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May 12, 2008

Habits vs. Routines vs. Accomplishments, and the Overriding Significance of Goals

Last week someone emailed me a story from the NY Times, and when I read it, I happened to look at the list of "most popular emailed stories." Near the top was something titled Unboxed: Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? Which was a question I wanted to read about and have answered.

One of the reasons I continue to value my Mormon upbringing was the whole goal program I grew up with. There was this official church curriculum for teenagers, which presented them with six specific areas of well-rounded humanity--physical health, spiritual development, social interactions, personal ethics, I don't remember them all--and we were expected to set and complete two goals in each area every year while we were in junior high and high school. If young women completed the program satisfactorily, they got a really ugly necklace. I don't remember what young men got. Maybe a merit badge; their version of the program might have been tied up in scouting, which the church has sort of commandeered.

I used the goal program to great advantage, collecting a slew of virtuous habits such as thrift and punctuality. I made running three miles every school-day morning a habit--albeit one I hated--and the fact that I managed to do that for a full year helped me acquire that necklace I never wore once. I wasn't in it for the necklace, you see: I was in it for the habits and the accomplishments themselves.

And yes, I didn't just focus on habits; I also set goals for specific accomplishments: prepare a bassoon solo for regional Solo & Ensemble competition. Be valedictorian of my crappy high school, just like my big sister--which included all sorts of habits for how I dealt with school work: listen in class, take good notes, attend to assignments promptly, complete them thoroughly, keep them organized so I could find things when I needed them, etc.

I still have all those habits--or rather, their equivalents in the adult world--and I don't want to relinquish them; they've served me well. I can find stuff when I need it. I don't bounce checks or get parking tickets or library fines or any sort of late fees. If I'm given a specific project to complete, I pretty much get it done on time.

And yet, I can feel a laxness and laziness and tiredness in the way I approach my habits. Now that I'm in my 40s and have been keeping an elaborate to-do list since I started grad school (my to-do list as an undergrad wasn't so elaborate, but I certainly had one), it's not really a habit; it's more an element of my character.

My goals these days are almost always about accomplishments, rarely about habits. I think this is a problem. Because while some of the habits I worked hard to cultivate have become an integral part of my personality, other habits I've acquired are more like the absence of intentional habits--just lazy routines.

One the thing I like about academia is that on the days I don't teach--and if I'm lucky enough to get a schedule were I don't have to be in a classroom until after noon, even on the days I do--I don't have to set an alarm clock. This means I habitually go to bed and get up whenever. Admittedly, I have sleep issues, and having to set an alarm is sort of anxiety-inducing for me; and yet, given that I usually wake up around 8, I would hope I'd be able to create a more structured, although still not rigid, approach to retiring and getting up.

Then there's what I do when I get up: I habitually sit down at my computer and read the news until I A) run out of news or B) get bored. I could devise a schedule; I could also say that other things would take precedent over reading on-line newspapers every morning. But it's a morning-appropriate task, and my brain isn't always ready for something for strenuous first thing in the morning....

I don't entirely know where I'm going with this, and that's part of the problem--not for this entry, but for my life. I want some new habits, but the thought of pursuing them seems vaguely uncomfortable--which is precisely what I should be seeking. I found the NY Time article really compelling for statements like this:

brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try ­ the more we step outside our comfort zone ­ the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

I have been trying to step outside my comfort zone in the last few days, in small ways. Friday I spent a good deal of time in the car, and I forced myself to listen to my least favorite of the radio stations I can tolerate: NPR. (I know I seem like the kind of person who should love NPR, but prefer music to talk on the radio.) I've been setting my alarm clock for 8 a.m. and making sure I'm in bed by 11:30 p.m. I even did yoga yesterday! Now there's a habit I'm sorry I lost: poses I used to be able to hold for a good long while I couldn't even get into in the first place when I tried them last night. I lost that habit--which I loved, which sustained and enriched me--for a variety of reasons: I moved away from Iowa City, where I had a house with a big expanse of bare floor perfect for plopping down a yoga mat at a moment's notice, plus a yoga teacher I adored who would teach me new stuff every week; and I got cable.

But I don't just want to do something new and different, once or twice--or something old abandoned so long ago that it feels awkward and difficult. Yes, I would love to take a ceramics class--I've wanted to do that for a long time. But I don't know if throwing pots would become a habit for me, and I want some new habits.

But what? I guess I could start crocheting more and knit less. I could follow Benjamin Franklin's template, provided in his autobiography, for "the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection":

1. Temperance
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. Order
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. Resolution
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.

6. Industry
Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice
Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. Moderation
Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

11. Tranquillity
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. Chastity
Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

13. Humility
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

But to be honest, that was part of my model back when I was a teenager, so even though I'm not as successful in some of the areas as I once was, they all seem pretty familiar....

I could resolve to blog every morning, or every other morning.... I could resolve to be a more faithful, regular commenter on my favorite dozen blogs or so. (That means your blog.)

Is anyone willing to help me out with this? Having had a few posts lately that garnered a lot of comments, I am reminded again that there's just no predicting what people will feel like responding to, and I also think that asking for comments is sometimes the surest way not to get them. But I'm taking the risk. Gentle readers, what are the habits you find most useful and or/enjoyable in your own lives? What are the habits you would most like to cultivate?

Posted by Holly at 8:23 AM | Comments (10)

January 25, 2008

Boring the Saints

A few days ago I finally finished watching the Helen Whitney documentary on The Mormons. I know, I know: this is old news; most people watched it months ago and I could have done so too if A) my tv got decent reception of PBS, but it doesn’t, or B) I was willing to watch it on my computer screen, but I wasn’t, or C) I had moved the disk to the top of my Neftflix queue weeks ago, but there were other things I wanted to see more.

Anyway, I watched it, and it was pretty good, I guess--it seemed balanced and reasonable and accurate. The voices presented included those of the faithful, the dissenting, the ambivalent, the scholarly, the mainstream, the extreme. There was nothing particularly objectionable about it, aside from this Terryl Givens guy, who embodies so many things I despise about a particular type of Mormon and set me teeth on edge every time he appeared on screen or opened his mouth. What a sanctimonious, prissy prig! How pig-like in his appearance, how like a mosquito in his intonation and speech. Ick.

But aside from that, nothing upset me, or moved me, or challenged me, or informed me. Watching it was like watching “The Trouble with Tribbles” and a few other episodes from the James T, Kirk series of Star Trek: OK, they were pretty good to begin with--at least, I enjoyed watching them at the time--and it has been a long time since I last watched them, but STILL, I saw them so many times in my youth that they remain really familiar and not that fun to watch. All that’s different now is that my TV is a lot newer and the commercials are more sophisticated.

So that’s my main reaction to the documentary: It bored me, not because it was badly made or anything, but because I already knew everything it contained, even down to the Reed Smoot hearings. Which is fine: it means I had a decent education about the church in the first place, that not that much has changed since I left over 18 years ago, and that I haven’t missed all that much by being gone.

But it did make me reflect on just how little most people outside the church really know about it. The documentary had to be so basic and and rudimentary because most non-mos don’t know much about the church except that A) the Mo-Tabs are a really big choir housed in a really funky building and B) the missionaries are annoying and C) Mitt Romney probably can’t get elected because he belongs to it.

And that lack of information has made it hard for me to write about Mormonism for a non-Mormon audience, so I am actually quite grateful that Helen Whitney chose to bore the saints.

Posted by Holly at 2:58 PM | Comments (2)

December 19, 2007

Maybe It Really Was Two Minutes In Heaven

Episode 18 of VM, which I discussed yesterday, opens with Veronica making out with Deputy Leo (whose reappearance near the end of season 3 is a much needed bright spot) before her front door. He wonders why he’s never been invited in and wants, he says, “to get a really good, long look at your bedroom ceiling.”

“Wow! College girls must be easy,” she replies.

The focus of the scene is the talking, not the kissing. There’s no dramatic music, nothing unusual in the camera shot. You understand, from everything in the scene itself, that these two people like each other, but you also understand that Leo likes Veronica a lot more than she likes him. I thought Deputy Leo was a great character and was sorry Veronica wasn’t nicer to him. But the show doesn’t intend for them to have incredible chemistry, and they don’t. The show does intend for Veronica and Duncan to have incredible chemistry, and they still don’t.

The show intends for Veronica and Logan to have incredible chemistry, and they do. And it makes sense that they do. Because as they work together on things like finding out who stole the money at the poker game, what’s going on with the various witnesses who claim to have seen Lynn Echolls jump off the bridge or ride away in a van, who is using the credit cards of Logan’s supposedly dead mother, they come to see one another’s virtues and vulnerabilities.

The kiss signifies something complicated and wonderful: they’ve discovered they have an emotional connection. As they acknowledge this emotional connection, it allows for an embodied attraction. (I use that slightly odd phrase because I think it covers more than calling the attraction merely “physical,” as opposed to some other sort, like “emotional” or “intellectual.” Emotions and thoughts are not just emotional and intellectual, they are embodied, and can cause physiological changes, including alterations in blood pressure, pulse, expression, posture, digestion, etc; and embodiment includes things like the way we carry ourselves, what our voices sound like, and how we adorn or decorate our bodies.) Admitting and acting on that attraction allows their emotional connection to deepen. And lust is part of every aspect of the embodied attraction and connection.

