I Was a Liar

When I quote someone, I like to check and make sure that I actually have the quote correct and that my source didn't make it up or change something dramatically. Today I'm not doing that. There are two reasons. First, I don't want to wait to share these thoughts until after I order and receive the book. Second, the words are even more important that who wrote them or in which book they were written. This was recently posted on the unofficial Chieko Okazaki Facebook page.

Sometimes I think we don’t create a very hospitable climate for questions in our Sunday School classes, Relief Societies, and priesthood quorums. Sometimes we give people the very clear message that there’s something wrong with them if they don’t know something already, or if they don’t see it the same way as the teacher or understand it to the same degree as the rest of the class. . . .
So people lie. They say they understand when they really don’t. Or they say they agree when they really don’t. Or they find one point they can agree on and swallow the four points they disagree on. Or they suppress the perfectly wonderful questions they have, because they’re afraid that the questions may sound accusatory or faithless. As a result, no miracles happen. . . . If we don’t have questions, there won’t be any miracles for us. I don’t know about you, but I need miracles in my life. I want miracles in my life. I hunger and thirst for miracles in my life. So I think I’d better ask questions---questions from the heart, questions that hurt, questions with answers that I’m afraid will hurt.
-Chieko Okazaki, Disciples, p. 229-230

If I had to identify the core of all the things I've learned from my parents, that core would be honesty and integrity.  As a small child, if I did something wrong, I might get in trouble.  If I did something wrong and then lied about it, I'd be in a lot more trouble.  I've watched as situations in their lives caused them to make major life changes rather than compromise their integrity.

Honesty is important to me.  I can forgive almost anything if I'm told the truth.  But living with honesty and integrity, especially when it comes to the church has been difficult for me.  I worry that if I'm truthful about what I think and feel that I will lead someone away, so I don't share much.  I bite my tongue and try not to make waves.  But it hasn't led to good things. Instead it's lead to a life of not knowing, not fitting in, and constantly being frustrated spiritually.

This post was originally titled, "I Am a Liar", but I changed it because I've decided that I can't be a liar any longer.  I've been that person who didn't get it, but sat there silently because I didn't feel safe enough to ask questions.  I've been the person who has sat through a class silently screaming, "No!" but who goes home without ever having shared my dissenting opinion.  I am the one who is unsure of how to participate in a Sunday School or Relief Society class in a productive, non-apostate way, even though my bishop and I have discussed it.  So mostly, I don't go. Church became more pain than nourishment.

I not only need to ask the questions, I need to live with the questions.  As I've opened to questions, to the messiness of not having one right answer, something that might surprise a lot of Mormons began to happen:  I began to grow spiritually.  Like Chieko, "I hunger and thirst for miracles in my life" and I love how she links miracles and questions. We don't grow unless we are willing to explore and wrestle with the unknown.

I've found two new communities that are helping me in this exploration. One is a closed FB group with a Mormon focus where my questions, problems, and concerns are at least validated if not agreed with.  I've also been attending another church since September.  I'm not sure where this path will lead, but the community of this other church is helping me to see possibility in my spirituality again.

Unfortunately, I've been having major digestive and anxiety issues about attending another church and not telling my Mormon friends and family.  I love the experiences I'm having and I've seen so much growth, but not coming clean feels like as much of a lie as sitting silently in my Mormon meetings did.  And although my other church does not demand that I give up my Mormon membership, beliefs, or heritage, there is a part of me that feels that I'm being a little dishonest with them too because I don't know where exactly my relationship with that church stands either.  I don't know if I'm done with Mormonism and ready to commit 100% percent to the Unitarian Universalist tradition.  I don't know if I this involvement with the UU church is just a way to help me re-frame my beliefs for a full return to Mormonism.  I don't know if I can just continue living in both worlds.  

This post is about coming clean.  It's about letting the world know where I am.  It's also a plea for patience and understanding, for me and thousands of others like me.  There might not be a lot of Mormons currently exploring this one UU congregation, but there are a lot of Mormons, or believers of other faiths, struggling to fit in, afraid to admit what they think and feel.  I'm reaching out a hand to those who feel out of place, and I'm asking you to do the same.  Let's ask the questions.  Let's wrestle with the questions. Let's bring on the miracles.

