Exponent II's Blog, page 83

Guest Post: Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel

by Leatha Udayabhanu.

Faith journeys are incredibly individual. Yet there are some common patterns inherent for many of us. 

You start to pull away from the rigid dogmas you grew up with – familial, cultural, and/or religious – and as you do, you start to discover that you have been living a life where your actions didn’t reflect what YOU value – they reflect the values of your family, culture, and/or religious institution. And perhaps that is what clued you in that you were in need of a faith transition – living your faith didn’t feel fulfilling or aligned. (Does this sound familar?) Something was off. Something was missing. So you start exploring possibilities. You start deconstructing.

You hit a significant milestone in that you start to explore what you actually value. You realize what you actually care about! And that is exciting, and wonderful…yet, this can be a really painful process. You may realize that your past actions weren’t only not reflective of your values – they were actually directly in opposition!

Let’s take racism as an example.You start to deconstruct your faith, and in the process, realize you have been complicit in upholding values that are not your own. Maybe you taught or believed in the “dark skin curse.” You were raised with all the mental gymnastics required to believe that the priesthood ban was inspired by God. Maybe you told someone they’d one day be “white and delightsome” or maybe it’s just that you realize you heard it and didn’t really question it until now. Or you realize the pride you felt in your family participating in the Indian placement program was woefully misplaced.

So you continue to deconstruct, and in doing so, you recognize that you deeply value anti-racism. You realize that these teachings you grew up with are abhorrent to you, and that you value a society based on equity. You realize that you have been complicit in upholding systems that you now recognize as deeply harmful. (This part usually evokes a deep sense of shame. More on that later.)

So now you get really excited, passionate, and impatient to live a life that actually reflects your values! You are eager to show up in spaces and do the work! You protest. Maybe you post a few things on social media. You join anti-racism spaces and you show up, eager to make up for your complicity in racist ideals. The enormity of the work that needs to be done to heal society of racism and anti-blackness becomes apparent to you. And so you are in a hurry to “put your shoulder to the wheel” because there is so much damn work to do, and you are willing! Put me and my Mormon work ethic to work! 

But then…instead of staying motivated and committed to your mission to change the world, you find yourself feeling burned out, exhausted, and/or paralyzed – wanting to take action but finding yourself immobilized. Or maybe you did take action – but found yourself navigating a lot of overwhelming conflict, and even causing harm in the very spaces where you wanted to show up and do good. 

Why? Why does this happen?

Shame. I mean, you just realized that you lived a life where you frequently acted in ways that are antithetical to your core values. That feels gross, to say the least. Remembering the things we said and did that now make us cringe – well, there’s a lot of shame inherent to this process. And while it might be easy to believe that your eagerness to get to work is simply a byproduct of your passion and that good ole’ Mormon work ethic, often, it is also the quickest and easiest way to bypass that debilitating shame.Getting to work is a great way to avoid witnessing in depth the role you, your family, and your communities have played in this plague of racism. If this feels familiar to you, you’re in good company.  Most of us have no idea how to cope with shame, so we do what we’ve seen modeled for us  – we skip over it. We move around it. We bury it under layers of service. We collect performative acts and accolades as proof of our goodness. We put our shoulders to the wheel and push along. 

But here is the very important thing to remember. Shame is internalized oppression. Shame is deep wounding. And our unhealed shit will always come out sideways and impact the people around us. 

So when we don’t learn how to sit with our shame, we do everything we can to avoid feeling it. We bypass. We get to work. We stay busy. And we project that shame onto others. 

The truth is, we cannot battle external systems of oppression while continually oppressing ourselves. You can’t shame yourself into liberating the world.

If you try to do this work without addressing your shame, you will continue to oppress yourself and the people around you. If you are serious about social justice work, you will absolutely find yourself triggered, activated, and fighting shame. It is the nature of the work. 

But if you don’t know how to soothe and heal your shame, you will use maladaptive ways to cope with the pain of it. You’ll inflict that shame on others – often people who share your identities but just aren’t as woke as you. Show me a social justice post on IG and I’ll show you privileged folks who haven’t dealt with their shame, shaming each other in an Olympic level competition that does absolutely nothing for the cause and often stops other people from taking any action at all because they are so afraid of being shamed. 

Or you will enter into spaces and when you mess up – and you will, because you’re human – instead of effectively engaging in repair, you will instead be asking marginalized people, directly or indirectly, to soothe those wounds for you. You will want someone else to soothe your shame by telling you how good or woke or allied you are. And that causes harm – most often to the very people you wanted to support.

So what is the solution? 

You need a skillset – one that probably hasn’t been modeled for you. You need to know how to hold space, how to hold yourself accountable, how to repair when you cause harm, and so much more. And most of all, you need to practice the antidote to shame. You need to practice self compassion. You need to know how to pour self compassion on those deep ancestral wounds. You need to witness who you are, who you were, and love all those parts. You need to lovingly and firmly hold yourself accountable – which is not the same as shaming yourself. 

