Exponent II

} AN SP

Sw ’
SIZ,

0 ~
Bz

ty)
a iW

W,

JP go

Se

EXPONENT II

MA

02174-0002

J] > ==

at a nn; a
Exponent IT is 20

P
Claudia L. Bushman
First Editor, Exponent II
New York, New York

Eee IT is celebrating its twentieth
anniversary; the periodical is close to
achieving its majority. I expect that most people
will greet this anniversary with considerable
surprise. Exponent IT has come to a great age for
a modest little publication. For a whole
generation now, this little sheet has made its way
into the homes of the faithful like a quiet stream,
carrying with it beauty and refreshment, news
and encouragement.

What have been the achievements of
Exponent II? The first is certainly endurance,
when remuneration has been largely spiritual
rather than financial.

The second has been providing a forum
for airing the opinions of a fairly broad spectrum
of people. These views are heartfelt and justified,

but still they are views that might not find a home
in other publications. The twenty years of issues
reflect the honest views of Mormons, mostly
female, honest views on homely matters not
necessarily welcomed elsewhere. In the pages of
Exponent Il, we find a combination of the
personal, the modest, the sisterly, the wise, the
desperate, the indignant, the outrageous, the
disappointed, and the heartbroken not met with
elsewhere.

Finally, the paper has created a network
of friendship and connection that transcends
distance, as well as class and educational
differences, and even gender. I look at the dozen
or so young matrons photographed with John
Harvard so many years ago and think of the
experiences that we shared before we diverged in
direction and destination. I think of the many
years of meetings, retreats, dinners, and Exponent
Day speakers and marvel that a group has been
able to hang together so well so long without
serious breaches. Even though I am long gone

from the scene, I count these women with whom
I shared so many experiences, among my dear
friends. The network continues to grow and the
connections between the people are increasingly
Strengthened with shared disclosures, decisions,
and events. This network, fearful and awesome,
sometimes transcends other attachments.

When I meet new people even today, I
am often classified as an Exponent I] woman.
When I meet again people whom I knew in those
old days who did not do Exponent II activities,
they ask me why they were not involved. The
shadow of the publication has so grown and
lengthened that they wonder how they could have
lived in Boston in those days and not been part of
those discussions and paste-up sessions.

Exponent II began in a modest and
simple fashion and has remained faithful to its
original style and efforts. Perhaps I will still be
around for the fiftieth birthday. It seems just a
few days ago that I was commemorating the tenth
anniversary.

Drawn into the Spotlight

Judy Dushku
Watertown, Massachusetts

FR: Mormon women in Massachusetts to
suddenly have a highly visible but little
known political candidate who shared our
religious label running in one of the most
publicized and contentious Senate races in the
nation was a new kind of experience. For years,
most of us had lived with beliefs and habits that
were quite invisible to our neighbors. Efforts at
missionary work were frustrated by the
indifference that most people exhibited to what
mattered to us. But when Mitt Romney began
sharing the political spotlight with a man that
everyone in the state knows everything about
{Senator Ted Kennedy], those around us wanted
to know everything about us .. . as Mormons.

“You are a Mormon like Romney, aren’t
you? Well, what do you think about mandatory
death sentences?” “So what do you Mormons
think about gays in the military?” “Because you
are a Mormon, what would your—and
presumably all Mormons’—position be on day
care vouchers for poor women?” “What about
U.S. troops in Haiti?” We probably all thought
we had opinions on these issues, around which
debates have been raging for months or years, but
when the questions came flying at us from all
sides, it was a new kind of daily challenge to be
crisp and precise and to articulate our beliefs
accurately. And, it was quite a responsibility to
be clear about what beliefs have been shaped by
the Mormonism that we share with Mitt and what
beliefs have been molded by other experiences or
influences.

Naturally, in our very Catholic state the issue
that has been for years the center of the greatest
contention and fury and that has become the one
that defines for most citizens just how a political
person stands on “women’s issues” is
reproductive freedom. So, naturally our voting
neighbors wanted to get clear where we
Mormons stood on this tough one. We were
asked, over and over, “So, what’s your view . . .
exactly?”

Mitt came out early in the campaign for
“choice,” but for months he was ambiguous on
the subject of public funding for abortions. To
Massachusetts voters, backing off from public

funding has long been the signal that one’s
commitment to choice was weak. So the public
was kept guessing, and we Mormons often
became the object of random polling. Mitt
favored the distribution of the “morning after”
pill, which people associated with his being in
favor of empowering women to make their own
choices about continuing a pregnancy. But,
others described Mormons as being part of the
“religious right” and that usually meant that they
made some connection between Mormons and
the right-to-life groups that blockade abortion
clinics. “If you believe in the right to choose,
which trimester do you favor for cutting off
access to abortion?” “If you don’t believe in
abortion, what form of activism have you chosen
to support your position on terminating
pregnancies?” “Is abortion a criminal act? If so,
what do you believe should be done to those who
perform abortions?”

In Boston, the “right-to-lifers” stand
across the street from the clinics with signs
showing bloody fetuses and maimed babies.
Often, directly across the street from these folks,
stand the protectors of choice with their signs.
“Were you there?” we were asked. “On which
side?”

Some of us loved the opportunity to
clarify, while others pleaded for more time to
shape our positions. Mitt’s coming out openly
for choice made some of us who had secretly
held that position for decades feel emboldened
and safe to speak up; others could only remember
those friends whom we know had been denied
temple recommends for that same position, here
and far away. Some asked themselves if they
would feel so bold once this Massachusetts
election was over, once there was no Mormon
candidate “for choice.” Others committed
themselves to a life of activism, having come
alive because of this time of having our opinions
valued so much. Some said that, as transplanted
Westerners, they at last felt that they were part of
the political fabric of the state where they had
long made their homes and lives. Some who
have defended a non-choice position felt betrayed
by a Mormon whom they had called “leader” and
still feel confused that this issue has not yet been
“decided.” No matter what our point of view, we
were all brought into the dialogue.

But whether we felt heady and bold or
fascinated or frightened by the complexities of

this long-privately-debated issue, we felt more
sharply the blow that came on December 30,
1994, when two loving and nurturing women
were gunned down at their receptionist posts in
the foyers of women’s health clinics in our own
city of Boston. Just last year, they may not have
felt so close to us because their daily battles were
more foreign to us. They might have felt more
like outsiders, caring passionately about
something most of us may not have felt part of.
But over the months of the campaign, we had
become part of this debate and part of the people
who cared deeply and had opinions. We could
now relate to these women and their families, to
other people who worked at these clinics or who
went there as patients.

The sharpness of the shock comes from
realizing that these victims are not only our
geographical neighbors but also our close
associates in spirit and in the struggle for
solutions and peace of mind around this difficult
issue of managing mothering. Many of us have
visited the clinics to add our flowers or notes to
the large collection. Many of us have stood in
silent vigil, wondering if those who happen to be
standing near us are family or close friends of the
slain or if they come, as we have, to share each
other’s burdens in the hour of fear and grief.

No good person could have wanted these murders
to happen, but I genuinely believe that they have
provided an opportunity for us all to commit to a
position on these questions and to feel powerfully
that we have, just as much as the next person, a
responsibility to involve ourselves in the
solutions to this battle over women’s bodies. If
no other good can come of this horror, let it, at
least, catapult us into deciding what is right and
what is not right, what is intolerable and therefore
will not be tolerated, and then committing to
speak our conviction.

Since the day of the murders, every day
has seemed like Mother’s Day to me. My heart
is with mothers, and I love them for their strength
to make hard decisions in hard times. I want
them to have more power, not less. I am appalled
that they are so unprotected and disrespected. I
feel tremendous solidarity with the women who
died and who were injured and with the mothers
whom they helped and supported. We must
bear one another’s burdens and keep one
another safe.

Exponent Il

—— "CT

n Memorial Day, I unroll the

paper and gaze at the usual photo

of war veterans marching in

parade on a sunny southern

California day. As I read on, it is
not until I finish all twenty minutes of my small
town newspaper that it hits me. On this Memorial
Day, the paper is not filled with reminiscences of
traditional soldiers, but warriors of a different
sort.

Next to the front page photo, a story
reports that an ex-wife and her five-year-old
daughter have been shot and killed by their ex-
husband/father. Turning the page, I read of a
bride, shot dead in her white gown on her
wedding day by a jealous ex-lover. It came as no
surprise that a restraining order against him
proved useless. Next, I read of “Sweething
Bamard,” age eighteen. Since she was five, her
father had molested her sexually. Running away
from home at sixteen, she attempted suicide
several times and used alcohol and marijuana to
numb the pain. The news release stated that she
had finally checked herself into a mental
institution and found seven other personalities
residing within her.

There is more. Another page tells of
Charles Campbell who is awaiting execution for
three murders of revenge. The paper reports that
he slashed the throats of Renae Wicklund,
Barbara Hendrickson, and eight-year-old
Shannah Wicklund, whom he nearly decapitated.
He was mad at Wicklund about serving time for
raping her and at Hendrickson for her testimony
against him on that charge.

All in one paper, all in one day, Memorial
Day. I sit and wonder, where are their memorials?

All of this has hit hard because our small
town of 28,000 is mourning the loss of our first
police officer killed in the line of duty. In the
early hours following Mother’s Day, Officer Kent
Hintergardt came into harm’s way responding to
neighbors’ calls of a disturbance at an apartment
building. Hintergardt arrived at the building and
stopped a man in the parking lot. The man, Mark
Kamaka, had his twelve-year-old son in the car.
In front of his son, Kamaka shot the officer point
blank in the head, killing Hintergardt, a young
father whose wife was pregnant with their second
child.

During the resulting commotion, a
neighbor saw a little girl wandering in her
pajamas. He approached her and the breathless
six-year-old told him that her mommy was
upstairs and wasn’t moving. The neighbor
followed and found that Officer Hintergardt was
Kamaka’s second victim. On her bedroom floor
lay Allison Jacobs, single mother to little

Winner:
Helen Candland Stark
Essay Contest

Women's War

Shari Siebers Crall
Temecula, California

Brittany, her struggle futile against her one-time
boyfriend’s strangling hands.

There are more incidents, of course. We
all know battle stories. Our neighbor down the
street, our sister, ourselves. That is the point. I
know a few veterans; I can think of two who saw
combat; yet, in the same circle of my
acquaintance, I know scores of women who have
suffered violence at the hands of men, regular
men who hold jobs and don’t serve time unless
they finally kill one of us. In my suburban,
almost rural, setting, I know only two people who
have been robbed and one whose car was stolen;
yet, I have three women friends who have been
raped.

As I read the paper that day, I thought
back to another incident. After shopping at our
local department store one day, I loaded three of
my kids into our van. I noticed a couple parked
directly in front of me, chatting, I thought. I saw
nothing strange as I put my key into the ignition,
although he was leaning in particularly close to
her. We prepared to pull away when the woman
opened her car door to get out. The man grabbed
her belt and flung her back into the seat. As if in
slow motion, I watched as the expression on her
face turned from normal to surprise to oh-so-
much humiliation. Stunned, I sat there.
Eventually, both of them lit cigarettes and looked
toward me. If nothing else, I was determined to
remain a witness. They both mouthed, “It’s okay;
it’s okay.”

It’s okay? What’s going on?

The bus stop where I and my neighboring
housewives bring our kindergartners seems
innocuous enough. In fact, it is lined with old
soldiers. Four of the six suburban mothers
waiting there are recovering from violence—
physical, sexual, verbal—by fathers, stepfathers,
uncles, teenage boys, fathers of friends, and a
man whose children one of them babysat; all four
of those women are Mormon. Some days, long-
hidden land mines explode as we walk through
the minefields laid in our youth.

At this daily gathering, we check on each
other. If someone begins to cry or we realize that
Bea is wearing the same thing she wore
yesterday, and the day before, one of us goes over
later with a flower or a poem. Chatting in the
poignant dignity of survivors watching the parade
pass on, like old soldiers in uniform, we wave to
our smiling five-year-olds as the bus lurches
forward.

Of course, there are no parades or
uniforms for veterans of women’s war. Not even
a rally saying, “Give peace a chance.”

Where I live gangs have yet to make a
dent. You can go for a walk at 9:00 P.M., and
ranchers, who never did, still don’t lock their
doors. Yet, it seems violence to women is
inescapable. Beside Allison Jacobs, our lively
town hall receptionist, Sally Gilbert, was shot
dead by her boyfriend who then turned the gun
on himself. Her memorial service was the first
public gathering held at our brand new
community recreation center. The same week,
thirty-seven-year-old Sharon Maxwell was
beaten to death with a hammer by a former
boyfriend while her two small children slept in
their nearby bedrooms.

I want to stop listing story after story,
but I am compelled to tell their names,
determined that somewhere their deaths will be
counted. Surely these women have sacrificed
their lives in as senseless a quagmire as any
found on a battlefield.

Don’t think it won’t touch you. Don’t
think it isn’t touching you now. Statistics claim
one in three women is sexually abused by the
time she is eighteen. Think of three women you
know: count down three women in the row in
front of you at church; your daughter and her
two best friends; or three female co-workers.
chances are, no matter how sheltered their
circumstances, one of them has fought this war.

Maybe some day we’ll build a memorial
to the women whose lives were lost before we
won the battle to make the world safe for our
daughters to grow up in. Last Memorial Day, the
body count in my local paper stood at six dead
and Sweething Barnard, who just wishes she

was. *

Shari Siebers Crall

Volume 19 Number 1

laledatele-lel(-M lV (-Tattlel tp

Helen Candland Stark

Essay Contest

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: Reflections in Fifteen Fragments

Beginnings

My earliest memories of the sacrament are not
actual memories but feelings. Curled up in my
mom’s lap, I felt safe. Looking up at my father on
the stand, I felt important. Carefully balancing
the teeny cup of water without spilling, I felt
grown up. Taking only one piece of bread when I
wanted to sneak more, I felt obedient. And
thinking about Jesus, I knew I had a secret
advocate—someone who understood even when
the kids in Sunday School made fun of me for
knowing all the answers. I knew He had gathered
the little children around Him. I knew He would
have gathered me.

I didn’t quite understand why He had a
beard, when no one else at church did. Looking
back, I believe this was my introduction into the
not-so-comfortable world of ambiguity.

The Sanctification of Jello

Fernand, a seventy-five-year-old priest in France,
believed that any meal shared between friends is
a replication of the Lord’s Supper. And, for us, a
meal was the only sacrament we could share as
two Mormon missionaries and a Catholic priest
with separate rituals and lines of authority that
refused to converge. Fernand insisted on sharing
a meal with his petites soeurs. A holy meal, he
said. We figured he was just lonely. We fixed a
truly American feast: hamburgers and lime jello
left over from a Christmas care package. We
taught him “I am a Child of God,” sang, blessed
the food, and ate together as an unlikely trio in
his studio apartment. He called it holy. The
sacrament of friendship, he said.

“And He took bread, and gave thanks,
and brake it.”

I grew up in a homemade bread family. Whole
wheat, from flour ground in the mill sold by a
couple in the ward. The rare occasions when we
bought Wonder White were cause for celebration.
Not only could I finally take a sandwich that
looked like everyone else’s to school, but I could
sneak downstairs and play sacrament. I would
sing sacrament hymns, break the bread, and
pronounce the prayer on the bread, as best as I
could from memory. Then I would eat it all. I
rarely moved on to the water because the Dixie
cups in the bathrooms were still far too big and
also because it was the white bread that was such
a novelty. | debated techniques. Was it best to
tear it into strips first and then move from strips
to individuals pieces? Or should I just do it piece
by piece? Which method would I choose? Should
I break it quickly, or slowly and deliberately?
What if I encountered the absolute embarrass-
ment of not being done before the end of the
sacrament hymn? What if I got the prayer wrong?

Exponent II

Diane Brown
Cambridge, Massachusetts

il

What would I do if I blundered in front of the
whole ward? Thankfully, I learned to snap
myself right back into reality when I remembered
that those questions didn’t matter for me. Not for
a girl.

Symphony

I remember when our ward changed from paper
sacrament cups to plastic. My father was out-
raged at the way these noisy new cups disrupted
the essential reverence of the sacrament. He
posed question after question: Was this decision
economic? Was it official church policy? A
change in the handbook? Who on Earth would
have made such a thoughtless policy?

