Right now I'm thinking of something I said (in a talk) when I was an active member of the church---and MANY years ago when I was quite young and "believing." I am totally mortified to think that I ever said such a thing.

So mortified that I don't think I'll even mention it here.

Do any of you have things you remember doing that just embarrass you because they were so close minded.

That the spirit was like a radio wave being broadcast everywhere on earth, and that all we had to do was to tune in our spirits to the righteous frequency.

Oh deary, dear.

Funny thing is I remember sitting down and thinking, "that sounds a little crazy".

The same analogy is used in the book "A Marvelous Work and a Wonder", by whats-his-name, the dead apostle.

Really I just spilled my guts about all the very bad things I'd been doing (that I now know are perfectly normal). I don't remember what I said, specifically; I just remember everyone looking really uncomfortable.

Couldn't help noticing neither of my idiot parents ever got up there.

because I feel like I need to go back to some of these people and give a heart-felt mea culpa.

I started a new job not long before I became disaffected, and one night I was invited to a party with many of my co-workers who were the same age. I was in the process of questioning my beliefs, but for some reason I was still putting on the display of being a little Molly Mormon - the last gasps of a dying faith, maybe?

Anyway, I talked way too much about LDS stuff that night, thinking that I was setting an example or some jazz like that. The worst part was that I found out later one of my friends is in fact a post-Mormon himself and, being BIC, probably knows ten times more about the religion than my silly convert ass ever did.

I imagine he had a really hard time keeping a straight face, but luckily he's been nice enough not to give me a hard time about it.

if you tell us what you said we can all........





wait for it!





be......







totally........






still waiting.........







not surprised and understanding, and laughing with you because we all do the craziest things when we are part of the collective

I think Art Linkletter would be proud

dimmesdale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> So mortified that I don't think I'll even mention
> it here.



NOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Please tell us so that we may laugh and point! ;)

I invited a friend to church to "convert" her and then asked her to give the opening prayer in the Sunday school meeting. I may have been only 8, but I still hate even thinking about it.

I had a friend come to church with me when I was 9 or 10. I think he just wanted to come out of curiosity. Anyway, I got kicked out of sunday school for being irreverent. It happened a lot to me in those days. My friend just asked the teacher if he could go sit out in the hall with me. Ha!

I wish I could have kept the rebellious streak going, but for some reason I started drinking the kool-aid and giving into the guilt-trips around 12-13. I think it totally had to do with puberty along with jack off talks combined with being forced to pass the sacrament(made me feel like a hypocrite). It's like a 1-2-3 punch for a kid.

I'll always be ashamed of the night, making out with a nevermo girl shortly before my mission, and she went a little south of the border...ahem...

After my business was through, I became racked with guilt and shame, and started blubbering to her about how I wasn't worthy now to go on a mission, and I opened the scriptures to her to prove it. She thought I was completely psycho, and she was right. We had an argument about it, with her trying to convince my TBM little mind that what we had done was perfectly natural and innocent. I, on the other hand, tried to convince her that we were both going to hell, and I gave her a Sunday School lesson from the BOM to prove it. Jesus Q. Christ, that was a dumbass thing for me to do.

As an aside, I still went on my mission. Strict honesty was NOT one of the virtues I learned from the Morg.

In regards to some of the less actives in our ward-

More than once I said that when people are guilty of sin, they have two choices;
The can repent or they can try to prove that the church is not true so that they won't have to repent.


Yeah, good move JoD-
Now you have everyone convinced that you are guilty of something.

Anyway, somebody slap me.

God, help me, I wanted to submit this as an article to the Ensign.

It had to do with being in the locker room dressing before a temple session and accidentally getting a paper cut on my finger. It happened two times in a row. Both times my finger started bleeding while I was dressed in white just about to enter a temple session. The second time I thought it was too much of a coincidence that it happened twice. IN THE TEMPLE. It must have been the spirit. I contemplated the blood, how it was the spirit impressing on me the reality of the atonement, what it meant for Christ to shed his blood FOR ME.

I actually wrote it out as an article. But I was too lazy to polish it and submit it.

Mortified.

I would have thought that such incidents was god telling me I was in the wrong place - and to get the hell out of there, FAST. I'd submit THAT article to the Ensign...

I think you may be referring to some words where you put others down. Am I right? Yes, it would be embarrassing now to reflect on that. But remember those were your cult days.

to one of my good friends when she cancelled her baptism.

It was in her best interests, of course.

She told me that maybe she'd join the Mormon church in the NEXT life, or later on in this one. I told her that she already HAD her chance to convert and she wouldn't get another chance after death. (After all, HF expected her to join as a 16-year-old in a non-member family where they weren't so crazy about the idea of her joining).

OUCH!


Years later, when I stopped believing, I remembered that conversation and just CRINGED. What a dumb*ss I was. Thankfully, I reconnected with her on facebook a few years ago and apologized. I don't think she even remembered me saying that. I guess it didn't make as big of an impression on her as it did on me. (And I thought I was being all moved by the spirit).

Many many things. But oh well. They are all in the past, I have changed.

I had a good buddy in Jr High. We went to movies together, rode bikes and even smoked cigars!!!! (Once. . Yuck)
In HS we started hanging out with other kids but remained friends.
I cringe when I think of eating lunch with her just after HS graduation and sharing my new found faith and the BOM.
I remember saying "and this is a record of your people!" I was so excited. I hope she never ever had anything to do with Mormons. Wish I knew where she was.
I did write to her every letter she wrote when she went off to college on the Indian college fund.
Then one day two years later when I was at Ricks (Byoo Idaho) I got a letter from her written when she'd been smoking pot. I was so mortified and self righteous I never wrote back. She was going to be a DR. she had always been at the top of our class in our school and her cousin got a scholarship to Yale!

I was such an ass. I'm sorry.

Even in the TBM diehard days, when we did something cruel or said something stupid, a little chime sounded inside. Sometimes I felt like my Being, the real me, was watching the charade Mormon me just like you watch a performance on stage. Even making comments, "That was convincing," or "That was a great lesson."

My worst (out of many choices) was when my neighbor's two year old son drowned in her swimming pool. She and I and a Catholic neighbor were sitting in the hospital waiting room. Instead of offering sincere comfort at this terrible time, I tried to super size my missionary efforts at converting her. I actually told her that the only chance she had of ever seeing her son again was to accept the one true church and have him sealed to her. Her son was in a coma, so I added, cheerfully as if I were a wait-theres-more infomercial (deep breath/cringe)

"...and in the MORMON church, you can have him sealed to you even if he dies!"

I didn't realize I was smiling until I saw the look of horror on the neighbor's face. The grieving mother didn't invite me to the (Catholic) funeral and never spoke to me again. And I don't blame her.

I have never told anybody this. Thanks for the opportunity to clean out yet another pustule of painfulness. F**g cult--I'm a decent person, how could I say such a thing?

The end justifies the means - like Christopher Hitchens said --religion makes you do things you would never, ever consider doing on your own, even things outside your own moral boundaries.


Anagrammy

that was then, this is now! I'll let my nonsense of by gone years stay in the past and not repeat it, if you won't repeat yours! Deal? :-)