Episode 197: (Transcript) Season 8 | That's a Wrap!
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener, Juanita Verma, 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: “Season 8, That's a Wrap!” Welcome to our wrap party!
SH: Did you bring cake, Cynthia? I hope you did!
CW: I have peaches downstairs, so there's gonna be some kind of peach dessert today, so maybe a peach cake? I don't know!
SH: I am here for that.
CW: Anyway, we did it, Susan. We wrapped up another season. Hooray!
SH: Hooray!
CW: Cake all around, confetti all around! I'm excited as I've looked over our notes to see some of the things that we're going to be talking about today. But before we do that, can we just do a little bit of housekeeping for like three minutes up front?
SH: Sounds good.
CW: Yep. Okay. It's hard to believe that four and a half minutes in four and a half minutes (laugher while correction is made), four and a half years into this project.
SH: Did it go that fast, Cynthia? I don't think it did. I mean, it went
CW: fast, but four and a half minutes. But after four and a half years, there are still people who are like, I can't find the show notes.
And so people still don't know that we have a website. So people, when we say we'll put all this info in our show notes, what we mean is every show has notes that you can find on our website. We have every quote. We have, if we reference a book, we'll have a link to the book. I mean, Susan does amazing show notes.
She's the one that puts all the links in there. I think you go above and beyond, Susan, actually, so.
SH: Oh thank you. And what is our website, Cynthia?
CW: I guess we have to say that! www.atlastshesaidit.org
SH: Attlastshesaidit. org. Everything's there.
CW: Well, and hopefully, in the next few months, maybe by the time we come back for Season 9, it'll only be one website. We're doing our best, people. We've hired a techie person who knows what she's doing, and we're combining our two websites together. So, hopefully by the time we come back for Season 9, maybe? If people go to atlastshesaidit.org, Everything is in one place. So maybe that's the confusing part. Let's assume that.
SH: Okay, we'll assume that. But right now, it's all in both places. So either one you go to, you're gonna find the show notes.
CW: Yeah. What else Susan? What's our other housekeeping?
SH: More housekeeping would be our online event, which is coming, our fall gathering will be a virtual fall gathering this year for a variety of reasons. But one of them is we're making some lemonade out of some of the lemons that life has brought our way. And we're going to try something we've wanted to try anyway. And that is having an event that is available to all of our listeners, no matter where you are in the world.
So we're excited for the opportunity to share these amazing speakers that we have lined up for our event this year with everyone.
CW: Right. And that's October 12th. (2024)
SH: Right. So look for registration to be coming about September 1st, right? Yep. And then you'll be able to register for it and then when it gets a little closer to the event, the link will come to you and on October 12th, we're all going to be together online.
CW: I was also thinking too, Susan, because some people gave us a thumbs down when we decided to move it from an in person event to an online event. And I thought, well, I get that because part of the fun of getting together is meeting like-minded friends. And so we thought maybe once registration goes out there, maybe we could put a chat out on our sub stack we'll advertise it somehow. Maybe we'll put it in the newsletter. I don't know. We'll put some type of link to a chat where people can say, Hey, I'm in Seattle. Anyone want to go to dinner the night before? Right. So if October 12th is the day for our event, maybe Friday evening, October 11th, friends would want to meet up at, I don't know, to get an ice cream cone or something. So anyway, that would just be, that chat could be a good place where people could say, I'm in Seattle, I'm in Phoenix, I'm in London. Who wants to have a meetup the night before?
SH: I think that's a great idea. And then I'm going to wish I could be at all the meetups because that sounds really fun.
I'm going to miss seeing people in person. I can't lie. [00:05:00] I'm going to miss that. It's a lot of fun to get to put faces with names and things like that. But we hope that. People can also get excited about the idea that this will enable a lot more women to participate. So we're excited.
CW: How about we give a shout out to our team because it's not just you and me doing all of this work, Susan.
So something new we added this season we started offering transcripts. So many, many thanks for any volunteers who have helped make us sound a little smarter by cleaning up our transcripts and taking out and “ like, like, like, yeah”. So thanks to our volunteers who kind of clean them up. I mean, like we run them through like an AI transcript thingy and we're going to be paying somebody who's going to do that.
And then the volunteer kind of comes in at the last minute to clean them up. So thank you. Thank you volunteers for doing that.
SH: Yeah much appreciated.
CW: What about Say More? Who do you want to thank for that?
SH: Oh, I want to thank Blakelee because Blakelee has taken over editorial duties for Say More. She is an amazingly gifted curator and I don't know how we just lucked into Blakelee.
I mean, she's a woman of many talents because we've had her on an episode and She's amazing. She used to host our Ladies Night In gathering, so she's a terrific emcee. But also, who knew Blakelee has a knack for putting together these themed issues for Say More. And one of my great moments of this season was you and I were at dinner with a friend who brought his daughter along, who wanted us to meet his daughter because she had been a fan.
And she said to us during that meal, it's really Say More for me. The women's voices in that publication are making a place for me. And it just went like straight to my heart because I thought, “ this is it. This was the goal. This was my vision for Say More when we very first started talking about doing it and now it's happening”.
CW: And also if women want to submit a piece of writing, a poem, an essay, where do they send that?
SH: So they send that to atlastshewritesit@gmail. com. There is also a link on our website.
CW: Perfect. I've also loved our book club.
SH: Okay, our book club is so good. If you haven't been to our book club, we hope that you'll check it out because those discussions are incredible and those are thanks to Lindsay and Chaless who run our book club.
They're amazing at organizing and facilitating discussions.
CW: We're grateful to Katie who does our email. She, if you send us an email, chances are she previews it first. You and I are on there a lot too, so sometimes we get to the emails before she does, but mostly it's Katie.
SH: It’s mostly Katie, yeah!
This is the amazing thing about all these women that we work with, because next we come to Kim, who's doing our website work right now. And it turns out that we have a message from Kim that's going to show up later in this episode. So, I think it's just marvelous how everyone who shows up to help us is also willing to lend their voice to the conversations here.
And speaking of voices, Cynthia, we have to thank everyone who has grown our Substack chat because I, did you have any idea that our Substack chat was going to be so great? I had no idea what to expect, but it's one of the most amazing surprises of this whole project. So thank you everyone who shows up for community support there.
CW: Yeah. And lastly, I particularly want to thank the people who send in voicemails. I think most people who are regular listeners know by now that at the end of every episode, we play at least two listener voicemails, sometimes three, if it's a little bit shorter of an episode. And those just..they're kind of the frosting, I would say, on the end of every episode because it's not just you and me “saying it”, right?
There are plenty of other women who are saying it, and so it's just brings me such joy to tack on other voices, because Susan, in the mouth of two or three witnesses, shall all words be established.
SH: Exactly. I used to say, wow, the voicemails were the best innovation that we ever came up with for this podcast.
But now I say it's the voicemails and the Substack chat. And both, the thing that both of those have in common is that it's not us talking, Cynthia. It's all of our listeners talking. And it's extraordinary to witness. So thank you all.
CW: Yeah. And once again, on the website is where you will find a link to send us a voicemail if you would like to.
So anyway, enough housekeeping. That was more than three minutes. Why don't you jump in Susan and intro our conversation today?
SH: Well, I don't have too much to say about it because this is going to be a largely [00:10:00] unscripted wrap up of our season. We kind of just wanted to jump on the mics and talk about it a little bit.
