What Is the Point of it All?

What the future is holdin' in store

I don't know where I'm goin' I'm not sure where I've been

There's a spirit that guides me, a light that shines for me

My life is worth the livin', I don't need to see the end

~~ John Denver

Irvin Yalom, an existential psychotherapist, has had an enormous influence on my emerging career as a mental health professional. He explores some of the most fundamental dilemmas which have faced humankind from the moment they became sentient until the present time. These dilemmas are namely: 1) freedom, 2) aloneness, 3) death, and 4) purposelessness. This post focuses on purposelessness, and finding a purpose which makes life worth living. Religion purports to supply answers to these four problems, but when religion fails and falls apart, one is left to wrestle with these issues outside the umbrella of faith.

When I left organized religion over five  years ago, I experienced what many ex Mormons experience. I had relied on Mormonism to define my life and my role for me. My grand purpose was to be a wife and mother, to live faithfully, to raise my children to be Mormon, to serve the church, and eventually to leave mortality and to stand by my eternal husband along with his other wives as he created a world of his own, and then to help him populate it with spirit children. When Mormonism crumbled around me, so did my purpose and my identity.

If religion does not provide a grand purpose for one's life, it is left to each individual to discover or create a purpose that makes life worth living. Individuals process this reality in different ways. Some feel the need to leave behind an important contribution to humanity, whereas others are content with small, everyday joys, and most people are somewhere in between those two. I know many who seek a purpose, especially those who are in the middle years, who have successful careers, whose children are grown, and who suddenly have no eternity in the Celestial Kingdom to work towards. That search can be overwhelming and disheartening.

In ensuing years since leaving Mormonism, I, personally, do not have the need for a Purpose with a capital P. I am flooded with joie de vivre every morning when I see the sunrise, each day when I drive through farmland and vineyards, each evening when the sun sets, when the moon shines through scattered clouds, when I cook a meal for my family, when I sit with a client and make a human connection. It is enough for me that I am free from the guilt, fear, and shame of Mormonism. Each day is a beautiful gift, each flower  is magical, each rainy day  is cleansing, and each cup of coffee with a friend is cherished. As I listened to this John Denver song this morning, it occurred to me that others may be seeking and searching for the Purpose of life. During this search, remember these words, "My life is worth livin', I don't need to see the end". You do not need to have the answers now.

I end with the words of Rilke: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

The Christlike Atheist

I originally wrote this post in June 2014 for a blog called the Ex Mormon Mavens, which is no longer available.  I thought that the post was lost forever with the demise of that blog, but I inexplicably found it on my laptop today. I am happy beyond words and emotional to have found this tribute to her. She meant a lot to me, and I wish that she was here to cheer me on in my journey in life. I will miss her with every breath that I have and for as long as I live. Thank you for being a great example to me, as I have moved into my own role as mother-in-law and grandmother. I love you dearly.

The Christlike Atheist

My mother in law was a beautiful woman.  She wasn’t a supermodel, didn’t wear fancy clothes nor have a trendy haircut.  She wasn’t slim, nor concerned with fashion, she was quirky, a little weird, and sometimes cranky.  She was generous and kind, and had a very soft spot in her heart for animals.  She loved birds a great deal, and her front yard is filled with birdfeeders of all kinds.  She was very organized and tidy, and she never forgot a birthday or anniversary.  She was a knitter, and taught me how to knit, which sparked my interest and turned me in to a knitting fanatic.  She made hundreds of blankets for needy children, and served the community in many ways.  Whenever we would visit, she loved to bitch about the goings on in their little community.  Her personality amused me and endeared her to me.

I say all of these things in the past tense because she died suddenly last February, with no warning, and left a huge hole in our lives.   As I have struggled to cope with her loss, I have reflected a great deal about the kind of person she was and the kind of life she lived.

As long as I have known her, which is since I was a teenager, my mother in law was an atheist.   She had no religion to shape her values or to help her determine how she should treat people.  She raised two sons, who are tremendously moral people, and very successful in life.  One of these sons is my husband.  She taught them to respect women, so be kind, and to always try to do the right thing.  Her sons are a tribute to her life and a testament to the goodness inside her soul.

I was Mormon for all of my life, and I was taught to be Christlike, and to treat others as Jesus would, and yet many of the rules I lived by were not very Christlike, even though I was both expected to follow those rules and be Christlike.  For all of my life, I had been hyper focused on following rules and being obedient, and not at all focused on thinking and reasoning in order to develop a sense of morality.  When you concentrate too much on obedience to authority, you lose the ability to evaluate a situation in order to determine right from wrong.  You become very good at following rules, and very bad at doing the right thing.

