*Please note, this post, while not explicit in nature, does address violence against women.

Over the past couple of years, the woman taken in adultery in John Chapter 8 has come into my mind again and again. While it is the consensus among Bible scholars that this particular passage containing the story of the woman was added centuries later and there are varying opinions on whether or not the story actually happened, that information doesn’t matter much to me, because in my religious upbringing, the story was always taught and told as truth, and so I took it as thus. Even if it is not true, the attitudes about this woman are indicative of what has pervaded culture for hundreds of generations.

The Woman taken in Adultery, c.1621 (oil on canvas) by Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) (1591-1666); 98.2×122.7 cm; © Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK; Italian, out of copyright

Clearly there are good intentions to teach about forgiveness and the grace of Jesus Christ, which I have always loved, but there is also a part of this story I have missed entirely until now. I had not ever considered what this woman’s side of the story might be.

The way these scriptures unfolded themselves throughout my childhood and into adulthood was based on this idea that the woman taken in adultery had clearly done something wrong, had sinned gravely, and we can only hope that she heeded Jesus’s grace of instruction to go and sin no more. Rarely did I give the woman much more than the time it took to read the verses. I did not give her or her future much thought. Much less, her future as it was changed given that singular event.

It wasn’t until recently that I even questioned the very premise of the story. When I think of this it now, I want to go back and tell the woman taken in adultery that I am so sorry. I am sorry that for my whole life I’ve called her that, “the woman taken in adultery.” I am sorry that I was not even curious about her side of the story. I did not question, nor even think much about why she was doing what she was doing and the fact that more than likely, the adultery was not her choice, but quite possibly was a situation of rape, violence and trauma.   [Read more…]

Today in Sunday school we were dancing around the topic of people who “leave the fold” and what to do about and for them. The standard, “never give up on

them” answers floated on the air and then a girl wearing pants and Birkenstocks at the back of the room raised her hand and talked about how important it is to recognize that most people don’t leave the church on a casual whim. She talked about how, (and it seemed from personal experience) leaving the church is like a really difficult break up, how it isn’t just not going to church on Sunday anymore. She talked about how no longer being mormon means leaving behind or changing an entire life. Nothing of what she said felt like a surprise to me. Most of my closest friends have left the church for different reasons. I’ve been on the front lines of heartbreak for well over a decade.

The thing then, that stuck out to me about the comment the women made in class, was this distinct and clear realization that I was who she was talking about, and yet, I was still sitting there in a Sunday School class, wrestling a baby who is not quite old enough for nursery, but too old to sit still for a full minute. My other children in primary. My husband next to me. I had chosen to come of my own volition.

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This is a follow up post from the piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago titled, “Men, what will you do when my daughter asks about her place in this church?”  First, I want to say thank you for the dozens and dozens of well-thought out, empathetic and kind comments that so many of you left.  It was heartening to know that in many ways, I can tell my daughter, and in effect, myself, that although things can look pretty dire for women having an efficacious voice in this church, there are at least circles of men and women working quietly and effectively in a myriad of ways for greater equality.  I will try and include some of your suggestions from the comments here in this post, but the thread (at least part of it) is worth going back and reading through for more ideas.

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The Vision of The Arts Auction, which is only running for 4 more days, is an incredible opportunity to purchase art from both established and up and coming LDS artists, while simultaneously supporting scholarships and opportunities for LDS artists, including a special fund for female artists working with young children at home.  All the artists have donated their work and the proceeds from the auction go directly to continuing the work of this program.

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Thanks to a recently acquired kindle and a lot of time nursing a newborn, I’ve read a lot of good books this summer, but none that I’ve recommended, referenced and been touched by more than Kari Ferguson’s new book, “The OCD Mormon: Finding healing and hope in the midst of anxiety” 

If you have talked with me in the past three months you can probably attest that I have tried to get you to read this book. I do not have OCD, or any mental illness for that matter, and many of the people I’ve recommended the book to don’t either, but that is precisely the power of her writing—this is a book we all need to read if we are going to claim to lift up the hands that hang.

Ferguson is doing the work of bridging a too-large gap for people like me that for whatever reason have a great void in my knowledge and understanding of mental illness. Reading the OCD Mormon made me want to be an active participant in both the dialogue and support that is offered to people confronting mental illness in general, and also with the specifics that come with being a Mormon with a mental illness.

