Suicides and "The Policy"

For those of you who aren't aware, the LDS church instituted a policy regarding LGBT families back in November. One of the major criticisms of this policy is it could potentially increase the suicide rate of LGBT Mormons. And recently, some numbers have been thrown around about the number of LGBT Mormon suicides since the policy was instituted.  I haven't fact-checked these, but as of January 23, the numbers I've seen were around 32.

I don't understand the policy, and I don't particularly want to defend it, but I do believe in statistics. The number of suicides alone is not enough to say that the policy has caused any change in suicidal behavior. We need to compare to the number of LGBT Mormons who would have done the same if there were no new policy announced.

We can't actually know what would have happened, but we can estimate it.  Ideally, we'd have data on LDS LGBT suicides rates, but I couldn't find anything quantitative.  So let's assume that most of these cases are Americans, and the average suicide rate in the US is 0.0211% per year, or 0.00451% of the population in the same 78 day period. The church reports around 6,466,267 members in the United States. This means that, if Mormons are typical in their suicide rate (which they seem not to be), there should be around 285 Mormon suicides in that same time period. Around 3.4% of the adult population identify as LGBT, so that takes the estimate down to about 10 suicides.

All these numbers come from Wikipedia, so I'm using questionable sources, but I didn't want to put too much time into this. But with this very loose estimate of suicide rate, it seems there would be a tragic increase—a 220% increase.  That seems a little too large to be believable to me.

We could mirror stats on Jewish LGBT youth to help account for the fact that LGBT folks in religious communities are more likely to attempt suicide.  Along these lines, if we assume there are 219,853 LGBT Mormons and that they are four times more likely to commit suicide than national average, that would put our estimate closer to 40 suicides in the same time range—this would mean that there was actually a decrease in the suicide rate since the policy was enacted.  This may not be as surprising as it sounds, since there was significant backlash against the policy, so LGBT Mormons may have actually received a surge of support from friends and family.

The point I'm trying to make is that it is very, very difficult to make any causal attributions in this case (or in general).  Suicide is incredibly sad regardless of cause, and I also mourn that any person could feel rejected by their religion.  We must take steps to help prevent suicide, and we must be loving and welcoming members of our respective communities.  But part of knowing what steps to take is to get real data on what's happening, not just jumping to the worst conclusions.  Big changes require strong evidence.  And probably lots of hugs in the meanwhile.

LDS Public Affairs

This past Sunday, I received and accepted a new calling: Secretary to the (horrible acronym warning) NYMMPAC, which stands for New York Metro Multistake Public Affairs Council.  It covers 3 Coordinating Councils, or 13 Stakes and 131 units.

Generally speaking, the idea of church public affairs makes me a little queasy.  In an ideal world, the good works of the church should speak for themselves and we should have no need to influence public opinion of us.  That said, I think the public affairs groups aren't there solely to bring about good press—the director emphasized to me that "public affairs" is really an unfortunate name, since there's much more to it than that.  But, prior to this, my perception of Public Affairs was the folks who force members to wear yellow Helping Hands vests and do photographed service activities.  Or, more recently, PA was represented by the token woman that introduced the Apostles for the press release on religious freedom.

So why did I accept the calling?  Part of it was certainly ego.  But another big part of why I accepted is that I was recommended for the position because of my strong opinions.  This means that they knew what they were getting, and I had license to be myself.  I also warned them that I have a blog.

I have a friend at church who is on the NYMMPAC, and she and I have had regular hallway discussions on church issues (in lieu of attending Sunday School).  She acknowledges that some aspects of Public Affairs and popular LDS culture need to be improved, and has been working to make things better.  The idealistic optimist in me says: now I can be a part of that effort!

While I do need to keep some things confidential, I hope to keep a record of some of my public affairs experiences, to improve transparency, define the role of public affairs a little more concretely, and to prevent me from drinking too much cultural kool-aid.

Update: Since writing this post, lots of people have told me about great PA experiences, like:

• Partnering with Feed Ohio
• LGBT outreach
• interfaith events, including a ongoing blood-drive that alternates between churches
• partnering with other local nonprofits through JustServe

Folks have also pointed out that PA is one of the few areas in the church hierarchy where women have impactful roles.  Now I'm feeling pumped.

meaningful service

Within my church community, we frequently emphasize service as a good thing that we should seek perform for others.  As such, we often organize service activities, in which we come together as a community to perform larger scale service that we might not otherwise be able to do as individuals. While I think this is a great idea, I think that there's one major aspect that can often be improved.  More on that soon.

There are roughly four objectives in performing service:

• Help  This is the most important objective: to fill the needs of others.  Needs can range from the physical, like hunger, to social needs, like loneliness.
• Feed the Fire  Individuals need to feel compassion for others; part of the goal of service is to kindle that desire in individuals so that they will be better people in their daily lives.
• Community building  Whether individuals are working side by side in an activity or one person is helping another, service forges connections within a community.
• Be an example  Here, the goal is to inspire people outside our community, either by welcoming them to join us or reminding them to do good independently.

The last objective is difficult in many contexts because it often gets conflated with getting good press, which is not the goal.  If we want to take pictures for our own memories, that's fine, but taking picture for the explicit purpose of handing them to a reporter seems disingenuous.  When we're trying to be an example, we should always be inclusive, which is to say, we should never isolate the people we are talking to. We should try to make them feel like they were there with us so that next time maybe they will be.

What I really want to talk about is the first objective: actually helping people.  We have a responsibility to be effective in our choices of service.  We need to ask ourselves: what are real needs? and not what is easy to do in the hour we have on Wednesday night with the youth?  Certainly we aren't always ready to ask these questions—there are weeks when easy is all I can handle.  When we have extra time and energy, however, this is where we should put the effort.

What are common service projects?

• tie the ends of felt quilts
• local disaster relief (e.g. hurricane cleanup)
• writing letters to missionaries
• yard work / housecleaning for members
• visiting with seniors or disabled individuals
• baking things for people
• making sanitation or relief kits

Take an honest look at the list.  Which of these have you done?  What has been your mindset for each one?  What mindset has the activity encouraged?  The winners for impact are local disaster relief and visiting with seniors or disabled individuals; not coincidentally, they almost always are accompanied with a sincere charitable mindset.  Other tasks are more about the secondary objectives.  When writing generic one-time letters to missionaries that you don't really know, who is really benefiting?  What about tying the ends of piece of felt that's just as effective as a blanket without your effort? Often it's more about performing the service than the actual impact of the service itself.

What else can we do that's effective?

