December 21, 2008
Look at what you've done,
Then at what you want,
Not at where you are,
What you'll be
There is a distinct posture in church one will notice upon close observation. Most common among teenage boys and the more tiring of meetings, it tends to accompany a sentiment of boredom or frustration. Sitting in a pew, the subject enters the position first by slouching forward then placing the elbows upon the knees. The forward-facing head is then perched upon the hands as the subject's center of gravity moves forward. Slowly the face drifts into disconnection, facing the feet.
I looked up for a moment from this very posture, opening my eyes and looking around at those around me attentively listening to the young man giving the day's Sunday School lesson.
"Could someone please read the paragraph beginning 'After'?"
"I will," a young woman recently returned from a mission in the Baltic states announced.
"Thanks," she said nodding as she looked up from her manual.
"After Heavenly Father gave Eve to Adam, he commanded them to have children. He revealed that one of the purposes of marriage is to provide mortal bodies for his spirit children. Parents are partners with our Heavenly Father. He wants each of his spirit children to receive a physical body and to experience earth life." She read the final line with emphasis, "When a man and a woman bring children into this world, they help our Heavenly Father carry out his plan." [Chapter 36, Gospel Principles]
Triggered by the topic of marriage, I retreated to my meditative state. Lately, a lot of my most productive thought had been done while staring at my feet. Practically all of my final papers had been outlined or to some extent composed in church as I tried to avert my mind from the dilemma at hand.
Distractions tugged away by the holiday break, I was forced to confront the emotions simmering over the past months. My rational mind had worked through the numbness to arrive at an understanding of what I truly felt.
It was indignation-- anger in righteousness.
Simultaneously, I conceived myself as a good person and an evil person. I hadn't done anything wrong, but felt as if I'd be denied a life I'd been promised my entire religious existence (one of family and companionship) for living a life of integrity.
A friction between the segments of my identity frustrated the sense of balance I'd managed to maintain for so long. However, like two tectonic plates thrusting toward one another, it seemed as if a disaster lay beyond the horizon-- as if the earth under my feet were about to reform as one continent of my consciousness prepared to subduct under another.
End, Part 2.
1 comments:
"Simultaneously, I conceived myself as a good person and an evil person. I hadn't done anything wrong, but felt as if I'd be denied a life I'd been promised my entire religious (one of family and companionship) for living a life of integrity."
That's a great paragraph describing what it's like growing up in the church. There's a great amount of cognitive dissonance when you know you haven't done anything wrong and that you actually WANT to live with integrity... but the church that taught you your lessons in integrity expect you to live differently.
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