Now, after many years of plastic cups, I
would be lost without the soft symphony of those
cups dropping into metal trays. When concentra-
tion is impossible, and the atonement—at best—
a mystery, I close my eyes and welcome the
hypnosis that comes from focusing on the sound
of cups. Every Sabbath offers a unique composi-
tion of rhythm only, no change in pitch. The
milli-seconds of silence between plastic plunks
stretch out in my head. The cadence mesmerizes
me. I hear no babies, no coughs, only the familiar
sounds of ancient ritual translated into a modern,
plastic world. Christ in the upper room had no
noisy cups, no shiny metal trays.

A child of my generation, I fear I would
have been lost among the stark silences of the
meridian of time.

Souvenirs

I invented many anti-boredom sacrament games.
My favorite in fourth grade was the lipstick
game. The rules were simple: count the number
of cups with lipstick marks in the bottom of the
tray. Penalties accrued if Mom ever caught on.
One glorious afternoon, I counted twelve:
brilliant half-circles from Passionate Pink to
Frosty Orange. Triumph.

ll

- Capernaum

In the village of Capernaum, on the shores of the
Sea of Galilee, Christ rebuked the crowd for
following Him. It was not enough to follow
Christ; one had to follow for the right reasons.

p That day, His followers came because they had

eaten the miraculously provided loaves and were
filled.

Christ quickly moved from His rebuke—
which was for putting the physical before the
spiritual, the physical loaves before the bread of
life—to a proclamation of who He was. He was
and is the bread of life. His bread was not Sinai’s
sustaining manna; manna only offered the

B children of Israel a few more years of mortal life
Christ’s was the bread of a more enduring sort

Eternal life, eternal bread.!

But even in a ritual of salvation, Christ
does not divorce the sacrament from the physical
body. The bread is His flesh; it symbolizes
Christ’s body, not His soul.

He was and is the bread of life. To
partake is to enact an event so sacred that I am
often afraid to partake.

The Tray

The water tray begins its odyssey entirely full of
cups. The members of the congregation remove
the cups one by one and systematically the tray is
transformed from full to empty. The holes in the
tray torment me. They speak of emptiness, of
loss, of something not being where it should be. I
feel an unspeakable burden. Faced with the
empty space in the tray, I know that I should be
filled. That somewhere—because matter is not
lost—the plenitude must have been transferred.
Am] filled after partaking? Have I truly drunk
to my own salvation?

Etymologies (I)

Take (transitive verb). Partake (intransitive
verb).

To take is to take directly: grammatically the
verb rake governs a direct object. I take a class, a
break, a book off the shelf. To partake, on the
other hand, requires the distancing of the object.
Partake is intransitive. One partakes of. One
does not partake directly. The grammar of
sacrament reminds us of our need for an interme-
diary. Just as we do not partake the sacrament,
but rather partake of the sacrament, we do not
partake of redemption without mediation. Christ
is always positioned between us and the redemp-
tion that we crave. The grammar of existence
does not allow eternal life to be a direct object.

ee Ee ee ee ye pe A ed ne ee

Etymologies (Il)

Sacrament. Eucharist.

Mormons only celebrate one sacrament. The
Roman Catholic church holds that there are seven
sacraments; many Protestant groups recognize
two: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The English
word sacrament stems from the Latin
sacramentum, which defined a military oath of
allegiance. It carries great weight because of its
root sacer, or sacred. In other words, the sacra-
ment is a sacred oath, some sort of holy confes-
sion. The sacrament prayer makes the covenant
explicit: we eat and drink in remembrance of
Christ. We are then promised that as we always
remember Him, we will have His spirit to be with
us.

Eucharist, the term used in the Catholic
mass for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, is
Greek in origin. The word is derived from
eucharistos, which means “grateful” or “thank-
ful.” It also carries a sense of grace, for charis is
Greek for “grace.”

As Mormons, adopting the term sacra-
ment, we may be linguistically aware of the
sacredness of the ritual, but we miss what other
worshippers might not: that the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper is a moment of gratitude and
grace.

Perhaps we can learn to increase the
sacredness of our sacramentum as our hearts
remember eucharistos. Grace, Gratitude. Sacred
grace and sacred gratitude, a wedding of the
Latin and the Greek.

A Mormon Considers a French Jew Who
Considers the Catholic Eucharist

Simone Weil envisioned the Eucharist as a
moment where we contemplate absolute purity.
Because there is no direct relationship between a
piece of bread and the divinity of God, the piece
of bread is pure symbolism. In the act of consid-
ering something entirely pure (the bread), we
forget the evil that we sense within ourselves.
Through this consideration, Weil writes, a part of
that deep-down evil is destroyed.

In other words, salvation dwells in the
realm of metaphor as it cannot exist in the
physical world. We enter sacrament meeting with
our whole selves, with our bodies that lust and sin
and so often betray the pure longings of our
spirits. Then, in the act of pondering a symbol,
we can attain a moment of cleansing and redemp-
tion.

I do not believe the cleansing moment
described by Simone Weil can endure more than
a moment. We are always already brought back to
our bodies. Because we are mortal, we cannot
singlemindedly ponder the bread; the world of
the metaphor cannot be sustained. Physical,
mortal, hungering, we eat. We take the real bread
into our real bodies in a sacred weaving of the
spiritual and the physical, of the sacred and the
profane.

Singing

My favorite sacrament hymn is “There is a Green
Hill Far Away.” Oh dearly, dearly has He loved.

Sure

a

The Offering

The sacrament tray passes from hand to hand.
The deacons offer us the tray. We eat or drink and
then pass the tray along. We feed each other in a
chain of giving and partaking. I hold the tray
while you take; you continue the chain and offer
it to your neighbor. My father often takes the tray
with his left hand, holds the tray for himself, and
then takes the sacrament with his right hand. This
act, while innocent enough, erases part of the
community of communion. It speaks of self-
sufficiency at the very moment when one should
be aware of dependence. We are dependent on
others to pass us the sacrament, just as we depend
on Christ to offer us His saving grace. The
sacrament, like salvation, cannot take place in
isolation. We need to receive with gladness and
then pass along what we have received. Hands,
mouth, hungry, filled. We are never quite alone in
the community of Christ. It cannot be otherwise.

Kneading

Several years ago, my ward began asking the
Relief Society to provide homemade bread for
the sacrament. I was the Saturday morning bread
maker in our home of all boys, so I knew about
bread, knew the feel of the dough as it responded
to my small hands. As I thought of women in the
ward making the bread for the sacrament, I was
filled with wonder. My eleven-year-old self
marveled at the transformation of the quotidian
into the sacred. The mixing, pounding, folding,
punching, greasing, baking were sanctified as a
community of believing women offered baked
bread to the ritual of communion.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the
seemingly arbitrary symbol of Christ’s body is
something that itself undergoes transformation.
Jesus could have chosen a carrot, or a fig, or an
apple—something that appears in nature much as
it appears on our table. But He did not. Rather,

He chose a symbol of transformation. As the
flour, the yeast, the water undergo metamorpho-
sis—from the inedible to the staff of life—so we
can become new creatures as we move from the
raw ingredients of an unformed, unholy life to the
refined, kneaded life of discipleship. And like the
rising of bread in the impatient time table of an
eleven-year-old, sometimes the process of rising
takes a very, very long time. All Saturday morn-
ing, and sometimes even longer... . .

Reluctant

My mind wanders during the sacrament. Some-
times this is simply evidence of my humanity.
Other times, though, it is because the weight of
what I am accepting in Christ’s gift of atonement
is too much. I must consider some sobering

truths:*
1. He was wounded for our trans-
gressions.
2. He was bruised for our iniquities.
3. With His stripes we are healed.

4. He poured out His soul unto death.
Wounded, bruised, crucified all
because sometimes I find it inconve-
nient to obey. I must be healed, but
must the price be so high? Does it
really require His stripes? How
could I require that? How could I
ask so much?

Are my unkind words, my unforgiving
heart, my rebellious acts, my deliberate sins a
worthy justification for the suffering and death of
one who knew nothing of rebellion and sin? It is
this disparity that causes me such pain. Reluc-
tantly, cautiously, I take the healing bread and
water, knowing that I will never fully understand
the cost. And knowing that I will bring sins to the
altar again and again. With His stripes I am
healed; I am sorry to require so much.

Sinners’ Bench

Sometimes I sit on a bench where we all tend to
shyly pass the tray on without partaking, which
invariably confuses those around us. How did all
the sinners find each other? Do they save seats
for each other? Are they marked?

I ask very different questions. When will
we still sit together but also partake together?
When will we cease to stubbornly close our
mouths to the nourishment that would heal us?
How long will we cling to the frail fellowship of
those who think themselves outside of Christ’s
love? When will we finally know that the arms of
Christ’s mercy are extended all the day long?

I do not know. I wishI did.

' John 6:26; 48-51.

> Simone Weil, Waiting for God. Trans. Emma
Craufurd (New York: Putnam, 1951). Transla-
tion of Attente de Dieu. (Paris: La Colombe,
1950).

‘Isaiah 53:5 and 12.

. hh eee

eS... aQQa8Qgk Sg ma sT_

olume 19 Number 1

balelureye-le) (Mattei es

alam er-lalel Flite Roi ele

y college friend, Michael, died

recently of AIDS. Until now,

AIDS victims have been

Statistics, cold numbers spit

out by computers. Suddenly
though, with the news of Michael’s death, the
numbers have faces. One is a familiar face with
dark brown eyes, a goofy grin and stick-straight
hair, the face of my friend, a vivacious young
man with a whole life ahead of him.

Michael and I, along with a close-knit
group of college pals, discovered life together
and revelled in the joy of youth. We shared our
dreams and frustrations, discussing ad nauseam
what we’d do with our lives and the part we’d
play in saving the world. We toilet-papered
houses together and laughed until dawn while
eating cheesecake in all-night restaurants. Now
he is dead at thirty-three, not long after those
nights of silly college pranks and talking until the
sun came up.

Besides being a first-class prankster,
Michael was a member of the Church. He had
served a mission and completed schooling at
Ricks and BYU. At the time of his death, he was
not active in an LDS congregation, but the
imprint of Mormonism remained. Although he
had chosen a lifestyle that was inconsistent with
Church teachings, many Mormon values re-
mained with him like knotted threads of a care-
fully stitched patchwork quilt. He grew up in the
Church, as did all the members of our college
gang.

We all feel sad about Michael’s death.
But I feel sadder about the last years of his life.
Michael never told any of us—the group of
friends who shared big chunks of life together—
about his illness.

We had suspicions, of course, and after
Michael’s funeral, a friend admitted he’d sus-
pected the truth when he saw a carefully con-
cealed bottle of AZT on Michael’s counter. Still,
Michael didn’t want anyone to know. He
guarded his secret and maintained a near-normal
life until his last months.

Many Church members
want to ignore AIDS,
thinking it's a problem
that won't touch

their lives.

Why did Michael deal with his terminal
illness alone? Why couldn’t we, his friends, help
and support him? The simple answer says we
lived far apart geographically and were each
involved in our own busy lives, relegating college
relationships to Christmas cards and infrequent
reunions. Maybe that’s true; however, other
college friends within the same group have
shared their pain despite these deterrents. We’ ve
commiserated over crises as disparate as failed
marriages, depression, and the loss of babies.
Why couldn't Michael do the same?

Essay Contest

Blessing the Sick and Afflicted

Lisa Ray Turner
Littleton, Colorado

I wonder if Michael thought we’d sit in
our comfortable homes, so far from AIDS
hospital corridors, and smugly blame, judge, and
condemn. As someone who strives to follow
Christ, this thought troubles me.

What bothers me even more is that
perhaps Michael was right. I’ ve been disturbed
at the reaction from acquaintances when I’ve told
them about Michael’s death. Invariably, they
have immediately asked, “How did he get it?” or
“Was he gay?” as if they want to withhold
compassion until they know how he acquired the
disease.

The victims of this cruel
disease are not meaningless
statistics but friends, sons,
daughters, and ward
members.

My response is always the same: “Does it
matter?” A young man has suffered through a
brutal sickness and died prematurely. His
mother and father grieve for their lost son and try
to get back to normal life in their small Idaho
town, amidst ugly prejudice and a disease that
they can only whisper about behind closed doors.
Michael’s friends struggle to mend the jagged
hole his passing has left. These facts are indis-
putable, regardless of how the virus was transmit-
ted.

Many Church members want to ignore
AIDS, thinking it’s a problem that won’t touch
their lives. Many think AIDS victims are not
worthy of sympathy because “they brought it on
themselves.” However, Church members are not
isolated from this disease. There are Michaels in
wards everywhere. The victims of this cruel
disease are not meaningless statistics but friends,
sons, daughters, and ward members. Surely we,
as Church members and Christians, can show our
love and share in the grief of lives cut short.

We can remember how Christ treated
people, especially the lowly members of his
society—sinners, Samaritans, and lepers. When
the Pharisees brought a woman guilty of adultery
to Jesus, he did not condemn, humiliate, or judge
but simply said, “Go thy way and sin no more.”
(John 8:1-11) This kindness is particularly
poignant when considering that the punishment
for adultery at the time was stoning. When the
unvirtuous woman washed the Savior’s feet, the
disciples criticized, aghast that an immoral
woman would dare to wash Christ’s feet. Jesus
freely forgave the woman and accepted her
contrite gesture. (Luke 7:36)

Perhaps the most profound example of
compassion is in Christ’s treatment of the lepers.
Leprosy was a vicious disease, disfiguring and
incurable. Lepers were regarded with such
abhorrence that they were required to dress in the

clothing of death and announce their condition by
the cry, “Unclean!” Nobody would go neara :
leper for fear of catching the dread disease.

The leper’s grotesque appearance fright-
ened even the most kind souls. The disease
literally ate its victims alive, leaving discolored
skin and scabs, decayed gums and teeth, and raw
fleshy sores. Eyes could be consumed and
fingers and toes decayed until they were gone. It
was a common notion that God gave leprosy as a
punishment.

To these most feared and scorned mem-
bers of society, Christ showed empathy. He
touched them freely. How good it must have felt
for the lepers to feel the touch of another human
being. He healed and cleansed them. He loved
them. He never asked how they got leprosy or
whether they were worthy of his charity. It didn’t
matter.

Christ has given us a perfect example of
how to treat AIDS patients and their families. We
shouldn’t ignore or walk around them, as the
people did to the Samaritans in Christ’s time.
Nor should we make them outcasts like the
Biblical lepers.

Instead, we can welcome them into our
circles of friendship and acknowledge their pain,
as well as their joys and their will to live. We
can laugh with them, share their lives, and mourn
with their families when they are gone. Mostly,
we can treat them like everybody else.

I never would have imagined
that my healthy young friend
would become a casualty of
AIDS before his thirty-fifth
birthday.

While it’s true that some of us will not
come in contact with a Michael, many of us will.
I never would have imagined that my healthy
young friend would become a casualty of AIDS
before his thirty-fifth birthday. The uncertainty
of life is such that it’s impossible to predict what
lies ahead.

Given this uncertainty, I hope the next
time I know somebody with this disease, I'll be
able to show I care. I hope I won't find a hidden
bottle of AZT. I hope I won’t blame or criticize.
As Church members and followers of Christ, we
can share these same hopes and, in doing so,
bless not only ourselves but the Michaels of the
world. ¥

Exponent Il

Illustrated by Linda Hoffman Kimball

I Give My Heart...

Jenny Atkinson
Cambridge, Massachusetts

everal years ago, in a class about the

history of Christianity, the professor

explained that the word credo, which

is often translated as “to believe,”

was better understood in the context of
a phrase like “giving one's whole heart.” As I
have thought about this subtle difference, I've
tried framing my testimony in these words. It was
enlightening to see what I felt | could give my
whole heart to. At the time, I expressed my
testimony in this way.

I give my whole heart to God: I think very
seriously about what God expects of me and how
I can live the way God would like me to.

I give my whole heart to my family: They are
my favorite people and some of my best ex-
amples. I also give my whole heart to living in
ways that will help me to be a good part of
another family some day. I am learning to think
of family as more than just the people with whom
I am related by blood or marriage.

