My husband is a cultural Catholic. Never mind the fact that he doesn't believe in God. He was baptized Catholic and raised in a Catholic home; therefore, if you ask him if he is Catholic, he will say "yes."
So even though he doesn't practice his religion or believe in its supernatural claims, he still has some sort of attachment to it that manifests itself in strange ways.
For example, it annoys him when Protestants claim that Protestants and Catholics are all fundamentally part of one big church. My dad likes to make this claim. Dad grew up mainstream Protestant -- then converted to Mormonism just long enough to marry a returned missionary in the temple and raise all of the resulting kids LDS -- then switched back.
Despite my husband's unbelief, he takes it upon himself to be offended by claims of Protestant/Catholic equivalence on behalf of believing Catholics. After hearing my dad talk about how Christians accept Catholic baptisms (but not Mormon baptisms), in a later private conversation with me my husband commented, "Just let him say that to my aunt, who is a nun. She'll tell him he's going to hell!"
Now my husband's aunt is super-mega-nice, so it would surprise me quite a bit if she told a Protestant -- to his face -- that he's going to hell. Still, my husband may be right about his aunt's fundamental beliefs.
The first time we went to visit Auntie, she asked my husband "Are you Catholic?" Of course he said yes.
Then she asked me what my religion was. I responded that I am a non-believer, not affiliated with any religion. The funny thing was that she wasn't upset by this at all since she figured that meant it would be no big deal for me to join my husband's religion. Then she told us how relieved she was because she was worried that I might be a Protestant.
Despite what that story seems to indicate, my husband's aunt is surprisingly accepting and tolerant. She's a really old lady (in her 90s) and has been a nun her whole adult life, so normally I would expect her to be really rigid about the whole religion thing, but she has been reasonably accepting of our choices.
Of course, during that same first visit my husband's aunt told us that she prayed that he and I would get married and have our kids baptized, to which we surprisedly responded "But Auntie, we are married."
"Civil marriage," she said.
But after that she didn't bother us about it again, and all the times we've stayed at the convent to visit her none of the nuns have ever pressured us to go to mass or anything.
Since then, on a few occasions Auntie has reminded my husband of the importance of having the kids baptized. But she was fine with my husband's explanation when he told her that because of our unbelief, we didn't feel like it was right for us to go through the motions of such an ordinance, but that we wouldn't try to stop the kids from having themselves baptized if they wanted to later, when they're old enough to make a mature decision about it.
I thought it was funny that she accepted this because in my mind it's not a concession at all. If the kids take up a religion once they're grown, whether we like it or not there's not a whole lot we can do about it. Sure we could threaten to disown them, but that's not really realistic. We have only two kids. We can't go around disowning them willy-nilly over trivialities like what religions they choose for themselves. If we did, we'd pretty quickly find ourselves with no kids at all, and then who would we annoy during our golden years? Think about that.
I can hardly ridicule my husband for his wacky relationship with Catholicism though, considering that my attachment to my LDS heritage is equally wacky, if not worse. I seem to have his same weirdo objection to seeing the true church of my youth diluted into just another flavor of mainstream Christianity. So I catch myself browsing around the Bloggernacle (LDS blog network) posting comments encouraging people to be open about their LDS beliefs and to identify as Mormon first and not just Christian.
Why do I care? Obviously I shouldn't. I think part of it is that after having grown up with the idea that it's a virtue to stand up and be counted as peculiar, I have some irrational aversion to seeing Mormons jumping on the mainstream Christian bandwagon.
Also I think it's because this whole "milk before meat" thing strikes me as counterproductive. I've spent a lot of time with ex-Mormons/apostates on the Internet and elsewhere, and I've noticed that there is one particular small current of ex-Mormon Christians who insist on disproving Mormonism by holding up a list of Bible passages and saying "Mormons think this scripture means this but of course Christians know it means that." This is bewildering to many people raised in the church -- apostate and faithful Mormon alike -- who say, "OK, so you've proved that Mormons and mainstream Protestants interpret the Bible differently. Well, no duh!"
But the thing is that it isn't as much of a "no duh" point as maybe it should be. I get the impression that some ex-Mormon Christians are not so much annoyed about having been duped into believeing Mormonism is true as they are about having been duped into believing that Mormonism is not that different from other flavors of Christianity.