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Rachel on writing Mother’s Milk:

How did I write 246 poems on a divine being we ostensibly know little about? In short, I prayed, I listened, I looked, I read, I lived, and sometimes I found Her. In long, I prayed to God the Father, to know more of God the Mother, to be close to Her, to feel Her love, and to be guided as I thought and wrote. I listened to my daughter, Cora, and my son, Søren–their words and their cries. I looked to children’s games–Peek-A-Boo and Marco Polo. I looked to the important women in my life–my grandmothers, mother, sisters, mentors, friends, nieces, and again, my daughter. I looked at the natural world around me–the trees, wind, stars, sea, mountains, birds, everything. I believe the Mother, like the Father, is a designer and creator. I read children’s books, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Peter Pan, The Little Prince, Where the Wild Things Are, and Are You My Mother? I read philosophy books, including by my son’s namesake, Søren Kierkegaard. I read poetry books, including by Amiri Baraka, Li-Young Lee, and Mary Oliver. I read passages from church leaders, including Chieko Okazaki, Erastus Snow, Joseph Smith, Jeffrey R. Holland, and Harold B. Lee. I read scriptures. Lots and lots of scriptures. [Read more…]

“All religions start with the cry, help.” I’ve looked for the original source of this quote since I heard it on a podcast and can’t locate it, but regardless, it is a line that spoke to me this week.

Today after I’d dropped my two older children at preschool for the afternoon and my six-week old baby slept in the back of the car, I said aloud the word, “help.” Nothing in particular was or is wrong, in fact, most is right, most is perfectly right, but I was overwhelmed, tired, full of doubt about my own abilities. I’ve learned to validate the difficulties that accompany parenthood, particularly motherhood, because for far too long I glossed over them as if they weren’t real (a topic for another post). My “cry” today was one of deep humility stemmed from my own insufficiencies, “please help,” spoken aloud and with a hope that someone might be listening.  That “cry” often seems to be the beginning of something useful in my life. [Read more…]

Conference this past weekend was peaceful and calming in the way I remember it being as a kid. The lilts and accents of certain voices felt familiar and a lot like home. Elder Holland’s talk was a sermon to anchor my mormonism in, as so many others have also noted. Many of the talks reminded me of what it is to step away from all other things and find a place where the spirit dictates my thoughts and actions. It made me want to be better. It was a good conference.

Still, I couldn’t help but notice that only one talk out of twenty-seven in the course of eight hours this weekend was given by a woman. [Read more…]

I haven’t written here for some time.  In a strange way, I think my own personal book, 100 Birds Taught Me to Fly, about my life experience as a Mormon, has quieted me since its coming out.  I’ve wondered a lot about this unexpected feeling of inadequacy since the book release and why silence would be the option.  I don’t think, however, that this experience is unique to me.  I don’t think it is because my book was good, or bad, well-reviewed or not well-reviewed.  I think at the root of things, I feel a pressure that so many of us in the church often feel to be good, to be more than good, to have things figured out, and have them figured out declaratively and now.

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I wrote a book for the Maxwell Institute.  It came out on November 1st.  In the last three weeks I have traveled and spoken at fifteen different events.  Up until November 1st, even when I practiced reading for my husband in our living room, my voice would shake so badly that the words would get caught up in my throat and finally stumble out in a bundle of nervousness.  I was quite serious in my consideration of hiring actors to read my work for me at the events I knew I was going to be speaking at.  I did not want to take up people’s time.  I did not want to be in the spotlight, I felt so much nervousness about what I wasn’t,  or at least the part of me that had spent a lifetime overdosing on what I thought humility meant.

On the opening night of the book, I stood in front of about 150 people and looked down at the words on the page, unsure if my voice would shake and render me incapable, or if it would carry steady.  I believe by an act of pure grace, and genuine love from the people in these audiences, my voice, for literally the first time in my life, read the words I had written without a crack or waver.  Something kind and believing has carried them each night as I’ve read the pieces about my own life, which are intensely personal and nakedly honest.