Season 8 was actually the first time that we've gone into a season with an identified theme. And I have to say, LOVED that. It ended up being my favorite season. Me too. And I think that that's because the conversations that we were having around women's spirituality in Season 8 have centered right exactly in the place that I'm in personally.
Same. That's really selfish of me. I mean, I know! I use the podcast as my personal therapy session and now I'm using it as my personal spiritual direction session. So, I apologize for that. For someone who comes to our podcast wanting to talk about current church events or who is working through a lot of anger because there are all different kinds of phases as people embark on this journey.
Someone who is largely focused on women's issues and wanting to talk more about those. This might not have been their favorite series of discussions, but for me personally, this is right where I am because I feel like I'm in the “After”, using air quotes, I'm in the after in my own journey.
This place where I've sort of pushed the organization to the periphery. And so now I'm interested in the what next. And for me, what's next is, continuing to familiarize myself with and also cultivate my own personal spiritual life.
CW: Yep.
SH: That's what's going on for me now. There's a learning curve to that.
There's been, I've moved into it naturally, but I haven't always known exactly where to go next or how to augment my own spiritual nutrition or any of those things it's like we said in the very first episode 177 this season Going Off Brand, it's been for me, like putting on the sleeveless shirt of my spiritual life But the reason I use that metaphor is because it's still pretty hard for me sometimes when I put on a sleeveless shirt, it feels weird to me, I mean I still have to sometimes say, “wait, is this ok” Like, I'm used to putting them on for running, but I'm not really used to putting them on for wearing, and that's been a jarring change in my life, and I'm amazed at how many times I still catch sight of myself in the mirror and say, wait, what? Shoulders? So, it's that way in my spiritual life.
I'm loving it, and it's generally the direction I want to be going, but I don't always, I feel completely comfortable in my own skin in this journey. And so these conversations have been enormously helpful to me personally.
Music interlude
CW: So if we both already agreed that this was our favorite season, then let's talk about maybe specifics, like what were some of our favorites here. And I'll go first. For sure, Season 8 was my favorite because like you said, we've kind of moved beyond the rage against the machine stage, right?
SH: Right, right!
CW: And so, what was that quote that you read early on? I think it was a Sarah Bessey quote that said something like, you know what you're against but what are you for? And so I feel like we really fleshed that out. This season was just talking more and more about the glorious and terrifying process of finding out like what you are for, like what is feeding your soul.
SH: Man, I love those words that you choose. Glorious and terrifying. That's exactly what it is. It's like really exhilarating. Someone's like, woohoo! And other times it's like, I just don't know. This is terrifying.
CW: Well, it's that proverbial or literal sleeveless shirt that you just mentioned, right? It's glorious And it's terrifying.
SH: Feels great, and also, yeah, a little scary.
CW: Yes. Well, and speaking of people we've already thanked, Kim, who is doing our website merging. We have voicemails at the end of episodes, like we just said, and last week's episode, she had a beautiful paint by number analogy that we shared as a voicemail on our What About Ritual episode.
And we don't, go back and listen to it if you haven't heard it yet. But I just wanted to highlight two lines here, which I think kind of illustrate. our theme of women's spirituality this season. She said, it's great for producing a picture, meaning, sorry, let me back up. If people haven't heard that voicemail, she was likening the church to like a paint by number kit which tells you exactly what to do and you get the cheap little paintbrush with it and you stay within the lines and you're going to get the same. You and I would get the exact same painting, Susan, if we bought the same kit, right?
SH: Right.
CW: So she says about a paint by number kit, she says, It's great for producing a picture for the untrained masses. it gets the job done, but it doesn't really teach you how to paint.
SH: Oh my gosh, that's it, Cynthia. Now we're talking about how to paint.
CW: Now we're talking about how to paint.
SH: And I love that.
CW: And then she said, I want more than what that kit can offer.
SH: Yeah.
CW: so I think [00:15:00] that's what we really tried to dig into this season is for those of us who are still in the pews, who maybe have moved it to our periphery like you said earlier?
Like how can we? Give that kit its rightful place and, because it's both for you and I move into teaching ourselves how to paint, how to be spiritual.
SH: Yeah, gorgeous metaphor, Kim. Thank you for that. Let's talk about maybe some highlight episodes from this season. Do you have a favorite episode?
CW: Well, it's interesting. As I've been thinking about the notes this week and thinking about my favorite episode, what kept coming back to me over and over was episode 184 with Janice Spangler, Am I Allowed to Change? And I feel like personally, I'm kind of, I've answered that question myself.
Am I allowed to change? Yes, Cynthia, you are allowed to change, but I feel like for so many of our listeners, for so many women who land in our Substack chats, like this is the terrifying part.
SH: Right.
CW: This, there's that word again. And so I just wanted to read one paragraph that Janice said in that episode. She said, sometimes we recognize that the systems don't work for us or that they're not good for us. And that is a real risk, which kind of feels like it validates the people saying, don't go there. But if the only measure of success is staying with the system, then you might have a point. But if your goal is to be well in this life, it is, if it is to be healthy, physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, I think it's pretty clear that accepting the way things are, And accepting the complexity and letting go of what we think we know, tends to lead toward better outcomes when people have been faced with these dilemmas.
So for some people that is going to be hard because to be well, may not always line up with what we always thought we should be doing. And I just feel like that perfectly sums up so many women who kind of first come into this At Last She Said It space is a shift has occurred for some reason, and they just need to hear other voices from other women like you, me, women in the chat, women who leave voicemails or call in episodes.
They need to know that A, they're not crazy. B, they're not alone. And so I think when Jana kind of, and tried to help flesh out the answer to that question of, am I allowed to change? I think that's really a big part of it is, okay, well yes, it's terrifying, but also if you want to be well mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, all of those things, then that means you gotta be willing to allow yourself to change.
SH: It gets kind of complicated, though, to me, because, like, intellectually, I know the answer to that question is yes, of course we're allowed to change!
CW: Right, intellectually.
SH: Right. But you and I both noticed over the arc of this project that in the beginning, when we started seeing that quite a few of our listeners were making the choice to step away from the church, that was hard for us.
Like we didn't really know quite what to do with that, that maybe we were playing a role in that. And that hadn't been our intention, going into the project. I just feel like for some reason, even though intellectually I knew people were allowed to change, and I was trying to put myself on the path of allowing myself to change by starting this project. It was still hard for me when the changes started to unfold in real time and I had to be willing to really allow people to change. I love that we, you and I sit in this sort of perch where we have this bird's eye view of what's going on with the listeners, just because of the emails that we receive, the messages, the chats, who shows up at some of our online events, all those things. We get a little bit of perspective on what goes on with our listeners and the trajectories are all over the place.
CW: Yeah.
SH: They're all over the place.
CW: They are.
SH: And so it gets tricky as a Latter-day Saint who has been conditioned your whole life that staying on the covenant path or, staying in the pews on Sunday, enduring to the end is the most important thing. That's always been the main goal for Latter-day Saints as I have absorbed it anyway from my time at church.
So watching that actually when people step onto this path of taking ownership of their spiritual life, it goes all kinds of places. That's something I had to learn in my bones.
CW: Okay.
