Quorums and Kit Kats 🍫
Call me a grumpus: I hate International Women’s Day.
It’s as flaccid as a Mormon church on Mother’s Day. Thank you, Elders Quorum, for all those years of roses and Kit Kat bars! I especially love that I received those annual gifts as a teenager being told I was a mother in the making. Does the Elders Quorum track return-on-Mother’s-Day-investments? If so, my account is in Kit Kat arrears.
Even as a teenager lacking feminist sensibilities, I remember feeling bothered by the names “Elders Quorum” and “Relief Society.” The men’s club seemed commanding and grandiose, while the women’s club felt dainty and antiquarian. Relief Society, blech. I thought of prim Victorian ladies sitting in wallpapered drawing rooms sipping tea with white lace gloves.
What, instead, could we call a collective of women that honors their wisdom and authority? I submit to you: Coven Quorum. Throwing it out there. One of y’all still in the church needs to get the ball temple rolling on this.
International Women’s Day has passed, but it got me thinking about my own coven. It’s been a while since my last email because I was in Utah visiting them.
I came home feeling like I’d pole vaulted into new realms of knowing and being. Here’s what my time with them looked like:
An old map, unfurling.
Two entrees for myself because life is short and food is joy.
Canceling plans to do so we could simply be together.
A long lunch with my favorite Finns.
The Devil card, rose tea, and cool jam on fresh bread.
Scattering sunshine and breaking spells inside a witches’ yurt.
Tundra swans at dusk and eagles at dawn.
The reclamation of Ruth.
An icy river and thermal springs.
A sharp right turn toward bloody land and healing waters.
A magic little girl with a blinking bunny wand.
Dogs playing poker at a card table.
Meadowlarks, horses.
Moonwatching with night vision.
Dancing with myself.
Dancing with my sister.
Conversations with a favorite crone.
If all of this sounds oblique, that’s partly on purpose, and partly to protect my lived experience as I process and integrate. But make no mistake: everything above is realer than you think.
Word-weaving stitches together the dimensions we live in. And one day, I’ll write about these experiences in depth. No one has given me a rose or a Kit Kat for my creative power (yet) but that’s okay. If my time in Utah taught me anything, it’s that the best gifts are inside me.
