I was saddened to hear of Thomas Keating's death yesterday. I first ran into his writings some years ago when his work was referenced in a book I was reading for a class. At the time it seemed kind of exotic and compelling but not something I felt I could make as much time for. Then as time passed it became more and more clear that my stress and anxiety levels were getting to be very intense and I needed to do something about them for my health's sake. As long as I needed a meditation practice to help me deal with stress it seemed eminently practical to combine worship with meditation, so I was more interested in Keating's teachings than in secular meditation practices. Meditation has made a big contribution to my mental well being and I've been grateful to Keating for his beautiful writing on the subject. As I've grown interested in other angles of spiritual practice and thought I've kept running into Keating again and again. It seems his impact on the world was large enough that I couldn't quite get away from him.
Keating's writings have helped me not only with meditation but also in helping me understand my overall spiritual life path. There have been special moments where I realize there are names and traditions that help to explain my experiences and that help me know mentally what to do with them and recognize the good parts of them that I couldn't have found as easily without his help. I've been very greatful for everything he has offered in life and am saddened to realize he is gone on to be with God. I hope the afterlife is as delightful as he imagined it.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Sunday, October 7, 2018
The Candle in the Silence
We were some of the last people to leave church today and my six year old ran into the chapel just before we left. I had a moment to contemplate the sanctuary lamp before we left. For context, this is the candle always kept burning before the reserved Eucharist elements to commemorate the presence of god in the sanctuary. Enjoying that sacred moment while being aware of the condescending attitude towards Ex Mormons that is routinely expressed in General Conference led to me writing a poem to explore the beauty of that moment along with the the pain I always feel around this time of year knowing people I care about are being taught to think ill of me.
The Candle in the Silence
The candle is in the silence,
The ghost of incense remains.
The music has all gone quiet.
Outside, the words of fear persist.
The candle is in the presence,
The Spirit of prayer remains.
The music of soul is silent.
Outside, the words of fear persist.
The candle is in the silence,
The Spirit of God remains.
The music of silence is ardent.
Outside, the words of fear persist.
The candle of silence is brilliant,
The Spirit of Love invades.
Life’s music and joy is fervent.
Outside, the words of fear persist.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Sam Young's pending Excommunication
It made me sad to learn today that Sam Young is being excommunicated from the LDS church for protesting the LDS church's children interview policies. I was totally sympathetic to his desire to change how the system worked. My own interviews as a child weren't abusive but they were within an abusive system that had a dramatic effect negative effect on me and on my siblings. If you trace how they contributed to a major family tragedy that happened when I was quite young, the worthiness interview system and the ideas that are used to justify that system are probably one of the worst things that ever happened to me and my family with consequences that will probably never fully heal. I am very glad to have left that behind, knowing that my children can mostly escape a recurrence of that kind of psychological abuse.
I never really expected Sam's protest to achieve much and I've been impressed by the amount he did achieve. He had more faith in his leaders than I did. It seemed just a matter of time till he would be excommunicated. He very much was taking up the role of a prophet calling his people to repentance. Its part of being human that nobody really likes being on the receiving end of a prophetic call to repentance. It makes the way this story is ending unsurprising. But that doesn't make it any less sad. We could always hope for better.
I never really expected Sam's protest to achieve much and I've been impressed by the amount he did achieve. He had more faith in his leaders than I did. It seemed just a matter of time till he would be excommunicated. He very much was taking up the role of a prophet calling his people to repentance. Its part of being human that nobody really likes being on the receiving end of a prophetic call to repentance. It makes the way this story is ending unsurprising. But that doesn't make it any less sad. We could always hope for better.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Maundy Thursday and Feet Washing
For the last several years we have tried to attend a few additional services during the week before Easter than the year before. There are so many beautiful traditions and experiences to explore that even after having been an Episcopalian for several years I still sometimes feel like a religious tourist, trying out new things for the first time. For perspective, our Parish typically hosts or participates in at least eight worship events between the Sunday before Easter and Easter day. One new event for us this year was attending Maundy Thursday church services.
Maundy Thursday is a unique worship service celebrating the last Supper, the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist, Jesus washing the feet of the apostles, and looks forwards to the events at the Garden of Gethsemane. Probably the most meaningful part of the service for me was encountering the foot washing ceremony. As a Mormon, I had always been taught to view Jesus’s washing of the disciples feet as being a part of the LDS temple ceremonies. Jesus’s statement that the apostles didn’t know what He had done to them but would understand it in the future was supposed to mean that Jesus had performed a special priesthood cleansing ceremony on the Apostles without explaining it to them. The ceremony in essence becomes a sort of supplemental or elite baptism, washing away the sins missed the first time around and blessing many parts of the body in preparation for a glorified resurrection. The LDS temple ceremony itself identifies the washing ceremony as being a reinterpretation of the consecration of priests in Exodus 29-4-7 and fails to mention Jesus’s teachings at all.
