Exponent II's Blog, page 14

Rainbows: A Symbol of Love

A few years ago, the universe spoke to me. It spoke with an image of arched light and color that connected the words of a stranger to the movement of my body. My cheap-soled shoes hit the pavement in rhythm as I ran; the poisonous particles that had been floating in the Utah air for months, blocking the mountains from view and hindering my daily runs, had evaporated. I was running in clean air for the first time in weeks. It felt amazing.

On my run I listened to a podcast, Be Brave Like Blaire, a conversation with a Queer Mormon woman, Blaire Ostler, about her book, Queer Mormon Theology. She read a chapter from her book, a chapter about Christ’s atonement. That word, atonement, and that incomprehensible and overstated moment described in scripture had interfered with and confused my life for years, similar to that tragic smoke and invisible PM2.5 that I can’t see but restricts and isolates me from what I love.

However, Blaire spoke into my ears, giving new meaning to the word, reimaging the moment that others have used to exclude and confine love. She said, “Jesus went into Gethsemene a he and came out a They.” Blaire read that chapter into my ear, about how we cannot comprehend the atonement, but we can imagine, can hope, that Jesus felt all pain – male, female, and everything in between. That queerness isn’t something we just need to accept- it is eternal, divine, and human. That love doesn’t have borders or rules; it accepts everyone. Every one.

Blaire’s ideas and words brightened synapses in my brain, creating neurons and pathways with energy. She described a Jesus and a God that made sense to me, a moment that mattered because all borders and hate dissolved when Jesus stepped across the threshold of their tomb.

Just then, a rainbow spread across the sky; a symbol of LGBTQ+ communities, diversity, unity, and light from the universe. Goose bumps danced on my skin as I ran below a symbol of clean air that heals rather than the minuscule particles that penetrate deeply into the lungs, irritating and corroding. I ran with that rainbow for a few minutes as it got brighter and brighter, and another, fainter rainbow appeared above it.

Two rainbows after weeks of brown skies. I felt like the universe playfully displayed its love for queer people in an incredible display of science. Then it dissolved, and I kept running and listening about queerness and love, breathing fresh air. It was a beautiful miracle. I felt like I witnessed the universe celebrating with Blaire and Jesus in a color fest that said: Love!

Later that day, I danced in the rain with my daughter and jumped on the wet trampoline. Both of us jumped up, meeting the rain in the sky, and then fell down to the earth with it. I felt one with the universe that day: rainbows, human stories, rain, and gravity. For a moment, the air was clear enough to breathe.

Guest Post, Polygamy: The Doctrine that Lives In Our Bones

Polygamy: The Doctrine that Lives In Our Bones

The weight of my foremothers’ pain, the doctrines that keep it alive—and the daughter I hope never has to carry it

It started with a familiar ache in my chest. I’ve felt it before- the moment polygamy shows up where I least expect it.

We walked past a sculpture on display at the very front entrance of the Covey Center in Provo while waiting for my 8-year-old daughter’s call time. She started reading the description out loud. At first, it sounded beautiful, something tender, honoring love and loss. I skimmed ahead of where she was reading, and suddenly the moment changed. The artist said the piece became “complicated” once he was sealed to a second eternal companion—something only men are allowed in Mormon doctrine.

My blood ran cold. That tightening in my chest rose before I could even name it. What started as a tribute had quietly turned into a celebration of a theology that has left deep scars.

It’s the same doctrine that allowed early Church leaders to coerce teenage girls—like Fanny Alger and Helen Mar Kimball—into becoming plural wives, and to use their power to claim women already in committed marriages, like Zina Huntington Jacobs.

The same doctrine that defined the lives of so many of my own ancestors—ancestors I trace through the polygamous lines in the FamilySearch app.

The same doctrine that caused my mother quiet anguish, as she struggled with the potential fate of becoming a “second wife” to a man still sealed to his ex-wife.

The same doctrine that had me, at 16 years old in Young Women’s, listing “must be older than me” right next to “priesthood holder” on my eternal companion checklist—because if he died first, maybe I’d be spared from a forced polygamous afterlife.

Even after marrying a man six years older, just like I’d hoped, the fear never left me. And in that moment, standing beside my daughter as she read the plaque, I felt it rise again.

So without missing a beat, I stopped her mid-sentence and gently pulled us away. I didn’t want her going on stage with that kind of story in her mind. I didn’t want to have the polygamy conversation in that moment. This was supposed to be a fun night. A celebration of her hard work and talent.

A few minutes later, she was off and on her way with a smile. I didn’t want to carry what I was feeling either. But the feelings lingered. They always do.

I imagined what would have happened if I hadn’t skimmed ahead of her reading out loud. How would I have explained it? She’s already been asking questions.

Why can’t girls be prophets or Church presidents?

Why couldn’t Mommy baptize her?

Why can’t she baptize people when she grows up?

I know her sharp, precocious mind won’t be okay with polygamy either. She’s already noticing the cracks— the structural, quietly accepted inequality between women and men.

Even though I no longer believe this doctrine comes from God, it still lives in my body.

The weight of it sits in my chest, coils in my stomach, and tightens in my shoulders. It’s in my nervous system, buried deep, passed down through generations of women who had no choice but to endure. My brain knows it isn’t real, but my body still flinches.

It’s embedded in the Church I grew up in.

It’s embedded in the temple, even as they try to make it less obvious.

It’s embedded in sealing practices that allow men to be sealed to multiple women, but never the other way around.

Many people I love still find deep meaning in the Church. And that’s great for them.

But for those of us who no longer believe, but are still tied to this doctrine through mixed-faith families, the trauma doesn’t just go away. Even if we’ve rejected the belief, the damage it causes is still bone deep.

This wasn’t an isolated experience. Just a week earlier, a man in a local networking group shared what many saw as a heartwarming story about how he’d found healing after losing his wife in childbirth and remarrying just under a year later. Hundreds of comments poured in with love and support for the photo he posted: his headstone, engraved with his name and the names of two women, each sealed to him in the temple. 

That’s how that woman’s resting place is portrayed, not as a person in her own right, but as the first wife in a polygamous afterlife.

In both instances, eternal polygamy wasn’t just tolerated. It was celebrated.

Let me be clear: I’m not against remarriage after loss. And I’m sure these men are good people.

To me—and to many other women—the problem is the doctrine. The idea that these marriages carry into the next life, and that we’ll be expected to become sister wives without consent.

And if the wife dies first? It doesn’t work the other way around.

I needed to talk about it. So I did.

That night, still shaken, I quickly shared a photo of the sculpture with my raw thoughts in a group of women in mixed-faith marriages (and shared about the gravestone a week before in the comments):

 The responses were immediate and emotional:

We hurt together. We raged a little. We held space for the grief that keeps finding its way back. Because this isn’t just history—it’s now.

