One More Mormon, Pt 2: Testimonial Void

I think the earliest sign that the whole Church Thing wasn't for me manifested itself to me as a teenager still at home. I'd often be 'too tired' or 'feeling gross' to roll out of bed and get all dressed up early on a Sunday. And as a teen, hey, getting up early on a weekend is obviously not an enjoyable task in the first place (especially when you're waking up at 6am every weekday for seminary). But if I was a bit more self-aware at the time, I should've been able to notice that my lack of motivation might've been indicative of something more substantial lurking beneath.

Eventually I moved away from home for the last time, to pursue work in another province. Under a warm blanket of indifference I didn't attend much church. I'd go for the odd meeting - sneaking in the back hoping that I wouldn't have to actually engage with anyone. I was fiercely lonely at the time and disconnected from the greater world, but having to shake hands and make repetitive small talk from behind a fake smile seemed to be an even worse fate. When a religious culture is built on extroverted engagement, any strange face is fresh food. Inevitably you'll be asked where you're from, and the last thing you want to explain time and again is that you actually live just a few blocks away. It reveals that you're (gasp!) an inactive member.

I worked an entry-level job at a small company. At one point I even took a evening charcoal drawing course at ACAD. I made it through the whole thing, then for the last two classes I discovered that we'd be doing some figure studies. Which, lo and behold, meant drawing actual live models. That were nekkid. It shouldn't be surprising that a Christian upbringing kinda skews your perception of nudity: I was so uncomfortable at the notion of seeing an unclothed human in the flesh that I skipped those last two classes.

Life ebbed and flowed. I worked for a few years before enrolling full time at ACAD. Once paying significant tuition for drawing courses that tied directly into the Almighty GPA, I came to appreciate what a beautiful thing the human body was and how it wasn't (gasp!) inherently sexual. I saw man parts and lady parts and it was all just... a non-issue.

Somewhere in here, I became regularly involved with the LDS singles' ward. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, this is a Sunday session made up entirely of youth/young adults from 18 to 30 that have yet to be married. Gotta get them kids starting families, apparently. After all, that is the only way to receive the highest level of salvation and be with Christ.

Aside from the distinct feeling that you're now starting to live your spiritual life from within a meat market of companionship, it was an alright place to be. The bishopric was a lovely set of gentlemen that really seemed to care for their young (and sexually-repressed) congregation. 

It needs to be said that there is a 'second-class' of citizen within the church. And that is, most definitely, young single men of mission-serving age who have not served a mission. Women aren't 'duty-bound' to serve a mission, you see, so they're all good. Returned missionaries are a very hot commodity - they usually get married off within six to twelve months of being home and move on to a regular family congregation. And it's no wonder most young women hold out for one of these men; they've had a spiritual experience, served their church and lord and fellow men, and are equipped with a superior spiritual arsenal. It doesn't matter where they went or future prospects, they are the complete package.

This whole 'second-class citizen' thing really isn't plainly spoken of in the church, but I can assure you it's true. Someone who hasn't served a mission must have something wrong. Not damaged goods,  per se, but questionable.

So being a single, rather introverted, non-mission-serving-Mormon young man... was a tough go. I remember walking to church early and then strolling around the block so that I could enter at the last possible minute. Anything to minimize being engaged by people you don't have much in common with under a sugary coating of fellowship. But eventually people caught wise to me. The bishopric gave me a calling as the building caretaker. This meant I locked up at the end of the day and had to organize groups to clean the chapel. It was perceptive to give me a non-social duty - it made sure I was regularly attending, and in a capacity that wouldn't totally overwhelm and drive me away.

During this time, my bishop spoke with me about receiving the next level of the priesthood. And the truth came out: I admitted I didn't have a strong enough testimony. This was an oddly freeing realization to have and communicate, because for a long time I knew that I just didn't quite have the same thing inside me that brought my other brothers and sisters to heartfelt tears of joy. I was missing... something...