Music, Poetry, Religion

Poetry is a framework that allows us to explore the depths of who we are as individuals.  Poetry is distilled truth.  One of the things I love about poetry is that it can mean different things to different people, or even something different to the same person at different points in their lives.

Last night, my voice was tired, so I decided to work with some easier English songs rather than my physically demanding Strauss. I found myself exploring the poetry.  In any song you sing, there are really four interpretations taking place.  First, the singer should try to figure out what the poet was trying to say.  Knowing more about the poet's life--their relationships, passions, and pains--helps you to understand the origins of these words.  Then, through examining the music--the phrasing, dynamics, harmonies, etc.--you explore possibilities of how the composer might have interpreted the ideas presented by the poet.  Your life experience brings it's own interpretations to the table.  And finally, the truth you convey through the song reaches the listener where she or he again filters it through their own history and hears the truth that they need at the moment.  

What Would I Give?

I immediately love the melody of Vicki Tucker Courtney's setting of Christina Rossetti's poem, "What Would I Give?" but I didn't find any connection at all with the words.  It was about someone who couldn't feel and didn't have the words to express what they were feeling.  I feel too much and I write to process that, so this song and I just weren't connecting.  Then I did a quick review of Rossetti's life history and remembered about her religious experiences and her struggle with depression.  Suddenly, I found my connections to the song.  These ideas may not in actuality resemble anything that Rossetti or Courtney were thinking, but it gave my a direction for my own explorations.  I now have three different lenses through which to filter the truth of this song:  depression, religion, and the two of them entwined. 

Let's start with religion.

What would I give for a heart, 

a heart of flesh to warm me through, 

instead of this heart of stone ice-cold, whatever I do?  

Hard and cold and small, 

of all hearts the worst of all. 

Feelings and manifestations of the spirit are often intertwined.  We speak of a burning in the bosom as confirmation of a spiritual truth or experience.  We talk about hard hearts, closed to truth and light.
We don't talk about large, warm, open hearts enough, but they are implied as the opposite of those hard hearts we are warned about.  

Imagine someone desperate for spiritual guidance sitting through a church experience (which everyone later describes as incredibly spiritual) and feeling nothing, except how defective they must be to not feel what everyone else seems to be experiencing.  

What would I give for words, 

if only words would come?

But now in its misery

my spirit has fallen dumb.  

O merry friends, go your own way,

I have never a word to say.  

Imagine sitting in a church meeting and hearing words that instead of inspiring you, hurt you deeply.  And in that pain, you can't find the words or the courage to speak up and speak out.  The conversations after the service are all bubbly and positive, but you walk away because you don't want your pain to pull them down.  Plus, they probably wouldn't understand anyway and would just try to fix you.  

What would I give for tears?  

Not smiles but scalding tears, 

to wash the black mark clean,

and to thaw the frost of years, 

to wash the stain ingrain,

and to make me clean again.  

Again, imagine that you've been told that there is something wrong with you and that it must be because of sin and the only way to be free of that is through "godly sorrow", but you know that all the tears in the world can't change this, because it is part of who you are.  

Let's shift gears slightly at look at this from the perspective of clinical depression.  

What would I give for a heart,

a heart of flesh to warm me through, 

instead of this heart of stone ice-cold, 

whatever I do?  

Hard and cold and small, 

of all hearts the worst of all. 

Some people think that being depressed is about being sad and crying all the time.  Sometimes it is that, but there is also a kind of depression where you just become numb.  You don't feel anything.  You no longer enjoy activities, and you also can't muster the energy to care about it enough to grieve those lost experiences.  You just feel nothing.  Dull, empty nothingness.  In those moments you wish for something, even pain to break you out of the spell.  

What would I give for words, 

if only words would come?

But now in its misery

my spirit has fallen dumb.  

O merry friends, go your own way,

I have never a word to say.  

Words feed my soul.  Words help me clarify what I feel.  But sometimes, in the depth of depression, there are no words.  It's not writers block, which to me is about a lack of inspiration and direction.  It is total emptiness.  I can't speak of where I am and I can't write about it.  

What would I give for tears?  

Not smiles but scalding tears, 

to wash the black mark clean,

and to thaw the frost of years, 

to wash the stain ingrain,

and to make me clean again.  

