Episode 246 (Transcript): What Women Don't Get | Part Two

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener Amanda Gunderson for her work in transcribing this episode!

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

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SH: I have played this game, Cynthia. I’ve played this game my whole life, so I get it. As a mother, I spent so many years trying to build that bridge that you and I have talked about, right? To spin things in a way that might make it feel sustainable for my daughters. I didn’t succeed, by the way, right? But I was, devoted to the exercise, for all the years they were coming through young women’s, I wanted them to stay in the church,

but not only that, I genuinely wanted their experience to be okay, to be good for them in some way. I wanted to believe that the goal was not always gonna be, maintain the status quo. So I threw the crumbs. I did.

CW: Hi, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley,

CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is What Women Don’t Get, part Two.

SH: Here we go, Cynthia.

CW: Here we go. Part one was, I don’t even know how many years ago, but-

SH: -a long time ago, I think This should get our listeners excited, this title, because I think that the essay that you wrote of the same name, which is in our book is, you know, one of the most talked about things, I guess is the way to say it, that’s ever come out of At Last She Said It. So high time, we revisited this topic, in my opinion.

CW: So why are we revisiting it?

SH: As part of our season talking about change it made sense that we revisit a few old topics that we’ve talked about before, just to see whether or not we sort of perceive any kind of movement around them.

Is there any? You know, are we going forward? Are we going backward? Are we going nowhere? Spoiler-

Anyway, so let’s do it in the context of two current events, kinds of things that have come up recently for us and the first is the episode about women from the YouTube series, An Inconvenient Faith. Something that I couldn’t stop rage texting you about when I watched the specific episode. And the second is the interview, I’m not gonna say press conference because I think really it was just an interview video that they released when the new first presidency was called recently.

And I feel like there are a few interesting tidbits in each of these things to discuss. At least- sometimes we record episodes based on how many text messages we exchange about something that happens. And this is one of those, it met the bar of, we’ve been texting about this, so we obviously have feelings about it.

CW: Let’s start out with what you kept texting me about, Susan, over and over.Because I had actually forgotten that in episode six of the Inconvenient Faith documentary on the episode called, was it called Women in Authority? Something like that. It was about women’s issues.

SH: Yeah, that’s, no, that’s the name I think.

CW: And you kept texting me about what Camille Johnson, who is our current General Relief Society president,something that she had said. And this is what she said in the video, “in the workplace, women have to push really hard to have their voices heard a lot harder than you have to push here. I don’t have to push at all.

All people are asking, what do you think? I sat down in my first meeting and I thought, I am just going to observe. And I got Sister Johnson, what do you think? And it was sincere interest.”

SH: Okay, why did I keep texting you about this? Because sometimes I just pay attention to my own reactions to things. And in this case, I had this really strong, physical, this visceral reaction to what she was saying. I don’t like to use the word rage that much, but I don’t really know another word for it. I felt enraged by this, so I had to really step back and think, you know, what is going on and why are you having these huge feelings about it?

So, that’s kind of where, that’s where we’re gonna go as we talk about this today. And I mean, it’s nothing against Sister Johnson. I wanna preface this by saying I love Sister Johnson. I really respect her. I think it’s amazing that we have a true career woman in this position. I mean, that’s also fraught too, in a way. We’ve talked about, you know, some of the feelings that brought up in us, because also I had feelings about that. But, so, when this happened to me and I was feeling this rage, I wanna talk about the feeling that I had. Not so much about Sister Johnson specifically, if that makes sense.

CW: Yeah, no, that’s a good point. Also in that same episode, Russell M. Nelson said, we’ve heard this before, it’s from one of his, it was just a conference talk clip, that they put in there where he said, we need your insights and impressions, speaking of women.

So [00:05:00] also on that video, they talk about the priesthood power that women have.

Oh gosh, Susan, I have decided, seriously, I have decided that I will never bring up priesthood power again when talking about women’s equality because it isn’t addressing the real problem, and the real problem, in my opinion, is decision making power. So you’ll notice what Camille Johnson and President Nelson, you’ll notice what they were saying, but also what they were not saying. Because I do believe they are genuine. I do believe the men who make all the decisions, think that asking for women’s insights and thoughts and impressions, and those were the words that Camille Johnson used, I really believe that they’re being genuine when they say that’s what it means to work together.

I mean, that might be true for them, but that isn’t decision making power for women. That’s what we call a benevolent patriarchy.

SH: Right. I mean, that’s how I would think about benevolent patriarchy. That’s how I’ve experienced it. I think that’s a good descriptor for what my experience in the church has been as a woman. So when you’re helping women feel heard, I mean, I guess that, there is something to that, that’s an improvement, I guess, over women being silenced. But it’s not the same as giving women equality.

CW: Correct.

SH: Decision making power, a seat at the table, all of those kinds of things. In the documentary, An Inconvenient Faith, and I should have said at the beginning, we’re gonna link to that for anyone who’s going, what are they even talking about? We’ll link to it so that you can watch it. This episode, it’s on YouTube. It’ll be easy for people to find, but in it, there’s this little clip where Fiona Givens is talking and she uses the descriptor collaborative authority, talking about how it works between men and women in running the church.

But I don’t see insights and thoughts and impressions, you know, that they’re asking women for and potentially listening to. It sounds like sister Johnson really feels like they are listening to her. They want those things from her, and they value them. I don’t see that as being real equality. It’s collaboration, but without any authority. And that’s not the same as equality.

CW: Already, this conversation is, as we were preparing all these notes, I kept thinking about our conversation we had earlier this year, I think it was January, it was episode 208, I know that, and Amy McPhee Allebest was our guest and she talked about benevolent patriarchy. So I’m just gonna insert a one minute clip here of her talking about that, if that’s okay.

Clip:

SH: You can put women in the red chairs on the stand at General Conference, but it’s still men putting the women in the red chairs. It’s not the same. It’s like giving the women any actual power within the system.

AA: Yeah, there’s a quote from Gerda Lerner. Gerda Lerner was a really influential scholar for me. She says, and I’ll just read her quote actually, ‘cause I wrote it down, “It should be noted that when we speak of relative improvements in the status of women in a given society, this frequently means only that we are seeing improvements in the degree in which their situation affords them opportunities to exert some leverage within the system of patriarchy.”

And that can be taken away anytime. Again, it can be bestowed or revoked. We’ve seen that in our own church. Yeah. So it’s not, it’s actually not real power. It’s like a teacher giving a child the privilege to go up to the front, you know what you can lead the class for 10 minutes if you want. But the teacher’s sitting in the back of the class and the teacher can go okay, your time’s up. You know what I mean? It’s still not equal.

SH: Such a good metaphor.

