Happy Easter from a former-mormon-currently-agnostic-humanist-stillmormonfeminist-effective-altruistic-mess. For those who believe and celebrate, I wish you a blessed day in unusual circumstances. For those who don’t, I hope the more general spirit of seasonal renewal and hope refreshes you. I particularly appreciated the sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and some comments from one of my former religious community’s leaders at their semi-annual gathering last week.
Malignant radicalism has led to a lot, if not most, of our collective problems as a species over my lifetime. Tribalism, performative politics, terrorism, homophobia, cruelty, misogyny, inequality, racism, and destructive hubris all seem to require it.
Whether religiously motivated or not, I would like to see that same fervor turned towards radical kindness over spite, radical collective care rather than radical self interest. The radical dismissal of selfishness that most faiths, at their best and most appealing, call for and encourage.
What kind of world would it be where we stopped trying to legislate others’ morality and focused more on living our own? Where we stopped using contractualism as an excuse to deny care to one another? Where we felt a sense of obligation to one another simply because we’re all specks of dust together on a slightly larger speck of dust hurtling madly and briefly through the void, and not just animals doomed to hunt or be hunted? Where care and community, or in other parlance salvation, isn’t based on transaction or complicated formulas?
“We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true Mormons.” ― Joseph Smith
This is going to be relevant or interesting to only a small segment of the minion coterie, so feel free to skip this post if it’s not your cup o’ tea, but this news from the Mormon sphere puzzled me and I had nowhere else to really put these thoughts.
A history lesson in brief. Mormons have had a fraught history with the term “mormon” since the very beginning. It was used as a pejoritave since the earliest days of the church and as a slang term for the followers of Joseph Smith, who claimed to translate The Book of Mormon as a work of ancient scripture. Most of the early uses of the term from outside the community are obviously negative and it remained a sort of derogatory slang term for the faithful by outsiders for a long time. However, there are plenty of uses of it within the faith itself that were positive and show from an early date that the community claimed it (see the quote at the start of this post). As a child, I remember church lessons and family discussions coaching us to not use the term and gently correct usage of it wherever possible to the full title: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
To quote the musical, “Hello!”
Then, in my youth, the LDS church came out with a frankly smart PR campaign. It was an attempt to reclaim the term, which is a tactic used by minority and marginalized people the world over for many years. Referred to as the “I’m a Mormon,” campaign, it did exactly what it says on the tin. Adverts, videos, billboards, and all kind of platforms featured individuals telling their personal faith story and sharing highlights of their lives. Schoolteachers, scientists, and even a few celebrities would share a short glimpse into their life and, mixed in with other statements about their hobbies, work, and family would include the phrase, “I’m a Mormon.”
The church must have invested millions into this campaign. And it worked! Since my youth, I have referred to myself as a Mormon when practicing and even now when I’ve left the faith, I still consider myself part of the wider and more complicated Mormon family in a weird way. A lot of ex-Mormons or unorthodox believers of my acquaintance share this idea. Mormonism is a very prescriptive faith and if you don’t walk the fairly narrow path it requires, it’s easy to feel as if there isn’t a place for you. A lot of people I know consider it something of a rebellious act to still claim a bit of identity with a group that does not necessarily claim you back–I can think of several LGBT friends or unorthodox and even excommunicated members I know who still proclaim that they are Mormon even if they don’t believe the tenants of the faith or attend services. I personally don’t say that I’m Mormon any more, but I have no issues declaring that I was raised Mormon and still have a lot of affection for and interest in the welfare of the community. In conversations about Mormonism with Mormons, I still speak in terms of “we” and “us.” I still consider them my cultural heritage and tribe in many ways.
The word “Mormon” is not only shorter and easier to say, it is frankly the easiest and most common way to reference the group in a way that will be recognizable to a wide group of people. “Mormon” feels like an authentic term to me, and I was part of a generation during which the Church made a concentrated effort to claim the term. Therefore, this style guide change feels distinctly odd.
