Earlier, I said that in lieu of great Mormon writers I’d be happy with adequate ones who capture the sweetness of Mormon life. A commenter who’s named Matt Evans but isn’t the coblogger said some pretty percipient things about the actual Catholic literature vis-a-vis the potential Mormon literature. Check it out. In passing he added this comment
I say ‘so-called sweetness’ because I don’t believe the essence of the gratifying experience you sketched above is in any meaningful way different from the Lake Wobegon religious life Garrision Keillor has chronicled so well.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that.
My assumption earlier was that Mormon life was uniquely sweet (not just sweet in its own way, but sweet-er, or sweet in a better way.) I think that assumption is probably right, so let me defend it, but then I’ll move on to some thoughts on why capturing the sweetness of Mormon life would be valuable even if other groups live lives as sweet.
First, I would argue that Mormon life is sweeter even if the things that make our life sweet–family, community, shared service, lived tradition and customs–are common to Lutherans in Lake Wobegon and many others, because our doctrine makes sense of those things in a way that other doctrines do not fully. I believe that doctrines like the eternity of families, the sealing links backwards and forwards, eternal life as induction into a divine sociality, or even the divine acceptance of certain human customs and particularities inherent in (1) continuing revelation (2) in man’s language—all of these link our beliefs to our sweetness. I think that in writing these kinds of links would naturally emerge.
I believe that Mormon life is generally uniquely sweet because I believe that the presence of the Holy Ghost enhances one’s enjoyments and because I believe that Mormon life in some greater degree resembles the life lived in Heaven, which I have spiritual and revelatory reasons to believe is the sweetest of all. I think this would be hard to comunicate in writing. And I could be wrong, of course–it could be that the kind of life necessary to prepare people to live in heaven isn’t much like the life in heaven and not necesarily sweet. Or it could be that Mormons have not lived up to their revelations to much of any degree. Or both.
Writing the sweetness of Mormon life for a larger audience would be valuable even if Mormon life doesn’t have a superior sweetness. If it did, of course, that would be a valuable missionary tool. But its a valuable missionary tool even if not. To the degree that Mormon life becomes intimate and familiar, Mormon beliefs become more of an offense and a stumbling block that must be dealt with in some way. If Joseph Smith is just a rought stone rolling–someone you might even know–then “I had seen a vision” becomes that much harder to ignore.
Assuming Mormon life has no superior sweetness to others, writing it would be valuable in other ways. Part of the sweetness of life is its variety. Our life will be sweet for many of the same reasons that the Lutheran life is sweet, or Amish life, or life on a military post (something I’m familiar with) but because we have our own history, customs, and belief, our sweetness will have its own flavor.
If some of our sweetness is fungible, readers from other traditions might be able to enhance their own sweetness by participating vicariously in ours.
Recognizing the sweetness of our own life would also be useful to us. It reinforces and enhances the practices that make for the sweetness, of course. Also, in some sense, it would enhance the sweetness by drawing our attention to it. It’s the extra flavor the first bite of steak has when you’ve been thinking about it for a while.* A couple of weeks ago I visited my relatives in New Jersey and, because I was thinking about the sweetness of Mormon life, I was acutely aware of their branch on Sunday. A newly-baptized brother went up to be confirmed. The branch president helped an old, blind man with a flattop walk to the front. The convert had asked him to participate in the confirmation. Later the four primary children got up to sing. I started to cry. Two girls of generally Anglo-American extraction, an italianate girl, or maybe Portuguese, and an Afro-American boy. But no /Anglo/American or Italian (maybe Portuguese) or African among them, if you take my meaning. They had the stamp of common parentage. One girl saw me crying and smiled for me.
So, all in all, I’m still calling for Mormon authors to chronicle the sweetness of Mormon life. No need to strive for greatness or for grand spiritual themes. Just write about a week of Sundays in an ordinary ward.
*assuming, of course, that said steak is consumed during the winter or in times of famine. Elsewise it would naturally taste like ashes in your mouth.
The challenge is to capture the sweetness with making it saccharin.
(And I don’t say that just because I can’t resist using that line; I say it because virtually every effort to capture the experience of the Saints has struck me as cloyingly, sickly, setimentally way-too fake-sweet.)
Let me amend my comment: most of the written experiences that I have seen in print have been sickly sweet. Wilfried and some of the other bloggers write about lives of the Saints in a genuine, sweet, real, and inspiring way.
Mission experiences, member-missionary experiences, service to others, conversions, epiphanies, teaching moments from the Holy Ghost, tender moments with children, and “divine appointments,” those are the sweet moments that I’ve experienced in the church.
