Exponent II's Blog, page 64

Our Bloggers Recommend: Will a top LDS women’s leader ever again be seen as a ‘13th apostle’?

April Young-Bennett (April Young Bennett – Motivational Speaker, Author and Activist) was interviewed on the Mormon Land podcast this week. Here is a great quote from Exponent II’s very quotable blogger:

“Relief Society leaders don’t supervise us. If you look at the structure of the church, women aren’t in the hierarchy. A local Relief Society president reports to her male bishop, and he reports to his male stake president, and so on. Women of our general auxiliary leaders – no one really reports to them. They’re not part of the hierarchy.

…Women are doing excellent work, but they are all accountable only to men and never to women. That sets them up better to be essentially spokespeople for the brethren, as opposed to advocates for the women.”

Listen the entire podcast interview here:

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/05/01/mormon-land-will-top-lds-womens/

Subscribe for free to the Mormon Land Podcast here:

Mormon Land Podcast (sltrib.com)

 

The Spiritual Nature of All Things

This is the written version of the Sunday sermon I gave at the 2024 Midwest Pilgrims retreat.

Last year it came up in a conversation that I studied physics. Someone asked me if I thought physics was a spiritual discipline. I had to think about that for a bit, but eventually I told her yes. The image that came to my mind was this cross section of a GaN nanowire. I was analyzing it with my advisor and there was this moment of awe as we started to understand its properties. GaN can have a cubic crystal structure or a hexagonal crystal structure. This nanowire had both types fitting together. Additionally, parts of the nanowire with the same crystal type had the structure oriented in different directions. The boundaries between the sections are a little messy. They aren’t perfectly comfortable with each other, but they still managed to grow together and become one thing. I find it amazing and awe-inspiring to figure out how our universe works. The clever ways humans take advantage of that knowledge is a marvel to me.

The science fair trifold board I used to illustrate my sermon

I chose to study physics because I like to start at the beginning of things. I knew that physics was the basis for chemistry and chemistry was the basis for biology. If you were to order matter by size, it goes something like this:
◦ subatomic particles
◦ atoms
◦ molecules
◦ cells
◦ organisms
◦ ecosystems
◦ the earth
◦ planets and stars
Studying subatomic particles and atoms is typically associated with physics. Studying atoms and molecules is chemistry, molecules and cells is microbiology, organisms and ecosystems is macrobiology, ecosystems and the Earth is earth sciences, and planets and stars is astrophysics. We’re back to physics! I like to think that physics encompasses all of science. During my schooling I did research in material science. One of the materials that I have experience studying is carbon.

One familiar form of carbon is diamond. If you have a diamond ring, the diamond is made of carbon atoms. The carbon atoms in the middle are all bonded to four other carbon atoms. The crystal structure looks like this:

A 3D printed model of diamond’s crystal structure.

These bonds are very strong and they are equally strong in all directions. This makes diamond the hardest natural material.

Another familiar form of carbon is graphite. The “lead” in a pencil isn’t made out of the element lead. The lead of a pencil is graphite, which is another form of carbon. These carbon atoms are arranged in sheets of hexagons. The bonds between the carbon atoms in an individual sheet are very strong. The bonds between the sheets are weak, so the sheets slip against each other which allows you to make marks on a piece of paper.

Graphite and diamond are both made of the exact same element, but the atoms are arranged in a different structure. The structural difference gives these two materials very different properties. The exact same element can have opposite properties when it is in a different structure.

DiamondGraphiteHardest known materialVery softAbrasive, used to drill and polish → makes rough surfaces smoothLubricant → rough surfaces slide against each other more easily

I’m going to make a kind of silly analogy: You are a carbon atom. You will behave differently when you are in different social structures. You will behave differently when you are in different spiritual structures. I’m going to say that the church is like diamond. It can look very pretty. It can be hard to alter. The atoms on the surface of a diamond are in energetically unfavorable positions. Atoms in the center of the diamond are bonded to four other carbon atoms. Atoms on the surface are not. They may only be bonded to two other carbons. They want to have more bonds so they can be more comfortable. The surface atoms may deform the lattice structure to stay on. They may skitter along the surface hoping to find a better spot with a ledge. They may pop off the surface altogether and may or may not ever get back on. Carbon atoms on the surface of a diamond will readily bond to other atoms like hydrogen or oxygen. These surface bonds affect the properties of the crystal. Depending on what the carbon bonds to, the surface may be hydrophilic or hydrophobic, insulating or conducting. The surface of a diamond can be engineered to meet specific needs.

