I recently had occasion to make a business trip, and one of the things I took with me to read on the plane was the current issue of Sunstone. Most readers of this blog will be familiar with this publication, but for those who are not, Sunstone is the closest…
Category: Testimony
Symbolic beliefs can counter cognitive dissonance, but at a cost
Facing East: Thoughts on (Dis)Orientation
I was talking with a friend the other day who was feeling uneasy about his life. Like me, he has known since he was a boy that he is gay, yet (because he was a faithful Mormon boy) he married and had children, then eventually came to a point where…
“Nobody actually believes in a man with a beard in the clouds.”
A friend of mine said this recently as we were discussing whether the god that New Atheists dismiss is too simplistic. All I could say is, “Well, I did.” Okay, maybe not in the clouds exactly, but from his first appearance with his Son to Joseph Smith to the affirmation…
Finding God in a Gay Bar: Why I Blog
I have recently had occasion to reflect on why I began blogging and why I continue to blog. I am not an expert on anything – except my own feelings and experience. When I began blogging, I decided that this would be a guiding principle for my writing. As I…
On Terry Tempest Williams
I believe I have read everything Terry Tempest Williams has written. I have followed her as she has contemplated and worked through the tangled relationship that exists between family and the LDS Church, and the heavy right leaning philosophy of both, as she has moved in an opposite direction. In…
Reflections on An Overwhelming Emptiness
About ten days ago, I published a post on my blog (invictuspilgrim.blogspot.com) entitled An Overwhelming Emptiness. It was Daves story, the story of his struggle to come to terms with his sexuality and identity in a Mormon mixed-orientation marriage (MoMoM). Then, on Wednesday of this past week, I published another…
What is Truth: Gays, Believers and Apostates
As has been pointed out by numerous commenters throughout the (relatively short) life of my blog (at http://invictuspilgrim.blogspot.com), a gay (active/post/ex-/inactive/anything in between) Mormons relationship to the LDS Church is often complicated. The reason for this should be obvious (but perhaps isnt to many members of the Church). Many gay…
Did you ever make up your own words to primary songs?
You know, like: In my pretty garden the flowers are naughty. Or: Saturday is the special day. It’s the day we get ready for Sunday We clean the house and we wash our hair It’s “no fun till the work is all done” day! Or in the chorus of “The…
The Toll: Inside a Mormon Mixed-Orientation Marriage
Losing you [when you joined the church] was like a guillotine blade that beheaded the loving richness I had in my life. [After you joined the church] I saw you withdraw from life. The relationship between your withdrawal from life and your involvement in the church appeared to be proportionally…
Culture
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Coming Out of the Conservative Closet
I have chosen to write about coming out of a closet the closet that hid part of who I really am, a part of me that I always knew was there but never wanted to acknowledge or accept. I guess part of the reason I never came out is that…