SH: Through watching it happen and being willing to change my own perception of it, like I had to really engage with that idea and get to a place where that was not only okay, but of course it was always meant to be that way and it's desirable.
CW: Yeah. [00:20:00] That's a good point.
SH: At some point I had to step back and say, I don't work for the church. My goal was never to, this is not a missionary podcast. My goal is not to keep women in the church, but I was amazed at how deep this stuff goes because then like part of me had this knee jerk fear reaction when people are leaving the church. (CW with supportive explanation in agreement)
CW: Yes.
SH: And it really required some personal work, some inner work for me to look at that kind of shadow behavior, that reaction happening in myself, see it for what it is and adjust my thinking on that and really get my heart in the right place with it. That's been a journey for me across this podcast. (CW: Yes, shadows-during this part)
SH: I won't lie. That's been hard.
CW: Well, just as you're saying that, as you use that word conditioning, like that rings true to me as well, because we have been conditioned. to stay in the boat, right? To go to another metaphor. And it's interesting because as so many of my beliefs, internal beliefs, but also some of my external actions that other people can see have changed in regards to being an active member of the church, I can think of a couple people right now in my life who said to me,” Oh, but I appreciate you didn't throw it all out”. Or “I'm so glad you found a way to still make it work.” And I know they mean that as a compliment, but again, that's their conditioning as well, which is “you stay in the boat”, right? And so even though I see things very differently than I used to, people are still willing to pat me on the back. And I'm like, okay, but what if I had left? What if I wasn't in the pews anymore? Then what would you say? I mean, I kind of don't want to know.
SH: It would be very different. No, you do know.
CW: I do know. I do know exactly what they would say is get back on the Good Ship Zion, right. But so I'm with you. I'm with you on that, Susan, that conditioning is so deep that the overall goal is to stay in the pews. And I think that's why I wanted to read that quote by Jana is because when we do recognize those systems aren't working for us, there is a risk because if we're willing to go deep and figure it out, that risk may be that we are willing to step away or we're willing to stay in, but you know, to quote Frank Sinatra, to do it my way and you're not usually going to get a lot of support from the Latter -day Saints around you when you start doing things your way. So, what about you? What was the episode that keeps sticking out?
SH: Gosh, I love, I loved so many of them.
I went back and I had looked through the list of episodes this season to think, like, what really jumped out at me? And one of the ones I really loved, and I think because it was a surprise to me, how much I loved it and how much feedback it generated from listeners, and interaction from listeners was our episode, “What About the Sacrament?”
I wasn't totally sure when we did that episode how it was going to go over. I didn't know if anyone cared, first of all, but second of all, I, on some of these things, I never feel like I have particular insights. Like why, what do I, why do I show up to talk about the sacrament? I don't, I'm not, I don't necessarily have any big insights, but the thing that I love is how much our listeners seem to love it when we have conversations about really foundational church things.
The first time I saw it was when we did our, like, what about blessings episode, and it's like people were coming out of the woodwork to want to talk about that and chew on it and share about it. And I see, I've seen it every time we've done one of our, We Don't Believe Our Own Stuff episodes. They're about these very basic things.
But the thing I feel like happens so often with Latter day Saints is we all use this common language. We have these phrases we repeat over and over again. We have these ideas that sound really good, but we never really engage with them. Like what's behind it? What does it really mean to me in my life?
Is it important? And does it have to be? And so I feel like every time we step into the space where we take on some of these very, very basic things that I've maybe never given really serious thought to. People seem to get pretty excited about those conversations and I don't have to necessarily have anything that insightful to share.
Just the act of asking people to step back and really think about things that are in the wallpaper that they don't really think about very often is deeply meaningful to me.
CW: Well, and what's interesting, Susan, is, and I can't remember if we said this when we recorded episode 181 about the sacrament, you are the one that started those notes for the sacrament episode almost a year ago.
SH: Yeah.
CW: And we ended up sitting on it, like we didn't get to it in Season 7. And then when Season 8 rolled around and I was like, well, hey, we have these And you were just like, well, I don't know. And so I think it's really interesting, Susan. If you're thinking about it, others are too.
SH: Yeah.
Or there's at least space to ask people to think about it, I think, inviting people to the conversation makes, seems to make them tap into, “well now wait a [00:25:00] minute, what are my thoughts about this”? And it turns out we all have them. But it's not something that anyone ever talks about.
The other moment in that episode that I just loved was when we read the sacrament prayers.
CW: Yes.
SH: That was really meaningful to me. I had no idea. Like weirdly meaningful.
CW: It was weirdly meaningful to us, but I was amazed how many women said, I didn't realize what I was starving for until I heard two women read the sacrament prayers out loud.
SH: Right.
CW: I know.
SH: And I should have known it because the first day I went to the Episcopalians, the thing about that service that just blew the doors off my personal spiritual life was that every, it just happened that day, that it was only women's voices in that service. Yes. Everyone speaking in that service was a woman that day.
And I thought, I'm starving to hear these sacred words in a woman's voice, coming from the pulpit. I'm starving for that. And I didn't even know it about myself. But so when we got this outpouring from women saying, oh my gosh, it was so, moving to me to hear a woman read the sacrament prayers. I totally get that. Of course.
CW: Well, and then remember, as a result of that episode, a listener rewrote the sacrament so it was like gender neutral language.
SH: Yes.
CW: And I tacked that onto the end of I don't remember what episode as well. And that was beautiful. Gorgeous. That was poetry.
SH: Yes.
CW: So, yeah. If we're thinking about it, Susan. Someone else is probably thinking about it, or can be invited to think about it, like you said.
SH: Right.
CW: So, yes.
SH: And that's a lesson for everyone in the church, I think. Say the things. Because someone else is thinking about it, right?
CW: Yes. Yes.
SH: Or is waiting for an invitation to think about it.
CW: Yes. You're not that unique.
SH: You're not that unique, Cynthia.
CW: If you're thinking it, someone else is thinking it.
SH: Oh, exactly.
Music interlude
CW: Let's talk about a few favorite quotes, things that maybe our guests have said this season that we incorporated kind of into our own life. What stands out to you that you keep going back to that a guest said?
SH: Well, one of the things that I should have said when you asked about favorite episodes or when we just talked about that was our episodes, our journey episodes are just one of my favorite, favorite things.
CW: Yep.
SH: I love to hear the thoughts and ideas and experiences of ordinary women just like me, who maybe don't have any or feel like they have any particular insights because guess what, they do! And this year, I have to say, we didn't ask people that we really knew at all in some cases.
Or, I mean, not this year, this season. We didn't ask people we really knew, like, like we didn't know how those conversations would turn out.
CW: I guess you are right.
SH: So I was thinking about episode 180 with Mary Cox. I had never met Mary. I had seen a couple of comments that she'd Substack chat. That's all I knew about it.
But it ended up being one of my favorite conversations because she showed up with this metaphor about the Block Tower. Do you remember that?
CW: Yes.
SH: That she had a block tower, she had to knock it all over, and then she had the opportunity to step back and decide, do I want to rebuild this? And like, what goes in the foundation?
What do I put first? And that has just stuck with me ever since she said it. It's such an easily accessible metaphor to me. And I mean, it's just so simple and so obvious. But one of the things that she said was, love and Jesus and me, those are the three blocks in the foundation. What else really matters?
