Half Mormon

My parents would argue that it makes no sense whatsoever to call oneself one-half of a religion based on having inherited it but not on half-practicing it.  I argue that (A) they're wrong on so many levels it's tough for me to know where to start a rebuttal and (B) by the time I've been both blessed and necro-dunked, I can say I  have practiced it

I've discussed the circumstances surrounding my brother and I having been blessed before. My grandparents wanted my brother and me to be considered LDS children of record, so they had us blessed in an LDS chapel during Fast & Testimony Meeting when we were two years old without bothering to enlighten my parents as to what had been done.

The necro-dunking incident -- more properly known among true-believing Mormons as "Baptism for the Dead"  was more an act of confusion. I was staying with relatives in Utah. A necro-dunking trip had been planned for the local LDS ward's youth. My aunt was going to be gone for the day with her four children who were too young to participate in necro-dunking, while the other three children were going along for the temple trip, and she didn't trust me alone in her house all day. (I was twelve at the time.)  In order to be allowed to participate in the necro-dunking activity,  had to pass through two worthiness interview checkpoints.

The first checkpoint was with the local bishop, who was my uncle. He genuinely thought I had been baptized and was officially LDS.  The next worthiness interview checkpoint was with a member of the stake presidency; an LDS stake is the rough equivalent of a Catholic diocese. The stake president in the area happened to be  another uncle by marriage, who also was laboring under the false assumption that I had been baptized Mormon and was officially LDS, and therefore eligible for necro-dunking.

I told both of these men I had not been baptized, but both thought I was lying in order to avoid attending the necro-dunking activity, and both signed off on my level of worthiness to be baptized on behalf of someone who had died in the distant or not-so-distant past. With all the lying I was supposedly doing in order to get out of participating in this activity, one would have thought my worthiness would have  been seriously compromised. The last I heard, bearing false witness was one of The Big Ten No-Nos agreed upon by both Mormonism and Catholicism. (It's one of the relatively few distinctions upon which the two religions agree, and even here they cannot agree upon which number of commandment it is, which is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of all things Catholic, Mormon, or anywhere in between.)

Anyway, I was necro-dunked in the Manti Temple a huge number of times because I was such a light-weight that dunking me didn't tire out the priesthood holder who was doing the dunking.  I finally got the man's attention and told him I needed to catch me breath, so he let me go.

The whole issue regarding my bona fide Mormon-ness concerns whether or not I was baptized for myself.    We all agree now that it never happened.  I think, however, that by the time a Mormon priesthood holder dunked me somewhere between thirty and one-hundred times (even among those of us present for the particular necro-dunking session, we cannot agree on how many times I was actually dunked; my relatives say one person would never be dunked close to one-hundred times, even though they acknowledge that I was dunked substantially more than is usual; i say I lost count at sixty-eight and that it went on considerably past the point where i lost count) some of it had to have spilled over the temple's "to infinity and beyond" territory and into the here and now, and that it counts. I have the right to consider myself  however much Mormon that I choose to consider myself.

The interesting thing is what happened in the eyes of the LDS church to the souls of those dear departed dead people (I acknowledge the redundancy of my description) on whose behalf I was necro-dunked. Must someone else be necro-dunked on their behalf, or are they considered good to go?  I would write the LDS church headquarters in Salt Lake City to ask The Big Boys, but they no longer entertain letters with questions from the masses.  If you write them with a question now, they send you in return a form letter telling you to consult and rely upon the counsel of your local LDS leaders. I would consider doing that except that relying upon the counsel of local LDS leaders was what got me possibly  invalidly necro-dunked in the first place.

My brother, too, is in a somewhat unique state of half-Mormon-ness.  He holds the Aaronic Priesthood of the LDS church without ever having been baptized, which is, if anything, even less probable than having been baptized for the dead without having been baptized for the alive.  I think my family is  just a bit special where Mormonism is concerned in such a way  that we can skip steps of Mormonism just as some people skip grades in school. We skipped a grade in school as well; it seems we're special in more ways than one.

