So Simple a Call

"Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise."

Luke 10:36-37

If there is anything at the core of the Gospel, it is this commandment: to go and show mercy on our brothers and sisters. The Atonement itself was necessary, not only to redeem us, but to show that redemption comes through submission without compulsion. Our submission to the Savior, yes, but more importantly, it comes because a God with all power submitted Himself into our hands.

The more I learn about the Gospel and about God, the more amazed I am at how all the secrets to life, all the keys of the Gospel and exaltation are found in scripture. It's not in the complicated attempt to figure out which part of geography the Nephites occupied, nor is it expounding difficult-to-understand concepts of how the Atonement works, why only men are ordained to the Priesthood, or determining how, exactly, we should follow the prophets. All of those things are mere window dressing.

True religion, the core of spirituality, is ministry. It is extending ourselves, opening our arms, inviting vulnerability by becoming vulnerable. There is nothing that can compare to knowing that you have served in the name and stead of God.

"The only joy that is comparable with the joy of the one receiving the help is the glow that seems to emanate from the one who has given so unselfishly of his time and strength to quietly help someone in need."

"Go and Do Thou Likewise" Robert L. Simpson

Living in the Mormon Belt means I witness many people hungry for position in the Church, wanting to serve more and more prominent callings, to make a difference in the Church by being included in councils, wanting to be heard by protesting or being the squeaky wheels. But the key to eternal life and all the power the Father has is not found in callings, nor in effecting change.

"There are those who associate high calling in the Church with guaranteed rights to the blessings of heaven, but I wish to declare without reservation that the ultimate judgment for every man will be on the simplest terms, and most certainly on what each has done to bless other people in a quiet, unassuming way."

I think we will be very surprised to find that those closest to God's throne are the ones we have never heard of here in this life. I hope and pray that I may serve God by serving His people. This isn't just part of the Gospel. It is everything.

Hands of God

Many years ago, I prayed for charity. I knew what I was doing when I did it, but I did it anyways. Now, years later, I still don't feel like I'm very good at it.

I don't do any great service. I don't even do my visiting teaching as I would like to.

The talk by Rex D. Pinegar is the shortest in the set for this week's session in the General Conference Odyssey. But it is the one that resonated best for me, because I'm coming to feel that it is the single most important aspect of what it means to be a disciple.

My post is going to be similarly short. But I wanted to share what I have been doing to try to cultivate charity.

Divorce, Pornography, Turner, Persky, and Being a Mormon Woman

First a disclaimer. In light of the last post and this one, one might think I'm struggling deeply right now. Strangely, I'm not. I could never write these posts if I were. These are not fresh wounds, they are old scars, which means I can poke at them a little, feel the pain just enough to describe it. Sure, things that happened recently have pulled at the scars, but I'm fine.

I promise, dear friends who read this blog and have reached out to me: I'm more than okay. These battles have been won already.

A friend of mine came to visit from out of state this last weekend. He is not Mormon, and I thought I'd give him the Temple Square tour. We wandered temple grounds for a moment, then went to the Church History Museum. As we walked in, a presentation on "the first Mormon presidential candidate" was announced in two minutes.

We headed over and sat down. Soon after us, came a group of Polynesian men in their early twenties. They had been doing a service project for their ward. A couple who were obviously not LDS came and sat down on the first row. An older male missionary was standing at the front, obviously the one who would give the presentation. He asked us all where we were from, and since the couple was from Florida, he said "you are the interesting ones," and made a few jokes about that.

They got up and left. I'm not sure there was a connection.

But then he started asking questions of the YSA men. They mentioned which ward they were from, and the missionary started joking about attending only when they weren't visiting other wards, amiright? wink, wink. Then he said that he used to visit singles' wards not his own, and then "if there wasn't anyone there he liked," he'd move on to the next one, "know what I mean?" Haha.

