Exponent II's Blog, page 89

“A Letter to My Daughter” by L.E.R.

Growing up in a Latinx household, I didn't consider depression a medical condition. To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, , Subscription – Print + Digital, United States, Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Year-Long Gift Digital Only, or Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Automatic Annual Renewal Digital Only, .

“After Dobbs” by Alixa Brobbey

My friend stares directly at the sun, cups his cheeks with her palm—risking blister and burn. She is the picture of bliss. Rosy cheeks stark against white lace. They sway as one, slice through the cake with giddy imprecision. Her corset cinched so tight she kneels by the bleach bowl in prayer. She folds over, […] To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, , Subscription – Print + Digital, United States, Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Year-Long Gift Digital Only, or Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Automatic Annual Renewal Digital Only, .

“Meet Sue Zwahlen: the First Woman (and LDS) Mayor of Modesto, California” — Interview by Katie Ludlow Rich

The decisions that women make in their homes and in their communities are the very things that make them effective leaders. To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, , Subscription – Print + Digital, United States, Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Year-Long Gift Digital Only, or Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Automatic Annual Renewal Digital Only, .

“Holiness Found Anywhere” — Interview with Kathryn Ivy Reese

Behold You Belong is a collection of poems and art inspired by the pages of the Book of Mormon. To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, , Subscription – Print + Digital, United States, Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Year-Long Gift Digital Only, or Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Automatic Annual Renewal Digital Only, .

Highlights from the Exponent II Blog

The following are excerpts from the Exponent II blog. To access this post, you must purchase Subscription – Digital, , Subscription – Print + Digital, United States, Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Year-Long Gift Digital Only, or Gift an Exponent II Magazine Subscription – Automatic Annual Renewal Digital Only, .

The Perfect Mormon Queer

Guest Post author bio Jaq Green lives with their polycule and menagerie in the New England woods. They spend some of their time writing and the rest of it making weird art. Find their other works in Pinky Thinker Press, Hindsight Journal, or follow them on Instagram @eatpastaraw.

CW: homophobia, transphobia, religious trauma, f-slur, suicide, rape

The perfect Mormon queer is born stained. Most Mormons don’t become sinners until the age of accountability, but the perfect Mormon queer is queer from the beginning, must apologize from infancy for being what it is. At seven and a half, the perfect Mormon queer asks, What if I’m not ready to be baptized? and its mother says, you are.

The perfect Mormon queer is always repenting. It’s a sin to want love and a sin to shove the want away, to feel temptation lingering in the back of its mind. The perfect Mormon queer knows it will never marry and must be content listening to talk after talk on the importance of marriage, the divine infallibility of heterosexual coupling. The perfect Mormon queer would marry a man if any man would have it but it knows none will. It bears its testimony every Fast Sunday and tries not to think about the sacred covenants slipping through its fingers.

But even the perfect Mormon queer has bad moments, sinful moments. It holds a girl’s hand at a movie theater one summer weekend and spends the rest of the night on its knees, red-eyed and choking, begging, Heavenly Father, fix me. It slow dances with its best friend at Sophomore Homecoming and stops talking to her after, because life swings on small hinges and it’s better to have no friends than to have ones who might love you the wrong way. The perfect Mormon queer cries into the Young Women’s President’s shoulder, How do I heal from this? That summer, it’s uninvited from Girls’ Camp, because the Young Women’s President told her husband who told the Bishopric. Even the perfect Mormon queer isn’t perfect enough.

The perfect Mormon queer is silent about its queerness. It would like to tell its sister, who, later, will be queer herself, but its mother tells it not to. The perfect Mormon queer honors its father and its mother. The perfect Mormon queer wears knee-length skirts and cap-sleeve blouses and tries not to think about how it would feel to have someone else’s hands dye its hair pink. The perfect Mormon queer never cusses, until late-night images of its lab partner’s smirk flash behind its eyelids, and then it scratches gouges down its arms and whispers faggot, faggot, faggot.

