Vulnerability

"I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure." (Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, p 34)

You do not belong here

Following is the copied the text of "You do not belong here – a high councilor’s talk about inclusion" by Geoff Nelson

On Sunday our high councilor spoke during Sacrament Meeting. It was an excellent talk that I feel should be shared with as many people as possible. Personal information has been removed, but otherwise the talk is here as it was given. Italicized emphases in the text were used in the written talk  from the high councilor.

I’ve been in this ward for a while now, but since this is a ward where many people come and go, I will briefly introduce myself and my family. [Talks about himself]. [Talks about his wife]. You don’t see her here because about 10 years ago she decided to leave the church. She joined the church in college, then after several years decided she no longer believed in it; so I guess you could say she had conversion experiences in both directions. [Talks about his children].

For the first few years we lived in this ward, I got to serve in the young mens presidency. I love that calling, but I’ve since been called to be a stake high councilor. That’s why you’re having to listen to me today. As part of that calling I get to sit in council with the stake presidency. I guess the conventional thing for me to do is to tell you that the stake president loves you. He hasn’t yet said that to me explicitly, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. I’ve observed him to be a man of remarkable faith and a very kind heart. I think we’re in good hands.

Every time I give a talk in church I feel obliged to begin with a warning, so here it is. I do not consider myself an expert on spiritual matters. I plan to share ideas that I hope will be helpful and inspiring, but please take them for what they are: the opinions and ideas of a guy who isn’t totally sure he knows what he’s talking about.

On top of that, I’ve chosen to speak today on a tricky topic, and I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to collect and structure my thoughts. So please bear with me, and try to listen with a forgiving attitude.

Many years ago I served a mission. It was a transformative experience for me. I was a proud, thick-headed kid, but through steady work and service I learned some profound lessons about the gospel. Most importantly, as I served people and tried to help them turn toward Christ, I was given glimpses into how much our Heavenly Father loves his children. Detailed memories have begun to fade, but the overall experience and its effects on me are still things that I deeply cherish.

Of course, not all of the experiences I had on my mission were positive ones, and as an entry point to my topic I want to describe a negative experience I had in the missionary training center. We had fairly regular meetings with general authorities of the church, and it was typical in those meetings for a choir to perform a song or two. My boys can tell you that I like to sing, but they can also probably tell you that I’m not especially good at it. Certainly I have no training, nor can I read music. But I decided to join the choir one week with my companion (who actually was a good singer). Early in the first practice, the choir leader said something about how baritones should sing this part, and basses should sing that part. I leaned over to my companion who was seated next to me and said “What should I do? I’m not sure if I’m a baritone or a bass.” At this point a missionary seated in front of me turned around with a scornful look on his face and said “If you don’t know that, then what are you doing here?”

I’m sure you can imagine how I felt. But I’m not telling you the story so you can feel sorry for me and my hurt feelings. And in fairness, the missionary had a point. But I want you to think about the message he was delivering: You do not belong here.

What I want to talk about today are the ways that we, as members of the church, might sometimes send similar messages to each other, albeit in more subtle ways than in my MTC story. I’m afraid much of what I’m going to say might seem like rambling, but let me begin by trying to be clear about what I’m trying to talk about. The gospel of Jesus Christ is one of inclusion: our God aims to save and exalt all of his beloved children. Ironically, the Church of Jesus Christ sometimes feels like one of exclusion: when people aren’t sure if they fully believe or belong, they often feel like they are being pushed out. What I want to talk about are some reasons why people start to feel like they don’t belong, and offer some suggestions for how we can make sure our church is a more welcoming place for such people.

When I talk about “people who wonder whether they belong here,” I’m not referring to some separate group of doubters or sinners. I suspect most, if not all, of us have felt this way before. More to the point, I have felt this way. And I don’t mean “I once felt this way a long time ago, before I became enlightened and gained a perfect unshakeable testimony.” I mean I have felt this way within the past month. So please understand that I am speaking about these issues from a place of empathy. And please allow yourself to hear what I’m saying as a message to you and about you, not just about “other people who don’t yet have a testimony.”

