Losing Faith

My philosophy of religion teacher gave us 3 reasons why people lose faith in their religions. The list surprised me, because I realized that not one applied to me.

The list was this:
1- There are doctrinal issues that they simply cannot rectify, and they reject the religion altogether.

2-They desire no consequences, and reject God in order to do whatever they want.
3- They are afraid of looking stupid for believing in God.

But I do not lose faith because of these things. I immediately began writing my own list:

Why do I lose faith? (Benefits of losing faith)
1- I judge people less when I reject the religious definition of sin.
2- I accept other people more when I don't believe my world view is the only ultimate truth.
3- I lose debilitating fear when I reject the notion of Satan.
4- I gain mental freedom when I consider my thoughts to be private.
5- I have ambition and hopes and dreams for myself when I reject the doctrinal place for women.
6- I have more control over myself when I don't blame my thoughts, feelings, and actions on good or evil spiritual influences
7- I allow my brain to mature to full adult mental capacity when I stop allowing religious information to bypass my critical factor.
8- I am more open to the discovery of truth when I am not afraid that it doesn't fit into the skeleton of church doctrine.
9- I come to more logical conclusions when I don't force religious and secular ideas together with over-complicated logic.
10- I feel an urgency to be productive and make the most of my life when I think that this is my only chance.
11- I find no reason to ever waste one second being unhappy when I believe death is the end.
12- I am less likely to base decisions on emotion when I believe the source of my emotions are chemicals, rather than spiritual influences.
13- It is easier for me to forgive and love myself after I make a mistake when I look at the actual natural consequences, instead of feeling guilty for sinning against God.
14- I understand the functions and purposes of my body when I believe that it was evolved over millions of years, and that everything about it was evolved because it was good and beneficial.
15- I am comfortable with my body and my sexuality when I don't associate it with religious shame.
16- I feel peace in my own skin when I don't believe that my natural self is an enemy to God.
17- I feel more connected to all life on earth when I believe we all have a single common evolutionary ancestor, and I have more respect for other organisms when I let go of religious human egomania.
18- When I let go of Mormon expectations for my life's path, a thousand possibilities open up for my future. Not being absolutely certain where life is going to take me is exhilarating.
19- When I reject Mormonism, my sense of goodness and morality is stripped down to elemental principles like kindness and freedom, and I have to think and study and decide for myself whether or not an activity is beneficial, instead of automatically labeling things as "sinful" or "righteous," based on a pre-made structure of principles that may be contrary to reality, or have nothing to do with my life.

But after I wrote this all down, I thought, "So why don't I leave just leave then? Why don't I pick up and leave Mormonism behind? There must be reasons why I stay." So I proceeded to write an equal and very opposite list, to illustrate the full extent of my cognitive dissonance.

Why do I keep my faith?

1- When I believe in Jesus Christ I believe that any problem I face can be overcome.
2- When I believe in God I believe that I have a lasting purpose.
3- When I believe in God I believe events are directed, not random, which (in some cases) is comforting.
4- When I believe in God I believe that my thoughts and prayers can in reality affect people.
4- When I believe in God I believe I have unlimited potential.
5- When I believe in God I believe my feelings are significant instead of meaningless chemical reactions.
6- When I believe in God I believe all of my questions about the universe will eventually be revealed to me, instead of me ceasing to exist with unrequited curiosity.
7- When I believe in Jesus Christ I believe that the human race is worth infinite love.
8- When I believe in Jesus Christ I value kindness and forgiveness for others.
9- When I believe in God I believe love is transcendent instead of something that exists only so our genetic material has a greater chance of replicating. (We only love our families because we're more likely to survive if we stick with them, and we only fall in love so that reproduction is irresistible.)
10- When I believe in God I don't feel completely alone when I have no humans to turn to.
11- When I believe in God I have a sense of protection, rather than being subject to randomness, probability, and the cold impersonal universe that doesn't care how much pain I experience.
12- When I believe in the Mormon church I'm capable of feeling "the spirit", which is a feeling of warmth, understanding, excitement, love, and like any obstacle is surmountable.
13- When I believe in the Mormon church it is easier for me to feel a part of my social group.
14- When I believe in the Mormon church it is easier on my mind, for I have a predetermined schema given to me with which I can use to judge all ideas.
15- When I believe in religion I have a very concrete idea of morality, and it's easy to judge whether an activity is bad or good, rather than having to think and decide and risk making a poor decision.
16- When I believe in religion I believe that all loose ends with be tied up-- I will see dead loved ones again, all pain and suffering will be made up for, all injustices will be justified, all mysteries will be solved, all knowledge will be given.
17- When I believe in Mormonism I have a very clear idea of the way in which I'm going to parent my future children, instead of having no idea how to present the idea of religion to them.
18- When I believe in Mormonism, it is easier to listen to the things that people around me say, and I never feel uncomfortable around those who believe, and I don't feel the need to role my eyes.

