff. But even as the garbage truck moves on, you are still who you are — as Ulysses said, you are partly what you met in this life. Can you ever just leave stuff behind and be fully active again after those experiences have changed you? (I am not talking about getting rid of grudges or hurt, I am talking about what those experiences made you into)…
Lots of people with all kinds of stuff in their past can be fully active; lots can’t. I wish there was an easy answer that would be applicable to everyone, but there isn’t. As individuals, we simply are too different, in too many ways.
SilentDawning wrote:
Anyway, back to the Bishop just released. He made a comment that many members have closets. He commented that some of the closets have locks on them. Others have stuff in them preventing them from being fully active. Others are active and have closets with shelves. He recommended that people get rid of the shelves and empty the closets.
Everyone has their analogies that work for them.
Mischievous response:
Get rid of my shelves and empty my closet. I’m going to need some help with this.
:think: Perhaps if top church leaders were to model this for me, lead by example.😈 Normal response:
This analogy speaks to a one size fits all solution. The goal is to purge oneself of everything that prevents them from meeting metrics that marks one as being fully active in the LDS church. What if someone needs something else for their spiritual well being, even if only temporarily?
Bishop, if you knew me you’d know that my closet is full of food storage and my attic is where I store all my junk. [in comes someone with an analogy to purge my closet of all
expiredfood] But that’s to be expected. I believed in the one size fits all, one path/program back to heaven approach. It’s not surprising that many people in church would feel that full activity in the church is THE answer.
SilentDawning wrote:For me, the answer is to simply leave it all there, but move on to new experiences. …
I like that approach. If faced with a similar decision point that I’ve faced in the past I might chose to do something different than what I did but that’s largely based on the experiences I gained as the result of making the decisions I made in the past. Experiences gained from making decisions has helped make me who I am. Whether the decisions are perceived as good or bad can change over time, but the experiences are still there to be evaluated and learned from.
It sounds like your bishop is using the wrong analogy. Reminded me of a time when the RS presidency at a YSA ward encouraged all women to help young men serve their missions by “filling their canteen”. :clap: It’s also interesting how these sweeping statements given by Church leaders (and even certain members),are always applied to “other people”.I agree its good not to keep things “shelved” or “in the closet”. Being open and honest with our experiences is essential to our survival. I’m afraid that if the Church and its membership (including us), keep things “in our closet”, denying that they are really there, the Church isn’t going to survive. And for all my gripes about it, I like the Church. I want it to stick around.
I think what he is trying to say is that a good number of us have secrets, sins, or baggage. Sometimes this stuff keeps us away from the church.
Sometimes we are able to compartmentalize and put a lock on the closet. In this way we are able to function and paste on a saintly face but we really are just going through the motions. I am sure we have all heard of families that were seemingly perfect on the outside but hiding deep sorrow and dysfunction on the inside.
I believe that your former bishop is saying that people should come clean and move forward. Repent, confess, and drop that Burden at the feet of the Savior.
“I will give away all my sins to know thee”
Roy wrote:
I think what he is trying to say is that a good number of us have secrets, sins, or baggage.
For me, a huge step was recognizing that what I had in my closet and on my shelf was not sinful. The process of emptying and cleaning them has had the opposite effect of what that bishop would have hoped.“Soooooo Bishop….. If I understand you correctly, your advice is to break the shelf and to come out of the closet?” 😆 Roy wrote:
“Soooooo Bishop….. If I understand you correctly, your advice is to break the shelf and to come out of the closet?”😆
:clap: Roy wins this week. Hilarious! Old Timer wrote:
Roy wins this week. Hilarious!
+1
I never thought he was talking about people having sins that won’t confess, or that they can’t get past. How autobiographical of me to think he was talking about people who have reasons for being inactive they are not willing to share out of distrust of Priesthood leaders…
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.