Exponent II's Blog, page 165

Sacred Music Sunday: When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

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Isaac Watts sure knew how to write a hymn. So many of my favorite hymns were written by him. One that I really love that I wish were in our hymnal is When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. I was first introduced to this hymn when I was in the MTC. I was in the choir, and we performed this hymn for a devotional one week.

I like how the music is simultaneously joyful and haunting. It captures my feelings about the Atonement perfectly – joy at the love that motivated Jesus to do it, and a haunting feeling of the reality of the suffering involved and my part in that suffering.

Rather than simply dwelling on the suffering, the hymn concludes with an admonition to devote our lives to Christ. So many times in the world today, we hear of terrible suffering, and a lot of times the story stops there, with little to no instruction on how to do something about it.

Here, we are told to give our whole souls to Christ. And that gives us some marching orders. We give our whole souls to Christ by following His commandment – to love our neighbor. If we do that, we will not only properly respond to Christ’s Atonement, but we will also be able to properly respond to the suffering in the world.

Blessing for the Undernurtured Child Within

Dear Sister ______,

I give you a blessing for the undernurtured child inside. For too long you have clung to the lie that perfectionism would protect you. You let it tear at your self worth, buried in efforts to do more and be more, never satisfied with your own attempts. You thought if you were more perfect you would finally deserve love. But all along, you were loved and held. You were always worthy. You deserved to be protected and cherished. You can never convince the unloving to love you or the unapproving to approve. Do not make yourself invisible and small and silent. May you feel light as you let go of hustling. I release you from that armor.

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You do not need to hide or redirect your ‘negative’ emotions. Do not bury them and ignore them, but instead listen to them, feel them, let them teach you where something is wrong and change it. If you feel angry, it’s okay. Anger is your teacher. It will show you things you need to know. Let yourself feel it and reach into it to discover the lesson. Find out its shape and texture, examine where it sits in your body. It will retreat when you are ready. If you’re hurting, it’s okay. Pain is also a teacher. It fades with time, you do not need to fear it. If you’re tired, it’s okay, please rest. I release you from constant vigilance and the weight of the world.  If you’re afraid, it’s okay. Reach into your deep knowing and reclaim your sovereignty. All of your feelings can help you recover and find wholeness as you make your own way. Give yourself grace and let it take the time it takes to recover from your trauma. You are capable of remaking your life.

Recognizing your human deficiency is not to make you ashamed and small. It is a gift to show you what you still need to let go of and what you need to embrace. Appreciate even your faults, for what they can teach you. I release you from envy, you can bless and celebrate other women in their growth and achievement. I bless you to tell your own story and bring hope and light to others. Speak in a way that gives life to yourself and others.

Your words speak powerful truths. Your eyes see majesty and beauty. Your hands work goodness. Your body is your holy of holies. Your life will mean what you make it mean, let your dreams run wild and free. Make time to develop your interests and abilities without apology. 

Who benefits when you don’t trust yourself and hand over your sovereignty? Who benefits if you despise your body and become preoccupied with checking imaginary boxes? When you see only faults and insufficiency?



Daughter you must own yourself. Love yourself as you would nurture your own small daughter. Eat of the best foods, drink to thirst, sleep to restfulness, remember to play hard and love warmly and freely like the sun. Follow your own soul’s longing for wholeness, nourish yourself with beauty, truth and goodness. Your self is worthy of trust. Take up your life and make of it what you will. Carry your safety and worthiness in that deep place inside.



In the name of love, these things are yours. So be it.

Silver Linings

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This has been such a strange time.  Every person has been affected in various ways.  I still wake up feeling like I am in some sort of apocalyptic movie, but I am surprised at how normal it is beginning to feel.

Sometime I am nostalgic for the other way of living.  “BC” or “Before Covid”, if you will.  Gatherings like concerts and sporting events and conferences all seem like dim memories of a distant past.  I feel dread about the upcoming election, and shame and horror about so much of what is in the news.

But.  But I am beginning to see some glimmers.  Perhaps a wisp of a silver lining.  There are always two sides to the coin. This in no way mitigates all the various ways of suffering.  I am looking, eagerly, for a bit of silver.

I planted a garden early in the spring.  Gardening is perhaps my most optimistic activity.  I have had my share of fatalities, of course, but the new potatoes and ripe tomatoes have been sublime. I never felt such encouragement from my flowers and vegetables, before.

The mundane task of grocery shopping has yielded unexpected joy- flour! I can now buy flour! There is toilet paper again!  Hurrah for lemons and limes!  I never appreciated those things, before.

I am a member of a book club.  It has been meeting monthly for almost thirty years.  We had a couple of months of  Zoom book clubs, but recently we met again, in person, six feet apart, masked.  To just be together with dear, old friends, was marvelous.  We were so very happy to see one another.  Book club never quite felt like that, before.

