Easy Like Sunday Morning

by Susan M. Hinckley

Recently my sister mentioned something about how we used to play games on the balcony wearing only our slips. I’d forgotten all about it; hadn’t thought of it in probably 40 years or so. What she was referring to is a memory that, on warm Sunday afternoons, we used to go out on the ivied balcony of our big old house to play, wearing nothing but white slips, having escaped from our dresses.

It was an attempt to beat the system.

We weren’t allowed to wear pants on Sunday. We weren’t allowed to play outside either. TV was also banned. And on Fast Sunday, we weren’t allowed to eat for 24 hours while a beautiful bakery cake gloated from the corner of the kitchen. So ‘Fast Sunday’ was actually a cruel misnomer for that dreaded Day, once a month, When Time Stood Still.

Consequently, I spent my childhood calculating how much time I had left in the week before I had to endure Sunday again. I remember asking, as a young girl having pink foam curlers wrestled into my hair, “But it isn’t Fast Sunday, is it?! Or Stake Conference?” Two other words that struck equal dread in my heart.

I grew up hating Sunday. The feeling persisted into adulthood. My dad recently confided that he’s never liked it much either. He said, “The problem with old age is that time is passing so fast now, it seems there’s nothing at all between one Sunday and the next. It’s just Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.” Yikes.

What I’d like to ask him about that is why my parents made Sunday so dreadable when we were growing up. What purpose did that serve? And if he had to do it over again, would he do it the same way?

I understand the idea of wanting to set the Sabbath apart from other days. I understand wanting things to be different; thoughts, feelings, and actions to be more reverent. I understand the concept of worship. I understand rest. I understand wanting a day to turn your mind to spiritual things.

But for me, gritting my teeth and getting through something is not conducive to spiritual thinking. Feeling good is. Feeling gratitude for my gifts, a love for my life, for the world, and all the beautiful things in it is. That’s more likely to happen in a whole lot of other places than when I’m sitting in my ward building.

I went on a Sunday morning run for years. I called them praise runs. They were often glorious; I’d find myself with tears streaming down my cheeks. I came home rejuvenated in body and spirit. I’m sure a lot of church members would not have approved of my Sunday running. But while I came to so many of the good feelings I craved that way, I otherwise found my Sundays to be emotionally draining.

Our church services haven’t done much to help me either. Three hours used to be interminable; now two begins to feel insufferable in a building devoid of anything to entertain or inspire the eye and therefore lift the mind. On Sunday, I wouldn’t mind a little time in the Celestial Room. Or wrapped in the awe of a jaw-dropping cathedral, a mighty pipe organ ordering the cobwebs be gone from my mind and heart.

Since I was very young, I’ve recognized that sacred music can have a profound impact on me, but I find little in our regular uses of it to excite or stir those feelings. A really good ward choir is a hard thing to come by in today’s LDS church. And if a choir is singing, it’s likely to be something thrown together from the hymnbook. Special musical numbers are few and far between, replaced by the drag of a yawning rest hymn. Wards struggle to have competent organists. The folks in the pews struggle to muster the desire to sing at all. The whole thing becomes a mumble and a slog, bearing little resemblance to the grand hymn of praise I so desperately want to sing when we come together to worship and celebrate God’s love of the world.

I struggle with the state of our church music more than perhaps any other thing. I know there are many who have probably had better experiences than I describe—I’ve had them too, and that’s how I know our music can be more than it often is. For instance, we used to have hymn practice. As a kid, music time in Sunday school was my favorite thing about church. It’s now so long gone; you have to be at least my age to remember it ever existed. But it was a glorious thing in the ward of my youth. I want that back. Focusing on the songs themselves and improving our singing of them, had real value for my spiritual well-being. Infinitely more value than another rehashed Conference talk will ever have. Singing is not me hearing someone else’s experience of God, it’s me reaching for my own.

