A Day in the Life of My Sabbath

7:58 AM ~ Paul & Harley are already up. Harley has found that she has far more success waking up Daddy in the morning over Mommy; Mommy just growls at her to let Mommy sleep and go watch Kipper or something (remember me when you send in your nominations for “Mother of the Year”).
9:00 AM ~ I’m getting dressed for church, Paul is ironing his suit. Due to having been out of town so much in the past month, I haven’t been to either church in nearly a month, so I have decided to attend both my congregation at 10:30 AM and Paul’s ward at 1:00 PM. Harley will be attending both. I select a black pantsuit and a red dress shirt, black high heels, my hair in soft curls, dangling earrings and an ear cuff. Paul will also be sporting a black suit and vest. This weekend I saw a deep purple dress shirt with matching tie on sale, so I got it for him (“You got me a grown-up shirt and tie!” “Yes I did!”). Harley is rocking a white and blue sleeveless sun dress, white tights, her hair in pig tails.
9:30 AM ~ Paul makes a final decision that he’s not going to my church. He attended Rock Canyon Assembly of God when he visited Utah and Sumner Presbyterian when he visited Washington state, so he more than did his evangelical quota for the month.
9:45 AM ~ Just as I’m about to load Harley into the car and head off to my church, Harley suddenly decides that what she needs is cottage cheese. Lots and lots of cottage cheese. Paul gets her a bowl before I can say anything and I grumble about not wanting to be late again as I pace around anxiously.
10:28 AM ~ We make it to my church on time in spite of the cottage cheesy delay and I drop Harley off at the nursery. All of the college students are back from summer break and it’s great to see them again. Worship during the service is really, really good. We sing this song, one of my favorites:
I wonder to myself if any of the people in my congregation are ever miffed by my Pentecostal habit of raising my hands during worship. Not many people in my congregation do it.
11:02 AM ~ The kids are dismissed for kids’ church, and I leave briefly to transition Harley from nursery to kids’ church. It’s something I’ve been trying to do lately. She fusses quite a bit, but calms down not long after I leave. The sermon is preached by a North Park M. Div. student since the pastor is on vacation, and she does a really great job.
11:50 AM ~ Harley and I mix and mingle in the foyer. Harley happily stuffs her face with strawberries and grapes from the after-church snack table.
12:30 PM ~ We stop at home and I run inside to get Paul, and we’re off to the LDS church.
12:45 PM ~ We’re mixing and mingling with people before Sacrament meeting. One of the counselors in the bishopric asks me about my Sunstone presentation, and not seeing any way around it, I start to tell him about the early Christian evidence for women as elders, bishops, deacons, and priests and that I don’t see any reason why Mormons can’t believe that women had the priesthood, that it was lost in the apostasy, and that it’s something God has yet to restore as per the 9th Article of Faith. The expression on his face leaves me worrying that I just said the wrong thing.
1:10 PM ~ I insist on sitting in the chapel for the start of Sacrament meeting in spite of Harley’s awful behavior; it’s something I’ve begun making us do recently. I want to be there until the Sacrament is passed at least, then we can retreat elsewhere like we usually do. Harley fusses horribly and keeps trying to make a run for it. Paul sits on one end of the pew, I sit on the other, and we tell Harley she can’t leave that space. She keeps trying to climb over or under it and cries horribly, but eventually resigns herself to her fate and cheers up a bit. She gets more interested when the Sacrament is being blessed and passed and keeps chirping, “Water! Water!” in the very quiet chapel at the top of her lungs. One of the guys blessing the sacrament is wearing a light blue shirt. I’m informed that he is a recent convert. I don’t know if they’re letting him do it in a light blue shirt because he’s new or because Mormon culture is finally relaxing its preferences for white shirts, but either way, I approve.
