Brouhaha

"Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say." 

-- Maggie Kuhn 

Before we take on anything else, let's talk a bit more about talking. After that first post, my husband said, "We need to talk more?! You're the worst offender. You never say a word in church." He's right of course, which is part of what I'm trying to overcome here. There are a lot of reasons I choose to be mainly an observer. Past experiences, fears (both valid and not), social anxieties and personality defects all play a role. 

Then I go home unhappy because my silence can imply agreement when really there are a few things I'd like to point out or clarify before I sign off. Make no mistake, I usually have an opinion.

So when I say I wish we were better at discussing things collectively as Mormons, I'm certainly talking about myself. If I don't express my position, no one can judge me by it? A silly, selfish, juvenile idea. A behavior which of course contributes nothing, and enriches no one. On the other hand...

When I told my sister I was considering starting a churchy blog, I saw a look flash across her face that validated the entire project. Was it discomfort? Dread? Downright fear? Not sure, but the look itself explained why my finger hesitated over the publish button for days. It made me think of the flailing robot from Lost In Space with his flat warning, "Danger, Will Robinson!" (She claimed she was worried it's another delay tactic to put off working on my book, so she does know me. But I think it was more than that, because I've seen that look before. Anyway, procrastination is what baking cookies is for.)

I don't think I'm alone in this. It can be hard to talk openly about difficult church issues. Our belief creates in us a desire to belong completely. We want to be good, to fit in. And that desire can make us hesitant to speak our truth. 

I think what has pushed me to the keyboard is that there's just so much noise in Mormonville right now. On a wide variety of topics. Thank Mitt Romney for running, thank Al Gore for the internet, thank whatever you like -- it's an exciting time to be us! A lot of what I see and read fascinates me. But a significant chunk truly dismays me, and that's the part that has caused me to step up. 

We're not being very nice to each other. And we know better.

As I've explored Mormon blogworld a bit, I've noticed a curious thing. It seems writers often spend the first few paragraphs assuring their readers that they are active members, with callings and testimonies and recommends and and and...THEN they proceed to raise their issue. Now why would that be necessary? Exactly when did any discussion about the wonderful, peculiar things that bind us together as Latter-day Saints come to require a disclaimer? Exactly what makes one worthy to raise a question?

As for myself, I have no axe to grind. I've had an axe or two in the past, but for the most part I'm in a pretty peaceful place. However, there is a significant amount of axe-grinding going on, and it interests me. Having experienced deep pain inextricably connected to my faith and survived, I sympathize. (But as we've already established, I'm not cut out to be an activist.)

Some people are upset about big issues, and they have unprecedented means to make their voices heard. For those people the stakes are high, and I am very concerned about the outcome. I mean I feel concern about how the experience will turn out for them, personally. Because I want it to end well.

It's interesting to speculate about the outcome of the issues too, of course, but there's not a thing I can do to affect that so it's not my focus. The church as an organization will surely continue to surprise us all. I've no idea who said it, but my dad loves the quote, "If anyone had told me I'd be sitting in sacrament meeting at 9am wearing two-piece garments while a black man passed me the sacrament, I'd have said they were crazy." If you've been a member long enough, you know that he's right. Life on earth is, after all, pretty much all change all the time. And the organized church is part of our earth experience. So don't get too comfortable.

My concern with current issues is that I'm seeing the kind of divisiveness in our Mormon discourse that I'm seeing in politics, and I don't like it. There seems to be an if you're not with us, you're against us mentality, in which one side seems to think they are living a higher law of some kind or arguing from a position of moral superiority. I understand how that happens, because I read a lot of things to which my first reaction is, "I have no patience for your kind of thinking. You. Don't. Get. It." Sometimes I even think words like stupid, moron, idiot, and things not fit to mention on a churchy blog. And I know better.

In reality, we all made the same covenants at baptism and are all on equal footing before God. We're all sinners. We're all imperfect. We're all entitled to personal revelation. We're all trying to lift where we stand. We all find ourselves somewhere on the spectrum of a relationship with our Savior, but the thing about that is, you don't know where I am on that spectrum and I don't know where you are either. It doesn't matter how well I think I know you, what calling we have, or what my life looks like from where you sit.

Some things remain between you, or me, and Him. All the important things, really. So who can judge?

The unique part about this whole earth/church/life game is that it is definitely NOT every man for himself. We don't get to save ourselves without trying to bring everyone else too. That's just not how it works. It's a team sport and our team is everybody. And if we do manage to "get to heaven", the only way to get anyone else there with us is to love them there. We can't exhort them, preach them, force them, nor shame them there. Example can be a fine place to start, but that doesn't work either if we begin by saying, "Look at ME!" 

Our only play is love, meeting people wherever they are with understanding, kindness and acceptance. We can find out how they got there by listening. And if we walk alongside them for awhile, pretty soon there's bound to be a meaningful conversation. They may even take our hand.

"Speak our love, and speak it again," as Pres. Hunter once said. If we think they're wacky, if we think they're misguided, if we think they're flat-out wrong. It doesn't matter what we think, because we simply can't know their hearts. We can only know our own, and then act accordingly. 

And that's what has me worried in what I'm seeing. If these are our hearts, I think we have a little work to do. And yes, that means me.

- S.