Inside of Music- A visual explanation of Sufjan Stevens

I have an idea for a body of artwork that I need to create.

It came to me after a few experiences:


Experience #1:
A Sufjan Stevens song came on as Laura and I were talking in the living room. It was one of my absolute favorites, and I was certain that she would like it. But much to my surprise, as soon as she started listening her face dropped and and she smirked like there was a bad smell in the air. She said, "This is... the stupidest music... I have ever heard." I rushed upstairs and turned off the music, terribly confused and embarrassed.

Experience #2:
I went to the Sufjan Stevens concert. The music that I heard there was the weirdest, most indescribable sound I have ever heard. My mind struggled to process it, and listening to it was one of the most brain intensive activities of my life. I had to work so hard to understand it, I came out a little different. My brain had been stretched in new ways, and the way I thought about music was altered. I struggled to enjoy that music the first time I listened to it. But then something changed. The way I perceived the music changed. And now, even though my brain is receiving the exact same information, I process it so differently that I actually hear something else. It's sounds beautiful to me.

Experience #3:
Laura began to make fun of the way Sufjan makes music. "You can't actually like it, Julia. It sounds like Mr. Rogers. It sounds like Sesame Street. The stupid horns! The clarinets and oboes! It sounds so stupid!"
"You can't tell me I don't like it, Laura."
"It's just that sometimes I think you're only saying you like it to seem cool, or to please Brian. I mean, come on. The way it sounds, the actual sonic quality is not good. It's not enjoyable."
"Laura, when I listen to it, that's not what I hear. I hear something different than you. I've let go of all prejudices about certain instruments. I don't associate the sounds with anything predetermined, I just listen to the sound. There is this one song in particular, that if I were to show to you, you would hear it as the ugliest, stupidest, cheesiest sound you have ever heard, but that's not what I hear."
"Ok. Well then, what are you hearing? What does it sound like to you?"
"I can't describe it in words. It brings out specific, subtle emotions that no other music expresses, that there aren't words for. It actually sounds beautiful to me."

When Laura responded to one of my favorite songs the way she did, it was very jarring-- I realized I couldn't possibly comprehend how other people were hearing my music. I never would have considered the possibility that that song would be, "the stupidest music" she's ever heard. I assumed she would love it. But listening to music is a mental process, and can be done in very different ways. Laura and I were receiving the exact same sound waves, but what our brains did with those sound waves was completely different.

The way I listen to music has changed. I used to hear the top layer, the shell of a song. This shell is our automatic judgment. It is each sound's perceived connotation. It is expectation of what we think music is and should be. It is the association of certain sounds with predetermined emotions. It is assumption, and impatience, and ego, an unconscious refusal to appreciate something others may label as silly, annoying, or strange.

This hollow shell is the only thing I use to hear while listening to music. It meant that while some music reached me deeply, far fewer pieces were able to reach me at all. But I was slowly exposed to artists who drove me to new levels, and different thought processes. They challenged, one at a time, all assumptions, expectations, connotations, and judgments that I made about music. And now, when I hear a piece, I listen to it from the inside-out, not the outside-in. That's the only way I can describe it. I'm in the song, I'm inside the world that it creates while it's playing. And it sounds completely different from the inside. It begins to display emotions that you didn't know you had, ones that are not simply "angry" or "sad" or "joyful." With all assumptions set aside, a specific song will communicate things that nothing else can communicate. You might think that stripping music down this way would eliminate all meaning, that if all pre-decided associations were dissolved then music would be nothing more than purposeless noises, like the unorganized sounds you hear walking down the street, or how a word loses meaning when you say it over and over. But this is not the case. Listening to music in this elemental way opens the way for more direct communication. It doesn't dismantle meaning, it uncovers it. Because that is what music is-- It's a form of communication. It's a language. It has meaning. It can communicate obscure ideas and emotions that words cannot even begin to approach. It's worth it to give a song a chance. It's worth it to be patient, and suppress your automatic aversion to the noise, because it may just communicate something precious.

And when you begin thinking about music in this new way, the way your mind thinks in general will open up. The patience and questioning and lack of ego will translate into all of your thought processes. Your brain will become accustomed to being accepting and free. It will get used to questioning an initial judgment. You won't get locked into one mindset, or one way of thinking.