And it was crazy to me that a Latter-day Saint woman would knock down her block tower, and it would feel pretty revolutionary to her to rebuild it with love and Jesus and herself in the foundation. I mean, that just told me so much about our experience, about what we're handed and what it doesn't give us, really.
CW: Yes.
SH: What our foundation is built on does not feed us. the individual spiritual needs of so many women. And I could see it right there where she said, wait, what do I even put here? And had to really think about putting herself in the foundation of her own spiritual life. That just knocked my socks off.
And I have not stopped thinking about it since. So thank you, Mary, for that.
CW: (Agreement Hmm- um!) Speaking of our amazing embracing your journey episodes, I really loved Amy Watkins Jensen's episode 187. She, of course, most people know now, she runs the Women on the Stand account, she was quoted in the New York Times.
SH: Right.
CW: Anyway, she is such a mover and a shaker in this space and we're so grateful to her.
And she is a middle school teacher by profession, and she said this one line that I [00:30:00] haven't… that I keep coming back to: She said, students who learn how to question well, become better problem solvers. And I love that line so much that we turned that into like a soundbite reel. We'll link to it if people want to go and just hear that soundbite.
But there's something about that idea of students who learn how to question well become better problem solvers, because I kept thinking about that in the Latter -day Saint context. Like, Susan, do you feel like you were taught to question well?
SH: No, no, no. I was taught to not question. Don't question.
CW: Right. Or that if you do question, here are the prepackaged answers.
SH: Right.
CW: And so I just keep thinking about that descriptor of questioning well, and I think how much better equipped you, and me, and so many of our listeners would have been, we would have been able to become better problem solvers if we had been taught to question well.
So thank you, Amy, for being the kind of person that is teaching the next generation to question well, because they're going to be the better problem solvers. They're not going to have to end up in a dark pit. Like I was trying to scratch my way out of this because I didn't know how to problem solve when everything burnt down to the ground, like that was really, really hard.
So anyway, what else for you?
SH: Well, interesting. I just want to say something in response to what you just said, and I think that questioning in our church is equated with doubt. And there is hardly a concept I can even think of that's more vilified than doubt among Latter-day Saints. And so, shifting questioning into the constructive learning and problem solving column is an entirely different approach to it.
But it's really kind of how Jesus used it. Remember when we did that episode with Andrea Forsyth, I don't even know in what season, about, can I ask a question, where we were talking about how Jesus used questions to teach because, I mean, it's how you get people to look inward, engage with ideas, and figure out what they think about them, right?
And even get ready to move toward problem solving. You have to be willing to engage with yourself first to do that. And I think Latter-day Saints are largely afraid to engage with their own real thoughts about things, to even know where to begin to formulate a question, because they're afraid when they look inward, a question comes from doubt, right?
Or from lack of knowledge, or from not being sure about something, not knowing. And not knowing is a scary, scary place to be for many Latter-day Saints. So like we never had a chance to learn how to question well, in my opinion. That's something that we do not equip our youth with at all and therefore our adults don't know how to do it either. I just love that came from a middle school teacher.
It just seems so obvious to me when I look at it now, you know, it's like it's so obvious!
CW: Embarrassing almost!
SH: I know but this is the thing I love again and again about our conversations is that we do an episode and someone says something so obvious and I had this gigantic lightbulb aha moment, for the most obvious things again and again.
CW: Yep.
SH: Love it. One of the phrases that has stuck with me and it's not yours and it's not mine. It came from I think a meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation. But anyway, it was that phrase, the cross of the present moment.
CW: Yes.
SH: Episode 179. Am I spiritual? We talked a lot about that cross of the present moment.
And that is just something that felt deeply true to me the first time that I saw it. And I knew that there was a lot in those few words, a lot of value for me to mine from that. And I've continued to sort of pick that apart and think about it ever since we had that conversation. I love it when little gems like that show up in our conversations and I can sort of just pluck them out and put them on the shelf and, and look at them for a while.
And that's one that I've loved.
CW: Yeah.
Music Interlude
CW: Let's talk about some of the feedback that we've received. We get reviews sometimes on like, I think, Apple podcasts might be the only place you can actually like write out a review. On Spotify. I think you can choose one, two, three, five star review or whatever. So please do that listeners if you use either of those platforms, it really helps us get the word out.
But can I just read the latest one that we received on Apple Podcasts and it's from DancingCow7 and she said, “Susan and Cynthia are two sides to one coin and I'm always so glad to hear their diverse perspectives on all the topics they discuss. I appreciate how different of personalities they have because I feel [00:35:00] like I get to relate and gain some empathy for those who aren't like me, all at once.
They are so good at broadening their perspectives with each conversation and I truly feel seen and understood in their discussions. I learn a ton and I have loved the community aspect that has grown with this podcast as well. I can't seem to get enough of A L S S I”.
So, thank you Dancing Cow. That's a very touching review.
I was really touched by that. And we read every review, so thank you. What stood out to you, Susan?
SH: Well, the thing I love about that review is that it's her telling us what we're doing, what we're getting right, right? And that's what I love when people take the time to review is like, I want to know when we hit the mark and how we do it.
And so like, it's meaningful to her that you and I are so different.
CW: Yes.
SH: And that's meaningful to me too. That I always say like, that's the magic, right? This works because there's a Cynthia and a Susan.
CW: I think so!
SH: And we're just so different. So I love seeing that other people appreciate that, too. So thank you, Dancing Cow.
CW: You know what, just, that just reminds me that we kind of had a quick, I don't know, five minute segment on our recent episode with C. A. Larson where we talked about introverts and extroverts.
SH: Right, right.
CW: And how hard it, and I can't believe how much feedback we got from women. They were just like, that really helped me when you talked about introverts.
Like, that has been the hardest thing for me being a member of the church is being an introvert. And so I think we decided, okay, let's go ahead…So look for that. listeners next season. We're going to try really hard to have an episode about introverts versus extroverts.
SH: Yeah, I think we need to do that. That's an example of one of those so obvious things that landed like this gigantic aha moment for me and obviously for a lot of listeners too because we heard from a lot of women. So there were a lot of introverts waiting to be seen and we saw them in that episode and that was beautiful when you see that happen. Loved it.
CW: Yeah.
SH: One of my favorite pieces of feedback started out by giving me butterflies in my stomach when I was reading it, actually, because I thought, oh, no, oh, no. And it comes from a male listener. And Mark wrote to us to say this:
“Dear Cynthia and Susan, today on a long drive back to Provo from St. George, I listened to your podcast episode on the Syrophoenician woman.
Thank you for a wonderful, insightful conversation. Possibly you heard my loud amens all the way from I 15. So, here's where I started to get butterflies because I'm like, Crap! This was just us like, us dancing with a story that we don't really, we're not Bible scholars. So is this going to be a Bible scholar coming to correct us?
He says, I love that story which my New Testament professor called the story of the woman who won an argument with Jesus. I also love the idea of inviting Sacrament meeting speakers to talk on the subject of their favorite scripture story about Jesus. And here's where it got hairy for me. He said, I really appreciated the interpretive options you explored and how you emphasize the value of reading the Bible.
These are things I'm passionate about too in my own teaching of BYU students. See, I was right. This is someone who knows what they're talking about. I too have been thinking a lot about the humanity of Jesus in recent years, especially as portrayed in Mark, as well as the Atonement, encompassing not only Gethsemane and Calvary, but the entire Incarnation, something that the ancient Christians that I study felt very strongly about.
