Archive for the ‘LDS’ Category
Recently a group of progressive Mormon women decided to organize a Wear-Pants-to-Church-Day. Really, it’s hard to believe that in the 21st-century that skirts or dresses are still the mandated attire for Mormon women, but it’s true. Growing up LDS, I was told my some stalwart church leaders that I should not even enter the Chapel [...]
Monday I went to lunch with an old LDS friend, someone I’d known back in the days when most of my time was spent corralling toddlers and keeping house. Because she was on her way to Italy and I just returned, we planned to discuss travel. But instead we talked mostly about change. I wondered [...]
The story of Sonia Johnson’s journey, From Housewife to Heretic, is a cautionary tale for young Mormon feminists. Through the story of Johnson we are warned against the dangers of too much ‘liberal’ education and too much female empowerment. In her (in)famous speech–the one that most likely caused her excommunication–she wrote: The political implications of [...]
One of the biggest compliments that I received recently was from someone that I know professionally, who just learned that I’d been practicing LDS for most of my life. She was shocked, only because she said that I didn’t behave like any of the LDS women that she knew–who she said were all the kind [...]
I didn’t take my camera with me last night, the final night of my Europe trip. I’d had a long day of snapping pictures and sightseeing in Bruges, and I needed a change. I was also realizing how, sometimes, being behind the lens stops me from actually experiencing and feeling what’s happening around me. So [...]
In my recent post about visiting the LDS church last weekend, I mentioned that I found the LDS sacrament rite to be quite difficult, even long before I left the church. On that entry, a friend left the following comment: So I thought I would briefly address her question… In the LDS church, the sacrament [...]
This weekend I attended the LDS church while on a visit to Utah. It was my first time attending a Sacrament Meeting in well over five years. It was my first time taking the sacrament (communion) in much longer than that (because even long before I stopped attending the Mormon church, I couldn’t stomach the [...]
Many people have asked me whether I’ll return to the Mormon church now that John isn’t in my life (this probably stems from the assumption made by many people that I only left the church to please John–which is wrong on so many counts, including the one where he recently blamed me for pushing our [...]
As part of organizing my new office at Chapman University, I’m moving most of my academic books from the shelves in my living room over to campus. Every time I pull a history book off the shelf it brings back memories of the specific graduate school seminar where we studied that work. So in packing [...]
Just for the record, I’m a big fan of bullshit. In fact, I buy huge bags of it every spring to use in my garden. Sure it’s stinky, but it gets the job done. Recently, the Feminist Hulk (a tongue-in-cheek twitterer) sent out a tweet about bullshit and it was widely “re-tweeted” (or copied, with [...]
Many of you might remember my blogpost from two years ago, “What Has to Be Done.” That post, and the talk I gave alongside famous blogger Heather Armstrong (of dooce.com) brought over 30,000 new readers to my blog. What a hard time that was. As I suffered through the pain of my surgery and the [...]
self-po, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl. In one of the more important Mormon temple rituals, your body is washed with water and anointed with oil. This washing and anointing is mostly symbolic–water and oil are only touched to a few points on your skin as sacred words are repeated by the officiants. However, what is most [...]
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