In Which I Discover [the General] You Can't Go Home Again... Or Something
When I was 14, I joined the Mormon Church. Some of you may already know this. I was an adolescent convert, introduced to that religion by a junior high school friend. No one else in my family had ever been a Mormon before, and no one else in my family converted along with me.
"You know, it's funny," my father said on several occasions around that time, "you have all the great scholars who have ever lived, the holy men of every religious persuasion around the world, the renowned philosophers... all those who have spent their entire lives searching for The Truth... and yet you, a 14-year-old girl, have so effortlessly found it."
"Yup," I'd reply, matter-of-factly, completely missing the irony in his tone. Of course it wasn't an accident or anything, for crying out loud. I was one of God's chosen. A Saturday's Warrior! It was obvious to me that I had been led to choose the correct religion because of the way thinking about it made me feel. It just seemed right in my heart of hearts; therefore it was right.
Things-- cultural things-- sights, sounds, experiences, emotions-- all of these which are encountered during one's coming-of-age time indelibly imprint themselves upon us. A newly-hatched duckling naturally starts following after the first living creature it sees; and it is the same with us humans and the things we see, hear, and feel as we pass from childhood to maturity. We love passionately, we bind ourselves loyally, we believe unconditionally.
Linda was my absolute best friend, pretty much from the time I joined the Mormon Church until my early twenties when I turned my attention toward home, hearth, family, and all that tommyrot; and she went off to a mission and away to school. We hung out together inside and outside of church. We commiserated about our lives as average middle-class teenagers. We shared secrets and dished gossip about boyfriends and peers. She stood up in my wedding party and-- only five years later-- accompanied me to my husband's memorial service.
A few years after that, I became an "apostate" in the eyes of the Mormon Church. Ostensibly? Because I was "angry at God" for causing/allowing me to be a widowed twenty-three-year-old mother with two preschool kids. It's an easy assumption for many people, especially those who prefer things in nice tight mental pigeonholes, to make. But really? Trust me, that was absolutely not the reason.
I won't deny that it was a catalyst of some sort. A reality check-- a nice empirical slap to the back of the head, if you will. A "still, small voice" of quite a different sort that said, "Hey, wake the fuck up and do some serious research already, because you've got a couple of little kids here who've got no one but you to teach them what's what..."
While Linda and the other Mormon friends of my youth had gone out of my life, I spoke to a number of Mormon faithful over the course of the ensuing decade or so. To a person, they behaved kindly and respectfully toward me. To a person, they expressed the belief that I left the Mormon fold as a direct result of anger toward God because my husband had died of a malignant brain tumor at age 28, and I could not convince them otherwise.
What, for instance, if my husband had still died... but if I knew of even one case where a young adult or a child with some terminal disease had been prayed for, received a blessing to be healed, and subsequently had actually defied the odds and was cured? It wasn't a case of, "Well, this didn't work for me, so I'm pissed..." It was a case of, "I see now that this doesn't work. 'Full stop,' as the British say."
No one from the Mormon camp understood this. Probably because they didn't want to.
So, um, meanwhile... twenty-five more years pass. I had thrown a pebble of rational inquiry into the center of the pond of my religious experience (Mormonism); and from there, over this span of time, it had rippled continually outward. To various offshoots of that church... to Christianity in general... to Semitic religion in general... to all god-centered religions... finally to Religion itself (as an abstract concept). And my conclusion at every level of this pursuit was the same: These were all ideas of human manufacture. There were no supernatural forces of good and evil playing tug-of-war for my eternal soul. There was no good evidence for anything other than the notion that life events are random, except where human beings have deliberately intervened.
That having been realized, I found myself free to use my own judgment and powers of reason to make decisions about how to lead my life and rear my children. Although I have never subscribed to Wiccan religious beliefs, I found the simple Wiccan rede a helpful guide. "An it harm none, do what ye will." As with most freedoms, it comes with an equivalent load of responsibility-- however, I decided pretty quickly that despite the accompanying din of pompous outrage, narrow minded folks are not actually harmed by seeing or hearing something they dislike.
