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Carol Lynn Pearson has been contributing to important conversations in Mormonism since the 1960’s. She is truly a legend in her own time who has used her powerful voice to bring awareness to some of the most challenging and sensitive issues we face as a church and as people.
I highly recommend her books, particularly her newer books, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, Finding Mother God (which we will cover in greater depth in part 2,) and The Love Map.
https://carollynnpearson.com/

Transcript

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. As always, I recommend listening to these episodes in order starting at the beginning. My name is Michelle Stone, and this is episode 45, where I have the great privilege of talking to Carolyn Pearson primarily about her books, The Ghost of Eternal polygamy and More recent book, Finding Mother God, both of which I just love. She also has a new book that she will tell us about. So I hope that you are enjoying these interviews we’re doing right now. The day that this that this episode airs is actually the day of my son’s mission farewell, which is also a week before Christmas, as you know. So I have to acknowledge that interviews are quite a bit Easier for me. I still try to prepare quite a bit, but it’s a lot less work than just doing my own episodes. So we will get back to more of those. But in the meantime, I very much hope that you enjoy this conversation with Carolyn Pearson, and I want to sincerely thank Carolyn for giving me so much of her time. So thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. Welcome to 132 Problems. I am so thrilled today to have one of my heroes, Carolyn Pearson, with me. She has so kindly agreed to come and talk to me, to us about these important issues. I think she doesn’t even need an introduction, but by way of introduction, I’m going to go ahead and give one. Carolyn has lived a truly remarkable life. Um, Just really quickly, and I’m sure she can fill us in with a lot more. She grew up in Utah, um, Salt Lake and Salt Lake City, and then Gusher and then Provo and attended. I, I, I heard you say that you lived in Gusher for a few years.

[02:04] Carol Lynn Pearson: No one’s ever heard of Gusher. Have you heard of?

[02:09] Michelle: No, somewhere to visit.

[02:11] Carol Lynn Pearson: I’m a real pioneer. OK.

[02:15] Michelle: And she, um, had actually we had a very similar major at Brigham Young University BYU. She was a musical theater major. Am I getting that right? And I was not

[02:23] Carol Lynn Pearson: musical, not musical, uh, just a theater music, a theater major. Yeah. OK.

[02:29] Michelle: She was a theater major. I was a music dance theater major, so that’s, that’s fun. And, um, and many of you know her story. She married Gerald, they had 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls in their 12 years of marriage. And um similar to the story I shared with my mom and my dad. The impression I get is that Gerald saw and appreciated Carolyn’s genius and contributed much to helping her establish her remarkable career, which is a story that I love. That’s a similar story with my parents. Carolyn is the author of at least 16 full-length books, including Goodbye, I Love You, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, one I really want to discuss today, Finding Mother God, and her newest book, The Love Map, Saving Your Relationship. and incidentally saving the world, which is just beautiful. And she has over 40 books total, including her plays, which many of you will know, My Turn on Earth and Mother Wove the Morning, which I thought my mom said she saw and just loved. And also children’s books, which includes I’ll Walk with You, which Carolyn wrote the lyrics to that’s in our our that’s one of our primary songs and screenplays another writing. So anyway, I’m thrilled to Have you here, Carolyn. I, I, when I was going to do an introduction, I wondered if you would share, um, I mean, I wondered if you would if you mind if I would share one way that I, that I came to think about you in reading your book,

[03:59] Carol Lynn Pearson: um,

[03:59] Michelle: finding. So this is called, this is, this is my introduction of Carolyn Pearson. This is called First Thought of Me, which I have subtitled A Poet’s Self Portrait. I think this is Carolyn’s poetic self-portrait. She said, Before the egg and the sperm, there was a conception. In the vibration that we called heaven, God had a conversation. Who are you thinking, my dear? he said. Hmm, not sure yet, she said. Kind of fuzzy and slow. This one is hard to conceive of. Probably a poet, he said. That would be nice. Too many businessmen zipping around. A poet, she said. What a concept. Let me think. Pregnant pause. Ah yes, she’s splendid, odd, but splendid. Do you love her? Oh yes, God laughed. And the conception was complete. So I give you Carolyn Pearson.

[05:06] Carol Lynn Pearson: Oh, thank you for that. I needed a good laugh this morning. I really did. Uh, that I’ve never, uh, of all the poems that I’ve been, uh, reading on the interviews and all, that’s, that’s not one that I have chosen, but I, as you read it, I remember now, that’s really quite charming, isn’t it? Oh, it’s

[05:26] Michelle: delightful. I think, I think all of us should write a poem of that nature for each. our children and for ourselves. I think it’s absolutely beautiful.

[05:36] Carol Lynn Pearson: So I love that, Michelle. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[05:40] Michelle: Carolyn, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with me today. And I have so many questions. I, I’m just eager to ask you. First, is there anything that you want to share that I maybe missed in your introduction or that

[05:54] Carol Lynn Pearson: Oh, well, only about 7 hours’ worth of the that that that you don’t already know here, but no, let us just move right ahead with with your interest in whatever I might have to contribute here. Thank you, thank you, Michelle.

[06:08] Michelle: All right, great. Well, I feel like one thing that you have done for our community that has been such a huge service is you just sort of Create a dish and set it on the table without conclusions drawn and saying, Here, this, this is something that deserves focus. This is something we need to focus on. I feel like with your book, Goodbye, I Love You, you kind of were saying, this is something we need to talk about. You didn’t necessarily draw conclusions, you just told a beautiful, heartbreaking story. And then I’m, I’m really interested to know, cause I feel like you in some ways did the same thing with the ghost of eternal polygamy. You just were like, here’s a topic for conversation. And I’m curious to know your process of why you decided to write that book at that time.

