So the whole blessing the food thing was something that always bothered me in the church. People always acted like it was some sacred ordinance that if not preformed will cause your food to turn into toxic bites of death. The whole thing in Mormonism is turned into a completely empty prayer where you say the same damn things over and over without giving it any thought. I always hated how insincere the whole thing was. It seems to have turned from a tradition of giving thanks for your food to, like everything else in the church, a ceremony devoid of meaning and substance.

Bless the meat, damn the skin. Open your mouth and shove it in.

Good bread, good meat, good God, let's eat. Amen

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, he who eats the fastest eats the most. Amen

(The second was our family classic.)

"It seems to have turned from a tradition of giving thanks for your food to, like everything else in the church, a ceremony devoid of meaning and substance."

Agreed. TBM's will say an extra prayer if someone forgets to "bless the food". They forget about the gratitude and think that god is busy blessing every good Mormon's food all day...and helping them find keys, etc... We still pray at meals because of my TBM wife. When she asks me to bless the food I sometimes put my hands over the food like I'm about to give it a priesthood blessing. I don't think she appreciates that. See if you can get invited to bless Thanksgiving dinner with your family, place both hands on the turkey (or cradle it like a baby if you prefer), bow your head...

Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yaaaay GOD!

Joseph started it, when Emma tried to knock him off for screwing teenage girls by poisoning his coffee.
He figured she was just gullible enough to think he actually did have some kind of magical power from 'god,' and that if he 'blessed' his food before eating/drinking it, it would magically make all the poison go away -- so she shouldn't bother.
Apparently it worked.

:)

I've actually had mormons tell me that 'blessing the food' will make it so anything bad in it won't hurt you. One of the first things to crack my shelf was when a load of us in our mormon boy scout troop got sick at a meeting from bad potato salad, despite the food having been thoroughly blessed by a member of the bishopbric. It was one of my first, "But, they said..." moments!

OK, so if jello and funeral potatoes become healthy when blessed, why doesn't it work on coffee, tea, etc? I'd love to ask a TBM that. Maybe that's why God forbids those things--the blessing just doesn't work on those things. Celestial physics.

It was always much easier to just "bless" all the groceries when we bought them and then do away with individual "blessings" on the prepared food!

Or so it seems to me...

BeenThereDunnThatExMo Wrote:
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> It was always much easier to just "bless" all the
> groceries when we bought them and then do away
> with individual "blessings" on the prepared food!
>
> Or so it seems to me...

Oh, but that neglects the fact that Stan (being very enamored of fire) might do nasty things to the food during the cooking...!
<grin>

As long as you didn't forget to bless the hands that prepare it. Forget about the rest of the person, just the hands.

Both of my kids got married the year that we also left the church. The people they married didn't seem particularly religious.

The first big meal together was ThanksGiving. My husband usually said the prayer for that meal. That year, dinner was ready, everyone was seated, and he said that it was a good time to make new family traditions. We could all vote on how we'd like things to go. Who wants to say the prayer? silence. Who thinks we should have a toast and for get the prayer? All wine glasses clinked to the center of the table.

So now, for our family get togethers we give a toast, and no prayer. It makes more sense. The toasts are never the same. I really like our new tradition.

On my mission I never prayed over breakfast or lunch, simply because we never did at my house growing up, it was only ever dinner.

Anyway, it drove all my companions CRAZY that I "never" prayed before eating.

They would get so offended, try to rope into praying with them, guilt trip me.

I just didn't get it. Same with closing my eyes and folding my arms. Why? is what I always asked. It doesn;t say in the bible that your eyes need to be closed...

"It shows respect!" they all said.

"What's respectful about closing your eyes?"

"Be quiet Elder"

Dad would say a long and boring blessing over dinner, glorying in his faux King James rhetoric. Meanwhile, the rest of us were getting restless in our dinette chairs as the food that Mom had boiled the flavor out of congealed and went cold on the table. I think the prophet got blessed more than the watery instant mashed potatoes. My glass of blue powdered milk lost its refrigerator chill as Dad droned on. I believe he was blessing the church building fund at this point.

By the time our alloy flatware stabbed into our gray meat the food was tepid at best, its heat having followed Dad's rambling speech heavenward. There was a blue shaker of sugar to pour over the soggy rice, and salt and pepper to season the flaccid vegetables fresh from the can. A dry Betty Crocker pan cake slathered with a frosting made of dyed lard and sugar was offered for dessert. Kool Aid and Jello were sometimes included for color, if not nutrients. Having exhausted her maternal energy by preparing the sumptuous feast, Mom retreated to her bedroom for some well deserved tranquilizer time. Us kids got to clean up and wash dishes while our stomachs churned in an angry effort to digest the convenience food products.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2014 04:26PM by donbagley.

LOL Good one Don

Man, that would really suck.

donbagley Wrote:
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Don, you're on a real roll lately...the prose is flowing from your fingers like honey from a Deseret Beehive! ;-)

This is some great writing, Don.

Sounds just like dinner way back when. Great description!

I didn't get the powdered milk though. I wish. My mother had a milk cow. The milk always had a disgusting layer cream on top that would make me gag. On the really bad days some of the poop floaties would escape the strainer and be coated in cream and stuck to the side of the glass. Cured me of drinking milk. I haven't drank a glass of milk for about 50 years.

Blessing food has always been shallow to me, I hated saying it because to me it was only words with no real meaning. Long prayers are so very boring, though only a few pompous people in my family do that.

My favorite was coming to the dinner table late and quietly offering my own thanks, only to be informed that "it had already been blessed. One of my early "What the..." moments.

