[Note: This is one of a series of posts about unexpected spiritual experiences. Here’s a link to the guest post invitation. Here’s a link to the archive for this series.]
“Which helps you feel the Spirit?”
I’m in an LDS Institute class on world religions. The man at the front of the room holds up two pictures: a beautiful mosque with golden domes in one hand (think Hagia Sofia beautiful); in the other hand, the D.C. temple, white spires piercing a crystal blue sky.
Apparently, this is a rhetorical question. No one offers a response. I squirm uncomfortably in my seat. I am enrolled in several different Institute classes for my fall semester as a college sophomore, and I’m hungry for spiritual knowledge. Genuinely curious about other religions, I want to hear about them straight, undiluted, not through Mormon-tinted glasses. It is evident, though, that in this particular class, we are all expected to wear our LDS shades. I don’t feel threatened at all by other religions, just deep interest. Why the need to compare? I sit up and brace myself.
“Now, which piece of music helps you feel the Spirit?”
The institute teacher walks over to a small boom box and presses a button. I recognize the chanting of Buddhist monks. Several years ago, I had watched a small group of these monks in colorful orange robes as they bent over to sandpaint an intricate mandala. That evening they gave a concert of sorts, and I heard their voices mix together to produce deep, vibrating sounds I’d never heard before. From what I understood, the art and the music were intended to bless the people of my hometown. I felt deeply honored and awed.
After a minute or two, the teacher presses another button. The chanting stops and the room is suddenly loud with the unmistakable warm vibrato of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Something is out of place. At the time, over a decade ago, I am a true blue, totally orthodox, preparing-for-my-mission Mormon, but this is too much. My stomach is knotty and my mouth is dry. This simple object lesson is presented on the first day, and I know I will have to drop the course. I am there because I want to know about other religions, not to have them constantly compared to my own and found wanting. If I had been honest with myself, willing to speak up, I could have raised my hand and said, “Both. Both pictures help me feel the Spirit. Both songs help me feel the Spirit. That’s the truth.” I would like to see the look on the teacher’s face if I had been bold enough, articulate enough back then.
I walked out of the room at the end of the hour, bought the manual, and decided I would just study the topic on my own.
That experience has often led me to question the nature of spiritual experiences. I wonder if we are conditioned to feel the warm fuzzies we associate with the Spirit, and if those warm fuzzies are strengthened by familiarity. Would a Buddhist monk feel the Spirit, or what we call the Spirit, if he walked into a Mormon temple? Would a Mormon feel the Spirit in a mosque? Do we feel good because we are taught that we should feel good in those places? Or maybe there is a measure of the Spirit in all of those places. The same line of thinking applies to music.
Something I know for sure is that I have felt good, affirming, bosom-burning feelings in cathedrals. Not even in them. Just looking at their spires, or basking in colored light from stained glass windows. I have felt those same feelings in and around mosques, synagogues, and churches of many different Christian denominations. Let’s add mountaintops and porch swings, too. May as well mention libraries, museums, planetariums, and kitchen tables.
I have felt good, affirming, bosom-burning feelings listening to Mozart and Holst and Beethoven, listening to poetry recitations, listening to rivers, migrating geese, trains, and storms. Also, the sounds my children make when they are asleep. Heartbeats.
My conclusion: the Spirit is everywhere, in everything, not just the LDS church. Not even mostly in the LDS church. But abundantly everywhere, especially if we’re willing to cross the threshold of the familiar into new territory.
–Dayna Patterson
[Last post in this series: Mormon Soccer; See all the posts in this series here]
Beautiful.
Cathedrals definitely do it for me.
I loved your list of things and places that make you experience those feelings that we call “the Spirit.”
I spent a semester abroad in Vienna, Austria, and visited many beautiful cathedrals and churches. My roommate sometimes accompanied me and one day made the comment that all these cathedrals and churches made her so sad because the people who built them weren’t worshiping the “right” way and she just couldn’t see how anyone could feel the Spirit there. Even back then, in my very TBM days, I was horrified. I replied that they were truly worshiping God and I was grateful to know that there were people who loved God enough to offer Him their best. And I could certainly feel the Spirit there, so I didn’t understand why she couldn’t. To her credit, she (who grew up in Orem and went to college in Provo) said, “I never thought of it that way.”