[06:59] Carol Lynn Pearson: Wow. Well, the process of deciding to write that book was one that’s decades old. And uh let me just correct a little bit of what I, how you introduced that, that I just put it on the table and said, here’s something to think about without drawing a conclusion, because, uh, let me just put right out front that I did draw a a personal conclusion in that book, and I did say very clearly in print, that it is my belief. That polygamy was one of the polygamy was Joseph’s primary error, and that God was not involved in it. I did put that in black and white print. So let’s just let that be one of the one of the parameters that that will be in in this in this conversation. But why did I do it and what was the process leading up to it? Well, I was, I was born. With Women’s issues. And then I married into gay issues. But all of the things that we call women’s issues that really are humanity issues, because these affect men just as much as they affect women. Perhaps not as much, because women bear the most um difficult emotional burden of polygamy. And I, the, the first thing I mentioned in the Ghost of eternal polygamy about How I realized that there was something so challenging here. Was that My much loved seminary teacher at BY High School in Provo, Utah. One day Boris his testimony that that he knew that he would claim as both he would claim as wives both of the women he had been sealed to. His first wife had passed away and he married again in the temple. And um he said, I, I know this sounds strange to some of you, especially the young women, but once you are more mature, once you are less selfish, you will realize the beauty of this principle, which is God’s true form of celestial marriage, and you will yearn to live that. And as I listen to those words, Something kind of cracked in my heart. And I do remember walking home that day thinking, Wow. There’s something There’s something really amiss here, it must be a miss in me. It must, I, I, I, I’m not, I’m not accepting this. That this, this is really painful to me and feels really wrong. Why can’t I get on board with this? My, my seminary teacher bore me his testimony that this is true. So for some time, I thought, OK, there’s something wrong with me. I gotta get on board with this, year after year after year after year, until I finally matured. Sufficiently enough to say, you know, Maybe what’s wrong here is not something that’s wrong in me. Maybe it’s something wrong in the system.

[10:35] Michelle: That’s a huge, huge step to take for a little Mormon girl. Can you tell me? Well, maybe you weren’t a little Mormon girl. Like, how do you know about what time, how old you were when that happened and where you gained that amount of courage? Cause I’ve had similar things. And it’s, it’s, that’s a scary step to take that you know better than all those profits. Is it really crazy? It,

[11:03] Carol Lynn Pearson: it, it is. And it, it’s hard for me to pinpoint a, a place along the way, but I, I did, I think I pretty much detailed in the ghost of eternal polygamy that a major time of Reckoning was, you know, when my, my marriage fell apart. And everything that I knew about my marriage, about life, about myself, about the church, about God, everything was in pieces on the floor. And, and I had to get down there and pick up these shards one by one and say, is this worth saving to build a new life with? or or is this something I should just throw away? And, and when I picked up many of the pieces about the church, a major one being the idea of polygamy, it was just so clear to me that this is not a correct thing. This is nothing from God, and this is not something I am going to ever try to to uh place in the new house of being that I am building. So it was a gradual thing, but But when, when I, what you see, it takes a lot of personal, it takes guts. To be able to say. Maybe I’m not wrong. Maybe somebody else is wrong. Uh, but that was my experience, and, and I, I hold to it then and now.

[12:43] Michelle: I completely agree with you. I love the description of picking up shards and deciding which ones to keep and which one when to discard because when there’s been a shattering. The biggest mistake you can make is try to reconstruct what existed before. You have to build something new, and you have to take the best parts of what was. And I, I, I, that, that completely makes sense to me. So, so with that background, what was it that made you choose right? I And I, I should have shown the book. It’s probably going to be backwards, but, um, I couldn’t find my own copy in my bookshelf somewhere, so I had to go get one from the library. But this is a book that, that I just love. And I believe you wrote it. Was it 2015? Am I getting that right? What, what brought

[13:27] Carol Lynn Pearson: it back? I think that’s I think that’s right. Yeah. Well, see, I had, oh golly, since way back when, you know, when my little book of poems called Beginnings put me on the map. I began to receive letters from women, from LDS women from all over, thanking me for that. And then as I, I started writing into uh women’s quote issues uh with Daughters of Light, the spiritual experiences of early Mormon women, the flight in the nest, but women in Utah were doing about education and their professional ideas and all of that. I kept hearing more and more from LDS women saying, oh, thank you for writing about these things, this is so important, and they would share their hearts with me, and their problems and their their anguishes. And the the subject of polygamy was among the many things that I kept hearing about from women, the pain that it caused. So anyway, what, 10 years ago or just whatever, I, I decided, you know, This is such a pressing issue, and I feel called to do something here, because I have a position, I have a voice, and I, and I have all of these women I’ve already heard from, and the the the huge number that I’ve never heard from that I know are in pain. And so I, I began to, to do that. I wasn’t quite sure what it would be, but um,

[15:18] Michelle: You began with your survey, is that that wasn’t that the first step you took?

[15:21] Carol Lynn Pearson: Um yeah. And, and my friend Greg Prince, who is a a very well known, uh, academic power in the church, suggested, listen, first of all, you get to get your evidence, you get a survey going. So he helped me put this together and we, we sent out just a questionnaire. Um, to LDS people, formerly, um, currently active, post LDS women, men, and on the first day, we got over 1400 responses, just sending it out on social media to people who send it along. And when we closed down the survey after 4 weeks, we had over 8000 responses. And um, I had asked in the survey if if people who had Personal feelings to talk about or family stories, and of course this is all anonymous. I wouldn’t know who any of these people were if I wanted to. Um, but, uh, a couple of 1000 of them send in their stories or their family stories. And this was not as a perfectly scientifically done study, but my estimate was that about 15% said, oh, polygamy is just fine. You just got to have more faith. And then about the the 85% said the pain in my life has been real about polygamy, and this is why. So I spent, I, I spent like a month, 3 months in this summer reading through all of the responses and the stories and picking those that were representative of what I was what I was getting. And over and over, I, I, I was just brought to tears often with the, the painful stories that these people told me that resonated with my own feelings, of course. And so I just created this, this book that was sort of half memoir, no, a third memoir, a third, uh, historical about all of the events, and then the rest that these people speaking their own words, and, and I’ve had tremendous response.

