But still, when it comes down to it and I'm tapped in to my true heart, I am simply willing to believe whatever things feel true, whatever ideas seem right, without compiling any evidence to prove it. (I believe Stephen Colbert calls that truthiness. It's a dangerous thing to rely too heavily on truthiness, but maybe it's okay in moderation and/or in a select few areas of life.)
There's an episode of the show New Girl where the lead character, Jess, explains why she believed in Santa Claus for so long: "I just believe things and go on believing them. If someone tells me a fat man's bringing me dolls every year, I just don't question it." I can relate, fictional ladyfriend. If a belief is working for me, if it's adding something wonderful to my life, I'm not one to be skeptical.
For so much of my life, the faith I came by instinctively was directed at the church I inherited and loved, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was raised attending meetings each Sunday, memorizing scripture verses occasionally, learning songs about Jesus and prophets and popcorn popping on apricot trees. My family wasn't over-the-top-obsessed with any of this stuff; in fact, I'd say our approach was pretty laidback, overall. But it was important to us. And believing in the truth and goodness of our particular denomination ... well, like I said, faith comes easily to me. I was a Mormon girl, descended from pioneers, born and bred in Southern Utah, and I had faith. All the blocks stacked up perfectly.
Something shifted for me around the time of my 22nd birthday. I've thought a lot about that shift over the years and written a lot about it, too; summing it up in a single paragraph is a tall order. We call it a crisis of faith oftentimes, and I've claimed that term for myself repeatedly. It's another way of saying that everything changed. But if I'm being truly honest, I didn't have a crisis of faith so much as a crisis of trust. I was still able and willing to believe things beyond reason, but my confidence in my church, its leadership, its culture, its values -- its whole story and all of its fantastic claims -- took a blow.
My impulse towards faith never went away, but the structure I'd counted on was no longer able to support that faith.
All this said, I am still a Mormon girl, or rather, a Mormon woman. Still a member of my church, still descended from pioneers, still born and bred in Southern Utah. I still have faith.
Words from another Mormon woman resonate with me strongly now. Emma Lou Thayne wrote in her book The Place of Knowing, "... the pillars of my faith were still intact, but the roof had blown blessedly off the structure to reveal a whole sky full of stars."
Nearly eight years have passed since I began this crucial shift in my spiritual perspective. On this side of those years, I feel empowered to redefine, reform, remake my faith. I'm ready to hit the ReStart button, in a way. The work I've undertaken over the past eight years has been, in large part, the work of undoing, unlearning things and questioning my long-held conclusions. Now, I want to build something. Maybe I'm turning the corner into my next phase of spirituality, a phase where I can explore and reconstruct a faith that's suited to the right-now me. That's how it feels.
I have no set expectation or vision for exactly where this part of the path will lead or what it will look like, but whatever happens, I want to document it along the way. That's the point of this blog -- to write down the questions and ephiphanies and occurrences that guide me in what I intuitively know is a clarifying moment in my life.
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