I apologize for the long gap between my last post and this one. My husband is one of those *religious scholars*, and he supervises an archaeological dig in Galilee and just had to go back after two years’ Covid hiatus. This has kept me busy at home; too busy to write, but has still given me time to think. I’ve been trying to decide the best way to end this series, but it’s been hard to know how to do it. Endings and beginnings are often the hardest, after all. There is no conceivable way that any amount of writing could begin to cover all the ways that we can experience the spirit. But that leaves us still having the problem of knowing whether what we are experiencing is actually the spirit or not. How do we know it’s not just us? This can be an important question, but underneath it is almost always one deeply problematic assumption: that something cannot be from both us and God. We have this compulsive need to make sure we firmly understand exactly where we end and God begins. Apparently there is a fixed line of demarcation and there can be no bleed over. We use terms like being a window or a door or letting go so God can take over or letting God write our story to remind ourselves of this distinction and the importance of keeping it safe from any human…
Author: Mary Grey
[Spiritual Languages] Thoughts From a Liberal, Feminist, Intellectual ProgMo. But Only If You Say So.
We are introduced to the concept of “chosen people” almost as soon as the bible opens. Though the earth is covered with the children of God there is one line (Isaac and Jacob’s) of one family (Sarah and Abraham’s) that is chosen to do a specific work for God. They are not chosen for their strength or prowess. They are landless nomads, and not by choice. They lie to survive, are often chased from place to place, have to deal and negotiate to even have a place to bury their dead, and suffer from extreme family dysfunction. By no means are these people the best God has to work with. And even within this deeply imperfect family God chooses the weak, younger sons to carry on the covenant. The usual tenor of the ancient myths is turned on its head. These people are not royalty. They are not demi-gods blessed with supernatural strength or cunning or some other gift that would be taken for granted must be had in order to serve a God. They are nobodies. And even as nobodies, God chooses the nobody among the nobodies to carry on the covenant. But God is not done yet. Just when the reader has adapted to this perplexing narrative, and begins to be assured they understand the story and characters—which ones are good and which bad—it is all flipped on its head again as the tragedies of Hagar, Ishmael, and…
[Spiritual Languages] Sad? Angry? Frustrated? Confused? Good.
The Gospel of Mark really focuses, more than any other gospel, on the human experience of Jesus. The reader sees him experience a whole gamut of emotions, particularly negative emotions, like sorrow, anger, frustration, and fear. I am deeply moved by Mark’s telling of Jesus at Gethsemane and his death on the cross. The author of Mark, more than any other gospel author, elaborates on the disciples’ abandonment of Jesus upon his arrest. Only a few hours previously the disciples swore to Christ they would leave behind everything to follow him, only to, at Gethsemane, while he is still reeling from the daze of pain for which nothing could have prepared him and which he begged to end, leave behind everything to get away from him. [1] Jesus then suffers agonizingly on the cross for hours when suddenly, horrifyingly, God leaves him. Shocked, Jesus yells out to heaven, asking God why he, too, has abandoned him. Then, with a loud cry, he dies. This is not a story of a stoic Christ calmy and peacefully enduring. This is the story of catastrophic failure of the community, and of God in lonely agony and distressed confusion. This is pathos at its most tragic. I love the Gospel of Mark for this perspective. I love how the author fully embraces Jesus’ human experience and sees it as being central to who he was. The author does not see Jesus’ weakness and struggles…
[Spiritual Languages] Mistakes, Messes, Screw-ups, and Other Forms of Perfection
We have this unique Latter-day Saint doctrine that Jesus had to learn line upon line, just like we do. [1] That is all fine and good, but here’s the problem. We also believe that Jesus was perfect, and these two ideas just don’t mesh. If you do not know everything you are liable to make mistakes, and mistakes mean imperfection. Don’t they? When we were in Egypt before our tour guide took us to see the pyramids of Giza we were taken to see several other cool but far less impressive pyramids first. On our way to Giza he told us the reason why was because tourists always wanted to know how the pyramids were made and how long it took to make them. He explained that answer couldn’t be given without first taking into account the other pyramids that went before them. Instead of seeing all these pyramids as separate projects interspersed across hundreds of years he explained that it was really one, massive, cross-generational building project, culminating in the great pyramids. Without those previous, messy pyramids there would have been no “great” ones. They were one. I’ve wondered a lot about the concept of perfection, as, (based on how much it gets brought up in church and conference), I think we all have. It was in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus says to be perfect as God is perfect, but there is an interesting word in…
[Spiritual Languages] The Other
