Missionary Work is not Exclusionary

The other night I had some people over. It was an interesting group and part way through the night I noticed something that made me uncomfortable as a hostess.

You see, I have different groups of friends: work, school, church, and folks I met socially. This night I had folks over from all of those groups. It was still a small gathering, though.

What I noticed is that the church people were dominating the discussion with very church centric conversation. What was going on with who at church, mostly. In a word, gossip.

Not only that, but every neutral topic I tried to steer the conversation towards got turned back to religion. I mentioned something about the lack of some books at the library and was immediately told,

“Oh, that’s a Mormon author.”

To which I responded that something like that doesn’t matter, and if that is the basis of the exclusion of those books why were other authors, who happened to be Mormon, represented at the library? (And yes, I named names and book titles.) Not only could the person who brought the religious leaning of the author into the conversation not explain this discrepancy, they couldn’t adequately explain why they brought it up in the first place. I mean, a fiction book is a fiction book, right? None of those authors are considered to be in the “Christian Literature” genre of writing.

As I thought this over, I think they weren’t doing it on purpose, and if they were perhaps they thought it was a missionary opportunity.

But it wasn’t. It was exclusionary.

And as a hostess I felt horrible that half of the guests had no idea what was being talked about, and had no way to contribute to the conversation. As sad as it is, I will not be inviting some of these people over again unless it is a church exclusive group. And it doesn’t look like that will be happening any time soon. I have friends outside of church who I value and treasure and want to be a part of my life, thank you very much.

I can’t help but conclude that it is behavior like this that can give the church a bad reputation. Not only were these people gossiping, and they tried really hard to get me to participate which really bothered me, but they were excluding a large part of the room. In other words, they were alienating people because they do not attend church with us. This is the same as excluding people based on things like gender, ethnicity, and even political leanings or education level.

And that’s NOT what the church is about. At. All.

So, I would like to ask you all to take a moment and reflect on your interactions in group settings. Are you perhaps excluding others in a way like this, purposefully or not? What can you do to change that?

Then go out and do it!

Can You Hear It?

Be still, and know that I am God.

 Psalm 46:10 

     As some of you know, this is a subject I feel  very passionately about. I think that in today's world people have a hard time being still, and quiet, so they can really listen. Listen to others, listen to themselves, and most importantly to listen to God. 

    Elijah in the Old Testament tells us: 

...and behold the word of the Lord came to him.... And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. 

And, behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind: 

and after the wind and earthquake,; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: 

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. 

1 Kings 19: 9, 11-12

     So we learn from Elijah, that there's a lot of noise out in the world, but the Lord isn't in any of them. The Lord is a still small voice. Dare I say that when you take time to listen to all the voices around you, not only is it hard to hear the voice of the Lord, it's often really difficult to hear your own voice too. 

  Nephi, in the Book of Mormon,  tells us that even if we have great spiritual experiences in the past, if we allow ourselves to, we can drown out the voice of the Lord in our lives: 

...Ye have seen an angels, and he spake unto you; yea,ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken to you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling,that ye could not feel his words. 

1 Nephi 17: 45

   So what can we do to make sure we aren't getting to the point where we are past feeling? How do we ensure that we are able to hear that still small voice in our lives? 

     

      You need to be quiet. You need to tell everything and everyone else in your life to be quiet, just for awhile so you can listen. This means turning off the computer, tv, cell phone, mp3 player, and (IMO) anything considered 'technology' these days. Find a quiet spot in your home, or near work, or wherever you can go (sometimes I take a walk without the iPod and the phone on airplane mode). Start small, 5 minutes a day or an hour on the weekends. And quiet everything that may distract you and meditate, or read the scriptures, or write in your journal. 

      You will never hear the Lord's voice if you do not give Him opportunity to be heard. Sometimes it may take awhile for you to start hearing the voice of the Lord. Especially if you are used to loud commercials, loud blaring music, the chime of a text message, etc.  For some of you who already take time to have daily prayer and scripture study, this will be an easy transition, just add a few minutes to that time to be still and listen. 

