I have two things to talk about: My Mom, and men.
Mom
The way I miss her isn't the way I thought I'd miss her. I went to visit her grave tonight for the first time since her memorial............. has it only been three weeks? Damn. It feels... longer. Much longer. And that's the thing. It's like I've entered a new life since her death. Rather than living a singular life in which there is now this gaping, unfilled hole left left behind in the mortal absence of my mother, another lifetime began in which she simply isn't physically present.
It's a little like moving away from home. The memories of home are still with you when you move away, you still love it, it's still the root of everything you do and everything you are and ever will be; but you are in another place now, and in effect, another time. You have another purpose, and while you will always and forever love your home, this new space you're in is the right space to be. There's a feeling of being homesick, of thinking back on the life that was, but being present in the life that is.
I think that's why I haven't been feeling as devastated as I had anticipated. As a family, we released Mom, because it was the right thing to do and the right time for her to go. We told her it was okay. There's no sense of unfinished business: nothing left unsaid, nothing left undone, no injustice in her passing. She completed her purpose on this Earth, and it was okay.
Granted, I am loudly sobbing and crying my eyes out as I'm typing this, but I'm also laughing at myself a little because I am typing while I'm wailing loud enough to make me glad my nearest neighbors are a few hundred yards away. It's just release. I'm super practical when it comes to letting it out, and even though I likely sound to the world like I'm an emotional mess, it's mostly physical. Inside, I'm pretty peaceful. And now I'm done crying. It just needed to get out.
(Tangent: Mom's buried next to a guy that was in my class in high school who died in a car accident between our Junior and Senior years. Always wear your seat belts. Just saying.)
Men
A large part of my reason for being a feminist is a strong belief and hope for equality. When I find this running up against the strong cultural dogma of male superiority in Mormonism (however benevolent its stewardship may supposed to be) it puts me in some dismay about the eternal order of things as we're presented with them.
I have a really big, freaking problem thinking that two equally worthy, covenant-making-and-keeping people, bound together for eternity would be bound to being anything but equivalent to each other for eternity. If it's not so, I have to look forward to eternity as Second in Command, instead of Co-Captain. Eternity. Forever. Without end. Never, ever, ever ending second citizenship.
How is that just? How is that good? How can that be acceptable and justifiable based upon the relative femininity or masculinity of an individual if all are alike unto God and God is no respecter of persons? How can being (a beloved and cherished) Second for the rest of all out-of-time be okay? It cannot. It cannot be okay. A man wouldn't stand for that being his lot, yet it's an implied expectation from the women. Such a concept deeply, deeply disturbs me, to think that I could bust my butt through this super critical mortal probation we're all in, perhaps even out-righteous my Hypothetical Husband, and still end up as the Silent Partner, the Heavenly Mother that never talks to Her children and whom Her children are discouraged from addressing. I find that idea incredibly unappealing, and it puts me in a position to wonder whether the effort is worthwhile if I have no guarantee of autonomy and personal worth outside the man I'm married to, forever. This a big scary question for a woman who has been pretty dang invested in aiming for goddesshood her entire life. So I have to think that we really just don't have the whole picture yet, that there's more, that the equality of the sexes will be seen as a central point of eternal doctrine at some time in the future, may Heaven make it soon.
But what if... what if I'm wrong. What if God moves in (to me) truly mind-boggling and seemingly hypocritical, unjust, mysterious ways and eternity is sexist? What if being more feminine than masculine lands you a spot just behind the shoulder of your more masculine eternal companion, to be protected and shielded and effectively silenced because you're somehow more sacred than anything else? It's an idea that sickens me to my stomach, and the only way I can conceive of it being a tolerable system is if I could find a man who would not treat me as anything but an equal. Where any "head"ship would be in token only, and irrelevant in practice. If he must have the title, he can have the title, but that's all I could tolerate. If I had to. If that's really the eternal order of things.
I don't think it is, though. It just doesn't make sense.
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
I've been thinking a lot about gays
(Great title, right? Right. Hang with me.)
Granted there has been more direct reason in the past three or so years, and really one could go back to circa 1995, but for me, it has been somewhere in my mind for about 11 or 12 years. That's when the campaign for Prop 14 started, which was the original law passed by California voters in 2000 defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Who remembers that? It kinda sorta hit the back burner from my POV until... what was it, 2004? 2006? When Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco basically said to the majority of the state's voters, "Screw all y'all, I'm authorizing same-sex marriages in this city!" (And the now-famous line "It's gonna happen, whether you like it or not!" Thanks Mr. Mayor. Voters FTW. Oh wait.) Then there was bickering and repeals and appeals and blahblahblah--Prop 8. So for the second time in a decade, we were asked to get involved. And I did.
And it sucked.
