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.

A Woman-centered Church

The last session I listened to for the General Conference Odyssey was full of talks for men. This is natural, I thought, for a Priesthood session. But then I realized that this week is actually the priesthood session, and last was a general session even though it was geared so heavily towards men.

Both last session and this are incredibly male-centric. All the talks are by men, to men, and for men. Women may be able to extrapolate something useful from them, but it is clear that women were not a primary focus.

It struck me as I was listening how very different our church is now than it was before. Conference now is peppered with feel-good talks. Things to tell us we're doing okay, that "[the Savior] knows when you are lost,"and that "we get credit for trying, even if we don’t always succeed." Even the Priesthood session urges men to "be good followers" so they can lead, and that priesthood comes with a price.

By contrast, the talks of the Priesthood session of the April 1972 General Conference are laden with telling men that they are strong, that they must take responsibility, that they "have a right to preside".

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.

Lift Where You Stand

It is more than just coincidence that today, after posting yesterday about male motherhood, I was shown this video. This is what the Priesthood does for us. It is less about the authority, less about the ordinances, and more about the responsibility that authority and those ordinances engender in the hearts of those of us who would otherwise find no reason to learn unselfishness. It is not about commanding. It is about bonding.

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.

The Priesthood

I love life. I love the smell of rain, the feel of my daughter's hair on my face as she cuddles into my shoulder. I love the ability to create, to make things better than I found them. I love watching people struggle and move forward with faith. I love being there for people, being someone they can talk to and want hugs from. I love watching things grow, the changing colors of the mountains, the sting of cold air and languid exhaustion after a day of hard work.

But, at the same time, I don't handle life very well. And a fews weeks ago, I was struggling with something very deep and personal which I will not get into here. But as I prayed and struggled, I kept feeling this urge to get a priesthood blessing.

I have good home teachers, a great man. I have a father who lives not too far away. I work in a building stuffed full with men who hold the priesthood. But I realized I had no one I could ask for a blessing. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Pride of Faith

Last night during a long drive home, a girl told me that she was thinking of leaving the Church because of how women are treated. And she is right. In many ways, women are afterthoughts at best. Especially among the midsingle men of the Church, women are a mystery who don't perform according to plan, a challenge to surmount, a problem to solve. Whether it is the men who are baffled by women and want to learn the rules so they can push all the right buttons to get what they want, or the ones who think they know the right buttons to push boundaries as far as they can, we women are objectified. Benignly and not-so-benignly.

I supported one of the teenagers in my Sunday School class in teaching a lesson on how we can teach of the importance of marriage and family. It is not an easy lesson for me, so I was mightily glad he chose it. But as I studied, I realized how strongly I feel about the importance of marriage between a man and a woman, in part BECAUSE my husband did not, as my daughter phrased it "treat me well."

When I asked the teens why marriage is important, their first answer was "to make it to the celestial kingdom." And that isn't wrong, exactly. But it's not the important part of the answer, either. "Making it" to the celestial kingdom by checking items off your list, a wife only being one item of many, is nothing but an illusion. A lie...or, at least, an embarrassingly dramatic oversimplification.

Ordain Women, Midsingles, and the Trouble with Agency

Have you ever wondered why a third of the hosts of heaven left God to follow Satan? I have. I've spent hours of time wondering why, when presented with God's eternal Plan, some shouted for joy, and others left the service of God forever. When I was younger, I couldn't comprehend it. How could someone, faced with the prospective glories of exaltation, simply leave them behind? As an adult, I'm starting to understand.

We often talk about the Celestial Kingdom as if it is heaven, and everything else is a version of Hell. We Mormons haven't really left our Protestant ideas of glory or punishment behind. We act as though, by following the commandments and doing all that we have been commanded to the best of our abilities, we will be justified by our sacrifices, forgiven by Christ, and enter into the Father's presence. But it doesn't work like that.

Relationship Entitlement in a Mormon World

What are your thoughts on this?

How does it fit into an LDS view of eternal marriage?
What recourse does a Mormon woman (or man) have in an abusive marriage?
What can we do to change our understanding of marriage?
What should we do?

I'll post my thoughts in the future, but first I want to hear what you think. Email me if your comments are too personal to post publicly. I promise I won't reproduce or quote them without your permission.

One Woman's Mormon Temple Experience

It breaks my heart to see so many people struggling in the wake of excommunication. It is like a sea of disquiet. I know I can help one soul at a time, but right now the pain is overwashing anything I could do, so I'm mostly just listening.

