Category Archives: spirituality

mormonism 6 Comments

Mormons and their Holidays

Sheryl said:

do mormons have special holidays? or do they just have the weird underweartraditions?

Good question, Sheryl. And, before I go upstairs to wash the massive amounts of dishes that pie-making has dirtied, I will answer this good question.

I think Mormons may actually celebrate fewer holidays than “normal” Protestant religions—at least, I know we didn’t do funky things for Palm Sunday or Lent or any of that. We had celebrations like Pioneer Days and attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant in upstate New York, but those weren’t really religious holidays as much as festivals.

As far as holidays are concerned, Mormons are pretty much like the rest of the Protestants. Easter and Christmas are the biggies, as with any other Christian religion, although Mormons believe that Jesus wasn’t actually born in December—I think they said it was actually in the Spring. I think that’s actually a Bible scholar thing more than a Mormon thing, now that I think about it. Has something to do with the fact that Mary and Joseph were trucking along home to be taxed, and when that happened during the year, and all that.

But, anyway, that’s not to say that Mormons don’t have their share of weirdness. It just doesn’t happen to be in their observance of holidays.

Weirdness of Mormons in a nutshell:
(in case I haven’t harped on it enough in the past)
– sacred undergarments protect Mormons
– hot drinks (coffee/tea) are not for the body or the belly
– native americans came from jerusalem on a boat
– magic glasses helped to translate the book of mormon
– the dead sea scrolls are actually lost writings of moses
– the second coming of christ will happen in america
– god lives on the planet kolob

Please feel free to comment on your confusion and amazement on any of these topics. I will gladly rant for your reading pleasure.

mormonism 4 Comments

On My Divergence From Mormonism

Interesting evening I’ve spent here at my computer. I started out normally, checking out my daily blogroll, and decided to check out Jason’s xanga (even though I’d stated that I’d make myself scarce, due to his politically- and religiously-charged commentary). While I’d intended to read it and pretend I hadn’t, I ended up responding to his response, and even blew the dust off of my old King James Version to refute some of his points.

It was not precisely a revelation to me to discover that all the scripture I’d had in mind was from the Book of Mormon, not the bible. Since informally leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I’ve discovered that much of their dogma is in fact from the Book of Mormon (supposedly translated from ancient American writings unearthed in 1830’s New York) and the Doctrine and Covenants (writings and revelations of Joseph Smith and other early church leaders), not from the bible itself.

My divergence from the Church has been a long, slow process. I’ve revisited this several times in the past years. As a youth, I never had the burning realization that the Church was true, although it wasn’t for lack of trying. I went to Church every Sunday, went to Young Women’s meetings every Wednesday night, went to Girls’ Camp every summer, sang in the choir, prayed daily, read the scriptures, and did all the other things the Church Leaders told us we should do. My Mom and Tom (stepdad #1) even got married in the Washington D.C. temple and were sealed “for Time and all Eternity,” in an exclusive temple ceremony which I was too young to attend at age 12, and during which I sliced wedding-cake strawberries in the temple parking lot with Sister Baker.

It wasn’t until Mom and Tom got divorced two years later that I started to doubt the Church. Being that they’d been married and “sealed” in the temple, the Church would still consider them married even if Mom managed to get a legal divorce. Assuming Mom still believed the principles of the Gospel (which she did at the time), that would mean that she would have to spend Eternity with Tom as her husband after she finally died. She wasn’t into that, so she arranged to be excommunicated, which wasn’t difficult. Once she found herself another lover, she simply went to Church, sat down with the Bishop (pastor, father, what-have-you) in his office, and admitted that she had committed adultery after leaving Tom. No problem, here’s your pink slip, don’t let the chapel doors hit you in the ass on your way out.

Free and clear of any eternal commitments. Amen!

Of course, during all these theological shenanigans, I was still attending church and early-morning seminary (bible study classes at 5am before school). Being that Mom didn’t have her driver’s license yet, I was getting rides from my Aunt Sammie. She had asked to be excommunicated in the 1970’s, I think, or the early 80’s, and hadn’t yet returned to the Church at this point—she just gave me rides to and from. Once my older friends started getting their driver’s licenses, they started giving me rides to church and seminary—and this is where I realized I had started to really fall away.

