Exponent II's Blog, page 199

#hearLDSwomen: After My Proudest Performance for My Degree, I Was Told It Didn’t Matter Because I Should Just Get Married and Be a Mom

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Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

When I was a freshman at BYU-I, the bishopric in my ward wanted to interview all of us to start the semester off. I ended up meeting with one of the counselors. When we sat down, he asked if I was seeking a “M.R.S.” degree. I didn’t get it at first because I wasn’t accustomed to the LDS marriage culture. I was totally clueless and confused. When I realized what he said, I laughed uncomfortably and then told him my deepest ambitions…like getting a BFA and then getting my master’s so I could teach art at any level. These are things I’d been wanting to do since childhood. He stared me down, and then said, “Well what if you meet someone here?” Immediately I felt uneasy, since my parents had always encouraged me to go as far as I can with my education. Why was he not happy with that, and seriously why would I spend all the time and money on education if all I was here to do was “meet someone”? I answered, “I’m sure we will figure that out together”. Which was the wrong answer. Now he’s almost glaring at me, and next he is explaining why I need to be thinking about my future husband and his career, and our need to start a family. I was crushed. All I could say was, “I’m not even dating anyone right now”. I left that meeting thinking, “Am I wrong? Was he somehow inspired to tell me this?”. Sadly, then I didn’t know the difference then between inspiration and his personal bias. This one horrible conversation derailed me, and pulled my confidence out from under my feet. I started feeling anxious about dating, like maybe I’m supposed to find a husband and not worry about my love for art. Oh how I wish I never had that interview. It changed me, but luckily I’ve found myself again.

– Anonymous

 

I was about a week away from leaving my hometown in Missouri for my first semester at BYU. I was talking to someone in my ward about being excited about starting college and going to BYU. They asked me what I planned to study. One of the counselors in the bishopric heard us talking and decided to butt in with his opinion that “it doesn’t matter what she studies. Her job is to go to BYU and accept the proposal of the first returned missionary that asks her to marry him.” I laughed, thinking it was a joke. Turns out he was serious.

– HS

 

I had a hard time figuring out what to major in and one of my guy friends said, “Well, it doesn’t really matter what you major in. You’re going to be a mom!”

– LP

 

I had someone tell me after one of my proudest performances in my undergraduate degree for music performance that it was nice but didn’t actually matter because I should just get married and be a stay at home mom. I was so hurt.

– NE

 

Pro Tip: See women as people apart from their relationships (or potential relationships) to others, such as marriage or motherhood. Women’s career choices and aspirations are valid and deserving as much respect as men’s.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)

Guest Post: On Trusting Our Bodies

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by Beth Murry

I stood at the end of the diving board looking down into the blue water of the deep end. The distance between my feet and the surface of the water was much farther than I imagined it would be. Usually a confident and daring kid, I retreated into myself, and with a shake of my head I returned to the dripping row of children lined up on the pool deck. My arms were crossed against the chill of morning air that pricked at my wet skin, but even with chattering teeth, my cheeks burned from embarrassment. My mom, sitting on a deck chair nearby, caught my eye and called out to me. “If you jump, I’ll buy you a Pillow Person.” I nodded my resolve at the promise of the coveted toy and stepped back up on that over-sized stick of chewing gum dangling over the water. With eyes shut tight behind my goggles, I clamped my finger and thumb over my nose and jumped. The water swirling around me seemed to clash against my anxious body, and I felt like I would sink forever. Soon I was gasping for breath with my teacher at my elbow ensuring I made it safely to the ladder. The only pleasure I took from the experience was the Pillow Person I carried proudly in the crook of my arm as we left the toy store. 

Embracing my sexuality was a much farther and scarier jump for me. Instead of offering a Pillow Person, my mom offered me her own fears and uncertainty, her own rejection of her body and self. A few years after that jump into the deep end, my sexual shame was nailed in place as I sat in our sun-lit living room with my arms crossed protectively over my chest.

“Masturbation is a sin,” my mom said in her solemn church voice. “They might tell you at school that it’s okay, that it’s normal. But it’s not okay.” My eleven year-old eyes shifted from the floor to my older brothers’ ruddy cheeks. I wondered what she was talking about, what this masturbation word meant. Entombed in my embarrassment, my questions stayed buried. My eyes turned back to the carpet and I tried to swallow the sawdust that seemed to line my tongue and mouth. 

