Exponent II's Blog, page 136

It’s the Message, Not the Messenger, That Matters. Or Is It?

I had a conversation recently with an elderly woman who is a dear friend of mine. We were talking about General Conference, and I asked her how she felt about the Church discontinuing the Saturday night session of Conference (which was, most recently, the Priesthood session or the Women’s session). My friend loves General Conference, probably even more than she loves Christmas, so I expected her to be a little bummed that she’d now get less of it. 

But she wasn’t. She said she’d been upset when the Church had moved the women’s meeting to the Saturday night slot (instead of the weekend before Conference) because it felt like Church leaders were “catering to the women who complain” about gender disparity in the Church. “They’re trying to make everything equal to please these insecure women,” she said. “That’s just stupid.”

I said I actually preferred having the Women’s Meeting on its own weekend because once it was moved to replace one of the Priesthood sessions, most of the time was taken up by the three male speakers from the First Presidency, and it felt like there was less time to hear from our female leaders. 

“Well I don’t care about that,” she said. “I don’t care who says it. I just like the words they say.”

I’ve heard this exact argument many times before, usually when I make a comment that I wish we had more than two female speakers during the general sessions of Conference. “The messenger is irrelevant; it’s the message that matters,” I’ve been lectured. But if it doesn’t matter who says the words, and only the words themselves matter, then why does it matter if a woman says them?

Because that’s the flaw in this argument: it only goes one way. “I care about the message, not the messenger” seems to only apply when the messenger is a man. 

Last Sunday, I looked up at the people sitting on the stand during the sacrament. There were ten males and one female (the chorister). Ten deacons, all male, trooped silently in formation up and down the aisles. All of the five people who spoke at the pulpit during the meeting were male. And the occurrence was so normal, I doubted anyone else even noticed. 

What if it had been ten women and one man who sat on the stand? What if it had been girls walking the aisles during the service? What if the five people who’d stood at the pulpit that day had been female? 

All of the people on the stand, including the men who spoke, were white. What if, instead, they were all people of color?

Or, going back to my friend, what if there were only two men who spoke next General Conference, and the rest of the talks were given by women? What if only two talks were given by white people, and the rest of the speakers were Black?

I don’t pretend to know what the collective response to such a large switch would be, but I’m guessing that at least for my friend, and likely for many others, it would not be “I don’t care who says it. I just like the words they say.” 

Because, by and large, “the message matters and the messenger doesn’t” isn’t a call for more diversity; it’s just an excuse for having overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white messengers.

Netflix Debuts Documentary By Female Filmmaker Who Loves Mormon Feminism!

First Netflix Feature Film By Female Feminist Filmmaker Mom (I made that up as a tongue twister!).

In 2015 I met Kristine Stolakis as she was finishing up her master’s degree in filmmaking at Stanford. She’d chosen to make her culminating film project about Mormon feminism and Ordain Women, and I had the great honor of working with her for several months. Her short film went on to be nominated for a BAFTA (British Oscar), and she’s been breaking barriers as a female director ever since. (Only about one in ten directors in Hollywood are female – and having straight, white men tell all of our stories and create all of our entertainment is something hugely problematic that we don’t spend nearly enough time worrying about.)

While Kristine had no direct connection to the LDS Church initially, her fiance (now husband and father of their cute new baby) grew up in Salt Lake City and introduced her to Mormonism. She was very interested in telling the stories of Latter-day Saint women, and was also interested in telling the stories of LGBTQ members in not only our church but all orthodox religions. I remember she was hoping to work on a future film about a transgender Latter-day Day Saint, and I hope she still ends up making that film someday.

On August 3rd her latest documentary (and first feature film) about gay conversion therapy hits Netflix! This is such a big deal, both for women in documentary filmmaking, as well as the dark and painful topic that she covers so masterfully. Kristine is an amazing story teller, and I hope she continues to tell stories about women and LGBTQ+ individuals in our church and other religions. Storytelling like this (through the perspective of a smart, feminist, religiously raised woman herself) is so rare and so special! We are lucky to have such a fantastic human going so many places that is also so interested in our church and telling our stories. She’s going to help change the world.

Click here to watch her BAFTA nominated film about Mormon feminism and Ordain Women: https://vimeo.com/205996837

Click here to watch the heartbreaking trailer for her incredibly important new documentary coming to Netflix on August 3, 2021: https://youtu.be/tk_CqGVfxEs

Please make it a point to watch her new film and share it with others, and if you are a (current or former) Latter-day Saint who is also a survivor of conversion therapy and would be willing to share your story, please reach out to Kristine and her team through the contact link on their website www.prayawayfilm.com.  In the days and weeks leading up to the Netflix release they are sharing these stories and would like to include additional Latter-day Saint voices and perspectives. Her team includes survivors of reparative therapy, and they are very sensitive and compassionate. I highly recommend reaching out to them with your stories if you feel inclined to do so. 

