Pants: Still a scandal in 2012.

1 Samantha 16:7
7 But the Lady said unto Samantha, Look not on her appearance, or on the manner of her attire ... for the Lady seeth not as mortals seeth; for mortals looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lady looketh on the heart.

You know, I've seen women wear pants to church numerous times over the years.  It hasn't been often, but it has happened.  When I was young, it always surprised me but I never commented.  The women always looked appropriate and put together.  Granted, I live in a very liberal area of the US that has a reputation for bucking tradition and the ward I grew up in was very loving and open, but the prevailing winds within the Mormon community have still leaned heavily to skirts and dresses.  However, pants were not looked down upon, to the best of my knowledge, beyond a few surprised expressions before everyone got on with their day.  Investigators and new members have generally been given a pass to wear whatever they want or have.

That being said, you wouldn't think this event would cause much of a ruckus, but the Event page on Facebook has been slammed by many orthodox members of the Church (and some random non-member trolls) for being disrespectful, sinful, daring to suggest that women are treated unequally, etc etc etc.  Because once you're in and experienced (and Heaven help you if you're a lifer and you should "know better") your free pass goes away?  God suddenly starts caring so much more about what you're wearing... even though we know that God very specifically does not look at the outside.

It calls to mind the many modesty lessons I've been given over the years in which some variation of this question was posed: Would you be ashamed by your clothes if the Lord came back and you had to bow before him?

No.  No I would not.  Not in a turtleneck.  Not in a V-neck.  Not in a skirt.  Not in pants.  Not naked as the day I was born.  Never unless my heart was out of place, and not even then because I know that is why I have a Savior who loves me enough never to shame me.  Instead, he suffered and died for me, to cover me with His grace and make Him and I at-one.  Where there is God-like love, there is no shame; Where there is shame, there is no God-like love.

Therefore, I'm going to wear pants to church on Sunday and speak as my father's High Council companion about the spirit of Christmas and radical love.

Celebrating my feminista

I got asked tonight if I'm a feminist.


Best question ever. :D


So just in case anyone missed the memo: Yes, I am a feminist.

• I believe absolutely in the equal rights of men and women.
• I believe the genitalia and/or DNA any person possesses should neither entitle nor disenfranchise.
• I believe in respecting those who are different and protecting and uplifting those who are downtrodden.
• I do not hate men nor do I want to be exactly like one; I glory in my personal female identity.
• I work toward the day when femaleness and maleness are regarded with identical amounts of respect because of humanness.

Additionally...

• I believe absolutely in the right of anyone to be different.
• I believe that biological sex and expressed gender are spectra; everyone is a mix of male and female traits, genes, and tissues.
• I believe that what diminishes one, diminishes all.  What uplifts one, uplifts all.

And you should check out this link: Snopes--Red Hot Mamas (The truth about "bra-burning" feminists.)

Mother's Day

sigh

Well, I did say I wanted to get it all done with at once.  Everything.  Death, memorial, Mother's Day...  That should make next year easier.  It also makes this year really, really hard.  Finally, it's beginning to sink in that she's beyond the veil, that life is different, that it's just Dad and I at home and that while she might be around in spirit.... she's not there in body.  At least it's really starting to hurt.  Today is really going to suck.

So I have two Mothers beyond the veil whose presence I can know no more of than to feel, if I'm lucky.  I might have three, if my birth mother hasn't survived this long, but I don't know much of anything about her, so I can't really feel attached, there.  How do I honor these women this day?

Well, for one, today I am only saying my prayers to Heavenly Mother.  Father can listen in, but I'm talking to my Mom.  I will take any opportunity to speak about Her.  I would be wearing goddess earrings and my tree and/or labyrinth pendants if I had them with me, but Dad and I are with my sister's family out of town.  I will cuddle my niece and hug my sister.  I will listen to and hum or sing women's songs.  I will treat my father kindly and sit beside him and scratch his back the way Mom used to do.  I will honor my sisters who are mothers and console, commiserate, or celebrate with my sisters who are not.  I will hold space with those also missing their mothers today, and mothers missing their babies.

