Retreat

Last month I went to a retreat with other Mormon feminists. One of the speakers was Margaret Toscano and she gave her powerpoint presentation about images of the Goddess in ancient times and today. She had some slides great artwork by modern Mormon artists- if I get the names, I'll share them here.

Ooh... powerpoint...

A couple of the other attendees of the retreat had studied some Pagan traditions and led a popular Pagan Goddess chant.

We all come from the Goddess
And to her we shall return
Like a drop of rain
Flowing to the ocean.

It was new to me. The first line "We all come from the Goddess," made do an inner nod, "Yes we do all come from Heavenly Mother." But the second line made me start tearing up, "And to her we shall return."

Part of it is that I don't handle death well. I don't like to think of me or the people I love dying in the future. But this stanza is right- we all die. And we all go back to our Creators. And Heavenly Mother will be there along with Heavenly Father. It's not something I think about often, but it was very powerful for me at that moment.

In the next month or so I'm going to be doing a post at the Exponent about Heavenly Mother and I'll cross post it here for you all.

Heavenly Parents, Conference Edition

Remember when I looked at how often "Heavenly Parents" was mentioned in church materials? Well, this past weekend in Conference, it seemed like there was unprecedented mention of "Heavenly Parents" in talks.

Most fun was Elder Ballard's mention of "Heavenly Parents." His talk is here, and at 10:55, you can here him start saying "Heavenly F... Parents." He changed his mind mid-word!

Here are the quotes I found:

Elder Ballard, "And the primary purpose of this priesthood power is to bless, sanctify, and purify us so we can live together with our families in the presence of our heavenly parents, bound by priesthood sealings, participating in the marvelous work of God and Jesus Christ in forever expanding Their light and glory."

Elder Christoffel Golden Jr., "Seen in its true light, the doctrine of the Father and the Son is the doctrine of the eternal family. Every human being has existed previously as a spirit child with heavenly parents, with Christ being the Firstborn of the Father in this heavenly family.

Elder Bednar quoted the "Heavenly Parents" line in the proclamation.

Elder Oaks, "Under that plan we are all heirs of our heavenly parents."

That's all could find- it seems the Church has changed their "search" feature on their website and now it's more difficult to find what I'm looking for! Alas!

Interesting to note: when speakers refer to "Heavenly Father" the words are considered proper nouns and are capitalized. "Heavenly parents" is not considered a proper noun in these talks. I'm not sure I like that.

November in Review

I know I didn't do any posts this month. I have some hymns and scriptures in mind for next month, though.

We'll still look at Heavenly Mother in the Bloggernacle this month:

At Patheos, there was a post called, "The Heavenly Mommy Wars," with the line, "At stake in the issue of Heavenly Mother is nothing less than what it means to be a woman." That article really gets at the some of the dilemma Mormonism faces with being silent about Heavenly Mother.

Rachael Rose guest posted at The Exponent about Heavenly Mother and the Paradoxical Embodiment.

The Huffington Post ran Catholics and Mormons: A New Sisterhood in the Struggle for Women's Ordination, which compares and contrasts some of the feminist topics in Catholicism and Mormonism, including the Divine Feminine and Heavenly Mother.

Also, this past month, the BYU Women's Studies Honor Society held a discussion on Heavenly Mother. Anyone there want to share their notes?

Have you seen any other posts this month?


This month has been a reflective month for me. I haven't been posting, but my mind has been on this blog. Next month is the second anniversary of this blog, which means this month is the second anniversary of the idea of this blog. Two years ago, I was really struggling with exactly what that quote from Patheos above gets at. I looked around and saw no reference to any resurrected being being female. Angels mentioned in the Book of Mormon or in Church History were all male. And in current Church organization, women's groups like YW and Relief Society are "auxiliaries," appendages. And while it's nice to have appendages like arms, you don't need one to live. And that's how I was feeling in my relationship with the world. It's nice that I'm around, but not really necessary. There were a few dark days where my existence was really put into question.

Ultimately I decided that I needed to insist on the importance of Heavenly Mother because I needed to insist on the importance of myself and all the other girls and women in this world. And so this blog began. I hit some resistance from commenters and emails early on, and the number of views and followers of this blog are small, but I do really like this little blog and I'll keep on with it. The holidays are upon us and I'm currently "great with child," so I'm continuing without a lot of momentum at the moment. Thanks for staying along for the ride.

I Have a Body like Heavenly Mother

A few months ago, in a monthly review, I linked to Mrayne's Exponent post, What My Daughter Learns, about the messages about our bodies that are taught in nursery class. I taught Sunbeams and hadn't run into handouts like that, though I would mention Heavenly Mother in conjunction with Heavenly Father. I did remember thinking, "Well, I turned down the nursery calling, so I probably won't have to deal with it, but if I did, I'd make sure I mention Heavenly Mother just like I do in Sunbeams."

