Being homesick for Mormonism but not actual Mormonism-- Mormonism as what I wanted it to be.
So I'm writing a romance novel about gay mormon missionaries and it started as me cackling over my keyboard: "heheheh, this is quite scandalous, the church leaders say 'grab your muskets to defend yourselves from the gays? I'ma make missionaries *Kiiiissss* and touch each others' BUTTS, So there!! "
It started as a thumb to nose at the church, neener neener. Well, really at the specific homophobia of the church in the early 2000s. That's when I was marinating in it.
Pfff, I knew I was queer when I went on a mission. I fell in love with girls since middle school! (Hi Elly! I love you!!!! You're literally the coolest person in the world!!!) but I also fell in love with boys and I kinda... hoped that would cancel it out (sorry Elly. I'm the worst. You deserved better and I'm glad you got it. Still love you, though.) I even put words to it-- I bought bisexual pins for my paisley flute case! I was out! And also Mormon! What the fuck!!
So then I went on a mission.
Then stuff happened.
And now I'm writing this gay missionary love story. I've been looking at maps of where I served and casting my mind back to who I was as a young missionary to make a real-feeling fictional world. It has been wild reading my old journals. I remember that poor kid, bless her excessive use of adverbs. The notes I jotted down about people and places and food and apartments bring the whole experience back in 4-D. But a weird side effect is---- a terrible homesickness.
Not for the church.
I don't want to go back to church. I cannot go back to church. The thought makes my palms sweaty and makes me want to crouch in the corner of my cement enclosure like a piss-stained monkey in a low-budget zoo.
But I miss those green hymnbooks with the embossed covers. I miss singing in four part harmony, cycling through the bass, tenor, alto and soprano lines. I miss the rustle of nylons and cotton church clothes against the pews when everything is meant to be reverent during the sacrament, and all the young wives are scritch-scritching their husbands' backs. That's a strange public intimacy, isn't it? I miss doodling in my journal uninterrupted for three hours during church meetings on Sundays because the background noise allowed my brain to focus, for once. I miss being quiet in a crowd. I miss making faces at the babies in the pews in front of me. I miss knowing 50 families in any new city I come to, and knowing elderly people and newly weds and precocious toddlers, and having our lives interweave.
I miss having someone else setting the expectations, and being able to soothe my anxiety and self-doubt by checking all the boxes: 10% tithing, church attendance, visiting teaching, daily journaling, prayer, and scripture study. Check check check, Yay I Am a Good Egg!
I miss the willing suspension of disbelief I practiced like tricky chromatic scales on an instrument. Is that another name for faith?
I miss the flights of imaginative-psycho-spiritual fantasy that a deep reading into scripture could launch. Yes, other texts and practices can do that too, but without the giddy frission of "it's true, it's all true!!!"
It's just nostalgia for childhood. It's a heartsick wish that Mormonism had been what my mom told me it was: a refuge for the heart and soul, a mystical but intimate connection with the divine, an extended family. She didn't hide the shabby parts-- it's a big messy family reunion, with the ex-cons and the serial divorcees and the smooth talkers and to setting-out-too-long potato salad and the bulk budget chips. But her version of the church was like a hen gathering her chicks. Yes, we're a bunch of shitty little chicks, but big mama church, she got you. Cluck, cluck.
It was maternal.
Don't worry, I'm not going back. But I am crying as I read the words to hymns I had forgotten about, but then rediscovered, like cuneiform pressed into bronze, in the soft walls of my heart.
For the joy of ear and eye,
For the mystic harmony
Linking sense to sound and sight:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.
For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth, and friends above;
For all gentle thoughts and mild:
Christ, our God, to Thee we raise
This our Sacrifice of Praise.
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