The Church's Rhetorical Dilemma

I was quite refreshed by the tone of the General Relief Society meeting this year. Just naming the hymns alone will make quite a statement: "Redeemer of Israel," "High on the Mountain Top," "The Lord is My Light," and one more that I can't remember of similar active vein. It was nice, for once, to actually have to think during a GenRS meeting

Not that the talks were stunning. I could feel the list of three things in Sister Beck's talk coming from a mile away--but it had good moments too. I confess that I found Sister Allred's talk slightly boring, although I did enjoy listening to her accent a lot. Sister Thompson carried that day with an interesting hybridization of gospel truths and worldly experience.

But in spite of their flaws, the talks had real substance. They weren't the pat on the head talks that have become the butt of so many GenRS vs. GenPriesthood meeting jokes.

Apparently though, the Church just can't win when talking to women. Katherine wrote a post complaining how either it's patronizing us with how great we are, telling us not to be depressed, or it's how we need to be the best, telling us to do better. Neither mode is satisfactory. But is there a point in the middle? After reading Katherine's post, I was left asking, "Well then, if they can't tell us we're good enough and they can't tell us to be better, how can the Church talk to women?"

If we have to pick between the two, I'd personally pick the latter--like Sister Beck said in her talk, the best cure for loneliness and depression is the get out and do something. It seems to me that the reason for the first, conciliatory mode of speaking is solved by the second--action. It seems to me that the recent move towards coddling has been mostly due to increased awareness of depression in the Church (and perhaps the Church's hyper-reaction to the problem--it has the same flavor of over-correction as affirmative action). Maybe this is just because I've found ways to deal with my own feelings of inadequacy through moving forward.

But in actuality, both the conciliatory and the active roles are parts of the gospel. The repentance process can be distracted by a perversion of either. Satan tries to convince us that we are flawed beyond hope or that we can perform our own salvation. But actual salvation needs the true nature of both. And perhaps so does the attitude of Church speakers toward their audience. Too much condemnation or acceptance is stifling to eternal progress. We must make the gospel something within reach, which is perhaps why President Hinckley's "small steps," "stand a little taller" motif works so well--it promotes action, but makes it reachable rather than hopeless.

Stability and Writing

As Katherine points out, the conversations we have during downtimes at the writing center are interesting, to say the least. Today, for instance, two of my coworkers and I covered in a single conversation topics ranging from psychologists (necessary, helpful, or evil?), the relationship of guilt and stress to achievement, the role of mothers and the problems therein, and whether insanity/instability is a necessary part of being a brilliant writer.

It's on this last point that I'm still sorting out my thoughts. The consensus seemed to be that you can be a good writer and a normal person, but most of the best writers will be tragically unstable and unhappy. Now, I acknowledge there's a definite correlation between an unhappy personal life and brilliant writing--look up the biography of the majority of canonical writers and you'll find a host of cruel families, unhappy love lives, suicidal tendencies, and anything else you'd care to imagine.

Yet I can't bring myself to believe there's necessarily a connection between the two. As anyone with a basic knowledge of statistics will note, a correlation between two variables says nothing about which causes which, or if a causal relationship even exists. The most current example would be the hilarious campaign revolving around the correlation between reduced amounts of piracy and increases in global temperatures. Clearly, it makes no logical sense to say one brings about the other, though the correlation is evident. If there’s any connection at all, they're probably both influenced by some hidden variable, say technological advances. So the fact that many great writers have been unstable is, at best, only anecdotal evidence of some connection between the two factors. (Granted, in the English department, anecdotal evidence is pretty much what we do. But indulge the science portion of my brain for a moment.)

Continuing the statistical analogy, I wonder if the relationship between brilliant writers and tortured writers comes by means of a hidden variable, namely, writers are always better when they have something essential to write about. No matter how eloquent your prose, if your topics are shallow or trivial, it's simply not going to become "great." Interesting and amusing, certainly, but great writing must inherently deal with the great matters of human existence. And a tortured personal life does certainly bring about a wealth of vital topics. All human beings, at one point or another, doubt their sanity, deal with failed relationships, and distrust the fairness of the universe, so these topics make the level of greatness more easily accessible. However, insanity or instability is by no means the only method of arriving at vitally important material. Religious devotion, scholarly study, and everyday observation can also bring about the consideration of humanity in all its forms.

In fact, writing driven by instability seems to me to be limiting rather than enabling. Writers motivated by personal angst are stuck within a realm of self, continually confronting the same issues of self-concept and depression in their writing, never able to move on to something of greater scope. Granted, there is infinity to explore within ourselves, but infinity also exists outside ourselves. Ought we to neglect one for the other? Introspection certainly has its place, but it’s not the only thing to write about. But I guess that’s my personal bias--I prefer considering the broad human condition rather than the local.

