I had hopes for more having experience with the Divine Woman in 1991 but it was not to be.

The epiphany with mother in heaven was in 1990 and one of  my blog posts talks about what had happened as of the two month of 1991. I had hoped that the leaders of the church would also be getting revelation about our mother in heaven. Instead it soon seemed things were going the other way. A young lady prayed to mother and father in heaven in a public meeting at BYU. I had some dread when I heard this because it seemed that perhaps it was being done for effect and not from knowledge. I’ve since decided that I was probably too judgmental, but then I was coming from a true believing Mormon background. I was being faced with conflicts between what I’d hoped would happen-leaders having contact with mother in heaven and speaking of that from the pulpit- and what was really happening-putting the act of praying to mother in heaven as a first intimation of apostasy.

Instead of things getting better for those who hope for our mother in heaven becoming more recognized, about this time church leaders begin speak against praying to mother in heaven and warned local leaders to look for the first signs of apostasy.

 Janice Allred wrote in: “White Bird Flying: My Struggle for a More Loving, Tolerant, and Egalitarian Church.” “President Gordon B. Hinckley, first counselor to the largely nonfunctioning President Ezra Taft Benson, had given an address to the Regional Representatives in April 1991, warning them to beware of ‘small beginnings of apostasy.’ Prayers to Mother in Heaven were cited as an example. He repeated that portion of his speech to the women's general meeting in September 1991. I knew of several women who had been released from callings and chastised just for talking about the Heavenly Mother.”

This is what I wrote in August of 1991.

About the time of Sunstone this year we became a aware that President Hinckley in a training session for regional Representatives and Area Presidents had discussed apostasy in the sense of the great apostasy in the years after the twelve's death and told them to be watchful for such things.  The example which he choose was that of the practice of some to pray to our Heavenly Mother.  Janice got a copy of the speech, it may have been, from the redemptive Cooking Club. It rapidly became a topic of private conversation and some intense personal concern for me because I pray to Her frequently in my private prayers and long for a time and place to testify of her and praise her to others. I am doing that more now to private groups. At a meeting of the Mormon Women's Forum August after the meeting the subject came up somehow. Nanette Stone told of her experience in seeing her own dead parents and then behind them her Heavenly Parents. I told her and the other two or three listening of my experience. The comments were well received and it felt good to be able to share knowledge of her which so enlivens me.

It doesn't seem accidental that Gordon Hinckley would say what he said in this way. At the Sunstone theological panel Daniel Rector[1] called attention to the regional representative talk with the observation in his prediction for the future of Mormon Theology that “He was inspired to make the statements.” Now Daniel doesn't believe it is wrong to pray to her, that we know nothing of her etc. He told me that he feels that he is inspired to know that this is the issue of our time and this may force more to respond to their beliefs. Indeed…

I have wonder since last year when I had the epiphany what to say about Janice and my experience to  our fellow saints.  From the beginning I felt that I shouldn't talk of it generally. It would be premature.  There is precedence for members receiving important  knowledge of the character of God and godliness before such were announced to  the church.  Snow heard the couplet “As man is God once was and as God is Man  may become,” in about 1831 years before the King Follett address and Eliza Snow talked of “I have a mother there,”  in the poem which has become “Oh, My Father” to have the president of the  church later confirm it.  I have worried that discussing such things ahead of time could polarize the church and precipitate rash statements contradicting the truth which could make it hard for the members since later leaders would find themselves in having to reverse themselves.   The thought of the massive and painful rejection that we could experience is also sobering. My employer  is the church and BYU professors have been dismissed for speaking unorthodox  views, but I know all along that I cannot deny her, come what come and I long  for the day that I can speak openly of such things and that She would let me  testify of her. It may not be premature now to speak of her. The future may be here now much quicker than I had imagined because of Hinckley's comment.  That is why though my first response was a touch of dread and anxiety that if what I know I were generally known to believe some might wish to drum me out as being in de facto apostasy, I have welcomed this as evidence of Her coming revelation and I feel more desire, boldness and, indeed, assent to speak of Her.

Still I want to conform to the requirements of the church.  Could I stop praying to her privately?  Janice and I were talking about this on the way back from the Bagley's (Kathy Ray was in from NJ) Sunday night Aug. 11, 1991.  Could I not worship her?   It is different for us than for others.  I have been in Her presence and knew it.  Janice said “If you are in the presence of deity you have no choice but to worship.” Actually there is another unthinkable action and that is to turn ones back, but that is a too horrible sin, to deny the Holy Ghost. We have talked several times about the praying of the Nephites to Jesus Christ when he was with them.  Some have said we are not to pray to Jesus, but these did and Jesus did not rebuke them but explained that they did so because he was with them.  He was God.  To be in the presence of deity makes the world different for you from that time forth.  I can't not worship Her and Him because to do so would be to deny them.  I can't do that!  It may be different for those who haven't had this experience.

