Be Excellent to Each Other

I'm going to start off with a few confessions.  1.  I love popping things: zits, infected cuts, ingrown hairs.  It's very therapeutic to me.  2.  My favorite playlist is called "Rage Aneurysm, I made it one day when I was in a very bad mood and had a whole lot of computer time ahead of me.  It starts with Bette Midler's "The Rose" and ends with Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" and I'm not ashamed that I love both of those songs intensely.  3.  I work in very muddy places and rarely remember to bring hand sanitizer with me so I've eaten at least a pound of mud inadvertently by eating my lunches with dirty hands.  I'm alright with that.  4.  My least favorite word in the entire English language is obedient.  I do not like being told what to do and I feel valuing obedience over intuition leads to conflict.  5.  I'm a feminist and the things Mormon feminists have been writing, whether or not they want the priesthood, speak to my heart.  The things being written to denounce and misunderstand feminists are breaking my heart and make me feel like the church of my youth has no room for people like me.

*Below is simply an extended crying session about feeling rejected the church I grew up in, plus some Star Wars and links to videos and articles about empathy that I think are really great.

I've been working on getting that last confession out for 1.5 years now.  I hesitated because it hurts my heart so much when this issue (gender roles in the Mormon church) flares up.  I was so excited when members of the Mormon church started talking about gender issues and it felt like a major letdown when the issues weren't addressed and divisions were drawn among members who are my friends.  I also hesitated because it feels passive-aggressive to add my voice to the internet defending my own point of view rather than telling my friends who have posted things that are hurtful "Hey, that's hateful and terrible.  You've got a feminist friend, I hope you didn't realize that before."  I also need to avoid ranting, because that's when the hurtful words really come out, when you can tell an author has bottled their feelings up for so long they can barely put full sentences together because they have so many forceful things to say.  Finally, I don't think my words add anything new to the discussion.  There are many more eloquent writers and so many more well versed in scripture.  I hope simply to put a friendly face on feminism to my friends who view it as an enemy to their way of life.  So here is my adventure for the day: state my position, my soul's cry, clearly without denigrating the people who disagree with me.  I can't avoid offense, I've seen that even discussing the issue of feminism is stressful and offensive to many followers, but it's an important issue to me so I will be polite.

One last thing before I start: I love you whether or not you share my beliefs about faith or womanhood.  I hope you, dear reader, can return the love.

I haven't been an active member of the church for several years now.  I didn't leave the church because of gender issues, I had larger troubles with faith itself, but I continued to attend meetings for a while because I had friends in my congregation and I enjoyed hearing positive messages from faithful people.  I stopped attending within a few months though, because without faith the congregation I was attending was a stressful place.  No one shared my politics and openly talked about liberals as the enemy.  Worse, I felt like there was no one in my congregation who wanted the same things out of womanhood as me.  I want to learn everything and go everywhere and have kids that I raise to be curious and kind and awesome.  I felt like the way we were being preached to about womanhood, to find and support husbands who were good leaders rather than being our own leaders, and that life doesn't really start until you're married, were more cultural than doctrinal.  I felt like I didn't belong in the church and that the stress I felt when I attended was actually bad for me.  Then in December of 2012 I read a blog post about religion that stirred my heart, which hadn't happened in many years.  It was about being a feminist in the Mormon church, feeling like you were all alone within their congregations, and the changes they would like see.  In particular I liked this paragraph

Sometimes, being a Mormon Feminist is a lot like being a Who. Some of us go years and years, thinking we are the only one. We feel like dust specks, invisible to the larger community of Latter-Day Saints. When we’re lucky enough to realize that we’re not alone, that there are lots of Mormon Feminists, fighting the good fight for gender equality in families and congregations everywhere, it feels like a miracle. There are enough of us that we’ve formed our own little Whovilles in more liberal cities and here on the internet. Among ourselves, we talk about Mormonism as we understand it, as a gospel of love, acceptance, and forgiveness. We envision a world where we can participate fully in our religion, where we are afforded the same opportunities as our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons: a place where programs for girls receive funding on par programs for boys; a place where young women are encouraged to serve missions on the same terms as young men; a place where women can finish their schooling without being criticized for putting off marriage and pursue careers without being condemned for abandoning the home; a place where mothers can bless their sick children and preside alongside their husbands in the home; a place where our spiritual progress is based on our worth as individuals, rather than on our relationships to the men around us.

 Within that post and another blog I really like (Mormon Child Bride) I read the soulful cries of women who loved their gospel so much they were willing to see past the voices that actively disdained them so they could be spiritually filled and raise their children within that same place they were raised.  I was so happy to know that there were people who felt like I did and were willing to make their relationship with the church work even though it was an uphill battle.  In the words of the original Whoville blogger I saw a great testimony and a raw love for Christ.  I loved the idea of banding together and making feminists within congregations known through the whole "wear pants to church" thing.  And it was about time someone admitted that most congregations are not safe places for progressive ideas.  I was completely caught off-guard by the vocal opposition to the simple idea of feminists making themselves known.  All over the Mormon internet world I read people saying, literally, "Go somewhere else.  There is no room for your feelings here."  There were some explanations about why some believed changes to gender roles were inappropriate, but words matter and the angry voices were the ones that stuck in my head.

