Sound familiar? I find myself up against this kind of thinking a lot lately. I’ve come to call it “resistance.” Because that’s really all it is—resisting the very truth of some aspect of my reality. I don’t like it. I wish it weren’t there, and so I butt myself up against it. The visual of it for me is of something like a large pane of glass, against which I find myself pressed, not unlike those videos you see of those people at the front of the crowds who have been waiting outside a Wal-Mart or some such glass-doored uberbox anxiously awaiting the holiday-inspired early-bird special whose bargain-devoted punctuality earns them the reward of a face-full of glass as the throng begins to press in anticipation.

The neat thing about glass is that it shatters. That’s actually how the image came to me. I’ve gotten pretty caught up in this kind of resistance on a few occasions recently, and on a couple of them, the resistance grew stronger and stronger and stronger until *crash* it just broke. Funny how my visual implies that the resistance is something external to myself, but I totally know that it’s all me. I put it up, in my own way. The glass is clear, of course, and so I can see where I could go if it weren’t there, but still I find myself sticking it there, again and again.

There are inconvenient and even uncomfortable truths in our lives, whether we like it or not. Sometimes there are even devastating and debilitating realities to be dealt with. We may not want them, and, if it were up to us, we certainly wouldn’t choose to have them there, but they come anyway. We can so easily get lost in the indignance of feeling that it’s not fair, that whatever-it-is just should not be. We can waste time and tears and dump milligrams upon milligrams of unnecessary cortisol into our bloodstreams chasing our tails with such ‘shoulds,’ pushing ourselves harder and harder up against our panes, locked in a semi-masochistic ego-battle with reality. In the end, though, reality usually wins, as it is wont to do, and all we’ve done is seize ourselves up tighter and tighter and tighter until in one tearingly, tearfully painful, spasmodic shattering we finally burn out and let it go, grudgingly accept the state of things, and deal with it.

With the glass gone, the view hasn’t changed, but now we’re free to move forward on into and through the whatever-it-is to the whatever-lies-beyond. Only now, we’re heading along, already run-down and in a defeated state of mind. We have to ask ourselves if this is the best state to be in when there’s an elephant in the living room or a crisis to be dealt with. With decisions to be made and consequences to be weighed, we want to be clear-headed, centered, and in possession of hearty reserves of energy and emotional resources to see us through.

Truth is the answer, as it is in so many things. What has happened has happened, and what is is. Like the old serenity prayer: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” If you ask me, the serenity and the acceptance are a little like the chicken and the egg. We have to find a sliver of serenity in order to make the acceptance, but having done so, we open ourselves to the abundantly peaceful wave of serenity that inevitably engulfs us in the wake of true acceptance, of dissolving the pane instead of shattering it.

In that state of acceptance, we are in a position to take all the time, energy, and feeling that we would have spent on fussing about it into dealing with it in the way that is kindest and healthiest for ourselves and those around us.

That’s what I want to do, and so, whenever I feel the cold, flat caress of that pane begin to creep in, I’ll just close my eyes, breathe in, make a quick, quiet reality check, breathe out, and release it. I may not be able to change the unpleasant reality before me, but I can choose to open myself to it so that I can do my best with it, whatever-it-may-be.

That could sound really egotistical, but for the fact that you clicked on the link that brought you here.

It’s ok, I’ve been blogging long enough to know not to take it too seriously.

So what? No big. You want to know what I’m thinking.

Well, really, I do, too.

This was once a place for me to be mentally naked and emotionally raw—a glimpse into my own head, for me and whoever else was feeling voyeuristic enough to want to look. Then, somewhere along the line it became a pulpit, and ‘duty’ adulterated and diverted personal honesty. Truth is what it’s about. Making sense of it all. Sure, in the end, a lot of it is just storytelling, but there’s truth in the telling. Rather, there’s often very telling truth in the stories. At least, I hope there is. Ay, there’s the rub.

I tell you now, my judge and jurors, my intentions couldn’t have been purer, whether I was opening my head and heart or just my big mouth. Done is done. I did what I did, and now I’m doing what I’m doing. I offer my sincere apologies for your discomfort to those of you for whom this will be alienating. It’s not the first time the light has shifted and illuminated another facet, and it certainly won’t be the last. I am not static. Neither are you, y’know? At least I hope you’re not. Well, really, that’s not really possible. I just hope that you don’t labor under the misassumption that you are, as I sometimes do. Every day, every moment we are different than we were in the one before. Always.

