State of the Me: 2019-2020

Since this new year is a nice, round number -- and I'm hitting 20 years of marriage and 20 years of living in Europe at the end of this new year -- I'd like to give a two-decade review this time.

The three main axes are home/family, career, and creative projects.  All three have had some significant ups and downs.

Let's start with career since that's the simplest one.  It's been a mostly upward (if bumpy) trend since I started as a software engineer around twenty years ago.  Overall I think I've done a pretty good job o treating setbacks as "crisitunities" that ultimately led to gaining good experience. 

Some highlights include the time I had the opportunity to take a product from slides to production as the sole engineer in the company, and another where I served as CTO for more than two years.  Plus, I've written three books on Java programming and have given numerous lectures.

From this past year, I'm especially proud of the three lectures I gave for Climate-KIC the Journey -- including one where I was invited to speak at the Community Summit in Hamburg.  This was a great follow-up to the Climathon in 2018, where I had a great time assisting as an invited expert.  I also gave a talk on building a career through startups (at the Impact Hub).  This was a follow-up to some of my earlier writings for The Startup.

I have just started a new job, and so far it looks like it's going to be an exciting challenge.  I'm doing straight-up engineering (no management), and the project is one that's up my alley.  Of course leaving my previous job was something of a disappointment.  I really wanted to make it work, but I learned that -- while I can fix a lot of things -- there are some big factors outside of my control, even as CTO.  Ultimately, I had stop banging my head against the wall and move on.

Maybe at some point I'll be CTO of another tech startup (hopefully something related to addressing climate change!), but I will have to make sure that I'm really on the same page with the others running the company before accepting this level of role again.  I have learned that agreeing on the grand overarching goal just isn't enough to make all of the other components fit into place.

The path of my creative projects has been a bit bumpier.  Through the first decade of the current millennium I built a beautiful dream -- a work I poured my heart into and am still proud of.  But over the years I found that I couldn't make it take off.  I couldn't get it to soar.  It was devastating to watch that dream die.

I took up blogging around the same time.  It was amazingly fun at first because I could write essays on a variety of subjects that I'd been thinking about -- and people would read them.  But over time that became frustrating as well because the amount of time and effort it took to build any kind of audience and community (here and at Main Street Plaza) was so wildly out-of-proportion with the size of the community I could build.  I've found myself slowly giving up.

That said, I've had a great experience working with people and making friends within the Mormon Lit community.  I loved giving talks and panels at Sunstone.  (See this roundup post for links to some of my publications and presentations.)  The Brodie Awards (which I built) are still going, and there's an exciting new project in the pipeline at Mormon Alumni Association Books -- so hopefully in the upcoming year I can rekindle some of the projects I started.

But for my personal creative/artistic work, my biggest breakthrough came in 2015 when a new story came to me.  During a magical 3-week vacation in Paris I wrote wrote it out and figured out how I could actually draw it in my favorite story format :  la bande dessinée (as a comic book).  Now I've drawn more than 2/3 of the first book (of three), and I love the results!  I'd be done already if it weren't for work.  My new goal is to have book one done before the first half of 2020 is up.

Regarding family and home -- well, I'm happy with what I've built.

I started the millennium on a high note by marrying my true love and starting my new "happily ever after" life in France.  (I recounted act one of this romantic adventure in an essay for the book Baring Witness, 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage.) 

It was challenging to start a new life in a new country at the same time as starting a new family -- with two babies who arrived shortly after we installed ourselves in Bordeaux -- and no support network of family and friends there to help us out.  But it was a wonderful, magical time.  I finally felt truly at home living the life I chose for myself.

Moving to Switzerland in early 2008 was hard.  I think that challenge was the main impetus for starting this "state of the me" series, as I explored how I felt about starting over as a foreigner in a new place surrounded by a language I did not speak -- it was as though all of that life I'd built as a person integrated into French culture had been erased.

But, over time, I learned the new language.  I've learned a new city -- Zürich -- which I love now probably as much as I loved Bordeaux.  I became a citizen of France years ago, and we're all on track to become citizens of Switzerland.

My children were so young when we moved that they don't really remember living anywhere except for Zürich -- specifically this one neighborhood of Zürich where we've been living since 2010.  It's a great environment for kids, teens, and young adults because it's so easy to get around on foot, on bike, and especially on public transportation.

I'm glad that my older son passed the Baccalauréat exam this past year and my younger son is on track to pass it as well in a couple of years.  Both boys are very bright, so I had expected them to both be at the top of their respective classes throughout school, but that didn't really happen.  Maybe I should have pushed them harder and run a more disciplined household. 

I think what really stopped them from becoming high-achievers in academics was lack of effort (and lack of motivation to make an effort).  And I think that problem stems in part from each one having a best friend at home and feeling secure and content.  They have all sorts of projects that they collaborate on, and they should be able to build careers in some sort of informatics engineering, so I think they're doing fine the way they are.

My relationship with my husband has grown deeper and more loving over the years.  He is my best friend in the sense that he is the one person I can completely count on to have my best interests at heart -- and vice-versa.  I think that's key to a successful relationship -- each partner cares deeply about the other's happiness and well-being.  Partners, not competitors.

The one home-front area that needs some work at the moment is our home itself.  It's a beautiful apartment that fits our lifestyle well, but the clutter is starting to take over.  One of my goals for the next couple of years will be to sift through all of our junk in the basement storage and in the apartment.  I want to get rid of everything we don't need and organize the rest.  I hate to devote so much of my time to piles of consumer goods, but they're starting to crowd my space, and I don't want to just throw them all in a landfill.

The first part of my organizing-stuff program was to get all of the Legos in order (see this video).  And I made a beautiful Lego city  which has been a super fun project to share with my kids:

Now I'd like to clean up the rest of my stuff.  In particular, I plan to sign up for some online portal to sell or give away anything that's not useful to me but might be useful to someone else.

As for the world at large, it's hard to be really optimistic or hopeful.  The devastation we humans are wreaking upon our environment (that we need to survive) isn't slowing down, yet it needs to turn around and reverse immediately if or species is to survive past the next few generations.

On the bright side, it's encouraging to see worldwide climate strikes -- led by young people who aren't OK with the future that's being passed along to them.  And it's good to see that US democracy has enough breath of life left in it to impeach that criminal.  But US democracy is still on life support and it's not clear it will pull through.  We need to wrench out this kleptocracy and rebuild the civil, democratic institutions and social infrastructure if we are to make the changes necessary to save our world.  Specifically we need to stop the use of fossil fuels pronto, in addition to addressing the related problems of worldwide exploitation of people and resources, and the corresponding wars.  Can we build sustainable, just, and democratic systems to replace our current mess?  I hope so.

I hope Elizabeth Warren will win the US presidency, as I think she really has the skill, passion, and knowledge to take down the current stranglehold that the ultra-rich have on American society.

And I guess my biggest source of hope is the rising generation (from millennials on).  It looks like they recognize the kind of mess we're in, and I hope they are becoming galvanized -- learning down to their cores how dangerous authoritarianism, corruption, and runaway inequality really are.

Here's looking forward to 2020 -- good luck to us all!

Mid-year goals!!

This is a tale of "be careful what you wish for" -- one that I hope can be turned into a plan for making those wishes come true.

I've told everyone the setup to this tale about a million times, but in case you missed it, let me get you up to speed:

A few years ago I got the impression that my career was stagnating. I took a look at my experience and skill set and determined that the job I'm most qualified for is CTO of a tech startup. (Check out this article I wrote for The Startup with some of my insights on the subject.) And so I took a risk, worked my butt off at a new company, and now I find I have succeeded in becoming the highly-valued CTO of a tech startup! One that is actively fighting climate change -- another of my big goals!!