1:25 PM ~ Paul and I take Harley and retreat to the nursery room where we turn on the speaker so that we can hear the meeting, unload her toys and let her play. I read about the Holy Spirit from my theology textbook during the meeting.
2:15 PM ~ Paul informs me that Harley’s behavior is horrible when she has to line up for Sunbeams and that I’d better help him with dropping her off. So I do. Harley stands there like an angel most of the time and doesn’t complain. “Oh, now that Mommy’s here, you behave,” Paul grumbles. Damn straight.
2:45 PM ~ Sunday school is on Jonah. Oh Jonah. I cannot begin to express how much I wish I could just sit the entire LDS church down and force them to watch this movie—which is available on YouTube in its entirety if you feel so inclined. I finish my reading from my theology textbook on the Holy Spirit.
2:50 PM ~ The other counselor in the bishopric is sitting with us. He tells us that a student just moved into the ward who is attending Trinity College on sports scholarship and lives on campus, and points this person out to me. Yup, that’s right: there is a Mormon student at Trinity. Paul is excited that there is another Mormon living on campus. I’m excited to get living confirmation of other anecdotes I had heard of LDS students being accepted to evangelical colleges.
3:00 PM ~ Something else happens during Sunday school. One of the toys we brought for Harley is a large, plastic blue train with buttons on it, and this train makes VERY LOUD noises when its buttons are pressed. I am idly examining the train as the relatively quiet Sunday school class continues, and I note that the switch on it is flipped to “OFF,” so I think I’m safe. Silly me. I accidentally bump the button. Suddenly the train begins chugging and whistling at the top of its mechanical lungs. I frantically flip the ON-OFF switch several times, but the train keeps chugging away undeterred, so I take the only escape left to me. I thrust the train into Paul’s lap and point innocently.
3:15 PM ~ Paul leaves early because he has to work at 4 PM today. I attend the joint Priesthood / Relief Society session alone. The counselor whom I spoke to about ordained women in early Christianity earlier in the day is teaching the lesson. My friend who is the Relief Society secretary (also married to the other counselor in the bishopric) comes and sits by me, later joined by her husband. The lesson is really good. The counselor talks about the story of William Tyndale and goes on to discuss the value and meaning of Scripture, with some final emphasis on the Book of Mormon. I raise my hand at one point and talk a bit about the story of Lazarus and how it comforted me during my mother’s death. Afterward, I approach the counselor and tell him that I truly enjoyed the lesson, that I think with a few modifications it’s exactly the sort of lesson that an evangelical would be proud of, and he thanks me for sharing about my mother’s death. Then he says, “Jack, what we talked about earlier? It’s possible.” It takes me a second to realize that he’s talking about women and the priesthood in the early church. I grin. Then he adds, “But we don’t know for certain.” No, we don’t. But I’m relieved that I didn’t offend him earlier, and delighted to hear people keeping an open mind on the issue. That’s all I ask.
4:10 PM ~ The Relief Society president drives me and Harley home, and we have a pleasant chat on the way. Harley’s Sunbeams class sent her off with a bag full of grapes, so she’s one happy kid.
The rest of my day is mostly just me relaxing at home, making dinner, doing dishes, and getting some reading done.
That is how the Sabbath sometimes goes down with the Meyers-Jeffries clan. Thanks for tuning in.

