A prayer to the Gods.
Which ones?
My grandpa. My grandma. My dad.
There is only one God under heaven.
A jealous God. An angry God.
My grandma is kind and loving.
God is male. God is white.
Who gets to be God?
God is God.
Will we not all become gods?
Only little g gods.
As God now is, so shall we become.
We don't get our own planets anymore.
I don't want my own planet.
I want to reach through time and space and
follow my longing to connect with grandma god.
There is no time for God.
He dwells in the eternal now.
So my grandma is a god now.
No. God is male.
But when does she become a God?
If eternity has no beginning or end,
when does she enter the circle?
It doesn't matter. Jesus only prayed to big G God.
What if he prayed to Mother God too?
Or to a God not bound by our earthly concepts of sex and gender?
Gender is eternal. Sex never changes.
What about intersex individuals? What about trans people?
We don’t talk about them.
God will figure it out and make all things right.
What about right now?
What about the people affected this day?
They just have to endure.
God will figure it out.
God is great. God is male.
Don’t you believe in Heavenly Mother too?
Yes. But Joseph Smith saw God.
He was male.
He’s the important one.
If God is a god, can’t God take on any form God wants?
Maybe Joseph Smith wouldn’t have recognized God
if she appeared as a woman of color.
You need to trust Joseph Smith’s account.
I was taught to trust my personal revelation.
I was told the Holy Ghost would guide and witness to me.
Your personal revelation is only valid if it affirms current LDS doctrine.
Is it no longer doctrine that we can become Gods?
Only little g gods.
You can’t pray to your grandma.
I feel God in every fiber of my being.
When I sit on the forest floor.
When I meditate on my ancestors.
When I pray to my grandma god.
Well. You’re wrong.
This poem was inspired by listening to my child pray to all their deceased ancestors. It has a lot of references to theological concepts I heard growing up. I also included a nod to the idea often taught to generations past that exalted peoples would get their own planets. The church now clarifies this isn’t true on their FAQ.
4 Responses
Beautiful, Tirza. I love your heart and your expressions and honestly. Liberating.
I love this tension between “what is needed” and “what is”.
– As a woman, I felt that I have “needed” a Divine Female to support me, connect with me, and teach me what being a Divine Female is all about (especially if “Gender is Eternal”) in specific ways. [I am horrible at the “nurturing” side of things, so I am even more aware of what that feels like.]
What I have been told when I dared to state what I felt I needed” is “what is”. It doesn’t matter that I felt that I need access to Divine Female, “What is” the way things are is that the Godhead “is” Male (with teachings of support, connection, and teaching associated with Jesus Christ).
The irony being that Joseph Smith felt that he got a specific answer to prayer that revolutionized his life and inspired thousands of people – but my “feelings” (and the feelings of thousands of others on this topic) get rejected because they are pragmatically organizationally revolutionary.
This is beautiful, Tirza. And I love this thought: “If eternity has no beginning or end,
when does she enter the circle?”
Oh, so good! I’m saving this in my favorites.