These people want each other, and the kiss makes it clear. OK, it’s a pretty tame kiss in a lot of ways: it’s just a first kiss, and just first base, and they’re juniors in high school, and while Veronica isn’t a virgin in that she was roofied and raped while unconscious, she’s never had consensual sex she remembers, so she could be considered a kind of psychological virgin. But there are little things, aside from the camera work and soundtrack, that show how passionate this kiss is. One gesture I particularly love is when Logan slides his hand down to the small of Veronica’s back and stops there for a moment: he knows that according to the protocol of a first date, his hand can’t venture any farther down, but it then allows him to slide his hand back up along her spine--not too far up, mind you--but this time, his hand is under her shirt. The kiss continues a moment longer, before they break apart and stare at each other, alarmed, excited and confused. There’s an awkward disengagement from the embrace, then Veronica goes to her car and shrugs at Logan before she gets in and drives away. Days later, after an inconsequential conversation about something else, Veronica will think to herself, “All right-y, Logan. We’ll just skip over the two minutes in heaven we had. You want to pretend it never happened? No argument here. My lips, for all intents and purposes, are sealed,” but there’s virtually no talking involved in this kiss. And it wasn’t two minutes in heaven: it was closer to a minute.

I acknowledged Monday that I could watch a fairly explicit, completely naked sex scene I enjoyed and admired, and still not get worked up, because the sex wasn’t about me. Whereas this kiss I’ve just described is, as I’ve already acknowledged, pretty tame. And yet, as I imagine my account of the details make clear, watching it is a complete turn-on. This is because the kiss replicates both my experience and my fantasies in really lovely ways. The kiss is a nice, accurate representation of what I have been taught to consider the early stages of how you act when you want to deepen not feelings of friendship, nor admiration or respect or esteem (though I think things develop more nicely when you feel all those things), but feelings of lust. And I have found, that just as turned out to be the case with Veronica and Logan, lust can make you feel more kindness, affection, respect and tenderness for the person with whom you explore it.

I grew up being told, flat-out, “Lust is evil.” We had countless lessons on it in every venue the church could provide. Lust is evil. Love is pure and virtuous, and completely unconnected to lust, which is evil. Lust is an evil feeling, and the actions that proceed from it are, from start to finish, evil. Never mind that, more than just about any other branch of Christianity, Mormonism is obsessed with sex, scorning and condemning celibacy as abnormal and insisting everyone get married, while the big whoop-de-doo reward of Mormon heaven is that you get to have sex for all eternity, which you wouldn’t find much of a prize if you didn’t have an active enough libido to experience lust to some degree and with some frequency. In Mormon culture and doctrine, you get married, you have sex, but somehow, you’re supposed to do it without feeling lust, feeling only this other, pure desire for children or SOMETHING that is divorced from anything erotic or bodily--again, ironic, since Mormons claim to love bodies, and insist that God has a body.

I don’t believe lust is evil, any more than hunger or illness or being incredibly, incredibly cold, or even buoyant good health, all of which can also prompt people to commit evil acts. (I think people get up to mischief sometimes when they’re feeling REALLY good.) I believe that the Mormon church’s vilification of lust is evil, and one more reason that Utah is the most depressed state in the nation.

All right. I have to run off to meet a student now and I’m going to be late. But I’m still moving towards my final point, and I promise to get there eventually. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Holly at 1:45 PM | Comments (3)

December 17, 2007

Latter Gay Gaze

My friend Troy hates the movie Latter Days--just hates it. A year or two ago at Sunstone when he and I were hanging out, I mentioned that I liked it; he countered that he despised it. “What do you think is so bad?” I asked.

“You mean, besides the script, the plot, the acting and the direction?” he replied.

I didn’t respond, except to shrug. Yes, the movie has problems. There are elements of the script that really bug me. There are elements to the plot I find predictable and cliched. There are performances I find really weak.

But I still like it. I liked it enough to buy a copy for myself and to give a copy as a gift to someone else. I liked it well enough to listen to the commentary.

One major reason I like it is that as far as I’m concerned, it’s about the only movie I’ve ever seen to get a mission right--I would argue it gives a more accurate depiction of a mission even than God’s Army, which I found thoroughly annoying and lame. (Don’t ask me why, because I don’t remember much about it aside from the fact that they make the new guy lug his suitcase around while they go tracting, which I’m fairly certain would never happen; that the main character goes back to BYU, dates and MARRIES his English TA while she's still his teacher (a BYU alum can correct me if I'm wrong, but I rather suspect the administration wouldn't be cool with that) and that the movie ends with her bringing him a cup of tea and sitting down at his feet to adore him; and that Richard Dutcher, who was about 40, plays a missionary of about 30 who dies quietly in his sleep from an inoperable brain tumor with no suffering or puking his guts out or whatever, so much so that no one even knows he's sick. I hate on principle all movies where people die quietly in their sleep from inoperable brain tumors. Anyway, aside from all that, I found the movie so vacuous and forgettable that I can’t remember what happened, and so can’t really tell you why I hated it in detail, though I think the reasons I’ve already listed constitute solid ground.)

But back to Latter Days. I like it for moments. There’s a moment where one elder grabs another and says, “I’m going to hit you, elder, and it’s going to hurt.” Pretty much. I liked it for Steve Sandvoss, the guy who plays the gay missionary--he has a sweetness and a decency I found both sympathetic and genuine, and it reminded me of the elders I liked best on my mission--some were really good young men.

But the thing I like best about it is the sex scene.

It’s not just that both actors are young, hot and well-muscled, so that the viewer is treated to some really nice views of beautiful male asses. It’s that the actors go for it. There’s a moment (one of those moments I like it for) when, after a hurried disrobing, they embrace and then positively fling themselves together onto the bed. It’s passionate, hot, and tender.

And after the sex, the guys sit naked on the bed and stroke each other and talk. The experienced guy in the equation says to the recently deflowered, soon-to-be-excommunicated elder, “I thought you’d be more reticent.” (Which is another reason I like it--reticent is a good word that people are reticent about using.) Rebecca, whom I try not to resent for deleting her entire blog, once wrote an entry about how watching these two guys make sweet love somehow brought tears to her eyes. I feel the same way.

I don’t always like sex scenes. A lot of them feel contrived, staged and manipulative (which isn’t surprising, since they are) and if I’m not emotionally invested in the relationship between the characters, I don’t really care about seeing them get it on. That’s one main reason I don’t care much for porn: aside from a sort of anthropological or informational interest--oh, so that’s how this industry works; that’s what the audience for this stuff expects; huh, I hadn’t known that particular activity was really part of the repertoire--I often find it fairly boring, which isn’t surprising since for the most part it’s designed to be emotionally vacuous.

But I love this sex scene. I could watch it over and over and not feel bored or dirty or cheap--or, for that matter, particularly aroused, since it’s a sex scene that has no room for me or any woman. I can’t imagine what I’d do in that scene; it sparks no fantasy; and so it doesn’t turn me on. (And I know all that because I did just watch it over and over, with the commentary on and off, so that I'd be accurate when I discussed it now.)

I remember reading a Dan Savage (whose most recent book is reviewed here) column in which someone asked him why straight men were turned on by lesbian porn, but straight women weren’t turned on by gay male porn, since in both cases what was depicted were scenes in which same-sex participants found ways to pleasure one another. He reasoned that in lesbian porn, men could always assume that they’d be welcome, and certainly there would be plenty of orifices into which a penis could be inserted, which, after all, is still what most people in our heteronormative world consider “sex.” Whereas in gay male sex, there are already accommodating orifices for any penis present, so any additional orifice is superfluous, and women therefore have a harder time creating a fantasy in which they’d be welcomed into the scene.

Savage’s argument about the possible welcomeness of a penis in a lesbian relationship is supported in part by this passage from Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King, about the early stages of her first lesbian love affair:

Taking turns making love to each other satisfied our need to experience total aggression and total passivity with no fear of settling permanently into either condition. It’s something heterosexual lovers would like to do but can’t. I always felt silly whenever I got on top of Ralph, but when Bres’s thighs were locked in the vise of my elbows, I really was in charge; yet when we changed places and she did the doing, I could let down my guard and wallow in the submission without worrying that she would get “the wrong idea.”

I had to admit I missed being fucked. Bres, who had slept with a man out of curiosity, said she liked it, too. We did our best with what we had but finger-fucking is inadequate even when you do it with someone you love. There is another problem for two women unless both of you are nail-biters, and neither of us was. Bres enjoyed it more than I did because she did not associate it with dates and fraternity boys, but every time she went inside me I could hear Faysie babbling, “I mean, it’s okay because we’re pinned!”

We had a few wistful discussions about getting a dildo but they were not sold openly then. Undoubtedly they were covertly available if you knew where to look, but we didn’t, and in any case, no Mississippi resident would have had the strength to embark on the search. Considering what we had to go through to buy hooch, God only knows what buying a dildo would have involved.

As for other foreign objects, we never used them.

Candles melt/ Carrots are tough/ Bottles can hurt you/ Might as well muff.

