Forrest Gump’s mama said life is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get—and I think that’s a sturdy enough metaphor. It holds up, in my experience. But as I texted Cynthia last night, life feels to me more like a salad bowl with every blessed thing in it. One bowl, all the everything. Personally I like to curate my salad a little more carefully than that, but all-the-things all-the-time seems to be what’s on the menu no matter what we order. At least with chocolates you have a choice whether to eat any. Life is an all-you-can-eat-and-keep-eating-until-closing salad bar containing everything you can name, but also all the things you don’t have words for.

I knew this a month ago, but I know-know it today.

We’ll start here: My mom died July 17, just an hour or so before Cynthia and I were scheduled to have a photo shoot—the kind of pics you need for promo stuff when you’re in the podcast biz. If you ever wonder what you’ll do right after you get the phone call that your mom just died, I’m going to suggest that you probably won’t know until the minute it happens. What I did is put on a little lipstick (which I never wear) and go for pictures.

There’s something about a bit of normalcy when the world turns upside down that can be lifesaving medicine.

I’d gotten the call that something was up with my mom—and it wasn’t good—the morning before, standing in the roller coaster line at Lagoon amusement park. Well, adjacent to the roller coaster line, holding my 2 year old granddaughter who was waving to her mom a bit nervously as the line snaked away, and also trying to put her fingers all over my sunglasses because she found that to be the funniest thing she could think of to do when you’re plunked in grandma’s lap and your mom walks away.

Maybe everyone should have a giggling two-year-old in their lap when they get that kind of phone call. It keeps the “and” in plain sight.

I answered the call as best I could, and absorbed the news as best I could. I didn’t know what to do. We were at Lagoon as part of our first full-family vacation ever: all the kids, all the grands, together for a week in Utah. (We’ll still be paying for it next year—100% worth it.) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’d spent the day with my mom two days before, going to Dairy Queen and playing Rummikub, and I hadn’t even hugged her when I left. I’d just said, “See you next Friday!” Which of course I wouldn’t.

I didn’t get another goodbye.

When I got the call the morning after Lagoon that she was already gone, and I’d missed it, the only comfort I could think of was the memory of helping her in the bathroom in some very personal ways 3 days before. If that’s not a hug and an I love you, I guess I don’t know what is. She’d said to me, as we struggled together to get her garments back where they belonged, “This is when you really want to have a daughter. Sons are good, but you want a daughter when it comes to this.” And as the one there helping the regal woman I’d always thought to be the most beautiful in the world do what amounted to changing her diaper, I thought “There are people who come to work every day and do this job. I can never thank anyone on this staff enough.” At the same time, I felt an unexpected wave of gratitude for having the opportunity to do it myself.

As I pushed her wheelchair up to the sink to wash her hands, she said, “Don’t look in the mirror after 60. Just … don’t.” It was the last—probably very good—motherly advice I’d get.

3 days later, I thought of that advice as I put on my awkward lipstick in the mirror, knowing it couldn’t do a thing to save me. After all, Cynthia is 10 years younger than I am and a good 6 inches taller. Plus, let’s face it—she has some truly worthy hair.

Blakelee—our photographer in addition to everything else she does for ALSSI—did her best to always put me in the most forgiving light, running us through a bunch of poses, assuring me over and over that I looked a-mazing. Remember me telling you how my daughters claim they could tell I was lying to them when they were kids because my voice went too high? Well, there it was, proof from the photographer’s mouth.

Anyway, at one point Blakelee said, “Now look serious,” and I said, “Serious like my mom just died, or some less-serious kind of serious?” And we all laughed. Sometimes laughing with women you love is all there is to do.

I didn’t jump in the car and race down to be with my dad and siblings who’d gathered in St. George to take care of the to-do list that suddenly materializes when someone dies, and that’s because of the aforementioned trip I was on with my own family, but also because of the reason we were on that trip.

We were in Salt Lake to celebrate my other-mother’s 90th birthday with an event so extraordinary, I can’t quite put into words just how special it was. My mother-in-law is much more than just that title in my life—since I was 18 years old, she’s nurtured me at times in ways my own mother couldn’t.

She helped me find my creative footing, taught me the value of my own hands and helped me learn what they could do, gave me perspective and understanding of the ways women’s handwork has saved their lives—and spoken the volumes they couldn’t—across history.

She is largely responsible for my relationship with art, and learning I could make it. In so many ways, this woman introduced me to the self I’ve become.

To celebrate crossing the threshold of her 10th decade, her children put on a quilt show, a retrospective of one facet of her lifetime of creative work. She’s a quilting purist in principle and practice—no machine stitching, no marking pens or adhesives or rotary cutters or synthetic fibers or fancy tricks or shortcuts of any kind. There were 80 quilts in the show, give or take, a remarkable body of work to say the least.

And so many people her quilting—and I think more importantly her being—have touched through the years, showed up. Hundreds of them. You read that right. Women flew in, some who had been in her neighborhood quilting groups as she’d moved around the country, many who (like me) trace their own creative lineage to her. Each quilt was displayed with a handwritten card identifying the pattern and giving a little background, maybe some insight into why she made that quilt at a particular time in her life. She’d also selected quotes that influenced her work, scattering them among the quilts.

A small table held her well-worn tools: needles and scissors, thimble, white cotton thread, and the flannel-covered lap board on which she works. I heard that when she woke up the morning of the event she said, “My tools are at the show. What am I supposed to do all day?”

The family gathered for a dinner the night before (my mom had died that morning). When we arrived, I found my mother-in-law on her porch swing and sat down beside her. We didn’t really say much, just watched what seemed like 100 grown-up cousins happily milling and visiting while their children hollered and chased.

She reached over, took my hand, and just held it.

Swing, swing, swing.

It was the “and” I needed to stay upright.

A few days later, we had the ALSSI live event. Talk about worthy stuff, there’s just nothing in the world better than the women in this community coming together over cake and questions! More healing balm.

The next morning I got up and drove to St. George. My mom didn’t want a funeral, so we weren’t sure how to celebrate her. For her 60th birthday, we had written a roadshow about her life—an irreverent musical roast, which she accepted with grace and humor, as she did most things. We reserved a ward, gathered up all the grandchildren, had a few memorable (and mostly useless) rehearsals, and surprised her with the show. We’d invited a few of her best friends; she looked radiant in a birthday tiara, laughing and crying by turns.

So the Friday after Mom died we gathered—31 years later, those grandkids all adults now—set up a keyboard, and sang the roadshow again in the theater room at the assisted living center. Her favorite white cake with raspberry filling (I didn’t come from nowhere!) completed the evening. Was it the tribute she would have wanted? I don’t know. Sometimes laughing with people you love is all there is to do.

Now, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys connecting life’s dots into little pictures of meaning, you may appreciate this detail: at the exact time my mom passed, all my kids and their kids were on a little family history field trip, caravanning past the house I grew up in. That house was one of the great joys of my mom’s life. My grandkids will never meet her—I like to think she waved from a window somewhere as their cars went by.

I can’t write all the lifey things that have happened in the weeks since. For whatever reason, I’ve been in one of those stretches where everything’s suddenly dialed to 11: good and bad, beautiful and absolutely not, heartbreaking and life affirming. I’m navigating the best of times and worst of times in a few ways and places—my mom’s death is just one. But in my experience, the light thrown off from these life-periods of intense paradox can be better quality than the light I navigate by most of the time.

For one example, I’m finding myself newly aware of the goodness of people. Who knew we could be so thoughtful, so tender in our handling of each other? I have felt seen and loved on a level I’ve never experienced before. More than just surprised, I’m blown away every day by some new kindness. Apparently, I still have much to learn about the care and handling of others, and I hope I can.

Just this morning, I was crying in the McDonald’s parking lot for no reason—as one sometimes does—and received this message from someone you may know as Pastor Stan (whom I’ve never actually met):

Stan Mitchell is someone who moves through the world witnessing and binding-up wounds; it’s the work of his life and ministry. How does one become such a person? Well, in this case I know he lost his own mother not long ago, so he’s sensitive to my fresh wound. It takes one to know one, as the kids say. But reaching out to do something about it when it crosses your mind? That’s next level, and I haven’t quite beat the level I’m on yet.

It’s like this every day right now: someone reminds me that I’m seen and loved, and I’m left standing all amazed. Even though in some ways I feel I’ve been initiated into a specific club with the loss of my mom, what’s actually happening is I am seeing in a new way that there is only the human club, and we’re all in it.

One bowl. Everyone and everything in it together.

Please let the eyes through which I see both—people and the stuff of life—be changed by this light.

When My Mother Died

There were flowers to be tended,
trimmed and ribboned, pinched and placed,
arranged, admired, water clouding green
then greener, needing to be changed

They broke down, bent,
drooped, sagged, smelled, spilled,
shed pollen tears, forgot themselves
in petals on her tabletop and chair

You will try but you won’t keep
what has been cut from life for long—

I have older friends, women
who’ve seen things, who didn’t send flowers
to sing this loss, this life event, they
sent a blanket, an artifact, a plain

and patient souvenir from decades further
down this path—someone is always
ahead, someone is already living
the thing I’m about to learn

—Susan 

*Find more from Richard Rohr on the illusion of separateness here.

What do women do with Christianity? While some experiences may be specific to Latter-day Saints, when we talk to women in other churches we find a surprisingly big overlap: our sisters from other denominations describe so many common themes and similar challenges in their institutional religious experiences and personal spiritual lives. In Episode 270, Cynthia and Susan welcome Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Dean of Core Faculty at the Center for Action and Contemplation, for a conversation about women and Christianity. Don’t let the “bonus” in the title fool you—this one’s a don’t miss!

Notes & Quotes:

Connect with Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher online:
On Substack:
On Facebook
On Instagram
On Threads
Carmen’s Website
Carmen’s Linktree
Carmen’s YouTube Channel
Carmen’s First YouTube Channel
Carmen’s Books
CAC Daily Meditations
CAC Podcasts
CAC Substack
CAC YouTube Channel

CAC Event: What Do Women Do With Christianity?

Have you ever wondered how women navigate faith amid structures that have often marginalized their voices? What Do Women Do with Christianity? is an online event offering wisdom, companionship, and space for bold and honest inquiry.

• Date: Friday, September 11, 2026

• Time: 10:00-11:30 a.m. Pacific Time (PT)

• Featuring: Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Christine Valters Paintner, and Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows

• Cost: $95, $30, $10, $5

• Register

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For weeks I’ve been knee-deep

in Volume 1 of the Carol Lynn Pearson diaries. Then when I heard that she had passed on July 29, 2026 it felt particularly heavy—as if I had just lost a friend. Daily I have been texting Susan or another friend messages such as, “Today’s reading from CLP that has me melting down is….”

At this point in my Mormony-ness I didn’t think much could trigger my melt-down-meter. After all, I’ve read all the popular Church history books,1 so much so that recently I texted Susan and said, “I think I am completely done reading about messy Mormon history,” which is 95% about men in unmerited positions of authority. But the women? I am always open to learning more about my fellow sisterly saints.

Enter the diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson (CLP), who, as a woman, has heard the private voices and unfiltered opinions of regular women—as well as the women in leadership roles—since the 1960s. And when women talk privately they do not hold back with Carol Lynn!

Up until now, the biggest view behind the curtain of LDS women in leadership we’d had is when Chieko Okazaki gave that now-infamous Dialogue Interview, as well as in 2021 when the Church announced that in Europe women had been called as Area Organization Advisors for the Relief Society and Young Women organizations. About that, I wrote in our book chapter called ‘For the Men in the Room,’2

The above example is fairly benign, it’s more a statement that something was missing rather than their personal feelings about the patriarchy. But in the CLP diaries we get a behind-the-scenes look at the pain points of women in leadership. Here are six diary entries documenting such conversations:

Now do you understand why I have been melting down? And not just because July 2026 was the third hottest July on record in Utah history! 🥵 I don’t know why I assumed women in leadership were called by The Men in Charge because they preferred the status quo of women in the Church. But if I only have their public statements to go by, it’s no wonder I thought they loved patriarchy! Their private sentiments, though, give me another picture of them, least of which is that LDS women are complicated. (Duh!) Nobody’s public comments always match her private comments. But truly I was surprised at their level of disappointment. What didn’t come as a shock to me though is that LDS women in leadership—then and now—still don’t publicly voice their concerns about our place in the church.

In 2019 I thought LDS women leaders were getting close to open dialogue about equality when BYU Women’s conference4 held a panel with our top women church leaders and one of the topics addressed was how to deal with dismissive male church leaders. Here we go, ladies, say it, at last! Jean Bingham, then president of the Relief Society, did have the courage to admit she’d had interactions with a dismissive leader that left her “seething.” She called her interactions with him “purse slamming” moments. Lest I thought she was going to then talk about unrighteous dominion or the power imbalance that exists between men and women, nope, she made excuses saying that she learned over time how to work with him. That it was a “style and personality issue.” That as she prayed for him she learned better ways to approach him.

She went on to say that recently she had counseled with a ward RS president going through the same problem with a dismissive male leader and she gave her that same counsel—to pray for better ways to work with him. In other words, the woman needed to do all the changing. The problem couldn’t possibly be the power imbalance between men and women in the church. Or the “asymmetry,” as Dale Renlund calls the power imbalance.5

“Making yourself smaller is what gave you a seat at the table.”

—Sara Fisk6

But what happened next might be my number one most disappointing thing an LDS woman has ever said on the record. Bingham blamed herself— “We women tend to be shrill or demanding or stubborn, thinking we have the best idea ever.” Nooooooo! Shrill? Really? Men in charge can act badly but the real problem is shrill women? Bingham closed her comments with a type of postscript: “One of the things my parents taught me when we have a challenge with a leader is we do not criticize, ever, ever, ever. I never heard my parents say one negative thing, because it doesn’t help.”7 Hmmmm, sound familiar? This is the same advice given to Barbara Smith in the 1970s—never ever critique. Has nothing changed between 1977 and 2019?

I think it is highly problematic in a hierarchical power structure like the LDS Church—one in which men are always on the top of the org chart and women are always on the bottom—to tell the person who lacks power to look at herself first and say, like Bingham counseled the struggling women, to look within and to ask, ‘Lord, Is it I?” and then to follow that up with advice to never criticize. This is how systems of oppression and domination continue. We teach the group with lesser power to never see those in power as having any fault. Look within and never speak it out loud. Ever, ever, ever.

Thank goodness the internet has allowed for the democratization of LDS women’s voices. Regular women like me, and Susan—and all of you—have public ways to voice our private concerns. I don’t know if the women in the CLP diaries would’ve done anything differently had they lived today. Would they have started a blog? Been a guest on a podcast? Privately joined a chat room with a name like ‘PurseSlammingProvoMom’?

Reading volume 1 of The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson while sweating through July offered me a gift that our manuals and church magazines never have and probably never will. My leaders were not—and are not—the passive cheerleaders of patriarchy that their public statements forced them to be. They were sharp women, deeply frustrated, and acutely aware of the “asymmetry” crushing them. So I’ll pick up my melty self off the floor, satisfied today to know that my foremothers have seen every inequity that I see as well. It changes nothing in the organization, but it changes everything in me.

Cynthia Winward

Most of our listeners are regular LDS women like us but we do have some listeners who don’t quite fit our profile yet they have found our work helpful. One such listener is a young man, a current missionary in Africa, who is openly gay. He recently shared the most amazing experiences with us and we were just gushing! He gave us permission to share, but for privacy and safety reasons, names have been changed and the country he is serving in has been omitted.

When it comes to a feminine divine, I wish all of our LDS missionaries were instructed to lead with our doctrine of a Heavenly Mother, but instead we choose to bury the lead. As Susan has said, she is simultaneously given to us and taken away. It makes me smile to know that African sisters have the same questions I have….where is the divine feminine? I’m grateful that Yuia and Rosine have this marvelous young missionary with which to talk about such things. Bravo, young man!

I’ll close with Carol Lynn Pearson’s famous poem on this very topic—

A Motherless House

by Carol Lynn Pearson

I live in a Motherless house,
A broken home.
How it happened I cannot learn.

When I had words enough to ask
“Where is my Mother?”
No one seemed to know,
And no one thought it strange
That no one else knew either.

I live in a Motherless house.
They are good to me here,
But I find that no kindly
Patriarchal care eases the pain.

I yearn for the day
Someone will look at me and say,
“You certainly do look like your Mother.”

I walk the rooms,
Search the closets,
Look for something that might
Have belonged to her—
A letter, a dress, a chair.
Would she not have left a note?

I close my eyes
And work to bring back her touch, her face.
Surely there must have been
A Motherly embrace
I can call back for comfort.
I live in a Motherless house,
Motherless and without a trace.

Who could have done this?
Who would tear an unweaned infant
From its Mother’s arms
And clear the place of every souvenir?

I live in a Motherless house.
I lie awake and listen always for the word
That never comes, but might.
I bury my face
In something soft as a breast.

I am a child—
Crying for my Mother in the night.

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Crying at Weddings

by Alison Ficklin

Four years ago my daughter and I attended her second grade

teacher’s wedding. As we were seated and waiting for the ceremony to start, my daughter asked me if I was going to cry. “People cry at weddings because they are so happy, are you going to cry mom?” “Maybe,” I told her, but I remember thinking that I knew I would cry, but not for the same reasons that others in attendance would be crying.

I would cry because her guest list was only limited by how many people would fit in the venue. I had to choose based on who had temple recommends, which meant many close friends and family, including three of my siblings, were not able to attend. One of my brothers would have been able to attend, but he was on a mission at the time. The guest list was mostly older relatives and friends of my mother’s.

I would cry because her sister officiated the wedding. There’s a lot to cry about right there in that sentence. The fact that she had such an intimate connection to the bride added a special touch that you just rarely get in a temple sealing. And to be able to choose anyone? Even a woman? I couldn’t even tell you the name of the person who sealed me and my husband. And well, he was obviously a man.

I would cry because her dress was gorgeous. I imagine she made her choice based on what made her feel beautiful. The biggest deciding factor for my dress was if it would cover my garments or not.

I would cry because she had a photographer taking pictures of the ceremony and I knew there would be pictures of her getting ready as well. Because there always are. I have no such physical reminders of my temple sealing or getting ready in the bride’s room because it wasn’t allowed.

But it wasn’t all tears of sadness and regret. I would also cry because I knew if my daughter were to get married, she would have more options than I did. Even if she did opt for a temple sealing, she could have the civil ceremony of her dreams with no waiting period. Thanks to sleeveless garments (that were not even a thing when we attended this wedding) her dress options will be greater than mine were. She could choose female witnesses. And probably other changes could affect her day that I couldn’t even imagine right now. I’m grateful for the changes that she can potentially benefit from, but I mourn what I didn’t have.

So yes, my sweet girl, I will cry.

What Stopped Me

by Xenial Mormon Mom

He didn't pin me down
So what held me there?
Frozen

He didn't pin me down
My body isn't bruised
So what stopped me
From stopping him?

I didn't want to cause a scene
I thought I could get us out of this situation without...
embarrassing him



In fiction, women have their wits about them
They use their cunning and time freezes for them to think of a trick

I freeze - not time
No trick, no cunning, no wit
It's too late

He didn't pin me down
I didn't kick him away
I covered my face and repeated,
"I said no, I said no,
I said no."

"Ladies, please stop dressing so provocatively."
"We need you to help the poor boys with their thoughts."
"It's the woman's job to hold the moral line.
"Men can't help themselves."
"We just need you to dress modestly."
"Don't be so pushy."
"Assertiveness is not attractive."
"Boys don't want a controlling woman."
"He has so much of his life ahead of him."
"It would be a shame to cause him any trouble."
"You don't want to ruin his life, now do you?"
"Think of the man's needs first."
"Honor and obey him."
"What were you wearing?"
"She was asking for it."
"Steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action."
“If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Polygamy Doesn’t Make Sense to Me

by KC Bramer

As I was weeding the garden, I had a thought.

In the book of Genesis, God created Adam and Eve. The idea that one man and one woman were created is reinforced in the temple. I wondered why God didn’t create Adam, Eve, Juanita, Olga, Greta and Jane? If the purpose was to be fruitful and multiply, wouldn’t it be easier to do so if Adam had multiple partners? After all, if God could create one woman, He could create several. If polygamy is important to God, then why wasn’t it created from the start? It doesn’t make sense. Polygamy never made sense to me.

We are told to judge things by their fruit. I don’t see much good fruit when I look at the Old Testament families. I see women abusing other women. I see handmaids being handed over to men to produce children for their mistresses. I see a man sending his wife/concubine and son into the desert with a skin of water and a loaf of bread. I see infertile women being taunted for something outside their control. I see women unsuccessfully trying to gain the love of their husbands. I see men selling one of their brothers as a slave to a passing caravan and telling their father that the boy was killed by a wild beast. I see cousins at war using the word shibboleth to identify the cousins they want to capture and kill. I see descendants of a family who to this day are in conflict.

I suppose there was some good fruit. Isaac and Ishmael did have families and the prophecy that Abraham would have numberless descendants came true. Leah was the mother of Judah from whom King David and Jesus descend. Joseph was in Egypt in a position to store grain and save the lives of his family members and others during a famine. Hannah eventually had a son who became the prophet Samuel.

This isn’t good fruit stemming from polygamy. To me this is God’s way of turning bad human behavior into something good. A God that can bring resurrection out of crucifixion can surely do these lesser things.

I contrast these stories from the Old Testament with a story from the New Testament. It starts with a young woman named Mary receiving a visit from an angel. Mary was betrothed to a man named Joseph. At no time during this story does it ever say that Joseph had multiple wives. (Although some believe that Joseph was a widower with children when he took Mary as his wife.) Mary never had to compete with another wife for the affection and attention of her husband. Joseph did not have to placate angry wives upset about other wives’ children. Jesus was raised in a home with one mother and one father. If polygamy was ordained of God, wouldn’t He want His only begotten son to live in that kind of family?

What are the fruits of Jesus’ family? He was kind and considerate. He had respect for all kinds of people. He must have had good relations with his siblings as some of them were his disciples. He healed people and forgave them. At the worst hour of his life, he saw to the care of his mother and comforted a criminal who was crucified with him. This is definitely good fruit.

Polygamy doesn’t make sense. It was not present with Eve and Adam. No good fruit comes of it. Jesus was not raised in a polygamous family. The only conclusion I can come to is that polygamy is a practice of men, not of God.

I Awaken

by Sarah Lewis

Each time I hear the word “polygamy”
something inside me aches.
A small, burning fury rises
from my stomach into my chest.
Bury it. Suppress it.
There’s no space for my feelings here.
Add it to the shelf alongside all the others—
My wonderings, my instincts, my fears.

Occasionally the fire of courage ignites
and I allow the hurt to settle, but
don’t tread those waters. “Doubt your doubts
before you doubt your faith.”
And so again, deep down inside
I smash those embers down
under the weight of patriarchy’s heavy bricks,
while a tear drips down my face.