And thus, for a period, I was a Very Good Boy. With the bishop as a guide, I was regularly attending sacrament meetings, fulfilling my priesthood duties, reading the scriptures every day, and somehow abstaining from such self-guided bodily activities that are particularly difficult for young men to abstain from. For a period of... four? six? months, I had an honest yearning in my heart to develop a true testimony of Christ and come to a personal knowledge that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. As a popular passage in the Book of Mormon states,

I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

To set a frame of reference, during this time I was in my second year at ACAD. Which was brutal. I was doing about 80hrs of classes/homework a week. For the first time since I started school, I wasn't even working part time, which meant I was enjoying the same three extremely cost effective meals on repeat. I hadn't touched my gaming computer in months, I didn't hang out with anyone, I wasn't watching any shows, I didn't eat out. The entirety of my life was school and trying to be a faithful servant of God and seeking to be an upstanding member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

And so I prayed with all sincerity and intent my heart had to offer. When I received nothing, I read more scriptures, and fasted more meals, and paid more tithing. And yet... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe something was wrong with me. Maybe I was even lower than young men who never went on a mission. Maybe I just wasn't good enough. How come everyone else got these feelings? What was wrong with me?

An aside: the above passage, known to Mormons as Moroni's Promise, is generally boiled down to:  Read, ponder, pray > Ask with sincere heart/real intent/faith in Christ. If the Holy Ghost testifies to you, you're all good. If he doesn't, then obviously you need to repeat steps one and two because something in your process is lacking. Nowhere in the formula is there a result where the church isn't true. The only two available outcomes are either a) the church is true, or b) you need to try harder to find out the church is true. There is only one exit from the loop.

My story now takes a turn for the cliche, because a girl happened to me. A precarious balance of scholarly pursuits and spiritual yearning was casually discarded, but unlike the weathered Hollywood tropes, this love story came with precious few redeeming qualities.

Those of you familiar with winter driving in Alberta (or most of the prairies, for that matter) are familiar with rock chips. Essentially, during the icy months, big orange dump trucks with an over-sized pepper grinding attachment coat all major roads with half a quarry's worth of fine salt, sand, and pebbles. Some of these particles aren't quite as fine, though, and soon lodge themselves in your windshield. A rock chip in the windshield is the time-honoured price motorists pay in exchange for appeasing the God of Commuter Traction.

And as the weather warms and cools and gets freakishly cold, that little chip turns into a spider. Before the season is out, the pressure of the glass and extreme temperatures causes one (or more) cracks to run the full length of the windshield, plotting a course right through your line of vision.

Unlike your average windshield, the chip caused by this girl turned into a run that, once reaching across the entire span of my vision, abruptly fractured the whole damn thing.

Okay, once more but without the drawn out metaphors: I broke the law of chastity, which states that any significant physical activity between individuals outside of marriage is a sin. To give it some conservative Christian Mormon-tastic context, this is about as terrible of a thing a person can do outside of murder or denying the Holy Ghost. I was officially a horrible, corrupt, worthless person.

And I didn't know how to handle that. Do you get excommunicated on the spot for such things? Would they notify your parents? The thought mortified me.

So I did what any good Mormon would do: I told my bishop. But then I did what any terrible Mormon would do: I told him I needed to step away to process things, and I promptly handed in my building key on the spot, turned around, and walked out. I had reached my breaking point.

The literary opportunity dangling in front of me right now is to say that the windshield had completely shattered, and I could finally see clearly again. That really wasn't the case though; my vision was more messed up than before, and now I was desperately swerving across four lanes of traffic.

I was in a relationship I wasn't equipped to handle, overwhelmed with school, and now there was a void where a foundation of pure purpose was supposed to sit (even if I wasn't 100% sold on it in the first place, at least it was something). Deep down I knew I didn't want to keep attending the church. And even if I did, I didn't know what kind of hurdles I'd have to jump to return, and the shame that'd entail. Forget the whole missionary thing, now I was legitimately damaged spiritual goods.