But countering the male fantasy of the “Hey, all these chicks would want me!” scenario, King also offers this insight, gleaned after her lesbian love affair ends and she goes back to heterosexual sex for a while:

After the third fuck, while drinking my fifth boiler-maker, I started crying. Most people are not in a position to realize it, but there is nothing sadder than being with one sex when you want to be with the other. I wanted Bres, but I wanted femaleness also. The sight of this naked man filled me with tearing pain; his hairy chest, his curveless trunk with no discernable waistline and the navel up so high, the tight flat nothingness of his buttocks, seemed like a mutation of the species.

Now, I really am going somewhere with this; I didn’t just set myself the academic exercise of analyzing a couple depictions of gay sex. But I have written enough for today, so you’ll have to come back later to read the rest of what I’m getting at.

Posted by Holly at 11:11 AM | Comments (6)

December 6, 2007

I’m Glad I Didn’t Tell That Joke, Because It’s Still Not Funny

It’s 4:30 a.m., I’ve been crying for hours and the medication I took to combat my insomnia isn’t working, so my judgment isn’t the best. This entry is overwrought and earnest and I hope it’s not too annoying but it’s one of those things I have to post because it really matters right now. I just I hope I don’t sound too ridiculous and unproofread later.

Monday during an appointment to have my teeth cleaned I picked up the newspaper to read while I waited for my dentist (whom I love--he’s both a good dentist and a very nice man) to check my teeth after the hygienist cleaned them, and read an item about how South Dakota (who knew?) is the least depressed state in the country, while Utah is the most depressed. (There are also only six states in which people commit suicide more readily than in Utah.) I laughed. “Of course it’s Utah,” I said aloud to no one in particular, shaking my head. I wrote down the details of the study in the notebook I always carry with me so I could find a link to it later, thinking I would write a glib, funny blog entry about how appropriate it is that Utah is not only the most depressed but the most depressing state in the country, filled as it is with miserable Mormons.

And then yesterday I read this account on Young Stranger of a young man’s desire to kill himself because he is both gay and Mormon, and I lost all enthusiasm for mocking the misery an actual human being experiences when his life is in conflict with his religion.

I’m going to do that incredibly maudlin 80s thing and quote a Smiths song, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,” which always makes me weep when I think seriously about the lyrics:

You should know
time’s tide will smother
and I will too
when you laugh about people who feel so
very lonely
their only desire is to die
well I’m afraid
it doesn’t make me smile
I wish I could laugh
but that joke isn’t funny anymore
it’s too close to home
and it’s too near the bone
more than you’ll ever know

The main reason I didn’t blog much in November was because I was traveling, and one of the things I traveled to was a conference, where I presented a paper on religious trauma, in which I finally found a way to make damnation intelligible to a secular audience. I’m not going to go into the details of that now, because if one wants to publish one’s scholarly work in journals one doesn’t explain it on the web. But suffice it to say, believing you are damned really, really sucks, and although it is outside the range of many people’s experience, it is not outside the experience of people who are devout Mormons and desire nothing so much as to live a virtuous, spiritually meaningful life sanctioned by god’s approval, but who feel that, for whatever reason, something about their core self or primary identity or most cherished concept of human ethics and responsibility or whatever somehow prohibits or violates true virtue and is beyond god’s approval.

I felt that. I felt it about my mission. I felt that my impulse to let people choose their own paths, to say sincerely “That’s a perfectly acceptable choice,” when they said, “I want to be an ethical person according to these principles and beliefs, and I don’t feel I really want or need to be Mormon to a good person,” put me outside the realm of god’s love.

It sucked.

But this suicide thing..... It reminds me of Puritanism, for which I felt a profound affinity when I finally studied it in grad school. I’m not the only person to write about the similarities between Puritans and Mormons, which go beyond a certain sexual reticence--after all, the 19th century form of New England Puritanism was Congregationalism, with which Joseph Smith was extremely familiar, and one of my favorite elements of Mormonism, the emphasis of careful reading of texts and of writing a journal in order to turn one’s life into a text to be read for evidence of god’s workings upon the soul, was inherited straight from the Puritans.

But the Puritans had a very dark side: The theology required people to imagine damnation if they weren’t up to par, to confront "the imaginative impact of the idea of being loathed and daily victimized by an all-powerful deity” (John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination) and to write about the experience of doing so. No wonder, then, that they were prone to despair, to the point that they killed themselves far more readily than other people. In fact, as I said in my paper,

the frequency with which puritans committed suicide was used by others as evidence that the religion’s adherents weren’t among the saved. It might also help you understand why the Puritans had such a propensity to call people witches, imagining dark rituals in which people celebrated their hatred of a god who hated them. It might also help explain why there aren’t many Puritans around today: the theology was too brutal and punishing to last.

Mormonism is fairly brutal and punishing in its own way, and yet it thrives. It thrives, as does the misery and despair it engenders when someone doesn’t measure up to its rigid demands. It thrives, even as it prompts people to write eloquent suicide notes, eloquent explanations of why suicide is a morally and theologically justifiable choice for a person who is gay/ an artist/ single/ infertile/ whatever.

Myself, I wrote my first (and still unpublished) book as the defense I would offer at the final judgment, explaining why I stood by the ethical choices I made, and I could well imagine the look of revulsion and contempt on god’s face as he rejected my defense and opened a trap door to send me straight to hell.

I don’t still believe in a god who would do that to me--I don’t still believe in any god, really. But you don’t write a text like that if you don’t care A HELL OF A LOT about religion and spirituality and ethics. Which brings me to my next point: Mormonism often punishes most those who invest in it most.

But that goes for religion in general, doesn’t it. I’m thinking of Karen Armstrong, and her amazing admission at the end of Through the Narrow Gate. Unable to to acquiesce quietly to the intellectual helplessness orthodoxy encourages (or to deal with ways the faints caused by her undiagnosed epilepsy are contemptuously dismissed as a moral and spiritual failing), she suffers a breakdown, and after a few months, is forced to admit that the life of a nun is not for her. While waiting for the dispensation that will release her from her vows, she listens one day to the choir sing the prayer of Saint Ignatius, which reads

Take and receive, O Lord, all my liberty; my memory, my understanding, and my will. All that I have, all that I am, Thou hast given me, and I give it all back to Thee to be governed according to Thy will.

All I ask is Thy grace and Thy love. With these I am rich enough and I do not ask for anything else.

Armstrong details her response to the prayer; she writes

It was the last words that stung. I did want things other than God’s love. I wanted human closeness, beauty, freedom of mind. I probably wouldn’t get them but I wanted them. God’s love should have been enough. It was in one sense everything. But I did ask for other things, and if I stayed I’d be grabbing at little unworthy human satisfactions [and she gives an example, as when sisters fell in love with a cat because they could not devote any affection to another human being].

The prayer left an aching sadness. That perfect self-giving. That image of God as Everything that still couldn’t satisfy me. How could I be happy when I’d rejected Everything?

Mormons who cannot overcome or dismiss their homosexuality often feel they have rejected Everything. Mormons who cannot overcome or dismiss their sense that certain human choices outside of Mormonism are entirely valid often feel they have rejected Everything. Mormons who want human closeness, beauty, freedom of mind in addition to god’s love often feel they have rejected Everything.

And yet we are entitled to human closeness, beauty, freedom of mind, and to be who we are, and I believe that in some fundamental way, rejecting Everything is really the only way to go: because saying that you want those things is a way of saying you are willing to lose your eternal life, to risk damnation. And as the scriptures also tell us, s/he who will save his life shall lose it, and s/he who will lose his life shall find it. And I don’t think that’s a religious truth; I think that’s a spiritual truth, explaining the fact that, as posters in so many adolescent bedrooms have explained, if you let something go and accept that it is not yours to keep, it often comes back to you and stays with you.

But losing your life is not the same as taking your life. Dear god, dear god whom I don’t even believe in but invoke because nothing else has quite the power of that word, please let that young man not take his life. Please let no one else in Mormondom ever take their life because they believe they do not please you.

I don’t know what else to say. My heart aches for Young Stranger’s friend, and I don’t even know him. I have burst into tears at least a dozen times while thinking about him over the past day. I’m up because I’m thinking about him--and about my dear friend R, whose husband has been in the ICU since Saturday and will probably never walk again because, of all things, a tree fell on him while he was working in the woods around their house--and I feel hopeless and powerless and utterly betrayed yet again by the spiritual training of my youth, which I still somehow continue to value, because it gave me things I cherish, like my love of autobiography and journal-keeping, or my marvelous sense of self-tied-up-in-place.

Anyway. I should go back to bed. It’s so late it’s early and my judgment is clouded--insomnia and the medication I take to counteract it often do that to me--and when I am fully awake and sober and it’s daylight, I may regret posting this, but what the hell.

Posted by Holly at 4:30 AM | Comments (6)

September 26, 2007

Warren Jeffs Found Guilty

I was triumphantly relieved to read that Warren Jeffs, "prophet" of the Fundmantalist COJCOLDS or whatever it's called, has been found guilty in Utah of two counts of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl. He faces more charges in Arizona as well.

The arguments of the defense in all this just sound so gross. I'm glad the jury focused on the fact that the girl was 14, and that she was told that if she didn't submit to this marriage she didn't like, she'd go to hell. Those are, I think the most relevant issues in the matter.

