The Voice of My Ancestors: a reflection on faith, religion, and the new paradigm of being a good, obedient daughter
A view from the Salt Lake City Cemetery of the mountains that rim the valley. All of my ancestors are buried here. |
My parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, most of my
family are Mormon . Many of them are practicing Mormons. A few are known as “Jack
Mormons” because they rarely go to church, smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol.
I was born in to the church, a child of pioneers who risked their lives for
their faith. Taking on the arduous commitment to travel west across an ocean,
the Great Lakes, prairie and mountains in 1848, a six month journey. Their
former lives reduced to a few possessions stuffed into crates and trunks and
loaded onto covered wagons.
I loved the Church. I
am enthralled by stories of my ancestors. I remember the exhilaration I felt climbing
the mountain trail and arriving at the statue that marks the spot where Brigham
Young announced, “This is the place.” The story told is reminiscent of Moses
pointing the way to the Promised Land; a place of milk and honey, of blessing
and a new life. The Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ taught me
that we/they are the reunification of the lost tribes of Israel in the high
desert of Utah – “God’s Chosen” people.
Brigham Young, as I recall the story from my childhood,
stood on that mountain pass and looked out across the verdant mountains that
crown the great Salt Lake valley and knew he had led his flock to the place God
was calling them. He did not know that the Great Salt Lake was an almost useless
body of salt water. It could not water their crops nor provide them with water
for living. All of their water supply had to come from the spring run-off of
melting mountain snow. A plague of grasshoppers nearly ruined the first year’s
crop. Seagulls arrived, an answer to prayer, ate the grasshoppers thus saving
enough food to survive the winter. It
took a few years of grueling work to build up provisions and establish a vital
community. As a child I would look from the mountain side upon which I lived
across the valley and feel the potency of that hard work displayed in city
lights and the glistening temple. My heart swelled with pride, I was part of
this. Through my family, I helped build it, this beautiful city.
Of course, it was all
I knew, the story of my church and my ancestors. But it was what I knew. I knew
it and loved it enough to go to church on my own and invest my life in it. Regardless
of what you may thing of the teachings of the Mormon Church I was baptized in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – and I was taught
that I as a Mormon I was also Christian. Mormons have their own version of apocalyptic
Old Testament- twelve tribes of Israel- teaching in the Book of Mormon, but
they embrace the Bible and Jesus too.
My father worked long hours, my mother was weighed down with
parenting and depression, not always fully functioning. I walked myself from our tiny house on
Elizabeth Street
My mother, brothers, and I lived in a basement apartment of this tiny house following her divorce from my father |
to the local Mormon church, the neighborhood ward (somewhere
around 4th South and 11th
East), and went to church. “Primary,” the Tuesday school for children, taught
me stories of Mormon hardship grounded in an effort to live faithfully that
mirrored my own and gave me hope. Hard work and strong faith and I too would
persevere and all would be okay. Those teachings sustained me through my parents’
divorce when I was five, my mother’s prolonged struggle with mental illness,
addiction to Valium, several years where she spent every day in bed and I took
over as the mother of my three younger brothers, an alcoholic father who was
absent more than present, physical abuse of my younger brothers when my parents
decided that beating them was appropriate discipline, psychological abuse for
me as I hid in my closet to avoid the cries of my brothers for whom I felt
helpless and incapable of rising up against my father to protect my brothers.
The teachings of the church gave me hope even as they reinforced my submissive
behavior to my parents. I was to be, always, the good obedient daughter, the
silent caretaker.
In time my mother went cold-turkey and got off the Valium
and became a slightly more high-functioning mother. She continued to have long
periods of depression when she was bed-ridden, but overall she was better. The beating
stopped and discipline became more appropriate, although for my brothers the
damage was done. For me too, I think. I have a low tolerance for abuse of any
kind and a perpetual feeling of helplessness in the face of criticism,
violence, bad behavior of others, and addiction, which is reinforced every time
I try to respond and fail. My education has taught me that this failure is less
about me - I know what a healthy response is - and more about others who cannot
rise to the healthy behavior. Somehow I thought that if I employed appropriate
behavior the outcome would change. Occasionally that is true. Mostly it just
means that I end up feeling vulnerable as I employ healthy responses and
behavior and boundaries resulting in a need to then manage feelings of anxiety.
Being healthy does not always make one look like the good girl, the obedient
daughter. Often it is the opposite. One looks like the bad one, the outspoken, inappropriate
one as a system pushes back to sustain its version of homeostasis. I can only
change me and manage my behavior, I cannot manage others.
The climate of American society today – political and
religious – is stirring me up. I feel an almost constant undercurrent of
anxiety within me. It hums just beneath the surface. It keeps me on edge. I
pray, exercise, meditate, practice yoga,
and meet regularly with a spiritual director in an effort to both be aware of
this agitation and conscious of the “what” and “why” of it. I get it, I
understand it. Nonetheless it is still present. All of the time.
