So this (past) weekend was General Conference. It was good, although I was attending the Utah Planning Conference in St. George, so I was wending my way home for the Saturday sessions. I'll have to catch up on them when they come out on video.
There were some noteworthy talks. It's interesting to me to see a bit of a split in the talks that are given. Some are super conservative (we'll never change! Don't even think about it!), while others seem to be more conciliatory (the word of God was liberal unto all). As LDS folks, we often find ourselves with the horns of the dilemma being that some of our core values and beliefs are very conservative, while the most important value is actually fairly progressive - that we should love one another. Why this is progressive, and why it seems to conflict with more conservative-type values, I'll never know. I've thought a lot about it and have come to no real, substantive conclusions.
Someone very close to me came out as gay about a year ago. This person's father is not someone whom you'd think would be capable or willing to accept this person's identity. However, we were all quite a bit surprised (and pleased!) when the father simply accepted this person with absolute love and concern, respecting the person for who that person is - his child. Because a person in their late 20s is capable of making their own choices about how they're going to live their life. Not that being gay is a choice, mind you. Knowing this person like I do, I know very well that this person struggled mightily with these feelings, and would never have actively or passively chosen to have these feelings. That's not a matter of choice, any more than it's a matter of choice for me to be attracted to women. What IS a choice is what I do about it, or what any of us does about it.
In speaking with this person's father, I asked him about what he thinks now that his child is gay, and how it works into his world view. He said it was hard. He said that learning to accept someone for their true identity is often a difficult thing, but that the problem with the accepting was HIS, not his child's. The difficulty, he said, was not in loving his child, but in reconciling what he had always felt about the world and what was "correct" with his child's apparent happiness and satisfaction. He said he'd always known that his child was gay, and had seen his child struggle for years and years.
At the end of the day, however, the overwhelming feeling he had was love for his child. And that's really all there ever is.
Contrasting that, I had another conversation with someone I'm close with that was very different. She spoke about her inability to accept anyone who has failings of any kind. Anything that did not meet her particular understanding of what is right was a "loser". This is why, she said, that she married so late in her life. Tattoo? Loser. Drink? Smoke? Cuss? Loser. Not attend church meetings? Loser. And because they're losers, they don't deserve her time/regard. I think she lives a very lonely existence, high on her pedestal, and incapable of feeling the warmth that comes from being surrounded by loving, if imperfect, fellow human beings. But, the thought of her coming down from her pedestal probably also fills her with a great deal of fear. She can't consider that people who struggle might actually be good people, capable of such love and goodness, but who just happen to have imperfections... Her choices to feel and react that way are very foreign to me, and I think they're alienating to others as well.
So it's interesting to see this played out on a larger scale as well. The talks in Conference are often along these lines, and the culture that has grown up around the idea of ideals in the LDS community is interesting as well.
The one thing I think everyone can agree on is that the hymns are very lovely. In the Priesthood Session Saturday evening, the congregational hymn was "Hark, All Ye Nations", which is just so powerful when sung by men. Give it a listen:
PS - I love that we can upload this kind of thing to the blog. :)
There were some noteworthy talks. It's interesting to me to see a bit of a split in the talks that are given. Some are super conservative (we'll never change! Don't even think about it!), while others seem to be more conciliatory (the word of God was liberal unto all). As LDS folks, we often find ourselves with the horns of the dilemma being that some of our core values and beliefs are very conservative, while the most important value is actually fairly progressive - that we should love one another. Why this is progressive, and why it seems to conflict with more conservative-type values, I'll never know. I've thought a lot about it and have come to no real, substantive conclusions.
Someone very close to me came out as gay about a year ago. This person's father is not someone whom you'd think would be capable or willing to accept this person's identity. However, we were all quite a bit surprised (and pleased!) when the father simply accepted this person with absolute love and concern, respecting the person for who that person is - his child. Because a person in their late 20s is capable of making their own choices about how they're going to live their life. Not that being gay is a choice, mind you. Knowing this person like I do, I know very well that this person struggled mightily with these feelings, and would never have actively or passively chosen to have these feelings. That's not a matter of choice, any more than it's a matter of choice for me to be attracted to women. What IS a choice is what I do about it, or what any of us does about it.
In speaking with this person's father, I asked him about what he thinks now that his child is gay, and how it works into his world view. He said it was hard. He said that learning to accept someone for their true identity is often a difficult thing, but that the problem with the accepting was HIS, not his child's. The difficulty, he said, was not in loving his child, but in reconciling what he had always felt about the world and what was "correct" with his child's apparent happiness and satisfaction. He said he'd always known that his child was gay, and had seen his child struggle for years and years.
At the end of the day, however, the overwhelming feeling he had was love for his child. And that's really all there ever is.
Contrasting that, I had another conversation with someone I'm close with that was very different. She spoke about her inability to accept anyone who has failings of any kind. Anything that did not meet her particular understanding of what is right was a "loser". This is why, she said, that she married so late in her life. Tattoo? Loser. Drink? Smoke? Cuss? Loser. Not attend church meetings? Loser. And because they're losers, they don't deserve her time/regard. I think she lives a very lonely existence, high on her pedestal, and incapable of feeling the warmth that comes from being surrounded by loving, if imperfect, fellow human beings. But, the thought of her coming down from her pedestal probably also fills her with a great deal of fear. She can't consider that people who struggle might actually be good people, capable of such love and goodness, but who just happen to have imperfections... Her choices to feel and react that way are very foreign to me, and I think they're alienating to others as well.
So it's interesting to see this played out on a larger scale as well. The talks in Conference are often along these lines, and the culture that has grown up around the idea of ideals in the LDS community is interesting as well.
The one thing I think everyone can agree on is that the hymns are very lovely. In the Priesthood Session Saturday evening, the congregational hymn was "Hark, All Ye Nations", which is just so powerful when sung by men. Give it a listen:
PS - I love that we can upload this kind of thing to the blog. :)
Comments
For some people, the easier path is the one they like best. Others (you, my dearest friend, and I) are strugglers and we prefer to be in the trenches with our fellows. There might be hardship down here, but there is also love.