Amen

A thank you to FaceBook for introducing me to Anne Lamott and some random woman named Asha:

"Let's settle this God thing once and for all.

God, or no God?

Who on earth knows?

Any proof, either way?

None, except for Bach, foxes, forgiveness, elephants, bulbs and my dog Lily, may she rest in peace. Also, the fact that someone like me could have 28 years without alcohol or the non-habit-forming marijuana I smoked on a daily basis for 15 years. Also, ripe peaches, books, and Mr. Rogers.

There is Infinite good and beauty and heroism and artistic genius everywhere we look. Is this proof of God?

No, because there is also infinite evil and madness. I am not going to name names.

What do we even mean when we use the word "God?"

For the sake of argument, let's say we mean a Higher Power--a power greater than our thinky thoughts, good ideas, grudges, positions and opinions: a divine Mind, a benevolent intelligence of some sort, some kind of bankable Love energy. Something that hears us and cares, when we cry out in our pain and mortification. I also like the Deteriorata's definition of God as the Cosmic Muffin.

But what if the most illustrious atheists and agnostics hear that we actually believe this?

It's none of your business what they think. To plagiarize from my book, it is like worrying about some guy wandering around the Mojave in a wet suit, reciting the poetry of Edgar A. Guest. People get to think and believe what they think and believe. You will never change them, or they us. Surrender: lay your weapons down. Let me make you a nice cup of tea.

What if they say you are ignorant, and a danger, in public?

It would have nothing to do with you. Maybe they are having trouble at work, or a spastic colon.

So do you actually believe that the soul is eternal? That death is just the end of dying, not of life?

Yes. Also, that there is a dessert section in heaven, and that it in fact makes up most of heaven, except for the ponds, and gift shop.

But we still die, correct?

Of course, and the question we ask ourselves, is, How do we live in the face of that? How alive are we willing to be? Why do we keep hitting the snooze button? What will it take for us to stop squandering our time?

Well? What's the answer? What does it take to get serious about this life we've been given, even if we don't know if God gave it to us, or chance?

Usually either a terminal illness or a DUI.

Is it legal to believe in evolution and all aspects of modern physics, yet also believe in a personal god, a Beloved, a sacred dimension to our lives?

Yes, in some states."

And here was the most "liked" comment that made me smile:

"Well, it's a total crap shoot if you ask me. Does God exist? Not exist? I think the more important questions are: does what you believe give you a sense of awe and wonder? Does it make you feel smaller in a good, humble way? Does what you believe make you want to get out of your comfort zone and do right by other people even if you don't like them or you don't feel like it because it makes you feel more like that thing you believe in lives in you and fills you up? Does what you believe make you feel more connected to the world around you? Does it help you bear the weight of unavoidable suffering and help you laugh at yourself (or check yourself) when you create unnecessary suffering? Does it help you love? If the answer is yes then I don't care what you call it. Just worship that whatever-it-is with all your imperfect, flailing, grasping, striving, loving self and we'll all be good. Amen.

What in my life is indestructible?

I am in this stage in my life that my therapist calls an existential crisis. I don't know what that means exactly, but I do know that I have been thinking deeply about how I want to live my life, and how I want to help my children live theirs. 

I've been thinking about how life seems to invite this:

Cynicism is defined as an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others.

And this:

Author Paul E. Miller said, "Cynicism begins with a wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing but never engaging, loving and hoping."

My friend recently told me about how much a book called, "Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies for Modern Life" by Sakyong Mipham has influenced how she recognizes that cynicism in herself and what she does about it.

When I looked up the book on Amazon this was the number one review listed for it:

By The Review Revolution (janariess.typepad.com) on February 13, 2006

"Mipham, the worldwide leader of Shambhala and the son of the late Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa (who wouldn't love to be a fly on the wall in that house?) argues that people need to examine the me-centered spirituality of their lives:

We think, "Will this food make me happy?" "Will this movie make me happy?" "Will this person make me happy?" . . . . Occasionally when I meet with meditation students, their questions show that they are approaching even spiritual practice as a way of making themselves happy. Is my yoga, my tai chi, my meditation making "me" feel better? They are simply using a new guise to perpetuate the old habit of putting themselves first." (pp 11-12)

He offers practical suggestions on how to change this habit, beginning with the realization that change will occur slowly and that we should begin by simply aiming for a ten percent transformation: to be ten percent more compassionate, ten percent less selfish, ten percent more aware of the karmic consequences of our anger. Subsequent chapters discuss four ways to instill compassion for a lifetime: we must strive to for the discernment of the tiger, the delight of the lion, the equanimity or the garuda, and the playful wisdom of the dragon. (And in case you're wondering, a garuda is a mythical bird that hatches fully developed. Who knew?)