• We can  develop long lasting relationships with lonely or outlier individuals. These are not just one-time visits.  My brother used to go play chess with a retired man in our neighborhood; I don't think either of them even thought of it as service, but it brought effortless joy to both sides.  This could be a simple as going to watch a fun TV show with someone.
• Fundraising  I think we shrink away from fundraising too much; there are a lot of fun, creative ways to fundraise, especially if we reach outside the church community.  Dessert auctions, hunger banquets, craft bazaars, yard sales, by-donation dancing lessons—the possibilities are endless.  If the proceeds go to an effective charity, this seems like a great option.
• Tutoring or reading to underprivileged kids.  I was a reading buddy at an old workplace which was walking distance from an elementary school with lots of low-income ESL students. A group of us would go over and read to the kids and play word games like hangman.  It was fun, easy, and effective.  Some kids just aren't getting enough individual attention to learn as best they can, and you can help.

What's the take home message?  We need to think about the people we're trying to serve first: what are real needs that exist in the world?  Maybe we need to do more research, or maybe we just need to think outside of our usual sphere of influence.  Regardless, we need to stop worrying as much about the secondary objectives.  You should know that something is wrong when you have the idea for a service project and then ask: so who could we give this quilt to?  All of the objectives I've listed are good; it's just a question of good vs. better.  

looking outward

There's been a lot of discussion in the wake of potential Mormon activist excommunications. There are those that defend Kate Kelly and John Dehlin, and there are those that defend the LDS church.  And then there are the few that abstain from defending, advocating both love and faith without judgement.  In my eagerness to have a well-crafted opinion on everything, sometimes I forget that it's not my place.  As my cousin pointed out, we can't possibly know the nuances of the situation.  We should not forget that this is a story about individuals, albeit in the context of various causes.  It makes me wonder if a variant of the Ring Theory of Kvetching needs to be applied here.

Complaint, judgement, discussion, and action all have their places, but it's hard to define their boundaries.  In the church context, they help us work toward things like gender equality and finding a place for alternative families.  But, I must remind myself: these are not the biggest issues in the world, nor in the church.  In some ways they're indulgent. They're centered around my feelings and experiences.  It's easy to see what's wrong and suggest changes: I'm proposing changes to my world to make life better for me and people like me.

We need to work on the things close to home in order to be more functional people.  If I'm struggling with mental health issues, I may not be able to focus on my family's needs.  If my family is having problems, I'm probably not going to prioritize my community.  If I don't have a strong support network, I may not be able to think about global issues. That's normal.  Certainly we must take time to heal and strengthen ourselves, our families, and our communities at each stage before we can look outward, but that should be our goal; we should try to move our thoughts and actions to be as far out on the ring of influence as possible.

I'm lucky enough to feel that there are people out there that need the time and attention much more than I do. That doesn't mean that the gender and social issues that impact me aren't important—they certainly are—but it does mean that I should probably spend proportionally less time and effort on them.  For instance, instead of talking about gender policies in the church, we could discuss how to make sure that all the children of the church are well-nourished.  Or we could move past the church to talk about how many people need to be dewormed.

It's harder to fuel discussion about these things because it's further from home.  What can I possibly say that's helpful?  Many people have the perspective that they can just give money as they feel motivated and then go back to talking about their own hot issues.  (Or they waste money on inefficient service projects to feel good.)  But what if we put as much time and effort into these issues as we have to ordaining women?  What is the church going to say?  No, we can't.  We need to build malls and support legislation on traditional marriage.  Probably not; I think they would actually listen, and it'd be really nice for the Relief Society to live up to its name more fully.

I'm blessed right now with a phase of life where I can look outward.  I don't expect everyone to be there, and I certainly won't be able to stay there continually, but I think everyone should want to be there.  I gave a talk at church recently that ended with the following idea.

Es fácil pasarse el tiempo trabajando en las cosas pequeñas, pero eso es como recoger granos de arena una a una para despejar el camino. Les recomiendo que en vez de eso, encuentren el obstáculo más grande [...] y deshágase de él.

Roughly translated: It's easy to spend our time working on the little things, but that's like picking up grains of sand one by one to clear the road. I recommend that instead, we find the biggest obstacle and dispose of it.  There, I was talking about becoming a better person, but it applies to activism as well.  This means thinking beyond ourselves, and thinking beyond the church.

So, what's the biggest obstacle on the road to a better world?

Excommunication of Mormon Activists

Two prominent Mormons are facing the possibility of excommunication.

I'm saddened, but not terribly surprised.  Kate Kelly, one of the members facing church discipline, is the founder of Ordain Women.  While I'd love to see women get ordained, either to the traditional patriarchal priesthood or to a separate matriarchal one, there's a huge problem with Ordain Women: it seeks female ordination regardless of God's will.

I'm happy advocating for the Prophet to seek answers on questions and for the Apostles to consider these issues, but at the end of the day, they lead the church.  No matter how I feel about the issue personally, I cannot receive revelation for the entire church. Promoting a substantial change unconditionally, like ordaining women, is not respecting the authority of the Prophet to speak for God.  We can suggest, discuss, and critique, but we must respect that authority, or else the entire premise of the church collapses.

The irony is that it's exactly this Priesthood authority that the Ordain Women movement seeks.  I think the request is reasonable, and worth, say, a church-wide fast.  It's a really important issue, and deserving of attention, but it cannot be demanded.  We need to have faith in our leaders, not just in the religious sense, but also in a human sense.  We need to hope that they're trying their best and want to guide us to the more perfect world we seek.

The biggest problem is that even the name of Ordain Women is a demand, or could be framed as such.  The start of their mission statement:

The fundamental tenets of Mormonism support gender equality: God is male and female, father and mother, and all of us can progress to be like them someday. Priesthood, we are taught, is essential to this process. Ordain Women believes women must be ordained in order for our faith to reflect the equity and expansiveness of these teachings.

Perhaps I am too docile, but I think a softer approach would be more impactful. I believe that the earthly ordination of women could be very good, but I do not believe it is the only way to work towards gender equality, nor do I believe that it is unquestionably God's will.

Having worked in the temple and performed priesthood ordinances (the only place where in our church women do), I can say that those experiences are certainly special.  I can say that we need more female leadership and that there are some cultural practices that should be changed.  But while I can say what I think and feel, I must acknowledge that in my limited scope of experience, I cannot say what is right for the whole church.

So, I'm not surprised that Kate Kelly is facing excommunication; even from my sympathetic perspective, I feel that the Ordain Women movement is too sure of its initiatives, as any movement needs to be.  I'm saddened that the church didn't use this as an opportunity to discuss the issues, and took a more cowardly approach, but I hope that those involved on all sides can take the time to be introspective rather than defensive so that they can take advantage of the true purpose of church disciplinary counsels: to help us acknowledge our failings and become better people.