Poultry, Prestige, and Power

Linda Hoffman Kimball
Belmont, Massachusetts

he summer before I started college, I

had a job in a factory picking the

meat off chicken bones. My first

day on the job I was determined to

do my job well, to pick the meat in
just the proper way, to flick the lights and darks
off with finesse. However, after an hour trying
my best on the job, I nearly fainted and had to
spend a short spell on the nurse’s cot recovering.
“What went wrong?” I wondered. “Was this just a
befouled case of ‘What e’er thou art, act well thy
part?’”

This job needed to be done. The service
provided was important, and the money wasn’t
even bad. I concluded, however, that it did not
need to be done with the same part of my brain I
used in every other facet of my life. After a
certain point, excellence was not required to get
the meat off chicken bones; excellence was
required in approaching the work in a way that
would keep me healthy, awake, and sane. I found
ways to enjoy the hours at Polo Chicken. For
example, some of my hair-netted colleagues and I
made up songs to ease the boredom. Like little

I give my whole heart to being a Mormon:
The people who know me best are probably
surprised to hear me say this with all of the
concerns I have about church issues, especially
knowing that I am not very invested in or com-
mitted to institutions in general, but I think that
lots of Mormon things can be separated from the
institution and I look for these things. One
example of this would be testimony meeting. I
have always loved testimony meetings because,
except for a few people who are unfortunately
excluded, anyone can come up here and talk
about what they are thinking, how they feel about
God, and so forth. This forum allows us to build
a real sense of community where we can learn to
love, serve, and trust one another.

I give my whole heart to following the example
of Jesus: I love studying about his life in the
New Testament and trying to live and love like he
did.

I give my whole heart to the struggle: It’s hard
for me to explain exactly what I mean by this
because so much of our discourse has been
reduced to PC lingo—words are so politically
and socially loaded now. The closest I can come
to explaining, I guess, would be to say that I give
my whole heart to seeing people and things that

chain-gang chicken pickers, we worked better to
steady rhythms. I still remember the lyrics:

Chicken, chicken give me your body, do.
I’m half greasy over the skin of you.

It won’t be a stylish plucking.

I cannot stand your clucking.

But you'll look sweet

With your white meat

On a chopper just built for you!

This job taught me things besides how to
adapt poultry themes to music. It taught me
respect for people who do production work day
after day. When I am about to eat a Lean Cuisine
meal, I really mean it when I ask God to bless the
hands that prepared it. I praise mothers who
watch Bamey or Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
five times a day. I thank God for long-distance
truck drivers. And I raise my glass of milk in a
toast to the diary farmers whose lives are sched-
uled around unrelenting bovine bodily functions.

All these jobs have a common element—
tedium. But, tedium is not the only characteristic
that can make an occupation trying. Depending
on one’s personality, any job can be a trial. Some
people have not been able to choose their work
situations and therefore feel trapped and resent-
ful. Some have chosen their jobs and are still
resentful. Some seem to have an inner core of

Sacrament Meeting
gage 42.08

our society tries to hide or make invisible. Some
examples I’ve been thinking about lately in-
clude: people who don’t have homes, hungry
children, incarcerated women, men who are
unable to help support their families because
they have been disabled in a dangerous job or
because they work for less than a living wage,
people who speak the wrong language or use the
wrong words or live in a reality that is different
from the one that most of us are familiar with.
For me, part of being in the struggle means being
very careful about the career I chose or the jobs I
take, what products I buy, who I vote for, how I
spend my money and my time, what assumptions
I make about other people and experiences. This
approach is hard for me, and I don’t usually
succeed. I also don’t plan to give up.

I give my whole heart to being joyful: Some-
times in the face of horror and inequality in our
own lives or the lives of others we cannot have
joy or it seems wrong to have joy. I think that
God wants us to be joyful. I am joyful when I see
parts of the world that are still beautiful. 1 am
joyful when I see good work that people do. I am
joyful when I am able to make good connections
with people.

contentment quite apart from whether they chose
their work or had it forced on them. Although I
respect people in each category, it is that last
one—those with the inner core of contentment—
from whom I have the most to learn.

In the scriptures, Christ picked out
people for us to learn from. When I look at whom
He chose, I see something I have begun to
expect: Jesus has set the world’s definitions on
their ear. Poor widows and outcast women are
honored and held up by Jesus as holy examples to
all. Children are set on Christ’s lap: “Of such is
the kingdom of heaven,” we are told. How does
it affect our understanding of truly valuable
service when a simple young woman and an
undistinguished carpenter become the guardians
of the Son of God? When he calls fishermen
instead of the politically powerful to be his
leaders? Joy does not come from acclaim, nor
success from wealth, fanfare, or the absence of
conflict.

Clearly, this is not how our American
society operates. Money and prestige and status
get attached to certain occupations in ways that I
have never been able to figure out. Recently, I
got a modest pay check for some work I did for a
periodical. Why was the photograph that graced
the cover (and that took less than a second to
snap) valued at three times the amount of the

(Continued on page 8)

Dimmu

a

————— ee eee

Poultry, Prestige, and Power
(Continued from page 7)

accompanying article that I had slaved over for
weeks? I don’t understand it, but I was glad to
get a check.

I was asked recently, “What do you do?”
It's acommon question, but the answer is tricky.
Do I list academic accomplishments? Do I list
relationships to children or husband or parents or
grandparents-in-law? Do I trot out my writing
samples or my drawings? Do I talk about my
hobbies or heritage or allergies? Do I talk about
my Church callings? No matter which I choose
to highlight someone might feel attracted, where
another is put off.

I resist giving the expected answer: I’ma
homemaker; I’m an artist; I’m a writer, or
whatever. It is not just because I am perverse,
although that may have something to do with it. I
am full of contradictions. Am I a feminist, a
devotee of the men’s movement, an intellectual, a
glue-gun expert, a liberal, a conservative? All of
the above? None of the above? Labels give me
the heebie jeebies. I feel as if I will be yanked
asunder by all the tugging camps.

Still, answering like Popeye with “I am
what I am and that’s all what I am” doesn’t
communicate much. It will not get me a job or a
temple recommend or, if circumstances were
slightly different, a date. Society requires practi-
cal accommodations. I have tried to think of
some handy and accurate titles to answer the
question smoothly the next time it comes up—
and inevitably it will. I could say I am doing field
research in human development and child
psychology. I am also the curator of a small
private zoo. Given how many things I choose to
do and how many things I have to do, I should
just tell people I am a juggler. I covet a sweatshirt
I saw advertised recently. It reads, “I am Woman.
Iam Invincible. I am Tired.”

A socially acceptable list of credentials
would not show the most important things I did
last week. I listened to my eight-year-old read me
Mice at Bat. | sang the complete theme song to
the Yogi Bear Show with a friend in my kitchen. I
wept over the recent loss of my mother. Society
has no monikers for these connective accomplish-
ments. But—I am coming more and more to
understand—although society demands some
accommodation, I do not have to give it my soul.
I will, in fact, be damned if I do.

Does our Church society require accom-
modation? My mother made me think hard about
that question just after my husband was called to
be a bishop in May. My mother was not Mormon
and didn’t know much about the Church or its
organizational structure. She had heard like the
rest of the nation about President Benson’s
passing, and she knew that Chris was a new
bishop. She asked, “Does Chris’s promotion at
Church have anything to do with Ezra Benson’s
dying?”

From her point of view, it was a perfectly
natural question, but it made me chuckle. There
is always some trickle-down effect, but not this
far. More importantly, do we as Church members
see calls as bishop, Relief Society president,
mission leader, elders’ quorum president, general
authority as promotions? As prestige posts? Do
we offer congratulations to someone to whom
these callings have been extended—or condo-
lences? Do we do the same for someone who has

been called as a visiting teacher or a bulletin
typist? Should we? Isn’t one of our favorite
Mormon pastimes speculating on who will be the
next so-and-so in the ward or the stake? If we are
thoroughly honest with ourselves—and God asks
us to offer our whole selves, not just the good
stuff—are we capable of letting go of this
worldly reaction? What do we do with traces of
ecclesiastical ambition?

But if, as imperfect human beings, we are
not completely able (or willing) to give up this
kind of evaluation, where do we draw the line in
our accommodation to it? This question is not
easy to answer. For example, in a ward where
there are many new black members, but no black
faces on the stand conducting, what do we do
with the honest human need for mentors and role
models? Where do the deaf go to see their
language as the language of leaders? Do we
women who lead have to have a podium to do it
from? If you have answers to these questions,
please let me know.

As a convert to the Church, one of its
most appealing principles to me, at least in
theory, is our commitment to lay leadership, to
the fruit-basket-upset mode of Church organiza-
tion. True, it can make for some boring meetings,
peculiar management of auxiliaries, and teeth-
clenching stress. But this system also provides
the spiritual petri dish for something else. We can
learn to love rather than just “deal with” one
another. We can learn acceptance, tolerance,
reconciliation, forgiveness, and patience. Hope-
fully, through all of this, we will also learn that
our religion is no substitute for our individual
relationship with deity. For all the “foyer follies,”
we are still called one by one to “come unto the
Lord with all your heart, and work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling before
him.” (Mormon 9:27)

A ward can switch gears smoothly when
changes happen or with squeals and groans, like a
troubled transmission. Inevitably, some will
prefer the old mode, and some will prefer the
new. Someone who was once a stimulating
Sunday School teacher is now a quorum secretary
who has trouble with details. Someone with no
rapport with children may be called to serve in
the Primary even if it is obvious to the person, the
bishop, and the Lord that the person really has
no rapport with children. The question with
Church callings is not “Why me?” or “Why not
me?” Perhaps the question is, “What is the lesson
I’m supposed to be getting out of this?” “What
kind of service is required of me here?” As my
experience at the chicken factory taught me,
some jobs really only need to be done. When I
get a Church calling I can ask “Is this the kind of
assignment where I bring my creativity to the job
itself or to the thinking up of chicken songs while
I’m getting something dull accomplished?” More
gracefully put, “How can I find peace, joy, and
contentment in my present circumstance?”

Something different is going on with
Church service than the “best” job for the “most
capable” person. We're not supposed to be
operating by the world’s rules here. In my ward
last year, my husband and I became good friends
with a couple who were in the area for a sabbati-
cal. While Marge and I buoyed each other as
counsellors in the Relief Society, Bill was my
second grader’s Primary teacher. Bill had never
been a Primary teacher before. He had been

mission president in Hong Kong and had served
as a bishop and in stake presidencies for years, |
was very grateful that my son could be taught by
a man who gave the same commitment to teach-
ing second graders that he would have given to
an executive calling. In the world’s eyes, was this
a demotion? Did I care?

When we lived in Illinois, I had the
opportunity to be a temple worker. The kindly
woman who trained me explained the simplest
assignment first—to stand at various places in the
temple to make sure people went the right
direction. Someone had to stand at the door and
greet people. Others had to stand farther back at
Stations in the building and gesture for the men to
go one way and the women the other. These posts
were only given in half-hour time slots because
they were, of course, pretty boring jobs, and it
was hard for some of the workers to stand up that
long. The other assignments—the ones that
required word for word accuracy and authority—
were rotated with this assignment as “door
keeper” as a matter of course. It was simply
understood. It was just part of service in the
temple.

I loved that! I was once again awash in
the upside-downedness of gospel priorities. Do
lust for power? I will never get it. Do I chose to
serve? I will be doused with the power required
for it.

That first day at the temple in Illinois, I
remembered a beautiful song called “Keeper of
the Door” by a Christian singer, Twila Paris. She
based it on Psalms 84:10: “...I had rather be a
doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell
in the tents of wickedness.” The singer begins by
describing a dream where she is proclaiming
God’s Word for thousands of people to hear. This
seems like a holy ambition, similar to the “O that
I were an angel” passage from Alma 29. It’s a
great dream; people come from all over to hear
her, and her name is up in lights. But she sees the
snag; whose glory is she more interested in?
What—or whom—was she trying to magnify?
Even a worthy goal cannot be fully accomplished
without a humble attitude. She then prays to be a
servant in God’s kingdom. She prays to become
familiar with the Way of Life in the dwelling
place of God.

Door keeper. Chicken picker. Queen and
priestess. Just put me where You want me.

That's the attitude I’m after.

My daughter, the vegetarian, can’t stand
to see me wrist deep in chicken parts. It’s not my
favorite thing to do either, but it is a great physi-
cal reminder of spiritual lessons. And what are
those lessons still being worked into my own
human bones? That as I live and work and
worship I will search for ways to serve with joy
and contentment; that I will examine my priori-
ties; that I will try to discern the difference
between God’s view and the world’s; that I will
pray to know what questions to ask and have the
courage to accept Godly answers; that I will
understand the approach to take to accomplish
what is required of me; that I will declare as
Mary did, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be
it unto me according to thy word....My soul doth
magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
God my Savior.” (Luke 1: 38, 46-47) ¥

Exponent Il

Sacrament Meeting
Sampler

phesians 6:1-4 says, “Children, obey

your parents in the Lord: for this is

right. Honor thy father and mother;

that it may be well with thee, and

thou mayest live long on the earth.
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to
wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord. I have some strong
feelings about the responsibilities of parents.
These ideas are shaped by my past experiences
growing up poor and black and by Church
teachings. It is Church doctrine that in the family
children should be cared for and taught eternal
principles. The most important of the Lord’s
work will be that which we do within our own
homes.

In our home, my husband and I try to
teach our children about gospel principles,
including being morally clean and the importance
of loving one another. When I was young, I
wished that both of my parents believed in these
principles.

My parents were divorced by the time I
was six years old. My father, who was an alco-
holic, did not share the responsibility of raising
his family. He felt that because he was drunk all
the time, it would be easier for him to leave.

My mom worked very hard and we saw
very little of her. She made sure that we ate
dinner with her or ate dinner while she was there.
Most of the time, she did not eat dinner because
there was not enough for her. As a child, I used to
wake up in the middle of the night to find my
mom on her knees crying and asking the Lord to
help her feed her children another day. I learned
something from this. I learned how to pray, what
to ask for and that my mom loved us very much. I
also learned an important lesson from my father
and that was that I will never drink.

It is Church doctrine that children should
be encouraged and allowed to receive as much
education as possible to make sure that they are
prepared for their life’s work. My mom could
neither read nor write and the only job she could
ever get was that of a maid or a cook. She taught
us how important it was that we should get a
good education. She also stressed that what you
learn or what you know should be shared with
those who don’t know.

We practiced this idea in our home with
mother. We taught her the basic knowledge of
words and how to sound them out. I remember
that when I was in the third grade, she would ask
me to read to her while she patched my brothers’
jeans. She was hoping that she might learn
something new from this. She didn’t have time to
go to school as an adult because she had a family
to raise.

Years later, we taught mom how to read
well enough to fill out a job application. She
never had a desire to progress past this point. She
obtained employment in a nursing home as a
cook from the skills she had learned from her
children. We were all so happy about that. We are

Nurture and Admonition

Hattie Soil
Las Vegas, Nevada

also happy when mother sends her own Christ-
mas cards out to her children. The cards never
have return addresses on them so the postmen are
forced to read and delivery them to us. We have
never had a Christmas without a card from
mother.

In our home, during family home
evening, we discuss with our children the fact
that grandmother was unable to read. We also
discuss how much she missed out of life because
of this problem. She has always told her own
children that if she could read there would have
been lots of things that she could have done and it
would have b
een easier for her to raise her children. I disagree
with her. With all the turmoil and racial problems
that were occurring during the fifties these were
the only jobs available for black women. I think
that it is true that if Mother had been able to read,
she could have made her life a little more
exciting through books, art and literature and
maybe understood things a little better.

It is also Church doctrine that we as
parents should seek help first from family mem-
bers and relatives who may be in a position to
help. As a child, I have always lived in communi-
ties that were all black and all poor. My mother
didn’t have anything to give and no one had
anything to give to us. It would have been a
waste of time or a total embarrassment to ask
relatives for something they didn’t have. Her
siblings talked about how sorry they felt for
Mother struggling so hard. They wished that they
could help her, but they were struggling too. My
mother’s favorite song during these times was
“God Bless the Child Who Has His Own.” We
didn’t quite have our “own,” but we felt very
blessed with the little that we did have.

