Practical for whom?

As I tweeted last night after reading chanson's Sunday In Outer Blogness round-up, I'm still not really sure if the post in question is joking. Irresistible (Dis)grace gives a further rundown and examination, and I agree with a lot of their points (most pertinently I'm inclined to agree that even if a thing is demonstrably false that doesn't mean it isn't worth believing in [see: Chaos magic, Alan Moore and his snake god, etc...with caveats.] In other words, I don't think the ahistoricity of the Book of Mormon is a good reason to not form a church around it).

However, what I'm really more interested in here is the mere possibility of so-called Mormon atheism. When I left the church there was no inkling in my mind that a person could remain in the church as a non-believer. I'm still not quite sure why anyone would want to, but that's neither here nor there. Everyone is familiar with Mormon culture, from casseroles to The RM, but what about cultural Mormonism? Will there ever be a point where nonbelievers engage with LDS culture as modern cultural Jewish people do with Judaism? I think most of my continuing surprise at this line of thinking is that my Mormonism did not separate culture and doctrine. As I grow older and read more accounts of currently and formerly practicing members, the lie that is correlation becomes more and more baldfaced. The church is not the same everywhere. It probably never will be, for the simple reason that people are people.

Without asking probing questions, I can’t assume any Mormon I talk to even believes in the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus. Even the Mormons that aren’t closet-atheists are largely latent atheists (or agnostics) without knowing it. Since evangelism, I take it, is partly to engage the conscience and the depth of one’s heart, I want to reach them where they are really at, even if they don’t quite understand what is going on.

What a world to live in! Again, perhaps this was consequence of being a hopelessly naive 19-year-old, but it would not have occurred to me to wonder whether the people around me at church actually believed what they heard from the pulpit and read in the scriptures. "New Order Mormons" weren't a Thing. Personal interpretations of doctrine were only ok as long as they matched up with official ones. The divide between what the brain knew and what it knew it was supposed to believe was an unbridgeable one. And, I will remind you once more, this was less than a decade ago. From where I'm standing, still connected to the church through my parents and still observing through blogs and the news, the LDS at large are not yet far along enough to allow for Mormon atheism.

The place that cradled me is burning

Normally I am not much for Gawker, but one of my favorite Hairpin writer/commenters, Mallory Ortberg, has begun doing pieces for them, so occasionally I have to venture in (the Gawker commenters, may I say, do not deserve melis even a little bit). Last week she wrote an article entitled "Have You Heard the One About the Religious Woman Who Stops Being Religious In College?"

Obviously that was going to be totally all up in my alleys, and it was--not just the memory of having religion and losing it, or the experience of being let down by authority figures and God, or the tendency to keep the church in the corner of my eye, whether incidentally or intentionally, or the lingering guilt over choosing to read the same SWEU novel for the eighteenth time instead of doing my scripture study. When I was young there was a disconnect between my home life and my church life; people said things from the pulpit and in Sunday school that my mother would never have said. When we were small she let us wear two-piece bathing suits, of all things, and didn't hover over my shoulder when I checked out books with swear words from the library. As I grew older and after my mother remarried a very stringently devout man, the gap closed, church authority and family authority presenting a united front (as I suppose it should have been all along, ideally). I have no idea if I still would have left had my mother continued to be relatively personally liberal, showing me that there was a way to be a good, faithful LDS woman as well as keeping one's own counsel.

This brings me to the crux of Ortberg's piece, what really hit home: the idea, totally foreign to me at age nineteen, that change can happen from within. It honestly never occurred to me to wonder if I, I, could be an instrument of change in the LDS church. That simply wasn't how the church worked. I only knew that I had become aware of the church as a place I could no longer belong. I didn't think about what it would need to be like for me to continue belonging there. Maybe it's no better than saying if my aunt was male she would be my uncle, but as a blogger who reads a good many LDS and ex/post/whatever-LDS blogs, I am seeing inklings of change. I see the women of fMh, I see Joanna Brooks. They're doing something I didn't think could be done. I'm still not sure it can be, or if it's worth it. But it's happening and I am watching, occasionally befuddled, more often proud.

Last LDS-related post for awhile and I swear there'll be kittens or sex or something FUN soon

In the interest of providing some background and insights into people who manage to be both Christian and polytheist or other brands of pagan, a few links:

Ruby Sara's new blog at Witches and Pagans 

Cat Chapin-Bishop and Peter Bishop, two Quaker Pagans 

Zillah Threadgoode of Surprised Christo-Pagan 

And one that is specifically LDS: Mother Wheel

Not all of these bloggers' paths fit my personal definition of what "Christian" means, but they all share glimpses of spirituality that reaches beyond what we typically consider "Christian" and "pagan," and anyway, that's the beauty of living in a free society, isn't it? Note to conservatives: we are still living in a free society, where people are free to worship according, as it were, to the dictates of their own conscience.

