tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-115139092024-03-13T13:17:58.533-06:00Bigelow's RameumptomMusings, observations, memories, reviews, and reports from writer, editor, and publisher Christopher Kimball BigelowChristopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.comBlogger393125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-78191040130158612112020-02-09T10:59:00.002-07:002020-02-09T17:24:32.566-07:00How and Why I wrote ACID TEST: LSD vs. LDS<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">This post first appeared on the <a href="http://associationmormonletters.org/blog/2020/02/christopher-bigelows-memoir-acid-test-lsd-vs-lds/" target="_blank"><span id="goog_638875920"></span>Association for Mormon Letters blog<span id="goog_638875921"></span></a>.</span></i><br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.34px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Can YOU pass the Acid Test?”</strong><br />
—Merry Pranksters, quoted in <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test</em></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OIu4R8QvEUw/XkBH4V40EXI/AAAAAAAACis/uyUtYA9wqKs2djvLbsoubaRe6e1KR6GXwCEwYBhgL/s1600/Acid-Test-ebook-cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1036" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OIu4R8QvEUw/XkBH4V40EXI/AAAAAAAACis/uyUtYA9wqKs2djvLbsoubaRe6e1KR6GXwCEwYBhgL/s320/Acid-Test-ebook-cover.JPG" title="" width="206" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.34px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-LSD-vs-LDS/dp/0999347233/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #cd0215; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Acid Test: LSD vs. LDS</em></a> is a memoir of my mid-1980s spiritual journey. The book relates my experience with what I eventually figured out were the dark and light sides of an unseen spiritual dimension. At first, I was just going to tell the tale of my wild years and then have a concluding chapter about getting spooked by the dark side and retreating back into Mormonism. As I wrote, however, and received high-quality feedback from pros, I found myself equally interested in portraying my struggle to find palatable ways to embrace Mormonism. Some readers enjoy the book’s initial dark half better, and others prefer the light side in the second half, but I see the two sides as necessary to explore together, in the correct order. As the title and cover suggest, this book is propelled by duality and juxtaposition. I appreciate what <a href="https://twisted.worldsmithstories.com/mormonism-meets-hunter-thomas-a-review-of-acid-test-by-christopher-bigelow/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #cd0215; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">D. Michael Martindale</a> wrote: “The tale seems to ramble from one disjointed thing to another at first, but slowly over chapters, you notice a pattern emerging, a plot arc arising from the punk chaos, and you realize [Bigelow] is an accomplished storyteller who knows what he’s doing without letting on.”</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.34px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
With <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Acid Test</em>, I wrote a book that I would want to read, rather than trying to target a certain readership or market. I call it a memoir, but it could also be tagged as an autobiographical novel. The reader goes through the story as if in real time with the protagonist (my late-teens self), rather than receiving it filtered through a present-day interpreter and judger. But I don’t like the term “novel” because it implies the book could be mostly fiction, and I definitely consider this book nonfiction. Like any memoirist, I reconstructed things, especially dialogue, but I did so to the best of my memory, refraining from consciously fictionalizing. (In a couple of cases, I couldn’t remember where an event fit in the chronology, so I placed it where it was most dramatically useful.) I learned that when you reconstruct a memory, your brain starts to turn the reconstruction into what feels like real memory, and you can never again be sure which is which.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.34px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Sometimes I think writing a memoir is simply a way to crowdsource your own psychoanalysis. I can be a somewhat exhibitionistic person, and my aim was to make <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Acid Test</em> a fully confessional account, an exercise in “radical disclosure,” as I’ve heard it called. Not only is <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Acid Test</em> somewhat of a passive-aggressive response to repressed Mormon culture, but I’m also admittedly influenced by today’s mega-transparency and micro-shame (for me, exhibit A would be the comedian <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/can-louis-ck-spin-his-troubles-into-art" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #cd0215; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Louis C.K</a>.). I’m also inspired by my favorite author, John Updike: “I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.” I included almost no profanity and not a single dreaded F-word, because I didn’t want to give Mormons such an easy excuse for not reading it, but I did include some drug experiences and nonpornographic accounts of sex, the most notorious of which involves Crisco. I wanted readers to go through the dark side with me and experience how it impacted me, so I could dramatize why a Mormon kid could get caught up in such misadventures and explore reasons—and perhaps suggest some blame—for his spiritual confusion and alienation. Unless a reader finds the content provocative in an entertaining way, perhaps similar to how true-crime stories can be compelling, it may be a challenge to get through the book’s dark first half. Personally, I think some of the book’s most disturbing and most funny parts both have to do with sex.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.34px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I consider <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Acid Test</em> as ultimately an expression of faith, a bearing of testimony. Nonetheless, I haven’t yet had an “active” Mormon outside my family express robust appreciation and acceptance of the book, although it’s still early days. However, I have started getting fans from outside the faith, and maybe that’s where the book’s readership mostly lies, if it has one at all. “An honest, entertaining, and moving expression of what it is like to be a human being,” wrote the director of the <a href="https://myiapc.com/book-review-acid-test-lsd-vs-lds/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #cd0215; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Institute for the Advancement of Psychedelic Christianity</a> (I love that this organization exists). “I felt happy while I was reading it.” As I tested earlier drafts, my most enthusiastic proponent was a novelist who grew up Mormon but later became an atheist. My drug-pusher friend depicted in the memoir said the book spoke to him as, thirty-five years later, he now tries to move forward with his long-time girlfriend who recently returned to Mormonism. I also appreciate what <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/christopher-kimball-bigelow/acid-testM/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #cd0215; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kirkus Reviews</em></a> wrote: “While the author is an able storyteller with plenty of colorful anecdotes, his interest in morality provides a unique ballast in what would otherwise be a typical but entertaining tale of adolescent mischief. His evocative depiction of the time and its subcultures helps make this a memorable and ultimately quite surprising autobiography.”</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.34px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I plan a follow-up volume called <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Zion Test,</em> in which I try to find a place within corporate Mormonism and then branch out into independent, alternative Mormon avenues, ultimately meeting a guru who extrapolates from the <a href="https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #cd0215; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Joseph Smith Papers</a> to show how the LDS church could decentralize its structure and thus transcend its corporate and cultural failings. Earlier, I was planning a memoir trilogy with <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mission Test</em> as the middle volume, but I decided I don’t need a whole book about my mission—though it would be fun to write—because so many others have already depicted that experience.</div>
Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-48146940612460371852015-04-01T10:29:00.000-06:002015-04-01T10:46:53.978-06:00My Latest Thoughts on LGBT IssuesIn a word, I'm now a lot more agnostic about LGBT issues than I used to be. I have gone through phases where I've been opposed to gay marriage, but that ship has sailed.<br />
<br />
I've never really had any secular case against gay marriage. I have made a religious case against it among fellow Mormons, but I've sort of lost interest in that now. I simply don't know what to think anymore. I really don't understand what God expects of those who feel the same way about their own sex as I do about the opposite.<br />
<br />
I think legalizing gay marriage is a huge, complex experiment, and now I'm more of a spectator than anything. In fact, I don't even really follow the news on it anymore. I do still wonder sometimes what the long-term effects will be. Nobody knows.<br />
<br />
As a Mormon, I think all kinds of casual sex are wrong, whether hetero or homo. I don't know about homo sex within a committed relationship—I'm now thinking it's simply not my issue or my business, so it's not a question I expect to have answered anytime soon, and I don't feel any pressing personal need to have it answered. I also no longer feel much, if any, need to shelter my kids from homosexual couple examples—that ship has already sailed, too.<br />
<br />
So now my thought is: live and let live, good luck with your journey, I have no idea what the long-term results will be, and I don't understand what God realistically expects of gay people.<br />
<br />
At the same time, I still don't think Mormonism should start performing eternal gay sealings in the temple without a specific, clear revelation. And if Mormonism did receive such a revelation, I would be confused because its entire theological system is based on eternal heterosexual coupling with endless spiritual progeny.<br />
<br />
However, a Mormon bishop performing a gay civil union in a public LDS meetinghouse? Eh, whatever.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-53619610140116624292014-08-29T11:38:00.000-06:002014-08-29T11:43:55.228-06:00My comments on the new polygamy rulingHere's a Q & A I did today with the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/">International Business Times</a>:<br />
<br />
<b>In your opinion, how will the latest ruling effect the way the general public views the LDS? The church has been trying to distance itself from its polygamist past. Will this threaten that goal?</b><br />
<br />
Overall, this is bad news for the LDS Church and its public image. There's already so much confusion between the mainstream LDS Church and the rogue fundamentalist polygamists. As polygamy becomes legal, the LDS Church will likely come under pressure to accept polygamists back into its membership ranks (currently, polygamists are excommunicated). With the law on their side, polygamists could ratchet up a "civil rights" campaign within the church along the same lines as we're currently seeing with the church's gays and feminists. All this will no doubt blur the lines even more in the public's understanding, as polygamists gain more status in society.<br />
<br />
<b>Do you think the LDS will address the ruling with its congregants? Will it be mentioned in sermons, teachings, newsletters etc?</b><br />
<br />
The more the media covers this polygamy issue, the more likely it will be mentioned in church communications as a countermeasure. I predict that the church will increasingly identify modern-day polygamy as a threat to the mainstream church and its members, along with things like gay marriage, extreme feminism, pornography, and other recent social changes.<br />
<br />
Right now, American LDS temples are used to perform both legally recognized civil marriages and eternal sealings of couples and families. As the definition of marriage changes in America, I expect that LDS temples will no longer be used for civil marriages but only for sealings, which are purely religious in nature. I'm sure the church will rather stop performing civil marriages altogether than face increasing legal and social pressure to perform gay or polygamous marriages within its sacred temples.<br />
<br />
<b>In what ways will this affect the LDS’ missionaries? Will it be harder to bring new people into the faith? Or is the fact that the ruling is restricted to Utah help them in that regard?</b><br />
<br />
Again, it depends on how the media covers it. If the story stays alive and grows, and if other states and nations start changing their laws too, missionaries will no doubt need to do a lot more explaining. Much also depends on whether polygamists themselves become more vocal in society, claiming their identities and rights as Mormons. Any stronger connection between Mormonism and modern-day polygamy will no doubt scare more people away from the church. <br />
<br />
<b>Besides a press release reinstating the fact that the LDS does not practice polygamy, are there any other ways that the church can help distance itself from this part of its past? Do LDS members even care that some think they practice polygamy?</b><br />
<br />
In my experience, many LDS members find it very uncomfortable that some people think we still practice polygamy. Many members feel very uncomfortable that the church ever did practice it. On the other hand, some LDS members may deep down feel sympathetic toward polygamy because of its role in our past history and in our theology. With the legal prohibition removed, some mainstream members may become more openly tolerant of polygamy, start putting pressure on the church to accept it, or even convert to a polygamous lifestyle themselves.<br />
<br />
I think all the mainstream church can do is keep making clear that we view polygamy as a grievous sin when it's not authorized by God through his appointed prophet, as it was in Old Testament times and the early days of the LDS Church. As the issue grows, I think the church will become increasingly vocal about lumping polygamy in with other latter-day social trends that the church opposes, like gay marriage, extreme feminism, and pornography. Many members see these trends as influenced by the devil in order to undermine the foundation of families and this American nation.<br />
<br />
<b>What is the LDS’ view on the FLDS? Do they live in peace with one another? Or does the LDS see them as a threat in any way (especially with shows like Sister Wives)?</b><br />
<br />
In my observation, the LDS Church strives to avoid any engagement with any polygamous groups, as no good could come of it. I believe LDS church members have been a driving force in trying to make and enforce laws against polygamists, so the new ruling is a blow to many LDS people, including LDS professionals in Utah politics and law. Many members see polygamists as a threat to our good name—they're like crazy, uncontrollable relatives who publicly embarrass us. The LDS Church tries its best to distance itself from polygamists, but everyone knows we have common historical roots and still share some religious DNA.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-70073259599750119212013-03-06T12:21:00.001-07:002013-03-06T12:52:52.429-07:00Advice to Someone Considering Taking Mind-Altering DrugsHere's an interesting note I received, followed by my reply:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I'm interested in your new book due to a personal situation. It's the
memoir <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1340353575/mormon-punk-from-lsd-to-lds"><i>Mormon Punk: From LSD to LDS</i></a>. I'm willing to donate to help get
your book published if you help me.<br />
<br />
I read the sample chapter about when you were on LSD at a concert, and
felt like your thoughts could be a trap, and i am intrigued. I want to
know about what caused you to flip 180 degrees, about your experience
"meeting the devil" and your thoughts on psychedelics.<br />
<br />
I am strongly considering taking a mild dose of psilocybin mushrooms for
therapeutic purposes. I've done them a couple times several years back
and only had positive experiences. This is paralleled by recent
experiments done with them at top medical centers around the country
(i.e. UCLA) and their long history of use by native tribes, along with
peyote and ayahuasca.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
My only fear is that of spiritual confusion. Honestly, if done with the
right intentions i think they can be highly spiritually beneficial. Yet I
still want to hear your experience and point of view. Enclosing more of
your memoir, specifically the chapter on your acid trip and subsequent
thoughts would be great, although any advice would be appreciated.
Again, I'm willing to donate to help get your book published.</blockquote>
<br />
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
Well, I come at it from a Mormon background. I
grew up hearing accounts of demons attacking people, and I remember
church teachers saying that drugs can open you up to demonic influence,
as do occult things (even Ouija Boards). As a rebellious teen, I thought
it was all a joke, but after taking acid several times (and shrooms
once), as well as dabbling in the occult, I began to suspect there might
be something to it. <br />
<br />
There was one acid trip where something or someone was trying to
sell me on the idea that the universe sees humans as just another
animal; I hallucinated that my friends turned into animals, and thoughts
entered my mind that people are just animals, with no higher spiritual
or theological dimension. It bugged me at the time for reasons I
couldn't understand or explain, and later I decided that it was demonic
suggestion, made possible because my mind was opened through the drug. I
think it was demonic because if I had accepted that people are just
animals, I would have begun behaving more like an animal with no higher
morals, values, etc.</div>
<br />
The actual devil experience came a few weeks after my last
acid trip, although I may still have been smoking marijuana at that
time. Late one night, I was writing in a journal about the possibility
of doing a 180 and going on a Mormon mission. I had been feeling uneasy
about the path I was on. I felt like I was now at a crossroads, and if I
chose to stay on that path, I probably wouldn't have another chance to
leave it, as I would be getting myself more deeply involved in drugs,
sex, and the occult (for example, one friend was pushing me to try
heroin at that time).</div>
<br />
Now, I didn't see or hear anything down in my basement bedroom
that night, but I felt a strong angry force trying to break into the
room and get me. It was almost like something was trying to punch its
way into the room through some kind of invisible barrier. Luckily it
stopped before it broke through (I may have prayed for protection or
something--I was seriously scared shitless). I felt no doubt that
whoever or whatever it was wanted to just throttle me, just obliterate
me. It was so pissed that I was slipping away from all the traps it had
so carefully lain for me. (My earlier LSD trips may have primed me in some way to sense that. It didn't feel like a flashback, though. It felt extremely real.)</div>
</div>
<br />
So
from a Mormon perspective, I'd say to tread very carefully. Unseen
beings do exist, in my experience, and many of them are evil ones who
are actively trying to ruin our lives (Mormonism has a whole story of
who they are, why they hate us, etc.). I don't know if it's possible to
combine God and drugs in some positive way (Mormonism would say not).
But in my experience, it's easy for unseen beings to confuse people
under the influence of mind-altering drugs, by projecting mental
suggestions into the person's head, as I felt happened to me a few times
on acid.</div>
<br />
Good luck to you. Don't take anything you "realize" under the
influence of psychedelic drugs at face value. Be skeptical that someone
may be trying to trick or deceive or mislead you away from the reality
of God. Personally, I really don't think God ever speaks to people
through drugs. <br />
<br />
Or if you're not religious at all and don't believe that unseen
personages could exist beyond our mortal awareness, then knock yourself
out! I'm now 46, and I'm not aware of any lasting effects from my drug
years at ages 17-19. But then again, who knows if something permanent
happened to my brain or body of which I'm not yet aware...<br />
<br />
<i>Want to help make this story a published reality? <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1340353575/mormon-punk-from-lsd-to-lds">Click here</a> to find out more and make your pledge. </i>Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-61098984958266959662013-02-15T14:57:00.001-07:002013-02-15T14:57:17.855-07:00Back My Kickstarter Project?So, I've long been fascinated by <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1340353575/mormon-punk-from-lsd-to-lds">Kickstarter</a>, the website that helps people find financial backers for their creative projects. Now that I'm currently freelancing for a living, I thought it was a good time to give Kickstarter a try. So read about my memoir project <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1340353575/mormon-punk-from-lsd-to-lds">here</a>, and consider becoming a backer by essentially purchasing a copy of my book in advance. Oh, and please help spread the word!Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-14732026725822693352012-05-27T17:32:00.001-06:002012-05-27T21:49:27.294-06:00My Thoughts on Two Recent Mormon Memoirs<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Emily Pearson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dancing with
Crazy </i>and Joanna Brooks’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Book of
Mormon Girl</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I first heard of Emily Pearson in June 2007, while I was
riding in a nearly deserted Manhattan subway car. Only two other people were on
board with me: my wife, Ann; and well-known Mormon writer and gay activist
Carol Lynn Pearson, the mother of Emily.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was
visiting New York on the dime—er, shilling—of a British publisher who wanted me
to join him at a book convention. Ann decided to come along for a long weekend
of theatergoing. We both enjoyed Vanessa Redgrave’s one-woman dramatization of
Joan Didion’s perhaps slightly overrated memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Year of Magical Thinking, </i>although the play was so quiet that you
could hear the traffic outside, and at one point a cell phone shattered the
spell for what seemed like several minutes.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>I loved <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spring Awakening</i>, but Ann
found it too raw and sexual. We also saw the tourist-friendly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.</i></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
For our fourth play, we’d heard
that Carol Lynn Pearson’s gay-sympathetic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facing
East</i> was playing in a small theater down in Chelsea, which I suppose would be
classified as Off-Broadway. We thought it would be a novelty to see such a
Mormon-related play in the Big Apple, a play written by the same person who wrote <i>My Turn on Earth</i> and the screenplay for <i>Cipher in the Snow</i>. Also, I was quite curious to see if Pearson would
offer any new insights into the Mormon-gay impasse. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As I sat in a stall in the theater
restroom before the performance began, I heard a group of men enter the
restroom. They were tittering together in a lispy way, and we were in Chelsea
after all, so I assumed they were gay. (Is there a word for a group of gay men?
I lean toward <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gaggle.</i>)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>For a moment, all I heard was the sound
of zippers opening. Then an exuberant, singsong voice called out, “Penithes,
penithes, all around!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I waited until they were gone
before I ventured out of my stall.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Inside the theater, I sat next to a
small woman with short silver hair. Turning to me, she introduced herself as
Carol Lynn Pearson and asked if I was so-and-so, naming a person she was
evidently expecting to meet. I told her no, sorry, I wasn’t. But I gave her my
name and said she might know me from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Sugar Beet</i>, a Mormon satirical news source to which I recalled that Pearson
subscribed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
She lit right up at the mention of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sugar Beet</i>. I told her about some
other times our paths had recently crossed. I’d included an interview with her
in my book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Conversations with Mormon
Authors</i>. At a Borders Bookstore in Salt Lake City, I’d done a book signing
right after her, waiting nearby as she chatted with a last few fans. While
coauthoring <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mormonism For Dummies</i>,
I’d sought her input on the homosexual section. Pearson hadn’t liked how I’d
said that some same-sex-attracted people could “reclaim their God-given
heterosexuality.” In addition, she felt that I didn’t give enough weight to the
“huge body of evidence these days that the biological contribution is
profound.” I don’t remember making any substantial changes based on this input,
which I considered wishful, deluded thinking on her part.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I thought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facing East</i> was fine as a drama, but I also felt it was
manipulative propaganda. For me, the basic message was that Mormons need to
learn to be thrilled with fellow Mormons who act out their gay desires, otherwise they
will commit suicide and it will be our fault. A year later, I would tussle with
Pearson in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salt Lake Tribune</i> over
this. She would write an opinion piece titled “We can change history for gay
LDS,” reiterating the same basic message as the play. My published response
letter would include the line, “That sounds like blackmail to me, and I don't
accept it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
After the play, Ann and I sauntered
through the hot Manhattan afternoon to the subway station. On the platform, we
found ourselves standing next to Carol Lynn Pearson, who must have walked by a
different route. During our screechy, rattling subway ride together, we started
chatting about blogs, and Pearson told us about her daughter Emily’s blog.
