Showing all posts by Lynnette

In Baptism, Ritual, Sacrament

Reflections on the LDS Sacrament (Part I)

Author LynnettePosted on 7 Comments

This has gotten ridiculously long, so I’m going to just start with the first half.

How many times did I take the sacrament in an LDS church? Weeks. Years. The sacrament hymns were almost mindlessly familiar. When I was a kid, the deacons seemed so old to me; later on, of course, they were strikingly young. As a girl who never participated in passing it, I wondered about the logistics of how they set up who was going to go where. Sometimes the experience was dominated by the awkwardness of figuring out how it was going to work, if I were perhaps sitting in the middle of an empty row. In singles wards, it was almost jarringly silent. In wards with young children, it was a dull roar. Read More

In Authority, God, Love

God the GA

Author LynnettePosted on 8 Comments

Growing up, I think I basically imagined God as being somewhat akin to a General Authority. In my mind, he (male, of course) was a generally benevolent older man. He wasn’t mean, necessarily, but he did have very clear expectations of how people should act, and would be disappointed if you didn’t meet those expectations. He would lecture when necessary, if he felt like you needed it. He would be patient, sure, but he also had a clearly defined plan for you, and wasn’t very interested in your opinions or ideas about how things were going, because you needed to get on board and follow the plan. God didn’t particularly care about your feelings, for heaven’s sake; he cared about accomplishing his grand purposes. I mean, he might listen politely and maybe even acknowledge what you said, but ultimately he wanted you to get with the program and get over yourself.

Read More

In Faith, God, Religion

Trying to Quit God

Author LynnettePosted on 3 Comments

The year that I was 23 years old, I wrote in my journal that I had made some progress on a particular goal. I had managed to go for a month without praying. (I admitted that I had actually slipped once, but I wasn’t counting that because it was short, and not actual conversation.) It was an incredibly challenging thing to do, but I had done it. Another step toward getting to where I wanted to be. Maybe I could finally give up on this whole believing in God thing, I thought optimistically,  and move on with my life.

That right there should tell you a little bit about my 23-year-old self. I was intensely obsessed with matters of religion and faith and God, but they caused me such profound ambivalence that I constantly  dreamed of letting them go. After graduating from BYU, I had decided that I was done with the LDS church, done with the patriarchy and the authoritarianism, done with what I saw as religious brainwashing. But simply quitting church, it turned out, wasn’t enough. I needed to quit God as well. And I was determined to do it. I actually thought through five general situations which tempted me to pray, and tried to come up with alternate things to do when those came up. I was going to find my way out.

Read More

In Advent, Depression, Joy

Gaudete

Author LynnettePosted on 6 Comments

It has been such a hard fall. The weather is getting to me; it is so gray, and it feels like the gray seeps everywhere and dims everything, dulls all the colors. The solstice is approaching, and the darkness feels relentless. But the worst part, of course, is that my brain is broken. I keep running into the same wall, I crash in the same way over and over, and I can’t put the pieces back together again; every attempt to do so somehow leaves me even more jagged and misshapen. I try new meds and go back off them because at the very least they don’t seem to do anything helpful, and sometimes it feels like they are making things worse. I can’t really tell, though, what it is exactly that’s making everything so horrible. As usual, I conclude that the world actually is that awful, and also I am a moral failure, and that explains everything. Read More

In Conversion, Episcopalians, Nov 5 Policy, Spiritual Direction

How Talking to a Quaker Helped Me With Leaving the Church

Author LynnettePosted on 3 Comments

It was the spring of 2019, and it had been over a year since I’d been baptized into the Episcopal church. I still felt like it was the best decision I’d ever made, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t still haunted sometimes. I was sitting in a Taize service one Sunday evening and thinking about my decision to leave the LDS faith, and I started to feel sick. Some fears are old ones; some fears are laid down in your understanding of the world before you’ve even begun to develop a sense of self. I’d been told all my life that walking away from God’s One True Church was a terrible mistake with eternal consequences, and even though my conversion had been an amazing experience, that didn’t always cancel out the anxiety, or erase the years of General Conference talks given in ominous tones by human leaders who were one hundred percent positive that they spoke for God. I wanted conversion to be more straightforward, cleaner; I wanted it to be a light that was so blinding that I could no longer even see the past, and I had no choice but to go forward. But while it was undeniably life-changing, my past was still there, a part of me to be reckoned with. Read More

In Church-Hopping

Visiting the JWs

Author LynnettePosted on 3 Comments

In 2017, I spent a lot of time church-hopping. My visit to the JWs is one that still stands out in my memory as being particularly interesting from a Mormon perspective.

