Very Important Information for Transitioning and Post-Mormons:
Last weekend we held a Mormon Transitions weekend retreat in Park City, UT focused on healing, growth, and community during and after a Mormon Transition.
According to those who attended, it was an absolutely fabulous/spectacular/life-changing experience.
During the retreat we covered numerous important topics with experts (e.g., faith transitions, healthy communication with believing loved ones, sexuality, spirituality, community, healthy marriage/relationships, raising children) — but most importantly, we had a ton of fun, and the 70+ attendees made lifelong friendships.
We are considering holding several Mormon Transitions events in 2016, including tentative events in:
- February 26: Birmingham, U.K. (Before Sunstone Europe)
- April 1-3: Gilbert, AZ
- Mid-July: Salt Lake City and/or Utah County Adult Retreat
- Mid-July: EFY for Post-Mormon Teens (ages 14-18) partnering with our friends at Zelph On The Shelf
- October: New York City, Washington D.C., or Boston (based on interest)
We are also interested in partnering with anyone who is interested in bringing a Mormon Transitions retreat to their own city.
If any of you are interested in any of these things, please fill this form. Then we will contact you shortly.
We can’t tell you how excited we are to organize and attend these retreats with you in 2016 and beyond!!!!
I still think of myself as Mormon, even though I’m no longer a member of the LDS church.
I didn’t at first.
I once attempted to yank the plant of Mormonism out of my life, but as I did I felt the entire garden of my life—including many things I had no desire to uproot—coming up with it.
Thus began a now decade-long process of meticulously untangling the roots of what I wanted to keep from the roots of things I wished to remove.
As I worked through this process through the years, I began to realize that I wanted to leave many of the distincly Mormon aspects of my life right where they were. This was confusing as I no longer thought of myself as religious.
In time, however, I came to realize that Mormonism had become something bigger than my religion.
I began to think of it as my ethnicity.
Try this idea on with me.
An ethnicity is a socially defined category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience.
I think Mormonism meets most of these criteria, with or without its religious aspects.
Mormonism is, for example, one of the longest-standing varietals of American pioneering. Our people settled large portions of the American west. My children are direct descendants of the people that settled some of those lands.
Mormonism has a distinct sociology. We are characterized by our tendency to quickly intertwine our fates and give each other a leg up in an often difficult world. We plunge optimistically into the unknown—dreams of a better world dancing in our heads—and push (often together, often with great care for one another and the next generation) through the ups and downs of life. We sincerely call each other brother and sister and are quick to treat each other with a love and familiarity typically reserved for family.
Mormonism has a distinct culture. We are dripping with our own linguistic, culinary, artistic, and behavioral idiosyncrasies. I like to joke about the speed with which I can identify other Mormons in a big crowd, and just how quickly we gravitate to each other.
These characteristics have undoubtedly cured in the influence of the religious aspects of Mormonism, just as the characteristics of my older ethnic influences (Scottish/Irish/Italian) cured in their religious influences, but that doesn’t mean that Mormon characteristics belong exclusively to Mormonism’s religions, any more than my Italian characteristics belong to the Catholic church.
If anything, I’ve found my preferences for the hereditary, sociological, and cultural aspects of Mormon life enduring–and even growing?–well beyond my departure from the LDS church and Mormonism’s theology.
And these preferences still bond me in deep ways to other Mormons … whether they participate in one of its religions or not.
Examples include:
- Ham, funeral potatoes, frog-eye salad, homemade rolls, Jell-O, and casseroles.
- The warmth I feel recalling the countless experiences I’ve had along life’s trail with other Mormon pioneers (nearly 1/2 of which have now happened outside of the LDS church).
- The joyful feelings I still experience when I listen to Lex De Azevedo’s Variations on a Sacred Theme.
- The goofy, distinctly Mormon antics of my kids and their friends.
- The reassurance I feel when I’m in the company of other Mormons (including many active LDS friends and family members).
- The inspiration I feel when I contemplate my Mormon pioneering heritage, and how grateful I am for the way it inspires me to continue pioneering in my life today.