New antitheses are constantly invading and altering our syntheses and subsequent theses, whether they be in the form of blog posts or the sound of a dog barking at a crow. Even the breath you just took just now changed you, as did reading this sentence, not to mention your dreams last night, or the last conversation you had. Truly. You are changing, and so am I.

Familiarity breeds comfort; we’re funny creatures that way. We’d best become familiar and comfortable with the flux, for it never ends. To be lithely fluid and adaptable, that is the only true comfort-state. Change is the only constant, and we’d best learn to flow with it, lest in our obstinacy we subject ourselves to the inevitable buffeting that comes from denying the flow.

Change is coming.

Change is here.

Change has always been.

Let’s embrace it.

I have no internet conection at home right now beyond my iPhone, and so this’ll be sketchy at best at first, but I have enough words in my head to put the Library of Congress to shame. It’s time to start outsourcing some of the load again.

Right now, though, it is 12:30 a.m. and I have no clear intention about which to write and am foggy enough so as to be unlikely to come up with one in the next 10-15 seconds, and so I leave you with just a little…

Coming Soon
Naiahdot 3.0

Though I have not chronicled it here, I have gone on growing and changing in the ensuing textual silence. A whole new chapter has begun in my life–more like a whole new volume after many new chapters have come and gone–one so new and so different as to be utterly incongruous with any old thread that I might pick up from here. It is a happy new chapter, the happiest of my adult life–well, really, of my life, period. So, you needn’t worry about my signing off. I am on to sweet new horizons.

My sincere thanks for all that I received from having done this-my own increase in personal clarity as well as the support and feedback that so many people have given me over the years through this medium. I’m grateful for all the doors that were opened to me through my efforts here, even if I never did quite step through many of them.

I have no desire to be any kind of a public figure, a writer or a blogger or anything else, as I fade into my life of delicious ordinariness–filled with love and art and beauty and growth.

Wish me luck, and please know that I sincerely wish you well.

As the subtitle of this site states, I write here to make sense of it all, to process all the various theses, antitheses, and yes, even my own varying syntheses as they flow through my life and mind. Sometimes I write to process. Sometimes I write to proselytize. Sometimes I write to persuade. Even then, though, when I think I have scrap of understanding that I wish to share, in the process of writing, that God-given ephemeral abstract pursuit of condensing the myriad sensations of existence into linear text, even then I am further cementing the order of my thoughts as I experience their verbalization.

I could not begin to make sense of the last several months of my life if I had two research assistants, a team of experts, and the Oracle of Delphi to help me.

I live in a small town. I like living in my small town. I don’t like leaving my small town. In fact, as a rule, I just don’t unless I have to. Well, last summer, I packed up and left town for quite a while and had what was safely one of the richest life experiences of my 30-odd years. I was blessed, together with my children, to get to spend a month of our summer living with some of the displaced FLDS mothers and children down in Texas. Yes, I went all the way to Texas. Yes, I went to stay with the FLDS in Texas. What a priceless cross-cultural experience!

You see, I had been very moved by both what I had seen of their plight in regard to the YFZ Raid of 2008, as well as what I had managed to learn of their lifestyle previous to it. I wished publicly that I could live among them and learn from them, and that wish was granted. I learned more there than I could even begin to quantify.

That one month is still being processed some six months later. (Has it really been that long?!?! I hadn’t counted until now.) Sure, I said above that sometimes I write to process, but there’s a fair level of pre-writing processing that has to take place before I can even begin to piece together a sentence, and, being a busy mother, I really don’t have anything close to the time to relax and peacefully ponder a body of experience of such depth and breadth and height. I have, at times, impatiently begged for understanding, but I was met with nothing but a quiet admonition to patience. And so, I wait. If He meant for me to have it, I would have it by now, but I don’t, and I’m ok with that.