I may be half Mormon, but I'm not yet half-finished with my work for the quarter, so I must return to the grindstone from whence I sprang.

Mormon Mommy Blogs

Because I have apparent masochistic tendencies, I sometimes click on the "next blog" button on the Blogspot bar. I don't know if what I get when I click on the button is representative of what's truly out there in Blogspot's corner of the blogosphere, or if I'm just lucky, but at least once out of every four times that I click, I land on a Mormon Mommy blog.

I have nothing against Mormons.  Maybe I do, actually, but I don't hate all of them, especially since I am a "sort of" Mormon. I was blessed in the LDS church, and, through a statistical and record-keeping anomaly, I was baptized by proxy for numerous dead people in a Mormon temple even though I was never baptized for myself outside of the temple, which is supposed to happen before a person is allowed to undertake the same ordinance on behalf of others. (Similarly, my brother, who was not baptized, either, holds the Aaronic Priesthood of the LDS church. We Rousseaus are apparently incredibly talented at being Mormons to the degree that we're allowed to skip necessary steps, pass Go, and collect our two hundred dollar stipends without troubling ourselves with Chance, Community Chest, or any of the four railroads. When someone's grandfather is among The Lord's Annointed, sometimes others make silly assumptions about pesky little matters such as baptism.)

Getting back to the subject at hand, while I may take many cheap shots at Mormons and Mormonism, many people whom I love or about whom I care are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Some of them are mothers. Paradoxically, though, they're not Mormon Mommies. Merely being both a Mormon and a mother (or even a mommy, if one prefers)  does not make a person a Mormon Mommy. Being a Mormon Mommy involves more than practicing a religion and begetting children.  "Mormon Mommies" are far more special than that.

A Mormon Mommy gives her children names such as Kennedie, Shelayna,  Gracie Claire,   or Sariah.  Sometimes she chooses to highlight her child's specialness by creating a one-of-a-kind designer name such as Emmalia or Deseret, and she becomes  most irate if anyone, upon seeing the name in print, mispronounces the first name /em-muh-LEE-uh/ or the second as /DES-ur-et/. (They're pronounced  /em-MAHL-lee-uh/ and 'des-ur-RAY/, idiots.)

She spends many of her waking hours on Pinterest, creating projects she learned about on Pinterest, photographing her Pinterestic creations, and publishing her fantastic Pinterest results there and elsewhere. She can blog for weeks about hairstyles she learned about on Pinterest.  Her children's birthday parties (the themes and implementation procedures of which usually sprung from Pinterest) are documented more exhaustively than was the birth of Jesus.


One may reach the conclusion that I have some sort of issue with Pinterest, which is not entirely accurate. While I have no desire to create adorable Christmas card holders from recycled Tampax boxes, or, for that matter, to create anything through any process that involves the use of a glue gun, I'm open-minded enough not to deny others that privilege; I just don't want to hear about it. What happens on Pinterest should remain on Pinterest. If I'm sitting on a chair that was slip-covered with individual Starburst wrappers that were melted with a steaming iron onto discarded hospital gowns, please leave me to wallow in my ignorance as to the process that created this one-of-a-kind work of art on which I'm sitting. If the chair is too precious for me to sit on, just say so, but don't torture me with cumbersome stories about the preciousness of the chair. I don't want to read about it on Blogspot, either. If anyone truly wants to know about all the bizarre hygiene products be created in one's own kitchen using only cornstarch, baking soda, candle wax, and Herbal Essence Shampoo, the person probably knows how to find Pinterest. the rest of the world would appreciate being spared the gory details.