As Carol Lynn Pearson says, it’s the “ghost of eternal polygamy.” And unless the men who hold the power choose to confront it, this is what we’re left with. The ones most harmed by this doctrine are the ones with absolutely no power to change it. Another generation carrying trauma while waiting for men to decide whether we deserve equality.

Because the truth is, women can’t fix this.

We can write. We can cry. We can walk away—and we are, in greater numbers than ever.

But the system still belongs to men. And only they can dismantle it.

I’m not holding my breath. I’ve lost all trust in this institution and its leaders.

I wish I could just be done with it all. And yet… I’m still tethered to this doctrine through family ties.

Someday, I’ll have to talk to my daughter about the belief woven into the sculpture we saw that night.

Not because I regret staying silent in the moment. I don’t.

But because she’ll ask.

Because she’ll notice.

Because she already does.

And when that day comes, I’ll tell her the truth:

This wasn’t created by God.

This was created by men.

She doesn’t have to accept it.

She doesn’t have to carry it.

She’s allowed to feel what she feels.

And she’s not alone.

And maybe, if she never has to spend years untangling this the way I did, this is what healing across generations looks like. 

 

The anonymous author is a mother of three and a professional writer, coach, and education expert. She draws on both personal experience and professional insight to explore the quiet complexities of faith, family, and legacy.

 

Guest Post: My Sacred Place

Guest Post by Moira

As my ability to withstand the cognitive dissonance that has been inherent in my faith and relationship with the church all of my adult life has waned- I have found myself attending Sunday meetings less and less. It is strange to not spend Sunday’s inside the structured walls of an LDS chapel building. Instead I find myself in my garden, tending to my plants and flowers, worshipping in the soil.

A few weeks ago my husband and I decided to attend sacrament meeting, the first hour of our congregations Sunday meeting. I was missing the special spirit sacred spaces have- and the feeling of a community striving for betterness together. I have long loved the architecture of churches, and how they are the manifestation of people trying to bring heaven to earth. But I have often found LDS meeting houses to be spaces that rather than reach for the divine and envelop a worshipper in God’s love, seem preoccupied with order and adhering to a long list of rules and policies that do not create a welcoming environment. Inside our chapel with its tall arching wooden beams, which are very unique for an LDS building, is where our sacrament meeting is held.

This meeting is presided over fully by men, there may be women who speak to the congregation, but the closing speaker is always a man. Every Sunday as I grew up I saw only a group of men sit on the stand, in front of and above the congregation – in the physical space meant only for this with authority in the church- a space occupied only by men and the occasional woman who is invited to speak or sing. The stand is the focal point of chapel-pointing you towards the men who preside over the congregation and church.

This particular Sunday the relief society was going to sing a musical number during sacrament that they had been practicing the past few weeks. I was invited to join them, but because I had missed the practices I declined. I sat in the pews with the children and the men in the congregation and watched, where for the first time in my life all of the men left the stand, and the space was filled entirely and solely by women.

As their voices sang, tears streamed down my face as I realized this was the first, and likely the only time that I would see only women on the stand. My husband squeezed my hand knowingly recognizing the significance and pain this moment held for me. I can’t remember the song they sang-but I’ll never forget the longing and heartache I felt in that moment. This place that was meant to be sacred and for worship had instead for me become a painful reminder of all the hurt I had felt in these walls while searching for God and worshipping.

I have not attended church since then, I have found it too painful to be a space where I know that as qualified, educated and experienced as I am, that I will always be considered less than, and unqualified for leadership compared to the least qualified man in my congregation simply because I cannot hold the priesthood because I am not a man.

I long for the day when women are provided truly equal opportunities to worship and participate in the church. I long for the days when the church is more transparent and honest about its financial practices, I long for the day when LGBTQIA+ members will be welcomed and celebrated fully and when racism is abhorred and the church takes accountability for past harms. Until that day, I am not sure if I will attend Sunday services again, but I will be in my garden, for I have found that my garden is also a sacred place. My garden has no stained glass, no arching beams or stand, it has only soil, seeds, some weeds, and space for all who wish to come, to sit, to worship, to be. My garden is sacred because it recognizes I am sacred, and for now that is enough.

Moira lives on the East Coast with her husband, (whose last name she did not take because she is cool), her dog, her cat, and many plants. She works as a Senior Budget and Policy Analyst, and spends her free time in nature, hiking, gardening or taking pictures of plants to paint later.

How the Science of Awe Is Helping Me Raise Grounded, Compassionate Kids

Last spring, I entered a state of crisis when I realized that I was just over halfway done with my years of raising children and could count our remaining summers living together as a family of five on one hand. Suddenly, the only thing I could think about was taking my kids to see the complete solar eclipse in Texas. It didn’t matter that it was last-minute or that flights were expensive and accommodations were limited. It didn’t matter that I would have to make the travel plans and decisions on my own, something that normally is prohibitively stress-inducing for me. We had missed the one in the US a few years ago, so this was my last practical chance to see a total eclipse with my kids while they were still kids, and I felt a driving need to go.

When the last red sliver of blazing sun was swallowed behind the black moon, now eerily radiating a silvery corona, and all 360 degrees of the hilly Dallas horizon were the dusky purple of twilight, we shouted and whooped with the hundreds of other people in the vicinity. During the moments of darkness, we traveled the spectrum from jubilant ecstasy to quiet, tingling awe, fully present in our senses as we listened to the confused crickets and felt the temperature drop. We took video and pictures and then put our phones down as we wrapped our arms around each other and basked in a state of transcendence. 

Time is not the only loss on my mind as I consider making memories with my family and finding ways to fill my children’s spiritual buckets, like witnessing the eclipse. One of the biggest losses from my faith transition is not having the scaffolding and structure of the church to help me in raising my children or guiding their spirituality. Mapping a course without the milestones of baptisms and temple trips and weekly young women activities I grew up with feels overwhelming and, frankly, terrifying. When my own spirituality is so fraught, trying to teach my children how to cultivate their own feels impossible.

Raising Awe Seekers

I’ve been reading Raising Awe Seekers: How the Science of Wonder Helps Our Kids Thrive by child development expert and parenting journalist (and emeritus Exponent II blogger!) Deborah Farmer Kris. The book presents relevant research on awe and then gives practical ways to apply it to parenting and children. Kris doesn’t discuss spirituality or religion in her book, but the insights and solutions she offers feel perfectly tailored for my situation—like how to create a family culture that frequently incorporates and teaches kids to recognize awe—and provides easily actionable solutions for my list of parental insecurities. The beauty of this book is that it would feel just as applicable for an actively religious family: awe and its benefits are universal and enhance spirituality and connection both in and outside of religious contexts.

What is awe?

Kris tells us that awe “is what we feel when we encounter something vast, wondrous, or beyond our ordinary frame of reference. It evokes a sense of mystery, reverence, or wonder. It is the feeling that washes over us when we hear a beautiful song, watch a flock of geese fly south, or see images from the new NASA telescope,” or, perhaps, experiencing the magic of a solar eclipse.

