NOM

I wrote this up in the Conference mega thread, but decided that it fit better as its own post.

What a conference! All my brothers and sisters and family decided to go to a family member's cabin for conference weekend. Apparently they weren't sure if they should invite me and my family, because we were invited after they were talking about it in front of us, which was awkward. But it sounded fun and I knew my kids would enjoy it, so we went. I was in hearing distance of every session, but got no direct pressure from DW or anyone else to actually pay attention. It was nice to be an adult and treated that way. And the family time was a ton of fun.

I think I am in an angry stage, because I couldn't stop getting angry every time I started paying attention, even (or especially) when they said things I agreed with.

On Saturday morning someone mentioned the story from the NT about woman brought to Jesus who was caught in the act of adultery, and how he didn't through the first stone, and all I could think was "why the bleep wasn't the man brought?" Even though I know the reason.

I couldn't stand the irony of a leader of an organization accused of bigotry giving a speech about how to handle the bigotry aimed at members of his organization.

The woman who taught that we need to do better getting our kids to keep covenants so they won't fail to keep their covenants to the church. (Honesty and keeping your promises are great, I support them, stability in society is built on it. But our promises to the church are BS.)

The talk about how amazing Joseph Smith was.

They all just get me fuming. But I feel drawn to listen so I know what my wife is going to be judging me with, and so I don't miss any big talks so I am not out of the loop, and if I'm honest I enjoy the rush of hearing the BS and calling it out in my mind. I am so at odds with the TBMs in my life. And I have few close non-TBMs in my life.

Where does this end?

You guys have a good conference weekend?

It ends with the things we replace it with. I ignored nearly all of it even though I heard a few minutes here and there. I'm just too tired of caring about Mormonism any longer. After awhile, it all starts to sound the same on both sides of the fence. How many hours of exmormonism or Nomism have we replaced Mormonism with?

My house was full of Mormons after conference as we all got together and BBQ'd. There was a buzz among the believers as they recapped their favorite talks. I quickly figured out that when asked what my favorite talk was that I only had to respond with the name of an apostle. They would recap the talk and I would nod my head and smile.

The secret to moving on is to become indifferent. Repeat different phrases to become indifferent. Such as :

That's nice.
That must have been a nice talk.
Glad to hear you enjoyed conference.

Then tell yourself:
Mormons are going to Morm.
Hey, look at the shiny thing!
Squirrel....

This was I think my favorite conference weekend ever. On Saturday it was my sons birthday so I did some shopping and errands for that.
On Sunday I had breakfast with a Nom friend. I cooked it all over a wood fired stove in the mountains. We discussed faith or lack thereof and how we were now viewing life. Different minds with differing ideas all the while in complete agreement that that makes it interesting.

I didn't see a face, hear a prayer or talk and didn't miss it a bit.

Already looking forward to October.

I also had my best conference ever. Had some family time on Saturday, then cleaned the house on Sunday while my wife listened in another room. I heard some of the standard drone, but none of the words. It was glorious.

This was an unusual conference for me.

My family Facebook group chat had only one mention of General Conference, "I love Elder Holland", and that was it. Usually my siblings and my mother talk quite a bit and give commentary throughout. Last year I just sort of dropped out of the conversation and ignored it, but I couldn't help but feel a bit on the outside of things. They didn't do that this year, which was really nice.

Every six months for the last 15 years, I have gone with my parents (and now just my mother) to lunch between the Saturday morning and afternoon sessions. When I was still a believer, we would talk about the conference session and discuss our thoughts on it. When I left the church we kept up this conversation, and she would bring up conference but we didn't really discuss it. My mother's beliefs are very liberal, so we never really disagreed on things regarding the church, it just became a bit awkward. This year, when we went to Subway, she didn't even bring up conference, we just had a nice conversation.

As I mentioned in another thread, I avoid Facebook on conference weekend because so many of my friends are LDS. When I got back on this week, I noticed a lot of memes from them, but it didn't bother me. I read them, I rolled my eyes a bit, and then I moved on.

So, it was unusual, but it was still very good.

I was surprised by how few people mentioned GC on FB. I avoided FB on Sat/Sun and expected to see some stuff Monday but didn't. And I haven't done any de-friending so it was interesting!

Anon70 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2017 9:13 am I was surprised by how few people mentioned GC on FB. I avoided FB on Sat/Sun and expected to see some stuff Monday but didn't. And I haven't done any de-friending so it was interesting!

I'm not on FB, but thanks for the report. I will report that I only had to unfollow one person on Instagram for posting an obnoxious GA meme. Then this popped up on the feed: I would say the membership is slacking when the COB has to spend hard earned tithing funds to buy adds on social media to spread their good news.

The weekend was nice. We didn't watch any on Saturday, but we never do. Husband skipped Priesthood session. We slept in on Sunday, made a huge breakfast and didn't turn on conference until Uchtdorf was speaking. Husband fell asleep during the second session and I tidied up the house. We also rode our bikes and took the kids to the park. All in all, it was a nice day.