Today I decided to go running, which is not that unusual, especially since I seriously overate this morning (my beautiful and sexy wife makes a mean lemon merangue pie and it made a delicious breakfast… and lunch).  What is unusual is that I just didn’t get tired, and didn’t get winded.  So I kept going until I had run ten miles, and decided to stop.  Before today, my record was about seven and a quarter, and most days if I run at all I run two, maybe three miles.  By the time I was done today, my legs were cramping fiercely and I had a blister on the arch of my right foot, but other than that (and being bored and it getting late, dark,and cold), I could have kept going.  I simply never ran out of breath.  I was very pleased.

By the way, we’re having a baby in three days and we might have finally picked out a name tonight.

I’ve really neglected this blog over the past couple of months while I’ve been tossing around new ideas, coming to conclusions, and maybe even figuring out what I actually believe, what I don’t believe, and why.  I haven’t really written about my experiments with and (possibly) final thoughts on Druidry.  I haven’t written about my experiences with trying to find meaning this Christmas without Jesus in my life, or at least without an obvious place for or a settled idea of what Jesus means, if he means anything at all.  I haven’t written about the frustration, anger, and tension in my family over the religion issue that has once again come to a head in the last few weeks.  I haven’t written about the intense series of conversations I have had about Self and no-self and how they may have brought me back full circle, in a sense.

There’s so much I haven’t written and things are moving so fast that I don’t know if I’m realistically ever going to write them, which is kind of sad, I guess.  But that’s just the way it is.

The thing is, I may have found Byzantium, or at least the closest thing to it that exists.  In any case think I may be ready to move beyond this blog and all it represents and into something new, into a whole new paradigm and a whole new phase of my life.  Things are in the process of changing, and I am as certain as I can be that they will never be the same again.  If you’re interested, follow me over to my new blog, because this one may be sitting in the harbor for a long time to come.

I have some posts I’ve been wanting to write that I’ve been procrastinating.  The new semester has started, and my beautiful and sexy wife is in her busy season at work (as well as fairly far along in pregnancy), and there’s been some extended-family drama.  That’s all to say that I haven;t had time really to sit down and compose myself enough to write about some of the things I’ve been thinking about.  I haven’t fallen off the earth, I’m just kinda busy at the moment.

This one isn’t about Jesus at all, but as it’s kind of a continuation of my last post, and I’m feeling silly, well… hey, I don’t have to justify the names of my own blog posts to anyone.

Like I’ve said before, although I haven’t been blogging, I have been continuing to think things through and to engage in conversation with people about my standard topics of life, the universe, and everything.  In particular, I have had some interesting discussions with my brother (who comments here periodically under the nom de plume Racticas), who is a grad student in religious studies.  One of the idea sets we’ve been tossing around lately is Neopaganism.

When talking paganism, the issue of polytheism naturally comes up.  Polytheism is definitely an idea that has to be accomodated rather than assimilated, because as western people we come into the picture with a fairly heavy bias towards monotheism.  My Mormon background gets periodically accused of a polytheistic bent by some Evangelical critics, but even as an ex-Mormon, I don’t think the accusation is appropriate.  Although Mormonism posits a comparatively limited God, believes that the members of the Godhead (father, son, and holy ghost) are completely distinct in substance, and accepts the possibility (or even necessity) of the existence of other gods coequal to, subordinate to, or even superior to Our Heavenly Father, in practice Mormonism is still thoroughly monotheistic.  The existence of other gods is an academic possibility for Mormons, and the only god they deal with and the only god who has ultimate power over this world is God the Father.

I go into detail about the Mormon perspective because it’s my background and thus informs where I am now, and accusations to the contrary notwithstanding, my background, and thus my default position, is monotheistic.  And I bring all of this up in order to admit my preexisting bias when I then explain why I don’t believe in literal polytheism.

Which brings me to my point: I don’t believe in literal polytheism.  I have enough trouble accepting the existence of one personal god; the idea of many personal gods seems even less plausible.  As figures of myth, the gods and goddesses of ancient people seem much more plausible to me as either metaphors of the human condition or as metaphoric personifications of different aspects of the transcendent divine, i.e. Masks of God.  I simply do not believe, however, that there are a bunch of real literal distinct divine beings living on Mount Olympus or in Asgard or another dimension or a spiritual plane or something.  I just don’t buy it.

Now that’s not to say that I think the gods and goddesses of myth (including Jesus and the Father) are useless things.  If there is a real transecndent divinity, I am inclined to think it impossible to deal with it directly in any kind of meaningful way.  Thus, we may need personifications and metaphors to be able to approach the divine in a way that our psyches can handle.  In other words, we may be putting the masks on God because otherwise God is so far outside of our experience and existence that the unmasked God would be meaningless, inaccessible, and incomprehensible to us.  I think of it like this: if a two-dimensional being existed, it could never comprehend us in our fullness as three-dimensional beings.  The best it could do would be to imagine a two-dimensional representation of us, but even then it could never be a complete representation.  Being two-dimensional the best it could do was approximate a certain aspect, slice, or facet (or simplified agglomeration of several aspects) of our three-dimensional reality.  If God exists at all outside our psyches, then so it is with God.