To put it saliently, she explains that awe often manifests in tears, chills, or a feeling of “whoa.” Awe feels good in and of itself, but its benefits go far beyond a momentary thrill. Kris cites research that shows that awe strengthens connection and curiosity, increases generosity, makes us kinder, and improves mental and physical well-being, even reducing inflammation and PTSD symptoms. She writes, 

Put simply, awe supports just about every outcome that we want for our kids, our families, and ourselves:

Do we want our kids to be compassionate and civic-minded?Do we want them to form healthy and meaningful relationships?Do we want our kids to retain their innate curiosity as they grow and strengthen their motivation to learn?Do we want everyone in the family to develop perspective, resilience, and the capacity to find wonder in everyday life?

Awe supports all these aims.

As I read that list of questions, I internally shouted, YES. Those things are exactly what I want for my children. And the great news is, helping our children experience awe, and seeking out transcendent experiences ourselves, is simple.

Where do we find awe? 

I’m not always great at follow-through. I love reading self-help or parenting books, but I sometimes finish them feeling overwhelmed at the changes I need to make. But seeking awe, Kris tells us, doesn’t have to be difficult or limited to big gestures like traveling a thousand miles to see an eclipse: “The best part about awe is how accessible it is. How ordinary. We don’t have to take our kids to the Grand Canyon to experience it. Awe is an everyday emotion, something we can feel during a morning walk, a puppy playdate, a bedtime story, or a soccer game.”

She then lists seven of the main universal sources of awe, and I was delighted to realize as I read through them that our family is already off to a good start at incorporating awe into our everyday lives:

Nature

Last night, our family went on a walk. We admired the blooming purple flowers on the vitex trees we passed, laughed at our dog bounding after wild rabbits, and breathed in the muted pinks of the sunset.

Music

My kids are all in music lessons (and I’m in a community choir), and music is an important part of our family culture. Watching my children perform and master new skills, like my daughter’s recent violin recital where I cried when she completely slayed the tricky pieces she’d worked so hard to master, is completely inspiring to me–and to them. 

Art

We are big into creating in our family, whether it’s writing stories, making crafts, or completing home projects. I feel like children are so inherently creative that I don’t have to do much to encourage mine other than occasionally providing supplies. My oldest daughter was up late the other night writing a story in her notebook in bed when she was supposed to be sleeping, and I was secretly delighted. We also visit art museums when possible and take in the beauty of the creations of others.

Big questions

Learning inspires awe, and children are insatiable. When my kids ask questions, we talk through them (or, if I don’t know the answer, they immediately ask Google). Their curiosity has led me to knowledge long forgotten or that I never knew I didn’t know, like when my son recently asked how stars can burn without oxygen (nuclear fusion, which I’d forgotten and find fascinating!).

Collective Effervescence

Collective effervescence is a term for the feeling we get when we work together in harmony or experience awe with other people. Think sporting events, concerts, collaborating on projects, dancing in a group, singing with others, or, well, watching an eclipse: these experiences not only give us a thrill of transcendence, they also serve to connect us to those around us, even strangers.

The Circle of Life

There is something amazing about birth and the mysteries of before and after mortality. One of my kids’ favorite things is to look at pictures of themselves when they were babies and hear stories about what they were like. My daughter asks over and over for me to tell her about how she was so big that after she was born right around shift change, the outgoing nurses stayed at the hospital for nearly an hour for the scale to show up to see how much she weighed. 

Human Kindness

My oldest and youngest clash frequently, but sometimes they are so tender in the way they look out for each other. My son injured his hand the other day, and his big sister was immediately advocating for him: “Mom, can we turn on the TV for a show to distract him? Can I get him a pain pill?” 

Awe Starts With Us as Parents

Kris encourages parents to search out and experience their own awe as the best way to show our children how to make a practice of experiencing transcendence in the divinely ordinary: 

Our kids take their cues from us. They are astute anthropologists of human behavior and tend to imitate what they see. So if we want them to feel more awe, we must become awe-seekers first. If we want them to experience wonder, we must open ourselves to it too.

The phrase be a lifelong learner is so overused it’s almost meaningless. So let’s reframe it: What if we paid more attention to what piques our curiosity? What if we tuned in to our tears, chills, and whoas? And then, what if we named those things out loud to our kids? When we get excited about a new skill we’re learning, pause to savor a favorite song, experiment with a new recipe, marvel at a sunset, or investigate a nest in a tree, we remind the kids watching us that wonder is a lifelong pursuit.

This book made me realize that, while my mourning the loss of church scaffolding and religious spirituality for my children is real and valid, I’ve actually been doing a decent job of creating my own. Raising Awe Seekers gave me confidence and resources to help guide my kids (and myself!) toward meaning, connection, and transcendence. Discovering the concept of awe as a tool for spiritual grounding has been both healing and empowering. It reminds me that while I may not have all the answers or a clear map forward, I can offer my children a life rich in beauty, curiosity, and reverence for the world around us.

And so can you.

It’s time for righteous rage

Each morning in preschool, my daughter constructed a tall and elaborate castle out of blocks, ribbons, and paper, only to have the same classmate, a little boy, gleefully destroy it.

This is the opening line of chapter 1 in “” by Soraya Chemaly, an in-depth look at women’s rage—why we’re angry, how we show it, how we handle it, how society sees an angry woman and, most importantly, how we flex it. Perhaps I was just extra over it as I read this introductory story, but I was ready to defend that castle, medieval-style.

Let’s continue that story:

Over a period of several weeks, one or the other of the boy’s parents, both invariably pleasant, would step forward after the fact and repeat any number of well-worn platitudes as my daughter fumed: ‘He’s just going through a phase!” “He’s such a boy! He loves destroying things,’ and, my personal favorite, ‘He. Just. Can’t. Help Himself!” Over time, my daughter grew increasingly frustrated and angry.

But my daughter didn’t yell, kick, throw a tantrum, or strike out at him. First, she asked him politely to stop. Then she stood in his way, body blocking him, but gently. She built a stronger foundation, so that her castles would be less likely to topple. She moved to another part of the classroom. She behaved exactly how you would want someone to behave if she was following all the rules about how to be a nice person. It didn’t work (emphasis mine).

I don’t interact with pre-K boys ever, so I don’t have that experience. But reading it immediately set off a montage of moments from my past church life—moments when I or other women politely said, “please stop hurting me” and the church, or the men in it, continued to gleefully knock down the castle, and the church, or the men leading it, repeat the churchy version of shrugging and saying, “boys will be boys.”

I thought of pioneer women coming up with their idea for a women’s organization, and Joseph Smith saying no, do it my way—making it by definition a men’s organization for women. The Brigham Young shut the organization down when the women became too defiant for leadership. Read more in this Exponent II article. I thought of the original Exponent II magazine, whose leaders drew attention—not the good kind—from members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and how editor Claudia Bushman was told her involvement as the wife of a stake president was unseemly. I thought of how Relief Society had its own budget, its own curriculum, its own leadership, and how priesthood correlation destroyed all of that like a glittery tower under the fist of an entitled 4-year-old.