[17:47] Michelle: It is I, OK, so I have to confess. So when a couple of things, when I read your book, I actually Um, forgive me, I’m just, I found it frustrating because I now know it’s because it’s, it wasn’t the book that I feel compelled to write, right? Like to me, so I was in that 15% for most of my life. Like, I, I, I was raised, my grandmother is the oldest daughter of post manifesto polygamists, and I was raised on the happy faith promoting beautiful stories. And just thought there are things we don’t understand, it’s going to be beautiful. And, and as, you know, a girl and a woman filled with faith, wanted the opportunity to have the chance to show God how faithful I was and that we could live in Zion. And I thought it was the law of Zion and the celestial kingdom. So I very much understand. Yeah, I think that the people in that camp still are the ones who are the most aggressively opposed to what I’m doing. I’ve told this story before, but my husband actually came to me and had been reading the scriptures and said, I don’t think polygamy was ever of God. And I was appalled that he would think that. I was Just in shock. And so I was like, Of course it is. So I went to the scriptures to start studying it out so I could show him how true polygamy was, and that’s when my journey started. I was just, and this was probably back in Oh, I can’t remember. Um, 2007, 2008, and I was just shocked by how incredibly ignorant I was. And as I kept studying how naive I was to just think, oh, you know, I’m exhausted as a mom with, of a big family with so much work to do. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a sister wife, to share the work and chat with? Like, I was completely, cause that’s how I was raised to believe. And so for me, I can honestly say I haven’t come to these ideas at all through, um, motivated reasoning, right? It’s been pure, for me, it was purely the study of the scriptures that made me think, oh my goodness, God established the perfect establishment of marriage, commanded it repeatedly, continually without exception, and man, messed it up big time. It was what I finally came. You. And so that’s what I have been feeling so compelled to add to the conversation is the scriptural and theological, like, I think slam dunk case to show that polygamy never was of God, but was always a complete contamination of what God established. And so, so I now can fully. I appreciate your book, but when I was reading it at the time, I, I kept being told, not yet, not yet, because I had so, I had so many children and was just kept being inspired to have children, didn’t have a minute to do writing the things I wanted to do. So I was like, Oh, someone did it. And then it wasn’t. Because you don’t really get into, I guess that’s what I mean. You don’t really get into the theological case in this. I feel like you get more into the Um, the reason the heart case, yeah, like this is what this has done to our community, to women, to our society. And that the

[21:03] Carol Lynn Pearson: uh right, and but to me it’s the, the logical extension of that thought is, well, of see God and good are words that only are, are, you know, are very matched here. You just need one more O to make God into good. So God’s work has to be good. And the good that has come from polygamy is very hard for me to find, very, very hard. And then the pain is all over the place. So it to me it is so self-evident that God was not involved in polygamy. Now look, take it. Here, God created all of us, created this world. So somehow God and Mother Nature conspired, that we have approximately 50% girl babies born, approximately 50% boy babies born. How in the world could you take a look at that? And say, however, the the way this has to happen now is to, you know, get, get rid of all of these boys who are not gonna have matches with the the the women. I mean, it, it gets into the most absurd kind of thinking from the get-go.

[22:29] Michelle: It truly does. The trick is you have to do that thinking, which I hadn’t previously done because It wasn’t, it, it didn’t rub me wrong. So I’m so glad that that, you know, that I’m so glad that 85% exists. You could see, just automatically. This is not right. And, and I do, I guess I feel like all the pieces are necessary. It, it is. Obviously ludicrous, just complete and complete contradiction to all of creation. And, you know, everyone who wants to choose a Bible story. Well, let’s look at Noah’s ark for one example, right? I think all of, all of those animals and couples needed to multiply and replenish. Why weren’t there a dozen females to every male and, you know, and And it’s interesting because talking about the obvious bad that comes from, I pointed out a little while ago that there’s no good fruit of polygamy. And people immediately start saying, well, the house of Israel, and that, you know, and I just always want to respond with, I, I think we would be hard pressed to find many people who think that Child and spousal abandonment is a good fruit, and that attempted genocide is a good fruit, which is, you know, all the things that happened, of course, God can always make lemonade, but, but we can’t put our blinders on to the actual harm done. And I, and I agree with you that it’s mainly the women, I would say, and the children as the book and the children as the book of Mormon also teaches that that experience the harm. But it also does not serve men well because it makes them into a worse version of themselves. I recently had a man testify of polygamy by testifying of the solar system, that there’s one sun and all of the planets that orbit around it. And I just, I told him, I said, I’m sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit because the hubris. To think that because you are male, you are the gravitational pull around which all of the females orbit. That does not, it is not good for men to be put in a position to be so unapathetic and so arrogant.

[24:42] Carol Lynn Pearson: Well, it is just absurd from the get-go. But it it it really is. It it just is. It, it’s, it’s just astonishing to me that that that someone can still try to make an argument about um polygamy being the way that God wants things to be. It it is beyond my comprehension.

