A Christmas gift

I was touched by the response to last week's post. It is good for me to see that I am not the only one, but I believe it is also good for them.

My patriarchal blessing focuses on gifts I have. At the time I really wanted to know what was in store for me, and that not happening was probably for the best, but I have come to appreciate what is in there anyway.

One of the things mentioned is my ability with my language. It is mentioned in conjunction with how it will help me reach out to other people, to learn about them and share with them. When I was sixteen that mainly seemed to mean by ability to learn other languages, but it applies to my native language too. Words are my thing, and that is for me, but it is also for others.

Looking at these dark times, I see how important it is to be brave and also how important it is to be kind. My bravery frequently seems to manifest through saying things that can really offend people. That may be a kindness to the people with similar feelings, but there could easily be an unkind aspect to it, when sometimes it feels like there is a "you idiot!" hanging on the end of every sentence.

It can be a tricky balance, but the gift I am giving will be to try and always keep that balanced. I will try and leave both no doubt of my beliefs and policies and stands, but that I will also try and leave no doubt of my love.

In practice this means that I will spend as much time as someone needs explaining why something is racist as long as their attempt to understand is sincere. If they are baiting, I will be explaining the stupidity as well, but I hope without name-calling.

(And "idiot" can be seen as an ableist slur because it was an actual diagnosis that could get people locked away at a time when there was more prejudice than science involved, in the shockingly recent past.)

Sharing that I can't share

Here it is - the way in which I am the most religiously rebellious:

I am repelled by missionary work now.

This is uncomfortable for me. I served a full-time mission. There were hard times, but there were really good times too, and I knew what I was doing mattered.

It's not that I don't believe in the Gospel anymore. I do. It's not that I'm not going to church anymore. I am. But I try and think about bringing people to church or introducing them to the missionaries, and I can't.

It's not just the gay thing, though I could not blame anyone who had a problem with the policy there. We could be handling that a lot better, but at this point there are ways in which our policy is better than the attitudes of the members, and that is where we get to the real crux of the problem.

Once upon a time I felt like bringing someone into the church would be introducing them to a lot of wonderful, wise, spiritual people. I do not feel that way now.

I can point to a lot of individual people who I love, and I know they have their good points, but over the past few years we seem to have given up a lot of depth. We were probably always too insular, but that's gotten worse.

For myself, that meant first that Sunday school lessons became painful, then it became true for Relief Society as well. Now I don't pay much attention to talks, and being in Nursery is a relief because I don't have to listen to the lessons.

Before that, any time I made a comment or answered a question I felt like I was speaking a different language. Realistically, I am fairly different. I have never been married or had children, and I am politically liberal.


It is embarrassing that so many Mormons voted for Trump. If some aspects of our church history seem to support racism, it is your time to read the essays. I guess it's nice that some of them voted for Johnson or McMullin instead, but it's still embarrassing that they listen to so much Fox that they believe Hillary is a crook. It's embarrassing that they get so caught up in abortion that they think anyone who even believes that it should be legal - regardless of whether they would get one - is a bad person, and not living the Gospel. It is embarrassing the mental contortions they will do to know that they are right, and everyone else is wrong.

And going back to last week, it is embarrassing how much of that isn't even doctrine, but based on things they have absorbed from the world. Remember, that world is full of people who think all you need to do to be saved is accept Christ, but that members of The Church of Jesus Christ (of Latter-Day Saints) - who pray in his name and do everything in his name - we go straight to Hell. Seems like flawed thinking; are you sure you want to give into them so easily?

It should still be worth sharing. I get enlightenment from the scriptures, and I get edified in the temple, and prayer is an important part of my life, so there is still a lot that I get as an individual from attendance, and that should be open to anyone, but I've seen too many people come in with enthusiasm, get criticized for minor things, and leave. I've seen the "lost sheep" note next to too many names of people don't come and we have accepted that. I get that there's a limit to how pushy you should be, but maybe our ability to write them off that easily contributed to that first loss.

It shouldn't even be an issue. The scriptures are pretty clear about love and charity. If you love the people you see at church, that is a start, but it's a much bigger world out there, and you have to love those people too. There is not a scriptural basis for choosing ignorance, isolation, and prejudice.

So many people that I have come to know and love would not fit in well at a church meeting, and they are still valuable children of God. I want to believe that they would receive a warm welcome that would help them to see how valuable a testimony is. I would want them to feel that God values them reflected in the way they are treated by those trying to follow God.

I do not feel that now.

Disagreement and faith

A while ago some essays went up the LDS web site. They treated some of the more controversial - and more ignored - aspects of our church's history.

https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng

I didn't pay a lot of attention, but I know some people really struggled with them, feeling their testimonies shaken. As people began to be upset about things in the handbook, that made it seem really helpful. If you can see things in the development of the church that bother you, but still love the blessings it has brought into your life, then that should provide a path to getting through new things that bother you.

As I was reviewing the Equal Rights Amendment, and finding a talk I hated from Boyd K Packer (whom I do not hate), that seemed like the right time to check out the Essays for myself. Then I could make the analogies and draw the lines between reconciling the things we are not sure about.

I found them really underwhelming.

Another friend who had read them said she has read much worse, so I didn't expect to be personally shaken. I still thought I would understand why other people were shaken, but it was all stuff that I already knew. Maybe it doesn't come up every Sunday, but my seminary teacher had mentioned it, or it was in a church history manual, or something.