I have cried more about the mainstream Mormon rejection of feminism than I thought I could.  I didn't realize that I could actually feel more excluded from the church than when I was sitting silently in the congregation.  Ordain Women and its leader might have been pushing too fast for change, I'm not really as knowledgeable as I should be on the doctrine of what they're asking for.  But there are so many other important questions they're raising, like why the modesty doctrine focuses on making women cover their shoulders rather than all members actually behaving modestly; like why it's acceptable to invest so much in Boy Scouts without similar investments in teaching girls; like why men should be strong, decisive leaders and women should be virtuous and obedient.  It absolutely breaks my heart when I hear someone calling sincere questioning about women's role in the church called power-grabbing, dissent, apostasy, stupid....  I had hoped that all followers could see the thing that unites them all, a love of the church and a strong desire to be there.  I didn't realize feminist had become a dirty, threatening word.  I expected to see more compassion.  Perhaps the ability to look inward and remember a time that we all felt like something we were being taught didn't jive with whatwe felt, a time we have felt excluded.  I had hoped with the Church's focus on agency that more followers could accept that one member's progressive thinking wasn't a threat to their own decision-making.

The things I've read from the more conservative and vocal factions of the church are so full of fear and anger, I can really only understand it by recalling the words of Yoda: "Fear is the path to the dark side.  Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering."  There are currently blog posts and statements being passed around the interwebs suggesting that Christ did not teach as much about acceptance as we (progressive folk) would like to believe and every time someone posts it with a "Hell yeah" I have to steady by pulse and sometimes dry my eyes.  They all suggest the people they disagree with can't just pick and choose the scriptures about a loving, accepting Christ because there are also scriptures (which they've chosen) that support exclusion and judgement.  Anyone with a knowledge of the Bible can find a verse to support what they feel because it's a long book, with multiple authors and some contradictory messages.  For me, there's a song I used to play for the primary kids that sums up how I feel about the teachings of Christ:

I'm trying to be like Jesus;
I'm following in his ways.
I'm trying to love as he did, in all that I do and say.
At times I am tempted to make a wrong choice,
But I try to listen as the still small voice whispers,
"Love one another as Jesus loves you.
Try to show kindness in all that you do.
Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,
For these are the things Jesus taught."

Simplistic?  Yes.  But I prefer that to longer explanations about why it's ok to exclude someone I don't agree with.

It's likely clear by now that I've pretty much just been talking about feelings.  I feel like there hasn't been enough recognition that faith, identity and acceptance are all very important and individually-specific feelings that are worth fighting to hold on to, but feelings nonetheless.  I have no scriptures or prophets to quote and you may be asking yourself why I feel like I have a dog in this fight at all.  I feel so strongly because my family is part of the church and I don't like feeling things that make me distance myself from that place that holds my family.  I've written so many journal entries about feeling rejected by the church, I've searched out things that make me feel like I could belong some day, like Feminist Mormon Housewives, because I don't want to turn away from the Church that gave me my roots.  I don't want to harden my heart against the entire institution so that I won't care what they say. I don't want to tell my people "Quit hoping for me to come back because there's no place for questioning minds where you come from."   Unfortunately that's the message I've gotten this week.

I know its been rough for people on both sides, for me the hard part has been seeing so many examples of "I don't believe this ____ and I think anyone who does believe it is a jerk."  I miss seeing the beautiful declarations of faith that fill me up, those examples of people making positive declarations of faith "I believe this ____."  I love hearing testimonies.  I'm so tired of crying, remembering the reasons I stopped attending church.  I'm scared of the results of Kate Kelly's disciplinary hearing because I don't want to read a wave of self-congratulatory "we were right, they were wrong" posts or "ugh, I hate knowing the people I sit next to believe anything different from me", but I'm afraid that will be all that comes of this.  (And that fear might lead to the dark side....).  It's possible that some voices will step forward to recognize the differences within congregations and potential options for discusses differences of options, including which topics are doctrinal and relevant to discuss during church and which are political and do not belong.  It's possible that a few on either side of the debate will recognize the things they have in common with each other and find the right words to move forward and talk with one another.  I hope the last part happens.

So, that's all I have to say.  Please treat everyone well, even the feminists, because we all want to feel we belong somewhere.  If I've still got your attention, I suggest reading this commentary about church congregations being safe places.  Perhaps check out this opinion piece about what one person took with them when they left the church.  Whatever you do, definitely check out this amazing video about empathy.

And what would all that crying be without a picture of the people who make me feel like I belong.  

Seriously, my family is great.