That said, I guess it's well enough to say that I'm entirely inactive to the Church, and in fact nearly deactivated. I've given quite a bit of thought over the past two years to removing my name from the records of the Church, and nearly decided to go that route. I feel no desire to be part of the LDS Church in anything more than name, so why not remove the name? It's mostly for my family, I admit. I don't want to hurt them that way, to remove what they see as the only viable way we can be together for eternity. I guess I hold out hope, too, that even in a Church I now view as fallen and out of touch with its membership and the world at large--even apostate to itself and unled by prophetic means--the core doctrines of eternal progression and family ties are actually true and that by keeping my foot in the door, maybe I can be set up with a ministering angel gig or something. I better be an angel of death, justice, or something else kickass.
Right, so, I'm not married. I'm 33, well on my way to 34, and we all know that a spinster over 30 is functionally little more than free labor/babysitting and an object of pity in the Church of The Family of Latter Day Gender Roles. Yes, I am bitter. I am bitter than my community has harped so long and hard on its vision of The Family™--One man, one woman, sealed at a young age in the temple so they can have a scad of babies who will never be anything but straight, temple worthy, and mission serving (unless the wife dies, then the man can have a second eternal wife, but not vice versa!)--that it shoves out and even kills those who don't fit the mold. And I don't fit the mold. I'm fat, I'm feminist, I'm single, I'm a belly dancer, I can swear like a sailor, I love dirty jokes, I have one tattoo and want more and piercings, I don't want more than one child, I love being naked and doing rituals and dancing in the moonlight and studying herbs and goddesses and I just have a really hard time imagining myself cramming into the mold ever again or wanted a man who fits in it. I hate the mold. I'm NOT the mold, I don't fit it, and I refuse to be converted to it. Of all the things I could want out of the Church, it's to be converted again and again to the radical, socialist-ish, loving, healing, just and merciful ways of Jesus the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. If I'm to be a sheep of the Good Shepherd, I will do so with orange paisley wool. He doesn't care. Who does care is a committee of fifteen retired, married, white men in Utah and their subordinates. Who does care is a congregation of local ward and stake members.
I hear too much about The Family at church, a Family I don't possess except as a child within one and thus I feel like Less. I hear too much about patriotism for the United States, and focus on the laws and actions of men bringing on the end times. I hear too much about how The Gays are going to ruin society. (They haven't managed to tear it down in the 5,000 or so years since Leviticus was written, but straight folk have done a bang up job of it multiple times!) I don't hear enough about compassion, mercy, love, kindness, charity. I don't hear enough about making sure the relationships I'm in are healthy, or how to healthily extract myself from ones that can't be transformed or whose seasons have simply passed. I hear too much about politics, with the overwhelming majority not being views with which I sympathize at all, and I just don't have the energy anymore to fight for a place at a table where I don't feel welcome.
Some would say that all are invited to the feast. That is true. Jesus extends an open invitation to all who wish to sit and partake. However, if you think that all are welcomed to sit beside any other feasters, you have clearly never been to a high school cafeteria. Each table has a code of whom is welcome to sit there, whom the community feels is safe. I feel like I started out sitting in the middle of the Mormon table. I was safe, ensconced, welcome, happy. It all felt familiar, I was with my friends, my teachers looked at me with approval, etc. As I went back for another plate year after year, though, I found myself slowly migrating toward the end of the table. I was still among friends and compatriots, but the faces started changing, the tone of conversation changed, and I learned things about the people who had sat here before us, things that were both good and bad. But these people were still at the table, more or less. Time and again, plate after plate, I kept migrating out to the more sparsely seated fringes. Sometimes it was something one of the core people said or did. Sometimes it was new information. Sometimes it was taking a jaunt to another table for a plate and getting the side-eye when I returned. Sometimes it was just that I didn't feel like fighting for a closer spot. The content of my plate changed, too, to more complex foods and the deconstruction of many of the simple foods I'd grown up on. It all contributed to drift, and I find myself now barely sitting at the table at all. I often eat while standing, leaning a hip against the table. Occasionally I chat with those still sitting. Sometimes I talk to people at other tables, or sit with them.
Metaphor aside, I still consider myself mostly Mormon. I guess I'm a Jack Mormon now. I don't go to meetings or wear my garments or pay tithes and offerings to the Church, and I'm realistic about the Church's faults and failings without (usually) being antagonistic. However, I don't villainize my fellow Saints because I know them. I know them to be generally good people doing what they believe is right, even if the ways they do it or see it feel wrong, dishonest, or abusive to me. I was right there with them five or more years ago. I gave a prayer of thanks with one breath when Elder Packard passed, and a prayer for for comfort to those who love him with the next. Sometimes I wish I had no problems with the Church so I could get some financial help from my Bishop, but faking it for money is against my personal creed.