Not long after that, the desire and sensations that existed inside my body led me through the process of masturbating for the first time. My chest filled with warmth and all thoughts were washed from my mind. My body, this pleasure, was all that existed. But as my breathing slowed from the ecstasy of my first orgasm, my mind raced. Without any knowledge or understanding of female sexual response, I wasn’t sure what had happened or why, but guilt tugged at my stomach. Being raised in a sexually conservative religion, fear of my own body and my own pleasure were imparted to me from the time I was small. I looked up the word “masturbation” in the dictionary and figured out what I had done was the same thing my mom warned us about. The rapture of my own pleasure was tainted with shame that would shadow me well into my married years, cementing my feet to the end of the diving board that dangled over the equally terrifying and inviting waters of my sexuality.

Aside from a few other shame-inducing forays into masturbation after that first experience, I never had partnered sex or did anything sex-adjacent until after I was married. Even talking about sex felt bold and daring during our engagement. I felt brave lying out in the courtyard at BYU, poring over a Christian sex book with my betrothed. We were about to enter into a temple marriage, the one “acceptable” time for sexual thoughts, feelings, and discussions, and shame swirled around with the excitement and desire that filled me fit to burst. These holy, God-given feelings I had for this man, this mortal body created to crave the touch of my partner, were wrong. After marriage, the tension between wanting to dive completely into the deep end and fearing what might happen if I did, remained.

When I became a mom and my daughter was small, I tried to let her questions guide me in deciding what to say to her about sex and her body, per the advice in all of the books, articles, and blog posts I had read on the subject. I was nervous the first few times she brought up baby making or genitals in her preschool years, but as she grew I realized the conversations were as comfortable or uncomfortable as I made them. We developed an open dialogue about sex and bodies, just as I hoped we would, no carpet-staring or red faces needed. Unfortunately, it would be a several years before I was ready to undo most of my own sexual shame.

While I felt good about how I responded to my daughter’s exploration of her body when she was small, I knew she continued to touch herself as she grew, and I worried about it. I didn’t want her to sin or develop a “bad habit.” So around the time she was eight or nine, as I tucked her blanket around her wiggly body, I told her that I knew she still touched herself, and that Heavenly Father didn’t want her to do that. She nodded. The fear in her eyes was unmistakable–the distance between the diving board and the water suddenly greater than she could handle. I told her she wasn’t bad for having done it, but she should try to stop because it could lead to other bad things. Looking back, I can see that all my fears about the deep end were imagined. I passed my own distrust of my body on to her, like my mother had done with me. 

Over the next year or two I read and listened to experts like Natasha Helfer Parker, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, and Daniel Burgess and finally dove into the blue water of my own sexuality. I embraced masturbation as a way to own my self and my sexuality in ways I never had before. This change in paradigm helped me emerge from a long depression, and the need to correct my earlier parenting mis-step became urgent. “I told you before that touching yourself is bad, and I was wrong about that,” I told her as I settled myself on the edge of her bed. “I was taught that it was wrong when I was growing up, but I had wrong information. As long as you do it in private and you wash up before and after, you can go ahead.” She asked me some more questions and I answered them simply and directly. She looked up at me with the glimmering water reflected in her eyes as she realized it wasn’t so far away after all, and she heaved a sigh. An unburdened smile crossed her lips when I planted a kiss against her forehead, and I knew we’d successfully chucked the shame in the bin. Neither of us has to carry it now.

In the summer, I take her to the local swimming hole. She runs full speed to the end of the dock, never hesitating or looking back, and launches herself off the weathered wood. Her body flies effortlessly through the air before splashing down. She trusts herself to know right where to place her feet to take off at the right moment, her full momentum thrusting her forward and up. Once she lands, she trusts the water to cradle her body until she bobs back up to the surface. To her, there is only the joy of flying, the sensation of her cold-water landing pad crashing against her skin, the safety of a big breath of air rushing to fill her lungs when she comes to the surface. Her pleasure is its own reward, no Pillow Person required.

Beth is an educator, mother, writer, and resident of the Pacific Northwest where her queer heart thrives. 

#hearLDSwomen: Whole Paragraphs in My Patriarchal Blessing Are Dedicated to My Husband and His Callings, While His Only Says He’ll Find an “Acceptable Wife”

[image error]My dad held my patriarchal blessing over my head for so many things. I tried to choose my own path for my career and was told my first three choices were not allowed because they didn’t fall in line with what my patriarchal blessing “said” or at least how my parents interpreted it. I now have a bachelor’s degree in something I will never be able to use without more schooling.

My dad also told me on one specific occasion that I had relinquished some of my blessings promised to me because of some choices I made.

– Anonymous

 

A couple whole paragraphs in my patriarchal blessing are dedicated to my husband and how he will be called to great leadership positions in the church and that it’s my job to love, sustain, support him, etc. In his patriarchal blessing, the only thing it says about me is that in time he will find an “acceptable wife.”