It is not uncommon to meet Mormon’s (or ex Mormon’s who are often more willing to talk about it) who found the LDS washing ceremony to be a traumatic or disturbing experience, especially if they went through the temple like I did before 2005 when the LDS church changed the ceremony to be less disturbing. Being repeatedly and somewhat intimately touched by strangers who don’t ask permission or give warning first while you are inadequately dressed just doesn’t always come across as a sacred experience. While I sympathize with these concerns I did not personally find the LDS washing ceremony to be personally disturbing, perhaps because someone (in violation of Mormon social taboos) told me partially what to expect and the officiator didn’t accidentally touch or see more than they meant to. However, even without that sense of trauma the washing was a bit of an empty place for me because the temple ceremony had lost its sense of meaning. I could hardly even think about the last supper and Jesus washing the disciples without thinking about the temple. It feels sad when a scripture passage is only associated with memories that no longer have a sense of purpose.
So it was a special occasion for me to hear the story again of Jesus acting as a humble servant or perhaps even in the role of a slave, washing the feet of his disciples to put an end to their arguments about which disciple was more important by showing them with his own example that leading in the church is about serving those underneath you, not by being served. This is what the apostles hadn’t realized but would realize afterwards, that Jesus had taken their expectation of what it meant to be important and turned it upside down. The very greatest of all was insisting on taking on the role of a servant to prove to them that they needed to be servants as well. Being important in the church should be about serving others, not yourself. After recounting the story the priest proclaimed that in their position of as priesthood leaders they needed a special reminder to live the kind of humility that Jesus taught and so invited us to allow them as our priests to wash our feet. There was no command, no mandatory participation, no surprises. I joined the line and had the intimate and consent governed experience of having a priest wash my foot, with its surgery scars still clearly visible, and tell me God be with you as she dried me. Another of the priests told everyone he washed to go and serve everyone as Christ served them. After the foot washing was over we were reminded that if the priests of God’s church served us in this way that we were to serve each other with humility just as we had been served. Just like the apostles we had submitted to being humbly served by our religious leaders, so like the Apostles we needed to learn to serve everyone else in our lives with humility.
While there is a powerful symbolism in letting Christ serve us by cleansing us from sin, foot washing was and is in itself an act of humbly offering hospitality that helps counteract the sin of pride. I didn’t come away from the foot washing feeling that I had experienced an elite cleansing from sin in a ceremony whose design (at least till 2005) didn’t fully take into account whether the cleansed felt violated. Instead, I felt humbled, having intimately experienced a priest humbly wash me and then tell me to serve and love those around me with the same kind of humility.
Maundy Thursday is a unique worship service celebrating the last Supper, the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist, Jesus washing the feet of the apostles, and looks forwards to the events at the Garden of Gethsemane. Probably the most meaningful part of the service for me was encountering the foot washing ceremony. As a Mormon, I had always been taught to view Jesus’s washing of the disciples feet as being a part of the LDS temple ceremonies. Jesus’s statement that the apostles didn’t know what He had done to them but would understand it in the future was supposed to mean that Jesus had performed a special priesthood cleansing ceremony on the Apostles without explaining it to them. The ceremony in essence becomes a sort of supplemental or elite baptism, washing away the sins missed the first time around and blessing many parts of the body in preparation for a glorified resurrection. The LDS temple ceremony itself identifies the washing ceremony as being a reinterpretation of the consecration of priests in Exodus 29-4-7 and fails to mention Jesus’s teachings at all.
It is not uncommon to meet Mormon’s (or ex Mormon’s who are often more willing to talk about it) who found the LDS washing ceremony to be a traumatic or disturbing experience, especially if they went through the temple like I did before 2005 when the LDS church changed the ceremony to be less disturbing. Being repeatedly and somewhat intimately touched by strangers who don’t ask permission or give warning first while you are inadequately dressed just doesn’t always come across as a sacred experience. While I sympathize with these concerns I did not personally find the LDS washing ceremony to be personally disturbing, perhaps because someone (in violation of Mormon social taboos) told me partially what to expect and the officiator didn’t accidentally touch or see more than they meant to. However, even without that sense of trauma the washing was a bit of an empty place for me because the temple ceremony had lost its sense of meaning. I could hardly even think about the last supper and Jesus washing the disciples without thinking about the temple. It feels sad when a scripture passage is only associated with memories that no longer have a sense of purpose.
So it was a special occasion for me to hear the story again of Jesus acting as a humble servant or perhaps even in the role of a slave, washing the feet of his disciples to put an end to their arguments about which disciple was more important by showing them with his own example that leading in the church is about serving those underneath you, not by being served. This is what the apostles hadn’t realized but would realize afterwards, that Jesus had taken their expectation of what it meant to be important and turned it upside down. The very greatest of all was insisting on taking on the role of a servant to prove to them that they needed to be servants as well. Being important in the church should be about serving others, not yourself. After recounting the story the priest proclaimed that in their position of as priesthood leaders they needed a special reminder to live the kind of humility that Jesus taught and so invited us to allow them as our priests to wash our feet. There was no command, no mandatory participation, no surprises. I joined the line and had the intimate and consent governed experience of having a priest wash my foot, with its surgery scars still clearly visible, and tell me God be with you as she dried me. Another of the priests told everyone he washed to go and serve everyone as Christ served them. After the foot washing was over we were reminded that if the priests of God’s church served us in this way that we were to serve each other with humility just as we had been served. Just like the apostles we had submitted to being humbly served by our religious leaders, so like the Apostles we needed to learn to serve everyone else in our lives with humility.
