From Apostate to the HC

This is for encouragement, ideas, and support for people going through a faith transition no matter where you hope to end up. This is also the place to laugh, cry, and love together.
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Mormorrisey
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Mormorrisey » Mon Sep 10, 2018 8:35 pm

2bizE wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:38 pm
On the HC, you have to share hour testimony a lot with wards you visit. What do you say?
It's been a non-issue so far - the one time I spoke, it was a NOM-imony. Details might out me, but I was gladdened by a friend who knows me well, telling me he's never seen someone give a clear message that didn't directly address the subject they wanted me to speak about. I took that as a great compliment. :lol:
"And I don't need you...or, your homespun philosophies."
"And when you try to break my spirit, it won't work, because there's nothing left to break."

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No Tof
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by No Tof » Tue Sep 11, 2018 7:03 am

As I read your post I couldn't help but chuckle. I see you in your suit of light, which looks damn good on you by the way ;) . The bull is coming straight for you and with a slight step to the right and a dramatic flourish of you cape it is sent on its way. The crowd here at NOM shouts OLE and you continue on with the dance of death.

Haha, I am still laughing when I think of you and your SP sparring about what it means to be an apostate. (please teach him the difference between the perjorative and the kinder word heretic.

I am shocked that the post was offered and even more surprised you decided to get in that ring. However on both counts it is a good thing. As others have mentioned, the SP might feel the need to keep you close to see if you really aren't an apostate. Or he could be needing some authentic voice in the crowd to help him keep his own sanity.
On your part, to accept, is brave indeed. The irony is abundant and I hope you have a lot of fun poking the bear while doing your duty. Even in my most TBM days and while on the HC, I maintained that you could actually be inactive and still serve well. It is a calling with minor supervision and lots of latitude to do what your spirit "prompts" you to do. Win win.

Best of luck to you. Please keep us informed.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Rumi

Reuben
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Reuben » Tue Sep 11, 2018 1:58 pm

Reminds me of DarkJedi on the StayLDS forum. His SP values his point of view, and he does good work on the HC.

Glad heretics can sometimes pull this off. The church needs people who will push back occasionally.
Learn to doubt the stories you tell about yourselves and your adversaries.

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Red Ryder
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Red Ryder » Tue Sep 11, 2018 4:32 pm

A few weeks ago we had a SM speaker give a talk where he told his re-activation story. The bishop had called him to be a ward clerk when he was an non-attending alcoholic Mormon. Bishop called him up and said I need you here on Sunday at 9:00 am. Be there. 35 years later and he is still an active member.

You're the SP's "ward clerk"!

If I was asked, I would take the position and create friction. Tell the SP that if he's inspired then he already knows what he's going to get. If he's not inspired then he deserves what he's going to get!
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StarbucksMom
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by StarbucksMom » Tue Sep 11, 2018 5:00 pm

That is a wild story! You said your SP IS new, so I'd be willing to bet he had a fair amount of people in his office saying they were struggling with their faith. He realized they really need someone like you. Good job, hope you can make a difference.

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deacon blues
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by deacon blues » Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:36 pm

StarbucksMom wrote:
Tue Sep 11, 2018 5:00 pm
That is a wild story! You said your SP IS new, so I'd be willing to bet he had a fair amount of people in his office saying they were struggling with their faith. He realized they really need someone like you. Good job, hope you can make a difference.
Good point. If anybody could talk me back into full or mostly full activity, it would be somebody like Mormorrisy.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

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Not Buying It
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Not Buying It » Tue Sep 11, 2018 8:24 pm

Well done so far, but hold to your boundaries, and do not let the Church cross them. Your stake president is an aberration - this is not how the Church he represents wants things done. Sooner or later you will find yourself having to take a stand on something.
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph

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Mormorrisey
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Mormorrisey » Tue Sep 11, 2018 8:43 pm

Red Ryder wrote:
Tue Sep 11, 2018 4:32 pm
A few weeks ago we had a SM speaker give a talk where he told his re-activation story. The bishop had called him to be a ward clerk when he was an non-attending alcoholic Mormon. Bishop called him up and said I need you here on Sunday at 9:00 am. Be there. 35 years later and he is still an active member.

