Exponent II's Blog, page 184

Winners of the Exponent Art Scholarship: Gifty Annan-Mensah

Last year, Exponent started an annual art scholarship for Mormon women of color. The goal of the scholarship continues to be to amplify the voices of LDS women artists of color by lending needed support for them to be able to continue to develop their art.

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing the work and words of some of the recipients of that scholarship. These extraordinary women have the ability to seismically change the artistic language of the Church: imagine Come Follow Me manuals, Church members’ homes or Church building hallways full of their work. We’re grateful that they shared it with this community and look forward to announcing this year’s scholarship very soon. If you’d like to contribute to the fund for this year’s scholarship, please contact exponentiieditor AT gmail DOT com.

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Gifty Annan-Mensah:

As an International Artist and educator born in the country of Ghana in West Africa, my main unique focus in art is using Doodles, Zentangles and Mandalas to create phenomenal pieces of art applying them in mediums such as Canvas, prints for interior decor, Acrylic and Metal Prints.

My works tend to run in abstract and semi-abstract designs, I bring African stories into colorful perspective by featuring the African woman in dance, African faces in culture, animals, totems symbols, African textiles suitable for textile and prints all in the African inspired art vein.

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When I dream, I see curated solo exhibits of my works in Galleries all over the USA and internationally, mounted exhibits in hospital atriums and public libraries bringing the colorful stories of Africa into major perspective, making my works part of a collective of talented artists whose beautiful stories in art have to be told.

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More for Mormon Women

More for Mormon Women

 

Guest Post: You Can End My Waking Nightmare

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By Abby Kidd

For the last year I’ve taught Sunday lessons to a class of eleven, twelve, and thirteen year-old young women in my ward. Each Tuesday they emerge from the sliding doors of minivans and hop down from the heights of their families’ suburbans and gather together searching for connection, belonging, and fun. Their scrunchied ponytails bob with their laughter. On Sundays they sit across from me in metal folding chairs and tell me about their lives—their victories and frustrations, their friends and fears, their hopes and disappointments. Together we look for ways to find God in all of it. Even when they are boisterous or noisy, when their young bodies move unthinkingly, fidgeting with trinkets in their hands, snapping gum between their teeth, they are always kind, always looking for ways to love each other. It is easy to love them, to want to protect them. They don’t know that I am queer, but I’ve tried to make it clear to them that I think queer people are good, worthy, lovable humans exactly as they are.

Recently I had a dream. Girls were piled into the back of another leader’s suburban. I chatted with the other leader as we drove and she explained the activity. The mid-tones of the girls’ chatter floated on the air as they visited contentedly on the back bench, connecting with each other as we drove. We came to a stop close to the entry of a narrow bridge, and my throat tightened. “We’re awfully close to the bridge,” I warned. “Oh yeah, there are bridges all over the place here; there’s really no avoiding them,” she answered, unconcerned. I glanced again at the roadway, at the arches between the waist-high railing. “They’ll jump,” I told her. This wasn’t speculation. In the dream, I knew they would jump, knew that some of them, many of them even, were having suicidal thoughts right now, and that at least one of them would jump if we didn’t take them someplace safer. “No way,” she waved me off. “They’re fine.” Girls piled out of the car and panic overcame me just before I woke.

This dream was a manifestation of something that is happening in real life. These girls dog sit for their neighbors, play in softball and basketball tournaments on the weekends, and reach out to friends they know are sad or lonely or struggling. But they have been taught something that will hurt them—something that could kill them. They’ve been told that if they are queer, they are broken. That if they are queer, their bodies and minds are created in a way that is sinful. “It’s okay to be gay, just as long as you don’t act on it,” they’ve been taught. “We love you as long as you don’t act like yourself” is the message they’ve received. “Your assigned gender is the right one—it’s eternal and unchangeable” transgendered young women have heard, all the while praying they’ll wake up a different gender than they’ve been assigned.

These words are how I know they will jump, if not literally, then figuratively. I know, because these words are what broke me, what made me look longingly over the rail and dream of what it would feel like to fly. “But we love our queer members” you tell us. This doctrine isn’t loving. We are taught to know whether something is good by its fruit. The fruit of this teaching is PTSD. The fruit of this teaching is suicidal ideation. The fruit of this teaching is psychological, and far too often, physical death.

You wouldn’t tell a child in a fat body, “It’s not a sin to be fat, but it’s a sin to wear extra large clothing.” You wouldn’t tell a kid with brown hair, “It’s not a sin to have brown hair, but it’s a sin to let other people see it.” You wouldn’t, then, pontificate on how much we love our “brown-haired brothers and sisters even if we can’t condone that lifestyle.” Those things sound absurd because they are absurd. To queer people, hearing “It’s not a sin to be queer, it’s just a sin to act on it” sounds absurd because it is absurd.

