A Short Story
“I am going to find my tears.”
The words reverberated in Fellow’s mind, haunting and divine. Long ago, they were the last words Mother spoke. Now he replayed them, letting them rise above all other thoughts. Then, of a sudden, a different voice spoke new words to his mind. Yielding to its interruption, Fellow opened a word processing document and transcribed the following revelation:
“Thus says the Lord to Deseret, do not marvel at the Eternal Mother’s silence. In her quietude there is no submission, only sacred singleness of mind. She has journeyed to the outside curtains.
“She goes not in submission nor disgrace, but with a fullness of glory. She marches alone, bearing victory’s grief. Fearing neither wolf nor serpent, she treads where her tears drained long ago. She will gather them, with an eye single to completeness, and return in the fullness of her glory. The first will be last and first again. Even so. Amen.”
Fellow sat at an old desk in his solitary apartment. The scratched and pockmarked cherrywood soaked in the dull yellow glow falling from a dusty ceiling lamp. Fellow’s eyes itched inside arid lids, recipients of the blue light rising from a laptop screen. Lonely and anxious, he traced the edges of keys, tempted to fiddle with the revelation’s wording. For now, he refrained.
Again, he recalled Mother’s ancient words. They rolled through his mind in the midst of a deep depression: “I am going to find my tears.”
Against all doctrine, Fellow believed he remembered the moment she had said these words. In vision, he saw the very Eternal Mother surrounded by victorious legions of the noble and great—angelic brothers and sisters, gleaming spotless and rising around her like candles on a grand chandelier.
The righteous thunder of billions shouting for joy rushed down and around Mother. Yet, she stood without a tremor. She looked out between their ranks, beyond the golden border of their celestial home. Distant pinwheel nurseries shined by the light of infant suns. She peered further still, through unorganized nebulae like embers pulverized into silvery ash. Beyond those, night draped itself as a black felt curtain.
She raised her arms open wide before the archangel Michael’s army. Their victory cry strained and crackled, till it evaporated on the altar of her perfect stillness. Some fidgeted in the ranks, wondering at her calm. And Fellow was one of these.
With a voice as small as a flute’s, light yet piercing, she answered their marveling: “I am going to find my tears.” Then she strode toward the expanding waves of matter and darkness. As all the lesser lights bowed and parted before her, she stepped off the edge of heaven.
Author’s Note:
Thank you for reading. Reactions to this piece are welcome in the comments section below. I also invite you to try the following pieces which explore the doctrine of Heavenly Mother through poetry:
Wheat & Tares 
This is fantastic work by Jacob C here. He has managed to hit the nail squarely on the head.
A failure to recognize Heavenly Mother is a failure to recognize all women. Indeed, the current reluctance to recognize Heavenly Mother leads to the objectification of women, which in turn leads to human trafficking and related ills.
And the irrefutable fact is that there is only one Heavenly Mother, not many. The afterlife involves committed intimacy among equal partners, not indiscriminate frolicking among multiple unequal participants.
So let us all join Jacob C in recognizing and giving credit to a coequal Heavenly Being. It is time to do on Earth what has already been done in the Heavens for eons.
Only when Heavenly Mother takes her rightful place within our narratives and doctrines, our thoughts and our faith will women be able to rise up to their full potential of powerful glory. But we do not have to wait for the men to see the light. This is a work we can do ourselves, within ourselves . Women, let’s go to work and rise.
A beautiful and a thought provoking story. It would good that all could read and ponder the story and its meaning.
This is a serious inquiry. Heavenly Mother is conceptually hollow for me. I struggle to understand why so many want to develop her role. She literally has no purpose. A purposeless being is not coequal with the Father. I have yet to see any evidence or hear any argument that a Heavenly Mother has any role in the salvation or exaltation of humanity. That is hardly an equal partner with God the Father and not a being worthy of veneration.
The idea that worship of a mother goddess, even a Heavenly Mother, would somehow reduce the objectification of women and human trafficking is not based in doctrine or reality. It certainly is not supported by historical data.
The sad part is that attempts to create a role for a Heavenly Mother in the salvation of humanity usually appropriates elements of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. Is there really anything humanity needs religiously that is not found in the Atonement of Christ?
I welcome correction or clarification from those who have different perspectives on these issues.
Y’all have a happy Pioneer Day.
@anonymous, I don’t even know where to begin. There is SO much material out there that explains why a feminine divine is necessary that I really have no interest in doing the explanatory work in a blog post comment.