– Anonymous

 

One Sunday in December of 2018, my husband and I took our 16 year old son to the stake patriarch for his patriarchal blessing. The patriarch visited with us for about 15 minutes before performing the blessing. At one point, he said to my son, “The Lord does all things in patriarchal order, so listen to him.” Then he pointed to my husband. My jaw dropped and I looked at my husband’s expression to see if it made him at all uncomfortable. It didn’t phase him. I cried about it for a week before I told him how much it hurt me. He might have been listening to me, but he didn’t say anything. I was really hoping for him to validate my feelings, but he didn’t at all. After a few more weeks, I shared my feelings about that with my son. I was talking to him about the recent changes in the temple for women and it seemed an appropriate time. He was slightly more thoughtful and sympathetic than my husband, but he has been raised in the same system my husband was, and gender equality in church is foreign to him.

– JS

 

I was initially denied a recommend to get my patriarchal blessing by a bishop. I was turning 16 on Easter Sunday, and I wanted to receive my blessing that day from my grandpa who was a patriarch in a different stake. My bishop kept saying, “oh, it’s a tradition in some families to get a patriarchal blessing when you turn 16, but you need to read your scriptures more to make sure you’re not giving in to family pressure and to be sure this is the right time for you.” He kept ignoring me when I said no, it wasn’t a tradition, and that this was what I wanted. I left sobbing. My mom went in and probably ripped him a new one because I got my recommend and I got my patriarchal blessing the day I turned 16.

– Terina Holmes

 

 

Pro Tip: Patriarchal blessings can be a tool to help individuals feel God’s purpose in their lives. Using a patriarchal blessing for coercion or manipulation–whether by a bishop providing a recommend, a patriarch giving the blessing, or a parent or spouse reading the blessing of another–is wrong.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)

If You Came to My Church, You wouldn’t have to say the Creed. by Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

https://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2017/10/31/if-you-came-to-my-church

Relief Society Lesson: Good Shepherd, Lamb of God by Elder Gong

[image error]I. INTRODUCTION

Today we’re going to focus on one particular title or metaphor for Jesus: What are some names of Jesus?

(Alpha and Omega. Lamb of God. Emmanuel. Bread of Life. Prince of Peace. Redeemer. Good Shepherd, Christ, Lord, Master, Logos (Word), Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, New Adam, Light of the World, King of the Jews, Rabbi, Savior, etc.)

We all relate to Jesus differently, and different titles are going to appeal more to different people. Which are your favorite and why?

Today we’ll be focusing on one of those names — Good Shepherd.

II. JESUS AS A GOOD SHEPHERD

Elder Gong says:

We learn much from our Savior’s references to Himself as the Good Shepherd …. As our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ calls us in His voice and His name. He seeks and gathers us. He teaches us how to minister in love. … As we seek with real intent to follow Jesus Christ, inspiration comes to do good, to love God, and to serve him.

 I was interested in the fact that Jesus chose to refer to himself as the good shepherd. I was looking into this reference and discovered that many scholars believe that in Jesus’s day, shepherds were largely a despised class, uneducated, lowly, and unable to keep purity laws of the time.

The Mishnah, Judaism’s written record of the oral law (3rd cent bc), reflects this prejudice and describes them as “incompetent”; another says no one should ever feel obligated to rescue a shepherd who has fallen into a pit.

A scholar named Joachim Jeremias documents the fact that shepherds were deprived of all civil rights. They could not fulfill judicial offices or be admitted in court as witnesses. He wrote, “To buy wool, milk or a kid from a shepherd was forbidden on the assumption that it would be stolen property.”

In Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, Jeremias notes: “The rabbis ask with amazement how, in view of the despicable nature of shepherds, one can explain why God was called ‘my shepherd’ in Psalm 23:1.”

(This historical information taken from this blog).

Are you surprised that Jesus explicitly called himself a shepherd, given this reputation in dominant Jewish society at this time? How does this complement other choices he made during his mortal ministry? 

I think it fits perfectly. This was a man who was pushing against the dominant focus on purity and instead saying ,no, focus on compassion. At this time, according to Marcus Borg, the dominant paradigm was “Be thou holy as God is holy.” Jesus advocates a different paradigm: “Be thou compassionate as God is compassionate.” So it makes sense to me that he would identify himself with a marginal, “impure” class. Part of his overall vision to push against boundaries that kept people ranked and separated. He’s identifying with the least of these.

So how is Jesus a good shepherd? Elder Gong states

  As the “Shepherd of Israel,”Jesus Christ exemplifies how shepherds in Israel minister in love. When our Lord asks if we love Him, as He did with Simon Peter, our Savior implores: “Feed my lambs. … Feed my sheep. … Feed my sheep.” The Lord promises that when His shepherds feed His lambs and sheep, those in His fold “shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking.”