At this point, you'll take anything, even if it is tears that are required to break the cycle.  Can you cry away the emptiness?  Can this defect be removed?  Can I be whole again?

Now take a moment to explore what depression plus religion might feel like by going back and re-reading.  Read the stanza of poetry, then the possible religious interpretation, and finally the view from depression.  Together, it is dark and not completely without hope, but close.  

The composer chooses to repeat "What would I give?" as the last line of the song.  The singer ends on the tonic of the minor key, so we know that things didn't improve immediately (which might have been indicated with a Picardy third).  We are left to wonder and wait, in much the same way the subject of the poem does. 

I haven't decided yet exactly what this song means to me, but living with those questions and options keeps me open to discovering even more depth.  

I Am the Wind

With my initial reading of "What Would I Give?" I didn't understand the words, but I was drawn to them somehow.  When I first sang Courntey's setting of the Zoe Akins poem, "I Am the Wind" I didn't experience that pull, from the text or the music.  But last night, that changed.  Again, the song is in a minor key, so maybe that is what pulled me to it last night.  The basic idea is of the poem is that you (whoever it is ) and I (whoever I am) are opposites.  I'm not big on black and white thinking, which is what this seemed to me at first.  

I am the wind that wavers,

you are the certain land; 

I am the shadow that passes

over the sand.  

I am the leaf that quivers, 

you the unshaken tree; 

you are the stars that are steadfast, 

I am the sea.  

You are the light eternal, 

like a torch I shall die; 

you are the surge of deep music, 

I but  a cry!

I first read this thinking of someone talking to their love.  "I am" and "you are" seemed an invitation to declare one good and the other bad, or one strong and one weak, but based on the way she set it, I don't think Vicki Tucker Courtney was thinking of it that way.  "I am the sea" is strong and powerful; it is really the climax of this song, so I doubt that Courtney read "the sea" as wishy-washy or the opposite of steadfast.  

Again, because I've been thinking a lot about religion lately, I saw this as possibly a description of a relationship with a church and/or God.  

I am the wind that wavers,

you are the certain land; 

I have lots of questions.  Maybe I'm unsteady or unreliable.  The church sets itself up as certain and solid and unchanging.  

I am the shadow that passes

over the sand.  

Maybe my questions darken the way of those who think they are on solid land.  But sand is not one piece of solid land.    It is billions of individual pieces that move and shift with the wind or the tide.  

I am the leaf that quivers, 

you the unshaken tree; 

I am part of the whole.  Yes, I shake and move with the wind, but the tree stays rooted and never moves.  

you are the stars that are steadfast, 

I am the sea.  

Stars give light and direction.  We think of stars as steadfast and unchanging, but in reality, they too are moving and changing, just at a rate much slower than we are.  "I am the sea."  I am alive with change.  I am the crystal clear water through which you can see to the bottom of the sea hundreds of feet below.  I am also the rolling and surging water of the waves.  I am a powerful force for change.  

The first two stanza's begin with what I am and how that is different from what you are (in this interpretation, from the church.)

For me, that changes with the last stanza.  The church is neither "the surge of deep music", nor "the light eternal."  It's no longer about the church.  It's about God.  Like God, I am a light, but my own individual influence will pass.  God's light will continue to shine.  The "surge of deep music" again is bigger than anything I can accomplish or do.  This isn't about torches or cries not mattering, because they do.  But there is something bigger and grander in play.  Bigger than me, and bigger than the church.  

The beautiful thing about poetry is that it doesn't matter if the poet or my high school English teacher see the same meaning in the poems that I do.  The point is that it makes me think and that I find my truth.  Will I see the same things in these poems 20 years down the road?  Who knows?  But for today, I found something of beauty.  That is what matters.  

Stress and Anxiety

Yesterday, my racing and pounding heart, nausea, and dizziness were joined by chest pains.  I was about 90% sure that it was just anxiety joining the party that my fibromyalgia started, but 2 friends recently had heart attacks (one fatal), 2 other friends recently were dealing with atrial fibrillation, and I kept thinking of a friend who had his heart attack in his 40's, so just to be safe, I went to the ER to have it checked out.

