Playing Grown-Up

I just got back from a wedding reception for a couple of my friends. In this case, by a couple I really do mean 2. For the sake of the entry, we'll call them just Bride and Groom.

Bride and Groom met in the ward here in the YM/YW program. He is one year older than she is, and they both started to like each other when he turned 16. She was still 15, and so they waited about a year to start officially dating. They then dated for 2 years, and he went the way of 19-year-old worthy young men in the church, and headed on a mission. She finished high school and wrote him, and then headed off to BYU-I. She continued to write him, went through some tough stuff, kept writing, and he got home last month. She came home for Thanksgiving, about 16 hours after he was released from being a missionary, and he proposed to her 4 hours later. She left to go back to school about a week later, and then came back about 2 weeks before they got married, yesterday. In grand total they've spent about 3 weeks together in the past 110 weeks.

For me, this is WAY fast. Crazy fast! In Bride's words: "I waited a year to start dating him, two years for him to go, two years for him to get back, I don't want to wait anymore!" Granted, they both look happy, and things will likely go well for them, but looking at them gave me the sensation that they were playing dress-up. The dress and suit fit perfectly, and they did all the things that happy cake-cutting newlyweds are supposed to do, but still, it all seemed play.

Now, this could very well just be me. All my life I've looked forward to something happening in the future: going to school, moving, going to middle school, moving some more, high school, moving, graduation, college etc. And each time I get to a new place, I think, wow, when I get to the next step, then I'll really be grown up. Somehow though, at each new step, I don't feel really different. Either that, or (especially in the case of college) I go through the motions for enough time that I become accustomed to a place, and then I become familiar with it, and then I get to be good at it. The whole, practice makes perfect thing. But I don't ever end up feeling like I'm any more grown up. I think it might be because it happens too gradually. I "play grown-up" until it becomes reality to me, at which point it's usually time to move onto playing something else. At this point, I can't realistically see myself in a wedding dress, or at my own reception, or in the temple, at least not in the near future. Good thing I've still got a couple of years.

Talktrine

I went back to my home ward today, along with my family, and it was...well, interesting.

Now, I love my family, and I had a blast with them, but the Sacrament meeting talks were both classic examples of first-rate talktrine (talk-trin...like doctrine, except not). My ward here practices the full use of talktrine all the time. "Let me 'splain. No, there is too much, let me sum up."

Talktrine is what some church members use when they give their talks. In order to use talktrine, you don't generally read scriptures, you quote them...from memory...or at least you quote what you think you remember them being. You may also use any bit of Mormon heresy that you think you might have heard in some devotional/fireside from someone who may have been a general authority. As long as it sounds good and righteous, it must be right, right? Right. You don't have sources, unless it's the Ensign, and even then it has to be something that you remember reading a long time ago. Personal stories of how you may or may not have been saved at one time by the Three Nephites are encouraged, and use of poems, quotes, and stories out of non church-approved sources are common.

That being explained, today we heard how Ether saw the finger of Jesus, and how we could know who the next prophet was before he was called through revelation. Bet you didn't know that Joseph Smith prayed in the grove because he read, "ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened to you." The things I learn in church...