. Even though I know that 99% of supplements are scams that don\u2019t pass the double blind, RCT standard, at the very least it\u2019s still health-motivating to see somebody cram a bunch of greens into a blender (although, to save you time, the only health\/muscle\/workout supplement that is really worth the cost if you\u2019re already eating your fruits and veges is creatine).<\/span><\/p>\nSimilarly, I\u2019d love to see somebody put together a sort of collation of spiritual \u201cstacks\u201d of spiritually powerful people, including but not exclusively Church leaders. I suspect they would shy away from this kind of thing because beyond the basics of prayer, fasting, and scripture study it\u2019s highly individual, and people might take a particular individual\u2019s personal routine as gospel, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any risk of that coming from me, so\u2026<\/span><\/p>\nMy personal spiritual \u201cstack\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Prayer at night: <\/span><\/i>My Mission President told us a story about how his MP would require that they set a timer to pray for five minutes every night, and how he thought it was dumb thing to require, but that when he actually tried it and realized that when you have five minutes you have to use, it helps you sit and center your thoughts and not feel any kind of rush. So he did not require us to do the five minute timer, but strongly suggested it, and I\u2019ve found it works in much the same way. I\u2019m very much a checklist guy, and forcing myself to take even just five minutes helps push against the strong rushing impulse that almost inevitably makes a prayer too fast and superficial.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDaddy devotional: <\/span><\/i>Every night (okay, maybe every couple of nights), I spend about ten minutes talking to my kids about some life lesson, principle, or practical knowledge. About ? of the time these have direct spiritual content.<\/span><\/p>\nWe don\u2019t really do the third hour of Church. Although to be honest I don\u2019t really know anybody who does, I kind of suspect that the third hour idea was a half-hearted bone thrown to some of the higher-ups that wanted to keep three-hour Church. Still, the principle that religious socialization should happen at the home is a sound one. I like to follow the \u201cGospel principles\u201d manual just as a broad thematic guide to make sure our kids get the basics, but I\u2019ll also dip into whatever theme or issue I feel like our family is struggling with at the time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0My ideal \u201cstack\u201d: What I don\u2019t do but would like to<\/b><\/p>\n
Fasting: <\/span><\/i>Yes, I know this should clearly be in the standard list. I’ve always been bad at doing the strict 24-hour fast because 1) I always forget until Fast and Testimony meeting that it is in fact, Fast Sunday, at which point I’ve already had breakfast, 2) between young kids and a pregnant or nursing wife, I have been the only faster in my household for over a decade, so it’s hard to remember, although my older children are starting to fast now.<\/span><\/p>\nDaily meditation:<\/span><\/i> I haven\u2019t gotten the meditation bug, and find the idea of clearing my head boring. In a sense I feel like Mormonism is a very Western religion. It\u2019s (arguably) about striving until our individual consciousness can (with the necessary boost of the atonement and God\u2019s Grace) reach Godhood. It\u2019s not, like in some other faiths, about losing our individuality and passions in the collective divine. I have to experience struggles and vicissitudes in this lone and dreary wilderness to advance. So the idea of meditating my way to the divine without the daily living, whether through, say, a Christian tradition or Buddhist one, does not sit well with me personally. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nStill, the idea of meditating on a particular spiritual feeling does, and for me to be able to glow in spiritual colors, for those sorts of feelings to become reflexive, I feel like I need to develop those muscles, and in an ideal world I would love to have 10 minutes of spiritual muscle development\/meditation. In the same way that Orthodox Christians meditate on icons to draw their attention to God, I have found benefit in meditating on a sort of distillation of a very particular feeling, whether it\u2019s love for someone, faith, calmness, sagacity, etc., often with the aid of music, a life event, or a scripture story or character where you can feel that distilled essence. Mordechai standing before Haman and remonstrating Esther, Christ healing the ear of the Roman guard, Isaiah having his \u201cyou shall not pass\u201d moment with Sanacherib.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMorning prayer: <\/span><\/i>I would love to have a meaningful, heartfelt, prayer alone in the morning to set the tone and cognition for the rest of the day. However, as the father of seven wild ones my mornings are not dictated by me, and I need to figure out a way to make this work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDaddy devotional with younger kids: <\/span><\/i>I need to do the daily words of wisdom thing with my really young children too, even if it\u2019s very basic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMake kids watch more spiritual content: <\/span><\/i>I\u2019m dealing with the reality that all of my religious formation \u201ccontent\u201d is competing for the attentions of my children against 24 hour streamed, high-quality content that\u2019s available at all times and places on whatever subject they want. I\u2019ve actually found that I also enjoy watching the <\/span>geopolitical talking heads<\/span><\/a> that my kids watch for hours, but Middle Eastern water conflicts will not get them any closer to exaltation, and I keep meaning to set some kind of prerequisite requirement (you can watch the Nate Silver interview after you\u2019ve watched 20 minutes of general conference, etc.), but it\u2019s the kind of thing that it takes a certain energy to enforce that I haven\u2019t mustered up yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m a sucker for those lifestyle influencers that show off their green smoothie stacks. Even though I know that 99% of supplements are scams that don\u2019t pass the double blind, RCT standard, at the very least it\u2019s still health-motivating to see somebody cram a bunch of greens into a blender (although, to save you time, the only health\/muscle\/workout supplement that is really worth the cost if you\u2019re already eating your fruits and veges is creatine). Similarly, I\u2019d love to see somebody put together a sort of collation of spiritual \u201cstacks\u201d of spiritually powerful people, including but not exclusively Church leaders. I suspect they would shy away from this kind of thing because beyond the basics of prayer, fasting, and scripture study it\u2019s highly individual, and people might take a particular individual\u2019s personal routine as gospel, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any risk of that coming from me, so\u2026 My personal spiritual \u201cstack\u201d Prayer at night: My Mission President told us a story about how his MP would require that they set a timer to pray for five minutes every night, and how he thought it was dumb thing to require, but that when he actually tried it and realized that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":47142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mormon-life"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/f3a214ad-f46d-4395-9930-377fc437b5cf.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47140"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50249,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47140\/revisions\/50249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/f3a214ad-f46d-4395-9930-377fc437b5cf-800x800.webp\")
<\/p>\n