Tag: Spencer

• The Principle Won, always.

  While reading in “Shattered Dreams” by Irene Spencer, I came upon a paragraph that struck a cord within me.
  She is describing the polygamy Principle, which is commonly known by Principle.
  “A teaching that was to have a grave impact on how I lived my life can be summed up quite simply as follows; People may fail the Principle, but the principle itself never fails.”
  This is how many folks look upon religion, as seeing how the people fail IT, and not that IT fails the people.
  She goes on to write, “My mother lived in a religious no-win situation. She was devoted to a tradition that defeated her.”
  Imagine being devoted to something that defeats you?
  What struck me as I pictured this girl watching her mother struggle with plural marriage, was in how she didn’t see her mother’s defeat, but wondered more about her own strength to endure…she never considered breaking the chain of polygamy.
  My estrangement with my mother happened because I was determined to break the chain of mothering as she mothered.  I believe each of us have either the strength to endure and continue on the chain or legacy….or the strength to break the chain.
  And there are many women who feel empowered by holding up doctrines and belief systems, while they are defeated by them.  What they see isn’t the lack of self, but rather the success of not allowing the belief to die.
  I had said that my mother’s greatest strength, was her blindness.  And now I understand that her blindness was of her self or what the cost had on her family to uphold the doctrine of the Forgiveness of Sins.  That is the Principle of the FALC.
  As Irene writes, “…when the children of the covenant lacked the courage to live polygamy for themselves, it was always the fault of the human weakness and sin, never a problem with the Principle.”
  My mother never could see any fault with the church and would not hear a word that would go against her Principle Belief.  We became invisible to her.  Her main focus was always to be loyal to what I feel was helping to defeat her.  
  Putting her Faith in the Principle (forgiveness of sins) was always a higher need than her own childrens or her own.  We came in second, always…and in doing so, it defeated our family from the git go.
  We were born into a system where we came second from day one…and there was no way to move ahead, if anything we fell lower on the totem pole as the years went by.
  It is very disheartening to see that in your mother’s eyes you stand behind the system that defeated her.  And in order to get along with her, you too have to be defeated.
  Defeated I left my relationship with her, for she couldn’t see how damaging she was to herself, to our family and to me.  
  Her beliefs destroyed everything…while holding high her faith in the Principle. The Principle won, always.
   

  October 13, 2011

  beliefs, defeat, dreams, FALC, Irene, Shattered, Spencer, that

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