Posted by Holly at 11:34 AM | Comments (1)

September 11, 2007

Baring Their Chests and Testimonies

I got this link from my friend Troy, who sent it to me with the note "as if missionaries weren't gay enough...."

It's for Mormons Exposed: Men on a Mission, a retailing enterprise promoting a calendar featuring a buff, bare-chested RM (returned missionary) every month. The faq page (an acronym I always read "fag" unless it's capitalized) states that "the calendar celebrates these missionaries' great looks and beautiful bodies, as well as the amazing stories of service of these deeply spiritual men," adding that

Behind the eye-candy, this calendar has a deeper story - one that can reshape perceptions, heighten awareness, and perhaps encourage and inspire a broadened acceptance of human and religious diversity. The fact that twelve young returned missionaries are posing shirtless will certainly raise eyebrows, but may also help to sort out some common misconceptions about Mormons. The shock value of what these traditionally conservative young men have helped to create has the power to build a dialogue that encourages people across every belief system and walk of life to defy stereotypes, step out of judgment and embrace tolerance.

It also notes that the "This product may be the must-have stocking stuffer of the year, or even be the gag gift of 2008"--or do they mean the "gay gift" of 2008?

You'll see what I mean if you go to the "meet the missionaries" page, click on the little photo of each missionary, then run your cursor over the larger photo that appears on the plaque on the right of the screen: each missionary appears in his shirtless pose! What cracks me up is that they simply removed their shirts and posed in their dress slacks, with their belts still on. But you must check out Matt, who holds is scriptures in his fully-dressed pose, but has his thumb tugging down the waistband of his pants (just a bit of his garments peek out) and his hair coyly disheveled in his shirtless pic.

I shouldn't be so snarky, I know: it's not like most Mormon men know much of anything at all about how to be sexy, since all they're taught for most of their lives is how to repress.

But they do know how to be pompous and white. I must point out that while the twelve young men who posed for the calendar served all over the world--Ukraine, Japan, Mozambique, Argentina, Las Vegas--they're fairly homogeneous in their origins: four are from Utah, two are named Brandon, one is a Matt and one is a Matthew, and they're all white, white, white! Not a Hispanic, Asian, Native American (or, in Mormon-speak, "Lamanite") or African-American (or, in Mormon-speak, "seed of Cain") in the mix. Not one.

If you ask me, that's a pretty serious lapse for an enterprise that claims it wants to "build a dialogue that encourages people across every belief system and walk of life to defy stereotypes, step out of judgment and embrace tolerance."

They're so entrenched in their own view of who they are that they can't even realize the extent to which WHITENESS is part of the stereotypical ideas about Mormons, and that seems to be one stereotype they have no wish to defy.

(And oh yeah. There's also the "deeply closeted" stereotype. They're not doing much to defy that one, either. Which is why you need to read Troy's essay on embracing queerness.)

Posted by Holly at 9:11 AM | Comments (4)

August 1, 2007

Some Pretty Nasty Shit

Warning: read no further if you have if don’t want to be grossed out, because frankly, my title should be taken literally. This entry includes a link to a site with thoroughly disgusting photos, as well as references to bodily functions many people prefer not to discuss.

In other words, don’t get to the end of this entry and leave me a comment about how I gave you too much information, because I’m telling you right now, if you don’t really want to know what I’ve been doing for the past five days, don’t read on.

So here it is:

I’ve been cleansing my colon.

Yep. A few weeks ago in an entry about lucid dreaming, I mentioned that one trick in the new age bag of steps to enlightenment is colon cleansing--the idea is that toxicity in the bowels impedes both physical and spiritual health. Not too long ago my acupuncturist recommended some outfit called Blessed Herbs--said they sold a mean colon cleansing kit. I had nothing better to do during the final weekend in July than drink a load of apple juice and trot to the bathroom, so I figured, why the hell not?

The specifics of this cleanse involve, as I say, apple juice. And packets of some toxin absorbing powder you mix with said apple juice five times a day. And some powerful digestion-stimulating herbs packaged in handy capsules so you can swallow some right before bedtime. And six to eight glasses of water. And, ideally, nothing else. Which is a basically a juice fast, and you do it for five days.

Before I go any further, let me say that I HATE FASTING. I HATE IT. I have ALWAYS hated it. Even when I was anorexic I hated it. I did it, but I hated it.

I especially hated it as a Mormon. Don’t know if you knew this, but all Mormons in decent health are supposed to fast for 24 hours the first Sunday of every month. Now, fasting can be good for you in moderation, provided you drink enough water while you’re doing it to keep your organs lubricated and healthy. But the thing about fasting as a Mormon is this: you go without water for 24 hours too. And that’s just bad for you. It’s not only onerous and boring, it’s flat unhealthy.

But even fasting as a regular Mormon wasn’t as bad as fasting as a missionary. Because as a missionary, you had to ride around on a bike and sweat and get dehydrated, and you still weren’t supposed to drink anything--or if you REALLY needed some liquid, you have a very little bit of water, just enough to wet your mouth.

Plus it made Sundays really long not to be able to go home from Church and cook dinner. The only good thing about fast Sunday as a missionary was that when we finally did get to cook dinner and eat, we usually just stayed in for the rest of the night, instead of going back out to work for three more hours like we were supposed to--we called that P-Day eve, because the next day was our Preparation or P-day, the one day a week we go to do things like listen to music or write letters.

Anyway. Back to the fact that I hate fasting. It’s painful and boring. I personally don’t have much energy when I fast--something about not consuming food just does that to me. But I do recognize that at times, being bored and uncomfortable is worth it.

This was one such time. Fasting got easier the longer I did it, partly because I wisely cleared my refrigerator of actual food before I started, partly because I kept reading the website and the instructions obsessively and learned that I could consume things like vegetable broth and miso if I really wanted to, partly because my stomach shrank (boy did it shrink) and partly because, well, the process was producing satisfactory results.

Now I’ve done colon cleanses before. But I’ve never seen results like those I got with this system. I won’t bother to describe them, because if you really want to know what they were like, simply go to a page aptly titled It’s Gross and It’s Mine! and see what happened.

There was a point when I wondered how I could have six bowel movements a day (hey! I told you not to read on if you weren’t prepared to encounter grossness!) when I wasn’t consuming any solid food, but according to the experts what I was expelling wasn’t anything I’d eaten recently: it was “mucoid plaque.” I got out an anatomy book and read up on the colon: turns out one of the main things the colon does is produce lots and lots of mucus, and it doesn’t always go anywhere. And when it just sits in your colon for over four decades, it becomes caked with very old feces and all sorts of nastiness.

By the end I had to wonder how there was room for my food to pass through when there was all that other stuff in there. Which is pretty much the point: clearing all that out so there’s room for your food, so nutrients are absorbed more easily, etc etc.

Overall I am quite happy with the results. I lost several pounds and my stomach is MUCH flatter. I feel like my complexion looks healthier--I might be making that up. But it’s really nice to know that all that stuff is just GONE.

In other words, I actually recommend this, and I might even do it again.

Now, one question you might be having is why doing that would prevent me from blogging. It didn’t, really; I just didn’t feel like it. I felt lethargic and vulnerable and all I really wanted to do was monitor my body and its various functions. But now that’s all done and I’m back to clogging up my gut rather than clearing it out. But who knows. Perhaps some new lightness and clarity will be reflected in my writing.

Posted by Holly at 6:41 PM | Comments (6)

December 9, 2006

Blessed Is the Man Who Goes Around Banging on People's Doors, at All Hours of the Morning, For He Truly Is Jesus's Friend

Here's a clip from John Safran, a guy from New Zealand, who rails, quite amusingly, about what's wrong with the ways Mormons conduct door-to-door proselytizing. And then, just to see how Mormons would feel if someone treated them the way they treat each others, he flies to Salt Lake with a friend, some pamphlets on atheism, a copy of The Origins of Species, and a nametag that says "John Safran, Atheist." Then he goes around and knocks on doors.

The whole thing is pretty damn funny, but I especially love when he says to one person, "May I offer you a reading from 1980s concept band XTC...."

Posted by Holly at 2:40 PM | Comments (7)

November 5, 2006

A Little Love for Big Love

All the disks of season 1 of Big Love are somewhere in my Netflix queue, but I can't be bothered to move them closer to the top. First of all, I'm currently far too preoccupied with getting through season 2 of both Project Runway (which I'm rather obsessed with--if I had any skill in making patterns and such instead of just sewing them together, I'd be auditioning to get on) and Battlestar Galactica (which I respect and am intrigued by but find kind of tedious--the tone and tenor of each episode is too unvarying).

Plus I can't get all that excited about a watching a show that will require me to look at both Bill Paxton and Chloe Sevigny, two of my least favorite actors. I honestly don't understand why they are ever cast in anything. Shows with just one of them are bad enough, but I will really have to grit my teeth to make it through an entire season of something where the two of them share screen time. Chloe is so whiny, and has SUCH horrible posture: I want to slap her across the shoulder blades and scold, "Didn't your mother ever tell you how important it is to stand up straight?" As for Paxton, I find it a shame that he's not torn to pieces by aliens in every show he's in.