My ward is persistant, though, and 6 months after working in the Sunbeams, I was asked again to go teach nursery. I relented on my "I don't teach the classes of my own children" rule and accepted the nursery leader calling. Two weeks ago I shadowed the nursery leader as she taught lesson 7, Jesus Christ Created the World for Me. Then I was on my own.

I decided to just go onto the next lesson in order because I wasn't feeling very creative and did lesson 8 last week. The handout for lesson 8 says, "Sunday is a day to remember Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ." I lamented the lack of Heavenly Mother and decided that instead of coloring that whole sheet with the words, they would color the pictures and paste them on a construction paper sun (for "Sun-day"). It was an easy way to avoid having to full-on photoshop the handout. I made sure to say that we remember our Heavenly Parents on the Sabbath.

Tomorrow is lesson 9, the one Mraynes' daughter had. And I decided that I would follow through on my vow to mention Heavenly Mother. So tomorrow, I will go to nursery with a basket full of handouts and half of them will say, "I have a body like Heavenly Mother." The little girl image was taken from the handout of lesson 11, so it's a little extra pixelated, but I don't think the 2 year olds will care.

As I teach, I may run into other lessons and find ways to mention Heavenly Mother. If I find some great ideas, I'll share them here. Feel free to use that handout in your own classes!

Have you tried adapting lessons to include Heavenly Mother? What has worked for you?

Mother's Day Talk

Happy Mother's Day, everyone! I know Sundays are when I usually feature a hymn, but today I'm going to share the last few paragraphs of the talk I gave today. I was asked to talk about how being a mother has helped me increase in love and become more like Christ. The first 8 minutes of my talk consisted of me quoting a scripture from the Sermon on the Mount and then giving an example of how I have lived that or how I try to live that in my life. I also included the story of the rich young man and the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Then at the end, I added a few paragraphs, which I'll share here.

Parents are important, because it is from them that children learn whether or not the world is dark and cold or warm and inviting. I know that their confidence and personhood is first developed at home. Home should be a place where they are built up, not brought down.

Elder James G. Duffin declared, “We, as parents, give an account to our Father and Mother in heaven of the manner in which we have conducted ourselves toward the precious souls entrusted to us.”

Speaking of a Mother in heaven, I think it would be disgraceful to go through Mother's Day and not reference Her at some point. The publication, A Short History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints says, “The theological conception of a Mother in heaven as well as a Father lends dignity to motherhood and wifehood.”

I would add that it lends dignity to womanhood and manhood: humanity and personhood in general. When we elevate the persons who created us, we elevate ourselves and understand our potential more greatly.

Elder John A. Widtsoe wrote: “The glorious vision of life hereafter . . . is given radiant warmth by the thought that . . . [we have] a mother who possesses the attributes of Godhood.”

How do we come to know Her? Just as Christ says we cannot know the Father but through him, I think that as we follow Christ, we grow closer to our Heavenly Mother. She is there. I do not think our lack of scripture and writings dedicated to her do not demonstrate that she is not important in our lives and eternally, but that we do not recognize her importance.

President Rudger Clawson urged, “It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal Mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mothers in our affections.” Rather, “we honor woman when we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal prototype.”

When God comforts his children, so does she. When He wept before Enoch, I believe she was crying too. Together our Heavenly Parents bring us miracles, care for us, love us, sustain us. Together they grants us wisdom, command us, judge us, and edify us. They sent their Son to show us how to kind to each other and to be patient and merciful. I believe in the gospel of Christ, and I find hope in eternal life. Through Joseph Smith, many wonderful truths were brought together again to aid us in our eternal journey. I know our leaders are trying very hard to show us the way back to Christ. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. (name of Christ amen)

As an aside, I had to read my talk from my smartphone and that last paragraph somehow got deleted in the transfer from my laptop to my phone, so I had to come up with my testimony on the spot which involved crying and an off-handed remark on how I'm a mother who doesn't know a thing.

How was this received? I got lots of great feedback- much more than my intro-to-the-ward talk last year. Many people loved the structure of using the Sermon on the Mount and a few people mentioned how wonderful it was that I mentioned Heavenly Mother. One even asked for a copy of the talk so she could share it with her husband who wasn't here. The Heavenly Mother quotes I used at the end there were from this new BYU Studies paper, A Mother There, which I plan on doing a review on later this month.

How was Mother's Day in your ward? I'm guessing most wards gave Heavenly Mother the common shout-out in O My Father today, though strangely, ours didn't. We had a brunch afterwards for all the young women and Relief Society sisters instead of going to Sunday School or Relief Society classes and the men took over our callings (I was Sunbeam-free today!). There was a presentation highlighting the ways women in our ward have served in their lives and a focus on how we can serve in many different ways. Wonderful day overall.