I've focused on Kate Kelly and Ordain Women, because I know less about John Dehlin and his Mormon Stories Podcasts.  I'm imagining that the "cause for concern" in his case is LGBT rights, but I haven't researched it thoroughly.

I am hoping that this results in a fruitful exchange between the church and its more liberal members about how to express concerns and suggest ideas.  Currently, our only recourse is to either limit ourselves to local impact or go incredibly public online.  There needs to be a way to faithfully express concerns in a way that it doesn't get stuck either at a local level or in a traffic jam to the top.

forgiving vs. condoning

Elder Holland's General Conference talk in April struck me with the following passage.

At the zenith of His mortal ministry, Jesus said, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” [John 15:12] To make certain they understood exactly what kind of love that was, He said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” [John 14:15] and “whosoever … shall break one of [the] least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be … the least in the kingdom of heaven.” [Matthew 5:19]  Christlike love is the greatest need we have on this planet in part because righteousness was always supposed to accompany it. So if love is to be our watchword, as it must be, then by the word of Him who is love personified, we must forsake transgression and any hint of advocacy for it in others.  Jesus clearly understood what many in our modern culture seem to forget: that there is a crucial difference between the commandment to forgive sin (which He had an infinite capacity to do) and the warning against condoning it (which He never ever did even once).

I have often supported or encouraged in others things that I would not accept for myself. Sometimes I feel like this is okay, and sometimes it falls into "condoning sin."

Let's start with a softball example: pierced ears. Paul taught that the body is a temple (among lots of other crazy stuff), and the LDS church has discouraged piercings and tattoos, with the exception that it's okay for women to have one earring in each ear.  I don't have any piercings, nor do I want any, but I have no problem buying earrings for people, or complimenting earrings.  Honestly, I think non-traditional piercings and tattoos can also be very tasteful.  Simply put, I'm condoning things that I wouldn't accept for myself.  But the things I'm condoning aren't really a sin, I just have a weird thing against body modification for myself.  It's one of the thing I'm compulsive about: I can't even draw on myself with pen and not be scrubbing it off within a few minutes.

Alright, so the easy stuff is over; let's move right on over to the difficult and sensitive issues: gay marriage and sex outside of marriage.  I'm supportive of gay marriage rights. I'm also supportive of my friends who have sex outside of marriage.  But should I be?  I have no idea.  I don't really know what is sinful and what isn't—this is the crux of the problem.  On some level I just don't care about the details of personal choices my friends are making.  Mostly, I don't want them to feel judged constantly whenever they talk about their partner and I want to keep being their friends.  If I don't say anything supportive, they might very well presume I'm stewing in religious judgement, which I'm not.  For me, it really is as simple as the pierced ears example: I'm not going to do it myself, but I think other people can be happy with different choices.

For less complicated issues, I might think that people could be happier with alternative choices.  If they asked my advice, I'd probably guide them according to my personal morals.  But on socially charged topics, it's really hard to disentangle the "sin" from the "sinner."  If a dear friend is gay, how can you possibly tell them in love that you disapprove of them having any kind of romantic relationship?  Are you just supposed to let it sit there awkwardly?

I can't forgive friends for certain things (like being gay) because there is nothing to forgive.  They haven't wronged me in any way and it's not my place to pass judgement. For this same reason I cannot condone or condemn their actions.  I trust people to choose the best path for themselves.  I will give advice when asked and will try to be supportive of them as individuals.  If I am guilty of condoning sin, it is because I think everyone should have the choice to determine for themselves what qualifies as sin.  I'm certainly still figuring it out for myself.

While I seem to be dismissing Elder Holland's remarks, I still am rolling them around in my mind and heart.  In particular, there are certainly times that I fake approval of other people's choices (trivial or otherwise) because I'm a people-pleaser.  The real thing that I've internalized from his comments is to stop that behavior; I should just be honest about my reactions to things.  If I don't like the way that skirt looks, I shouldn't say I do and encourage my friend to buy it because she likes it.  If I don't think a particular couple should move in together, I shouldn't fake my support because I'm worried that they'll think I'm being judgmental otherwise.  I should have confidence in my opinions and stop trying to say what other people want to hear.

needing a mother and a father

While it feels like gay marriage is well accepted by most American society, official LDS doctrine does not tolerate it.  A common argument against gay marriage is that having both a mother and a father is best for children; they "need" one parent of each gender.  If that's true, then mothers and fathers play truly different parts, and that gender roles are a real and important aspect to the parenting triangle.

Obviously, the LDS church is pro-gender roles, advocating them in teaching children and in the general structure of the family.  But the roles are not well defined: in the eight-thousand-plus word chapter on teaching gender roles, roles are defined as mother/wife and father/husband, and then implied elsewhere along the lines of "each child is learning how to be male or female and about what being male or female means about their relationships with others."  Nur?

In the family proclamation, we're given a sliver of insight as to what they actually mean: men are responsible for providing and presiding and women are primarily to nurture, but that men and women should be equal partners as parents.  This has been picked apart from every perspective, but it's still pretty opaque.

The message I'm getting is that gender identity is important, even if we really have no idea what accompanies gender.  And this brings me back to my original point: if gender defines very little about a person's personality and parenting style, then why is having both genders represented in parents important?

Admittedly, it would be harder for a girl to have two male parents, or vice versa, because there would be social and biological questions that may be more difficult for an opposite-gender parent to answer. Harder, but certainly not impossible.

The irony here is that in the LDS church, we only really have father figures, or male spiritual role models: Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  There are stories about more men and women, but we're supposed to become like these two figures.  We're not supposed to be like Mary the mother of Christ.  I mean, we are, but only in as much as she is like Christ.  And we're not supposed to try to be like the only-whispered-about Heavenly Mother, since we have no idea what to emulate.

You can't have it both ways.  Either you need both parents, especially for spiritual guidance, or else gender in parents doesn't matter.  Either we have a Heavenly Mother and Her role is clearly defined (preferably with an accompanying Matriarchal Priesthood), or gay marriage is okay.  Which one is it?

An addendum: I didn't talk about single parenting, which is another situation that the LDS church doesn't handle as well as it could.  No matter the doctrine of the church, alternative family structures need to be more welcome, which is a job for the members and not the hierarchy.

switching places

As a thought experiment, consider a world in which the roles of religion and science are switched.  One would ascribe to a particular branch of science the way we currently connect ourselves with religious sects, often with a binary attitude:
"I used to be a laser physicist, but now I'm a non-denominational physicist."
"I'm a hydrologist, but I grew up as an astronomer and converted in college."

