Thoughts...and No Pictures

Just thought I'd share some of the ideas I've been mulling over lately. This is not easy, since Tess keeps trying to share her own ideas by kicking the keyboard while I feed her with one hand and try to type with the other. I may have to let her submit her own post.

The following is an excerpt from a recent address given by Claudia Bushman on "The Future of Mormon History." As many of you know, Ryan and I met during a summer internship for the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute at BYU, under the direction of historian Richard Bushman. Claudia was also there that summer, though she kept largely to herself while diligently researching a book she was working on. I remember seeing her work away in the BYU archives, day after day.

The Bushmans each sent us warm letters of congratulations on Tess' birth--the finest work ever produced by the Smith Institute. Claudia also sent a sweet book for Tess and a copy of "Granny B's Finger Plays"--a compilation of finger games for children that she put together for her grandchildren (I love how she includes an introduction citing the "primary source materials" for the finger plays.) She is also the only person who has correctly recognized the origins of Tess' first and middle names on first consideration.

Claudia has referred to herself as one of "the women of a certain age, those often solitary, old ladies on the edges of things...Grandmothers...the recipient of the Christmas basket. You can imagine the conversation in bishopric meeting: 'We have to do something for poor old Sister So-and-so.'" Yet, her vision for women in the Church remains fresh, progressive and encouraging.

Here is her vision for the future of Mormon history (it warms the cockles of my heart):

There will be greater interest in writing about lesser known individuals and groups. The light of the gospel will follow the plain man or woman rather than the prophet or star, illuminating new meanings and areas of Mormondom.

Implications here:
1. A decentering of church focus to a broader field.
2. More research opportunities
3. More understanding of what the church was really like.

The availability and simplicity of recording experience on film will lead to working out that standard Sunday School allegory, when one’s life is filmed in its completeness. Every act will be recorded for future judgement by the angels above us who are silent notes taking. The same angels will set up booths on earth where the films are viewed and the subjects are interviewed about the completeness of their repentance. The films will then be edited in accordance with their reformed lives.

Implications here:
1. Men and women will be able to judge in advance their approval ratings and know to what kingdom they will be dispatched. They will then have the choice of heading to their heavenly level or volunteering to be reincarnated as small creatures.
2. This process will provide occupation for the multitudes of film makers who will never make films in Hollywood.

Everyone will write and publish at least one book. There will be a greater interest in writing personal scriptures. Mormons will see more value in writing their own stories, in observing the institution changing around them, and in comparing that to other times and places. They will write narratives of adventure, war service, religious enlightenment, miraculous experiences, and the indoctrinization of the young. The familiar genres will be continued: missionary journals, collections of letters, ancestor stories, and personal memoirs. Some housewives will relate how they have turned their housekeeping systems into science. Other housewives will organize collectives to share babysitting and cooking so that they will be able to write the Gothic romances of their fantasies. The Shakespeares and Dantes of Mormondom will arrive on the scene, welcomed and emulated. The bright young intellectual lawyers and businessmen who cannot leave Mormon history alone, will explore new systems of thought. Fiction, poetry, and belles-lettres will flower as never before.

Implications here:
1. Despite a great past of personal writing in the past, there will be an even greater flowering of personal writing in the future, which because of the technical advantages of our age, can immediately be printed and bound for distribution to friends and family.
2. Complaints about how hard it is to write on the plates will be no more.
3. Each story will be placed in the context of time, of history, of other religious traditions, and other worlds. The great connections will be made as never before. While each small story shows like a diamond, it will be in the company of millions of twinkling diamonds in the black night sky
4. A new cave will be blasted in the Wasatch Mountains and all these documents will be collected there. A stone will seal them up for millenia to come. There through heavenly alchemy, our little journals and looseleaf binders will metamorphose into golden plates.

Women will cease to leave their monuments in bounteous feasts to be daily destroyed, in sewn goods to be worn out by lively families, or in icing sugar on ornamental cakes. They will follow the admonition given to Emma Smith, and their time will be given to writing and to learning much. They will each be given a golden pencil at birth to record their thoughts and experiences.

Implications here:
1. Generations of wise women will arise.
2. No one will die unrecorded.

In short, a new world will be opened to us and everything will be possible.

For another provocative Claudia read while the babies are napping today, see Should Mormon Women Speak Out? Thoughts on Our Place in the World. (How's this for a killer line: "We need to take action...Like Mother Eve. She took action. She had to pay for what she did, but she did not remain an idle princess in paradise. She took action.")

I'd like to be part of her vision--lately I've been considering just how to accomplish that. Her list of "action items" at the end of the article provides good food for thought. I'm still working on it.