is there a place for heavenly mother in mormon theology?

S U N S T O N E
harem, who keeps score—and found, in what was left, a familiar,
accessible deity. It may not be as majestic as a redwood,
but neither are its reaches as distant. From the junipers, I
lopped off the dead wood of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.
I then looked at my groves and saw that they were good.
Pinyon pines and Utah Junipers also
share an interesting botanical trait. They
are monoecious, which means that both female
and male characteristics—cones or
berries and the flowers that pollinate
them—exist in the same tree. Thus both
God and humanity in my garden are simultaneously
male and female, and
gender role constructs are simply irrelevant.
THE DOMINANT LANDSCAPING
feature of my front yard is the
lawn. A healthy lawn is a lot like
the institutional Church. As a groundcover,
it is unparalleled. It has a pleasing
color and texture, survives being walked
on, and with sufficient, appropriate care,
can grow almost anywhere. Its blades are
uniform, looking just alike. It crowds out
the weeds of life, and the individual components
grow close together, providing
shade and shelter for a healthy root
system. Its abiding popularity demonstrates
its enduring benefits.
A lawn is not without its problems, however. It takes a great
deal of effort to keep it looking good—fertilizer, weed killer,
pesticides, frequent mowing, and copious amounts of water, a
precious commodity in the second driest state in the union.
Also, it is invasive, frequently spilling over into flower beds
and other places where it is not wanted, even sometimes
cracking concrete sidewalks at the seams.
Like the lawn, the institutional church can also be invasive,
extending itself into too many private aspects of our lives and
into too many public places as well. Particularly annoying, to
me, is when the institutional Church spills over into the political
arena, attempting to enshrine its beliefs and practices in
the civil law, making up as it goes along the rules for what constitutes
a “moral issue.”
There is a place in my landscape for the lawn, the institutional
Church, and it is still a fairly prominent one, right in the
front yard of where I live. I’ve installed automatic sprinklers to
reduce the amount of effort I have to put into it, and to regulate
the quantity of resources that go into maintaining it. But as
I see it encroaching into areas where it doesn’t belong, I
wonder if I am affording it too much of my space and substance.
For now it remains, hedged about in most places by
concrete boundaries, which limit its spread, but I have not
ruled out the possibility of displacing at least some of it with a
ground cover more compatible with my life and resources.
In addition to pinyon pines and junipers, one other native
She complained to
me that when I’m
around, people feel
uncomfortable talking
about the roles of
women. I took her
complaint as a
compliment, knowing
that my consistent
weeding work had
raised people’s
consciousness
about sexism.
plant dominates the natural landscape of the Great Basin: sagebrush.
Sagebrush, perhaps because of its abundance, is a
much under-appreciated plant. Like the pioneers, it is hardy in
the hottest summers and coldest winters. It may not be elegant,
but it is as stable and constant and indestructible as the
pioneer stock who made a home in a hostile
land. The memory of those pioneers,
and others before and after, exemplifies
faith and courage and the triumph of the
human spirit; the memory is a vital part
of my faith journey. The pioneers’ stories
inspire me with a sense of who I am and
how I came to occupy my time and place
in the chain of life.
The subcontractor who cleared our lot
to make room for our house had far too
little respect for sagebrush. He drove over
it and bulldozed it everywhere except
where it managed to hide behind rocks or
under junipers. Our pioneer forbears
were not without their problems, but
bulldozing the parts of their story that
make us uncomfortable today robs us of
our heritage and of the lessons we might
learn from it. My sagebrush reforestation
project includes doing genealogy and
family history work to make sure their
stories are preserved.
MY GARDEN IS not without weeds. I generally find it
pretty easy to control the small, personal ones.
Whatever dissonance I may have over the condition
of the faith’s pillars, I believe deeply in the value of the
Mormon way of life—the life of faith and family and community,
of helping others, of respect for the body and keeping it
free of harmful or mind-altering substances. Most of the time,
my spiritual landscape exists comfortably and joyfully within
the community of Saints. It is home to me.
A couple of persistent and particularly noxious weeds deserve
mention, however. One I constantly battle is the everpervasive
tumbleweed. It’s a nasty little devil with tough,
thorny seeds that can stick into your fingers right through
leather work gloves. To make matters worse, I have discovered
that despite a life free of plant allergies, even in California
where almost everything grows, I am allergic to tumbleweed
pollen.
I have decided that tumbleweeds represent the twin plants
of sexism and homophobia that grow out of a patriarchal
worldview and that have become pervasive and insistent
during Mormonism’s last quarter century. I find these weeds
the most troublesome ones in the entire garden. It takes a constant
effort to pull them out early, before the flowers pollinate,
before the seeds harden and turn into thorns that implant
themselves wherever they touch and sprout new offending
plants. Once a ward member complained to me that when I’m
around, people feel uncomfortable talking about the roles of
PAGE 24 JULY 2004