I am actually a little bit scandalized

Still on the Mormon train: what's this I see about the Book of Abraham being removed from official LDS canon? I suppose you could say that until super official word comes down from the General Authorities, nothing doing--but this interview is still a very interesting read. After fifteen years of Mormonism Florida-style, I'm inclined to think that, despite the church's intense efforts at correlation, members in the mission field apparently practice a bit differently from the hub in Utah. Hearing an LDS "expert"--can I read that as "mouthpiece"?--state that some items of doctrine "depend on which Mormon you talk to" is frankly a goggler for me; what church is he part of? Nothing in LDS doctrine is supposed to depend on who you're talking to! That's the whole point of correlation, the much-loved adage that "the Church is the same everywhere."

Basically my reaction to this piece was a lot of gasping. Manfriend became concerned and thought perhaps naked pictures of Idris Elba had surfaced on Tumblr. Alas, nothing so sexy, but it is very strange to contemplate things that I had never considered fringe aspects of LDS doctrine being talked away or denied significance. May I remind you all that I'm only twenty-five? Less than ten years ago the Book of Abraham was part of my seminary classes, eternal progression was a main tenet of the Plan of Salvation, and the Garden of Eden was most definitely located in Missouri--hell, I joked about the latter in a LiveJournal entry dated to 2004: "Then it was time to pack up our dear camp by scenic Troutless Lake and pull out for Zion! I mean, Salt Lake, since Zion was actually behind us, in Missouri, contrary to what Utahns believe."

Trek-related teenage sniping aside, I do wonder how potlucks, dances, and wedding receptions will change now that drinking Coke is ok (seriously, they picked the caffeinated items that are totally terrible for you to OK?). On the one hand, shoving the Book of Abraham to the quaint-and-outdated or esoteric-and-scholarly closet is a long time coming, since it's basically a crock of easily disproven shit, but there's a lot that stems from that book that is very important to the larger church doctrine. Or is it? Who knows? Apparently the LDS Newsroom is now the center of revelation in our techy era. All I can say from my own experience is that if beliefs about the world to come are indeed misconceptions, they are misconceptions held by a good chunk of members. Part of participating in a religion which accepts modern revelation is experiencing and acknowledging changes to lived doctrine, but I don't think I'm wrong in thinking that most Mormons prefer to get their revelation straight from the Prophet in General Conference, rather than the church website on any given weekday.

Those Mormons and their polytheism

Check out this article from The Wild Hunt--interesting, nay? I've never personally encountered anyone who considered the LDS religion to be a polytheistic (and therefore "pagan" and "non-Christian") one, but it comes up occasionally in articles that I read, and always, without fail, I am taken aback. Of course it never occurred to me while I was in the church to wonder if my religion was a polytheistic one, and once I left, I had other things on my mind. But now I have all the time in the world to consider such things! 

So. Are Mormons polytheists? This is not really the kind of thing that I think matters, but lots of other people do. Generally I feel like if Christ figures into your belief system as a personal and/or universal savior, you are probably a Christian, and by this measuring stick, the LDS church is a Christian one. I have more than once explained this to people, but it didn't occur to me until just now to wonder whether those people were implying that Mormons were pagans when they said that they didn't think the church was a Christian institution. Maybe they were! Maybe everyone thinks Mormons are pagans and I'm just really oblivious! I think, being in the church and worshiping as a Mormon, it doesn't cross most members' minds that they might be polytheists. But then, if it does, I also think it doesn't cross their minds that this automatically makes them not Christian.

The problem for me with this whole conversation is that there is apparently one very narrow definition of Christianity. You could argue, as some do, that Catholics are pagans and polytheists for their veneration of Mary and the various saints. The possibility of Heavenly Mother adds to the perception of the LDS as polytheists (if you know enough about the church to know about possible Heavenly Mothers). Indeed there is a good bit about Mormonism and the history of the LDS church that is quite pagan--Joseph Smith utilized what amounts to fortune-telling and divination methods (and one of his and following prophets' titles is "Seer"); temple architecture and ceremonies take many aspects from Freemasonry, with its mysterious origins and pan-religious membership, and the mere existence of sacred (or secret) temple rituals is somewhat analogous to mystery cults; and an entire new mythology is found in the Book of Mormon. Interestingly enough, Lorenzo Snow's couplet "As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be" is very close in spirit to the popular pagan adage "as above, so below," generally attributed to Hermes Trismegistus but said by nearly ever major figure in modern Western paganism at some point. Imagine that! We're all cribbing from the same sources, folks. These are not small things. They certainly make the LDS church a peculiar one. But are they enough to cancel out Christ as the centerpiece of the religion?

Not for me. I suppose the commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" is a pretty clear one (then again, so is "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," and pretty much ONLY Mormons stick to that one), but then you get into all sorts of arguments about who is speaking: it is God the Father? Is it Jehovah-who-will-be-Christ? Does it matter? If Christ is the same figure as God the Father and God the Holy Ghost, why are they demarcated at all? For Mormons, such questions are even stickier, since LDS dogma indicates that the members of the Godhead are distinct figures, that Jehovah of the Old Testament is Christ, not God the Father, and that God the Father was once a physical human man and is the literal as well as spiritual father of humanity. But does that make Mormons true polytheists? I say ye nay, and here's why--henotheists acknowledge the existence of more than one deity, and active polytheists worship more than one god figure. The LDS church does neither and wouldn't dream of it; you aren't even supposed to be praying to Heavenly Mother in the privacy of your own bedroom. Prayers are without fail addressed to God as "Heavenly Father," and ordinances such as baptism are carried out "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost" much as other Christian churches' rites are. Practically and functionally speaking, there's no polytheism to see here. Theologically speaking...it's a thicket, man. If you consider the LDS doctrine that all humans who reach the celestial kingdom will eventually become deified, well, that's a very un-Christian idea both in concept and in practice--as far as I know--to think that there are a myriad other worlds with their own Heavenly Parents and Saviors. Mormon theology's greatest sin may be that it wants to have its cake and eat it.