Though I still have one regret due to ignoring a prompting during the event, one of my sweetest moments was Christmas in Ecuador visiting an orphanage on Christmas day. The story is here:
http://www.mahonri.org/story/2005/2/20/181340/764
My second favorite sweet Christmas moment, perhaps also a tender mercy of the Lord, happened in December in the early 80′s.. I had joined the church earlier that year, and was single and in my early 20′s. I was in one of the suburbs of Boston for a week or two for training at a computer company.
I already knew about how you could just drop right into any LDS congregation while traveling, so I called the local ward there. I didn’t have a rental car, so a local family took me under their wing to see that I got to church on Sunday, and also took me to their ward’s Christmas program, found me a dinner appointment with another family, and invited me to go carolling with them.
At the Christmas program, we arrived early because the husband and/or wife were helping in preparations. Everyone else who was there early was engaged in the hustle and bustle of preparing for the event. Every task was covered, so there wasn’t really anything for me to do, nor was there anyone available for idle conversation. After meandering around I finally sat down on one of the folding metal chairs in the cultural hall.
Within a few minutes a little girl about two or three years old, with a pacifier in her mouth, confidently climbed upon my lap as if I were a well-known family friend. She leaned back against my chest and snuggled the back of her head under my chin.
Not being familiar with small children, but having a good understanding of cats, I knew her gesture meant “I trust you.”
The Spirit also seemed to indicate that she was not just being an attention hound, but had sensed my newness there. Her innocent gesture of trust meant far more to me than any number of handshakes, smiles, and howdyado’s from older people schooled in manners.
I savored the extreme compliment of a child’s trust for a minute or two, and then, again almost cat-like, she just as non-chalantly climbed down off my lap and went elsewhere.
I know I’m going to take flak for saying this, but “percipient” is the second most annoying word I’ve ever read. The most annoying was “perspicuity,” and I think I read that one on this site as well. Someone owns a thesaurus and wants to impress…
Dan in Baghdad, not necessarily. There are actually people who use some of these words. I have taught a lot of writing, and it is relatively easy to tell the difference between something written by someone consulting a thesaurus and something written by someone to whom the word is familiar. I don’t recall the use of “perspicuity” that you mention, but in this post “percipient” didn’t seem to me like something hauled in artificially from a thesaurus, though it is, obviously, an unusual word.
Adam, I think that Julie’s point is an important one: writing well is difficult; writing well about sweetness is especially difficult. Most who try to do so give us saccharine instead of sweetness. I would rather have no description of life at all, or at least a clumsy one, than have the sweetness of life turned into saccharine.
This is of course a fascinating topic, Adam. Insightful material has been written about aspects of this, and I would refer our readers to the following essays if they do not know them:
Eugene England’s Mormon Literature: Progress and Prospects
Richard Cracroft’s, Attuning the Authentic Mormon Voice: Stemming the Sophic Tide in LDS Literature.
Overall, the Mormon Literature Website will provide much more.
Adam, I don’t have anything particularly interesting to add to this conversation, but I wanted to thank you for getting me thinking about the sweetness of Mormon life in a unique way. Both of your posts have made me stop and think about my own Ward and, more importantly, my reaction to what you describe as the “sweetness.” I am one who probably misses a lot of that sweetness until someone calls it to my attention. So, thank you for doing so. And I nominate you to begin chronicling more.
I like this topic because in recent years I’ve become more aware of the sweetness available to us. As I thought about this topic, it seemed that one source of sweet-but-not-saccharine writings would be reflections recorded in personal journals. Not written to impress anyone, they likely would have many straightforward examples that could be compiled into our LDS offering.
Julie in A.,
I’m not calling for great stuff, only decent. So I don’t totally mind saccharine sweetness, as long as its sincere and not condescending. Unf., almost all of the saccharine stuff Mormons do is arch and doesnt’ meet my criteria.
Bookslinger,
Thanks.
Dan in Baghdad,
No thesauraus here, friend. Others pretend to be pompous windbags, but I’m authentic.
Wilfried D.,
Thanks for the links, they’re always timely. I don’t wholly agree with ‘em, but they’re worth reading.
Todd L.,
Great! If you see something worth sharing, email me.
Manaen,
I think personal journals would be a bad source, mostly. People are always trying to draw lessons and things, which is great for a journal but bad for public writing.
So it’s somewhat bittersweet, but “New York Doll” captures, imo, the sweetness of Mormon life in a decidedly non-saccharine way.
Bookslinger: what a great scene you paint.
Adam: I think you’re right on in linking “sweetness” with “divine sociality.” I’m not aware (maybe someone can enlighten me if I’m wrong) of another faith tradition or culture in which “sociality” is lent such a sense of spirituality, or in which the concept of heaven so closely resembles the most enjoyable moments on earth. What makes it unique (I think) is that, as Jim. F. once put it so precisely,”God exists in the world in something like the way that we do”; we can deduce from this that there’s something literaly holy in those moments when we experience profound joy in the company of others. Mormonism implies that such moments will happen forever–and, in fact, are the purpose of existence.