And I will mourn honestly and openly and in whatever way I damn well please, be it weeping or donuts or seclusion or walking out of Sacrament meeting if I hear the phrase "We/You are all mothers" and it upsets me because I'm sick of that platitude and it's insulting and patronizing.  I will be grumpy if I feel like it because I miss my Mom.  And I'll be happy if I feel like it because I had my Mom.  I'll be and do whatever gets me through this day.

Peaceful Mother's Day to you all.

I want the Priesthood, too.

And shouldn't I?

Boys are raised in the Church to want it.  To aspire to it.  To expect it.  They are expected to live in such a way that they have it conferred upon them at the age of twelve so that they can begin to administer and serve.  That expectation, that aspiration is considered a wonderful thing, a great thing.  Not a sin, not a power grab, not an itching to rule the world or exercise rule over others.  In fact, I'm not aware of any time when that's an idea ever put out in the open.  And yet, adult women who want as much (or more) authority as a pubescent boy are cast as unfaithful villains instead of anxious workers in the cause of Christ.

What?

I was listening to a Mormon Stories episode on the way to the temple earlier today.  The interview featured the man who started Agitating Faithfully, Dane Laverty, a site that collects names of women and men who support the implementation of gender equality in the Church.  Dane said something that really struck me as he was describing the inspiration for the site name.  The context begins about 28:39 and he rambles for a bit, but then he says this:

[President Hinckley's] response wasn't, "We don't have revelation for that."  His response wasn't, "The doctrines prevent that from happening."  His response was just, "We don't hear anyone in the Church asking.  We don't hear any movement in the Church for women to be priests."  And so the way I read that is, "Yes, we'd be more than happy if we found the need for women to be priests, if we found that there was a desire out there for women to be priests, that's something that could happen; but we're not seeing that desire, so it's just not an issue that we're going to address right now."

And he's right, in a way.  Granted, President Hinckley was an extremely shrewd media personality, and the way he answers moves all responsibility for the inequality to the membership, rather than the leadership.  I will let my readers think of that what they will and move on.  There isn't agitation, or at least not very much.  There is anti-agitation, as with so much about the Church, the large and disapproving fraction of the population who insists on things the way they are and that they're perfect and wonderful and we shouldn't want one thing that the Lord doesn't hand down to us from the Throne of Heaven itself.

Doctrine and Covenants 58:26  For it is not meet that I should command in all things; for s/he who is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and an unwise servant; wherefore s/he receiveth no reward

 Hm.  Well, that's problematic.

 27 Verily I say, wo/men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

 28 For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as wo/men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.

 29 But s/he that doeth not anything until s/he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned.

So, if an Earth-rocking revelation were unveiled between 9:15 and 9:30 AM PDT by President Monson, unveiling the nature, power, and duties of Heavenly Mother, and commanding that women be ordained to the Priest(ess)hood, beginning immediately and would President Beck and her Counselors please come forward so they can be sustained and ordained... how many brethren, how many sisters would be prepared to sustain President Beck in her ordination?    How many would get up and leave, and never return to the Church?  It's a sobering thought.

But how many would cheer?  How many would offer their heads to have hands laid upon them?  How many are prepared to receive, when we put so much emphasis on it being wrong to even want the Priesthood because we are women?  I do believe it will happen, I believe it will happen in my lifetime, even if I have to live to the age of 100 to see it.  I believe it just as much and as surely as I believe we will learn more about Mother, but as a people, we must be prepared to receive, and I feel that we generally are not.  We have shot ourselves in the foot by insisting that we don't care about or want these things.  We are limiting the spirit of revelation in the name of conservation.

A quick sampling of things I've commonly heard about women not having Priesthood, generally from women...
It's so much more work!  Why would you/we want that?
--Why do the men want it?  Don't many hands make light work?  Is our only work really only supposed to be among our husbands and children?  I'm off the hook!  Awesome!  ...except that I want to serve. In the past several years, there have been numerous Conference talks praising the sisters for their hard work and encouraging them to greater heights of service.  I've heard many women groaning under the strain, though.  There's only so far people can be encouraged before there's nothing else they can do.  If the Priesthood gives power to do the work of the Gospel more effectively, it would be a mercy and a help to everyone to ordain women.

