In Defense of Late Starts

My sister has been posting furiously on Facebook the past several weeks, having recently encountered decidedly ‘telestial’ facts about the religion we were raised in and its history both old and recent (“telestial” is a term in Mormon scripture for the lowest “degree of glory,” a booby prize in church culture despite doctrinal protestations otherwise, the estate given to the worst kinds of people during the Final Judgment where the Telestial Kingdom is reserved for murderers, liars, whoremongers, ne’er-do-wells, and bad apples). The gritty details of the church’s polygamous and occasionally polyandrous past, its expulsion in the nineties of a few bothersome intellectuals known as The September Six, the recent accusations of sexual abuse at the hands of a church leader back in the eighties, the church’s efforts to protect itself from said accusations, and “blood atonements” that were at the very least verbally encouraged by Brigham Young, second prophet of the church, my sister’s and my great-great-great grandfather, and the person my mom had in mind while I was growing up when she would regularly take me by the shoulders, look through my eyes as her own glistened in certainty, and with gravitas try to engrave a well-meaning but unhelpful message on the back of my skull by declaring, “Stephen Joel, the blood of prophets flows through your veins,” among other things, ‘other things’ here referring to additional troublesome bits of Mormonism but could also refer to the kinds of things my mom would say to me when I was younger, all combined to hot-and-bother my sister who is now blasting out posts about her discoveries and sounding the alarm to anyone who will read them: “HEY! EVERYONE! DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS?!”

Well, yeah, I did…

…like, ten years ago when I was on my way out of church.

Apparently, a few people on Facebook have reached out to my sister to thank her for her openness and confess they hadn’t dared talking to anyone about some doubt or negative experience they’d had at church, but now felt they could confide in her, so clearly she’s helping a few even though many of her friends and family both in and out of the church might be rolling their eyes having already been-there-done-that, or never needed to, and therefore muttering, “Duh. Welcome to the party. What’s all this hullabaloo about?”

I was amused at how fired up my sister was over what to me was old and boring news, and when we talked on the phone about it a couple days ago I was tempted to see myself as wiser or more mature than her. Such comparatives are tricky, though, and in this case wrongly assume that qualities like ‘wisdom’ or ‘maturity’ can be measured on anything resembling a linear scale. It’s not for no reason, for example, that my sister has until recently been the only person in my life in whose arms I’d felt comfortable sobbing, something I’ve called on her for three times over the years. She’s known things that have taken me much longer to learn. More significantly, though, I soon saw parallels between my sister’s johnny-come-lately enthusiasm over Mormonism’s skeletons and what I’m doing right now with this blog specifically and with life in general, in which the hero dramatically documents internal struggles and revelations others have long ago warred for and won. To them, perhaps, when I go on about inner journeys or ponder by way of poetry questions like, “Who am I?” and blah blah blah, they might similarly roll their eyes, having figured all this out when they were supposed to in some age-appropriate developmental period of life. Perhaps they are even one of those unknowingly lucky few who never needed to figure such things out in the first place and thus, “Why the fuss?” To them, it’s obvious. Duh. Of course you need to love and accept yourself. Why the histrionics and lengthy blog posts about it, man? To them, or more accurately to the part of me that uses their faceless voices to express my own doubts— which is what this is really about— I’d say, “It wasn’t obvious to me.”

Earlier this week I enjoyed an email reunion with a friend I hadn’t talked to for over two decades. He and I spent a week in Washington DC together during high school, he representing Massachusetts and I Florida in a national speech and scholarship contest there, along with fifty-or-so other high school kids, and as we caught up we quickly dove into weightier things of the spirit as befitted the nature of our friendship years before, summarizing for each other where our lives had taken us since those days of youthful idealism, an idealism we weren’t wrong to have, incidentally, but that at least for me had been lost somewhere along the way, and then later regained. Here’s part of what I wrote to him, which will also serve to flesh out a little more of a story I’ve hinted at over these blog posts:

I was raised Mormon and continued devotedly in it until my late twenties when I left after a period of growing doubts and unhappiness. Leaving helped the immediate discomfort, but there was still something in me, some unknown wound or sadness I couldn’t quite see. All I “knew” was that I was not enough, and even that was a belief I had no name for at the time. It was axiomatic, largely unseen, and ultimately the cause of a number of failed relationships and general discontent. Early last year, after losing a relationship I had high hopes for and into which I threw myself with self-erasing enthusiasm, I hit my rock bottom and knew I had to change. It ended up being a whole thing, the short of which was a transformative spiritual experience (I say ‘spiritual’ even though there was no metaphysical content in the experience, no evidence of some greater power outside of myself, at least not for me, but the feeling of it I can only describe as holy and spiritual) followed by months of crying daily and writing like a man possessed every free moment I had. It felt like I’d been reborn and was learning how to do some basic things I’d never picked up the first time around, like loving myself, letting myself feel things, crying, etc. Those months led to more clarity, reconciliations, and a more grounded sense of self. Eventually the next step was to finally make good on all my talk over the years about quitting my job as a corporate trainer to travel, write, and figure out what I really wanted to do, like I was leaving home to venture out into the big scary world for the first time in some way.

In other words, I understand that what I’m up to is old news and cliché for many, that I’m leaving home late and learning lessons I missed out on in my younger years. Like my sister, I’m discovering with excitement and danger things long-known and long-safe to some but revelatory to me and like my sister as I tell the story and share what I find, and hopefully do so in the spirit in which they are received, as a novice, perhaps others like me for whom these lessons have not been obvious might also benefit.

Is this any surprise? Isn’t this what the entire self-help genre has done for decades, to say nothing of most variations on religion: taking the same or similar messages and repackaging them in a new language, the old one having been corrupted or lost, and all declaring in their own tongue, “You are enough! You are saved! You are whole!” and then building from there? “For the Lord God giveth light to the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.” (2 Nephi 31:3, Book of Mormon).

Isn’t this putting old wine into new bottles?

If we late-comers give up because we’re only now figuring out where others have always known water can be found, or if we blindly follow the directions they impatiently give us, we will never find it because the way is the water.  Wisdom is, to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “to find the journey’s end in each footstep” (RWE, “Experience”). If you, having attained your wisdom already, dismiss us for being so behind schedule, you might miss something you haven’t picked up, especially if you haven’t had to work for your insights or suffer for your past ignorance. If you have, then your sympathy should be immediate and can only deepen those lessons you had to earn by the sweat of your own brow.

I am fashioning a cup. I am putting old wine into new bottles, that I may drink, for myself and anyone who wants to come over to my place tonight to relax with a nightcap of conversation and libations.