Choose Love

I think it’s time for me to write this letter.

In fact, I think that this letter is long overdue. I have mentioned my attitude toward the LGBT community in a earlier post on The Peacewriter. I feel years of bigotry weighing down on me. I hang my head low in reaction.

In my home state, gay marriage will never see the light of day. Several years ago, the state of Missouri passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. It passed. My vote was one that helped it to pass.

For that, I am duly ashamed.

To think that I once felt that banning a basic civil right from a group of people based on their sexual orientation garners feelings of guilt and humility.

I did that. I was part of that.

I was afraid of the influence homosexuals had on society. I even turned away a relative because she came out to me.

How could I have done that?

I chose to educate my children at home for nearly a decade in part because someone told me that gays and lesbians were on a mission to indoctrinate the world. I read that idea in books. I read articles online. Just like off-color racist jokes, the ideas were whispered between me and other "conservative" people.

I cannot even begin to tell the gay and lesbian world how sorry I am. My regret brings me to my knees.

I get that when you know better, you do better. But I think that is a cop out. I wonder if a part of me always knew better.

I always knew that it was wrong to discriminate. I was born with that sense. But my belief system gave me the ‘right’ to act out against something I did not understand. So when I saw a gay or lesbian story line on television or in the movies, I could express my ignorance and uncomfortable unfamiliarity as prejudice, loudly, and with disgust.

I take responsibility for my thoughts, my actions, my shame.

You are my brothers and my sisters. You are parents and sons and daughters and spouses and partners. You shop in the grocery store and wring your hands over finances, cry at weddings and funerals, laugh with joy and love with ferocity.

Just like me.

Now that I have seen the truth for what it is, I have a message for people like me. Like the me I used to be.

Err on the side of love. It is about love. Let that be your guide, and the hatred, the misunderstanding, the discrimination will simply melt away.

Choose love.

Where Love Is...

These are the memories that really get to me. My eyes fill up with tears as I recall the little voices in Primary singing these lines:

Where love is

There God is also

Where love is

I want to be

I dreaded conducting on the days when the music leader would choose Where Love Is as the reverent song. Sometimes it was all I could do to keep the crack of a sob out of my voice.

When I am feeling particularly nostalgic, I log onto the music player on LDS.org and listen to the song again from the Children’s Songbook.

The words hold special meaning to me, though meaning has changed since my days serving in a Primary presidency.

I take them quite literally. Where love is, there God is. Where love is, I want to be.

Finding where love is, searching for God in my life has become something of a personal quest since losing my belief in the Church. Along with my membership, I lost my bearings. When I would stand in the middle of the Primary room, or sit in the chapel I always, always knew what I was supposed to think about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I could close my eyes in the middle of the Sacrament prayers and repeat the words fluently, bringing into my mind a painting of Christ beseeching his father in the Garden of Gethsemane.

When I lost my grounding in the LDS gospel, my anchor to God was rendered loose and adrift. My thoughts towards God have run the gamut between clinging to the concept of Heavenly parents to edging close to the borders of atheism.

It has been a tough ride.

In those days that seem so far from me now…standing there listening to the voices of the little ones sing about the loving arms of God surrounding them, I did not simply listen enjoying the sweet innocence of their voices. I was a believer, stalwart and immoveable. Every word etched into my heart, providing me with comfort and peace and meaning.

Feeling that assurance slip from my grasp left me wondering around blind. But when you begin to see the holes in a doctrine, teachings about God lose their meaning as well. If Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God, what does that mean about what I have learned about God since my birth?

Suddenly, there is nothing sure left worth clinging to; it all becomes very clear that no one really knows anything. Religion is made up of the philosophies of some very well-meaning men.

Losing that reassuring belief in God makes for some very lonely and dark nights. Staring into the heavens I wondered, is there really anything there? Is it all just random?

Am I alone?

The ache in my heart has been almost too much to bear.

Time is, however, a faithful healer. As it moves forward, I find more peace and meaning in the world around me.

Simple things began to teach me a little more about the God I walk with now. There is so much love in this world, and in my heart and mind I cannot accept that it is merely an accident.

Where love is, there God is also.

Love teaches me that God loves all of his children, and whoever it is or whatever that means, is quite unlike the picture humanity has painted.

I do not accept that God is a man who sits in the heavens keeping track of the missteps of his children below. I do not think that God is fulfilling eternal laws that require him to punish the wayward among his offspring.

I think it matters little to God who we find to love. I doubt withholding civil rights from a corner of humanity in God’s name is really an accurate practice. Mankind has put a lot of unkind words in God’s mouth over the subject of gender roles and differences.

So, where does that leave God?

It leaves God wherever love is.

The gospel message I get these days goes a little like this:

Treat one another well. Let go of destructive things like jealousy, hate, envy, and vengeance. Practice kindness, live in fairness, embrace love.

Ethics and morality are not the sole property of religious folk; atheists and unbelievers love and serve their fellow man without hope for reward or fear of punishment.

Are we alone? Absolutely not. God, that spark of divine love within each of us, finds its way to uplift and bless those of us here below. It happens around the world every minute of the day. Someone lends another a helping hand, smiles erase the pain of those who feel used up and left alone, miracles occur all of the time. Love radiates outward from the amazing hearts of humanity.

And where love is, there God is.

Purpose of Life

This has been a week of amazing posts in the blog world. I promise to have an original Peacewriter piece up later in the week, but for today I had to share this amazing post by Juliane over on Molly Mormon's Evil Twin.

Juliane shares a video of an amazing man who serves his neighbors with the kind of selfless love that others merely write about. This man has figured out the purpose of his life. Watch the video and read Juliane's remarks.

If you need a dose of perspective today, here it is.

I have to say, this is better than any message I have ever heard from any pulpit anywhere in my entire life.