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The following is an interview with J. Kirk Richards, LDS Artist and board member of THE VISION OF THE ARTS FUND, which was established in 2015 as a home for the Gospel Vision of the Arts Auction, which provides scholarships and opportunities for LDS artists.  As I’ve learned and talked personally with the people working behind the scenes to make this happen, I am both touched and so grateful for their optimism, enthusiasm and patronage of the arts within Mormonism.  Recently I visited one of their homes, which is brimming with intelligent, well-crafted, beautiful and spiritually engaging art by Mormons and I left feeling such a strong desire to be a part.  I’m excited about this work and the opportunity it will give many people to pursue their own work in the arts.  You probably want to take a moment to check out the auction, there are really beautiful pieces up for bid http://visionofthearts.org/auction.html

Q:   Tell us about the current state of LDS visual arts.

A:   I’m hugely optimistic about the future of Mormon art.  I think pessimists focus on a very small segment: the few pieces of artwork that meet the rigorously dogmatic requirements of correlation.  But there is a much larger art community outside of correlation—from new classical revivalist schools along the Wasatch front to New York artists showing in the MoMA; from traditional to conceptual and everything in between.  There are energetic and supportive networks of LDS artists, encouraging and lifting each other to new heights.    

Auction piece “Believe” by David Linn.

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This morning my daughter wanted me to make her an owl.  I cut out the body and two wings, setting them on the paper tucked up against the paper body.  Immediately she took them and set them outwards and said, “No, she is flying mom.”

I fell asleep late last night and like so many of us woke in the early hours of the morning to the shock of a reality I did not believe would or could happen.  I rose with a pit in my stomach.  I woke with deep disappointment in the state I grew up in, the Mormon state, the one who could have proved to me that they value my body, my voice, my daughter, over possible economic advantage, but they did not.

I also woke to something I did not entirely expect, as I read through my emails, texts and social media, I found words that did not spell defeat.  I saw words about love over hate, about bravery and action.  I read the words of friends who, although heartbroken, did not miss a beat in going to one another to ask, what now?  What do we do? We will do it.  If no one else will usher in our voices, we will do it ourselves. [Read more…]

Recently I read When Mormons Doubt, a new book by Jon Ogden. The book is a mix of philosophy on reverence and practical ideas for scenarios that Mormons increasingly find themselves in: What do you do when belief is no longer concrete, either for you, or for someone close to you? How do you move forward meaningfully in familial relationships that seem to be taking different paths? Jon writes optimistically about the possibility for both peace and reconciliation both for the people who step out of the church and for those who stay in. The book is a worthy read. Jon pulls the reader gently through a series of thought experiments that nudge in a direction of deeper thought, reverence and respect for the countless spiritual paths that personal Mormonism can offer if we allow it, even once a person has “left” the church.

I’ve written at least three separate pieces working through my ideas after reading When Mormons Doubt and while the book itself got me thinking, it is also the idea of the book that is interesting to me. I don’t have a comprehensive knowledge of the history of Mormon literature, but I am an avid reader of non-fiction. The literary landscape available to me as a young BYU student was not encouraging of the type of brazen exploration and questioning my evolving faith asked of me. I realize now that in part this was because I did not know where to look and that devotional literature is not a new genre by any means. To quote a BCC writer and historian, J. Stapley,

Scholars of all sorts have been dealing with historiographical and epistemological concerns over Mormonism for much longer then 10 years. Richard Bushman’s  Rough Stone Rolling is over ten years old, but his JS and the Beginnings of Mormonism was  published in 1988.  Even BH Roberts was writing for Americana magazine at the beginning of the century.

I suppose then, in part, my being exposed to what feels like new Mormon non-fiction is because I am young— accumulation takes time—in part because I haven’t invested the time I hope to in knowing the larger timeline. I don’t think my experience of not knowing which Mormon writing to turn to is uncommon. I think many people feel lost and hopeless within their Mormonism precisely because they do not know or haven’t been exposed to writing that might help them. [Read more…]

One morning as I drove my kids to their swim lessons I overheard Remy, who is five, tell Thea, who is three, “I know four people: Heavenly Father, the Holy Ghost, Jesus and Heavenly Mother.”  I think they both must have nodded in agreement because I didn’t hear much else on the topic, but those few words Remy said so confidently have stayed with me.  I didn’t speak the words Heavenly Mother aloud until I was in college, and even then it felt subversive and a little rebellious.  I remember saying it in my testimony  and I’m sure it didn’t sound entirely natural as I still stumbled and paused at the words. 