On the one hand, this feels a lot like trying to slam the barn door closed after the horses have bolted. The twitter handle and website where I first saw this story officially? @MormonNewsroom and MormonNewsRoom.com respectively. An official church website? www.mormon.org. The massive outreach campaign to the LGBT community (with mixed feedback but I choose to believe fairly sincere in effort)? www.mormonandgay.com. One of their most effective cultural ambassador groups? The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
For better or worse, this is a term that is intertwined with the community and has been since the 19th century. I think it was a smart idea to claim it fully and make the language work for the church rather than be used against it. I don’t understand this change back to trying to enforce the longer, official name of the organization, and think it’s something of a fruitless effort. I can only speculate as to the reasons for it.
I’ve noticed a common tactic withing the LDS organization is to try and try and take control of the narrative for a number of things by inventing its own language and terminology–usually for things that already exist. The best example of this is around homosexuality where the term that was in common usage when I was a teenager and young adult was “same sex/gender attraction.” The words gay and lesbian were almost never used, the justification I heard most commonly being that those terms connoted a “lifestyle” choice while the term “same gender attraction” explained the underlying issue. In other words, “same gender attracted” people weren’t “gay” unless they were physically acting on their sexuality. This is rot, but that was the explanation.
After the push to rebrand the word “Mormon,” I wonder if the backlash to the church’s high profile over the past decade or so has now tarnished the “Mormon” brand and this is an attempt to pivot to a different title to gain some distance.
We had the “Mormon Moment” in the media, which most people date from the advent of Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate. My longtime argument has been that this high profile attention was the first spate of media interest in the LDS church in a long time that was not explicitly antagonistic but rather genuinely inquisitive. What was this All American religious faith–what did they believe, and why?
My equally longstanding argument is also that this attention shone a spotlight on the church that it either wasn’t exactly prepared to deal with, or frankly didn’t handle well. Mormonism has an exclusive and tribal element to it. Because it is a demanding faith, it is not unusual for the congregation you attend to be your main source of social life and community engagement. If you are a devout Mormon, you probably spend a lot of your time around people who already believe and think the way that you do; you speak the same language, have the same underlying heritage and cultural assumptions. You probably have a shared persecution narrative as well as a shared testimonial language. You don’t often have to explain or scrutinized what is culturally shared with other members of the in group.
So when the world came asking questions, and not in the way that a potential convert would (after all, the LDS church has a famously well trained missionary force), but in academic or journalistic sense, I think the church was surprised when its usual, highly crafted answers to sensitive questions were not accepted at face value. In other words, I think the Church and the culture of the American Mormon community was used to be laughed at, ignored, or even sneered at by other faith groups, but the one thing it was surprisingly badly prepared for was mostly-respectful secular scrutiny.
Mormonism has a complicated history, with race and gender issues woven into its canon. “Because god said so,” is an acceptable answer to a (white) believer as to why people of color were denied full participation in the faith until 1978, but from the outside that answer is suspect. “Because god said so,” is an acceptable and even faithful response to the question of why women cannot be ordained to the priesthood and are therefore prevented for administering in almost every single ceremonial, administrative, and even fiscal aspect of church organization…but to an outsider it sounds like fairly run of the mill sexism and antiquated gender dynamics.
This scrutiny kicked off major and highly public internal debates around gender, sexuality, political, social, and doctrinal issues. These arguments sometimes played out in the public sphere. Scandals have come to light as a result of this attention that are embarrassing to the community. Pop culture in some cases did a better job of telling a historically accurate but less faith promoting version of Mormon history than Sunday school classes. Schisms within the church that would never have attracted attention before suddenly became interesting to wider audience. Policies have been enacted that don’t feel like prophetic edicts so much as clumsy bureaucratic lurches, kicking against the pricks of a changing society. Far from the tidy, united front the organized church prefers to portray to the world, the messy history of the Mormon movement (with its offshoot sects, polygamous practitioners, doctrinal argument, warts, and all) was on full display. As were some of its family feuds.