We’ve probably all heard a million times that Christ said that in serving others we serve God, and that in order to be prepared to meet God we need to take care of the poor and marginalized.[1] I don’t think any of us would argue these points. However, I do think we often miss something in our retelling of this sermon. We frequently use it to talk about how in serving others we can become like God, (which is true), but that is not exactly what Christ says. What Christ says is that serving others will help you to be ready to meet God, not because you did acts of service for others, but because God was in the others you served. There is a crucial distinction here. We do not become like God just because we perform service, we become like God because of what we learn of God in others when we serve them. A few years ago this realization hit me like a blunt force to the head. I’ve quoted and heard these scriptures quoted more than almost any others. How had I missed their meaning so spectacularly?! My focus had always been on needing to serve. I wanted to love others, certainly, but that always felt a little vague. Service, however, I could grasp. It was tangible. It was measurable. But here’s what we’ve done: we’ve done an acrobatics act in which we have changed the…
[Spiritual Languages] On Coyotes and White Stones
Thus far I have played it safe. I have kept to spiritual languages that make sense to me and that, at least to some extent, I understand. This week we are continuing on a theme begun last week, but off the beaten track, at least off the beaten track of WEIRD (Western Educated Industrial Rich Democratic) culture, to which I myself belong. Last week we discussed how science can be a language of the spirit because creations not only testify of a creator, they teach the nature of their creator. In the case of the creator God, we discussed how through science the material creation can teach us about and connect us to our Heavenly Parents, thus creating a spiritual language. When it comes to the material world speaking through science I think most of us are generally ok with that. But there is another kind of spiritual language via the material world that crops up all throughout Judeo-Christian history, as well as in the modern restoration’s history, that, at least for WEIRDos, we tend to be extremely uncomfortable with, and can be very patronizing about. We are going to talk about how material objects themselves may be direct sources of spiritual communication. Decades ago, right after my mother was born, my grandfather and a friend were making visits around the Navajo reservation where my mother’s family lived. It took several days to travel across the entire reservation, and they…
[Languages of the Spirit] Science
“We are obsessed with ourselves. We study our history. Our psychology, our philosophy…Much of our knowledge revolves around ourselves, as if we were the most important thing in the universe. I think I like physics because it opens a window through which we can see further. It gives me the sense of fresh air entering the house. What we see out there through the window is constantly surprising us.”[1] Carlo Rovelli “The earth rolls upon her wings, and the sun giveth his light by day, and the moon giveth her light by night, and the stars also give their light, as they roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of the power of God…All these are kingdoms, and any[one] who hath seen any or the least of these hath seen God.” D&C 88:45, 47 In explaining his belief in God, scientist Francis Collins (a world leaders in genome research), expressed something that many believers can relate to when he said, “I’ve never heard God speak out loud to me. That’s not an experience I have had.” For him, like for so many, God does not speak with an audible voice. There is, however, another way that God reaches him. “I believe God did intend, in giving us intelligence, to give us the opportunity to investigate and appreciate the wonders of his creation.” I am not a scientist. Science bored me to tears when I was…
[Languages of the Spirit] Doubt
My husband frequently says of our team dynamic that he is the historian and I am the theologian, and that before I talk about anything I lay a theological framework for it. This is clearly interesting and endearing of me. The last couple of posts have been me laying the theological framework for this series, and now we get to get into actual examples of spiritual divergence. Just one last thing, though. A few comments in a previous post pointed out that I have not clarified what exactly I mean by spirit. This is a really good point because, frankly, the concept of spirit isn’t always clear. There is the Holy Ghost (which is talked about as a power by which our mind is connected with God[1] but is also described as a person). There is the Light of Christ which sometimes is the conscience with which everyone is born and is secondary to the holy spirit which is the source of greater truth[2], but other times is the source of all light and truth and makes the role of the Holy Ghost a little more ambiguous[3]. There is the spirit that is inside our bodies and the spiritual creation inside everything and the spirit of different powers and principles. So what does “the spirit” mean? Firstly, I think this is a really important question and I am grateful for the comments that brought it to my attention. Secondly, I…
[Languages of the Spirit] Messiness is Next to Godliness
Last week we learned how everything is made of spirit; that it is the substance of creation. This is critical to different spiritual languages because there are so many different manifestations of spirit. In fact, if the Book of Abraham is to be believed, everything we see is a manifestation of spirit, and they each have their own kind of language. Faith fits into this in a very particular way. We are creators. That’s what this whole life thing is about: the creation of creators. Being a creator is written into our DNA, and we are always creating, even without realizing it. God is trying to help us to be a certain kind of creator—not meaning we are clones creating exactly the same things in exactly the same ways, but that we are all creating in our own unique ways yet with a harmony of purpose. Critically, what we create is dictated by our faith. We create what we have hope and trust in because that is where our efforts and energies and thoughtfulness go. Faith is the perspective through which our understanding is arrived at and our decisions are made. Faith is not just a thing we have or don’t depending on whether or not we believe. Everyone has faith. You can’t not have faith. Instead of being a spiritual thing you do or don’t have that makes it so you can or can’t hear the spirit, I would…
[Languages of the Spirit] You Shall Know it by its Fruit