“Now, I have to warn you, she can get a bit salty,” Pearson said, as I was
jotting down Emily’s blog address. When I asked if she thought Emily would ever
come back into the LDS Church, Pearson shook her head sadly and said something
like, “I don’t think so. For some people, the church does more damage than
good.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
To our surprise, a few days later
we found ourselves standing next to Carol Lynn Pearson again, this time at La
Guardia. It turned out we were on the same flight to Atlanta. During this
layover, the three of us ate lunch together at a Chili’s restaurant. Pearson
said that our numerous chance encounters had earned us a mention in the diary
where she noted the “synchronicities” in her life. A few months later, she and
I would do a session together at the Utah Book Festival, titled “Mormon
Writing: Promised Land or No Man’s Land?” Our purpose would be to discuss “the
trials and blessings of seeking an audience for material that some would call
‘too worldly for the Mormons and too Mormon for the world.’ ” Of course,
Pearson would use this opportunity to spread her gay-activist gospel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As soon as we got home from the New
York trip, I added Emily Pearson’s blog to my Google Reader. Over the next few
years, I enjoyed reading her exuberant, snarky, often witty posts. Sometimes I
played along with her on some irreverent, inappropriate things that I thought were wildly funny. Other times I went head to head with her
over Mormonism and the gay issue. When she announced that she was
finally self-publishing her memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dancing
with Crazy, </i>I was one of the first people to order it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I was expecting Pearson to paint a
rosy picture of her father, Gerald, who left the family to pursue a gay life in
San Francisco, eventually dying of AIDS. But this is not at all what Pearson
does. Instead, we get a realistic account of her father’s hedonistic gay life
and his profoundly irresponsible exposing of young Emily to the whole gay scene,
including pornography and drugs. She even reveals that some of Gerald’s friends
ritually sexually abused her, without Gerald’s knowledge. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Now, it’s clear that Emily loved
her father—in fact, rather too much and to a codependent degree, in my opinion.
But there is absolutely no way I can see for her to defend his character, and I
don’t think she tries to. He’s not some noble gay man who took a responsible
approach to his homosexual orientation and made a life that could be held up as
any kind of worthwhile example. No, he comes across as someone who simply
abandoned his commitments and completely gave himself over to follow all the
temptations that came his way. In the process, he did a terrific amount of
damage to his daughter Emily, who often spent time with him down in the Castro.
How could she not be screwed up?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I have not yet read any of Carol
Lynn Pearson’s books, but now I definitely want to read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Goodbye, I Love You,</i> her version of having a gay husband and
helping him as he died of AIDS. While Emily completely threw out her Mormonism
perhaps partially as a coping mechanism for accepting her own father, I’m curious whether Carol Lynn tries to make any argument that
Gerald’s homosexuality was actually a worthwhile thing, something defensible,
something that God himself might have accepted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Unfortunately, Gerald was only the
first of many toxic, codependent situations that Pearson got herself into. When
describing this book to others, I have often used the term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">train wreck</i>. Seriously, Pearson had a real knack for attracting
Mormon weirdo after Mormon weirdo, including a polygamist who courted her for
his third or fourth wife. Her one normal boyfriend ended up dying of cancer,
but not before some whacko Mormon priesthood holder led Pearson to believe that
she could save the boyfriend via extreme faith.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Of course, Emily eventually ended
up marrying Stephen Fales, even though he was attracted to men. They had two
children together, but this horrible relationship was probably the deciding
factor that finally drove her away from religion. Again, even though Emily is
now a gay activist, there is nothing about Fales that makes me think the gay
identity is actually a good, worthwhile thing. Like her father, he’s just
another spiritual failure who couldn’t control his impulses, keep his
commitments, and stay on the Mormon track. I’ve read Fales’s play, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Confessions of a Mormon Boy</i>—which,
incidentally, is what goaded Emily to write her own version of the story—and he
offers nothing to make me think homosexuality is actually a positive thing
worth pursuing. It’s a human weakness that should be resisted, just like any
other ungodly impulse.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When I was in high school, I made a
friend who told me a weird, horrifying story. One day, this guy’s father came
home from work and, even though it was starting to drizzle outside, he took out
a chainsaw and started cutting into the roof of the family’s home. It turned
out that my friend’s dad had decided to take a second wife, and he was adding
some rooms to the house for her. My friend was pulled out of public school and,
as the oldest of seven children, was put in charge of their home-schooling. He
missed his entire junior high experience before his mom finally kicked out her
husband and the new wife. When this friend and I rebelled by moving to downtown
Salt Lake to join the underground New Wave/punk scene, I knew he had a damn
good reason for rejecting Mormonism and anything like unto it, whereas my only
reason was boredom. To this day, I don’t blame my friend for taking a
completely nonreligious approach to life; in fact, he’s an atheist, and I can
see why.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
After reading Emily Pearson’s
memoir, I feel much the same way about her. With most people who leave the
church, it’s fairly easy for me to identify a reason that reflects more on
their own poor spiritual character than on the church. Often it’s because they
put too much stock into human ways of understanding science and history.
Another common reason is that, consciously or not, they have adopted secular
humanism as their worldview and can’t see things in terms of spiritual reality,
true theology, eternity, etc. (see, for example, Joanna Brooks, discussed
below). Secular humanism “embraces human reason and secular ethics while
specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, pseudoscience or
superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making” (Wikipedia). It’s a
worldview for spiritual weaklings who just can’t or won’t exercise faith in the
face of ambiguities and unknowns.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My main emotional response to Pearson
is pity, and I don’t blame her (much) for abandoning Mormonism and becoming a
New Age goddess unto herself. She now subscribes to a worldview wherein the
self is the ultimate authority—in fact, she basically says that the self and
God are the same thing. How could she not be confused with a father like that,
with formative experiences like that, with fellow Mormon weirdoes like that?
Whenever she did try to exercise faith with all her heart and mind, it usually
led her down a terrifying rabbit hole. I don’t really see much that she could
have done differently. I wonder how accountable she is for leaving Mormonism
and what God’s ultimate judgment of her will be. (I also hope she hasn’t
misrepresented or exaggerated her story.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Although Pearson’s memoir needed
more editing, especially for surface-level stuff like punctuation, I can
recommend it as a fascinating example of Mormonism gone awry. Perhaps, like
Emily’s mother said, Mormonism does more damage in some people’s lives than
good, at least as far as their earthly experience. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While I feel sorry for Pearson and don’t really blame her
for leaving Mormonism, Joanna Brooks just pisses me off. When I read her
expressions, not only her memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Book
of Mormon Girl</i> but also her stuff online, I often find myself wondering, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who does this person think she is?</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Before I complain about Brooks, let
me first say what I like about her communications, in this memoir and online.
She is quite articulate and charismatic, with considerable social and emotional
intelligence—she’s fantastic at empathizing with people, reaching out to those
who feel alienated in Mormonism, and building a sense of community among her
followers. At times, she expresses some good insights and interpretations of
Mormonism for outside audiences. She can communicate clearly and simply—one of
the best things about her memoir is how short it is and how fast it reads. Her
writing style can be entertaining and moving at times, although equally often
her prose turns purple, and occasionally she floats out a misshapen metaphor,
such as: “Do we blame our parents? Do we resent the worry in their eyes? Do we
feel our failures eat up the oxygen in the room like lost and hungry
ancestors?” (Kindle location 1643). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
For me, the problem with Brooks is
that she’s missing an authentic Mormon spiritual core, and she does not hold an
essentially Mormon worldview. Rather, she sees the world as a secular humanist,
putting far more stock into human understanding and human ethical reasoning
than into religious faith and prophetic authority. For Brooks, the ultimate
authority is the self, not God or religion or a prophet or anything else. For
these reasons, she ends up doing more bad than good, especially for Mormons who
are looking for justification to abandon Mormon orthodoxy. Brooks is calling
for a big-tent Mormonism that can accommodate and equalize people with all
kinds of contradictory beliefs and behaviors, without holding them to any kind
of orthodox standard. In other words, a bunch of selves who are all making their
own rules and calling the shots in their own lives, rather than trying to find
out what the Lord wants so they can obey and conform to that standard. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Brooks wants what I can best
describe as a kind of Mormon Unitarian Universalism. “Unitarian Universalism is
a religious denomination characterized by support for a ‘free and responsible
search for truth and meaning.’ Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed;
rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth and by the
understanding that an individual’s theology is a result of that search and not
obedience to an authoritarian requirement. Unitarian Universalists draw on many
different theological sources and have a wide range of beliefs and practices”
(Wikipedia).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
What’s so wrong with this? It’s the
gospel of secular humanism, not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Brooks seizes upon
one important aspect of the Savior’s gospel—loving and accepting others despite
their differences and sins—and elevates that teaching above all others. In
other words, individual humans know better than the Lord’s church, and the self
is the ultimate authority. If the self feels homosexual, than the self is fully
justified in pursuing that. If the self prefers the idea of gender neutrality and
sees justice and ethics in that worldview, then the self is justified in
ignoring Mormonism’s prophetic teachings otherwise. After all, Mormonism made a
terrible mistake with the blacks, so it could be wrong whenever it tries to
uphold standards or warn that some identities or lifestyles or philosophies are
ungodly and incorrect. (Brooks seems to somehow know that the whole black
situation was entirely a mistake of bigoted male Mormon leaders, and that there’s
zero chance that God could have had anything to do with it. Her own human brain
can’t imagine such a thing, so it’s impossible. Also, she apparently takes the
gay agenda completely at face value, believing everything that gays say about
themselves and their experiences, how they are born that way and have no other
options and deserve fulfillment. She acknowledges no possibility that maybe
so-called gays are deep in self-deception and are simply giving in to
temptations. Where God fits into it, she doesn’t even attempt to say.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Brooks is basically a proud
intellectual/feminist who, enabled by today’s predominantly secular society,
thinks she knows better than prophets, the church, and maybe even the Lord
himself. The authority she follows is not priesthood or faith or the Holy
Spirit but her own human heart, which is constantly getting squished between
concrete and a cinder block because Mormonism has been so mean and discriminatory
toward blacks, women, and now especially gays. Brooks is a bleeding-heart
liberal of kneejerk proportions who, after leaving the LDS Church, has now come
back because she missed some tangential aspects of Mormon culture and society and
because she wants to teach Mormonism the correct path. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11513909" name="_GoBack"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When Brooks does, on rare occasion,
say something positive or encouraging about an actual Mormon theological
belief, I can detect an agnostic undertone to it, a feeling of “Wouldn’t it be
nice if that were true.” I don’t remember hearing Brooks ever say anything
about the devil, which is a common blind spot among so-called Mormons who have
a secular-humanist worldview. Without belief in the reality of a devil who
tempts people and leads them astray, it’s easy to define homosexuality as
simply a biological fact that can’t be resisted. But what about the
possibility—the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fact</i>, in my
belief—that homosexuality is a temptation and that today’s gay movement is a
huge deception that the devil is perpetrating on our civilization, as the
newest battlefront of the Sexual Revolution? Brooks is completely blind to this
kind of worldview, to a reality in which actual unseen beings can whisper false
ideas and impulses to the spiritual minds of human beings—including, I would
argue, Brooks herself in all her heresies. She is clearly one of the elect who
is being led astray, putting more of her soul into fighting for gay rights than
into humbling herself before Mormon (male) prophetic authority and getting with
the program.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I can imagine that, with young
daughters to whom she wants to bequeath a cultural identity, Brooks might be
envious of her husband’s Jewish identity. I think her return to Mormonism is
motivated mainly by her desire to carve out something similar to modern-day
secular Judaism, something with cultural texture and ancestral resonance but
without actual central (male) authority, core doctrines and theology, and a
supernatural worldview. This is exactly the direction that the secular world
would like to see Mormonism and all strong religions go, so it’s no wonder that
Brooks has become a bridge between the secular world and so-called Mormonism. I
understand that an imprint of Simon & Schuster is now republishing her
memoir, and there’s no mystery why. To them, Brooks is a modern, progressive,
rational thinker who sees past all the hokum of Mormonism, has grown out of it,
and is trying to transform it from within and neutralize its power and
authority in people’s lives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I have to admit, I’m personally
almost the exact opposite of Brooks in my stance toward Mormonism. I really don’t
like Mormon culture, society, or spiritual practices. However, I have firsthand
experience with the devil, and I strongly believe in Mormon authority,
revelation, and theology. My suggestion to Brooks is that she go ahead and
start her own religion. She can take the Mormon Jell-O and funeral potatoes of
which she is so condescendingly fond, her beloved pioneer ancestors, her
favorite LDS hymns, the social aspects of the church that she likes, and join
it to her pro-gay secular humanism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
You can tell that Brooks is at once
fearful of and attracted by the prospect of church discipline. Personally, I
would like to see the LDS Church act against her in some way, because I feel
that she is misrepresenting Mormonism and confusing people both inside and
outside the LDS Church. I feel this is true for any so-called Mormon gay
activist; eventually the church is going to have to do something about these
heretics within the faith. Since Brooks has already self-selected as a
non-temple-going member, there’s probably no need to excommunicate her. But I’d
like to see the church make it clearer somehow that many of Brooks’s beliefs
and views are not acceptable, especially on the gay issue. Probably that won’t
happen anytime soon, because today’s LDS Church seems to be run more by public
relations than prophecy, and it wouldn’t be good PR to start cracking down on
people like Brooks. However, I consider her an enemy to the faith, a
not-so-secret agent of today’s dominant secular humanism who is trying to
infiltrate Mormonism, weaken its authentic spiritual power and authority, and
water it down to be like any other humanist pseudo-religious organization. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Yeah, yeah, I can hear some people
saying, “You’re just judging Brooks, and Elder Uchtdorf said ‘Stop it!’ ” Well,
in my opinion, anyone who puts her story out in public and sets herself up as
alternative spokesperson for Mormonism is a worthy target for analysis and,
yes, judgment, just as she judges Mormonism for being anti-gay, anti-feminist,
etc. I predict Sister Brooks won’t last too many years in Mormonism unless something
pierces through her intellectual/humanist pride so she can see spiritual, eternal
reality and humble herself to it. In the meantime, I think Mormonism needs some
protection from her. She teaches the philosophies of (wo)men mingled with
Mormon culture, and I don’t see where she’s much different from a Book of
Mormon antichrist like Korihor or Nehor.</div>Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-20058408220674385012012-05-26T17:44:00.001-06:002012-05-26T17:57:19.623-06:00Agent Rejection and Starting OverMore than a year ago, I started writing a new memoir titled <i>Mormon Punk: From LSD to LDS</i>. I have read conflicting opinions on whether one can sell a memoir on proposal with sample chapters and a synopsis or whether the whole thing needs to be written first, as with a novel. I decided to try selling on proposal because I already have a track record with seven books published, and I felt that the topic of Mormonism was (and still is) timely, for obvious reasons.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
I formerly had a literary agent when I was trying to sell a Mormon missionary memoir, and she did get me the contract to coauthor <i>Mormonism For Dummies,</i> but I wanted to start fresh with someone else, preferably someone actually based in New York City (people claim this doesn't matter, and probably it doesn't, but there's something appealing about it). My former agent was based in Amherst, Massachusetts.<br />
<br />
Over the past year or so, I've probably submitted this new proposal to about thirty agents, and I've gotten readings from about seven or eight, including some well known agents such as Betsy Lerner, Richard Curtis, and Molly Glick, all of whom I got personal rejections from. (In the case of Lerner and Glick, their junior agents first responded to me and evaluated my work, and then they passed on my proposal to the senior agent.) I think I came close in a few cases, with my proposal being evaluated by several people within an agency. I have included some of the more interesting personal rejections below, without identifying who wrote them.<br />
<br />
In one case, I had a strong referral from a well-connected New York journalist/author, who gave my proposal to his agent. Despite my contact's repeated followup, this agent really took his time before rejecting about six months later. From what I could gather, one of the agency employees found something I wrote online that made the agency uncomfortable with taking me on as a client. I can only assume it was something I wrote against gay marriage and the gay movement. Of course, if you're going to publish an authentic Mormon memoir, it's likely going to include some resistance to the gay movement, otherwise it's not really an authentic Mormon viewpoint, in my opinion (I think any Mormon who is pro-gay is really a secular humanist, deep down). But I doubt New York publishing will ever accommodate this. I don't regret my position; it's not like I would change my beliefs just to get published by telling lies.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I am now setting aside the 18,000 words I previously wrote as sample chapters and starting over on the memoir, taking a somewhat different approach. I'm not sure how far I'll get, because I've been having trouble getting into a routine of regular, consistent work. I will try not to fall into temptation to submit proposals until I have a completed manuscript in hand, which I think will increase my chances. I hope I can have something done by the end of the year. This should be doable if I spend an hour or two writing most days of the week.<br />
<br />
One thing I failed to do was get into a writers conference this summer. I went to Writers@Work in Salt Lake last summer, and it was helpful in some ways, but I didn't feel like going again this year. (In some ways, writing workshops are rather tedious and uncomfortable.) I wanted to attend a writing conference on the East Coast this summer, but none of the three I applied to worked out. The Norman Mailer Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, rejected me for undisclosed reasons; I assume they didn't like my writing sample. Emerson College was launching a new summer writing conference, but then they canceled it for some reason. Then I applied to the Yale summer program, but they were already full. Maybe I will try again next year, if I still have budgetary capacity like I did this year.<br />
<br />
Frankly, I do not like the role of creative writing in my life. I really wish I could just forget about it. However, I feel a constant tug of guilt when I let months go by without really working on anything, and I constantly take notes on potential ideas and material. Without a creative writing project on the horizon, I feel adrift at sea. On the other hand, I don't feel like anything I want to write would be welcome by Mormons, family members, my wife, or even the Lord himself. When I write creatively, I don't want to toe any cultural lines of what's "appropriate" or "uplifting"; I want to tell weird, realistic, transgressive, original stories, otherwise it would just be boring and not worth the effort. However, the impulse might just be a temptation to spend my time and energy in the wrong way, instead of putting enough effort into family, church, and corporate career. <br />
<br />
Here are the agent rejections:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thank you for both the chance to
consider your manuscript and for your patience.
While your story is a compelling one, I felt that it isn't strong enough
for me to present to the major publishers.
What I was looking for when I requested this was a strong, clear arc
that carried us through your personal testing.
What I feel like I'm seeing here is a somewhat truncated and rather
simplistic (because of your youth at the time) challenge to your early
understanding of your faith and a similarly youthful affirmation of your
faith. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I may be missing the mark--which is why
I've hesitated to say no to this project--on account of my own (I'm a
Protestant pr<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=11513909" name="_GoBack"></a>eacher's kid) similar rebellion and return
to the fold which I don't feel qualifies as a literary jumping off place. Another reason that I am declining here is
that there seems to be a remarkable lack of curiosity about the Mormon faith
here in the States despite the success of several books both pro and con pub'd
in the '90s. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I regret that I can only offer you all
my best wishes for your future success
with this story. I am almost certain
that you're going to be able to find another agent who not only disagrees with
me, but does so with both alacrity and vehemence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
===</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I appreciate the offer of exclusivity,
and so I dropped what I was doing to read this, and I asked some colleagues to
do so as well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We're all agreed that if anyone can
write an absorbing and entertaining memoir about life in the LDS it's you, and
what we read fulfilled that promise. But
it doesn't take us far enough into the story arc of your life, ending before
the commencement of your missionary adventure.