I did a blog post on this that you can check out – not so much because the post itself is the end-all be-all on the topic but because it references dozens of other sources on the topic that you can look at as well:
https://wheatandtares.org/2022/03/31/how-i-met-then-lost-your-heavenly-mother-a-primer/
@jake c, this is beautiful. I guess the question is leaves with my is that I hate the concept that HM is silent because she’s off doing other things. When actually, I don’t think she’s silent at all – patriarchy has just pretended she is and declined to listen. So I’m trying to reconcile that with your piece.
This is beautiful. So great that you are giving us this prose poem. Thank you.
Mormonism continues to perpetuate a long, tragic history of patriarchal abuse of women. To cite fairly recent events, I highly recommend watching the well crafted Netflix documentary series: “Be Sweet- Pray and Obey” that chronicles the FLDS Warren Jeffs saga.
Comparing Warren Jeffs to Joseph Smith is frightening. Both used young girls and women as chattel for cronies, engaged in sexual entanglements with underage girls and lied about such events. The list of comparables is long and tragic.
I look back at some of my my experiences serving as a bishop with great regret. Just like the FLDS, the LDS church engages in classic brainwashing tactics beginning at a young age. The progression is familiar: From singing Follow the Prophet to EFY to engaging in quasi Masonic temple ritualism, members are taught to suspend any independent thinking.
Such practices lead to a culture based on worship of flawed men, intolerance of those on the margins, and the ever present “God loves Mormons more” mentality. As second class citizens, Mormon women will eternally be consigned to the back of the bus.
Thank you everyone for the comments. It’s helpful to receive sincere reactions.
@Anonymous, I sympathize in part with what you’re saying. Though there is disagreement, I see both you and Elisa speaking to the limitations of what I’ve written, especially when applied to lived religion. Still, as De Novo points out, there are real world consequences for marginalizing women and other groups.
This and the other two pieces I link to above represent my exploration of the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother. I place her in the context of the staunchly patriarchal/literal Mormonism I was raised in. I give her something specific to do and see where it goes. For me, it’s an experiment and an exercise.
With this piece I’m asking for the sake of asking: What active role could or would Heavenly Mother take in Mormonism’s old school theology? I write as an agnostic and mostly to experiment. The conundrum becomes developing a Heavenly Mother I want to know, but who also goes along with all the brutal Old Testament/Book of Mormon vengeance God dishes out.
Here’s another try I gave, focused on the Creation story:
@Elisa, point taken on the silence-because-busy criticism. I wrestled with that some before electing to post. Thinking more on it, silence can be quite proactive and direct as a form of protest or punishment (as in the intentional use of the silent treatment/cold shoulder). Not what I had Heavenly Mother do here, but perhaps a compelling literary reason for her silence could be found with more experimentation.
Here again is a link to Elisa’s recent post, along with another I see by Mary Ann. Posts like these are where serious critical work regarding Heavenly Mother is done these days:
https://wheatandtares.org/2022/03/31/how-i-met-then-lost-your-heavenly-mother-a-primer/
I have very mixed feelings on this topic. Beautiful writing, but left me feeling really very … not sure what the right word would be… conflicted.. aggravated… disturbed.. none are quite correct.
It’s not as though religions with some strong female deities actually respect or treat women any better. It’s a common idea expressed online that if only we recognised HM appropriately the position of women in the church would improve. Hinduism has female deities. But the treatment of women in India is really not very good, with very high rates of sexual violence against women, infanticide of females, and general misogyny.
We could all do with finding our tears.
Gorgeous. I have read this at least five times, tossing different interpretations around in my head. Thank you for putting your searching and inspiration into words and sharing with us. Maybe She is doing what She needs and wants to be doing. Just because She is busy with her own mission, it doesn’t mean She isn’t there for us. Maybe she is searching for those in the darkest places who need the most help. So much to think about and so lovely.
The feminine divine has been known and worshipped from the very first civilizations this earth has known. The female fertility and natural power has always been worshipped. In history it is quite recent that men with power (and fear) have decided that God is male. It was a human decision to make God a male. I have never been convinced it is so. I think if there is a God, it is both male and female, yin and yang. Only in that way a deity can incorporate and hold together everything and everyone in this vast universe
I love this. I read it not as a theory about where Heavenly Mother is, but as an illustration of the wrestle a Latter-day Saint feels as he instinctively senses Her power and wonders how She can be so powerful and yet so absent to our patriarchal church. And I love that men too, not just women, are struggling with this question.