So I haven’t learned another language, or how to keep a sourdough starter alive (I am still traumatized by that Amish Friendship Bread that made the relief society rounds years ago), or written my personal history, or read Moby Dick.  Some days just getting up and doing the daily things feels like an accomplishment. The great dark clouds are real.  Worldwide there are 612,000 dead. That is a stunning number, especially given the bungled opportunities and appalling lack of leadership. I am seeing a few faint twinkles of  silver lining though.  Are you?

 

It is Time for Mormon Women to Shine

You know what I love? History. I love reading it, researching it, listening to documentaries and history podcasts and so on. I especially love Mormon women’s history. As well as being a source for me to meditate upon, and apply to my life (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”- George Santayana), history is sometimes a way for me to escape from the angst of today.

There is so much angst today. The world is in the midst of a pandemic where one needs only to glance at any media source to be inundated with opposing political views, racism, blaming, boycotts, angry rivalling voices, and overall duress.

In this confusion, I have had friends, but Mormon and not, “take a break” from all media, including email as remedy to their state of mental health which steadily declined as a result of the media. I confess to being one of those “break” people.

In my temporary retreat, I read poetry and history while crocheting and quilting with bright coloured materials to lift my mood. Weaving and cutting soft pinks and peacock blues, it came to me that we are in a global war against COVID19. Thus, I sought refuge in reading war-time stories of countries pulling together through “victory gardens” and sharing wheat stores with those in need—not by hoarding toilet paper. Before and during the First World War, Relief Societies worked directly with the Red Cross to organize nursing and nurses’ aids classes, as well as sewing lessons. They did this to be a positive influence on the communities where these women lived, and united to sing from the new Relief Society Song Book, Lucy A. R. Clark’s “New Freedom Song”:

 

We come, we come in mighty throngs

To do the Christian’s part:

The hungry feed, the naked clothe,

Bind up the broken heart.

Women of Covenant, 199

It was in this that I realised: This is the perfect time for Mormon women to shine. Today. Here. Now.

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We have been taught to have food storage. Now we get to share it! It was a relief for me to have enough flour so that my routine of baking two loaves of bread, and giving one away could continue. Not only that, being able to do this helped me to continue to communicate with my neighbours which in turn aided my mental health.

And I sew. I learned to sew as a teen because I was too poor to buy my own flower-print church dresses. Plus, I always liked loud-print pants.

Right now, I sew masks.

We all know that masks protect from the spread of COVID19. So before school went back for my children, I contacted the headmaster to find is they needed certain colour masks to match their school uniforms. He responded that it did not matter—he was all about protecting the children. So I made him a mask. And he wore a matching tie on the first day of school, demonstrating the government guidelines and school recommendations for wearing a mask. My kids were thrilled—and as I sewed, I smiled and felt in tune with the Relief Society sisters of a century ago.

World War I had a weighty impact on women’s suffrage because women played such a powerful part on the home front. The sacrifice and work of women to keep their countries financially stable as well as providing assistance, support and care for soldiers did not go unnoticed. It was just after the end of the war in 1920 that white American women were able to vote for the first time in a presidential election.

Maybe that break from media made me sappy. I am certainly aware of those who oppose wearing masks and claim it is an infringement of their rights. But I am relief society woman. The sisters before me taught me better than to be selfish. They taught me that when we work together, we are successful. They taught me to share my food storage. They taught me to care and to heal to the best of my ability. They taught me to sew and to share that talent.

It is our time to shine, sisters.

#sewthemask

#wearthemask

Shorts, Garments, and Hairy Legs: Taking Ownership of My Body

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Three years ago, I stopped wearing garments. I’d worn them about half the time the year before during pregnancy and after having my son. I eventually became used to the feel of my clothes moving against my bare skin, the breeze on my back through the yarn of knit sweaters, and the improvement of health and hygiene that came from increased air circulation in private areas. I still wore garments out of habit, loyalty, and a tiny bit of fear until, one day, I didn’t anymore. 

As with many lasts, the last time I took off my garments, I didn’t know it would be the last time. But days turned into weeks and then months, and I never put them on again. 

The unexpected byproduct of the decision to only wear garments when I wanted to was a sense of exhilarated liberation. For the first time, I felt I was taking ownership of my body. It was the first small step toward taking back my own moral authority from the church I’d outsourced it to for so long.  

Two years ago, in scorching summer heat that I weathered in jeans, I set a goal for myself: the next summer, I would wear “real” shorts. In public.

I’ve always hated knee-length shorts. To me, they’re uncomfortable and unflattering, restrictive and heat retaining. Despite living in one of the hottest places in the US, I nearly always opted for trousers in the summer, preferring jeans to long shorts. 

