Author: James Olsen

James is the husband of Erin Fairlight Olsen. Together they have conspired to doom their four children to a lifetime of mispronounced names: Gaebriel Joseph, Magdeleine Ysabelle, Myriam Reevkahleh, and Ewa Nuhr. Raised where the buffalo still roam in northeastern Wyoming, James learned how to Anglicize French while serving in the Missouri, St. Louis Mission. Afterward he thought so long and indecisively and with such passionately committed existential anguish about what to do with his life that finally BYU simply granted him a degree in philosophy. He then received a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs from George Washington University. Unable to subsequently handle the pressures of looming heteronormativity, however, he once again took up philosophy, this time at Georgetown. Currently he is in Doha, Qatar, hiding out from Georgetown, which, much like his wife, would really appreciate it if he just graduated.

Reading Nephi – 8:1-8

Verse 1: it seems clear that they lived in the Valley for quite some time. Lehi’s dream. This labyrinth makes the whole book worthwhile. I too have had dreams that make me deeply question the future and my relationships, that do not simply manifest but engender worry and joy. But here we see a dream that not only spawns reflection in the dreamer, but gives future credence to Nephi’s narrative and theocratic reign, shapes a people, is buried for fourteen hundred years, comes to light, and once again shapes another people. This dream is as iconic as anything in Mormonism. I don’t think we pay nearly enough attention to the very first part. Lehi walks in darkness. For hours. Taking the account straightforwardly, this walk in darkness is the overwhelming bulk of the whole dream. Doing as Lehi and Nephi do and extrapolating this vision as a metaphor of our mortal lives, those lives are almost entirely—or perhaps I should say they are built on the foundation of—walking through darkness. Lehi had a guide, but didn’t seem to know if the guide was trustworthy (at least, he says nothing of the guide beyond noting a white robe and that he was beckoned to follow). I also have guides I frequently do not trust, or at least am unsure of; they give me no comfort, just as this guide gave Lehi no comfort. Retrospectively, some of them have been angels. For…

Reading Nephi – 7:6-22

Here again we get a narrative, and in the perceptible foil of a competitor narrative. Once again, Nephi works hard to discredit Laman & Lemuel, and here we can see clearly what their major point is: returning to Jerusalem. It’s easy to imagine a New World experience decades into the future, in the wake of hardships that rival or surpass the hardship of the 8 years in the wilderness—infant mortality, disease, lack of food, the general hardship of coping with an entirely unfamiliar ecosystem, together with whatever struggles they might have had with their native neighbors. It’s easy to imagine competitor narratives to Nephi’s rule that focus on the illegitimacy of leaving Jerusalem—that comparative Utopia still very present in Lehite memory. It’s easy to imagine a public unconvinced either by the claims of Jerusalem’s destruction or unconvinced that becoming a vassal state would’ve been overall worse than what they suffered in the exodus and settlement of the Americas. Such a narrative might make a great deal of a pivotal moment when a majority or near majority attempted to return. The major points of Nephi’s narrative—preservation and deliverance in the wake of scrappy, faithful obedience to God’s commands—coincide with the major elements of criticism. There’s plenty of room within the text itself to craft a plausible counter-narrative to Nephi’s claims. Here’s some possibilities: At this point, Laman and Lemuel must have felt a little desperate. It is no longer a matter…

My petition for a bill of…

The law that God gave to ancient Israel was pretty clear and unambiguous: divorce isn’t part of the program. Then the people sued Moses for a bill of divorcement. I have no idea what that conversation between Moses and God was like. Maybe it had parallels to the one where Moses talked God out of destroying the Israelites and starting over. Whatever the conversation, God granted the petition and gave Moses that bill of divorcement. Then came Jesus of Nazareth. Divorce was a normal part of society in his day (even if not anything like divorce in our day). And Jesus spoke out in straightforward and unambiguous terms. Divorce was granted because of the people’s unrighteousness. Because they weren’t willing to keep the higher law. But together Moses and God had realized it was better for our people overall to grant the bill. I personally believe in that original law, reiterated by Christ. I believe that divorce is not part of the Eternal Plan. But I’m incredibly grateful for the fact that our Church is not struggling with this in the same way that the Catholic Church is currently struggling with it. I think we are able to better fulfill the goals of this dispensation and in our personal families not only because we universally grant this exception to the Eternal Law as we understand it, but also because we don’t think we need to look down on or alienate or…