I didn’t know, when I wore scrunchies in my own hair, that suicidal ideation wasn’t normal. I thought then, and through most of my adult life, that most teenagers are suicidal at some point. What I didn’t realize is that I was queer, and while for queer kids in the church that’s a pretty accurate view of things, suicidal ideation is not at all a part of normal, healthy development. Lesser degrees of suicidal ideation followed me through my teen years and well into adulthood. It still pops up once in awhile, but now I have the tools to deal with these thoughts. I was thirty-five when I recognized and got treatment for my suicidal ideation. That’s also the age I learned to love myself enough to accept that I am queer, that I am attracted to both women and men (and others on the spectrum of gender). This kind of self-acceptance and self-love feels radical for people my age, and I pray every day that it won’t be as radical for my young women, for my daughter, for the other kids I have the privilege of caring for in different ways at different times.

My nightmare didn’t end when I woke up. The kids are still surrounded by bridges and some of them are thinking about jumping the same way that I did. Now, I live in a state of panic, shuffling around chasing kids away from the ledges, trying to guide them by the elbow to safety before the temptation becomes too great. It isn’t enough. It will never be enough because there are so many of them and there’s only one of me. This is something that will take an effort from all of their safest adults. They need to hear from your mouth, whoever you are, however you interact with them, that whoever they are is the right person to be. They need to hear that God loves them and wants them to find joy in the full range of human experiences, including being comfortable in their gender identity and having fulfilling relationships with romantic and/or sexual partners if that is what they desire.

It is a scary thing to stand up against someone you’ve been told is a mouth-piece for God. You might risk judgment from friends, family, ward members, and spiritual leaders. You might face ostracism from your community by asking God (the Mother and the Father) what they really want for their children by looking inside yourself to find what is moral, then standing up for that even if it doesn’t fit with what church leaders have said. In my view, it’s worth the risk. It is worth every risk if it means our kids can live.

The Savior taught that we should leave the ninety and nine to save the life of the one. That was always framed for me as venturing out to minister to the “spiritually lost,” but maybe that framing is too narrow. Maybe when I include queer families in my Sunday lessons on the family knowing it could mean having my calling or temple recommend challenged, I’m walking out into the night for that one sheep. I think the Savior would happily make every sacrifice to keep them alive—to keep me alive.

 

Abby is a queer Mormon educator and writer. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, daughter, and a revolving door of other young friends who need a temporary safe place to land.

Guest Post: Zion’s Suffragists Podcast Launch

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The Awakening – by Hy Miller

By Dianna Douglas

It’s a year of grand anniversaries for American women: One hundred years since the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women’s suffrage nationwide. Fifty-five years since the Voting Rights Act protected racial minorities at the polls.

And, one anniversary unique to Utah — 150 years since women in America first voted under an equal suffrage law. It was so long ago that the issues and the passions of the time seem quaint, and the details hopelessly hazy. That is, if we can pull them up at all. 

Women–and men–in Utah fought extraordinarily hard for the vote. This January marks 150 years since a cascading series of events brought Utah women to the front of the battle for women’s rights. 

The story is all wrapped up in polygamy, patriarchy, and the competing pull in Utah between trying to lift women all over the world and just wanting to be left alone.

I created a podcast about the history of Utah women getting the vote for Deseret News–“Zion’s Suffragists”– after finding myself inexplicably drawn to the nineteenth century women who built Utah and created the church. The podcast launched today  the anniversary of a mass meeting in Salt Lake City that started it all. 

I first heard about the Salt Lake Indignation Meeting at the 2016 Exponent retreat, from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. (I’ll just note that I was almost forty years old, and had sat through exactly one million lessons where we studied the history of the church without ever hearing about this Indignation Meeting.) Her most recent book, A House Full of Females, about polygamy and women’s activism in early Mormonism, opens with a stunning scene: Five thousand women packed into the hard benches of the Old Tabernacle, speaking for hours about their rights as citizens. 

“Have we transgressed any law of the United States?” asked Sarah Kimball, who had called this meeting. The audience shouted back, “NO!”

“Then why are we here to-day?” she asked. The immediate answer was that their church was under attack from the federal government, which was coming down hard on polygamy. A new had bill passed the U.S. House that would strip the Church of its property, put polygamous men in prison, and deprive polygamous wives of the their immunity as witnesses against their husbands in court. 

The bill was headed for the Senate, and was about to become the law. People in Utah watched in horror. A few women decided to fight back. 

“The bill in question would not only deprive our fathers, husbands and brothers of enjoying the privileges bequeathed to citizens of the United States, but it would also deprive us, as women, of the privilege of selecting our husbands, and against this we most unqualifiedly protest,” Sarah Kimball said that night, to thousands of her sisters.

