Green Oasis

This spinning silhouette optical illusion is pretty funky. Check it out first, then come back. I’ll wait.

…

For me, she spun clockwise first. I wonder if this depends on a person’s handedness. I tried really hard to get her to change directions by convincing myself that the outstretched arm was her left. I couldn’t get my mind to make the flip that way. She stubbornly insisted on spinning clockwise.

I changed her direction by staring at the shadow of her foot. I have to really focus on the shadow without allowing my peripheral awareness to see the black silhouette. All of a sudden, she’s spinning the opposite direction!

Her apparent direction of spin has some persistence. I can look away for about five seconds and she’s still spinning counter-clockwise when I look back. Too much longer and she goes back to clockwise rotation.

Sometimes her movement stutters back and forth as my mind struggles to reconcile her ambiguity.

Fun.

I didn’t expect to hear about topless teens when I sat down in the pew that day. A missionary had returned from a mission to somewhere in the South Pacific. He spoke in church and devoted a large portion of his talk to chastising the young women where he served.

School graduations there require traditional attire. Traditional attire meant being topless for the women. The missionaries exhorted the young women to refuse to honor the tradition by dressing more modestly for their graduation. They pleaded with the girls to observe Heavenly Father’s standard for modesty. They reminded them how sinful it was to appear in public without covering their breasts.

The young women attended the ceremony in traditional attire despite the missionaries’ exhortations, and the speaker condemned the young women for bowing to custom and social pressure instead of following the word of God.

His remarks got me thinking.

…

After I stopped daydreaming about topless young women in grass skirts (thanks, Elder), I wondered: what exactly is the true standard for modest attire?

The talk reminded me of my own missionary service. I learned soon after I arrived in my first area that it was forbidden for missionaries to be in Seneca Falls during the summertime women’s rights parade. It didn’t matter that I arrived as the last of the autumn color was fading from the trees, that I would probably leave before I had a chance to violate the taboo. The other missionaries told me anyway, taking some relish in warning me that all of Seneca Falls was verboten during the parade because female participants often went topless.

It was apparently legal in the state of New York for women to go topless just like men. At least prosecutors refused to try cases. The missionaries also shared folklore with that topless sunbathers could be found at the top of Cobbs Hill in Rochester. Oh the devilish controversy these stories conjured in this young missionary’s heart! I heard stories of errant P-day activities at the top of Cobbs Hill, but I studiously avoided participation. That’s not to say that I didn’t want to.

The mission leaders forbid missionaries from these areas because the wanted to preserve us from the taint of sexual temptation. Randy young men can be hard to control, especially when their leaders remove all sexual outlets. The leaders expect the young missionaries to lead exceptionally celibate lives at the peak of their sexual drive. Personally, I felt like a boiler with a red-lined pressure guage. Any weakness could cause the whole thing to explode. Seeing topless women could be the beginning of the end.

As I thought about my missionary experiences, I could think of no particular reason that men and women shouldn’t be held to the same standards of modesty. Why should women’s chests be so much more sexually charged than men’s?

Many modern members of the LDS church will point to the temple garment as God’s standard of modesty: the limits of the garments define the minimum standard for modesty. My primary problem with this idea has always been that the garment has changed over the years. It originally covered down to the ankles and wrists and up to the neck. Today’s garment covers a few inches below the shoulder and down to the knee, and plunges quite low below the neck. If the garment is God’s standard, he seems to have changed his mind to suit changing fashions in the Western world. Would God make the garment even more abbreviated in the future?

Also, assuming there is an absolute standard for how well clothing should cover our nakedness, what happens if we shorten clothing even a little bit I wondered. If my shorts should cover my knees, what if I shorten them just a nanometer? (A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers) Surely a nanometer can’t make a perceptible difference in modesty. Surely shorts that reveal 1 nanometer of my knees are still modest. But if I can reveal 1 nanometer, why can’t I reveal 2? That’s still not enough to perceive. If 2, why not 3? Pretty soon, the assumed absolute standard doesn’t seem so absolute anymore. It seems downright subjective. I began to suspect the very idea of an absolute standard for modesty. Modesty came down to nothing more than an “I know it when I see it” test.

So if modesty is subjective, then whose standards did the LDS church preach? Did God set these changeable, hazy standards? It seemed like pretty sloppy work for a perfect God. Perhaps God just expects us to follow the standards of modesty for our own time and place. That made more sense to me. If the idea is to avoid titillating each other with naked flesh, then different cultures have different thresholds for titillation. An African man wouldn’t give any special attention to a bare chested woman. A Muslim might feel aroused by the sight of a woman’s hair.

Wasn’t the missionary just exporting his own cultural mores to those young women in the guise of serving God? Maybe the problem was that the missionary found the idea of topless young women titillating. The problem arose because of his cultural expectations, not because of the attire of the young women. He was the visitor. He failed to adapt instead expecting them to conform to an absolute standard that didn’t exist. He believed himself to be God’s emissary come to save the benighted natives from their lascivious ways.

I became a lot more forgiving of other culture’s standards of modesty after that missionary’s talk. No standard of modesty is more justifiable than another.