Years pass by while I press on
fulfilling nature’s role.
No time, no space for flickers here;
a wife and mother in Zion I must be.
I strive every day to be righteous,
to perform most perfectly.
I’ve become so good at doing it all
at the cost of being me.

One day I begin to wonder,

Who am I?
What do I need?

My role has stripped it all from me;
am I anything underneath?
The smoldering inside me still remains;
The smoke seeps into my bones.
It’s heavy.
I hurt.
What’s wrong with me?
I’m weak.
I’m not enough.

Each day I try anew
to be patient, kind, and strong,
but the boulders of burden pound me until I crack
breaking out of nowhere an inner rage.

Shame is ugly and pervasive
Breeding dark thoughts in my mind.

I tell myself,
“Go to the temple, pray and read more. Do it right.”
(The given recipe to feel the light.)
I’m a good and righteous Mormon girl
so I follow the prescription:
Attend all meetings, study general conference, fulfill your calling,
pray and read your scriptures.

I can’t stay awake in the temple.
Reading scriptures puts me to sleep.
Do I even know my Savior?
Too much is blocking His reach.
Slowly I begin to realize
there is only one of me.
How can I ever do all of these things?

Must I admit defeat?

All of my time is given to others.
I ignore my body’s whispers
to “Back off, slow down, you’re nearing the edge.”

Continuously I persevere.
I only know one gear:
Full throttle toward perfection.
I reallocate my time to more pressing needs
but never lessen my pressure against the pedal.
Now my body starts to scream,
“Too much! Too fast! No more!”
Depression chips away my hope
and exhaustion overtakes me.
I feel helpless and burned out.
My own kids won’t even respond to me.
How can I keep pressing on
when every expectation overwhelms me?
The burning, expanding anxiety I feel
almost incapacitates me.
Full panic is just around the corner
if I don’t get a handle on things!

And then,

One simple invitation
opens the door for me
to look inside, behind, beyond—
Permission to discover what this hurt could mean.

And so I grab a match.

Then with courage and equal fear,
I strike and it becomes the spark
to ignite my long-suppressed embers.
With welcoming, yet timid arms
I reach out to embrace
the questions of my woman soul
my performance of expectations always hid.

The burn and sting of shame pervade.
Fear fights to hold me down.
“Don’t listen to your inner self” it says,
“For then you won’t be good and worthy.”
Countless expectations rule over me.
Is this what Christ wants from me?
Finding Him eludes me still;
how did I never learn how?

Why have I needed permission
to consider spirituality another way?
Strong women inspire me to take that for myself.
My faith journey is mine to make.

An ache resides within my soul
from the feeling of dismissal
of my Mother God, divine and infinite
and how manhood takes her place.
How could you men tuck her neatly away,
so ignorant of the harm it brings me?
You reason this is to respect and reverence her,
while maintaining your power to reign supreme.
How often have men been silenced
and put back in their place?
I don’t believe most understand,
for their voice has a stage.
Men at the helm to lead us
at every level in the church.
Patriarchy, priesthood, and preside
are tasting more bitter every day.

And we circle back to polygamy,
a dark stain on our church’s history.

That burning fury still quakes my heart.
This could be my eternity?!

When I vulnerably shared my honest pain with him,
he countered and questioned me:
“Since you’d have your children and family in heaven,
what would plural marriage actually take from you?”

I can’t put together an answer
into words that properly convey
the arrow piercing through my heart
as patriarchy once again aims to douse my flame.

Still struggling to articulate
how that question punishes me…
dismissal,
no power,
no equal leadership role,
sharing my husband,
a concubine to my “King”?
Or is it something still deeper?
The devaluing of feminine traits,
downplaying our heavy emotional labor,
our low self-worth,
our concerns,
our strengths?

My personal experience must influence
my past, my present, and my future.
Only God knows my inner heart.
His grace attends my interpretations.
My Gods’ gift of agency to me
demonstrates Their confidence and Their Plan.
Inside me lives Their light and Their power
to converge with my intuition.

The opening of my heart,
my yearning toward heaven,
my veneration of nature’s beauty,
my pleading, hoping, thanking.
These are my ways of prayer these days to
my Mother,
my Father,
my Jesus.
All Gods to me,
separately,
I seek to know each one.

The greatest gift I can offer to God
is to be wholly and only me,
to step into my God-given capacities—
love, goodness, strength, learning, growth, empathy.

And yet, despite my longings, sometimes
a certain sadness visits me.
I feel lonely, worn, unknowing.
What do I want?
What do I need?
I seek to know and comprehend
what has been dampened down.

With each stumbling step toward my Christ
my understanding broadens.
Immense feelings once brushed aside,
my gleaming fire now invites in.
Slowly I come to know Him
through His love, His kind teaching, His suffering.
His adoration and respect for women was evident
In his every interaction.
Surely this Brother of ours,
so perfect and benevolent,
knew His Mother in Heaven above,
and now aches while we, seeking Her, are starving.

This feminine awakening stirred my slumber;
I join my sisters, strong.
O, Mother God of women, Divine,
guide and embolden me along.
Help me to find my buried voice
and the courage to share it wide,
To awaken the fire in others’ souls
where true love and knowing reside.

From a listener:

I am a mom of a young woman. She’s 14. Every path that she’s been told will lead to success is probably not there. Nursing, education, computer science, science at all—these are paths that are traditionally held out. Doctors. Lawyers. But the costs of education are so high. She’s an athlete. She’s trusting in her athletics to cover her schooling so that she can get a degree in the first place.

She’s getting the same messages her aunts got. I was never a YW. I’m a convert. And I always grew up with the idea that I will work and have a career. Being a mother was never ever on my radar. And being a mother isn’t on her radar. She pushed back in seminary when they said the equivalent of priesthood for women is motherhood. She asked what happens if she can’t physically have kids? Or if she can’t afford them. What happens if things don’t work out. Is she less? And why is her spirituality tied to something about her body? Isn’t she worth more than that. And I guess she inspired a revolt because I got the joy of meeting with the seminary teachers.

I’m shocked at how resilient these girls are. And how willing they are to take their friendships from seminary and all into the real world and rely on those. They have hope. They have amazing ideas. And they do not let adults squash on them at all. But the messages they’re getting are still the same ones her aunts got. It is just not the same world, but it is the same messages.

At some point the church is going to have to adapt or they will lose all the young women. She knows several gay young women who are in seminary because they believe, but who have plans to leave the church because the church can’t accept them. She’s decided that she won’t continue when she’s on her own either because the church lacks the flexibility or general desire to change with and support the youth as they are experiencing the world, and relies on the “older” times instead of leaning into what they are going through now.

-Natasha

Contributors:

Alison Ficklin

Alison is an elementary school teacher who lives in the Midwest with her husband and four three two children. She has four kids, but the oldest two are adults and she is clearly still trying to figure out how to navigate that and determine where it is exactly that they live. She enjoys reading, playing the piano, wasting time on her phone, traveling, and training in karate.

Xenial Mormon Mom

KC Bramer

KC lives in St. Paul Minnesota with her husband of 20 years and their two young cats. She works as a pharmacist. Her hobbies are reading, writing, biking hiking and knitting. She also likes baking cookies and banana bread. Raised in a two faith family, she is interested in the practices in other Christian faiths.

Sarah Lewis

Sarah loves being active and outdoors, appreciating nature's beauty. She is passionate about connecting with others, always learning, and finding her voice. Her faith journey has led her to being open to questions, letting go of guilt and shame, coming to trust her inner knowing, redefining God, and curating her own life. She is actively choosing what remains and what or who doesn't support or uplift her. She is the newly single mother of six children. Excited for her future, she believes we all have the power and capacity to determine what that looks like for ourselves.

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It’s my turn to share a few funsies of what has been worthy of my precious time. You probably heard me say on one of our last episodes before we went on break that I’ve gone full analog these days. I just can’t take the electronic world we live in right now. Bad news in America 24/7, the fear around AI, etc. It’s just too much.

So I replaced the batteries in all my old watches and put my Apple watch away in its drawer. I am only reading paperback books right now, no e-books. And most shocking of all, I’m hand quilting for the first time in life even though I have all the equipment to machine quilt. Who even am I? Despite all this, I am still watching YouTube and using my electric oven. I’m not that crazy! So here are a few things that have been worthy of my time this month—

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by Susan Hinckley

I don’t know where or when I learned that I would need to do things to earn love.

I can’t pin it down—it seems like knowledge I was born with. In this kind of paradigm, Being Better = More Love, so from a young age I started trying to be the best at everything.

I tried to please teachers, parents, friends. I tried to be popular (not much success there), win awards (more there, but spoiler: awards don’t make you feel loved, they just make you worry about how you’ll top it next time). I got voted “best dressed” one year in school, “best smile” another. Sure I’m still secretly riding high from those Jr. High titles—let’s be honest—but I didn’t really believe either one of them. Still don’t. “Awkward” and “not quite fill-in-the-blank enough” are the designations I assigned myself in school, and those are the ones that stuck.

Religion made sense to me, because it was a scheme to earn God’s love by becoming very very good, and hopefully even perfect. Religion also taught me I was not naturally good, not inherently worthy, not a beloved child in any way I could feel or believe. It was confusing—church told me God loved me out of one side of its mouth while insisting God couldn’t stand me the way I am out of the other.

I honestly thought that the point of Christianity was transcending my humanity, that the ‘good news’ was we don’t have to be what we are—and what we are is fundamentally not okay—because Jesus can fix it! It was based on someone who was better than anyone else who ever lived on this planet: who resisted all temptation, performed miracles, walked on water, then punctuated his example with the heretofore unimaginable trick of resurrection, literally transcending his mortality.

I certainly didn’t absorb the idea that my humanness was one of the essential things about me. That it was key to connection, or the pathway to love.

It would never have occurred to me that humanness was the mirror in which I could glimpse Divinity.1

The day I met God—and let me explain what that means: it means one day I met the understanding that I actually am okay, beloved even, and always have been, as is—was like going around a corner and finding myself in a completely different world. A world I was not only allowed but meant to love, full of humans like me who were also beloved. Once I turned that corner, it disappeared. There could be no going back.

The Rev. Jacqui Lewis writes, “What if the goal of our lives of faith is to have this revelation: The only way to love God is to love yourself so you can love the world?”2 The first 50 years of my life, I wouldn’t have known what to do with that sentence. It would have sounded nice, but love of self simply wasn’t in my wheelhouse.

Loving the world came very naturally, but was mostly something I kept quiet around other Latter-day Saints. The idea that I had sensed God’s presence much more regularly in places other than church would have required some explanation. An ongoing negative narrative about it left me conflicted and confused by my private affection for the world, quietly confirming a deep fear: that for some reason I could neither understand nor control, my faith must be faulty or deficient.

I’d always secretly been on the side of people. I loved the things we did and invented and said and wrote and made. I remember coming home from a movie once, overwhelmed by the beauty of its complex portrayal of relationships between deeply flawed characters—something about their interactions had pulled up a chair for me, assured me it was okay to sit down in my own life, that I deserved to be comfortable. I said something about this to my father-in-law—so often a reassuring light in my church life—and he responded a bit disapprovingly that for him, the movie was too humanistic.

Well, yes … exactly.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher teaches that, “Being spiritual is much easier than being human.” This simple framing stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard her say it. Rarely has anything explained myself to me in such a simple and profound way. For me, being a Latter-day Saint made being human feel like a tricky proposition. It set up an adversarial relationship between me and myself, between me and God, and as I think about it now, between me and every other human. It made me jump hurdles for love, placed rules around the love I was allowed to feel myself and express for others. This fueled a deep-rooted loneliness and distrust of all of it, setting me up for a true crisis when the wheels of my religious life suddenly flew off.

If religion could no longer be my conduit for seeking connection with God, would I have to just give up on the whole relationship? Even though church hadn’t really gotten me the feelings or insights I was seeking, I’d dug in hopefully, because I didn’t know there could be any legit god-connection outside it.

Christianity has not rewarded a fully-embodied spirituality. If people can know The Source in their bones, why do they need the church? So the church is invested in keeping us separated from the truth of our own bones and hearts and humanity.

Reimagining Christianity for me would involve beginning with the full acceptance of the human experience. Jesus was, after all, a person—no matter what else he may have been. But it’s not for his humanness that we are taught to emulate him—it is for having been better than we are. No wonder I learned to show up at church with only small portions of myself visible. No wonder I was taught that the natural Susan was an enemy to God. No wonder I internalized shame for my own most human parts, even though it is through that common thread that I am connected to all my siblings. How could I love the thing I had not been taught to reverence? How could I believe God loved me if I had not been taught to love myself?

So one of the biggest things that happened for me the day I suddenly realized I was beloved was that I no longer needed an intervention. Not an atonement, at least not in the way I’d been taught to think about it.3 Not a card to certify my worthiness, nor a priesthood holder who could do essential things that filled requirements I couldn’t fill myself.

For the first time in my life, nothing at all between me and love.

It was a slippery slope, too. One minute after being granted Divine permission to love myself as I am, I realized it put my neighbor in a new light as well. I felt suddenly equipped with compassion, understanding, desire, acceptance, willingness, patience—a whole lot of things I’d never known exactly how or when to use. Love had been obscured by layers of fine print, prerequisites and conditions. As they fell away, I could see the thing underneath was actually easy to pick up and light to carry.

This also meant that rather than a conduit for connection to a god out there somewhere, church might become a conduit for connection with other people. A love lab, where I could grow in self-knowledge and understanding while I learn what it means to live the great commandment, to internalize the one thing we were sent here to really know.

Jesus didn’t come to teach us how to get out of being human, but to show us how to love while we are.

An idea expressed by Rabbi Donniel Hartman4 describes the Jesus I think of when I read his teachings and experiences: “A life of faith isn’t just about walking with God, but how one walks with humanity.” I think that’s about how I walk with my own humanity, in addition to how I walk with everyone else.

“My deepest me is God!” declared St. Catherine of Genoa.5 This means the thing at my center can’t be sin, or shortcoming. In such a view, there can be no deficiency in being human, only divinity. Feeling God’s love is just—feeling love.

I become the pebble in the pond from which all the circles radiate. God’s love originates in me. I never need to be instructed in it, or go someplace holy to experience it, or put myself in the right mindset or soul-set to receive it. The concept of qualifying for it feels as nonsensical as earning my breath.

I talk a lot about a God of relationship, and as I check in with myself about what that phrase means or looks or feels like for me today, the first word that bubbles up is simply connection: humans and all creation, with and within each other, one living whole. I’m trying to learn to stay awake to this world as much as I can: aware of each moment and my place in it, fully inhabiting—committed to and content with—my part.

“Love yourself,” explains Jacqui Lewis. If that sounds simple, the rest of her sentence blows it out to engulf everything else I know now or may ever learn: “—so you can love the other, so you can love the world.” I may have gotten a late start, but I’m willing to work on this for the rest of my life.

Susan Hinckley

As the self-proclaimed Grace Peddlers1, we always love getting feedback from our listeners about podcast topics. We received an email from a podcast listener named Carol who spotted grace out in the wild, okay she actually spotted it in academia, and we wanted to share a bit of it with you all—

How amazing is it that the data from a Brigham Young University study2 is supporting grace? I don’t love the phrase ‘healthy perfectionism’, but I can appreciate the distinction the researcher is trying to make.

After receiving Carol’s email, I read the article she sent in BYU Studies. Basically, researchers found that religion itself is not the primary cause of toxic perfectionism; rather, it is the manner in which we engage with religious standards. The harmful effects of perfectionism can be mitigated if our teachers, parents, and church leaders can foster in us an intrinsic motivation and a grace-based understanding of faith.

Yikes! That seems like a really tall order, especially in a church that struggled to teach me anything about grace. And I’m not alone! I remember years ago reading a BYU Magazine article by Sheri Dew about grace3. She admits grace wasn’t fostered in her or a friend either—

“Her e-mail led me to ask another friend what she wished she understood about grace. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she said, ‘TV evangelists have wrecked that word for me. I almost feel disloyal to the restored gospel even talking about grace. I mean, do we believe in grace?’”

I had to go on my own Grace Journey. And after that long and painful search, I am determined to continue to peddle grace to anyone who will listen. Maybe someday we will believe our own Jesus-y stuff about grace.

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As part of our 250th anniversary observance, U.S. Latter-day Saints are invited to participate in a unified fast on July 5th “to express gratitude for religious liberty and to pray that it be strengthened throughout the world."1

Our 11th Article of Faith says:

I believe in religious freedom and wonder why our leaders don’t get a little more specific about what they’re thinking of when they use that phrase. The fact that they don’t leaves room for me to engage with it for myself, and I’m going to take full advantage of that precious mental space.

First, I’m going to call out the fact that when Joseph Smith penned this article, he should have said “people,” but I’ll overlook that and just remind us all that “men” doesn’t really mean “everyone,” and words matter. In 2026, I think we could consider updating language where it would be easy to do so, to reflect current usage and culture.

Secondly, I hope all church members recognize that in order to be real, any religious liberty you publicly proclaim being devoted to must exist for YOU as a Latter-day Saint—inside the Church—as well as for everyone outside it.

Need to change the way you think or talk about God? A She perhaps? A They?

Need to pray using different words? Maybe even completely different practices?

Need to start coming at scriptural interpretation a bit more broadly, and a bit less literally?

Need to ask big questions about stuff, and maybe stop focusing so much on having the answers?

Need to talk about whatever you struggle with…out loud?

Not a comprehensive list of possibilities of course, but I hope you’ll feel at liberty to change, adapt, and grow in your religious and spiritual life in any way your relationships and experiences may call you to do so. Why wouldn’t we take Joseph at his word, secure in the idea that being LDS need not prohibit us from worshiping how, where, or what we may, and according to the dictates of our own conscience?

There are things in our culture and history that make religious liberty a naturally resonant topic for Latter-day Saints. I think we’re generally pretty insistent on it for ourselves as a church, and therefore invested in defending it for others.

Allowing all people to find meaning and connection however and wherever they may is a worthwhile goal. Can you love people enough to give them space to express what matters to them, and why it does? Can you get out of the way to let them figure that out for themselves?

What about in a Relief Society lesson?

I wish I’d felt more freedom to think, reason, feel, believe differently, and ask questions throughout my life as a Latter-day Saint—you know, the things humans need to grow and develop spiritually. I’ve been in these pews and classrooms for well over half a century, and if we’re going to make noise about religious liberty as a church, from here on out my noise as a member is going to focus on defending our diversity of thoughts, ideas, spiritual needs and practices from the tyranny of ourselves.

It’s an interesting focus for a fast—I think we generally reach for a fast when we’re hoping to get God’s attention, and in this case we really only need to get the attention of ourselves and the people around us. After all, God doesn’t vote. God also doesn’t keep people in boxes, but some of us are prone to keeping ourselves and everyone else—including Them—in one.

Wishing you a happy July 4th, however, wherever, or whatever you may be celebrating.

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I was watching the news last night with sadness and a deeply unsettled feeling as they continued to pull people—some still alive!—from the rubble in Venezuela following last week’s earthquakes. The coverage highlighted the story of a man buried under the rubble of two buildings, apparently protected by the small parking booth where he was working in an underground garage when the world came down. But it’s rescue-Jenga—they can’t figure out how they can get to him when any piece they pull might lead to further collapse. His wife watches nearby, taking small comfort in the fact that, 6 days in, the rescuers have finally been able to get water to him.

As I tried to put myself in her shoes—and couldn’t, really—I thought about the many thousands of collapses happening every minute of every day on this precarious earth of ours. We’re forced to walk a bridge, and there’s no getting off it. But it’s an unreliable bridge: every now and then, often without warning, it just…collapses. We try to avoid looking down, distracting ourselves in every way we can from the chasm. But there it is.

Learning to embrace that reality has become key to my peace and well-being. If that sounds nonsensical, let me explain. I’m not perfect—I over-scroll and over-eat and over-spend to distract myself all day every day. I take too many pills, probably exercise more than I need to, hoping to stave off the inevitable. I’m definitely still learning and will need more practice.

But the peace-giving shift for me is that I finally understand: if no one deserves a tragedy, how can anyone deserve a blessing? I can't deserve a blessing any more than I can deserve a mountain or a baby or a giraffe or the tree growing outside my window.

I can ask for blessing, love for it, live for it, try to stay present to it in my own life and help the people around me feel and find it too. Asking for blessing is really just begging a little reassurance from God, a glimpse of divine love, and Jesus showed me how to manifest that love in the world. I have a choice whether to make this unreliable place a little easier for everyone I meet, or not.

But I will never be more deserving than every person in Venezuela, or anywhere else. May I never forget it.

On the day this bridge gives way beneath my feet—it will, I’ve been watching other people fly off the edge my entire life—it is only love that will sustain me. Only the portion of grace I am willing to give as freely as I hope to receive it that can make me okay, when everything in the world is not. For as long as it took me to write this, anyway, it is enough.

Note: More from James Finley here.

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One of the hallmarks of a Big Idea is that there's always more to say about it! In bonus Episode 269, Cynthia and Susan have conversations with 3 women from the ALSSI community—Lisa, Brooke, and Michelle—exploring a few ideas they had in response to Season 11 topics.

Notes & Quotes:

ALSSI Ep. 257: Big Ideas | The Beatitudes
ALSSI Ep. 260: Big Ideas | Letting Go
ALSSI Ep. 262: Big Ideas | Confirmation Bias
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, by Gregory Boyle
Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, by Gregory Boyle
Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times, by Gregory Boyle
An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ before You Die, by Adam S. Miller
Does Religion Still Matter? Nadia Bolz-Weber on Faith & Forgiveness, Rainn Wilson with Nadia Bolz-Weber, Soul Boom podcast
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr

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We posted this snarky bingo card on social media but I had a few more things to say about women and priesthood.

Way back on Episode 97, Christ Chose Women, we talked about David Bednar’s 2022 comments at the National Press Club Luncheon. (Watch his body language as he answers the questions….nervous much?) When asked about whether we would ever have a woman prophet he said:

“We follow the pattern of the ancient church. … The pattern anciently was that the apostles were men.”

We had plenty to say about his response on the episode, but let’s just accept for now that it is true, that at the highest levels of governance Jesus wants only men to be apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fine. But why can’t we be bishops? If the reporter had asked him that question instead, what scripture—or “pattern”—from Jesus’s life and ministry would Bednar quote to support the Church’s ban on women clergy at the local level? What do you think? Because I can find nothing. Nada.

Cynthia Winward

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Hello Summer Vacation!

We did it! Season 11 is done! Our season of ‘Big Ideas’ and the ‘What Do You Say?’ episodes have been boxed up and packed away. Our summer break has started but already we’ve been texting each other all the projects we’ve been up to—painting, organizing, and family events. So I guess we’re on podcast break, but not life break. That train always seems to be flying full speed ahead.

