From the Archives: Breadcrumbs
If perhaps you are dancing with doubt, it’s important to remember that the gate swings both ways. Sure, commiseration feels good, and *nothing* feels quite like having your own feelings validated by seeing them articulated by someone outside yourself. You might even find someone who tripped along the same path where you find yourself caught and pick up their breadcrumb trail. You also might inadvertently snag someone else and land them in your quandary. Make sure you leave a trail of your own breadcrumbs for them to follow out.
Sure, as you pass through the trail you might pick up a few stragglers and be able to help guide them out having found some crumbs that they missed. You might also leave some stragglers from your own party you brought with you. As on any wilderness trail you might hike, ‘pack it in, pack it out.’ Be true, be honest, leave no crumb unshared. Where two worlds meet with nothing but agency between them, never forget that the gates swing both ways. Make sure you’re not holding the gate open for someone hitting the trail unprepared.
If it’s your hand that’s on the gate as they pass through, it’s your head their loss could be on if they don’t make it back.
January 15th, 2007 01:08
Thanks for this post, Naiah. Good things to keep in mind! We have a responsibility to others, as well as ourselves, in what we do and say.
January 15th, 2007 14:47
I really love the imagery in this piece. I think too often it’s easy to just share thoughts and feelings and concerns and doubts and frustrations without realizing that what we say can and often does have an effect on others. It’s a hard balance, because sometimes I think it does help to be able to vocalize concerns and questions, but if all that ends up doing is leaving more questions and not seeking for resolution, I think it often ends up doing more harm than good…a sort of “swimming in the same mud” phenomenon. I think this is one of the downsides of internet communities…often too many like-minded people with gripes get together and end up not doing anything but validating their gripes instead of finding constructive solutions. In an LDS context, this can be particularly dangerous, IMO. I’d love to see openness paired with more resolution, not just leaving loose ends dangling in space for others to unravel all the more.
January 20th, 2007 16:16
After I got though my teenage questioning period, I was truly grateful that I had not talked about my questions about the existence of God with my any LDS people except my parents. Fortunately, even though I was prideful and arrogant, I didn’t feel it was my place to undermine the faith of others, since I certainly had no way of proving that my thoughts were any more correct than theirs. And I communicated my testimony, when I finally gained it, to all those non-member doubters with whom I had discussed philosophy. Some respected my beliefs, and some thought I was forsaking the search for ultimate truth in favor of comforting myths.
I have seen some who have been sucked into the anti-LDS material on the Internet recover their faith, but too many remain alienated. And many of them seem to develop a missionary zeal to “enlighten” others–either openly, or covertly. It really scares me to see the way some threads get stuck in negative, or even hostile attitudes towards the prophets of this dispensation, or the orthodox doctrines of the LDS Church.
Thanks for this powerful analogy and reminder, Naiah.
January 20th, 2007 16:47
I have nothing to add, but a resounding THANK YOU! for this post. I’ve found myself having to be very, very careful as I tread through the blogging world –especially through the Bloggernacle.