Quicksand and Cactus

 

Pioneers have been on my mind a lot this month because of  Pioneer Day and because I read Quicksand and Cactus a memoir by Juanita Brooks. It deeply resonated with me. Juanita wasn’t from the generation that crossed the plains but the generation that made the desert bloom as rose – only the desert her family settled in Bunkerville, Nevada was so harsh I don’t think it ever bloomed. It sounds cliché, but I was struck by how faithful and hardworking her community was. It seemed like any anecdote she shared, no matter how unrelated to work and faith, were back dropped by work and faith. This has inspired me to start teaching Norah to help with chores around the house. I was also impressed by the detail she could recall from her life and only realized towards the end of the book, as she included diary excerpts, that it was because she had recorded her life. To me her childhood was fascinating and extraordinary and yet I’m sure it was typical of the time and place she lived in. I feel more motivated to blog after reading Quicksand and a desire to make it a bit more personal – which is why I’m even writing about my reaction to this book. I’ve been pretty good about posting and writing “we went such and such and had a good time” but I rarely ever write down my thoughts. I want to be able look back and remember what I was doing and also what I was thinking.

Quicksand struck a chord with me because Juanita was a bit of a rebel. She was faithful to the end of her life but there were times she challenged what she was taught. For example, as a young child she listened to her mother sing a pioneer hymn in church that was very vengeful and Juanita told her mom she thought it had no place in Christ’s church. I know that might not seem significant, but I think for a child to challenge a parent like that is a display of moral courage to follow her conscience. I couldn’t help but see this incident as precursor to her work as a historian documenting the Mountain Meadows Massacre despite being pressured not to by the church. She ends the memoir when she is about 35 years old – long before her writing career - but the introduction gave some insight to this part of her life. I described her as a rebel but the intro specifically says that “she must be seen as a responsible thinker, not as a rebel or even a dissident.” Juanita’s efforts to change the way the Church talked about its past were misunderstood at the time but now she is appreciated for helping the Church to heal. The introduction shared a quote from Juanita that I love “When a cowboy wants to turn a herd of stampeding cattle, he doesn’t run directly counter to them. If he did, he’d be run over. He rides with them, and turns them gradually. So if I don’t like the stand of the church, I can do more about it by staying in.” This was personally relevant to me because I identify as a Mormon feminist and hope that one day women will be ordained. Some people find this puzzling because they equate questioning the status quo with a lack of faith. An old acquaintance recently said he was disgusted by feminists wanting to change the Church and suggested that we just leave Church. He truly could not understand why we would stay when clearly, to him, we had no faith. I wish I could have responded to him with that quote from Juanita. I do have faith – I have enough faith to believe that the imperfect church that I belong to can change. I love that Juanita compares the church to a herd of stampeding cattle because sometimes I think people just run in the direction everyone else is running in without asking why. Juanita implied that she was a cowboy in this analogy (and I think she was influential enough to claim that) but I see myself as one of the cattle. I don’t expect to influence others but I do take personal responsibility to question the direction I’m running in and to understand why. I often hear friends who are struggling with their faith ask (and I have asked it myself) how to reconcile belief that the church is guided by revelation when we sometimes feel our leaders are misguided. We place so much responsibility on them and forget that we as members are like a stampeding herd of cattle. The cowboy can only do so much. We all need to change direction together. I have great hope that we will. Alma 32:21 says “And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.”