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as i have read and read posts the last 2 days, i see the occasional emergence of the old ‘milk vs meat’ discussion. from what i read here, and experienced everywhere i think we’d all agree the church preaches milk, not meat. even our rarefied priesthood meetings, generally have mostly milk, and if any meat, teeny, tiny bits. i have been thinking about that again today. in regards to my other post about how i do not get difficult, meaty topics with my leaders, even if i want them. annoying, but hardly faith challenging. and forgive me if i am again reinventing a wheel that has been invented by all of you first, but it suddenly dawned on me, as i read some of brian J’s comments…
the church’s purpose is to give us milk–its MY JOB to get meat for myself. aka, the church teaches me to fish and i need to go fish.
JS taught that a purpose in this existence was to come to know god as he really is (we won’t address the nature of god here, other posts have muddied that water enough… is anything real??!!
no more should i ask where’s the beef?? i should be asking, ‘why am i starving?’ and hunting for myself.
and perhaps, despite my earlier lament, that is why i can’t AND maybe shouldn’t have these discussions in PH meeting. maybe they belong in the this venue. and maybe it is just a little more frankness and lack of fear of the unknown the church and its members need.
so, in that vein, “GO, FISH!! Hunt, Hunt, Away!!”
but have i covered old ground? i did not see this specific thread but may have missed it.
what say you, you motley crew!?
Yet we don’t send a child out hunting as soon as he is weaned. We teach him to hunt. There has to be “scaffolding” in between. I think it’s fair to ask “Where’s the beef?!” excellent point. i’ll have to concede that. so, would my 13 year old daughter coming home from girls camp singing a song about “getting her mormon boy” count as scaffolding? hmmm. I would say that the School of the Prophets in Kirtland attempted to provide more meat. There have been other attempts over time, perhaps BRK Mormon Doctrine, or other books put out by GAs that are no longer on the reading lists. It seems curious to me that these don’t seem to hold up over time or satisfy the appetite of questioners.
Perhaps we should always be asking the questions and “hunt away”…but perhaps we should no longer expect there is one true source that will provide it to us on a silver platter…and look to church authorities to give us what we should get ourselves. That creates codependency on the Church rather than on God.
Toad, have you “fished” for meat in new waters…outside of Mormonism that you have not allowed yourself to be exposed to before?
You may enjoy Joseph Campbell’s “Power of Myth”.
There is meat to be found outside of the Church, which actually enhances the milk. The Church gets themselves in hot water trying to put in print things that later they have to recall or correct, so a safe place is to stick to milk for the masses. It just feels scary to take the “meat” hunt on your own responsibility because you could go wrong.
But don’t fear being wrong. We learn from mistakes. Its a wild ride, Mr Toad! Enjoy it, don’t fear it.
When meat is served, typically the only thing on the menu is sausage. I agree … I’d rather provide for myself, thankyouverymuch. no fear of outside the church. not anymore. but until a few months ago, i would tune out. if you asked me then if it was fear, i would have said no, too. interesting. but now i would look back and say, yes, there was a level of fear. but mainly, i was conditioned and trained from birth to tune out certain sources. the last months though, with disillusionment and some feelings of being lied to or betrayed by the brethren, then i actively sought the other. and it didn’t matter where, so long as it was not of my previous life. anger in me. still some. but not so much.
hindu, check? buddha, check. joseph campbell’s power of myth, check? i was in my full, absolutist mode i had been in all my life, only it was all out instead of all in the church. and quite literally, in the last week, i am feeling a lot of that anger bleed away. i am still left with large, copious amounts of frustration, on behalf of myself, and many others i know and love.
and the cost of finding some peace? it seems it cost me some pride. some impossibly high expectations for leaders. and perhaps not high enough for myself.
i realized today that i had 2 personal revelations today:
1. i may not be able to reconcile all my concerns and become TBM again.
2. for the first time in months, i feel real hope i can reconcile it.
i find this tension immensely liberating to me. to accept i do not “know” as i always have, that i will be a member forever. and somehow, by some miracle, in so doing–in letting go of that, i started to feel some re-connection forming. its small. its tenuous. but its real. and its all mine.
and i have missed that. only when we lose ourselves, can we find god, and in finding god, find ourselves? maybe. maybe steps to the elevator… baby steps to coming to to know my god? we’ll see. stay tuned.
i love this quote:
“The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic “ideas” [the characterological lie about reality] and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. And this is the simple truth–that to live is to feel oneself lost–he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He who does not really feel himself lost, is without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.