This is Kristine! The upper left hand picture is her when she was showing her student film a few years ago, below that is a good capture of the friendly and down to earth Kristine that is so lovable, and on the right is a recent and beautiful photograph of Kristine the new mom/Netflix director. I am excited to follow her career and know she will do amazing things for women, LGBTQ people, and minority groups with stories that need to be heard.

Come Follow Me: Doctrine and Covenants 81-83: “Where Much Is Given Much Is Required”

Set the spirit for this lesson by listening to this musical medley:

Because I Have Been Given Much Medley performed by American Heritage Youth Chorus

The Law of Consecration: Then and Now

When Joseph Smith visited Latter-day Saints who had gathered in Independence, Missouri in April 1832, he received this revelation about caring for vulnerable people like them through the law of consecration, which reiterated a similar revelation about the law of consecration received in Kirtland in February 1831.

The Utopian experiments of Latter-day Saints in these communities eventually failed, as did many similar experiments among other faith communities and groups of the time. However, the principles of consecration still apply.
—Lesson 14: The Law of Consecration, Doctrine and Covenants and Church History: Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual, 1999

Behold, here is wisdom also in me for your good.

And you are to be equal, or in other words, you are to have equal claims on the properties, for the benefit of managing the concerns of your stewardships, every man according to his wants and his needs, inasmuch as his wants are just—

And all this for the benefit of the church of the living God, that every man may improve upon his talent, that every man may gain other talents, yea, even an hundred fold, to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church—

Every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God.
D&C 82:16-19

What principles described in these verses still apply?How do we exercise these principles today?“You are to be equal”

Joseph Smith encountered  Phebe Peck and Anna Rogers, widows with children, during his visit to Missouri. In Missouri in the 1830s, state laws gave widows limited rights to their deceased husbands’ property.
—Doctrine and Covenants for Individuals and Families 81–83: Where “Much Is Given Much Is Required”

And the storehouse shall be kept by the consecrations of the church; and widows and orphans shall be provided for, as also the poor. Amen.
D&C 83:6

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
James 1:27

How can we protect the vulnerable among us?Who is still vulnerable and/or unequal among us today?How can we work toward equality for all?

Amy Brown Lyman, former General Relief Society President and founder of LDS Family Services, taught:

No work could be more important and satisfying than that of helping to raise human life to its highest level …[by providing] relief of existing distress [and] prevention of new distress.
—In Retrospect: Autobiography of Amy Brown Lyman,1945

What does it mean to raise a human life to its highest level?What are some ways we can relieve existing distress?  Prevent new distress?“Every man [or woman] according to his [or her] wants and his needs”

In addition to more practical items, Bishop’s Storehouses offer items like hot chocolate and ice cream.

Why do you think that is?Why should we provide for “wants” of those in need, as well as “needs”?“Every man [or woman] may improve upon his [or her] talent”

The Lord has established a way for his Saints to care for the poor and needy and thereby bring blessings into their own lives. Providing for the poor and needy in the Lord’s way means that the giver helps those who are less fortunate by giving according to what he has received from God. He gives freely and with a true spirit of love, recognizing that his Heavenly Father is the source of all his blessings and that he is responsible to use those blessings in the service of others. The receiver accepts the offered help with gratitude. He uses it to release himself from the bondage and limitations of his need and become more able to rise to his full potential, both temporally and spiritually. He then reaches out to help others. Providing in the Lord’s way humbles the rich, exalts the poor, and sanctifies both.
—Providing in the Lord’s Way: A Leader’s Guide to Welfare

How can welfare build character and sanctify both givers and receivers?How do receivers become givers in the welfare cycle?

The Lord’s storehouse includes the time, talents, skills, compassion, consecrated material, and financial means of faithful Church members.
—Thomas S. Monson, Guiding Principles of Personal and Family Welfare, 1986

How can we can we use non-financial resources such as time, talents, skills and compassion to bless others?What does it mean to use our talents “with an eye single to the glory of God”?How can living the principles of consecration help us improve upon our  talents and gain other talents?“Every man [or woman] seeking the interest of his [or her] neighbor”

Sorrow by Egon Schiele, courtesy of the MET

Wherefore, be faithful; stand in the office which I have appointed unto you; succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.
-D&C 81:5

What are some ways a person can be “weak”? What does it mean to “succor” those who are weak?What might cause a person’s hands to figuratively “hang down”? How can we “lift up” those hands?What might the phrase “feeble knees” mean? How can we “strengthen” those with feeble knees?Does anyone have a personal experience when you felt “weak” in some way and someone lifted or strengthened you?

Watch one or both of these two videos about service.

Works of God

Pass It On

How can we be instruments in the hands of God?How can we recognize the needs of others?How can we reach out to others in need?

Let Youth Lead: 7 Ways to Build Strong Church Youth Programs

Let youth lead.

This is perhaps the most difficult recommendation for anyone working with youth. It’s a simple statement, but what does it really mean?

Stand aside and put them in charge?Teach them leadership skills?Teach them to organize and plan?Have them help organize and plan?Let them fail?Give up control?Work as partners?Make them assistant leaders?

