Episode 259 (Transcript): What Do You Say? | 3 Conversations About Mysticism, Music, and Living in the Now
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Rebecca Bigelow for her work in transcribing this episode!
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CC: I hadn’t based my foundation on the teachings of Christ, my foundation was on the words of the prophets, right? And the organization of the church. So if I hadn’t set it up that way, I wouldn’t have had such a hard fall.
CW: Hi, I am 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 today’s episode is, What Do You Say: Three Conversations about Mysticism, Music, and Living in the Now. Hello, Susan.
SH: Hello. I love these conversations. Let’s roll ‘em and then we’ll come back later and share some deep thoughts.
CW: Let’s do it,
SH: or maybe not so deep.
CW: Well, deepish.
Hello Mer Monson. Welcome back to At Last She Said It.
SH: Hi Mer.
MM: So good to be here.
CW: So good to have you. Okay, Mer, we can’t wait for your wisdom. And our first category is Memories. Would you like question one, two or three?
MM: I want three.
CW: What was a moment in your life when you could have chosen a different path?
MM: Shoot. Oh, how many answers do I get?
CW: Oh, I wanna hear ‘em all, but just one for now.
MM: So what comes to mind is my first pregnancy was horrific, like lost 25 pounds, couldn’t drink water without throwing up, totally incapacitated in bed. And I survived it, had my kid, had my beautiful son, and I could have chosen to like not do that ever again.
In fact, I did choose that for about four years. And then I didn’t, then I changed my mind and decided to go back into the depths of hell again. So, wow. Yeah. That’s what comes to mind.
CW: And was it because after four years you were like, oh, it wasn’t that bad, or,
MM: Nope, that wasn’t it. Who knows what preyed upon my- how old was I? 31-year-old mind?
CW: Yeah. Yeah.
MM: I wanted him to have a brother.
SH: Yeah.
MM: I thought I was supposed to. I thought I should.
CW: Yeah. Yeah.
MM: It was the right thing to do. You know, that’s your status, that’s your value in the Mormon world.
I thought, in fact, can I just, can I share one thing?
SH: Yes!
MM: I remember I was… So, I was pregnant with my third, uber sick playing the piano in primary, and the chorister leans over to me and she starts asking me about my kids and how many I have and blah, blah, blah. I was telling her I get really sick, and she’s like, oh, is that why you only had three kids?
SH: Wait, what?
MM: Yeah, that, wait, what? Like I don’t get any credit unless I can fill a minivan.
CW: Uhhuh.
SH: Wow.
MM: Like, wow. I get no credit. No credit at all
SH: when women are the problem, Cynthia.
CW: Yeah.
MM: Oh shoot.
CW: When women are the problem,
MM: yeah. That moment is etched in my brain, even though it was 20 years ago.
SH: Oh wow. I mean, that is, that’s really something.
Also, like hearing you talk about it, it makes me think like it’s not really fair to women. Also, like nature, I think, puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to making this decision because you’ve got this biologic, I mean everything age 31, the clock’s ticking, right? You know, your runway is limited if you’re gonna have any more kids, and then nature somehow dulls the, maybe the memory a little bit or something of how exquisitely terrible it was. Just so that we can continue to do it. I can’t believe any woman ever does it again, honestly.
CW: Yeah, one and done.
MM: Well, the other thing is though- I just wanna say about that before we move on- is that it’s also like the soup gets so complicated that I couldn’t give it a clear, clean Yes.
I think I would’ve had a different experience as a mom if I could have wholeheartedly and freely chosen to be a mother. There would’ve been a whole ‘nother layer of joy and resource and strength and capacity.
SH: Wow. Wow.
MM: So sometimes that pisses me off.
SH: And there are women who do wholeheartedly choose that.
MM: Yes there are, but I wasn’t one of them.
SH: No, as an LDS woman, I also feel like I did not have a hundred percent unfettered consent.
CW: I guess I was gonna say, Susan, are we heading towards consent?
SH: Yeah, I think we are.
CW: Again,
SH: the [00:05:00] conversation that wouldn’t die.
MM: Yeah. It’s that thing like, yeah, you can’t have a full Yes.
Unless you know you can say No and I didn’t know that.
SH: Right. Right.
CW: I hope that’s one thing women will take from this whole podcast project is that if you can’t say no, then your yes isn’t really a yes either. Like you have to be able to actually choose.
MM: Yeah. Can’t you just feel the spaciousness of that.
CW: Right. Crazy talk.
SH: It’s crazy talk. All right Mer, Insights. Let’s see. Would you like, I’m not even sure which of these I want you to answer. So would you like question one, two or three?
MM: Why don’t you just pick?
SH: No, you’re gonna pick!
MM: oh, ah one,
SH: one. What gives you holy envy?
MM: Oh, so many things.
CW: Oh, good.
MM: The female mystics give me holy envy. Richard Rohr gives me holy envy.
You know, growing up I was wholly envious of people that joined the church as an adult. Because I just felt like, wow. A free choice. Wow. What would that feel like to see it from that space? You know.
SH: Same
MM: people like Rohr, people like you, people like Julian of Norwich, you know, she’s basically in this cell off of the church, next to the world.
People from the world come and talk to her through her little window, but she’s never unattached to the church. You know, like people that can hold that space.
I’m so envious of that. Like that they just, their both/and is so big.
CW: Yes.
MM: They can do it and they can hold their own and they can stay in their own skin and they can speak from the depths in either direction.
You know, without being too traumatized like that’s just so cool to me.
SH: Okay. This is so interesting though, because I think of you as exactly what you just described, like you’re that for me. Does that make sense?
CW: Yeah. You’re a mystic.
MM: Oh,
CW: don’t you think, Mer, you’re a mystic?
MM: Well…
CW: I know that’s another question, but I’m asking anyway.
MM: I definitely have a mystic’s heart, but I also,
CW: yeah.
MM: I’m at a space in my journey where I cannot be directly engaged with church. I can’t do that right now. And like, I’ve, you know, that’s hard for me. Like I wanna be the one with the big enough heart to be in both spaces and be okay, but I just can’t right now, and I know that’s fine. I’m in the space where I know that’s okay, but
CW: Right.
MM: Gosh, I wanna be that. I wanna be, you know, a female Rohr. That’s my favorite thing about Rohr is that everybody’s included. It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not, if you used to be, if you’re gonna be, what you think, what your vocabulary is, what your experience is like, everybody belongs.
And he sees the whole world of life in Jesus that way.
SH: I mean, including the church belonging for him.
MM: Yes. That’s what I mean. Like including everyone in every flavor of religion. Yes. And every religion.
SH: Yeah.
MM: Like the whole thing. And that’s just, that’s the only space that feels big enough for me.
So that’s what I desire- to inhabit that more, the older I get.
CW: Okay. So I have a follow up about that, Mer. What did learning about the women mystics do for you? Learning about Julian of Norwich or Teresa of Avila? Catherine of Siena. Like all of these badass women that lived contemplative lives.