Last summer, I tentatively wore my one pair of mid-thigh shorts to school pickup a handful of times and once to the grocery store. Despite my resolution the year before, I felt self conscious and harbored worries about running into members of my ward. I watched other moms picking up their children from school, apparently completely unconcerned over their weather-appropriate clothing, and I imagined how amused they’d be if they could sense my internal turmoil over a few inches of thigh emerging from a pair of completely banal shorts.

This summer, while I’ve worn shorts regularly in my own house and yard (where I spend the vast majority of my time #copingwithcovid19), I’ve hit a new mental barrier to public shorts wearing: I’ve stopped shaving my legs.

Other than a brief novelty-fueled enjoyment of shaving in my adolescence, I’ve always disliked it. In my last shower there was no ledge of any sort, so to shave, I had to awkwardly brace my foot against the wall while I balanced on the other leg (a hundred bucks says a man designed that shower). In high school, I sometimes braved razor burn and quickly shaved with lotion before running out the door rather than be seen with stubbly legs. At church during the winter, I’d often wear my one long skirt week after week to avoid shaving. But I’d always shave when I knew I’d be swimming or showing my legs.

There is a sensory pleasure in shaved legs: the feel of them sliding frictionless against bedsheets, the silky caress of a breeze on smooth calves. But I’ve discovered there’s a sensory pleasure in hairy legs, too: air currents gently move through leg hair like ocean currents through seaweed, the subtle pleasant ruffling of follicles undulating individual hairs against bare skin.

I have no objection to anyone who chooses to shave their legs for any of a myriad number of personal reasons. I do object, however, to a culture that insists women groom themselves in a certain (often time consuming, expensive, and painful) way in order to be seen as acceptable while requiring practically nothing of men. 

While I think I have the fortitude to wear “real” shorts in public with shaved legs and face the judgment (real or imagined) of my righteousness from Church members OR to wear knee shorts in public with hairy legs and face the judgment (real or imagined) of my femininity from the public at large, I’m having the hardest time potentially offending both groups on both fronts at once. It’s one layer too many of nonconformity for my already anxious self concept.

It’s easy to say, “Who cares what other people think?” and “No one will even notice!” But while I know this on an intellectual, rational level, fighting against a lifetime of immersive religious and cultural conditioning to be pretty, to conform, to cover up, to view my body as an object, is exhausting. Even more exhausting than spending days of my one wild and precious life resentfully shaving or sweating through summers in jeans. But as with bringing about any cultural change, there must be those who are willing to break ranks to push the needle forward.

So when you see me in Costco pushing an embarrassingly full cart with my face mask, shorts, and hairy legs, know that I am saying to you and to myself with my body, I can wear shorts and be moral. I can have hairy legs and be feminine. And so can you.

Idea: Make Statues of Polygamous Wives

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This is a statue of Bishop David Evans. He’s a founding father of Lehi, Utah, where I’ve lived for 17 years.

Statues of slaveholders and colonizers are coming down left and right these days, and the controversy is intense. I’ve tried to imagine how it would feel to be a slave from the 1800s and see the person who owned me memorialized into a statue, or how it must feel to be the descendant of that slave and see those monuments every time I walk across my college campus or town square. I can only imagine their feelings, but the same thought experiment got me thinking about a statue in my own town – and one whose problems I can identify with more personally.

See, I’ve lived in Lehi, Utah for over 17 years. I built my house here while still a senior at BYU in 2003 and I’ve lived (and loved it) here ever since. 

One part of Lehi that I regularly use is the community recreation center, called the Lehi Legacy Center. My best estimate is that I’ve walked through those front doors about 3,200 times between aerobics classes, swimming pool trips, gymnastics classes and preschool lessons. It feels like my second home. 

In front of the Legacy Center is a statue of a Lehi Founding Father named David Evans. He was the first bishop and second mayor in Lehi, and I even learned recently that my last stake president was the model for the sculptor, as he is a direct descendant of Bishop Evans. 

One morning during the summer of 2018, my aerobics instructor took our class outside because the weather was beautiful that day. We circled around this statue for our group workout. (We even used his leg to wrap our exercise bands around when we were short partners, and made jokes about his “buns of steel”.) The morning was perfect, the workout was great, and many of us paused to read about this man we’d all been walking by for years, yet never stopped to learn about. 

He sounds like a cool enough guy. He was the bishop in Lehi for almost 30 years. He survived the Haun’s Mill Massacre, was part of the Mormon Battalion, the second mayor of Lehi, laid out the grid for the city, got water diverted from American Fork Canyon down to the people, lots of other historical stuff I’m glad he did for my city, and had seven wives and 41 children. One kid was even adopted. He has a very impressive life resume! I guess he earned a statue here. It’s fine. 

