Exponent II's Blog, page 55

“Poems of a Faith Journey” by Nancy Ross

A book reivew of Dayna Patterson’s If Mother Braids a Waterfall

Whether we decide to stay in the LDS Church or not, the experience of wrestling with faith, family, community, and history is a nearly universal one in our Mormon feminist community. The last few years have seen an explosion of collections of poetry that describe the faith journeys of Mormon feminists, perhaps starting with Ashley Mae Hoiland’s One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God (The Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship) in 2017 through to Carol Lynn Pearson’s anticipated new collection, Finding Mother God: The Missing Half of Heaven: Poems, which will be published by Gibbs Smith later this year. These books tend to include themes of personal experience, seeking Heavenly Mother, and connecting the work of our religious and literary foremothers. My own book in this group, Shades of Becoming: Poems of Faith Transition (Amazon CreateSpace, 2019), edited with Kristin R. Shill, emphasizes the process of releasing old identities and claiming something new. Dayna Patterson’s If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020) is no different in its themes, but offers a thoughtful poetic narrative that pushes deeper into spaces of discomfort and disconnection with the LDS Church while holding onto Mormon identity. It holds a wonderful range of memories, beliefs, and experiences in tension with each other in a way that few have articulated. 

If Mother Braids a Waterfall is a collection of poems that includes illustrations using historical family photographs. It touches on themes of family history, polygamy, the author’s mission, her mother’s coming out, finding Heavenly Mother in nature, and leaving the LDS Church. Patterson prefaces the work with her family tree and dedicates the collection to “my mothers and foremothers.” While not articulated in the table of contents, the poems are divided into three sections. Textless pages with manipulated photographs mark the breaks between sections. Each section follows a similar arrangement, with poems speaking to identity, letters to foremothers, and memories of community holidays beginning each section. 

The opening poem, titled “The Mormons are Coming,” serves as a kind of guide to the whole book, introducing the majority of themes and imagery. It celebrates Mormon compassionate service while poking fun at the quirks of Mormon culture, reflects on the patriarchal and heteronormative nature of the LDS Church, and closes with a comment on service for service’s sake. In this, Patterson invokes the imagery of funeral potatoes, cards from visiting teachers, garments, Wonder Bread in sacrament trays, and temple clothing. As she works her way through her own faith story, these and other objects become touchstones of experience that will be familiar to her Mormon readers. 

The poems in the first section address themes of polygamy, and the unbalanced roles in relationships between men and women. After my first reading, the most memorable poem from this part was “Dear Grandpa” (p. 21), where the author returns her grandfather’s unwanted cheek pinching and he learns to stop this behavior. The final poem of this section, “Apples,” marks a transition away from the model offered by traditional Mormonism and invites the reader to partake of “Eve’s calling card” (p. 34). 

The second part begins with “Post-Mormons Are Leaving” (p. 37), which is both heartbreaking and my favorite in the book. Patterson evokes both Mormon history and my own painful journey with the lines “Post-Mormons are leaving in the night, trailing red / across a frozen river” (p. 39). She defends her fond childhood memories of heritage parades to a non-Mormon newcomer in “Pioneer Day” (p. 44) and questions the wisdom of trying to persuade Catholic women away from St. Mary while she herself was searching for the feminine divine (“Proselytizing by a Marian Shrine in Québec,” p. 47). “Ring Tricks” contains the most compelling imagery for a change of belief, describing Mormon bodies “palimpsestuous” with the ability to rewrite our stories. “When I Beach” (p. 63) ends the section with a description of the pleasure and immanence of sex contrasted with a lack of intimacy with God. 

