Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our house, July 10th. 1666. Copied Out of a Loose Paper.
In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow near I did not look, I wakened was with thund’ring noise And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice. That fearful sound of “fire” and “fire,” Let no man know is my Desire. I, starting up, the light did spy, And to my God my heart did cry To straighten me in my Distress And not to leave me succourless. Then, coming out, behold a space The flame consume my dwelling place. And when I could no longer look, I blest His name that gave and took, That laid my goods now in the dust. Yea, so it was, and so ‘twas just. It was his own, it was not mine, Far be it that I should repine; He might of all justly bereft But yet sufficient for us left. When by the ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast And here and there the places spy Where oft I sate and long did lie. Here stood that trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best. My pleasant things in ashes lie And them behold no more shall I. Under thy roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy Table eat a bit. No pleasant talk shall ‘ere be told Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle e'er shall shine in Thee, Nor bridegroom‘s voice e'er heard shall be. In silence ever shalt thou lie, Adieu, Adieu, all’s vanity. Then straight I ‘gin my heart to chide, And did thy wealth on earth abide? Didst fix thy hope on mould'ring dust? The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? Raise up thy thoughts above the sky That dunghill mists away may fly. Thou hast a house on high erect Frameed by that mighty Architect, With glory richly furnished, Stands permanent though this be fled. It‘s purchased and paid for too By Him who hath enough to do. A price so vast as is unknown, Yet by His gift is made thine own; There‘s wealth enough, I need no more, Farewell, my pelf, farewell, my store. The world no longer let me love, My hope and treasure lies above. I was introduced to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet in a college course on early American literature. Her relatable emotions and vulnerability made an impression on me and humanized the Puritans, whom I, like most people, am otherwise inclined to regard as stuck-up, joyless bigots. The professor made us read between the lines and explain how maybe Anne Bradstreet was secretly expressing doubts when she affirmed her faith. I wondered then, as I do now, whether that was really in there or the professor just wanted it to be. Anyway, I've liked this poem even more ever since my own beloved childhood home burned down. I wanted to buy it back someday, but the new owners apparently didn't know how to use a woodstove. And thanks to the previous generations who thoughtlessly screwed mine over, I may never be able to own a home at all. At this time I can't even save up enough to cover summer rent for one of the cheapest places in town. I have family members willing to help me, but if you want to help too, consider buying my book. I've shared this poem at a gathering of friends on the theme of change last fall and at a poetry-sharing meeting of the Cache Valley Unitarian Universalists last week. It's all about priorities, and that message remains strong even though I'm now agnostic about the attached theological claims. If Anne Bradstreet's house hadn't burned down, she still wouldn't have it anymore because she's dead. I'm pretty confident that consciousness persists after death, but I won't try to guess what the afterlife looks like, and I won't assert it with certainty because I'm not dead. I think it's a safe assumption, though, that the only things we can take into this hypothetical vague afterlife are knowledge and relationships, so those should be our top priorities once our basic needs for survival are secured. And if we can't get our basic needs for survival secured, well, at least we won't have to worry about that forever. I don't mean to be flippant, but it's true. We might have healthier perspectives on our suffering if we keep in mind how short and impermanent this life is instead of trying our hardest not to think about it. I also like the part of this poem where she goes full Yoda: "And them behold no more shall I." It's so random.
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I really couldn't care less about football. For any non-Americans who may happen to stumble on this post by accident, "football" in this context is not the game where you kick the ball with your foot, but one where you throw a ball with your hands. And the game stops every five seconds for reasons that are unclear to me. I cannot comprehend how anyone finds it exciting, but lots of men are obsessed with football and worship football players. I watched one football game in my first semester of college, and that was enough for me. But when I get the chance, I go to Super Bowl watch parties for the food, the commercials, and the company. Even when I was a Mormon and didn't believe that sports were keeping the Sabbath holy, I felt that bonding with friends was a more important consideration. The local YSA bishop evidently feels the same, as he's (unofficially, of course) hosting a watch party for the second year in a row.
