Seeking Authentic Voice

Although I moved fifty years ago, this summer I will return to the city of my birth, where I will stay for three weeks. I’ve come back many times, but this will be the longest visit I’ve ever made.  No doubt the contrast of how I began my life and how I live it now will be prominent in my thoughts. True, I think about this every time I return to Salt Lake City. However this summer, when the Episcopal Church holds its triennial General Convention in Salt Lake City, the past and the present will merge in new ways. More specifically, on Sunday, June 28, when the Episcopal Women’s Caucus hosts its ever popular General Convention breakfast, I will celebrate my fifteenth anniversary of ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. I’ve come a long way from the little Mormon girl I was when my family moved away in 1966. My mother loved to tell the story of my birth. On February 14, 1957, she walked outside on a snowy night, hoping to induce labor, yearning for her ...

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 Lan...