A basic element in religion is connection. As I understand it, the root of the word religion traces back to the idea of connection, which people in Western religion often construe as connection with God. Like many who inhabit the cultural hall, I prefer to see it more broadly: spirituality represents connection with the world, with nature, or with humanity.
I was reminded of this when I read a friend’s memoir, published in the new literary journal, Memoir (and). Take a few minutes to read it, and enjoy the sense of spirituality it beautifully expresses.If you’re at all like me, you’ll find yourself reflecting on your connections and the many forms they take. Take a moment or two and, as the hymn suggests, “count your many blessings.” Chances are, your connections are atop that list.
“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them–and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, perhaps then someday far in the future you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”– Rainer Maria Rilke
I received an amazing email the other day from someone who stumbled upon my essay “How to Stay in the Church After Becoming Disaffected“.
It basically describes different types of believers, and I thought CH folks would enjoy. Check it out…
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Hi John,
Greeting from a fellow blogger and religious thinker. I have no LDS background or connections. I’m a philosophy prof who specializes in philosophy of religion. I’ve long been interested in Mormonism, and realized, pretty much on my own, back in the early 1990s, that a lot of the evangelical apologetics stuff I’d been exposed to was unfair or otherwise obnoxious. Anyway, I love your podcast - I appreciate your gentle and reasonable manner, your intellectual integrity, and your evident love for your fellow troubled or conflicted Mormons. Some of it resonates with me, I think, because of my own journey.
Continue reading ‘Types of Believers — A Letter from a Philo Prof’
Please forgive me if this is not too interesting to y’all. I really wanted to write about this and this is where I write Mormon stuff.
Pretend you are a member of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy. You are attending at least two special stake conferences in the Louisiana/Mississipi Gulf coast area that was affected by Hurricane Katrina. The purpose of these conferences is to reorganize stake boundaries.
The three stakes that were most severely affected by the Katrina were:
- New Orleans Stake. The stake has five wards; one is a Spanish Ward and another a YSA ward. There is one branch for the west bank of the Mississippi and another named the “New Orleans First Branch” that meets in a small building Uptown. Several wards and branches were dissolved; at least two buildings were destroyed.
- Gulfport MS Stake: The stake has five wards and one branch. All five wards are in coastal areas spread along the Mississippi coast. Wards exist in places where entire cities were destroyed, which seems very odd to me. I know less about the current state of Gulfport than the other two stakes.
- Slidell, LA Stake: This is my stake. It has four wards and one branch. One of the (at least) two special stake conferences is being held here. We lost at least one branch and a large ward after the hurricane; the ward’s building was destroyed. The stake center is on the eastern side of the stake boundaries, about halfway between New Orleans and Gulfport. The Bishop’s Storehouse for the Gulf coast from the Louisiana/Texas border over to Pensacola, Florida is in this stake.
Another stake where one of the (at least) two stake conferences is being held is the Denham Springs, LA Stake. This is a geographically large stake with six wards and two branches. The stake center is in the far west edge of the stake. The westernmost unit in the Slidell Stake meets in the same building as the easternmost unit in the Denham Springs Stake.
If I were going to realign stake boundaries, I would base my decisions on a number of factors. As tempting as it would be to move wards from stronger stakes into the weaker ones, no nearby stakes have units to spare. I would want to strengthen the leadership and the membership in the New Orleans stake. I would want to realign geographically as much as possible without imposing undue transportation burdens on members who are already suffering financially from dramatically increased housing and transportation costs.
So, if it were my decision, I would dissolve the Slidell LA Stake - my stake. I would move two solidly middle class units, the Slidell and the Covington wards, into the New Orleans Stake. We can afford to drive across the lake once a year for stake conference; most of the menfolk already drive across the lake every day to get to work. I would move the ward that shares a building with a ward in the Denham Springs Stake into that stake. I would add the fourth ward to the Gulfport, MS stake, and send the branch to Hattiesburg, MS (Six wards and five branches that cover a very large area).
The main problem with realigning this way is that it places a greater burden on members from the transferring units that serve in stake callings. I wouldn’t want to be in the New Orleans stake presidency and living on the Northshore! Also, the church seems to align its units around the suburbs rather than around the cities. If they follow that trend here, then they would send the New Orleanians out to the other stakes. It would surprise me if it happened that way, but the church has a way of doing that sometimes. Surprising me, I mean.
I won’t have to wait long for the answers. The realignment meetings are two weeks from today.
Richard Dutcher’s recent admission (see comment #77) that he enjoys drinking dark Irish beer (yuck, by the way) and the reaction of some around the Bloggernacle got me thinking it was time for another confession. I am a Mormon Drinker. I subscribe to what I’ll euphemistically call a “pre-Heber J. Grant” interpretation of the Word of Wisdom. No, I’m not some weird, “fundy,” alterna-Mormon who has searched the scriptures and/or church history and discovered Joseph Smith’s or God’s true meaning in the scriptures. Quite simply, I’m a New Order Mormon (NOM) who believes the Church is neither “true” nor “false,” but an organization of good people with beliefs or doctrine that, like most religions or personal beliefs, probably contains some mixture of the human and the divine. Or you could say that I’m a “Buffet Mormon on a diet.” I used to fill my proverbial plate with generous spoonfuls of the Word of Wisdom, but now I walk past that dish in the buffet line as if it were a pan of cold, shriveled peas. “No thanks,” I say to the elderly matron wearing a celestial-white apron and cap standing behind the buffet cart, “but I’ll take a second scoop of Elder’s Quorum quiche.” Continue reading ‘Confessions of a Mormon Drinker’
I was sitting in on the last 15 minutes of ward council, to go over the calendar with the real ward council. They had been talking about goals. I came in during the last few minutes of that conversation. I sat next to the Relief Society president.
