Exponent II's Blog, page 114

Guest Post: In the Womb: Heartbeat vs Voice

Guest post by Amy. Human Being. Mother of Two. Deep Thinker. Granddaughter of a Philosopher.

Points of Connection

While carrying my first child, I was minimally concerned about hearing the baby’s heartbeat. My unwritten, quite logical rule was that “Babies have heartbeats. Inside me, I am growing a baby. Of course we will hear the baby’s heartbeat.”  It really felt like that, and really fit into my world narrative.

The second time around, the unsuccessful quest for a heartbeat seared into my soul the innocence of my previous assumptions, and sanctified how hearing my baby’s heartbeat connected my baby to me. We went into the doctor’s office expecting to finally hear the heartbeat. Our hearts shattered temporarily over and over again when we heard no heartbeat, saw no baby on the ultrasound monitors, and eventually my body no longer carried traces of what might have been.

During my third pregnancy, a stethoscope was one of the main tools of reassurance that I cherished for a few months to reassure myself that my baby was “OK” and maintain that connection to my unseen baby. And yes, being the paranoid soul that I was, for a few months, I attempted to hear my baby’s heartbeat every few hours. My talismanic stethoscope was a figurative lifeline for those few months between when the baby’s heartbeat was strong enough to be heard through layers of skin, fat, and fluid and the baby could kick like a mule. It mattered.

Flourishing and Growth

Scientists have investigated and confirmed that babies can hear while still in the womb. Babies can hear the mother’s heartbeat, the mother’s voice, the mother’s digestive tract, and more distantly, the voices of others.  Any newborn provider can tell you that babies need to hear a heartbeat outside themselves. It matters.

Both baby and mother listen to each other’s heartbeats as a reassuring, sustaining point of connection. It matters enough to be a life or death point of connection that crosses gender, nationality, race, or religion lines.

We sometimes forget that, just as human tools can fail to pick up a baby’s heartbeat, the baby can still be flourishing and growing.  Conversely, a baby can flourish in utero despite not hearing a mother’s voice or identifying a mother’s heartbeat.  In both instances, other ways of describing and navigating reality are implemented as ways to connect.  Just because a heartbeat or voice is not heard one way or at one time, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

God as Life-Giver

Because of my parent/child (specifically mother/baby) relationship experience, I can easily try to imagine God as a parent, and myself as a child.  Things I learned as a parent I can transfer to God as a parent. Things I learned as a parent, as a nurturer, as a provider, transfer into what makes me secure, protected, and connected as a child. I thought I knew what God’s voice sounded like, and it connected me to God.

Until, one day, I wasn’t.  I didn’t hear God’s voice anymore as I understood it or as I expected it to sound like.

In my faith transition, I have felt keenly the absence of that Voice – the Voice I associated with God.  I have tried to analyze the loss of this Voice, to process/work through it, to wring meaning from it – to bargain it out of existence as it were. In doing all this, a part of my soul remembers the dense, immersive sensation of grief, of bawling my eyes out while listening in complete silence for that one quiet, steady sound that meant the world to me in that moment.  But another part of me is different.  It is cautiously hopeful and tentatively curious, while daringly tiptoeing around, asking different questions and coming to different conclusions.

New questions bubble to the surface of my thinking.  “What if there is the possibility that just because I no longer hear the Voice of God doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist or that God has dropped/disowned me?  What if I am not cut off?  Or what if I am, but everything is just fine?”. The most daring, almost counter-culture question that I have come up with is, “What if I am expecting God to communicate to me as methodically and as often as a baby hears a caregiver’s heartbeat, and the reality is that communication with God is less frequent and more intentional?  What if I should expect and normalize the times when God won’t be speaking to me?“

This is comforting to me.  As a sleep-deprived, child-carrying mother, I had hours on end when I wasn’t talking to my child because I was sleeping, working, thinking or doing something else that didn’t require prodding and talking at my expanding belly.  This wasn’t a crisis for either of us – my baby was sleeping and growing, and I was trying to sleep, provide my baby’s shelter,  and grow into a better human. So, I can easily relate to it not being a crisis that God isn’t talking to me – I can be in a comparative state of respite and growth while God could be running the universe and/or resting in a Godly rest, and/or advancing into a better God. The possibilities are endless.  A refreshingly new and paradoxically always existing status quo may be that both of us are connected but comfortably sile

But more importantly, I may be able to hear and identify God’s heartbeat in ranges outside of God’s Voice throughout the world.

What does God’s heartbeat sound like when I stop mistaking it for the Voice of God?

Guest Post: Heavenly Mother is Packing a Suitcase

Guest post by Ash Rowan (they/them, he/him), an autistic artist-poet, and a culturally Mormon Unitarian Universalist. This piece was written two years ago, in response to an interaction between the author and their daughter.

God sniffles, then wipes her nose with the back of one hand before folding up the rest of a gossamer sheet.

“MoOoOom,” I whine. “I’ll be fine. There will be BIRDS! And DOGS! It’s gonna be so much fun.”

“I know,” she says with a soft smile. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes, because all she can think about is how much I will miss Her.