I think your life, and the story of your life, need to cook longer. And I gather the book isn't completely
written. The episodes you depict seem
tenuously linked to each other, and though each is telling it was hard to
assemble them in a cohesive way that would show me how your character is
unfolding.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In short, we felt this memoir isn't
ready to release despite the timing. If you
can elicit interest from an enthusiastic agency, you should absolutely go with
them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
===</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many thanks for sending in your
proposal. Between Mitt and Book of Mormon, the timing seems right for your
memoir. I’m sorry to pass, but I didn’t connect enough with the writing – with
the intensity of the experience. I hope others have a different reaction and
you place this in good hands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
=== </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have not been responsible--I owe you
an apology. Please do reach out to others so that I don't slow you down. But I
will try to focus on your work soon. I read what you sent previously but I need
to re-read it. You are talented--but I need to evaluate whether I think I can
actually sell your memoir in what is an anxious book marketplace.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Later:</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thank you for sending these materials
and for being forthright about your process with other agents. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have decided to step aside so would
like to thank you and wish you much luck with this project. I am sorry I was not more responsive. I think you’re a talented writer and very
much hope you find success with it.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
===</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thanks so much for sharing this with
me. The writing is quite strong and the story interesting, but since I've done
similar books in the past (like Tony DuShane's JESUS JERK) and they've sold to
tiny presses, I'm not sure I'd be able to find a big enough audience for this,
so I'm going to step aside and let an agent with a clearer sense of how to
break it out take it on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Me:</i>
Thanks for the note. You don't think Mormonism is a special case right now,
with unprecedented curiosity due to Mitt Romney, "The Book of Mormon"
musical, "Big Love," etc. and yet not much published that reveals the
faith's innards?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Agent's reply:</i> The one Mormon book we've done so far
didn't do very well...</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
===</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
I think you need to have less chapters
that are more fully fleshed. I think today's political arena
with Mormonism could give you a real marketplace. Personally,
the religious side/ the Mormon devil experience etc.--was not
something I could relate to in any way that I felt could help sell the book.
Best of luck<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
===</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my favorite movies growing up
was <i>SLC <span class="il">Punk</span></i> and I've spent a lot of
time in Utah, fascinated by LDS culture. However, I don't represent a lot
of memoir, even if it is coming of age, so I wouldn't have the right contacts
to really do this justice. However, just so you know, it sounds great. Best of
luck.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
===</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I enjoyed the opening very much. You're
a fine writer and have a knack for capturing all the right details. But I'm
afraid that going back to your childhood isn't necessary. In fact, it detracts
from what's actually interesting -- your years as a drug user and absence from
the church. Many memoir writers have a tendency to tell the whole story, which
I actually think is a mistake. While events from your childhood might provide
depth to what happens later in life, they aren't always required. My instinct
is to focus on your later years. Let that carry the story. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know I just read the first few
chapters, so perhaps you take this route. Please let me know because I'm
intrigued but at this point I'm not yet convinced that the approach is right.</div>
</blockquote>Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-35639596395129423552012-01-25T15:29:00.003-07:002012-01-25T15:30:24.137-07:00My Latest Author Bio<i>Here's an author bio I wrote for an upcoming humor book I'm involved in:</i><br />
<br />
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"MS ??";
panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-alt:"MS Mincho";
mso-font-charset:128;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"MS ??";}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-font-family:"MS ??";
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Born and raised in an ancient Nephite sorcerer's underground lair in an undisclosed location in the Great Salt Lake Desert, Christopher Kimball Bigelow considers himself a modern-day Gadianton robber of the written word. After working for seven years at the <i>Ensign</i> magazine, he began to fear he would be translated, so he quit and helped start a secret combination called <i>The Sugar Beet</i>. His publishing projects have also included cofounding <i>Irreantum</i>, a Mormon literary magazine whose name no one ever mispronounces; coauthoring <i>Mormonism For Dummies</i>, which the LDS Church has selected as the priesthood and Relief Society curriculum manual for 2014; a novel titled <i>Kindred Spirits </i>that recently hit triple digits in sales; and four or five boring nonfiction LDS reference books that funded several fun vacations. Forthcoming works include an exhibitionistic memoir titled <i>Mormon Punk: From LSD to LDS</i> and a post-apocalyptic, likely prophetic Mormon horror novel titled <i>Master Mahan Avenged, </i>which includes the gays taking over the LDS Church's City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Bigelow has a wife, five kids, a dog, and a cat who all want nothing more in life than to support his writing by providing him with unlimited, uninterrupted quiet time at his laptop. </div>Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-13921911009345417592011-11-18T15:21:00.004-07:002011-11-18T19:52:49.955-07:00Upon Hearing of an Old Roommate's Gay Marriage<em><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Yesterday, a long-ago roommate's name popped up as a recommended connection on a social network, and I invited him to connect. He accepted but wrote back to warn me that he's now gay-married and that maybe I will want to delete him for political/personal reasons. So here's how I explained my stance:</span></em><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I think I saw something about your same-sex marriage on Facebook, but then I must have been wiped out in a friend cleanse you did, because I don't think we're FB friends anymore. (Feel free to add me again, sometime.)<br />
<br />
I'm against the gay movement on theological grounds and am opposed to gay activism in any form, but I'm not necessarily against individuals who have decided to privately live in a same-sex partnership--I don't presume to judge an individual's situation. My personal policy is to socialize with gays and gay couples as occasion naturally arises, but I don't allow gay couples around my minor-aged kids, because I want to protect them against examples of alternative lifestyles. (I realize they will get the examples from elsewhere, but not with my implied endorsement.) <br />
<br />
So my wife and I go out to dinner with my wife's gay cousin and his partner and even recently flew down to L.A. to see his one-man play about leaving Mormonism and embracing gayness, but when he comes over to our house he doesn't bring his partner, at least not as long as we have minor-aged children living at home. (If one of my own boys decided he was going to live gay, these same standards would apply to him as well.)<br />
<br />
I'm afraid I feel the same way about church. I would not welcome a known gay couple to attend church together because of the confusion it causes for children, whose sexual orientations can be quite fluid through young adulthood, easily affected by many different kinds of outside influences.<br />
<br />
Anyway, good luck with your path, which I'm sure must yield you much happiness or you wouldn't go out on such a limb as a believing Mormon. I hope that homosexual happiness lasts as long as possible for you and extends in some form into the afterlife, although I'm quite dubious about that last part.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-70252414121873963762011-07-05T17:25:00.000-06:002011-07-05T17:25:13.399-06:00One Decade, One House<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Courier New";
panose-1:2 7 3 9 2 2 5 2 4 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:647 0 0 0 159 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Wingdings;
panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:2;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:0 268435456 0 0 -2147483648 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Wingdings;
panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;
mso-font-charset:2;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:0 268435456 0 0 -2147483648 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:.7in .7in .7in .7in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{mso-list-id:73363689;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-757669384 67698693 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693;}
@list l0:level1
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
@list l0:level2
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:o;
mso-level-tab-stop:1.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:"Courier New";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New";}
@list l0:level3
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:1.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
@list l0:level4
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:2.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level5
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:o;
mso-level-tab-stop:2.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:"Courier New";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New";}
@list l0:level6
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:3.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
@list l0:level7
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:3.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level8
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:o;
mso-level-tab-stop:4.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:"Courier New";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New";}
@list l0:level9
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:4.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
@list l1
{mso-list-id:1567258053;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-1618973378 67698693 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693;}
@list l1:level1
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
@list l1:level2
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:o;
mso-level-tab-stop:1.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:"Courier New";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New";}
@list l1:level3
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:1.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
@list l1:level4
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:2.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l1:level5
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:o;
mso-level-tab-stop:2.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:"Courier New";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New";}
@list l1:level6
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:3.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
@list l1:level7
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:3.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l1:level8
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:o;
mso-level-tab-stop:4.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:"Courier New";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Courier New";}
@list l1:level9
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:4.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;
font-family:Wingdings;}
ol
{margin-bottom:0in;}
ul
{margin-bottom:0in;}
-->
</style><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Occasionally I like to indulge myself in longish personal journal entries, like this one.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In June, we hit the 10-year mark in our current home in Provo, Utah. This is the longest, by far, that I have ever lived in one house continuously. My parents have lived in their current Bountiful house for 33 years now, but I lived there for only six years continuously with them, although if you count my pre-mission (1986), post-mission (1988), post-Boston (1992), and post-divorce (1997-98) times with them, the total is closer to eight years.</div><a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First I must admit that I’ve always actively disliked Provo/Utah County, so it’s ironic that I’ve lived here the longest of anywhere in my life (followed by Southern California, which was also about ten years total, but in three different houses). The reason I still mostly dislike Utah County is basically that it’s too culturally Mormon for my tastes. As a kid, I thought my Bigelow relatives from Happy Valley were a tad conservative and otherworldly, especially compared to the worldly, sophisticated, somewhat black-sheepish leg of the family up in Federal Heights. After 10 years, Utah County doesn’t seem as bad, I have to admit, although I’d still much rather live on one of the coasts, if I only had the career and salary and mojo to do so (and the wifely approbation).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What I like about this house:</b></div><ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="square"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">It’s almost paid off. We did a 15-year mortgage and refinanced it once, so we still have nearly seven years left, but that should go pretty quick. (Very scary to think I’ll be 50 years old by then…) </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">It has plenty of room. Right at this moment, we have 13 people staying under this roof (three Chinese students plus my wife’s sister and her family from California), but the house absorbs them well. I love having the large family room on the other side of the house for the kids, plus another smaller family room in the basement. The yard is also plenty big, and there is plenty of storage space in the home.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">We live right across the street from my mother-in-law, and that has been nice. We often share meals, and she has pinch-hit for us numerous times by watching kids for a little while, etc. We sometimes help her move things or solve computer problems, but she overall probably does more for us.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">We have terrific views of Rock Canyon right above us and Mount Timpanogos to the north.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">The neighborhood and local schools are pretty good. It’s one of those LDS wards with only two or three nonmember or inactive houses within the entire boundaries, so there’s lots of social cohesion and people helping each other out, etc.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">We’re only a couple blocks north of BYU, which is overall good except when we get caught in football traffic. We make pretty good use of campus, going over for plays, sports, concerts, museum exhibits, etc. I despise some things about BYU (mainly cultural bone-headedness), but I also like some things. I believe being this close to BYU also makes it better to sell and rent houses, if we ever need to do either of those.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;">We’re pretty close to decent shopping and restaurants, and we’re also quite close to Provo Canyon, Sundance, and Park City.</li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What I don’t like:</b></div><ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="square"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;">Even with a 40-year-old house, we’ve chosen to spend our extra money more on traveling than on remodeling. We did a major remodel of half the basement, stripping down to concrete and studs and adding new walls to create an extra bedroom and storage room, but otherwise we haven’t done much, mainly just some painting inside and out. As a result, we still have popcorn ceiling with sparkles in it; awful wallpaper in a few places; acres and acres of green-moss carpet that’s high in quality but very dated (and deteriorating progressively faster now); some hideous old light fixtures; ugly linoleum that is wearing out; yucky old lace curtains; and dark faux-wood paneling in the family room. Part of me would like to remodel, but another part would rather continue to spend extra money on other things. I think putting in much new stuff would just make me anxious, because I hate it when new stuff gets beat up and dirty; a big part of me would rather not have new stuff to begin with, because it’s just depressing when it starts falling apart. We’ll probably do some more things eventually, but in recent years we’ve mainly been replacing tons of appliances (within the past five years, practically everything except the air conditioner and clothes washer), and we need to do a new roof within the next year or two, which will be a huge expense.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;">The yard is nice in some ways but also much higher maintenance than I’d like. The old lady who used to live here made her adult children come and do the yard, and sometimes they even won city awards for it. We still get lots of exotic tulips in the spring, and there are tons of trees and shrubs and hedges, plus plenty of lawn to mow and many flowerbeds to manage. We end up spending several hundred dollars per year to have all this stuff trimmed and pruned, and we still look pretty shaggy most of the time. There’s a nice wooden fence that we don’t maintain, as well as a big wooden patio that’s starting to buckle from tree roots, as well as a slanting deck with a ridiculously wide flight of stairs down into the yard. All this wood will have to be renewed or replaced sometime, and we’ve already had to remove three smaller trees and will probably have to remove a couple of gigantic trees at some point. Overall, I’d much rather live in a condo without any yard concerns at all, which I consider a big stress and waste of time and money. I worry and fret over the lawn the whole summer long, because large patches are always dying from grubs or heat or something. The yard is my single biggest reason why summer is my least favorite season. The kids get some good use out of the yard, I admit, but I’d much rather just live near a park or common area that I don’t have to personally maintain.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;">The master bedroom is a problem in this house. Part of this is our own fault, because we keep the main family computer and the best TV in here, so people are constantly in here. We also keep our desk in here, and it’s not a very big room to begin with. There’s a spare bedroom right next door that used to be a baby nursery, and we really need to turn it into a study and move the desk/computer in there, but right now that room is pretty full of Ann’s stuff. I would like to replace our old queen mattress with a king, scrape off the sparkle-popcorn and wallpaper, get rid of the awful drapes, redo the adjoining bathroom with its smelly old shower, recarpet, etc. If and when we ever do get serious about more remodeling, I think the master bedroom should be our first target.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;">The house is a long way from the freeway; it takes us about 20 minutes to get down there. </li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;">While I feel safe and secure in this ward/neighborhood, it’s also too retirement-aged, conservative, homogenous, and Zionish for my personal taste. There are many Mormons in our ward who are so conformist that they almost seem like Stepfordian robots to me. However, there are also a handful of creative, independent-minded individuals, and the balance is gradually shifting toward younger families with less rigid attitudes about some things (although some of the young ones can seem pretty Stepfordian too). And let’s face it, I’ve never been one for meeting my social needs much via ward or neighbors; rather, I get plenty of social interaction through workmates and my extended families. </li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">I have to admit, our new elders quorum presidency is a hoot. The president has long hair and a beard like Jesus and wears blue shirts and red University of Utah ties, and one of his counselors has a full head of wild curly locks that go down well past his shoulders. These two guys are almost comically out of place in our ward, as far as appearance, and I’m really glad they didn’t start conforming to the Utah Mormon look after they were called into the presidency. As for me, I enjoy wearing a beard, colored shirts, and sandals (in summer) to church. I think the Utah Mormon male dress code is ridiculous and refuse to uphold it, even as part of Elder Packer’s dreaded so-called “unwritten order of things” that stake leaders have been mentioning lately. I refuse to own even a single missionary-style business suit or white shirt, and if someone ever asks me to shave for any reason, I will tell them, in effect, to mind their own business.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Overall, I must say I feel blessed by our house. It’s overall comfortable and peaceful, a haven that I enjoy more often than not. Even though settling permanently in Utah County is pretty much the exact opposite of what I’d hoped and dreamed for myself, I can’t really complain. Besides, now that I’m middle aged and on the gradual downward slope to retirement, I don’t feel like I have the vision or drive to drastically change anything. But who knows what the future holds?</div>Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-89832538678984255782011-05-18T21:11:00.001-06:002011-05-18T21:13:03.748-06:00Giving Up SodaSo, I've now been off soda for about a month.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure when I developed a daily Coke habit, but by the time I was working at the <i>Ensign</i> magazine in the mid-to-late 1990s, I was getting a 32-ounce Coke every morning and then another one at lunch on some days, plus a refill of that one. By the time I was working at Unicity in the early 2000s, I was drinking as many as 100 ounces of Coke a day. Well, subtract for the space taken up by the ice, which I usually filled to the halfway mark of the cup, partly because I love extremely cold drinks and I love chewing ice, and partly because I told myself that putting more ice in was healthier because it meant I was drinking less soda, which I suppose is true. (I can also drink Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and at one point Dr. Pepper, but Coke was my main drink.)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
Then one day I attended a health fair at work, and a few days later the nurse tracked me down with some urgency to inform me that my triglycerides were about 400, about double the maximum they should be. I did some googling, and I learned that triglycerides are fat in the blood that comes from your diet. One source is sugar, which your liver turns into fat if you eat too much. I eat out a lot and eat too many rich foods, so that's probably where most of my triglycerides come from, but I also felt certain that Coke was playing a role too.<br />
<br />
I didn't make any immediate changes to my Coke habit, but within a few years later my doctor had put me on a couple of medications that I still take (Tricor and Niaspan), and my triglycerides soon got back down to normal. However, I have a minor case of osteopenia, which is a precursor to osteoporosis, and I'm pretty sure the main reason is all the Coke I've drunk. My understanding is that something in cola leeches minerals from the bones.<br />
<br />
In more recent years, I've made some other gradual changes. I used to keep canned Coke at home to drink on the weekends, but then my kids started drinking it all the time, so I stopped keeping it at home. Besides, I don't really like the taste of canned Coke--I really only like fountain Coke. So on the weekends, I'd always get a Coke at some point on Saturdays, and on Sundays I'd drink it if we visited anyone with canned Coke on hand (especially my family's house in Bountiful).<br />
<br />
At another point, I decided to finally cut my daily consumption of Coke. I don't remember what triggered this decision, but I started limiting myself to one 22-ounce Coke a day, nearly always at lunchtime. I did pretty well with this for the past year or two, only occasionally slipping and having more.<br />
<br />
Another thing I started doing was eating fruit every day, or nearly so. This has taken a lot of discipline, and it took several months to really get in the habit, but now I'm quite good about it. The real battle is making sure that fruit is available and that I remember to eat it. My workmates tease me because I have computer alerts set to ping me with "Eat fruit" every day at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Every Monday or so, I drive over to Wal-Mart and load up on apples and oranges, enough to have one of each every day. (I'd do bananas too, but I hate the taste and texture of bananas.) And then of course you have to wash the apples, because the pesticide accumulates in your body over your lifetime. Fortunately, one of my coworkers lets me stow my fruit in his fridge, so it's reasonable convenient. The oranges are a pain in the butt to peel, but oh well.<br />
<br />
I've done this fruit thing long enough now that I actually look forward to my morning and afternoon fruit. It seems to satisfy my sweet tooth and keep me from eating candy and crap, at least most of the time. Also, my wife always has fruit available at home, and she cuts some up with nearly every dinner she cooks. At home, I especially like mangos when they're perfectly ripe, and we also eat a lot of melons and berries. I honestly believe that eating fruit every day has made it so I don't like processed sugar as much. When I eat a candy bar now, it usually tastes way too sweet and chemical-ish. But I've continued to drink soda until a month ago.<br />