But I will watch Big Love some day, because I feel a commitment to seeing how Mormons are depicted in the mainstream media, yada yada yada. Then there's also the fact that one of the most interesting panels I attended at Sunstone was on Big Love, and two of the panelists were women who work on Mormon Focus, the pro-polygamy magazine that supposedly served as the inspiration for the series. These two women consider themselves "independent" polygamists, meaning that they are not affiliated with some fundamentalist group telling who to marry whom. And they LOVE the show.

These women, who were articulate, bright, educated and capable, if very conservatively dressed, love the show because they feel it portrays polygamists truthfully, sensitively, generously. It does a good job, they say, of depicting both the affection between the husband and the sister wives, as well as the strife than can occur. It also presents the polygamists as "normal" people who choose an alternative lifestyle.

Polygamy is seen by many people as extremely repressive for women--and I'm certain that in many forms (particularly the variety overseen by the likes of Warren Jeffs), it is extremely repressive. Nonetheless, the women in independent polygamist marriages are much more vocal and visible than the husbands, because the husbands can be prosecuted for bigamy and the women cannot. The women are vocal and visible in part because they are arguing for the decriminalization of polygamy between consenting adults (which I'll discuss further in a future post).

Neither woman on this panel, it should be mentioned, is actually in a polygamist marriage right now: one is a widow, and the other was a second wife, but not long after she joined the family, the first wife became unhappy with the arrangement and left. So these women are left in the position of espousing a lifestyle they cannot currently enjoy. It will come as a shock to learn, I'm sure, but it's not actually that easy to recruit "independent" women to "independent" polygamist marriages--independent women tend to want an independent husband of their own.

So that's why I will, someday, watch all of Big Love, just like I watched Orgazmo. I've seen two episodes of BL already, courtesy of some friends with Tivo, and I admit I wasn't overwhelmed, one way or the other. It didn't irritate me the way Angels in America did or impress me with its rigorous accuracy the way the South Park episode on Joseph Smith did. When I try to remember it now, I remember mostly annoyance: I was annoyed by the way the youngest wife dressed--no one trying to pass as Mormon would wear such skimpy outfits--and by the fact that the characters mispronounce "temple recommend," putting the stress on the last syllable of "recommend," as if it's a verb, when Mormons stress the first syllable--stuff like that would be so easy to fix if they just had a Mormon as a consultant for the show! And I didn't find Bill Paxton a good fit for the role he plays: he lacks a certain... glossiness Mormon priesthood holders exude, so the fact that I hate him to begin with made his position in the show even more annoying. But I've been told by plenty of Mos and Post-Mos that overall the show is pretty good and gets enough things right that you can enjoy it quite thoroughly. So I'll watch it all, truly I will--when I get done with the stuff I really want to see.

Posted by Holly at 9:46 AM | Comments (6)

November 1, 2006

Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism (the excerpt)

Here are some excerpts from the paper I presented as part of this panel.

As part of my presentation, I pose this question, "why isn't it politically correct for a gay man to venture into the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--if that's what he chooses to do?," first posed by Ben Christensen (whose temple garments are all in a twist because I claim the right to think he's a self-deceived, selfish gas bag--see the comments on this post) and cite ancient Athenian and Hebrew society (both of which required men who had sex with men to nonetheless marry women) to support my contention that Christensen's basic assumption is flawed. As it happens I am all for opening what has been the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--to gay WOMEN. But Christensen shows little care for the rights and opportunities of women, gay or straight: his concern is with preserving the privileges of MEN, straight or gay. Thus remains a question needing an answer, which is this:

What does it mean for a homophobic, patriarchal, misogynist society to require men to marry women and impregnate them as part of their duties as members of the community?

Why should a gay Mormon man give a damn about women's sexuality, since doctrine created by straight Mormon men doesn't? Consider Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants (a.k.a. the "new and everlasting covenant," a.k.a. polygamy): a man can have an infinite number of wives who belong to him, but no more than one man can belong to a woman, because women are given to men to multiply and replenish the earth. Women's pleasure and subjectivity aren't factors.

I know it can take a while to figure out one's sexual identity, and that people who avoid sexual behavior during their teens, only to marry in their early 20s, might not have a firm handle on their sexual orientation. I've known people who figure out after a decade or two of marriage that maybe they're not straight after all. I know from watching friends go through it that it's profoundly painful. But I also think from observing various marriages and divorces that there's something different happening when men who know ahead of time that they are gay marry women they know are straight. Whether or not these men are seeking some kind of "cure," they still seek to assuage their own suffering and discomfort through means that create profound suffering and discomfort for women, suffering and discomfort women have been trained to believe they should accept. I submit that patriarchy endows men with a sense of entitlement--witness Christensen's resentment that marrying women and fathering children is still the "exclusive territory of straight men"--that blinds them to the real cost of their actions, whereas women are trained, through doctrines like the new and everlasting covenant, to expect that they will not have the exclusive regard or affection of their husbands, that indeed their feelings about their marriages are less important than the patriarch's wielding of authority.

Both Fales and Christensen stress that they informed their wives of their homosexuality before the wedding. They did NOT make this revelation at the start of the courtship; they waited until marriage had been discussed. If a gay man truly wants to be honest and honorable, the real time to make this admission is on the first date, before the woman is in love and has a vision of her future with him. Admitting to a serious girlfriend that you're gay ends the deception, but I doubt it improves the chances for success of any subsequent marriage, given how naively and earnestly hopeful Mormon women are about marriage--and how ignorant they are about sex if they've obeyed the law of chastity.

In his commentary to Christensen's essay, Ron Schow notes that Christensen oversimplifies "his options as either temple marriage or ‘a rampant life of unrestrained queerness.' Obviously," Schow points out, "there are many choices between the two extremes" (139). Christensen ends his essay by relating an epiphany that occurred after a "BYU fireside where they tell you to get married. I'd pretty much tuned out the entire thing," he writes, "because it didn't apply to me, but then I got home, sat on my bed, and had a distinct impression that yes, it did apply to me. Yes, I was gay, but that didn't mean I was excluded from Heavenly Father's desire for his children to marry and have families" (131).

I am glad Christensen had that epiphany--I accept its truthfulness. What I don't accept is his oversimplified and religiously predetermined interpretation, that any marriage he might have must be with a woman for whom he feels little sexual desire. While I acknowledge the right he and his wife have to do as they please, I have the right to find their efforts foolish and destructive rather than admirable. Why should he settle for a partner he doesn't desire? Why should his wife settle for a partner who doesn't truly desire her? The fact that they're willing to doesn't strike me as adequate justification.

I want for these gay men who marry straight women what they seem unable to want for themselves or their wives: to be able to form their families and raise their children with a partner beloved, cherished and desired body and soul, and I think the world will be a better place for me and all other straight women and men when gay women and men have that right.

Posted by Holly at 9:20 AM | Comments (4)

October 30, 2006

Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism (the introduction)

During the six years I've attended Sunstone, I've noticed that sessions there discussing homosexuality tend to focus on male sexuality, and that discussants, regardless of orientation, are generally male. For the 2006 symposium, I proposed a panel entitled "Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism" in part as a way of calling attention to the fact that homosexuality is an issue that also affects women. Admittedly, my panel did not include lesbian voices, but it seemed artificial to ask a lesbian to comment on the topic just as a way of correcting previous imbalances. I hope future sessions will address the concerns of lesbians, or include their voices.

I thought a lot about the title: I went with widely-recognized references to pop culture to show how common this issue is. I invoked Will and Grace because I want to underscore how genuine, precious and pleasurable my platonic friendships with gay men have been. I invoked Angels in America because it's a Pulitzer-prize winning set of plays featuring an unequal marriage between a closeted gay Mormon man and an unhappy Mormon housewife. (Though I admit I HATE both installments for so many reasons, including the fact that they're full of self-indulgent speeches that go on and on beyond the point of being either narratively or philosophically interesting, and that Kushner is a really shitty fact-checker, and that his female Mormon characters are not at all believable to me--no Mormon woman--no Mormon, PERIOD--would ever complain that it was a bad idea to leave Manhattan and move to DC, because DC is less righteous--hell, DC is overrun with Mormons, and there's a goddamn temple there!) I invoked Brokeback Mountain because it was current and also I really loved it.

That's the stuff before the colon; after the colon we get STRAIGHT WOMEN first, and then GAY MEN, because I wanted to foreground women in all of this. And then we get Mormonism, because it's the spin that complicates the matter.

Mine was not the only session dealing with homosexuality; one reason Dan Wotherspoon was so enthusiastic about the timing of my panel was that 2006 was the 20th anniversary of the publication of Good-bye, I Love You, a memoir by Carol Lynn Pearson, one of Mormondom's most beloved writers, about her temple marriage to a gay man, their divorce, and his death from AIDS. Carol Lynn presented a heartbreaking discussion of the suffering gay Mormons often endure. Her daughter Emily, who also married a gay man (I mention his one-man play here), was one of the panelists in my session. And Carol Lynn's ex-son-in-law also presented some of his more recent work.

My remarks for my part of the panel were drawn in part from material I first grappled with here. Relevant posts are, in order of posting, Mormon Social Taboos, A Happy Marriage with a Good Man, The Exclusive Territory of Straight Men, The Society of Buggers, Brokeback Mountain, Old Testament Weirdness, It's Not Just Mormon Men Who Don't Want to Lose the Beard, and The SL Tribune Joins the Chorus.