But... The problem is that while growing my career was an important goal -- it's not my only goal or dream. Working full-time-plus kind of crowds out everything else, and I'm left with this constant background of stress of wondering when I'll have time to pick up this or that project again.

Being undervalued, on the one hand, was enraging and depressing -- but on the other, there's something to be said for being in a dead-end job where you're overqualified enough to just phone it in (and where you only have to work three days per week). I sure had the time and energy to get a heckuvalot else done, and I miss that... :(

It looks like I am on track to get my IT department into a state where I can reduce my hours to 80% -- or ideally even 60% -- in the beginning of 2019. That's great, but it means another almost six months of postponing all of the other junk I want to do. So, I was thinking that -- maybe if I outline it all here -- I might get some of it done on evenings and weekends...? Also note, I'm currently taking off Fridays for the Summer in order to make some progress on drawing my comic book, and I am really, really hoping to finish at least the dining hall scenes before this vacation time is up.

So, aside from my comic book (which is dream/goal #1, always), here are the other things I would like to have time to do, organized into categories:

2. Organize my apartment

This perhaps shouldn't be #2, but it is. I hate the feeling of being slowly buried in clutter, and I don't want to just throw stuff out. I want to go down to my basement, donate or give away online everything that is usable (but not by me), and hence free up a bunch of space down there.

Then, I have this dream of constructing my own "Ikea-hack" Lego table (which I have designed in my mind) so that I can free up a huge amount of floor and shelf space in Nico's office (a.k.a. the guest room), and have a beautiful place to sort the whole Lego collection -- and build an awesome city! (I would love to do some of this stuff again!)

I'm thinking I might be able to get the table constructed during Christmas break if everything works out. Then, naturally, I'll be in a position to organize/donate the rest of the clutter, and for a brief moment, I will live in a blissfully clutter-free home.

3. Articles, conferences, and MAA Books!

Here's what I would like to do:

• Promote MAA Books in general, and Donna's awesome book in particular -- It would be really great to be able to get enough reviews and listings for this book so that we could realistically start working on finding, editing, and promoting our next book.
• Stoke up the fires of Main Street Plaza -- unfortunately I don't seem to even be able to keep Sunday in Outer Blogness alive. :( Fortunately, Donna has helped recruit another author, but in my fantasy universe we would have a collection of people writing regularly (and be able to pay them...).
• Write a couple of more articles for The Startup. I have the drafts ready, it's just a question of focusing and doing it.
• Give a lecture on startups in a tech lecture series (this is in the works).
• Help organize a Mormon Stories Workshop in Switzerland. This one actually has a deadline (plus I'm not the primary responsible), so it looks like it's really going to happen.
• Write more articles for this blog. It's not that I think I'll ever have a non-trivial readership here -- it's that I really enjoyed having this sounding-board for my ideas here in the past. After a while I got to the point where I'd written about all the subjects I was really burning to write about, so I stopped. But now it's been long enough that I have a backlog of topics again, and I'm just having trouble getting started.

There are a couple of additional things standing in my way from getting this sort of stuff done. For some reason I can't seem to start writing a simple blog post without many hours of psyching myself up to do it. Not sure why. Even on a topic that I've been churning over in my head and constructing arguments and phasing for weeks or years -- sitting down and composing it is daunting.

Additionally, I haven't been reading books regularly for the past couple of years because I used to read in the tram -- and that time has of late been almost entirely eaten up by Pokémon Go. On one level, I feel like this is a shameful waste, but I can't dismiss it as entirely wasted time.

Pokémon Go has two big advantages for me: (1) it is very Zen -- it allows me to relax and shake off all of the stress while I'm commuting to and from my stressful job, and (2) I am -- really for the first time -- regularly socializing with actual Swiss people. Not just people like me -- international, third-culture folks, mathies and techies -- but really random people of all walks of life who live in Zürich.

Actually, not everybody who plays is Swiss -- Pokémon Go seems to cut across all categories, immigrants from all countries, locals, tattooed youths, bankers and finance guys in their suits, moms & dads with kids, moms who don't bother to bring their kids (like me), old, young, guys, gals, you name it! And to do it right, you really have to make an effort to meet people and make friends. This has meant stepping outside of my comfort zone in a major way and growing my perspective, so I can't really beat myself up for obsessing over whether I managed to catch this or that shiny pokémon, etc.

4. Other stuff that should be on the list

Here's the grab bag of stuff I would love to do if I had an infinite amount of free time:

• More projects with my kids. I would like to do some of the Kangaroo math challenges with Léo, and help them both to create more image and music assets for the video games they're developing,
• Political activism. I'm ashamed to admit that I'm one of those people that is watching the news, aghast at what is currently going on, and saying, "Wow, I hope somebody (else) does something about this!!!!" I did register to vote (I can legally vote in the US and France), so I guess that's better than nothing.
• My own podcast -- yeah, that's a fantasy, but maybe someday if our species lasts a few more decades.
• Figure out more recipes for the herbs in my balcony garden. That said, I think my garden has been a bit of a success story. I tend it a bit and it produces more foods that I would expect from a balcony.

I was going to include a list of the blog entries I'm hoping to write -- to see if there's interest -- but let's leave it at this. And we'll see how much I can get done!!

Ma ha nei bu, Eebowai!!!

This past Wednesday I made a trip to London to see God's favorite musical with the post-Mormons of Switzerland!!

I had an absolutely fantastic time!!  This was actually the first time I've ever seen a real Broadway musical (not counting movie versions or amateur (school/church) productions).  And I'm so happy this one was my first. ;)

Ever since I first heard the score of The Book of Mormon, it has been my #1 favorite musical.  This, despite the fact that I hadn't seen the show until this past week -- but the music alone is sufficient!!

Since I already had the score memorized, there weren't too many surprises, but there were a few good ones.  With effort, I managed to restrain myself from singing along, but I couldn't help occasionally whispering to my friend "Oh, this next part is great!"

It seems like every time I read something about this musical from believing Mormons, they have to talk about the errors in the portrait of Mormonism (with the implication that the writers are simply ignorant of Mormonism).  One of my pet peeves about Mormonism is the attitude that no one except a faithful member of the CoJCoL-dS is qualified to speak about Mormonism.  Thus, if the musical makes it look like the Missionary Training Center is in Salt Lake City (when it's really in Provo, nearly an hour's drive from there!) it reinforces the belief that the writers must not know what they're talking about.

The key example is that (in the musical) the missionaries get assigned to their mission locations and companions while they're at the MTC -- when in reality, missionaries learn their mission location before entering the MTC and they are assigned a series of different companions throughout their mission.  But the thing is that the missionaries commit to spend a year-and-a-half to two years in a faraway place without knowing in advance where it will be, and they have to stay with a companion 24/7 for months without having any say over who that person will be.  And there is very strong social pressure not to be disappointed with your assignments -- though many people are disappointed (as Elder Price was in the play) -- and some manage to "turn it off," and convince themselves to love their call.  This is a specifically Mormon scenario, but to tell that story in a musical, they needed to use a little artistic license on the logistics in order to allow the Elders to do a song-and-dance together about it.

The whole play is like that.  There are some details that are wrong (though very few are gratuitously wrong), but that is nothing compared to the Mormon points (from little details to profound themes) that they got right.  I discussed a lot of these points in my earlier post on insights from the Book of Mormon, as well as in the Holly's Brodie-Award-Winning piece BOM: The Most Correct of Any Musical?  If you would like a carefully-detailed list of the accuracies and inaccuracies of the musical, see this post by Dad's Primal Scream.

Overall, I feel like this musical really succeeds at achieving universality by rendering with great fidelity a specific milieu (which I feel is something good for art to do, as I've often said).  It's a tale that wouldn't take place outside of Mormonism, yet anyone can understand the various characters' motivations and relate to their interpersonal dynamics.