CW: It really is, like that, which is why I think almost a year later, it’s really stuck in my head the teacher analogy that she uses. Because you’ll notice in the Camille Johnson clip, there is no talk of women making decisions- of women leading committees. We’ve been told that women now sit on the highest committees in the church, but sitting on a committee is not the same as leading a committee. That’s not decision making power.

And also, I don’t think that’s true, that women sit on all the highest committees- maybe it is true. They sit on the highest committees, but the first presidency in the quorum of the 12, they do meet regularly without women. For years, we’ve all known that they meet in the upper rooms of the Salt Lake temple.

And so I googled that actually, just because I was curious, with the Salt Lake Temple having been out of commission for years, where are they meeting? And so, anyway. I [00:10:00] found an article I will link to it right now. They are meeting in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and in this article it says this, “the governing first presidency in the quorum of the twelve apostles have always had a spiritual space designated in the Salt Lake Temple for them to meet, make decisions, and pray for divine guidance.”

So they meet in the Salt Lake Temple or right now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, they have the sacrament, they have a prayer circle, and they make decisions.

There are no women there.

SH: I would not expect that there are, I don’t remember where we heard earlier this year or who told us, so I have no firsthand knowledge of this. But it seems like we’ve had it corroborated since. Anyway, I should look these things up before I bring them to episodes. But we were told that the General Relief Society presidency only meets with the first presidency something like once a year.

CW: Once a year, that’s right.

SH: Yeah. That they meet with, I think that they have a designated member of the 12 maybe, or something like that, that they meet with more often than that, but that they don’t really have access to the men at the very top very often at all.

So what good does it do you to sit on a “high committee” in the church, If you don’t have access- you don’t even have access to the people making, you know, with bottom line authority to make decisions.

CW: Exactly. This is why I want women to stop quibbling over definitions of priesthood power. What is priesthood power? Is it only for women who’ve been endowed? Is it for anyone who’s–they’ve been baptized? It’s for anyone on the planet, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Because I feel like that’s a really subjective topic.

Meaning the way that I would describe priesthood power is probably going to be different than the way like you would describe it or the way that Camille Johnson would describe it. And that is so subjective that I’m like no. That’s something different than the organizational power we’re talking about right now, which is sitting on committees or making decisions, and those committees are leading those committees.

That’s totally different.

SH: How I’ve thought about it most of my life is that the priesthood is. The power to act, on earth, on God’s behalf.

CW: Yeah. That’s the definition I’ve heard.

SH: That’s the definition that I heard my whole life. But now, in the past few years that we’ve started really muddying the water around this power and authority thing and talking about it, it’s starting to seem to me like no one knows what priesthood power even means.

So like you said, so subjective, and probably everyone would have a different description of that. I don’t hear priesthood power using air quotes there used only in the context of exercising God’s authority on Earth.

CW: Yes. We’ll get to that. I put some in our notes later on.

SH: So in a way, I agree with you that I am over it with quibbling over the definitions of this stuff, but also in a way, I want the whole church to start quibbling about all of this, because I just feel like we have muddied the water, in a way that actually has taken us backward in the conversations. Words that used totally agree to mean something no longer mean anything to me. And I would really like clarity, and I know that we’ve said this before in conversations on the podcast, but as I say, if we revisit this looking for change around it, no, I don’t see any, except that maybe it’s getting worse. I feel like this is a place where we’re actually moving backward.

CW: I agree.

SH: In my personal understanding anyway. There’s a quote by our friend Jana Spangler on this same documentary where she is actually quoting Sister Joan Chittister, but she says, “it’s a separate issue whether women are ordained or not. The big problem is that we don’t even talk about it.”

CW: Yep.

SH: Yeah, and I don’t know if you remember when I wrote a chapter for Chris Kimball’s book, you know, some years back when we were first starting the whole podcast project. I mentioned in that chapter that I felt like there was no more taboo thing for a woman to talk about in our church than ordination.

Now, Chris didn’t necessarily agree with me on that. He said that had not been his experience. But then also I would say that Chris is not a woman, so maybe he hasn’t felt disempowered around, you know, this subject in the way that women have. So it may not scandalize him to hear it talked about at his dinner table, but I can guarantee you that for many people in the church, that would be a pretty taboo dinner table conversation and certainly in a church class setting.

CW: Oh, you’ve been hauled into the Bishop’s office a couple times over this very topic,

SH: Correct.

CW: Like it’s really personal for you.

SH: It’s extremely personal for me, this is my experience. You can’t say these things out loud.

CW: You have the receipts to prove it.

SH: I have the receipts. I do. In the documentary also, there’s a clip from Jean Bingham, a former Relief Society president, and she explains, “women who are endowed in the temple have priesthood power in their lives and in their homes.”

That’s [00:15:00] the end of the quote. But Cynthia, tell this to the single mother who wants to give her child a blessing. How often do you, and I hear about this coming up for women in their homes, where they have a sick child or whatever, they don’t have a husband there for whatever reason or a priesthood holder and they are in turmoil about what to do, because it feels really wrong to them, on some kind of bone level, that they can’t just put their hands on their own child’s head. Right, or that they don’t feel empowered to do that. They can, of course. But I mean, it’s a high hurdle. I feel like a high permission hurdle, for women to give themselves permission to do this. And so when I think about that situation, you know, I feel like if I brought it up to a lot of members, I would hear a woman has priesthood power, but she does not have that authority.

And right before that quote in the documentary, the quote from Jean Bingham, we hear President Nelson say, “when you are set apart to function in a calling by someone who has priesthood keys, you are given priesthood authority to function in that calling.”

So my question is like, why can’t an endowed woman who supposedly has priesthood power, be set apart to function with priesthood authority in her home and family. She is sealed by someone with keys. The time that this family begins, if it begins in the temple anyway.

There is someone with a key there doing something and it seems to me like they could maybe. Activate– maybe this isn’t included in the ceiling ordinance. But I guess my question is, can’t we change some of these things? You know, and I guess the answer if you press that you would get is that ordinances require ordination to priesthood offices and women are not entitled to hold those offices. Although, I looked this morning in the handbook on the church website, it simply says, ordinances and blessings are sacred acts performed by the authority of the priesthood.

CW: Ah, really?

SH: So, really, power and authority are just muddy water from top to bottom, right now in this church.

CW: Speaking of Joan Chittister, because Jana quoting her in that documentary made me go Google her name. I ended up going down the Joan Chittister rabbit hole, but more on that in a minute. But when Sister Chidester was speaking at the Women’s Ordination Worldwide Conference way back in 2001, she said, “what do we do when a church proclaims the equality of women, but builds itself on structures that assure their inequality?”

SH: We’re not the only church.

