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.