In the mid-90's I assisted in the founding of what would grow to become a very large organization of former Mormons. Not that it was an obsessive cnsideration, but I always had in the back of my mind from that point forward that if I did ever manage to renew acquaintances with any friends from my distant past who were still faithful Mormons, that would be the metaphorical "elephant in the room," ahead of my atheism, or even my (*gasp*) polyamorous orientation. After half a dozen years, my ex-Mormon organization schismed-- as quickly growing, chaotically emotionally charged gatherings are wont to do-- and my group drew the short straw. We became outcasts among outcasts, and the "winners" were far from charitable. We disbanded after a couple more years, and my ex-Mormon activism became yet another thing of the past.
Over the years, I had periodically googled the names of some of my closer friends from my mid-to-late-teen, rabidly-loyal-Mormon era. I came up empty every time. I felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief at not being able to locate them. On one hand, I was curious about how their lives had turned out in all respects-- education, family, career, and so on... On the other hand I could still recall how I used to regard "lost sheep" when I was still religious and wondered if I would be thought of in that same detached, pitying fashion.
With the skyrocketing popularity of Facebook came an unprecedented number of informal online encounters with all kinds of people from my past. I was contacted by a member of my high school graduating class about our 30-year reunion which she helped organize. I very politely declined her invitation; but wrote her a nice, upbeat, newsy email about what I have been up to during all of this time.
"I'm sorry you're not interested in our reunion," she huffed back. "Kathy and I put a LOT of hard work into it."
So, I suppose getting re-acquainted with your old classmates isn't, you know, actually about getting re-acquainted with your old classmates after all. Instead, it's all about whether or not they show up at this one particular party that you've planned. Ohhhh, now, I see! (*feigned forehead smack*)(*eyeroll*)
Then there was that time four or five years ago, when I managed to locate a couple of people who had been good friends of my first husband's, and with whom I'd had no contact since shortly after his death. These two people are very into music-- specifically indie pop/rock-- and one of them is actually a musician herself. You would think they would be thrilled to hear that the children of their long deceased good friend had grown up to be performing singer-songwriters and that they would at least want to listen to a song or two? Maybe go to a show? Um, nope. *Yawn* Zero fucking interest.
Don't get me wrong-- it wasn't that I expected to become their new best friends or something, or that they'd quit their jobs to be roadies for my kids. But given the full set of circumstances (how close they had been to John; his early, tragic death; yada yada yada) the complete absence of interest in his kids truly floored me. And not only that, but they seemed totally apathetic about sharing anything at all with me about their current lives or hearing anything about mine. The guy and I arranged an online chat and ended up having the most ridiculous, stilted conversation about Mac and PC operating systems you could ever imagine. The woman apparently added me to some pre-existing mailing list she'd had, because I started receiving forwarded spam from her at least twice a week-- and no other communication besides. When I finally became annoyed enough to say, "look-- the entire point of this is that I want to hear about YOU, not the latest stupid computer virus warning or helpful hints for kicking the tail lights out of a car from the inside after a kidnapper has locked you in the trunk, for chrissakes!" she was terribly offended.
So as you can see, I'm a little jaded when it comes to the whole rediscovering old friends thing. What I have going on right now is essentially an increasingly one-sided correspondence with a couple of friends from my teen-Mormon era, both of whom are still actively Mormon. One of whom is my former best friend, Linda, whom I mentioned earlier in this post. We initially reconnected on Facebook several months ago. They have both said they'd made atempts to find me over the years, just as I have tried to locate them. They have both said they were excited to have "found" me after all this time. They have both stated they do not intend to take a judgmental stance toward me as a non-Mormon/atheist.
However, in just a few months' time, things appear to be on the fizzle (at least from their ends). It seems to me as if neither of them is as jazzed about getting reacquainted as they claimed to be, and/or really knows how to go about dealing with the situation as it is.
Or, hey, maybe I just expect too much from people.
I'm just tired of going out of my way in situations like this to lay whatever baggage I may have aside and make an honest and enthusiastic attempt to share my life story and inquire after theirs-- only to get spam forwards (or *chirping crickets*) by way of reply. So I live a scandalous lifestyle by your estimation-- or something. Perhaps you live a sterile and deluded lifestyle by my estimation. So? So what? Can't we both just agree to disagree on that single point and move on?