Not all music will speak to you, even after you give it the opportunity to do so. I suspect that Sufjan Steven's music affects me personally because of who I am, and Laura would not find the same meaning in it, even if she were to look for it. But I want to answer that question, "What are you hearing? What does it sound like to you?" And I can't do it in words. I can however, attempt to express it visually. I will describe my individual perception of it through color. I will make pairs of paintings for several songs, one representing the outer shell, and next to it a representation of what it sounds like to me.

This is gonna be fun. :)

The Zombornography Apocalypse

The prophets use fear to keep men away from pornography.

"Avoid pornography as you would a plague." -Gordon B. Hinckley

"Today we have a rebirth of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah." -Thomas S. Monson. (Referring to pornography.)

"Pornography, though billed by Satan as entertainment, is a deeply poisonous, deceptive snake that lies coiled up in magazines, the Internet, and television." (He describes pornography as a snakebite that spiritually poisons you, then continues...) "Sexual sins are among the most poisonous." -David E. Sorensen.

"Pornography is overpoweringly addictive and severely damaging." -Richard G. Scott.

"Stay away from pornography as you would avoid a serious disease. It is as destructive." -Gordan B. Hinckley

"Pornography is like a raging storm, destroying individuals and families, utterly ruining what was once wholesome and beautiful." -Gordon B. Hinckley

"There appears before us in this generation a sinister and diabolical enemy-- Pornography... [It is] the carrier of a deadly disease... The constant march of pornography blights neighborhoods just as it contaminates human lives. It has just about destroyed some areas. It moves relentlessly closer to your city, your neighborhood, and your family." -Thomas S. Monson

The fear tactics used here are astonishing. It sounds more like they are describing a zombie apocalypse than anything else. I am not saying the prophets are not correct, surely pornography is a problem, just as they are suggesting. I simply wonder if the tactics they use are effective. Because it seems as though the problem of pornography is just getting worse and worse. It makes one wonder- perhaps if saying the same kinds of things over and over again in every conference is not working, then a change in methods is necessary. Telling people they are infected with a disease gives them a terrifying, hopeless view of themselves, and instead of seeking help they may just give up. They also become terribly ashamed and hateful towards themselves, which does not help break the cycle of pornography use one bit. In fact, shame may be a key contributer to the cycle. I am not assuming any authority on the subject, and I will not propose what the new tactic should be, but it seems to me that if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you're getting. If the brethren keep teaching this the way they do, the results will be the same. Clearly the root of the problem is not that men are irresponsible, fearless, careless, and want to eat, drink and be merry. Otherwise, describing the diabolical dangers of an action might have an effect. I think men know it's wrong, they know it's destructive, they know they have a great responsibility to their families, they care so much that it eats them alive, and they want to please God. They get the point. But pornography still has a hold over them, suggesting that the root of the problem lies elsewhere. Perhaps pornography gains such an iron grip on men because of how terrified they are of it. Perhaps the huge dose of adrenaline and cortisol they receive when they slip, due to how ashamed and evil they feel, actually reinforces the addiction with those chemicals so powerfully that it becomes ridiculously difficult to overcome. Perhaps a better coarse of action for the church to take would be, instead of instilling extreme fear of pornography use into men, they concentrate on fear release, on letting go, on self empowerment and self-esteem, assuring that such material is not as powerful as the human mind, will, body, or spirit.

I have had experience with the effects that a pornography addiction can have on relationships, even after the addiction is overcome. The effects can indeed be serious, but perhaps not for the reasons most people suppose. I had been dating a young man for over a year when I found out he used to have a pornography addiction. It threw a wrench into our relationship. Also, some of my close family members' marriages were damaged when they discovered their husbands had current pornography habits. I believe most people think pornography hurts relationships because it makes the man into a bad companion. This is certainly the case sometimes, if the addiction is uncontrolled and extremely advanced. But I think that pornography hurts relationships most of the time because of how the women respond to it, having been raised to view it as the most destructive infection on earth. It upset the relationships in my family, but not because the man was disrespectful, or distant, or unkind, or inappropriate, or not gentle. It ruined everything because the women (myself included) suddenly saw their man as an irreparable, diseased, weak, partaker of Satan's very own intellectual property, a disgusting porn-looker. Since we believed it had destroyed and poisoned the minds of our sweethearts, we couldn't let it go. We wondered, “How does this poisoned mind see me, after looking at porn? How can I appear beautiful to him? How can I ever be close to this infected man again? How can he be a good father after witnessing the most family-destroying material on earth?” In my case, I felt like running away and completely erasing my relationship. I distanced myself and looked at him differently, with judging eyes. In the case of my family members, they made actual plans to leave their husbands and rip apart their families, when their husbands had been nothing but good fathers, lovers, and providers. Certain that the men were plagued by Satan, the women did nearly all the work of destroying their relationships. So yes, the brethren are completely correct when they say that pornography is the cause for broken families. But we are the ones doing the breaking. We are the ones who are letting pornography have so much power and influence over us. We are leaving good men, distancing ourselves from our spouses, making decisions based on fear, becoming obsessed and scared, perseverating on our thoughts, quarantining the “infected,” flooding ourselves with shame and guilt, on the premises that pictures are more powerful than people, that sexual feelings are nearly as evil as murder, and that what you look at determines your worth as a human being, rather than whether or not you are Christlike in the treatment of those around you.

