Wow, what a week. It seems that when you feel the most secure, somehow, the proverbial rug knows it and it just comes out right from under you. When that happens, W whisks me to my happy place and zen is soon upon me.
Where do I begin, well, lets talk pants.
My only real contact left with the Mormon Church comes from membership to a few Facebook groups. One being the FMH or feminist Mormon housewives. Love those girls. They are unafraid of their own commitment to change. A blog was posted about a thought. Wear pants to church in support of gender equality in the Mormon faith. Another member put it into action and before you knew it all hell broke lose.
I joined knowing full well that I wouldn't be showing up to church in pants. For obvious reasons, me at church in pants wouldn't be about the pants but that I was even at church at all. The point would then be missed but I wanted to be a part of it in the way I could; a support number, one of the over 2000 that saw this as possible.
Well, when you join a group what happens is you get the updates and by 10am on Wednesday my iphone was creating a nuisance, bang, bang, bang. WTH! I opened FB to find one of the most obnoxious occurrences on FB I had ever seen.
Death threats, seriously? Over wearing pants to church. Penis implants. Really? Is a woman donning a pair of pants at church that threatening? Really? By Thursday at 1pm FB had to actually pull the site down. WOW, can we say Mormons behaving badly?
Private inboxes were filled with hate, women were berating each other and what was once a thought now appeared to be a full on war to get those snarly FMH'ers back into their kitchens preferably barefoot and preggers.
I have to say I wasn't surprised, those of us who have been on the receiving end of Mormons behaving badly know just how capable people can be at dispelling hate in the name of their righteous indignation.
I actually wept for those young woman who honestly set out for a dialogue and ended up being crushed with hate. They held their own but it was a battle that wounded many. It may have even changed some long held thoughts that change can come from within? I hope not though.
No sooner had the dust settled from the first round when news of the Newton massacre was leaking out and somehow, pants seemed trivial.
Hate is hate. It can be dispelled in words, in written attacks and even with a gun. The levels that one reach is most often associated to mental health. I am thinking the BYU student who wrote on the pants wall that all those women wearing pants to church needed to be lined up and shot in the head may possibly be rethinking his words in light of Friday's happenings.
I doubt we will ever know what brought a 20 years old young man to ever walk into a room full of young children and aim let alone shoot an automatic weapon killing almost all of them. There is a part of me that hopes I will never understand why because somehow understanding that is inconceivable to me. Understanding it means I understand that kind of evil and I just don't want to go there.
Same with all the hate that was dispelled to those beautiful women at FMH. I will never understand that, ever!
So today, as I open the FMH FB group and see picture after picture of women and children and husbands and sons in purple and pant suits I wonder if because of all that happened this week they were all saying so much more than anything a simple pair of pants could have said. It was more than just gender equality, it was about standing up for it all, for everyone.
Love those girls, just love em!
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