Ultimately, for me, the church's emphasis on Christ as the Savior is enough to make it a Christian institution. That isn't the case for everyone, but I very much abhor the idea that Christians must be monotheists. Basically, to Christians who are concerned that voting for Romney means they won't be voting for a "Christian" I would say: have no fear, he and his running mate share all your bigotries.

You've got to know when it's time to turn the page

This used to be me. I hope it's worth it for this person.

via Postsecret

Hurry, put a ring on it!

I promised it'd be all fun all the time until Next Giant Post, but Sulli always gives me food for thought. Currently the chewy topic at hand is marrying in haste. My experience of LDS marriage culture is exactly so--I watched everyone from friends  my age to my mother get married after bare months of knowing the other person. There were some shotgun weddings as well. My hypothesis is that the urge to get married as soon as possible stems from the premium the church places on (temple) marriage; holding a person's salvation hostage is a pretty good way of getting couples hitched. Also worth noting is that once you get married, you can get laid. That's a powerful impetus for young people who aren't even supposed to be masturbating.

Relatedly, a few nights ago my gentleman mentioned that he'd seen some LDS missionaries out and about, which kicked off a conversation about how missions work in the Mormon church. In high school I kind of assumed that I would serve a mission, both because I was laboring under the impression that I was unattractive to all male specimens generally and especially to LDS guys, and because I didn't actually want to get married at nineteen or twenty. Needless to say, none of that came to pass, since I am unmarried at twenty-four and left the church before serving a mission became the road to take. I hope that in the years I've been gone the attitude toward women serving missions has changed from "sweet spirits no one wants to marry even though they're rilly rilly good people" to "life experience and valid personal choice." Has the stereotype of overweight/ugly/awkward/otherwise-non-marriage-material sister missionaries disappeared? Serving the church should not be  considered the second-best option for women who can't get a husband. At the time I disliked that one pole was Get Married and the other Serve A Mission (Because No One Wants You) but hadn't really figured out why. Now it's clear as day. Part of the reason I grew away from the church was that there simply weren't enough options for meaningful relationships. In the year or so before I left there were a couple of articles in The New Era decrying the rise of "hanging out"--the authorities were not happy that traditional dates seemed to be going out the window and that young men and women seemed to be (gasp!) becoming friends before doing the dinner-and-a-movie thing. If the tendency and/or cultural pressure for LDS singles to eye every member of the opposite sex with the Moroni spire glare is diminishing, all the better!

Now, of course, there are many reasons why I am yet unmarried, none of which are satisfactory to my mother. And I can't say for certain if the hasty marriages I witnessed as a younger person were a bad idea (or if the parties are repenting at leisure). I hope they're all doing well and they probably are. But LDS marriage culture as a whole seems unhealthy to me.

Rising

This weekend was Easter, of course. No longer being of a Christian faith and having a convention to attend in Columbus, I didn't really remember until today, when I realized that all my favorite candy would be on sale at the grocery store. A few of my beau's classmates invited him to church with them, which (I believe) the former Catholic declined. If we had been at home, we would have had lunch or dinner with our families, and that's really what I miss the most. As zany and irritating as our respective clans may be, the weight of cultural holidays is centered around family and togetherness, especially for secular people, atheists, or people whose religious paths don't celebrate that particular holiday. For many years when I was growing up, Easter Sunday was the day that we took our family photograph, and it still feels somewhat strange to not see my mother's family that day. 

But Easter still happens here in Ohio, and in many ways the season is more overt; maybe because of the preponderance of giant old Catholic churches in my new area and the streams of people I saw tracing the Stations of the Cross, maybe because of the extravagant flowers and blooming trees everywhere. As Christmas is the season of preparation and anticipation, Easter is the season of promises making good and tangible results. It is easy to feel inspired by the newness around me,  it is simple to enact the rites of spring in the everyday, and that is my religion.

Leave me alone

There's kicky little saying that Mormons love to parrot regarding apostates: "They leave the church, but they can't leave it alone."

Aside from how incredibly short that sells the church in terms of spiritual and cultural impact (like, you guys realize you're saying that the church is totally easy to ditch and completely forget about, right? THAT SHOULD NOT BE A GOOD THING), this adage also ignores the church's tendency to never leave anyone alone ever, not even after they've died. I don't remember if I talked here about how my mother had given the missionaries in Tampa my new cell phone number and how that made me feel--it pissed me off. A very simple invasion of privacy. Furthermore, by that time I had not been inside an LDS church in five years.

