Exponent II's Blog, page 134

Sacred Music Sunday: Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me

Calming of the Storm Fresco Karemin1094, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Back when I was the ward music chair, I tried to pick hymns that were seasonally appropriate. Christmas and Easter were easy. Other times of the year were harder. I would scour the calendar at timeanddate.com to see what I could come up with. August 19 fell on a Sunday one year, and the calendar told me that it was National Aviation Day. As a joke, I chose Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me as one of the hymns for the day. I know the hymn is about boats and not airplanes, but I went with it. I whispered it to the person sitting next to me in the pew and we had a private laugh. Humor notwithstanding, it is a nice enough musical setting for the story of Jesus calming the storm.

My 15-step process for planning a Come Follow Me lesson

Step 1

I read the Come Follow Me manual. Full disclosure: this is wrong. If you came to this post looking for sage advice about how a good teacher would go about this, my lousy Step 1 is a good hint that you’re reading the wrong post. My co-teacher was shocked when he learned that I read the manual first. He always reads the sacred text first, directly from Doctrine and Covenants, so that the Spirit can speak to him through scripture before he is biased by reading somebody else’s interpretation in a manual. He makes an excellent argument and I decided that he is right but I still read the manual first. If you are wondering why, see Step 4.

 

Step 2

I read the other Come Follow Me manual. I teach Gospel Doctrine. There’s a manual for that but there’s also the Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families manual that covers the same scriptural text with a different lesson plan. Sometimes I find material that speaks to me in the other manual, so I read both.

 

Step 3

Caroline and Mary Elizabeth Rollins save the manuscript of the future Doctrine and Covenants from vandals when a mob destroys William Phelp’s printing press in 1833. (It wouldn’t have bothered me if they had left a few bits behind.)

I read the relevant sections in Doctrine and Covenants.

 

Step 4

I hate it. Why did they think they had to make scriptures out of all this stuff? Did they really believe they had to canonize every mission call and every administrative rule and every reprimand of every person who got fingerprints on the church windows or whatever? And unlike the other scriptures in our canon, there is no storyline. A bunch of revelations (and mission calls and admin stuff and reprimands and blah blah blah) are presented in random order with no context using a highfalutin voice and fire and brimstone preaching style that went out of fashion over a century ago. On behalf of my generation, nineteenth century prose can be annoying.

 

Step 5

I give up.

 

Step 6

I try again. I go back and re-read the text, this time highlighting every phrase I see that could potentially have relevance to a modern church-goer who wants to think about how to be a better person.

 

Step 7

I copy all the scriptures I highlighted onto a fresh blank document. Now, I have a shorter, better version of the Doctrine and Covenants text. 100% inspiration! No admin! No fire and brimstone!

 

Step 8

I find the story narrative by placing the Doctrine and Covenants text into the context of history. The section header gives a good starting place: the location, date, and names of persons involved, but I need more.

Favorite sources:

Revelations in ContextSaints: Volume 1 and Volume 2Gospel Topics EssaysDialogue: a Journal of Mormon ThoughtDaughters in My KingdomThe Gospel Library app function to re-sort the Doctrine and Covenants sections into chronological order (Why didn’t they just number them chronologically in the first place?)

 

Step 9

I look for themes in the scriptures, the manuals and the history. Using cut and paste, I organize my notes and scriptures by theme under headers. Sometimes the headers look similar to those in the manual. Sometimes I go in a different direction.

 

Step 10

I fill in the blanks with other sources. I complement Doctrine and Covenants with other scriptures: the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price. In fact, many scriptures from Doctrine and Covenants allude to other books and can’t be fully understood without that context. I augment scriptures with quotes from church leaders, other church members and people of other faith traditions. I often use videos or music.

 

Step 11

I add discussion questions. The manual provides many, but I also add my own. I make sure there are frequent group discussion opportunities throughout the lesson.

