reading the Book of Mormon
Happy Anniversary to me! Today is two years since the last time I attended LDS church services. I realized that with a little thrill of excitement.
I started reading the Book of Mormon several times when I was young, after I was baptized. I never got through First Nephi. When I was 11, I started reading daily, a chapter a day. I was motivated by the Gospel in Action award. One of the goals for that was to read every day for a month. When I passed off that goal, I did it with an unclean conscience--I was pretty sure I had missed one or two days. I felt so guilty. To help make my conscience feel better, I started reading daily in earnest. My daily reading was helped along by my personality--once I set myself to do something like that, I can just do it. (My husband would call it obsessive-compulsive, but I disagree of course.)
I did the same thing for journal writing. I just picked up my journal one day when I was 14 and said, "I'm going to write every day now." And I did. For 10 years. And when I started blogging, I set myself a "post daily" goal, and kept that up for months until the pace was too much for my schedule. Yet I still post 4 to 5 times a week, as if pushed by a compulsion. I just tell myself I have readers counting on me. All five of you.
I kept up the daily Book of Mormon-reading for over 10 years, when I started to shorten it to less than a chapter. Eventually, it got to the point that I was reading only one verse just for the sake of saying I did it. When I was 24, I decided to read D&C, and I started to dislike Joseph Smith and have some serious cognitive dissonance moments. When I finished D&C and went back to the Book of Mormon, I found it screamed "Joseph Smith wrote this!" to me. It was just too painful to read.
I lost exact count after 12 full read-throughs, but I think I read the Book of Mormon 14 or 15 times total, almost all of that in my teenage years.
What a waste of time.
5 comments:
I read through it roughly 12-15 times as well, mostly on my mission. At least twice in German.
Oh, well.
I can relate to the obsessive-compulsive thing - I'm not admitting, by any means, just sayin' that I relate.
I never made it through Nephi 1. What I did read multiple times:
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien's series, 9-10 times)
Riddlemaster (Patricia McKillip's series, 6-7 times)
Thomas Covenant (Donaldson's series, 3-4 times)
Shadowland (Peter Straub, 3-4 times)
Talisman (Stephen King, 3-4 times)
I think you have way more than 5 readers - you are a brilliant writer.
K- I tried reading it in a couple other languages, too, but never actually made it through. It was good language practice, and I could claim to be reading the BoM like I was supposed to, but not being bored to death by it.
Sid- lol. There are a bunch of fantasy/sci-fi books I read multiple times, too. Now I generally only read things ones; so many books, so little time! (Except Harry Potter.)
Ugh - waste of time FOR SURE. THE most boring book I've ever read, hands down.
Rebecca- Oh, come on, haven't you read the phone book?
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