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It worked Heber, it’s raining where I live. Has been since 8 this morning. Thank your ward for us. We appreciate all you do. Rob4hope: Yes!
mom3 wrote:It worked Heber, it’s raining where I live. Has been since 8 this morning. Thank your ward for us. We appreciate all you do.
No…it totally DIDN’T work at all…it rained Friday and Saturday here…then we fasted on Sunday. Dangit…blessings are supposed to come AFTER the trial of faith…not two days before the fast! It just made it all confusing.Nobody is going to be able to get up in sacrament meeting and say “The rains came because we were planning to fast in a couple days…they just came early because we had so much faith.” I don’t think that will fly. But BYU did win…but that was before our fast too…I think we fasted the wrong week…we were supposed to fast last week to get all these blessings this Friday and Saturday. I will tell the SP to get his timing better.
Rob4Hope wrote:Heber, I don’t know your situation, but I hope you can draw close emotionally during this crisis with your family, and if they need help to cry, or to carry the fear or burden, you can be there. That will make that fast worth every effort.
Thanks for those words of support, Rob. I don’t suspect God is involved in any way with the cancer or diagnosis of it. Things happen in life. But…your words are of comfort, and we are brought together because we believe in God, have been taught gospel principles, and have hearts that turn to follow Christ…and in that way, God’s hand is made manifest through our actions. Very indirectly. Very impersonally. And very lovingly.My family members that know I was fasting for them were touched and felt support. That is the point. Like you said, it is what we do.
Roy wrote:I used to love the BYU produced movie “Windows of Heaven”
In it the pioneering saints in St. George are told that the drought would end if they pay an honest tithe. When the rains finally come and the farmer falls down to his knees in the muddy field in a prayer of gratitude I always got choked up.
As a church, we have historically believed in changing weather patterns through righteous living.
Roy, I hate to burst your bubble, but almost nothing in the movie actually happened. Read that last part of this post
here in Pure MormonismSheldon wrote:almost nothing in the movie actually happened.
…but it made a good story Roy would get choked up about.
Maybe it was “based on true events”…which is what Hollywood uses to say “none of this actually happened…but it is based on a true story”.
Wow! First the miracle of the seagulls and now the tithing that ended to St. George drought. At least with the seagulls there seems to have been a gradual communal exaggeration as the mythmaking took hold but with the BYU produced movie “Windows of Heaven” it was propaganda through and through.
I appreciate that I found this out among friends.
Roy wrote:Wow! First the miracle of the seagulls and now the tithing that ended to St. George drought.
At least with the seagulls there seems to have been a gradual communal exaggeration as the mythmaking took hold but with the BYU produced movie “Windows of Heaven” it was propaganda through and through.
I appreciate that I found this out among friends.
Can someone give any details on the seagull exaggeration?LookingHard wrote:Can someone give any details on the seagull exaggeration?
Essentially that the early pioneers had their crops devastated by grasshoppers (among other things). They tried everything that they could to stave off the infestation. Those were some very lean years and starvation was a real possibility. There were several years of this. At this time some noted that the seagulls were helpful in dining on the hated grasshoppers. The seagulls were providing a helpful and needed service and were looked upon favorably. Apparently, nobody at the time saw anything miraculous in this and it was not reported as such in any first person journal accounts. Years later, stories of the seagulls coming to the rescue began and the myth took on a life of its own.
That is just my hasty memory of the events.
Roy wrote:LookingHard wrote:Can someone give any details on the seagull exaggeration?
Essentially that the early pioneers had their crops devastated by grasshoppers (among other things). They tried everything that they could to stave off the infestation. Those were some very lean years and starvation was a real possibility. There were several years of this. At this time some noted that the seagulls were helpful in dining on the hated grasshoppers. The seagulls were providing a helpful and needed service and were looked upon favorably. Apparently, nobody at the time saw anything miraculous in this and it was not reported as such in any first person journal accounts. Years later, stories of the seagulls coming to the rescue began and the myth took on a life of its own.
That is just my hasty memory of the events.
I hope you are happy Roy to know you just broke my shelf!
Actually, it feels to me that I am to the point where nothing surprises me.
I have seen movies where the Catholic church sends out inspectors to verify supposed miracles. It just seems that in contrast if someone in our church says that something miraculous happened and it is faith promoting and generally reaffirms the church narrative then there are no constraints. This only really becomes a problem when:
1) You take these reported miracles as evidence of the truthfulness of the church. It really hurts church credibility when the more nuanced story comes to light.
2) You assume that you can secure similar divine intervention for yourself and your family by following the same formula. I did very much believe that God would look after my family as a result of tithing compliance. This unfortunately is something that appears to be actively fostered in the church and we are left to wonder what went wrong when the reality doesn’t seem to match our expectations.
Quote:President Nelson made this comment at a presentation to world wide MTC’s in 2013.
“Obedience brings success; exact obedience brings miracles,”
Roy, good comments. I think it is a tricky balance…wanting people to be inspired by a good story, but not embellishing to the point it is misleading. Quote:J.R.R. Tolkien — ‘Good stories deserve a little embellishment.’
Do you think early saints had this problem of getting overly excited about spiritual gifts, and JS had to crack down on it because it was too chaotic to run a church that way?
They want to inspire people with the First Vision, they want you to have faith you can have experiences….but….they don’t want to look like a crazy cult.
Heber13 wrote:Maybe it was “based on true events”…which is what Hollywood uses to say “none of this actually happened…but it is based on a true story”.
I am usually a much bigger supporter of creative license in order to tell a good story. This one hit me hard because I had believed it so fully. I actually like historical fiction novels because they are much more transparent in revealing how the author and the intended audience would like to view history. I was fascinated in comparing a historical fiction novel on the life of Emma Smith from a popular LDS author with one from an author from the RLDS church. It is also instructive to see how our treatment of Emma has changed over the years. Not long ago LDS literature treated her as a greedy and power hungry individual, as someone driven insane with grief, as someone that had lost their exaltation unless JS descended to hell to save her from her fate. The events of Emma’s life were fixed some time ago – but the positioning of what she ultimately stood for is still very much evolving.
So what lessons can I take about the creators and intended audience from the historical fiction work “windows of heaven”?
1) We want our prophets to receive clear instruction from God.
2) We want to honor the role of our pioneer forefathers in settling this land.
3) We want God to have a clear role in the early events of the church – from the restoration, to the succession, to the westward migration (miraculous accounts surrounding the Martin-Willie handcart companies are particularly interesting/perplexing)
4) We want miraculous stories that validate our belief in the church.
5) We seek refuge from the unpredictable and capricious nature of life. We want a just world were hard work and sacrifice are always rewarded.
Heber13 wrote:They want to inspire people with the First Vision, they want you to have faith you can have experiences….but….they don’t want to look like a crazy cult.
In thinking about this – this too speaks to what the intended audience already wants to hear. Suppose BYU did a video called “Windows of Heaven” where the three Nephites show up and help the tithing paying farmers bring in the harvest before disappearing into the mist. Many of the qualities that exist in the actual “Windows of Heaven” video would still be present in this alternate version – and yet it would just be too weird to be fully embraced by our modern – largely science based audience. It would be too much for our suspension of disbelief.
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