Posts tagged lds

When I was in YW/YSA, people constantly had trouble coming up with ideas for activities.  Based on posts here on Tumblr, on various blogs, on Facebook, and on email lists, I’m pretty sure this is still a problem.

At the same time, I promise you all that every ward and stake has desperately lonely, ill, unhappy, etc., members, who could really benefit from just a little bit of attention from these auxiliaries and organizations that can’t seem to figure out what to do with themselves for two hours on a Wednesday evening, or how to entertain themselves at the YSA FHE, or what have you.

This constitutes, in my opinion, a tragic situation.

At the very least, please consider an activity consisting of planning future service to those in need: answering questions like who needs our help, what kind of help do they need, what kinds of things can we do for them, and who should we coordinate with.

This, BTW, is what the original Relief Society did: they spent their meetings and activities figuring out how to help people, and actually helping them.  I don’t think we should ask less of ourselves in this age of “I really don’t want to do another Modest Fashion Show, we’ve done two this year already.”

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I have one simple question for you:

What would Jesus want you to do?

Seriously.  The person who tells you that you “don’t know them well enough to ask” or “don’t really need help that badly” or “haven’t earned help yet” or “will screw things up if you ask” or whatever - that person is not on Christ’s side, here.

The reinforcement of shame, fear, distrust, etc.?  That’s not the Holy Ghost talking.

The hope that you won’t get help, that you’ll go it alone?  Who exactly roots for isolation and total independence for every human being?  It’s not Heavenly Father!

Everything in the scriptures, in General Conference, etc., tells us that we need to serve one another, that we need to lift up one another’s hearts, that we need to bear one another’s burdens.  I didn’t hear anything pleading for us to “struggle through things until you break, before you finally ask for help with the greatest of reluctance and self-hatred, and please make sure you wait till things are way past the point where you actually needed the help.”

That would be what Satan wants us to do.

So, just, you know, keep that in mind when you’re deciding whether or not to get the help you know you need.

These speakers demonstrate and describe pretty much exactly how men should think and act toward their families, even when they don’t mean to.

I had to look it up, because wow.

There are pants-wearing women in the audience.

There are gay people in the audience.  

There are pants-wearing female gay people in the audience.

There are even registered Democrats in the audience! And probably on the stand; can’t say I even know any of the political affiliations of the general authorities that I know for sure were actually up there.

Also, the person who gave the benediction for the Saturday morning session is female.

Seriously.  This identity politics stuff is so not the point of General Conference it’s pretty much impossible for me to articulate how not the point of General Conference they are.

(I’m quite certain there are pants-wearing female gay registered Democrats who were born in, I don’t know, South Dakota, in the audience.  It’s a big freaking audience.  All I can hope for is that they weren’t thinking about their pants, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, or birthplace during the session, because again, so not the point.)

Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just kind of… making me laugh.