So while this practice of downplaying the unusual aspects of Mormonism by claiming Mormons are monotheists or saying that the church doesn't emphasize the doctrine of eternal progression, etc., may make Mormonism more palatable and increase the number of converts coming in the door, quantity is not necessarily the only concern here.
If you find a person who is aware of the doctrinal peculiarities of Mormonism and converts in spite of them -- or even because of them -- now that's a quality convert. That's someone who will likely say "OK" when hearing more of the various eccentricities of Mormonism rather than someone who will just become progressively angrier until he gets to the point where he not only leaves the church but feels compelled to debunk Mormonism's claims of being "Christian."
It seems to me that one convert of the former type would be worth more than 10 of the latter. But I'm an apostate myself, so obviously faithful LDS shouldn't be taking my advice.
In fact, if you're Mormon you should probably do exactly the opposite of whatever I say, just to be on the safe side!
Published in the Utah Valley Monitor February 16, 2006.
Concurrently run as a guest post at fMh.
The Adventures of a Friendly French-American ExMormon Atheist Mom Living in Switzerland!!!
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Saturday, February 25, 2006
La littérature dangereuse: Lifestyles of the rich and literate
From some of the great classics of the literary canon, we learn that when a community or class of people have nothing more important to do all day than get dressed up and receive visitors in the drawing room, they tend to develop an elaborate web of intricate rules of etiquette and then spend way too much of their time jockeying for position by worrying about how well their friends and neighbors are following those rules.
Leisure class novels don't necessarily represent the typical human experience, although they are probably pretty representative of the experiences of the sorts of people who have plenty of time on their hands to write whole books fictionalizing all their romantic adventures and intrigues they like to fill up their lazy afternoons with.
I'm not complaining here. Our literary world of imagination would be that much less rich if people like Choderlos de Laclos, Edith Wharton, and Jane Austen had had to get a job or take care of their own households without the help of servants. And it's fun to read along and play pretend.
I know there are tons of books that fall into the category of leisure class novels, but I'm just going to focus on three of them here representing the high, middle, and low leisure class: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons
), The Age of Innocence
, and Pride and Prejudice
. Fortunately all of these have been made into popular films for the non-reader's convenience.
On the high end, we have the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. They're born into the highest level of nobility, and feel no insecurity about their position. Consequently they feel themselves to be above the social rules of their society, and essentially have nothing but contempt for such rules. Their entire novel (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) is about how they make a game of putting on a proper façade while seducing everyone and doing whatever else they please on the sly.
Representing the middle, we have Newland Archer from The Age of Innocence. He's well established in his position in the late 19th century New York aristocracy, however throughout the novel it is constantly present in the minds of the characters that the Manhattan social scene is the little country cousin of the courts of Europe. Newland starts out seeing the customs and values of his community as being self-evident, and through the course of the first half of the novel becomes disillusioned as he comes to understand more clearly how his social world is constructed and how it works.
On the low end, the Bennet girls of Pride and Prejudice are in the leisure class, but just barely hanging onto it with the tips of their fingers. Their family is in a position to slip down to the merchant or working class within a generation if they don't get an infusion of new money fast. They can't afford to go around questioning their society's conventions and practices, so they don't. Not one person in the entire novel questions why things work the way they do.
In some ways The Age of Innocence is the most interesting of the three because of the way the reader gets to see Newland's awareness and comprehension increasing. Even as the novel opens, he's already something of a player, recognizing the socio-political importance of announcing his engagement (and hence family alliance) at the same time as his fiance's family is taking the risky step of welcoming back a cousin, the Countess Olenska, who had married a nobleman in Europe and then moved back to New York without her husband. Still, at that point he sees the social hierarchy and the types of pursuits befitting a gentleman as obvious, and it doesn't seem to occur to him that things could be any other way.
The Countess Olenska turns Newland's world on its side by showing him alternate possibilities. She sets up a house for herself in an unfashionable part of town. She frequents and befriends people who are interesting but are looked down on by the polite society (old money families) of Manhattan. Worst of all -- those top aristocrats that are revered by all of New York -- she dares to find them dull.
The closing segment of part one is beautifully poignant as Newland sees his cage for what it is just as he is in the process of locking himself into it for good.
I honestly wish the novel had stopped right there. Part two isn't bad, but it really doesn't deserve to be in the same novel with part one, which is a masterpiece. Part two is essentially a long, tedious lament as Newland slowly resigns himself to an unhappy life of attending an endless stream of dinner parties that he now sees as empty and pointless while trying to forget his true love.