I have to admit that my own Mormon connection is a big part of my love for this play.  Without it, I'm sure I would like the musical, but the fact that Mormonism has been such a big part of my life makes me want to jump up and say "Yes!!" when watching or listening to it -- and it makes me happy that such a brilliant piece was written about something that I have such a personal connection with.  The songs are loads of fun, and they mean something to me.

"We are still Latter-day Saints -- all of us.  Even if we changed some things, or break the rules, or have complete doubt that God exists.  We can still work together to make this our paradise planet."

New book reviews and Mormon Lit news!

I just reviewed to great new memoirs for Main Street Plaza: John K. Williams' tales of serving a mission in Bolivia Heaven Up Here and Ingrid Ricks' amazing adventures in a highly unusual (and-not-entirely-in-a-good-way) Mormon family Hippie Boy.

Also note: Johnny Townsend is planning a project that sounds really fantastic:

I am accepting short stories dealing with unconventional Mormons for an anthology to be called “Marginal Mormons.” The stories should be 25 pages or shorter, though length will not necessarily disqualify a submission. Payment will be $20 and one copy of the book, in exchange for perpetual, non-exclusive rights. The stories may be original or previously published, as long as you currently retain the rights. I am not particularly impressed with faith-promoting stories, but I am also not looking to attack the Church. I simply want stories that show unconventional Mormons or new interpretations of doctrine or history. The story does not need to be disturbing but should certainly be thought-provoking.

Please email any stories in the body of the email, but also include them as an attachment. Send to johnnyjohnnyt at yahoo dot com.

Two great new Amazon reviews of ExMormon!

I am an ex-Christian, and not an ex-Mormon, however I identified soooo much with this book of stories. I was April, Lynn and Jill. It was the little things really - that I only had one "church friend" because our church was small and exclusive and there were only a few other kids my age. Especially poignant are the stories of discovering sexuality, and the shame and guilt that go with that in a conservative Christian environment. Like the first time reading the word "masturbation" and recognizing what it is I do (several times a week). Then rationalizing by only fantasizing about married sex.

It follows the stories of several different characters who's lives are all connected in some way. All the characters are written with love and humor, giving them depth and clear room to grow and learn, whether they remain in the faith or leave it. It shows the interactions between believers, doubters and unbelievers in a realistic way, far more so than any other book I've read on this topic. It also shows how leaving the faith comes in many different ways for different people.

I just felt that I had to say something, because I simply loved this book.

-- Aimee

Now in a spiffy new-and-improved illustrated edition, this book was written by a multi-talented former Mormon who's now an expatriate living with her family in Switzerland (she's also a blogger, and did her own illustrations for the book). It's a series of novellas with linked characters and plots, and centers around the experience of growing up Mormon. Some characters are true believers, some are skeptics or struggling, and others have left the Church. The stories explore conflicts between people in various states of Mormon-ness and the world outside Mormonism. While the book has some of the usual flaws of a first novel (e.g., sometimes it lacks scene-setting descriptions, or dialogue comes across as stiff and clunky), it also has a lot of insightfulness and humor, and is well worth a read for anyone interested in literary depictions of Mormons struggling with or leaving their faith.

-- Groggie

I try not to look at ExMormon's Amazon page too often, because it doesn't get that many reviews, and I'd rather be pleasantly surprised once or twice a year than disappointed once a week. ;^)

If you're one of the nearly-two-thousand people who've read ExMormon -- if you have a minute to go add an Amazon review (or even just recommend the book to your friends), I'd really appreciate it! Thanks!! :D

*** Update! *** I just saw that someone posted a recommendation of ExMormon over on Friendly Atheist's post about BYU atheists!!

I definitely feel for ex-mormons, especially in the beginning. I finished reading a good book online called Ex-Mormon.

Even though I didn't grow up Mormon, a lot of things were similar to my childhood in the church of christ. Its a good read if you have the time for it.

Insights on Mormon culture, thanks to "God's favorite musical"!

I haven't seen "The Book of Mormon" yet, but you can hear the songs online, and people have already started discussing them on Main Street Plaza.

When the reviews of the musical first started appearing, I remember there was a lot of focus on whether they got the doctrinal details right (Is Kolob a planet or a star? Does God really live there? etc.). But it appears that what they really got right is unique character of Mormonism — what it’s like to be Mormon! (And, really, placing less importance on the precisions of doctrines like Kolob and more importance on Mormon practice and attitude is, itself, quite accurate.)

If you have an opinion on any or all of the songs, please vote in our poll and tell us about it. Here's my favorite (followed by what I wrote about it):



A lot of the songs had me going “Wow, fantastic! And so true!” But it was listening to “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” that made my whole youth and childhood pass before my eyes. Standing there, happy to supportively sing “my best friend…” while somebody Awesome! sings his heart out about serving God. And it didn’t hurt that the song kind of reminds me of ’80′s pop, and of “Humble Way” from God’s second-favorite musical:



This same missionary scenario — including the leader/subordinate relationship, and the fact that it’s cute that they’re not really humble about their awesome task — is exactly what the song “Humble Way” was about. “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” is what “Humble Way” wanted to be (if it had been totally brilliant).

I completely agree with Holly’s assessment that this would be perfect sung as a duet between a young LDS guy and his fiancee. I don’t think that’s reading anything into it that’s not there. Hierarchy colors so much about Mormon interpersonal relationships. And the (officially unequal) partnership between missionaries sets the model for marriage.

One point that is pure genius is the fact that their unequal relationship isn’t quite the central focus of the song. The leader’s earnest desire to do something great for mankind and God is as central (if not moreso). And the fact it’s tied in with his own ego is winked at.

You can see this symbolized in the Mormon temple endowment ceremony (which I haven’t been through, but I’ve heard about it). The fact that the wife covenants to obey her husband is OK because the husband is making a covenant with God. If you complain (or do anything other than stand beside him being supportive), then you’re the buzzing fly that’s detracting from a man and his important business between him and God!

I can’t imagine any song could more perfectly capture what Mormon patriarchy feels like.

And I can't wait to see the whole musical!!

A new mishie story!!

I've always been interested in mishie stories (as you can see if you click on the "mishies" tag below), and I recently read one that, IMHO, is one of the best of the bunch. See my review here, on MSP. Actually, of the many indie-published works I've read, it's among the top handful in terms of writing quality, so if you'd like to read what a Mormon mission is like, definitely pick this one up!

Steven H. Lee's "Falling into Life: A Gay Exmormon's Journey"

Falling into life. Taking the plunge into the great unknown.

For a few weeks now, I've been wrestling with trying to write a review of this book. The problem is that I want to call it beautiful and inspiring -- it is -- but it's hard to write that about a book that describes so much pain. Consider this scene of a young boy and his mother:

One time, when she was particularly distraught, she went and got my dad's pistol, walked through the house with it so I could see it, and I panicked. I followed her to the garage where she got into her huge brown car, set the gun on the seat beside her, started the car and then she sat, staring ahead and banging on the steering wheel. She was enraged, and I thought she might break her arms, she was pounding on it so hard. I was standing in front of the car, crying and screaming for her to stop. After a few minutes, she put it in reverse, and backed out and away down the street.

I was sure that was the last time I'd see her; I sat there in the garage waiting for her to come home. Three hours later, the garage door opened, I ran to her and she got out of the car. She had almost a catatonic look about her. I kept repeating that I was sorry, and just as she went into the house she looked at me, and with a stone-colored face shouted, "Sorry doesn't matter!"

As background to Steve's life story, we meet a mom who repeatedly frightened her son threats of suicide, starting from when he was five years old. We also meet a dad who misused his pharmaceutical license to get the mom prescription drugs that he felt she needed to deal with her depression.