The LDS church no longer practices conversion therapy but that doesn’t mean the perfect Mormon queer can’t change. It spends hours in prayer and fasts once a week, trying to feel starvation where there used to be want. It carries an open safety pin to chemistry and stabs its palm whenever its eyes stray too long on its lab partner. In its Patriarchal Blessing, the perfect Mormon queer is told that it will marry a man and bear many children. The perfect Mormon queer rereads the blessing, over and over, until the paper tears.

The first time a perfect Mormon queer hears about a different Mormon queer’s death, it thinks only, Suicide isn’t the worst sin. The second time, the suicide is a close friend, and the perfect Mormon queer sits in bed and stares at the wall until its mother yells that they’re running late for church. At church, a Sunday School teacher with a perfect queer child says, I love gay people. Even though they make me throw up. And the perfect Mormon queer, remembering how it feels to hold a girl’s hand, thinks, Maybe I should kill myself before I sin again.

The perfect Mormon queer would never ditch Sacrament Meeting, so when the perfect heterosexual Sunday School teacher is ordained as Bishop, the perfect Mormon queer stays in the pew, fingers clenched in its lap, wondering if it should take the Sacrament today. That bishop writes it a letter when it leaves for college, telling it to keep its testimony strong. Telling it of Christ’s perfect love.

The perfect Mormon queer is not kicked out of its childhood home but it leaves as soon as it can. It spends a year across the country, overdosing on antidepressants and wondering if God is dead or just doesn’t care. After the rape, it rereads The Book of Mormon twice, looking for something it missed. What does Heaven look like for a perfect Mormon queer? What’s the point of meeting God if you’ll only ever always be alone?

So maybe it’s an imperfect Mormon queer. Maybe it’s not a Mormon queer at all. It starts going to places that aren’t church or the hospital, like game night, a Black Lives Matter protest, its girlfriend’s house. It dyes its hair pink. One day it goes home and there’s a rainbow flag flying beside the front door. The perfect Mormon queer almost throws up.

It’s Time to Shift Our Testimony Language Away from Exclusive Truth Rhetoric

It’s fast Sunday today, and I find myself not looking forward to fast and testimony meeting later this afternoon. Of all Sunday sacrament meetings (except maybe High Council Sunday) this is the hardest one for me to find the motivation to attend.

This is unfortunate because in theory, I like the idea of anyone in the congregation having the opportunity to claim the pulpit and share things that are the most meaningful in their lives. That feels wonderfully democratic to me and potentially moving and poignant.

But in reality, I often find myself feeling more distanced, more alienated, and more alone in these meetings than in nearly any other. And much of it is due to the exclusivist rhetoric many people employ as they share their testimonies.

“I know this church is true.”

“I’m so grateful to belong to the one true church of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.”

“I’m so grateful that we in the church have the truth and that we know how to get back to Heavenly Father.”

These refrains about the one true church and having the truth are common throughout talks and lessons during the Sunday block, but they are present in an especially high proportion during fast and testimony meeting.

And this rhetoric troubles me.

First, this kind of exclusivist discourse has an othering, divisive effect. It puts up a wall between us and others, those that have “the truth” and those that don’t. It rhetorically draws a stark line that creates insiders and outsiders. And at the same time, it implies that all of those outsiders don’t have access to God’s truth (or have considerably less access). Do we want to present to others and to our own congregants a universe in which 99.8% of the population of this earth doesn’t have godly truth? Do we want to even slightly imply that people in this vast population of non-Latter-day Saints haven’t developed meaningful connections with God and powerful spiritual insight within their own traditions? Every time I hear this kind of language, I can’t help but cringe a bit (and I especially cringe when I hear it parroted in rote manner by children). How must this language sound to visitors who are not of our faith? It strikes me as a very narrow presentation of God and Jesus. God is much bigger than this church and always will be.

