Exponent II's Blog, page 212

I couldn’t find the history book I wanted to inform my Mormon feminist activism, so I wrote it myself.

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Buy Ask a Suffragist here.

“Remember this, and hand it down to your children’s children for them to wonder at and laugh over in the good time coming,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton told the younger suffragists in her audience. “At the opening of the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, on the 12th day of June 1840, delegates from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania Societies were denied their seats, simply on the grounds of sex.”

I remembered her words when I heard these through the web browser on my cell phone: “Since these subjects are of equal concern to men and to women, I am pleased that these proceedings are broadcast and published for all members of the church.”

It was a strange thing to say to a male-only audience.

“This session is for the priesthood,” said the official at the door.

“Do men have to be ordained to the priesthood to attend?” I asked. “Do they even have to be members of the church?”

“Women are welcome to listen over the internet. Please step aside.”

Men and boys in dark suits hurried toward the tabernacle doors, dodging raindrops and looking straight ahead, trying not to see the growing crowd of women in drenched Sunday dresses.

I thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. After traveling 4,000 miles across the ocean to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, she was barred from the meeting but offered a seat in the balcony behind a curtain. Being silenced and hidden in that way inspired her to host the first women’s rights convention. Almost 200 years had passed, and yet I was listening to a male-only meeting over the Internet, the curtained balcony of my era.

The spirit of suffragist Alice Paul descended upon the Mormon feminist community in 2012 and prodded a resurgence of Mormon feminist activism. Mormon feminist Stephanie Lauritzen blogged about Alice Paul’s radical advocacy for women’s suffrage, lamenting that modern Mormon feminists were spending so much time blogging and too little time with more direct advocacy. She concluded, “Mormon feminists, I think it is time for some good old-fashioned civil disobedience.”

A few weeks later, we demonstrated our desire for equality in a way that was much more civil than disobedient. En masse, we unleashed our feminist fury by attending church—wearing pants instead of dresses.

I know. Showing up at church naked would have been interesting, but wearing pants? In 2012?  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has no rules against women in pants. While wearing pants at church is against the norm in our culture, it certainly isn’t forbidden, so why would anyone care? And yet, at least one Mormon man was so peeved that he threatened to shoot any woman who showed up at church in pants. My mind was taken back to our suffragist foremothers, who received a similarly visceral reaction when they wore bloomers in the 1850s.

On the day Ordain Women launched, my name was among fewer than two-dozen organizers and supporters listed on its website.  We tried to draw attention to the issue of female ordination in all kinds of ways: lobbying church leaders, social media campaigns and community art projects. We held prayer meetings and religious fasts for equality, often in collaboration with women of other faiths who were also seeking equality within their religious traditions. Support rapidly grew from  two dozen to hundreds. No effort attracted as much attention as when hundreds of us marched to the male-only priesthood session of the church’s General Conference.

In those first years, Ordain Women moved at a frantic pace, with facebook providing a forum for incessant 24-7 brainstorming sessions. We thought the internet had changed everything. In the internet age, we reasoned among ourselves, curtailing freedom of speech would be impossible. There were too many venues where we could raise our voices and too many of us to silence through church discipline.

We were wrong. Church leaders didn’t need to punish everyone to intimidate the masses; going after a  few well-publicized opinion leaders would do.

Being silenced by patriarchs never made a woman feel better about patriarchy. When religious leaders denounced abolitionists Angelina and Sarah Grimké for giving speeches to men (they thought women should listen to men, not vice versa) the Grimké sisters expanded their platform to support women’s rights alongside abolition. Speaking out while female was dangerous back then; when Angelina addressed the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in the newly erected Pennsylvania Hall, an angry mob attacked, burning the building to the ground.

Modern Latter-day Saint priesthood leaders generally aren’t arsonists, but in other ways, the story seemed familiar.  I began to wonder if we weren’t recreating the wheel with our frantic brainstorming—the world had not changed as much as we thought, and certainly some of the feminists who came before us had already addressed some of the problems we were facing. What could we learn from our foremothers?