Reading Nephi – 7:1-5

Sometimes I feel like I deeply understand the tight integration of extended family, covenant, and connection to God—a trinity that is indeed one in substance. And sometimes, as here, it feels so exotic. I feel like I stand in between worlds. One cannot live today without having these three analyzed as fully distinct. The rhetoric at church tends to place them in complimentary relationship—Zion is when we can get these three together. But reading Nephi it seems like something different. None of the three make any sense without all three. The point of enlisting Ishmael’s family is to raise up seed to God, as is the point of life and religion. God’s commands are issued and heeded not as a matter of sovereign authority exercising its whims, but as a covenantal relationship. The terms of the covenant are kept as God prepares a way for deliverance and as God’s children take advantage of that deliverance to raise up seed within the covenantal fold. God delivers in order to have a people, and offers that people a promised land. Here is another Exodus, another Genesis, a new dispensation. And the central pillar of this dispensation is a God covenanting with and for a family. Here too we begin another parallel. We’ll repeat the return to Jerusalem to secure an indispensable variable that will allow this covenant to obtain: another family. There is no salvation either in this world or in the…

Reading Nephi – 6

This was a chapter break in the original edition (end of Chapter Two), but I’m not terribly impressed with whoever’s editorial decision that was. This is clearly not a break. Nephi’s switched from discussing his father’s reading of the Plates of Brass to discussing his own writing—but it’s not meant to be a substantive shift; rather, it’s mean to draw a continuity. I don’t know that Nephi’s being audacious in the same way that you or I (or a General Authority for that matter) might be being audacious if we declared our writings scripture. But he is being audacious in the sense that he sees himself as continuing the record. There are the Plates of Brass, there is the Book of Lehi, and here are Nephi’s writings, and they all fall into the same category. Being the new caretakers of this record, the obligation is clearly to continue it. And this sense of things continues, even amongst later record keepers who knew themselves to be unrighteous. And what ought one expect to be written in a record such as this? We’ve already seen that a major understanding of the Plates of Brass—and here Nephi obliquely informs us that Lehi took it up as well—is the recounting of one’s genealogy. Scripture is like a covenant—temporally extended, and something in which we ourselves our situated; and giving us an understanding of that situating is a major purpose for having scripture. I lament…

Reading Nephi – 5:10-22

I’m first struck by what a joy this must’ve been for Lehi. At this point, he’s as committed as he could be, completely immersed in living the life of a prophet that he feels he’s been called to. Of course, it’s a serious question whether or to what extent he’d been exposed to scripture prior to this point. We see here that he was obviously familiar with the fact that there were five books of Moses, and the story of Joseph of Egypt was known to him (as was, of course, the story of Moses that Nephi used earlier). But clearly he had no copy of the scriptures himself—no one did back then. There were only communal copies, and it’s not clear that Laban would’ve been any more liberal with the plates back when Lehi was a normal merchant of Jerusalem than he was when Laman went to speak to him (for that matter, it’s not at all clear that Lehi was interested in the scriptures prior to his hearing many prophets out preaching to the people). But having committed himself to this life and this path, seeing himself (however humble or vain he might have been) as one of the prophets, he now, probably for the first time in his life, had the opportunity to sit and read the scriptures. What possible parallel do we have? I can imagine a woman in the DRC who leaves her tribal homeland,…