[25:04] Michelle: Yes, I agree with you, and that’s that’s what I love about this book is that you show both The current pain, which I think it’s like trying to even wake people up to understand what polygamy does to widows, where God, where Jesus tells us to care for the widows, and we have this doctrine that is built up by shoving widows down because widows are pariahs and are put in this horrible young widows in particular in Mormondom. And And then the harm to all of the women, it’s, it’s so strange to me that, anyway, so I love that you bring up both the historical pain it has done, the current pain it is still doing. And, uh, anyway, I, I, I just, I highly recommend this book to anyone who hasn’t already read it because I think it is important to consider. Exactly how this is. I like how you say it’s still this ghost that has a chair at our tables, that’s still it and it also Another thing that I have learned more is also it totally turns the gospel inside out and upside down into this awful pretzel of works. We have to earn God’s love. We have to just like a wife has to be good enough to earn her husband’s love. If I keep sweet enough, if I do enough, he’ll come visit me as well. And then children are raised thinking that they need to do that. And it gives us this view of God where we actually end up with talks about how God’s love is not unconditional where I just, I’m like. You who God loves.

[26:38] Carol Lynn Pearson: The whole thing moves into the most bizarre territory that that you just have to shake your head and, and then you have to say inside your heart, wait a minute. That does not feel peaceful and loving, and encouraging, and godlike to me. Now, for, you know, probably many of your listeners, well, have, have, have certainly not read the book that we’re talking about here, the ghost of eternal polygamy. I’ll be many of them have and so they’re they’re having to just take our word for, for the, for talking about, you know, the, the stories that that demonstrate that dramatize the, the incredible pain. And now let me just say that I I continue to receive stories from women and from men. Who have read the book. And I, I have, oh, a, a lot of uh the emails from people, men and women alike saying, ah, I’m so grateful for this book. I, I thought if, if I throw away polygamy, which I have to do, I’m gonna have to throw away the church too. But you’ve shown me a way that I can throw away polygamy and and not have to throw away the church, and the, but the ongoing pain. That is special, see if we had time, I would, I would read many of the stories that came in to me from, from all of these people. Let me just uh give a a a little moment to and I’m still thinking about this one because this is one that just came to me a few weeks ago from a woman thanking me for the book and saying. My husband, um, cried as he finished reading the ghost of Eternal polygamy. And he said for the first time, he feels the pain that I have experienced throughout the entire years of our marriage. And she said, I have to acknowledge that in those prior years, I withheld a part of my heart from my husband, because I was taught to believe. That in the eternities, if we’re both sufficiently righteous, I will be one of his wives, and I will have to see him sharing himself in the same way with other women that he’s been sharing himself with me. And she said I would give anything. To have those years back. That I was not fully invested in this man that I truly do love so much. Now, see, from my point of view, Michelle, that is wicked. From my point of view, that is evil. For anything to come between a woman and a man in a protected marriage arrangement. To introduce an idea that is so horrific. It is wicked. And I, I say that with all my heart.

[29:50] Michelle: I, I love you speaking out so clearly. I, I know exactly what you mean cause the, um, uh, the messages that I’ve been receiving, they just, well, it keeps me going as hard as it is to do this with my big family and all of my, you know, it keeps me going because Hearing the pain, and one of the main things that has come across to me in the messages I’ve received is both I uh the separation from the husband, but the separation from God. To try to understand how God views you and values you. I think that for, see, I was raised, I wasn’t, I wasn’t born into women’s issues cause I had almost, I had mostly sisters and my dad was always the bishop, and at the, you know, I was he was always he was always busy with his callings and his business. And my mom was a professional woman, and I, you know, I didn’t feel directly in my family. And, and then, so I was kind of protected from it to some extent. And so, um, I had my own sort of, I guess, feminist awakening, which just surprised me and came out of nowhere. I remember distinctly driving when one conference Sunday to go listen to general conference at my mom’s house with my little kids in the car, and all of a sudden it was like I hit a wall. Where I could not again go listen to those same 15 men. It was, I, I that that’s a hard, it was, it was shocked me cause I was just excited. I love General Conference. It was out of the blue. Nothing. I mean, I mean, nothing prepared me, and I went to listen and started to think, what is this? And that was what, how my attention was first drawn to it. And, you know, it’s affected me in many different ways. And that’s, I, I, I, going in a couple of different directions. But one thing that has really been apparent to me is that polygamy is actually a symptom of a much greater problem. It’s, it’s It serves to keep the problem embedded more deeply, but it’s, we have been trained. I, I think the adversary’s greatest tactic has been to train humankind to not see woman and therefore to not see the lack of women.

[32:10] Carol Lynn Pearson: Well, Michelle, I think the word that you’re searching for here is patriarchy. Yeah, we, the patriarchy is a paradigm. It is a paradigm. In which maleness is the standard. And femaleness is the other and does circle around the male, just as you see, you know, when Galileo caused us to see the heavens differently. That that was a shift in a paradigm. And right now, our world is undergoing another shift in the paradigm of patriarchy. And I know that might sound really challenging and frustrating and and um Absolutely heinous to people who don’t understand what I’m about to say. But I believe that our journey right now and our calling is to move out of patriarchy into partnership. This is not taking away anything from men. It is giving the rightful place to women. So that we will be partners, which does not mean that men and women will have to do the same things. I love a statement from British writer Virginia Woolf. That men and women are different. What needs to be made equal is the value placed on those differences.

[33:49] Michelle: I love that, exactly. One

[33:51] Carol Lynn Pearson: of my favorites as well. Patriarchy does not equally value femaleness as much as it values maleness. And, and we just have to understand that there’s a lot of things that are upset right now, and maybe some extremes going on that that really uh make people frightened, but it, the, the vision of moving across the plains of patriarchy into the promised green land of partnership. Where both men and women are valued equally and assist each other to do whatever it is that a couple can determine for themselves. And you know that there are men who are really enjoying being the house husband while the woman brings in the money for a period of time. If that’s what works for them, then, then so be it. But we have to just understand that that a man and woman. Must be complete partners in determining the how the family operates, how the marriage operates. And as Boy, you know, this, this gets into so many other concepts. I, I, I just remember that the statement from Uh, Catholic theologian Mary Daly that if God is male, the male is God. Now, in our, in our LDS understanding, we do have the concept that we have a heavenly father and a heavenly mother. And I, I think sometimes Well, and I know that our our our friends in the fundamentalist organizations. Don’t want to develop the idea of heavenly mother because there’s so many of them.