You need to stop bypassing the shame and learn how to sit with it, and sit with yourself, with love, tenderness, and compassion. 

If you are truly serious about fighting oppressive systems, then a self compassion practice is a MUST. Without it, you will not have the capacity to continually engage in this work. And collective liberation requires much more than a single social media post or a one time donation to the ACLU. It requires us to practice moving through shame with compassion. It requires willing folks who wear the workers seal, yes, but more than ever, it requires you to deeply care for yourself. It requires our open hearts, an ever expanding capacity to love, and our resilience. The work requires you.

And it will be long but must go on. Put your shoulder to the wheel. We need you. 

Leatha Udayabhanu is a public speaker, life coach and educator who specializes in helping you deeply connect to yourself, so you can do the work you’re meant to do in creating collective liberation. Find her on Instagram @essentiallyawake and Essentially Awake.

Leatha writes, “You need to witness who you are, who you were, and love all those parts…a self compassion practice is a MUST. Without it, you will not have the capacity to continually engage in this work.”

The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism

Most readers of this blog have likely heard of the “September Six”—the six feminists and intellectuals who faced church discipline in September 1993 for their research and writing related to the theology and history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One—Lynne Kanavel Whitesides—was disfellowshipped. Five—Avraham Gileadi, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks, Lavina Fielding Anderson, and D. Michael Quinn—were excommunicated. Though local church leaders held the disciplinary councils, there is good reason to believe that general authorities coordinated these councils.

While the “September Six” is a catchy moniker, it threatens to obscure that month’s events as isolated anomalies. Just in time for the thirtieth anniversary, Sara M. Patterson’s book The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism will be released this month.

I received an advanced copy courtesy of the publisher, Signature Books. I was surprised when the book opened with the story of David Wright, a former BYU professor who was excommunicated in 1984 while living in Boston for publishing unorthodox perspectives on the Book of Mormon. It soon became clear that Patterson was setting the stage to discuss not only the individuals who faced church discipline in September 1993, but the larger story of an era of intellectual retrenchment in the LDS church where church leaders and members clashed over which narratives of the Restoration were okay to publish.

Patterson does indeed discuss each of the six—their work that led to the disciplinary councils, the results of the councils, and the intellectual and spiritual paths that each followed in the decades to come. Patterson uses a variety of sources for the book, including personal interviews or correspondence with several of the key participants. I was moved to hear more about the experience of Margaret Toscano, who was excommunicated in 2000, seven years after her husband Paul was excommunicated as part of the Six. Patterson writes, “It should have been Margaret Toscano. She was the primary focus of the church authorities’ attention until her husband, Paul, stepped in. She did not need to be rescued” (213). It was an interesting manifestation of the church’s sexism that infantilizes women and considers their priesthood-holding husbands as spiritually responsible for them.

The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism is available for pre-order. Come for the stories of the September Six, stay for Patterson’s in-depth analysis of the church’s purity system that placed some ideas and bodies inside a circle of acceptability and pushed others out.

And while you are waiting for your copy of the book to arrive, you can read this roundtable from Dialogue with insights from Taylor Petrey, Jana Riess, Patrick Mason, Kristine Haglund, Benjamin E. Park, and Amanda Hendrix-Komoto.

Guest Post: Musings on Judy Blume and a Feminine Divine

by Jessie R.

A few months ago I saw Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret in theaters. It was a wonderful movie and a surprisingly cathartic experience. The theater was full of women-mothers and daughters, sisters and friends- laughing, groaning, and cheering at all the best parts. We were the target audience, after all, and what could be more relatable than an 11-year-old girl navigating a changing body, a new group of friends, and her relationship with religion?

Like Margaret, I spent the entire runtime contemplating about my own understanding of God–in particular, what it meant to grow up female, in a world where God was known exclusively as male. Heavenly Father. He. Him.

Young me was perplexed by this. How could a Father ever really understand what it was like to get your first period, to stuff tissues into a training bra? Did He care? Were those things unimportant-silly, even? Only now, years later, do I recognize the shame I felt about my femaleness–my “otherness”. After all, with my girl parts, I would never truly be made in God’s image.

Over time, my ideas about God have changed. I now accept God as mystery, with a powerful, baffling love for me and all creations. When I pray, I still use the spiritual language I was taught all of my life. I truly believe that God hears me, and all of us, regardless of the words we choose to use.

God feels plural to me now. I don’t just picture a father, but a mother as well. Equally loving and equally powerful. A mother I wish I knew more about.

“It’s not that an idea of god the father [is] so upsetting to me,” Meggan Waterson wrote in her book, Mary Magdalene Revealed, “[it’s] that [it’s] so incomplete…. It just [feels] like one side of a far more inclusive and radical love story.”