Another factor is the confusion of the esoteric with the brilliant. Just because something is hard to understand does not make it good writing. It's (relatively) easy to write something so esoteric that it seems profound because no one else can get it. It's a much more difficult and worthwhile task to write something so intensely clear and powerful that everyone knows exactly what you mean from the second they read it. And not something on low level, either. You must take an abstract, difficult concept and make it so obvious, clear, and simple without letting your audience know. (See, of course, CS Lewis.) In my opinion, this was the original function of poetry, and by extension literature: not to be obtuse and mysterious, but to be so dazzlingly clear as to appear prototypical. This is one problem I have in my own writing. It would be so easy to write something mysterious--pregant with general feeling but lacking a specific message. But I'd rather spend the time to make my meaning painfully specific and clear, clear enough to unite the minds of the writer and the reader for one moment. (I know this is a large enough heresy against the English department that it might take another post to fully justify, but work with me.)

But the most pressing reason that I reject this idea is that I simply don't believe that the goals of being a brilliant writer and a happy, fulfilled individual should be mutually exclusive. For me, creating art is a part of the gospel, one method of our pursuit of divine and eternal knowledge, creation on a small scale. I can’t believe that anything as good, true, and healthy as art could be incompatible with joy and happiness. It feels unnatural and untrue.

Middle Woman

Ah-Cheu was a woman of the great kingdom of Ch'in, a land of hills and valleys, a land of great wealth and dire poverty. But Ah-Cheu was a middle person, neither rich nor poor, neither old nor young, and her husband's farm was half in the valley and half on the hill. Ah-Cheu has a sister older than her, and a sister younger than her, and one lived thirty leagues to the north, and the other lived thirty leagues to the south. "I am a middle woman," Ah-Cheu boasted once, but her husband's mother rebuked her, saying, "Evil comes to the middle, and good goes out to the edges."
-"Middle Woman," Orson Scott Card

I guess the real thing I was getting at in my "Insecurities of a Jack" post is that lately I feel like a middle woman, moreso at this point in my life than at other times. I'm neither entirely ignorant nor astoundingly intellectual, neither committed science geek or philosophical humanities student, neither flamingly liberal or staunchly conservative. I don't read the cannon classics or the pulp fiction, but in between. I'm envious of those who can be obsessive fans of something, for I find myself on the borders between fandom and normality. I am a middle woman.

It's not that I don't have firm opinions, because I do. It's just that most of them happen to be firmly in the middle. Everything I've learned has lead me to believe that's where the truth is (see the Circle Theory). But to the people out on the edges, I appear wishy-washy and bland.

In theory, it's a great place to be. The middle is more objective, the middle can try anything, the middle can camoflage itself. But it feels so fake. I'm on the fringes of so many different communities, but part of none of them. Gamers, anime fans, science researchers, English researchers, high culture, low culture, political culture--I've got enough of each to understand what they are talking about, but I never really get out there and commit myself. I balance on the edges, watching and observing.

Which brings me to the excerpt from "Middle Woman." I love the story overall, but I've always wondered about that line: "Evil comes to the middle, and good goes out to the edges." It simply doesn't make sense to me. Good comes to all the edges, no matter how different they are, leaving out only the middle, which is a little like all of them?

And then I wonder if it has something to do with the parable of the unjust steward. Am I only in the middle because I lack the zeal or courage to settle on a direction and move out towards it? Does evil come to the middle because it is afraid?

Depression and iPods

One good reason for me to keep blogging every day is that when I skip a day, I suddenly find I have a million things to post about. Argh.

Let's put the most serious topic first: Tuesday's forum on religion, being LDS, and mental health. This is a topic very close to my heart, considering I have several family members battling depression and various other mental problems. The problem with this topic is trying to come to one conclusion as to what a mental illness is and what causes it. Different people draw the line between normal sadness and depression at different places. As for causes, the suggestions vary widely between personal sin, social problems, chemical imbalances, and heredity.

I am often quite shocked when discussing this topic with other people, especially within the LDS community. There are some pretty harsh and unfair conceptions of depression out in the church. For instance, yesterday at work, someone tried to convince me that there were no medical causes of depression and that it was simply the result of our society's unrealistic expectations of happiness. He seemed to think that medicating depression was ridiculous and that all these people needed was some good counciling to set them right. Let's make this perfectly clear: I am not a fan of our medicate-it-and-forget-it culture. I personally believe many drugs are overprescribed, and I avoid using even painkillers unless absolutely necessary since overuse creates tolerance.

However, as I have watched some close family struggle with depression, ADD, anxiety, and other diseases, I have seen the huge difference medication can make. Contrary to popular belief, depression medication is not something that makes the person feel instantly happy. It is not a wonder happy pill. As far as I have been able to tell, what it does is remove the person's inability to deal with their problems. When someone is depressed, everything seems hopeless and even the smallest of obstacles seem impossible to get over. With medication, I have seen this barrier removed and people able to tackle their problems, which are still difficult, hard and painful, but now manageable.

