For several years I have struggled mightily with the 10th commandment. Most of the others I can handle. The prime number commandments I’m especially good at, being a math major. Graven images hold little appeal (math majors aren’t artistic anyway), I try not to bow down much because it aggravates my recurrent sinusitis, my mom and dad are easy to please, and I’m too immature to commit anything that has the word adult in it. Read More
On Questioning
In Rabbinic tradition, Noah is considered the lesser – if not the least – of the Patriarchs. Unlike fathers Abraham and Jacob, Noah did not argue with God. When faced with God’s declaration of the impending destruction of all life through the Flood, Noah was obedient and preached to the people, warning them of the imminence of God’s wrath. But he did not, like Abraham when contemplating the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, attempt to persuade God to forgo such a drastic, horrific plan.
For the rabbis, then, part of righteousness comes from dialogue with God. Noah was righteous, yes. But the better part of valor – the proof of the truly great – is in challenging God; in wrestling like Jacob and the angel until we may claim our blessing (Genesis 32:24-32). Although we are to be obedient, we are not to be unquestioning. On the contrary, God wishes us to respond. No human question could upset the Divine; it is questions that bring us closer to Him. Read More
Top Ten Reasons I’m Grateful for My Mission: 5
You can find the earlier posts in this series here, here, here, and here.
5) The Elders
I have no younger brothers. On my mission I came to feel a sense of siblingdom with a lot of the Elders in my different zones and districts – a feeling of occasional exasperation mixed with tenderness and deep affection, what I imagine I would feel toward my younger brothers if I had them. I loved those guys.
I served in the Provo MTC alongside an Elder from California. He and I were in each other’s district there and again after we moved to a smaller MTC in Latin America for our Spanish language training. Then, after we arrived at our mission country, we happened to be placed in the same district again. I will try to be careful in how much detail I give in this story because it is his and not mine.
Sometimes I Dream
Sometimes I dream that I’m watching a girl drown. The water is deep and dark, the current is strong yet gentle, almost caressing her. It seems to be a slow-motion drowning, lacking in drama and velocity. And I’m standing right there on the shore, waving my arms ineffectually as I look on in despair. I am useless. Sometimes it seems that she isn’t even trying to swim, and I become frustrated as she stops stroking and kicking, apparently consigned to letting the waves calmly wash over her and carry her out to sea. Read More
Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
My wife’s life changed forever on a hot summer evening when she was 12 years old. Up until then she had lived a fairly sheltered life in a predominantly Mormon community in a cookie-cutter suburb in the Mountain West. This was a typical suburb–sprinklers greening up the lawns, bicycles in the driveway, the occasional cat or stray dog–no other wildlife to speak of.
On this evening, behind closed doors in his office at the ward building, the mild-mannered, middle-aged, soon-to-be excommunciated-for-adultery bishop, asked innocent little Lilian if she practiced bestiality. Read More
Welcome, Mike C!
Mike C has done a couple of great guest posts for us recently, and we’re excited to announce that after the appropriate contract negotiations, he has been officially adopted by ZD. Read More
How I Learned About Grace and Works from a DBT Group
For much of my life, I have been both intrigued and a little terrified by the idea of grace. Growing up in the church, I rarely heard the term, but I was drawn to the questions it posed. One day when I was an early adolescent, I stumbled across a standard evangelical pamphlet in a Reader’s Digest. I read it clandestinely, because I doubted it was okay for a good Mormon to be reading such wild things. But I was fascinated by the idea that you could get yourself saved simply by saying a prayer. For someone who felt overwhelmed by the expectations of the church, that seemed way too good to be true. Read More
Blind spot: The assumption that all women can use their sexuality to influence others.
I was recently listening to the awesome feminist mormon housewives podcast episode in which Lisa Butterworth talks to Brad Kramer about what it means to be a male feminist. I particularly liked his discussion about modesty and sexuality and how he wants to frame those issues for his children. There are many, many parts of this discussion that I wholeheartedly agree with. For example, I really like his discussion about how the current modesty rhetoric in the church reinforces the idea that girls and young women are primarily sexual instead of sexuality being only a part of who they are as a person overall.