"I know that Mathematics is True."
"Everything Neuroscience taught me was a lie."

Similarly, we would explore religion in the context of all the other religions:
"I really want to major in Christianity, but I know that I need to study Judaism first."
"I'm a Buddhist, but I geek out about Hinduism."
"I'm really struggling with this Lutheran problem.  Do you know any books on Protestantism that could help?"

Some newly established or more social-science-y disciplines might be regarded as cults. We already see things like psychology being dismissed as not a "real science."  As an aside, did you know that Genetics is younger than Mormonism?  Take a look at this Google N-gram: (The scientology/neuroscience and Unitarianism/Zoology ones are interesting too.)

So what can religion learn from science?  That each approach is a different perspective of the divine to be respected and explored, and understanding other disciplines or denominations only improve the comprehension of your more narrow path.  And what about the other way around?  Science can learn that no matter what the topic, there are emotional biases in humans based on what is familiar to them. Ironically, folks get very passionate about logic. This human side needs to be remembered as not all knowledge comes from books.

Answering the Temple Recommend Interview Questions, Part 2

Originally posted at Zelophehad’s Daughters.

This is a post in a series in which I give my personal, longwinded and rambling answers to each LDS temple question, since the actual interviews do not allow for elaborate discussion. The first post is here. 

It's taken me a while to get to this second post, in part because I didn't like part of my answer to the last one.  I wrote that I was most comfortable praying to a male or joint-gender god due to my upbringing, and I'm happy to report that I am now equally comfortable praying to Heavenly Mother as I am to Heavenly Father.  I've even had one of my Teyve-style (out loud, casual) prayers to/with her in the celestial room, which, by the way, is my all-time favorite part of serving in the temple—getting the room completely to yourself.

The other reason I've been putting this off is because I wrote an answer to the second question a while ago, and was thoroughly unsatisfied with it.  It wasn't that I was inarticulate (nothing can help me there, save an editor), but that I didn't like what I had to say.  I've been so focused on God in general and also with particular issues with the LDS Church that I had neglected the more middle-ground of Christianity.  Thus, I did some soul-searching, found some peace, and am now ready to answer #2.

Question 2: Do you have a testimony of the Atonement of Christ and of His role as Savior and Redeemer?

When I was a little girl, at some point my dad mentioned how to cast out demons in the name of Jesus Christ, and that really stuck with me.  I used it to dispel the scary monsters of my imagination: skeletons reaching out from under the bed, creatures in the mirror, and the like.  (One of the Poltergeist films played a role in some of this.) To this day I still think of Christ's name as something I can use in a practical, physical way.

I also attempt to use the ordinance of the Sacrament in a practical way; I have never prayed directly about the Atonement, but I have prayed to use the Atonement.  I try to identify the things I might have done hurt people accidentally—these are the things that you can't really apologize for because too much time has passed, it's too trivial, or they might not have been offended at all, in which case you certainly don't want to point out how what you said could have been offensive.  I mull these over, apologize to God, and think of how I could be better.  I also meditate during the Sacrament, trying to focus on God's love for us.  When I'm being good, that is.  Sometimes I just make faces at kids from the back row.

One thing that I know I can do, but don't engage as often as I should, is using the Atonement to help with negative emotions not necessarily associated with sin.  Guilt and anger can be caused by something you've done wrong, but they can also be associated with other things.  One might feel guilty for not doing something good because they chose to do something better.  One might feel angry because they were wronged.  Fear, sorrow, stress, doubt, and jealousy are other emotions we might want to rid from ourselves.  I view praying for relief from any of these as engaging Christ's Atonement to lift our burdens.  The few times I've prayed in this way, I felt gentle, subtle comfort.

The problem with using the Atonement like this is that we have to be very self-aware, and when we are sufficiently self-aware to use the Atonement, we're also usually aware enough to use other mechanisms, like talking with friends or therapists, or simply doing something about our emotion, like working to relive stress.

I am by no means perfect, and I don't really know how I would behave in the presence of God.  I might fall to the floor, cover my head, and cry for mercy.  I might try to argue the reasons for my decisions, claiming I did the best I could.  I might arrogantly assume that I've passed whatever test and I should be rewarded without any more thought.  I might stand tall, but bow my head, take responsibility for my misdeeds, and submit to God's will.

All of these possible scenarios reveal different attitudes I have toward the Atonement. Sometimes I know I've messed up and I know that I would need some kind of saving grace to return to God. Sometimes I think my imperfect actions are justified. Sometimes I think that imperfection is just part of mortality and that as long is we make it to a certain point we should be fine. Sometimes I feel like I want to take the full responsibility for my actions.

For I while I wondered if the Atonement of Christ is strictly necessary in order to repent from sins. The definition of sin isn't always clear to me either—I usually define actions as sinful or not retroactively based on the guilt, etc. I feel about taking them.  For things I haven't done yet, I imagine how I would feel.  With this in mind, I've come to define sin as something that keeps me away from God such that I need the Atonement in order to be worthy to re-enter God's presence.  It's kind of tautological, I know, but the point is that there are some actions that are sinful in this sense, making the Atonement necessary.

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a good man and with inspiring teachings. I believe it is possible that he acted as a Christ in performed some kind of atoning sacrifice for each individual who has ever and will ever live.  I believe it is possible that I personally need to use an atonement of this kind in order to be with God, therefore saving and redeeming me. I believe that the concept of Christ is powerful; it is humbling to think that I must depend on another in order to become better or even perfected.

I am comfortable sharing my experiences and feelings with others, but again, I prefer to share with those who are anxious to hear.  The only real knowledge I have is that utilizing the concept of Christ's Atonement has made me a better person, and that I have felt peace in doing so.

So is that a yes to the original question?  I think so.  Do I still have a hard time being dependent on a third party for my salvation?  Yes; I want to be able to do it myself, but I'm becoming more okay with it, since it restores much needed mercy while maintaining justice.  I take comfort in the fact that Christ will teach us to be perfect, to eventually be able to stand on our own, but that we can't get there instantaneously and we can't get there alone.  Even still, I can't help but think: perhaps the goal isn't to stand alone, but to stand among the Gods, all leaning on each other.  If that's the case, my independent self would just have to get over it.

Answering the Temple Recommend Interview Questions, Part 1

Originally posted at Zelophehad’s Daughters.

