Though I'm leaving the content of this blog public, I'll no longer be posting here. My primary blogging activity now is my collected poetry, which you can on Blogger and on Tumblr (identical blogs, pick your preferred medium). You can also follow me on Twitter.
I was raised as a Mormon and was very much the orthodox, faithful and believing type. I officially resigned my membership in the Church in 2008. The long version of how I gained my faith in Mormonism and why I left can be found here. The brief version is this:
Birth -- 2002: Faithful Mormon
2002: Excommunicated
2003: First attempt at returning to the Church
Lasted a few months, but in the end just didn't feel right
Tried a few unimpressive Protestant churches
Pregnancy with first child makes questions about God feel more urgent
2004: Complications at birth and scary-as-hell emergency c-section that I take as a sign from God that he wants me to return to the One True Church. So I do with new determination to be humble and make it work, for the sake of my child. Cognitive dissonance increases to intolerable levels.
2005: I leave the LDS Church for good, more or less set all religion aside for a while.
2006 -- 2009: Still have nagging feelings that there's gotta be something more to life than just what meets the eye. Dabble in a few more Protestant churches, discover ideas about the sacred feminine and feminist spirituality, really get into yoga and meditation during second pregnancy (2007-2008), become disenchanted with organized religion, determined to forge my own path, a lot of dabbling, no real consistency, nothing fully satisfying, a persistent unease and yearning for an unnameable Something.
I launched this blog in the Fall of 2009, because after all my seeking, I was convinced that I had finally found "the truth" of atheism, and I was eager to join in exposing all religion for the sham that it is so we humans could just be done with it already and move on to More Important Things. But through blogging, I found myself in discussion with spiritual and religious people whose perspectives made me reevaluate.
Where am I now on the religion and God question(s)? It's complicated. I am a seeker. I welcome wisdom from whatever source I find it and my views are frequently shifting. This poem that I wrote offers a snapshot of where I was at the time it was written. But, always, shifting shifting shifting. How can your views or approach remain fixed when the object of pursuit is never fixed? I have found much to love in every tradition that I have explored, even in my own Mormon roots, though I take all of it with a rather large grain of salt.
Where am I now on the religion and God question(s)? It's complicated. I am a seeker. I welcome wisdom from whatever source I find it and my views are frequently shifting. This poem that I wrote offers a snapshot of where I was at the time it was written. But, always, shifting shifting shifting. How can your views or approach remain fixed when the object of pursuit is never fixed? I have found much to love in every tradition that I have explored, even in my own Mormon roots, though I take all of it with a rather large grain of salt.
This blog is now a place for me to explore my thoughts on religion and spirituality and hear thoughts from others at various points along the journey. I don't pretend to have any answers, only questions. I respect your right to believe or disbelieve in God(s), to define that term for yourself, and to periodically change your mind, or not. I ask that you return this courtesy.
Besides this blog, my writing has appeared on NPR's Being Blog three times in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, twice in the literary journal Northern Eclecta (2008 and 2010) and in the anthology Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teens Talk High School (and I don't even like Chicken Soup for the Soul books, but I got $200 for my story, so there you have it, I don't call myself a whore for nothin' ;-). I also contribute articles to Recovering Fundamentalists and Main Street Plaza.