OK. That's all preamble. Tomorrow is Halloween and I'm planning to go that with theme in tomorrow's entry, so check back Wednesday or Thursday for the more substantial account of my remarks at Sunstone, if you're interested--or, if you're not, you know to stay away until the weekend.

Posted by Holly at 10:10 AM | Comments (2)

October 6, 2006

My Least Favorite Kind of Mormon Man: The Dirty Old One

So far I've been pretty lucky when it comes to trolls: I haven't attracted too many. I think it helps that my blog isn't devoted to a single issue: OK, I write about feminism, and sex, and Mormonism, and teaching, but it's not like you can show up here and now that you'll find some polemic on gender or religion every single day.

Unfortunately, as of early this week, some filthy old coot has taken to showing up and leaving long, rambling, poorly edited comments here, full of questions about, speculation on and advice regarding my sex life. He is, of course, Mormon, at least in the cultural sense.

That's important, because Mormon men often hold positions of power where it is their duty to ask explicit questions about other people's sex lives, and to hear "confessions" about what the church considers sexual impropriety. I don't know if this guy was once a bishop and so got to hear all about people losing their virginity or visiting prostitutes or sleeping with the babysitter or hooking up with a truck diver etc etc or if he resents that he was never a bishop and so could only fantasize about how great it would be to hear such confessions, but he seems anxious to use my blog as an opportunity to play the role of enlightened priesthood holder passing judgment on someone else's sex life.

But that ain't gonna happen. So I'm telling you, asshole: go the fuck away.

Oh, yeah--that's something he has a problem with: my profanity. I really shouldn't swear so much! It offends him! Somehow, it hasn't occurred to him that he is precisely the kind of head-up-ass fuckface-dickwad I hope to offend, alienate and avoid.

I admit I hardly paid any attention to his first comment. It was LONG, poorly organized, condescending, boring as all hell. He invoked Mormonism and referred to me as "sister"--sister!-- early on, and at that point I knew I would never post the damn thing. I tried to skim the rest. He chided me for writing such long posts (how dare I use a personal forum as I see fit! Apparently prolificacy is the exclusive domain of self-important, emotionally and intellectually clueless middle-aged men) and trotted out that old Mormon attitude about how, since I still care about religion even though I no longer attend the Mormon church, I must be stuck in the past--of course there's no way I simply care about my spiritual development. He seemed pretty sure that since I owned a pair of mannish green shoes, I had to be gay. He really wanted me to talk about being gay.

As I say, I didn't read it too closely; it went in the trash bin and I assumed that was that. But yesterday he showed up again, seemingly unaware that I hadn't bothered to post or even read his first comment. This time, I read the comment, because this time it's starting to be harassment. He offers observations about my "strident feminism" (!), my vulgar mouth (!) and the "divine slut" within all women, as well as this utterly asinine and insulting assessment:

Women are: more than other creations of the universe, meant to feel. They are uniquely situated to feel sexual pleasure in a way a man cannot imagine, tolerate or last long enough to experience. And you are celibate? I hope that was then and not now.

He suggests that I become a lesbian since all the good men (like him, maybe?) are taken. In particular, he recommends that I begin sleeping with former female students.

Never mind that I'm not gay, would rather not sleep with former students and wouldn't trust this fuckhead to offer advice on how to open a can of cat food, turn on a light or take out the trash. No, what really matters here is that this scumbag seems to be turned on by lesbian sex.

He thinks I should do this because "People without sexual partners tend to become bitter, acerbic, outspokenly critical, judgmental and generally unpleasant." I wonder if never getting laid is his excuse for being bitter, acerbic, outspokenly critical, judgmental, generally unpleasant, as well as officious, remarkably lacking in self-reflection, disrespectful, sexist, offensive, intrusive, gross, foolish (because he used his real name, and thanks to google, I was able to find an address and professional affiliation for him) and downright creepy and vile.

I banned him from commenting and hope I've seen the last of him. If not, well, I'm not afraid to contact the society that oversees his profession and seek their help in getting him to stop harassing me.

Posted by Holly at 7:23 AM | Comments (6)

September 2, 2006

Intro to my Sunstone Synopsis, Finally

Yeah, here it is: the day some of you have waited for, and others have dreaded: I'm finally gearing up to offer my report on Sunstone.

I should explain a little about what Sunstone is, since it has become obvious to me that even people with a background in Mormonism aren't quite clear on that.

Sunstone's website states that it is the "sponsor of open forums on Mormon thought and experience." The forum I attend each summer in Salt Lake is a symposium on Mormonism, not a conference. The two words are interchangeable in many regards, but General Conference in Mormonism means something special: it's a big meeting held every six months (the first Sundays in April and October) during which the faithful listen to exhortations from the brethren and reaffirm their commitment to the church by sustaining said brethren.

There's very little of that going on at Sunstone, which is probably one reason that some years ago (10? 15? anyway, before my time) the brethren issued a statement condemning alternative forums, which was, I am told, understood to be a condemnation of Sunstone in particular. Scholars who worked at church institutions were warned that their jobs and their membership could be imperiled by participation in Sunstone. As a result, attendance at the symposium declined sharply.

So you won't find too many conventionally devout Mormons delivering papers at--or even attending--Sunstone. It's not that you won't find any; they're just not the majority. Instead, Sunstone is a place where people from the fringes meet and mingle. For instance, at the plenary session one evening, the opening prayer was given by Susan D. Skoor, an ordained apostle of the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the branch started by those Mormons who did not follow Brigham Young to Utah after Joseph Smith was assassinated in Illinois--that's right, they ordain women now, and Apostle Skoor was extremely cool) and the closing prayer was given by a guy whose name I didn't catch but who freaked me out with his peremptory command that the audience stand while he prayed and who (I later learned) is a member of a fundamentalist polygamist offshoot of the church.

You ain't gonna find too many of those sorts offering prayers in mainstream Mormon functions.

I'd guess the majority of attendees are people who still maintain their activity in the church but are fairly unorthodox. (I admit I don't have data to back this assertion up, and I might be wrong, but it seems a reasonable guess.) The next biggest contingent, I imagine, is people like me: cultural Mormons who don't practice but maintain an interest in the religion that was once so important to them. Also in the mix are scholars who are not and never have been Mormon, but who have an academic interest in it. There is also a respectable showing from members of the Community of Christ (which never embraced polygamy), and from polygamist groups as well (which never stopped).

The only group not represented is any group that has as its raison d'etre convincing people to leave the Mormon church, because although Sunstone is most definitely not devoted to Mormon apologetics, its goal is to explore the role Mormonism plays in people's lives, not end that role. At Sunstone, you can voice long and loud the opinion that the church is entirely full of shit; you just can't make it your work to convince everyone else to feel that way too.

More to come.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (3)

August 28, 2006

As Good as the Replacement

I recently discovered something amazing: It is possible to play solitaire without a computer! Just get a regular old deck of cards--the kind you use to play poker or some such game--and replicate on a table or some other flat surface the layout of your favorite version of computer solitaire. The rules and so forth are the same, except that you must shuffle and move the cards about yourself.

I think part of me always knew this--now that I plumb my memory, I can recall a time in the 1970s, back before VCRs were commonplace; back when there were only three networks, all of which showed reruns in the summer, so that there might be nothing to watch on television, necessitating other ways of amusing oneself after the sun went down (which it does around 8 p.m. in mid June in Arizona, a state that resolutely refuses to observe Daylight Saving Time); back when my mother would try to get my sisters and me to entertain ourselves quietly from time to time and so taught us all to play every version of solitaire she knew of and bought us each our own deck of cards. (Which was kind of a big deal because there was this whole weird to-do in Mormondom in the 1970s and 80s about how "face cards were Satanic." Rook cards were fine; Uno cards were fine; Gin Rummy played with Rook cards was fine and Go Fish! played with Uno cards was fine; but play those same games with a deck of face cards and you were practically ringing the doorbell of hell, because cards bearing stylized representations of European royalty were the devilish creation of Lucifer himself, and the sin in such cards was so potent it would rub off on your fingers if you even picked up a deck.)

But seriously, when I recently came across a deck of cards and thought, "Huh. I so rarely run into anyone who enjoys playing cards any more; what am I ever going to do with these?" it felt like a discovery to realize that I really truly could, all by myself, play a game of cards that wasn't virtual, that the object itself was every bit as good as the electronic replacement.

Posted by Holly at 10:12 AM | Comments (6)

August 11, 2006

Sunstone and Its Effect on Me

Yesterday I explained why I go to Sunstone; here's something I posted last year about why it's hard to attend, and how I always feel weird in Utah.

Posted by Holly at 10:30 AM | Comments (3)

August 10, 2006

Why I Go to Sunstone

Today is my first day at Sunstone. Several people have asked me recently why I go to Sunstone, especially given my relationship to the church. Since I've already written something that addresses that question, I'm posting it here. This essay was published last year in Sunstone's print journal. It's kind of long, but if you're interested, here it is.

"What are you doing at Sunstone, then?"