Who can't leave whom alone?

Thursday evening I got a charming email from my lady parent detailing the coming apocalypse as brought on by President Obama declaring "peacetime martial law" (I know, I know). I replied briefly and vulgarly. In her response to my brief vulgarity, my mother reminded me that this weekend is General Conference! AS IF I COULD FORGET, since she reminds me of this twice a year. Now, sure, if I had cable I'd be slamming down shots every time an old white dude mentioned Joseph Smith, but I don't and so I'll just have to conduct my weekend the way I normally do: a little library, a little grocery shopping, maybe get laid.

ALAS.

Friday sexytimes

In her latest post, Sulli at We Were Going To Be Queens talks about sex and the (LDS) church, including a quotation for discussion from Alison Bechdel to kick things off: "Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death."

I think this is an elegant summation of one of US society's most trenchant issues. Being raised in the Mormon church, I found that this broader perennial problem was percolated to a fine brew of feverish guilt Kool-Aid. It's probably the same in other churches, but as ever I can only speak to my own experience. As Sulli points out, in LDS doctrine sexual sin is second only to murder in God's Litany of Bad Things; in this case, "sexual sin" covers everything from cheating on a spouse to non-standard relationships--such as polyamory, ironically enough--to homosexuality to sexual abuse to masturbation to French kissing your boyfriend and possibly even oral sex within the bounds of marriage, depending on who you talk to.

This doesn't mean that church members in good standing never ever do these things (I recall overhearing gossip among the married women in my ward back home which singed my precious teenage ears). It certainly doesn't mean that sexual abuse never occurs or that Mormon babies are never born out of wedlock. What it did mean for me was that a disconnect grew between how I thought about sex on an everyday basis and what I expected would occur once I got married. Mormon youth are bombarded with messages about how their sexuality should manifest and express itself and what should be done about sexual urges. Effectively a good Mormon has no erogenous zones until a wedding ring appears on the left hand. Body shame is instilled early and reinforced often, and LDS members are expected to bounce from "sin second only to murder" to participating in and enjoying conjugal activities once married. I can't provide any real insight on Mormon marriages and sex lives, since I skedaddled before that happened--not that it was likely to. But I did get to go through the process of learning about my body and sexuality outside the confines of LDS doctrine. Thankfully, I had libraries and Internets full of health information to guide me, because no mistake, one of the most real consequences of the LDS attitude toward sex is teenage mothers. As I recall from my ward growing up, there were three teenage girls who became pregnant while I was nearing teenagehood myself. THIS CAN BE AVOIDED. It is frankly criminal negligence to lie to children about sex and the facts of life in the twenty-first century modern world. I was lucky in that I managed to rip out most of the shame I associated with sex all by myself, though sometimes remnants of it still surface. I was not ashamed enough to not find out everything I could about the way my body worked; I read tons of books, surfed Scarleteen, and talked to my more experienced friends. But what about the young men and women who are overwhelmed by that shame, who are afraid to ask questions or have no one to ask?

Doctrines of shame do no service to anyone save those in power. The death which stems from sexual shame is the death of part of a person's self. Shame is inherently about hating yourself; guilt is about the things that you do--it's easy to see where the two intertwine. A church that teaches its children, youth, and adults to hate themselves does not come from a place of divinity. Another death is that of a person's sex drive, for how are we to repress a thing for many years (many, many years depending on when a church member gets married) and then suddenly expect it to flourish? I recall a woman in my ward who was single and had never been married; I remember my mother saying that she was "angry"; and now I think to myself, Of course she was angry! She was in her forties and probably had never gotten any! Had I kept on in that church, I likely also would have become angry and depressed, since by the age of twenty no right-thinking LDS man had shown any interest. I mean, sweet Zombie Jesus, I was practically an old maid! Another death resulting from sexual shame is in the realm of self-love, and I don't even mean the Divinyls kind, although let us be clear: jerking it occasionally is important for most people. Self-love here refers to love and reverence for ourselves as humans. My experience as an LDS youth was a cycle of perceived sin and repentance, and apparently this is how it should be; keep in mind that I never actually had the opportunity to do anything tragically bad--I never dated anyone, let alone got close enough to do some sinnin'. I never masturbated. I didn't read or look at porn (except on accident, like when I discovered the novelization of The Wicker Man. O was that ever a night for repenting!). But that shame was there, always. I knew even thinking about kissing the cute guy in physics class was wrong. We are not whole humans if we can't acknowledge all parts of ourselves. Shame leads to fear, fear leads to hate...we know where this goes. So much hate manifests in the LDS church from the shame associated with sex: hate of homosexual people, hate of interracial marriages, hate of those who choose to marry outside the church.

