Prayer and Family Worship- Episcopalian Style

In many ways, our family worship has remained the same since joining the Episcopal Church.  We still read our scriptures daily- when we can manage it.  We still pray daily, including over our food.  We still go to church as a family every week, although only for two hours (if you include hanging out for socializing afterwards) instead of three.  But we now enrich our family worship traditions with some of the ritual forms of worship found in the Book of Common Prayer.

The Book of Common Prayer is the guiding tradition of ritual worship in the Episcopal Church, guiding how worship is performed at church and at home, through the week, and through the year.  There are traditional schedules for reading the bible, traditional worship services for different times of day adapted for daily and church life from the English monastic traditions, and an entire church calender that focuses worship on different parts of Christ's life through different parts of the year.  Community and individual prayer are an intense part of the worship tradition in the Episcopal Church, so much so that we were taken somewhat aback when asked by a family member if we still prayed.

Ritual worship is something that I grew up disrespecting as an inauthentic way to reach God, despite the many formal and informal ritual worship phrases and ceremonies in the LDS tradition.  But praying with an intent to be always spontaneous and conversational failed to work for my own personal worship the way it used to.  When I stopped believing in the LDS church, I didn't feel like I knew who I was talking to when I prayed anymore.  All the answers I knew from growing up were ones I was now willing to throw out because just because a general authority or LDS Sunday School teacher told me so was no longer a good enough reason to believe anything anymore.  One advantage of ritual worship is that it allows you to directly join an inclusive community of worship even if you aren't sure of your own path to worship alone anymore.  It's helped me refind my voice as I've tried to redecide who I thought God was.

We've started to include using elements of these traditions in our family worship as well.  Our kids seem to really love rituals and routines.  Heaven forbid we change the order of events in which bedtime is done.  But, they appear to enjoy us adding pieces in, and join in with their own exuberance.  A few quotes give some of the flavor of how bedtime prayer (with elements of the Compline ritual) can go in our house these days:

Mom “Give us this day our (Yawn)
L: “DAILY BREAD!!!”
Mom “Yes that’s right L, daily bread”
L: “GIVE US OUR REFRIGERATORS!!!” (laughs hysterically)

Mom: “It’s time for bed”
L: “THANKS BE TO GOD!!!” (repeated over, and over, and over)
("Thanks Be to God" is the ritual closing phrase at church, so L innovated on the normal routine to declare that worship was done.)

Mom: “Let’s all cuddle and sing a calming down song” (proceeds to sing gospel hymn from church because its the only calm song coming to mind)
T: “We sing that calming down song at church!”
— Later upon tucking into bed T sings the gospel hymn to himself

Mom: (recites Lord’s Prayer)
T: "Do you need the book now so you can read the "Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.” with the Allelulia’s at the end?"
L: “ALLELULIA!  ALLELULIA!"
(How T memorized that when its unclear how much he pays attention normally is a mystery to us.)

Although prayers for refrigerators from a two year old might cause some hilarious distraction, the rituals of the Episcopal Church form a structure of worship through the day, week, and year that is rich, beautiful, and Christ centered.

Confirmation

Last Sunday, my wife and I were confirmed members of the Episcopal Church.  Since I have already covered what that doctrinally means in a previous post, I wanted to simply give a few thoughts on the experience.

Between the youth and adults being confirmed, we were in the largest group to be confirmed at one time in the history of the parish, which extends back more than 100 years.  As a result, there was some excitement over the event.  The ceremony is presided over and performed by the Bishop.  An Episcopal Church Bishop is somewhere between an LDS area authority 70 and a Stake President- so he isn't someone who I've encountered a lot beyond the thoughts on daily scripture readings he posts on facebook.  But for such a special occasion, he spent more time with us.  During a practice rehearsal of the ceremony ahead of time, he spent some time going over with us the history of the practice of confirmation and how that practice differed between different faith traditions.  Apparently, there are two vows in the Episcopal traditions of baptism and confirmation that are, to the Bishop's knowledge, fairly unique to the Episcopal church.  They are the following:

• "Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving  your neighbor as yourself?"
• "Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?"

 He suggested that raising these concepts to the level of being part of the baptismal/confirmation vows is very unique and should take a particular place in the setting apart our sense of identity as Episcopalians.

