Outer Lightness » MagicCicero's Odyssey

Expand blog entries with this slider:

MagicCicero's Odyssey (10 unread)

Conference Inspired Me to Repent and Again Believe the Lord’s Holy Propaganda

Posted: April 5th, 2008, 4:45pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

My brothers and sisters who frequent MagicCicero’s Odyssey, I write to you today a humbled man. Until this morning, I have been living the life of an apostate: sleeping late on the Lord’s day, saying words stronger than “fetch” and “heck,” being more interested in what real scholars have to say about the Bible than some suit-wearing octogenarians with all the life experience of a peapod.

But no longer. I meet the world with new resolve to live up to the Lord’s Correlated Plan of Salvation. For this morning, you see, I watched sixty seconds of General Conference, and it changed my life.

I had stayed up late, surfing the Web and reading worldly books, long past the time when the Spirit goes to bed. And I woke up late, without even saying a prayer in King James English after I got up. But I felt myself drawn, brothers and sisters, drawn to the television. I wondered: What were they saying during General Conference? Was Boyd K. Packer’s mouth dripping with foam as he denounced intellectuals? Was some Seventy they picked out of the crowd doing his duty kissing Monson’s butt now instead of Hinckley’s? Was the new apostle yet another guy in a business suit with no ministerial credentials at all beyond his loyalty to the company — I mean, church?

I couldn’t resist. The spirit of the Amalgamated God and Nordic Jesus, Inc. worked upon me. I picked up the remote, turned on the TV, and changed the channel to the Conference broadcast.

The first words I heard, from some woman with short, curly hair speaking in her best preschool teacher voice, were clearly a message aimed at me. I will never know the name of the woman who spoke, for I am far too lazy to surf over to lds.org and find out. She spoke of “finding fault with the scriptures and the Lord’s prophets.” She warned of relying on “the understanding of the world.” She reminded her listeners that the only way to happiness was in keeping the Lord’s Sixty-Three Thousand, Two Hundred and Nineteen Commandments, Plus Supplemental Rules and Obscure Clauses.

I might have concluded that it was just a bizarre coincidence. I might have realized that I could just as well have turned the TV on at any other random time and gotten a message about, say, how some five-year-old located his little lost puppy dog because he paid his tithing. I might have decided that if the Mormon God really wanted me to believe in the church, he might have structured the church to function on truth instead of propaganda.

But those would have been the thoughts of a stiffnecked, hardhearted apostate. No, the conclusion was unmistakable. Through this faithful sister, the Lord was calling me to repent of my intellectual pride, my fault-finding with the scriptures, my criticism of the Lord’s prophets, my relying on the understanding of “the world.” He is angered that I used common sense and objective evidence to dismantle the church’s carefully doctored truth claims.

No, it was not the case that this well-meaning woman was merely mouthing tired phrases, woven into a clichéd critique of people who expect the church to live up to its own ideals. It could not possibly be that she was performing the unenviable task of repeating the same old stuff once again so as to reinforce members’ belief that the world is evil, and that anyone who has any objection to Mormon scriptures and prophets is being influenced by Satan L. Adversary. (The “L” stands for “Lucifer,” incidentally.)

No, the message is clear. I must repent, return, and believe the correlated propaganda that passes for inspiration in the church today. I must rewire my brain to accept that this mortal existence is divided into a stark binary — “the church” and “the world” — and that anything which makes me sit up and go, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t make any damn sense!” is inspired by Tempter P. Devil. (The “P” stands for Pre-Mortal Rebel.)

Seriously, folks. It’s hard for me to watch any amount of Conference anymore without seeing the man behind the curtain that I’m not supposed to pay attention to. Am I just that cynical now, or are the speakers at Conference not even bothering to tweak the talks they gave six months ago, and six months before that?

The bland, soporific voices, carefully sapping any notion of charisma out of the spiritual experience of the believer.

The monotonous, formulaic talks, endlessly rehashing the church’s only remaining messages: obedience, leader-worship, fear of all things non-Mormon, obedience, suppression of intellect, missionary work, obedience, tithe-paying, and obedience.

Everything is carefully choreographed. Everyone knows their place, their role, and their lines.

It seems to me that Conference is an exercise in reinforcing existing beliefs. You trot out the dark-suited leaders (and a token woman or two) to lend their carefully constructed authority to the same old messages you can hear every single week in church. The whole thing is a misnomer — it’s not a conference (which would imply conferring among the people in attendance). It’s a ten-hour lecture with breaks for lunch, dinner, and sleep. It’s an occasion to celebrate mediocrity and label it inspiration. It’s an opportunity for Mormonism’s self-appointed men of God to put on a suit and tie and parade their job titles in front of a crowd of millions.

Instead of spending the day camped in front of the TV (or the satellite transmission for the evening’s male-only priesthood session), I opted to spend it with my family. We had leftover donuts for breakfast. We stumbled across the movie Gremlins while channel surfing and giggled our way through the rest of it. We played several versions of “Scene It” — whispering the right answers to our six-year-old when she couldn’t figure them out. (The baby just looked on, smiling.)

My family is what I find most inspiring in life. I’ll take my wife and daughters over crusty old men wheezing their testimony about stuff that never happened any day.
An Open Letter to Thomas S. Monson

Posted: March 21st, 2008, 3:40pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Dear President Monson,

Congratulations! After years of languishing in the Number Two spot, you’ve finally fulfilled the Lord’s plan for you by outliving your senior colleagues and picking up the mantle they dropped somewhere on the way to advanced senility. Millions of Mormons are now bearing their testimony of the greatness of Comrade — er, I mean, President — Monson, instead of that guy you played second fiddle to for … good lord, was it really twenty-three years? How time flies!

You’ve had a couple of months to settle into your role and get the recline on your presidential office chair just right. You’re off to a running start, what with overseeing the church while it carries on the time-honored tradition of harassing and disciplining Mormons who defend gay people. No doubt we’ll see more witch hunts to come (don’t forget to go after the feminists and so-called intellectuals!), and I’m sure you’re working on a list of new articles of clothing and types of body decoration that Mormons will no longer be allowed to wear.

But here’s the thing. That stuff’s old evil. You’re the prophet now! You get to put your own stamp on the calling! Do you just want to go on doing the same stuff your predecessors did? Gordon B. Hinckley will probably have historians naming a whole era of church history after him in years to come. Are you content merely to be remembered by generations of Primary kids as “what was the name of the guy who came after Hinckley?”

Or do you want to step it up and have the 2010s named after you? Do you want to be the George Clooney Batman, or the Christian Bale Batman? Just picture it: thousands and thousands of correlated manuals trumpeting the accomplishments of the Monson Era, remarking in passing, maybe in a footnote, that the Hinckley years were basically preparatory to the main event. You, sir, can be that Main Event.

