One of the advantages I have heard of being bilingual is that each language has its own peculiar way of defining the world and so learning a new language helps you think more flexibly. I think the same thing can be said of learning to think in more than one cultural language. I think the first time I discovered this was when I took a tour through the beauty of Le Guin's books, particularly the Hainish Cycle, and started to understand the beauty and possibility of looking at the world from a secular humanist viewpoint. It didn't mean that I chose not to be religious, but instead of viewing the ideas of humanism with angry suspicion, humanism became another layer of potential and alternate meanings. I could start to look at many given situations and understand them from both a conservative religious outlook and also from a liberal humanist outlook. This was by no means a comfortable transition, but it increased the richness of how I saw the world.
Later, I found that I was studying myself right out of the radical conservative extremism I had been brought up in. Things that had seemed impossible to question about the Mormon brand of Dominion theology politics I had grown up with (the theocratic idea that Jesus did not fulfill the political structures and commands in the Law of Moses and therefore to favored by God government should be changed to reflect the Old Testament) simply failed to work anymore. I can still understand the value of much of conservative politics and appreciate many of the noble goals involved, but I became more of a centrist liberal. Maybe if I had gone to a higher quality conservative school I would have been perfectly happy being a more moderate conservative and it is the radicalism that really broke the system for me. Perhaps knowing this is what keeps me a centrist, I can understand political problems from conservative and liberal mind sets without assuming either one to be completely invalid.
Later, as Mormonism no longer held its meaning for me and I have become an Episcopalian, there is a whole new religious language that I am learning. There is a whole new vocabulary involved, even when the words are the same the definitions change. When I discuss Mormonism these days it can feel distinctly odd, I either have to intentionally switch back to speaking in Mormon speak or I end up discussing Mormonism from a religious vocabulary that simply doesn't match. Even though it hurts to change, I believe I have become a fuller human being from the experience.
Fundamentally changing your sense of self hurts. Finding that entire aspects of your culture or sub culture no longer accept you and you no longer accept them hurts. It isn't something you could really wish on anyone. However, I believe there is a value in that sort of pain. It can force you to learn the language of a new cultural outlook. Even if you don't accept that outlook as your own, being able to understand the richness of possibility in the world brings its own humility and sensitivity to the wonder of all that might be.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Funerals
Growing up LDS I heard a lot of stereotypes about funerals. About how LDS funerals were very happy because supposedly LDS people felt so secure in their knowledge of the Resurrection. By contrast all the other religions had super sad funerals because their belief in the Resurrection was defective in some way. I even once heard it suggested that it was common in other religions that people were in such despair that they became overly dramatic and upset because of this failing.
Growing up it was hard for me to accept these stereotypes as real, because the first funeral I ever attended was a Salvation Army Church funeral where the tragic despair and sadness I had been taught to expect simply wasn't there. As a little kid I was confused. I had been told that funerals were sad and that non LDS funerals were sadder. The people I was seeing were smiling, happy to see each other. It felt like a family reunion. As the years have passed it seems the happiest funeral I can remember.
By contrast the first two LDS funerals I ever attended were for people who died young in tragic circumstances. While I have no doubt as to the faith and belief of the people in these situations, I also observed that they were intensely sad. Who wouldn't be? I have attended funerals conducted in at least four, maybe as many as five different religious traditions. Specifically coming to mind I have been to Salvation Army funeral's with traditional hymns sung along to a brass band, an informal Catholic funeral held with the eulogy structured around the rosary meditations of the mysteries of light, LDS services, a non religious service focused around people coming together and sharing memories of the deceased, and an Episcopalian funeral mass. Each funeral service is unique, and how happy or sad people are in response is very individual. Generally each has its own mix of steadfast faith and hope mixed with the very real tragic sense of loss. Generally I have seen much to honor and little to criticize about most of the funerals I have attended. It is unfortunate that a lack of interfaith contact allows myths about non LDS funerals to be perpetuated. If Jesus can weep at the tomb of Lazarus then it is perfectly acceptable for family to be sad at a funeral. People who are sad are in need of comfort, not judgements about how much their believe in the Resurrection or not. No matter what someone believes about the after life, their loved one for now is gone. While of course there is nothing wrong with being attached to your own cultural traditions surrounding funerals, if you find yourself making assumptions about other people, maybe try attending a funeral from another tradition. From what I have experienced, I expect that if you do it with your eyes open and an open heart, you will come away touched by what you see and feeling more charitable towards people who are different than you.
