Episode 193: (Transcript) What About Blessings, Part 3 | Things That Would Be Nice If They Were True
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener, Kathryn Lee, for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on Substack.
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 this week's episode is “What About Blessings: Part 3. Things that would be nice if they were true”….exclamation point!
SH: Exclamation point! One of my favorite Kate Bowler-isms. Things that would be nice if they were true. And people are probably wondering what that's going to be, but what I will assure our listeners right now is that they'll know them when they hear them in this conversation.
CW: Yes they will.
SH: They'll say–
CW: yeah, unless they've been a Latter day Saint for five minutes or have been living under a rock. They will be like, Oh yeah. I've heard that as well. So anyway, Susan, this was your idea for this episode. Jump into why we're talking about blessings part three and where we're going to go.
SH: It was my idea because of a Relief Society lesson that I was asked to teach earlier this year which is basically about why bad things happen to good people.
Now, do you want to stand up in front of a Relief Society and teach that lesson? I mean, I both did and didn't. I didn't because, for one thing, I have no special insight in this at all. So I got to preface the conversation right there by saying if you think you're gonna listen to this conversation and learn something, in air quotes, I am not showing up here as any kind of expert in philosophy or theology.
So that's not really happening. But I was excited to have this conversation in a Relief Society room specifically, because I think there are all kinds of– I hate to use the word toxic, but I'm just going to say it – toxic beliefs in our church and things that people have probably heard and things that some of us have even said ourselves over the years to each other, and some of us cringe now when we think about some of the things that we've said-
CW: Yeah.
SH: That have caused no end of havoc and pain in people's spiritual lives. And so I was excited to get to unpack some of those things today. Things that would be nice if they were true, Cynthia. But that I haven't really found to be helpful.
CW: I'm glad that we're having this conversation not too many weeks after our conversation on grief, with Pam Heggy.
Because when you say the things that we've said to people and we cringe now, I mean, Pam brought up several things that had been said to her and these are what 10, 15 years ago and they still sting. So, right. Yes. We can do so much better in the things that we say to people. When they're grieving, when they're going through trials, when they're fill in the blank.
SH: Yeah, that's exactly why I wanted to have this conversation. And I think there's a lot of value– Okay, you and I may not have any special insights, but I find a lot of value in Latter-day Saints who don't necessarily have any special insights talking about this stuff together. Trying to figure out where did our beliefs that we have come from?
And when I sit back and look at them, what do they really mean to me, if anything? And what might be a more helpful way to think about it? And you and I are qualified to have that conversation, just as a result of being human and being here. So that's the conversation we're going to have.
CW: I wish we were not!
SH: Exactly. I'd like to be less qualified in that way. But anyway we received a message from a listener some time ago who was expressing pain; that she didn't know what to believe anymore because prosperity gospel had failed her. Some of the teachings of a transactional god had let her down. And she was in a situation where she had a child that was experiencing ongoing and tremendous unsolvable pain.
And as a result as the mother, she had doubled down on all the churchy answers, right? She had exhausted herself trying to do everything right so that God could fix this. And she finally realized there was no cure, number one. And number two, God was not going to fix it. And so she ended her message with a question that I feel like sets this conversation up so well.
And this is what she said. [00:05:00] “How do I reconcile my life experiences with the things the church teaches about blessings?” Yes. Isn't that the million dollar question? So, this sends us down the theodicy rabbit hole. And the question there is basically, how can we defend God's goodness, right? How can we say we have a loving God in view of the existence of evil in the world?
People have been trying to answer this question throughout all of human history, really smart people, Cynthia, way smarter than you or I, right? And so I want to preface our conversation by saying that when I talk about the problem of “evil,” evil means suffering. It's really the problem of suffering in the human condition.
CW: It's a pretty big umbrella.
SH: It's a huge umbrella. And I may love this definition more than anything I've ever heard. Richard Rohr says, “I would define suffering very simply as whenever you are not in control.”
CW: I really, really like that definition, especially as I know you've said 101 times that you are a controlly person and I didn't used to think I was, and then the older I get, I think we all prefer to be in control.
I think there's a spectrum of controlling this, and I just think that's part of what it means to be human. We all have ideas about the way life should go, right? And when that doesn't happen. That can bring on suffering like Father Rohr says. I think anyone who has served a mission, if they're going to pull out their missionary bingo card, I bet you anything, every single full time former missionary can put a little bean on the square that says, I can't believe in God because evil exists.
SH: Right.
CW: Because God allows this or that. I'm sure that has happened to most people. And so, I think this just really is a very Human 101 question that at all times, I think, if we're being honest, we've all thought about it to a certain extent.
SH: Right. And then I think religion complicates it because you have all the questions that you're asking yourself about, why are people suffering, but specifically, why am I suffering?
And also as a God-like person or a person who's seeking God, how am I supposed to deal with it?
CW: Yeah.
SH: What does it require of me? Right? I mean, should I fast? Should I go to church? Do I need to take the sacrament? Do I need to repent? How am I supposed to behave in light of this? And so religion takes what is already a very gnarly human question and adds this whole other level of questions to it.
CW: That's a good point.
SH: And it can be pretty wracking, really, when you start trying to untangle it all and how it can wreak havoc on your beliefs and on your well being. Honestly, on your mental health, on all of it.
CW: I think sometimes I have thought that religion would simplify that question. And I think it actually complicates it.
SH: Oh, I think so too.
