Values, Heavenly Mother, and Cleaning the Church

Like a leaf swirling in an eddy of a stream, a post titled It’s Time for the LDS Church to Hire Janitors Again has been stuck in my mind ever since I read it. All these weeks later, internet chatter about a stake training clamping down on talk of Heavenly Mother abruptly clarified for me the beliefs underlying the current meetinghouse cleaning system.

Wait, what? What does talk about Heavenly Mother have to do with cleaning the church? 

Let’s first consider meetinghouse cleaning. Monetary concerns were explicitly ruled out as the reason for making the now two-decades-old switch from paid professionals cleaning church meetinghouses to members cleaning meetinghouses. The reason provided at the time of the change is that cleaning would provide an opportunity for members to develop personal character and receive eternal blessings. To me this justification smells as bad as a pair of old gym shoes. I highly doubt that the presiding bishopric was sitting around thinking that adult members who give of their time and money to fill church callings were a slothful bunch who lacked opportunities for personal development. The presiding bishopric is tasked with temporal responsibilities which mostly means money. 

Cleaning is an act requiring feminine energy. Feminine energy is not the same as female or female gender roles. True, in the church female gender roles and the feminine are often thought of as being interchangeable. However, whether performed by a female or male, cleaning draws upon feminine energy. We all have energy and characteristics within us that are considered masculine and/or feminine. As an example, when I visit my acupuncturist, a male, the space is clean and calm with a subtle pleasant scent in the air. Soft textured fabric is placed on the treatment table while vibrational sounds and gentle light bathe the room. This feminine attention to the physical environment ensures the space supports healing. 

Feminine energy is healing, intuitive, nurturing, collaborative, and expressive, among other characteristics. Examples of expressions of feminine energy include writing, teaching, therapy, design, cooking and expressive arts such as dance, theater, music, and painting. Energy typically considered masculine is driven, clear, assertive, stable and logical. We could give different names to these energies or categorize them differently; I am speaking from my perspective as a white female living in the United States.

In the current church administrative structure, masculine energy and males currently hold more power and are more highly valued than feminine energy and females. That is because the current church administrative structure is a patriarchy; a system where some men hold power and make decisions for the rest of the men, all women and other people. Women rarely have power in a patriarch. Rather, as Katie Rich eloquently explains, women are limited to influence. In a patriarchy, what is the worst thing a person can be? The Mask You Live In, a documentary film, powerfully and heartbreakingly answers this question. The worst thing a person in a patriarchy can be is a girl. Don’t be a sissy. Don’t cry. Stop with the emotion. Don’t throw a ball like a girl or run like a girl. Pick yourself up. Don’t be a girl. Be a Man.

In a patriarchy, males are taught to squash their feminine energy. The feminine not being encouraged or valued by a large portion of men in the church shows up in a variety of ways from lack of concern about creating worshipful experiences in clean meetinghouses to the types of artwork approved for meetinghouses, to the structure of church meetings, to nurseries filled with old broken toys, to labeling a desire to know more about Heavenly Mother as ‘doctrinal drift’. In a patriarchy, females learn to disconnect from their bodies while males learn to disconnect from their hearts. Disconnection from the heart creates fear of the feminine. This fear of the feminine can show up as a desire to control it, hide it, and tamp it down. 

When a person, no matter their calling, eliminates monetary compensation for a feminine energy task such as cleaning the church when money is not an issue, it could be a reflection of that person’s disconnection from their heart. When a person, no matter their calling, expresses a need to control and tamp down dialogue around Heaven Mother instead of seeking for more information about Her, it could be a reflection of their fear of the feminine within themselves and others.

We are here on Earth to learn and grow; growth includes facing and wrestling with our fears. Growth also includes developing all parts of ourselves. It is a process that takes courage. The rewards are incredible though. I imagine how patient Jesus is as we are willing to, in the words Teddy Rosevelt, be the person “actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.” Developing all parts of ourselves is part of becoming fully human. Imagine how joyful the church will be when individuals and the organization as a whole value and develop both masculine and feminine characteristics. Clean chapels and more information about Heavenly Mother would be the beginning. When both feminine and masucline are valued, the possibilities of their synergistic energy creating opportunities for us to grow and heal as individuals, families, communities and a church are boundless.

This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.