A Full Well

Selfish. I really hate the concept selfish brings up. The only people who worry about being selfish are the kindest, nicest, more caring people. Religion has instilled this idea that if you do anything for yourself, you are a selfish person. Like most ideas that I struggle with, I redefine them.

Each person has a well within them. This well is full of love, companionship, support, activities that we enjoy and make us feel good, words or encouragement and hope. We can put some of these things in our own well by making time for activities we enjoy, such as a movie, time with friends, exercise, etc. We allow others to contribute to our well when they offer words of support or encouragement, when they spend time with us, call or text just to say hi.

When this well is full, we are able to give love, companionship, support and hope back to others. We can do this in the form of words of encouragement, offering our time, doing acts of service, etc. We have lots to give when we are full.

When our well is empty, however, we have nothing to give to others. We are not able to give words of encouragement when we are feeling discouraged ourselves.  We are not able to give our time when we are feeling run down and frustrated, tired and overwhelmed or taken advantaged of on a regular bases.  We are not able enjoy time with others when the other people are critical, demoralizing or minimizing to us.  When others are always taking out of our well and not adding to our well, we are a dry desert and have nothing to contribute.

It is not selfish to expect others to contribute to our well, just as we are contributing to their well. Each relationship is a partnership, a two-way road. If only one person is contributing or it becomes a one-way road, then there is no longer a relationship in place, but manipulation and a doormat. We wouldn't think to call the other person selfish for accepting our generosity or kindness, so why do we think it is selfish to expect the same treatment in return?

A dry well cannot contribute...it is healthy to have a full and wet well.  Live well and full.

Equality vs. Priestesses

As many women have recently sought equality within the ranks and files of the mormon religion, I have heard it repeated that they already have the priesthood since they are called priestesses and goddesses in the mormon temples. If only simple words equaled equality and this wordage was not outweighed by the other words and actions within the mormon temple. Do simple words make women equal with men?

There are five areas that women are treated differently than men within the Mormon temple.

1. Let's start with the mormon temple ceremony. In other Christian weddings, the bride gives herself to the groom and the groom gives himself to the bride. Not so in the mormon temple weddings.  Here is the exact wording:
Officiator: Brother ______, do you take Sister ______ by the right hand and receive her unto yourself to be your lawful and wedded wife for time and all eternity, with a covenant and promise that you will observe and keep all the laws, rites, and ordinances pertaining to this Holy Order of Matrimony in the New and Everlasting Covenant, and this you do in the presence of God, angels, and these witnesses of your own free will and choice?

Groom: Yes.

Officiator: Sister ______ do you take brother ______ by the right hand and give yourself to him to be his lawful and wedded wife, and for him to be your lawful and wedded husband, for time and all eternity, with a covenant and promise that you will observe and keep all the laws, rites and ordinances pertaining to this Holy Order of Matrimony in the New and Everlasting Covenant, and this you do in the presence of God, angels, and these witnesses of your own free will and choice?

Bride: Yes.
women give themselves to their husbands only

There you go; the man receives the woman, the woman gives herself to the man. There is no man giving himself to the woman. There will be no equality in the eternities for women, only indentured servitude.

2. At a certain point in the endowment portion of the temple ceremony, women are required to veil their faces before the men pray to god.  Women are not allowed to participate in the pray with unveiled faces, but men are not required to make the same shameful covering.

3. Women are required to make an extra covenant than the men are. The women are required to covenant to submit to their husbands. They must bow their heads and say yes.

4. All people who take out their endowments are given a new name in the temple. The women, however, are required to tell this new name to their husbands, but the women are not allowed to know the new name of their husbands.

5. After presenting themselves at the veil, women cannot then enter the Celestial kingdom without their husband escorting them. This is symbolic in the temple, but the women are told it will be literal in the eternities.  The women are told they will not rise to be resurrected until their husband's call them forth and escort them into god's presence.

I pose the question again, just because the women are called priestesses and goddess, does that make them equal to men?
 My answer is a resounding NO.