CW: No, we’re not. And I feel like that’s kind of what you’re getting at. Like when we’re quibbling over priesthood power versus like priesthood keys, like all the talk around priesthood. I think Joan Chittister is right here when it’s okay, but the Catholic church and our church has also built itself on structures that assure our inequality. So the problem is so much bigger than even just a woman being able to bless a sick child in her home.

SH: Or even hold her own baby. Right? In a baby blessing.

CW: Yes.

SH: You know, we don’t even have to go as far as putting your hands on your child’s head and giving them a blessing. Let’s back all the way up to even holding your own child in the circle while someone with the office is giving your child a blessing.

CW: Right, but I really feel like our top leaders, I really feel like all of our leaders, maybe most of the church, I don’t know, it’d be interesting to see what people would say if they were really truly being honest–if they were asked the question, do you believe women have equality in the church? I’m gonna guess most would say yes.

SH: Oh, I think they would, especially most women. I think most women would say yes.

CW: Okay, but that’s exactly, I think what Joan Chittister is getting at is what do you do when a church proclaims that? This is the part where, this is the banging my head against the wall part, is we’re told we are equal, and yet our church has built itself on structures that have assured my inequality.

SH: And that’s why we’re told that we’re equal, in my opinion. Is so that we will believe that.

CW: Oh, absolutely. They keep telling us that, but I’m like, show me the fruits. Show me your receipts.

SH: Yeah, no, the fruits are not there and I feel like this is again, getting worse because the muddier that they make the water around power and authority, I feel like I’m actually getting further away from having anything that actually matters.

CW: From the real issue?

SH: Yes, from the real issue.

CW: I would agree. I feel like we’re getting further away from the real issue as well. And speaking of priesthood power, like how often I have lost count, how often [00:20:00] we have heard from women who write to us, “oh, our lesson this Sunday on relief society is on the priesthood power of women.” Like over and over. Those lessons are happening and I want to pull my hair out when I hear about these lessons. Some women will say, and I’ve sat in these lessons where I hear women say things like, I feel like I have access to priesthood power because I am endowed. Or any number of iterations of how we describe the nebulousness of priesthood power.

Like I was just saying a few minutes ago, like it’s such a subjective topic, but in my opinion, the priesthood power talk --those lessons– they’re a red herring. I really think they’re meant to distract us to lead women away from conversations about equality. We’re told what women get, which is priesthood power. We’re told that over and over, but we never talk about what women don’t get.

Hence the title of this episode.

That’s what I wanna talk about. But we don’t talk about those things. We only talk about priesthood power, which is what women do get, as nebulous as that even is.

SH: Now I feel a little sheepish admitting that I have taught several of those lessons myself, Cynthia, including one I would specifically titled Priesthood Keys and Authority.

CW: Yeah, but I know what you’re gonna say and anyway, go on, because I would love to be sitting in on your lesson about this. Go ahead. Sorry.

SH: I tried really hard to make it feel empowering rather than demoralizing. I tried to take what was in, I mean, okay, the most recent one that I did was based on President Oaks famous talk from, what is it, 2016– maybe earlier, like 2015, maybe 14 –it’s not 13 – yeah– but it could be 14– it’s 10 years either way. Yeah, it’s 10 years. The famous talk where he started the official muddying the water about authority and power. Yeah. Yeah. In my opinion, even though at the time it sounded like he was doing something that was giving greater clarity.

So he gave me an opening to give what I felt was a really empowering lesson about that because my brain is such that, okay, I’m gonna sit down and figure out exactly what are you saying and what are the implications of it, which is precisely what I did. And that’s where I came up with the keyless ignition metaphor, right? That was the lesson. But what did that do? It landed me in the bishop’s office. And then, you know, 10 years before that I was called into the Bishop’s office for the other time that I gave a lesson about this and talked about how my grandmother had given blessings. So the two times that I’ve been hauled in for things that I’ve said at church, and there are only two times really that’s happened to me. They were both around this topic. So again, I maintain that there is nothing that makes your average member man or woman more uncomfortable than talking about women and priesthood. And so now I feel like they’re trying to normalize the conversation, but they’re trying to make it about nothing, and that’s the way that they’re making it okay for us to talk about it.

CW: I agree.

SH: Because I was talking about specific things. I was talking about keys and authority and the relationship between those things. I was talking about specific power that women had previously to give blessings as my grandmother did. But we’re not talking about specific things generally when we’re talking about this at church and when or when we’re hearing leaders talk about it. We are talking about this nebulousness, that you mentioned, around power and authority. And I feel like that is how they’re keeping, they’re letting us start talking about it but actually taking the teeth out of the conversation.

CW: And I’m guessing that’s why you got hauled in because you were kind of setting the stage. For what could be…

SH: I think so.

SH: Yeah. I mean, I was connecting dots based on what they were saying. Yeah. I started connecting dots. If what you’re saying is true, then the implications are this, but that was way too specific for people to be comfortable with at church. I mean, and you might remember from that story the most recent time that I got hauled in, it was because of complaints from a woman who wasn’t even in my lesson. So this was so radioactive that she heard about it later at Sunday dinner and called the bishop immediately. That’s how uncomfortable people are with this stuff.

CW: Yep.

SH: And I feel like that’s just gonna keep getting worse. No specificity is gonna be allowed around this topic.

CW: Yeah. I mean, it’s ridiculous that you got hauled in. And also, just as you’re retelling this story, and I’m thinking it makes perfect sense to me actually, that you got hauled in because you were laying the foundation, like you just said, you were maybe trying to help them connect the dots, which is a huge no-no, because if we’re gonna connect those dots – we’re going to start focusing on – the women are gonna start going, Hey yeah. What about this? What about that? You know, they’re gonna start [00:25:00] focusing on objectively measurable topics. Do women have decision making opportunities? Decision making power. Do we? And the answer is no.

SH: Yeah. The answer is no. And then my question becomes, then why did President Oaks bring it up at General Conference if he doesn’t want women connecting dots? Because to me, that was the obvious thing to do with that talk. He was saying new things. Let’s see what he is really talking about. Talking about if they don’t want women to do that, if that’s not going to be okay, then why bring it up at all?

CW: Great question. I wish I could get into his mind and figure out the purpose of him giving that line. We haven’t even said what the line is, you know?

SH: No.

CW: What is it? If women, what other power and authority,

SH: Can it be, could it be, we’re not used, it’s not speaking of women functioning with priesthood authority, but what other authority could it be. Right?

Yeah. When a woman is set apart in a calling by one who holds priesthood keys, she is given priesthood authority to function in that calling.

I think the quote is very close to that.