But a deeper why–Why did they feel empowered to speak out? And how were they able to get five thousand women together, in just a few days, to attend this protest meeting? Why did they ask for the vote when they planned the meeting? Why would some of them decide that securing voting rights for all America women should be their life’s work? The answers to those questions begin with the organization of the Relief Society in 1842. They also form the heart of Laurel’s book.

But, back to the Indignation Meeting. Let’s return to the articulate, persuasive, intelligent women who organized an all-women’s meeting, with all women speakers. And then decided that they should invite a few men who were newspaper reporters, so that the meeting would be covered in newspapers around the country. They wanted to speak from Salt Lake City and be heard in Washington D.C. 

Who does that? 

Sarah Kimball, monogamous, had the idea of an all-women’s indignation meeting, just like she had had the idea of a women’s benevolent society back when she lived in Nauvoo. She had decided that women were powerful when they were together.

Eliza R. Snow, married to Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, took what was left of the Relief Society to Utah in a little book, and recreated it when she got there.  

Bathsheba Smith, living in a polygamous marriage, decided that the women of the church would ask the governor of the Utah territory for the vote. And then did. 

Amanda Smith, lost her husband and sons in a mob massacre in Haun’s Mill, Missouri, and said she was ready to die herself. 

Phoebe Woodruff, struggling through her husband’s polygamous marriages, took the podium at the Indignation Meeting and warned the congressmen in Washington that they’d better be ready to build jails big enough to hold all the women of Utah. 

The early days of Mormonism were radical. The women who embraced it were radical. They built new lives, carved out new freedoms, and arranged new societies. 

The reporters at the Indignation Meeting were stunned. The meeting landed on the front page of the New York Times. 

“It will not be denied that the Mormon women have both brains and tongues. Some of the speeches give evidence that in general knowledge, in logic, and in rhetoric the so-called degraded ladies of Mormondom are quite equal to the women’s rights women of the East,” wrote the New York Herald.

The legislature of Utah territory fell quickly into line, and wrote a women’s suffrage bill. It passed unanimously–every single man in the legislature voted ‘yes’ for women’s suffrage. Utah women started voting two days after it became law. Fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment. 

Equal voting rights should have been written into the U.S. Constitution in 1789. Thank God for the women of Utah, who pioneered a way to fix it. 

Dianna Douglas is a radio journalist and podcaster who reported, produced, and edited for National Public Radio and in the public radio network for a dozen years. She has created podcasts for Slate, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, and just finished the first season of a new podcast for the Deseret News. You can find “Zion’s Suffragists” on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or online at Deseret.com

Baptism, Buddha, and Eternal Bonds

My oldest child was baptized a year ago. It was a decision I struggled with the year leading up to the occasion. Having been “Mormon” in every sense of the cultural word my whole life, I very much identify as LDS and very much love my community there. And yet there are many teachings and practices that deeply trouble me. My concerns feel amplified as my children grow and I am more conscientious about what I teach them. I cannot easily ignore comments like the one from this past Sunday, warning to “beware of the false doctrine that says love is the most important thing and it doesn’t matter what religion you are.” I don’t believe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true church, but if I am going to stay in this organization and have my children participate, I need to find the strength to worship according to the dictates of my own conscience so they can learn to do the same.

Here is the talk I gave at her baptism, highlighting a core tenet for me – that we are all divine.

To begin, I’m going to tell you a story of a giant, clay statue of Buddha. It was made in Thailand hundreds of years ago, but needed to be moved. As you can imagine, it’s a tricky thing to move something so big and heavy and in the process it got cracked. When a monk went to examine the damage, he saw something glimmering through the crack. They removed the clay to reveal a statue made of pure gold.

Do you remember the activity we did one day where I gave you a play-doh people and you chipped away the clay to reveal candy? Do you remember the question I had for you? Are you clay or candy? Sometimes we might feel like or say we are clay, but that doesn’t change the truth of our divinity. We are pure gold!

There are a lot of symbols of baptism. One I hope you’ll remember is how the gospel can help us remove the clay so we remember our true nature.

In the Book of Mormon Alma goes through a transformation. He then teaches a group of people about Christ and asks if they want to be baptized. These are his words:

8 And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;

9 Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—

10 Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

11 And now when the people had heard these words, they clapped their hands for joy, and exclaimed: This is the desire of our hearts.

When you get baptized you are making a covenant. Your Heavenly Parents will pour out their spirit. God will help you feel love through the spirit which may come in many different ways.

You promise to this community that you will help to chip away the clay and reveal our true nature. I see you do this already when you make sure everyone is included, when you “mourn” with the baby, give me a hug every morning, or help your siblings with their projects.

