Listen(ing) Up.

 

Let me tell you something about my mom. She pretty much engages with the world on her own terms. I'm sure she'd say that's a bit of an oversimplification, but I'll give you an example. I remember when she reached a certain age, my mom said she was finished standing in lines. She just announced she'd done enough of that in her lifetime, and she didn't need to do it any more. So she started avoiding activities that require it. And it works for her. Basically, my mom no longer stands in lines.

As for me, I still wait in lines. But then there are a lot of things I haven't successfully figured out how to stop doing.

However, while sitting in church this past Sunday, I noticed some things. Both about what was going on at church, and about myself. It started during Sacrament Meeting, and continued through the 2nd and 3rd hour lessons. It may have just been an unfortunate combination of things that happened to be said, or it may have been the way I was perceiving things on that day. But it occurred to me that as Mormons, we have an amazing aptitude for using turns of phrase that make us feel guilty. Or like we come up short. Or like we could do, or be, better than we are, in just about every area.

There's a Mormony way of saying things that causes discomfort rather than contentment. It's a little sneaky sometimes, because it may sound good on the surface, but there's often a stab or a little gotcha in it somewhere. 

That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was that, for what seemed like the first time in my life, I didn't really care. For once, those phrases delivered glancing blows. I was able to identify the twist in each message that empowered it to inflict those negative feelings, and identifying that construction robbed it of its power.

And I wondered how I'd never really noticed how pervasively we do that, and how little value it actually has in energizing people (specifically me) to improve.

Anyway, the bottom line is, I guess I'm done with sitting in church feeling bad about myself. This is my announcement: I've spent enough of my life doing that. It's time for church to make me feel good.

Now, don't get me wrong. There's plenty in my life that I could improve. Everyone needs a call to repentance now and then. I definitely do fall short continually when it comes to so many things. We all do. That's a given, isn't it? If not, we wouldn't have any use for Christ's atonement.

We fall short. That's our nature as human beings.

For some people, having that pointed out to them every week may be motivating. Phrasing everything in a way that reminds them of the things they're not doing, or the ways they could be doing everything better, may make them want to try. I doubt it, and the rate of anti-depressant use in Utah makes me doubly suspicious, but I'm willing to make room for the possibility. 

But the way my brain works, there's already a running dialogue going 24/7 that tells me those things. Piling on with more just makes me feel hopeless. Or worthless. Or ashamed. None of which motivate me to want to do anything but lay down on the pew and wonder why anyone would expect me to want to share the gospel with my friends and neighbors when church often leaves me feeling stressed, guilty or unhappy and then even worse for feeling that way.

Somehow it seems many of us don't talk enough about the joy, or concentrate on feeling it. Right here and now.

The thing about all that negative spin is that I'm starting to believe it may be Satan at work. My daughter (the one in the sidebar there, who has brilliant church insights quite often and will hopefully be joining this blog as soon as her personal life calms down a bit) pointed out to me that Satan working within the Church can inflict much more damage than he inflicts working in the world at large. He can't really hurt people who don't know truth. But he can truly wreak havoc when he gets his hands on people who do.

She used an interesting example of this in a recent discussion we were having about modesty. There's rampant modesty rhetoric running around in the Church these days, and I have to wonder where it's coming from. Because my father has a gorgeous picture of my mother on his desk, in her strapless high school formal from the 1950's, a good Mormon girl through and through, and it makes me wonder why her shoulders were not evil then but somehow should be viewed as being so now. Having raised 3 daughters in the Church, I've seen all kinds of crazy modesty talk that I thought did much more harm to girls than any positive effects it might have had. Which is surely another post. But I bring it up here because my daughter asked, "Are we sure this isn't Satan, whispering to us to grab some fig leaves? We know he's used that tactic before."

I'd absolutely never considered that: the idea of Satan using shame and guilt about something that wasn't really important as a diversion to keep Adam and Eve (or you and me) from focusing on the much weightier matters at hand.

Are we sure a lot of the negative spin on things that we hear from other members or at church isn't more aligned with Satan's tactics than it is with those of a loving Father who wants us to return to Him, and also find joy along the way?

Even when the message is not tied to my own shortcomings, continued dire warnings about the increasing evil in the world do little to make me glad I came to church or feel hopeful and empowered to take on a new week. I'd much rather hear about the good things people are doing, and there are a lot of good things.

Might it not do more for our young women if we did everything in our power to help them feel that their bodies are beautiful and valuable, a gift and blessing no matter their shape, size, or dress...than it does to inflict shame on them for showing their perfectly innocent shoulders? I have to wonder. (I once worked with a Stake Young Women's President who insisted that girls who showed up at camp in shorts that were too short be made to pin extra fabric around the bottoms to lengthen them. I couldn't see any possible good in that solution. It could only make someone feel bad. That's just one example.)

Every now and then I encounter a church talk or lesson that really makes me feel great. But those are relatively rare in comparison to the other kind. For years I've called myself the "feel-good speaker/teacher" because that's basically my entire goal. I probably never say anything insightful or new, but I do strive to communicate a gospel principal in a way that helps the listener feel hope. I believe that hope urges people forward, and isn't that the point?

In some ways I'm jealous of my husband's current church experience. He's attending a ward while he's living in Panama that is conducted entirely in Spanish. He doesn't speak Spanish. So he fumbles along through the hymns, probably mutilating the lyrics but blissfully unaware of that, takes the sacrament (which remains the same because the symbolism speaks a universal language) and listens intently to the speakers, pleased every time he can make out a word or phrase and have any idea what it means. Then he goes home, feeling nothing but glad that he attended. 

So now, I'm going to try an experiment -- I'm going to attend church with new ears for awhile. I'm going to try to engage with speakers and lessons on my own terms. I'm not sure exactly what that will mean, or how it will work, but I'm going to listen intently to the joy and praise and gratitude bits and tune out all the other stuff about how I should do and be more. I'm going to try to point out the good in the world wherever I can, and better appreciate some of the things that are of the world too.

It's not that the other messages are completely without value, I've just realized that they don't have much value to me, where I am right now. I want to be lifted and buoyed, boosted and reassured. I want to be comforted, filled with peace and love, gratitude and praise.

Virtuous, lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy...those are our stated goals, after all.

Next week when I come to church, I want you to tell me something good.

- S.