“The entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’…The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Galatians 5: 14, 22-23 Section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants is, in my opinion (which is correct), one of the most radical, beautiful works of theology ever written. While I could happily do a whole series about it, there is one particular part of it I want to draw upon for the sake of this series. The revelation in Section 93 starts with describing the nature of Christ, his greatness and glory and goodness. This is familiar and comforting language describing God. So far so good. Generally, however, the language that describes God is used to show how very, very different God is from humanity (who, the interpretive narrative often interjects, are kind of gross but whom God seems to inexplicably love sometimes anyway). Section 93, however, goes in a very different direction. Jesus, the revelation says, was with God before the world was, became perfect because he learned a bit at a time, and is made of the spirit of truth, the same as God. These traits are what define him. Again, other than the teaching that Christ needed to learn (which deserves plenty of attention), this is pretty standard stuff. But here Christ adds something of paradigm shifting importance. These same things that are true of…
[The Languages of the Spirit] More Than a Feeling
I remember when I was a little kid and began to learn that there were different languages. I loved that primary song where you learn how to say “thank you” in languages from all over the world. It felt so cool, like learning some kind of secret code. But even as I learned these words I still assumed that when people heard them they were having the exact same experience that I was. For example, I heard the word “hola”, but in my mind it was immediately translated as “hello”. To me “hola” didn’t exist as its own word with its own meaning; “hello” was a word with meaning, and hola was just another way of saying hello. I still remember the day when I realized I was wrong. I was wondering why people would speak in other languages at all if the languages were being translated in their minds into English (because that’s what happened in my mind it never occurred to me it wasn’t happening in everyone’s). So why the inefficiency? Why not just speak English in the first place? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe those words weren’t being translated into English in people’s minds. This was a shock. Maybe those words had meaning in and of themselves and people were having conversations and experiences that I not only couldn’t participate in, but maybe couldn’t even fully understand even if someone translated for me, because those…
The first rule about disagreements in church is no one talks about disagreements in church. But we should.
There are certain things that you grow up with that you don’t realize are weird until you start really noticing the world around you and see that other families don’t do those things your family does. Take one of my friends, for instance, who didn’t realize until well into his twenties that most kids don’t necessarily grow up playing poker and drinking Baileys with their grandparents and their grandparents friends, or another who didn’t realize until adulthood that it wasn’t normal for children to get stiches every few months because of frequent climbing accidents around her house, yard, and neighborhood. In my family we were raised to argue. (I don’t mean fight, my parents didn’t have any patience for that even though heaven knows we still did it plenty.) I mean we love delving. We can sit and argue for hours. We were raised to have lots of opinions and all of them strong. (My brother-in-law would be happy to tell you about the time he came over and listened in horrified fascination as my brothers argued passionately for three hours about the definition of soil. None of them are soil experts.) I always thought this was normal until one day my sister had some friends over for dinner. After dinner it was commonplace for everyone to sit around the table and talk, discuss, and argue, sometimes for hours. One day as we were doing this one of my sister’s…
Deny not the Spirit of Revelation-a reflection on Come Follow Me
The story of the First Vision is one of the most beloved in all the Gospel, and many of us have sat through multitudes of lessons on what truths this vision taught, one of which being that the creeds of all of the other religions are an abomination to God. Sometimes this has been interpreted as meaning that the religions are an abomination, but that is not what God said–it was the creeds that God hated. Weirdly, however, while there are some creeds that teach things that we find abominable, there are many that are perfectly fitting with our doctrine. (I don’t think most Latter-day Saints would find it abominable, for example, that Jesus is the son of God, that he saved us from our sins, that he was born of a virgin, etc.) But God did not distinguish between which creeds were an abomination, they were all lumped together. Joseph Smith’s way of defining the gospel was that “Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the Latter-day Saints, is truth. … The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of [others].”[1] When explaining what God meant when telling Joseph that the religious creeds were all an abomination, he explained, “I want to come up into…
At Home with Nothing to do? Try a Zion Project
I am currently serving as the RS president in our ward. Basically I have spent the last almost year pining and waiting for things to get back to normal, but lately I have been thinking that maybe that is not at all what I want. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait until we can leave the house without masks and can be with people without it, you know, ending in death. But I’m also realizing, what better time to shake things up a bit? Firmly believing that if you’re going to do something you might as well do it big, and in honor of this year’s study of the Doctrine and Covenants, our Relief Society is going to put forth a concerted effort this year to create a Zion community, and we want to think outside of the box to do it. For example, many people think Zion is a place where everyone can be accepted, but it’s also a place where people are not free to hurt each other. There have to be some firm boundaries of accepted behavior. How do you see boundaries being implemented while at the same time appreciating diversity? What problematic behaviors do you think are deserving of patience and what ones cannot be tolerated under any circumstances? I have a million questions and I would love to get some ideas from you all. I would truly love to know what you picture when…