OK, whinefest over. As y'all were...
"You know, it's funny," my father said on several occasions around that time, "you have all the great scholars who have ever lived, the holy men of every religious persuasion around the world, the renowned philosophers... all those who have spent their entire lives searching for The Truth... and yet you, a 14-year-old girl, have so effortlessly found it."
"Yup," I'd reply, matter-of-factly, completely missing the irony in his tone. Of course it wasn't an accident or anything, for crying out loud. I was one of God's chosen. A Saturday's Warrior! It was obvious to me that I had been led to choose the correct religion because of the way thinking about it made me feel. It just seemed right in my heart of hearts; therefore it was right.
Things-- cultural things-- sights, sounds, experiences, emotions-- all of these which are encountered during one's coming-of-age time indelibly imprint themselves upon us. A newly-hatched duckling naturally starts following after the first living creature it sees; and it is the same with us humans and the things we see, hear, and feel as we pass from childhood to maturity. We love passionately, we bind ourselves loyally, we believe unconditionally.
Linda was my absolute best friend, pretty much from the time I joined the Mormon Church until my early twenties when I turned my attention toward home, hearth, family, and all that tommyrot; and she went off to a mission and away to school. We hung out together inside and outside of church. We commiserated about our lives as average middle-class teenagers. We shared secrets and dished gossip about boyfriends and peers. She stood up in my wedding party and-- only five years later-- accompanied me to my husband's memorial service.
A few years after that, I became an "apostate" in the eyes of the Mormon Church. Ostensibly? Because I was "angry at God" for causing/allowing me to be a widowed twenty-three-year-old mother with two preschool kids. It's an easy assumption for many people, especially those who prefer things in nice tight mental pigeonholes, to make. But really? Trust me, that was absolutely not the reason.
I won't deny that it was a catalyst of some sort. A reality check-- a nice empirical slap to the back of the head, if you will. A "still, small voice" of quite a different sort that said, "Hey, wake the fuck up and do some serious research already, because you've got a couple of little kids here who've got no one but you to teach them what's what..."
While Linda and the other Mormon friends of my youth had gone out of my life, I spoke to a number of Mormon faithful over the course of the ensuing decade or so. To a person, they behaved kindly and respectfully toward me. To a person, they expressed the belief that I left the Mormon fold as a direct result of anger toward God because my husband had died of a malignant brain tumor at age 28, and I could not convince them otherwise.
What, for instance, if my husband had still died... but if I knew of even one case where a young adult or a child with some terminal disease had been prayed for, received a blessing to be healed, and subsequently had actually defied the odds and was cured? It wasn't a case of, "Well, this didn't work for me, so I'm pissed..." It was a case of, "I see now that this doesn't work. 'Full stop,' as the British say."
No one from the Mormon camp understood this. Probably because they didn't want to.
So, um, meanwhile... twenty-five more years pass. I had thrown a pebble of rational inquiry into the center of the pond of my religious experience (Mormonism); and from there, over this span of time, it had rippled continually outward. To various offshoots of that church... to Christianity in general... to Semitic religion in general... to all god-centered religions... finally to Religion itself (as an abstract concept). And my conclusion at every level of this pursuit was the same: These were all ideas of human manufacture. There were no supernatural forces of good and evil playing tug-of-war for my eternal soul. There was no good evidence for anything other than the notion that life events are random, except where human beings have deliberately intervened.
That having been realized, I found myself free to use my own judgment and powers of reason to make decisions about how to lead my life and rear my children. Although I have never subscribed to Wiccan religious beliefs, I found the simple Wiccan rede a helpful guide. "An it harm none, do what ye will." As with most freedoms, it comes with an equivalent load of responsibility-- however, I decided pretty quickly that despite the accompanying din of pompous outrage, narrow minded folks are not actually harmed by seeing or hearing something they dislike.
