Comments on: Jumping the Gun with the Online Patriarchal Blessing Announcement

By: CS Eric

CS Eric — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:26:52 +0000

My wife received two blessings, about 15 years apart. Not much the same between the two. The second was much shorter.

By: queuno

queuno — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:00:35 +0000

I had two blessings, one right after another. The recorder didn’t work on the first one.

The second blessing was almost word for word (and it wasn’t a stock prayer), with two exceptions: one relatively negative “promise” was removed and anothegtivr relatively negative “promise” was altered to a neutral/favorable promise.

I refer to my blessing. It’s led me through some difficult times in some profound ways.

By: Clark

Clark — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:52:19 +0000

Steve, funnily that happened to my Mom (who has both copies). The first Patriarch turned out to have dementia and so they did a second blessing. It obviously wasn’t word for word exact but it was pretty similar.

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:21:36 +0000

Regarding the “test” blessing:

I was raised in a small, rural town in fruit and cattle country. My patriarch probably would have uttered a few choice and very descriptive words while telling the person to repent. I like that response, personally.

By: Velikiye Kniaz

Velikiye Kniaz — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:03:01 +0000

Thank you, Ardis, for your last statement in #3. This explains why after several decades and requests the keepers of the blessings haven’t been able to coreect the spelling on my late mother’s first name. This even after I made a personal visit to the C.H.O. with the request. My poor mother must now go through the remainder of time, and possibly all eternity with her name spelled incorrectly. (Not to mention what that error does to the pronunciation of her name. No wonder she hasn’t appeared to me demanding that her Temple work be done. She is likely still miffed about the restored Church holding all of the relevatory keys not being able to correct a simple error.) Perhaps the millennial Church computers will be able to rectify this mistake.

Steve, I heard a similar legend except that the second Patriarch said, “Thus saith the Lord, please refer all inquiries to your original Stake Patriarch. Amen.”

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:50:08 +0000

Sorry, DavidH, you were caught by the spam filter for some reason. And you left off the part about the patriarch being Steve Martin.

By: DavidH

DavidH — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:42:03 +0000

Regarding Steve’s uplifting anecdote–I heard that the new blessing even contained the same grammatical and spelling errors as the first! And it is a little known fact that it was Snoop Dog’s blessing!

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:00:46 +0000

Ooooh, Steve, I think you should write that up in email AND SEND IT TO EVERYBODY YOU KNOW!!

Keri, there’s no apparatus in place to record a request like that. Right now, they don’t even have a way to record a correction in the spelling of a name.

By: Keri

Keri — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:33:05 +0000

Thanks for the update. This got me wondering, is there any way I can request that my parents not be able to get a copy of my patriarchal blessing? (At least as long as I’m still living.) They are active church members, but they weren’t when I received my blessing. There is some stuff about them in my blessing that I would prefer they not read. (It’s nothing unflattering, just stuff that was meant for me and not for them.)

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:26:03 +0000

My favorite story about patriarchal blessings is about the guy (a California Mormon, I believe) who decided to test the accuracy of his blessing, and surreptitiously went to another patriarch and asked for a blessing. When delivered, it was EXACTLY THE SAME!