I keep hearing about some stupid controversy over Taylor Swift dating a football player and getting too much attention at football games. I won't mind very much if all the footage of the Super Bowl is replaced with Taylor Swift's face. Actually, I'll pay a lot more attention if that happens. I don't know much about her as a person and I'm only a moderate fan of her music. I'd rather listen to any of her songs than watch a football game, but I don't understand why she's the second-most streamed artist in the world. Still, good for her. I remember when she was a teenager singing country songs about boys. When I heard her almost every day on Q Country 102.9, the school bus driver's favorite station, I never imagined how far she'd go. And if she's making MAGAs angry, she must be doing something very right. I think I know what it is. I've heard various things, but I think what really set these terrible people off the most was when she encouraged young women to vote. She didn't tell them how to vote, but it's a given that most young women will not vote for the senile orange fascist. His cult is scared. And it should be. All Americans, whether they realize it or not, will owe Taylor Swift a debt of gratitude if we just get a civil war after he loses instead of the nightmares he'll unleash if he wins. The LDS missionaries stopped by my apartment the other night. They were the Chinese-speaking missionaries, the only ones who have ever stopped by my apartment, apparently because a couple years ago I had a Chinese neighbor who had joined the LDS Church. One was American and remembered me from the last time he knocked on my door. The other was from Hong Kong, hadn't yet mastered English, and didn't talk much. I told them I was no longer LDS, but I still let them come in and try to convince me to come back because I want them to have positive experiences on their missions. I have no animosity toward these kids doing what they believe is right, and I want everyone everywhere to be nice to them. I could have wiped the floor with them in a debate, but because I didn't want to send them into crippling existential crises, I was vague about my reasons for leaving and didn't push back much on the stuff they said. I especially didn't want to expose the Chinese guy to a bunch of problematic stuff that he'd probably never heard of due to having far LDS-adjacent fewer resources in his native language.
The American said he knows there are a lot of difficult issues in church history, and he named a few - the Book of Abraham translation, polygamy, and the priesthood ban. He probably learned about those things in seminary. I certainly didn't. When I was his age, the LDS Church was just barely starting to be more honest about its history as damage control after the skeletons in its closet were plastered all over the internet, which is how I had to learn about them. The seminary curriculum was dumbed down so much that even as an all-in gung-ho believer, I hated it and didn't finish. And, of course, even though this missionary knows these things, he sure isn't going to teach them to prospective converts. Anyway, I could have wiped the floor with him in a debate on any of these topics if I'd wanted to. I'm positive I know all the same apologetic arguments that he does. But we didn't go in that direction. He only lingered on the priesthood ban, mentioning that Joseph Smith gave the priesthood to Black men, and then that practice just stopped, and it's weird. I could have said that we know why it stopped, that it stopped because Joseph Smith's successor was virulently racist and enshrined his virulent racism in both church doctrine and policy, which really decimates the credibility of all LDS prophets, but I nodded politely instead. He asked what it would take for me to come back to the church. Again, I held back. Believing in the LDS Church again would be like putting all the toothpaste back in a tube. I would have to forget that I know it's not true. I would have to pretend I can't see Joseph Smith's nineteenth-century fingerprints all over the Book of Mormon, or his manipulative tactics to increase his authority, blame others for his prophetic failures, and persuade teenage girls to marry him. In short, I simply know too much to believe. But I didn't want to say something so invalidating. It's not polite. I told him I'd come back if I heard a voice or saw an angel. I said I know the church specifically tells us not to demand miraculous signs like that, but I don't trust "the Holy Ghost" anymore or believe that my spiritual feelings really mean what the church claims they mean, so I'm going to need something more. They read some scriptures. The Chinese guy talked about the importance of trusting God with my questions instead of people, and approaching them with a perspective of faith. I nodded politely instead of complaining about confirmation bias. They asked about my views on God and Jesus. I said that I don't feel like God ever intervenes in my life, and I still pray every night, but I've given up on asking for anything because it's pointless. I said that I used to look back and feel like God had been guiding me through my life, but now I wonder if that's just because I'm a human and my brain has evolved to see patterns where there aren't any. I said that I think I have a pretty good life, but I'm not comfortable