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It Wasn't a Gift

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I went to a retreat this week about “Faith Crisis” and after listening to myself talk, hearing the anger and resistance to being told this was a “gift” and being asked to list some of the good things that have come out of it, I finally figured out what was going on and why I’m probably NEVER going to say I’m glad this happened to me. My faith crisis happened as a result of my daughter’s death. I can’t separate the two timelines. I wish I could. I really wish I knew if I’d have gone through a faith crisis at about the same time anyway. But as far as I can tell, it happened because of my grief and guilt over losing my daughter. So many friends and family who are Mormon church members told me this narrative that God had caused this to happen because there was an important “lesson” for me to learn about my daughter’s death. It was supposed to bring our family closer together. It was supposed to make us more righteous and lead us to the celestial kingdom, where we would see her agai
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Mormonism and Original Sin

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Morrmons often pride themselves on the rejection of the Catholic/Christian doctrine of “original sin.” We think that in rejecting the idea that all men are born into sin because of Adam’s transgression, we focus on the innocence of new life. A wealth of other Mormon doctrines stem from the rejection of original sin, including the idea that children don’t need to be baptized until the age of eight, which we deem the “age of accountability” and even the idea that special needs children who never reach a mental age of accountability are automatically accepted into the celestial kingdom upon death. I spent most of my life holding fast to the importance of the idea of original innocence. But a few years ago, I began to question it. A few years ago, I was recovering from a deep faith crisis and returning to God. At the same time, I was also experiencing a creative crisis. The career I had built as a young adult fantasy author had crumbled. My big publisher dreams died as my sales tan
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A Mormon Sabbatical

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I told the Primary President in my ward that I wouldn’t be available to teach the 3-year-olds (the “Sunbeams”) next year. It was in many ways a typical Mormon experience. I was standing in an open hallway. I’d been called out of the general Primary “sharing time” lesson with four other teachers. This is the way Mormonism often works. No boundaries, especially not for women. No one thought to consider whether or not privacy might be an issue. When I asked to speak privately, the best I got was me alone in the hall. I explained that I wouldn’t be attending church regularly next year and that was why I couldn’t teach the Sunbeams. The Primary Presidency was eager to tell me that if I had trouble with the new manual, which I don’t think is workable for 3-year-olds, I could teach what I wanted. I tried to explain that wasn’t the problem. The problem is simply that I don’t feel my voice is welcome here. When both women in the Primary Presidency assured me that my voice IS welcome, an
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What I Still Believe

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1.        God does not change the course of human events. No amount of twisting ourselves into shapes or trying to figure out how God wants us to worship will protect us from bad things happening. Anyone who tells you differently is selling you something. 2.        God loves. That’s it. If you want to say that God is really just a metaphor for human love, I’m good with that. My personal experience has led me lately to experience God as outside of myself. Most of the time. But I can certainly see why people want to see the divine within themselves, especially after spiritual abuse has occurred. 3.        Paying money to a church isn’t what “tithing” was ever meant to be. It takes your own choice away from you and your own ability to see pain and try to help with it. I don’t think that’s right. 4.        Leadership worship is toxic. It covers up so many sins and leads people to give up themselves. No one mortal is God. No one mortal has exclusive access to God. No one mortal can
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On the Rameumptum

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Can we all agree that the big story of The Book of Mormon is that the “good guys” (the Nephites) are constantly getting proud of themselves for how righteous they are, and then have to be smitten by God through the “bad guys” (the Lamanites). The Nephites fight war after war with the supposedly “uncivilized” and “savage” Lamanites, but when Christ comes to the Americas, it’s the Lamanites who are there to greet Him. The Lamanites become His people. In the end, when everything goes to shit, the Lamanites are at least a little less bad than the Nephites, who are completely destroyed. The promises of God are for the descendants of the Lamanites, right? It seems to me that Mormons are constantly forgetting that the lesson of The Book of Mormon is about us. We’re the ones who get proud. We’re the ones who think that we “deserve” blessings. We’re the ones who stand on the Rameumptum at times and pray about how blessed we are to be God’s special children. We’re the ones who are going to
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O My Mother

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One of the talks in General Conference was about the importance of understanding the aspects of our Heavenly Father, so that we can become like him. I must admit that for me, having listened to most of General Conference without a female speaker (even the Women's Session was more male voices than female voices), I couldn't help but think that this man was speaking to other men. That men ultimately matter more because men are going to be the leaders of the church, and of course, we want to pay special attention to them. So, listen up men, this is what God is like. You need to be like him. And I wonder who I'm supposed to be like. There are throwaway references to Heavenly Parents, but rarely any reference to Heavenly Mother and very, very little doctrinally known about her, except for the stereotypical traits of binary womanhood: submissive, shy, feminine, obedient, and so on. I try to explain to the men in my life why it is that it's important to me that women spea
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Choose Me

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When I started on my path to understanding the world differently, I believed that the people who were really close to me, who knew me and knew that I was a "good" person would always be on my side. I believed that if they had to choose between me and the Mormon church, they'd choose me. By that I mean that I believed they would choose to listen to me and engage with me rather than simply rejecting me out of hand. I believed that they would continue to believe I was a "good" person whether or not I followed the "rules" of Mormonism. In retrospect, this was a pretty naïve belief. I'd already seen two siblings leave the church. And had I chosen my siblings? No, I hadn't. I chose the church. That's not how I thought of it, of course. I thought that I was choosing the right. I thought I was choosing sanity and goodness and family and values and Christ and truth. I thought that if they were going to head off in the wrong direction, I was act
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