<br />
So what made me quit soda altogether? Deep down, I've always sort of expected some doctor or someone to tell me I had to, but I didn't really plan on it anytime soon. But the other morning, I got a Coke on the way to work when I stopped for gas, and when I took a mouthful, it tasted bad to me, all artificial and chemical-y. Then after I arrived at work that morning, I read <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html">this article</a> about how much excessive refined sugar messes with various body systems and disorders, including cancer.<br />
<br />
So I just said, "I'm stopping." However, I didn't necessarily think it was permanent. Despite my longtime habit, it was easy to stop. I've never been one to feel the effects of caffeine much, and I didn't feel any trace of withdrawal. Sure, there are times when a Coke sounds good, but it's been surprisingly easy just to get water at restaurants, and then fruit wipes out any lingering sweet craving I may be feeling. I also drink more fruit juice now, which has a lot of sugar but not as much or as refined as the corn syrup in soda.<br />
<br />
I've toyed with the idea of allowing myself some soda, such as on odd days of the month or something. But why restart when I don't really need it anymore? The time when I crave it most is on the way to a restaurant where the Coke goes well with the food, but once I start eating I find that water is just fine with it too. I think trying to have soda in my life would be like having Angry Birds on my phone, which I had to totally stop playing because I just wanted to play it all the time. If I started up on soda again, it would probably gradually creep back into an unhealthy habit. I hope soda is just something that I've finally grown out of.<br />
<br />
I wonder if I will notice any long-term benefits of stopping soda. With the combination of reducing soda and eating daily fruit, I'm pretty sure I'm feeling healthier overall now than I did five years ago. I'm still 20-30 pounds overweight and have a swollen-looking belly, but I consistently do the treadmill 90 minutes a week and I've been trying to take a brisk outside walk for an hour or two every weekend, and I also do fifteen minutes of crunches and light weights three mornings a week, which helps too.<br />
<br />
I'm quite certain I couldn't have stopped soda if I didn't develop a daily fruit habit first, so if you're thinking about doing the same, maybe try that. Typing about soda right now makes me kind of want a Coke, so I'm going to go get an O'Doul's now instead, or maybe a little glass of grape juice...Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-15771635912633069342011-02-12T20:20:00.001-07:002011-02-12T20:21:17.686-07:00Updating My Reading ShelfFor several months (or years?), my shelf in our bedroom where I keep the books I want to read next has been mostly full of LDS last-days stuff, which I intended to read as research for a novel project. Tonight, I decided to put all those books down in my basement and bring up a fresh crop of books, which I'd like to think I could read my way through within the next year. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Below is the new list on my reading shelf, in no particular order. In choosing these, I admit I stayed over on the west side of my basement library, where I have been stockpiling more recently purchased books; I did not venture over to the large eastern shelf, where much guilt is shelved along with hundreds of books (on average, I tend to read only one out of every ten or twenty books I purchase).<br />
<br />
<em>The Widows of Eastwick</em>, John Updike<br />
<em>Goodbye, I Love You</em>, Carol Lynn Pearson<br />
<em>LaVell Meldrum Bigelow</em> (my grandfather's personal history)<br />
<em>The Bad Girl</em>, Mario Vargas Llosa<br />
<em>It Sucked and Then I Cried</em>, Heather Armstrong<br />
<em>Summer of the Apocalypse</em>, James Van Pelt<br />
<em>Earth Abides</em>, George Stewart<br />
<em>Deliverance</em>, James Dickey<br />
<em>Underworld</em>, Don DeLillo<br />
<em>The Overton Window</em>, Glenn Beck<br />
<em>The Hangman's Daughter</em>, Oliver Potzsch (wow, five consonants in a row)<br />
<em>Room,</em> Emma Donoghue<br />
<em>Kings of the Earth,</em> Jon Clinch<br />
<em>The Keys of the Kingdom</em> (Book 4, Standing in Holy Places), Chad Daybell<br />
<em>Heroes of the Fallen,</em> David West<br />
<br />
Realistically, I'm afraid this is more like two years' worth of reading than one, especially now that I've also got a Kindle stocked with a few books. I find that I tend to get through books more slowly on the Kindle because there's not a physical book sitting next to my bed, importuning to be read.<br />
<br />
Any comments on any of these titles?Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-55175518724990691372010-12-17T17:27:00.003-07:002010-12-17T18:00:27.755-07:00Status Report on Zarahemla Books<em>Someone asked me for some thoughts on <a href="http://zarahemlabooks.com/main.sc">Zarahemla Books</a> and Mormon publishing, and I ended up typing more details and personal thoughts than he probably needed, so I'm posting it here as a personal blog/journal entry.</em><br />
<br />
My little Mormon-themed publishing company Zarahemla Books published three titles in 2010. Angela Hallstrom's story anthology <em><a href="http://zarahemlabooks.com/Dispensation-Latter-Day-Fiction-ISBN-978-0-9843603-0-7.htm">Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction</a></em> has sold nearly 300 copies, Stephen Carter's personal-essay collection <em><a href="http://zarahemlabooks.com/What-of-the-Night-ISBN-978-0-9843603-1-4.htm">What of the Night</a></em> about 50, and Darin Cozzens's story collection <em><a href="http://zarahemlabooks.com/Light-of-the-New-Day-ISBN-978-0-9843603-2-1.htm">Light of the New Day</a></em> about 60 copies. I knew none of these titles were particularly commercial, especially the latter two, and they have performed exactly how I expected.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
For 2011, right now I am editing a huge Mormon play anthology put together by Mahonri Stewart. I don't have much mojo for Zarahemla work anymore, so it's taking me a long time, and I don't know exactly when it will be done but hopefully this next year. In 2011 we will probably also put out a new Doug Thayer story collection, if he gets it done and still wants us to, and volume two of the best of <em>The Sugar Beet</em> (satirical Mormon news), if the compiler and designer get it done.<br />
<br />
If we do three titles in 2011, I will still have four ISBN numbers left with Zarahemla, and I would like to see these ISBNs well used (of course, if needed I can always buy an additional block of 10 ISBNs for about $250). However, I'm a little burned out and don't see myself personally doing much else with Zarahemla beyond 2011, except perhaps publishing another one of my own novels if I ever finish one and can't sell it elsewhere. This is par for the course for me on volunteer things: I tend to last five solid years and then feel ready to move on (I did <em>Irreantum</em> and <em>The Sugar Beet</em> each for about five years). I started Zarahemla in about August 2006, so I'm coming up on five years.<br />
<br />
That said, there's no reason to ever shutter Zarahemla. I would like to keep it open for qualified editors with book projects that they have already perfected with the authors and that sound like they would be good to publish. When the text is ready for publication, then I don't mind using the Zarahemla pipeline to get it out: page layout, proofreading, cover design, printing, distribution through Ingram, and notifying some potential book reviewers. But it has to be an editor whose editorial taste and skill I know and trust. This has actually already happened several times in the past, and it's probably the only way much is going to get done with Zarahemla in the future. The problem is, I have to like it too, of course. <br />
<br />
Personally, I just don't have that much time and energy to review manuscripts and do developmental editing with authors. I mean, I would if the books sold better and I got some personal payment from it, but it's all just essentially volunteer work, and I have my own family and creative projects and TV shows to keep up with. At the same time, if the right manuscript came my way that was highly recommended and sounded interesting and, most importantly, gripped me enough that I couldn't stop reading, then I could get excited about it, perhaps even to the degree of doing developmental editing with the author, as needed. But I would have to be <em>really</em> into it, enough to set aside my own pleasures and pursuits. <br />
<br />
What it boils down to is that, for the last seven or eight years or so, I have been too workaholic, doing a full-time corporate day job, writing and publishing my own seven books with five different publishers, teaching a night freshman-composition class at Utah Valley University every fall and spring semester (and now two online sections every fall and spring too), and launching and running Zarahemla Books, which has put out 13 titles so far. I'm 44, and this is not the way I want to live my life anymore. I am now turning away even paid nonfiction book projects and otherwising trying to reduce and simplify my life. Seriously, I am finally starting to watch some TV shows I've been wanting to watch for years.<br />
<br />
As far as the state of Mormon publishing, I don't really see any significant progress. Frankly, I don't really care at all what Deseret and Covenant are doing with fiction, because I know their fiction will always be too sanitized and contrived for my taste. I think it's cool that so many Mormons are breaking into national young-adult books, from <em>Twilight</em> on down in terms of sales impact, but I'm not personally interested in reading any of them. I still think it's lame that believing, practicing Mormons can't produce nationally engaging adult work because they are too timid and squeamish and uptight about presenting real life, but even if they did I think national publishers and critics would be prejudiced against any adult novel that portrayed Mormonism as being at all reasonable or worthwhile. I think book publishing in general has gotten harder just in the four-plus years I've been doing Zarahemla, and I don't see any indications that the Mormon culture will ever really become open to alternative Mormon literature. For me, the decline of AML-List has detached me quite a bit from the Mormon literary world (or from whatever community the AML-List allowed me to imagine existed). <br />
<br />
Despite this lack of belief in a real Mormon book market that interests me personally, I am still working occasionally on my own supernatural postapocalyptic horror novel based on Mormon scripture and folk beliefs, tentatively titled <em>Master Mahan Avenged</em>. I'm about 30,000 words into what I consider a solid draft, and I would like to finish by the end of 2011, although I'm not going to stress over it. I will try to sell it nationally, but even if it turns out good enough to publish (and that's a big if), it will probably be too Mormon, so I'll have to run it through Zarahemla for glorified self-publishing, bypassing the so-called Mormon publishing world because there's really no place in it for fiction like mine.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-67703207285893540072010-12-16T19:40:00.002-07:002010-12-17T14:47:40.678-07:0015 Songs on ShuffleA little sampling of 15 songs my iTunes just randomly played from my 8,000-song library, with some commentary:<br />
<br />
<b>"The Bike Song (feat. Kyle Falconer with Spankrock)," Mark Ronson & The Business:</b> I have no idea what this song is and don't even remember listening to it.<br />
<br />
<b>"The Trooper," Iron Maiden:</b> I have deleted most Iron Maiden from my iTunes because the singer is often quite bad and out of tune.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<b>"Just You 'n' Me," Chicago:</b> A somewhat guilty pleasure from my childhood (my mom was a big fan).<br />
<br />
<b>"Away," The Toadies:</b> I really dig the Toadies, with their propulsive music and dark, twisted vibe. I have all their albums.<br />
<br />
<b>"Liberate," Disturbed:</b> I'm pretty tired of Disturbed and don't buy new albums, but I still have some songs.<br />
<br />
<b>"Alive," P.O.D.:</b> Eh, this is a CD I once bought that has survived in my iTunes. My favorite song of theirs is "Satellite," but the rest is pretty forgettable for me.<br />
<br />
<b>"Roll The Bones," Rush:</b> For me, the best Rush is <i>Permanent Waves</i> and earlier. <i>Moving Pictures</i> and <i>Signals</i> are OK even though they're starting to get too synthesizer heavy, but then there's a stretch of New Wave–flavored albums that are so bad I've simply deleted them. However, I don't mind some of the more recent albums with more guitar, such as the album this song comes from. (My favorite relatively recent Rush album is <i>Counterparts</i>.)<br />
<br />
<b>"Senses Working Overtime," XTC:</b> This must be a song from some compilation. Not a fan, but I don't dislike it enough to delete.<br />
<br />
<b>"You And Me," Neil Young:</b> This is from my wife's CD, and I keep it around as a mellow flavor.<br />
<br />
<b>"Indefinitely," Travis:</b> Don't mind this rather mellow album, but I don't like it enough to pursue more Travis.<br />
<br />
<b>"Scared Money," Saul Williams:</b> This was some freebie I picked up. It's somehow connected to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame.<br />
<br />
<b>"Colder World," EchoBrain:</b> I really like EchoBrain and wish they had continued beyond two albums.<br />
<br />
<b>"My Friend of Misery," Metallica:</b> I love the black album, and my next-favorite Metallica album is actually the cover songs collected in <i>Garage, Inc.</i><br />
<br />
<b>"Rock 'n' Roll Doctor," Black Sabbath:</b> I love me some Ozzy-era Sabbath, although I wouldn't say this particular song is one of my favorites. For one thing, the song title sounds too much like something Kiss would do. I like Sabbath's deeper stuff, like "After Forever" and "Symptom of the Universe." <br />
<br />
<b>"All Secrets Known," Alice in Chains:</b> When it comes to grunge, the groups I still listen to most are Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. Pearl Jam is OK, and I like the Nirvana mystique but don't actually enjoy listening to their music very much. This song is from Alice in Chain's recent comeback album, which I think is quite strong.<br />
<br />
(Bonus points to anyone who can identify the connection between Metallica and another band in this list.)Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-51321079487809857022010-10-12T10:05:00.002-06:002010-10-12T10:10:11.545-06:00Thoughts Provoked by a Gay-Mormon Play<i>This essay will hopefully finish off my latest spate of posting (mostly on Facebook) about the gay issue</i><i>. This issue pushes so many buttons for me that I tend to get sucked into too much writing about it, when I have lots of other things I need to be doing. I'm sure something will trigger me to write about it again in the near future, but I'd like to take a few months off.</i><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">I spent a recent weekend seeing a one-man play called <i>Becoming Norman</i> at a little nonprofit theater in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles. This intimate, honest, heartfelt, engaging play is the dramatized memoir of a guy who grew up Mormon in Orem, Utah, served a mission and attended BYU, but ultimately chose to leave Mormonism and pursue a gay lifestyle and gay romantic/sexual relationships. It was written and performed by my wife<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>s cousin and good friend Norman Dixon, who I too enjoy and value as a person.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">The play is basically a very entertaining personal history and explanation of why and how Dixon has become who he is today. While sexual orientation is a major theme, another major theme is the struggle to realize one’s talents and share them with others. While the career theme really interests me, as he and I share some shortcomings and disappointments along these lines, the sexual orientation theme is what I will write about now. I think the gay issue will, more than any other, become society's organizing principle between the secular/agnostic and the religious, and it's a situation that deeply troubles me because I think homosexuality will be to the Mormons in the twenty-first century what polygamy was in the nineteenth, in terms of affecting our place in society. For me, Dixon's play is an opportunity to reassess my attitudes about homosexuality and my personal beliefs about if and how Mormonism--which I firmly hold as my theology and worldview--could better accommodate homosexuality.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">As a believing Mormon, it<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>s been clear to me so far that I cannot accept any choice to participate in gay relationships as being pleasing and acceptable to God. However, part of me is open to the possibility that someone may find a way to somehow harmonize homosexuality with Mormonism and give me reason to accept that choosing to pursue one's homosexual desires is a morally, theologically, eternally valid and worthwhile choice. In that spirit, I actually said a little prayer to myself while waiting for Dixon's play to start, asking that I would be able to learn anything I'm missing so far on this perplexing issue and, if necessary, adjust my attitude and opinion regarding gayness.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">In processing Dixon's play, I find myself thinking about the two most interesting earlier attempts I've heard to harmonize homosexuality with Mormonism. I will first revisit those two attempts and then give some thoughts on Dixon’s play and whether or not it has changed my personal position on the gay issue.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">1) One person I know speculated that perhaps some children of God really are eternally gay and can be fully saved in that identity, perhaps in the middle kingdom of the celestial kingdom in some kind of eternal partnership with their same-gender loved one. We know that fully exalted heterosexually married couples go to the celestial kingdom<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>s highest level, but it<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>s less clear who goes in the middle and lower celestial levels, and perhaps a place in God's presence is reserved for moral, ethical gay people to continue being homosexual throughout the eternities.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">Here<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>s why I reject this one: There is no evidence or logical reason to believe that God would procreate some children in a state that would never allow them to attain full exaltation. There is no such thing as a special class of God's children for whom the plan of salvation does not fully apply, including its gender and heterosexual aspects. All those who are born on the earth have the potential for full exaltation by overcoming their weaknesses through the Savior<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>s atonement, including people who are same-sex attracted in this life. Of course, full exaltation means an eternal heterosexual union that can produce spirit offspring, like God.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">Now, I<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>m open to the possibility that gayness may, in some cases, have some connection to premortality, just like many other aspects of the human condition may. Some of our mortal proclivities and weaknesses no doubt first started to develop in the premortal spirit world through our own choices and behaviors, some of which may have been aberrant or disobedient. After all, a third of God<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>s children developed such negative, rebellious characters and personality flaws during premortality that they disqualified themselves from earth life altogether. But regardless of what happened or didn<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>t happen in premortality, anyone born to this earth has just as much opportunity as anyone else to be fully exalted through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, if they so choose. There is no special place set aside in the celestial kingdom for exceptions like gayness or any other ungodlike trait or identity.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">2) Someone sent me a personal essay from a 1995 <i>Sunstone</i> magazine that threw me for a loop, as far as reconciling gayness with Mormon theology (<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">"'</span>My God, My God, Why Has Thou Forsaken Me?'" by Oliver Alden, which a little googling leads me to suspect is a pseudonym related to <i>The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel</i>, a nineteenth-century book that apparently has some homosexual themes). The following passage is the part that I remember as the most troubling to me:</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">After sustaining minor injuries in an automobile accident, I had requested a priesthood blessing from this man--a humble man of profound charity, but one who had gently but firmly made clear from the outset his fundamental opposition to the course I had adopted. When this leader laid his hands on my head, however, he blessed me not only that my injuries would heal properly (they did), but that I would one day meet the man who was to be my "companion in this life." It was the only time in my many years in the Church that I have stood after a blessing to see its giver manifestly shocked and horrified. That leader remained shocked and horrified for a very long time, but eventually--a year after the blessing, perhaps--walked up to me after sacrament meeting one Sunday and quietly told me that he hoped I would find my companion.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">One reason this passage rattles me is that I received a similar blessing given by a person who did not want me to be with a certain girlfriend, but then to his surprise he blessed me that I could be an instrument for saving this girl. He too was shocked and perhaps a little horrified, and of course the blessing had a big impact on me, although it ultimately ended up not working out between that girl and me due to my own foibles. But the point is that I<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">'</span>m quite open to the idea of a priesthood holder receiving inspiration to say something in a blessing contrary to his own opinion or desire.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">My mind keeps returning to this passage whenever I try to work out the gay-Mormon puzzle, and I<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>ve pretty much decided that it could be true only if we're talking about a nonsexual companion, because God does not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, and to me he would cease to be God if he endorsed any form of homosexual physical relations. Another alternative is that the essayist is either mistakenly or purposefully misrepresenting this blessing. The bottom line is, I simply cannot interpret this blessing as a release from God for this person to enter into a sexual union with someone of his own sex; otherwise, the whole structure of Mormon theology breaks down for me and I may as well stop paying tithing and go enjoy some real beer.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">3) And now, Dixon's play. The story begins with young preschool-age Norman dressing up in girl's dresses and playing with dolls. A major dramatic theme revolves around his parents' decision to buy him a dolly of his own when he was four years old. His mother wanted to buy it, but his father and teenaged brother opposed it. In the end, the mother won out, and the play program features a photo of young Norman tightly hugging his new doll at the base of the Christmas tree, surrounded by other toys that don't seem as precious to him as the doll.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">Personally, I believe buying him the doll was unwise, although I'm sure it was done out of pure love and innocence, because it set a pattern of indulgence for Dixon's life. I acknowledge that gender roles can be restrictive, but today's alternative of ever-increasing gender-neutral chaos is worse, in my opinion. One useful thing about gender roles is that they help people with inborn gender confusion to follow a useful template and exercise some gender self-discipline. Yes, there are some cultural limitations on how we understand gender here in mortality, but our essential tendency toward gender differentiation is God-given, I believe. I'm willing to admit that my own life is somewhat gender neutral, as many people's are in this modern civilization, and that this is not necessarily all bad. But I think most of modern society's tearing down of gender roles is evidence of how society is moving away from God, who clearly created his children in male and female identities and roles.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">Especially after having seen Dixon's play, I would tell my own boys no if they wanted to have their own girl doll. I wouldn't freak out if they played with someone else’s girl stuff on occasion, but I would want to guide them in the right gender path. I admit, I'm fearful of contributing to any gender ambiguity or potential for same-sex attraction my boys may hold, because in today's world there are few if any taboos left to help them stay on track. I don't think people are either gay or not gay; I believe in the Kinsey scale that shows a range of orientation, including Kinsey's finding that one’s place on this scale can change during a lifetime, depending on circumstances, environment, and behavioral choices. With the gay movement so prominent today, I think it's playing with fire to indulge gender confusion, especially with boys, because personally I think homosexuality is a bigger temptation and trap for boys than it is for girls. With all that's happened in the recent past regarding the battles between secular and god-fearing people over homosexuality, I'm to the point now where I don't even like it when my boys wear pink shirts. Twenty or even ten years ago, this stuff wouldn't have bothered me, but we live in a different world now, and we are practically in an open war over this issue, with clashes promising to worsen in the near future.