Lately I’ve come to understand that church is sometimes a place for people to share their views but its seldom a place to challenge other people’s points of views. I think you should definitely state your position when you feel its appropriate, but we also must allow others even when they are flat out wrong the same without challenging them.

This is for Lisa: Your husband sure sounds like a great guy. If you read this, say hi to him for me. If I may, I’d like to mention your aversion to getting paid for spiritual work. It’s still a conception in our culture that spiritual work should be free or by donation only. That’s a beautiful tradition that has continued through the centuries in many cultures. However, in those cultures, the ordinance workers / healers were supported by the village through the gift economy. What’s wrong with getting money together to cover, at the very least, your costs? I get worried when I hear people say things like this. Do you really think God would look down on you if you make a profit from FMH? Why do we still think that money is dirty? Why don’t we want to receive money for what we do, spiritual or not? Where is the line between “spiritual” and “healing”? Massage therapists get paid. Psychoanalists get paid. Is their work not spiritual? Where does one draw the line? Is money dirty in God’s eyes? I think the idea of priestcraft from the BofM is about paying for *access to God,* which is what the priests provided. “Better get money together for this ordinance or you can’t be saved.” But I really think we hold ourselves back from having sustainable healing / spiritual / writing / communally enriching contributions by our seeing money as dirty. It’s as though if you get paid for something, you’ve dirtied it. I’ve had to see this shadow in myself. Bless you, Lisa, for what you do, and may it be very soon that you never have to worry about money. I think sometimes we *repel* money and keep looking at it at the same time. I’m not talking about getting rich off people’s quests for happiness. Although that doesn’t even sound evil. Anyway, there is a healthy relationship to money to be had, and I’m working on it for myself, which is why I’m saying all this, for the help that it may benefit someone else as well. Blessings to all

I would be willing to be that almost every person in the Church has these experiences of being shut down, or not feeling like a part of the body of the Church, or ones like them. And yet, the conclusions reached based on those experiences are so vastly different.

Keep up the great work!

Thanks for that link… it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so, so sad…

Lisa:

Great interview! I’m almost embarraassed that I’d never heard of you or FMH before. Keep up the good work…

The story of receiving her witness, in the car, was amazing for me. My experience is so similar, and I’ve never heard anyone else describe it that way.

Motherhood feminism….isn’t that basic Betty Friedan feminism, that women who aren’t mothers are having equal career opportunities.

I literally laughed out loud when she said ‘dirty liberal’! I can imagine the looks, and comments she must have received when admitting she held anything but the normal conservative view.

I’ll never forget coming into a RS Enrichment activity wearing my I Voted sticker (proudly!) and being asked who I voted for, when I reported that I had voted Democrat, the reply instantly attacked my righteousness, my testimony, even my ability to hold a TR. I was stunned to say the least! I’d gotten looks before and experienced some snide comments like oh you’re young, you’ll grow out of it, especially when you have kids of your own. But never before had I felt such a verbal slap like this question into my righteousness.

It became very clear that I could not express my views politically or on social issues without being attacked.

When Lisa shared her experience about speaking up in RS I thought she was going to give me an example that would inspire me to do the same. Instead it seemed like her experience pretty much mirrored my own. In fact, it was only last week when the SS teacher opened D&C 132 and asked us to tell her what the section was about. I sat there wonder if I should raise my hand and say, “polygamous marriage”, but held back because of previous bad experiences. There was also an opportunity in EQ I pass up where the EQT asked, “How did Joseph Smith translate the BOM?”. I really wanted to mention the seer stone and hat bit, but was worried about how it would come across to a room full of people that had never heard about it. Almost every time I look back on such moments I regret not having said anything. In a strange sort of way your experience has strengthened my resolve to speak up more, but to do so in a loving way so I don’t come off as a jerk. That’s really going to take some serious practice:)

Thanks for doing the podcast Lisa, you are one of my new heros!

Here’s a quote from near the end: “There are some of us who prefer that willful people who are in defiance of Church authority and or doctrine not call themselves Mormon. We perform a socially useful function…”

Do you think this could be a new church calling? “You have been called to serve in the FaceBook mission as a ‘Mormon Orthodoxy Enforcer’…

BTW, an enjoyable podcast John!