It is an un-special special meeting this week in church. Special because there is a missionary who is leaving to the mission field speaking, and also one returning home. Un-Special because Mormon's aren't supposed to have special meetings for missionaries leaving and returning home with 400 family members and friends in attendance. The sacrament has to be blessed twice as they run out.
We partake of the sacrament to remember our dependence on the Savior. To look outside for deliverance for the consequences of our deeds. To receive the outside influence of the spirit to our insides to guide us in the path. We look outward for a change within. The boys slowly work their way around the congregation, bread and water release people from the chains of bondage. Whence come the chains?
Weekly there is a constant promise of reward and a re-commitment to follow. To hand our choices and feelings to above, and soak in what we are supposed to feel. All this to ultimately have our consequences. taken away. Dependence always from the outside and above. Always it seems we are nothing, and yet the universe was created for us. But was it? What if this dependence on another fails for some and doesn't work?
Missionaries....I have oft been repulsed by the idea in the recent years. The audacity of one person to actively push upon another their idea of what is best. I wrestle with this. But maybe I shouldn't. Everyone is free to listen or ignore. Some may find contentment in that path, and some may not. Man has had religion for centuries and it quite possibly is an evolutionary trait that helps man to work as a group rather than an individual. This trait moves him up the food chain. Perhaps it is natural to believe in external religious phenomena. Then again, if it is only a property of our nature, does not this ring a little hollow in the ultimate purpose of the universe? If we by our very belief that the universe was created for us, in fact prove ourselves as just being a natural piece of it in so doing?
Perhaps we are not so much separate entities from the universe as we would like to believe. Perhaps we are the universe itself. A sentient portion of the universe whose atoms ebb and flow with time from elements to sentient elements and back to elements.
We partake of the sacrament to remember our dependence on the Savior. To look outside for deliverance for the consequences of our deeds. To receive the outside influence of the spirit to our insides to guide us in the path. We look outward for a change within. The boys slowly work their way around the congregation, bread and water release people from the chains of bondage. Whence come the chains?
Weekly there is a constant promise of reward and a re-commitment to follow. To hand our choices and feelings to above, and soak in what we are supposed to feel. All this to ultimately have our consequences. taken away. Dependence always from the outside and above. Always it seems we are nothing, and yet the universe was created for us. But was it? What if this dependence on another fails for some and doesn't work?
Missionaries....I have oft been repulsed by the idea in the recent years. The audacity of one person to actively push upon another their idea of what is best. I wrestle with this. But maybe I shouldn't. Everyone is free to listen or ignore. Some may find contentment in that path, and some may not. Man has had religion for centuries and it quite possibly is an evolutionary trait that helps man to work as a group rather than an individual. This trait moves him up the food chain. Perhaps it is natural to believe in external religious phenomena. Then again, if it is only a property of our nature, does not this ring a little hollow in the ultimate purpose of the universe? If we by our very belief that the universe was created for us, in fact prove ourselves as just being a natural piece of it in so doing?
Perhaps we are not so much separate entities from the universe as we would like to believe. Perhaps we are the universe itself. A sentient portion of the universe whose atoms ebb and flow with time from elements to sentient elements and back to elements.
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