Growing up it was hard for me to accept these stereotypes as real, because the first funeral I ever attended was a Salvation Army Church funeral where the tragic despair and sadness I had been taught to expect simply wasn't there. As a little kid I was confused. I had been told that funerals were sad and that non LDS funerals were sadder. The people I was seeing were smiling, happy to see each other. It felt like a family reunion. As the years have passed it seems the happiest funeral I can remember.
By contrast the first two LDS funerals I ever attended were for people who died young in tragic circumstances. While I have no doubt as to the faith and belief of the people in these situations, I also observed that they were intensely sad. Who wouldn't be? I have attended funerals conducted in at least four, maybe as many as five different religious traditions. Specifically coming to mind I have been to Salvation Army funeral's with traditional hymns sung along to a brass band, an informal Catholic funeral held with the eulogy structured around the rosary meditations of the mysteries of light, LDS services, a non religious service focused around people coming together and sharing memories of the deceased, and an Episcopalian funeral mass. Each funeral service is unique, and how happy or sad people are in response is very individual. Generally each has its own mix of steadfast faith and hope mixed with the very real tragic sense of loss. Generally I have seen much to honor and little to criticize about most of the funerals I have attended. It is unfortunate that a lack of interfaith contact allows myths about non LDS funerals to be perpetuated. If Jesus can weep at the tomb of Lazarus then it is perfectly acceptable for family to be sad at a funeral. People who are sad are in need of comfort, not judgements about how much their believe in the Resurrection or not. No matter what someone believes about the after life, their loved one for now is gone. While of course there is nothing wrong with being attached to your own cultural traditions surrounding funerals, if you find yourself making assumptions about other people, maybe try attending a funeral from another tradition. From what I have experienced, I expect that if you do it with your eyes open and an open heart, you will come away touched by what you see and feeling more charitable towards people who are different than you.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Lent, Community, and the Workplace
I was sitting in my car, staring at my reflection in the mirror,
looking at the cross of ashes on my forehead. I wanted to keep it there
as a way to claim and hold onto the sense of the sacred in Ash
Wednesday and as a physical reminder of the sense of belonging that
comes from worshiping together. I wanted a reminder of why Ash
Wednesday is a special day and to contemplate preparing for Easter. But
the bible verses quoted in the service were still ringing in my ears:
There are many ways piety can be publicly displayed, some more quiet, some more loud. Each religious tradition seems to have its own characteristic ways of building community with visible markers. Despite being hesitant to walk around with ashes on my face, I have my own religious identifiers that stay visible at work. I wear a ring with a cross on it to replace the CTR ring I used to wear. To encourage my coworkers not to speak in tactless ways about other religions around me I have an 8 inch tall glass cross ornamenting my desk and a copy of the Book of Common Prayer.
A few days ago at the office, the head of one of the other accounting teams was walking up and down our row of cubicles with a stack of Ensign magazines. In preparation for General Conference, she wanted to form a group that would meet once a week on lunch break to focus on different self improvement goals every week. For the first week she wanted to focus on spirituality and was inviting us all to read the Ensign magazine together as a group devotional activity. Since I am typically somewhat invisible in social spaces I was at first totally unsurprised that she walked right past me without extending an invitation but invited everyone else in our row, including others I am fairly sure are not Mormon. I watched, wondering if I was socially invisible enough to escape the whole situation. As she returned from the back of our row I think she noticed me watching and out of a desire to be inclusive (or at least avoid the awkwardness of having invited everyone but me), she invited me as well. I had been so busy wondering whether or not to feel sorry for myself for being so invisible again that I hadn't come up with a witty response. So I just said simply, "No, I'm not interested." I'm not sure why, but she seemed to grow a touch defensive or confused and stated perhaps she was just weird that she wanted to do things like this. I cut in and stated that I didn't think it was weird at all, that I thought it was a great community building activity, but I wasn't interested.