I hold the Priesthood when I hug/dance with my husband.
--You married the physical embodiment of the Power of God?!  Holy crap!  Oh, you meant that you married a person who has been ordained to the Priesthood.  Gotcha.  Wouldn't it be nice if your husband could say the same thing, though?  Also, once again, this is discriminatory.  I, as an unmarried woman with no children, don't have the option of hugging a husband.  Eventually, I won't have the option of hugging my father, either.  Please stop using such an exclusive platitude.  It gives no value or power at all to women like me.

Women don't miss out on any of the blessings of the Priesthood.
--This has always required considerable mental gymnastics for me, even years before I considered myself a feminist, but I went with it for a long time.  I mean, the absence of a worthy Priesthood holder can be circumvented if necessary; I've done it, but how many women (or children) know how to do it?  It isn't something you'll find in a lesson manual.  What if circumvention was unnecessary because women and girls received ordination and advancement just like men?
Even if we don't miss out on any blessings, saying so would come off in a much more genuine way if we also didn't miss out on the cultural benefits and respect that come with administration and authority that men enjoy while they're about the same Work women are.


I know that there are many women out there who genuinely don't want to be ordained and that's okay.  For most of my life, I didn't either.  It wasn't until I realized that ordination made sense to me that I said "Okay, I understand.  Yes, we should be ordained."  That wasn't even until after working in the temple.  I wish I had understood better during my time there that the day I was Endowed, I left with the same Priesthood potential as any man, short only the formality of laying on hands.  I held and exercised religious authority there to perform ordinances.  I wielded Priesthood, as do tens of thousands of women working in temples worldwide, and the Church hasn't collapsed; in fact, it relies on female Priesthood users to do proxy work for the dead.  The only difference is that it doesn't happen outside the temple in every day life to do the work of living.

Why?

I want to serve.  I want to work.  I want authority and power to be more effective in the Church and in living the Gospel and to be taken seriously.  This is my little agitation.  This is my Yea vote.  This is my siding with women and men to whom ordination for all worthy Saints makes sense.  I also want the Priesthood.

(Happy Mother Fast Day!)

As a woman on fire

 "The Spirit of God like a fire is burning...  The visions and blessings of old are returning, and angels are coming to visit the earth."

I felt the burning of the Spirit tonight as I found myself with the opportunity to be the voice for thousands of women.  I haven't had many experiences so forceful in my life, but there was no mistaking the Spirit when it came and moved me.

We have a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and an assisting Regional Authority in town this weekend to change our Stake Presidency.  At the end of adult session of Conference tonight, the Seventy gave us about 5 minutes to think of "inspired questions" that he or one of the others on the stand would answer.  He told us that he has a daily opportunity to eat lunch with members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve at Church headquarters, conversing with them and that he has been on assignment with every Apostle or Prophet for the past 16 years.  He said that he would take the hard ones and the easy ones could be answered by his assistant, the Mission President, or a member of our Stake Presidency.

I knew I had to ask about Mother.


As I was waiting for our thinking time to be over, I had the whole heart racing, hands shaking, sweating Spirit prodding thing going.  I was determined to be first.  When he finally opened it, my hand shot up.  I know I wasn't first in the air, but he called me and the mic came my way.  I stood with racing heart and I asked, "As a woman, "How can I as a woman know who I'm going to become if we know so little about Heavenly Mother, and how can we learn about her?"

I don't think he quite got the eternal scope of the question--or if he did, he didn't address it that way, in my opinion--but his answer was still good.  He talked about consulting Patriarchal Blessings, reading the scriptures to familiarize myself with the voice of the Lord/Spirit, and praying (to Heavenly Father) to know more.  He also spoke about finding little packets of blessings (I liked that) along life's road that would lead and guide me in the right direction.  I was hoping for something grander, personally.  However, when I stepped back from my expectations, I found that the answer given was a confirmation of what I've done and what I'm doing, the direction I'm traveling.  Also, for those out there who may be asking and thinking they're alone, or who are afraid to ask, or who don't even know to ask, I think it was a good intro answer that--if nothing else--might open dialogue and searching.