Following the rehearsal, there was a community dinner in honor of all being confirmed.  Having heard that it was going to be a pasta dinner, I had visions in my head of a bunch of uninspiring noodles heated up with bottled tomato sauce.  In reality, it was superb.  I don't like to go out to eat places where I can cook better than the food being offered is and the chef catering our dinner clearly is a better cook than I am.  While I might be able to replicate the dishes prepared for us if I knew the recipe, I frankly couldn't do so just on general inspiration.  I had originally thought of having extended family come with us to this dinner as part of the general family celebration of my graduation, I'm now somewhat glad I did not.  Moderate amounts of alcohol were being drunk by many of those present and I know it is not uncommon for LDS people to feel uncomfortable in settings where alcohol is being served.  I was personally amused by the situation, since I can now say that my first experience with being around people who had just enough alcohol in them to make them more sociable was at church.

Similar to how LDS children are often given journals or their own copies of the scripture when they are baptized, Episcopalians are often given their own copy of the Book of Common Prayer as a traditional confirmation gift.  Both my wife and I were presented with copies which were signed by both our confirmation sponsors and by the Bishop.  This brings the total number of copies in our possession to three.  I have been working on learning how to adapt the spiritual ritual practices of the Episcopal Church into my life, so these were welcome gifts.

On the day of the confirmation, we had to attend church at a service later in the day than usual since the Bishop was doing all confirmations at the same time.  The social hour in between the two services was packed with people.  The mood was celebratory.  Photographs were being taken all around.  The Bishop took all of the people being confirmed aside to visit with us ahead of the ceremony and asked if we wanted to share our thoughts and feelings.  Many tender emotions were expressed, with at least one person there breaking into tears.  The ceremony itself was joyous, and there was an extravagant burst of applause following the completion of the confirmations.  There is a kind of emotional power in a group of people making spiritual vows together, not just quietly whispered but with loud confidence.  The sense of community created is beautiful, especially when the congregation at large promises to help those being confirmed live out their promises.

I grew up being taught that those who left the LDS church would invariably have much of the light and spiritual spark in their lives die as a result.  I was taught that all who left typically fell prey to dire temptations and a darkening of their personalities as satan took over their hearts.  Frankly, leaving the LDS church can be a very dark and disturbing experience where your entire sense of identity,  personal and family relationships, worldview, and sense of morality can be reevaluated so fast that some people are left with a sense of vertigo.  Family and community rejection is common.  Who wouldn't face a period of darkness after the entire foundation of their life was disrupted?  But that has nothing to do with the rebuilding of lives that can happen afterwards.  Confirmation is, in part, a way for me to solidify my new way of interpreting my Christian identity.  The Episcopal church is a faith community I am proud to be a part of.

Easter Season Disconnect

Easter season produces a very large sense of disconnect between my past and present.  For an idea of the magnitude of the dissonance, take a look this article from the Deseret News.  To sum it up, in the population of Mormon's studied by this BYU professor, Easter observances in the LDS faith around the Utah area where he surveyed are completely dominated by the observance of General Conference.  In terms of how much planning an preparation go into their holidays, the respondents put Easter as 3rd, with Christmas at the top, Thanksgiving second, and then Easter only slightly ahead of the 4th of July.  A minority of the respondents knew what day Easter was on that year, had a thorough familiarity with the events of the New Testament leading up to Easter, and a minority followed specific worship remembrances of the Easter season.  Even when General Conference does not fall on top of Easter, ward level celebrations of Easter only consistently rose to the level of being the subject of talks and hymns during Sacrament meeting.  Specific areas had more local traditions, but it was fairly universal that the lesson materials for the day on Easter were not on the subject of Easter during Sunday School or Priesthood/Relief Society meetings.  As a church, the celebration gets a few hymns and talks on one day.  Other observances are family or locally based.

In the Episcopal tradition, which preserves much of the traditional structure of Catholicism and is mirrored in many elements by other protestant religions, devotes 44 days (including Sundays which are traditionally not counted) to Lent which prepares for Easter, 7 days to Holy Week which re enacts and focuses Worship on the specific New Testament events leading up to Easter, and 50 days to celebrating Easter afterwards.  Or in other words, 101 days focused on Easter either in preparation for it or in remembrance afterwards.  That is 27% of the entire year, focused on one holiday.  The seasons are marked by many specific celebrations, in particular during Holy Week.

Of course, the LDS belief that all of Christendom is in a state of apostasy doesn't produce much cultural borrowing from other worship traditions- especially anything that looks vaguely Catholic.  Also, the LDS holiday traditions are arguably descended from Puritan dominated New England where the celebration of holidays including Easter and Christmas was discouraged.  Even knowing all of that, transitioning from Easter being something that growing up we occasionally honored with a little bit of candy and deviled dyed eggs to having Easter dominate almost one third of the year is startling.  The rapid swing from the sedate worship during Lent to the intense outbreak of joy on Easter makes a profound effect.

