'Twas the night before Christmas

As a kid, I wrote a bazillion versions of the classic Christmas poem, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. I stumbled across a few of them this year while decorating for Christmas. I figured I would share one for your viewing reading pleasure:

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, we ran around naked and sat on a mouse.

The Christmas tree was old and falling apart, and my grandpa sitting by the fire, was acting like a fart.

The children were all down watching t.v., but I really needed to take a pee.

I ran in the bathroom, and to my delight, I saw a fresh roll of toilet paper, my first joy tonight!

Then I heard a big noise coming from the kitchen, I ran to the room and saw Santa's reindeer Blitzen!

He scared me to death, so I ran and screamed; this was not at all the night I had dreamed.

I ran to my wife and told her what I'd seen; she didn't believe me, she thought I was nuts, it seemed.

But I knew what I'd seen and I wanted to prove, but when I took her to the kitchen, that reindeer Blitzen had moved!

Gee, I was mad, lots of anger arising, I wanted to prove I was not hallucinating.

Gee whiz! I was mad, my anger arising, I threw a glass bowl, the results were quite frightening.

I ran to the window as my wife screamed, "Look at what you did, you ruined the beans!"

I felt terribly bad, but had no time to lose, I had to find that reindeer, no time to choose.

I ran out of the house and looked onto the roof, and what did I see, but that dumb reindeer... or was it a moose?

I guess I had been mistaken the whole time, that moose wasn't Blitzen, no way it was Dime.

I felt really stupid, I felt really dumb, cuz the whole time I thought that a reindeer had come.

It was just a mean neighboor playing a trick, and I thought it was a reindeer that belongs to St. Nick.

I went to my wife and told her the joke, she came outside, saw the moose and said, "You silly bloke!"

"You thought the whole time this was one of Santa's reindeer? You have a wild imagination" she said, "and I fear,"

"that you have need of some Christmas cheer."

So we went inside and had a drink, then we played a few games til I started to stink.

I was losing every game so I said, nodding my head, "I'm pretty dang tired, let's go to bed."

The end.

All this pushing the envelope has given me a papercut: Yes, I will be wearing pants on Sunday!

Have you heard about Pantspocalypse? No? What?! You don't have your smartphone attached to your hip so you can check Facebook compulsively every five minutes like me? Good for you. I really am need of some help when it comes to that matter.

But in all seriousness, I would like to address many of the thoughts that have been going through my mind for the last few days as a result of what many have termed "the pantspocalypse." Let me give you a quick explanation and timeline:

At some point during graduate school, a friend posted a link to a hilarious blog post that you will find here. It was my introduction to The Mormon Child Bride aka Stephanie, a woman whom I have since grown to admire and respect a great deal.

I found that initial post about Bently at the perfect time. I needed a break from the stress of writing a zillion papers for my greedy, research hungry monsters professors. I also needed to know that I was not the only one questioning my beliefs when it comes to how women fit into the LDS church. I spent the next hours (much to the dismay of my grades) reading nearly all her posts and feeling this incredible sense of peace. "I am not alone."

Rewind a couple of years and you will will find me in a UVU classroom absolutely enchanted by my Gender and Crime class. I mean, I knew about the reality of sexism, but my lack of formal education about patriarchy and feminism left much to be desired. That semester was probably the most eye opening experience of my life. Not only was I getting my groove on in Hip Hop, rocking the darkroom in Photography 101 and writing silly limericks in Creative Writing, but I was also being opened up to just how powerful "white privilege" is in my Race and Minority Relations class and taking field trips to the prison to meet women that I would later work with. Needless to say, in the end, I was converted.

To feminism that is.

Within in the church we sometimes hear converts say that when they find the church, they feel like they are coming home. What they learn and discover about the gospel feels familiar to them. We say that this is because we did, after all, exist before this life and we had the gospel in its fullness. So it makes sense that it would feel familiar. In a way, I feel this way about my feminism. It was always there, I just didn't have a label for it. Or an educated way to talk about it. But it was there, and oh, so familiar.

After I read about Bently and blogstalked my heart out, everything was different. So when I read Stephanie's recent post about starting All Enlisted, a Facebook group "for brainstorming ways to faithfully and peacefully advance feminist causes within the church," I was all in. I mean, 90 percent of my life is already devoted to Facebook (just kidding! kinda...) so this was the perfect way for me to find like minded people who before now I didn't really even know existed.

And then I read about The Pants.

More specifically "Wear Pants to Church Day" which will be taking place (for me) in T Minus 8 1/2 hours. You can find more information on the event here. Unfortunately, the original Facebook page was taken down due to the extremely abusive nature of many comments (mostly opposing the event) which included death threats aimed at the administrators of the group.