Body and sexual shame forces bodies to be battlegrounds, and though I might joke about it, it's serious business. Sexual shame demonizes bodies, both male and female bodies. It lays blame for rape at the feet of victims. It places the onus of responsibility on women while creating men as animalistic and out of control ("You should dress more modestly to help men's thoughts remain pure"). Once upon a time I refused to be ashamed any longer and though it is a continual process of reworking and relearning, I will never look back. I am not ashamed of my breasts or my legs or my ass or my hair. I am not ashamed of my desires. I am not ashamed of my opinions and beliefs and morals. I am not ashamed of how my face and body look when I'm getting busy. I am not ashamed to embrace myself, to tell my gentleman that he's sexy and I want him, right now. I am not ashamed to bring a basket of condoms to the CVS checkout counter, and frankly I hope someday to be utterly shameless.

Hail Columbia (and happy Diwali)

This morning as I was running errands I got a phone call. Not recognizing the number, I let it ring and lo--there was a voicemail. Who could it be, Diana? I asked myself. Perhaps it's from a job you applied to in Cleveland! I opened my voicemail box to see.

It was a Mormon missionary. How do they still find me? I lamented. I changed my phone number! I moved to a different apartment! And then, in the middle of the message, the missionary's very polite voice said that she had met MY MOTHER in Salt Lake City during conference and was calling ON HER BEHALF.

Oh Mom, why you do this? It's been five years. I'm not coming back. Let it go...and don't give out my new phone number to Mormons. You can show your love in ways that don't involve LDS personnel calling me; in fact, just saying "I love you," as you do every time we talk, is enough.

This anecdote is a roundabout way of getting to the point: Hail Columbia. Hail Columbia is an initiative begun by pagan groups in order to remind people that, oh yes, here in the US we do have this thing called "freedom of religion." And the concepts of freedom and the US as a free land are handily personified in the figure of the goddess Columbia? So much the better! Minority religious and atheist/agnostic communities and people face a lot of garbage in the form of aggressive proselytizing, hate speech, and even legal measures which favor majority religious groups (read: Christians), much of which is outright lies. Hail Columbia aims to distribute information and coordinate marches, meetings, and demonstrations to "help re-affirm the idea set forth in our founding document: 'that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'" There are currently coordinating groups in 26 of the 50 US states (no surprises, Utah doesn't have any yet). If you're interested in what this effort is about, check out the website's coordinators map to see if someone in your area is involved.

And on that note, it's Diwali! Best wishes of light, awareness, and clarity to Hindu, Jain, and Sikh readers out there.

Another music post; still angry, now with added sad

I guess it's that kind of week. Honey Diana don't care!

I have a lot of deep feelings about music. Not deep in the "totally philosophical shit, brah!" way, just in the deep-rooted way. I was listening to Boys for Pele in a traffic jam on the way to work this morning and vaguely thinking about Tori Amos and how I like her and she has red hair and she is friends with Neil Gaiman and sometimes sings about him and she's a tree in his book Stardust and apparently her new record is really great and her daughter does some guest vocals on it and so on etc., and then I remembered that the first time I ever heard of Tori Amos was from a Mormon woman.

Not entirely expected.

This woman--I feel bad that I can't remember her name, because she was one of the better Young Women leaders I had--was talking to us in YW about music and how music affects the Spirit. LDS culture-dogma basically subscribes to the "rock'n'roll/rap/heavy metal/edgy country/odd female vocalists/everything non-MOTAB is Satan's music and he will use it to drag you to Outer Darkness!" brand of music appreciation. Easy listening radio stations are usually safe; LDS dances are horribly boring and non-danceable; me asking the guy with the guitar at a youth conference to play a Nirvana song was extremely daring indeed (I only did it to be a dick, since he was wearing a Nirvana shirt).

Anyway, this woman was talking about how she had basically forced herself to stop listening to Tori Amos, because she knew that Amos' music didn't bring in the Spirit. And even though I was very distracted at the time, because I was mentally going through my Kazaa playlists and noting all the punk and industrial and metal stuff on them and knowing that I was a Bad Person for ever listening to them in the first place and an even Worse Person because I probably wasn't going to stop listening to them, I noticed that this woman was pretty fucken sad about giving up Tori Amos. Clearly Tori Amos had brought her a lot of joy and fulfillment and deep feelings, and she disliked having to pretend to enjoy Sandi Patti's Christmas CD instead of being able to play Midwinter Graces.

I wish this story ended with "and so I went home and listened to Strange Little Girls and had a spiritual awakening and left the church and have never been happier" but it doesn't, and I actually only started listening to Amos a couple of years ago. But I can say that she brings me a lot of joy and fulfillment and deep feelings now, and so do Big Black and the Mars Volta and Foo Fighters and Kamelot and Evergrey and M.I.A. and Nine Inch Nails and many, many, many other devil's-music artists. I cannot, cannot, and will never again get behind any kind of movement--political, spiritual, religious, social, whatever--that pressures people to throw away things that they love, things that are meaningful to them, and yes, things that bring personal revelation. Our souls are too important to allow their forms to be dictated to us.

The Shattering (SPOILERS)

So a few nights ago I read The Shattering, New Zealand YA author Karen Healey's newest novel. I loved her first book, Guardian of the Dead, and enjoyed The Shattering so much that I read it in one sitting. There's a lot going for this book--a thoughtful cast of multicultural characters, sex-positive relationships, great friendships between girls and between boys and girls, a scary-cool premise.

