Come Along With Me - Second Arrow

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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Linked
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Come Along With Me - Second Arrow

Post by Linked »

As a compromise between non-believing me and my believing wife, once a month we stay home from church and have a little family lesson at home instead that we call Come Along With Me. Usually we just have a little discussion about stuff I think they should learn to be good humans. My lesson planning looks a lot like preparing for a mormon youth Sunday School class, i.e. I throw it together at the last minute. Yesterday was Come Along With Me and I decided to talk about the Buddhist concept of the second arrow - that suffering is much worse when we add our own worry, anger, rumination to the pain we encounter in life.

About a minute in my oldest kid said, "You already did this one." Oops, my bad. But it has to have been like 2 years, and he still remembers! I asked him to tell me about it and he perfectly described the concept. He remembers and understands and has that available to himself as he navigates life. That's success. It can be hard to watch my kids become believing mormons, but it's very reassuring to find out that they are still hearing lessons from me. Maybe they're gonna be ok.
"I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order" - Kurt Vonnegut
stuck
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Joined: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:48 pm

Re: Come Along With Me - Second Arrow

Post by stuck »

Linked,

I am impressed that you at least are able to have your family stay home with you once a month. My wife is pretty strong-willed and so it's been hard to do much compromising with her. I am just hoping to at least let them them know of my beliefs before they decide to go on a mission and perhaps give them the opportunity to learn "the rest of the story".

Keep us posted
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Journey
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Re: Come Along With Me - Second Arrow

Post by Journey »

Linked wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:21 pm As a compromise between non-believing me and my believing wife, once a month we stay home from church and have a little family lesson at home instead that we call Come Along With Me. Usually we just have a little discussion about stuff I think they should learn to be good humans. My lesson planning looks a lot like preparing for a mormon youth Sunday School class, i.e. I throw it together at the last minute. Yesterday was Come Along With Me and I decided to talk about the Buddhist concept of the second arrow - that suffering is much worse when we add our own worry, anger, rumination to the pain we encounter in life.

About a minute in my oldest kid said, "You already did this one." Oops, my bad. But it has to have been like 2 years, and he still remembers! I asked him to tell me about it and he perfectly described the concept. He remembers and understands and has that available to himself as he navigates life. That's success. It can be hard to watch my kids become believing mormons, but it's very reassuring to find out that they are still hearing lessons from me. Maybe they're gonna be ok.
Thank you very much for sharing this philosophy, I’ve never heard of it before. I think it’s really great that your son was receptive to you sharing it with him the first time around and remembered it well enough to be able to explain it after all this time. That is definitely success! Congrats!
And yes, sometimes that’s all we can do, share what we think might help our kids in life, and hope they take it with them for years to come.
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Hagoth
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Re: Come Along With Me - Second Arrow

Post by Hagoth »

Linked wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:21 pm ... But it has to have been like 2 years, and he still remembers! I asked him to tell me about it and he perfectly described the concept..
And you didn't even have to hit him with it over and over again, every few weeks like the lessons from the other three Sundays on tithing, temples, and following the prophets, ad nauseum.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."
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Linked
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Re: Come Along With Me - Second Arrow

Post by Linked »

stuck wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 3:46 pm Linked,

I am impressed that you at least are able to have your family stay home with you once a month. My wife is pretty strong-willed and so it's been hard to do much compromising with her. I am just hoping to at least let them them know of my beliefs before they decide to go on a mission and perhaps give them the opportunity to learn "the rest of the story".

Keep us posted
Yeah, it took a few years to get here and my wife is an accommodater. I sometimes need a 3rd person to tell me if my position is fair or not because she may not express that she thinks something is unfair. But I think we have a pretty good system in place.

I hope you get a chance to build that bridge for your kids too. It's still a fraught path, I have to deal with my kids getting told repeatedly that I am stupid, lazy, or crazy, and I'm sure they are internalizing it to some extent. But we also get to have some interesting discussions that we couldn't have if he thought I was toeing the church line. And he knows that it's his choice to go on a mission or go to BYU.
Journey wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 4:59 pm Thank you very much for sharing this philosophy, I’ve never heard of it before. I think it’s really great that your son was receptive to you sharing it with him the first time around and remembered it well enough to be able to explain it after all this time. That is definitely success! Congrats!
And yes, sometimes that’s all we can do, share what we think might help our kids in life, and hope they take it with them for years to come.
Thanks for your kind words!
Hagoth wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 5:21 pm And you didn't even have to hit him with it over and over again, every few weeks like the lessons from the other three Sundays on tithing, temples, and following the prophets, ad nauseum.
Hahaha, maybe if they taught useful and interesting things they would only have to teach them once. Or twice if they forgot that they already covered a topic.
"I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order" - Kurt Vonnegut
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