Green Oasis

Words to live by, the essence of my outlook on life.

I’ve decided to work through the Simple Living Manifesto, a list of 72 ideas to help simplify. I began with step one: make a list of my top 4-5 important things. I reflexively began to rattle off: family, work, school, and so on but stopped myself. Are those really the most important things in my life, or are those means to an end? I paused and tried again.

Throughout the day, I pondered on what my most important things are. I finally came up with this list:

• Life—the survival and propagation life
• Knowledge—learning the truth
• Peace—contentment and satisfaction
• Compassion—suffering with others and working to alleviate the unnecessary pains of life
• Love—to love and be loved

I value these things. I can’t justify why, but I don’t feel any need do so. I just want them. Perhaps I value those things just because I’m human.

On to the next steps: evaluate my commitments and my time. Everything I do should support those goals.

My daughter nestled into the crook of my shoulder and we gazed up at the soft blueness of lastlight. I had just removed some cat manure from the lawn. I looked over at her hive ridden body. A cool breeze hinted at the coming autumn.

She reached up, caressed a branch of our small pomegranate tree with its solitary blossom, and said “Everything’s perfect. It’s right where it’s supposed to be.” I smiled to hear such poetry come out of a little girl’s mouth, and for a moment I believed her.

We went back to spotting gape-mouthed crocodiles with castles for party hats as they floated by above us.

Masturbation (and more) is on my mind again.

I just read a comment by “struggling” about his struggles with masturbation. I can feel echoes of my own life in his story.

The other issue here is that while on my mission there could have been no time in my life where I was more dedicated to abstaining or avoiding sexual thoughts or activities. Furthermore my days were always completely planned and scheduled so it is not like I was not busy and being idle. I had never masturbated until the near end of my mission and that seems really quite odd to me. It nearly destroyed me. I thought I would be sent home from my mission cuz I had read the statement that no young man should go on a mission who engages in such an activity. I fell on my knees in some disgusting foreign country bathroom and weeped excessively while expressing the most intimate of feelings with my Father in Heaven and promising never to do it again. After that I tortured myself mentally and emotionally…maybe even physically. I constantly fasted for strength(once for 48 hours), prayed, confessed, memorized scriptures, wore tight clothing, went without sleep to avoid being in bed where the “temptation” was strongest and all the while trying to serve as the EQ president in my singles unit while battling thoughts of failure, inadequacy, and at times suicide.…

I was just trying to do what the church leaders kept telling me to do. I looked for relief. I read a lot and I read from Miracle of Forgiveness, To the Young men only, talks by Featherstone, some article which may or may not have been from Elder Petersen, my scriptures, skousen books and many more that were not directly correlated to the topic on tab; to what end I am not sure. All I wanted was relief not anxiety. That is what I was searching for. One could argue that I was anxious because I continued in the practice, maybe so, but I fought with everything I had. Every ounce of energy was dedicated to winning this battle every night and after weeks of battling, struggling, enduring, the battle would extend to two fronts as “tension” would infiltrate my daily activities. The funny thing is that I would not even consider myself a “Peter Priesthood” type of guy. Most of my friends were not even LDS but I cant help but feel bad for what those “pristine” mormon children feel when they cannot overcome masturbation or anything that one could logically call an even more grave mistake.

Then there’s Sister Mary Lisa with her painful, touching story of being pregnant out of wedlock and later married to a non-Mormon. She speaks of the pain and humiliation she endured for 13 years.

A couple months later, I realized I was pregnant. All I could think about was my high priest dad’s words from my childhood: “Any daughter of mine who comes home pregnant out of wedlock is no longer my daughter.”…

Being in the primary presidency for years, I was expected to teach all those diverse children about eternal families and what they should strive for in their own lives, because anything less is not what righteous people do. I remember teaching about how families can be together forever while looking into the hurt and wounded eyes of Brother Z., the teacher whose impending divorce had just been announced the week before, and whose daughter was crying in the back row. I hid my own pain well, I thought. Until later that night when my son asked me, “How come WE’RE not sealed together forever?” How do you explain such a nasty concept to a child? Your father doesn’t believe the church is true, honey, and if we don’t go to the temple, then we aren’t sealed together forever. “But why not? He loves me, and I love him!” I know. I know. It’s God’s plan. “But where will we GO when we die? Who will I be with??” If you are really righteous, and marry your own sweetheart in the temple someday, you’ll be with her and your children! “But what about you and Dad?” Oh, don’t worry about us. It’ll all work out in the next life. I’ll be OK. “But will I see you there?” Pain like that eviscerates and is impossible to hid from your children.…

Imagine my horror in finding out that the beloved prophet Joseph Smith (whom I had admired enough to name my son after, along with Joseph in Egypt) had married over 30 women, some of whom were still married to men he had sent on missions! Imagine my horror in reading the accounts of how he convinced Heber C. Kimball to give his 14 year old daughter to him in plural marriage by promising her entire family eternal salvation if they said yes! Imagine my horror when I found out that he did his plural wife thing behind Emma’s back, and denied it publicly when someone called him on it!!