The final section opens with “Former Mormons Catechize Their Kids” (p. 67) and is a description of the many ways former Mormon parents try to instill in their children a sense of religious plurality, telling diverse stories of gods, goddesses, and creations. The poems in this section tell haunting stories of small-town celebrations of colonization (“Founder’s Day,” p. 77); Patterson’s mother coming out while Patterson remained in her Mormon certainty, her “hibernacle” (“Dear Mom,” p. 81); and her grandfather running over her toddler mother with his car (“The Mercy of Mud,” p. 85). She frames the story of her many-greats grandmother Ellen as one of heroism (“Dear Ellen, 2018,” p. 91) and claims former Mormon poet May Swenson as her foremother (“Dear May,” p. 89). This section ends with “If Mother Braids a Waterfall,” where Patterson contemplates the forgotten mystery of communing with Heavenly Mother. The final poem, separated from the final part, declares itself in the title “Still Mormon” (p. 107), where the imagery for her lingering identity is compared with the smell of skunk spray and a tapped-out sugar maple tree. 

The collection achieves many goals. The sense of the distant and recent pasts being in dialogue with the author’s voice in the present is one of the great strengths of the poems. Many of these exchanges are facilitated through letters to family members and others, both dead and alive. She seeks for Heavenly Mother without locating Her in a tidy human body. Instead, the longing is for connection, typically expressed through encounters with the natural world. It discusses her journey through Mormon identity, beginning with the first poem (“The Mormons Are Coming”) and still claimed in the final poem (“Still Mormon”). Again, 

Patterson holds together her complicated relationship with Mormonism and the LDS Church. This willingness to engage in the complex work of picking and choosing, claiming and rejecting, and leaving while staying Mormon sets the book apart from others in its genre. 

Patterson’s writing is full of grief, empathy, curiosity, and insight into her experiences and those of her mothers and foremothers. “Post-Mormons walk barefoot over the wreckage of faith / crisis, exchange bleeding digits for free time” (“Post Mormons are Leaving,” p. 39). As someone who is interested in the sociology, ministry, and lived experiences of people who are going through faith transitions, I want to emphasize that this volume has much to offer in a first reading, but also much to chew on and revisit. 

Political Movements and Heroes

In 1870 Utah became the second U.S. territory to remove sex as a restriction to the right to vote. Mormon women remained very engaged in the national battle for suffrage. Likewise, Susan B. Anthony showed interest in Utah politics, as seen in this letter published in The Woman’s Exponent in 1899. Anthony refers to the […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

“Approaching Unity” by Andi Pitcher Davis

Bless the union between savior and soul Blessed be the savior whose soul is union of between and in between. Bless the one who blesses, and the one who taught her to bless. Bless the one who traipses through beauty To arrive in despair. She is our Eve, and mother of death and life. Bless […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

“Woven Power” by Ashley Sturgill

I feel it in the warning of a thunderhead above darkening the skies, quieting every feathered voice. In each crack of blinding electric lightreleased in the earthen smell of cleansing rain. It casts off the tail of a star falling from Her place in night’s sky, terrifyingly beautiful and bright landing gently, lightly dusting the […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

“Mormon Women’s Suffrage History” by Andrea Radke-Moss

In January of 1889, Mormon suffragist Emily Sophia Tanner Richards attended the annual conference of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Washington, D.C., the first of her faith to formally represent Utah in an official, national setting. But as a Mormon woman at a time of heightened tensions over the Church’s practice of plural marriage, […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

“The Book of Ruth” by Catie Nielson

Three women in an upstairs bathroom; squinting at their lives in early morning light. Death’s wife smells of Vaseline; her bad hip keeps her from sweeping the floor. Divorce has painted her nails green for growth or envy; she holds back the hair of Abandonment, who grimaces over her belly and vomits again in the […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

“Little and Big” by Brita Brown Engh

I had sworn after I graduated from BYU that I would move far, far away from Utah and never return. Part of my reluctance about living in Utah was that I was so similar to the majority of the people in the state: white, Mormon, and descended from pioneers. I was certain that I would […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

“Consecrating Our Thoughts to God” by Sarah Gusky Kemer

This sacrament talk was given on August 19, 2018 in the Lynnfield Ward in Massachusetts.  I went to a small liberal arts school for an obscure graduate degree in something I enjoyed; it was expensive with little external funding. At the beginning of my second semester, two women in the year above me started planning […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

“Ministering Through JustServe” by Fara Sheddon

At a Public Affairs Denver Area Coordinating Council meeting in 2015, the area media coordinator shared a document he had prepared to educate local opinion leaders about Mormons in advance of a new temple. He was looking for input. One of the “Did you know?” points on this document was that LDS women have an […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, or Subscription – Print + Digital, United States.

