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Oh. I just found them. Yeah, some of them I take great issue with. And others are great in theory but in practice? Not so great. . . It’s easy for people to know who I am. I’m Ruthiechan, but my real name is on my website too. So if people really wanna know they can put two and two together or perhaps I did that for them. 
cwald wrote:Old-Timer wrote::clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: That comment deserves an award of some kind. Consider your salary here doubled.
Yep. Pretty well sums up the 2013 year at StayLDS so far.
That was a pretty epic post.
:clap: Roy wrote:Ruthiechan wrote:I know that prayer works.
I agree that prayer does have multiple functions. I had already mentioned how (in my home) it is an avenue for me to state my hopes and dreams for my family. Dark Jedi mentioned that it is a form of worship. Ruthie has indicated that it can be a centering/meditation technique. What seems to be in dispute is weather prayer will reliably give one secret/supernatural knowledge to make the best possible decision or to bring about a specific external outcome.
I believe that prayer is all those things.
Oh, hey, I did see that but then failed to see it after I went back to find a thread with you as the last poster. Eh heh. Kumahito, My answer to your question is this: No. You are not fooling yourself.
You need to live the Gospel according to your understanding. If your understanding differs from someone else’s so be it. No one lives perfectly or understands perfectly. Even the question “Are you honest in your dealings with your fellow man?” is problematic because in actuality everyone’s answer ought to be no. We are all a little dishonest. Leaving pieces of a story out so your spouse doesn’t get as upset. Taking advantage of an employee discount even though you are not employed by that company. Saying “I’m fine” when someone asks how you’re doing when you’re really not fine at all.
How many men say yes to keeping the law of chastity even though they at porn on a semi-regular basis?
The beer thing, well, that’s tough because most Mormons would say, oh heck no. But, the biggest thing that Joseph Smith said about alcohol was to avoid drunkenness. You can get tipsy or drunk off beer. Avoid that because I think that’s the real crux of the matter. (No one says don’t use pure vanilla extract which has 35% alcohol.) So yeah, you’re gonna have to be in the closet over this one to most people. Or you can rethink it. Or drink so little in moderation as to have the alcohol content be negligible.
As long as you can honestly say that you are striving to live the Gospel (that’s one of the questions) then you’re okay. It’s the STRIVING that’s important because we are all going to fall short of perfection, but that’s rather the point. One of the greatest lessons in this life is striving, or in other words, enduring to the end, end as in until judgment day.
(Hm, I wonder if Judgment Day is actually a day in God’s time and thus will be a span of a thousand of our Earth years. That thought just occurred to me right now.)
I recommend you consider studying Buddhist mindfulness practice and trying meditation. Find a local Buddhist temple to get started or if you’re with Kaiser some facilities have a meditation class. I have found that meditation and mindfulness practice (meditation is a part of this btw) has really helped me spiritually, physically, and emotionally. The beautiful thing is that it’s a practice not a religious belief system so you don’t have to believe in any particular religious creed to make it a part of your life. Excellent blog post! I bore testimony during the Presidential elections about being Mormon first. That to think that all Mormons are conservatives actually hurts our missionary work and that we’re a world wide church so we’re all going to have different opinions on how to run a country. Despite this, we are all Mormon doing our best to live the Gospel and follow Christ’s example. During the testimony I said it way better, but that’s because it was totally by the Spirit. A couple of people afterward looked very upset with me but they never said anything so I could be totally wrong on that. However, many people appreciated what I said. Power of the Spirit yo. Ya know, I’ve actually never understood the whole “pay tithing on your gross income”. I didn’t receive a gross income. I received a net income. I felt like anyone trying to force members to pay on their gross income is putting undue stress on families who don’t make a whole lot. Dark Jedi, I’m on lds.net too. Though intermittently. Same user name. It was actually a fellow called Snow over there who helped me see that same sex marriage under the law is separate from one’s religious beliefs about such marriages. Good guy, I miss him and wish I had an email address. Alas. I find it interesting that you are making the assumption that you would have been happy at your previous job and still there. Perhaps that’s not at all what would have happened.
I know that prayer works. In one of the darkest times of my life I prayed daily. My husband wanted a divorce which turned a two year separation during which time we reconciled and got back together. I prayed to be calm of heart and clear of mind. To know what to do for my husband and when and how to do what’s needed. To know what to say, when to say it, how to say it, and when to be silent. This is not to say I did not have times where I fell apart, I did. But it happened less frequently after two weeks of not being able to eat (it was a good day to eat half a health bar). There were times where I just wanted to lambaste him in reaction to my pain, but these prayers kept me in check and helped me to remember that he was hurting too.
In a blessing that I gave to my daughter, she was told the following, “do not pray for conveniences.” We were both surprised by that one. What is interesting, upon sudden reflection as I type this, is that the prayers I offered during my time of tribulation with my husband were anything but convenient. It took a lot of hard work and mindfulness. It totally would’ve been easier to divorce him, mourn a little bit, and then find someone to marry in the Temple (my husband is not Mormon). But that’s not at all what God wanted me to do.
It seems that God does not want us to have easy lives but to have lives full of reciprocal blessings.
I read this talk, wondering why parts of it seemed so familiar, and then I noticed I had it bookmarked. Ha! I had read it before! It was good to read it again. I find it uplifting and that it gives me the language to help others who struggle with faith or with seeing the hand of God in their lives. I am one of those people who has frequent guidance from the Spirit, so much so that I have difficulty understanding people who say that they have never felt it (which means either they really haven’t or they don’t recognize it but the sum is the same, they don’t know what it feels like to feel or receive guidance from the Spirit). I can understand it intellectually, but that’s it. I have had prayers met with silence but I always feel heard as if God is saying to me, “Yes, I hear you. No, I’m not going to tell you anything right now.” But this talk I can connect with enough to be able to use find a way to talk to some people who struggle with such issues. I’ve been prayfully pondering how to reach people who don’t know the Spirit and this talk is a partial answer to that prayer methinks.
It’s okay to believe. Even Elder Holland talked about it being okay to just believe. http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/lord-i-believe?lang=eng His talk helped me to figure out what I know and what I believe and what I hope for.
hawkgrrrl wrote:
Another interesting thing is that we don’t know what it means to feel like we are wrong. We only know what it feels like to realize we WERE wrong and in doing so, we become right again. So everyone who is doing something at any given time is convinced they are right (or they could not take action).That is a very poignant point.
