A Message for Atheists this Christmas

One reason I started this blog is because I feel like I have a somewhat unique ability to bridge gaps. Maybe. I hope. In addition to helping me sort out my own beliefs, I really wanted this blog to be a platform for me to help people understand each other. I have a lot of devout Christian friends. I have a lot of non-religious or even atheist friends. I have been all of the above at different points in my life.

I want to use this post to scratch the surface of this topic, and explain how an intelligent, logical thinking person who firmly believes in science (I am! I swear!!) can also believe in God.

When I stopped going to church, it wasn't a conscious decision and it wasn't because of any one thing. It was very gradual. I didn't just decide one day that I didn't believe in God anymore and say screw it. It was a process, like most things in life. I remember my mom telling me once, with genuine fear in her voice, that she was worried that I wasn't a Christian anymore. And I was like, "Mom, chill out. Of course I'm still a Christian. I'll always be a Christian."

But that wasn't true. After long enough away from the gospel, listening to liberal podcasts and getting involved in online communities, as time went by, the more atheism made sense to me. Things like faith and prayer and obedience seemed really silly. I can't honestly say that I ever truly stopped believing in God, but I definitely reached a point where my doubt outweighed my faith. I wanted to believe in God, but it seemed very unlikely to me.

And then I had my "Come to Jesus" moment. A point in my life where things got so dark that I saw no reason to go on. I'll be honest, this is not something I was unfamiliar with. I'd reached that point many, many times in my life. But this time was different. This was last straw bad. My sisters told me to pray. And I had nothing to lose.

What happened next is something I will never be able to explain. I liken it to trying to explain the color green to someone who's been blind since birth. It doesn't matter what words I choose, I'll never truly be able to convey it. That's how it is to try to explain the Spirit of God. All I can ask is that you trust me - I am an intelligent person, a logical thinker, a believer in science, a skeptic who requires the burden of proof be met before I believe. That is who I am, and if you believe that about me, then please trust me when I say that my experience was undeniable. It cannot be explained away. I felt God's love.

If you know much about me, or if you read my last post, you'll know how important freedom is to me. I read an article recently about an atheist group in California who is starting a billboard campaign. Because freedom is my core belief, I certainly can't say I don't think they should be allowed to do the campaign. The first amendment is, in my opinion, the most important part of the constitution and I will always defend it. Everyone has the right to believe what they believe, and to express it. I will always believe that.

But man, reading about that campaign made me so sad.

I don't have the right words to explain how my life has changed since that prayer several months ago. It was the first in a series of many, many prayers and the start of a journey that has completely transformed me. One billboard I saw said something like "There probably isn't a God, so stop worrying and live your life." Oh, man! That broke my heart. The opposite is true. There is a God, and knowing that has made my life a trillion times better.

Religion has been described as "the opiate of the masses". But my senses are not dulled. I do not feel drunk, my pain has not been numbed. I am experiencing true happiness for the first time in my life. I am not high on religion. I am awake. I have not pulled religious wool over my eyes to protect me from the challenges of life. I have pulled the wool away from my eyes so I could climb the stumbling blocks, not trip over them.

Religion has been described as a "crutch." It is not a crutch. I have been healed.

It's frustrating to be limited by the language. I know I will never have the right words to explain it. Unless you've lived my life, you won't understand the difference. I had no hope. I thought my life was over. I thought I had achieved everything I was ever going to achieve in my life, at 30 years old, and now I just had to kill the next 50 years somehow. I was going to be alone, and bored, and stagnant and miserable. For 50 years. Minimum.

And now, I have hope. All of a sudden I can see all the opportunities I have. All the things I have yet to do, and all of the things that I can do, because I believe in myself. Finally. I feel excited about my life. Again, you won't know how major that is if you don't know how completely hopeless I used to feel. All I have are these inadequate words.

But anyway.

It is because of the atonement of Jesus Christ that I have any kind of future at all. And that's what I am celebrating this Christmas. The birth of Christ. His perfect example. His perfect sacrifice. His perfect love.

And my message to atheists this Christmas is this:

You don't believe in things you can't prove. But I've felt the proof.

You don't hear music with your eyes. You don't taste food with your ears. You don't see with your nose.

You see with your eyes, you hear with your ears, you smell with your nose, and you feel the spirit with your Spiritual sense. If you've never used it before, it might be a bit rusty but you have one. I promise.

I would never pressure anyone to believe the way I believe. A person's beliefs are their own and I respect that. But it's like I found this amazing, amazing gift that changed my life... it's hard not to get excited about that and want to share it with everyone. So I guess ultimately my message is...

God loves you.

Merry Christmas.

The Mormon F Word

Ooooooh, what's it gonna be? Nope, not that one. Not that one, either. No, today the topic is one of the most taboo words in LDS culture:

Feminism 

Is there a special font for disaster-movie-trailer-voice? You know, all James Earl Jones with a lot of tympani? Someone needs to come up with one. Is pink the right color for it?

So yep, we're gonna tackle this one. I find that I get frustrated very easily when trying to discuss feminist issues in the real world using my mouth and my vocal cords. I think there are two reasons:

1. I've always been better with written communication than verbal, I'm just one that needs extra time to put my thoughts together. (Case in point: I started writing this blog post over a month ago. Two other blog posts have been written and uploaded since I started this one.) So, especially when talking about issues that I feel strongly about, I struggle to express my thoughts verbally in a coherent way. I know what I'm trying to say, but unless you've spent a few years actually living inside my head to gain context, it comes out sounding... well, not quite right.