I spent a good part of the rest of the day either chuckling at the absurdity of the situation or feeling stressed that I I didn't know to respond. The desk cross was in part supposed to prevent weird interactions like this by making it obvious I wasn't Mormon. Perhaps the desk cross is too small to be noticed and I need a larger one... 😉 Or maybe I should start wearing a cross necklace at the office to make my brand of Christianity much more obvious? I felt pleased not to have been ignored as so often happens, but at the same time worried that I had rejected this offer of community participation without softening the rejection with more graceful words. Part of me also pondered that this special preparation for General Conference wasn't too far off of a Lent observance. Even if the focus of the preparation is a human meeting instead of Easter, the basic concept is still the same, to have a special time of spiritual practice before a special occasion at about the same time of the year. The similarities are strong enough you could argue that the difference is mostly just that we belong to different faith communities. Offering to read the Ensign magazine with people is a way to build community with people based on spirituality, not totally unlike what I experienced attending church on Ash Wednesday. It is worth asking, if building community is such a great thing, what is the problem? Why did it stress me out? Beyond not wanting to parade my piety, why else did I feel a need to hide my own signs of spiritual community? A lot of it comes down to that religion is a subject that involves a lot of social power imbalances.
Some of the power imbalance just comes from living in Utah. Mormons have a lot of social power. In an office where most of the staff are Mormon, Mormons to some extent can expect more social legitimacy than non-Mormons and much more than ex-Mormons. This causes inherent problems for me, not dissimilar to what I'm sure atheists experience in most of the country. Social power and legitimacy can express itself in a lot of ways. If there was any conflict connected to religion, the dominant group can be expected to have their concerns taken more seriously. If someone starts a malicious rumor or spreads speculative juicy gossip about a member of a minority group, it will be believed more easily, especially if it ties in to the stereotypes the dominant group commonly believes about the minority group. In any kind of discussion of religious opinions, the dominant group will have a harder time understanding when they are behaving in an unwelcome manner, while the minority group's unique opinions or needs might be unwelcome from the start.
Growing up, I was raised to believe that social norms that secularized the work place were somehow a reflection of the degradation of society. I was given to believe I should be open and often feel defensive about my right and need to pray, proselytize, and visibly practice my religion publicly. Now that I have the experience of being a religious minority, I have a different perspective. While I appreciate that belonging to and participating in religious communities can make up a large part of personal well being (or detract greatly from it), the power imbalances between religious communities makes any discussion or assertively public practice of religion in an interfaith space very tricky and time consuming to do right.
And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.How do you walk into the office with a face marked advertising that you attended worship services on your lunch break after hearing that? Sadly, I wiped my jacket sleeve across my forehead, and headed back into work.
There are many ways piety can be publicly displayed, some more quiet, some more loud. Each religious tradition seems to have its own characteristic ways of building community with visible markers. Despite being hesitant to walk around with ashes on my face, I have my own religious identifiers that stay visible at work. I wear a ring with a cross on it to replace the CTR ring I used to wear. To encourage my coworkers not to speak in tactless ways about other religions around me I have an 8 inch tall glass cross ornamenting my desk and a copy of the Book of Common Prayer.
A few days ago at the office, the head of one of the other accounting teams was walking up and down our row of cubicles with a stack of Ensign magazines. In preparation for General Conference, she wanted to form a group that would meet once a week on lunch break to focus on different self improvement goals every week. For the first week she wanted to focus on spirituality and was inviting us all to read the Ensign magazine together as a group devotional activity. Since I am typically somewhat invisible in social spaces I was at first totally unsurprised that she walked right past me without extending an invitation but invited everyone else in our row, including others I am fairly sure are not Mormon. I watched, wondering if I was socially invisible enough to escape the whole situation. As she returned from the back of our row I think she noticed me watching and out of a desire to be inclusive (or at least avoid the awkwardness of having invited everyone but me), she invited me as well. I had been so busy wondering whether or not to feel sorry for myself for being so invisible again that I hadn't come up with a witty response. So I just said simply, "No, I'm not interested." I'm not sure why, but she seemed to grow a touch defensive or confused and stated perhaps she was just weird that she wanted to do things like this. I cut in and stated that I didn't think it was weird at all, that I thought it was a great community building activity, but I wasn't interested.
