For quite a few years I’ve struggled with the fact that I have not in my life, to my knowledge, outside perhaps one or two very distant experiences at most, received any sort of spiritual confirmation or answer to an act of prayer. And yet, I still believe that God answers prayers; it has always seemed right to me, though that belief hasn’t spared me from a lot of anguish over why my own life does not, so far as I can tell, offer that belief any support. My tentative conclusion has been that having such dialogical and confirmatory experiences isn’t my gift. It’s nice to hear of someone else who has come to a similar conclusion.

I don’t think the fact that knowing and hearing the counsel of the Spirit directly is a spiritual gift that some lack is reason to be content to live without such hearing and knowing; Givens makes the point that the BoM portrays dialogical revelation as a model applicable to every Saint; to comfort oneself about the absence of such from one’s life by saying “it’s not for me” doesn’t seem to be an option. We’re all supposed to be seeking after that gift. But still, God will give gifts to whom He will; it’s the seeking that matters most, after all.

Since I was a young child I have regularly sought and received very specific answers to specific prayers. I have regularly taught in Sunday school and elsewhere that we should all consistently be involved in dialogic prayer — that it is one of the primary benefits of being Mormon. In fact I just taught it over the last few weeks with D&C lesson 5. I admit to some bewilderment on how easy the process seems to me and yet how hard it seems to so many other righteous saints I know.

I had resolved that perhaps it was just one of those skills that just came more easily to some people than others. Something like doing that super loud two-finger whistle everyone else (including my lovely wife) seems to be able to do at football games etc. but I still can’t get right after years of trying.

If it is a spiritual gift than the whole subject makes a lot more sense. It also means I probably owe Christian an apology on this subject. We have disagreed on the subject in the past and I sort of had the attitude “try harder”. But spiritual gifts or lack there of aren’t a matter of effort — they are free gifts from God.

You know, you guys, you have been a blessing in my life. I really thought I was a freak of nature, one who could question without questioning my faith. I am so blessed to have found people whose minds work like mine, although I know, some of you would hasten to correct me, okay, better than mine. :)

I am feeling like there is room in this church for me after all. Thank you.

And there were other things that bothered me. It didn’t take me long to understand and reverence the temple ceremony, but that first time sure gave me room for pause.

Now I truly do feel the weight of the world leave me when I go there.

I wish I had you guys’ stake president, although mine is also pretty cool.

I had read Jim’s post not taking much note of the names involved, and had just pondered what had been said. But your post helped me connect “Thomas Griffith” to my old stake president and yours, the man I had only known as “President Griffith.” It is funny because in readings Jim’s post about how prayer is not just for our personal purification, I thought to myself that it reminded me of something my old stake president used to say. So then I finally put two and two together,

President Griffith truly changed my life as well. Kevin, were you present for his devotional on charity in which he showed a video about Mother Theresa? It changed my view of the gospel forever. He spoke about how so often in the Church we think the commandments are for our personal purification. We defines ourselves by a list of don’t. “I’m a Latter-Day Saints I don’t drink.” I’m a Latter-Day Saint, I don’t have pre-marital sex…..or do things on Sunday, or use profanity, ect ect ect.” To many members these rules define spirituality. He challenged us to redefine what spirituality really is. He then expounded to us that the reason we keep the commandments, the reason we “bridle all our passions” is to cleanse our vessels to be filled with the Spirit of love. The Spirit then compels us and enables us to go out and serve. The point of our holiness is that we can have more charity. That is the end of the entire gospel. The point of everything in the Church is to get us to move beyond ourselves and out helping others. He showed how our treatment of the “least of these” is what separates the sheep and the goat sat the judgment day. He taught us what C.S. Lewis once said: that our fellow human beings, next to the sacrament, are the holiest things to cross our senses. It was powerful, revolutionary, and nothing short of amazing. I cannot possibly do it justice here. But I left a changed woman. I have never seen the gospel the same since.

Of course that devotional was enough for me to love President Griffith forever, but another devotional also completely endeared me to him. He gave a talk on the temple. He said he wanted to speak on his first experience with the endowment ceremony. He invited a few comments from the audience on what they had experienced with their first endowment. The replies were typical, “It was wonderful!” “It was so peaceful.” “I never felt such peace and love.” Of course they had all fallen into his trap. “Well,” President Griffith said with a smile, my experience with the temple endowment was different.” “I hated it,” he said flat out. “I didn’t like it at all. It made me question my faith. I came looking for Jesus Christ and couldn’t find Him anywhere in the ceremony. I felt lost.” Of course he then went on to explain how he ended up reconciling the ceremony to himself. But his brutal honesty made him my hero. As a fellow convert, at the time I truly feared the day when my own endowment would be taken out. He allowed me to see it was okay to have questions, and to have doubts, and that it would work out in the end.

All this and he would also quote Eugene England in Sacrament meeting! Is there a cooler man in all of Provo? I have often thought how he could single handedly change the whole vibe of the church if he was called as an apostle.

Well sorry for all this rambling. This is a post about prayer after all and not the virtues of Thomas Griffith. But I am always looking for an opportunity to sing his praises!

Some random thoughts on prayer:

One night at dinner as I vainly tried to shush my babies for the blessing it occurred to me that this was the first prayer that had been uttered in the house all day: I had risen late and skipped morning prayer, I hadn’t sat down for breakfast with the children and thus hadn’t blessed their food, we were out of the house for lunch. I suddenly felt as though the house had been cut loose from the cosmos, drifting and unconnected. I visualized our many daily ritual prayers as tethers of light binding our house to the heavens, holding it in place and linking it to God. Although I am not yet perfect in instituting our ritual family prayers, I never let an entire day go by without at least a few.

One day at the temple it occurred to me that communal speech (as in the prayer circle) may be the most clear and certain form of improvisational speech: a single speaker will pause, hesitate, stumble over a word, mumble–but in concert a groups will edit out the pauses and hesitations, correct the stumbles, and articulate strenuously to blend and keep time with the group. This struck me at the time as a kind of metaphor for the clarity and power of communal prayer.