My Talk: Gratitude

Last week I mentioned submitting names to the temple. 

The collected efforts of my grandmother and the two cousins meant that when I was assigned a family tree in junior high, I could do a really good one. In the process of doing that, I also noticed that not many ordinances had been done. That was the first time I submitted names to the temple.

The next round of submission happened when two other cousins, inspired by cousin Marguerite, created a book of the descendants of our great-great-great grandparents. In fact, their son was the one great-great grandparent I had left out in the junior high batch, because that family was so complicated. Another cousin lent me the book, and even though I was a busy college student I spent hours uploading the information and submitting names.

That cousin later dropped about 1000 Bobier names on me. Other cousins would emerge from the woodwork at times, filling in blanks. None were members of the church, so they were not going to submit the names to the temple. The appearance of those names to me felt like there was family knocking from the other side of the veil, telling me it was their time.

I was grateful to be an instrument for that purpose, but also grateful for the others who helped. I could not have done so much without their help. 

As I was thinking about how the work of the Utah pioneers prepared things for current members of the church, I again had to acknowledge that their are other legacies. We all have people who have gone before. 

Sometimes that is family. Although my father did not stay in the church, it was his joining in the first place that led to my being here today. I know it is possible to join the church later in life, but I am grateful for being born in it, and the head start that gave me.

As I learn more about economics and generational wealth, it has become very clear to me that we would not have a house if my father had not been able to get a loan through the VA, which he was able to do because of his time in the army, and being able to do so at a time when housing was more affordable. My buying the house was my own decision, but it being available for us is not something that I could have controlled.

Even with that, there is more to the story. The house hunting had been very discouraging, and he was giving up. Our mother began looking. Her requirements were a four bedrooms and a fenced yard. Our family had recently grown from 5 to 7 with the birth of my sisters, and as they were starting to tear around more, a fence to contain them was absolutely necessary.

The first agent Mom spoke to - a man - told her that there was no way that she would find what she wanted in her budget. Mom found a woman agent to help her, and the house was found right away.

That gives us not just a roof over our heads and the ability to keep pets -- which is absolutely necessary for my happiness -- but also connections. There are people in this word whom I have known since I was six, and in this stake some who have been in my family's life since before I was born. I like having those roots.

To be here, I needed not just my job at the time (which came through a combination of prior work experience and church connections), but also my father's military service, my mother's persistence, and a helpful realtor who was not an arrogant chauvinist.

One of the greatest blessings in my life has been the public library system. There have been countless people contributing to that for decades. Some of them are well known names, like Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie. Many lesser known people contributed. Locally a big part of strengthening the Aloha community was Eric Squires, and our parents socialized.

That does not even count all of the people who have contributed to public education, which was so important to me.

For those things, they did not have me in mind, but they did have an eye toward benefiting others and they worked toward that.

Family history may show us that we are related, and the gospel lets us know that in a spiritual sense, but there are other connections, and there are ways in which we help and harm each other.

It is easy to assume that everything that we do is because we are good and smart and competent.

I hope we are all of those things, but we still do not work in a vacuum. Not knowing that can lead to judging others, and pride, and those will kill the spirit.

It also leads away from a sense of gratitude, and awe in the way things can work out. 

Those are wonderful things to have.

My Talk: Pioneer Heritage

Before the last two posts, I had thought about spending some posts on the different elements of the talk I gave, having mentioned that I prepared a lot that wasn't said:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2022/07/speaking-and-teaching.html

That seems like the thing to do now. It may lead us to other things.

It was my first time speaking on Pioneer Day. I don't have any of the traditional Utah pioneer heritage, but I do have other connections.

I have been asked before if we are related to Martin Harris. I always assumed not, but in the library I once found an old book on the ancestors of prominent Americans. I looked up Harris, as you do.

There was a Franklin Harris who was prominent for being president of BYU, and whose great-great grandfather's brother was Martin Harris. They were descended from the first Harris to leave England for the American colonies, Captain Thomas Harris. Our line is descended from his first wife, and then after Thomas was widowed he remarried and that's where you get those other Harris', making us distant cousins.

I have another connection to a completely different pioneer heritage. 

My father's aunt Mary was Carrie Ingalls' stepdaughter. 

When we would watch Little House on the Prairie, and Carrie would tumble going down the hill, no one ever said, "Oh, that's Aunt Mary's stepmother", but I don't think anyone realized it then. She and Uncle Monk and my own grandparents were gone by then. While the books were around, there wasn't the same familiarity with them. That came later.

As it is, my family lore of Monk and Mary is one pretty funny invitation to a family reunion they threw that had happened long before I was born, which I found looking through a box of family history things. There is also a story of young Mary telling a relative that she never wanted to have children, and that elderly woman responding that she hoped Mary would have a dozen.  And she did!

Diaries and things I have seen from that time period when they refer to Mormons are always about how weird they are with all the wives. It is a miraculous thing to me to know that two sons of Aubrey and a grandson of Monk's would separately find their way into the church, and yet they did.