One of the main reasons that people can feel like they don’t belong in the church is that they don’t believe the doctrine as easily as others seem to believe it, or they don’t see the doctrine the way the majority of members seem to see it. One of my favorite social psychology experiments was one conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s, aimed at understanding conformity. Subjects in the experiment were brought into a room with seven other participants. However, the seven other participants were “confederates” – they were in on the experiment. The participants would be shown a card with a line segment on it, and another card with three line segments on it, and each participant was then asked to say which of the three line segments was the same length as the one on the first card. The answer in each case was fairly obvious: it wasn’t hard at all to tell which segment was the same length. The seating was arranged so that the true experimental subject always answered last. In the first round, the seven confederates would each in turn give the correct answer, followed by the subject. Then they’d be shown another set of line segments, and again the seven confederates would each give the correct answer, followed by the subject. But in the third round, all seven confederates would unanimously give the wrong answer: for instance, they’d all say that line segment A was the match when in fact it was obvious that line A was too long. This would put the true experimental subject in a dilemma: should he agree with what seven people in front of him so confidently reported? Or should he answer based on what his own eyes clearly told him? I won’t belabor this by telling you about the results of the experiment – I’m sure you can guess that there was a high rate of conformity. But I want to tell you about my favorite part. When I first read about this study, I saw a picture that was taken during the experiment. In the picture, you can see the eight participants seated around a long table. Seven of them look completely calm, and one of them is leaning forward, squinting and straining at the picture of the line segments, with his mouth open and an utterly perplexed look on his face.

What is my point in describing this to you? Well, at church I have occasionally felt like that 8th guy with the perplexed look on his face. Sometimes it has felt like everyone around me is saying stuff that seems a little crazy, and then reassuring each other about how right they all are. And how do I feel when this happens? Like I don’t belong here. And I suspect that some of you have felt the same way.

Our discussions in church sometimes seem geared toward achieving agreement and consensus. Surely there are some basic principles we all expect to agree on, but we should try not to be uncomfortable when others voice opinions that differ from our own. When Jesus called 12 disciples, I doubt he expected them to be clones of one another. We get glimpses in the New Testament of the disciples’ different personalities: Peter is passionate, Thomas skeptical, James and John were thought to be bold and quick-tempered. I imagine that this group of disciples didn’t always agree with one another, and I like to believe that in some ways Jesus wanted it that way.

As members of the church, we tend to get especially uncomfortable when someone expresses serious doubts about the gospel or the church, or shares opinions that conflict with standard doctrine. This is natural, but unfortunate. Everyone struggles with faith, but it is sad when those who are struggling feel like their voices aren’t welcome, or their opinions a threat. Instead of being treated with patience and empathy, they feel like they are being told “if you don’t believe it, then you don’t belong here” – or, even more insidiously – “if you don’t believe all of it, then you don’t belong here.”

How can we make church a place where everyone feels welcome, including those who are wrestling with doubt? I think a good place to start is with empathy. I once heard an apostle give a talk in general conference, directing the talk explicitly toward those who had doubts about the church. The way I heard the talk, the message could have been summarized as “To those of you who have doubts: What’s your problem? Get over it already.” I’m sure that’s not the message that was intended. But it made me think about how important it is for people, myself included, to feel validated – to be told yes, some things are hard to reconcile, and you are not alone.

If we want to be more empathetic toward people who struggle with faith, or more forgiving of ourselves when our own faith falters, a good place to start is to recognize that the Lord appears to have intended for us to struggle. In church culture we like to use the language of certainty: we are taught to say that we know the church is true, and we like words like “perfect” and “firm” and “unshakeable.” But, in my opinion, an honest assessment of our relationship with God must admit that it involves a great deal of mystery and uncertainty and confusion. We’re told that if we’re unsure, we can just ask Him in prayer to tell us it’s true. But for many of us the answers to such prayers don’t come easily; inspirations, if and when they finally come, may be “dimly perceived” and difficult to interpret. I recently read a commentator who suggested we understand this not as evidence of God’s indifference, but as a way in which God poses the important question: “What will you do now?”

If we start with the premise that God is mysterious and that faith takes time and effort to cultivate, we will likely have more patience with our own doubts and those of others. If someone expresses a skeptical or unorthodox opinion in Sunday School, we won’t shift in our seats and think of how we can say something faith-promoting to offset the deviation. We won’t panic and call a meeting to discuss how to fix the problem, fretting with furrowed brows that “she doesn’t have a testimony, and she’s already 13!!” We’ll simply recognize that even if the person is at a different place than we are, he or she is traveling on the same highly nonlinear path that we are. And if we’re prompted to respond, it will likely be to express empathy: maybe simply saying, “Ah, I know what you mean.”