Standard written English and A Mormon Mommy are not usually best friends, or even casual acquaintances. A Mormon Mommy connects independent clauses with commas.  ("We are laughing, we are friends.") The distinction between adjectives and adverbs is not a matter to which she gives much thought. Likewise, if subject/verb agreement happens, fine; if it fails to happen, that, too, is fine. Pronoun/antecedent compatibility? What's that? She uses apostrophes liberally, though not necessarily in any way of which David Foster Wallace or any other grammar Nazi would approve. (The Anderson's  had  BLAST'S at  Alicias' and at Great-Grandmas "60th" birthday bash's.)  Blogspot's spelling correction feature keeps her blog from containing even more spelling errors than a person would find in an average posting of this blog (I admit to being a notoriously poor typist who doesn't take the time that I should to edit), but provides more than enough homophonic errors to make up for the lack of outright spelling miscues. ("My great-great-grandfather still serves on the steak high counsel and sings base in the choir. He and my great-great-grandmother receive so many complements about they're many descendence whenever there entire family is together, like at my cousins bridle shower.") Exclamation points are a Mormon Mommy's best friend, and she hearts them!!!!! (A Mormon Mommy does not merely love people, places, things, or ideas. She hearts them!

I most definitely do not hold disdain for LDS mothers as a whole. I'm related to a great many of them, some of with whom I'm even on speaking terms. Two ladies (one a relative and the other not) with whom I have close relationships are both practicing Latter-Day Saints and mothers. One works full-time as an ENT, otherwise known as an otolaryngologist, and, along with her husband, who is a gastroenterologist, looks after her two children.  The other one, who has six children, is a non-practicing dental hygienist. though she likes to boast that not one of her six children has ever had a cavity. In what little spare time she has, she handles accounting for family operated enterprises.  Both women are intelligent, attractive,  articulate, nice, and funny. To the best of my knowledge,  neither woman blogs, but if either one did, it wouldn't be a Mormon Mommy blog. They would have more intelligent messages to share than how to conserve energy by baking cheesecake atop the engine of a just-parked SUV (that gets a whopping eleven miles to the gallon) after she has driven it around the neighborhood for thirty-seven minutes for the sole purpose of heating  the engine sufficiently to back the cheesecake. How's that for conservation of natural resources? Natural resources do not actually need to conserved, nor does the concept of overpopulation need to be considered, according to  Mormon Mommies, because The Savior will return soon enough, ushering in The Millenium and rendering as moot any discussion of the Earth's resources.

I shared my distaste for Mormon Mommy blogs with my dad, who said, "If you don't like 'em, don't read 'em." I could follow his advice, but it's not that simple. Mormon Mommy blogs are the proverbial train wreck from which i cannot turn away. I also, on the other hand, reserve the first amendment-supported  right to criticize what I find worthy of criticism.  If anything is worthy of criticism, it's the average Mormon Mommy blog.

Litmus Test of Religion

What makes a person the religion they are? For many of us, we're born into a particular faith or denomination. We either blindly follow along, don't follow along, actively choose to believe and practice it, or choose something else.

Sometimes  it's more complicated. My father was born Catholic. He attended Catholic schools and went through the Catholic milestones at appropriate times. Then a nasty curve ball was thrown his way in the form of two Mormon missionaries who showed up on his parents' doorstep. His parents were converted to Mormonism and took their large brood of children along with them. What this really accomplished for my father was to take away his belief system without replacing them with anything of substance. You can't take a bright kid who excels in math and science, immerse him in one religion that's not entirely logical, then jerk him out of it and into another one that has even less a foundation in science-based logic, and expect him to emerge with anything resembling an intact conventional religious faith. We're probably lucky that my dad is even as sane as he is.  I think he believes in a higher power and that Jesus was one of the good guys. Beyond that, I doubt he has much in the way of religious beliefs.  He attends mass with the family and usually even takes communion, but I suspect he does it so that our family can worship together more than any inner sense compels him to do so.

To the outwardly observing person, my father is a Roman Catholic. What is a Catholic, really, or what distinguishes a Catholic from anyone else? In the olden pre-Vatican II days, Catholics could largely be told apart from the non-Catholics by their observance of meatless Fridays. Someone in the know can still tell for the most part during Lent whether or not a person is adherent to Catholic tenets. If one happens to notice a rosary in a person's possession, it's also a pretty good indicator of Catholicism.