CW: Good job. That has to be it. That sounds right to me. Because I also, for years after that talk was given, I would quote it word for word, trying to get women to connect dots a little bit more. But anyway it’s, it just reminds me of when that audio clip we just played from Amy’s episode, patriarchy 101, her example of the teacher. Anytime that teacher can say to the child upfront, okay, your time is up. And I really do– I mean, Camille Johnson, she is a brilliant attorney like you. I’m really glad she has the calling that she has. What an example for our young women as an attorney. She knows that words matter.

SH: Yes. Yes.

CW: And I think she was very careful about choosing her words in that interview.

All female church leaders, in my experience, that I’ve heard talk about this topic over the years, all of them focus on what women do have. And she specifically focused on a voice. They wanted my voice, they asked me what I thought. That was her focus in that audio clip instead of like I have already mentioned earlier, what we don’t have, which is equality. And I think that’s really smart, actually. Smart, in a, do I dare say, devious way? Because if the goal is the status quo-

SH: Right.

CW: –and I think that’s the goal, is to keep the status quo, to keep women happy where we are not demanding more. I don’t wanna assign any nefarious objectives to our leaders when they talk about it, but it feels a little bit, it feels a little bit nefarious to me.

SH: And you’ve just articulated, you’ve put your finger right on what specifically it was that enraged me. When I heard her talking, because you just talked about her brilliant legal mind – and what do brilliant legal minds do? They connect dots between things. They go into a situation and untangle all the particulars of it and connect the dots in a way that makes a compelling argument. Right? And so to me what she was doing was refusing to connect any dots, in that. So to come on and tell me, I’m listened to, I’ve never felt so listened to in my career. It’s been harder for me to have my voice heard in my career than it is here. She said something very similar to that, and I thought, oh, come on.

Because if you were really being heard and listened to and your voice was given equal weight, you could move the bottom line in some way.

CW: Exactly.

SH: But you can’t and you never will. As things are presently constituted. Is the goal to maintain the status quo? Yes, I think you’re absolutely right, but I also think the goal, in a case like Sister Johnson and what she was saying is, throwing crumbs that will keep women happy by making it sound like there’s been movement in this area. If you don’t really analyze it or try to connect dots. I mean, is that too cynical?

CW: It’s less cynical than I was a second ago.

SH: It’s pretty cynical. But I have played this game, Cynthia. I’ve played this game my whole life, so I get it. As a mother, I spent so many years trying to build that bridge that you and I have talked about. To spin things in a way that might make it feel sustainable for my daughters. I didn’t succeed, by the way. But I was devoted to the exercise for all the years that they were coming up through Young Women’s. I wanted them to stay in the church. But not only that, I genuinely wanted their experience to be okay, to be good for them in some way. I wanted to believe that the goal was not always going to be, maintain the status quo, so I threw the crumbs. I did.

And so I know what that looks like and what it feels like when I see it happen. And that’s what I feel like is being my experience now as a member when my General Relief Society [00:30:00] president gets on a documentary like this and gives that example.

That’s crumb throwing.

CW: And speaking of examples, I want– I came with receipts, Susan. Okay. So I came with a list of things that our church organization has very specifically done to get women- to keep women talking about priesthood power instead of equality. So here is just a list of things I’ve run into in searching for this episode.

In 2021, Sherry Dew wrote a book called Women and Priesthood. In 2018 the Renlunds wrote a book called The Melchizedek Priesthood: Understanding the Doctrine, Living The Principles. In 2024, Barbara Morgan Gardner wrote a book called The Priesthood Power of Women in the Temple Church and Family. And in 2020, the church news had this whole series titled Women and Priesthood Power, where they kind of interviewed or had women write articles- women throughout the church where they were discussing their personal experiences with priesthood power. And we’re gonna link to all of this. Seriously, under that church news series, there are like 30 articles. This was an intense campaign in 2020, to keep women talking about where the intersection of priesthood power is and women’s lives. And then there were Facebook posts about it too. And so we will link to some of those as well. And those Facebook posts were also talking about priesthood power and women.

SH: Man, all of this. I’m gonna put my tinfoil hat on here for just a second, but okay. I look at the dates on this, right? And they’re all from 2020 to the present-

CW: till now.

SH: –and I just feel – is all of this – after, is it coincidence that all of this happened after President Oaks gave that talk that made even non brilliant legal minds like mine connect the obvious dots? Was this like a, is there some specific concerted effort to say no, no, no, that’s not what we meant. Let’s talk about power and authority over here. I mean, I don’t know. I wish I knew, I’m sure that I assign conspiracies all the time where there are none probably everywhere in my life, but I’m generally not a big conspiracy theorist.But I am a person who looks for explanations and tries to connect dots, like even in this way. And so I have to wonder, I mean, to me, this seems like a very concerted effort to be managing the conversation around this.

CW: Absolutely. I think that’s all you’re talking about. You can take your tinfoil hat off, Susan, set it to the side and still have this conversation without it being necessarily a conspiracy. I really do. I think it can go both ways that you’re just reading the writing on the wall or reading the Facebook post on the wall, or books at Deseret book, all of it. It’s there.

SH: Speaking of reading the Facebook posts on the wall, I wanna read one as part of this conversation if I could and we’ll link to it. This comes from Sister Johnson in 2022, and she says this, “Sisters, you have access to priesthood power! The blessings of priesthood power are available to all church members who keep their covenants, women, men, and children.” Now, I wanna stop right there. Do you notice how children are included in that? If we give things to women, do we always have to give them to children too? Because it seems like we do.

CW: I can’t, I just can’t. Go on. I’m silent.

SH:This is still Sister Johnson, “I am learning that in order to draw upon priesthood power, I must do more than just obey the commandments. I must set aside the things of this world and consecrate my talents, time and resources to God. It is a heart, might, mind, and strength kind of commitment to the work of salvation and exaltation, the gathering of Israel, that allows me to draw upon the priesthood power with which I have been endowed. President Nelson has promised that quote, those who are endowed in the house of the Lord receive a gift of God’s priesthood power by virtue of their covenant, along with a gift of knowledge to know how to draw upon that power.” So I wanna pause there again, So if we don’t know how to draw upon that power. Or even what that power means, did we somehow miss the gift of knowledge in the temple, because I’m endowed. You’re endowed. She’s making it sound like this is part of what goes along with that is not just the priesthood, but we know what to do with it. And so I dunno, that calls my attention-- muddy water.

So she continues in response to his promise, “I have worked to examine my life. I made a list. What do I do in a day, week, or month? Then I asked the question of myself with a prayerful heart, what is no longer worthy of my time and energy? Just as [00:35:00] the prophet suggested things that once seemed important, receded in priority, and some activities were crossed off my list altogether, because while seemingly harmless, they were a distraction. My self-examination was not a one-time exercise. I am learning that a meticulous examination of my time and energies is, as President Nelson said, a lifelong process of consecrating my life to the Lord, and has changed my understanding about what I must do to draw upon the priesthood power to which I have access, if I keep my covenants. Will you join me in seeking access to and drawing upon priesthood power? I would love to hear what you learn as you do.”