I, myself, wait rather patiently on the Lord these days. He has kept me plenty busy with volumes more life experience in arenas much closer to home, and so, like a lovingly distracted and redirected toddler, I find myself not even thinking much about the lack of recent posts on my blog. All my concerns about yesterday, and all my fears about tomorrow are remedied by living today as best I can (a spectacular truth that I picked up from my FLDS friends), and so I find myself staying in the moment. So much so that, apparently, six months have gone by before I could even stop to reckon them up on my fingers. All through this time, though, I have been receiving such kind and sweet encouragement to begin writing again, from such different quarters of my life, that I felt I needed to offer some explanation for my silence.

So, there you have it. I’ve been blessed with one of the most priceless experiences of my mortal sojourn, but without the corresponding capstone of understanding. If anything, I’ve learned how little I know, especially when I think I know something (and really that train of thought can get me chasing my tail so long I’ll never write another public word again if I don’t break it off). Perhaps I will need to just set that all aside, and accept that, contrary to what seems like the obvious thing to do with such an exceptional life experience, I may need to just set it on the shelf, and go on writing without having actually made sense of it all.

I do like writing. I love words. Next to flowers, they’re one of my favorite aspects of this world the Lord has given us. Mostly, though, I like the thinking and the moments of clarity and understanding that come along as connections are made and truths are realized, but really, in the end, like flowers, such things are gifts, and it’s not up to me whether I am to be a receiver or not, and so I just wait and cheerfully tend to my work elsewhere.

Which one is my true home? Ohio was, and in a way still is home, with family and memories. Yet Washington, too, is home, as well, with the roots that we have put down here. They say that home is where the heart is, but in that moment, I honestly could not have told you where my heart was.

As we were driving, I telephoned my father to let him know that we had arrived safely and to ask his opinion of my quandary. He mentioned that I’m just very adaptable, and I agreed, saying that wherever I am, I am with my whole heart.

After we hung up, I was still turning the idea over of where my true home was. What makes someplace home? Is it just where the heart is? Or, is it more empirical than that? Which counts more, where I was born, or where I live now? Then, suddenly, it hit me, and I couldn’t help but smile at the irony. It’s funny, but it’s neither Ohio, nor Washington.

I was born there, long, long ago (way longer than my 32 mortal years), and whenever I stop to think about it, my heart is really and truly there. Caught up in day-to-day living, though, it can be easy to forget. Our true home, you see, is nowhere on this earth.

While here, though, our truest home is the place (both on the planet and in our hearts) that brings us closest to that celestial abode.

It’s up to each of us to find the earthly home that will help us make it back to the home that counts. I can’t help but ask myself if that’s Ohio, or Washington, or somewhere else entirely…

We know from the scriptures that unto whom more is given more is required. As we are each given greater light and truth, we are also given accountability for what we do with it. In a worldy metaphor, the longer we play the game, the higher the stakes become.

Buddhist philosophy tells us that attachment and expectation are the source of all suffering. (Well, they teach that all life is suffering, but that attachment and expectation are some of the greatest sources of it and that peace can only be attained by releasing them.) I see a gospel parallel in that. The temptations of worldly attachments and expectations can act as obstacles to our living in full harmony with the light and truth that we have received.

As the level of sacrifice required of us rises commensurate with the knowledge that we are given, some of the attachments that we are required to release can seem like too much. This can be a breaking point for some. Called like Abraham to deliver their own Isaac, whatever it may be, they find themselves approaching the altar, only to find that they think the weight of their offering is too heavy and they are unable to take the last few steps to lay it before the Lord. I, myself, have done as much, and even still do on almost a daily basis.

I am finding again and again now, though, that after one finds the willingness to shoulder even the heaviest burdens through those last few crushing steps, when the offering hits the altar a most beautiful truth is revealed–that those sacrificices, those offerings that were so heavy, those obstacles that were so insurmountable, being of the realm of moth and dust, are rendered weightless, revealed for the temporal nothingness that they are. I find that I think I can’t until I do, and then I see that I did and know that I could and even that I can again.

The wordly weight is nothing but illusion.

We must not be dissuaded.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, at the request of Senator Harry Reid, is going to convene this week for a hearing entitled “Crimes Associated with Polygamy: The Need for a Coordinated State and Federal Response”, coming up July 24, 2008. This is an entirely speculative hearing, and the only people called to testify are outspoken critics of the FLDS people. It does not matter how you feel about polygamy or the FLDS; what matters is that you oppose government targeting like this.