At the end of the movie, Margaret cries tears of joy over getting her first period (Spoiler. Sorry!). In that moment, I imagined a divine feminine face. I wondered if there was a Heavenly Mother who heard her prayer of gratitude. Perhaps She had been walking beside her all along, listening to her prayers, whispering in her heart, crying with her, cheering for her. Relating to a daughter as only a mother could do.

All I have is speculation. This is the God of my own understanding, pieced together by the answers to my most personal prayers.

But expanding divinity to include the feminine feels a brave step into the unknown. It feels like strengthening muscles I didn’t know I had, like painting on canvas with a wider, brighter array of colors.

It feels more … whole.

Jessie R is a math teacher, aspiring data scientist, and mother to two little girls. She likes to write about her faith, if for no other reason than to quiet her own mind.

What’s In A Name

When my mother was born, my African relatives rejoiced. There were prayers. They were tears.

And eventually, there was a name.

My mother, the apple of her parents eyes, was named Paula Ernestine Chiedu. Ernest from her father, an engineer from Africa who she would never have the opportunity to know once she left England. Still with the name Chiedu, she was reminded her of her heritage.

Roughly translated from the Igbo language from Nigeria, the name means “God leads”. 

In its present-day usage, it reminds the recipient of the name of the connection to their faith and the God who continued to lead. And my ancestors remembered all, giving the beautiful name to a daughter who would not be with them for long.

Decades after returning to Barbados, my mother decided to bless me with the name she herself had been given.

On March 20th, thirty-one years ago, I would become Ramona Chiedu Louisa. Chiedu became an inherited name and Louisa was given in honor of a great aunt who had raised my mother and prayed for her pregnancy after years dealing with endometriosis.

As I grew up, I began to resent my name. I didn’t mind much that when people met me that they began to sing the Louis Armstrong song “Ramona”. My disdain for my name had little to do with the eventual comparisons to the childhood character Ramona Quimby.

It had everything to do with Chiedu, the name which in it purest form is a sacred reminder to the recipient that there is a higher power which should guide one’s steps

I’ve always hated my middle name. In school, it was hard to pronounce. It was reduced to C. as many failed to give my name the respect it deserved.

Growing up, the name Chiedu had become a heavy weight, making me the target of jokes and mean spirited jabs about how funny it was compared to the cutesy, girly-pop, aesthetic and cool names most girls in my secondary school had.

When I first joined the church, I never considered the complexities of the love hate relationship with my name. I would pronounce it haphazardly, wishing that the name could be removed from my life.

Over the years, I avoided receiving priesthood blessings as the lost boys from Utah butchered my name with each hands placed upon my head seemed to stray further away from the light. I recalled one such blessing while in Utah where a young man decided I needed to be renamed and made up a whole new name entirely.

A year ago, I stumbled upon a video by the actress Uzoamaka Aduba commonly known as Uzo Aduba (Crazy Eyes from Orange Is The New Black). I remember being pulled to this video as she spoke about her history with having an uncommon name and the beauty she was blessed with at birth.

Tears rolled down my face as I recognized that the feelings I had suppressed were so apparently common for most with Ethnic African names.

After typing my name into an African name generator, I learned after almost thirty years, I had be pronouncing my middle name incorrectly. In the months that passed, I worked hard to nail the pronunciation until it became second nature, knowing that on my graduation day my name needed the respect it deserved.

On graduation day, I strode across the stage with tears in my eyes. The reader pronounced my name with sincere respect and while I’m not quite sure it was intentional, I could feel my grandmother’s warmth around me reminding me of the sacred meaning.

I look back at my name, once marred by the world’s slim worldview. I take comfort in my name knowing that it is not simply the gift bestowed to my mother but future generations will know the name.

I am Chiedu. My children will be Chiedu.

We are Ernest’s posterity even if the sands of time believed we could survive life without the culture and the influence of his spirit.

I pray for my future children. My sons Chinedu and my daughters Chiedu. And for their children as well. They will be led by the beauty of the name. By the pride in holding on and being led by something higher…someone higher.

Like the warblings of birds

General Conference is nearly upon us, which means we are all but guaranteed to have at least one sermon on the Sabbath day, and how to keep it holy.  There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I would ever be invited to speak at General Conference, but most Sundays I find myself composing an address to the greater Church membership on what they should say.  I notice that the people who are giving talks are overwhelmingly male, in a patriarchal Church.  In all likelihood most of the men speaking were busy at church meetings, doing calling stuff, or just being dads in the 1960s.  

All of the speakers are long past the stage of having small children at home, and it is pretty clear that the further you are from parenting small children, the more you suppress the memories.  My mother-in-law, whom I love and respect, once told me that she brought the kids early to Church so they could prepare for the Sacrament, and that they were able to be reverent.  My father-in-law said “whose children were these?”  My husband has a scar on his face from the time he flailed into the hymnal holder, gashed his skin, and had to be hauled screaming and bleeding to the ER to get stitches. Our General Authorities are of a similar age and distance from active badger raising. In short, the people who are telling me how I could better observe the Sabbath are people who have no idea whatsoever what Sunday morning actually looks like at our house.