There is so much discourse about women's terrible temple experiences, how the endowment ceremony hurts them, how it keeps them unable to understand their place and who they are as women. Right now all the stories seem to be about how unequal and terrible it is. But I believe in the power of stories. Parts of my story can only be shared one-on-one, in person, when moved by the Spirit. But right now I feel constrained to share something publicly. Maybe seeing how I process my temple experience can help someone else who is trying to understand.

What it Means to Repent in the Face of Excommunication

I have never been called before a disciplinary council. But on my mission, I experienced something similar. Near the end of my mission, my mission president was released and a new one was called. My first mission president had incredible perception by the Spirit. He allowed me to be the kind of missionary I was drawn to be, even though it caused considerable upheaval and confusion among the ranks of the elders called to lead me in my work.

I remember going to interviews with him, which happened once every six weeks, nervous that I was going to be called on the carpet for the disagreements about how to conduct missionary work I had been having with my leaders. Every new set of leaders in every place I was moved (and it was frequent, at the beginning of my mission) was a new battle. They were called to report numbers of baptisms and lessons taught. I was inclined more to concentrating on the people I came in contact with, feeling strongly that counting numbers was not going to be effective in the area I served.

Arguments Against Female Ordination That Don't Work

I do not consider myself a feminist, though I have several opinions and feelings that some feminists share. Like many political topics (and make no mistake, the action taken to ordain women is inarguably political no matter how some might wish to convince otherwise,) I have a foot in both camps. I have felt (and am currently struggling with) the sting of unrighteous dominion, of the priesthood privilege being wielded to put me firmly in my place.

But there are many arguments against female ordination being lauded by people who, quite frankly, ought to know better. Mostly in the interest of working some of it out for myself, I'm going to gnaw on them a bit.

Ordain Women and the Powers of Heaven

Last Sunday, for the first time in several months, I had to get up and leave Relief Society. It wasn't because I was upset, it was because I was angry. The well-meaning woman in the front of the room, addressing the concept of woman's ordination, chose to mock the entire idea. Met with laughter from other sisters in the room, she declared, "Who wants the priesthood? I have enough to do!" She went on to suggest that the OW movement was stupid, faithless, and foolish. I finally left when she started listing all the "access" that single women have to the priesthood.

It would probably take some who only know me online by surprise that it bothered me as much as it did. Others are probably convinced I'm a sympathizer and agree with Ordain Women, though previous posts of mine should make it clear that I'm not. But while I am no sympathizer to the Ordain Women movement, I am an empathizer. Many of the same things that have led these women to "supplication" at the doors of the Tabernacle are things that I have felt.

As a single woman, I've experienced cradling a sick child in the middle of the night with no one to ask to give her a blessing. As a married woman, I experienced asking someone to offer a blessing only to be refused. I've been summarily overridden, my perspective and revelation in my stewardship discounted because I was not one of the ultimate decision makers. As a sister missionary, I've been subjected to ever-increasingly creative verses of "Sisters are Stupid," a song set to the tune of "I Often Go Walking" because the prevailing opinion was that sisters shouldn't bother themselves with priesthood duties such as sharing the Gospel. I've been judged and rejected for not being enough of an appendage. While none of these things SHOULD have happened under a priesthood organized as it is, they all did at least partly BECAUSE of how it is organized, giving those so inclined to interpret women as less-than.

I know the sting of possessing no organized authority in the Church of my Savior.

Recently, I listened to Kate Kelly's podcast where people were invited to "ask her anything." Listening to it, I changed some of my opinions about Kate Kelly and the movement, and others were confirmed. I may have nothing more to add to the discussion that has been going on around her and the Ordain Women movement. But I have felt the Spirit prompting me to write. Even as I type these words, I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to say.

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.

Detracting from Productive Conversations

This is exactly how I feel.

Public demonstrations and forceful activism are exactly contrary to the principles upon which the priesthood is built. How can they ever expect to wield the power of God when they so clearly don't understand even the most basic aspect of it?

When Church Leaders Are Wrong

With the recently released study topic on race and the priesthood in the LDS Church, there is predictably a flurry of praise for the Church's efforts and criticism that it wasn't enough. And, naturally, questions are being raised about the significance of the Church disavowing past explanations for the Priesthood ban and discussion of the racism that caused it, and what that means for following current leaders now. The racial ban could not have been any part of God's will, an argument often runs, because God would never cause so many people so much pain. Therefore, policies which currently cause pain cannot be of God's will, either, so there is no obligation to follow the prophets in matters which cause people pain.