 Sunday, June 4, 2017, 2:30 pm worship service

I was nervous about this visit, because I feared that they would aggressively try to convert me. Which made me laugh at myself, given my Mormon background. They met in a very utilitarian, plain building; from what I’ve seen, all the Kingdom Halls look the same. In the lobby, I found information about what areas of Bloomington met at what times. (Geographically assigned congregations meeting in the same building at different times also felt very Mormon!) Read More

In Eucharist, Mental Health, Ritual

A Tangible Presence: Thoughts on the Eucharist

Author LynnettePosted on 2 Comments

If I hadn’t grown up immersed in Christian symbolism, I suspect that I would find the Eucharist both bizarre and deeply disturbing, perhaps even offensive. Even as accustomed as I am to the whole thing, the sheer strangeness of it still hits me at times. I wish that Jesus had come up with a different ritual for remembering him, I sometimes think. I’m not sure how much I care for this one. In John 6, Jesus graphically comments that “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” (v. 56), and links this eating and drinking to eternal life. The disciples complain that this is a difficult teaching (v. 60), and then many of them end up leaving him (v. 66). Honestly, I’m sympathetic. I don’t think that this would have won me over.

But on a week-to-week basis, I find that I struggle less with the weirdness of the ritual, and more with how mundane it actually is in practice. Maybe I’ve read too many exciting accounts in which the Eucharist worked wonders, but I find myself wanting it to be a mystical experience, to be somehow transcendent. I don’t think that it ever has been. Read More

In Abortion, Faith

A Religious Perspective on Abortion

Author LynnettePosted on 6 Comments

I definitely did not plan on writing about abortion for my first post back. Honestly, it’s a subject I tend to avoid, largely because I feel like all the arguments on both sides have been elucidated a million times already and I don’t think I have much to add, and because conversations on the topic seem to go absolutely nowhere. But here we are, and for obvious reasons, I am feeling the need to do a bit of reflection. Read More

In Blogging

A New Lynnette? Lynnette Strikes Back? The Return of Lynnette? Regardless, I’m Back!

Author LynnettePosted on 12 Comments

I didn’t actually mean to stop blogging and disappear, and leave my faithful brother Ziff to keep ZD going all alone. The last time I posted, I see, was at the very beginning of the pandemic. And then I lost my energy to say much of anything. I was in the hospital, yet again, in July of 2020, which was an unusually weird experience because of covid. If you know my history, you know that I’ve weathered a lot of depression storms, but that year I really lost my momentum, and somehow I never made it back to blogging.

However, it’s occurred to me this spring that I evidently still have a lot to say, which currently is often showing up in ridiculously long Facebook posts, and I started thinking that maybe I needed to find more outlets for that. Read More

In Easter, Faith, Holy Week, Liturgy

Saying Alleluia in Coronavirus Time

Author LynnettePosted on 2 Comments

When I was a kid, I came across a phrase in a novel that rather haunted me: “even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” It was only after I became an Episcopalian that I realized the source of this—it comes from one of the burial rites in the Book of Common Prayer. “For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me, saying, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ All we go own to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

I have been thinking a lot about alleluia’s lately, specifically about unsaid alleluia’s. We’re still in the season of Lent, and during Lent, all the alleluia’s disappear from the liturgy. At my parish, they literally process a banner reading “Alleluia” out of the church on the last Sunday before Lent, as we bid a temporary farewell to the word. Six weeks later, about halfway through an Easter Vigil service which begins with the congregation processing into a dark church holding candles, the church will be completely lit up and the words “Christ is risen! Alleluia!” will ring out with joy. I love the rhythm of removing the alleluia’s for a sober six weeks of reflection, and then exuberantly proclaiming them. Read More

In Conversion, Episcopalians, Hope, LGBT Issues

Choosing Life in an Affirming Church

Author LynnettePosted on 6 Comments

I knew that I probably shouldn’t let myself be encouraged by the unexpected news a few weeks ago that BYU was softening their stance on same-sex dating. Over the years, after all, you learn better than to hope. I remember attending my first Affirmation conference in the fall of 2015, and being blown away by the faith of so many of the people there, the confidence they had that eventually the church would make more room for them. The sheer exuberance of that hope was hard to resist. Despite my skepticism, it infected me a little. I mean, here was a crowd of LGBTQ people, surely a demographic bound for apostasy if anyone was, and more than anything it felt like EFY for queer people—complete with a dance, cheesy music, and even a testimony meeting at the end. I looked at this crowd and thought, okay, maybe I’m too skeptical. Maybe the church really will come around on these issues. How can they possibly resist this sort of faith? Read More