2. For whatever reason, any kind of feminist issue, and especially the word itself, is extremely threatening to Mormons. I don't really understand why, but it is. So attempting to have any kind of dialogue about it is difficult because it immediately puts your conversation partner on the defensive. Which in turns makes me feel defensive and it turns into this vicious circle where no one is actually hearing each other.

Screw verbal communication, guys. Seriously. (I suppose "oral communication" is probably more accurate, but it just doesn't sound right. You know why.)

Before we get too much further in this conversation, please take a moment to listen to my favorite feminist anthem: Not A Pretty Girl by Ani Difranco. We will be referring back to some of the lyrics throughout this post.

Anyhoo. Since, as noted above, just the word feminism tends to get people in a tizzy, I'd like to start by sharing my definition of the word. To be fair, there are a lot of different kinds of feminists, and like any other movement, there has been a lot of evolution in approach, intent, etc throughout the years. Perhaps what would have been defining characteristics of the feminist movement 20 years ago are not so much so today. Which means your idea of a feminist and my idea of a feminist might be completely different, with neither of us being wrong exactly, and that might be where some of the miscommunication comes from. So to be clear, this is what I mean when I speak of feminism:

Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing and defending equal political, economic and social rights for women. 

I really cannot comprehend anyone disagreeing with the above statement and believing that women should not have any of those things. And if you think we already do, well... yikes.

Uh.... yeah

Feminism is not an army of man-hating lesbians.

While an army of lesbians sounds pretty freaking awesome to me, lumping anyone involved in the feminist movement together under that label in order to easily dismiss them as somehow being outside the norm and therefore not worthy of your consideration is a total douche move. So if you're doing that, knock it off. And as far as man-hating; while I'm sure there do exist some feminists and/or lesbians who do hate men (probably women who have been continually exploited or abused by them), that is not remotely a defining characteristic of either group so again, if that's your impression, knock it off.

Or, in Ani's words, "I am not an angry girl, but it seems I've got everyone fooled. Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear."

My approach to feminism is the same as my approach to every other issue placed before me. If you ever want to know what motivates my thinking or have found yourself just driving along minding your business and then thought to yourself "I wonder what Nichole's personal creed is?", well, wonder no more because I'm about to tell you.

I believe in the freedom of every person to choose how they want to live their life. The Wiccan creed is "An it harm none, do what ye will". I'm not Wiccan, but that pretty much sums it up. Or from a Mormon perspective, I believe in the plan presented by Heavenly Father, and not in the one presented by Satan. The one where we all have agency and not the one where we are all forced to do right. I believe that every person should be able to make their own mistakes, and make choices that I wouldn't make, and ensure their own salvation (or not) as they will. I believe that the laws of the land should reflect that, and not constrain anyone to behave by the tenets of  any religion.

I believe that everyone's relationship with God is their own. I believe that God didn't just create Men and Women, but individuals with unique personalities, gifts and talents that may or may not match up with those belonging to other members of their gender.

Since this blog is about how I reconcile my liberal beliefs with my Mormon ones (feminism being a liberal view, apparently), I only seek here to address women's issues in the context of the LDS church. I really can't address the whole kit and caboodle in one blog post. Just scratching the surface here has taken me several weeks. So for now I want to start with the church's teachings on gender roles.

No discussion of gender roles in the LDS church would be complete without referencing the infamous and omnipresent Proclamation on the Family. In fact, it pretty much provides the foundation for everything I will discuss, so I have linked it.

I love to serve my man!

The Proclamation says a lot of things, and it does so in rather vague terms so as not to come out and actually say anything, but we all know what it actually means. In addition to condemning abortion and gay marriage, the rest of the Proclamation deals with gender roles. I won't get into how troubling some of the implications of the Proclamation are regarding our *trans brothers and sisters in this post, we'll save that for another time.

The part that concerns me right now is this:

"By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children."

What this means is that the man should work and support the family, and the woman should stay home and raise the children.

This is something that is reiterated frequently in Mormon culture and in Mormon churches. Sure, they'll qualify it by saying "if she can", like that's supposed to make it better. (The proclamation says "Disability, death or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.")
But the ideal for a woman is to be a stay at home mom. That is the ultimate goal for every woman, set out for us from birth and reinforced almost weekly, or even daily. "This is your destiny and this is what you should be working toward and keeping in your mind at all times. If circumstances don't allow it, then that's okay, I guess, but intentionally choosing anything else is wrong."

What is troublesome about this to me is that it flies in the face of my personal creed. The one where everyone gets to choose how they live their life. The one where a man and a woman could sit down together and decide what's best for their family. Maybe in most cases, they would come to the conclusion that their ideal is for the man to work while the woman stays home with the children. If so, then fantastic. But if they choose something different, they should be free to do so without stigma. Without being made to feel guilty or abnormal or somehow "less than" every time this other "ideal" is held aloft.

And what about the rest of us? Those of us who wish we could meet that ideal but can't. Unmarried people. Divorced people. Families who can't subsist on a single income. You know. The majority of us. We've all been set up to feel like failures. When you're taught your whole life to expect one thing and then grow up to discover that it doesn't happen for everyone, it is devastating.

Something I've learned after 31 years of life, something that I was not at all prepared for, is that life isn't a formula. It's not a "do this, and then this will happen" kind of thing. Everyone's path is individual. It is unique. This is truth, but it is not something that is taught by the LDS church, and I think that is a weakness. Mormon kids are taught black and white principles, and are caught completely unawares when they find themselves in a gray world.

And it's not just about whether or not women work. It's about who we are. Individual personalities, strengths, and talents are discarded and instead we are told what qualities we ought to possess based on our reproductive anatomy.