Second, this kind of exclusivist discourse—so engrained in the Mormon scripts we enact throughout our church lives—orients people towards a mind frame and way of thinking that just doesn’t resonate so well with many young people and non-members any more.  As Jana Riess pointed out in her terrific piece from 2019, finding the “true church” was a burning question for many people in Joseph Smith’s time. Most people in the U.S. in the nineteenth century were nominal Christians and some were trying to figure out which was God’s true church. But today, we live in a world where people may be less interested in churches’ exclusive truth claims. To paraphrase Riess, the burning question for many people today is not so much, “Which church is true?” Rather, “How can the Church help people flourish? How is it good? And why does religion even matter?” may be questions that resonate more.

If those latter questions are ones that younger members and our neighbors care about, perhaps it’s time to develop new rhetorical emphases in our meetings. Emphases that don’t divide between those that have the truth and those that don’t. Emphases that don’t sound self-congratulatory and clannish.

Instead, let me hear in testimony meeting about how being a part of this church community has helped to expand your heart and broaden your capacity to love. Tell me about your regrets, your pain, your struggles, and your hope. Tell me about experiences in life that helped you develop compassion. Let me hear about how stories from sacred texts have led to personal insight. Tell me how this tradition has helped you to heal wounds, enhance vision, and find goodness in life.

A meeting filled with that kind of language and content—well, that’s a meeting I would feel motivated to attend.

What’s New at Exponent II?

Whether you’ve followed along for years or are newly connecting with Exponent II, we want to make sure you know about the new ways to get involved, as well as some of our recent milestones in growing our community and advancing our mission. The best way to stay up to date as the year progresses is to subscribe to our monthly newsletter (sign-up here!). Our magazine is 100% reader-supported, so your subscription sustains this important work long-term.

New Ways To Get InvolvedWinter 2023 issue of Exponent II being prepped for printing. Cover art by Mary Sinner. Spend time with our new website , which now hosts, under one roof, our modern digital magazine experience, retreat info, and the blog—including the thousands of posts and comments since its founding in 2006. Your print subscription comes with a digital subscription, making it easy to share links to articles or to search our database for past articles. Drop by our free, bimonthly writing workshops . These are for experienced and new writers alike. Past topics have included writing op-eds, erasure poetry and conducting good interviews. Support our community funds , designed to support BIPOC content creators, artistic collaborations and needs-based scholarships. Attend our quarterly launch parties for each issue of Exponent II magazine. It’s like attending a poetry reading or a gallery debut, on Zoom. Hear from our many contributors in our place. New Organizational Highlights

We’re also proud of the way we’ve continued to advance our mission to provides feminist forums for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum to share their diverse life experiences in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. This includes:

Funding honorariums to contributing magazine writers and artists for the first time since the magazine’s inceptionAwarding scholarships to BIPOC writers and artists  Launching a Patreon account to sustain long-tern investments in our organizationsMoving our magazine printing to a zero-waste, top-quality printer

Young Women Lesson: How Do the Savior’s Teachings Help Me Make Righteous Judgments? Matthew 6-7

This lesson, like many lessons for Young Women class, requires a choice. Is your lesson going to be based on the lesson title or on the scriptures listed for the lesson? This is a necessary choice because the lesson title and content often do not align with the scriptures assigned to the lesson. 

The title of this lesson is “How Do the Savior’s Teachings Help Me Make Righteous Judgments?” The lesson title contains the word ‘judgments’ and the scripture passage assigned to the lesson contains the word ‘judge’ and ‘righteous’ in the JST version, but that is the extent of the similarity between the lesson title and the scripture reference. 

The lesson suggests that Matthew 7:1-2 is about Jesus telling us to make righteous judgements but that is a proof-texted use of those verses. Considered in context, the point of the paragraph consisting of Matthew 7:1-5 is that Jesus tells us to take inventory of ourselves. Look inward; be aware of our own ‘beams’. The entire sequence of the Sermon on the Mount is instruction about developing characteristics of the type of person He asks us to become. The ability to be aware of the darker parts of ourselves – our beams – is necessary for growth. In psychology this is often referred to as shadow work; the unconscious part of ourselves that does not align with the ideal version of ourselves. It has nothing to do with evaluating a situation to make a choice. 