When we were done with the calendar, I turned to her. For no apparent reason, I said, “C., if you’d like me to, I can be a visiting teacher again.” I suggested some people I would like to visit. She asked me if I could train a new visiting teacher. After Relief Society I recanted my suggested visit-ees. “C., whoever you need me to visit, that’s who I’ll visit.”
The next week, C. gave me a list of the women I was to visit. It was the same as the people I had suggested, which was nice.
I’m kind of a crappy visiting teacher. I like the visiting part, mostly, but it’s the helping I’m not so good at. It goes back to my theory that people are vast sucking black holes of need who take and take and take and give nothing back in return. But the stars have aligned in the last few weeks to make it easy for me to go. I was sitting outside the clerk’s office and my new companion sat down, so I brought up visiting teaching and she was very excited. I didn’t make appointments like I said I would the first week, so the second week I actually tried to make an appointment. And today, we went.
I had forgotten how much like a ministry it feels to be a visiting teacher. We visited a woman who has been housebound after surgery for over a month. She was so happy for company and we just talked and talked and talked and it was so nice to be able to just be there with her. At the end we talked about forgiveness and shared some experiences about it and then had a prayer. I didn’t hear any thunderbolts or heavenly choirs but it was a Good Thing. I felt blessed. A funny word to use, but it fits.
I think one of the reasons some of these “commandments” I’m “obeying” seem so pleasant and effortless is because I’m not really “obeying.” Situations come up and I go along with what’s happening because it feels right. And it is.
OK, we’re not Oprah, but we can still have a book club, no? If so, I heartily recommend Krista Tippett’s Speaking of Faith as our first (a generous gift by a dear friend, I should add). 
In my mind, it’s one thing for all of us to attempt to articulate the Mormon “Middle Way” experience. It’s an entirely different thing altogether to have a non-Mormon articulate our experience better than we can ourselves. For me, that’s what Krista Tippett does in this book. Allow me to illustrate:
As a journalist, I’m committed to drawing out the contours and depths of what I call “the vast middle” — left, right and center between the poles of competing answers that have hardened our cultural discourse. In the vast middle, faith is as much about questioning as it is about certainties. It is possible to be a believer and a listener at the same time, to be both fervent and searching, to nurture a vital identity and to wonder at the identities of others.
Continue reading ‘Krista Tippett’s Speaking of Faith: A “Cultural Hall” Book Club Book’
Today during fast and testimony meeting, and again during testimony time in Relief Society, several people who shared their testimony stated explicitly: “I don’t just believe. I know.”
I did not say, but thought: No, you don’t.
I did not say, but thought: What, so mere faith isn’t good enough?
I don’t know anything. I believe some things. I find that faith to be something of a miracle in and of itself. It was very frustrating to find that minor miracle to be dismissed as “just” believing.
I read Ralph Nader’s new book about lessons he learned form his parents. It had some real gems in it. One gem in particular reminded me of the often cited “Love it or Leave it” retort we often hear from people in the Church. Read the section from his book below and replace the word “country” with “church”.
On occasion [my father’s] non-conformist viewpoints led [people] to question his patriotism. “Love it or leave,” they would say but such taunts were his cup of tea. He loved turning the tables on his challengers.
“Do you love your country?” he would ask back
“Your damn right I do” (they would reply)
“Well, why don’t you spend time improving it?”
Mother put us children through a similar drill, “Ralph, do you love your country?” she asked when I was about eight. “Yes, mother,” I said, wondering where she was going with this. “Well, I hope when you grow up, you’ll work hard to make it more loveable.”
Thank you, to all of you who do “love” the church, but who are also quietly working to “improve” things and make things “more loveable”.
Apparently, the Cultural Hall is the only remaining Mormon-themed blog on the face of planet earth without some kind of running commentary on Helen Whitney’s PBS documentary “The Mormons.” Sure, we could (and probably should) wear that fact like a badge of honor. But sadly, like a lemming jumping into the river without an inner tube, I just can’t resist the urge to spoil our peaceful “Whitney Free Zone” with a few of my own paltry NOMish musings on the Mother of All Mormon Documentaries.
For me, the most interesting part of “The Mormons” wasn’t all the historical detail, or the descriptions of the foundational events in Mormon history, or even that whole weird “this is why we dance” segment. I was actually much more intrigued by some of the larger themes that were explored or introduced in the first hour of the documentary. Continue reading ‘Bloggernacle Post about “The Mormons” #2,367′
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