Just this past Sunday, a woman gave a talk in Sacrament meeting where she presented the following quote that disturbed me to my core:

"Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity"  ("The Joy of Womanhood," Ensign, Nov. 2000, 15).

What bothers me about this quote is that while all of those qualities are good, they are being reduced as uniquely feminine. The implicit message here is that it is okay for men to be tough. It is okay for men to be coarse, or rude. Women are to be tender, kind, virtuous, pure, nurturing.

Why is it so stressed that women must cultivate these qualities but not men? Shouldn't men be tender? Kind? Virtuous? Why can't men be nurturers?

I don't understand the need to constantly reinforce these ideas that women must be so soft. Is it so that men get to feel strong? As Ani said, "I ain't no a damsel in distress, and I don't need to be rescued. So put me down, punk. Wouldn't you prefer a maiden fair? Isn't there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere?" I resent the idea that I have to be anything in order to make men feel more comfortable.

I'm not saying that I think it's wrong to encourage women to cultivate these qualities. And I am not saying that I think women who have them, and exhibit them, are weak. Not at all. What frustrates me is the implication in a statement like that that it is against God's will for a woman to stand up for herself, to challenge the status quo, to voice her opinions, to blaze trails.

I can hear you now. Or maybe it's my mother I hear, saying "Nichole, that is not what that quote means at all! You're just hearing what you want to hear!"

Okay, maybe. But I'm just saying... we hear talks like the above a lot in church. I don't hear a lot of talks about women cultivating leadership qualities. We don't talk about women being independent. We don't talk (as much) about women being educated, being leaders, being outspoken. Having thoughts. We hear a lot about virtue.

I have a lot more to say about this subject but I think I'll save further discourse for future posts. This one is long enough. Please leave comments! Start a discussion. Link my post and help my blog get more traffic. I would love to have a mature and respectful conversation about this.

To anyone who has been bothered by anything I've said here, if it got your hackles up and you're frustrated with me because I just don't "get it", I close with my final Ani Difranco lyric:
"Imagine you're a girl just trying to finally come clean, knowing full well they'd prefer you were dirty and smiling."

Immersion Week

The last time I blogged, I announced that I wasn't going to go to church anymore. I felt that going to church meetings on Sunday was distracting me because I kept getting worked up over tangential issues and I was losing my focus on what was important. So my plan was to eliminate that distraction by taking a break from the “organized religion” part of it, and focus on my personal relationship with God through prayer and scripture study.

I thought it sounded pretty solid, but you guys didn't agree. (I want to thank those of you who didn't agree though, because you did so with love and no judgment and that is always welcome.)
My mother especially didn't like it. (No, my mother doesn't read this blog, she can't even check her email. I made the mistake of telling her on the phone.)  Her response was something like “I’m not telling you what to do. But don’t do that.” Normally I don’t really care what my mother thinks, I’m a grown up and I do what I want. But for some reason her opinion mattered this time and I started to second guess my decision.

So long story short, instead of giving up on church altogether, I decided to keep going but just to sacrament meeting. And now I'm back to the whole block. So... yeah. Just kidding, guys! Previous announcement redacted... ha ha. (Awkward.)

But the whole point of this blog is to document the journey, and that was part of it. You've all seen this diagram, right? Well, it's accurate. So I'm not going to be embarrassed about my squiggles, okay?

The crux of the issue is that if I had already been doing "part B" of my plan, and I was still distracted by my church meetings, then my theory might have held water. But I wasn't. Not consistently, by any means. Instead of giving up on church as a way to eliminate distraction, I should have put the focus on the other part of the plan. The part where I actually live the gospel instead of just listening to people talk about it. Which is what I'm trying to do now.

But why is that so hard? I guess if it was easy there wouldn't be much of a point. Ultimately I decided that the idea of diligently praying and studying the scriptures every day for the rest of my life was just too intimidating and maybe that's what was causing my mental block. So I thought, maybe I'll just make a goal of doing it for one week. I can do anything for one week.

This quickly led to "well, if I'm only doing it for one week, maybe I'll also blah blah blah" and this is how "Immersion Week" was born.

The idea of immersion week is to, for one week (surprise!), eliminate all distractions and focus on the spiritual. I figure this could look like a lot of different things for different people. I also figure there are varying degrees of success, but whatever. I can already claim to have screwed up and changed some of my own rules and it's only Tuesday. But here is what "Immersion Week" looked like for me:

The Don'ts (aka eliminating distraction)
1. No TV
2. No Facebook (I'm 0 for 2 already!)
3. No non-church books

The Do's
1. Pray every morning and night
2. Listen to church music in the car on the way to work
3. Read one Ensign article every day
4. Watch at least one conference talk every day
5. 20 minutes of scriptures
6. One chapter of a church book (I'm currently reading The Infinite Atonement, it's fantastic)
7. Journal 10 things I'm grateful for each day
8. 20 minutes of meditation

I started Immersion Week on Sunday with a fast, and I figured while I was at it, I'd take another pretty big leap and I actually went to my own ward for the first time.
This might not seem like a big deal, but you guys, it was HUGE. Have you ever gone to a brand new ward where you didn't know a single person, completely by yourself with no moral support? I was terrified. But I did it. I walked in that building with my heart pounding in my chest, and I found a seat and I sat through sacrament. And when sacrament was over, I girded up my courage again and I asked someone where Sunday School was. Anyone who knows me and how shy I am will know what a big deal that was for me. I was tempted to say "I've done enough for today" and go home, but I didn't.