I would be remiss if I finished this post without providing photos and videos of topless women in New York.

I’ve always heard how most native-born U.S. citizens would fail the citizenship test given to immigrants. I decided to put myself to the test: am I worthy of my U.S. citizenship? The questions for the test are always drawn from the following 100. I’ve highlighted the ones I got wrong.

1. What are the colors of our flag?
2. How many stars are there in our flag?
3. What color are the stars on our flag?
4. What do the stars on the flag mean?
5. How many stripes are there in the flag?
6. What color are the stripes?
7. What do the stripes on the flag mean?
8. How many states are there in the Union?
9. What is the 4th of July?
10. What is the date of Independence Day?
11. Independence from whom?
12. What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War?
13. Who was the first President of the United States?
14. Who is the President of the United States today?
15. Who is the vice-president of the United States today?
16. Who elects the President of the United States?
17. Who becomes President of the United States if the President should die?
18. For how long do we elect the President?
19. What is the Constitution?
20. Can the Constitution be changed?
21. What do we call a change to the Constitution?
22. How many changes or amendments are there to the Constitution?
23. How many branches are there in our government?
24. What are the three branches of our government?
25. What is the legislative branch of our government?
26. Who makes the laws in the United States?
27. What is the Congress?
28. What are the duties of Congress?
29. Who elects the Congress?
30. How many senators are there in Congress?
31. Can you name the two senators from your state?
32. For how long do we elect each senator?
33. How many representatives are there in Congress?
34. For how long do we elect the representatives?
35. What is the executive branch of our government?
36. What is the judiciary branch of our government?
37. What are the duties of the Supreme Court?
38. What is the supreme court law of the United States?
39. What is the Bill of Rights?
40. What is the capital of your state?
41. Who is the current governor of your state?
42. Who becomes President of the United States if the President and the vice-president should die?
43. Who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?
44. Can you name thirteen original states?
45. Who said, “Give me liberty or give me death.”?
46. Which countries were our enemies during World War II?
47. What are the 49th and 50th states of the Union?
48. How many terms can the President serve?
49. Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.?
50. Who is the head of your local government?
51. According to the Constitution, a person must meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to become President. Name one of these requirements.
52. Why are there 100 Senators in the Senate?
53. Who selects the Supreme Court justice?
54. How many Supreme Court justice are there?
55. Why did the Pilgrims come to America?
56. What is the head executive of a state government called?
57. What is the head executive of a city government called?
58. What holiday was celebrated for the first time by the Americans colonists?
59. Who was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence?
60. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
61. What is the basic belief of the Declaration of Independence?
62. What is the national anthem of the United States?
63. Who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner?
64. Where does freedom of speech come from?
65. What is a minimum voting age in the United States?
66. Who signs bills into law?
67. What is the highest court in the United States?
68. Who was the President during the Civil War?
69. What did the Emancipation Declaration do?
70. What special group advises the President?
71. Which President is called the “Father of our country”?
72. What Immigration and Naturalization Service form is used to apply to become a naturalized citizen?
73. Who helped the Pilgrims in America?
74. What is the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America?
75. What are the 13 original states of the U.S. called?
76. Name 3 rights of freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
77. Who has the power to declare the war?
78. What kind of government does the United States have?
79. Which President freed the slaves?
80. In what year was the Constitution written?
81. What are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution called?
82. Name one purpose of the United Nations?
83. Where does Congress meet?
84. Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
85. What is the introduction to the Constitution called?
86. Name one benefit of being citizen of the United States.
87. What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?
88. What is the United States Capitol?
89. What is the White House?
90. Where is the White House located?
91. What is the name of the President’s official home?
92. Name the right guaranteed by the first amendment.
93. Who is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military?
94. Which President was the first Commander in Chief of the U.S. military?
95. In what month do we vote for the President?
96. In what month is the new President inaugurated?
97. How many times may a Senator be re-elected?
98. How many times may a Congressman be re-elected?
99. What are the 2 major political parties in the U.S. today?
100. How many states are there in the United States today?

93% isn’t too bad. Now I don’t feel like such a big schmendrick for having my citizenship handed to me.

Lacey has written another post which relates to this blog. She’s torn over whether she should announce to the members of the ward that she’s married to an atheist.

I felt smugly self-satisfied that I had gotten the right answer. I turned in my essay to my eighth-grade English teacher. She had assigned us to write on how we defined success. I felt sure that my classmates had written about schools and careers and other worldly pursuits. Instead, I took the moral high ground with the help of a Prophet of the Mormon church.

My church leaders repeatedly emphasized this teaching: “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” (Benjamin Disraeli as paraphrased by President David O. McKay) The church prepared all young men to become husbands and fathers. Our whole lives should be centered around marriage and fatherhood, just like our Heavenly Father.

I wrote about being a father and husband because of the church’s teaching. I considered any other goal petty and trivial. I had written about the only worthy goal. I fantasized that my teacher would recognize the moral superiority of my goals and applaud my wisdom. That never happened. I probably received a good grade based on the mechanics of the essay (i.e. thesis, support, support, support, conclusion), but I never heard from her about its content.

