Bless My Palpitating Heart

When I first felt “called” to join the Church decades ago, I –  a Midwesterner – was a freshman at an Ivy League college. I was already a devoted Christian regularly reading the scriptures and intent on walking Christ’s path. My first LDS Sunday School teacher was a C.S. Lewis scholar and the perfect segue for me to feel confirmed that this new place was fertile soil. My earliest Church experiences were in university wards under the pastoral care of some of the best, brightest, and most committed LDS people one could find. I didn’t yet know that Primary was a thing. I wasn’t quite sure what “Relief Society” was, but I learned to love it.

Among the concepts that resonated early with me was this bold pronouncement by Brigham Young:

“Mormonism,” so-called, embraces every principle pertaining to life and salvation, for time and eternity. No matter who has it. If the infidel has got truth it belongs to “Mormonism.” The truth and sound doctrine possessed by the sectarian world, and they have a great deal, all belong to this Church….All that is good, lovely, and praiseworthy belongs to this Church and Kingdom. “Mormonism” includes all truth….If you can find a        truth in heaven, earth or hell, it belongs to our doctrine. We believe it; it is ours; we claim it.

What a joyful, bountiful, abundant concept! With the confidence to explore and seek truth and serve others while firmly nourishing my “personal relationship with Christ” (to use my previous Protestant parlance) I kept “growing in grace.” This is what I wanted and expected out of a church experience. It was what I was used to in my upbringing. It’s what I still expect.

With the past year’s pandemic-induced modification of “home church” I have been well fed in that regard. I’d been tuning in to zoom church meetings since the early days of the pandemic. My husband and I have been deeply enriched by supplementing ward meetings with the Dialogue Sunday Gospel Study (which keeps up with the “Come Follow Me” course curriculum). It has provided thoughtful, spiritual meals since the start of “home church.” Having the sacrament with just my husband has been rich and humble, providing a holy dynamic I cherish.

Last week, wearing a mask and literally “armed” with a booster shot, I returned in person to my regular ward. We now live in rural Utah where many ward brothers and sisters are the descendants of the original settlers of this valley. They say “hell” when they mean “hail.” They say “dill” when they mean “deal.” Most of the time I can understand them.

Sometimes I need to be reminded that I am not “typical” in the culture of the Latter-day Saints. As my husband describes me, I am “fluent but not native” to the world of the Latter-day Saints.  Sometimes the pearls of great price  I love and prioritize just don’t translate among the “born and bred.” I feel proverbial pats on the head for my eagerness to explore spiritual goldmines – like robust inclusion, abundance, grace, and the wisdom of ambiguity. My LDS-for-generations brothers and sisters sometimes look at me as if I were exulting over unappetizing root vegetables…though surely the sugar beet has some redeeming qualities.

Returning to church was harder on my system in ways I couldn’t at first explain. I returned home feeling more isolated and distressed than I’d ever felt during quarantine.

I was reminded of the allergy tests my mother (a nurse) would administer in my childhood. If she thought perhaps I might be allergic to milk, she would not allow me to eat or ingest any milk or milk-related products for at least 4 days. Then on day 5 I would drink down a glass of it, and we’d see if I had any “bad reactions.” Perhaps I have, as my mother would have said, “a sensitivity” –  not to milk, but to current LDS parlance and priorities.

Let me be clear about my ward. Some of the best people on the planet live in my ward. Their hearts are huge. Service to others seeps out of them like a sweet fragrance. The women share their genuine struggles and honest thoughts in Relief Society, and I have felt a holy unity there. As the song goes, they put their “shoulder to the wheel” and “do their “duty with a heart full of song.” These are good, wonderful neighbors and friends. I love them.

Although apparently I forget from time to time – I DO approach things differently. I DO speak with an “accent.” I have taken Brother Brigham at his word and HAVE brought truths with me from my origins that just don’t get much air time among the contemporary Saints.

What I heard in the meetings I attended that first Sunday back was a smorgasbord of phrases or concepts that left me feeling boxed in, confused, dizzy, disoriented, and a kind of sick. My mother would have called it “a bad reaction.” I heard so much talk about how the purpose of this life is to pursue “exact obedience” on the “covenant path” so that when we die we can get the rewards God has promised those who follow Him.

Wait a minute. Why all this scrupulous striving toward an eventual reward? Faith is not a  vending machine. And never mind the afterlife; what about NOW? I know what it feels like to be guided by Divinity now, in my daily life. Life with God is not something to “earn” or “long for.” It’s ours now! The way it sounded at church with the beehive saints, was that “the covenant path” is the most exquisite carrot ever put before our diligent donkey noses.

Good-hearted folks lamented that friends and loved ones had “fallen away,” and they genuinely mourned for them. Perhaps these “lost ones” have felt that they had been fed, as Elder Holland once vividly put it, “theological twinkies” and “fried froth.”

I came home from that first in-person meeting numbed by repeated airy tropes that felt theologically suspect. I felt like I was in a starkly foreign place where I was a novelty who  didn’t understand the vernacular and just “didn’t get it yet.” I was quite startled by how strongly and negatively I reacted to what was – in non-pandemic times – a typical Sunday at Church.

Something about it was familiar, though. Having lived in urban areas like Boston and Chicago I have seen enough short term graduate students come out “from the West” to get their degrees in “the mission field.” They muttered among themselves about how eager they were to get back [to Utah or Idaho or Southern California] where things were done “right.”

There’s now an extra urgency for me toward following Pres. Nelson’s advice to “take your vitamins.” To sustain my healthy spiritual life, I need (and, thankfully, have) a cadre of folks who “get me” and a variety of rich sources of divine food. I’m so thankful to have them – like a celestial EpiPen at the ready. Well-dosed, I was back again last Sunday with a steadier pulse and a fortified spirit. No one should leave home without their own cultivated EpiPen support system.

God continues to confirm to me that, despite my “allergy,” He/They now want me here among my pioneer stock brothers and sisters, active in my ward – learning to love, forgive, repent, make room for, and participate in the glory and joy that the Gospel can be – here and now, in this moment, in this place where I speak with MY accent… and at least God  understands me.