Comments

A Day in the Life of My Sabbath — 11 Comments

  1. LOVE it, Jack. I am impressed you got to not one but TWO meetings on time. Go you!!! (Definitely makes up for any points lost not waking up at some insanely-too-early-for-humans time of day)
    And anyone who doesn’t understand a noisy kid playing and being noisy in Sacrament Meeting is either 1) visiting, or 2) a new member. LDS Sacrament meetings are the noisiest church meetings in the world. Every baby decides to cry somewhere during one of the prayers, every toddler has to shout some obnoxious thing (my own daughter decided to yell, “Jesus is COMING,” a few weeks ago), and every teenager is whispering to the teenager about the date they were on the evening before. Probably no one else notices your little girl being a little girl. They are too worried about their own children wreaking havoc.
    The only thing we’ve managed to do to keep our two year old quiet is to get books about JEsus or other scripture stories for before and during the Sacrament, and other quiet toys for after. She only gets some of these toys at church, so she actually stays quiet sometimes. We also keep putting treats in her mouth…non-messy ones of course. It keeps her mouth a little too busy for her to scream the entire time about the basketball hoops and the lights and the doors, and that Jesus is coming, and all the other silly things she decides MUST be discussed in church. :)
  2. What a great Sabbath. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished we had a nursery during the LDS sacrament meeting. Of course, I’d probably end up in charge of it, so maybe I’m better off without it.
  3. I find it ironic that a church that does so much to promote “reverence” in its worship meetings would have services that, to outsiders, would seem the least reverent.
  4. Really enjoyed reading this. I wanted to watch the video too but youtube in my country blocked me on copyright grounds.
  5. Jack, my only thought through this is that it must be such a long day for Harley to attend TWO church blocks. Yikes, I believe Seth would go on strike if I told him we had to go to church twice. He’s more than ready to be done after our 3-hour block. Good for Harley! Good for you!
  7. Normally, I wouldn’t take Harley to both services. I’m wary of putting a kid through that much church in one day.
    However, right now she’s in the kids programs in both churches, which are really fun for her, so going to two churches is a lot like going to two different ice cream stores for her. She really does enjoy both programs. The least fun part of the day for her was when I forced her to sit through the first part of Sacrament meeting in the chapel. Once we retreated to the nursery room and laid out her toys, she was fine again.
    I wasn’t too worried about her making noise in Sacrament meeting. I know they’re used to kid chittering and noises. I did feel a bit self-conscious that she was the only one being especially loud.
    Martin, if you want to hear the song, try going to YouTube and looking up “David Crowder Band – How He Loves Us” for another video. Maybe one won’t be copyright blocked.
  8. Hi! I found your blog a few months ago, probably by clicking on your name on one of your comments on FMH, and I thought maybe I should introduce myself since I’ve been lurking here for a while. I was at BYU from 2000-2007 and I remember when that article in the Daily Universe came out about you and I thought your story was really cool. :) I’m LDS, both of my parents are converts (one from liberal protestantism, one from Catholicism), and I’m working on a PhD in something very sciencey, so I’ve been finding myself reading religion blogs to get some balance in my intellectual life! I’ve always been drawn to certain evangelical ideas for some reason, so I love reading your thoughts about things. And I love that song! I’m going to go on iTunes and download it right now. Maybe sometime you should post a list of music you think all Mormons need to hear. :)
  9. I’m one member of the LDS church who has seen the Jonah Veggie Tales and loves it dearly (we own a copy that gets viewed regularly). I’m curious what is behind your comment that you want to sit us all down and make us watch it.
  10. Hi Struwelpeter,
    Welcome to the blog.
    I didn’t go into specifics of what I disliked about the lesson out of concern that it could get back to the SS teacher, since I blog under my own name. But, since you ask, I guess I’ll take that risk:
    * The story of Jonah was framed as an example of missionary work, with plenty of discussion about how it applies to missionary work today, and in fairness to the SS teacher, that is how the official LDS OT manual presents it. However, I think this comparison is rather strained. What Jonah preaches to the Ninevites is a message of impending destruction on account of their wickedness. I don’t think a prophet issuing an ominous rebuke is necessarily the same as an evangelist trying to share the Gospel with non-believers. Gospel, after all, means “good news.” They aren’t wholly unrelated concepts, but I think the calling of prophet and the calling of missionary/evangelist are very different ones.
    * The teacher taught the class that Jonah didn’t care about the gourd. I’m completely baffled at how he came to that conclusion, since it’s the polar opposite of what the text says. The entire point of the ending is that Jonah cared more about the gourd than he did the entire city of Ninevah.
    * The teacher talked about how much Jonah cared for the people of Ninevah and how missionary work helps us to care for others. Again, the polar opposite of what the text says. Jonah didn’t care about the people of Ninevah, he didn’t want them to turn and be saved, and there’s no evidence that his experience among the Ninevites changed his feelings on that.
    I think the Jonah movie does a really good job of getting those last two points across. In general though, I often find that Mormons don’t attempt a lot of exegesis on biblical texts. Instead they tend to force the texts into the service of modern-day LDS principles, and the manuals almost always exacerbate this problem.
  11. I taught (or co-taught, to be precise) the lesson on Jonah, and I didn’t find the comparison with missionary work that big of a stretch. One of the main points of the book is that God’s message is for all people, not just the chosen few, not just the people we like, not just for those who we think might be willing to accept it. It’s quite a difference from the parochial attitude evident in many other parts of the Old Testament.
    I can’t imagine, though, where the teacher got the idea that Jonah cared for the people of Ninevah and didn’t care for the gourd (or, more precisely, for the comfort it provided him). Jonah was a reluctant prophet at best. The point of the narrative was that Jonah cared most for himself, even after he repented and God gave him another chance to do what was called to do. And, in my opinion, that’s why the story ends so abruptly — the reader is supposed to contrast the compassion of Jehovah/Yahweh with the wretch Jonah seems to be in the process of becoming. And when we wonder what becomes of Jonah, we’re also forced to think of how much we might be like him. And if you don’t see that, you haven’t studied Jonah.

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