“I know your family and friends will care for you well.” Already, she can see the faces of so many mentors and givers and receivers who will cross my path as I forge my way through a mortal journey. But can they listen and speak in my language, the way She does intuitively? Will they nurture and nourish me to Her exacting standard?

(She puffs out a low breath at that thought because while she won’t say it out loud, this is exactly why she’s glad to be getting a break from me. She needs some time to just lay in the quiet and be Herself again.)

“And I can talk to you all the time!!” I add, still running eager circles around her.

“Whenever you want,” she affirms with a measured tone, knowing that I will forget to check in for days or weeks or months at a time. Knowing that She will be completely lost to my view for the first quarter-century of my life.

A dark shadow clouds her expression.

When I pummel into her from the side and throw my arms around her, she lets out a little startled shriek, and then breaks into a grin. Her entire figure relaxes and descends to wrap tight around me, as I nuzzle into the frizzy curls of Her hair and breathe in deeply. She smells like home. Her hearty laughter enfolds me from all around.

She tells me, “Oh, I will miss you so,” and cups the curve of my cheek.

“I’ll miss you too, Momma,” I say earnestly, beaming up into her eyes. Then a heartbeat later, I’m already hurtling away again.

She smiles again at that. Then, inhaling deeply, she snaps my luggage shut and trails her fingers deftly along the canvas surface, as though imbuing it with some kind of magic.

At last, she hefts the bag up into her arms, and walks out of the room to find me.

“Are you ready?” she asks, and realizes that the question is more for her own benefit than for mine.

“Let’s go!” I yelp, and her heart swells while breaking just a little bit more.

This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.

Guest Post: Cracking Down on Heavenly Mother

Guest Post by Jennifer Crow. Jennifer Crow studied gendered religious experiences through a Mormon feminist lens while in graduate school. Her studies were cut short when she was diagnosed with a rare neuromuscular disease for which she has spent the past three years recovering. She writes from her home in the Everlasting Mountains of east Tennessee where she lives with her husband, two adult sons, and a rambunctious puppy named Finn.

The LDS Church is on another rampage and this time Heavenly Mother is on the chopping block. Maybe not Heavenly Mother herself, per se, but those who actually talk and write about Her and Her role within Mormon theology – those are the people who might be singled out for this latter-day inquisition.

One of the most comforting and unique theologies, in my opinion, is the Mormon belief in a Heavenly Mother. One of the earliest and most oft known references to Heavenly Mother is an early Mormon hymn ironically titled, “O My Father”, in which the third verse best explicates a belief in Heavenly Mother, as shown in the following:

In the heav’ns are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason; truth eternal
Tells me I’ve a mother there.

-Eliza R. Snow, 1804-1887

I have always loved this hymn for that very reason. It speaks of our Heavenly Mother. It is the only public place within the practice of Mormon culture that it was acceptable to talk about, to think about, or to sing about, a heavenly mother. It doesn’t even explicitly mention her there either. In Mormon theological lore, Heavenly Mother, we had long been told that She is too sacred to talk about, too sacred to discuss, and in some circles, too sacred to even think about. Heavenly Mother had been relegated to the back circles of feminist and intellectual discussions – a place only presumed heretics feared to tread.

However, in May 2021, Peggy Fletcher Stack, senior journalist at the Salt Lake Tribune wrote, “Mormonism’s Heavenly Mother has gone mainstream.” Stack continued by listing the ways in which Heavenly Mother has been getting more air-time, so to speak. Essays and academic debates, art shows depicting Her image, poetry, hymns, and one-woman plays have all emerged to celebrate, depict, and attempt to understand the ethereal female godhead. Stack reminds us that even the LDS Church, updated its Young Womens theme in 2019, that is repeated every week during church services, to include the phrase, “I am a beloved daughter of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny”. Previously, when I was a young woman and was reciting it in my weekly church meetings, the theme started, “We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him.” There was no mention of a Heavenly Mother, no mention of Heavenly Parents– just a singular figure, God the Father. Single parenthood FTW, or not.

Trends have tended toward the not, therefore we’ve seen a movement away from a single father-god-parent figure, to a duality of a father-mother-god parentage. This influence came in part from the Church essay on Heavenly Mother, and also from the research documents requested by the Church on Her.

With the change in the Young Women’s theme and the selling of art and books depicting Heavenly Mother in the Church owned bookstore, it would follow then that discussions of this previously obscured second figure, God the Mother, would emerge. The strict emphasis of the Family Proclamation, a document clarifying Mormon theology about the herteronormative nuclear family and the gendered expectations of father and mother, those heteronormative points of the Proclamation continued driving the concept home– if a Father, by necessity also a Mother. And yet, a lot has been written of God the Father, though very little of God the Mother.

“Family, isn’t it about time?” That used to be an advertising slogan that the LDS Church spread across the airwaves through short vignettes called the Homefront series. Its first and very popular spot was called, “Your Children Need More of You”.

Ouch. Isn’t that the clarion call of this “Heavenly Mother has gone mainstream” movement?

Latter-day Saints are all but shouting, “Mother, we need more of you,” yet the Church has refused to listen. Why then would the Church shy away from discussions of a Heavenly Family? If Elder Renlund’s recent fireside is to be expounded upon, we are being told not to speak of, to, or about Her, Her role, or even to capitalize Her pronouns. Why withhold further light and knowledge of our Heavenly Parentage? Why not a Father and a Mother? Why not more understanding of Mother?