Thanks for your good work. I wish you the very best in your continued efforts. I get the sense that there is a real growing groundswell of hunger in our community for the expansive kind of faith you two are modeling.”
I loved so many things in that message. Thank you, Mark. I absolutely love that he was so willing as someone who actually knows something, to move over and make room for two people who don't know a dang thing to just noodle their way around a scripture story and try and reach for some possible insights.
(CW words of agreement/appreciation during this)
CW: But I mean, that's why we're kind of calling those kinds of episodes “a dance with”
SH: Exactly.
CW: Because you and I are just dancing with, in this case, the Canaanite woman, or also called the Syrophoenician woman. Yeah, you don't have to…let me just say it this way: Susan and Cynthia give you permission to dance with any scripture that you want to dance with, to have a midrash of sorts with it, because we are not Bible scholars either.
SH: Right.
CW: And yet, we're not landing on anything permanent that, I mean, we, go follow the Biblical scholars, like, Bart Ehrman and Dan McClellan, they actually know all the data that's out there. You and I are just trying to extract meaning from the stories to apply to our own lives.
And I feel like no matter where anyone is on their education of the Scripture Spectrum, we all have the right and the duty, I'm going to say, to do that.
SH: Yes. Agreed. But it doesn't always feel like that in Gospel [00:40:00] Doctrine, right? Because there's..
CW: Correct.
SH: The teacher has an agenda, like, here's the interpretation that we're going to get to in this lesson, and so all roads are going to lead to that interpretation.
And also, if you bring up any other ideas that might sit outside that accepted interpretation, then there's always another member ready to shut you down and say, “ no, no, no, that's not what it means”. Right? And so I just love that Mark, who obviously probably knows something, made room for us to just do that, seize the value in doing that.
And I absolutely…just, that was my favorite, favorite bit of feedback that we got this season. I also loved that he sees our conversations as modeling an expansive faith. That I cannot think of a descriptor that would be more meaningful to me, that would feel more like I was doing the work I wanted to be doing than modeling an expansive faith.
So, thank you Mark for that.
CW: Well, and I think that phrase, expansive faith, is exactly what we really tried to focus on through this season of Women's Spirituality, is to see that as an expansion of all the good things in your life, as opposed to like, when things all burn down, it very much feels like a retraction.
SH: Yes, yes!
CW: Yes. So once you go through the retraction and you're ready for the expansion, I'm glad that you and I can model that just a teeny tiny bit.
SH: Me too.
CW: So.
SH: Let's talk about our voicemails because we love our voicemails! What was your favorite voicemail or one of them?
CW: Well, I think you and I have the same favorite voicemail.
SH: I think you and I and our listeners have the same favorite voicemail. And what did we say to each other about it? Exhibit A.
CW: Exhibit A. Can we just play it?
SH: The Exhibit A voicemail, yes, let's play it.
CW: I want it to be on an actual episode. Oh, okay. Let me get there.
VOICE MAIL IS PLAYED:
Two years ago, I was in a stake leadership training.
The meeting was full of PowerPoint presentations about the numbers and the stake president kept going on about how it isn't about the numbers, but of course, everything that followed was numbers. He was putting charts and data and everything was about the Melchizedek priesthood holders, potential elders, and not a single equivalent list of how to track the sisters.
So even though I was in the Relief Society presidency and my focus should have been on the women, I was being asked to track the men and how can we make them more involved. The thing that made me most angry was when he said that our job as women was to secure our families and get young men on missions.
And he explicitly said that our success as good women of Christ would be measured by our children's activity in the gospel. My eyes immediately darted to one of the counselors in the Stake Relief Society presidency. I knew her well, and none of her children are active. I wanted to stand up and yell at him that only Christ can save us, not the moms.
And that agency is one of the most important pieces of God's plan
. [said with deep emotion}:
But to my utter shame, I sat silently in that awkwardness, and I watched my friend's head drop to her chest as she quietly cried. (said with emotion/tears in voice)
NO MORE. Thank you for being amazing examples of the power of saying things, AT LAST. NO MORE.
SH: Okay, it makes me cry. Every time I listen to that voice mail, it makes me cry when she says, no more. I remember exactly where I was when I was previewing the episode that you sent me and that came up. And I'm just crying on my walk.
CW: Oh really?
SH: Yes. There was something really, really powerful about it. And I think it's because I make a lot of noise about like not not being an activist.
CW: Right.
SH: That activism is not my thing and a lot of that might have to do with me
being an introvert. I don't know. I mean, I think there are a lot of different reasons that, that's not my thing.
CW: Probably!
SH: That's really hard for me. But when she had that moment of saying no more, it just went right through me. I was thinking immediately, well, the first thing I started to do is think about the song from Hamilton, Rise Up.
So I was hearing the Rise Up number, right, and that chant just like grows louder and louder, rise up, rise up. And I thought, I am feeling called as a woman in this church, suddenly, to be willing to just say, NO MORE.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And I think part of it has to do with what happened with the Annette Dennis quote heard round the world, that also happened earlier this season, where suddenly I don't know how many thousand, do you know how many it ended up being?
I mean, 7,000? 10,000? How many comments ended up on that Instagram post?
CW: I don't even know how many. I know the comment I made got over 7, 000 likes!
SH: Unbelievable, Cynthia!
CW: Yeah. I think 30,000 comments, actually.
SH: It was a moment like I've never seen in our church, where the women did rise up!
CW: Rise up!
SH: I can't think of anything else that compares to that I've seen as a Latter-day Saint woman.
And I was just thinking, you and I have this glimpse of how much pain there is around some things for many women in this church and you and I also have a glimpse of how hard it is for women to “say things” [00:45:00], even very benign things. Man, it is hard for women to say these things out loud. I was thinking, what if even a tiny percentage of women began to rise up and say the things?
They could not silence us!
CW: Um hum!
SH: They did not silence that post on Instagram. Surprisingly, actually.
CW: Yeah.
SH: That poured out and there really wasn't a good way for them to put a cork in that and stop it. I just feel like we are approaching this tipping point (CW: yes, tipping point) SH: where the women may well rise up, and things are going to have to change.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And I want to be one of the ones who rises up on behalf of other women.
CW: Well, Susan, you do that every week when you show up for this podcast. So I know you're kind of hard on yourself about you're not an activist. And, but I think there's also a difference between being an activist and being an advocate.
SH: There is.
CW: I think there are two sides of the same coin. And so you are an advocate for women. I am as well. And in my own private life, I do some activist type things. We just don’t make a call on this podcast. We don't have letter writing campaigns.
SH: RIght.
CW: But we very much support women who say NO MORE.
In fact, can I play one more voicemail actually in response to you?
SH: You can, you can, yeah.
CW: Okay, let's hear what Shanna thought about that voicemail.
Hi, Cynthia and Susan. I just finished listening to episode 194. Thank you so much. That first voicemail after the episode had me in tears, just crying with that woman. (said with tearful emotion)
I feel like there are times in church meetings where it is becoming more and more appropriate to just stand up and say WTF and call out the messaging that is so wrong. Nowhere did I covenant as a woman and daughter of God to be invisible and silent and continually be reminded by some men how much I need them for happiness in my life.
