Crying in church

[Stargazer]

14 hours ago, smac97 said:

5. I have had several experiences which, in my view, were plainly "spiritual" and not emotional.  I present two here:

Experience #1: Right after high school I joined the Army (National Guard) and spent 12 months studying Russian at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA.  At the end of my training, I submitted my mission papers and was called to serve in Taiwan, where I spent the next two years learning Mandarin.  By the end of my mission my Russian had become rusty.  When I returned home my sister recommended that I sign up with ILP ("International Language Program"), an outfit that specialized in sending Americans overseas to teach English.  She had taught English in China and had a wonderful experience, and she said they would definitely find me useful because of my past training in Russian.  She gave me the sign-up papers and told me that I was a shoo-in.

Okay, I'm going to chime in here. Mainly because of the DLI reference, but also because the subject interests me.

I served my mission in Germany. I was pretty good in German by the end. Native German speakers could tell I wasn't a native speaker, but had a hard time identifying my accent -- in my last city, the two ladies in the Konditorei (pastry shop) thought I was Swiss. So I when I talked to a US Army recruiter after taking the ASVAB (military intelligence/aptitude test) he talked me into joining the Army Security Agency and going to the DLI for Russian. On the morning I was to drive into Los Angeles to sign my life away, I couldn't make myself do it, though I dearly wanted to. But less than a year later I did indeed enlist in the Army -- but as an infantryman -- and after signing the papers I had an overwhelming feeling of peace. Nearly four years later I intended to leave the Army, and when talking with the reenlistment NCO, instead of telling him I was out, instead my mouth had its own agenda, and said I was thinking of getting into something more technical (it's amazing when one says something one didn't intend, and a part of you inside is asking "WTF?"). As I walked back to my barracks room after that decision was made, I got that feeling of peace once more. I ended up reenlisting to go to the electronics school at Ft. Gordon, Georgia, where I met my future wife. A whole range of very interesting intersections occurred before that marriage happened (and she had some on her end, as well). But the point is, I wouldn't have met her in any other way. Some may say that the Anthropic Principle doesn't prove God, but...

By permission, I'm going to reveal something in connection with the Defense Language Institute and the foregoing story as it relates to my patriarchal blessing. In the blessing it says that I have the gift of tongues for the purpose of bearing witness of the Savior to the nations of the earth. Can you imagine what the patriarch felt like when those words came rolling out of his mouth to a kid he had just barely met and would never see again? Just to write about this here causes a rush of the Spirit to pass through me. Given this part of my blessing, I should have gone to the DLI. I wanted to as well. But I couldn't make myself. As my mission experience suggests, I learn languages easily. But it appears that meeting my wife was more important, because if I had gone to The Presidio of San Francisco, which is where the DLI was located then, I would never have met her.

I have had a number of very personal revelations, including one definite "stupor of thought" in the classic DC 9:9 manner, and in none of them were tears involved. This is not to say that emotions do not tell us things. There are some hymns that I have a hard time singing because of the precious feelings that arise in me while singing them. I do not mistake emotional response for the Spirit, though sometimes when I tell about a deeply spiritual experience, such as meeting and marrying my current wife, I get teary-eyed and choked up. But in the event when it happened, tears were not part of it. Though I suppose that emotions and the Spirit may manifest simultaneously, in my experience, the Spirit leads emotional response, not the other way around. One should not confuse carts with horses. 

[Stargazer]

15 hours ago, smac97 said:

I don't know why this happened.  I had every reason to buy it.  My "emotions" would have had me continuing to bid (and, frankly, I think I would have won).  Instead, the "Spirit" had me - in grumpy and begrudging fashion - withdraw from the process.

I have always been interested in the law. Statutes, Code of Federal Regulations, The US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, Common Law: all fascinating. When I hear about court decisions, I like to read the decisions themselves to see how the justices decided. Fascinating stuff! And I either agree or disagree with how principles are applied. I fancy myself being able to discern between well-decided and crap. Obergefell v. Hodges? What a load of crap. Just as well-decided as Roe v. Wade. I.E. not well-decided at all. Let's not discuss that, I mention it only to illustrate my interest.