It's a question I am asked each year. Sometimes the question is posed with genuine curiosity; sometimes it's an accusation. Why would someone who isn't a practicing or believing Mormon attend a symposium on Mormonism? It's also a question I asked at one point. Although I had read, subscribed to, published in, cited in my own scholarship and learned from the print version of SUNSTONE for years, I never attended a symposium until 2001--and the decision finally to do so wasn't easy. Early in 2001 I submitted an essay for publication; a few months later I got a message from Dan Wotherspoon, letting me know that he'd accepted the essay, and requesting that I read a version of it at the symposium. I told him I'd think about it.

"Why would I want to go to that?" I asked myself. "It's all fine and good in print, where you can read what intrigues you and ignore what doesn't, and nobody interrupts the author in the middle of a point. But this live version...I'm sure it'll just be a bunch of disgruntled inactives arguing about stuff with a bunch of bossy hard-liners"--and I'd seen and participated in enough of that already. But Dan was graciously, persistently insistent that I'd enjoy the symposium, so I queried a few friends who had attended.

"Of course you should go," they told me. "For every panel that doesn't interest you, you'll find one that does. And you'll meet so many incredibly cool people."

So I went. And Dan and my friends were right--so right, in fact, that I've been back every year since, and plan to go again. But what is it that draws me?

The short answer is that Sunstone is a place where I can ignore pronouncements about what I should believe and value and figure out what I do believe and value--about my own history, my own faith, about how to move through this complicated world as a moral, ethical person, all the while employing a vocabulary and frame of reference shared by the people I'm talking to. I certainly can and do spend much of my time pondering questions of ethics and truth with people who have no connection to Mormonism, but sometimes it's nice not to have to explain how the particulars of my Mormon upbringing affect my views on larger questions of spirituality and ethics.

The long answer goes something like this:

I try to accept that Sunstone is everyone else's forum as much as it is mine. I know there will be plenty going on that doesn't matter to me, and that's OK. Chief among the panels or presentations that don't interest me are any that focus on Joseph Smith. He may or may not have been a living prophet once, but he's not a living prophet any more--at least not to me. I find him only marginally more interesting than, say, Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science; or William Miller, the farmer from Upstate New York and Baptist preacher whose apocalyptic visions help launch the Second Great Awakening of 1820s and 30s. But I accept that to many people, even to people who are no longer or never were faithful Mormons, Joseph Smith and his teachings are of vital interest--after all, he made a lasting impression on US history, and he shaped an institution that affects millions of lives. And I don't discount the possibility that the right presentation could succeed in making Joseph Smith's life compelling to me again.

Nor do I worry much about the daily workings of the Church. At the time I'm writing, Gordon B. Hinckley is still president, but I can't name his councilors. Weeks will go by in which I don't hear a single mention of the church. Unless the Church takes a political stand, I don't see the current institution as having much effect on my life. But these days I don't live in the inter-mountain West where I spent my childhood. If I did, I might feel differently.

What I do care about is how my training as a Mormon has shaped and continues to shape the choices I make and the ideals I espouse.

Primo Levi wrote, "Changing moral codes is always costly; all heretics, apostates, and dissidents know this." I would add that changing moral codes rarely involves a complete renunciation of one's old ideology. Often the change comes because a beloved and honored aspect of the ideology (for instance, an emphasis on disciplined religious study and the belief that each person should ask for confirmation that something billed as scripture is indeed a source of spiritual truths) somehow comes into conflict with another aspect of the ideology (such as directives not to probe religious mysteries or question the utterances of leaders). In such a situation, the first belief often is not abandoned; in fact, it is embraced all the more fully.

There are parts of my Mormon past I shed easily enough, parts I struggle to escape, parts I still embrace gladly and parts so inescapably central to who I am that it takes careful, deliberate scrutiny to tease them out in the first place--and even more work to understand them. How I see the world, what I find meaningful in the world, is irrevocably shaped by my Mormon upbringing.

For instance: I have ancestors who joined the Church in 1832. One of my ancestors survived the Haun's Mill Massacre only by pretending to be dead. I had two ancestors in the Mormon Battalion, one on my father's side and one on my mother's. One of my ancestors arrived in Salt Lake with Brigham Young and was named the first bishop of the city--indeed he was the only man to be bishop of the entire city. There are polygamists all over my family tree. Every one of my siblings has been married in the temple. I grew up in a town so Mormon that we held our high school prom in the church's cultural hall. One of the primary, crucial events of my life was my mission in Taiwan and the crisis of faith I suffered there. I even approach my job as an English professor in a way shaped by Mormonism: I love exegesis, or critical exploration of a text, and I know one reason for that is all those exercises I learned to do with scripture: leave it in context and see what it means; take it out of context and use it to explicate something; find something else to explicate it.

So if anyone can claim to be an ethnic Mormon, I think I can. And it is partly by virtue of my religious training and partly due to my temperament that I believe quite strongly Plato's maxim that "an unexamined life is not worth living." Thus, if the church somehow lost all its members tomorrow and existed only as a historical relic, I would still be concerned with scrutinizing and puzzling out how my present life has been shaped by my past, including the 26 years I spent as a devout Mormon, obeying the commandments, participating in the culture and passionately studying the doctrines of the Church.

Chances are slim that the Church will lose all its members tomorrow, and so I am also faced with the challenge of interacting respectfully with my parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends who remain in the church. I share with my family the legacy of sacrifice and creation given to us by our Mormon forebears, and I value that legacy. I chose to honor it by imitating my forebears and swapping a belief system I no longer find meaningful for something that offers me greater hope of grace and redemption, just as they did, while many in my family honor that legacy by remaining in the faith our ancestors chose. The challenge for all of us is to love and be happy for one another.

Maturity and generosity aren't always required in order to be happy for someone who behaves exactly as you believe s/he should, and is then rewarded for that behavior. But it can take maturity and generosity to be happy for someone who flourishes in a system that made you miserable, or in a system you don't approve of. How, then, do those who are gladly devout and those who are cheerfully inactive or excommunicated manage to share the cultural legacy of Mormonism and the network of relationships forged through Mormonism? For instance, should I cease to care about or pretend not to know people I loved on my mission, simply because I no longer believe what I preached then, that membership in the Mormon church is necessary to salvation? How do those of us who are no longer among the faithful reconcile a view of the world shaped by Mormonism with the sense that Mormonism is not adequate in helping us navigate the world? How do we avoid conflict with those we love who still rely on Mormonism as a moral and spiritual compass?

These are some of the questions that concern me, and I come to Sunstone because it helps me pose and answer those questions in meaningful, lively and constructive ways.

In March 2004, Karen Armstrong, one of my favorite writers and scholars, published The Spiral Staircase, a sequel to her earlier memoir, Through the Narrow Gate. In The Spiral Staircase, she discusses the difference between orthopraxy (right behavior) and orthodoxy (right thought), and convincingly cites the argument that in many religions, orthodoxy and doctrine are of little significance--what matters is behaving rightly, cultivating behaviors that change us for the better, regardless of what we believe.

This argument was so revolutionary and astonishing to me that I needed to explore it further. Remarkably, once I abandoned the idea that orthodoxy--that troublesome, unswallowable bone in my throat--mattered at all, I felt more at liberty to celebrate and embrace those practices inherited from Mormonism that truly have enriched my spiritual life. Thus I proposed a panel for the 2004 symposium: "Doing Things That Change Us: Mormonism as Praxis" (reprinted in SUNSTONE December 2004). I wanted panelists to consider the special benefits offered by cultivating religious habits and behaviors either unique to Mormonism or approached in a uniquely Mormon manner. I hoped the panel would be positive and validating for any audience: active, faithful Mormons could affirm those practices that reinforce their faith, while people who were no longer active or believing Mormons could acknowledge and remember what was valuable about their training as Mormons. The idea was to celebrate the ways in which Mormonism inculcates and encourages behaviors that truly do make us better people, regardless of belief.

That panel was one of the highlights of my five years at Sunstone--and I've been to some stellar presentations. It truly became a celebration, and no one in the audience seemed to think that anyone would need to justify a desire to identify and embrace the elements of our religious training that help us live lives of greater spiritual awareness and maturity, despite the fact that we had also shed elements of that training.

That's what Sunstone offers me: a forum where I can work to identify and embrace the elements of my religious training that help me live with greater spiritual awareness and maturity, which, admittedly, is something you can do at Church. But Sunstone also offers me a forum where I can ask if there have been elements of my training as a Mormon that get in the way of spiritual maturity, which is something you really can't do at Church. For me, it's about deciding, as consciously and deliberately as possible, what I want to keep and what I want to lose--and in order to do that, it helps to be around people who recognize some value in Mormonism to begin with, who don't think religion as a whole and Mormonism in particular are a waste of time. I am sure I will continue to encounter people who find it baffling that I want to discuss any element of Mormonism when I no longer subscribe to its doctrines; but at Sunstone, I also find people who understand where I'm coming from--and who are also willing to help me figure out where I want to go next.

I would differentiate here between community and kinship. I admit, I don't feel much of a sense of community at Sunstone: there are too many different groups devoted to too many different doctrines and too many people who don't fit in to any group for there truly to be a community. But I don't see that as a bad thing. That lack of cohesiveness means there's room to ask your own questions, spend an hour listening to someone else's questions. You may not agree with people or change their minds, but no one even pretends that that needs to happen. And at each symposium I have been lucky enough to meet someone who becomes a genuine friend, who challenges and inspires me not only for one weekend in late summer, but all year long.