I also think it’s important that we not assume faith crises are the consequence of sin or neglect. Sometimes when a person’s faith faltered and he or she fell away from the church, I have heard people say “she must not have been reading her scriptures” or “there must have been some sin in his life.” It is likely true that, on average, people who stop coming to church read their scriptures less than people who do come to church. But correlation is not causation. People who diligently study the scriptures can still have crises of faith. But the real danger in these attitudes is not simply that they’re inaccurate; it’s that they’re dismissive and disrespectful to people who are genuinely struggling, with a sincere heart, to find and understand truth. If we convince ourselves that faith crises only happen to people who are doing something wrong, the message we’ll be sending to people with doubts is “if you’re not a believer, I’ll infer you’re a sinner.” This is not likely to make them feel welcome.

You may have noticed an implicit premise in what I’m saying, which is that we should want everyone to feel welcome at church, including those with doubts and concerns about the church. And it’s possible you’re asking yourself, “Well, do we really want them here? We’re here to nurture our faith. Do we really want to increase the number of skeptics in our congregations?” My response to these questions is, first, too many skeptics is not a problem we’re likely to have. For now, at least, we’re too good at driving them away. Second, with the possible exception of people who come to church to willfully antagonize, I think the answer is an emphatic yes: we should want everyone to be here, and we should want everyone to feel welcome here. Did Christ associate only with the faithful? He ministered to believers and unbelievers, to the sinful and to the repentant. You may say “Well – he was the Son of God, so his testimony was too strong to be shaken by anyone’s unbelief.” But I suggest an alternative: he was the Son of God, so his love was too strong to be shaken by anyone’s unbelief.

I’ve talked about how people who have doubts can feel pushed away from participating in the church. Another threat to our sense of belonging is a perception that we’re not as righteous or as spiritual as everyone else. Ours is a church with many programs and prescriptions, many dos and many don’ts. It’s hard to keep up with all the things we’re supposed to be doing, and easy to feel like we’re not measuring up – especially if it seems like everyone else in the ward is doing everything right. When someone in church talks about how sweet it was to sneak in some family history work in between dropping off dinner for a widow and preparing a family home evening lesson, and all we can remember from last week was how many swear words we said under our breath, how do we start to feel? Like we don’t belong.

A missionary companion of mine once told me that when he gave priesthood blessings, the words came to him in inspiration so clearly it was like reading the words off a scroll. To help me understand what he meant, he said it was like the scrolling of the prologue in the Star Wars movies. I could have reacted to this by thinking “how blessed I am to have a companion who is so attuned to the Spirit!” But mostly I just thought “Wow, I’ve never experienced anything even close to that. I guess I’m really lousy at this spirituality thing.” In other words: maybe this isn’t where I belong. I mention this to set up a simple suggestion: when we describe our spiritual experiences, we should be modest and honest about the nature of those experiences. We may be tempted to exaggerate them, thinking that embellishment will amplify the faith-promoting effect; but in fact this can have exactly the opposite effect. It can make people doubt the validity and worth of their own less dramatic spiritual experiences. Relatedly: if we “know with every fiber of our being” that something is true, I suppose we should go ahead and say it. But if not, we should never pretend. As Sister Wixom said in her talk during the most recent general conference, the ward should not be a place to “put on a perfect face.” If we present our true, honest selves, then those around us will feel comfortable being their true, honest selves. And it’s the true honest selves that the Lord loves, no matter what stage of spiritual progression we are at.

I believe that Jesus Christ lives and that he loves us. I believe that he loves us in spite of, and perhaps even because of, our faults and foibles. I believe he understands our struggles with faith, and expects each of us to travel a different road to redemption. My prayer is that we’ll treat each other with love, patience, and perspective as we travel our respective roads.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Come, Flounder With Us

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Since then my experience as a church member, or as a father and a husband, has been much the same. Never an unmixed success. Never a performance that I could feel I hadn’t unnecessarily tainted with sins of commission and omission. I am a shabby Mormon. These failures are better than successes elsewhere. I have found more joy making a hash of things in the gospel path than would be possible on any other path pursued however flawlessly. I mean that. 