I wanted to read something about this era—one book, preferably, because I was busy—but broad enough to impart the wisdom of activists from a variety of racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. I didn’t want it to be limited to the most famous people because in my experience, movements are built by communities of rank-and-file workers, not solitary heroes. And while history can be fascinating, I was in a hurry—I had urgent causes to support—so I wanted something that focused on what was most pertinent to my modern concerns, like relationships, strategies and activism, but that would be lighter on dates, meeting minutes and genealogy charts.

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Buy Ask a Suffragist here.

I didn’t find that book. So I read everything: memoirs, biographies, history books, archived letters and diaries, even those boring meeting minutes. I asked suffragists my questions and they answered me, but they didn’t all agree with each other; they were a diverse, opinionated bunch. In their lives, I saw much to emulate and many pitfalls to avoid. The people who came before us were as deeply flawed as they were passionate and inspiring.

Several years later, I’ve written the book that I wanted to read back when I started this journey.  I call it Ask a Suffragist: Stories and Wisdom from America’s First Feminists. Each chapter focuses on one question modern activists might ask our feminist foremothers, answered by the lived experiences of the women and men who started the American feminist movement.

It is available for pre-order now and will launch on June 4, 2019, the 100th anniversary of the day Congress approved the Nineteenth Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification, which would grant (most) American women the right to vote. This was an event most of the women and men in my book did not live to see, and none of them were around when the voting rights promised by the Nineteenth Amendment became a reality for Native American women and Southern black women decades later.

Buy my book in any format (hardcover, kindle, audiobook, or large print) by June 30, 2019 and send an email to april@aprilyoungb.com with the words Illustrated Companion in the subject line and a photo or screenshot of your receipt as an attachment, and I will send you a free e-copy of the Illustrated Companion to the book, complete with pictures of the people, places and events described in the book and discussion questions for your book club or activist organization.

You can get more information about the Ask a Suffragist project at askasuffragist.com.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (May 13, 1858) Address to the Eighth Annual Woman’s Rights Convention.

Oaks, Dallin H. (April 5, 2014) The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood

History of Woman Suffrage Volume I. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds.: Rochester, New York: 1881.

Stephanie Lauritzen  (December 5, 2012)  The dignity of your womanhood… The Mormon Child Bride  Capitalization standardized.

Timothy Pratt (December 19, 2012) Mormon Women Set Out to Take a Stand, in Pants. New York Times

 

Now She Takes her Place among the Angels

“At times I’ve tried to wring the waters of my first baptism out of my clothes, shake them out of my hair, and ask for a do-over in some other community where they ordain women, vote for Democrats, and believe in evolution. But Jesus has this odd habit of allowing ordinary, screwed-up people to introduce him, and so it was ordinary, screwed-up people who first told me I was a beloved child of God, who first called me a Christian. I don’t know where my story of faith will take me, but it will always begin here. That much can never change.” -Rachel Held Evans (1981-2019)

[image error]Rachel Held Evans

Like a lot of us in the feminist, progressive Christian world, the news of Rachel Held Evan’s death was a shocking blow. She was a guiding light to so many of us who still remain Disciples of Christ while rejecting the patriarchal and hierarchical structure that Christ’s church has become.

Like Evans, I went through a faith crisis that ultimately led to me leaving the church of my baptism and embracing a theology that is much more radically inclusive and gathers and embraces those at the margins. When I first read the above quote in Evans’s book Search for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, it hit me to my core and I wept. Even though Evans was raised Evangelical and I was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the similarities between what she was taught, and the teachings I received, are striking.

My faith crisis has been a grieving process for me and one of the hallmarks of grief is anger. I will admit I have been so angry with the Church. I’m angry at doctrine that would exclude my non-member father from being with my family in heaven. I’m angry at rhetoric that tells me Women Are Incredible! While at the same time excluding me from being a witness to sacred ordinances. I’m angry at the policy of exclusion being rescinded, but then the church coming out against the Equality Act . I’m angry that those who have advocated for equality and the protection of children have been excommunicated and silenced. I’m angry that I’m expected to be obedient to imperfect men instead of following the dictates of my own conscious.