At its heart, this is what Christianity is all about–God become man so that man can relate to God.  Its the essence of Hinduism as well, where all things, the gods and goddesses especially, are merely aspects of Brahman.

Alternately, if “God” is just something in our heads, something embedded in the human psyche, then I still think that anthropomorphized representations of God or gods are the best way for us to make sense of it.  This is the Joseph Campbell route.  We make sense of existence primarily by metaphor and symbol, and that includes conceptualizing symbolic and metaphorical gods.

The moral of my story is that if I were to be a pagan of any stripe, I couldn’t be a strict, literal polytheist.  And even if I were to have a mystical encounter with a god or gods, I would still strongly suspect that I had merely put a mask on something otherwise completely transcendent and incomprehensible so that I could comprehend it, as opposed to thinking that whatever god I had encountered had a real, literal, separate and distinct existence of its own.  Unless it told me it did and struck me with lighning for being an unbeliever or something.  I have a pragmatic streak, as well: at my house, people who didn’t believe in Santa Claus didn’t get presents from him.

So, the fact that I’m not posting much on here isn’t really indicative of a lack of thinking in the religious/spiritual vein. In fact, I’ve been thinking in overdrive, but not coming to any conclusions and not really going anywhere with it. My brother, Racticas (he comments here somewhat infrequently) is now in a Religious Studies masters program, so that’s added an interesting academic element to both of our searches.

I’m not going to church now, but it’s a deliberate thing. I feel like participation in church gives me a kind of uncomfortable vertigo-like feeling. Like the merry-go-round is going awfully fast for someone like me who’s not even sure he wants to be on the playground. I don’t know if that metaphor makes much sense. I feel like participation in church means moving in a direction, whether or not I know I want to be moving in that direction, or indeed moving at all.

In my head I’m going back and forth and around and around: Christianity-Asatru-Agnosticism-Atheism-Paganism-Christmas-Asatru-Christianity-Agnosticism-Frustration-Druidry-Christianity-Frustration-Anger-Christianity-Asatru, and I like Christmas. I don’t really know what to do with any of it. Every religion in the world is repugnant to me for some reason, but so many of them are attractive to me for so many other reasons. At the same time, I just don’t know if I can, or if I am willing to, simply will myself to believe. I find myself yearning for a catalyzing spiritual experience, but they just don’t seem to happen. Indeed, I don’t know if mysticism has ever really happened for me.

In other words, I’m no better off than I was nine months ago. Look at my archives; you’ll see what I mean. I know some of the Christians out there would say that my problem is that I’m trying to connect to a religion instead of connecting to Jesus, but for all practical purposes that still just sounds like gobbledygook. I have yet to figure out what “being in a relationship with Jesus” even means. But I still really like Christmas, and I am hesitant to even consider giving it up, and the religious significance in particular.

Maybe I’m just afraid to commit, mentally and emotionally. Or maybe I really just want a reason to believe that’s greater than just my preference. I’m not interested in atheism, and I don’t think I could ever be happy with atheism. But I don’t know if I could ever be happy with Christianity, Asatru, Druidry, or anything else. And I sure am never going to be happy with agnosticism. And I’m absolutely sure that I’m never going back to Mormonism.

I feel more desperate about it than I ever did before, partially because of simply being frustrated at how long this has gone on, and partially (mainly) because of major, earthshaking, terrifying life changes that are coming very soon during which I think faith could probably be a great source of strength.

I’ve mulled it over quite a bit, and decided not to write a letter to my family explaining my reasons for leaving the Mormon church.  In the end, I don’t think it will be well-received.  I think most people will perceive it as an attack, not as the frank, open icebreaker that I intend it to be.

I’m still going to have my name removed.  I also want to at least tell my parents first.  I don’t think they’re going to take it well, and I guess I can’t blame them.  It’s a tricky business.

Anyway, I wrote a couple of drafts of my letter to family, both in my head and on paper, and I wasn’t really satisfied with any of them.

So, I’m probably going to have my name removed from the LDS Church’s records, i.e., formally resign from Mormonism.   I’m not ready to do it quite yet, because I have to write a letter first.  Not the letter to the Church, but a letter to my family, explaining why I do not think the Church is true, and why I am resigning.