Reading Nephi – 5:1-9

Here is a poignant scene. Reunions are an important trope in all stories, because they’re an important element in all of our lives. As Mormonism’s grand cosmological narrative makes clear, our very life is about separation from our parents and working toward an eventual reunion—after we’ve made our (usually very messy) journey and acted in faith to do the things that we’ve been commanded to do. Verse one gives us a nice twist, however. It’s not that the brothers have completed their quest and come home like every other Odysseus. Rather, they’ve completed their quest and having done so returned to the wilderness. The Book of Mormon is indeed, as Jacob who was born in the wilderness will later state, a story of strangers wandering in the wilderness. Grant Hardy offers a compelling argument that this scene is a matter of artful obfuscation. Nephi distracts his readers from his murder and what was surely an awkward reunion—one can almost hear the irony, imagining Nephi declaring that he has accomplished the commandments of the Lord—by throwing his poor mother under the bus and making the reunion about her own struggles and faithful reconciliation. It’s also hard not to see this as adding insult to injury, given that this is the one time Nephi focuses on a woman’s experience or quotes her (one of three named women). While I agree that Sariah’s experience is being exploited here, I see it as political…

Reading Nephi – 4:20-38

Zoram is another critical element of this narrative. Once again, we learn later in the Book of Mormon that there was controversy concerning Zoram’s departure from Jerusalem and joining Lehi’s expedition—enough controversy to eventually fuel a serious political movement and secession (Alma 31-35). It’s another instance of Nephi portraying himself as heroic, faithful and possessed of a liberal spirit. One certainly hopes that Lehi’s later blessing of Zoram corroborates Nephi’s account—but Zoram’s joining the Lehite project is another oddity. Why does Zoram join them so readily? He was from the lower classes, perhaps made naturally compliant on account of his life circumstances. He might well have felt compelled or lacking better alternatives. I suspect that this is where Nephi’s murder is revealed. I imagine a terrified Zoram asking what Nephi (who is “large in stature,” and this time the description is obviously physical—he’s just physically restrained Zoram from fleeing) what he did with his master Laban and how he had gotten Laban’s clothes and sword. Nephi’s brothers surely had the same question. Facing the question, and aware of how conspicuous his wearing of Laban’s clothing was, and particularly given the dramatic nature of the night’s events and the effects this would’ve had upon an exhausted young Nephi, it’s plausible that he straightforwardly confessed. It’s easy to picture Zoram, physically restrained by the “large in stature” Nephi, who has just explained to the group that he murdered Laban, feeling like he…

Reading Nephi – 4:3-19 (part II)

So is this my contemporary sensibilities, my modern moral compass set in a fantastically different, less physically grueling and brutal world that recoils from Nephi’s terrifying justification? Undoubtedly—although that in itself certainly makes it no less right. But the text itself and Nephi’s manner of disclosing and addressing this event offers evidence that something was rotten in Nephi’s Denmark.

Reading Nephi – 4:3-19 (part I)

Once again, reading these difficult passages, I see something prodigious in Nephi, something my soul longs after. At the same time, however, my soul recoils, and chapter four is the realization of the danger inherent in Nephi’s faithful outlook. I want to think that Nephi’s mistake was youthful inexperience—faith and zeal untempered by the wisdom and moral constraint of realizing that every human one confronts is a child of Heavenly Parents and a brother or sister [see comment 1]. Contextualizing our lives within the scriptures seems so right. This is how I want to read them—this is how I want to live. This is what I hope I’m doing as I read and write my thoughts, weaving myself into a temporally extended web, binding myself within the covenants that I have made, which are the covenants of God with his people in former and latter times, which binds me to the mothers and fathers who’ve gone before. With Nephi, I want to not only declare but experience (as he experienced) that profound Passover motto: The Lord is able to deliver us, Even as our ancestors; And to destroy [insert obstacle] Even as he destroyed the Egyptians. But now, here, I can’t even chant this refrain in the way that Nephi does. I cannot make my obstacle a human to be destroyed as God destroyed the Egyptians. The Passover story is a horrific story. It’s not just one man that perishes…