In that spirit, I’m offering you some suggestions. You do some of this stuff, and you’ll have thousands of ex-Mormons flocking back, tithing envelopes in hand. You may even manage to get the Aaronic Priesthood to turn from the bombardment of girl-on-girl porn that they watch instead of General Conference. Mormonism may even survive and thrive to give people reasons to ask uncomfortable questions about polygamy well into the twenty-second century.

But ignore this, dismiss it as the ramblings of a post-Mormon crank, and I guarantee you, the only reason you’ll even be mentioned in any history of Mormonism is in a sentence noting that “Thomas S. Monson, who succeeded GORDON B. HINCKLEY (see also “Hinckley Era, the”; “20th Century, Notable Cult Leaders of”; and “McTemples, Lots of”), presided over the continuing decline of the LDS church into stagnation and irrelevance.” And by the way, that sentence will be in an endnote. Not even a footnote. Damn, that’s harsh.

Let’s start with sacrament meeting. It’s boring. You’ve got millions of people convinced that this is prelude to the celestial kingdom. No wonder so many people have decided to bail for the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms!

So why don’t you spice things up a bit, and start with some audience participation? I realize it’d be a little awkward at first, letting people actually have a say in their own church experience. But maybe you could correlate things a bit, just to ease the transition. Install “APPLAUSE” signs and maybe even add a laugh track (especially for when the high councilmen come to talk). You might end up with some excesses, of course — every ward would eventually have a loyal cadre of back-row hecklers like those two old guys on the Muppet Show. But the returns would be worth it.

You might think about hiring some professional actors. You might have to stick to B-listers if you want weekly visits, but you’ve easily got the budget to hire Patrick Dempsey for the occasional Enrichment Night, or Katherine Heigl to give the Young Men a very special lesson on the importance of chastity. You could invite Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell to guest star with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I’d bet Britney Spears would jump at the chance to be paid for a fireside where she stood as a cautionary example to all Primary age children.

While you’re at it, there are some things you can do to the endowment to attract more temple-goers. Hinckley went out and built all those McTemples; you can be the guy who filled the seats and got people ordering McEndowments with McBaptisms and a side of McSealings, week after week.

How are you going to do it? Three words: Full. Frontal. Nudity. All the nineteen-year-old soon-to-be missionaries are already secretly hoping for some Naked Eve action, and why not show that the church is moving tentatively toward gender equality by letting Adam show his stuff as well? Now, Boyd K. Packer will probably object, but you can just remind him that the Lord didn’t give them clothes until after the Fall, so you’re just staying true to the scriptures.

If you’re a little more daring, you might consider adding a sex scene to the part where Adam and Eve are wandering around the garden gawking at all the animals. If you want to add some doctrine to the mix, you might have a line where Eve says, “Not right now, Adam, I’ve got a headache.” And Adam can reply, “Come on, baby, it’s not like we can get pregnant before the Fall!” Or you might have Lucifer watching them in the distance and cursing the fact that he rebelled in the pre-existence and now he ain’t got no body. You might even consider adding a musical number, perhaps “Come, Come Ye Saints.” It’s your call. I guarantee you, it’ll keep the faithful coming. Again and again.

On to the next problem: the demographic crisis that’s going to knock on the church’s door like Jesus in those cheesy paintings, some time in the next generation. Let’s be serious for a moment. Your problems can be boiled down to three main issues. (1) The church is baptizing and not retaining converts. (2) Lifelong members are finding the church increasingly irrelevant and/or discovering that you boys have pulled the wool over their eyes as far as its origins are concerned. (3) The remaining faithful aren’t popping out enough babies anymore to cover the shortfall.

You know this stuff already, even if you’re not talking about it at Conference. Question is, what are you going to do about it? Well, the solutions are ready. First of all, there’s nothing you can do about (1). You can’t very well tell missionaries to baptize less, otherwise their mission presidents will have nothing in their arsenal to make them feel like worthless crap and bludgeon them into more hours of work; and the returned missionaries will have nothing to brag about once they get home so they can convince BYU co-eds that they’re all spiritchul and worthy of marriage, oh, in two weeks.

Some of the things I’ve suggested above will help with (2). Except with the part about people discovering the reality of the church’s origins. Truth is, you’re kind of screwed on that one. You really shouldn’t have let the Packer Posse set the agenda on “faithful history.” A little more honesty might have helped. Like back in 1980, when you guys maybe still had a little plausible deniability left. Right now, your best bet is to just keep praying some folks continue to think that history doesn’t matter in the present and that God, if he exists, hasn’t created a special circle in hell for you.

But you can definitely do something about (3). How do you create a new Mormon baby boom? Easy. Ditch the garments, and instruct the sisters at every Conference that it is their God-ordained duty to bare their shoulders, wear shorts at mid-thigh or higher, and put on no underwear larger than a thong. Why should this be the women’s duty? Practicality, really. I mean, you guys are already good at objectifying women by continually portraying them as quasi-pornographic temptresses who are out to ensnare every male over the age of 12 with their scandalously bare elbows and knees. Why not just put a new twist on old sexism and turn it to your advantage? And if you think a No Garment Policy would be going too far, you could mandate garment thongs and sell them at, say, Emma’s Secret. It’s got sex appeal, and you get to run a doctrinally justifiable — and guaranteed profitable! — church business on the side.

Well, that’s probably enough to start with. You can feel free to bring them up at your next temple meeting, but make sure you practice saying, “An angel with a flaming sword appeared to me and said…” lots of times in front of a mirror before you take it to the others. They’re probably going to need a revelation to accept the changes you’re proposing. And alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.

Yeah, you should probably abolish the Word of Wisdom, too.

Sincerely,
MagicCicero
The Secret History of the Plan of Salvation, Chapter 1: Elohim and the Big Secret

Posted: February 1st, 2008, 4:09pm EST by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

In the beginning was Elohim. Elohim Jones, to be exact. Elohim had once been as man now is, on a distant planet in the Ceti Alpha system near the Mutara Nebula. Upon reaching the celestial kingdom, he practically a shoo-in for Godhood because he had all the qualities they were looking for in a new deity.

He was a member of the one true church on his planet — baptized, endowed, and sealed in the temple — and more importantly, he was a full tithe-payer.

At the veil, he knew all the uncorrelated signs and tokens. (It always took forever to re-educate the post-correlation initiates about the penalty oaths, the Five Points of Fellowship, the obedience oaths for women, and why they’d been removed. But drudge work was what the folks in the first degree of the celestial kingdom were kept around for.) Still, Elohim was thrown off a bit when the angel standing guard tried to add a Sixth Point of Fellowship, “penis to penis.”