Now that I can start to view my past celebrations of Easter from an outsider perspective, there is a stark contrast.  I can respect that Mormonism wishes to be viewed as part of Christianity and I think it deserves to be considered so- just a branch of it that isn't descended directly from the historical flow of events or historical doctrinal progression.  But now it feels distinctly odd for a Christian religion to share so little in the outbreak of joy that makes up the Easter season.  It feels distinctly odd that crosses are typically considered to be taboo or even sometimes offensive symbols in Mormonism.  It feels odd that the statements of recent religious leaders eclipse the words of Christ in the New Testament in theological significance.  Its hard to say that any of that is right or wrong- its simply a different pattern to express faith that I no longer find meaningful for myself.  But the contrast between my present and my past is especially deep in Easter Season.

My Easter

I've never experienced Easter with so much anticipation in my life before.  Though I wouldn't say I managed to fully dive into the participation of the Lent and Holy Week traditions, I was aware they were there and they've driven the themes of worship and devotion at church and somewhat at home for months now.  It will dominate worship for some time yet- Easter is a season in the Episcopal Church, not only a day.

Last night I got home from work to find my wife carried through on my suggestion that we participate in the potluck refreshments for after the services.  She's got an entire walnut bread braid in advanced stages of preparation.  She goes to bed and I finish cooking it.  It's a beautiful creation.  Chatting with my wife I find out a little of gossip of what has been going on at general conference, and I find more when browse the web.  I'm worried.  What negative messages about people like me will be delivered over the pulpit?  Why does someone feel a need to stir the pot by casting dissenting votes to not sustain church leaders?  Sure it probably felt good to them and showed more prominently the weirdness of a vote where a no vote  is not only meaningless to outcomes but also is considered socially inappropriate and probably a violation of covenant obligations.  But, in real terms, other than making people mad it accomplished pretty much nothing.  Will my family think I'm just another "crazy angry person" instead of realizing I'm just me?  Will they even care who or what I am if simple answers are provided to those questions over the pulpit?

Easter Morning arrives.  The church is packed, and the service is practically a burst of joy.  Shouts of Alleluja, energetic singing, a professional organist, and high church liturgy all combine for an experience the like I've experienced no where else in my life.  The contrast of Easter being routinely almost eclipsed by General Conference in Mormonism is strong.  Different faiths, different traditions.  Just being able to remember the disrespectful things I learned to think about other faith tradition's ways of interacting with Christ compared to this massive eruption of Christ centered joy in Easter make it hard to forget the difference.  Looking back, other than the Easter candy I'm not sure my family had much in terms of Easter traditions.  Of course, we weren't big on tradition as a family anyways and, well, General Conference often falls on top of Easter so why would there be?  Easter candy is a tradition that will continue in any case.  Our kids gather Easter eggs outside of the church and we enjoy refreshments.  There is practically a feast going on.  The two loaves of bread we made are completely consumed and the kids stuff themselves on candy.  Friendly church members who don't want to take any of the candy home help out, making sure our kids don't lack for chocolate.

Afterwards at home, we relax some.  I'd forgotten how big of a deal Easter is in our new tradition, so I had forgotten to ask off work in time.  I don't want to go to work.  I don't want to deal with my hyper Mormon coworkers who will be more hyper Mormon than usual because its General Conference time.  Because its tasty, soothing, and helps me feel like I'm putting emotional distance between myself and my hyper mormon judgmental coworkers- I brew up some tea to take to work with me.  Nothing shouts non mormon like a travel coffee mug with yummy tea in it.  Too bad I was in such a hurry to get out the door, I can never get the tea just right when I'm in a hurry and I'm still experimenting with how best to make it.

When I get to work, I push the distance between my hyper mormon co workers and myself even farther apart by going to the back of the room where a little group of mostly non Mormon's hang out.  They won't judge the tea- why would they?  As far as food goes, in this crowd I'm just weird because I only cook with alcohol instead of drinking it.  When I go to the break room, I find someone has turned on General Conference on the large screen TV.  I don't want to listen to General Conference, so I go outside instead.  I'm still worried, what are my parents and family and friends hearing about "people like me" that they'll assume is gospel truth just because someone whose never met me before claims to be able to speak for all the ex mormon's in the world and explain their spiritual characteristics.  How do I stop caring?  I probably never will.  At least not fully.