Since there was no way I would or could go to Law School when I was 39 years old with just a couple of Associate degrees, I had given some thought to at least getting involved with law as a paralegal, and perhaps make a business or second career out of it. I definitely have the capacity -- my very favorite church callings all involve clerk work. When the stake president called me to be the stake clerk I was on the moon, and loved that calling out of all the others I've ever served in. And then a few years later he went and released me to be elders quorum president. It was a big let down. Paperwork, I love paperwork. I think I'm a born bureaucrat, but I don't want to lead it, I want to do it. Anyway, I wanted to get into paralegal work. But I prayed about it, and got not merely a stupor of thought but a feeling of dread when I did. The Spirit did not say "No." The Spirit said "HELL NO!" I still don't know why I got that response, but I am not about to tempt the Spirit. If angels fear to tread, then I shall not rush in.

[Stargazer]

20 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

Last week I taught GD and I shared a story that was very personal, and I cried. Regretfully.

I don’t have a problem with crying in front of people. I think vulnerability can be a very honest offering. But I think crying in the context of a church setting is undesirable because there can be a lot of confusion around what is the spirit and what is emotion. 
 

Upon reflection, last Sunday, I was crying, not because the spirit was testifying of any particular truth, but I was moved by my own words. That’s embarrassing.
 

It’s really important to me to understand and operate from a place of truth for myself.  
 

I recently listened to a podcast. The speaker was a very intelligent, very educated and very articulate person. I was inspired by the things she was saying, and I felt the spirit testify of truth that she was saying. Then, at the end, she started sharing things that were deeply personal and she became very weepy. I ended up turning off the program early.

There have been times as a performer I have cried. Sometimes the music moves me to tears. Admittedly, sometimes even my own music moves me to tears. that is not embarrassing to me because it feels authentic. For some reason, my tears at church often feel like something else. 
 

I’m not sure how to articulate what I’m experiencing. I thought I would put it out here and see if anyone that might help me get a little closer to what happens for me, when I cry, and when others cry at church. 
 

thanks- 

I've already said this in the thread, but I wanted to answer you directly. For me, at least, tears come in response to reflection or reaction to what the Spirit has already told me, not during the spiritual event itself. I've had emotional reactions to completely fictional events that have been portrayed in movies or TV shows. Events where the Spirit wouldn't be present at all. So I don't mistake emotional response for the Spirit.

When I joined the church at age 14, a year after being introduced to the church and being taught by the missionaries -- I don't know why it took so long because it seemed to me that I instantly believed the church was true after my first conversation with the classmate who introduced me. Anyway, by the time I was preparing to serve my mission I hadn't yet read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, and had never knelt down to pray to ask God if the Book of Mormon was true. That technicality seemed necessary to fulfill before I went out, so I spent two weeks reading the book, and upon reading the last sentence I knelt down to pray. And got no answer! Nothing! I tried on succeeding nights to get the Lord to tell me it was true, and was getting very annoyed that I wasn't getting my revelation! By Golly, I wanted the revelation, He owed me that revelation, and I was going to get it, or ELSE! After a few days it finally hit me: I already knew. I had known it since I was 13. I was bothering the Lord over something I already had, that He had given me without my asking for it. I guess I got that because my heart was open; that's the only explanation I have. 

During that intensive read of the Book of Mormon I had a seriously emotional moment while reading Alma 14:10,11. Upon reading what Alma said to Amulek about the believers being burned to death as martyrs because they had believed A&A's preaching, I broke down and blubbered like a baby. To this day I cannot read those two verses without losing it. I'm crying while typing this. For some years I thought that this was my moment of testimony of the Book of Mormon, but I realized later that my testimony of the book came well before this, and my emotional response was a product of the quiet personal revelation that had already given me my testimony of the book, not the source of it. It was like when Cleopas and his friend were walking on the road to Emmaus after the Savior's death and before His resurrection became generally known, when the Savior joined them and they weren't aware that it was Him. "And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" No tears, no crying at that time, but their hearts burned within them, when the Spirit witnessed to them the truths the stranger was testifying of. But no doubt there were tears when they recounted the event afterwards.

There's nothing wrong with tears or crying in connection with our expressions of our spiritual events. There's everything right with both; they are honest admissions of our true feelings -- if the tears are real, anyway. But what I am trying to say is that the Spirit precedes the crying and the tears. At least this is so in my observation of my own experience. Your mileage may vary -- I'm not going to dictate how it happens with others.