ALSSI Newsletter
November 2024
Hello!
Here in the U.S., it feels like we’re descending into cozy-season at breakneck speed! Hope this newsletter finds you warm and well, wherever you are. Let’s start with a message from Susan:
I was talking to a friend this morning who is asking herself
all the questions—the ones so many of us have asked ourselves—about what/how/when to teach her children in the context of all-things-Church. As always, I had no particular wisdom to offer. Some things I think I did right, because I managed to raise nuanced thinkers who didn’t haul a lot of church baggage into adulthood with them. They continue to recognize the good parts, it’s just that the good parts didn’t prove to be quite good enough.
When it comes to raising kids, I’m the first to say I don’t know the best way, in a church or out of it. I don’t feel too bad about that, because I’m not sure any generation in human history has gotten it right yet. We love our kids as individuals, and we do the best we can with our love—in my mind, that’s Parenting 101. The whole syllabus.
I’m sure there are many things I could have done better; for instance, as you may have heard me say before, I didn’t manage to pass god along to them. What I mean is, I’m not sure I instilled the kind of durable faith or hope rooted in The Larger Thing that I’ve found in my empty nest years. Why does that matter to me? Because my faith, hope, and love are the 3 things I seem to grab first when my life feels like it might burn down … which threatens more often and in more ways than I ever expected it would. It turns out that having a God—which didn’t used to matter much to me—has mattered a lot.
But who has time, when you’re driving to swim practice 6 days/wk and staffing YW camp and making sure the homework and practicing get done, to think about (let alone find) anything larger? So maybe I should be more specific: I didn’t pass heavenly father on to them. I didn’t give them my church or my church’s god in any kind of lasting way, because I simply didn’t realize the two could be untangled. Or, as it turned out for me, would have to be. Yes, that god turned out to be too small, but at least it was a placeholder. One I’m afraid might be missing from their copy of life’s book, if you see what I mean. But the heavenly father I’d been taught about and spoken to and reached for all my life—with pretty mixed results—was all I had at the time, so my ability to grab any better tool in my kit was necessarily limited.
If I had it to do over, I like to think I’d teach them more explicitly how they could keep the best parts and grow the rest for themselves. How their spiritual lives would always be their own, regardless of where Sunday morning found them. But when I became a mother at 19, what did I know about anything? It mostly felt like blindfolded pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey from the day they were born until they moved out. True story.
If I were to ask them now, my daughters might assure me they do indeed have their own version of The Larger Thing, they’re just not as loud about it as I am. And they’re also really busy with all that (m)other stuff.
In Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, she says:
"If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that ... coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know?"
We used to debrief and dismantle Everything We Heard But Didn’t Quite Believe at Church at our Sunday dinner table. I’d keep those conversations, if I had it to do again, but I’d allow a lot more space for asking big questions. At the time, I didn’t know I was allowed to ask any myself. How were my children supposed to have learned it?
Ten things I wish someone had taught me as a young Mormon girl:
1) That I was allowed to ask God anything I wanted or needed to ask.
2) That I was allowed to find God anywhere I might.
3) That my connection with God didn't need to look or feel like anyone else's, because it was 100% mine.
4) That God is bigger than anything I would hear at church, and didn't really require any specific belief. Just my love.
5) That my hope would prove a much more reliable life raft than my "worthiness."
6) That grace applied even to me, so I didn't need to worry so much. About everything.
7) That faith could be as simple as getting up in the morning.
8) That prayer was a language only I could speak, so it didn’t really matter whether anyone else understood or approved of it.
9) That the actual default is abundance, not scarcity! So I never needed to worry about Enough, or More, or Working Harder—or anything, really. Except maybe Noticing.
10) That this sh!+ is complicated, and life burns down—maybe repeatedly—but also has this uncanny way of rebuilding itself while we’re sitting in the ashes.
Unfortunately, these were not the lessons that spoke loudest to me at church, nor in my childhood home. Maybe I wouldn't have listened anyway—maybe these kinds of truths have to be learned on one's own, because it's the only way to really internalize them. All I know is, at 61 I’m thankful for all of it, my mistakes and my growth. I see how the larger fruit is good, even when individual bites aren’t. Every day I wake up, I try to feel gratitude for simply having the opportunity to participate in the Great Human Experiment Upon the Word for a little longer. It’s been some ride so far—the scenery is breathtaking, in every sense. If my beloved girls can also look back on their own whole mess someday and see love and gratitude glinting clearly from the rubble, I’ll feel like I got the bottom-line right.
—Susan
Calendar:
December’s busy (there’s a Duh headline!) so please make a note of whatever you don’t want to miss! After the 20th, we’ll all take the last two weeks of the year off to catch our collective breath. Whew.