EKG, blood work, and x-rays of the lungs looked good, so the doctor sent me home with a prescription for Ativan and some information to read about dealing with stress.  Dealing with an anxiety attack is not something new. I've had friends and family deal with it, and I do deal with anxiety regularly, but this is the first time it has been this severe.  I laughed as I read the material, because it was definitely what I've been dealing with. And then, I decided that since I work out so much through writing, that maybe writing a little about this will help reduce the anxiety.  And maybe it won't, but at least I'll know I shared the stress with people who care and I didn't keep it all bottled up inside.

So here it is.  I'll start each section with a quote from the reading materials and then I'll fill you in on how that fits my life.

1) Try to locate the sources of stress in your life.  That may not be obvious!  These may include:

--Daily hassles of life which pile up (traffic jams, missed appointment, car troubles, etc.)

Actually, the sources of stress in my life are pretty obvious, at least to me. Here are some of the recent daily hassles:

1. With the exception of the entryway and stairs (cleaned by a wonderful friend this week), my house is a total disaster.  It's never as clean as I'd like, but with being sick and stressed for 2 months, it's worse than usual.  I basically have the time and energy to add to the mess, but not to do much of anything about it.  Keeping the laundry, dishes, and garbage somewhat under control is the best I can expect, and I don't always get that done. Dust (which causes more breathing problems) is completely out of control.  
2. Money.  Too many expenses and not enough income.  Enough said.  Most of you probably understand this.  I'm just hoping that getting the ER bill doesn't send me back there again!
3. I forgot a credit card payment (just got busy and forgot I hadn't paid it) until a transaction was denied.  Awkward.  
4. Students aren't ready for NATS.  
5. I'm trying to get involved in more MMTA education programs, but I messed up multiple things in getting a student enrolled in the voice exams.  
6. Lots of students still haven't paid me, but I haven't had the time and energy to run invoices and get them sent so I can get paid.  
7. If I push myself too hard, a fibromyalgia flare up reminds me that I can't do that. Basically, I've been living with a flare since August.  

All that is pretty normal, everyday stuff I deal with all the time.  

--Major life changes, both good (new baby, job promotion) and bad (loss of job, loss of loved one.)

This is a big one.  

1. My friend and mentor died this summer.  Besides feeling the loss, I'm also feeling the need to step up.  Both of the voice teachers that had the biggest influence on me are both gone now and it's my turn to carry on the legacy.  
2. I'm not leaving teaching voice, but I am starting a new career (which isn't paying much at this point, other than joy and health).  Situations have changed, enabling me to take more of a leadership role in our local tai chi community, and within a year or two, I may be able to make that role more official.  That's great, but it definitely adds some stress.  
3. Recent events have caused me to more closely examine my spiritual life.  There are some big decisions that need to be made, and it's difficult to talk to most people about these.  And not talking feels like not being open and truthful, which feels like a violation of my integrity.  I've found a church that feels like home and that helps me see things in a different light.  I'm not sure that I am ready to leave my old church or that I even want to, but I'm not sure how long I can walk in both worlds.  
4. I've been asked to join a blog team (Yay!) and I've been asked to submit a guest blog for another group that is doing a series and they value my perspective on this topic.  I'm really excited for both opportunities, but it's one more thing on my plate.  Plus, as you can tell, my own blogs tend to be more vomiting feelings and I'd like these to be slightly higher quality. 

--Overload: feeling that you have too many responsibilities and can't take care of all of them at once.

1. See all of the above.  
2. I'm trying to be more involved in MMTA programs, but they need people to run the programs and I don't feel like I can take on anymore.  At the very least, I should be volunteering for every event I enter students in.  I also don't feel like I can run a program when I'm still messing up getting my first student enrolled for it.  
3. We have a Tai Chi Down Under Fundraiser on Nov. 2.  It will be awesome, but I will be stressed until it's over.  By the way, if you want to make some food for the bake sale or work at the bake sale tables that day, let me know.  We need all the help we can get.  
4. I have this great website system that also helps me with scheduling and bookkeeping for the studio, but it still requires a lot of work to get all the data entered.  And I am always behind. 

--Feeling helpless, feeling that your problems are beyond what you're able to solve.  

Believe it or not, this one is not a major issue right now.  I will get through this.  I know that.  The quality of my work might not be what I want, but the world will not come to an end because of it.  In that, at least, I think I've come a long way in the last several years.  

2) Notice how your body reacts to stress.  Learn to listen to your body signals.  This will help you take action before the stress becomes severe.