Reading Nephi – 3:31-4:3

They misplaced the chapter break. We’ve reached a hard spot in the Book of Mormon for me—perhaps the hardest spot in Nephi’s record. The text in chapter four challenges me on multiple fronts every time I read it. I hope that my wrestling with it is fruitful and faithful, but often it’s merely implacable. One thing that I can see clearly is that we here get Nephi’s commentary on the nature of miracles and the way they interact with human reason and trust. All of us have Laman and Lemuel within us. Analyzing the variables of our life, we simply cannot see a solution to a given problem—there is no plausible way out of whatever bind we find ourselves in. Laban has twice now sent his henchman to threaten Laman. The reality of Laban’s ability to kill him is obviously quite firmly in the forefront of Laman’s mind—encounters with those who are perfectly comfortable using violence to coerce others is bound to have that sort of effect. This isn’t a game anymore, this isn’t perseverance or faith or optimism; this is now suicidal—Laban wants to kill us. Laban’s perfectly capable of killing us. I don’t walk on water, and the water doesn’t part for me. Yes, I’ve read that God’s performed water miracles in the past, but I have no experience with such things. My experience with water is that when I step into I sink, and should I try…

Reading Nephi – 3:15-30

There really is something terribly compelling about Nephi. It’s hard not to be won over by his absolute commitment and tenacity. I want to bracket all my inevitable reading of an older political authority justifying the legitimacy of his reign, countering his opposition’s narratives concerning crucial events at the genesis. Instead, I want here to simply let myself be taken in by a youth who displays this unyielding faith and optimism. It strikes me that this is precisely the attitude and commitment that brings about change. How—in the context of ancient Holy Land Jerusalem—can God transplant a faithful family, a family whose faith is rooted in the framework of their people’s having obtained a promised land and established a House of God? It would seem that either God would need a family whose faith was secondary, thin, perhaps non-existent (i.e., they weren’t all that faithfully Jewish and so weren’t committed to the Holy Land); or else God would have to give up on the idea of transplanting them. But here’s a third option: find someone like Nephi who will hold to what he’s been given in revelation and jump into the abyss. Assuming he doesn’t die—that is, assuming Providence—a new land of promise is indeed a possibility. Looking at Nephi’s persuasive rhetoric, I can’t help but notice the difference between the explanation we get here for why the plates are needed and the explanation given when Nephi quoted Lehi. A…

Reading Nephi – 3:1-14

There’s a reason why this—the return for the plates—is the first event Nephi mentions following their departure from Jerusalem. I wonder if there’s not also an inspired reason for it to come upfront. Lehi’s theophany and departure is the rupture that opens a new dispensation. The story of the retrieval of the record of Laban is the founding of Nephite history, the origin of Nephite political legitimacy, and perhaps even the founding of Nephite religion. Once again, there is a great deal going on in this story, with absences that are as revealing as what gets stated. Nephi subtly lets us know that he speaks with Lehi in confidence, that Lehi already spoke with Laman, Lemuel, and Sam, and that this meeting(s) didn’t go well. Lehi attempts to pre-empt what he assumes will be Nephi’s similar balking at the idea of returning for the record. Why do the others balk? Especially at the idea of a return trip—even temporary—to Jerusalem? Is it that taking the records is an irrevocable movement away from Jerusalem, something that makes their stint in the Valley more than a mere waiting for things to die down? Why does Lehi think Nephi will also balk? What have Nephi’s speech and actions been up to this point that cause Lehi to take preemptive measures in discussing the return? Why wasn’t Nephi with is brothers when Lehi approached them about the return? Why is Nephi getting his own…