Not long ago I walked through a neighborhood south of BYU with a good friend who is still active in the LDS church, and we reminisced about times nearly 2 decades ago when we were freshly married, pushing infants in strollers through those streets. We looked at each other at one point, tears in our eyes, and discussed how we still share a great deal. We have a shared history and many of our goals for the future remain largely the same.
That’s not to say we aren’t different in some fundamental respects. But we still feel an undeniable kindred connection. We’re part of a larger family.
A Mormon family.
An ethnic family?
Perhaps not unlike orthodox, conservative, and reform Jews?
A decade into my Mormon Transition, this is how I’ve come to see my Mormon family, friends and neighbors: LDS, fundamentalist, ex-Mormon, Post-Mormon, or just Mormons in transition.
Mormons.
Like me.
This post contains excerpts from a previous article I wrote called “Faith Like a Ship on the Sea” for A Thoughtful Faith.
If you’re reading this, the word “virtue” probably has a lot of baggage. Not-so-fond memories of chewed gum and plucked flower petals, hemlines and sleeve lengths, and uncomfortable questions asked behind closed doors likely come to mind. However, despite its narrow application in Mormon discourse, “virtue” imbues so much more than sexual purity, modesty or chastity.
The New Testament (KJV) uses the English word “virtue” six times within the text. Most of these are translations of the Greek word “areté.” Areté (pronounced arr-eh-tay) is a difficult word to define. But in its loftiest sense areté refers to human excellence through virtue. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle attempts to explain how virtue/areté can be pursued, specifically by finding the mean or balance between two extremes. As Mormons, we’ve often heard the term “moderation in all things,” yet we rarely realize that this oft-used Mormon maxim can be found nowhere in our scriptures, but instead is a phrase attributable to the Ancient Greeks, particularly Aristotle.
The Athenians were master ship builders and navigators for their time. As such, Greek philosophy is replete with sailing analogies as they apply to various philosophical concepts, including this approach to virtue or areté. Since the Greeks lacked compasses and a knowledge of celestial navigation, they relied on maintaining visual contact with the shoreline while sailing the seas. However, the art of this navigation was found in balancing your distance from the shore. If a seafarer came too close to land he risked being spotted by enemies or being shipwrecked on the craggy Aegean coast. If he drifted too far from land he would lose his bearings and become lost in the expanse of the Mediterranean. Therefore the areté or virtue of ancient ship navigation was found in the ability to ensure that you were neither too close nor too far from the guiding line of the coast.
This analogy can be used to show how the noblest human attributes (virtues) are realized by finding the moderate balance between two extremes of excess and deficiency (called “vices” by Aristotle). For example, Aristotle explained that courage on the battlefield is obviously not found in the avoidance of conflict. But it is also not a foolhardy act of bravery. The virtue of courage is achieved by learning to find the subjective tension and balance between the opposing vices of cowardice and recklessness. The virtue of generosity is found with the tension between excesses of wasteful giving and selfishness. Likewise, the virtue of temperance implies finding a balance between indulgence and deprivation.
I was introduced to the concept of areté during an Ancient Political Theory course shortly before my faith transition began four years ago. It was serendipitous timing. Throughout my reevaluation of Mormonism I would often feel lost and rudderless. Without the Church’s static framework of morality, the challenge of redefining my moral compass was daunting. Thankfully, I realized early on that the Greeks had sturdy shoulders for me to stand on.
Achieving human excellence through virtue was a lifelong quest for the Athenians. It guided their devotion to their roles in society, their treatment of each other, and fueled their pursuit for enlightenment. It can do the same for us in the wake of a faith crisis. American philosopher Will Durrant wisely summarized Aristotle’s philosophy in The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers:
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
We have all been forced into the choppy, uncharted waters of a life where the thinking is no longer done for us. The prospect of new adventures in sexual freedom, spiritual and intellectual independence, drinking alcohol and even experimenting with drugs often comes with the fear of becoming shipwrecked. However, virtue can ground us while we bravely explore our human experience. Our roles as parents, spouses, professionals, citizens, neighbors, friends, and lovers are well served when we seek virtue in our lives.