The way we lived made us strong. We
didn’t have much, but we had each other. I know
now that it wasn’t easy for us and deep down it
made us feel a little bitter toward society for the
way we were treated, but we can’t dwell on that
because it will get in the way of our future and
what we are trying to accomplish in this life. It is
also Church doctrine that we teach our children
good work habits and attitudes while they are
young. These habits will likely stay with them
later. This will make a difference between a
useful, productive life and one that is idle and
wasteful.

As children, we were never on welfare.
We always helped Mother by working small jobs.
My brothers usually had paper routes or delivered
groceries and my sisters and I had baby sitting
jobs or we went to work with mother and helped
her. The ones who were left at home would take
care of the other little ones and keep the house
clean. We all pitched in. I am not saying that we
didn’t need welfare, but Mom didn’t believe in it.
Years later, I asked Mother if she had ever
considered welfare. She said that she had, but that
when she prayed about it, something always
made her abort the idea. She had a lot of pride in

herself, and she felt that she could have managed
by asking the Lord for what she needed. Her
ideas were shared by most black people in the
fifties and sixties in Memphis. In the communi-
ties in which I lived, I had not heard of a family
being on welfare. I was unaware that it existed
until I moved to Chicago.

Some parents feel that they worked too
hard when they were growing up and that they
don’t want their children to do the same. This is
not my problem. I do want my children to work
and help keep the house clean. I haven’t quite
mastered the concept of work in my home, but I
am working on it. I want to help my children
develop positive attitudes about work. I want to
teach the lessons that work teaches. I don’t want
to tell my children how hard I have had to work
all my life. I want them to develop a good
attitude toward work. Perhaps the best way to do
this is to help them find joy in their work even if
it is just sweeping the kitchen floor.

I have included numerous black issues
among these thoughts. I know that my children
need to be aware of them and that they are as
strong as I am. The hard times for them are
ahead, and we have tried to teach them, in our
family, how to cope with the problems that they
will face as young black people. I do believe that
they should remember one important lesson
gained during our many discussions: Do not
judge people; \et God do that. If they remember
this, they will be one step ahead of society.

None of us is perfect when it comes to
raising our children. We were not born parents;
we have to learn how after having our children.
My mom made mistakes in raising us, and my
husband and I have made mistakes in raising our
children; however, we feel good when we know
we have done the best that we could by building
on gospel principles as well as the lesson learned
from our lives. ¥

mia eee @

olume 19 Number 1

a ction |

tis Hannah who first suggests we move

into the old church. With lips pressed

together, she concentrates on her leaps

across the worn oak floor of the Pioneer

Ward’s gymnasium, knees high and arms
outstretched.

“Find your starting shape again dancers,”
Miss Debbie calls out as the music ends, and she
rewinds the tape. I recognize the tune as the
Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts,” but the words are
new to me:

Dance, then, wherever you may be,

I am the Lord of the Dance,” said He.

And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And Ill lead you all in the Dance said He.

Hannah turns and skips to the music until
she reaches me at the gymnasium door, where her
classmates and her words tumble out together.

“My teacher says we can’t dance here
next year. They’re going to tear down the church.
But not yet. Can we live in it? Let’s ask Miss
Debbie.” Hannah begins to lead me back to her
dance teacher.

“I don’t think Miss Debbie knows if we
can live in the church or not.” I pull Hannah and
myself away from the listening huddle of mothers
and children. “So, what did you learn in class
today?”

“I already told you. They’re going to
wreck the church. We need a place to live. Why
can’t we live here?”

“T bet you're thirsty after all that dancing.
Would you like a drink from the fountain?”

“Mommy, why can’t we live in the
church? No one will be here.”

It’s not the worst suggestion I’ve heard.
“Okay Hannah, I promise to think about it.”

We follow the crumbling sidewalk past
the flower beds—now full of bright-faced
pansies—as we had almost every week this past
year. Yet just last month seems like a world away.

Four Sundays ago, our home burned to
the ground. Like always, our family and everyone
else in our Mormon neighborhood were in church
for three hours that morning. By the time the
firefighters were notified, the most they could do
was prevent the blaze from spreading to nearby
houses.

“Mommy, the wind goes through my
dance skirt right to my tummy.” Hannah skips
ahead of me in the May breeze, a kite of peach
tricot and caramel hair.

It doesn’t seem possible that I can’t drive
home to 1072 Willow Way and find our brick
colonial waiting for us. Just inside would be the
mudroom lined with our coats, jackets, and
sweaters of varying lengths and bulk, more or
less hung on the two rows of Shaker pegs painted
forest green. High on the walls would be the red
berry vine I stenciled from a colonial pattern.

Past the mudroom would be the family
room, where George convinced me to install the
ceiling fan. “It will circulate the air,” he per-
suaded, “and make the room warmer in winter

Exponent II

ee eee eee

The Lord of the Dance

Lisa Gosper Brereton
Orem, Utah

and cooler in summer.” I knew that he had heard
this pitch from our neighbors, both with ceiling
fans, who had heard this from the salesperson,
with hundreds of ceiling fans. I didn’t want to
clean it, fix it, referee fights over it, but finally, it
seemed like a small thing to make my husband
happy. Until it caused the fire.

“Can we go out to eat, Mom? We can
bring a com dog back to Aunt Christie.”

“Sure, Hannah. That’s a great idea.” I’m
not in a hurry to get back to Christie’s. Yes, Iam
very grateful she and her husband generously
offered to share their home with us until the
insurance claim is settled, but I don’t know if any
structure is large enough to happily house these
four adults and ten children for that long.

While putting clean clothes away yester-
day in our make-shift drawers of cardboard
boxes, I found a stash of rusty wire, tin cans, a
metal spring under Ethan’s jeans: materials for
his “makings,” the last of which was a flat-
bottomed boat that ended up as tinder when the
fire reached the garage. And at least three times
last night, I had to pull Stuart away from the TV.
His cousins casually gazed at the murders on the
screen while Stuart stared in horror. Finally, Eva
and I found a quiet comer where we could read
her favorite book, Children of the Forest by Elsa
Beskow, that we had already replaced. The
enchanting tale began as always: “Deep in the
forest, under the curling roots of an old pine tree,
was a small house. Warm and dry in winter, cool
and airy in summer, it was the home of one of the
forest families.” But instead of working its usual
magic and transforming us into the elfin family in
mushroom caps, Eva and | could not be com-
forted.

I reach down for the Kleenex box
wedged between the gear shift and my seat, feel
only air, and remember the “tissue dispenser”
under the dash of the new van, just one of the
several “conveniences” in Package C that George
was so keen on. Test drivers for Package C must
have been part gorilla; my stretched arm stops
short of the tissue dispenser by six inches. I miss
“The Bee” —our old Suburban-with its comfort-
ing chatter and endless complaints of squeaks and
groans. The kids and I loved how its cheery
yellow heralded our approach to all who knew us.
It had served us well; it deserved better than
being burned alive in our garage. Even after the
firefighters sprayed both our cars to prevent a
gasoline explosion, The Bee somehow managed
to preserve a small patch of its yellow, showing
through the black and grey mess of char and
phosphates.

I park the van in a far corner of the mall
parking lot beneath a lone tree that seems a
mirage in the shimmering expanse of asphalt.
“The Eatery,” with its neon signs of world-wide
cuisine, is just inside the glistening front doors.
We slide ourselves into the glossy booth. Hannah
bites carefully into the bright orange cheese
pieces skewered between the pink hot dog slices
of her shish-ka-dog. I nibble at my mozzarella
stick and search the house rental section of the

newspaper. I make a list, a very short one, of the
rental possibilities for families. After stuffing
most of the available dwellings in town with all
the single women and single men that a univer-
Sity attracts, there isn’t much room left for those
of us trying to live happily ever after. Especially
those of us trying to rent a place for two dazed
adults, four unpredictable children, and two
hound dogs suffering from copious smoke
inhalation and emotional trauma. Of course, the
landlords are all suitably polite and appropriately
sympathetic, as would be expected in a commu-
nity known as “Happy Valley.” Still, we do not fit
their picture of perfect renters.

I think about the old church. Eva danced
there before Hannah did, and that was the year I
met Anne, Toni, and Kathryn. For one glorious
hour every week, we'd talk in the foyer of the
church: the unnameable red flowers that
splashed the couch pulling us toward unknown
thythms and the serene green carpet rooting us in
familiar patterns. We forgot everything else until
the other mothers, rushing back from their fifty-
eight minutes of errands, puzzled over us, cau-
tious.

Sure-hearted Kathryn would be saying
loudly, *... and I also think everyone in this valley
would be a lot happier—and healthier—if we’d
stop pretending that we’re something we’ re not.”
Anne slid her eyes in the direction of the waiting
mothers. One of them was in her ward.

“Don’t worry about them, Anne,” whis-
pered Toni with her child-like grin. “They’re just
awed by the brilliance of our shining faces.”

Hannah slides off the upholstered bench
and down under the table, then emerges like a
flower just burst into bloom.“I’m done! Now
what are we going to do?” I sweep the trash onto
the orange tray and let Hannah dump it.

Back in the van, Hannah sings a story:

...So the little girl has
nowhere to go,

no place to sleep

Her pillow is gone, oh where,
oh where

will she sleep?”

This spontaneous song sounds a lot like it could
be from “The Sound of Music,” which we
watched last Friday night. We roll up miles of
State Street and onto Christie’s driveway.

Christie is supervising the planting of
several yucca plants—all the neighbors have
them this year. “What is that face for?” she asks
me from behind the sweating, shoveling worker.
“No reason to look so worried, is there?”

The clouds from the Sunday afternoon shower

are just beginning to drift apart as we walk away
from Christie and Allen’s house. It’s four blocks
to the church, giving us some much needed time

— se

——————E— le

before three hours of meetings. Ethan and Stuart
spurt ahead, Hannah and Eva wander behind,
and George and I talk.

“So what about staying in the university
dorms?” he asks.

“They said there would be room,” I
explain, “as long as we don’t mind moving each
week to accommodate youth groups staying on
campus through the summer.

“But that would be hard on you and the
kids, wouldn't it?”

“You know, after spending seven hours
trying to keep the Sabbath day holy in there,” I
glance back at the now smaller house, “I’m ready
to live anywhere if we could have our own four
walls around us. Anywhere.”

George sings in mock desperation,
“Some-wher-re over the rainbow...”

Allen drives by in his executive gray
Volvo wagon, and Christie rolls down the win-
dow. Through the tinted glass, I can see Joshua
shooting Nerf arrows at Jenny. “Is Janessa with
you? We just realized she’s not in the wagon.”

They quickly catch up with Stuart; I see
Christie waving her arms and shaking her head
wildly. Stuart’s shoulders droop, and his hands
slowly open at his sides. They drive on, and we
reach him.

“What's wrong Stu? Do you know where
Janessa is?”

He will not look at us. “I told her Janessa
ran past me to the church.” We wait. “Aunt
Christie told me I couldn’t pick up the worms
anymore.” I remember now his bending and
straightening in front of us along the sidewalk. “I
was just moving them onto the grass so they
wouldn’t get squished and they could go back to
their homes.”

I put my arm around his slumped shoul-
ders. “That's really kind of you, Stuart. I’m sure
the worms really appreciate it. Just remember to
wash your hands when we get to church.” But as
I look down, I see a smear of mud already on the
front of his white shirt; perhaps his tie will cover
it. Stuart walks, then skips, up to his brother.

“Meanwhile, back at the ranch,” George
continues, “there is no ranch. Except for the great
little house in the ‘tree streets’. . .

It was an older two-bedroom home on
Oak Lane, and it was perfect; it even had a
fenced-in backyard for the dogs. We had appre-
hensively mentioned our pets to the rental agent,
and he had promised to check with the owner
about the dogs before finalizing the agreement.
George and I planned out sleeping arrangements
while the agent made the call:

“Do you think Ethan and Hannah should
sleep on the couch? Ethan stays up later than
Hannah.”

“Hmmmm.”

“But Ethan might need more privacy than
Hannah.”

“Hmmm. Hmmm.”

Then the rental agent turned and relayed
the message: the dogs were welcome, but the
owner would not allow children in the home. We
momentarily toyed with the idea of bringing the
dogs inside and setting up a tent for the children
in the back yard.

I am made somewhat calmer by sacrament
meeting, with its welcoming prayer and song and
soothing rhythms, until the closing hymn:

There is beauty all around, when there’s
love at home;
There is joy in ev'ry sound,
when there’s love at home.
Peace and plenty here abide. . .

Eva is still asking for water even after
three trips to the drinking fountain; I grasp her
hand and leave the chapel, suddenly also thirsty. I
push the swinging door of the ladies room open
but let it swing shut when I startle a group of
women.

“so I bought their best carpet, but you
should see it after just one month. . .”

Eva and I continue down the hall and out
the smoky glass doors into the hot afternoon
made just right by a cool canyon breeze. I sniff
loudly and wipe my cheeks with the back of one
hand, while taking Eva’s smaller hand in the
other. She looks up at me and sighs. I have a
feeling that she has considered running from the
chapel into the sunlight several times before. So
have I.

I turn and look at the new church build-
ing with its pristine stucco, steel steeple and
arched windows with plastic pane inserts, and I
think of the old church. Its bricks are a warm
blend of golds, pinks, and oranges—as if the
church had been plastered with the sun-ripened
skins of the apricots grown in the orchards that
used to surround it. The wood around its many
windows is painted the palest gold and looks like
sunshine streaming out from inside the church. A
small cupola grows from the gable above the
front doors, home for several families of spar-
rows in brown tweed.

“What's the matter?” George catches up
with the runaways. I take a deep breath. “It’s just
so hard. Too hard.” I cannot continue, and what is
there to say anyway? “Life is hard, and then we
die.” Too many times this past month, I have
recalled Sister Nelson’s jest from the Relief
Society lesson that she gave that Sunday of the
fire.

George picks up Eva and hugs us both to
him. “I know. I know,” he moans into my hair.
The few remaining clouds bend and curtsey, then
dance apart with the spring breeze.

After giving me the required four hugs and four
kisses—"One for every year I am”—Hannah
skips across the oak floor and finds a place in the
dance circle. I watch her a minute and then tip-
toe down the stairs to the foyer of the church. I
can still hear the restless African melody from
the gym; I put the book I had intended to read on
the red-flowered couch. I am led to the left, down
a long hall that ends in a steamy glass door of
muted whiteness. Several rooms line the hall: a
large one with just-right leaf green benches for
the children’s church meetings, another with
Jungle Book characters painted on the walls for
the nursery. Every room has at least one long
rectangular window of veined glass, set high in
the wall and scattering handfuls of light on the
earthbrown linoleum. What would Ethan make,
Stuart feel, Eva see, and Hannah do in these
rooms?

Down the other hall is a large walk-in
closet full of shapes I can’t quite make out as I
peer through the crack between the double doors.
Beyond the closet is another door, which opens to
more stairs, going down and dark. I can’t find a
light switch; so, I go down the stairs with my left
hand on the wall, expecting to feel fur or flesh at
any moment. I open the door at the bottom of the
stairs and find a huge empty room with tall, tall
ceilings ringed with wild light from the dimpled
windows. Drumbeats from far away filter down
through the room’s vents to me.

Back at the top of the steps, the hall turns
and joins more stairs to the heart of the church
where the chapel is. Its ceilings peak in the cooler
air high above, but the chapel is warm with honey
maple and stained-glass sunlight and geranium-
red upholstery. My cold fingertips warm as I
outline the carved finial of a beehive on the end
of the pew. There’s even a cry room in the
back—separated from the chapel only by glass—
something I had wished for many times as I sat
nursing on the toilet seat in our church’s modern
ladies’ room or walking a baby in the halls,
unable to hear the meeting.

I climb the foyer steps again and pass the
gymnasium. A haunting Celtic melody seeps
through its closed double doors as I follow the
steps to the top floor. The wide hall glows with
light from the frosted-glass balcony doors and the
old radiator coils shimmer in burnished silver.

