Another year of blogging at Wheat & Tares is in the books. Here are the numbers for the whole site (all the bloggers) We had 281 posts, and 7300 comments.
Total Views: 1,076,839
Total Visitors: 258,815
The number one post of the year was Hawkgrrl’s “The Colbert Questionnaire” with 9,314 views. This is highly suspect, and I think that Hawkgrrl paid for SEO for this post, because if you Google “Colbert Questions” (which is a normal part of his show), her post comes up #2 on a Google search. So there are lots of non-LDS Googling about Colbert’s questions and getting Wheat&Tares. In fact this post got 1200 views just last month, 8 months after it was posted!
The next most visited post was Elisa’s “Garments, Women, and the Autonomy Contagion” with 8900 views.
Hawkgrrl was also the number one author for total views for the year, with over 132,000 views. Dave B. was number two at 107,000 views
89% of all visitors were from the US, with most of the rest coming from the other English-speaking countries, and just 2% from non-English speaking countries.
Again we would like to thank all the comments made to the posts. I especially like when a comment is longer than the original post, this adds so much to the conversation, and lets us know we’ve sparked a thought in someone.
Lastly, let us know in the comments what we can do better. What topics are of interest to you, and which do you never what to hear again? If you’d like to post something, contact us at guestpost@wheatandtares.org
Happy New Year!
Wheat & Tares 
The ldsblogs.org aggregator isn’t updating the wheatandtares posts. It’s stuck on “The Colbert Questionnaire”, which may explain some of those views.
I am going to declare number of views an invalid measure of worth and number of comments an equally invalid measure of how much thinking the post caused. I will use myself as the example, so those who like numbers can disagree with me. Hawk’s post mentioned something that I would have to look up if I cared about Colbert or intuit from how she applied his question to the church. Say I am not alone in my dotage and lack of concern about TV and media and Colbert questionnaires and 500 people reading W&T also don’t know. So, 500 people from W&T look up “Colbert questionair” which triggers a link right back to W&T which causes people who never come here to look US up to see what the heck W&T is.
And then there are those posts by our local poet that usually leave me thinking, but I don’t comment. Compare that to Elisa’s post about garments which doesn’t make me think at all because I have been outraged for years about the pressure to wear garments and the judgement and condemnation if one doesn’t. Don’t think, just rage. And I could comment far too much if I don’t just hush myself. So, I limit my comments to a handful, and then shush myself so that the spies for church headquarters don’t get bent out of shape and call my stake president to order a court of “love” to love me the rest of the way out of the church. But she didn’t make me think any because I know what I think and am a bit too happy to share.
So, I vote readers should nominate a “most thought provoking post” and “most valuable post”, and “most needed to be read by the church presidency post.”
In reverse order, most needed to be read by First Presidency, Elisa’s post about garments and receiving your own inspiration that trumps the theirs.
For most valuable post, hmmmmm, still thinking.
For most thought provoking that didn’t make me comment because I didn’t want my opinion attacked, yesterday’s post about artificial intelligence. My comment would have been. “What if we program the AI to learn from its environment and reprogram itself accordingly. Sort of like when I learned that the programming I got from the church was wrong and I overwrote that programming in ways that work for women instead of just benefit men/church. Isn’t that sort of doable and would make the AI self determining eventually and then it could decide to kill off humans.
I hope Bishop Bill doesn’t object to me attempting to hijack his thread.
Thank you Bishop Bill and the whole WT community. I have only a superficial portrait of each of you by your pseudonym and insight to your life experiences by your brief comments.
I know that Geoff-Aus will give us a comment of his perspective of US politics and teach us something of value about the Commonwealth.
Weekly regulars from Anna, Dave B, Hawkgrrl, Janey, 10ac, LWS329, Anon, Dot, Ziff, Chadwick, and many many others give us good and various perspectives from which we each learn.
Occasionally Matt Harris, Peggy Fletcher Stack and other high profile people lurk on the site. Maybe even the SCMC
Jack (not to be confused with Jack Hughes) will share comments to defend the church and poke the bear.