I found this book genuinely helpful, and that's saying something. I'm not very forgiving of pop spirituality and the self-help genre. But Mipham is wise and unafraid to call a spade a spade. He's not out to flatter his readers or tell them how to live longer or feel invincible or win friends or influence people. He's a realist, and he only wants to prepare them for the inevitable: death is coming."

And this was a part from the beginning of the book:

"Dawa Sangpo, the first king of the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Shambhala, once supplicated the Buddha for spiritual guidance. He said, "I'm a king. I have a palace, a family, ministers, subjects, an army, and a treasury. I want to realize enlightenment, but I cannot abandon my responsibilities to pursue spiritual practice in a monastery. Please teach me how to use life in the world to become enlightened:'

The Buddha assured the king that he would not have to become an ascetic or a monk in order to attain enlightenment. Indeed, he could practice a spiritual path while fulfilling his many responsibilities. He could become a sakyong-a ruler who rules by balancing heaven and earth. Heaven is wisdom. Earth is nitty-gritty experience. When we begin to mix wisdom into our secular life, we have success-both spiritual and worldly. The Buddha said to the king, "Don't be biased. Look at the land and look at your people. If you can develop certainty in the indestructible basic goodness that lies at the heart of everything, then you can rule your world. But becoming a sakyong is a challenging path, since life in the world is full of decisions to make, as well as endless distractions:' Taking these instructions to heart, King Dawa Sangpo developed certainty in the view of basic goodness. This vision transformed his kingdom, for it brought inspiration and meaning to people's lives.

....If ruling our world stems from developing certainty in our sanity, how do we discover it? The Shambhala teachings instruct us to "put our mind of fearfulness in the cradle of loving-kindness." The most loving environment we can create is on the meditation seat. My father taught me to meditate when I was a child. At the beginning, this meant simply taking time out of my day to reflect on my feelings. Then I learned to stabilize my mind by placing it on the breath. When I had accomplished the precision of this technique, he told me to contemplate impermanence, suffering, karma, selflessness, and compassion. When I was about twelve, he instructed me to meditate and contemplate for one hour a day. He later increased the sessions to two hours, At times I meditated for several days, and eventually for weeks and even months. Since meditation was to be the mainstay of my future vocation, I had the time to do it this way.

When I was a teenager, I explained to my father that I wanted to go camping alone in the wilderness. After pondering it for a few days, he said that this would be a good time. As a parent, he was proud that I wanted to explore the world on my own, and he was concerned about my safety. He wanted to make sure I could carry a heavy backpack, so after loading me up, he had me run up and down the stairs a few times, Having satisfied his concerns, off I went, feeling exuberant.

I hiked for about a week, rarely seeing anyone and encountering all kinds of foul weather-wind, rain, hail. I felt surprisingly happy. Having grown up in situations where there were many people around, I had always been tutored, fed, and served. Feeling alone helped me appreciate what others had done for me, and I also began to discover my own strength as a Shambhala warrior on my way to becoming a ruler. Nature was an excellent teacher, never giving an inch. If I wanted to eat, I had to make a meal; if I wanted to sleep, I had to think ahead and find an appropriate camping spot.

Upon my return, people were relieved, excited, and proud. Although it had been a short trip, I had grown tremendously. Through all the dramatic weather and other challenges, I was left sitting with my mind, I had discovered my own confidence, which gave me confidence in my basic goodness.

