"There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of. There were... loose threads - untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I... pulled on one of those threads - it'd unravel the tapestry of my life." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation

All the recent little changes the church is making made me think of this particular episode. The church is tugging at many of these unpleasant loose threads of their past in an attempt to appear less messy. Is it possible that their tugging on these little threads (name change, civil marriages now OK, policy reversal of children of gay members, messing with missionary ages, missionaries calling home weekly, etc) as well as future tweaks the FP & Q12 have coming in the future may actually unintentionally cause the whole LDS tapestry to unravel?

Just a thought.

Nice post to think about.

I think we can look to the Catholics who have been doing that for centuries as an example. They no longer have a tapestry; just a flimsy piece of gauze remains.

Maybe this is why so many Catholics seem so comfortable "doing whatever they want" since they prefer the gauze.

Maybe Jean Luc can learn to send those untidy parts down the memory hole and settle for the gauze of his life. Maybe he just needs to become more Orwellian and convince himself up is down. Maybe he can convince himself the untidy bits of his life never happened or rationalize them away.

But when I... pulled on one of those threads - it'd unravel the shield of my initiatory and I hid myself because I was naked.