Like I know what it did for me. I wanna hear what it did for you. Just to even hear that they existed.
MM: Yeah. Right. They’re just the brazen way. They just bypassed the whole system. They just took a straight shot right through it, like me and God, and not even that separation. Right, right. Me is God, right?
SH: Yes.
MM: You know, like Catherine of Genoa, “my deepest me is God”. They just-the clarity of their vision, like all the scales were off their eyes and they just saw that the system was this little trinket on the playground of God, on the playground of love.
CW: Yeah.
MM: And that’s how they didn’t dishonor it necessarily, but they just saw its proper place.
Completely, clearly. And because of that, like, ugh, so much heart, so much love, so much boldness. They were bad asses.
CW: Yeah.
MM: They are still, I mean, look what they’re still doing for us.
SH: Right, right.
MM: For you and for me. Like, man, I wanna be that.
CW: Yeah. I wanna have a whole conversation with you, Mer, now about the mystics, but we’ll move on.
We’ll move on for now, but it’s coming. Okay. A question from Beliefs. Would you like one, two, or three?
MM: Two.
CW: Okay. Have [00:10:00] your beliefs or thoughts about sin changed?
MM: Yeah. I know you guys have been in this well, exploring this. Well, absolutely. A hundred percent, 500%.
And I guess I would just say it this way, that if you wanna use the word, well, two things.
So if you wanna use the word sin it feels like blindness to me. So it feels like I, I forgot, I can’t remember. I lost track of who I actually am.
You know, the ultimate unbreakable presence of God everywhere in everything in me. That, that I lose track of that. I lose sight of that. And so I do crazy things to try to remember.
And I guess I could call those things sins, but they just, they look like an innocent forgetting to me all of it. And I resonate with the woundedness idea as well.
CW: Yeah.
MM: You know, we are wounded and that’s what causes our eyes to go dim.
So when we have dim eyes, we do kind of crazy things.
And I also really resonate with the idea that sin is more a description of the world as a whole- of institutions. That systems are evil. There are systems that are evil that, I mean, just look at the whole thing of how abuse plays out for women in patriarchy, the way that they are not protected.
The way that they’re not heard, the way that they’re not believed, that, I mean, it’s not some, it’s not one person doing that. It’s a system, right? It’s a system of ideas and power and hierarchy and that’s kind of where my mind goes these days with the word sin or evil, and that as enough of us wake up, we speak truth to power.
Like that’s what a prophet is, right? That’s what a mystic is.
CW: Susan and I were talking recently about Richard Rohr went on Father James Martin’s podcast. On the podcast- I can’t remember what the question was that Father Martin asked him and Richard Rohr said something about, you know, the church went down the path of sin and became obsessed with sin and we should have stuck with the Jesus path.
And I just thought, okay, they’re speaking as a Catholic, but I’m sitting there nodding my head as a Mormon. I just think was all of Christianity infected with the sin language? I don’t know a lot about like Eastern Orthodox Christian religions, but from what I can see where I’m sitting here in the Western United States, it seems like we went down the sin path instead of the Jesus path and
MM: Oops.
CW: Yeah. The biggest, oops.
SH: I was just gonna say, as you say that, Cynthia, it makes me think that is, that was a way to totally absolve the system. When you put sin on the members, right, of the religion, you’ve absolved the system.
MM: Well, and you make the whole thing a project of private salvation.
SH: Correct?
MM: Right. And the moment you do that you’ve lost Jesus already. ‘cause Jesus was, I mean, the only thing Jesus- I just- my favorite things Rohr ever said, the only thing Jesus was loyal to was suffering.
CW: Yes.
SH: Right.
MM: and so you’ve already excluded the moment you do that. We lost sight of the fact that salvation means everybody gets to come in the door.
SH: Right.
MM: That’s what makes it that way.
SH: Right. And the thing I love about Richard Rohr is that he’s never willing to absolve the system. I think he is always
MM: Yes.
SH: …in this position of being able to just put it back on the church. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t value the church, but I think he’s pretty willing to say the church is off base on this thing because the church is the system.
MM: Yes.
SH: And so we, as followers of Jesus, we need to reclaim what was originally ours, what Jesus has given to us from that flawed system. But I don’t know, I was thinking Mer, when you just were talking about patriarchy. We’re living through this particularly flagrant thing right now where we all have this glimpse really of how disempowered women have been and how unbelieved and everything else, and it’s not just America.
This has gone beyond America now, right? The world,
CW: the globe
SH: …is getting this sort of reality check of it. We really still are operating within this and women are complicit in it. And men who run every other system also administer this system and it feels really sinful to me. It feels like [00:15:00] sin flagrantly on view for all of us.
MM: That is exactly what I’m talking about. That is exactly what I mean. It is the most egregious thing.
SH: I just can’t even believe we’re all still walking around functioning.
MM: Yes. I don’t even have the words like the grief, the anger, the
SH: Yes.
MM: It’s so overwhelming. And I listen to Rohr.
I mean, Rohr is gutsy. Yeah. He’s so gutsy, you know? I mean, and he does it with so much heart. Like he speaks from, he speaks as though he is from that system even, you know, that he’s a victim of it too, and he’s fed it too, and he’s propped it up too. I guess that’s part of what I’ve been sitting in this self-made retreat I’m in, is like, how do I speak this huge energy that’s in my body with love and boldness and no fear?
How do I do that? What does that look like for me?
CW: Wow.
SH: I have no idea.
MM: From the little things to the big things, you know?
SH: Yeah.
MM: In the grand eternal scheme of my soul’s journey, like that matters the most to me at this point in my life.
SH: Yeah. If you figured that out, would you let us know?
MM: Oh, you guys are leagues ahead of me in answering that question.
CW: Do not say that. Do not say that!
MM: Sure looks that way. Sure looks that way!
CW: Thank you so much Mer.
SH: Oh, was so good to talk to you, always
CW: Fabulous.
MM: You too. I love you both
CW: So, so much, I love you.
SH: Hi Zinah. So glad you’re here.
Z: Thanks for having me.
CW: Welcome.
SH: We’re gonna start with the Memories category, and I have three questions pulled for you here. Would you like question one, two or three?
Z: Three.
SH: What’s something about your church experience as a kid that shaped you as much as any person did?
Z: Oh wow, that’s such an easy question for me to answer. I’m so glad I picked number three
Fully, it was music. Oh my goodness. My dad was the choir director in our ward when I was really young, and I just remember sitting in and listening to him conduct choirs from the time I was very little. I loved primary singing time. I had some primary singing time leaders that I just remember so clearly because of the way that they really taught us how to sing.
And how to put emotion into the songs. And so music is a huge part of church that shaped me. I just feel like I would not be the musician that I am today without growing up in the church, for sure. Being just singing all the time. My family sang hymns and primary songs together, like every night growing up and sitting at church, singing all those hymns and just like trying to pick out the harmony lines every single week was such good practice. I am just so grateful for that part of church for sure. Really shaped me.
