I am tripping out over this!

Andrew, aka godwillbegod of the blog Beyond Belief and Reason has made a video based on parts of my de-conversion story and a few other posts on my blog. I'm just speechless! A hundred thousand thank yous, Andrew! I love it!

I am tripping out over this!

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Yes, I left because I was offended.

I have an article up over at Main Street Plaza. Here's a free sample:

Leaving the Church over offense is portrayed as something akin to a stubborn, pouty child, whose pride and fragile ego prevent her from doing what deep down she must really want and know is right. And if the Church were really all it was cracked up to be, indeed, ‘twould be silly to forfeit all that bliss over the foibles of imperfect members.

I didn’t ditch the Church because some blundering member hurt my feeling, but I admit it: there is much about Mormonism that offends me. I wouldn’t continue a relationship with a person I found persistently offensive. Why should I apply different criteria to an institution?

Go visit MSP to read the full article.  :-)

Yes, I left because I was offended.

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"I'm Robert, and I'm an ex-Mormon."

The LDS Church has been running a campaign to show the world, "Look, we're just regular people who happen to believe kooky stuff." The commercials start out with a person introducing herself, talking a little about her life and what she does and ending with, "And I'm a Mormon." You can visit this site to watch some of the videos. And I will say that most Mormon people I've known really are great people, but one of the things that bugs me most about Mormonism is the pervasive stereotype within the Church that anyone who leaves the Church does so under the influence of Satan and spends the rest of their lives miserable and tormented. My experience since leaving the Church and those of others I've met who have left has been completely the opposite! Here's the first of what I hope will be many videos made to show the world, "Hey, ex-Mormons are just regular people who used to believe some kooky stuff."




Thanks to Chino Blanco at Main Street Plaza for the link.

"I'm Robert, and I'm an ex-Mormon."

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Friday Funny: Futurama - Evolution Under Attack

Futurama	Thursdays 10pm / 9c
Preview - Evolution Under Attack
www.comedycentral.com
Futurama New Episodes Roast of David Hasselhoff It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Friday Funny: Futurama - Evolution Under Attack

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My take on the Unitarian Universalists

Since the UUs came up in some recent comments, let me say that I think they're absolutely wonderful. I've visited their congregation here in Fargo and had a great experience. They encourage diversity, freethinking (they even link to the Red River Freethinkers on their website) and individuality. To quote from their About Us section:

The search for truth is a personal one—unique for each individual.  Each of us is different and is affected differently by life’s events.  The purpose of the Unitarian Universalist Church’s services and Religious Education Program is to help adults and children explore their own religious and spiritual ideas and feelings (as well as those of others of all times) in a friendly, non-judgmental environment.

The first Sunday I attended, the message was given by a special musical guest, Peter Mayer,  who told his story of growing up as a Roman Catholic, but losing his faith in early adulthood and then searching for another religion. He said he and his wife would go to services, and if they could get through one without having to mutter under their breath, "Bull-oney," then they would go back. That didn't happen until they visited the UUs. He mentioned that the UUs were a somewhat ironic group, because they're an organized religion that is largely composed of people who are disenchanted with organized religion.

Then he spoke of what he'd like to see in the future, great works of art devoted to the wonder of everyday life, stained glass windows depicting the Big Bang or the first cell. I found particularly touching the contrast he found with Catholicism where only a certain very few things were considered holy, and this world and this life were considered imperfect rubbish, nothing more than a pit stop on the way to the afterlife and heaven, which are held up as better and more real in most religions. He wrote a song about these feelings, "Holy Now." An excerpt:

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now 

You can see the video of the whole song at the bottom of this post, or visit Peter Mayer's website to hear more of his music or buy his CDs.

The next time I visited, two graduating seniors were invited to talk a little about their experiences with the congregation. One young woman talked about feeling like the odd one out as a child because all her friends were Christians, but as she grew up, many of her friends were having these crises of faith, being told they had to believe certain things but not being sure if they did or not. And she realized, "Hmm, my church told me I could believe whatever I wanted and decide for myself." She felt free to find her own path.