CW: I think my religion– and I'm not saying that's a bad or a good thing. I'm just saying it was maybe an unintended consequence of being a religious person. Personally, it got more complicated when I tried to break down all those questions.
SH: I think so, because then you had to have this whole thing of “Is God going to bless other people, but not me? And why, what am I doing wrong? What's my part in all of my own suffering,” all those kinds of things. And so I agree. And I feel like that's another part of where it sort of plays mind games with you because you do think that religion should solve this for you.
And yet it doesn't. So, I have a question for you. Have you hit a time in your life- I already know the answer, I'm still gonna ask you, I'm asking everyone – have you hit a time in your life when you realized that you were not the exception and you could not control things no matter how good you were?
CW: Absolutely. Who can't say yes to that? We've all hit some, I mean- and we all come up with different answers, I guess, to why that might be happening, but I think we all have come up against that brick wall before.
SH: I mean, can you identify in your life, specifically, when was the time when that happened to you and it sort of changed everything going forward.
CW: Oh, I absolutely, yes. And you don't even know what I'm going to say. So good job. Okay, putting me on the spot. When my husband and I were 23 and he was 25 years old, we found out we would not be able to have biological children. End of story. And you don't think all of my box-checking up to that point in my life, all of a sudden completely fell apart.
And I'm sitting there going, wait, what? I don't understand. I've been a good girl. Trust me. I kept all the commandments to the Nth degree. I went to BYU. I married a return missionary. We got married in the temple. We were active in church, like cue vending machine here. I'm putting the coins in and I'm putting the coins [00:10:00] in. And then we came up against a brick wall that was completely insurmountable. There was nothing that was going to fix that. So yes, all the coins fell out of the vending machine and… There were no chips at the bottom when I reached my hand in to grab something.
SH: Well, I also can identify that specific day for myself.
And I think interestingly, as I look back, I can see an earlier day when actually the thing happened that I didn't have any tools to deal with or know what to do with, but. It took me maybe 20 or 30 years to even be able to begin to sort that. So for the 20 or 30 intervening years, I was going through periods of thinking if I were just better, I could fix everything, right?
I didn't go straight to “here's something I absolutely can't fix,” because the thing for me happened in my childhood. I went through all these periods of I have to be even better. Like the mother who reached out to us in the beginning and said I doubled down, tripled down on every church thing because that was what I had been taught would work, I guess.
CW: Oh.
SH: So did you have thoughts of that when you found out about infertility? Did you think “Maybe if I'm better,” or did you, were you able, or were you mature enough, I guess, at that point to go straight to “here's something I can't fix,” and then just have to deal with the aftermath of that.
CW: Well, just, that's interesting, as you're posing how you dealt with it.
In some ways, because we immediately put our papers into LDS Family Services, and our children came pretty quickly, three years apart, we had three children. I, in some way, got a little bit back of the vending machine. And so I was able to kick that can down the road of really having to like mentally go into that dark, dark place and say to myself, I don't think God is going to just shine all the blessings upon me because I am a good, kind, wonderful, baptized and endowed member of the church, fill in the blank.
SH: Even if it may appear that God has done that previously. Yes. For me, anyway. Oh, I can see all the, all the ways that I've connected those dots previously, but ah, it's not working this time.
CW: Yeah.
SH: I think that that is both the worst day in your life when you really descend into that darkness and realize you're powerless to fix it. And also the best thing that ever happens to you because as we struggle to regain our footing with this, that's when we begin to realize that we finally, finally get to stop carrying the burden of making things okay that are simply not okay.
CW: Okay, that's a good point.
SH: That's the day that you finally set down the control or begin to anyway, or see, maybe perhaps you just glimpse that “maybe if I let go of my control,” right? But it takes a long time. You're still trying to pry my fingers off my life, right? We talk about this all the time.
I still haven't been able to totally give it away, but at least I understand that I need to give it away in order to find peace in this life. I did get to that place, at least, and that is a huge exhale in my opinion. So it's a horrible day. It's an awful day and also beautiful in its terribleness because we simply do not control other people or their actions.
Full stop. But where I would hope that religion can step in and maybe help us a little bit with this is that even if things will not be okay, we can somehow begin to understand that we will be okay. And those are different things.
CW: Very, very different.
SH: Okay. Interestingly, I think we often show up at church thinking we all believe the same things, which is absolutely not true. It's just not true. And I believe that we find comfort and solace in different ideas, each of us. Even within the doctrines of one church, we all pick and choose what works for us and what doesn't.
And I feel like this is why even though we mean well, and I really do think that Latter-day Saints are often the most well-meaning people in the whole world. Even when we mean well, we sometimes say really hurtful things to people who are suffering.
CW: I would say especially when we mean well. That is our goal.
SH: There's something about that. Yes. Well, we want to give people answers, right? We want to say, here's the meaning. Let me wrap up this shiny box of meaning and hand it to you. Here's the meaning of what you're going through.
CW: Well, we're the Answer Church. We're the Answer Church. We are the Answer Church.
We answer those three big questions that plenty of people have. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? And we're like, here we go. Here's our little flip chart. Flip, flip, flip. Here are the answers to all of that.
SH: Yeah, but is there anything more dismissive of pain than an answer? It just doesn't help, right? It doesn't help. And this is [00:15:00] why I chose the title for our episode today of Things That Would Be Nice if They Were True, or Things That Would Be Great if They Were True because that's what Kay Bowler, that's how she describes some of these things. And I'm thinking about things like this: God doesn't give us more than we can handle.