Reading Nephi – 2:16-24

I’ve no desire to rob those who are physically large with a means of relating themselves to Nephi. But I can’t for the life of me see how we connect “large in stature” with physically large. [Note: later in the text we do get a direct connection between Nephi’s stature and physical size, so perhaps that later connection colors things here; but for all we know, these were different words all together that both came out as ‘stature’ on Joseph’s stone.] The contrast in this clause is with young—which I suppose might be intuitively connected to physical size—my children do this all the time (they can’t quite understand that mommy is older since daddy is bigger). Just yesterday they nearly came to blows over whose foot was larger, which is apparently a genetic marker of natural aristocracy and right to rule. But it’s the right to rule that matters—and as soon as I convinced my children that there was no connection between foot size and ruling, they no longer cared about it. This helps us get at another interpretation of stature that I find far more plausible: status. In Biblical Hebrew qaton means small, young, or insignificant, while gadol means large, great, or important. Although young, Nephi already had a significant community status—just what that is, I’m not sure. Perhaps Nephi was like young Joseph Smith and was well respected in his family for his ability to find lost objects with a peepstone, or…

Reading Nephi – 2:8-15

This passage doesn’t seem to reflect well on Nephi. I don’t blame Nephi. To the degree that any of us have good reason to think poorly of family members who have wronged us, I think that the older man Nephi has cause to think poorly of his brothers. But how can we not also see the older, embittered Nephi projecting back on his brothers here? Our memories are inevitably colonized by our present experiences—sometimes glamorized and sometimes darkened. If I read past Nephi’s retrospectively projected interpretation, however, I am deeply moved by Lehi’s wisdom and love. There is no way to see what this family is going through as anything other than wrenching and difficult. I keenly remember feeling like my whole life was torn out from under me when as a melodramatic young teenager my family moved towns. I certainly murmured. I continue to feel my feet kicked out from under me as I move through life (and alas, I continue to murmur). I think we can see a general phenomenon in Lehi’s wrenching experience; but we can also see a particular affinity to our experiences today: we maintain very little in terms of solid, stable, long-term cultural transmission. By which I mean that time and place and identity and purpose are no longer tightly married together and stable over the course of multiple generations. When I was young, Utah was a homeland, even though I never lived there.…

Reading Nephi – 2:1-7

Here is the great rupture. Nephi acknowledges that it came in a dream—a dream that made a coherent narrative of the details of Lehi’s life. Did he feel like a failed prophet? Did his heart break? Or did he feel vindicated or at least consoled in joining that host of ancient prophets who were rejected by their people—or was that a later, literary reconciliation? Regardless, the dream tells him to leave the Land of Promise. Again, forsaking the idea that this was a dramatic overnight event, and recognizing instead that it likely took place over the course of some time—what were the conversations with Sariah (goodness, I hope he had them) and his children? Neighbors or friends? Or if not with others, what were the conversations with himself? Jeremiah (whom Nephi later extolls) had not been commanded to leave, but to stay and preach and get himself locked up in prison. Other prophets had been killed. Why was Lehi spared? Was it a sparing? Why was he commanded to leave? Also worth noting, at this point their journey is conspicuously lacking a destination or end goal. We’re so familiar with Lehi’s divinely led exodus and how it ends that it’s easy to overlook how odd and directionless this commandment is at this point in their journey. Surely Lehi felt some puzzlement and even regret (or pangs) at leaving. For as Nephi next offers us in a candid if understated way,…

Reading Nephi – 1:18-20

Two contrasts strike me in verse 18: a contrast between the way that Nephi uses the word ‘marvelous’ and a contrast between the visions and prophesying he attributes to Lehi here, and what we just got in verse 14. To begin with a word on the latter, I’m heartened that Lehi’s prophesying included beautiful, affirming, psalms; I trust his public messages did too, even if Nephi didn’t note this fact. I never hear the word ‘marvelous’ used to neutrally reference a marvel. It’s always used as a synonym to ‘wonderful.’ Marvels and wonders only receive a positive valence today; but Nephi’s clearly not using it that way. Which hints at something else buried here that is easy for us to miss today: it was indeed a marvel, something that defied common reason and common sense of the day, that Jerusalem, the holy city, the Lord’s city, the house of the artifacts of Moses and Aaron and the seat of God’s presence on earth, would be destroyed and God’s people carried off. It wasn’t given to Lehi as an incredible possibility; it was given as fact (or at least given as a strong “likely” from an ultimate authority). This indeed must’ve been something to marvel at. This contrast between Lehi’s “marvelous” visions and how they would’ve sounded to a public that didn’t acknowledge their divine source helps to make sense of the public reaction. Noting that there was not then a…