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
C.S. Lewis, in Screwtape, showed us that the fear of death was harder to endure than death.
“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for.” 

One of the themes of this blog is that failure is always an option. I would almost say that it is the only option. Come, flounder with us. ("Being a Mormon is Hard", Junior Ganymede, Nov, 4, 2013 )

My experience is the same as Junior Ganymede. I don't think highly of my experience on my mission. I attribute nearly all of my success since to my wonderful wife who has inspired, and and times, prodded me in the way I knew was healthiest for me to go.

The last paragraph above contains a point that should not be missed. I think this life is designed for us to fail. I think that is the primary test for each of us. In the infinite variety of strengths and weaknesses were are all gifted with, the greatest is the opportunity to act in relation to our failure.

Will we, like my deepest tendency is, attempt to hide until we have fully overcome our most shameful attributes? Or instead, will we forge ahead and decide that we cannot be what we want to be, what the Lord has said we can be, without his hand.

Like Peter faltered so do we all. It is only through the hand of the Lord and the loving word of chastisement that we both receive his grace and recognize our failings and can therefore begin our work to overcome them, hand in hand with the Lord.

We must be willing to dare greatly and be the (wo)man in the arena. Not waiting until we are bullet-proof. Letting others see us, and hopefully join with us in a heavenly quest of evolving, growing, becoming like God.

But I'll be danged if I ain't just as good!

I love line from Oklahoma, "I don't say I'm better than anybody else,: But I'll be danged if I ain't just as good!" ("The Farmer and the Cowman")

We have to stop putting women on a pedestal or in the gutter. Women are humans. Men are humans. One is not better than the other. One is not worse than the other.

Women are not more spiritual than men. Men are not more capable than women. It has been posited as self-evident that all humans start out as equals. Perhaps a better way to say it is that all humans have an equal capacity to improve. And really isn't that what brings meaning to life; that I can be a better husband, father, provider, etcetera etcetera?

So let's stop it. Stop comparing ourselves to others, men women or children. Let's be willing to be vulnerable and begin improving in non-trivial ways.

The Man in the Arena

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ("Citizenship In A Republic" Delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910)

I love this quote. I love Brene Brown. She is my vulnerability hero.



I also love this talk from her, "The power of vulnerability"

Empathy vs Sympathy

The power of empathy is great. The voice is Brené Brown. She is the speaker from Ted that spoke about the connection between shame and vulnerability.

Four qualities of empathy from Theresa Wiseman (Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, Kings College London, London, UK) 

- Perspective taking - the ability to take the perspective of another person.  Or to recognize their perspective as their truth
- Staying out of judgement
- Recognizing and understanding emotion in other people
- Communicating your understanding of that persons feelings  

Empathy is feeling with people.
Empathy is a sacred space.
Empathy is a vulnerable choice. In order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.
...
Rarely if ever does an empathic response begin with "At least"
"I had a miscarriage" - "At least you know you can get pregnant"
To silver line an expression of difficulty or pain.
...
Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.

Listening to Shame

"Being vulnerable is essential to wholehearted living."

"You're like the worst vulnerability role model ever"

"Vulnerability is not weakness and that myth is profoundly dangerous"

Let me ask you honestly (and I'll give you this warning, I'm trained as a therapist so I can outwait you uncomfortably. So it you can just raise your hand, that would be awesome)  How many of you, honestly, when you're thinking about doing something vulnerable or saying something vulnerable, think "Vulnerability is weakness". How many of you think of vulnerability and weakness synonymously?  [short pause for hands to raise]  The majority of people. Now let me ask you this question; this past week at Ted, how many of you when you saw vulnerability up here, thought is was pure courage? [another pause for hands]  

Vulnerability is not weakness. I define vulnerability as "emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty" It fuels our daily lives.  

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Shame drive two big tapes [scripts or sayings], "never good enough" and if you can talk it out of that one, "who do you think you are?"

Confronting shame brings vulnerability. Vulnerability brings power

A great Ted Talk by Brené Brown, "Listening to shame" (youtube)

"Shame is not guilt. Shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is 'I am bad'. Guilt is 'I did something bad' "

"Here's what you need to know. Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders. And here's what you even need to know more, guilt is inversely correlated with those things."

