A while back the kids and I went to see a performance of Godspell that a friend of ours was in. If you’ve seen it, you know it’s one of those weird hippie musicals, like Jesus Christ Superstar or Hair, only with clowns and no nudity. It’s based on the Gospel of Matthew and portrays Jesus’s ministry, starting with John the Baptist and ending with the crucifixion, and in between the cast acts out various parables.

My kids weren’t quite sure what was going on, though it was a fantastic performance and was entertaining enough that they didn’t particularly care that they didn’t understand it. I provided a bit of commentary now and then.

At one point near the end I leaned over and whispered, “This is the Last Supper. Judas is leaving to go get the soldiers to arrest Jesus.”

They both looked at me blankly. “Judas?”

“Yeah, you know… Judas. He betrayed Jesus.”

No sign of recognition.

Now, they went Primary until they were 11 and 8, respectively, and I know they heard about Judas betraying Jesus because I taught CTR8 for three years and it’s in the Easter lesson. They heard that story every year.

So what were they learning in Primary?

And surely it wasn’t only once a year. Jesus! The Garden of Gethsemane! The atonement! Isn’t that the point of it all? I remember name-dropping Jesus in a lot of contexts unrelated to the New Testament Gospels — Jesus wants us to pay our tithing, Jesus doesn’t want us to drink coffee, Jesus gave us (at least the male segment of “us”) the priesthood, Jesus wants us to follow his example — but there had to be Bible stories too, right? There’s the story about John the Baptist baptizing Jesus, and there was one about Jesus healing a blind man, and… um…

That’s all I could come up with. I knew there had to be more, though, so I went back and looked through the manuals online. Turns out, the Choose the Right A manual does include many references to the New Testament. I found the story of Jesus’s family escaping from Herod and going to Egypt, Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus calling his disciples to be “fishers of men”, the healing of Jairus’s daughter, calming the seas, “suffer little children to come unto me”, healing the ten lepers, the widow’s mite, and others.

Jesus wants us to be correlated

But something struck me that I never noticed before. The purpose of the lessons is not specifically to learn about Jesus, but to learn principles, which are illustrated and supported by the New Testament scriptures.

For example, the story of the prodigal son illustrates the principle of repentance. The widow’s mite is in a lesson about paying tithing. The healing of Jairus’s daughter is about priesthood blessings for the sick. Jesus calming the seas during the storm is also about the power of the priesthood, and how men with the priesthood can perform ordinances like baptism, confirmation, blessings, and weddings (which is exactly like having the power to control nature). “Bear testimony,” the lesson text instructs the teacher, “of your gratitude that we have the priesthood—the same power Jesus has—to help us in our lives.”

Ironically, the lesson called “I Can Tell Others about Jesus Christ” doesn’t talk about Jesus at all. It mentions his name, of course, but if you swapped out every occurrence of the word “Jesus” and replaced it with “the Church”, it wouldn’t change the meaning or substance of the lesson. In fact, the lesson itself uses the two terms interchangeably.

The CTR B manual uses the Book of Mormon as the primary source of its supporting scripture references, and both manuals also occasionally reference the Old Testament and other books of scripture. In Senior Primary the classes start focusing on the actual scriptures, and they spend one year each on the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants/Church History (no comment), New Testament, and Old Testament. So they do get two years of Biblical education before they go into Young Men/Young Women.  It’s just that neither of my kids got that far.

A possible solution

The problem is, Bible literacy is required for cultural literacy. Whether or not you believe in it as a book of scripture or the word of God, it’s going to be nearly impossible to understand the literature, art, and culture of Western civilization without a certain level of familiarity with the Bible.

But if we went back to the LDS church and sent the kids to early-morning seminary (which Horatio vowed he would never allow after the year he spent teaching it), it wouldn’t help. To get a decent grounding in the Bible, you’re going to also spend a lot of years on the Book of Mormon and Doctrine & Covenants, and then what you’re taught about the Bible will be colored by the Pearl of Great Price, so it’s not going to match up with the broader culture. Obviously they’re not going to get that type of education in public school either. We toyed with the idea of vacation Bible school (there was a Harry Potter-themed Episcopalian one near here that sounded amazing), but ultimately we decided we’re just going to have to do it ourselves. And we came up with a revolutionary idea for how to do it…

Family.

Home.

Evening.