A yoga teacher once explained the spiritual quest to me this way: it's as if we're all wandering through some giant maze of a corn field, the stalks too high for us to see who or what is in the next row. But if we're lucky, we find people we can wave to at those moments when we come out of a row, before we forge back down the narrow paths of the field, just so we remember that others are pursuing the same quest, even though ultimately, we must all do it alone. I buy that explanation; it resonates with my experience. Sunstone for me is the end of a row: I come out, take a deep breath, look around; I greet others seekers and hear something about their quests; then I get on a plane and head home, where I plunge once more into the maze.

Posted by Holly at 10:00 AM | Comments (4)

July 24, 2006

Pioneer Day

Today is a holiday I haven’t celebrated since, oh, 1976. It’s Pioneer Day, anniversary of the day in 1847 when Brigham Young and a bunch of other guys (including my great-great-great-grandfather Tarleton Lewis, the first bishop of Salt Lake and the only man to be bishop of the entire city) arrived in the Salt Lake valley. Supposedly when they reached the descent into the valley, Brother Brigham, who was quite ill, sat up in his bed in the back of a wagon, surveyed the scene, then said, “This is the right place. Drive on.” (It’s often shortened to “This is the place.” But my dad, who reads lots of history books and loves correcting misinformed tour guides--he's done it all over the country, on topics ranging from the burial place of Wyatt Earp to the birthdate of Joseph Smith--always insisted that we say it correctly.)

When I was little we had big Pioneer Day celebrations; we dressed like pioneers and had parades with handcarts. But then the Church got ambitious and wanted to shed its provincial western image, and Pioneer Day ceased to be a big deal outside of Utah, where it's still a state holiday. I’m not complaining; it’s not all that fun to put on a long dress and sunbonnet and walk up and down the streets during monsoon season in southern Arizona.

But I admit I am totally captivated by the story of the trek across the plains, which killed a few of my relatives: Tarleton lost one of his sons that way, a small child of three or four, who wandered off one evening while collecting cow patties for fuel with a group of children. They found his bucket, but they never found the boy. Tarleton was heartbroken. Then there’s the story of the Willie and Martin handcart companies, a group of people who got a late start and so were overtaken by snow storms and blizzards. The survivors were eventually rescued by a bunch of young men. It chokes me up even to think about it.

In Primary we used to sing this song I absolutely loved, called “Pioneer Children.” It went,

Pioneer children sang as they walked... and walked... aaannd waaaaalked
They walked for miles....

and I can’t remember the rest. I just remember the way we’d draw out “aaannd waaaaalked.” It was fun.

So happy Pioneer Day! If you get a chance, take a walk. (I still can't--my gimpy hip is still bugging me.)

Posted by Holly at 2:02 PM | Comments (9)

July 22, 2006

Not the Star I Paid to See

Picking up where I left off yesterday on the matter of unpleasant parents:

Another good thing about the way Mormons deal with kids: everyone (well, almost everyone) learns very early that there are places where it's just not appropriate to bring children. This doesn't cause kids much pain or resentment, because a lot of those adult forums are plain boring, and kids are rightfully glad to escape them. You learn that your parents can go off and leave with you a babysitter and it won't kill you, the babysitter OR your parents--in fact, if the babysitter is cool enough, you might even have fun, and you usually get something special for dinner.

The last ward (a Mormon congregation) I attended was an young adult/student ward at the Institute at the U of Arizona. There were no kids in this ward, because you had to be a childless university student and/or single person over the age of 18 but under 35 to attend it. The idea was to help young people meet potential mates, though childless couples in which at least one spouse was enrolled as a student could also attend this ward.

But there was this divorced woman in her late 20s who insisted on bringing her five-year-old daughter with her, and largely because the bishop felt sorry for her, both mother and child were allowed to attend. The daughter went to all the meetings with her mother, including Relief Society, the meeting for women. Well. One Sunday I was teaching the lesson, and I made an off-hand comment about how there was no Santa Claus.

Well!

The child was upset to learn that there was no Santa Claus, and the mother was incensed that I let that secret slip, and wanted me reprimanded. However, the RS president dealt with the matter in what I consider the most appropriate way: she told the woman, "If you don't want your child to hear adult conversations, don't bring your child to adult forums."

I really resent parents who refuse to get babysitters, who insist on bringing their kids with them to ANY and EVERYTHING they want to do. Neither I nor my sister (who had four kids of her own, but she and my brother-in-law got a babysitter) will ever forget the 2002 midnight premier of The Two Towers, mostly because some young couple brought their three-year-old. He cried for a good long while, and the parents let him. He kept saying, "I'm tired! It's noisy here. I want to go home." And finally, since he couldn't go home, the poor boy did what he could to escape the noise: he went out in the hall and fell asleep on the floor--and the parents left him there. There is no way in which such profoundly selfish behavior constitutes acceptable parenting. In fact, it might even considered criminally negligent--what if someone had stolen the kid? It wouldn't have been hard. And although the greatest wrong was done to the child, I also felt sorry for everyone else in that theater: we should not have had to listen to him cry. The parents should not have brought him, and when he began to cry, they should have left the theater.

The theaters where I live now try to prevent such situations; there's a sign at the box office with the picture of a really cute baby. Underneath is a caption reading, "Cute as you are, you are not the star I paid to see." The sign explains that no child under six years of age will be admitted to any R-rated movie beginning after 6 p.m. (I always used to wonder who would bring a child under six to ANY R-rated movie, no matter what time it showed. Then I found out.)

Restrictions like that really infuriate one of my friends, who fairly burst with pride as she told me how she'd taken her six-month-old child to a showing of Brokeback Mountain. And I kept thinking, "Brokeback Mountain is a really great movie, but you're an ass." She spent all this time telling me how lonely and depressing it is to be around a kid all day without other adult company, and how hard it is to get people to accommodate her motherhood. And then she and her husband and child and I went to dinner, and a fair portion of the meal was spent retrieving the silverware the child constantly threw on the floor. I have 14 nieces and nephews; I understand that small children need to be entertained. But I also understand that entertaining children requires energy, and that if you want a certain kind of adult conversation, you don't involve a kid. And as I listened to my friend go on and on about how lonely she is, I thought, "Could part of the problem be that you alienate people who would be DELIGHTED to give you the adult conversation you claim to crave, if you were just willing to pay a babysitter?"

In other words, I accept that if I visit friends who have children, part of my time will be spent getting to know and interacting with their children--and in many ways, I enjoy that, because as I said, I like kids! But if you assume that my primary motive in making the effort to visit you (particularly if it involves forking out several hundred bucks on airfare) is to watch you watch your child shred magazines, or if there's nary a single kid-free moment in a period exceeding seven or eight hours, or if over 50% of what you say to me is about your kid and the style of parenting you've adopted, well, I probably won't be back to see you until the kid's at least in junior high--and for god's sake, don't ask if you can bring the kid and visit me! Because cute as s/he might be, your child is not the star I really want to see. And as I have other friends who manage to raise children while retaining an identity other than parent, I'll just hang out with them.

Posted by Holly at 8:38 AM | Comments (20)

July 17, 2006

Go Away, Parent, You Bother Me

I think of myself as someone who likes children, mostly because there are a lot of children I like. OK, occasionally I meet a kid I truly dislike, same as with adults: a couple of my friends had five children, four of whom I found mildly repellent: they were not only badly behaved, but just plain weird--one in particular I rather expect to end up in the penal system. But generally, I'm well disposed to like kids. If I see a cute baby in a stroller, I usually smile and try to make eye contact. If I hear a child crying, I usually think, with a pang of genuine sympathy, "Oh, that poor thing."

I especially like kids old enough to walk and say at least a few words and feed themselves a high-chair-tray full of diced broccoli, but still small enough that you can pick them up and tickle them and play peekaboo with them: there's something profoundly wonderful about making those wee ones squeal and clap their hands in delight. I also like little kids whose parents buy them really cool electric train sets (that would be my brother and his wife). As I've watched my nieces and nephews grow up, I've noticed that sometimes they get hard to talk to around nine or ten (and they can stay that way for about a decade), but if a kid likes to read, I can usually manage a reasonably interesting conversation. And I'm gratified by the fact that the kids I like seem to like me OK, too.

There's a famous scene where WC Fields (I have no idea what movie it's from--I tried to find out) says to some child, "Go away, kid, you bother me," a particular expression of his general antipathy for children. I was always baffled by that in my youth, and offended as well: how could anybody who'd been a child dislike children on principle? I still sort of feel that way.... Because I really do like kids at least as often as I like adults. Change that: I like children more often than I like adults. It's certain parents, I've realized lately, that I really have problems with.

I've also realized as I've considered this matter that most of my attitudes about childrearing are influenced by my upbringing as the second of five children in a Mormon family. Not only did I have four other siblings, but I both watched and helped my mother raise the younger ones--especially my baby brother, who was born when I was almost nine. I also did a hell of a lot of babysitting for other Mormon families. And the entire situation left me, I honestly think, with some fairly sound ideas on the matter.

For better or worse, having children--plenty of them--is normalized in Mormon culture, and the culture accommodates the existence of children in many sensible ways the rest of society could benefit by imitating. Churches generally come equipped with playrooms