Berry seeds and bathroom shelf

I have enough pictures for another post! And since Q broke his arm last week, we're spending a lot of time at home.

I collected some huckleberry, salmonberry, and Indian plum seeds! I'm really excited to get them germinating in the fall. I've wanted these plants on my balcony since we moved here. Here are some pictures of my seed-cleaning method:

Huckleberries

Mashed seeds

Cleaned seeds

These look nothing like the seeds I ordered from VanDusen Garden a couple years ago, which explains in part why those didn't sprout, and why the Saskatoon berry seeds I ordered turned into willow trees. At least the bald-hip roses I grew from VanDusen seed are growing nicely and do look like bald-hips, though I won't really know 'till they flower.

I have them in packets in a drawer to after-ripen, and in Sept or so I'll put them on wet ppr towels in little boxes in the fridge to germinate.

I finished building an over-the-toilet shelf for the bathroom! I made it almost completely from scraps, gluing together some of them for bigger pieces. It was my first attempt at using my new Kreg Jig, which was pretty cool! And I got to use my new orbital sander, which was really fun. My new-to-me miter saw made the cuts a lot easier but they weren't quite as clean as I would like. Here's the final picture (it's attached to the wall to keep it from tipping over):

And here are various in-progress pictures:

Planer shavings! I love planing, so long as I keep it sharp.

Mormon Women and the Priesthood

Now that the excommunication of Kate Kelly (founder of “Ordain Women”) is headliner news, I’d like to make a few comments on the issue in addition to what my sister said here and here. First, the basic news: Kate Kelly’s organization’s goals are: “Mormon women seeking equality and ordination to the priesthood.” She was excommunicated. Thousands of other women who think the same way were not excommunicated.

As I read people’s facebook posts and blogs for and against women being ordained, there are several things I don’t see. The first is that the wider and much more complex issue of gender identity is largely ignored. Second, actually, women do have the priesthood, but they exercise it differently. Third, men can’t hold women’s positions either but that doesn’t seem to matter. Fourth, putting women into men’s organizations would require a complete restructuring of the church. Maybe that should happen, maybe not.

The observation that not all humans can easily be assigned a gender is one that our current society is just beginning to accept. Finding the best way to incorporate that into my church will take awhile.  And it’s a little beyond the scope of this little post. I will say, though, that my thoughts probably mostly (only?) pertain to people who genetically, physically, and socially identify as being either male or female.

I’d like to clarify something. Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (or Mormon or LDS) do hold the priesthood. Yes, we do. But we’re not ordained to the office of bishop, deacon, or apostle. That’s why the Ordain Women organization is called “ordain women” instead of “give women the priesthood.” The problem seems to be that women don’t hold the same offices as men.

Men can’t hold women’s positions either.  Yes, women have important positions in the Mormon Church, and no, men can’t have them.Women run the Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary, and they sit on various councils. It seems to me that if women should have men’s jobs, then men should have women’s roles too. It’s only fair, right? If women and men are the same and should do all the same things, then there’s really no need for gender-separated meetings or organizations at all, right? So everyone does everything. That’s “fair.”

But it’s diametrically opposed to a lot of basic church doctrine. Changing that would require complete restructuring. It would be a different church. Maybe that’s what should happen, yes, but maybe not.

The LDS church believes that men and women have fundamentally different strengths and challenges, and that assigning different gender roles in the church allows us to strengthen each other better than lumping everyone together all the time. I hate to use this statement, but scientists agree. It’s one of the things I really like about my church. I like being recognized as different than men, and as having my own set of challenges that most men wouldn’t be able to help me with.

It’s not just in my church that women like to be together for support and encouragement. Wikipedia lists over 50 women’s organizations of all shapes and sizes. And oh my there are tons of men’s organizations. So let’s say that men and women do indeed like to have their own separate groups sometimes.

You might say that has nothing to do with holding “priesthood” offices in the church. The church could retain gender-divided groups but still allow women to be bishop or apostle or church president, right? Okay, let’s see how we could do that. The only way I can see it working is to keep women’s organizations at status quo, but change the men’s organizations so they have to include women. Then we’d need to add several more organizations so the men could hang out together. That’s a major restructuring. Maybe it’s justified, maybe not.

If women must be ordained to priesthood offices in order to have equal weight in how the church is run, then a total reorganization is the only solution I can come up with. If men and women are equal but hold complimentary roles, then maybe we could just keep things as they are and make sure that women are included in policy decisions. That sounds a lot simpler.