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Shame is organized by gender...
For women the best example I can give you is Aun-geli, the commercial. "I can put the wash on the line. Pack the lunches, hand out the kisses, and be at work five to 9. I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never let you forget you're a man."
For women, shame is "Do it all. Do it perfectly and never let them see you sweat."
...
For men shame is not a bunch of competing, conflicting expectations. Shame is one. Do not be perceived as weak. 

Here is where it starts making the connection from shame to vulnerability.

Empathy is the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgement. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive. The two most powerful words when we're in struggle: "me too"

--
Update 2017-06-05
"Shame verses Guilt - Brene' Brown" https://youtu.be/DqGFrId-IQg

Update 2018-09-18
Here is a nice summary from a FB Post

https://youtu.be/cIKae2k6UHM

Praying with your Feet

I friend of mine Geoff Nelson posted this. I wanted to make sure to remember it, so I copied it here.

This is a transcript of unprepared remarks by Russell Hancock
1st Counselor, Menlo Park Stake Presidency

to the Valparaiso Ward Elders Quorum
6 May 2012




I’m grateful for the invitation to speak to your quorum.

My objective today is to tell you about my faith journey and offer up some conclusions and observations. I’m going to speak the only way I know how: honestly and with complete candor, nothing withheld. It means making myself vulnerable in front of group I don’t know well (yet), but we think you have a right to know your new stake presidency. If you sustain me as your leader then you need to know exactly what it is you are sustaining. 

So here, for what it’s worth, is my story.

But first: it would appear that there are two types of Mormons, or at least two paths to conversion. 

One set of members base their testimony on some sort of sensory encounter which they describe as a burning in the bosom, a witness of the spirit, or some sort of infallible encounter with the Holy Ghost. They might hear a voice, or have a tingling, or find themselves in tears, or some other such sensory experience. Many people that I trust and admire describe their witness in these terms, and I believe them. I absolutely believe them. If I’m being completely truthful I will also tell you there are others who speak of this, and I wonder if they are confusing the Holy Ghost with something else, something emotional or intentional or overwrought. But I have decided never to judge, to accept their claims at face value, and I do not doubt the possibility of such experiences. 

The scriptures of course describe this. The most famous instance of it is the promise at the end of Moroni where we’re told to test the gospel and seek a manifestation of the spirit. We’re also taught that the manifestation of the spirit will be the Holy Ghost revealing truth to us.

So that’s one way of ascertaining truth. 

Now here’s the true confession: I’ve never had it. This has never come to me. That’s not how I’ve obtained my truth. 

Now, for most of my life, especially while praying, this is something that led to the sense that I was alone, and led me to feel like I was a second class Mormon--second rate because I couldn’t accomplish this sensory, infallible encounter with the Holy Ghost. I thought that there was something wrong with me. 

It came to a head for me when I was in high school and began asking the big question that looms over the life of a young Mormon male: am I going to serve a mission? And by the way, I was born in the church, “born of goodly parents,” and raised to have faith. And I loved the church--loved everything about it. So as that crucial milestone came in my life where I had to decide whether to go on a mission, I wanted more than anything to serve! I wanted to do this, and yet when I was honest with myself I had to confess I didn’t actually know for myself that the Church was true. I was following my parents’ religion and way of life, and the testimony of family, friends, and ward members. 

Here is the next confession that I need to make: I did something I’m not proud of. I began to speak more loudly and in a voice that was more shrill, and I would actually testify. I would stand up in church meetings and say things that I had no right to say, that I didn’t yet know for my own self. But I thought that in the act of saying them--and saying them more loudly--the testimony would come. So there’s another confession for you. 

Well, my public speaking notwithstanding, I did what Moroni challenged me to do. I think I was very sincere. I worked very hard to pray and I approached my Heavenly Father in that prescribed way and I asked for a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. And brethren, it didn’t come, I knew that if I was being honest with myself I had to admit I wasn’t feeling any palpable sense of the Holy Spirit. 

So what am I to do? Well brethren, here’s the next confession: I served a mission. You could say I caved. But I wanted to serve, and I think I had righteous reasons, but I should also tell you I felt like it was an important rite of passage. I felt all of the pressure that you feel to serve a mission, knew the opportunities I would be foreclosing if I didn’t, so I submitted my papers and received a call. 