Add to this scrutiny the church’s choice to involve itself in certain (American) political issues the way it has, usually around gender and sexuality issues, and I wonder if the term “Mormon” still has more negative connotations than positive, in spite of the probable millions spent trying to rebrand it. And still, in many parts of the world, in spite of the effort put into the rebrand, the term “Mormon” is still perceived with active negativity according to many scholars.
To summarize, one of the unexpected side effects of the Mormon Moment was within the Mormon community itself. A whole generation of the faith had to deal with media scrutiny, mixed in with the triumph of the internet age and rise of social media all at once. To use my professional language, as a result of this, I think the Mormon “brand” became more confused and awkward to manage.
I have no idea if this PR reasoning is the case for this latest attempt to pivot to a “new,” preferred title, but it’s my best working theory. But I also think that as the last 250 years of history shows, attempting to enforce the full name of the church will probably not be picked up very widely outside the community itself. We–and I’m including myself here, for all the reasons I rambled about above–have always been “Mormons.” I suspect the outside world will continue to think of us/them as “Mormons.” The church itself saw value in claiming the term for years. Why the shift? If, as I suspect, a reason for the shift is because the perception of Mormonsim isn’t popular or tidy enough, there needs to be deeper conversations and introspection as to why that is because a style guide change won’t solve it.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – Constitution of the United States of America
Two posts in one day, you lucky darlings. But the news of the Executive Order issued by President Trump banning access to the country from several (Islamic) countries has broken and rather consumed our day here at SDS headquarters. He’s not calling it a #MuslimBan (though General Flynn’s son is, for what that’s worth)…but it’s a ban on Muslims. You know how we can tell? Because President Trump also directed that priority for immigration should be given to people from the Middle East…who are Christian. But let’s set that aside for a moment.
I’m not going to speculate on how much ammunition this will give to terrorist groups, some of whom have already apparently used the EO in recruiting efforts. Or how this might affect my brother and countless others currently serving in the armed forces.
I’m not going to touch the fact that this EO, steeped in racial tensions and fearmongering, was issued on Holocaust Memorial day.
Instead, I want to talk about some personal background, some legal realities, and the question of motive.
To recap.
On my father’s side, his mother was the daughter of immigrants from Slovakia. They were Roman Catholic at a time when Catholics and immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were viewed as suspect and fundamentally Un-American. My grandmother married a WASP from New York and bore three children, one of whom is my father who served most of my life in the US Air Force. One of my brothers has followed him into service.
On my mother’s side, I am descended from religious converts who came from Scotland and elsewhere to the deserts of the American West to join in a small and somewhat persecuted religious movement–Mormonism. This movement had an extermination order issued against them as a group at one point and were eventually driven out of what then constituted the boundaries of the country. My mother descends from this religious minority, now considered one of the most conservative and patriotic subsections of the country. My dad later converted to this faith and this heritage. I’ve left the former, but carry the latter with me always.
That’s my immigrant and religious minority legacy. Why do I repeat this? Because I’m not special. Most Americans have some kind of story like this in their background, this intertwining of minority and immigrant stories goes right back to our founding myths and has been our day-to-day lived reality for the better part of three centuries. Cracking down on immigrants, especially when you are using religion as part of your reasoning is fundamentally counter intuitive to our national history and story.
Years later, I’m now an immigrant in a Western nation at this very moment. I followed all the laws to legally enter this country and work here, and I have the paperwork to prove it. That is how international immigration and laws work. I’m lucky. I’m white, educated, English speaking, but I’m still an immigrant. My life is here and it is dependent on the goodwill of two governments. If I boarded a plane in the US and arrived in London only to be detained at the border because the Prime Minister had decided that in defiance of laws and regulations in two countries, my right to entry (again, documented in two countries) was suddenly invalidated, I have no idea where I’d be. Catatonic in a corner perhaps. Propublica estimates that up to half a million people are potentially in this situation now. The Washington Post is reporting that the language of the recent executive order that has brought this mess about also applies to people with dual nationalities…aka…citizens of the US. Huffinton Post reports ditto for Green Card holders. Representatives of the government under which I currently live are also reporting that they could not access the US under this EO, which doesn’t make me overly optimistic for continued operational goodwill across borders.