Even considering all of that, Evans helped me reconcile my Mormon heritage, and the claiming of that heritage, with my feminist, pro-LGBTQ, pro-child protection, values. I have ancestors on my mother’s side who left their countries and families for their religion. Who pushed handcarts across the Great Plains. Who sacrificed everything they had to worship their God in the way they wanted. I honor that heritage and it is why I will always consider myself a Mormon. Evans gave me permission to embrace the faith that allowed me to know God, while also embracing the fact that I never really fit in. My beliefs of radical inclusion will never align with the beliefs of a church whose disciples push vulnerable people to the margins, just like Christ’s disciples did to the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21-28).

I credit Evans with helping me find my way after my faith crisis. Evans vocal journey out of Evangelicalism and into the Episcopal church gave me the courage to continue my relationship with Christ after I knew my values and beliefs conflicted with the LDS church. She helped me realize that there are other ways and other churches to worship in, than the church of my origin. That I could still call myself a Disciple of Christ while no longer considering myself a Latter-day Saint. Rachel Held Evans was a light in the darkness for me and so many others. The world is a little less bright without her. Now she takes her place among the angels.

Relief Society Lesson: The Eye of Faith By Elder Neil L. Andersen

Guest Post by Descent

Sometimes Relief Society instructors mention how they have to dig to find a lesson that they find uplifting to share. This is one of those talks. Due to that, I am going to lead with a powerful message that I can glean from this talk and one that I believe is a needed message to emphasize at church.

There is One Who Understands

There is One who knows your burdens because of His sacrifice made in the garden and on the cross. As you seek Him and keep His commandments, I promise you that He will bless you and lift the burdens too heavy to bear alone. He will give you eternal friends and opportunities to serve. More important, He will fill you with the powerful Spirit of the Holy Ghost and shine His heavenly approval upon you.

Elder Andersen describes several situations that a small but significant portion of the church experience personally: namely; homosexuality, gender dysphoria, pregnancy in the absence of marriage and couples living together before or in the absence of marriage. The message of most importance to individuals in each of these situations is “There is One who knows your burdens.” Because of the Atonement, Christ possesses perfect understanding and perfect empathy. He does not wish us to bear our burdens alone. He is with us in and through all circumstances.

Bear One Another’s Burdens

In addition to the comfort provided by the Atonement, Paul teaches that the disciples of Christ are called to “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil

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the mighty rainbow rose, painting by scott richard, photo by torbakhopper, Used with license CC BY-ND 2.0

l the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2) The Book of Mormon also teaches us that part of our baptismal covenant is “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.”

When it comes to circumstances which differ from the ideals taught by the church, Elder Ballard in a BYU Devotional acknowledged “we must do better than we have done in the past so that all members feel they have a spiritual home where their brothers and sisters love them and where they have a place to worship and serve the Lord.”

It is our duty to conduct ourselves such that all of God’s children feel that they have a home in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Ballard also expressed this wish: “I want anyone who is a member of the church who is gay or lesbian to know I believe you have a place in the kingdom and recognize that sometimes it may be difficult for you to see where you fit in the Lord’s Church, but you do. We need to listen to and understand what our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing.”  May we follow Elder Ballard’s advice we must listen a to and understand our LGBT brothers and sisters so that Christ can share some of his limitless empathy with us.

In a recent Liahona article entitled “Developing the Empathy to Minister”, church members were encouraged to “lift others as we try to understand what they are experiencing and show that we are willing to walk with them.”