All the same, Disraeli’s catchy phrase shaped how I feel today. I still believe that my wife and children should receive my first attention. They should expect to receive the best of me, leaving the leftovers for my other pursuits. My fondest hopes lie in the continued health and happiness of my family. My family gives me my greatest joy. I look forward to time with my wife and girls at the end of the day. They keep me going.

I could have learned this attitude from some other source, but I didn’t. I learned it from the Mormon church.

I immediately noticed the motorcycle decor in his modest home. My missionary companion and I had been in his neighborhood so we decided to visit this inactive member of the congregation we served. We had heard that he hadn’t attended church in years, so we decided to see what we could do to bring him back into the fold.

Motorcycles didn’t interest me, but I asked him about them anyway in the interest of building relationships of trust. For the next couple of hours he regaled us with stories about his new Harley-Davidson Softail. I heard about truly insane hill climbing trials. I picked up new phrases fraught with wisdom like “Loud pipes save lives,” and “There’s only two kinds of riders: the old and the bold.” He made something of a convert out of me by the end. When I later served in Buffalo NY, I made sure to buy a 75^th anniversary t-shirt from the Harley-Davidson/Buell store.

After two hours, we finally got down to business and asked him why he didn’t come to church anymore. His answer forever changed my attitude about church service. This older man had converted to Mormonism early on when the LDS church wasn’t well established in the area. The church asked a lot of its members back then. It was routine for him to spend almost every night away from home on assignments for the church. After a while, this began to wear on his family life. He decided to leave the church to save his family.

We gave him some unsatisfactory excuses about the church not being like that anymore and how his attendance would strengthen his family. I didn’t think the excuses would convince him, and they didn’t. He thanked us for the visit, and sent us on our way. I left his home convinced that he was making a short-sighted choice, but he had planted a thought in my mind.

My wife was taking classes at the university to finish her degree. I watched our new daughter on the nights Lacey had classes on campus. I was serving in the Elders Quorum presidency and feeling the pressure to be away from my family on the nights Lacey didn’t have classes. Home Teaching always needed to be done. I needed to go out with the missionaries once a month. We needed to make visits to members’ homes as a presidency. Various congregation members had little emergencies that needed attention. I needed to attend the ward’s monthly temple night. We needed to meet with the Elders in the quorum for monthly interviews. The list goes on.

I probably could have been away from home most evenings, but David O. McKay and the Biker from Hamburg NY whispered from the back of my mind. A lot of the things that I could have allowed to take me away from home seemed less important than being with my family. I began to build up a boundary between my family and church service.

I had always heard that serving the church also brought blessings to the family. Serving God would call down blessings from heaven on my home. My leaders intended this to justify all the hours spent away from family in the service of the church’s needs. The tension between this idea and Disraeli’s “No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home.” forced me to find a balance between the two ideas. I decided to serve in the church, but only if my personal attention to a church job was more important than time with my family. I felt justified by God in saying no to uninspired activities. A night of wandering around with the missionaries trying to find someone to talk to didn’t often make the cut.

While serving in the presidency, I attended a world-wide church broadcast for priesthood leaders. The church leaders taught us that we needed to find balance between church service and family time. They expressed sympathy for the demands that church service placed on us and gave us general guidelines on how much time each calling should require of us. This broadcast brought me peace of mind: they agreed that we need to set boundaries to preserve balance.

The Elders Quorum President at the time had a young son himself, but often left his home to serve in his church calling. I know that this was hard for his wife, but they were conscientious people and did what they thought was best. I wished he wouldn’t, but I knew that the President would pick up the slack when I refused some church service. I wished he would delegate and allow someone else to take care of things more often. Instead, he took a the-buck-stops-here stance. I could admire that in a way, but I thought he lacked balance between family and church life. If he spent more time with his family, I would have felt less guilty about prioritizing my family, but he had his own choices to make, and I had mine.

We entered the Stake President’s office dressed in our Sunday clothes with our little one in tow. The Elders Quorum President had moved away, and the Stake President had asked us to meet with him. We sat down in his wood-panel office and made small talk for a few minutes. Getting serious, he called me to serve as Elders Quorum President and asked if my wife would support me in serving.

With the example of the previous Elders Quorum President in mind, I told him that I would serve in the calling but that I had some concerns about the amount of time it might require. I told him about Lacey’s classes, her callings, and the other demands on my time. I said that I worried that I might not have enough time to serve well, but I would do my best. Then he did something unexpected.

He thanked us for coming in, said that we did the right thing by bringing our concerns to him, and told us he would be in contact with us if he had anything further for us. I left his office a little stunned. I felt like I had just turned down a calling—very taboo. Faithful Mormons do not turn down callings. At least they shouldn’t. I sat with my wife and daughter in the car for a long time. We talked about going back to his office and telling the Stake President that we took it all back: we new that I could serve faithfully in the calling. We eventually decided to leave it in this inspired hands. I started the car, and we left for our home.

The LDS church promotes itself as family centered. It has been a mixed blessing for me in that arena. I’ve focused on only one way that Mormonism has influenced my family life. What effects, good and bad, has the LDS church had on your family?

(Here’s a humorous antidote for the terminal sappiness of that commercial I just linked to, if you feel the need.)