One of the most delicate conversations you will ever have, is an attempt to comfort a friend, family or loved one in the event of a Suicide.
A family suicide is one of the worst case scenarios for problematic communication.
Sigh!!
Years ago a boy I loved, a precious member of our family took his own life.
As the boy's family is LDS, and I am LDS, I pondered what to say to another family member not of our faith, who would be attending the funeral.
Because I have personally made every communication blunder possible, and the husband of the woman I wanted to write to is and was openly hostile to our faith, I thought I could best trust an article already written on the subject by the Church itself.
I found the Article by M. Russell Ballard, Suicide: Some Things We know, and Some We Do Not, insightful and intelligent. The WHOLE POINT OF THE ARTICLE IS TO DISPEL THE MYTH THAT EVERYONE WHO COMMITS SUICIDE GOES STRAIT TO HELL.
I read over it several times as it brought me comfort. It first exposes the harsh beliefs of those who oversimplify the delicate subject. Then moves on to reason and intelligence and the Love and Wisdom of the Almighty. The article pleads understanding, patience, and faith in God's grace.
“I believe the Lord will consider each case separately and judge the circumstances of each individual. I have sincerely sought direction from our Father in Heaven to help me understand the nature of suicide. And I have come to know, as well as anything else that I know from God, that these people have a place in the kingdom of our Father, and it is not one of darkness or despair, but one where they can receive comfort and experience serenity.”
And thus, I sent a link to the article to my non-LDS family member, hoping for her to have a greater understanding of how Mormons perceive the tragedy. I was very careful to not say anything myself, but left it to the article to explain.
Instead of a response from the woman I sent the email to, her husband responded with hostility, arguing with the assumption that the article I sent declared the child was in hell.
I felt that any further attempt to straighten out the miscommunication would only make thing worse. So for the last 14 years, those family members have hated me for it. Lovely. Just lovely. Go Natalie!
But hey, the story gets even worse. Yep. So the mother was a dear friend that I cared for and worried about every night. Her husband and I spoke several times on the phone over the next couple of months. I wanted to speak words of comfort to her, but I was terrified of saying the wrong thing. She was understandably terrible traumatized and fragile during this time.
I thought of her son, on the other side of the veil of death, watching his mother helpless to comfort her. I felt that he would want to comfort her, but was powerless to do so. For me, to have to watch a dear, loved one suffer, while helpless to intercede is absolute hell. I laid awake many nights, trying to understand and find the words she needed.
Finally, I spoke with her on the phone. I knew of her fragile state, and believed that she needed to know, that the best way for her to help her son, was to heal herself. So I told her that I believed that her son could see her and her suffering. I told her that I knew her son loved her dearly. I told her that seeing her suffer so, was a hell for him. That her healing would be healing for him. I tried to be so careful. For me, these are empowering words, to be reminded of the love her son had for her, that she could make a difference to comfort him even after he passed on.
What did she get from the conversation. Her boy was in Hell. Yep, I did it again. Go Natalie!
So after 14 years, my kids came home from an extended family event, and asked me about this. Yep, they got to learn from the horses mouth what a jerk I am. Gratefully, this situation is easily explained to them. As they too, have experienced people misunderstanding them, they understood quite easily. I guess they get to learn from me that we are all misunderstood at seemingly the most significant moments. I hope my loss comforts them when they too are misunderstood. At least they can learn that. They know that if someone doesn't want to understand, there is no way to make them understand.
I got out two pitchers of water. Mine was open, while the other pitcher was shut. I demonstrated pouring my water of intelligence into the closed pitcher. My child laughed as the water splashed everywhere. This is what it is to try to explain something to someone who doesn't want to understand.
I then got out a teacup, and tried to pour a gallon of water from my pitcher into it. The water spilled everywhere and made another mess. This is what it is to try to share intelligence with someone not ready for it.
I didn't have a big water gun. But I explained that for some people, trying to pour your water of intelligence to them, is just to fill their water gun so they can shoot you.
Communication can only happen when both parties are willing, sincere, and capable. It doesn't matter how much you love someone, or want them to understand you. Thats just too bad. They have to be capable and willing, you cannot force them to understand you. Continuing to try to communicate in these situations, just makes the situation messier, and arms them with more ammo.
We discussed different ways of dealing with people who we want to understand us, but don't. We discussed the importance of knowing our audience, and their readiness, and willingness to understand.