Empathy extends to all of the minority groups Elder Andersen named in his talk. As Elder Ballard stated, each of them fit into the Lord’s Church and in the Lord’s kingdom and it is our responsibility to be welcoming and loving. At the end, RS instructors can testify of Christ and His Atonement and the power of empathy to help us keep the second great commandment– to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Resources:




Neil L. Andersen “The Eye of Faith” General Conference Address April 2019
Galatians 6:2
Mosiah 18:9
M. Russell Ballard “Questions and Answers”
BYU Devotional Address November 2017
“Developing the Empathy to Minister” Liahona Article February 2019

Exponent II Guest Editing Dialogue

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“Blessing of the Grandmothers”  by Anne Gregerson. www.annegregerson.com

Exponent II is excited to announce that we will be guest editing the Spring 2020 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. The theme of the issue will be Women Claiming Power. We are currently looking for contributors for academic essays, personal essays, book reviews, poetry, fiction, sermons, and art. This is an exciting moment in the history of Exponent II and Dialogue and we’re hoping that you will be a part of it.

Here are some topics that we will be exploring:

How are women claiming power within the church?
How are women defying proscriptions about their roles?
How are women claiming power through leaving the church?
LDS women and ordination
LDS women in key leadership roles within organizations
A global look at different concepts and approaches to female power
How artists and poets are exploring concepts of Heavenly Mother
Womanist theology
Gender binary in the concept of a Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and how that engenders or limits a broad spectrum of female power
How does spiritual/religious power reflect or keep up with or ignore social/cultural trends in women’s visibility and power?
How do women adopt the methods of patriarchy and engage in undermining one another’s power?
Mormon women immigrants and how they’ve merged/maintained their cultural traditions into U.S. church culture

If any of these topics interest you or spark another idea of where you can take this topic, please contact us at exponentiieditor AT gmail DOT com or reach out to one of our board members. Submissions are due August 1, 2019.

Things I Regret Doing When the Church Told Me To

[image error]There’s a lot of social pressure in the LDS Church: to conform, to be a good missionary, to do things the “right” way, to follow the party line. Here’s my top 10 list of things I regret doing when I felt that pressure. Be kind, please–this is a pretty emotional and honest list.

10. Trying to take the Mission Prep class at Institute. Hoo boy, was that awful: the local mission president and his wife came to talk about what they wanted in their missionaries, and–I kid you not–the wife said that missionaries should buy polyester shirts so they didn’t have to press them. I suggested that they buy good-quality cotton shirts and actually learn to iron. She responded that she didn’t really have anything to say to a young woman going on a mission. Come to think of it, there were very few Institute classes I took where I learned anything at all. And seminary was more focused on faith-promoting stories that played fast and loose with the facts than it was on theology. I did get kicked out of seminary for arguing that Santa Claus, despite wearing red fur, smoking a pipe, and taking attention away from Jesus, was not in fact the personification of the devil. I don’t regret that at all.

9. Thinking I should get married as soon as humanly possible after my mission. I dated the wrong guy for way too long and stayed in Salt Lake City for way too long, figuring that I’d get married soon if I lived in a city swarming with other Mormons. Guess what? I shouldn’t have worried about it. For me, the right guy was in Los Angeles, where I’d gone to college and was dying to return. And for many of the people I know and love, marriage isn’t the answer or even an option. (But there were SO MANY single LDS guys in Utah! Never mind that a crazy high percentage of them hadn’t finished community college and had no Big Plans with their lives yet.)

8. Being super hard on my third mission companion, who was a wonderful, sweet girl who never got my North American hustle. I’ve lost touch with her, and I wish I could apologize.

7. Not doing anything when another mission companion told me she’d been raped by her older brother. I should have raised hell. I should have taken it to the mission president and the local police and helped her make a plan to live in another part of the country after she finished her mission. All I did was hug her and tell her how sorry I was, because sister missionaries who had “agendas” were generally belittled by zone leaders and assistants.

6. Teaching that awful RS lesson about avoiding anger over a decade ago. I had no idea what I was doing. I should have said so.

5. Oo, while I’m at it: giving that really terrible talk in sacrament meeting (well over a decade ago) about following church leadership when they weigh in on political things. At the time, Pennsylvania was deciding on casino gambling, and while I’m REALLY not a fan (did you know that the average person who gambles spends about $300 on it per month? And that amount is pretty steady across income brackets–meaning that people who live below the poverty level spend about as much on gambling as the super-rich do?) I should have declined to give a political talk in a church setting. It was before Prop 8 but after Prop 22, and I’d been in California for Prop 22, so I definitely knew better. I should also add that I spent a day working on a Prop 22 mailing campaign and I regret it terribly.