I mention this because it's interesting, but also because as important as it is to know that we are all connected as children of God, it can also be delightful to find the many other connections. There are patterns and combinations that are easy to miss, and then precious to find, and we find them by looking in our family history. 

As I prepared the talk, I did think about how the legacy of the Utah pioneers is important to me. To have time to grow in strength and knowledge, going out beyond the borders was necessary. That is how we were able to get temples and growth and continuity. That has benefited me.

In addition, I see effects on my family outside of the church. 

When Elijah came and turned the hearts of the fathers to the children, my extended family did not know about it. Despite that, there was a cousin of each side of my father's family that was bitten by the genealogy bug. Marguerite collected all of the Harris information, and Maxine collected all of the Stone information. Because my grandmother was interested in it too, even though she was not the researcher she collected it.

That is why years later I could submit names to the temple. I might still have been able to do some things on my own, but they laid a broad and strong foundation for me.

They also inspired other cousins, so at times other information would come from me. It was still not from people in the church, but it still blessed our common ancestors and me.

And because I keep track of that and submit names, I sometimes get contacted by other distant cousins:  Can you release this name so I can do it... ? Do you know anything about.. ? 

And I find I am connected more.

Smashing the patriarchy

Last week, in posting about the failures of the help line, I mentioned wanting to write about failure to examine power dynamics and change the interactions.

I was concerned about how to handle that, thinking it might require some delicacy and nuance. That is not just because it is a topic we often overlook, but that when we do look at it there is often discomfort, at least for those most likely to be leadership. 

I was thinking about approaching it from a different angle, and I am still going to do that, but I guess I needed the potentially offensive title to balance it.

Our church tends to hold patriarchy as a good thing: family structure, continuity of gospel and priesthood, and blessings. 

In other conversations, patriarchy is a system that can be full of abuse. 

Saying that may cause some bristling, but we also know that some family structures are abusive and toxic and harmful. It's not the ideal, we don't want it to happen, but it does happen. There have been wonderful Scout leaders whose troops had great experiences, too, but that's not how it always goes.

Perhaps one issue can be failure of imagination. We need to understand that there are people who will be cruel and sadistic; that is not a misunderstanding that can work itself out. 

One obstacle to things working out is an imbalance of power. If the father is the head, the children unanimously wanting change may not be enough. The need felt for loyalty to the father may also keep the children from being unanimous; someone may be trying very hard to be the good one.

This is where I want to go sideways, and approach power dynamics from a different angle. 

Fortunately, material always presents itself.

Here is a recent item from Psychology Today: 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-state-our-unions/202208/the-rise-lonely-single-men

It briefly goes over an increase in single men. While it mentions more than one factor, the key is that today's women largely want emotionally available men with good values and the ability to communicate.

(The article did not mention this, but it has been more common in previous generations to lose a lot of men to war, and more equal numbers of women and men now may be a factor.)

That certainly makes sense on its own, but it is interesting to see men online complaining about how women just want handsome rich jerks and don't care about nice guys at all. Not what women have been saying, but you can't trust what women say, apparently.

As it is, I remember this same complaint from my 20s. The men who made it were not as nice as they thought they were, often being pretty chauvinistic, bitter, and also quite shallow in terms of what level of looks they would accept, but they knew it was definitely the women who were the problem.

(Patriarchy, by giving men the supremacy, supports this tendency to put the responsibility upon others.)

Perhaps it is not completely unrelated that there was a video going around August 11th where a self-styled guru was very unhappy that he was unable to get another man to agree to strictly defined gender roles. The father of five who has been married for 20 years said that he does what his wife can't get to and she does what he can't get to, and they both do what needs to be done. They also both have jobs, so expecting one to take primary responsibility for home and childcare would be selfish. 

The other guy remained frustrated that women who worked full time did not want to cook and clean when they got home, but it was his video. Apparently he cut the other guy off and blocked a lot of people who commented. 

If I were to start giving examples of men feeling like they should be able to exert an influence on women, or get service from them, or demand attention from them, this post will become unimaginably long.

Suffice it to say that under patriarchy, men get to expect some deference, and that is hard to let go. 

Now I am going to switch to calling it kyriarchy, where we acknowledge that it is not all a direct line and that there are multiple factors. Race and age and physical abilities and economic status can all complicate it. 

For example, a white woman might call the police on a Black man who pointed out that she was violating the park rules by having her dog unleashed. She might relish that quite possibly lethal power more because of her awareness of the things that might be held against her in boardrooms or while walking down the street. 

At the same time, a Black man might be tempted to align with a white woman over a Black woman, because there is a way in which it is aligning with power.

I can give lots of examples here, too, but they will all sound gross, and I will feel hypocritical giving examples that don't involve white people.

It is more to the point that yes, leveraging your privilege against those with less is gross, not Christ-like, and not gospel. That should be very straightforward... except that when the time comes to actually let go of that privilege in favor of greater equality and equity, that's when people start feeling twitchy.