It turned out that the angel had been a gay apostate who’d sneaked in from the telestial kingdom. He’d spent the last 3.5 million years passing himself off as a member of the first degree of the celestial kingdom, where gay members of the church could stay only if they played straight for eternity (many failed and were demoted). His forged Celestial Kingdom Recommend was confiscated and he was sent back down, after being threatened with Outer Darkness if he tried it again. In any event, the experience gave Elohim a paralyzing fear of homosexuals, which the exalted folks in the highest degree smiled upon, seeing it as an important characteristic to instill in their spirit children.

Elohim then had a PPI with one of the lackeys to whom the founding prophet of his generation had delegated the task of interviewing new candidates for exaltation. It was found that Elohim had been a regional sales representative in a large corporation during mortality, and had never traded jobs despite many opportunities, and more than enough reasons, to do so. Moreover, Elohim had raised eight kids (his wife had wanted to stop at five, but he insisted on his priesthood prerogative to furnish as many spirit children with bodies as possible), whom, because of his job and many church callings, he had rarely seen and to whom he had rarely been able to keep promises.

His interviewer was amazed. Single-minded loyalty to an organization … an insistence on patriarchal privilege over a woman’s wishes … absentee father … holding out promises that often went unfulfilled. The potential was staggering. Elohim’s file was immediately referred to the Celestial Correlation Committee, which reviewed candidates for exaltation. The CCC recommended that Elohim be fast-tracked for Godhood.

Which meant he had to be let in on the Big Secret. “You’re going to have to take more wives,” he was told when he came in for his exaltation callback. “We don’t allow anyone into the highest degree of the celestial kingdom who doesn’t practice plural marriage.”

Elohim was confused. “Polygamy was…”

“Plural marriage, please,” replied his interviewer with a tinge of annoyance. “Gods call things by their proper names.”

“Sorry. Plural marriage was practiced earlier in the dispensation I belonged to, but I didn’t realize it was necessary for exaltation. I mean, I knew that past prophets had taught it was necessary, but I always thought they were speaking as men.”

The interviewer chuckled. “If I had a wife for every time I heard that … You know, it’s the same story on most planets. The church gets into a spot of trouble and we have to signal them to retreat from the practice for a while. We’re always really specific about them needing to teach that it’s a temporary expedient.” He sighed. “But you know how it is. Correlation gets started, they sweep the troubling stuff under the rug, and soon even the members of the church don’t know that the highest degree has a three-wife minimum.”

“Three wives?” Elohim was genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, three wives to represent the Godhead,” the interviewer replied. “Or,” he added with a snort, “as some of the jokers in the second degree say, ‘three wives to give the God head.’” His eyes darted around guiltily. “Don’t tell anyone I laughed at that. Next thing you know the boys from the Triple-C — that’s Celestial Correlation — will send someone down here to examine whether I’m guilty of loud laughter. They’re touchy about that.”

“So I’ve got to find two more wives,” Elohim stated.

“At least. More, if you can manage. Shouldn’t be too hard, once it starts spreading that you’re on the Fast Track. The more wives, the more spirit children. Which means more planets, and more glory for you!”

So far, so good. But one question still nagged at Elohim. “What about my first wife? Do I need to clear it with her? She’s not likely to take well to it.”

“Fetchin’ heckfire, Brother Elohim! Do you want to be exalted or not? There’s plenty of room down in the second degree for the one-wife-only folks. That’s where we keep those slackers, and all they get to do is serve on committees that regulate visits down to the lower kingdoms. You want to make planets and spirit babies, you gotta get with the program! Obedience is the first law of heaven! Wifey doesn’t like it, she can go hang out in the first degree with all the other single women of the church who didn’t have the balls — pardon my Adamic — to put their education, careers, and personal interests aside to find themselves a worthy priesthood holder!”

Elohim was convinced. But his wife was not. She was not at all interested in taking on sister-wives. “We were taught all our lives that polygamy would be practiced in the celestial kingdom, but it wasn’t a necessity!” she raged, when informed of the interview.

“Plural marriage, dear,” Elohim corrected. “Look — the church had to hide some things from us for its own good. Remember how we used to say to ourselves that there were some things we’d have to wait until after mortality to find out about? Well, this is obviously one of those things. The Lord is calling us to plural marriage. So choose you this day whom you will serve.”

Elohim gave her a few centuries to think about it. By the time they came around to the topic again, he had already found and married a multitude of women from various dispensations, who were either single and facing their last chance at exaltation, or who had died in mortality before the age of eight and were very impressed with the life experience of a man who had lived to 79. He even convinced a few already-married women to trade up from their original husband when he pointed out that he was being fast-tracked.

Elohim’s first wife was outraged and refused to take part. The CCC quietly issued a cancellation of sealing and she was sent down to the first degree to find consolation in back issues of Celestial Exponent II that had been smuggled in from the feminists in the telestial kingdom. Elohim quietly vowed never to speak of her again. He determined that, when he had spirit children of his own, they would not be allowed to know for sure of the existence of any of their Heavenly Mothers, lest their acknowledgment of them lead to his wives getting uppity. If his prophets asked about it, he’d just tell them to say that it was to protect her good name. If the women weren’t satisfied with that, T. S. It was his planet; he could do what he damn well wanted with it.

And with that, Elohim was well pleased.
Mormonism: Now With Catchy Slogans!

Posted: January 18th, 2008, 4:02pm EST by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Inspired by a recent thread on Further Light and Knowledge, I’ve decided to post a list of my own suggestions for advertising slogans the LDS church might use to attract new customers — I mean, converts — as well as some to keep the attention of the faithful. (A few of these are ones I first posted at FLAK, but I’ve added plenty more.) Enjoy!

“Sacrament Meeting: When Lunesta Just Isn’t Enough”

“No Suit, No Tie, No Service”

“Polygamy: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

“The Book of Mormon: Now With 100% Less History”

“Tithing Is Ten Percent, But the Guilt Trips Are Free”

“Mormon Theology: Like Scientology, But With Fewer Aliens”

“Pretending Not to Get Involved in Politics One Issue at a Time”

“What Happens in the Temple, Stays in the Temple”

“Join Now and Get a Free Persecution Complex”

“Dispensing Inconsistent and Contradictory Revelation Since 1830”

“Home Teaching: Like Stalking, But Legal”

“Mormonism: Where Mitt Romney Isn’t Just the Future President, He’s a Future God”

“15 Old Men Can’t Be Wrong!”