Some of the advice I remember hearing in the past includes wearing our “Sunday best,” possibly all day long to encourage overall holiness. Families should prepare their clothing and bags the night before so the morning is peaceful and harmonious.  You should arrive early so as to listen to prelude music and build a spirit of reverence.  Small children may require amusement – this should include things like Gospel art pictures to look at during the Sacrament.  After Church you should turn away little friends in favor of focusing on the family.  Everyone should refrain from work, but also there should be a large special family meal.  This should happen without mother working through a mysterious process that is perhaps only revealed in the Holy of Holies.

There is nothing wrong with any of this advice, and I bet it works like a charm if you’re 60 years old, have freezer meals, and no one else to interact with.  I’m hella Christlike when I’m alone.  But I would like to offer some more realistic goals – attainable goals.  Goals that might help you reach a little higher, come a little closer to Sabbath peace, while also not being part of some fantasy world of retirement reverence.

How many times between awakening and sitting in the pew do you hear the words “I hate you” directed either at you, or a sibling? How often do you hear “I hate Church”?  Anyone wishing out loud that you would drop dead? Next Sunday, keep count.  One recent Sabbath in my home we got five in the course of an hour, which was actually pretty low for us.  What could you, as a family, do to reduce the hateful invective by one?  Is it possible to keep all family members separated from one another, while also getting ready? Could any or all family members wear noise cancelling headphones so that you can’t hear anyone saying “I hate you” which is practically the same thing as love at home?

In an ideal world your little angels would have styled hair, wrinkle-free fancy clothes, clean church shoes and a high level of personal hygiene.  What is a realistic goal for your family?  In my home my goal is clean underwear within the last 24 hours and everyone is wearing shoes.  I’m not totally married to the second one, I can be flexible about it especially if the ground isn’t wet outside.  The shoes do not need to match each other, and frequently they don’t.  They do not need to be clean, on or the correct foot.  They usually aren’t.  If you’re shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace then loafers are superfluous.  I know we own a pair of nice shoes for each child.  Where they are is one of the mysteries of Godliness.  Sometimes I can stretch beyond “are we wearing shoes” and I aim for “no graphic Ts.” Or if I’m really into it, we try for a polo shirt.  Here’s a pro tip:  Polo tops are reasonably comfortable.  There is not reason on God’s green earth why your child can’t dress for Church the night before and sleep in their church clothes.  Lay out the clothes the night before? We can do better than that! We can lie in the clothes the night before.

Ideally of course you would arrive early to Sacrament Meeting to build holiness and not be disruptive when your horde tromps in.  But as part of your realistic goal setting, ask yourself how much time your children have in them to act domesticated instead of like feral weasels.  My children have a maximum of forty minutes even when I drag bags completely full of graphic novels with me.  Are these scriptural graphic novels? They are not.  To me, church-themed entertainment is not a realistic goal because church-themed activities will hold their attention for no more than three minutes.  My goal is that they are subdued and refrain from excessive writhing so I have a chance of catching a snatch of spiritual uplift.  When you have determined both the outer limit of reverence, and a realistic estimate of what the average quiet period might be, consider how best to use it.   For many people the most meaningful and important part of Church is taking the Sacrament.  In that case, showing up on time makes sense.  But maybe what you really need is to have an adult sharing adult thoughts about adult problems with Gospel solutions.  In that case it’s more prudent to keep the barrel of monkeys at home, in the car, or in the foyer until the odds of catching a talk improve.

Misery loves company.  Identify which children in the ward are about as ferocious and menacing as yours, and exchange phone numbers with the parents.  Sometimes my best chance of resetting when we finally stagger in to Church is to text a dear friend whose home life looks like mine and describe our day so far.  Or maybe I celebrate our successes – I met our Bishop in the foyer last Sunday and triumphantly announced “we’re here! Wearing pants!” and he celebrated with me because he has four small gremlins.

After my talk the Tabernacle Choir could favor us with a special musical interlude.

Some holiness give meStriving with my childrenMore patience in sufferingCelebrating small winsMore skin with no bite marksMore hope they will have funMore willing to show upMore thanks when it’s done

Five reasons I tell my daughters to NOT get married in the temple

I loved everything about my wedding. My husband was and still is one of the best people I’ve ever met. I was excited to spend the rest of my life with him. We were sealed in the Bountiful Temple on a Thursday morning in May. We had a reception the next day in his stake center. He and I worked together to plan our reception. We wanted it to be something that was ours. It was the first big project we’d ever worked on together and its success cemented the knowledge that we were very compatible. 

At the time I was married I felt like my wedding went perfectly. And it had. Everything went as well as it could have in 2007. 

In 2019 the policy around temple sealings changed. Couples in the United States could be sealed in the temple right after their civil marriage. They no longer had to wait a year. When I heard that news I started to revisit some of my thoughts and feelings around my wedding day. I’ve realized that if I could do it over again – with the option to get married outside of the temple and then sealed later – I would have done things differently.  

