At Last She Said It Newsletter
September 2022
Hi, friends! Thanks for allowing us a place in your inbox. We know there’s a lot vying for your attention, so we feel honored any time you’re reading or listening to ALSSI. September’s message comes from Cynthia:
The one question we get private messaged over and over on our social media is “how do you stay?” It’s impossible for us to give each woman a heartfelt reply every time we receive this message. In many ways, that question is the entire point of our podcast—talking about how we navigate our journey in the church despite knowing all the tough stuff. So we usually point them towards the actual podcast! (Most specifically, episode 38, 64, and now episode 104.)
Brian McClaren has become one of Susan’s and my favorite nuanced Christian thinkers. With books like Faith After Doubt, and Do I Stay Christian?, it’s obvious what he writes about. In one of his recent devotionals he wrote the following words which I have mixed with my own:
“I don’t have to choose between staying Christian compliantly or leaving Christianity defiantly. I can stay defiantly. I can intentionally, consciously, resolutely refuse to leave and I can refuse to comply with the status quo. I choose to occupy Christianity <in the Latter Day Saint tradition> with a different way of being Christian,” always with my focus on Jesus, to help the marginalized, to speak for women’s equality, and LGBTQ+ issues, while still worshiping with all my fellow saints.
I choose to “remain paradoxically present. I neither minimize the faults nor do I hate the church for its faults.” It’s messy, messy, messy. I’m okay with that now but for years I felt all those swirly emotions like so many others just beginning what we might call a faith journey. Learning to navigate those feelings and to hold paradoxes has been the single greatest reason I have been able to stay in the pews. Together we can share our ideas and practices! Onward!
— Cynthia
“If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?”
― Barbara Brown Taylor
Note: all the quotes in today’s newsletter come from BBT’s book:
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
Upcoming Events:
Our September Ladies’ Lunch In is coming right up—We hope you’ll join us to spend an hour among women of faith…discussing complicated things!
ALSSI Ladies’ Lunch In
Thursday, September 29
12:00 Noon Mountain time
Register here to receive a Zoom link by email
This month’s meeting will be a potpourri—that means we’ll be discussing whatever is on your mind! Whether you come to set down your own burdens or to help other women carry theirs, there’s bound to be a lot of wisdom in the room. For the tenth time or the first, we’ll look forward to seeing you!
But wait—it’s events…plural!
Our live gathering in Salt Lake City is in the final planning stages. There are still a few spots left. If you haven’t registered, we hope you will! Our speakers for the event will be Jeralee Renshaw, Kajsa Berlin-Kaufusi, Cynthia, and Susan—with plenty of time left over to say what you want to say, enjoy lunch together, and meet new friends.
Saturday, October 15
10:00 am — 4:00 pm
Click here to register now!
“You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.”
— Barbara Brown Taylor
Extra, Extra!
We had a great time this month sitting down with Religion News Service’s Jana Riess for a conversation about the ALSSI project. In case you missed it, you can find the article that resulted from our conversation here. Our favorite part is the caption, “Duo dares to speak aloud what many women in the church are quietly thinking.” Ha!
In other news —
We have some great guests coming up in the next month as we wrap up Season 5! We’ll be getting a little help from experts as we examine purity culture, discuss the challenges of raising and teaching children in the Church, learn about ways repeated language and ideas affect our brains, and take a deeper dive into the Divine Feminine.
There’s also an episode in the works exploring a topic so daunting, we needed to get 100 episodes into the conversation before we finally felt ready to take it on. We hope you’ll stay with us through October. After that, we’ll all be ready to take a break between seasons. Whew!
“The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart.”
— Barbara Brown Taylor
What are our listeners saying?
Please keep the comments coming! We love to hear your experiences and thoughts around the topics we discuss on the podcast. Today’s comments all come from our website:
“This episode brought back a lot of memories from my own mission. From opening my call letter to ‘returning with honor’ but being a complete noob in the real world and having a huge struggle adjusting. As a Sister my experience of pressure to serve was completely non-existent, but the pressure to NOT serve was loud and clear. The first time I truly recognized the spirit communicating with me as youth was in regards to serving a mission. My Dad’s mission didn’t have any Sisters, but both my older brothers agreed that Sister missionaries were just ‘problems.’ The young man I was dating swore a mission would ‘ruin me, and take all the fun out’ of me. My Bishop made it very clear that I didn’t HAVE to serve and that I was perfectly capable of getting married. There was exactly 1 Sister RM in our ward, who told me that my companions would be my biggest trials in the mission (again, perpetuating the ‘problem Sister’ mentality.) I know that the age change has helped a lot with the ‘only girls who can’t get married serve’ idea. I am hoping that having so many of our young sisters out serving will motivate even more change, for instance Sisters are completely capable of being a district leader, yet the only sisters who get that opportunity are the ones called to Temple Square. And perhaps with all the female RMs and current female missionaries we can start seeing some female ward mission leaders.”
