On my relationship with my God and my faith community

 I have found the following talk by Elder Oakes before he joined The First Presidency helpful in knowing how to receive personal revelation and how to follow the current prophet.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2010/10/two-lines-of-communication?lang=eng

With a church based on continual revelation there is bound to be some ebb and flow in her teachings and Doctrine.  Look at the changes Joseph Smith experienced between the New York Period and the Nauvoo Period.  There were very many radical changes in teachings and doctrine.  With Brigham Young there was some push back from Josephs later Nauvoo teachings.  The church has largely ignored Joseph’s last speech “The King Follett Sermon” until very recently.  Wilford   Woodruff pushed back from the Adam God Theory, the practice of being sealed in the Temple to great men and prophets, and returned to the early practice of being sealed to our own kin.   Pres Nelson is pushing back from central correlation and moving to a family center, church supported model.

... "but all the men in the United States cannot prevent a man from thinking. There are not Apostles enough in the Church to prevent us from thinking, and they are not disposed to do so; but some people fancy because we have the Presidency and Apostles of the Church they will do the thinking for us. There are men and women so mentally lazy that they hardly think for themselves. To think calls for effort, which makes some men tired and wearies their souls. Now, brethren and sisters, we are surrounded with, such conditions that it requires not only thought, but the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Latter-day Saints, you must think for yourselves. No man or woman can remain in this Church on borrowed light." (J. Golden Kimball. April 1904 General Conference)

I love and enjoy the time, I spend with my faith community.  I am well respected in the community.  I am not willing to let it govern my personal relationship with God or in how I receive Personal Revelation.  This is a tip rope I am more than willing to walk.

The Gardener and the Cure

It is growing now, in the garage.
The Gardner brought the solution,
he tells you to believe.

You have no faith in the cure,
but peace it may bring.

This herb, this evil then, they tell you.
This gateway to Hell.

But you live in Hell, now.

To risk it all, now you do.
For the life of the loved one,

you do adore.

So many fights, through the years,
with each other, to gain the children.

The Gardner will be a 3rd child soon,
with the marriage of your daughter.

For now their is hope growing in the garage, and peace, in your soul.

Who am I

Who Am I?

I am a 54-year-old middle-aged man.  I am a father.  I am a husband. I am a son. I love to read.  I love to write essays and poetry.  I am very highly self-educated.  Because I am very high functioning on the Autism Spectrum, I have a need to continually gather fresh information.  As I get older I have a much more difficult time recalling the data at a whim. I am very good at taking two facts and creating a third fact that builds on the first two.  This talent used to drive my mother crazy.  She thought I was making fun of her lack of education when I would ask her questions and then create facts and then appeared to know more about the subject than she did.   

I am an unorthodox heretical nonconforming Mormon.  I am highly respected in my faith community because of my vast understanding of church history, and scripture study, and my depth of knowledge of religious matters.  I found about 10 years ago this knowledge left me with no lasting peace or enjoyment in life.   I can remember going outside and cursing god in my unhappiness in this situation.   As I prayed and worked through this faith crisis, I learned to universalize my faith and began to understand how God will redeem all mankind.  I do not have time to describe it in full here, but it is based on the Light Of Christ, The Law of Atonement, and our Temple Ordinances.  I believe God does speak to all and there have been plenty of non-Mormon prophets in the world.  I have spent decades of my life searching out and finding their writings.   Their study has enriched my life.

I am dirty and disorganized at times.  I sometimes have to be reminded to shower on a daily basis.  It has not been a problem in the last few years, but it caused me great difficulty in my early grade school years.  I had a poor experience in grade school.  I was intellectually gifted but socially backward.  I discovered in my forty’s this was most likely caused by my undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome.  Once I took the Aspie test my whole world became clearer.  I began to understand why I think and socialize differently than most of my friends, especially in grade school.

I am a father who was born sterile.  I discovered this after I had been married a couple of years and my wife asked me to take a fertility test.   I have the privilege of adopting two children, a boy, and a girl.  They are the joy of my wife and my life.  I am so grateful for the chance to be a father. I often feel like a failure as a father when I compare myself to others in the ward.  Then I remind myself  I was the best father I knew how to be and if I was not their father they would never have been born.  My adoption made their life possible and they have blessed my life and my wife’s life.

An assignment for Comm 150

Still the Poetry

Still, the poetry

From where doeth it come.
But cometh it does.

Till I come,
It reaches me.

Forevermore
And then the same.

Doeth it reach you?

Steven Bassett

Facebook September 29, 2016