 Our Good Shepherd cautions that shepherds in Israel must not slumber,nor scatter or cause the sheep to go astray, nor look our own way for our own gain.God’s shepherds are to strengthen, heal, bind up that which is broken, bring again that which was driven away, seek that which was lost.

III. BEING A GOOD SHEPHERD

These quotes about binding up the broken, bringing back that which is lost, reminded me of two stories. I want to get your reaction to them. The first story is one Elder Gong mentioned:

  A dear friend shared how she gained her precious testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. She grew up believing sin always brought great punishment, borne by us alone. She pleaded to God to understand the possibility of divine forgiveness. She prayed to understand and know how Jesus Christ can forgive those who repent, how mercy can satisfy justice.

One day her prayer was answered in a spiritually transforming experience. A desperate young man came running out of a grocery store carrying two bags of stolen food. He ran into a busy street, chased by the store manager, who caught him and began yelling and fighting. Instead of feeling judgment for the frightened young man as a thief, my friend was unexpectedly filled with great compassion for him. Without fear or concern for her own safety, she walked straight up to the two quarreling men. She found herself saying, “I will pay for the food. Please let him go. Please let me pay for the food.”

Prompted by the Holy Ghost and filled with a love she had never felt before, my friend said, “All I wanted to do was to help and save the young man.” My friend said she began to understand Jesus Christ and His Atonement.

 

This for me is a story of Jesus leading us down unexpected paths. This woman never imagined doing this. Never thought of inserting herself in brawl. I don’t like conflict, so I probably would have just hung back and looked desperately around for someone else to break up the fight. But she felt God/Jesus taking hold of her heart and leading her to this very unexpected act of kindness and love. And in that moment came to understand the atonement so much better. A great example of being a shepherd to someone who needed help and healing.

When has Jesus led you down an unexpected path? When has Jesus led you to do something brave, something kind, something outside your comfort zone, something that led you to take an unexpected position or reach an unexpected conclusion? Have you been the recipient of this kind of act?

What are the most important experiences you’ve had with shepherding? Or being shepherded? Challenges, successes? Moments when you’ve felt your heart and mind expand?

  If you’ve gone after lost sheep, have they responded well to your overtures? What’s your philosophy about reaching out towards those that are on a starkly different path than you are on?

 How have you balanced the mandate to reach out and include everyone — the broken and the lost — with the need and desire to have a safe community? 

IV. OUR OWN MINISTRIES?

 Elder Gong states:

We covenant to follow Him, not passively, blindly, or “sheepishly,” but instead desiring with all our hearts and minds to love God and our neighbor, bearing one another’s burdens and rejoicing in one another’s joys…. We gladly seek to join His work of gathering and ministering to all of God’s children.

 I’ve been thinking about this idea of ministering, and it occurs to me that while the big vision should be to minister to everyone, in reality we may find ourselves called to use our specific talents and experiences to particularly minister to a certain group of people. In other words, we each have our own ministries.

I’m thinking of a friend who has an autistic son and has done a lot of work connecting together LDS families with autistic kids, coming up with guides and suggestions for Primary leaders when autistic kids are in the room, etc. That’s her ministry.

I think of another friend who has done amazing work connecting to LGBTQ Mormons and their families, and she composed a beautiful  LGBTQ ministering guide. This is her ministry.

I know another woman whose ministry was to single women in the church, another woman whose ministry has been to the vulnerable and indigent in our community.

What is your ministry? What would you like it to be? Is there power for you in thinking that you might have a particular ministry or do you prefer a more general approach to the concept of ministering.

V. CONCLUSION

As I’ve been thinking about Jesus and shepherding and ministering, it’s occurred to me that Jesus shepherds us and ministers to us in different ways. And we come to and respond to Jesus in different ways. But what seems to me to undergird so many people’s admiration for Jesus and his message is that that root call of Jesus:

to love one another,
to show boundless compassion,
to let God lead us in surprising directions,
to be our biggest and bravest selves
to imagine radical change in ourselves and the world

This has been a powerful message for billions of people throughout the world and its history. I’m grateful for Elder Gong’s reflections of Jesus as shepherd and I’m grateful to you for your stories and wisdom.

