This is a formal apology to all my LDS friends and family. I love you, I love the church and the good things I've extracted from it. In some posts within this blog I have shared my crown of thorns about the church, the things that really hurt me deeply when I found out about real issues and thorny problems. I have read extensively on church history, and doing so really opened my eyes. It's certainly not all I was being told. I felt lied to, deceived, and angry. These things hurt to know because I was so attached to the church, and it felt so much like a part of me. I went through all the stages of grief. It was like experiencing the loss of a loved one - a child, the child in me. I feel that now I've reached the final stage of grief - acceptance, and peace. I feel a need to apologize to anyone I may have offended in this horrible journey out. I am at peace now and very happy.
When still an active and true blue mormon (TBM) I took the teachings of the church to their logical conclusion and doing so drove me mad. I was reading the scriptures fervently and praying frequently. I was under a lot of stress both from church callings and my career. As my mind slipped into inspirations and revelations it all matched perfectly that contained in scripture and what the church itself taught, e.g., personal revelations and heavenly visitations. It felt like a conduit was shooting from the top of my head straight into the heavens. I felt so connected to god and all the glory. God was my trigger, and I pulled it, and kept pulling it, landing me in the psych ward three times in one year at the age of thirty-four. It took me some time to accept that it was merely mental illness because it felt so powerful, so authentic, so much like I had always been told the "gifts of the spirit" were like. Once accepted as mental misfires the church became an enemy to my mental health. I stayed away from church for many years. At some point I became curious to know the history of the church. This started the fascinating trail of many books on the subject, which uncovered much of the unsavory stuff the church does not address.
Before finding out about my religion, I had experienced other very jolting incidents of deceit and betrayal, and this felt like the same thing all over again in spades. It was simply too much to bear. I struggled. It took me years to get where I am now. I went through some denial at stages, trying to find the good, trying to salvage and resurrect the church, just like I tried in those past bad experiences to salvage something in them and from them, and I failed pretty much to the same degree.
So the bell had been rung and the cat was out of the bag. I was angry at Joseph Smith, and trying hard to find anything redeemable there - I did. There are some passages of scripture that seem to be inspired, and if not so, wisely noticed and borrowed - he was a very smart and creative man. He was a great remixer and synthesizer of ideas. These few things he "revealed" are still true and resonate with me, but there was also a lot of deception and selfishness with him. I do think he had a gift, but it was tainted by his impure desires. I struggled with loving him the most - but I do ... now I do. I feel I know him quite well - he was a scoundrel, with an egotistic love for people, and on some level he was really trying to do good, and help others in love for them, but at the same time looking to vaunt himself and make money off "his" church. No one is a perfect vessel - it's just so weird if the lord chose him. Maybe he did in some really weird way. As Joseph said himself, God works by weak and small things. I believe that Joseph Smith was an inspired man. I'll leave it at that.
Like I said, some of the things he presented as revelation have really resonated with me, and I carry them forward. The LDS church, although fraught with error and deceit, was a great springboard for my life. I think of the church now as aging parents whom one visits occasionally on weekends. They had issues of their own to deal with. They were never out to be mean, or do their children harm. They were just a little clueless, carrying on the errors and issues heaped upon them, but hey - aren't we all in some degree?
I am not LDS by most people's definition of that word - I am not. I am more than LDS now. I am SuperLDS. The church did a good job raising me, and I love it for that, this is it's "all good" when I step in for a visit. I still consider myself of LDS heritage, just like I still consider myself a HILL and the child of my parents ... I've just learned a lot of things about both that have taught me (when taken correctly) to be a better person ... both the bad stuff and the good - It's all good, but not TRUE shouted from the heavens. It's merely true, spoken in a whisper. I was There (+), then There (-) and Back again many times. Now I'm in the middle. Many will interpret this as a fence sitting; butt sometimes you need to sit on the fence and tolerate the sharp uncomfortable pickets in your ass to hold onto what's true. I'm "back" my friends, but I have to be authentic and be back in my own way, which is a loving way.
I still try to attend somewhat weekly according more to my wife's wishes, or when I feel like it, and when doing so I try to keep the thorns which prick to myself. I'm done kicking against the pricks and want instead to enjoy the cherries. I know cherry picking gets a bad rap, but that's what I'm doing, and need to do, trying to still find the good in the church, picking out all the cherries I love, despite all I know. Coming back and attending was very hard at first. Initially I was trying to attend and just keep my thorns to myself, fighting the urge to try and knock some sense into people with my dead pruned branches. That was so hard. I was still angry and naively thought that people needed to know this stuff, and that they'd WANT to know it - the truth, the whole truth about the church.