California is a pretty blue state, and I can be a very shy person, and the 50+% of voting residents as of 2000 and 2008 still opposed gay marriage do not live in my calling area. There's areas of the state that are fairly red, or at least magenta. The county I live in is maybe half a shade less blue than San Francisco itself. I carried a lingering uncertainty for my safety having a yellow Prop 8 sticker on my bumper... right next to the other yellow one that said, "Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else." (I got into a brief discussion once about the apparent incongruency between the two. I'm still surprised it was only once and that it was brief, because believe me, the difficulty of holding both of those as true did not escape me.) The night of the election, all the bumper stickers in my family came off for that reason. I'm sure many people elsewhere in the state with blue stickers did the same thing for the same reason, and really it's just a tiny taste of the fear LGBT people live with around the world.
Anyway, I did most of the stuff I was asked to do. I made phone calls. (I would have rather eaten escargot. I hate phones and I hate potential confrontation.) I stood on street corners with signs. I may or may not have contributed money; I can't remember. I got a balloon at a street fair in my grandparents' hometown, and walked around with that for a while that night. I had conversations with a few friends that I didn't especially want to have, but I did it out of a feeling of obligation and duty. That didn't mean I was especially happy about it.
The subject was inescapable one way or another. Every.one.was.talking.about.it. It was on the news, on the street, in businesses, at church, in the grocery store, in my college classes. Posters and bumper stickers and banners and mediamediamedia. (This was also the year I got royally fed up with both major political parties--I was raised Republican--and registered as an Independent. I was sick and overwhelmed by the political madness of that year.) And at last, I voted the way I felt I should, while secretly envying my newly baptized friend who told me straight-up she was voting no.
While all of this was going on, my family was estranged from my gay brother and his partner. There had been a series of incidents over the years (actually very few of them directly to do with his orientation) and things just got awkward and silent. Occasionally gifts would go one way or the other but we just didn't really communicate. I wanted to be his friend on Facebook but felt like that was disloyal to my Dad, who was the one particularly mad at him. We saw them at a family wedding and maybe a reunion, but... yeah. He was still my brother, and he was still gay, and nothing was going to change that. I wanted to know him, and his partner. It took two and a half years after the '08 elections for that to happen. Now we're all friends on Facebook and Words With Friends and we comment on statuses and photos and it's a grand ol' time! The family feels whole without this weird gap because they'e not there.
Fast forward to this summer or even the whole past year. We got back in touch with my brother and his partner as mentioned. I became friends with a lovely lesbian couple who are my business neighbors. (I'd link to their store--which is fantastic--but it would destroy what anonymity I maintain.) I attended their wedding reception last month. And beginning to learn about Carol Lynn Pearson and her life story with her gay ex-husand. And the Daughters of Mormonism episodes immediately after mine. And... I don't know, it has just been on my mind. The publicized accounts of people committing suicide because of bullying, the ongoing hullabaloo of post-Prop 8, my friends; all of these things just kept it coming back up, and honestly, I'm not sure exactly where all of my opinions and beliefs sit anymore. However, I do know where a few sit.
No one should be bullied for being LGBT, or any other reason. No one should end up feeling like death is the only way out of their suffering. I've rarely seen two people more in love than my neighbors. I don't think everyone who identifies as LGBT was born that way... but prob-ssibly a lot--maybe most!--were. I don't know why. I don't know how that fits into my view of the purpose of life and eternal progression. I do believe people when they say that they love a person of the same sex, and that they belong together. (At least as much as I'd believe a heterosexual couple. Being one or the other certainly doesn't guarantee good relationship skills or a good match.) I believe people when they do say they've gotten a feeling from God that they are just the way that they're supposed to be. I have no reason or right to doubt another person's spiritual experiences, even when they don't mesh with my own.
I believe that God is love, and that love is a fruit of the Spirit and when you feel love (or peace, kindness, long-suffering, etc.) that's a sign of the Spirit's presence. (Once I put that idea together in that manner--thanks to a Sunday School lesson no less--it blew a gigantic hole in my ideas about homosexual relationships.) I believe everyone deserves at least a chance at love and happiness in life, even if some of us never find it. I believe every soul has great intrinsic value, no matter what shape it's in. I believe everyone should be treated with fairness, kindness, and respect. I believe we all have our sins and our struggles and things that other people don't like about us: some of them we can change in this life, some of them we can't. I don't believe being homosexual in and of itself is a sin; I don't know where I think it goes from there, especially in context of things I've already said about love and happiness.
I wish no one would ever feel like they could not come unto Christ, partake of the Atonement and the blessings and ordinances of the Gospel, be washed clean, and believe and worship in full fellowship with all the saints because of their sexual orientation. I wish something--whatever it is--would come to be so that no one would ever have to leave again in order to live with integrity about who they are and whom they love. I've personally known three people (maybe four but I lost contact with him years ago) in my life who have left the LDS church at least in part because they are gay. They've all gone on to continue being God-loving, spiritual, religious people... just not in the Church. I wish it wouldn't be that way. I hope someday it won't be.
