Zelophehad's Daughters

Just to declare my potential biases up-front: I received a copy of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother In Mormon Poetry in exchange for a review. Also, I know some of the contributors. 

In my last review of a book of Heavenly Mother poetry, I asked for more: more perspectives, more poems, more essays, more talk of Heavenly Mother in general. Well, ask and ye shall receive, as Peculiar Press has come out with an entire anthology of Heavenly Mother poetry, from the early origins of the Church to the present day.

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I first read Mother’s Milk, by Rachel Hunt Steenblik, last July, about a month after I learned I was pregnant for the first time. I tried to see myself as the mother portrayed in these poems, but mostly failed: I had constant nausea and threw up 5-10 time a day for two months straight in my first trimester, and so I felt no magical love connection to the fetus, whom we nicknamed Barfolomew. I mostly just felt tired, and irritated at the way this hostile force had overtaken my body. The poems were lovely, tasty snack-sized deep thoughts, but, like Lynnette has written about on this blog, I wasn’t really a Heavenly Mother person, and the mothering portrayed in many of the poems–nursing, weaning, comforting in the night–didn’t resonate with me. I tried to hold space to change my mind, though: many of my friends talked about childbirth as a quasi-magical experience, a primal connection to their mothering self, and, despite the pain, glowed about the love they felt for their child right away, or for a rush of instant recognition when their child was placed on their chest.

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This is slightly adapted from a sacrament meeting talk I gave a few years ago (hence, all the numbers are out of date). I recently stumbled on it while cleaning out some files and decided to share. 

Let’s start with something about me: I have been a church-attending Mormon all my life. let’s calculate, for a minute, what that means, besides a closet full of skirts and a knowledge of all the verses to “I Believe in Christ”: I have taken the sacrament to renew my baptismal covenants approximately 782 times–17 years since my baptism, at 46 Sundays a year. (52, minus two Sundays for General Conference and two for stake conferences and two more for vacation Sundays or simply arriving at church late. I didn’t say I’ve been a perfectly church-attending Mormon all my life!)  That, my friends, is a lot of times to do something and still not quite understand or enjoy it.

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When we were using the Joseph F. Smith manual for Relief Society a few years ago, I remember reading a note in the intro material about Smith’s use of “men”, “man”, or “mankind”:

“Also, President Smith often used terms such as men, man, or mankind to refer to all people, both male and female. He frequently used the pronouns he, his, and him to refer to both genders. This was common in the language of his era. Despite the differences between these language conventions and current usage, President Smith’s teachings apply to both women and men.”

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The argument goes like this: if women get the priesthood—I mean, they won’t, because God doesn’t want them to, but just imagine if they did—then what would men do? They wouldn’t have anything special anymore, and if they can’t have anything special, why would they participate? Or sometimes it’s like this: if women have the priesthood (or, toning it down, if women can be Sunday School presidents, or pray in sacrament meeting, or what-have-you), fewer men will get to do it, and we wouldn’t want to limit their opportunities.

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I was lucky enough to grow up with unorthodox Mormon parents, who patiently listened to and sympathized with my teenage and college-age complaints about going to church: how boring it was, how my YW leaders could never answer my questions, how I often felt like I just didn’t fit in. And every conversation, at least in my memory, ended with a gentle reminder: “Remember,” they’d say, “it’s your church too.”

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