      Which brings me to my final point, and one I'm bit cautious about sharing. Every Sunday you are given the opportunity to unplug, be still, and listen to the voice of the Lord. It's called church. The Lord blesses you with all of the abundance you have, the least you can do is give Him the time it takes to attend your church meetings.

        Leave the phone in the car, turn off the wifi on you iPad or Kindle. Better yet bring actual hard copies of the scriptures with you to eliminate the 'I need to have it with me because my scriptures are on it' excuse. Yes, excuse. I know people who say that and then spend all of sacrament meeting checking email, Facebook, and making dinner plans via text. 

     Those things can wait. The Lord cannot. 

     

P.S. I found these guys on Facebook, if you are the type that taking a public pledge is a goal keeping strategy that works for you: Tech Timeout

In Recent Months...

      In recent months, I've seen a lot of people in my life be very critical and judgmental of others. In my viewpoint, a lot of this is coming from a "Holier than Thou" mindset. The people are so focused on religion and how things should be according to them, that they are missing the mark on a lot of great things. They are missing opportunities to love those around them, to feel the Spirit, and to serve the Lord because they can't look beyond someone not doing something 'right'.

It makes me wonder, "If you are being this critical of others to me, how critical of me are you to others?". I'm not perfect here, I can be critical and judgmental. However, in the past few years, I have tried very consciously, and sometimes with much difficulty, to not verbalize criticisms to those around me. I try hard to change my thinking when I find myself being critical of others. And it's frustrating to me to have people hop back into high school mode and start gossiping and criticizing to me. What is it about me that makes these people think I'm okay with that?

      This morning I ran into a blog post on a blog that I don't frequent, but for some reason is in my bookmarks. While I feel that this person goes off into left field a few times, overall I think they did well in addressing criticism, especially when it comes to criticism in the church.

If you have time, I think you should check it out, and ponder what it means for you personally and what you can do to improve yourself in the area of being critical, if you feel there needs to be some change there.

Criticism is Bad by In Defense of Women

Thanks on Facebook

So, I know some people will post an "I am grateful for..." post on Facebook each day during November as a Thanksgiving type deal.

I personally don't like this. I won't do it. I refuse to jump on the bandwagon.

HOWEVER, I recently had some experiences that I felt needed to be put out there as an "I am grateful" post, but I didn't want to bore Facebook. We all know not many people read this blog, so thanks for putting up with me my few readers.

I am in grad school. Grad school is not fun. There is a stereotype of the 'poor grad student', and let me tell ya, I had no idea how true this can be. I end each month worried out of my mind about making all the bills and not starving. It's kind of scary at moments.

But, I was raised to pay tithing. I know you get blessed for paying tithing. Along with that, people in my church also pay a 'fast offering' where once a month you fast and pay the same amount of money that you would have paid for the meals you fast into a fast offering fund. This fund is then used to help people in the church who are struggling enough to really need assistance for buying groceries. I've paid this for the past few years as well.

The cool thing about tithing, and fast offerings in my opinion, is that Heavenly Father tells us that if we pay them He will "...open the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blssing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." (Malachi 3:10)

Lately it's been tough for me to pay these things, because it's a big chunk of money. But I also trust that I will be looked after for paying it. In order to motivate myself to keep paying tithing, I've been praying lately that I will recognize the blessings that are coming to me as a direct result of my paying my tithing.

And well, I feel like this has happened several times over.

I needed new shoes, because one pair of mine had somehow lost the right shoe. I was ready to buy a replacement pair of  them off of eBay. Last time I saw it was when I wore it to the zoo. Almost 3 months ago. This morning  I felt like I should look for this shoe in a particular box, that I have been through a couple times since then. I opened the box, which I needed something out of anyway, and the missing shoe literally fell into my hand.

I sold an item on my Etsy site. The first sale I've had in over a year. Not only that, but they requested a custom change to the item. I went to the store to buy some buttons in a color I don't have on hand. The buttons I wanted were missing one, 3 on the card instead of 4, and the manager at the store just let me have them. No charge.