What I am not trying to do with this letter is convince anyone that I’m right.  I’m also not expecting anyone to agree with me, or even think that my position is reasonable, defensible, or plausible.  While it would be great if that happened, experience tells me that most Mormons are so fully inoculated against “Anti-Mormonism!!!” that it will essentially go in one ear and out the other (or in the eye and out the ears, or out the whatever).  If someone surprises me, I’ll be, well, pleasantly surprised.  But I’m not going in with optimistic expectations- so far, my family’s reaction to me leaving the Church has been really mixed.  Some people have been understanding and supportive, and some people have reacted with hostility.  I don’t want to get disappointed, so my expectations are kind of low.

That said, I do have some expectations, some goals that I intend to accomplish with this letter:

1. I want to break the ice.  I want to bring the subject up and indicate my willingness to talk about it.  I’m not excited about the prospect of future uncomfortable silences, or white elephants in the room, so I’m just going to be the one to start the conversation.  If people are interested in talking things through, I’m game, and I want people to know that.

2. If people just hear through the grapevine that I am planning on leaving, they’re probably going to freak out.  I’d rather control the information and be the one that tells people.

3. My family is steeped in Mormonism, and many of our relationships are based on the religion and the religion’s assumptions.  It would be naïve of me to expect that leaving the Church won’t irrevocably change things.  Again, I may as well brace for it, even if it’s uncomfortable.

4. I feel like I at least owe my family an explanation and a fair warning.

When the letter is written and sent out, I will probably post it here.

I’ve been thinking about having my name removed lately.  I’ve ben pretty sure for awhile that it’s something I would eventually do, but I wasn’t in a hurry.  Really, it’s more than that.  Name removal is really the final step in truly leaving Mormonism, and it’s a scary line to cross.

I told myself I’d do it later,  for several reasons.  If I did it now, I’d be afraid my family would freak out and think I was rushing into things (or out of things, as the case may be).  But at the same time, I wonder if it will take something as final as name removal to get my family to take me seriously.

But then, being a member of the Church doesn’t actually hurt me much- I like our home teachers, and we let them visit when they call.  The bishop and the missionaries haven’t bothered us for a long time.  The only times Mormonism seems to even matter is in family interactions.  But there, it’s the elephant in the room.

I resolved some time ago to write an email to my extended family, explaining that I’ve left the Church and it’s not a sensitive topic, so we can feel free to talk about it- I’m a fairly open person  after all.

I’m not going anywhere with this, really.  I’m not going back to the Church and I don’t know that I want my name on the Church’s records.   I’m not really that angry at Mormonism, and I’m even getting less interested in the internet exmo scene.  Realizing that I was an ex-Mormon, not just a regular guy, was kind of a big deal.  But I wonder if i can just be a regular guy.  and I wonder if name removal isn’t the final necessary step to finally leaving Mormonism behind.

Today my wife and I went to a service at the Church of Christ, Scientist. We’re not sure that Cedar Ridge Community Church is a good permanent church solution for us, and we were in the mood for something different. I actually found an Episcopalian parish I wanted to attend, but they’re on some kind of weird summer schedule (I guess most Episcopalians don’t go to church in the summer) where they only have an 8:00 am Rite I Eucharist service (old style, and with no music). I was kind of annoyed about that.

Alternately, we’ve been thinking about visiting an Orthodox church again, but we hadn;t hear back from the OCA parish in Bethesda about whether they have child care during the liturgy.

So instead, we decided to go on a wacky adventure to the Church of Christ, Scientist!

I should co ahead and say that I’m not actually interested in joining the Church or practicing Christian Science. But the church is odd and quirky (much like Mormonism) and I wanted to at least visit. Plus, I’ve been keen for some time on getting my hands on a copy of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science And Health With Key To The Scriptures, just out of pure theological curiosity.

Anyway, there was child care available, which was good (without it, we would have just had to go home, because there’s no way our one-year-old can quietly sit through, well, pretty much anything).  The service was kind of boring- Christian Scientists have no preachers, because the Bible and Science and Health are their preachers.  That means the sermon is just a set of collected readings from those two books.  It takes up most of the hour, and it’s hard to sit still and pay attention.

There were also some responsive readings, which I always really like in a religious setting, and some hymns.  It was nice to sing hymns after six months of nothing but contemporary Christian praise music.  Did I mention that I like hymns?

One of the readers sounded hilariously like a Mormon General Authority- actually like a cross between Thomas S. Monson and L. Tom Perry, I thought.  My wife mentioned that the man had sounded like a GA, and I laughed because I had been thinking that the whole time.

The meeting was not well-attended, although the church was in a really nice building.

The topic of the sermon/readings was Life, and it was all about how life, mind, and spirit are real and  how matter and death and illness are illusory, which I think is pretty much the gist of the religion.

At the end, when we went downstairs to fetch the little one, the nice lady there gave us a copy of Science And Health, and that pretty much made my day.  Also, it was really nice of her, because I think the book cost something like ten dollars.  The thing was, the cover was glossy and it hurt my eyes in the car on the way home when the sun reflected off it.  So she really did blind me with science.  As in, Mary Baker Eddy blinded me with Christian Science.