Alma talked about standing as a witness of God at all times. That doesn’t always look like going up to someone and saying, “You are a child of God!” or “You’re candy, not clay!” More often it’s mourning with those that mourn and bearing one another’s burdens, being a friend, showing forgiveness, being patient with people. Basically doing what Jesus would do.

When you think about this day I want you to remember three things.

Your Heavenly Parents love you
You are “candy”! Nothing can change that.
As you become a disciple of Christ you can try every day to do what He would do and treat and remind others that they are “candy” too.

 

On my daughter’s wall hangs a quote by Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space. She said,

“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.”

Jemison’s words pulsed through my mind recently after a particularly challenging run in with a Mormon “authority.” I captured my feelings in this poem:

Bound

I am bound to you.

You to me.

We to each other.

Connected.

Tied together through our divinity

Cords of ancestry

Culture

Cords of stories.

But I am not bound to your ideas.

I am free to let go of limits

False doctrines

I am not bound to believe

In my smallness

Or yours.

I can walk away

From the abuse

The rigidness

The certainty

Holding to one thing only:

We are connected.

Bound together forever.

While I do not yet know where my road will take me, I try to remember that I am candy – not clay – and I can choose how I participate in a system that might try to tell me otherwise. I can refuse to answer inappropriate temple recommend questions or decide not to do an interview at all. I can step away or advocate for change. I hope, above all else, that I can be a witness of the goodness within each of us and like my kids say at the end of a yoga session: There is light inside of me. There is light inside of you. Together we are one.

Winners of the ExII Art Scholarship: Kwani Povi Winder

Last year, Exponent started an annual art scholarship for Mormon women of color. The goal of the scholarship continues to be to amplify the voices of LDS women artists of color by lending needed support for them to be able to continue to develop their art.

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing the work and words of some of the recipients of that scholarship. These extraordinary women have the ability to seismically change the artistic language of the Church: imagine Come Follow Me manuals, Church members’ homes or Church building hallways full of their work. We’re grateful that they shared it with this community and look forward to announcing this year’s scholarship very soon. If you’d like to contribute to the fund for this year’s scholarship, please contact exponentiieditor AT gmail DOT com.

Kwani Povi Winder: “I have always felt a struggle, both in art and in life, to figure out how my Native American Santa Clara Pueblo heritage is a part of me, and how it will influence me. I started down my art path with the intention to only paint landscapes. Not long into my professional career, the pull to represent my native side soon became strong and an internal battle began. There have been times when I have felt that it would be easier to ignore that part of me and not even try to incorporate it into my life or my art. This past year I feel that I have finally started to find my identity as a Native American woman artist. I now know that I would like to use my talents to share, educate and preserve not only my unique heritage, but other people of color. 

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My four most recent works have focused on Native American women who are strong, powerful and spiritual. The paintings have received awards and even more special to me, I have received thoughtful messages and feedback from people of color that they feel empowered and encouraged to see women of color represented in such a different manner than the typical painting. I want to continue to create works that show a different side to native women. I want to show the person, showcase their unique spirit, and capture that spiritual connection that each woman has with the earth and the world around them.”

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Check out http://www.kwaniwinder.com/ to see more of Kwani Povi Winder’s work.

Guest Post: Qualifying for Exaltation

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By Blaire Ostler

The Church released the new Young Women theme a couple months ago. It reads as follows:  

I am a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny. 

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I strive to become like Him. I seek and act upon personal revelation and minister to others in His holy name.

I will stand as a witness of God at all times and in all things and in all places.

As I strive to qualify for exaltation, I cherish the gift of repentance and seek to improve each day. With faith, I will strengthen my home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, and receive the ordinances and blessings of the holy temple.

Thought not perfect, overall, I’d say this is a significant improvement from the previous Young Women theme. I am particularly pleased about the inclusion of Heavenly Parents in the first sentence. If we are children of God who grow up to be gods ourselves, it makes sense to make the trajectory of Heavenly Parents gender inclusive.

However, a sentence receiving criticism from some Latter-day Saints is the first sentence of the last paragraph. Some are resistant to the idea of “qualifying for exaltation.” I understand to a certain extent why that might be a concern. When we apply a perfectionist or pharisaical lens to the idea of “qualifying for exaltation,” it could feel discouraging—like no matter what a young woman does she constantly has to please the patriarchal authority in order be qualified, valid, or legitimate. The benchmark of patriarchal law becomes her qualifying marker, thus making the idea of “qualifying” ripe for ecclesiastical abuse. The concern is real and deserves attention. However, I do not think the solution is to disregard the idea of “qualifying for exaltation,” but instead redirect our attention to how we qualify.

If I am a God with godly powers and I want my child to have those godly powers too, I’m not going to just hand them to my child without helping them qualify for those powers. It would be dangerous to both my child and to those around her. As parents, we do this already with our children. 