It’s energetically unfavorable to be at the boundary of the church too. Some of us are engaged with the church, but feel discomfort. Some of us have found church engagement untenable for whatever mix of reasons. I want to suggest that you can engineer your church relationship to meet your life’s needs. People at the boundaries of the church have extra influence with how the church interacts with the outside world. You can decide what that looks like for you.

For me, pilgrimage is like graphite. It is a space where I can experience what it feels like to be in a different spiritual structure. I always make new connections and new relationships here, and my brain is flooded with new ideas. I always feel so creatively energized after pilgrimage. A pencil is a symbol of creativity and learning, so graphite works really well as a metaphor here. For me, going to pilgrimage is a totally different experience than going to church. At pilgrimage I can communicate my spiritual experiences in different ways than I am allowed to at church.

There are other forms of carbon. If you have a spherical shape it’s called a fullerene. You might have heard this called a buckyball. There can be balls inside of balls and that’s called a carbon onion. A single sheet of graphite is called graphene. Graphite and graphene can be rolled into a cylinder to form carbon nanotubes. The sheets can be rolled in multiple orientations and that affects the properties of the carbon nanotubes. They can be either conducting or semiconducting. That small change affects the material’s properties. Engineering is all about creating the correct properties for the desired application. The end goal dictates your parameters. If your spiritual life isn’t giving you the desired result, experiment with structure. Even small changes affect the properties!

Carbon bonds not just with itself, but with so many other elements in so many other structures. This is the basis for organic chemistry and biology. We say that we have ‘carbon-based life’ because it is such a prevalent element in the molecules and compounds that support our existence. Science fiction writers sometimes try to imagine what life could be like without an abundance of carbon, but the fact is: we really don’t know. This magical life—our bodies, minds, souls, the whole experience—life as we know it exists because carbon combines so readily with other elements.

I want to take a break from science for a bit and talk about God as the creator of life. Years ago I read Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth. This taught me that early societies worshiped female deities and tended to envision Her as being Mother Earth, often a fertility goddess. Later societies tended to worship male deities and imagined a separation from this Father. Often this was a sun god, inconceivably far away. I read that, and I wanted both!!! The ideas of earth-Mother and sun-Father are compatible. We hear about sun-Father all the time at church. He lives in the celestial kingdom, represented by the sun.

Many of us ache for a deeper connection with earth-Mother (Sometimes we call her Heavenly Mother. The earth is in the heavens, thank you Copernicus.) A few years back, so many of us came to pilgrimage wearing tree necklaces as a symbol of the divine feminine. I’ve come to understand the tree as representing an individual’s need for both divine feminine and masculine. The tree needs nutrients from the soil of earth-Mother, the god of here and now. The tree also needs light from the sun-Father, the god of yearning for something inconceivably far away. The tree needs both of those in order to grow. I see sun-Father and earth-Mother as analogies for different aspects of divinity. I see them as different parts of the same thing. If the concept of god is a little itchy for you, when I say ‘god’ you can think ‘the source of connection and relationship’. In physics terms, that’s what gravity and electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces do: they create relationships and connections between matter.

We’re all familiar with Moses 1:39. “This is my work and my glory: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man[kind]” I interpret that as sun-Father’s work. If you flip the words, you get a feminine version: Earth-Mother’s work and glory is to bring to pass mortality and temporal life. Temporal life is a time of darkness, a time of unknowing, a time of growth. I want to share a quote from The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit (p. 185).

“Darkness is generative, and generation, biological and artistic both, requires this amorous engagement with the unknown, this entry into the realm where you do not quite know what you are doing and what will happen next….Ideas emerge from edges and shadows to arrive in the light, and though that’s where they may be seen by others, that’s not where they’re born.”