SH: That is so resonant for me.
CW: I was gonna say.
SH: You could just be describing my own experience, so I’m curious because of that. As a follow up then, is music deeply tied into your spirituality?
Is it a part of how you have connected to the Divine? Does it continue to operate in that way in your life?
Z: Oh, absolutely. I got to spend quite a bit of time as the word choir director, as an adult, which I love. I’m one of those weirdos that that’s my dream calling.
Love it so much. And it was so fun to just get to pick whatever I wanted. Towards the end of my time in that calling a while back, I was really just picking all of the songs about the love of Jesus and all of that stuff. It was so fun, and I love talking to the choir every time before we sing something- about like, what does this song mean?
Like we’re not just singing words here. We’re not just singing notes. Like we need to really think about what we’re singing about and that’s going to make the difference. And I sing in a community choir now that I love and we sing a lot of religious stuff for our Christmas concerts, obviously.
SH: Right.
Z: But for the spring we- they’re different, but I’ve still just really connected deeply with different bits and sometimes I just really feel that connection. There was a song we did, and I’m sorry I can’t remember the name of it. I think it’s called Earth Song, and it’s beautiful and there’s this part in it that just makes me tear up almost every time because it says ”through darkness and pain and strife, I’ll sing”. And it’s so beautiful.
CW: Wow. Wow.
SH: Love it. Love it.
CW: Yeah. I don’t think you’re alone in that, Zinah, in that for so many people, music is such an anchor for them in the church and rightfully so. So, okay. Under Insights, would you like one, two or [00:20:00] three?
Z: Let’s go two.
CW: Who’s an influential spiritual teacher or mentor in your life?
Z: Oh, I would have to say that right now, the person that I feel like I stumble upon a lot, like on Instagram or via emails, newsletters is Reverend Benjamin Cremer. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.
I just love everything that he puts out, it just resonates deeply with me. Everything that he says, and I love his newsletters. He’s so connected to both scripture and religion, but also like the humanity of people around him and the teachings of Jesus about really loving and accepting our neighbors.
So I just always, I always get so much out of everything he puts out.
CW: I’ve only read a few things by him, but Zinah, you’re not the only person to come in my orbit lately and be like, you have to read more from him. But I noticed you said he brings in the teachings of Jesus. And I just think we’re in such a moment right now in our society where people are claiming “I’m a Christian”, they wear their cross or whatever.
And yet the words and the actions that we see from them are so far from Jesus that in some ways I feel like this moment we’re in, it’s actually really easy to be- I’m not even gonna just say Christian- to be a disciple of Jesus, because you only have to go back to his actual words that are written down in the New Testament.
Right. Like, it’s not that hard. It’s not that hard to combat the cruelty that’s going on right now, I don’t know. Is that what you’re seeing in him when you say he goes back to the teachings of Jesus?
Z: He also has a way of pulling out Old Testament passages that support it as well.
‘cause you kind of see this whole split between New Testament God, old Testament God.. But he is really good at dipping into the Old Testament and bringing out a scripture that says no, it’s consistent. We’re still supposed to treat the stranger in this way. Even in the Old Testament it says this.
CW: Awesome. We will link to his website so that others who maybe don’t know him as well will get to know him.
Z: Yeah, he’s great.
SH: I feel like if we asked a lot of church members that question, it would never occur to them that they could name someone outside our church. Right?
CW: Yeah, other clergy
SH: Exactly. I’m just wondering- like for you. Are you surprised that he’s an influential voice for you in your life? Or would this have been likely to happen at any point in your life?
Z: I think the 5-10 years ago-me would be surprised by this. I do remember, I don’t know how long it was ago, but it was several years ago when I sort of went, “Oh, hold on a second- I can find the words of God and I can find prophetic voices outside of just the Liahona magazine and the conference talks, and the standard works. It’s all good.”
CW: Sounds familiar
SH: Yes it does. All right. It’s time for the Beliefs category. And I’m sorry, you’re gonna get all the same color here, so you got no help at all.
One, two, three.
Z: Oh, it’s my favorite color
SH: Oh good, mine too!
Z: I’ll go with one since I haven’t done that number yet.
SH: Was there a time in your life where you felt like you really had it all figured out?
Z: I mean, I don’t know if there was ever a point where I thought I had it all figured out. I think there have been different times where I have felt like I had certain parts figured out, that then I realized I don’t have them figured out at all.
CW: Say more about those parts if you want to.
Z: I mean, let me say this. So right after I was first married- I was very young- they put me in as the young women’s president in my ward.
CW: Whoa.
Z: Which was crazy. I was like 21. The girls were not that much younger than me.
CW: Right, right.
Z: And I really didn’t know what I was doing.
My counselors and everyone else in the leadership around me were much older than me and bless them, they were so supportive and never made me feel like I was dumb. They were wonderful. But I do remember feeling like, eventually feeling like I know exactly what I need to be teaching these girls and like, they need to be doing this and they need to be doing that.
And I’ve just gotta get them fully committed. I remember teaching a whole lesson to the youth about that song, “Who’s on the Lord’s side, Who?” okay, like, now is the time, like you gotta get off the fence and…
SH: preach Zinah!
Z: Yes. I really look back at that time, like, man, I thought I had it all figured out.
CW: That’s such a good LDS hymn. [00:25:00] I’ve never really thought about it that way, but it’s, you know, get off the fence, make a decision now, like that is so Mormony.
SH: Basically. I have found my older life to be, well, actually all the way along really. Each kind of new phase of my life is really just this phase where I eat all the previous words that I’ve ever said.
Z: Yeah,
SH: It was really hard for me when that started to happen. And I think it really crystallized for me, like when I had really young kids, then I had a lot of opinions. Like I really did think I had parenting figured out. I had all kinds of stuff figured out. And then as my kids started to get a little bit older, they didn’t have to get very old before I started to realize, oh, I’m such an idiot.
Why did I ever say I would never, you know, fill in the blank. Yeah. So that’s just kind of continued and it’s one of the things that personally it was really hard for me ‘cause I’m kind of a know-it-all. I have been in every phase of my life. I was a know-it-all 4-year-old. Same person today.
And so I feel like that’s something that God has continually poked me with to try to get me to grow. I don’t know. I don’t know. Have you had any really memorable experiences of things that you’ve had to eat when it didn’t turn out that you knew everything that you thought you did?
Z: Well, I mean, I just think that the older I get and the more that I learn, the less that I think I have anything figured out. I feel like I say “I don’t know” so much more often. And also being okay with saying, “I don’t know” I definitely felt like I probably knew a lot about parenting and I had it all, I knew exactly what it was, but then when I was in college, I actually had to take a parenting class, and I talk about this all the time.
It was the most transformational college course I ever took. Because it just blew my mind wide open. Everything I thought I knew about what parenting was.
CW: Okay.
Z: I have four younger siblings. I’m two of six. And so I did lots of babysitting, so I just thought.
