On Women and the Priesthood: Finally

This post has been a long time coming, and it has been a labor to get to it. It hasn't been without its rewards, and I hope that I can help in lending my voice; at least in a small part. 

In April of this year, I put a request for discussion of women and the Priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as my Facebook.com status. I wanted to hear from my friends what they were thinking about it, and I wanted to find a means through which to formulate my own opinion on the matter. I was blessed with an outpouring of thoughtful and well reasoned conversation from men and women of a multitude of opinion.  I haven't actually heard any news about the discussion that was officially begun and carried on in an institutional manner since a few months ago, but some of the things that were brought up in discussing this topic with some friends have been weighing heavily on me. I want to share those and talk about my own experiences. 

I finally feel like I can talk about this. I finally feel like I should weigh in. This post is freaky-long and filled to bursting with more freaky-long links. Take your time, it'll be here forever. Sorry if you are already past it and you live in Idon'tcaresville already; skip this post and read my thoughts about nature or gardening or art or crushes or grass (those ones are good too). Or better yet, get a drink of water and go outside. Your bicycle probably misses you.

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In March of this year, I went to church with my aunt in Ogden, Utah. During Relief Society, an elderly sister raised her hand and made a non-sequiter comment to the effect that the "good" sisters of the church are not advocating for change. They don't ask a million zany questions, they aren't disruptive in their appearance, they don't ascribe to gifts or callings, they are sweet, they are good cooks, they are submissive, they are pleasant, they are gentle and meek, they are educated as a backup plan, they are quiet, and they do not wear pants to church (this was shortly on the heels of what had become called "Pantsgate," about which you can read more here, here or here). It would have been easy to put this sister's comments to rest for curmudgeonly state, but her comment reached down deep and made me think. Her attitude was one that created a real "us/them" dichotomy that made me uncomfortable and actually excused the spirit from that meeting. I know many women who are seeking after righteousness and the Spirit in their lives who fit precisely in the crosshairs of this woman's frustrations. I know how deeply these sisters defy all that she has been taught was good and true, but they are still her sisters. I include myself on many points. While this experience happened before the Ordain Women movement really hit the ground (April 2013), there was a foment in the air. This sister's comment became linked, inextricably in my mind with the question of women and the Priesthood and it is the thing that has bothered me most deeply in the discussion at large: it is divisive. 

I sought first to dismiss the whole issue because of its potential to tear apart the tender and vital ties that create a sisterhood within the church- that is something that I believe in and value greatly. We are asked to serve one another, and we are very good at it. My mother is no longer active in the Church, but she often inquires, gratefully, about the service that the sisters in my Relief Society in Nebraska have offered me. They treat me, without hesitation or guile, as one of their own. They enjoin me to their hearts as any sister would, and the enquire after her. I rejoice in detailing the goodness of the women (and men) with whom I am blessed to associate. Service and charity always first.  Our work is service in the work of perfecting the saints. This is a part of the four-fold mission of the church, which is: to proclaim the gospel, redeem the dead, care for the poor and needy and the perfecting of the saints. I love that the emphasis is on the ACTION of perfecting rather than the admiration or adoration of the already perfected. That emphasis allows plenty of space for impetuous, imperfect, me. What greater principle can there be?

Our second responsibility as members of the church, is to ask questions and respond when prompted in the name of coming unto Christ and becoming Christlike in our attributes and in our attitudes. We seek further light and knowledge always. The entire church is founded on a question. We believe in continuing revelation even when it is hard to bear and the changes we are asked to make seem strange or incomprehensible. We have a very long history of making those changes anyways. It is a SUBSTANTIAL part of our faith narrative, and one which I embrace wholly. I admire the spirit of Mormonism for which the veil is thin and the Heavens are open, for which the tenacity to approach the God of the Old and New Testament is a daily practice. That is the geist to which I seek to join myself; this is faith enacted. It is faith that compels action and moves a people across a continent, across oceans in an attempt to make promises with their God in holy temples. It is the power of healing and of blessing and the encircling comfort of angelic sweetness. It is the vehicle of forgiveness. This is the power by which we are enabled, our faith finished. There are evidences of this faith that I cannot deny, and this is what keeps me in the church. 

If questioning is such a substantial part of our faith, then I applaud those who have fostered the Ordain Women movement. I wish only that they were carrying on a continued conversation about it. Perhaps there is a conversation going on, but it hasn't reached Nebraska yet (If you know/are an answer to this, please comment). I am grateful for the opportunity to ask what Joseph Smith meant on founding the Relief Society as a "Kingdom of Priests." I am grateful to ponder the thinness of the veil and the willingness of my God to hear my concerns and treat my questions.  I have been blessed in asking questions about the power and authority that come through receiving an endowment in the temple. It has been a noble course of study to seek to more deeply understand the priesthood at large as well as in the specific (I have LOVED Joanna Brooks for leading this). I believe deeply in questioning.