In the mid-90's I assisted in the founding of what would grow to become a very large organization of former Mormons. Not that it was an obsessive cnsideration, but I always had in the back of my mind from that point forward that if I did ever manage to renew acquaintances with any friends from my distant past who were still faithful Mormons, that would be the metaphorical "elephant in the room," ahead of my atheism, or even my (*gasp*) polyamorous orientation. After half a dozen years, my ex-Mormon organization schismed-- as quickly growing, chaotically emotionally charged gatherings are wont to do-- and my group drew the short straw. We became outcasts among outcasts, and the "winners" were far from charitable. We disbanded after a couple more years, and my ex-Mormon activism became yet another thing of the past.
Over the years, I had periodically googled the names of some of my closer friends from my mid-to-late-teen, rabidly-loyal-Mormon era. I came up empty every time. I felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief at not being able to locate them. On one hand, I was curious about how their lives had turned out in all respects-- education, family, career, and so on... On the other hand I could still recall how I used to regard "lost sheep" when I was still religious and wondered if I would be thought of in that same detached, pitying fashion.
With the skyrocketing popularity of Facebook came an unprecedented number of informal online encounters with all kinds of people from my past. I was contacted by a member of my high school graduating class about our 30-year reunion which she helped organize. I very politely declined her invitation; but wrote her a nice, upbeat, newsy email about what I have been up to during all of this time.
"I'm sorry you're not interested in our reunion," she huffed back. "Kathy and I put a LOT of hard work into it."
So, I suppose getting re-acquainted with your old classmates isn't, you know, actually about getting re-acquainted with your old classmates after all. Instead, it's all about whether or not they show up at this one particular party that you've planned. Ohhhh, now, I see! (*feigned forehead smack*)(*eyeroll*)
Then there was that time four or five years ago, when I managed to locate a couple of people who had been good friends of my first husband's, and with whom I'd had no contact since shortly after his death. These two people are very into music-- specifically indie pop/rock-- and one of them is actually a musician herself. You would think they would be thrilled to hear that the children of their long deceased good friend had grown up to be performing singer-songwriters and that they would at least want to listen to a song or two? Maybe go to a show? Um, nope. *Yawn* Zero fucking interest.
Don't get me wrong-- it wasn't that I expected to become their new best friends or something, or that they'd quit their jobs to be roadies for my kids. But given the full set of circumstances (how close they had been to John; his early, tragic death; yada yada yada) the complete absence of interest in his kids truly floored me. And not only that, but they seemed totally apathetic about sharing anything at all with me about their current lives or hearing anything about mine. The guy and I arranged an online chat and ended up having the most ridiculous, stilted conversation about Mac and PC operating systems you could ever imagine. The woman apparently added me to some pre-existing mailing list she'd had, because I started receiving forwarded spam from her at least twice a week-- and no other communication besides. When I finally became annoyed enough to say, "look-- the entire point of this is that I want to hear about YOU, not the latest stupid computer virus warning or helpful hints for kicking the tail lights out of a car from the inside after a kidnapper has locked you in the trunk, for chrissakes!" she was terribly offended.
So as you can see, I'm a little jaded when it comes to the whole rediscovering old friends thing. What I have going on right now is essentially an increasingly one-sided correspondence with a couple of friends from my teen-Mormon era, both of whom are still actively Mormon. One of whom is my former best friend, Linda, whom I mentioned earlier in this post. We initially reconnected on Facebook several months ago. They have both said they'd made atempts to find me over the years, just as I have tried to locate them. They have both said they were excited to have "found" me after all this time. They have both stated they do not intend to take a judgmental stance toward me as a non-Mormon/atheist.
However, in just a few months' time, things appear to be on the fizzle (at least from their ends). It seems to me as if neither of them is as jazzed about getting reacquainted as they claimed to be, and/or really knows how to go about dealing with the situation as it is.
Or, hey, maybe I just expect too much from people.
I'm just tired of going out of my way in situations like this to lay whatever baggage I may have aside and make an honest and enthusiastic attempt to share my life story and inquire after theirs-- only to get spam forwards (or *chirping crickets*) by way of reply. So I live a scandalous lifestyle by your estimation-- or something. Perhaps you live a sterile and deluded lifestyle by my estimation. So? So what? Can't we both just agree to disagree on that single point and move on?
OK, whinefest over. As y'all were...