I think there must be enough room in all eternity for our LGBT brothers and sisters. I hope someday we'll find it.
Granted there has been more direct reason in the past three or so years, and really one could go back to circa 1995, but for me, it has been somewhere in my mind for about 11 or 12 years. That's when the campaign for Prop 14 started, which was the original law passed by California voters in 2000 defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Who remembers that? It kinda sorta hit the back burner from my POV until... what was it, 2004? 2006? When Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco basically said to the majority of the state's voters, "Screw all y'all, I'm authorizing same-sex marriages in this city!" (And the now-famous line "It's gonna happen, whether you like it or not!" Thanks Mr. Mayor. Voters FTW. Oh wait.) Then there was bickering and repeals and appeals and blahblahblah--Prop 8. So for the second time in a decade, we were asked to get involved. And I did.
And it sucked.
California is a pretty blue state, and I can be a very shy person, and the 50+% of voting residents as of 2000 and 2008 still opposed gay marriage do not live in my calling area. There's areas of the state that are fairly red, or at least magenta. The county I live in is maybe half a shade less blue than San Francisco itself. I carried a lingering uncertainty for my safety having a yellow Prop 8 sticker on my bumper... right next to the other yellow one that said, "Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else." (I got into a brief discussion once about the apparent incongruency between the two. I'm still surprised it was only once and that it was brief, because believe me, the difficulty of holding both of those as true did not escape me.) The night of the election, all the bumper stickers in my family came off for that reason. I'm sure many people elsewhere in the state with blue stickers did the same thing for the same reason, and really it's just a tiny taste of the fear LGBT people live with around the world.
Anyway, I did most of the stuff I was asked to do. I made phone calls. (I would have rather eaten escargot. I hate phones and I hate potential confrontation.) I stood on street corners with signs. I may or may not have contributed money; I can't remember. I got a balloon at a street fair in my grandparents' hometown, and walked around with that for a while that night. I had conversations with a few friends that I didn't especially want to have, but I did it out of a feeling of obligation and duty. That didn't mean I was especially happy about it.
The subject was inescapable one way or another. Every.one.was.talking.about.it. It was on the news, on the street, in businesses, at church, in the grocery store, in my college classes. Posters and bumper stickers and banners and mediamediamedia. (This was also the year I got royally fed up with both major political parties--I was raised Republican--and registered as an Independent. I was sick and overwhelmed by the political madness of that year.) And at last, I voted the way I felt I should, while secretly envying my newly baptized friend who told me straight-up she was voting no.
While all of this was going on, my family was estranged from my gay brother and his partner. There had been a series of incidents over the years (actually very few of them directly to do with his orientation) and things just got awkward and silent. Occasionally gifts would go one way or the other but we just didn't really communicate. I wanted to be his friend on Facebook but felt like that was disloyal to my Dad, who was the one particularly mad at him. We saw them at a family wedding and maybe a reunion, but... yeah. He was still my brother, and he was still gay, and nothing was going to change that. I wanted to know him, and his partner. It took two and a half years after the '08 elections for that to happen. Now we're all friends on Facebook and Words With Friends and we comment on statuses and photos and it's a grand ol' time! The family feels whole without this weird gap because they'e not there.
Fast forward to this summer or even the whole past year. We got back in touch with my brother and his partner as mentioned. I became friends with a lovely lesbian couple who are my business neighbors. (I'd link to their store--which is fantastic--but it would destroy what anonymity I maintain.) I attended their wedding reception last month. And beginning to learn about Carol Lynn Pearson and her life story with her gay ex-husand. And the Daughters of Mormonism episodes immediately after mine. And... I don't know, it has just been on my mind. The publicized accounts of people committing suicide because of bullying, the ongoing hullabaloo of post-Prop 8, my friends; all of these things just kept it coming back up, and honestly, I'm not sure exactly where all of my opinions and beliefs sit anymore. However, I do know where a few sit.
No one should be bullied for being LGBT, or any other reason. No one should end up feeling like death is the only way out of their suffering. I've rarely seen two people more in love than my neighbors. I don't think everyone who identifies as LGBT was born that way... but prob-ssibly a lot--maybe most!--were. I don't know why. I don't know how that fits into my view of the purpose of life and eternal progression. I do believe people when they say that they love a person of the same sex, and that they belong together. (At least as much as I'd believe a heterosexual couple. Being one or the other certainly doesn't guarantee good relationship skills or a good match.) I believe people when they do say they've gotten a feeling from God that they are just the way that they're supposed to be. I have no reason or right to doubt another person's spiritual experiences, even when they don't mesh with my own.