We will be back in a couple months, but here are a few ways to still connect with us during the summer—

Upcoming:

July ? - Ep. 269 - July Bonus

Jul.10 - Friday Live Chat | 10:00 Mtn (canceled)

Jul.16 - ALSRI Book Club, 7:00 pm Mtn

Jul. 21 - ALSSI Live Event, Salt Lake City 🥳

Aug ? - Ep.270 - August Bonus

We won’t be having any Friday Chats on Zoom for July, but we will still be around for our robust chat room on the Substack app. To avoid trolls, we keep it behind a paywall, but please, shoot us an email if you’d like access but can’t swing a paid subscription right now. Zero questions. Community is everything!

Live Event! —

We still have room for you! (register here)

An Evening with At Last She Said It
Tuesday, July 21, $25
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 pm
3301 E Louise Ave, Salt Lake City, UT

We’re going to pack in a bit of fun in just two hours. Both of us will speak, then we will all get to play ‘What do You Say?’ And of course, we will have cake and some merch. All are welcome—guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

Come to our virtual book club!

Who doesn’t love good fiction in the summer? Our summer book club meeting will be here in a matter of weeks. Attendees voted at the last meeting, and Lilith, by Nikki Marmery, is our next selection for July’s discussion.

Whether or not you get a chance to read the book, we hope you’ll plan to join us for the conversation!

Stay cool!

Many thanks for all the support you send our way—emails, voicemails, chats here on Substack, and financial support. We truly feel nourished and strengthened. :)

Happy Summer!

Cynthia, Susan,
and the ALSSI Team

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A Wrinkle In Time and How NOT to Build Zion

by Mara

In this essay I will address the building of Zion, how we may

be thinking about it in a flawed way, and how we can think about it instead. I will focus on the qualification “of one heart and one mind”—the principle of unity.

The scripture I just quoted in Moses is a description of the city of Enoch, and it could be argued that the description is unique to just that city. It is commonly used as a description in the church, however, as the kind of society we should be working for, since prophecies claim that Zion, the New Jerusalem, will be built in the last days, and we are also members of Zion inasmuch as we are members of stakes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In addition, the scripture says the people were called Zion “because they were of one heart and one mind,” implying that Zion is a title bestowed on people who meet those qualifications and not just the people of Enoch. I feel it is therefore appropriate here to discuss the building of Zion as something that we can all work towards.

At this point you might be wondering about why I called this piece “How NOT to build Zion.” In addition to being an attention-grabber, this title shows that most of this essay will focus on how this scripture can be misinterpreted and how we can read it instead.

The idea of being “of one heart and one mind” can be interpreted in more than one way, and I would like to discuss one way this could be interpreted that I am going to argue is incorrect—that everyone feels, thinks, and acts exactly the same.

This is not a completely unreasonable way to understand the scripture, since other scriptures tell us,

“I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one, ye are not mine.” (D&C 38:27)

and

“I beseech you that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together.” (1 Corinthians 1:10)

However, if the idea of “one heart and one mind” is applied irresponsibly, it may be interpreted to mean that we give up our agency and individuality and all become exactly the same. I argue that sameness is undesirable as a quality in Zion, while unity can be built another way.

In the well-known book “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle, the characters Meg and Charles Wallace visit a planet called Camazotz where everyone behaves exactly the same because they are controlled by a totalitarian mind called IT that does not tolerate any deviation. When they first enter the town, they view a residential neighborhood that seems to be like a pleasant place at first but they soon discover there is a difference from what they are used to.

Meg and Charles Wallace continue into town and discover that these children and mothers, along with other inhabitants of the town, are under the strict control of the being IT, which uses fear and intimidation to make everything perfect. The effect is absolutely chilling: everything on the planet works perfectly because IT wills it so. IT tells the children:

The effect is quite chilling. IT’s words remind me of the arguments made by Lucifer during the council in heaven:

“Behold, here am I, send me, I will be they son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.” (Moses 4: 1)

We might often feel that the Church is teaching that everyone must be exactly the same; we certainly do have a lot of commandments and “rules” that we expect people to follow in order to be considered a “good” member. But in fact the scriptures have taught us that it is only in diversity, not sameness, that we will be able to build things properly.

Consider the teachings in 1 Corinthians 12, which compares the followers of Christ to a human body:

“If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now they are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” (1 Corinthians 12: 17-21)

The author explains clearly here why sameness is not only not unifying but also not useful. “And if they were one member, where were the body?” In other words, if all the people of Christ were hands, exactly as the same as each other, we would not have a unified body, but only a collection of disembodied hands. And since each of the hands was exactly the same, the body would receive no additional functionality by joining two or more of the hands together. So they are separated and each hand has only the functionality it brought to the situation.

When the people of Christ are different types of body parts, however, the body is able to be unified: “But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body.” The parts make a body together and complement each other as members of the body. In addition, each part in this diverse body has access to the utility of the other parts of the body: the eye cannot hear, and the ear cannot smell. But by being part of a great body with the other members, each body part has access to the functionality of the whole body and contributes to that greater functionality.

Discussions of spiritual gifts in the scriptures also point out that diversity is needed for increased functionality as a unified church:

“And again, I exhort you, my brethren, that ye deny not the gifts of God… And there are different ways that these gifts are administered; but it is the same God who worketh all in all; and they are given by the manifestations of the Spirit of God unto men, to profit them.” (Moroni 10: 8)

They are given by the Spirit to profit them as a whole, not just one particular member. Therefore, the collective, unified body has access to all of the spiritual gifts, increasing its abilities in comparison to one member.

In short, Zion is not Zion in spite of diversity, but because of diversity. Those members of the church who feel they are different are just what the church needs, and the church as a whole suffers when they choose not to be part of us.

What does it mean then to be “of one heart and one mind?” How can we then understand these scriptures without understanding them to be talking about complete sameness? Consider these descriptions of the kind of mind and heart we should have:

“...Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” (Matthew 22:37)

“...that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;” (Phillipians 1:27)

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:” (Hebrews 8:10)

“And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably…” (Mosiah 4:13)

“Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind;” (D&C 64:34)

“Blessed are the pure in heart…” (Matthew 5:8)

“And ye shall offer for a sacrifice… a broken heart and a contrite spirit…” (3 Nephi 9:20)

We can bring minds that are full of love, striving, peaceful, and willing to make covenants with the Lord, and hearts that are loving, contrite and pure. These are the characteristics that will unify us in a way that we are not all the same like servants of a controlling IT-like mind, but that we can benefit from each other’s differences.

Checking Boxes

by Marlee Bedke

Letting the Fields Lie Fallow

by Brooke RaNae Palmer

I live in Southeastern Idaho, just over the Utah border in

the first Idaho community settled by Mormon pioneers. When they arrived, the land was thick with sagebrush—wild, dry, and unpromising. What transformed it into farmland was not just effort, but an irrigation system.

To catch the spring snowmelt, they excavated reservoirs with horse teams and cast iron implements, carved canals and ditches with hand tools, and relied on gravity to carry water across hundreds of acres. It was a carefully planned feat of engineering.

Presently there are 5 canal companies and 13 reservoirs in Franklin County, and many of the ditches and canals have been encased in pipe and buried in the ground, and by-and-large, it is still gravity that sends the water where it needs to go. For more than a century, water has moved because it has been guided to move, again and again, in a carefully maintained system.

This irrigation infrastructure has shaped the land, and it shaped the people who lived on it—teaching them to produce, to maximize, to make the desert yield. Over time, farming became the dominant industry here, and with it came a rhythm: plow, sew, water, grow, harvest, repeat.

Despite improving the rate of crop production, on-demand irrigation isn’t always positive. Constant farming also depletes the ground of minerals and nutrients, which then are usually replaced with another man-made innovation: chemical fertilizers. (But that’s a subject for another day.)

As you travel north, there are “dry farm,” areas where irrigation is not able to reach. The land is too far from the reservoirs, or it is too hilly for the gravity flow to be able to work. So, these farmers have learned to farm in a different way. Some years these fields lie fallow. To a passerby, they look abandoned: overgrown with weeds, marked by washouts where snowmelt has pooled and receded. They do not appear productive. They do not appear tended.

And yet, this too is a deliberate practice because through this period of rest, the soil is able to gather moisture deep into the ground. The weeds, when eventually turned under, become nourishment. When the field is planted again—often with hardy wheat—it draws on what has been quietly stored below the surface. The crop is able to grow without being dependent on a man-made watering system. It can even grow through a summer that gets very little rain because the moisture has been allowed to accumulate in the earth. It may yield less than irrigated land, but it yields enough. It survives.

I can guarantee that over the past 165 years, these stewards of the land have tried to come up with a way to get onto an irrigated system. It’s not for lack of ingenuity, or money, or will power. It would take a seismic shift in the landscape for something like that to happen.

On the other hand, there are thousands of acres watered by man-made irrigation, and so they’re able to produce more varied and abundant crops. They are not as limited by the amount of water that is provided by rainfall. On irrigated land, a farmer can sometimes get up to four cuttings of hay, compared to two on a dry farm.

Growing up in the church, in a community that was predominately LDS, I was part of a man-made irrigated system. I was watered consistently and thoroughly. As a child I grew both homemaking and leadership skills. As a young woman I produced a temple marriage and raised 4 wonderful children. As a member of my ward, I was a steward of Primary children, YW and YM, and Relief Society sisters. And like the irrigated fields around me, I was taught—implicitly and explicitly—to produce, produce, produce.

But then the unthinkable happened, I experienced a huge seismic shift, one that had been building up for years. There had been tremors, but I ignored them in favor of producing. This shift threw me off of the irrigation system that had been the framework of my life.

All of a sudden, the pipes that led out of my reservoir were fractured, the flow disrupted, and I learned that systems, even sustaining ones, can break if they become too rigid and confining.

I tried to limp along, doing the same things I’d always done, tried to grow the same crops, followed the same patterns, expected the same results, but without the constant water, my output shriveled up. I found myself exhausted, unable to sustain what once felt natural. I tried to get back on the system, but returning to the old system was not an option; it no longer felt like nourishment. It felt contaminated.

What I did not realize, at first, was that I was being invited into a different method of growing—the kind practiced by dry farmers, a season of fallowness, completely reliant on mother nature.

Having observed many fallow fields over the years, I knew during this phase of fallow-ness the field would be ugly. There would be weeds growing in it. There would be washouts from melt-off and rain. My neighbors might drive by and wonder what happened to my beautifully cultivated field and why I was letting it run to ruin now.

I am learning how to let a field lie fallow. I know my field doesn’t have to look perfect, or even pretty.

However, I don’t have to rely solely on my own observations as I employ this technique. This, too, has roots in my inheritance, I have dry farming in my genetic code. Not only do I have Mormon pioneers on one side of the family, but I also come from Volga German stock. In 1762 Catherine the Great invited immigrants to settle in Russia. Many Hessian Germans formed a community on the banks of the Volga River and there they developed agricultural practices shaped by scarcity and resilience: crop rotation, soil stewardship, and the intentional leaving of land unplanted. They became some of the most important wheat growers in the empire.

However, their history, too, is marked by disruption. By the late 19^th century there had been many seismic shifts in Russian politics and eventually many of the Volga Germans emigrated to the United States. Carrying their knowledge with them to the mid-west and western states, they grew a variety of crops: rye, potatoes, sunflowers, sugar beets and the red wheat with which we are all familiar. Adaptation was not optional; it was survival. Long before any Mormon Utahans were farming, the Volga Germans had been using innovative farming techniques, including allowing a field to lay fallow. They understood that in order to get the best production out a piece of ground, they needed to let it rest, to gather moisture and nutrients.

If the Mormon pioneers taught me how to build systems, the Volga Germans remind me how to live when those systems fail. If you Google “Volga Germans” you will see that they are known for their tenacious work ethic. If you read between the lines, you will also notice that they are farmers who understood the necessity of rest and were remarkably versatile. And while I applaud my Mormon ancestors for their tenacity and work ethic, I feel like those of us in the Mormon belt may have lost the versatility that we once had. Instead, we are relying too much on man-made irrigation to produce, produce, produce.

Now after this seismic shift in my own life, I am going to hearken back to my German roots, where a season of fallowness isn’t a liability, it isn’t unacceptable, but is counted as necessary. I am learning how to let a field lie fallow. I know my field doesn’t have to look perfect, or even pretty. It’s okay that it’s filled with weeds—unanswered questions, unfinished thoughts, grief that surfaces unpredictably. There are washouts, places where old structures have collapsed under the weight of change. From the outside, it might appear neglected, as though I have stepped away from responsibility or purpose. To be fallow is to remain present without forcing growth. It is to trust that something is happening beneath the surface, even when it cannot be measured or displayed.

This season is sustaining me in ways I could not have anticipated. It has loosened my dependence on constant production. It has reconnected me to something more elemental—something like the slow accumulation of moisture in the soil, unseen but essential. At some point, in a season when I’m strong enough, or feel good enough, or when I’ve finally figure something out, I’ll just plow everything under and those weeds will be part of the nourishment of the soil. I do not know yet what I will plant when this season ends. I suspect it will be something different from what I grew before—something that can reach deeper, something less dependent on carefully controlled systems, one that isn’t common in this LDS soil. A crop that doesn’t leave me burned-out or reliant on anything man-made.

For now, it is enough to tend this field as it is. To let the field lie fallow. To trust the work of rest. To believe that meaning, like water, does not always arrive on command—but can still be gathered, held, and, in time, made to nourish what comes next.

Women Who Understand

by Lisa Fluckiger

A Vision of Living Thread

by Jessie Santa Maria Whittaker

And it came to pass that I beheld a land covered in mist, and many

voices were heard within it, speaking commandments and judgments to the travelers who walked there.

And the mist was thick at times, heavy with the weight of words and expectations, pressing upon the shoulders of those who passed. And at other times it parted, letting light spill gently upon the path of the traveler.

And I saw a rod of iron stretching across the land, straight and unbending, and many did cling unto it with great effort. And the rod did ascend upward unto a great building that stood high above the earth.

And the building was filled with people who looked down from lofty windows and balconies. They spoke with certainty and mocked the travelers in the mist. And though the building appeared magnificent, I perceived that it had no foundation beneath it.

And near the rod I beheld a young girl who had just loosed her hands from the iron. She looked upon the building with troubled eyes, for she knew it was not her home, yet she feared to depart from the path she had been taught.

And as I watched, a thread of gold came gently into my hands. It was soft and living, and it moved with me as I walked.

And I perceived that the thread grew brighter when I walked in compassion, and dimmed when I walked in fear, yet it did not depart from me.

And I beheld that there were many such threads moving through the mist in every direction. Some crossed and some parted, yet all were woven together into a great tapestry that stretched across the earth.

And I saw that the tapestry was not yet complete, for new threads were continually being woven into it by the lives of those who walked the earth.

And following the thread, I came unto a tree whose beauty was beyond all that I had known. And the fruit thereof filled my soul with a great and quiet love, sweet and comforting to taste.

And I beheld that the roots of the tree reached deep into the earth and drew life from hidden waters beneath the world, even from living springs that did not fail.

And the branches spread wide as though to gather all who hungered for its fruit.

And I saw that the trunk of the tree opened as a doorway, and beyond it was a garden where light and shadow dwelt together, and the light made the shadows gentle.

And I turned again and saw the young girl standing in the mist, and I went unto her and held her with compassion, for I knew her burdens and her longing for goodness.

And as we stood beneath the tree, I perceived that the light which shone there had also been within us from the beginning, a spark of the divine entrusted to our care.

And the golden threads continued to move through the world, weaving the journeys of many souls together.

And I knew then that the journey toward God was not a single road to be followed, but a living weaving of souls learning, stumbling, and shining together.

And I bore record that the love which grew from that tree was the true guide of the soul; and whosoever walked in that love need not fear the mist, for the light within them would ever lead them onward.

Contributors:

Mara

Marlee Bedke

Marlee is a “stretchy saint” that’s doing her best to find her place and voice at church. She’s become the girl that shocks her southern Utah ward by holding her daughter during her baby blessing, wearing a rainbow bracelet, finding God outside the normal Primary answers, and sharing “liberal” things on social media. She’s lucky to be married to her best friend, and they lead their home and 2 young kids as equal partners. She’s a mindful yoga teacher, a daycare supervisor, an amateur gardener, a proud firefighter wife, a sourdough baker, a hiker, a Krispy Kreme fanatic and an avid reader.

Brooke RaNae Palmer

Brooke is a big thinker, voracious reader, stained glass enthusiast, and heavy metal headbanger, in addition to being a loving nana, mother of 4, happy farm wife and badass homemaker.

Lisa Fluckiger

Lisa is a second year grad student in Chadron State College's Clinical Mental Health Counseling MAE program. Her most recent work has been providing SEL education and support for middle school students. Long ago at BYU, Lisa earned a BA degree in chemistry and then a master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction, with an emphasis in the inclusive classroom. Her family owns a small artisan bakery in the small town where they live, and it is a place where their daughter, Eleanor, can have meaningful work and continue to participate in the community. Totally her husband's dream, and she is all for it! In addition to studying mental health, Lisa is loving life beyond church, running with her dogs, yoga, and writing. Also Netflix.

Jessie Santa Maria Whittaker

Therapist, writer, professional meaning-maker, wife, and momma. Jessie sits with big feelings, sacred questions, and nervous systems that have had a rough day—or life. She is a lover of Christmas magic, messy faith, honest stories, and the brave work of becoming fully human.

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One of the hallmarks of a big idea is that it's connected to so many others. In Episode 268, Susan and Cynthia revisit the Big Idea episodes that formed the theme of ALSSI Season 11. After discussing these topics, If there's one thing we're sure of it's that we only scratched the surface.

Notes & Quotes:
Jim Palmer on Facebook
Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times, by Gregory Boyle
Healing Acts of Connection, Center for Action and Contemplation, 3/11/2026
Seeing the Underside and Seeing God: Tattoos, Tradition, and Grace, On Being podcast, Krista Tippet with Nadia Bolz-Weber, 10/23/2014
Sanctification Explained Simply, by Bryan Schneider, Gentle Reformation, 8/21/2024
Keep Trying, by Marvin J. Ashton, Liahona Magazine, 08/2018
What If Prayer Isn’t What You Think It Is?, Kate Bowler with Malcolm Guite, Everything Happens podcast
Mike Petrow: The Path of Descent, Faith Matters podcast, 3/23/2025
Sabbath As Resistance, Ruth Haley Barton with Cole Arthur Riley, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership podcast, Season 17 Ep. 3

“The pattern is so obvious that it is almost invisible. The religion a person considers sacred truth is usually the religion of their family, culture, geography, and historical inheritance. Most people do not arrive at their religious worldview after a comprehensive investigation of the world’s competing claims about ultimate reality. They do not spend years objectively evaluating every major religious tradition, philosophical system, and metaphysical framework before reaching a carefully reasoned conclusion. They inherit a story. They are born into a language, a culture, a community, and a set of assumptions that become the lens through which reality itself is interpreted. This does not mean their beliefs are false. It means their beliefs are situated. The problem begins when people forget this. Religious certainty often presents itself as though it emerged from pure reason, divine selection, or unique spiritual insight. Yet if most of us had been born somewhere else, to different parents, speaking a different language, we would likely be defending an entirely different set of convictions with equal confidence. The beliefs that feel self-evident to us frequently owe as much to circumstance as they do to careful examination.” —Jim Palmer

“Sin is an old world map.” —Gregory Boyle

“Is the love of God looking down on a sinful world in need of salvation, or does our God see a broken world in pain and in need of healing?” —Gregory Boyle

“The movement we made in the last century of not calling addiction sin, but calling it a disease, I think was a major movement. There’s very little freedom when we sin. Very little freedom. We cannot not do it. Virtue is an ultimately free action. Sin is when you’re most unfree.” —Richard Rohr

“I loved the emphasis on grace, the fact that God always is coming to us. There’s nothing we do to make our way to God. God is continually coming to us and interrupting our lives and wanting to be known.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“There is a danger in sanctification—a false pride that can creep in. [...] This often happens when people see sanctification as a stairway upwards. They imagine that they were saved at a certain point, and as they climb the stairs of holiness, they become increasingly aware of their progress. They feel they’re getting better and better, seemingly ascending into heaven. Their self-perception becomes one of self-improvement. [...] I am convinced that this is the exact opposite of how the Spirit works to sanctify us. Sanctification isn’t a stairway upwards to higher and higher rungs of holiness. No, sanctification is a downward soul work. Now imagine a different picture: Stairs descending downward, spiraling deeper through the heart.” —Bryan Schneider

"To become a winner in the race for eternal life requires effort—constant work, striving, and enduring well with God’s help." —Marvin J. Ashton

“We develop a story or system in our minds and whatever doesn’t fit, our brains exclude it because we only want to judge new information based on the information we already have that we’re comfortable with. And so, our old information and our old trusted authorities create a screen.” —Brain McLaren

“Community bias, it's almost impossible to see what our community doesn't see, or what our community doesn't want us to see. You could think of this as a community confirmation bias, and our identity is wrapped up with the community we belong in, and it's very hard for us to accept some ideas if they will put us out of sync with our community because that will rob from us our secure social location or identity.” —Brian McLaren

“If I were to say people can't see what they can't see, that's true, but it's not the whole truth. They can't see what they can't see until someone helps them see it, or maybe a new life experience comes along that helps them see it.” —Brian McLaren

”Reason is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.” —C.S. Lewis (via Malcom Guite)

“When we don't understand it and it doesn't make sense, it can be an invitation to think more deeply and look for a meaning worthy of a god we believe in, a god of love.” —Mike Petrow

“It’s the audacity to face the demands of this world and proclaim, ‘We will not be owned.’” —Cole Arthur Riley

“When we practice Sabbath we are saying to this world, ‘You do not own me. I am not owned by your values, I am not owned by your schedule, I am not owned by your consumerism, I am not owned by somebody else’s priorities for me. On this day, I am not owned by anyone else but God Himself or Herself. I am proclaiming where I belong [and] who I belong to.” —Ruth Haley Barton

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Many thanks to listener Quinn Nilsson for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

Listen to Episode 268

CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinckley.

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is We Have No Title. Well, we do. Let’s just make up our title. We’re- Yeah ... I’m not even gonna cut this.

SH: No.

CW: Our-

SH: Season 11 Wrap Party. I don’t know.

CW: And the title is Season 11- ... Wrap Party. Yay. Or something. Welcome to the wrap party. Or

SH: something. Welcome

CW: to the

SH: wrap party. Yeah. I hope somebody brought treats because we deserve them at the end of a season. Cynthia, this season has been-

CW: Yeah ...

SH: huge. Has it felt huge to you?

CW: It has felt huge for me.

I feel like, I think I’ve said on at least a couple episodes of the season, I’m punching above my weight. And I,

SH: I- I love that way of thinking about it, but I think what I said to you in response was, “I love when that’s happening.”

CW: I know you did.

SH: I love that feeling of hanging on- That’s- ... by my fingernails,

CW: so

that’s because you’re in a growth mindset, Susan. So good job.

SH: Cynthia, I’ve never been in a growth mindset ever for one second- Shh ... of my life. So if I’ve achieved that- Don’t admit that ... now- Shh ... we should celebrate that. Oh my gosh, no.