 

Book Review: Ask a Suffragist

“…the very qualities that make art powerful make it inherently risky. Art is vulnerable. When Julia Ward Howe started publishing her work, she revealed both her hidden virtues and her ugliest biases. Art is subjective. Each person will interpret its symbols differently, building new layers of meaning that do not always match the intent of the artist.” – Ask a Suffragist, p 120

 

[image error]The artistry and intelligence of the Ask a Suffragist: Stories and Wisdom from America’s First Feminists  cannot be debated; the book is simply brilliant. Not only is it brilliant, the content, style and research make it a “triple threat” in the world of books. The content is an important contribution to global history. Ms. Young Bennett’s emphasis is on the American women’s movement, but she includes imperative information on the companion anti-slavery / abolitionist movement, as well as important women who influenced the American suffragist movement from outside of the United States. This makes the book an important contribution to global women’s history as it shows that the progression of women knows no national boundaries.

 

 

The writing style is abundant with quotes from the women and men who were a part of the early American suffragette movement. This gift makes the writing feel personal and intimate. Testimonies and doubts of God and religion are discussed frankly, recovery from childbirth, economic survival, love stories and even the sometimes self-doubt of the women is shared through their public and private writings. [image error]These sentiments are relayed in such a manner that if felt as if I were reading personal emails from friends and family; I was completely enthralled, anxious to know what would happen next. Because of this feeling of intimacy, I was able to relate to these women as friends. I was anxious for them to succeed—succeed in raising their families, finding love, and being given a voice in their own lives.

 

In addition to the compelling content is the comprehensive research. Ms. Young Bennett’s generous citations make this a great resource for readers and students in and out of The Academy. Quite frankly, I think this book would be a brilliant addition to high school and university curriculum in anti-slavery and feminist history, and would serve a global audience keen on learning about the early American suffragist leaders. The term research sometimes implies a complicated thing to read. But this book reads as if it were a well-written novel. It is as engaging as it is smart…a book that was truly a struggle to put down!

 

In short, this book is well worth its purchase price. Each reader may come to their own conclusion in the early start of the women’s movement and come to their own conclusion, making this a work of literary art. The crafts(wo)manship in which this is  written compliments the  intellectual content, making this a treasured investment for the soul. I plan to read this to my daughters next for family bedtime reading—it is that beautiful and important, and I want to share this with them. You will want to share it with your family as well. Hardcover copies of the book, including a large-print edition may be purchased directly from the Ask a Suffragist website, or via Amazon here. KindleUnlimited advertises that the audio book is available for free for subscribers—an investment well worthy for commuters and family road trips.

 

The next book in the series is Activists Who Built a Movement. I cannot wait to read this next addition!

Divine Absence, Tea Cups and Football

[image error]Have you ever felt like everything is finally making sense?  …..like your questions are being answered? I hope so. Today I’ll share snippets of ideas that have brightened my outlook and revived my spirituality. It’s a bit like a scripture chase modified into an ‘idea chase’. 

The first idea is Divine Absence, which I originally heard of on Gina Colvin’s podcasts.  Gina mentioned that she felt as though God had moved from one corner of the room to another.  Gina turned her attention to the other corner and followed God there. It was counter-culture to think that way, as we have been taught to be steadfast and immovable, perhaps always looking in the same direction for God.  But what happens when we are not able to find God where we once found The Divine? What happens when God seems to be absent and our seeking, asking and knocking go unanswered? 

Hold that thought as we explore another idea I originally heard on a podcast with Richard Rohr.  He was being interviewed on the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He shared a football analogy that I am hijacking, bending  and suiting to this discussion.

Imagine a football field with players lined up on the scrimmage line. The quarterback hurls the football forward as the team pushes through.  

Imagine the quarterback is Heavenly Father and the football is Jesus Christ.  Jesus goes out ahead, moving on, urging us to follow. In the moments when Jesus is in flight we are without him.  We experience that Divine Absence. We scramble, push, fall, get up and press forward to meet him. According to Rohr’s analogy the Holy Spirit runs interference and enlivens us to go forward. The other team isn’t necessarily real people, but our shadow selves and the circumstances that trip us up.  Remember also that in football, each quarter, the teams turn and face the opposite goal post. The location of the goal changes. Isn’t this like God showing up in a different corner of the room, or football field, or church, or universe? Jesus goes forward, sometimes without us, yet inviting us to find him, to catch up, to turn around and head down the field in a new direction.

Next, a Zen Koan, I first heard on Noah Rasheta’s podcast.  Paraphrasing…A student approaches the Zen Master asking, “How can I learn more?  I want to understand enlightenment. I want to reach that point.” The Master says, “Sit down. Let’s talk. Let me pour you a cup of tea.”  They sit together and the Master pours tea into the student’s cup until it overflows from the cup, to the table. The student says, “Its full, stop pouring.  Its spilling.” The Master says, “You are like this cup of tea. Once you are full, you can’t fit more tea, no matter how much is being poured in. When you approach me seeking to understand enlightenment, you already have a concept of what it is.  So you’re not going to be able to accept any new information. Go, empty your cup, and come back once it’s empty.”  