In a church setting, this often becomes even more convoluted. Adults are, after all, called as youth leaders in the LDS Church and the Bishop is the president over the young men. Are adults teachers, leaders, mentors, guides, or coaches? Yes to all of the above.

For some adult leaders, letting go of control and perfection is natural; it’s more challenging for others. I’ve worked with adults who felt comfortable letting youth struggle with forgotten supplies or underdeveloped game ideas. I’ve also worked with adults who were so focused on creating the perfect activity and having everything go right, they only allowed youth minor assistant roles.

Both types of adult leaders want the same things:

We want to plan successful activitiesWe want youth to have funWe want youth to learn somethingWe want youth to returnWe want to be successful leadersWe want youth to have spiritual experiences

So, how do we find the balance as adult leaders, encouraging growing leadership skills and meeting other important goals?

There isn’t one perfect solution, of course. Context matters here. We have to consider the age, experience, commitment, and family support of the youth involved. More than anything, we have to be flexible and compassionate.

My past work with youth leadership training my role as a teacher have helped me experience both success and challenges in letting youth lead. Here are a few tips I’ve learned (and I’m still learning) along the way:

Invite children and pre-teens to help in primary so that they have ownership over their experience. This might look like asking them to prepare a portion of a lesson, seeking their activity ideas, or offering consistent volunteer roles at Sunday services and activities.

2. Create group rules together. Scholastic explains the importance of this step, asserting, “Students are more likely to buy into the rules if they have a hand in creating them. Start with this list of adaptable ideas.” This should be short, specific, and easy to remember. I like this suggestion because it encourages community and youth buy-in.

“Students are more likely to buy into the rules if they have a hand in creating them. Start with this list of adaptable ideas.”

Scholastic

3. Create goals based on the unique needs of your youth. Sometimes, the main goal will not be planning the most exciting youth activity, but instead successfully planning and organizing an activity. This will require adult leaders to spend more time focusing on the process and building organizational skills. Once youth have mastered some of these skills, it’s easier to trust them to plan and lead more complex activities.

4. Provide leadership tools. Don’t assume youth know how to create an agenda, lead a meeting or class, or assign tasks. Perhaps the first meeting with a new presidency, the adult leader creates the agenda. Next meeting, they work with the youth president to complete the agenda. After that, the youth leader takes responsibility for the agenda. Maybe the next activity requires calling and asking someone to teach a skill? If the youth isn’t comfortable making the ask alone, offer to speak with the individual together in person or by telephone. Coach the youth on how to ask and what information to provide. In the future, that young person may have the tools and confidence to approach a potential teacher or speaker on their own.

5. Value learning over perfection. Allowing others to lead means delegating responsibility and allowing others to learn. Adult leaders should guide and coach youth, but not take over. It’s okay if youth activities and lessons aren’t Pinterest-worthy. It’s okay if unexpected hurdles come up and youth need to problem solve them. It’s even okay if some youth don’t follow through and the youth leaders have to figure out how to improvise without adult leaders coming to the rescue with “back-up” treats or supplies.

6. Invite youth to delegate to you. My comment about “back-up” treats doesn’t mean I don’t think adult leaders should help or contribute. Of course, they should. Maybe you help print out instructions for a craft or are tasked with buying the necessary supplies. Perhaps you make out-of-this-world brownies and you bring the treat one week.  Depending on your circumstances, budgets, the age of youth, etc., you may be the person primarily responsible for supplies. The difference here is inviting youth to plan what supplies are needed and organizing them, rather than just expecting you to show up with them.

7. Have fun and put community first. The goal of spiritual enrichment is always at the forefront of leader’s minds. But youth already spend their week at school, participating in extra-curricular activities, fulfilling home responsibilities, and seminary. Make room for socializing, laughter, and silliness, movement, and games. As I mentioned in 5 Ways Improve Primary – The Exponent (the-exponent.com), kids are looking for community, connection, and fun. Spiritual enrichment is intertwined with these.

As I read over this list, I can already anticipate the pushback. And, oh boy, is there legitimate pushback. I’ve been a church youth leader. Sometimes your primary goal is just to get youth to show up. Other times, you are stretched so thin, it’s everything you can do just to arrive on time to Wednesday activities with something to do. And, of course, youth, families, and wards all have different levels of commitment and interest in youth programming.

For me, this is where valuing process over everything else is a life-saver. Maybe your youth group isn’t anywhere near bringing supplies, fully planning an activity, or consistently showing up to meetings. While your ultimate dream goal may be to have activities fully planned, organized, and executed by youth, this is currently unrealistic. Smaller goals kept me going when I faced these hurdles in Young Women’s. They matter to youth too.

What I Learned when I Joined a Latter-day Saint Emotional Resilience Group

After a year of pandemic quarantines, I was feeling emotionally drained. So when my stake of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints (LDS) announced that they would be hosting emotional resilience groups, I decided to give it a try. Here’s what I learned.

