Unwavering Faith

I told another close friend There was another close friend to me that I had yet to disclose my new decision to. I rang her, and after some small talk about how we had been, I told her the news: my wife and I had decided to step away from the church and I wanted you to hear it from me first. She responded as she typically does, "Yeah I figured it was something like that." She then dropped a one-liner that stuck with me:  "That's what happens when you stop going to church." I had to brush that line aside even though it hurt to hear my decision reduced to a single action. Why would such a line hurt ? When I was a TBM (true believing Mormon), I would hear about the importance of going to church every Sunday, and the importance of living the gospel everyday. Various analogies would be told to help members understand why it is important to stay. "It's like using your arm; if you bend it and lift with it, and use it, it will stay strong. But when I put it in a...

The classic phrase uttered by almost everyone at some point in their Mormon journey, and one of the most subjective concepts taught, yet relied upon as one of the best tools to navigate truth. On this day, I listened to a Mormon Stories episode 1563 where a girl named Faith Erickson spoke out about redefining sexuality and body autonomy. The episode runs for 2 and a half hours, and so I will only speak to the notes I took at the time, but the whole episode is worth a listen. From the episode, there were two main points that struck me as being very real when you belong to the church; the doctrine of your own voice and the voice of the Spirit is very confusing, and your sexuality is something the church tries to own. Is it the Spirit, or just me? From the age of Primary, I was taught that the still small voice  was how god spoke to us, unless you were a prophet, which meant he actually spoke to you. Like Moses and the burning bush, or Smith and the First vision. This voice was called...

Listening to the Mormon Stories podcast became a regular activity I pursued during my work hours. I spent much of this time hearing the perspectives of others and reflected on my own journey quite deeply. One such guest came onto the podcast who went by the pseudonym  Mike  from a website called LDS Discussions where an extensive website pieced together a systematic timeline of historical events of the early days of the church. The website is a great resource to refer back to after listening to the actual podcasts, at least for me it was. A list of the episodes can be found here . The seer stone the church believes Smith used. The series first starts with information regarding Joseph and activities that he got up to, including something I never knew about him: treasure digging as a legit way to earn money . Yes. The prophet who was to usher in the gospel and the true church dug for treasure using a variety of folk magic techniques, including the use of a seer stone which he f...