Its 5am in New Zealand and Nathan just went downstairs to watch the Saturday Morning session of General Conference. He’ll spend the weekend watching every meeting. On the other hand I’ll try and avoid it. The last few years have been an evolution of sorts from my active pursuit of every General Conference address to my furious and sometimes exasperated retreat.

I remember the last time I truly wanted to participate in General Conference. It was in 2013 and I was in Salt Lake City for the Ordain Women’s Action. In truth, at that point I still loved conference and was excited to attend. I wanted to balance my desire for change with some respect for what still was. Though I was in town to take my place alongside my sisters and brothers in a collective expression of feminine spiritual longing I was still in the thick of seeking for spiritual awakening in this cherished General Conference ritual that for years had been a treasured part of my religious practice.

So, there I was, a tiny speck in this auditorium vastnesss, open hearted and in anticipation for those old feelings of confirmation and spiritual enlivening to sweep over me.

And then something surprising happened.

I had been in deep conversation with a woman from South Jordan who through a ticketing mishap had been separated from her family now deposited below us on the Plaza. Our discussion was punctuated with her frequent bursts of frantic waving. She was busily telling me about their family’s Saturday morning house cleaning rituals where for six months the sounds of her home echoed with the General Conference recordings from the session just passed. Her teenagers, she told me, are always pleased for conference so that they could get a fresh batch of talks. I was in the throes of asking her if her teenagers wouldn’t rather listen to Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift while doing housework when mid sentence she suddenly bolted out of her seat and stood quietly to attention. I looked around me and noticed I was the only one still seated. Not inclined to stand without a reason I whispered loudly up at her,

“Why is everyone standing?”

“The Prophet has come in.” Was her urgent reply.

It was 10 minutes to the hour and I was accustomed to this ritual just minutes before starting so this seemed odd to me. I strained an inspection of the podium and saw nothing remarkable.

‘Where is he?” I asked. “I can’t see him.”

“I can’t see him either.” She replied.

“I don’t think anyone can because he’s not actually there.” I observed.

The Prophet’s absence and the error of this premature stand to attention had become increasingly obvious yet I couldn’t see anyone resuming their seats. I tugged at the woman’s sleeve,

“Why don’t you sit down?” I asked with genuine curiosity.

She looked around her nervously as the standing, sombre masses remained stock still in their futile reverence.

“Because the prophet has come in? ” She replied weakly.

Whether real or imagined I felt all around me the disapproval of the vertical throng at my continued sitting and in a reflex born out of years of defiance I became noisy. I turned toward the crowd and probed,

“Why are you all standing – he’s not here!” Breaking all of the rules of good Mormon congregational behaviour.

“Why don’t you sit down?” I implored

“I think you may have this wrong. It’s OK to sit down. Heavenly father won’t love you less.” I continued.

Yet most refused to meet my eyes. There were no smiles returned, no winks to acknowledge the silliness of it all. I soon became aware that I was beginning to take some inexplicable pleasure in the ripples of consternation that my outburst was producing. So with great effort I buttoned up and let the perpendicular assembly alone to their pious but senseless fidelity to an absent seer.

President Monson eventually came in, after five or more minutes of interminable standing. Yet the dramatic effect of 25,000 people suddenly quieting and then leaving their seats in the noise and spectacle of their esteem was sadly lost. He shuffled in to an eerie silence that was shot through with both confusion and relief that he was finally come, and that this excruciating interlude could now be concluded.

Yet, my attendance at that conference session awakened me not only to the calloused thinklessness of conformity. As I observed the cascading stand of Red Velvet Chairs filled with a congregation of besuited men, dramatic in its affected spectacle of Mormon patriarchy, I sensed deeply and transformatively my own erasure as a woman in this gala of churched masculinity. I realised then, and it has become clearer since, the enormity of this one thing in the church. Not one man or boy in the church is spiritually accountable to a woman. NOT ONE. As a result, the church limps along in its half formed economy of salvation. And I have come to understand that God must be both the Mother and Father or I am lost eternally in this endless and eternal ocean of male governance. I am satisfied that in this moment of consciousness I felt the sadness and the suffering for this that God wanted me to feel.

There is a saying in Maori:

Whaia te iti kahurangi, me tuohu koe, me maunga teitei.

Pursue that which is of worth, if you should bow down – let it be to a tall mountain.

So this weekend, while Nathan lets the words of General Conference knock about in his head I’ll settle with the words of my favourite feminist theologian, Sister Joan Chittister:

“Authoritarianism is both the mainstay of patriarchy and its cardinal virtue. In patriarchy the system counts above all else. Order rules, not wisdom, not charism, not vision.”

“A patriarchal system rides on obedience, blind obedience and absolute authority. Nowadays, the word may be ‘Trust me,’ but the message is ‘Obey.’”

“The religious believer who is untrained in the theology of faith and formed only in its customs and cultural expressions looks for the current rules rather than the reasons for them and clings to them uncritically.”

“The spirituality spawned by authoritarianism is a barren and sterile excuse for the God who leads us gently on from one discovery to another in life until we come to fullness of soul and soundness of heart. It is patriarchy pretending to be holy. It resides in unholy righteousness and rests on legalism. It freezes theological development. It misses the mystery of God and puts limitations on the Holy Spirit.”

“Feminist spirituality confronts the world with openness to difference and values them. The stranger becomes the bearer of new kind of competency, another kind of effectiveness, a treasure house of possibility. Feminism challenges the world to trust again.”

“Whatever course life takes, for the feminist who welcomes the God of surprises, life is forever a new event, full of mercy, full of promise.” [i]

The first session of conference has just concluded. Nathan will no doubt emerge soon flushed with some kind of new knowing – General Conference rarely bothers or bores him and I like that he has kept the tradition alive in our home despite my tiring of it for now. But I hope that one-day General Conference becomes something full of the promise that only the full inclusion of women, and a congregation full of lively conscious spirit will allow. Because despite it all, this religion that I love and hate with intensity still has my heart.

I remain ever hopeful.

[i] Chittister, J (1998) Heart of Flesh: Feminist Spirituality For women and Men. [Kindle Version] Wm. B Eerdmans: Michigan.