Happy Mother's Day!

A Couple of lds.org Searches

Last year I was curious as to how often the term "heavenly mother," appeared on the official Church site, so I did a search. I wasn't very impressed with the results. There were a total of 11 over the past 40 years.

Most of the references are from the 70s and 80s. The one reference in 2000 is from a manual that was originally written in 1979, but was revised in 2000, so I don't think that point is really indicative of what has been published by the Church in recent years. In general, Heavenly Mother was referenced "a lot" in the 70s and 80s and not at all in the past 15 years.

After fretting about this, it came to me to go back and search "heavenly parents." So I did.

Because some of the references were to the same article, I counted each article only once. This means that if there was an article in the Ensign that was also published in the Liahona, I counted it only once. There are peaks at 1995, 2000, and 2002. The Proclamation on the Family came out in 1995 and the 2000 and 2002 peaks are the result of the Church re-publishing manuals in 2000 and 2002 with the Proclamation printed in them.

In this graph, we can see "heavenly parents" was referenced regularly in the 70s and 80s and early 90s. In the years following 1995, many of the instances of "heavenly parents" are quotes from the Proclamation. Despite this, I think it's safe to say that the average member, from Primary age and up, is hearing "heavenly parents" more than s/he would have in the past.

I hope that this increase in reference to "heavenly parents" will continue! I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about these graphs.

Why Heavenly Mother is Important to Me

When I came to put pen to paper, or hands to keyboard, for this topic, I had a hard time starting because so much came to me all at once. I'll try to break it up for you.

As a Child
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the first time I learned about Heavenly Mother and what I did with that knowledge as a child. As a child, it was simply instinctive to want to know Her. She was important to me because how could your mother not be important to you? I loved both my earthly parents, so it made sense to want to know and love both my heavenly parents.

As a Mother
My thoughts about Heavenly Mother changed perspective when I became a mother. I am now on the "other side" and knew more about what it means to love a person who is so completely dependent on you, and yet so unique with independent thoughts. To imagine a mother who was faceless and essentially non-existent to her children is abhorrent to me. And to imagine a father who tells his children not to talk to their mother is just... well, abusive. I cannot accept the idea that she needs protection from her children- is she all powerful or not? I have started thinking of her more lately partly because I think we needlessly separate ourselves from Her. And distancing myself from the feminine divine feels like I'm rejecting half of God.

As a Woman
This is the most wounded part of me when it comes to knowing Heavenly Mother. The insistence from others that it's not important now to have a relationship with Her pains me. If it's not important to have a relationship with the one exalted woman I know of, who is perfect and Eternal, why bother working on relationships with the mortal, flawed, imperfect women around us? If She's not important- the person I hope to someday be like- am I not important?

That is the pain of not having a Heavenly Mother to me. If She has no purpose, then I have no purpose- no reason to exist.

When I think of Her, I am also thinking of all the women around me. I am thinking of them and who they can become. When I insist that our Heavenly Mother needs to be spoken of, I am insisting that we need to speak of each other as well. We need both heavenly parents. We need to know and understand who they are to know and understand each other. We need each other.

"Goddess"

When I first started this blog, my brain ran into a little discomfort in referring to Heavenly Mother as Goddess. I told myself, "If I have no qualms in calling Heavenly Father God, why this mental quirk about calling Heavenly Mother Goddess?"

I think the answer stems from our cultural tradition of patriarchal Christian religion. In Christianity, "God" is not only a title, it is a name. While we know "El" is the Hebrew name for "God," in English we just stick with "God." For a nerdy example- it's like how "Doctor Who" goes by Doctor and it is both a title and name. He's just "Doctor."

"Goddess" on the other hand, has been much more limited. In Protestant-idea-entrenched America, the word "Goddess" is only used in referencing non-Christian pantheons. "Goddess" was a word for what other people worshiped. Indeed, she is the Other, and not like my God- and not like me. Except that when it comes down it it, I'm not like my God either, I'm more like the Other- and indeed I am the Other and that is where Christianity starts separating itself from women. What is unique to Mormonism is that we do believe in a Heavenly Mother- so we have the potential to no longer treat women as the Other and include them as equals- equally potential to reach the status of God and Goddess. Unfortunately, as Mormons, we haven't made that step to really include Heavenly Mother into our reverence. And that's why I started this blog: to include the Mother in our thoughts- and to include women into what it means to be godly (goddessly?).