But somehow I'm not satisfied with the ordination of women as an answer to all of that questioningness (If you were looking for a simple take-away message, this is it: I am not satisfied with the ordination of women to offices in the priesthood as it has been presented). A persistent concern for me in this entire conversation and in the buzz surrounding mormon feminism's upsurge in the last few years, is a disquietude for other cultures and traditions. I believe that God is big.  Bigger than I can fathom. Yes, I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the location of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I do not, however, believe that Mormonism has a corner on the market of righteousness or of correctness in principle or faith. I easily dismissed the "wear pants to church day" as a day for a very specific subset of Mormon women in the western United States to voice their concerns and demonstrate their opinion and feelings. This was not an important day where I live- there hasn't been a Sunday that a woman hasn't worn pants to church in the two years I have lived outside of the Western U.S. Nobody has ever batted an eyelash. I believe that there are more important things about us, as children of God, than what we look like or wear. I wore a dress on that day.  I am still a Mormon feminist. 

I recently had the opportunity to travel to northwestern Montana to learn from the Assiniboine tribe, from which I am descended. I learned so much in my time there, and a study of gender was a crucial component. of my thought process (so much more to come on this later). As it pertains to this topic, I was entranced by the exclusion of women in the performance of ceremonial functions. The Assiniboine are a traditionally matriarchal society, but even still, women are not participants in pipe ceremonies or in the Sun Dance except as dancers. The women make the food and watch the children. Watching this gender normativity play out in an indigenous tradition provided a means for me to both greater understand, and forgive the misgivings of Mormon gender relations. There may be a leap in logic there, but my point is that the supposed exclusion of women in priestly office is not singularly the fault of the LDS church, but rather a larger practice that I do not purport to fully understand. I didn't understand it in the context of my tribe, and I don't understand it in the context of the church (my other tribe). I will continue my study on this topic, but I will do it with a gentle heart. I will do it with humility and forgiveness in mind. 

Two final thoughts and I will wrap up this longest-ever-post. 

One: I am not certain that women aren't priesthood holders. I don't know how to quantify this here, but I think that women are not excluded from authority. We do not hold office, but is this separate from holding the priesthood generally? We wield authority in the temples of our God in both initiatory and endowment work for our selves as well as for the dead. We have power when we bring humanity into existence (and yes, I believe that fatherhood, NOT priesthood is the equivalent of motherhood; I also believe in a Heavenly Mother. She is a major part of my belief system although I do not know her well; these are the questions that I am still seeking answers for, still studying). We have authority in our callings and the magnification thereof. I believe this and I have done this. We are qualified for the work to which we are called. I have been blessed by women both inside and out of our temples, and I can't deny the power that I have felt from them. I have learned about the Levites in Exodus, who were washed and anointed, set apart as priests unto God. We inherit their tradition. All of us. Certainly it is frustrating that I entered into this when I was 25 when my brother was ordained to an office in the priesthood when he was only 12. Yes there is a tinge of disparity. And yes, I feel that too. 

But that brings me to my second and closing point. Many of the people I talked to about this topic were women who felt already-burdened by the cares they are asked to have in the daily functioning of the church and their lives. How many times did I hear sweet, over-burdened sister say that they felt filled up in the demands of running their houses, their education, their travels, their concerns for the future and their negotiations of the past? We feel like we are running at capacity perhaps, and that an office in the priesthood would be nothing but an added level of care. To them, I acquiesce and wish them the help and comfort they seek in the held-by-men-offices in which they invest meaning. Others wish that there were more of an opportunity to serve. I echo this and I find ways to do it. I make the bread each week for our sacrament service. I provide service in planning uplifting activities for my congregation. I pay my tithing. I ask questions. The church is remarkable in the way that it works with individuals. If you haven't found this to be true, move out of the Western United States for a year and try to do your visiting teaching 100%. Your testimony will quadruple and YOU WILL BE CHALLENGED.  I recommend that we re-examine the basics before we demand the complexities. Milk, then meat. My wise friend reminds me of this often. And then she texts me nightly to see that I read my scriptures. It's really fun to get wrapped up in the complicated, heady matters of the gospel, but I think we need a moment to breathe and take in the simple purity of the gospel. The small and simple things, after all, are the means by which greatness is brought to pass. 

This is my friend Dana, modeling a shirt made for her birthday by our friend Justin. I love the message on it- "Real feminists visit teach 100%." Amen sister. Amen. 

believing

I need to write this down so that I don't forget it. It isn't for you, it's for me. If some kernel of it touches you, that's great, but I need to write it to remember.

