Sunday in Outer Blogness: Recovering from Mother’s Day edition!

I’m 41 and unmarried, childless, and I find it pretty difficult to be in a family ward sometimes. A confession… I never really had an overwhelming urge to have kids (can I be an LDS woman and say that?). So the awkwardness comes more from pitying glances and talks about how I’ll be a mother “someday, if not in this life”, than feeling sad over not having kids of my own.

That’s a comment from the Mother’s Day debrief on By Common Consent — which includes the happy stories and the horror stories of a typical Mother’s Day in the CoJCoL-dS.

A lot of people talked about how Mother’s Day is hard for women who don’t have children, but I feel like the church’s practice of giving Mother’s Day gifts to childless women (so they won’t feel bad) kinda makes it worse. It’s a reminder that you should feel bad about not being a mom (in case you thought you had a happy and full life or something). Then the rhetoric about how motherhood is every woman’s true essence diminishes all of the other aspects of our lives, whether we’re mothers or not, as illustrated by another comment from the same thread:

That same talk emphasized the speaker’s mother who, with the exception of two or three special occasions, was always home when school got out. “She was ALWAYS there for us. Always. She never felt the need to go out and do anything selfish for herself, not ever. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that what motherhood should be all about?” Hoo boy.

The holiday is also hard for people who have issues with the mothering they got.

Ordain Women is launching a series of discussions on the priesthood (since a bit of clarification is in order). But, of course, they’re still getting flack:

OW must realize the course they are setting will lead people to have difficult conversations with their Bishops and Stake Presidents. From the very beginning OW has a “Productive Conversations Toolkit” available on their website. The purpose of this document is to prepare OW acolytes to “effectively and confidently engage in conversations with leaders and peers about Ordain Women and the ordination of LDS women.” The document begins by introducing the hypothetical that the reader has “just got called in to meet with your church leaders.” It then gives specific advice for, among other things, avoiding discipline. Why would such a thing be necessary if it weren’t for the fact that it was entirely foreseeable and expected that activity in OW would lead to potential Church discipline or other problems?

In other words, Ordain Women wouldn’t be a problem if the CoJCoL-dS were serious about keeping people in, even those who persist in having their own opinions.

Smallaxe wrote an interesting critique of apologetics-by-calling-your-opponent-a-heretic (if I understand it correctly — it took me a long time to figure out that he wasn’t talking about wheat and tares the blog).

In life journeys, David Knowlton felt conflicted about being identified as Mormon, and Emma is starting to move on.

In scripture study, it’s dangerous to turn the Book of Mormon into a drinking game — it’s kinda repetitive and a little crazy. Steve Wells is enumerating all of the commandments in the Bible. This week’s Old Testament lesson again covers why the Bible is the opposite of a good source of moral guidance. And if you think the faithful just skip over the bad lessons, read this post.

In books, Johnny Townsend is trying to raise funds for his next book on Indiegogo — have a look and give a little if you’d like to support the Xmo arts! Andrew Hackman liked “Why I am an Atheist who Believes in God”, despite the author’s reliance on the usual false parallel. And Runtu has been serializing a story.

In not-mo-related, Roger Hansen encountered some activists driving all-terrain-vehicles over archaeologically-significant lands (in order to protest the government’s authority to protect valuable/fragile areas from random idiots with ATVs…). Bored in Vernal has been blogging about a fascinating experiment, spending a week eating as if she were in the third world. (I wonder if this Spanish tortilla would work?)

Here in Zürich, the sun finally came out, so I got my basil and tomatoes planted — as part of a calm, house-cleaning weekend. And reading what all my mo and exmo friends are up to is a delicious part of this nutritious weekend! Now, back to making sure my kids did their homework… Happy reading!!