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LookingHard wrote:Heber13 wrote:
My analogy to my kids in FHE was an oreo blizzard from DQ. Then squeezed some yellow mustard on top. Yep…that seems to ruin it (although my son did try it and quickly spit it out).
The simple solution was to scoop out the mustard from the top, and all enjoy the rest of it that wasn’t all ruined because of a little bad part.
Hey wait – wouldn’t that be called “cafeteria Mormonism”?:lolno:
Quite literally…huh?At church today I looked around at all the people that I admire and love and I listened to the talks and comments about how strong the spirit was and I wondered as I do every Sunday, what’s wrong with me. I’m starting to think that one of these days I won’t be able to do it any more. GBSmith wrote:At church today I looked around at all the people that I admire and love and I listened to the talks and comments about how strong the spirit was and I wondered as I do every Sunday, what’s wrong with me. I’m starting to think that one of these days I won’t be able to do it any more.
Sometimes I feel what I think is the Spirit at church, but more often I don’t. I feel it elsewhere, and interestingly enough I feel it in high council meetings more often than in SM. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. I do think that many people have not figured out how to differentiate the Spirit from their own personal emotions/feelings and therefore confuse them. I am far from an expert on how to recognize the Spirit, but just because I feel good doesn’t mean it’s the Spirit.
FWIW, I did not feel what I think is the Spirit today, even during my talk (which is not a big deal, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t). The other talk was also good (probably better in some ways), but no Spirit for me. SS had several things that bothered me (see my post about Samuel the Lamanite) and toward the end I turned to my tablet. PH was even worse, not because it bothered me but because the instructor was incredibly boring.
Not such a great day for me either. Our bishopric had a goal to increase sacrament meeting attendance, but instead of going up like they thought they were inspired it has been rather steady on the decrease. We had a 90 minute ward council where we went down every name of someone that was not fully active and labeled them in various ways. What bugged me is other than one sick person in the ward that the ward is taking good care of very well, the only focus was getting them back inactive. Zero attention to anything else about these individuals. Nothing about “what do they need?” When I tried to say this person just wants to feel accepted, they said, “right! right! Exactly”, but I know this person does NOT feel accepted and feels judged. Just kind of frustrating.
DarkJedi wrote:Sometimes I feel what I think is the Spirit at church, but more often I don’t. I feel it elsewhere, and interestingly enough I feel it in high council meetings more often than in SM.
Outside of giving and receiving blessings, I don’t recall ever feeling the Spirit particularly strongly in any LDS service. IMO, it has a lot to do with the attitudes of the other people present…or possibly recently present, as I’ve felt a very strong presence in hospital chapels when I was alone there. (Presumably because that’s one of those places where people really mean it when they go there to pray. I was just looking for a quieter spot than the waiting room at the time. Also felt the same in one small chapel at a large Catholic church when I was doing some maintenance work there. Never found out why it would be so special compared to two other nearly identical chapels or the main sanctuary.) Apparently, in Sacrament Meeting, most of the others are as bored as I am, they’re just better at hiding it from other people, but can’t fool the Spirit.
LookingHard wrote:When I tried to say this person just wants to feel accepted, they said, “right! right! Exactly”, but I know this person does NOT feel accepted and feels judged.
I guess you could count it as a positive that for once they didn’t say “well, we can’t fix how he feels, so he just needs to have more faith and pray harder.”
Yesterday was personal war day. I only attended 3rd hour. Don’t ask for details. Anyway I walk in and the lesson is on honesty. My internal gag reflex hits over drive. I debated walking back out, but I like 3rd hour often because we can talk. I can listen to others stories and whether I agree or not I can learn things. However, just looking at the quotes on the board my rage grew. In short my mind was shouting, “How dare a church that has hidden history, dismissed responsibility, and faked transparency worthy to teach honesty.”
Worst of all on the board was a quote about “The Holy Ghost leaves when we are not honest.” My inner snark was on full roll then. I imagined asking, “So did JS die because he wasn’t honest and the Holy Ghost left?” or “Were we forced out of Missouri because the Holy Ghost left?”
My problem is I like a challenge.
So I sat, I stewed, I breathed deeply and I hunted for opportunity. I also like my ward members, so I have to be careful how I fire off my tongue. I was losing the battle until the very end. I saw a light, room to make a small, gentle comment. Somehow the conversation on honesty had moved to Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy. I could tell we were wrapping up. We had covered honesty in business, solicitations, etc. So I grabbed the moment and said, “I guess that is the churches point in writing those 15 essays in 2014 and 2015. You know the ones they have changed the seminary program for, that Elder Ballard wants teachers to know inside and out. It’s a way of clarifying and fixing problems in our history, culture, doctrine.” It wasn’t quite out of the ball park like I wanted it to be, but I felt some small vindication. Other people were nodding their heads. If we weren’t wrapping it up I wanted to ask if anyone had read the essays, but we didn’t have time.
