Turning and burning

Fire is a popular image in mormonism. The fires of hell, of course, but mormonism doesn't focus much on hellfire. Fire is associated more with the holy ghost, the baptism by fire of having a member of the godhood there to comfort and guide you. The spirit of god like a fire is burning, the latter day glory begins to go forth. The spirit and blessings of old are returning and angels are coming to visit the earth. It's also the refiner's fire: becoming perfect hurts, and it burns, and it stings. But the suffering in this life will lead to our perfection and exaltation in the world to come.

The bad fire is mostly associated with tithing. Those who don't pay a full tithing will be "burned at the last day." A lot of mormons refer to this 10% of their gross income as "fire insurance." Pay it and live, don't pay it and be burned alive. That is the loving god that deserves our respect.

The title to this blog doesn't come from that tho. It comes from Lady Lazurus:

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it -

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featrureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify? -

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot -
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies,

These are my hands,
My knees
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everthing else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

"A miracle!"
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart -
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge,
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash -
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there -

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

I love this poem. The tone is playful and suicidal/homicidal/irreverant. Lazaruz as a female already turns the all-male bible into something that women can relate to. Lazarus in the bible was dead and called forth by Jesus. Lady Lazarus is called back by they... her friends? her family? Certainly, it is no deity saving her. She warns both god and lucifer that she is in charge of her own rebirth.

But it's this turning and burning that has defined my journey out of the church. Parents are taught that children are their opus... they are responsible for their children's salvation... the guilt keeping families in the church is incredible. Me leaving the church represents a failure on the part of my parents. Maybe it is because my mom died, because I wore a backwards baseball cap, because I read to much.... my parents should have done more, taught more, been more controlling... I should have gone to more church activities.

Leaving the church is not easy, emotionally and mentally. It hurts. I read my first accurate mormon history on the road between DC and delmarva. I was shocked. I was hurt... I spent the next year(s) reading compulsively. I love DAMU (the disaffected mormon universe for those, like me, who think damu sounds like a very odd name)... I am always reading RfM or FLAK or NOM. I need to know how other people deal with the ward, with their families, with the pain, with the recovery. I need to know why I was so faithful for so long. I need to know that I will not be eternally punished for having a cup of coffee.

My families concern is great... my grandmother had a talk with me, my sister wants me to believe in something, my second mother doesn't want me to throw god out with mormonism. I am not minimizing their concern. They honestly believe that I am sinning against god, that I am denying the holy ghost, that I want to leave mormonism because I am too prideful about my knowledge of the world (when they are learned they think they are wise and they harken not unto the counsel of god), because I want to have sex or drink wine. I am, like Esau, selling my birthright (my birthright, btw, to become a goddess, which in mormonspeak means endlessly pregnant baby making machine forever under the righteous dominion of a husbandgod I share with at least two other baby making machines), and I am selling my eternal exaltation for a bowl of lentils... or a really delicious cabernet.

My family is worried because they love me and don't want me to go to hell... and it is partly their fault if I do. I don't want to minimize or dismiss it. But I'm ok with melting to a shriek, I'm ok with with the ash. Cuz I will be ok... other apostates who have gone before me have proven that... life is better on the otherside, and more so because it is not imaginary friends (god/lucifer) who are fighting a microcosmic battle within you... it's YOU.

The rebirth isn't fun, but you get to find out what is on the other side.