Just because they are a little different from mainstream culture doesn’t mean that they are not protected by the Constitution.

Aren’t we all a little different in our own ways?

If we allow this for some of us; it’s only a matter of time before it’s any of us.

The roster of people called to testify before the committee is made up entirely of people with a vested interest in the vilification of the FLDS poeple because of their books to sell and foundations to fund, and contains absolutely no members of the actual community being targeted or anyone friendly to them.

Realize that all the accusations and allegations made against them in terms of their religion being a danger to society were more than disproven in the April raid on the YFZ Ranch. Even the supposed ‘evidence’ of a ‘pervasive pattern of abuse’ was never produced (and thus the seized children were returned on order of the Appeals Court and the TX State Supreme Court).

If you wish to know a little more about the FLDS that’s not from the unfortunately tainted bias inherent in almost all media representations, please see Truth Will Prevail. Just about anything morally appalling that you may have heard about these people is addressed in an article on that site.

Here’s the information on the petition (my response is below):

www.voicesforthechildren.org

The above link will take you to the website for the Letter to Congress.

If you have a site, please link to it.

If not, we ask our friends here, to send the link to all the people in their address book.

We need this Letter distributed throughout the Country today (July 20, 2008), please do what you can to give the children a voice in their future and some security in practicing their religion.

Write me if you have any questions, and if you have a listing of people you want to receive this letter, either in the government or in the media, please let me know and I will see that it is added to the list.

Many thanks,

Bill Medvecky wjm2644 (at) aol (dot) com

www.voicesforthechildren.org

Here’s what I had to say when I signed it:

“Naiah”
Such an inquiry as is planned is utterly unnecessary at best and utterly un-American or even anti-American at worst.

So much wrong has already been perpetrated on this score, to the tune of over M$20 of taxpayer money and untold damage to hundreds of children. This type of targeting of a religious group is absolutely unacceptable by traditional American values.

There is no danger in the Constitutionally-granted free exercise of this faith or in its culture.

The one shred of good to come from the raid in Texas is that the outlandish claims and allegations made against these people, in terms of stockpiles of weapons, mass graves, threat of insurrection or mass suicide, and the like, have all been revealed for the baseless fabrications that they are.

We need not sink anymore resources into a tedious, invasive, scrutiny of the FLDS people.

Even if such scrutiny is deemed necessary, it simply cannot be achieved by hearing the testimonies of nothing but their most vocal detractors. A true study of the FLDS people absolutely MUST include testimony from some of the FLDS people, as well as their allies and those who deal with them regularly and can speak to their character.

Please make your voice heard for the children, too.

These people, according to their own admission, have been schooled for a year or more by lying apostates from our society. This is akin to taking the testimony of an ex-wife who has left her husband and had a bitter divorce to find out what his character is like without using any other source of information.

I would like to take this metaphor a step further.

I am under the impression that, in the field of psychology, it is commonly accepted that perpetrators of abuse need the abused to be at fault, need them to have ‘deserved it.’ If it were not so, then their abusive actions become unconscionable. Unable to cope with that unconscionable truth, they convince themselves, and all too often their victims as well, that the responsibility rests with them.

In the state’s ‘informants’ we have a body of people who have, for their own reasons, turned against their faith. Since doing so, they have written books, filed lawsuits, engaged in slanderous media circuses, broken up families, and, through their self-advocacy, inflicted untold harm on hundreds of children.

Some of these ex-members have truly suffered at the hands of certain individuals; I do not deny that, but their indiscriminate response has resulted in the mass-abuse of all members of their previous faith to some degree or another. I purport that rather than that of just a bitter ex-wife, the state of Texas has been relying on the word of an abusive ex-spouse, a pack of self-justifying abusers–abusers with a vested interest, both psychological and economic, in the perpetuation of their cover stories.

Of course they haven’t gotten the truth.

A couple of weeks ago, in their defense, I tried my hand at a little fact-based persuasive writing–something that has never been my forte. I simply do not have the mindset. The adversarial discourse that such writing invites just tears at something in my soul. By virtue of something in my personality, I can’t follow the news obsessively (as one has to when playing that game), and that leaves me ill-equipped for any debate. I was surprised when the very people whom I thought I had defended so poorly saw enough value in my article to republish it on their own website. It just is not a comfortable role for me, and besides, there are others, such as Bill and Al, who do a much better job as warriors for the truth. As I said, it’s not a comfortable role for me, and so I feel like I just cannot do it.