We have entire libraries, theologies and religions dedicated to knowing and understanding God the Father. Isn’t it about time we equal the playing field and include theologies of God the Mother? Is that so scary or controversial? In the absence of top-down direction, scholars, poets, and artists have attempted to fill the gap to understand the Mormon divine feminine, adding to comprehension of the Mormon Mother in Heaven. Books and works of art that are dedicated to understanding the nature of Heavenly Mother are sold at the Church owned bookstore, Deseret Book, implying implicit permission that discussions to understand and explicate the nature of Heavenly Mother are acceptable only if they are profitable.

If permissions aren’t granted for explicit discussion of Heavenly Mother in church settings, such as during prayers or sermons, explicit permission is given to purchase works celebrating the divine mother. The Church is a corporation, and what business would allow a stream of income to go untapped? That is, until the membership became too comfortable with connecting to the divine feminine, too comfortable with questioning, too comfortable with projecting Heavenly Mother’s possible connection to the Godhead; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Is She the Holy Ghost? Perhaps! It’s a beautiful thought for some and blasphemous to others. The ambiguity remains because Church leaders refuse to address head-on who exactly Mother in Heaven is and what Her role, if any, is beyond eternal pregnancy and wife to Heavenly Father.

Mostly, women in the church are asking,“there has to be more to heaven than that, right?” If Mormon women are to look for glimmers of what their eternal roles, their eternal destinies are to become, what greater example could they have than a mother in heaven? And who is more obscured in Mormon theology than Mother in Heaven? Herein lies the conundrum.

Mormon women are taught very little about what Godhood would look like for them, what their role might be. This offers little hope or comfort for an LDS women for a heaven where she already has to grapple with the specter of eternal polygamy. And this speaks nothing to trans and gender nonconforming people, what might their roles be in the eternities? Who represents them in Mormonism’s Heavenly Godhead?

This ambiguity and questioning of Mother in Heaven’s role logically leads to questioning women’s roles. Now, of course, we’re entering dangerous territory. Once a challenge to their authority to define prescriptive gender roles and norms came into question, Church leaders decided it was time to squash the emerging movement. Men have decided it’s time to curtail emerging theological discussions of Heavenly Mother.

Where have I seen this before? The Church has a pattern of ousting members who ask tough theological questions for which they have no intention of answering. Women are prevented from adding in any meaningful way to the exegesis, let alone theology, of their church, lest they be seen as somehow dangerous.

Who is Heavenly Mother? What is Her role? Questions are dangerous. The Church either attempts to destroy the person or they try to destroy the idea – frequently it’s both. In 1993, Boyd K. Packer, stated in a speech delivered to regional leaders that feminists, intellecutals, and gays, posed the greatest danger to the Church. In September of that year, six feminists and intellectuals were excommunicated for challenging Church authority largely because of their public discussions of Heavenly Mother; they later became known as the September Six. Twenty-years after they were publicly expelled from the faith, feminists were on the chopping block again. Enter Ordain Women. Founder, Kate Kelly, and some prominent participants of the movement, were either disciplined or excommunicated for their feminist activisim, advocating women’s ordination to the all-male priesthood.

Now it looks as though a new crop of crackdowns may be on the horizon. Prominent intellectuals within progressive Mormon circles have publicly expressed fears that their membership may be on the line. Included are those who were previously requested as students to research all prior aspects of, and mentions in doctrine regarding, Heavenly Mother, in research which eventually contributed to the gospel essay about Her on the LDS Church website. These same academics who had been requested to research on behalf of the Church now must be apprehensive that they might be the next ones to be forcefully jettisoned from their faith communities. The September Six, Ordain Women, Heavenly Mother – feminists, intellectuals, and gays are enemies to the Church? Indeed, who is the enemy?

Recently, regional leadership training has begun to counsel Bishops how to steer their congregations away from discussions of Heavenly Mother. This includes instructing them to squash speculations about Her, to reply to these discussions with such vague responses as, “We don’t know very much about Heavenly Mother,” or “Don’t create Heavenly Mother in your own image.” And this suggestion, “Don’t talk about Heavenly Mother by Herself, only with the Father as ‘heavenly parents’ – lowercase.” To paraphrase a popular song from Disney’s Encanto, like Bruno, “We don’t talk about Heavenly Mother, no, no, no!” And, lastly, “Don’t pray to Heavenly Mother.” This is particularly odd, considering the original title to that beloved hymn, “O My Father”, which I quoted above was originally called “Invocation, or Eternal Father and Mother.” As theologian, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, recently reminded us in her Instagram and Twitter posts:

“We recognize “Invocation” as a prayer word-as a prayer. She addressed both Parents directly in the 4th stanza/verse: “Father, Mother may I meet thee?” It is clear to me that Eliza viewed this as a prayer.”

The inclusion of Eliza Snow’s poem in the official hymnal of the Church is an explicit declaration that this is doctrine.

Therefore, praying to the Mother must be fine.