But as I left that day, all I could think about were his seven wives and 41 children. To have time to build that impressive resume, he couldn’t have been a very engaged husband or father. It would be hard with only one family, let alone seven of them!

I happen to be an army wife with 4 years of foreign deployments under my belt. I know what it’s like to be the one left at home with the kids while my husband is applauded as he walks through the airport in his uniform and the news interviews him as he returns in glory (and by all means, clap for him, he’s awesome). The very first night of his most recent deployment (right after he appeared on the news), two of my young children became violently ill within a few minutes of each other at the stroke of midnight. There wasn’t a clean towel or sheet in the house by 1 am. I’ve never had such sick kids before or since, and it was almost comical – what universal practical joker made this happen the very first night of another year long deployment, right? I couldn’t even be upset, because it was so absurdly funny.

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This is one of the two kids who was happy and cheerful the morning my husband left, only to become disgustingly sick all over my bathroom later  that night.

I’ve thought about that night ever since. Yes, my husband and others like him go into harm’s way and sacrifice to preserve our way of life, but he literally could not dream of doing it without me at home, cleaning his kids’ projectile vomit off the walls. (And nobody applauds for the puke cleaner when she walks through the airport.)

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I looked through old deployment airport photos and saw this one. My husband had just returned from a year in Iraq in 2011, and someone snapped this photo of me standing to the side in the pink sweater while the news reporter interviewed my husband holding our two kids. They didn’t even acknowledge I was there, despite the fact that I was the one who actually kept those two children alive the prior 12 months. The reporter was only interested in him.

Over the years I’ve read many histories of early polygamist wives in the church, and they are often excruciating. There are stories of young teenage girls becoming the plural wives of older church leaders, raising their kids essentially as young single mothers on the frontier, never having more than a formal, polite “he’s my priesthood leader and I respect his authority” relationship with their husbands, who spend one or two nights with them a month. When the husband with a future statue survives the Haun’s Mill attack, that means his wife(s) probably did, too. When he marches with the Mormon Battalion, that means she stayed home alone, with all of his children, running things in his absence – all in a place where there are no security systems, 911 operators, or emergency rooms. (Or cars. Or Netflix!) And although he will often have a wife in more than one city he visits or rotates between, she has to remain celibate and faithful and alone for 90 percent of the time. I read these women’s stories, and it feels SO UNFAIR. 

That morning two years ago, I spent an hour circling the statue of Bishop Evans with hand weights doing lunges and bicep curls. His statue has seven cement rectangles with the names of his seven wives radiating from the center where he stands, like the points of a star, with him as the center. Someone raised a halfhearted concern by saying, “It’s not disrespectful to him to do this, is it?”, while no one even noticed that we’d been stepping on the names of the women all hour.

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Bishop Evans’ wives are printed in the cement around him.

All I could personally think about as I read his plaque and lunged around his buns of steel was, “How much puke did these women clean up so that he’d be free to make up the grid system for Lehi?” He gets credit at the base of his statue for raising dozens of children that I would be willing to bet he spent significantly less time caring for than the women who were NOT memorialized equally on the monument with him. 

Finally (on my list of frustrations), he was born in 1804. His seventh wife was born in 1843. That last marriage happened in 1861. This means that he was 57 years old with six wives when he married an 18 year old girl. I was 18 once. I was not attracted to 57 year old men at the time. I’m now 39, and they’re still too old for me. An 18 year old (presumably) virgin girl becoming the wife of a much older, very experienced man, in a position of political and ecclesiastical authority over her – it just feels gross. A typical 18 year old girl will have pretty intense desires for love, intimacy and romance, yet she has to funnel all of her passion and hormones and love into one night a month with a silver-haired grandpa who has been her bishop since she was born. 

And sure, things were very different then and I have no idea who was fine with what and maybe this teenage girl was happy with the arrangement. I certainly can’t speak for her, although I can imagine what all of Bishop Evans’ wives might have endured to help him create Lehi city. I do, however, feel confident saying that I want some new statues of the women who made it possible for the men to build our cities, because I’m pretty sure they were just as capable of plotting maps as their husbands. Instead, they were put in charge of the invisible, lonely, supportive work that allowed the men the freedom to do all the awesome stuff we like to read about in history books and on plaques in front of their larger than life bronze statues.

Until then, I’ll keep giving this statue the side eye each time I pass by it on my way into the gym, and think about all the women at home who made his remarkable achievements even possible in the first place. I’ll pretend there are statues for all seven of them in between him and the front doors and give them imaginary high fives, from one army wife to a bunch of polygamous wives. I like to think we get each other. 