In part two, the author develops the theme that there is beauty and value in the innocence and provincial, small-town atmosphere of old-money New York, where everyone knows everyone else's business and no one seems to have anything better to do than throw fancy dinners and gossip and sully one another's reputations. Compared to the author's masterful treatment of the mask of innocence being pulled off this society in part one, her description of why Newland and the countess should love their innocent home country anyway seems clumsy and unconvincing.
The explanation repeatedly given for why the Countess Olenska should prefer to mill around Washington, D.C. -- apparently doing nothing -- rather than going back to her glamorously exciting yet decadent life in Europe is simply "because she's an American." The reader is expected to accept this answer and say "Oh, of course." Still, it's a bit confusing since the cosmopolitan world-view that made her so attractive in the first place was clearly described in part one as having been the result of her rich and varied experiences in Europe.
Pride and Prejudice, by contrast, portrays a society of innocence in which the innocence is never lost, and where we are treated to a light, straight-forward fairy tale. It's a fun read with plenty of entertaining characters and dialog.
My biggest problem with Pride and Prejudice is that it just seems almost too convenient that Mr. Darcy is at once so lovable and so rich. Unlike most people's lives in reality universe, there is not a single hint of a dark shadow on Elizabeth's happily ever after, which makes the story vaguely unsatisfying, like candy or porn.
My favorite way of analyzing Pride and Prejudice is to look at in terms of evolutionary biology and reproductive strategy. In their society, maintaining or increasing one's social position was absolutely vital for the long-term survival and success of one's progeny. It was so important to them that the people there were routinely marrying their own cousins to keep money in the family, showing that social advantage trumped even genetic advantage.
Now consider the choice that Mr. Darcy is presented with in the story: his own very rich but dull and sickly cousin or the lively and clever Elizabeth Bennet. The overall values of the society at the time might have given the advantage to the cousin, but -- keeping in mind that he's loaded -- it is clear that increasing his wealth at the expense of seeing his future children sickly and inbred is not in his reproductive best interests. The author's alignment of her tale's conclusion with universal constants of human nature helps make the ending feel right, and not just because Elizabeth is the protagonist.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the universe of Les Liaisons Dangereuses is not even remotely innocent. It is unabashedly cynical, and for that reason it is in some ways the most fun of the three.
Right from the start, the Marquise de Merteuil describes how she analyzes her society and plays it to her advantage. The book is chock-full of cynical love wisdom, such as the following:
"It's a law of nature that only love changes; and love -- do you have it when you want it? Yet you always need it, and that would be a big problem if one didn't notice that fortunately it's sufficient for it to exist in one direction. That cuts the difficulty in half without losing much. One enjoys the happiness of loving, the other that of pleasing someone -- in truth a bit less intense, but to which is joined the pleasure of cheating, which evens everything out in the end." (translation mine)
It's interesting how the trajectory of all three novels tends to go towards balancing out the lot of the main characters. Elizabeth Bennet starts at a position of disadvantage and ends up fabulously wealthy and happy. Newland Archer starts in kind of a middle position and more or less stays there. So since the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont start at the top, they must obviously must suffer a terrible downfall.
I would imagine that if the author of Les Liaisons Dangereuses based his characters on real people, they were probably chuckling together about their exploits to a ripe old age. But in novel-land it's not okay to entertain oneself at the expense of others without getting some sort of comeuppance, particularly since in this case it would just inspire people to hate the nobility even more than they already hate the nobility.
Another interesting thing to note is that Les Liaisons Dangereuses is the only one of the three novels in which there are servants who are characters that play a role in the action. The Age of Innocence includes some small scenes of speaking to servants. In Pride and Prejudice it was important for the Bennets to emphasize the distinction between themselves and the servant class by treating the servants as invisible or as robots. The difference in rank of the protagonists is inversely proportional to how threatened they feel by the possibility of acknowledging that the servants are human.
Of course, while all three of these novels describe a lifestyle that is perhaps unfamiliar to the average reader, they at least are grounded in the familiar trappings of western culture. If you enjoy these sorts of leisure class novels, but are ready to taste one with a completely different flavor, a great choice is The Tale of Genji
, by Lady Murasaki, which describes the exploits of the courtesans of the imperial court of 11th century Japan.
Published in the Utah Valley Monitor February 07, 2006.