Okay. I’m still not sure what any of this means, but why are women being asked to give more – give up things in order to access what is supposed to already be ours?

As I’ve said a thousand times, could we please have real words that mean real things on this topic? We’re continually being invited to explore women in priesthood power, that was one of President Nelson’s things. He kept asking women to explore what this means. And so that’s what we’re doing in this conversation right now, Cynthia. We’re exploring what this means and what I’m coming up with is, I don’t know, it doesn’t mean anything as near as I can tell. Nothing specific, but let’s, so let’s normalize talking about it and if we’re gonna normalize talking about it, let’s be real about it. And I’m gonna tell you what I really think, which is even after reading that whole thing from Sister Johnson, I don’t have any idea what she’s talking about.

CW: In terms of priesthood power.

SH: In terms of priesthood power. Is she talking about the Holy Ghost? Like having the spirit with me in my life? What is she talking about?

CW: Like you, I need words to mean something too, because when she asks the question, I actually really love that Facebook post because when she asks the question, what is no longer worthy of my time and energy, I mean, I’m about her same age. I’m thinking she’s in her fifties like I am. I have done the same thing. I ask myself that too. And I have actually made changes in my life as a result of asking that question, but, I would file that under like time management, not priesthood power.

SH: Okay.

CW: I would file that under, like, priorities, like as we get older, I think that’s just normal. We start to siphon down things like what do I really value? What are my priorities in life? So I don’t – I understand after you read it how you said – I still don’t even understand what she’s talking about. I do. If you take the priesthood power equation out of it, except that’s her whole purpose in that Facebook post.

SH: I totally agree. That’s why I say she’s talking about having the spirit with me, generally improving the spirituality in my life. My question is, would a man be asked to do that kind of self-reflection in order to exercise his priesthood power? Maybe he would, but to me, a man’s priesthood power just feels more like a gift that he can lay his hands on someone’s head and do something with.

CW: Absolutely.

SH: So I don’t know. I’ve never been in a priesthood meeting to know, do they get those kinds of instructions in order to more fully access priesthood power? I don’t know the answer to that.

CW: That’s a great point. Yeah.

SH: But it sort of reminds me of, do you remember when women were asked to abstain from social media for a period of time and men weren’t asked. Yes, I do. To do that. This is the same kind of feeling to me, like, why are women being asked? You’re right to give up more, to access something that is less than what men have.

I don’t know. I’m very confused by all of it. And I’m not just trying to be argumentative. I seriously just wanna understand what the goal is that I’m trying to get to.

CW: I think that’s fair to ask that. Yeah. I mean, and speaking of things that I would not file under priesthood power that I would file under like time management or priorities. In the book that I said that the Renlunds wrote, I can read you a couple things that they wrote about in their book?

SH: Okay.

CW: I mean, this is really gonna muddy the waters because if we talk about women who are endowed have priesthood power,

SH: but so do children-

CW: Exactly right.

Then here we go. We’re about to broaden it to the entire planet Earth. So it, I’m just gonna read you a couple excerpts from what the Renlunds wrote, “Christian reformers such as William Tindale, Martin Luther, and John Calvin received God’s power as they translated the Bible and participated in other inspired activities even after the great apostasy, God was not snoozing until the priesthood was conferred on Joseph Smith before and after the Reformation. God blessed men and women. Protestants, Catholics and non-Christians by his priesthood power and authority as they [00:40:00] prayed and lived according to the light and knowledge they received.” Then he goes on to talk about Joseph Smith, and he says, “the Book of Mormon was translated in part by the gift and power of God before Joseph Smith received any priesthood ordination. What power then did Joseph Smith have access to? The only answer is God’s priesthood, power and authority.”

SH: I’m so sorry.

CW: No, you’re laughing because it’s laugh, or bang your head against the wall. So now I’m left with two categories. There are two categories of people. There are ordained LDS men who have priesthood, power and authority, I guess, and then there’s the rest of planet Earth has nothing to do with women being endowed because we give that power to, as Elder Renlund and Sister Renlund said, Protestants, Catholics, and non-Christians, anyone who is living according to the light and knowledge they receive.

So I totally believe, Susan, you are being genuine and you’re not just being argumentative when you know, read that Facebook post and you were like, wait, what? I don’t get this. I don’t get this either, because if every human on planet Earth, which is what we used to call, I feel like in years past, we would call it the light of Christ. Is that what they’re talking about? The light of Christ?

SH: Well that’s like –I was gonna say, this reminds me of the discussions in gospel doctrine classes that go round and round about the light of Christ versus the gift of the Holy Ghost. Where that’s also very muddy water. And I feel like all we’ve done is taken that conversation right now and transferred it to priesthood Power and authority. That’s what It’s the new light of Christ. Gift of the Holy Ghost. Yes. Which is fine if they want to make those kinds of vocabulary shifts.

That’s fine with me. I just need someone to tell me. Now we’re gonna change the way we talk about this and we’re going to, when we talk about the Holy Ghost, we’re going to instead call it priesthood Power and Authority. Just make that transition for members. Just make a transition for members so we can go with you.

We’ll go with you where you wanna go. We just need to be invited into the conversation in a real and meaningful way, which I just feel like on this one I haven’t been. I feel like I stumbled into the middle of a movie on this thing, right? And I don’t have the context. I’m not totally sure what’s going on.

As I thought about all of this, speaking of context, in the context of the documentary that we started this conversation with, the bottom line problem, as I see it gets expressed in that documentary by Deidre Nicole Green and she says, women don’t have epistemic confidence. What she means by that is, “ women aren’t able to know in the same way men are. Even women’s personal revelation can be contradicted by a priesthood leader, somebody who has authority over them.”

CW: Yeah.

SH: So, to me, asking women to engage with this topic at all is really a way to make no progress on it, because women aren’t entitled to receive these answers, Cynthia.

And to me, the lack of – of personal, spiritual authority is the most basic kind of lack that someone can have in a church.

CW: Gosh, you said it.

SH: You’re completely disempowered within the church organization if you don’t even have bottom line, personal, spiritual authority. You know, and whether or not our leaders mean to communicate this idea, I can’t say I would imagine that they would be bewildered by the conversation that you and I are having today. Really. And I think that many men would also tell you my personal revelation can also be overruled, you know, by my bishop or by my priesthood leader. But it’s more subtle and more basic than that, I think, because no woman ever has bottom line authority, even in her callings. And so that’s not the same for some men’s calling. There are plenty of men who do have bottom line authority in some areas of their lives.