Why do I bring all this up? Because, like me, we are talking about people who have already passed multitudes of tests and requirements to gain access to the country.
There a lot of genuinely necessary conversation and work to do to create a safe, viable immigration network in the 21st century world. But do you know what really is pissing me off? It’s that the basis for this EO is due to fears and anxieties concerning illegal immigration and religious backgrounds. People who have the paperwork to get into this country have, in many cases, already passed a vetting process far more grueling than anyone currently being considered for a position in Mr. Trump’s cabinet! And freedom of worship was one of the first things the Founding Fathers enshrined.
And so, people who voted for this–including some of you who told me that these kinds of actions or bans would never come to fruition: do not tell me that the problem is illegal immigration, and then turn around and start detaining or denying entry first to those who already legally live and work in the US, including citizens. Do not tell me you consider the constitution sacrosanct but then impose a religious litmus test on entry in violation of the Bill of Rights. Do not cite the 9/11 attacks or recent lone wolf actors as a basis for this ban and then apply it to countries who citizens didn’t participate in those atrocities.
You’re either delusional about your motives, or you’re lying.
“Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!” ― James Oppenheim
When I was in New York over the summer, X and I got second piercings together–an extra hole in one lobe each. We decided to do it almost from the moment we started planning the trip and even picked out the piercer we wanted to use.
So much, so high school, you may be thinking. Why is this, the tiniest of body modifications worth a write up? Well, a third hole punch in my frame may be a rather dinky example of self actualization, but it’s important to me.
Body modification was not an option growing up. LDS teachings place a high amount of reverence on the human body and care of it, which is also why there are the famous dietary restrictions Mormons are often noted for: no coffee, tea, or alcohol, and (supposedly) meat in moderation. Raised LDS, I grew up with a lot of presentation expectations around hemlines, sleeve lengths, hairstyles, tattoos (hard no), and piercings. The formal advice, though it can be enforced in some circumstances, being none for boys and one hole in each ear permissible for girls. There were a lot of rules for girls.
You can find this referenced and cited multiple times in official church literature. I went looking for a link reference for this blog post and ended up with the following, which is instructive in its own right.
I started typing in the words “women should” in the website search bar, and the auto fill in immediately supplied “stay home” on my behalf. Thoughtful of it. But there, right beneath the advice of “women should be women and not babies” (a baffling admonition), and “women should follow their husbands and he follows the counsel from god” (to which, no), is the statement, “women should only wear one pair of earrings.” It’s a bit hard to read, but it’s there, right above “women should avoid paid employment.”
This direction about earrings is something I heard specifically and multiple times growing up, and I experienced dress codes enforcing the one earring rule (among other requirements) which are in place at most church activities, and at its institutions like universities. I adhered to these expectations and didn’t think too much about it. I wasn’t particularly bothered about strictures on earrings and didn’t even get around to having my ears pierced until I was 13; I believe my sister still hasn’t at 19 simply because she doesn’t care to.
But as time went on and my opinions developed, I came to see this rule as a very minor cog in a much larger and troubling context of women’s and gender issues in the church and its culture. These eventually led (through a long and complex route I won’t bore you with again) to me deciding to leave the church and renegotiate my relationship to its organisation and teachings. I’ve since felt the need to review a lot of my notions about my body and what I choose to do with it. It’s not in my nature to be impulsive about my corporeal form, a lot of the reverence I was raised with still lingers, but getting a second piercing was something I’d wanted to do for a long time–since my early 20s and then largely due to a misguided belief that it would look “rebellious.” Oh, youth.