My Dad called last night to say he and my sister and BIL were going to the temple today to do sealings for his grandparents, parents, and himself to his parents. I was genuinely happy for them because as problematic as I find the temple these days, I still hope that I can be with my family forever. He said they'd miss me since I couldn't be there, seeing as I don't have a recommend, and he started asking questions like if I'd been to my new ward, if the missionaries had contacted me (apparently he took it on himself to send my new address to my old ward to transfer my records... thanks, weird Mormon boundary issues...) and said he wished he was here to help get me back in. I asked him what he thought he could do, and he said he could at least take me to church, and... I had to say I wasn't interested. That conversation was a long time coming... He wants to love me back into activity, but he doesn't really understand that that's not the problem.
It's not the love of the people who love me that's lacking. It's that a lot of the story no longer makes sense to me. It's that I feel like the Qof12 and the First Presidency are no more inspired than any other group of 15 smart men of prayer, and I can't remember the last truly prophetic thing to come out of a Prophet in my lifetime. It's that the Church functionally worships the Family more than Jesus, even going as far as having Apostles declare that marriage is the purpose for the Plan of Salvation.
NOPE!
I'm looking at you, Russel M. Nelson.
It's that women just got added to ruling councils in the Church two seconds ago and I felt no joy or sense of progress. It's the consistent resistance to effecting real change in listening to the concerns of women and treating them as an equal part of the Church. It's the refusal to seek for God the Mother. It's the falling back on ancient scripture to justify not continuing revelation with regards to women and the Priesthood in spite of modern historical precedent that Joseph Smith intended women to participate in it. It's the legitimizing of ancient scriptures that prescribe violence to justify homosexuality as a sin. (No one but Packerites talks about that in the LDS Church, but those scriptures that say "this is wrong" also say "and therefore kill them." Talk about cherry-picking! But thank Gods for cherry-picking. Then again, the epidemic of LGBT LDS youth who are committing suicide... It's kind of still happening, and the Church is doing nothing--or not enough--to stop it. Our own are dying because we're making them miserable, and... nothing. /endrant) It's Correlation and the dehydrating effect is has had on the holy life of the Church and its members. It's the GIANT MALL in SLC paid for by the Church, regardless of where the money came from. And speaking of money, it's the lack of transparency in how tithes and offerings are used, the demand of trust for the corporation of the Church, the pressure on low-income individuals to still give their two mites, when the Romneys of the world give less than a 10% tithe (and there's the offerings on top of that?), and the change to the tithing slip that basically says "you can tell us where you want your offerings to be used, but we're not going to be held to that." It's the fact that missionary culture is structured to breed codependence, obedience, and abuse. It's that I spent my entire Young Women's experience dreaming of my future/hypothetical husband's desirable traits and weeding out non-virgins from the pool of potentials and never spending more than two seconds thinking about healthy communication or relationship dynamics or how to recognize red flags. It's that our great scriptural hero, Nephi, was kind of a white-washing jerk that I'm pretty sure most people would find unbearable and a narrator of dubious reliability, and Laman and Lemuel's reactions were not that extraordinary in context! It's that part of the BoM is interpreted to mean that fornication is next to murder and alllllllllllll the spiritual and emotional problems that causes. It's the problematic nature of LDS polygamy and marriage and the temple in general as outlined in the Doctrine & Covenants that disenfranchises women and makes men their intermediaries with God instead of Jesus. It's that the things that are actually wrong within the world of the Church is so much more insidious than the supposed Satan worship and blood sacrifice lies that some Antis throw at us.
I believe in Jesus, I believe in God, I believe in Goddess, I believe in the Spirit, I believe in a lot of the Gospel doctrine I've been taught, and I still hope for a lot of what I even question. Mormonism is still my primary spiritual context, even when I really have a deep affection for bits of various Pagan traditions. I just... can't... subject myself to all of this other crap. It's not good for me. It hurts me rather than helps me grow. And that really sucks. I wish it wasn't that way. I don't want it to be that way, but I have to be realistic about myself and where I am and who I am and how I feel, instead of performing a spiritual lie for the comfort of my loved ones. That serves no one, least of all me, and if there's one thing that I've been slowly but surely learning the value of the past few years, it's to demand that the relationship I have with my beliefs is mutually beneficial. They must serve me as much as I serve them. Isn't that the essence of covenant? I served mainstream LDS doctrines for three decades, and I'm waiting for them to return the favor. Until then, I'm stepping out of Eden into the wider, brighter, "dark and dreary world."