As you might have noticed, I try to take a balanced approach to depression. I believe that there is a biological/chemical component which, when removed, allows to person to deal with the underlying social/personal problems that caused it to appear in the first place. When life is good, people with depression are just like any of us; it's just that when obstacles appear, their biological make up causes them to panic, freeze, and plunge into despair out of proportion with the problem. No, I can't site any studies to back this up, yet. These are just my observations from personal experience. Feel free to send sources my way.

And on that note, sixth and lastly, I bring you iPod accessories to the point of ridiculousness. Alright, I admit, I sometimes envy the cuteness and portability of the iPod. But most of the time I manage to resist the temptation to buy one by thinking of two things. One, how disgustingly consumeristic this whole thing is. And two, it's really ridiculuous of me to have to pay to have my life soundtracked when I can just do it myself. *I'm siiiiiiiingin' in the rain . . . . .* Besides, I have an mp3 player on my phone, assuming I ever get around to purchasing some memory for it.

Weak Things

Sorry about the lack of recent posts. I've been working on getting back in the habit of writing in my journal, and it seems to absorbed all my blogging time. After the journal guilt trip lesson in the Wilford Woodruff manual, I've recently rediscovered some of my old journals.

As I was reading through them, I realized something: I keep making the same mistakes and discoveries over and over again. Seriously, I was reading my journal entries from last summer, and I could almost just change the dates and call them good for this summer. The same rants about a lack of time, dropping good habits in favor of stress, feeling lonely and worried, new resolve to do better, etc. etc. in endless cycles of the same realizations, the same problems.

It seems to me that maybe these are the things that the scriptures are referring to when they talk about taking our weaknesses to the Lord. For some reason, I had always thought of "weak things becoming strong" in terms of talents, or areas of knowledge. For example, I know I could never have made it through my Physics series without the Lord's help--it's simply not something I could have understood on my own.

Perhaps the scripture is true in that way, but I wonder if the Lord wasn't more specifically referring to weaknesses of character, those flaws in our own personality and thought process that we can't seem to see past. Because as I read my journal entries, I notice that when I am not keeping up on my scripture reading and those daily things, my weaknesses are magnified. When I become overwhelmed with my weakness and sink into the depths of despair, it is then that I am inspired to pick up again, to come close to God, and as I do, I see my weaknesses fading away.

It's almost like my own personal pride cycle. I'm not sure that I could ever fully be rid of it, but maybe someday I'll be able to shorten those downward periods and prolong the periods of light.

Happiness in Spite of Change

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes people happy, partially because of some stuff Katfish wrote in her blog over Christmas break. Apparently, some really wacked out stuff is going on in her life. It almost makes me feel like I have no right to talk about being sad, since my life is comparitively stable. Actually, I take that back. Every human being has the right to be happy and sad. Of course we all have a different scale; sometimes our scales aren't even measuring the same things. Why shouldn't we have a different scale? We're different people.

Anyway, what I wanted to write down was that life is simply a matter of centering yourself. As cliche as that may sound, I'm pretty sure it's true. (Isn't that how cliches get started? Something that is true that people say over and over because it sounds right? Maybe . . . interesting.) I got this idea out of the old Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens book. You see, what determines whether you are happy or sad is what you center your life around. People are usually miserable when they center their life about things they can't control: friends, a relationship, money, grades, etc. When those things change, the foundation of your life just disappears, leaving you freefalling.

The obvious solution is to find something to center on that will not change. In my case, I believe that thing must be the gospel. For instance, right now I'm really worried about losing my scholarship. My grades were much worse this semester than I thought they would be, and if I don't get straight A's next semester and retake some classes, my scholarship is bye-bye. When I first thought about this, I panicked a little. However, I went home that night and read my scriptures and just felt the reassurance of faith. I have something to fall back on. No matter what, I know the gospel is true, and its principles and precepts will get me through anything.

Which leads me to the real problem that I've been thinking about. Several blogs I've read recently have said they want to find a testimony, but just can't get it. I wonder what's wrong there. Exactly how does one go about gaining a testimony? For me, it was during my sophomore year of high school when I really started reading my scriptures every night, no matter how late is was. At one point, not during any particularly important part of Alma, I just felt a wave of peace and love, and I knew it had to be true. Sure, before that you had your EFY moments, and since then I can't say I haven't had my moments of doubt, but down inside I know its true. That seed of truth makes me feel guilty when I go against it and gives me peace when I do right.

But what can you say to someone who has tried and doesn't have a testimony? I can't possibly know what they have done, felt, tried. I cannot judge the sincerity of their desire. To me, it seems there must be one universal answer, a fool-proof method of finding truth for one's self. I've decided to make this the guiding principle of my scripture study for the next little while, until I find myself a satisfactory answer.