On faith

I was contacted last week about writing a faith-affirming essay to be included in a volume for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons).

I cannot write the essay they want. Instead, I would write this one. 

***

In November, in Philadelphia, an atheist from Israel asked me, a Mormon from Australia, if I believed in God.

And I said I did not know.

"Ah, so you are agnostic," he said.

"No, an agnostic thinks that no one can know if there is a God. I just personally don't know if I believe in God today."

***

God has spoken to me. When I was a young teenager, I felt a wash of the spirit after reading the Book of Mormon for the first time. A few years later, on my own and lonely, I asked God if he would please send me strong visiting teachers, to be my friends. And God told me that that wasn't going to happen; I needed to build up my resilience to loneliness. Once I asked God if I could go on a date with a crush, and God smiled and said sure, but nothing will come of it -- this guy isn't for you. And once, afraid and alone on an overnight train from Germany, I asked God to please send me someone -- a girl -- who spoke English who could help me make it to the airport on time in the morning. God sent a girl about my age to my rail car, who was on her way to be an au pair in Ireland. But she had no idea how to get to the airport. So I found the way for both of us. God was laughing with me then. He was telling me that I needed to recognize that I was capable, and step up to help others.

Those were all small things. What of the bigger things? My Mormon faith told me that women should never work outside the home. And my mother testified that that was true. And my grandmother testified. Women were meant to sacrifice their talents to their husbands and families. When I received several full scholarships to PhD programs all over the country, I asked God if I should sacrifice these gifts? Even without a husband? Or choose a PhD program? But which one? And how to choose? And God was silent. In anger, months later, I asked God why he hadn't helped me make the decision. And God told me that he trusted me to make hard decisions. He trusted me.

***

How could I not know if I believe in God, when God has spoken to me so many times?

God spoke to Lucy Walker. When she was a young teenager, after the unexpected death of her mother, a religious leader more than twice her age sent her father away on a mission, and invited Lucy to live in his home, like a daughter. Soon after, he told Lucy that God commanded her to be his plural wife, in secret, and she must agree overnight to the union or she would be damned. Lucy spent the night in prayer and agony. But in the morning she was visited by peace and light and a sure understanding that the man was a prophet and she would be his plural wife. When you and I read this story, we recognize classic child abuse. Lucy saw it as the pinnacle of her religious experience and the foundation of her testimony. God told Lucy to marry her abuser.

God spoke to the young men who used civilian airplanes as weapons, and killed thousands in September 2001. Those young men sacrificed their very lives for God, knowing he would bless them with a glorious afterlife. But you and I know they were only terrorists.

Who is this God who speaks, condoning child abuse and murder?

***

I grew tired of being angry. I grew tired of having to give different answers to my child's questions every Sunday after church. I knew all the right answers to the Mormon temple recommend interview questions, but I could no longer with integrity give the right answers simultaneously to question number three, affirming my belief in the restoration of the Mormon church, and question number nine, was I honest. So I moved jobs. I let my recommend lapse. I still attended, played the organ, taught the women's meeting. Tried. But grew tired of being angry. I grew tired of the fact that no one cared if I came. They cared if my son came. They cared if my husband came. But even though my son and husband only came because I came, no one cared about me, the woman.

So one sunny summer Sunday afternoon, waiting for the tram to take us home from church, my husband responded to my anger with his own quiet words. "You don't have to keep going. Maybe it's time to take a break."

And I looked him in the eye and said, "Maybe it is."

***

God has spoken to me since my Mormon temple card lapsed. One afternoon, walking home alone from work in the park near my apartment, I argued with God privately, a one-sided conversation in my head. How could I continue to support the Mormon church, I asked God, when their policies towards their people were so cruel? When they willfully suppressed the talents of their women and the futures of their LGBTQ members? When they had been on the wrong side of every social issue since the nineteenth century? I told God that I couldn't fit in that space anymore, not unless my heart was torn out and replaced with a completely different heart.

"That's it," said God. "You need a new heart."

***

How does one obtain a new heart? Does one stay up all night praying, like Lucy? Or does one sacrifice one's life, like a terrorist? What about the things the Mormons say to do? To read scriptures, to pray harder? Those things have I done all my life, and yet I have this heart here in my hands. Jesus said to the young man in that situation to go and sell all and give to the poor. But I have a family to feed. And a husband who wouldn't let me.