One morning, I either overslept or just decided I wasn’t going to church. I don’t recall how it happened, and I don’t remember who was supposed to give me a ride or how I cancelled said ride. At any rate, I slept in until about 10:30 or so (which was absolutely luxurious for a Sunday, considering that church started at 9am and ended at noon). I had just gotten up and thrown on clothes when there was a knock at the door. Mom answered it, to find my friend Michelle standing there in her church dress. She had noticed I wasn’t at church, and skipped the Sunday School portion of the morning to drive across town to my apartment. She told me she came to see if I was OK and to bring me to the last meeting of the morning, and encouraged me to throw on any old dress and jump in the car. Even though she had been so selfless and had come to help, I made up some lame excuse about how I’d already missed two thirds of the meetings, and the actual worship service (Sacrament Meeting) was first, and entreated her to go back without me so she wouldn’t miss the last meeting of the day.

She didn’t go out of her way to help me after that, and I started skipping church more and more often. By my Senior year in high school, as I recall, I went to church about as much as I went to class in college.

Speaking of… once I got to college, that was when things really began to unravel. Again, not for lack of trying. My first semester at BGSU, I looked up the church and arranged for a ride with one of the English professors who happened to be Mormon. Sang with her in the choir, went with her to area conferences… and began my discovery that church is more of a social institution than a religious one. Being that there were so many college students at the Bowling Green Ward, they had a separate Young Adult Sunday School. This after I’d just been so glad to have graduated from the 12-to-17 age bracket, and gotten to attend real, grown-up Sunday School for a few months. I knew very few people in the BG Ward, and most of the ones I got to know seemed almost plastic to me. I’d grown up with my old congregation; I couldn’t identify with these people, no matter what their beliefs. I stopped going to church in BG sometime during the Spring semester.

I didn’t give my religion much thought for another year or so, when I started dating Aaron. I knew my morals and my basic principles hadn’t changed; I was still a virgin at age 19, and was particularly proud of the fact. Aaron had heard about Mormonism in one of his classes at St. John’s High School, so I got to answer a lot of odd questions about “Joe Smith’s magic glasses” and magic underwear (especially after this aired on 60 Minutes), and only much later did I get questions about polygamy. He was quite a trooper, too, and dated me for a year an a half before I finally decided to, um, submit to my carnal desires.

Before that, though, I met Amy.

Rooming with Amy was one of my two major influences away from Mormonism (and Christianity in general), with the other being Sociology 101. Soc taught me how much of religion is a societal structure, and how some religions were developed specifically by ancient governments in order to keep people in check—or, rather, to make them happy with their lot in life, so as to avoid a revolt. That really got me thinking, and long discussions with Amy fueled the fire. I watched Amy turn from agnostic to atheist in the four years we roomed together (or, at least, she began to admit her atheism more freely over time). I don’t remember the exact subjects we discussed over the years, but I remember how it made me feel; looking back on what I had once believed to be unshakeable truth, I felt I’d been brainwashed. It all sounded so ridiculous to me.

I still know it inside and out, though. I can still tell you all about the three levels of Heaven, or about the planet God lives on, or about Joseph Smith’s First Vision (how it’s taught to modern Church-goers, anyway), or I can sing you one of several dozen exclusively Mormon hymns still buried in my head somewhere, or I can tell you about baptism for the dead, or tell you some Book of Mormon stories.

A couple years ago, I actually picked up Volume I of the Book of Mormon Stories VHS set at Goodwill. I made Aaron watch it, too—actually, he was kind of curious. And he was flabbergasted when the climax of the story came about, too. To capitulate: Nephi and his dad and brothers are about to split Jerusalem, but they have to get the record of their family (inscribed on a set of brass plates) from this evil dude named Laban, who owns them. So, Nephi is scared shitless, but he knows he has to come up with something. And, lucky Nephi—when he walks up to Laban’s house, guess who is shitfaced drunk? Yup. Now, in the words of 1 Nephi, Chapter 4:

10. And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.

11. And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.

…

18. Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.

At which point Aaron says, “What?!” Having assumed, of course, that it was only a test, and that God wouldn’t ask Nephi to kill the drunk dude, then put on his clothes and pretend to be him to get the brass plates from his servant. Heh.