I wish I were home.  It may be a slow day at work, but working holidays is lame when I'd rather be with my family.  I read some in a devotional book, a lot in a fun book, help customers fix their telecommunications, and get yelled at a few times by customers.  "Hail thee Festival Day" is still ringing in my ears, but Easter at work just doesn't cut it.

Perception and Connection

I like food.  I like playing with making food.  I like tasting new flavors and learning new techniques for making food.  Occasionally, I even like to talk about food.  I like to brag about how my wife makes amazing meals for me to eat.  Despite life being crazy busy, she makes things that are new and interesting on a semi regular basis, which is pretty impressive considering how the kids behave sometimes.  Just recently, we had a bottle of "rose water" arrive in the mail, and my wife exclaimed "Hooray, I can finally try that wine pasta with the saffron and the rose water sauce."  I frankly have almost no idea what to expect, other than that I'll experience something probably incredibly delicious with flavors I've never experienced before in my life.  When I come across something spectacular and special, I want to share it.  It's part of how I connect to life and to other people who can rejoice with me in the celebration of life that eating represents.

Since I no longer feel morally bound by the paradigms of Mormonism, I naturally have a desire to expand my boundaries and in the process I discover new worlds of flavor.  Recently the expanding horizons we've been playing with have involved tea.  Though our first tries weren't very good, we've found some basic flavors that we've fallen in love with.  There is an entire world of flavors involved in tea drinking and we've only just scratched the surface.  I've tried a number of types of tea, experimented with different techniques of preparation, and learned how to work with new types of equipment.  Its as if I just opened a new flavor world just waiting for me to play in it.  That's my perception.  With anything that fun I'd just love to reach out and connect to people in sharing just the simple joy of flavor.

But who would I share such a connection with?  My perceptions aren't the only ones that matter to make a connection.  To most of my social world from my life before leaving the church, I'm participating in a forbidden act.  It would look like I was smearing the signs of my unholiness as a badge of honor- rejoicing in wickedness.  Some would probably think that I probably left the church because I just wanted to sin anyways and so came up with excuses to allow myself to do so.  For some, it would be as if I were posting a picture of using a dangerous drug like Meth and then bragging about how awesome it was and asking for people to follow in my footsteps.  It could be seen as crass and immoral- an example of the bad things that come to those who wander in spiritually dangerous territory.  Some might even speculate that my poor health over the past few months was a punishment from God or a withdrawal of blessings for being willing to cook with and partake of forbidden foods in rejection of the pure will of God.  Without shared perception, there is little room for human connection.  Even while I can enjoy playing with new flavors and using new tools for creating new worlds of experience, I mourn the loss of connection.

What about the Word of Wisdom?

Christ stated, "What goes into someone's mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them." (Matthew 15:11) While I fully understand that from a Mormon perspective Christ can speak again and give good advice and commands beyond what is recorded in the New Testament, I no longer accept the Mormon tradition as speaking for Christ. That doesn't mean I've decided to take up smoking or binge drinking. I just view them as about on the same level of moral concern as participating in extreme sports- having many potential negative consequences including death but not a black and white matter of right and wrong.

I've heard stories of people who leave the church and suddenly family and friends assume that they are immediately going to start smoking cigarettes and heavily drinking. Frankly any former member of the LDS church is probably going to have some period of experimentation with things that used to be forbidden to them like a teenager trying to figure out what their increased freedom really means. However, what each person experiments with and how they do it will be different- assumptions are inappropriate.

Just to clear things up, at this point I do not intend to drink much alcohol. Being on the autistic spectrum I have been and probably always will be at a high risk of depression, anxiety, chronic loneliness, and a high level of social inhibitions when I'm around people. Since drinking can loosen social inhibitions I'd probably enjoy social drinking quite a lot. It would also probably be personally risky. My life is hard enough without giving myself an unhealthy short cut to feeling better that would be easy to abuse. I just don't plan on going there, but that isn't the same as total abstinence.

I love trying new foods and I love to cook. Many recipes call for alcohol. I no longer feel a need to always substitute out other ingredients for alcohol. When I cook with alcohol, I see no reason not to taste it to understand better the flavors I am experimenting with. The three alcohols I've tasted so far I'd rate as tasting more "interesting" than "good" on their own. Cooked into other foods, they can be fantastic. For example, pasta with white wine infused into the dough tastes absolutely marvelous even with a bottled alfredo sauce. I've made red wine infused pasta that in the right context was heavenly. One of the best grilled steaks I've eaten in my life was marinated in ingredients including red wine.