Outward manifestations, however, are just that. What really makes a person a Catholic? The bottom line, to my liberal way of thinking, would be whether or not a person considers himself or herself Catholic. Other less subjective markers do exist, however. I heard once that, even more than a belief in the ecclesiastical infallibility of the Pope, which may very well become a moot point for American Catholics in my lifetime,  is the issue of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the term used to describe the mysterious process by which the bread and wine of communion are literally transformed into the body of Christ while retaining the physical properties of bread and wine. The Protestant churches, as well as a whole lot of Catholics, believe that the representation is symbolic rather than literal. I have no issue with the beliefs of others differing from mine in this regard, as we all need to be free to believe what we believe.

In black and white, even I can say transubstantiation seems a bit far-fetched, but it's OK with me that a very few things I believe cannot be explained scientifically. If a large portion of my belief system were predicated upon things that did not hold up to fact-based inquiry, I  would experience major cognitive dissonance. With just a tiny number of beliefs, however, I can write them off as mysteries and probably be happier than I would be if every single thing in my life had to have a logical explanation.

I'm finished for now, but not finished entirely with this topic.

Scientology

I read somewhere [precisely where I read it I cannot recall]  that Scientology exists for the purpose of making Mormonism appear somewhat normal by comparison. It was obviously intended as a joke, but there's more than a sliver of truth to it.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' recent divorce has brought Scientology to the forefront of the news. Most of what I know about Scientology I learned from watching a South Park episode. Normally a cartoon isn't a great primary source for reliable information about a religion or  about anything else, for that matter, but I've been told by people who should  know that the episode summed up the religion, quasi-religion, or whatever one would care to call it, fairly accurately. Mormonism is not without its eccentricities, but it at least wasn't made up by a mediocre-at-best science fiction writer. (Joseph Smith may very well have been an author of fiction, but it wasn't science fiction.)

I question the wisdom of having young men interrupt their college educations to go at their own expense to wherever the church wants to send them for two years; it seems to me that if they're going to go at all, it would be wiser for them to go directly after graduating from high school or to wait until they've finished college if they plan to attend college. Still, at least LDS missionaries don't have to sign contracts, symbolic or otherwise, pledging one thousand years of service to the church. That's reportedly what is required of Scientology's SeaOrg work crew.

Inspired by Dog the Bounty Hunter, His Lovely Wife Beth, and Baby Lyssa: My New Career

I have an idea about what I want to do with my life. It involves being a bail bondswoman, but there's more.

My plan is this: I will bail criminals out of jail only if I think they're innocent. I'll use my law degree to defend them if I think they can get a fair trial. If I think the system is stacked against them, I'll help them escape to a nation from which they will not be extradited back to the U.S. Amnesty International may choose to be involved in my cause. I don't yet know which countries do not have extradition treaties with the U. S. I'll learn that in law school. It will be the first thing I've ever learned in school that had any practical value.
Then again, maybe i'll just look it up on Wikipedia.

One obvious complication to my plan is that it's going to be pretty damned expensive to post bail for these people  then forfeit it when they go on the lam. I simply don't have that kind of money. I'm going to need a benefactor -- someone incredibly wealthy who believes in my cause. If  I could work in cooperation with a church, my benefactor could give the money to the church, which could then hand it over to me. Then the benefactor could get, in addition to the feeling of doing a really good deed, a massive tax write-off. Any wealthy takers out there? Mitt Romney has a lot of money. Perhaps, generous soul that he is who always wants to help the underdog, Mitt will want to join forces with me.

Predictably, my dad thinks this is a terrible idea. He's very upset about it to the point that he's threatening not to pay my law school tuition. Everyone else just laughs about it.

Until I'm allowed to do something fun, I'm going to keep coming up with ideas every bit as brilliant as this one.