CW: Well, it sounds growthy to me when you said that you love punching above your weight, whereas I was like, “Imposter syndrome.”

SH: I guess I love it because I’m deeply interested in all this stuff, and I-

CW: Well,

SH: yeah ... I just want more of it. So, you know- Yeah ... if I’m having to climb uphill on, intellectually, on some of this, awesome. Bring it on.

CW: Awesome. Well, why don’t you explain how this wrap party’s gonna go, and then we’ll jump in.

SH: We are going to revisit some episodes from this season, and we decided to focus on our big ideas episodes, because if they’re big ideas then that means they’re big enough to bear talking more about, I guess, is how I’d think about that.

CW: For sure. For sure. I’m sighing only because they were such big ideas that I think that’s the reason we’re tired at the end of this season is ‘cause we worked- I know, I think that’s why

Really hard. Like I’m brain

SH: tired, yeah.

CW: Re- yeah. Some episodes go together more quickly than others- ... but I hope a- I, okay, I just want all our listeners to know, like our, the reason we’re tired is because I- how long would you say we probably worked on each big ideas episode?

SH: I mean, a I don’t know.

Weeks? A, yeah, a long time.

CW: Yeah.

SH: Yeah. Yeah.

CW: Yeah.

SH: A long time.

CW: Well, where should we go first? How about our first big idea episode we had this season was on belief.

And again, punching above my weight, this was really hard, and I felt really vulnerable doing this episode as well. But also, like if there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, Susan, it’s that words matter.

I don’t know how many times you’ve said that to me over the six years of this podcast. You need words to matter, right? How many times have you said that- right, right ...

CW: on the microphone? And I feel like this episode really drove home the point for me that as a religion, as a church, as a people, like we really need to be more intentional with our word choice because I think in our church we use words like faith and belief, and there’s probably another one to toss in there.

Knowledge. Knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. We use all of those interchangeably, and so I really haven’t stopped thinking about this episode ever since we re- recorded it a few months ago that I just h- I hope we keep talking about this because I feel like, like the topic of grace, I think, I hope tell me if you agree with this, like I feel like belief might be the second most misunderstood topic in our church- next to grace Because I just feel like we em- we emphasize the wrong thing when really, like, what was that David Brooks quote we said in the belief episode? He said something like, “We should be emphasizing longing and thirsting-

SH: Right ...

CW: rather than knowing and possessing.”

SH: Right.

CW: And if that doesn’t sound so Latter-day Saint-y to me, I don’t know what does, because I think we focus so, so much on knowing and possessing.

And so I’ve realized since this episode, okay, I wrote in our book, we have a whole chapter on fear, and I think it was in that chapter I admitted I have a really good fear dar.

SH: Oh, right. Right.

CW: Like, my antenna is always up, and when I hear fear at church, I’m like ni.”

It’s just buzzing. But since this episode a few months ago, like, I feel like I can spot lessons and comments in church on belief, so I have a belief dar now, is what I’m trying to say. Okay.

SH: Okay.

CW: Like, like, my, my belief dar has been constantly buzzing. It’s just picking up these signals in overtime as I’m sitting in church.

So those have been my thoughts since this episode, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing to have my belief dar, like, bzz, constantly buzzing, [00:05:00]

SH: But wow. I’m not sure it needs to be a good thing or a bad thing, but it can be a thing. W- we can just let

CW: it

SH: be a thing. Oh, I like that.

SH: And it could be-I like that

I mean, well, I think it, I think, personally, I think it’s a good thing, ‘cause I’m one of the people who recorded the episode about this idea. So I think it’s a good idea- There you go ... to be tuned into. But I was surprised, and I wasn’t surprised by what a big response we had to this episode. Do you feel like we had a big response to it?

Because as I think about this episode, I think it, it might’ve been the biggest one of the season. Like-

...

SH: People had a lot of feelings and a lot of things to say about their relationship with belief and the church’s relat- relationship with belief and their experience of belief, you know, within the church.

Rightfully so. Rightfully so, because it sorta, it sort of, drove home the point to me, oh yeah, this is as big a concept as I thought it was, and as big specifically for Latter-day Saints. But one of the words that you used when you were just talking that I, that got my attention was misunderstood.

You said it’s one of the most misunderstood. And Like I’m I don’t know. Is it misunderstood or is it something that maybe we understand all too well and therefore know how to I mean, I don’t wanna say weaponize maybe, but I will sometimes weaponize or at least leverage it to drive behaviors- that, that we want among church members.

CW: Good point.

SH: I feel like people put their thumb on the belief scale all the time in church situations in order- Yes ... to get the result that they want.

CW: Yes.

SH: And there’s so much that’s problematic for me with making belief the required hurdle for any kind of religious participation.

For one thing, I think it sort of perverts the entire idea of a spiritual life, ... to make belief a requirement for entering into sort of that realm of life. And I also have spent a lot of time thinking since this episode came out about how much where you’re born and to whom you’re born plays a role in our beliefs.

And our certainties. Yeah. You know? It’s like, it’s the, this always goes back to the agency question, Cynthia, and I still wanna have the agency episode because, like, how- We are ... how freely- yeah ... do people choose their beliefs, right? I mean, al- Totally agree ... also choosing beliefs, the other- ... the other conversation that will never die for me.

Yeah. But so, so I read something online from Jim Palmer the other day that I just wanna share a quote from because he articulated this so well. And he said, “The pattern is so obvious that it is almost invisible. The religion a person considers sacred truth is usually the religion of their family, culture, geography, and historical inheritance.Most people do not arrive at their religious worldview after a comprehensive investigation of the world’s competing claims about ultimate reality. They do not spend years objectively evaluating every major religious tradition, philosophical system, and metaphysical framework before reaching a carefully reasoned conclusion.They inherit a story. They are born into a language, a culture, a community, and a set of assumptions that become the lens through which reality itself is interpreted. This does not mean their beliefs are false. It means their beliefs are situated. The problem begins when people forget this. Religious certainty often presents itself as though it emerged from pure reason, divine selection, or unique spiritual insight. Yet if most of us had been born somewhere else to different parents speaking a different language, we would likely be defending an entirely different set of convictions with equal confidence. The beliefs that feel self-evident to us frequently owe as much to circumstance as they do to careful examination.”

CW: Holy moly

SH: At last someone said it. At last Jim Palmer said it. I love the idea of our beliefs being situated. I love that word choice- Yes ... right there. I feel like it communicates so much, and that if you pulled a lot of us out of that place in which our beliefs had been situated it would be fascinating to see what happened to our beliefs.

CW: Wow, Susan. Okay, 100% set that quote aside, and we will revisit it again when we have that episode on agency/free will or whatever we’re gonna call it. Right,

SH: whatever it’s gonna be.

CW: Right. That is gold. Good find, my friend. That’s,

SH: That’s- that’s pretty good ...

CW: That was a good find. All right, let’s talk about sin, which wasn’t a Big Ideas episode, but it was a voicemail episode.

SH: It was, and [00:10:00] it’s definitely a big idea.

CW: Oh,

SH: Yes. Like, it could have been a Big Ideas episode. We just decided we wanted to hear from listeners, ... about that, so we branded it differently. Let’s just say it that way.

CW: Well, one of the things I will always be the most proud about i- in this whole podcast project is our voicemail episodes, because I think each time we have a voicemail episode, we have at least a dozen women’s voices- and men, some brave men as well- Yeah, sometimes ... but usually at least a dozen folks will send in. Anyway, I’m just really proud of that, that we just keep giving the mic, handing the mic over to others as well. And so usually each season we try to have at least one. Sometimes we’re lucky enough and we end up with two episodes that are just voicemail driven, and this season it was sin, and so it was.

Right. It was definitely a big topic. And whenever we have these voicemail episodes, I’m always saddened by the messages we get. I’m touched, I’m surprised, I’m encouraged. I’m ... I mean, all of the adjectives, all of the emojis, Susan, is like- Yeah, right. All the emojis surface for me when we have these episodes and the sin episode definitely checked all those boxes for me again, and I was thinking dang it, I can’t stop reading Father Greg Boyle.

His three books, anything he says I will listen to because just my whole spiritual practice now is to try to love more. And I just feel like when I read anything by Father Greg Boyle, I get to the heart of love in about five seconds.

And in his latest book, Cherished Belonging, he wrote that sin is an old world map.

SH: I love that.

CW: Isn’t that good?

SH: Oh, it’s so good.

CW: Like, when we talk about sin, it’s like we’re looking at an old world map from a bazillion years ago. And I think we un- I think now in society, I hope, we understand enough about, like, human development and psychology, anthropology, all of that. I think we understand enough about that now to understand that sinning, I’m putting air quotes around sinning happens when we are hurt or wounded.

And so the antidote is healing.

SH: Right.

CW: Because it’s healed people who change the world. And Father Boyle said in a CAC meditation, he said, “Is the love of God looking down on a sinful world in need of salvation? Or does our God see a broken world in pain and in need of healing?”

A question worth asking.

SH: Yeah. It is a great question, and I had another question occur to me as you were sort of setting that quotation up, which is, do you ... how do you think our leaders think about sin? I mean, I ask that question because you, you said you know, m- hopefully at this stage in the world’s development, we understand that sinning occurs when people are hurt or wounded.

Do you think that is a mainstream LDS belief- No ... or could become one without requiring a big shift in the- ... the way that we approach our messaging about sin?

CW: I think it could be c- I think I think I have hope on this one. I think it could become that, I wanna say quite easily. I don’t think it’s a big stretch to convince people that hurt people.

Right. Like, that’s what sin is, is- Right.

I don’t know. What do you think?

SH: I don’t know. I’m trying to think specifically what the hurdle would be for most members, and I think that f- I don’t know, as I think about it, I think the problem would be that it would give too much weight to our humanity.

It would give too much legitimacy-

...

SH: To the, to our humanity, I think, for them to approach it that way.

CW: Interesting.

SH: I mean, you know that I s- That’s not what I thought you were gonna say ... Well, you know that I sort of have a thing about having felt like most of my life as a Latter-day Saint, I was sort of being asked to transcend my humanity in some way.

Yes. Right? And so I feel like if I were to say, “Look, humans get hurt, humans get wounded, and as a result they make unfortunate choices sometimes, and that this is a problem we need to approach with healing,” I mean, I think it would be like the way sometimes people have a hard time accepting alcoholism or addiction as a disease.

I think it’s the same kind of- ... shift that’s required. I think there are some people who are like, “Whatever, I stopped drinking. You can stop drinking. Stop calling it a dis- a disease. It’s a bad choice that I made.”

CW: Okay. I have a personal story I want to tell ‘cause it’s coming up as you are talking about, you know, our humanity and

Okay, here’s the story. So my mother has two [00:15:00] brothers who passed away quite early in life, I believe both of them from alcoholism.

SH: Okay.

CW: And they had really hard lives, my uncles, my tios. And my mom has said to me over and over about the choices these men made in their lives, she says, “I know that there is a loving God who will see what my brothers came from.”

This makes me cry. She said, “Because my dad,” she said, “My dad would take my brothers into corn fields, like after they had like mowed down the corn or something, and he would make them kneel in these corn husks that would like cut their knees, and then he would beat them And my mom said, “I know there is a loving God who will take all of that into consideration at the judgment bar.”

And so as you say that, Susan, it would put our humanity kind of to the forefront.

SH: Right.

CW: I actually have a lot of hope in that because-

SH: Okay ...

CW: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think my mom could tell that story in a sacrament meeting talk and have anybody be like, “Yeah, but...” Like, I think there’s, I think that story elicits tremendous com- would elicit tremendous compassion and be like, “Of course.

Of course God will see their extreme woundedness

SH: I mean, I wanna think that, but honestly, when you started that, telling that story, I wasn’t sure where it was going to go because there was an equal part of me that thought it’s going to go to her mom saying their lives could have been so much easier if they’d made better choices.

Which I feel is like the most-

CW: Okay, I see what you’re saying ...

SH: Mormony s- lens through which people sometimes look at other people’s lives.

CW: Yeah. I... That’s a really good point. So

SH: I love that story. I love that story. I love that it surprised me. I loved that it showed me maybe that I am too cynical sometimes in the ways that I look at our membership general membership of the church and their approaches to things.

CW: Well, I don’t know that, I don’t know that makes you cynical because as soon as you said it, I was like oh, duh, I see what she’s saying,” and yeah, you’re probably right. And maybe my mom is just someone who real- And I do believe my mom really is someone who understands love. She really understands love, so maybe she is further along- Right, right

the path than- Right ... most of our friends in the pews. I don’t know.

I don’t know. None of this was in our notes, listeners. Like, I’m just... Susan and I really are... This is a very casual conversation, and so I don’t even know that I’m so much more prepared to say that, but I love the question you’re raising about how maybe we collectively see sin, and would it be a big shift or an easier

SH: shift?

Yeah, I’m super interested in this now, so thank you for giving me even more to think about this one. I don’t know whether to apologize to our listeners or to say you’re welcome to our listeners for the fact that you and I are doing The Living School which I mentioned for the millionth time.

But so we on some of these... Like, we... I don’t know about you, but w- it was when you were talking about Greg Boyle, I was thinking about going and hearing Greg Boyle speak in Albuquerque last fall and how amazing that was for me, and, like, the love- Yeah ... that I felt sort of pouring- Yep ... off of him, right?

And something’s aspirational for me. Like, I looked at him and I thought, “Man, I, I would love to get to what you are.” And I felt- Oh ... I felt like that was like that would, like there was really some distance for me to travel in order to- ... realize love in my life in the ways that he has, right?

...

SH: I say all of that as a preface to the fact that I’m gonna use yet another quote from our, from Richard Rohr in our Living School materials that I just read, like, this week, and put it in these notes because, I don’t know, it crystallized something for me about this discussion. And he said this: “The movement we made in the last century of not calling addiction sin, but calling it a disease, I think was a major movement.

There’s very little freedom when we sin, very little freedom. We do not do it. Virtue is an ultimately free action. Sin is when you’re most unfree.” We can’t not sin.

We can choose virtue, I guess is what... I mean, I guess that’s the distinction that he’s making. And again, all of this, I think, goes back to the idea of agency.

Agency. And this is the thing I love about all big ideas, Cynthia. They all have their fingers laced together somewhere. Yes. Yes. Like, if you just follow the idea, it’s gonna jump you right into another one, I [00:20:00] feel like. That’s one of the tests of a big idea. But I think as Latter-day Saints, we could talk about sin probably for the next two- Yeah

full seasons, and have only- Potentially ... scratched the surface of it.

CW: Well, speaking of big idea topics that are all laced together, let’s just jump into our next big idea, which was piety. And I don’t know how we could detangle sin and piety if we wanted to, like

SH: 100%. Yep.

CW: I love that they were back to each other. Yep. But I wanted to highlight a social media comment that we had received after this episode came out.

She said, “Wow, that part about trying so hard to be above,” she put that in air quotes, “above being human. Wow. Piety doesn’t get us where we are trying to be present, connected thinking, thinking about more than our own salvation.” Anyway, I could just- ... see, like, the wheels were turning-

...

CW: In her mind as she was leaving this comment for us.

And for the millionth time, like, how does piety serve us exactly? Like, to what end? To what end, Susan, are we to be pious? Like, if my goals are, and my goals are similar to this comment of presence and connection, then piety isn’t what we need to be working on. Piety’s a red herring, and yet I feel like I spent my whole life believing what I was taught, that the more righteous I am, the more connected to God I can be.

SH: Right.

CW: And that never really worked for me.

SH: And I think that gets back to as I think about those words, the more righteous I am, the more connected to God I can be, like, why would that be? I guess because you’re more pure?

CW: Because no unclean thing- Right ... or no unclean person can enter the presence of God.

Yes. That’s what I wholeheartedly absorbed.

SH: So it is about-

CW: God couldn’t stand to be with me ... purity. Yes, it’s about... Yes.

SH: Okay, I have so many problems with

CW: this. You should have problems with this. You should.

SH: Well, part of why I had to pause there and my wheels are turning is that I’m thinking like, how has piety served me in my life really?

CW: That was my question for myself.

SH: How,

CW: To what end?

SH: Well, I mean, I really love looking like a good Latter-day Saint to other Latter-day Saints.

I love having social capital in my church or, like, having Mormon cred, right?

I like the position that gave me and what it- ... qualified me for, right?

Same.

SH: So, like, piety could function that way. Did I ever think it was, I was ever getting more... Did I ever feel more pure as a result of piety?

I don’t know the answer to that. I’m gonna have to sit with that. I’m not totally sure. But as I think about it, I’m not gonna say that it ever made me feel closer to God, because I really feel like piety is about the least altruistic thing-

...

SH: About my religion. I was r- I was really doing that for anyone except myself.

Even if the goal was just to get me closer to God that’s just- Yes ... for me, right? Right. I just wanna feel closer to God. I wanna feel more godly, I guess, or more holy or more s- I don’t know. I don’t know what. I was listening to an old, like 12 years old, On Being episode with Nadia Bolz-Weber recently, and she said something that I can’t stop thinking about.

And she said, “I love the emphasis on grace. The fact that God always is coming to us.”

CW: Ah. “

SH: There’s nothing we do to make our way to God. God is continually coming to us and interrupting our lives and wanting to be known.”

CW: Yes.

SH: And I feel like piety really is nothing but trying to claw my way-

...

SH: To God, right?

It’s building my own tower to climb closer up to heaven when I don’t think it ever occurred to me that there would, there was nothing I could do to make my way to God. But that way of looking at it, that Nadia Bolz-Weber way of looking at it, is a way for me to release, like, all of those... I mean, so many unhealthy things-

CW: Yes

SH: for me are tied up in that. So, so many.

CW: Yeah.

SH: And I feel [00:25:00] like, I guess that’s why I feel like getting the rug totally pulled out from under me, that forced release of my unhealthy ideas and my small ideas and my fearful ideas about God, I guess I- that’s why I feel like that reset was the best thing that ever could’ve happened in my spiritual life.

And I mean, actually in my religious life, because I was on this false piety treadmill-

...

SH: My whole life. I mean, I really was.

CW: Wow. Okay, I have a million things I wanna say to what you just said. I’ll just say this. Like, could ... You used the word, like, reset, the reset button. So could anything have reset your relationship to piety other than the rug getting pulled out from under you?

SH: That is a great question. It’s a great question. And I do, I’m gonna keep thinking about now, I can see, is this idea of the old world map. Because- ... I’m like, piety was a country on an old world map- ... that I was using. But my new map really does not have those kinds of borders, I guess, is what I would say.

I’m not defending borders around the country of piety anymore.

But I did put a lot of energy into that in the first half of life. We’ll just say it that way-

...

SH: For simplicity.

CW: Well, I have a feeling now that we opened the Pandora’s box of piety, it’s gonna keep surfacing in our conversations, Susan.

SH: How would it not?

CW: How would it not? I have a piety-dar now as well.

SH: Right?

CW: I spot it everywhere now, and I’m like, “Wait, what? Why are they trying to convince me of their goodness, righteousness, wholeness- Right ... piety, piousness,” Right ... cleanliness, purity. Like, to what end? I don’t know. I just keep saying that about piety now over and over when I think about it. To what end? To what end? Where does it get me? Spoiler, it didn’t get me anywhere.

SH: It landed you right on this podcast, Cynthia.

CW: It did. It did. It did. No, it really d- anyway, let’s move on. Okay. Let’s move on. All right. Our episode on the Beatitudes. Man, talk about punching above our weight.

SH: Okay, this one was the first one that was like a real, like felt like a huge reach for me.

CW: Oh,

SH: good. I just felt like I had no right- ... to be talking about this. Like I had no particular insider knowledge about this, but-

...

SH: So I loved doing the dive on it.

CW: I loved doing the dive on it too. Oh my gosh, for all the reasons we already said on the episode, so this is just a follow-up.

This is just a PS that we’re gonna have for the next few minutes about that Beatitudes episode. But I- we got a comment on this episode from a woman named Malia on Instagram, and it’s a kind of a long paragraph, but you could tell the exploding head emoji maybe was occurring for Malia, and she said this about our Beatitudes episode: “I had some thoughts about the idea of how the covenant path squares with the Beatitudes, and I wanted to share this thought a few times on different topics.

My relationship with the temple has fluctuated over my faith life. Times when I have needed to go for peace, and times like now, where I don’t feel p- pulled to go there and don’t feel peace. But I liked what I heard on a podcast that the temple is meant to turn us into the type of people that will go out and live a Christ-like life by lifting up the poor and needy.

It is to turn us into a people that will be ready to live a Zion life. So maybe that’s how the Beatitudes and the covenant path can be reconciled. All the emphasis on covenant in the temple right now, while it’s often interpreted to be about your own eventual exaltation and perfection, maybe it’s really supposed to be part of sanctifying you now in this life to be more to make you into the person who will be those things, meek, humble, seeking justice, et cetera.

And side note, the temple is not the only way that you can become that.”

SH: So many things-

SH: that I wanna say about this.

CW: Well-

SH: Do continue.

CW: Go ahead Do continue. Well, I don’t know that I have much to say other than I, I love it when people hear our episodes, and then they kind of have their own big ideas-

SH: Right, right

CW: kind of surface as a result, so that makes me happy. But I also feel like, okay, at first glance, when I read this comment, I thought, “Wait, are we talking about piety?” Like is sanctifica- if she says, you know, maybe the temple’s really supposed to be part of sanctifying you so that you can be more Christ-like and like go out into the world and do good things, I’m like, is that...

Is sanctification the same as piety? Because if it is, I’ve already released piety, so I’m [00:30:00] releasing sanctification, but is sanctification d- I don’t know, what do you think? Are those the same? You’re my wordsmith friend.

SH: Okay, well, here is what a really smart word person- Says in response to that.

CW: Okay. “

SH: And it ain’t me.”

CW: Oh.

SH: No.

CW: Stop it.

SH: That, no, here’s what I did. What’d I do, Cynthia? I Googled sanctification because I wanted to start to understand- Oh. ... some of the nuances of this word. I didn’t know off, I can’t answer your question off the top of my head.

Okay.

SH: So I started looking around at it, and sanctification, I mean, in simplest terms I guess, would be like to be made more holy, right?

CW: Yeah.

SH: To be made holy. Closer to God, all of those kinds of things. That we were just talking about piety being the preferred vehicle of choice for many Latter-day Saints trying to accomplish that in their lives, right?

But I love her idea that... Okay, well, first of all, one of the things she said that gave me pause was she uses the word interpreted.

“While often it’s interpreted to be about your own eventual exaltation and perfection.” And when she said that, I was thinking, “Wait a minute, was I just interpreting it that way, or was it presented that way-

Ah ...

SH: to me?” And so when you hear leaders talking about the temple and about the covenant path, how do you feel about that?

CW: Oh, I absolutely feel like it’s presented that way. Okay. I don’t feel like I absorbed anything that maybe I shouldn’t have absorbed.

SH: Right. Okay. So me too. I mean, and so since it’s two of us, obviously everyone feels that way, right? Obviously. Let’s just universalize that right now.