Teachers aren’t necessary. Unlike a typical church class, no one was assigned to be the teacher.  Instead, group members would go through the curriculum together, which is available with accompanying videos at the church website and app, and complete activities by following the instructions in the manual. We did have “facilitators” whose primary job was to host our group of about 10 people at their home once a week for the duration of the 10-week course. The lack of a teacher-student hierarchy, combined with a manual that was heavy on group discussion prompts, contributed to a strong environment for open dialogue.

We try harder when someone is checking in with us. At the end of each session, we picked partners with whom we privately discussed goals for the upcoming week. Then we followed up with each other via text during the week to talk about our progress.  This follow-up made integrating the course into our lives much more likely than typical church lessons (which I often forget soon after leaving the classroom, but I’m sure ya’ll are better at pondering your church lessons than I am). 

We feel better about our lives when we put our gratitude into words. It works even if we’re just verbalizing our gratitude in a private journal—although actually saying thank you to someone is even better!

We have to take care of our bodies to have healthy emotions. Of course, I already knew that but I needed the reminder! Early in the group, I got back to tracking good habits like exercising and taking advantage of my standing desk so I’m not sitting all day. Which brings me to the next thing I learned…

There’s an app for that. Okay, that wasn’t in the manual, but because the course required me to make commitments, I looked for tools to remind me of my goals and help me follow through. I found some good ones. I like Grateful for gratitude journaling and Strides for goal tracking.  Grateful includes prompts to make me think of more than the typical list (“My health, my family, blah, blah, blah…”). Strides makes goal tracking easy; I can track daily habits by just verbally saying to my phone, “I exercised,” or “I used my standing desk,” without even opening the app itself. It was also  great for dividing long-term projects into smaller bits.

We have to overcome some aspects of our own culture to be emotionally healthy.  I was surprised and pleased to see that the course addressed some of the most common pitfalls to emotional health within Latter-day Saint culture. We discussed the problems with perfectionism and “all or nothing” thinking. We practiced saying things like “This must be really hard,” instead of bearing our testimonies at people  coping with adversity. A whole session was devoted to how to stop being so judgmental of others. (I would love to see more of that incorporated into our regular Sunday curricula as well.) There was even a segment that seemed to imply that bringing someone cookies was not always the best way to show empathy for them, but I am not entirely sold on that one.

It is important to distinguish between addictions and other behaviors. As recently emphasized by marriage and family therapist Natasha Helfer, the Emotional Resilience curriculum also discusses the dangers of incorrectly labeling people as addicts. (Unfortunately, the stake president who recently excommunicated Ms. Helfer for expressing this concern has clearly not received the memo.)

Honesty is related to addiction…somehow. The session on addiction begins with a discussion of honesty, but no explanation of why we were discussing honesty or how it relates to the topic of addiction. I talked to a friend who participated in a different emotional resilience group than my own and she noticed the same thing. Both her group and mine came up with a same ideas  about what the connection might be through group discussion: hiding your behaviors and lying about them is the common sign of addiction; when we lie to ourselves and justify our actions we are setting ourselves up for addiction. But were those the right answers? The curriculum didn’t say. Even without a teacher, the rest of the curriculum flowed very well and it was easy to understand the connections between different concepts but this was the one exception. As church curriculum developers continue to make updates, this might be an area to look at. 

People want to help. One of our activities was for the group to practice noticing the needs of others by actually choosing someone to help that week…and my friend’s group chose me! (I was having a minor crisis at the time because my husband was injured and I was on a tight deadline for a big yard project.) 

Pray over that list. I love my to-do list, but I had never thought of making it as a spiritual practice. The curriculum features an awesome woman identified only as “Sister Benkosi” who teaches us how to take list-making to the next level.

Video: The Gift of Time

 

 

Finding Mary

TW: birth experience

Did she scream? It bothers me, the way we see Mary after the birth, immaculate blue robe, beatific smile, her perky breast that never knew stretchmarks pointing toward heaven. Clean her up for the cameras, I guess. Brush her hair and wash her face so she can look like a Mother of God. It wasn’t her vanity, after all, but the vanity of patriarchs who never were in a birthing room but who painted this moment anyway, without asking if she screamed. I don’t have room in my life for sanitized Mary, the one who looks the way certain types of men want virgins and their mothers to look. I’m old enough now that I only have room for all the parts of life-bringing, the glorious, messy, terrifying experience of birth. I have no space for prudishness that is, after all, erasure. She’s been diminished and weaponized in so many ways. But right now, in this moment, I want to see her as she gives birth, the complete act of life-giving she would have experienced. I want to hold all the parts of that essential birth because what we see in so many paintings diminishes what she accomplished. It reduces her to a before and after photo that negates the miracle itself.

Give me back the laboring Mary their uninformed pigments hid. Give me Mary surrounded by family members who welcome the gore because, without it, there would be no birth at all. Give me companions unfazed by human urine and excrement because that, too, is part of childbirth. Give me strong hands and nimble fingers that apply oils and stretch the vaginal wall, which, if we believe what we’re told, hadn’t stretched for penetration. Let’s step into the fray, not cover it up. Let’s breathe with her through exquisite pain. Let’s draw in eternity with every fresh contraction and expel brittle air through our teeth as agony threatens to overwhelm her. Don’t take away her glory by magicking a baby into her arms; walk with her along the precipice of death.