Not Belief: I Know It

I do not remember the first time I knew that God was real. It seems to me that knowing Him is something I've come to over a life of fighting to reach out to Him, an infinite series of small miracles and preponderance of evidence. I know He has spoken to me, typically, through thoughts and feelings, sometimes through the actions of others, sometimes in still and mighty words.

Debate over the authenticity of the Book of Mormon has been rampant since before it was even removed from the stone-covered box in the side of a hill. I've read and heard it all, how it "cannot be true" because of ABC, and how it "cannot be explained as a lie" because of XYZ.

Despite many people saying "no one can know," I assert that their declarations are useless, for under their definition, no one knows anything. I know that it is true because after extensive testing, after seeking knowledge and pitting that knowledge against the hard rock of experience, I have heard the "song of redeeming love," and tasted God's power.

Elder James A. Cullimore spoke about "The Importance of a Personal Testimony" in each of our lives. One quote caught my attention more than any other.

"The Twelve Apostles are special witnesses of the Savior. I don’t know how many of them have actually seen a personage. They don’t talk about it. But they don’t have to, to receive their special witness that can come by the Holy Ghost."

No Success Can Compensate

"...Whatever you do for the Lord, you do the very best that you know how." —H. Burke Peterson

A very good friend and I discussed recently what it meant that no other success can compensate for failure in the home. Like me, she is a survivor, divorced, and a single mother, experiencing the intensely personal frustration that is the lot of single LDS parents.

She said that she suddenly realized this meant that no matter who you are in the Church: a bishop, stake president, or even one of the Apostles, it means nothing if you abuse or neglect the souls in your family. It doesn't matter what people in the Church think of you, it makes no difference what privileges in the priesthood you are awarded. If you do not repent and make amends for how you have treated spouse or children, your successes are ash to the Lord.

Living by Power—A Woman of God

My last post got twice as many readers as a typical post of mine. It is not hard to imagine why. In that post, I say things that everyone else is saying, about how it is hard to be a woman in the Church. That refrain is echoed across the blogs, though often with a different tone. People read it because it said what they wanted to hear. That isn't true of this post. It is easy to identify problems. And problems get to people’s emotions, especially when they’re struggling with the same problem. But solutions are hard. They are uncomfortable. They often seem to cause problems. No one wants that.

But, while I know that far fewer people will read and like this post, I want to follow up my last with what lies beyond the pain of being a woman in the Church. There is another side of that valley of sorrow. On the other side lies a chance to build a great, tall mountain of discipleship that completely swamps all the things that make membership hard in the Church. It doesn't make them go away, of course. I still mourn sometimes. But it takes that pain and frustration and makes something great of it.

This session of Conference, the last of 1971, was a symphony. The talks all addressed slightly different things, but together they wove a great tapestry of discipleship. I couldn't pick just one without robbing some of the harmony. Obviously, going and reading them yourself is the best thing, but I'm going to play you only a small sample.

Lost People

It surprises me that in my ward, I teach teenagers. It surprised me even more that, after coming into the classroom to hear her daughter teach, one mother told me, "you are just what these girls need."

I do not feel like I'm just what these girls need. I am not a good example of the efficacy of the things I was taught as a teenager. I waited for a temple wedding, only to have it fall down around my ears. I'm a single working mother with little hope and no expectation of marrying again, in small part because I will not marry outside the temple.

Based on my reading of scripture, both public and private, I have thoroughly failed to do what the Lord asked of me. There is little left. But I intend to do my best at what little there is. At least I'll die trying. I'm too German to give up in the face of failure.

There are two things I have been called to do which still may have some application to my life. I have been told to be a mother and to be a teacher. So when I listened to Paul H. Dunn's decades-old talk, (nearly fifty years old!) I knew what I needed to write about.

Becoming a Male Mother

I know that some people get wound up about the comparison of holding the priesthood to motherhood. This post is not going to make those people happy. As I read the talks from the Priesthood session so long ago, an overreaching theme coalesced. It is something I have been pondering for a very long time. It is easy to pick apart how Priesthood and Motherhood are different, but I have spent years pondering why men, and not women, might be given the priesthood at this stage in mortal life.