And I thought about the time a man who was my peer told the women in sacrament meeting that he felt prompted to tell us all that if a man walked past us when passing the sacrament and became unworthy, we needed to repent. And how women weren’t allowed to sit on the stand because … well, the stories are all different depending on which stake you were in. Or how, the year the bishopric was in charge of the ward Christmas party, there was money in the budget for catering, but when the Relief Society was in charge, not only was there no money for that but the bishop didn’t want to ask people to bring food. I thought about the time I went to a temple dedication and heard six general authorities introduced with full bios and then “and their wives.” I thought about how the church taught that women had equal access to the rites and blessings of the priesthood, and then 2020 happened and I as a single woman had to choose between the sacrament and my health.

Continuing with Soraya’s story:

In the interest of classroom relations, I politely talked to the boy’s parents. They sympathized with my daughter’s frustration but only to the extent that they sincerely hoped she found a way to feel better. They didn’t seem to ‘see’ that she was angry, nor did they understand that her anger was a demand on their son in direct relation to their own inaction. They were perfectly content to rely on her cooperation in his working through what he wanted to work through, yet they felt no obligation to ask him to do the same.

Oh, the “I’m sorry you feel that way” of it all—who hasn’t heard some variation of that at church? I’m sorry you don’t feel equal—my wife feels totally equal. Maybe you should stop reading those feminist websites. I’m sorry you don’t feel heard, but your voice is too shrill. And you’re making other people uncomfortable. No one should feel uncomfortable at church. I’m sorry you don’t like polygamy, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it—I, a man, never do. I’m sorry someone said something you found hurtful, but have you tried not being offended? I’m sorry you’re having a hard time in church; you should pray more and read your scriptures. I’m sorry you feel bad that there is almost no meaningful representation of women or people of color in major leadership positions, councils where decisions are made, speaking in General Conference, but that’s how God set it up. Are you disagreeing with God?

We have seen women get angry in recent years. We have seen women demand more. And more often than not, church leaders have not seen women’s anger. They have brushed it aside; they have declined to take it seriously; they have said that women are important and needed and to keep the faith but have not backed up those words with any actions. They’re sorry we feel this way; they hope we can feel better about the situation, which will remain unchanged. This is from God. He never changes. Here’s an opportunity to be a witness to temple baptisms—now stop talking about Heavenly Mother. Maybe stop talking altogether unless you’re ready to toe the party line.

Soraya barely touches on religion (at least so far—I’m halfway through), but her words repeatedly brought to mind my experiences in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For example: women are more likely to show big feelings of sadness than anger. Whether correlation or causation, this often means women are more generous or empathetic. But. “On the downside, sadness can easily turn into paralyzing rumination, lowered expectations, and costly impatience. Sad people expect and are satisfied with less (p. 5, emphasis mine).

How many times did I settle for crumbs—or less than crumbs—simply because that’s the way it’s always been done? Or because God said so? Or because the prophet said so? Or because no one said so and thus nothing can change?

And then there was this: “Girls learn to smile early, and many cultures teach girls explicitly to ‘put on a pretty face.’ It is a way of soothing the people around us, a facial adaptation to the expectation that we put others first, preserve social connections, and hide our disappointment, frustration, anger, of fear. We are expected to be more accommodating …” (p. 7). That brought to mind the last time I went the temple, when a female temple worker—a stranger—patted my stomach and asked when I was due. I froze, but not before pasting a smile on my face because heaven forbid I make her sit with the rudeness and discomfort of what she’d just done. Or the time on my mission when a less-active member my companions and I visited told me if I got any fatter I’d never find a husband. Or the time a temple worker interrupted my prayer in the celestial room because a couple needed somewhere to sit and I, a single person, could be moved. Or the time a sealer insisted I do a couple’s sealing with an older man whose wife was there because “I want you to experience it.” Or the laughter that followed President Oaks saying in general conference that a woman he knew shouldn’t worry about polygamy in eternity.

And finally, there is this from the one section (so far) that has discussed religion; Soraya, a former Catholic, notes that Mormonism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam practice complementarianism, a “separate but equal” system that isn’t actually equal. That section finishes with this thought: “It is possible to have faith in the divine in ways that don’t demand that women trade their freedom and power in return for protection from male-perpetrated violence and predation. Any woman interested in her own equality would do well to avoid men and institutions that claim to want nothing more than to protect her” (p. 171-2).

All of this to say—we should be angry. There are lot of things in the world worth being angry about. Be angry, be loud, be heard. And read this book. But fair warning—it will make you angrier. And if you’re ever worried the rage is bad, remember you’re in good company—the story of Jesus getting angry and flipping tables in the temple is repeated in all four Gospels. Clearly, it’s a message someone wanted readers to internalize.

For more reading on a related subject, see Soraya Chemaly’s 2014 essay, “10 Simple Words Every Girl Should Learn.”

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Religion vs. Violence

The church has added a “Religion vs. Violence” section under the Topics and Questions portion of the Gospel Library.

I was intrigued by the attempt to justify one of the Book of Mormon’s most horrific moments: Nephi slaying Laban.

“One potentially unsettling example of violence in the scriptures is the Lord’s command to Nephi to kill Laban in 1 Nephi 4,” the section states. 

I’m not sure why the word “potentially” is used here; I would hope that just about everybody would be unsettled by the decapitation of an unconscious person, but I digress. 

I am more intrigued by the following quote stated by Elder Dale G. Renlund: “No simple explanation of this episode is completely satisfactory, but let me highlight some aspects. The episode did not begin with Nephi asking if he could slay Laban. It was not something he wanted to do. Killing Laban was not for Nephi’s personal benefit but to provide scriptures to a future nation and a covenant people. And Nephi was sure that it was revelation —in fact, in this case, it was a commandment from God.”

I do appreciate the emphasis that Nephi did not desire bloodshed. However, how can we claim that Nephi was “sure” that this was revelation—a direct commandment from God?

After all, we’re talking about a God who has struck people dumb. Who has left people unconscious for days at a time. Who caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. He could have done any one of those things to Laban, giving Nephi plenty of time to escape unharmed with the scriptures in hand.

It may be worth questioning why God did no such thing for Laban. Why was it necessary for Nephi to murder Laban? In the bloody form of decapitation, no less.

Some may argue that it was a test of Nephi’s faith; to see if he would do anything the Lord commands.

But do we really want to believe in a God who would require you, through a commandment, to murder someone in their sleep?

Is that really the God we worship?

If so, how could we blame former Latter-day Saints, the Lafferty brothers, for murdering their sister-in-law and two year old niece? After all, they were certain it was commanded by God, much like Nephi was certain. I guess if you’re certain—really really certain—then that makes it okay? It’s no surprise that they chose decapitation as their form of killing. The parallels are striking.