That’s right. Now that we’re apostates we’re having FHE for the first time ever. And it’s so much fun! I’m not even joking. We’ve done a couple lessons, but we’re still working out the details and curriculum, so…

To be continued.

For our little celebration we turned off all the lights in the house during the afternoon, then once the sun had set, we lit some candles (following the example of the solstice service at church last week, we had four candles, one for each compass direction), read “The Shortest Day” by Susan Cooper, sang “Deck the Halls”, and each opened one of our presents.  That was more than enough for NinjaBoy, who opened his new iPod Touch and hasn’t wanted to talk about anything else since. Butterfly and I made some garlands of popcorn and cranberries, and I frosted the Yule log cake, but Horatio had choir practice and didn’t get home until nearly 11 and I was asleep by then, so we had it for breakfast instead.

In the morning we took a walk in the woods at sunrise and put out nuts for the squirrels, NinjaBoy playing with his iPod all the while, and hung our cranberry/popcorn garlands on a bush in the backyard for the squirrels and chipmunks and birds.  There is evidence the critters have found them — I put some extra popcorn bits and cranberries on the top rail of the fence and it’s all cleaned off now.  Hopefully there won’t be any repercussions of attracting vermin — uh, woodland creatures — to our yard.

Breakfast was a sugar overload.  Not only did we have Yule log cake (with cream cheese frosting), but I couldn’t resist trying out a recipe for Nutella bread pudding. So good! And easy.  My kind of recipe.

I’m fairly certain we will celebrate the solstice again next year.  Everybody enjoyed it, even NinjaBoy, and not only because he got to open a present early.  He especially liked the sunrise walk and asked if we could do it again.  I expected it to feel fake or forced — “real” holidays are the ones that you’ve grown up with and that are kind of organic.  Traditions just happen, you can’t manufacture them. But this felt like a real holiday, a cross between Christmas and New Year’s. And actually, it felt much more like an authentic holiday than New Year’s, because it was based in something real occurring in the physical world.  

After spending the morning in the quiet (and swampiness) of the woods and eating sweets with my family, it was interesting to scan through all the posts in my Facebook feed about the horrors of the traffic around the malls and the “Air Jordan” riots and think about how stressed out people are getting ready for the holidays, when I was feeling like it was a holiday.  A day for sitting around “playing with our electronics”, as NinjaBoy said. Christmas almost seems like an afterthought.  Not that the kids would agree with me on that. I hope we have enough presents…

Somehow Butterfly got to 8th grade — I’m really not sure when my little baby turned into this young woman who is living in our house now — and she is taking the OWL class.  At the parent orientation the team of teachers made it clear that what the kids share in class is confidential. It’s very important that the kids feel comfortable asking questions and sharing thoughts without having to worry about it getting back to their parents.  But, as I pointed out to Butterfly, she can tell me about the topics they discuss, in general terms.  When I mentioned it, Butterfly thought about it for a minute and then said “Yeah, but I don’t see why you’d need to know.”

So, I have a class schedule that lists the topics of each lesson, but no idea what Butterfly’s reaction to any of it is.  Ah well.  She says it’s fun though.  NinjaBoy is very intrigued by it — Butterfly told him it’s a class that’s entirely about “inappropriate stuff.” He just started the school version (FLE) where they learn about puberty, sex, and STDs, and Butterfly commented on how little they tell you in FLE compared to OWL.  Just as well.  The first FLE lesson covered basic anatomy and NinjaBoy came home very grossed out.

In other church news, Horatio joined the choir and it has been a fantastic experience for him.  They do a wide variety of music, the choir director is really good, and it’s challenging enough to be exciting, but not super stressful.  There are, oh, 15 or so men in the choir, and Horatio is one of only 3 tenors, so he feels a lot of responsibility to get it right (especially when he’s the only one singing a certain part, since he’s the only 2nd tenor).  He practices at home, listens to the practice CDs in the car, and is generally having a great time.  Last week the whole service was the choir singing Rutter’s Magnificat.  It was wonderful.

Now normally I wouldn’t consider using an organization’s website to send a message that’s the opposite of what they stand for because it’s, well, wrong. Maybe not as wrong as, say, denying people’s civil rights, but still wrong.

But then I saw how easy they made it.  You fill out one little form and it sends your letter to just about every person in the state of New York, plus your own state senator, which they figure out for you based on your zip code.  And the letter so readily lends itself to supporting same-sex marriage (my deletions in strikethrough and additions in bold)–

Dear [recipient],

I strongly urge you to oppose support the same-sex marriage bill if and when it comes up to a vote in the Senate.

