Working with Those Who Are Struggling to Believe: Teaching Stillness

I've long believed that one of the primary focal efforts of those who are struggling needs to include an understanding of "Be still, and know that I am God" - but, unfortunately, we live in an age when there is a constant barrage of messages focused on always thinking, talking, debating, conjecturing and otherwise "doing something" and being stimulated actively. So many people go to bed tired, wake up tired and spend their lives tired, rushed and thinking about the next important thing - and they forget how to be still and feel. They can be emotional, but I believe there is a big difference between feeling emotional and feeling spiritual - and it's a fading art for many.

I think miracles fade away as much from sheer, voluminous busy-ness as from other things that drive away faith - since busy-ness makes things accumulate to the point where someone just can't deal with it all at once. In an online forum, we can't get people to slow down by physical means, but we can provide a place for people to take a breath, breathe calmly and slowly and start to re-learn how to "be still". We can model calmness, rationality and spirituality, even in cases where we have to express disagreement.
 
I believe most people who overcome deep crises do so more by a change of mind and perspective (and even character) than by finding the right argument, so online communication can't be primarily about arguments. For that reason, I try to focus on attitude, character, perspective and charity rather than winning an argument.
 
At least, that's how I see it after working for years with those who are struggling to believe.

A Discussion of Suffering and Desire - and Salvation and Redemption

The following is a short conversation among some friends of mine about suffering.  I hope it makes sense and helps someone in some way: 

Friend 1) I posit that we suffer because we want suffering more than not suffering. We will suffer and cause suffering until we decide (collectively) to stop. This doesn't require a central authority (God) directing and orchestrating the suffering. In my own view, we can decide to no longer suffer. We can still experience physical pain, but spiritual suffering is a choice we make. We experience and cause suffering by wanting something else (anger, violence, revenge, theft, etc.) more than peace, especially more than giving up our mortal life.

Friend 2) This sounds like a Buddhist idea. I haven't studied a lot of the ideas, but a friend of mine was a Buddhist. He said that much suffering comes from wanting things. Fix your "wanter" and then you replace suffering with happiness. Not happy you don't have a nice house to live in? Then stop wanting it. Unhappiness gone.

 
 

Friend 3) To me suffering just is.  I know little about Buddhism but agree that all life is suffering, that it has a cause, and there is a way out of it.

 
 

Me) Rather than "fixing my wanter", I have worked on being at peace with the gap between what I want to be and what I am. Notice, I did not say "between what I want and what I have." There's an important difference. I also beleive there are plenty of people who simply are wired genetically to emotional suffering and others who aren't.  It's easy to overlook that.  It can be addressed and overcome, but it's not easy or natural.

 
That's where the idea of grace and mercy amid "failure" resonates so strongly with me. I live a life full of paradoxes, and it isn't easy to recognize them and strike an appropriate balance between competing extremes. It's the idea that there is "salvation / redemption" IN AND DURING what I call the "muddle in the middle" (the suffering) that inspires me to strive to become perfect ("complete, whole, fuly developed") while not letting my inability to do so in the here and now keep me from trying, regardless. (Personally, I like "redemption" more than "salvation".)
It's finding peace in the journey and letting go of the need to fight or struggle or suffer - and that isn't a natural thing, especially for those who are less inclined to let go than I am.

I'm OK with Seeing through My Glass, Darkly

Part of my testimony is due to my study of other theologies and religions. Frankly, I don't "desire to believe" any of them like I desire to believe what is taught within "Mormonism" and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It really is my foundational desire (what I want), so I've chosen to pursue a deeper understanding of it - to reconcile what I can reconcile and gnaw on what I can't reconcile for now, with an understanding that much of what we believe is our best attempt to understand a little better what can't be understood. It works for me.

It also has given me a bit of perspective on "the alternatives" - again, enough to realize that I just don't want them. They won't give me any more joy in the here and now than I already have, and they don't give me the hope for a continuation eternally of what brings me joy in the here and now. I feel what I believe is true; I want it to be true; I don't want any radically different "truth"; I accept the concept of continuing growth and revelation (the evolution of understanding that will continue to change my perspective) - so I accept the difficulties inherent in the history of the Church as a natural result of mortality, and I pursue the joy I want and for which I hope.

I could make religion a very complicated thing if I chose to do so, and I could get all wound up in knots about it if I chose to take that route, but I have SUCH joy and peace and wonder in my life without doing those things that it would be folly to do so. I also am just humble enough to realize that I always will see through my religious glass, darkly, no matter how hard I try - and, at the core, foundation level, that is a fundamental principle of Mormonism. It might get lost in the natural tendency to want to know it all RIGHT NOW far too often, but it's there, nonetheless.