That week's speaker was a women's activist who talked about her work with the local Girl Scouts and what we could do as community members to work toward equality for women. At one point she asked, "How many of you here would consider yourselves feminists?" And I grinned as almost every single hand went up.

I stayed for coffee and conversation and the people were all great. I glanced through their lending library, which included the Bible, the Koran, books on Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and... Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. How many churches do you know of that would include Sam Harris in their lending library?

Will I go back? Probably. The local congregation doesn't meet during the summer months and I discovered them just as their church year was ending. The words spoken and the lyrics of the congregational songs were all things I agreed with. It was very open and accepting and non-dogmatic.

But... I found it a little bland. The genercism (I invented a word there) that allowed for such a wide pallet of individual beliefs and paths lacked a certain depth and potency that I crave in religious practice. For me. But overall, I think UUs are great and they fill a need for community and tradition and education that many people lose when they can no longer believe in many mainstream religions. So I'll probably go back and visit, but I don't see myself joining.

If you'd like to learn more about Unitarian Universalists, you can read about them on their website, where you can also enter your zip code to find a congregation near you.

My take on the Unitarian Universalists

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TED Talk Tuesday: Seth Godin on standing out

I know a lot of my readers are fellow bloggers and this week's talk is especially for all of you. With about 175,000 new blogs created daily, the competition for readers is fierce. Seth Godin lays out how to get noticed in an age of information overload. The bottom line: Ideas that spread win. Here's a summary of how to get your idea to spread:

1. Be remarkable, meaning not just "neat" but "worth remarking about." People are busy and being merely "very good" won't get you noticed. (Here's where I make a frowny face, because I think this blog probably falls under the "very good" category.)
2. Figure out who does care about what you have to say, and target them. If you're remarkable, they'll tell their friends and your message will spread. (Here's where I try to figure out what I have to offer that's unique and focus in on that.)

And a few tips of my own:

1. Don't post second-rate material. Respect your readers' time and don't post if you don't really have anything substantial to say.
2. Grab attention from the get-go. If someone follows you on Blogger or a Google reader, often only the first couple of lines show up. If you're on someone's blogroll, the reader usually only sees the post title. If you're not interesting right from the beginning, chances are, they won't click through to see the rest of what you have to say.
3. Make it easy for your readers to share posts they like. I have a Share This button at the bottom of all my posts. You can get one free here.
4. Have a regular posting schedule. I need to be better about this, actually. My goal roughly is a TED Talk on Tuesday, something funny on Friday and some sort of original content post at least once a week.
5. Be a good blog buddy. If someone links to you, say thanks and return the courtesy. And here's where I want to add: If you're not on my blogroll and you think you should be--especially if I'm on yours and/or you read and comment here regularly--it's almost certainly an oversight on my part, so please leave me a comment or send me a message and I'd be happy to add you. Also, if you're not already my Facebook friend, you can find my profile in the right sidebar.

And a couple of links: This was one of the most actually useful articles I've read on how to increase site traffic. And Jane Friedman of Writer Unboxed shares what makes her stop reading a blog.

Much more in the talk. Enjoy, and happy blogging!

TED Talk Tuesday: Seth Godin on standing out

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"Why do you still like religion when you don't believe in it?"

Some of the comments on my recent post about my fondness for Catholicism prompted me to try to break down the factors that contribute to my feeling that I need a bit of religiosity in my life.

First, I was raised in an intensely religious home and was myself a sincerely religious person all through my formative years, up until about five years ago when I concluded Mormonism was false but still wanted to seek out other paths to spirituality, and up until a year ago that I started calling myself an atheist. Something that has been an integral part of one's psyche and identity for so long is not easily slaked.

On the other hand, my brother, twenty-two months younger than I am, raised in the same home by the same parents, claims to have been an atheist since childhood, and I believe him. God and religion just never meant anything to him. So while environment probably played a role in my own religious longings, I suspect there's something inborn about my temperament at work as well.