And so, I made a decision to get another hole punched, and plotted and planned with my best friend–who has written publicly and far more eloquently than I have ever managed to about her own faith transition–to do it together. We made a girls day of it, shopped, got bespoke lipsticks, sat next to each other in the piercing studio, had a long and winding talk about faith journeys afterwards at brunch.
It’s tiny but it was a gesture that made me feel as if my body was really mine in a way it didn’t before. Not a loan from on high, not a meat house for the soul, but genuinely something that belonged to me in my own right.
Having the unexpected experience of seeing how many other gender admonitions are connected to such a trivial thing during a website search on jewelry was just reconfirmation that the issues I found so upsetting are still there. Possibly getting worse as strict concepts of bodies and purity and gender roles continue to be emphasized in the way that the organization does, and in some cases such as LGBT issues, is doubling down on.
Out of interest and fairness, I decided to check the auto fill on the site again more recently in drafting this post. The mention of earrings was not longer suggested. However there are now two references to women “hearkening” unto their husbands, one to dressing modestly with two about specific dressing standards, three references to either “staying” home or not working outside of it, and the most troubling suggestion which seems to be a variation on a statement on rape from a book by a prominent former church leader published in 1969–that it’s better to die fending off rape than live through it. I myself heard variations on this theme throughout youth and young adulthood and though I don’t believe it’s claimed as a public position anywhere in the church today, the fact that mangled versions of this idea are common enough to still being generated by algorithmic search suggestions is pretty disheartening.
I also checked again today, out of morbid curiosity at this point. An auto fill suggestion about earrings is back–the problematic suggestion about rape survival remains.
“Bloodies are the centerpiece of the Sunday Brunch–they are also, perhaps, the #1 Prep mixed drink….. 1. Place ice cubes in a large glass 2. Pour in two fingers of vodka 3. Fill glass almost to top with V-8 4. Season with: 2 drops Tabasco, 4 drops Worcestershire, 1/2 tsp. horseradish, 1 tsp. lime juice 5. Add wedge of lime, stir and drink 6. Repeat as needed” ― Lisa Birnbach, The Official Preppy Handbook
Starting from when I went to university and getting increasingly worse as time went on, Church attendance had pained me for years. There was a particularly memorable length of time where I came home from every single service either in tears or enraged by something that had been said over the pulpit, taught by a teacher or leader, or even just discussed in the classes that follow the main communion service in Mormonism which is the central part of Sunday worship. I started taking breaks from attendance when we still lived in the States, a week here or even a month there, believing that if I gave it some time and space, the next time I went to services would be better. Almost inevitably it was not and often it was worse. A sermon would be preached proclaiming things to be true that I believed deeply to be false. A teacher would cite centuries of Church leadership stating a position I thought fundamentally wrong. Stances I held because I felt them to be right and good were decried as dangerous or even evil. Meanwhile, my own research into history was complicating the many, more simple stories I had been taught about my faith all my life.
This wasn’t a one-time thing, it had lasted the better part of a decade. It was spiritually and emotionally draining, and the cognitive dissonance was strongest on the weekends. I came to dread the Sundays when we did attend services as the results were usually bad, and Sundays when we didn’t I spent at home whipping myself into a mass of Puritan-descended guilt. I felt for years that something was wrong with me for thinking and feeling the way I did and having the questions I had. I felt ashamed that I had not been able to find the same answers within the faith that almost everyone important in my life had, and embarrassed to be struggling with a problem that, as far as anyone else could tell (whichever side of faith divide you fall on) was entirely in my own head. To a lot of outside observers who shared their thoughts on the matter with me, it should have been easy to decide either to stay or to go. It wasn’t.
The last time I attended services was here in London.
In news which is not in the least groundbreaking, Mormonism has a major problem with racism in its history and in ways that affect it right up to the present day. Black men could not be ordained to the lay priesthood until just eight years before I was born, and both men and women of African descent were excluded from the most important parts of worship in Mormon temples–which is, by the way, fundamentally necessary in the LDS view of salvation. Meaning it was a valid theological question whether or not black people even got into heaven, and if they did, in what capacity. There are decades of recorded statements on the matter that black men and women did not qualify to enter heave except as “servants.” Cringe.