That last hinges on something I was not expecting at all: an examination of modern Western witchcraft. One of the major characters, Janna, is a teenage semi-practitioner of Wicca (she says she believes but needs to study it more), and a couple of other characters are witches as well, including the major villain. No one in Summerton seems particularly bothered by this; apparently neopagans are common enough in New Zealand. Keri and Sione, the other two main characters, don't exactly follow Janna immediately down the path of believing magic is real right off the bat, but neither do they make fun of her or act like this isn't a viable belief system. Daisy, the villain, is a practitioner what Janna calls "the left-hand path," the leader of an apparently older coven which has less use for things like the Three-Fold Law. This coven has been ritually sacrificing young men for many years to keep Summerton safe and prosperous.

All in all, the comparison text that immediately popped into my head when I finished The Shattering was The Wicker Man. This was a trippy 60s horror film which revolved around a Scottish island where pagan ways were still practiced, including human sacrifice, to insure the island's prosperity (particularly that of the apples grown there). The movie was novelized, and I read the novel when I was a teenager. Go ahead, have a giggle at the thought of good Mormon teenager Diana reading The Wicker Man; obviously I would not have been allowed to watch the film, but my dear sweet mother doesn't believe in monitoring her kids' library records, a liberalism she likely regrets now. At any rate, I LOVED that novelization and didn't even know it was a movie first until I got to college. I think I read The Wicker Man three or four times. I did not connect it then with other books I was reading--Rosemary Sutcliff and Marion Zimmer Bradley specifically--though it seems clear now that my brain and spirit had been primed for this sort of interest and need since I was a kid.

The Shattering is in a similar vein to The Wicker Man, though more nuanced, less shock-valuey, and more suitable for younger audiences. Though set in New Zealand, her previous book, Guardian of the Dead, straight-up utilized Maori mythology for its plot and characters, while The Shattering bases its supernatural dealings in Western myth, specifically the idea of the Summer King (go read your Frazer if you don't know what I mean). As someone interested in neopaganism generally, any fiction book with a thoughtful treatment of modern witchcraft gets kudos from me, especially since there are far too many which go in for shock'n'schlock and fall back on idiotic tropes like Satanic ritual abuse or witches sexily applying fly ointment to their genitals. Healey presents a balanced offering of both witches who use their power for good (such as Sandra-Claire and Janna's protection spell for Takeshi) and for evil (Daisy and her coven).

Body Appreciation Saturday: More period talk

(I'm out of town this weekend, so I'm posting this early. Cheers!)

Womanist Musings recently put up a thoughtful, interesting, and well-stated post about menstruation, Islam, and prayer. Obviously I can't comment with any kind of depth or authority on that particular topic, but reading through the post, its links, and its comments reminded me of something similar which occurred in my time in the LDS church.

When I was a teenager growing up Mormon, I took a lot of trips to the temple. My family was lucky enough to live close to the Orlando, FL temple, and I took many trips there with my parents and with my ward to do baptisms for the dead (the only temple ordinance Mormon teens are allowed to perform). These are literal baptisms; they involve immersion in a tank of water, and the ritual garments worn by the participants are white.

Now before we went into the chapel to sing and pray before the baptisms started, one of the female leaders present would ask me and the other teenage girls if we were menstruating. If we were, we would only be allowed to participate in the laying-on-of-hands (blessing) which is the second portion of the baptism for the dead rite. No dunking. After our song and prayer in the chapel, whatever bishopric member or other priesthood holder who was leading that night would ask the female leader present how many girls were going to be being baptized. Of course Sister So-and-so didn't name any names or point at us, but it became quite clear very soon after who had their period that day--it was whoever wasn't sitting in line to be immersed.

I don't know if this still occurs, or if it was or is widespread, or indeed if it has anything to do with doctrine. Logistically, there's nothing wrong with not wanting there to be blood in the baptismal font, especially since white clothes are involved. But quite frankly, I don't give a shit. This occurrence embarrassed me then and it infuriates me now. Women were singled out publically for something beyond their control, something that is both idolized and demeaned by the church proper. I don't actually care now if the world at large knows I'm on the rag, but I sure did when I was a teenager, partly because no one had bothered to talk about my body with me--because it was shameful and dirty and functionally nonexistent until I had a wedding ring on my finger. The LDS church--like many other institutions, I'm sure--likes to go on about the wonder of motherhood and how great it is that women give birth, etc.; it also likes to not ever talk about those things that make motherhood possible, and it certainly reinforces the popular attitude that menstruation is something either funny or gross, not something normal, even boring, sometimes holy.

At least, the church authority system does. That doesn't necessarily mean that every member feels this way, and let me tell you, all the advice and gossip and bitching about periods I got while a teen Mormon, I got in church settings (usually Girls' Camp). So thanks, Kelly, for teaching me how to use a tampon. Thanks, Sister Hill, for telling me that yes, it's ok to ask Mom for Advil during That Week. Thank you, ladies, for being there for me to complain to and ask questions of. No thanks at all to you, gents, for making me complicit in the mockery of my own body.