That being said, there were a couple of statements within this discussion that brought me up short. Read More
Washington, D.C. snacker May 29th
I’m going to be in Washington, D.C. next week, and frequent commenter Marta is generously hosting a bloggersnacker. It will be Wednesday, May 29th at 6pm. If you’re in the D.C. area and would be interested in joining us, please email me for directions: ziff at zelophehadsdaughters.com.
You’re the meaning in my life, you’re the inspiration
This guest post comes to us from Mike C. See his previous guest posts here and here, and definitely don’t miss his most recent fMh post, “Why I Am Wrong & Why I Need You to Tell Me I’m Wrong.”
I had just popped open an ice-cold, 24-ounce Bud when my phone rang. It was the bishop. How did he know?! It was the first time in my life that I had opened a can of beer, and the bishop seemed to know. I wasn’t even in the same state—I was on vacation, 200 miles away. Surely he couldn’t hear the pop and hiss from that far away. Let me tell you, my testimony of leaders being guided by inspiration was reaching new levels.
“Hey, Mike, whatcha up to?” Hmmm, was I honest in my dealings with my fellow men? “Making dinner”, I replied (technically true). It sounded better than, “Just opening a cold brewski, Bishop.”
Fallout from Mother’s Day: The Doggerel Challenge of 2013
This comes from a Facebook conversation primarily between me and Melyngoch, with some contributions from Ziff and Kiskilili thrown in for good measure. Read at your own risk. (Since my FB page isn’t public, I only included the verses composed by members of my family, but please feel free to contribute or re-contribute any additions of your own.)
A Mother’s Day Poem
“I love you, Mother,” said little Mao
And wiped the sweat from off his brow
“I’ve written all day, now have a look
You too can have your own red book!” Read More
Variations on a Creepy Theme by Anne Campbell
You are the life I threw away,
The happiness I never had;
You’re everything I’ll never do—
But whatever you do, don’t feel bad!
You are the naps I never take,
the toilet where I flushed my dreams away
You’re all the hobbies I don’t have.
No need for guilt! It’s all okay!
You are my halted education,
Projects smothered before they began;
You are my withered sense of self;
You are my snuffed out hopes and plans.
You are the mortgage I can’t afford,
You are the car that actually drives.
You are the only thing I have left.
No problem. You are my whole life.
“I never noticed women weren’t praying in Conference”
In the discussion of the Let Women Pray movement, one of the comments I heard most frequently was something along the lines of “I never noticed women weren’t praying in Conference.” In a few cases, the context suggested that the statement was being made as a marker of being more righteous than thou, but in most cases, it came across to me as a genuine statement of surprise. Heck, I probably said something similar at one point. I don’t think I had ever really thought about the question until I read Cynthia L.’s post on the issue at BCC a couple of years ago.
Even for all of us who sincerely hadn’t noticed that women weren’t praying, though, I think a lot of people drew the wrong conclusion. Specifically, they concluded that because they hadn’t noticed, then it must not be a problem and must not need rectifying. I think this is completely backwards, though. The fact that so many of us hadn’t noticed this very public and constantly repeated instance of institutional sexism means that sexism in the Church is a huge problem.
How often are men and women quoted in General Conference?
Soon after I finished my most recent post, I realized that it would be fairly easy to assess how often men and women are quoted and how often stories are told about men as opposed to women in General Conference. I decided to analyze the most recent conference (April 2013) to get the most up-to-date data. From the April 2013 conference, I randomly selected two talks from Priesthood Session and two talks from the General YW Meeting (and by random, I mean truly random. I assigned each talk a number and used a random number generator to select talks for me). I also randomly selected two talks by men from the main sessions of conference and analyzed the only two talks that were given by women. Read More
How often are men and women quoted in church?