I want the whole picture of that birth, the smell of endorphins and sweat. I want the capillaries-burst face with eyes rolling back because childbirth is the valley of the shadow of death out of which Mary brought forth a life that is Life. Let me see her exhausted arms pull on her legs as she pushes with another contraction. Even better, I want to see her companions lift her too-heavy legs as they count slowly with her, “One, two, three, four, five and….breathe.” Birth should be a communal event, where a chosen few inject the laborer with courage.

Give me a Mary with cleft hips spread wide wishing to God that this moment would pass. Give me a woman who screams in pain so primal the Matriarchs through generations scream with her. And let me have those Matriarchs with their worn and blessed hands endow Mary with all the power and authority of mitochondrial DNA, the life force that connects us all.

A god who can’t handle the tearing and screaming isn’t a god who has room for me. A god who requires a sanitized birth isn’t a god who can hold all of me while I labor or while I live. If God’s sense of decorum hides Mary until the birth-blood has stopped and she’s been ritually cleansed, how can that god possibly understand what it is to have your body tear itself open, pouring out the waters of life in literal form? My God, the one who doesn’t turn away, holds the entirety of life, including the messy parts. She doesn’t turn away from exquisite suffering; She steps into it. My God is big enough to hold all the blood-filled, agonizing parts of birth and life. My God is a whole-experience god, one who shouts and screams and sings along with me. My God knows the smell of birth, the viscosity of blood and amniotic fluid. My God has room for all of it, every single piece. My God is there, in those private, communal moments, wiping our hair from our face and rocking us as we face the unimaginable. She’s there, in the moments the artists didn’t paint, in the scenes that didn’t make the cut.

I want to reclaim the birth of the Messiah. The conception may have been immaculate; birth never was. Mary must have felt the pain that so many others have felt, the cleaving apart of pelvic bones and the rush of blood and tissue. Jesus didn’t suddenly appear in her arms–Mary clawed and gasped and fought to get him there. And I want to name this, the perfection of this experience, that she, with all her humanity, went through the valley of the shadow of death to set God upon his earthly throne. I will not have her erased. I would give her that glory, well deserved, as part of her divinity. 

 

Mary is a prop through which women view idealized Womanhood. But what was she really like?

I Wish Sonia Johnson Were Irrelevant

I recently read Sonia Johnson’s memoir From Housewife to Heretic: One Woman’s Struggle for Equal Rights and Her Excommunication from the Mormon Church. The book made me furious. Captain Marvel in flames mad.

Why? Because forty years after its publication, it is still so relevant. Tophat had a similar experience reading the book in 2019.

Sonia Johnson was a co-founder and president of Mormons for ERA, a national organization that took a stand against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ decision to enter the political fight against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. The Church joined the efforts of Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA campaign, and the right-wing coalition was successful in halting the ERA’s march towards ratification.

For Sonia’s efforts in leading Mormons for ERA and speaking out against the Church’s political meddling, she was excommunicated in December 1979. Her memoir, published in 1981, tells the story of her life leading up to her entry into the ERA fight and the near-simultaneous loss of her marriage and membership in the Church.

Sonia Johnson in 1980, Photo from Salt Lake Tribune

Her insights into the patriarchal structure of the Church are often biting, but I wish they were antiquated. I wish I could read her words and think how nice it is that women today don’t have to fight so hard for a voice in the Church. If only. Sonia describes her excommunication court(s) as a kangaroo court, and it is hard not to see the sad effort of her bishop to maintain authority and a pretense of love while repeatedly lying and manipulating the effort, often against policy guidelines, in order to force the outcome he desired. Or perhaps it was not his desire, but the outcome he was directed to achieve by men higher up in Church leadership.

Sonia had many poignant insights, but I want to highlight one idea she amplifies from feminist philosopher Mary Daly. There is a tendency in patriarchal institutions to uplift women with their words while using the structure of the organization to keep pushing them down. Daly calls this the “patriarchal reversal.” Men will praise women and their goodness and godliness while actively denying them institutional power.

As this rhetoric becomes more and more elevated on the one hand, on the other, in the real world where women actually experience their lives, the lid of oppression is descending at the same rate that the rhetoric is ascending. The language is a deliberate attempt to distract women from noticing what is really happening to them in their lives. It is a deliberate attempt to manipulate our perceptions so we will believe what it benefits men to have us believe.

Sonia Johnson, pg 110

We barely have to glance at transcripts of General Conference to find examples of patriarchal reversal—rhetoric that elevates women, particularly those who fit a very specific mold, while simultaneously denying them a voice or a position with institutional power. This elevated woman is often described as more spiritual, more innately good, more naturally nurturing than men, and it is woman’s very goodness that means she should be denied the “burdens” of leadership that are required to make men good. If men did not have this power and responsibility, how would they rise to the status of women? Despite the exclusion of women at every level in the Church, it would be hard to find a man saying that this is because men believe women to be less capable, competent, and significant. Rather, the rhetoric rises at the same time that the institutional lid pushes down.