Seeing red

"So important is the seed, in fact, that it can be a sin for it to spill on the ground. Rather it must be deposited in a bonafide f*toilet. Whereas, menstrual fluid, a potent symbol of actual growing and producing of little dudes and women, is so vile that it can make a dude unclean. I don’t suppose I have to explain the implications of this to anyone."

--A comment from this thread at Twisty's, re Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the male atheist response to Rebecca Watson's vlog about harassment, and some other stuff.

It's against my religion

So every now and then one of these idiots pops up and is all But I CAN'T it's against my RELIGION. And somehow they get away with it--whatever "it" happens to be: not providing Plan B to unmarried women at CVS, not allowing their child to get a blood transfusion. E!T!C! as D. Boon would say.

So I got to thinking. What's against MY religion? I'm religious--I'm of the religion of atheism! Y'all want to call it a religion, best respect my religious beliefs. I can see some scenarios where my atheist card could come in very handy.

"I'm sorry, my religion prevents me from providing you with unlimited binder clips and pens for free. You'll have to buy those items at the bookstore."

"No, I can't tell you the location of the closest Hooters. It's against my religion."

"My religion allows me to watch Stargate SGI on company time."

"Well, in my religion we partake of the sacred sacrament fettucini alfredo every Friday, as homage to He of the Noodly Appendages. So we have to go to Olive Garden for lunch today. Five Guys will not be acceptable."

"I won't be at the staff meeting today. It cuts into my religiously-mandated nap time."

What does your religion keep you from doing?

The bishop said, This is what God does not like about you

That cropped head, very improper too edgy
unfeminine; men don't like women with short hair.
And so tall! It would be better
were you petite.
Why do you talk about a career? University
is a last resort for women
whom men don't want.
You should not watch such movies
read such books--
you read too much anyway.
And these stories, fighting and lasers
far-away planets
What's wrong with where you are?
It's clear you had no
male influence in your childhood.
Poor child of a single mother.
She let you run wild, didn't she
she let you wander outside barefoot
and climb trees;
she read you too many books
she took you to meetings of women.
Well my girl, there are no trees in the Celestial Kingdom
you will wear your soft robes and walk in a
straight
line.

A tattoo, a book, and a ramble

Because I am me, I find it most utterly necessary to deconstruct my recent tattoo and its meanings for you, my fine bunch of reubens. I mentioned the new ink and included a picture in Sunday's post, but the tat is more than it appears. As is evident, it's a rendering of a portion of the autograph Neil Gaiman left in my copy of American Gods--but for me, it's more.

See, the tattoo is not EXACTLY what I would have wanted. While trying to decide on its placement and size, I realized that I thought the "Believe" looked better by itself, without the exclamation point. But as you can see, the exclamation point is there. I decided to include it in the tattoo as a reminder of a couple of things.

First, that although I really, really admire Gaiman as a person and I love his writing, he IS a person and not everything he produces is solid gold and rainbows. Some of it is imperfect. More on that in a moment.

Second, that my beliefs are always going to be changing and that I am probably going to be dissatisfied with them and with myself at various points in my life.


So that first note really needs expanding upon. By all accounts (these accounts being Twitter, blogs and LiveJournals, interviews, and the body of work Gaiman has produced and is producing), Gaiman is a pretty fantastic person: a good dad, a good husband, a good artist, a good activist for comic book creators and libraries and literacy initiatives. But I'm old enough now that I have to see the warts on my heroes, as much as I'd like to stay in the safe realm of ZOMGURAWESOME. One of these warts is a portion of American Gods--a segment which did not strike me odd the first time I read the book, but which now I find difficult to countenance. This passage is below:

'"Eh? Excuse me, miss?" This to their waitress.

She said, "You need another espresso?"

"No, my dear. I was just wondering if you could solve a little argument we were having over here. My friend and I were disagreeing over what the word "Easter" means. Would you happen to know?"

The girl stared at him as though green toads had begun to push their way between his lips. Then she said, "I don't know about any of that Christian stuff. I'm a pagan."

[...] "And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship?"

"Worship?"

"That's right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and at dusk?"

Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, 'The female principle. It's an empowerment thing. You know?"

"Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name?"

"She's the goddess within us all," said the girl with the eyebrow ring, color rising to her cheek. "She doesn't need a name."

"Ah," said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, "so do you have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into the seafoam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?"

"You're making fun of me," she said. "We don't do any of that stuff you were saying." She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was counting to ten. "Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, ma'am?" Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had entered.

They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another customer.

"There," said Wednesday, "is one who does not have the faith and will not have the fun,' Chesterton. Pagan indeed. [...]"'


Yeah. That passage hurts to read, now. My beliefs have changed enough over the past few years that I can no longer read it detachedly. In a book about gods in America, Gaiman's premise ignores the million-odd people in the country who worship an old god--whether the Lord and Lady of Wicca, the Aesir and Vanir of heathenism, the orishas of Vodou, the animikiig of Anishinaabe religion, any of the panoply of Greek, Irish, Indian, Gaulish, Egyptian, and Babylonian deities, or yes, the "feminine principle." And though many of these gods appear themselves in American Gods, the only inkling of modern pagan religion that the book shows is the above passage. Another of Gaiman's books, Anansi Boys, utilizes vodou and other African diaspora spiritualities, and most of his writing incorporates otherworldly characters and ideas, but American Gods--given its title--is notable for what it lacks.