I spent a good part of the rest of the day either chuckling at the absurdity of the situation or feeling stressed that I I didn't know to respond. The desk cross was in part supposed to prevent weird interactions like this by making it obvious I wasn't Mormon. Perhaps the desk cross is too small to be noticed and I need a larger one... 😉 Or maybe I should start wearing a cross necklace at the office to make my brand of Christianity much more obvious? I felt pleased not to have been ignored as so often happens, but at the same time worried that I had rejected this offer of community participation without softening the rejection with more graceful words. Part of me also pondered that this special preparation for General Conference wasn't too far off of a Lent observance. Even if the focus of the preparation is a human meeting instead of Easter, the basic concept is still the same, to have a special time of spiritual practice before a special occasion at about the same time of the year. The similarities are strong enough you could argue that the difference is mostly just that we belong to different faith communities. Offering to read the Ensign magazine with people is a way to build community with people based on spirituality, not totally unlike what I experienced attending church on Ash Wednesday. It is worth asking, if building community is such a great thing, what is the problem? Why did it stress me out? Beyond not wanting to parade my piety, why else did I feel a need to hide my own signs of spiritual community? A lot of it comes down to that religion is a subject that involves a lot of social power imbalances.
Some of the power imbalance just comes from living in Utah. Mormons have a lot of social power. In an office where most of the staff are Mormon, Mormons to some extent can expect more social legitimacy than non-Mormons and much more than ex-Mormons. This causes inherent problems for me, not dissimilar to what I'm sure atheists experience in most of the country. Social power and legitimacy can express itself in a lot of ways. If there was any conflict connected to religion, the dominant group can be expected to have their concerns taken more seriously. If someone starts a malicious rumor or spreads speculative juicy gossip about a member of a minority group, it will be believed more easily, especially if it ties in to the stereotypes the dominant group commonly believes about the minority group. In any kind of discussion of religious opinions, the dominant group will have a harder time understanding when they are behaving in an unwelcome manner, while the minority group's unique opinions or needs might be unwelcome from the start.
Growing up, I was raised to believe that social norms that secularized the work place were somehow a reflection of the degradation of society. I was given to believe I should be open and often feel defensive about my right and need to pray, proselytize, and visibly practice my religion publicly. Now that I have the experience of being a religious minority, I have a different perspective. While I appreciate that belonging to and participating in religious communities can make up a large part of personal well being (or detract greatly from it), the power imbalances between religious communities makes any discussion or assertively public practice of religion in an interfaith space very tricky and time consuming to do right.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Some things never change...
I can still remember being excited for the first times I helped to pass the sacrament in my LDS ward growing up. I'd get all dressed up, be excited to participate, and I can recall once even crying when we didn't make it to church on time for me to participate in my assignment. I recall taking a copy of one of the hand drawn instruction maps showing where we all were supposed to walk and deciding I could do better. Even though I held no special position of responsibility to take charge, I went home and made a line drawing on my computer to replace the rough sketch, one that could be printed out 9 copies per sheet, easily distributed to everyone involved, small enough to be kept in a pocket, and small enough to look at without drawing attention to yourself. They were so popular that when I was an older teenager and a new young men's leader tried to take charge and make his own official map for everyone to use, there were immediate requests from the other young men that he should change the one he made to look like mine- he tried to make the map cover an entire page -- much too large.
One of the disappointments I encountered as I transitioned out of the LDS church is that I discovered that the LDS sacrament, which I had dutifully passed, prepared, blessed, memorized blessing prayers for, and even on occasion taken to people who couldn't attend church because they were sick, represented a theology of how God expressed love towards and interacted with the world that didn't seem to match the way Jesus reached out to people in the New Testament. The sacrament went from a highlight of my week and a memorial of a lifetime of devotion to something that I could only hesitantly participate in. It was a joyful experience to discover a new way to understand and participate in worship to hear in the Episcopal Church the words of communion after the breaking of the bread:
Today was my first Sunday volunteering to be a chalice bearer. During communion the priest presented the bread to those gathered around the alter and I followed after him carrying the chalice, a wide brimmed ceremonial cup, filled with wine for those gathered around the alter to drink from or dip their bread . The priest presented the bread, saying:
One of the disappointments I encountered as I transitioned out of the LDS church is that I discovered that the LDS sacrament, which I had dutifully passed, prepared, blessed, memorized blessing prayers for, and even on occasion taken to people who couldn't attend church because they were sick, represented a theology of how God expressed love towards and interacted with the world that didn't seem to match the way Jesus reached out to people in the New Testament. The sacrament went from a highlight of my week and a memorial of a lifetime of devotion to something that I could only hesitantly participate in. It was a joyful experience to discover a new way to understand and participate in worship to hear in the Episcopal Church the words of communion after the breaking of the bread:
Priest: "Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us"Instead of the Sacrament representing a theology dividing people - the kinds of people the Holy Ghost would spend time around and the kinds of people the Holy Ghost did not spend time with- communion was a gift to be received joyfully.