If Sonia Johnson were irrelevant today, we wouldn’t see things like what happened at the October 2018 General Conference. In the Women’s Session, President Nelson told the women, “We need you! We need your strength, your conversion, your conviction, your ability to lead, your wisdom, and your voices. We simply cannot gather Israel without you!” Simultaneously, he instituted a new practice wherein three men, the full First Presidency, spoke at the Women’s Session instead of the usual practice of one male speaker. This ultimately decreased the overall speaking time of women in both the Women’s Session and General Conference as a whole. He could have passed the mic to a woman. Instead, he elevated his rhetoric about women at the same time he directed the decrease of time women spent at the pulpit. With the Saturday evening sessions now being eliminated, it is likely that women will get even less time at the pulpit overall.

I’d like the Mormons who insist that male supremacy isn’t a problem in our church to take a good look at the stand. It is filled with men. How many women speak at conference, though they make up over half the population of the church? We know who is valued by behavior, not words.

Sonia Johnson, pg 156

I, and many other Mormon feminists, make the same arguments now that Sonia was publishing in 1981. Yes, some things have changed in that time. But a male bishop can still hold a kangaroo court to excommunicate (or withdrawal the membership of) a woman without any women having a voice or a vote in the process. There is still no system to protect victims of ecclesiastical abuse in the Church. No semblance of equity on the major councils and quorums.

Forty years is a long window to turn elevated rhetoric into meaningful action. But that’s not the purpose of men speaking highly of women in patriarchal institutions. The point is the rhetoric. Words over action. Words over partnership. Yet it is not words that show us who is valued, it is action.

Closing the Distance

Maddison Colvin | maddisoncolvin.com | @maddisoncolvin

The following is the Summer 2021 Letter from the Editor by Editor In Chief Rachel Rueckert. If you would like to receive this issue, please subscribe by July 15, 2021.

In March of 2021, I received a message that my grandpa—who’d been mowing his own lawn the day before—had experienced a stroke. The doctors said he had a few weeks left to live. Because of pandemic safety concerns, I couldn’t visit him in the hospital and needed to wait several more weeks for my full vaccination. I only hoped that he could hold on that long. Like so many who had watched loved ones suffer and pass away during the year, I felt an overwhelming urge to hug him, to hold his hand. That urge only increased, knowing that I couldn’t.

As the old saying goes, we tend to appreciate what we have when confronted with its absence. For many of us, that has meant a period without physical and sometimes even emotional connection with others. In January 2021, The Guardian ran an article about the negative toll a year without hugs has had on our mental health, since “[t]ouch has a huge impact on our psychological and physical wellbeing” and helps us regulate stress and pain. In the words of Diane Ackerman, “Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight,” and in Doctrine and Covenants 88:15 we read that “the spirit and the body are the soul.” At a time when physical touch has been restricted and limited due to social distancing, what have we learned about the significance of touch as embodied souls?

This issue seeks to examine the literal and figurative meaning of touch through the lens of our rapidly changing present with fresh perspective from our recent experience. You will notice a visual, floral motif throughout this issue, starting with Maddison Colvin’s cover depicting two audacious yellow flowers mired in tar behind a glass screen. The natural elements throughout this issue underscore nature and the chance to re-see our environments up close. There are pieces that speak directly to life during COVID-19, such as Dayna Patterson’s poetic invocations and an interview with Debra Marie Reynoso, a nurse. Additional essays include Andi Pitcher’s “Beloved” about a Zoom funeral, Katy Ardan’s “Has Motherhood Been What You Expected?” on postpartum depression, Melissa Ricks’ “Silent on the Stage” about missing performance arts, and Orinda Darling’s “A Fish Story” which examines everything a pet comes to signify. There are also pieces that explore touch more literally, like Sidney Pritchett’s “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” as well as essays that veer more metaphorical, such as being touched by the kindness of strangers in Cybèle D’Ambrosio’s “The Belle of the French Quarter,” or by the haunt of the invisible ghosts we cannot touch in Judy Ou’s “A Tale of Ghostly Hauntings and Tiger Dreams.”

In the end, I did get to see my grandfather before he died. Thanks to the vaccine, I keenly felt a privilege that many others could not experience: the chance to visit him in hospice each day, hold his stricken, sun-spotted hand, and consider the words of poet Ada Limón in “The End of Poetry”: Enough of the osseous and chickadee and sunflower and snowshoes… enough of the longing and the ego and the obliteration of ego…enough of the air and its ease, I am asking you to touch me.

Regardless of where you find yourself reading this issue—whatever your new “normal”—we hope you will feel touched by these pieces. As the new incoming Editor in Chief, I am grateful for the legendary editors who preceded me and feel humbled by the task ahead. I’m excited for the adventure to come alongside my Managing Editors, Sam Layco and Carol Ann Litster Young. Thank you for trusting us with such an enormous responsibility. Thank you for reading and witnessing.