But I, but then I reread her sentence and I thought, okay, maybe she’s saying this is how leaders have interpreted it.

CW: Oh.

SH: And so that either way, I think that, I think they’ve presented it that way, and so I think it’s a safe guess maybe that is often their interpretation. ... You know, let’s just say it that way.

But so I think that there can be broader interpretations of that word sanctification, where it becomes a good thing and not necessarily a false piety kind of thing. I like that. Okay.

SH: Yeah. So I went looking around to see, like, what are other people saying about this? Okay. And I came across something on a website that I’m gonna just say right here, I don’t know this guy.

I tried to look up a little about who he is, and I have a really strong suspicion that I would hate most of his religious ideas, okay? So I’m just gonna put that right there. Okay. We disagree on almost everything, I think, just based on what I could see. But I did like his take on this so much, and so even dumb people like me are allowed to have good ideas sometimes, and so we’re gonna just take this good idea regardless of how our theological agreement or disagreement is happening in the background.

Anyway, this is what he says. His name is Brian Schneider. I will link to his website. He says this: “There is a danger in sanctification, a false pride that can creep in. This often happens when people see sanctification as a stairway upwards. They imagine that they were saved at a certain point, and as they climb the stairs of holiness, they become increasingly aware of their progress.

They feel they’re getting better and better, seemingly ascending into heaven. Their self-perception becomes one of self-improvement. I am convinced that this is the exact opposite of how the Spirit works to sanctify us. Sanctification isn’t a stairway upwards to a higher and higher rung of holiness. No, sanctification is downward soul work.

Now imagine a different picture, stairs descending downward, spiraling deeper through the heart.” Sanctification as path of descent

Yes

CW: Yes

SH: And I think that’s the description that our listener was giving us about how the temple and the covenant path could function. Love it. Can you imagine the covenant path spiraling deeper and deeper through the heart?

Oh. Going downward, drilling down into your heart.

CW: That’s gorgeous.

SH: Yeah. It’s a beautiful idea, and one that I feel like if I got up and talked about it in sacrament meeting, probably a lot of blank stares and maybe- ... some people getting up to go to the bathroom.

Yeah. That’s what I think.

But for me, it’s like one of the first shifts that’s ever made me think, “Okay, maybe I need to think a little bit more about covenant path.”

And I really was so sincere when I asked the question about the way covenant path would function up against the Beatitudes. I th- I think it was in- Yeah

the, this conversation where I asked that question. Yeah. And I’ve sort of banged my head against that since we recorded that episode, but this is the first time I’ve seen a way in to that conversation- Love it ... between those two things. So anyway, something to think about. [00:35:00]

CW: Okay. I just love... ‘Cause yes, it was in our Beatitudes episode where you, like you said, genuinely, honestly posed the question, like how we can square covenant path-

SH: Right

i-

CW: in a conversation about Beatitudes. And I think as Latter-day Saints, since we do hear so, so, so, so much about covenant path talk at church, that if there is a way to nuance that, I’m showing up for it.

So I love that you opened the door to that through the idea of descending. I’m-

SH: Well, and I liked getting a glimpse that’s out there, that’s being talked about out there in other religious traditions as well.

Even some that I find very little meeting point really-

CW: Yeah ...

SH: between our theologies. It’s good stuff. Perhaps this is a good human idea that we’re all wrestling with a little bit in the world right now.

CW: All right. Our episode on letting go, our Big Idea episode on letting go, this one was your idea.

SH: Yes, it was.

CW: You were the one that wanted to have this episode,

SH: These are my white knuckles, Cynthia.

CW: Those are your

SH: That’s why.

CW: Why didn’t you choose a picture for this episode of, like, white knuc- like a woman on a rollercoaster- Because I

SH: wasn’t that smart

with white knuckles. I don’t know why I didn’t. Oh, that is funny.

CW: A listener named Susan left a comment on Instagram about this episode, and she said, “I particularly loved when you were talking about un-work. It’s true, members are not allowed to just be on the covenant path. Church messages are deeply infused with the idea that one must be constantly striving, accelerating, growing, increasing, serving, et cetera.

It’s all about eternal progression after all. And remember, if you aren’t constantly growing your testimony, you’re gonna lose it. It was exhausting. To ease up at any time for any reason was a moral failure.” And then she pastes in a quote from Marvin J. Ashton that actually had, I guess, resurfaced in a Liahona article just a few years ago, sh- where he said, “To become a winner in the race for eternal life requires effort, constant work, striving, and enduring well with God’s help.”

She closes her comment by saying, “After years of maintaining that grueling pace, I simply couldn’t do it anymore. I especially was unable to generate the constant emotional intensity they wanted me to have. It wasn’t sustainable. I just want to sit here for a minute or maybe several years and just be.”

SH: How about that quote, Cynthia?

CW: No likey.

SH: I mean, there it is. To become a winner in the race for eternal life. I know. Oh

CW: my gosh. I have such a strong natural aversion anyway to any talk about being a winner that, ugh.

SH: Yeah. I don’t know. That quote is really something. It has everything in it. It’s like the poster child for everything that I like to preach against, I guess.

You know? It really really is. Like, there’s a reason that we internalized some of this stuff.

CW: Oh,

SH: There’s a reason. And it starts like that, right? Yeah.

CW: Right. Right.

SH: It was explicit.

CW: I, going back to what you said earlier about how all these big idea episodes are kinda interwoven, her comment made me think, I mean, it could’ve easily have been a comment about our Sabbath episode, right?

I guess what I’m taking away from this is that maybe we just need to have a letting go episode every season.

SH: Oh, I think we absolutely could, and if you and I could have some letting go phone calls between seasons- ... that would be really great. Because I could use it every day.

I was thinking about letting go in approaching this episode. I was thinking about how the, how it’s a concept that really functions within each of the big ideas that we had, or that we- Yes ... took on during this season. Yes. So, like, there’s some component of it in all of it and in changing the way that we- Totally agree

think about some of these things, and the way that they function in our lives. Like, how can you have a conversation about confirmation bias for instance, withna- without thinking about letting go? Without

letting

SH: go. You know, I mean, and it just works that way with all of them. So letting go might be the ultimate big idea in my life right now.

Anyway it’s, like, it’s a way to get from here to wherever I wanna go next. Wherever I wanna go next in any front of my life, it’s gonna require me to let go. It’s gonna require me to be willing to lay down my own old world map- Yeah ... and stop trying to follow something that simply isn’t d- doesn’t go.

It doesn’t show the way to, to where I wanna be next.

CW: All right. Our next Big Idea episode on confirmation bias. I don’t know how [00:40:00] everybody else felt about this, but I loved finally being able to have this conversation. I don’t know, what did you-

SH: I think our listeners loved it, too.

CW: Okay. And- What are your takeaways?

SH: M- I mean, my, it’s not so much that I have takeaways, it’s that sometimes when I sort of dabble in a topic, the universe starts to hand me things that-

CW: Yes ...

SH: are related to that topic, right? And that is what happened to me, and just as I was preparing for this conversation we just had this whole unit in the Living School talking about confirmation bias, and then the unit after that had all these other things in it that went into the same ideas, developed the same ideas.

Oh. And it comes from Brian McLaren, all of this material does. No

CW: surprise

SH: there. Which is no surprise, right? And so just to sum up his approach to it, okay, he said this: “We develop a story or system in our minds, and whatever doesn’t fit, our brains exclude it, because we only want to judge new information based on the information we already have that we’re comfortable with.

And so our old information and our old trusted authorities create a screen.” And that idea of a screen-

CW: Yeah ...

SH: this is exactly like what I’m talking about- ... of where I am now and where I wanna go next, my confirmation bias. It reminded me of, like, the iron gates that President Uchtdorf talked about- Yes

in his talk, right? Yes. These big old rusty iron gates of the things that we know. This is, I think this is the screen that Brian McLaren is talking about. And so there are two other things that he said after that I wanna talk about, and the first is community bias. He says, “Community bias, it’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t see- Yes

or what our community doesn’t want us to see.” Yes. “You could think of this as a community confirmation bias, and our identity is wrapped up with the community we belong in, and it’s very hard for us to accept some ideas if they will put us out of sync with our community because that will rob from us our secure social location or identity.”

I can’t even think of a better-

...

SH: Exhibit A for community bias than my experiences as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There’s some serious community bias operating in this community, and probably every religious community, definitely every high demand religious community, I think.

CW: Well, and I think one of the definitions, I’m making this up right now, one of the definitions I’m gonna say, one of the requirements of being a high demand religion is the community involvement. I mean, think about it. Susan, I went to church six days a week growing up. Six days a week.

SH: Right,

CW: right. Five days for seminary.

Plus mutual on like Tuesday night or Wednesday night

SH: Right,

CW: right ... plus Sunday. So ev- so six days a week, and five, six, se- what is that? Seven, eight times a week

I mean, that’s just bananas. So I don’t think we could emphasize enough to people who have never been in a high demand religion just how involved the community is for Latter-day Saints

SH: Or has been historically.

I’m honestly not sure that it is to the same degree anymore. Now, if you’re a seminary student, then you are gonna be at that sort of-

CW: Yeah ...

SH: you know, apex of, Yeah ... involvement. But even not be- not ever having gone to seminary I still grew up in a church that kept me at the church building-

CW: Yes ...

SH: so, so much.

Everything revolved around what was going on at our ward building growing up in Utah. It just did. And I don’t know if it’s still that way. We’ve talked about that, and we could debate it, but I think that there’s something about belonging to that community that was, like, so integral- ... to who I was and how I thought about myself and my place in the world that yeah, of course, my biases were going to defend themselves to keep my standing in the community.

Absolutely.

CW: Okay. This is dov- this part of our conversation is dovetailing really nicely with that Jim Palmer quote you started out reading, kind of about agency and free will- Right ... because I think when we have that episode, we absolutely are gonna have to talk about community bias.

SH: Gonna make a note of that right now, so thank you very much

CW: Because it is the water that we have been swimming in our- Yes

entire Life. And so all the grace to you and me and all of our listeners.

SH: Right. Yeah, there are good reasons.

CW: The good reasons.

SH: Yeah. For, there are good reasons for all the ways that we feel and

...

SH: the experiences that we’ve had and the things that are difficult for us to let go of.

CW: Absolutely.

SH: Like, there are really good reasons for that.

And then just one other thing I’m gonna say about all of that Brian McLaren confirmation bias messaging was that [00:45:00] he said, “If I were to say people can’t see what they can’t see, that’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. They can’t see what they can’t see until someone helps them see it, or maybe a new life experience comes along that helps them see it.”

I know that was my experience. I think it was your experience. Yes. I think it was so many people’s experience, and really, I hope that’s the experience that our listeners have sometimes listening to this podcast, that when we say something that they’ve never seen before, it at least gives them an idea to sit with and consider in the light of their own- Yeah

experience and potentially their own biases and just under- see, I guess try to come to some self-understanding of how it has served them, whether it continues to serve them, and how it can get them to where they want to go next.

So Cynthia, myth

We’re back to myth.

CW: So soon?

SH: I loved this episode. How did you end up feeling about this episode? ‘Cause this is the one that had you shaking in your shoes a little bit when we approached it.

CW: Yeah. I’m really shocked at how well this episode went off. Like, I just think, my goodness, there are a lot of landmines-

SH: Right

CW: to avoid, or to just go ahead and step on and blow up people’s worlds when it comes to- yes ... I don’t know. I was really nervous, and I feel like it went off a lot better. Let that be a lesson to me, Susan.

SH: Okay, but I think that we got more pushback potentially on this episode than we have on any episode I can think of for a long time.

But also I wanna say that was social media pushback- ex- exactly ... and I felt like it was not people who had listened to the episode. They just saw that we were talking about approaching the scriptures as myth and couldn’t really live with that. They couldn’t let that stand unchallenged. Okay.

CW: Yeah. You know what’s funny about you saying that just now is as I was working on these notes the last couple of days, I went through some of those social media comments, and I copy and pasted some of them in here-

Okay ...

CW: in our notes for today, and then I went ahead and deleted them because like you just said, I didn’t get the feeling that these were people who had listened to the episode or that- Right, right

were regular listeners. Some of them even seemed like, i- is there such a thing as a Mormon bot? I don’t know.

SH: Yeah, no. Didn’t we decide that there are because we looked at some of these profiles, and they weren’t real Facebook profiles There is such a thing as a Mormon bot- Okay ... or at least Mormons who open Facebook-

CW: Okay,

SH: yes

profiles under false identities and then comment on things. And then to,

CW: and,

SH: and- That is

CW: a thing ... antagonize women- Yes ... and a podcast they couldn’t give two licks about. Right. Like, that just boggles my mind, but anyway.

SH: Yeah, I don’t even wanna think too much about all the implications of that idea of Mormon bots, but-

just to say that there was an aha moment when I started looking at who are some of these people, and found out- Yeah ... that they aren’t really people at all. But all of that, h- where- whatever the origin of these comments was, it just goes to show me how deeply uncomfortable a conversation this still would be for most members.

And yet it’s not a new idea and it’s not a radical idea really. I came across a C.S. Lewis quote shortly after we recorded this episode that I just loved. I had to stop on my walk and write it down immediately- Oh ... which was that... I mean, and anything from C.S. Lewis is, you know, one, not gonna be too radical.

He’s one of the few non-LDS writers who has been consistently quoted in general conference, like, throughout- ... my lifetime, right? So, like, everyone’s a fan in the Christian world of C.S. Lewis or many people, even mainstream Latter-day Saints- ... are fans of his thinking. But he sa- he wrote this: “Reason is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

And so the idea that we have to approach something, anything, and in this case we had been talking about the Bible through a lens of imagination in order to get to the thing kind of behind or beyond- ... the thing is not a new idea and not really that radical an idea. So I’m n- I’m not sure why it still feels so deeply challenging, I guess, for Latter-day Saints.

We do not trust imagination, period.

CW: Yeah

SH: Like you’re not allowed to imagine freely even about change you’d like to see in the church, right? Right. This is the imagination committee that we talked about. Like, I’ve never felt at liberty to talk about [00:50:00] change because then there’s a criticism implied, and I feel like with the scriptures you’re not really allowed to talk about looking for bigger meaning because there, that means that the meaning that, that is there isn’t enough somehow or isn’t right or doesn’t get to the heart of...

There’s not enough there for you already, I guess.

CW: That C.S. Lewis quote, that, that last half, “Imagination is the organ of meaning,” makes me... Oh, it just makes me really sad that-

...

CW: That ha- that hasn’t been a part of my Latter-day Saint experience, to just sit there and imagine what different scriptures could mean, different, extract different meanings, right?

We’re very much handed the one and true meaning.

SH: Right.

CW: And that’s it. The thinking has been done. The

SH: thinking has been done, yeah.

CW: And the, and it just makes me think about re- remember when we had our episode with Kathryn Knight Sontag on mysticism, and I said for funsies I went to the church website and I looked up mysticism, and it said, like- sorcery, false prophets. Right.

SH: Yes. Yes.

CW: So I think we very much do not trust imagination.

SH: I think that’s true because, could mysticism exist without imagination?

CW: That, it-

SH: Like, I don’t think

CW: so. No.

SH: I don’t think so.

CW: But I’m just connecting those dots here for the first time- Yeah ... going, “Oh, okay.”

SH: We

CW: don’t- No, we don’t

SH: trust it ...

CW: We don’t trust imagination. We don’t trust mysticism. I- if it can’t be measured, I guess we’re not gonna... I don’t know, the first half of that C.S. Lewis quote, “Reason is the natural organ of truth.” Oh, we like that. We-

SH: But now you’re kinda blowing my mind with that because, like, does God exist outside of human imagination?

I mean, maybe God doesn’t. None of us can prove that, and the fact that none of us can prove that means you can’t really reason your way all the way to God, can you? Doesn’t it require- Nice ... a leap of imagination at some point? And yet we are not taught to trust that

...

SH: That process of engaging that part of our brain.

It’s a

CW: slippery slope.

SH: It’s a slippery slope. I heard a Faith Matters episode recently. Oh, I went back and re-listened to it. It wasn’t a recent episode, but where Mike Petro, your favorite and mine- ... was talking about, quote, “More than literal reading of scripture.” So yes, there’s value in whatever the literal interpretation of those words on the page might be, but that there also could be something more than literal.

And I think that’s that leap into the imaginal realm, right? And I think that’s what C.S. Lewis is talking about when he’s like, “Well, if you wanna get to meaning, you gotta be willing to step a little bit into imagination.”

CW: Love

SH: it. And one of the things that Mike Petro said when he was elaborating on this way of looking for larger meaning within scripture that I just loved, he said, “When we don’t understand it and it doesn’t make sense, it can be an invitation to think more deeply and look for a meaning worthy of a God we believe in-

A God of love.”

So like if you can’t approach scripture with an idea that you’re open to imagining a meaning that is in line with the God you have imagined, then I think scripture is not gonna do a lot of heavy lifting in your life, I guess.

It’s gonna do a lot of confusing, which does happen for people.

Scriptures are contradictory. They’re ... I mean, there’s like, there’s-

Yes ...

SH: all kinds of crazy stuff in scripture, right? But I think approaching them as an invitation to step into this imagine, this imaginary not imaginary, what’s the word? Imaginal realm of- ... spirituality invitation to step into that realm.

If you don’t see scriptures as a doorway to get you there it seems to me that they’re a pretty limited use.

CW: Okay, Susan, do you hear yourself right now? Do you hear how non-Latter-day Sainty you- Dang it ... sound right now?

SH: I’ve stepped- Like- ... right out the door of the building. No.

CW: Everything you’re saying, I’m loving, and it is delicious to the taste, and yet- i’m sitting here thinking, “That is not-”

SH: No, it’s not. I wonder what, I

CW: wonder- “... that is not what I was taught.” ...

SH: if I’m ever gonna get asked to teach Relief Society again, Cynthia.

CW: I don’t know, but it’s good stuff, my friend. So anyway, slippery slope.

SH: Slippery slope. And I’m sliding fast.

CW: Yes. You are, and I’m loving it.

I’m loving it.

SH: Okay, Cynthia, last but by no means least, Sabbath.

Okay. Shortly after we recorded this episode I did, I was doing a little searching online for one of the [00:55:00] women that I had quoted in this episode, Ruth Haley Barton, and it came to my attention that she has a podcast, and then it came to my attention that she had a whole episode about Sabbath with one of your favorites, Cole Arthur Riley.

Oh. And so I had to pull that up immediately and also send it to you. But part of the conversation that they had, I really loved, and so I just wanna visit that really briefly here. And Cole Arthur Riley says, “It’s the audacity to face the demands of this world and proclaim, ‘We will not be owned.’”

And then Ruth Haley Barton expanded on it, and she said this: “When we practice Sabbath, we are saying to this world, ‘You do not own me. I am not owned by your values. I am not owned by your schedule. I am not owned by your consumerism. I am not owned by somebody else’s priorities for me. On this day, I am not owned by anyone else but God himself or herself.

I am proclaiming where I belong and who I belong to.’”

CW: Okay. Amazing.

SH: Amazing. And it was sort of an expression, it was such a succinct expression really of the whole idea- Yes ... of the liberation theology idea- Yes ... of all of the letting go of things of this world idea. Everything that I really wanted to say about Sabbath was pretty much expressed in that small quote.

Well,

CW: I was just gonna say, okay, to our listeners who don’t know, you have no idea how often Susan and I hit stop after recording an episode, and then Susan will text me or I will text her something we’ve run across, like Susan just- Right ... read to you, and saying- Dang it ... “Dang it. I wish I had this for the episode,” to which I’ll be like, “We already recorded an hour and 10 minutes, Susan.”

Right. “We couldn’t have squeezed it in anyway.” But as you’re reading those two quotes by two amazing women, I will not be surprised, Susan, if you write this down on a sticky note and you put it on your mirror for a while.

SH: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. If anything has a hope of getting me to reevaluate- Yes ... my relationship with Sabbath, this would be that thing.

CW: This would be that. It’s gorgeous. So I’m glad- It’s beautiful ... I’m glad it made it to our season finale ‘cause now I’m gonna put it on a Post-It note because I, because like we said in the episode, genuinely I really would love to explore the idea of re-imagining Sabbath and what it could be.

So I like that.

SH: More to come, Cynthia.

CW: Yeah. Well, okay, hopefully everyone knows that we have been offering transcripts for the last few seasons. We have one volunteer, Celeste- Right ... bless her, who she makes the rough draft. She runs our MP3 through Descript, and she comes up with the transcription, and then she has a nice volunteer.

Thank you to all those who help volunteer to clean up a transcript. And anyway, so there are a million people that use our email, it seems like. Susan, you use it, I use it, like, Celeste uses it, right? So many people use our email to get all the work done for At Last She Said It, and so s- sometimes I have to go in there and I’m looking for a specific email, and I saw the email between Celeste and the volunteer about getting the Sabbath episode transcribed, and I had to giggle because the person who was transcribing it said, “Yeah, I wasn’t really excited for this topic.”

But then, “Wow,” she said, “Wow.” And I want to say along with her, I get it. Wow. Like Sabbath is a tired, old, tiny topic that you and I just even wanted to m- I mean, aspirationally big. I don’t even know if we could’ve. I don’t even know if we made it big, Susan, but we tried. We tried to not make it a tired, old, tiny topic.

Right. Right. We just wanted to show some imagination around it and expand around it and to breathe maybe some new life into it. So-

SH: I,

CW: I

SH: had not seen that email. Thank you so much for sharing that with me, ‘cause I just knew it, because I knew that would be my response also.

CW: So good. So good. All right.

Well, we have a couple minutes left. How about we just do something fun for a second? For the three people- lay it on me ... who are still listening- Okay ... Susan.

SH: Yep. We’re gonna reward them, or-

CW: We’re gonna reward- Or not. Or force them and keep them hostage to listen to us for a couple more minutes. But okay, for those who don’t know, Susan and I, we have, our workload is divided up really well.

We always say to each other, “Best team ever.” Because Susan does things that I have no idea what she does about to get the podcast up and running, and then I do some things, like editing, that Susan has no idea about.

SH: Right.

CW: So Susan, what is something you do to get the podcast out into the big world that I don’t know anything about?

SH: I think it’s pretty much everything I do on a Monday.

CW: It is,

SH: but give me

CW: something

SH: specific. Before the podcast comes out on Tuesday. Something specific. [01:00:00] Okay, so I go into our show notes, and I find the links for everything that’s in there, and it usually means, I mean, maybe not usually, but we don’t put full information in those notes generally, and it requires some sleuthing for me to get to the original source or- get to something, you know, with a working link that I can give people or get to like I’ll go into Goodreads and pull up the books that we reference, because then I go in and add those to our book section on our website and with a link to that. I mean, there’s just a lot that goes into getting that information from our sort of disorganized-y, jottings in our show, in our episode notes when we record, the ones we record with and getting it packaged in a usable way for listeners. So I hope people do take advantage of those, because I do put my heart and soul into distributing that stuff. Because the thing is, anything that made it into those notes, we loved enough to bring it into an episode and build a conversation around it.