This realization has impacted how I talk to my three daughters about their wedding days. They are about to enter their teenage years. I know that the Young Women Program will emphasize getting married in the temple. But at home we talk about marriage differently. I tell them to NOT get married in the temple. Here are five reasons why.

You don’t want to exclude your younger or unendowed siblings. 

I’m the oldest in my family so when I was married none of my siblings could come to my wedding. Even my younger sister who was getting married two weeks later could not come to my wedding because she was not yet endowed. At the time this felt completely normal. I hadn’t been able to attend any of my aunt and uncle’s wedding ceremonies. I’d been just fine waiting in the visitor room of the temple during those ceremonies. It felt normal to ask the same thing of my siblings. I didn’t think about how odd it was that none of my siblings were at my wedding. 

Now that I look back on it I’m flabbergasted with how I was expected to exclude the people who mattered the most. My siblings are some of my closest friends, but they didn’t witness one of the biggest events of my life. 

I tell my daughters that they should be married outside the temple so that their siblings can come. This is especially applicable in our family because my son has intellectual disability. I don’t know if he’ll ever be mentally mature enough to be endowed. Without being endowed he will never be able to attend his sisters’ wedding ceremonies in the temple. I think he would be extremely disappointed to miss seeing their weddings. I know his sisters will want him to attend their weddings. 

You don’t want to exclude family members who have left the church. 

When I was married my Grandmother and one of my aunt’s couldn’t attend my temple wedding. They had joined the church along with my mom years earlier, but had since gone inactive. At the time I felt bad, but basically thought, “well, that’s their choice. They should have repented and come back to church.”  Now I know how small minded my thinking was. 

At this point about 40% of my family has left the church. That number will probably increase by the time my girls are ready to get married. I can’t imagine planning their wedding days and saying, “well Uncle ____ can’t come” or “too bad Aunt _____ won’t be able to see you get married.” These are people we have gone camping with, who have braided my girls hair, who have listened to their stories, who care about them deeply. We can’t exclude them from the wedding because of their feelings about the church. 

And even if the family members haven’t fully left the church, they may not have a temple recommend at the time of the wedding. I quite possibly will be one of these people. I don’t want to be left out because of my complicated feelings toward the temple. And I don’t want to leave anyone else out either. 

You can’t write your own vows for the temple. 

I deeply regret that the only word I said in my wedding ceremony was “Yes.” Also I had no idea what my vows would be ahead of time. I just went into the ceremony trusting my parents and my fiancé that everything would be fine. 

At the time I was fine with whatever I did say yes to. I was so happy to be marrying my husband. But I honestly have no memory of what I agreed to. With all the wording changes over the years I can’t just go to a sealing and hear the same words again. 

Even if I did remember the wording, I have no emotional connection to those vows. The beginning of my marriage to a man that I have a deep and fulfilling connection with, started with the same words that everyone else in my religion used in their ceremonies. Maybe there is something lovely to having the vows be standardized across an entire world religion, but it seems sterile to me. They weren’t words that we created. I’m a writer, I love words. I would have enjoyed writing my own vows that reflected my commitment and love to the man I’d chosen to spend my life with. 

I want my girls to have the option to write their own vows. To create something that is meaningful to them. I definitely want them to say more than one word at their own wedding. 

You can’t pick your officiator in the temple. 

My husband and I literally never met the man who married us until about 20 minutes before the ceremony. Again, this was completely normal at the time. But now I’m shocked that we were so blasé about having a random person officiate at our wedding. 

He talked to us briefly before the ceremony, and was very nice, but he was in and out of our lives pretty quickly. I did run into him one other time at another temple. The only way I recognized him was by his name tag. I wouldn’t have recognized his face. 

I’d like my girls to have the option to pick a family friend to officiate at their weddings. Actually I’d love to be the one to officiate at their weddings. Officiating at a wedding is on my bucket list. I’d love to do it for my daughters. Their dad gave them their baby blessings and baptized them, it’s only fair that I be the one to marry them. 

I’ve told that to my girls, but they’ve told me that I’ll probably cry too much. Which is a valid point. Even if I’m not the one who officiates I think it should be someone who has been in their lives and will continue to be in their lives. 

You might not be ready for the endowment ceremony when you are ready to be married.

Honestly, I didn’t want to go through the temple before my wedding. For years I’d had nightmares about getting lost in the temple. I’d struggled with feelings of worthiness. And I just wasn’t sure if garments were for me. But I felt immense pressure to get married in the temple. There was no way I was going to get married civilly and have everyone whisper behind my back about whether or not my husband and I had “messed up.” 

So I pushed down my worries and planned a temple wedding. I scheduled the ceremony, bought the clothes, and went through the temple. All the while I was wondering if I really wanted to do it. Even now I wonder if I would have ever gone through the temple if it hadn’t been part and parcel to my wedding. 

