Guest post by Anonymous, who is a mother of four incredible kids, a heartbroken questioner, a bibliophile, a wife of an atheist, and a thousand other things
I sold my soul to God. For $40 a month, lies in a temple recommend interview, and documents full of men’s quotes about a Heavenly Mother I no longer believe in. I’m a shell of my old self. I severed my body from my soul when I started to imagine another God but stayed in a religion that enforces a He God that I don’t believe in. I hold my soul hostage for community, ideas of goodness, and my family heritage but mostly for the hope of change.
The hope of changing the definition of God is not unfounded or unprecedented; God evolves and changes with the needs of the culture-creating-people since the beginning of time. One such change comes to mind—the Nicene Creed defined God, stripped the bible of feminine deity and imagery; the names and stories of Ashura, Sophia, and Elohim have all been gleaned from the LDS lexicon. If the word God can be stripped away and defined, perhaps it can also be created and undefined. Hence, I stay in a place of pretending, a place of imagining. My body resides here in this church smiling and nodding and listening but my invisible parts desperately wade through hopes and language and realities that I find on the fringes and that I reform into palpable messages of faith. The He God has control and He is tearing me apart.
Ripping my soul from my knowing is slow, dull, numbing—less painful than I imagined. My body does the motions of devotion but my soul no longer believes and the idea of God has my soul by the throat, gently squeezing, slowly suffocating me to sleep with meaningless rituals designed by men for reasons sanded down by history.
For a long time, I created my own meanings for the rituals of sacrament, wearing garments, veiling my face in the temple, and praying to God. The meanings were feminine and beautiful; meanings that helped me find my own divinity. I found Her on the fringes like when Eliza R. Snow prophesied at a women’s meeting: “While sitting here I have been looking upon the faces of my sisters and can see the form of Deity there.” I too found Deity in the form of women.
But that belief kept being ripped from me by the constant reprimands in the rhetoric of the church: “We do not pray to Heavenly Mother,” it says, and “do you have a testimony of God, the Eternal Father,” it asks; reprimanding me for having a testimony in a god that is more than a Father, more than a man, more than words defined by a group of men in the third century, more than comprehension. I found Her in stories and wind and breath, but the reprimands forced me to face the He God again and again, and I know I should have left the church then but I couldn’t leave when She was so close and stirring within me like an untamed beast.
I sold my soul to this Father God of my girlhood so I could speak to a congregation and say She, so I could teach children about love, so I could listen to neighbor’s experiences and meanings, so I could learn about acceptance in a diverse congregation of people from disparate backgrounds, so I could talk about literature and spirituality in a language I know. So I could send a document full of quotes and art about Heavenly Mother to 45 adults in my ward and encourage them to incorporate Her into their Primary lessons. I disguise these beautiful things as devotion to the He God and everyone believes me.
Now I don’t know how to untangle my soul from this man God I pretend to know. The one I sold my soul to for an audience I understand, a people that I love, a language I studied since birth. I didn’t realize I’d slowly stop breathing, imperceptibly deflate as that idea of God’s grip tightened and tightened around my windpipe while I gently nudged a bishop here and a bishop there towards a Mother God until I accidentally became an institute teacher and then a primary president and now I pay tithing and answer impossible, exclusive, eroding questions with lies and pray to a God who doesn’t exist but has a grasp around my throat and allow people to assume I love Him, know Him, when all I hear is Him, him, him, him, his, he.
And then I remember why I sold my soul to Him. For Her. To plant the seed of something else into the minds that belong to Him. I’m fairly certain She doesn’t exist either, the reprimands have had their effects on my faith, but that is just a complication because language matters. Representation matters. Saying She and Her and Heavenly Mother at the pulpit matters. And if a She God is created and exists in our language, in our minds, then women might feel powerful and girls might love their bodies and write their stories and go on their quests and use their minds and unleash their doubts on the patriarchy.
And while my soul is suffocating in His hands, I deliriously think that if we can create a She God maybe we can create a They God. A God that represents every living being and holds our stories and our grief in Their palms and wombs and hearts. An undefinable God for all of the undefinable souls. I sold my soul to the He God so I could change Him into They from the inside. I sold my soul to a He God in hopes that God can become a word where no one is excluded by language or meaning or document. Perhaps, He and Her will dissolve into They if I can make it beautiful enough to the people who belong to Him. And so, you see, I have sold my soul to God thinking I could be a hero. Thinking I could change the direction of a massive vessel with the touch of my blue-nailed finger.
It is dysfunctional, but maybe, like the Nicene Creed re-defined God and a million other men re-define God over and over again, we can undefine God. Maybe God can be the limitless They in the collective lexicon of human minds. And even if I’m withering in the hands of Him Him He His, maybe I can watch humans find their femininity, their beauty, their freedom, find their power and acceptance of all people. And maybe the He God will stop strangling us with a pronoun, with a word, and finally, let us all breathe.
This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.
6 Responses
Religion is a set of rules, definitions, and doctrines, that have been agreed upon by the participant members. Sometimes it’s possible to intersect religion and spirituality, but not always. And not by a lot of the people involved. Spiritual connection to the divine Great Creator can be enjoyed by anyone. Period. You sound like a wonderful person for staying in the church to help create the changes that are long overdue, but our “seers” can’t seem to see. Bless you in the journey.
What a generous and kind comment. Thank you, Beth.
“Representation matters. Saying She and Her and Heavenly Mother at the pulpit matters. And if a She God is created and exists in our language, in our minds, then women might feel powerful and girls might love their bodies and write their stories and go on their quests and use their minds and unleash their doubts on the patriarchy.”
Yes! And I understand that even in the face of uncertainty about who and what exists where, this still matters. She matters. They matter. And helping children and youth see themselves represented and fully loved matters.
Mary Daly said, “If God is male, then the male is God,” and it’s true. This recent crackdown on Heavenly Mother makes me scratch my head, just like all the previous crackdowns. Do these men really not understand the disconnect between their insistence of gender essentialism + their hyperfocus on motherhood and their erasure of the divine feminine? If motherhood is such a high and holy calling, then why aren’t we “allowed” to speak to our Mother? They teach us gender is eternal and then present us with an eternity that is at best invisible and at worst unbearable.
I’m so sorry, and thank you for sharing.
Yes, all of this. That they don’t seem to see the disconnect between gender essentialism while at the same time erasing divine feminine is bewildering. This post is eye-opening. So many of us are in a similar place on the inside that nobody looking from the outside and only seeing institute teacher, primary president would ever guess what is happening inside.
Heart wrenching. Thank you.