CW: Yeah.

SH: So I, I feel very affectionate toward all of those sources. How about you, Cynthia? What’s something that you do that I have n- no idea?

CW: Okay. Something that you have no idea that I do is, okay, we have interlude music, right? Right. In every episode. We break it up into sections, and we have probably about 30, 30 to 40 interludes that I recycle and use from sea- Okay

I try not to use an interlude more than once a season. In fact, I never do. Okay.

Okay.

CW: So our listeners can’t see it. I’m gonna show you. You can hear my papers rustling, people. So I have three pieces of paper. Each one says season 11, season 10, season nine. Anyway, so I-

SH: You make note of which one you used

CW: Yes. I write down every interlude and what episode I used it on so that the next season when I’m trying to find an interlude, I go back and I say, “Oh, okay. I haven’t used that one for seven months or whatever, or 20 episodes or something.” And so I go ahead and use that interlude. But what’s hard about it is The titles of these interlude, okay, here are a couple of these titles.

Cozy Evening Chillin’ .

SH: Yes. I mean, that makes me think of Sabbath. Is that what you used it for?

CW: I don’t e- no, I didn’t actually. I’m

SH: teasing. Well,

CW: I know, exactly ... it’s a

SH: ridiculous title.

CW: It’s a ridiculous title. Another one is called Inspirational Uplifting Acoustic. In other words, they tell me nothing.

Nothing. And so depending on the conversation we have, some of our conversations lean more serious, and so I’ll be like, “Oh, I haven’t used this interlude in 20 episodes. I’ll go ahead and use it,” and then it just doesn’t fit. Like it’s- Oh, sure ... too upbeat or something. Anyway, so that’s something you don’t know about, is that sometimes finding the, just the right interlude music for an episode is harder than you would think.

Because I have, like, 30 or 40 to choose from, and sometimes it gets a little complicated, because I don’t wanna take a serious moment and then break it up with a jam chicka jam chicka jam. You know? So that would, that

SH: just-

CW: Okay ... is offensive.

SH: Okay, but here I’m gonna say that nothing that you do is harder than I think, because it’s all just wizardry and black magic to me, Cynthia.

I have- Bless you ... no idea what you do, and I stand in awe. And the thing that’s so beautiful about the way the work breaks out on this podcast is that you don’t know what I do, and I don’t know what you do. But it all gets done, and therefore neither one of us is at liberty to quit, because the other person- Right

could not rebuild this thing. Right ... we could not plug someone else into your job. It could never happen. And so I’m afraid we’re in it for the duration, my friend.

CW: We’re in it together. Perfect. Well, Susan, I hope you have a lovely summer break. If we had yearbooks right now, I would write in it, “Stay cool.”

SH: That’s hilarious, because did you read my draft of Worthy Stuff that comes out tomorrow? I signed people’s yearbooks at the end, and it says- Ah ... “Stay cool.” We’re the same person, Cynthia.

CW: Ah. I love knowing this. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That’s too funny. Well, stay cool and have a great summer.

SH: Let’s hang out a lot.

CW: Exactly.

Oh, goodness. Okay. Let’s hit stop.

Voicemail 1: Okay, go with me on this one. It’s gonna make you laugh. I was just listening to the episode about our shadow and dealing with the shadow, and I was trying to talk to my husband [01:05:00] about it, and we decided that it’s very difficult to have shadow aspects of ourselves that we can’t really name. And then I’ve just been working on how people use symbols in spiritual practices and different symbol sets that people use, and I was looking at tarot decks as part of that research, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a deck of cards that was all the different aspects of the Church?”

Some of them might be stereotypes, some of them might be symbols that are inherent to Church culture. And could I possibly please have one so I can use it so that when some of my shadow self comes up, I can actually pull that card and, you know, my judgy Molly Mormon card or my I have to be a missionary card or, you know, listen to the bishop card or the prophet speaks for God card, you can’t talk to your own intuition, whatever that would be called card.

Like, wouldn’t that be hilarious? I think that would be so much fun. I need this tool, but I don’t really have the spiritual, like, capacity to be that sassy, and I need an artist. We need an artist to get involved. So please make that, and then I will buy one so I can use it to work on my shadow.

Thank you.

Voicemail 2: Good morning, ladies. Coming to you from California on my way commuting into work. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the most recent episode discussing the Sermon on the Mount. And it made me think of a book I read recently by Howard Thurman called “Jesus and the Disinherited.”

And you may know Howard Thurman. I don’t know. I didn’t until I read this book. He is a theologian philosopher. Many of his writings inspired Martin Luther King in his speeches and sermons and ideas. He’s a Black man from the South, and the book addresses a question. When he-- when Howard Thurman traveled to India, there was a man that he had lunch with there who kind of challenged him, asking how it is that he could be Christian when Christianity was a part of what had oppressed his people.

And this short little book is basically Howard Thurman’s answer to this question: What does the gospel, the teachings of Jesus Christ, have to offer to those who are oppressed, whether it be in slavery or in poverty or in suffering circumstances? It’s a beautiful book. It really expanded my thinking. Of course, the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes is a key part of it.

So just wanted to flag that for both of you and anybody listening. I think it fits right in with the beautiful discussion you had in your episode this morning. Thanks so much, ladies. Really appreciate all you do. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

SH: Me too, and the other shoe will be- Ah ... when you go to listen to it, and I go, damn it,

CW: damn it.”

Maybe.

SH: But look, right now my line is moving. It’s like everything is going perfectly. I don’t- Yeah ... I don’t

CW: know. I know. Fingers crossed. Okay, here we go. All right.

SH: Give too much, Oh, gosh, I... What’s

CW: the right word? Okay. L- let’s just skip that Facebook comment. Let’s go-

SH: Are you sure?

CW: Yeah. We’re at- Okay

we’re at one hour,

SH: so. Oh, ouch. Okay. Well, we just had one more. That’s cool. Yeah.

CW: Don’t forget we have a website atlastshesaidit.org. That’s where you can find all of our content. You can contact our team, send us a voicemail, find transcripts, buy our book, subscribe to our Substack, or make a tax-deductible donation.

Paid subscribers get extra stuff, including access to our community chats and also Zoom events with us. Remember, your support keeps the podcast ad-free. Thanks for listening.

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An Evening with At Last She Said It
Tuesday, July 21
7:00 - 9:00 pm
3301 E Louise Ave
Millcreek, UT 84109

Bring a friend, and/or come make a bunch of new ones!
Plan on a short presentation from Cynthia and Susan, followed by plenty of time to get to know (and enjoy cake with!) members of the ALSSI community.

Seats are limited—register by clicking this link today!

(Please do us a favor and share this email with someone you know who might like info about the gathering.)

See you soon!

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“All real living is meeting.”

So says Martin Buber, and if you don’t know his work but his name sounds familiar, it may be because I touched briefly on his ideas contrasting trust in vs. belief that in our recent episode about Myth.

I’m starting with him here because that line sits at the heart of Susan’s Presence Project, aka Summer 2026. The best way for me to really accomplish a thing is to find an alliterative title for whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing—surely that’s 90% of the work, isn’t it?

This approach would undoubtedly explain a lot about my life, especially if you looked in my closets. Let’s just say I’m a better starter than finisher, but I’m really gifted at making it Sound Like I’m Doing Something.

Look, I want to become a master of presence, with a deep grasp of the Fundamental Meaning Underlying All Things, including this moment right now.

And this one.

Read more

In Episode 267, Susan and Cynthia ask Jen, Jessie, and Anne, What Do You Say? It’s the fifth installment of ALSSI’s series of episodes involving questions, answers, and the wide-ranging conversations they inspire among Latter-day Saint women.

Notes & Quotes:
Hear our previous conversation with Jen Dille on ALSSI Ep. 233
Hear more from Anne Pimentel on ALSSI Ep. 192 and Ep. 214
Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion, by Pema Chödrön, Emily Hilburn Sell (Editor)
Brené Brown on How to Reckon with Emotion and Change Your Narrative, by Brené Brown, O, The Oprah Magazine, 9/2015

“Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?” —Pema Chödrön

“We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment—over and over again.” —Pema Chödrön, (p. 7 Kindle)

“Steve opened the refrigerator and sighed. ‘We have no groceries. Not even lunch meat.’ I shot back, ‘I'm doing the best I can. You can shop, too!’ ‘I know,’ he said in a measured voice. ‘I do it every week. What's going on?’ I knew exactly what was going on: I had turned his comment into a story about how I'm a disorganized, unreliable partner and mother. I apologized and started my next sentence with the phrase that's become a lifesaver in my marriage, parenting and professional life: ‘The story I'm making up is that you were blaming me for not having groceries, that I was screwing up.’ Steve said, ‘No, I was going to shop yesterday, but I didn't have time. I'm not blaming you. I'm hungry.’” —Brené Brown

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Many thanks to listener Rebecca Graham for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

Listen to Episode 267

Anne Pimentel: I think that when people have an expansive faith experience, to the outside, to the maybe orthodox member, it looks like they’re falling away.

CW: Yeah.

AP: And people may think that about me right now as I’m expanding and changing how I approach church, but what they may not understand is that I have never felt closer to God than I do right now, and my relationship is deeper and more enriching than it ever has been.

And so we have this fear of changing how we do church, but I think that when you really dig deep into it, it is such a beautiful deepening experience.

_____

CW: Hi, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley.

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is “What Do You Say? Three Conversations About Holy Envy, Uncertainty, and Forgiving Yourself.” Hello, Susan.

SH: Hello, Cynthia. I’m looking forward to these conversations today, but can I take a second for housekeeping before we start?

CW: Please.

SH: I wanted to let listeners know that this is our second to last episode of our regular season episodes for Season 11. We’ll have one more next week, and then we’re going on summer vacation, Cynthia.

CW: Summer vacation.

SH: But there will be more ... We haven’t finished with all of our “What Do You Say?” interviews yet, and so there will be some “What Do You Say?” dessert over the summer, and-

CW: Nice

SH: And that will show up in the form of a bonus episode. And then we will have a few other bonuses, and we hope that people will hang with us for the bonuses and come back with us when we resume in early fall, I guess. Late summer, early fall.

CW: Mhmm!

SH: Yeah. Not gonna pin any dates down on that yet. I also wanted to thank the listeners. We … People may have noticed we’ve had a little bit of a mini pledge drive going on here. And I wanted to thank people for their generosity in all the ways that they have supported the podcast, but particularly at this time, financially. We have appreciated that, and so thank you to everyone who has donated, who has helped us out with a paid subscription on Substack.

And I just wanna give people a reminder that even if we stop talking about that, you can keep thinking about it.

CW: [laughing]

SH: And we’re happy to have your support any time that you can afford to kick a dollar our way. And also a reminder that we are a 501[c][3], and so if people will hit the donate button on our website to make a donation, those are tax-deductible. A paid subscription to our Substack actually is not tax-deductible, so that’s something else people may wanna consider when they’re figuring out the best way to support the podcast.

CW: Nice! Good housekeeping. Alright. Are we ready?

SH: Yeah, let’s get to the good stuff.

CW: All right. Let’s get to our three conversations, and then I’ll meet you back here for Contemplation Corner. How’s that?

SH: Perfect.
_____

SH: Oh, Cynthia, here’s one we’ve been looking forward to. We’ve got Jen Dilley with us to play today. Hi, Jen.

CW: Yay.

JD: Hey, Susan and Cynthia. I’m so excited for this. Woo-woo!

SH: We’re gonna start out with a question from our memories category. Would you like question one, two, or three?

JD: Let’s go two.

SH: Was there a big churchy question you were obsessed with as a kid, and who, if anyone, did you feel free to ask about it?

JD: Okay. I would say my answer to a big churchy question was probably closer to a big churchy topic, which was the temple. And I loved it when I was growing up because it was the temple and not kind of how we talk about it now as, like, the covenant path.

CW: Oh.

JD: So I still remember it, like, where I was sitting in the primary room when we learned the song “I Love to See the Temple.” And I just had such warm, fuzzy feelings in my heart and just kept thinking, like, “Man, how can I get there?” And I feel like my young women’s leaders did such a good job of really emphasizing, “you really need to get married in the temple.” And looking back, I realize, like, it did feel like they kind of drummed it into our head for how important it was.

CW: Mhmm.

JD: But it felt okay. You know, it didn’t feel like “covenant path” nowadays where it’s, like, the only thing we could talk about it. They talked about it in, like, fun and creative ways, and they also talked about, like, how can you prepare for the temple as a really exciting thing.

And so I do remember feeling like right before I was gonna go to the temple, I just wanted to read all the scriptures, go to the temple, and then read all the scriptures again and see how I could relate to the scriptures differently because I’d been to the temple.

CW: Ahh.

JD: And so I do remember, like, going through the temple and being like, [00:05:00] huh, okay, yeah, that wasn’t really what I thought

CW: Right?

JD: [laughing] As like, probably all of us did. But I really appreciated that I could talk to my dad about it. And I remember talking to my mom about it as well, but my dad was probably like my primary go-to person because my dad was a convert and,like, he joined the church when he was 19, and so he had really studied it out, whereas my mom was a lifelong member.

And so she was just kinda like, “Yeah, it’s so special, it’s so great,” whereas my dad would be like, “The history of the temple came from the Old Testament” and would kind of go through it with me. So yeah, just how to prepare for the temple. It was a big, big focus in a very happy way.

SH: And did you feel like you were well-prepared? Like, did you get adequate preparation,

JD: [laughing] Not at all.

SH: Okay. [laughing] Say more.

JD: I do remember going to temple prep and just smiling and nodding and being like, “Okay, but when are we really gonna talk about like-

CW: Yes

JD: ... what the temple is-

CW: Right

JD: ... and what we do? It was all these like, you know, I can still remember the Boyd K. Packer little pamphlet, “The Holy Temple.”And reading it through and just being like, “Okay, where’s the page when they’re actually gonna, like, talk about what we do?”

CW: The ceremony.

JD: The ceremony and what I promise. And so when our kids were getting ready to go to the temple, like, we sat them down and were like, “After you walk through the door, then you’re gonna go here, and then you’re gonna do this.” And we told them, like, step by step, and they were so funny. They were “yeah, okay, whatever. It’s gonna be fine.” And I was like-

CW: Nice

JD: ... “No, I want you to know…so I want you to know”

SH: [laughing]

JD: ... like every step of what you’re doing.

CW: Yes.

JD: And what you’re promising

SH: Oh, amazing actually. Nobody did that with me, Jen

CW: Uh-huh.

JD: I know. I know. It was a different time, you know? Like, I’m not saying we’re old, Susan, but for us, you know, like, temple prep was just like, “Yeah, read the Boyd K. Packer pamphlet and come with questions.”

SH: That’s what it was.

JD: That’s what it was, right? And we can’t talk about anything.

SH: Right.

JD: But it’s not secret, it’s sacred, and-

SH: And also secret.

[all laughing]

JD: Yeah.

CW: Oh my gosh, I wanna have a whole episode about the temple with Jen, but we will move on.

JD: K.

CW: We will move on. Okay, from insights, would you like one, two, or three?

JD: Let’s go with three.

CW: I love this question so much. What gives you holy envy?

JD: Ah, so many things. Lately, I’ve been seeing that Pope Leo has been making social media posts, and just media in general, about how he’s praying for peace and not war. And I feel like that is such a brave thing to do right now, and he’s definitely taking heat for that, because there is a certain segment of Christianity that’s like, “What are you talking about?” Like- “This is fine. We just follow our president.”

CW: Mhmm.

JD: And I’m really grateful for the leadership of Pope Leo to say, “I feel like I’m speaking God’s message with this,” and it feels like he’s being very prophetic. I also appreciate that-

CW: Yes

JD: ... the Episcopal bishops also made a video, I think it’s been a few weeks now just saying-

CW: I saw that

JD: Yeah, just saying, “Hey we’re concerned about what’s going on in our country.” And I loved that they stated like, “Here’s our values. Here’s why we’re concerned.” And they were values that I feel like everyone can rally around. So I think in this moment, I’m really craving church leaders who will speak up and say what Jesus actually said and-

CW: Mm. hm hm hm.

JD: ... And use it for good. And a little sub-theme to that, I also have holy envy for people observing Lent because as, when we’re recording this, you know, people are in Lent, and I feel like our church is kind of in that baby stage of trying to figure out what to do around Easter.

SH: Right, right.

JD: Where, you know, we’re talking about it more, it’s so great, and they’re saying, “You should do some stuff.” And I’m kinda like, “What should I do? Do I observe Lent? Do I give something up for Lent? I don’t really understand it. Where should I look to find out more?”

CW: Yeah

JD: ... so, yeah. Trying to learn more about how to observe Easter and these traditional Christian holidays that really are part of our heritage as Christians.

CW: Okay, I really love, Jen, that you used the word craving when you were talking about this holy envy that you have for other clergy of, you know, Pope Leo and Episcopal leaders, because as you were talking, I was thinking to myself, “Yes, please, I will take two helpings of that on my plate.”

JD: [laughing]

CW: So apparently I [00:10:00] am craving that as well. So everything you said ditto. I’m craving that so much-

JD: Awesome ...

SH: What you didn’t say is why you might be craving that.

CW: Ooh, that’s a dangerous follow-up, Susan.

[all laughing]

JD: Do you want me to spell that out?

CW: Are you insinuating she’s lacking something in Mormonism?

SH: I’m just saying this is “At Last She Said It,” and I wanna hear the quiet part out loud right now.

[everyone continues to laugh]

JD: Alright. Alright. I will say it. Our church has been very silent, and it is breaking my heart because I do feel like with what’s happening, there is a moral issue of what’s going wrong. And I understand that it’s very difficult for church leaders. I feel like during COVID they found out what it’s like to take a stand on a political issue.

SH: Right.

JD: You know, when they said, “Hey, wear masks, get vaccinated,” and they got a lot of pushback for that. And so I understand it feels tricky, and I feel like we are in a situation where this is no longer just party politics. Like, this is a moral issue when we’re seeing, like, the rule of law and democracy- being openly violated. This is a problem that has moral implications, and it’s not just, like, what’s the letter behind the people’s name who you vote for. It’s a lot bigger than that.

CW: I said to Susan recently, because everything you’re talking about, Jen, I’m like, “This is the Jesus work, and shouldn’t we always be taking a stand on the Jesus work?” And so I said to Susan, “Whose name is on our building? It’s Jesus’ name, not Joseph Smith’s.” Because all I feel like I hear is people leaning on Joseph Smith, on The Articles of Faith, right? We believe in obeying the laws, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, “Okay, that’s all great and good, but his name isn’t on our building. It’s Jesus’.” So I feel like that should take precedence over the laws, but what do I know?

JD: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, I just read a book about Bonhoeffer, who was a pastor in Germany in the 1930s.

SH: Right.

JD: Yeah, you’re familiar with him. And he got really frustrated that churches were just falling in line with their leadership, and he felt to speak out, and he paid for it with his life. And I read that book to see what the similarities are between then and now. And there are some really disturbing similarities-

CW: Mhmm.

JD: ... of church leaders right now just falling in line behind some really immoral action and it’s very sobering, so. And I was speaking with someone who I’m very close with, and I said, “Are you disappointed that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not taken a stand and come out publicly and made a statement?” And they said, “Well, in order to be disappointed, I would have to have expectations that they would.” And I said, “Do you really wanna be in a church where you have zero expectations-

SH: Ah

JD: ... of them taking a moral stand?”

SH: Right.

CW: Fair question

JD: And that got them thinking.

CW: Wow. Ooh, okay. Interesting.

SH: Now, aren’t you glad I asked that risky follow-up, Cynthia? [laughing]

CW: Yes. Oh, 100%. I had to. You can edit all that out. I think of that as well.

SH: I knew she would not disappoint us. Okay. Would you like-- We are in beliefs now. Would you like question one, two, or three?

JD: Okay, let’s go one.

SH: Was there a bedrock truth in your life that you found out wasn’t true?

JD: Yes. The bedrock truth that I found wasn’t true is, I grew up hearing that Heavenly Mother was too sacred to talk about. And when I found out that came from an institute teacher in California-

CW: Right. Right

JD:... and that wasn’t anything that the brethren ever said-

SH: Right.

JD: I just, that was a rage-y day, just feeling like, “Well, wait, if that’s not true, then why aren’t we talking about her more?” And- ... why can’t we platform her, and what- what’s the risk of having her featured and highlighted more?

CW: Mhmm.

SH: Love that answer. And, like, how did these things used to spread? This is what I wanna know.

CW: Before the internet, you mean? [laughing]

SH: I guess. We’re talking, there’s no internet, so some rando institute teacher comes up with this, and then suddenly it takes over all of the conversation for the next however many decades. Well, it means that people were ready and willing to pick that up and run with it.

JD: Yeah, I think you’re exactly right, is, we’re all kind of looking for an explanation of, like- ... how can my brain make sense of this?

SH: Right.

JD: And yeah, but the problem is it plays into this docile view of a little timid woman in the corner.

CW: Ugh.

JD: Like, and I’m sorry, that is not Heavenly Mother. [00:15:00]

SH: It has not served us well. That’s absolutely true, in- on any level that I can think of, you know?

CW: I always find it fascinating when people say, “Well, we don’t talk about Heavenly Mother ‘cause we don’t know anything about her.” And I’m like, “Well, let’s be honest. What do we know about God, the Eternal Father? Zero.”

SH: Right.

CW: Like, the only thing we know, I mean, the scriptures say if... I think Jesus says, you know, “If you know me, you know the Father.” And so I’m like, “Okay, that’s literally all we know then, so wouldn’t the same be true if you know Jesus, you know the Mother?”

JD: Right. Exactly.

CW: That’s just my question.

JD: Exactly. And I’ve heard that another reason given is like, “Oh, well, if you look at the Lord’s Prayer, it starts out, ‘Our Father...’ “ And then, you know, continues on. And I recently learned from a Christian historian, they said rabbis would give their parishioners prayers as kind of a template to kind of get them going.

Like, “Hey, here’s a little something-

CW: Mm

JD: ... that you can recite, and this kind of gets you going down the path of prayer.” And so it was very common for rabbis to be sharing just a simple templated prayer to their parishioners. But then they were saying that doesn’t mean that every single prayer after that had to be only that prayer based on that prayer, that prayer-

SH: Right

JD: That prayer template was perfect. And so I just think could we maybe, like, open our minds a little bit on this topic?

CW: Could we open our minds a little? Yes.

JD: Yeah.

CW: Yes.

JD: And if we don’t know, how about we, we could ask for further light and knowledge. Oh, well

CW: Now we’re talking crazy. And a church that has prophetic revelation as its backbone, one would think, right?

SH: Okay. But also in a church that has polygamy as, I mean, maybe not its backbone, but one of its foundational bones

CW: Ohhh Susan

SH: ... do not ask questions to which you do not wanna know the answer. Right?

CW: Ouch.

SH: Ouch. Sorry, had to wreck it.

CW: It’s good that you did.