The LDS temple interview is an interesting process to me. We’re expected to give relatively short answers to fifteen questions, but I feel like some of them require more elaborate answers. For the sake of the interviewers, I spare them the ten-hour monologue that would be required to give them the full picture of my faith. While I’ve thought through each of the fifteen questions, I’ve wanted to record a written answer to each of them. This is the first post in a series in which I will answer each with varying degrees of verbosity.

Question 1: Do you have faith in and a testimony of God the Eternal Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost?

I have faith in God; my most honest prayers are Teyve-style. I do not know if God is male, female, both, or neither, but I’ve prayed to each one. Because of my upbringing, praying to a male or joint-gender god (Heavenly Mother and Father) is most comfortable for me. More fundamentally, I do not know that God exists, but I have had experiences that feel like they come from a divine source. I have prayed particularly about the existence and nature of deity, and received ambiguous (but comforting) experiences that allow my otherwise hyper-rational self to have faith in God, without firm knowledge of his/her/its existence or nature. I don’t know if God is embodied, but I find that perfectly reasonable, given that I hope for an embodied afterlife. I am comfortable talking about my faith in God and its complexities (as made obvious by this post), and consider that to qualify as a testimony.

My faith in Jesus Christ is inherently tied to my understanding of the Atonement, so I’ll leave most of my discussion of that for the next post. I believe that Jesus lived as a real person, and taught the principles, if not the same parables, that are recorded in the gospels. I believe that it’s possible that he is the son of God as we are all children of God, but that he played the role of Savior, advocating on our behalves and acting in some sort of pre- and post-mortal leadership role. While my faith in God is stronger than my faith in a divine Jesus Christ (the former is intrinsically more general), I would be comfortable explaining the gospel of Christ and testifying of the role it has played in my life.

While the Holy Ghost is arguably the member of the Godhead with whom we are in most direct contact, I feel that I know the least about him/her/it. The Holy Ghost could have some connection to Heavenly Mother, but my hunch is that she is too important to play spiritual courier and instead conveys her love and messages to us through the Holy Ghost, as does Heavenly Father. I’ve never prayed about the Holy Ghost–I think of it more as a medium for spiritual communication than something I need to ask God about. It’s a little like calling your folks up and asking, “Can you tell me that this phone is working?” after you’ve asked “Are you there?” Thus, my faith in and testimony of the Holy Ghost is very much wrapped up in my faith in God, as I think it’s supposed to be.

For doctrine relating to the Godhead or anything else, I strongly prefer to keep any of my now rare proclamations of spiritual witness or testimony (of this or any doctrine) to audiences eager to hear such affirmations. On the other hand, I am much more comfortable talking about my pragmatic involvement in the LDS church.

In the end, my simple answer to this question is “Yes,” sparing the poor interviewers my long-windedness every two years–they probably would rather be home with their kids.

pinball machine God

Belief in deity is obviously a complicated thing. You could pick any two aspects of belief and make a pretty diagram, kind of like I have on the right, which depicts the magnitude and method of divine involvement.

The two dichotomies are familiar: Atheism versus the broad sense of Theism, and Deism vs. the narrow sense of Theism.  The reason I want to present the dichotomies this way is so that I can propose a new analogy: the pinball machine God.

Deists love their watchmaker God analogy.  This lovely little world is created with awesome science, and the awesomeness of science proves that God is.  Some deists might edge up the side of the side of the triangle a little.

On the other hand, narrow-definition theists might be offended at the puppeteer analogy.  They'd also probably be offended that I classified Deism as having the same magnitude of involvement.  But look at it this way: you construct and elaborate timing mechanism, flick the switch to place your bomb via an intelligent robot you designed, and then go out and get a cup of coffee, return a library book, and sit at a cafe overlooking a famous river of your choice.  As you're hailing the waiter for the check, the bomb explodes a hundred miles off, destroying your evil arch-nemesis' secret lab.

OR, you fight a half dozen lackeys at the lab yourself, using your super-awesome martial arts moves, place the bomb by hand, light it with a match, and run out, just in time to feel the heat of the explosion on your back as you roll safely onto the grass.

Either way, you still blew up the place; it's just an issue of method.

And even though it doesn't really matter which method God uses, I'd now like to explain my idea of a pinball machine God, which sits pretty close to the center of the triangle.  God constructs this elaborate machine for us: the pinball machine we call Earth.  There are an uncountably many number of targets, bumpers, balls, and flippers.  Maybe we're the balls, but God is certainly the player.  The coin is inserted, and God mutters under her breath: let there be light.  And the machine comes to life.

See, the the pinball machine world, there's a lot of factors.  Every ball starts with a unique trajectory, maybe some special dents and scuffs too, or perhaps they pick them up on the way.  Maybe they have different masses, radii, and densities.  They bounce around making and missing targets, ricocheting off of bumpers and running into each other.  An then, every once in a while: fwip!  They're hit by a flipper.  Maybe some balls are flipped all the time, and maybe some balls are basically never flipped.

The core of the analogy is this: it may be that God constructs the world and influences it certain ways, but that there's a good amount of randomness inherent in the system.  Random here doesn't mean that God doesn't know about or account for problems or peculiarities, but that God can't do too much about it anymore because that's intentionally the way he built the game.  Part of the joy in creation, I'd imagine, is watching something flourish on it's own.  Flourish?  Okay, maybe God the Gardener would have been a better analogy...

seeking Mormon women in Computer Science

There was a lunch presentation at work recently by Mary Fernandez, CEO of MentorNet. She talked about connecting students with mentors in STEM fields, focusing on women and ethnic minority groups, who have fewer role models. This got me thinking (again) about Mormon women in STEM fields, specifically computer science.

I ran some really rough numbers based on the number of PhDs in computer science in the United States and the number of Mormons. Uniformly sampled, there should be a non-trivial number of Mormon women with PhDs in computer science--on the order of tens to low hundreds. But have I met a single one? No. Have I heard of a single one? No. Does BYU's faculty have any?  No. On the U of U's CS faculty listing, three out of 67, or 4.5% of the faculty are female.  But even still, one does not simply email women faculty at Utah-based schools and ask them if A) they are Mormon or B) they'd like to give me life advice.  I have some social skills.

I've known plenty of Mormon women who have gotten a Bachelors or Masters in STEM fields, or PhDs in Social Sciences or Humanities. I appreciate the camaraderie of both of those genres of similarity, but it'd also be really nice to have someone who I could talk to about the particular situation of being a Mormon woman in a STEM PhD.

But why is the particular combination of Mormon and STEM PhD important?  These two cultures are the strongest external pressures on my big life decisions, and have largely conflicting objectives. 

