Mormonism of Yesteryear's Pioneer Spirit

It would not be complete to not include the link to this post by Holly Welker; Latter-Day Saints and Modern-Day Pioneers, which generated in me a culmination that it has become  time or even past time for me to lift up my voice with my husband's voice in honoring the spirit, integrity and courage displayed by his familial ancestors as reflective of the pioneer spirit of Mormonism.  I can admire the story, the people, the experience and relate to it strongly as it mirrors for me that deeply held faith beliefs can sustain horrific life experiences. 

I do believe believe that through arduous reflection, introspection, and determination, faith can help rescue human pain, human hurt.  I am not of the belief that there is some immediate miraculous lifting of the anguish, but that faith is a process and like many  processes, it evolves in increments, steps, time and experience. I think for the most part humans will experience varying kinds of levels of deep pain, deep hurt that need the balm of healing.  And I believe a combination of factors to include reaching out for or holding onto faith can be that balm.

My husband's  viewpoint on his ancestral story is better told in his own book 'And Should We Die', which is not an effort on my part to promote his book in this post; more that his own words tell the story of how he feels about his ancestral heritage and story.   Given what I have come to learn about this fateful and dangerous trek and the costs in terms of loss of life of men, women and children, I do not share quite the same viewpoint as my husband.  We do share in common a mutual admiration for the people who were his relatives, who made that trek, who brought his family to the West. 

In that vein, when I read Holly Welker's post, I let out a hoop and holler of Yes!  A person who not only shares my viewpoint but brings additional material to the discussion, offering up resource material for me to seek out and digest.  Bringing me to an almost 'aha' moment, which generated in me the desire to initiate this blog. 

Quoting from her post;

  As far as I'm concerned, my activity in the Mormon church is irrelevant to my identity as a Mormon. Mormons call themselves saints; I suppose these days I'm a secular saint rather than a devout one. But that indelible mark made on the collective Mormon psyche by the trek across the plains? It's as vivid and deep on my psyche as on anyone's. What it marks is not my relationship to orthodoxy but to sacrifice, landscape, the unknown, and change.

I am proud of and humbled by the actions of my ancestors. They abandoned the familiar and strode bravely into the unknown, confident that doing so would enable a better future. They gave up possessions, relationships that no longer nurtured them, ideologies they had outgrown. They did the hardest thing they could, both because they could and because they had no other choice.

I cannot count the number of people who have said to me,"I have profound doubts about the church -- its politics, its doctrines, its social structures. I don't always feel at home. But I'll never stop attending or voice certain doubts in public because that would render the sacrifices of my ancestors null and void."

And I say, "How is doing the opposite of what your ancestors did the best way to honor their actions? Isn't the best way to honor their examples simply to follow it?"

I currently live in Salt Lake City, with ample opportunity to celebrate Pioneer Day: concerts in the tabernacle, a ball, a powwow, fireworks, the obligatory parade. I'll probably skip it, because these days Pioneer Day is about settling down, when the spirit that made the arrival in the Salt Lake Valley possible in the first place was about rising up. Mormons today are instructed to submit to authority, when the impetus for the trek across America was rejection of authority.

So this year I celebrate by imagining the Pioneer Day parade of my latter-day dreams. The marshals of my parade wouldn't be men who make pronouncements about doctrine, but the contemporary pioneers who challenge and remake the ways Mormons lives their day-to-day lives.

Read more at the link, and the resource material she has posted.

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Literalism, another way to look at it

 

I have come to value that one of the pitfalls my formerly devout (in other words, accepted by the LDS mainstream) husband was his experience of a literal faith, which proved to have holes too big for him to ignore, followed by his need to resist the literalism of his faith community. 

In the either/or literal sense, his resistance was truly more his own effort to deepen his faith within the context of his faith community.  What he met with were too many who offered him the black or white literalism - if you are not for it, do not believe it, do not accept it, then you have lost your way, are listening to another force, are out of step and compliance with the homogeneous belief requirements. Would that his resistance have met with people who could offer him a more meaningful way to wear and use his faith, acknowledging his need to be out of compliance as part of his quest to deepen his faith.

My journey with him began at the time of his questioning, and I can only speculate what his life in the literal belief may have looked like, felt like to him.  Before I knew much of the community of LDS or Mormonism, I only knew of some of what is described as the peculiarities of Mormons - the usual array of things like their undergarments, the history of polygamy, the strong family bond, and an arrogance that they believed they had the only truth there is to have in such matters as faith, family, God.  What was more relevant to me than what the beliefs were, was his carriage of himself, the obviousness (to me) of his deeply held faith, and that there was a goodness about him that I had to conclude came about as a result of his heritage, his culture and his beliefs.   I have oft wondered if there was a way in which to accept aspects of the faith minus the literalism and still be able to hold to the faith-based tenet of the narrative.

My experience of religions considered to be traditional and mainstream Christian is that they too have holes too big to ignore, and again it seems literalism is a core cause of the need to resist by questioning.  It is the questioning process that I believe strengthens the faith.  It is the faith, I believe, that then strengthens the belief.  The two seem incompatible at times. I could never, for example, say that I believe with absolute certainty and unequivocably that a conceptual storyline is reality or truth, rather that it points to inner, deeper, personal truths that need to be nurtured over time and experience in order to more fully manifest in one's personal life.

Coming across the post Avoid The Temptation of Literalism, by Steve P. at bycommonconsent corresponds well to my take on the matter, and I'm actually a bit surprised to find it so well articulated from inside the LDS community.