 

Step 12

I share my lesson plan here at the Exponent. After all that work, I want my lesson plan to be useful to more people! I give myself a deadline to share the lesson plan well ahead of the scheduled teaching date.  That way,  more people will find it when they need it and I have an incentive to finish it early so I am not stressing myself out by procrastinating and trying to pull something together on my teaching day.

You can find my lesson plans, and lesson plans from other Exponent bloggers and guests, here: Come Follow Me Lesson Plans

Do you teach Come Follow Me? Return the favor and share your lesson plan with the Exponent community by uploading it here: Submit a Guest Post

 

Step 13

On the morning of my turn to teach, I meet with my co-teacher and compare notes. When the bishop called us to teach together, he expressed that he was envisioning that we would not simply take turns teaching separately, but that some sort of synergy would happen with both of us providing more than one perspective on the sacred text. We have found that the easiest way for us to do that is to treat ourselves like a panel or a podcast.  We study and prepare separately, and then convene. Sometimes we find that we both arrived at similar lesson plans.  Sometimes our notes have little overlap.  We decide who will lead which parts of the discussion based on who was more excited and inspired about what. Or Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Whatever works.

 

Step 14

We teach the class. When the other  teacher is leading the discussion, the co-teacher chimes in with his/her own thoughts, like an over-prepared student who likes to show off. Some of these interruptions are pre-planned: “I’ll lead the discussion of Section 12, but can you bring up that quote/cross reference/example you found?”

 

Step 15

With all that group discussion time planned in, the class doesn’t always look like our carefully prepared outlines. Sometimes the group seems bored, so we move on to something else quickly. Sometimes they get really excited about something and their comments fill up the time. Regardless of how much of the lesson plan we have covered, when time has elapsed, we stop. Right away. Done. No more. Have you heard the saying, “The Spirit goes to bed at midnight?” I don’t believe in that, but I do believe that the Spirit flees the classroom as soon as the hour is over. Get out of there and pick up your kids from Primary! Their teacher is tired.

Tell Exponent: How Did Your Local Leaders Respond to the First Presidency Message?

Screenshot via Newsroom

It was the press release heard around the (LDS online) world.

Last week, on Thursday, August 12, 2021, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a message urging members to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and to wear masks in public meetings when social distancing is not possible.

In the following days, many members of the Church heard reactions and instructions from their local leaders. The responses varied widely and in sometimes unexpected ways. We would like to gather a snapshot of the ways that wards and stakes have initially responded to the First Presidency message.

What instruction did you receive from ward or stake leaders? If you attended Sunday meetings in person or via zoom, what was modelled for you from your local leaders? Did you hear exclusively from male leaders, or did female leaders offer instruction on the topic? How, if at all, is the new instruction different than guidelines your ward or stake had most recently been following? How have you seen members in your local congregation respond to the First Presidency message? How have you felt about the message or local response?

Please leave a comment below, along with your name, initials, or a pseudonym, and where you are located (state/region or country if outside the US). A selection of the comments will be shared in a follow-up post. If you would prefer, you can email your comment to KatieOnTheBlog at gmail dot com.

God sent you a life raft

Photo by Rémi Boyer on Unsplash

I don’t remember if it is a parable or an old satirical cartoon, but there is the story of a drowning man caught in the waves as they crest above him. He cries out to his God begging for a rescue. Right before he goes under a boat appears and the people onboard throw him a life raft. The man scoffs as his rescuers and says he is waiting for God to rescue him. This foolish man fails to see that it was God who sent the boat with the life raft.

On Good Friday 2020 President Russell M. Nelson invited people of all faiths to join with Latter-day Saints in a day of prayer to end the pandemic and heal humanity from this wretched, horrific disease. I remember so many declarations and statements from LDS faithful that it couldn’t be a coincidence that in this time of a worldwide epidemic that the prophet was a doctor – a heart surgeon no less. Many felt that President Nelson had been saved by an all knowing Heavenly Father for such a time as this.