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">As Dixon's story progresses, self-indulgence continues to emerge as a theme in his journey. He describes attending BYU preschool, where, when the other kids were out at recess, he snuck back inside to put on the pretty dresses from the dress-up box. He says he knew deep down that he shouldn't let other people catch him doing this because they would not approve, but I would also say his conscience was telling him that this wasn't a good self-indulgence for his own gender identity. Later, Dixon graduates to Barbies, playing with them obsessively even though his mother disapproves. When he reaches the puberty years and sex enters the picture, he discovers masturbation early and makes it a daily habit, which he admits continues to this day. Not only does the thought of such daily exercise sound tiring, but isn't that just a little bit self-indulgent? Dixon doesn’t seem to acknowledge any value in the concepts of disciplining oneself and trying to resist impulses. I assume that he fully indulged all his same-sex fantasies as well, reinforcing them more deeply with every masturbatory act. As a Mormon, I know there's value in abstinence from a wide variety of potentially addictive things, including sexual. Dixon doesn't give me any reason to think his approach is superior, although worldly philosophies surely back up his attitude of "do whatever feels good." </div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">One of the most remarkable things about the play is Dixon's lack of bitterness or anger regarding Mormonism. In fact, he recounts an amazing sequence from his mission when, feeling terribly lonely and displaced with his first companion, he knelt in desperate prayer and received a spiritual manifestation of love and concern that he says kept him going for the entire remainder of his mission. Dramatizing this extremely Mormon-sounding spiritual experience reflects Dixon's integrity and honesty, all the more so because this experience negates the validity of his post-mission sexual choices. In this mission experience, we find a microcosm of how God expects Dixon and all of us to live our lives, and yet Dixon does not make that connection or try to keep applying the principles he learned. I'm sure he prayed after his mission in dealing with his same-sex attraction, but for some reason he did not stick with it enough to get the spiritual help and support he needed to stay on the Mormon track during his adult life, despite the loneliness and displacement caused by his same-sex attraction.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">Let me clarify that I don't doubt Dixon's degree of same-sex orientation and gender confusion. For whatever reason, he naturally felt feminine impulses and intense homosexual attraction from an early age, with crushes on boys and other aspects. I would not claim that this was his choice, especially considering the teasing and abuse he got from other kids, although on the other hand this teasing didn't sound any worse than most people get for a wide variety of reasons. While Dixon had girls who were friends, he didn't ever make a real romantic/sexual connection with one in his formative years, and I don't know if he could have accomplished such a connection even if he was really trying, including abstaining from gay fantasies and masturbation. Perhaps if he'd tried harder, he could have actually made an authentic-enough heterosexual connection, even if his homo attractions never went fully away. Observing people like Dixon, I feel sympathy for gays who really believe that their homosexuality is an integral, essential, positive part of who they are, no more needful of resistance than eating or breathing. But I'm afraid such self-rationalization is a deception.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">To the best of my memory, the turning point for Dixon appears to have been when a BYU therapist gave him advice that didn't make sense to him: start fooling around a little with girls so he could get himself sexually interested in them and stop desiring boys. I can see where this was weird advice, but it's not an excuse to give up. Soon after that, Dixon allowed himself to undergo a seduction by an older man. From this point onward, Dixon seems to forget all about the spiritual experience on his mission and about Jesus Christ, and he starts to fulfill his spiritual needs through various trendy New Age techniques. Rather than looking to Jesus Christ as his example and savior, he discovers a new mentor to worship: k.d. lang. From a Mormon perspective, that's a rather ridiculous tradeoff, but judging by how Dixon has chosen to depict himself in his play, he often does not seem to have much concept of purposefully redirecting his own thoughts and impulses in the most productive, sensible ways. He seems to be a guy who can only believe in what’s in front of him and who interprets almost any impulse he feels as worthy of pursuing. </div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">As Dixon grows older, he starts to look to homosexual relationships themselves as a way to save himself and become happy. Eventually, he reaches the stage where he wants a monogamous lifelong partnership with a fellow man. He tells about one major failed relationship with a guy I remember meeting at a family picnic some years ago, and then he tells about a newer relationship with Raul, his current partner who, in fact, produced <i>Becoming Norman</i>. The problem is, even if he manages to find a lifelong partner to solace and console him for the rest of his life in this lone and dreary world, gay sexual/romantic relationships cannot survive death in any Mormon concept of an afterlife.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">The real issue underlying the gay debate is: do we serve God or do we serve ourselves? Are we secular/agnostic/atheistic, or do we believe in a higher power and strive to connect with it and serve it to the best of our ability? In Dixon's case, nothing about his play suggests that his journey is taking him closer to God; rather, his journey is downright narcissistic in looking to himself as the ultimate authority, as is true for so many people today. At one point in the play, he even says something to the effect that God and the self are actually the same thing. </div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">This quote from John Gardner reminds me of Dixon's persona as presented in his play, as well as so many others in today's world: </div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">Leo Tolstoy knew about the universe of despair and endured . . . a crisis certainly profound and all-transforming. He came out of it not with a theory that every man should make up his own rules, asserting value for all men for all time, but with a theory of submission, a theory which equally emphasized freedom but argued that what a man ought to do with his freedom is be quiet, look and listen, try to feel out in his heart and bones what God requires of him--as Levin does in <i><span style="font-family: Courier;">Anna Karenina</span></i>, or Pierre in <i><span style="font-family: Courier;">War and Peace</span></i>.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">Judging by Dixon's play, we don’t see much evidence of this kind of introspection and effort, at least in terms of his sexual orientation, which he now accepts as a morally neutral trait, like being left-handed. Yeah, it may be morally neutral if you don't act on it, but it's immoral to act on it because it goes against God. This is a problem that more and more people today are trying to address by turning themselves into God, so they can make whatever rules they want. Talk about pride!</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">It's been said that, as mortals, we are all drowning in our own dilemmas and in need of a savior, but we cannot pull ourselves out by our own hair. Judging by his play, Dixon is looking for the ultimate perfect gay relationship to save him, but I don’t think it's going to happen that way--especially not in the next life, even if he does manage to find a fellow gay to grow old with in this life. After watching Dixon's play, I'm left feeling more confident than ever that nothing can really save any of us except repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not even a heterosexual relationship can save us, although once we're saved by Christ, such a relationship is necessary to reach full exaltation. It's a terribly difficult thing to expect gay-attracted people to either be celibate or find a way to have an honest, committed heterosexual marriage, but there are certainly many worse trials in life than wrestling with lifelong gay feelings. Gays are not some kind of special exception who are justified in pursuing ungodly ways, even if they really, really, REALLY want to.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">While I have no way of knowing everything about how personally accountable Dixon is for his own situation and choices in life, his play does give some clues as to the human foibles that can exacerbate a challenge like homosexuality, and I think people in Dixon's situation may possibly be eligible and due for some self-discipline and repentance. I do know that, while it's not right to judge individuals or treat them poorly, it is right to resist the gay movement and gay marriage in general. I can and do certainly enjoy Norman and Raul as people and respect their right to pursue happiness as they see fit, but I can't endorse their choices, and while I can very much enjoy going out with them for an adult brunch, I don't want them to model a happy-seeming, normal-seeming homosexual relationship in front of my young boys. We need to protect kids, as much as reasonably possible, from risky ideas that can be planted like seeds and grow into something that will interfere with their ultimate happiness. And we all need to continually humble ourselves and repent, or the Lord will humble us instead, either as individuals or, as I believe will eventually become the case, as a society.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText">So no, Dixon's play didn’t crack my Mormon nut, as far as the homosexual dilemma goes. But I sure feel for him more now after seeing his play, and I can't really blame or judge him personally, although I can give my own strong response to how he presented himself in his courageous, publicly performed play. I wish Dixon the best, and perhaps he has a better chance at happiness through homosexuality than my Mormon beliefs say he does.</div>Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-77105739993624016912010-10-06T21:05:00.003-06:002010-10-06T21:11:48.428-06:00Letter to President Packer<em>Here is my letter in response to the following invitation: "Please support President Packer in standing for truth and righteousness, sounding a clear and much-needed warning voice, and exercising his constitutionally protected freedoms despite intense intimidation. You can send an email to the Church’s Public Affairs office at </em><a href="mailto:owentl@ldschurch.org"><em>owentl@ldschurch.org</em></a><em> (we are told your email will be forwarded to Pres. Packer) or send a note or postcard to President Boyd K. Packer, 50 East North Temple, Salt Lake City, UT, 84150."</em><br />
<br />
Dear President Packer:<br />
<br />
I felt so relieved to hear your talk on homosexuality and gay marriage (although I don't think you even mentioned those two terms). I'm online a lot, and I get so frustrated by the high level of confusion and worldliness AMONG LATTER-DAY SAINTS on this issue. I've even sometimes wondered if the LDS Church was starting to soften and go politically correct, such as when Church PR announced support for Salt Lake City's gay anti-discrimination ordinance or when Elder Marlin K. Jensen seemed to apologize for the Church's involvement in Prop 8 recently in California, or at least made it sound as if we're not already bending over backwards to be as compassionate as we can without changing our doctrine and surrending our standards.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Personally, I believe that the twin assaults of pornography and homosexuality are the main keystones of Satan's final attempt to bring down the world. Abortion and drugs are bad too, of course, but porn and gayness are infiltrating and confusing even many Latter-day Saints to an unprecedented degree. He has been carefully planning and developing these two campaigns for millennia, and in the 1960s he was finally ready to say, "Release the hounds," and 40 years later they are still ripping and tearing our civilization and getting closer and closer to vital flesh and organs.<br />
<br />
I believe he didn't tempt the Book of Mormon civilizations much with homosexuality because he didn't want it to get into the scriptures, so that he could save this abomination for his great last-days effort. If the Book of Mormon civilizations had faced this issue, they would have written about it and made it extremely clear, but the silence in latter-day scripture allows for more division and confusion among the LDS. It is so astounding how, with the gay movement and pornography, Satan has cleverly mixed together things like the black civil rights movement (which was mostly good) with the sexual revolution (which was nearly all bad), along with new technologies that can be both good and bad and can foster so much grassroots mobilization, not to mention act as a delivery mechanism for evil.<br />
<br />
Again, thanks so much for standing up for sanity, and I feel bad about all the contention swirling around you. However, I fear that the gay issue, more than any other, will be the factor that really divides the god-fearing from the growing ranks of the secular/agnostic/atheistic in today's society, and I fear that before too long, the Mormons will be the only significant group left standing on God's side of the issue, which will bring back a nineteenth-century level of persecution on our heads. <br />
<br />
In the nineteenth century, Mormons espoused a principle that the civilization could not abide, and the civilization eventually pressured us to abandon earthly polygamy, although we continue to hold polygamy as an eternal principle. The twentieth century was the eye of the storm, during which we grew strong and found favor and success in the world. In the twenty-first century, our host civilization is espousing a principle that Mormonism cannot abide, and I expect that the civilization will pressure us to accept gay marriage with every bit as much force as they employed to make us abandon polygamy. But I think we’re going to hold firm this time, simply because our doctrine won’t allow us to do otherwise.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-51320195551653822962010-09-01T21:22:00.002-06:002010-09-01T22:35:06.139-06:00Thoughts on "The Passage"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3VMzuoTGTvo/TH8O48CpEBI/AAAAAAAAAUY/4tNEcmuZUmM/s1600/ThePassageUSA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3VMzuoTGTvo/TH8O48CpEBI/AAAAAAAAAUY/4tNEcmuZUmM/s320/ThePassageUSA.jpg" /></a></div><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Passage-Justin-Cronin/dp/0345504968">The Passage</a></em> is one of those books that I just had to read. Not only is it a post-apocalyptic novel with lots in common with the novel I'm occasionally working on, but several trusted people recommended it to me, and I couldn't resist all the buzz.<br />
<br />
So I just finished reading it. It's nearly 800 pages, so it took me about a month. There were many sentences that I really liked. There were several stretches of pages that I really liked. Overall, however, it was only a second-base hit for me.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<strong>What I liked:</strong><br />
<br />
<em>The writing style.</em> Very readable and well-paced, at the sentence and paragraph level. Lots of good description, but no bogging down. (Although I have to add, there were some cliches and several editing errors, mainly words left out and using "wretch" several times when he meant "retch.")<br />
<br />
<em>Lots of inventive story elements.</em> While the story does have a lot of familiar virus, vampire, and apocalypse elements, it has equally as much stuff that feels fresh and original.<br />
<br />
<em>Lots of tension, in spots.</em> The book definitely keeps you reading to find out what happens. And a few times when the monsters were going to get the people, I couldn't put the book down until I found out what happened.<br />
<br />
<strong>What I didn't like:</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<br />
<em>The length.</em> The book is too long by at least 200 pages, and I got antsy during the second half, frequently checking how many pages I had left and feeling a little stuck. The part set 100 years after the virus in the California compound became somewhat tedious to me, until some refugees finally left. In general, I don't mind huge books; right before reading <em>The Passage</em>, I read the expanded version of Stephen King's <em>The Stand</em>, which is over 1,000 pages, and despite some of King's foibles and excesses as an author, I didn't want that one to end. (I think <em>The Passage</em> draws a lot of inspiration from <em>The Stand</em>, by the way, and Stephen King is one of the book's big proponents, although I don't agree it's quite as good as he claims it is.)<br />
<br />
<em>The characters.</em> I don't think the characters are generally very strong. Some are better than others, but very often in this book I found myself getting confused between characters who are too similar or undifferentiated. Especially in the aforementioned compound section, I found characters confusing to keep track of because several of them are quite similar to each other, although later in the book some of the refugees become more developed characters.<br />
<br />
<em>Lack of plausibility.</em> The book features a virus that turns people into vampires, but I think it's asking a bit much of a virus to have such a big effect on their bodies in such a short time. Some aspects of these "virals" are quite interesting, but on other levels they're just like any number of other monsters you can fairly easily imagine. And then the book has virus survivors using a lot of 100-year-old food and fuel and clothing and vehicles and equipment as if they're still fine, and lots of dead bodies are still lying around intact after 100 years.<br />
<br />
<em>The central figure.</em> The book revolves around a little girl who receives a perfected form of the virus that makes her stay young, so she's still bouncing around the vampire-infested landscape 100 years after the military lost control of the virus and destroyed the world. The book starts with her sad story of living with a prostitute mom before the virus, and while this section is well written, I found it somewhat emotionally manipulative. And then she has this excessively sentimental relationship with an FBI agent who lost his own daughter and so makes this little girl his new daughter, emotionally. This all came across to me largely as formulaic stuff to help the book become a best-seller by playing on people's emotions, and there are some examples of this later in the book, too.<br />
<br />
When the girl (finally) comes back on the scene later in the book, her powers and her role remain unclear to me, and the narrative sort of forgets her but then remembers her again as the refugees go forth. There's a lot of hype in the book about how important she is and central to humanity's long-term survival, but the book doesn't really show why, to my satisfaction. She's involved with a lot of telepathy and other powers, but it's not clear to me how or why she has these powers. Granted, this is the first book in a trilogy, and I assume the author will explain more in later books, but I didn't like how this girl was handled; I didn't feel like the author had full control over his story, in book one. (Even though book one wasn't a home run for me, I'm definitely interested enough to read the next two, by the way.)<br />
<br />
<em>The ending:</em> I didn't like how the book wrapped up. One of the virals was given all these weird telepathic powers to affect people's dreams and stuff, and it seemed to be building up to some big climactic conflict with him, but then he and his mob of virals ("the Many") are killed way too easily. The virals are very dumb and are just like animals, by the way, with some observable instinctive behaviors but no real intelligence or communication possible, except with this one Babcock viral with the telepathic powers. There's a lot of mumbo-jumbo in this book that doesn't hold together very well.<br />
<br />
<em>The title:</em> All during the book, I kept wondering what "The Passage" referred to. Near the end, the author makes an attempt to explain it, but it's just a few sentences that aren't very convincing, and the concept is never really developed.<br />
<br />
I don't know, maybe I'm just getting harder to please as I get older, or maybe I'm becoming a less empathetic reader or something, but this book only half-worked for me. He has quite a few things that I also have in my book, but I thought of them on my own or was inspired by earlier stories, not this one. Anyway, if you like post-apocalyptic thrillers, you should definintely definitely check this out, and I think most people will like it better than I do.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-53358779477298569962010-08-31T18:38:00.001-06:002010-08-31T18:39:28.576-06:00Trying to Listen to "The Exorcist"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3VMzuoTGTvo/TH2gFmd2zJI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/lI2RPTY_k-s/s1600/Exorcist" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3VMzuoTGTvo/TH2gFmd2zJI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/lI2RPTY_k-s/s320/Exorcist" /></a></div>Recently, I've been listening to "The Exorcist" as an audiobook. The main reason I got it was because I'm working on a novel that has demon possession in it, and I wanted to see how this mother of all demon-possession stories plays out.<br />
<br />
I remember seeing the movie as a kid, but I don't remember being that scared by it. Of course, I saw it before I became spiritually awake to the reality of the devil, so I guess it didn't have as much punch for me then. Or maybe I'm just not remembering my feelings. I remember I felt more scared about getting caught by my parents watching an R-rated movie than I did about the subject matter of the movie itself. (In fact, it may have been the first R-rated movie I ever watched, when video players had just come out and my neighbors across the street became movie fanatics.)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
But now, the story just freaks me out. I listen to audiobooks three mornings a week while doing the treadmill, and even the night before I've found myself dreading my next "Exorcist" session. Sometimes I've even awakened in the night and not been able to get back asleep because I know in a few hours I'll be waking up and facing my fear.<br />
<br />
The book is actually pretty good, and it's narrated by the author, who has a great voice for it. While listening, I turn on the lights full blast and keep looking over my shoulders. I'm just to the part where the mom actually sees the girl's bed shaking with her in it, and that gave me the chills really bad. Even right now, I'm feeling uneasy and looking over my shoulders just typing about it.<br />
<br />
So I've pretty much decided to give up on it. Yeah, I'd like to finish it, but it just disturbs my peace too much. Maybe I'll listen to it sometime on impulse and when I'm around people, such as on a road trip. But I can't handle these planned early-morning encounters with such a scary story. Or maybe I'll just pick up the book and try it old school, although books can be too scary too.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-42387385702837870302010-07-26T18:38:00.001-06:002010-07-26T18:51:17.443-06:00Lake Tahoe So FarGood things so far:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>We left with things in good shape both at work and home, so no unfinished business is hanging over our heads, and we will be going home to a clean house and yard, unless some disaster hits while we're gone.</li>
<li>No one has thrown up or otherwise gotten sick or injured, except Ann bit her lip when she hit herself with a paddle.</li>
<li>The resort is very beautiful and clean and high class, with lots of amenities, plenty of handy stores around, and excellent concierge and valet service.<a name='more'></a></li>
<li>Ann has been providing good, cheap food. She got these delicious meals made at a place called Dream Dinners, and she brought enough for the whole Tahoe portion of our trip. This is good because taking our crew of seven even to a lousy restaurant can easily approach $100. We have a full-sized kitchen and have divvied up the dish-duty days among four people, so no one feels too much pain. Plus, as we usually do while on vacation with the kids, Ann and I are sneaking away for a fine-dining experience, just the two of us.</li>
<li>Our resort accesses a private lake beach that is great. We got an inflatable raft, and the kids are having a great time. Believe it or not, I'll even go out in the little raft.</li>
<li>We just got back from renting bikes and taking a terrific 90-minute ride along the lake and up into the woods. I would like to do that again while we're here.</li>
<li>Last night just Ann and I went on a sunset walk, and there were a lot of clouds so it was spectacular over the lake. We strolled past a casino where Elton John was playing in an outdoor venue right on the Nevada/California state line, and we stood outside for a while with tons of drunk, smoking people freeloading on the great sound. I'm not a huge fan, but he does have some excellent songs, I admit. Having Elton's voice and keyboard float through the whole area really cast a spell on this little town last night.</li>
<li>Ann and I have our own private, enclosed room, and I've been sleeping great. This has been a clock-free vacation for me, so I have no idea what time it is when I wake up, we eat when we want, and sometimes in the afternoon I honestly don't know if it's 3:00 or 5:00 or 7:00. I like this timeless feeling.</li>
<li>I have been reading a ton, which is bliss. I'm almost done with the 1,100-page <i>The Stand</i>. Last night I dreamed that the LDS Church was having Sunday School classes read <i>The Stand</i> as a way of studying the last days, and I was pissed off because I've had several bad experiences of getting censored in Mormon culture, and yet the church was tolerating all King's profanity and vulgarity.</li>