Ultimately, I believe that there is much more similar between men and women in general than there is between any two given women or any two given men. In other words, I believe there is more diversity within a gender than between genders. I also believe that there isn't much that a determined person is incapable of doing, outside of certain handicaps.

But I also believe that who we are as people is not only based on who we were before we came to this earth, it is also based on who we have become while here. This mortal life is fraught, not only with sin and moral weakness, but also with mortal weakness: the circumstances of our physical bodies, and the culture that has developed from those underlying circumstances. I cannot explain the differences between male and female in a way that is irrefutable or without exception. But I'm not inclined to get lost in exceptions when the pattern has so much to teach me.

My words are mine, and colored liberally with my perspective and experience as a woman. I don't have perspective as a man, nor any of the other myriad options out there.

Motherhood and Mechanical Rabbits

"Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men...."
—D&C 121:34-35

"Mother" was once a word that struck me with fear. As a teenager, I knew I had a temper problem. I knew I was not cut out to be a parent. When word came directly from the Lord to me that His calling to me was to be a mother of "many souls", I was rocked to my core. After much inner struggling, I determined that if that was my Lord's wish for me, I would try to be the best mother I could be.

I spent a decade wrestling with inner demons, praying with all I had, to be changed into someone who could handle parenthood. I went through a 180° change. My heart was softened, I mastered my temper, became a wholly different person than I was. The vision I had been given fell apart over certain events of my life. My life now looks like what I first thought I wanted: very different from what I was led to believe it would be, but in the process I have learned a respect for motherhood that some might call "fetishization." (I have also earned a similar respect for fatherhood and priesthood, but that is a discussion for another post.)

Love and Lies

"Without [honesty], there can be no salvation."
—Honesty, a Principle of Salvation by Mark E. Petersen

"Everyone lies sometimes. I never understood why liars were treated the same in scriptures as murderers and adulterers until I met [one]. Now I understand."
—Unattributed

What is the difference between someone who tells a lie and a liar? Neither are good, but until I spent many sleepless nights trying to come to terms with the truth of my marriage, I had no idea there even was a difference.

But since my education in the school of hard knocks, I've learned to see the threads of deception which weave themselves through the fabric of our culture, our lives, and our very identities. We lie to ourselves constantly. Sometimes, we try to avoid hurting someone, and sometimes we are simply trying to cover our own weaknesses.

But there are people who have willingly and earnestly immersed themselves in lies to the point where they are nothing else. All their relationships are false, because they are built on lies. They live in a constant state of brazen insecurity, as they layer one lie upon another until they convince themselves that they are good people. And the hardest part to understand is that these people are everywhere. To an extent, they are even us.

Love and Sacrifice

Typically, I write a blog post when I feel moved by the Spirit. Having a deadline and structure to what I post is not my natural practice. But I felt that I should participate in the General Conference Odyssey, and it has been good so far. But this week, I had a hard time connecting to any of the talks from this session. Not that none of them spoke to me, but they spoke to me in ways I'm not entirely comfortable sharing. So I apologize if this post is a bit stilted. I'm sure it won't be the last like that.

While my children have never gotten along perfectly, as they age there seems to be a certain level of viciousness in what they sometimes say to each other. Few things break my heart as much as hearing one of the people I love most in this world being cruel to the other. It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong as much as the viciousness.

I can't imagine it's much different with the Lord and His children. While it does matter who is right and who is wrong, I believe He must feel about His children's discord the way I feel about the arguments between my children. The talk "By Love, Serve One Another" by S. Dilworth Young was written decades before our current political and ideological battles, but as I read it, I was deeply impacted by how clearly he challenged us members of the Church, particularly those of us who don't have significant or time-hungry callings, to spend greater time serving the poor and those who mourn. "...Those who are not given great responsibility in the organizations have more time to seek out the poor, needy, and helpless. And this help is badly needed. All about us are those in need of encouragement, assistance, and help...."

