Nancy's Musings

I genuinely like myself - my body, my brain, my personality, my opinions, my interests and skills. But I have been around me for a long, long time, and I don't really have many secrets left for myself to discover. I have lost my novelty. I'm comfortable. I easily change sizes to fit myself. Tonight I cooked dinner for someone who didn't come home. She left me for Marvel. I watched a horror movie by myself. I did not the slightest stitch of housework (although I'm going to, because clutter is starting to bother me), and I didn't feel the slightest bit judged. I don't hate being alone. I'm not afraid of being alone, even after Mercy Black (2019). But sometimes I really want to talk, and right now that desire to talk to someone is flailing around like a fire hose, even though if I did have something specific to say, this post would be a lot more enjoyably concrete. I am not enjoyably concrete. I'm squishy, like this post. (Has sudden image of gel...

As I listened to a short sermon in church today, I was so intrigued by an idea that it sparked that I began writing a blog as soon as the meeting ended. And then my phone deleted it. But it's a really important idea that I think I really need to articulate, so I'm going to try to recreate at least the sense of it. The speaker was comparing common quotations from popular culture (including "All You Need Is Love," which I think is arguably true, at least mitigatedly) to their counterparts in scripture. I was struck by an impression that I've had before. So that I don't misrepresent what the speaker was saying, I must admit that this speaker argued explicitly that real happiness isn't possible outside of Latter-Day Saint orthodoxy. I disagree, and this post is basically going to articulate the differences I observe between those who are inside the church and on the "covenant path" and those who left it, or never enter. A dear friend and...

In recent years, I have looked forward and loved General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The leaders gave messages of comfort, hope, counsel, and sometimes reprimand, which I sometimes processed in good mental health with optimism for the future, and sometimes they triggered spirals of self-recrimination. I don't take criticism well at this dose of Sertraline. But it was always a good experience, all-in-all. There was something I could take and run with. I felt supported by the Spirit. The conference that concluded yesterday was not so smooth. And I want to blame Facebook, but really, making conference a shared experience was painful, problematic, and also really important for helping me to understand the variety of needs of the people around me. The social media reactions to the conference generally fell into two extreme piles: those who in blissful cheer image-macro'd oversimplified quotations (or reposted them frequently and without ...