I want my girls to choose to go through the temple on their own timeline. Not because it’s coupled with something else. 

* * *

When I look back on my wedding, my favorite memories are from the reception. My husband and I had so much fun planning that reception. From designing the backdrop, to figuring out the way we wanted the room laid out, to selecting the dancing music; everything reflected our tastes and personalities. I wish we’d had the same options for our wedding ceremony.

The biggest thing I want for my daughters on their wedding day is to feel like they have control of their options. I don’t want them pressured into a ceremony in a certain building just because it’s expected of them. I want them to know that they can have the wedding they want, with the guests they want, with the words they want, and in the place they want.

These are my reasons for telling my girls to get married outside the temple. I’m curious if you have similar thoughts or if you want your children to be married in the temple. What are your reasons? I’m also curious about those of you who have sons. My only son is the one with intellectual disability so it’s hard for me to imagine his wedding day. I wrote this post with my daughters in mind, but I’m aware this could apply to both daughters and sons. What would you tell your sons about getting married inside or outside the temple?

Photo by Ty Welch on Unsplash

Guest Post: Mixed-Faith Marriage–Appreciating the Beauty of a New Journey

by Emma Renshaw

My husband and I are three years into a mixed-faith marriage. We are Midwesterners who love to backpack. The backpack adventures started as a quip comment when he served as a bishop and asked what I wanted to do for a couples trip. I sarcastically replied, “Somewhere where a single phone call or text can’t make it through.” Two months later, we found ourselves on Ray Lakes Loop in Kings Canyon, without a line to the outside world and our first encounter with bears. It was a time when our faith was fully intact. The fractures were forming, but neither of us would anticipate the landslide of emotions that would bury us in the coming years as we learned to navigate a life where religion was no longer the foundational component of our relationship.

The heartache has subsided, and I wanted to share this analogy for those starting to embark on the mixed-faith journey.

He packs to conquer the mountain and the vistas. I pack for the flora – the windswept flowers and the delicate moss that grows above the treeline. I’ll allow him to self-pace when it’s steep, and he stays in earshot. When the altitude strains my Midwest lungs, he’s by my side, patiently waiting. Because we’re drawn to the mountain for different reasons (and we’re grossly different heights), we’re simply mis-paced. However, we both love the engulfing silence; therefore, the mountainside is ours together.

Sometimes I’m envious because he’s traveling in ultralight gear, but I can’t, not yet. As a woman, there is so much baggage, an identity interwoven with the church. I continue to carry my pack until I have the time, space, and courage to unravel it all. He can’t help with or force it; he can only provide patience and space when I’m ready.

When I thought I was finally ready to upgrade to ultralight equipment to match his, I realized my pack would always be heavier because I’m a woman. One day women’s backpacking equipment will be equal to men’s, there is progress, but I’ll always need warmer gear. Sure, it’s just a few extra ounces, but it’s a weight I can’t shed, and it shows on the steep pass.

I try a few new pieces of equipment, some work well, and some don’t. After a few more trips up the mountainside, I realize my old pack fits me better, and the heavier sleeping bag is the difference between the “worst night of my life” and ‘I can still feel my toes.” For me, it’s not all about weight; I need comfort.

In my faith life, I’ve found a home on the edge, a place where complexity turns into something beautiful and wild. It’s lonely and complex, but it also affords growth, empathy, and a more expansive view. It’s a space where I can sort my pack out and decide what is necessary and what is not.

We’ve backpacked together for eight years and married for almost two decades. Our kids joke when they look through our photos from the same trail; it looks like two different trips. We realize it’s the same with our faith, we now view through different lenses. It’s messy, unlike on the trail; there’s no map for mixed-faith marriages. At times it’s painful to see how faith deconstruction has altered our lives’ trajectory. This is not what we anticipated, not what we sought out, not what we were promised.

I do not fully understand why his faith shattered, and he does not understand how I still believe, albeit in a strange and unorthodox way. Still, we are learning to appreciate the beauty in the vistas and the intimate ecology of our views on faith and life. We made a verbal pact to keep the adventure going together. To learn, together. To grow, together. To experience, together. So we plan the next trip into an unexplored wilderness, knowing there will be challenging climbs to find breathtaking beauty and allowing space for each of us to have a different experience on the same adventure.

Emma is a mom of four and partner. She is an agricultural nonprofit director, lover of fields, woods and everything that grows within.

Photo: Wayfinding Through the Fog – The Presi, Mt. Washington

Rocky Mountain Retreat

Are you hungry for deep conversation with thoughtful women? Do you need a break from the daily grind? Does a weekend in nature sound healing? Rocky Mountain Retreat (October 13-15) is just around the corner, and we are all looking forward to being together with friends both old and new. We’ll have breakout sessions, singing, yummy snacks, eclipse viewing, labyrinth walking, possible mountain climbing, certainly deer viewing—along with real and meaningful discussion about who we are, shared and divergent faith journeys, religious pain and religious healing, and how to meaningfully participate and help others in our communities both in and out of the church.

