Misfit Mormons

When I read this blog entry, I had a lot of emotions well up.  I, too, feel like a misfit.  I have my whole life. Sometimes, I enjoy it, other times, it frustrates me.  As I read this, I knew I'd have to share my feelings.

First, I must insist that this feeling is cultural. I've not felt spiritually out of place.  For the most part, I've always felt like I had a connection with my Heavenly Father, and when I've felt that the connection wasn't as strong, I've always known that it's been me that was disconnecting.

When I was younger, I grew my hair out long.  At one point, it was down to the middle of my shoulder blades. I used to wear shredded jeans, bandanas and untied high-tops.  I looked like I'd walked out of a guitar magazine.  Yet, I always carried a current temple recommend. I wore my hair like a flag, challenging all to get to know the real me.

My taste in music has never been mainstream LDS.  I recognize that Janice Kapp Perry and Michael McLean are great talents and wonderful people.  I've met them both.  But I have no tunes by either one on my cell phone tracklist. What is there?  Lots of hard rock, much of it Christian.  Lots of old school prog rock, too.  Some classical.

Early on, I yearned for hard rock music with Mormon themes.  Finding none, I made my own.  I still carry much of that in my phone lists, too.  Did you know there are LDS rappers?

All of these things are superficial, I know.  But I really have felt very alone through much of my church experience. I still go.  It's still true. Much of LDS church culture is built on the concepts of obedience and of following your leaders.  And they wear white shirts, dark suits, and simple ties. That's how you're supposed to be spiritual, right?

In the end, I grew tired.  I felt like I was fighting a losing battle, all the while nobody else around me knew that we were even at war.  My hair is short, my shirts are mostly white.  But my ties have guitars and looney toons on them, and I still love loud, obnoxious guitars.





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

October 2013 General Conference, Controversy and Compassion

General Conference has always been a time of great controversy.  It seems that everyone who has a beef with the church or wants to push their own agenda onto it kinda comes out of the woodwork to make their statement.

 I’m not surprised, either.  It makes sense.  This is where the saints are gathered, with the authorities, and the media.  You’ve got the Ordain Women movement, and the Gay and Lesbian movement and the Mormons Are All Going to Hell movement, and they all have a place in the great wide “Supermercado de Dios” (“God’s Supermarket” - a phrase I learned in Honduras).

 This time, there were two talks that spoke directly to my own agendas, in very powerful and reaffirming ways.  They calmed the controversies that had been brewing for a long time in my soul, and left me feeling quite weightless at the end.  I wish I could find transcripts this soon after the event, but I haven’t been able to find them.

 The first, and probably the biggest (for me) was Elder Uctdorf’s talk on Saturday morning.  I was driving home from a book signing, and listening to it on the radio.  I ended up in tears.  Let me set it up for you.

 For a long time, as I’ve interacted with many different people who have many different ideas about the church, I’ve encountered many with negative things to say about the church.  Frankly, there’s a lot of material to draw from:  Polygamy, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Missouri wars, the Adam/God theory, the ERA, the Salamander letters, the political involvement by the church in many issues, including California’s Proposition 8, and even, on a small scale, the expansion of the Provo MTC.

 In my own mind, I had come to be (pretty much) at peace with most of these issues by arriving at a personal understanding that the leaders of the church (historical and current) are humans, and that God allows his human representativess to make choices.  Sometimes, those choices are good and wise, and other times, not so much.  In other words, I truly believe that God leads this church, but that sometimes we humans get in the way, and He allows that as a part of our growth.

 One thing that has consistently bothered me about these things is the way the church has handled the dissent.  Either they’ve ignored it, shouted it down, or simply excommunicated those that were dissenting.

 The tone of the talk by President Uctdorf was finally one with openness, compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness.  And by “forgiveness”, I mean both extending it, and asking for it.  A member of our highest governing body (the First Presidency) stood up in General Conference and admitted that we have, now and in the past, made mistakes.  That was HUGE.  It confirmed all that I had been feeling, yet wondering about, for so long.  A massive weight was lifted from me. My spirit and mind are both still reeling from the lightness I’m feeling, even days later.

 Then, if that wasn’t enough, in the afternoon session, Elder Holland talked about mental illness, particularly depression.  He talked about how important it is to recognize it and to treat it, even with contemporary professional methods.  He said we wouldn’t send someone with appendicitis home to “study and pray”, but we’d send them to the hospital for an operation.  He called on everyone to treat those with mental health issues with compassion and support.

 While I don’t really know if I would be diagnosed with an actual clinical depression, I’ve been through long periods of “down” throughout my life.  I’ve gotten therapy from time to time and dealt with a lot of my issues.

 It was very nice to hear from that grand pulpit that I’m OK.  That I can be healed, and that I can take steps to be healed.  Another weight lifted.

So, say what you wish about the controversies and the agendas, my two big problems felt, if not resolved, at least at peace.

Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

More Thoughts on Revelation

As I re-read the article I mentioned in my last post, about Joseph Smith's first vision, a couple of paragraphs stuck with me.  These were where he talked about how communication works with humans.  

"In any communication there is an encoder that sends the signal and a decoder that receives it. Always there is noise between the sender and the receiver of the signal and it limits and hinders perfect transmission and reception. In terms of communication, noise is not only audible. Sound or physical noise can interrupt a signal, but other kinds of noise hinder communication too. Semantic noise happens when the encoder sends signals that the receiver lacks the power to decipher. Psychological noise happens when a receiver’s assumptions or prejudices or preconceived notions or emotions prevent an accurate interpretation of the signal.

"God may reveal flawless signals, but no mortal, including the youthful Joseph Smith, receives communication flawlessly. There is always noise. And in this case the process of communication will be doubly difficult since Joseph’s best efforts to re-communicate his experience to us are also compromised by communication noise.So rather than assume that I could know all about the vision by reading Joseph’s accounts, I expected only to understand some of what Joseph experienced and only as it came through his memory and the limits of communication.

These thoughts reminded of a blog post I did here in Mo'Boy a while back.  Something sparked my mind and I got to thinking and writing about how revelation works with us.  I think that all too often we take the simplest possible explanations, and realize that more often than not, the simplest is not the right one, nor even the most "realistic".  Revelation and scripture is a good example of this.  

Too often we just assume that our scriptures were handed to us, complete, and uneditable, like a great holy pdf attachment.  I think even some of us believe that the priniting layout was divinely mandated.  We forget that our scriptures are collections of human writings, documenting thousands and thousands of years of communication from God to humans.

When trying to understand the scriptures, it's valuable to consider them on all of these levels.  First, of course, is what it means to me, the reader, at face value.  What is it saying to me?  Second, it's good to try and figure out who wrote it and when, and what they were going through and who they were writing it to.  Finally, it's good to try and figure out what we think is the message God is trying to send to all of us.

This is true of ancient scripture, like the five books of Moses, or modern scripture, like the Joseph Smith story.

First, I try and get into my own mind and heart, then the mind and heart of the writer/revelator, and finally, to try and figure out the mind and heart of God.  Then, I'm finally in a position to really understand a scripture.

Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

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