This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Honing a knife requires a certain amount of quiet concentration, especially if you're doing it in the middle of church. But the Benchmade Infidel 3300 is a thing of beauty, and it deserves a razor edge.

Sharpening knives is a form of worship for me. The rhythmic movements calm my pathologically restless mind and allow me to connect better with my surroundings. It's my preferred method of spiritual connection.

This form of worship is not the one practiced by the rest of my LDS ward. That's why I sit in the same spot every sacrament meeting. People can sit nearby and sometimes pass their own knives to me, or they can go sit somewhere else.

People who don't want to be bothered by the soft whisking of steel and choose to sit elsewhere can be distracted by loud and malodorous children, sonorous talks, and the possibility that time moves backward on High Council Sunday.

Last year, a minor church official noticed me doing something other than staring at the speaker. He leaned over the pew to see what was going on and became concerned.

Him: "Brother Kirby, what are you doing in here?"

Me: "Same thing you're doing in here — whatever I want."

A glance around my LDS ward shows people worshipping in their own way. Some are fiddling with their phones or tablets, others are struggling with kids, and a few are in deep reflection to the point of almost snoring.

Not everyone worships the same way, including people who worship the same thing. For me, there are only two appropriate forms of worship: my way and everybody else's.

As a kid, I learned how to worship before I learned what to worship. In primary or junior Sunday school, I was commanded to sit still, fold my arms and bow my head. That's the way our Heavenly Father wanted good boys to worship.

There were two things wrong with that. First, I wasn't a good boy. Second, I wasn't even baptized before I figured out this folding arms stuff was a load of crap. If arm-folding was so important to God, how come adults didn't do it in big church?

I tried other forms of worship back then. I tormented my siblings, scribbled in hymnals, crossed my eyes at the bishop, or made loud farting noises whenever elderly parishioners stood up to bear their testimonies.

It worked, although not the way I'd hoped. Dragging me from a meeting and locking me in the trunk of a car soon became the preferred form of worship for the Old Man.

Eventually, I settled on a less outlandish method of worship. I brought books to church in case things got boring, which they often did. That lasted until I was 13, when my mom caught me reading "Catcher in the Rye" during the sacrament.

As I continued to mature — although not by much — I settled on worship practices that allowed me to occupy my time while simultaneously listening to the speakers on the off chance they said something I hadn't heard a million times already.

I tried bubble gum, worry beads, impure thoughts, making paper airplanes, self-hypnosis and mental telepathy. Unfortunately, none of those produced anything of worth by the end of the meeting.

Then I found a beat-up Old Timer pocket knife and whetstone in my grandpa's stuff after he died. At the end of the meetings now, if I'm not spiritually edified I am at least better armed.

This isn't how most people worship. Some will even insist that quietly sharpening knives during church isn't what Heavenly Father would have me do.

Maybe. But I suspect these people all have dull imaginations and even duller knives.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.