Comfort is NOT of the Spirit

Although Christians have been advised not to grumble and gnash their teeth during their earthly existence, if one keeps their ears close enough to the Mormon gossip they are ensured to hear chompers (teeth) across America on the cusp of being ground to smithereens. 

 Lately, most of the debate revolved around whether children should be subjected to critical race theory in their school curriculum. 

From my comfy warm Caribbean Island of Barbados, most of these conversations generally float over my head. In my four years of membership, I have been able to decipher which conversations warrant my attention or need to be discarded like the empty noise that some of them are. 

 As a rebellious member of the LDS blogger community, I knew that it was impossible to avoid this conversation. After dealing with several racist encounters both in person and online, I have recognized that being silent is simply a comfortable compliance with not being willing to be deemed difficult and rebellious. 

There is some form of PTSD that comes with being one of the few black women in the LDS blogger-space after facing more than one encounter with racism over the years. I recall how a former friend called me a monkey and made several accounts to harass me over the period of a week. I see clearly how my content is viewed and interpreted differently than my peers. When I shared my experiences two semesters ago during one of my class meetings, one of my white classmates worked triple-overtime to invalidate my experiences with the racism I had faced and called it simple ignorance from ignorant people. 

In this case, how long is ignorance allowed to continue?

Recently when I spoke about my mental health struggles, the unfollows poured in in comparison to the very vague and often bland posts of those who follow along with what is expected. In other words, I should play along and not rock the boat too much because anything than the norm is rebellious. 

But, I’m getting off topic here. Let’s talk comfort.

Back when the critical race theory debate circulated among the mom bloggers and LDS influencers alike, I took an extremely vocal stance on the matter. As expected, I was unfollowed by many who believed I was being way too involved. 

What really struck me was a concerned DM from a mother who followed me arguing as to why learning about critical race theory would impact her “precious six year old” who would be told that he was bad and evil because he was white. As calmly as I could, I explained why in homogenous states like Idaho and Utah and especially those who were “landlocked by whiteness” could benefit from learning from a curriculum that would make them uncomfortable. 

Now I’m not the most informed about critical race theory and how it looks in the American educational system. However, coming from somewhere that most Americans class as a third-world country, it’s shocking that the curriculum teaches only the bare minimum, and I can often spend more time educating my American friends on things THAT THEY SHOULD KNOW! I look back to my experiences in Utah when I was called the “n word with the hard r” when no one thought I had heard or when the returned missionaries who had served in my mission assumed that I had come to America to receive handouts from my host family.

I remember the video made by a missionary who returned home and wondered why people in the Caribbean had large screen televisions and nice cars  but lived in not so fancy houses or the missionary who referred to the people in the Caribbean as poor in each weekly email. I’d like to think that learning about critical race theory would’ve been beneficial for them so that they could learn about economies of different countries and that they could grasp the basic understanding that black people are often at a disadvantage in relation to their white counterparts. 

 One shouldn’t have to be taught these things only when they attend BYU or any university. It shouldn’t even have to be taught when they serve missions outside of America. Because if we are really being honest here, attitudes dripped in subtle racism and elitist classicism follow them even when the missionary tag is snapped onto their white shirt or on whatever dress they buy from one of the modest “Molly Mormon” boutiques.

Still, in our church culture, we believe highly in the unspoken theory that to be a good member is to be the one that’s the most comfortable. What is comfort really? I often say that passivity is not of the spirit and that most if not all members should get comfortable with healthy confrontation when we see things we don’t like or when someone hurts us with their words or actions. In my eyes, if I have reached that point where my anger has boiled to such a level that I want to run you over with an imaginary car, then it’s a good time for us to hash out our issues. 

The same thing goes for our attitudes regarding things within our church culture or even in our family culture that don’t seem quite right. As my friend Lina always says, “if you see something wrong and you want to stand up for it, SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST!”. Instead of being fearful of “rocking the boat”, when things are wrong, we acknowledge and learn from them. To me that’s where learning and acknowledging the horrible injustices in our history come in. 

It’s not to say that teaching styles won’t be more passionate depending on where the curriculum is taught. I fondly remember sitting in a Race and Ethnicities class at BYU-Provo where the teacher (who happened to be white) taught with great passion and his first hand knowledge of living in Chicago which allowed him to connect with the curriculum he taught. I remember leaving that class as one of the few black people in the room saying “I hope someone got it!”. 

The path to understanding is acknowledging past hurt. It isn’t about hiding our heads in the sand and only acknowledging it when our leaders speak or when we identify with one of the LDS super-celebrities and instantly forget about it when the message has gone through from one ear to the next. Most persons of color don’t expect someone from another race to ever fully understand. Still, we hold on to hope that with learning and anti-racist attitudes that mindsets will change and bit by bit the culture will change as well. 

For our culture to change as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we have to get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable. 

Afterall, no scripture verse says that comfort is of the spirit. 