This one just makes me laugh.  I know the signals.  And I also know a lot about how to cope with them.  But I can't exactly stop a lesson or a class and make people wait while I do 30 minutes of deep breathing and meditation.  I'm trying to work it in at other times and do quick fixes between lessons, but sometimes you just have to push through, or take a day and a half off work like I did this week, which only moves the stress to a later date when I have to make all of that up.  

I'm also exercising at least 5 days a week (3 days of 2 hours of tai chi and qigong, 2 days circuit training and walking for a total of 45-60 minutes).  That physical activity really does help, especially when I'm not too exhausted to move.  

I now also have Ativan to treat the anxiety, but that basically means sleeping (or at least no driving and anything else needing clear thinking for 6-8 hours.)  Again, not a great solution for when I feel stress or anxiety at work.  

3)When you can, do something about the source of your stress.  (Avoid hassles, limit the amount of change that happens in your life at one time and take a break when you feel overloaded.)

Laughing.  Again.  Until I win Powerball, most of these stresses won't go away.  

4) Unfortunately many stressful situation cannot be avoided.  It is necessary to learn HOW TO MANAGE STRESS better. There are many proven methods that will reduce your anxiety. These include simple things like exercise, good nutrition and adequate rest.  Also there are certain techniques that are helpful:  relaxation and breathing exercises, visualization, biofeedback, and meditation.  For more information about this, consult your doctor or go to a local bookstore and review the many books and tapes available on this subject.  

1. Thank you for admitting that we can't avoid all stress.  
2. I love how "HOW TO MANAGE STRESS" is all capital letters like they are yelling at me.  
3. See above for exercise I do.  
4. Nutrition does make a difference.  Food sensitivities add to stress. I'm pretty much gluten free now and since I think I also have sensitivities to dairy, chocolate, and sugar, I'm also working to minimize, and hopefully eventually eliminate, those.
5. I'm the queen of anti-stress breathing and relaxation techniques. I have a few visualization exercises that work well.  I've done biofeedback, and I'm exploring different kinds of meditation.  
6. I probably know more about anxiety than my doctor.  
7. I probably need to get back to regular counseling appointments, but I don't know how to fit that into my schedule and my budget (Ha! Ha!) right now without adding more stress.  
8. I already own a bunch of related books.  
9. Going to the bookstore means spending money, which causes stress.  I may explore some more things from the library.  Due dates and late fees are less stress than not having money for bills because I spent it at the bookstore.  

So…that's my anxiety story.  I don't expect the things that cause stress to change anytime in the near future, but hopefully I'll continue to get better with how I deal with them.  

Pendulums, Paradoxes, and Pachyderms

It's that time again.  This weekend is the semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Some of my friends are excited for this weekend because it brings them a lot of joy and peace and helps them to re-focus on the things that really matter to them.  Other friends are avoiding it completely or dreading the talks that hurt and open old wounds.  And then my friends that aren't Mormon either don't know it's going on at all or wonder why it is such a big deal.

I'll be honest.  I wasn't sure that I wanted to watch conference this year. With everything that has happened, it just seemed easier to avoid it completely.  But, I believe that there is always a possibility that something could be said that is exactly what I need to hear.  With that in mind, I started thinking about how I can get something from this conference and not let myself be overwhelmed by the drama and the pain.

Years ago, I wrote an essay about pendulums, paradoxes, and pachyderms.  It was focused mostly on teaching singing, but I realized that those ideas can be expanded to include spirituality in general, and General Conference specifically. So now, you get the revise version of the essay.

Pendulums

In my early years of voice training, I would go to one lesson, learn a concept, apply it all week, and then go back, only to have the teacher give me almost the exact opposite advice the next week.  For a black and white thinker who was also a people pleaser, this was extremely confusing and frustrating for me.  I would think I had something figured out and that I was doing what had been asked of me, and then it seemed like everything I was doing was wrong.  Unfortunately, no one had ever explained the pendulum principle of teaching to me.  I figured it out on my own and now share it with all my students so that they know what is going on.  

Here's the basic idea:  Sometimes in an attempt to correct, we steer in the opposite direction.  If the pendulum has swung too far to the right, we send it left to correct.  In fact, we don't even send it.  The extreme position itself creates the move in the opposite direction.  Often the pendulum swings back and forth several times before finally settling to rest in the center.  