I was in process of leaving the building after the meeting, when I got this strong feeling to go back.  I almost didn't, but the pull was so strong.  It wasn't a forceful push or a drag, it wasn't a command it was... assurance.  I walked back inside and stuck my head into the chapel.  I looked for him, didn't see him, started to leave again.  Again the feeling came, telling me to go back and keep looking.  I did, but I didn't see him, didn't see him... Finally, I saw him across the room.  Of course, there were a couple doen people chatting between us.  I made my way in his direction, trying to find a path.  I almost stopped to hug a friend of the family, but I said to myself, "No, I'm not here for that," and got through the gym to the opposite foyer.  As I went through the door and looked up, I found myself face to face with the mission president, who said mine was a very good question and shook my hand.  I nearly shook the hand of the Regional Authority but the mission president distracted him.  Just as he was turning back to me, the Seventy approached and shook my hand and thanked me for being present tonight.

I thanked him for coming and I put my hand over his.  Instantly, I began to tear up as I looked at him.  I was filled with the fire of the Spirit and the weight of women's need.  It enveloped me and seeped into me.  It fused with my being for 30 electrifying seconds.  I have felt such a sensation once before--this thick feeling of being engulfed in water but never drowning, only being pressed in upon by something omnipresent and holistic--as I entered a Celestial Room for the first time.  I stood before him, wearing an unseen mantle lent to me by the spirit of every woman who ever lived, and choked out the words, "Please... I've talked to so many women about this, and we're very concerned.  We want to know about our Mother.  Please take that back to them.  Let them know.  Please, take it back to them."

He said he would, and thanked me again.  The mantle did not lift from my being until I left the building.  I couldn't help the tears falling down my face.  It was likely confusing to those who had seen me just two minutes before going in the other direction with a smile on my face, but I had done what I needed to do.  I did it without little fear and less hesitation.  I felt the Spirit move me in ways I would not have moved myself under my own, often-timid power.


Now I pray and I hope--I desperately hope--that he felt the weight of our need, and he will take it back to the Apostles and Prophet.  I will be praying for that this week as I prepare for this month's Fast.  I will likely also go off the "planned subject schedule", personally, and go back to Fasting for our leaders' inspiration.  Now may be the right time.

May our prayers be heard and answered.

Edits: Corrections made to titles of participants.

Today's Recommended Listening

Daughters of Mormonism #8 - Eve as Balance to Christ

In this episode from May, Sybil presents an enlightening bit of her own spiritual thinking about the nature and role of Mother Eve in the Plan of Happiness.  Parts of what she discusses have skimmed across my brain over the years, but her thoughts have been much deeper than my own and I find the way she puts things to be very enriching.  I had never looked at my own womanhood in quite this way, and it gives me some hope and even a new tool for reaching forward in my physical and spiritual progression.

Head on over and listen if you haven't already.  Even if you have, it's worth a second listen.  (For the squeamish and/or male, she talks quite a bit about menstruation.  Just an FYI.)

How the LDS Church grew this Feminist

I was inadvertently raised to become a Feminist, and my faith is a large part of how that happened.

Among Christian traditions, I have to say that the LDS Church makes some of the best efforts of which I'm aware to show respect to women, and to honor our Mother Eve and Heavenly Mother.  Things may not get done perfectly and the damaging effects of patriarchy still exist, but I grew up hearing that even though She's not talked about much, She is there, and while the idea that she's "too sacred to be discussed" to be completely groundless, she is revered as being sacred.  Eve's choice in the Garden is respected as a glorious one without which we could not exist or progress (see third section "Great Blessings...")  I was told that if no Priesthood holder was present, I could call upon the authority of one with stewardship over me and exercise it in an hour of need if I was worthy.

The Young Women programs (MIA, Camp, etc.) taught me that I was the daughter of God, that I had a divine nature and individual worth.  I entered the oldest women's organization in the world at age 18 and began learning how to relate to women of many ages and life stages and circumstances.  In Young Women, Especially For Youth, Institute, and Relief Society, I was told repeatedly that any man who said I had to do anything (marrying him was usually the example given, but other things were included) "because he held the Priesthood" was in the wrong, that I had an immutable right to my own revelation, and the right to tell him to shove it.  (I don't remember who I heard say it, but someone along the way suggested that any man who proposed by saying he'd received a revelation that we should marry should be rejected.  In a letter.  Mailed Second Class.) (Edit: It was Elder Scott at a fireside in Arizona.  (Thanks Jana!)  Elder Scott also delivered a gently scalding reprimand to a young man at that meeting for something he expressed regarding a potential wife, but that's another post.)