Elegantly put, Jeremy. Hopefully when I go to see New York Doll on William Morris’ recommendation, I get a sense of that divine (bitter)sweet sociality.
I may be connecting dots that are not connected but….
I think the reason people go inactive is that they loose this perception of this sweetness. Mormon life becomes sour to them. Drudgery. Bitterness. Toxic. (Where is that thesarus when I need it?)
I spent a few days out of town visiting with a close friend who once was one of the greatest members I knew and has gone pretty sour. He once told stories like these and now would howl in laughter and derision at this thread. All of these conversion stories, not just this one. His last experiences with Mormonism were anything but sweet.
I can not cover 20 hours of intense discussions, but a snippet: He challenged me to demonstrate, based on the last two years of general conference talks, that any of the current GA’s had a genuine understanding of the Atonement. He said he would attend one more Mormon church meeting if I could do it. He has been attending other churches for many months. I had him read Elder U-dorf’s last GC talk on the church website and he said that it was primitive and lacked depth and too heavy on the works and not enough emphasis on grace and basically tore it apart. I am rather cynical but I thought that talk to be quite uplifting.I hoped he would taste a bit of the old sweetness. I find that I like Elder U-dorf and my friend finds him a buffoon. Further descriptions might violate the policies of this website, I am on thin ice already.
We went to both services. Neither was particularly good. My friend said it represented a threshhold for him; the first time he felt more comfortable in a Protestant service than in a Mormon one. I suppose I walked with him out of the doors of a Mormon church for his last time two days ago. (We also loose his wife and four sons, ages 18, 16, 11, 8. As recent as 1 year ago his oldest son was planning to serve a mission). Off course, he spent much of the previous day telling me all the things he does not believe about Protestantism.
Since the Methodist sermon covered the virgin conception of Jesus, I asked him, out of fairness and consistency, if the multiple versions of the 1st vision were a problem for him then is not this story in Matt 1 also problematic? Old Jewish folklore about the Roman soldier, etc. Does it not yank the rug out from under Christianity worse than our Lamanite DNA problems? And Moses with his burning bush; come on that is assinine, maybe it was his pants that were on fire. If we are agoin’ to squirt lemon juice on the gold plates then we must be fair and consistent. I humorously proposed a scientific experiment: Test the Shroud of Turin for !st century Roman DNA.
He wants to find or start a religion that is completely rational. No nonsense that requires the suspension of logic and giant leaps of faith and close mindedness about problem areas. The only thing everyone can agree on then I told him is periodic eating, that it is a good thing. Jesus fed the hungry 5,000. What exactly to eat is another story. Not jello. An intense discussion on why stay in Mormonism has run its 10 year course. So he may start up the church of the feast. Dutch ovens will be the sacrament trays.
My point: I read these wonderful conversion stories from people on this website whom I do not know and I should rejoice, but one of my best friends has gone sour and I hurt. That you are feeling the sweetness is remarkable to me because it so contrasts with what my friend has gone through.
Mike, I’m sorry to hear about your friend. A friend, my former HT, is going through similar wrestlings and I also pain to see his lack of confidence and peace.
Re: “He wants to find or start a religion that is completely rational. No nonsense that requires the suspension of logic and giant leaps of faith and close mindedness about problem areas.”
I flirted with the rationality path in years past as I tried to argue the reasonableness of the restored gospel. It doesn’t work. I had a Protestant friend that tried the same thing your friend proposes. As I posted at M*, “in high school, I was able to argue a Protestant friend out of his beliefs, which is not difficult to do. He announced one day that he’d made-up his own religion and explained it to us. His new religion didn’t work out very well: the year after we graduated, he wrote a note, took some pills, and died. I feel responsible for my part in his death because I took away his false foundation but I failed to show him how to obtain a real testimony based upon the witness of the Holy Ghost. ‘Trifle not with sacred things.’ (D&C 6:12)” (see complete posting here)
As for “a religion that is completely rational. No nonsense that requires the suspension of logic and giant leaps of faith,” God, the source of true religion, already told us “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14)
I don’t believe that we do require close mindedness about problem areas; but an open mind doesn’t shut out the favorable evidence of spiritual witnesses we received either. In such cases, I say, “I do not know the answer yet to this issue and I will continue to wait for it. I do know that the Holy Ghost repeatedly testified this restored gospel is true, that this gospel saved my life, and that it healed my soul. I will not drop what I do know for what I do not yet know.”
I hope the best for your friend.
“He wants to find or start a religion that is completely rational. No nonsense that requires the suspension of logic and giant leaps of faith and close mindedness about problem areas.â€?
No such animal. it seems that about the best that could be done would be “help mine unbelief” but not addressed to anyOne, necessarily.