I have found, or I should say, Jesus has found me in all of my dark times. And He has affirmed my value, my worth, the value of all women, and we were not sent here to be small and invisible. We were sent here to experience this life together, in collaboration, in cooperation.
CW: NOWHERE did I covenant to be invisible, PREACH!
SH: Okay, but here's the thing. I know full well, Cynthia, if I'd been in that meeting, I would not have called that damaging messaging out. I wouldn't have.
CW: Okay.
SH: And I remember so well how it was to be a mother who's when my children had left the church, when that kind of exodus started, and I remember sitting in meetings drowning in my own failure and feeling like there was no support and no one because of the shame that I could acknowledge that with.
That conversation doesn't happen. It doesn't happen among Latter-day Saints. And I have never felt more alone ever in my life. And so when she tells this story of watching her friend silently crying as this message is coming out, man, I have been that person. And also, I'm still not yet the person who would stand up or send an email to the stake president or, whatever it would be to be able to say that out loud.
And I want to be that person.
CW: But you say it out loud here.
SH: Yeah, but man, there is a lot of remove that comes from being behind a microphone. I'm here in my cozy little bedroom, like it's really easy for me to say things here. It's really quite anonymous in a lot of ways.
I don't know that anyone in my ward even knows I have a podcast except like a few close friends. Like I'm still pretty anonymous, believe it or not. And that is a long way for me from being willing to stand up for the sister next to me, against whatever patriarchy is unfolding in that meeting on the stand.
I'm just not yet, not there yet. I didn't leave a comment on Sister Dennis' post, but you did. We're just different that way.
CW: Then I'm going to ask you a follow up question. I'm going to, I'm going to totally put you on the spot.
SH: Okay.
CW: What does “no more” mean to you?
SH: I think that's why it hit me so hard. I was just thinking, “Susan, no more”.
You have got to be willing to stand up in person, in your body, like to take up your space with your voice, BIG VOICE, GO AHEAD.
CW: BIG VOICE
SH: Like Candice said in our episode, BIG VOICE, GO AHEAD. I have got to be willing to say it out loud for the woman who [00:50:00] is in that room next to me, because no one was there to say it for me.
And I know exactly what drowning in some of this messaging feels like. And it is soul-killing. It's terrible.
CW: Well, I want to go back to what you said a few minutes ago about a tipping point, because I think we are at some kind of tipping point. And that phrase, no more or rise up is going to mean different things for different women.
SH: Right.
CW: And maybe just for the first time, like you're saying, maybe for you, it's just like, okay, what am I going to do with this? And the wheels are turning in your head and whatever you come up with is going to be right for you. And maybe for others, it's going to be different. Maybe they literally would stand up in a meeting and say, you cannot say these things about women, that we have a Savior and it isn't us. So stop it. Or so, I don't know, whatever or the email or going up to him afterwards and grabbing his elbow and saying, “Hey, just some feedback on what you said…” I mean, I think there are a number of ways to say no more.
SH: I think so too. And I'm working on it.
I'm working on it.
CW: Yeah.
SH: I could just see, I still have a long way to go.
CW: And that's okay.
SH: And if the founder of At Last She Said It still has a long way to go, then that just tells you that this stuff runs deep and I just would love everyone to have some grace for themselves in this process.
CW: Yes.
SH: It's not easy to make these changes in ourselves and to be able to live them out loud, once the changes begin.
CW: I think, again, I think that goes back to what we were saying before that, or the listener said about us, that we're two sides of the same coin is because the way you say no more is just going to look different than the way I say no more.
And I think we create space for women all along the introvertedness, extrovertedness, whatever spectrum to show up as themselves. So. I think it's a fantastic thing actually, Susan, that, that this is really hard for you. I know it doesn't feel fantastic to you, but I know it, it throws a lifeline to so many women for whom it is also just so darn hard.
SH: So. Well, thank you for that. Thank you for leaving space for it to still be really hard for me. I just had this glimpse of when the women finally do rise up, it’s game over. There is a wave that is primed to come. And then when it does that is going to be a game changer.
Music Interlude (upbeat)
CW: On a lighter note what surprised you?
SH: Oh my gosh. I'm so surprised that there was a Season 8. Do you remember back when we were doing season two, we're slogging through it and thinking, maybe it'll just be a two season podcast. And then we started to think like, swinging for the fences, maybe it'll be a five season podcast.
Maybe we'll make it that far. It didn't really feel like we would. Anyway, but at the end of Season 8, I'm like energized and ready to keep going. So, that was, that's been surprising to me. A great surprise, actually. A good surprise!
CW: Yeah, I think you're right. We didn't know. We were committed from the start of this project.
We knew that we were taking on a part time job which has probably gone into more of a three quarter time job.
SH: Full time job
CW: We tease each other. I mean, listeners are so generous in their donations so that we can keep the podcast ad free. But that's something I'm surprised at is people's donations.
And so we can tease each other and say, yay we take home McDonald's wages from 1988 now.
SH: Right.
SH: But we do. And that's great.
CW: But we do, and we’re so thankful!
SH: And thank you. The generosity humbles me. I guess I didn't expect the community that has grown up around this project. We just thought we were just starting a podcast. And like, of course, we didn't know if anyone would listen to it or care, but we didn't really expect this community to show up.
And this is another place where I glimpse the women in this church and say, I see you and the wave is coming because I sense what is showing up behind this. And so that's been amazing. The least surprising thing, the least surprising thing for me is that we still have not gotten Barbara Brown Taylor or Sarah Bessie on our podcast, despite your great efforts, Cynthia.
I bow down to you for trying. It hasn't happened yet.
CW: No. Hasn't happened yet. Well, Barbara Brown Taylor did write us the nicest “declining to come on our podcast”, we've ever received. So she's still our favorite. And that's okay.
SH: I’ll put that in my book of remembrance, but still I'd love to I'd love to have either one of them on the podcast The other thing that is the least surprising to me is that we haven't had time to get our book finished Cynthia and that is part of why the break that's coming is It's truly needful for us at this point because we have a deadline and we are going to have to take a break from these conversations, in order to write those conversations.
So I'm excited about that.
CW: We are on contract for a book and our draft is due December 31st. So honestly, listeners, this [00:55:00] next break, Susan and myself are probably going to disappear a little bit. We're going on break.
SH: Yeah, we have to!
CW: We have to get this book written. So…
SH: if anyone needs me, I'll be at my desk in October and November and December.
CW: And there might be a lot of DoorDash at my house even though I love to cook. I might just be getting meals delivered as I go back in my little cave with my laptop, writing!
SH: It’s going to happen, I am excited for it.
CW:You’ll be in the cave with me Susan. We can do it!
SH: Absolutely, we can do it!
CW: We can do it!
SH: We got this!
CW: I just spent a couple of weeks with my grandson who is kind of bilingual, he is learning to crawl, so I am constantly saying, “tu puedes!, tu puedes”, “you can do it, you can do it!”
SH: Adorable!
CW: I am going around saying to myself, “Tu puedes…”
SH: I am going to write that down and put it on my mirror. That's great.
CW: Anyway. What about since you and I talked earlier about embracing your journey episodes and how much we love, love, love them, what are you, can I ask you, what are you embracing today in your journey? I don't even know what you're going to say.
SH: Yes! I have been thinking about this and I think one of the biggest shifts for me, and it's actually been maybe just in about the past year, is that I have stopped trying to fit the puzzle pieces that the church supplied me with in my life into the holes in my puzzle.