Right? Or, we agreed to these problems in the pre-existence. Or, God needed the person that you just lost to do work on the other side. Or, everything happens for a reason, right? All things work together for those who trust God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
CW: Yeah. To those questions I just want to say: show me your work. Remember we had a caller one time say when she raises her hand gingerly in church and – because people are making some, I don't know, comment – she says, “Cite your source.” Give me the source to prove- right,, show me your work and cite your source that says this is always the case.
And I mean, I just have to say I looked at some of your notes ahead of time. That God needed the person you lost to do the work on the other side. And I googled how many people have been on planet Earth. And the estimate is like a hundred billion to 117 billion people have been on planet Earth.
And we currently have 8 billion people on the planet now. So do a little quick subtraction, and at the minimum, God- I mean, if we're being really literal here, Susan, 92 billion people are on the other side of the veil. So when someone says, Oh, God needed that person on the other side, I think that is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.
If God has 92 billion dead people and a big chunk of those people are helping them out doing whatever, fulfilling God's ways, then I think that's one of the meanest things we can say to people. Because when a mom dies, for example, and her children are left alone here on earth, nothing is going to make that okay.
And we just need to say it. Stop. Just stop.
SH: Absolutely. Some suffering is just so senseless according to anything that we can understand. Yes. There is nothing that we can say to silver lining it, nor should we. Nor should we be trying to do that. Right? It doesn't stop us from trying though.Because we want to feel better. Because we want to feel better.
CW: And who doesn't like coming to the rescue of somebody in distress? We all like being fixers. So I get it because I'll admit that's still where my brain starts going. When someone starts telling me something that's really difficult and I have to stop myself. Don't you dare, Cynthia.
Don't you dare silver lining this for them. So it's still my default and I hate that, but at least my lips stop me and say, don't you do it!
SH: Well, I think that we're trying to reassure ourselves too, when we say those things, right. That our beliefs work the way we think they do. And all those kinds of things, just a way of trying to make ourselves feel better that often makes the other person feel worse.
If this problem of evil is baked into the human plan, and I believe it is – I would argue that it is – then there must be a reason. But while philosophy and doctrine, those kinds of ideas are operating on very general levels, people's lives are operating on very specific levels. So any meaning that, you know, or purpose for suffering that someone is gonna try to draw is best left to the individual to seek that understanding for themselves, right?
You're allowed to find your own answers to this stuff. And I would maintain that the only way that this ever does anything good for you in your life (if it does)- The only way you don't come out empty handed from going through hell is if you're allowed to find your own answers to it or not, like maybe you never do, right?
I don't know, but that would have its own kind of effect in your life. This is work for the individual to do and we all have to do it. Our religion's not going to do it for us in a way that's going to be that's going to grow us.
CW: I know we try really hard on this podcast to never hand out really specific advice.
We throw out ideas but I'm going to break that rule for a second. And kind of touch on something you just said, because as someone who has had those hurtful things said to them – like I said, infertility – someone actually said to us, “Oh, you and your husband chose to go through this in the pre-existence.”
Now here's what's really interesting. The person that said that to me had adopted eight children. So if anyone, Susan, should have been allowed to say it to me? It should have been her. And guess what? Still wasn't allowed. She still, in my opinion, should not have been allowed to say that to me because if that's how she made sense of her own suffering / lack of control.[00:20:00]
I'm fine with that, but don't ever think that you get to take the meanings you drew from your suffering and say, well, Here, you chose this. That just felt like such a slap in the face to me. So yeah, assign all the meaning you want to your suffering.
SH: Can I ask a follow up question to that?
CW: Yeah.
SH: How would it have felt to you if she had said, “Let me tell you my experience with this and where I landed with it.”
Not in a way of necessarily offering it to you as your answer, but just to sort of show her work, if you know what I mean. Here's how I've made meaning of this. How would that have been for you? I'm just curious. I don't know. I'd never thought of it till now.
CW: Yeah. If she showed me her work.
SH: Is there a way to share our experience in a way that's helpful without. Dismissing someone else's.
CW: I think with a huge qualifier, she could have said that. I mean, I still would have bristled like, Ooh, you really think that? Okay. That's weird. I mean, in the moment I was 24 years old, but with a huge qualifier, like just saying it like “This is what I have felt and I know it sounds crazy, but after 25 years of being a parent, this is what I've landed on.”
“I have no idea if that resonates with you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That would be the kind of qualifier I would have needed. And maybe someone else would have been fine with that kind of advice. I don't know. I'm just not that kind of person that likes to cast such a wide net over this life and our previous life and our following life and try to silver-lining it all together and to circumscribe it into one great whole.
I'm just going to go for the- gofor how we like to phrase things in LDS-ism, so.
SH: Use the language we all speak, Cynthia. That's what I say. It's the clearest way to communicate.
CW: And also I mean, I do want to say this. I think unless someone has really harmful ideas, like, God is punishing me for X, Y, Z.
I stay quiet. Like that's when I would absolutely speak up is when someone is just beating themselves. Just lashing against themselves, like, Oh, God must be doing this to me. That's maybe when I would speak up and not necessarily silver lining it, but maybe challenge that.
SH: Right. Here are some other things you might want to think about. Let me offer you some other ideas. I don't know. Yeah, interesting.
CW: Yeah. When you've been talking and sharing these ideas about the problem of evil and you, I think it's natural as a human being to just think what is God doing up there?
