Big Time: The Difficulty of Increasing Favor While Also Wanting to Only Look Good

I'm on my way I'm making it,  

I've got to make it show yeah, 

So much larger than life 

I'm gonna watch it growing.

  
. . . . 

 My parties have all the big names 

And I greet them with the widest smile
Tell them how my life is one big adventure 
And always they're amazed 

When I show them 'round my house to my bed
I had it made like a mountain range 
With a snow white pillow for my big fat head
And my heaven will be a big heaven,
And I will walk through the front door . . .

"Big Time"

Peter Gabriel, 1986 

http://www.petergabriel.com/  

http://www.gabriel.com/features/Play:_The_Videos/

Several of us have been discussing the article "Mormons need to work to increase favor," which reports on what appears to have been a frank discussion about the Mormon image in America, how Mormons are seen by the general public, with the goal of identifying and rectifying the causes of people's low opinions of the LDS Church and its members.

Gary Lawrence's study apparently supports what I have long argued: Mormons often charge critics who ask hard questions with "misunderstanding" Mormonism or the LDS Church when, in fact, they understand very well.

As they say, taking responsibility for one's communication is the first step to cleaning up lack of integrity or authenticity. But it is often not pretty, for it involves having to face the reality of how we have been dishonest as well as how our ways of "being" land over there where others are. (Believe me: I know, because I routinely have to do it!) It's not just about facing what we wish others would see when they are in our presence. There's nothing wrong  with wanting to look or be good, but cleaning up after ourselves requires recognizing what's really so about it.

I realize that this is just an article and not the entire talk given by Lawrence at the FAIR conference this week. Therefore, I admit that my concerns may actually have been addressed when he spoke to his audience. However, based on just this article, the consensus among my conversation partners seems to be that Lawrence's solutions for making changes in how Mormons relate to people still miss the mark.

For instance, his suggestion that church members break up the three relational steps for getting friends to join the church into a six step model are likely to still occur to others as transparent friend-making with conversion as the goal. In other words, because nothing fundamental is changing in the person doing the friend-seeking (i.e. their motive for friend-seeking), it is likely that "favor toward Mormons" won't increase just because church members become more stealthy about pursuing converts.

Put another way, though Lawrence instructs readers not to make friends with an agenda, the tactic he promotes appears to perpetuates the baptism agenda. True friendship requires not trying to get anywhere with a potential friend but just delighting in their company.

Moreover, I'm not sure that Lawrence is on the right track with his suggestions for how to answer what have been hard questions for Mormons. For instance, Lawrence cites the active membership of Glenn Beck and Harry Reid as evidence that Mormonism is "a big-tent religion." The article doesn't clarify the context, but I assume Lawrence is referring to a perceived lack of diversity in Mormonism (or, presumably, blind obedience in the political sphere). Though I get where he's trying to go with that, there is no obvious acknowledgment of  how polarizing both of those figures have been in the larger American (and American Mormon) community/ies.

Similarly, complicated questions cannot be answered in a soundbite. Other seemingly flippant remarks he suggests as responses to questions about polygamy ("If I wanted to be excommunicated from the church, I would practice polygamy; the other sins take longer.") and Christian identity ("Of course we believe the Bible; our members wrote it.) ignore the complexity these questions ask about religious identity and are likely to land for non-members as inherently offensive. In fact, I see very little difference between those responses and the question about the relationship between Jesus and Lucifer, against which Mormons always cry foul when it arises.That, too, is a complicated relationship--and that's the problem. When we try act like Protestants, our doctrines simply reveal the truth we try to obscure with the charge that we're "misunderstood."   

Finally, as an academic, I must also dispute the claim that Mormonism can only be "fairly" represented by the experience of "believing" Mormons (whatever that means). When looking into/studying any religion, it is necessary to listen to as many voices as possible. The full experience of Mormonism doesn't just reside in just those who have temple recommends or who believe the church to be "true." (And what it means to "believe" something is very complex).

However, according to Lawrence, "less prepared" members appear to be less appropriate representatives, though they actually have more non-Mormon friends than do active Mormons. (This in itself is a huge ah-ha moment that could transform any  church member's point of view in deep ways.) Though "less prepared" is clearly a euphemism for "less active," it remains unclear by what criteria these church members' stories are insufficient or, as is implied, don't qualify as true or legitimate Mormon experience.

Like all people, Mormons want to be treated fairly in the marketplace of ideas. However, at the same time they also want only to look good. That isn't a criticism of Mormons. It's the human condition. But it is important to distinguish the meaning of the term "fair." Some of the definitions of "fair" include "not excessive or extreme"; "free from bias or deception"; and "evenhanded." However, it can mean "very pleasing to the eye" while simultaneously designating something as "average: lacking exceptional quality or ability."