It felt pretty amazing. I mean, afterward I felt like I had accomplished something like running a marathon or climbing a mountain or something. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I did feel like I had overcome a fear and conquered something.
But in addition to that, I also really felt the Spirit confirming to me that I was doing the right thing and that I was in the right place. I may not know why... my ward is really old, y'all. The Relief Society must be super busy with all the funeral potatoes. Just saying. But that's okay. All those old ladies were really sweet and welcoming to me, and I know that my Father in Heaven has a plan for me and being in that ward is part of it for whatever reason. There were some less-old women there too, and based on some of the comments made in Relief Society, maybe I do have some idea why the Lord put me there. I'm interested in getting to know some of those ladies better.

So I count Sunday, day 1 of Immersion Week, as a resounding success. If the goal has been to feel the Spirit this week, then I can put a big check mark next to both Sunday and Monday. I have felt that outpouring of love that I first felt six months ago when I began this journey, and I'm remembering why I chose to do this. Why realigning myself with the LDS church is worth it, even when I don't fully understand (or even completely disagree with) some policies or doctrines. Even when being so open and honest about it is scary because I wonder what my non-LDS friends are going to think of me. Following the Savior is always worth it.

As alluded to above, that still doesn't mean that all those issues that caused me to leave the church originally just magically disappeared, and I do still intend to eventually address some of those on this blog. Hopefully I'll have a post ready this week. But what it does mean is that I have faith that Heavenly Father has it all figured out, and even when I don't understand the plan, I'm not worried because He does and one day I will understand. I'll see it all laid out before me and will rejoice in His perfect wisdom.

Um... an announcement?

I do have a good post in the works, if I can ever summon up the energy to finish it. One of the problems with this blog is that the whole point of it is to discuss topics that get me worked up. But then I get all worked up while I'm writing them, and I get frustrated and pissy and I don't like feeling that way, so they get hard to finish...

But anyhoo. I do plan to post some more interesting stuff soonish, but in the meantime, I wanted to make an announcement.

While I will not be changing the name of the blog, it is currently not all that accurate because I have made the decision to stop going to church. Whether or not that will be permanent I don't know yet. I'm not making any plans one way or the other. But I found that going to church was actually distracting from my true goal, which was to work on my spiritual side and develop a strong, personal relationship with God. Church was supposed to help me on that path but it did the opposite.

So I'm taking a break to focus on that, and if that journey leads me back to the church, then great. If not, I guess we'll see where it does take me.

This doesn't mean that I'm abandoning Mormonism altogether. In fact, I might start attending a weekly Book of Mormon class with my sister. There is so much good that Mormonism has to offer that can't be found in other religions; things pertaining to the atonement of Christ, the Fall of Adam and our very purpose on this earth, that I fully believe in and can't just throw away. So I plan to continue reading the scriptures, including the Book of Mormon (but probably not the D&C), and other church related books.

But over the years I have really struggled with the LDS culture and the seeming demand for complete conformity that I just can't fall in line with. I've tried. I just don't bend that way and I don't believe my Father in Heaven wants me to break. He doesn't want me to twist myself in knots trying to fit a cultural ideal. He wants me to let Him shape me into the person I'm intended to be.

So that's where I am.

I had a conversation with my sister on Sunday after I went to church with her that was pretty simple, and yet had a really big impact on me. I told her I'd decided not to go to church anymore, and she said two things in that conversation that were really, really obvious and were probably floating around in my own head somewhere, but for some reason I couldn't see them so when she said them out loud it was like a light going on.

One was that she could see I wasn't happy. My first instinct was to respond, "That's not true, I'm fine." But, oh, light bulb, she was right. Compared to what things were like when I lost my job and was unemployed for two months, things are better so I've sort of been in denial about it, but I really haven't been happy. I've actually been incredibly frustrated because I've been looking at my life and realizing that as an adult, I haven't finished anything I've started, from college to novels to craft projects. I haven't finished a single thing. And add that to the fact that I have this really easy job that demands basically nothing of me, and yet I'm still not doing anything with my time... I've been angry with myself because I thought that now that I wasn't in a job that sucked out every single bit of my physical, emotional and mental energy that I would be able to focus on achieving some of my other goals, but instead I just sit around and watch TV. Surprise. I'm not happy.

And that leads me to the second thing she said, which was that I needed to do something every day that makes me feel good about myself, that feeds my soul.

Again, it seems really obvious, but man. That was exactly what I was missing. No wonder I haven't been able to accomplish anything. Our spirits, souls, whatever, are like our bodies. They require fuel to keep going, and I have not been feeding mine. At all. I have nothing to give to anyone or anything because I'm spiritually starved.

So I haven't fully figured out what that something is that I need to do to feed my soul, but I think it's going to have a lot to do with prayer. And honestly, when I think about what makes me happy, what makes me feel good about myself, I think about singing. I feel good when I sing. It feeds me. So I guess I need to find a way to incorporate that into my life more.

The other thing I'm trying to do is change some of my negative thought patterns. Just like when we drive the same route to work every day and then you find yourself going to work when you meant to go somewhere else entirely, our brains have certain routes it likes to follow and if you're not paying attention, you'll find yourself following that route to the same destination every time. For me that destination looks a lot like "no one will ever love you" and "you don't deserve to have ___ because you're not a real person." Isn't that weird? I don't necessarily think it in exactly those words, but a lot of my thought patterns go back to me not feeling feeling like a full legitimate person. Like I'm just a background person. I'm an extra in the movie of someone else's life, and I don't deserve to have the things that real people have, like romantic partners or fulfilling jobs or social lives or whatever. By being aware of these thought patterns, I actually caught myself today denying myself basic health care because I felt like I didn't deserve it. Or maybe it was more like I don't feel like a real person and so I assume the doctor won't see me that way either, so he/she won't actually be able to help me in any meaningful way. I just assume the doctor doesn't give a crap about me so why spend all that money (i don't have insurance right now) and time (last time I went to the doctor, I sat in the waiting room for almost two hours before the doctor finally deigned to see me) on something so pointless?