I was sitting at dinner with a friend the other night who unexpectedly blurted, “Talks about talks are killing the Church!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of his complaint. Even the best talks don’t need to be drilled over and over again. We have a diversity of lives and minds right in our wards and can come up with interesting explorations of gospel topics that are applicable in our own neighborhoods, wherever we may be. I hear what the general authorities have to say at Conference. I hear their inspired suggestions for applying gospel principles to our lives. I thank them for their wise insights, and do reread them as needed. The rest of the time, I’d like to hear how the saints around me are coping with life while attempting to follow Jesus right in my town. All the Church’s official information is at my fingertips 24 hrs/day. I don’t have to carry around a copy of the Liahona with me, or even subscribe to it. So enough with the never-ending Conference reprise.

On Sunday, please fill me with something I can use the other 6 days of the week.

Give me something that feeds my spirit. I want to know what the person next to me is really thinking. I want to be comforted by the ways we are the same, and stretched by the ways we are not. I want to understand their specific struggles; I want to feel seen in mine. I want to sing together in praise, voices raised in a hymn big enough to hold us all, regardless of where we stand in our individual faith. Or even just our desire for faith, on days we’re at ground zero. I want to bask in our collective Mormon-ness, reach back through the songs of our ancestors and forward in a shared hope. That would leave my heart expanded, and my spirit wanting more.

Now I know, some of you are probably thinking I get as much from my Sunday meetings as I’m willing to put into them. You may have a point, although I’m going to push back. Sure, go ahead and make me feel bad for the ways my needs are not being met. Go ahead and tell me if I had more faith, or the right kind of faith, I wouldn’t be riddled with aching spiritual needs. Tell me that my lifelong problems with Sunday have all been my fault. I feel like I’ve received that message my whole life, so go ahead. I can take a punch.

But please also do me the courtesy of listening to me. Because I’m telling you I need something different, and I’m qualified to speak about my own needs. I’m saying I shouldn’t have to dread church. That my religion should make me feel good, and feel alive, and like myself better, and give me a positive sense of my place in the universe and its grand scheme. It should remind me of God’s love for me, and of yours too. It should buoy me up. It should energize me and send me out to meet the challenges in my life feeling like my faith has got my back. It should teach me the ways in which I am exactly enough, while still helping me want to be more. It should increase my capacity for love by immersing me in it. If your Sunday church experience is doing that, I’m genuinely happy for you. But it’s not doing it for me, even though I actually love my ward.

I don’t believe church is meant to be hard. You might say, “If it weren’t hard, everyone could do it. Straight gate, narrow way.” You’re right. But I thought the point is that Heavenly Father wants us all to succeed, and to feel hope in the meantime.

It makes me think of Elder Holland’s talk many conferences ago in which he spoke derisively about the feel-good God and the pats on the bottom and the picking marigolds. That description caused me pain, and I’ve decided the reason is that I want desperately to feel good. I’ve been taught God wants that for me too, I just don’t often feel it in our meetings. I don’t feel it in phrases like obedience with exactness, in handbooks that spell out every decision for me, in standards that have wanted me to dress, think, and act like everyone else. I don’t feel it in tired lessons that do little to enlarge my intellect or expand my spiritual horizons. I don’t feel it when I’m hesitant to raise my hand and disagree. I don’t feel it when there’s guilt and shame around doubts or troubling questions. These needs sit directly on my heart, right at the center of my spiritual well-being.

And I have a real problem finding a desire to share our glad message when our message is not making me glad. Here I’m going to come right out and say that I sometimes think, “Why would I want to invite my neighbors to church? They’re pretty happy.”

Please understand that I want to love church. It’s why I keep showing up. I want Sunday to become my favorite day, for once in my life. But as an adult, my happiness requires more than being able to wear pants and play outside. I changed those policies for myself years ago, when I realized they weren’t serving me.

I don’t believe church should feel like an endurance test; the other parts of our lives are hard enough. Sunday should feel like relief, worship like fresh air, callings like an opportunity to offer our gladdest gifts. I like to imagine being picked up, dusted off, set back on my feet with a hug of reassurance that there’s a reason I’m like I am. Catching sight of myself in the church’s mirror, I want to glimpse the larger image in which I am created.

Remember that song lyric, “Easy like Sunday morning?” Yeah, I know they weren’t talking about church. But I do think they were on to something.