“It’s Sunday, 9AM: Time for Your Regularly Scheduled Programming”

“The Pearl of Great Price: Where the Men Are Men, the Women Are Women, and the Blacks Are the Seed of Cain”

“Being Republican Isn’t Required, But It’ll Help You To Not Get Yelled At”

“General Conference: Come for the Revelation, Stay for the Disappointment”

“Mormon Leadership: Our Failures Are Your Problems”

“Mormonism: Because in a Complex and Changing World, It’s Nice to Know There’s a Church Where You Can Check Your Brain at the Door”

“Truth: I Don’t Know That We Teach That”
Mitt, We Hardly Know Ye

Posted: December 3rd, 2007, 4:38pm EST by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Mitt Romney has come closer to the presidency than any Mormon in U.S. history. (Joseph Smith might have done better back in 1844 if he’d spent more time courting the voters and less time courting new wives.) I never expected him to get this far. I figured the evangelical Christians who contribute so much to the American admiration of ignorance dressed up as conviction would nix his candidacy before it got this far. His religion seems too much a liability.

But Mitt is actually going to give a speech addressing his religion. And you don’t have to be a prophet to figure out what he’s going to say. (In fact, rumor has it that to be a prophet anymore, you have to be related to current or past prophets. Apparently it’s become a family business.) Still, I’m going to venture a prophecy anyway. I’ll do it King James style because we all know that the Creator of the Universe learned English by watching Shakespeare reruns.

Behold, I lay awake in the morn, even fourscore and thirteen minutes before my alarm (which is, being interpreted, my newborn daughter) waketh me, and the Spirit of the Lord flowed into me; though not like unto water, for behold, we know that Satan controlleth the waters in the latter days (and besides, too much spiritual water maketh me to spiritually urinate). And the voice of the Lord spake, saying, “Brother Mitt shall multiply many words with a great multiplication in his speech. But verily, I say unto thee, he shall say nothing of substance whatsoever. For behold, his speech will be filled, even unto overflowing, with the same PR-friendly pieties about Mormonism that any church leader spouteth to make the church seem mainstream, even though he knoweth quite well that half the high priests in the church will be pontificating on the location of Kolob the following Sunday. Yea, there shall be the obligatory references to God, the virtues of faith, and family values, and probably Mitt appealeth to tolerance in the hopes that he can get people to stop pestering him about whether he weareth magic bulletproof underwear. Thus saith the Lord.”

That sounds about right. Seriously, Mitt’s not going to give us the coordinates of Kolob in the speech. Nor can we likely expect him to talk about any pre-1990 death oaths he swore in a ceremony where he pledged all he has to the LDS church. That would be political suicide. Besides, not a Mormon alive would be willing to show their face in public for a while after that, and Mitt needs Mormons to work for his election.

And to tell the truth, I’m not that worked up about Mitt’s death oaths. Sure, there’s an outside chance Romney would put Gordon B. Hinckley on the Oval Office speed dial. But I don’t see Hinckley calling up to pressure him to pass the No Tattoos Act or the Too Many Earrings Tax. Nor is it likely that Romney will suddenly declare Jackson County a FEMA disaster zone and evacuate it just so Utah Mormons can walk back and lay siege to the RLDS temple.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about Mitt’s religious commitments and their potential conflict with his constitutional duties. Nor do I think we shouldn’t demand answers to hard questions about them. In fact, I’d like to see all faith-professing candidates answer the same kinds of questions.

It’d certainly be funny to watch Mitt squirm if a reporter quoted chapter-and-verse on Kolob, or see him sputtering to explain whether polygamy is OK as long as you marry a virgin (D&C 132:61-62), or gauge his reaction to the idea that, according to Mormon doctrine, it is quite possible that God was once a truck driver on a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. (Actually, I’d like to see the church publicly own up to the eternal progression doctrine. Shorn of elitist overtones, it remains for me one of Mormonism’s more attractive ideas.)

But I’m less worried about the wackier aspects of Mormon theology floating around in Mitt’s brain than I am about, for example, the very powerful Christian fundamentalists who right now occupy the highest offices in the land. Today’s Mormon apocalypticism barely holds a candle to the flaming delusions of the Christianists who continue to formulate American foreign policy around their expectations for the end times. It doesn’t seem likely that Mitt will forcibly deport the population of Jackson County to make room for the latter-day LDS temple in Independence. But at this moment, George W. Bush and his cronies are overseeing policies that are a Christianist’s wet dream. Among other things, these people seem anxious to provoke an apocalyptic conflagration in the Middle East because their Christian constituents think that Jesus will be attracted to the stench of religious holocaust and decide to come back, despite his remarkable failure to show for the last two thousand years.

The truth is, I’m much less concerned about the possible influence of aging octogenarians on Mitt than I am about a plausible willingness to cater to popular fanaticism to get and stay in office. And I’d like to hear Mitt talk about that. He can start by telling us in no uncertain terms what he feels his religion tells him about the end of the world, and how his beliefs will impact his foreign policy. And I’d like to hear every other candidate, Republican and Democratic, answer the same kinds of questions. And I want the press to nail them hard on these things, because more than a presidency is at stake. Increasingly, the world seems to be at stake.

Americans seem to admire the certitude that political leaders claim to find in faith (at least when it suits them), with almost no concern that the most passionate of believers seem passionately eager to watch the rest of us burn in an apocalypse of their making. An apocalypse, after all, is a faith-based initiative.

I don’t worry so much that our leaders believe in God; even if it’s a God that has a summer home on Kolob and wants his followers to wear magic underwear. I’m more worried about what their God tells them about the rest of us who believe in a different God, believe God has different priorities, or don’t believe in God at all. Mormonism’s track record isn’t so bright here, and politically, it seems to have sold its soul to the most fanatical elements in American Christianity. I think Mitt owes us an explanation. If he wants to be president and expects to sell his beliefs as a virtue, he should expect to be held accountable for those beliefs.

Still, I don’t see Mitt’s speech opening up or responding to any meaningful dialogue about Mormonism or religion in public life. Mitt’s speech will be a bid for Mormon respectability, nothing more. He will do what every other religious politician does when confronted with awkward questions about his faith: play the faith-is-a-virtue and tolerance-means-not-questioning-my-values cards in a bid to shame those into silence who think that private beliefs are not private when it comes to public officials making judgments based on those beliefs. It’s time for us to talk openly and critically about the role of faith in a world where faith fuels so many destructive delusions.

