Community of Christ Prophet-President Stephen M. Veazey on the Importance of Diversity in Leadership
In the video link below, Community of Christ Prophet-President Stephen M. Veazey speaks about the importance of diversity in Community of Christ leadership.
One excerpt:
“We…believe that the diversity that is evident in creation is a reflection of God’s nature. Having diversity in the church and having diversity in the leadership of the church helps us draw closer to understanding God’s nature and will. So there’s blessing in there; there’s struggle to understand issues from various perspectives. But I understand that as a
white male, I am privileged in society, in the church, in ways that I don’t even fully comprehend. It’s only when there are people from other experiences who are given the opportunity and empowered to speak, and share their perspective and their truth from their life experience, do I get a much better understanding of the nature of God – what the focus of ministry should be…The richness of cultures and languages …help us to see issues from various perspectives… In nature itself…diversity is considered to be a healthy ecosystem because it can survive and thrive in changing circumstances…” — Stephen M. Veazey, Prophet-Presdient of Community of Christ
For anyone interested in learning more about Community of Christ, check out these links: Information and Groups.
The seductiveness of being certain: When I was a child, moments of doubt would cross my mind. “What are the chances that I was born into the one true church, in the greatest country in the world (because my religion tells me so), and that I truly have all the answers to life’s difficult questions?” It seemed too good to be true! I felt something deep within me, begging me to challenge my basic assumptions, but I would immediately shut down that line of thinking and feel guilty for doubting. I felt like I must be such an ungrateful little brat to bite the hand that fed me, to question the religion that was already central to my identity and the source of all my blessings. I shamed myself back into submission. Besides, it felt really safe and comfortable to believe I had answers and a sure foundation.
As I moved into my teenage years, I was so sure that the church was true that doubts didn’t even surface as conscious thoughts anymore. My most basic, core assumption was that the LDS church was God’s one church on the earth, and that I absolutely had to follow its teachings to be happy. When I went to the temple to receive my endowment two days before my wedding, I was horrified to discover that women really are secondary to men in the church. This concept flew in the face of what I had wanted to be – a strong, confident woman, a scientist, equal to my husband in our marriage, independent and amazing. But I was so certain that the church was true, that instead of disbelieving what I had learned in the temple or brushing it off, I questioned my own goals and inner voice. I accepted that God didn’t love women as much as he loved men, a devastating blow to my self-esteem and spirituality, because the truthfulness of the church was even more central to my identity than my gender or self-respect.
In my adult life, I thought I must be the worst kind of person because I was so lucky to have the true church, a comfortable life and all the answers, and yet I was mostly unhappy. It seemed like something must not be right. Depression is the repression of expression, and I paid the price for shutting down my inner voice. Because I had sold myself out for the church, it took several years and a mountain of evidence before I could even ask the question “What if the church ISN’T true?” Like everyone else, my confirmation bias was always ready with excuses to defend my most basic assumption. It was just so hard to admit that my entire world view was warped, that I was wrong, and that I had been wrong for my entire life! What made it harder for me than others to admit I was wrong and move on?
The Fixed Mindset: In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck explains that the “fixed mindset” is the belief that your talents and abilities are innate, and there isn’t much you can do to change them. Conversely, the “growth mindset” is the belief that your achievements are based on your efforts. I started to realize that I’m just about the most fixed mindset person on earth. This explained a lot about the differences between myself and my husband. He is very growth mindset, which enabled him to see that the church wasn’t true much earlier. No wonder it was much more difficult for me to decide that the church wasn’t true.
A fixed-mindset depends on the idea of superiority, and then uses defensiveness to keep yourself superior. We have been told we are the chosen generation, that our spirits were saved for this dispensation of time, that we are special to have found the true church, and this means we can have true happiness. Dweck explains: “The problem is when special begins to mean better than others. A more valuable human being. A superior person. An entitled person.” Buying into this view raises the stakes for being wrong. That’s the blessing and the curse of leaving the church: you have to realize that you’re just like everyone else on the entire planet. It makes you not special anymore, but helps you connect with people in a way you never could before.
The good news is that you can change your mindset – in the end it’s just a belief. It can be hard to break old habits, but it is possible to transform yourself from a fixed to a growth mindset. You can become comfortable with challenge and uncertainty. You can see your true self, without the distortion that inevitably comes from trying to prove yourself. You can be less self-conscious and less anxious and worried about judgment. You can develop yourself in new ways without fear of failure.
The gift of being wrong: I started to realize that I had been given an incredible gift: the perspective of intimately understanding what it feels like to be 100% certain that something is true – and then to disprove that to myself. To accept that I was WRONG on something so crucially important to me that I built my life around it. Which begs the question: what other underlying assumptions in my life are wrong? Well, here are some examples that I’ve found in my personal life over the past year:
- What other people think of me does not define me.
- I’m a smart person, but I sometimes make bad decisions.
- Although I consider myself socially capable, I have a mild autism spectrum disorder.
- I am accountable for my choices even if I was just being obedient.
- No one else is responsible for my emotions.
