Marcy's Musings

I was a teenage culture warrior. I grew up in a fairly conservative social group that believed that the root of the nation's problems was moral depravity. We needed to bring prayer back to school, protect our guns, and make abortion illegal again. I sat in more than one Sunday school class where the teacher drew two parallel lines moving in the downward direction. The higher line was “The Church” - followers of Jesus. The lower line was “the world”. We were then admonished to keep God’s standards as written rather than settling for being just a little bit more righteous than those around us. The world was going to hell in a handbasket, and it was my responsibility to preserve and honor the values my parents taught me. Righteousness was under attack, and it was my duty as a priesthood holder to defend righteousness on a societal level.  The primary cultural conflict of my teen and young adult years was marriage rights for “the gays”. I was an enthusiastic cultural warrior who tirele...

  Allyship is an interesting concept. Ostensibly it feels simple, yet it grows complex as soon as you start to examine it. I never really called myself an “ally” prior to coming out. I figured that all my time campaigning against gay marriage rights precluded me from that title. Once I was a member of the community, I figured I didn’t need to worry about that title. Then my older brother asked me if I thought someone could be a member of the LDS church and an ally. At the time I was unsure, but felt like paying ten percent of your income to an openly hostile organization like the LDS church would offset whatever good someone could accomplish. My current position on the issue is not only can LDS folks be allies, but that we desperately need allies in the LDS church and other conservative Christian institutions. I grew up in a conservative echo chamber. This was by design. Singular focus on the voice of the prophets was seen as a virtue. My mother’s answer to what was called back t...

Special Thanks to Cora Ohara For her badass hakery  that brought us the foot notes and for the help she gave me in wrapping my head around my thoughts   Music in the lodge is more than sacred. It is medicine. It is the center of the ritual. Jerry, who pours the lodge (he is clear that the lodge itself is Bear Boy's lodge) says any song sung in lodge is sacred. Even if it is "row, row, row your boat." There are times in lodge that I have sung Sikh prayers. This is always meaningful and powerful for me. When Jerry held a small lodge for my children, I sang the Grateful Dead song "Ripple" which is sacred to me because it was one of the few lullabies I sang my children that was not an LDS hymn. There are times in lodge that certain songs will come to me; a personal form of medicine. I've taken time to mentally collect these to see what I could learn. During ceremony, women wear long skirts as a way of communing with mother earth. Our skirts tickle the gr...