attributing that to blessings from God because what about the countless people with crappy lives? Does he love them less? The Chinese guy said it's important to keep the perspective of the premortal life and the next life, to remember that not all blessings come in this life. And you know what, that makes sense. I do believe there's a purpose to life and that whatever it is can only make sense if it starts before birth and goes beyond death. That's one thing I think Joseph Smith got right. I certainly don't believe the specific details taught by his church, though. And I don't think it's possible to know the details without dying. Maybe not even then. The American encouraged me to pray and ask God if he loves me. Not if the LDS Church was true. I was glad that he wasn't really pushy about me coming back. He seemed to genuinely respect my personal journey and prioritize God's love over being in a specific church. He encouraged me to ask that and pay attention to whether I felt anything or to what happened the next day, and if I didn't notice anything, to be patient and not give up. I could have argued that in my view, if you have to keep praying and waiting until you feel something, you've probably just convinced yourself to feel it. But I didn't. And that night, I did ask, and I didn't feel anything, just like I knew I wouldn't. And the next day was a good day, but I wouldn't say anything special happened. Oh well. I certainly would like to believe that God loves everybody. I don't claim to know that he doesn't. I just don't see it. As the missionaries left, the American asked if I would like to go to church this Sunday, and I said I'm participating in the Unitarian Universalist church right now, and he said that was good and didn't press the issue. Believing in the LDS Church again is out of the question, but here's the bare minimum that it would have to do in order for me to participate: * End all policy restrictions on LGBT members. * End all policy restrictions on women. * Stop hoarding obscene wealth and start spending a lot more on humanitarian aid. * Stop protecting sexual abusers and fighting against their victims in court. * Stop lying about its history and finances. * Stop worshiping the current prophet and pretending that every word out of his mouth comes from God. * Apologize and make restitution for the harm it's caused to people of color, LGBT people, women, abuse victims, and apostates. I have no doubt that all of these things will happen eventually, but probably not in my lifetime. Much to the disappointment of both my regular readers, I'm a bit behind my usual posting schedule because I spent much of the weekend in Salt Lake and also because I've lost so much sleep in the last two weeks that I wish I was dead. The most significant thing to come out of that weekend was that I drank a significant amount of tea for the first time. Because a con man enshrined nineteenth-century pseudoscience as revelation, I was raised with the belief that coffee and tea are unhealthy or somehow sinful, and I'm not even being snarky when I say that belief has been the hardest part of my Mormon upbringing to deconstruct. I have no desire to try coffee because I dislike the smell. I tried a small bit of tea without sugar some time ago, and it was putrid. But this weekend I was killing time with a couple of friends in Salt Lake's Chinatown market, a place I never knew existed, and they wanted to get some boba tea, so as a matter of principle I pushed past my deep-rooted misgivings and got some too. The first sip was weird. The rest were delicious. It had brown sugar and tapioca pearls, which I didn't notice until the first one came up my straw. Little rubbery balls, not much flavor, but appealing in their own way. Part of me still stupidly expected some kind of physiological reaction to the forbidden drink, but of course there wasn't one because it was just a normal drink. Up yours, Joseph Smith. Then we met up with a couple of other friends and went to a Chinese restaurant that ironically was not in Chinatown. It was a rice noodle soup restaurant, and I think the menu items were more authentic than the ones at Panda Express, but the still left me hungry again a couple of hours later. This soup had beef, cabbage, corn, carrot shavings, cilantro, elephant ear fungus, and a quail egg. I saved the quail egg for last because I knew I wouldn't like it. Also, I was the only one at the table who didn't know how to use chopsticks, so I just struggled through it. I stayed the night at another friend's house, but he didn't get off work until 12:30, so for a while I was alone with his wife who doesn't speak much English, and that was a little awkward, but she was very nice. I watched the Disney version of Hercules, struggled to get to sleep, woke up in the middle of the night, struggled to get back to sleep, and slept until 10:30. That afternoon, all the other friends came over to celebrate Juanuary, a tradition I was there to experience for the first time. Apparently it's just having tacos in January. Then we watched Coco. It occurred to me that Hercules and Coco both depict absolutely horrifying visions of the afterlife. In the former, Hercules gives up his immortality to be with Meg, and it's supposed to be a happy ending, but it's really not because you know that after they die their souls will be condemned