[35:49] Michelle: It’s the heavenly harem.

[35:52] Carol Lynn Pearson: And you know, in my own ward. Uh, not long ago, a friend of mine who was an elderscorum said, well, you wouldn’t like what what was said in, in, in priesthood meeting, uh, this morning. Uh, that why do, why do we not talk about heavenly mother? Well, because there’s so many of them. You see, this, what, what this, what I think is a, it is really a poisonous concept of polygamy. It infiltrates our ideas of the heaven. As it infiltrates the ideas of how a marriage is supposed to operate. So to me that the word that we are moving toward is partnership, equal valuing. And and we, we will never see. Polygamy is not in any way close to partnership.

[36:46] Michelle: Oh, no, not at all. No, it’s

[36:48] Carol Lynn Pearson: not. And I think, I think we can judge whatever does not. Add to the health of a partnership. And certainly polygamy does not add to the health of a partnership. Then I’m, I’m very committed to just saying it’s wrong, it’s wrong. If it, if it does not involve and help to grow the partnership, it’s wrong.

[37:19] Michelle: I, I completely agree. And I think one of the things I love about your book, um, is it Finding heavenly finding Mother God? I, I don’t want to call it the wrong thing. Um, when I can, I can’t remember if it’s seeking or finding. I think it’s finding because finding, not the seeking. Yep. Um, what I love about that is I, I know patriarchy is such a loaded word, just like feminism is such a loaded word, and I think that that’s unfortunate that It makes it hard to talk about these very important concepts because there are the extremes. But what I love is that it’s not so much about dethroning the patriarchy as much as enthroning the matriarchy, letting both exist together. And, um, and I loved your way of, well, you know, I was, as I was reading it. Our problem of pronouns is much older than just this, this recent past decades. It goes clear back. I have not known how to refer to God because it is so awful to me to refer to God as he, because it, it is not inclusive. And so this pronoun problem we have actually. It’s almost like, and this big, the feminist problem and the, you know, it’s almost like things have to get like, like these containers we have aren’t big enough. And if this is the only way they get busted down, I guess this is how they get busted down, because we can’t even contain God within our current language in a holistic and honest way. And I love how you went back and forth and back and forth throughout your poems. To include both mother and father, which is, which is so true in my own experience. Even my patriarchal blessing talks about the relationship I will establish with my heavenly mother, and I have had experiences with heavenly mother that have been profound, and so it’s so strange. To not be able to include my God in my language.

[39:22] Carol Lynn Pearson: Right. And, you know, as as you were speaking of the, you know, the challenge that it is to find the right words, I’m, I’m thinking we, we are in a, we’re in a space right now that maybe we could compare to labor pains, because we, we are birthing a new idea. Of maleness and femaleness together. And it’s, it’s not easy. It really isn’t. And and and I, I, I so agree that we don’t have the the the pronouns get in our way. You know, even the pronouns that we use now for individuals, I’m, I’m on the alarm about, you know, it’s just asking too much of me, but somehow just, just reframing the idea of God. It is not something that is easily done. We, we are, you know, I, I like to sort of rise up above the territory in what I call my spiritual helicopter and, and look down and see where we are now and where we have been and where we may hope to hope to move to. But we, we right now are the product of our history. And our history of the last number of thousands of years. Has been a very patriarchal history. That has given us some really bad fruits. We have the witch burnings. We have the terrible struggle for women to even be recognized as human beings, really, let alone being able to have the vote. We, we, we have all of these things in, in our past that that still affect us now. And so we, we have to, we have to be a what both patient. And urgent. And, and I know that’s, that’s not easy to do. And we have to understand that maybe what we’re talking about is shocking to a lot of people and very disturbing. And, and, and we can’t say to them, well, you’re, you’re just not smart enough, you’re just not up to date, get, get on the wagon here. It to to change our consciousness. It is way harder than to change our wardrobe or to to to change anything, but to change the way we view reality. I mean, we’re we’re to talk about maleness and females and kind of shifting things around here, especially as it concerns how we speak of God, or how we speak of a perfect marriage arrangement. This is not an easy thing for a lot of people. Who have only experienced what the past has given them. But every change has discomfort associated with it. And And I am very clear that that it is a correct thing. Uh, a useful thing. Something that will, will bring us better fruit. If we truly examine what we have inherited from the past, and, and what I mean, the word really is is patriarchy, that means the the rule of the fathers. And I know for a lot of people to attack for us to, I, I’m not attacking that word, I am saying this is a word that has not served us well. It, it, it had it, it’s historical roots. But it has not served us well, and we now need to move into a new era. And the best word that I can find for that is partnership. Now Ranne Eisler, who’s a brilliant non-LDS writer, and who, who wrote a book called The Chaice and the Blade, and and uh other books about partnership. Partnership is really the answer. To this whole dilemma about the genders. Yeah. And I, I love the word partnership. Right.

