It's Such a Good Feeling.

In re-reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird lately, I came across this passage I particularly liked:

"A sober friend once said to me, 'When I was still drinking, I was a sedated monster. After I got sober, I was just a monster.' He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when people let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we've all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition. We don't end up with a brand on our forehead. Instead, we compare notes."

The human condition. We're all in it. And while I think the point, at least in part, is to try to transcend it if we can, we will of course accomplish that with limited success here on earth. Because here on earth, we're human from start to finish. All created from the same basic mold, with a few modifications and some special equipment to differentiate us one from another, but all made in God's image. And the only conclusion I can draw from this is that He must like us this way.

I believe Mr. Rogers was really on to Something Big when he said, "I like you. Just the way you are."

I bring it up because I've had love on my mind lately. All kinds of it. The Capital L kind, and also the little bits that we bump into all day long but hardly recognize if we're not paying attention. I've probably been thinking about it as a result of marrying off my baby this past week, and also attending my parents' 60th anniversary celebration. But I know I also started thinking about it shortly after Elder Holland's most recent and now somewhat infamous talk (the one we've already covered here).

A lot of people are still discussing that talk. I've heard it rehearsed in three separate church meetings already, I'm scheduled to teach it in Relief Society as soon as July, and it seems nearly everyone has an opinion about it. This has made me continue to wonder what it was about his words that caused such a stir on all sides, and as I've read interpretations and re-read the text and thought more about it, it's pretty clear that my own negative reaction to it was centered squarely in the notion of God's love, and what our relationship with that love is meant to be. 

I simply didn't feel the kind of love I recognize in some of the ideas he presented, and I think that's why it left me in such an uneasy, unhappy, uncomfortable place. By coming to better understand where that message and I failed to connect, I've found peace on the matter. (But I'll admit I've recruited a sub to teach my upcoming lesson. We'll all be happier.)

On top of that, I've had several conversations lately about the concept of Unconditional Love, and its place in our collective Mormon thought, and more importantly in our curriculum, and there seems to be quite a disagreement as to whether the idea of God Having Unconditional Love For Us is a doctrinally friendly idea or not.

Now -- I don't know any better way to say this than to just say it: The idea of God without unconditional love pretty much just blows my mind.

Or in other words, the idea of A God of Conditional Love is not an idea that I can relate to. At all.

But then I don't think I'm supposed to teach you about God's love so much as help you feel it, am I? It seems to me that's the way we learn about it. We feel it. It teaches us about Itself. That's what the Holy Ghost is for, after all. To help explain what we're feeling. To point out, this is what God's love feels like, at the appropriate times. And to direct our attention to the source.

Because if we don't know what God's love feels like, we don't stand much chance of loving others in the same way. And that's the commandment.

So I've decided it hurt to have a church leader tell me about God's love in a way that didn't feel like the same love I have come to recognize, appreciate and understand in my own life. Because it felt personal.

And as that idea has finally crystallized, I have also realized this: when I don't like things I hear at church, it's most often for this very same reason.

I know what it's supposed to feel like, for me anyway. I have that gift just like everybody else. He's my Father, too.

Unconditional love is the only kind that makes sense, once you're a parent. I just spent the past week with my three daughters, whom I see infrequently now that they're off living their own lives. And it reminded me just how much I love them. Doesn't matter one whit to me what they're doing, when it comes to that. I am just plum crazy about those girls. Sure, there have been days in our relationship when I've wanted to put them in time out or even flat-out spank their behinds, but it never impacted the bottom line. Not even a little. And that's not going to change.

Do my parents feel the same way about me? I can only think that they probably do. I understand that now. Heaven knows I haven't done a thing to earn it, having been bratty as they come as a youngster. But I'm theirs. And as a parent, I know precisely what that means and how it feels.

It seems to me that the destination of any successful spiritual journey is probably the same, regardless of whether or not there is a specific denomination acting as the vehicle to get us there. The goal is to draw close to God, to feel His love, and then to understand and act upon our obligation to turn that love outward and shine it on those we come in contact with. Which is everyone.

I don't really feel God's love in lists of requirements. I don't feel it in things that divide, differentiate or discriminate. If it's a thing that causes anyone to feel that they are in some way less, I don't feel love there. A demand for unquestioning conformity also does not feel like an accurate reflection of His love to me.
 
Instead, I feel it in the billions of ways people are different. And also in the billions of ways we are the same. For me, it's there in my relationships and the ways I care and am cared for.