Leisure class novels don't necessarily represent the typical human experience, although they are probably pretty representative of the experiences of the sorts of people who have plenty of time on their hands to write whole books fictionalizing all their romantic adventures and intrigues they like to fill up their lazy afternoons with.
I'm not complaining here. Our literary world of imagination would be that much less rich if people like Choderlos de Laclos, Edith Wharton, and Jane Austen had had to get a job or take care of their own households without the help of servants. And it's fun to read along and play pretend.
I know there are tons of books that fall into the category of leisure class novels, but I'm just going to focus on three of them here representing the high, middle, and low leisure class: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons
), The Age of Innocence, and Pride and Prejudice. Fortunately all of these have been made into popular films for the non-reader's convenience.On the high end, we have the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. They're born into the highest level of nobility, and feel no insecurity about their position. Consequently they feel themselves to be above the social rules of their society, and essentially have nothing but contempt for such rules. Their entire novel (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) is about how they make a game of putting on a proper façade while seducing everyone and doing whatever else they please on the sly.
Representing the middle, we have Newland Archer from The Age of Innocence. He's well established in his position in the late 19th century New York aristocracy, however throughout the novel it is constantly present in the minds of the characters that the Manhattan social scene is the little country cousin of the courts of Europe. Newland starts out seeing the customs and values of his community as being self-evident, and through the course of the first half of the novel becomes disillusioned as he comes to understand more clearly how his social world is constructed and how it works.
On the low end, the Bennet girls of Pride and Prejudice are in the leisure class, but just barely hanging onto it with the tips of their fingers. Their family is in a position to slip down to the merchant or working class within a generation if they don't get an infusion of new money fast. They can't afford to go around questioning their society's conventions and practices, so they don't. Not one person in the entire novel questions why things work the way they do.
In some ways The Age of Innocence is the most interesting of the three because of the way the reader gets to see Newland's awareness and comprehension increasing. Even as the novel opens, he's already something of a player, recognizing the socio-political importance of announcing his engagement (and hence family alliance) at the same time as his fiance's family is taking the risky step of welcoming back a cousin, the Countess Olenska, who had married a nobleman in Europe and then moved back to New York without her husband. Still, at that point he sees the social hierarchy and the types of pursuits befitting a gentleman as obvious, and it doesn't seem to occur to him that things could be any other way.The Countess Olenska turns Newland's world on its side by showing him alternate possibilities. She sets up a house for herself in an unfashionable part of town. She frequents and befriends people who are interesting but are looked down on by the polite society (old money families) of Manhattan. Worst of all -- those top aristocrats that are revered by all of New York -- she dares to find them dull.
The closing segment of part one is beautifully poignant as Newland sees his cage for what it is just as he is in the process of locking himself into it for good.
I honestly wish the novel had stopped right there. Part two isn't bad, but it really doesn't deserve to be in the same novel with part one, which is a masterpiece. Part two is essentially a long, tedious lament as Newland slowly resigns himself to an unhappy life of attending an endless stream of dinner parties that he now sees as empty and pointless while trying to forget his true love.
In part two, the author develops the theme that there is beauty and value in the innocence and provincial, small-town atmosphere of old-money New York, where everyone knows everyone else's business and no one seems to have anything better to do than throw fancy dinners and gossip and sully one another's reputations. Compared to the author's masterful treatment of the mask of innocence being pulled off this society in part one, her description of why Newland and the countess should love their innocent home country anyway seems clumsy and unconvincing.
The explanation repeatedly given for why the Countess Olenska should prefer to mill around Washington, D.C. -- apparently doing nothing -- rather than going back to her glamorously exciting yet decadent life in Europe is simply "because she's an American." The reader is expected to accept this answer and say "Oh, of course." Still, it's a bit confusing since the cosmopolitan world-view that made her so attractive in the first place was clearly described in part one as having been the result of her rich and varied experiences in Europe.
Pride and Prejudice, by contrast, portrays a society of innocence in which the innocence is never lost, and where we are treated to a light, straight-forward fairy tale. It's a fun read with plenty of entertaining characters and dialog.My biggest problem with Pride and Prejudice is that it just seems almost too convenient that Mr. Darcy is at once so lovable and so rich. Unlike most people's lives in reality universe, there is not a single hint of a dark shadow on Elizabeth's happily ever after, which makes the story vaguely unsatisfying, like candy or porn.