To borrow Steve's words from the post;

This is why reading the scriptures a scientific text does such violence to their purpose. They are designed to connect us subjectively, consciously and spiritually to richer truths and meaning. To use the scriptures to pull out objective facts about the physical world and its history is to tear them way from what they are there to ground. Literalism is like giving a child a calculus book as a stepping stool to reach a washbasin. In so doing, much is lost that lies with the proper use of the book. Certainly children need footstools, but such use misses the true potential the book has to offer.

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The scriptures are sacred. They allow us to touch the deepest truths available. To use them to read the surface of physical things (for which they are not intended and for which they don’t lend themselves) is a mistake that leads us away from where science is strong and should be used (as Elder Oaks points out) and, worse, wrenches the scriptures away from the beauty and truth they have to offer.

My husband has posted thousands of words expressing just such thoughts in his earnest need to indict literalism in any religion.  He and I have shared many hours of conversation and discussion over the past sixteen years of our lives together.  I'm not as likely to spend the amount of time, energy or resources as he has used in pointing to the flaw in a literal interpretation of what many consider the 'sacred' book.  As we have shared our thoughts, feelings with each other, I believe our sense of faith and belief has evolved and that while we share much in common in our connectedness at a spiritual level, we might have somewhat dissimilar verbalized belief sets.  It is extremely difficult to have any kind of conversation about religion, beliefs, faith because the language one eventually must employ has so many words that are 'charged' with meanings as defined for us, rather than words we can use and define for ourselves. 

Yet he and I have persevered in sharing such discussions, and when it gets close to the heart of the matter, to the faith of our child selves and the intellect of our adult selves, a reconciliation must take place for the faith to grow and mature.  I see us at this place in trying to find our own definitions. 

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She asks the questions most obvious to me

Is this a pattern? A lot of us women on fMh have been hurt by men in some form or another - abuse, rape, abandonment, etc. It seems to me that my friend in the temple easily dismissed my concerns because of my fears. If I wasn’t so “damaged”, then I would understand the patriarchal order and be at peace with it.

Is that true? Part of me wonders if it might be. But then part of me tends to think hat because I am aware of the abuses of authority that can occur, I am more sensitive to how they can occur.

Anyways, these are my questions:  If you have been hurt by a man at some point in your life, do you feel it has shaped your feminism? If you have never been hurt by a man, what do you think shapes your feminism and makes you aware of these issues? If more women who are not “damaged” speak up, will it lend more credence to those of us who are and make it harder to just dismiss us and our concerns?

via Feminist Mormon Housewives by Stephanie on 9/18/10

She asks questions that seem obvious to me, in the sharing of sisterhood across all the spectrums, don’t we have a bit of a sister obligation to ‘hear’ our sisters when they try to speak to abuse they experience under authoritarian structures.  And don’t we have some inner urging to speak out against it, even if the voice we use is one of support for one of our sisters?

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What does Yon Kippur have to do with Mormonism?

 

Perhaps more than is realized or currently practiced.  In quickly scanning which posts I would read this morning, I almost skipped this post, because it immediately started with Yon Kippur, and I wasn’t in the mood to read about Yon Kippur today.  But what Mraynes did with interpreting the spirit of Yon Kippur in applying it to Mormon doctrine of atonement was refreshing.

Today is Yom Kippur. Day of Atonement. A time to repent of the sins between man and God. I like the idea of taking a day to right your relationship with God. In our own tradition, the story of Enos has always spoken to me for this reason.

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There is not a lot of room within Mormon theology for this kind of relationship with God. God is perfect, some say unchanging, and it is us who must repent, break our hearts and make contrite our spirits. And yet who among us has not been angry at God? Who among us has not felt that God has treated us poorly?

If Rabbi Brous’ metaphor holds, what kind of marriage is it if one party cannot say to the other, “You have hurt me”?

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Barbara B. Smith influence on Mormon Women at time of ERA

 

It helped me to read what Stephanie posted in eulogizing Barbara B. Smith.  Her expansive description of the time in which Barbara Smith took office of President of Relief Society reflected a time of great inner organizational structural change in the LDS church.  At the time of ERA, I knew little of Mormon faith, beliefs or culture, only that the LDS women were marching in lockstep to help defeat ERA.  At the time I was not in the fullest sense of the feminist movement, but I was in a budding career and much interested in growth of recognition of equal wages for women who found themselves in the workplace (either by choice or economic circumstance).  I recall my thoughts at that time of thorough surprise, puzzlement and even disdain in hearing that Mormon women were not in support of ERA.  How could sisters not support sisters, I wondered.  What was this peculiar belief set that permitted the women to hold to the status quo of too many characteristics on the economic and domestic frontlines belonging to a ‘man’s world’?

Perhaps Barbara B. Smith wasn’t as far off the mark as I believed at the time.  Now that even Mormon women find themselves in the workplace, and not necessarily by choice, but by economic circumstance, women’s rights have taken a slightly backwards step forcing choices to multi-task as wife, mother, parent, and working woman.  The ‘SuperWoman’ as it was thought we women could be in those years of the movement (1970’s n 198'0’s) has proven to be unrealizeable.  Some role element suffers - be it the career, the parent, the wife.   I now believe an economy that forces women into the workforce at the expense of raising their children has consequences for the woman and the children.  Which is not to say it can’t be balanced and done well, but it takes enormous energy and superb help, not always readily or handily available. 

Having said that, I also believe that an economy built on consumerism has worn out it’s welcome and revisiting what we ‘need’ instead of what we ‘want’ is timely.  We may well find out that we need less consumerism and want more time to be in and with family. 

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