 

Love is a verb

In the last month I unfortunately encountered a number of posts from members of the Church quoting scriptures about the dangers of pride, drawing the conclusion that pride month must be inherently sinful – like having an adultery month, or a murder month. I seethed. It frustrated me (beyond the obvious bigotry) because it relied on disingenuous self-righteousness. We all know that there is more than one definition of pride in the English language. Only the most uptight pedant refuses to say “I’m proud of you” when a child makes progress on the grounds that the word pride is bad. We know that some kinds of pride are bad, and some kinds are fine, or even good. To oversimplify, here are two ways of seeing it:

1) Pride as the opposite of humility. This is the sin we hear about in the scriptures. A lack of humility before God is the big no-no.

2) Pride as the opposite of shame and self-loathing. Shame and self-loathing serve no redemptive purpose and instead tend to send you into a spiral believing God could never love you so why try.

Pride month is about definition #2. It’s about saying “I am not filled with shame and self loathing about how God made me. In fact, quite the opposite! I like me!” Self loathing destroys the holy principle of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” God wants us to rejoice in being created as we are, and to love others as they are. To me there is nothing remotely contradictory about a Mormon honoring pride month. I’m glad you like you! I’m glad you feel good about your spirit, and your body! Most of all, I’m glad you’re here, alive, sticking around with us. Hooray! A Mormon can express every one of those things without making any statement one way or the other about what you think of sexual intercourse. But of course, we can’t really seem to help ourselves, as a people, from making it about sex instead of identity.

Another favorite Mormon adage in June is “I hate the sin but love the sinner. God loves everyone!” I don’t happen to think that God makes any person wrong and therefore being LGBTQIA is not a sin. I will say that again.  The spirit you were born with is not a sin.  The body you were born with is not a sin. The way your spirit and your body interact with one another creating your identity, is not a sin.  

But for the sake of argument, let’s follow that line of thinking. Pointing out that someone else is a sinner is a judgmental act that none of us benefit from. Every person is a sinner, our whole thing is failing to be perfect 100% of the time.  I can be sharp with my kids, and a slovenly homemaker, and am very lazy about scripture study and prayer.  My approach to budgeting is slapdash and vague.  What if I walked around with a sign I couldn’t remove that said SHREW  SLOB   INFIDEL  SPENDTHRIFT?   It would be very easy for someone to say “oh I don’t want my kids playing with hers. The scriptures say we should pray often.  Her role is to create a home, and it is a cluttered heap.  We are counseled to be wise with money, but she doesn’t keep accounts very well!”  You’re right.  And these are just scratching the surface of my sins.  I’m also prideful, gossipy, not great at the Sabbath, I fail to honor my father… the list goes on and on and on.  I’ve never murdered a person, but I do love True Crime so that’s definitely kill-adjacent.  I’ve never committed adultery but I enjoy reality TV verrrry much. 

My point is, I’m a sinner.  And if you’re worried about seeming like you’re condoning sin by treating me with dignity and love, welp I’ve got news.  You’re just as bad.  As Elder Uchtdorf quoted “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.”   So.  We’re on rather shaky ground when we make a big fanfare about hating sins.  It’s easy to hate a sin you’re not tempted to commit.  How good are you at hating the sin of breaking the law by exceeding the speed limit?  Are you rock solid on hating the sin of gluttony and sloth? Or is it cookies and Netflix tonight?  We’re all sinners.  None of us has any room to point fingers.  You hate sin by not committing it yourself.  That’s your job.  That’s my job. You don’t hate sin by prancing around waving a banner about how much you hate what other people do that is condemned in scripture.

Let’s move on to the second part of the adage.  Hate the sin – problematic.  Love the sinner? Easy peasy! You just say it! 

My question is this, and I mean it absolutely seriously. What have you specifically done to show love to the LGBTQIA community, or to a person within that community? I’m crystal clear on how y’all hate the sin. But love is a verb. It isn’t just a vague sense of benediction. How are you loving LGBTQIA people? And is it even approaching an equal and opposite scale to the energy our faith community devotes to hating the sin? I hear talks and lessons and posts all the time about condemning same-sex relationships. I don’t ever remember a service project devoted to mental health outreach, or supporting education about STIs, or financially supporting youth that get kicked out of their homes for their identity. Do you have any LGBTQ+ friends? Do they feel safe talking to you about their family, their relationships, their interests? Have they ever come to your home? Do LGBTQ+ kids play with your kids with the same privileges and inclusion as any other child?

If you can’t do pride month, fine. Do love month. Better yet, just do love. Figure out some small way to signal to the LGBTQ+ people around you that you care. Wear a rainbow. Ask about your friend’s daughter’s engagement to a woman with the same interest and kindness you would extend if she were marrying a man. You can honor your friend’s parental love without needing to say a peep about what sexual contacts you approve of. Educate yourself about the experience of LGBTQ+ youth in the Church, or at BYU, or in general. I’m not saying you have to approve of lady bits touching lady bits. But when you get right down to it, your opinion of lesbian sex is relevant only as it relates to your own sexual choices. As far as other people are concerned, the commandment is clear – love one another. As Christ loves you, love one another. By this shall all people know that you are His disciples – if you have love for one another.

Yes, I know Pride month is “over.” The commandment to love is still a thing in July.