That’s beautiful. At some point though, this gender binary wasn’t big enough for me. I took my older daughters to do baptisms at the temple. I stayed outside with my youngest. It was a beautiful summer day and she didn’t want to go in the stake center to play with the other kids, so we spread a blanket under a tree and played games. She wondered about a maple spinner that whirled down next to us so we started talking about plant reproduction. There were daylilies all around the temple, so we dissected one. We stained our fingers with the pollen from the anthers of the stamen. We felt the sticky stigma and looked for the ovary in the pistil. She was amazed that the flowers could be boys and girls at the same time! There is an artificial binary inside the temple. One of my daughters had told me that it seemed wrong to her that women have to be baptized for women and men have to be baptized for men. The natural world, with all its varieties of God’s creations, shows us so many other ways of being.

Where do God’s creations come from? Let’s start with how science understands the creation of the elements. I’m going to tell you the story of one of my favorite scientists. Her name is Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. She was born in England in the year 1900, and she loved science from the time she was a little girl. She started studying paleobotany at Cambridge. There had been a recent total solar eclipse in the southern hemisphere. Cecilia was lucky to get a ticket to an astronomy lecture where Arthur Eddington was presenting the results from his observation of the eclipse off the coast of Africa. His observations confirmed that Einstein’s theory of general relativity was correct: the mass of the sun does warp space. Cecilia was mesmerized. She went home and wrote the whole lecture down from memory and quickly changed her major to physics. The women’s college had a telescope that wasn’t being used. She restored it to working order, began hosting observation nights, and started keeping a journal of topics she wanted to study. In England, there were no research jobs available to women in physics. She could only be a teacher in a girl’s school. Cecilia didn’t want to teach, she wanted to do research. She won grants and fellowships that allowed her to move to Cambridge, Massachusetts and study at the Harvard observatory. The director there wanted her to measure how bright the stars are, but Cecilia had her own funding, so she could study whatever she wanted. She wanted to figure out what the stars are made of.

Light from the stars is made up of lots of colors of light all added together. You can separate the light into its spectrum using a prism. You can do the same thing with starlight. Stars have dark lines in their spectra. So does the sun. Different types of stars have the dark lines in different parts of the rainbow. The dark lines aren’t completely black, just not as bright as the surrounding colors. Cecilia took careful measurements of the dark lines in the spectra of many stars and found that all types of stars are mostly made of hydrogen and helium. Previously, people thought that the proportion of elements in the stars would be similar to the proportions found on Earth. Cecilia’s thesis was published as a book, and it helped astronomers figure out how stars shine and how elements are made within stars.

How do stars make new elements? They take the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms and fuse them together to make helium. This reaction gives off energy that warms up the Earth and makes life possible. Once the star runs out of hydrogen in the center, it starts fusing helium into heavier elements. The types of elements a star will eventually create depends on the star’s mass. The mass also affects what happens at the end of a star’s life: whether it will become a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole. I’m going to talk about how a neutron star is made. The iron in the core of the star has a nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud. The gravitational force is too strong for the atoms, so the electrons are crushed into the protons. When the electron and proton combine, it creates a neutron. A neutron is much smaller than an atom with its electron cloud, so the core of the star is suddenly much smaller. The outer parts of the star fall inward and then rebounds in a supernova explosion. The heavy elements created by the star are recycled to help form new stars and rocky planets, like Earth. The Earth that we are on right now is recycled old star. Earth and everything on it is made out of stardust. Our sun is mostly made of hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang, but it also contains heavy elements from a more ancient star, from something that came before. So the sun is also made of recycled stardust, just like the Earth.

We are like these atoms under pressure. Women at church experience pressure on their orbitals from things like correlation and excommunications and church policies. This pressure isn’t comfortable, but it’s also not bad: it can be transformative. If women transform from an atom to a neutron, it can lead to a creative explosion with far-reaching, long-lasting consequences. The comments on the church’s Instagram post after the Relief Society broadcast was a small explosion. It was exciting because of the mass of women telling their experience directly to the institutional church.