I think about the opposition of the church to the Equal Rights Amendment. A lot of that seemed to be based on how it would disrupt the family.

If the marriage can be disrupted by legally making both partners in the marriage equal, that can't be a very good marriage.

While women are not equal in pay or treatment or opportunity now in many ways, as we have come closer, yes, some women are choosing to remain single, and are happier that way than being with someone selfish and dominating and disrespectful. 

I know there are many marriages where that isn't a problem, but your situation being better doesn't automatically upgrade mine. 

All of which is my long way of saying that while the bishop probably would never need to have CPS called on him, and the lawyers at the help line probably also wouldn't need that, the guy that is sexually abusing his children and filming it and posting it to the internet absolutely needs to be prosecuted, for the protection of the children currently in his power and to prevent him from getting access to other children.

In the original article, there is a photo of the mother. She looks kind of young, based on the ages of the children, and also she looks like of brown. The bishop described her as appearing to be "pretty emotionally dead". So, without in any way excusing her not taking steps to stop the abuse, I wonder what she had been through before it started. How much older was the husband? How did he influence her?

When I see that her bishop (who was also her doctor) was asking "What are we doing to do to stop it?", that sounds ludicrously ineffective. If she doesn't have an answer, you can try giving her one, and if that doesn't work either, you do something.

It's easy to feel like the inaction of the bishops is the fault of the help line, but the question then is how relieved were they to not have to do something?

It would be uncomfortable to bring in law enforcement, separate a family, maybe help start divorce proceedings; none of that fits in with our idea of eternal happy families, but that was already past. That's when you need to be able to see a way to take action.

That's what I am trying to get at. I don't think this is a well-written post, but I hope it can at least give some ideas.

So much of what we do is learned without deep thought, until it becomes basically a matter of instinct. The immediate results may not be obviously horrible, especially not for us, depending on how well we fit into our circumstances.

But the horror happens.

Are we going to try and pretend it away, or are we going to deal with it, with all of the soul-searching and changing that entails?

Here is an interesting article exploring abuse and trauma via a television show:

https://www.vox.com/culture/22777228/succession-episode-5-season-3-recap-review-retired-janitors-of-idaho-logan-abuse

The Help Line

Thursday I saw an article about the church covering up sex abuse that indicated that the help line wasn't accomplishing what I had been trained that it was meant to accomplish.

I have since read the article. It is disheartening and I feel I must spend some time addressing it.

https://apnews.com/article/Mormon-church-sexual-abuse-investigation-e0e39cf9aa4fbe0d8c1442033b894660

I have been through the training two or three times, first as part of the welfare committee as emergency preparedness coordinator, then as a youth teacher.

Those trainings both happened well after the help line was created in 1995. Prior to that, I know the policy was to report to local authorities. I assume the help line was created as there started to be more awareness (accompanied by lawsuits) of abuse by Catholic priests and Boy Scout leaders. I suspect also that local leaders might not have been reporting at all, trying to protect the wrong things. The advantage of the help line would then be to take away that type of discretion.

That was what I first expected on hearing about the story; that personal discretion was the issue. People can be terrible about that.

There are always excuses you can make about ruining someone's life, though if you look at the life impacts that should fall apart pretty quickly.

It was worse than that.

Let me say that I don't object in principle to the church using legal counsel; it's a big entity with deep pockets, and where different states might have different laws, it is a reasonable thing to have someone available with expertise to guide.

I do object to the priorities of protection. The training clearly specified that the first priority was the protection of the child. It was certainly not to protect the predator or the church, and yet that is what has been happening. 

That has made it an absolute failure. The children were not protected, the predator himself is dead by suicide, and the church may very well have legal liability, which I support. Whether the issue was that the policy was not well-delineated enough, or that there was not enough oversight or follow-up, this failed.

There is often a certain cynicism regarding lawyers that is not without cause.

Now I can't help but feel that the newer policies about always having two adults in the room with a youth class and windows in all the classroom doorways is a capitulation; we can't handle abuse, so let's just focus on prevention.

I don't mind prevention, but those measures will only prevent opportunistic abuse. Predators find ways.

Beyond that, those methods only work if the problem is teachers or leaders. It does nothing for when the abuse is coming from inside the home, which is the vast majority of cases.

This is a failure in the area of not letting offense come to these little ones by those who believe in Him.

I also remember a part of the initial training that included the goal of attempting to help the sinner, though the first priority was to protect the child.

I don't object to this either. There doesn't seem to be a high success rate for turning around abusers, but if we can try -- especially if someone is seeking help from the bishop -- fine, let's try. 

However, repenting means forsaking the sin and attempting to make amends. It means paying restitution. 

Doing "nothing" is not helping.

This is extremely disappointing and needs a bright light shone on it. The three children in this story were betrayed by their parents and their church, and they are surely not the only ones.

I do believe that part of the failure includes a failure to examine the power dynamics and change the interactions. 

I intend to write more about that later.