"...There are many lonely people, people whose loneliness is hidden...." Is this not just as true today as 1971? The demographics of those who don't feel like they belong to the Church may have shifted a bit, but there are hosts of people who do not feel welcome. It is up to us as baptized members to reach out to them, no matter their circumstances. There is nothing that says "mourn with those who mourn for reasons we would mourn," or "comfort only those whom we perceive as victims," or "stand as a witness of God unless it hurts someone's feelings." I'd like to share a parable. Don't read too much into it, I'm just trying to illustrate a point.

Sustaining Failure

"But as for me and my house...."

This is a refrain I've read often recently, mostly from people who support the Brethren of the Church to those who are struggling with recent policy changes and the claim that those policy changes are revelation from God.

While I resonate with that sentiment: to "claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of [my] own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege..." I can't help but feel that it is a way to shut down discussion, to draw a line in the sand, and to condemn those who are wrestling with this concept. In that I have no interest.

It is with this in the back of my mind that I read again the words of Brethren from over forty years ago, and prayerfully ponder what I should write. I am very grateful to be invited to participate in the General Conference Odyssey, but I admit to feeling a little out of water. I do not write the great analyses that others write. I don't tend to place things in historical, doctrinal, or philosophical context. My blog is very personal, just as the name suggests. It is about two things which are really one thing: publicly sharing parts of my struggles with God in the hopes that seeing me try to shore up my house against the storms of mortality will encourage others to do the same, to build their house on the rock of my Redeemer. My relationship with God is not all that I am, but it is the part of me that I most want to share. It is the best thing I have to offer the world...or the tiny part of it I can reach. I know that I am nothing, but I will write of the miracles of God in me as best I can.

Unborrowed Light

In some ways, my testimony has come easily. I was taught from childhood to question and to turn to scriptures and the Lord for my answers. Ever since I first read the Joseph Smith story, one thing became very clear to me: that if Joseph could see God and talk with angels, so could I. At that moment, my testimony became something influenced almost entirely by my observations and by my relationship with God.

While I have not seen angels nor spoken with God face-to-face, and despite there being no evidence in scripture (outside of Mary) that a woman could even do such a thing, I still believe that God could speak to me that way, should He choose. And should He not choose to send me angels, I know He has spoken with me—at times quite strongly—in other ways.

But I have had deep discussions with many people for whom it hasn't been so easy. They don't feel what I have felt, or they don't put the same significance on their feelings as I do. For them, testimony is more academic, more reasoned. It is something to be understood more than it is felt. For others, testimony lacks both logic and feeling, and is rather something that they do, living their lives in God's service without the emotional or mental assurances of His literal existence.

With such varied experiences with Diety, the question remains: what is a testimony?

Liminality And Shaded Areas

In Elder William H. Bennett's 1971 Conference talk, "Help Needed in the Shaded Areas," he compares color blindness to a person who is seeking truth, but will not humble himself, exercise faith, or live the gospel. You might expect that a conference held that long ago would be largely irrelevant, but of all the talks that day in Conference, this was one of two which I needed to read.

Because in many ways, I am in my very own "shaded area." The magic numbers hidden in the shaded area are the promised blessings we get for being righteous and doing the right thing.

Religion and faith to me has largely meant fighting to hear and understand the Lord's will for me. It's been a struggle to learn submission, to understand my place in God's plan, if any. I have placed that struggle, that fight to submit, at the center of my life. I'm not any better at it than anyone else, but I thought I knew what it meant to be in tune, to hear the voice of the Lord, and to be His disciple. It was a feeling of warmth for me, a brief sense of belonging...of sudden balance. Like the sparkle of sunlight through storm clouds, or the thrill of sliding on a sled after tugging it up the steep hill.

To Those Who Know Joseph

“We both belong to the race that knows Joseph, as Cornelia Bryant would say.”

“The race that knows Joseph?” puzzled Anne.

“Yes. Cornelia divides all the folks in the world into two kinds– the race that knows Joseph and the race that don’t. If a person sorter sees eye to eye with you, and has pretty much the same ideas about things, and the same taste in jokes–why, then he belongs to the race that knows Joseph.”