In Lent, Prayer, Relationships, Spiritual Practice

Praying in the Dark

Author LynnettePosted on 3 Comments

At church today, the sermon was on healing fractured relationships. We need to go deep into the heart of these rifts, said our interim rector, describing the work of repair as something that needed to be both thoughtful and delicate. It was a good sermon, and hit close enough to home that I was joking with some friends afterward that I felt rather personally called out by it.  I was actually a little reassured to hear a few other people share similar thoughts. I doubt any of us are not struggling with fractured relationships in some context.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy has a long list of confessions. It’s the part of the service that seems to always leave me feeling the most shaken, and sometimes quite emotional. The words are just too true. “We have not loved you . . . We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves . . . We have not forgiven . . . We have been deaf to your call to serve . . . the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives . . . our anger at our own frustration . . . our blindness to human need and suffering . . .” There’s an awful lot in it, and a lot that is awful. I find Ash Wednesday services deeply moving and powerful, but never really comfortable. “Remember that you are dust,” they say as they trace the cross made of ashes on your forehead, “and to dust you will return.” The ashes are made from burning the palms from Palm Sunday the previous year. They make me think about human fickleness: palms waved in welcome by crowds who soon be calling “crucify him.” They make me think of charred hopes, of aspirations ground to dust. It is a sobering reminder. Read More

In Nature of God, Praise, Spiritual Experience

Praising God

Author LynnettePosted on 2 Comments

Praising God is a staple of Christian worship. In the various Pentecostal churches I’ve visited, I’ve found that people are more likely to greet you by saying “Praise the Lord” than by simply saying “hello.” In churches where higher levels of congregational exuberance are the norm, it’s not uncommon for people to call out “Hallelujah” or “Praise the Lord” during the sermons and to have bands spending a lot of time on praise songs (“Our God is an Awesome God”). Episcopalians are more sedate, but every Sunday mass has a song of praise at the beginning (though my parish tends toward more traditional music). “Glory to you, beholding the depths; in the high vault of heaven, glory to you,” we sing. Read More

In Depression, Mental Health

Going to the Edge

Author LynnettePosted on 9 Comments

CW: Suicidality

To start with, it was my birthday, and even in good years I don’t like my birthday. It comes just after New Year’s, after everyone is burned out on holidays and get-togethers and eating too much rich food, and has moved on to New Year’s resolutions about healthier living. It’s only two weeks after the winter solstice, and the light is barely making any headway against the still-dominant darkness that somehow seeps into everything. And by that point I am usually tired of people and celebrations, and feel cranky and just want to hide. In bad years, I am also deeply upset about being alive, and the anniversary of my birth feels like a bleak thing to be noticing, let alone pretending to be happy about. Read More

In Baptism, Conversion, covenants, Episcopalians, Ritual

Re-Thinking the Covenant Path: What Baptism in the Episcopal Church Meant to Me

Author LynnettePosted on 10 Comments

(This is adapted from something I recently wrote for a writing group.)

A phrase that seems to have become popular in the Mormonism of recent years is “covenant path.” It’s after my time; I don’t recall hearing the term much, if ever, during my years in the church. But even from my vantage point outside the church, I’ve noticed the phrase appearing more and more. Honestly, it makes me flinch. I have some old baggage with the notion of covenants, and the phrase “covenant path” seems to be used, as often as not, to weigh in on the failings of those who are not on it. People left the covenant path, and terrible things befell them; the tale is told in many ways and in many contexts, but the moral remains the same. Read More

In Faith, Personal Narratives, Prayer

Praying Like a Mormon

Author LynnettePosted on 5 Comments

I’m in something called Education for Ministry, which is a four-year program run by the Episcopal church in which you study the Bible, the history of Christianity, and theology. (It’s somewhat confusingly named; it’s actually for laypeople. The idea is that everyone is called to a ministry of some kind, and this is supposed to help you discern and develop it.) My group has eight people, who come from a fun variety of religious backgrounds, and we meet every other Sunday afternoon. The others frequently express curiosity about Mormonism, and ask me lots of questions. One week they wanted to hear me pray like a Mormon, so I obliged and offered a closing prayer that would have sounded perfectly normal over the pulpit in a sacrament meeting. My classmates were underwhelmed, perhaps expecting something weirder. They said that I’d just sounded like a Baptist. (This amused me because I suspect neither most Mormons nor most Baptists would appreciate that comparison.)