Because of the groundwork that was laid for two decades by infectious disease scientists and doctors, we had a vaccine in record time. In less than a year. I was lucky to be one of the very first to be vaccinated because I’m a mental health worker. I even wrote about the guilt I felt in getting the vaccine before most everyone else. I was assured that in no time we would all be vaccinated and I had no reason for my guilt. I had no idea that the very people who prayed to God for absolution from this pestilence would reject the life raft God sent them.

God sent us a life raft, folks. Grab on.

***I realize there are immune comprised people who have been advised by their doctors (real doctors, not YouTube doctors) not to get the vaccine. It’s up to those of us who can get the vaccine to do so to help protect them. It’s what Jesus would do***

Guest Post: Quick To Observe

Guest Post by Moss. Moss is a mom who lives in the desert and loves cooking, memes, reading, and faith.

Sister Bednar and I are acquainted with a returned missionary who had dated a special young man for a period of time. She cared for him very much, and she was desirous of making her relationship with him more serious. She was considering and hoping for engagement and marriage. This relationship was developing during the time that President Nelson counseled the all members of the Church to get vaccinated for Covid-19 and wear masks when social distancing isn’t possible.

The young woman waited patiently over a period of time for the young man to get vaccinated or wear a mask but he did not. Instead of listening to our Prophet, he listened to anti-science strangers on YouTube. This was a valuable piece of information for this young woman, and she felt unsettled about his nonresponsiveness to a prophet’s pleading, to say nothing of the pleading of the medical community. For this and other reasons, she ultimately stopped dating the young man, because she was looking for an eternal companion who had the courage to promptly and quietly obey the counsel of the prophet in all things and at all times, and one who was willing to put the safety of others above his own comfort. The young woman was quick to observe that the young man was not quick to observe.

I presume that some of you might have difficulty with my last example. You may believe the young woman was too judgmental or that basing an eternally important decision, even in part, upon such a supposedly minor issue as how someone responds to a major community health crisis is silly or fanatical. Perhaps you are bothered because the example focuses upon a young man who failed to respond to prophetic counsel instead of upon a young woman. I simply invite you to consider and ponder the power of being quick to observe and what was actually observed in the case I just described. The issue was not earrings!

This guest post is a play on Bednar’s 2005 BYU Devotional address, Quick To Observe.

Follow the Prophet–Don’t Go Astray! (Unless He Says to Wear a Mask)

There is an old Mormon joke that says something like, Catholic doctrine is that the pope is infallible, but none of them actually believes it; Mormon doctrine is that the prophet is fallible, but none of them actually believes it.

When I’ve suggested over the years that prophets might have gotten some things wrong, or that the church as an organization still has a lot of evolving to do and improvements to make, I’ve been accused of steadying the ark, speaking ill of the Lord’s anointed, heresy, and lack of faith. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been asked, “If you don’t like the Church, or if you think there are so many problems with it, why don’t you just leave?” or told, “Once the prophet speaks, if you’re truly faithful, the decision has been made.”

I have been watching with part amusement, part horror over the past year at the way that many of these same people, the ones who treated me with disdain and deep suspicion for saying I thought the policy that forbade the baptism/blessing of gay people’s children was flat-out wrong, for example, or that it would sure be nice if the Brethren actively worked to seek inspiration for how to better include women in Church systems and policies, have reacted to the Prophet’s counsel–nay, urging–to wear masks and be vaccinated. 

President Nelson receives the COVID-19 vaccine while wearing a mask

In response to the first presidency statement release last week, a man who is an acquaintance of mine posted on Facebook a quote from “the very same prophet that issued this letter”:

“I am optimistic about the future. It will be filled with opportunities for each of us to progress, contribute, and take the gospel to every corner of the earth. But I am also not naïve about the days ahead. We live in a world that is complex and increasingly contentious. The constant availability of social media and a 24-hour news cycle bombard us with relentless messages. If we are to have any hope of sifting through the myriad of voices and the philosophies of men that attack truth, we must learn to receive revelation.”

Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives, Russell M. Nelson, 2018

The man then encouraged everyone to “pray and seek their own revelation on this matter,” implying that the prophet was wrong about masks and the vaccine and that God would confirm as much if people took the time to ask.

I completely agree with him that we shouldn’t blindly accept what we’re told by church authority figures, that we should all do research and seek our own revelation, and that our conclusions may be different than what the Church advocates. Hearing viewpoints like these from extremely orthodox members is refreshing to me, even despite the concerning public health implications. If these black-and-white, “either all of it’s true or none of it is” thinkers can identify nuance in their beliefs or sit with their cognitive dissonance when the prophet says something they don’t agree with, perhaps in the future they will be able to better empathize with those who voice disagreement with the Church’s position on an issue or advocate for change in the church. 

After all, if prophets can be wrong about wearing masks, how much of a stretch is it to consider that they’ve been wrong about some other things, too?

Relief Society Speakers Compared to Other Women’s Organization Speakers – Visuals That Will Blow Your Mind

I officially belong to two female organizations – the Relief Society (for over two decades), and Girl Scouts of America (where I have been a leader for 7 years). Neither organization is perfect, but both have brought great experiences and friendships into my life.

A couple months ago, I received a package with m’n’ms, microwave popcorn, and a drink mix along with this announcement for a stake relief society event:

It’s a cute flyer for an online broadcast to watch at home during covid, and the movie snacks to eat while watching it are a really nice touch. It’s honestly a great idea.

A week or so before that, I also received this postcard in the mail from Girl Scouts of America:

It didn’t come with snacks (unfortunately), but it is also an online event for girls and adults to listen to a message from one of the most influential women in America today.

The big difference I noticed between these two online events for their female-only organization members was this: the relief society event invited a male speaker and put a quote from a male leader on the invitation, while the Girl Scout organization invited a female leader and put a picture of her and another girl on the invitation.

I honestly can’t imagine a stake priesthood meeting where their invited guest is a local stay at home mom who is great at public speaking. Likewise, I can’t fathom Girl Scouts of America inviting a successful male leader to address their members. There’s certainly nothing wrong with hearing from successful male leaders in general, however the purpose of a female organization is to learn from and engage with successful female leaders, especially because those have traditionally been lacking in representation while male leaders (as an example, every single president of the United States ever) are everywhere to be found.

Wouldn’t it have seemed strange if Girl Scouts had invited Barack Obama to talk to the girls instead of Michelle? So why doesn’t it seem strange to everyone that my relief society broadcast invited a local male speaker (despite an abundance of qualified female speakers to choose from instead)? He’s not a church authority – he’s literally just a regular guy who writes religious books and hosts a podcast. There happen to be lots of women who write popular LDS books and host podcasts, too.

I also belong to women’s hiking groups, and I follow a local museum that has been hosting online presentations from female leaders in science and technology this past year. Because these groups are specifically targeting the experiences of women and girls, I’ve noticed they seek out and invite only guest speakers from that half of the population.

I looked up different national and international women’s organizations on the internet. Most of them have had only online events this past year, so it was easy to see who they choose to invite as guest speakers. Almost without exception, the speakers are female. If a man does sit on a panel, he’s always the minority (for example, five women and one man) and they are never, ever the keynote speaker.

Here are images from prevalent women’s organizations. Whether you agree philosophically with them or not isn’t important. The important thing to notice is who they invite to address their memberhip.

Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA): National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference speakers: National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO): Girl Scouts of America: Natural History Museum (Salt Lake City, UT), Women in Science Conference:

Now let’s shift to our church. The images I found changed dramatically from what I found elsewhere.

BYU Women’s Conference Speakers**To be clear, there were plenty of female speakers at this conference as well, but there were also so, so many men – including the keynote speaker (Elder Rasband). They took a very big chunk of time – more by a landslide than any other women’s conference I could find. There’s certainly nothing wrong with hearing from these men – it just feels so oddly out of place to see so many of them at a conference for women. Here are some local Relief Society Conference posters off of Pinterest: And finally, our General Conference Speakers:

If we intend to keep calling ourselves a women’s organization, can we start acting more like one? Because oh, man (not woman!)… it feels so strange.

PS. I think it looks even more strange to outsiders as they hear us referring to ourselves as the “largest women’s organization in the world”.

PPS. I looked up numbers for the other organizations I posted images from above, and we aren’t the largest by a long shot. For example, the YWCA has 25 million members internationally, more members than we even have in our entire church.)

Reframing God: Old God and New God

Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, painted circa 1508-12, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Vatican City, Rome.

I gave this talk on Sunstone Sunday (Aug 1, 2021) at Salt Lake City Community of Christ’s worship service on Zoom. I don’t imagine that this is a story that resonates with everyone, but if you feel that are losing your faith because God no longer seems good, this one might be for you.

I want to talk this morning about reframing God and the best way that I can do that is by telling you the story of how I reframed God and am continuing to reframe God. For some time, I was sure that God was good and that my church or church culture were the problem. As time went on and I left the LDS Church, I realized that it was hard to build a new faith around the God that I had come to know. I saw that more and more of the spiritual problems that I was working through stemmed from my image of God.   

My first big breakthrough in spiritual direction in the last few years was naming that I had an Old God and a New God. The Old God was the God I had encountered at church. He was an authoritarian father who ruled the world from a distant heaven. Old God demanded perfection and seemed to resent having to forgive people of their sins. Old God was kinda cranky and didn’t understand LGBT folks or affirm the dignity and humanity of women. Old God used to exclude people of color from the best parts of heaven, but then he changed his mind in the late 1970s. Old God was fickle and taciturn, a tough-love kind of guy who embraced a withholding and begrudging kind of love. Old God’s love was available to me, but was always conditioned on my obedience and if I asked Old God if my sacrifices were enough, the answer was always no. 

At the same time, I felt that periodically in my childhood I encountered a God whose love was more abundant and more freely given. This God comforted me in private moments of sadness and despair. Whenever this God showed up, God invited me into ways of moving through the world with more patience and generosity. Later, God opened up questions that stayed with me, like what is my responsibility to my enemy? Or why am I feeling the Spirit in my Hebrew school class? Or why is goodness complicated? This God knew me and knew my family and our challenges and our sins. This God always seemed to respond with love – the kind that always felt loving.

It was hard to reconcile these competing understandings of God. My church leaders insisted on the authoritarian image and talked about other models of God as being too permissive. It seemed like those leaders had the authority to name divine realities in ways that I could never possess as a woman, or at least that is what they taught. At the time, I’m not sure I was even aware of this conflict in my mind. In that subtle battle between Old God and this other God, Old God won with the backing of church authority. 

The work of deconstructing my faith, though, eventually brought struggles with Old God to the surface. I didn’t like many things about him, and I resented him, but to lose Old God entirely also wasn’t something I was ready for. And while atheism did not scare me in the way that it scares many people of faith, I came to realize that I still wanted God, I just didn’t want this Old God. I was starting to realize that when other people in many traditions talked about God, they were not all describing God in the same way. For my own mental health and wellbeing, this God had to go. But my desire for a good God remained. The problem was that I did not know how to get to a place of believing in a better God. That was not a conversation I had seen or participated in before. 