So I thought the next logical post would be about reconciling yourself with the fact that Brigham Young could be a racist in a time when that was common, but still successfully get people to Utah and get temples built and have revelations. Maybe it makes sense that it doesn't need to be about that, because it kind of replicates when I was leading up to writing about women and the priesthood.

Instead, this is becoming more about how it is not healthy to have an uninformed testimony. If your comfort at church depends on never hearing anything hard, how long do you think you can keep that up?

Back to that other conversation, my friend said that she has been hearing the word "equal" more and more in regards to men and women. There was never an announced doctrinal shift, but it has felt like a slow change that people are accepting.

I don't object to that specific change, but there are much more harmful things that can slip in without examination. That is how you get a seventy hinting at how bad Halloween is without just coming out and saying it. That is getting infected by the world, which can happen when we are not paying attention.

(Even with that, there is nothing wrong with not being in to Halloween, but when you feel like you need to spread that to others, again, that seems like the world is getting to you.)

If you know even the most basic information about the church, you know that we believe that there were prophets who wrote scriptures in the new world as well as the old, that God and angels showed themselves to Joseph Smith, and that the Book of Mormon was translated by the power of God. We are in a cynical age and world, but we believe that. You can handle seeing the power of God working in a variety of ways.

If you have paid any attention to the scriptural accounts of Christ's mortal ministry (and many things prophets and teachers led by him have said), then you know that we believe in being kind and generous, not greedy and judgmental, even though we are living in a cold and materialistic world. You can handle seeing that some things are not charitable without losing your love. At least you need to be able to do so.

And as members of a church with an exclusively lay ministry where we all need to help, you should be able to handle imperfect servants of God. It is often frustrating, but I need forgiveness and guidance and correction all the time, and I am not going to begrudge anyone else their chances at that.

I have had other thoughts, and there are pertinent links below.

Next week I shall explore my most rebellious stance yet.


Related posts:

Multiple posts on following and believing prophets starting here: http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2014/01/following-and-believing-in-prophets.html

Not infallible: http://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2015/11/not-infallible.html

Early memories of a Mormon feminist

Before I get into dealing with disappointment, it is reasonable to ask if I remember anything from the time period when there was still a question of whether the Equal Rights Amendment would pass.

The first introduction to Congress was in 1923. No memories there, but it clearly didn't really have momentum at that point. Conflict between different feminists and opposition in Congress meant it rarely even reached the Senate floor, except for once in 1946 when it was defeated.

I think when you say "ERA" people really think of the '70s. That is reasonable, but it is also reasonable to remember that history is always more complicated than what is widely known.

In 1972 (when I was born) the Equal Rights Amendment passed both houses of Congress, which sent it to the individual states for ratification. There was an original ratification deadline set for 1979, later extended to 1982, but the real peak would have been 1977 (when I was 5). By then 35 states had ratified and only 3 more were needed. Instead, some states rescinded their ratifications.

In the states that were still up for grabs, there was probably a lot of buzz. Oregon ratified in February 1973, when I was just barely a year old, so even though the issue was still going on, I don't think I would have heard a lot about it. There are three memories that I believe are related.

One was the Batgirl commercial about equal pay that I linked to in an earlier post. I remember it in the same spot in my mind where I remember commercials encouraging you to get government publications from Pueblo, Colorado.

Two is a vague memory of people at church talking about someone saying something as a man or as a prophet. Later I remember church teachers saying "When you hear people talking about whether someone is speaking as a man or a prophet...", but I think for that first memory it was not hypothetical and it was kind of intense. I don't know how often that particular question comes up, but I have a funny feeling that it could have been about Elder Packer speaking on the Equal Rights Amendment in 1977, though the building I remember being at probably puts the memory in 1978 or '79. Maybe he gave more talks that were similar. It could fit.

(You can read it here: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1977/03/the-equal-rights-amendment?lang=eng I had great affection for Elder Packer, but not for this talk.)

The last memory is "The Liberation of Marcia Brady", episode 19 of Season 2 of "The Brady Bunch". It originally aired February 12th, 1971, almost a full year before I was born, but I remember seeing it sometime before I was 6, because we were still living in Wilsonville.

The episode starts off with a reporter asking high school girls what they think about women's equality, which Marcia finds herself feeling strongly about. Challenged on her stance, she joins the Frontier Scouts and proves her abilities, but then doesn't stick with it because it's yucky boy stuff.

I know that doesn't sound that radical, but I remember being struck by the unfairness of the stereotypes, and that she could do as good as them, and it made me not want to attend a scouting event that was coming up.

I remember it so well because it was an early conflict with my father, and I was wrong and stupid because women weren't as good as men. I don't think he said it quite that succinctly. I don't think it was that time when he gave the example of the woman in the Coast Guard who messed up a rescue, or how letting women be firefighters and police officers messes up the height requirements, but he was always very sure of the legitimacy of the inequality, both when he went to church and after he stopped.

I also know, as someone a bit older and more experienced, that it's bull. There are women who are not physically good matches for the military or fire crews, but there are also men who are not. There is enough variation among either gender to rule out any clear signs of superiority, if you are willing to look at it.

Apparently the best reason to not look at it is an unwillingness to face that you do not have clear superiority, but that you have good points and bad points and strengths and weaknesses just like anyone else. It's more complex, and there's more personal responsibility, but it's also true and that's worth a lot.