Birth Memory

This is how I felt that day, before Laura hypnotized me:
I am nothing but a biological computer. I've been abandoned by God because he doesn't exist. I believe in nothing. There are no souls, there is no truth, nothing is special. I don't even believe in love. My emotions are pointless, my thoughts are useless because they mean nothing. They are only there to make me want to survive or procreate. I'm a big walking set of genes that want to replicate themselves. Every thought, every feeling is manipulative and false. I have no connection to anything greater, anything unexplainable, anything powerful. I'm falling in the dark with nothing to grab on to. Every handhold I try to grasp disintegrates into dust, and I fall further. I have no center. I have no equilibrium. I have no home.

This is what I experienced while my sister hypnotized me:
I was brought into a deeply relaxed state. I moved no muscles, and I didn't feel the need to. I was told to think of my favorite color, and breathe it into my lungs. Immediately, the floor of my consciousness became salmon pink. But salmon pink was not my favorite color. My favorite color was a very specific shade of red-orange. My conscious mind had long decided that red-orange was the most beautiful color in the world, and I tried to eradicate the pink and replace it with orange, but when I tried to envision the color it hit a brick wall. I could not hold onto it for longer than a flash. So I allowed salmon pink to take over, and I breathed it into every cell of my body. I was told to use the name of the color I was breathing in as a key word for future relaxation. My conscious mind said that pink was a stupid word. I couldn't use that word. It was silly. I refused for a while to use pink, and would only think the word, "Color". But my subconscious continued to be adamant that pink was indeed the color appropriate for my deepest relaxation, and I let go. I released all ego and embraced the wisdom of my subconscious. As I slipped deeper and deeper into relaxation I dug up the origin of salmon pink. I knew why my mind had chosen it. It was the exact same color I used to see as a child, falling asleep in my bed. I'd always remembered the image. When I was young, the image of a pink, balloon like shaft used to take over my mind. The balloon would suddenly collapse in on itself and become a dark, crumpled mass. Then it would blow up and become perfect and smooth again. Over, and over and over. I was instructed to wake up. I heard counting 1...2...3... and I opened my eyes with a calm, silent gasp.

This is what happened after I was hypnotized:
"Laura, my conscious and subconscious minds were totally battling over colors during that."
I told her what had happened. I told her how I'd uncovered the weird, deep memory of the balloon that became shriveled and black. I'd never understood the image. I'd never told anyone about it before. It had always baffled me.
"Oh, I know what that is." Laura said immediately. What? She did? She understood it instantly when I'd been confused by it my whole life? "Those are contractions.” She said. “You're remembering your birth. That's what it must have looked like."
It struck me as obvious. Of course. Of course. The sensation of contraction would inevitably be a part of us, somewhere. The idea made my mind open. It made everything seem clearer. We realized that since flesh is see through, and babies can see light while they're in the womb, salmon pink was probably the color that surrounded me. My first color. My first memory.
"What's interesting," She said, "Is that the image of contractions is not a distressing memory for you. It was actually the most relaxing thing your mind could come up with." We realized how powerful this image could be for me in the future, when I'd give birth to my own children.
"Everyone retains a memory of their birth, in some form." She said. "For some it's ingrained into their personalities and life choices. Others may experience it through emotions, or physical feelings. You're an artist. It makes sense that your brain retained it visually."

This is how I felt the day after I was hypnotized:
Something was said in one of my religion classes that I disagreed with, and instead of my mind swimming in the horrifying sensation of abyssal cognitive dissonance, I used my key word and the imagery to make myself extremely relaxed. In this state I was able to solve the problem, to get inspiration, to make sense of the dissonance at hand. For the first time in months I was able to reach a resolution. I am not powerless. There is goodness, there is truth, there is power in the universe, and I can access it through my body and my mind. I have somewhere to go. I have a handhold to grasp when everything else is pure confusion. I am complete as I look back at my very first thoughts as a living organism. I can connect to who I was from the beginning, my very deepest self, the person without pride or shame, the child who was not trying to impress anybody. I remember the being who hadn't yet obeyed fear, who knew only one color, one image, who only felt love and connection and trust throughout the process of entering the world. I can return there whenever I need. This gives me a center. I can find equilibrium. I have a home.