4. Thinking my grandparents must not be very good people because they drank coffee. (Okay, I was about seven when I thought this, and my mom talked me through it extremely well, but I still feel really bad about it.) My grandparents were some of the loveliest and most Christlike people I’ve ever known. Grandpa, who’d almost let his drinking destroy his marriage, would hunt out another alcoholic, put his arm around him, and invite him to go to the next AA meeting with him. I can’t think of better work to be doing. (Oh, and coffee is delicious, and probably a lot better for me than my Coca-Cola habit.)

3. Giving up my Dialogue and Sunstone subscriptions shortly after getting married. My husband was raised in a family that thought those periodicals were downright evil, and I let their prejudices get the better of me. I’m still Mormon because I read the heavy stuff, not despite it. It gives me comfort and increases my faith that there are other people out there who struggle with church culture and harmful teachings: it tells me I’m not alone, and it tells me that the gospel is more than a list of things to do to make myself look righteous.

2. Getting married in the temple. Both of my sisters and my husband’s mother were excluded, and though I was only a little uncomfortable about it at the time, I’ve learned that preserving the relationship with my family is much more important than being “righteous” in a public, visible way. I wish we’d done a civil marriage and gotten sealed a year later. And I’m very, very happy that future U.S. couples won’t have to make that choice.

1. Bullying my sister into going to church with me. I told her it was a family rule that everyone in the house had to go to church, but the truth is that I let my husband talk me into that “rule” and I was feeling oh-so-self-righteous. Sorry, sis. I messed up bad. I love you.

Book Review: How the Light Gets In

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Why does evil exist? Why is there human suffering? I’ve always wondered these things my whole life. As a teenager I was very concerned about the state of the world (and still am) and have realized that even though bad things happen, sometimes positive stories come out of those bad situations and people are made stronger.

This book is like that. It’s about Keira Shae and the struggles and abuse she faced while growing up. I was a bit hesitant to read this book, since I dislike stories about abuse and similar things, (there’s already so much evil and suffering in the world) but it sounded like the book would end positively, so I started reading it.

I don’t usually read memoirs, but once I started reading this book, it immediately drew me in. Even though some stories may be full of sorrow, they can teach us about others, make us aware of issues in society, and make us better and more caring people. Shae says, “I hope these lessons I paid dearly for, then took the time to write down, will enrich your souls and infuse your bones like a concentrated broth” (3). Oftentimes, sorrow results in creativity, and as you’ll see throughout this book, Shae has shared many poems that help us feel and understand her heart.

Shae says, “In my own struggle of accepting all my light and my shadows, I find a stillness in myself and a radical love for others with all their glitter and gold….There is a crack in everyone. That’s how the light gets in” (3). Her words are very poetic throughout the book and Shae paints a clear picture of what her life was like.

The story begins with Shae’s childhood and goes through her teenage years, and there’s even a bit from her adult life in there. Shae experienced sexual abuse at a young age, and I found this very shocking to read. I hadn’t realized that sexual abuse on young children was so common. The writer’s mother was always bringing strange men home, getting married and divorced multiple times, and addicted to meth. Shae’s family was very poor and they moved too many times to count. She also had to take care of her younger siblings, because her mother was unable to.

There are some happy moments throughout the book. It’s not all depressing. There were times when the family was living an okay life, but it was very short-lived. I was especially upset when I read that her mother took some of Shae’s earnings away from her and kept manipulating her. It was difficult to read about a mother behaving this way towards her children.

It’s courageous of Shae to share the negative experiences she had while growing up. Though we are apt to focus on the positive stories, there is wisdom in reflecting on the negative as well. There are many lessons that we can learn from our own and others’ negative experiences. The important thing is that positivity and hope is sought for in the midst of suffering.