Identifying the ways in which some things fail to work, or the times when our actions have caused others harm, doesn't necessarily constitute "distortion" of the truth, nor is it "unfair." The last time I looked, those acknowledgments were inherent to the practice of repentance.

Religion is messy, and the (fair) truth is never at the ends but always somewhere in between the poles.

Déjà vu

These walls have eyes
Rows of photographs
And faces like mine
Who do we become
Without knowing where
We started from

. . . .

 And I will try to connect
All the pieces you left
I will carry it on
And let you forget
And I'll remember the years
When your mind was clear
How the laughter and life
Filled up this silent house

by  Neil Finn, Natalie Maines,  
Emily Robinson, Martie Maguire

We had a marvelous family vacation in Puerto Penasco, Mexico the week after youngest daughter Natasha graduated from law school at USD. We all just caravanned from San Diego down to Rocky Point. My mother joined us again, the second year in a row after my father's death. I'd been writing in a steady and committed way but left my books at home for the first time on a trip like that. I just wanted to be with my family and knew that I would pick right up where I'd left off when I returned. 

However, less than 24 hours after our return home, my mother took a still-mysterious fall at her home and ended up in neuro-ICU with bleeding in two places in her brain. I saw the untransformed future pass before my eyes: endless hours in ERs and hospital rooms; the emotional and physical pain that accompanies such lack of activity and the stress of both the known and the unknown; the loss of power around my declaration that I would finish my dissertation and graduate by December, 2010; and, most devastating, the ultimate loss of my mother.

Her falling wasn't a surprise. Increasingly unsteady, she'd fallen twice in the previous two months. This time, however, it became impossible to distinguish between her rapidly failing memory and the head injury. After almost three weeks, we brought her home to our house, a move we'd been negotiating with her earlier. Suddenly, living alone at her home was no longer an option and we hurriedly shoveled (yes, shoveled) out my office and the adjacent spare room, which had last been Lawyer Girl's. We culled both academic books and fiction I'd been hoarding for decades so as to empty one entire wall of shelves for her personal items, and we still don't know what to do with the large floor loom that remains in the office (now her sitting room).

Our children living locally made an amazing difference. The oldest daughters helped with this process by moving and cleaning. However, while my mother was in the rehab hospital, daughter #2 was also rushed to the ER with blood sugars over 1000, so we rotated between the rehab facility and the ICU a few blocks away, still trying to prepare the house for Mother's release. In the meantime, I spent a week in Georgia, attending our youngest son's graduation from basic training and transporting him from Ft. Benning to Ft. Gordon, where he will be doing his training in satellite communications. By my return home, David had brought my mother home.

A week later, I had surgery on my other knee.

I know, I know. I just really want to be able to be in the world with my husband, doing the things we love to do together, like scuba diving, hiking, and active travel. I live in a tennis family and I can't play tennis. From my perspective, if not now, then when?

So here I sit, with my crutch and my range of motion and cooling machines, watching Wimbledon tennis (a family tradition). Occasionally I see a black chasm open up that feels like my future. Still working out the anesthesia, I don't feel focused enough to write, and I'm exhausted from answering the same questions over and over again for my mother. Her memory has declined so dramatically that she just now asked me twice in the last five minutes who just called her on the phone (her sister-in-law, whose name she can't now remember). At least twice a day she suddenly turns to me and says, "Doe Nan, I need to go home. I have laundry to do and things to take care of." I remind her that she lives with us now and doesn't need to worry about such things. After years of not cooking and very little cleaning, I've become a homemaker again, which I didn't do very well (and didn't much like doing) the first time around. My mother is my new two-year-old, who I can't pick up and carry around when she gets into her medications and messes them up and other such adventures.

(Sidenote: I took my oldest grandchild, a granddaughter, the daughter of my diabetic child who almost died two weeks ago) to a writing workshop at Changing Hands. Because this daughter couldn't drive, her sister and I coordinated making sure her two children's needs were met. It took lots of time and effort and I loved it. It happened that a colleague from ASU had her own daughter in the workshop and we chatted for a while. When I explained why I hadn't been writing, she responded that the only students she'd seen complete PhDs were those who were willing to tell their families to take a hike for six months.)

Though it seems counter-intuitive, her observation isn't the truth. So what IS the truth?

What I know is so about writing a doctoral dissertation while also being a human being: 

• "It won't get any better than this," "It's only going to get worse" or "I guess I'll scratch the PhD off my list; I clearly can't do it with all that's happened" are only stories that have nothing to do with what's happened and won't open up a space for action that will make a difference in my life or the lives of my mother, husband, children, and grandchildren. 
• I will not tell my family to take a hike while I write my dissertation.
• I can still meet my personal commitments AND manage my mother's care and be her loving daughter at the end of her life AND be an effective spouse, parent, and grandparent while writing my dissertation.
• I am in the process of working out just how it will all happen. 
• I am a powerful person who can do amazing things. I am unstoppable. 

Don't believe me? Hide and watch!