I feel it wherever I encounter excellence, or striving, or mastery. I feel it in the magnitude of creation, its infinite variety, and in the new chance we are given every day we're lucky enough to wake up. I see it in divine, serendipitous connections between people and ideas, things and events. In the way the Universe seems to tip its hat to me now and then, just to let me know someone's paying attention.

Also in falling off the wagon just like everyone else, but being allowed to get back on. Its in all the hands that reach down to pull me up, over and over.

But the net is much wider than that. When I am on a run with my iPod and suddenly Freddy Mercury sings the opening lines of "Barcelona", I feel God's love. Huh? She feels God's love when Freddy Mercury sings? Absolutely yes. Right down to the tips of my toes. (If you don't know what that feels like, get an iPod and put something really good on it. A sound that feels like love to you, if only because it's better than any sound you could possibly make yourself. You'll know it when you hear it.)

God created giraffes for no reason at all that I can think of. Who does that? Except that giraffes are simply oozing with awkward, graceful love.

I feel God's love whenever I log on to Facebook. Well now that's a bit ridiculous, right? The thing is, I'm miraculously allowed to interact with people from all the different parts of my life there, and to show them that they matter to me. Even though I maybe didn't sit by them in the school lunchroom, it wasn't always a reflection of how I felt. I was busy figuring out how to navigate the world. But every day I noticed they were there, and now I get to show them how glad I am that they still are. Surely that's a divine gift.

Maybe I'm getting a bit silly as I age, but as the years tick by, I feel God's love in just about everything. It's the joyful stuff of life. So I'm not interested in narrowing or restricting any channels, but rather in continually increasing my notice of it, absorbing as much as I can and figuring out how to act as a better, more luminous human reflector.

Unconditional love doesn't mean God isn't interested in seeing us improve, like every good parent is. He expects it. But the fact that He's provided a way for each one of us to do that puts us on equal footing, no matter where we stand. That's unconditional love. And if His expectations are really only relevant to our desire to get closer to Him personally, they don't have anything to do with being a yardstick by which we measure or interact with others.

A light that grows brighter and brighter, until the perfect day. Something like that. That's the kind of love I want to feel, and the kind I want to give.

And always, I'm interested in comparing notes. Because I think you probably know as much about God's love as I do. We're all monsters, after all...but that's quite all right because it seems He designed us this way. And because we are His little monsters, I'm quite sure He loves us. Every one of us. And just exactly the way we are.

Anyway, that's the way it feels to me.

- S. 

A Fine Mess.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, 

it's certainty.

-- Anne Lamott

My mother is really clean. No, I mean really. The toilet paper in her guest bath is actually folded into a little point just as it is in a fine hotel. Her trash cans are perennially empty. The vacuum trails on the carpet remain somehow forever unspoiled. It's been that way as long as I can remember. I say this not to mock her in any way, but because having raised children myself, and seeming to lack completely the ability to stay ahead of the pile of mail on my kitchen counter, I marvel. 

I did then...I do now. So some things are obviously not genetic. Not that I live like a slob, but I do live. And I haven't yet figured out how to keep some of that living from forever showing up, all over my house.

My mother is the only person I know for whom it might be possible to call the realtor to list her home for sale in the morning, and have the agents' open house at noon. All without ever having to get up out of her chair because there wouldn't be a single thing that needed to be done in preparation. 

She could also get invited to lunch at the White House at 11:00 am and show up at 11:15, not even having needed to comb her hair. This is how she lives. This is where she is comfortable. This is the world she carries or creates, wherever she goes.

I was fortunate to attend a church meeting recently in which she bore her testimony. She said that she has never had a moment's doubt. That she was somehow born with perfect faith, and that it has never wavered. In fact, she has never even considered the fact that it could waver. She believes what she believes. She likes things how she likes them. The universe somehow complies. End of story. 

Well then.

Or maybe alas. Because I don't know how she manages that faith trick either.

The currently popular bit about "doubting your doubts" always makes me smile. Because no one needed to tell me to do that. I doubt everything. Which gives my mind the same real, "lived-in" feel that my house has. My mind and my kitchen counter look quite a bit alike most days, actually. Perhaps someone should do a scientific study to see if that's a universal truth of some kind.

I don't think the quote I used at the beginning casts aspersions on my mother's faith. I think it just means that my own less tidy brand is of equal value.

Anyway, I believe all of this is why I am drawn to Anne Lamott's writings. If you haven't read Anne, perhaps you should. She's not LDS, but is a Presbyterian who took a long time finding her way to God, and who seems to value the long slog as much as she does the destination. Her brand of faith feels very close to my own, and I've decided that's because first and foremost, I feel her acknowledgement that faith is messy. Like all the important things in life. Families, relationships, birth, death...all one big happy mess. 