<li>It's been a little rainy off and on, but that has served to cool things off and slow down our pace a little at times, which I welcome.</li>
<li>I love having Ann be our tour guide. I just drive, go where I'm told, and do what I'm told. If it were left just to me, we'd probably rarely make it out of the hotel! </li>
</ul>Complaints so far:<br />
<ul><li>I don't know if other people's kids are this way, but our kids are so often demanding and irritating and stressful. I would like to have lots more stretches of time without people constantly interrupting me and asking me to do stuff, whether go to the pool, load the dishwasher, play chess, etc. And I know Ann deflects some of that stuff away from me, so it could be a lot worse!</li>
<li>It's not a two-bedroom villa like we often get in Park City, but rather a one-bedroom. So the five kids are all out in the lounge room. There are two pull-out queens, so they can all sleep comfortably, but that room is always a wreck and Hannah Montana is always playing on the TV, so I hardly even go in there (we have our own TV and DVD player in our bedroom, but I haven't even really watched a movie yet, since I'm so into reading <i>The Stand</i>). And with two beefy teens, let's just say the place often needs airing out.</li>
<li>One bathroom. 'Nuff said.</li>
<li>With our vacation club, we get no maid service unless we want to pay extra, which we don't. So we're constantly running out of towels and stealing extras from the maid carts or the pool. The carpets really need to be vacuumed every day, but we have no vacuum handy (I suppose we could request one), and we have to gather up all our own trash and throw it out into the hall. Plus, I'm pretty tired of seven people's wet bathing suits and beach toys all over everywhere, sand on the tile floors, etc.</li>
<li>Everything costs so much. I'm glad we're not eating out much, but we're spending almost $200 to ride a gondola up into the mountains, $500 to rent our own powerboat for half a day, etc. I agree with Ann that it's silly to come all this way and not take full advantage, but then again it's difficult to see all my hard-earned book money disappear so fast, especially when we could save it or spend it on making some household improvements, paying off this low-interest loan we have, or replacing our beat-up purple minivan, which is coming up on 200,000 miles. Ann and I went to Europe two years ago, China last year, and now this full-family two-weeker, so I'm already pushing for taking a year or two off from expensive traveling. In 2011, I hope all we do vacation-wise is spend our week up in Park City, and I think Ann's in agreement.</li>
<li>I've really been wanting to work on my own novel as part of vacation, but I can't seem to find fifteen continuous minutes to really concentrate, let alone the minimum of two hours I usually need for a productive session. And even when I do have a little time, I waste it doing stuff online or typing things like this. Although I love typing this current novel, I hate having it hang over my head and feeling guilty when I don't work on it as much as I think I should, which is a dumb way to feel about a hobby.</li>
<li>Although beautiful, the lake is too cold for me to even consider swimming in. The resort pool is also too cold for me, although the resort has some great hot tubs with plenty of heat. I'm a real wimp when it comes to water and simply won't get in unless it's quite warm. </li>
<li>I'm a little nervous about the powerboat, because I think Ann thinks that she's going to water ski and that I'm going to do a competent job piloting the boat. From when I water-skied as a kid, I remember it as a fairly complex, dangerous thing to do (both my mom and I were injured while water skiing).</li>
</ul>Bottom line: I like Lake Tahoe a lot, and if you're a member of the Marriott Vacation Club, I recommend trading your week to spend some time here. And I like that after our full week here, we get to have a second vacation visiting our brothers in Vacaville and Danville.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-51599529255734574162010-07-20T17:17:00.009-06:002010-07-21T16:26:42.459-06:00Mormon Cult Analysis<span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"> The word “cult” is quite loaded. I don’t think the Mormon church is really a cult anymore, although it certainly was in the beginning, just as Christianity itself began as a cult of Judaism. However, people still like to use the word “cult” to describe the Mormon church, and I think that’s because the church and its culture still display quite a few cult-like traits, not all of which are bad. <br />
<br />
The following is a list of cult attributes that I picked up from somewhere, and I’ve responded to each one by analyzing how much I think Mormonism displays that trait and whether I personally feel that’s good or bad.<br />
</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"><br />
<b>Leadership<br />
</b><br />
<i>Is the leader charismatic? Cults are often created and maintained by the force of the founder’s personality.<br />
</i><br />
No, not anymore. I don’t think any of today’s General Authorities have enough charisma for a cult to form around their personality. They are all more like corporate board members, with no single individual doing or saying much that is unique, provocative, or attracts attention. For me, Mormonism has become too corporate in this area.<br />
<br />
<i>Is the leader always right?<br />
</i><br />
Pretty much, but the leader is unlikely to say anything to rock the boat. Plus Mormonism generally requires unanimity among the fifteen apostles to make any real declarative statement, but when all fifteen speak together, they are always right (such as with the Proclamation on the Family). And I can accept that.<br />
<br />
I have to admit, I found it quite off-putting when President Hinckley said he didn’t like extra earrings and mainstream, orthodox Mormons turned that into practically a commandment. I don’t think a religion has the right or the need to dictate personal dress and grooming choices on that level, but Mormons are so quick to jump on things like this.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the leader not tolerate or receive criticism, while criticizing everyone else? Does the leader discourage negative feedback about the group?<br />
</i><br />
I do not think Mormon leaders at any level generally welcome or listen much to criticism, but I also don’t think they criticize others much. Mormonism is an almost ridiculously positive, conformist culture, in which frankness, candor, analysis, critiquing, and other forms of social and political honesty are not generally welcome.<br />
<br />
<i>Is the leader treated like royalty or considered with reverential awe?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, Mormonism is somewhat nauseatingly overboard in this respect. Unlike the early LDS, today’s LDS definitely put the prophet up on a pedestal. Mormons SAY that the prophet is an imperfect man but BEHAVE as if he’s perfect and infallible, whereas the Catholics are the direct opposite regarding their pope.<br />
<br />
<i>Is the leader coercive? Does the leader try to compel members by force, intimidation, or authority against the member’s individual will?<br />
</i><br />
My experience with and observation of today’s church leaders, both local and general, has been that they are generally quite benign and inoffensive in this area. (However, Mormon social pressure makes up a lot of the difference.) <br />
<br />
<i>Is the leader self absorbed? Cult leaders are often preoccupied with how people perceive them and seek to aggrandize themselves.<br />
</i><br />
There may be a little of this among today’s General Authorities, but not much. I think the current prophet is a little more mindful of these things than some past prophets, or at least he was before he became prophet. (So far as prophet, he’s actually been quite humble and low key, in my opinion, but I remember when I worked at the LDS Church magazine he would complain if the skin tone was off on his photo.)<br />
<br />
<i>Does the leader seek sexual gratification from the members?<br />
</i><br />
Ha, not anymore, in the slightest. I’ve never even seen it on a local level, although I guess it happens from time to time.<br />
<br />
<i>Is the group organized in an authoritarian, hierarchical power structure?<br />
</i><br />
Absolutely, and proudly so. Not my first choice for how to structure an organization, personally.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the leader claim divinity or special knowledge and authority from God?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, but not very much anymore. Personally, I wish we heard more along these lines——as long as it’s true, of course, and not just something the person is saying to increase his or her power.<br />
<br />
<i>Is disagreeing with the leader considered the same as disagreeing with God?<br />
</i><br />
You do still hear too much of this kind of talk in the LDS Church. It particularly bugs me when it’s implied that a local bishop’s decision to issue a calling comes directly from the Lord and that saying no to that calling is the same as saying no to the Lord. I don’t accept that.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, I personally feel that disagreeing with the fifteen apostles on an issue like same-sex marriage is the same as disagreeing with God and is a very spiritually dangerous thing to do.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the leader expect unquestioning obedience?<br />
</i><br />
To a degree. I think at the general level, they do expect that. But at the local level, I think most leaders are willing to talk through things with members, including general-level things the member might be having trouble with. So questioning is OK to a degree, as part of the process of ultimately yielding to obey.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the leader hold out the promise of salvation, power within the group, enlightenment, or other ultimate rewards in return for membership and obedience?<br />
</i><br />
Salvation, certainly. And I think it’s just human nature to bestow higher leadership responsibility to those who obey and conform and serve more. And obeying Mormon standards makes one pure enough to receive more inspiration, in the Mormon view. None of this particularly bugs me.<br />
<br />
<i>Is the leader not held accountable for his actions or the actions of his authority structure?<br />
</i><br />
I think Mormon leaders are generally held accountable as needed.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the leader ask for money as a sign of loyalty, to be in good standing, or to go to the next level?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, obviously, in the form of tithing. However, this money doesn’t enrich or support any individuals, beyond a set living allowance for full-time general leaders. This area does not bug me.<br />
<br />
<b>Recruiting<br />
</b><br />
<i>Does the group provide an instant community by love bombing a newcomer or presenting itself as a happy family?<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, but that’s just good sales and marketing.<br />
<br />
<i>Do the members always appear happy and enthusiastic for newcomers? Or have they been encouraged to appear that way?<br />
</i><br />
Ideally, they’re supposed to. Again, sales and marketing. Plus Mormons really do want others to join, both to validate themselves and for the new convert’s benefit.<br />
<br />
<i>Are members unable to tell the truth about the group? Members will often lie or evade the truth about the group in order to present a more palatable vision to newcomers. However, this issue goes much deeper, because members are often unable to acknowledge the truth to each other.<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, there’s some of this in Mormonism, which can be quite disingenuous at times. Individuals are under a great deal of pressure to present themselves to fellow members and to the world at large as being righteous and pure and spiritual and wonderful, and I think a lot of Mormons put on phony masks, at least part of the time. Also, a lot of the history is too whitewashed.<br />
<br />
Personally, I’d like to see much more frankness in the Mormon church and culture at all levels, less focus on PR and more focus on just being who and what we really are.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group withhold the full truth about its ideas and practices from newcomers? Cults often refrain from divulging the complete picture until newcomers have gotten themselves in deep.<br />
</i><br />
Yes, regarding the temple, and also regarding the hiding of difficult aspects of early Mormon history. I think that’s fine with the temple, since it’s structured as something to work toward, but I think it’s bad to hide the hard history, because in today’s Internet age lots of people will eventually come across it and then feel deceived and betrayed.<br />
<br />
<i>Do group members keep near constant contact with interested newcomers? This prevents the newcomer from having time to rethink their involvement and to think with a cooler head away from the love bombing.<br />
</i><br />
I don’t think Mormonism overdoes this, generally.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group isolate newcomers from family and friends? Cults will try through various means to cut off contact between newcomers and outsiders to prevent the truth about the group from coming to light and to replace familial bonds with bonds to the cult.<br />
</i><br />
No, I don’t think the Mormon church does this, but I’ve seen the reverse several times, with family and friends cutting off a new Mormon convert because they disagree with the choice, feel threatened by the religion, etc.<br />
<br />
<i>Do new members estrange themselves from family and friends? Even if group members don’t actively try to cut off newcomers from outside influences, newcomers may start to distance themselves from others who don’t share their new outlook and seem to misunderstand or be overly critical.<br />
</i><br />
Well, if someone keeps insulting something you value, I think it’s natural to draw away from that offender. And while I think it’s important to try to understand other people’s outlook, there are times when it sucks too much time and energy and you need to retreat from it, at least for a season. This happens to me all the time with my debates on the gay issue; I often just have to drop the topic for months at a time, otherwise the debate becomes too consuming.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group emphasize the unimportance or worthlessness of the new member while hyping membership in the group? A cult will seek to break down an individual’s self worth in order to foster dependence on the group. A weakened individual becomes pliable to coercion.<br />
</i><br />
No, I don’t think Mormonism does this. If anything, it pumps up an individual’s self-worth with the whole “child of God” thing. But it does foster dependence on the group in order to receive the proper ordinances, etc. <br />
<br />
<i>Does the group solicit confessions of guilt, weakness, or fear? Cults seek to break down normal personal boundaries in order to foster a new identity centered around the group.<br />
</i><br />
Perhaps confession to the bishop of serious sins falls into this category somewhat. But on the other hand, Mormon culture doesn’t want to hear about personal weaknesses and fears, beyond a certain superficial point to establish one’s all-important humility within the group.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group demand that new members take some action to affirm their loyalty? These demands may start out small and get progressively bigger. This primes the newcomer to follow directions given by group members. It also causes newcomers to unconsciously justify their actions. For example, “I gave money to this group. I’m a smart person who wouldn’t get cheated. This group must be good.”<br />
</i><br />
Yes, I’d say Mormonism does this quite a bit. For example, the full-time mission required of young men fits this pattern, as well as future demands the church may make on a person’s time and energy. In my own case, I’m at a point now where I’m prepared to say no to something I don’t want to do, though.<br />
<br />
<i>Do newcomers need to be trained to think correctly (i.e. according to the group’s ideas)?<br />
</i><br />
Sure, but don’t nearly all human organizations do this, to some degree? Mormonism does it quite a bit, I admit.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group encourage new members to renounce former values or beliefs?<br />
</i><br />
Sure, to the degree that they’re not in harmony with the gospel. I think doing some of this is good, but Mormonism may go a little overboard at times.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group test members before completely accepting them?<br />
</i><br />
It’s easy to get baptized but less easy to gain entry to the temple. I think this is a good thing, giving people a chance to be challenged and grow.<br />
<br />
<b>Dissolution of Individual Identity and Independence<br />
</b><br />
<i>Do members use a language that no one else can understand?<br />
</i><br />
Mormons have their share of lingo and acronyms, but not to an excessive or unusual degree, I don’t think. Rather, I think Mormons take some pains to help others understand them.<br />
<br />
<i>Do the members have special ways of dressing or other special behaviors that mark them as members? Having a common lingo and similar modes of dress fosters a sense of group cohesion and identity. It also serves to further separate members from the wider society.<br />
</i><br />
Of course. And personally, I have a huge problem with the “uniform of the priesthood,” which is the same as a conservative corporate suit and tie. I don’t think this is necessary or good, and it’s something I just refuse to go along with. I’ll put on a tie but do not own a suit and do not ever intend to buy one. Perhaps this is my own passive-aggressive response against what I see as an excessively conformist, cult-like expectation of Mormon men.<br />
<br />
Other than that, Mormons don’t do much along these lines, certainly far less than many other religious groups. I suppose temple garments might fall into this category, but garments are not visible to others, so they're more of a personal reminder. Even other members generally don't know if you're wearing your garments or not.<br />
<br />
<i>Do the members have solidarity within the group with little or no outside allegiance? Cults will try to become the entity that members are ultimately loyal to instead of more natural loyalties like family or friends.<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, the church expects loyalty when one’s family is at odds with the church, but certainly whole families and groups of friends can find solidarity together within the church. And at least in the United States, the church and most members are almost fanatically patriotic, which is one way the church lifts itself out of cult status and joins with the larger civilization.<br />
<br />
Personally, I’m not very patriotic. I think America has played a key role in the world and that the early events were inspired like Mormonism says they were, but I think America peaked with World War II and has been on the wrong track since then in nearly every way, except perhaps in the development of technology, although even technology has a big downside. I would really like to become an American expatriate for a period of time, if I could find the right situation for my family in Europe or Asia somewhere.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group use guilt to motivate obedience?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, definitely. If you break the rules, you fear loss of blessings and protection.<br />
<br />
<i>Is there a system of punishment and reward? Such a system infantilizes the member, creating a relationship that resembles that between parent and child.<br />
</i><br />
Not really in an outward sense. Most of this is left to one’s own spiritual relationship with God, I think. Although with serious sins, there is punishment, so I guess that does make the church like one’s parents in some ways, who will excommunicate you if you screw up too badly.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members feel a sense of powerlessness, dependency, covert fear, or guilt?<br />
</i><br />
Somewhat, in all areas. I don’t think an individual member like me feels any power to really influence or change things in the church. To me, Mormonism feels like being a worker bee in a hive——unfortunately, I don't like honey. And Mormonism does make you feel dependent on it for eternal blessings, and I must say that one reason I like being in the church is that I expect to be helped materially if my personal situation falls apart, which is somewhat of a sense of dependency. As far as fear, Mormonism’s teachings that we all need to go through personal trials and that these are the last days and terrible things will happen do cause some fear, although the faith also provides ways to maintain hope that all will come out right in the end.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group demand complete loyalty or trust in the group and its beliefs? Is the expression of doubt suppressed through guilt or character assassination?<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, I would say it does. Certainly you can’t successfully blend Mormonism with other faiths and still really be a Mormon. And I do think Mormons are VERY effective at freezing out people who express doubt or otherwise rock the boat. That’s not character assassination, though. On the other hand, I think anyone who leaves the church is automatically assumed to have some secret sin or flaw that made them want to leave, and I admit that I personally think that is indeed the case, even if the flaw is simply pride.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members feel dependent on the leader? Would they feel lost without the leader’s direction and presence?<br />
</i><br />
To a degree, yes. But any leader can be readily replaced in Mormonism, so it's about the role, not the personality.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members allow the leader to make decisions for them?<br />
</i><br />
Not really. Leaders invite and ask members to do or think certain things, but members still have to make their own decisions. When I've sought counseling on certain issues, my leaders have usually made it clear that they cannot and will not decide things for me.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members lose the ability to make choices contrary to the group’s beliefs? Nearly all decisions are weighed against how the group would look at the choice.<br />
</i><br />
To some degree, yes. The area that comes to mind is again the full-time mission thing. Far fewer people would go or would last the whole mission without the intense Mormon social pressure. The same could be said for marrying outside the church and other things. Then again, there’s plenty of room in Mormonism for people to make plenty of choices against the grain, as long as they don’t cross certain moral lines, and even then there’s good opportunity for repentance.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group deprive members of the sense of time by removing clocks and watches?<br />
</i><br />
Perhaps in the temple? Which is why the endowment session always feels like about four hours to me... But they don’t make you take off your watch, do they?<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group encourage child-like or uninhibited behavior? Disinhibition fosters child-like dependence and further opens members to coercion.<br />
</i><br />
Not in the slightest. On the contrary, Mormonism fosters all kinds of inhibitions, cultural and moral and otherwise. Some are good, and some are unhealthy, especially the cultural ones.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group demand public identification with the group or expressions of solidarity with the group? The more often a member publicly identifies with the group, the more membership in the group dominates individual identity.<br />
</i><br />
I think it’s fairly possible to be a Mormon and fly under the radar, unless someone happens to notice that you don’t drink alcohol or something like that.<br />
<br />
I think in the near future, as persecution increases due to Mormonism’s resistance to gay marriage and other issues, this will become a much more significant issue where it might be tempting to deny one’s affiliation with Mormonism.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group have rules that govern every aspect of life? Members get in the habit of following rules and the cult comes to dominate their thoughts throughout the day.<br />
</i><br />
Not every aspect, but certainly enough aspects to be a daily concern. But most of these rules are good for you, helping you avoid addictions and vices and other unhealthy things, as well as increase spirituality. Personally, I’m pretty good at avoiding the evils but quite poor at doing the positives. I pray most mornings, but other than that I don’t regularly read scriptures or do a lot of the other regular spiritual disciplines, except I do attend church more often than not.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members endure verbal abuse or character assassination?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, absolutely, and I think we’ll have to endure a lot more of it as civilization and Mormonism increasingly part ways.<br />
<br />
<i>Are the members malnourished or sleep deprived? Members who are physically weak are less able to resist mental coercion.<br />
</i><br />
No, not for any reason directly related to the religion, although the religion does promote parenthood, which leads to sleep deprivation. On the contrary, I think more Mormons are too well fed than otherwise (including myself).<br />
<br />
Personally, I never wake up early for church meetings, such as 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. priesthood meetings. I don’t get enough sleep during the week, and it’s important to me to get plenty of sleep on the weekends.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;">I wonder if fasting can be considered malnourishment? I don't think so, since 24 hours is hardly enough to cause nutritional harm, and experts say fasting like that is actually physically beneficial. And no one tries to mentally coerce you when you're fasting, although you're encouraged to focus on spiritual things in your own mind. Anyway, I'm not a very good faster, only doing it about once a quarter rather than monthly.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group employ peer pressure and the desire to belong to change member’s behavior?<br />