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My 11 year old daughter and I stopped for a selfie with the backside of David Evans yesterday (because the sun was in our eyes facing the other way). I had to promise to buy her a drink inside because she thought it was weird to pose for a photo with a random statue while people walked by.

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The family of Bishop Evans, listed at the base of his statue.

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A short bio of his life, on the other side.

The Parable of the Sower

I gave this sermon at Centre Place’s Beyond the Walls online worship service on July 12, 2020. Centre Place is the home of the Toronto congregation of Community of Christ. The video recording of the live stream is at the end of the post.

[image error]Vincent Van Gogh, The Sower, 1888, oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

At the end of the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9), Jesus asks his audience “Are you listening to this? Really listening?” I see the text of this story offering different meanings and interpretations to readers throughout time, readers were hearing different messages in this parable, who were responding to the needs and demands of their own context.

There are many medieval illustrations of the sower, which would have resonated with people whose lives and livelihoods revolved around the growing of food and the seasons of the year. In medieval Europe, the twelve months were each associated with a different agricultural activity, and the whole program was referred to as the Labors of the Months, with regional variations. The Labors of the Months were a standard program of decoration for churches and cathedrals. Planting was the labor of the month associated with April and spring and also the winter planting, in mild climates, of October. Representing this labor in Christian art was part of marking the passing of time and the seasonal cycles of the year.

During the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, many French painters celebrated the rural simplicity of the sower in contrast to a world that was becoming increasingly mechanized and capitalist. For them, the sower had a deeply spiritual connection to the land he worked. French Realists like Jean-François Millet through to Post Impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh idealized the sower’s peasant class, humility, and faith as he performed tasks in the appropriate season, as farmers had done for thousands of years. 

What does this parable mean to us today and right now, in the middle of a global pandemic and global conversations about race and racism? What are we hearing?

I have sat through many lessons and settings where we got bogged down in the details of the story and in its interpretation. These days I tend to ask “Who am I in this story? And where is the Divine?” I’m not sure that the text offers easy answers.

Are we the sower? I feel like biblical commentaries don’t do enough to critique a farmer who throws his valuable seeds into the gravel and rocks and hopes for things to work out. This carelessness makes it hard for me to read the sower as God, but it does remind me of the time my toddler threw a handful of seeds into the garden bed. But that is the parable of the Unexpected Radishes, a story for another time.

Are we the seeds? Or are the seeds related to faith, as in the parable of the mustard seed that follows this one? Is God a seed? 

Are we the ground? Or does the ground symbolize our willingness to embrace faith? Or something about our circumstances or attitude? It is hard to see the rocks and gravel as symbols of the Divine. 

And ultimately, what I really want to know is who is the bad guy in this story and how do I hold myself at a distance from them and their sinful ways? Whether that villain is represented is the sower, the seeds, or the different types of ground, I’m against them and happy to declare my opposition to their ways in a public statement.

There are a lot of symbols and elements at work in this story and I’m struggling to pick out a meaningful alignment of interpretations. I’m not sure that I’m any closer to locating the divine or myself here. Nor am I sure what this parable has to say about building Zion in our present context. So I’m going to let it go for a bit and tell you a more pressing story in my life about gardening, where I have a little more clarity of interpretation.

When my husband and I were graduate students in the UK, we got hooked on an English TV show about country life and were eager to try it out. When we moved to Southern Utah years ago, we lived in the country and had a large garden and orchard, where my husband planted 30 fruit and nut trees and built eight large garden beds. We raised chickens and kept bees. I learned to can vegetables, manage watering schedules, and keep back the towering and thorny desert weeds. My husband learned to build chicken coops and collect wild bees that swarmed in the neighbor’s yard. My girls spent their early childhoods years collecting eggs and eating peas out of the pod, hot from the desert sun. 

A few years ago we moved from that house, garden, and orchard, to a house closer to our workplace and schools. We were fortunate to get a house with a backyard. My husband built a long garden bed so that we could continue to grow a few things, though I was not sad to give up canning or weeding. 

At this moment, we have four tomato plants and this is where our contemporary parable begins. The tomato plants are all varieties that we’ve planted before, ones that grow well in our desert climate. The seedlings were all the same size when we put them into the ground and set up our watering hoses, but today that is not the case. 

At one end of the bed is our cherry tomato plant and I cannot say enough good things about this one. It has grown so much that it has spilled over the side of the garden bed and is overtaking a rose bush. It is perhaps five or six feet in diameter. Its vines hold a hundred tiny yellow flowers and many developing tomatoes in shades of green, orange, and red. Every day for the last week or so, it has produced enough cherry tomatoes to fill a large bowl. The fruit has a full tomato flavor and is sweet like ripe berries. They are at their peak right now and couldn’t be any more delicious. We’ve eaten them on salads, with pasta, and hot off the vine. This plant produces exactly the kinds of tomatoes that you long for in the winter months. They are divine.