When I was a kid, we were the quintessential "Mormon family" from what everyone else could see. My mom had an immaculately clean home, everyone in the ward knew this, and she took pride in it. It also drove her crazy due to the fact that my dad eventually became bishop and that meant constant visitors to our house.

I'm sure that faithful Mormons reading this will protest that the family's problems can't be blamed on Mormonism. I'd agree, and I'd even say some people thrive in Mormonism. But in this case (like others where there's real abuse and/or mental illness) -- even if Mormonism doesn't cause the problem -- it certainly doesn't help.

Steve grew up with his parents' terrible example teaching him what marriage -- eternal, celestial marriage -- is supposed to be like. And he grew up learning that that's the whole point of life, as he saw in his brother's "Plan of Salvation" poster:

It gave a drawing for each step of this poor sap's earthly sojourn. But what was missing, what scared me, was noticing that from age twenty to age seventy he had nothing going on, literally. His "earthly life" flew by as if nothing of note even occurred. I translated this to mean that the bulk of our lives have no meaning, whatsoever. You are simply a drone. You work away your life until the good stuff comes.

As he grew up, Steve was horrified and ashamed to discover that he had homosexual tendencies. It's important to realize that this part of the story took place several decades ago, and things have changed a lot since then, even for Mormon teens. At the time, homosexuality was totally taboo, and Steve naturally believed the common Mormon wisdom of the time: that homosexuality was an addiction, caused by masturbation, but could be cured by faith and prayer. Because he hated himself, he learned to hide his authentic self even from himself.

As a side-note, the book gives an interesting account of how he was humiliated and treated like a leper in his Mormon ward -- even though he was doing what a righteous man "afflicted with SSA" was counseled to do (namely marry a woman, have a family, attend Evergreen, etc.).

The catalyst that changes it all is a stunning scene of the watching the tragedy of 9/11. There isn't a short pull quote to do the scene justice, but you can read it in the book's preview here.

After that, you see Steve learning how to love himself, how to be himself, how to love others, and live life. This life, now. The book is rich with metaphor, so even if you've never experienced anything like this, you can feel what it's like. It's a passionate, dramatic, sometimes funny, human story.

Note that the book has a number of humorous chapters mocking Mormon history and doctrine, and faithful Mormons probably won't find those parts funny. But I don't think the book is written for them. I'd recommend it to everyone else, though, especially if you're interested in getting some more perspective on the experiences of (generation-X) gay Mormon men.

“These beautifully flawed vessels”: The Conclusion of ExMormon!

I love to joke around. I've got the perfect joke for just this occasion. It's an oldie, so stop Me if you've heard it:

Way back when Jesus and I were creating the world, I turned to Him and said "Hey Jesus, let's create a really gorgeous mountainous region, with lakes and rivers full of fish, beautiful canyons, waterfalls, valleys, and peaks..."

Then Jesus said "But Dad, that'll never fly! Everyone will want to live there, and it will get so crowded, it will suck!"

Then I said "I'm one step ahead of You Jesus, My boy! Why do You think I created Mormons?"

Hahahahahahahahaha!

I'm just kidding, of course! The Mormons are My chosen people these days, so that's why I love having a little fun with them!

Now this whole idea of leaving the only true church is so completely nuts that I couldn't help but be fascinated when I noticed that some of My children were organizing a whole conference just for people whom I was planning on sending to outer darkness. Being omniscient and all, of course I knew it was going to happen. But that didn't make it any less entertaining to watch! More ->

The Making of "Exmormon"

Exmormon was written over the space of a year, and not in chronological order. This is an article I wrote in 2006 to explain how -- and why -- I wrote it.

One day I was on a business trip, and to pass the time in the evenings alone in my hotel room, I'd brought along a stack of old New Yorker magazines to read.

I noticed one of issues I'd brought had a story about Mormon teenagers in it. Mormonism is obscure enough that it's fairly rare to find something about Mormonism in the mass media, so -- like most people raised Mormon -- I was fascinated to find this and to see what they had to say.

My reaction: Not too bad.

But it kind of rang false in a couple of places. Particularly the fact that the Mormon girl in the story tries to talk the non-member kid out of taking his prescription drugs -- on the basis that it's a sin to take drugs. Of course recreational drugs are a big-time sin for Mormons, but medications prescribed by your doctor are not. It's not even a question of "if you're really devout" or something -- the idea that standard western medicine would be a sin doesn't exist in Mormon thought. (Maybe confusing Mormons with Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientologists?)

Then there was the fact that the Mormon girl was using sex as a tactic to draw people into the church and keep them there. My reaction was, "close but no cigar."

In my experience, Mormon teens really do (deliberately or not) use flirting and unfulfilled erotic desire to attract other teenagers to join the church. And I'm not going to claim that Mormon teens never have sex. But for a Mormon girl to give a guy a complete B.J. explicitly as a missionary tactic would be extremely atypical, to say the least. The result would be exactly what happens in the story, namely that the non-Mormon guy thinks: "Thanks for getting me off, bye! (sheesh, these Mormons are weirdos)."

Basically it read as if the author had had some sort of bizarre experience with Mormons when he was younger and was trying to make sense of it.

That story inspired me to a little challenge: Let me paint you a portrait of what it's really like to be a Mormon teenager.

The result of this challenge was the four-chapter novella "Youth
Conference."



Youth Conference really is fiction and not memoir -- in that the characters aren't just re-namings of real people, and the events didn't happen in quite that way or all together like that. Yet the story is very strongly reality-based and autobiographical.

I was fond of my little story when I wrote it, but it was too long to be published as a short story and too short to be a novel, so I wasn't sure what to do with it. I vaguely had the idea that I could continue the story by writing other segments of the main character's life, but I didn't want to add a bunch of junk to it just to make it longer, so I just left it sitting around on my hard drive for more than a year.

Around that time, I was a big-time regular on the Internet forum exmo-social, and the occasional discussion of Mormonism -- plus the writing practice the experience afforded me -- finally inspired me to write two more segments to the story: one where the main character (Lynn) goes to Brigham Young University (and concludes the church isn't true), and one where she's a young adult ex-Mormon dealing with her LDS (Mormon) family.

The BYU segment is less autobiographical, although it takes elements from life. I've said many times that I was already a non-believer when I started attending BYU, but that wasn't the story I wanted to tell this time. I didn't want to show BYU through the eyes of the angry young apostate, depressed about not having the opportunity to meet other young non-believers and resentful of the enforced religion. So I took my earlier attitude of believing (but just barely hanging onto it) and transposed that mindset onto a lot of the trappings and details of my real-life BYU experience.



One of the ideas I wanted to express in the BYU segment was that the problem with Mormonism isn't that it's not cool -- it's that it's not true. So I invented the character of Paige as something of a composite of a lot of people I knew who worked on the independent student publication The Student Review, who were these hip, non-conformist, liberal Mormons -- easily cooler than the shy, nerdy main character Lynn -- yet who were true believers. (see ask a Mormon Girl -- she was one of my colleagues during my Student Review days.)



To have Lynn meet the cool Mormon girl (Paige), I decided to hold a little illicit slumber party in a cabin. The Student Review actually did organize cabin slumber parties, although they were supervised (unlike the little unofficial party in my story). I remember thinking -- way back when I was attending such a sleepover with a whole bunch of young people of both genders sleeping in one big room -- that the situation had a huge amount of suppressed erotic potential. It seemed a terrible shame at the time that there was no one there at the sleepover that I wanted to share the flirty secret erotic spark with. True to form for a first novel, I opened up this box of regrets and re-wrote the scene the way it should have happened. Thus, the character of Rex Wendell was created.