While I am not black, I have been a victim of others' bad choices before. I know what it is to feel pain from the perspective and opinions of Church leadership, as well. It is from that experience and the things I have learned about the nature of God that I now address some of my feelings on this topic. It isn't meant to tell other people how to think or feel, but only to share my personal reaction to fallacy in my priesthood leaders which affects me. I, obviously, have no right to demand the Church leaders repent on the issue of blacks and the priesthood. I am not the injured party. But what I can do is liken the situation to myself, and what I have experienced, so that I can learn from it. With that in mind, although blacks and the priesthood is a parallel, it is not the whole point.

Dear Men: You’re Breaking Our Hearts

I don’t know if what I’m going to write represents more than just me. Maybe I’m alone in feeling this way, but it doesn’t matter. I need to write this for me. Maybe it will let me move past one more barrier of anger and pain. And maybe, if I’m not alone, it will make a difference for someone.

If you were to meet me in person, you would never guess that I have a deep hollow wellspring of pain. And when you read these words online, if you know my previous writings, you could probably chalk that pain up to my divorce. But you would be wrong. My ex-husband is just one data point on a vast continuum of experience. It isn’t my ex. It’s you, men of the Priesthood.

When I was a teenager and watched the boys around me turn into men, I noticed how they looked at girls. Because I was a bit of a tomboy, I also heard it. There may be women out there who don’t get it, but I think they are few. You think that looking at female bodies, those little “jokes” about “wanting some of that,” go unheard, but they don’t. We seem to ignore them, but they stick.

If you’re a good guy, you’re probably saying to yourself right now “at least I’m not one of those scummy guys who only value women for their looks.” But it’s not just the so-called scums. It’s our brothers, fathers, sons, priesthood leaders. Look at this bishop in the LDS church, teaching women that they exist to be beautiful. If it were only the scummy men, it wouldn’t hurt so much. But it’s our priesthood leaders, those who have made covenants to represent the Father.

Trees or Veils: a Division of Authority

In 2010, Valerie Hudson Cassler presented an idea in FAIR that addresses an idea of Priesthood and Motherhood. While I think there is some valuable insight into our eternal nature in this theory, it has one huge problem. It isn't doctrinal truth. Unfortunately, the idea has exploded across LDS blog thought, finding particular root in faithful feminists, that is people who support the Church and also believe in feminine eternal power, that women are not subjected to men via the priesthood, but have access to their own brand of power that works in tandem.

A very rough summation of the theory, in case you didn't want to follow the link above and read it for yourself, is that there are two Trees, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life. In this theory, Eve was foreordained to partake first of the first Tree (of Knowledge of Good and Evil,) ushering mankind through that phase of existence and Adam is then to partake first of the second Tree (of Life) and usher mankind through that phase of existence (per Lehi's dream, I imagine.)

I can see why this idea is compelling. It explains why men have the priesthood and women do not, but still validates that women are powerful and important to God's plan. There is a very similar hypothesis that women and men are to preside over different veils, that women preside over our first birth (into mortal bodies) and men preside over our second birth (accept Christ's atonement.) This is slightly different, but still the same general idea. There are several problems with it, however, which I don't intend to touch upon until the very end. First, I'm going to take Elder Holland's advice and lead with what I know and believe.

A Mirror of Imperfection

An hour and a half past bedtime, I rocked my weeping 6-year-old daughter. She was really too big to fit into my lap, but I cradled her, folding her in half so I could hold her without my arms giving out. The litany of "everybody hates me" and "Cami/Alexa/Ana/Mia were mean to me" and "I accidently touched someone when I was putting my coat on, so I had to sit in the office for recess" and "I laughed with my friends and my teacher punished me" garbled and mumbled through wild tears had been going on for a little over an hour.

At one point, I wept with her in the dark, silent tears running down my cheeks as I tried to sniff quietly enough she wouldn't notice. It only makes it worse for her when she senses I'm crying too. But by now, I was numb, whispering "there-there's" and "shhh, it'll get better" as if they were magic spells to ward off the pain she was feeling.

I was helpless. Her fears and anxieties were all too familiar.

To Become a Priestess

“And, finding there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought for the blessings of the fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same; having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to be a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and desiring to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir, a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers.”
—Abraham, on becoming a priest; Abraham 1:2

I rocked, helplessly alone in a house as silent as a house can be in the middle of the city. A faint pool of streetlight fell over the face of my restless ten month old. Her fevered body could only find rest in my arms until the Tylenol soothed her symptoms. Even though there was no one to see, I furiously held back tears. It was 2 a.m. and I wasn’t going to call a house in the middle of the night to try to find some priesthood holder to wrest himself out of bed to give my daughter a blessing. So, instead, I offered a pleading prayer of faith.