Janice says she has wondered long what worship means.  As we had this conversation she say that she sees that being in the presence of God is to worship him (them) and to worship is to put yourself into the presence of God. 

The next is a note that I wrote to send to Paul. I think it was to my brother-in-law, Paul Toscano. This was before September 1993. I don’t know if the note was ever sent.
“There will be a discussion sponsored by the Mormon Women's Forum on Sept. 7, while I am in Wales, on “How should we Worship our Mother in Heaven?” If it seems good maybe Paul, you could present our experience something like this, because many are going to say that we don't know anything about Her and it’s all an intellectual exercise anyway so why worry about it?” ‘I have some friends who have had an experience.  It isn't a common experience in some ways but in some ways it just what we ask people to do. Have a spiritual experience and gain a testimony of Jesus and Heavenly Father, but these people, who are committed LDS and have a testimony of Jesus and God, had an experience with Our Mother.  Now this was an intense spiritual experience, an epiphany. They were in Her presence. This wasn't something they set out to have, but it happened to them nevertheless.  They knew it was real and true and could not deny it. One of them said at the end of experience, “I gave my heart to our Mother.” You might go on to read selected items from what I wrote at the time. Please mention that this experience has not weaken our commitment to Jesus, but has deepened it. We realize that They are one. “Now some say that this is all an intellectual matter, that it really doesn't affect our salvation.  But for these it is not. They know and have been in Her presence.”  “How they worship Her, and now if they will be allowed to pray to Her even in private prayers, is a daily issue.”  Then discuss what worship is, the people near the temple in Bountiful when Jesus was with them and their praying to Him. Argue that when people have had experience like these, and they assuredly are the only ones, it isn't just optional to worship the Mother, not to do so is to deny her.  “It is wrong for members of the  church, even if they are the leaders, to ask their fellow Saints who have had  such experiences to stop their worship, in every  way, of Her, as well as Him.’

End of what I wrote in 1991

So things were not looking good at the end of 1991 for honoring the mother in heaven in the LDS faith. I had just finished my three-year review at BYU in 1990 and was working towards “continuing status” (tenure). It was a bit of a bind for me. Now, I had received no direction from Heavenly Mother that I was to do anything special. I wanted to do her work in helping people in their needs. There were plenty of opportunities to do that. I knew I could do it without making a stir-essentially it is doing the service that Jesus would have you do. But I was uncomfortable with the disconnect between what I had learned and what the church was saying about people who believed and did as I did. We had eight children at the time and were trying to raise them as active Latter-day Saints.

Fast forwarding 24 years.  Daniel Rector was probably right. But it had been not what I expected at all.

One thing I want to make clear is that in spite of all the problems that might come up if you know

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[1] Daniel Rector was editor for the Sunstone magazine at this time. He was a son of Elder Hartman Rector of the 70 and an active member of the church.

I did not set off to find the Heavenly mother, so why did I?

1. About the time that I had the experience of feeling that I was in the Mother’s presence and giving my heart to her, I also had several experiences with seeing angels/spirits. Once when talking about these “rare” but not totally uncommon experiences with a good friend in the Department of Family Sciences, he remarked gently, “Having an experience with the Mother in Heaven is a probably good thing for a man who’s a physics professor.”

I think I understand some of where he was coming from on this. I had been reading a “Little Book on the Human Shadow” by Robert Bly before the trip to Littleton, Colorado that I mention in my blog post. It talks about “shadow work”, and the nourishment we can get from our shadow. I was ready to look at what was in my shadow at this point I was a 43-year-old, white, male physics professor in the hard sciences. One should not be surprised, following my friends thinking, that in there might be a powerful feminine presence and I may have been not giving her her due.  (The “shadow”, as I am using it here, is not evil. It contains the characteristics we haven’t emphasized which may be in our unconscious.)

I did not set out to find the Mother in Heaven, at least consciously. By disposition, age and choice I had been pushing back the frontiers of knowledge for several decades. This is more of the “hero’s quest” more than the Mother’s work. (Willow in the eponymous tale who leaves on a hero’s task vs. Kiya who stay home with children but without her husband’s support and in poverty.) There was, however, a part of me that wanted to do another part of what academics are supposed to do and take joy in: that is, to mentor their students, nourish them and bring them along, and yes, occasionally to “mother them”.   That was the part of me that responded so quickly to the image presented in “Strangers in Paradox” of the Heavenly Mother as “Madre Dolorosa” being with us, her children in our trials on the earth rather than in the heavens.  I believe my doing “shadow work”, feeling heart quicken to the call to serve my fellow humans as she does when this image was presented to me is why I turned so quickly and called out so strongly to her. I also think that the susceptibility of my mind to “seeing” subtle things at this time allowed me to hear her respond to my thanks for what she does “thank you, I love you, too.”