Those are the thought patterns I'm trying to change, so that ends up with me repeating affirmations to myself like, "You're awesome! You're easy to love! You deserve to be happy!"
Which makes me feel like a world class dork, but I'm told it works and I really have nothing to lose.

Except my pride. Why am I putting this out on the internet again? I guess I'm hoping that by baring my soul and embarrassing myself to death, that maybe someone else will gain something. Maybe someone else who feels the way I feel will stumble across this and know they're not alone. Maybe it will be encouraging to someone. That's my hope.

So anyway. In a nutshell: Trying to fix my broken-ness and become a happy person who does things. And I'm not going to church anymore.

Hopefully I'll be able to share my post on the dreaded F word soon, so you all can bask in its wonderfulness. I'm going to try to keep my rage to a minimum so I might actually be able to finish it. But it's hard.

Til next time...

Music Friday - 8/23/2013

No stories or anecdotes or meanderings or blahbedyblahs. Just listen to these songs, they're fantasmic.
(Sorry, couldn't find them on Soundcloud.)

Well, Howdy!

Hello again! It seems like only yesterday that we parted ways. How time flies, right?

Okay, so yeah, I started a blog amongst a great deal of pomp and fanfare, and then quickly fizzled after two posts. Which makes this Post the Third, wherein your humble author attempts to explain her prolonged absence whilst begging your most gracious pardon and thanking you for your kind patience. Also it seemed weird to do another music post without writing a real one in between, so there’s that.

Alas, the long break can be explained by two things, which will I shall now endeavor to describe:

The First Thing

I take this opportunity to break my silence and share with you a terrible secret I have been keeping for far too long. Everyone, I suffer from a very serious condition. It is called “Extended Obsessive ADD”, and I just made it up. Here’s how it works:

• I discover something new (or re-discover something old)
• I get really, really into this something and spend almost all of my time feeding the obsession. (Some of you may recall “The Charmed Years”. Shudder.)This may involve compulsive googling, Pinterest-ing, Youtube-ing, or perhaps actually doing that activity. It depends, of course, on what the “something” is
• The obsession takes over my life to the point where I can’t really think about anything else. Depending on the nature of the “something” and how deeply obsessed I get, it can be fun, or it can become a burden and send me into a funk
• The obsession lasts a week or two, sometimes more (obviously the Charmed one went on for quite some time) but I will eventually get distracted by something new and shiny and move on. This is good when the obsession gets destructive, but bad when the “obsession” was a positive goal that I was making progress towards. I pretty much never finish anything I start and it’s frustrating.

For example, my current obsession is make up and nail polish. My roommate thinks I’m a little crazy because I paint my nails almost every day. I spend money I don’t have at least once a week on new makeup products. (I did finally find the perfect mascara, guys, so it hasn’t been a total waste.) This particular obsession is fairly harmless, although I need to stop buying new products because I’m broke.

Before this obsession, it was One Direction. Yes, you read that right. Yes, it means what you think it means. Two months ago I knew that One Direction existed and  that they were British, and I had heard one song that my niece played for me one time and that was the end of it. I now know way, way, WAY more than I ever wanted to so if you have something you want to know, just ask me.

If you want to know how all of this came about, I have a very detailed story with lots of YouTube and  tumblr links if you’re interested. But short version: I discovered a phenomenon called “Larry Stylinson”, which is basically a subgroup of One Direction fans who are absolutely convinced that One Direction members Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles are in a romantic relationship with each other and are forced to hide it by their evil management team. They have a LOT of “proof”, and I really wanted to believe in it. In fact, I did for a while, and there are still a few “Larry” moments that give me pause, but after a while I decided most of it was just wishful thinking and I cast it aside because Harry Styles can’t be gay, he’s my future husband. He’s of legal age (now), so just shut it. Look at him. Seriously, just look at him:

After I go at those eyebrows with a pair of tweezers, he'll be pretty much perfect.

But anyhoo. Prior to that embarrassing little diversion, of course, my obsession was this very blog – I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning in some kind of mania-induced frenzy getting it set up and writing those first two posts. But it fizzled out pretty fast, even for me. And the reason for that leads me to…

The Second Thing

(Also known as The Anti-Mormon Rabbit Hole)

I was working on my next blog post, which was to be all about how people (mostly in the various comments sections abounding on the internet, where whatever the opposite of the "salt of the earth" is gathers to, like, torture rabbits and perform blood sacrifices or whatever) think it's great fun to make fun of Christians, and how it's somehow okay to do that even though if you did that to pretty much any other social group, you would be hunted down with pitchforks. 

So I was writing that post and I decided I needed to watch Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous so I’d have some extra ammunition. And that, of course, led me to look for rebuttals, and that took me to the Holy of Holies of Internet Sinkholes. YouTube.

I can hear you guys yelling at your computer screens right now, like it's some kind of horror movie. “Girl, don’t go up the stairs!”

But I did. And that’s where I discovered this guy: 

http://lifeafter.org/exit-story-of-lee-baker/

Lee Baker is a former Mormon who left the Church after learning some stuff about early Church history and doctrine that didn’t sit well with him. I watched a video of him on YouTube, talking to a group of those people who protest at the Manti pageant. You know those people. It’s a very long video and I was drawn to it like a train crash. After watching that video, I went to Amazon.com and bought his book. I read it over the course of the next couple of days.

First of all, his book is terrible. I almost want to edit it for him, just to help him out, it is so poorly written and organized. I mean, it’s really, really bad you guys.