SH: Oh, so much fun. Thank you, Jen.

JD: Yes.Thank you both.

_____

CW: Alright. Well, we’re excited to have Jessie Santamaria Whittaker here with us. Best name ever.

SH: Hello, Jessie.

JSW: Thank you. It’s nice to be here.

CW: Ah, you play such an important role in our Substack chat, so we are so glad that we get to talk to you. So I am going to start out with the memories category, and you get to choose one, two, or three.

JSW: I’m probably gonna choose two every time ‘cause that’s my favorite number.

CW: Okay. Let’s just do it. Okay. Your question is: What’s the biggest sacrifice you’ve ever made?

JSW: I don’t- I’m not sure how to answer this one, to be honest. Are we thinking sacrifice in a good way or sacrifice in a bad way? [laughing]

CW: You decide.

SH: We’re not thinking at all. Only you think. [laughing]

CW: Yeah ... I don’t wanna put a label on it. You decide.

JSW: When I hear the word sacrifice, I do tend to think of a negative connotation.

CW: I can see that, yeah.

JSW: I think for a lot, yeah, for a lot of years, I sacrificed just myself, like who I am and honestly, the person I think God wants me to be because I was so concerned with being who everyone else said God wanted me to be.

CW: Mm.

JSW: Yeah. It’s really been, like, probably since COVID that I have really been like, no, I deserve to be myself and to feel joy and contentment and live authentically and wholeheartedly and do what I feel is right.

SH: Do you feel like this is, like, a natural progression as you’ve gotten older? Or have, you know, life circumstances shifted to help you come to this? Or, do you have any insight on why that’s changing for you?

JSW: Well, church has always been really, really hard for me. When I was very young, I had an experience where I realized that there was evil in the world. And that the evil was not this arbitrary, like, random, can’t see Satan, right? Like-

SH: Oh ...

JSW: ...that the evil was inflicted by other people. Like, I’ve always just felt very sensitive to other people’s pain, to their suffering. Because I was so consumed with trying to be who other people wanted me to be, I ended up in a lot of situations that weren’t healthy for myself. And- and so it just, like, came to a point where I finally was like, “This can’t be what endure to the end means.”

CW: Wow.

JSW: This can’t, like, this can’t be what God [00:20:00] wants for me. Like, my whole life I’ve heard, “God loves you. You have divine nature and individual worth,” and all of this stuff, but I came to this point where I was like, “I can’t even look in the mirror and say I love myself.” And that was a really scary and hard realization for me, because I was like, “If I can’t love myself, how am I supposed to love the people around me?”

CW: That’s insightful. Yeah.

JSW: Yeah, that was ... I think that was probably the breaking point where I, yeah, I just, I had to choose myself.

CW: That’s a hard-fought lesson, Jessi. Thank you for sharing that. Alright.

SH: All right. Insights. And just so you know, these are totally random. Do you still want number two?

JSW: Sure do.

CW: [laughing]

SH: Okay, here it comes. Is there anything you feel like you’re constantly chasing as an LDS woman?

JSW: So it probably was in November, December of this last year. I had, like, an ugly cry breakdown in my boys’ room. I was racked with grief because I had this realization working as a therapist that, like, at least in this lifetime, there is no, “I am fixed. I am healed.” And I don’t necessarily believe that I will ever reach that point, even if the eternities are real. And so, like, my whole life, I’ve been chasing this peace that I’ve been promised.

CW: Mm.

JSW: And this, like, Jesus can fix it. He can heal you. Everything is gonna be okay, and I don’t know that’s true anymore. Because even though I’m in a place where I understand myself better, I know how to manage my emotions and my thoughts and my beliefs better than ever before, I still struggle with everything I’ve always struggled with.

CW: You’re still you.

JSW: Yeah, just this idea that, like, like, why am I chasing...Well, and I think, too, the other part that goes with it is, I was chasing the idea of peace that has been taught, right?

CW: Yes.

JSW: And I had to recognize that peace actually looks and feels different than I thought it did.

SH: Mm.

CW: Nice.

SH: So maybe, I could be totally drawing the wrong conclusion here, but maybe you already had something, or you could access something that you didn’t realize was peace?

JSW: Yeah. For me, I actually find a great deal of peace and comfort in uncertainty. Which is, like, wild, because me a year ago saying that, I would’ve been like, “You are crazy.” Like, “There’s no way,” especially having OCD as, like, the”what if disease” is what I call it.

SH: Right.

JSW: It’s- doubt consumes me. And I’ve been running away from that for a long time, and when I finally stopped running from it and I turned around and I decided I was gonna embrace it, it was like, oh, life is still hard, but this actually feels manageable.

CW: Wow. That’s pretty amazing, Jessi. I think to go from, as your label, the “what if disease,” I like that, to accepting uncertainty. I mean, I’m sure it rears its ugly head still here and there, right? Because you’re still you.

JSW: Yep. 100%.

CW: But to have maybe the tools to probably work through that, that’s kind of big.

JSW: Yeah. It really has been life-changing.

CW: Wow.

SH: I’m also trying to imagine a church experience in which uncertainty can be peace. I’m pretty sure you’ve never had that lesson at church.

JSW: No, never.

SH: [laughing] I don’t think church gave that to you.

JSW: Not even once.

CW: Don’t hold your breath. [laughing]

SH: No, not gonna happen. But that’s, I love the way that you described that. My mom also, by the way, has always called it “the what ifs,” so.

CW: Really? Yeah.

SH: It’s a very apt description, in my experience.

CW: Yeah.

SH: Love it.

CW: All right, well let’s get another three cards. These are in beliefs, Jessi, so-

JSW: Okay.

CW: Susan’s favorite category.

SH: Okay. It’s not my favorite category.

CW: I know, I’m teasing you.

SH: You don’t have to answer it.

CW: You don’t have to answer it, so it’s your favorite now.

SH: Nope. [laughing]

CW: Okay, Miss Jessie, has your idea of what it means to be a good person changed?

JSW: I don’t know that it’s changed really. I think for a long time I thought that my idea of a good person was wrong because that’s not what other people said a good person was. But, like, if I really look back on my life and I really think about, this is what I see as a good person, and these are the people that stand out to me as Christ-like and truly living the gospel how I understand it- I think I’ve always known deep down what a good person is and how they show up in life. So I don’t necessarily think that how I see it has changed. I think I [00:25:00] just stopped telling myself that how I saw it was wrong.

CW: Mm. So maybe it was uncover...if it hasn’t really changed, then maybe you just

JSW: I actually like that you said uncovered, or you were going to say uncovered.

CW: Yeah.

JSW: I recently had this thought about bearing a testimony, right? And bear as in B-E-A-R. Like, that’s what we’re taught to do. We’re taught to bear it, and it’s like this image of strength and standing up. And then I thought, “What if I bared my testimony- ... as in B-A-R-E?”

SH: Right.

JSW: Instead of the other.

CW: Mm.

JSW: What if I uncovered it and I showed people how simple it could be and-

CW: Wow

JSW: ... how we don’t have to have the knowledge, the “I know” or the certainty or the whatever it is that’s put out there. Like, what if I bared it and I uncovered it and I let people see who I am? And I think that’s really been part of my journey is the uncovering and the, I’m not gonna hide anymore.

SH: And how’s that going for you? I mean, I say that in a kind of flip way, but I actually, like, mean it. Like, really... How’s that been?

JSW: I think it’s been good. Like I said, life isn’t magically easier now that I am living this way, but somehow I have found the people that I needed to find. I have found community. I have changed my core beliefs towards myself and recognize that I do have value, and that maybe there is, even if it’s only one person that I can help touch with my story or the things that I’ve learned or whatever I’ve been through, that will have been enough. Because even when I thought God had abandoned me and that I wasn’t worth it, like, I was always trying to do the next right thing, you know?

SH: Right.

JSW: And now I can look back and go, “You know, I don’t actually think God ever abandoned me. I think God was witnessing where I was and giving me-

CW: Wow

JSW: ... the space I needed to make my next decision.”

CW: That sounds so incredibly beautiful to go from a feeling of abandonment to God was witnessing.

Okay, Susan, I knew this was gonna be the problem doing these kinds of episodes because-

SH: I know, that is a really beautiful image.

CW: Well, I know, but I feel like we can’t- I’m gonna be thinking about it. We can’t leave this at a 15-minute interview.

SH: Right?

CW: And yet we’re going to have to, because now I wanna talk to Jessie for a full hour about that concept. Maybe we will another time.

SH: Cynthia, this whole thing is just, like, a thinly disguised way for us to find new podcast guests. Don’t know if you figured that out yet. Duh.

CW: Maybe [laughing]

CW: Oh my gosh. That’s a lot of... that’s hard. Again, that’s hard-fought wisdom, isn’t it?

JSW: Yeah.

CW: I bet.

SH: Yeah.

JSW: It’s... There’s been a lot of wrestling. Like, true wrestling and yet I wouldn’t change any of it despite the challenges, and, you know, the tears, and the hardships, and I wouldn’t change any of it. Because I truly believe it allows me to approach life and my career the way that I do. And witnessing when people need to be witnessed.

SH: Yeah. Those are some beautiful answers. Cynthia and I are gonna be talking about that after we hang up.

CW: Yeah.

SH: Thank you so much, Jessie.

JSW: Yeah. Of course. Thank you. I appreciate it so much.

_____

CW: Okay, we have Anne Pimentel with us. Welcome, Anne.

SH: Hi, Anne.

AP: Hi, thanks for having me.

CW: Ooh, we’re so glad to get to know you a little bit better. Okay, from our memories category, would you like one, two, or three?

AP: Let’s go with number one.

CW: What’s been your favorite decade of your life so far, and why?

AP: Oh, dear. I would have to say this decade that I am in right now.

CW: Mmm!

AP: And that is actually hard for me to say because I do feel like I am having a lot of ouchy moments right now and growing a lot and struggling with things. But the growth that I have had in this decade of life is above anything I’ve ever done before. And I feel like I’m more authentically me and more understanding of who I am and what I’m meant to do and how I’m supposed to move through this world [00:30:00] right now. And so I just feel so much more sure of myself than I ever have.

CW: Well, then I’m glad we asked the question the way we did, was “what’s been your favorite decade,” not easiest or [laughing]

AP: Yeah ...

CW: cause it doesn’t sound like-

AP: It’s definitely not this one if it was easiest.

CW: This one hasn’t been the cakewalk, huh?

AP: No. No, but that’s where the growth happens, and so that’s a good thing.

CW: Yeah. Dang it.

SH: Well, that’s really interesting to me that you’d say that because I don’t know if I... I don’t know where I wrote about it or talked about it. It might be in our book, but I talked about my 50s being my favorite decade. I think it was. I think it was in our book. Even though all of these really difficult and awful things happened in my 50s, if there was a decade I’d go back and do again, that’s really the only one I can think of that I would.

CW: Hm.

SH: And so I’ve thought a lot about why- how my favorite decade could be, like, the hardest- in some ways. The kind of hard that it was, I guess, and it’s because it was grow-y. It’s exactly what you said, so thank you. You just explained that to me. Can I ask just a follow-up?

AP: Yeah.

SH: What’s your least favorite decade of your life? [laughing]

AP: It’s hard because I wouldn’t say that any decade has complete bad aspects to it. You know? Everything has had bits of good and... I mean, I would say, like, as a teenager, I loved my friend aspect of my life. I played volleyball in high school. I had the best girlfriends. We just had a great time, but my relationship with my mom was strained sometimes, and I didn’t really wanna be around my family. And I was, I’m the youngest, and so my sisters had all moved away, and I was just with my parents and that was hard. But I wouldn’t say that decade was bad or my worst. It just was, I don’t know, I just kind of floated through it with a focus on friends... which is a good thing sometimes.

SH: Yeah.

CW: Plus, who wants to relive their teenage years anyway? Even if it was your favorite, as in the easiest, bestest, everything.

SH: You know what? If you’re someone who wants to relive their teenage years, I don’t like that person because it probably means ... they were like the homecoming queen [laughing] or they were like-

CW: Yes

SH: ... who knows what they were doing, but it didn’t resemble my life.

AP: Yeah. That was not my experience.

SH: All right, Anne, let’s talk about insights. Would you like question one, two, or three?

AP: Let’s go three this time.

SH: When have you had to forgive yourself for something?

AP: These are deep questions.

CW: Yes ma’am, they are.

AP: I can think of one big experience where I just did not handle the conversation well, and I went to an extreme emotional response mixed with anger, like sadness and anger mixed together. And I didn’t take what was being said, which was meant to be constructive criticism, and I didn’t take it that way, and I just got super offended and angry. Looking back on that situation, it was with a woman in my ward. I wish that I had just listened more and I didn’t have to take what she was saying because I don’t agree with what she was saying.

I didn’t have to take what she was saying personally... but I could have just let her say her piece and then moved on, and instead it turned into this big explosive experience. And so I’ve had to forgive myself for how I’ve interacted with her specifically. But I think that those human interactions get messy quick. They have that possibility. And I wanna do better with that, and so maybe that’s why I feel like I’ve had to forgive myself when I don’t do how I feel I should do.

CW: Okay, I have a follow-up because this sounds oh-so-familiar to myself. So was your overreaction because you felt like you were being misunderstood in that moment? She was characterizing you as A when you’re like, “No, I’m B,” or was it just the facts were wrong and you just needed to set her straight? I don’t know.

AP: A little of both.

CW: Okay.

AP: I feel like she definitely was not understanding where I was coming from, and I thought that we were on the same page in a lot of ways. And so to have her say what she did about me, which was also riddled with lies and kind of falsehoods that she had fabricated-

CW: Oh, yeah

AP: That didn’t feel good.

CW: And so looking back, you wish now you had just, “Okay,” she said her piece, shrug your shoulders, and walk away?

AP: Yeah. I understand now more that people can have their story that they’re telling themselves of a situation.

CW: Ah.

AP: And I didn’t need to carry the weight of what her story was.

SH: Wow.

AP: And so I think that is a skill that I’ve tried to learn, to be able to just have a person tell me what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling and I [00:35:00] can just-- I can hold that they’re thinking that, but I don’t have to have it weigh me down and affect me emotionally in the same way that I used to.

CW: That’s hard stuff, isn’t it? Dang it.

AP: It is. And I mean, I’m not good at it.

SH: But- I was gonna ask actually if you feel like as a result of that experience you got better at something. Did you learn something from it? I mean, you know, that has had an impact?

AP: Well, definitely in the way that I interact with my husband. Like, we will tell each other, “the story I’m telling myself is X.” And, you know, and that’s a good way to kinda diffuse a situation-

SH: Yeah.

AP: ... And not blame somebody. But what I’m telling myself is this, how are you seeing it? What is your story?

SH: Right. Right. I love that. That’s a good tool.

CW: I learned that from Brene Brown as well, and it’s so good, right? Yeah. “The story I’m telling myself” dot dot dot, so.

AP: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve heard her say that.

CW: Awesome. All right. From beliefs, would you like one, two, or three?

AP: Let’s do two.

CW: When do you feel closest to God or the divine?

AP: I am, so we’re all doing the Living School together.

SH: Right.

AP: And it’s a wonderful, expansive understanding of what spirituality is and who God is. And one of the things that I’ve loved is that they say that the Living School is your life. And I feel that that extends to being in God’s presence or feeling God, and that is just my life. I have goodness and godness in me, and everything I do, everything I see, everyone I interact with also is a creation of our heavenly parents. And so I can acknowledge and see and feel God in them. And so I don’t know that I need a specific set-aside time or place to feel God or to-

CW: Right

AP: ... you know, be in communion with God. But I’m working to just have that be a more constant experience or feeling in my life.

SH: Okay, can I ask you a follow-up question?

AP: Yes.

SH: I’m curious to know, I have moved in the same direction myself, so I really resonate with what you’re saying, and I’m curious to know, like, how much is this orientation toward God and toward experiencing God just sort of, part of who you are? Like, did Mor- would Mormonism have gotten you there or did it? Or is this something that represents a pretty big change in how you think about God and how you think about experiencing God and what that means?

AP: Yeah, I think this is a huge change. Like a left turn off the path of what-

SH: Okay

AP: …what I was taught in Mormonism.

CW: Okay.

AP: I feel like within Mormonism, you are taught, you know, go to the temple to be closest to God or go you know, when you’re fasting or when you’re praying or when you’re reading your scriptures and, you know, all of those things. And whether I do those things or not, I’ve realized that God is bigger than just that. And those things can have beautiful meaning for people and in different times in my life, but I don’t want to be confined to just that to connect with God.

SH: Right,

AP: And that feels very different from Mormonism.

CW: I really like that you use the word “confined” because that describes my situation exactly. I very much felt confined before, that, like, these were the acceptable ways to feel close to the divine, and now it looks much different, and it’s more accessible, so therefore it can happen all day every day

AP: Mhmm

CW: As opposed to what you’re describing, like these specific moments of, like, going to the temple or fasting. So, agreed, agreed.

AP: Yeah I feel that you know, when, like I said, we were told these specific things helped us to feel closer to God.

SH: Right.

AP: Now as I’m, like, as I think of who my heavenly parents are and what are their characteristics and, you know, what do they do? You know, one of them for me is that Heavenly Mother is a creator. And so when I am creating, when I’m doing things, whether that’s, you know, helping my kids with something or doing my beadwork or cooking or designing something or, you know, painting my house, whatever it is, I can feel-

CW: Yeah

AP: ... connected to her in that time and so there, it just is so much bigger and more enriching. I think that when people have an expansive faith experience, to the outside, to the maybe orthodox member, it looks like they’re falling away.

CW: Yeah.

AP: And people may think that about me right now as I’m expanding and changing how I approach church, but what they may not understand is that I have never felt closer to God- than I do right now.

CW: [whispering] Yeah.

AP: And my relationship is deeper and more enriching than it ever has been. And so we have this fear of changing how we do church, but I think that when you really dig deep into it, it is such a beautiful, deepening [00:40:00] experience.

CW: There was a video that came out recently that a lot of people have been sharing on social media, and I believe it’s the General Relief Society leaders, and they’re saying, ”life’s going to be really hard, but you can do it with Jesus in the church or without him out of the church.”

And I’m like, wow, that is so binary. And so just like what you just said, Anne, is that from the outside, people might think you’re, “falling away,” whereas you’ve just said you’ve never felt closer to God. And so I feel like if I could wave my magic wand, I would get rid of that binary-ness that we are so embedded with in our church that, you know, Jesus is in the church, and outside of the church you’re alone and you’re without divine help.

SH: Right.

CW: Ugh.

AP: Well, and I think that puts such a sad twist on, like, all religions if you’re thinking that people that are outside of our church-

SW: Right. Right

AP: ... can’t connect with God, can’t connect with Jesus, and are just lost souls. I think that we’re missing out on so much beauty that these people in other religions have and can teach us.

SH: Right. Well, I think it also is really limiting. I also love the word “confining” that you used. I think it’s so limiting. Like, I don’t remember whose quote it was. In one of our temple episodes, we read a quote about how “your time in the temple will be the pinnacle of your spiritual life” or something. It was a word like that. And I thought to myself, okay, that was just never going to be the case for me, which made me think, well, “I’m doing all of this wrong, obviously.”

CW: Right.

SH: I’m not experiencing what they said I would experience at the times that they think I should be experiencing it. And so, it would’ve been pretty easy for me to actually walk away from pursuing any kind of relationship with God because I had spent my life doing the things that I thought I was supposed to do to pursue that, and not gotten the results that I was promised.

And so therefore, why would I think there was gonna be any chance of me doing that, doing my own thing, right? Or going at it in different ways than they were saying. And so I feel like we really do with that kind of binary, we really do set people up to fail

AP: Mhmm

SH: In their spiritual lives if it doesn’t fit, you know, exactly within the confines of what they have defined as being the way to find God.

AP: Yeah. And it sets people up, like you’re saying, to fail even with if that means scrupulosity or,

SH: Exactly. There are all kinds of things failing can mean. It absolutely is a spectrum of disappointments and missed connections and all of those things.

AP: Yeah.

CW: Thank you, Anne.

SH: Thanks, Anne.

CW: This has been lovely.

AP: Yeah, this is fun.

_____

CW: All right, Susan. Jen Dilley, it was so lovely to have her back on the podcast. We sure loved her conversation, our conversation we had with her, I don’t know, was it a year or two ago? By, I don’t even remember how long it’s been since-

SH: I don’t either but I’ll link to it in the show notes, Cynthia.[laughing]

CW: Yes.

SH: So our listeners can find it there. Any opportunity to have a conversation with Jen is a good opportunity.

CW: Yeah.

SH: So let’s talk about what we talked about.

CW: Right. Well, what stood out to me with Jen that I wanted to chat about with you for a little bit is, and maybe just ‘cause it’s personal, so it’s just, like, she is craving our church leaders speaking up about the whole mess that the world is in right now.

SH: Mhmm.

CW: And I feel that deeply as well. And I don’t know, Susan, it just…tell me if this is fair or unfair. Like, the church seems to want to keep a particular segment of our church membership very happy. And so, is that why they’re not speaking out about the absolute dumpster fire that’s happening in our country right now?

I don’t know. I mean, here was kind of a parallel for me, was during the temple and priesthood ban on members of African descent, like, “white members need,” I’m putting that in air quotes there, they “needed segregation,” meaning racism…Their need for segregation was prioritized over blessings for Black members.

And so post-COVID, it feels like to me, we now prioritize…there is a segment of our church that is Christian nationalist. I don’t know. I don’t even wanna say we’re prioritizing, like, gosh, I’m so sorry I’m getting political here, but this is a moral issue, Susan. Yeah, there’s,

SH: There’s, agreed, but I think this is a complicated conversation, so yeah, continue and then I’m gonna weigh in.

CW: Well, just I mean, I [00:45:00] wanted to be specific about saying, like, this is a Christian nationalist problem of whom, of which we have a few, a lot, I don’t know, Christian nationalists in our church ‘cause I don’t even wanna say, like, “Republican” because I have so many good friends who are Republicans, and they are devastated at what is going on at their party’s embrace of this morally bankrupt person leading our country whose name I won’t even say. So I don’t know. I’m with Jen. She’s craving our leaders speaking up and so am I, and it’s just not happening.

SH: Yeah. No, I feel that deeply. I agree, and I was so glad that Jen brought it up so that we could bring it up. The reason that I was thinking it’s complicated is that my own idea about how I would respond to this actually sort of morphed while you were talking. And so I’m gonna say more about that, because when you put it in the context of the priesthood ban and you were saying they were prioritizing white members’ “need” for segregation- I really wish that I knew if it wasn’t just some people in high leadership prioritizing their own racism.

CW: Ohh.

SH: If you see what I’m saying. Maybe they weren’t even thinking about the effect on members because it was so deeply ingrained for them-

CW: Yeah

SH: …that they didn’t even have to think that far out.

CW: Yeah.