I especially loved this quote: “I don’t search far away for God; I am God. God exists in the eyes of everyone I meet. God is in the air I breathe, the water I drink. The entire universe is permeated with love, and I am included in that love. I am equal in divinity to everything I encounter. What I want matters, too” (234).

Another great quote, which may resonate with mothers is, “Being a mother is my greatest, loudest lesson: I cannot ignore myself. I cannot neglect myself. My desires, needs, and wants are my divine voice; my body is not a petulant child to discipline. My children will die if I am not (what I used to call) ‘selfish’” (233).

If you enjoy stories about an individual overcoming trials like poverty, abuse, and depression, this book is for you. Whether you’re single, married, and whether or not you are a mother, this book is definitely for you. This book is not just about Shae, but it can be about you. It reminds us to reflect back on our life, see how far we’ve come, and continue to build and improve ourselves.

My Mother’s Quilt

The Quilt  written by Kathleen Powers, May 2003

I love how this poem uses quilting as a metaphor. We might have been dogmatic and precise, even ripping apart our efforts if they did not meet the mark.  Overtime we can replace exactness with vulnerability as our authentic selves emerge.  We need not fear being seen for who we are and what we have become.  This is the part to be treasured.

 

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My mother’s quilt, begun with pride—

How flat it lies on this left side,

The patches square, the miters true.

No stitches show where pink meets blue.

 

But on the right some straight lines curve.

See how the stitches jerk and swerve?

Feel how the corners lump to touch?

The pink and blue are really bunched.

 

The left side is the Mom I knew,

So excellent in all she’d do,

A model how to live a life

As quilter, daughter, mother, wife.

 

The right side though entrances me

With imperfections plain to see.

So unlike Mom when she was young,

This is the Mom that she’d become.

 

On left side, Mom was feeling fine.

On right, she worked in her decline.

She pieced them both through good and bad.

And now this quilt is what I have.

 

Her fears were gone.  That’s what I think,

When Mom stopped ripping blue from pink.

Perfection had become too tough.

A quilt with flaws was good enough.

 

Though folks say this is not Mom’s best,

This quilt I like more than the rest.

I love both parts, the left, the right.

But right is what I hold at night.

 

The Patterns of Life

[image error]My mother was an excellent knitter, especially with mittens, hats and sweaters. She often wove pictures into the sweaters.  When my daughter was in her Madeline phase (“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines”) my mother knitted this sweater.  I am saving it for my daughter’s daughter, who just turned one.

I learned to love knitting from my mom.  Back in the day it was a group project because yarn came in hanks not ready to use skeins.  One of us would hold the hank between outstretched arms while my mother or sister would wind the yarn into balls.  It was fun. We’d pick out patterns and watch our mom create a sweater over a few weeks time.

I love knitting too.  It’s like therapy for me.  The following yarn (pun intended) is about a recent project that led to deeper reflections on patterns in my life.  If you are not into knitting feel free to fast forward to the latter half.

In March I found a ‘knit-it-in-10-hours’ sweater pattern calling for chunky weight yarn.  Being in the mood for a bright spring sweater, I bought the pattern and went shopping for chunky yarn.

The problem is, it’s hard to find chunky weight wool yarn.  Most chunky is acrylic and I wanted a natural fiber product. I went to a specialty yarn shop, the kind that sells yarn in hanks, not skeins.   Wandering through the shop I feasted on fibers ranging from lace weight to chunky, however, the chunky selection was limited, acylric, and didn’t appeal to me.

I kept circling through the shop, pattern in hand, beholding all the yarns by color and weight.  I came upon a beautiful merino worsted-weight hank, the color of sunlight. I grabbed it and moved into the front room, featuring  trunk show (high end, hand-dyed, limited time offer, expensive) products. I found a sock-weight merino-cashmere blend, aptly named Spun Honey.

Would a composite of worsted-weight and sock-weight equal a chunky?  The store clerk, a young woman knitting a lace shawl behind the counter, thought not. I agreed, still too thin. I found a lace-weight wool-silk product called Daffodil.   Can you picture the golden hues?