So I get into the mission field, where it started to trouble me that I was saying things to investigators I thought were true but didn’t know were true. That troubled me. So I thought it was crucial to continue this effort, to find out for myself if the church is in fact everything we’re taught. In fact, I would wait for my companion to fall asleep every night, and when I heard his heavy rhythmic breathing I would get up again and spend the night trying to induce this thing. 

Well, it didn’t happen. That manifestation that was promised in Moroni eluded me. So this was a crisis point for me and I actually felt like if I was going to be true and have integrity then I should probably confess these things to my leadership, to my mission president, and also to my parents. So I actually wrote a letter home to my parents saying that I felt I was a fraud: I loved the church, but that I didn’t know it was true through this encounter with the Holy Ghost. 

Instantly, back comes a letter from my mother. You have to know my mother to fully appreciate this. She doesn’t suffer fools. She can be very stern. So back comes her letter, and she says “Rusty, enough of this nonsense. This is pure foolishness. Stop this at once. Stop praying with your knees, start praying with your feet.” And that was a sweet relief for me. It was complete and total liberation. I took her advice and decided “I’m going to stop doing this thing. I’m going to stop holding a gun to the Lord’s head and insisting on a sign. I’m just going to live my life as if the gospel is true.”

So you must understand: what I did upon reading that letter, was that I made a wager. I decided to bet my entire life that the gospel was true. I decided I would wager my life that the church is everything it claims it is and live out my life accordingly. So that is what I’ve done and what I continue to do.

Now, there’s more I need to tell you on the subject because of course, the story doesn’t just end there. The kicker is that in the course of serving and fulfilling priesthood duty, knowledge does in fact come. But for me it has come in ways that were unbidden. Knowledge for me has not arrived because it was beckoned, or because I said ‘give me a revelation.’ For me it has come in ways I can barely describe, and never on command, and I’m not even sure that they’re sensory or palpable. But I can tell you brethren and sisters that I somehow crossed a threshold into an area that I think we can call something more approaching knowledge. When I speak with conviction about our church it’s not merely with hope and with faith but with something that is approaching knowledge. That I can tell you. But it’s never come on my terms and never come to me on my timetable. 

Now here’s what’s striking. Every time I share these experiences I am assailed by people who tell me “that’s my feeling, that’s my experience too.” So I’m starting to draw conclusions that there really do seem to be two sets of Latter-day Saints. The two sets are people for whom these are experiences are forthcoming and those for whom they’re not. That’s a curious outcome, but there it is. I think we can observe it empirically throughout the church. 

Now there is a section in the Doctrine and Covenants that speaks to this, and for some reason it doesn’t get the press it deserves, certainly not as much press as Moroni. It’s section 46, and it says:

13 To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world.

That’s me, okay? That’s definitely me. And yet believing on the words of another is described as a spiritual gift--a legitimate spiritual gift. One that we might even seek, to believe on their words. This is me. And today I don’t think that makes me less of a Latter-day Saint, or less of a disciple. Actually I think I can stand before you and make the case that this makes me a gifted Latter-day Saint, and that gift I have is to believe on their words. 

Furthermore, long years later, many years later, I encountered the writings and the talks given by a number of general authorities in the church, and if I could only have known this at the time of my mission and when I was very young, it would have saved me so much consternation, self-doubt, and recrimination. 

I want to share with you the story of President David O. McKay, which I had never heard! But he stood up in the 1968 General Conference and told a story that turns out to be just like mine. I had never heard this from a church leader. Let me share it with you. This is President McKay:

I am going to tell you what happened to me as a boy upon the hillside near my home in Huntsville. I was yearning, just as you boys are yearning, to know that the vision given to the Prophet Joseph Smith was true, and that this Church was really founded by revelation, as he claimed. I thought that the only way a person could get to know the truth was by having a revelation or experiencing some miraculous event ... So one day I was hunting cattle. While climbing a steep hill, I stopped to let my horse rest, and there, once again, an intense desire came over me to receive a manifestation of the truth of the restored gospel. I dismounted, threw my reins over my horse's head, and there, under a bush, I prayed that God would declare to me the truth of his revelation to Joseph Smith. I am sure that I prayed fervently and sincerely and with as much faith as a young boy could muster. 