My father also trained me in poetry and calligraphy, following the traditional guidelines for educating a future ruler. One day as we were leaning on a railing at our house in Colorado, looking out at a meadow and some pine trees, a hummingbird appeared. It fluttered in several directions and darted off. My father turned to me and said, "Today I will teach you how to write poetry." I have continued to practice and enjoy this art, as well as calligraphy. Such deepening arts teach us to express the inexpressible-love, impermanence, and beauty. Diving into our own profundity, bringing the precision of meditation into physical form, we discover the profundity of life.

In addition, my father made sure that I trained in martial arts-the physical discipline of moving meditation that helps us become less insulated within our own mind. Practicing sports or martial arts gives us natural confidence. We develop a bond of kinship and appreciation with friends.

Breathing fresh air and learning to synchronize mind and body help us develop a healthy sense of self, which allows us to further increase our confidence. We can then offer our understanding to others, I learned Japanese archery-kyudo. Initially, we were not allowed even to hold the bow and arrow. Then for the first year of practice, we shot at a target only six feet away, the idea being that if we could develop proper form, hitting the target would not be an issue. Eventually, we shot at a target seventy-five feet away.

Raising a ruler differs from the conventional approach to education, which considers the mind an empty box waiting to be filled. My father once told one of my tutors that in raising a future sakyong or sakyong wangmo-earth-protector king or queen-we are educating the sky. The sky perceives, understands, and encompasses everything. There are no boundaries-only possibilities. Educating ourselves as sakyong is therefore not a laborious undertaking. It is filled with appreciation, curiosity, and delight. We are cultivating certainty in basic goodness and developing our noble qualities. When we are connected with basic goodness, it inspires our every breath, action, and thought. With the resulting brilliance and confidence, we can accomplish whatever we wish. This is how we rule our world."

I've decided that my existential crisis will be met with a commitment to develop this certainty:

"If you can develop certainty in the indestructible basic goodness that lies at the heart of everything, then you can rule your world."

I want to do this by recognizing that "the cynic is always observing, critiquing but never engaging, loving and hoping." and choosing to put my energy and resources toward the opposite. I want to engage, love and hope more by pursing meditation, time in nature and exercising, and time creating or appreciating art, even if it is only ten percent more at a time.

Because turns out, DEATH IS COMING. Whew. I thought a lot about this reality after reading this insightful piece as well:

"We need to be clear about the background against which our discussions of religion take place. None of us are going to make it out of this world alive. And everyone of us will have to part with everything and everyone we care about most. Everyone of us will have to sacrifice everything.

As the Lectures on Faith put it: a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things has not the power to save.

But there’s a catch here: even if your religion doesn’t require you to sacrifice everything, life will.

The basic religious question with respect to all these losses is not if you will be asked to sacrifice everything, but how you will do it. With what attitude, with what posture? With an open heart and an open hand or with a fearful mind and a closed fist?

Sacrificing everything happens more dramatically and traumatically for some, and more quietly and subtly for others. But no one gets a free pass. We will all have to face this. We’ll all have this day of reckoning when God shows up to require that we return to him what he’d previously given."

And this one: 

"Faith is not the same thing as common sense. It may be that, for you, God’s reality is so natural and so consonant with common sense that you’ve never doubted it and don’t have to work at believing in it. God is just plain given as part of how things are. This is true for many people. Believing in God isn’t something they chose any more than they chose to believe that the sky is blue. They couldn’t unchoose it if they tried. But this isn’t enough. Though this native, common sense acceptance of God’s reality can be a blessing, it can also get in the way of practicing real faith. It can lull you into thinking the hard work of losing your soul is done when, in fact, you haven’t even started.

On the other hand, it may be true that, for you, the existence of God is so unlikely and runs so counter to common sense that even an earnest kind of wishful thinking is more than you can credibly muster. God is just not given to you as part of how things are. This is also true for many people. Not-believing just is and this is not the result of sin or the product of something they chose or could magically unchoose. Though this common sense godlessness can make things harder, it too can open a path to practicing faith. It may free you from common sense idolatries.

Neither kind of common sense is faith. Whether God is or isn’t obvious to you, the work is the same: practice faithfully attending to the difficult, disturbing, and resistant truths God sets knocking at your door. Faith is a willingness to lose your soul in caring for what’s right in front of you. Faith doesn’t wish these difficult things away. It invites them in, breaks bread with them, and washes their feet. Faith gives to what is given.