And so I was left with a God problem I did not know how to fix. I wanted God, just not the one I had. I was sure that there were some better models of God out there, but I did not know how to find them on my own. When I explained this problem to my pastor, she suggested a book – Robert Mesle’s Process Theology: An Introduction – that might give me some ideas on how to think about God differently. Within Process theology, God was not an embodied man, but more like a force for good in the world, who sought connection with people and to create loving connection between people. In chapter 1 of his book, Mesle wrote

In Process theology, God is constantly, in every moment and in every place, doing everything within God’s power to bring about the good. Divine power, however, is persuasive rather than coercive. God cannot… force people or the world to obey God’s will. Instead, God works by sharing with us a vision of the better way, of the good and the beautiful. God’s power lies in patience and love, not in force.

I liked this new-to-me idea of God that Mesle presented through Process theology. I recognized that my former faith community would likely view this God as a wishy-washy God whose very being would crumble in the face of a tougher, more masculine Old God. The very last shreds of Old God that I was still holding onto also did not like this new image of God. But I was starting to realize that I had fought this quiet battle before, and that I needed to come to a different conclusion if I wanted to keep believing in God. 

In Mormonism, I had come to rely on the presence of good feelings to confirm truth. My faith transition caused me to let go of that, but I wanted to feel connected to this new-to-me image of God that I encountered in Mesle’s book. But how do you grow feelings for a new God in your life? Do you date for a while and talk late into the night, sharing intimacies? I couldn’t find a book that spoke to that process. 

Eventually, I remembered that in my earlier years, I had encountered a more comforting and compassionate God. I named this God New God, as I was discovering this God for the first time after a long time. This God consistently shows up in my life as loving connection, helping me to connect and integrate the different parts of myself and moving me to make meaningful connections with others. I reflected on past memories of New God and connected with New God when I meditated, listened to the stories of others, and in dancing with my kids. I realized that this God had been with me through my whole life in the shadow of Old God. In these reflections and in new encounters with New God, I started to feel New God in my life and I realized that I liked the way that New God felt, always showing up with abundant kindness and compassion.

For a while, I was worried that I would pick up new ideas about New God that would come back to hurt me again, but scripture offers ways for us to test ideas about God’s love against a kind of love that is lasting. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 13:4-8 reads 

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Paul isn’t my favorite biblical author, but this description of love, of what good love, God’s love, looks like, is a helpful litmus test for my ideas about God. I can see that Old God’s love was envious and arrogant, always demanding. Old God’s conditional love was always threatening to end, instead of enduring. Old God caused a fracturing of my inner self that always felt inadequate and broken. Appeals to Old God to help heal these wounds never resulted in healing, but in a persistence of woundedness.

For me, New God, or really just God these days, loves the people I love and the people I struggle to love. God is continually inviting me into ways of seeing the world that honor the worth of all persons. In feeling that I am loved by God without conditions, I understand what a blessing it is to walk through the world accompanied by this love. It is healing. Instead of creating permissiveness, this solid foundation of love in my life calls me to mirror that love back to others, though I do not always live up to that standard. Regardless of my mistakes or my goodness, God’s patient love is enduring and always feels like kindness.

Pray with me.

God of abundant love,
God of a love that is loving,
Help us to heal the wounds in our lives 
That have been caused by 
Cruelty named as love
Judgment named as kindness
And conditions named as steadfastness.
Guide us to find 
Foundations of divine love
In our lives 
That can serve as a 
Bedrock of healing
For ourselves.
Call us into this healing
And stay with us as we do this hard work.
In the name of Jesus, the peaceful one,
Amen.

Weaponizing The Word Strong: A Black LDS Woman’s Guide to Vulnerability

As a young child, there was nobody better than I was at being open. I seemed to have been born with the ability to healthily regulate my emotions. I was courageous and took charge. I took part in every activity that my small Methodist church had to offer. I believed I could defeat the trials that came my way or swim the deepest seas of uncertainty. To everyone around me, I seemed to be the perfect example of what a young Christian woman should be.

 With age, that courage evaporated quickly. It’s funny years later that the habits from my childhood seem to be the ones I struggle most with as an adult. My teen years brought insecurities, harsh self-criticism, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Gone with the girl who seemed to have it all under control.

