- Juncos and Chickadees visiting my bird feeder
- My christmas tree is up and my ornaments are awesome
- I'm making progress rock climbing
- Hot cocoa and tea
- The semester is over and I'm going to read more for fun!
Here I will try to hide heavy feelings among descriptions of fun and adventure. I often repress the thing "I just need to get off my chest," because if the internet has taught me anything, it's that un-weighting yourself online is just asking for trouble. However, I feel ready to burst and my general technique of writing it down in my disposable journal has not been effective. There's been a kerfuffle around the internet about feminists within the LDS church. Initially I watched this with great wonder, it's a difficult position for these women to be in, and one I felt a great deal of empathy with. But it just snowballed into a flame war between faithful feminists and faithful anti-feminists, and just got me discouraged (note that both appear equally faithful to me). Discouraged that feminism has turned into a dirty word, discouraged that small misunderstandings (perhaps even poor reading skills) can turn the friendliest people I know into more of the angry internet folks, and discouraged that a situation ripe for really meaningful discussion could just ruin my day like it has.
This whole thing has ruined my day because it's brought about this awful deja vu, reminding me in vivid detail of my own struggles with faith, and ultimately the decisions I made to no longer count myself among the faithful. The biggest reasons I am not faithful, of course, are very personal and were very difficult to acknowledge; admitting the things I no longer believed in was a very painful process, something I did not take lightly, and something I still revisit. However, deciding not to attend church any more was much easier because I simply felt that I did not belong and attendance became a stressful event that was not uplifting at all. There were some very important friends who made me feel very loved, and I still cling to those relationships, but the overall experience was one of outsideness. One of the more upsetting aspects of these feelings is that they came from the followers, not the leadership. I still like to hope that the message of Christianity is one of love and inclusiveness, one of the benefits/purposes of religion, in fact, is membership in a group. Unfortunately, identifying those who are in the group can often lead to pointing out those who are not part of the group. I'm not convinced this is a necessary practice, but for many it seems the easiest way to encourage solidarity is to mock those who feel differently. It's in this simplified environment that I felt like there was no place in Relief Society for someone like me who was questioning things, including what I wanted to accomplish with my life (i.e., marriage, travel, education, career). When I was younger, I felt like it was assumed that I would live a traditional Mormon life, but in my 20's, this was assumption was stated explicitly and effectively turned me away from those loudest voices in the congregation who were telling me I was "worldly" and other things (perhaps selfish) for not ardently planning my future family. Especially when I was trying so hard to make a substantive, deep life for myself.
The whole point of that rambling narrative is that the goals I had set for myself seemed counter to what I was hearing from other women in my congregation. And now I feel like I'm being pushed further from the church by the Mean Girls in Relief Society. I'm struggling with how I should proceed, how I can avoid being reactionary. If I simply keep things shallow, avoid any discussion of subjects that bring out the mean in people, I will lose the deeper discussions that really mean a lot to me. If I completely reject all the people who are saying things that hurt me, whether they intend it or not, I push away people I love along with those I could live without. And in the end, I really do try to avoid being fearful and reactionary. So I'm left crying, wishing I wasn't so sensitive, and wondering if perhaps Facebook will prove to be the biggest feature in the decline of polite society.
But I've got a better plan, I'm going to play Christmas music on my piano, blog about my awesome friends and family, make sugar cookies, and plan a vacation to somewhere warm and ripe for adventure. In the end, I live a really great life, full of great people, and I can work harder to make sure the discussions on Facebook don't disproportionately affect my mood.
*Point of clarification: I should note that it was comments about the wearing pants to church movement (really, those against the movement) that have me so upset. I don't generally despair like this.
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