Common sense theist, common sense atheist, common sense (or anguished!) agnostic: the work is the same. Each must practice faith. Each must choose to care rather than wish or run."

Every day, every moment, I am facing the inevitability of the destruction and death of everything and everyone I love. 

I keep hearing people farther along the road than I am tell me some version about how the best way to face the pain of current or future loss is to create a life where I can believe that goodness is indestructible, and that goodness is at the heart of everything. They tell me that choosing to believe that at the heart of even difficult things is goodness is choosing to stay and have faith, and that choosing cynicism in the face of difficulty is choosing to run. They tell me that this is the real choice of life.

I'm pretty sure I'm choosing faith. One moment of presence at a time, one walk around a lake at a time, and one hour at a time of... listening to a musical artist while I clean. HA! That's all I've got for you today art! 

But seriously, this ha become so real to me - this decision I want to make every morning when I wake that today I can commit to give 10% more toward believing that at the heart of everything is a goodness that can never be destroyed. I am told that this is enough, even if today is all I have. 

I believe that too. 

What I'll remember

None of them wanted to fall asleep in their own beds and I just didn't have it in me to break out the measures that would have gotten them there. I was feeling so done though. Especially with Joan. She was crying and freaking out about everything, "Bu I TAN'T ____!" was her wailing response to every single suggestion I had for helping her.

It's amazing how much little things help though. I had turned on the Spotify playlist "Lullaby music that helps the baby sleep but doesn't make me homicidal" when I started bedtime prep and it kept bringing me back over and over to remembering that this moment is the only one I'm guaranteed and my options are to accept it or fight against it.

The other thing that helped was this silly sounding parenting tip that has actually really helped me since reading it:

from: http://www.janetlansbury.com/2012/11/tantrums-and-meltdowns-my-secret-for-staying-calm-when-my-kids-arent/

"I’m the kind of person who absorbs and is affected by everyone’s feelings. But I also know that staying calm and centered in the face of even the darkest of my children’s emotions is imperative to their well-being. My boat is easily rocked, and when that happens I can lose perspective, and rather than giving my kids the solid support for their feelings or the behavior limits they need during a tantrum, I can end up losing patience, melting, second-guessing myself, getting mad or frustrated, yelling, doing things that not only don’t work, but also create problems that make matters worse.

...So when my kids are angry, sad, frustrated, winding up or melting down, I imagine myself donning a superhero suit equipped with a protective shield that deflects even the fiercest, most irritating emotional outbursts. It makes me feel confident and capable and inspires me to rise above the fray.  Just reaching for my superhero suit helps me to take a step out of myself and gain a clearer perspective.  I realize:

This is a VIPM (very important parenting moment). Releasing these feelings is so good for my child. This explosion will clear the air and lift my child’s spirits.  Staying present and calm, sticking with whatever limits I’ve set and being a safe channel for these emotions is the very best thing I could ever do."

So while Sophia rolled around on the edge of the bed in her own little world and Verity played sitting on my knees and Joan clutched at me and cried that I wasn't tickling her right, wasn't getting her the drink she needed, wasn't fill-in-the-blank and whatever you can come up with she probably cried hot, bitter tears about it into my shoulder. But when I felt that desire start to overwhelm me to pick her up, march her to her own bed and tell her she was welcome to cry herself to sleep alone, I mentally put my superhero cape on instead and repeated, "Releasing these feelings is so good for her." over and over. I just let her clutch at me in writhing, loud, "nothing will ever be better" tears until she slowly quieted and fell asleep on my chest. I kissed her chubby little cheek, scooted her to the side, nursed Verity to sleep, and then took this picture before tip toeing away feeling grateful to have made it through a hard night with a few moments of this:

...Occasionally (though it’s pretty rare) my superhero perspective even allows me to recognize the romance in these moments. I’m able to time travel at hyper-speed into the future, look back and realize that this was prime time together.  It didn’t look pretty, but we were close. I’ll remember how hard it was to love my child when she was at her very worst and feel super proud that I did it anyway."