The Sun and Earth have very different properties and different proportions of the elements, but the origins of their heavy elements are the same. I’ve been saying that the sun is Father and the earth is Mother and also that the sun and earth both originated from something earlier. As old as the sun and the Earth are, it all came from something even more ancient. I see sun-Father and earth-Mother also being from something older and bigger. Father and Mother are tiny but crucial parts of God. The ancient source made more than just the Earth and Sun. It also made the other planets, other stars and solar systems, other galaxies. As far as humans have been able to discover, life is the exception, not the rule in the universe. Celestial bodies that we have not deified have inspired curiosity and motivated human innovation. Studying astronomy has fueled so much innovation and technology. We’ve been to the moon, gotten robots to crawl around Mars, and sent Voyager and other space probes out into the unknown. Studying astronomy has given us new software, GPS, x-rays, CT scans, PET scans, MRIs and more. This is all because humans want to know more about black holes, dark matter, galaxies millions of lightyears away, exoplanets and the possibility of other life, and the origins of the universe.

Ancient stars created the atoms of the Sun and the Earth. The atoms of the Earth constantly rearrange themselves. I want to share an excerpt from Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (p. 3)

“The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change everything about yourself—shape, size, color, species-affiliation, everything—and to do so repeatedly. That’s much easier said than done, because the process of change is random. To get from “protoplasmal primordial atomic globule” (as Gilbert and Sullivan put it) to sentient upright modern human has required you to mutate new traits over and over in a precisely timely manner for an exceedingly long while. So at various periods over the last 3.8 billion years you have abhorred oxygen and then doted on it, grown fins and limbs and jaunty sails, laid eggs, flicked the air with a forked tongue, been sleek, been furry, lived underground, lived in trees, been as big as a deer and as small as a mouse, and a million things more. The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary shifts, and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walruslike on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of you head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms.”

Wow! I am all those things, even though I don’t remember being them. And they are all me for this brief moment in time. I am the air the dinosaurs breathed. I am the water molecule that hid at the bottom of the ocean for a thousand years before finding its way to my water bottle this morning. This makes me feel so small, but also so connected to all of creation. I am the dust of the Earth. You are the dust of the Earth. We are stardust. Amen.

Our Bloggers Recommend: Honoring Jewish American Women

May is Jewish American Heritage Month. Let’s take a moment this month to learn more about Jewish American women and their stories. The National Women’s History Museum put together a beautiful tribute to several important Jewish women in American history. Take a moment this month to learn their stories. Check out this link here: https://www.womenshistory.org/article...

Lost in the Temple

I have a recurring dream/nightmare where I’m lost in the temple. These dreams started several years before I went through the temple for my endowment and then continued after. 

The dreams come about once or twice a year. 

In the dream I’m attending the temple. I turn the wrong way down a corridor, and then spend the rest of the dream trying to find my way back. 

Nothing malicious or scary ever happens in these dreams. It’s just me wandering around trying to find my way back. There are long corridors and sometimes some unusual rooms. Once there was a waterfall cascading down the stairs in an endowment room with theater style seating – that was weird. 

I always thought these dreams were tied to my anxiety around the temple. In real life I’m afraid of not knowing where to go inside the temple. I’m often afraid of getting lost. Whenever I go to the temple, even if it’s one I’ve been to before, I will check with EVERY temple worker to make sure I’m going the right way toward the dressing room, the chapel, the restrooms, the exit, etc. 

So it makes sense that I’d have dreams that play out my fear of taking a wrong turn. 

However, now I think these dreams represent something more. I think these dreams represent that I feel lost theologically when I’m in the temple. 

I’ve been trying to make sense of the temple ever since my first endowment session in 2007. There was so much information to process: The clothes, the symbols, the actions, the standing, the sitting, the extra clothes, removing the extra clothes only to put them on again, the words, the repetitiveness, the movement between rooms, etc. 

It was a lot. 