The first room off the upstairs hall is
large with three pairs of almost perfectly square
windows: a wonderful master bedroom. Next to
it is another classroom with two pairs of win-
dows—plenty of room for two beds and a dresser
for the girls, Past this room the hall narrows and
tries to hide a small room with one wide window,
I can almost see Ethan bent over one of his secret
projects here. Next to it is another door—
locked—maybe another bedroom just right for
Stuart. At the end of the hall is the ward library—
now only shelves with remnants of teaching aids:
paper triangles torn from the bent comers of
pictures, broken crayons, and the lingering smell
of Borden’s paste. I wonder where the water
pipes are? This spot would be a nice one for a
small bathroom.

Back in the upstairs hall, the open double
doors reveal steps down to what makes the
gymnasium also a “cultural hall”: the stage. I let
my feet lift and touch to the Native American
music as I silently cross on the stage, behind the
closed black velvet drapes. A cotton backdrop
curtain swells towards me then bows back into
place; behind it, I find an open door to the
kitchen. It’s like stepping into the fifties, back
into my childhood: the appliances are white and
chrome with rounded edges, all whirling in aqua
linoleum, counters, walls, and ceilings. I cross the
floor—balancing on the turquoise squares only—
to another door that goes back into the gymna-
sium. I bend down to peek over the split Dutch
door used for serving. Hannah and her dancing
partners twirl and leap to the drumming from
Miss Debbie’s tape player. I look past the dancers
up to the long row of windows—all-seeing
sentinels—their light flows over the dancing
children, over Miss Debbie, and over the half-
door onto me still kneeling there.

“Wonderful work, all of you. Wonderful
dancing! Now find your ending shape... .” ¥

Volume 19 Number 1

LU'Gop's
CRITTERS GOT A PLACE
IN THE CHOIR

zz

Povirtek Paine Winnie

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Pour AvrHon TEACHER

Emma Lou Thayne

The “East/West”in this issue comes in the form of
Emma Lou’s introduction of Laurel on the
occasion of Laurel’s receiving the Association of
Mormon Letters Honorary Lifetime Membership
Award and Laurel's lecture given at the presenta-
tion of the award. On January 14, 1994, these
“East/West” sisters met and complemented each
other once again, this time in person. Of special
note here is the publication of Emma Lou’s and
Laurel” s new book of essays (some of which first
appeared in Exponent II) All God’s Critters Got a
Place in the Choir by Aspen Books in Salt Lake
City. It should be out by May 1995 and will be
$14.95,

Introduction of
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Association of Mormon Letters
Visiting Scholar Lecture

Emma Lou Thayne
Salt Lake City, Utah

mong our usual days, we find human
A= who shine here and there. Such a

one is this Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, like a
prism, multi-faceted—New Hampshire scholar,
wife, mother, friend, teacher, speaker, writer
feted in just the past two years with a Pulitzer,
the Bancroft, a MacArthur (in the world of letters
right up there with the Ty Detmer Heiseman in
football!), dinner at the White House, and
invitations to be part of esoteric presentations
across the history and literary worlds. She does
everything the rest of us do—only better—even
as she stays as natural as her Idaho beginnings
and Utah education. How does she manage all
this?

Maybe it can best be explained by what
she does best—telling a story.

Hanging in a lighted corner of what used to be
my mother’s sitting room, in our home where
she lived with us for fifteen years, is a sampler.
On it are cross-stitched, meticulously, the alpha-
bet, numbers to 14, and a verse: “When daily I
kneel down to pray/ As I am taught to do/ God
does not care for what I say/ Unless I feel it too.”
Most important is the cross-stitched signature,
Emma Turner, aged seven years, September,
1840.

Emma Turner has been after me for
weeks to find her. She’s my great-grandmother,
my namesake, and lately a presence in my
dreams. Who was she? How did she live? When?
Where? And why does she want me—a non-
genealogist—to know?

Two days ago, I paid a very green visit to
the Genealogy (geen-e-alogy, my dictionary
says!) department—The Family History Center-—
to find her. A young sister missionary from Brazil
fed me a keyboard, and lo, unto me were deliy-
ered these fifteen pages identifying my Emma
Turner. In the Ancestral File, backward and
forward, run her lines—from four generations
back to 1721 ona pedigree chart to her birth in
1833 in Malvern, England, her marriage in 1857
in Salt Lake City, and her death in 1875 in
Farmington, Utah through four generations on a
Descendancy Chart—from her oldest child, my
grandmother, Emma Louise Stayner, to my
mother, Grace Richards, to me, Emma Lou
Warner. Bonanza! I was thrilled. I had found her.

But had I? I knew her years, her coming
to Deseret, her marriage, her ten children’s births,
her death at 42, my genetic connections to her.
But what did I know of her? Not one thing.
Never did I want so much to have my friend
Laurel beside me. She could likely find it all—in
the fabric of her sampler, in a sample of her
writing, in a history of Farmington, or in a recipe
book handed down to my grandmother to my
mother to me. She might even find a connection
between her birthplace, Malvern, England, and
Malvern Avenue that leads into solid Tudor
Highland Park Ward where I housed my first
twenty-five years and where I am in the corner-
stone as the first baby blessed there in 1924. Into
the skeleton lines on these pages, Laurel could
inject blood and tears, passion and frustration,
longing and hope. She could bring me into the
picture knowing why I am there.

That is why this woman tonight can
ignite history with the matches she strikes in the
dark in her search for significance in the ordinary.
More even than a historian, she is that storyteller.

In a moving new film, Shadowlands, C.S.
Lewis reiterates a student’s conviction: “We read
books so we know we are not alone.” Laurel
writes them to let that happen.

How better not to feel alone than to be
given a companion from the past to walk into our
lives and remember what is yet to come by
redefining our sensibilities today? To feather our
despairings and hopes with a real person’s
managing of dailiness?

Think what she could bring to my Emma
Turner—and to me.

First, her dogged and illuminating
curiosity. Laurel would find Emma Turner—in
records and cemeteries—yes, but more . . . all

that might erupt in the story, Laurel would spin as
Emma might have the flax for the linen of her
sampler. With Laurel’s gifts—imagination flossed
with surprise—that little girl would become a
woman, her dailiness as visible as the dates on
her headstone. My Emma Turner would have
whatever tantrums or doldrums or fancies or
frailties that went with her strengths and witti-
cisms and loving kindnesses. She, like Laurel,
like you and me, would be human. And graced
with the divine of being unique .

Second, Laurel would bring her selectiv-
ity. Because Laurel has focus, all essential parts
of the patchwork get pulled together. Even in
their apparent haphazardness, she can discern
pattern, feel feeling. I’d know a lot more than
Emma’s being a first wife of Arthur Stayner. I’ ve
heard, goodness knows, about him and his
speaking seven languages and Brigham’s urging
him into an ill-fated sugar business and his dying
at eight-two after marrying—can it be?—five
wives? How did Emma feel about this, them?
And about her ten children, two dying before
they were two? Was my grandmother—Emma
Louise, oldest child—elected or birthed into
taking over the remaining 8 at 18, when her
mother died? How I'd love to know.

If to the neurotic all things are of equal
importance, Laurel's far-from-neurotic gift of
focus would make Emma’s story eminently sane
to read and follow.

Third, she could let Emma Turner be
herself. Laurel’s honesty allows it. She has
freedom of intent. She knows that to praise one
thing is not to condemn another. In her candor,
she lets be her capacity to appreciate difference
even as she delineates our samenesses. As in the
15th Psalm, “.. . she walketh uprightly, and
worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in
her heart.” She can afford to acknowledge anger
as well as affection, amusement as well as
deference. Her story makes room for it all. She
can be a model because she does not try to be—
and do the same for the person she writes about.

Real freedom is allegiance without
ambition. Laurel’s Emma Turner could be real,
not defending a stance, hers or anyone else’s,
with no hidden agenda that might color the truth.
Because, like Laurel’s, hers would be her own
voice. And in fresh continuity her being could
pass on to me options without chains, thoughtful
opportunities without strings. She could converse
without needing to convert—and thereby invite
conversion.

She would retain her ability to question
her own assumptions about her history, her
education, her church, her relationships. What did
she feel? Know? Being comfortable with nor
knowing is a great discovery. Being comfortable
with what we know, an even greater one.

Was my great-grandmother comfortable
with herself? As Laurel is? Was she like the
Amish, needing to make no distinction between
the sacred and the everyday? For them, “Five
minutes in the early morning and five minutes in
the evening were devoted to prayer. The rest of
the day was spent living their beliefs. Their life
was all one piece. It was sacred—and all ordi-
nary.” (Simple Pleasures ) Did she also regard
life as sacred—and simple even in its complex-

Exponent Il

en ee EE SS

ity? Did attention to the ordinary make her
extraordinary? As it has Laurel? With no deep,
self-conscious search for self-expression—simply
taking enjoyment in every step of the process?

Fourth, did she, like Laurel, grow as she |

grew up—even to her only forty-two years? Did
she grow from the prayer on her sampler at
“aged seven years” with God caring about her
feeling it too? How did she become a grown-up |
version of childness, the only word I could invent |
to describe my death experience seven years
ago—what we were bor to, in whatever genera-
tion or circumstance, what we lose with our
trailing clouds of glory and regain on our return.
At the end of experience, did she know allness,

the sum of our parts and players and fields and |
convictions—what the best know how to be true
to. Like Laurel?

Finally, Laurel writes as a personist:. She |
represents an island—maybe a continent—of
sanity and stability between extreme anything:
male chauvinist on one end of the spectrum,
radical feminist on the other. She is on the side of |
life—of finding it more abundantly, for both
women and men through and with each other.
She finds it in the fabric of living. And in record-
ing it. Like her Martha Ballard in A Midwife's
Tale, by “mustering grease and ashes, shaking
feather beds and pillows to attention, scrubbing
floors and lines into subjection, she restore[s] a
fragile order to a fallen world.” (p. 219)

As other historians are caught up in the
flow of the proverbial river of battles and govern-
ments, tyrants and tirades, peace and its evanes-
cence, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich saunters among us
citizens on the banks, noting and celebrating,
understanding where we come from and what
we’re about.

Of course Martha Ballard left a diary
along with the bones of genealogy that even I
might dig up. But it was not the diary alone that
told her story. It was Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
detecting and celebrating that story. Historians
before had judged the diary “filled with trivia
about domestic chores and pastimes.” Laurel’s
gift of appreciation of what others might not see
is what makes her the writer we honor today.

Oh, yes, I would have her in my pocket
to derive and explain and make me smile at just
who in the world I come from and am. And oh,
would my Emma Turner beg to come alive under
the exquisitely tuned eye of a Laurel Thatcher
Ulrich.

I year for her kind of story—not ever to
feel alone. And with Edna St. Vincent Millay’s
“Winter Night,” |

The day has gone in hewing and felling,
Sawing and drawing wood to the
dwelling

For the night of talk and story-telling.

Here are question and reply,
And the fire reflected in the thinking eye. |
So peace, and let the bob-cat cry.

The peace of a story to let us understand
any cry. Tonight, we travel with Laurel, Clio, and
Elijah in the Family History Center. Another
story. Emma and I can hardly wait.

Clio Meets Elijah at the Family History Center

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Durham, New Hampshire

am a professional histo-
rian and also volun-
“fa, teer two or three times a
month as a librarian
‘; in the Family History
# Center in our stake.
; When I was asked to
speak at this Association
of Mormon Letters gathering in Salt Lake City, I
decided to tray bringing my two lives together by
imagining a meeting of Elijah and Clio.
Every Latter-day Saint knows Elijah, the

prophet who tumed “the hearts of the fathers to
the children and the children to the fathers” by

| restoring the keys of genealogy and temple work.

But who is the mysterious Clio?

When my husband heard the title of my
lecture, he said, “Oh, yes, Clio. Isn’t she men-
tioned in Paul’s epistle to the Romans?” I

| panicked and ran to my Concordance. To my

great relief, I did not find a New Testament Clio.

| It was very important to my comparison that Clio
| remain a pagan.

In Greek mythology, Clio is one of the
nine muses who sprang from a union of Zeus and
Mnesmosnye, or Memory. Although we usually
speak of the “muses” collectively, each has a

| name and a mission. Clio is the muse of history.’

Historians aren't the sort of people who

usually admit to having muses. Poets have

muses. Historians have only footnotes. Yet, in
language and in our institutional life, we ac-
knowledge Clio playfully and with some affec-
tion. She is to our clan what the Goddess of

Liberty is to the U.S. Congress—an abstract
| representation who has no immediate influence

on our daily work. Clio is whatever we wish to
make her. We name awards after her and some-
times invoke her name in the titles of books.

| When I was in graduate school in the 1970s,

historians were heatedly debating the virtues of

| something they called Cliometrics —a marriage

| of history and statistics. Clio has survived many
| marriages since Hesiod first invoked her name. I
| suppose she can survive a meeting with Elijah.

I chose the title to my talk impulsively,
thinking it would give me an opportunity to
explore the relationship between my secular work
as a historian and my Church calling at the
Family History Center. I expected to discuss the
differences between history (Clio’s territory) and
genealogy (Elijah’s realm). Yet, the more I
thought about the actual work that goes on ina
Family History Center, the less satisfied I was
with that comparison. I wanted to use the two
figures more freely to symbolize contrasting
approaches to the past. Yes, history and geneal-

| ogy meet every day at Family History Centers
| across the United States, but I am not at all

certain that Clio is responsible for all the history
and Elijah for all the genealogy.

Clio was a Greek, Elijah a Hebrew.
Hence, the two figures can be seen to represent
the ongoing and never totally resolved tension in
Western culture between the Greek commitment
to reason and the Hebrew tradition of faith—a
tension resolved, I think, in the teachings of the
Prophet Joseph Smith and in the concept of the
Kirtland Temple as a house of both “learning”
and “faith” (D&C 88:119). To me, it is one of the
great paradoxes of Mormon history that a man
capable of translating the Book of Mormon by
the gift and power of the Holy Ghost would take
the trouble to study Hebrew so he could better
understand the Bible. That’s a little like what
happens every day at our Family History Centers.
Motivated by the spirit of Elijah, we sit in front
of microfilm readers and do the works of Clio.

My contrast between Clio and Elijah is
not, then, a contrast between good and evil,
between the ways of the world and the ways of
the Lord. It is a contrast between two very
different ways of approaching the past, both
of which have something to teach us, and both
of which are perfectly evident in the Joseph
Smith Memorial Building [the site of the AML
meeting].

When I walked into the Joseph Smith
Memorial Building, the remodeled and rededi-
cated Hotel Utah, for the first time, I did a double
take. The marble figure of Joseph Smith in his
1840s frock coat seemed entirely out of plan in
the late-Victorian lushness of the 1911 building.
Clio was leaning over my shoulder at that mo-
ment. Clio doesn’t like anachronisms. She wants
us to know the distance—materially, culturally,
intellectually, and perhaps even spiritually—
between 1842 and 1900.

Those things don’t matter much to Elijah.
He symbolizes the unity—not the distance—
between present and past. As Doctrine and
Covenants 128:18 tells us: “For it is necessary in
the ushering in of the dispensation of the fulness
of time, which dispensation is now beginning to
usher in, that a whole and complete and perfect
union, and welding together of dispensations, and
keys, and powers, and glories should take place,
and be revealed from the days of Adam even to
the present time.” The spirit of Elijah not only
melts away the distance between past and
present, it pierces the veil between heaven and
Earth. Clio allows us to encounter the dead only
through the things that they leave behind. She
is behind an old aphorism in my profession:

No source, no history. Nothing is more sacred
to Clio than sources. She teaches us that we
can know only as much of the past as surviv-
ing letters, diaries, censuses, and artifacts can
teach us.

At a winter dinner party at our house, the
conversation turned to genealogy and temple
work. One of our guests told us about taking her

(Continued on page 14)

“Wann e——eEeEeEee—E————e

olume 19 Number 1

i... Oe

(Continued from page 13)

mother to northern New Hampshire to find the
birthplace of an elusive great-grandfather.
“Mother has worked for years trying to find his
records,” our friend explained. “Of course, she’s
still not sure this is where he was born, but when
she saw the town, she just felt it was the right
place.” That’s what’s known in Latter-day Saint
culture as the confirming evidence of the Spirit.
Historians can’t get away with that sort of
evidence. But I’m not sure that my friend’s
mother can either. She will have to prove her
great-grandfather’s existence through finite and
earthly sources—Clio’s sources—before she can
do his temple work. She would be delighted with
the new computer cluster in the Joseph Smith
Memorial.