CW: Yeah!
Z: I know what to do. And that class changed everything for me. I was like, oh my goodness. I don’t know anything.
SH: Yeah, I guess I underestimated how many ways it’s possible to screw up. I guess that sort of my experience, the depth of my ability to screw up continues to surprise me. Oh gosh. Thank you so much, Zinah.
This has been really fun.
CW: Welcome Carol McCullough Colvin to At Last She Said It. Thank you for playing this game with us.
SH: Hi Carol.
CC: I love games. Thank you.
CW: Well, let’s start with the Memories category. Carol, would you like one, two, or three?
CC: Three.
CW: What’s something you once thought was normal about the church that you now find unsettling?
CC: Oh. There’s so many things.
CW: I know, sorry. That’s for the one in there.
CC: Yeah, the one thing. Okay. Well, when I talk to people who aren’t members of the church and don’t know anything about the church, the thing that I thought of as normal that they are like, oh, that’s weird, is probably temple work.
Like baptism for the dead. I don’t know. I grew up every year going down to the Oakland Temple.
And it was a big road trip. We stopped at the Nut Tree and got souvenirs and candy and we would stay up all night if we could. And you know, it’s like one big giant slumber party. But we were going into the temple to do work for dead people.
And I just thought that was cool because of course everyone needs to be baptized, and these people didn’t get a chance. And I love doing family history. But I found out it wasn’t normal for my daughter, and it really freaked her out. And I didn’t learn that until much later that she thought that was really weird.
SH: Uhhuh.
CC: And now I kind of think it’s weird too, especially the emphasis that we put on temple work over helping people who are alive, who need food and housing and
CW: yeah.
CC: …a safe place to live, you know? Right. A country that will welcome them. I mean, we have a lot of problems, but it seems to be considered normal to spend hours every month or every week for some people
CW: every week.
CC: …doing things for people who aren’t here and don’t even know that it’s happening and may not want it.
SH: Right.
CC: I thought it was a really fun trip once a year to do, and I thought it was meaningful and it seems weird now.
CW: How far away did you live that you would- I’m just struck by the idea- you said you guys would stay up all night, so it was kind of baptism for the dead by the dead,
SH: by the dead, yeah.
CW: But the time you got there, you probably felt dead.
CC: I grew up in Roseburg, Oregon. I currently live just north of that in [00:30:00] Eugene, Oregon.
CW: Okay.
CC: Oakland Temple was our temple district
CW: That’s far!
CC: So that was a long drive.
SH: Right. I would imagine it was kind of a rite of passage among the youth growing up where you were, and you looked forward to it. I can see all of that- it seems to me to be weirder than it used to be. This emphasis that we have on dead people. And the thing is, I think members (I’m gonna say the majority of members and also the organization) probably spend as much emphasis on living people as they do dead.
But we hear so much about the temple, we hear so much about the temple, and it’s just really hard to not draw the conclusion that we’re devoting way too much of our time and resources to that. I don’t know. Do you feel like that’s changed, like over your life?
CC: Yes.
SH: Just your perception or do you feel like the emphasis in the church has changed?
What’s your experience been with that?
CC: The emphasis in the church has definitely changed, to be more strongly toward the temple than not. We’re getting a temple here five minutes from my house.
SH: Oh, wow.
CC: The open house is in June, or? No, the open house is starting in April and then the dedication’s in June.
SH: Okay.
CC: And I haven’t had a temple recommend since 2019, so I don’t plan to be spending much time there, but the emphasis at every ward conference, stake conference, high council Sunday, everything has been around the temple. We had a Relief Society conference that I attended because darn it, this is my church too, and I wanna hang out with my sisters and have lunch with them, but every single- the whole emphasis for the meeting was on preparing to go to the temple, preparing your kids, preparing as an adult, preparing to serve in the temple. And they gave out embroidered handkerchiefs with the temple on them and little stands, wooden stands, I have it right here. And they gave out cards.
Like placard kind of cards. Each one of them had a temple recommend question on it and a scripture or, something that supported that question so that every week up till the dedication, we could be pondering these questions and making sure we’re ready to go. I threw away all the cards, and I kept a little stand to put my mom’s funeral program in.
SH: Wow.
CW: I love this Carol.
CC: And I gave the handkerchief to my sister because she’s still all in and was really excited about this and would
CW: and would appreciate it!
CC: Right, yeah, but I had to say something when I was at this meeting. The two little old ladies I was sitting next to, they’re my good friends, they were looking at me every now and then as the meeting was progressing because it was kind of like a discussion. They’d have somebody come up and talk about how they prepared their kids to go to the temple, and then we would all discuss our testimonies around that.
SH: Oh, okay.
CC: And I was just getting more and more feeling irrelevant, you know?
I was like, this is all irrelevant to me. And these ladies afterwards said, I was wondering, Carol, how are you? How are you handling all this? And I said, well, to tell you the truth, the whole meeting was irrelevant to me. I only came to get one of those handkerchiefs for my sister. And I just, I’m a little annoyed that I can’t come to a relief society meeting and be fed because all they wanna talk about is the temple,
SH: right?
CC: And not everybody can go to the temple. And I figured that most of the people who don’t go to the temple- can’t go to the temple- don’t feel like the temple is part of their season right now. They just didn’t show up.
SH: Sure.
CC: I was the only one who came knowing what it was gonna be about and knowing that I wasn’t gonna enjoy it.
And I came anyway because I want the community and enjoyed sitting next to Brenda, my friend and her friend Yvonne, who’s kind of new in our ward. She really enjoyed my Relief Society lesson that I taught- kind of on quantum physics. And I think she kind of gets me, but she’s really, you know, very all in and when I said, you know, I haven’t been to the temple since 2019, and I really don’t think I’m going to go back.
Yvonne had to say, oh, but I want you to know, I know in my heart there’s still something for you in the temple.
CW: Interesting.
CC: You know, bless your heart. But that’s just what they all think, you know?
SH: Yeah. yeah.
CC: They love it so much.
CW: I think it’s so fascinating.
I’ve been hearing situations like this so much lately, Carol, where people show up to a lesson- so they show up to a meeting and the focus is on a different meeting. It’s like, but you showed up that day, Carol, wanting to be fed, wanting to feel community, wanting to feel sisterhood. And instead the meeting was all about pointing to a different meeting.
CC: Yeah. It was about going to the temple, getting ready to be serving in the temple. It was all about that. And we just had ward conference, and the whole discussion for second hour was role playing on how to invite people to come to the open house. That was the whole point of the second hour.
CW: Wow. [00:35:00]
CC: They did role playing, showing the wrong way to do it, and then they were gonna make us practice on each other how to do it right. And that’s when I left. I can’t take this anymore. I’m outta here.
CW: Oh my goodness, Carol. Okay. I just wanna scrap the rest of our questions and hear the rest about this meeting because this is audio only, not video, but my mouth has been literally agape, so I am shuckified! This is, this is-.Anyway, we will move on, but thank you for sharing that much. Wow.