I don't have to make those things fit. I've been able to let those puzzle pieces go. And really just what that means for me is like if there are things I don't understand, don't agree with, and don't need or that aren't nurturing me spiritually at this point in my life, I no longer feel under obligation to try to figure out how to nuance them or fix them or, whatever it is to make them fit.
They don't go in my puzzle. Fair enough. I can leave those pieces for people whose puzzles they do fit.
CW: And good for them.
SH: And that's been a change for me. For a long time, I was trying to nuance the old ideas, I was trying to figure out, “How can I use this? How does this still work for me”? No, no more.
I don't have to make it work for me.
CW: Yep.
SH: There are enough things that do work for me that are there, it's fine that when there are things that are not for me. How about you? What does embracing your journey look like today?
CW: Okay. I have been flying a lot to see my little grandson in Seattle. I've been on lots of plane trips this year, and I never travel without my noise canceling headphones. Do you wear them when you fly?
SH: I don't. Maybe I need some.
CW: Oh my gosh, Susan! Oh, well, I've become like the old cranky lady. It's like, where are my headphones? I can't stand hearing all these people around me. So, the thing about my noise canceling headphones is they just dim. Like, I can still hear the pilot when they come on to say, okay, we're going to, there's a delay. And this is the delay. Like I can still kind of hear it, but it's muffled. It's in the background. I can choose whether to angle my headphones off if I want to really hear or if I'm like, I heard enough. And so I feel like lately I've been getting really good at my church canceling headphones. Because as we're recording this in August [2024], there's kind of a lot of buzz going around. There've been some more temple changes. There's more buzz about like radical garment changes that are coming.
SH: Right.
CW: And I'm just sitting here with my church canceling headphones going, I don't really care. I mean, I care in that it affects loads and loads of Latter-day Saints, but personally for my life, speaking of puzzle pieces, like I've stopped trying to make certain things fit.
SH: Yeah, it's the same thing.
CW: Yeah, exactly. Okay, we have the exact same thing. That's really interesting. You're using the metaphor of puzzle pieces. And I'm using the metaphor of church cancelling headphones. So, so there, that's all.
SH: Yeah, that sounds like finally letting go of some things, actually, that sounds really healthy. That sounds like what we've been talking about doing for a few seasons now, but it's not as easy to actually do sometimes as it is to envision.
CW: Right. You and I, we hear the things going on. We're hearing the buzz, but it's kind of muffled. For us now, at least personally, it's muffled for me. Sometimes you and I may choose to address things out loud, not muffled on our episodes. Not so much during Season 8. But yeah, it feels really good.
Like it feels really good. Like I said with the buzz about different changes that I'm just kind of sitting here going that's nice. Like good stuff. So personally, what's been on your mind, Susan? Like what, what's going on personally?
SH: Well, I can tell you a couple of things.
One is the 11 and when I say the 11, so there was this, toward the end of the season, we had an episode with Candace, and there was a moment where you [01:00:00] stopped in the conversation and figured out that between the three of us, we had 11 children, and that one of them was in the church, and that was your son.
And that's a pretty startling little artifact. For me, from this season, that of three women with 11 children, one is in the church. Now, I realize that we're in a pretty specific demographic, I guess, church wise, right? We're in this sort of edge group, so the subset is not representative of the church body as a whole, but I have to pay attention to the fact that three women gathered for conversation who are all still in the pews on Sundays.
Yeah. Have 11 children between them, and one is in the church. And he's a man also. And I think that is important also. So I haven't been able to stop thinking about that. That is on my mind. I think we are continuing to hemorrhage, particularly young people. And I don't know what that looks like going forward, but at some point, it's got to catch someone's attention, and they've got to try to, you Figure out how to stop it.
That's how I feel about it. I could also be totally wrong, but that's been on my mind. The other thing I've been thinking about is one of my daughters who has stopped attending and actually that's just happened in the past few years because she's been a guest on our podcast several times and was in the Relief Society Presidency when she was doing that, right?
So, it's not just like super peripheral members who are leaving. It's young women who were in the Relief Society Presidency a few years ago. Who are leaving also has my attention, but I was talking to this daughter who is expecting her first baby very soon. And this is the second time that she has brought this up to me.
So I can tell it's on her mind and therefore it's on mine. And that is, she's saying, I don't know what to do. I want to raise my daughter in the church. She wants all the things and she can detail them in a very detailed list. She wants all the things for her daughter that the church did for her. In her life, she very much sees the value of what the church has done for her in her life.
But as an adult, right, it's not given, the value prop is not there for her anymore. And so, but she wants it for her child and really is racked by it, doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to raise a child in today's world, in today's church. And the thing is and I've told you this a million times, we have so many young mothers struggling with this question, can I keep my children in this church and how do I do it?
And I don't have any wisdom on that. And I feel really inadequate. I don't even really know what to tell her about that. And so that does keep me awake at night sometimes. I don't have the answer to that question, to how young parents should raise children in today's world, in today's church as it is presently constituted.
Which means the culture, like all of it, I mean there are a lot of things. Like she said, I don't want to take my baby to church in a sundress and have someone tell me that she needs to be garment standards, I mean, there are crazy things in the culture of our church still.
They're still there.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And so, they're just things that she doesn't want to expose her child to and that's on my mind.
CW: That's fair.
SH: Yeah.
CW: Whether, I mean we should all be concerned about this next generation and that's really hard Susan. And your daughter is having a daughter so I'm sure that compounds it.
SH: Oh it does. It absolutely does. Raising daughters. Yeah. It's very specific. Very specific to women.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Like I said, it's your son who is still active so that has my attention, everything about those two facts. What about you? What's on your mind?
CW: I have more to say, but I'll save it for the end. We're going to ask each other, what do we know? Right?
SH: Oh, ok!
CW: So I'm going to save mine for that. But you know, what's funny is I didn't know what you were going to say. I mean, you just kind of had some notes scribbled here in our Google doc, but when you had the 11, I thought you were going to talk about the documentary, the Philadelphia 11!
SH: Ah!
CW: .. that recently came out about, it's the 50th anniversary of the Episcopalians Ordaining Women.
SH: Yes.
CW: And I am 50. So yes, it was in 1974 that the Episcopalians ordained women and what I've been thinking, okay, so here's something that I have been thinking about is in this documentary, they talk about the 11 women who were ordained and the way it was subversive, because they basically found like minded men who are like, “Of course, women should be ordained”.
And those men just did it. They didn't ask anybody's permission. And I remember afterwards, texting you furiously saying, “Susan, Like, this would never happen in our church”. Like, we wouldn't, and I'm not saying, I mean, I haven't, I have no idea. I mean, maybe there would be some LDS men who would be subversive and do it.
They would get quickly excommunicated five seconds later, unlike [01:05:00] in the Episcopalian church, which that's a whole other story. You can go look up the documentary if you want to know more about that and why they weren't excommunicated. But anyway, that just has me thinking again about change and it kind of goes along, I think, even with what your daughter is dealing with and like wanting all the good things, but also just seeing that so much needs to change. And seeing that, my gosh, for being a 50 year old woman, some churches are way ahead of us. And it makes me sad to think, I don't even see that happening in 50 years.
SH: Right.