Soon after my baptism almost five years ago, I was reintroduced to the “S-Word”. Before I’d identified it with superheroes and mythical gods who harnessed infinite power. Back then, as a twenty-four-year-old convert, the word strong super-glued itself onto my entire existence as a saint of color, refusing to budge in the eyes of others who saw me as some tokenized superhero who seemed able to fix all the world’s problems without the ability to break down and have bad days just like everyone else.

Time and time again, I have been on the receiving end of the “s-word”. At first, it came from the missionaries who with their glowing testimonies believed in rainbows and butterflies instead of rain clouds, tropical storms, and hurricanes. Then it came from well-intended members who believed that to be a saint of color meant that I had to wear a mask to hide any sign of vulnerability. Then it came from leaders who despite their good intentions placed high expectations on shoulders that were already weary and bruised.

Now, this isn’t a blame game. However, in a gospel where passivity is rewarded as the sign of a perfect member, strength for black women in the church places a mirage of superpower for women who just seek to be normal. Instead, they are placed on pedestals they’re not quite able to stand on during their lifetime. Despite its definition in any dictionary, the s-word isn’t a friend for women of color in the church. It’s not a loving companion or a confidant who listens to our deepest fears and inadequacies. Instead, the s-word is violent. It’s problematic. It forces us to be something that we’re not sure we can be and binds us into a contract with people’s expectations of the person that they assume we should be.

No good ever came from the s-word. Over time, it’s been twisted and altered, placed like a blanket of fire on the women of color who would much prefer an umbrella during a rainstorm. Each day, as the word is thrown upon us, it’s the noose around our necks, with an ever-tightening hold that tells us that if we aren’t “copy and paste” definitions of the s-word, that the world sees us differently.

As I deal with health challenges and the crippling depression and anxiety that throw “raves of inconvenience” in my life, the s-word even with well-intentioned utterance stings like hell. It tells me that people assume but do not know and believe without delving beyond the surface level.

Because of this, I’ve found it so much easier to gloss over everything and ignore the raging inferno which threatens to become a disaster at a later date. Glossing has NEVER or WILL NEVER be healthy. It forces you to don the mask. It forces you to play a game of make-believe that the world is perfect, even when your emotions are far from it. The need to constantly project strength and security means that some forget their own emotions. Over the years, I’ve lived in this space afraid of the fallout my words may cause.

While society paints women of color as strong, resilient, and even fearless, it also gives us frightening case studies where persons of color faced horrible experimentations as they were thought to be able to endure more pain, more anguish, and torment than their white counterparts.

Even in a gospel of togetherness, speaking openly about pain is seen as weakness. My words have no merit as I am expected to be fine.

I am expected to endure.

I am expected to overcome.

As a woman of colour…even as a woman of colour in the church, my strength is weaponized to bind me to that tokenized ideal that I am not allowed to feel, and that feeling is not of the Spirit. Years later, I recognize that this toxic positivity is the albatross on my neck which I wish to remove by surrendering myself to my emotions even if they are complex and messy.

I am allowed to feel. It doesn’t make me less of a member to be less than strong.

I recognize that in the gospel and even in life, I need support and love and time to fall apart, just like the average member. While I don’t plan to stay in a place of brokenness, being strong defeats my growth. It defeats my ability to make peace with my brokenness and be reborn again.

Maybe the best advice I could give in a gospel of glossing is to recognize that strong isn’t my definition as a saint of color. It doesn’t define me as a woman. And maybe it’s okay to admit that strength isn’t my defining characteristic in a gospel where everything is assumed to be okay until it isn’t.

It’s okay to use other “ s-words” too (especially when referring to saints of color). So, without further ado allow me to use more.

Hi. My name is Ramona. Strong is not my definition.

I’m not settling

I’m struggling but I’m on the path to surviving.

The Mark of the Devil

This is a story. It’s a true story. It’s a story that happened to me. And, I’m sorry to say, in this story, I am the antagonist.