With faith sitting precariously atop the pyramid like a leaking umbrella. It's not perfect and it can't stop the rain, but at least it keeps a lot of it off while you're running to the car. Even though your feet still get wet. 

I'd like to be the Mormon Anne Lamott. I think we need one, or anyway I do. I'm afraid most Mormons might not share my embrace of the idea of messy faith, however. We like things neat. We like them spelled-out. We are answerers, explainers. Solvers of mysteries. 

We like to watch the rain coming down on the world from inside the sturdy shelter we've built to keep us dry. And when we're forced to venture out, we are continually patching the umbrella.

In my patriarchal blessing, it says that I have been blessed with "a believing heart". Darn it, it's true. As hard and as messy as it gets for me sometimes, my heart wants to believe. So I guess I probably did inherit that from my mother, along with the hefty dose of gray areas from my dad. 

One of me continually pokes holes in things, one of me patches. 

Or on good days just sits still, waiting for the storm to pass. They always do. 

I came across a beautiful passage recently, written by a member whose writings on faith have also resonated for me over the years. In her essay Seeing Without Seeing, Emma Lou Thayne expresses it like this: 

"I believed it all -- the seeing without seeing, the hearing without hearing, the going by feel toward something holy, something that could make her cry and could lift my scalp right off, something as unexplainable as a vision or a mystic connection, something entering the pulse of a little girl, something that no matter what, would never go away. What it had to do with Joseph Smith or his vision or his gospel I never would really understand -- all I know to this day is that I believe. Whatever it is, I believe in it. I get impatient with people's interpretations of it, with dogma and dictum, but somewhere way inside me and way beyond impatience or indifference there is that insistent, infernal, so help me, sacred singing -- All is well, All is well. My own church, inhabited by my own people -- and probably my own doctrines, but my lamp, my song -- my church. I would be cosmically orphaned without it."

And so would I. Darned messy, leaky, imperfect, impatient Faith. Darned Believing Heart. 

But thank you for that gift, Mother. Because it's becoming increasingly clear that, in the end, it will probably be the one that made the difference.

- S.

Aches and Pains.

A thought to help us through 

these difficult times: 

Be kind, for everyone you meet 

is fighting a hard battle. 

-- Ian MacLaren

Hard things in the church are tricky. Your hard things are not my hard things, and vice versa. I wish none of us had hard things, but alas. We're living in a world of them. And unfortunately, it's impossible to keep the realities of our lives from colliding with our doctrine.

Here's one of those tricky examples -- something you may think of as being a warm fuzzy thing. I used to. But I've decided its warm fuzziness hides sharp edges.

That thing is this: Families Can Be Together Forever.

For me, that's a slogan I wish we would let slip away. I know it's meant to bring peace and joy and provide an ideal, a goal from which to draw strength and purpose. And for many people, I'm sure it does. But there are also many people for whom it brings pain. Families are complicated things.

There are people for whom that idea holds no appeal, at all. For whatever reason, their families just don't work. I know several.

There are people who haven't started families of their own, and that's difficult in a church that can feel like it's made of, and for, families. I know some of those too.

There are people whose family members do not all share their spiritual lives or goals. I'll bet we all know many in that position.

It's a nice idea to teach children. It sounds sweet and comfortable and good in Primary. But even that is problematic, because young children are literal thinkers so when they hear that families can be together forever, the chances are good that they're not thinking about it the way the teacher is.

That phrase is a good example of something that seems so harmless, it's hard to imagine it could hurt or offend. But perhaps we'd do better to say that Our Relationships Can Continue Forever. Maybe that would provide a little more space for peace and happiness outside the "family" box. We need a new song.

Anyway, I bring it up because hard things have been on my mind lately. And as church members, we're often not upfront about it when we struggle with things that we think shouldn't cause us to struggle. We assume it's something wrong with us. 

Really what we need is to be able to say, "Ouch. This hard thing hurts me. Just so you all know, I am getting no joy from this, and it's not because I'm not worthy of joy."

We have back-to-back weddings coming up in our family. Two daughters are getting married in the space of two months! It's an exciting time, and we are eager for our family to grow. We feel lucky to have found two of our missing pieces.

But weddings bring up another thing that some might think should not be a hard thing but that for me has been known to cause exquisite pain: the temple.

The temple has always been challenging for me actually, and for a variety of reasons. Some are as simple as claustrophobia. But I've had profound experiences there too, and one of the things I love about the temple is that I never fail to feel the spirit there, even on challenging days. It's a remarkable place.

That being said, the temple also breaks my heart in a way that nothing else in our church does.