Then while I'm down here suffering or whatever- and I just finished reading an older book of Barbara Brown Taylor's called The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion. And she said in that book, “In Sunday school, I learned to think of God as a very old white bearded man on a throne who stood above creation and occasionally stirred it with a stick.”
I mean, I can't think of a God I want to worship or have a relationship less than that type of God, who's just once in a while, like, Oh, let's just stir things up and see how they handle it. So, ouchie. Ouchie. But I mean, I get it. I get that for many people that when the sweater maybe completely unravels they can't quite resolve – resolve's not the right word – the problem of evil.
SH: Explain maybe? They can't explain. They don't have a justification for that. Yeah. Sure. Well, I mean, it's hard to make one. Personally I come down on the side of a relatively non-interventionist approach. And I mean, I'm perfectly willing to say that out loud, not everyone feels that way.
And I say that with the qualifier that, yes, there are touch points with God in my life, places where I have felt God's hand in my life, or the hand of something larger that I cannot touch. I have those things. I have those experiences.
CW: Do you mean feeling loved, supported, cared for? Or do you mean an intervening?
SH: I'm going to go straight here and say sometimes miracles happen and sometimes miracles don't happen. And I have no idea why that is in this world. That's just sort of how, in my experience, observing the world generally and in observing some things in my own life. I like that. There are things that I can't explain and I don't know why.
And for me personally, that's fine. I'm a person who doesn't need to have answers and explanations for everything. That's just me. And I can understand how that may not be helpful at all for some people. Some people really do want answers and explanations. That's where they find peace. That's not my jam so much.
So that's just a personal thing.
CW: Has that always been your jam or did you arrive [00:25:00] to that? You arrived there at some point later in life. Or are you wired that way?
SH: I think I’m wired that way, but I wanna tell you a story about that, but can we hold that story for a minute?
And then I'm gonna tell it to you. Put a pin in there. Okay. But yeah, put a pin there for a second because I wanna talk about can we give and receive comfort without having answers? Is that possible?
CW: Oh, wow. Now we're getting heavy.
SH: And I think the answer is yes. Well, I feel like Latter day Saints are trained to give comfort and receive comfort through answers, right?
I mean, I feel like that's the way that our religion sort of operates. Like you were just saying, it's the answer religion.
CW: It's the answer religion. But I just felt like what you were saying two seconds ago actually sounded very comforting, and I don't have to explain it. Like your non-answer is an answer.
SH: It is for me.
CW: Well, but it resonates with me. So I'm just letting you know as you were saying that.
SH: It might for someone then. Okay, good.
CW: It might for one person and her name is Cynthia. Like I found comfort in your non-answer. But maybe that's why we have a podcast together because in some ways our lives overlap.
SH: Yeah, because like the woman who sent us the message I was talking about at the beginning, I can't tell you whether or not having an answer could ever become comforting for her or not. I don't know. Good point. And I don't need it. I'm not trying to sell anyone that line.
I'm just saying that's where I've found peace; in not knowing. So that works for me. Everyone's gonna have to find their own way through this stuff. But in terms of offering comfort to each other, I feel like this is really important in this conversation because Latter-day Saints want to-- well, actually, we are commissioned through our baptism, to move into the world mourning with and comforting, right? And we're not good at it. We're just not good at it in some ways. And Sarah Bessie talks about when she was parenting very small children and she would reflect their experience and their emotions back to them.
CW: Yeah.
SH: So she observed how feeling seen and heard brought them comfort. And it was sort of this thing where she helped her little children transition to the next situation or emotion by acknowledging the one they were in. And I've watched my daughter do the same thing with her toddlers. It's like she's saying, yes, you're sad. Yes, this hurts. Yes, I will name with you what you feel and I will love you in it.
And then the kid can be ready; they can hold that as long as they need to, together, untill the child is ready to move to the next thing. And so I feel like comfort can look and feel like a lot of different things, but I feel like what's really key– what becomes key in it is allowing people to tell us what they want or need for themselves.
There you go. Because it's validating. I don't know if you've heard of the 3H thing. I mean, it's gone around on social media, but it was really teaching to me. And so occasionally I thank the internet for memes that come into my life and here's one, right? Okay, so the 3Hs are to approach someone with this idea:
Do you want to be heard, hugged, or helped?
Because people can tell us what they need. It's so simple. It's just so simple. But we don't all need the same thing in those situations. Sometimes people do want to be helped, right? And sometimes they really- maybe they do want you to give them an answer and that's going to be comforting. But a lot of times I know as a mother, and it took me forever to learn this, my kids did not need me to help fix everything for them.
Yeah. But I wanted to, my instinct was to want to fix everything. I'm a fixer.
CW: Instinct. I think it's so great that you said that your daughter is doing that with her littles, right? You're sad. This hurts. I can name it with you.
SH: Yeah, they're better parents than I am, Cynthia.
CW: Well, they are. I didn't do that with my kids.
I think I was the silver lining mama trying to fix things for them. But I notice now with enough life experience that I'm doing that with my little grandson. I mean, he's teeny tiny. He's not probably comprehending what I'm saying, but I notice when he's fussing I say to him, Oh, you have every right to feel sad right now.
I never said that to my babies. But I think anyone who's had to raise a teenager or two, or just had really good life experience. Let me take that back. You don't have to have been a parent to learn this, but for some of us slow people that's how I learned it was through parenting. Like you said, validate, validate, validate.
That is what needs to happen and it just– I mean, break down the word compassion, right? Com + passion, to suffer with. People just need to not be alone when they are suffering.