For example, I can drive a car and that comes with considerable responsibility, freedom, and privileges. My daughter needs to qualify before she can have those privileges too. She will need to go to driver’s education classes, attain a learner’s permit, practice with a responsible adult, and demonstrate she is ready for the responsibility of having a driver’s license. Not only that, I’m not going to just give her a car, as that comes with considerable financial responsibilities. Who is going to pay for the car, gas, insurance, and upkeep? Has she demonstrated she is going to use her new powers responsibly and safely? If I were to hand my six-year-old daughter the keys to the car I would be doing her and every other person on the road a sore disservice. She needs to grow and qualify for her new responsibilities and privileges before she is given the keys to the car. 

I think our Heavenly Parents look at us similarly. We are not simply meant to be like God, but to become gods ourselves. Imagine that. We have Heavenly Parents who love us so much that They want us to have all the same privileges and responsibilities They have. However, They also have some requirements for us. We need to qualify before we are handed the keys to our eternal destiny to be exalted beings like our Heavenly Parents. That’s what we are doing right now. We are demonstrating that we are ready for godhood. Qualifying for godhood is a good thing to require of your children. If not, it’s like handing the power of a loaded gun to a toddler. She simply isn’t qualified to handle a firearm. 

Now, so far we should be on the same page. Qualifying for exaltation is a good thing. The bigger question is how we qualify for exaltation and godhood.

I imagine the average young woman sitting in church is not considering qualifying for exaltation in the same way I am. She might be thinking about dressing modestly by covering her body or avoiding coffee or tea to appeal to a religious social code. Neither are bad if that’s what she chooses, but the problem is those choices are far less important to her exaltation than the larger questions at hand. If she is going to become a god, how do we help her get there? What do gods really care about? Do we seriously think gods care about whether on not she wore a sleeveless dress to prom? Or a bikini to the lake? Frankly, I don’t think gods spend much of the time worrying about those things. So, what does it mean for a young woman to qualify for exaltation and her eternal destiny of godhood?

If I were God and I were trying to determine whether or not my children were qualified to be handed the keys to godly powers, these are some of the questions I would ask. 

Were you kind and thoughtful? Show me the poor among you. How did you care for them? Where are the least of my children who struggle at the margins? Why did you think it was okay to take a baby away from a mother who crossed your imaginary border drawn on the earth? Why did you let my sick children die of the flu in a detainee cell? Were you racist on earth or did you work to eradicate racism from yourself and others? Were you in a position of religious authority? Did you use your religious authority and position of influence to hurt or to help others? What works did you accomplish in my name? What did you do to combat slavery, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, poverty, sickness, hunger, racism, injustice, and oppression? How did you treat your queer siblings? Did you include the outcasts? Did you leave the ninety-nine to seek the one who was lost? How did you treat your own children? Did you cherish them and give them the time, love, care and consideration they needed to grow? How did you care for the elderly? What about the sick and afflicted? How did you heal them? Did you love your enemies and those that despise you? Did you stand for all things virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy? Did you follow the example of your brother Jesus? Or did you twist and weaponize Jesus to injure my most vulnerable children? Tell me, love was my greatest commandment, how did you love? If you have done unto them, you did it unto me. 

If I were a God I would NOT ask, did you put your right arm in the correct position at the temple? Did you repeat the exact rote phrases at the veil? Did you tie your sash correctly? No. Instead I would ask, how did your religious tradition and rituals help you care for your fellow siblings? How did your rituals inspire you to create tangible eternal families? Did you use your temples to strengthen familial bonds and seal them up in the eternities, or did you weaponize your temple as a way to divide families? If your temples didn’t keep mixed-faith families together, what were your temples really about?

If I were a God I would NOT ask, did you wear your temple garments night and day? Did you wear a white shirt when you passed the sacrament? Did you wear a yarmulke, hijab, or turban? No. Instead, I would ask, how did your clothing help or hinder you from being a better human being? Did you use your religious clothing and expressions as a weapon against those who don’t dress like you? Did you look down on others for what they wore? Did you give coats to the cold and homes to the homeless? Did you judge people according to their name brands, apparel, or economic standing? If your garments were meant to help you be a better person, tell me, how did they make you a godly being? 

If I were a God I would NOT ask, did you masturbate or have sex before marriage? No. Instead I would ask, how did your sexual activity affect your partner(s)? Were you thinking about what’s best for them, or only what you wanted for yourself? Have you ever physically, emotionally, or socially manipulated a person into having sex against their will? Did you use sex as a weapon to hurt others? When you did have sex, did you have sex responsibly? Did you care for your partner and consider their needs? Have you ever sexually harassed, assaulted, or coerced another? Have you ever hurt a child sexually? If you did make such a grave error as hurting a child, how did you repent and seek to be worthy of godhood? Those who misuse the powers of sex are not worthy of my powers. 

