READER POST: Dear Sister,
I was there. With you. Just a year ago.
We assembled hygiene kits for the local women’s shelter. We laughed. We ate chocolate chip cookies and drank pink lemonade. We talked about our kids and our next vacations.
One shampoo, one soap, one toothbrush, one toothpaste. Some get dental floss if there is enough. Sealed in a Ziploc bag. Toss in the bin with the others. Forgotten just as quickly as it was assembled. Continue reading “To the Sister Who Made this Hygiene Kit”
READER POST: For seven years next September, this American has lived in a tiny European village.
Where I live now is home to 550 inhabitants and is named after the brook it nestles. This village is quiet, surrounded by fields of corn, hay, and the bright yellow flowers used to produce canola oil. The noisiest sounds are the traffic on the main road.
We live in an old farmhouse on the left, just after you cross the bridge into the village, coming from the nearest city. Our house is directly under the flight path of storks passing from the river to their high treetop nests.
Although our village is small, it does not feel isolated. Very typical of many European countries, it’s one in a network, one village accessible to the next by a short walk. So although the closest thing we have to a grocery is the corner bar-restaurant, which is mostly a bar, it’s still only a two or three minute drive to arrive there.
With a large family that requires plenty of shopping, I visit my favorite grocery store several times a week, sometimes several times in one day. I can reach it by travelling either way on the main road. Continue reading “A Lovely Road”
DEBORAH: Sisters Quorum has been publicly quiet in the wake of the Joseph L. Bishop scandal, but behind the scenes, our writers have been in an emotional and spiritual tumult. If you’ve followed the blog, you’re aware that some SQ writers have deep, prolonged history with sexual and spiritual abuse. The reality is, as it turns out, many of our writers have been victimized sexually and abandoned, or not believed, by church authorities and often by family members. I’ve watched these amazing survivors grapple with the hard reality that the formal Church, through its authorities, looked the other way, expressing a level of forgiveness or compassion for a sexual predator that resulted in enabling his continued abuse. The level at which this is striking the souls of abuse survivors is deep and primal. The pain it renews, the rage and confusion it reignites, aren’t going away. Continue reading “The Wounded Women of Polygamy Culture”
READER POST: And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
-Zechariah 13:6
Two thousand years ago, our Savior made his victorious entry into Jerusalem. His people looked to him as a living prophet and Son of God, the messiah who would save them in victory and power. I try to imagine shouting “Hosanna!” and laying palm fronds before Him. What would it have been like to be so near my Savior, to give Him marks of His kingship?
But Christ’s kingdom was not of this world; it would not be founded in the powerful structures of men. His lack of military or financial power disappointed many followers. His social and spiritual might was taken as a threat to the powerful institutions of his day, especially the high priests and scribes, who laid plans for his painful and humiliating death. Continue reading “Lamb”
Thank you for accepting the call to serve as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and congratulations. I listened yesterday to both the announcement of the newly formed First Presidency and to the press conference which followed. I was pleased to hear you reiterate that women’s voices are needed in church. As a practicing Latter-day Saint, a convert of several decades, as a woman who married in the temple with her family outside, and as a mother and grandmother, I have some things to voice that are important for the future of our church.
Sisters Quorum 