Perhaps one takes a step back in life, to pause. To think. To evaluate. And then one keeps moving forward. Because God won't make the hard decisions for you.

In July, visiting my parents in the Mormon community where I grew up, I attended church at my Home Ward. My former young women's leader spoke. She related her experiences as the wife of a missionary. As she spoke, I felt the Spirit descend upon me, thick and tangible, and I knew I was in a good place, and this was where I belonged.

Simultaneously, I received a Revelation. This Spirit, this tangible, physical, physiological response, was a superpower of evolution. It led the teenagers from broken homes to face their empty futures, abuse, self-inflicted death, with peace and light and understanding that they were serving a Higher Good. That this would be how they Mattered. And their tribes, their clans, their people -- they survived and belonged and grew closer and powerful with the sacrifice of these lesser people. The Spirit is a massive evolutionary advantage for the homo sapiens.

***

I used to speak to God daily. But my prayers have changed. I don't want to speak to God the disappointed father. If there is a God, I hope he still trusts me.

***

Here, at the end of this essay, I think a little about my readers. Some readers will see my anger and my pride and shake their heads in judgement, and know that I am wrong to step away. And those readers are correct. Some readers will see the abuse and the irrationality of religion and shake their heads in judgement and know that I am right to step away. And those readers are also correct.

I am not agnostic. I know that people can know that there is a God. Lucy knew. The terrorists knew.

I just don't know if I know. And I cannot trust the Spirit.

For now, I have to walk forward within the constraints of my life, and act with integrity and morality. And initiative. More initiative, I think.

This is my faith.

Thank you for inviting the essay.

The seven horsemen

In January 2020, we had visits from the seven horsemen of the apocalypse.

First, in early January, fire. The bushfires in Australia raged so far out of control that they made international headlines, accompanied by pictures of burned koalas, and kangaroos jumping away from raging infernos. All our friends abroad, from North America, Asia, and Europe, wrote and hoped that we were safe. We were. Although only a few weeks before, I had spent hours pouring over airbnb listings of holiday homes, trying to decide whether to take our vacation in January in the areas that were now covered in flames. With those places now evacuated, we were happy we had not made a booking.

Next, poison. Although in Melbourne there were no fires, for a couple of weeks the winds blew toxic smoke to settle over the city. The air quality became worse than in Bejing. Tim bought masks to protect our lungs. We stayed inside as much as we could.

Third, the sword. The war-mongering leader of a country in the northern hemisphere massacred an Iranian official, leading the world to the brink of war. With commercial airplanes being shot down over Iran, I pulled out a globe and very carefully chose airline tickets for my conference in Germany in February that avoided Iranian airspace altogether.

The next week, ice. Our suburb was hit by torrential rain. A few miles away in the suburb of Caulfield, golf-ball sized hail fell from the sky. Sidewalks and roads flooded. Trams were cancelled. Homes and vehicles were damaged. And the storm didn't even put out the bushfires, since it swept south from Melbourne rather than continuing east where the fires were still raging.

The following week, mud. Far away in the centre of the country, windstorms swept the red desert sand into massive clouds. The clouds blew with the ferocious wind for miles and miles, until high in the air, they hit a wet cold front coming off of the southern ocean, and rained down on Melbourne. We heard the pleasant sound of rain falling all night. But in the morning, sidewalks, cars, and plants all had a fine coating of mud on them.

Sixth, disease. A new virus had been spreading only a short 12 hour flight north of Melbourne, in China. It finally reached Australia and a few other countries. Global panic ensued. In China, the city of Wuhan was locked off. One of Tim's colleagues in China was among the last to get out before all the trains were stopped. Soon after, Shanghai was also shut down. Tim's office in Shanghai received strict notices not to come in, at all. Work from home. Don't go in the streets. Shut the elevators in high rises so people weren't tempted to go out. Remember those airline tickets I carefully purchased to avoid Iran? I had chosen flights with a stopover in mainland China. The flights were cancelled by the airline. And then even Monash University shut their doors and moved the start date of the semester back a week, with requirements that the first week of classes involve no face-to-face meetings. Online lectures only.

And finally, the week after that came the seventh horseman of the apocalypse ... school. Jonathan started a new year of school.

I hope February is less eventful.