Here is a link to our favorite article, https://www.lds.org/ensign/1987/10/suicide-some-things-we-know-and-some-we-do-not?lang=eng
Friday, December 25, 2015
Thursday, December 10, 2015
The Scariest Most Dangerous People in the World
The most dangerous, and scary people in the world are those who believe they can be controlled and that they are controlled by others. Nothing is weaker that someone who believes these things.
Now, Basic Christianity 101 teaches us that no one can be controlled.
Every teaching of Jesus Christ is focused on how we treat others, irregardless of how they treat us. His teachings are all about treating others with respect and kindness. Christ speaks of being kind to those who mistreat us. This is the ultimate act of true power.
This is because of the basic simple fact that We, Ourselves, are the ONLY one we can control. There is no way to control anyone.
Anytime ANYONE has ever spoken to me of the fear of being controlled, I have considered them ignorant and confused. For so many years I didn't even know how to address it, because the very concept was so foreign to me. It wasn't until the last ten years, that I came to understand where in the world this idea came from.
I grew up in an authoritarian home. But Mr Authority was always pretty busy. So when he was gone, which was A LOT, out came the gun powder, and we'd build little volcanoes in the field, put a hole at the top, and powder in it, then light it. Gun Powder, black powder, I don't know. But I learned from watching all that happened, that there is no such thing as controlling others.
Physical force and coercion can work only while the pressure is applied. Even then, most minds plot escape from the coercion during the moments of coercion. It doesn't work.
Free will is a basic desire of the human spirit. The right and and ability to choose burns in our hearts.
When someone believes that they can be controlled, and/or that they are being controlled, or that they can or should control others, it brings out the darkest of Humanity. Such a believer can commit any and all cruelties against the individual or group they believe is controlling them, without any remorse or holding back.
Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, a painful read, even if you can only get through a few pages of the filth, Mein Kampf is a longwinded monolog of the many Methods the Jews use to "Control" others. Adolf in his over bent intellectualism think he is outsmarting the Jew in explaining all the tricky ways a Jew can use a pretended kindness to put you under their thumb. It's all about how the Jew controls others. Adolf claims that the little "Jewess" who pretends to fall in love as a young girl, is just really trying to seduce you into mating with her and creating more Jews. Of course Adolf's filthy mind and preaching that the Jews were controlling people, and that the only way to defend against it was to bake, gas, smoke, fry every living Jew on the globe. Yikes. People were sucked into Adolf's profoundly ignorant belief that people can be controlled.
People can be controlled only so long as they believe they can be controlled.
Perhaps those who believe they can and are being controlled have never experienced or embraced their own true free will. They begin to evaluate every action of the other, solely on the measure of gaining or loosing power. This basic distortion of reality clouds their judgment.
One of the most power full experiences you can have, is to have a beast, a dog of a human tear into you emotionally, and still look inside yourself and know that you still have the power to be sincerely kind to them, that you are of worth, and that God Loves You. That is the greatest power that exists in the world.
Jesus taught to be kind to the bastard. To be kind, and feel kind within, to a ruthless bastard, knowing that you still have power over your mind in the worst of the worst of situations, so much that you can be kind to such a person, in all sincerety of heart and soul, is the most powerful feeling you can ever have.
In Rwanda, the Hutu leaders preached over the radios, all day and all night of the evil Tutsi's desire to rule over them and control them. The radios continuously blared of all the innumerable ways Tutsis seek to rule over Hutus. The Tutsis had all basic rights taken from them, until Tutsis were near powerless, and yet the Hutus were so weak minded, they still believed that the Tutsis could rule over them. Their solution, the only solution was to kill and murder every Tutsi man woman and child they could find. In 100 days, the Hutu's slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis. Little girls. Pregnant women. Little boys. Babes. Everyone, anyone. The bodies were piled high, but still the Hutus were so weak and pathetic of mind that they believed the Tutsi's would destroy them so they continued on in the filth.
The truth is that those who believe they can be controlled become very weak themselves. No mater how much power you give them, it is never enough. They still fear the power they imagine you can have over them.
Power over self is the only power that exists. Nothing else is real. That is why EVERY teaching of Jesus Christ, is all about what we can do as individual to serve others righteously.
Until you understand your own power over self, you can never experience true unconditional love to and for another living human being. Only then can you understand what real love is.
As you understand your own power over self, and you own place in your life as you learn and grow and progress, you being to see others, in their place of grown or regression. You understand that just as you life is made of your place in experience, so is their life.
You come to understand that someone else's ignorance, or weakness may hurt you, but they are not ABOUT you. It's not about YOU. Their flaws are about them. You have no ownership over their flaws. They are theirs and theirs alone.
