During Sunday School this weekend I sort of zoned out.  The teacher was talking about worship and what it meant to worship and I was expecting any minute for someone to say, “The Bible dictionary defines worship as blah blah blah.” I lifted the little bag of Lindt chocolate to decide which flavor I’d eat next (my reward for being a woman!), but before I could disengage further, my friend Colleen raised her hand and said a bunch of awesome stuff. Her main point was that there are many “languages of worship,” just as there are “love languages,” like preferring service, gifts, touch, etc. as a means of expressing our affection, of course there must be various means of expressing worship.  Here are some she mentioned along with a couple of my additions:

Music: For many churchgoers, music is the language of the spirit. In the preface of our hymnbook it states: “Hymns can lift our spirits, give us courage, and move us to righteous action. They can fill our souls with heavenly thoughts and bring us a spirit of peace.”  Lots of us feel closer to God when singing than when doing anything else. I am always touched at the Exponent Retreat when many women are move beyond words as we unite in voice. I am not one of these people. However, when I hear Pandora Brewer sing “Hie to Kolob,” I am converted. At least temporarily.

Intellectual: These souls are fed through lively intellectual discourse.  These are the saints who sit on the edge of the pew when there’s a powerhouse speaker who knows their doctrine cold and uses their field of expertize to illuminate and expand our understanding. These folks love the gospel doctrine class that digs deep and isn’t afraid to leave the manual behind.  The Spirit of God is intelligence.

Symbol/ritual: Mormons love to poo poo other faiths’ reliance on ritual.  But symbol plays a large role in our church as well, and there are many saints who crave it.  The sacrament is the pinnacle and purpose of our weekly worship service and people will go to great lengths to partake of it each week. Additionally the temple is obviously rich in symbol. I remember thinking when I first took out my endowment, “So HERE  is where all the ritual has been hiding…”  Many of my friends’ parents are motivated socially by ritual as well and only visit grandkids when there’s a blessing, baptism, or priesthood advancement occurring. Substitute ordinance for ritual, and this is the thing that holds it all together for some folks.

Emotion/Empathy: For other saints certain emotions facilitate the spirit.  When talks and testimonies contain personal, moving stories, these guys FEEL the connection. Sometimes we tease these folks for being quick to tears, but that is their way of manifesting they feel the Spirit, so cut them some slack.  These passionate saints worship with all their heart, love hearing and telling tender stories, and have empathy to spare. This style makes me think of the prophet, Thomas Monson.

Service- Some saints are doers. They are forever in motion and need to be actively serving to feel they are worshiping.  These are the folks who magnify the callings that have them helping/teaching/working with others. I have one such friend who doesn’t show up on Sunday if she doesn’t have a purpose. These are the gems who show up with meals and help you pack. Not that other people won’t, but the servers among us do it not out of obligation, but because it brings them closer to the Lord. “Unto the least of these…”

Meditation: I debated whether I should label this as prayer, but meditation seemed to be a bigger umbrella for the ways in which many of us worship through quiet, mindful, often solitary practices. My father loved to sit for hours in his study and read the scriptures. He would never have used the word “meditate” but he’d emerge as peaceful and centered as a yogi. During the sacrament this week I glanced at the brother behind me and was struck by his posture. Back erect, eyes closed, hands resting palm up on his knees. His kids were bustling and for a second I thought he was asleep–but he was just so peaceful.  As I was trying to focus on renewing my own covenants it dawned on me that he was meditating, something that I do during the week when I want to connect with the divine. But it never occurred to me that I could bring that practice with me into my meetings.  Call it pondering things in your heart, communing with God, these guys are masters at internal reverence.

Obviously there are many other ways of worshipping, and most of us rely on more than one method to seek the divine. What was instructive to me about my friend’s comment was how different we all are in our spiritual quests and how important it is to allow for as many “worship languages” as possible during our services. I know I need to work on valuing the languages that are not my native tongue.

What language works best for you? What languages do you think are undervalued/underrepresented in LDS services? Which languages are privileged? How can we encourage languages that feel foreign?

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Since this is my first Relief Society lesson at The Exponent, I thought I’d start by quickly describing my philosophy for teaching in the LDS church.  Since this is a church with a lay ministry, in LDS classrooms everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner.  I believe when I’m teaching a lesson, even though I’ve prepared thoughts on the topic of the day, I don’t necessarily have the best insight into any of the points in the lesson.  The class members are often my teachers, and I’m a learner in the lesson as much as they are.  Which means I see myself as not so much a teacher but as a facilitator.  My most important job is to ask good questions, give people time to think about them, and, as much as possible, ask good follow-up questions.  I also generally avoid commenting on other people’s comments.  Some teachers do well at asking questions that provoke insightful comments, but seem to feel obligated to follow up with their own commentary on them, which rarely adds much to the original comment.  So I usually just say “thank you” when people are finished speaking.