But as far as the actual content, I guess I wasn’t as blown away by it as I’m sure he intended me to be. He’s right, everything in his book is true. (Side note: he claims that because it’s true, it’s not anti-Mormon. I say that because the intent of his book is to draw members away from the church, that yes, it is.) And most of it is stuff that you won’t run across in any modern church manual. These are things that are being pushed aside and covered up because they’re uncomfortable and hard to explain.

But, contrary to Mr. Baker’s belief, none of it was actually new to me. Maybe to some or a lot of members, it would be shocking and they really wouldn’t have ever heard any of it, but I had come across all of those things before. Granted I had buried them deep in the recesses of my mind because they weren’t convenient to contemplate. But because I had encountered it, it didn’t shake me to quite the same level that it clearly shook him. I didn’t immediately cast away my fledgling faith, but it sure made my head spin. I think you’ll understand why I couldn’t finish my “Yay Mormons!” blog post after that.

So over the last couple of months, in between watching (and re-watching) One Direction videos on YouTube and compulsively painting my nails, I’ve been trying to piece together my thoughts and feelings. I can’t deny the experiences I’ve had and the things I’ve felt. I know God is real and that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. I believe whole heartedly in the power of prayer.

But after that, things get murky. I’ve still been going to church for the most part, and there’s a lot of good to be found, but there’s also a lot that just rubs me wrong. And I guess it all boils down to this: if the LDS church is the one true church, then I shouldn’t be sifting through all of it, cherry picking what works for me and ignoring the rest. I should either accept all of it, or leave.

But on the other hand – I’m realizing on a level that I never have before that the church is a lot like us as individuals – it is not perfect, and it is constantly growing and changing and getting better. This means that maybe it’s okay for me to not accept all of it. Maybe the parts of it that chafe at me are the parts that need to change, and maybe my divine role is to help open up a dialogue and get some wheels turning, at least in a few minds.

But where’s the line?

So yeah. I struggle.

I have a list of five specific issues (some with a list of further sub-issues) that concern me, and I will address these in more detail in further blog posts. They are:

• The treatment and role of women in the church  
• The treatment of and official policies regarding LGBT members and the LGBT community at large
• The homogenization of the membership and general disdain for non-conformity
• Faith vs. Blind Obedience – where is the line?
• Joseph Smith vs The Book of Mormon, or the inauspicious beginnings of the church vs the exclusive truths that can be found in it

I hope you're all on the edge of your seats for those exciting installments!

Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope I gave you a lot to think about. In the meantime, look forward to another music post soon.

Music Friday - 6/28/2013

I meant to post this yesterday, so just... pretend I did, kay?

Happy Friday, everyone!

Since this is my blog and I can do what I want, I've decided to borrow a feature from another blog I visit occasionally. Every Friday(ish), I plan to post a couple songs that are getting heavy rotation. Feel free to listen, comment, make suggestions, whatever.

This week, I present to you the following:

So I download a lot of indie rock sample playlists and that's how I discover some of the music that I like. Last year, on one of those playlists, I discovered a song called "Wichita Lineman" by a band called The Feeling and fell in love with it. I was like, "Wow, this song sounds so 70's!"

Well, I later found out that's because it is from the 70's (er, 60's). Embarrassing! The track I had downloaded was actually a cover of a Glen Campbell song from 1968. Turns out even I don't know everything.

But then this year, I discovered this song! This one also sounds very 70's, but this time I'm pretty sure it's new. If I'm wrong I'll eat my hat.

Someone on Youtube (do as I say, not as I do, and never read comments on Youtube) said this about it, which is dead on: "this song feels like the eagles, fleetwood mac and steely dan all in one!!"



I don't have a fun, funny or interesting story for this one, it's just awesome. Straight up pop and catchy as hell. Enjoy bouncing about to this one! Enjoy your weekend, y'all.

Surprise, it's a gay post!

But there’s kind of a twist, so if you're rolling your eyes at me already, hang in there.

So somehow I totally missed this. I must have been living under a rock. But I bet most of you missed it too, so there.

Just a little over a year ago, a man named Josh Weed came out as gay on his blog. Not so exciting on its own, but Josh happens to be a Mormon man, married with three children. Again, not particularly groundbreaking if he had announced he was tired of living a lie and he was getting a divorce. But no. Turns out Josh was not living a lie – his wife knew he was gay from the time they were teenagers, and they both voluntarily entered into the marriage knowing he was gay and that it wasn't going to change. They’ve now been married for 11 years and claim to be very happy, with a robust sex life, despite the fact that Josh states he feels no sexual attraction to women. 

Whaaaaat…..?

Go read it for yourself. It’s kind of fascinating. And then you’ll inevitably get sucked into reading the comments, even though they’re mostly very positive and drama free. Just eventually come back here so you can read my thoughts on both Josh’s announcement, and the reaction he received.

Josh's coming out post

Welcome back!

So if you read through the comments section of that post, you probably noticed a person with the username "Alder" who was the Voice of Reason. I don't know this Alder person or even whether this person is male or female, but I kind of want to marry him/her and have his/her babies.

So here's what I think about this.

If Josh and Lolly are happy, then more power to them. I have no reason not to take them at their word. If their marriage works for them, then that's great.

However, I do think it's a little dangerous to have their story out there, because for those of us who came around to loving and supporting and enthusiastically embracing the gay community early in our lives, it's just an interesting anecdote. But for people who are just now starting to accept that homosexuality is a thing and it might be time to try to understand it a little (which, among Mormons and Christians in general is far more common than the former), this story suddenly becomes the "See? You have a choice!" example and completely smothers any further dialogue.

