Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
PazamaManX wrote:
With conference next weekend, I’m curious if anyone here has anything that they are expectingA lot of talks about the pandemic and all the restrictions.
Quote:or hoping for?
Talks which don’t mention the pandemic and all the restrictions.
I won’t be upset if someone shows a picture of a nurse. But I will be if it turns into a whole Stockholm Syndrome scenario. In fact I’m not sure I want to see endless shots of people with needles in their arms.
There is very little to recommend this situation nor many of the solutions. It certainly is not uplifting in most cases.
So putting the elephant in the room aside, what else? More temples. A reform to primary. The usual stories about childhood and spouses.
I’m trying to think of “offensive testimonies”, I’ve heard. Luckily they are infrequent here, but women seem more inclined to give them than men – no idea why that is. Somewhat like attacks on missionaries, it’s something I’m surprised doesn’t happen more often. One that used to be common was that someone would complain about the “lack of priesthood holders” offering testimonies, to shame the men into coming up. Again, 9/10 it would be a
womanwho said this, by the way, not a man. Personally, I couldn’t care whether men or women were speaking, just as long as I found it enjoyable. (No small children though – I never “dug” that.) We used to get an occasional one which dealt with gays. When I say occasional, you’re talking once a year if that. None of them were graphic, thank goodness. (We had a similar thing in Sunday School once – not the teacher I might add – but at least one of our members offered her own counter POV.) On the flipside, I’ve heard rumors from other wards that sometimes LGBT activists have started deep tonguing and groping each other on the stand as some kind of protest – but that’s something which is inappropriate for different reasons.
On one occasion, a visitor commented on the number of Chinese converts offering testimony and the lack of locals. Our Chinese converts tend to be students (probably one or two spies – yes, they’re around too) and don’t stay long. I actually got up after that, offered my own testimony and mentioned in passing how wonderful I thought it was that we had new members from China, especially given the fact that their government had tried to destroy Christianity, and told them that they were extremely welcome here. I also mentioned that salvation was for all God’s children and that I prayed against the repression of religion worldwide. I could feel the previous speaker staring daggers at me, but didn’t make eye contact with her.
I should add another one. One I believe is common elsewhere, but very rare here. When a single member starts advertizing their availability on the stand. It comes over as desperate. I mean, I’d like to marry a beautiful and good-natured lady too, but you won’t see me up there begging.
I really don’t think I can stomach a Covid conference. This disease has already done enough harm, not only medically and economically but in letting evil people take advantage in this situation. https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2011/01/wacky-but-true/ (First part is not F&T but I include it anyway)
Quote:
The bishopric appeared pleased that Sister Somewhat-less-active agreed to speak in sacrament meeting on her favorite topic, family history. But they must have been surprised when she announced, “I may not come to church much, but I’m d*!# good at family history.” She continued her talk, liberally sprinkled with the “nice” swear words, but the bishop turned white when one of her concluding statements was that she thinks “family history is bi#$@-in’.”I don’t necessarily wish my young, impressionable children had been there for that, but you can be dang sure I’m adding it to my collection. I was in attendance at a fast and testimony meeting when a sister from South America bore her testimony about how disrespectful and immodest Americans are for allowing their children to wear pants to the primary program practice in the chapel. Apparently, it is a casual practice that would never happen in her home country. The testimony was long (10 or so minutes) and quite in-depth. The next sister to the pulpit announced that she “couldn’t agree more,” and bore her testimony about how too many women don’t wear pantyhose to church, a casual practice as disrespectful as wearing flip-flops. It was after that lengthy testimony that the bishop felt he needed to get up and explain that he wasn’t “one to know about women’s pantyhose,” but he was sure “we were all trying to be respectful and reverent in our buildings and will try harder.”
Well, at least no one fell asleep that day.
hawkgrrrl wrote:
When I was a missionary, we were visiting a family that was partly active. Their adult daughter was there, and she normally didn’t go to Church, and I mentioned that the next day was F&T meeting. She threw her head back and laughed right in my face: “Why on earth would I want to go to that? They’re all the same. People blubbering on about the same things over and over.” Honestly, I pretty much agreed with her, so I didn’t push it. I just thought it was kind of refreshing to have someone say the truth for once.
Thankfully we don’t get the waterworks in our ward often these days. I’ve never understood why something people say they love and enjoy would make them look as if they’ve just been spanked by a hairbrush. We’ve also lost the I know crowd – I always found them very formulaic.
I definitely have noticed differences between wards… And branches, well they tend to have a limited stock of speakers.
Quaker meetings seem to resemble F&T. Someone talks when they feel inspired. Some of them are boring.
From a financial view, there are a few questions – in this day and age, it is no good to invest in shopping malls as they are partly obsolete. They also buy a lot of farmland, but recently they have been outcompeted by the sinister and slimy Bill Gates in that area. nibbler wrote:
Quote:Many changes are being made to ensure a familiar, uplifting experience for members who attend that temple.