Registration is Open as of today! Registration will close at midnight on Wednesday, September 13th. To register, go to www.rockymountainretreat.org

Keynote Speaker: Caroline Kline

Caroline Kline is the assistant director of the Center for Global Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. She holds a PhD in religion from CGU, and her areas of interest include contemporary Latter-day Saint women’s communities, feminist theory, and oral history. Kline is the author of a number of articles or book chapters that center on Mormonism and gender, including “The Mormon Conception of Women’s Nature and Role: A Feminist Analysis,” (Feminist Theology, 2014) and “Saying Goodbye to the Final Say: The Softening and Reimagining of Mormon Male Headship Ideologies,” (Out of Obscurity: Mormonism Since 1945, 2016). Her book, Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness (2022), explores Latter-day Saint women’s lived experiences in Botswana, Mexico, and the United States.

Keynote Address: Caroline will speak to us about her book, Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness (2022), which explores Latter-day Saint women’s lived experiences in Botswana, Mexico, and the United States:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to contend with longstanding tensions surrounding gender and race. Yet women of color in the United States and across the Global South adopt and adapt the faith to their contexts, many sharing the high level of satisfaction expressed by Latter-day Saints in general. Caroline Kline explores the ways Latter-day Saint women of color in Mexico, Botswana, and the United States navigate gender norms, but also how their moral priorities and actions challenge Western feminist assumptions. Kline analyzes these traditional religious women through non-oppressive connectedness, a worldview that blends elements of female empowerment and liberation with a broader focus on fostering positive and productive relationships in different realms. Even as members of a patriarchal institution, the women feel a sense of liberation that empowers them to work against oppression and against alienation from both God and other human beings.

Vivid and groundbreaking, Mormon Women at the Crossroads merges interviews with theory to offer a rare discussion of Latter-day Saint women from a global perspective. (University of Illinois Press re: Mormon Women at the Crossroads)

When I Stand Still, My Daughter Will Fly

How does an independent woman fit in the church? Not very well, because our cultural and institutional structures are intentionally designed to make women dependent. The idea that a woman can and should hold agency to herself runs counter to the ideal of self-sacrificing wife and motherhood set on a pedestal at the center of LDS discourse on womanhood.

When I was a senior at BYU-Idaho, a solid almost twenty years in the past, I was a counselor in the Relief Society for our ward. We were, of course, overseen by a married older woman. She once had us over for dinner. As a senior in college, I was mostly concerned with the next step of my career and the apprehension of leaving school to become a fully-fledged adult. The other members of the presidency were dating serious boyfriends and the conversation mostly focused on that topic. “Who are you dating?” instead of “what are your next plans?” or “How’s your education coming along?” or even “what are you learning from your leadership role?” struck me. That moment was one where I truly felt the marriage market pressure. I was 22, not dating, wasn’t interested in dating, and had made my impending career my central purpose. I was over the hill and an ill fit.

It’s been well documented that our church infantilizes single, unmarried women of all ages, but I was also surprised when I did later marry and have children.

The internal and external pressure I felt in the early years of my role as a parent to prioritize the role of mother over any other aspects of my whole self led to deep unhappiness. It seems like, even now, whenever I make a move in my career, I have to answer the question “what about the children?” I struggled in the early baby and toddler years to recognize that it was permissible to spend time and money on myself.  

Once again, I was somewhat of an ill-fit. The role of primary caregiver was a mire of depression, anxiety, and overwhelm for me. My efforts to alleviate the issue didn’t make me any better of a fit in patriarchy.

I found returning to my career sustained me, but I appeared like a stay-at-home parent because I worked remotely. I was sending the kids to a babysitter and feeling hefty guilt about it. I was rediscovering my love of lap swimming to put movement and me-time back in my life but feeling pressed to squeeze it all in at the edges of my life, because the kids were supposed to be the center.

My spouse, who did not grow up in the church, wasn’t the source of this. I had to work out what I really felt internally and to untwist the knots that had been made by what I had been taught over the years. Somehow, I had to learn to reserve my own agency and to actively protect it, when passivity and protection and dependence were what I was taught was right. It’s been an uneven journey.

Now that I am the parent of a seven-year-old daughter, this journey has greater significance. I want her to be able to advocate for herself, to protect her economic and relationship agencies, to live her life intentionally and to take risks where she believes she can. What I am (hopefully) modeling for her and teaching her will be very different from what was modeled and taught to me. Where I have had to push back against what I was taught, I hope she will instead feel that she has the lift to fly.  

I am reminded of the profound line from Barbie, when Ruth speaks, “we mothers stand still so our daughters can see how far they’ve come.”

If my daughter knows that marriage is a choice instead of an inevitability, that her inherent value and worth is not tied to either marriage or parenthood, that she can take risks and be ambitious without shame, and that she is her own person who can develop strong relationships and connections without becoming subservient to them, she will have gone further down the path than I and I will rejoice to see it.   