Clarity

After Joan's accident this summer I have struggled to make peace with the memory of the events. For a couple months I would struggle not to replay it over and over in my head when I'd be laying in bed at night. I'd cry and cry and often have to get up and do something to distract me. That has faded, it is easier to distract myself, but I still, every time I think about it - I feel the stress response spread through my body. I feel sick to my stomach, my chest tightens and my heart beats faster and I just think to myself, "Hello Rachel you are not actually watching your daughter cut her finger off, calm down." So anyway, I've been wanting to do EMDR therapy ever since researching it after listening to some friends talk about how much it helped them process traumatic events in their life.

A short definition by Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro that emphasizes disturbing memories as the cause of psychopathology^[1][2] and alleviates the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).^[3]

EMDR is used for individuals who have experienced severe trauma that remains unresolved.^[4] According to Shapiro, when a traumatic or distressing experience occurs, it may overwhelm normal cognitive and neurological coping mechanisms. The memory and associated stimuli are inadequately processed and stored in an isolated memory network.^[1]

The goal of EMDR therapy is to process these distressing memories, reducing their lingering effects and allowing clients to develop more adaptive coping mechanisms. This is done in an eight-phase approach that includes having clients recall distressing images while receiving one of several types of bilateral sensory input, including side to side eye movements.^[5] The use of EMDR was originally developed to treat adults suffering from PTSD; however, it is also used to treat other conditions and children.^[6]

So today, exactly seven months from the day of her accident I finally had a session with a therapist who specializes in EMDR and child therapy named Carol Kibbe.

She asked me to describe the experience very briefly and I just told her that I was sitting on the living room floor with a large metal paper cutter right in front of me that I was using to cut paper for an art project for the kids when Joan just out of nowhere sat down next to me, lifted the cutter and pushed down on it with her other hand and cut the top of her pinkie off. I told her if it had taken one second instead of half a second, that I could have stopped it. There was blood pouring everywhere and we rushed her straight to the hospital where we had to wait for an hour and a half for the pediatric hand surgeon to respond to the ER docs questions about how to treat it and in the end they just decided to stitch it back saying she'd have a 50/50 chance that it would reattach.

I bawled like a baby through most of the session but it was so so so good.

Carol: What was the worst part of the experience, what was the most traumatic part, if you had to just choose one image, what would it be?

Me: Watching her push the blade down on her fingers and not having time to just reach out and stop it.

Carol: What feeling comes to you the strongest when you think of that image?

Me: helplessness.

 Carol: And where do you feel that?

Me: In my chest.

Carol: Ok, so I want you to replay that image and that part of the experience in your mind and let yourself feel those feelings of helplessness while you hold these small cylinders. (that took turns vibrating and were the "bilateral sensory input" part).

We did that a couple times and she'd have me rate on a scale of 1-10 how distressing my feelings were.

And then we moved on and I told her another thing that I felt I needed to work through was that when I think of her accident or it comes up in conversation, I struggle with feelings of guilt or anger at myself. Of feeling like I should have prevented it. She asked me to label it more precisely and I said it was a feeling of not being enough, and that I felt it mostly in my stomach, like a sick feeling in my gut.

And then we did the same thing and then I told her another issue I still struggle with in the same, "I'm not enough" way is that when it happened I yelled "Oh God" over and over while carrying her around trying to find something to stop the bleeding and while Verity and Sophia followed me, and how every time the accident comes up Sophia tells people, "My mommy FREAKED ME OUT. She was yelling and yelling and I got freaked out!" And how I feel ashamed that I didn't stay more calm, that I traumatized Joan worse by not being calm and that I also was the reason it was a worse experience for Ver and Sophia. And then we did the same thing where I imagined it all and felt that feeling of not being enough, if I had been enough I would have been able to stop it from happening AND I would have handled it better during the initial crisis. And then she said we were going to do the same images but while finding one phrase to repeat to myself - a phrase of what I would have told a friend who was in my situation and was struggling with feelings of helplessness, guilt and not feeling competent or enough.