As my husband and I began our marriage, we did something that hurt her very deeply and yet this atheist never spoke a single word of her pain to us.  We were good, obedient Mormon kids.  I was raised in the church, while my husband was a convert.  We were high school sweethearts.  My husband joined the church when he was 18, served a mission, and we got married 6 weeks after his return.  When we got married, we did it the “right” way, following the rules, and married in the temple.  The problem is that in following this rule, we failed to make the right moral choice and include my mother in law in our wedding.  This loving mother, who happened not to be Mormon was deemed “not worthy” and therefore excluded from her oldest son’s wedding because she is not allowed to enter the temple, and all good Mormon couples get married in the temple. 

We could have gotten married in a civil ceremony elsewhere and been sealed in the temple after one year’s time, but I had been taught all my life about the dangers of doing this, and that should one of us die before that year is up, we risk not being together forever.  So, we chose to do the “right” thing without even thinking for a second how wrong it was.  This is one of the least Christlike rules I have ever heard of, and yet it’s a rule of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  A church that claims to have Christ at its head, and to have a prophet who speaks to God, and for God certainly has a lot of rules that don’t seem very Christlike to me.

My sweet atheist mother in law endured this pain silently.  She always treated me well.  She was not highly critical of me, and as far as I could tell, never held a grudge towards me for the horrible thing I had done to her.  She and I shared a love of cooking and knitting.  We exchanged recipes and gave each other cookbooks for gifts.  She truly embraced me and loved me as her son’s wife and mother of her grandchildren.  She exhibited many more Christlike qualities than I did, even though I was a Christian.

I find solace that she was able to see my husband and I leave the church 18 months before she died.  I was able to apologize for the things I had done.  I judged her harshly sometimes for superficial choices, such as drinking alcohol.  The day we told her that we were both leaving the church, she cried and we cried.  I was able to make things right.  Since then, we shared a drink with her, laughed with her, and poked fun at the things I once thought were so important.  I am grateful for her example to me of what a good mother in law should be.  I’m thankful that she was part of my life for nearly 30 years.  She showed me that what I thought was Christlike, was in fact unkind and cruel.  She showed me this by behaving more like Christ than I ever had.

You will be missed, but your mark on this world will never end, my beautiful mom.

All Freedom Is My Freedom

Yesterday I joined over 100,000 of my fellow human beings in downtown Portland for the women's march. Most of us were women, though many men also joined our ranks. Never in my life have I done anything like this, but I hope to participate in innumerable future events before my time on this planet is through. 

I come from oppression. I grew up as a little Mormon girl. I am the oldest of eleven children. From the moment of my birth, my life was scripted for me. Good little Mormon girls learn to cook and clean, take care of children, serve the lord, their children, and their husbands. Good little Mormon girls obey priesthood (male) authority, even if the authorities are wrong, because god will bless the good little girls for their obedience. Good little Mormon girls don't dream of careers, travels, adventures, activism, or independence. I was a good little Mormon girl. I did was I was told. I became what I was supposed to be, until Mormonism suddenly just wasn't true anymore. What?? My entire role, the scripted play, was based in a world that's even less real than Narnia?

I woke up. I put my script in the fire. I became the playwright of my own life. 

One step in becoming my own woman was taking part in the women's march. My voice was added to hundreds of thousands of other voices, one drop in the ocean of change. As I gathered with my friends, old and new, most of whom I will never see again, I felt a swirl of emotions. I stood with tears welling in my eyes as I looked at the women around me, the beautiful faces, the smiles, the heartache, the passion, but above all, the fierce determination to say to the patriarchy, "This is not acceptable to me." I experienced a spiritual awakening unlike anything I ever experienced inside Mormonism. I sang, I chanted, I laughed, I cried, I walked, 

Our movement is not "anti-man", but anti-patriarchy. There is a difference. Men are welcome in our movement. We have men and boys at home and in our lives who we love very much. After the march I came home to my husband, who had cooked a delicious pot of chicken soup in my absence, and I baked some of my famous homemade rolls to go with his soup. I talked to my boys and men about why we marched, and the importance of this historic day. I have no daughters, but I do have a granddaughter, and I want her to live in a different world than the one in which I grew up. A woman's place is wherever she chooses to be; in the boardroom, in the oval office, in the kitchen, or in the seat of a fighter jet, and I want her to feel that in her soul.

We marched to tell the world that all people, all children, every single one, can seize their dreams and make them come true. Unfortunately, we do not yet live in that reality. Children live in poverty, women and children are abused, women fear for their safety when walking alone at night, families live in war zones, babies cry from hunger, and too many die. Women live roles dictated by patriarchal religions and enforced by fear of eternal damnation at the hands of a male deity. Living in fear will never be freedom. The opportunities available to me are not available to everyone. Even though I grew up in oppression, I still grew up privileged in countless ways that many dare not even dream of. As the sign in the photograph says:

"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." ~~Audre Lorde