“I stand at the window looking out, trying to remember the truths that Nature always brings home. That what lies before me is not all there is. That time is ever passing, and not only when I notice. That strife and pain are no more unexpected than pleasure and joy. That merely by breathing I belong to the eternal. I watch the bald cardinals feeding their fledglings, and I know they feel awful. I remind myself of what I cannot remind them—that raggedness is just the first step toward a new season of flight.”
—Margaret Renkl
from The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
Other reminders—
Thanks to the generosity of our friend, ALSSI listener Rich Corbridge (whom we truly can’t thank enough!) our website update is complete, and everything is now in one place. The address is the same, the destination has changed. We hope you’re finding it easy to navigate. Having one site has definitely simplified things on our end.
If you haven’t downloaded the Substack app yet, here’s a shout-out for it. You’ll see new ALSSI posts in your feed, and always have our chat at your fingertips! Note: If you can’t find our homepage/menu via the app (which defaults to our most recent post), you can access it through your browser.
If end of year giving is in your plans, we’d be thrilled to have your support! Even the smallest amount helps us keep the podcast ad-free, pay our bills, and give our team members a little fun money every month to thank them for their hard work. You’ll see “donate” in the website menu—click it (or click here) to find options for PayPal or Venmo. As always, your contribution is tax deductible!
There are Live Chats, and now there are LIVE-Live Chats!
In November we held our first Zoom Friday Live Chat. Paid subscribers can click on the regular Friday chat to find the link at the normal time, 10:00 am Mountain. These chats last one hour. We had a great discussion last week, and look forward to many more in the future! You can join us next on Friday, December 6. Hope to see you there!
This is the essential questioning we must bring to any belief system: Can it transform our minds? Can it help reshape our pain into wisdom and love? When we grapple with the truth of our experience in relationship to our beliefs, we have the chance to deepen our faith. Does our experience match the belief system or not? If not, we can let the belief go. If it does, we can trust it as our own.
—Sharon Salzberg
from Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience
In other news—
An update from Exponent II:
“Exponent II has published the multitudes of feminist experiences in their magazine since 1974 — making Exponent II the longest-running Mormon feminist platform. They have excelled in facilitating nuanced conversations by prioritizing community over ideological purity and providing opportunities to listen deeply to one another. Past themes include holy places, the art of loss, friendship and environmentalism.
“The next issue of Exponent II asks the question: What would you say if you said the quiet thing out loud? This Winter 2025 issue is the annual contest issue with prizes for the best writing and artwork — and Cynthia and Susan, the hosts of the At Last She Said It podcast, will be the contest judges. Now is the time to subscribe (or gift a subscription as a holiday present) if you want to receive this issue as part of a $35 annual print subscription or $12 annual digital subscription. The subscription deadline to receive this issue is January 15, 2025. Stay tuned for our cover reveal and launch party for this issue!”
Book Club—
Delayed, but not forgotten! Our next At Last She Read It meeting will take place January 16, 2025 at 7:00 pm Mountain. Watch for registration details on our website and social media, coming soon! Here’s what we’ll be discussing, in case you’re looking for a book to curl up with over the holidays:
Speaking of books … voila!
Can we get a drumroll? Signature Books has finalized our cover design. You’re the third person to get to see it, but only because we were first, of course!
We’ve still working like crazy, with a publication target date of Mother’s Day 2025. More info to come! (ad nauseum, probably—sorry/not sorry)
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
Cake for breakfast? Pretty much. But that’s okay, because it’ll be pie for dessert! Variety is an important part of a healthy diet. —Susan
1 2/3 c flour
1 c sugar
1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 cup plain pumpkin (1/2 can)
1/2 c butter, melted
1 c chocolate chips
Heat oven to 350°. Mix dry ingredients in large bowl. Break eggs in another bowl; add pumpkin and butter, whisking until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour over dry ingredients and fold in with rubber spatula just until moistened. Scoop batter evenly into greased muffin cups. Bake 20-25 minutes, or until puffed and springy to the touch. Cool on wire rack.
See you everywhere!
We hope you’re enjoying our new episodes as much as we’re enjoying recording them! ‘Tis the season of gratitude, and we’ve got a whole lot. Thanks for listening, reading, and supporting our podcast and community. Wishing you and yours the very best.
Love,
Cynthia, Susan,
and the ALSSI Team
@Susan, thank you for that list. It's just what I didn't know I was looking for.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about raising kids and The List. I made a list of things I wish I had been taught too and while there are some other pieces like boundaries and autonomy a lot of your items were similar to mine (worded more eloquently of course). As far as being a parent and teaching kids about God, isn’t “The Larger Thing” sometimes just teaching them to trust the “God” part of themselves that’s within them, within all of us? It sounds like you did that admirably and I always tell people that I am proud of my children because they are good humans, they see good in others, and isn’t that a divine power anyway? Thanks for all your thoughts and I’m so proud of you and Cynthia on the book!