I tried so hard to understand it. I figured I could understand it. I was born into a multi-generation LDS family that went to church every week. I went to Girls Camp every year. I graduated from Seminary. I’d read the Book of Mormon countless time. Also, I’m a smart person. I got good grades in tough subjects at school. I’d learned to analyze poetry, to solve multivariable equations, and write essays on the French Revolution. The temple was just another complex thing to learn about. 

But on that first visit all I ended up with was a headache. 

“Don’t worry about it,”  My soon-to-be husband said, “It’s weird for everyone on the first visit. Just go more often, it will eventually make sense.”

But no matter how hard I tried to understand the temple it never really made sense. 

No One To Talk To

One of the problems was that there was no one to talk to about the temple. I’d taken temple prep and I guess everyone assumed that class had all the answers. But I wanted some sort of post-endowment class. One where someone said, “Okay, now that you’ve been through the temple we can talk about what certain things mean.” But there was NOTHING like that. 

I was told not to talk about the temple outside of the temple. It was too sacred. There was nowhere I could go to bring up my questions. I assumed I was the only one with questions. I thought that my questions must be a sign of spiritual weakness. Maybe there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t understand or enjoy the temple like everyone else seemed to be doing. 

So I did what my husband and so many other people suggested, I tried to go more often. I hoped that things would start to make sense. But I was just as confused. Concentrating hard to try to understand things resulted in headaches. After a while I found it was best if I didn’t try to pay attention when I went to the temple. I’d zone out and wish for it to be over soon. 

Changes Without Explanation 

The other problem was that the temple kept changing. For a long time I didn’t see the changes as a problem. Some of the changes were slight. I first went through an endowment session in May of 2007. There was a lot of standing in that first session. At some point in the next few months the church changed things so there was less standing. 

Other changes were big. In 2019 Eve’s covenantal relationship with God was completely reworked. That represented a huge change in theology. We were instructed not to talk about it outside the temple though.

Here’s a sampling of the things that changed over the years after I received my endowment. These aren’t in any sort of order. 

The movies were updated.One whole section of adding the extra clothes was eliminated. Eve talked more. The movies were changed to a slide show.  We didn’t take our shoes off just to put them right back on.Jesus Christ’s earthly mission was more prominent

I applauded each of these changes. I felt they showed progress. Things were getting streamlined. Revelation was bringing the ceremony into a more enlightened state. Whoever was in charge cared about our comfort.

I thought things would keep on improving. Maybe I’d eventually understand everything related to the ceremony.

As I look back at all these changes I see that while they represented progress they were actually hurting my understanding of the temple. The changes themselves were fine. It was the way they were done that was the problem. 

The changes were barely acknowledged. A statement “from the First Presidency” would be read at the beginning of the session. It would state that changes were made to the endowment from time to time. Then the session would start and everyone would just take in the changes as they came. After it was over everyone would be in the Celestial Room having whispered conversations about how “that was SO much better!” People would say things like, “I understand things clearer!”

I’d be happy. And happy was good. 

But underneath the happy – in a place I didn’t acknowledge – were questions. Why were things the way they were for so long? What prompted this change? Why did I have to struggle through the old way of doing things if it wasn’t actually necessary? Will there be more changes? Who makes these decisions? Is there a way to talk to them about this? 

No wonder I was having recurring dreams about being lost in the temple. I WAS lost in the temple.

The changes were good, but they were the equivalent of new doors being added. Or long hallways opening to new rooms. They were like stadium seating in the endowment room with a waterfall cascading down the stairs. I had no one to explain what these new additions meant or why they were there. 

And that brings us to the present. Two weeks ago the church released updated temple recommend questions about the wearing of the Temple Garment. The Temple Recommend interview will now include a statement that will be read to everyone seeking a recommend. 

The first sentence reads: “The garment of the holy priesthood reminds us of the veil in the temple, and that veil is symbolic of Jesus Christ.”

I couldn’t believe it when I read that statement. I’d never been taught that the garment represented the veil of the temple or that the veil is a symbol of Jesus Christ. Yet this statement was so matter of fact about this new theology. The statement made it seem like this was common knowledge. It’s like the statement was saying, “didn’t you know this? You must have missed it because you weren’t paying attention. Or maybe you didn’t go enough? It’s really quite clear if you’d read this certain book. Why is this new to you?”