A Soft Closing for the End of the World
Let it be said first off that I am a last days cynic. It’s not that I think many current ideas of apocalypticism are weird (I mean, I don’t just think they’re weird). I just really hate them. This is likely partly due to growing up in the 90’s right when apocalyptic fervor was still enjoying a level of mass popularity that put it up in the doctrinal hierarchy somewhere in between the Resurrection and not committing murder. I vividly remember sitting in seminary and Institute and Sunday School classes brooding, teenage-like, as I listened to lesson after lesson about all the cruelty and abuse and carnage hanging like a sword over our heads that was going to fall any moment now and there was nothing you could do about it except get food storage. (How food storage was going to help protect us from the nuclear war which was apparently imminent I did not know, but it seemed to make sense to people.) Since this was a time in my life that I was in desperately profound need of hope and comfort, hearing that God was going to unleash terror unlike anything the world had ever known but that it was for our own good was, needless to say, not super faith instilling. This got to the point that by the time I was an adult I had shut my eyes and ears to the last days. My heart…
The Book of Mormon, Modern America, and, of course, Nazis
In her provocative work Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt proposes a fascinating insight. “Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation,” she writes. “Many Germans and many Nazis, probably an overwhelming majority of them, must have been tempted not to murder, not to rob, not to let their neighbors go off to their doom…and not to become accomplices in all these crimes by benefiting from them. But, God knows, they had learned how to resist temptation.” As Arendt explains, defining evil as temptation—as something that we are not allowed to do, that must be withstood at all costs, can create significant repercussions. We feel honorable when we overcome temptation because it takes courage and strength of character to do so, and it’s something that we owe, not only to ourselves, but to our communities. What happens, then, to a society where Christian acts of compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, welfare, and understanding become seen by its members as temptation—and therefore the evil—against which we are expected to fight? One of the things that the Third Reich did spectacularly well was to convince its adherents that they were truly fighting for the greater good for all of humanity, and that the terrible things that they had to do to towards accomplishing that good, while unfortunate, were nonetheless necessary. To be kind they first had to be cruel. To be generous they first had…
Women in the New Kingdom
Some of the places I love the most in the Holy Land are the churches dedicated to women. My favorite is the Duc In Altum in Magdala on the shore of Galilee. It is a lovely Catholic chapel overlooking the Galilee and dedicated to the women of the New Testament. In one room is a particularly magnificent painting of the woman touching the hem of Jesus’s robe, and this may be my favorite place in all the Holy Land. I can’t think of a place more suited for pondering on what it means to be a daughter of God. I find the treatment of women in the New Testament deeply empowering, even more when one considers it in context with the society of the time. One of the heritages of Hellenization was a deeply imposed misogyny, and though there is evidence of a certain degree of egalitarianism in earliest Israel, by the time of Jesus, Jewish society generally reflected much of the attitudes toward women commonly found in the Hellenized world. With some exceptions, the vast majority of women in 1st century Palestine were largely denied education, work, and any kind of leadership role in religious or political life. Put in this context many of the stories of women in the New Testament have powerfully radical messages. Stories like that of Elizabeth understanding and witnessing to truths that her husband, a man and priest, did not yet comprehend. Of the…
The Divine Christ and the Human Jesus
We’ve been in Jerusalem long enough to be able to spend time with pilgrims of varying denominations from all over the world. I personally love the concept of pilgrimage. I love being able to find the spiritual world within the material one, and I love how it brings people together through a special kind of worship; because while there are many beliefs and traditions that make the groups of people we’ve met fascinatingly different, there are important ways that we are similar. One of these is that we believe that somehow in coming here we will find something of Christ that we can’t find elsewhere. Since Christ’s death believers have spent thousands of years, millions of pages and countless hours trying to understand what it means to believe in a god who has form, but who few have ever been privileged to see. And, because we don’t see, we work very hard to find meaning in not seeing. We cling to Christ’s pronouncement that it is better to believe without seeing anyway, reminding ourselves that a true believer’s responsibility is to move past such superficial needs as sight and touch. But, despite our best efforts, there is something tangible I think most of us long for when we think about Christ. The fact is we have physical bodies and our physical bodies long for physical connection. And so we pack up our hope and our longing and we travel across…