“Ok, I want to leave you with a promise. As a representative of Jesus Christ I know that the church in we represent, which is the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints is Jesus Christ’s church and that if you attend this Sunday you will find what you are looking for. We have the same power and authority that Jesus Christ had when he was on the Earth. We can testify that you will feel of that power at church. Is their a time we can stop by to share more about how we are Jesus Christ’s church and how his church was restored on the Earth?“ – Elder Barry1
Not long after moving to a bungalow tucked away in plain sight, the mormons visited. Kind. Friendly, even. Eager to talk with folks. They were walking past as I was taking out some boxes and asked if I had some time to chat about jesus. Two young men dressed in their Sunday best on a Saturday. You know the type. I obliged anyways.
For the record: we all probably know the ending before these conversations begin. I engage anyways with a curious heart. Plus, we are deep in my driveway as they have followed me to the recycling bin and helped me lug too many boxes into a space not big enough. “Thank you,” I say. It is god’s plan, elder barry says, that we were walking past as you were leaving your house. I smile. “That’s one way of seeing it, for sure.” I respond.
You don’t think it was on purpose that we happened to walk by as you were needing help with your boxes? That god did that on purpose? “Which purpose is that? I say.
They ask if I am a believer of jesus christ our lord and savior. “I could be.”
They ask if I believe there is one true god. “I am a believer that there is not merely one god, but thousands of gods”
They waffle a bit, wanting to challenge that notion, but pivot and ask me if I‘d ever want to learn more about the one true church that jesus christ himself has blessed, the only one that real believers subscribe to. I smile at them. “I want to learn how you came to believe that.”
“What do you say when someone says there is no god?” Not everyone will be ready to accept jesus christ as our lord and savior. We just love them and plant a seed before it’s too late. I pause. Smile. This is the crux of this interaction. The planting of a seed. Before it is too late for a seed to bloom.
After talking a bit more, we exchanged numbers, they left me with some literature, and said they’d be in touch. The quoted text at the beginning is an example of that. They want to stop by again to talk more. There’s still time, they say, to be cleansed of my sins and be born again.
There is such certainty in elder barry’s words. This belief is embedded in both content and context. There is a braiding of belief and embodiment. There are no bridges but one bridge to get from where I am to where I want to be, this they know for certain.
As a amateur researcher and believer in the study of humans as a way of understanding, both historically and futuristically, I am a little obsessed with how someone comes to believe something–the journey, from beginning to now, and how it has evolved–and why–the reasons why they subscribe to it still, why they want to continue subscribe in the future. What drives belief. I want to know that. What interrupts belief. I want to know that, too. What changing the mind in the middle of changing the mind looks like, feels like. I want to know that intimately. I don’t want to change your mind, I want to know why you don’t want to change your mind, change your heart.
The truth about these interactions with the mormons is that there is no promise any holy person can give me right now that will fill whatever gap they want to sell me. If there is a single god, they are in all things. Manifesting as all things. Showing up as all things. If there are thousands of gods, they are everywhere, whether we see or feel or know them or not. They are not in one place and not another. They are not picky or choosy. They do not exclude because of belief or identity or where they were born. I do not need to be invited to bible study to know these things. If we are to believe that fear of god is a good thing, and belief in all other gods is a sin, I will trust that that belief can stand the test of time, of evidence, of the lived experiences of people that do not believe the god that you do.
This way, we are not left with promises that can’t be kept. And I can go to their hell for not wanting to close the door on possibility and wonder, Circles begin and circles end back at the beginning. Tomorrow will be new; I can be born again.
There are promises in friendship. Spoken or unspoken agreements. Bartering, even. They wax and wane and are almost never 50-50 because life is happening in-between. The world is set ablaze, tax dollars are used to raise gas and food prices, and we still have emails in between all of that.