So thank you for letting me soap box for a paragraph.  Now, here are my thoughts on this lesson. (Note I’ve put quotes from the manual in italics, rather than explaining each time that they’re from Lorenzo Snow.)

First, it’s interesting to find this statement at the end of the lesson:

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This last Sunday, we had combined Relief Society and Priesthood opening exercises owing to the Young Women needing rehearsal space for a fireside planned for that evening. Forgotten announcements of the switch resulted in a slow but eventual gathering. In the temporarily combined room, the seating arrangement resulted in a change in the average seating patterns, which in turn resulted in people sitting and chatting with people whom they might not routinely sit with. This was not uncomfortable for me; I rather like a good mix up- besides- it was just for opening exercises.

In this, I began to notice something interesting. It seems to me that “average” church meeting small talk is along the line of “how are you/your family doing?” But in this meeting, and in other interactions I have had in the last few weeks with church members, the small and big talk is focused on the recently announced change in missionary age.

In nearly every conversation, the reaction is one of happy excitement; 18 year old males who had thought they had a year to prepare are suddenly, yet happily questioning if they should go sooner. Further, it seems to me that a very large number of women between the ages of 19 and 20 have already spoken to their bishops and are in the process of submitting their papers (I personally know of 3).

Interestingly, in this combined meeting moment, a member of the Stake Presidency pointed out an observation of his that seemed to almost border on a concern. This was that males still had to be ordained as Elders before they could serve; hence, they would need to be sustained in Stake Conference. I do not know why this seemed to concern him (perhaps a Stake admin issue that could be challenging?), but I could not help but consider the implications in relation to age. Based on a male’s birth date, high school graduation date and stake conference scheduling, it is possible that he could very well still be 19 years old the soonest he is eligible to serve a mission.

If this is the case, and a young man was anxious to serve a mission, is there an equality argument for males to forgo Melchizedek priesthood ordination in order to be as readily eligible to serve as un-ordianed women?

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My temple recommend interview is coming up. One question that always confuses me is: are you honest in your dealings with your fellow men?

I think this question is asked to make sure you are not lying, stealing, cheating, living a double-life, or conducting business fraud. However, I always interpret it as: Are you always 100% completely honest?

How do you answer that question? If I say “Yes” I am inevitably lying. So I always say “No.” To which my leaders usually chuckle and I quickly explain “I mean I don’t willfully lie or hurt anybody, but I’m sure I’ve told a lies in the last two years. In fact I’m lying to you right now by answering all these questions about prophets, belief and faith with one word answers because it is all so much more complicated than that.” I sometimes have the presence of mind to leave out the last part, but normally I have mouth diarrhea the second I am stuck in a room with an authority figure and cannot seem to figure out the line between information that my leaders need-to-know and what is none-of-their-business.

After one such meeting, I decided that I would try to live my life without telling any lies (mind you this was the hyper-religious OCD college Whoa-man at Ricks College in Rexburg and not the uber-critical culturally relative academic Whoa-man now). Right then and there I committed to being 100% honest.

I have many weaknesses, but some things I’ve never lacked for are determination, stick-to-it-ness, or obsessive-compulsive behavior. So when I say 100%, I mean 100 freaking percent.

That night there was a church fireside. In college everyone went to these because we were all single and spent about 90% of our time checking out the opposite sex. I arrived and saw some of my friends. One of them was named Andrew. He was a cute guy from the South. We were semi-flirty, just on the precipice of going out. We all sat together and just as we were taking our seats, Andrew noticed I had a Band-Aid on my finger and nonchalantly asked, “Oh, did you cut yourself?”

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Several days ago I was at a park with my children. There was nothing particularly interesting about this park except for two older boys at one corner play-fighting. I don’t like my children to watch or engage in violent behavior so I tried to keep their attention on the other side of the park. But we kept hearing snippets from their dialogue: ” I have the power.” “Ha ha, I just took your power.” “You can’t take it because I’m invincible.” “I have your power, I have your power.” “No. I have THE POWER.”

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It’s that time of the year again. There’s a chill in the air, the leaves are changing, I am suddenly craving apples and pumpkin and mr. mraynes spends a good deal of each Saturday watching, reading and discussing football.

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