So, consider what your young women need and then choose:

A class based on the title/doctrinal topic of the lessonA class based on the scriptures assigned to the lessonIf you choose a class based on the title/doctrinal topic of the lesson:

Teens do need guidance to help them navigate the myriad types of circumstances and situations they encounter because most teens are in a stage of developing values – their own set of principles or standards of behavior. Explain to the class that values direct our path. (Option: If you feel comfortable, have the students complete a value sorting activity. Be sure to inform parents of this beforehand since it is outside of the lesson/church/scripture resources.)

Stories throughout the New Testament show Jesus teaching us the over and over again, He values people. I admit, it’s hard to distill His teachings into one lesson so to make this doctrinal topic accessible in one young women class, I turned to Paul and Timothy’s letter to the Philippians. In this letter, they provide values that they encourage the Phillipians to use as a guide to where to focus their thoughts. Near the end of the letter they write: 

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

This scripture is Philippians 4:8. Read together as a class. Then ask the class what types of situations they typically encounter in a day. It could be figuring out friendships, activities online, how to use their time, whether or not to keep commitments, show up to school or work on time, or choosing what types of books/movies/music to engage with. What challenges them? When do they feel uncomfortable or unsure of what to do? Class members can help each other by brainstorming how the values listed in the scripture could help them make choices about how to make choices in situations they find challenging. 

Conclude class with a reminder that figuring out how to live in a way that our behavior matches our values takes practice. We won’t always get it right. The important part is to remember the kind of person we are trying to become and that continually trying to make choices in line with our values will help us eventually be the people we want to be. 

Give the class an overview of the Sermon on the Mount which is given in Matthew chapters 5-7.  This overview is clear and concise. It is important to point out that Jesus is speaking to the Jews; people who, like members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, view themselves as a covenant chosen people. Jesus gives instructions that give people direction about what kind of people to become. He is teaching them about how to live in a way that will build their character. 

If you choose a class based on the scriptures assigned to the lesson: 

Prior to class, select a passage from Matthew chapters 6-7 that you think or feel is most needed by your class. Read this post for how to use pilcrows to guide your passage selection.

After giving the class an overview, use the TQE method – thoughts, questions, and epiphanies – to guide the rest of the class time. A simplified explanation of this method is to:

1 – Read aloud the text passage you selected. You can do this or you can ask someone to read who you know will be able to read in a way that gives the text interest. Keep it short. A paragraph’s quantity of verses works great. 

2- Write down thoughts, questions, and epiphanies (TQEs). Depending on the size of your group, you may choose to do this all together or split into smaller groups.

3-Write the TQEs on the board. As a group, rewrite as necessary to combine similar TQEs or to clarify obscure TQEs. There is a chance the young women will not be used to doing the work of asking questions and sharing thoughts and epiphanies in church. Be patient! It may take a few lessons. In the meantime, you can help them create TQEs with these sentence stems, courtesy of this post: What did you like? Dislike? What surprised you? What imagery interested you? What questions do you have? What symbols or allusions did you find? For a more detailed explanation of this method, as well as additional sentence stems, see here. 

Typically, once a class adjusts to this format, time flies quickly. It is a beautiful thing to see teenagers delving deeply into scriptures. 

A few items to note:While this lesson only includes Matthew 6-7, the Sermon on the Mount begins in Matthew 5. See this post, Be Perfect: It’s About Love, for a breakdown of the command to be perfect in Matthew 5:48. A few items to keep in mind about these chapters of scripture.  The Come, Follow Me lesson for Matthew 5 describes the Beatitudes as the way to “eternal happiness.” There are a few problems I see with this interpretation. First, ‘eternal’ is nowhere in this section of scripture. That seems to be the addition of the CFM curriculum writers. I also can’t find where Jesus says that the personal development instructions of the Beatitudes are about happiness. Teaching youth that doing ‘X’ action = eternal happiness sets them up for potential shame, mental health illness, and faith crisis when their lived experiences prove that equation false. This website by the church but directed towards people who are not members, does a bit better than the CFM manual with its treatment of the Beatitudes. It describes them as eight lessons learned from the Beatitudes; blessings that come when we develop the traits described in these passages. Yes! It is about character development. Thinking of blessings as items dispensed from a machine doesn’t work but thinking about blessings as opportunities to grow in our development does fit the purpose of this text. (For more in-depth discussion about a different way to think about blessings, see this podcast: What About Blessings?)

