What do you think of recent Church initiatives such as the “Journey through grief” series.
What do you think of Beehive Mills ceasing to make garments and switching to PPE production?
Did that affect your willingness to wear a face mask?
What other recent initiatives have gotten your attention?
Wheat & Tares 
I think the Church did a good thing when it switched Beehive Clothing over to making PPE masks for a while. It also provided food and other items to areas that were in need. However, comparing what it’s done so far vs. what it’s capable of doing, leaves me underwhelmed. Hunger, homelessness, medical care, etc. will certainly be elevated for the foreseeable future and I hope to see the Church tap it’s enormous rainy day fund to the tune of several billion dollars and materially help individuals and communities throughout the world. If not now, when?
Never heard of Journey through Grief, so no opinion.
I really appreciate the PPE efforts. And the efforts of my local ward during the SIP.
I live in an area where only nutjobs don’t wear a mask in public. For me it’s a no brainer as we’ve kept our covid numbers very low compared to neighboring counties. My church membership has nothing to do with this.
I must say that I am very favorably impressed by the “Journey Through Grief” video.
As one who has lost two children and facilitated peer support groups for parents that have lost children (hundreds over the last decade), the stumbling blocks and challenges of the grief journey were well described. It also hit on many of the sore points that parents who are active members of the Church almost universally experience: “You need more faith”, “the atonement will take away your grief”, “they’re in a better place”, “do you still think about that”, “your testimony needs to be stronger”, “God had a mission for them”. In general conference, President Eyring described how his father did not shed a tear at his mother’s passing because of his unshakeable faith in the “plan”. You should have heard those poor parents in the group session the next week.
It is hard to know what to say to the bereaved so we often resort to saying something that makes us feel better. It’s hard to find fault with others when just a heartbeat ago we were still in that blissfully unknowing state ourselves.
But we have been called to a higher way – to mourn with those who mourn – to bear one another’s burdens – to comfort. That calls us to share the pain and sit in sorrow. That takes more time than making a casserole. It leaves you spent. You forebear judgment and never suppose that you are right in making a fellow traveler feel “they aren’t doing it right”.
I appreciate that the video had input from professionals that understand. This video will be very supportive for the bereaved and – I hope – informative for the rest of us as we take up a portion of their burden.
The only change to beehive clothing that will impress me is totally changing garments so as to make them comfortable and practicable. love the covenants, hate the execution
I never received word about the Journey Through Grief. It’s not a high priority to watch because I see that the church has it’s role in dealing with grief and that is to give you a larger context of the purpose of life. Having said that, in dealing with grief, I’m going to see a trained therapist who can individually help me with the unique situation that I’d be going through.
My willingness to wear a mask has nothing to do with what the church is doing. The evidence says that I could be asymptomatic and not know I have the virus. Evidence also says that I can spread the disease to others through stuff coming out of my mouth and nose. Evidence also says that the virus doesn’t do well traveling through masks. So I’ll do my part to help out by wearing a mask. It’s not some huge burden that I can’t bare, it’s a small mask that I wear when I go out in public.
And if further evidence changes, I’ll review the evidence and change with it.
I’m not personally well acquainted with grief, but I have heard from those who are that 1) most Church members are seriously bad at supporting those who are grieving, and 2) this video from the Church was a great example of the right approach. The complaints I generally hear about how members approach those who are grieving are that they treat grief as a sin or something that makes them uncomfortable (if you have faith, you’ll get over it because of the Plan of Salvation–same as how some talk about depression), and most attempts to comfort are just a reminder of empty platitudes and eternal promises. I don’t know if that’s unique to Church members, but it sounds like the kind of clumsy comfort you get from people who haven’t really grieved.
I appreciate the effort of the institution to recognize grief. The “emotional field” of a grieving soul extends beyond the flesh—we can feel it when we are near.
In addition to grief, I hope the institution learns to recognize trauma—particularly sexual trauma—as another emotional field we might serve to heal. The behavior of victims often resembles sin (promiscuity, prostitution, crime), but it comes from a place of innocence-lost. Deep psychology.
Bishops do not have enough training with this.
Bishops do not need to be psychologists to recognize trauma. By recognizing trauma, moral expectations could be relaxed, which will allow for space needed for healing. The timeline for healing may be decades.
Bishops would benefit from learning from Diane Langberg, PhD. The lecture is entitled, “The Spiritual Impact of Sexual Abuse and Other Trauma.”
Was already wearing masks. If the masks made by Beehive Clothing are as obnoxiously ill-fitting as the garments they make, expect a covid spike wherever they are sent.
Will have to check out the Grief information.
Dave F already said most of what I was thinking of saying.
Where I live nobody really even knows about beehive clothing. I am glad they switched to making the masks. All of this is a side issue to wearing a mask (which I do).