I have been troubled lately by the trend of Mormonism-discussing articles. It seems like people who have had an experience with the church are using their experiences for capital. Perhaps it is the fervor surrounding what Newsweek and the New York Times last year called, "The Mormon Moment" that has sparked the interest. Perhaps there are political motivations. Regardless of the motivation, it appears that my religion has become fodder for articles and columns rather than a means to access God. Honestly, it's why I won't be voting for Mitt Romney this fall. I want my religion to stay peculiar. I want it to stay out of the mainstream. We have never been mainstream, and I am not ready to apologize for that. It has become a cultural stamp to say "I was once Mormon, and here are all of the reasons why I was wrong and I am stupid for doing it". I am tired of reading those things. I am tired of hearing the reasons why these people think I am stupid for remaining active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I understand the implications.

I have read the history, I have intimately known the racism, the sexism, the bigotry. I understand that heritage in proclaiming my love for and adherence to the church. I can see the danger in accepting that.

I am not blind in my faith.

But when it comes down to it, that is precisely what I have: faith. I often think that the only things I have are faith and an enduring hope that faith will be rewarded. I am increasingly comfortable with that. I do not know many things. I am constantly impressed to think about how little I actually KNOW for fact. It seems that there is always another modifying element that comes along to challenge my certainty in all things. I'm not just talking about churchy things here: social, emotional, academic, secular, scientific, etc. Knowledge seems to work as a manner of disproving past theorems, asserting the rightness of new ideas to replace old ones. It's the work of so much philosophy and science. I respect that, but I am not going to root myself in it as absolute truth. I spend a lot of time at church asking questions and challenging the knowingness of my fellow Mormons as well. I don't direct my frustrations with knowing at the secular world alone. I want to push to see if they really know, and if they do, how it can be so. I rely a lot on Alma to back up my challenge here. Is their belief mistaken for knowing?

I want us to become more comfortable with faith. There are so many things that we cannot know, and I am happy to accept the limitations of my capacities. I can acknowledge my weaknesses. In so doing, I also must assert that there are many who seem to know more than I do. I wear my questioning nature as a badge of faith. I believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ can withstand my questions, and righteousness will reign. I believe in absolute truth. I do not know it for certain, but I believe in it. There is power in belief.

I am increasingly comfortable with not knowing. I am increasingly comfortable with relying singularly on faith. I am, herein, seeking to praise that virtue. I want to hear more people in the church stand at their pulpits on the first Sunday of the month and tell me what they BELIEVE. I am tired of hearing what they presume to KNOW. I am saying that there are limitations to what we can know, but there is not a limit to what we can believe.

I study systems of value in the history of humankind. I have seen empires fall and rise based on the certainty of particular systems, assertions of knowledge. Assertions of knowledge lead to dangerous, hateful places. In so studying, I have come to the conclusion that we are all different. We are all trying to adhere the most to the things we want the most, the things about which we are most certain, the things which congratulate us the most. We are all seeking for the best situation for ourselves and for those we love. We use logic to deduce the best possible means to accomplish our goals. I will never deny the power of logic in decision making, but I would really like to introduce and affirm the power of faith in decision making. Not in knowing, but in believing. Faith, inherently, has uncertainty built into it. That's why it's scary.

I went to the Nauvoo Pageant this past weekend. I have to insert here, that I have found a lot of ways in my life to disconnect from Mormon culture. I hadn't ever seen Saturday's Warrior. I never fell for any of the missionaries who visited the wards of my youth. I didn't own a Jody dress with an ugly pastel floral print. I didn't plan to marry until after I had graduated from college. I have friends who are homosexual, and I had stepped foot in a bar before the age of 22. I enjoy a nice Diet Coke now and again. I unapologetically pepper my language with swears. I didn't want to go to BYU, and I have never been to a Cougar's football game. I only ate at Brick Oven in Provo once (it was gross). I often forget what happened in Kirtland, and couldn't name the prophets in order for you. I sought to defy the faith of my ancestors in a lot of venues, sought to differentiate myself from them for a long time. I went to the Manti Pageant a few years back as a tongue in cheek, semi-ironc statement. I can take responsibility for those decisions I made.  I was defensive against an institution that sometimes manifests human insecurity and selfishness. I was defensive against a culture that sometimes moves in ways I think of as unholy, ungodly, monotonous and harmful. I was defensive against institutional harm that has been done to my people. I was defensive. And I accept that.