Tolerance does not mean being ashamed to demand accountability for a person’s beliefs. Mitt ought to step up to the plate and give us some straight talk. But he won’t. No one would. It’s disguising the content of faith under rote pieties about the virtues of faith that gets them elected.
Losing My Temple Virginity

Posted: October 1st, 2007, 3:34pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Behold, the seventh day of September in the year 1996 was the day I had my temple cherry popped. I admit that’s very difficult to imagine, seeing as how I am fully endowed with male parts. But that’s the day I was initiated into Mormonism’s most exclusive club, reserved only for those who’ve cleared their heads of reason enough to see some really crazy shit.

OK, so I’m being a little flippant here. The fact is, my first time wasn’t so bad. A lot of post-Mormons tell horror stories about the temple — especially if they went before 1990, when initiates were still required to pantomime the means of their own death. There weren’t any death oaths when I went through, so it was a bit less of a shock to the system. In fact, I came away from it fully convinced that I’d just witnessed the most inspiring scenes of my life.

This, from my journal that day: Today I had the sacred privilege of receiving my endowments in the Bountiful Temple. I won’t get specific, of course — all is of a sacred nature. But I was uplifted, instructed, and blessed this day.

The temple endowment, with its ritual clothes, chanting, secret passwords and handshakes, is the kind of thing that any non-Mormon would not fail to raise his or her eyebrows at. Not having been raised in or indoctrinated by the church, they don’t spend years being told that the temple is the pinnacle of earthly spiritual experiences. Mormons believe that it is literally the house of the Lord — kids are sometimes told that “Heavenly Father and Jesus live here,” as I recently overheard one lady tell her brood in the temple lobby in a desperate bid to keep their boredom from spinning further out of control.

Of course, Mormons who have not yet been to the temple are never told what goes on there beyond glowing generalities. And even those who have do not talk about it much outside the temple walls. It’s too “sacred” to talk about anywhere but in the temple itself. So up until the very moment you attend, you seriously have no idea what to expect. And after you’ve attended, you’re left largely as clueless as before.

Picking up where I left off in my journal: The Spirit is strong in that House of the Most High. In the Celestial Room, you can almost sense tangibly the presence of God. It is all very moving and solemn, although I was a bit overwhelmed by everything that went on.

I have to admit, the temple is peaceful. It’s hard to argue with that, since it is designed to be physically apart from the rest of the world. And “solemn” is a very good word to describe the aura of the place. Mormons are big on solemnity. Excitement need not apply in Mormon ordinances. Apart from the fact that Mormons don’t know how not to treat every damn thing like a funeral dirge, the solemnity, I suspect, helps distract from the many WTF moments that first-time attendees have.

I hinted at some of my own WTF experience when I admitted I was “a bit overwhelmed.” I continued, elaborating on the overwhelmedness: Which is what I was told would happen, but I didn’t believe until now. I can see why the Lord wants us to go back frequently — you’ll never pick up on everything the first time.

Yeah … this was an understatement. I love to analyze, so trying to understand deep meaning is appealing to me. Indeed, one of the appeals of Mormonism in those days was its esoteric side. The sense of mysterious knowledge, arcane ritual, obscure symbolism — all of which just begged to be analyzed, compartmentalized, and understood! — was exciting. I expected the temple to be esoteric.

And yet, nonetheless, I went though and found something very much at odds with what I expected. It’s hard to say exactly what I expected, since I knew no more about it in advance than the usual pious generalities. Quiet Atmosphere plus Solemn Attitude equaled Spirit in my mind, so that worked out. But I was mystified by it. I came into it expecting to learn something, and though I said in my journal that I was “instructed,” I can’t say that I honestly did learn anything, other than secret passwords and handshakes.

The film, with its modified creation saga, was easy enough to follow (though I just about pissed my pants when Satan started threatening the audience). The robes didn’t bother me tremendously, as they seemed loosely analogous to the garb of the ancient Israelite priests depicted in the Old Testament. Probably the worst part of that was being the last one standing there, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as you try to maneuver your way through various knots, robe slippages, and itchy elastic bands in the hat.

I grew more mystified as the ceremony dragged on, though. What were all these signs and tokens supposed to mean? Some had no apparent Mormon or Christian significance at all. And standing in a circle, making celestial gang signs while repeating aloud some other person’s words is the “true order of prayer”? Did that mean that my own private prayers were less true? Would God hear them less?

And how about those covenants? Very exacting, and my agreement to them was tinged with fear, seeing as how Satan had threatened us in the film that we would be in his power if we failed to keep every one of them. The one that literally kept me up that night, deep in anxiety, was this: Had I really promised God never to laugh loudly again? How was I supposed to manage that?

I think I was a bit dizzy after I passed through the veil into the Celestial Room. At no point did I think, “My god, I’m in a crazy cult!” I came out honestly believing that this was all deeply spiritual — I’d just missed the significance of some of it. But I can’t help but recall that I was a bit disappointed. It was hiding really deep down — and it was something I couldn’t acknowledge on paper. After all, my children and grandchildren might one day read that journal, and I couldn’t very well leave them questioning the temple experience. And in any case, the disappointment was easily suppressed — it was just my first time, right? Surely I’d pick up some more things in future sessions.

What I think bothered me most — or as I phrased it at the time, “overwhelmed” me — was how disconnected the ritual of the temple seemed from the soul of the “gospel” as I understood it. I enjoyed the symbolic representation of a person’s journey through the plan of salvation, but a lot of the content seemed to distract from any meaningful spiritual appreciation of that fact. Here I was supposed to get all these deeper truths, and instead got sent down a dizzying assembly line — bustled through an almost-nude washing and anointing ceremony, given a new name, and then hammered with rigorous covenants and none-too-subtle threats plastered over a poorly acted presentation of the creation/fall story.

I had come to the temple to learn the “higher order” of things. But the higher order took all emphasis away from inner reflection and instead focused on outward ceremony and rote obedience. There was a lot of solemn swearing to keep signs and tokens secret, but there was not a word about love, which is supposed to be the highest commandment. Even the Atonement of Christ, which in Christianity is supposed to be the highest expression of love, was mentioned only in passing. The ritual re-enactment of one’s journey through the Lord’s plan was not presented in terms of sacrificial love, but sacrificial obedience on the part of the initiates.

I finished my journal entry for that day with this admonition: To those who may read this — seek out these blessings. I, though not understanding all of what happened, already feel I’ve got a new understanding of the Lord’s plan. The temple is edifying, purposeful, and wonderful. Don’t deny yourself these blessings. They are worth it.

