A minor rant about Mormons

[lizziec]

Continued from here.

* (this started out as an aside in the previous entry, but it got so long I split it off) According to Phil the mormon also reported that someone had seen a vision/dream of my dad recently and he believed it had happened. Honestly, I swear most mormons I've ever known have seen a vision or something of my dad in the years since he died, and it pisses me off. If he wants to communicate with me, or get me back to church or whatever then he really needs to come speak to me about it. Or I shan't believe it. Because he's been dead for 19 years now and never appeared to me or mum or Phil. And if he wanted us to know stuff you'd kind of assume he'd come to us rather than going through someone we don't know at all, or barely know, or have never got on with. Also, why didn't he tell those people he did appear to to take better care of his family who spent a good deal of those 19 years struggling in one way or another.

Seriously, WTF is wrong with these people?!

Also, is it just Mormons where a large number seem to have these visions and dreams of dead people, or at least tell people they have, or do all religions/sections of christianity suffer from this?

Comments

[xanantha.livejournal.com]

It sounds, from your previous entry, as though your mum's funeral was as good as a funeral can be, for which I am glad for you and Phil and the rest of your family. You should be really proud of yourself for the way you've coped with this: and while I appreciate that you probably feel Well I Didn't Have Any Choice But To, there ARE a lot of people who would just have given up and left it all to other people. Truly.

As for the stuff with your dad though... I think you are absolutely right to be angry about the way they invoked your dad, tried exploiting his memory to get their own way. I am quite sure that your dad is still watching over you from somewhere, but less convinced that he is likely to be making personal appearances on this plane of existence, even in dreams. And as you say, if he was going to rock on up in a vision/dream, he wouldn't pick Some Random, but he would come to you or Phil (or, in the past, your mum).

While I realise that it was a rhetorical question, I suspect that much of what's wrong is Having An Agenda and Seeking To Manipulate. You'll know an awful lot better than I what's likely to be going on in their tiny tiny minds of weirdy (to think this sort of thing is okay that must be their mindtype, surely?) but's what I'd thinkfeel... Also, I suppose that it's about claiming a mark of piety/favour from God, being Entrusted With Visions etc? Don't mean that they are [necessarily] making it up, I hasten to add - if you want this sort of thing to happen, it will; and you will interpret it as you wish.

Er. Yes. Can't say it's something I've heard of/encountered. Certainly, if someone from church told me they'd had a dream with mummy in, say, they would be saying it just to let me know she's still thought of; and they'd be attributing it to the way dreams pull things out of our subconscious.

Take care, petal. And I truly am so very sorry.

xxx

[princess-cutter.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry you had to hear of that and deal with that on such an emotionally charged day. Some people have no sense of tact or decency at all.

As far as i know it's not a generally accepted Christian thing, but my uncle and his ex wife were Christian Spiritualists and on a semi regular basis they would call me to say that someone in their group had received messages from my dad. Sometimes i think people are just a little bit sick and want the attention, be it good or bad.

That aside, i just wanted to say that if you ever want someone to talk to, then i'm here. *hugs* xxx

[barakta]

I've not come across the 'visions' type stuff from good old fashioned C of E or even the Happy Clappy brigade - but then have not lost a parent or anyone the church folk could have known enough to do that.

Added to the fact my mum's vicar doesn't come near me now - when dad left the 2nd time he made as if to hug me, I gave him look of death and he backed off - it also occurs to me that as a dirty queer which he might have found out about by then also put him off... Dunno, don't much care cos he's creepy and I avoid.

I think the other commenters have made sense of it better than I could, subconsciously wanting attention or whatever and indeed how they phrase it. I'd never dream of telling my oldest friend's mum that "I saw John in a dream" unless it came up in conversation and it would just be "Oh yeah isn't subconscious weird" not claiming to have any significance. People will read what they want to - and the Happy Clappies certainly have their ways of doing that "Oh well badthing happened cos they didn't pray/believe/faith well enough" etc which makes me want to thump them cos it's so manipulative and horrid.

I think you and Phil were very very kind to lots of different and potentially difficultly compatible people allowing them a chance to show condolence for your mum in their own way - and despite the nasty manipulation from the desecrating-grave person I think you were still right to "let them get on with it" since you don't care. Hopefully you'll have to have minimal contact with them again.