The LDS church has been attempting to formally address some of the troubled or troubling aspects of its past through a series of essays over the past few years, and I give it a lot of credit for confronting many of these issues head on using good scholarship and historical citations. It has not always done so. One of these essays concerns the history of what has been come to be called the “Priesthood Ban,” though I find this problematic since women are not ordained to the LDS priesthood at all and as mentioned women were just as excluded from what are considered saving ordinances. In some academic circles the more accurate term of “Racial Ban” has gained traction, and it’s the one I use. This essay goes on to explain that a number of folkloric justifications for the Racial Ban developed in the LDS community over the years (quite true) and that church leaders today disavowed those previous statements and reasoning (this essay was the first disavowal I have ever seen, and is fairly weak, but I’m willing to take the intention in good faith). It’s a long overdue piece of writing, and doesn’t go far enough in clearing up the decades and centuries of racially tinged folklore and official teachings of the church, in my opinion, but it’s a step forward.
It was after this particular essay had been released that Jeff and I made the decision to give LDS services in London a real shot. We’d only attended church sporadically for the first few months of living here because I was frankly burned out from leaving services crying or ranting, and Jeff was not far behind me in exasperation, though he was much less vocal about it. Nevertheless, it was worth a shot recommitting ourselves to regular attendance, we decided, and so off we went one December Sunday with a renewed sense of dedication and a quiet uptick in hope. Perhaps all the frustrations were mostly our fault and if we shut our mouths more often and tried listening instead, we’d notice the things that bothered us less and the things that uplifted us more.
Plus, we were a bit lonely. Growing up in the military meant that the Mormon congregations we attended were a massive part of my family’s social structure. No matter what country we moved to, we were assured of finding an instant community of people ready to welcome us with open arms. As adults and expats in our own rights now, Jeff and I were missing that community, having found nothing to replace it with. The congregation we were assigned to at the time was in South London and almost entirely made up of first or second generation African or Afro-Caribbean immigrants to the UK. There seemed to be a couple of expats and a lot of people from “somewhere else” as we were so I was hopeful we’d find a group of people with similar experiences to us who would have a lot of wisdom to share.
The day in question, just before Christmas, it so happened that the Sunday school teacher was a visiting white American man who, rather than teaching the lesson topic he had been assigned, decided to expound to the congregation (of, again, almost entirely black members) his feelings about the recently released race essay. They were not entirely positive and the main gist of this speech was that he was puzzled that leaders had “disavowed” the teachings he had always “known” to be truth. I could have felt more sympathy for him if he had not gone on to lecture the members as to why “you people” were not able to be ordained to the priesthood, citing the very folkloric teachings the essay tried to distance itself from as truth, and growing more animated in the defense of those racist theories as he went on.
I sat there for as long as I could but at some point I got up, found the bishop in another part of the church, apologized profusely for what was about to happen, and burst into tears. After first assuring himself that the teacher got back on track to his appointed teaching topic, that kind bishop sat and listened to me as I sobbed for an hour about how for years, every single time I had entered a church building, I had heard a lesson like this. Racist, sexist, politically tinged in a way to make me wince, anti-LGBT in ways that violated my conscience, and so on. I was (and remain) deeply conflicted that as a white, admittedly privileged woman, I had felt offended where clearly people who had far more cause than me to be were not, but as I explained to that patient man, my reaction was not the result of that one hour, but the years proceeding it. Church did not feel safe for me, and I genuinely felt that there was no place for me in the organization I had been raised in. I fundamentally disagreed with too much of it, and as time went on the disagreements and dissent were getting bigger and bigger.
