Green Oasis

“I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the point that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if I’m hanging out with you, I can’t even tell whether I like you or not because I’m too worried about whether you like me.”—David Foster Wallace

This has been rattling around in my brain, a subject of subconscious meditation, bobbing to the surface of consciousness from time to time. Shyness as a kind of self-absorption.

I pity the clients who see this therapist who runs frightened from sexually provocative media. Rather than teaching healing and transcendence of fear, he promotes the very same trembling attitudes that lead to addiction. His essay reminds me of the world of fear that I so narrowly escaped. I join Jesus’ skeptics in demanding “Physician, heal thyself”. (Luke 4:23)

Most religions implant psychological safeguards against apostasy, little emotional bombs of fear, guilt, shame and self-loathing that get triggered by the mere act of questioning. In religious orthodoxy, doubt is the domain of fools. It is the consequence of having hardened your heart like Pharaoh or resenting God’s power like Lucifer. Oh ye of little faith!

So says Valerie Tarico in response to Michael’s story of leaving Mormonism.

I must confess that even though I’ve made my peace with the idea that not everyone will see Mormonism the same way that I do, I still worry about my family’s future.

I attend sacrament meeting most weeks, and every time I do, the reasons that I left reinforce themselves to me. When I was Mormon, I assumed that anyone who attended church enough would eventually soften their heart to the truth. Every time a relative attended church who hadn’t been there in years, I imagined that they would realize what they had been missing and come back into the arms of the church. I enjoyed church, so I assumed that they had simply forgotten how good church was, and with a little reminder, they would remember and return to the faith.

Now I see the LDS church differently, and I finally understand that for some people, attending a Mormon church service only gives them more reason to stay away. It’s not a problem of forgetting; they object to Mormonism on principle. I never imagined as a Mormon that the words spoken the pulpit could be disturbing and repulsive.

As a Mormon, I thought that anyone who disagreed with the teachings of Mormonism was being deceived by Satan, that the antidote was to feel the joy of the Holy Spirit in church. I now see that is too simple. As I continue my life outside of Mormonism, I am generally happier though I have good days and bad. Mormon teachings give me no joy, so attending church services has no hope of persuading me to return—none that I can see.

So I understand why someone else might not find the same joy as I do in the ideals of freethought. The idea of doubting and not feeling certain about our beliefs is frightening for some, even though I revel in it because it feels authentic to the human condition.

I’ve seen both sides, and I see how unhealthy Mormonism (or any other fundamentalist, cultish group) can be. I don’t like the idea of my family being stuck there. I don’t like the idea of that separating us. I hope they can find their way out. I want them to wake up to the toxicity of Mormonism. They want me to wake up to the joys of Mormonism. We are at an impasse.

Todd was my third-grade arch nemesis. For some unaccountable reason, all the girls in my class seemed to like him, including Jamie Conway, that dark-haired vixen with the black-magic voice that haunted me for years. Todd was taller, better looking, and probably smarter than I was, and he could draw. While I was overjoyed to learn to draw realistic cubes, he could draw believable dinosaurs, an infinitely sexier subject. He drew her attention away from me, and I cursed him for it.

For years I’ve wished that I could draw realistic pictures—perhaps to prove that Todd wasn’t that special after all. I’ve doodled. Sometimes I’m surprised by how well my doodles turn out. Most of the time, I hide them from critical eyes. I hate doing things that I’m not good at, being vulnerable in that way. When I realized how driven by fear I had become, I started to intentionally put myself in situations where I would probably make a fool of myself.

Today is a continuation of that quest to face up to my silly fears. My wife gave me Keys to Drawing for Christmas. I plan to post my drawings here to 1) allow myself to look foolish, 2) use your peer pressure to keep me going, and 3) chronicle my progress (I hope).

The first exercise was to draw my crossed feet using a simple line drawing with no erasing and redrawing lines where necessary. The key was to spend more time observing my feet than being critical of my drawing. I think the author expected me to be wearing shoes, but I spend most of my time at home barefoot, so you get a 2-for-1 embarrassment deal: my amateur drawing and my feet in all their long-toed, short-footed, hairy, knobby glory:

I’m currently unable to reach Google which holds in its ambiguously not-evil hands an inordinate amount of my life.

First thought when I couldn’t open my feed reader: Crap! Am I going to have to check my blogs by hand? By typing in their web addresses? How last millennium!

First thought upon realizing that I couldn’t remember those blog addresses: Double crap! Am I going to have to actually work?

Signs of the times.