When I was involved in the Church, they called the stuff presented in the following links “anti-Mormon,” and they told us to stay away from it. Now I see why. Want to check out some fucked-up religion? This is what I’ve been checking out all evening:

I think that’s the longest LJ entry I’ve ever written. I’m going to bed now. Whew.

longhand, spirituality, the ongoing saga of my job

Journaling and such

I had an interesting idea today. I had brought my sketch journal to work instead of a book to keep me occupied during breaks and lunch, so I ended up writing a journal entry. And I thought, why shouldn’t I scan in some of my random journal pages that I have in various notebooks, in addition to some of the more memorable journal entries from my “real” journals in the past? So, as my first entry, non-interesting though it may be, I offer to you May 7, 2004.

I also had the most fascinating conversation with a co-worker today. I don’t think anyone from work reads my LJ, so I think it’s safe to talk about it—I won’t be “outing” Mike as a non-Christian, which, yes, would be a bad thing in bible-belt BG.

Wow, I just stole my own thunder. How lame is that?

Anyway, in our weekly department meeting, I mentioned that I’d be heading out to the Waterville Community Garage Sale this weekend. Now, Mike tends to come down to my cube and talk to me, anyway, since he noticed that Deb and I are so isolated, being in a different room than the rest of the department. (Given the cliqueishness of some people, though, we prefer it that way.) But today, he came down to ask about the garage sale. Turns out that he likes to thrift, too, which is cool. We got talking about what we look for, and I found out he’s a Medieval buff, collects Renaissance-related stuff and cast iron and things like that.

So, he drifted back to his own cube in the other room, and after lunch I got an e-mail from him. Funny shit—all sorts of whacked out pictures from around the net. I plan to post them on my page eventually. After that, he stopped past my cube again to ask what I thought of those pictures, and just to say hi before he went off to clock out for his own lunch.

And we ended up talking for an hour.

The conversation ranged from my soy candles to essential oils to herbs… then we got into a discussion about what he’d printed off to read during lunch: some Norse mythology, an epic poem about Odin. From which point we got talking about cultural history and mythology, which morphed into religion, of course. We were kind of feeling each other out (so to speak) about how far to go with the conversation. He’d mention symbols and runes and how often they’re misused, so I’d mention people’s misconceptions of the five-pointed star and its various meanings, so he’d mention how those meanings were explained to him, and so on. Eventually we both discovered that we consider ourselves non-Christians, but are kind of “in the closet” about it publicly, due to everyone’s misconceptions of paganism. That wasn’t all we talked about, though—we also discussed the Ren Fests and SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and Goth Night at Uptown and “dabblers” in Wicca and other poseurs in the counterculture. Anyway, I told him I’d be up for a double-date to one of the Ren Fests this summer.

Just to clarify, I don’t consider myself an all-out Pagan or Wiccan or what have you. I don’t believe in The Great Horned God as an actual entity whom I could call to assist me, no more than I believe that the Judeo-Christian God (whose name I do still have enough respect for not to put into writing) actually follows our daily lives. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe that a god may have had a hand in creating our world/universe, or that I don’t believe in an afterlife of some sort. Honestly, I’m just not sure, and I won’t be until I die. At any rate, just the fact that I no longer believe that Jesus was the Son of God would be enough to ostracize me from many circles.

In other news, I relocated the credit card that was lost on my desk at home, and managed to order Mom a Mother’s Day present. (Mom, I hope you haven’t found my LJ yet… but if you have, Happy Mother’s Day!)

P.S. – If you haven’t checked out my webpage lately, I’ve got some new sketches up. The U-Haul rut photos are also posted in the Photos section, if you haven’t looked at those yet. Good stuff.

spirituality

Samhain

You guys are gonna think I’m so weird…

First off, before you get too far, it’s pronounced \SOW-in\. ("Sow" rhymes with "cow.") Quite similar to what a deep southerner would answer if you asked her what she was doing with that needle and thread. (Although, after a little research, I think I prefer the Welsh pronunciation: Shah-VEEN.) And yes, it’s the Wiccan (or Pagan, if you prefer) holiday from which modern Halloween stems.

But let me begin at the beginning. (Hmm, this could be a long post…)

You all probably know about my on-again/off-again battle with my spirituality. When my mother left the Mormon Church while I was in high school, I clung to my own beliefs like a lifeline. In fact, at times I was so suicidal (reference teen angst poetry) that my belief system was all that kept me from attempting it. (That’s really creepy when I think about it now. *shiver*) When I came to college, I located the local Mormon church and kept attending services, but somehow it felt different. I stopped going after a semester or two. After taking Sociology 101, I came to realize that religion was mainly a social structure, a grouping of people with similar beliefs, and that religion at its most base and fundamental level was a means of teaching and controlling a population. By or around this point in my education, I was living with Amy, who basically turned from agnostic to atheist before my very eyes while we roomed together. All these factors together — Soc class, long talks with Amy, online research about my crackpot religion — eventually made me discard my Mormon upbringing.