In our family, the temple is sometimes an insurmountable, rock-hard divider.

We have one daughter who is no longer an active member of the church. I know a few of her reasons, but I'm sure I don't know them all. I'll be the first to admit that I understand many of her choices, and I can't say I wouldn't be in the same position given her experiences. Bad things happen sometimes, and she has endured a few.

I don't spend time worrying about her in the context of "being together forever" -- I have heard all of the comforting doctrine over the years. More importantly, I have faith in the atonement and in our Savior's ability to know her heart, much more fully than I can.

But I do worry about us being together as a family right here on earth sometimes. When it comes to the church, breaking up is hard to do. For all parties.

We have a strong culture. Eschew the Mormon mold and it's easy to feel that you're no longer "in the club". When she first left, of course it was difficult for us. No one raises children in the church hoping they'll choose a different path. But we moved past it many years ago, and I'm not sure she really understands that. She feels different. She feels a division. I think she believes that we must always be disappointed in her, because she knows our doctrine well.

Having grown up in the church myself, I understand why she would suspect us of having those feelings, why she can't quite believe that we think she's amazing exactly the way she is.

And that's why the temple causes me pain. Because the temple reinforces that division. She won't be at her sister's wedding. How does that make her feel? Probably like she's not in the club. Probably like she's different. Probably like we think she is somehow "less". 

But wait! This is our FAMILY I am talking about. Not a club or an organization, a quorum or a congregation. This is my daughter.

And I can't help being genuinely resentful of anything that would ask me to feel that my darling, beloved girl is in any way "less". She is remarkable. She is full of love and goodness and the most amazing gifts. She's really one of the more extraordinary people I know. And it makes me so sad to think that she has a hard time believing I can see her in exactly that way.

So during the wedding, when I should be overcome with the joy of family and the eternal nature of those loving ties, I will also find myself heartsick for the one who isn't there, and for the way in which that day will probably affirm for her the feeling of being the "other one". 

I know because I've experienced it twice before.

We attended the Nauvoo Temple dedication when the girls were younger and I cried all the way through it. Not because I was touched. I couldn't see that far past my pain. I cried because it was the first time she was officially excluded. The church...that I loved...was putting up an explicit wall within my family. That was the moment it came into clear focus for me. And there was nothing I could do as her mother to fill the gap. No reach could bring her to the other side that day. I felt a deep wound. If she wasn't deemed worthy to be there, why should I want to be?

Then she missed her first sister's wedding. At least I was able to brace for the pain. I wasn't blindsided by it, as I had been the first time, but I could still cry about it right now. Just give me 30 seconds to conjure those feelings up.

In trying to explain something sensitive to me, a friend once said, "Wait until you see one of your daughters sealed in the temple. Then you will understand." I could sense his joy at the eternal glimpse in that pivotal parenting moment. But all I could think of was, "I'm happy for you. Actually, I've already seen that. And I'm pretty sure you wouldn't understand." 

You had to be there. For all of it. 

Of course, I'm grateful that two of my daughters have chosen to begin their marriages in the temple. I know the blessing that can be throughout their lives, I know the sacrifices it required, the choices they had to make to be ready for that ordinance. As a mother, my heart truly does rejoice.

But the sadness is nearly unbearable for me too. And I can't deny that. If we could do it any other way, I would.

I tell you all of this only because I suspect some of you will understand. Because I'm sure you have your own hard things. 

Days your heart is breaking while everyone else in the meeting seems to agree that, if you're doing it right, you'll surely be happy. 

Days you hear the message, but it doesn't seem to apply to the reality you see and feel in your personal circumstances.

Days you don't want to teach the lesson because you know it's going to be another hard thing for one of the members of your class.

Days you try to access the joy the gospel can bring but you come up short.

Just about the time I begin to feel like I'm passing the test, I often figure out that the test isn't actually what I thought it was at all. 

And I feel we need to be more aware that even our best teachings, the ones that we are assured will bring peace and happiness if followed, can be hard, painful things for some among us. It all depends on how and where they land. 

We don't need to see the wounds, but I'd like to shift our group perspective a bit so that it's acceptable to acknowledge they're there. Because even though we can't eliminate every hard thing, we can provide softness, kindness, safety, and caring to cushion the blows. Isn't that why we come together every week?

Whether or not we even understand why the cherished words, practices, and principles that bring us joy don't have that same effect on everyone, we need to accept it. Sometimes they just don't. So when it comes to our lives as Latter-day Saints, maybe we should be a bit quieter about how we are all expected to feel. 

Even the best people are not spared hard things.

-S.