You're the SP's "ward clerk"!
You're not wrong - my assignments are, well, not really the hub of excitement in the stake. Let's put it that way.
deacon blues wrote:
Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:36 pm
StarbucksMom wrote:
Tue Sep 11, 2018 5:00 pm
That is a wild story! You said your SP IS new, so I'd be willing to bet he had a fair amount of people in his office saying they were struggling with their faith. He realized they really need someone like you. Good job, hope you can make a difference.
Good point. If anybody could talk me back into full or mostly full activity, it would be somebody like Mormorrisy.
Thanks for your kind words. And actually, we've had this discussion. I've offered to help in that regard, but I don't think I have earned that level of trust quite yet, and he was quite squeamish about my offer. I think it's VERY difficult for him and frankly, most members to realize and accept that people have valid concerns, questions and doubts about church history, Mormon cultural practices and current corporate behaviour. So I'm not sure how much they'll let me anywhere near the "doubters," in case I make it worse.
Not Buying It wrote:
Tue Sep 11, 2018 8:24 pm
Well done so far, but hold to your boundaries, and do not let the Church cross them. Your stake president is an aberration - this is not how the Church he represents wants things done. Sooner or later you will find yourself having to take a stand on something.
Great words of warning - I'm prepared for that too.
"And I don't need you...or, your homespun philosophies."
"And when you try to break my spirit, it won't work, because there's nothing left to break."

Anon70
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Anon70 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 5:28 am

I am so impressed. While I took the stake calling I chickened out on explaining my NOM ness and didn’t admit to anything. Now I’m stuck trying to navigate these awful assignments when I don’t believe. I’ll be following your posts to gain ideas!

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Mormorrisey
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Mormorrisey » Wed Sep 12, 2018 7:22 am

OK. Now we're heading into hubris territory, and I'm leaving quite the trail of breadcrumbs for the hardliners at the SCMC. However, I've been thinking a lot about many of your comments about "will this guy have any impact at all?" (And my thanks for your words of encouragement.) I'm still very ensure of the impact I'll have, if any, but let me tell you a recent story.

I was asked to teach EQ because they needed a teacher - they asked if I would teach on Oaks' talk on the family proclamation. I answered the Mormon equivalent of "heck no!" but if they were desperate, I would teach a recent conference talk. They indeed were desperate, so I picked Oscarson's talk on the young women needing to do more at church. I offered a proviso at the beginning of the lesson, that as the father of daughters I was really passionate about this subject, then I began with Oscarson's declaration on how the YW needed to prepare for their roles in the community, the home, and at church. So I asked why did she pick these three roles? Because our EQ is a mix of the young and old, the young guys got it, and talked about how a woman could do anything these days - so I managed to go on a not-very-humble brag about my married daughter, who is planning for a career after her schooling, while balancing being a wife and mother, and a church assignment. This led one of the older guys to proclaim that the lesson was off-track, because the "most important role for a woman in the church was being a mother in Zion." You could have knocked me down with a feather because the individual who rushed to my defence was the old SP, who told this guy in no uncertain terms that was an antiquated notion, and women could do anything they wanted to do, including "being mothers in Zion." That was interesting.