In sacred religious texts all over the world, we can find gods who are violent, oppressive, and authoritarian.

We don’t need to look beyond Christianity to see this at play.

The Old Testament is riddled with prophets describing God to be nothing short of a tyrant. God condones slavery and the oppression of women. God murders the innocent first born sons of Egypt. God drowns an entire population. God fearfully asks Abraham to sacrifice his son.

The list goes on and on.

We move over to the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants to find much of the same.

God commands Nephi to kill Laban. God murders thousands after Jesus’ crucifixion by means of natural disasters. God threatens destruction to women who do not obey the practice of polygamy.

These stories are contradictory – and rather confusing – when taught side by side with a message of a loving God; a Heavenly Father who knows you intimately and personally. A Father who wants nothing more than for you, His child, to return home to Him.

We speak of a loving father while simultaneously preaching of an abusive, threatening, and manipulative God who uses fear and violence as a means to an end.

Then we are surprised when our own people resort to fear and violence.

This has lead to much harm and devastation across human history. Wars like the Crusades were fueled by religious dominance. Terrorist attacks like 9/11 were lead by men who believed God would reward them for murdering thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

A glance at Mormon history can show much of the same. Polygamy—rooted from Old Testament customs—subjected and oppressed women and treated them as no more than property. Latter-day Saints participated in the removal and murder of Native Americans, their beliefs that God had given them a land for Zion seemingly justifying this violent expulsion.

But I guess all of this violence and abuse was okay, right? Because they were really really certain that God commanded it.

This is where the trouble lies. When we believe that God has commanded immoral atrocities of the worst kind, we can believe that God is asking us to commit those same atrocities. It is a dangerous slippery slope that many religions have to face. Mormonism is certainly not immune.

Perhaps we can agree that something must be done about this, or we will continue to see violence performed across the world in the name of religion, and continue to see members of our own faith justify terrible crimes.

So how do we reconcile these vile acts in our scriptures? I believe there is only one way.

It is my opinion that the only safe and moral way to view God and the divine is that they consist of—and are only capable of acting in —love.

Anything that is fear based, authoritarian, abusive, threatening, and violent CANNOT be of God.

Just because scripture describes a God who manifests those characteristics does not make it so.

We have to remind ourselves that all scripture is written by flawed and fallible men who were attempting to understand the divine; something that I believe is impossible for any of us to fully comprehend.

These men viewed God through their own cultural biases, their own human nature, and their own personal shortcomings.

In other words, they made God in their own image.

Unfortunately, we haven’t evolved much. We still allow our cultures, our human nature, and our own personal flaws to shape our image of God. This has lead to disastrous results.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see that religious participation is in a steep decline. People are done with the hypocrisy. They’re done with hearing about unconditional love on one hand and threats on the other. They’re done with the failed attempts to justify religious superiority, dominance, and abuse. They’re done with a perception of God that appears to be so very.. human.

They’re not buying that God is an authoritarian like dictator who demands obedience under threat of destruction, who prioritizes his love and mercy toward his “chosen” people (who everyone happens to believe includes themselves but not others).

I’m not buying it anymore either.

While there is a decline in religious worship, I believe there is an increase in spirituality, though others may use other words to describe it. People are largely interested in freedom, equality, inclusion, compassion, and love—the things Jesus really taught about. Our moral code of conduct is much higher than those of the Old Testament, or even of those from a few hundred years ago. Our standards are high, and unfortunately, religions are falling short.

It is time to challenge immoral scripture. If religions hope to bring more into their fold, they must tackle this challenging topic head on. They must confront the past in order to move forward into the future. They must preach that there is a higher and holier way; the heart of the law rather than the letter of the law, as Jesus taught.

Elder Renlund’s comment misses the mark, and quite significantly so. We cannot condone religious violence simply because we feel certain.

Nephi killing Laban IS unsettling, and for good reason. Quite simply, it was wrong. It is not a faith promoting story we should be teaching to children. Rather, it is a story we should be denouncing.

Because a God who commands such things wouldn’t be worthy of our worship anyways.

When a Lullaby Becomes a Regret

Guest Post by Lacey Parr

When I became a mom more than 12 years ago, Joseph Smith’s First Prayer was a hymn I sang to my children as a lullaby, almost every night. Once I started deconstructing my faith, it became a painful memory.

The hymn itself is lovely. A simple tune that tells a story I knew well. One that I could tell by the time I was in Primary. It gives details of natural beauty that appealed deeply to me. And it was easy enough for me to memorize as a youth. This was remarkable for me, who, as a youth, struggled with all the high school seminary scripture mastery.

As a new mom, singing it to my children at bedtime became a habit I was proud of. I also sang All the Pretty Little Horses, hummed the Harry Potter theme song, and the lullaby from Disney’s Tarzan. But Joseph Smith’s First Prayer helped me share arguably the most important story of my faith to my children. Even if we forgot to read scriptures aloud to them that day, at least my babies and toddlers would be exposed to this most important story.

But once I learned there are multiple versions of the First Vision—and wildly different in detail—I became conflicted over those sweet moments. I still believe the First Vision tells a beautiful story that in some ways, I still believe: essentially, we can escape into the wilderness—Creation—and seek God and God will answer! I want my children to feel the truth of that! But now it’s time for me to teach that universal truth in different ways.

This small experience became a microcosm of the many aspects of my life that became complicated when my testimony crumbled. Learning more about the context of Joseph Smith’s life and other events around the Restoration (that the Church has largely ignored or hidden) shook me to my core and a lullaby became a regret.

When Religious Words Become Swear Words

When I moved to Quebec eight years ago, I quickly learned that swear words in Canadian French are virtually all Catholic words. The closest equivalent to the F word in potency is tabernak, or tabernacle, the box where the eucharist (bread and wine used for communion) is stored. To say, “I don’t give a ****,” people say “je m’en calice,” a chalice being a cup used for drinking sacramental wine. Baptême or baptism, is a profanity, and so is saint. Crisser from “Christ” is a verb meaning “to swear,” and curse words themselves are referred to as les sacres, from sacrer, to consecrate. This is only the tip of the iceberg, there is a much longer list of religious profanities, and creating “more powerful combinations” and variations of these words “to express extreme anger or disgust” is the norm. Religious profanity is truly an artform here.

It’s common across the world for religious words to become profane due partly to religion’s shadow side of control, shaming, and oppression. Sacred words are among the most inappropriate words to use as curses, producing a desired shock effect and cathartic release for those who feel angry at faith institutions. Yet this phenomenon is more prominent in Quebec than anywhere else in the Western world (where sexual epithets usually dominate profanity).

Quebec used to be one of the most religious societies, with 90% Catholic mass attendance rates in the 1950’s, densely distributed places of worship, and Church-governed health care, education, and social welfare. The religious curse words started during the 1800s “when the social control exerted by the Catholic clergy was increasingly a source of frustration” (see Quebec French profanity). 