Rachel Hunt Steenblik, arguably the preeminent contemporary scholar on the Mormon theology of Heavenly Mother, was one of those tasked with researching Heavenly Mother in a paid position at Brigham Young University; her research and writings have become some of the most downloaded scholarship from its database. Days after discussions of the emerging witch-hunt were discovered on Twitter, sales of Rachel’s books rose to the number one and two positions on Amazon’s best seller list in Gender & Sexuality in Religious Studies– an impressive feat that can only be accomplished because a group of committed Latter-day Saints want to know more of their Heavenly Mother. Not only is Rachel a scholar, she is a poet. Her poetry collection “Mother’s Milk: Poems in search of Heavenly Mother” published in 2017 is arguably the most stunning collection of Mormon theological thought on Heavenly Mother. Case in point, this poem:

Genesis

And God said, Let us
make woman in
our image, after
our likeness. So
God created women in
Her own image, in
the image of God
Created She her;
Female and male
Created She them.

Imagine! Imagine if this is what was taught to teenage girls in their weekly meetings. A weekly recitation of, “We are daughters of a Heavenly Mother, who loves us, and we love Her.” If we had a female theology of Heavenly Mother, imagine how that would change the ways in which teenage girls understood their gendered connection to God! She! Her! God! “O My Mother”, sung instead of, in place of, in addition to, “O My Father.”

Imagine if Latter-day Saints included a theology of Mother God in their religious practices how that would change young women’s perspective on their own divinity, their own roles, their own power. She was created in Her image. That’s powerful imagery.

Imagine if the Church allowed women, men, and gender nonconforming people to understand—to know—the power held by a female God? Therein lies the danger. The danger is held by defining our divine relationship to a woman. Patriarchy demands that our relationships, specifically our religious relationships, are defined by our connections to men. Wife of…, mother of…, sister to…, etc. Women in church culture only hold power by their connections to male power or authority. It is the currency foot soldiers to the patriarchy trade in, their relationships to powerful men. This currency is so valuable that it keeps women adherent to not only the doctrines but to the patriarchal practices of a male dominated culture. Women use their connections to powerful men to advance themselves, to maintain their social positions, or to squash others. Women with less power, therefore fewer connections to esteemed men, have less currency to trade on.

This might all disappear if the tables were turned and women could claim their connection to power through a Woman. A powerful woman, God the Mother, creator of She, Them, He, They, Their, male, female, non-binary, them – ALL. Heavenly Mother, the Creator of all. The all-encompassing beauty of this theology turns previous patriarchal thought on its head. Family, isn’t it about time…we started including all of us. Families can be together forever, if… NO. Families can be together forever because She made it so.

Yes, female theology is dangerous and someone must pay. Unfortunately, that payment could end up being the heads of some of our most intelligent and capable scholars, as it always has been.

This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.

Guest Post: Pray, She Is There. Speak, They Are Listening

Hi, I’m Meghan (she/they.) I live in North Idaho where I am a founding member Harmony CDA, a local support group seeking to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ and allies in harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And my husband suggested it might be a good idea to link my latter-gay stories post if anyone wants to know more about my personal “coming out” story that is mentioned. This can be found here: https://lattergaystories.org/hi-im-meghan/

I’ve been feeling a lot of feelings following Elder Renlund’s address in the Women’s Session of General Conference, but mostly, I am sad. I’m sad because the words that Elder Renlund chose show me that he (and likely, all of the brethren, by extension) haven’t had any of the experiences that I have had.

I don’t think they’ve ever felt prompted to come out as queer after years of struggling with their mental health, and months of praying to see themselves and loves themselves as their Heavenly Parents see and love them. I don’t think they’ve had to sit in the existential dissonance between how they were created, what gifts God gave them, and what the church presents to them as good and righteous life. I don’t think they know difficult it is to expose the most vulnerable and starved parts of yourself, or how unkind others can be when you claim it’s divinely guided.

I wonder if they’ve ever had their anxieties about following such an unexpected prompting manifest in a dream- not just your garden-variety “I’m at school without my pants” dream, but a violent and visceral nightmare where Satan himself is literally showing you what can or will happen if you come out- what relationships will suffer, what people will say, and what pain you will endure- complete with weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

Since they are men who hold the priesthood, I doubt they’ve started to lucid dream and felt completely powerless, crippled by pain and fear and shame. It’s safe to assume they’ve never thought, “Oh my gosh, this is too much. I can’t handle this. I need to wake up my spouse right now so they can give me a blessing. I need this to stop.”

I don’t think they have. I don’t think any of them have felt the warm, feminine embrace that I felt in that moment, cradled in a perfect, protective love- a hug that only a Mother can give. I know they’ve never felt Her imprint, “You have the power you need” onto their souls, and then banished Satan from their subconscious with a newfound faith and confidence in their own divine femininity.

I wonder if they’ve experienced what it is like to go through EMDR therapy.

To have puzzle pieces fit together that your mind has spent your whole life trying to hide, separate, ignore, and forget.

To start picking at a decades-old scab, only to realize what lies beneath hasn’t healed at all- the wound is as raw and fresh as the day you got it.

I wonder if any of the brethren have come to realize that they’ve been so scarred by the hands of men that praying to even a celestial one feels like a cruel joke.