Read More

In Easter, Good Friday, Liturgy

And It Was Night

Author LynnettePosted on 5 Comments

“So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.” (John 13:30)

At the Maundy Thursday service last night at my parish, our visiting Quaker (because we have a visiting Quaker for Holy Week this year, which has been a fascinating experience in and of itself) gave the sermon, and talked about what the Last Supper, and indeed all of Holy Week, might have felt like for the disciples. Intense. Unsettling. Confusing.

I, of course, like all of you, know the end of the Easter story; I think I likely knew the end, the Resurrection, before I knew the beginning or the middle of the narrative. And that knowledge of what is to come inevitably shapes our perspective on the rest of the events. But the sermon called our attention to the fact that for those who were having these experiences, they didn’t know how it would turn out. The disciples at the Last Supper didn’t know it was the last. And they were likely rather confused as to why Jesus was adding an unfamiliar ritual to the meal, instructing them to eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of him. Read More

In Church Life, Conversion, Faith

A Faith for This Life

Author LynnettePosted on 4 Comments

My decision to convert away from the LDS church was undeniably overdetermined. So many different factors; so many different threads. Some of them, I suspect, could have sparked the decision all on their own. And like so many life narratives of momentous events, already I note that I tell different versions of it at different times. The story is never quite the same. I imagine that I will continue to make sense of it all in new ways and with other perspectives as time goes by. So I can’t really say of any particular factor, this is the one thing that led to it all. However, when I look at major issues, one that I see being very deeply rooted is that I hit a point where I desperately wanted a religious tradition that had something to offer in this life, and not just the next one. Read More

In Authority, Church Life, Personal Narratives

Finally Leaving

Author LynnettePosted on 19 Comments

I still remember a Sunday when I was a young teenager, when the bishop felt impressed to get up at the end of sacrament meeting and share some counsel. I don’t remember any of the specifics of what he said. But I remember how he concluded his talk: in a voice of utter certainty, he said, “This is the will of the Lord for this ward.” And I loved that he said that. It made me feel so safe. God was aware of and interested in our ward, so tiny in comparison to the great vast world. God would send direction through priesthood leadership about even small decisions and issues. Weren’t we lucky to have that, while other people had to deal with uncertainty and doubt. We had a sure connection to God. Read More

In Depression, Hope, Positive Thinking, Theology

Abandoning the Quest for a Positive Attitude: Thoughts on Hope

Author LynnettePosted on 9 Comments

At the residential crisis place where I landed a few weeks ago, we had occasional groups. One day, we did some basic mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is very trendy right now, but I’ve found it to be useful, and don’t mind (see what I did there) going over the basics again. As part of the exercise, they had us look out the window and just observe something for a little while. We then reported back on the experience. I was fascinated to note that everyone in the group except for me, with no prompting to do this, didn’t only talk about the experiencing of observing; they turned it into an inspirational message. For example, they saw the dead leaves on the trees, but realized that there was new life underneath. Or they noticed how a tree continued to grow despite obstacles. I found myself wondering—are people in other cultures this well-trained to relentlessly find inspiration in everything?

In most of the psych wards I’ve been in, they have you rate your mood every day on a scale of 1 to 10. I struggle with the quantification aspect of this, but usually do my best to accurately assess how I’m doing. One day I looked around at the papers of the people sitting around me, and saw that they’d all marked 10. I was mystified. I mean, you don’t get into a psych ward without being in fairly significant distress. Such a rating might have made sense if a person had been hospitalized during a manic episode, but that was clearly not the case for any of the people there that day. My guess was that they were reporting high numbers in an attempt to get released, which is usually the primary goal of people who are locked in a psych ward, but I also wondered whether it was connected to cultural expectations about making the best of everything and having a positive outlook. There’s a certain virtue in circling that 10. Sure you might be having a complete psychological breakdown, but you wouldn’t want to not be positive about the situation. In another group in the residential place I mentioned above, I listened to a fellow patient share that he knew that he could accomplish anything if he would just put his mind to it. The group leader enthusiastically agreed. I realize I’m probably overly cynical—it’s taken me much of my life to realize that it’s not necessarily delusional to try to stay generally upbeat, and that relentlessly negative people can actually be pretty exhausting—but it’s hard for me not see this sort of thinking as problematic. Because the dark side of the equation is that if you haven’t accomplished something, no matter how unlikely that thing may be, it’s because you just didn’t put your mind to it. Read More