In the middle of the garden bed are two tomato plants of a similar size. They aren’t thriving in the way that the first plant is thriving, but they are producing full size tomatoes that have a richer, less sweet flavor. The plants are healthy and bushy with large green leaves. We will have fewer tomatoes from these plants, but still many rounds of sliced tomatoes for sandwiches and plenty for homemade pasta sauces and salsa.

The final plant has not done nearly as well as the other three. There are only a few tomatoes developing on this plant and they are all small – undersized for their variety. The plant is struggling and straggly. It is not bushy and does not currently show much promise. 

My husband and I spent weeks watching these four plants grow: the over-productive cherry tomato plant, the thriving plants in the middle, and the struggling plant at the end. While the plants were growing, we could see the differences in their growth patterns, but ultimately, the problem did not become clear until the three plants reached full size and started producing fruit. The one on the end just didn’t live up to expectations and we couldn’t figure out why. 

In the last few days, we’ve observed the garden bed closely and worked it out. The over-productive cherry tomato plant is right next to the garden spout. Even though we tried to rinse out last year’s soaker hoses to use them this year, the plant next to the spout was getting the most water and the hoses were too clogged to distribute water to all four plants evenly. The two plants in the middle were getting enough water, enough resources, but the plant on the end was not. It was struggling to survive on not enough.

So now that we know where the problem is, we have some ideas about how to fix it. I don’t think we will get around to replacing the soaker hose this year, but next year we will. In the meantime, our growing season is long – I routinely pick tomatoes into November. This under-resourced plant needs extra attention and water. It also needs some fertilizer so that it can catch up.

I can’t help but think that the pandemic and the global protests for racial justice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder also have something to do with this gardening story, with the racial justice conversations we are having in many places at the moment. 

As I am thinking about our context, here is what I am hearing and taking away from this story. It is easy to identify myself in this one – I am literally the gardener – but in seeing this story as a metaphor or a parable, I think I’m like the thriving tomato plant. Plenty of education, resources, access to good healthcare, jobs, and opportunity were part of my growth and development and now I have more than enough for what I need. This doesn’t mean my life is perfect, but I am thriving. I have received plenty of water from a hose  – a system – that favored me.

I look around in my community, and like the tomato plants in the middle, there are many people who are also doing well and succeeding in life, living in homes and apartments, with access to jobs, education, resources, and healthcare. They have received the water that is needed for growth and development.

There are also folks at the fringes of my community that people prefer to ignore, seeing only the people who are doing well and refusing to see those who are not. My community has many stories that it has told itself about the people who are not thriving, who do not have enough access to jobs, resources, opportunities, education, and healthcare. There are stories about individual poor choices, about not pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, about not doing things the way other, more successful groups, do things. 

We tend not to question these stories and instead accept them as truth, refusing to hear, as Jesus calls us to do, from those who are disadvantaged by our systems. There is little awareness or attention to the defective hose that does not deliver the needed water or resources and a general resistance in our stories to identify this problem as a systemic one. We prefer the narrative of individual failings, which allow us to blame those who are not thriving and hold them at a distance from ourselves. 

There is little awareness of additional barriers or problems that folks on the margins of my community face, from being harassed by police officers to the daily indignities of discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, poverty, disability, and immigration status. I cannot say that all my tomato plants matter to me while ignoring the needs of this tomato plant. I cannot say that I uphold the Worth of All People and declare that All Are Called while ignoring the gifts, talents, insights, and humanity of those on the margins. My words would be hollow, like the hose that is supposed to deliver life-giving water, but doesn’t. I must work to fix this system if I wish to be a person of integrity, as my expressions of caring matter little on their own.

As a theologian-in-training, I am compelled by ideas of social justice from feminist and liberation theologians. Feminist theologians ask us to hear the lived experiences of those on the margins and to advocate for flourishing life in these spaces. Liberation theologians ask us to consider that the Eurocentric ideas and models of justice that formed us also upheld white supremacy, class privilege, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. For white folks like me, our ideas of justice and fairness are bound up with these forms of oppression, which do not support justice for all. Liberation theologians ask us to see God on the side of those at the margins, to stand in solidarity with these folks, and follow their lead as we hear God’s call to undo oppressive systems, which will end oppression and free us from the sins associated with it.

At the end of the Parable of the Sower, Jesus asks “Are you listening to this? Really listening?” And after considering my tomato plants, I feel like maybe there are some messages in Jesus’ parable that I am now hearing. I see God in the figure of the sower, inviting us to exercise seeds of faith in a Zion community, with mixed results. 