SH: And then it gets complicated to me when you move that forward, gosh, however many years are we talking? 50 years later, and we have COVID come along and we see this, you know, you used one to give context to the other. And the thing is, that’s a case where I think we had a doctor at the head of the church, so I think he was going to prioritize his medical responsibility that he felt toward people in that situation. I think that it never occurred to many people, and I mean, I say that because it honestly never occurred to me that this health crisis would break down along political lines-

CW: Right

SH: ... to the degree that it did. And so I’m not sure that they really thought about that. And so they spoke out, and then it was kind of, I was gonna say a fiasco because it didn’t go well for them, but I’m not sure even how they perceived that or how most members perceived it. I just know I’d never seen anything like it in my lifetime...the kind of backlash that they received for that.

And so that brings us forward to what’s going on in the country today where some religious leaders are speaking out. Ours are not, and yet we have listeners who have pointed out to us, we just had a whole general conference where they did nothing but speak out about this, right? So members are hearing messages differently, perceiving messages differently.

You and I and Jen feel like they’re not saying the things that we want them to be saying. I think some members feel like they are handling this in the way that they would want and expect them to. And I just feel like that whole experience around COVID totally muddied the water-

CW: 100%

SH: ... for leaders about what they should, the way that they should handle this. That’s just what I think, from the cheap seats.

CW: Well, from the cheap seats, it breaks my heart that we can’t just do what is right and let the consequence follow.

SH: 100% agree.

SH: ‘Cause I have no doubt that if the church spoke out about what’s going on right now, that it would really tick off a huge segment. And you know what? Too bad.

SH: Agree.

CW: Too bad.

SH: And then this gets to a lot of underlying questions, like what’s really important? What do they perceive as their job as leaders of the church?

CW: Right.

SH: Is that to offer pastoral care to the members? Is that to offer moral guidance to the world, like to serve as a prophetic beacon, you know, to the world on moral questions? And so I think it’s a pretty complicated soup actually that they’re trying to wade through in making these decisions. But I guess for me, in my heart, I wish that there was really only one question, and that is, “what would Jesus want us to say in this moment?”

CW: Nice. Yeah. I’m with you.

SH: Also, I’m really glad I’m not a leader. I think that about once a day in my life. I think if there was nothing-

CW: That’s really what you think?

SH: Oh, I think it all the time. That I do not wanna be a leader of this church.

CW: I think all the time, if I were queen for a day, oh no no no, Susan. You need to turn that frown upside down and be like, “If I were queen for a day, the world would be perfect.” [laughing]

SH: Oh, well I mean, I’m not saying that I don’t think my ideas are better than everyone else’s. Of course I do, Cynthia. [laughing]

CW: Okay. Okay. Whew.

SH: That’s why I have a podcast. Every podcaster thinks their ideas are better-

CW: Thank goodness

SH: ... than everyone else’s. It’s not that. I just wouldn’t want to have to be, I wouldn’t wanna have to be wading through the morass that I feel like they are and trying to make these decisions. I’m old. I’m tired. I don’t know. I don’t know what I would, I mean, I [00:50:00] understand some of the political, and I don’t mean that in like the two-party United States way. I mean political in the larger sort of meaning, the political decisions that they have to make.

But Jesus didn’t care about that. Jesus did not he didn’t care about the political considerations of the words that rolled out of his mouth, clearly-

CW: Thank goodness ...

SH: …as I perceive him anyway.

CW: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I have one more thing to say about our conversation with Jen Dilley, and it’ll take me a minute to make my point. I promise I’ll get there. But we had a recent episode with a voicemail at the end where she was pontificating that she had a conversation with her Relief Society president, and the Relief Society president was worried with the recent changes that women could be Sunday school presidents now, that men would no longer feel needed.

SH: Mhmm.

CW: And I’m just thinking, why do we always center men? Is that why, getting back to Jen’s conversation, is that why we center Heavenly Father only? Because Susan, you said, “it has not served us well on any level.” I believe that’s exactly what you said in the conversation.

SH: Yes, that sounds like me. [laughing]

CW: Okay, but I’m gonna also... I’m gonna quote another Hinckley. I’m gonna quote your mama.

SH: Okay. You’ve told me before that when your mom might hear, I don’t know, people being a little ridiculous, she says-

SH: Oh, no. It’s just my dad

CW: ... oh. It’s if my mom hears my dad, Cynthia. [laughing]

CW: Oh, it’s when your mom-

SH: Whatever my dad says

CW: Then your mom likes to add a PS, and she says, “In your opinion.” [laughing]

SH: Right, “In your opinion.”

CW: It’s so good.

SH: And she often emphasizes it with her finger. “In your opinion.”

CW: She’s wagging her finger as she says, “In your opinion,” right? Well, because I do think it served a purpose. Or I’m not sure if I’m talking just about the Sunday school presidency or if I’m just talking about God now or maybe both, but I think it served a purpose to center men, to center God as only male.

I mean, do we even acknowledge that Heavenly Mother is a god? Like, have we actually? We just say she’s married to Heavenly Father- I don’t even know actually what we say. We acknowledge we have a Heavenly Mother, but I don’t-

SH: We have a Heavenly Mother. But that’s it. I think that’s what we say. Yeah, I think that’s the limit of what we say, really, as I think about it. Okay. I am going to say that I care about specific words, and I said, “it has not served us well.” And so I think serving a purpose, which is the way that you framed it- is not the same as serving us well.

CW: Correct.

SH: And that is also in my opinion, Cynthia.

CW: In your opinion. I should just start adding that to everything I say.

SH: I should just start adding that to everything I say. But what I mean by that, it hasn’t served us well to center men, is that I don’t believe it has been to the betterment of any segment in our church. I mean, certainly not women. That we, that’s what this whole podcast is about. Not young women or girls, but also not men, young men, or boys.

CW: For sure.

SH: ... because yeah, when females are never centered, even and actually maybe especially is the right word in divinity, so going back to the idea of Heavenly Mother, then everyone’s vision is skewed. We’re looking through one lens, right? And that affects not only the female experience, but it spills over onto gender roles generally as they’re perceived by both sexes-

CW: Mhmm.

SH: By members of our church. And so then that, as we’ve talked about 1,000 times, creates this widening disconnect with what many of us, and definitely the younger generations in the church are seeing and experiencing in the larger world. It’s like the chasm just kind of keeps getting bigger around that.

And so I feel like we’ve done a disservice across many generations with this, but now we’re continuing to actively perpetuate that disservice into the future on our youth and children by continuing to not center women ever, really.

CW: Mic drop.

SH: Yeah. But I think that a lot of members would say, “Oh, no, women are definitely centered because they’re revered and loved” and “we love the women, Cynthia. We love the women.”

CW: We love the women. Well, and we all have said a million times, “Keep your patronizing pedestal and give me equality instead.” But anyway- moving on. What do you wanna say about Jen’s, our conversation with Jen before we move on?

SH: There was a sentence in our conversation with Jen, not a question I guess, that I have not stopped thinking about, and that was-

CW: Oh, okay

SH: …”do you want to be in a church where you have zero expectations?”

CW: [laughing]

SH: I mean, that just landed with a thud, and it’s just, like, still sitting in the middle of my mental room. And I think the reason is because giving up all expectations is really kind of foundational, I guess, to how I’ve made peace with a lot of things in the church.

CW: Okay, so you’re saying that resonates with [00:55:00] you. You have given up all expectations-

SH: I have. I had to. I had to.

CW: Okay, go on.

SH: I can’t go to church on Sunday and have a lot of expectations for things that are just going to disappoint me. That just does not work for me. That does not serve me. So giving those away was actually pretty easy for me.

But Jen’s question made me really pause and wonder, like, if we can’t have expectations for the people that we consider to be moral leaders, I mean, talking about our leadership- if we can’t have expectations of them, then what is the point of having moral leaders?

CW: Mhmm [snickers]

SH: Doesn’t that position come with inherent expectations? And so to give all of those away, well, let me just say I’m really glad to have the opportunity to reexamine that tactic because it’s worked for me personally on a lot of levels, but I feel like it’s deeply flawed on some larger levels, and so I gotta think more about that for me.

CW: Okay, so in a way, Jen, when she said that line, held up a mirror to you, and you-

SH: Absolutely. Yes.

CW: And you didn’t like what you saw looking back.

SH: 100%. And it’s not necessarily that I didn’t like what I saw. It’s the first time I had questioned that. I hadn’t really thought about, okay, on the flip side, this has another effect, and so Jen caused me to confront that. There’s one more thing I wanted to visit, just one tiny thought I wanted to visit from our conversation with Jen before we move on, and that is the idea of sacred versus secret.

CW: [laughing] I’m sorry, share it.

SH: Can we just talk about that for a minute?

CW: Okay, go ahead.

SH: I feel like so many secrets hide behind the word sacred in our church. It’s like the perfect disguise for things because no one dares to question something if you slap the label “sacred.” It’s like it’s too sacred to talk about. It’s a word that grants total immunity among church members, I feel like.

CW: I total- can I bring up your visual of the velvet ropes? Like I think when we call something-

SH: Yeah, it’s the ultimate velvet rope.

CW: Yeah ... yeah when we call something sacred, we put it behind a velvet rope. “Do not cross this rope. Do not touch it. Stay behind it.”

SH: Yeah. I was thinking about this because we had, we’ve had, I’ve noticed in our Substack chat and other places online that there have been a portion of members whose minds have recently been blown by a video about this, that was talking about the second anointing. Do you know what I’m referring to?

CW: Mhmm.

SH: Okay. So they’re talking, suddenly they’re talking about the second anointing, which is something that I think a lot of members knew or have known nothing about. I mean, I, we still don’t know very much about it at all because it’s too sacred, Cynthia. It’s Holy of Holies, literally, so sacred. [laughing] It’s just so sacred that it’s never been talked about among or to the general membership of the church. Well, like, to me, that looks an awful lot like a secret practice.

CW: Yeah.

SH: It may or may not be sacred. Whatever, you know, maybe it is. I can’t judge that. It can’t be sacred to me because I know nothing about it.

CW: Right.

SH: But it is definitely secret.

CW: Good point.

SH: And I feel like with Heavenly Mother, this is just the obfuscation that never ends. She’s too sacred to talk about, and therefore we’re not even gonna ask for further light and knowledge on this subject, right? Because it’s arrogant of us to ask-

CW: That’s right

SH: …about something that’s obviously- Arrogance is the word. ... So sacred that we have very little information about it.

CW: Ah.

SH: Well, I’m gonna call BS on that whole sacred versus secret thing. I think things can be both sacred and secret, but the fact that something is sacred is not a justification for keeping it secret.

CW: Well said.

_____

Alright. Let’s talk for a few minutes about what we learned from Jessie.

SH: I just love Jessie. Can I just say that?

CW: Love, love Jessie. Please, Jessie, come back on. We will contact you in the fall ‘cause I’ll tell you why in a minute, but go ahead.

SH: I was thinking the first question that we asked Jessie was about sacrifice, right? And I was just thinking when I listened to her talk that I’m guessing that there would be a pretty bright line in our church right down the middle of the pews between women who think that sacrifice comes with negative connotations, which I think is what she said about how she felt about it, versus women who think that sacrifice is virtuous.

And if you went a little deeper on that question and you asked how many women feel like they have sacrificed their self as a result of being Latter-day Saint- because that’s what Jessie talked about. She’s like, “I had sacrificed who I am,” so you know, she didn’t really know herself. I mean, I, this was so resonant to me because this was so my experience.

CW: Yeah.

SH: This was so my [01:00:00] experience in the church of just having, trying to be two people because I had the person that I knew I was, but then also my church self. And so I-

CW: Wow

SH:... sacrificed that first one in order to be able to fit in the second one, and that one always had to get privileged. And so I think things would get very uncomfortable if you started really poking around a Relief Society room with that question. ‘Cause I think a lot of women would never have identified that they had engaged in that kind of self-silencing. Anyway, I’m just really glad that Jessie brought it up, and glad that she has, you know, seen that for what it is and been able to, I guess, claw that sacrifice back for herself in the ways that I have also.

CW: Yeah. Good stuff. Well, I have a couple things. I have a lot of things, actually, more than a couple things I’ve wanted to talk about as a result of our conversation with Jessie. But we’re short on time, so I’m just gonna make one point, which is, oh my gosh, this so completely resonated with me. I mean, I would love to explore the idea more, maybe next season, Susan, maybe with Jessie, that Jesus doesn’t fix everything. Because like Jessie, that is what I was taught, was that Jesus heals your wounds he will make it all better. He will dry every tear, and yet that hasn’t been the case for me either.

And so when Jessie said, like, she had this ugly cry moment in her son’s bedroom, realizing in this life she, there is no, “I am fixed.” That just really, really touched me, and I don’t even know that I have been brave enough to articulate, ‘cause I don’t know that I’m ready to articulate how I feel about Jesus fixing everything, like Jesus being the Savior.

I mean, the only thing I’ve alluded to before on the pod is saying I have, “I feel solidarity when I’m in suffering.” But I think I’ve been careful about not saying, like, I felt healed-

SH: Right, right

CW: … through the atonement. I have more to say another time, but I was just really glad that she brought that up. I thought it was really brave.

SH: It was so brave. And what really struck me about that story was she went one step further and said she didn’t think she would ever reach that point where-

CW: Yes

SH: … She was healed. You know, even if, I think the phrase was quote, “The eternities are real,” right?

CW: Yes.

SH: I resonated with that so deeply as well.

CW: I knew you would.

SH: Yeah, because, well, you’ve heard me say before, I wouldn’t know what it would look like to be a perfected me in the eternities. What, who even is that? Why do I wanna be that person? But so giving that away, that idea of things being fixed has actually brought me peace.

But it also occurred to me that this is a problem in wider Christianity generally, this idea that Jesus fixes everything, and what you do with that in a world where clearly nothing is fixed.

CW: Okay. I was gonna skip the part about uncertainty when Jessie talked about it, but it’s in our title, so I just wanna nod to it once again. I think even in a conversation talking about peace and comfort, even uncertainty comes into that convo. So I love when she said, like, doubt used to consume her, but now she felt a lot of peace in that uncertainty, and I was like yes yes yes.

SH: I never wanna skip talking about uncertainty because I think it’s the key to so many things about this life. I’m reading right now Pema Chödrön’s book, “Comfortable With Uncertainty,” which is one of her most foundational books. I don’t know how I hadn’t read it yet.

CW: I haven’t either.

SH: But she poses the question at the beginning of that book, “Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?” Well, I mean, I was choosing to live and die in fear for about, you know, 50 years. But I hadn’t really ever considered that the expectation that Jesus would fix everything might be a way of cushioning ourselves from relating to life directly.

CW: Wow.

SH: It’s like something that we do instead of growing up and getting comfortable in the reality of life. And I’m just gonna share one quick quote from the book with you where she says, “We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment over and over again.” And this is me redirecting myself to presence 7,000 times a day right now, and it never sticks. But I’m gonna keep doing it.

CW: Beautiful.

SH: Because I do think that’s where the peace is.

_____

CW: Alright. Anne Pimentel has been on the pod a couple of times, so we will link to her episodes as well. But what do you wanna say about Miss Anne? Anne with an E coming back on.

SH: Anne with an E. Okay, I love Anne’s take on things, too. Cynthia, our listeners are so [01:05:00] smart. I’m not sure why we have the podcast, because every time we have a guest on and I hear them speak, I’m like, “Dang it. Why didn’t I ever think of that?” But I loved where she was talking about forgiving herself in a situation that she’d been through, and she framed it with this sentence: “I didn’t need to carry the weight of what her story about the situation was.”

CW: Mm.

SH: And I love that line so much because carrying the weight of other people’s stories about things, carrying the weight of the story that the church was telling me about things, and carrying the weight to be you know, fully honest, carrying the weight of my own story that I have been telling myself about things, like, that is a lot of weight.

And when you strip story away from that, when story becomes the launching pad, right, like we said in an earlier episode this season, when story becomes the launching pad instead of the landing place man, you just shed a lot of dead weight.

CW: Yeah. Yeah, I loved when she talked about, you know, “The story I’m telling myself is,” and my antenna immediately went up, Brene Brown-

SH: Right, right

CW: …because that’s where I read it in, I don’t know if that’s where Anne read it, but I read it in Brene Brown’s book, Rising Strong. And it’s interesting because hearing Anne say, like she does that with her husband now, “The story I’m telling myself is da da da,” I’m like, okay, why haven’t I done that with my husband?

Like, I only say it, like internally to myself, like when I start- ... you know, making up all these ways of, “You hurt me, and this is what they were trying, you know, they meant to hurt me,” you know? I only tell that to myself, but I’m gonna actually have a conversation with my husband, and I’m gonna say, “I’m going to start saying this now,” ‘cause I think Anne is so wise to approach difficult conversations with her husband by saying, you know, “The story I’m telling myself is,” which, you know, is basically saying, my perspective on things is, or how I absorbed it is, or whatever.

So, thank you, Anne. I’m going to incorporate that as well. But I just wanted to give a nod to Brene Brown. In an interview, or in an article she wrote for Oprah Magazine about that, she said, her husband Steve, one day he opened the refrigerator and he sighed and he said, “We have no groceries, not even lunch meat.”

And this is a direct quote from Brene. She said, “I shot back, ‘I’m doing the best I can. You can shop, too.’ ‘I know,’ he said in a measured tone. ‘I do it every week. What’s going on?’” She says, “I knew exactly what was going on. I had turned his comment into a story about how I’m a disorganized, unreliable partner and mother.

I apologized and started my next sentence with the phrase that’s become a lifesaver in my marriage, parenting, and professional life. ‘The story I’m making up is that you were blaming me for not having groceries, that I was screwing up.’” Steve said, “No, I was gonna shop yesterday, but I didn’t have time. I’m not blaming you, I’m hungry.”

I’m gonna link to the full article because every sentence of that article is unbelievable. But I am committing to you right now, Susan, I am actually going to start saying it out loud to the people I love, not just inside my own head.

SH: I am willing to give that a shot also. And so yeah, I’ll check in with you and see how this goes. I’m really interested to try it, and the thing that I love the most about the way Brené Brown phrases it in that quote is that she says, “The story I’m making up.”

CW: Yes.

SH: Right? Because oh man, that is me making up this narration all the time-

CW: Sure

SH: ... about everything in the world, right?

CW: We all do.

SH: But it’s but made up. It’s made up, Cynthia. It’s wholly made up. Oh, gosh. The thing that I was thinking about is that I love that Anne said, and maybe it’s because it’s personal. She mentioned we’re all doing The Living School, and that their motto is kind of the curriculum of “The Living School is your life”. But she used it to frame the sort of journey to, I guess, maybe rediscovering God or how you encounter God, changing your expectations maybe about how you encounter God, that actually your whole life is the-

CW: Yes

SH: …is the means for that. Yes. Yeah. Not just the “spiritual things” that you do or, you know, religious practices that you engage in, and I just loved her whole expansive take on that.

CW: I think everything changes when you realize the curriculum for everything that’s meaningful in your life is simply your-

SH: Your life.

CW: … life. You know, ‘cause Anne talked about, you know, finding God in the everyday moments as opposed to just in the sacred spaces that our church leaders tell us are, “These are the sacred spaces. This is where you will feel closest to God.” And it’s like, well, maybe for some, but we need to be open to when that’s not working, figuring out what will work for [01:10:00] us. And personally, the curriculum of my life is where I have found sacredness and holiness, just the everyday.

SH: I mean, yes, and just hearing you say that made me think the curriculum of your life is also what has blown the lid off everything.

CW: Yes.

SH: And so our life is a pretty good teacher and a pretty good workshop-

CW: Yes

SH: … and a pretty good laboratory if we allow it. It’s a pretty good curriculum if we allow it to be so. But was there anything in your life as a Latter-day Saint that made you believe that your life was really the place where all of this was supposed to be worked out? That it was, like, the ultimate vehicle for you? Like, I felt like the church was supposed to be the ultimate vehicle for what I learned how to be with God.

CW: Right. I think it’s pretty explicit. Yeah. I think so.

SH: Well, it changes everything-

CW: It changes everything when your life becomes the curriculum for all of the beautiful, sacred moments that there are, that abound.

SH: I cannot thank these women enough, as always, Cynthia.

CW: Can’t thank them enough. This was lovely. Thanks for showing up and contemplating a few things with me, Susan.

SH: Absolutely, my pleasure.

_____

Voicemail 1: Hey, Cynthia and Susan. I’m just listening to episode 156, “What About Consent?” And you guys talk a lot about agency, and that’s something that I was really wrapped up with in my upbringing in the church. But in my returning to activity and my personal study of the doctrine, separate from opinion of leaders or members, I understand agency to be simply our ability to choose.

I don’t know why culturally we’ve conflated it into something larger than that, but in everything scripturally and doctrinally that I can find, that’s simply what it is. I think people conflate it too often with the concept of free will, which is simply meaning that we have lives that are not predetermined or predestined to be or end a certain way.

And I think that free will and our ability to choose or agency go hand-in-hand and are essential in the plan of salvation, and nothing in the plan of salvation works if we do not simply have the ability to choose and free will. And I think that LDS members need to start to understand that is the doctrine, not this weird cultural odd understanding that we’ve come to gain of agency.

_____

Voicemail 2: Hello Cynthia and Susan. I just listened to your episode 258, your rage cast potpourri. I have not been practicing for about 12 years, for a while now, but I love listening to your podcast because most of my family, the majority of my family are still active, so I like to kind of keep a pulse on what’s going on.

And also, honestly, I really miss going to church. There are so many things I have issues with, and so it would be hard for me to go back to church, but I do miss church, and so I appreciate your guys’ podcast ‘cause it kind of gives me the churchy vibe without being too crazy. Anyway, so very much appreciate you guys.

With regards to that episode specifically speaking to the comments from men about women and the priesthood, what I don’t understand is why men aren’t more insulted by the thought that they are so unspecial and they’re such scoundrels and they have nothing to offer the world, and so they have to be given the priesthood in order to be as good as women.

Like, why are men okay with that? Why aren’t they insulted by that idea? I don’t know. It’s so bizarre to me. Thank you so much for all you do. Bye.

_____

CW: Susan, I just realized my window’s open a little and I heard an airplane. You probably did too. Let me close it. Sorry. I’m the weak link today.

SH: There’s your blooper for the end of this call.

CW: There’s my blooper. And the wind chimes too. Serenity now. Hit the wind chimes. Serenity now. Okay. Sorry, let me calm down. All right.

_____

SH: So, like you just take all the time you need.

CW: Yep.

JD: You both are so amazing. That’s incredible.

CW: No, I got Hershey Kisses here. I’m fine, so. Okay.

_____

SH: Let me just get my head together. I was just thinking, “What’s wrong with this?” Okay. Let me get my head together here.

_____

CW: Okay, I’m gonna skip that next section.

SH: Are you? Okay, but uncertainty is in the title. Oh, damn it. We can’t skip that. We could skip the other one, but we can’t skip that one. Oh, shoot. [01:15:00]

CW: What was I thinking? You’re right. Okay. All right. Let me get us there.

CW: Thanks. All right. Let’s hit stop.

_____

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