Guest Post: Identity Expansion Part 2–Forgiving Mom

by Melissa

The lights in the house were dim as the sun was just setting outside. My siblings and I had our swimsuits on ready to jump in the car with Dad. We were going to Slaggers and Mom was staying home. I couldn’t wait for the large indoor hot spring, complete with high dive and the largest slippery tree log floating in the pool, but held securely with chains at either end. We kids tried desperately to stand on it for the shortest of moments before falling off. In my memory, we did this often, but it may just have been a handful of times and that left the happiest memories for me.

Dad was always the fun one. Dad also worked a lot; he was always on the phone. But Dad always had my admiration. Mom did not.

When I was first married, my husband was my de facto therapist. I purged many feelings I had toward my mother and he listened. My mom yelled … not a, “Go clean your room!” yell, but a, “You’re such a b*$@ — why do you always go out with your friends? You’re so cavalier!” yell. That type of yell was reserved for my teen years, but when I was just a little younger, her yelling was also irrational, too angry for the “crime” committed. Later, when she would lay on the couch in her depression, we kids knew that a clean house, help with making dinner, ironing Dad’s shirts, and not being around … would keep the outbursts at bay. It wasn’t until I started taking my first kid to the library to read books that the good memories of my mom came flooding back.

Mom took me to the library all the time. She read to me, she would do spelling flashcards with me. I followed her on all her errands, which included many trips to the Scout office to get merit badges for her Cub Scouts. I remember the McDonalds drive-through and getting Happy Meals, hoping for Miss Piggy this time because I already had several Fozzie Bears. I loved sitting on Mom’s lap while she rocked me on the bench during sacrament meetings.

“We kids are instilled with admiration for dad — because he never fell apart like mom did — while nurturing lifelong disdain for mom.” Aptly put by Emily B. in the comments from my first post on identity expansion. She couldn’t be more right.

I thoroughly enjoyed the moments I would see my husband crack after spending long hours with the kids while I was away. “See! I am normal!” I would point out to both of us, but just for my own validation.

I had compassion toward Mom and moved on, but interactions and different life experiences have a way of making old healed wounds rip open again. Books, in-person therapy, and thousands of hours of podcasts taught me that I most definitely had an anxious attachment style. I also needed to control my emotions around this anxiety and how I let it bleed into my interactions with my husband and kids.

Working on myself was and is hard. I wasn’t praying for strength, or asking God for help … because it didn’t work. I was taking the brutal feedback from my husband and kids and the pain I felt was deep. There were so many behaviors I had learned, incorrect beliefs I had nurtured and I was stripping it all down and it was painful, so very painful. The recognition of my continued mistakes in how I handled my emotions felt unbearable. I knew exactly how my kids felt. I had been in their shoes and that was the driving motivator for my change.

Going back to work happened at the same time I started really working on who I was and how I wanted to show up for my kids and husband. Being away gave me the chance to crave being back home again. I started to value the time I had to be a part of my family’s life.

Don’t get me wrong. I had always spent time with my kids. I took them to the library, hiking, backpacking, was their Girl Scout leader, taught them to rock climb, and ski. I wanted to play and be the fun one, but I was battling feelings and interactions all the while.

So now as I look at my own mother and try out my new skills in handling my emotions, I come up short. I see what she could change in her interaction with me and crave something deeper and more meaningful.  What I know is that I can not expect her to act how I want her to. I have to accept what she has to offer and set boundaries for myself in how I will interact around that.

I am not at peace if I compromise who I want to be and I can only work on myself.

So how is this forgiving? Well, it is a work in progress and perhaps real forgiveness always is. It is constant compassion for the other, mixed with boundary setting, a bit of letting go of expectations, and lots of practice in kind interactions. I really hope my kids can do this for me.

Melissa, author of Midwife Of The Wild Frontier, is a mom to three awesome girls, whom she hopes to grow up and be like one day.