Perfect pitch is something you either have or you don't, yet it is more common among people whose native language is tonal. A need to tune in to pitch to understand language won't give perfect pitch to someone who doesn't already have it, but it may sharpen an innate ability that would otherwise atrophy if one grows up listening to English instead of Chinese. A Mormon upbringing couldn't impart any religious fervor to my brother, but I wonder if I would still be as drawn to religion as I am if I hadn't been so steeped in it during childhood.

I still like certain aspects of religion and value religious practice. Others can't see the point. What does this say about whether or not religion actually has any purpose?

I have pretty good relative pitch, but I do not have perfect pitch. There are no well-crafted arguments that can give me perfect pitch, but this doesn't mean that perfect pitch isn't a real phenomenon. Nor is music that the tone deaf can't appreciate any worse because some people can't appreciate it. Human beings do not all see the same things.

I like to think of myself as a fairly cultured and sophisticated person, but when I walk into an art gallery, I freely admit that at least half the pieces in there will make me go, "Meh." That doesn't mean it's not good art. Someone else could stand in front of those same pieces and be moved to tears, and their reaction is just as valid as mine. I don't get what the big effing deal about Lady Gaga is, but obviously a lot of people disagree with me there. I can't tell the difference between the bottle of wine that costs eight dollars and the one that costs thirty. Doesn't mean I don't think a difference exists; it's just not one that matters to me.

Skepticmatt asked, why religion? Why not science fiction or fantasy or something that doesn't have the baggage that religion does?

First, it's not an either/or proposition. I read and write fiction and poetry in addition to this blog. I frequently engage with literature, music and art to stimulate my imagination and edify myself as a person. Certainly I can "feel the spirit" while watching a ballet, but the difference between these other humanities and religion is one that matters to me. Religion reaches me in a place where these other art forms don't.

A friend and I were discussing this recently. We were both religious at one time but have since become unbelievers. He admits that there are parts of religion that he still likes and sometimes misses, but feels it is unethical to take part in something that has contributed to so much suffering in the world. He compared himself to someone who really likes the taste of hamburgers, but doesn't eat meat on moral grounds.

If I were to put myself in this analogy, I would say, I can definitely see the moral high ground of a vegetarian diet, but I tried it and found it unsatisfying. Getting my "protein" (meaning) solely from "plant" (secular) sources wasn't working for me. I was still left with an aching hunger. So I'm trying a middle way, more or less equivalent to eating meat in moderation and only from sources where the animals were treated humanely.

I have another friend with a similar background who came out of religion, found himself an atheist and knew that atheism made perfect logical sense, but described it as missing a needed "emotional map." I am a critical, thinking being, yes, but I am also an emotional, feeling being, and secularism doesn't address my emotional needs to my satisfaction. We have ample examples of religion gone awry, but it also serves a useful purpose, or it wouldn't have developed in every human culture. And I no longer believe that those taking a moderate approach are contributing to extremism.

I need religion. For whatever reason, I feel un-whole when I neglect that part of my psyche. I've theorized about why. It meets an emotional need that I have and that I think many, but not all, humans share. There are certain things that all religions have in common. They all have narrative myths. They all have symbols. They all have ritual practices.

Maybe it's the kinesthetic, participatory nature of religious practice that sets it apart from other art forms. In her monologue Letting Go of God, Julia Sweeney details her journey from Catholicism to atheism, and then talks a little about becoming a mother and not wanting to raise her daughter to be religious, but still wishing she had a way to mark the important events in her daughter's life with community and great music and art. Sabio wrote recently about a salt purification ceremony that he performs when he moves to a new residence, purely for "ceremony, tradition and specialness." Rituals are a way of imbuing meaning in our lives.

