Thursday, February 18, 2010

Thinking to my full capacity (1-2)

Folks, these videos are to announce a new phase in my life as a blogger and video maker. I do not intend to hold back any more. I am going to think in my blog and my videos to my full capacity. I am going to intensify.
In the society I grew up in I always felt like I had to hide what I was thinking. People couldn't take it. In fact, nobody was supposed to say what they really thought. It might get you in trouble. I thought people went through their whole lives and never said what they thought. Why? Well, in Utah I thought the reason was the grip the Mormon religion had on the people. I thought in other states no one religion dominated, so freedom of thought was more a reality. Even as I write this I think well Mormons are going to read this and maybe watch my video and huff and puff and act like I am committing some kind of crime. But if people had not criticized the Mormon religion in the early days and insisted their policy of polygamy was wrong, Utah would also be so full of polygamists that containing them would be an impossible job. Utah mainstream Mormons can thank these critics for outlawing polygamy when it would have been impossible for the church to do it.
The Mormons huffed and puffed for a while, but I am sure today most would agree that yes, restraining polygamy needed to happen. It is not a good thing when a church gets so powerful that their policies cannot be touched. And church members think they are right just because they are Mormon and will book no criticism because their prophet Joseph Smith was getting his revelations straight from angels, from gold plates etc. I think one reason Mormons do get so mad at criticism because it is hard to defend such stories as real gold plates from which Joseph Smith was supposed to have read a full history from hieroglyphics. I am telling you such claims would arouse skepticism in a little child. They sure did me. I thought when I first heard these stories, that can't be true. Somebody is telling a lie here.
I was an expert at telling when grownups were lying. My dad would come home and say he had not drunk a drop, and I would think, "Oh, what a liar! As if we can't tell he is drunk as a skunk!" I had also detected subterfuge on the part of my dad about his relationship with the hired man who molested me. I felt he was being unfaithful to my mother, but he was going to get killing furious if accused of lying and cover-up. So was I supposed to be afraid to say, "And I don't believe that story Joseph Smith told his followers either. These Mormons are just like Grandma. They are gullible like she is who believes everything her lying son tells her!"
I thought it was important for husbands and wives to be honest with each other, or when they went to fighting they were apt to commit great violence. When my mother started having affairs, too, I felt such a great disturbance because she became a liar too. Our home life was hell because two people were not committed to telling the truth to each other. I swore that I would never lie to my husband no matter what when I grew up. I would tell him the truth if he killed me. (He almost did) I told him that I was falling in love with someone else and I couldn't stop, and he had done this to me by his violence toward me when drinking. I had no feelings left for him." He responded a few nights later by getting drunk and saying he was going to kill me. He tried but I guess killing a person proved to be too hard of job. He knocked me down a few times and then quit, and that galvanized me into packing up and leaving before he recovered and finished the job.
I figure the only reason he did not kill me was because I told him the truth. He could rely on it. I did not lie to him. It is a very hard thing to break up sometimes, especially over violence when drinking. When you leave a man like that, that is when he is most apt to kill you.
About all the advice I got from Mormon advisers on my husband's alcoholism was: "If you had married a good Mormon you would not be in this predicament." Or "You are the problem. He is a good boy who married the wrong woman (me)." I did not ever get drunk but was considered wild because of my opinions about Mormonism, among other things.
Do charismatic church leaders lie? Yes, they do as far as I am concerned. They lie to people who they think are credulous enough to believe them, for power and glory. If what they tell you happened sounds like an embellished story, it probably is, but I have got in more trouble in Utah for saying this to the wrong people. When is it ever going to be all right to question such beliefs? Somewhere in the world right now, people are being tortured and maybe killed for questioning a powerful leader or dictator's claims. It takes a lot of nerve to expect the truth when it comes to religion.


3 comments:

kanyonland King 2.blogspot.com said...

I do hope when you 'go to full capacity' means a thoughtful, reasonable discussion not a rage
against life's evils! I worry about that. I am always looking for something lighthearted, so I hope for some of that! I want a bit of laughter in my old age.

salemslot9 said...

and
Puff
the
cat

DB said...

Good for you. Not being free to say what I thought was also in my past. Thkning at full capacity is in my present, I hopr.

DB


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