When I finished the BYU segment -- even though the plot and story structure left something to be desired -- I was well-pleased.

I was a little worried about starting on the family segment (later called Temple Wedding) because I didn't want it to end up as some junk tacked on to the other two pieces, dragging them down. so I spent a lot of time planning what should be included.



First of all, I was fond of the character Rex and of his relationship with Lynn, so I wanted to bring him back. Yet I didn't want it to be that they'd gotten together very young and consequently had grown up with little relationship experience and would eventually start wondering about all the erotic exploration they'd missed out on. I didn't want them to have that kind of relationship. So I decided to have their initial relationship be brief -- as they were attending different universities -- and have them get together again on a permanent basis years later.

Aside from that, I had an easy time thinking of all of the things the LDS (Mormon) family members could do to irritate the exmo (apostate) characters ;^) but I was unhappy with the list because I felt it came off as whiny, and it wasn't interesting, and it wasn't a story. I had to find a way to balance it out so that I wasn't one-sidedly presenting the Mormons as the only bad guys.

Then I came up with the idea of having Rex buy beer for his sixteen-year-old younger brother. That was when I finally felt like "Okay, I can do this." That was the perfect scenario for this story because it was something I could easily see a young adult apostate doing -- and seeing as funny and no big deal -- that would make the Mormon parents completely flip out. (Thus illustrating their difference in perspective.)



The whole scene -- the dreadful dinner scene -- came to me all at once like a lightning bolt. That scene was really the turning point for me that changed this whole project from "look at me -- aren't I clever? I'm writing stories!" to "I have to publish this story and make a connection with people through it."

The funny thing is that for more than a year after writing that scene, I was patting myself on the back for writing such a thing from pure imagination since our family never had an explosive fight over the kids' apostasy like that. Since all of the circumstances and superficial trappings of the argument in the story were invented, I saw the scene as being wholly fictional.

It was only by reading my journal later that I realized how closely this scene portrayed (caricatured) a series of fights (and one in particular) that I had with my own parents. Again, like a proper first novel, it's all about exploring wounds that were smoothed over and forgotten but never healed; exorcising demons by reliving the bad parts and correcting them. In the fictional version (unlike reality), when Rex went off in disgrace, he had Lynn to tell him that everything would be okay.

The rest of the Temple Wedding section was just the icing on the cake. I was deliberately trying to cover a lot of details about Mormonism, and the story structure suffered for it. the funny thing, though, is that by throwing so many random things into the story blender, this segment ended up being kind of a seminal section, creating various character dynamics that I decided I wanted to explore further.

The part of "Temple Wedding" that I had the most fun with was the interaction between the Hobbs and the Wendells -- the one Mormon family with all of the signs of piety and righteousness (garden, uber-homemaker-SAHM, lots of kids on missions), and the other Mormon family with none of that but a lot more money. As both advantages are important for status in the LDS community, each family ends up jealous of the other.

When Lynn's three-part story was done, I gave it to my husband to read.

One his comments was that instead of being intimidated by Sister Hobbs' kids' (religious) accomplishments, Sister Wendell should have stood up for her (apostate) son and should have been willing to proudly recount his (non-religious) accomplishments to Sister Hobbs. I told him he was right, but that that wouldn't fit this story. I decided to go with his suggestion and write it up as a separate short story. Here I shifted voice for the first time, and instead of telling the story from Lynn's perspective, I told it from the perspective of Rex's younger brother Jared.

My plan was then to tack this story on to the little novel as an epilogue, but my husband caught me and told me not to. He pointed out that even though it has the same characters, it really doesn't follow as an epilogue -- it's completely separate.

I agreed, and decided that instead of using it as an epilogue, I'd use it as a starting point for a new story. I'd had fun with the Sam-Joe-Jared dynamic in "Temple Wedding" (which was an extension of the Wendells vs. the Hobbs), and I felt like I wanted to continue their adventures.

One of the million aspects of Mormonism I'd portrayed in the "Temple Wedding" segment was the connection between the mainstream Mormons and the (polygamist) Mormon fundamentalists. I'd gotten an email from a former Mormon fundamentalist (whom I'd met through exmo-social) full of details on the subject that he said I could use in my story if I liked.

One particularly dramatic incident the former fundamentalist had recounted (on exmo-social as well as in this email and his online autobiography) was that he had been allowed to attend a mainstream high school (despite being a fundamentalist), and there he fell in love with a mainstream Mormon girl. Naturally he explained his own beliefs to her -- what he'd been taught as true -- and when her parents got wind of it, they were horrified and forbade her from ever seeing him again. He wound up heartbroken (and maybe thinking it would have been better not to have gone out of his way to tell her about the fact that the mainstream LDS church is obviously in apostasy for giving up polygamy, among other things...).

His story was a poignant one. However, since my novel is fiction and not a retelling of some real person's life, I figured I'd take some details and piece together a different story. So I had my former-fundamentalist character Joe attending a normal high school (in my story it was because he had run away from his polygamist family), and had him fall in love with a girl from a mainstream LDS family, and had her family freak out when they discover she's frequenting a guy who was raised in polygamy, and have them forbid her from ever seeing him again.

But then instead of having her be a docile, obedient LDS girl who submits to her parents' wishes, I figured it would be more fun to have her be an ex-Mormon atheist girl who defies her parents and sees the guy anyway. I know I'm just being silly of course, but I liked that scenario much better. ;^)

Of course, to me it seems like a proper teen romance has to have a poignant, heartbreaking quality to it. It's a part of growing, learning, and gaining experience. So when I wrote Joe's romance, I kept the focus on Jared (Rex's younger brother), who loses out as he falls in love with the same girl. In the long run, however, he gains valuable experience.



And fortunately for Jared, he gets a great party scene. The party
sequence up through his chat about it with his brother Rex the next day is one of my favorite segments in the whole novel, including the parts that were written later.

At that point, I'd decided that I had two novels: Lynn's story and the sequel, Jared's story (eventually titled "Orem High"). My husband told me that novels don't really come in twos, and that I needed another to make it a trilogy. I was inclined to agree because I'd had fun so far and wanted to keep going.

(Despite this constructive advice, my husband hated Jared's story -- he apparently didn't like the idea that some dumb kid from Utah should get to have his own car and go to parties with girls, etc. -- and so he refused to read any more of my novel after that.)

I decided that next I wanted to explore a theme I'd alluded to back in the Youth Conference segment, namely the fear (as a chaste-not-entirely-by-choice Mormon teen) of things getting out of hand and getting pregnant as a result.

Looking around for a spot in my fictional universe to situate this story, I hit upon an off-hand comment I'd put in the BYU segment. In order to help illustrate the relationship between Jake and his jack-Mormon mom, I'd recounted how she'd laughed it off when Jake's uncle had made a disapproving comment about Jake going on a road trip to Las Vegas to gamble. I took that as a starting point, fleshing out that tiny anecdote as being a trip where Jake takes Rex and Jared's sister Jill to Las Vegas to get an abortion.



When I wrote this segment (eventually titled Saturday's Warrior), I had just re-read my teenage journals, so I wrote the whole thing in that voice and mindset. This prospect -- and this fear -- was clearly another big demon that had haunted my adolescence that I wanted to get out. I wrote the whole segment practically all at once, like a fever dream.

One nice thing about this part was that by this time I'd gotten over the idea that I needed to cover a list of particular details about Mormonism, so I could just write it as a free-flowing, reasonably-structured story. I ended up portraying additional aspects of Mormonism as they came up naturally in the story rather than bending and stretching the story to fit them.

Once I'd written Jill's story, I decided it was a prequel to Lynn's story and that I had a trilogy on my hands.