In retrospect, I’m not sure what “new understanding of the Lord’s plan” I walked away with, because amidst the confusion, I distinctly remember thinking something like, This is all? Where were the hidden teachings I was promised? This paragraph strikes me as coming from one who “protesteth overmuch.” I think the truth is this: I didn’t know quite what to think about it, so I quickly fell back on the same glowing generalities that I’d been spoon-fed before I went. That mentality probably best explains why Mormons gush endlessly about how wonderful the temple is. After all, all they know beforehand is how wonderful it’s supposed to be, and then they go and get smacked with warmed-over Masonry. They can’t talk about it because there’s no one who’ll talk with them — it’s too sacred, you see. They figure, if I thought it was a little crazy, it must just be me, because everyone else sure was solemn about it! And so you fall back on what you knew beforehand, because if you don’t, the temple might just not live up to the hype.

Like just about everything else in Mormonism, the temple could be so much more. But it is not, and the fact that this is touted as the highest spiritual experience awaiting a Latter-day Saint is tragically telling.
The Shawshank Mentality

Posted: September 14th, 2007, 5:01am EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

The Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite films. Its story revolves around men incarcerated in a dismal prison for decades and the psychological world they inhabit. Most of the men in the story are “institutionalized.” The walls of the prison define the boundaries of their world. Inside the walls is life, identity, even purpose. For example, Morgan Freeman’s character, “Red,” is known as the “guy who can get things.” Through connections to the outside, he can smuggle in all sorts of contraband for his fellow prisoners, for a price.

The response to “institutionalization” is a key theme in the movie. At one end of the spectrum is the aging librarian of the prison, “Brooks,” a convict who has served over 50 years and is finally paroled. The world outside is no longer recognizable to him. He cannot function in it, and he has no identity as part of it. In the end, he hangs himself.

At the opposite end is the protagonist of the film, Tim Robbins’ character “Andy.” Andy has been wrongfully convicted and spends his 19 years in Shawshank preserving his dignity and identity by remembering and hoping for renewed life on the outside. In fact, he spends most of his years working out a daring escape, which he finally pulls off. Unlike Brooks, Andy has the imagination to conceive of himself outside the walls.

In a way, the Shawshank mentality is a good metaphor for the present-day LDS church. There’s been a lot of talk in the Mormon and post-Mormon reaches of the Internet about “inoculation” — the idea that the church may, in some measure, come clean about its problematic history, doctrine, and ethical stances, so as to inoculate devout members against the damaging information that currently leads thousands to leave the church each year.

The excitement about inoculation, it seems to me, is the hope nurtured mainly by the minority in the church that is familiar with the church’s problems and by the people in the post-Mormon world who still care enough about the church to want to see it change. Now, I have been a persistent — and at times, strident — critic of the church in this blog, but I count myself in the latter category. The leaders of the church may be tools, but I care enough about the Mormon people that I welcome the idea of change.

But I fear that change is going to — and indeed, already has — run into the Shawshank mentality. The leaders of the LDS church are unquestionably “institutionalized.” Many of them have spent long decades in its highest echelons, so absorbed in the routines of defending the institution that they cannot conceive of existence in any other way. Advocates of inoculation (of which I am one), both Mormon and post-Mormon, acknowledge that it will transform the church. The LDS church’s current foundational claims depend from start to finish on an uninoculated, literalist reading of a carefully whitewashed and edited history. It is against the unedited history, after all, that inoculation must be provided in the first place. If the church had been accustomed to telling the truth, instead of looking out for number one, inoculation wouldn’t be necessary.

Change the history, and you change the church. It would have to mean something very different for Mormons to say “I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet” if they had to acknowledge that he reinvented his prophetic claims time and again. It is admittedly difficult to imagine thousands of 19-year-old men putting their lives on hold for two years to preach a Book of Mormon that is, at best, a nineteenth-century devotional text. And who’s going to want to pay 10% on their gross or net to attend a temple whose rituals are just Mormon theology stretched over a Masonic framework?

The leaders of the church know this. That’s why the church today redefines truth in terms of its usefulness. Mormonism’s top dogs are institutionalized. They are both unable and unwilling to imagine a church that evolves beyond its current distorted truth claims and the perquisites that accrue to the institution from the members’ devotion to those claims.

Or perhaps, on the contrary, they are quite able to imagine this, and it is this that keeps men like Boyd K. Packer up at night.

In the church as it is now, these men are somebody. They’re not just the guys who can get you things; they’re the guys who propose and dispose and make things happen. Eager crowds hang on their every word. Why rock the boat? Any sudden changes of direction would certainly crack the church’s foundation right open. And in an institution that prizes gerontocratic conservatism and functions mainly in a state of advanced inertia, what is the incentive for change anyway?

Mormonism is Shawshank. In the case of the present-day church, it is not so much about imagining life on the outside, but rather, the inability to imagine the institution itself differently. It is for this reason that I think inoculation — if it happens at all and isn’t just another ephemeral fad hyped up by the hopeful Sunstone crowd — will probably be minimal in scope, and glacial in progress. Continued media exposure will no doubt force the church to deal more forthrightly with its polygamous roots, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, race and gender issues, and so on. But does anyone really see, say, the beloved prophet President Bednar heading a church that has disavowed the historicity of the Book of Mormon, or of Joseph Smith’s First Vision? The best one can hope for with those things is not inoculation, but the surreptitious sweeping of uncomfortable facts into the church’s memory hole — the same way it’s always been.

A serious, if gradual, attempt at inoculation probably would salvage some dignity for the church and perhaps even arrest the decline. Future generations of Mormons might array themselves in defense of an institution that connects them by shared heritage and a tolerance of difference, rather than the commitment to a dogmatic interpretation of distorted history. But in the end, the Shawshank mentality of the church’s leaders will probably prevail. They will continue to bludgeon the devout with “faithful” history, and the growing minority who discover the truth will continue to vote with their feet. The stone rolling down the mountain will not fill the whole earth; instead, it will slowly erode its way into obscurity, until it is merely a pebble among humanity’s failing religious ideologies.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, or The Lack Thereof

Posted: August 31st, 2007, 4:12pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Mormons pride themselves on their tolerance. The idea that all other religions have something to offer, however incomplete, is taken more or less for granted. But more than on their tolerance, Mormons pride themselves on being Right, or as they’d say, "true." Mormon tolerance is a tolerance of condescension, not a tolerance of interest in or genuine engagement with other traditions. When the chips are down, or when the missionaries are knocking at your door, the most important thing about other traditions is the extent to which they can be used as a springboard from which to push non-Mormons into the baptismal font.

Accordingly, Mormonism is a Copernican nightmare. It truly thinks of itself as the center of the universe — spiritually, culturally, and intellectually. Mormons typically believe that all light and knowledge on earth flows from the Spirit, which Mormonism (or its past dispensations) naturally has a de facto monopoly on. Any intellectual or cultural accomplishment must ultimately be linked to the most important "truths" recognized by Mormons, namely, those dispensed as "latter-day revelation."