— Michelle
”I wanted to direct a reply to the woman who was threatened by her bishop because she referred to God as ‘they.’ We don’t believe our own stuff here: In LDS scriptures, Joseph Smith interprets the proper pronouns for God, i.e. ‘Elohim’ as they/them:
‘So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them.’ (Abraham 4:27)
If we take the word ‘man’ here in its Hebrew ‘adam as meaning ‘human.’, then all of humans, male and female, are created in the image of ‘them.’ ‘Elohim’ (literally, Hebrew for ‘gods’) must therefore properly be seen as a plural yet a singular unity. And, this plural Elohim must be both male and female, otherwise male and female cannot both be created in the image of ‘them.’
If we take the current LDS teaching that ‘exaltation is a family matter’—setting aside the deep problems it implies by excluding those who don’t conform to so-called traditional gender norms—LDS theology demands that both the male and female become god. Such ‘gender’ must not be merely biological sex, but rather, the male/female, the yin and yang and all of its patterns in nature and humans, must be considered an integrated, cooperative divine nature we all share.
This is evident in the creation itself. Abraham 4:1-2 show that in the beginning ‘the gods’—Elohim—created the heavens and the earth, and the ‘Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters.’ Joseph Smith corrected the King James Version that reads, ‘the Spirit of God *moved* upon the face of the waters, to the more accurately rendered ‘the Spirit of the Gods *was brooding* upon the face of the waters’, reflecting the ongoing nurturing of a mother over her offspring. The term ‘Spirit’ in Hebrew, ‘ruach’ is female, adding to the idea that the divine mother was the very Spirit of the Gods who breathes life into creation, and then nurtures, protects, and sustains it.
It is time for us to truly embrace our own theology. We need to believe our own stuff. It doesn’t make sense for us to strictly define God as male or ‘Father;’ even if it is true that male terms have been used in the past to refer to collective plurals including both men and women. To refer to God exclusively as ‘Father’ denies the fullness of the divine nature. ‘They’ are God. ‘They’ are our parents. ‘They’ are both male and female, as the image of the male and female gender of god is present in each and every one of us.”
— Mark
”I was listening to this podcast and wanted to share I have always had a relationship with my Heavenly Mother. I received my patriarchal blessing in 1990 and it specifically refers to my Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother in the beginning and through the rest of the blessing it refers to my Heavenly Parents. Specifically, saying there is nothing I can ever do will make them love me less, they will always love me. I am confused to why it is so taboo when a patriarch of the church recognized Her in my blessing. I believe my Heavenly Mother is there for me and loves me. This needs to be shared with everyone women in the church. I did do a lesson on Elder Rendlund talk in Relief Society and shared this with the women in my ward, it was liberating.”
— Leslie
“I wanted to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me though I am not sure of anything.”
― Barbara Brown Taylor
And now…refreshments!
If it has to be fall (I know, I know—some of you aren’t as addicted to sunshine as we are!) we should at least have a really REALLY good fall cake to kick things off right. Here it is!
”The fact that I don’t have a picture of this cake doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. It just means I’m always more interested in eating it than photographing it.”
—Susan
Favorite Fall Applesauce Cake
1/4 c butter
2 c sugar
2 eggs
2-1/2 c flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
(I just use 1-3/4 tsp pumpkin or apple pie spice instead)
1-1/2 c applesauce
Crunchy topping:
Mix together 3/4 c each: brown sugar, mini chocolate chips, finely chopped walnuts
Sprinkle mixture over batter before baking.
Preheat oven to 350°. Cream butter and sugar, lightly beat the eggs and add to mixture. Mix dry ingredients together and stir in. Add applesauce and stir well. Pour into well-greased 9x13” pan and bake 45 mins or until cake tests done. Watch carefully toward end of baking time as brown sugar can scorch. Serve with whipped cream. (I know, you’re thinking this doesn’t need whipped cream—just trust me on this one.)
Thanks for everything each of you contributes to ALSSI—whether it’s your ears, your personal experiences, your support of other women, your volunteer time, or your donations. You’re amazing, and you make this community. Happy fall!
— Cynthia and Susan
Thank you so much for your newsletter and Instagram posts. I've been going through an excruciating time in my life so I haven't been in the headspace to listen to the ALSSI podcasts. The newsletter and posts help keep me somewhat connected. I hope to reconnect in a few months. =)