CW: Oh. Just look at the difference between what an Elder’s Quorum President can do and what a Relief Society President can do.

SH: Correct. Correct.

CW: He can extend callings to his quorum. She cannot.

SH: Exactly.

CW: It’s explicit.

SH: And I also feel like, you know, no woman ever has bottom line authority in a conversation about women and priesthood in our church ever. Ever. There is nothing we can say about this that has legitimate weight. In fact, we’re marginalizing ourselves really by even having this conversation.

CW: Ooh.

SH: That takes us out of the mainstream. We are immediately –

CW: Absolutely.

SH: – made suspicious by having or come under suspicion by having this conversation.

CW: More on that in a sec. I have something else to say about that, but [00:45:00] put a pin in that. But first I wanna kind of respond to what you were saying there about this lack of personal authority.

Because there is nothing you and I have seen more in the last five and a half years doing this podcast. Absolutely.

SH: Yep.

CW: Than women who don’t listen to their own personal authority, who don’t trust themselves. And recently I watched an old face-to-face fire site on the church website with Dallin Oaks and Elder Ballard.

And I just want to read something I stumbled upon that President Oaks said, he said, “If we get answers contrary to church leaders, then we know it can’t be coming from the Holy Ghost. I had an experience once with some members who sought my council and they said, our parents have told us that they’ve gotten a revelation that they don’t need to pay tithing and they don’t need to attend church anymore. What do you think of that? And I said I don’t question your parents’ revelation, but they got it from the wrong source.”

And then the audience roars with laughter.

SH: Of course.

CW: Now, I know you were just saying a minute ago you said you’re not sure if they mean to communicate this idea to women or not, but here it is explicit, not just to women, but also to men. That if you get an answer different than what the church leaders say, which in example Elder Oaks, President Oaks brought up, is about tithing and church attendance, then you’re not getting it from the right source. Also, zero context to that kind of example, because I heard that and I wanted to say, wait, what? Say more. Say more about this family that came to you and said, our parents had this, you know, revelation, this answer to their prayers. Did those parents have a transgender child? Church is not safe right now for our transgender friends. I could totally see them getting that kind of revelation from God. No, you have to protect your child job number one. Or what if a child was abused by a leader and those parents need to protect that child from their abuser? I could see them also getting that type of revelation or answer to prayer. So I didn’t like that example anyway, because I don’t think you can just drop that like a bomb and then not give any context to it.

But it is explicit that we do not– that we are not entitled to receive answers for ourself. We can get personal confirmation, right? But we don’t get personal revelation. We can only be confirmed what our church leaders have already been told us. We struggle with personal authority for a reason because it’s explicitly taught that receiving those answers to prayers that are different from LDS leaders are not from God.

And where could they be from? He doesn’t even say, but I’m like, come on.

SH: I think we know the answer to-

CW: I think we know to suggest our favorite new word suggest for the devil is

SH: the adversary. I think those answers are coming from the adversary, but yet absolutely yes to everything that you’re saying. And both men and women are given this message that we don’t have bottom line personal authority, but I feel like because of the church structure and organization women receive even another layer on top of that.

CW: That needs to be said. Absolutely. Speaking of our new president of the church Dallin Oaks, we had a faux press conference.

SH: I mean, I’m just gonna call it a 60 minutes interview.

CW: A 60 minutes interview. I don’t dunno.

SH: It was that style. It seemed like that style to me.

CW: It did. Oh my gosh. You’re right. And it was Jane Clayson Johnson who interviewed them, who did used to work for CBS News. Okay. Go. So maybe she knew, she’s I want this to be like my old employer over at CBS with 60 minutes. I don’t know. That’s kind of snarky. But anyway, I’m pretty sure that the church PR folks knew what a disaster. And I’m going straight to the word disaster. The disaster of that PR conference was when Nelson became the president of the church.

SH: I mean, how many times have we quoted it?

CW: Oh my gosh. Three or four. Yeah, three or four or a hundred times. We’ve quoted it where he talked down to Peggy Fletcher Stack. You know, she tried to ask him a question about women in leadership, and his answer was, we love women. He didn’t wanna go there and he wasn’t going to go there to talk about leadership. So in this interview, Jane Clayson Johnson asks him something about women, and he says this is straight from the church news. It’s a mixture of his quote, and then the church news editorializing or something.

It says this, “we have not always been wise in using the great qualifications and powers of the daughters of God. He said. Some of those adjustments have come from the highest levels of church leadership and organization, including having leaders of the church’s organizational presidencies sit on executive councils. We have work left to do, president Oaks said, but we are a lot better off than we were even a decade ago.” [00:50:00]

SH: Yeah, so here I wanna point out that I read that and then I went and listened and then re-listened and then re-listened a third time to what he actually said. And they’re being kind to him by including that. The adjustments – coming from the highest levels of church leadership and organization, blah, blah, blah, including having leaders sit on executive councils. They’re kind to put that in because he didn’t say anything about that. Basically he says, heavenly father loves women, and that, you know, all changes can’t happen at once. And we haven’t always been wise, but we’re better off than we were 10 years ago. So he doesn’t really give any specific examples at all, or even any vague examples like it gives in the, there are no examples.

CW: I wanna point out here that hearing him talking about how things are better now than they were 10 years ago, it reminds me of something that we wrote about in our book, and we’ve talked about it on air before that, after the church in Europe called – what the title of this calling for women was Area Organization Advisors. So when those area organization advisors were called, they asked general women leaders at the time, what did you think? And they said things like it was the missing piece, right? It was the missing puzzle piece. You know what I mean? They gave their opinion on how things used to be.

And so I wrote in our book, in the chapter, for the men in the room, what’s difficult about the reactions is that we never would’ve heard these women utter these statements that it felt like something was missing prior to this change. How long had they thought something was missing? Years? Decades? Statements like Burtons and Cordons only come after men decide to make a change. So here we are again with President Oaks saying we are a lot better off than we were even a decade ago. So a decade ago, if I had stood up in church and said, the church has a long way to go for women. Because that’s exactly what he said, I would’ve been chastised. People and sadly, I think women especially would have angrily testified to me.

SH: Oh, I think they still would. I think you still would be chastised.

CW: You’re probably right.

SH: Yeah.

CW: You’re probably right. It’s only looking back that I think members are allowed to say, yeah, that needed to change, just like Sister Burton and Sister Cordon did in that interview. I remember a million years ago at BYU, one of the religion classes I took, Teachings of the Living Prophets, the professor said, over and over, don’t get out ahead of the brethren. They set the pace of change.