CC: I’m always happy to talk about this. Anytime
SH: I bet there’s a whole episode waiting to be had there. All right. We’re gonna move on to Insights. Would you like one, two, or three?
CC: Let’s go with one.
SH: If you could give one piece of insight or advice to your childhood self, what would it be?
CC: It would probably be question authority more. Don’t put your trust in someone just because of their position. That would probably be it. And love is more important than the rules. I was navigating some stuff when I was younger. My dad was not a member of the church and he’d had some religious trauma in his life early on, and so he didn’t wanna have anything to do with organized religion.
And it wasn’t LDS trauma, it was a totally different trauma. He grew up not a member of any organized religion after a certain point. And then my mom had grown up sort of- whichever church her parents could drop her off at so that they could go home and have a quickie. While my grandpa was off work just like Sunday was their day.
So they took their kids and dropped ‘em off somewhere.
SH: Okay.
CW: Bow chicka, wow wow!
CC: So she was converted to the church when I was four years old. So she was a young married mom, I’m the oldest, and she read the Book of Mormon and decided that she wanted to go to the church. And so she joined and then for every moment of her life from that point until my dad joined the church was geared toward “we want my dad to join the church”.
So I grew up knowing that it was my job to be a really good little Mormon girl, to show my dad that being a member of this church was awesome and it turns you into a great person. I lived in an area of the world where there weren’t a lot of Mormons. So I went to school with one or two other Mormons. My whole childhood.
So I was trying to be the best little missionary that I could be, and the best example to show my dad. And I just lived off of every word that came out of the mouth of my bishop, my stake president, all my leaders.
SH: Yeah.
CC: I just considered, this is God talking to me right here.
And if I could go back and say, that’s not how it works, because when the rug got pulled out from under me, when my oldest came out as gay…
I had to totally take a wrecking ball to everything I knew. Everything I thought I knew because I hadn’t based my foundation on the teachings of Christ. My foundation was on the words of the prophets.
SH: Right.
CC: And the organization of the church. So if I hadn’t set it up that way, I wouldn’t have had such a hard fall when the rug got pulled out and I was topsy-turvy in the air and landed on my head.
CW: That’s fair. That sounds familiar also to me.
CC: Yeah.
CW: Alright, Carol, our last question in Beliefs, would you like one, two, or three?
CC: I’ll go with two.
CW: Have your beliefs or thoughts about blessings changed and how?
CC: Well, yes. When I was younger, my dad- not being a member of the church- if I wanted a priesthood blessing, I had to get it from somebody else. So I was baptized by somebody that wasn’t my dad, it was our home teacher. I used to think of blessings as sort of transactional.
You know, if you do this and this, then God will bless you with this and this. But then I would see people having horrible things happen to them after doing all the right things. You know, why do bad things happen to good people and all that kind of stuff. My husband had a heart attack in 2015 and by divine intervention miracle, he survived it.
But right before that happened, I had another friend who lost her husband and her daughter in a car accident, and they were on their way to a family reunion in Utah.
SH: Oh, wow.
CC: And, you know, they prayed for safety. I mean, everybody does. So I’ve gotten to the point where I now believe that God can’t control and micromanage our lives, and we are blessed by noticing God’s hand in our life.
CW: Yes
CC: But we can’t demand it. We can’t do anything to get it. So I, you know, when I have an awesome day and things are going really well, I say I’m grateful that I can see that I’m [00:40:00] loved today. I feel loved by God today and I know God is mindful of me and when bad things happen, I still know God is mindful of me, and I can find peace and comfort knowing that God is there for me.
Not necessarily that God is going to do something to fix it or whatever, but just noticing the wonderful things in my life makes me feel very blessed even when things go wrong. You know, I lost my mom last summer to dementia after eight years of that.
And she lived in the present. She only had about a five second memory.
So we would tell her jokes and get her to laugh. We would show her the clouds. She would notice the birds at the bird feeder out the window, and in those moments, life is good. God is blessing her with these good moments. And that’s all we really have. All of us.
CW: Such a good point. Such a good point.
CC: So we have to just be grateful, live in the moments. And be grateful for those moments and look for God when we need help to be there to help us, but not to fix it. To give us peace and comfort and to bring people into our circles that can help us in some way but not to fix everything.
CW: Wow. Those are hard won lessons though, Carol. I find myself nodding my head quite a bit, so thank you for sharing that wisdom.
CC: The older we get, the wiser we get, right?
SH: We hope so.
CW: We hope so. Carol, thank you so much.
I know our goal was to have our guests talk for like 45 minutes and then you and I come in for just 15 minutes, but I feel like with so many of these conversations we had today, I need an hour. I would like an hour. Maybe you and I just need to go out for burgers and talk about these things off the mic for an hour.
SH: I think that’s the solution.
CW: But I just love them. I loved all of them. So let’s talk first- what are you still chewing on since our conversation with Mer?
SH: When we were talking about things that give you holy envy? I mean, I meant it when I said Mer Monson gives me holy envy. She just, she always does.
I don’t know what, there’s something about the way that she thinks and the way that she expresses those thoughts that really draws me in and leaves me wanting more, I guess is what I’d say.
CW: Agree. Agree. Maybe this is just because the space that we’re in, not just as a church, but I think in society talking about consent. I love that once again, consent reared its head even in a conversation where we’re just playing a game.
SH: Yes. And this just has my attention every time it comes up.
CW: Right?
SH: Because I don’t know why, I mean, I remember exactly when consent first occurred to me, which was during our conversation about polygamy with the Faithful Feminists.
CW: With the Faithful Feminists, yes- right.
SH: And it just knocked me sideways. And I haven’t stopped thinking about that.
But ever since then, I’ve started to see consent as this thread, this common thread that runs through so many of my church experiences and of the things that I’ve been trying to unpack and work through. As my faith has evolved, part of that evolution is definitely thinking about consent.
And so, yet again, Mer kind of bowled me over when she attached consent to the idea of motherhood. I’d never thought of that. Had you thought about it?
CW: Maybe not with that actual word consent, but I had thought about the idea that women have children because that’s just what we do in our church.
That’s just what we do. And if you remember our conversation with Debbie Squires Coleman, she talked about that as well.
SH: Oh yeah, absolutely.
CW: That was something now that she’s glad we’re talking about more, like how much can I physically and mentally handle?
SH: Right.
CW: So it’s kind of a buzz, and I’m glad that it’s buzzing in our society.
SH: A lot of things about women’s lives are buzzing in our society right now.
CW: Hallelujah.
SH: And hallelujah. But also, it’s really hard, like I’m noticing this psychic weight, I guess, that I’m carrying right now as a result of some of the stories and things that are circulating, things that have come to light.