As I’ve worked through my feelings about this latest change – in a long line of changes that were barely talked about – I realize I’m done with feeling lost in the temple. 

As long as the temple is a mysterious place that isn’t fully explained, as long as it’s a place where I can’t ask questions, as long as it’s a place where I feel spiritually deficient for having questions, as long as it’s a place where changes happen with barely an explanation, then I’m out. I’m not going there.

I’m done returning to a place where I’m supposed to learn things without being given a guide or instructor. I’m done with feeling like I’m somehow less than because I have questions about something that has never been explained to me.

I’m done wandering in ever changing corridors.

Photo by Robin Schreiner on Unsplash

Our Bloggers Recommend: What Does Being a Haitian Woman Mean to Me?

Today’s the first day of May which also marks the first day of the annual “Haitian Heritage Month.” While doing some reading on Haitian Heritage Month, I came across this beautiful tribute to Haitian women written by Nathalie Cerin back in 2015 titled “What Does Being a Haitian Woman Mean to Me?”. She discusses how she grapples with being grateful for her family legacy and wondering whether she’s doing enough. Her message, I think, can resonate with people from all cultures. Please, take a moment to read her words: https://woymagazine.com/2015/03/08/what-does-haitian-woman-mean-to-me/

Guest Post: Dormant

by Tracy

I agree with Brené Brown: anger is a secondary emotion. (1)

Reflecting on my angriest times, it is deep hurt (betrayal, grief), sadness at injustice, and feelings of powerlessness that have most often fueled my anger. When I have allowed my anger to act as the necessary catalyst for change that is the inherent gift of this dark emotion, it has lit the torch of my empowerment and propelled my growth in stunningly beautiful ways.

It is said that, as difficult and scary as anger can seem in the context of a relationship, it is better than apathy. According to Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Joel Walton, “Simply put, apathy is when you just stop caring. Your head tells you there’s a problem, but your heart doesn’t care anymore to fix it. You feel no motivation and no interest. You are unwilling to put forth any energy or effort toward something because, well, you just don’t care.” (2)

As a “born in the covenant” fifth generation Mormon of “pioneer stock” through both my matriarchal and patriarchal lines, I was birthed into relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have inherited and personally sustained deep gender wounds as a faithful Latter-day Saint girl and woman. Patriarchal pangs were my shadow for the better part of four decades until, in my mid-thirties, the bright flame of trauma vanquished the lie. My feminist awakening was brilliant in its beauty and its pain. As the apt saying goes: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. The grief was intense, and yes, anger was one manifestation of that grief.

As I expanded into my true, balanced self, I was inspired, as many Mormon feminist women before me, to apply my spiritual gifts to the collective effort of coaxing our beloved church to likewise grow. I was encouraged and excited by prophetic calls to the women of the Church to lean into our unique gendered experiences and to courageously lead with the Spirit. I heard statements such as these as beautiful invitations to unashamedly speak with my divine feminine authority truths I was learning through study and through faith:

“Women see things differently than men do, and oh, how we need your perspective!” (3)
-Russel M. Nelson

“…it was Eve who received the knowledge that Adam needed to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge for them to keep all of God’s commandments and to form a family. I do not know why it came to Eve first, but Adam and Eve were perfectly united when the knowledge was poured out on Adam.” (4)
-Henry B. Eyring

I felt empowered to come out of my safe spaces and speak more openly from a place of my own profound spiritual experiences.

Experiences with Love, informed by pain and by healing and by my increasing oneness with God and others…

Following Jesus’ feminist example into further light and knowledge, He who told a woman first and relied on women to witness to doubting male apostles…

THWACK!

Dale G. Renlund’s profoundly patronizing and supremely ironic “Your Divine Nature and Eternal Destiny” talk, delivered in the Women’s Session of General Conference (presided over by a man and opened and closed by the speeches of men) in which he lectured and maligned women for following the examples of both our Glorious Mother Eve and Jesus Christ as we sought a more balanced spirituality in the image of Them. (5)

Our revelations recast as merely “reason”. As if revelation cannot be informed by reason! Our righteous enthusiasm for learning about our divine nature and eternal destiny as women from Her, Them, the Source dismissed as “arrogant and unproductive”. For there is only one source of truth according to the men in the matching suits in their privileged seats in front of and above the girls and women: Always He and Him. Never She or Them.