Yeah, it's a $1.25, but that's enough for me to eat dinner on. And I usually have leftovers, so that's a dinner and lunch the next day.(And yes, I really can have dinner on a $1.25, I'm crediting a good mother who taught me how to cook along with the fast offerings.)

You can bet I'm grateful. And you can sure bet that I will continue to pay my tithing and fast offerings, even when I worry about my bills getting paid.

Sunday Spiritual Thought: Elder Holland Hits Home

"For this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ and we had a hope of his glory many hundred years before his coming; and not only we ourselves had a hope of his glory, but also all the holy prophets which were before us."
Jacob 4:4

Minerva Teichert's "Jesus and the Children"

You know, how sometimes things just keep coming up over and over again in your life for a period of time? Sometimes it makes you wonder if you are supposed to be getting a message of some sort, right? Well, this has come up a couple times in my life in the past few months and I felt that maybe I would share it with you all for today’s Spiritual Thought.

Back in 2003 Elder Jeffery R Holland, of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, gave a talk called “A Prayer for the Children”. In it he addresses the importance of something we, as parents and role models for children must do.

“As parents we can hold life together the way it is always held together—with love and faith, passed on to the next generation, one child at a time.

In offering such a prayer for the young, may I address a rather specific aspect of their safety? In this I speak carefully and lovingly to any of the adults of the Church, parents or otherwise, who may be given to cynicism or skepticism, who in matters of whole-souled devotion always seem to hang back a little, who at the Church’s doctrinal campsite always like to pitch their tents out on the periphery of religious faith. To all such—whom we do love and wish were more comfortable camping nearer to us—I say, please be aware that the full price to be paid for such a stance does not always come due in your lifetime. No, sadly, some elements of this can be a kind of profligate national debt, with payments coming out of your children’s and grandchildren’s pockets in far more expensive ways than you ever intended it to be.

Parents simply cannot flirt with skepticism or cynicism, then be surprised when their children expand that flirtation into full-blown romance. If in matters of faith and belief children are at risk of being swept downstream by this intellectual current or that cultural rapid, we as their parents must be more certain than ever to hold to anchored, unmistakable moorings clearly recognizable to those of our own household. It won’t help anyone if we go over the edge with them, explaining through the roar of the falls all the way down that we really did know the Church was true and that the keys of the priesthood really were lodged there but we just didn’t want to stifle anyone’s freedom to think otherwise. No, we can hardly expect the children to get to shore safely if the parents don’t seem to know where to anchor their own boat. Isaiah once used a variation on such imagery when he said of unbelievers, “[Their] tacklings are loosed; they could not … strengthen their mast, they could not spread the sail.” 6

I think some parents may not understand that even when they feel secure in their own minds regarding matters of personal testimony, they can nevertheless make that faith too difficult for their children to detect. We can be reasonably active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints, but if we do not live lives of gospel integrity and convey to our children powerful heartfelt convictions regarding the truthfulness of the Restoration and the divine guidance of the Church from the First Vision to this very hour, then those children may, to our regret but not surprise, turn out not to be visibly active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints or sometimes anything close to it.”

I’ve returned to this talk several times in the past few months, and pondered how I can personally be sure that my children and grandchildren will have a sure knowledge of my testimony. When reading just yesterday, I came across a passage in the book “The Miracle of Forgiveness” by Spencer W Kimball. He supports Elder Holland’s statements by clearly telling us what our negligence in making our testimony known (Or, our lack of secure, firm Gospel living) can do:

“Such people fail to bear testimony to their descendants, destroy faith within their own homes, and actually deny the “right to the priesthood” to succeeding generations who might otherwise been faithful in all things.” (pg. 43)

As I’ve pondered these passages, it has turned my mind to what I need to do as a parent and role model to make my testimony known to the children in my life. I want my children to understand and build upon the same foundation of the Gospel that I have, as laid for me by my ancestors. I pray that my children will be able to say, as did the Stripling Warriors, “We did not doubt our mother knew it.” (Alma 56:49)