Statements on Heavenly Mother

I appreciated the loving tribute Elder Holland just gave to all mothers, and in particular to our Heavenly Mother. In the wake of that talk, I’m reposting[1] some of the quotes on Heavenly Mother collected in Paulsen’s & Pulido’s BYU Studies article, “A Mother There.” [2] It’s a valuable resource to actually have before us a sampling of what church authorities have said over the years, and is one way to express the love and gratitude in my own heart. And now the quotes: “All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign Nov. 1995: 102) “We were created . . . in the image of our father and our mother, the image of our God.” (Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. John A. Widtsoe, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1954: 51) “God is a married Being, has a wife . . . [and] we are the offspring of Him and His wife.” (George Q. Cannon, “Mr. Canon’s [sic] Lecture,” Salt Lake Daily Herald 14, April 15, 1884, 8.) “Our theology begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.” (Dallin H. Oaks, “Apostasy and Restoration,” Ensign 25 (May 1995): 84) “There is radiant warmth [in…

Reading Nephi – 1:7-17

Joseph Smith remarked on visions that they are something that overcomes the visionary—that is, they’re physically exhausting. After the famous vision he shared with Sidney Rigdon (D&C 76), Sidney was apparently quite overcome, and Joseph quipped, “He’s not as used to this as I am” (or something to that effect, a la Truman Madsen). Thus it appears to have been the case with Lehi—overcome after his experience in the presence of God (a pillar of fire being a typological Old Testament symbol for the presence of God), he casts himself upon his bed. But God wasn’t yet done with him. Hardy points out that this appears to be something of a cover-up, that Nephi appears to be intentionally blurring the lines between visions (note that Nephi’s narrative begins with what is clearly denoted as a conscious, daytime vision) and dreams, which Nephi often parenthesizes as a “vision.” Hardy sees Nephi as responding to the criticism lodged by Jeremiah that dreams are the least trustworthy of spiritual experiences. This seems quite plausible, and it does read to me as though Nephi is responding here, taking cues from other discussions, likely criticism of Lehi (perhaps a later Laman-ish/sons-of-Ishmael-ish criticism; or perhaps more likely the criticism of the inhabitants of Jerusalem that might have later been repeated by critics in the family). In addition, however, Nephi is positively painting a picture of his father as being in constant communion with the heavens. He’s…

Reading Nephi – 1:1-6

‘I, Nephi’ begins his record in a remarkable manner, and I’m tempted to write long-windedly exploring the labyrinth of the first verse. I’m grateful that he acknowledges goodly parents and not just a goodly father. Some have certainly had only goodly fathers and not goodly mothers (Disney loves this scenario), but as written, I see a reflection of my own life in the first line of the Book of Mormon—of all of our lives. We have goodly Parents — Heavenly Parents. And, accordingly as Nephi notes, we have been taught somewhat in all of their learning, and are continuing to be so taught, which is the purpose of our sojourn. Indistinguishable from this learning is Nephi’s frank admission of affliction being integral to the whole process. And too often this can come to dominate our view of life. Nevertheless, there is goodness. And how these things are able to comingle in a divine setting is itself the substance of the mysteries of God—whether it’s God in Christ to which we refer or a God-created cosmos with evil in it or a garden with life and death in it or Nephi’s or my own experience. However intimate and outsized I might think of my own pains and afflictions, however irrevocably tainted with suffering and injustice the world appears, I deeply want to affirm with Nephi and with God: it is good. Toward that end, I remember something that my wife taught…