And I actually told her that instead of the friend idea, it helped me to think of what I would tell Joan about her part in the accident. At one point in the hospital when I was explaining to her that we had to unwrap her hand to get it X-rayed she sobbed to me, "I jus wish I hadn't messed wit it!" And I told Carol that THAT feeling I had when Joan was blaming herself was what I wanted to feel for myself. That feeling of wanting Joan to know that I understood how awful she felt but that she didn't need to blame herself, that accidents are just a part of life and that I loved all of her no matter what she did. That it was impossible for her to do something that she should ever beat herself up about, that just her being, just her existing was the reason she shouldn't regret any part of herself.

So then we did "I am enough" as what I told myself while replaying the hard images/experience but I told her that in my head I kept justifying to myself WHY I was enough. Like I was telling myself, "Well you're enough cause you pulled it together at the hospital and was calm for her." or "You're enough because you process the experience with her now in helpful ways when it comes up." And I told her I didn't like it. That I didn't tell Joan that she was "enough" because she was competent or acted in a certain way. I told her that I love the mantra, "Love shows up" and THAT'S what I wanted to tell myself. That I was enough for Joan because I showed up. Because I was there for her giving my everything no matter how poor my everything was, the quality of my mothering didn't matter. Wow this is harder to write than to say. But in the end, we spent most of the rest of the session with me bawling (and holding the vibrating cylinders) while going through the experience again through the eyes of a mother who was there for her daughter and that was all that mattered.

I went on a little walk afterwards and just felt so grateful and peaceful. Grateful for science and good people to help me find clarity about the hard things in life.

The real problem is single-mindedness

from http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/09/religion-is-not-the-enemy-rushdie-charlie-hebdo/

"The real problem isn’t religion. It’s a deeper psychological failure that afflicts humans of all varieties, religious and not. It’s called “fanaticism” — that eerie quality of single-mindedness that can lead even the intelligent and the educated to believe that the views they hold excuse any form of savagery. Yes, many of these people gravitate to absolutist versions of religion — but history shows they’re equally attracted to secular forms of political extremism." 

It's like everywhere I look is another example of the damage that comes from black and white thinking. I have found myself trying to communicate this idea with anything and everything that comes up lately as I parent and it feels so healthy. The other day Sophia asked me, "Which is more important: brushing teeth or brushing hair?" I responded that it seems to me they're both important in different ways, and then asked her to brainstorm all the ways each was more important or less important depending on different variables I would bring up.

Does that sound silly? Because it feels awesome.

When she screams, "You love Joan more than me!", I don't say, "Of course I love you as much as Joan, don't be ridiculous." I wait until it's a good time and then I bring up her comment and elicit discussions about how there are lots of different kinds of love and how sometimes we feel loved and sometimes we don't and how some people struggle to love in certain ways while being awesome at loving in other ways. I tell her that I know that there are ways that I fail at love and that I am sorry for the pain it brings to her heart, and that I will never stop trying to learn to love her better and better.

If as children they get used to the feeling that there are no easy answers in life then I'll have offered them the foundation for finding love and peace when they're out their on their own.

At least I think so.

So far the effort is provoking lots of long, in-depth, thought-provoking conversations where we really have to listen to each other. And I'm going to call that good.

I (heart) feminists

I felt like I needed to stand up and applaud at the end.

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/what-men-dont-understand-about-women-lindy-west/

"You cannot “get” a girlfriend, because a girlfriend is not an iPad or a burrito or gonorrhea. Women are people. You aren't entitled to “have” people, just because you think it will cure your unhappiness. Your unhappiness is your problem and no one else’s. And thinking about a girlfriend as a thing that you “get” and not an equal partner whose humanity you respect and cherish will never result in a satisfying relationship anyway."


Also, the friend who posted this did so with this thoughtful commentary:

This is excellent. I would push back on only one thing: that she overestimates that men accurately understand what it means to "be a person" or what it means to be human. Part of the basic problem with sexism/patriarchy is that men (and sometimes women) so often assume that men experience and understand the basic standards of humanity and merely deny these to women by perceiving/using them as objects. It's more the case that men themselves are so often confused by and insecure about their own humanity (forcibly interpreted through the lens of having to come to grips with what it is supposed to mean to be a man) and so are floundering and in despair in profound ways about their own humanity.