My favorite way of analyzing Pride and Prejudice is to look at in terms of evolutionary biology and reproductive strategy. In their society, maintaining or increasing one's social position was absolutely vital for the long-term survival and success of one's progeny. It was so important to them that the people there were routinely marrying their own cousins to keep money in the family, showing that social advantage trumped even genetic advantage.
Now consider the choice that Mr. Darcy is presented with in the story: his own very rich but dull and sickly cousin or the lively and clever Elizabeth Bennet. The overall values of the society at the time might have given the advantage to the cousin, but -- keeping in mind that he's loaded -- it is clear that increasing his wealth at the expense of seeing his future children sickly and inbred is not in his reproductive best interests. The author's alignment of her tale's conclusion with universal constants of human nature helps make the ending feel right, and not just because Elizabeth is the protagonist.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the universe of Les Liaisons Dangereuses is not even remotely innocent. It is unabashedly cynical, and for that reason it is in some ways the most fun of the three.Right from the start, the Marquise de Merteuil describes how she analyzes her society and plays it to her advantage. The book is chock-full of cynical love wisdom, such as the following:
"It's a law of nature that only love changes; and love -- do you have it when you want it? Yet you always need it, and that would be a big problem if one didn't notice that fortunately it's sufficient for it to exist in one direction. That cuts the difficulty in half without losing much. One enjoys the happiness of loving, the other that of pleasing someone -- in truth a bit less intense, but to which is joined the pleasure of cheating, which evens everything out in the end." (translation mine)
It's interesting how the trajectory of all three novels tends to go towards balancing out the lot of the main characters. Elizabeth Bennet starts at a position of disadvantage and ends up fabulously wealthy and happy. Newland Archer starts in kind of a middle position and more or less stays there. So since the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont start at the top, they must obviously must suffer a terrible downfall.
I would imagine that if the author of Les Liaisons Dangereuses based his characters on real people, they were probably chuckling together about their exploits to a ripe old age. But in novel-land it's not okay to entertain oneself at the expense of others without getting some sort of comeuppance, particularly since in this case it would just inspire people to hate the nobility even more than they already hate the nobility.
Another interesting thing to note is that Les Liaisons Dangereuses is the only one of the three novels in which there are servants who are characters that play a role in the action. The Age of Innocence includes some small scenes of speaking to servants. In Pride and Prejudice it was important for the Bennets to emphasize the distinction between themselves and the servant class by treating the servants as invisible or as robots. The difference in rank of the protagonists is inversely proportional to how threatened they feel by the possibility of acknowledging that the servants are human.
Of course, while all three of these novels describe a lifestyle that is perhaps unfamiliar to the average reader, they at least are grounded in the familiar trappings of western culture. If you enjoy these sorts of leisure class novels, but are ready to taste one with a completely different flavor, a great choice is The Tale of Genji
, by Lady Murasaki, which describes the exploits of the courtesans of the imperial court of 11th century Japan.Published in the Utah Valley Monitor February 07, 2006.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Girlhood Dreams
When I was a little kid, feminism wasn't called feminism. The way I remember it, back then feminism was called "Women's Lib" and it was evil.
This was back in the distant era of the 1970s -- also known as they Polyester Age -- and "Women's Lib" was all about crazy stuff like burning your bra (irresponsibly immodest and a fire hazard!) and forcing boys and girls to use the same bathroom by promoting something called the E.R.A. And who could be in favor of such obviously misguided foolishness? So like all good and reasonable Mormon families of the time, we were opposed to "Women's Lib."
On the other hand, the fact that girls should be encouraged to aspire to be anything they want to be -- just like boys -- was a fact that was so self-evident that it certainly didn't require a name, such as "feminism."
My parents encouraged almost all of my childhood dreams, including ones when I was really little that my older brother insisted on pointing out were impossible such as becoming queen of America or taking over for Robin (of Batman and Robin).
For example, one day on a whim I decided that I should grow up to be a doctor, and I went and told my dad about this idea. In retrospect, it seems that a typical response from an LDS parent of the time might have been to say something like "Now honey, that would take an awful lot schooling during just the time that you'll want to be a mommy. You could maybe study nursing instead if you like while preparing for marriage and family."
It pains me to type out a statement like that even as a theoretical possibility since saying such a thing would have been so alien to either one of my parents that it would never have crossed their minds. My dad's actual response was to ask me what I wanted to be a doctor of, since there are plenty of fields out there to get a doctorate in such as mathematics, different branches of science, etc. So I went back to the drawing board to try to decide which field of research would interest me the most.