The Latter-day Saint interest in records is
truly puzzling to outsiders. Last year at a histori-
cal meeting, someone shared with me a conversa-
tion that he overheard while he was doing
research at a small archive in Pennsylvania. Two
members of the staff there were discussing the
impending visit of a team of technicians from the
Family History Center in Salt Lake City.

“They are coming to film our records,”
the first man explained.

“Oh, we can’t let them do that,” said the
other. “Don’t you know what they do with those
records? They'll turn all our ancestors into
Mormons!”

The first man responded dryly, “If you
really think they can do that, you'd better join
their church.”

For most Latter-day Saints, the two
enterprises—genealogy and temple work—seem
perfectly compatible. We never stop to think
about the paradox inherent in our system. To
renew our Own covenants with God, we must
connect ourselves to other people, long dead. We
achieve that connection not only through vicari-
ous temple work but by library work, saving
ourselves and saving our dead by concentrating
on the most mundane and tedious of tasks—
researching names and dates. The emphasis on
records is right there in Doctrine Covenants 12.
In verses 2-4, the prophet instructed the Nauvoo
saints to establish recorders in each ward. “You
may think this order of things to be very particu-
lar,” he continued in verse 5, “but let me tell you
that it is only to answer the will of God, by
conforming to the ordinance and preparation that
the Lord ordained and prepared before the
foundation of the world, for the salvation of the
dead who would die without a knowledge of the
gospel.” There can be no mistake about the
importance in Joseph Smith’s mind of connecting
the dead and the living through records.

Verse 24 concludes: “Let us, therefore,
as a church and a people, and as Latter-day
Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righ-
teousness; and let us present in his holy temple,
when it is finished, a book containing the records
of our dead, which shall be worthy of all accepta-
tion.” If God knows every sparrow, he surely
must know his children. I can’t believe he needs
our help to identify the dead. All this effort must
be for our sakes—and for those other persons,
once living, who remain connected to us.

Not too long ago, I was telling a historian
from New York University about my work at the

Exponent II

_—————————————

Family History Center. I told him how people
from every walk of life fill our little room three
times a week. “People really do connect with the
past,” I said. “As professionals, we are some-
times contemptuous of popular history and of
genealogy, but it is important.”

“Yes,” he answered, “as long as those
people are doing something more than filling in
crossword puzzles.”

I suspect that some of the amateur
genealogists who come to our center are engaged
in a diversionary pastime, like doing crossword
puzzles. I am sure that many Latter-day Saints
also miss the larger significance of their work.
My experience at the Family History Center tells
me that most people who really get engaged in
research are animated by something larger,
however, that there is a spirit to genealogical
research. Whether it comes from Elijah or Clio, I
cannot say. All I know is that the amateur
researchers, mostly non-members, who come to
our center week after week, have a glow about
them as they follow the thin threads that lead
them through the past.

It is true, however, that historical re-
search and genealogical research are very differ-
ent. When I go into a county courthouse to look
at probate records, the clerks, assuming that I am
a genealogist, usually ask, “What name are you
looking for?”

“All of them,” I answer.

At the moment, I am working on hun-
dreds of probate inventories recorded in Hamp-
shire County, Massachusetts, between 1690 and
1760. My objective is to understand more about
the life of a woman named Hannah Barnard, who
left a marvelous oak cupboard with her birth
name painted on it when she died in 1717. It is
not enough for me to know who Hannah’s parents
were or that her husband listed her furniture when
he made his will in 1725 or that Hannah’s grand-
daughter eventually inherited the cupboard. To
fully understand Hannah’s story, I need to
understand the pattern of inheritance that made it
difficult for early American women to transmit
property from one generation to another. One
name won't give me a pattern. Only by knowing
“all of them” can I fully understand one of them.

My experience with Hannah’s cupboard
suggests the broader differences between Clio
and Elijah. I became interested in the cupboard
when I was asked to keynote a symposium on
regional New England Furniture held in conjunc-
tion with a set of exhibits at the Wadsworth
Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut. One
exhibit featured Hadley chests, a distinctive
furniture form built in the Connecticut River
Valley between 1680 and 1720. Hannah’s
cupboard is a Hadley chest. When a reporter for
the Hartford Courant saw the show, he saw a
“protofeminist message” in Hannah’s cupboard.
Why else would a woman paint her maiden name
in bold letters across a piece of furniture that she
took into marriage? A local furniture collector
came to a very different conclusion. Because
men controlled property in this period, the
cupboard must have been a gift from Hannah’s
future husband. It was “a Valentine in furniture.”
Each interpreter read twentieth-century experi-
ences into an eighteenth-century cupboard. They
wanted to connect present and past and draw

personal meaning from that connection. They
must have been inspired by Elijah.

The furniture historians assembled at the
show were too high-minded to consider such
questions. In their efforts to be objective, they
focused on measurable attributes and broad but
definable characteristics. While acknowledging
that the woman’s name on the cupboard “made a
strong statement” about her role “as keeper of the
household and a major portion of its assets:
valued textiles and silver,” the catalog of the
exhibit concentrated on stylistic analysis (“The
Barnard cupboard was a stage for new Baroque
concepts conveyed through traditional Hampshire
County ornament’) and on details that could be
empirically affirmed (under polarized light
microscopy the paint on the columns turned out
to be a mixture of white lead and Prussian blue,
an artificial pigment first synthesized in Berlin in
1704). The furniture scholars were tuned in to
Clio.

Bringing Elijah’s question to Clio’s
methods yields a very different result. Instead of
backing away from contemporary questions, as
the furniture scholars did, or collapsing present
and past, as the newspaper reporter attempted to
do, we can use our own deeply felt need to
understand gender relations to motivate a broader
search of the evidence. Furniture was a form of
property as well as a decorative object, and a
close examination of early records demonstrates
that males and females typically inherited very
different forms of property in early America.
Wills and inventories not only distributed family
resources across generations, but also defined
gender. “Real property,” or land, was normally
passed from father to son. Women received most
of their inheritance in “moveables”—pots, pans,
featherbeds, cows, and such. This division was
hardly neutral. As anthropologist Annette Weiner
has shown, the Western concept of “real prop-
erty” (preserved in our use of the term real
estate) is the Western European version of an
ancient division between “alienable” and “in-
alienable” possessions. Inalienable possessions
give the owners the ability to transcend death,
perpetuating their names and identities across
time. “Moveable” property, on the other hand,
could be passed indiscriminately from one person
to another. In Western society, women were
themselves moveables, changing their names and
identities as they moved from one male-headed
household to another.

The name on Hannah Barnard’s cupboard
made it less moveable. It was handed down
through the female line, carrying Hannah's
maiden name and memory with it. While there is
no other cupboard exactly like Hannah’s there are
hundreds of other household objects marked in a
similar way. In a world in which women became
femmes couvert at marriage, their identities
legally subsumed in those of their husbands,
marked spoons, chests, sheets, towels, and
embroideries perpetuated female lineages.

Female property was not simply a
parallel form of male property, however. Tracing
the provenance of household objects allows us to
see how women created a less linear, less exclu-
sive sense of “family,” preserving multiple
allegiances and multiple connections across time.
Of course, men did that, too. Patrilineal naming

patterns, like formal property law, obscure the
real nature of kinship in early America. Follow-
ing “male lines” from one generation to another
misleads us into thinking that women were
merely vehicales for perpetuating male lines of
inheritance. Unfortunately, some of us perpetuate
that fiction in our own genealogical research.
Focusing on the top lines on our charts, we move
the “moveables.” As we redirect our attention
toward all the lineages in our past, something
marvelous happens. We are no longer part of the
“Ulrich family” or the “Thatcher family.” We
become brothers and sisters across time.

I think that it is significant that the
Church now emphasizes family history rather
than genealogy. Genealogy gives us the opportu-
nity to relate to the dead one by one. History
asks us to consider the larger human family of
which we are a part. There may be less of a
contradiction between the two than at first
appears. In a fascinating essay in The New
Yorker some years ago, Alex Shoumatoff wrote
about the relationship between human history and
the “mountain of names” being gathered in Salt
Lake City. While each of our pedigrees grows
exponentially as we move backward in time (two
parents giving way to four grandparents, eight
great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandpar-
ents, and so on), at some point every pedigree
collapses in on itself, as remote ancestors from
one line begin to overlap with those from another.
Within fifty generations, we are all part of the
same family tree. “History can be seen,”
Shoumatoff concludes, “as a mosaic of billions of
overlapping pedigrees” (60). Ironically, the more
successful we are in tracing our own folks
through time, the more we discover our relation-
ship to others.

In Shoumatoff’s words:

If all of us could be made aware
of our multiple interrelatedness,
if the same sort of altruism that
usually exists among close kin
could prevail through the entire
human population, if this vision
of ourselves could somehow
catch on, then many of the
differences that have polarized
various subpopulations from the
beginning of human history .. .
would seem secondary. (60)

Or, in the words of Malachi ( an Old
World prophet) reinterpreted by Moroni (a New
World messenger):

Behold, I will reveal unto you
the Priesthood, by the hand of
Elijah the prophet. . . . And he
shall plant in the hearts of the
children the promises made to
the fathers, and the hearts of the
children shall turn to their
fathers. If it were not so, the
whole earth wold be utterly
wasted at his coming.

To summarize, in broad terms, Elijah

represents faith, Clio reason; Elijah unity be-
tween present and past, Clio distance; Elijah a

Volume 19 Number 1

quest for personal connection, Clio a search for
broad patterns. What then are we to make of the
fact that Elijah is male and Clio female? Is this
one more example of the absurdity of gender
stereotypes? The irony is deeper.

Elijah, unlike Clio, actually has a history
He is not only the white-robed messenger who
appeared to Joseph Smith in the Kirtland Temple
in 1836. He is the inhabitant of Gilead who
confounded the priest of Baal, raised the widow’s
son, and fasted forty days and nights on Mount
Horeb. Even in Greek mythology, Clio remains
an abstraction. The muse of history has no
history. No place, no time, no defining stories are
attached to her name.

She is like the Statue of Liberty in Susan
Elizabeth Howe’s trenchant poem—hollow,
empty, consigned to hold a torch above her head,
a book on her arm. In Susan’s poem, Liberty
finally has her say:

And the book, suggesting more
Than it will ever give, weighs
a ton. I want to put it down,
Tell my visitors I know how
Their lives go. I never will.

I am huge, copper-weighted,
Supporting the status of icon.

As areal person, Liberty might comfort
her visitors, telling them she understands the
vertigo of their stiff climb to the top. As a
symbol, she can only stand there, holding up the
torch, year after year,

... Blood always draining
From my arm, hand and wrist
Always going numb.

If Clio ever was a real women, her story
is lost. She represents, then, all that has been lost
from history as well as all that survives. Some-
one has estimated that “ninety percent of all the
people who ever existed slipped into complete
oblivion, without leaving even their names
behind” (Shoumatoff, 63). Although the Church
has collected the names of almost two billion
people, it will never discover the names of those
whose records were destroyed by fire or war or
who lived in societies without writing. Here is
where Joseph Smith’s vision of “a book contain-
ing the records of our dead” becomes important.
Tomorrow’s history is built on today’s records.
There is a lesson here, I think, for Latter-day
Saint women. To honor Elijah, we must turn our
hearts to our mothers as well as our fathers. To
give Clio a history, we must begin to keep our

own.

'The others are Calliope (epic poetry), Erato (love
poetry), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Melpomene (tragedy),
Thalia (comedy), Urania (astronomy), Terpsichore
(dance), and Polyhymnia (sacred song).

Howe, Susan Elizabeth. “Liberty Enlightening the
World: The Statue Has Her Say.” Weber Studies 10.3
(Fall 1993): 81-82.

Shoumatoff, Alex. “The Mountain of Names.” The
New Yorker, May 13, 1985, 51-101.

im

Sos

Reflections on Meg Munk
and Seasons of our Lives

Kay Atkinson King
McClean, Virginia

he author of Ecclesiastes (3:2) talks

about a time for every season: “A

time to be born, and a time to die; a

time to plant, and a time to pluck up

that which is planted.” As I recently
re-read Meg Munk’s “Pillars of My Faith” in
Exponent Il [Volume 18, Number 3 (1994)], I
thought about her time, my time, and about our
seasons together.

Meg was my friend. She was a wonderful
writer, poet, and human being. When she faced
her terrible struggles—first with an armed
attacker invading her home and then later with
ovarian cancer invading her body—I, along with
many others, felt compelled to offer love and
support. But we did not know what to say to her
or how to relieve her burdens. I felt frustrated and
helpless—sitting on the sidelines, watching her
battle against tremendous odds.

We shared some wonderful moments
together. Just after she had finished her first
series of chemotherapy treatments and her cancer
was in remission, our families shared a beach
house in North Carolina for a glorious week. She
and we were full of hope and excitement. I have
vivid memories of her bobbing in the waves,
trying to keep the scarf, which covered her bald
head, from being washed away in the surf.

But the cancer returned, and she was
soon back to greater uncertainty and more
torturous treatments. I remember talking with one
of Meg’s friends, sharing our frustrations about
what we could do for her. We decided that
redecorating her kitchen might cheer her up.
Meg had torn out some tiles to start the process
just before her life had fallen apart again. The
half-tiled walls were a constant reminder of the
disruption and chaos she was facing. We knew
that Meg and her family were going to Cam-
bridge for a few days for a Harvard class re-
union—both she and Russ, her husband, had
gone to school there. So as a surprise, we con-
spired to re-do the kitchen during her absence.

A few days later, I picked Meg up at the
hospital and put her on the plane to fly to Boston
to join the rest of her family who had traveled
there earlier. Then I went directly to her house to
start the work. Much to my surprise, word of this
project had spread, and people came from
everywhere with offers of help. It was obvious
that I was not the only one who loved Meg and
wanted desperately to do something for her. We
had opened up a Pandora’s box of love and
frustration.

Over the next three days, thirty or more
people pitched in to re-do the Munk house,
contributing countless hours to help our project
succeed. It was not so much that the house
needed the work, it was that we needed the
opportunity to do something tangible to show
Meg and her family how much we cared, how
much we wanted to help in some way.

What had started out as a project to
remove the tile in the kitchen turned into a major
overhaul. Kitchen walls were spackled, painted,

Reader's Response

and wallpapered; cabinets painted; curtains
made; and a new floor installed. The people and
the love kept pouring forth, and so the project
grew larger. New comforters, sheets, and rugs
were purchased for the master bedroom. The
bedroom walls were painted. Anew mattress
appeared in one of the children’s rooms. Win-
dows were made to sparkle. The whole house
was scrubbed from top to bottom. The lawn was
manicured, trees trimmed, the garden tended,
and the gutters cleaned.

This labor of love brought people to-
gether who did not even know each other. We
worked together; we cried together. When we had
done everything we could possibly imagine or
had time for, we left a bouquet of fresh flowers
on the dining room table and then—like the
shoemaker’s elves, who secretly made the shoes
and then disappeared—we all left and locked the
door behind us shortly before Meg’s return.

I do not know if what we did was helpful
to Meg and her family, but I would like to
believe it was. I do know that it was immensely
therapeutic and important to her “elf” friends.
We felt better for being able to give something to
her—to show her that we cared.

Just a few short months after the house
transforming, I sat with Meg as she lay dying.
She was beyond the point where she was awake
or could even communicate. I realized that
although we may have had some success in trying
to renew her house, we could not renew her
body. This temple was failing, and her spirit
wanted desperately to escape it. I watched a moth
inside the house, batting against the sliding glass
door, trying to get out. I walked over to the door
and opened it, giving it its freedom. It was not
right to keep it trapped. As I returned to Meg’s
side, she stretched out both arms toward heaven
and said, “Yes! Oh, yes!”” —the only words she
uttered while I was there. Her time to leave was
very close.

I did not want her to pass through the
door to her release; yet, I knew she had to. I
wept.

Meg was gone just a few days later. It
had been her time to be nurtured, and my time to
nurture. That was eight years ago, and I still miss
her.