"This is important:"

I am really, really grateful for Mormons who feel called to write things like this and then do it. Honestly, I skimmed most of the philosophical part at the beginning, but this ending that I've posted here I read carefully, and then went back and read it again.

from: http://rationalfaiths.com/summoned-unsettled-gay-mormons-power-face-love/

...Only when we allow ourselves to be fully summoned by another’s gaze and therefore another’s injunction do we begin to understand and experience what it is to love. My own unsubstitutable individuality is due to the other’s intentional gaze and summoned injunction. I owe myself to those who created me by addressing me (or failed to address me). Love is the “the act of a gaze that renders itself back to another gaze in a common unsubstitutability.”

This past week we learned that Charles Cooper, the Republican attorney who defended California’s Proposition 8 before the Supreme Court, is now in the process of planning his daughter’s wedding to another woman. Ironically, his daughter Ashley had become engaged to her girlfriend just months before Cooper began arguments against the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. While Cooper has not definitively clarified his own personal views on same-sex marriage, he has been quoted as saying, “What I will say only is that my views evolve on issues of this kind the same way as other people’s do, and how I view this down the road may not be the way I view it now, or how I viewed it 10 years ago,” and, more importantly, “I told Ashley that what matters most is that I love her and she loves me.” If Cooper had held any firm beliefs about the positive prohibition of gay relationships, it was not argumentation and logic that swayed him; after all, he was a paid expert in all the legal, cultural, and religious arguments to be had one way or another about same-sex marriage. And it was not just an abstract universal responsibility to love another human being (which at best becomes mere toleration). The only thing that changed his heart and mind (the only thing that could have changed his heart and mind) was an injunction derived from that particular face and that particular gaze of one whom he loved.

Part of the problem in living within the Mormon cultural mass (which, though becoming increasingly diverse is nevertheless still fairly homogeneous) is that gays and lesbians very often have no face, no particularity. They are invisible, both as individuals and as an accepted and legitimate category within the culture, and thus recede into the mass of otherness toward which we are supposed to feel some sort of general “ethical obligation,” tied to our notions of shared humanity. But such general ethical obligation—even where it genuinely exists—cannot produce genuine love and charity. We cannot genuinely love a universal ethic; we can only love a face with a gaze with a particular history, etc. When Mormons learn that someone they know and love is gay, this might produce an actual struggle for acceptance, which may at times change their views about the gay community because and only because of this particular gay person who has a face, who is that particular other that they love, whose own unsubsitutable gaze has helped to make them what they are as individuals. Of course, it also happens that at other times nothing substantively changes and they continue to hold previous beliefs and/or prejudices. There was nothing inevitable about the conclusions Charles Cooper arrived at through his love for his daughter; he might not have chosen to be open to her summons at all. But, no longer are these beliefs and prejudices beliefs and prejudices about a faceless other that one can believe just anything about. Now, they are must deal with these beliefs overlayed onto an actual person they are forced to reckon with. As Marion says, before the gaze of the face we are unsettled. Things change when the other has a face, and genuine love is only possible when this occurs, even when the other does not love us back. (This is important: we can love those whom we might not have chosen or preferred to love in different circumstances. What counts is that we are confronted with the face, gaze, and injunction of a particular other, not that they must love us in return).

Our beliefs regarding our LGBT brothers and sisters (and I daresay some of our doctrinal orientations and certainly our cultural attitudes) will change in proportion to gays and lesbians emerging from the faceless mass (toward which we have a mere ethical responsibility to treat fairly as human beings, and therefore are free to fear and not to love) and taking on the faces of those we love. Not all of us will love them simply because this occurs, but some will, and no doubt all of us would be unsettled.

That the gay community is mostly faceless to the average Mormon has, I am arguing, the effect of there being no particularized call, no one to address, no gazes to meet, no injunction to enact. And thus we remain settled and sure in our knowledge, enclosed in ourselves and comfortable in our separate worlds. To the extent that more gays and lesbians become that particular person–sons, daughters, friends, neighbors, with names, faces, and gazes, unsettling and breaking our hearts, and destabilizing our preconceptions–is the extent to which unpredictable events will begin to happen, and love and charity will do the work that loose, abstract ethical obligation cannot."