The one ambition of mine that I remember my mom didn't encourage was when I decided I wanted to grow up to be a prophet. I went and found myself a secluded natural area with a little pond surrounded by trees and prayed to have a vision. I tried this a few times, but as you might imagine it didn't work very well. I didn't let this discourage me, though. I don't remember how it came up in conversation, but at one point I was telling my mom about my plan and about my idea that I could just pretend I had a vision, and write a book about it, and then I could found a religion.
I don't know if I imagined my mom would praise my cleverness and ambition to aspire to such a highly esteemed position or what, but I was disappointed to find that she wasn't at all happy about it. Even after I carefully explained to her that if I told everyone I had a vision, no one would know for sure or be able to prove that it didn't happen.
I'm guessing my mom was displeased that I had apparently intuited that that was a perfectly normal and reasonable manner to go about becoming the leader of a religion. Out of the mouths of babes -- sometimes a child's innocent impressions of how that world works are cute and appreciated, and sometimes they aren't.
It didn't even occur to me to aspire to become prophet by rising up through the ranks of the gerontocracy of the LDS Church. Even if it weren't for the fact that such a thing would be as impossible for a girl as becoming queen of America, it didn't appeal to me since everyone knows deep down that that's not how you become one of the cool prophets.
But in the end my mom made mincemeat of my dream of founding a religion, so I got that Ph.D. in mathematics instead.
Published in the Utah Valley Monitor February 09, 2006.
This was back in the distant era of the 1970s -- also known as they Polyester Age -- and "Women's Lib" was all about crazy stuff like burning your bra (irresponsibly immodest and a fire hazard!) and forcing boys and girls to use the same bathroom by promoting something called the E.R.A. And who could be in favor of such obviously misguided foolishness? So like all good and reasonable Mormon families of the time, we were opposed to "Women's Lib."
On the other hand, the fact that girls should be encouraged to aspire to be anything they want to be -- just like boys -- was a fact that was so self-evident that it certainly didn't require a name, such as "feminism."
My parents encouraged almost all of my childhood dreams, including ones when I was really little that my older brother insisted on pointing out were impossible such as becoming queen of America or taking over for Robin (of Batman and Robin).
For example, one day on a whim I decided that I should grow up to be a doctor, and I went and told my dad about this idea. In retrospect, it seems that a typical response from an LDS parent of the time might have been to say something like "Now honey, that would take an awful lot schooling during just the time that you'll want to be a mommy. You could maybe study nursing instead if you like while preparing for marriage and family."
It pains me to type out a statement like that even as a theoretical possibility since saying such a thing would have been so alien to either one of my parents that it would never have crossed their minds. My dad's actual response was to ask me what I wanted to be a doctor of, since there are plenty of fields out there to get a doctorate in such as mathematics, different branches of science, etc. So I went back to the drawing board to try to decide which field of research would interest me the most.
The one ambition of mine that I remember my mom didn't encourage was when I decided I wanted to grow up to be a prophet. I went and found myself a secluded natural area with a little pond surrounded by trees and prayed to have a vision. I tried this a few times, but as you might imagine it didn't work very well. I didn't let this discourage me, though. I don't remember how it came up in conversation, but at one point I was telling my mom about my plan and about my idea that I could just pretend I had a vision, and write a book about it, and then I could found a religion.
I don't know if I imagined my mom would praise my cleverness and ambition to aspire to such a highly esteemed position or what, but I was disappointed to find that she wasn't at all happy about it. Even after I carefully explained to her that if I told everyone I had a vision, no one would know for sure or be able to prove that it didn't happen.
I'm guessing my mom was displeased that I had apparently intuited that that was a perfectly normal and reasonable manner to go about becoming the leader of a religion. Out of the mouths of babes -- sometimes a child's innocent impressions of how that world works are cute and appreciated, and sometimes they aren't.
It didn't even occur to me to aspire to become prophet by rising up through the ranks of the gerontocracy of the LDS Church. Even if it weren't for the fact that such a thing would be as impossible for a girl as becoming queen of America, it didn't appeal to me since everyone knows deep down that that's not how you become one of the cool prophets.
But in the end my mom made mincemeat of my dream of founding a religion, so I got that Ph.D. in mathematics instead.
Published in the Utah Valley Monitor February 09, 2006.
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