This then led to a further discussion on how we could encourage young women to actually do everything they wanted and needed to do. A recent convert piped up and suggested we let them pass the sacrament. My old friend the former HPGL was there and looked at me and said quite clearly, "be careful!" So I said, "no, I don't think I'll be careful," and told the group about the time when I was bishop, I spoke to the young women about their possibilities in life, and told them I hoped I would be alive for the day when they could hold the priesthood. The "mother in Zion" dude was aghast and said "this is taking things too far!" and so I just shrugged and continued with the lesson. A few of the young guys approached me afterwards and told me how much they enjoyed the lesson, and have never heard such things in church before. This led to an email exchange with my old HPGL buddy, who told me as a former bishop and CURRENT member of the HC, I simply could not say such things. I sent him a long email with the latest essay on Joseph Smith, women and the priesthood, along with the Race and the Priesthood essay, telling him to read it and see if one day if they replace the word "race" with "gender." A couple more emails ensued, as he insisted that women not having the priesthood was doctrine - after showing him that denying blacks the priesthood was doctrine too, we just ended that "doctrine," and we could at any point end the "doctrine" of denying women the priesthood, at the end he just gave up. I did hear from a source that my lesson got as far as my ward council, but apparently the old HPGL and the "mother in Zion" guy were the only ones out of sorts about it, so it was quickly dropped.

So at the end of this, there are going to be people who will give me a hard time, those people who might listen, those who are ambivalent and so forth, but I think lessons like this are the reason I'm doing this. Of course, until they or I have had enough.
"And I don't need you...or, your homespun philosophies."
"And when you try to break my spirit, it won't work, because there's nothing left to break."

Anon70
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Anon70 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:29 am

I love that experience (teaching Oscarsons talk) and that is what I keep seeing. The younger generation will either push for “revelation” aka change or will leave.

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Hermey
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Hermey » Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:40 am

Fascinating! I'm looking forward to future installments from your HC adventures.

Here's a sacrament talk you can put in your library of "the spirit guided me to switch up the assigned topic" talks to give. It's fully NOM'd up and has the right amount of faithful sources being referenced/quoted to satisfy even the most TBM listener. Some of you may recognize parts of it as I mostly cobbled it together from various sources over the years. I put this together for a lesson my daughter gave in YW earlier this year prior to her resignation. I made just a few modifications to turn it from her lesson into a talk.

It made my wife, and then some of the YW leaders, tear up as they were molested by the Holy Spook that Sunday. It also went over the heads of others. (Not surprising at all.) Afterwards, I had to serve up a little cog dis.... I let my wife know that I was drinking when I put it together. She kind of chuckled (did I really just use that word?) at that thought/realization.

Here's the link to the talk.....

http://roadkilldelight.com/NOM/CharityTalk.pdf

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Red Ryder
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Red Ryder » Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:45 am

Love it! The generation gap is beginning to push out the old school of thought.

In our ward, the young women were recently assigned by the bishop to bring the bread each week. At first everyone thought that meant the young women would be baking bread for the sacrament. The Bishop responded to the email questioners by stating they should not be baking bread for the sacrament but merely providing it each week like the Teachers Quorum does. So we've had the same familiar loaf of white wonderbread! The only difference being the female mode of transportation to the church.

Slow progress.

PS. Can we just keep this going as the "Mormorrisey HC Experience" mega thread?
“It always devolves to Pantaloons. Always.” ~ Fluffy

“I switched baristas” ~ Lady Gaga

“Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” ~Rosa Luxemburg

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GoodBoy
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by GoodBoy » Wed Sep 12, 2018 5:23 pm

Mormorrisey wrote:
Wed Sep 12, 2018 7:22 am
A recent convert piped up and suggested we let them pass the sacrament. My old friend the former HPGL was there and looked at me and said quite clearly, "be careful!" So I said, "no, I don't think I'll be careful,"
Love this! Wish I had the cahones to this kind of thing a little more often.
Always been the good kid, but I wanted to know more, and to find and test truth.

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StarbucksMom
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by StarbucksMom » Thu Sep 13, 2018 12:07 pm

Mormorrisey, your post in response to mine was about a lot of stuff, so I'm not going to quote. But just to clarify a bit what I meant by your SP likely learning that lots of people are struggling, and asking you to join the HP. I wasn't thinking that he wanted you to talk directly with members about their doubts. I read your op and thought that the HP needs your perspective. They need a voice in there who can say "wait a minute" before judging or dismissing members with doubts, make the HP group aware that there are actually real issues (w/o details) and who can direct them to the essays. You can also give Christ/service/love others talks in wards. You can also share your perspective on women's roles in church, and giving them more of a voice in leadership roles, etc etc etc. They need someone like you to bring awareness.