My husband lost two of his LDS friends in high school because he told them he felt the Spirit in a Catholic cathedral in Italy. So sad, and so narrow minded.
Beautifully put. I wonder what the other people in your class were thinking, and how many of them silently thought the same thing.
Your class description is just troubling! I would say that is definitely conditioning! But your take away from it is really beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
I have to admit, I was shocked by the way your story ended. I was totally expecting the story to turn 180 degrees and to hear that the object lesson actually was to show the holy ghost is also found in other religions. I was thinking your teacher was waiting for someone to bravely express thoughts similar to yours, to which he would reply, “Exactly!”
Are you sure he wasn’t building up to that? If so, that makes me really sad.
I took a lot of institute classes at the University of Utah and I’m confident that among all the teachers I took classes from, most (though probably not all) would have made the point that the spirit is often found outside the LDS church.
I hope so, too, ScottHeff! Not arguing with Dayna’s story, but I’ve had this argument with my husband a time or two. ;) I feel like plenty of Mormons are open to the idea that the spirit can be found outside the LDS church. It’s usually within a somewhat limited context, as in:
1. “Bring us all your truth and let us add to it” (implication = we have more)
2. “That’s the influence of the Holy Ghost, not the GIFT of the Holy Ghost” (implication = we have something special that non-Mormons don’t have)
3. “That’s a partial truth” (implication = we have the rest of the truth)
Do you feel like that’s a fair characterization? Yay or nay?
It’s weird because I’m confident I could easily find Mormons who agree that non-Mormons definitely experience “the Spirit.” But if you follow that argument to its logical end, then don’t you butt up against the question: do we actually have something special or not?
I didn’t want to argue with Dayna’s story either. Upon first reading, I thought she left after the first two object lessons, so I had hope that she just missed the end where the teacher flipped it on its head. Then I realized she stayed for the whole first class. Really sad.
I definitely think that’s a fair characterization, Heather. Especially number 2. (Which is why I was surprised the story didn’t go the other way.) I’ve always tried to make sense of this, even from a very young age. The Sunday School answer is that others may feel the Holy Ghost at times, but because we have the gift of the holy ghost, we can have it as a constant companion and can access the spirit anytime we want. Well I never felt like I had it as a constant companion. I only ever felt (feel) it on rare occasions. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.
This is beautiful. I, too, feel that warm-fuzzy feeling in so many places, regardless of their ties to my Mormon upbringing and learning. Thanks for sharing your list. Makes me feel less of an outsider to know that I’m not the only one who feels that feeling in other places.
Fantastic post! I also don’t understand Mormons who get all judgy-judgy about other people’s faith. Especially when it’s part of our core doctrine to not be so judgy (A of F 11), and especially considering the church’s early history, when judgment from those of other faiths made life pretty miserable for folks. If you can’t (ideally) appreciate the moving, faith-promoting works of other faiths, and use them to help enrich your own faith, then at very least please be respectful, and not condescending!
This post also reminds me of so many institute class experiences that I found really lacking. I went to graduate school at UCLA. With such a large institute program and so many really smart students, I desperately hoped for something more intellectually stimulating than what I’d experienced in institute classes in my home stake. Disappointment after disappointment. Just when I had decided that I was done with institute, after all these disappointments, they announced they’d be offering a “graduate seminar” where we’d be “discussing” the scriptures in depth (they picked one book–can’t remember which–Isaiah, maybe?). I looked around at the other students on the first day of class–tons of super smart, gifted young scholars–folks working on PhDs in literature, the natural and social sciences. I was so excited! And then class started. And we got the same sort of spoon-fed pablum from the instructor as usual, with the only difference being that we spent more time on each verse, and got the spoon-fed pablum at a slower pace. People kept interrupting with raised hands to share insights that were very thought-provoking, but they were quickly dealt with so we could move back to spoon feeding. I dropped the class after the first meeting and that was basically the end of institute studies for me. Sad. Fortunately, a lot of those same class members were in my ward. We had some awesome gospel doctrine classes. :)