At the conclusion of the prayer, I arose from my knees, threw the reins over my faithful pony's head, and got into the saddle. As I started along the trail again, I remember saying to myself: "No spiritual manifestation has come to me. If I am true to myself, I must say I am just the same boy that I was before I prayed." I prayed again when I crossed Spring Creek, near Huntsville, and again in the evening to milk our cows. 

The Lord did not see fit to give me an answer on that occasion, it wasn’t until I had been appointed president of the Scottish Mission, that the spiritual manifestation for which I had prayed as a boy came. And it simply came as a natural sequence to the performance of duty. 

So that is President McKay. That’s interesting! And I want to read to you this quote from Elder Oaks, which was interesting:

I have met persons who told me they have never had a witness from the Holy Ghost because they have never felt their bosom “burn within” them. What does a “burning in the bosom” mean? Does it need to be a feeling of caloric heat, like the burning produced by combustion? If that is the meaning, then I have never had a burning in the bosom.

That was Elder Oaks. Interesting, right? Now here’s Elder Packer:

Some have been misled by expecting revelations too frequently. I have learned that strong, impressive spiritual experiences do not come to us very frequently. Revelations from God—the teachings and directions of the Spirit—are not constant. We believe in continuing revelation, not continuous revelation. We are often left to work out problems without the dictation or specific direction of the Spirit. That is part of the experience we must have in mortality. The people I have found most confused in this Church are those who seek personal revelations on everything. 

Let me read you another one, this from Elder McConkie:

Some people postpone acknowledging their testimony until they have experienced a miraculous event. They fail to realize that with most people—especially those raised in the Church—gaining a testimony is not an event but a process. Being born again is a gradual thing, except in a few isolated instances that are so miraculous that they get written up in the scriptures. As far as the generality of the members of the Church are concerned, conversion is a process; and it goes step by step, degree by degree, level by level, from a lower state to a higher, from grace to grace, until the time that the individual is wholly turned to the cause of righteousness.

Boy, that’s me! That describes my experience precisely. I wanted to share that for what it’s worth. 

Now, I also want to point out that the Book of Mormon actually proposes actually two different models for obtaining faith and testimony. This is very important. The one model we’ve covered and everybody knows because it gets all the press, and that model is Moroni 10:4: Ask and have a witness be delivered unto you. That’s a legitimate model; it’s scriptural, I believe that it’s true and that it can take place exactly as described. And yet there’s another model laid out very clearly in the same book, which we must also take as scripture and therefore literal and therefore equally valid. It describes an entirely different path to faith and testimony and it is found in Alma 32, where the gospel is likened unto a seed. It uses an agricultural metaphor.. That one really resonates with me. It describes my own life experience. Here we’re not asked to have this dramatic confrontation with Deity, to seek out something bordering on mystical  and to have it delivered on the spot. Instead, we’re asked to do something altogether different, which is to cultivate a seed, to nurture it through our actions. It’s the horticultural approach, where a testimony is a thing to be carefully planted, cultivated, watered, tested. And what do you test? You test the fruits, right? To me the fruits of the gospel are delicious. They pass my taste test. 

I find that a curiosity why missionaries don’t actually lead with that. I would lead with that if I had it to do over again. This is what I would be asking my investigators to do. I would say “just plant the seed, test it. Try it. You might have to try it over a lifetime, but take a look at this seed and then make your own decision on the merits, whether it is good or not. That’s been my experience. To me the fruits are so beautiful and so good that I’ve been willing to bet my entire life upon it.

So there’s my story, and we your stake presidency feel that you have a right to know us in this way. You have a right to understand our spiritual journeys, how we come by the things that we  say. And I will make you a promise right here, that you will never hear me say anything over the pulpit or in a church setting that is beyond my knowledge. If you listen carefully you will hear me choosing words like “believe” as in “I believe this is true” or “I trust this is true” or “I have accumulated enough evidence to persuade me this is the better path.” I’ll be using words very carefully.

