No, that’s not true. Sometimes in the temple I’ve felt like HF was assuring me that he doesn’t work the way the world works. I try to remember that.

One thing on your comment, I guess I never thought of scripture supposing to be counter-cultural. In fact, I would assume it’s meant to fit in with culture, at least during the time it’s written. I look at scripture as something that is meant to help all of us apply divine things to our everyday lives, it only feels counter-cultural when it’s 1000 years old… But I often am accused of being a heretic for my views on the scriptures

Your comment about prayer very much resonates with me. My private prayers also tend to be somewhat jumbled and chaotic. And I hadn’t thought about how that might apply to this question–that’s a really interesting point.

Thinking about this more, and about some of the conversation here, I’m thinking about the different implications of a ban on private prayer and a ban on public one–though as discussed earlier, I don’t think the 1991 statement makes a distinction. In some ways I see the former situation as less of a concern, maybe because it is so unenforceable, and I think it’s the kind of thing that most people would simply say is between you and God. But the public ban, the fact that we only address HF in church, inevitably shapes our view of gender in ways that I find troubling.

Anyway, getting back to your comment, I don’t know what to make of the absence of the divine feminine in scripture. Except for the obvious point that our scriptures come from males, and we do tend to create God in our own image–and as you mentioned, they might not have been open to revelation about HM. There’s a tension there, I think, not just on this issue but generally, in that in a sense the whole point of scripture is to be counter-cultural–the prophetic voice challenges the status quo–and yet we then find ourselves grappling with the cultural limitations of even that critique. And it’s hard to untangle.

I also agree with you that the argument from silence (we don’t have any examples of it) isn’t very compelling, especially in a church which believes in continuing revelation.

I’ve come to think that the question of HM’s silence is like some of the other difficult questions in religion–attempts at explanation are prone to make the situation worse. (Some of the ones that have been cooked up, like the “she’s being protected” thing, I find almost more disturbing than the situation they’re attempting to explain.) But I’m not sure where that leaves me. My hope is that she’s every much as involved as is HF, not a subordinate partner in the shadows, and that her apparent silence is–as you and others have suggested–due to our limitations, rather than hers. But I do wish I had a stronger basis to build that on.

Great post, I just wanted to add a couple of my thoughts.

First a caveat: when I pray it usually turns into a big jumble. I have a hard time following the primary proscription: address HF, thank Him, ask Him, close in Jesus’ name. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to HF, sometimes to Christ, and sometimes to HM, and sometimes I’m just shouting hoping anyone at all will listen. So my prayers are not very orthodox, I guess.

I really dislike the idea that we don’t discuss HM (I think of her in the singular because even if there are multiple, I only have one) because HF wants to protect her. It is demeaning to her and reminds me too much of times when I was being “protected”, or in other words, simply not allowed to do something that wasn’t appropriate for girls in my fathers’ eyes.

I tend to believe that over time men (as in male, not as in humanity) have removed references to divine feminine from scriptures simply in order to continue the power status quo. Perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously, probably a mixture of the two. But in my mind, it is more likely that references to spouses for either God or Christ have been removed, rather than the fact that they have not existed at all. Or maybe that men simply didn’t ever put them in, where HM might have been trying to slip in some inspiration to do so.

Although I do think that God inspires those that He calls, He does not take away their agency, so even in latter day revelation, an idea that seems unpalatable to the prophet due to his generation and life (ie worshipping a woman) would be easily dismissed, or at the most put in the “We just don’t know so let’s not talk about it too much” box.

To me Her silence doesn’t imply a lack of power in HM, it implies a lack of willingness in us to continue to change closer to unified godliness. When enough of us desire that something gets fixed, and it’s inline with God’s desires, it happens (major things like the removal of the Priesthood ban all the way to smaller things like changes in the temple ordinances).

I was not familiar with President Hinckley talk in 1991 on the subject, but using that logic you could also say that because She’s simply not mentioned anywhere in those sources, we ought not believe in Her at all, and obviously we do. I’m okay with accepting that President Hinckley (at least in ‘91) just wasn’t there yet, in recognizing HM for her reality…

What are your thoughts about praying to Jesus or the Holy Ghost? That is just as proscribed, no? Why would Heavenly Mother be any different than Jesus?

As the Ignorant Sage said, I think that proscription is maybe less clear, given the ambiguity of the divine figure in the OT, and the Nephites praying to Jesus in 3 Nephi. But in any case, I’m thinking about why that is—why we pray to the Father rather than the other members of the Godhead. Off the top of my head, my guess is that it’s because we understand the Father to be the one ultimately responsible for it all, the mastermind behind the plan, so to speak—we talk about the Son and the Holy Ghost as carrying out the Father’s will, not as initiating things. So it makes sense that prayer would be addressed to him. But I would think that HM’s relationship to HF is qualitatively different from that of Jesus’ relationship to the Father, which is why I don’t see the situations as comparable.

My other problem is that some clearly do feel (as expressed here and elsewhere) the need to have a connection to HM in this phase of life. I think it’s one thing to say that one parent is more involved at different times of life; it’s another to say that one parent has opted to be completely uninvolved even if the child wants that connection. The church emphasizes, after all, that children need both a mother and a father to be involved in their upbringing, and I’m assuming that means having both involved throughout their development, as opposed to switching off between one and the other.

Jenne, thanks for your comment. I have a lot of problems with the multiple Heavenly Mothers idea, not least for what it suggests about the eternal status of women—but I can’t dispute that LDS doctrine poses the possibility. But I’m intrigued by your distinction between prayer and worship; it occurs to me that I’m not actually sure what we mean by “worship.” Because I agree with you that when we talk about prayer, we’re usually talking about communication. Is the concern less with prayer than with worship, I wonder? And why would worship be appropriate for a divine male but not for a divine female? Maybe that actually gets better at the basic question I have about all of this—even beyond the problem that we’re told not to talk to her, how do we make sense of the fact that we posit the existence of a divine female who is specifically not an object of worship? Because I think that’s closely tied to the status of women both temporally and eternally.

If polygamy is an eternal law

That’s a gigantic “if.” Though plenty of people in the church disagree with me, I’m pretty unconvinced that polygamy is an eternal law, that God is a polygamist, or that polygamy will exist in the eternities.

Also, on the ability to connect with our specific Heavenly Mother whether she is one of many or just one, I found comfort in a quote from Joseph Smith (of course, I can’t find the specific quote at this time) where he described it being okay to talk to beings who are not on this earth (living or dead).

After the death of a number of people close to me, I found myself turning in my prayers from a prayer to Heavenly Father, to a conversation with a loved one. I never knew if it was “right” or not, but its what I felt impressed to do. I got confirmation of that after reading the quote I’m referencing. It was okay to talk to the dead, knowing that they can listen and know what our hearts and spirits want them to know. If it can work for deceased loved ones and friends, why wouldn’t it work to talk to our Mother in Heaven?

Its not a prayer because prayer required worship. When I talk to my father who is deceased, I’m not worshiping him but talking to him as if he were still here. My worship still squarely focuses on the God who I’m commanded and covenanted to worship.