While there is a powerful symbolism in letting Christ serve us by cleansing us from sin, foot washing was and is in itself an act of humbly offering hospitality that helps counteract the sin of pride. I didn’t come away from the foot washing feeling that I had experienced an elite cleansing from sin in a ceremony whose design (at least till 2005) didn’t fully take into account whether the cleansed felt violated. Instead, I felt humbled, having intimately experienced a priest humbly wash me and then tell me to serve and love those around me with the same kind of humility.
Friday, March 30, 2018
My Journey with the Bible
I received my first set of scriptures at 8 years old as a baptism present. They consisted of a bonded leather brown King James bible with a matching “triple combination” containing the other Mormon scriptures. I was expected to read from them regularly as well as bring them to church in a grey vinyl carrying case that came with them. Telling an eight year old to read a King James Bible might seem a tall order, especially since I only learned to read in 3rd grade.
However, I am one of the autistics who has the mixed blessing of hyperlexia. That means my anxiety level about reading things I don’t fully understand is very low and I love to read, so where other kids would have given up in frustration I dove eagerly into authors like Tolkien and Asimov. I promptly read both the entirety of the Bible and the Book of Mormon when I was too young to understand them thoroughly but that didn’t matter much to me, I liked reading and could often get the gist of what was happening. I remember reading the Book of Daniel as a youngster and proudly discovering that unlike the version I was taught in Sunday school the evil wise men got fed to the lions. I kept it up and became very familiar with the Book of Mormon and passingly familiar with the Bible. While the LDS version of the scriptures leave much to be desired in terms of the commentary and footnotes they provide I made thorough use of what they had. One of my childhood Sunday school teachers taught us how to make color coded marks to help us identify what category of assistance each footnote represented and before entering my teens I read through the almost of the LDS scriptures to mark all of the footnotes using the system she taught.
As I approached my teenage years I became aware that daily scripture reading wasn’t just a good habit, in the LDS worldview it is a commandment from God. I was afraid if I didn’t read my scriptures daily I was rebelling against God’s command so I became very strict in performing my daily reading no matter how late I was getting to bed. This need to be reading was reinforced by the popular and repetitive challenge from LDS leaders to read the Book of Mormon from start to finish within certain time frames. You could barely finish reading the Book of Mormon due to the challenge of one leader before some other leader would reissue the challenge. Scripture study was viewed as synonymous with reading the Book of Mormon. I felt that the Book of Mormon was true because I had always assumed it was true and felt that God pointed that out to me when I prayed about it in the classic Mormon fashion. Always assuming something isn’t the same thing as it being so, but I was satisfied enough to keep enjoying it the way I always had before.
As I entered my teens I had read the Book of Mormon so many times that it became less meaningful through sheer repetition and reading from the bible felt much more meaningful. I still felt I had to follow my leaders command to read the Book of Mormon daily so I doubled my scripture reading time so I could start to read both from the Bible and Book of Mormon regularly. My scriptures became so well used that the vinyl carrying case fell apart and was replaced by a black canvas bag with a special compartment for extra study materials.
Starting around age 14 I started attending a daily Sunday School class in Mormonism called “early morning seminary” and received my second copy of the LDS scriptures, an all in one volume (or Quad) in a Burgundy cover. The purpose of this second set was to allow me to have a copy in the Sunday school room to be used there and virtually nowhere else, so I never became very attached to this copy. I never succeeded in memorizing the scripture passages expected in this Sunday School class but I took pride that I didn’t just read the assigned selections but I read the entire text while keeping up with the class. I was able to keep this up until in the year we were studying the bible we got to the book of Isaiah. Mormon’s put a special emphasis on Isaiah being important but most of the Mormons I have talked to are positively terrified of it. It is common to hear people say they only read the parts from Isaiah that are copied into the Book of Mormon and even some skip those parts. When our class reached the Book of Isaiah we spent one day talking about how to read Isaiah and then skipped the entire book. That wouldn’t do for me, I wanted to read everything. Isaiah scared me too, but I took it slowly and prayerfully, reading the same passages over and over again until I felt I had some level of understanding. I became passionately involved with the text and would get into a zone of contemplative worshipful reading. I could only zone in like that if I had a quiet place to study, so I often found myself staying up late at night after the rest of my family had gone to bed to have time to study without any distractions. This drove my family a bit crazy, especially when I suggested they should hurry to bed so I could get on with my night of scripture study and journal writing. No one thought to buy me ear plugs or noise isolating headphones to help me study earlier in the evening, so I just stayed up late, sometimes very late.
This was a very dark time in my life and emotionally these late night study sessions became extremely important to me. I learned to write from practicing in my journal. I learned that even if I was afraid to trust anyone else in life I could still trust God. I had a sense of spiritual rebirth and developed a sense of a personal relationship with Jesus while contemplating the suffering servant passages in Isaiah, particularly chapter 53. The spiritual practices of scripture study and journal writing are probably the main reasons why I survived my teenage years without attempting suicide. In fact, I directly used them as a tool to escape from a cycle of child abuse that intensified after I started homeschooling.
My mother hated not being in control. I loved being obedient but hated being strictly controlled and could never really function well trying to do anything exactly like other people did them. My mental anatomy as an autistic is different enough that I often need to find my own ways and times to learn things. Unfortunately my mother had a strong need to believe she was perfect and she was very sensitive to other people questioning or acting outside of her perfect ideas and needed me to learn things on her time table instead of mine. She often yelled at me demanding to know if I thought she was stupid because I wouldn’t or couldn’t do things exactly her way without having a prolonged discussion about why and how. I recall one memorable incident when I washed some dishes in a different order than she thought was correct and she came into the room screaming at me, asking how dare I rebel against her when she had never even specified the order in which to wash them and had no reason to need them done in a specific order. Everything was black and white, good or evil. If you really wanted to be good you would do everything she expected right the first time. If you failed to be her version of perfect on the first try it was because you weren’t really trying because you were a bad person. My assumed evil personality justified whatever she found necessary to force compliance. At this point in my life I was larger and stronger than she was so she virtually always resorted to emotional manipulation and abuse. She moved quickly from offering rewards to offering punishments to trying to damage or even crush your sense of self esteem in hopes that you would start performing the task at hand correctly to prove her wrong about how worthless you were. Once when I begged for time to learn my daily chores without dramatic punishments because I wasn't trying to be lazy or rebellious but simply needed more time to learn how to remember everything and my parents told me that they felt if they didn’t take me strictly in hand I’d end up just like my brother, by which I think they meant a college dropout with no job and no girlfriend living in the basement. Due to my unique circumstances, I took it worse than that and became very scared of myself.
Among the many things she didn’t like, my staying up late to read my scriptures and write in my journal weren’t on her approved list. She didn’t like that I was sleep deprived. She hated that I used my journal writing to emotionally cope with life instead of pouring out my soul to her as if that idea made any sense at all. She didn’t understand why I needed peace and quiet to enter into intense contemplative scripture study. I don’t think she saw my scripture study as any different from doing my math homework which she expected me to be able to do while she indulged in screaming matches or worse against my little sister who she treated in the much same way as she treated me except with differences resulting from my being so much larger and stronger. In any case my mother started a campaign to try to stop me from writing in my journal or reading my scriptures at night. I decided that thought there was no chance I could defend my dignity when it case to the normal chores or school work, there was a real chance I might undermine her opinion of me when it came to my scripture study. I determined to make a point to fight her on this one issue where winning might mean something.
So the fight was on. She’d prowl into the basement where I would study at night or look to see if I had lights on in my bedroom. She tried to monitor and punish me more and more strictly until my father found out what was going on. Suddenly something clicked. Their evil rebel son wasn’t rebelling to sneak off to be promiscuous or use drugs or hang out with gangs or any other notorious evil. He was rebelling… to worship… in the tradition of the family faith. I intentionally used my worship behaviors to create a situation that made the emotional abuse look and feel absurd. It broke me out of the cycle of abuse and created a space where they respected me and became almost willing to bend over backwards to accommodate my life and needs. Things were still black and white but now I was considered to be good instead of bad. Unfortunately my victory didn’t apply to my little sister who they generally still viewed as deserving what she got even when I tried to explain otherwise. Life worked best when I depended on my parents for as little of my emotional or physical needs as possible since my mother still had trouble with things she didn’t control and was not above hurting me in dramatic ways just to get revenge for some annoyance years gone by without stopping to think about what she was doing. Like killing my pet hamster by pretending to forget to buy clean bedding for it until it died of infection to get revenge for the way my ADD had been really horrible before I started medication for it in third grade. She explained that she had always needed me to know what it felt like to raise an obnoxious person like me but hadn’t realized that her actions would result in its death. Overall though, my gamble had paid off.
Unfortunately it also felt like the most cynical thing I had ever done. I intentionally used a pious behavior that had been an honest act of worship to manipulate someone into doing what I wanted. I felt intensely ashamed of my actions and stopped being able to enter the intense contemplative mindset I had enjoyed before while doing scripture reading. It felt more like I was just reading words rather than communing with God, though I still needed peace and quiet for even what I had left. It wasn’t until the last few years that it occurred to me that since the scriptures are supposed to be for our benefit, why would God feel I had betrayed a trust by using them to escape from child abuse?
One way or another I kept reading that brown bonded leather set of scriptures until grime from my hands accumulated on the cover, the binding broke, and the pages started to fall out.
Many pages are crumpled from falling asleep while reading. My wife and I read the Book of Mormon one last time together and started to feel distinctly uncomfortable with it. Some of the doctrines preached in it simply felt overly black and white and the development of culture described in the text felt unreal. We decided to try out reading the apocrypha next which was a very satisfying experience, if I recall we made it though maybe the Book of Tobit before we ran out of time to work on it. Our faith lives went into a tailspin over the next few years. In my personal reading I tried reading the Book of Mormon one last time to ground my faith again and found I couldn’t stomach it, at least not while trying to maintain a belief that it was literally and fully what it was supposed to be. I wasn’t able to enjoy reading the scriptures again until we were settled in the Episcopal church and started to read the bible in the tradition of the Daily Office Lectionary. Even then, I couldn’t bring myself to read my tattered brown king James bible. The translation problems in the King James are now obvious to me and the study aids in the LDS version of the King James bible aren’t spectacular. We tried reading from my wife’s study NRSV bible but found we had trouble navigating the unfamiliar book abbreviations, especially when apocryphal readings came up. I bought an ESV translation pocket new testament to read from on occasion at work but it didn’t fill the void that was left by my old tattered brown bonded leather scripture set. I wanted a study edition that I could learn from easily and a feeling that I could place my bookmarks where ever I wanted to because the book was mine.
After all this time I have finally replaced my copy of the scriptures. I purchased a fifth 5th edition of Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard edition of the bible that was just recently released, the thumb indexed version so I can quickly find passages even when the book abbreviations are unfamiliar.
I have started to learn about the meditation practice of lectio divina where bible passages are read repeatedly creating a contemplative sense of communion and conversation with God. It reminds me of contemplative experience of the bible I had the year that I read Isaiah until I broke through into my parent’s respect. Perhaps that wasn’t some kind of unique peak experience but something I could learn to do again. I probably only lost my hold on the experience because of my needless shame and because I didn’t really understand what I was doing. While I appreciate that all the flaws of humanity are on display in the Bible, it is still where I met God and where I gained the strength to emotionally survive from day to day. I hope to spend years yet enjoying its pages.
 | |
| My First Scriptures |
As I approached my teenage years I became aware that daily scripture reading wasn’t just a good habit, in the LDS worldview it is a commandment from God. I was afraid if I didn’t read my scriptures daily I was rebelling against God’s command so I became very strict in performing my daily reading no matter how late I was getting to bed. This need to be reading was reinforced by the popular and repetitive challenge from LDS leaders to read the Book of Mormon from start to finish within certain time frames. You could barely finish reading the Book of Mormon due to the challenge of one leader before some other leader would reissue the challenge. Scripture study was viewed as synonymous with reading the Book of Mormon. I felt that the Book of Mormon was true because I had always assumed it was true and felt that God pointed that out to me when I prayed about it in the classic Mormon fashion. Always assuming something isn’t the same thing as it being so, but I was satisfied enough to keep enjoying it the way I always had before.
As I entered my teens I had read the Book of Mormon so many times that it became less meaningful through sheer repetition and reading from the bible felt much more meaningful. I still felt I had to follow my leaders command to read the Book of Mormon daily so I doubled my scripture reading time so I could start to read both from the Bible and Book of Mormon regularly. My scriptures became so well used that the vinyl carrying case fell apart and was replaced by a black canvas bag with a special compartment for extra study materials.
 | |
| My Seminary copy and Black Canvas Case |
Starting around age 14 I started attending a daily Sunday School class in Mormonism called “early morning seminary” and received my second copy of the LDS scriptures, an all in one volume (or Quad) in a Burgundy cover. The purpose of this second set was to allow me to have a copy in the Sunday school room to be used there and virtually nowhere else, so I never became very attached to this copy. I never succeeded in memorizing the scripture passages expected in this Sunday School class but I took pride that I didn’t just read the assigned selections but I read the entire text while keeping up with the class. I was able to keep this up until in the year we were studying the bible we got to the book of Isaiah. Mormon’s put a special emphasis on Isaiah being important but most of the Mormons I have talked to are positively terrified of it. It is common to hear people say they only read the parts from Isaiah that are copied into the Book of Mormon and even some skip those parts. When our class reached the Book of Isaiah we spent one day talking about how to read Isaiah and then skipped the entire book. That wouldn’t do for me, I wanted to read everything. Isaiah scared me too, but I took it slowly and prayerfully, reading the same passages over and over again until I felt I had some level of understanding. I became passionately involved with the text and would get into a zone of contemplative worshipful reading. I could only zone in like that if I had a quiet place to study, so I often found myself staying up late at night after the rest of my family had gone to bed to have time to study without any distractions. This drove my family a bit crazy, especially when I suggested they should hurry to bed so I could get on with my night of scripture study and journal writing. No one thought to buy me ear plugs or noise isolating headphones to help me study earlier in the evening, so I just stayed up late, sometimes very late.
This was a very dark time in my life and emotionally these late night study sessions became extremely important to me. I learned to write from practicing in my journal. I learned that even if I was afraid to trust anyone else in life I could still trust God. I had a sense of spiritual rebirth and developed a sense of a personal relationship with Jesus while contemplating the suffering servant passages in Isaiah, particularly chapter 53. The spiritual practices of scripture study and journal writing are probably the main reasons why I survived my teenage years without attempting suicide. In fact, I directly used them as a tool to escape from a cycle of child abuse that intensified after I started homeschooling.
My mother hated not being in control. I loved being obedient but hated being strictly controlled and could never really function well trying to do anything exactly like other people did them. My mental anatomy as an autistic is different enough that I often need to find my own ways and times to learn things. Unfortunately my mother had a strong need to believe she was perfect and she was very sensitive to other people questioning or acting outside of her perfect ideas and needed me to learn things on her time table instead of mine. She often yelled at me demanding to know if I thought she was stupid because I wouldn’t or couldn’t do things exactly her way without having a prolonged discussion about why and how. I recall one memorable incident when I washed some dishes in a different order than she thought was correct and she came into the room screaming at me, asking how dare I rebel against her when she had never even specified the order in which to wash them and had no reason to need them done in a specific order. Everything was black and white, good or evil. If you really wanted to be good you would do everything she expected right the first time. If you failed to be her version of perfect on the first try it was because you weren’t really trying because you were a bad person. My assumed evil personality justified whatever she found necessary to force compliance. At this point in my life I was larger and stronger than she was so she virtually always resorted to emotional manipulation and abuse. She moved quickly from offering rewards to offering punishments to trying to damage or even crush your sense of self esteem in hopes that you would start performing the task at hand correctly to prove her wrong about how worthless you were. Once when I begged for time to learn my daily chores without dramatic punishments because I wasn't trying to be lazy or rebellious but simply needed more time to learn how to remember everything and my parents told me that they felt if they didn’t take me strictly in hand I’d end up just like my brother, by which I think they meant a college dropout with no job and no girlfriend living in the basement. Due to my unique circumstances, I took it worse than that and became very scared of myself.
Among the many things she didn’t like, my staying up late to read my scriptures and write in my journal weren’t on her approved list. She didn’t like that I was sleep deprived. She hated that I used my journal writing to emotionally cope with life instead of pouring out my soul to her as if that idea made any sense at all. She didn’t understand why I needed peace and quiet to enter into intense contemplative scripture study. I don’t think she saw my scripture study as any different from doing my math homework which she expected me to be able to do while she indulged in screaming matches or worse against my little sister who she treated in the much same way as she treated me except with differences resulting from my being so much larger and stronger. In any case my mother started a campaign to try to stop me from writing in my journal or reading my scriptures at night. I decided that thought there was no chance I could defend my dignity when it case to the normal chores or school work, there was a real chance I might undermine her opinion of me when it came to my scripture study. I determined to make a point to fight her on this one issue where winning might mean something.
So the fight was on. She’d prowl into the basement where I would study at night or look to see if I had lights on in my bedroom. She tried to monitor and punish me more and more strictly until my father found out what was going on. Suddenly something clicked. Their evil rebel son wasn’t rebelling to sneak off to be promiscuous or use drugs or hang out with gangs or any other notorious evil. He was rebelling… to worship… in the tradition of the family faith. I intentionally used my worship behaviors to create a situation that made the emotional abuse look and feel absurd. It broke me out of the cycle of abuse and created a space where they respected me and became almost willing to bend over backwards to accommodate my life and needs. Things were still black and white but now I was considered to be good instead of bad. Unfortunately my victory didn’t apply to my little sister who they generally still viewed as deserving what she got even when I tried to explain otherwise. Life worked best when I depended on my parents for as little of my emotional or physical needs as possible since my mother still had trouble with things she didn’t control and was not above hurting me in dramatic ways just to get revenge for some annoyance years gone by without stopping to think about what she was doing. Like killing my pet hamster by pretending to forget to buy clean bedding for it until it died of infection to get revenge for the way my ADD had been really horrible before I started medication for it in third grade. She explained that she had always needed me to know what it felt like to raise an obnoxious person like me but hadn’t realized that her actions would result in its death. Overall though, my gamble had paid off.
Unfortunately it also felt like the most cynical thing I had ever done. I intentionally used a pious behavior that had been an honest act of worship to manipulate someone into doing what I wanted. I felt intensely ashamed of my actions and stopped being able to enter the intense contemplative mindset I had enjoyed before while doing scripture reading. It felt more like I was just reading words rather than communing with God, though I still needed peace and quiet for even what I had left. It wasn’t until the last few years that it occurred to me that since the scriptures are supposed to be for our benefit, why would God feel I had betrayed a trust by using them to escape from child abuse?
One way or another I kept reading that brown bonded leather set of scriptures until grime from my hands accumulated on the cover, the binding broke, and the pages started to fall out.
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| My original scriptures were loved to death. Click to see my footnote highlighting. |
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| Example of the study aids in a modern study bible |
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| My new bible |
Sunday, February 4, 2018
Beauty and Styles of Reverence
One thing that has stood out to me as different between our experiences in the LDS church and the Episcopal church is how differently the two communities express respect for sacred spaces. In many ways this would be obvious the moment a visitor walks in. The Episcopal church uses a complex and traditional priestly uniform. For Mormon men and boys their priesthood dress code generally is indistinguishable from a business while shirt and tie or maybe a suit. Next you might notice the amount of art work on display. The LDS church bans all artwork from its sanctuaries and baptistries, viewing it as distracting from more important parts of worship. The Episcopal church, on the other hand, uses a wide variety of types of artwork notably including influences from Orthodox Christianity. The Episcopal Church also uses candles in their worship spaces. Lit candles, by contrast, are banned from LDS worship spaces.
The next thing you might notice is the noise level. While Mormon’s in practice might socialize a good deal in their sanctuaries and the many babies and small children are always making noise the ideal is always held out to be that in sacred spaces social conversations shouldn’t happen in worship spaces or should be whispered. In the Episcopal church there are fewer small children to make noise and children too small to keep quiet are often in a nursery during services. As a result the silent moments during worship are often more profoundly silent. However, socializing is not forbidden and is in even indirectly encouraged when the priest invites us to “Greet one another in the name of the Lord”.
In Mormon sanctuaries much of the physical act of reverence is defined by what you are not to do. Don’t speak, don’t laugh, don’t play on your smart phone, don’t run in the hallways, etc. There are few positive physical acts of reverence. Physical actions are restrained to make room for a reverent mindset, as a popular LDS children’s hymn states “reverence is more than just quietly sitting, its thinking of Father above…” By contract the Episcopal church has a rich tradition of using physical acts of reverence as well as a worshipful mental frame of mind. At quite a number of times and places people kneel, bow, genuflect, or make the sign of the cross to express reverence to God and to where they are.
The music is also different. In some respects a typical Episcopal and Mormon church might seem very similar with traditional hymns sung to organ music. One prominent difference is in the number hymns sung. A typical Mormon worship service might include 4-5 musical pieces if you count the prelude music. Virtually all of the music will be from the one and only approved hymnal. Special musical numbers are occasionally used but brass and percussion instruments are banned. Music is never performed during “the sacrament” or Eucharist for fear that it would be distracting from maintaining a mental attitude of reverence. By contract in an Episcopal service virtually the entire service might be performed to music depending on the tastes of the congregation. In our parish there could easily be as many as 9 or 10 pieces of music from either a small library of approved hymnals or any other source desired and we always have music during communion. Though Episcopalians are generally very fond of traditional organ music there are parishes who worship to jazz or hip hop music. About the only common form of worship music I am aware of that has little presence in the Episcopal church is praise band music.
What took me most by surprise in the differences between how Mormon’s and Episcopalians express reverence is that in our parish there is no rule against giving applause and if a special musical number or the organ postlude is particularly beautiful we very likely will give applause. In Mormon worship spaces applause is considered so inappropriate the ban is even mentioned in the official church handbook of instructions.
While my preference for the Episcopalian worship style is in some respects a matter of my own personal tastes, I think that the LDS church’s top down rules regulating how many things are done prevents local congregations from freely searching out ways to experience beauty in worship. If you explore the history of the LDS church you can find time periods where musical selections from outside of the one hymnal were allowed, artwork was not so tightly restricted, and music was performed during “the sacrament”. The personal tastes of the church leaders has become a list of centralized rules that have accumulated over time. While all these rules in some respects meet the social needs of the LDS church I think they have been over applied limiting the flexibility and beauty that could be experienced in favor of a very mental form of worship reverence. There are so many kinds of beauty to be experienced in worship. I prefer how the Episcopal church allows and encourages so many more ways to, as it says in the psalms, “worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness.”
The next thing you might notice is the noise level. While Mormon’s in practice might socialize a good deal in their sanctuaries and the many babies and small children are always making noise the ideal is always held out to be that in sacred spaces social conversations shouldn’t happen in worship spaces or should be whispered. In the Episcopal church there are fewer small children to make noise and children too small to keep quiet are often in a nursery during services. As a result the silent moments during worship are often more profoundly silent. However, socializing is not forbidden and is in even indirectly encouraged when the priest invites us to “Greet one another in the name of the Lord”.
In Mormon sanctuaries much of the physical act of reverence is defined by what you are not to do. Don’t speak, don’t laugh, don’t play on your smart phone, don’t run in the hallways, etc. There are few positive physical acts of reverence. Physical actions are restrained to make room for a reverent mindset, as a popular LDS children’s hymn states “reverence is more than just quietly sitting, its thinking of Father above…” By contract the Episcopal church has a rich tradition of using physical acts of reverence as well as a worshipful mental frame of mind. At quite a number of times and places people kneel, bow, genuflect, or make the sign of the cross to express reverence to God and to where they are.
The music is also different. In some respects a typical Episcopal and Mormon church might seem very similar with traditional hymns sung to organ music. One prominent difference is in the number hymns sung. A typical Mormon worship service might include 4-5 musical pieces if you count the prelude music. Virtually all of the music will be from the one and only approved hymnal. Special musical numbers are occasionally used but brass and percussion instruments are banned. Music is never performed during “the sacrament” or Eucharist for fear that it would be distracting from maintaining a mental attitude of reverence. By contract in an Episcopal service virtually the entire service might be performed to music depending on the tastes of the congregation. In our parish there could easily be as many as 9 or 10 pieces of music from either a small library of approved hymnals or any other source desired and we always have music during communion. Though Episcopalians are generally very fond of traditional organ music there are parishes who worship to jazz or hip hop music. About the only common form of worship music I am aware of that has little presence in the Episcopal church is praise band music.
What took me most by surprise in the differences between how Mormon’s and Episcopalians express reverence is that in our parish there is no rule against giving applause and if a special musical number or the organ postlude is particularly beautiful we very likely will give applause. In Mormon worship spaces applause is considered so inappropriate the ban is even mentioned in the official church handbook of instructions.
While my preference for the Episcopalian worship style is in some respects a matter of my own personal tastes, I think that the LDS church’s top down rules regulating how many things are done prevents local congregations from freely searching out ways to experience beauty in worship. If you explore the history of the LDS church you can find time periods where musical selections from outside of the one hymnal were allowed, artwork was not so tightly restricted, and music was performed during “the sacrament”. The personal tastes of the church leaders has become a list of centralized rules that have accumulated over time. While all these rules in some respects meet the social needs of the LDS church I think they have been over applied limiting the flexibility and beauty that could be experienced in favor of a very mental form of worship reverence. There are so many kinds of beauty to be experienced in worship. I prefer how the Episcopal church allows and encourages so many more ways to, as it says in the psalms, “worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness.”
Monday, January 8, 2018
Monson in passing
I admit I have mixed feelings about the passing away of President Monson. He honestly wasn't someone I felt much connection to. I respected and loved him out of a sense of duty when I believed in Mormonism, but his leadership wasn't a great fit for me. His behind the scenes style of leadership left me without much to strongly react to. I often got lost in his story telling sermons, feeling as if the sequence of stories didn't always have a clear theme or thesis that they were supporting. All the stories of helping widows were nice but I've felt awkward about how much he talked about it. Seems it would be better to let someone else sing your praises. He was in charge at a time when changes of direction were made that severely undermined my faith and that caused intense suffering to many. I also recognize that he is intensely loved by many people. I honestly can't summon up feelings of righteous indignation against misdeeds performed during his administration or feelings of tragic loss at the passing of someone viewed as an righteous individual by many. It feels like learning that someone's grandfather just died but not only is it their grandfather he is the grandfather of practically everyone you've known for your whole life even if he made you feel unwelcome when you hung around. It is a big deal in the community but personally I don't know how to feel about it.
I'm just glad my coworkers didn't try to talk to me about it. I don't go around advertising that I am an ex Mormon so generally speaking my coworkers don't know that I am one. I didn't want to deal with people trying to explain to me why President Monson was special to their faith when I already understand that in painstaking detail. And I didn't want anyone to expect me to show any particular outpouring of interest or sympathy. I mean, if one of my religious leaders passed away I doubt any Mormons would care and they would think it odd if I tried to insist that they care about it the same way that I do.
In some ways I feel kind of puzzled by the outrage over the New York Times article. LDS people may feel that criticism of their leaders is inherently spiritually wrong and this leads to a culture where LDS leaders are only ever written about or spoken about in a hagiographic style where only their positive traits are spoken of while holding them up as moral examples. At a time of death and sadness it should be no surprise that Mormons might feel this impulse especially strongly and feel a kind of culture shock and a sense of sacrilege when it isn't followed. So in a sense I sympathize with their feelings. It is downright jarring to read about your own culture and leaders from a different cultural perspective.
That being said, the New York Times is not the Deseret News. It isn't owned by the LDS church nor does it share the political and spiritual priorities of the LDS church. The New York Times is not writing for a predominantly Mormon audience and is under no obligation to follow Mormon cultural norms. They are a liberal newspaper discussing the public affairs of the country from a liberal perspective. So it should be unsurprising for them to view President Monson, a conservative leader of a conservative church who led his church into newsworthy political clashes against liberal causes, with a goal of interpreting how his public personality interacted with social issues important to liberal non Mormon readers. Which is exactly what the New York Times article did.
While it is natural for Mormon's to want the world to honor their beloved dead the same way they do, that isn't the way the world or newspapers work. It would be as odd as Hillary Clinton dying and expecting the Deseret News to publish a glowing obituary talking about her being a devout Methodist who believed in the power of forgiveness, valued marriage, provided a public example of sticking together through hard times even when things go wrong, and spent her life trying to follow the example of Jesus by making sure that people could be healed from their diseases just like Jesus healing the sick. If Mormon's want to read another story of all the widows President Monson visited they know where to find them, but they shouldn't expect the New York Times to write it for them.
I'm just glad my coworkers didn't try to talk to me about it. I don't go around advertising that I am an ex Mormon so generally speaking my coworkers don't know that I am one. I didn't want to deal with people trying to explain to me why President Monson was special to their faith when I already understand that in painstaking detail. And I didn't want anyone to expect me to show any particular outpouring of interest or sympathy. I mean, if one of my religious leaders passed away I doubt any Mormons would care and they would think it odd if I tried to insist that they care about it the same way that I do.
In some ways I feel kind of puzzled by the outrage over the New York Times article. LDS people may feel that criticism of their leaders is inherently spiritually wrong and this leads to a culture where LDS leaders are only ever written about or spoken about in a hagiographic style where only their positive traits are spoken of while holding them up as moral examples. At a time of death and sadness it should be no surprise that Mormons might feel this impulse especially strongly and feel a kind of culture shock and a sense of sacrilege when it isn't followed. So in a sense I sympathize with their feelings. It is downright jarring to read about your own culture and leaders from a different cultural perspective.
That being said, the New York Times is not the Deseret News. It isn't owned by the LDS church nor does it share the political and spiritual priorities of the LDS church. The New York Times is not writing for a predominantly Mormon audience and is under no obligation to follow Mormon cultural norms. They are a liberal newspaper discussing the public affairs of the country from a liberal perspective. So it should be unsurprising for them to view President Monson, a conservative leader of a conservative church who led his church into newsworthy political clashes against liberal causes, with a goal of interpreting how his public personality interacted with social issues important to liberal non Mormon readers. Which is exactly what the New York Times article did.
While it is natural for Mormon's to want the world to honor their beloved dead the same way they do, that isn't the way the world or newspapers work. It would be as odd as Hillary Clinton dying and expecting the Deseret News to publish a glowing obituary talking about her being a devout Methodist who believed in the power of forgiveness, valued marriage, provided a public example of sticking together through hard times even when things go wrong, and spent her life trying to follow the example of Jesus by making sure that people could be healed from their diseases just like Jesus healing the sick. If Mormon's want to read another story of all the widows President Monson visited they know where to find them, but they shouldn't expect the New York Times to write it for them.
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