If I were a God I would NOT ask, were you queer, straight, bi, cisgender, monogamous, polygamous, divorced, single, or transgender? No. Instead I would ask, how did you love those around you? Were your family relationships built on love and inclusion? How did you care for your partner(s) and/or spouse(s)? Did you take responsibility for any children you may have had, and did you love them with care, kindness, and devotion? How did you treat your family? Did you ever hit, hurt, or belittle them? Did you apologize for your mistakes and seek to do better? 

If I were God I would NOT ask, did you consume coffee, tea, caffeine, or alcohol? No. Instead I would ask, how did your beverage selections affect those around you? Did your beverages help or hinder you from being a kinder, loving, more compassionate being? Did you hurt someone while under the influence of a beverage? How did your beverage selections affect the economics of your community? Did you think about how you eat and its effect on both the economy and environment? How did your consumption habits help or hurt the earth from being renewed to its paradisiacal glory? Did you think I was going to do that for you? Whose test did you think this was? 

If I were God I would NOT ask, were you obedient to a religious authoritarian or tyrant? No. Instead I would ask, I gave you agency, how did you use it? I asked you to love one another. Did you do it? Did you think critically about your decisions and how they may or may not coincide with my law to love? Did you relinquish your responsibility to think for yourself? How were you a prophet? How did you use my priesthood power? How did you bless the lives of others? I didn’t ask if you were ordained by a patriarch, I asked how did you act in my name? Did you use priesthood power to exclude or put yourself above others? Or did you share my priesthood power and encourage others to do godly things in my name? Compliance to tyrannical authority was never my law. I gave you agency, how did you use it?

Again, I don’t think the problem is that we need to qualify for exaltation. If God is going to hand us the keys to the car, what do we need to do to demonstrate we are ready for all that our Heavenly Parents have in store for us? What do we think we should be doing to qualify for exaltation and the divine destiny of godhood? 

We are gods in embryo—the seeds of divinity are within us. If we are to become exalted, we must start acting like it. We must practice, practice, practice. Line upon line, precept on precept. Eventually, we may find ourselves qualifying for the godlike powers our Heavenly Parents have promised us. I have no doubt that godly exaltation and power is something we must work to qualify for. However, we need to strongly consider, what kind of gods do we want to be and how do we make that happen?

Blaire Ostler is a philosopher specialized in queer studies and is a leading voice at the intersection of queer, Mormon, and transhumanist thought. She is an author publishing her first book, “Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction.” She is a board member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, the Christian Transhumanist Association, and Sunstone. You can reach her at her website, BlaireOstler.com .

Guest Post: I Think Jesus Would Be Angry

[image error]by Cassidy Steele-Stewart

I think Jesus would be angry

I think Jesus would be angry

or saddened

or both

if he watched the news right now

I think Jesus would be angry

like he was in the temple

when he drove out the rich

to make room for the poor

I think Jesus would be saddened

like he was at the leaders

who said laws

were more important

than love

I think Jesus would be angry

as he said

suffer the children

not

let children suffer (in cages)

I think Jesus would be saddened

to know that

do unto others

has turned to

hit first and hit hard

I think Jesus would be angry

or saddened

or both

if he watched the news right now

Cassidy is a teacher, photographer, and proud social justice warrior dedicated to making the world a better place.

 

This is Life Eternal

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Mandelbrot Fractal
Created by Wolfgang Beyer with the program Ultra Fractal 3. – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

The search for eternal life has been a concern of many religions and philosophical traditions throughout human history. This is especially poignant in our own tradition – Adam and Eve were immortal, ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, became subject to death, and were prevented from eating from the Tree of Life by angels with flaming swords. We have been seeking after that eternal life ever since.

Eternal life is spoken of at church as something that is far in the future and only for a privileged few – straight, temple married, checklist-followers. Heaven is seen as an exclusive country club for the extra-special. It’s even tiered so there’s an exclusive part of the exclusive heaven, sort of like “The Best Place” in the sitcom The Good Place.

However, God is more expansive than that. When Jesus delivered the Great Intercessory Prayer, He said, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” [1] There is no checklist. To gain eternal life, we must know God.

English uses the word “know” to mean a few different things. This was brought home to me in high school when I learned French. In French, there are two different words for “know”. There is savoir, which means intellectual knowledge – to know about, and there is connaître, which means experiential knowledge – to understand. The kind of knowing we need for eternal life is connaître. Just knowing about God is insufficient – even Satan knows about God.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

1 John 4:7-8, 20-21

It’s really that simple. We gain eternal life by knowing God, and we know God by loving one another. Doctrine and Covenants 19 tells us that eternal punishment doesn’t mean punishment that never ends. It means God’s punishment because Eternal is a name for God.[2] By extrapolation, that means eternal life is God’s life.