Mormon culture says I should be having my second child by now (let alone a first), that my husband's career should be getting priority, and if I do pursue higher education or have a job, I should only do around my children's schedule--once my children are in school is ideal.  I want to talk about how when I meet other Mormons, male or female, they usually ask me about what I do only after they have asked me about what my husband does, if at all.  And they pretty much never ask my husband about what I do.

On the flip side, I want to talk about the pressures of academia, and not in an abstract sense.  I want to talk about the technical details about what I'm doing and have them understand.  I want to talk about what I should do after my PhD program beyond the general categories of industry and academia--I want advice on particular institutions and people.  I want to talk about being female in a male-dominated field and how that impacts the way I perceive things and the way people perceive me.

Putting it all together, I want to talk about how I feel when my male academic colleagues and female Mormon colleagues are having kids.  I want to have kids, but I feel that I can't right now, or I'll risk falling behind.  There needs to be substantial planning for it to work, which doesn't feel fair.  I want to talk about no matter how strong my ego is, sometimes I think that I'm just not smart enough, but don't want to admit it because I need to be an example to other women, both at church and in CS.

It's actually not that important for me to have a female Mormon CS or even STEM mentor, since I have all sorts of wonderful support: my husband, my parents, my advisor, my mentor at work, my colleagues at school and work, and select friends from church.  Perhaps I've just been adding modifiers until I get such a tiny subset of people that I can complain that I haven't run into any.  That said, it never feels bad to know that you're not alone.

Regardless, if you are or know of other LDS women in CS or STEM fields that are looking to connect with similar folks, please let me know!  That is, unless they kvetch as much as I do.

General Conference Sentence Generator

Thanks to Ziff at Zelophehad’s Daughters, who curated a great dataset of General Conference talks and generously shared it with me, I was able to code up a General Conference random sentence generator.

Using 3-grams (use the last three words to predict the next word) worked best, since it maintained some gramatical structure, but still allowed for substantial variation.

I still need to polish it up, but I'll put it online at some point, and allow the options of picking particular sessions, years, or speakers.  In the meanwhile, here are some of my preliminary results.  I've included some ones that I think are funny, but also some that aren't.

Manning and I embraced, and thanks were expressed for his service, not only to their homes, and ponder upon the majesty of the gospel of love and union is with us, so I guess we'd better study and ponder the scriptures.

They have gone into the waters of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, even the Comforter, which is the great physician.

I speak of is lacking.

To my horror, I could see I was willing to share.

They need the strength that has bound their family together every day to read the manual.

He understands how hard it would be if we would accept every assignment to the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1820.

I think I should shoot them, but my mom doesn't.

But we can forgive whatever may have caused us not to condemn him.

What if the commitment is already there and were so hard they couldn't or wouldn't eat.

Rather, I believe our meeting was an answer to every man according to his will, according to his own mother and father.

Lowering his voice, he told us that he sent his divine Son, our Savior, to show us how to establish peace and happiness, but no matter how advantageous it may seem to others.

There are times in the standard works with the area conferences in Mexico, Central America, South America, the Philippines, and we were about to pass through on dry ground.

And don't you go along home.

Fundamental to this is no, of course not, provided it is done in harmony with God.

Then he had the courage to respond almost unanimously to a man and a woman outside of marriage.

In all of our people, with eighty wagons and hundreds of thousands of footnotes would require many hundreds of thousands of Heavenly Father's plan of happiness.

As noted by Moroni, this perfect love comes as a product of that, because when my mother's advice.

Lehi said in the April 2007 Ensign and Liahona To avoid so-called 'incompatibility,' they should be removed in a genuine Christian spirit.

Today my plea is to those members already inside but whose discipleship is casual, individuals whom we could call to be president of twelve deacons.

It may be difficult to tell the world something a thousand times more educated or more serviceable to our fellowmen.

This is our responsibility to break the Sabbath day.

What mother would not want to know about its eternal journey to know where it is possible to send letters, tapes, and pictures, particularly where distances are great and varied.

I've been very proud of my husband.

Jesus used this common illustration of his day and times, but ours as well; they have communicated with us as I speak to you tonight, I was sitting in his robe reading Gospel Doctrine, by President Joseph F.

People didn't like it, she would say, 'O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they saw the placard that Elder Schreiter had posted on the airline communication board by the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach.

Arms are tangible, and we use them to achieve his goal.

Does it seem reasonable to cure leprosy by telling a story: 'A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell among thieves and was left half dead.

One spring when we opened up those islands for the preaching of the word of knowledge by the same covenant, volunteered to defend their families and make sure they were all from Idaho stakes affected by the flood opened their homes and by the gif.t and spirit of his message and investigated the Church for their faithfulness.

Thereafter, every time I approached the reception desk of a large lion' s head roaring.

She held her well-worn Personal Progress book and said she had forgiven her unrepentant adversary.

Do you see, Sister Anonymous.

I have mentioned the lives of those who held it when the Savior is known to the church to which we have on hand this year's General Women's Meeting.

He did not place a demand or order for the Church.

If a rope had only one window, we would see one.

That judgment will consider not only your actions, but also for the young man, I can remember the excitement I felt as though heaven and earth and the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world.

Such individual blessings are part of a mistreated soul.

He understood, and he could not be evacuated.

In the Andersen home, the Sabbath day holy, maintaining personal purity, and the other prophets of this new approach even a glassful could cause a drowning.

It has been our experience that if you practice these virtues, you will be unable to make its way back into the presence of thousands and thousands of them working together in productive pursuits.

Let us now return to our Father in Heaven reserves for them every promised blessing for His people: a belief, a testimony, patience, obedience, charity, wisdom, and faith in His timing.

Sorrowfully, she answered them, ' Because they have taken away my Lord, and I am grateful for the opportunity to take a careful inventory of their annual increase.

I had the help and blessings of the priesthood would have power, through faith, to govern and direct all of his hopes seemed doomed to scorn and destined for extinction.

On Sunday, April 11th, 1830, Oliver Cowdery preached the first public meetings in the local ward while his team played without him.

The Holy Ghost is to bear witness of the Spirit came to him: he had made a special study of the scriptures and the revelations, they would find Elder Cruz, the mother clasped his hands in bringing individuals into the Church, and so forth.

We gather each week for forty years, lest they should be as concerned with the rising divorce rate.

May we all repent and become active during this coming year of jubilee offers an excellent time to work out the infinite and eternal sacrifice for all mankind, or are the first in England to lure away British girls and make slaves of its citizens.

And there were deep shadows in which the ordinances and direction of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to meet the extremely demanding time requirements of his profession as a heart surgeon.

