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For the past couple of weeks all the talks in church have been general conference related and they seem to be the ones that hurt me the most. Follow the prophet, prepare for the temple, etc. I’m wondering how you all deal when you have to hear these again? That is interesting, since the ones in my ward have been, by and large, the ones I liked the most. During recaps of difficult talks, I usually compose an alternative talk in my head.
I want to say that SWK said something to that effect. Actually it was someone’s father. They said, “my dad said he never went to a bad sacrament meeting. If the speaker was poor, he just thought with a positive outlook how the talk could be improved.” But I have to say have to admit taking conference a bit like a cafeteria line. Some talks I listen and just have to leave it with “Heavenly Father, if there is something I need to get out of that, knock me on my head cuz I didn’t get much our of it.”
LookingHard wrote:I want to say that SWK said something to that effect. Actually it was someone’s father. They said, “my dad said he never went to a bad sacrament meeting. If the speaker was poor, he just thought with a positive outlook how the talk could be improved.”
Kind of reminds me of the Richard G. Scott lesson:
Helping Others to Be Spiritually LedThere’s too much to quote but it starts at:
Quote:Some years ago I had an assignment in Mexico and Central America similar to that of an Area President….
TataniaAvalon wrote:For the past couple of weeks all the talks in church have been general conference related and they seem to be the ones that hurt me the most. Follow the prophet, prepare for the temple, etc. I’m wondering how you all deal when you have to hear these again?
I feel you. During the interim between April 2014 and October 2014 one of the more difficult conference talks from April was shared on two separate 4th Sunday occasions. The same talk. And there aren’t that many 4th Sundays between conference sessions.
:problem: In that
Helping Others to Be Spiritually Ledlink above Scott talks about how a humble, insecure brother’s love and humility helped invite the spirit and how he was able to receive inspiration on what I’m guessing was something tangential to the lessons being shared. I don’t know what the struggling brother’s message was about but Scott learned from the brother’s example of love he had towards his fellow classmates. He then contrasts that with attending a lesson taught by an educated brother. Scott’s impression was that the brother wanted to gain respect and admiration through his fancy teaching. Again, I don’t know what that brother’s lesson was about but the message that Scott apparently received was teach to help others, not to elevate yourself above them.
In both circumstances Elder Scott was able to take something away from the lesson, he either learned things that he wanted to incorporate into his life or he learned things that he wanted to make sure he guarded against. I think that in both cases the lessons he learned weren’t even related to the subject being taught. Sometimes you’ve got to let the mind wander to receive the message you were meant to hear. Of course that’s right when the teacher calls on you to answer a question.
😳 I think the takeaway is that we can learn from the good and the bad.
Nibbler, Richard G. Scott visited my mission twice and gave versions of that same story. I took dutiful notes and worked diligently to apply his suggestions in my gospel study to recieve revelations of hidden knowledge. There are some differences that are interesting. On my mission he told of attending a class with a very learned instructor that seemed to be trying to impress the class with his obscure knowledge of JS. RGS didn’t feel the spirit there so he left and went instead to the class for new members. There a humble instructor gave simple and bold testimony of JS as a true prophet and the spirit was present. Then the impressions came. Then he removed himself to a room apart and the impressions kept coming.
Being a storyteller myself I can understand the changes. They illiminate all the uneccessary details about his calling at the time, the false traditions of the lamanite peoples, and how he was visiting different wards with significant time between the classes attended. He essentially condensed the events to make them appear to be consecutive. Assuming that the story that you linked to is the more accurate – he also inverted the order of the classes – with the puffed up professor first and the humbe testifier second. I do not begrudge RGS his creative license – it is just an interesting example of how stories can change with retellings.
Looking at all this through the eyes of my faith crisis I am however not impressed. RGS’s revelatory experience seems to dismiss or devalue knowing or sharing details of the life of JS in favor of simply testifying of his truthfulness. I am particularly not thrilled with his impression that “the puffed up shall be cut off.”
I can just imagine applying that to a difficult SM talk. “Black & white thinkers without understanding or compassion for life experiences different than their own shall be cut off.”
🙄 nibbler wrote:I think the takeaway is that we can learn from the good and the bad.
That is what I think also. And why I find value in listening to conference from time to time, and being at church, and studying materials outside of mormonism. I just want to learn.
Quote:For the past couple of weeks all the talks in church have been general conference related and they seem to be the ones that hurt me the most. Follow the prophet, prepare for the temple, etc. I’m wondering how you all deal when you have to hear these again?
I either do what Ray does (compose my own talk on the same subject), compose a different talk that I’m actually going to be giving (I’m pondering about service right now, that’s the topic of my next talk) or if I’m too tired or just don’t feel like putting in the effort, I reread one of the talks I have bookmarked on my phone. When I first returned to church I would visit here (I still do that sometimes, more often during SS), and sometimes I read scriptures if I’m in the mood to do so.
I hate to admit it but I got a “did this reeeeeeally happen?” vibe from RGS’s story. I wasn’t too fond of the way he passes judgment on the learned brother either. Maybe the learned brother put in a lot of time and effort into preparing his lesson. Maybe he thought that digging up more obscure references was his way of helping the class members, give them something new to think over as opposed to the same lesson they heard a month ago. Nope, he was proud. I think the learned brother was labeled proud just so RGS could juxtapose two common scenarios in order to make his point. I’m sure those stories are based on some real experiences but they’ve probably been reshaped in order to teach a lesson.
It can still be a story about working with what you’re given though, taking the good and the bad from the talk itself.
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