An excerpt of Christian Wiman's "Hive of Nerves" was quoted in a New York Times blog recently, in which he compared religious narrative to poetry. Religion is not a spectator activity. Like poetry, it takes active thinking and participation to "get," or as Wiman describes it, "it takes patience and imagination to perceive....Thus the very practical effects of music, myth, image, which tease us not out of reality but deeper and more completely into it." For me, the exciting question about poetry or other artistic or religious symbolism isn't, "What does it mean?" but, "What could it mean?" And I think we're all entitled to make our own interpretations and extract our own meaning.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly describes ecstasy, the state of stepping into another reality, and that what we have left of ancient civilizations are their sanctuaries and temples, where they went to experience life in a "more concentrated and ordered form." That is exactly what I experienced when I visited Saint Paul's Cathedral last weekend.

I don't think God exists outside of the human imagination, but if my objective is to change myself, what better place to engage with the Divine than internally?

I expect some readers will nod along and know what I'm talking about, and others won't, and that's fine.  So long as no one tries to make me like Lady Gaga, I won't try to make anyone like religion.

Related Posts: Defining Spirituality
                       Am I a Raging Religion-oholic?

"Why do you still like religion when you don't believe in it?"

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Friday Funny: Mrs. Betty Bowers: Less is Mormon

In celebration of the recent Prop 8 overturn. "Being lectured on what constitutes a traditional marriage by a Mormon is a bit like being scolded for loitering, by a crack whore!"

Friday Funny: Mrs. Betty Bowers: Less is Mormon

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Prop 8 overturned!

L.A. Times confirms, California gay couples are once again free to marry!

Prop 8 overturned!

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My Catholic-ish roots

I grew up in a small, predominantly Mormon town in Northern Arizona. When I was in fourth grade, my class took a field trip to Flagstaff. We were out walking around town and stopped at a Catholic church. I remember the stained glass windows and how pretty it all was, and I remember wishing I was Catholic so I could go to a pretty church. Mormon chapels are terribly sparse and utilitarian, with absolutely no artwork inside the chapel itself. A couple of plants next to the podium is the extent of the decor.

I'm not sure if this is official Church policy or not, but I remember my mother telling me that artwork wasn't allowed in the chapel because that was the beginning of the slippery slope into idol worship. I also remember being taught that the ancient Egyptians and other idol worshipers of the Old Testament literally worshiped their idols, believed the workmanship of their own hands were actually gods with power. How silly they were! Well, no, how silly my mother was not to realize that the idols were only visual representations of the gods these people believed in.

Many times we were taught that the only two churches that could possibly be true were either the Mormons or the Catholics. It was either the Catholics who had the true priesthood keys handed down since Peter, or the Mormons who had the true priesthood keys restored through Joseph Smith. Every other Christian church was just a splinter group and could be doing no more than playing make believe at their services since they didn't have any real authority.

I'd heard a rumor that the Catholics prayed to Mary, and that appealed to me very much, possibly because I was never close with my mother. I prayed to Mary a few times, but then felt guilty about it because of all my mother's warnings that apostasy starts with the tiniest diversions from the Truth and the Right Way. There was something about all the imagery and relics and trappings of Catholicism that seemed so much more mysterious and alluring than Mormonism is my childhood and adolescent mind.

But there were a couple of things that knocked Catholicism out of the One True Church running for me. (Looking back now, these were not at all good reasons, but this was how I thought at the time.) One was a family trip to Southern Arizona where we visited some of the old Spanish missions. I thought they were fascinating, but I remember my father affirming that he sensed a spirit of darkness in those places. (From an adult perspective, I think more than likely he was just uncomfortable because it was unfamiliar.) The other was a discussion with a friend in high school. We were both gung-ho about seminary and had just had another lesson about how we were one of the only two churches that could possibly be right. And she said, "But you look at some of the stuff that the Catholic church did, and you know that just can't possibly be anything from God." Hmm, that makes sense, I thought.