SH: Let's talk [00:30:00] about the obvious underlying principle. And that is that all of our good works do not protect us from the natural consequences of being human in an imperfect world. Bad things happen to good people, right? And I mean, yeah, you kind of laugh because I feel like even though we know this intellectually, I feel like we could all– I feel like about everybody in the Virtual Relief Society room would assent to this, but somewhere along the line, I think most of us have internalized the idea that we are somehow special and that's true for everyone else, but that we can achieve control by doing the right things.
And I think it's so funny to me. I'm not totally sure how this happens because I feel like the scriptures are really clear on this point. So this is something, this is where people have taken religion and done unhelpful things with it or internalized it in ways that aren't helpful. And I'm not totally sure why that is.
But I mean, let's just consider going clear back to the Old Testament. Job 1:1.
CW: You're going all the way to Job. The ultimate.
SH: I'm going to Job. There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil. The setup for the whole Job story is that Job was perfect and upright.
CW: So he put all his coins in, he had loaded the vending machine with all his quarters. Okay.
SH: I love what Rabbi Steve Litter says about that story. He says, “So the book of Job comes to say, first verse, Job was a blameless man, innocent victim. Bad things really do happen to good people and worse.”
Good things happen to really bad people. And therefore, cosmic justice and earthly justice cannot be the same. And not only that, but I think it's fascinating that God also reminds Job, “I make it rain where no person lives,” right? So in other words, our human lives may not be the center of the whole universe.
There are just a lot of big things about this whole thing that we don't know anything about and probably aren't going to understand from our puny human perspective. But you know, it continues into the New Testament, right, in Matthew chapter 5, “For he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
CW: Yeah.
SH: So like, why do we even wrestle with these big questions? I feel like the Bible set it out pretty clearly. And then the worst things of all happened to the best person. In the Bible, right? Like Jesus was crucified. So why would we think that life was going to be easier for us? And then it gets even a little more ridiculous because then Jesus deflects his own goodness even, right?
He's like, “Why callest thou me good? None is good save one, that is God.” So in other words, we're all positioned for suffering. And so I don't think we're ever going to be able to reliably connect the dots between goodness and earth experience. And that is why I'm fine with not having to have answers about that.
I don't think it's baked into the proposition. I don't think that we're supposed to be able to have answers. I feel like the wrestle in itself is part, like it's a tool. This is another tool in my growth and in my figuring out how to live among other human beings.
And so, I feel like we're so bad at acknowledging suffering in our church, or in, I'm not gonna- in the church at large, let's say it that way. In the church at large. All of them. Not just ours. We're still not willing to admit this because we made the suffering, we made Jesus’ suffering our fault.
Yes. It's Jesus atoning for our sins, right? So this is something we have caused, something we've caused. So like we- religion does not sit easily at all with the problem of suffering. Speaking of Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in the World. Which is one of your favorites and mine also. She says this about pain and it's so instructive to me.
She says, “Plato once said that pain restores order to the soul. Rumi said that it lops off the branches of indifference. Quote, the throbbing vein will take you further than any thinking. Whatever else it does, pain offers an experience of being human that is as elemental as birth, orgasm, love, and death.”
“Because it is so real, pain is an available antidote to unreality. Not the medicine you would have chosen perhaps, but an effective one all the same. The next time you are in real pain, see how you feel about television shows, new appliances, a clean house, or your resume. Chances are that none of these will do anything for you.”
“All that will do [00:35:00] anything for you is some cool water held out by someone who has stopped everything else in order to look after you. An extra blanket might also help, a dry pillow, the simple knowledge that there is someone in the house who might hear you if you cried.”
This is a way that we learn to be together. Or that's, I feel like that's how it functions in the plan, anyway. Keeps us grounded.
CW: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And we can, of course, always choose to enter that space with others or not. Suffering is inevitable, but going through it and helping others, that part, of course, is choice. So. I don't know.
That's… It reminds me of– I think I told you recently that I know it's one of your favorite On Being interviews with Father Greg Boyle. And so I re-listened to it again. It had been a few years. We'll link to it. It's pretty good. But Krista Tippett had asked him about his battle with leukemia. And he said, “I wouldn't trade that period of my life for anything.
It was about the most graced moment in my life for as uncomfortable as chemotherapy is, and I'm sure many in the audience have been through this, I wouldn't trade it because it was just so intimate and so mutual.”
Now, what I love about that, because I don't think he's putting a silver lining on it. I think some people might think he is. But what I love and what he was saying is he used words like “graced" which I maybe interpret as he felt loved and held by God and maybe his community. And then he used words like, “it was just so intimate and so mutual”, which again, to me sounds like relationship.
SH: Yeah, yeah. I think it's what Barbara Brown Taylor was just talking about. It's being human, the intimacy of it.
CW: Yes. The intimacy of our humanity.
SH: Yeah.
CW: Yeah. I don't think we ever have to be grateful and say, yay, I went through this because like he said, chemotherapy sucks, but it's going to happen anyway.
And so what can we-- if we're going through hell, what are we going to grab on our way out?
SH: Right. Well, which would be more inspirational for you? Like someone standing up in testimony meeting and telling you, “all of my kids are married in the temple and I've never had any hard things and all of my children have served missions and everything is so great in my life.”
I've heard that testimony. I don't know if you have, but I'm willing to bet you've heard something like it. Is that better? Or is somebody who stands up and says, “I had leukemia and it sucked and I was pissed off at God and. Also, it was the most graced moment in my life.” So it doesn't land as a silver lining to me.