Whether you choose a lesson based on the doctrinal topic or a lesson based on the assigned scriptures, remember you’ve got this! Be a gardener by letting go of the outcome and allowing everyone in the class space to grow.

Imagine credit: https://restlesspilgrim.net/blog/2017/06/03/scriptural-iceberg/

Vol. 42 No. 3 — Winter 2023

COVER ART — “Gloves with Pink Stripes” by Mary Sinner
I’m fascinated by cultural symbols that migrate from “high” to “low” cultures and back again. Cultural understanding is constantly mobile in relation to “stuff” viewed through a postmodern lens. Depending on the context, the subject can morph into a myriad of people, places, or things. @marysinnerart | marysinnerfineart.com

LETTER FROM EDITOR “Holy In All Its Forms” by Carol Ann Litster Young

ESSAY “A Tongue to Cry to Thee” by Sarah Safsten

POETRY “Home” by Kameron Abilla

WOMEN’S WORK  “To Ukraine With Love” — An Interview with Svitlana Miller

ESSAY “Run. Breathe. Repeat.” by Heidi Toth

BOOK REVIEW of Carol Lynn Pearson’s The Love Map, Reviewed by Katie Ludlow Rich

ARTIST FEATURE “Places Made Important By the People” — Interview with Alejandra Ramos

ESSAY “Letting Go of My Holy Place” by Alma Frances Pellett

ESSAY “Wandering in Wilderness” by Aislynn Collier

ESSAY “Dumpster Sunday School” by Holly Mancuso

BLOG FEATURE by Natasha Rogers, Kaylee McElroy, Jody England Hansen

ESSAY “Sepulchre” by Cynthia W. Connell

ESSAY “Mycelium Mothering” by Shannon Milliman

BOOK REVIEW of Rachel Rueckert’s East Winds, Reviewed by Nancy Ross

ESSAY “What Makes a Place Holy?” by Emily Fisher Gray

POETRY “Three Degrees” by Lauren Simpson

ESSAY “Shifting Sands” by Andee Bowden, Contest-Winning Essay

POETRY “Peter — In That Instant” by Lorraine Jeffrey, Contest-Winning Poem

POETRY “Tabernacle of Flesh” by Allyson Turner

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EDITORIAL STAFF

Editor-in-Chief Rachel Rueckert 
Managing Editor Carol Ann Litster Young
Art Editor Page Turner 
Managing Art Editor Natalie Taylor 
Layout Designer & Editor Rosie Gochnour Serago 
Women’s Theology Editor Eliza Wells 
Poetry Editor Abby Parcell
Blog Feature Editor Katie Ludlow Rich
Subscription Manager Gwen Volmar 
Proofreaders Kami Coppins, Cherie Pedersen, Karen Rosenbaum 
Additional Staff Kif Augustine, Kate Bennion, Andee Bowden, Pandora Brewer, Kim Ence, Alma Frances Pellett, Lisa Hadley, Caroleine James, Jessica Mitton, Margaret Olsen Hemming, Tia Thomas

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EXECUTIVE BOARD

President Lori LeVar Pierce
Vice President & Secretary Lindsay Denton
Treasurer Jeanine Bean
Secretary Kirsten Campbell
Members Crystal Adams, Andee Bowden, Carol Ann Litster Young, Rachel Rueckert, Nancy Ross, Heather Sundahl

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SPECIAL THANKS

This magazine is volunteer-led and reader-funded. Please consider a donation, supporting our Patreon, or subscribing to support our contributors and community!

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Exponent II (ISSN 1094-7760) is published quarterly by Exponent II. Exponent II has no official connection with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Articles published represent the opinions of authors only and not necessarily those of the editor or staff. 

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