I layered the three yarns together to determine if the colors supported each other.  The clerk and I agreed they did, but still thought it did not equal the diameter of a chunky yarn.  (Imagine substituting a combination of angel hair, capellini and spaghetti to equal a fettuccine weight pasta).

I deliberated a bit and decided it would do. I purchased the yarn and a new size 13 circular needle made of smooth pomegranate-colored wood.  The clerk then offered to wind a few hanks into skeins using the wooden contraption mounted on the back counter. Contraption is the only word to describe this apparatus that resembles the inside of a compact umbrella that unfolds, securely holding an outstretched spinning hank, while a line of yarn is pulled off and wound onto a spool.  I was wishing my grandson was there to watch the flying yarn. I thanked the clerk, promising to come back and show her the finished project.

So excited was I, that I pulled into a parking lot at a nearby grocery store, opened the needle pack and began my project right there in the car, pulling from all three yarns at once.  The worsted weight was thicker than the sock and lace weight, but together they added dimension and subtle color enhancements to the whole. It was heaven in my hands. Did I mention that I love knitting?

I followed the pattern, making first the left front, then the right front, then the back.  I purposely added several rows at the bottom to accommodate the difference in yarn weight from the pattern.  I sewed the front pieces to the back at the shoulders seams. I put it on, to gauge the fit. Unfortunately it was too small at the side seams.  I was disappointed but not discouraged, having anticipated this might happen. Undeterred, I knit up two side panels to insert between the font pieces and the back, at the side, running down from the underarm to the hip. Bingo!  It worked.

I then set in the sleeves and added front button hole strips, not in the original pattern.  It was really shaping up nicely, different from the original pattern, but nonetheless beautiful.  The pattern had been an inspiration and a guide, but the customizations made the sweater my own unique creation.

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Life is full of patterns.  Some patterns fit us well, others do not.  Sometimes we make adjustments or add in extra panels to meet our needs.  Sometimes the beauty of the material is such that we strive to attain it, all the time knowing the pattern will require adjustments.  

In my life, the pattern has been a little different.

Instead of a childhood home with a mother, father and children we had a home with a mother, a deceased father, an aunt, a grandmother and children.  The added panels of our loving aunt and grandmother helped stabilize us. Despite our mother’s profound grief, we experienced her as a survivor, eventually thriving as a working woman and mother.  We watched her achieve a masters degree, plus 60 credits–each one adding to her salary, as she worked in the public school district, and taught at the local college. Her successful survival wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our aunt and grandmother, who literally moved into our home to help us. I saw a pattern with these three lovely ladies, all widowed women helping each other adapt to a different life than the pattern they expected.  They were and remain my role models.

In my own marriage, the pattern of the husband working and wife being at home with the children did not happen. I’m not sure I even wanted that pattern to be honest.  I had a college education, a job with good working conditions, health insurance, life insurance, and a pension. We had an unconventional situation with my husband being at home with our children when they were young for several years.  At times we have both worked full time, and other times he has worked part time while I worked full time. It worked.

Sometimes we have a good pattern, but the raw materials of our life don’t fit the pattern.  We need to make adjustments to our expectations. Multiple people can start with the same pattern but based on who they are, they end up with very different results.  

Consider our congregations, our friends, and our families.  Isn’t it nice to have variety? Instead of one chunky line we can blend many threads of thought into one integrated fabric.  Colors and hues of culture, belief and practice enhance the whole.

Patterns are useful guides.  They give us basic structure to build, assemble or work a plan.

Maybe it’s more important to know how to evaluate a pattern and determine if it is a good pattern for you and your materials.  Are you able to make the adjustments, or is a different pattern a better fit for you? With practice you can design, create and adapt your own patterns and utilize all the fabulous fibers at your disposal, not just the ones called for in the dominant pattern.

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Discussion questions:

Did the pattern you set out with change over time?

What adjustments have you made in the pattern of your life?

Do you feel free to adjust as needed?   If not, what is holding you back?