I have heard anecdotal evidence that men are much more likely than women to be quoted during LDS church services, and that stories about men are more often shared than stories about women. It is not surprising that this trend would exist given that the majority of scripture stories in the LDS canon are about men and that the majority of modern-day conference speakers are men. In light of this anecdotal evidence, I decided to collect some data to get a better idea of the percentage of times men vs. women are quoted and the percentage of stories that are told about men as opposed to women during a typical church service. Read More
Heavenly Parents, are we really talking about you more?
After April Conference, I was asked by someone in the fMh Facebook group to check whether this Conference had featured an unusually large number of references to Heavenly Parents. The answer is yes, it did.
Top Ten Reasons I’m Grateful for My Mission: 4
You can find the earlier posts in this series here, here, and here.
4) Class Awareness
I served with one native-speaking companion, a fiery, fascinating woman from Nicaragua. Not only was she a native speaker, but she was also an exceptionally educated person. Often when we were out talking with people in the streets they would stop her and ask her to rephrase things, telling her that her Spanish was too high-brow for them. And she spoke nary a lick of English, so living with her was a sink-or-swim course in Spanish fluency for me. (I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for her to basically serve as a Spanish finishing school for so many Americans coming to the country with shaky MTC-Spanish. The Mission President very judiciously gave her a new companion nearly every transfer period so that as many English-speaking sisters as possible could benefit from her expertise.) Read More
Top Ten Reasons I’m Grateful for My Mission: 3
You can find the earlier posts in this series here and here.
3) The Interviews
Every six weeks on my mission, the missionaries would have a one-on-one interview with the Mission President. Interviews were one of the only times that companionships were separated. These interviews were not particularly long – they would typically last anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour. Their purpose was simple: the MP was checking in with the missionaries, and giving them an opportunity to ask questions, discuss any issues had in companionships, etc. They were not scripted, and no topic was an absolute requirement for review.
I liked my MP, and I liked him a lot. On a personal level. He was sincere, reflective, and a deeply thoughtful man. I also liked his wife, largely for the same reasons. I respected them. He would often make comments to me about how he disagreed with our culture of quasi-hero worship of the General Authorities, since they are men serving in a calling, susceptible to weakness like any other man.
Once in a Zone Conference (also a meeting that took place every six weeks) he opened up the floor to questions on doctrine or practice, encouraging the missionaries to ask anything they wished. One of the Elders from my district – a guy that I also really liked and stayed friends with after the mission – asked “What would happen if we used a cross on our church?” The MP replied, “It would still be the Lord’s Church, but with a cross on top.” Like I say, I really liked this man. Read More
What we all secretly wish we’d hear more about at church
This guest post comes to us courtesy of Mike C. You can read his previous guest post here.
The idea for this blog post came to me, as many of my best ideas do, while I was thinking about sex in church. Now please don’t get all huffy. I am aware of the impracticalities: limited privacy, no comfortable places to lie down (I should know, I’ve tried sleeping on the couches while my kids are attending seminary), etc.
Top Ten Reasons I’m Grateful for My Mission: 2
You can find the earlier post in this series here.
2) The Mother’s Day Lesson
My last companion was relatively new to her mission. The child of a recently widowed mother with several teenagers at home, one of her biggest worries as a missionary was that her mom would need her back home and she would be powerless to help.
One day, shortly before Mother’s Day, she received a letter from home filled with good news after a long interval of anxiety-inducing silence. Her mom and family were doing remarkably well. Things were as smooth and happy as they had been since her father passed away. After reading the letter she brightened visibly, and remained noticeably relieved and relaxed for some time afterward. And, since she had been asked to give the lesson at District Meeting that week, she chose to speak on mothers. It was a simple, brief lesson, consisting mostly of her expressions of gratitude for the sacrifices her mother had made for her. Neither then nor ever did she tell the other missionaries in our district that her father had died. Read More