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