SH: That feels very true to me, all of what you just said. But as I listen to President Oak speak in that interview, like, I don’t really believe we are better off than a decade ago, are we? I feel if I asked that question in Relief society, most of the women would nod their heads and say, yes, we are better off than we were a decade ago.

CW: Probably.

SH: I think they would point to things like women being able to have a few more callings and I’m talking about a very few like stake auditor, right? I mean there are some specific changes that are made women can witness. Things like that, few specific changes that have been made. But my life on the ground as a latter day saint woman in my ward is pretty much unchanged. I walk into sacrament meeting, you know, it’s not like women’s presidencies are sitting on the stand. I mean, I would, I feel like if I got put in a leadership calling, I wouldn’t have any more bottom line decision making power and, you know, than I would’ve had in 1983. So if women are sitting on council somewhere, you know, the highest councils of the church in the offices of the church office building, having any kind of increased influence, which I am willing to buy, that they are, I’m being told that they are, or actual power, which I don’t believe that they are – and if they are, please tell me. If that’s happening, it isn’t trickling down in my experience and the thing about the changes that have been made, like even if you go to things like changes in temple wording or changes in these callings that have been given to women, is that there was no acknowledgement that this needed to be changed.

Like the church never gets out in front and says, we realized that there was no reason women couldn’t have this calling. We realized that this specific language in the temple was making women uncomfortable and it was pretty sexist, so we took it to the Lord. That never happens. We never get these kinds of transitional statements from leadership that really would empower members to feel like we’re in on the change that’s happening and wanna step into it and follow the leadership as it happens.

We’re always the people wandering into the middle of the movie. We don’t get any of the overarching context of what’s going on. It would make things so much better if we did, because for women who feel betrayed sometimes - when these changes happen, it would help to hear an apology of we are sorry that we hurt you-

CW: [00:55:00] right

SH: with this, and we want to make it better. Here’s what we’re doing.

CW: This is where I would toss in the word nebulous again, because the nebulousness of Oak’s comment that things are better for women now than they were 10 years ago. He would have to acknowledge all those things that you just said, callings. Women can have, or witnessing, temple wording, like he would have to acknowledge those and why is it better for, why is it better now to acknowledge it’s better means to acknowledge it used to be worse.

And we’re never going to admit that things were once worse for women. They just, poof. They just magically change.

SH: Yeah. By not connecting those dots-

CW: right

SH: -for women, by not connecting those dots, then what you’re gonna just have is women who don’t really engage fully with the idea. They heard the prophet say it, the prophet says, we’re better off.

I accept that because I accept everything the prophet says and they nod and on we go. And so, you know, three weeks later if Sister Hinkley stands up and Relief Society and says, are women better off than they were 10 years ago? This is the reason that all the women in the room are gonna raise their hands.

CW: Yeah.

SH: Because no dots were ever connected, so they didn’t really engage with that sentence in the way that I engaged with it, when I heard it, you know, and I’m still scratching my head over it. I hope we’re better off. I, and I think that President Oaks believes that we are, could I please hear more about how-

CW: Yeah, say more.

SH: Yes. Could I please hear more about how?

CW: Also when he, what does this even mean? When he said, we have not always been wise in using the great qualifications and powers of the daughters of God. He didn’t- speaking of things I want expanded on first of all.

Who is we? and what does using mean?

Because we means men, right? Men on the table. We’ve talked about that before. Women only have a seat at the table if we’re invited.

Some people I think would, if I asked that to like the – just in my ward, I’m sure some people would say we means, the organization of the church. But we can’t really get around the fact that men run the church.

SH: Yeah. That’s men.

CW: So, yeah. So it wouldn’t really make sense for Oaks to say we includes women, because then that would mean like women haven’t always been wise in using women, and that just sounds ridiculous.

I mean, I have no doubt he means male church leaders haven’t been wise in using women.

But also what does using mean? Because trust me, I feel used. That ain’t the problem.

SH: I also thought that was such a funny word, choice. I thought, don’t take, do not take the top off that can of worms, president, because use is a very specific word and I think you might wanna reconsider that use of the word. Yeah. That’s any woman who’s been stuck in the kitchen doing, you know, whatever in the word building would say. Oh yeah. No, I’ve been used. Thank you. I’ve been used adequately.

CW: Speaking of brilliant attorneys, pick their words right wisely.

SH: Correct. Correct.

CW: Choose a different word.

SH: So funny. But also again, connect some dots for us. How were you using women before and how would you like to use them?

CW: Ah ha!

SH: How could women be better used? We get nothing on any of that.

CW: Yeah. Was that a teaser? Is he making an unofficial announcement of some? Anyway, we’ll

SH: see. I mean, we’ll see. I mean, I think it was a crumb, honestly. I think it was throwing crumbs in the same way that, you know, I talked about earlier. That’s just my opinion, but I have no idea. I hope it’s a teaser. We can hope. You know, the most interesting thing about that interview for me actually was not the part about women, but it was when she asked President Oaks what advice he has for families.

And his response, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, and I’ve listened to it more like six times. Just replay it, replayed it. He says, “the church outlines the destiny of the children of God, and that destiny culminates in an eternal family, a father in heaven, and also a mother in heaven.Though we haven’t been given very much information about her for reasons that God understands and we don’t understand. But the point is, the whole purpose of mortal life is to prepare us for a heavenly destiny in a family organization.” Now the organization that he just laid out was all of us with a heavenly father and heavenly mother. And the subtlety of that caught my ear immediately, that description, because he’s talking about eternal life in the family organization of God.

What he’s saying is not the same thing at all, as us being heavenly parents to our own children in some kind of earthly looking, eternal nuclear family organization that we’ve all grown up being, you know, terrified might not happen for our family because of the helpful slogan, families can be together forever. Yeah. But maybe not yours. Maybe not yours.

It’s all of us belonging to God’s family, which is what I believe the sealing ordinance is really about. As you’ve heard me [01:00:00] talk about many times before.

So whether he intended that subtlety or not, I don’t know, but he is or was a high powered attorney who chooses words carefully. And to me that feels like a marked difference from Russell Nelson’s sad heaven messages, you know, which was about empty chairs at our family table.

CW: Interesting.

SH: Not empty chairs at Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother’s family table. As a sidebar to that, you know, his aside about we don’t know much about Heavenly Mother is really frustrating to me, Cynthia. It just makes me wanna ask the follow up, are you asking how hard are you trying to get that information? Which is why I feel like in this what felt like a scripted interview setting, you know, we really needed, a real journalist. Where was Peggy when we needed her? Asking real questions.

Instead of, you know what, it functioned like a stage prop journalist. Not like they were, we were playing softball in that interview.