The first and thousandth time this question is invariably asked, particularly by members of this church, which testimony I leave, in the name of Jesus Christ.

I have been coming to conference, I have been to the end.

knowledge vs. belief

It's very common for Mormons to say "I know ___," as in "I know the church is true," or "I know that Christ is my Savior."  Today, we had a man stand up and shamefully declared that he didn't know, but that he believed, and it was one of the most touching expression of faith that I've heard in a good long while.

We also had an investigator sitting near us today, and after the meeting he asked me what people meant when they said that they knew something that is generally considered to be unknowable.  I told him that it was a way in our culture of expressing that one has had a spiritual experience confirming the belief in question, but that often times we just say I know instead of I believe out of cultural habit.  People simply like the strength implied by knowledge.

I'm somewhat comfortable with this specialized cultural context of knowledge, but my main struggle with this phrasing is that it discourages people that don't know, or that haven't had confirming spiritual experiences.  It's exclusive: you're not in the club because you don't know.  Because of this, the use broadens to cover simple belief as well, making the club more inclusive, but making things even more painful for those who feel they cannot honestly declare knowledge when they have none.

finding peace

Here I am thinking that 2013 is still so young, and yet it's almost February.  My plate is piled high with all sorts of things, possibly the highest it's ever been.  The semester has been ramping up, and things will continue to be busy until the summer...a five month long Thanksgiving dinner, you could say.  I go half mad when I'm not busy, so in some ways, this is a good thing.

Not totally unrelatedly, of late I've been thinking about how we find personal peace.  I was reading Ask Mormon Girl, this post in particular, and was thinking about how folks deal with personal problems.  Generally, we face two facets of any problem: how to find personal peace, and how to act.  While they are somewhat dependent on each other, I think that we can tease them apart more often than we actually do.  In doing so, I think we'll come to solutions faster.

For some problems, finding peace is surprisingly easier than coming up with a full-blown plan of action.  Then, once you're at peace, the problem matters less and thus the particular course of action isn't so important.

At church, I was recently called to work with the young women, ages 14 and 15.  Two weeks ago, I challenged them to identify negative emotions (anger, fear, jealousy, etc.) that they felt throughout the week, acknowledge that they didn't want to feel that way, and then to pray for peace and comfort.  I was thoroughly surprised when they reported back this past Sunday having succeeded in replacing anger with peace.  (Though I should have had more faith in them.)

I'm going to need to stay centered this semester, keeping my own peace at some pretty high levels.  My plan of action?  Prayer, meditation, exercise, and reading good books.  And, you know, doing my actual work.  Wish me luck!

the things I didn't write about

It's been a while since I posed anything.  I got stuck on my diatribe about digital barbarism, and then a bunch of stuff happened, personal and otherwise.

In the personal arena, I attended NIPS, drowned in coursework, and was elected garden coordinator for our apartment community.

Then there was the hullabaloo about Mormon women wearing pants.  I participated in a cowardly manner by wearing my baggy skirt-like harem/jeanie/Aladdin pants.

Locally, Sandy has still displaced way too many people, and we're still working on gutting homes so mold can be prevented before they start to rebuild.

And then Newton.  I cried several days in a row.  I know that there are worse things abroad and to some degree it's selfish to focus on how terrible it was when other equally bad things get very little attention.  But it felt more personal; it's a two-and-a-half hour drive from where I live and the states are all so close culturally, it felt like it could have been my own town.  An emotional reaction, rather than a logical one, I know, but I'm not a robot.  A lot of people are suffering, in Newtown and elsewhere, and they have my prayers.

just on belief (a follow up)

I was talking about belief with some of my friends this week (if you think you were one of them, you probably were), touching on some of the things in my last post, but mostly covering a lot of ground on the topic of belief generally.

One friend questioned my assertion that belief was a choice, saying something to the effect that even if you want to believe, sometimes you just can't.  That resonated with me and I've been mulling it over for the past few days.

I think belief is akin to an emotion--it's something we feel, not that we logically come to.  A position or stance, we come to by logic, but usually basing some of that logic on a belief, e.g.: given that I believe X, I can conclude that the government should do Y.  There are some things that most of us believe to be true, like that killing is bad.  But sometimes our beliefs change and warp because they're emotionally based.  Someone can believe that killing is bad, but then kill someone in a rage, defending the honor of a member of their family.

I think that we can consciously train our emotions to some extent (more here), but I had never really thought of applying that to beliefs.  My sense is that beliefs are like gut reactions we don't want to train, or shouldn't train, otherwise we end up with situations where people are manipulated.

At the same time, beliefs are manipulated by political parties, religious denominations, and social groups.  We teach each other what's acceptable, mostly in terms of social behavior, but expressing certain beliefs is a social behavior.  If I said I believed the moon was made of cheese, I would be mocked until I didn't believe that any more.

So we also come to beliefs based on evidence.  They are, in part, a summary of our understanding of the world.  I believe sun will rise because it has done so repeatedly.  Some of that evidence is enforced socially (like people making fun of me if I believe the moon is made of cheese), but some of it is based on evidence (the moon kind of looks like cheese, but other things look like cheese and aren't).

There are feedback loops for belief as well. Attending church could make people believe more (or less) in a religion. Socializing with Democrats could make you more liberal.  You often use your belief to determine you actions, but then your belief is reinforced by the results of your action.

In the end, do we make the choice to believe or not?  It might be deterministic given the evidence and our emotions, but I don't know.  Is the moon made of cheese? Does God exist? Does the sun rise each day? Some questions are easier than others.

on belief and expressing ideas

I am annoyed by atheism.  It annoys me because people are out there declaring that there obviously is no God with the same kind of certainty that was held by those who believed the earth was flat.

Agnosticism and skepticism I respect and encourage, but when it come to matters of that which is inherently beyond our understanding by its very definition, I don't think that we can have any semblance of certainty in either direction.

To be sure, ardent believers also annoy me with their unwavering faith--perhaps I simply cannot see the perspective from shoes that are not my own, even when they were once mine.  I was once an arrogant believer, so convinced of the truthiness of my particular denomination.  Now I want to believe and disbelieve all at once, but can do neither.

There's just no evidence to prove or disprove the notion of deity, and so the scientist in me decides to sit square in the middle, on top of a fencepost, huffing and puffing all the while about those running about in either field.  Fenceposts aren't very comfortable, you should know, but they can provide spectacular views.