I think we all know the kind of stuff we’re talking about. On the PBS news hour, the other night I was watching it and they did a sort of deep dive story with Gisele Pelicot, and her experiences in the trial that she’s been going through in France and everything about that. And I came away from watching that-
First of all, I was completely mesmerized within one second, even though I’ve known that story was out there. Even I’ve known it’s out there. It’s like it hadn’t landed with full force until I sat down and listened to that woman tell her story. And it’s so unbelievable that I just had this moment where I thought, how have [00:45:00] women born the collective weight of these experiences and mostly born them in silence? Throughout all of world history. And now when it starts to come to light, it’s not just that her story weighed a million pounds on me, it’s that every woman’s story landed on me with a million pound force.
You know, it brings my own experiences and my own things that I’ve been silent about right to the fore. And it’s almost more than I can bear, but it’s in a good way. It’s like in a healing way to have the opportunity to start to say these things and explore them as the world’s women. I feel like this can only lead to healthier women and better experiences, but it’s hard going through. It’s like going through therapy. It’s hard going through the work to get there. Right?
CW: Yeah.
SH: And so when Mer said this about consent around motherhood, it was like someone threw a 50 pound bag of flour and I wasn’t expecting it and I had to catch it.
That’s how these things are landing for me. And I know that’s because of my own experiences that have been, I mean, repressed, I guess for want of a better word.
CW: I find it really interesting a minute ago you just said, you know, it’s kind of like therapy. You and I have texted each other, I don’t know how many hundreds of times over the last couple of months around the issue of Gisele Pelicot being in the time of the Epstein files.
Like it’s just all swerving.
SH: right. It’s so much.
CW: …all this, it’s just so much that we’re being forced to confront it. I think on a level we haven’t seen before, or at least not seen since like the Me Too movement five, six years ago. I don’t know.
SH: Yeah. I feel like Me Too sort of set the stage. It sort of got us ready maybe for the reckoning that…
CW: yeah,
SH: …it has continued to happen and is happening now.
So like the world is ripe for conversations about consent, I think, and particularly the world’s women because we’ve been assigned such a specific role that we didn’t choose necessarily.
CW: Right, right.
SH: You know, because that’s happened in a bunch of different things- a different bunch of different areas of women’s lives, right?
CW: Yes.
SH: But motherhood is definitely one of them. And I did just a little looking around in preparation to contemplate some of this stuff in this conversation today. And I think this goes so far beyond religion. I read an interesting piece on Medium by Fatima Muhammad, and she said this and it really resonated with me.
She said, “we were raised to see motherhood, not just as an inevitability that would come at the right time when we were married to an acceptable man, but also as a duty, a price we paid for being women. The thing we owed the world. We were born girls. So they told us our very existence revolved around what our bodies could offer the world. To think otherwise wasn’t an option. Who are you to be born with a womb only to choose not to use it? Who do you think you are? How dare you? The very idea of it was inconceivable.”
CW: Wow.
SH: I think I’ve talked about it before on the podcast, but I remember so well lying in bed as a young girl. I mean, I was a young child- because this was such a dumb thought.
So it sort of exposes how young I must have been. But I remember thinking, I have to have babies, I have to have babies. But boys have to memorize the sacrament prayer and that’s way worse.
CW: Well…
SH: But even then, it’s like I knew my place, right? I knew what was ahead for me, what the world expected of me as a result of being a girl. I knew that from a very young age.
CW: Definitely. The other thing I love that we talked about with Mer- obviously Susan, you and I have our pet topics and mysticism has been one of them.
SH: Absolutely. Yeah.
CW: That really stood out to us- when we talked about that, and I mean, we had a whole episode last fall, I believe, with Catherine Knight Sontag on mysticism. So it’s just something you and I are super interested in for lots of different reasons. So, I’m glad it came up again with Mer.
SH: Me too. Mysticism is such a thing that feels so- foreign, maybe foreign is not even the right word. Exotic, I guess Exotic to me as a Latter-day Saint.
CW: Ooh
SH: And I think it’s because, you know, if a mystic is a person who is seeking a direct experience with the Divine, I haven’t felt like my direct experience of God was the important part, I guess, of all of it as being a Mormon.
I was meant to experience God through the church and through the things that I did. I mean, it’s explicit, right?
CW: Yes, yes.
SH: I read the quote not that long ago where, and I don’t even remember which prophet it was, but who is explaining how your experience in the temple will be the pinnacle of your spiritual life.
Or something like that. And I thought, wow. That is [00:50:00] just not the case for me. So I’m deeply hungry or have been as part of my own journey for direct experiences of the Divine. So I have holy envy for the mystics. But there were three words that Mer used when she described what she envied about the mystics.
And she said, so much heart, so much love, so much boldness. Heart, love and boldness are also the things that I crave, I guess, in my spiritual life. And those are deep hungers that have not necessarily been met in my life as a Latter-day Saint woman.
CW: Well, in speaking of mystics, then of course, you know, we had to bring up some of our favorite female mystics, and she brought up that line by Catherine of Genoa.
“My deepest me is God”
SH: right?
CW: And I couldn’t stop thinking about that after the episode. So I went and googled that phrase, and of course a meditation from Richard Rohr’s daily meditation from cac.org came up. So I had to read all about that. It’s funny how, you know how sometimes you hear something and you’re like, Ooh, you kind of latch onto it and then you hear it everywhere.
It just keeps popping up everywhere.
SH: Yes, yes.
CW: And so then I ended up hearing that phrase, “my deepest me is God” in a couple other places since we recorded with Mer. And one of them was an episode of Everything Belongs from the CAC again, and Carmen Acevedo Butcher. And here’s what she said on that podcast episode.
“And it reminds me of Catherine of Genoa who said, ‘my deepest me is God’”. (And she actually said something a bit more detailed than that. And then she said it in whatever language it was.) “What she’s literally saying is, the deepest part of me is divine. And that is something that I try to listen for in everybody.”
So I think it’s easy to see why the idea of our “deepest me being God” resonates so much with LDS women because for so long we were taught not to trust ourselves.
SH: Yes,
CW: the natural man, woman, whatever, is an enemy to God. And you and I, and so many of our listeners are kind of on this discovery of “my deepest me is God”, or like Carmen Acevedo Butcher said that seeing the divinity in everybody including us, means we can trust ourselves.
SH: Yes, absolutely. As you read that from Carmen, I’m thinking, well, this is also a very mormon point of doctrine. I mean, God’s an embryo, right? Isn’t that how we are taught to think of ourselves? And yet,
CW: Yes! And yet- yeah. The irony!
SH: On the other hand, we’re giving no encouragement to really internalize and believe and act on.
CW: It’s such a good point.
SH: It’s really interesting to me.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Yeah.
CW: Okay. I know we probably need to move on, but I also love the little mini conversation we had with Mer about sin. I think that’s why we put that question in the deck of cards, Susan, is ever since our episode about sin we just kind of wanna hear everybody else’s opinion about how they have redefined the word for themselves.