I hadn't really wanted to travel to Nauvoo with my ward in Lincoln for the utter cliche of it all. But my heart was softened while there, as a piece of the evolution of my faith. I was in conversation with a friend from the ward here who was baptized a few months back. He thinks really deeply about things, and so is interesting to talk to. He is pretty logical about most things, and it's refreshing sometimes to hear things from a Spock perspective (I function mostly as a Captain Kirk). But after we watched the pageant, he told me that he felt like his heart grew three sizes bigger, that the hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he felt overwhelmed with peace. I felt like he was witnessing to me the meeting of the head and the heart. Together, they testified to him and allowed the Spirit to teach him about the Gospel. He told me he felt like the Grinch in the cartoon version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, when he goes into the town and everyone shares their canned food with him. When he feels bad about them all being hungry, but still celebrating Christmas, so he gets the "roast beast" they had prepared- while he is slicing it, his heart grows too big for the frame. That part. He felt like his heart was going to burst with love.

I love that feeling.

I am also completely terrified and addicted to that feeling.

I cannot explain the logic in it, and I want to assert the power of feeling the Spirit. I want to acknowledge the courage it takes to act on faith. I want to sing praise for my pioneer grandparents whose exodus makes no logical sense. I want to give love to the polygamist sisterwives of my ancestry, who resisted based on logic, but committed because of faith. I want to thank all of them for their humility and willingness to build, what they believed, was the kingdom of God on the earth. I think I am coming to understand why there is such a focus on pioneers at church. I always hated how much of a focus there was on that... It seemed like ancestor worship that detracted from a testimony of Jesus Christ, which is the center of my faith. But I think I am coming to know the principle that is at work in those stories of which there are not a few. I am coming to see the common thread that knits my heart to theirs. I am coming to know that it is precisely that testimony, that faith to act on the mission of Jesus Christ is what provokes the focus. We liken the past unto ourselves.

I believe that faith leads to action. I am trying to resist the demand to know, and trying to be content with the power of faith.My sweet missionary baby brother directed me to this talk today. It has a lot in it that I find applicable to my assertions, queries and ideas here. The gospel is amazing. I believe it to be true.

East/West/East

The sunset is classic today.
Clouds scratch across the sky from the north east and point in the direction of home; southward, westward. Arching high above the prairie, they too seem to think that this is "fly-over country". I wanted to come here so that I could know the un-ness of that idea. To touch the ground, touch the country. They are white and high and straight as arrows that made this land work. They end together in the corner of my left eye, a soft peach patch next to the sun. And above those clouds and their lightness and whiteness and highness and straightness and pointingness, the sky is the softest, babiest blue that can't help itself but to remind me of my brother as a baby. Maybe that color is given to all baby boys; he was the one I knew the most, the one I held first.
The clouds look like they were stretched, or maybe that they are running. They are like a masthead that is leading a ship to the west, to the south, to "America".

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I was thinking today about how I am an un-pioneer these days: pushing myself backwards from the history of my faith, from the narrative that had been my cultural harbor in so many ways, but that has also repelled and rejected me, and left me alone, here, in the middle.

Ogden, my birthplace, with its train memorabilia: Jack Kerouac talked about it once and made me feel valid and liberally liberated. My people settled this place and they dot the land there. Children of the "last living son of a Utah pioneer", they learned to love the land, and it pumps in my veins in very real ways. That baby boy. That summer dust in my nose.

And then westward, ever westward, the American Dream; Manifest Destiny. Progress.

San Diego, flourishing under early Mormon community, and the land of my adolescence. My people are there still, at least physically. Go west; paradise is there.

But I always push back. I always rupture the narrative.

Provo, with that university and my heart's home. This is where I found myself and came to know myself as the best that I could be. This is where I was first the happiest. There will be more, I know, but this was my first.

Lincoln now, where trains do not exist in memoriam, but in shining and cutting reality, declaring themselves consistently set to a schedule I cannot untangle. Where is the Mormon trail here? The trail my people plodded? There is a cemetery a little less than an hour away that I haven't yet been to, that might tell me more. I wonder if they were here. I wonder if they would care about me. That I am reversing their trail.

Un-cross the continent.

Those clouds are a deep purple now, yet they push all the same. They are reminding about how the west was won. Won from what? I am not homesick for a real home, but for a place that may have never existed; for vapor, high, white clouds that point ever west. Eventually, the land runs out.

The birds and the squirrels all assembled themselves in the trees outside of my window to watch the sunset. I have never seen such a thing. It might be because I have never lived at the height of treetops before. The birds fluttered and flitted around a good deal before they claimed their positions, sort of a clumsy dance. The looked more like they were falling, flapping their wings only to lift themselves high enough to avoid crashing. It seemed like they were contending, because once they settled, they stayed until dark.