How to speak "Mormon"

One of the difficulties I keep running into when writing about my religion is the language barrier. Mormons have a unique way of talking about our beliefs, a syntax and diction that would be unfamiliar to just about anyone else. Or else it is familiar but has a slightly different connotation from the way it is usually used. Language is so key to understanding, so central to the way people think and express and explain. It's hard to know how to talk about something when the words come short of communicating what you're trying to say.

For example, as in other religions, we have prophets, apostles, bishops, deacons, teachers, priests, missionaries, saints, churches, temples, and scriptures. But each of these things means something very specific to us, with its own set of associations and implied meanings. For example, a bishop is at the head of each ward, and he's just an ordinary member called to serve as a leader. It's an unpaid position, all on his own time. The bishop doesn't speak or preach in church every Sunday (though he could), but he directs the church meetings and has stewardship over all the members of the ward and looks out for their spiritual and temporal needs.

We also have a lot of phrases that probably just sound weird, though they are all regular English words. Things like new member, recent convert, sustained to a calling, set apart, giving a blessing, paying tithing, and partaking of the sacrament.

In addition to these familiar words, we have a whole set of things that just don't make sense: wards, stakes, Relief Society, Primary, Beehive/Mia Maid/Laurel classes, General Conference, home teaching/visiting teaching, the Book of Mormon. We don't think twice about using any of these terms, because they are so ingrained in the way we talk about our religion.

We love acronyms, too. Some are easily understandable, such as SLC for Salt Lake City or BYU for Brigham Young University. Some even make sense when you know that BoM stands for the Book of Mormon and MTC stands for Missionary Training Center. But the list keeps going: FHE, YSA, BYC, PEC, PPI, YW/YM.

The thing is, we know how bizarre some of this sounds to people unfamiliar with it. And we think it's funny, because we know what it all means, we get the double meanings. One of my favorite jokes to tell other Mormons (though I originally heard it as a true story, but I seriously doubt it's true, so I just tell it as a joke) goes something like this: A psychiatrist moves to Salt Lake and sets up a practice. A woman comes in to see him. She seems very distressed, and he quickly sits her down to talk to her. "What seems to be the problem?" he asks. "I just don't know what to do," the woman says, wringing her hands. "It's the Sunbeams. They just won't stop talking."

That's all I have to say for Mormons to start laughing, or to at least smile in recognition of where thie joke is headed. Sunbeams are what we call the group of kids in the youngest class in Primary, which is like Sunday School for children under the age of twelve. The Sunbeam class takes the kids who are 3 or 4 years old. The joke continues, with the psychiatrist thinking the woman is totally cracked and talking to sunbeams, and the woman trying not to stress about how she's going to get the Sunbeams to stop talking to her. We especially find it funny because if you've ever tried to teach the Sunbeam class, you know how short their attention spans are and how quickly they can drive you crazy. It's a very language/culture specific joke, and a silly example of the kind of translation I don't know how to do.

That's what I feel like sometimes: a translator. I'm trying to take words and concepts that flow so easily in one situation and shape them to make sense in another. But like any translation, so much of the meaning and poetry of the original feels lost to me. Maybe it's just a matter of practicing more, or a matter of just writing anyway and letting you all tell me what isn't translating coherently. I don't know. But I'm going to try.