Another battle with Benson

"You were not created to be the same as men. Your natural attributes, affections, and personalities are entirely different from these of a man. They consist of faithfulness, benevolence, kindness, and charity. They also balance the more aggressive and competitive nature of man. The business world is competitive and sometimes ruthless. We do not doubt that women have both the brain power and the skills to compete with men. But by competing they must of necessity, become aggressive and competitive. Thus their godly attributes are diminished and they acquire a quality of sameness with man. The conventional wisdom of the day would have you be equal with men. We say, we would not have you descend to that level." -Ezra Taft Benson

If a woman is really born with divine, nurturing, compassionate traits, would the world of business so easily destroy those qualities? I think women would change the business world for good, long before the business world would change women. Women are not malleable like children. If simply going to work can remove these qualities and replace them with new ones, perhaps they are not as ingrained into women as we think.

But if women truly are the naturally benevolent beings the church teaches us, what damage could possibly be done by allowing their influence to reach every human institution? What harm would any organization experience with a balanced leadership of female and male? What part of our world would collapse if it was more generous and kind? What about our current patriarchal, screwed up, warlike world are we so desperate to preserve? Are we so captive to our traditions, our history of death and despotism, that we'll turn our heads and let it remain the same forever, under the pretense that it's just the way God made things for men and women, that women have been as powerless as slaves because that's the way it's supposed to be? Here's a simple law of the universe: If you keep doing what you're doing, you're gonna keep getting what you're getting. Women have always been barred from authority and what do you get? A very dark, bloody, tragic world history. I say, just because masculinity has ruled the world without femininity for as long as we can remember, doesn't mean it's right. Just because women have motherly attributes, doesn't mean those attributes should be confined only to the home. If we have ever needed female qualities to take root in the businesses and organizations and policies and events of the world, it is now.

God's Body

Humans have a story. The story is that all-powerful, human shaped beings created the universe, and that we are their children. We have a serious fixation on the story of parental higher beings. Is this universal sense of almighty humans some evolutionary by-product, or evidence that its real? We believe we're the children of omnipotent people, because we're just so dang smart. We are real, real intelligent. The conclusion that follows is, clearly we'll rule the universe someday, or at least, there are glorified humans who rule the universe. Obviously, super, super intelligent biological creatures must be God's children. But what qualifies us to be God's children, when whales and dolphins and great apes are fairly intelligent too? Why is this shape, the human body, the only shape that becomes divine? Why would God need this kind of body when this body was evolved because of evolutionary necessity--hairlessness for endurance hunting, opposing thumbs to hold tools, the simian shelf moving forward and becoming the chin making room for more complicated vocal communication, skin color in response to the environment, reproductive organs, bellybuttons, etc. Why would God have a body designed for the earth?

Or did God simply direct evolution? Did God make sure our environment would shape us just so, so that we look like Gods? Why would God bother making sure we ended up in the same shape as them? Why would it matter that we appear like Gods in our mortal lives? We're going to lose our bodies anyway. Can God's spirit children only occupy the shape of a human body? Is there something in the DNA of a human that enables progression, all the way to creating universes? That's a real bummer for those smart whales that swim around and think about the mysteries of the universe, but just can't do anything about it because they have no thumbs. But there are no whale shaped Gods. There are only Gods for humans. Perhaps humans are the “special” ones simply because evolution has allowed us to become extremely productive, because of the shape of our bodies. Perhaps it is our productivity that will allow us to progress, that sets us apart, not how intelligent we are compared to whales. Perhaps God needs human DNA because the work that a God does requires fine motor skills and feet and brains and hands, just like us. Developing the nebulous, seemingly magical cyber-world was only possible because of the work of actual human hands. Perhaps the seemingly miraculous work of Gods comes about from actual hands, too. The shape of a body leads to the kinds of things it can create. If God is the creator of the universe, God's body must somehow facilitate the kind of creation that takes place.

Unless Gods are beings of pure thought, in which case, why have a body? If that kind of creation comes from pure will of thought then is a body really necessary? Perhaps it's necessary for consciousnesses to have a house in order to create stuff, and that's why a God would have some kind of body.