[43:58] Michelle: So I, I wanna throw something out because especially for any listeners, I, I know that patriarchy can be a loaded word because in part we have the disadvantage of the extremes of the I don’t need a man type of Of movement. I want to request that people please not just go to the extremes to think, you know, it’s so easy to lump everything into the extremes. And instead to just look at the concept being discussed here and leave all of that out of it, because that’s not what we’re talking about. We are talking about partnership, right? And I, you know, I, I have, I have a, I’ve had a thought for quite a few years that I want to run past you and see your ideas. Um, Part of, at least in my understanding, part of our belief about the Book of Mormon is that it clarifies the Bible. It brings further light and knowledge. It’s not in conflict to it. It just kind of takes it further along in some ways, if I can explain, describe it that way. And one thing that is really struck me many years ago is that The proportion of male to female in the Bible is way better than in the Book of Mormon even. In the Book of Mormon, we have 3 named female characters. I mean we have, yeah. There are 3. And the Bible actually has quite a few more women in in proportion to men than the Book of Mormon does. And then when I look at the patriarchal society that polygamy grew out of. And how actually the polygamy took that into such a worse place than even Christian America was in, because it was Christian America fighting against polygamy. And to me, I think, oh, isn’t that interesting? The Book of Mormon and the Restoration bring further awareness to things in the Bible. And it feels to me like God is saying, do you see it yet? There’s this problem in the Bible of not enough of the feminine. You don’t have the prophetesses, you don’t have the women’s writings, you don’t have the women’s testimonies and stories. So let me make that even more obvious and more extreme in the Book of Mormon and in polygamy, to see if that will wake you up to see what is missing. That’s how, that’s, I guess, how I interpret it because we believe that God will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God. To me, that is the prophetesses, the mothers. We have so much in scripture about the fathers. I was called to do this podcast by the mothers. We also need the mothers, I guess I want to know what you think of that.

[46:34] Carol Lynn Pearson: Well, I, I had not heard that that particular explanation for all. That’s a, that’s a very generous explanation. Um, and I, I don’t really have a lot to bring into the conversation, but I, I have noted for a very, very long time, and the last time I read the Book of Mormon all the way through, it was to just circle and read all of the, the, the words of the, the names, the, the female pronouns, and it, it, you know, it’s just embarrassing, the, the, the lack of any attention. I mean, usually it’s our, our flocks and our women. That that kind of thing is how women are referenced in the Book of Mormon, and it is kind of an anomaly in that as, as you, and when you said the Bible, I think probably you were talking about the Old Testament. We have a lot of rather rich stories in the Old Testament, in spite of the fact that there is, you know, clearly a lot of the the the awful uh legal stuff there that there really is very destructive. Of, of the feminine. So, so there there’s quite a bit of richness in, in the, the Old Testament that does not exist in the Book of Mormon. And in the New Testament, We have this radical guy named Jesus. Who overturns everything. About gender, who speaks to women when he should not have spoken to women, who asks them to follow him to to be and and in many accounts to be equal with his his his male disciples, and that’s a that’s a shocking kind of thing to for him to have advanced the position of women, contrary to the social norms of the day. The way that he did. So here we have prior Book of Mormon. Post Book of Mormon. And the paucity of female reference in in the Book of Mormon is a great puzzle, and, and I don’t want to even get into it. OK, it is interesting to look at. It is.

[48:50] Michelle: It is. And I think that the combination, adding polygamy on top of that has been challenging because it does skew the way we read all of Scripture. Like, we completely ignore Holda, who is a profoundly important figure in the Old Testament to teach us. About women. We completely ignore, um, um, Deborah, who is another profoundly important figure, or we just, our lessons of her are so muddled and dumbed down to not actually look at who she is and what she, what role she filled and what she was called to do. It’s similar to Holda. And even to the point of, see, see, for me, I really do hold to this reason of God is like, do you get it yet? Can you see that woman is missing and you need to, you need to recognize that. That’s my perspective. And I think that we have done such a disservice to even the women that we have. Like for me, Lot’s wife. Is one of my greatest scripture heroines, because if we read her story truly, that I presented on that at Sunstone, because I think her story is profound. And Jesus, she’s a type of Christ, who the savior even refers to in that context. And then we have Soraya, and it’s so interesting to me to read. In the, oh, I can’t remember which chapter it is, but where Soraya murmurs against Lee Hyatt, it’s sure to like list that in the chapter heading, right? And I, I think that’s a complete misunderstanding of the profound experience Soraya had of having to go through that experience to gain her own independent testimony. Of of what God was doing with them, so that as they were going forward suffering in the wilderness, pregnant, and even layman and Lemuel said it would have been better that our wives had died than suffer pregnant in the wilderness. Soraya was 25 years older than any of them, where was also pregnant in the wilderness, and she never murmured. And then we go forward and Lehi, who was the prophet, murmurs against God. That’s not written in the heading, right? So we’re so quick to, OK, I’m, I’m glad that you’re like, like to me that is appalling. And even speaking of the New Testament, and I know that we have some, um, some things that we don’t see eye to eye on, but it’s profound to me that In the New Testament, we have Paul supposedly saying that it is a shame for women to speak in church and women must be silent. And, you know, but then we have Joseph’s revelation to Emma, Doctor N Covenant 25, where she is called to expound and to exhort, and she is ordained. It is said that she would be ordained. And those, like, I wish I said this a little. A while ago. I wish so much that in that little footnotes on those scriptures in the New Testament that are so awful about women being silent, we would put a link to Doctrine Covenants 25 saying, Oh, no, this has been corrected. This was false. Because we have so much available to us. I feel like, to me, God is saying, Hey, like, eat what’s on your plate. Find what you can, and then see, like, I feel like God is saying you need to wake up and see that this is missing so you can start asking, so you can start seeking so that more can be given. That’s my, my take on it.

[52:07] Carol Lynn Pearson: And I, I appreciate that. I, I accept that. we would all maybe describe what we’re looking at in different ways here, but I think The the similarity of how we see all this is just that we live in an age now where new light is being given, new light from way up there, but a lot of new life that just comes from here, because we, we each have light within us, and we each have a calling to say, I have inherited a lot of good things and a lot of difficult things. I am responsible for getting rid of the difficult things and bringing with me all of the good things. And then I’m responsible in the now, in the, in the right now in this moment, to add what I feel is truly important and useful. To what I have received from the past, so that the future. Can be richer. And you know, right now, you know, with all of the upheavals and the women’s movement and the Ms. magazine and the Equal Rights Amendment, and, you know, all of these things that that people are are divided on, there is a thread of truth that exists in the in the whole conversation. Which is that it is time now. To invite women to the table as equal partners in decision making. And in giving us their female gifts to remold society, so that it is a kinder, more gentle, more luminous place.