Yes, you read that correctly. Death threats. Unbelievable. Because of PANTS.

Of course, I joined the event and I am extremely excited to wear pants to church tomorrow in support of this "movement" which is aimed at peacefully drawing attention to gender inequalities within church policy/culture/doctrine and opening up a dialogue so that these things can be discussed openly and honestly.

I haven't been to church in months, so I was a little nervous about showing up sans a skirt. Believe me, I feel passionately about women being allowed to wear pants over dresses. If you don't believe me, you can read this hilarious rant. But I have plans to attend the baby blessing of a family member tomorrow, and I knew that my choice would probably not sit very well with many of the family members in attendance. After posting my support for the event on Facebook, one such family member came unglued and made sure I knew how "ridiculous" this was, and how "disrespectful" I was being by choosing to wear pants on the Sabbath.

While this was not unexpected for me (I know my family are VERY conservative/cultural Mormons), I think what happened on the event Facebook page was quite unplanned. If you happened to come across the page before it was taken down, you might have seen the incredible backlash that it ignited. In reading through fellow Mormons' negative comments, I was incredibly disheartened and appalled by the behavior of those who consider themselves followers of Christ. Initially, my gut reaction to all the hatred and judgement was to swear. A lot. I will not lie, I got incredibly worked up and heated over it. And I thought to myself, do I really want to associate myself with people and a church so full of hatred towards their own people?

Cries of "apostate" rang out, and commenters were encouraging those in support of the event to "just leave" the church if they didn't like it as it currently stands. Yeah. That's real Christ-like. You claim to have a monopoly on Salvation, yet you are telling me to walk the other way because I have a slightly different opinion than you. Hmm. Sleeping in sounded WAY better than sitting in a room full of these people.

But then the Facebook page was taken down and I turned to the All Enlisted page. I found words of encouragement and peace. I found not only a call to wear pants on Sunday, but a call to love and be patient with those who have openly expressed their hatred for us and all we are trying to accomplish. I felt the spirit, something I hadn't felt in the months I was attending church before I slipped into my current status of "inactive." I realized that I still was not alone, and I strengthened my resolve to stay and "fight the good fight."

There have been a lot of misconceptions that have come along with the purpose behind wearing the pants. I really like the explanation given in this article. Everyone participating has their own personal reasons for doing so.

I would like to share mine:

The most heartbreaking thing for me was going through the temple for the first time. My relationship with God/the church has had many ups and downs over the years, especially when I was a teenager. But despite my doubts or annoyance about church policy/culture/doctrine I have always felt that the gospel is true and I've never been able to fully walk away from it.

After my son was born and I placed him for adoption, I went though the incredibly difficult and humbling process of repentance and felt so strongly about going through the temple and the wonderful peace and blessings I would find there. Instead, my first time through, I questioned everything I thought I knew.

On top of the whole ceremony being extremely different than I thought (let's admit, for first timers, it's flat out WEIRD... for me even borderline creepy), I felt a complete absence of the spirit. I know the wording of the ceremony might seem to most as a trivial thing, but it left me feeling scarred and empty.

For awhile after we got married, I tried going back. I figured that like many said, it took going back a lot to truly understand the symbolism and the ordinance. But the few more times I went, I almost felt worse. I heard the same hurtful things repeated and it broke my heart. I felt like I was in a way being cut off from God because I was required to go through my husband to reach him and I just could not see the logic or fairness in that.

Sadly, I haven't been back to the temple in quite awhile... The excuse after awhile was that I was SO busy. Which was true. Grad school is a very demanding beast. But I also just couldn't bear to go back only to leave feeling empty and dejected yet again. I almost didn't even renew my temple recommend last year when the time came. Not because I wasn't worthy, but because I almost didn't even care anymore. The temple wasn't the place of peace and solace that I was counting on. It became a source of question and doubt.

The temple is at the center of our religion. In it we find the keys to our own personal salvation. To have this experience was devastating for me. Even the very House of God I found soul crushing (far from perfect!) patriarchy. Talk about a faith crisis.

Unfortunately, my repertoire of defense mechanisms involves getting really angry, and shutting down (hence my tendency to swear like a sailor). So instead of searching for answers within the church to my questions, I just stopped caring/coming. Until now.

I have been inspired by the many women (and men!) I have found who have grappled with similar issues but remained visibly faithful and steadfast in their devotion to the church. These are not apostates, they are "true believers of Christ." And I stand beside them with all my heart.

Which is why tomorrow I will be wearing pants to church.