For the uninitiated reader, let’s consult MagicCicero’s Compleat Dictionarie of Mormonspeak and Sundry Terminologie under latter-day revelation. In Mormonism, refers to the uninformed speculation of men who either (1) fast-talked people into believing them to be prophets; or (2) have assumed the mantle of prophet by virtue of their connections — through birth, marriage, or simple cronyism — to the earliest fast-talkers. More recent speculations always take precedence over earlier ones, because (1) it would make the church look bad if people paid too much attention to the early fast-talkers and realized what crackpots they were; and (2) the earlier guys are dead and can’t protest anyway.

In other words, if you are a high-ranking church leader, your opinions trump all facts, evidence, experiments, and truths to the contrary.

The upshot of all this is that Mormons have a hard time drumming up even the most basic respect for any tradition that can’t be co-opted by the church in some way. Respect, it seems to me, implies at least an appreciation of ideas not your own; you may not agree, but you do recognize that other people may have something useful to contribute to this ongoing dialogue we call human existence. For all its talk that "all truth can be circumscribed into one great whole," Mormonism perceives nothing outside itself as a reliable authority on knowledge or source of goodness and happiness.

The "one great whole," in other words, is Mormonism itself. Non-Mormon ideas must be compatible up front with Mormon dogma to even merit consideration. And just about the best compliment a Mormon can offer a non-Mormon goes something like: "He/she is such a great person; they’d make a great member of the church!" Or "I can’t believe he/she’s not a member of the church!" Hence respect for anything non-Mormon is a principle honored mainly in the breach.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the most disrespectful aspect of Mormonism is probably its missionary program. It is not merely that Mormon missionaries aspire to convert the world, nor even the laughable belief that the world, really, really deep down, wants to be converted. It is the willful ignorance with which Mormons approach other traditions, magnified a hundredfold in the insulated bubble of missionary life. Most of a Mormon elder’s down time (of which there is plenty) is spent either fantasizing about hot girls he’s proselytized, reminiscing with his companion about what they did back home, or trash talking local traditions and religions. For, as any good Mormon missionary knows, traditions and religions that don’t have their home base in American Mormonism are inspired by Satan, or his doppelganger, the Adversary.

I have often felt that the church would dramatically improve its missionary program by teaching outgoing missionaries about the religious and cultural traditions they are going to encounter — on their own terms. But then I bop myself upside the head and remind myself that (a) I don’t want Mormon missionary work to succeed; and (b) this is the one thing the church cannot afford to do, if it wishes to maintain the illusion that it is the center of the universe. Because missionaries, in fact, live for up to two years in places where Mormonism is decidedly not the center of the universe, a prodigious amount of effort is required to get missionaries to continually convince themselves that it is. Allowing people to consider the possibility that the church may not, after all, have all the answers (nor even be asking the right questions) is a quick path toward lower tithing receipts.

That happened to me. Maybe it was because I was in one of the least successful missions in the world. Maybe it was that my Mormon blinders weren’t on tight enough. Maybe I just believed that truth was more important than dogma. Or maybe the church is just full of crap.

Whatever the case, as my mission wore on, the answers I’d been trained to give to what I was taught were the universe’s most important questions seemed less and less compelling. It’s not that I didn’t believe them myself; they just didn’t translate very well into the world outside Mormon insularity. It was the first hint I had that there was a disconnect between reality and Mormon ideology. Experiencing firsthand that most of the world did not think like me and that the Mormon way of thinking was not necessarily convincing was a huge wake-up call. I glimpsed for the first time the fact that my faith tradition was virtually irrelevant in the big, wide world. At that point in my life, there was nothing more enlightening — and frightening.

That last adjective, "frightening," says a lot about the basis of Mormon disrespect. Both from above and below, it originates in a paralyzing fear that Mormonism, for all that it protests its rightness in all things, is in fact wrong. From above, in the sense that Mormon leaders cultivate disrespect for other traditions because they know there won’t be a church left if people realize Mormonism isn’t the only good thing out there. From below, to the extent that lay Mormons themselves fear losing their anchor-cum-crutch, and find it tragically easy to mute their own discomfort amidst the drudgery of their correlated faith by mocking outsiders. Everyone sees outside the bubble from time to time. Mormonism functions best, however, when you just pretend not to notice.

A few break the cycle. They see outside the distortions of the bubble and realize there’s a lot out there — right and wrong — to respect and learn from. Many do so and remain believing Mormons, though usually not of the strictly orthodox kind that the church eats for dinner. But many — and I think, increasingly many — do so and eventually find themselves outside the church, because it’s too difficult to reconcile the conformity of Mormon thought and practice with the diversity of reality. I spent seven years trying to salvage some fragment of Mormon ideology despite the growing evidence of its untruthfulness and irrelevance. In the end, I simply could not ignore reality any longer.

Mormon leaders have circled the wagons so tight that life and thought within have become too constricted to deliver on their promises of truth and happiness. In the end, the church survives by defining truth and happiness downward, by convincing its members to lower their expectations of their leaders and, more importantly, of their own lives.

And that, I submit, is the most disrespectful act of all.
Mormon Rules to Live By

Posted: August 13th, 2007, 9:22am EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

The first commandment is to love God — and what better way to show your love than to surrender every shred of your individuality and cast aside all common sense in favor of the anal-retentive ramblings of octogenarians whose claim to speak for God is based solely on the fact that they outlived other octogenarians who claimed to speak for God?

The second commandment is like unto the first: Love thy neighbor. But not too much. You don’t want them to think you’re polygamous or gay.

Judge not, lest ye be judged — but if you’re really worried about being judged, then you should judge first. Getting the first strike in is a way of letting others know how righteous you are.

Pray not as the hypocrites, who stand on the street corners — but do pray publicly over every meal, including work-related barbeques, and before BYU football games; for people which see thee pray openly shall not judge thee in secret.

Don’t hide your light under a bushel — especially if it’s a bushel of wheat that you’ve been holding as food storage since 1977. Instead, go buy another new 72-hour-kit to put your light in, so that all those enterprising Utah salespeople can make more money off you and pay more tithing to the church.

It is not meet that man should be alone. If left alone, he will either begin to think for himself or masturbate.

Jesus said: How hard it is for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God. Therefore, trust not in riches. Instead, invest your riches in prime downtown real estate, and they shall grow an hundredfold.

Do not build thine house upon sand. Also do not build thy shopping mall upon sand, lest it fall, and great be the loss of two billion dollars which thou hast invested therein.