But maybe they are not beings of pure thought. Maybe they don't create by thinking and making it so. Maybe what it takes to create universes has to be done with hands. Then what is it those hands are doing? They're not reaching into the earth and moving the tectonic plates to create mountains, or squeezing dirt together to make a planet. Technically, God didn't actually make anything. When a baby is growing inside of you, God is not piecing together the organs. The baby is growing based on the DNA map and biological principles. What God makes are principles. God designs principles and physically makes those principles functional, and puts them into play. So that when a primordial soup of matter is floating around, principles start functioning, and creation starts happening on it's own. God designs gravity, somehow using a body, so that matter is attracted to each other. God designs electromagnetism so that charged particles respond to each other. God designs entropy and relativity and the strong and weak nuclear forces. God decides that quantum particles will be based on probability, that the speed of light is a barrier, that energy may transfer into different forms, that observation changes electromagnetic particle behavior. These are principles and these are the things that God creates. The result of their creations is a functional universe which eventually leads to intelligent life which then creates independently. And they achieve this somehow with physical bodies.

Alright, then, if physicality is necessary for these principles to be created, why would a human shaped body facilitate it? Is it possible their bodies are very, very different than we imagine? Is there any reason to think bodies that have been evolved to carve weapons and build houses and operate machines, also have the capacity for principle creation?

Well maybe it doesn't matter what kind of body it is. Maybe God's will simply needs a house, a brain to control. Maybe God looks human because they're simply partial to it. Maybe they chose these bodies because, heck, ya need some kind of body and brain to live in, and human is how they looked when they were in the infancy of their progression, still learning to make clubs and houses and computer chips, so they identify themselves as being this shape and there's no reason to change it.

So Gods look human then. And they make spirits who look like humans. But why would they make our spirits in the shape of human bodies? Can intelligences only be organized into “spirits” if they look like humans? Or perhaps they actually use their bodies to make spirits, so the spirits end up looking like bodies, spirit bodies that look just like our future physical bodies for some reason, because God, being omniscient, knows exactly who we are going to mate with someday, and for our convenience made the spiritual matter resemble twenty-year-old humans.

Or maybe we're just monkeys. Whew.

The Santa Clause Phenomenon

I felt like an alien in my own world. No one at church was like me. I heard members of my ward speak, and I could only stare dumbly at the things they were saying. I couldn't imagine how it was possible to be a human being and also think and speak the way they were thinking and speaking. How can these smart people... be the way they are. It didn't make any sense.

But how can I be feeling this right now? I know exactly what it's like to be a believing Mormon. I was one, for my entire childhood. Every person I know is a true blue Mormon. This is the only way of thinking I've EVER been exposed to. How is it possible that I feel like such a fish out of water? This is my world. My only world.

And yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I was surrounded by an entirely different species, and the language they were all speaking was foreign to me. Perhaps it's because I can't imagine being an adult and still believing the things I believed as a child. I believed in Santa Clause. But I grew up. I started using my brain and I figured out it was a bunch of hooie. Same with the church. I was solid in the church until about thirteen or fourteen. Maybe that's why church is so incomprehensibly strange to me. All these educated, intelligent adults getting excited about the presents that Santa Clause brings them.

The children I can understand, but the adults? They're either incredibly stupid, or too afraid to exist in a world where everything they've been taught isn't entirely correct. Am I the only person who isn't scared shitless to think about things?

But how am I thinking this right now? I know the adults in my family aren't stupid. They're not mental cowards either. Then why do they still believe in Santa Clause? No one makes sense, they're all aliens, they're all from a different planet.

When did I become disconnected from every human being I've ever met? If I'm not connected to Mormons for heavens sake, then what on earth am I connected to? Maybe if I had a group of non-Mormon friends, maybe if I'd ever witnessed life outside of Utah, it would make sense that I was rejecting this so that I could cling to something or someone else. But there's no one. There's nowhere. I'm an alien to everyone on earth. When did this happen to me?

I thought backward. It was the worst part. I could remember believing in everything, and also not being stupid. I could remember it but I couldn't figure out how it was possible. I remembered sitting in church and suddenly thinking, 'right now, anyone could say anything to me, and I'd still believe Joseph Smith was a prophet.' I remember going to girl's camp and feeling so lucky to have the truth of the gospel in my life that I bore my testimony around the campfire and told everyone firmly, “If any of you have any doubts, just don't.” Just don't, I said. Like it was so simple. Like the truth of the church was blatantly obvious.

I remember watching tv or hearing stories about people and always asking, "Well, are they Mormon?" Because if they weren't it was like they weren't real people. If someone wasn't Mormon then they almost... didn't count. It was hard for me to swallow that the founding father's weren't Mormon because then how could they have possibly been led by God? But then I heard that their work had been done in the temple and that they'd accepted it in the afterlife, so whew, now the founding fathers counted as real people. I remember listening to my favorite artists, Maynard Keenan and Tori Amos and fantasizing that they would become Mormon someday because then they'd be real, despairing that all of these people I admired had pointless lives because they weren't Mormon. I could only understand the minds of Mormons, I could only relate to those also in my exclusive club.