I believe that God is love, and that love is a fruit of the Spirit and when you feel love (or peace, kindness, long-suffering, etc.) that's a sign of the Spirit's presence. (Once I put that idea together in that manner--thanks to a Sunday School lesson no less--it blew a gigantic hole in my ideas about homosexual relationships.) I believe everyone deserves at least a chance at love and happiness in life, even if some of us never find it. I believe every soul has great intrinsic value, no matter what shape it's in. I believe everyone should be treated with fairness, kindness, and respect. I believe we all have our sins and our struggles and things that other people don't like about us: some of them we can change in this life, some of them we can't. I don't believe being homosexual in and of itself is a sin; I don't know where I think it goes from there, especially in context of things I've already said about love and happiness.
I wish no one would ever feel like they could not come unto Christ, partake of the Atonement and the blessings and ordinances of the Gospel, be washed clean, and believe and worship in full fellowship with all the saints because of their sexual orientation. I wish something--whatever it is--would come to be so that no one would ever have to leave again in order to live with integrity about who they are and whom they love. I've personally known three people (maybe four but I lost contact with him years ago) in my life who have left the LDS church at least in part because they are gay. They've all gone on to continue being God-loving, spiritual, religious people... just not in the Church. I wish it wouldn't be that way. I hope someday it won't be.
I think there must be enough room in all eternity for our LGBT brothers and sisters. I hope someday we'll find it.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Mortal Ambitions
I know our time here is limited, and we must at times forego the good in order to choose the better or best things in life for ourselves, our families, and our faith in Christ. I feel that, having eternity, we'll have ample opportunity to do just about any righteous thing we want to do, have every righteous experience to which we aspire. Perhaps it will be even better after "this frail existence", when we are strong and whole and able to appreciate them at even deeper levels than we're currently capable, in a perfect sphere of health and awareness.
Still, I must say that I wish I hadn't dawdled the past few years of my life away in uncertainty and dwelling on what wasn't, what had been, and what might still be. If I could have the past six years of my life back, knowing what I know now, I would have worked much harder, to provide myself a chance to do at least a few of the following.
I posted on Facebook earlier:
I know I'm supposed to be a mother. I don't know what that means yet, but I have that promise, as long as I'm faithful. These ambitions are good. In time, I will either fulfill many of them on my own, or with my family. I should likely plan and aim for them on my own, and if and when a family comes, they can join in the adventure.
Part of me dislikes that I've come to this place in my life, of having to plan to just get on with it and stop watching the metaphorical door, waiting for the right man to walk through it. However, concentrating on my disliking it only wastes my time. It doesn't lead anywhere, and it stops me from pursuing more interesting things than moping and pining. Like living in a yurt. Perhaps in Alaska.
Still, I must say that I wish I hadn't dawdled the past few years of my life away in uncertainty and dwelling on what wasn't, what had been, and what might still be. If I could have the past six years of my life back, knowing what I know now, I would have worked much harder, to provide myself a chance to do at least a few of the following.
- Live in a yurt for at least a year
- Go to Ireland
- Go to Alaska, possibly live there for at least a year
- Homestead on at least one acre of open ground, or five would be even better. A horse, chickens, and a goat or two would be very nice.
- Have five children
- Sing in or with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
- Improve my fiber art skills (sewing, knitting, crocheting, spinning, weaving)
- Be a traveling doula? At least a few times, if not fully professionally. The jury is out on this one, but it's an intriguing idea.
I posted on Facebook earlier:
"I have posted other, similar thoughts lately, and been urged by others (older, more experienced) to carry on and go for it. I wish I had my lost time back, but at this point, I may yet have another year or two or more of singleness, and it would be foolish to waste it in the hopes than I'll meet Mr. Right, drop everything, and start churning out kids in a desperate rush to cling to my best fertile years. Considering that I'm fairly convinced at present that no one but God can heal my present fertility dilemmas, I should probably stop worrying about it. Does fertility decline after 35? Probably. Does pregnancy after 40 have a higher tendency for complications? Yes. Does that mean I am guaranteed a biological dead end after January 1, 2017? No. Am I likely going to face hardship, even grief? Very likely.
I know I'm supposed to be a mother. I don't know what that means yet, but I have that promise, as long as I'm faithful. These ambitions are good. In time, I will either fulfill many of them on my own, or with my family. I should likely plan and aim for them on my own, and if and when a family comes, they can join in the adventure.
Part of me dislikes that I've come to this place in my life, of having to plan to just get on with it and stop watching the metaphorical door, waiting for the right man to walk through it. However, concentrating on my disliking it only wastes my time. It doesn't lead anywhere, and it stops me from pursuing more interesting things than moping and pining. Like living in a yurt. Perhaps in Alaska.
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