The local Church struggled to incorporate reforms intended to modernize the Church prescribed by Vatican II, and this contributed to its failure to remain helpful and relevant to members. Church authorities exercised a great deal of control over individuals’ lives, from dogmas drilled into children at school, to rigid gender roles expected at home. They played a major role in preventing the use of birth control and pressuring couples to get pregnant more often than they wanted. Families of 12-25 children were the norm for fertile couples. They prevented entrepreneurial efforts and women working out of the home and contributed to the fact that many more French speakers lived in poverty than Anglo-Canadians.

The Church failed to adapt to the spiritual and social needs of a more intellectually and morally nuanced Quebec people. It no longer provided things they needed and wanted; instead, it was getting in the way. Quebeckers left in a mass exodus, largely led by women, during a “Quiet Revolution” during the 1970’s and 80’s.

A lot of Mormons today may resonate with what French Quebeckers went through. Many of us are finding the Church is not adapting well to changing times and needs. In some cases, its efforts to change, such as through scaling back on community programming and funding, have only added insult to injury, worsening members’ quality of life and level of social and spiritual support. For many of us, the Church has become an at least somewhat oppressive, dissonant or negative force in our lives.

I’ve noticed Mormons using religious words and phrases differently over the past ten years. We have become more likely to complain about words and phrases and how tired we are of them, to avoid or reject them, to use them sarcastically, or to crack irreverent jokes about them.

Some of my favorite moments of word-rejection, irreverence and honest anger happen at At Last She Said It. During episode 185 of ALSSI, Susan Hinckley mentioned how fatigued she is with the word covenant, adding “I’m going to eat a piece of cake every time someone says covenant!” (I found this hilarious).

In a post about the word “preside,” Cynthia Winward wrote, “All of my study, praying, and pondering has never yielded a testimony that my husband presides. Nothing has worked. I finally gave myself permission a few years ago to ignore that word. It has no meaning for me in my personal life. It became so painful trying to understand it that now whenever ‘preside’ is even uttered in church I give myself permission to walk out of the room and attend the Hall Class.”

In the cut material from their What About the Sacrament? episode (added at the end after listener voicemails), ALSSI showed irreverence toward a notorious Mormon leader that made me laugh out loud:

Cynthia: “We’re so rowdy, I’m like evil-laughing at Bruce R. McConkie.”

Susan: “That’s okay. You’re allowed to evil laugh at Bruce R. McConkie now!”

Cynthia: “If there’s anyone that needs to be evil-laughed over…”

The podcasting pair have also referred to patriarchy and polygamy as “P-words.” They discussed how difficult it was for them to start using the patriarchy “P-word” as if it were a dirty word. Susan called a bonus episode released this week about the intersection of plural marriage doctrines and contemporary conjugal abuse a “holy **** episode.” ALSSI doesn’t shy away from the fact that Mormon women’s lives include some R-rated content wound up in religious legacies and traditions–that we are subjected to experiences very much worth swearing about.

Apart from ALSSI, we find discussions online about what words are more oppressive and triggering to members and former members, such as this “Covenant Path” discussion and What are your most triggering Mormon words or phrases? Catchphrases coined by leaders are especially troublesome.

Below are a few words and phrases that are, from my experience, grating on many people right now for various reasons, whether because they are overused, applied in pushy/controlling ways, loaded with unacknowledged meanings or trauma, considered the only Kosher way to refer to something, or experienced as paternal and condescending.

CelestialCovenant/ Covenant path/ Temple covenantsGarmentsGeneral ConferenceHeavenly FatherI know the Church is TrueNew and Everlasting CovenantNurture/ Nurturing Obedient/ obediencePresidePriesthood/ Priesthood powerProphet/ follow the prophet/ living prophetsRelief SocietyTempleTestimonyTithingPatriarchalPresideWorthy/ worthiness

What would you add to this list?

I don’t think Mormon words will ever become true swear words. Historically, we don’t swear that much (although I do think that is changing for many of us). And while our religion can be high pressure and oppressive in our personal lives and extended families, we are a minority religion living in a secular age. If we went around swearing Mormon words, we would seem weird and not be understood in greater society!

But what if we did turn LDS words and catchphrases into creative subversive swear words and expressions, just for fun or to release some frustration? Here are a few of my examples ChatGPT came up with when I told it to do the same thing to Mormon words that the Quebecois did to Catholic words. I’m sharing the ones that resonated or made me laugh and threw out the others. I’d be curious to know which ones you find funny or satisfying!

“You just covenant-pathed the whole thing!” – Said when someone overcomplicates a simple task by turning it into a moral crusade.“Obey this , you correlation drone!” – A rebellious outburst against institutional rigidity.“Don’t you start with that follow-the-prophet bullsh***.” – Asserting boundaries against manipulation.“What in the name of garments was that?!” – Like “what the hell?!”“That’s some next-level temple-worship guilt trip right there.” – To resist manipulative arguments.“Go blow it out your celestial room!” – Spicy, dismissive, and deeply coded.“Covenant-path it all!” – A general expression of frustration, like “to hell with it!”“Tithing settlement can settle this middle finger.” – Context-specific to refusing to attend tithing settlement.“Oh, you can shove your priesthood keys where the sun don’t shine.” – For when someone abuses authority.“That’s some straight-up Worthiness Olympics bulls***.” – Referring to self-righteous competition over righteousness.“You and your damn temple recommend can sit this one out.” – Directed at self-appointed moral police.“Patriarchalcurse!” – For moments when you’re annoyed at outdated systems or power trips.“Shut the temple up.” – Said when someone won’t stop bearing their “grateful for covenants” testimony.“Well I’ll be Relief-Societied!” – Used when you’re shocked or offended by someone’s holier-than-thou behavior.“Just temple it already!” – A sarcastic command when someone won’t stop spiritualizing everything.“Preside my backside.” – A rebellious mutter when being micromanaged by someone with a title.“Oh, Heavenly Freakin’ Father.” – Used like “Oh my God” in pure exasperation. This one is likely uncomfortably irreverent for many of us, I realize, but I’m including it here because I also realize this name for God is fraught, triggering, and fatiguing for many members.“That was temple-level awkward.” – Describing anything as painfully silent or overly ceremonial.“Think telestial!”– Reveling in worldliness or secular-ness instead of religiosity (I came up with this one!)

Religion can be useful and valuable. It’s an important resource and option for people, something that should generally be treated with respect. Yet, on the inside, religion can also be one of the worst and most frustrating aspects of life when institutions exercise too much control over adherents’ lives or fail to respond to their needs.

Aspects of our faith tradition can lose our trust and respect. Sometimes there is a genuine need to reject, redefine, or replace words that have become little more than resented, vacuous platitudes. I don’t blame French Canadians for what they did with sacred words that had become oppressive to them.