Ugh. I might be interested in seeing a unique temple. I have far less interest in seeing the familiar. I can go to the McTemple down the road if I wanted that experience.
I can appreciate the effort to support multiple languages.
It seems a very Philistine stance to take. People are interested in the LDS because it is different and there should be variety in that.
As for multiple languages, I’m all for that, but I suspect the main demand in the SLC temple will be for English with Spanish a distant second. (ASL is a slightly different matter, and not one of numbers.)
I feel that religious groups should not be taxed, but should be forced to open their books. The LDS obviously does this in some European countries already but not in the US where it matters. Arrakeen wrote:
Minyan Man wrote:
Maybe the next change is virtual endowments?
When COVID hit I did have the thought, “What if they just dedicated a temple that was a server farm, and everyone could log in remotely?”
:think:
That’s really been the game plan in thia crisis – force everyone online for everything… The big lie is that doing anything on a screen is much like attending in person.
The main problem here is privacy. Even though the script of the endowment etc is available outside official channels, the church still doesn’t like to publicize it. I suppose they could set up a room in stake centers to deal.with this, in remote areas.
nibbler wrote:
I need to read more on that subject but I’m guessing it has more to do with an unfortunate casualty of some other design decision than an intentional decision to remove them.
It’s kinda hard to see how that would get rid of all the murals.
A live play is never the same twice. A film is, although you can have different reactions to it. Live sessions come and go, but losing the murals? Just why? Homogenization? Supposed progress? Or something they were embarassed by? I just hope the plaster fittings, carvings etc are all intact.
I take Patrick Mason’s point that Teichert’s style is out of date, but she is a fascinating woman. In fact, they are erasing some of Utah’s women’s history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Teichert There are some things the church does I struggle with. This is definitely one of them. Correlation is not something I am a fan of, but it happened here.
nibbler wrote:
A local temple in my area was recently renovated and went the opposite direction. It was generic and sterile before but now it has a lot more local character. Go figure.
Other than the Celestial Room, the endowment rooms in our temple are very dull to be honest. The celestial room is beautiful, but the previous two are a cinema in which everything is cream/beige/yellow, and the next is dull except some tiny windows. I think every element in those two rooms is industrially manufactured, and can probably be found everywhere from Honshu to Honduras.
The gardens are a bit mixed in their approach. They have featured on national television here, and personally I like them, but the gardening style itself is too, well, American. It is out of place… That said, our temple is built in a fairly ugly location except for some farmland nearby, and it is like a beacon of beauty at night. So sure, it’s out of place, but it has improved the neighborhood.
DarkJedi wrote:
I have been to the Salt Lake Temple for a live session once. I am not so disappointed in ending the live sessions, the movie really is better. However, I am very disappointed in doing away with the art work in both temples. Sad day.
I would have loved to see a live session. I’m told the actors tended to be elderly, but it is something I would have loved to see at least once.
It pains me that they have been so callous about the murals. It reminds me a bit of a bar I used to go to, which had an amazing mural of the famous scene of Sherlock Holmes tussling with Prof. Moriarty by the Reichenbach Falls, appropriately at the top of some stairs… It changed hands and the mural was quickly painted over. I have photographs of it at least. It is probably facetious to compare a bar with a temple, but once it’s gone it’s gone, and photographs don’t capture it.
The worst part is that, like I say, those who did this probably thought they did nothing wrong. We have similar struggles every day around the world – people want to tear down woods or knock down old buildings, dig up old graves or even rebrand a place with a stupid inappropriate name. It is often done in the name of progress, but the progress is rarely enough to compensate.
A Masonic lodge down the road from me went on fire some years ago. (It was an indisputable accident, no foul play – it happened because a heater caught fire in a gym next door while people were using it) Like the temple, the public couldn’t go in. The roof was off and you could see these beautiful Masonic murals gradually being washed away by the rain. That was accidental, but it was sad to watch and despite the vast wealth of Freemasonry, none of the rich lodges coughed up money to repair it. The place is still a shell.
Limhah wrote:
I know folks who practice ‘polyamory’ (not my favorite term) but that’s another kettle of fish entirely.
I don’t like the term either, but the result is the same – multiple sexual/romantic partners. They just don’t “put a ring on it”. But I think polyamory is also more likely to spread disease like other open ended forms of sexuality than closed systems like polygamy.
Limhah wrote:
Interesting to read about this, I’d heard of Green years ago and had totally forgotten about him until now. I was never particularly impressed by him or his efforts though I never really investigated him that closely.
He was a big self-publicist, but not a good campaigner. There are other polygamy campaigners who were more convincing – like an English aristocrat, Lord Bath who had 74 “wifelets” at one point. As far as I know Bath never went for underage girls, thankfully, but he was open about it.
One thing I don’t like about the documentary is it calls Green “Mormon”, but does not bother to explain he is not part of our church. (Likewise the media describes Mel Gibson as Catholic when he belongs to a church with a few hundred members.) It is hard to find out much about his religious practice.