I had no idea what I was doing or what I wanted out of life. On some base level, though, I knew I couldn't continue trying to be a Latter Day Saint. After spending a lifetime of missing out and not quite getting it like everyone else, I was exhausted and broken.
-Cril

One More Mormon, Pt 1: Faith of a Child

I think my first memories of Mormonism, or church, or religion in general was having a sacrament ceremony in the living room of our home in a remote fishing village. I remember how we'd sing songs from small, brown, worn hymn books before my dad would take out special table cloths. He'd break bread and prepare water in a bunch of small disposable and plastic cups. They were maybe an inch tall, and the size of a quarter across. He'd cover the bread and tiny cups with another special cloth, and recite a prayer.

For some reason, I have it in my head that we'd usually close the curtains during our Sunday 'meeting'. I don't know if that's routed in fact, or shaded by the emotional colours of an intimate and isolated experience. Either way, it certainly felt special.

I don't know how long it took me to realize that performing a sacrament in our home just for our family was a Strange Thing. I don't think I thought it was one of those things everyone did behind closed doors, but I didn't understand until many years later how uncommon it was to get permission to perform that ceremony within a home.

Towards the end of our time in that village, we started attending a United Christian Church, even though it wasn't my family's specific faith. I never felt comfortable in that big church with stained glass windows, but you can't deny that a sense of belonging and socialization is a big part of having faith.

We moved away to a more populated area, and started attending a proper Latter Day Saint ward, with many more people. We had visited proper congregations before, so I wasn't totally thrown for a loop.

Because we had been so isolated, I hadn't had the chance to be baptized when I turned eight. Now at the age of ten, I remember being told that I was technically going to be a convert and had to be interviewed by a pair of sister missionaries as part of the baptism process. I can't remember if I liked getting the specialized attention during a time of change, or if I was a bit miffed that I didn't quite qualify the same as my sister and brother. I was regardless a bit frustrated when the missionaries had me identify biblical figures from a standard case of Mormon illustrations - I had gotten one of them wrong. I remember thinking how dumb it was that I had to identify these people when they were all  old white men with beards, furrowed brows, and beards hiding frowns. I think I got Moses and Abraham mixed up or something. I still maintain that they all looked similar.

Alas, I got baptized. I picked a hymn to sing from the newer hymn books at the church (There is a Green Hill Far Away, which in retrospect I may have liked because it featured my favourite colour) and a small program was drafted for the event. My mom had me sign each one, and I think she has even kept one or two somewhere. My baptism faithfully followed the program, and by the end I was a certified, ratified Later Day Saint. As was family tradition, my parents got me my own set of brand-new scriptures.

The next few years followed, and outside of the odd, temporary friendship, I never really fit in socially at the church. There was a lot of activities - young men's meetings, men's meetings, scouts, youth activities... And they all just kinda grated on me. Every Tuesday was activity night with other youth, which I really started to loathe.

My testimony through this time waxed and waned. As pre-teen I had a pretty bad run-in with some depression, anxiety about my skin condition, and general loneliness. During these periods I remember getting up in front of the congregation and sharing my testimony with everyone - it was really helpful to have a spiritual outlet for my temporal woes. It was a means to believe that all my suffering was building towards something that would benefit me in the long run. I light to look forward to.

As I grew into a teenager, this didn't work the same. I became more introverted and started to internalize, rather than spiritualize, my problems. I'd speak in front of the congregation for assigned talks, but the last time I really got up to bear my testimony out of my own volition was when I was fourteen or so.

Then came Trek (and not of the Star variety, unfortunately). It was a big deal, a multi-day event where the youth (with select adults) emulate the journey of early LDS pioneers from the east coast to the promised land of Utah. We dressed in period-accurate-ish clothing, loaded up a giant handcart with belongings, and pushed it along a huge hike through back country roads. We ate bread and broth for meals and slept under tarps. Everyone in the church made it out to be some fantastical, spiritual experience. For me it was... an inconvenience? I was never a fan of outdoor activities (much to the chagrin, I think, of my Dad who was the Scoutmaster for many years), and was terrible at socializing. Everyone told us we'd grow closer to God and Christ, and feel the Holy Ghost burning in our bosom to give us undeniable proof of the one true church.