The beauty of this is that we don’t have to wait for the hereafter to experience eternal life, and we don’t have to meet some pre-defined checklist. Anyone can experience eternal life right now, including people who church leaders explicitly exclude from eternal life. People of any race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, marital status, personality type, etc. are welcome. I have a dear friend who is a smoker. The church would say that since he can’t qualify for a temple recommend, he can’t have eternal life. But he has a heart of gold and is one of the most loving people I know. When I need help, I ask him to pray for me because God listens to him.

I’m single, so the church says I can’t go to the extra-special heaven, but God doesn’t exclude me from eternal life because I can love. I made this discovery a few years ago, and it has changed my life. I realized a while back that I will never be a “good Mormon”. That ship has sailed. I’m not living a cute Pinterestified life as a SAHM of 4.5 smiling blonde children. I’m single on the wrong side of 30 with a career. So I decided that since I couldn’t be a “good Mormon”, I would focus my efforts instead on being a good Christian.

I still teach Primary and attend the temple. But in addition to that, I found people I could love and serve, causes I could support, and I opened my home to people who need it. And I have become happier than I could ever imagine. Of course I still have challenges and sadness, but on the whole, it’s wonderful. Eternal life agrees with me. I have a peace that I couldn’t have imagined was possible. And you can have it, too.

As I have come to know God, I’ve become acquainted with a Being who is more welcoming and open than I ever expected. God rejoices in the differences that make us unique and doesn’t want a bunch of Stepford followers. God wants you, God wants me, God wants that odd person living down the street. And God wants us all to have the kind of life that God has, right now, even before death.

[1] John 17:3
[2] see Doctrine and Covenants 19:11

Guest Post: The Sacrament Meeting Talk I Wish I Could Give

[image error]by Nicole

In November 2015, right after the church’s policy on baptizing children of LGBTQ people was made public, I wrote a post on Facebook about the controversy. The content of the post was essentially a call for kindness and acceptance for those who would leave the church over this, or any other issue, instead of arguing endlessly over right and wrong.

I am not one to do much on social media aside from occasionally posting a back to school picture or a request for a good plumber, so when the impulse to write this post came, I tried to shake it off, but for some reason I couldn’t stop myself from writing it. I wasn’t sure where the strong feelings were coming from. As a person who stridently avoids all possibility of confrontation or controversy, it seemed odd and out of character for me, but I hit publish anyway.

About six months after that, my husband told me he was leaving the church. The post on Facebook now seemed prophetic, not reactionary. I was blindsided. It’s hard for me to describe the turmoil that followed, as the two constants in my life (my husband and my God) seemed to be pitted against each other. It wrecked me, in so many ways. Everything that used to be simple and joyful became unbearably complicated and heartbreaking. It seemed an unsolvable problem. I wouldn’t leave my husband, certainly. My priority was to keep my family together, and to protect my sweet child from as much pain and confusion as possible. And regardless of what my personal conclusions about the church may have been (though I felt like I had no space to figure that out anyway), it didn’t matter, since I was employed through the church and needed to keep my job.

As an extremely private person, there was an added level of stress and difficulty, as there’s no way to go through something like this in a tight-knit ward in Utah without being the topic of discussions and rumors. My instinctive and overwhelming response was to shut down. Tell no one. Talk to no one. For over 5 years I talked to no one about any of it. My loneliness and dysfunction grew, and sometimes I found myself in pretend conversations with pretend therapists in my head. I could imagine what they would tell me, when I explained how it felt like someone close to me had died, like I was in mourning. Or how they would respond when I told them I wished often that I was dead. Not that I would ever kill myself, I had no suicidal ideation. Mostly my thoughts centered on the fact that it would just feel like such a relief to leave this all behind, these unsolvable problems. That if I just *happened* to die, would that really be the worst thing?

I was shocked at the level of pain I felt, especially since I was pretty religiously laid-back as far as members of the church go. Why was it such an enormous upheaval? Why did I feel like I could tell NO ONE? Certainly, some of that had to do with my own personality and need for privacy. But it also felt like something pervasive and damaging at the very core of our culture. Something in our culture made me feel like a shameful, embarrassing thing had happened, and that it should only be whispered about. My long history in the church had taught me that people who “leave” are other, somehow, and I felt keenly that I no longer truly belonged in the group that I had loved and been a part of for over 40 years. And I think what I’m trying to do here is to fight against that – to call it out for the utter nonsense it absolutely is. People who “leave” are not other. THERE IS NO OTHER. It is a lie, and a dangerous one. There is only all of us, as children of God, and any other distinction beyond that certainly isn’t from God.