People: "Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia."
Priest: "The Gifts of God for the People of God."
Today was my first Sunday volunteering to be a chalice bearer. During communion the priest presented the bread to those gathered around the alter and I followed after him carrying the chalice, a wide brimmed ceremonial cup, filled with wine for those gathered around the alter to drink from or dip their bread . The priest presented the bread, saying:
"The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven."I followed after saying:
"The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation."With everything that has changed in my life, one thing that hasn't changed is the value I place on being able to participate in and perform religious rituals. I look forwards to continuing to participate in church services and as my kids become older I hope to find new ways to do so. Some things never change.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
If I could change one moment in time... talking about the temple
I was in early morning seminary at the time and someone said "what about the changes in the temple?" Let's just freeze that moment, press pause. There is so much awkward tension at that moment, the temple is so sacred that it is mostly secret. So I knew practically nothing about the temple and had virtually no way to learn about its history. I knew supposedly there were "anti-mormon lies" circulating about the temple but had been taught to ignore them. I had picked up a few tidbits from searching in an electronic LDS reference library, but knew virtually nothing.
Press play, the teacher is responding, a man I look up to tremendously as an extremely educated and as a religiously mature man... "The wording of the temple ceremony has only been modernized and the words of the covenants themselves has never been changed."
Let's stop. One reason I've managed to keep from feeling as angry about my time growing up Mormon is that there are very few times important to me where I feel like I was intentionally deceived. Many of the untrue things I was taught, I fully believe the people who taught me them believed them fully and were acting with good intentions. Unfortunately, this is one situation where I'm honestly not sure if I was intentionally lied to or not. Significant changes to the covenants had been made within recent living memory when this moment happened. Unless you define some of the covenants as not covenants, because they don't feel important enough to count, this statement should have been obviously not true. Maybe that was how he viewed the subject, feeling that unedifying covenants should be viewed as ceremonial in nature and not truly part of the covenants as he understood them.
If you go back through the history of the temple there are many changes, covenants added and removed, doctrines added and removed, elements that no longer seemed helpful or useful being removed or replaced. I would have expected that if anyone knew the basic history of changes to the temple, he would, since he claimed to know answers to questions about it. You don't normally make bold proclamations like that regarding anything unless you have actually studied up on the subject. But maybe that is my own personal bias showing up... I know this teacher was fully capable of forming very strong opinions about historical events that no one has any way of knowing about based on his feelings. Typical Mormons have virtually no access to information about the temple's history, so maybe he thought he knew about the temple because of how his idea of the past made him feel but hadn't ever learned the real truth. One way or another, I'd never really felt betrayed except by that one moment.
As a result of believing what he said, I assumed the temple ceremony had been preserved pristine as handed down from the mind of God. Why wouldn't I? If it had only been "language modernized" then of course the influence of man and the culture of man should have had almost no effect. When I went through the temple the first time, I imagined the ceremony existing in a chain of unbroken existence back to Adam, imagining the sacred secrets being passed down in caves or on mountain tops, imagining everything being perfect... But the one place I expected to find virtually uninfluenced by man had so many changes and man made influences, I was astonished. The temple fell dramatically from representing the very pinnacle of what it meant to be LDS as I understood it to, well, I wasn't sure what.
I wish I could rewind back to that cursed moment and change it. Here is what I wish someone had told me:
I know there are many reasons conversations like that don't happen in the LDS church. It would undermine the entire concept of why the leadership needs to be taken as seriously they do. But I wish it could have happened that way. That kind of humility in teaching about leadership and history would heal quite a few of the problems in the LDS church. I might still have left the LDS church, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as traumatic to have tried to have stayed in. And if I felt the need to leave, it wouldn't have been so traumatic.
Press play, the teacher is responding, a man I look up to tremendously as an extremely educated and as a religiously mature man... "The wording of the temple ceremony has only been modernized and the words of the covenants themselves has never been changed."