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Mormorrisey
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Mormorrisey » Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:01 am

StarbucksMom wrote:
Thu Sep 13, 2018 12:07 pm
Mormorrisey, your post in response to mine was about a lot of stuff, so I'm not going to quote. But just to clarify a bit what I meant by your SP likely learning that lots of people are struggling, and asking you to join the HP. I wasn't thinking that he wanted you to talk directly with members about their doubts. I read your op and thought that the HP needs your perspective. They need a voice in there who can say "wait a minute" before judging or dismissing members with doubts, make the HP group aware that there are actually real issues (w/o details) and who can direct them to the essays. You can also give Christ/service/love others talks in wards. You can also share your perspective on women's roles in church, and giving them more of a voice in leadership roles, etc etc etc. They need someone like you to bring awareness.
Got it. That makes a lot of sense.
Hermey wrote:
Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:40 am
Here's a sacrament talk you can put in your library of "the spirit guided me to switch up the assigned topic" talks to give. It's fully NOM'd up and has the right amount of faithful sources being referenced/quoted to satisfy even the most TBM listener. Some of you may recognize parts of it as I mostly cobbled it together from various sources over the years. I put this together for a lesson my daughter gave in YW earlier this year prior to her resignation. I made just a few modifications to turn it from her lesson into a talk.

It made my wife, and then some of the YW leaders, tear up as they were molested by the Holy Spook that Sunday. It also went over the heads of others. (Not surprising at all.) Afterwards, I had to serve up a little cog dis.... I let my wife know that I was drinking when I put it together. She kind of chuckled (did I really just use that word?) at that thought/realization.

Here's the link to the talk.....

http://roadkilldelight.com/NOM/CharityTalk.pdf
Thanks a bunch for sending that along - I couldn't download it initially through an ID10T error, but it did download on my phone and it's a great talk. It will help me remember to have some charity for those up the chain too. Not too much, perhaps, as evidenced by what went down with Sam yesterday, but sometimes it needs to go both ways.
"And I don't need you...or, your homespun philosophies."
"And when you try to break my spirit, it won't work, because there's nothing left to break."

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Fifi de la Vergne
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Fifi de la Vergne » Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:48 am

Red Ryder wrote:
Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:45 am
PS. Can we just keep this going as the "Mormorrisey HC Experience" mega thread?
Yes please!
Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous Yes to one's own true being.

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Raylan Givens
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by Raylan Givens » Mon Sep 17, 2018 9:11 pm

Mormorrisey wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 8:35 pm
2bizE wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:38 pm
On the HC, you have to share hour testimony a lot with wards you visit. What do you say?
It's been a non-issue so far - the one time I spoke, it was a NOM-imony. Details might out me, but I was gladdened by a friend who knows me well, telling me he's never seen someone give a clear message that didn't directly address the subject they wanted me to speak about. I took that as a great compliment. :lol:
"apostates" of the world, unite and take over.. (with a catchy Smith's beat in the background)
"Ah, you know, I think you use the Bible to do whatever the hell you like" - Raylan Givens

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MalcolmVillager
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by MalcolmVillager » Mon Sep 17, 2018 9:37 pm

So cool. The members need leaders like you. Kudos. Do what you can. I am in a similar boat. My privilege allows me to hide in my disbelief. I just look the part and nobody asks any questions. I push the boundaries and try to create space for nuance and the marginalized.

I dont hold out hope. I am not delusional. The church will change slowly and painfully as 90 year olds die out.

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MerrieMiss
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Re: From Apostate to the HC

Post by MerrieMiss » Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:04 am

I want to tell you how great I think this is. So long as you are okay with it, I think this will benefit so many people. I hope my husband gets a teacher in EQ or GD like you someday - someone who is "in" who can verbalize so many of the things that are wrong and make it a safe space to do so. Good job! I'm sure your talks are interesting too! Our ward and stake has a policy of only one speaker on HC Sunday; not even youth speakers. It is the worst.

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