In a way, the first one is more silver lining-y to me, because you know full well the person's life has not been blessed every second of their life, using the word blessed in air quotes, right? But that is a way of silver lining it. But if we can't hold up our silver lining. So hold our suffering together.
In other words, like I was saying about my daughter, she's like, I see you and this hurts and being human sucks and let me sit with you in it. If we can't do that, I don't know how we can lift each other.
CW: That's the work of being human.
SH: That's the work of being human. I feel like Jesus’ suffering is sort of this entry point for us to follow him, that this is how we get here, Jesus’ humanity. And we've talked about that before on the podcast, so we don't need to spend a lot of time on it… But Peter Kreef too is a Philosophy professor at Boston College wrote an essay called God's Answer to Suffering that I have absolutely loved.
And in it he says this, “In summary, Jesus did three things to solve the problem of suffering. First he came, he suffered with us. He wept. Second, in becoming man, he transformed the meaning of our suffering. It's now part of his work of redemption." So whatever you think about the atonement, that's a piece of this, right?
And it functions in it somehow. And that is because it's the centerpiece of his story. “And then third, he died and rose. He transformed death from a hole into a door, from an end into a beginning.” And so whatever you might believe about the afterlife, not just in death, but in life. I think he's showing that suffering can be a beginning for personal growth and transformation.
I think that's the lesson of it. And then he rose with his wounds as we've talked about before. So it really does make a place. The Jesus story really does make a place for all of it. It has been used for good and evil, I will say. That story has been used for good and evil. So, religion hasn't always answered this question in great ways as we know.
CW: When I think about the purpose of Christ being incarnated, like why he had to come to earth and live in this human meat suit that we're all in– I mean, sometimes I think, couldn't God have just uploaded what all this suffering the world felt like into Jesus's [00:40:00] brain, but I mean, who wants a sympathetic computer-like savior? I'd rather have an empathetic fleshy one in a meat suit, right? I mean, that's why that is one of my favorite scriptures.
SH: Yeah, that's why it works.
CW: And I'm thinking that's the only way it could have worked. It's the only way it could have worked for me. So let me personalize that. It's the one reason I love that scripture– “the Word became flesh.” It could just as easily say, “and the flesh became Word.” It goes both ways, I think. So the more I listened to people like our friend Richard Rohr and maybe some other Catholics, I realized, wow, the incarnation was so, so central to Jesus becoming the Christ.
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SH: Okay. Now I want to go back to the story I put a pin in for a second.
CW: Oh, good. Oh, good. I want to hear it.
SH: So the experience that I had when I was seven, that was really the setup for me to come to all of this later, but took me 30 years to get there. So listeners who've listened to this podcast, or maybe you've heard me talk about it in other places–
I talk about challenges with mental illness, in myself and in generations of my family, including my mother, and it gave me a very difficult childhood, as you know, because you're my friend. And as I've talked about on this podcast before and in other places, so I'm not telling anything that I haven't really told before.
But I grew up in this enormous house, outlandishly huge. I mean, the living room was 2,000 square feet. So we're talking about a big house, right? And these long hallways. And it was terrifying to me as a small child. I think because I experienced a lot of loneliness and things like that in my childhood because of the other things that were going on. It was scary for me.
So I sort of enter this story from a place of being a fearful child anyway, but here's where it gets real. So I'm lying in bed at night, I'm about seven years old, and I'm lying in bed at night and my mother – these are during the years that she was gravely ill, she couldn't leave her bedroom so she was quite removed from us as children.
And we visited her occasionally, but we were mostly kept away from her by the adults in our life. So, I'm in bed. It's the middle of the night, and I can hear my mom pacing up and down the long hall. And you know how you can hear sound kind of move away from you and back to you across a long distance like that?
This is a big hallway. So I'm in my bed and I hear this happening outside my door. She's pacing up and down the hall and one of the few things that brought her comfort during this time was ice water. So she has her glass of ice water that she always had and I can hear the ice tinkling in the glass.
And I've woken to this sound of her moaning as she goes up and down the hall.
CW: Oh, Susan.
SH: She moans, and she moans, and she moans, this rhythmic sound of suffering. And there were two little steps at the end of the hall that went up to the master bedroom suite. And at one point she falls on the steps, and I hear my father pick her up, and then, after a pause, the moaning and the pacing continue.
And so I just want you to imagine for a second a scared little girl in the dark experiencing this. It was terrifying, Cynthia. It was terrifying. And, we're talking about around 1970, maybe 71. And so, if anyone who grew up in that period knows that many adults were not as forthcoming with answers and things.
Like, children were not included in the adult world in some of the same ways that they are now, right? So, no one felt any need to acknowledge that that had happened in the night, to explain it, or to do anything to comfort those fears of the child who lived through it.
CW: So, the next day at breakfast table It's like-
SH: Nothing happened.
CW: Yeah, you're eating your Cocoa Puffs, but nobody's saying anything about the night before.
SH: Right, not only that, in my family, if you do bring it up, then my grandmother would like, shh, shh, we don't say these things out loud. We don't talk about this. So, that message was clear, but... So I have it's kind of a defining, that night is kind of a defining point in my childhood.
And I've talked before about how I've been a person that fear has really had a huge impact in my life, right? That's something that has driven a lot of things for me. And I think, and here's where I can see how that happened. But I really became acquainted with darkness, I'm gonna say, because it was literal night, and I have this nightmarish experience.
