It's a Tough Nut to Crack...

Years ago, Hurricane Katrina rammed into the Mississippi and Louisiana coast.
You remember.
It was bad.

The Spouse and I were living in the southeast, and both serving in stake leadership positions at the time, when we were told that the church was going to mobilize to send help. We were going to send actual people to do actual clean-up humanitarian aid work. And let me tell you, I was on board with this thing. You betcha. I was so excited at the prospect of being able to get my hands dirty and actually DO something. We arranged childcare for our baby girl, and waited for instructions.

Then we got the direction that women were not invited to come--priesthood only.
I wasn't devastated. I was just downright ornery about it. I mean, I know I can't wield a chainsaw and throw around downed trees like my husband can, but I can sure rip out moldy drywall and carefully sort through and salvage the belongings of people who lost everything. When I protested and pushed back and asked what we, as women, COULD do to help, we were told that we would organize and make quilts.

Make quilts?
sigh.
I know some women who make beautiful quilts and take a lot of satisfaction in doing this kind of work, especially as a service. They would put the Amish to shame in their gorgeous use of color and symmetry. I admire that so.
But I am bad at making quilts. Just plain bad at it, and I frustrate people who are good at it.
It hit to the core of some of my frustration--why must my role in the gospel be in those areas that I am really bad at????

But whatever. Swallow it down. Deal with it. It's fine.
The Spouse left with the other men from our stake and headed down. To get his hands dirty and work hard. When they arrived in their assigned area, they proceeded to a (flooded) stake center where they would camp out. About 600 brethren from all over the southeast were gathered there to receive their assignments and instructions.

Then a group of sisters showed up from one stake who decided to send women anyway. My husband related that these 30 women and young women (they had brought their Laurels since Priests could come), claimed both the women's and men's bathrooms as their own and left the single handicapped bathroom for the men. One toilet and sink. For 600 men. So that they could have privacy and mirrors.

No wonder the men wanted to pull their hair out.

As I was recently thinking about and studying out the issue of ordaining women to the priesthood, this experience came back to my mind. You see--there are women that deeply want to serve in ways that feel meaningful to them, that they don't feel are open to them right now. I don't mean that they want to be apostles and overthrow the church. I mean that they feel drawn to service that is often designated to our priesthood-holding brothers. To our husbands, fathers, and sons. Some women don't feel drawn to that AT ALL. They are so happy to leave it to the men. They are thrilled at the prospect of making quilts. The thing is: both positions are right. Both positions should be fine, I think.

I can also compare it to sisters that choose to serve missions. I have always loved that sisters can choose to prayerfully consider and submit their papers to serve a mission--or not. And it's fine, either way. Which is why I could serve a mission and have experiences that I so desperately needed, at the same time that my best friend could get married and begin her family instead. Both righteous choices. Both very individual.

I think that's why this issue is such a tough nut to crack. I fully love and support those women who want to serve in ways that extend beyond women and children--who ache to show up in their t-shirt and tennis shoes and get to work and realize that it might mean no showers for a week. I also fully understand and support my sisters who wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole and are content serving in their current capacities, and who see their feminine contributions as equally satisfying and powerful. I can see that. I do think that the Relief Society is capable of so much more than we currently do. I wish we could capture the vision Joseph Smith had for us, as a quorum of women. We have a long way to go on that.

But in the meantime, while being ordained is not something that drives me, I try to remain open and willing to serve. Willing to do more. Willing to know more. I believe "all that God has revealed, all the He does now reveal, and [I] believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things, pertaining to the kingdom of God."

The blessing of alone...

Image from here.

I stayed up until 3:30 this morning cleaning, just so I could enjoy the peace. Because it's when I'm up that late, alone, that I finally have time to write notes to tuck into my kid's lunches and make sure that they have matching socks to wear. You know. Like a good mother would.

Walking around in your own home--putting things away, making things right, and knowing that it isn't being undone at the same time by little hands--being alone and content in your own mind? That, my friends, is happiness.

One of the hardest parts, for me, of being a Latter-day Saint feminist is how lonely it can feel. Sometimes I go to church and feel alone in a crowd. In countless Sunday School and Relief Society lessons, I have stared down at my lap and said nothing because I didn't want to say the wrong thing--the thing that might make someone uncomfortable. Even if I believed passionately that my thoughts were more true than what was being said. I keep my mouth shut most of the time. Well. Some of the time.

But keeping my thoughts to myself tends to make me feel very disconnected from my sisters in the gospel.
It makes me feel very, very alone.

Tonight I read the transcript of this video with the general presidents (or former presidents, for Sister Dalton) of the Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary organizations as they discussed women, the priesthood, and women's role in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I laid my head on the table and cried because their words--their kindly offered and sincere words--left me feeling ever more isolated, misunderstood and alone.

Where is the serenity and peace for that kind of loneliness?
The kind of loneliness that I worry, deep down, might last forever?

As I grapple, trying to hold on to peace even in my seeking, I remembered the Savior's words in John 14:18 when he said "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."

So I went and looked up that scripture and found this too--earlier in the chapter:
"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father's house there are many mansions...I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."

The truth is: sometimes I am alone. Sometimes in the gospel I not only feel misunderstood and isolated--I am misunderstood and isolated.
But I have been promised comfort and reassurance in knowing that even when I feel most alone, there is a place, just for me. That there are many mansions, and it will be okay because mine will be personal and individualized. It will be perfect, for me.

So. For as much as I don't know or understand, and despite knowing that my struggles will surface again tomorrow, tonight I can know that I can walk around my quiet, dark, house or sit quietly in my loneliness and know that, in the end, I am never alone.

April 2013 General Conference

The F Word.

Artist unknown.

Feminist.

The F word.

It conjures up images of sad, angry, bitter women.

Aging hippies with no bras.

Intellectuals who have ne'er seen the inside of a dentist's office.

A fearsome thing to behold.

I remember sneering to a professor once that I would never become a feminist.

He cocked his eyebrow at me and asked if I believed in the right for a girl to drive, to vote, to get an education, to get a job, and to decide who she wanted to marry.

My response was somewhere along the lines of "Well, duh."

"You are not only a feminist, then, but--in most of the world--a radical one at that."

Ooof.

So what does it mean, to me, to be a Latter-day Saint and a feminist?

It means that I have a deep and abiding faith in God and in His son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

It means that I have a deep love for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

It means that I married in the temple (a marriage that makes me blissfully happy) and that I have a testimony of the temple. 

It also means that I struggle with my role as a mother and a woman.

It means that I believe women in the gospel are capable of so much more than their currently assigned roles in our faith.

It means that I am deeply torn about the fact that I can't talk about these struggles in church. I yearn to be heard and seen. I fear for my membership. I feel very alone.

This blog is my somewhat anonymous attempt to explore the roots and branches of my own faith. To understand the path that I've taken, to this point, and to see where it might lead.

I am seeking.