I had been made to feel low and dirty and worthless for my two weeks of sex and my lifetime of keeping an “illegitimate” baby out of wedlock, all by the very church that had been founded by a guy like Joseph Smith???

You know, I can think of only one way to express how I feel about teaching children to be ashamed of their sexuality:

Fuck… That… Shit!

Don’t even come near my daughters with that poison. You seem like a nice person. I don’t want to have to beat you down.

I’m fed up. The shame implicit in the way the Law of Chastity is typically taught is mental and emotional child abuse. I know you’re trying to keep them clean and pure (nobody wants to be a chewed up piece of used bubble gum), but your delusional good intentions would pave the way to a hell full of self-loathing for my daughters. I can’t let that happen.

If one of my daughters comes home pregnant outside of marriage or—heaven forbid!—she masturbates, she will be received as always with open arms and heartfelt kisses. She will never be less than my beautiful, my priceless, my incomparable daughter.

You can call me a sinner if you want. You can blame my non-belief on my not-so-secret sins if that makes you feel justified in your beliefs. But leave me and mine alone. I’m happy to be rid of you and your hateful ideas.

So put down your copy of The Miracle of Forgiveness and nobody gets hurt. Close the door on your way out.

Letting go of God involves letting go of the stories that gave meaning and purpose to life. This can be a very dark time. When I think about this part of my deconversion, I imagine myself skirting the brink of a bottomless abyss like those swirling black holes in old sci-fi movies.

…the person’s former faith has collapsed, but they do not yet have anything to replace it with. Unfortunately, most people are taught that only through religion can they hope to find happiness, meaning, purpose or fulfillment in life, and this belief often persists after all the other aspects of religious belief have gone, leading to a feeling of emptiness and hopelessness, of having hit rock bottom. Fear, undirected anger, and feelings of depression are common. Often a person feels overwhelmed and lost, adrift in the world without a framework to make sense of it all. (Into the Clear Air)

One day while I was flailing around for meaning in my life, I happened to be driving through northern Utah and southern Idaho on my way to a family reunion. The overcast skies and the long, scenic drive conspired to put me in a contemplative mood. I wondered why it mattered whether I lived or died since I would be dead in the end anyway. The universe didn’t care. It would go on its mindless way, heedless of my death.

Then I began to think about my daughters and my wife. My death would matter to them. I didn’t want them to be unhappy or to struggle without me. I wanted to help my family.

Then I thought about my ancestors, about all of the hard lives they eked out on this earth, about the flashes of joy and the dark tragedies in their lives. They survived and I owe my existence to their perseverance. I pondered on the countless generations of mankind who lived and died before me. A sense of deep history overcame me.

I imagined even further back to the time of my ape ancestors. I imagined the strength and tenderness of a maternal ancestor grooming her new baby, protecting it with her own life from the dangers lurking in the darkness. I imagined the strength and determination of my paternal ancestors whose lives punctuated by violence made me possible. I began to feel a sense of deep connection with all of my ancestors back to the beginning of life on earth.

Then I looked on the plants and animals around me and realized that I was surrounded by family, distant cousins trying to live according to the dictates of their own drives. I worried about the brutishness of their lives and wished I could lift them out of it. I was filled with compassion for all life.

I looked to the future. I saw obstacles and uncertainty. There was no God to help us. We could only succeed by our own wits, by taking responsibility into our own hands. Only we had the power to succor and bring equity. Only we could love each other.

I decided to live in the service of the grand experiment: life on earth. If I could ameliorate the suffering of other beings present and future, I would count my life meaningful. My heart burned within me with an intense love and connection with the world around me. I felt at peace; I had finally found a safe harbor to escape the storm. I felt an growing confidence that I was on the right path.

I had broken through to the other side.

Most people, by this stage, have learned that they are not alone, that their path is one that many travelers have walked before; that there are whole communities of freethinkers out there, glowing like galaxies through the dark veils of blind faith.… this stage is characterized by a peak as high as those valleys [of the previous stage] are deep, a joy as high and sublime as the horizon of dawn. The exhilaration of breaking through the layers of things that you believe because you have been taught to believe, of discovering for yourself what is true, and of finally knowing who you are and understanding your place in the cosmos, is something compared to which the sterile and antiquated dogmas of religion seem puny and absurd. Returning to them, at this stage, is like trying to return to life in a small, windowless room after one has seen the soaring, sunny vista that awaits just outside. (Ibid.)

Since that time, I’ve met a few believers who have had brushes with atheism. They come to the place of darkness and meaninglessness but never seem to make it through to the bright vistas on the other side. They’ve dipped their toes in the pool and decided that a world without God is not for them. Or perhaps they leapt in and began to drown like I had. While I found the other side of the pool to save me, they returned to the place from which they dove in.

They have to find their own way and happiness, but I wish I could share with them what I found.