Going astray, or taking a different path?
Relief Society has always felt like the safest place in church to me.
It’s not safe, exactly, but the patriarchy is better hidden and I am usually more comfortable being more honest and open in that meeting. When I say something with which others disagree, no one feels the need to announce their disagreement. I don’t have to sit through lessons on the scriptures that came from a church manual that was written by men and fight the urge to point out bad translations, the context we always ignore, the prejudice and patriarchy baked into so many of the verses we all love. Plus, I know enough women who struggle that I assume that there are others in that room who are on a similar path as mine. If one of my few church friends are there, it’s even safer. I feel so much less alone when I know I’m not the only one whose relationship to the church is, let’s say complicated.
None of that is true anymore.
Last month, I went to Relief Society. My friend and I didn’t notice in time that the topic was President Henry B. Eyring’s talk “All Will Be Well Because of Temple Covenants.” We both flinched when we saw it but decided to stay.
Now, the topic of the lesson, while problematic, didn’t end up being the problem. I will start with saying I haven’t read this talk, so it’s possible the talk was fine and it’s only the title that is horrendous, not doctrinal and, if I’m honest, a little blasphemous, not to mention utterly contradicting of the topic of sacrament meeting, which was about how Jesus Christ saves us. One speaker specifically mentioned that temples do not save us. And how here we are, in the midst of a lesson about how the temple will save us. Not the temple will help us feel closer to Christ, will help us be better, will help us become more spiritual. No, the temple is the reason everything will be OK.
But again, I can handle a lesson on a topic with which I don’t fully agree. At this point in my church-trust-relationship-crisis, that is every single lesson.
No, the real problem arose at the end of the lesson. I’d been mentally cringing through most of it, listening to the women talk about how much the temple had given them and how much they knew it gave to others–that it was the right place to be for everyone. As someone who does not get much from the temple–the last time I went, in 2019, a temple worker asked me if I was pregnant and patted my not-pregnant-just-fat stomach–I was trying to leave space for the knowledge that other people felt differently and that was fine, and the way I felt was also fine and that deserved some recognition. I was debating raising my hand when my friend next to me raised her hand.
She then shared what I’d been thinking, but more eloquently–that everyone did not find Jesus Christ in the temple, that it was not a place where everyone felt safe and had good experiences and that we needed to be careful having such reductive conversations. I wanted to applaud but settled for whispering my agreement to her.
Then a woman a row in front of us raised her hand. Her love for the temple is well-known, which isn’t a problem. Her problem is insisting that everyone else share the same love for the temple or they’re wrong and butting in anytime people express the remotest question with the certainty that when they go the temple, everything will be resolved. She proceeded to say exactly that, including turning around to my friend and offering to go with her. My friend, who just shared something really difficult in a space where I know she doesn’t always feel safe, was now being put on the spot and told to correct herself because her feelings and experiences were wrong.
(And they weren’t even overtly her experiences! She never said she felt this way, just that we need to keep in mind that people do.)
How did the woman in front of us respond after her “loving” offer was politely declined? Well, she continued to insist that her experience was correct and other experiences were incorrect. I was shaking with anger or sorrow or this slap in the face that no, this was not the safest place. No place here was safe.
And I wish I could say that was the end of it. Reader, it was not. Right after the teacher agreed that yes, everyone felt differently about the temple, another woman raised her hand, announced that she was a temple worker and was “blessed” (can we just … not with this word?) that all of her children went to the temple, but that some of her siblings had “gone astray” and it caused her parents significant grief. (Note: I’m certain her siblings were all close to retirement age.) And I snapped. Because according to her definition, I have “gone astray.” I don’t go to the temple because it’s not a safe space for me. Neither is church, and I’m not there very often. These women do not offer a safe space for anyone who does not agree with them. I am not on the covenant path. But in my living room, where I am sitting on a Sunday afternoon writing this, I can be myself, I can feel close to Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father, I can say things out loud and I can cry and I can express my doubts and ask questions and feel only love, understanding and acceptance from divinity.
I found out later my friend left about 30 seconds after I did; the woman’s comment moved from “gone astray” to accusing my friend of having something fundamentally wrong in her life, which is why she doesn’t feel comfortable in the temple. It could only be sin that causes discomfort in the temple–not the overt misogyny and inequality, not the clothes that are mass-produced and don’t fit well, not the covenants that require promises made not to God but to the church. No, it must be sin. And that is perhaps the saddest, maddest thing of all–that people in the church, that the church itself, simply cannot allow for different experiences. The “my-way-or-the-highway” idea that we have rebranded the covenant path hurts and excludes people–the same types of people whom Jesus Christ sought during his ministry. The misconception that discomfort comes from sin, that someone’s dislike of an aspect of the church reflects their relationship with divinity, that those who are offended “chose” to be that way as tempted by the devil instead of having a reasonable response to something offensive. People like me and many of those close to me, people like you and the readers of this blog who sought out community online when their IRL community failed them. People who have left because they knew they would never fit and people who keep trying to fit and being reminded over and over again that they don’t. People whose sincere questions and efforts have been met with rejection because there is simply no place for them on the covenant path, so they are pushed off or wander off or intentionally step off. And what looks like “going astray” is in fact simply “taking a different path.”
Read about respecting others’ journeys in The Visible Symbol of Our Covenants.
Photo: About 3 miles into the Ice Lakes trail in Silverton, Colorado, hikers have a choice–left or right? Both get you to the top. Both are hard. If you go right, it’s steeper–so steep that I scrambled almost on hands and knees to get up. I stopped to take breaks every 20 feet or so. It is the harder choice, but when you get to the first lake, you’re done with uphill. Plus, as I have bad knees and the trail was muddy, coming down those angles made me fear for my safety. Take the left and it’s still hard, still steep, but not as steep, plus you get to the more beautiful lake first and get the reward. But if you keep going to the second lake, you have another punishing climb. I went right. Most of the hikers that day went left. No one went astray. We each simply took the path that was right for us.