After a particularly difficult church experience last month when recent General Conference talks were used more than once to blame members for their dissatisfaction with the current Church, and when a supposed church dress code was imposed on someone I love, I came home and had a swearing melt down in my kitchen. They weren’t Mormon-specific curse words like the ones above, but they might as well have been.

When church gets really hard and unsupportive, it can raise tough questions such as What makes the difference between religion that is a blessing and religion that is a curse? Where is God in the direction the Church is going? Are the helpful things worth the harmful things? Imagining Mormon swear words is one thing that has come to me while wading through frustration and perplexity.

While turning resented Mormon words into swear words might not be right thing for many angry or disenchanted Mormons, many of us genuinely need to find relief and independence by letting ourselves express our anger, break from reverence, or poke fun at dogmas and expectations. Comparisons between Mormons and disenchanted French Canadian Catholics are fascinating to me and make me feel a bit less alone. Maybe this post has disturbed you, or maybe it has brought you some levity or inspired some of your own made-up Mormon swear words.

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

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Guest Post: He Broke the Covenants. I Paid the Price.

Guest Post by Anonymous

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, obedience is everything and dictates your good standing within the ranks.  If you break a covenant or a rule, it’s immediate punishment; unless you’re a man.

I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 40 years; unshakable and firm in the faith, someone who followed all the rules.  Like many Mormon women, I got married young at 21 and started the marriage journey with my eternal companion.  My partner was not what he advertised himself to be.  I thought I was getting an equal partner who was firm in the gospel and whose interest was to lead our family with faith. What I got was a passive, emotionally manipulative partner whose failure to lead eventually shattered both my marriage and my testimony.

Marriage, the pinnacle of a young Mormon girl’s life.  I was no different.  I rushed into a marriage with a man I barely knew, anxious to build an eternal family and have a strong, stalwart priesthood leader in my life and home. The Family Proclamation stated that, “By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families… Fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.” And both of us professed to believe and love this idea, but he had other ideas.  As our marriage started, there was a glaring disparity between what I was doing and what he was doing.  His role, according to everything I understood, was to be a provider both physically and spiritually.  Sure, he worked, but he worked low-paying jobs that forced me into the workplace just to help our family survive financially.  I worked more hours than he did and made more money, but when I came home, he was often playing video games with the house left in a state of disarray and the yard an overgrown mess.

Spiritually, he did little to help my testimony or that of our children’s grow. He avoided church for over 15 years, citing anxiety and burnout, while I dragged our kids to church and tried to keep their testimonies and mine alive. He never led prayer. Never cracked open the scriptures. I carried everything. And when he did finally get energized? It was for himself.  The burden of the house, yard, kids, and spirituality rest solely on my shoulders. I was expected to carry all the temporal and spiritual loads on my own while he went to work, and I came home to chaos and a checked-out man behind a video game console.

In 2022, he decided to open a business.  He felt this business would be hugely profitable and give him the freedom that he so desperately wanted in his work-life balance.  I remember the conversation we had when he came to me with the idea.  He gushed and gibbered about the amazing financial prospects and the boon this business would be for our family.  He told me how difficult it would be initially to get it off the ground and begged me to be a partner in the workings of the business.  In that moment, the crushing weight of everything that I was already carrying threatened to destroy me.  How could I continue to work 45 hours a week, take care of the home, kids, yard, budget, spiritual needs, emotional needs, and be a business partner?  I broke down in tears and told him that I couldn’t do it; I didn’t want to be a part of this endeavor because I was already dying under the expectations he had placed on me. My tears did nothing to evoke his empathy; he got angry and told me how selfish I was for not supporting his dream.  I stood by my decision not to take on one more thing. He left angry, and I left feeling like the weight of our life together, all on my shoulders, was never enough for him.

In September of 2023, he hired a new employee, an active LDS woman, to help him with bringing in additional clientele. The first time I met her, my stomach dropped. She was aloof, but something didn’t seem right about her.  She fawned over my husband and tried to worm her way into my good graces with fake friendship.  As soon as she started working there, my husband’s behavior shifted dramatically.  Suddenly, he was attending church every Sunday, reading his scriptures at work throughout the day, praying, conducting doctrine study groups out of his business, and attending the temple regularly again (his recommend had expired for nearly 10 years).  None of this behavior rang true for who I knew him to be. The man who avoided religious responsibilities for over a decade was suddenly “righteous” again.

Meanwhile, I was unraveling. Years of spiritual gaslighting, emotional labor, and silence had broken something in me. I started looking into the Gospel Topics essays and listening to such podcasts as “At Last She Said It.” I desperately tried to salvage my testimony, but I saw too many cracks in the system and could not support the church’s attitude toward women and LGBTQ+ individuals.

In a moment of desperation, I went to my husband and presented him with the information that I had found and my feelings about the church.  Instead of being met with love, empathy, or understanding, he lectured me about my sin and how I was following Satan.  Instead of being a spiritual guide, I got a barrage of abusive insults about my unbelief and stupidity for looking into the issues of the church. He called me faithless and stupid. He didn’t offer guidance, just spiritual abuse disguised as a priestly concern.

Our relationship stayed strained and daily felt like navigating a minefield.  He started working longer hours and not coming home until 10 or 11 PM at night.  None of this passed the “smell test” for me.  One day I showed up to his work unannounced only to find him and his coworker sitting too close and touching in a way that felt uncomfortable for me.  I knew they had been texting and calling, so I called my cell phone company to find out how often they were doing this, only to find out that there were phone calls and texts upwards of 500 times a day.  I called him out on it and told him he was having an emotional affair.  He admitted to this and promised to stop. He promised to speak to the bishop and end it for the sake of our marriage and our kids.

He did talk to the bishop, and while I was not privy to that conversation, nothing changed; instead, he confronted me and told me he wanted a divorce because I didn’t believe in the church anymore.  He told me he wanted a divorce because I was no longer a “Celestial Wife.” I was not worthy of standing beside him in the temple. I spiraled, I’d given him 20 years at that point and done EVERYTHING for him, only to be met with disinterest, coldness, emotional abuse, and weaponization of church doctrine to spiritually abuse me.

That summer, the kids and I went on vacation, a vacation that was supposed to be a family outing, but he had “too many clients at work” to go.  When I got home, his phone sent me a message asking if I wanted to see his GPS data and his recent trip to a city that we had never traveled to.  I looked at the data and realized the truth of what I was looking at; the affair had gone past emotional and into physical.  He had stayed at hotels and at her home multiple nights while the kids and I were away.  When I confronted him, he didn’t say a word or admit anything. I kicked him out and filed for a divorce.

