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This was wonderful to read! It makes me feel less alone as well. 
What a wonderful talk! Thank you for sharing. I find myself constantly torn between negative feelings toward the rigidity, fundamentalism and judgement that can be exhibited by some in our church and my desire to love and reach out to all I can. While it can feel like we are in the minority at times, I am reminded as you have been that many, many in our wards feel very similarly to us. Your talk and these comments have reminded me to focus on loving and serving all – even and maybe particularly those who can so agitate and dissapoint. And a huge part of doing that is trying to view and treat others the way the Savior does. To do so is the pinnacle of empathy and love. I love the new “platinum rule” (instead of the “golden rule”) which is to treat others the way THEY need to be treated rather than the way WE would want to be treated. It is another step toward pure empathy. Perhaps the ultimate “rule” is to treat others the way the SAVIOR would like them to be viewed and treated.
flowerdrops wrote:canadiangirl wrote:My talk was on “keeping the world out of our homes” I basically said to embrace the beauty of the world and expose our kids to all the wonderful things the world has to offer us.
love it!
Exactly -some of the world is actually good. But there are certain aspects you won’t want in your home!!!
SamBee, Yes, of course we want to monitor what comes into our homes and I made a point at the beginning of my talk to let the congregation know that I wasn’t naive enought to assume that there was only good in the world. I just think that as LDS we concentrate so much on the bad or what we judge to be bad that we forget all the beautiful art forms, compassion, remarkable people the world produces and I wanted to emphasize that. I also sense that many LDS judge other people to be “bad” based on their habits ie smoking, drinking etc. We have families in our town that won’t allow their kids to play with other kids whose parents smoke. It is that kind of judgement that I was trying to avoid talking about. I believe that what you focus on becomes a big part of your life therefore I want to focus on the positive and not the negative and that was the point I was trying to bring out.
In our HP Group lesson today, we talked quite a bit about our baptismal covenants – and the longest discussion was about “bearing one another’s burdens”. Someone made the point that we can’t bear burdens about which we don’t know – and that those whose burdens are the heaviest generally are those who are shunned the most by people. Relative to the Church, he mentioned explicitly those who are single / divorced in a family-oriented church, have serious problems with alcohol and tobacco, don’t live the Law of Chastity and “those with AIDS”. He mentioned that one of the most powerful aspects of Jesus’ ministry was that he was willing to “touch the lepers” – and asked us to consider how willing we are to actually associate with those whom we tend to classify as the lepers of our own modern society.
I thought of your talk, flowerdrops, and this post while I was listening to him.
Old-Timer wrote:I thought of your talk, flowerdrops, and this post while I was listening to him.
Thank you for sharing it was wonderful.
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