Promises cannot always be kept. The ball drops. The bombs drop. The phone doesn’t ring. 24/7 news cycle. The text doesn’t come through. We become ships in the night. The past finds a way of being unremembered, un-exorcized. Slowly, surely, the gaps get filled with promises to connect, to do better, to find the time, make the time, be the time. Be the reason. Something to look forward to. Memories to re-write.
I have recently bowed out of a book club of people who are mostly friends. For one reason and another, it was time. It wasn’t the book club necessarily; I have loved every iteration that has come before this one. It was the feeling of obligation to seeing something through despite a lack of interest or effort from everyone. After years and years of feeling the obligation to make myself small in order to fit inside of boxes something else created for me, I believe there is wisdom in stepping away.
This is nuanced, of course, and not nearly applicable to every situation. But if I look at the whole picture, if I roll out the carpet of receipts where grace, flexibility, understanding, and so much belief in people’s ability to change has lived these last 15 years, it is a glaring truth: slowly, quietly, inevitably, circles complete themselves. Circles are journeys in returning to the beginning, eliminating the beginning altogether. Wholeness. Boundaries for containment. A representation of god, as some might have you believe, of unity, of strength. The coming together of things. The life cycles. Epiphanies in the middle of the night. Birth. Growth. Death. We see it in the moon and the sun. We are the points of complete.
They complete themselves, else they are not circles at all. It’s entirely possible that I misread things perpetually. But patterns–iterations of behavior that have little to no difference when transposed, despite alleged best efforts–reveal themselves in time. Circles self-actualize into circles.
Each iteration of friendship looks different. There’s no doubt about that. Think of everything friendship you’ve been in. Have they all looked (felt) the same? It would be irresponsible to apply to same rigid rules to every person you meet as the bar for a friend becoming a friend. And yet. There are non-negotiables that every person bargains with themselves to formulate. For all of my stubborn parts, I have spent the better part of the last year or so clarifying what these non-negotiables are for me. Surely, time will weather them, change and evolve them as the seasons tend to do. The Earth regenerates if we let it. We need not exclusively extract from soil (people) to meet our own needs and we need not replenish only our own cup when we are thirsty.
I’m still learning the ins and outs of intimacy in friendship. I’m experimenting with feeling as a primary way of knowing.2 I am applauding curiosity.3 I am spooling and threading. There is a messiness to it. Everything collected up to this point, all the memories, the threads, they deserve to be honored. They hold meaning still and should not be traded for pennies.
But I need not split in half to be something for someone who cannot be something for me. Reciprocity is planted inside abundance, in rebirth. If friendship is to evolve over time, it requires mutuality–a side-by-side withness that makes it possible. Creating together deep investments in that which makes regeneration the standard. It is one of the defining characteristics of sustainable mutual aid4: to focus more on decentralized and un-hierarchical nature of interconnection rather than charity for, high-low feel-good-ness. It is a model for understanding solidarity and for collections of care. Friendship evolves when care is mutual, when committing to such a thing is a necessary prerequisite, and when the in-betweens become spaces for reflexivity and meaning-making. It dies when we do not tend to such a notion. Friendship dies when we rearrange a circle to make a ladder.
Walking away is a small thing. Big in the moment, small in the grand scheme of things. It is a partial end point. A period instead of a question mark. Patience, flexibility, grace, all in the between times of “working on it” do not last forever. And that’s okay. When enough becomes enough, when the dots connect, when the line comes to complete, you will know it is time.
Take care,
Robbie
Footnotes:
- This name has been changed for obvious reasons. ↩︎
- This phrase comes from a ~12 year old blog post from adrienne maree brown titled, “how many times do i have to give up knowing?” If it is of interest to you, I’d encourage you to find and read it. I would be delighted to talk more with you, reader, about it. ↩︎
- Same article as #2. ↩︎
- There is more to be learned about how mutual aid can be a model for care for one another. Another world is possible. We can make it so. Read more: https://bookshop.org/p/books/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-this-crisis-and-the-next-dean-spade/6d964062e8ba8054?ean=9781839762123&next=t ↩︎
R. Francis Williford 
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