My morning with McBaine and Wiman

As happens every now and then, I had a furious, fortuitous conjoining that so filled the boughs with fruit that they now creak and threaten to break. And language—especially quick language—isn’t likely to succeed in conveying the experience. What follows is a quick, momentary set of notes. But I don’t want to let it pass or hold back; I want to attempt to capture and share a moment of clear resonation. Riding in to work I was reading two books: Christian Wiman’s utterly unparalleled My Bright Abyss (review forthcoming) and Neylan McBaine’s desperately needed Women at Church. The one prepared me for the other, but I’ll share them in reverse order. At the end of Chapter One Sister McBaine seems to strike right at the heart of our paradox with women’s issues: “How do we protect the traditions, practices, and truths of our earliest progenitors while holding sacred the rebel explosion of the Restoration?” I’ve no desire to dilute or dismiss the vital, wrenching particularity of her focus. It’s a question that any reader of my posts at Times and Seasons knows I wrestle with almost obsessively. But clearly this question expands beyond women’s issues and is really a complicated paradox for the Restoration and it’s disciples generally.[1]  Wiman’s writings this morning were focused on the difficulties and necessities of language in religious experience. Exploring and drawing on the wealth of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics and the ways in…

Faithful priesthood narratives?

some of those who speak in opposition to women’s ecclesiastical enfranchisement do so because they can’t imagine what a faithful, coherent narrative of our dispensation could possibly look like if women’s priesthood role were restored and developed or if they did receive the Melchizedek Priesthood

Knocking With My Sisters

One of my most recent posts was an attempt to honestly explore (or at least ask) the question: “How do faithful members collectively petition our prophets to petition the heavens?” The scriptures and the early days of our church are replete with faith-inspiring examples. How do we do it now that we’re millions strong? The answer – as the events of the last two weeks have thrown in dramatic relief – is that we don’t have one.[1] Many others have noted the fact of Kate Kelly’s disciplinary council arising from (as many think) her aggressive tactics courting media and engaging non-Mormons on this issue. She has done so (many think) because it’s the only way she was able to actually engage Church leadership. Again, if staying quiet or staying local is not a practically effective means of knocking (and it’s not), and if going public is effective but off-limits (as tonight’s council seems to say), then how do we collectively knock and gain further light on these huge issues? We do not have an institutional answer. I don’t know if tonight’s vigil was an answer, or if it will ultimately become a kind of solution to our current institutional lack, but it was beautiful. And it was beautifully Mormon. We collectively gathered – an incredibly diverse mix of folks, a poster event of “Big Tent” Mormonism – on the lawn outside of the stake center where Kate Kelly’s membership was being reviewed. Like…

Mourning with those that mourn

Job 1: 20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.  22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. Job 2: 11 ¶Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.  12 And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.  13 So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.   I do not have or expect answers. I acknowledge and feel the tragedy and sit in silence – for the grief is very great.

Awkward Discourse, Awkward Practice

Let me say up front that I’m a big fan of the Church’s new Gospel Topics section. And the most recent entry “Becoming Like God” is perhaps my favorite. I thought the author contextualized the topic well, and I especially liked the section entitled “How do Latter-day Saints envision exaltation?” In part because of the nature of the topic, and in part because the author courageously included two full paragraphs on our Heavenly Parents, however, this article manifests our incongruent, sometimes incoherent, and at the least wholly awkward way of discussing all things women in the Church. There’s nothing special about this awkwardness showing up in this particular article – as I just mentioned, the author was courageous in candidly discussing Heavenly Mother. Unfortunately, this awkwardness seems to show up in nearly everything we say as a Church. To be specific: I find directly analogous the way we talk about and treat women generally and the way “Becoming Like God” conspicuously switches back and forth from noting how significant it is that “we have heavenly parents” to speaking only of Heavenly Father, referring to Him as if a single parent involved in our eternal progression. It’s certainly enough to make reason stare. We awkwardly go from heralding the RS and how active and worthwhile our sisters are to upholding patently unequal governance and practices of ritual participation. Just as we go awkwardly from exalting the critical importance of the priesthood…