Then things started to happen. I got sick of Joseph Smith because of the infamous “Joseph Smith Year”. The Joseph Smith year in church was designed to strengthen everyone's love and testimony and appreciation for Joseph Smith by literally never speaking of anything else. Forget Jesus. Forget repentance and forgiveness. By the end of that year I was so bored of continuous Joseph Smith bludgeoning, that I lost my testimony of him. I missed talking about Jesus. And I never wanted to hear the words, “Joseph Smith is a prophet” again, for the rest of my life.

Things that I heard in church started feeling wrong, like when someone said the purpose of women on earth was to help men. The fact that my role and destiny as a female was completely mapped out for me made me feel rebellious. And I finally let myself ask the question, "why the hell don't women have the priesthood?" without putting it out of my mind and telling myself, whatever, it doesn't matter, god has a reason. When I finally let the question in, I felt a kind of heartbroken rage I'd never felt before. With my mind finally unafraid to open up, I also stopped pretending that polygamy never happened. I mean, I always knew somewhere inside myself that polygamy had happened, but I was like the people in 1984, using doublethink, making it disappear from the past, refusing to think about it. But when I finally had the courage to ponder it, I had a clear and horrifying sense that it was putrescent and horrid and evil and wrong, a mistake a mistake a mistake... I tried to ignore my intuition and explain it away as something harmless, but I got sick of denying my own truth sensor. And more and more things started tripping off my truth alarm. Like in my Doctrine and Covenants class at BYU, when my professor brought up the subject of Heavenly Mother and questioned aloud whether or not she was even divine. I've never felt so black inside, hearing him question her divinity. I've never felt so much negativity and falseness in one room. I started blacking out during the lecture. I struggled to breathe and held in frantic tears on the way to my next class.

And worst of all, or best of all, I read Orson Scott Card's Xenocide. His character called Gloriously Bright believed that her own disturbed and genius mind was the Gods speaking to her. She had an unshakable testimony in something completely false. I remember reading Xenocide during seminary once. Gloriously Bright was knelt over, in a ridiculous religious ritual caused by severe obsessive compulsive disorder, speaking to the “Gods” in her mind. I looked up from my book and looked at the TV screen. They were showing a seminary video on prayer and revelation. A young women was kneeling, closing her eyes and folding her arms... speaking to God in her mind. I couldn't breathe. Mormons were Gloriously Bright. We do all of these rituals and believe we're Godspoken and we know it's true, just like Gloriously Bright knew. She was too faithful to see that what she KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt was false. I could never look at myself or anyone the same after witnessing such close parallels between her and the entirety of Mormondom.

I started out feeling unbelievably blessed. I believed. Then I became cynical of the culture, sick of it. Then I thought maybe it was possible it was false. Then I wanted to believe, but feared that it was false. Then I couldn't see much truth in it, but I wished and hoped and dreamed that it was true. Then I wanted more for myself as a woman and secretly wished it wasn't true. Then if I were to have found out it was true I would have been very surprised. Now, I realized, when I meet someone who is Mormon I automatically feel like I can't relate to or understand them. Now if I were to find out it were all true, if I found out that there was a big scary monster called Satan, if I found out that all main Gods were male, that God's wife did and said nothing, that Joseph's polygamy experiment wasn't the blunder of the century, that I was being judged for saying swear words in my head, that my brother wasn't going to make it to the celestial kingdom because he's a “sinner!!!”, I would be heartbroken. Devastated. Now I wouldn't want to live in a world where it was true.
What has happened to me?

A Day

You were a stranger without that look,

a hidden flickering game
of indifference that hits me with

a shrouded pathway from the eyes.

I didn't know you, but I knew you didn't

need my sanity to stay. You'd stay anyway.

And when you didn't ask for conformity,
it shattered, fell limp.

You stayed awake for me that night
and took nothing but my gentle presence
to breathe relief to deep hollow.
I buried my head, you swayed.

My ice and your stone broke well before the sun
came up through the window where I first left home.

You didn't alter, strong current set us eye to eye.

I hid my upper lip, you told me it was perfect.

You permanently stand in my thoughts
and you didn't try. But I see you even now.

I was in, you let me be there.
No doubt you saw all of me.


For a day. Then you didn't care.

Questions

This quote by President Ezra Taft Benson made me feel diminished and then pigeon-holed. But by the last sentence I was made to feel superior to men, to balance out the previous pigeon-holing.