I became acquainted with that at a very young age, and it was something I really had no tools to make sense of, no way to explain it. It just sort of hung over my life in fear, and I didn't really understand how to harness it or use it.
CW: Okay.
SH: But I realized when I hit my [00:45:00] adult dark night. When the wheels really came off for me, and it's not, it's– we've talked about times when the wheels came off for me, and this is not one that you're even thinking of, just like you said, “you're gonna say something, you're not gonna know what it is,” and it was your infertility, this is not the one I generally talk about – but when that hit for me, and I was about 37 years old, I realized that having that big, dark, scary thing hanging over my life all of those years or operating, within my life–
Yes, it had left all kinds of difficult things, but it had also left gifts, like very real gifts. I had tools for living with hard and dark things that I didn't know that I had. And also, I had empathy. I recognized other people who knew darkness. And I had sort of always recognized that and wanted to rise to it in people. I could meet people in that experience and talk with them about it. But like I say, it really took me like 30 years.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Yeah. And so this sets me up for what has become one of my favorite scripture stories that I had never noticed until I moved into the “faith journey” path.
I just had never noticed this story at all, right? And this is Genesis 32 and it's Jacob wrestling with the angel. And the context of the story is really important to me because of everything I just told you. Jacob was very afraid and distressed, he's preparing for reuniting with his brother Esau and there's a lot of anxiety around that.
And so the story that happens next happens in this anxious context and then also it happens in the dark. And so I feel like I know the place of this scripture story, right? And so I'm going to read from the NRSV. Here's what it says. It's a very short story. “Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”
“When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, Let me go, for the day is breaking. But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’”
I love that story because I feel like I begged for that experience to bless me for 30 years.
This was not an immediate thing that happened, right? That I was able to attach some meaning to that story or know what to do with it. It took a long, long time, but it continues to serve me in my life. I was graced in that experience, I guess I will say. Not so much at the time. I didn't feel that at the time.
I didn't know – what does a seven year old know? To do with– Correct. Nothing. Yeah. But I have been able to demand the blessing from that in the years since, and it has continued to pay off growth dividends for me. I love what Rabbi Jonathan Sachs says about this. He's really one of my favorite thinkers, and I go back to him again and again.
He says, “Jacob says to the stranger, angel, God, whoever it is, I will not let you go until you bless me. Somehow within every crisis lies the glorious possibility of rebirth. I have found, and so surely have many others, that the events that at that time were the most painful were also those that, in retrospect, most caused us to grow.”
“They helped us to make difficult but necessary decisions. They forced us to ask, Who am I and what really matters to me? They moved us from the surface to the depths, where we discovered strengths we did not know we had and a clarity of purpose that we had hitherto lacked. I have learned to say to every crisis, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’”
“The struggle is not easy, though Jacob was undefeated, after it he limped. Battles leave scars, yet God is with us even when he seems to be against us, for if we refuse to let go of him, he refuses to let go of us, giving us the strength to survive and emerge stronger, wiser, and blessed.”
It's not a promise, it's a strategy. Okay? It's not a promise that somehow this is going to someday be good for you, but it is a strategy for taking hold of hard things. And saying, I'm not going to let you go. I'm not going to let you go until you bless me.
CW: You remember when we recorded with Pam and she and I both admitted to each other, I mean, I'm sure you would agree too, that if I could go back and not have all those hard things happen to me, then, well, yeah! But that is not a choice.
This is not a choose your own adventure book, right? We do not- that's the most, almost the most ridiculous thing to ever say is well, “if you could go back” because it's impossible. I remember Kate Bowler saying someone said something to her, “but look at how wonderful you are now. And you have, you've thrown out so much light to people” and she says, yeah. And I also would like to have intact intestines, an intestinal system and not have had, I think she said seven or eight belly buttons because her guts have been torn apart so much.
She's like, yeah, I would give it, I would give that all [00:50:00] back. So I think since that's not even an option, nobody ever has the option to go back to when they were seven years old and change things like you've gone through. Then I love that idea of using it as a strategy. That's a good word.
SH: Well, I'm a person who likes to have tools. I mean, I guess I like to feel empowered against things and situations that I don't have any power in.
I mean, that's a double edged sword, too. It's me trying to get control. Yes, it is Cynthia. Yes it is. But Richard Rohr says something about this story that I love. He says ”it's clearly in our interest to, in the midst of our wrestle, demand the blessing. If we can't transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.”
CW: It's my favorite Richard Rohr-ism. Ever.
SH: So good. It's so good. So the question becomes, how am I going to transform this pain? What am I going to do with this 7 billion pound lump of clay that I've been left with? What am I going to do? And then the only thing that I can say about that, I guess, is use it to give you an access point to the pain of other people.
That's really the only thing I've developed that has been able to transmute that pain into something really useful to me. I feel like it's sort of my superpower. I feel like my superpower was sort of born in that dark night.
CW: Totally agree. I mean, just as you were telling that story, how you were saying, because of your hard childhood, you recognize suffering in other people as well.
And that right there made me go, wow, that is a superpower. I'm not sure. I think I can do that now to a certain extent, having been through enough in the last dozen years. But that's a gift. That is a superpower.
SH: No, I absolutely think that you do that. I think that you can. I think this whole podcast is a result of your strategy of taking your hard things and using them to give an access point to other people who are struggling. I very much see you that way.