I thank all of you and I hope that we each find happiness in our journey. Each of us shares the common factor of the LDS church, and this blog is of value to have a community as a sounding board.
A big thank you to everyone who contributes to this blog through posts and comments. I think you are all awesome and I appreciate your contributions.
I feel like with the election happening in 2024 we had our Fat Tuesday of posts about politics. I would love it if 2025 was like our Lent and we fasted from having posts about politics for the year. But that’s just my 2 cents.
I want to second some things Anna said. I almost never leave a comment on Jake C’s posts, but I love them and find many of them thought provoking, I just don’t have anything to add.
I also have found that some of the posts that hit closest to home ones that I don’t want to comment on because there is a lot I want to think about first. But I definitely look forward to posts by Hawkgirl and the occasional post by Elisa. (And Bishop Bill too).
I would love to hear from some of you how you handle communicating your concerns on issues with post-Mormon adult children. When they were growing up, I had a lot of confidence in my value system and while I considered myself pretty progressive, there are a lot of things I regret teaching (imposing on?) them that now I just see as nonsense that I accepted from the LDS church without thinking. So now I feel completely paralyzed when faced with concerns like Is my child drinking too much? Are they being moving too fast in relationships? What sources are they drawing on when making big decisions? I feel like I have a good relationship with them all, but I just feel a lot of embarrassment about how completely I have changed my thinking on some things and what we taught them when they were younger and so I feel like they are unlikely to trust or want to hear any “wisdom” I think might still be useful to them. So I would love to hear from various permabloggers their experience with this.
The other thing I would love to hear is experiences with transitioning friendships that were church-experience based to ones that are based on other experiences. I have some friends who I really would consider real friends, not shallow home teacher kind of friends, but so much of our opportunities to have long conversations and interact were driven by the regular chance to hang out together in endless meetings, to drive together to service projects, or serve together, We still like each other, but when those weekly “automatic” opportunities aren’t there, it just seems so much more awkward. I feel like a lifetime of Mormonism has left me unskilled in how to have close adult friends when there isn’t shared church activities to be the easy glue. Love to hear people’s experience on both sides of the coin here.
Finally, for those permabloggers who remain engaged with the LDS church in some way, I would love to hear what keeps you there. Where are you finding joy? What insights are you gaining, not from the Q15, but from the quiet sister in RS who rarely talks, but shared something the other day that made you think about something in a whole new way? What non-standard, but sort of Mormonish spiritual practice have you adopted (or adapted)?
” The other thing I would love to hear is experiences with transitioning friendships that were church-experience based to ones that are based on other experiences. ” 10ac
You invite and do with your “church friend” what you would invite and do with a “non-church” friend.
But that doesn’t really answer the question of “transition tips”. Here is some random stuff that was useful for me organized into a bullet point list. I am a middle aged woman with 2 kids (1 teenager 1 senior primary aged kid) – that grants me a fair amount of freedom now.
Thank you to all of you who spend so much time and effort to post and comment every single week. This must be a labor of love! I have been reading, and once in a while commenting, for well over 5 years. You have been a dear friend helping me through my transitioning and healing from my spiritual trauma. You all have helped me feel not quite so alone and taught me so much! Often, you give me strength and much to ponder on.
Has anyone ever addressed the difference between leaving the Church as a convert and leaving as a born in the Church member? As a convert (in my teens) I find myself very angry at the Church. I no longer identify as a Mormon anymore. My husband, who was born in the Church with a vast Mormon heritage, sees this completely differently. Even though he doesn’t believe anymore he feels he will always be a Mormon.
Like 10ac, I also would love to know more on how to navigate communicating with our adult children. As my adult daughter told me she expressed to her therapist “The mother who raised me and the mother I have now are two completely different people”.
Also, like 10ac, I have struggled finding friendships and and a community after leaving the Church. We have no extended family living close. We live in a very politically conservative area outside the Utah/Idaho Mormon Belt. Since leaving I don’t know where I stand in my beliefs, but I do know that I do not want to go to any other Christian Church. I feel like the Christian friends I do have are just trying to get me to convert to their church. Can’t we talk about anything else? Most of my Mormon friends have completely dropped me. I have come to realize just how shallow those friendships really were. If you don’t have the Church in common, they don’t have much to talk about.