It seems likely that Gaiman simply didn't have time or space to delve into modern American pagan paths. It also seems likely that Wednesday is not a mouthpiece for the author, since (SPOILERS) he's the villain, a villain who uses his words as weapons to goad, trick, deceive, coerce, and con: He is an extremely not-nice person. And the book as an organic whole is fully deserving of the moniker "masterpiece." It is my favorite of Gaiman's offerings, yes, I even like it better than Sandman (which has its own set of issues with old gods and modern worshippers), and the gaps as I perceive them do not detract--for me--from it being a very powerful, important book. There ARE "glitterwitches," as one of my friends calls them; there ARE people only interested with the trappings of Wicca or Thelema or whatever path they find interesting; there ARE people who, as Chesterton has it (hateful man), do not have the faith and will not have the fun. But there are also people who do hold mighty bacchanals, who do carry out magic rituals to their gods and ancestors, who do walk between the worlds, who do gather and dance under the moon.

Those people exist, too.

I have to assume Gaiman knows this and simply did not see fit to address it or include a modern pagan character in the story. The concept of American Gods is a fascinating one: that when immigrants came to the U.S., they brought their gods and demons, and generation by generation belief faded as offspring turned to the "new" gods of technology, fame, etc., leaving the gods and demons in a pale, shadowy state. It's a perfectly sound concept...that is weakened considerably by the fact that modern Americans DO worship a vast variety of foreign and native "old" gods. I suppose if you want to write a story like this one, factors such as that must by necessity be left out.

So yes. That is the over-long story of my new tattoo. I like it--I think it looks great, and it's a wonderful, personal symbol. Expect more ink and more ink-related musings in the hopefully-near future.

Thor (spoilers)

As promised, some thoughts on Thor! I'm coming at this from four perspectives: first, that of a person who genuinely enjoys films; second, that of a person interested in paganism and portrayals of pagan stories in the media; third, as a comic book reader; and fourth, as a feminist.

Given that...I actually don't have much to say. SHOCKING I KNOW. Guess I'm still distracted by this.

For perspectives on the pagan aspect, I would direct you to the Wild Hunt's post about the movie, because it includes some interesting links to a variety of reviews, as well as over 60 comments that are actually worth reading. Thor is not in my personal pantheon, I'm not Asatru, and I'm not qualified to comment on the sticky topic of seeing one's gods on the big screen. Bastardized, blasphemied, homaged, or reinterpreted: take your pick.

From a strictly film-goer's point of view, it was a well-made popcorn movie. I can get behind such films; this summer is going to be full of them and I'm looking forward to it (thanks, AMC, for showing me every single action movie trailer worth seeing!). The action was pretty tight, Branagh must've known that there were some ladies and gay men in the audience, because damn that was a long, lingering look at Chris Hemsworth's abs, the CGI portrayal of Asgard was spectacular, and the acting was generally solid, especially from Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Idris Elba as Heimdall.

For the comic book fans--sure, why not. I don't read Thor, but my manfriend is more familiar with the stories associated with Marvel's version of the Thunder God, and he was pretty pleased. I was glad to see the Hawkeye cameo. I like Clint Barton and I like archery, and he's going to be in Avengers, and it was quite a bit neater and more subtle to include him in a small scene rather than attempting to shoehorn in the Incredible Hulk or Iron Man. I thought Jeremy Renner looked pretty great in character.

And the feminism! Well. I have to say I was rather pleased with Jane Foster's character (portrayed by Natalie Portman). She's an astrophysicist who just wants to get her work done, doesn't take kindly to it being lifted by S.H.I.E.L.D., and goes to great lengths to get it back. The role could very, very easily have been strictly love-interest, so props to the writers for fleshing her out substantially. No idiotic costume changes, no running in heels, and the cooing over aforementioned Hemsworth abs seemed, in conjunction with her character as established, refreshingly forthright and straightforward: she's got the hots and she wants to lay it on him. So she does, without sacrificing her interests and career. Sif and Darcy (Kat Dennings' character), however, got some short shrift. Sif came off as the Warriors Three's token lady friend and Thor's line about how Sif was the first warrior maiden was a touch unbelievable, given that the Asgardians are essentially a warrior race. It WAS nice that Sif followed up that line by pointing out that she did all the work. Dennings as Darcy was funny, but that was her sole purpose.

So there you have it: a basically better-than-average summer comic book movie. Cheers to Thor and its crew for delivering the first of the season.

International Pagan Coming Out Day

Dirt-worshippers, tree-huggers, Asatruar, Goddess women, faeries, voudouisants, Wiccans, crystal-gazers, shamans, merry apatheists, UUs, hedgewalkers, witches, animists, and Others unite! There is power in names, as any fantasy fan knows: if you can, and you feel you ought, name yourself. Don't let anyone else do it for you. I am an atheist; I am a pagan. I get to say who I am. My voice is mine.