I don't find any evidence that Josh is advocating his lifestyle choice, but it seems inevitable that a swarm of  other well-meaning but ignorant people will, and that can lead to a lot of heartache. So let me set the story straight (ha ha!): Mixed orientation marriage might be possible. It sure seems to be working for Josh. But Josh and Lolly are the exception,  not the rule. For most people, this path will lead to a lot of ruined marriages, devastated families and long term psychological damage. For every one story of a successful mixed orientation marriage (and so far I've only found the one), there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of stories of gay Christians who took their own lives because despite their extraordinary efforts at obeying the commandments and doing what their leaders or families suggested, it didn't work. They then felt like God didn't love them, that they had failed, that there was something wrong with them, and there was only one way out. It's truly, truly heartbreaking.

So if you are a devout Christian and have a loved one who tells you they're gay, please, please, please don't pressure them into a mixed orientation marriage. Our job is to love and accept, not to pick anyone else's path for them. By all means, point them to Josh's blog because I'm all about everyone having as much information as possible when making their decisions, but please make it clear that just because Josh and Lolly seem happy, the majority of people entering into that type of situation will not be. For most people, choosing this path will only compound their feelings of guilt and failure when it doesn't work. That's not going to help anyone.

And while, again, I must take them at their word, I do have a hard time believing that their sex life is really that fulfilling. I think that Lolly deserves to be with someone that finds her truly sexually attractive, and I also think that if Josh had the chance to have sex with a man, he might sing a different tune about how much he enjoys sex with his wife. But what do I know? That's just my opinion; I'm not in their marriage and it's really none of my business.

And that brings me to what really got me all worked up about this whole thing, and that is the reception that Josh's announcement got.

VH1 recently featured Josh and Lolly on an episode of their series "I'm Married to A...". Looks like you can watch the full episode on hulu. I haven't yet, but I did watch this clip on the Huffington Post, that shows Josh and Lolly having dinner with a gay couple and how totally douchey the gay couple was to them. I shouldn't be surprised by their reaction but I am. Surprised and just very very disappointed. (But Lolly, man. I could be friends with that girl.) K, go watch the clip and come back.

Alright, did you read the comments? Gah! Comments sections never lead to anything good, but I'm going to respond to some of them a little bit here.

This is probably the comment that got me the most inflamed:        

"The fact that they're mormons makes me kind of enjoy watching the hurt on their faces when they say "you're gay but you're not one of us." But ultimately... they're right. He's gay but he isn't one of us and never will be. Those of us who live on our own terms are not the same as people who follow the rules of some imaginary magic man in the sky."

Is there any part of this sentence that is not just unbelievably offensive? Let’s pick it apart, shall we?

"The fact that they're mormons makes me kind of enjoy watching the hurt on their faces” – uh, wow. Let’s replace the word “Mormons” in that sentence with any other group of people. Like, Jews for example. Mexicans, maybe? How about Muslims? How in any way is that an acceptable statement to make? I get it, Mormons have been seen as being primary aggressors against the gay community for a long time. It's become personal. I understand there's a lot of anger. I've felt it too, guys. For rizzle. But you simply cannot advocate inclusion for all, which is something the gay community does and which I wholly support, and then turn around and make exclusionary comments like that about someone else. That's serious hypocrisy.

Which leads me to the next hugely hypocritical remark in this comment: "Those of us who live on our own terms" - I doubt the poster has any idea of the rich irony here. Josh is living on his own terms. He's just not living on yours. Another commenter helped to restore my faith in humanity by saying: "I am also gay and lived in the closet for many years, and sadly this is the type of "acceptance" a lot of gays promote, we accept you if you do things the way we believe them to be correct. For a group clamoring for others to accept us, we make it very difficult for others to feel included." Thank you, internet dude, for saying it so I didn't have to. There's enough ranting in this post already.

And the final piece: "some imaginary magic man in the sky". I will eventually devote a whole post to this, but here, just a plea to the whole internet: mocking the beliefs of others is not a good way to get them to hear your point of view. Please stop.

I also saw many comments expressing displeasure that Josh seemed to be asking for acceptance from others but that he didn't even accept himself.

I think he does accept himself. He's just choosing to live in a different way. If he didn't accept himself, he would never have admitted his sexuality to anyone, especially not his wife. He never would have come out to the whole world. Josh accepts himself. He doesn't say that he tried not to be gay. He doesn't express any self-loathing (another word all over that comment section), he doesn't muddy the waters with words like bisexual. It's only other people that have shoved that label on him. He doesn't pretend to be anything but what he is - a gay man. He simply chooses not to engage in sexual relations with men. Whether you or I can fully buy into the validity of that choice is completely irrelevant. 

Ultimately my frustration boils down to the refusal of people to look outside themselves and accept others who are unlike themselves. Of all the people in the world, the gay community should understand the concept that we don't need to be the same as someone, or even agree with their choices, in order to accept them. That is the whole message, right? So when I see the gay community rejecting one of its own because he hasn't chosen to follow the same path the rest of them did, I get really really angry and I start blogs.

From a Mormon perspective, our call is to love and serve our brothers and sisters. Today in Sunday School, my brother in law Adam said something that struck me. He said, how can we serve someone if we don't  understand them? I would encourage everyone to just take a deep breath every once in awhile, step outside yourself and try to see things from someone else's point of view. It's hard, especially since people's points of view are shaped by their experience and so if you haven't had their experiences, you don't have the frame of reference to ever truly understand. But you can try, and you can get closer. That's what I would ask of you.

Blog Post the First

I’m starting a blog, yo!