Doctrine & Covenants 164:9b tells us “When your willingness to live in sacred community as Christ’s new creation exceeds your natural fear of spiritual and relational transformation, you will become who you are called to be. The rise of Zion the beautiful, the peaceful reign of Christ, awaits your whole-hearted response to the call to make and steadfastly hold to God’s covenant of peace in Jesus Christ.”

This verse holds compelling imagery, inviting us into transformation, which sounds both beautiful and challenging. I want to imagine that being transformed by God’s covenant of peace looks like having a picturesque but powerful moment of spiritual awakening as I release a dove in a forest. Instead, I wonder if God is actually inviting us to wrestle with our complicity in systems of oppression and then work to undo them to build something better. Easy gestures that point to peace and justice are not what God is calling us to, but real transformation where we understand new things about ourselves and our communities, making new kinds of choices. It does seem as though that invitation is the one in front of us today. Will we be like the rocks and the gravel, unable to let peace and justice take root in our hearts and actions, or will we be fertile ground for growing peace and justice in ourselves and in our communities?

Pray with me. 

God, help us to open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to the truths of our communities today. Guide our hands and feet as we seek to build a just and peaceful Zion. Amen.

My sermon begins at 30:40

Guest Post: “For the Weak and Weakest of All Saints”–The Word of Wisdom in the Time of COVID-19

[image error]by Aimee Hickman

While most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints practice the Word of Wisdom as a law of health which offers “temporal and spiritual blessings” to the body, it was also delivered as revelation for the collective well-being of the body of the Saints. Recorded in Doctrine & Covenants Section 89, it declares itself in service to the “temporal salvation of all saints in the last days—Given for a principle with promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints.” 

As health benefits associated with following many aspects of the Word of Wisdom have been scientifically verified in the 187 years since it was written, it seems we have focused more on individual blessings of those who adhere to its guidance and less on how our collective actions bless the “weak and weakest of all saints.” Yet the Word of Wisdom tells us  from the outset that it  is written as a communal “greeting—not by commandment or constraint, but by revelation and the word of wisdom, showing forth the order and will of God in the temporal salvation of all saints in the last days.” This is not a document designed to simply prove individual worthiness or protect one’s health, but to strengthen the entire body of Christ, and protect its most vulnerable members. As a global pandemic encircles our planet, remembering that the Word of Wisdom was delivered not simply for individual salvation but for the collective “temporal salvation of all the saints in the last days” seems especially prescient—and urgent.

With this understanding, the demonstration in my hometown of Provo, Utah this week of a maskless crowd cramming into  a Utah County Commission Meeting and demanding their right to breathe potentially COVID-19-infected air in schools and other public buildings by not wearing a mask, is an affront to the most foundational principles of the Word of Wisdom. When Utah County Commissioner, Bill Lee (a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints according to his bio on the Utah County government website), threw red meat to the crowd by declaring, “I don’t like government mandates” as he removed the mask he was wearing, he chose partisan jargon over community commitment among a group of many avowed Saints. For all the times I have heard Church members cite modern scientific findings as evidence of the Word of Wisdom’s inspired teachings, it is disappointing and appalling to see so many of them now disregard scientific research that proves wearing a mask is currently the most effective thing we can do to stop the spread of a virus which is especially lethal to the most vulnerable members of our society. How, when we read the Word of Wisdom’s promise to benefit “the weakest of all saints” do we not also hear, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me?” (Matthew 25:40)

Refusing to wear a mask and flaunting an unwillingness to protect oneself or others from a virus which has taken the lives of over half a million people world-wide and continues to ravage the most vulnerable, is not only a betrayal of the Word of Wisdom, but makes a mockery of it. “For the weak and weakest of all the saints,” wear the darn mask!

Guest Post: Still

[image error]by N. Christensen

We still love you, they said.

Even though your countenance is dark

We’re so sad for you.

Was it pride or sin or did you choose offense?

But we can still be friends.

You’ve turned your back on your covenants

You’ve turned your back on God

You’ve turned your back on this family

You’ve betrayed your ancestors

But we can coexist.

We’ll respect you if you respect our beliefs

Just sit there in silence

Don’t speak up

Your experiences don’t belong to you

It’s our church, you can’t talk about it.

Don’t be bitter

Don’t talk about why

You’re trying to destroy faith

You’ve left the church, now why can’t you leave it alone?

But we can agree to disagree.

Here, this talk made us think of you

Let us bear our testimony

Don’t you dare testify in turn.

We know better than you

You unruly, rebellious child.

You used to be so strong

We used to admire you

We used to trust you

You were never really one of us

What happened to you?

We won’t listen to your lies.

Cover your wounds, the blood makes us uncomfortable.

We’re as secure in our salvation as we are in your unworthiness

But we still love you.