He listened. He acknowledged the social/political/historical divides I felt (even validated a few of them as being genuinely hard to reconcile with the faith). He didn’t try to cite quotes from leaders or scripture at me as previous bishops I had spoken to on the subject had done. There was genuine love and sincere care in the way he spoke to me; it was the kindest encounter I had had with church leaders in years.
And as I said, it was the last time I attended services, unless staying with family or escorting visiting friends. Jeff and I decided to take another break after this particular Sunday, this one intentional and for as long as we needed; guilt was not allowed. We found other things to do on weekends: museums, walks, markets, exploring the city, and just generally being with one another. It was spiritually restful. A few months later, a spate of high-profile excommunications took place that cemented for both of us that the LDS church was not where we wanted to be nor aligned with what we support and believe. We did not believe several of the key truth claims, we could not in good conscience support the leadership on the many public stances they had taken, and neither of us were comfortable with the idea of raising a family in the structure–particularly daughters. Even to keep the peace with friends and family, there was no point in even going through the motions of attendance or participation. We were done.
These days we attend what I only semi-satirically call, The Church of Brunch. On Sunday mornings we now usually go to one of a handful of venues that do a proper Yank brunch–or occasionally get adventurous and try to find a new joint famed on blogs or social media for its protein and carb heavy concoctions. We linger over food. We debate, argue, joke, talk news, gossip about work, and plan for our future. We’ve had some of the deepest and most meaningful conversations of our marriage over pots of tea and avocado toast (sausages and waffles on his side). We often include friends, growing the new community we are trying to build for ourselves as proverbial strangers in a strange land, but more often we use it as a time to reconnect after long weeks focused on careers.
It’s not a global network or system of belief, and I suspect most people would probably laugh about it if I tried to explain it to them, but the Church of Brunch has done me and us a lot of good. It’s filled a gap and created a safe space in a time slot that was previously dreaded and painful. It’s reliable, uncomplicated, and good in the way that simple, basic things often are. We plan on including future friends, children, and even strangers (we strike up the oddest and best conversations with our co-diners). And it’s delicious. We expect to be devotees for a long time.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..” ― John Milton, Paradise Lost
2014 was the year that I officially stepped away from the religious community of my youth. The break really happened long before but a lot of things happened this year to confirm to me that it was the best decision I could have made for me. The reactions to this decision have run the gamut but the only ones that have confused me have been people who felt it necessary to offer their hearty congratulations for my choice.
As if the decision were not the most wrenching and difficult of my life. One that took a solid decade of increasing frustration, heartache, painful doubt, and baffling alienation to accomplish. I was fortunate to actually have a supportive partner along every step of the way for the second half of that decade and I still managed to feel desperately lonely in the crumbling I felt going on internally and externally. There was nothing heroic about my decision to leave my religion. It signified that I had run out of any other options–faithful, emotional, cultural, or otherwise–and to be in that position is the most angry and emotionally exhausted I have ever been in my life.
Think it’s easy to walk away from your religion? Trust me, it is not. In one big go I opted out of a community, a culture, a language, a heritage, and a legacy precious to almost every member of my family and a significant chunk of my friends. I disappointed and confused a lot of people who’s good opinion I value deeply. I put peculiar strains on my friendships and my marriage that took holding on tight and communicating hard to navigate thoughtfully and intelligently. I turned my back on an entire cosmology and worldview without really having much solid in place to replace it with, and now have the task of building a new one after nearly 20 years of certainty and 10 of crippling doubt.
I don’t want to be congratulated. Honestly there are days that, in thinking about it, all I want is a hug!
I’m lucky I came out on the other side of my decision feeling as little damage as I do. I’ve had friends and acquaintances make similar decisions in the same or similar religious communities and pay horrible prices for it. But in spite of that laundry list of angst above this, I am actually in a more calm and steady place than I’ve been in years, emotionally or spiritually speaking. Uncertainty is not nearly has bad as I had been made to feel for most of my life. For years now I’ve felt like I was clinging to a rope desperately in the dark, knowing that the drop would kill me if it happened. The more my grasp tightened in panic, the more numb my fingers got, the more the strength gave out in my arms, the harder and harder I would cling, but still I would slip. Several months ago, the last slip happened and the final strands slid out of my clutch. And it turns out the floor was just inches beneath my feet the whole time.
