Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I’ll second cwald — great posts, everyone. Mom3, I especially liked yours, as you talked about your spiritual feelings as you visited the cathedrals and churches in Europe. I can totally relate. I’m fortunate enough to be able to travel abroad several times a year for my job, and (as much as I hate airports and crowded airplanes) what I do love is getting to know and appreciate other cultures, and to see the good in humanity throughout the world. I love meeting with other Christians, with Buddhists, with Muslims, and with basically anyone who is attempting to develop a relationship with The Transcendent. I actively seek out sites of religious significance as well as I travel — medieval cathedrals, Buddhist and Taoist temples, and even megalithic sites where ancient people worshiped 4000-6000 years ago (as well as sites of natural beauty, where I can feel the spirit).
I nearly always feel that my spirit has been expanded through my contact with other cultures and peoples and religions, and then … I come back to what often seem like the provincial backwaters of Utah. That’s the hardest part of coming home.
So many times at church I hear people say that they just can’t understand how anyone could be happy or find meaning outside of the church. And I think of all of the people I’ve met in other religions, whose life is full and rich because of their religious beliefs. It makes me very sad that many in the Church are unable to see or recognize this.
Sorry if it’s there and I just don’t see it, but is there a link to this profile on mormon.org? I can’t find it through the search there. Anyway, this profile is really cool. I did one for mormon.org a while back (part of a push to do so in our ward). I certainly wasn’t as openly “heterodox” in my profile as this person was, but I pointed out similar themes.
Oh, how I wish that the type of attitude expressed in that profile could become the norm (or at least a lot more common) in the Church — i.e. “we feel that we have some important truths to share, but we honestly and sincerely recognize the same in many other belief systems. We believe that we are *a* path back to God, but not *the* only path”.
Anyway, cool post — thanks!
Quote:“Nobody knows the answers. We are working with the questions.”
In the college classes I teach, I always tell the students that it’s not the answers that matter (and I often don’t even give an answer to a particular issue or problem), but rather we should focus on the questions — they are always more interesting.The students don’t really buy into this, though — they just want to memorize some simplistic, canned answers for the test. Probably that way in religion (and life) as well…
mackay11 wrote:I didn’t realise the church owned schools only employed active Mormons. Is a TR also a requirement.
Yeah, it’s virtually impossible to be hired at an LDS university nowadays unless you’re LDS. And if you are LDS, then your bishop has to sign off on a form every year, indicating that you’re “temple worthy” (tithing, attendance, etc). If not, you’re gone.
mackay11 wrote:Doesn’t that for a slightly one-dimensional teaching core.
Not really. I teach in a field where the Church and the gospel would only very rarely be mentioned, so it’s not much of an issue. If the Church comes up, it’s in response to someone getting a mission call, etc, and I’m totally supportive of that anyway.
mackay11 wrote:How many of you do you think are ‘in the closet?’
That’s the $64,000 question. It’s almost impossible for “non-orthodox” employees there to find out about each other, because (kind of like in Stalinist Russia or the novel “1984”, sadly enough), one slip-up in a conversation or one “oddball” comment in class, and you could be suspect. You might then be reported to the central administration, and there would be consequences. So it leads to a somewhat frustrating situation, where even if you suspect that a colleague might be “like-minded”, there’s really no way to broach the subject and find out for sure. But this really isn’t much different from most universities in the US nowadays, where political correctness is enforced with such rigidity that “non-believers” (i.e. conservatives or Christians) have to stay underground, to avoid negative consequences.But even with all of this, I still love my job — lots of other very nice things about being there.