Now the times have changed. Now I find
myself where Meg was. In December of 1993, I
was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now it is my
time to be nurtured. Now it is my bald head that
I see in the mirror. Now it is my friends gathering
around me, feeling frustrated because they want
to help but do not know what to say or do—just
as I was with Meg eight years before.

I want to tell them that it is not all so bad.
Yes, I cried a lot when I found out (and some-
times still do when I am tired). Many of my
reactions were as I would have expected after
going through the experience with Meg. But there
were some surprises also—some good, some
bad. With every new challenge comes new
understanding, new lessons to be learned. Most
of the lessons I have learned have been very
positive. But there are negative ones, too.

I have learned that while medical knowl-
edge about the treatment of cancer has pro-
gressed in some ways since Meg’s illness in
1986, we still do not know nearly as much as we
ought to know. People ask me if I am angry that I
got cancer. The answer is that I am angry that
anyone is still getting it. 1 am angry that there is

ee —

no known prevention or cure. Furthermore,
progress with research on some women’s health
issues appears to be lagging behind that on
men’s. While there is an early detection test for
some forms of prostate cancer, there is no blood
test for the early detection of any form of breast
cancer.

Yes, we have mammography, and I am
grateful for that; however, in my case, it took far
too long for the mammogram to detect my
cancer. It had been there for years, and in spite of
yearly gynecological exams and yearly
mammograms, it was only last December that the
mammogram showed up something that the
physician had missed only the month before.
Well, surely I’ve caught this early, I reasoned.
Not so. The cancer had already spread to my
lymph nodes. How can that be? Some cancers
like mine do not have a lump and do not show up
until they have advanced quite far. The recent
discovery that a certain gene can signal breast
cancer predisposition is a help, but since over
85% of all breast cancers are not genetically
linked (including mine), we still have a long way
to go. Yes, we need to have more cancer re-
search—particularly on breast cancer, which will
afflict one in eight women during their lifetimes.

I also learned that medicine is more an
art than an exact science. Not only the cause, but
also the cure, for this cancer is not known, and
experts do not have definite answers about how
to deal with it. It was not a case of “physician,
heal thyself,” but it was a case of “patient,
choose thy treatment.” I literally had to “pick my
own poison.” Three highly recommended
oncologists disagreed significantly about the
treatment I should have. Their disagreement was
not comforting.

As for the positive lessons, I have been
reminded of the wonderful family I have. They
have always been there for me. But now, more
than ever, I treasure all that they are to me. I
could not have gotten through the pain of surgery
and the sickness of chemotherapy without their
support. My husband went with me to every
doctors’ visit, surgery, and chemotherapy and
continues to give me incredible love and encour-
agement. My sons did our grocery shopping for
months. (We’ve never had so many donuts and
Pop Tarts in the house). My mother and sisters
made trips from the west to see me and to help,
even when it meant great sacrifice on their part.
The list goes on and on.

I have learned how many truly wonderful
friends I have, and how good, generous, and
loving people can be. The number of friends was
a surprise for me, because social time had been
squeezed out of my life as I had become incred-
ibly busy just trying to keep afloat with my
family of three boys, a demanding job as Chief of
Staff to a congressman, and a house that had been
under renovation for eight months before the
discovery of my cancer. Just previous to the
diagnosis, I had commented to my husband that I
was amazed that anyone ever sends us Christmas
cards because we haven’t had time to get cards
out for years now.

I have had to learn to receive graciously
because I am on the receiving end now. It has
always been much easier for me to give than to
receive. But now I am the one who finds people
anxious te do something tangible to show their
love and concern for me. I have been amazed at
the number of friends who have come forward

Exponent II

with flowers, books, food, and other gifts of
everything imaginable. I see so much goodness
and compassion that I never had the opportunity
to fully appreciate before. Now I know from this
side how wonderfully helpful and comforting it is
when friends take the time to call, express
concem, and extend gifts of love.

I am learning better how to accept and
deal with situations I cannot control. I am the
“victim” here. I was accustomed to having more
control over my life. I have always felt more
power to be able to do something to change
things. This experience has made me focus more
on the many things I can’t change. When I look at
that bald head in the mirror, I see a concentration
camp victim, or someone at army boot camp or a
military academy, whose head has been shaved to
humiliate. It is a constant reminder of the inva-
sion of my body and how little I can really do to
ensure my victory over this aggressor. I am
reminded of it every time I see a beautiful model
with gorgeous long, flowing hair in a shampoo
commercial in a magazine or on television. I did
not realize how many hair-care commercials
there are! Having a “bad hair day” pales in
comparison to a “no hair day.”

The process of actually losing my hair
was more traumatic than the resulting baldness,
which one gets used to surprisingly quickly.
Every moming, after the first chemo treatment, I
would tug at my hair to see if that would be the
day that it would start to fall—like autumn
leaves—slowly, but surely. Finally, after about
three weeks, my ritual tug produced an entire
handful of hair. It was as though my hair was
dead and just sitting on my head. I only had to
run my fingers gently through it to pull it out. I
felt like Hansel and Gretel, dropping bread
crumbs everywhere I went—except that I was
dropping hair. So I wore a hair net and looked
like a waitress in a cheap diner as I awaited the
full loss. Maybe I should have just shaved it off
and gotten it over with quickly— some women
do—but I just couldn’t. And what do you do with
the hair? I had been so attached to it before! I
couldn’t just throw it into the garbage, uncer-
emoniously. So I put it in a nice little bag and
decided that after I got my new hair, I would
return this old dead hair to nature somehow—
perhaps by putting it out for the birds to help
them make a nest. I’m told that some Eastern
religions insist that the hair be saved to remain
with the body after death. I understand that
sentiment.

The feeling of victimization was particu-
larly difficult to deal with when I was first
diagnosed. I am told that my reaction to this
invasion is very similar to that of a rape victim.
My body had been attacked by an unseen enemy.
I lost my self-confidence. Making decisions—
even small, relatively unimportant ones—became
almost impossible. I felt vulnerable, fragile. I had
an identity crisis. But now I am learning to cope
and to find ways to feel more in control of my
life.

Perhaps most important, I have learned
the value of faith and prayer. I have never been
in a situation where I needed the faith and prayers
of others as much as I do now. I am deeply
comforted to know that so many friends are
praying for me.

When my ward held a special fast in my
behalf, I was lifted and overwhelmed. I looked at
the beautiful flowers that were in my room, and I

Volume 19 Number 1

thought that each little petal was like a prayer.
When you put them all together, they make an
incredibly beautiful bouquet reaching up toward
heaven. My faith is strong, and I believe these
prayers are heard. I also believe that if God wants
me to be healed, I will be. And surely all of these
prayers on my behalf will help. Perhaps because

I have worked with Congress for so long, I feel
there is great benefit in having large numbers of
people (most far more worthy than I) lobbying
with God on my behalf, seeking to convince God
that I should stay on Earth a bit longer.

I have learned how much the Savior
loves me. Through the premonition I was given a
month before the discovery of my cancer that my
family was about to face a difficult time with a
serious health problem and through the wonderful
priesthood blessings and prayers that have
sustained me, I have learned that I am loved and
I will be fine, whatever happens. I have not been
spared the fiery furnace, but just as Shadrach,
Meshack and Abednego, I have not had to face
the flames alone.

Having a potentially terminal illness puts
things into focus and helps you to define priori-
ties very quickly. I have learned to look at the full
half of the glass. It is so easy to focus on the
negative. It is so easy to criticize and find things
that can be done better. This is particularly true
with human imperfections and the Church. But I
have come to realize that even though some
things are done that I think might be done
differently, that is not important. Focusing on
areas of disagreement only damages my spiritual-
ity and diverts my attention from important
principles and the need to forge a spiritual
relationship with the Savior. I am far from perfect
myself. How can I expect the Savior to love and
forgive my shortcomings if 1am so quick to
judge those around me, both in and outside of the
Church?

As Lehi explained to his son, “For it
must needs be that there is an opposition in all
things.” (2 Nephi 2:11) I do not know that God
“sent” me this illness for my own good, but I do
know that it is up to me to take this as a challenge
and as an opportunity for growth. I just pray that
in this “season,” I will have the strength and
insight to learn all I can and endure it well.

Single ... and Welcome?

John A. Cox
Fairfax, Virginia

he last issue of Exponent II [Volume

18, No. 4] was particularly sad for

me. As a lifelong member of the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints, my heart aches for the
sisters who long for a husband but for any
number of reasons have not found a male coun-
terpart with whom they want to be sealed for time
and all eternity. Sisters, your story also has its
male side to tell.

For twenty-three-and-a-half years, I was
married in the temple to a woman I believed to
be the epitome of Mormon womanhood: a
returned missionary, attractive, industrious, and
possessing all the other virtues that we LDS men
have been taught to look for in a wife. One day, a
little over six years ago, my wife came home

from a business meeting in Coeur d’ Alene,
Idaho, to announce that she did not love me any
more and that she wanted a divorce. I begged
her to stay with me until our oldest son left on a
mission and until after the Thanksgiving and
Christmas holidays were over. The ensuing
divorce and pain could fill volumes, but as
Howell Raines said so succinctly in his book,
Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis, “The
winding down of any long marriage is a compli-
cated story and a sad one, too, if the marriage
has been a very good one for a very long time. I
am not going to tell the entire history of that
marriage because the story does not belong to
me alone.”

After the separation and divorce, I was
thrown to the wolves, naive about the rules and
protocol of dating in and out of the Church.
Rules had changed. It was no longer inappro-
priate for a woman to call a man and invite him
to dinner, the theater, or a Church social. For my
non-Mormon women friends, AIDS and other
sexually transmitted diseases precluded inti-
macy. I was comfortable with my non-dating
status. My youngest son came to live with me
and during the few years that we lived together I
threw myself into a life that left little time for
dating even if it had been available to me.

Nonetheless, I still cried real tears over
the loss of the woman I loved, and I mourned
the life that she was leading. My family and my
wife had been my entire purpose in life and to
see that way of life destroyed in front of my
eyes was so painful that even if a woman had
seen my anguish and had tried to befriend me, I
would not have recognized any overture of
kindness.

Time has a way of healing. I moved, to
start my life new and fresh. I was determined
not to wallow in my inner pain and to find a
good LDS woman with whom I could have a
loving and enduring life.

Unfortunately, I found nothing. A
single, middle-aged man in Mormondom is a
pariah. I watched as newly widowed and
divorced women were figuratively wrapped in
the loving arms of the ward members. Time and
time again, I got the message that women are
always the victims and that men who are single
must be the wrongdoers. Week after week and
month after month, I attended church faithfully.
The bishops of the various wards I attended
never talked with me, my home teachers only
wanted to tell me their stories and hardships,
and I was excluded from Church social events.
Going to church became a reminder of the
unworthiness that I felt as a rejected husband
and parent.

I eventually stopped attending alto-
gether. The weekly reminders of my status as a
single, divorced male were too much to bear. I
longed to talk with a Mormon woman with
whom I could become the person I actually was:
caring, compassionate, and sincere.

Friends universally told me that I was a
good person, that I was good-looking, and that
any woman would be proud to go out with me
and be seen with me. I could discuss literature

intelligently, talk about politics, and discuss
theology rationally, without being dogmatic. I
cried for the chance to meet someone, but I
believed myself to be damaged goods: If lama
good person, why was I tossed aside by my
(Continued on page 18)

SS a See
Reader's Response

(Continued from page 17)
eternal spouse, and why didn’t anyone express
any interest in me?

I spent a lot of time on my knees by the

side of my bed asking God those same questions.

If He could not help me win the love of my wife
back, could He please erase the pain in my
heart? Please! I prayed that I could just make it
through the day without tears welling up in my
eyes and without the stabbing pain that pierced
my heart. After months and months of this daily
prayer, I had a moment of epiphany: I realized
that I was never going to marry again, and I
realized that I could make it without a woman by
my side. The heavy burden was lifted from my
heart, my thoughts, and my desires. I knew that I
could make it alone. I remember that moment as
clearly as if it were yesterday. The lightness in

my soul gave me a whole new perspective on life.

I changed careers and was offered the
same job that I had had several years before. I
threw myself into my work. I read, and I wrote.
Life was looking good to me after years of pain.
I met a divorced, Mormon woman, and she
wanted to get married immediately. She even
called me and told me that if I did not marry her
now, she was going to marry someone else. With
that knife held to my throat, I declined, and I
wished her well. Ten months later, she divorced
the man she had said “God had revealed to be the
right man in my life.” We began to date again,
and I began to believe that despite the epiphany
revealing that I would be single for the rest of
my life, I had been granted a second chance at
happiness. Then her manipulation began again.
She had dreams that God was revealing to her
how and when we would be getting married.
There is apparently no argument when the other
person claims that God has revealed certain plans
to her. You can’t trump God! Painfully, I parted
company with this good LDS woman. Interest-
ingly, she married her fourth husband just a few
months after my departure. God must have
revealed another perfect mate to her.

I began to direct my anger toward
Mormon women in general. Why had she pushed
remarriage when I hadn’t known her well

This year's retreat will be
held July 14-16. Send your
requests for information and
reservations to:

1995 Retreat
Exponent II
Box 128
Arlington, MA 02174

enough? I gave up on ever seeing another good
Mormon woman.

I was transferred to the East where I was
once again alienated from the Church. I had been
encouraged by a childhood friend in the Washing-
ton, D.C. area to attend a singles ward in Alexan-
dria, Virginia. In great pain, I drove to the church
an hour early to make sure that I would find my
way in anew and unfamiliar setting.

As I waited in the foyer for the meetings
to begin, no one approached me or talked to me.
Finally, the chapel cleared, and I sat down and
waited for the meetings to begin. As the moment
for church to begin approached, an attractive
woman walked up to me and asked if I were a
visitor. Flattered, I said that I was. Very embar-
rassed, she told me that I was in the Relief
Society opening exercises and that the priesthood
holders were meeting in the Cultural Hall. I
picked up my scriptures and exited the chapel.
Unfortunately, the priesthood meeting was even
worse. As the instructor stood up, he welcomed
all the visitors. I was prepared to introduce
myself, but I was not asked to do so. I watched
the bishop jump up to welcome two Ethiopian
investigators who came in and sat behind me. He
must have sensed that I was a member and that I
did not need the welcoming. As I sat there in the
singles ward listening to the instructor read the
lesson from the manual, I was struck with the
painful reminder that I was a single, divorced
middle-aged male and that I was an anomaly.

Six months prior to my relocation to
Virginia, through an organization that encourages
the art of writing letters to friends, a woman ten
years my junior had started to write to me. She
was an excellent writer, and I was impressed
with her directness and no nonsense approach to
becoming acclimated to the dating world. When
business brought her to Virginia, we agreed to
meet for a strictly platonic date in Roanoke. The
rest is history. We both fell in love with each
other almost at first sight. Nine months later, we
were married in her church, St. Peter’s Episcopal
Church, in Charlotte, North Carolina. For
someone who had such a strong epiphany of my
fate to be single the rest of my life, I was little

prepared for falling in love again, and with a
nonmember of the Church as well.

Do I regret not marrying a good Mormon
woman with a strong testimony of the gospel of
Jesus Christ? No. I’ve been there and have done
that. Iam a little bitter and disappointed that my
brothers and my three sons would not or could
not come to my wedding. Only my eighty-year-
old mother and her sister came. It has been
difficult to attempt to explain and excuse my own
family’s boycott of my wedding to my new wife
and her family. Relatives of hers from as far
away as British Columbia, Canada, and Houston,
Texas made it a point to be at the wedding. I
wonder if I had married an LDS woman if my
family would have been there. Probably so.

I have just one message to the single
sisters in the Church. We are there. No, you may
not have seen me at church, but when I was
coming to the meetings I would have melted at a
kind word from you or even eye contact and a
smile. Sure, there are a lot of single fellows in
the Church that aren’t worthy of you. I knew
them when I was a missionary in Switzerland.
They were dorks then and they are still nurds
now. Still, I can tell you that for six long lonely
years I was out there praying for someone to
love me just a little bit, maybe enough to even
marry me one day. Where were you when I
needed you? That's all a moot point now. I love
my Episcopalian wife very much and enjoy the
sermons delivered by a learned and intelligent
priest. No, it isn’t my church, but I do hope that
one day I will be able to enjoy reinstatement and
fellowship again with my fellow brothers and
sisters in the gospel.