I remember during Trek we were all encouraged to take the afternoon for a quiet time of spiritual reflection. To feel the love of God. I took this opportunity to pray for the knowledge that the Book of Mormon was the word of God and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet to bring His church back to man. I prayed in earnest, with every ounce of my soul - I really wanted to know. For so long I was aware of a hole in my being, missing the feeling and confidence that everyone around me seemed to have. Where's the burning in my bosom? I laid out my heart before God and prayed in earnest. I was desperate to know.

I received nothing.

For the last few years of highschool, LDS youth are enrolled in a church-led course called seminary. It lasts four years, one for each of the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants. It's a class for studying the scriptures and church history, that takes places every day before school. That's right: a bunch of teenagers were getting up at 6am each weekday to study the word of God. We diligently tried our best to hoover up factoids and doctrine. We'd memorize important passages and race to find them as quickly as possible. I look back at that time as a grind as well. Waking up so early for something that I wasn't super passionate about wasn't fun. And our class took place in our home. There were some kids and a teacher that drove half an hour to attend. Oof.

A reoccurring theme in the church, especially for young men, is serving a mission. I remember singing I Hope They Call Me On A Mission as a kid, and listening to returned missionaries speak to youth about how awesome it all is. Ubiquitously attached to the concept of a mission, though, was the $10,000 price tag. I think that alone caused me to check-out on the whole concept from a young age. Growing up in a poor family where the $60 we got for our birthday was the most spending cash we'd get all year, ten grand was an unfathomable amount. When I voiced my doubts, members would chide me, "Oh don't worry, your parents will help you out!" When you have vivid memories of your mom crying over how $8 of strawberries wrecked the entire monthly budget... Let's just say I never entertained the notion of making my parents pay for something that wasn't essential.

I had moved away and worked for a year, bought a car, and came back home. And I felt damn proud of that - an embarrassing story my mom likes to tell of me is when she found a certain five-year-old sobbing late one night. I was in absolute tears because I would never have enough money to buy a car when I grow up. Looking back, I like to think I've made that little five year old proud. And I was proud of that first car I bought. A silver 1996 Honda Civic CX, if you're curious.

Anyways, it wasn't a suggestion but a sacred duty of a young man to serve a mission. When I returned, I was put in a 'mission prep' class at Sunday school. I think this was where they stuck all the young men who had yet to be called to serve, but were still eligible. They wanted to get us out the door, is my guess, and the class itself wasn't much different aside from the demographics. I remember it was taught by a returned missionary that had abruptly dumped my karate instructor (a lovely soul, and non-member) so that he could climb the social ladder within the church. Met, engaged, and married a nice Mormon girl within the span of six months, as returned missionaries tend to do. It made me a bit skeptical of the class from the get-go.

Months later the new Stake President (stakes consist of several wards) dropped by our congregation one Sunday and started interviewing all the young men. Once it was my turn, we made some brief chit-chat. I told him how proud I was that I had just moved away from home and bought my first car. He then blatantly called me to serve a mission on the spot, making some off-hand remark about how my car would be in the junk yard within a couple years. If I wanted to do something really worth while, I should be preaching the Word of God to others.

Aside from being insulted by the casual belittling of my recent accomplishments as a semi-independent adult, I did something I'd never done before in my people-pleasing existence of a human being: I stood my ground and said no. I told him flatly that my testimony wasn't strong enough for a mission. He invited me to serve anyways, ensuring me that I'd find it in the service of God. I told him I simply wasn't ready to commit. He was obviously disappointed, and shook my hand before I was dismissed. On my way out, I passed my brother and gave him heads-up before it was his turn.

I mean, seriously. As an introvert, I could not fathom a more unpleasant experience than a mission. Imagine living in an unsettled environment for two years where I have to share every waking moment with a companion I don't know, going door to door to speak with strangers, and doing everything I can to help every person I meet. Knowing how I'm socially wired, I can't think of something that'd make me more miserable.

That experience with the Stake President left a sour taste in my mouth. Up to that point, everyone I interacted with from the church were fairly well-meaning, pleasant individuals. That man, though, clearly saw me as one more bullet that could fit into the magazine of missionary work before being shot around the world. Pray and spray.

I moved out of the province shortly after for work and school.
-Cril.