SH: Exactly, right? Oh, I’m never gonna get bored talking about sin. I mean, because it’s been, it’s played such a huge part, I guess, in my own religious life. I had such a light bulb moment in this conversation. I don’t remember what we were talking about or what Mer said, but it’s like suddenly I could see that the concept of personal sin- the way that shifts the onus away from the system and onto the individual.
I mean, that’s not a revolutionary idea, but you know how sometimes something lands as revolutionary when it’s the first time your brain makes the connection. Right. And that’s what was happening for me. And Richard Rohr has said a lot about this actually. About this idea of, he calls it corporate sin, or systemic I would say, or institutional.
He says “in fact, evil is often culturally agreed upon, admired and deemed necessary, as is normally the case when a country goes to war, spends most of its budget on armaments, admires luxuries over necessities, entertains itself to death or pollutes its own common water and air. Evil seems to be corporate, admired and deemed necessary before it becomes personable and shameable.
Sin and evil must be more than personal or private matters. Convicting people of individual faults does not change the world. I believe the Apostle Paul taught that both sin and salvation are first of all, corporate realities. Yet we largely missed that essential point and thus found ourselves in the tight grip of monstrous evils in Christian nations all the way down to the modern era.”
CW: Yes, yes, yes.
SH: Truth, truth, truth. When the [00:55:00] system is the church, meaning the larger church, not necessarily just the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then the system offers the individual a way to absolution that keeps us reliant on them. And not only that, if we point out the sin in the system, then we jeopardize our own absolution.
So in a way, it’s a kind of spiritual blackmail to me.
And I just had such a moment of reckoning with that in this conversation.
CW: Oh my gosh, I’m so glad we have been talking a lot about this topic of sin. Like this is at least the third episode we’re bringing it up on, I think, because maybe it’s always been there, like you said.
But I too have just kind of been connecting those dots as well. And it makes me need to lie down. It just does.
SH: Well, it just feels so current to me, to my experience of living and where I do in this time period. Period. You know, this is just current.
CW: Right.
SH: And we’re still not reckoning with it.
CW: We’re still not reckoning with it.
SH: Instead, we’re still talking about sin and repentance, like it’s mainly a personal matter.
CW: Right. Yeah. It definitely feels relevant in the context of what’s going on in the United States right now with Iran and everything. It’s like, how do we not see exactly what Richard Rohr was saying in that quote.
SH: cause we’re busy repenting every day. That’s how.
CW: yeah, I guess. I guess.
SH: but it’s for our own body sins, right? It’s not for the sins of the larger body.
CW: Let’s talk for a minute about our conversation with Zinah. I thought it was so interesting when we asked what shaped her. She immediately knew and said, oh, that’s so easy. It’s,
SH: yes,
CW: it’s singing. And I thought, oh, you and Susan just need to go to lunch. Because I knew that was going to resonate with you.
SH: It absolutely did. It’s so good to be known, Cynthia. Thank you for knowing that. But actually she, I mean, she really just could have been telling my story. I don’t even know if I would have God in my life- be a spiritual person or anything else if it hadn’t been for my church experiences with music.
CW: Interesting.
SH: It’s like all of my earliest experiences, I guess, of feeling the spirit in any way, or connecting- feeling like I had any connection with God. Those were all music based. I particularly loved her line where she was quoting a song “through darkness and pain and strife I’ll sing”. And that’s, so, I can’t even really describe how resonant it is for me.
It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Bertolt Brecht’s Motto. He writes “In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the Dark Times”.
That’s really, I guess just the most succinct description I can think of for how I feel like I live. It goes to hope, it goes to- it just speaks to things that are at the very deepest part of me.
So thank you. Thank you Zinah. For giving me an opportunity to reflect on that again.
CW: Yeah. I was also really glad that we could have a conversation about spiritual mentors with her. For her she mentioned Benjamin Cremer, and I think everything can really change for women once they look outside of the church for their spiritual mentors.
SH: Yes, yes.
CW: And it sounds like that has been the case for Zinah. Obviously it’s been the case for you and me. Look how much we quote Richard Rohr and Barbara Brown Taylor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, all of our favorites, right? That have just fed our souls in ways that we were starving for.
SH: Yes. Yes.
CW: So finding influential women for me outside the church has probably been the most important for me because really since Chieko Okazaki, and I have all of her books on my shelf, I can’t really think of other women in our church that have influenced me quite the way like Chieko has.
SH: Totally agree. But how many opportunities have those women had to influence you?
CW: Exactly! Right.
SH: So I totally agree. If I could give all of our listeners one gift, it would be permission to look outside the stuff that you’re used to looking at. It really would.
CW: Right.
SH: Because that’s where it all began for me.
CW: Right. Oh my gosh. So much more to say on that. But let’s move on because we’re short.
Carol Colvin, oh my gosh. When she talked about that temple stake- that Super Saturday or whatever we call it anymore. The stake relief society meeting they had on a weekend and how it was all about the temple and I was 0% surprised. And also, I don’t know, it just makes me sad. I mean. I never really liked toll painting that much, but I’m like,
SH: Right!
CW: I would go back and take…
SH: well, toll painting might be okay.
CW: Right? I would take toll painting and glass [01:00:00] grapes any day over sitting and listening to people talk about the temple for six hours.
SH: Yeah, I mean, I can’t disagree, but of course that says everything about my own relationship with the temple, I’m sure.
CW: Well, yeah,
SH: But do you remember when I asked you in a recent podcast conversation, and I’m not sure which one it was, but I asked you whether you think our church could move more into mainstream Christianity while maintaining our current focus.
Because I think this is a great example. I think we’re a really conflicted organization right now.
And I honestly don’t know how that’s going to play out because I’ve come to believe, and this is just maybe as a result of the kind of spaces that I hang in and the people I’m in conversation with, but I believe there are many more members opting out of the temple than I ever realized that there were.
Not everybody has a temple recommend or goes- even of the people who have recommends.
CW: Yeah.
SH: So like, is our church going to address that in some way? I mean, like, can there be non- temple LDS and temple LDS members? I really don’t know.
CW: I don’t know. Just hearing you talk makes me feel right now, like our church is in an identity crisis.
SH: Yes. I felt like that watching what happened around Easter. I was like, oh, I’m watching an identity crisis. This is like someone in junior high who doesn’t know whether to cut their bangs. Or you know what? That’s the church that I’m watching right now.
CW: Oh my gosh. I love it.
But I mean, it’s, like I said to you, I think it was on our Beatitudes episode, we had those amazing little, 45 second promotional videos on the Beatitudes that we have on our proselytizing arm of our website, showing how much we love Jesus to our potential converts, but then to our Mormon side, we show all temples.
SH: right? Oh, exactly. I had an interesting conversation with KC Bramer about our episode. I think it was the Rage Cast episode. But anyway, where she said maybe your problem with the Easter thing is that it feels like cultural appropriation. Because we’re talking about celebrating Palm Sunday, but we don’t really,
CW: but we don’t do the Palm Sunday stuff.