I had been thinking about this idea and then while I was reading Dance of the Dissident Daughter, I found that Sue Monk Kidd said it well,

An uneasy reaction to the word Goddess is common among women. Thousands of years of repression, hostility, and conditioning against a Divine Mother have made a deep impression on us. We've been conditioned to shrink back from the Sacred Feminine, to fear it, to think of it as sinful, even to revile it. And it would take a while for me to deprogram that reaction, to unpack the word and realize that in the end, Goddess is just a word. It simply means the divin in female form.

So as I continue this blog and continue to put "Goddess" in my scripture study, I also hope to "unpack" the word and let go of the connotations of "Other" and accept the person it represents, not only as someone as awe-inspiring as God, but as my own potential. And my daughter's. And my son's. And yours.

Faith like a Child

When I think back to the first time I remember being presented the idea of a Heavenly Mother, I remember that it was in Primary, and I was seven. I remember being seven because it was the year I was baptized. I don't remember my Primary teacher's name, but I do remember her giving me a mug with a quote about faith on it when I turned 8. I don't have the mug anymore, but it had a Precious Moments-like character on it and said, "I believe in God even when I see him not."

The Sunday my Primary teacher mentioned Heavenly Mother, she not only mentioned Her, but promised that the next week, she would share with us where it is that Heavenly Mother is mentioned. That caught my attention. I didn't know anywhere that Heavenly Mother was mentioned! I wanted to know! I could not wait for the next Sunday.

The next Sunday at the beginning of class, I remember excitedly asking, "Where does it talk about Heavenly Mother? You said you'd tell us!" This is where my story gets disappointing: I don't actually remember what my Primary teacher said. She probably mentioned either O My Father or referenced the creation story in Abraham and said something on the lines of, "It says that the Gods created the earth- and Heavenly Mother was one of them."

What I do remember about the response was that I felt let down. I really felt that my teacher was going to show us this wonderful scripture that specifically mentions Heavenly Mother, but she didn't. I kept holding on to that thought, though, and during my scripture reading the next few years, I kept my eyes peeled for this mysterious scripture.

And I never found it. Eventually I stopped looking in my scriptures. But I kept looking for Heavenly Mother in my prayers.

I don't exactly remember a lesson saying that prayer is like communicating with God on a phone, but I got the idea from somewhere because I remember being in my room with green shag carpeting and my collection of horse figurines, praying to Heavenly Father and then pausing.

"Heavenly Father, can you get Heavenly Mother? I want to talk to her."

And I paused, like you would on the phone, while the other person goes to hand off the phone. After I waited what I thought was enough time for Heavenly Father to get Heavenly Mother, I continued in my prayer and told Heavenly Mother a few things. Then I asked her to go get Heavenly Father so I could end, "In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

I also remember thinking at some point, maybe I'm not "supposed" to talk to her directly, so I modified those prayers.

"Heavenly Father, please tell Heavenly Mother that I love her and miss her."

But just like my search for the Heavenly Mother scripture, those prayers slowly stopped.

And as I think about that, I feel so sad for the child-me, who wanted so much to know her mother, but because of our lack of knowledge about her and the anti-Heavenly Mother sentiments in our culture, she gave up. I wish I could pick that child up and tell her to not give up and to believe in the Goddess, "even when we see her not."

December in Review

Because I know there is some confusion about the purpose of the blog, I'm going to start doing "Months in Review." As I have said, this blog is to help us include our Heavenly Mother in our thoughts. Previous to writing this blog, Heavenly Mother was this nice concept, but I didn't really associate a role or purpose to Her, other than to exist. Then one day I had the epiphany that She really is exalted and really is a powerful, awesome Being; I had just never attributed real god-like traits to Her. How narrow-minded of me! Of course she is powerful, of course she is strong, of course She is everything that God is. So I started reading the scriptures and starting thinking about how the things we read about the Father can be applied to the Mother.

And that is purpose of this blog- to help us to think about Heavenly Mother more often and in god-like terms and purposes- not just as a nebulous idea of "Yeah... she's there... doing something..."

What I have really enjoyed, and what is alluded to in the title of this blog, is idea of our heavenly parents working together as partners. Now, when I think of "God" in the scriptures, my mind doesn't think only of a single man, but of a team including Heavenly Mother.

So December in review:

Heavenly Mother and Father love, deliver, bless, claim, are praised by, grant wisdom, request the service of, sustain, command, guide, gave their Son to us.

Heavenly Mother in the Bloggernacle and across the Internet this month:

Corktree wrote The female half of God? at the Exponent II blog
Brad wrote God The Wife at By Common Consent
fMhLisa, in a post Mary, Divine Motherhood, and Mormonism, added some thoughts about how we think of Heavenly Mother at Feminist Mormon Housewives.
Joanna Brooks wrote, "Adios, Divine Mother"

This past month was just a starting month and I hope to expand on the types of posts here. In January, look for a book review and a couple of personal essays.