That time of month

Dear brothers and sisters, I just want to remind you that it's the last day of the month, so if you haven't done your home teaching (brethren!) or visiting teaching (sisters!!) you'd better be sure to whip up a batch of cookies and take them over to your assigned families tonight!!!

We all know how much kids love cookies and how those cookies are the only thing keeping the neighbor kids from hating our guts totally and completely for interrupting their evening with an hour of boring parent talk, five minutes of awkward "tell us about school" talk, and the even more awkward ten minute "here's this month's lesson" talk. We all know how awful that is, right? These poor kids. What do we think we're doing for them by making them sit quietly while we adults blabber on and on about whatever the hell isn't interesting at all to anyone anywhere?

We might say it's not really for the kids, it's for us. We might, but I think we'd be lying to ourselves. Do we really need to have neighbors come over and read a few paragraphs from an article in a magazine we're already subscribed to? Oh yeah, and didn't we already read and study and pray about that very article in preparation to share our thoughts on it with about three other families already? And aren't these articles little more than a rehashing of yet another primary lesson? How is this supposed to be beneficial again? I'm not seeing the purpose of rehearsing this monthly farce we call "teaching".

Is it about our pride? Is it about making higher ups happy?

Surely it's not for us. Oops! There goes the timer on the oven! I'd better go pull the cookies out.

Direct pressure

 
When it comes to "direct pressure to conform", Mormons have an arsenal of pressures and a wide range of pressure points to work with. Members who question the Church will certainly feel it from believing family and they might get called in to talk with the bishop, who will likely send out a request that home and visiting teachers make a greater effort. Every word and every action gets evaluated constantly in order to understand one's strength of loyalty to the Work.

Nowadays every minute spend in church, every lesson-oriented visit, every Ensign article, every second of General Conference feels like direct pressure.