This led to a quote by Deepak Chopra from his novel, The 13th Disciple, page 146.  

“To meet God as a reality, you have to reach the zero point, where there is faith in nothing.  At the zero point every false idea about God has been abandoned. You cry with all your heart, ‘Show yourself as you really are.  I’m finished with fakes. Either show yourself, or I am lost.’” 

This quote resonated strongly within me.  

There was a point when I was so sure I knew the truth that I was blind to anything else.  I glibly dismissed other ideas or ways of worshiping or being. When my shelves crashed I looked everywhere, but my proverbial cup was still full of dogmas and doctrines.  For a time I couldn’t get past that. There was “no room in my inn-box.” I began slowly to listen to others, to hear their ideas, to see things from different vantage points.   

I clearly remember a prayer where I said, “I just want to  know the truth. I’ll deal with it, whatever it is, but please just help me find the truth.”  Literally the next morning I woke up in Divine Absence, or so it seemed. I no longer ‘knew’ (as in testimony bearing) things I had previously believed in. That was a gift.  I believe God had moved to a different corner of the room or changed direction on the field and invited me to empty my cup so I could follow where The Divine was leading. But it was SOOOO painful.  It was (and still is at times) so painful and scary and isolating. 

That was a few years ago.  Since then I have grown into this new way of ‘being.’  I have been led to others who understand my journey. I am able to view things with a new lens.  Recently at church the story of Zacchaeus was shared. You may recall Zacchaeus was a tax collector and a man of short stature.  Jesus was coming to his town and Zacchaeus wanted to see him. Being resourceful he climbed a sycamore tree, so he could see over the crowd as Jesus walked by.   Jesus stopped at the tree, looked up, saw Zacchaeus and told him that he wanted to have dinner at his home that evening. Zacchaeus scrambled down and went ahead to prepare dinner for Jesus. 

Do we at times, have trouble finding God because of the crowd?  Because of the obscured view? Because of the rules? Do we want to climb to higher ground?  Where is the tree with the vantage point?  

Perhaps the vantage point is actually lower ground, sitting on the floor, meditating.  I have begun a mediation practice called Centering Prayer in which you are invited to free your mind from thought and attention.  The goal is not to empty your thoughts so as to have some mystical experience. The goal is to learn to let go of thoughts while meditating, so that during your day to day life you can also let go of  thoughts that drag you into judgment. It is a pathway to being more balanced and less binary.

Another scripture, paraphrased and re-purposed…..”A Bible, A Bible, we have a bible, and have no need for more”  What if this scripture is not so much about people not accepting the Book of Mormon, as it is about LDS not accepting anything beyond our own canon of scripture, authority and doctrine?   This scripture was discussed on Dan Wotherspoon’s podcast recently, with the prompt to open our minds to other wisdom that is available. It’s exciting to learn new things! There is so much out there.  

In closing, one more scripture reference about new wine not being able to fit in old wine skins lest the wine skins burst.  I don’t know much about wine, but I gather that new wine expands and stretches the container it is in. So it is with us.   If we want to hold more wine, more tea, more living water we need to become new wine skins, empty cups, new creatures.

Discussion questions:

In what ways have you experienced Divine Absence on the path to spiritual growth?

What practices have you incorporated into your spiritual life?

What have you found in addition to the standard works that resonates with you as scripture or sacred resources?

Beginning to see already

[image error]Stand ye in Holly Place and be not moved.

Serving a mission is perhaps the most conservative thing I have ever done, and it pushed me over the edge to be a feminist.  I served my mission in 2005-2006, when women had to be 21 years old, had to wear nylons, had to dress formally and conservatively, there were no sister training leaders and there were very few sister missionaries.  I had many reasons for wanting to serve a mission.  I had planned on it for years and saved money to buy my clothes and outfit myself.  I felt that it was one of the only church-sanctioned ways to put off marriage and children, which didn’t feel like something I wanted then.  I had this feeling of “anything you can do I can do better” about young men and I resented the assumption that I wouldn’t do something they were expected to do.  I had a deep testimony and prayed and studied and felt that God wanted me to serve a mission.

However, perhaps the most salient reason for serving in terms of this post was my sense in the singles ward of being a second class citizen.  I looked around at all the men in their early twenties who had returned from missions and saw that they were seen as figures of respect and authority.  They were very familiar with scriptures and doctrine and were invited to teach and speak, and the class listened with interest and respect to their comments.  I wanted that!  I didn’t like feeling inferior and I thought that serving a mission would even the playing field and give me the skills I needed.