The agitation is fueled because this is an election year,
and much is at stake. It is fueled because once again I am in a church where
anxiety is present but my relationship with the congregation is too new, too
young, to be fully trusted. It’s a time
of testing and growth and deepening understanding. It’s the dynamic of a second
year at the parish.
The agitation is fueled because I am feeling called to be
more authentic, to use my voice, to speak about the issues that concern me.
Sometimes this part of my voice filters into my sermons. An article from the
Alban Institute on “Preaching Ethically, Preaching Your Perspective” by Ronald
D. Sisk addresses this growing edge as I am experiencing it in me and my
preaching voice:
“Transparency in preaching requires ongoing personal effort both to know yourself well and to remain objective about how who you are informs your preaching. One might say that the conversation is between distance and intimacy. You must remain intimately aware of the influences that shape you and at the same time be able to evaluate those influences honestly. You must know yourself well enough to be able to testify how you have responded to those formative influences. An ethical preacher first honestly and unashamedly preaches her own perspective.” [i]
I am working to find that ethical voice that preaches
appropriately from my perspective. Honed by years of work with a therapist and also
with a Spiritual Director, I am very clear about the influences that shape me
and can evaluate them honestly. My voice is influenced by the faith of my
ancestors, their willingness to struggle and work hard to live a life of faith.
That is my legacy, my heritage, and the reality of my life too. My voice is
influenced by the upheaval of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the assassinations of JFK,
Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Regan years, Bush and Clinton, and Obama,
the tea party and the war on women, the empowerment of LGBT people. My voice is
impacted my effort to embrace all human beings as equally created and loved by
God for being exactly who we are, made in God’s image. I believe that. The
Gospel I preach is always: We are made in God’s image, made good to do good.
Therefore we are to love God, love self (be authentic), and love others.
Always. Just as we are. And then from that love, we are being transformed into
that which God is calling us to be. And,
it is not easy. Loving with integrity is always more transformational than a
warm-fuzzy feel good.
The Mormon Church did not teach me that Gospel directly. I
learned it in opposition to the teachings of the church, in opposition to the
teachings of “God’s Chosen.” In opposition to teachings that narrowly define
how one acquires salvation. I’ve come to
realize that many world religions and many branches of Christianity believe
they are “God’s Chosen.’ Mormon’s are not unique in this. Mormonism is just my
experience of it.
Throughout my life as a priest in the Episcopal Church I
have been clear about my experience of the Mormon Church, how the teachings
formed me early on and how the Episcopal Church has opened up my response to those
teachings, giving them life and breadth and giving me enough hope to remain a
Christian.
The agitation that flows beneath the surface of my being is
fueled in part by this year’s general election for a President of the United
States. There is much at stake for women and all people who are not, by an
accident of birth, a white male. As a priest I walk a fine line when I reflect
on politics, and yet I feel that religious leaders must speak, honestly and
with integrity, about our understanding of life, faith, religion and politics. For
me, this level of authenticity, in a climate of anxiety, pushes the paradigm of
“good, obedient daughter” fueling that agitating hum. The make-nice, be an
obedient good girl paradigm is challenged. I speak my peace through the lens of
my faith informed by my life, I strive to be honest and respect the dignity for
all. I try to not slip into name-calling or inverting the bad behavior imposed
by one group and turning it onto another. I try to rise above the fray and yet
speak honestly. It is my ethical duty as
a priest to do this; any other voice would not be authentic, honest, or
grounded in the Gospel.
This comes with a price. Transformation always comes with a
price. The good girl paradigm is being transformed into a new understanding. It
begins by re-framing the answer to the question,” What does it mean to be a
good, obedient daughter?” That new answer is being formed in me. It is a conversation I am having internally
as I think, pray, reflect, and write about the agitating hum. It is also a
conversation that finds its way into my preaching as I test this voice and
learn its growing edges, limitations, and strengths. This conversation within and without of me is
a kind of “homiletical ethics” approach to discerning and preaching. Duke
Divinity School ethicist Stanley Hauerwas talks about ethics as character,
one’s dominant approach to the challenges of life.[ii]
I live at risk of giving into the threat the hum poses and
silencing the voice. Most days I tell myself that the agitating hum will
dissipate as I learn to articulate and trust this voice rising within me. In my heart I know that the only way for me to
really find the peace I yearn for is follow the Spirit’s lead. This means, learning to speak from my heart and mind - trusting that "voice" - must be my dominant approach to
life. It’s a question of ethics, of learning to be as authentic as I can to the
person God is calling me to be. Surely
that too is being a good, obedient daughter – just not a submissive, passive,
silent one hiding her true voice in the closet.
Comments
First, what a powerful story of formation.
Second, I, too, am struggling in this second year of pastoring and this election year, to develop a voice that is both authentically mine and gracious to those who hear things very differently than I do.
My spiritual director last month urged me to try to live the words Open. Receive. Accept. My daughter unwittingly added a fourth: Embrace. And now you have added: Be authentic.
What a set of assignments we have!
What a gift your Mormon background brings.
Blessings on your way.
Powerful and authentic.