"I thought it was to say thanks for '[my] daily bread.' "
"Well, yeah. And to bless it."
"Is it not going to metabolize without a prayer?!"

And I got shushed. Weird times.

I know just what you mean about the food already being blessed. this happened a lot on my mission we would go to some members house and they would give us some food with the disclaimer that it had already been blessed. I didn't want to push it but I always thought to myself "so what, it is not an ordinance, it should just be giving thanks for what you are eating not something you just check off your to due list."

Once I was asked to give a blessing on the food at girls' camp. I did, and tried to make it a meaningful prayer, but I forgot to actually say the magical words blessing the food. Immediately there was an outcry, "She forgot to bless the food!" Another girl jumped in front of me, "I'll do it," and she said a super-quick and apparently super-magic blessing on the food. Mine didn't count. That stung for a while, a slap in the face. Yet another "follow the form, forget the soul" example.

I never understood this either. If the food needed to be blessed, why didn't we do it in bulk when it came from the store? If we bless our food storage do we not have to bless it during the year we're forced to eat that garbage? And we wouldn't survive without the clothes we wear. Why don't we say a blessing on those when we put them on in the morning? And how does the phrase "nourish and strengthen our bodies" magically make cookies and punch as nutritious as fruits and vegetables?

I asked my Dad all these questions once and he finally just gave up trying to answer. He told me to write a letter to the profit and ask him.

I am married to a Catholic....and when we're with her family for a meal there is a blessing with all the crossing BS....and I try and avoid having to say a blessing but in deference to my dear wife, I sometimes do it....but it is not enjoyable.

I feel the same way! I don't like saying dinner prayers. They always feel meaningless and robotic. I have never understood why the food needs a blessing. Blessing sounds like you are trying to get the food to come back to life. Like how they give blessing to people who are ill. If you are going to say a prayer at dinner time it should be to thank God for the food. There is no reason to ask blessings on food.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2014 10:51PM by bella10.

I don't think I would say "Bless you" to my food if it sneezed. I would be too astonished.

The only time I was ever "offended" by religion, was at a family reunion buffet at my TBM brother's house. There are a lot of relatives that are now ex-Mormon, and have joined all sorts of other religions, and married people from a variety of religions, Knowing this, my brother gave what I thought was the ideal blessing. It was not a Mormon blessing, but a general, God-loving blessing of thanks. My brother has a way with words. Afterwards, our cousin't husband, a Jewish rabbi, asked if he could give his prayer, and he did, and it was very, very long.

Didn't my nice brother's words get through to God?

It's the same God, right?

And the same gratitude.

The next reunion was at another cousin's house, and she said, "We will now bow our heads in silence, for our individual prayers of thanks for the food." Good solution.

Our PE class in high school (from Canada) went to help a local church (non LDS) with some service. Our PE teacher gets up before we were to eat the lunch they provided and said "I'm sure these ladies would like us to say grace before eating". They all started nodding their head in agreement.

He stands up and says "Heavenly Father, Holy Ghost, please God bless those who eat the most".

As a faithful Mormon boy at that time, I thought that was the best prayer I had ever heard! BTW...our PE teacher was probably 6'4" and 280 lbs. The ladies faces were priceless after his prayer.

OMG! My kids (2 teenage boys) were JUST talking about this very thing. After a church event when they serve cookies, cakes, pies, ice cream, whatever... they say a prayer i.e."bless this food that it may nourish and strenten our bodies..." LOL Like really? Not much about cookies and punch saturated with sugar is going to 'nourish and strengthen" our bodies! They were cracking jokes left and right and we were laughing so hard. The entire ritual is hilaious if you just think about it.

Growing up our family dinner pray was "Dear HF, thank you for this day. Thank you for this food, ask to blesa it. Name if JC, Amen." It was ALWAYS verbatim regardless of which of the six kids said it... and said it fast!

As for the sacrament prayer that MUST be said exactly right... this made no sense since in my head as a child I often imagined god in heaven shaking his head if a word was missed and writing names down on the "go to hell list."

"It was always much easier to just "bless" all the groceries when we bought them and then do away with individual "blessings" on the prepared food!" - Yes Bless it outside of the grocery store while in the parking lot. Bless all of the food in the store.
Or better yet, the warehouse before it gets to the store.

And the sacrament prayer is entirely devoid of meaning. Some 12 year old brats who have been picking their noses praying over the sacrament? No thanks. I'm surprised more people don't get deathly ill from it.

While attending the U of U, I was in the University of U Symphony. I was appalled when right before a concert, we were in the green room tuning our instruments and one of the assistant conductors said that they'd be having a prayer to bless the concert (no bad notes I guess). I knew the assistant conductor was a CULTer so
I went out the side door and missed the CULT prayer. I was thoroughly shocked that they would try to force this at a STATE UNIVERSITY, NOT BYU. When I mentioned it to my Jewish teacher there, he just shrugged. But he was one to go with the flow. I was shocked though and angry. If I wanted CULT prayers while at school, I would have gone to BYU (perish the thought!)

What smirking ignorance.

Every blade of grass has its corresponding devic intelligence, and in this sense even so-called inert matter is alive. But we, pretty much for our own good given our selfish use of matter, cannot access this.

Nevertheless, the tradition of "blessing" food is an occult means to "awaken" the spiritual elementals of that food, making that energy available for our conscious use. (Just think--even physically, there is a Hiroshima bomb of fission latent in each atom of our meal.) Without this, you might as well be eating sauteed gravel...to fuel your 2-watt lives. Bon appetit!

My mum used to turn this into family prayer, dragging it out with blessings to he and she and family. We just wanted to eat. Made me loathe prayers.