Photo by Erik Dungan on Unsplash

Come Follow Me: 2 Corinthians 1-7 “Be Ye Reconciled to God”

Attention activity:

Give everyone paper to list trials they have experienced or situations where they aren’t sure of the best course. Assure them that their lists are private and they won’t need to share anything from the list unless they want to. Relate their lists to 2 Cor 4:8 “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;”.

Main quest: reconciliation, empathy, atonement

Discuss context: Paul had been planning on visiting Corinth on the way to Macedonia, but plans changed so instead he wrote a letter that we now know as 2nd Corinthians. Last time he visited, it ended painfully. We don’t know what happened or who caused offense, but Paul had written a different letter to the Corinthians “with many tears” to let them know of his love.

Read 2 Cor 2:1-10 where Paul explains why he wrote his previous letter. Talk about how Paul handled a hard situation and ask “How should we treat someone who has offended us?” Read and discuss Matt 5: 43-48, which discusses loving your enemies. Loving your enemies can be hard! How do we do it while still keeping ourselves safe?

Read 2 Cor 5:18-21 together. Note that reconcile means “restore friendly relations between” and “make one account consistent with another”. How did Jesus reconcile us with God? Do we always have friendly relations with God? What does it mean to be an ambassador for Christ?

Read 2 Cor 1:4. God can comfort us and that can teach us to comfort others. Have the class think about the trials they listed at the beginning of class. Does anyone want to share about a time they felt God’s comfort, or a time someone comforted them? Note that the word empathy which means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” has only been used in English for about 100 years, but the concept was taught in this verse. Talk about how the atonement, being at one with God, is related to empathy.

Talk about the symbolism in partaking the sacrament. Read 2 Cor 4:10-11. Representations of Jesus blood and body enter your body and empower you to act. When you take the sacrament, Jesus lives in your actions, or as Paul puts it the “life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”

Side quests: These are passages that you could use if you have extra time. They all involve metaphor. You can discuss the symbols used, their meaning, and limits of the metaphor.

-Light Read 2 Cor 4:5-6. We don’t proclaim ourselves, we let light shine out of darkness.

-SavorIn other translations the word used is aroma, fragrance, or scent. Read 2 Cor 2:14-17. We should smell like Christ to God.

-Unveiled Read 2 Cor 3:12-18. Veils are used as a symbol of the old covenant. Unveiled means that you are transformed by God.

-Tent/tabernacle Read 2 Cor 5:1-10. A tent is impermanent like our bodies are impermanent.

Conclusion: Note that it feels really good to feel understood and heard. Encourage the class to talk to a friend, family member, mentor, or God about the challenges or trials they wrote down. Talk about how one of the kindest things we can do for another person is to take time to listen and try to understand them (even if we don’t agree with them). Share one or two of the quotes below and encourage the class to embody Christlike attributes.

“The greatest manifestation of charity is the Atonement of Jesus Christ, granted to us as a gift. Our diligent seeking for this gift requires that we not only are willing to receive it but are willing to share it as well. As we share this love with others, we emerge as ‘instruments in the hands of God to do this great work.’ We will be prepared to sit down with our sisters in heaven—together.”

Kathleen H. Hughes, First Counselor, Relief Society General Presidency
“ That We May All Sit Down in Heaven Together ,” October 2005 General Conference

“ Benevolent is a lovely word that we don’t hear very often. Its roots are Latin, and it means ‘to wish someone well.’ To be benevolent is to be kind, well meaning, and charitable…Our Savior taught us about and lived a benevolent life. Jesus loved all and He served all. Centering our lives on Jesus Christ will help us acquire this attribute of benevolence. For us to develop these same Christlike attributes, we must learn about the Savior and ‘follow in His ways.’ ”

Mary N. Cook, First Counselor, Young Women General Presidency
“ Remember This: Kindness Begins with Me ,” April 2011 General Conference

“…in this ongoing process of growing up unto the Lord, we will be asked to do all we can, in some cases, even more than we know how to do. The challenges may be formidable and the route sometimes unknown. But inevitable wrong turns notwithstanding, those who strive to be truly Christlike—with steadfast determination to serve others and a willingness to press forward in faith—can come to echo this grand spiritual truth shared by Nephi as he continued his shipbuilding: ‘And I … did … pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things.’ To be shown ‘great things’—what a gift, what a blessing to those who have chosen ‘to grow up unto the Lord.’ ”

Anne C. Pingree, Second Counselor, Relief Society General Presidency
“ To Grow Up unto the Lord ,” April 2006 General Conference

“ When we take the sacrament each week, we commit to change our lives for the better. We should always be trying to become a new person who is more like our Savior Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul calls this ‘[walking] in newness of life.’ ”

Julie B. Beck, First Counselor, Young Women General Presidency
“ You Have a Noble Birthright ,” April 2006 General Conference