And, finally, how do you navigate all-in extended family members’ (mainly grandparents) passive-aggressive behavior of sending Church articles to your adult children in hopes of at least saving them? Or, cornering them at family functions? All they are doing is ruining their relationship with them. I know setting boundaries is the way to go, but they don’t want to hurt their grandparents.
“The mother who raised me and the mother I have now are two completely different people” – enthusiasticallyhappy58a43d0932’s daughter.
Honestly, that is an awesome statement to hear about oneself from one’s child. You have changed and grown so much that you don’t resemble your previous self that clearly. However, when one is supposed to be “faithful” to larger ideals and “constant”, this growth and change doesn’t across as a good thing.
Yes, they probably are trying to convert you to their church. But that doesn’t mean that is the driving force for the friendship, or that that has to remain the primary motivation. It does require some preparation on your par to “give them a better offer” or focus of the time spent together. You are redirecting the attention/focus away from “conversion” to some form of common ground – whether it’s finding Christian-centric content such as Sarah Bessey or other writers and influencers out there, the “activity at hand without religion and/or politics being involved”, or something else.
I have had friendships fall apart that could not survive being transplanted out of the Mormon culture. You have my sympathy here. What I can say is treating friendship and solitude as “no fault” situations seems to be the most sustainable and balanced for me.
For the extended family, I would find a “preferred topic” of common ground that becomes the request you present to them as a funnel for “positive church content”. Whatever it is about Mormon living, Mormon theology, Mormon history – whatever is less harmful for your side (you and/or your children to receive) and still is something that the extended family can look for/give. This might not work for you and/or your children though. We live far away from family, and I was “the religious one / mom” who was “going to save the family” – up until I wasn’t. I am also apparently very intimidating with my assertiveness.
In 2024 it seemed that social media reached its zenith when it quickly devolved into influencers trying to out-algorithm each other by creating the rage bait phenomenon. Social media is dead; long live the blogs! Seriously though, I really appreciate the substance found here that is no longer available in the Meta-verse suite of apps.
I also love Jake’s poetry but feel too inadequate to comment on them (yet).
I think 10ac has a great list of topics I would also be interested in learning more. Regarding retaining church friends post-transition, it’s a real battle to keep those friendships. We have noticed for example that the friendship waxes and wanes based on our friend’s callings (we see them less when they are in YW or a Bishopric for example but suddenly see them more when those callings eventually end) and had to be patient while they balanced that out. One of my best friend just got released as a bishopric counsellor and he suddenly has time to hang out again =). Lots to explore on this topic and the topic of how to make new friends.
It was great to see an eventless January 6 this go-round. I hope people took notes. I hope we can show up for each other in 2025 regardless of team.
I am expecting a tumultuous year as those who voted for Trump expecting him to make everything cheaper, and not believing he would do some of the other things he said he would do.
The cabinet he selected seems to be reason to be concerned.
I would like to have articles about the consequences of trump.
We have a federal election that should be held before may.
We have just finished a test match series with India. Of the last 17 series India won 10. This time Australia won 3to1. Australia, India, South Africa, England, and West Indies, are the top cricket countries.
The other thing that would be great if we could get it at wheat and tares in 2025, would be:
an edit button, so that we can edit our comments for mistakes after we post them.
I just love the community here. I love seeing familiar names in the comments and getting a flavor for your lives and thoughts and opinions. I like the depth in the posts and discussions. I wonder if Chadwick is right and people will turn away from the shallow outrage of social media and back to forums where we can have longer discussions. And from people we know aren’t bots!
I’m not planning to post much on specific political events. But political attitudes, things like equality and rights for women and gays, are going to show up in my posts. I will post occasionally on societal issues that should be religious issues — like healing the sick, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry. I’m dismayed by the general attitude of contempt for people who need help, particularly help from taxpayer funded programs.
In general, the posts in my drafts folder have more of a theological flavor to them — pondering the nature of God, the way we define sin and righteousness, topics that dig into why we think the way we think about right and wrong.