For me, much has changed since those college years, and I have so many brave people to attribute that to. Conversations, books, poems, lessons, artwork, encouragement all set me up to explore my own personal relationship with Her in my late 20’s and forward.   I love that my children have no need to feel subversive in speaking about Heavenly Parents.  They are being raised up by a community that is better becoming acquainted with Her.  I love many things about the new book Our Heavenly Family, Our Earthly Families by McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spaulding with artwork by Caitlin Connolly but the invaluable space they offer to children to think about a Heavenly Mother in conjunction with a Heavenly Father, along with the books inclusivity of different types of families, makes me so happy to have it on my bookshelf. [Read more…]

Five years ago, in a new ward, our tiny son took immediately to a man on the front row of the gospel principles class–a wide-armed, rugby player of a man who shook our hand and nearly lifted us off the ground.  He was big and bright and new.  Baptized just a few months before, though schooled in Mormonism for many years.  There was something about Jack’s sincerity and insistence in speaking often about social justice that endeared us to him without reservation.

A couple of years ago Jack started to bring his friend, Vince, to church. Every Sunday Vince wears a black shirt and pants nearly as dark as his skin.  The grandchildren that hold his hands as he walks into sacrament meeting run to hug Jack. Another family has saved them a spot on the bench with them. Vince doesn’t often speak out, but it is clear that he is both gentle and wise with experience as he accepts these offerings with grace.

At Vince’s baptism he spoke about his time in prison and how at a low point he knew he wanted to find God, his sweet family peppering the baptismal room chairs calling out “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” [Read more…]

Too often in my own life I have looked for the one right story to live by. The older I get, the more I am aware that there is not one ‘best’ narrative, or even a few ‘best’ narratives. I need a quantity, a gigantic sum of narratives to survive and thrive in Mormonism.

The other day while driving in a hot car with my two children as they handed out requests faster and more outlandish than I could possibly ever deliver on, I got to thinking about  conference talks about motherhood that I’ve heard my whole life.  The remembrance of them, however,  did not feel like an act of solidarity in the moment.

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This afternoon my son, Remy, got to missing his dad who is in Japan doing field work.  I found him in the backyard sitting on a rock crying tears that were so sincere and alone that I immediately cried right along with him–both out of sadness for him, and also a sense of joy that he, after a mere five years on this earth, was able to feel so deeply for someone else.

Because I was crying, I was short on words, and really didn’t have anything that great to say anyway, but I sat on an overstuffed chair and let his little heaving body fill in every space on my stomach and chest.  We stayed there for a long time without words while he calmed and seemed to want to melt right into me until any hurt he felt was gone.

I’ve been thinking a lot about bodies and the spirit lately and have come to a few abstract ideas and conclusions, but that moment for me was made of clarity.  My body is home to my children.  I lay between them each night while they fall asleep and they reach out in the dark and stroke my face or reach for my hand. It’s like the reaffirmation of both their place in the world, and their place in a larger plan, as they run their tiny hands across the familiar and tangible landscape of my body.  My body for them is a manifestation of home, and home is what the spirit has always felt like for me. [Read more…]

I want to go right to the well known story in the beginning of the book of Mark where a paralytic man is lowered into a home by four of his friends who had broken a hole into the roof above the crowd.  They know Jesus is teaching there and the crowd was too pressing to enter in by the door, so in hopes that Jesus will heal this friend, they climb up above and do something that I imagine was most unexpected and unconventional. I have read or heard that story so many times in my life, but it wasn’t until recently when I stopped to really consider the scene that I was a bit taken back.

Think again of the image: think of these people climbing on top of the roof while carrying their friend on his sick bed, about to dig a hole and interrupt a large crowd, and not least, the most important and sought after man in the city.  I wonder if they hesitated, I wonder if they thought they should turn back, that it was just a silly idea.  But then, I marvel at their bravery as they do the thing they must have felt they should.  They broke a hole in that roof and sent their friend right in to land at the feet of Jesus.  The reaction of Christ to this act is stunning to me.  He does not question, he does not tell the men they should have just waited outside the door for later, he does not lecture, He simply accepts their offering of faith without question.  He heals the man, first from his sins, then in his body and the man rises, picks up his bed and stands.  [Read more…]

I am truly pleased to present to you one of the best kept secrets of the Mormon Instagram world.  Jon Bryner and Tallia Feltis are the mastermind couple behind the account @texturesofmormonism.   While very funny, they are equally thoughtful and deliberate.  They speak of both the humor and strange tenderness in this idea of shared nostalgia that Mormons literally all over the world can relate to.  My husband and I have spent more than one evening chuckling before bed as we scroll through the account.  Ah Mormons.  Something so strange and so funny about our collective aesthetic that somehow hasn’t changed in decades.

