Truth is beauty, beauty truth

So a couple posts ago i mentioned that i was going to be traveling to family reunions, and as i more or less expected, that resulted in my complete radio silence over the past week and a half or so. However, stuff that happened over the time i was away gave me a couple things to write about.

For example, this past Sunday my family attended church (along with most of the rest of that mostly-Mormon branch of our family) at a smallish branch.* While i was there i saw something i haven’t seen in a Mormon church service in years:

Metal sacrament trays!

(Old-school represent!)

You know, i certainly understand that they can get dinged up, and they’re noisier than the plastic ones,** but the metal ones are so much prettier—and i hadn’t realized how much i’d missed that.

* Those of you who know how church unit budgets are calculated will understand why i kept imagining that the branch president was thinking to himself, “Why couldn’t their family reunion have been in June instead of July?”

** Unless you use the paper cups—but for whatever reason, the paper cups cost noticeably more than the plastic ones.

Shall the youth of Zion tripfalter?

So the church has released a bunch of videos to go along with this year’s youth program theme. In one of them, a teenage boy talks about how passing the sacrament is the most wonderfully amazing feeling in the world for him.

I feel very happy for him, i really do—perhaps not least because when i was a teenager, you know what passing the sacrament felt like for me? Constant fear that i’d trip over my still-outsize-for-my-height feet and spill the bread or water all over the place. Not really the height of joy for me, you know?

Apparently i was already in training to be evil back then.

Changing rules

Unless i read it wrong, the most recent version of the church’s administrative handbook* says that the wearing of white shirts and ties should be encouraged among those who are asked to conduct the administration of the sacrament, but that—and this is the interesting part—white shirts and ties aren’t to be required of those who administer the ordinance.

I wonder if the widespread local de jure rules on white shirts and ties while administering the sacrament will actually go away, or if they’ll simply be replaced by de facto versions of the rule.

* Now called just Handbook, though it’ll always be the GHI to me!

Sacramental bread

I have been in wards where there was a strong local directive to only use white bread (as a symbol of purity, i suppose). I’ve also been in wards where there was a strong local directive to only use whole-grain bread (to match up with the Last Supper, i suppose).

Why not just recognize that it makes no difference, and not give any such directive at all?