When I went to the bishop with phone records and hotel receipts, I expected accountability. Instead, I was told not to “look over the hedge into his home.” In other words, don’t dig. Don’t question. Don’t expose. Just let it go. He had admitted to the emotional affair, but dismissed everything else. No discipline. No public accountability. Instead, he was fellowshipped welcomed with open arms as someone “struggling.” Meanwhile, I, the woman who had carried the burdens of our marriage, raised our children in the faith, and dared to voice my doubts, was cast out. My husband eventually tried to excuse his betrayal by claiming that his new partner was more righteous, more worthy to lead him and our children to the Celestial Kingdom. It was a cruel, delusional lie he clung to, not out of truth, but to silence his guilt and justify the devastation he caused.

I was destroyed.  My husband of 20 years cheated, lied, and committed adultery, one of the biggest sins in any religion, and instead of being met with compassion and fellowship, I was told to let it go and move on.  The bishop encouraged me to get the divorce and not talk to my husband about it.  My whole life felt like a lie.  My husband, who was supposed to be my spiritual leader, dismissed and belittled me, and now the leader of my congregation was doing the same.

When I wasn’t granted a cancellation of my sealing prior to the finalization of my divorce, I felt my hand being forced; I withdrew my membership and didn’t look back.

After all of it happened I sought out online communities for support what I found is that this isn’t a unique story.

Too often in the Church, a man can cheat, lie, abandon his covenants, and still be seen as redeemable. My ex still regularly attends church, pays tithing, puts on the “Good Mormon Boy” show for everyone around him, and has promised his “new love” a temple marriage while continuing to emotionally and spiritually abuse the kids and me. The facade of goodness outweighs his actions, and the church continues to allow him to do so.

But for me, a woman who questions, who leaves, who stands up and says “enough”? I’m dangerous. I’m disobedient, and ultimately, I was expendable. I didn’t hold the priesthood, I didn’t blindly follow the church, so I was the one forced to leave.

I spent 20 years being everything he wasn’t. And in the end, I was the one exiled and forgotten, cast aside for a man who presents as “righteous”.  The message was clear, dissent among the women is unacceptable.

There were many reasons for me to leave the church, but the biggest reason wasn’t because I didn’t love God, but because the Church stopped loving women like me.

The Author was a member of the LDS church for 40 years. A seeker of truth. Writing to release.

From Covenant Path to Coven Path

When you’re raised Mormon, patriarchal blessings are a big deal. Think of it as a cross between the Sorting Hat, putting you into a house with specific characteristics, and revelation that can feel like low-key fortunetelling. It’s meant to provide you with insight and guidance. I received mine when I was 12. My grandfather, a patriarch, was widely known for his detailed and insightful blessings. For years I looked to it for comfort and direction. But at a certain point, most of it no longer served me. Maybe it was being the only active member left in my immediate family. Maybe it was the divorce. Either way, what had once been a road map and an ode to the eternal family felt obsolete at best and a cruel taunt at worst. But I missed what it once gave me: hope, counsel, and a feeling of being known by the divine. 

When I realized I needed more inspiration and direction, I decided to do something about it. I reached out to my cousin Mattson (@mattsonm) who has been very deliberate in his spiritual journey, eventually apprenticing with a shaman in the New Mexico desert. He reads tarot cards (among other spiritual practices) and I have seen enough of his proficiency to know that he inherited the gift of our grandfather: the ability to tease the veil and communicate what he senses. I reached out to him and said I was expanding my journey from what I’ve jokingly heard called the Covenant Path to the “Coven Path,” seeking women’s ways of knowing. I explained to him my frustration at the limitation of my patriarchal blessing. We laughed at the irony of me seeking a man to help me access a matriarchal blessing. But just as women can be the staunchest defenders of male power, Mistresses of Patriarchy if you will, so too can men be in concert with divine feminine and spiritual practices honed by women over millennia. 

Given that we live in different states, we set up a session via Zoom. I was a bit skeptical of that medium at first. As a therapist I do sessions both in person and teletherapy and I prefer being in the same room as my client. But the way Mattson sets it up, the camera is arranged so I only see the cards and his hands, helping me feel more present and allowing me to stay focused on the process. Plus he recorded the session and shared it after. I have gone back and rewatched it several times now and love that I can do that. 

If you are unfamiliar with reading cards, there are lots of ways they are used. Some people pull a card for daily insight. Some approach the cards with a specific question. For our session, Mattson shuffled the cards and then spread them into a circle like the frame of a mirror or the edges of a pond. In the center he placed one card then four sets of three–north, south, east, west–that surround that central card, with a total of 13. The center represents current reality and each of the directions is an “exegesis of how you got here;” they warn of obstacles and offer insight, guidance and possible resources. Not terribly different from a traditional blessing in this respect. But unlike a patriarchal blessing, this maternal reading was interactive: Mattson regularly asked me questions and my answers helped him interpret what he saw, making me feel a co-author to the experience. 

I won’t share what was illuminated for me any more than I would reveal what my patriarchal blessing said. But I will share that the process itself was powerful and I feel seen by God in new ways. I think this is partially because of the connection I feel to my cousin, that he has witnessed some of the hardships in my life and was able to address them directly. Looking back, I know now that at the time of that original blessing, my grandpa’s life was imploding. Could he glimpse my similar trials and hope he could speak a smoother path into being? Did it serve me to have a shiny celestial blessing at 12 and now, mid-fifties, to embrace a more terrestrial one? 

As Mormon women, we receive mixed messages about our agency. “Speak up” we are told, but don’t be outspoken. I told my very devout mother what I was going to do and I could tell it stressed her out. She wants me to seek inspiration, but through traditional ways. Back in Nauvoo when Joseph was about to be imprisoned, Emma asked for a blessing and he instructed her to write her own which he would later sign, sanctifying her words. But he never had the chance. Emma considered the blessing divine regardless and I love the idea of acting on our own behalf, not waiting on others for deliverance. I learned this story from my mother, who often told about the women in our ancestral lines, like Lydia Knight leaving a bad marriage to join the saints, eventually making it across the plains despite Brigham taking her wagon and team of cattle and giving it to someone else. Twice. A few years ago we discovered we are descendants of Rebecca Nurse, accused of witchcraft and hanged during the Salem Witch Trials. Women of power and faith who were determined and resourceful. I come from strong women who crossed oceans and plains, supported families on their own, and stood their ground when challenged.

Am I that different from Emma, seeking inspiration and guidance during a time of trial, imbuing words with power in the hopes of finding solace? The longer I am on the journey, the more I recognize the variety of sources that can aid me in my quest for knowledge and connection with God. I don’t believe I am forsaking my faith or my grandfather, but expanding it. I am not turning my back on the gospel, but using all my senses to absorb the good news. Let me share a quote from Lavina Fielding Anderson—a matriarch, a wise woman, a fellow seeker of the divine—whose words both warn and exhort Mormon women: “I feel that we may have circumscribed our limits too narrowly. Our birthright is joy not weariness, courage not caution, and faith not fear. By covenant and consecration, may we claim it.” Like a prophecy, those words are inscribed in my heart; I use them to guide me on my path—sometimes straight and narrow, sometimes twisty and wide, and always leading me home.