to swim around half-comatose in Hades' giant magic toilet forever, along with everyone else who's ever existed. No wonder this religion lost to Christianity. Then in Coco, of course, dead people's souls only continue to exist until every living person has forgotten about them, which will eventually happen to everyone except for Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan. What is even the point of that temporary afterlife, except to prolong and exacerbate the inequality between famous people and normal people? And how did it work before photographs were invented? Speaking of death, the high school I worked at yesterday recently had a suicide, so this week it's doing "Hope Week" with the theme "Life is worth living." (Utah has an above-average youth suicide rate, though you wouldn't know it from the imaginary problems its Republican legislature chooses to address instead.) It had an assembly with Tom Ballard, a guy who cuts hearts out of rocks and distributes them to people to remind them that they're loved. (Not to be confused with Tim Ballard, the grifter and sexual predator who founded Operation Underground Railroad.) He brought heart rocks to give to everyone at the school. I forgot to get one before I left. I know it sounds weird, but he says it's really impacted people and even saved lives, so good for him. I made a simple little YouTube ad for my book. In theory, I have a wider reach on YouTube than on any other platform, because I have 3.45K subscribers, mostly thanks to one music video I posted in 2015 that has over two million views. In practice, this video has gotten six views in six days. Yay, I love being me. But I'm also friends with a host of a Star Wars podcast, and I arranged to exploit that for some free advertising under the rationale that my book drew lots of inspiration from Star Wars. I listened to this episode on mute because I want to support my friend but I'd rather slit my wrists than hear my own voice. This was my first time being interviewed about what I hope to leverage into a career, and I think I did pretty well right until the end. I've decided that from now on I'm not going to be apologetic or self-deprecating about the fact that I self-published. That was my choice, and I stand by it. I don't know how much rejection I would have experienced or how many changes the publisher would have wanted to make if I'd gone the traditional route, but the fact that I didn't is not a reflection on the quality of my writing. Also, at the end, I should have mentioned my Goodreads author page. I only mentioned my Amazon page and this website and said that should about cover it. My mind was racing with all my different social media profiles, and I thought I should keep it simple by not including them, and then I didn't mention the Goodreads author page because I haven't done anything with it, I have one follower (the podcast friend), and I don't have a strategy for using it to further my career. I should, though. But see, I'm learning already, and it's a very good sign that I don't hate everything about this interview. A few days later, as it happens, another friend sought out people to participate in a podcast that she's making for a college class. The topic is "life lessons you wish you had learned sooner." I'm not sure if I'll do it or not, because the biggest life lesson I wish I had learned sooner, besides the generic and boring ones, is one that she, a Mormon, wouldn't want to hear. The biggest life lesson I wish I had learned sooner is this: Feelings are not a reliable method of evaluating truth. I've only learned this in the last couple of years. My parents and everyone in the LDS Church taught me from a young age to base my worldview in large part on "spiritual witnesses" that are actually just normal human emotions. As an adult, I thought I was so open-minded and well-rounded because I accepted spiritual methods of evaluating certain kinds of truth in addition to empirical methods for evaluating other kinds of truth. But this sandy foundation, and my desperate wholehearted efforts to follow God's direction for my life, eventually brought me a world of pain and disillusionment. Pleasant feelings are not the Holy Ghost. Unpleasant feelings are not Satan. This is so obvious now. I'm pretty pissed off that I was indoctrinated to think that way. I try not to be pissed off at any specific person who indoctrinated me, because I know they all meant well. There was a very specific point in my life, age seventeen, where I chose to continue believing the church, despite all the evidence I'd stumbled upon that Joseph Smith was a fraud, because of the powerful "spiritual witness" I'd felt at EFY. It's hard to say I regret that as such. I don't regret moving to Utah, going to USU, or meeting many wonderful people and having many great experiences through the church. It's impossible to even say how my life would have turned out otherwise. But eventually, my fidelity to this decision - to God, I thought - drove me to twist myself into intellectual pretzels, put up with a lot of bullcrap that was so clearly wrong, and waste several years of my life defending and promoting a lie. I wish I had still come to Utah and gone to USU but left the LDS Church years earlier. And I hope to help others figure it out sooner than I did before they base their major life decisions