N. Christensen is a teacher of some things, a student of others, and a master of little.

Educated, Activist Women Who Opened College Doors for the Rest of Us

Shortly after publishing my book, Ask a Suffragist: Stories and Wisdom from America’s First Feminists, I was surprised when emails from middle and high school students started coming in. In retrospect it makes sense, but at the time, I didn’t know that an author is also a volunteer mentor for young students. Speaking to America’s young citizens about who came before them and how they will carry on that legacy is a privilege. I love to hear from male students, who understand that just as women’s rights are human rights, women’s history is human history, rich with information to benefit both women and men. I love to hear from female students, the beneficiaries of the work of generations of women and men who opened doors to make their education possible.

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Lucy Stone

The first college in America to admit women alongside men was Oberlin College in Ohio. Since it was literally the only option for an ambitious American woman seeking a college education, several of the nation’s future suffrage leaders attended Oberlin, such as Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, who met at Oberlin and later founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.

At Oberlin, they enrolled in the same public speaking course. Both wanted public speaking careers—Lucy wanted to be an abolitionist and Antoinette wanted to be a minister—but they were dismayed to find that women were expected to learn public speaking by silently listening to their male classmates. They protested the rule and subverted it by forming their own debate society for women.

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Antoinette Brown

After graduation, Antoinette applied for postgraduate theology studies, flummoxing Oberlin officials, who supported co-education but not women in ministry. In the end, they agreed to let Antoinette take the courses but only as a “resident graduate” ineligible for a divinity degree. Even without the degree, Antoinette went on to become the first ordained Protestant woman in the United States.

The friends became sisters-in-law when each married brothers from a progressive Ohio family, Sam and Henry Blackwell. Both brothers became women’s rights activists after witnessing the struggle of their sister, Elizabeth Blackwell, who was rejected from over a dozen medical schools because she was a woman. Eventually, the student body of Geneva Medical College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges) in New York voted to let her in as a joke. Elizabeth became America’s first female medical student, thanks in part to a bunch of young men who wouldn’t take her seriously.

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Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth performed well at Geneva, but when her younger sister, Emily Blackwell, tried to follow in her footsteps, she found that the door that had opened for her sister had since slammed shut. Geneva administrators weren’t willing to repeat the experiment of educating a woman. Emily was accepted at Rush Medical College in Illinois, but her admission was revoked during her first year when the school faced retaliation from the local medical society for having a female student. Emily eventually returned to Ohio and finished her studies at Western Reserve College (now Case Western University).

Shortly after Emily graduated, Elizabeth helped another woman, Marie Zakrzewska, start medical studies at Western Reserve College. In her home country, Marie had battled against a sexist rule prohibiting young single women from attending the school of midwifery in Berlin. (Single ladies would be too distracting to the young men!) She eventually prevailed with the help of a forward-thinking male professor, Dr. Joseph Hermann Schmidt. After graduation, she heard about the women’s rights movement in America and decided to immigrate, but encountered equal doses of sexism here, compounded by anti-immigrant prejudice.

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Marie Zakrzewska

Elizabeth introduced Marie to activists Harriot Hunt and Caroline Severance. Harriot was a self-trained doctor who had tried and failed to gain admission to medical school at the same time Elizabeth had been applying. She had since turned her efforts to helping younger women attain medical educations. While touring Ohio, she collaborated with Caroline, a local women’s club leader, to start a scholarship fund for female medical students. Marie became one of its first beneficiaries. Marie went on to help Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell open the first American hospital administered by women, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, before moving to Massachusetts to teach at the first women’s medical school, New England Female Medical College (now Boston University School of Medicine).

Oberlin was the first college in America to admit black women—but that didn’t happen until about two decades after white women and black men began attending the school.

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Mary Church Terrell

“For,” as Oberlin graduate Mary Church Terrell explained, “not only are colored women with ambition and aspiration handicapped on account of their sex, but they are everywhere baffled and mocked on account of their race.”

Mary became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, a united force to uplift the people of their race by advocating for reforms such as women’s suffrage and universal education. Mary coined their motto: “Lifting as we climb.”

[image error]I like to think that when I donate a bit of time to a teenager, I am lifting that young person as I climb, just as Mary would have me do. The young students who look to me for help with their history projects can be flaky. They send nonsense emails, well-decorated with emojis. They seem to struggle with setting appointments and instead of using their time with me more productively, they often waste the opportunity by peppering me with basic questions they could have answered by googling, or better yet, by reading my book. They are young, and it shows.

But it won’t be long before they are the nation’s workers, activists and leaders. I’m happy to do a small part to contribute to the education of America’s next generation, remembering that education was once a rare gift for a woman. I am grateful that many of the few women who got in to college back when so many barriers stood in their way became human rights activists who made the opportunity available to the rest of us.

This blog post is cross-posted at the Ohio History Connection.