Now having shared my story, I want to make five observations for all of us here in the Menlo Park Stake, each on our own faith journeys. Indulge me in five observations. Here they are; 

First, and I want to say this very clearly: if you happen to be somebody who wonders; if you happen to be somebody who is experiencing doubt about the church or about the gospel or any of the great existential questions, if you happen to be a person who wonders I say: Marvelous! How marvelous that is! This is your home. You belong here with us, and you are badly wanted. I want to be very clear about this, the Stake Presidency wants to have a community of saints who are probing, who are discovering, who are testing, who are faith testing, and who are making serious, critical investigation. We’re not trying to cultivate a stake of passive believers, mouthing platitudes. We are trying to cultivate active seekers. This is the kind of stake that we seek to lead. So that’s the first thing I want to make clear,  that if you are finding doubts or asking questions, this is a safe and appropriate place to do that. And I can say that because my own Hosanna have passed through the crucible of doubt. 

The scriptures make it perfectly clear that there is a place for doubt and for skepticism and that this is part of the journey. Remember in the book of Mark when the man seizes upon the Savior and says “Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief,” and how the Savior looked especially kindly upon him. Count me as one of those. 

Observation number two is to issue a challenge to those who are feeling comfortable, or those who are feeling complacent in the faith. We want to root out complacency. We don’t think there’s a place for that in the church. Forgive me, but I think there are a few too many Mormons who have decided that because the church is true, we therefore have all the answers to all of the questions, all of the theological questions that have plagued scholars and theologians for centuries. Disciples have been breaking their heads open over these questions for centuries, but because we have the gospel, we know every answer and there’s nothing left for us to do but to be perfunctory Mormons. We don’t think this stake should be a place where people can be smug. Nobody is excused from this lifelong journey of probing and questioning. An unexamined faith is not worth having. 

Not only that, there is yet so much truth that need to be revealed, that needs to be discovered. Remember we believe in continuing revelation. So there is a great deal more for us to do. I fear that many of us confuse faith with depth, and this we must never do. So the second observation I wanted to make is that all of us have a duty to examine our faith, and to be breaking open our heads all over the great questions that our theology poses. It’s breathtaking if you allow yourself to participate in that kind of an exercise. 

Here’s the third observation that I would like to make. The church is a dynamic organization. By dynamic I mean it changes. The gospel is timeless but the Church is not. I have lived long enough to witness the Church make many great and significant changes in my lifetime. Significant things, things like doctrines, teachings, or practices about women, about priesthood, about the garments we wear, among others. So this is significant. We should all understand that the church is a dynamic thing, and one that will grow and change and mature, and we will witness it in our lifetimes. 

Here’s my fourth observation. I want to suggest that we have a role to play in that evolution. We should be agents in helping discover truth, agents in helping the church grow and increase and improve as an institution. Now we make distinctions of course between the gospel and the church right? There was a great talk in this past conference about that, the difference between the church and the gospel. Read that and apply it to our stake as well. Over the 9 years of our stake presidency I’m sure you’ll see many things come and go, changes made. We want you to be enlisted in the change. We want you to feel like you are agents in this. We want you to be innovative with us, and entrepreneurial and creative. We want you to bring your best thinking and we want you to help us. 

Here’s the last observation I’d like to make. It’s an invitation to the members of our stake. We hope that you’ll pray with your knees and also pray with your feet. We want you to pray on your knees, we rejoice in those prayers. We seek those prayers, but we also want the stake full of people who are caught up in the work. It’s a work of compassion. It’s a work of saving, one person at a time. It’s a work of sweat and equity in this place where we’re trying to build a portion of the kingdom. And it’s our experience (it’s certainly my experience) that in the act of service, in the act of fulfilling our duty, this is where the greater knowledge comes, the greater light and knowledge. So we want encourage that among all of us. 

Well, we’re living in an exciting time, when the church (I think) is asking more and more, asking more of us, asking us to be more like Ammon who served the king, who was willing to serve all his days. The church is asking us to be more like Ammon. The church is asking us to be less like Samuel the Lamanite: declarative, standing on the wall, shouting the truth. There’s a place and time for that, of course, and in stake conference I’m going to speak on this subject. But the church here locally is trying to be a bit more like Ammon, praying with our feet, ministering to the people around us. It’s really exciting, to be a part of this. Our mission, for example, has stopped all tracting, on a pilot basis. Right now we’re not tracting! We’re working with members, and seeking out service opportunities for our missionaries. We’re going to take that very seriously, and it’s a way that we’ll be doing that praying with our feet. So that’s the invitation that we want to make to all of our members.

Thanks again for inviting me. I would love to answer questions and make this a dialogue now, instead of a monologue.