on unreliable feelings, perhaps with less positive results. Think of all the women who gave up their dreams because their prophet told them to be stay-at-home moms, for example. Think of all the irrational things people may do because they think the Holy Ghost told them to. Someone posted this on reddit a few months ago. They filed it under Humor/Memes, but it's not funny, it's terrifying that children are being groomed to think this way. Or more precisely, to not think at all. People in every religion appear to get the same "spiritual witnesses" that the LDS Church wants to monopolize, and I point this out at every opportunity. Mormons typically give me one of two responses. The first one is that of course all these people feel the Holy Ghost because all religions have some truth. But that still undermines the claim that Mormons' spiritual witnesses specifically prove that their religion is the most true. Mormons have no right to assert that their subjective personal feelings are more powerful or more authentic than everyone else's subjective personal feelings. This also fails to explain why "the Holy Ghost" bears witness of the truth of suicide cults, as attested by people who have been filmed bearing emotional testimonies a few days before they killed themselves because their prophet told them to. And when I bring that up, Mormons give their other response, which is that Satan deceived those people by mimicking the Holy Ghost - something that the LDS Church specifically taught me he couldn't do. My sister said that's why we have to evaluate religions by their fruits. I tried to explain that nobody in the world sees the LDS Church protecting child abusers or lying about its obscene wealth and thinks "Ah, this must be the true religion." Someone posted this on reddit a few days ago. I can vouch that nothing in it is inaccurate. I was taught all of this in the LDS Church, and now, from the other side, the manipulation and circular reasoning are so obvious (without even getting into the fallacious claim that the church is automatically true if the Book of Mormon is true). The LDS Church quite noticeably pulls this same bullcrap with tithing. If you pay it and good things happen, that proves tithing is a true principle and you should keep paying it. If you pay it and good things don't happen, that means you need to wait on the Lord's timing or you're just failing to notice the subtle ways he's blessing you, and tithing is still a true principle and you should keep paying it. There is no scenario in which the church will concede that the tithing promise has been falsified. While I'm on the subject of the Book of Mormon, though, I want to address a couple of faith-promoting cliches that I saw all over Twitter when Mormons began studying it in their church curriculum this year. The people saying these things weren't the usual alt-right jerks that I interact with, so I left them alone unless they specifically invited feedback. But I can't stand the claim that Joseph Smith only had 85 days to translate the Book of Mormon and therefore it was miraculous. According to his own narrative, he had five and a half years between the time he first mentioned the golden plates and the time he started translating them. His mother later wrote of this period, "During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelings, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life among them." He even got a bit of a practice run when he dictated the original 116 pages and then didn't reproduce them after Martin Harris lost them, as he would have been able to do if he'd actually received them by revelation. And then he only needed to dictate for three to six hours a day to get the Book of Mormon finished in 85 days. Suddenly it's a little less miraculous. I also saw a lot of assertions that the Book of Mormon has "held up to scrutiny" for almost two hundred years. That one just baffles me. Orthodox Mormons will continue to believe in it because of their "spiritual witness," not because of external evidence or internal consistency, regardless of what anyone says. Meanwhile, the people outside of the LDS Church and the tiny Mormon splinter groups who take it seriously as an ancient document can be counted on one hand. Virtually all scholars of anything regard it as an obvious work of nineteenth-century fiction. Even many Mormons regard it as a work of nineteenth-century fiction. I have no real idea, but I think it would be generous to estimate that 0.05% of people in the world believe the Book of Mormon is what Joseph Smith said it was. So why does that tiny fraction of a percent, whatever it happens to be exactly, get to decide that the book has "held up to scrutiny"? What does that even mean under these circumstances? Just that the book has continued to exist? That's a pretty low bar, and not miraculous by any stretch of the imagination. It's the same bar to which they hold the entire LDS Church now that its "miraculous" growth rate has been plummeting for three decades in a row. So that's why I'm not sure if I'll appear on this other friend's podcast.
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"Guys. Chris's blog is the stuff of legends. If you’re ever looking for a good read, check this out!"
- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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