CW: I want to toss out a line here again by the amazing Benedictine nun, Joan Chittister, and she said, if women can’t claim as much as a pronoun in this church, you’ll never claim the Deaconate.

Now, a little context to that quote, she was asking that language be gender neutral in their – in mass in Sunday services, which obviously hasn’t happened for Catholicism. So, why on Earth could the Catholics be even discussing ordination is, I think, was what she was trying to say. And so this is the part where my breath was taken away.

Like I needed to lie down because when you apply her words to our denomination, how could we. Ever get closer to equality if we don’t even see the importance of revelation about a feminine divine, about a heavenly mother.

If we don’t value the role of a feminine divine in the eternities, why would we value the feminine in mortal roles?

That’s the part that made me need to go, this is worse than I thought. Because like you said, are they asking the questions?

My guess is no. Otherwise I would brag, I’d be like, we’re asking. We’re asking. We’re asking. Hold on, sisters. We’re asking.

Anyway, this is hard.

SH: Hard is really hard. That was the shrug.

Your sentence right there just stops me in my tracks. If we don’t value the role of a feminine divine in the eternities, why would we value the feminine in mortal roles? That is both the question and the answer to all of this, Cynthia.

CW: But it was Sister Chittister that she took it from her Catholic point of view. And helped me apply it to my Mormon point of view.

SH: Yeah, that’s because we’re not even asking the question. Mormons aren’t even asking the question. You and I were part of a conversation with a group of Latter Day Saints the other day, that one of them said, when they use the word God, they are thinking of male and female.

They’re thinking of both. Heavenly Father and Mother, and my immediate thought was that’s why in our church we use the title Heavenly Father. That’s why Mormons don’t really talk about God.

CW: Interesting.

SH: We talk about Heavenly Father, and that is very specific because it leaves out any possibility of the broader context that you could be thinking about with the term God.

CW: And what we value is what we prioritize and we prioritize Heavenly Father type language.

SH: Absolutely.

CW: It’s pretty explicit. And so Sister Chittister goes on to say, men who do not take the woman’s issue seriously may be priests, but they cannot possibly be disciples.

SH: Oh, boom! Wow!

CW: I mean, really Susan, I wasn’t joking when I said earlier, like I had these big aha moments as I went down the Joan Chittister rabbit hole last night on the internet. As LDS women who are interested in women’s equality in the church, I had this aha moment that we need to start looking to our Catholic sisters more on this topic because they have been wrestling with this-

SH: centuries

CW: –for centuries. But on a bigger scale.

SH: Yes,

CW: maybe than we are.

SH: Yes.

CW: And I wish we had more time to go into that. Maybe we will another time. But everything Sister Chittister was saying about women’s equality. I could check the box. Yep. US too. US too. US too. And she just articulated it in such ways that I’m like, we cannot.

I’ll personalize it. I cannot leave our Catholic sisters out of this when talking about this because they have said so much on this topic. Specifically yes, that quote, “men who do not take the women’s issues seriously may be priests, but they cannot possibly be disciples.” Because to be disciples of Jesus Christ means that they care about all of us. I do not feel like my role in the LDS Church is really cared about. Like you said a minute ago, it was like a shrug your shoulders answer.

SH: That just, that, just that part about we don’t know why God hasn’t revealed anything to us about how heavenly mother.

CW: Shrug

SH: Shrug.

CW: Anyway, the last Line Oaks said is [01:05:00] we have work left to do.

Again, who has work left to do? Men have work to do on behalf of women? And if men haven’t let us do whatever, x, y, and z for crying out loud, have a 10 minute meeting and make those changes because like you have said Susan, a million times, I’m quoting you from our book, “And if this is only about keys, let’s open every calling that doesn’t require any to women as well as men. We could do that starting next Sunday.”

SH: Which is why I say my ward life has not really changed at all, Cynthia. So, yes, I a hundred percent agree with President Oaks. We have work left to do and I say we not just meaning the men of the church, but also women with microphones. You and I have work left to do, which is why we’re having this conversation and our church leaders both.

CW: Yes.

SH: Thanks for the fun today.

CW: Ugh. Thanks for showing up and wrestling in the mud. I feel like we have been wrestling in the mud for the last hour

SH: on the floor. I love my on the floor, my favorite kind of conversation with you. Thank you. Thank you.

Voicemail 1: Hi, Cynthia and hello Susan. I just finished working out to your latest podcast with Julie de Azevedo Hanks, gotta tell you, that was one of the most pumped up workouts I’ve had in a long time. It was so beautiful and inspiring and I wanted to share an insight I had with this podcast and talking about the temple prayer roll.

That’s something that’s always been near and dear to my heart. It was introduced to me by my grandmother, who, my faith is built on her foundation. She was remarkable. But I have been guilty of putting names on the prayer roll to control an outcome. And that’s just not right. And I don’t believe for a minute that’s what the prayer roll was truly intended for, whether we’re taught that way or not.

The insight I gained about the prayer roll is that by putting a name on a prayer role, I am inviting myself to be one with God in helping this other person in whatever way God and this person need me. And maybe that’s loving words. Maybe that’s just stepping back altogether. But anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there, that the prayer roll,I think for me, going from now on is going to be another source where I can come closer to at-one-ment with my heavenly parents and my savior. I’m Debra. I’ve written you several times. I’ve met you, I’ve met you at Faith Matters. Don’t expect you to remember me, but just know that I love you and I cherish your work.

Take care guys. Bye.

Voicemail 2: Hi, Susan and Cynthia. This is Kira. Thank you for your recent episode on Enmeshment with Julie Hanks. That conversation brought to mind a time about 20 years ago when my oldest son, who has younger brothers, was deciding whether or not to serve a mission. My husband and I wanted this to be his decision, and we tried not to nag or prod or push him, and I considered myself a nuanced church member, but when it came to the mission, I was desperate for him to serve.

If he didn’t, then how many of his younger brothers might follow suit? And I knew that he would face a lot of repercussions living in Utah, culturally, if he didn’t go on a mission. That’s what really ate me up, thinking of this big hearted, but complex boy who always marched to the beat of his own drum being wrongfully judged by others.

What I did to remedy my anxiety for those many weeks and months was that I fasted every Sunday, transactionally, at, I attended the Temple Weekly, transactionally, and I prayed daily, transactionally, that he would choose to serve a mission. And I’m sure I gained some hope from all of these behaviors. But they were performed in anxiety and desperation and none of this was healthy, and none of this was really honoring my son’s agency.

Enmeshment is truly alive and well among LDS parents and their kids. And why wouldn’t it be? When we are taught that we all must be in the same boat in order to be together eternally. Thank you both so much for covering this topic. I appreciate all that you do.

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