Reorganizing (Pan)Dora's box

I’ve been contemplating the divide between women and deity. In lessons at church (especially those in Relief Society), teachers will draw an isosceles triangle … labeling the top angle as god, and the bottom two angles as husband and wife. We are taught that marriage is a three-way partnership, between man, woman and god. And yet, that isn’t what we are taught in the temple. There, it seems more like a vertical diminuendo of communication, god on top, followed by men, with women on the bottom. We promise obedience to our husbands, but our husbands promise theirs to god. We are slated to become queens and priestesses to our husbands, yet they are to be kings and priests to god. It’s a niggling bother that I try to stuff back into my own Pandora’s box. I do a lot of mental gymnastics, consoling myself with the fact that mine is a church of continuing revelation, and that certainly this will be reconciled when the time is right. How is it possible for women to be so divided from their Heavenly parents and divine heritage in the long run? I tell myself, it is just a faulty translation from the mind of deity into the hearts and minds of good men who struggle to interpret the divine on our behalf. It’s a problem of language.

And yet, language is important. Specificity and correctness is important. The church just fought for and won a pyrrhic victory to pass Prop 8 … in essence, a battle for the right to use the term “marriage.” We employ a certain number of set prayers and blessings that were given by revelation. What’s a feminist to do?

I don’t know. For myself, I have become a cafeteria Mormon. I’ve heard this term used as a derogatory slur on the bloggernacle. There are those who sneer at cafeteria Mormons, at their apparent laziness, selfishness and lack of faith. And yet, I wear it as a badge of pride. There are some tenets of Mormonism that I believe strongly, to the very core of my being. I believe in Heavenly Parents who love us. I believe they are just, and instituted proxy work so that all the inhabitants of the world get a fair chance. I believe in the bonds of eternal families, and the promise of eternal progression.

And so it was with a combination of concern and relief that I read this post by Lynette over at Zelophehad’s Daughters. I’m not the only one that struggles. I’m not the only one who has to be creative in finding ways to reconcile what I’m taught with what I believe. Because I do believe. And so I stay.