I doubt they’ve experienced that unique agony, or ever uttered a prayer of desperation and defiance, saying, “If this is wrong just strike me with lightning and end it now, I don’t care. This is all I can manage,” and then prayed exclusively to Heavenly Mother for a few weeks.

I don’t think they have. I don’t think they’ve prayed and been overcome with a mental image of Heavenly Father literally stepping behind Heavenly Mother, hand on Her shoulder, no hint of offense or resentment on His face. Both looking down on me with so much love. Both so proud of me for still seeking Them, even in my darkest moments.

I love, honor, cherish, and sustain our General Authorities. I do. But I also love, honor, cherish, and sustain my personal authority. And after Elder Renlund’s talk, I faltered in that. I began to question answers to questions I’ve already received. I wondered if I was wrong, if I had been deceived, and if I was overstepping in cultivating this novel relationship with my Heavenly Mother. I wondered if I had offended Christ by stepping outside the lines and violating his instruction for prayer. I wondered if I needed to repent.

And that night, I had another dream. Not directly featuring Heavenly Mother this time, but all the “mothers” I have on the other side of the veil. I saw my great grandmothers on all sides of my family, the faces of some who I intuited where my husband’s ancestors, and hundreds of others that I didn’t physically recognize, but knew in my heart were my progenitors, going back generation after generation. A legion of feminine ministering angels. And then I felt a hug and the words, which my heart and soul attributed to Christ, “I’ll be with you, everywhere.’ No correction, no condemnation, no call to repentance. Just love.

These experiences are so sacred to me. They have affected me on a cosmic and cellular level. They have redefined the divine. They have allowed me to forge a personal and intimate connection with Christ, my Heavenly Parents, and with those who minister to me on other side of the veil.

I’ve seen general references to personal experiences many times, and often others seem to opt out of sharing details due to their sacred and personal nature. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t me. And I’ve often wondered, “is it wrong that I’m speaking so freely about my experiences? Am I freaking people out? Do I need to tone it down so others think I’m normal?” Many would answer yes, I’m sure. But the answer I get from God is a clear, concise, and emphatic “no.”

I have often joked that I must be pretty hard to reach, because so many of my spiritual promptings come as such a slap in the face. Big, loud, obvious, undeniable inspiration. But man, what a gift that is. I have complete faith and confidence in my experiences, and nothing anyone says or does can take that away from me.

Occasionally when I open up, someone will skeptically ask me how or why I get these answers in this way, and my only response is that I ask for it. I don’t demand revelation, and I try to be patient, but my experiences with Heavenly Mother didn’t come until I asked to feel love from both of Them, and my encounter with Christ didn’t happen until I admitted I didn’t know how to connect to Him individually, and asked how I could grow that relationship. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Ask and ye shall receive.

So, I humbly testify that prayers are answered. I believe in the ability of general authorities to provide general guidance, and I claim the privilege of worshiping according to the dictates of my own conscience.

As we sit in the wake of this April 2022 conference, I implore everyone to simply ask the questions that are on their hearts. Especially if a specific talk (or 2, or 3…) didn’t resonate with you. Pray, pray, pray. If claiming your personal authority makes you uncomfortable, I get it. I was once there too, and old habits die hard. But, I am willing to bet that if I asked the brethren if I should pray about a talk they gave, 15/15 would say “yes.” So, start with that. You will never regret praying.

Guest Post: All Glory, Laud and Honor

Guest Post by Kimberlee. I am the proud grandmother of 3 incredible adorables. The proud parent of two amazing adult children. Celebrating 47 years with the love of my life. We love to read, hike, travel, and eat good food together. I have graduate degrees in Art History (MA 2001), Women’s Studies (MA 2003; PhD 2013) from the University of Maryland. We live in northern California where we serve in the Oakland Temple. 

All glory, laud, and honor to Mother God, the Feminine Divine, the Divine Feminine, the Goddess, Mother in Heaven, Heavenly Mother. Her names are endless and endless is her name. Praise and Adoration to Her.

My earliest pull towards her came in 1972 during a choral performance of “we young women” in the Bay Area on the stage of the Oakland Inter-Stake Center. Although still in high school, I had been reflecting with confusion on my discomfort with the position of the church on the proposed ERA amendment. As we sang, “Nothing Like a Star” (wearing pink!), a sliver of comfort came down from above and rested upon me. While I didn’t identify its source as Mother God at the time, it’s clear to me in hindsight that it was she who was sending me the peace to move forward comfortably in disharmony with the official position. While before I had been wavering in the social winds of the congregation in which I worshiped, I was now comfortable with articulating my own position for myself. It is possible, of course, that someone might have felt comfort from above in aligning with the position of the church. My hindsight recognition was less about the amendment itself but about traits of being that I would need in the years going forward: comfort in living with paradox, ambiguity, and a lack of clarity on many significant topics. The recognition at that time of my being able to let go of internal conflict over contradictions in the world about me has been one for which I’ve been humbly grateful. It has allowed me to stretch and grow and remain rooted in faith.