The worth of souls is great in the sight of God —therefore, you must remind every soul constantly how unworthy they are, so that they obsess over their worthiness, and how they must be perfect in order to be considered worthy in God’s sight.

Let cherubim and a flaming sword guard the tree of life. And let the bishop and stake president guard the way to the temple, lest those that have not paid their 10% entrance fee go inside, and see how ludicrous the ceremonies are, and have no regrets about never coming back, because they’re not out any money.

Hold to the iron rod — but not too tightly, lest ye ejaculate.

God is no respecter of persons — but he does give bonus points to male Caucasians wearing white shirts and business suits.

God is a god of truth and does not lie. That’s why he hired the correlation committee to do the lying for him.

You must pray always and not faint — because, chances are, while you’re praying, God is busy dallying with one of his celestial wives and won’t hear you the first ten thousand times.

Man does not live by bread alone — but when you’re starving on Fast Sunday, even that stale Wonder bread they use for the sacrament is pretty damn good.

A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh — but first they need to drop by the temple, dress in funny robes, kneel across the altar from each other, and listen to some liver-spotted stranger dispense useless advice about how scripture reading will somehow paper over the vast differences between them that they haven’t even discovered yet, because they’re 21 and 18, respectively, and in too much of a rush to get married so they can FINALLY have sex without having to confess to the bishop.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. The more fear and trembling, the better, because it’ll keep you psychologically dependent on the church. And while you’re at it, toss in some shame, guilt, and muddled thinking.

Do not run faster than you have strength. Do, however, pay your tithing when your children have no food; do have more children than your body can bear; and do neglect your family when you have been called to serve in the bishopric.

This life is the time to prepare to meet God. But if you’re not prepared when you die, don’t worry — the Mormons will just baptize you anyway.

Wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion! How dare he be at ease when there are more McTemples to build, more places at BYU to name after leaders of the church, and more shopping malls to renovate!

Ask and you shall receive. However, this should not be construed as a guarantee. Some restrictions apply. Six to eight millennia for delivery. And don’t expect God to heal, prevent natural disasters, or relieve suffering; for he does that only in faith-promoting stories.

Why do you behold the mote in your brother’s eye? Thou hypocrite, go write out your tithing check first, and do your home teaching, and make snarky comments about people who drink coffee, and pay attention to others’ garment lines, and try to get your neighbors to hear the missionary lessons; then you shall be justified in beholding as many motes in your brother’s eye as you wish.

Ask God, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if you ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, having grown up in the church and having had these ideas pounded into your head since you were two, having paid tithing on your gross income, having been incessantly warned that you will never make the celestial kingdom with your family intact unless your magic underwear is worn under your bra; then God shall manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of lifelong routine and wishful thinking.
17 Random Things About Me

Posted: August 9th, 2007, 7:31am EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

In the spirit of other post-Mormon blogs whose authors have been putting up random weird facts about themselves lately, I’ve decided to post some random things about me as well. I’ll simply list them in the order they occur to me. Why seventeen? Well, that’s part of the randomness!

1. I didn’t originally plan to become a historian. In high school, I wanted to be a software programmer. At BYU, I realized how much I hated programming. Good thing I switched majors.

2. In my most memorable dream to date, about a year ago, I was lying on my back in bed when a large rat scampered up the side of the bed and across my neck. I literally jumped out of bed and across the room, waking up in the process, and waking my wife up for good measure as I shouted, "Holy fucking shit!"

3. My major phobias are heights and (by extension) elevators. On my mission, my trainer, who knew of my elevator phobia, started jumping around in a rickety East German elevator while we were ascending sixteen stories. I told him, in no uncertain terms, never to do that again. I was seven inches taller than him and quite a bit heavier. He didn’t do it again.

4. If I had the power to (a) travel through time and (b) inhabit the bodies of other people, I would use my newfound powers to go back, inhabit my younger self, and have steamy premarital sex with my future wife. Not having had premarital sex with her has become one of my recurrent post-Mormon regrets.

5. I would also use the aforementioned powers to get Lucy Harris to hide the 116 pages of the original Book of Mormon manuscript she made off with and arrange to have them discovered by future scholars. (There are, perhaps, easier ways to expose the Book of Mormon fraud to the world, but this one seems creative.)

6. When I was on my mission in Germany, I lent my voice (speaking, not singing) to a track on a techno CD an investigator of ours was composing. The song actually became a regional hit.

7. I like to eat salad toppings. Minus the salad.

8. As a teenager living in the Washington, D.C. area, I had the opportunity to see the inside of the office of then-Vice President Dan Quayle at the Capitol. His desk had once been Richard Nixon’s in the Oval Office. Under the desk you could see the holes from the screws that had held the infamous recording devices.

9. There was a period in my late teens when I concluded every single journal entry with my testimony.

10. A few years ago, I wrote the screenplay to a film starring my daughter’s stuffed animals.

11. I’m a frequent sufferer of sleep paralysis. It sucks.

12. On my mission, I killed a spider about two inches in diameter (no idea how something that big got to Germany) by dropping a box filled with Books of Mormon on it. But only after a fifteen-minute debate with other missionaries in the apartment who insisted that it might be blasphemous for me to do so. In retrospect, maybe it's clear why I became an apostate.

13. I’ve never broken a bone. The only time I’ve had stitches was when I was hit in the head with a golf club. I was 11.

14. I hate winter. I used to love it, but it broke my heart and I’ll never forgive it. More to the point, snow hasn’t been fun since I got my driver’s license.

15. When I was four, something happened to our first family cat and my mom explained that she had to take him to a "cat farm," where the cats could run free and play. I didn’t think to question this story until I was 29. (And, to be honest ... I turn 30 this fall.)

16. My first celebrity crush was on Lea Thompson, who played Michael J. Fox’s kittenish teenage mom in Back to the Future. I was eight. Is that precocious? I’m not sure.

17. My wife is not only the only woman I’ve ever had sex with, she’s also the only woman I’ve ever kissed or held hands with. (What can I say? We were high school sweethearts.)

← Liminal Blather Main Street Plaza →

Outer Lightness » MagicCicero's Odyssey

Feeds

MagicCicero's Odyssey (10 unread)

Posted: April 5th, 2008, 4:45pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: March 21st, 2008, 3:40pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: February 1st, 2008, 4:09pm EST by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: January 18th, 2008, 4:02pm EST by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: December 3rd, 2007, 4:38pm EST by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: October 1st, 2007, 3:34pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: September 14th, 2007, 5:01am EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: August 31st, 2007, 4:12pm EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: August 13th, 2007, 9:22am EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]

Posted: August 9th, 2007, 7:31am EDT by MagicCicero

Tags: [edit]