[54:08] Michelle: More complete, more true,

[54:10] Carol Lynn Pearson: absolutely more true. The, the truth is maleless and femaleless together. Equal and not the same. But equally valuable. And, and, and that that’s what we are called to do right now.

[54:29] Michelle: Absolutely. I want, can I share another little experience? I, um, I experienced and I shared in a different episode and and an experience I had with very difficult, uh, I had a bishop interviewing me. In a very challenging, difficult way, telling me I was wrong on something. And, you know, and it was the imbalance of power and feeling so small and feeling silenced and feel, you know, and being told my temple recommend was on the line. It was actually about my views on Lot’s wife. I had previous. Whoa. Yeah, it, it was quite a story. It’s like, like I’ve had, I’ve had my share, but I had previously felt strongly inspired to give birth, um, unassisted. My bishop bizarrely happened to find out about that. This was, it was a different bishop. And, um, I was called into the bishop’s office multiple times. And I just, I just have always thought, isn’t that interesting that A woman’s inspiration about how to give birth, even that is subject to male authority, let alone the fact that while giving birth we’re supposed to be communing with and praying to a male god, like all of it is just Really messes with your mind, right? And so, in this particular experience, and I thought I had fasted and prayed and gone in, I knew that my temple recommend was on the line if I didn’t say I was wrong, you know, in this talk, in this, in this interview, I was told I wouldn’t speak again or teach again, which Um, or, uh, you know, have a calling as a teacher. And, um, my wonderful, I, I have wonderful leadership that, you know, that now is like, allowing me to speak and, and, you know, I was trying to undo that. But the thing that was fascinating to me is while I was sitting there, I kept having the thought. If I won’t say her name, but if she were here, his wife, his wife’s name kept coming to mind. If she were here, this wouldn’t be happening. She would be seeing how I was feeling. She would be carry, carrying, she would be saying, hon, and then let me talk. It would have been a and that was not the experience I expected to have in that interview with the bishop. And I was so broken and devastated after it. It took me months to be able to go back to church, which I was called by God to do. And, um, and he, he’s a good man, a good kind man. It’s just the imbalance of power. And, you know, it’s, and he had been given instruction from above, and it’s just tricky. But when I came home, so just barely could catch my breath for sobbing, you know, so broken. And I went to, I prayed and I was like, God, you gotta give me something. And I opened my scriptures. And I was not in this place. I didn’t know this was about this male thing. I wasn’t in a feminist, um, spot. But when I opened my scriptures and all I could read was he, him, his, son, father, and, and I, that was another step in my feminine awakening where I literally just took my quad and threw it against the wall. I, I, I was so And it was that I realized then that the Lord had brought all those pieces together to show me this part of it. Like for me now, in my paradigm, I think that all callings should be couples. We shouldn’t be content to have a father of the ward without a mother of the word. Uh, if, if we could have the feminine brought in on every level, and that does to me go all the way up to the divine. We’re trained to see. It’s OK to just have a father from we call the bishop, the father of the ward, and we are missing that incredibly important aspect of I love your poem, but I’m sure so many know of, I live in a motherless house, right? That’s exactly what it is on every level of our experience. Experience. And so my, like, I’ve just, I haven’t told that insight before other than just kept it inside going, oh, OK, if, like, in my view, this is how Zion will be. There will be the couples serving in every level of ministering and administration in the church because We need that desperately.

[58:45] Carol Lynn Pearson: Well, Michelle, it’s really thrilling for me to sit here and watch you share your passion about this. It really, really is. And I think, you know, to to some, it’s it’s sca it would be scary, you know, to, to see the passion that you have just evoked in in in what you’ve been telling us here. But see, I have been thinking about all of this for such so many decades. Then then I look at what you just said, and I think this is one of the beautiful fruits. That have come from the decades of women working and working and working, to draw attention to the imbalance. The imbalance in our language. In our structures, in in in all of our paradigms that that that that we have to create a balance of input of maleness and femaleness. Or we’re not gonna be able to progress because we are sort of stuck in the mud. Now, so as I, as I listen to you, I, I’m It is, and I see, I, I have had tremendously positive uh interactions with my priesthood leaders. Um, I, I gave it, uh, we have a brand new bishop in the board and my first meeting with him, I, I gave him a copy of the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, Finding Mother God, as well as the new book, The Love Man. And, and as I, I, I, I introduced, he said, I don’t know much about you, Carolyn, tell me. I said, well, Bishop, I am one of your Somewhat unorthodox, but highly useful members. And, and so we had this great hour long conversation and so I, I, I want to acknowledge that I personally have had tremendous Um, positive reactions from my bishops and my state presidents. Who are, I think, to the best of their ability, acknowledging that there’s there’s something going on that I want to learn about. I, I want to learn about. I recently gave a copy of the Ghost of eternal polygamy to the, the institute director in Berkeley, who, who, uh, attends my ward, and he’s just entranced with it. So, I know I’ve got to understand this because here’s these young kids that I, I, I have to, I have to know what they’re thinking and what I can bring to them because I know there is this really significant problem about the lack of balance between maleness and femaleness. So, What I’m saying is that we, we live in In, in, in a period of time where we are. Seeing things that have not really been seen before. Because they’ve all just been covered up by this is the way it is, this is the way it has always been. But we have to be brave enough to say, there are things happening now that we finally see are not healthy, not useful, not productive for the kind of future that we want. We’ve got these, these 8, 1012 year old girls who are looking around and saying, hey, I don’t know about this, because, you know, they live in a world that is acknowledging them as a full human being. Now, we I know a fair amount of women who really think, well, there’s no problem here, but there’s there’s no problem in me addressing God only as Father, or, you know, but I want a place for us to consider. The the idea that every Sunday, as we sit in our major meetings, in all of our meetings, We sit there and over and over and over. Here masculine pronouns for the divine. How many dozens of times in in in in an hour sacrament meeting? Pretty much never hearing a female pronoun for the divine. Once in a while we sing a female pronoun, like the grave, the grave yield up her dead. Now that doesn’t do much to nourish us. But I think even for those who do not.