Incidentally, Christian Science is not the same thing as Scientology.

I had a great discussion with my mother a few days ago (she’s a true believing Mormon) about the difference between faith and testimony in Mormon theology, and I’ve been mulling around some thoughts about it ever since.

“Testimony,” as commonly used by Mormons, is an unfortunate term. It’s an umbrella term, a thought-construct composed of several different distinct but related concepts, but they’re all blurred together into one conglomerate noun in the Mormon vernacular. When the Holy Ghost bears witness of the truth of x, a Mormon calls that your testimony. When you tell others the religious things you believe or “know,” that’s also your testimony. Those two I can handle, but the third main use is the most vague and elusive, and the one least based in (even Mormon) scripture and theology. It’s this idea that a testiony is a thing, a noun, an intangible object that you actually have and need to nurture and work on so it grows.

It’s not the same thing as Faith, which is given some pretty clear and basically consistent definitions in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. Paul (or whoever wrote Hebrews) said “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV). In the Book of Mormon, Alma said faith “is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true,” and Moroni said faith is “things which are hoped for and not seen.” None of those are really the same thing that Mormons are talking about when they talk about their testimony. Testimony is the assurance of the truth of Mormonism via mystical experiences.

Faith is consistently couched in terms like “hope.” Your testimony is the things you know. You might talk about faith in terms of certainty, but you would never describe a testimony using the word “hope.” Sure, the terms are similar, but they’re not identical.

In Mormon theology, such as it is, the requirments for salvation are faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end (which includes getting the necessary ordinances and priesthood, and continuing to develop faith, repent of sins, and renew your baptismal covenant by taking the sacrament). Testimony per se is not a requirement for the Celestial Kingdom. There’s not testimony checker at the pearly gates. Nevertheless, Mormons constantly talk about the necessity of having a testimony, as if it is basically the most important thing in Mormonism.

It has no real connected place in Mormon theology, so why is it necessary? All of the critical steps (the principles and ordinances of the gospel) for salvation are obtainable without ever once feeling the Holy Ghost, much less Getting a Testimony.

There’s a weird inconsistency yhere that bothers me. Basically, what it boils down to is that Mormonism in practice focuses almost obsessively on the need for the individual to experience successive, ongoing conversion experiences. No wonder Mormons are able to simply ignore their doubts and criticisms of the church that they hear! They are spending their time and effort constantly converting themselves. Why? I think it’s because without constant conversion-as-reinforcement, Mormonism doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. Testimony may not actually be a requirement for salvation in Mormonism, but if you aren’t constantly cultivating mystical confirmations of the Church’s truth, you’re far less likely to stay a member of a Church that is heavy-handed, authoritarian, wildly implausible, and extremely demanding.

I don’t really believe there is such a thing as “having a testimony.” I think that you can experience God through the Holy Spirit, and I think you can yourself bear witness to things you believe are true, but as far as this nebulous thing that you have, I think it’s a mental and cultural construct with no real existence. It’s a doublespeak term tat obscures what’s going on. Faith is something that you have. Testimony is something you hear or give.

Given that opinion, why then does it bother me when people say I must not have ever really had a testimony, seeing as how I left the Church. I mean, if I don;t believe that testimony exists, at least the way they’re talking about it, why do I care if they say I never had one? Again, it comes down to the nebulous doublespeak use of the term. When someone says I never had a testimony, they’re actually questioning whether I ever was really ommitted to the Church, and that pisses me off. I was raised in the Church, and I was a faithful member. I scrupulously tried to keep the commandments. I graduated from early morning seminary. I served an honorable mission and I worked incredibly hard, both physically and spiritually. I read the Book of Mormon again and again, not as a skeptic, but as an earnest believer. I married in the temple, which took great personal sacrifices on my part and on my wife’s part. I always paid a full tithe, and I gave generous fast offerings. I magnified my callings. I prayed daily. When doubts came, I did my best to resolve them. I tried to me a member-missionary, and I even tried my best to do my home teaching. I did everything I was supposed to do to “get a testimony,” and I did it with pure intentions, because I honestly thought it was all the right thing to do.

The Church promises that if you do this stuff, you’ll Get A Testimony. Thus, when people say I must not have had a testimony, they are insinuating that I never did the things that were required to get one, and that impugns my integrity and my earnestness, and that bothers me a lot.

I have to say that I believe that the Church is simply not true, at least it is not true the way it claims to be. It may be a fine place for some people, but it is certainly not God’s one true church, restored in these latter days in preparation for the second coming, led by living prophets, etc. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me, but I do have a problem with people assuming that the only reason I came to the conclusion I did is that I wasn’t really genuinely committed and faithful in the first place. That’s just insulting.