A feminist foundation is present and alive in the Church, even if construction of an equitable living space upon it is slow. It was because of that foundation that I first began to realize my feminism, the reason I grew up believing that I was personally entitled to access the Divine, and that God loved me no matter what, even if sometimes I didn't feel worthy of it because of my mistakes.  It wasn't until I was an adult that I began to recognize that other women hadn't caught the same half of the vision that I had, or indeed that there were halves to it, or quarters, or any other fraction.  I naively assume that there were the righteous women who knew who they were and attracted good, righteous, kind husbands; and then there were the women on the fringes who didn't know who they were, who felt like they had cause to be angry, worldly, or both, and dated/married losers.

Yeah.  I was one of those.  One of the quietly and lovingly self-righteous, who just hoped she could be Christ-like enough not to let the judgment show through the piety.  Forgive me, Sisters, for I have sinned.  I mean that sincerely.  I truly was naive.

But like Eve, I came to be aware of a certain fruit.  It felt like I had received a commandment not to touch it, not to be like one of those, those.... Feminists.  *gasp!*  (Nice us/them theme going on here, right?  Yeah.)  But Feminism came and made her case.  We carried on a dialogue as I considered the options.  I pondered.  I secretly began to understand.  In time I made my choice and partook of the Forbidden Feminist Fruit.

My eyes were opened and I saw so much more.  I began to understand, to recognize justice and injustice, balance, unity, expansion.  Feminism gave shape and purpose to the foundation the Church had laid for me, and the Church gave my Feminism depth and intricacy. Feminism taught me what the Church hasn't quite gotten around to yet; that I can offer more things to the world than only bearing and rearing the next generation.  The Church taught me that my capacities and traits as a person, as a woman, for change, creation, ambition, determination are eternal and Divine parts of Me.  Several of my Feminist Sisters (and one who doesn't identify as Feminist to my knowledge) have set awesome examples for me of righteous, adventurous, independent, strong women who advocate for a better world, seek out knowledge, build their homes and families, and stand side-by-side with their husbands.

I'm not alone on this path, nor the only one to see newly with these eyes.  More and more women are having their eyes opened; many "mainstream" Mormon women are partaking of this Fruit as our Mother Eve did once before, seeing how unprotected, how naked we have been before the onslaught of misogyny throughout the ages.  I did, and I'm seeing more and more signs of it in those around me.  In fact, I think it is much easier and less traumatic for LDS women to expand and adapt their identities and thought patterns into Feminism than many--if not most--faith traditions under the Abrahamic umbrella.  There is a broad range of experience of course, as with anything, but by our tenets and the things we uphold, I do think it's less of a leap than a hop to bridge the gap.  We have the foundation.

Don't be afraid if you find yourself or someone you know waking up to the inner Feminist, though it is not without controversy or difficulty.  Neither was the choice made in Eden.  We change and thereby our worlds change, but the more of us at the "core" who expand ourselves to include the "margins", the less they will be margins: the greater understanding , the more common ground and solidarity as a people we will have.  The wider and deeper we water the tree of Zion, the stronger and deeper its roots, the more nourishment the body will receive.

We are the roots and the watering can together.  We are the ones who make and drive change.  We are, as Harriett Beecher Stowe famously said, the real architects of society.

My name is Jena, and I'm a

 

Happy Pioneer Day!

I got so angry today (Updated)

I've finally been reading The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (If you buy, please buy via The Amethyst Network's Amazon widget), having received a distinct spiritual kick in the butt that I was haring off into the awakening adventure of mine with entirely too little preparation.  So far, I enjoy the book and it has a lot of beautiful information, it is not the end-all-be-all of this path.  However, it has begun to turn the lock.

I was driving to take care of some business in the next city over, contemplating what I'd read and my own thoughts, and I began to pray, puzzling over Why.  I usually try not to ask Why, but What Can I Learn--well before a Conference talk last year to that effect, pretty much since going through a bad relationship several years ago--but I just can't seem to escape it.  Why.  Why do we know so little about God the Mother?  We're Her children, Her daughters.  We're allowed to know a decent amount about other sacred subjects, namely everything that goes on in the temples.  The foundations are laid there for women and men to become like our Parents.  It's sacred stuff.  Is Mother, is Goddess more sacred than that?  Why?  How?  The old saw about her being too sacred to be talked about (which, incidentally, is NOT an endorsed, official position; we seem to have taken it on ourselves as a people) just doesn't stand up.