I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps the only solution I have, the only power I have in my personal situation, is to stop being silent. My new goal, which makes me feel stronger just by saying it somehow, is to be brave and honest and speak out whenever possible, and to break down these taboos and judgments that are rooted in fear, not love. Because in the same way that my silence was a poison to me, I think our silence and secrecy as a group is a poison to our church. Can we all be a little more brave and honest? Can we say aloud the things that make us feel alone and different? Can we get up and say “I DON’T know the church is true”? Can we love and support each other in the uncomfortable feelings, as well as the ones that conform?

An acquaintance of mine posted something on Twitter the other day, the main idea of which was that we should strive to make space for people who aren’t “All in” with the gospel, that a person shouldn’t feel like their belief has to be all or nothing in order to fit into a congregation, that there should be room for all of us who are stumbling along in our doubt and our imperfection. It was a lovely thought, and something that didn’t seem to be remotely controversial…until I read the comments. It appears I was quite wrong. People seemed to be markedly offended by her idea of an inclusive church, one meant to help everyone. The comments were mostly about how the gospel actually IS black and white, and how God Himself has said that you absolutely do have to be all in, or all out. Commenters indicated that pandering to these lovely but naïve ideals is just lying to people, when it would be better to tell them the honest, harsh truth – that you must embrace all aspects of the church and gospel, unquestioningly, if you wish to have any part in it at all.

Ugh. It was disheartening, since, strictly speaking, those comments are probably true, based on scripture and modern-day teachings. I started thinking about the list of commandments we’re given, the long list of strict beliefs and actions we are taught and which we are somehow expected to be perfect in. And how futile and exhausting it all is, if there’s no room for people like me with a million doubts and struggles and ways I just don’t FIT. But then I thought about how all of those commandments, save one, are exclusively individual. There’s an enormous list of things I need to concern MYSELF with, but when it comes to my neighbor, there is simply one. When it comes to my neighbor, my family, my friends, there is simply one requirement, and that is to love them. If you see someone calling for acceptance, and inclusion, and kindness, please pay attention to your reaction. If your first instinct is defensiveness, ask yourself why. If your first impression is to think through the reasons those people should perhaps be excluded, or if you consider that the decisions they have made are what have separated “them” from “us”, please let that go. It is not your burden. The ONLY commandment that applies to other people is to love them.

There is a parable that used to be a painful one for me, but as my viewpoint has shifted, it has become my favorite one. It is almost magical in its ability to help me gauge where I’m at with God’s greatest commandment. It is the parable of the Prodigal Son, and I’m sure I’m not alone when I say it used to be problematic for me. I felt it was so unfair, that the eldest son who had always been obedient was seemingly overlooked when the disobedient son returned home. The nearly magical thing about this parable is its ability to teach two different lessons, depending on how we cast ourselves in the story. I had always found the story problematic, because I was identifying with the elder son. But the elder son says something that gives the answer away. He says “neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment”. He says he has been perfect. The key to this parable is that none of us ever are, or ever can be, the elder son. Every single one of us is the prodigal son in the story. Every single one of us is the recipient of the grace and forgiveness and endless love of the father. If you identify as the elder son in the story, it becomes a story about pride and a false sense of “right” vs “wrong”, and of “us” vs “them”. But if you identify yourself as the prodigal son, as we all truly are, the story becomes something beautiful and humbling and redeeming.

My heart has broken over and over during the last five years. My formerly simple relationship with a church and a gospel and a culture that I have loved for my whole life has become complicated and painful and lonely. It will probably continue to be complicated. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the simplicity of “before”, or that I’m not jealous of what probably still is so simple and joyful for many of you. Some of you are probably thinking that I’m “doing it wrong” if church feels this painful and complicated. With that, I whole-heartedly agreed. I am almost certainly doing most of it wrong. Aren’t we all though?

There are, miraculously, some things that feel like they might actually be better than before. As my heart has broken, it has more space than it used to. It holds space for anyone who also has a complicated relationship with God, or the church, or our culture. There’s more room now for all of those people who feel like they don’t fit here (or who aren’t here are all), or who feel like they must be silent about whatever they’re struggling with. I have so much less assumption and judgment than I used to, and it feels like a good start, especially when I don’t know at all where the rest of my life is heading. If I’m being completely honest (which I’m trying so hard to do even when it seems impossible) most of the time I don’t know what I believe anymore. I hope we can all be brave enough to say those scary things. I’m becoming more okay with not knowing. I try to hold on to the things I DO know, as short as that list might be. I know that I HOPE there’s a God. And that if there is a God, He is big enough for this – for my disbelief and confusion and heartbreak. And because of that, His gospel must be big enough for it too, to hold all of us, His beautiful and broken people.