</i><br />
Big time. Mormons are way excessive in trying to look good so others will think well of them and so the world will think well of Mormonism, but so much of it comes across as not genuine or believable.<br />
<br />
<i>Are members punished and rewarded for similar behaviors? This confuses the members and keeps them off balance.<br />
</i><br />
Can’t think of any real examples. Of course, sex is rewarded within marriage and punished outside of it, but it’s still the same activity, so maybe that counts. And I think that does confuse a lot of young people, when suddenly marriage flips the sex switch from bad to good.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members report each other’s misbehavior to the leader?<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, I think this happens a lot in Mormonism, especially at BYU, which is like Mormonism on steroids.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group keep members so busy with activities and meetings that they don’t have time and energy to think about their involvement or to spend time with non-members?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, I think Mormonism definitely does this. Personally, I have no interest in spending as much time on church things as I see a lot of people do, and I blow off a lot of it. I even think the three-hour Sunday meeting block is too long. Because I teach night school during the week, I have a personal policy of refusing any callings that require weeknight time, even if the calling would take place on a night that I don’t teach. I need SOME time during the week for my family and myself, after all.<br />
<br />
<i>Are the members’ personal boundaries and privacy violated?<br />
<br />
</i>Some would say that the temple-recommend interview questions do that and the requirement that sexual sins be confessed to the bishop. Personally, I think this is OK as a way to help members keep their lives more on track, if they want to stay in good standing.<br />
<br />
<b>Suspension of Rational Thought<br />
</b><br />
<i>Is the member blamed for all failures or disappointments? (E.g. you aren’t recruiting because your heart is full of sin.) This allows the cult to shift blame for its own failings to the member while simultaneously breaking down their self worth.<br />
</i><br />
This definitely happens to full-time missionaries, and I personally really dislike the full-time missionary program and think it’s just chock full of psychologically harmful nonsense. The missionary program IS a cult in so many ways, and I personally really hated it. But I don’t think these kinds of things happen much to regular church members.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group use hypnosis (sometimes presented as meditation or relaxation)? The difference between legitimate use of these techniques and how cults employ them is that the cult uses them to suppress rational thought in order to make the member more pliable.<br />
</i><br />
No, I think Mormonism is known to be, if anything, too slim on things like meditation. I suppose prayer could be considered a form of self-hypnosis and meditation.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group tell members what they should read or watch? Leaders want members to avoid opposing points of view so the spell the cult has woven over its members won’t be broken.<br />
</i><br />
Mormonism does this a lot, but not to cult-like extremes, I don’t think. I’m a member in good standing, but I watch and read whatever I personally want, although I do not indulge in outright pornography. In addition, I freely read anti-Mormon stuff on occasion, as well as difficult, honest history. I take that kind of stuff with a grain of salt.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group employ thought-stopping language, clichés, or slogans? These sayings are presented as self-evidently true, but their true purpose is to shortcut logic and critical thinking.<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, Mormonism does a fair bit of this, especially in bearing testimony. For me, I don’t say “I know”; rather, I say “I believe.” But most Mormons say “I know” when they really don’t <i>know </i>but rather just strongly believe or hope. And there are others as well, such as “Follow the prophet.”<br />
<br />
<i>Do members repeatedly chant or sing mind-narrowing phrases? These techniques make an end-run around rational thought and implant ideas through sheer repetition.<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, we have our share of hymns like this, and the temple is full of this kind of thing. I don’t think it’s bad, but I think it’s really very boring.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group discourage members from asking questions?<br />
</i><br />
Somewhat, beyond a superficial level. Mormons are often reminded to stick to the "plain and precious" things, the vanilla. Another problem is that the church isn’t always good at answering questions, because it doesn’t acknowledge a lot of realities or want to admit error or ambiguity.<br />
<br />
<i>Do they encourage the experiential instead of the logical? For cults seeking to hide the truth or foster dependence, it is simpler to manipulate emotions than to provide a reasonable chain of logic.<br />
</i><br />
I think Mormonism has a good mix of both. My own belief is based more on the logic of Mormon theology, which I think is superb, but I also have a number of experiential things. I think you need both to have a strong belief.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group present incomprehensible doctrine that confuses members and discourages the use of logic? Members may try to reconcile contradictions in doctrine, but their efforts prove ultimately fruitless. At this point, cults can insinuate that logic is impotent and discourage its use.<br />
</i><br />
Mormonism has its share of fuzzy doctrines and unanswered questions, but like I said before, the theology really appeals to my overall sense of logic of why the world exists, why we’re here, the nature of the earthly test, etc.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members neglect to verify information they receive from the group? Do the accept something as the truth simply because it came from the group?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, I think Mormons tend to do too much of this. As for me, I’ve come to rather dislike some of what I hear from the church’s PR department regarding the issues of gay rights, and I think errors have been made. (As an aside, since President Monson took over, I sometimes get the feeling that the church is being run more by PR than by prophecy.)<br />
<br />
<i>Do members avoid thinking in ways that are contrary to the group’s beliefs? Members may have a strong mental aversion to merely entertaining an opposing point of view.<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, I think most Mormons feel some of this pressure, and I do think there are some real risks of being deceived when one goes off the Mormon track. I have several friends who I feel are deeply deceived when it comes to the gay issue, for instance, people who are living gay and people who sympathize with them to the degree that they think gay sexual relationships should be embraced.<br />
<br />
There are some areas within Mormonism that don’t have a clear answer, though, and it’s possible to find members with opposite opinions, such as about polygamy. Personally, I think polygamy is the eternal order of things and, when authorized by God, can be a superior family structure here on earth, but a lot of Mormons think it’s practically evil or, at a minimum, a lesser form of family life that won't necessarily be part of exaltation.<br />
<br />
<b>Attitudes about the Group<br />
</b><br />
<i>Does the group have all the answers to the important questions in life?<br />
<br />
</i>Yes, nearly so. And I think that’s a good thing. I see too much agnosticism in the world, the idea that it’s impossible to know so much. What a limiting, illogical world view.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group claim to be the only or the best source of truth?<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, but what’s wrong with that? Mormonism doesn’t claim to be the only source, but it does claim to be the best, and I agree with that, otherwise why be in it? I don’t think it’s reasonable to say all religions are equally true, when their doctrines and authority claims are different.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members consider themselves to be the elite or the chosen?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, and in Mormonism’s case, if you can embrace its truths and abide by its disciplines, I think you have some valid claim to that, although there’s no use in becoming prideful about it. I see this earthly test as survival of the spiritually fittest, and I think someone who fully lives Mormonism (which I don’t personally claim to do) is indeed at the top rank of spiritually fittest.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members consider themselves the only ones who will be saved or earn the ultimate reward?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, but Mormons also make it plenty easy for everyone in the world to hear about Mormonism and accept it. It certainly isn’t an exclusionary religion in that sense; quite the opposite.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group see its role as preparing for the imminent end of the world?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, a source of both considerable angst and fascination for me personally.<br />
<br />
<b>Attitudes Toward Outsiders<br />
</b><br />
<i>Outsiders are dangerous to the cult—</i></span><span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"><i>—</i></span><span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"><i>unless they feel an interest in joining—</i></span><span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"><i>—</i></span><span style="font-family: Monaco,Courier New; font-size: small;"><i>because they threaten to disrupt the spell of the cult over its members.<br />
</i><br />
Yeah, there’s definitely truth to this. On the one hand, Mormons are supposed to reach out to outsiders, but on the other hand, there’s a very real danger of being tempted or corrupted by them. I know lots of people, Mormon and otherwise, who aren’t a good influence on me, and I also know some non-Mormons who I think are better Christians that I am and a lot of Mormons are. So you have to judge on an individual basis.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members avoid association with non-members?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, this happens, especially in Utah. Personally, I don’t do this, but it’s more because I get bored with Mormons than because of any higher-minded reason.<br />
<br />
<i>Are virtually all of a member’s close associates also members?<br />
</i><br />
This happens a lot with Utah Mormons. I think many Mormons tend to be somewhat guarded with non-Mormons, at least on some level, even perhaps subconsciously. Mormons are supposed to be best friends with the Lord and their own spouse, so I don’t think we make as many intense friendships as those without a religion might. At least, I remember that my friendships were a lot more important to me during my two irreligious years than at anytime after I got converted; when you’re irreligious, you’ve got no savior except your friends.<br />
<br />
<i>Do the members live together, sequestered from non-members?<br />
</i><br />
I do not like this tendency in Utah. I experienced it growing up in Bountiful from age 10 to 17, and I’m experiencing it now in Provo, much to my dismay. But I’m too old and lacking in ambition to do anything about it now, and besides, my mortgage only has about seven more years, so I’m staying put! Anyway, I do have plenty of non-Mormon and former-Mormon friends at work and online.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members attack the character of critics or those who are not in the group?<br />
</i><br />
Of critics, yes, because they really ARE lacking in character——or spiritual integrity, or SOMETHING——if they think Mormonism is something to fight. I don’t think Mormons typically attack the characters of people simply because they’re not Mormon, though.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members devalue the opinions of outsiders?<br />
</i><br />
To a degree, perhaps. But I think most Mormons can find value in any outside opinion that contains truth and wisdom.<br />
<br />
<i>Are non-members considered less enlightened?<br />
</i><br />
About God’s true, authorized religion, yes. But not necessarily about other important subjects. I think most Mormons could acknowledge that many non-Mormons have more enlightenment than Mormons, in many areas.<br />
<br />
<i>Does the group encourage thinking in us-versus-them terms?<br />
</i><br />
To a degree, but Mormonism also encourages the building of common bridges, if often with the ulterior motive of converting people. I think some “us versus them” is necessary and unavoidable, especially as civilization falls further away from God.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members avoid listening to the perspectives of non-members?<br />
</i><br />
I see it happen regularly, yes. And I perhaps do it myself. I personally don’t really care to hear much about the beliefs of other religions, to tell you the truth, simply because I feel confident my religion is more true than any other religion and religion is just not a topic that interests me much.<br />
<br />
These days, I think I see this problem more related to politics than religion, with Democrats and Republicans unable to really consider each other’s perspectives because they’re too worried about defending their own party lines. I really don’t have much respect for politics or interest in it; I think it’s all just a big clusterf*ck.<br />
<br />
<b>Leaving<br />
</b><br />
<i>Is it difficult to leave?<br />
</i><br />
I know it is for some people. I don’t think it would be for me, because I would likely leave simply out of boredom, not out of anger or offense or collapse of faith, although you never know. Some people go from hot to cold and suffer some resulting shock to their system, but I’m more just lukewarm. I suppose I would feel some pressure from family, but not much, and I’m not a guy who is terribly subject to social pressure, although certainly not completely immune to it. <br />
<br />
I don’t think I’d ever completely leave Mormonism unless my wife wanted to as well, and even then I’m sure I’d continue to believe deep down, while enjoying not having to deal with the religion anymore, which is really almost completely a source of good-for-you tedium to me, much like doing the treadmill. I guess eventually I’d come crawling back with an empty soul or whatever, so I guess I would never really fully leave the religion, so in that sense I suppose it is difficult to ever really leave! (I could pretty easily check out any time I like, but I could never leave.)<br />
<br />
<i>If members try to leave, are they considered rebellious against the will of a higher power or of the leader?<br />
</i><br />
I would say more rebellious against the Lord than anyone else. I would also say that most people who leave are rebelling against the culture and the members in general more than against any particular leader, although I’m sure there are many cases of rebellion against a leader too.<br />
<br />
<i>Are people who leave considered deserters, weak, or evil by members?<br />
</i><br />
Yes, I would say so, and I personally agree. Weak, at a minimum. Oftentimes simply hedonistic. Also sometimes just confused.<br />
<br />
<i>Do members avoid association with onetime members that have left the group?<br />
</i><br />
Many do, yes. I personally enjoy former Mormons in some ways better than Mormons, because they’ve thrown off many of the cultural inhibitions that make Mormons boring. But I don’t really want to be like them, because I believe in the eternal rewards of living Mormonism, and I think without Mormonism I might be in trouble by now with addictions and other worldly problems.<br />
<br />
This was a fun analytical exercise. So yes, Mormonism does still have some features of cultism, even if not overall enough to be labeled an actual cult, if only because the church is now too large and long-lived for that status.</span>Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-21534687591651621642010-06-12T10:48:00.005-06:002010-06-12T20:46:37.674-06:00No Way Around It: Bad Guys Say F-Words<em>Here's a post I wrote for <a href="http://mormonletters.org/">Dawning of a Brighter Day</a>, the blog of the Association for Mormon Letters:</em><br />
<br />
So, I'm working on a Mormon-themed novel with some bad guys in it, one bad guy in particular. I know this isn't a totally new discussion, but right now I'm in the thick of the issue of realistic language. I'm at the point where sometimes I delete the F-words and sometimes I add them back in or substitute "softer" crudities. But the bottom line is that my bad guys say F-words; they just do. And at least one of these guys is a very important point-of-view character who I just don't feel I can sanitize, and plus his use of profanity helps differentiate him from the other main POV character, who is of the same age, gender, and similar background.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
In editing manuscripts for <a href="http://zarahemlabooks.com/">Zarahemla Books</a>, this issue has come up numerous times. I can think of at least three books that originally had F-words in them, but I believe that the authors and I agreed to pull all of these out, by the time the final version was struck (correct me if I'm wrong and anyone remembers reading an F-word in a Zarahemla title). It has been interesting to see authors originally feel that as part of their artistic truth, they had to reflect the way people talk, but as the publication date drew nearer, they sort of wimped out and pulled the F-words. <br />
<br />
I'm one of those authors--in my novel <em><a href="http://zarahemlabooks.com/Kindred-Spirits-ISBN-978-0-9787971-2-6.htm">Kindred Spirits</a></em>, my conflicted Mormon female protagonist originally said some F-words when she was really mad (with good reason), but then I changed them to "effing," which struck me as a funny reflection of her Mormon core that was true to her character: even when extremely angry, "effing" was as far as she could go. At the same time, I was aware that any readers of my novel would likely have fairly Mormon sensibilities, and in that case I didn't think the artistic integrity outweighed the costs of potentially alienating readers. I believe the other authors who purged the F-words felt largely the same way.<br />
<br />
The problem is, there are just so many Mormons--many of my own family members included, perhaps even my wife--who believe that a Mormon NEVER has ANY reason or justification to include a bad word like the F-word, perhaps especially in print that could potentially reach multiple people. But I don't agree with this, of course: Just because a character in my book says the F-word does not mean that I advocate the use of the F-word or intend to start using it routinely in my own actual life. The reason I use it is because that's how people like that character really talk, and to have them avoid profanity or use substitutes seriously undermines the story's credibility, especially when you're writing from the POV. (I'm fine with a pure POV reporting on what the bad guys are saying without quoting them directly, but some stories need an evil POV in them as well, and you just can't whitewash that.)<br />
<br />
Here's, perhaps, some hypocrisy: While I can see having bad characters use the F-word in a story I write, I personally never allow taking of the name of God in vain, because to me that's a clear violation of a commandment, whereas the F-word seems more just like this weird cultural taboo. But I can see where that's a little arbitrary and a person could make an argument that the F-word's connection to the sacred sex act, even though it is more often used simply as a generic intensifier, makes it nearly as offensive as casual or profane use of deific names. At the same time, I don't think readers would sense a lack of realism if bad guys don't take the name of deity in vain, as long as they're using other real bad words instead. I'd MUCH rather have the F-word in my stories than profane use of the G-word or the JC-word.<br />
<br />
One test you hear applied in Mormonism a lot is: "Would you give this to the Savior to read?" or some variation of that. Even with F-words, I honestly think I would, although of course it's impossible to know what I'd really do if I really could personally hand something I wrote to the Savior to read. The reason I imagine I could is because I honestly believe I'm portraying the bad within an overall morally worthwhile story, and making the bad seem real can make the good seem more real, too. However, I wouldn't want my kids to read it until they are mature adults. That's another fallacy I see in Mormonism: depictions or imaginations of R-rated human reality that are not good for kids to read would also not be good for the Savior to read, as if he's some kind of child who can't handle full-bodied reality.<br />
<br />
When I was editor of <em>Irreantum</em>, one time I let through an F-word in some story or essay. A woman wrote and complained that this hard little nugget of reality had "interrupted my rejoicing." For one thing, that's more of a pentecostal or born again thing to say, isn't it? Probably some odd phrase out of the New Testament. And much more importantly, is that the only reason or even the main reason we read literature, to "rejoice"? I think there's quite a bit more to it than that--I think literature helps us face fears and dangers and actual or potential realities and evil itself, perhaps even psychically preparing us to better face such things in our own lives.<br />
<br />
Realistically, here's what I predict will happen: When the manuscript is done, I'll probably send it out to some national agents with the F-words (and other graphic elements) intact. If none of them bite or even if one does but gives up after two years of trying to sell it (hey, it's happened to me before), then I'll have to decide if I want to try marketing it directly to national and regional (non-LDS) publishers myself. If I manage to publish it nationally or non-LDS regionally, my wife will warn her sweet, pure Mormon family members not to read it but will probably still allow me into our bed. If that kind of publication doesn't take place, I don't see any LDS-market options for it even with the F-words taken out, because the LDS market tolerates only such a shallow little zone of actual or imagined reality, and my story probably goes way too far in many areas beyond language. The only option left would be Zarahemla Books, and if I reach that bottom rung on the totem pole, I suppose I'll do a Zarahemla edit and take out many or all of the F-words, and perhaps I can sell 100 copies. But hey, at least that's something!Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-20389205233947450902010-06-08T13:44:00.004-06:002010-06-12T20:47:17.645-06:00Overstock Sale at Zarahemla BooksWould you like to help Zarahemla Books generate some cash flow to publish the next four books in our pipeline?<br />
<br />
We’re overstocked on the following titles, so we're offering some deep discounts. Now would be a great time to stock up for your summer reading, future gift-giving occasions, book club, copies to donate to your local library, etc.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/Angel-Falling-Softly-ISBN-978-0-9787971-6-4.htm">Angel Falling Softly</a>--60% off<br />
Cover price: $15.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $6.38<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/Hooligan-A-Mormon-Boyhood-ISBN-978-0-9787971-5-7.htm">Hooligan</a>--50% off<br />
Cover price: $14.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $7.47<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/Hunting-Gideon-ISBN-978-0-9787971-4-0.htm">Hunting Gideon</a>--80% off<br />
Cover price: $14.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $2.98<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/Kindred-Spirits-ISBN-978-0-9787971-2-6.htm">Kindred Spirits</a>--50% off<br />
Cover price: $15.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $7.97<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/Long-After-Dark-ISBN-978-0-9787971-0-2.htm">Long After Dark</a>--40% off<br />
Cover price: $14.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $8.96<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/On-the-Road-to-Heaven-ISBN-978-0-9787971-3-3.htm">On the Road to Heaven</a>--40% off<br />
Cover price: $16.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $10.17<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/Rift-ISBN-978-0-9787971-8-8.htm">Rift</a>--40% off<br />
Cover price: $16.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $10.17<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/Temples-of-the-Church-of-Jesus-Christ-of-Latter-Day-Saints-978-1592239900.htm">Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a>--40% off<br />
Cover price: $34.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $20.97<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.zarahemlabooks.com/The-Timechart-History-of-Mormonism-ISBN-978-1-903025-40-6.htm">Timechart History of Mormonism</a>--70% off<br />
Cover price: $17.95<br />
OVERSTOCK PRICE: $5.38<br />
<br />
Shipping is free for orders of $25.00 or more, only $3.50 if less than $25.00.<br />
<br />
HELP SPREAD THE WORD: Please share this post with anyone else who might be interested.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-11810565065920962842010-05-30T18:35:00.007-06:002010-06-12T20:47:36.515-06:00More Thoughts on DutcherI've been thinking more about the two recent Dutcher films I saw, "Falling" and "Evil Angel. (I mistakenly called it "Fallen" in earlier posts--sorry about that; I guess I was focused on the idea of Dutcher as a "fallen angel" from Mormonism.) Although I didn't get much online response to my earlier review and subsequent discussion, I did receive several private e-mails of support from people who, for some reason, did not want to speak out negatively or unsupportively about Dutcher. So I'd like to do a little more typing on this topic, with the acknowledgment that my expressions may not be 100% free of judgmentality, hypocrisy, and other flaws. <strong>WARNING: My following discussion has plot spoilers for both films.</strong><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