Let's stop. One reason I've managed to keep from feeling as angry about my time growing up Mormon is that there are very few times important to me where I feel like I was intentionally deceived. Many of the untrue things I was taught, I fully believe the people who taught me them believed them fully and were acting with good intentions. Unfortunately, this is one situation where I'm honestly not sure if I was intentionally lied to or not. Significant changes to the covenants had been made within recent living memory when this moment happened. Unless you define some of the covenants as not covenants, because they don't feel important enough to count, this statement should have been obviously not true. Maybe that was how he viewed the subject, feeling that unedifying covenants should be viewed as ceremonial in nature and not truly part of the covenants as he understood them.
If you go back through the history of the temple there are many changes, covenants added and removed, doctrines added and removed, elements that no longer seemed helpful or useful being removed or replaced. I would have expected that if anyone knew the basic history of changes to the temple, he would, since he claimed to know answers to questions about it. You don't normally make bold proclamations like that regarding anything unless you have actually studied up on the subject. But maybe that is my own personal bias showing up... I know this teacher was fully capable of forming very strong opinions about historical events that no one has any way of knowing about based on his feelings. Typical Mormons have virtually no access to information about the temple's history, so maybe he thought he knew about the temple because of how his idea of the past made him feel but hadn't ever learned the real truth. One way or another, I'd never really felt betrayed except by that one moment.
As a result of believing what he said, I assumed the temple ceremony had been preserved pristine as handed down from the mind of God. Why wouldn't I? If it had only been "language modernized" then of course the influence of man and the culture of man should have had almost no effect. When I went through the temple the first time, I imagined the ceremony existing in a chain of unbroken existence back to Adam, imagining the sacred secrets being passed down in caves or on mountain tops, imagining everything being perfect... But the one place I expected to find virtually uninfluenced by man had so many changes and man made influences, I was astonished. The temple fell dramatically from representing the very pinnacle of what it meant to be LDS as I understood it to, well, I wasn't sure what.
I wish I could rewind back to that cursed moment and change it. Here is what I wish someone had told me:
God speaks to us through and knowing the culture we are in. Our culture is imperfect. So, historically many things in the temple have inevitably been of human origin. As a result, human imperfections affect it and our leaders try to respond to those imperfections by fixing them. So yes, the temple has changed, generally in ways you'd appreciate if you knew the details. In general the changes have allowed the ceremony to focus more on God and less on cultural things that the early church leaders found fascinating or influences from their personal flaws that they tried to project back on God. Church leaders are human and make mistakes even sometimes in how they set up the temple. The important thing to realize is that God accepts and redeems us despite our tendency to make mistakes. So if something in the church past or present, even in the temple, doesn't seem right and you wonder whether God or man is responsible, feel free to wonder. Maybe its a genuine mistake, maybe you simply don't understand enough yet. We don't know all of where God is leading us or where he might still be finding us lacking. But the journey to God that we undertake in life and through the temple is a beautiful and a vital journey to undertake.
I know there are many reasons conversations like that don't happen in the LDS church. It would undermine the entire concept of why the leadership needs to be taken as seriously they do. But I wish it could have happened that way. That kind of humility in teaching about leadership and history would heal quite a few of the problems in the LDS church. I might still have left the LDS church, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as traumatic to have tried to have stayed in. And if I felt the need to leave, it wouldn't have been so traumatic.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Ministry of Reconcilliation
Being a religious minority in Utah can make some things obvious. Like how being part of a majority makes it hard for people to realize when they are being openly critical. At my job its not uncommon for me to hear LDS people gossip about how they disapprove of people whose religious opinions they disagree with, whose life choices have taken them in different religious directions, or who they feel don't live up to the tenants of the LDS religion in some ways or others. I don't think it ever occurs to them that anyone in the room might think about life and religion differently than them and might take exception to this kind of criticism being thrown about so casually. Most of the criticism is pretty tame, being constrained by the professional environment we are in, but the naive lack of sensitivity reveals both the power of a hyper majority to influence how people think and talk and also how distant I feel from much of the surrounding culture. I feel estranged in many ways from most people that I interact with at work and at times with family. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, having gotten used to being part of a dominant close knit culture only to end up so far outside of it. I don't want to be such an outsider, but there isn't much help for it.