You see, no matter where you are, it's a matter of choice. Some people choose to believe. Some people choose to not believe. Some people choose make chancy chairs out of pillars of wood.  It's a personal choice and we've got to respect each other, not scoffing at believers, not attempting to convert anyone that floats into your sphere, and not getting upset when people aren't as angsty about the whole dilemma as you are.  (Doesn't mean I listen to my own advice.)

I've been reading Religion for Atheists, which is inspring this rant.  Botton outlines a series of points about how religion improves communities and provides individual consolation; his objective is to illuminate how secular society can use many traditionally religion mechanisms to make itself better.  He is very thoughtful and his points are enlightening, but his tone is grating because it continually emphasizes the obviousness of atheism.

So I suppose it's not atheism that annoys me, its the arrogance of presuming the position of your audience.  I don't like it when people presume I'm either a Democrat or a Republican.  I don't like it when people presume I believe blindly or that I am constantly critical of my church.  I don't like it when people presume that I believe whatever thought they're selling me at the given moment.  Part of the reason I don't like it is because the people making these assumptions don't bother to justify statements that I think are in dire need of justification.

Refining an idea within a sympathetic community is a good first step, but it is not the end. The title makes it obvious who the intended audience of Religion for Atheists is, but that's just a cop-out--the work would have been stronger if it had anticipated a wider audience. 

If ideas are truly good, be they political ideas, social ideas, or ideas related to belief or the lack thereof, they can and should be expressed without relying on the crutch of targeting a sympathetic audience or presuming your audience is sympathetic.

the pace of change

For those of you who aren't LDS or otherwise haven't heard, this Saturday the church president a policy change: men can now serve missions starting at age 18 (used to be 19), and women can now serve missions starting at 19 (used to be 21).

Everyone's buzzing about it.  Young women are super stoked about the possibilities, some older women are excited but a little bitter that the change was only made recently.  I'm personally excited to see the next generations of girls, possibly even my own daughters, grow up thinking that a mission is a serious possibility, not just something to be done if you don't get married in college and don't know what to do with your life.  (I'm not saying that was the actual reason for most women missionaries, but it was a common perception.)

I think this is a great step toward equalizing men and women in the church.  While it isn't perfect equal (women can still only serve 18 months as opposed to men's 24, and there's still the 18/19 discrepancy), it's a much, much better policy.

It's got me think about the pace of change, though.  At the press conference after the announcement, when asked why weren't the ages set to be equal for men and women, Elder Holland responded "one miracle at a time." N pointed out the quote from Winterbuzz on FMH, that sums up the skeptical view pretty well (which I share):

While I am happy that this change makes so many people happy, I can’t help but wonder that if this is the most we can expect from modern day prophets in the way of revelation, that’s sort of depressing, isn’t it? We must be so spiritually hungry that even the smallest shift in policy seems heaven sent.

Each generation experiences the church's policies and politics differently.  My parents experienced the policy change that African descendants could receive the priesthood, but also the anti-ERA push.  The next generation, like Joanna Brooks, experienced the September Six in the heat of their coming into real adulthood.  My generation experienced Prop 8 in that same heat, and now we have this policy change to add to the list of experiences.

Just looking at the list, it seems like we're focusing on smaller and smaller changes or policies.  This makes sense, because--never mind, I'm not going to go into detail on the parallels between policy changes and simulated annealing.  You can make them yourself, if you care enough.

Anyway, I hope to see more equalizing progress.  That's all.

seeing change, or fruit and dirt

The LDS "bloggernacle" is full of common complaints, like with any community.  I sympathize with most issues raised, but reading them rehashed over over again is exhausting.  Many approaches are very negative, and I decided to find some semblance of progress, to add to the positive (but still problem-acknowledging) voices.

Except I couldn't really find any.  I wanted to scour the young women's manuals to find something that had changed since I went through the program, but I don't think the manuals have been majorly updated since then.  I wanted to point out that the perpetuation of the feeling of being "dirty" was cultural to the point of not being in the manuals.  And then I looked at my sharing time lesson for the week and laughed.

The title was I should read, listen to, and look at things that are pleasing to Heavenly Father.  Not so bad, though I would have preferred an approach like I should read, listen to, and look at things that are uplifting, with the approach that we should seek for a good spirit in our lives.  It's not that I inherently object to using Heavenly Father in this way, but I think we shouldn't be teaching the appreciation of beauty and personal growth from an obedience perspective.

Anyway, I looked at the lesson and saw a big bowl of fruit and big bowl of (absurdly clean-looking) dirt.  The corresponding text: Show the children a bowl filled with fruit and a bowl filled with dirt. Ask the children which would be good to eat and why. Explain that Heavenly Father wants us to fill our minds with things that are good for us rather than things that are harmful.  Hm.

I don't like dirt metaphors.  They imply that if someone makes a choice that is contrary to Church teachings, they are dirty and should feel guilty.  While I feel that certain social pressures can be good for societies, helping to maintain order, some are not healthy.  While personal change and improvement is good, as are some level of social standards, excess guilt can drive people away from communities and prevent much-needed personal or community change.  This metaphor was better than others, seeing as it was about eating dirt rather than being dirty, but it still didn't work for me.

I also don't like the black-and-white aspect of the fruit-vs.-dirt metaphor.  As is, the kids might come away feeling like they need to read scriptures and near nothing else, which obviously wasn't the intent of the lesson.  (The obvious intention was to prep kids for anti-pornography and anti-R-rated-movies lessons in their teenage years.  Okay, there was more to it than that, but I couldn't help feeling that it was laying that foundation.  I mean, what kind of "dirt" can six year olds read?)

So I went for a "balanced diet" metaphor instead.  I brought in a bunch of food, and I also brought a book of fairy tales, a robotics textbook, a cookbook, and a book on Jesus Christ.  I brought a picture of family, the sacred grove, and an impressionistic painting.  We talked about how each of these was good in their own way, and that how Heavenly Father wanted us to fill our bodies, minds, and spaces with things that are good and uplifting. (And what I mean by uplifting isn't makes-you-feel-happy.  You can be "uplifted" by a really sad movie because it helps you understand the world better.  Is there a better word for this?  Enlightening?)  We talked about listening to the spirit, how you can get sick if you eat too much candy, and how everyone will have a different diet, literally and metaphorically.  Instead of focusing on the dirt, we focused on the fruit.

I don't want to be blind to problems, but I think that we need more fruit-focus in our lives, in the traditional church setting, in the bloggernacle, and in all areas of life.  Even when we're trying to change things, we need to acknowledge the changes that have already been made, and work towards a better community.  People don't like to be unhappy; if we reframe some desired changes into the good that can come of it, rather then the bad things that are happening now, more people will stick with it because it builds them up.  And then change might actually happen.