I entered the MTC the day before I turned 21, the earliest possible instant.  I had graduated from University, but the young men in my district were all fresh out of high school.  One of them was called as our district leader.  During one of our lessons our teacher (a woman) shared a story of an investigator from her mission and invited us to suggest how we would approach the investigator’s concern.  The district leader said “maybe she just needs to hear it from a man.”  I wanted so very, very, badly to hit him I had to excuse myself to cry tears of rage so I could restrain myself.

In the field I wanted to be the best missionary I could.  Our mission required us to “pass off” (memorize) 100 scriptures, read the Book of Mormon and teach all the Preach My Gospel Lessons to a district leader. I did it in my first transfer.  I took all of my mission president’s counsel as direct commandment and was sure that every infraction was the reason that nobody was that interested in listening.  Exact obedience brings blessings.  So maybe nobody listened because I wore my CTR ring on the wrong finger (a mistake I corrected as soon as I knew the Mission President’s wife’s preference in this matter). Or maybe it was because I didn’t realize the mission was supposed to read the Doctrine and Covenants by Joseph Smith’s birthday, so I frantically read it in 12 days to make the deadline.  Maybe it was that time I waited in at lunch time an extra five minutes so the mail could be delivered.  It had to be something, because blessings come from obedience.

As I served I started to notice a few gender-related patterns.  At any given time we had about 12-18 sister missionaries, or 6-9 companionships.  This meant that often my companion were the only sisters in our zone and we would see other sister missionaries only at transfers or sometimes at zone conference. At large mission meetings (transfers, zone meeting, zone conference) the sisters were supposed to sit in the front row, together, so that we’d never be sitting by elders.  This meant of course that we were physically isolated from the rest of the group.  At lunch the rule of “ladies first” prevailed, which meant in practice that we’d fill our plates and sit at a table, and then no elders would choose to sit by us.  The elders were also careful to never touch us and so it felt a bit like a parting of the Red Sea scenario walking through a crowd.  Move aside! Leper coming through!

I don’t mean to say that I had no friendships with Elders, I did.  When we were in isolated rural areas we often became good friends with the only other missionaries around.  Spanish-speaking missionaries were often friendlier with the sisters because they too were a small subgroup of the whole, never serving with the bulk of the Elders.  I still stay in touch with a few of the Elders from my mission who helped keep me sane.

When I went home from my mission I don’t think I would have called myself a feminist.  But the experience had made clear to me that the secret element that held me apart from my male contemporaries was not missionary service.  As a missionary I was older than my male contemporaries, better educated, more experienced and as my mission went on, more experienced as a missionary.  But I was never going to be a district leader, or a zone leader, or an AP.  I would always report to someone whose primary qualification was gender, I would be subject to the goals he set, teach the lessons in meetings he asked me to teach and at the end of the day report my whereabouts and success to him.  No amount of zeal or obedience would ever change the structural imbalance.

I know that some things have changed in missions.  I have no regrets about serving and believe that I came home with priceless gifts – a love of the Savior, a love for total strangers, a familiarity with the Gospel and the scriptures, confidence in speaking and teaching and so much more.  But I do think that the experience first opened my eyes to the reality of gender dynamics within the church, and once I started seeing I couldn’t unsee the world in which I lived.

What were your first steps down the path to feminism?

The Unholy Practice of Excommunication

For the second time, the case of Lavina Fielding Anderson has demonstrated that the church discipline system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), especially the draconian practice of excommunication, protects men in power from the inconvenience of criticism and harms the vulnerable people those men are supposed to serve.

In 1993, Lavina Fielding Anderson was excommunicated by a male-only church disciplinary council (the only kind that exist in our church) for whistle-blowing about instances of abuse perpetrated by male priesthood leaders.  Since then, in spite of the humiliating and ostracizing sanctions placed on her for a quarter century as part of the disciplinary process, she has continued to attend church.

After she was recently widowed, another male priesthood leader at last allowed her to seek re-baptism.  The only way back according to church policy would be submitting to another disciplinary council. This time, the men who judged her deemed her worthy to return to church membership.

Today it was announced that the First Presidency denied her request for re-baptism anyway.

The basic protocols for church discipline come from scripture: Doctrine and Covenants section 102, to be exact. However, the header of most sections of the Doctrine and Covenants  begin with the word “Revelation…” followed by details about how this divine instruction was obtained. Section 102, outlining the church discipline system, makes no such claims.  Its header begins with the word “Minutes…” and clearly explains that the LDS church disciplinary council system was established by a group of mortal men who voted on the matter at a male-only meeting in 1834.