 

Guest Post: Reclaiming Mother’s Day

[image error]By Ariel Wootan Merkling

Anna Jarvis was forever changed by a simple prayer offered during Sunday School by her mother Ann. Her mother, an activist who organized around maternal and infant public health, stated her hope for “a day…set aside for mothers to rest.” (1) This prayer, a precursor to modern critiques of the second shift and women’s unpaid domestic labor in the home, also offered a solution-radical in both its day and ours, that women rest. Rest, strike, radical self care, abstain from all labor, the notion is radical in a capitalist society that under values women’s work. This call to action was powerful enough that it impacted Anna for the rest of her life. She devoted herself to lobbying for national recognition of her mother’s vision-a day of rest for mother’s. In 1914, she was successful and President Wilson declares Mother’s Day a national holiday. (2)

Almost immediately, the floral and greeting card companies began to coop the holiday, emphasizing the message that children ought to spend money on flowers and cards to appreciate mothers. They inflated prices and made significant money. Anna was horrified, reacting in increasingly public demonstrations. She is reported to have upended a “Mother’s Day salad” at a restaurant and walked out with out paying. She was also reported to have been dragged screaming from a Mother’s Day service by the police. (3) She worked to rescind the holiday the rest of her life, and died in a sanitarium paid for by the greeting card and floral companies. She was quoted in the New York Times obituary as saying “a printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who’s done more for you than anyone in the world.” (4)

Given this turbulent origin story, a few takeaways.

First, if you feel have ever felt like ranting until the police have to be called to drag you screaming from the building during a Mother’s Day sacrament meeting, know you are in good company and it is how the founder of Mother’s Day spent the holiday.

Secondly, the original vision for the day was to have a day of true rest. This is a radical notion, and may be uncomfortable. But you don’t have to apologize if your day of rest included avoiding church and family, getting a massage or checking out a new hatchet throwing venue. You do you.

Thirdly, the original public health needs that Ann Jarvis was addressing in her work is still vitally needed. Infant and maternal mortality in the United States is hugely problematic, and is increased by violence against women and significantly higher for black women. The holiday can be a reminder to support organizations working towards those original goals.

Lastly, grassroots activism is the core of the holiday. Women during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum are a highly vulnerable population. This vulnerability is increased by dealing with additional burdens. Some areas of activism to consider this Mother’s Day may include:

Incarcerated mothers

Families separated at the US border

Homeless mothers, mothers experiencing domestic violence

Mothers organizations working to end gun violence, police brutality

Nursing and lactation advocacy groups

Paid family leave, universal quality childcare, WIC, lunch debt reduction

Family Acceptance project and helping families support LGBT children

What others would you include?

1. Martin, M (Host). (2014, May 8). “Take A Second To Salute Anna Jarvis, The Mother Of Mother’s Day.” All Things Considered, Radio broadcast episode.

2. History.com Updated May 10, 2019. 

3. Mulinix, J. “Why Mothers Day Founder Anna Jarvis later fought to have the holiday abolished.” 2019, May 7. Mental floss.

4. Martin, M (Host). (2014, May 8). “Take A Second To Salute Anna Jarvis, The Mother Of Mother’s Day.” All Things Considered, Radio broadcast episode.

Ariel is a thirty something mother of two who enjoys social work, libraries, and making tamales. 

Spring Cleaning is a Radical Feminist Act

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Sweep the corners

Put that aside

Wash the windows

Look outside

It’s brave to imagine

Summer warmth in soggy Spring

Strip all the linens

Rock out. Sing.

Open the windows,

Clear the old air

Knock dirt from the rugs

Wage wrathful in warfare

Straighten the books

Joy is your guide

Re-order the realm

Make space inside

Order the memories

Air out musty dreams

Brush off the table

Let the wood gleam

Visit the garden

Set out the stakes

Break up the soil

The world is awake

Clear out the pantry

Inhale, breathe, sigh

Take out the garbage

Give thanks, say goodbye

Joy cometh in the morning

Goddess, I hope so

For now it’s my business

To make room to grow