All glory, laud, and honor to those who further opened the conduit to Mother God for me. As a young married mother in 1985, I watched Carol Lynn Pearson perform “Mother Wove the Morning” with rapt attention. My mind exploded with endless possibilities of knowing and being there unfolding before me. Pearson’s tireless, courageous, and brilliant dedication of her talent to knowing Eternal Mother in all her many incarnations has informed so much of her work and my awareness of eternal possibilities throughout the years that have followed, most recently recapitulated with glorious power in her compilation “Finding Mother God: Poems to Heal the World.”

All glory, laud, and honor to the women of Exponent II and Dialogue for courageously giving voice to the discoveries of many with respect to Mother God: to Margaret Olson Hemming for her passionate and uplifting focus on the Feminine Divine in her recently curated art exhibition on the topic at Lincoln Center, to McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding for their books exploring the multi-faceted faces and attributes of Heavenly Mother. The voices and talents of all these women and more have been manna to me in my own exploration towards the Divine Feminine. They have been the hands and voices of earthly angels on my mortal journey to better understanding God as female and to building rapprochement with God as male.

All praise to women everywhere and throughout time who have celebrated Her, who have acted with Her power on behalf of women’s oppression in patriarchal cultures across the world. It is She who animates so much of all that is living. Her divine and earthly powers are equal in might to that of Father God. Individually and together, they are creators and sustainers of all that is hopeful and good in their compassionate love of humankind. They inspire and embrace and hold us as we journey.

While I had always felt it possible to comprehend (at least in part), the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as Savior and Redeemer and thus forge a relationship to Him, God the Mother has changed my relationship to God the Father in many positive ways. For many years I struggled to pray effectively to God the Father. He felt distant to me, and although I knew He loved me and all of humankind, it was difficult for me to feel a relationship with One who didn’t have attributes that I could discover of the female. Having since felt the heart of Female as Divine has been a beautiful and edifying experience and has helped me to learn more about both God the Mother and God the Father. The first time that I addressed them both in prayer, my heart felt at home. It felt so natural that it now seems impossible to me that it had not always been thus in my life. What an experience of Grace for me to have been able to grow in knowledge of and love for Her, thanks to all the way finders who have been pulling Her slowly but determinedly into our orbit and view. I see Her smiling upon these efforts and endowing them with magnifying and magnificent greatness.

I write and think out of the space of the privileges of my lived experiences. I am a white (European-American), cis-gender woman living among the upper middle class. I have the privilege of being highly educated. I lack for nothing. Although I have studied and taught Women’s Studies and Feminism, with an emphasis on social justice and an attention to the marginalization and oppression of women along the many intersecting axes of color, ethnic, gender, religious identity, economic status, geopolitical location and more, I recognize the paucity of my experience in truly seeing through the lives of others who do not stand in my location of privilege.

What I wonder is their experience of or hopes for the Feminine Divine? I look forward with great eagerness to this and other opportunities that exist for us to share what She means to each and to all of us; I look forward to learning about The Divine Feminine from others whose lived experience is vastly or even partly different from my own. In this regard, I am, again grateful to the work of Hemming, Krishna and Spalding, and Exponent II and Dialogue editors for the powerful and multi-faceted visual experiences of the Female Divine they have given space for in their spheres of influence.

My testimony is that She is omniscient and omni-powerful and the essence of eternal love and of peace. I believe that She accommodates, indeed celebrates our differences and our diversity. Indeed, Her gift is to bring us to our own joyful acceptance of the very diversity she endowed the earth with from the beginning.

I believe She has the power both to heal those who suffer though any capacity, while simultaneously elevating the wisdom they have acquired from their particular and challenging journeys. I believe She is comfortable using they/their pronouns. I believe that She/They both mirror and reflect what is most needful and precious for each of us. There is nothing that She/They may not accomplish for good. Worlds without end live in Her/Their being and She/They live for us, with the goal to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of each and all of us journeying here in mortality. As we come to know Her/Them better, our understanding of how to better realize this goal more inclusively will unfold harmoniously, for Her/Their work is to use Her/Their glorious light to dispel the dark forces of earthly tribalisms and other isms of oppression. These will fade away and the earth itself will begin to heal, particularly to the extent that we put forth all our own efforts to the work. Following the principles of the Gospel of the Savior Jesus Christ will bring us closer to God the Mother, and to her all-knowing wisdom, illuminating the journey forward for all those born of woman.

We Have To Stop Making Young Mormons The Butt of Our Trauma Jokes

Have you seen this TikTok? It’s not extraordinary; a million identical videos are circulating online, each as unoriginal as the last. 

Roll camera: Hahahahaha those Mormon kids. Can you imagine getting being so young and getting married after only six months?! What FOOLS. hahahahaha. /SCENE

It’s time somebody reminded the Progressive LDS community that this trope is condescending, naive, and classist, and it does nothing to prevent young people from making imprudent marriages.

photo: courtesy of the author

Of course, the joke is that quick marriages are at least correlated and probably caused by horny people who don’t believe in pre-marital sex. This flies in the face of mountains of data showing that abstinence-only education does not prevent sex. And who could deny that church curriculum and culture are unreservedly, undoubtedly, and unambiguously abstinence-only?

You know what is actually correlated with and caused by being horny? Having sex. Which happens. All the time.