First, here's why I liked "Falling." Hearing about it in advance, I thought it was going to be a melodramatic drag. But when I watched the movie, I found myself thoroughly absorbed in the story, the acting, and even the way it was shot, with the lighting and the sense of the gritty side of L.A. (I don't remember ever seeing L.A. caught on film as realistically as Dutcher does it, in both "Falling" and "States of Grace.) While I hear complaints about Dutcher's acting, I'm one who by and large enjoys him on the screen, particularly in "Falling," which I think is his best performance ever. I think complaining about his acting is a little like complaining about the quality of someone's self-published book; in essence, Dutcher self-publishes his own acting, which for many is cause for undue skepticism.<br />
<br />
Anyway, here's how I read "Falling," which is probably not how Dutcher intended it. You have these people who've decided to give themselves over to worldly Hollywood and do things they know are ethically and morally suspect, in the form of filming violent crimes and accidents instead of helping the victims and in the form of doing nudity in a film. It was very clear to me in the way these things are presented that the storyteller knows they are wrong and so do the characters, and I found this tension exquisite. The movie then ends in total tragedy, which I read as the natural consequences of the characters' decisions. God appeared to have abandoned them, but from my Mormon standpoint, that was obviously because they had first abandoned God. I found the very bloody ending a little over the top--Dutcher does veer into melodrama fairly often in his films--but overall I found the movie very engaging, thought-provoking, and satisfying, even though the screening I attended was plagued with distracting technical troubles.<br />
<br />
Then you have "Evil Angel," in which Dutcher does NOT show any signs of understanding anything deep or real or important. In "Falling," you had a character giving up her body to Hollywood, and you feel bad for her and hateful toward the people who are using her. Then in "Evil Angel," you have Dutcher doing exactly what the sleazy Hollywood guys did in "Falling": exploiting women and their bodies and showing tons of flesh purely for sensationalistic reasons. In "Falling," a character cradles his dead wife and yells out "F--- you" to the heavens. You really feel for him, although you know that his lack of wise choices got him where he is. By making "Evil Angel," Dutcher is pretty much doing the same thing as the "Falling" character did: giving a big F-U to God. But we don't know why. For me, observing Dutcher's public career and life is like watching any other drama, and there's a big plot point missing as to why he turned into this "Evil Angel" director.<br />
<br />
In "Evil Angel," evil is all powerful, and religion is weak, with no sign of protection or anything from God. Lilith is able to run rampant and do whatever the hell she wants--even if you manage to kill the body she's in, she just hops to another body and continues her rampage. There's no sense of anyone opposing her, beyond a few pitiful human attempts. There are some "good," supposedly sympathetic characters in the movie, but they are very weak. One ends up with his head in a pot of tomato soup, and the other escapes Lilith's wrath for reasons I'm not entirely clear about, but he isn't really a very strong character, more of an observer to whom women seem to happen. I really don't know why Lilith spares him.<br />
<br />
(I have to admit, I'm not that great at following the plots of movies and plays, and I'm getting worse as I grow older, so if I'm missing logical connections that would explain some of this, let me know. I hate getting lost in movies, though. I even got lost in the recent "Iron Man 2"--I had little or no idea what Samuel Jackson was doing in the movie or what his organization was about or how/why Tony Stark was apparently on some kind of house arrest at some point. Someone told me, "Oh, they're just setting up 'Avengers'," but for me it was a real botch in story development, not making that more clear. I hate it when movies don't have great stories, and so many movies today don't, possibly because filmmakers want you to view the movies over and over again to figure them out. But to me, if I can't fully appreciate and enjoy and understand a movie on the first viewing, I'm not going to spend more time on it when there are so many other movies I want to see.)<br />
<br />
In "Evil Angel," Lilith is pretty much omniscient and omnipotent, as far as I remember. In a plot development I didn't fully understand, the main protagonist, an EMT, falls in love with a woman who he first meets, I think, when she is almost dead. I do not remember if this woman is possessed by Lilith or what--I was confused. Somehow he forms this mystical bond with her that I really don't get--for me, this is one of the weakest logical links in this whole story. Then later on Lilith somehow knows all about this, and after the protagonist's bad wife dies, Lilith possesses the wife's body but pretends that her spirit belongs to that girl who the protagonist loves. How the heck did Lilith know and do all this? Did she somehow trick the EMT into falling in love with her back when she was in the first girl's body, and if so how and why? Again, no one can or does really oppose Lilith.<br />
<br />
For these reasons and others, the film's first 10-15 minutes were rather hard to follow and sort out, at least for me. The opening credits linger for several minutes on a woman writhing and undressing herself in a rather explicit way, but this turns out to have no connection to the movie that I can remember, except for a cheap scare at the end, and then we're thrown into an action scene in which a guy keeps seeing Lilith's demonic face on several different women, which doesn't really make sense when you later learn that Lilith possesses only one person at a time. (Come to think of it, this film is pretty misogynistic too, with all women having the potential to transform into Lilith-bitches. I admit for a day or two after the movie, I worried that women around me might suddenly start sporting Lilith's horrible face, so I guess the movie was somewhat effective on that level.)<br />
<br />
I agree with one of my friends who observed that one big missed opportunity is the character that Dutcher plays himself. He plays this former-EMT crackpot who keeps guard dogs and is paranoid about everything, and he apparently has techniques for dealing with supernatural threats. In reality, this character is a total mockery of religion, because his ideas don't even work--he's just a laughable goofball. Dutcher could have used this character to show some real opposition to Lilith, to give some insight into those who use godly means to oppose evil. But Dutcher doesn't allow any room for God or true religion in his film, except a weak priest whose only role I can remember is to provide info on the Lilith legend. For a film this cynical and irreverent and unfaithful to come from a guy who used to know how to explore a realistic spiritual dilemma is just so disappointing. I'm not at all opposed to an R-rated horror film based on the Lilith legend, but jeez, why does it have to be so one-sided toward evil and so irredeemably pandering and sensationalistic? Now we're getting into the realm of personal preference, but I would have liked to have seen this film be taken a lot more seriously, something more in the mode of "The Exorcist" or "Poltergeist." This horror-humor thing doesn't usually work for me personally, except maybe with zombies (I loved "Shawn of the Dead," didn't like "Zombieland" as much).<br />
<br />
Rather than being some remote, unknowable Oz ensconced in the emerald city of Hollywood, Dutcher is a real, down-to-earth person who walks among us here in Podunk, Utah, and makes his human dilemmas and disappointments publicly known, with frankness and integrity that I often admire. You can spot him at the local malls, and he gives small workshops at places like Sunstone. So having seen a fair bit of Dutcher the real guy without becoming personally acquainted with him, it's tempting to psychoanalyze this public character and try to figure out what his big beef is. He's talked about his troubled upbringing, so maybe he's still carrying a lot of baggage from that and feels pissed off that God allows so much evil and suffering in this world, as if Dutcher never understood or has forgotten that God allows both good and evil during mortality in order to test us. Just because evil often gets the upper hand in this world doesn't mean good and God aren't still part of the equation, and of course we know that God will eventually shut down this testing situation and put evil in its place. In the meantime, it's up to God's children to try to keep good in the dominant position rather than let evil grow stronger in any form. Mormons know that in these last days evil will grow so strong that it would completely overwhelm and destroy the world, were it not for the Second Coming. With "Evil Angel," Dutcher is definitely feeding the evil side of the equation with mindless, graphic, carnal entertainment that is not edifying in the slightest. It's just another foul entertainment that is preparing and conditioning people to increase this era's growing degradation, which will eventually help lead to the fall of our civilization.<br />
<br />
If you judge by Dutcher's departure from the LDS Church followed by "Evil Angel," he apparently now has this idea that evil is the only supernatural power there is and God is absent and people are just on their own--or more likely, he's now agnostic/atheist about supernatural things altogether and therefore sees no harm in glorifying the evil side. Yeah, "Evil Angel" was supposedly done all in good fun, but in my opinion you simply can't believe in God/religion and still make a movie like that. I really don't get what went wrong with Dutcher. From the time he emerged into the Mormon consciousness in about 2000, apparently the only thing that hasn't gone well for him is that his post-"God's Army" movies haven't been embraced by Mormons. (There was that fire at his office, but judging by the new office, I think he may have come out ahead on that one.) To me, he seems like he leads a charmed life. He apparently has a wonderful wife and kids, and I haven't heard anything about any of his immediate family members getting cancer or undergoing some other great trial. Judging by his Facebook updates, he gets to travel the world to go to film festivals. I've been to his new office, a beautiful historic house in Provo equipped with the latest film-editing technology. I heard he has a nice house in Mapleton, and he obviously eats and drinks well.<br />
<br />
So with such an apparently blessed life, what made him turn away from God and do this big celebration of evil called "Evil Angel"? He's like the opposite of Job. I can only guess that it's artistic pride, the idea that he should be rich and famous for his work. Since the Mormons didn't give that to him, he's now giving the bird to the whole religion/God thing and turning back to Hollywood like a dog to its vomit, and Hollywood may indeed give him fame and riches in return for making a degraded movie like "Evil Angel," although I don't think the film is quite good enough to find any real mainstream success. Dutcher is apparently simply caught up in today's secularism, atheism/agnosticism, carnality, etc. I don't know how much of that is true, if any, but that's how it comes across to me, from what I know based on Dutcher's public persona and story over the past decade. <br />
<br />
If there's some better explanation, I'd like to hear Dutcher defend his pathway and his choices sometime. Yeah, he left Mormonism and Mormon filmmaking, but for what? The fact that "Evil Angel" was his first film out of the chute post-Mormonism tells me everything I need to know, as far as I can see at this point. Is this rock-bottom for him and he climbs back out of the pit from here, or is this the new Dutcher? Perhaps my opinion will change as his story and his career take different turns in the future and more worthwhile movies come along, but for now, talk about a cautionary tale!Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-27850431840288700952010-05-29T17:27:00.007-06:002010-06-12T20:47:53.984-06:00My Wife Has Joined a CultSo, my wife and I haven’t had any squabbles in several years. Seriously, we get along that well.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, we have now declared the fridge a battle zone. Yes, I said the fridge.<br />
<br />
Why? Because my wife has joined this weird fruit-and-vegetable cult.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Saturday is their Sabbath. Every week, she disappears early in the morning to go participate in the cult’s pagan rites. I don’t know exactly what they do—and I don’t think I <em>want</em> to know—but she comes home with some of the weirdest-assed stuff. I’m talking great big bulbous vegetable types of things with hairy-looking roots at the bottom and stalks busting out everywhere.<br />
<br />
Half the time, I don’t think she even knows what it is or where it came from. But she loves to fondle this stuff under running water, lovingly dice or chop it up, and call her fellow cult members to talk about what it might be and how to cook it.<br />
<br />
So how does the fridge come into this? Well, she brings home a whole laundry basket full of stuff, and most of it is not bagged or anything, just flopping around free in the wind like my nudist friend’s junk must. And then she crams all this stuff into our fridge.<br />
<br />
Then along comes me, just looking for a nice little O’Doul’s or pudding or whatever, and I open the door to see this total <em>jungle</em>. Seriously, green-leafed stuff is jammed all along the tops of the milk and into every nook and cranny. If I want to get something out, there’s no way I can find it unless I unload the whole fridge so I can actually see what's in it. It’s a major half-hour project just to extract a jar of mayo. Occasionally, when I try to just wedge and wiggle my hand inside the fridge to pull something out, the whole avalanche comes piling down on top of me.<br />
<br />
So I’ve been carping about this a little, and the other day my wife got sick of it and started pulling stuff that I like out of the fridge and telling Austin to go throw it away. It was a lot of fun and games! You should have seen the look on Austin’s face.<br />
<br />
Now, I admit I like a lot of this green stuff, but I think the time has come to get a new fridge and move this old fridge down into the garage, where my wife can turn it into a permanent upright altar to hold all this weird produce she now worships. I don't even know for sure if she's still Mormon anymore.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11513909.post-65188095177410953422010-05-25T18:36:00.004-06:002010-06-12T20:48:37.229-06:00Debate on Dutcher<span style="font-style: italic;">Here's an e-mail I sent out on the nearly defunct AML-List. The parts in angle brackets were responses to my original review by D. Michael Martindale, followed by my new responses:</span><br />
<br />
> Dutcher's Mormonness or lack thereof is not an issue in critiquing the<br />
> film. Many former Dutcher fans now retroactively criticize even<br />
> Dutcher's Mormon films, films many of them once liked, because Dutcher<br />
> "betrayed" them. As if it's any person's responsibility to subjugate his<br />
> spiritual life to the desires of other people.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Well, it's a valid issue for my personal critique, if I want it to be. But I don't like the idea of people revising their views of his earlier films because of subsequent events.<br />
<br />
> It's extremely offensive to call anyone a "fallen angel" simply because<br />
> they stopped believing in a religion that was taught them in their<br />
> youth. In spite of the rather haughty attitude of many Mormons toward<br />
> the alleged proof of the exclusive rightness of their religion, there<br />
> are lots of reasons to question the validity of Mormonism. It doesn't<br />
> require sin or a loss of the spirit or Satanic deception to stop<br />
> believing in it. It takes nothing more than a heavy dose of objective<br />
> thinking to see the holes.<br />
<br />
Yeah, that's all fine to say from your perspective. But from my basically believing Mormon perspective, he's still definitely a fallen angel. In my opinion, your term "objective thinking" can also mean "over-reliance on human intellect" and "lacking the humility to exercise faith."<br />
<br />
> All of this is extreme hyperbole. "Very hard R" is simply not true.<br />
> Adding "in a most gratuitous, worthless way" only adds insult to injury.<br />
> Neither of these phrases come close to accuracy.<br />
<br />
I stand by my "very hard R" statement as an objective observation based on the movies I've seen, but no doubt I've been missing some films that reflect the hardest possible R's in today's society, perhaps such as the "Saw" and "Hostel" movies. And I'm a guy who really likes Tarentino and Coen brothers movies, etc. But my statement "in a most gratuitous, worthless way" is certainly more subjective, I acknowledge, not something I would claim to be "accurate" by any standards except Mormon.<br />
<br />
> More than anything, "Evil Angel" was a typical horror film with a new<br />
> twist added--the Lilith myth. Chris Bigelow speaks as if there are lots<br />
> of horror films that have substance to them. I'm at a loss to think of many.<br />
<br />
I admit, I don't see much horror, mainly because I don't enjoy being scared. "The Ring" really freaked me out, for instance. But it was certainly a satisfying story, whereas the Lilith aspect of Dutcher's movie, as well as several other aspects, were simply not as satisfying to me on the story level. Some aspects of the story were too obvious or contrived, and others just didn't connect the dots enough. I don't always have to have deep substance in a movie, but to be satisfied I need really compelling internal logic and consistency and unity in the story, which the Dutcher film lacked (as so many films do).<br />
<br />
> Which pretty much says it all about Chris' objection to the film. It<br />
> isn't the film--it's that old "Evil Hollywood" bugaboo. It's that great<br />
> (contrived) battle between good and evil that Mormons and other<br />
> Christians love to congratulate themselves on. "Perverse" and<br />
> "pandering" reveal what I think is the true motive behind the critique.<br />
> These are negative, emotionally charged words more appropriate to<br />
> demagoguery than a serious artistic critique. The description above<br />
> could just as easily apply to most every other horror film made.<br />
<br />
Well, I certainly do believe that many, probably most, aspects of Hollywood are influenced by real evil powers more than godly powers. I enjoy a lot of what Hollywood puts out, but I'm not proud of doing so, from the perspective of preparing for post-mortal life and eternity. I think Hollywood has clearly shown signs of decline that mirror the civilization's decline. Anyway, mine is not really a "serious artistic critique" so much as a "personal response from a Mormon perspective."<br />
<br />
> It can't be that Chris dislikes "Evil Angel." It has to be that Chris<br />
> doesn't like horror films. Which he's welcome to dislike. But don't<br />
> blame Dutcher's film on Mormon apostasy when it was only conforming to<br />
> the tropes of the genre.<br />
<br />
I'm sure Dutcher's film is fine as horror, but yeah, I don't really like horror films of this type. In my Mormon critique, though, it's obvious to me that one main motivation for Dutcher ditching Mormonism is so he could get behind this movie, which I don't respect. Again, my commentary is a personal response from a Mormon perspective and from the perspective of Dutcher's earlier career as a Mormon filmmaker.<br />
<br />
> Which brings me to the real problem with post-Mormon Dutcher. One film<br />
> is a rather tiny sampling to say anything definitive, and Dutcher<br />
> admitted from the beginning that "Evil Angel" was a departure from his<br />
> usual approach to film--it was purely for the fun of it. But Dutcher<br />
> always stood out as a filmmaker precisely because he was Mormon.<br />
<br />
Yes, he hasn't tried to hoodwink anyone, I agree. But when someone leaves Mormonism, they lose interest to me because what really interests me in a Mormon-connected artist is the conflict between Mormonism and the world and trying to create something new in the midst of that conflict. I no longer view Dutcher as someone who can adequately accommodate the Mormon side of that conflict, so based on the fact that he left Mormonism and made "Evil Angels," now he's really just another director who doesn't have anything distinctive to offer me, unless and until he can address both Mormonism and the world again in a way that engages me, or unless he becomes as good a director as a Tarantino or a Coen brother.<br />
<br />
> Knowing what I know about Chris, I can understand why he's disappointed<br />
> in Dutcher and LaBute. I imagine these two artists reflected Chris' own<br />
> self-proclaimed lifelong effort to consolidate his belief in Mormon<br />
> doctrine with his detestation of Mormon culture. It's a struggle I'm<br />
> familiar with--reconciling doctrine with my observation of reality.<br />
> After years of effort, these two artists reached their verdict: it can't<br />
> be consolidated. Not in a way that allows them to both live with<br />
> integrity AND remain in good standing with the judgmental community of<br />
> Mormons who figure because you're a member, they own you. It's pure sour<br />
> grapes to start calling them fallen angels because of that. They simply<br />
> explored the issue and made their decision. As they have every right to<br />
> do. Even if it does disappoint fans who thought they owned them.<br />
<br />
From the Mormon perspective, the one I still hold, they are fallen angels who have followed a similar trajectory as the original fallen angel, on a smaller scale. Mormonism requires a great deal of conformity as a spiritual discipline, and while I personally chafe against it a lot on many levels, I have to begrudgingly tolerate it because I believe in the underlying principles and theology, including the definition of Zion as being those who are one in heart and mind, with God. So yeah, mainstream Mormons do a lot of judging of things that threaten that goal, and they miss out on a lot of worldly fun, but maybe they're right in the end, mostly. Personally, I do wish I could either commit to worldliness or Mormonism, and part of me respects people like Dutcher for taking a strong stand, even if I know it's the wrong one. (Yes, I do KNOW it is, absolutely; same with yours that you've been public about, D. Mike. None of you guys ever replace it with anything worthwhile except becoming laws and religions and cultures unto yourselves, mingled with worldly attitudes and philosophies. Good luck with that.)<br />
<br />
> I imagine this is very disappointing to Chris, who may have been hoping<br />
> Dutcher and LaBute would show him the way for his own consolidation. But<br />
> that hardly means these two artists sold their souls for their art. As<br />
> someone who's in a similar position to them, I see it as saving my soul<br />
> instead of capitulating to the intrusive demands of a community that I<br />
> can no longer in good conscience agree with. I see it as an act of<br />
> integrity, not falling.<br />
<br />
I see it as being unable to recognize and live a higher law and to perceive and deal with spiritual reality; instead, it's falling into mere worldliness, following one's own impulses and the baser impulses of the civilization rather than really trying to find out what God wants one to do. There is no way anyone could ever convince me that God wants people to jettison Mormonism and go their own way, because NOT ONCE HAVE I EVER SEEN A FORMER MORMON COME UP WITH A GOOD REASON AND RATIONALE FOR WHY THEY'RE ON THIS EARTH, WHAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING, AND WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS. And by putting out a very carnal, worldly, ungodly movie like "Evil Angel," now Dutcher has shown me very clearly that he's got nuthin'.<br />
<br />
> But that's up to him. His only obligation is to his own artistic<br />
> integrity. I don't own him.<br />
<br />
Sure, he's got his free agency, like we all do. But God and the Lord don't own him either, anymore, and my knowledge is that Satan is real and owns those who aren't owned by God, at least on some levels. Humans may have the illusion that they own themselves, but in a lot of ways they really don't. Sorry, but from my own perspective, I see any person who puts out something like "Evil Angel" as simply responding to or being driven by mostly evil impulses counter to God's priorities and purposes. The movie is its own evidence of that, and it's sobering to see someone who should know better stoop so low--I like to see Mormons experiment artistically, and I can enjoy all kinds of worldly elements in juxtaposition to story elements with real eternal value and significance, but I know non-worthwhile crap when I see it. Didn't "Girl Crazy" teach Dutcher anything? This is "Girl Crazy" x 10, as far as tastelessness and lack of redeeming qualities of any kind. This is Dutcher throwing some kind of tantrum or something over not getting his way with Mormon film (which I think he should have gotten, by the way).<br />
<br />
Come on, this is all just shooting fish in a barrel from a Mormon perspective, and if you don't have a Mormon perspective, then there's not really much conversation to be had, is there? We speak a different language. It all boils down to worldview: Are humans meant to be the ultimate authority in their own lives and do whatever the fookin' hell they want, or are they meant to seek out God as their authority and do what he wants? From this movie, it's obvious that Dutcher now believes the former, as well as anyone else who leaves Mormonism, in my opinion.<br />
<br />
It was good to see you at the screening, D. Mike! We should have had dinner beforehand.Christopher Bigelowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417741940958662788noreply@blogger.com0