Marriage isn’t about discrimination or exclusion, or just a package of government benefits (and occasional penalties). Throughout history, marriage has been a long-term, public, sexual union between a man and a woman. Why? Because these sexual unions are unique in their ability to produce children — even unintentionally in many cases.  Marriage is about forming committed, stable families — the foundation upon which a healthy society is built. 

Government has no business determining who I love — but it does have an interest in making sure that as many kids as possible get to know and be loved by their own mother and father. No same-sex union can do this for a child.  are well-cared for by loving parents. Same-sex marriage will create opportunities for more children to grow up in stable homes, especially those whose biological parents are unable to care for them. 

The threat to religious freedom — and the utter refusal of gay marriage groups to accept any substantive protections for people of faith – is another major concern. For years, gay marriage activists have argued under the banner of tolerance, but now want to silence any opposing views. Examples of religious groups being forced out of the public square have already begun to crop up as Catholic Charities across the country are forced to give up their adoption license, a religious group in New Jersey is denied tax exemption for refusing to recognize civil unions, and people   Many priests, pastors, and ministers are now barred from practicing their faith in performing marriages for their LGBT congregants. No person of faith should face professional sanction for their religious beliefs. And no one religious group should be able to impose its beliefs on another. 

Please, there are other ways to protect the legitimate needs of same-sex couples of churches whose beliefs preclude them from recognizing same-sex marriage.  They have the right to live as they choose, but not to redefine marriage for all of us. Please vote no yes on same-sex marriage.

So, yes, I gave into temptation and filled it out.

I didn’t really want NOM to have my contact info, but I also didn’t want to use a fake name or address, because it was a sincere message. I settled on leaving out a digit in my address. When I went to submit the email it caught the mistake and asked me to fix it.

Well… okay.

After I corrected my address it took me back to the page to preview my letter — where it now thanked me for registering and called me by name in big, bold letters —  and… uh oh, it had reverted back to the original version.  I was about to send a “vote no” letter to all those people!  I panicked and hit cancel (because, you know, if you don’t act fast it’ll just send itself), then futilely tried to see if there was a way to delete my shiny new NOM account, then got the heck out of there.

So there we are.  I didn’t send a letter to anybody, but now I’m on NOM’s mailing list.

That’s karma for you.

Butterfly is REQUIRED by the county, as a seventh grader and therefore presumably a potential juvenile delinquent and drain on society, to provide 12 hours of community service during the school year.  It’s like preemptive sentencing, I guess.  And it can’t be just any random service or helping out your mom with yardwork or babysitting, either.  It has to be a cohesive 12 hour project approved by the school, and supervised by an adult who is not the child’s parent.

Sheesh.

Part of the problem with getting a non-parental adult to supervise is that the child’s grade then depends on the reliability of said adult. And we had trouble finding one because of the tendency of many adults not to answer their email in a timely fashion.  However, we did pull it all together only a week or two after the due date for the proposal, and the full letter drop in her grade because of its tardiness will not be reflected in her final grade.  So, phew.

Butterfly is helping in the nursery during our church’s newly-instituted Saturday evening service.  Since it’s both new and on Saturday, it’s a pretty small service, and there are usually two or three babies in the nursery, which makes it relatively calm and manageable.  Butterfly seems to be enjoying it. And I like it too, because I take her to the nursery and then go to the service, where I can find a seat without being jammed tightly in between two complete strangers.  NinjaBoy has been staying with a neighbor friend while Butterfly and I go to church, and that makes it all so much nicer for everyone!

The services are usually an hour long, so she needs to go 12 times, which will take her into February, probably, since I’m sure she won’t get there every single week.  Sometimes, like this last weekend and every two or three weekends on average, her mother will have yet another #@$%ing migraine and be unable to get her there.  But all we can do is all we can do.

All of my answers were accepted, and they didn’t ask me to revise anything. I didn’t know if they’d like that I said I wasn’t very religious, that I’m only a Mormon because my ancestors were (no profession of belief), that not all members agreed with the church’s stance on Prop 8, and that the church splintered in chaos and confusion after Joseph Smith’s death.  But it seems those were all okay.