There were a few problems with this trilogy plan though. First of all, both Jill's story (Saturday's Warrior) and Jared's story (Orem High) were too short to be complete novels, even young adult novels. Then there was the fact that the Youth Conference segment of Lynn's story naturally came before Jill's story both chronologically and thematically. I felt like Jill's story really ought to be read between the first two parts of Lynn's story.

For a long time, I had a bunch of ideas on the back-burner for other stories to turn my "trilogy" into a "series" (called Exmormon) that could one day be published all together in a single volume. Eventually I realized that that single volume was where I really wanted to go with this work, so I selected a set of related stories I wanted to write up and include.

First of this new batch was the little interlude: Gratuitous Love Scene. I called it that as a joke because of the fact that Mormons always say things like "it was a good movie overall, but why did they have to include that one scene?" You know what scene they're always talking about. It doesn't matter if the love/sex scene is important to story, to Mormons if it's a sex scene, it's a priori superfluous and should be cut out.



In the case of the Gratuitous Love Scene, I added it because it was necessary for the overall story structure. It develops the relationship of Rex and Lynn, it's an important step for Lynn in terms of dealing with her conditioning, and I needed to include a sweet and romantic sex scene to counterbalance the more questionable sex scenes in Jill's story and Jared's story.

I know those who have read the "Gratuitous Love Scene" probably think I'm crazy to call this scene "sweet and romantic," but seriously I'm not at all a romantic person, so from my crazy perspective this is romance. ;)

After that, I decided exactly which additional stories I wanted to include. I wanted to add April's story (Young Women's) to flesh out her character a little better so that when her situation comes up in the BYU segment it doesn't seem like it's coming out of nowhere.



Additionally, I wanted to open with her story in order to illustrate what it's like for a young teenager dealing with church and trying to believe.



April's story was pretty easy to write since I wrote it mostly from my own journals and memories. The only tricky part was guessing what it would be like for a young lesbian to deal with all of the romance-and-temple-marriage indoctrination that the young women get. Basically I did my research by reading Queer 13 and The Indelible Allison Bechdel and did my best to extrapolate.



I wrote the wrap-up chapter next (Exmo Conference) which is just a fun little "what happened to everyone" conclusion.



Next I wrote Bordeaux Mission. I wanted to write that one because I've always been fascinated by LDS missionary stories, and all through my novel people talk about missions (with young Mormons, somebody's always setting off on one, or on one, or just back), so I wanted to include the actual experience. Additionally, in Jared's story I'd introduced the character Tanya -- who wasn't originally intended as a sympathetic character, but who ended up stealing the show in a lot of ways. So I wanted to explore her character further by giving her a new boyfriend -- someone with a little more self-confidence than Jared -- who wouldn't be intimidated by a woman who takes the lead. Thus the character of Spencer Hobbs was created.

I had a great time writing Spencer's story, largely because I got lots of fantastic mission details and inspiration from another person I met on exmo-social. With his help, I had an easier time writing Spencer as a clever jock, to balance out my character spectrum which had been hopelessly weighted a little too heavily towards scrawny math/science nerds (i.e. my own familiar social circle).

I was so pleased with the Spencer character that I had him play a leading role in the last segment I wrote (Polygamist, part 5 of the novel), which I added in order to introduce Joe's character and explain how it came to be that he was living with his uncle's family.



Writing a story in such a haphazard manner makes for kind of a random and confusing narrative structure. Yet the story is actually fairly well organized if you look at it thematically as a portrait of growing up Mormon and leaving the church as a young person:

1. Young Women's: Trying to be a good Mormon and live up to the church's expectations for you as a young teen.
2. Youth Conference: More serious indoctrination and the beginnings of cognitive dissonance.
3. Saturday's Warrior: The dark side of the resulting mindset.
4. BYU: The epiphany; realizing that it's not real or true.
5. Polygamist: Breaking free of the mindset.
6. Temple Wedding: Dealing with the family fallout.
7. Orem High: A second adolescence while exploring your new-found freedom.
8. Bordeaux Mission: Reflecting on your life, your choices, your feelings about the church.
9. Exmo Conference: wrap-up.

It's very clear that this is a first novel -- between the autobiography, the coming-of-age aspect, and the purging of those fantasies and demons that are closest to the surface. That's why I don't want to try to re-write some subset of this material into a more-reasonably-structured different novel. For the future, I'd rather start over with all new material and a plan. ;-)

Still, I think this one has a lot of potential interest and value as it is, which is why I'm posting it online, in hopes of making a connection with people who might relate to some of the characters and situations I've portrayed.


Don't forget -- the conclusion will be posted online this Tuesday!!

The Church of the For-Profit Corporation: Daymon Smith's "The Book of Mammon"

You mean the Church produced videos, DVDs, plays, digital media, and never actually did audience research, or evaluated their effects? And some stupid five‐minute film costs how much!?! [...] after working at the COB I understand why saccharin does not measure the heavy handed artifice dumped upon our films. “Propaganda” is too kind, and ascribes too great an effect.

That's from Daymon Smith's new book The Book of Mammon: A Book About A Book About The Corporation That Owns The Mormons.

I don't know how many of you would be surprised to learn that "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" is a trademark owned by a "corporation sole", and that the fortune-500-level wealth of the church is owned by a corporation that consists of one man. It doesn't matter how much time and money you donate to this corporation sole (the corporation of the president), he owes you absolutely nothing in return. Notably, he doesn't owe anyone any public accounting for where that money goes and what becomes of it.

To see how that works out in real life, just read Daymon Smith's entertaining memoir of the time he spent working at the Church Office Building (COB). The bottom line is that if God needs flesh-and-blood followers to send money to Him, then it's reasonably to expect He'd need live humans scrutinizing the accounting books as well. You can't just toss (worldly) money into a grand, corporate black hole and trust that God is keeping an eye on how it's spent. If you've been trusting in God's accounting skills, it turns out that He's asleep at the books.

According to Daymon's tale, working at the COB has all of the crazy office politics you'd expect at an ordinary fortune-500 corporation. There's a big difference, though, and it's not just the church devotionals on company time or opening meetings with prayer. The problem is that they have absolutely no motivation to figure out whether their products are useful to their consumers. Mormons pay 10% of their income per year to the corporation (in order to be eligible for the saving ordinances in the temple), and the corporation gives back manuals, magazines, films, scriptures, garments, etc. -- but the direct market feedback that comes from consumers selecting the goods they purchase is completely cut off.

As I've said before the private sector and the public sector each have their strengths and weaknesses. In economics, it's not a question of choosing which one is "right" and which one is "wrong" -- it's a question of optimizing your strategy by using the best of both. The COB has the worst of both because it has the advantages of neither: there's no market incentive to produce good products, and there's no public oversight either.

(The biggest irony is how ferociously right-wing the Mormons are, yet they give so much money to a corporation that functions just like the very worst stereotypes of the Soviet government economic system.)

One of the most amusing illustrations in Smith's book was how -- instead of doing any kind of reality-based market research -- the Cobbers would waste countless hours of labor creating "personas" -- that is, invented profiles that are meant to represent typical consumers of their products. Unsurprisingly, the "personas" seem to need exactly the sorts of things their COB-authors are poised to produce. The personas even have their creators' racism baked right in, as the Spanish-speaking persona not only wanted printed materials in Spanish, but also wanted them dumbed-down. (Actually, that one is a little surprising since I can hardly imagine these materials could be dumbed-down any further.)

Smith's book gives you the inside story on some products and programs you may remember if you're Mormon. For example, marketing the "quad" from the pulpit at General Conference and moving pallets of piled-up Books of Mormon through a program where Mormons were encouraged to buy copies and paste their pictures and testimonies in them for the missionaries to distribute. (Yep, I remember doing that with my family when I was a kid.) Plus he recounts some other episodes that are almost too amazing to be believed, such as getting feedback from members in Africa, Mexico, and the Philippines on an "educational" film for Mormon bishops about the importance of getting (Spanish-speaking) freeloaders off the church welfare rolls.