None of our seminary lessons covered the Mountain Meadows Massacre. We only talked about how much the early Mormons were persecuted, ironclad evidence they were doing God's will. Any wrongdoing on their part was glossed over and justified if it was mentioned at all. I was a diehard, nerdy, scripture-lovin' super seminarian, but I never heard about Mountain Meadows until two years after I'd left the Church when I watched Helen Whitney's documentary The Mormons on PBS. There goes the Mormons' "holier than thou" card when it comes to religious violence.

I graduated high school and began college at Arizona State University. My favorite spot on campus was Danforth Chapel. It was non-denominational, just a nice quiet place where I liked to go to be alone with God. The Mormons also had an Institute and chapel on campus, but Danforth felt holier to me. There was a daily Catholic mass there, and I used to go to that, just because I liked it. I was still very much a believing and practicing Mormon at this time, but I'd always had a fascination with other religions. My parents had taught me with well-intentioned smugness that other religions were full of good people who were doing "the best they can with what they know." We were superior because we had the Fullness of the Gospel, but those other churches had a lot of good too, even if they weren't as ultimately awesome as we were. So I went to mass pretty frequently. I liked the ritualism of it. I liked when we all wished each other peace. I even took communion because at the time I didn't know that non-Catholics weren't supposed to.

Also, I was a Spanish major, so Catholicism interested me because of its importance in the Spanish-speaking world. I had a Catholic classmate and I went to mass with her at the Newman Center. This was where I learned that I shouldn't be taking Catholic communion. Another time, I went to a lecture there about the book of Revelation. Afterward they served cookies and punch and I remember thinking, Wow, our churches really aren't that different after all.

Now like every church, the Catholic Church is full of flaws: too many rules, too much obsession with humanity's "unworthiness," too many hang-ups about sex (or not enough when it comes to priests and kids), way too patriarchal. But I still have a soft spot for all the symbolism and the rituals and history and heritage. Catholicism offers so much for the imagination to latch onto, so many potential corridors for the mind to wander. I don't believe in their authority; I think they're just playing make-believe like every other church, but I like make-believe.

I ran the Twin Cities Marathon last October, and either just before or just after the 26-mile marker (it's all kind of blurry at that point), I passed the Cathedral of Saint Paul. I was down that way this last weekend and decided to take a look inside. It was a Saturday morning and a wedding was taking place. A few tourists were milling around the peripheral parts. I wandered through the side chapels, one for Mary, one for Peter. The sheer size of the place was astonishing. Exploring the place reminded me of reading a poem, something new to discover and consider around every corner, some new meaning to extract, some new way to be changed.

They had a special display of a replica of Michelangelo's Pietà.

I'd seen photos of it, but being in front of the sculpture was a different experience. Mary looked so peaceful, quietly joyful even, cradling the body of her murdered son. Christ looked spent and defeated, but Mary was an anchor of calm and strength.

I wanted to press my cheek up against hers.

The lyrics of a song I sang in recital a couple of years ago came to mind:

Ah! Sore was the suff'ring borne by the body of Mary's son.

But sorer still to him was the grief which for his sake came upon his mother.

From "The Crucifixion," from Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs.


I went back to my hotel for a nap, then slumming in bookstores and coffee shops, then back to the cathedral for the Saturday evening vigil. I stood and sat and recited "And also with you" with the rest of them. During the homily, the priest asked how many parents put as much effort into making sure their children get to heaven as they do into making sure their children get to college. Could it be, he asked, that heaven doesn't seem like a real place to us, that it's in the same category as fairy tales in our minds? Well, for me personally, yes actually. But he made some nice points about making heaven more of a real part of our lives here and now, about going before the Lord and saying, I have become aware of something unheavenly in my life, and I want this encounter with you to change me.

Isn't that really the point of any religious practice?

And I know you don't need religion to be good or to be happy, but I still like it. I like the ways it stimulates my imagination, and it is through my imagination that I become a new, and hopefully better, person.

When it was time for communion, I went forward with the rest of the congregation, crossed my arms over my chest to indicate that I would not be partaking, accepted the priest's blessing and returned to my seat.

Changed.

My Catholic-ish roots

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