This is just a sampling of some of my favorites from the account.

It’s Wednesday night! Hit like if you need a ride home from mutual. #foyerphone #texturesofmormonism

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Tonight with my two tiny children before bed, one clutching my hand, the other flying wordlessly into sleep, I sang them the same primary songs I have sung them every night for the past five years.  My son sang some of the words with me and I had the
distinct feeling that these songs will be theirs forever, the melodies and words will be make up the threads of their spiritual lives long after I am singing them to sleep.

As I sang, I did something that I hadn’t done before, not because the idea hadn’t occurred to me, but more because my religious experience has been as much one of rules as it has been of freedom to move beyond those rules.  Even as a grown woman very comfortable with speaking, thinking, figuring out and experimenting with spirituality for myself, I had never out loud sang the words to those familiar primary songs with a female pronoun.  As I sang, I am a child of God, and She has sent me here, my children did not balk at the change.  If they noticed, they did not say, but it felt right to give it to them.  It felt warm, it felt calm singing those words out into the dark.  I sang the repertoire replacing the singular pronoun for the word “Parents” in some cases, and going back and forth between “She” and “He” in other cases. [Read more…]

From the time I was a kid, I knew the story of the five loaves and two fishes. However, it wasn’t until recently as I re-read Matthew 14 that I really took note of the context in which Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.  The first half of Matthew 14 tells the horrifying story of John the Baptist’s murder, and how the disciples took his body and buried it and then brought the news to Jesus.

In response to the news, Jesus leaves by a ship into a desert place. But as he goes, the people follow him on foot out of their cities.

And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick./And when it was evening,  his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals./ But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.

For all my life, when I have eaten so eagerly of the parable, I had never stopped to consider that the miracle was born of what must have been one of Jesus’ most lonely and sad mortal hours.  The loss of his cousin could not have been slight, could not have been anything less than devastating.  Jesus’ initial reaction to jump on a ship and get to a place where he might mourn and pray alone seems appropriate, but there is always a yet.  

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I remember so distinctly last summer when the Pope made the call for every parish across Europe to take in a refugee family and help them in the ways that they needed.  I remember this because I longed for the same explicit message in regards to specific service we can and should give in the world.  [Read more…]

“How do we as parents increase the spiritual capacity of our little ones?”  I love that Sister Durham posed this question.  As a mother with children who are still so young, but also so capable of entering that space where they see, hear, feel and know through the spirit, I’ve thought a lot about how I can nourish their curiosity and help them develop a love for the spiritual exploration. [Read more…]

Nearly a decade ago I spent a summer in the Special Collections section of the BYU library.  I wasn’t particularly sure of what I would find there,  but I was hungry to know something of the women in my mormon history.  I read lots of journals, including Emmeline B. Wells, Louisa Barnes Pratt, Minerva Teichert and the first young sister missionary to ever serve on her own instead of as a married couple or family. [Read more…]

For my birthday we went to the beach, not a sandy beach, but a secret rocky beach down a path rife with poison oak that we jumped over. The day was a little bit foggy, a little bit colorless, a little bit cold. I walked along behind my husband and two children, stopping to pick up a fossil of a shell, a piece of abalone, a memory of my son looking out into the vast ocean. We had been collecting quietly, sliding over wet rocks, filling our pockets with treasure for almost an hour when my two and a half year old daughter came and sat next to me. I noticed her little palm was tightly shut and when I asked her what she had, she opened her hand to reveal a dozen carefully selected round pebbles. She has a propensity for small round things, and I welled up with intense pride and love as I went back over in my memory that devout little girl searching, examining, holding on to the very best things without even the intention to show me unless I had asked.

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By the time my son, Remy, was four, I had not told him the story of Joseph Smith, despite all his friends having the ability to recount the story with aptitude. My guilt at seeing him on the outside when the conversation about Joseph and his story occurred among tiny mouths on more than one occasion, drove me to want to tell the story before I was sure the words to say. I tried a few times, fumbling through the lines I’d said a hundred times over on my mission, the memorized pieces engrained deeply in my memory. But the words felt foreign and did not rise from my heart as they once did, and my son, so sensitive to his mother’s vibrations, was slightly off-put and confused by my recounting. [Read more…]