The whole story is written in the style of an 18th or 19th century expose. It reminded me of some of the French libels described by Robert Darnton, complete with an amusing line-drawing frontispiece illustrating the subject:



Overall, The Book of Mammon is eye-opening and quite entertaining. It's a little dense, but worth the effort.

ExMormon -- The Final Chapter!

Many of you are no doubt aware that almost all of the novel ExMormon has been posted online -- serialized from here. And now it's getting to be time to finally post the last chapter! There's just one catch:

Remember how I've said that each of the individual novellas can be read alone? Even the gratuitous love scene. The stories are connected, but you don't need to have read the earlier ones to understand the later ones.

Well, that changes with this chapter.

The Exmo Conference chapter is a lighthearted wrap-up where Elohim watches how the various apostates' lives have turned out. But that means that you have to have read the earlier sections to get it. Fortunately, you have nearly a month. (And, according to my statistics, it's not hard at all to read any one of the eight-and-a-half novellas in one sitting.)

But if you want to pick and choose, here are the choices:

Young Women's: Slumber parties, sibling rivalries, and praying for a testimony are all on the agenda for a good Mormon girl like April.

Exmormon's Real Launch!!!

The final version of Exmormon is finally available from Amazon!!!



Those of you who have been following this blog are probably asking: "Wasn't it already available?" Here's the difference:

The earlier Lulu edition was a bit of a pre-print test run (without illustrations or ISBN). Now you can get the real published version -- with all of the illustrations and a new professional cover design and layout! Also, I've finally set it up so that you can order a PDF e-copy -- with all of the illustrations in color!

Note that I'm planning to donate the proceeds to Solar Aid and/or to the local conservation partnership with the Masoala National Park in Madagascar. (More about my reasons for this coming soon.)

I'm also starting on a publicity campaign. Here's my first ad, which I'm placing in the program notes of the Secular Student Alliance 2010 Annual Conference. It sounds like it will be a fun conference (I think Greta Christina will be there, among other cool people). I can't attend myself, but if you go, please be sure to admire my beautiful ad. :D

Caption Contest!!!

I just read that Sunstone Magazine is going to be doing a special issue of LDS-themed comics, and they announced an open call for submissions!!!

Since I love light stories about Mormons -- and since improving my illustration/comics-drawing skills is right up there on my list of goals -- I'd really, really like to submit something. The only problem is that my plate is too full at the moment, so there's no way I'll have time to come up with something good between now and May 15.

Unless...

It hit me that some of the illustrations I've already done might make good single-panel comics if only they had really hilarious captions! This is where you come in. I've reprinted below some of the ones that I think have the most potential:

A.


B.


C.


D.


E.


(Feel free to look around for others if these aren't the most inspiring.)

Naturally, if you come up with something that turns one of these into a one-panel comic funny enough for Suntone, I'll split the credit and payment with you.

(Given that the comic will occupy about 1/4 page, at $25 per page, you could potentially win as much as $3.13 -- not to mention the corresponding fame and glory!)

Tales of a gay Mormon male staying obedient to the Mormon authorities

If you're gay and Mormon, you're highly motivated to figure out what you really believe about the "truthfullness" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are a few obvious choices:

1. Conclude that the CoJCoL-dS is true overall, but wrong when it comes to homosexuality, and hope the leaders will one day revoke your group's cursed status, as they did for the blacks.

2. Conclude that the CoJCoL-dS is wrong, period.

3. Conclude that the CoJCoL-dS is true, and that the leaders are right about homosexuality.

Door #3 is not only a painful choice, but also an incredibly thankless one, considering that the leaders just won't stop making pronouncements that are not only hurtful but are obviously false. And don't expect much sympathy from your gay-friendly friends, either. They're about as likely to support your decision to stay in the LDS church are they are to encourage you to stay in any other abusive relationship.

I recently read a novel about what life is like behind door #3. I normally put book reviews here on my personal blog, but since I think this book will inspire some serious discussion of the issues involved, I've posted my review on Main Street Plaza instead. You can read it here: What the church really offers to gay male Mormons: Jonathan Langford’s No Going Back.

The last P-day of my mission

I was back home fishing. The morning sun was filtering down the canyon as I rowed my boat out to the middle of a calm lake and started preparing my lines...

Not really.

But in my mind I was already gone. Anywhere but wasting the last P-day of my mission watching the rest of the missionaries of my zone playing basketball.



At least my companion Elder Beaverton was having fun. He was doing great -- he was all over the court.

Elder Beaverton was really into basketball. It always annoyed him when people would ask him about hockey, just assuming he loved hockey since he was from Canada. Read the rest of the story ->

The difference a vision can make: Zoe Murdock's Torn by God

God is an interesting character. Attracting His attention isn't always a good thing, and hearing from Him directly can be a real problem -- especially if you're not sure precisely what He said.

Zoe Murdock's novel Torn by God (H.O.T. Press) opens with a terrifying vision. More precisely, a young girl has the bizarre experience of watching her father wade out into a raging river where a pillar of light descends upon him. He returns, certain that it was a message from on high. From that moment forward, nothing on Earth is as important to him as discovering (and carrying out) God's special plan for him.

Naturally the father (Brother Sterling) starts to dig deeply into the roots of his own faith tradition. Being a Mormon, Brother Sterling centers his search around the teachings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. This search leads him to old doctrines like polygamy and the "Law of Consecration" (signing over your belongings to be distributed by the church). He drags his family (not literally kicking and screaming, but almost) into the bosom of the local independent Mormon fundamentalist group. The resulting emotional and financial hardships are made all the more painful by the constant realization that everything could so easily go back to normal if only Brother Sterling could forget about his vision and cut the crazy out of their lives.

Sister Sterling's role is particularly disturbing and frustrating. As it became increasingly clear that the family was in serious trouble, I kept feeling like -- no matter how much you love him -- there comes a point where you say to your husband "I can't just keep waiting for you to go back to normal, I have to take action to get myself and my children into a safe and sane situation." But the problem is that Sister Sterling had been brought up to be a meek and submissive wife. She takes her temple covenants (to obey her husband) very seriously. When he uses the words of the Mormon prophets, when he compares her to Emma Smith (wife of the prophet Joseph, who hated polygamy but stood by her husband), and when he tells her that their family's hardships are caused by her selfish unwillingness to follow him whole-heartedly, she wavers and can't tell whether or not to believe him. I like to think a modern Mormon woman would be more independent and resourceful, but this novel was set in small-town Utah during the prophetic tenure of David O. McKay (1950's-60's).

This story illustrates a bit of how Mormon fundamentalism feeds off of mainstream Mormonism. Part of the connection is doctrinal, since studying the writings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young can lead a Mormon believer to conclude that the fundamentalists are right. But there are also social factors that come into play. Sister Sterling avoids seeking help from her Mormon neighbors because she (justifiably) fears that her husband will be excommunicated for affiliating with the polygamists. She also refuses help from "gentiles" because she doesn't trust them. Then, once the rumors start to spread around town (about the Sterlings' fundamentalist leanings), they're shunned and Brother Sterling's carpentry business dries up, leaving the family with no one to turn to except the fundamentalists. And Mormons are brought up to believe that "persecution" is a sign that you're doing the Lord's work -- so the Mormon fundamentalists seem all the more right because those guys are really persecuted.

However, all of this theology is a bit of a sideline to what I think is the real strength of this novel. The author, Zoe Murdock, weaves description and action into incredibly vivid and memorable scenes. She shows how confused and upset the children are by giving them realistic immature behavior. The novel is crafted throughout with the kind of rich detail that brings the story to life.

