Stumbling to Zion

I don’t usually celebrate Easter.   Oh, there’s church and then some chocolate and easter eggs and a dinner I put a little more effort into than other days, but that’s it.   Frankly, I don’t usually have the energy.   Our party season runs from October to mid-March, encompassing eight birthdays, 4 major holidays and various minor ones.   This year, however, I tried to recalibrate. Easter, not Christmas, should be the focal point of the Christian year.   Christmas celebrates Christ’s birth, but Easter marks the culmination of what he was born for.   Without the atonement and resurrection, Christianity has no purpose (1 Corinthinans 15:1-22).   I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some traditions hold that Christ was actually born in the spring, a time of new beginnings and rebirth and hope since the earliest days of civilization.   It also makes sense to associate his birth with the midwinter solstice, when the world turns and the light begins t...

I don't know what happened to my algorithm, but for the last several weeks I've been treated to various articles and videos explaining why members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints aren't Christian. It's not a new accusation--I've run into it multiple times over the years--but it's still frustrating and so very untrue. For those of you who don't know, the church is Non-Trinitarian, meaning that we don't subscribe to the belief that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are simply facets of the same literal being--different stages of spiritual matter, as it were.  Instead, we believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three separate beings united in one purpose: the salvation of all humankind.  I've been ruminating on this post for weeks.  I was ready to spit facts, to illuminate the history and doctrine of the Holy Trinity, to show the concept of the Trinity isn't established so much in the New Test...

The other day the pilot light in the water heater went out.  I carefully followed the directions on the side of the water heater.  It sparked, briefly flared, and went out.  I tried again, and again it poofed out as soon as I released the button.  I tried a third time, even setting a timer to make sure I held it for at least a minute, as recommended.  Yet again, the little blue flame winked out of existence.  For the next fifteen minutes I attempted to light the pilot with increasing desperation while Googling frantically for a fix and shushing the kids impatiently waiting for much-needed showers.  Was it the thermocoupler? A short in the wiring?  A clog in the valve that controlled the gas intake?  And what the hell was a thermocoupler anyway? I turned off the gas, I turned it back on.  I fiddled with the thermocoupler wire and checked the fittings for leaks.  I banged on the thrice-cursed chunk of metal. Nothing worked.  Fina...

 Twice a year the church holds General Conference--two days of talks from the leaders of the church about a myriad of topics.  I never expected to love 10 hours of religious lecture, but I do.  I've struggled to find a framework for my thoughts on the gospel, and watching Conference made me realize that I had a readily available source of topics to find inspiration in.  One of my favorite talks from the most recent session was "Building a Life Resistant to the Adversary" by Jorge F. Zeballos.  In it, he shares a story from his youth when he went to university to become a civil engineer. "[...] I dreamed of the day when I would [learn] to design buildings and other structures that could             then be considered "anti-seismic." "The day finally arrived for my first class on the subject.  The first words from the professor were the following: "You are surely anxious to begin this course and learn how to design anti-seis...

When I was younger my favorite book was The Mists of Avalon .  The characters, many of them strong, independent women who don’t need no man in Dark Age Britain, worshipped the Mother Goddess—a powerful, mysterious deity that embodied every facet of womanhood from virgin to crone.  Even now I get the appeal.  As much as I believe and trust in my Father in Heaven, it is occasionally hard to believe that He knows me and understands me on a deeply personal, female level.  I want to see myself reflected in the divine—or the Divine reflected in me—just as easily as my brothers can. This brings us to one of the beautiful, sacred parts of the gospel: the idea that we have a Mother in Heaven.   Usually the closest that Christianity comes to having a Sacred Feminine is the Virgin Mary, who is largely relegated to the side as a benevolent and compassionate onlooker, an adoring mother to Christ, and the occasional intercessor for us sinners.   The concept of a Goddes...

 Confession: I didn't write last week.  I got overwhelmed trying to decide what to talk about so I just kept putting it off and hoping for inspiration to strike.  Then I started feeling like a failure because I had a self-imposed deadline that I was probably going to miss, and I thought about how some of you might notice and be like "Wow, she only made it two weeks before she started screwing up." And that sounded like inspiration to me.  So here I sit, the morning after my self-imposed deadline, hiding from the kids that I just decided yesterday I wanted to reprioritize, drinking a Pepsi which I decided to give up two weeks ago. Let's talk about perfection. Sometimes the church is accused of having a culture of perfection that is too hard to bear.  That’s true.  Some people place a premium on being perfect—the perfect hair, boobs, kids, house, job, calling, and mommy blog.  Perfection is measured by whether you attend all of your church meetings or ha...