CW: Well, thank you. I will accept that compliment and say you and I had very different childhoods. And so for me, those lessons came later and in much different packages. So I can see, though, how you were able to transmute hard things that a seven year old shouldn't have had to go through.
And yet that gave you a superpower to recognize pain probably quite early on in, in other people. So, we all get there eventually, or hopefully, at some point, where we can empathize and mourn with those who mourn, so.
SH: And I think there is a way when things get hard with religion, and religion has not helped you, and you step away from it, and you let some of the things that have felt toxic fall away, there is a way to sort of weave back into it. To come back to the things that you do learn and understand and the ways that you do grow and then find maybe helpful things that but the other stuff talked louder for some reason, right?
And so, once you get that – let that stuff be silenced – then there can be good things there. Because I really do believe, to put it back in religious terms, that our trials equip us to minister to others in their trials. From 2 Corinthians 1, “Blessed be God, even the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforted us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them, which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.”
—
From that same essay by Peter Kreeft that I read from he says this- he's talking about Jesus here and how it all sort of works together. And he says, “He came, He is here. That is the salient fact. If He does not heal all our broken bones and loves and lives now, He comes into them and is broken like bread and we are nourished.”
“And He shows us that we can henceforth use our very brokenness as nourishment for those we love. Since we are His body, we too are the bread that is broken for others. Our very failures help heal others lives. Our very tears help wipe away tears. Our being hated helps those we love.” Anyway, It all comes back to the Kingdom of Heaven being within you, doesn't it?
This line of scripture is so important to me and it just keeps getting more and more important because promising people a reward in the next life does little to provide comfort for me. Now it just doesn't do anything for me. And so, this one tiny line of scripture reminds me that we are equipped to find and to help each other find peace and happiness in our lives now.
And part of that is going to be being present to our own suffering and being present to the suffering of others, right? [00:55:00] I feel like we can find hope in that place that we're going to be okay, even while things are not going to be okay. And I hope that doesn't sound like a silver lining to anyone because nothing that I say here is easy or has been easy for me.
I can speak only from my own experience and it's hard won experience like that I have had to wrestle with actively for 61 years now. I've wrestled hard for 61 years. So all I can tell you is some things that I've taken away from it, and in your lessons it may definitely be different. Will you read us a blessing from Kate Bowler's book in closing, because I love it so much?
It's from her book, The Lives We Actually Have.
CW: Oh, yes. People should follow Kate Bowler for no other reason to hear her blessings that she writes and posts on social media. So, alright, let's read a beautiful blessing from Kate Bowler. “Blessed are you who feel the wound of fresh loss, or of a loss, no matter how fresh, that still makes your voice crack all these years later.”
“You are stuck in the impossibility of it, frozen in disbelief. How can this be? It wasn't supposed to be this way. Blessed are you, fumbling around for easy answers or quick truths to try to make this go down easier. You who are dissatisfied with the shallow theology and trite platitudes. Blessed are we who instead demand a blessing.”
“Because we have wrestled with God and are here. Wounded, broken, changed, blessed are we who keep parenting, who keep our marriages and friendships and jobs afloat and who stock the pantry because what choice do we have but to move forward with a life we didn't choose with a loss we thought we couldn't live without.”
“One small step, one small act of hope at a time.”
SH: Beautiful. Thank you.
CW: Great summary to this conversation. Susan, I have no idea how your Relief Society lesson went, but I have thoroughly. I enjoyed breaking it down again here with you today. So thank you.
SH: Thank you for being willing to share so openly.
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VOICEMAIL 1: Hi there. I just finished the episodes about Sister Missionaries, and big thanks to everyone that shared their stories. I am a little jealous because I didn't go on a mission, and I think I would have really liked to have had that experience. And the reason I didn't go is because from the earliest that I can remember, I was taught that missions are for girls that are ugly and unable to get married.
This was taught explicitly and just the water we swim in, right? And the stories my dad told from his mission and my grandparents from when they were mission presidents, the sister missionaries were a distraction, they weren't wanted, they were annoying, they were in the way, all sorts of problems were blamed on them, lack of success, people getting caught for breaking rules, it was all blamed on sister missionaries.
So, when the time came where I was old enough, I didn't even consider it. And I got married very young, as I was supposed to. And I can't say for sure it impacted my sister's decisions, but that none of them served a mission either, even when they didn't have a marriage proposal looming.
And I think we need to acknowledge the way patriarchy has attached certain stigmas to missionaries throughout the years. This was back in the 90s. Thanks.
VOICEMAIL 2: Hi, Cynthia and Susan. Despite sitting atop a white, male, Utah, born in the covenant and raised, RM, BYU grad, temple married, always active, and with Colleen's privilege pile, At Last She Said It is a great place for me to expand my view regularly and often.
Profoundly and sincerely, thank you. Regarding episode 189 about sister missionaries, may I say my experience with sister missionaries during my service 40 years ago was super clunky. Being tasked with interviewing, counseling young women with vastly more life experience was so awkward. I felt at complete loss when they asked for help with personal or companionship problems, but was so grateful for the couple of times they courageously shared their wisdom and experience with me.
One of my dearest friend's daughters, who recently returned, was groomed and sexually abused by her mission president during their one on one interviews through more than half of her mission. With her family's support, she reported it, and the man was quickly released. That entire arc, while quite rare, underscores for me how important it is to shine a light on patriarchy and to resist its pervasiveness and continuance in so many of our LDS practices.
Thanks for your leadership with this.
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