Now with the agency we were always supposed to have, this broader concept of virtue gives new meaning to teachings that once came with the burdens of anxiety, guilt and shame. “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly” (D&C 121:45). It allows us to find our own path and choose our own adventure. It gives us the permission and freedom to make mistakes and experience new things. As we each navigate the new complexity of life like a ship on the sea, we can look to virtue to guide us on our voyage.
“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.” — William Martin
As I have admitted, I rather love structure. I find something grounding about having a general idea of what to expect in a day. And so it is no surprise that as a parent, I have always felt drawn to routines and rituals — especially when the children were small.
I can still recall those early days in Seattle. We would wake up early, eat breakfast in wee dark hours of morning, get ourselves ready for the day, tidy the house, and head out for some time in nature. We would walk among the trees and around a lake. The girls just loved to feed the ducks. They would play with plastic animals and scarves on a bed of soft pine needles. We would play at the park and head home in time for lunch and stories. Each day, the kids had a quiet time after lunch. The little ones would nap. When they outgrew naps, this was their time to read, play or listen to books on tape. The children usually enjoyed some small treat.
Do you see what I mean about how I love routine? It soothes me just writing about it! Time seemed to slow and cradle these daily moments. Reading by the fire or baking a treat in the afternoon. Bath time. My schedule protected these times. Allowed for them. I felt a lot of fear back then. I protected their childhood fiercely. If I had to describe our parenting style in the early to middle childhood years, I would say that we were high control and high support parents. We were very involved. We had high expectations. We showed a lot of physical affection. Interests were fostered and fed. If a child loved tennis, we would play tennis together. If a child loved art, I would infuse art time into the day. I was not a drill sergeant, nor was I severe. Our home felt warm, in fact. Yet amidst all this goodness, control was an important aspect of our life.
With that control, an underlying message was conveyed. While our family cultural script valued learning, excellence, truth, creativity and hard work — a flip side implied that love or one’s worth must be earned. Of course, this was entirely unconscious. The children were sensitive, creative, engaged, and seemed to be thriving. I had no idea.
The unconscious moved into the conscious as our two oldest daughters became teenagers. They exhibited tendencies toward perfectionism. Anxiety. Shame. Self-hatred. They held tightly to the damaging belief that their worth is tied to what they DO and how well they do it. One daughter expressed openly. Another daughter suffered inwardly for some time before being able to speak of her wounded places.
Our children challenge us. They also teach us.
As a result of their bringing their wounds to us, John and I were able to work on healing many of these false scripts. As it turns out, they were inside us all along. We were just passing them down. In this way, our children really can be some of our best spiritual guides. As I began to see my two daughters suffer, I desired to learn a different way. I wanted to create an emotional template that allowed for them to heal — and if possible, replace the former false scripts with kinder ones. Reading became a lifeline. The books that appealed to us most were books about connection over control. We savored sources that support the notion that our children do not come to us depraved or lacking in any way. In fact, they are whole and desire to do good naturally. All that most children really need is for us to support and trust them (and for us to grow ourselves up). Learning becomes about connecting with them — and allowing for them to connect with the larger world in a way that is both healthy and meaningful to them. Mistakes are all part of the process and invite sacred moments for introspection and reflection.
Some people assume that this type of parenting is permissive or that it allows children to do whatever they want. This assumption is not true! A different style of parent might need to seek out a different type of book for support. One that acts as a complement to their nature or style of parenting. Children all have unique needs too.
Here are a few books that really rocked our world. They are all gentle (because we really like that). We did not resonate with every single detail of these books, so take what you like and leave what you don’t! They are still well worth the read.
Parenting with Presence by Susan Stiffelman (an Eckart Tolle book)
The Conscious Parent (preface by the Dalai Lama) by Shefali Tsabary
Out of Control by Shefali Tsabary (John’s favorite)
Mitten Strings for God, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, and Magical Journey memoirs by Katrina Kenison
Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
As a side, we really enjoyed watching the television show, Parenthood as well. It felt tremendously nurturing and inspiring to our journey. Have any of you watched it? Did you like it?
I must admit that this is a bit of an introductory parenting post. In the coming weeks or months, I will reference many of these books for my posts on parenting. Feel free to look for those!
What books have been helpful to you as a parent? What is a belief about parenting that has changed amidst transitioning?