It began innocently enough. I had arrived on time for ward council. Early, in fact, because my bishop used to say that 5 minutes early is 10 minutes late, and I tried very hard to be as obedient as I possibly could be. So, leaving my children and their hair in the care of my husband, I dressed in garment-appropriate clothing. Or so I thought. “Ask yourself, “Would I feel comfortable with my appearance if I were in the Lord’s presence?”” Leaving my house, I would have said ‘yes.’ But you see, I had deceived myself.

I had chosen to wear black patterned tights to church.

You’re probably wondering if I missed every lesson about modesty in Young Women and Relief Society. You might be thinking about quoting For the Strength of Youth, “Show respect for the Lord and yourself by dressing appropriately for Church meetings and activities. This is especially important when attending sacrament services.”

I thought I was safe. After all, my skirt went below my knees, without even a slit in the side to allow a male-gaze-magnet peek-a-boo of my upper leg. My shoes were black heels, but low ones. And I had seen an older woman with the same tights on. In fact, I had seen her wear them for several months before I cornered her in the foyer beneath the picture of outstretched-hands Jesus to ask where she bought them. Temptation comes in all forms, and this sister, who should have been a mentor and guide for my inexperienced 40-year-old self, not only told me where she bought them, but she told me she was excited for us to be twinners.

If only.

I first became aware of my Jezebel status when I entered ward council at 7:00 AM, black patterned tights and all. One worthy priesthood holder leaned over another worthy priesthood holder to say, “I wish my wife would wear tights like that. They make your legs look so attractive.”

I knew the fault lay with me and my ill-conceived choice in clothing when not a single Righteous Temple-recommend holding Priesthood Leader, told the aforementioned Brother in Christ that he was out of line. None of them stepped in to say that his comment was inappropriate, or that his gaze on my legs unwelcome. The discomfiture was palpable, and it was clearly my fault. “When you are well groomed and modestly dressed, you invite the companionship of the Spirit and you can be a good influence on others. Your dress and grooming influence the way you and others act.” 

After ward council, a man I dearly loved and who had been a friend to me for many years, took me aside and, in private and with much generosity, shared his own story. I don’t think he would mind if I were to reshare it here so that others may learn from our mistakes. You see, he had worn a tie once with bright stripes. His Bishop explained to him that if his tie evoked comments, it was a distraction from the spirit. “You also send the message that you are using your body to get attention and approval.” The Spirit, it seems, is a fickle companion. I had attention, yes. Approval, of a sort. Neither of those things had been the intended effect, but they were, nevertheless, the cross I bore for my excitement over novelty tights.

I rebelliously wore those tights straight to the mother’s lounge tucked modestly in a corner of the women’s bathroom and removed them. I then had another problem. Naked legs. I had a bishop who used to say that life swings on small hinges. I just didn’t know patterned tights were hinges on the saloon doors to hell.

Sisters. I never intended to be a distraction from the purpose of meeting with my fellow saints. I thought, mistakenly, that sexy thoughts only happen when shoulders, bellies, and knees are reveled to Mormon men. I didn’t understand that sexy thoughts also happen with black roses on a woman’s calf.

I thought, mistakenly, that my husband and four children were enough of a shield that any sexy thoughts by not-my-husband men would be quickly repented of, if they accidentally happened at all. I didn’t realize that men have so little control over their thoughts that no amount of friendship with another man will prevent them from thinking sexy things if they see an ankle with a black leaf on it.

I didn’t understand that men are so fragile, so easily led to immoral thoughts, that a glimpse of patterned tights would disrupt so many temple-sealed marriages.

Let this be a lesson to all other sisters lest you fall into the trap and the great confidence that has been placed in you be withdrawn. Your body, made in the image of God, is a stumbling block on the road to exaltation, especially when you slip your legs into patterned tights early on a Sunday morning.