“Oh, I understand,” exclaimed Anne, light breaking in upon her.

“It’s what I used to call–and still call in quotation marks `kindred spirits.’”

“Jest so–jest so,” agreed Captain Jim. “We’re it, whatever it is. When you come in tonight, Mistress Blythe, I says to myself, says I, `Yes, she’s of the race that knows Joseph.’ And mighty glad I was, for if it wasn’t so we couldn’t have had any real satisfaction in each other’s company. The race that knows Joseph is the salt of the airth, I reckon.”

—Anne's House of Dreams, Lucy Maude Montgomery

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Do you ever meet people who just instantly click with you? It's like you've known them before, even though you have just met. Rarely, I have. It is a wonderful feeling, like you resonate at the same wavelength.

One of my companions was just that sort of friend. From the first hour we met, we were instant friends. We saw missionary work the same way, we were both a bit older, and we were able to pour our hearts into our work and have fun doing it. It really helped a particularly stressful time, and gave me the confidence to be the kind of missionary I felt called to be, even though it was almost the opposite of what I was being taught to be.

Female Ordination and the Church: Another Way

I am one who has struggled mightily with female roles in the Church and in eternity, yet I have a VERY hard time being sympathetic to Ordain Women as a movement. Most individuals who have aligned themselves with that group, I sympathize and even empathize with. I have gone to the mattresses on many of those same issues many times. I am not known for my reticence in speaking up.

There is nothing new about Ordain Women. They have organized together in direct, open, and unapologetic opposition to the Church. I'm not going to pick apart their claims to faithfulness and belief in priesthood authority while publicly opposing that authority. There is really no need, it's obvious enough. I also have no doubt that there are well-meaning people caught up in the smoke and mirrors. But I personally don't have a very long rope when it comes to that brand of deception, conscious or not. I'm all too well acquainted with it.

They Shall Not Sorrow

Conference brought me peace, but it was not so for everyone. I intended, at one point, to write my perspective on several of the events surrounding Conference, and the applicable talks, but as I have watched discussions and listened, my heart was moved. I feel it doesn't matter how I see a fellow sister or brother in the Gospel erring, nor how I perceive that they have been deceived. What matters most right now is that they hurt and mourn.

I do not really share that mourning, though I believe I understand it. I have been burned by unrighteous male authority many times, myself. I have struggled with some of these same issues for nearly two decades. My journey through those struggles has been far different, but not so different that I cannot feel compassion. And what touches my heart more than the errors of those who find themselves feeling at odds with the Church leadership is the rush to harm them by people who ought to be most filled with the compassion of the Savior.

There are enough people telling others they are wrong. We need more people focused on hearts and tender feelings, offering sympathy and love.

Young Women's Values—Choice & Accountability

One of the most essential doctrines of the LDS Church is that of agency. We believe that we chose to come here to earth, and that we have full ability to choose whether or not and to what extent we will follow God. I used to think that the choice part of the equation was good, and the accountability not so much.

A prevailing opinion seems to be developing that we, as humans, deserve choice without accountability. I believe that this is one of Satan's most powerful mockeries of the eternal principle. Being able to choose and taking responsibility for the effects of our choices—good and bad—are two sides of the same coin. You can't lose one without losing the other. This has been a painful lesson for me, as I have had to learn to stop taking responsibility for things I did not choose, at the same time that I learned to take responsibility for the things that were my choice. However, as I've come to understand agency better, I have also come to see that taking responsibility is just as liberating as choosing.

It took an indescribable amount of soul-searching to come to the decision to divorce. And a great deal of pain came to me and to others for that decision. Yet, as I exercised my ability to choose, I also came to accept the responsibility for the effects of that choice. If I had not realized that the good effects of my choice far outweighed the bad, it would have been impossible to make. Yet, I sacrificed others' good opinions of me, my good opinion of myself, my personal comfort and feelings of safety, and in some measure, my daughters' comfort and safety, so that I could protect myself and my children in the long run. And, unexpectedly, my good opinion of myself as a daughter of God has returned tenfold. My children are happier and I am far happier than would have been possible had I not trusted the promptings of the Spirit to make that hard choice.