What about the health risks of alcohol? Am I endangering my children by letting them eat wine pasta and marinated steaks? I'm honestly not that worried about it. I am aware that alcohol does not completely "cook out." I am also aware that especially for longer cooking times, much alcohol is destroyed or evaporated during cooking and what remains is very dilute. Most of the health risks of alcohol come from drinking more than something like one glass a day (for a man) or drinking too much at once. Most of the recipes that I have tried with alcohol in them have called only for a few tablespoons or perhaps 1/4 cup for a dish that might take my entire family two days to eat. We don't make many of these dishes because some of them are time consuming, wine is expensive, and many recipes that call for it we've substituted out the alcohol so long that it tastes right to us the way we've always done it and we forget to pull the frozen wine out of the freezer to thaw in time. My alcohol intake from cooking with alcohol over time is probably less than my alcohol intake from cough syrup or even my alcohol intake from eating fresh homemade yogurt with a drop of almond extract. McCormick Almond Extract flavoring is 32% alcohol-dramatically higher than any wine I've  even thought about cooking with and my kids eat a lot of homemade yogurt.  All told, since leaving the LDS church a little less than a year ago, our cooking projects have consumed a little less than two bottles of wine.

I have started to experiment with drinking tea. I love Indian food with the variety of spices and flavors that I would have found unimaginable before I started eating Indian food. Chai tea in its many varieties plays with some of the same flavors. I'm looking forwards to trying to learn to brew it properly with my own spices instead of relying on pre-flavored packets. So far, I have no plan to experiment with coffee. Though I might someday, at this point there simply hasn't been an inherent appeal. I do not intend to ever experiment with tobacco- there is no inherent appeal for me and the health risks are high and are not readily avoidable by using it sparingly.

For my still Mormon friends and family members, I promise I won't even invite you to dinner and try to trick you into eating something with alcohol in it. It probably wouldn't even be on the menu. For my non-LDS friends, if you want a little wine with dinner we'll have to check what's in the freezer.

Sad today

So the founder of Mormon Stories has been excommunicated.  This should be no surprise I suppose and its not as if I'm not very well familiar with how the rules and culture of the LDS church work.  But it makes me sad.  I'm not sad about it because I was a huge fan of listening to his podcasts.  Honestly, his podcasts are very long (3-5 hours per subject is not unusual) and I rarely have time for them.  I couldn't say I was a follower of him in any particular way, though I think he may have been more careful to be accurate in what he said than some other podcasts I did have time to listen to.  I live in the same town as he does, but we've never met.  It's sad because community is something horrible to lose.

Recently, the local Bishop stopped by to ask if we still didn't want any contact from the church.  The funny thing was we had never actually said that (we said we wanted no proselytizing contact, which is a very different request), and showing up at our door step uninvited while believing that we didn't want contact is kind of inherently rude.  As he left he said we would be welcome back.  And in a way I'm sure he meant it.  If we would be willing to never express any disagreement, be willing to look like everyone else, silently endure lessons and official church materials that presented often in an insulting and infuriating way, and be willing to be subjected to emotionally traumatic discipline whenever someone spread a rumor about us then sure we'd be welcome back.  These are the same people who told my wife that she couldn't conduct the music in Relief Society while wearing pants because she couldn't represent Jesus while wearing them.  Sure, we'd be welcome back in a sense.  If we openly discussed our opinions and explained why certain historical teachings were actually incorrect or didn't express the love of God appropriately we'd certainly be excommunicated as well.  Silence, except in private consultations with priesthood leaders who probably aren't interested or knowledgeable in the subjects at hand, is the price of admission if you have a problem.  That is unless you just get lucky and live somewhere the culture is different, then all bets are off.  As it was, I could hardly discuss basic biblical translation scholarship without scandalizing my home teacher.

Some parts of me miss having a "ward family."  There were times in my life the social support structure of the LDS church was very helpful and healthy for me.  There were times it was the only place outside of my family I could go and feel welcome and accepted.  As wonderful and as healthy as the social situation is in our new church, just like having a new child can never really replace one who has died gaining a new church family can't really replace one that fails to love or accept you.

So yes, some parts of me miss the emotional security that a healthy relationship with a ward can provide.  Some parts of me miss feeling like I fit in with one of the only social groups I remained attached to through out my whole life.  Caring enough about truth and love enough to leave wasn't without cost.  And its not as if going back would ever truly be an option.  I value the truth too much and I value the more expansive view of the Love of Christ that I can find outside of the LDS church too much to ever be willing to suffer in silence again.  If I wasn't silent, I would be treated like John Dehlin was treated.

That doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt.