Posted by:
forestpal
(
)
Date: April 21, 2014 03:36PM
Worse than boring, it was soul-sucking, depressing, abusive. I haven't been to a Mormon sacrament meeting for 8 years, but I still can smell the stuffy air. The cries of the children bothered me in a different way. I'm a mother and love children, but these were the screams of children being imprisoned, with parents' arms around them like straight jackets, forced to sit still in a dirty diaper. They were tired, hungry, often sick. But, respecting children like I do, I always thought that they could sense the hopeless and despair and phoniness of the people. Kids are sensitive to that sort of thing. They know when their parents are stressed out, too.
I always felt that discomfort. To escape, I would draw pictures on the program, write to-do lists, write notes to my friends for after, since we couldn't sit by each other or talk at church. I would write minute-by-minute, what I was going to do after I got out. 12:00 run home. 12:10 change to my shorts and jean jacket. 12:14 Eat a bowl of cereal. 12:15 Call Susie. Focusing on that was like a self-hypnosis. I could, in my mind, flee that boredom and imagine playing with my friends, eating ice cream. It was more interesting to sing all the harmonies of a hymn, switching from soprano to alto to tenor, and bass an octave higher. I would save the paper sacrament cup, and invented 100 different things you could do with a sacrament cup. Now they have plastic cups, but now people have i-phones!
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 03:39PM by forestpal.