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The men at that meeting voted for a set of church disciplinary protocols that were fairly standard for their time. Neither religious nor secular justice systems had advanced much since the Salem witch trials demonstrated just how well patriarchy-administered justice serves women. One of their contemporaries, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, described the male-only criminal justice system of their time this way: “[Men] will be judges, jurors, sheriffs; and give woman the right to be hung on the gallows.” It was still 45 years before any state in the United States would admit women onto juries⁠—the first would be Mormon-dominated Utah in 1898⁠—and it wasn’t until 1973 that women could not be barred from juries anywhere in the country.  Back then, many faith communities excommunicated activists as a matter of course; Angelina Grimké was excommunicated from her Presbyterian congregation in 1829 for supporting the abolition of slavery. Abolitionist and feminist Lucy Stone was excommunicated by her Congregational church in 1851.

We’ve come a long way in our societies since then, but LDS church discipline policies have not. We treat the meeting minutes in Section 102 with as much respect as we do actual revelation and with much more respect than the vulnerable people in our congregations.

Could inspired policy come from a committee meeting? Sure, but we can only judge it by its fruits. Lavina Fielding Anderson’s case is just one of many in which church disciplinary councils have traumatized, discriminated, and coerced. It is time we stopped pretending mortal men have godlike power to cast people out of heaven. Instead of punishing widows like Anderson, our ecclesiastical leaders could focus on following scriptural directives to honor, comfort and protect them.

I do not fault the 19th century men at that meeting for introducing such a flawed and harmful church discipline system into our church. That was the way things were done back then. They knew no better.

But we do.

#hearLDSwomen: I Had to Redo a Disciplinary Council for a Sin I’d Repented for Years Ago Even Though I Told My Bishop I’d Already Repented and Had Held a Temple Recommend for Years

[image error]I was married to an (inactive) priesthood holder who was abusive on many levels. I went to one bishop for help was told “If it was really that bad, you would’ve already left.” I went to another bishop for help and he told me, “you need to stop being so selfish and think of your daughter.” I went to a 3rd bishop for help (over a span of years); he called the church abuse hotline and used ward funds to get me into counseling.

Let’s note that my husband the priesthood holder told me “I hold the priesthood and you don’t need counseling. If you get it you are going against the priesthood and therefore God!” Also note that he told me I didn’t need to buy groceries every week because he needed to pay tithing…… and that I didn’t need clothes that fit (basics) and could stay home in my pajamas since I was a stay at home mom….ugh

Bishops meed more training on responding to abuse!!!!

– MT

 

I got in trouble with boyfriends a lot as a teenager. I would always confess to my bishop and usually follow up multiple times. Over and over again I would be told about the law of chastity and how I was breaking it. I didn’t realize then, but what was happening with these boyfriends was that I didn’t know how to say no. So what my bishop saw as me sinning, was really teenage boys taking advantage of me. I felt SO GUILTY. I felt so deserving of not being worthy to partake of the sacrament for months at a time. Or go to the temple. But looking back, instead of a lecture, I could have really benefited from someone telling me how to say no and that I had every right to say no. I was raised as a people pleaser! I was taught to be quiet and little and pretty. I wasn’t taught that I had a voice that mattered. I’m so sad for my younger self who spent so much time beating myself up for sinning.

– Anonymous

 

When I was 11, I was molested by my grandpa. My parents found out a few months later. Within a week they took me to see the bishop. I didn’t understand why they took me to see him but I remember feeling they thought I must have done something wrong or else I wouldn’t be there. I had already told my story in a room to a male detective. My grandpa was already in jail. In the windowless room of the bishop’s office, I again told my story to a man. I was alone. Although he was incredibly kind, he did tell me I was loved and my parents had done the right thing for bringing me in to confess it. In any of these interactions, including with my parents on this subject, I was never told it was not my fault. I was never told I hadn’t done anything wrong. Victims of abuse do not need to be interviewed by priesthood leaders to determine whether they were at fault, especially children.

– Anonymous

 

My records were lost from 20 yrs ago and the church made me redo a disciplinary council for something I already repented for in a previous marriage. Despite my old bishop acknowledging it had been taken care of and despite my journal documentation. I was humiliated and horrified with my current husband. They said I was disfellowshipped RANDOMLY and would not be able to hold a calling. I explained how I’d held numerous callings and attended the temple for many years since then. It didn’t matter. It was despicable.

– SK

 

Pro Tip: Because the church teaches morality and rarely (if ever) mentions consent, there are a shocking amount of girls/women who aren’t aware that they’re allowed to say no and/or aren’t aware that they’ve been raped. Be aware of this issue and learn to recognize such cases.

If a person tells you s/he has been abused, believe them. Victims of abuse do not need the repentance process; they need to be told they are loved and not at fault.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)