As if our “demanding revelation from God” is somehow so different from the example set by the very founder of our religion.

His talk worked. Not in the way I think the brethren intended, but it indeed worked to shut me down. Not to Her, Them, God. To the Church. While there are many members of the Church who embody Christlike love and a holy openness to new perspectives and who demonstrate a willingness to listen to and learn from the marginalized, this institution that claims Christ’s name is cold, hard, and uncaring. I’ve lost interest in waiting on Adam to take Eve’s lead. The Eve the brethren prop up is merely an image of her, a puppet who speaks the lines they give her. Who sits where they tell her to sit and leaves the room when they tell her to leave. The brethren have turned away from countless opportunities to learn from the unique perspectives of women and bravely follow their lead. They value the voices of women only to the extent that they echo the voices of the men in charge. They desire the pretty stamp of female approval to seal the words they have already spoken.

I have spent so much time and energy speaking up because I have felt called to do so, but I am exhausted and find myself falling into cynicism as my personal revelation and that of my sisters has repeatedly been doubted and disregarded and our cries—whether of pain and desperation or of hope and inspiration—have continually fallen on deaf ears. It’s getting to the point where I wonder if I even want to raise my daughter in this church, and yet I am running out of energy to set a better example for her, whether in staying or in leaving. Apathy has set in. My existence as an awakened woman in the Church feels as hollow as the prophetic calls to share our female perspectives, to lead as Eve led. Yet I continue to go through the motions because I don’t at present have the energy for anything else.

The institution wants to control my relationship with God, teaching of an all-male father god who cherishes his exalted wife by locking her away in the attic (6) and modeling a disturbing family dynamic. (7) An all-male creator god who enlists other men, but has no need of woman, to create life itself. But I have come to know God and, borrowing the words of Jane Eyre:

“I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in,—with an original, a vigorous, and expanded mind.

“[Does the Church] think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? [Does the Church] think, because I am [a woman], I am soulless and heartless?—[The brethren] think wrong!—I have as much soul as [men],—and full as much heart!

“…it is my spirit that addresses [their] spirit[s]; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!” (8)

I have learned from Them that growth and progression follow the pattern of seasons. I am currently in winter, dormant but not dead. Will my spring come in the Church or must I, as countless brave women before me, leave to bloom again? I rest now in the place where I was planted, with icy layers of hardened snow weighing heavy upon me and the bitter winds of prevailing thought howling triumphantly about. But spring will come, and I will rise. She always does.

Tracy writes to heal her soul and discover her truest self. She will write for as long as she lives, because healing and discovery are never done.

 

Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart (New York: Random House, 2021), 218-226. Joel D. Walton, “The Big Threat to Your Relationship: Apathy”, mended LIFE (blog), October 20, 2019. Russel M. Nelson, “Sisters’ Participation in the Gathering of Israel”, General Women’s Session, General Conference, October 2018. Henry B. Eyring, “Women and Gospel Learning in the Home”, General Women’s Session, General Conference, October 2018. Dale G. Renlund, “Your Divine Nature and Eternal Destiny”, Women’s Session, General Conference, April 2022. Guest Post, “Madwoman in the Attic”, Exponent II (blog), April 26, 2022. ElleK, “I Don’t Want to Be Like Heavenly Mother”, Exponent II (blog), April 19, 2022. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), Volume the Second, 17-18.

