Guest post by Arawn Billings. Arawn is a transmasculine nonbinary artist whose works center the marginalized to help broaden perspectives and make spirituality a place of belonging. You can find his art and spiritual musings in the Church’s 11th and 12th International Art Contest galleries as well as on their website and instagram.

As I’ve learned is relatively common among transgender people, I was obsessed with understanding gender growing up. I studied popular texts and distilled the behaviors of those around me, looking for what inherent part of a person made them one of the binary genders. This obsession eventually brought me to study the theology around both Heavenly Mother and the Divine Feminine.

I was still seeking the answer to the gender question when I first began pondering over the BYU Study: A Mother There. I thought it would tell me the ideal traits of womanhood and how I could finally make peace with my assigned gender at birth. But it didn’t. Instead, I got the sense that if Heavenly Mother had once been a mortal, then She had come to Her own Godhood through perfecting who She was. Whatever She had been as a mortal, whether that had been a storyteller, healer, architect etc., She had perfected and mastered that. As I pondered this, I became more convinced that Her Godhood did not have to do with masculine and feminine traits, but godly traits.

Indeed, one of the frustrating things (for me at the time) about masculine and feminine traits, is that those traits are not possessed by just one of the binary genders. There may be patterns, but there are enough deviations from these patterns that they can’t really even be considered deviations. Thus I could not use a list of these traits to define gender. Additionally, from a religious standpoint, many religions, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, do not ask their members to develop a set list of masculine or feminine traits because it aligns with their gender. Instead, the Church asks all it’s members to develop traits that are Christlike. And that brings us to the example of Christ himself, whose ministry demonstrated many traits that would be considered feminine.

In turn, this begs the question, why is it necessary for our Heavenly Parents, or any eternal unit, to be made up of a binary cisgender man and woman. If the divine feminine and masculine can be developed in all of us, then the argument cannot be made that a heterosexual couple is needed to ‘balance’ these traits of masculine and feminine. In fact, I would argue I have never seen a heterosexual couple that demonstrates a balance of equal and opposite traits in all their aspects.

Also, do we believe that creation of spirits or, indeed, creation of any other kind requires the same conception method that is needed for mortal beings to be birthed? I find that concept bizarre and do not know of any doctrinal backing for such a belief.

What is more, why must our Heavenly Parents (or, again, any eternal unit) be one monogamous couple? Why must our Heavenly Family look like our concept of nuclear family, a fairly new and European concept? In a church that says it values familial ties throughout generations, why is there no space for a more expansive take on the Heavenly Family?

Do I know what our Heavenly Family looks like? No, but I have no qualms about speculating on this either. Most of the beliefs around our Heavenly Parents are speculation. They are just speculation based on the accepted cultural norms and so probably do not feel like speculation to those in that culture. I believe it is harmful to speculate when those speculations draw assumptions that hurt and exclude already marginalized groups. The Church’s history has an unfortunate amount of examples of this type of speculation that have made it to it’s policies and have been held up as doctrine. So I ask, what harm comes from making speculations that would include more of God’s children in our concept of the eternities?

And how will we receive revelation unless we are willing to consider concepts outside of our current understanding? Is it not a tenant of Mormon belief that revelation comes by asking questions with sincere intent?

So, coming back to my original question. The one that brought me on this quest. What defines a person’s gender? I have no empirical answers for you. I can only testify of my own gender identity as a transmasculine nonbinary person from my own inner knowing and revelation. It is a truth that has been spoken to my soul, and has been witnessed to me by my soul as well. And I think it is a fitting answer in a Mormon context, given that the Church puts so much stock in personal revelation and faith in things which cannot be seen, but are true.

And where does all this speculation leave me when it comes to worshiping and connecting with our Heavenly Parents? It certainly leaves a lot more gray in my relationship with deity, a relationship that has been my rock through a lot of difficult things. And even though these thought exercises are expansive and affirming, it is not easy to think of making changes to what is essentially the foundation of my life. It also has been confusing as I try to understand my experiences from a new lens of thought. Essentially the journey so far has been both incredibly uncomfortable and exciting.

As for my relationship with deity, I have chosen instead to focus on the energies of the Divine Feminine and Masculine. These energies are easier to recognize for me. It also allows me to not get too caught up in the exact identity of God. Are They female, male, nonbinary? Multiple parts of a Divine Family? In some aspects, why does it matter, if They are one in mind and purpose?

In other aspects, their potential for diversity is exactly why is matters. Expanding our concepts around our Heavenly Family makes space for those who are in the margins. It makes space for all the beautiful possibilities of humanity. Will shifting our thinking around this require effort, discomfort, time, and practice? Yes. But I think this is also one way of how we can push our concept of Heavenly Mother beyond the current cisgender heterosexual paradigm that too often surrounds Her.