This afternoon’s guest post is by kmillecam, as part of The Exponent and Doves & Serpents Blog Swap.
I’m not sitting in the cheap seats because better tickets weren’t available. My parents were devout Mormons, so I was born on the field. It took effort to get up here. Like most arenas, mine is shaped like a bowl and the field is at ground level. It doesn’t matter if you walk in from the street, or start out on the field, it’s roughly the equivalent of forty flights of stairs to get to my seat. Looked at from the right perspective, I’ve climbed a small mountain. I should feel like I’ve accomplished something.
—Brent at Doves & Serpents
;
;
When I read the first Mormon in the Cheap Seats, I kept nodding my head as I realized how accurately it describes where I am now in my Mormon journey. I was struck by how much I needed to hear that there were other people in my section. I wasn’t alone. Other cheap seaters had also fought their way up to the nosebleed section.
I also relate to knowing what it’s like to be down on the field. I used to rub elbows with other bigwigs in my ward who believe in the Church with their whole heart. I never thought I would leave. I don’t even think I realized I was in a stadium that had other sections. Growing up in California I saw my mother become a Relief Society president among other high callings, and assumed that I would enjoy the same trajectory as I moved from Young Womens to Relief Society, adulthood, marriage, and motherhood. I also saw my aunts and grandmother hold high ward and stake callings, and I took my callings as seriously as they did when called to Laurel president or later on as a RS teacher at BYU. I had all the answers, unless I didn’t and I put them on the shelf saying “I’ll understand that in the next life!”
After having my first child and dealing with all the fallout that comes from an abusive family of origin, I realized that the Church didn’t need me as much as I thought. I focused more on my baby, and my friends and family.
Over time I developed questions of my own about the Church. Why didn’t women have more influence? Why did black men get the priesthood in 1979? Why were so many Mormons conflating being Republican with being a faithful member of the Church? Why did I feel increasingly uncomfortable with where I was?
Before I was one of the people who might consider trekking up to the nosebleeds, I was literally unable to see that it existed. I guess I am selfish that way. I could not see where other people were until I needed that place myself.
I started to wonder about where I was standing. I started to look around. I didn’t see the cheap seats yet, but I did start to find the edges of of what I knew. What’s going on over here where the aisles start to curve upward? What do these people think?
What I found was my real tribe. When the cheap seaters talk and hang out at the game, it’s a family. We like the view, we like each other, we chose to be here. I remember the same feeling used to come from being on the field. But I knew that I could not stay down there anymore when I started to feel out of place like an intruder. Everyone wants to matter. I came to a place with my people so that I can be myself and feel truly loved.
So where are you in the great stadium of Mormondom? Are you happy where you are? Do you visit other sections? Do you have friends in other places?
[Last Post: 12 Moral Imagination (Guest)]
K,
This is a thoughtful post. Thanks for sharing it. I’m sure I’ve trekked my way up to the cheap seats as well, but I think I brought my binoculars with me because I still feel awfully close to the game sometimes.
Perhaps it helps that I do attend church most weeks and have a lot of friends in my ward.
I wonder, though, for some of us if it’s less of being in the cheap seats than being on the other side of one of those window/mirrors. It’s like we can see what’s going on inside and people inside can only see themselves. Hmm, I’ll have to think more about that analogy.
Jessawhy–love the binoculars comment. So true!
I’m also intrigued by your mirror/window suggestion . . .
I think it’s probably because you still attend. I feel like that’s why I feel so distant on the flip side, because I haven’t even been inside a church building since that fateful “meeting” with the bishop.
Before I read the cheap seats metaphor, I used to describe leaving the church as feeling like something had shifted and I was now on the outside looking in. That I no longer belonged because I couldn’t be inside with everyone else. I felt the change intuitively as the tribal connection with ward members and believing family dissipated. It was a pretty painful realization. And, like Brent, one that really highlights the problem with believers (myself included, when I was one) painting the people who leave with the broad brush of this road being the easy way out.
This observation ties in so nicely with Corktree’s post about the “good eye.” My climb up to the cheap seats was very humbling (strange that people often believe it is a result of pride) precisely because I realized how much of the world I hadn’t seen and hadn’t understood. I used to chase that vulnerable and open feeling away with certainties, but now I find myself leaning into it, not running away so quickly and staying so I can see what I can see and understand from that place.
” I started to look around. I didn’t see the cheap seats yet, but I did start to find the edges of of what I knew. What’s going on over here where the aisles start to curve upward? What do these people think?
What I found was my real tribe”
I love this description K. It really is a progression of seeing the edges and slowly checking out the perspective from other sections. I feel the way you do in that this view is more comfortable, with people that enjoy watching the game in the same way I do ( a little more removed?) I sure am glad to be sitting in good company with people like you. :)
I consider myself to be in the cheap seats, but know nobody (in person) who is there. Everyone is either very, very involved with the church or has completely moved on. It can be a little lonely.
I’ve noticed that (smile). I think one of the reasons for that is because folks on both sides sometimes make it difficult for us cheapseaters. They wait until we’re asleep, and then they try to steal our seats (I don’t mean they try to sit in our seats–I mean they try to have them removed from the stadium). Or they put up annoying banners to block our view (both sides do–banners that block our view of the field, and our view of the street). It seems like folks in the middle get pulled and/or pushed to one side or the other. . . I say we stake out our own section of the stadium and defend it. Glad to have you up here with us.
This is a really great way to put it: “I started to wonder about where I was standing. I started to look around.” It’s so easy, sometimes, to let other people do the spiritual driving, so to speak. It’s another thing entirely to start exploring things on your own. I really enjoyed the post.
Re: meeting other “cheap-seaters.” I’ve had the good fortune of meeting like-minded Mormons (“misfit Mormons,” as I affectionately refer to us) in various cities as I’ve travelled places for work. It IS like meeting family.
Alex W., you might want to join one of these Mormon Stories support groups, if there’s one near you:
http://mormonstories.org/?page_id=1518
They’re facebook groups but each group has get-togethers.
Thanks, I’ll check it out :)