The stress gave me a face ache all day.
mom – this is why I have a hard time considering going to church each week. At least for me at this time, I really need to back off. I have crossed a few hurdles that were keeping me going every week. Now that those are passed, I am REALLY having a hard time thinking about attending even next week. I read an article this week that I can’t find now about September beginning the “real” New Year. We’ve got one more week to feel the renewal and refreshment. Looks the 18th was not it. This hasn’t been up for awhile. I had an interesting Sacrament meeting today. It started out with the opening prayer. Given by one of my favorite Sisters. She included a blessing for the refugees coming to the US. She asked that, as a country, we would be more
compassionate. In our congregation is the wife of the Mexican Consulate to our city.
The 1st speaker was a recent convert (an older man) who was dressed in jeans & a hooded sweatshirt. He is an immigrant from Mexico.
He talked about repentance & forgiveness. It was very sweet, to the point & very heartfelt. You can tell that he put a lot of thought into it. Bore his testimony for the 1st time.
The 2nd speaker was a woman who is a Medical student. She talked about being raised by a single Mother. The hardships they went through growing up & about her FT mission.
The 3rd speaker is an old friend of mine. He talked about how we should observe the Sabbath day. It was complete with a list of things we should be doing on Sunday plus, those things we shouldn’t be doing. He is a real hardliner. But I really like him & his family a lot. In spite of his hard line views, he would give anyone the shirt off his back if it were needed.
I’m finding that I’m more tolerant of the hard line views from the pulpit lately. I think it’s easier when the subject matter is diverse & inclusive.
Overall, it was a good day.
This makes me cry with happiness. Our Bishopric member spoke he never directly mentioned anything political but his entire talk was about How Much God Loves Us. He used quotes by Uchtdorf, Wirthlin. I wondered if he chose the theme based on the recent events or just felt we all needed a warm soft embracing talk. I needed it.
I have to say, this new ward (we had boundary changes) has been a real challenge for me. In the 2nd hour, the teacher asked to make sure there weren’t any non-members there with the specific purpose of being able to claim that they don’t believe in personal revelation (which he was implying to mean that they don’t even believe in answer to prayer). A class member did raise his hand to say that no, other faiths do believe in getting answers to prayers and guidance in their lives just like we do whether they call it personal revelation or not. Then, the 5th Sunday lesson was on provident living which was OKish (honestly a bit dull although the church’s videos focused on global examples and were taken from poverty class which is a nice wake up call), but a guy in the ward was asked to say a few words at the beginning, and he was pretty insensitive I thought. One of his businesses (he’s quite wealthy and retired) was doing payday loans. He made the remark that from where he’s sitting things are getting worse and worse with people living off handouts like welfare and social security. Uhm, what? Last I check social security is not a hand-out but something we pay into. And I would think that someone who made his fortunes from payday loans, literally living off the financial instability of others, would have more compassion for the plight of the poor in this country. Do they bring some of their woes on themselves with bad choices? Sure. But I’m not going to begrudge them food stamps or welfare. This was at church! What kind of person says that at church??
hawkgrrrl wrote:Uhm, what? Last I check social security is not a hand-out but something we pay into.
I believe what he is referring to is social security disability. My very limited observations lead me to believe that some people that are unemployable end up getting perpetual SSI. Like many issues, I believe that there is a legitimate use for this program… and some misuse.
On Sunday, our Bishop mentioned for the second time in a month something about other churches in town he admires and wishes we were better at doing. Our Ward Conference Priesthood Meeting was conducted by our Stake President, who opened the conversation with the question:
Quote:Why do we hate talking about Home Teaching?
He then used Elder Holland’s recent talk to tell us he doesn’t care about numbers and how many people we see or how we contact them, as long as we are doing what we feel we can and should do to help those who need help.
It was a great meeting.
Last week we had Stake Conference. We just got un-gerrymandered (is that a word?) so I literally had two stake conferences, in two different stakes, in back-to-back months. But the new stake we’re in actually puts together a stake choir for conferences, and since I don’t have to drive an hour each way, I was able to participate along with my 14 year old daughter. (She is ambivalent about the church, but loves to sing.) And the week before that, we had a great SM talk about inclusiveness… given by a brother in our ward whose wife happens to be a board member here.
😆
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