SH: We don’t understand, we don’t know what Palm Sunday even really means to Catholics or the kinds of things that you do on Palm Sunday. Like we don’t know any of that. So we’re in this moment of cultural appropriation.
CW: Interesting.
SH: This is why it makes me think of junior high, because in junior high you’re trying on all these different personas really.
I mean, maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but it’s a time of trying on different personas to see what you are gonna be or what you wanna be, right? But a lot of them are really not very convincing. I went through some particularly non-convincing phases myself, of appropriating other people’s personalities and styles and ideas and everything else. And that’s what I feel like we’re doing right now. It’s cultural appropriation at this point. Now, can it become something deeper than that? I hope so. I think so. I want it to.
CW: Yeah, me too.
SH: But it’s hard to marry the Jesus side in our videos to the temple side in all of our talks.
And I even feel like the temple’s going through an identity crisis.
CW: for sure.
SH: Because you know, you go and it’s this slideshow about Jesus while it doesn’t really match the narration of the way that the old films used to, if you see what I mean, so- we’re just in this sort of weird discombobulated time. I don’t know.
CW: Yeah
SH: it’s interesting
CW: I mean, I think comparing it to junior high is actually so spot on, Susan. Those of us who’ve been to junior high know exactly. We’re all nodding our heads.
SH: Pretty sure that’s probably true. I’m not the only awkward eighth grader ever.
CW: Okay.
The last thing I haven’t stopped thinking about with Carol is when she talked about living in the now. Right. And her mom who had dementia. And so she had a five second memory. And so living in the now was literally all that there was for her mom. And that wasn’t an angle I had heard before.
SH: same
CW: It was so touching
SH: It’s so touching. I loved that way of thinking about it and looking at that experience that she’s having and with her mom, and I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t know. I sometimes wonder when certain ideas are sort of afoot in the world or they’re part of the public conversation all of a sudden, like what it means or why those ideas arise when they do.
CW: Like consent.
SH: Like consent, exactly. But another one right now is presence, right? Presence has my attention in that way right now also, and I don’t know, like is it a backlash to our current lifestyles to the technology that is sort of separating us from actually experiencing the real moments in our lives? Is it a backlash to religion that continues to insist that our experiences on earth aren’t important and we have to keep our focus on something bigger than that?
Right. Right. Isn’t it an expression of a collective hunger of some kind? I’m not totally sure what’s going on, [01:05:00] but presence is happening that way right now for me.
CW: Oh, I totally agree. Yeah, there’s something in the air about presence and living in the now, and it could just be you and me, Susan.
Maybe everybody else is like, what are you talking about?
SH: It could just be my air.
CW: But it’s something you and I are breathing a lot of that air right now. And we keep talking about, I don’t know, but like you, like I’m kind of seeing it everywhere as well. And I recently heard Arthur Brooks say that we spend so much time watching other people’s lives on social media instead of getting out and living our own life.
SH: Yes.
CW: And that went straight to my heart when he said that. And I’ll admit since I heard him say that, like I’ve been Googling how to take my Instagram feed, turn it into one of those books, and then my goal is to delete everything I have on Instagram. Not close my account or anything, but I think I’m just getting to the point where I’m done sharing so much of my personal life on social media. I just wanna get out there and live my personal life. I don’t know, Susan, maybe I’ll feel differently tomorrow, but for a few weeks, that’s what I’ve been chewing on, is I want to live in the now. And for me, living in the now doesn’t necessarily mean I need to show everybody else online how I’m living in the now.
SH: Yeah. Because, you know, whether you’re that intentional about it or not, you’re sort of staging your life, you’re staging your experience like to make it…
CW: Yes, staging.
SH: Staging to present it to other people, and when you’re thinking of that, it’s pretty hard to be living authentically, I guess.
And really immersing yourself in your own experience. I love that thought. That’s a great idea actually,
CW: Well, that’s it. Those were our Contemplative Corner ideas that we had listening to three Wise Women again. And I just have to say, I love how much we’re doing this again this season. Instead of just having 90 second voicemails at the end, which stay tuned, we’ll have them here.
SH: Yeah, and I love them.
CW: And then having full hour episodes with one woman. I love this In-between-ness that we’re doing, having 15 minute segments with more women.
SH: Same. And our continued thanks to all of the women who are sharing so generously with us.
Voicemail 1: Sacrament meeting this last week was all youth speakers each reflecting on the theme for the year. Walk with Me. I’m struck by how many of them hear it primarily as a command, an instruction to follow Jesus more closely, to do better, to stay in step. But I hear it as a two-way invitation. Not just movement, but presence, intention.
I am with Him and He is with me. And maybe it stretches even wider than that. Maybe Walk with Me is also an invitation to walk with each other, to witness one another’s lives with tenderness. To be close enough that someone can feel He is with them, because we are. Not fixing, not leading, just staying, step for step through whatever terrain they happen to be crossing.
Following matters, yes, but so does companionship. A God who walks does not shout directions from a distance. He comes close and sometimes His nearness arrives wearing another person’s shoes.
Voicemail 2: I have never worn the temple garments because I’m not endowed. I have, however, been in a relationship with a man who wanted to control my underwear, my clothes, my hairstyle, my body, et cetera. My heavenly father saved me and protected me from that man and helped me to understand that type of control is abusive in the divine purposes of sexual intimacy.
Elder Dale G Renlund and Ruth Lybbert Renlund teach that sexual relations within marriage must respect the agency of both partners and should not be used to control or dominate. I would add also the word coercion under the umbrella of control, and one sign of coercion in relationships is emotional manipulation, which can include using guilt, fear, or shame to force compliance.
Do I have the agency to choose my own underwear and also have a relationship with my heavenly Father inside of his house? I would say no. If I choose not to wear the garments, could I attend the temple without guilt? No. Could I attend the temple without fear? No. Could I attend the temple without shame? No.
You might say, oh, but the Renlunds are talking about sexual intimacy, not the temple. But if my temple garments, my underwear are covering my sexual organs, my private areas, how are we not talking about sexual intimacy? And if I don’t have the freedom to choose my own underwear and still be able to visit my Father in His house, is my agency being respected?
I could play Bishop Roulette and explain my past abuse to my bishop and tell him why it feels so violating to me to have another person decide what I am going to wear under my clothes in hopes that he would give me my recommend anyway. But should I have to or should my agency to make that decision privately and with dignity for myself just [01:10:00] be respected?
Z: Really honed my sight singing skills, being at church, sitting in the pews. There’s like a plane going by. I’m sorry. It’s really loud.
SH: We specialize in that.
CW: Redo.
Z: Oh, this one’s harder because your cards are all the same color. I picked the pink. I picked the pink one. That was a different color.
CW: Susan’s fancy, I’m not,
SH: I’ll just say the French woman.
CW: Well, we can just Google it really quick. The French woman. Gisele Pelicot. Yeah. Gisele Pelicot. Okay. Yeah. Look at that. You had it right.
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