No, not just Mormon. Christian. My mom about swallowed her tongue when I told her a couple years back that I didn’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God. I even had a long discussion with Gary (who holds an Associate Degree in Theology) about whether Jesus was a con man, a liar, or just plain crazy (or perhaps misled). I’m sure Mom and Gary think it’s a phase. I’ll let them go on thinking that.

Now, hoping I haven’t alienated any of my readership, I’ll move on…

About the same time I was discovering what I no longer believed in, I met Kelly. Kelly was a VCT major, and was in several of my classes with me. Kelly was also a Pagan, and had no qualms about telling you all about Paganism. (Interesting sidenote: Kris H. actually dated Kelly just before I met her, and she’d turned him off by talking incessantly about her religion. So, she is known in our circle of friends as "Pagan Kelly.")

Kelly introduced me to the Pagan Society at BGSU, and invited me to a meeting. This only reinforced my idea of religious meetings as social gatherings, although I felt more welcome there than I would have at Church. The dozen members of the Society (which has since split and disbanded) all had varying beliefs: some were Wiccan, some Druid, some were Taoist to an extent, and some (out of sheer perversity, I do believe) followed Norse practices. More than anything, that made me realize that a.) my belief system is my own, and b.) as such, I need to discover it for myself.

So, here I am. Back to my original topic of Samhain.

To preface (and I’m paraphrasing from what I’ve read and researched), Wicca is a neo-Pagan religion which gained popularity in the hippie era of the 60’s and 70’s. People felt a need to commune with nature, to shed their prohibitive Puritan upbringing, and opted to revert to the oldest form of nature-worship they could discover. Unfortunately, most non-Christian European religions were nearly obliterated during the early Christian Era, and no true followers of ancient religions remained. (A few isolated covens still operated in Europe, however, believing themselves the only remaining practitioners of their faith.) Through research, interpolation, and a little creativity, modern man managed to imitate the ancient religion of the Celts as early as the late 1800’s, albeit under an extreme vow of secrecy. Most Wiccans believe their version of the ancient religion to have been founded in the 1930’s or 40’s.

Wiccans observe eight holy days, or Sabbats, during the course of the year. The first of these is Samhain, October 31, which marks the final harvest and the beginning of Winter and the Pagan/Wiccan/Celtic New Year. This is a time where one communes with one’s ancestors, remembering those gone before, and makes resolutions for the upcoming year. Wiccans believe this is a time to invite ancestors to revisit the world of the living; hence, the creepy overtone of the undead.

Since learning a little about Wicca and Paganism in general, I find that, around Halloween, my thoughts gravitate toward those have passed on, and toward my genealogy and family history. I used to think only of my Granny (1911-1990) and my stepdad (1948-1995), but now I have my Memaw to think of, too (1933-2003). I don’t know what’s happened to them, or where they’ve gone, if anywhere. Heaven? Purgatory? The Elysian Fields? The Spirit World? Another dimension?

Oblivion?

Wherever they may be, I am bound and determined to keep their memories alive — even those ancestors I didn’t know. There are a few that I feel a certain kinship to, and I’m not quite sure why. My Mormon friends would tell me that they’re urging me from the Spirit World to finish their genealogy and Mormon temple work for them. I personally think I just find their lives and circumstances fascinating, and I can relate well to some of them.

So, I think I’m going to celebrate Samhain this year. I think I’m going to get out my three-ring-binder of genealogy and study my ancestry for an hour, surrounded by candles and photos of my family. Afterward, I’ll dig out the Tarot cards (and my trusty reference book) and give myself a reading — although Amy was always better at that than I. Then perhaps I’ll write a brief list of things I want to eliminate from my life in the coming year, and symbolically destroy the list (by fire if I’m feeling pyromanic). No, I won’t "cast a circle." No, I won’t "call the corners." No, I won’t supplant the Horned God or call upon the Ancient Ones. But it’ll be a nice little evening of reverance and remembrance while the rest of the nation is eating candy and burning couches.

Wicca links:
History of Wicca at religioustolerance.org
The Sabbats of Wicca