Please excuse the strained metaphor.<\/p>\n
Every now and again I have the chance to head into town. By town I mean Salt Lake City. Home of a basketball team that people sometimes care about, the biggest salt water lake in our hemisphere, and some pretty nasty inversion in the winter time.<\/p>\n
Inversion is a silly little phenomenon. It\u2019s what happens every year in the Salt Lake Valley, when cold wind passes over the Wasatch Mountains and traps pollution that has an easier time escaping in warmer months. Traps it right in the valley, where people walk around trying to breathe. Forcing pedestrians to inhale what smells like (to the untrained nostril) sewage.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know much about inversion, just that it\u2019s awful and I wish someone would fix it. I can see the smog hover over the city form my perch in the hills. Looking at it is unsettling. Being in it is even worse.<\/p>\n
The smog during this inversion weighs down heavy on the city. It\u2019s a relentless reminder of past sins. People wear masks to keep whatever it is that\u2019s floating around out of their lungs, all the residue from decades of coal and cars.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the ultimate elephant in the room. A reminder that ignoring problems doesn\u2019t make them go away, but apparently it\u2019s too late to do anything about it now. It\u2019s enough to make someone want to leave the city, even when they love everything else about it.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Every time I walk into my local ward building, I feel the absences. All the people who should be there but aren\u2019t. When I hear talks from the pulpit reprimanding those who question, I sense the heartache and confusion it causes. I have a hard time believing not everyone else can feel it.<\/p>\n
Maybe they can\u2019t. Maybe it\u2019s just me. But I very much doubt that. I doubt it because I spent a good portion of my Christmas vacation talking to old friends and loved ones about how hard it feels to be Mormon right now.<\/p>\n
I ran into one friend, someone who I simply never thought would struggle in his faith. I was very wrong. I hadn\u2019t seen him in almost 7 years. We spent hours together, talking almost exclusively about his struggles to remain active in the church. Not because of coffee, or tea, or sex, or rated \u201cR\u201d movies or church attendance (even though he\u2019s struggling, he remains active in his ward and enjoys his calling).<\/p>\n
He\u2019s struggling because the church is struggling. Because it seems like everywhere you look there are old unresolved demons. Thirty-one is no age to first learn about Joseph Smith\u2019s polyandry. Twenty-four is no age to learn the hard truth that the church simply has no place for you as a homosexual unless you abstain from some of the most basic tenants of happiness (in that case, I don\u2019t imagine any age is a good age).<\/p>\n
But as I look around, as I strain to find help for my friends \u2014 and increasingly, myself \u2014 I keep finding unsatisfying answers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they didn\u2019t know about Joseph Smith\u2019s polyandry it\u2019s the fault of their own historical laziness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlenty of people live their whole lives without companionship. Each of us has our cross to bear.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are answers, but unfortunately they are not very good ones. Something that I think we are learning, but I think we are learning it too slowly.<\/p>\n
In my selfishness, it was hard for me to see the realities of our neglect and flippancy until it started to strike closer to home. I\u2019ve always had my own personal struggles, but I was not \u2014 and am not \u2014 prepared for this degree of heartache. And it is an aching, I think.<\/p>\n
When I returned home from my mission, I stumbled on to Mormon Stories. I watched the video interviews with fascination, but I remember feeling baffled by the notion that people were leaving the church for intellectual reasons.<\/p>\n
Up to that point I had only really seen people leave the church out of (what I perceived to be) convenience. Not drinking coffee is hard, as is abstaining from sex and pornography. Giving up three hours every Sunday, as well as all the other volunteer time necessary to meet the requirements of even the most well functioning ward can be exhausting and overwhelming. That\u2019s why people left, I thought.<\/p>\n