Their actions, although they may be against you, are their actions, and their actions alone. Just because they are directed to you, doesn't make it about you. It's about them.
That disconnect is profoundly freeing. Understanding this helps you to free yourselves of the hurt they seek to inflict on you, and see them for themselves, for who they choose to be.
After that disconnect of their abuse of you, you may someday come to a place where you can even pray for them and seek for their repentance and coming to God so that they may experience the freedom of self, and the true power that comes from it. You may even pray for them to have experiences that will open their hearts and mind to the truth of what is real.
This is why True Believers always see to reach out. While for some, the wounds may be too fresh and deep to be anywhere near the abusers, maybe even for all of the rest of their lifetime. Some wounds may not heal enough before standing before Christ himself. That's okay.
Only by and thru this Atoning power of Jesus Christ, and the basic understanding of Free Will can there be peace on earth, peace in our homes, and families and relationships.
Faiths that preach of force and coercion, faiths that distance the believer from their own experience of self control, self will, free will, these faiths can only bring more suffering and bloodshed to all of creation. Faiths that preach that peace can only come through the subjection or annihilation of another group, can only bring suffering and death to self and the world, as subjection can never truly exist. When you combine this belief with the belief of "get the bad guy", you have a toxic, sometimes deadly combination of beliefs that lead to terrible violence
Faiths that preach of Free Will, and how to overcome the darkness through light, choosing service and love as individuals, these faiths will bring us closer to our God in Heaven, and closer to our potential as his literal Children. The belief of Free Will combined with reach out to the "missguided" to bring them to the light willingly, is peaceful. Remember the worst thing that Christ taught to do to the unbelievers, is Dust off Your Feet, as you leave their home. Thats it. Dust off your feet.
I believe that Satan is very real. I believe that his number one teaching is that others can and will have power and control over you, that you have no power unless you take someone else down.
More importantly, I believe that God the Creator of all Creation lives, and is all powerful, seeks to GIVE us POWER, has no fear of losing power. I believe that he cannot give us that power until we personally come to understand the very power we now have, and that as we experience our own sense of power over self, exercise it, and grow, that the Lord God will grant us more. Our Spirits grow within in power and strength.
Please reread the First Four Gospels of the New Testament, focusing on how Jesus Christ is teaching us how we personally have power, Real Power.
Sincerely, and in the Name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Natalie Fleming
Now, Basic Christianity 101 teaches us that no one can be controlled.
Every teaching of Jesus Christ is focused on how we treat others, irregardless of how they treat us. His teachings are all about treating others with respect and kindness. Christ speaks of being kind to those who mistreat us. This is the ultimate act of true power.
This is because of the basic simple fact that We, Ourselves, are the ONLY one we can control. There is no way to control anyone.
Anytime ANYONE has ever spoken to me of the fear of being controlled, I have considered them ignorant and confused. For so many years I didn't even know how to address it, because the very concept was so foreign to me. It wasn't until the last ten years, that I came to understand where in the world this idea came from.
I grew up in an authoritarian home. But Mr Authority was always pretty busy. So when he was gone, which was A LOT, out came the gun powder, and we'd build little volcanoes in the field, put a hole at the top, and powder in it, then light it. Gun Powder, black powder, I don't know. But I learned from watching all that happened, that there is no such thing as controlling others.
Physical force and coercion can work only while the pressure is applied. Even then, most minds plot escape from the coercion during the moments of coercion. It doesn't work.
Free will is a basic desire of the human spirit. The right and and ability to choose burns in our hearts.
When someone believes that they can be controlled, and/or that they are being controlled, or that they can or should control others, it brings out the darkest of Humanity. Such a believer can commit any and all cruelties against the individual or group they believe is controlling them, without any remorse or holding back.
Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, a painful read, even if you can only get through a few pages of the filth, Mein Kampf is a longwinded monolog of the many Methods the Jews use to "Control" others. Adolf in his over bent intellectualism think he is outsmarting the Jew in explaining all the tricky ways a Jew can use a pretended kindness to put you under their thumb. It's all about how the Jew controls others. Adolf claims that the little "Jewess" who pretends to fall in love as a young girl, is just really trying to seduce you into mating with her and creating more Jews. Of course Adolf's filthy mind and preaching that the Jews were controlling people, and that the only way to defend against it was to bake, gas, smoke, fry every living Jew on the globe. Yikes. People were sucked into Adolf's profoundly ignorant belief that people can be controlled.
People can be controlled only so long as they believe they can be controlled.
