I am a lapsed Mormon. I am a proudly lapsed Mormon. I feel tugs and yearnings for Something that Mormonism sometimes gave me (SO had a dream about being a missionary last night and for a moment i wondered whether he was announcing he'd realligned entirely and we'd have to find our thorny way back and I wasn't sad about it, The Gravity, the Purpose!) but it only takes a look at the green shoots of myself just emerging--I love them so much! I love me too much to go back there.
But if I went back, even if I don't ever, there is a thing I'd write.
Heavenly Mother is a sort of shibboleth in Mormonism. An ability to talk about her or engage in thought about her signifies, almost always, progressive mormon thought. I'm not going to rehash the history here of the (mostly) women excommunicated for believing in her too much, in insisting on her role and power. I'll never know how many women (people?) hold worship of her close and secret, even as leadership discourages us from talking about her.
What I'd like to write is an essay/book about why Heavenly Mother isn't just for women. That's how I understand the discourse to be framed currently: women deserve to hear their mother's voice. Women deserve a voice in the organization of the church, and if we officially recognized HM, that voice would have sturdier ground. These things are true, but the wisdom of a mother is wisdom that everyone needs, that would offer some curative to the worst excesses of institutional mormonism. I want to write a book about why mormon men need Heavenly Mother.
((LOOK. I also hate this idea. I don't love giving more power/energy to gender essentialism and binaries. I do not love the idea of giving more thought and emotional energy to mormon men. This is such a weird and conflicted concept no wonder no one's attempted it [that I know of].))
My very smart friend who has been able, incredibly to me, to transcend the harm sustained by a childhood of fundamentalism to find real practical beauty in the gospels shared a meditation about the garden. About how, when Jesus was suffering there, he was also certainly appreciating the beauty of the place. He created it. He created it knowing it would be the venue of his most difficult night. He asks why he has been forsaken, but also, surely, he knew that he had not. There were creatures in the grass whose names he knew. The smell of spring blossoms. When I consider the power of the mother, this is it: the mother is the earth and the trees, where she was worshipped. The mother is the earth still warmed from the day even though the night has cooled. The mother knows about spending a night in agony with only her hope of something new to sustain her.
For me, mormonism is really good at congratulating you when things go well and terrible at supporting your when things go wrong. It's terrible at appreciating that things are going wrong while they are also going well. That you can do everything that is required of you and also feel deep and abiding love and then get overwhelmed suddenly by loneliness and despair and thats ok too. Mormonism is bad at holding you while you cry. It's bad at letting you rest. It's bad at cycles and contradiction and mysticism and divergence of any type and death and shit and sex and actual awe-struck joyfilled dirt streaked humility.
This is what the mother means to me. She means I am ok now.
All mormons need their mother. I know some mormon women are coming to understand that and find her. I know that mormon men need her just as much.
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