If a voice student comes in with a muffled, woofy, dark sound, a teacher might use imagery and instructions that help the student bring the sound more forward (singing into the mask, aiming the sound at the upper teeth, etc.)  A student may need to think about being bright or forward in order to actually bring the tone to a balanced place.  

We get into trouble when we confuse the thought process or imagery with the actual goal.  If the student mentioned above corrects their tone production, but thinks that thinking of bright and forward is the solution to every person's tone problem, that student will not be a good teacher.  If they encounter someone who is already quite bright and forward, and even pinched in the way they are producing their sound, it will be disastrous to ask them to do more of that.  One of my colleagues refers to that as "peeling the paint off the walls."  The student with the bright and tight voice needs a different solution to help him or her find the most beautiful tone possible.  

I personally think that much of religion is swinging the pendulum.  Policies, rules, commandments, etc. are about reversing the direction when we're headed the wrong way, but that doesn't mean that the rule itself is the goal.  For example, the Mormon church and many evangelical Christian churches have in recent years experienced a renewed focus on modesty.  In reaction to the sexualization of the female body, churches are more and more encouraging people (especially females) to cover up.  In the 50's and 60's, shoulders were not a modesty issue (see pictures of Anne Romney before she and Mitt were married, or google BYU Homecoming queens from that era), but today, Mormons are encouraged to cover up more, and some are even putting short sleeved shirts under infants' sleeveless sundresses.  

So what do pendulums mean for my General Conference experience this year?  Pendulums remind me to look for the principle, not just the action or rule.  

John Taylor, the third President of the Church, reported: “Some years ago, in Nauvoo, a gentleman in my hearing, a member of the Legislature, asked Joseph Smith how it was that he was enabled to govern so many people, and to preserve such perfect order; remarking at the same time that it was impossible for them to do it anywhere else. Mr. Smith remarked that it was very easy to do that. ‘How?’ responded the gentleman; ‘to us it is very difficult.’ Mr. Smith replied, ‘I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.’”

from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith

Pendulums remind me to ask, "Why?"  Pendulums remind me that I need to see the goal, not just all the minute adjustments in course that take me there.

Paradoxes

Paradoxes are seemingly contradictory things that are both true.  One of the best examples of this in singing is chiaroscuro.  We don't want just bright.  We don't want just dark.  We don't want the place between the two (like we might get with swinging the pendulum.)  We want them both.  Bright and dark at the same time.  This description from wikipedia is actually pretty good.  

Chiaroscuro (Italian for "light-dark") is part of bel canto an originally Italian classical singing technique in which a brilliant sound referred to as squillo is coupled with a dark timbre called scuro, which is often perceived as having great depth or warmth. Chiaroscuro is commonly used in opera. Within operatic singing, especially in Italian, the vowel "Ah" is a perfect example of where chiaroscuro can be used. When singing "Ah" it must have a bright Italian "Ah", while at the same time having depth and space in the tone, achieved through the use of breath and the body.

It's easy to read scripture or listen to General Conference and find lots of contradictions.  It's also easy to then dismiss the information because of the contradiction, but what if both ideas are true?

We don't have to go back any further than the conference of April 2013 for a good example of where this might be the case.  President Boyd K. Packer warned us of the tolerance trap in his address, "These Things I Know."  At the conclusion of the April 2013 conference, President Thomas S. Monson said,

I admonish you to be good citizens of the nations in which you live and good neighbors in your communities, reaching out to those of other faiths as well as to our own. May we be tolerant of, as well as kind and loving to, those who do not share our beliefs and our standards. The Savior brought to this earth a message of love and goodwill to all men and women. May we ever follow His example.

So which is it?  Should we be tolerant or is tolerance a trap?  Maybe the answer is both.

As I watch and listen to conference, I need to remind myself to be open to the possibilities of paradoxes.  I need to let myself wrestle with the contradictions until the truth can find it's way to the surface.  I need to remember that it doesn't have to be one way or the other.  It can be both.