The coworker whose desk is in front of mine often plays religious material of some kind through the speaker on her phone while she works, just barely loud enough that I can tell what it is without quite being able to hear most of the words. I don't mind terribly much, especially since its so quiet, though I have to wonder how quickly I'd get reported to HR if I practiced my own devotional habits out loud instead of quietly reading to myself or using headphones to listen to scriptures and sermons. I think it only irritates me at all because of the rest of the religious gossip I've heard from this coworker. Often after eating my lunch I'll sit at my cubicle and silently read over a noon time prayer devotional. One passage that comes up often is the following-
If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed
away, behold the new has come. All this is from God, who
through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18
This passage has a lot of power for me in more ways than one. When I was a teenager I had what I think would be called in some religious traditions a "being born again" experience. I came back out of that experience feeling such a deep emotional "reset" to the world that I walked back into the toxic environment of my home and instead of being part of the toxicity I was able to stand apart from it, feeling like a stranger in my own house because I largely no longer participated in the petty hatreds that surrounded me. I gained the strength to fight back against abuse directed towards me by attacking the perceptions and situations that allowed the abuse to occur rather than by being consumed by emotional warfare. It was as if I was a new person and helped me act as an agent of reconciliation with and between other people in my life as a result.
Now in my life I've again gone through another huge transition of becoming a new person. Except this time its not about letting go of old hatreds and bitterness. Its about letting go of the identity that had been built around being Mormon and especially the parts of me that were unnecessarily judgemental and unemphatic as a result of how I had lived out that tradition in favor of a new sense of community and identity much more flexible and embracing than I had before. I'm becoming again a new creature. It's a bitter irony that the reconciliation part isn't automatic. Letting go of fear and bitterness is a fundamental change that makes reconciliation a pretty direct result. Changing your group identity can include that, but if the group identity is the biggest part of you that is changing, the reconciliation that happens is a matter of group dynamics. Mostly there is nothing very personal about it. The part of me that was born when I decided I could trust God enough to abandon holding onto my bitterness and pain is still here, that part of me doesn't change. I was big enough to fight back against intentional emotional abuse without being consumed. I'm big enough to glide past unintentional petty gossip without being consumed by that either. Emotionally its small stuff, I'm battle hardened to a lot worse. But it still hurts to feel so estranged from family and the surrounding culture.
It is all to easy to toss off this feeling with a sense of holier than thou snobbishness. Matthew 10:34 comes a little too easily sometimes:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.While that is a comfort to think that some level of estrangement is a natural sacrifice to doing what I think is right, it doesn't negate Matthew 26:52:
Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.I am all too familiar with how emotional combat can consume people's lives and destroy happiness and relationships. Victoriously sulking in the pain of being estranged from others breeds contempt and conflict. I was dwelling on these tensions during my noonday devotional when I was reading in Romans 14 about the conflicts regarding the Jewish Law-
Who are you to pass judgement on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.and
Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgement seat of God. For it is written, As I live says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So then each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgement on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. I knew and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.
Its an ideal to strive for, that we should acknowledge the integrity of people trying to live a good life the best way they know how, even if any given tradition, including my own, can have their frustrating blind spots and refusing to white wash over the very real pain and damage caused by those blind spots. That is in a sense, the beginnings of a ministry of reconciliation in the heart.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
First Good Friday and Easter Vigil services
So I made it to a Good Friday and Easter Vigil services this last week, thought I'd write up a few impressions.
Good Friday commemorates the death of Christ. We attended an interdenominational service at a local ELCA Lutheran church which was holding joint services with our own church. The style of worship between the two churches is actually similar enough that we feel pretty comfortable there. It was actually our number 2 choice of where we might have gone after Mormonism if not the Episcopal Church. The biggest stylistic difference you'd notice immediately other than the differences in the building and vestments is that the local Lutheran congregation uses chant more in their worship than our parish normally does. We chanted psalm 22, the one Jesus quotes while on the cross. We also read New Testament passages describing the trial and death of Jesus. The songs were mournful and the emotions raised were intense. At the end of the service they brought out a large cross which I assume they normally use for both processions and as a room decoration and laid it on the floor. After remembering the death of Jesus in ritual, song, sermon, and scripture we all filed out of the room almost silently after one by one pausing to give reverence at the foot of the cross- some by simply touching it with their hand, some by crossing themselves, or a few by bowing their head to touch it. It was a solemn and beautiful occasion. I'm certain this service would make many of the LDS people I've known uncomfortable since they are used to priding themselves in "focusing on the living Christ" and not Christ's death or the cross. However, I honestly don't see it as fundamentally different than the remembrances of Joseph Smith's death performed at the tours given of Liberty Jail. Other, of course, than that this is about Jesus. Remembering the death of Jesus in this was was deeply moving and I'm glad I went.