Even so, touch and affection are basic human needs. Two years into a pandemic we should know this viscerally. Mental health for young people crashed dangerously in the early days of lockdown. It is literally not good for any of us to be alone.

The joke is not merely unkind; it perpetuates the myth that chastity is both sustainable and healthy for most humans. It is not.

So why do young Mormons get married so fast, if it isn’t primarily for sex?

Sometimes it’s for guilt; they marry the person they had sexual contact with. And let none of us forget that marriage is historically and primarily an economic proposition. For many young LDS couples, it remains one.

Plenty of young people of marriageable age come from large families that cannot or will not help financially; and these kids have been soaking in rugged individualism like amniotic fluid. They are often poor, and the vulnerable ones are unlikely to seek for much assistance.

Getting married in the United States serves as a way to delineate who is financially dependant on their parents. It’s a highly unreliable measure of financial independence, but it gives young people access to pell grants (which go a long way when you are going to a heavily subsidized church school). Having a baby gives you long-term access to food benefits like SNAP and WIC. 

So what do you do when you are 21 and rent and tuition are abhorrently, prohibitively expensive? When you are not eligible for any of the paltry assistance you might be eligible for if you were older? When you are bone-crushingly lonely and need some semblance of stability?

If you live in secular Western society, you move in with your partner of six months and nobody bats an eye. Maybe your parents help you out. But this option isn’t available to young LDS people, and they are drowning in stories that say it is not only okay but imperative to marry as quickly as you find a suitable person. And then their theology, social training, and biology all compel them to start having babies, often before healthy partnership patterns have been examined or established.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said that most women marry their glass ceilings. This is a feminist issue.

Young people are vulnerable and making life-altering decisions based on immediate economic need, loneliness, and a wealth of incomplete love stories. I’m done laughing at vulnerable people. This social reality doesn’t only encourage hasty marriages, it traps women into unpaid care work from a very early age. We should all take that a lot more seriously.

Guest Post: I Sense Her in the Silence

Guest Post by Angie Killian. Angie Killian is Christian songwriter with a passion for sharing the light and love of Jesus Christ.  With over a million views on YouTube (www.youtube.com/angiekillianmusic), her songs have been shared and performed by people across the globe.  You can find out more about her music and story here. (www.angiekillian.com)

As an LDS lyricist and composer, the summer of 2019 will forever be remembered as the “great revision.”  For me, it will also be cherished as the summer that I was given the words for ‘A Mother There.’

This is that story.

It starts with a different song I was hoping to submit for the children’s songbook called ‘My Body.’ The lyrics went like this:

My body is a special gift
From Heavenly Parents above,
So I will treat it carefully
With kindness, respect, and love.

I’ll keep my body pure and clean
And fill it with goodness and light.
My body is a temple
For my spirit to dwell inside.

Since I was out of submission slots, I asked a friend and fellow composer to set the text to music and submit it under his account. He graciously agreed, but, a few days later, I received an email from him wondering whether “Heavenly Parents” should be capitalized.  After pouring over conference addresses, he noticed that it was usually left in lowercase. He went a step further and found several examples where Heavenly Mother wasn’t capitalized as well. Even in one of Her only inclusions in our current hymnbook, “truth is reason; truth eternal tells me I’ve a mother there,” She is left in lowercase.

This discovery left me feeling dumbfounded, upset, and utterly defeated.  20 years’ worth of questions and longing erupted to the surface, and I needed strength and comfort from my Mother whose arms I left when She placed me in my own wonderful mother’s arms.  I ached for Her to be a tangible piece in my life.

I could no longer survive on the crumbs I had been given; I needed bread.

In my grief, I turned to Heavenly Father and asked Him to relay a message for me: I wanted to be close to Her, I was ready to know Her, and I truly couldn’t know myself and my divine nature and eternal roles until I understood Hers.

In the tender moments that followed, vivid imagery and distinct phrases filled my mind. I pulled out the yellow notepad app on my phone as the lyrics for ‘A Mother There’ poured through my soul and spilled onto the screen. It was the most beautiful gift and answer to prayer I have ever received.

I learned several things from the words I was given. First, the wonderful things in the world are one of the ways She shows us Her nature and love. “All things denote there is a God” and can remind us of Her beauty, creativity, and care (Alma 34:40).

Second, Her children inherited spiritual gifts from both Heavenly Parents. She and Father are the culmination of everything good in ourselves, our brothers and sisters, and our beloved Savior. We can know Her attributes and understand her nature by looking for kindness, talents, and love in ourselves, those around us, and as we come to know Christ.

The biggest thing that was impressed upon my soul was that She is ever-present in our lives, cares about us individually, and wants to have a relationship with Her children. The last verse of the song is particularly special to me:

I sense Her in the silence,
In moments I am still.
She reaches back and teaches that
Her love is what I feel.

Several months later, when my friend Shane Mickelsen set this text to music, he added the hallelujah choir to the last chorus. Hallelujah translates to “God be praised.” She is so worthy of our praise! It is my prayer that Her children praise Her, seek Her, and find Her.