Pachyderms

There is an old tale of an elephant and some blind men.  Each of the men examines a part of the elephant, and thinking that it is representative of the whole, declares their truth about what an elephant is.  The man who has examined the trunk of the elephant declares that an elephant is a snake-like creature.  The man who felt the strong, thick leg of the elephant says that an elephant is like a tree.  And the story goes on, each man describing their own truth, but unable to "see" the truth of what an elephant really is until they share their individual perceptions to create a complete picture.  

I think that truth is an infinitely large table on which we place our individual tiny circles of experience and perceived truth.  It becomes an infinitely large and multi-dimensional Venn diagram.  Those places of intersection, the places where multiple circles overlap,  are where culture, society, and religion grow.  We have a shared truth.  But we get into trouble if the only truth we allow or accept is that which falls in the overlapping areas of the majority of the group.  

Brigham Young declared, 

“Mormonism,” so-called, embraces every principle pertaining to life and salvation, for time and eternity. No matter who has it. If the infidel has got truth it belongs to “Mormonism.” The truth and sound doctrine possessed by the sectarian world, and they have a great deal, all belong to this Church. As for their morality, many of them are, morally, just as good as we are. All that is good, lovely, and praiseworthy belongs to this Church and Kingdom. “Mormonism” includes all truth. There is no truth but what belongs to the Gospel. It is life, eternal life; it is bliss; it is the fulness of all things in the gods and in the eternities of the gods (DBY, 3).

Truth is both bigger and more beautiful than we can even begin to imagine.  It cannot be contained in a single sermon or even the entirety of this conference weekend.  In this video, Elder Holland talks about the prayerful preparation that goes into these talks.


I have no trouble believing that someone in the world needs to hear the words as they are delivered.  I also believe that some of the messages won't apply to all of us.   We're often encouraged to "Follow the Prophet," but it's also important to remember that we are entitled to receive personal revelation about how those things should be applied in our lives.  Elder Oaks addressed that idea this way,

If you feel you are a special case, so that the strong counsel I have given doesn’t apply to you, please don’t write me a letter. Why would I make this request? I have learned that the kind of direct counsel I have given results in a large number of letters from members who feel they are an exception, and they want me to confirm that the things I have said just don’t apply to them in their special circumstance.
I will explain why I can’t offer much comfort in response to that kind of letter by telling you an experience I had with another person who was troubled by a general rule. I gave a talk in which I mentioned the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex. 20:13). Afterward a man came up to me in tears saying that what I had said showed there was no hope for him. “What do you mean?” I asked him.
He explained that he had been a machine gunner during the Korean War. During a frontal assault, his machine gun mowed down scores of enemy infantry. Their bodies were piled so high in front of his gun that he and his men had to push them away in order to maintain their field of fire. He had killed a hundred, he said, and now he must be going to hell because I had spoken of the Lord’s commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”
The explanation I gave that man is the same explanation I give to you if you feel you are an exception to what I have said. As a General Authority, I have the responsibility to preach general principles. When I do, I don’t try to define all the exceptions. There are exceptions to some rules. For example, we believe the commandment is not violated by killing pursuant to a lawful order in an armed conflict. But don’t ask me to give an opinion on your exception. I only teach the general rules. Whether an exception applies to you is your responsibility. You must work that out individually between you and the Lord.
The Prophet Joseph Smith taught this same thing in another way. When he was asked how he governed such a diverse group of Saints, he said, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” ⁴ In what I have just said, I am simply teaching correct principles and inviting each one of you to act upon these principles by governing yourself.

The messages we hear at General Conference will be general rules and guidelines designed to address the needs of the majority of the people listening.  Not every message will inspire or even apply to every person.  It is quite possible that the same message that causes pain for one person might be exactly the thing another person needs to bring peace and joy to his or her life.  In cases like that, I would hope that the person who felt joy would be able to honor the pain of the other, without trying to convince them that it is wrong to feel that way.  And I would hope that it works the other way too.  Can I find a way to rejoice with my brothers and sisters over the things they love, without telling them how wrong they are, even if it is wrong for me?  

This year, for conference I'm listening differently.  I'm listening for the messages that are there for me, and letting go of those that may be helpful for others, but are not helping me right now.  I'm listening for things that might cause pain to people I love and getting ready to be there to support them in that pain.  I'm listening for things that bring strength to people I love so I can support them in that too.  But mostly I'm listening because I can't honestly say I'm searching for truth if I cut off this avenue that for me still holds the possibility of more truth.