Where are they?

I often wonder where are the people my age, especially when I see someone my age and do not recognize them as such. This is something I have been considering since, well, before I was even 40 years old.

My theory is that the reason there are so few of people my age who are members of the church started as paranoia that perhaps they all knew something I did not, finally deciding that I would wait until I figured it out. But, as I learn more the more I end up believing things I cannot yet understand. I have noticed a huge difference between me an others although we conclude the same things as real they have this some sort of extra sense that everything is based on, and they call it the holy spirit, and it confuses and makes everything a mystery that only the chosen few can grasp and understand, thus their children (my peers) try for a thing they cannot possibly grasp yet. It is actually alot like God trying to teach us in his way of seeing things, huh? I heard a good lecture yesterday where a person explained teaching of Godly things by using the metaphor of a Kindergarten teacher. That clicked and I understood what happened to the people my age. I see it in the elementary school here, teachers teach to a level and expect children to work to get it, and if they don't they are simply not meant to grasp things, instead of observing how a child learns and using it to explain the things they must understand.

Utah children seem more advanced, but I bet they have more children considered "special" cause it is all about sink or swim, and coddling is considered not preparing them, and like Lucifer, it is so extremely close to the truth that it can be almost undestinguished from it. The truth is that overcoming obstacles makes us fit for greater things, like a bird breaking out of it's shell, or butterfly from his cocoon. We have all heard "what does not kill you makes you stronger." So, instead of teaching to a level that naturally a child is at, instead they teach to a given level, afterall that is the point of classes full of students. That is what I love about preschool, it prepares a child to understand at the level taught, but teaching at the child's level...but, I digress. I meant to address why so many left the faith they were raised with, if it was true.

My theory is that things as they were understood were not true, and when that was doscovered they were considerably more understanding and assumedthey were enlightened because they could see that what they had supposedly been taught was untrue. Even now, I am far far below the state of so many of the parents of my peers, because I have taken a different route.

I heard yesterday that of our facets of bring reasoning is by far the weakest. I first tried to reason everything out starying in a college philosophy class, I assigned myself the task of writting a paper to reason out the existance of God. I stood on the shoulders of Blaise Pascal, and felt good about it. But, I found loop holes in anything I reasoned, so I developed a cynical sense that tried to doubt anything could ever be known.

Finally, I realized that *I* could never know anything if I only reasoned it. That seemed like a long life for nothing so I started paying attention to more of ME than my thoughts, and I realized among my talents and abilities is to know things but, it was not going to be reasoning alone, but I had reason to believe I could come to a knowledge of things as they were although it might take years and years, then you add to it the notion I had already chosen to live by which was, "mortality is to be lived by faith."

Or is that just a thing to encourage thinkers, you can never know things, so just know that. I found this issue finally considered and written about in a book called the Book of Mormon. In the subtitled book of Ether I genuinely wanted to know what they had decided about this trouble. It is called feasting on words when you want to know/read them so badly the best way to explain the feeling is liken it to eating. The book said that we do not recieve any witness  (knowledge) until after a trial of our faith. Again, if true, this truth is so close to the thing I cried earlier was the cause of ignorance, meaning we need obstacles to overcome, to gain anything, this is understood by many as a law of sacrifice, it is afterall how we trade money or earn it by giving up a thing for another or supposed worth. In a trial of faith we experience a difficult thing in return for knowledge, but