A Girl...

Three Past Three

He comes home today!!!

[Photo taken in August 2006 at Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill's birhtplace, outside of Oxford. The huge lawn in back was mown in a diagonal pattern and the clouds that day were surreal. I half expected a party to "play through" with flamingos and hedgehogs.]

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Random unrelated aside:

I grew up in a suburb of Salt Lake City and lived there until I was twenty-two. I attended Mormon church services until I was about seven when, so the legend goes, we stopped playing along because the Sunday School teachers said my little brother was too wiggly and I was "asking too many questions." Story of my life.

Because I grew up outside of but still close to the church (most of my extended family is Mormon), I didn't develop any of the attendant bitterness that comes with being entrenched in something and then having to actively reject it, nor did I suffer being a complete outsider, like the kids from other religions, who had no idea what a "mission" was or how someone could be older than his own uncle or why everyone was singing all the damn time. Most of my non-Mormon friends growing up were one or the other--angry ex-members or frustrated non-members--and although I mostly remained outside the drama, I can't say it didn't affect me over the years. Religion in Utah is everywhere. It's the family, it's the social network, it's the business community, it's the government. There's no escaping it. Neutrality is evasive.

I generally try to avoid the whole Mormon thing for several reasons: (1) Once I get started, I can talk about it for hours, and no one is ever really prepared for that, (2) I know a lot of people who have been hurt by it--more specifically, hurt by their families in the name of it--and that makes me both angry and frustrated on their behalf, and (3) it's next to impossible to accurately describe the Mormon community to someone who has not experienced it him or herself, and I hate being inaccurate or incomplete.

All of those reasons contribute to why I've never watched an episode of Big Love, the HBO series about a modern polygamist family. (One of my pals in college was a gay teenager who was exiled from the family and, strangely, the religion, he loved very much; this is his uncle; his elementary school yearbook was one of the oddest things I'd ever seen--everyone was related.) When it comes to that can of worms, I don't want to get started, get involved, get frustrated and angry and sad on behalf of the kids I know who have been ousted from their families in the name of "family values."

Flipping through the channels over the last few days, I noticed that PBS was airing a several-part documentary on Mormonism, and I honestly wasn't the least bit interested. The Mormon church is an expert at controlling its public image, and I was sure the program would be a lopsided look at a religion and culture that is both very secular and livable and outwardly "normal" but also completely wacked out and bizarre (i.e., popular group date for teenagers = baptising the dead.)

Last night, though, I happend to click past the show and recognize a familiar face. Being interviewed on the process of excommunication was my college Latin teacher--far and away my favorite professor who I didn't love mostly because she had a nice butt. (Her butt was fine, but I like boy butts better in general.) She's the reason I minored in Classics and took a bunch of rah-rah ya-ya courses on feminism in the ancient world, even though that's not really my thing. She was brilliant and engaging and she never wore the same outfit twice and she made outstanding baklava.

Anyway, there she was on t.v., talking about the pain of being rejected by her own family because she didn't want to follow the Mormon church the way it was required of her. Basically, she was asking too many questions. As one of the other interviewees put it (and I paraphrase), "As long as you play by the rules, being part of the Mormon culture is paradise. Everyone gets along and everyone is happy." Once you go in a different direction, though, everything breaks down around you. After my professor was officially excommunicated, she says the committee members shook her hand and acted very cordial. "Nice" was the word she used. And then she said something I've been trying to put my finger on for many years: "There is something vicious about niceness." And that's exactly it. Mormons will always be nice to you, but unless you're playing their game, they will probably also think poorly of you, maybe even talk behind your back, judge you, pity you. Sure, everyone is guilty of that at one time or another, but the sinister way that this particular kind of niceness is groomed and then cloaked in religion gives me the heebs. I think it comes down to my distaste for, to use two clumsy words, inauthenticity and ungenuineness; I'd rather people just say what they feel rather than walk around like they're Jesus 2.0 but then spread nasty gossip later on. This is why I'm down on organized religion in general. If you're Mother Theresa and you live what you preach, more power to you; if you're the little shit who lies and cheats and then tells his non-Mormon friends that they're going to be banished to outer darkness because they're not part of the club, well, I don't have much patience for you.

I watched the last forty-five minutes of the documentary and am now compelled to see the whole thing from the beginning. It's as full a picture of both the religion and the community (two entwined but separate entities; Utah Mormons are quite different from out-of-state Mormons) as I've ever seen, and even though there are still those nuances that will only ever be accessible to people who have spent years in the midst of it, if you've ever been curious as to what it's all about, this is a good place to start. You can watch the whole thing online.