I highly recommend this book for both Mormon and non-Mormon readers.

Here's another one!!

Just today I happened upon another heartwarming tale of growing out of Mormonism!

This one is very different from yesterday's, and since it's an online serial (I love those exmo lit online serials) you can read it right now. Well, the beginning anyway.

It looks beautiful so far!

Multicultural Surprise! Jack B. Worthy's "The Mormon Cult"

A Chinese, born in China with a dark skin, and with all the handicaps of that race seems to have little opportunity. But think of the mercy of God to Chinese people who are willing to accept the gospel. In spite of whatever they might have done in the pre-existence to justify being born over there as Chinamen, if they now, in this life accept the gospel and live it the rest of their lives they can have the Priesthood, go to the temple and receive endowments and sealings, and that means they can have exaltation.

-- (Apostle) Elder Mark E. Petersen, in a talk given at Brigham Young University (BYU) on August 27, 1954

The Mormon mission experience is a unique and remarkable thing. If you send single young adults to a foreign country to learn the language and culture, there's a danger they'll assimilate, internalize the new country's values and culture, and stay there. Yet, the LDS church has a pretty strong track record of getting missionaries (or mishies, as I like to call them) to learn a foreign language/culture just enough to get around easily but not so much that the new country becomes "home."

How do they do it? Well, I've just read an interesting new missionary memoir that goes a long way towards explaining how it works. From a faithful LDS persepctive, Jack B. Worthy's mission was a "failed" one -- not only did he leave the church at the end, but he essentially went on to choose his mission country (Hong Kong) over his Mormon American culture. Naturally this gives us some contrasting points to show how those missions that do work work.

The Mark E. Petersen quote above (which I read in Jack's book) isn't just shockingly racist. It also betrays the common human failing of being unable to perceive the people of another culture as being just people. As I discussed in Is religion the problem? it's weird, but while you naturally see that your own community is full of all different types of people, it's nearly impossible to avoid mentally flattening different races and nationalities into cartoon caricatures. Even educated people who know intellectually that foreign societies have the full spectrum of human qualities still have a difficult time feeling on a gut-level "they're more like us than they are different." Obviously Chinese people don't see themselves as a handicapped race, with little opportunity, who had the misfortune of "being born over there as Chinamen." In fact, I'll bet there are plenty of Chinese people who pity Americans for being "born over there" (in the U.S.), into a culture that many Chinese probably view as pitifully limited and obscure. Jack's memoir is a positive and encouraging tale of breaking through the haze of a simple, provincial perspective and getting to the point of seeing "just people, like us" in the faraway city of Hong Kong. The similarities began to stand out so much more than the differences that he'd originally called his memoir "Confucius Was a Mormon Pioneer."

Like many missionaries, Jack was sorely disheartened by the vast gulf separating faith-promoting mission expectations from the mission reality that he saw around him. The critical point that pushed him over the edge into apostasy, though, was the humiliation of being disfellowshipped and sent home in shame after he had sex with a local girl. Jack describes how returned-missionaries are put in a position where they're socially required to tell stories from their missions that are as faith-promoting as possible, and how this experience affects their own memories of their experiences, making the faith-shaking parts fade and the faith-building parts grow by comparison. Of course, humans naturally frame their memories to emphasize how they got where they are today, so -- since Jack's mission ended badly -- his memories focus on his growing doubts and unease (even though he didn't fully stop believing in Mormonism until a decade later). In the book, he gives some interesting speculation about where he'd be today, and what his own mission memories would be like if he hadn't made that fateful decision to sneak out with a girl to the upper deck of an anonymous boat docked at the pier and have sex under the stars.

Considering Jack's happy, secular life with a bi-cultural family in Hong Kong today, I'd say this is an encouraging story of taking opportunities to learn and of overcoming adversity (where adversity, here, is indoctrination and the traumatic experience of getting excommunicated shortly after his mission). I particularly liked the end where he talked about getting a job doing the stock role of "the white guy" for Hong Kong television: "In one movie, I was a member of a group of Eastern European terrorists who had come to Hong Kong and taken an entire high school hostage. Of course the Hong Kong police force saved the day, and I ended up fighting to the finish alongside my terrorist friends." That sounded like such a fun job that remarked to my (French) husband that it almost makes me wish I'd chosen to learn Chinese instead of French! Jack closes with some fascinating comparisons between Chinese culture and Mormon culture (including some rituals and beliefs about the dead, from his own new extended family), and with a message of understanding:

In 470 B.C., only nine years after Confucius died, a rival philosopher named Mozi was born. Mozi, a contemporary of Socrates, taught universal love. He believed that the same degree of good that one wishes for one’s own parents or children should also be wished for the parents and children of others. He also taught that the identification one has with one’s own community and nation should be extended to all communities and nations.

So the last remaining elephant in the room of this book review is why did he name a positive story of cross-cultural understanding "The Mormon Cult"?

I emailed the author to figure this out, and he told me the following:

I consider all religions to be cults, as well as many other belief systems that are not labeled as religions, e.g., Herbalife and patriotism. Are they qualitatively different or just quantitatively different? I guess it depends on how you define cult, which is not easy. To keep it simple, we could say there is only a quantitative difference. The question then becomes, Where does the LDS Church lie on the continuum of cultishness? That's not an easy question to answer. I think it's safe to say that there are religions that are much worse, and there are many that are not nearly as bad. And within each religion, even, there are many levels. I grew up in Nebraska, which was probably much different from growing up in a small town in Utah.

That makes sense to me, and fits quite well with the theme and conclusions at the end of the book. However, I felt like that point didn't come through at all in the first section of the book, which explains in detail how Mormon indoctrination works (eg. training small kids to "bear their testimonies", telling people with doubts to "fake it till you make it" since saying you know X encourages you to convince yourself that you really do know it). I don't want to belabor this point too much because we've just gotten done discussing it in detail over on MSP here, but the problem is that people aren't going to assume you mean to place Mormonism on a "continuum of cultishness" if you don't say so and you don't call anyone but Mormons a cult. These guys, for example, absolutely don't mean some sort of nuanced "within each religion, even, there are many levels" when they call Mormonism a cult.

But, in the end, the publisher picked the title The Mormon Cult, and the (potentially even better book) Confucius Was a Mormon Pioneer got shelved. The tragic reality is that there's a real market for faith-promoting Mormon books and a lesser market for books proving that Mormonism is bad and wrong -- but essentially no (paying?) market for heart-warming, positive stories about being raised religious and finding your own way to skepticism.

*sigh*

Mormons: "If it's a sex scene, then it's gratuitous"

Or "I was kidding, yet I was serious..."

Remember way back when I wrote the following in the disclaimer for my atheist sex scene?

Second of all, why did I call this scene "gratuitous"? In a novel called Exmormon, it's naturally an in-joke about Mormonism. Mormons aren't supposed to watch R-rated movies because of all the sex (although the violence is less of a problem for them, as I discussed here), and I'd heard too many people say things like "It would have been a good movie if only they'd cut out that one scene". You don't even have to have watched the film to know what scene they're talking about: it's the sex scene. And, really, whether the scene was integral to the story is irrelevant -- for Mormons, every single story that has a sex scene would be improved by cutting all the sex scenes out.

I'll bet you thought I was just kidding, didn't you?

Well, following the links from some discussion of Angel Falling Softly, I found this gem:

My sister asked me once why I read so many mindless LDS fiction books. My answer to her was that I really hate reading a book, turning the page and being smacked in the face with gratuitus scenes. In LDS fiction, one does not have to worry about that, no matter how insipid the story may be.

Okay, maybe you didn't doubt me to begin with, but I still think it's funny... ;^)