It’s disorienting, to find your worldview gone but your own feet steady beneath you. It feels oddly like peace.
“I don’t think intelligent reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.” – President John F. Kennedy
It’s been a busy week, as you may have suspected. I’m afraid that makes for an even busier Friday, so here are your links. Share anything else worth reading, plus what you’re getting up to this weekend, in the comments and enjoy high summer!
Had to wait an extra day to get it over here, though the original is currently winging its way to me thanks to friends.
Marvel is changing the comic book character Thor to a woman and certain parts of the internet reacted to the news…internet-ish-ly. Luckily the blog Texts from Superheroes had the perfect response.
Art remixes where new and old subjects and pieces are mashed up beautifully. (Warning for pearl-clutchers, nude forms are present!)
A Facebook friend, moderator of a freelancer forum I belong to, and a writer herself penned this hugely useful piece on the realities of how to do your taxes when you work for yourself.
I could never persuade Jeff to this, he’s all about lofts and modern space, but I’m currently house-lusting over this 14th century home.
And, the biggest news for me personally, in case you missed it, I wrote an op ed for the New York Times that was published on Tuesday. It contains my perspective on Kate Kelly’s excommunication, its place in the “Mormon Moment,” and what I feel to be the larger implications for the church. It was not easy to write, and it was very scary to share, but I’ve been really overwhelmed at the positive and sincere feedback I’ve received from it. A huge and heartfelt thank you to friend and Friend of the Blog Caitlin Kelly (unrelated to Kate) who urged me to write a piece after many emails on the subjects of Mormonism, feminism, and religion in general, and who helped me to place it.
It’s an experience that’s still unfolding, but let me just say that I’m grateful to have the chance to contribute what I hope is something meaningful to the conversation. To be able to do so in the Grey Lady herself is truly a privilege.
“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A friend sent me one of those silly Buzzfeed quizzes, which I decided to take for fun. “Which is your patron saint?” However, when one of the questions turned out to be…
“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You people are wonderful, thank you for all the lovely comments and emails from my last post. I’ve really been blown away by how something that felt so personal and unique to one community has turned out to be a pretty universal emotion and feeling. Such is the way of all fear and trepidation, I suppose. Either way, reading through those was the most cheered I felt in a week.
In the meantime, while one aspect of life has been a pit of turmoil, others have been tripping quite merrily on without time to waste. The human experience is a strange, fractal thing… Currently I’m working on one project that might or might not have anything to do with the Miss America contest, another involves wrestling through multiple layers of online security which makes me feel much more advanced and technologically impressive than I am. Nifty things and amazing work happening over in freelance territory.
Also our five year (!) wedding anniversary is coming up Tuesday. Don’t ask me where the time went.
Here are your links for the week, add anything else worth reading about and let me know what you’re getting up to in the comments!
Interesting portraits of first year college students. We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of me starting college (clutches self a bit to realize that) but I don’t have many photos from that time period still hanging around. I’ve never been a big picture taker until we moved to London, and even then very few of myself or Jeff. I wish I had more from my college days.
Really interesting TED talk on how we as a society are using people with disabilities as motivation, which on its face seems good but as the speaker points out, has a pretty bad side effect.
A source of some confusion to various friends and acquaintances, I have never been to Disney World/Land. I have been to Euro Disney, but those in the know tell me that this is Not At All the Same Thing. So, people who know better than I, tell me what you think of Disney Land’s original prospectus?
If you are suffering from an insufficiency of cuteness this Friday, may I offer this as a balm?
I would kill to get my hands on one of these 18th century pattern books on fabrics and textiles to sift through on a rainy afternoon.
Small Dog Syndrome 