It took a bit less than a month to be approved, in case anyone is wondering or waiting…

In an interview in Deseret News the church media director talks about the diversity among the church membership, and then says “Yet surprisingly, if you read the 3,000 mormon.org profiles, you will find those people are very unified in the understanding of what they believe. It is shocking. I expected responses to be all over the place, and they are not.”

Hm.  That could be because true-believing, missionary-minded folks who have a good grasp of correlated material are the ones creating profiles.  Or it could be because only the “correct” beliefs are being allowed through.  Or both.

I’m wondering how long the review process takes.  Anybody know?

I’m guessing that anyone who stumbles across this blog knows about mormon.org, but in case you don’t, it’s a companion website to a new ad campaign that the LDS church is running.  The basic premise is “Hey, look, we’re not weird!” and features commercials spotlighting a variety of normal (if exceptionally cool) people whom you might not expect to be Mormon.  The most popular one so far seems to be hip-skateboarder-guy.  This may in part be because he is also a hip-photographer-guy whose photos you might not want your bishop to catch you looking at.

So the website is a place for all you nonmembers who have never met a real live Mormon to find a virtual Mormon neighbor. Any Mormon can fill out a profile telling about their lives, their personal religious experience, and answering FAQs about Mormons.

As a superstitious agnostic universalist Mormon pragmatist I’m pretty unorthodox, but I’m still a Mormon, so I figured why not?  I mean, the point of the website is to let people get to know the real Mormons, right?  To show a more accurate picture of a misunderstood group.  To represent the people, not just the doctrine.  And while I’m unorthodox, not very religious, and currently inactive, I’m not all that unusual as a Mormon.  There are plenty of Mormons like me, and if the general public is going to get a representative picture of Mormons, we should be included.

So I filled out a profile. It’s not critical of the church, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t assert any position that contradicts church doctrine.  I didn’t bear testimony, of course, I basically talked about being a cultural Mormon.  The question is, I suppose, how broad a spectrum of people the church wants to show.  Do they want to show that Mormons can be all kinds of people with all kinds of views, or is the goal to show that Mormons are all kinds of people who all believe the exactly the same?  I’m guessing the latter, though I think the former would be more reassuring to the general public.

Right now my profile is “Pending Review.”

The thing is, I’m just not very spiritual.  I always enjoy church when we go, I’m happy we went, but it doesn’t fill any particular need for me.  My life and psyche don’t suffer from a lack of spirituality.  Not that I’m fulfilling my need for spirituality in some other way, but that I really don’t have one.  I suspect a lot of people won’t believe that.

The way spirituality is expressed in the LDS church makes me deeply uncomfortable.  I don’t know why, because I did grow up with it, but I don’t like it and break out in a cold sweat if I have to participate in it.  I will go to great lengths to avoid public prayers, I’m uncomfortable even listening to them, and I hate hate hate testimony meeting.

I don’t even like personal prayer. When I stopped praying entirely it was like a huge burden was lifted.  I think this is because prayer has always been an expression of my anxiety disorder.  It was about my fears — I had to pray to prevent bad things from happening, but, as you’ll hear in any testimony meeting, if you don’t watch how you phrase things, prayer can make bad things happen. If you want to be a better person, God will make you suffer. As a “test” or to give you the “opportunity to grow”. So praying was a dangerous activity, but not praying was dangerous too.  What a horrible trap to be caught in. So being able to stop was a sign I was getting better.

Spirituality at the UU church is much nicer. It’s about love and kindness and being your best self.  Good stuff with no trickster gods or commandments to be perfect.  I enjoy it.  I’d like to go.

But it does feel optional (part of that lack of commandments about obedience and perfection, probably).  And when my daughter doesn’t wake up until nine on Sundays, I can NOT bring myself to wake her up.  Her need for sleep feels like it outweighs my nonexistent need for spirituality.

We went to the church picnic last Sunday, since it was in the afternoon and I didn’t have to wake anybody up. And the kids wanted to go because, well, there were snowcones.

The only problem was that I only know three people in the congregation and none of them were there.  I have not done well at making connections.  That’s really not my strong suit.  The funny thing is that I’ve become closer to several people in my LDS ward since I stopped going to church.  In my entire life I’ve never had friends in my ward and now I have a bunch.  How does that happen?

I’m going to get more serious about going to church, though not immediately, and not for my own sake.  But as my kids get into middle and high school I would like them to have a peer group where the focus is on treating others with kindness and respect. Also, they have to take OWL.