[1:03:26] Michelle: And that’s more about the grave than it is the feminine divine. Yeah. Oh,

[1:03:30] Carol Lynn Pearson: of course, it’s a negative pronoun, and our our positive pronouns for the divine are all and and I don’t want to take them away, but I want to suggest that what that does to the psyches. Even unconsciously, to the psyches of every woman and man, every girl and boy who is sitting there. There is damage done. Damage to the way they see themselves in the mirror. To the way they see the, the, the other gender in our classrooms. To the way they see everything. And

[1:04:13] Michelle: we go ahead, I’m sorry, because

[1:04:16] Carol Lynn Pearson: truly. If God is male, the male is God.

[1:04:22] Michelle: I feel like we have ceded all of this territory to the father of lies. That’s what it is. This is a lie. It is a lie that the feminine is and should be invisible, is and should be. Out of our sight, out of our thought, and that it should all be represented by mail. And so we are teaching a horrible untruth. We are not acknowledging the pain of, you don’t have a mother, and that’s as it should be. You never had to have one, you never will. Or if you do, she’s unaccessible to you. You can’t seek to know her, you can’t talk. You certainly can’t talk about her, and don’t ever dare try to talk to her. That’s the lie that we are, that that the we need truth. We need truth and we need love and that and in order to have those things, we need the feminine, we need mother.

[1:05:18] Carol Lynn Pearson: We do. And and injury is a is a good word because we, we are all, we are injured children when we do not have mother and father in our spiritual home.

[1:05:34] Michelle: And, and the idea that somehow having a mother is a threat to maleness. is, is, is completely insane. I don’t know any man who thinks he’s less of a man because he has a mother. Right? We all, my, my sons need me in their life as much as they need their father. And when they were little boys, they needed me a lot more. Boys need to be held by their mother.

[1:06:05] Carol Lynn Pearson: Of course, of course. Once we really take all this apart and examine it, we understand the incorrectness of it. And, and I think those who are, who are honest at heart. will say, I, I, I see things that should be corrected in this. Because I don’t want my sister. To feel Well, you know, we, we have this, this term auxiliary. I’m not sure. Do we still use that word auxiliary? But now that means sort of on the outside of this supports

[1:06:44] Michelle: the planet to the sun.

[1:06:46] Carol Lynn Pearson: Yeah, we have so many concepts. That are just not healthy, and whether we recognize them or not. See, you have explained to us beautifully your personal journey that kind of erupted When, when, when uh a few things got more and more and more on the, on the pile, and then all of a sudden, you know, we, we, we have a tipping.

[1:07:17] Michelle: To

[1:07:18] Carol Lynn Pearson: your

[1:07:18] Michelle: consciousness, it’s all under the surface. We,

[1:07:21] Carol Lynn Pearson: we have a tipping point, you know, there’s a wonderful book written called The Tipping Point. And everything does, you know, the social issues, individual kinds of things, merchandizing, whatever, there’s, that’s building, building, building, and then there’s a tipping point. You know, we’re seeing this interesting thing right now. We’re seeing in in Iran, the, the women rising up. Saying, no more. I’m not gonna wear your headdresses anymore. And I’m not gonna just do what you tell me to do. We, we’re seeing this strange thing happening in China. Our people are rising up and saying, no, I, I don’t like the way that’s been going. The tipping point has been reached. And you know, in, in, in Russia, we see a lot of people saying, well, yeah, I mean that that that is yet to be determined quite how that’s gonna play out, but there are a lot of people rising up and saying this is not OK, this is not OK. So the idea of of a tipping point, just in in the general concept. Of gender relationship. And, and I, and I feel OK using the word patriarchy, because the purer, the better word that we should all be willing to walk toward, run toward, help to build is the word partnership. And I really think our men of goodwill. Once they understand the history, once they understand the present experience of women, we say, of course I want that for my wife, of course I want that for my daughter. Of course I want, I want our society to to present that. Which is is so much finer than what we’ve inherited because we right now are the builders. We, we, we have received something, there’s no reason for us to just sit around and complain and condemn and say, wow, you know, why didn’t they do something better than that. We are in the now and we are the ones who are called upon to do something better than that. And we can, because our consciousness allows for conversations like you and I have been having. And so I just want to put the word partnership out there as the beautiful destination, as we reload our wagons, and throw away some things that are now useless, and put on board things that are more correct and useful and beautiful, and travel together, holding hands, men and women together, moving into this glorious green. Partnership Future. That is what I believe and hope that we are all uh acknowledging.

[1:10:29] Michelle: This conversation with Carolyn was so wonderful that I couldn’t stand to edit it down. So I decided instead to release it in two parts. So this is the end of part one, and I’m planning a special release on Christmas Day, the second part of my conversation with Carolyn. Pearson will be released on New Year’s Day. So hopefully, in the meantime, you will already have bought her book, Finding Mother God, which is what we’ll discuss in the second half, and, um, she’ll read many poems. So I really hope that you will tune in for that episode as well. But for today, thank you so much for joining us for this special episode of 132 Problems, and I wish you all a wonderful Christmas, and I will see you next week.