This is a church that loves and extols the TRUTH. I foolishly assumed that the people in it would want the truth above all else. I was really trying to help others in my clumsy and misguided way. Turns out they didn't want to know it, and had their own bags of issues for why they were attending I'm sure. They had all the truth they needed. They were attending to feel better, to feel uplifted, to put some good back into their harried world. If I truly loved them, I'd shut up and not hurt them by heaping more harriedness into their haven, and in the process being a prick myself. No one likes to get pricked, especially when the truth hurts. Sometimes pain is best left unexpressed, especially with those who may be standing in a heap of it blissfully unaware.
In this world of gravity, everyone needs to stand somewhere - you've got to have some kind of ideology. People are very good at standing within their comfort zone, standing where they want, and seeing it from that perspective; They're standing where they are happiest. It's cruel (and oft pointless) to try and force them to move. Wherever they are, it's working for them. I've learned to leave them be (thanks mostly to a very good friend, Tony B), just like one of my favorite moments in shallow Hal:
Hal: Let me ask you something. Who is the all-time love of your life?
Mauricio: [ponders] Wonder Woman.
Hal: Okay... let's say Wonder Woman falls in love with you. And everyone else in the world didn't find her attractive.
Mauricio: It wouldn't matter. Because I know they'd be wrong.
Hal: See! That's what I had with Rosemary! I saw a knockout, I don't care what anybody else saw!
Mauricio: You're right. I guess I really did screw you, huh?
So I've learned to tend my own cherry tree, prune the misguided or dead branches, and keep the cherries, especially the best cherries. And I've learned, or am learning, to share the cherries, not the dead branches, and not the thorns. I can't imagine ever considering myself LDS again in the current mode of being LDS, I am atypical LDS. I am SuperLDS. I have no wish to go back to being that guy with glasses going "incognito" (yeah right superman, anyone with a brain in their skull knew it was you), just like I have no wish to go back home and live with my parents. But just like them, I'm glad of the things the church taught me, and I still love those good things.
I'll try to keep my mouth shut about the branches I've pruned, and the thorns which stuck me (and continue sticking me during visits), maybe not, hopefully so.
I will certainly be open to talk to anyone who in the painful transition, or who is genuinely seeking the truth in earnest desire to help their tree bear more fruit, or better fruit, no matter how hard it is to hear. This is what I deem as true integrity - Truth being greater than comfort. But that kind of integrity has its price - you have to leave your comfort zone, and a few of the things you love. I have no need to attend any other church, nor any church at all for that matter. But I still attend because I love my wife and the people there, and there is truth (small letter truth) in the church, and more than any other in my opinion, but there are also a lot of thorns getting in the way of that truth. I can deal with thorns - Christ did, so can I.
The world and the universe are my church now, and have been for some time, and I ponder them both often. I have found god, and recovered Christ to some degree, because I never gave up, even when they were both a shrinking glint on the horizon of hope. I sought god sincerely with fervor, passion and pure intent, and an intense desire to know what god knew, or at least what I needed to know (I'm very curious). The things I was shown from this sincerity and earnestness, driven by constant nagging, opened the floodgates and drove me mad. I kept sincerely asking god to know who or what god was, to know if god was there, and each time god would show "himself" to me in fulness as best as I could grok it. It was so vast, so complex, that I couldn't handle it all. I couldn't understand it. With each request and each "visit" it was still too much to take in. I went manic, full blown off my nut, many times. But each time, I was able to better handle it, and glean something - a cherry or two. I'm okay now ( I think), because I have figured it out, everything I needed to know has been shown to me - I'll leave it at that.
I believe in god, I believe in Christ and his message. I believe they ARE, but I don't know exactly what or how they are (my curious mind is still working on that, and I've got some pretty good ideas on the matter). This is what my mania shows me - and it's all good. It's all wonderful. Words cannot express the joy I've felt (and the pain). When my brain-state leans/topples toward the positive I feel very happy and spiritual. Maybe all religious experience is some degree of manic delusion and wishful thinking. If were able to choose one or the other I'd definitely choose the positive side ( a moderated positive side). I'm ready for the joy, the pure unadulterated joy, unvexed by extremes. If everything is some form of delusion why not choose a happy and functional delusion?
So this is my apology - I'm genuinely sorry. Maybe it's a bad apology still laced with thorns, but I think it's an honest and authentic apology nonetheless. So let's pick and share the cherries together ... but don't be offended if you see me discreetly spitting some of yours out into my napkin. I love you truly.
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