I attended Easter vigil by myself, since its held at night after the kids bedtime. We started outside, lighting a new fire to represent the light of God coming into the world, lit a ceremonial candle from the new fire, and then lit from that candle individual candled that we held through most of the service. Much of the introductory and explanatory words which normally might be spoken in our parish were sung instead in a beautiful chant setting I had never heard before. Old testament prophecies dealing with Christ were read. The story of the Israelites passing through the sea was recounted and discussed in the context of baptism. Baptismal covenants were renewed by literally repeating the promises, Baptism as a symbol of Christ's death and resurrection was discussed, and many songs were sung. Easter Vigil is celebrated in the evening as if it is part of Easter itself, following the Jewish tradition as counting a new day as starting with the sunset of the old day. So the tone started out silent and solemn but progressively turned joyous with shouts of Alleluia and laughter. We shared a communion meal together and enjoyed a sermon about what it meant to be "dead to sin" and resurrected in Christ when one is most definitely still a sinner. It was again a very beautiful event.
Despite having attended church 3 times over the last 6 days, I still haven't experienced the full cycle of worship in Holy Week. I still have yet to attend a Maundy Thursday service which commemorates the Last Supper, the night watch service (which I have yet to learn about), stations of the cross commemorating Jesus's walk carrying the cross, or a ceremonial stripping of the altar (which I have yet to learn about). With so many opportunities for worship, there is a reason that the last week before Easter is called "Holy Week."
Good Friday commemorates the death of Christ. We attended an interdenominational service at a local ELCA Lutheran church which was holding joint services with our own church. The style of worship between the two churches is actually similar enough that we feel pretty comfortable there. It was actually our number 2 choice of where we might have gone after Mormonism if not the Episcopal Church. The biggest stylistic difference you'd notice immediately other than the differences in the building and vestments is that the local Lutheran congregation uses chant more in their worship than our parish normally does. We chanted psalm 22, the one Jesus quotes while on the cross. We also read New Testament passages describing the trial and death of Jesus. The songs were mournful and the emotions raised were intense. At the end of the service they brought out a large cross which I assume they normally use for both processions and as a room decoration and laid it on the floor. After remembering the death of Jesus in ritual, song, sermon, and scripture we all filed out of the room almost silently after one by one pausing to give reverence at the foot of the cross- some by simply touching it with their hand, some by crossing themselves, or a few by bowing their head to touch it. It was a solemn and beautiful occasion. I'm certain this service would make many of the LDS people I've known uncomfortable since they are used to priding themselves in "focusing on the living Christ" and not Christ's death or the cross. However, I honestly don't see it as fundamentally different than the remembrances of Joseph Smith's death performed at the tours given of Liberty Jail. Other, of course, than that this is about Jesus. Remembering the death of Jesus in this was was deeply moving and I'm glad I went.
I attended Easter vigil by myself, since its held at night after the kids bedtime. We started outside, lighting a new fire to represent the light of God coming into the world, lit a ceremonial candle from the new fire, and then lit from that candle individual candled that we held through most of the service. Much of the introductory and explanatory words which normally might be spoken in our parish were sung instead in a beautiful chant setting I had never heard before. Old testament prophecies dealing with Christ were read. The story of the Israelites passing through the sea was recounted and discussed in the context of baptism. Baptismal covenants were renewed by literally repeating the promises, Baptism as a symbol of Christ's death and resurrection was discussed, and many songs were sung. Easter Vigil is celebrated in the evening as if it is part of Easter itself, following the Jewish tradition as counting a new day as starting with the sunset of the old day. So the tone started out silent and solemn but progressively turned joyous with shouts of Alleluia and laughter. We shared a communion meal together and enjoyed a sermon about what it meant to be "dead to sin" and resurrected in Christ when one is most definitely still a sinner. It was again a very beautiful event.
Despite having attended church 3 times over the last 6 days, I still haven't experienced the full cycle of worship in Holy Week. I still have yet to attend a Maundy Thursday service which commemorates the Last Supper, the night watch service (which I have yet to learn about), stations of the cross commemorating Jesus's walk carrying the cross, or a ceremonial stripping of the altar (which I have yet to learn about). With so many opportunities for worship, there is a reason that the last week before Easter is called "Holy Week."
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