CW: In our own, you and I are not going to see equality and this isn't even necessarily about ordination for me.
And that's a whole nother topic you and I've talked about many times, but I'm deeply concerned about equality, just like you are. And I don't see full equality coming for women anytime soon. And that breaks my heart. Yeah. To say. So, if I were bringing a new baby girl into this world, I would probably be having all those same thoughts that your daughter is right now.
Music Interlude
CW: All right. Well, let's close this long episode, Susan. Can I ask you then, what do you know? What is something that you know right now, today?
SH: (light laughter) I am going to say that I know more than I did when we started.
CW: Oh, good.
SH: I mean, I've talked a lot about I don't really know anything, and like, the older I get, the less I know. And to some extent, that's true. But actually, I feel like I know a lot more about myself than I did when we started this journey. I've been able to and not only understand myself better, but sort of myself in context of the church, and how all of these pieces have kind of gone together. I have a view of that I've never had before.
And the reason it matters, the reason it's worth knowing is I feel like none of this can be solved. And by solved, I mean making peace with God, the Church, in your larger spiritual life, none of this resolves, that's a better word than solved, none of this resolves without a good knowledge of yourself.
That putting myself in the foundation really was essential to making any kind of spiritual progress at all. And I know that now. I know that that is the first thing that had to happen. I had to go in at the foundation in order for any kind of growth that I was looking for to be possible. And I didn't really fully appreciate that when we started this journey.
So I'm happy to know it now. What about you, Cynthia? What's one thing that you know right now?
CW: I know today that letting go is the key to peace, to having inner peace. And I'm on this journey of learning to let go that I never thought I would have to be on. I mean, that makes it sound more horrible than it is.
It's not. In fact, as I'm going through this, I'm saying to myself, Ooh, this is good. This is a feeling I haven't had before of having to let go of outcomes or anyway, I'm trying to, I'm trying to be vague because it involves family members. But I've been getting more into Buddhism. I've been listening to some more Buddhist podcasts, secular Buddhism.
And it's funny because when probably three or four years ago, I started listening to secular Buddhism and it didn't do anything for me.
SH: Interesting.
CW: And now I can’t get enough of it. And so I think that just goes to prove we, we are all kind of in our journeys, different things will or may not mean anything to us in that moment. And then eventually they will or not. But for me, I thought, Oh, this is really interesting that I didn't really resonate too much with Buddhist principles, but now I feel like in some ways I'm, I've kind of been painted into a corner where it's like, what are you going to do now, Cynthia, because you can't control this situation.
So are you going to learn to let go finally or not? So I had a good conversation about this with a bunch of friends. We were sitting around a fire pit and I asked them all this question and they all had something, these are all Latter-day Saint friends of mine who are edgy friends like me. I would say three out of the five of them all had something, some advice to give me, and it all went back to Buddhism.
SH: Dang it. Dang it.
CW: Because Latter-day Saints, we are not really good at letting go. We are very enmeshed with our families. Families are forever. We will control that outcome. And we just don't give each other tools for that. And so one of my friends around this fire pit, she actually said to me, my new spiritual practice every day, Is letting go. Letting go of outcomes for her it was with her daughter. And I [01:10:00] thought, Oh my gosh, she just gave me the greatest gift. And so every day when the little hamster wheel starts running in my head about, certain things going on in the periphery of my life I sat there and “let it go, Cynthia. let it go”. I mean, there's a lot more I could say about that, but we're out of time.
So.
SH: Well, you know that “open my hands” is my personal three word prayer. That's the one I use the most, “open my hands, open my hands”, just like release my grip on all of this. “Open my hands”.
CW: Okay, I'm adding that.
SH: That mantra is definitely part of my spiritual practice. But what I wanted to say is, and I mentioned it in my Worthy Stuff newsletter this week, but I wanted to be sure that you saw it.
If you're going down the Buddhism path, I cannot recommend highly enough the book that I'm reading called Faith, Trusting Our Own Deepest Experience. It is faith from a Buddhist perspective basically. It's on my list. And absolutely check it out. So I'll leave you with that parting gift.
CW: Thank you for being my wise friend as well on this journey.
You were not one of the friends sitting around the campfire with me that night, but you’re probably sick of me texting you and going “wah, wah, wah”, and then you come back with wisdom and you have been so helpful to me as well, Susan. I just want all our listeners to know that, that I don't know if it goes the other way around because I'm 10 years younger than you.
So you have 10 more years of wisdom, and I'm just grateful that I can… I can just be like, Susan, what do I do in this situation?
SH: I’m going to push back a little on that and say, I get back 10 times more than I give. So thank you. You're my, truly my favorite conversational partner in life and in podcasting.
So I pinch myself daily, Cynthia. Thank you so much. Can't wait for next season and I'll see you at the typewriter, so to speak.
CW: Okay. See you in a few months listeners. Thank you. Bye.
Closing music ALSSI theme music
P.S. FROM CYNTHIA
We recorded this episode right before the most recent Church handbook changes that further marginalized our transgender Latter-day Saint siblings. I did say that I care about hurtful policies in as much as they hurt other fellow Saints. But I said it quite light- hearted, and there is nothing light about these most recent changes.
I mourn with those affected. I could have better explained that my privilege allows me to wear those church canceling headphones better than many. I will always walk with our LGBTQ saints, always.
VOICEMAIL 1
I had an interesting experience today with some of my ward members while we were volunteering at the food pantry.
One of the brothers that was there was talking about how we have all of the eligible criteria in order for us to get a temple in our stake except for the number of worthy priesthood holders. And he said that that number has decreased over the past two years in our stake and that the number of single women has increased.
And, he said that his theory is that men only attend church and exercise their priesthood duty because of their wives and their children. And so if they don't have those things in their life, they're not going to be active in their priesthood duty, which there's some issues with that statement anyways.
But he basically said that the church is dependent on women to keep their husbands active. And so I said, well, it sounds like we should be putting more women in charge, doesn't it? And it goes back to this thing that you've discussed on your podcast several times about how if women are what is holding this church together, why aren't more women in charge? Why can't women run these things in the temple so that like we can have a temple here instead of waiting on the men if that's the only thing we're waiting on.
VOICEMAIL 2
Hi Susan and Cynthia, my name is Emily and I just finished listening to your episode about spirituality and religion I was stopped in my tracks when C.A. Larson talked about how difficult it is for introverts in the church, and how it's just not set up for introverts. I have never heard anyone talk about that before but I have thought about it a lot. It was my entire lived experience in the church. I could tell lots of stories, but the one I want to share today is I was in a teacher training class, and we were talking about how to reach out to people, how to get people to engage more.
And the teacher asked a really thoughtful question. He asked how people who are introverted could do this in their own way. [01:15:00] How they could adapt this for them. I raised my hand to answer because I had a lot of thoughts, but a man started speaking and he said that introverts needed to repent, they needed to repent of being introverted.
That everything about them was, about that personality trait, was wrong, and they should try to be more extroverted, like him.
CLOSING CREDITS
CW: Check out our website to find everything in one place. Episodes, show notes, events, merchandise, voice messaging, newsletter, transcripts, and donation links. It's all at atlastshesaidit.org. Want to talk about this week's episode? Watch social media, or better yet, subscribe and join our Friday chats on. You'll be keeping the podcast ad free and supporting other women too. Thanks for listening!