I write this tonight because I’ve been reflecting on what some say “perhaps I’ve not really given my heart fully.”  Katie Gibson Jacobsen wrote “It seems so simple -- just desire to know her, and desire to nourish, and you can. But it also seems impossible at the same time. Maybe I just haven't surrendered yet.”  I’m trying to see if any of the experiences and preparation that led up to the surprise are helpful to others. God knows for many years I tried to give my heart to Jesus. And I can’t recall any dramatic manifestation. But when I say the words “I know that Jesus loves me” I have the warm confirmation of the spirit that I know this. It’s been more of the slow realization.

I’m hoping that this helps some friends. It may be the Heavenly Mother we hope to find, but it is Jesus who we meet first. (After all he is her beloved.) Or it may be the Divine Feminine as the Daughter, the Dragon-slayer, or as Wisdom or as Life.  And God is an ocean. No, that’s not exactly it is it?   I was hoping that saying something about how God has many names/attributes and has been known in many ways by good people over the ages, hoping that might help here. Indeed, it might be in a subtle way that we come to know her. It may be walking in the dark alone and then not realizing when we are not alone but are comforted by a still, small presence and we can’t say exactly when it joined us.  But she is there with us. 

This is what I believe to be true: My reading of the Scriptures- of what Jesus said about himself as recorded in the Gospels leads me to believe that is the nature of God to testify of other members of the Godhead but not of themselves. And thus she testifies of him when we ask her about God.  At the beginning of this year I ask Jesus if the Mother could not be more manifest. 

“Knowing Her gives me such joy.” I told Him.  “I glory in her love, her being, her work and her joy.  It makes me rejoice every day.  I know that millions know/have known or will know her.  But can that time be now?  Please, can she be more manifest to those who desire her?  May she come more fully in the World? ”

And after a time I heard in my mind Her quietly speaking these thoughts, “Let them come to me.  I am here to receive. I will not be hidden to them. Those who come to me desiring, will know me and I will hold them in my arms.”  And I was very excited, for I know She speaks the truth.  That is her nature. Therefore, I firmly believe that if any would truly know her better, ask.  Children of Wisdom, now is that time.  She will make herself known. 

Now I sat on this knowledge for a while. Because exactly how does one share it?  But that is the purpose of this group, so I’ve shared what I believe is her intent. Therefore I’m interested in how she will make yourself known to you. Because I believe that this will happen. But I believe it will be according to our circumstances and needs, so the story will not be the same for any two of us.

2. When my daughter Miriam was very small we all went to tithing settlement. She’d been explained that tithing is money that we give back to God. We got there she did not want to give the money to the Bishop. It was after all for Jesus and she wanted to give it to him directly.

But none of us can’t make Jesus show up. The appearance of God is not mechanical. Our coming into the presence of God is not by mechanism.  None of us can bring ourselves into the presence of God, let alone do this for others.  God is/are a free and independent agent. We don’t know why she does what she does. Jesus’ word come to mind. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”  We are grateful for the grace we receive.

But having said that there may be personal patterns for devotion that can help us.  I find that

3. Four years ago at Sunstone

This was a new beginning for me. I wanted to share with the sisters there my experiences with the hope that it would be an inspiration to others to persevere. But can’t it also be a rebuke when others don’t get the same experience. That can be a discouraging part. Why don’t others have the same experience? There was nothing about worthiness or intensity of desire in my experience. So why did I have it and others didn’t? Janice was in the car-driving it. She felt the spirit but not in the same intensity I had. She had done more reading and preparation than I had.  I don’t have a satisfactory answer for everyone.

It may be that Heavenly Mother has accepted other people’s commitment, but the experience of acceptance isn’t on the surface. It may be that people will experience soul-shaking events at another time and another place in their life and with another aspect of God. The image I’ve had this weekend is of my being one of the weakest of the saints in getting a “remedial-kindergarten” manifestation. Whereas for others their experience maybe at a higher level and see God in a more consolidated way-as the eye-searing, bright and burning light that brings together many of her attributes together in an instant. 

4. “God is an ocean.” As I say the words and an image comes.  And as it comes each time it is more clear and detailed. 

5.       The Experience I had  mother in heaven while on I-70 headed westward was very intense and I wondered why I was so fortunate is to have this. Then I knew that millions have/had/will have such an experience with her. I am nobody special. That was very comforting. But I hoped that more would have the experience, that I would find more people who had had such an experience. And I have reflected on why me. Janice told me that she was glad for the experience that I had because it helped her know that her understanding of the heavenly mother was right. I think many times we have such experiences not for ourselves but for those around us.