I do have a testimony of the truthfulness
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I could never turn
my back on the teachings of the Church, and I
would never dream of joining another church,
but I will wait until the day that I can be wel-
comed back into the fold. President Hunter asked
me to come back and I will. Will the member-
ship welcome me back again? I hope so.

The Retreat—July 1994

The water is cool;

the trees are green.
Canoes on the lake;

all is serene.

The women laugh

and splash and scream.
They gather to talk

and share their dreams.
They talk of children,
church, and men,

how to save the world,

and become spiritual again.
They share with each other
their joys and pain,

and make new friends,
and greet old ones again.
They come each year,
the old and the new.
They find acceptance
and lots of love, too.

As women they gather,
as strangers they meet.
But friends they become
at the retreat.

Sylvia Russell
Arlington, Massachusetts

Exponent Il

——

Recovering From Modesty Lessons
Judy Dushku

Watertown, Massachusetts

Four years ago, I gave a Relief Society lesson on
“modesty.” I quickly covered the familiar points
made in the manual about the specialness of our
bodies, how we make a statement with how we
dress about who we are, and that we are good
modest women who cover ourselves in a culture
where covering is less the norm.

Once I had made these points, however, I
went on to describe perspectives from my own
experience, perspectives not covered in the
manual. I said that I and several other sisters in
the Church had negative attitudes toward our
bodies as a result of having been told so often to
cover and hide them. I spoke about the need to be
very careful not to be so zealous and excessive in
teaching modesty that we suggest to women,
including our vulnerable and sensitive daughters,
that their wonderful bodies are somehow shameful
and repulsive and unacceptable to the Lord. That
was certainly the message that I heard growing up
in the Church, and I have spent years trying to
undo the body-hating lessons that I was taught by
well-meaning but misled teachers.

So, as part of my Relief Society lesson, I
urged moderation in the teaching of modesty, and
restraint when urging sisters to cover themselves.
Most of all, I urged being acutely sensitive to the
impact of our words on adolescent ears, ears
already hypertrained to hear words of criticism,
mockery, derision, or amusement about their new
and changing bodies. Do those of us raised in the
Church, I asked, want our own daughters to
dislike their own bodies as much as most of us
were taught to dislike ours? What they need to
hear is our celebration of them.

Then I told some stories, and other sisters
offered theirs, about damage done by too much
talk of covering and too little talk of accepting and
loving our bodies and those of the girls and
women we love.

One woman told of an enthusiastic,
testimony-bearing, new convert who had spent
hard-earned money on a special dress to wear to
church on the first Sunday after her baptism.
There she sat in her lovely sundress listening to a
talk on the importance of covering our arms at all
times in order to prove that we were clean-minded
and pure-hearted women. She shrank farther and
farther down in her seat as the sermon continued;
she left in tears. No one could tell whether they
were tears of humiliation or indignation. She did
not return.

Then there were the string of girls’ camp
stories! Most began by describing a thirteen-year-
old girl who was newly big of bust. In some
cases, the sister telling the story was remembering
with pain her own experience, maybe thirty years
ago, still vividly. The girl had carefully packed
her T-shirts for camp, knowing she would meet
new girls and new leaders and would feel that she
was being watched and judged on her taste and her
good looks and her “coolness” and her nearness to
the standards set by the really “in” girls—or her
failure to meet all of these terrifying standards.
Shy, insecure, afraid, self-conscious, cautious, and
hating her unfamiliar body, the little girl acts
flamboyant, carefree, cavalier and bold as she
dons her choicest T-shirt for the introductory
hike—or meal, or game, or skit—only to be
laughed at—jeered, pointed to—for (of all horrible
things) the tightness of her shirt, the T-shirt

Sisters Help and Sisters Speak

revealing those awful new breasts that seem to
have grown even more since she packed last night.
Sadly, it is not only the girls who throw barbs and
jeer, it is also the leaders, some even suggesting
that the offensive girl take herself and her breasts
and her shirt back to the cabin for an alternative.
What an entry into life among the Mormon girls
and leaders, who—after all—are there to monitor
righteous behavior and looks.

For others the story centered around
bathing suits; for still others, it was shorts, shorts
that they were absolutely certain were exactly the
same length as those of other smaller, “less de-
veloped” girls but that attracted attention because
they were on their own already unacceptable—
more developed—bodies.

We all laughed and cried over these sto-
ries and how deeply their memories were etched
in our minds and hearts—and images of ourselves.
One sister said that she thought about her girls
camp story every summer day that she had to
dress to be outdoors with people. What a load to
carry! Another said that she had avoided camps
and outdoor summer sports ever since going to
girls' camp. What a price!

In speaking of the high price of these
lessons, a couple of women joked about what they
had cost them in actual dollars spent in marriage
counseling. We laughed sympathetically. Unspo-
ken among us that day was the terrible loss that
many of us have experienced in our relationships
with the men in our lives because we, and they,
wrongly learned lessons that our bodies were “not
proper,” that they were somehow “too much,” or
“too little.” And worse was the further implica-
tion that we could and we should “do something”
to make our bodies over, make them better, so that
they would signal our goodness, our desirability to
a righteous priesthood holder, our pureness of
heart.

We talked about eating disorders that have
their origin in young women trying to cover their
unacceptable bodies with fat or trying to make
their unacceptable bodies disappear with anorexia
or excessive dieting. It was clear from the discus-
sion that we had touched on a raw nerve and that
it was not just a few of us in our big healthy ward
who had struggled with these lifelong feelings of
badness associated with having the body of a
woman. During the next two weeks, I received two
letters and three phone calls about my lesson. I
expected the first letter to be critical of me for
straying from the manual because | perceived the
woman who wrote it to be narrow, inhibited, and
inhibiting. It turned out that she saw herself in all
of the same ways and resented and was sad that
she did. She traced being ashamed of herself and
her body to always feeling that because her
womanly body made her so susceptible to sinning
that she had to be on guard all the time, checking
herself for improper behavior that might reveal
her inner, wicked self. Hers was a powerful
letter—crying out for some way to feel free, to
live with herself in joy.

The second letter was from a woman,
whom I will call Jenny, who reiterated the validity
of the points from the lesson and added stories of
her own that have led her to a life of hating her
own lovely body, of always feeling compelled to

hide and cover it because she feared being thought

immodest, bad, sinful and reprehensible to the
Lord and, in turn, to any righteous priesthood
holder, like her husband. How, she said, she had
tried to be freer to enjoy herself as a sexual, adult,
attractive woman, how she fought the messages

that told her that because she was a Mormon girl
she couldn't be that. Jenny thanked me for calling
her attention to the problem because she had two
daughters and hoped now to be able to raise them
differently. She also hoped that by focusing on
these messages of body-hating as a problem, as an
excess, she could fight them and modify them to
her own benefit.

The first phone call I received was from a
friend who described the messages that her father
had delivered to her and her sister about the dan-
gers that they were to themselves—one had long
and beautiful legs and the other (my friend) had big
breasts. His warnings, accusations, prohibitions,
critical looks, and remarks about their bodies
accompanied these girls every time they went out
the door and continued when they got home. His
constant warnings and negative comments about
their legs and breasts left them feeling ashamed and
self-conscious and hating those body parts that had
imperiled their feelings of safety and well being.
Even today, they shy away from their father’s
glances and accusing looks and assume that others
like him—that is, other Church leaders—have the
same condemning attitudes towards their bodies.
What a burden to have been born with such legs
and breasts!

The second caller spoke of how her self-
consciousness in summer clothes had led to anxiety
about summer even coming. “It has impaired even
my ability to enjoy playing in the yard with my
kids,” she confessed with regret. The third caller
said that she had been in therapy for problems
related to sexual disfunction that she now believed
were made worse by her carefully taught hostility
to her own body and her fear of its parts being
exposed. She had laughed and cried over the
lesson, claiming that she identified with every story
told.

Four years have passed, and I am not a
Relief Society teacher any more. Last fall, we had
another lesson on modesty. The sweet teacher
covered familiar points, and frankly, I had forgotten
my lesson on the same topic. But as we all left the
room, several sisters squeezed my hand and re-
called that day when we had shared our regrets
about hating our bodies. Somehow modesty
lessons bring it all back with a vengeance.

Jenny was there to say that she had made
great strides in changing the way she looks at
herself. She is not out of the woods, she says, and
still has more self-consciousness and feelings of
ugliness and wrongness and badness than she
wishes she did, but she is improving. She can look
in the mirror and admire her body . . . sometimes.
When her husband genuinely compliments her on
her good looks, she can accept his comments with
graciousness. "What a blessing,” she says. And
best of all, she thinks she is setting a healthier path
for her three daughters, who are not yet old enough
for girls’ camp but who, with their mother’s help,
are preparing themselves by learning to like
themselves before that fateful thirteen-year-old's
day appears. Good luck, Jenny. May we all be so
healed.

Another sister reminded me that we had
concluded that lesson four years ago with the
mutual agreement that if you have to chose be-
tween modesty and self-esteem, self-esteem is more
important. When she had arrived home after that
lesson, she had put that message on her mirror. She
had then added, “If covering up your body makes
you hate it, uncover it!”

Note: Please respond to Judy’s experience by
May 30, 1995.

Younes ©

Volume 19 Number 1

Exponent Il Readers in the Rocky Mountain Retreat

Northwest To Hold Retreat Set for May

Re: The Third Annual Willamette Valley Plans are underway for the 1995 Rocky Mountain
Women’s Retreat Retreat (formerly the Southwestern Mormon

Date: April 21-23 (4:00 P.M., Friday to 2:00 Women's Retreat). Last year's retreat was a huge

P.M., Sunday)

Where: Camp Cascade on the North Fork of the

Santiam River (approximately 40 miles

east of Salem, Oregon)

$65 (all meals and lodging in comfortable

facilities)

Purpose: To establish a place of peace and
refuge for women, a place to explore
ideas, share feelings, develop friendships,
and renew our inner selves.

Theme: “Leaving Home”

Special Guest: Susan Howe

success, and this year's promises to be as fun,
interesting, and spiritually uplifting.

So far, the speakers are: Cathy Stokes (an
ambassador for the Church who helped establish
relationships with the Kenyan government),
Phyllis Barber (a widely published, award-
winning author), Denise Volkman (a popular |
speaker who will discuss "Adversity: Who Needs |
It?"), Linda Trappett (a wonderful speaker, |
engineer, and single mom), and Jerrie Hurd (a
well-known author who will continue her |
"Women in the Scriptures" series with her presen-
tation "How To Read the Scriptures and Not Miss
the Women."

Snow Mountain Ranch isa YMCA camp _ |
located on 10,000 forested acres high in the
Rockies about | 1/2 hours from Denver. Retreat
participants can use the swimming pool, the
skating rink, and the hiking trails. The cabins
have indoor plumbing and beds and are wheel-
chair accessible.

Registration will be limited to the first 50
participants. For more information or to reserve
your space, contact: Linda Tyler, 14759 East
Chenango Place, Aurora, CO 80015, (303) 680-
8475; or telephone Lisa Turner at (303) 730-6410
or Paula Goodfellow (303)460-7278.

Cost:

For information, call or write: Sue Phair , 510
Winding Way S.E., Salem, OR 97302, (503)588-
2284 or send $65.00 to Sue to reserve your spot.
(Include your phone number and a self-addressed,
stamped envelope.) Our first two years were
wonderful, and number three promises to be just
as great. Bring a friend and join us for a warm and
wonderful weekend of interesting workshops,
music, and friendship.

Mormon Electronic Mail Options

If you have access to an e-mail surfing device,
you may want to check out these addresses on
Internet:

Sunstone Announces Annual

GENERAL MAILING LISTS Fiction Contest
LDS-net: Contact David B. Anderson
(anderson @merl.com); he can also provide a
copy of his complete "List of Lists."
Mormon-L: Contact Susan McMurray
(catbyrd @ onramp.net)

WOMEN ONLY
Sister-Share (an ''on-line Relief Society''):
Contact Lynn Anderson (lynnma@netcom.com);
for information about discussing LDS feminism
and gender issues.

MAGAZINE

Saints-Best: Contact David B. Anderson
(anderson@merl.com); there is no discussion,
just "best of the lists" and news items.

The Sunstone Foundation encourages all inter-
ested writers—novice or professional—to enter
its annual Brookie and D. K. Brown Memorial
Fiction Contest. Entries must relate in some
manner to the Latter-day Saint experience,
theology, or world view. All entries must either
be taken to the Sunstone office or postmarked by
June 1, 1995. Cash prizes up to $400 per win-
ning entry will be awarded by the Brown family
for two categories: short-short story—less than
1,000 words; short story—less than 6,000 words.

Stories will be judged by an independent
board consisting of noted Mormon authors and
professors of literature. Awards will be an-
nounced August 12, 1995, at the Salt Lake City
Sunstone symposium banquet. Winning stories
will be published in Sunstone.

For further information, call the Sunstone
Foundation, 801/355-5926, or write, 331 Rio
Grande, Suite 206, SLC, UT 84101.

J oin us for the first time, renew your subscription, or give the gift of EXPONENT II and

There are also LDS-related lists on
America On-Line, Compuserv, Genie, and
Prodigy.

participate with Mormon women as we share our lives, reflect on our common bonds,
expand our understanding, and celebrate our diversity.

|
|
|
I
|
|
|
|

[| One year - $15 Two years - $30 Gift Subscription:

[| "Friend" Contribution: $30 (includes | year)

|] Outside USA: Add $8 postage per year Name

=

jName Address [|
jAddress City State Zip
icity State Zip Gift card to read:
Check below as applies:
| Te rae ee

|] New subscription Mail this form with check or money order to: |
| renewal EXPONENT II, P.O. BOX 128 |
CL] Change of address ARLINGTON, MA 02174-0002 ai

| ART EDITOR

EXPONENT II

EDITORIAL BOARD

Sue Paxman

Barbara Streeper Taylor
Nancy T. Dredge

Ann Stone

Laurel T. Ulrich

Robin Zenger Baker
Anne Wunderli

Bret Wunderli

Eileen Perry Lambert
Linda Hoffman Kimball

EDITOR
MANAGING EDITOR
SENIOR EDITORS

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

BOOK REVIEWS

EAST/WEST Melinda Smart Graves
| FICTION Susan Elizabeth Howe
POETRY Laura Hamblin

SISTERS SPEAK/HELP Judy Dushku
PRODUCTION :
Karen Call Haglund
Melinda Smart Graves
Ellen Patton

Jenny Atkinson :

CIRCULATION

WORD PROCESSING
BACK ISSUES

READERS COMMITTEE

MEMBERS Lynn Matthews Andersoy
Jenny Atkinson
Robin Zenger Baker
Nancy T. Dredge
Kristen Graves
Linda Hoffman Kimball
Sue Paxman
Sylvia Russell
Annie Bentley Waddoup:
Linda Andrews Whiting
Stephanie Smith-Watem:
Anne Wunderli

SPECIAL PROJECTS
BEST OF EXPONENT Cheryl Howard

EXECUTIVE BOARD

PRESIDENT Robin Zenger Baker

SECRETARY Karen Call Haglund
TREASURER Jenny Atkinson
HISTORIAN Cheryl Howard ,
MEMBERS Nancy T. Dredge

Judy Dushku

Kristen Graves

Melinda Smart Graves ,
Eileen Perry Lambert
Sue Paxman

Sylvia Russell

Carrel Hilton Sheldon
Barbara Streeper Taylor
Anne Wunderli

Exponent I is published quarterly by Exponent II Incorpo-
rated, a non-profit corporation with no official connection
with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Articles published represent the opinions of authors only
and not necessarily those of the editor or staff. Copyright @
1995 by Exponent II Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The purpose of Exponent II is to promote sisterhood by
providing a forum for Mormon women to share their life
experiences in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. Our
common bond is our connection to the Mormon C) hurchand
our commitment to women in the Church. The courage and
spirit of women challenge and inspire us to examine and
shape the direction of our lives. We are confident that this
open forum will result in positive change. We publish this
paper in celebration of the stren eth and diversity of women.