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”—Matthew 7:7

Guest Art: The Anointings

Guest Artist: Kamron Coleman. Kamron is thousands of hours into working on a hand-written and hand-painted Scroll well over one hundred feet in length which illuminates the symbolism of John. The Scroll proposes that Christian Atonement temple theology has its roots, not only in Israel, but in Egypt, India, and Babylon, and is undergoing restoration by covenant people even today.

“The Anointing” Oil on canvas 36w x 60h by Kamron Coleman. The painting depicts the Anointing of Christ by Mary of Bethany prior to his crucifixion.

“The Second Anointing” Oil on canvas 48w x 60h by Kamron Coleman. The painting depicts the Anointing of Christ by Mary Magdalene prior to his resurrection.

“The Comforter” Oil on canvas 36w x 60h by Kamron Coleman. The painting depicts the Queen of Heaven, or Heavelny Mother, comforting her Son in the Garden of Gethsemane under her standard, the almond tree.

“The Ascension” Oil on canvas 48w x 60h by Kamron Coleman. The painting depicts the seven seals of St John the Apostle, and Christ’s Apotheosis through the ministrations of holy beings from the Heavenly Council.

An essay published in Square Two, called “Terrestrail Lost and Found” elaborates on the themes of these paintings.

The artist’s website is www.kamroncoleman.com

 

Guest Post: If Doctrine and Covenants 130 is True

Guest post by Inquiring Mind, who is a speech-language pathologist by profession and a harp teacher by passion. She has a heart full of faith, a head full of ideas, a basket full of laundry, a family full of feelings, and a nightstand full of books.

I wrote this poem weeks before the birth of my 3rd child–an event that brought simultaneous feelings of joy and trepidation.

Artwork Cred: “Mama” by Shar Tuiasoa. Visit https://www.punkyaloha.com/shop/mama
Used with generous permission by the artist

If Doctrine & Covenants 130 is True

Then the Mother has a body
of flesh and bones
as tangible as man’s
or the son of Man’s.

As tangible as the life
She gives each of us:
sustained by Her blood
nourished by Her milk
surrounded by
living, rushing waters.
Her heartbeat’s melody
the most familiar of sounds.

The miracle of God in us
made possible by our first
dwelling in Her.

This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.

Guest Post: My Mother Watches Over Me

Guest Post by Sarah. Sarah lives in the Salt Lake area with her dog and like to sew.

Recent conversations about church leadership potentially cracking down on discussions of Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Parents and encouraging the idea of conditional love for God’s children have had my head spinning and my heart breaking and prompted me to tell the story of my current understanding of and relationship to my Heavenly Family and Heavenly Mother and how I got here. It’s a very personal story to me and isn’t something I have ever shared in its entirety, just bits and pieces with friends.

Basically, I’m sure of three things about God right now:

God wants us to be happy
God wants us to love one another
God loves all their children

The rest is details. I don’t believe God cares too much about how we view God. I think a God that requires a specific view of God is a small God. A God that can be damaged by someone making a joke is a small God. I believe that God loves their children. That God is not just male. I don’t know if God is all genders and none, or if God is made up of multiple Heavenly Parents, but I’m also not sure it matters. I think what matters most is that God’s children feel God’s strength and support when they need it. Sometimes I’ve felt like God is male, but when I’ve needed comfort these last few years, I’ve experienced a feminine divine. I don’t believe it is anyone’s place to tell others that they’re experiencing God wrong. To tell them that their experiences aren’t valid.

In early 2019 I prayed to receive an answer to a personal question that had been causing me pain for a long time: where should I look for a partner? I was 35. I hadn’t had a date in a decade. I was sat in a room of mostly single women like me. I was unhappy. I was attending my fourth singles ward in four years. I’d tried family wards but at that point they all served as a reminder of what I lacked, what I felt I wasn’t good enough to deserve. When the sacrament hymn finished I had one of the clearest impressions I’ve ever received: don’t look here, you won’t find what you’re looking for at church. I cried for the rest of the meeting. I cried for days. I prayed for comfort, I prayed to know why, and my Heavenly Mother said in my heart, softly and gently, that a temple wedding won’t make me happy. I was still sad, but I felt peace. She was looking out for my happiness. I continued to attend that ward. I continued to not feel like I belonged. I felt my Mother beside me as I stood up and said that God loved my queer and trans sisters as much as they loved me, as I testified of Their unconditional love for their children, for Their desire for their children to be happy and to love each other, to not cause harm to one another.

Several months later, as I was driving home, I saw the moon, huge and round, sitting between the mountains. I rounded a bend and there She was, shining down on the world, and I felt my Mother’s love. It was such an intense moment. I was minding my own business, driving down the freeway, listening to music, and then suddenly my Mother’s love surrounded me and covered me in moonlight and I felt more loved than I had in weeks. It’s been more than two years, but I still feel Her love in the moonlight. I lay in my bed, with the curtains flung wide, huddled in the dark, scared and alone, and then I look to the window and see Her there, and know I’m loved, that someone believes I’m worthy and deserving of love.

I’m largely distant from the institutional church these days, but I still find comfort in prayer, in scripture, in private devotion, and I feel loved when I walk under a full moon, or see a winking sliver in the sky.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending, because it isn’t over yet. I’m still single. I still feel alone. I still feel alienated from my family and from the faith tradition of my childhood. But in Her light, I feel peace.

This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.