Posted by:
messygoop
(
)
Date: December 10, 2019 01:38PM
exminion Wrote:
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> The last devotional I went to was awful, and meets
> the description of this year's devotion, right
> down to the dragging funeral dirges. No feeling,
> no expressiveness, just a crowd of old people
> gasping for breath. Staggering the breathing
> doesn't help, and erases all the musical phrasing.
> Too many voices make a chorus sound muddy.
>
> The devotional always killed any Christmas spirit
> I had.
>
> My children started refusing to go to any meetings
> that weren't "mandatory", so I always went without
> them. I'm divorced, and did have a Mormon
> boyfriend for a few years, who went with me, and
> we would grab a nice dinner, afterwards, but he
> had died suddenly, at a young age. I was looking
> for Christmas warmth and neighborliness at the
> Mormon church. (BTW, the kids and I would go
> together to the Methodist candlelight service with
> friends on Christmas Eve--and that always gave us
> those warm fuzzy Christmas feelings!
>
> I got dressed up and went alone, because it was
> always crowded. Mormons like big crowds, and
> watching the devotional was always a stake affair,
> to cram more people in there, so I went early, to
> get a good seat. Some men were there, blocking
> off the first 3 rows with paper, and they said the
> seats were being saved for some VIP family
> members, but that the fourth row was free. I
> found a place, and sat for quite a while. There
> had been so much "consolidation" of wards, and
> bringing in wards from outside our area, that I
> didn't recognize many faces, and I sat for quite
> some time, watching people come in, in pairs, and
> family groups. I felt alone in a crowd. Then two
> men told me to move, because they needed a fourth
> row for the VIP's. The seats were pretty much
> filled-up, but I saw some seats in the middle of a
> row, and took care to ask the people next to me if
> the seats were taken, before I climbed over
> everyone's knees to get there. After I sat down,
> the people behind me said that they were saving
> those seats, so I stood up, and had to climb over
> everyone's knees again to get out. By then, the
> meeting was beginning, and I was the only one
> standing up. Luckily, there was a large empty
> space on the aisle next to a neighbor, but the
> neighbor said she was saving it for her son and
> his wife I got up, again, and someone was talking
> at the podium, as I walked up the entire aisle,
> and out the door, letting it slam behind me. I
> had paid tithing all my life, gotten married in
> the temple, and I had been in that ward for 9
> years, as an organist and teacher on the ward and
> stake level, and there was no place for me to sit
> at the Christmas devotional. God was trying to
> tell me something, and I never went to another
> Mormon devotional or fireside again. Really, other
> congregations, and parents at crowded school
> events, are not rude like that.
Pretty much sums up my experiences with large gatherings of mormons. I remember being in the very last row at the MTC for their mandatory Sunday night devotional. It was end of August and the place was jammed to the max. Went to a whole bunch of them and it wasn't until Oct that I finally got to see the very front from the middle rows. We made it a point to sit four or five rows and we were told that they were reserved. So my group was told to find other seating. So it was to the back again.