And I know that I am right in the sight of God, and that is priceless.

When we use our own judgment and the input of others to make our own decisions, and when we own the effects (foreseen and unforeseen) of those choices, we become a little more like God.

This also applies to conference talks and other things that are sometimes taught in the Church. LDS doctrine makes it very clear, for example, that divorce is not the ideal. Yet, because of the power and love of God, I was able to hear the Spirit and know when it was time to make the exception in my life. Though it was painful, it was empowering. And it has helped me believe even more strongly in the doctrines of the Church. I believe in eternal marriage and marital fidelity even more than I did before, and now I believe with a full heart and clearer vision of what marriage should be.

As we come to accept the doctrine of agency, and learn to choose wisely and take responsibility for the choices we make, we progress even closer to God and to understanding His doctrines.

An Enemy to God

There is a lot of talk and buzz about Elder Packer's talk. I'm not really going to address the thrust of all that, but there is one related aspect which I would like to address.

There is a claim that teachings such as those in Elder Packer's talk cause innocent children to kill themselves, that by teaching that certain behaviors are sinful, we teach that people are disgusting and enemies to God, and therefore they kill themselves. (Specifically according to many people's interpretation in this case, homosexuality, but I don't wish to address that specific. I want to re-broaden the principle to ALL sin, whatever you might consider to be sin. I believe that's really what Elder Packer's talk was about, and that homosexuality is only one example.)

As I first heard these claims, the scripture came to my mind, "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord . . ."

Sin . . . all sin . . . makes us enemies to God. When we teach a person that their behavior makes them an enemy to God, we bring their attention to their behavior and give them a choice "to act according to their wills and pleasures, whether to do evil or to do good . . . ." In other words, we elevate their behavior from simple animal reasoning and reactions to conscious choice. We take ourselves out of the dust and reach for the divine within ourselves to act rather than to just be acted upon by our environment, by our genetics. We are no longer helpless victims of circumstance, but true children of the Most High God.

Teaching the commandments of God does not drive people to kill themselves, or leave the church, or turn into Church-active automatons. When we give commandments as God gives them, in an environment of charity and love, we make ourselves more than our physical, scientific bodies. We then have the chance to umkehren . . . turn around . . . repent. God created us to act, not to be acted upon. To Elder Packer's amended rhetorical question, "Why would Heavenly Father do this to anyone?" The answer is He would not. He would never create a person incapable of action, unable to fight against that which takes them away from Him, and then turn and hold them accountable. Some may have fewer opportunities for action than others (such as babies, the mentally damaged or others) but where there are fewer opportunities to act, there is less accountability.

So the answer is not to back down from the morality taught by God, whether it be homosexuality, anger management, or obsession with worldly possessions. It is to make certain that morality is taught in a framework of love.

And I think the Church does a great job of teaching that we make ourselves into enemies of God, and we likewise have the power to no longer be His enemy. Hopefully more people will get the knack of it before more children feel so unloved they choose to take their own lives.

General Conference Questions

At a response from a challenge in a post on Segullah, I'm going to break from my Articles of Faith posts to post my questions for General Conference. I will come back and edit this post later, as they are answered.

1) The ward doesn't really want my input, and my time is very limited. What can I do to serve in my ward?

2) There are many people struggling with "issues" in the Church, some of which I can empathize with. How can I help them feel God's reassurance and love within the Church?

3) What should I do next to deepen my spiritual relationship with God?

4) What can I now do to deepen my family's relationship with God?

5) How can I eliminate negativity when the negativity is continually refreshed, but the positivity is always being depleted?

6) What must I do to gain the blessing given to Nephi by God? Is it possible for me to have such a blessing, since I do not hold the priesthood?

7) Will it be enough?