And the truth burst forth, burning from my lips like a phoenix from a cage.  "Because that's the greatest desecration of all!  It has already happened!"  She has been erased, written out, suppressed, oppressed, and the very idea of her existence ignorantly reviled for millenia, forced to submit beneath the iron fist of unrighteous patriarchy.  Throughout the centuries, mortal men undertook to squelch virtually all mention of Her, practically every hint under the umbrella of Judeo-Christian tradition, denying women equally standing and prestige in every particular of their religious, social, and cultural lives, even to the point of murder.  Can there be a more perfect example of desecration than intentional defamation and systematic annihilation?  She has already been disrespected and abused by her children.  Many who should revere Her sneer at the concept that She exists.  They fight it.  Silence can be no protection from the abuse that silence begets.

So I prayed and I pled, "Make Her known!  Bring Her forth and unveil her face!"  I quickly realized, however, that such revelation would do very little good as yet.  We, as a people, are mired in bitterness and apostasy--literally standing apart from the principle--where She is concerned, and our men are deeply affected.  The apparent imbalance in practical representation of Deity only reinforces the ideologies they've been given.  So I pled for them.  "God Almighty, open the hearts of the men.  Soften their hearts toward their Mother.  Help them to accept Her when she is revealed."  But I couldn't deny that, whether the men ever get it or not, the women have been wronged.  Deeply, horribly wronged.  We have had inferiority projected and enforced upon us.  For thousands of years, billions of men, billions of women; the lack of the Feminine Divine has wounded everyone it touches.  So I pled for justice, for some sort of restitution to be made on behalf of the hated daughters of Eve, for our abuse to end, for us to be finally seen as equals.

I rarely rail in my prayers, but today I did, shouting and weeping with indignation at the sheer injustice of what we've had thrust upon us simply because we lack a penis, because we have a womb.  It is deeply unfair, but so help me, it is not "just the way it is."  This was done intentionally, centuries ago, by men who then passed it on to not only their sons, but their daughters as well.

"TRADITIOOOOOON!"

Many of the traditions we carry are good, beneficial, and beautiful, but the erasure of Goddess and the oppression of women are not.  It's time for this to stop.  It's time for us to "arise from the dust, my sisters, and be women, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that we may not remain in captivity." Indeed, "Awake, my sisters; put on our armor of righteousness.  Shake off the chains with which we are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust."  (Likened from 2 Nephi 1:21, 23)  It's interesting that the above words in their original form were spoken to Laman and Lemuel as their father's dying plea for them to spiritually awaken, to be strong, to reverse direction on the dark path down which they have travelled.  Laman and Lemuel chose to be proud, to reject their traditions to the point that God lost favor with them and they lost favor with God; Women had no choice in having their rights and power stripped away by men.

The Fast begins in a few days.  I find myself approaching this even with a growing sense of the daunting task it represents.  I know this is important, this work to ask for greater light and knowledge, for the Restoration of our Goddess into the official record, not as a point of doctrine used to provide leverage in proving a moral point, or lumped in as one half of our Parents, presented only in relation to Heavenly Father, but a Divine Being in Her own right.  This work is more important than the gross majority of us realize and it cannot be accomplished without great effort.  Perhaps many of the women who read this (if they read this far) will not realize how deep that need is, and would call me subversive, blasphemous, or foolish.  I cannot blame them; I cannot hold their conditioning against them.  I've been conditioned the same way and I struggle under the same burden.

I still believe.  Deeply.  I am still strong in my faith, with a strong conviction that this Church is where I belong, that it is where the most important eternal truths and proper authority can be found.  That, however, does not negate or excuse the problems that exist because of our mortal imperfections and weaknesses.  Indeed, if we were a perfect people, we would have been taken up.  Until that happens, we still have improvements to make, things we can all learn and do better, and traditions to overcome.

*Updated to add references, clarify a few statements and make minor grammatical changes