Ever once in a while (more and more it seems), Sister Wesson manages to get me scrubbed and brushed and off to Church, even though there’s always chores to be done around our place.  It’s a good thing, too, seein’s how I’m the High Priest Group teacher and all.  The Bishop, he don’t take kindly to excuses from me about missing Church, except he didn’t mind it much when his old mare foundered and he excused me from a Priesthood Executive Committee meeting to go out to his place to do some horse doctoring.  Guess he figured the Bishop’s horse is like the Lord’s horse, so it takes the place of Church under them circumstances.  I’m okay with that.

Anyway, that ain’t what I’m talking about today.  It just so happened that last Sunday, I’m sitting there in Fast and Testimony meeting (which ain’t ever fast enough for ol’ Rulon, if you catch my drift), when daffy old Sister McMurtrey gets up and starts jawin’ away, ruminating on bunions and blessings like there’s no tomorrow.  I just set there for 15 minutes with my eyes glazed over when suddenly I had this vision of my best milk cow, Amelia, standing there at the pulpit, and she’s just chewing her old cud, right there in the microphone, same as ol’ Sister McMurtrey!  It was about then that the Spirit starts trumpeting away in my brain, and I know I’ve stumbled over a principle of the gospel. 

See, a cow’s belly ain’t built to digest the hay the first time it goes down.  It ain’t ready yet.  The cow, she chews it up, swallows it, and lets it set there deep down in her gullet for a few hours.  Then later, she lays around and horks it all back up in the form of soggy wad, and chews on it some more until it’s ready to swallow again.  After doing that for a time or two, the cow turns the hay into more cow, or else leaves it laying around the pasture for ol’ Rulon to step around.

It’s the same way with the gospel.  First time you read the scriptures, or learn your Sunday School lessons, you pretty much just got to swallow them whole, ‘cause they don’t make a hell of a lot a sense half the time.  That’s the thing, see, it takes time for the spirit to digest it.  So that’s what Church does.  It helps us cough up what we learned, chew on it again and again, and swallow it back down.  Your Bishop, he’s a clever guy, and he knows what it takes to get us finally getting the message of the gospel through our thick skulls, so he makes sure that we talk about the same things every week or so.  Same as with the rest of the Church, like General Conference and the Ensign.  Every time we chew that cud, we get closer and closer to making it a part of us, same as cows. 

Before I understood that principle, sometimes I would just roll over when Sister Wesson tried haulin’ my carcass out a bed on Sunday morning, and say to her, “The Church is true, so’s the Book a Mormon, and Joseph Smith was a prophet, pay your tithing and say your prayers.  There.  I just done Church.  Now go back to sleep.”  Never worked, but it was worth a try.  But now I understand the cud principle, and so I have to think of different excuses.  And it still don’t work.

But don’t go thinking you got it all figured out, ‘cause I ain’t done with you yet.  See, cows ain’t all that bright, and they’ll eat about anything what looks like feed, and a whole bunch a more things that might be mixed up in there with it.  Like bugs, for instance.  Cow munches down a big old spider, and she don’t care.  But sometimes she munches down a piece of bailing wire, or a nail or something, and that can be mighty hard on those girls.  That’s when ol’ Rulon slings a big magnet down her throat, and it gathers up all the dangerous stuff and helps it end up out in the pasture where it belongs.

Sometimes people are stupid, too, and they’ll swallow all kinds of dangerous things, like thinking gay folks ought to be able to get hitched, or that we got no business bombing the A-rabs back to the stone age.  Those things can mess a Mormon up if he don’t get ‘em out where they belong, out in the pasture, so to speak.  So that’s why we take the Sacrament, I suppose.  We swallow that bread and water down, and it gets in there and roots around in our spiritual system and cleans us out.  Ever notice how most of the High Priests you’ve ever known take the Sunday paper and slink out a sight for a while shortly after Church?  Now you know.

Rulon’s advice is make sure you’re always getting the right feed.  Stick to reading the scriptures and churchy books.  If you need news, read the Church news or at least the Deseret News and leave it at that.  If you get a hankerin’ for a movie, there’s lots a good Church movies out these days, or Conference re-runs.  That’s good feed, brothers and sisters.  Anything else, and you’ll bloat. 

Here’s hoping that you’re feeding your spirit only the gospel hay, and leaving the other nonsense to the gentiles.  Let them choke on it if they want.  You just chew the gospel cud and you’ll end up swallowing it all, by and by.

Reprinted with permission from The Sugar Beet (http://www.thesugarbeet.com)