"You were not created to be the same as men. Your natural attributes, affections, and personalities are entirely different from these of a man. They consist of faithfulness, benevolence, kindness, and charity. They also balance the more aggressive and competitive nature of man. The business world is competitive and sometimes ruthless. We do not doubt that women have both the brain power and the skills to compete with men. But by competing they must of necessity, become aggressive and competitive. Thus their godly attributes are diminished and they acquire a quality of sameness with man. The conventional wisdom of the day would have you be equal with men. We say, we would not have you descend to that level."


I asked myself one question. And then the questions wouldn't stop coming.


But what am I meant for?

Does my sex determine my destiny? Does sex determine every individual's destiny? An individual's Purpose? Even an individual's personality? How is it that my personality can be pre-determined and recited to me, simply because my genetic code lacks the Y chromosome? How is it that the nature of my spirit is decided for me? How can they tell me what my spirit is like? How can they tell me what my personal divine attributes are, when they have never heard of me? Just because I "am" what they call a woman? Do they know what a woman is? Or do they only know what they think a woman should be? How can they tell us not to descend to the level of a man's characteristics, when those are divine in nature as well? Must we only strive to become half of perfection? Must we avoid development in certain areas, and cling to it in others? Are "masculine" divine attributes detrimental to a woman's divinity? Are only decidedly feminine characteristics beneficial for my personal progression? Why would two individuals sharing an attribute weaken them, or weaken the the union between them? Can not I, and my brother as individuals work toward being nurturing as well as powerful? Must people artificially divide themselves in half so that the sexes need each other more? Can we not all be complete people? Can a union between a man and a woman not function with well-rounded individuals? Must I base my marriage on the fact that I am incomplete? Wouldn't it be more powerful for two people to be whole and use their agency to choose to unite themselves, rather than to compensate for the attributes that they have neglected, or that have been socialized out of them? Why did I feel uneasy when my three-year-old nephew carried around a doll in public? Why are we told it's not natural for males to be nurturing? And why, in turn, do we make that characteristic unacceptable from infancy, deterring any natural nurturing instincts? Would a man be un-manly if his culture had allowed him to cultivate a "feminine" characteristic? What benefit to society is there in discouraging gentleness in males, when they are considered the ones responsible for the majority of crime? Would a woman be un-feminine if her culture had approved of her being an "aggressive" participant in society? What benefit to society is there in encouraging passiveness among women, who then so often let themselves be taken advantage of? How can we attribute our own silly, human, mormon, modern american culture to the way the universe actually works? How can we assume that the traditions and dysfunctionalities of our time and place have anything to do with how divine people function? How can we think that the way we've learned to be women, mothers, and wives reflects in the slightest what it means to be a Goddess? How can we believe that the way masculinity is taught and implemented here is in any way similar for Gods?


Foolishness.

What. On earth. Am I.

What on earth am I, really?

I am a woman.
I am a feminist.
I am a mormon.
I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.

(Am I?)

I am a capitalist.
I am a conservative.
I am an artist.
I am a daughter of God.

(Am I really?)

I am human.
I am intelligent.
I am capable.
I am equal.

(Am I, really?)

I have a purpose.
I have a destiny.
I have divine potential.

(Do I?)

I have a specific role and set of duties that I must perform.
I carry within me certain feminine attributes that, by nature, all women share.

(Do I really?)

I am more nurturing than my brothers on earth.
I am less competitive than my brothers on earth.

(But, am I... Really?)

The current, orthodox path my life is on will bring me the most happiness and fulfillment.

(Will it?)

I want to be a mother.
I want a husband.

(Do I?)

I am an individual, not a product of my culture.

(Am I so sure?)

I can feel truth when it is presented to me. (Can I?)
I have the ability to receive direct revelation from God. (Do I?)
I am guided by the spirit. (Am I?)
I can gain a relationship with higher beings. (Can I?)

The gospel is the reason I'm so happy.

(Is it?)

I know who I am.
I know why I'm here.
I know what I can and cannot do.


I know what I am.

(Do I? Really?)

I'm one of those

I'm one of the odd ones
the different ones
the other ones.
the ones set apart from the usual
the dominant
the norm.
I'm one of the ones left out of the story books
the history books
the religious books,
making way for every character
every leader
every great mind.

I'm one of the objects of poison
of seduction
of temptation
for the normal
the orthodox
the prevalant, who spend their lives attempting to overcome our magnetism.

I'm the butt of a joke.
a punchline.
a stereotype.

I'm one of those who are unconsciously ignored
who have no power
no position
no destiny.


I'm one of them.