Our Bloggers Recommend: Why the LDS Church’s top women’s leaders are not necessarily top leaders in the global faith

Exponent bloggers April Young-Bennett, Katie Ludlow Rich, Lindsay Ott Denton (“ElleK” on the blog) and Abby Maxwell Hansen share their thoughts in this Salt Lake Tribune article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Peggy Fletcher Stack. Did you know that top female leaders in the church no longer meet separately with the first presidency or an apostle on a regular basis? (Instead, they sit on an “executive council” where they are outnumbered by men, a change that occurred in 2015 in the wake of the Ordain Women movement.) What are your thoughts on Peggy’s reporting?

ttps://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/04/30/why-lds-churchs-top-womens-leaders

Our Bloggers Recommend: Celebrate Diversity, Autism Acceptance, and Arab American Heritage

April is Arab American Heritage Month. Let’s learn more about Arab Americans, their stories, and their experiences.
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/subjects/social-studies/arab-american-heritage-month

April is Autism Acceptance Month. Let’s learn more about autism and the importance of moving from awareness to acceptance.
https://www.neurologyadvisor.com/topics/autism-spectrum-disorder/autism-acceptance-month-history-and-impact/

April is Celebrate Diversity Month. Let’s learn about the importance of diversity and ways we can honor and celebrate it. https://unexpectedvirtualtours.com/resources/celebrate-diversity-month/

The Trial

This piece was commissioned as part of the In Our Own Words series, which seeks to share the voices and experiences of marginalized individuals. You can find all of the pieces in this series here.

By Naomi Akira

I have sat so many times across the desk from a bishop. Just waiting for the ball to drop. Waiting to be deemed unworthy. Knowing, that as a young black woman, I have to work exponentially harder to prove myself deserving. My throat tightens and my head throbs. 

I want to scream.
I want to scream. 
I want to scream.

I have sat so many times across the desk from my judge, jury, and executioner. Just waiting for the ball to drop. Waiting to be told I can’t continue at school. Waiting for all I have worked for to be ripped away from me. But I smile politely. I sit, legs crossed uncomfortably. I hope my hair has cooperated. I hope that I look put together. I hope I look suitable. But my brain rages against those words. 

It screams.
It screams.
It screams.

I don’t feel put together. I feel tamed. Like every curl gelled down into place is desperately clinging on for me. I don’t feel suitable. I feel colonized. Like I can smile away a complicated history. Thank away my difference. Like this pretty dress is enough to pretend away problems like church leaders have done for years. I want him to see me as “one of the good ones.” I want him to feel like I am different. I want him to see that I am obedient. My heart rages this time. It beats against my ribs and begs me to stop. 

It screams.
It screams.
It screams.

I don’t know how to tell it to calm down. That I don’t mean it. I don’t know how to tell my heart that if it beats too loud it might be called “ghetto”. I don’t know how to tell it that if it moves too quickly it might get hurt. I want to apologize to it for the battering it takes again and again. But I stay quiet. I am mindful of my courtroom manners while I am sitting on trial, but my lungs burn.

They scream. 
They scream.
They scream.

I want to tell them to be cool. That if they burn too bright, he might see the fiery anger within me. That I might be questioned further. I want to tell my lungs that boiling over in this seat won’t just hurt me. That if I get too hot it will inevitably burn every other black person around me. That they might all be treated differently. 

I am sitting across the desk from my judge, jury, and executioner. I am waiting for the gavel to drop. I am praying that I win this trial. I am praying that my brain doesn’t stop working. That my heart doesn’t break before the sentencing. I am praying that my lungs can keep breathing. I don’t know how much longer my body can hold out. I don’t know when it will call upon me for justice for forcing it through this. Every part of me wants to be near you God, but I don’t think I can survive this trial again.

Naomi is a Master’s in Public Administration student at BYU’s Marriott School of Business. She enjoys reading, writing poetry, and being at the beach.

​​Open Theme – Summer 2024 Call for Submissions

SUBMIT YOUR WRITING & ARTWORK FOR THE SUMMER 2024 ISSUE

For this Summer 2024 issue, we welcome all writing and visual artwork submissions. No specific theme, we look forward to reading and seeing what you have been creating and thinking about during this winter and spring to publish in our summer open theme issue.

We are seeking a balance of fiction and nonfiction through short story, personal essay, and visual artwork. Submissions are due by May 10, 2024. Please follow the guidelines. Authors and artists should identify with the mission of Exponent II.

Photo by Hannah Gullixson on Unsplash