- Even though I consider myself a nice person, I can be hostile, mean, or even cruel.
- I can put down my idealism and face reality without losing a sense of hope.
- My emotions don’t mean something is true, they are just information on how I’m feeling.
- My contributions are still valuable even when they are average.
- I’m emotionally immature (ouch!) after being focused for so long on one version of what I “should” be.
Challenging myself in this way has been SO HARD. And I know it’s far from over. I felt much more comfortable as a card-carrying member destined for special VIP heaven. Following a set of rules allowed me to consider myself a “good person.” Now I have to recognize the light and dark inside of me, to see that it’s not a binary of good and bad, but just me trying every day to be my best self. Because I experienced being fundamentally, devastatingly wrong about the LDS church, and have been better off by challenging that assumption, I learned that I could challenge other deeply held beliefs and continue to grow. Also I have hope that I will be able to effectively change other harmful beliefs because I was brave and overcame a world view that I no longer value.
And finally, I can have more empathy for people whose world views differ from mine because I know what that’s like. I know how it feels to be so invested in a paradigm that you can’t see out of it. I know what it’s like to fall flat on my face, and I know how it feels to get back up again, even when I’m not sure I have the strength. I have the gift and the power and experience of being dead wrong about something very important, and moving on.
For thousands of years, humankind as built cities to escape the hardships of nature, but has turned to nature for spiritual nourishment. The rishis (seers) who wrote Hindu scripture lived in the wilderness. Old Testament prophets sought God on mountaintops. The Buddha and his disciples sought enlightenment in the forests. After taking their vows, Hindu and Buddhist monks go into the wilderness to meditate. After his baptism, Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” (Luke 4:1) Jesus repeatedly took solitude in nature. (See e.g., Matt 14:23, Mark 6:32, Mark 6:46, Luke 5:16, Luke 6:12.)
Why has nature drawn spiritual seekers to it for thousands of years in all parts of the globe? Why do so many people feel the presence of “the divine” more closely in nature? Perhaps the answer lies in both scripture and science.
“You Are That”
It is believed that roughly eight hundred years before Christ, an Indian rishi named Uddalaka recorded his teachings to his son, Svetaketu. Those teachings, known as the Chandogya Upanishad, contain a theory about humankind’s relation to the natural world that has endured ever since: that everything and everyone is part of one great whole (which has been translated as the One, the Self, or simply, Being), that everyone and everything is a temporary manifestation of the One, and that all will eventually merge back into the One.
“So through spiritual wisdom, dear one,
We come to know that all of life is one.
“In the beginning was only Being,
One without a second.
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that. . . .
“As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were ever separate streams,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being. . . .
You are that, Svetaketu; you are that.”
Long before Darwin published his theory, mystics and poets intuited the evolution and inter-relatedness of all life. In the 13th Century, the Sufi poet Rumi wrote:
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Six hundred years later, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
“The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and vegetable. . . . Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.” (Nature, 1836)
“We Are Made of Starstuff”
Modern science has taken great strides down the path illuminated by the mystics and sages of old, bringing scientific confirmation to the idea that everything is an expression of one great whole: the Universe. Uni-verse literally means “combined into one, whole”.
As Alan Watts has explained:
“You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. You are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.”
As Carl Sagan explained:
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
“We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion, billion, billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.”
“We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.”
Sagan and Watts’ statements echo that ancient refrain found throughout the Chandogya Upanishad: tat twam asi, “you are that”. We are not conscious beings experiencing the Universe, we are the Universe experiencing consciousness.
Transcending the Illusion of Separateness
Echoing the ancient sages of India, Albert Einstein affirmed the oneness of reality and described our sense of separateness as an illusion we must transcend:
“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to enhance all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
For nature mystics like Ralph Waldo Emerson, immersing himself in nature was a means to transcend his apparent separateness and merge with what he called the “Universal Being”:
“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. . . . Standing on the bare ground–my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space–all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. . . . I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.” (Nature, 1836)
Temples Made Without Hands
I have noticed something about myself and many others who have left the LDS church: we tend to spend more time in nature than ever before. Something draws us there, some inner yearning. Putting behind us the temples made by man, we find spiritual nourishment in the temples made without hands.
When I am in nature, I often feel like I’m walking on sacred ground. That feeling puzzles me, because I don’t hold any religious or metaphysical beliefs that would deem one place more “sacred” than another. When I’m walking in the woods, surrounded by life in a thousand forms, I feel as if I can sense the energy radiating from it all, though I cannot explain how or why. Standing in the shadows of stone towers in Bryce Canyon, or on the rocky coastline near my home, the thought often arises that if God were to build temples, this would surely be one of them.
If you haven’t already found a spiritual refuge in nature—a place of natural beauty where you can enjoy solitude often—I strongly recommend finding one. It doesn’t have to be an exotic location or National Park; any nearby meadow, forest, mountain, stream, lake, or beach will do. Enter the temples made without hands. Immerse yourself in the endless forms of matter, life, and beauty. And remember You Are That.