–Ernest Becker, from “The Denial of Death”
Oh…I like that quote…especially this line:
mrtoad4u wrote:to live is to feel oneself lost
Not all who wander are lost, right?
are you looking to me as a source of authoritative answers? Matt 15:14. alas, all i have are questions. but if all who wander are indeed lost, then we’re in good company i suspect.
sometimes ditches are cool! Heber13 wrote:sometimes ditches are cool!
Just make sure it’s a ditch first and not a latrine!
My family has a history of physical issues that make it hard for us to eat meat without choking – unless we are very careful to chew it extremely well before swallowing. I haven’t had that exact issue, but one of my little brothers almost died of choking on a relatively small piece of meat, and I have an aunt who choked to death at the dinner table. I share that ONLY to emphasize that every person has unique dietary needs and issues of some sort – some that are critical to health and continued life and some that deal only with taste and preference. Thus, I am wary of describing anything as universally “milky” or “meaty” – or insisting that “The Church” teach or not teach something specifically becasue it constitutes milk or meat to me.
I agree totally that we should be engaged in meatier conversations and classes as adults of God, but I also realize that there are many mortal adults who still are children of God spiritually. Thus, I throw out really small portions of “meat” in most group settings carefully to see if it is digestable before putting a larger chunk on the communal platter – and I often “chew on” the meat I put out there by taking a moment to frame it carefully as something a friend once said – or something I’ve thought about over the years – or something an apostle once said – or some other phrasing that makes it less likely to cause someone to choke.
Ultimately, I stopped expecting or requiring “The Church” to feed me a long time ago and shouldered that responsibility myself. Seriously, I wasn’t getting “fed” at church with what I needed for my own growth before I left Primary – so I’ve been feeding myself for a long, long time. I still get a really good meal quite frequently at church, in one form or another, but it’s dessert to me – not the main course.
I’ve been doing some work with a personality assessment, and I’ve learned to do this thing called a “domain analysis”. You look at a person’s personality profile, and tell where their dominant sources of energy/motivation/natural inclinations are: 1) Relationship Building
2) Thinking
3) Influencing others
4) Executing
It wouldn’t surprise me if people here have a lot of “Thinking”. For people like us, you need the meat because we tend to think deeply about things.
Others, who are bigger on relationship building or execution may well have no use for the kind of questioning and searching for deeper meaning that we engage in here. And for them, the Stage 3 milk is just fine. And I’m good with that too.
Just for me, I need to put it all together so it makes sense. That’s why I’m here.
oh, silentdawning, i LOVE that!! yes, yes. and we should respect that others may have no need, and even, no use (at least right now) to think as we do. or i do. and hopefully they would respect that i do. which sadly, is not always the case. and i can value how others may be better executors and doers than i. etc, etc.
so there is a chance i am a thinker? wow. i’ve never been accused of that before… of course, it does not mean i do it well, does it? sigh.
and so it goes…
In life, there are lots of things where it really doesn’t matter how something gets done – as long as it gets done. Thinking fits that category more often than we thinkers tend to think.
SilentDawning wrote:I’ve been doing some work with a personality assessment, and I’ve learned to do this thing called a “domain analysis”. You look at a person’s personality profile, and tell where their dominant sources of energy/motivation/natural inclinations are:
1) Relationship Building
2) Thinking
3) Influencing others
4) Executing
It wouldn’t surprise me if people here have a lot of “Thinking”. For people like us, you need the meat because we tend to think deeply about things.
Others, who are bigger on relationship building or execution may well have no use for the kind of questioning and searching for deeper meaning that we engage in here. And for them, the Stage 3 milk is just fine. And I’m good with that too.
Just for me, I need to put it all together so it makes sense. That’s why I’m here.
I like your approach SD. It’s important to acknowledge that we have different personality traits that define us. Although not perfect Myers-Briggs Type Indicator gives a good base approach to different personality types. In helping to understand yourself and others a limited more and how different people with different personalies react or interact with each other differently as well as interpreting data differently. There are thinking people, there are feeling people, there are those that just want to observe naturally and those that can’t stand to observe but to participate etc. we all have different personality traits and therefore different needs. All personality traits are needed to acheieve gids plan from my point of view. So there will always be a need fir milk or meat or any area in between for different people and that’s ok.
🙂
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