Recently I explored the writings of a Mormon literary thinker little-known among Church members today, Wayne Booth. In The Company We Keep, Booth proposes that human beings not only learn by induction and deduction, but by what he calls “coduction” — the discovery of knowledge in conversation with others. This is a cornerstone of how we are supposed to learn at Church, in our Sunday School, Priesthood and Relief Society classes. It is also a key element to how we are supposed to learn in counsels. It requires that each person in a class, or in a counsels, both listen carefully to what others are saying, and contribute actively to the discussion. Without both of these, coduction, or group learning, can’t happen.
If we are to learn at Church, we need to be engaged. It doesn’t help if we complain about how others act. Instead, we need to listen carefully to what they say, and to what that implies, and contribute to improving the experience for everyone. And we can start by looking at how we react to what is said or communicated at church.
How did you react to Church yesterday? What did you notice? Did you end up thinking differently? Do you think your reactions were what they should be? Were they ethical? Did your reactions make things better?
This is the latest invitation for reactions to local meetings, continuing the spirit of my post on September 25th about how we receive what happens in Church meetings—sermons, lessons and anything else—and enter a conversation with them, magnifying what was said or adding what we think. In these posts I’m asking us all to think about how we listen and receive what happens at Church. If we only listen for mistakes, or things that bother us, what does that say about us? Is it most important to criticize others? Or to try to change ourselves?
The point here is that no matter how poorly prepared the speaker or teacher is, or no matter how what happens triggers us, or is objectively or doctrinally wrong, we can still find elements in what is said and what happens that inspires and edifies us. Even if church meetings aren’t conducted in a way that reaches us, we can take responsibility and find a way to feel the spirit.
So please, write down reactions and thoughts to what happened in Church. You might keep your own ‘spiritual journal’, or, if you like, you can post your reactions below. I’m adding my own reactions and thoughts as a comment to this post — instead of as a part of this post, because my reactions aren’t any better than anyone else’s.
Let me emphasize that this is NOT a place to criticize what is wrong with church or your fellow congregants. The point is to post what you learned because of what happened at Church or how that led you to think. It’s about the good things we can get out of Church, not the negative things that disturbed or upset us. It doesn’t have to be orthodox, traditional or even on topic.
If you like, make your response in the format, “They said or did this, and I said or thought that.” Even the things you dislike the most can be turned into lessons for what the gospel teaches we should do.
My hope is that these reactions serve as an example of a better way to treat what happens at Church instead of the perennial complaints about speaker or teacher preparation or ability, or complaints that the Church should do things differently.
Comments
7 responses to “Your Reactions to Church Yesterday, 1/18”
Wow, when there’s a lesson that really engages you, it makes a huge difference. In my case, I come away from the lesson with my mind expanded and a lot of great ideas. Here are a few of my reactions to my Church meetings yesterday (1/18):
In Sunday school the teacher asked, “if you had a question about a ferrari, would you ask a dentist or the creator of the ferrari?”
While I get what he was driving at, no pun intended, sometimes the creator isn’t answering. (The ferrari guy is dead by the way). I did not put my two cents in as someone else chimed in with something similar to what I was thinking, (if you can’t find the creator, try the mechanic that works on the ferrari). I am trying to attend after years of skipping so I will take keeping myself quiet as a win.
Re: Anon
The best answer of course is to ask both of them but its presented as-if you can only choose one.
In Sunday School, during the lesson on the creation, the teacher had class members read the various versions of it in Genesis, Moses, and Abraham. The discussion was terrific, imo—good-natured, speculative, acknowledging all that we can’t possibly know. We live in an affluent, well-educated stake. When a med student pointed out that “the firmament” includes argon, nitrogen, and hydrogen, another person said, “these descriptions of the world’s creation are not a science lesson” (both statements are true). Someone said they didn’t think there were any differences among the versions (!) and someone else said, those first four “days” are just a blur— how could vegetation be placed on earth before the sun and moon? No one got riled up—those who were paying attention at all nodded, some laughed, because really, how could it? These were questions we all had. Someone said, maybe God put it all together before he sent it into orbit. Again, some laughter, some acknowledgment that we have no idea, that trying to make Genesis correspond to geology is more work than we seniors have energy for. Symbolism and mythmaking were brought up. Some fun discussion in the hall afterward. But nobody was bent out of shape. When I got home I found I’d lost an earring, which my dear friend gave me for Christmas and which I’d only worn one other time, so I was pretty dismayed, and that was about as riled up as I got about church yesterday. My favorite thing might have been learning Shawna Edwards’s rollicking Primary song, “The Creation,” about the hawks and the hippos and the honeybees, oh oh oh. Do we really need to take it any more seriously than that?
This year I did something I’ve never done before: I read Genesis without any reference to modern science. (I’m the son of a biology professor who grew up in the waning days of the evolution wars, so that was in my mind from an early age.) I pretended I was an ancient Israelite who thought the world was flat and the sky was a transparent dome with water above it (that’s why it’s blue, duh), and God didn’t have to correct any of that before I could understand his message–any more than he needs me to know what “dark energy” is before I can understand it now.
And it was great! The poetry was beautiful, the ordering made sense, and I was able to feel God’s message more strongly than ever: I made this world, I made it for you, and I made it good because I love you. By the end of this week’s reading we’ll know why he made it, what we’re here to accomplish, and that being here won’t be pleasant, so starting with that message of love is important.
Fortunately, my Sunday School class supported my approach. Our teacher is a creative writing professor, so we started by talking about origin stories: why we tell them and what we learn from them. Then we applied what we discussed to the world’s origin story, and came to the same kinds of conclusions I had arrived at on my own, including some I hadn’t considered. The question of *how* the world was created never came up. It’s not very important, so God is happy to let us try to figure it out on our own.
We had Stake Conference this past weekend. While I was really looking forward to “feeling the spirit”, sitting quietly and thinking about more spiritual things – unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.
Our Stake President is a CEO of a rather large (successful) company along the Wasatch Front. His meetings tend to take on the tone of a “Sales Meeting”; with a great deal of Rah, Rah and over the top narrative. Honestly, it was more exhausting than anything else. More and more these days, I wish we’d simply hear about and discuss the basic doctrines of Christ. I get so tired of the never – ending drumbeat of “Covenant Path”, “Gathering of Israel”, “Blessings of the Temple” and “The Last Days are Here”. The spirit becomes a punching bag….and remains unfed.
LHL, I’m sorry that you had a poor experience.
Is there some way to reframe the experience to get something spiritual out of it? If nothing else, the Stake President needs what was said, but maybe something in the details of the talks, or the way members treated each other, or the way the children played during the meeting taught you something spiritual?