Hanging Out with the Whiners

[_Runtu]

I had lunch today with some exmo friends. It was really nice to just sit and talk with people who have been through what I have and who understand. I ended up spending most of the time talking with a believing man whose wife is one of us horrible apostates, and we had a great conversation about how we have managed to preserve our marriages despite not being on the same page as our spouses.

When I got home, I noticed mfbukowski's snarky post about how we're just obsessed whiners. So many times I've heard people say we're bitter people who can't let go of the church, so we fester away in anger and bile. But that wasn't what I saw today. There wasn't much complaining, no bitterness, and very little said negative about Mormonism. It was just about supporting each other and trying to help people navigate difficult paths. The only person I talked to who was stressed at all is someone for whom the loss of faith is still fresh and raw, but even then his main concern was how to deal with the conflicts from his believing Mormon wife.

It's really easy to point fingers at those of us who leave the church but don't leave it alone. Emotionally healthy people would just forget about it and move on; the clear implication is that we're not healthy. But from what I've seen, it's not about dwelling on the negative; it's about lifting people up and supporting them. To me, that's a good thing.

[_Blixa]

I had a great day, too, runtu. I taught a summary of postmodern theories of language that pretty much ran along the lines you laid out once in a thread here. Now I'm home and digging into the work on my research project: I want to outline my book as much as possible this semester while I'm writing my paper for the MHA conference in June. I sure hope George Miller makes it to NYC next month, I'm dying to talk turkey with him about Masonry.

Since I'm teaching an Anne Perry detective novel this semester, I've also been reviewing her story. I've found a couple of interesting books on Juliet Hume and Pauline Parker that I didn't know about, one I'll order and read. I've never found any discussion of her conversion outside of her own very general statements on it. It would be interesting to know more, especially since she had to get a special permission for baptism. If I recall correctly, too, this was all before she'd published her first book.

I'm also ordering Playing with Shadows: Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West (Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier). I've been waiting for it for a long time. Polly Aird's book, Mormon Convert, Mormon Defector: A Scottish Immigrant in the American West, 1848-1861, was really, really good; a more "on the ground" coverage of the early days of Brighamite Utah than any other work on that topic.

Oh, I finally read Alfred Lambourne's Our Inland Sea, his account of his year living on Gunnison Island. It's available on Google books, but the version culled from the original Deseret News series was published with another artist's sketched vignettes. There's a variant version, Pictures from an Inland Sea, also available on Google with the original Lambourne illustrations. It looks like Ken Sanders has a copy of it (along with some other Lambourne rarities), maybe it will still be there when I next get to Salt Lake. Did you know that Lambourne also contributed poetry to the Relief Society Magazine? I suspect he also was involved Salt Lake's early theatre culture, too. Pity there's not a biography.

Well, enough whining from me...

[_LDSToronto]

I went to work, interviewed for a new position, came home, ate dinner, and installed a new washing machine. I wish I had blixa's life and runtu's gift for writing. Otherwise, I'm happy.

And that's about as much whining as I do.

This place has kept me sane as I've left the church. Some of the best people in the world are here.

H.

[_Morley]

Some of the best people in the world are here.

Worth repeating.

[_MrStakhanovite]

So I spent my evening with a lovely young lady who ended up recounting her experience growing up Catholic, moving into Evangelicalism, and eventually into unbelief. It struck me how similar her story was to Ex-Mormons, even the silly and inept counseling she received was so similar to what a Bishop might say (“Maybe God is giving you depression so you can learn how to cope with it and teach that to other Christians”), and how nothing in her life could make sense until she answered the question about God’s existence to her satisfaction. Her friends who sensed her turmoil actually accused her of some kind of unrepentant sin.

The neat thing, was that I actually had something to say, besides just offering sympathy. I’ve managed to learn a great deal about the trauma that is involved with leaving the LDS Church, and it’s given me a perspective that I couldn’t otherwise get from a book. This place, the friends I’ve made here, is what gave me that perspective.

Bukowski is just here playing games, he’s openly admitted he’d never openly discuss his own issues with the Church (as minor as they are), because it would only give ammo to the other side. That whole line about tough love is just some dumb canard he dreamed up to justify his stupid cavalier attitude. This whole notion that when you decide the truth claims of the Church are no longer tenable, you can simply shrug it off and forget about everything is ridiculous.

People here are not whiners, they are survivors in my opinion, they survived an exit from a faith that makes it very difficult to leave (via social pressure) while holding on to what relationships they can.

I can’t stand it when some cad with unwarranted self importance like Bukowski wants to trivialize the suffering and sacrifice most posters here have to endure, with social stigma and strained family relations.

The posters here have taught me a lot about what it means to sacrifice things of importance for intellectual honesty and a clear conscience. Something that a guy who worries about “giving ammo to the other side” doesn’t have even an iota of moral fiber required to even contemplate, much less, do.