I’ve toyed with the idea of blogging before. I have a lot of Opinions, guys. Capital O intended. And the comments section on the Huffington Post isn’t cutting it. I need a space where I can say what I’m thinking, unencumbered by character limits and without the inborn bias and prejudice found on the comment sections of most news sites, etc. But I’ve always fizzled in the past, before even starting. I really hope I won’t be one of those people who only blogs 3 times a year, because I think if people will actually read it and even engage, that it could lead to some very interesting as well as important dialogue. But I have a tendency to flake out. A lot. Or, you know, maybe I’ll be totally awesome but no one will read it. So I guess we’ll see what happens!

My blog, as is the case for most people, is going to be mainly whatever I’m thinking of at the moment, which could really be anything, but the primary focus will be me trying to reconcile two seemingly incompatible parts of myself  – my Mormon faith, and my liberal political views.

So to start out with, here’s a little bit about me:

My name is Nichole, I am 31 years old, a single female living in Centerville, UT. I grew up in northwest Montana, and was born into the LDS church. In fact, I recently did a little genealogical research and can trace all four of my family lines back to the very beginning of the church. I’m as “ethnically Mormon” as it is possible to be. My great great grandfather on my father’s side was Joseph Bates Noble, who has the dubious honor of being the priesthood authority who performed the very first plural marriage ceremony, when Joseph Smith took his first second wife. (Yeah, I know.)

My point is, I was raised Mormon. Like really, really Mormon. Although I wasn’t raised Utah Mormon, thank heavens.

I was a very happy Mormon. My testimony was strong, and I loved my ward. Growing up in a small town like that, your ward really is your family. Those were (and are) people who watched me grow up, people I’ve known my whole life. It was, on the whole, a very positive experience.

When I graduated, I moved to Provo, Utah and attended BYU. I was active in my student ward, as were my roommates and our friends, and that was also a very positive experience. I really enjoyed BYU, especially my religion classes. One in particular left an impression, a really awesome class focusing on the second half of the New Testament. Man I wish I could remember that professor’s name.

But around the age of 21, I stopped going to church regularly. Mainly it had to do with my job, I started having to work a lot more Sundays, and also I had to move out of my apartment complex and going to a new ward with roommates I didn’t know was less than motivating, especially since I couldn’t go every week.

I then moved from Provo to Farmington, then to Salt Lake, and then back to Farmington. My experience with the various wards I attended during that time grew increasingly negative, until I finally decided I couldn’t do it anymore. That was 2007. I was 25. Up to that point I had still been going to church sporadically (though not often), but after that I stopped entirely and was completely inactive in the church up until a couple of months ago.

That was when I had a huge change in my life. I was going through a big event that was causing me every negative emotion in the book – fear, doubt, hopelessness, despair. I have struggled with depression all my life, and this event seemed like the last straw to me. I just couldn’t handle feeling that way anymore, so I had two choices. I initially made the wrong one, but due to what I believe to be the intercession of my Heavenly Father, I was given a second chance to make a better decision. And so with nowhere left to turn, I found myself on my knees.

I do not have words to explain the feelings of peace and love that came over me. My Heavenly Father reached out to me immediately. Throughout all my years away from the church, I had never stopped believing in God, but having knowingly turned away from His church, I felt that it would be hypocritical of me to pray or attempt to have a relationship with Him. It was very hard for me to turn to Him; I felt that I would not be heard. Why would He listen to me, or answer me, when I had been so willingly obstinate?

So to feel that immediate outpouring of love was something very special. And all of a sudden, I felt something that just moments before had seemed impossible – hope. The world was suddenly full of possibility again. Through consistent prayer, over the next month I was able to make incredible changes in my life that I know I could not have done on my own. I know because I had been trying for years.

I started going to church again, and have been reading the scriptures and other doctrinal books. (I’ve linked to some amazing ones in the sidebar of this blog.) I was surprised by how quickly my testimony started to come back to me. I am in awe of the love of Christ and so thankful for the gospel in my life.

But the bottom line is, there are reasons that I did not want to go back to church, and those reasons didn’t just go away. I won't get into to detail about those reasons here, since they'll all probably get their own post at some point, if not several. But anyway, my faith tells me that this is where my Heavenly Father wants me to be, so I have to figure out a way to make it all gel.

One day, early in this new journey, I sat alone in relief society feeling like a square peg. It wasn’t that anyone had made me feel unwelcome. But I didn’t feel like I belonged. Like the lesson didn't really pertain to me. Being an “older” single woman with no children and liberal beliefs, little to no interest in canning, food storage or vinyl lettering, and (ideally) a full time job makes me Different. As I was sitting there stewing in all that dissonance, I felt like the Lord was speaking to me, telling me that it was okay that I was different – in fact, it was good. That I was the person that I was meant to be, and that I didn’t have to be anyone else in order to belong. Not only that, but that because I am different, I have something special and important to contribute. It was a powerful feeling for me.

So here’s one way for me to do that. If I can help anyone look at a topic in a way they haven’t thought of before, then I will count myself as successful. I believe that being a Mormon liberal allows me to walk a mile in the shoes of both sides of many debates, in a way that most people can’t. In most polarizing political issues, it can become very difficult to understand why the opposing side thinks the way they do – our position is so obvious to us, why is it not obvious to them? It’s like we’re speaking completely different languages.

I have very strong opinions about many issues and fall into that trap easily, but I think that my background allows me to step back, if I choose, and have an understanding of the opposing side that most other people don’t have. Maybe that gives me the ability to translate for some of the more heated debates? Maybe help us understand each other a little better? That’s my hope for this blog. Oh, and the ranting. Never underestimate the healing power of a good  rant.