Perhaps those who believe they can and are being controlled have never experienced or embraced their own true free will. They begin to evaluate every action of the other, solely on the measure of gaining or loosing power. This basic distortion of reality clouds their judgment.
One of the most power full experiences you can have, is to have a beast, a dog of a human tear into you emotionally, and still look inside yourself and know that you still have the power to be sincerely kind to them, that you are of worth, and that God Loves You. That is the greatest power that exists in the world.
Jesus taught to be kind to the bastard. To be kind, and feel kind within, to a ruthless bastard, knowing that you still have power over your mind in the worst of the worst of situations, so much that you can be kind to such a person, in all sincerety of heart and soul, is the most powerful feeling you can ever have.
In Rwanda, the Hutu leaders preached over the radios, all day and all night of the evil Tutsi's desire to rule over them and control them. The radios continuously blared of all the innumerable ways Tutsis seek to rule over Hutus. The Tutsis had all basic rights taken from them, until Tutsis were near powerless, and yet the Hutus were so weak minded, they still believed that the Tutsis could rule over them. Their solution, the only solution was to kill and murder every Tutsi man woman and child they could find. In 100 days, the Hutu's slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis. Little girls. Pregnant women. Little boys. Babes. Everyone, anyone. The bodies were piled high, but still the Hutus were so weak and pathetic of mind that they believed the Tutsi's would destroy them so they continued on in the filth.
The truth is that those who believe they can be controlled become very weak themselves. No mater how much power you give them, it is never enough. They still fear the power they imagine you can have over them.
Power over self is the only power that exists. Nothing else is real. That is why EVERY teaching of Jesus Christ, is all about what we can do as individual to serve others righteously.
Until you understand your own power over self, you can never experience true unconditional love to and for another living human being. Only then can you understand what real love is.
As you understand your own power over self, and you own place in your life as you learn and grow and progress, you being to see others, in their place of grown or regression. You understand that just as you life is made of your place in experience, so is their life.
You come to understand that someone else's ignorance, or weakness may hurt you, but they are not ABOUT you. It's not about YOU. Their flaws are about them. You have no ownership over their flaws. They are theirs and theirs alone.
Their actions, although they may be against you, are their actions, and their actions alone. Just because they are directed to you, doesn't make it about you. It's about them.
That disconnect is profoundly freeing. Understanding this helps you to free yourselves of the hurt they seek to inflict on you, and see them for themselves, for who they choose to be.
After that disconnect of their abuse of you, you may someday come to a place where you can even pray for them and seek for their repentance and coming to God so that they may experience the freedom of self, and the true power that comes from it. You may even pray for them to have experiences that will open their hearts and mind to the truth of what is real.
This is why True Believers always see to reach out. While for some, the wounds may be too fresh and deep to be anywhere near the abusers, maybe even for all of the rest of their lifetime. Some wounds may not heal enough before standing before Christ himself. That's okay.
Only by and thru this Atoning power of Jesus Christ, and the basic understanding of Free Will can there be peace on earth, peace in our homes, and families and relationships.
Faiths that preach of force and coercion, faiths that distance the believer from their own experience of self control, self will, free will, these faiths can only bring more suffering and bloodshed to all of creation. Faiths that preach that peace can only come through the subjection or annihilation of another group, can only bring suffering and death to self and the world, as subjection can never truly exist. When you combine this belief with the belief of "get the bad guy", you have a toxic, sometimes deadly combination of beliefs that lead to terrible violence
Faiths that preach of Free Will, and how to overcome the darkness through light, choosing service and love as individuals, these faiths will bring us closer to our God in Heaven, and closer to our potential as his literal Children. The belief of Free Will combined with reach out to the "missguided" to bring them to the light willingly, is peaceful. Remember the worst thing that Christ taught to do to the unbelievers, is Dust off Your Feet, as you leave their home. Thats it. Dust off your feet.
I believe that Satan is very real. I believe that his number one teaching is that others can and will have power and control over you, that you have no power unless you take someone else down.
More importantly, I believe that God the Creator of all Creation lives, and is all powerful, seeks to GIVE us POWER, has no fear of losing power. I believe that he cannot give us that power until we personally come to understand the very power we now have, and that as we experience our own sense of power over self, exercise it, and grow, that the Lord God will grant us more. Our Spirits grow within in power and strength.
Please reread the First Four Gospels of the New Testament, focusing on how Jesus Christ is teaching us how we personally have power, Real Power.
Sincerely, and in the Name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Natalie Fleming
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