What I can do, though, is write from my heart. And so that’s what I want to do, here and now, show my heart–my divided heart. I feel a little like Eve in the garden; my heart is a study in contrasts, in opposites. A paradox. The price of joy is sorrow. Fealty means betrayal. Obedience is to disobey. The call of the Spirit to me and the directives from Salt Lake to the world have not only divided my heart, they have broken it. Is that not part of what we are to offer the Lord–a broken heart? And so I have persevered in this strange, disobediently faithful state. It is, though, getting harder as the days go by. I have been unable to write because, out of desire not to be disobedient to LDS church policy, I find myself having to mince my words such that by the time I’m done they feel drained of the very vibrant truth I wanted to share. My crisp, fresh apples have lost all their shape and color and are turned to applesauce before my eyes. And so, I have written nothing.

That is not true; I have written a great deal, but I have published nothing publicly. At least one reader has written me to ask that I break my silence, and for that, I am appreciative. Without such encouragement, I might have just decided to continue to lay low in my silent state of contrast. My silence, though, has bothered me greatly, as silence is tacit approval. Upon being mistaken for a member of the FLDS and quoted as such in a news article, I contacted the journalist who wrote it, and referred him to the LDS church’s website and their push to clarify the differences. I made my emails to him public, here on my website. I’ll confess here and now that I did it out of fear. I feared that if a journalist could mistake me as such, then likely I was on the wrong side of the line when it came to that directive from Salt Lake. The fact is, though, that I never felt good about that. Sure, I encouraged that journalist, and anyone else who may have read the emails, to look deeper when looking at the FLDS people, but really, in the end, I didn’t need to make that correspondence public. After a few days, I removed that entry from public view.

I have little desire to point anyone at the materials coming from the LDS church in regard to the FLDS right now. Ironically, it’s not because of what it says about the FLDS, but rather, it’s because of what it says about the LDS. One of the driving reasons behind the whole thing is that the the LDS church wishes to define itself (as opposed to being ‘defined’ by the actions and attention given another church with a similar name), but what is happening now, what is coming from Salt Lake as a part of this is not indicative of what the Gospel is about, and so I see the very purpose of it all thwarted in the attempt.

I see mention of the church’s “increasing social prominence,” and it just wrings my heart. I see unkind words about the dress and appearance of the FLDS women, and I, myself, feel betrayed. I see bullying of not just the FLDS, but all the other Restorationist churches and individual practitioners over whether they are Mormon the way the more ‘mainstream’ Christian churches bully Mormons over whether or not they ‘count’ as Christian. That is identity theft, far more than incorporating a church with similar historical roots and therefore a similar name. I see the word ‘church’ replaced wholesale with ‘sect’ even though the FLDS are a legally incorporated ecclesiastical organization. I see what comes across as an unaccountable level of insecurity in regard to identity.

What I do not see is language and behavior that behooves what is supposed to be true church of Christ on the earth. If the aim is to define, then I am greatly saddened by the definition that has been revealed. Thus, the joy I have found as I have come to know the FLDS has been in stark and inviolate contrast to the sorrow I have felt as, for the first time in my life, I find myself in indissoluble disagreement with the church.

I went to my husband, the priesthood leader of our home, weeping for the wretched feeling of finding myself uprooted from what I felt was my sound, gospel ground. For the difference between what the Spirit tells me about all of this and what Salt Lake is saying has been heartbreaking. My husband told me, though, that as hard as it is to find myself ‘without’ the church, that I needed to remember that that gospel foundation is not in the church, but in God, our Heavenly Father, himself and the Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Ghost, and that so long as I made that my true foundation that all would be fine.

Like everything in this situation, though, his comfort was a mixed blessing. For, I still find myself in a strange state of paradox. In my chest beats a heart divided against itself which colors the thoughts of my mind divided against itself as I contemplate my place in the church, which I being a member of, is now a house divided against itself. I have faith, and that faith gives me hope that resolution will come. I must simply have the patience to exercise that faith until the Lord resolves it, however He may do it.