Latter-day Faith

This podcast episode, "Women Outside the Garden" number 7, features Terri Peterson sharing a story about a 13th century golden Buddha statue in Thailand that was covered in clay for 700 years to protect it, illustrating how people can cover their true worth with external layers. Terri explains how these protective layers, whether from well-meaning others or self-imposed doubts, can prevent people from seeing their inherent value and divinity. She discusses how breaking free from these layers requires experiencing and applying learning rather than just reading about it, comparing life to a classroom rather than a test. Terri emphasizes the importance of trusting one's own experience and inner authority while being mindful not to act impulsively, encouraging listeners to question beliefs that don't align with their direct experience of their true souls and to recognize that flaws are temporary layers rather than permanent parts of their true selves. Listen in! It's wonderful!

Most often when we talk about doing "shadow work," we usually focus on pains, wounds, and fears that we've tucked away (in our shadow). We don't see them until we do this kind of inner work but they affect our lives in harmful ways. Carl Jung opened up a new window by recognizing a "golden shadow" that also operates in the deepest, repressed part of our psyche. A quick overview is that we have wonderful gifts that we don't put forward into the world. Sometimes our hesitation is the result of family dynamics, bad messaging, or even church-influenced taboos about staying in our place, yielding authority in our lives to leaders. Deep down we know we harbor many gifts, but we fear letting them step out of our shadow. In this episode, LDF host Dan Wotherspoon is joined by a brilliant therapist, Valerie Hamaker, and a certified life couch who has been working with clients for nine-plus years, Jana Spangler. Each of them adds much wisdom to the subject of the golden shadow, especially the dynamics of how it manifests or doesn't in our lives. We are all of us magnificent, light-filled, talented, whole beings. Why do we hesitate to own and project those parts of ourselves? Their conversation is brilliant. You must listen in!

In the second episode of our special series, "Women Outside the Garden", host Terri Petersen interviewed an amazing Substack content provider Stephanie G., discussing women and priesthood power. In a church culture that emphasizes patriarchal authority embodied by "keys", Stephanie presents a parable of how a young princess is given a new car, but never really given the keys to operate it. It's a refreshing look at how our systems of authority and control can have a toxic effect on women in the church, and what we can do about it. Stephanie has discovered she can find access to Jesus without the need for "keys" at all. She, along with other women have the power to direct their lives, blessing all with whom they contact. Paradoxically, having her own keys has been able to enhance her family relationships, becoming a true equal partner with her husband in their journey. Stephanie's substack link is here: "More Questions Than Answers" Here is the link to her "Parable of Power and Priesthood"

In this short episode, Latter-day Faith host Dan Wotherspoon reflects on this week's "No Kings" rallies and an idea that has begun to form in his mind that names something happening over the past decades (and specifically the last six years) that has led to the need for rallies of this type. Drawing very briefly on descriptions of James Fowler's second and third "stages of faith," he wonders if we are seeing an increasing number of people who had found purpose, optimism, and signposts for a healthy spiritual (hallmarks of a third-stage orientation to the world and others) move into despair and the kinds of preoccupations that are more characteristic of stage two: fairness, certainty, reciprocity and an ability to operate without a need for coherence in the stories they believe. Are there ways that this naming might help us clarify a way forward as we encounter and interact with those who seem to have forgotten those things that led to their earlier optimism? He offers one. We hope you have others!

Many people feel unsettled these days. There seems to be a general unease in the air, some of it caused by the rapid changes the current president is making, many mean-spirited and cruel. For Latter-day Saints, add in the recent loss of President Nelson and the terrible tragedy in a Michigan chapel, and a sense of uncertainty and impending doom fills many hearts. In this episode, LDF host Dan Wotherspoon and LDF board member Mark Crego speak to this general malaise felt by so many. What is it? How is it manifesting? Is anyone, anywherd feeling settled at all? Most of all, what self-care strategies might help us? Their discussion doesn't contain a lot of answers, but they elucidate the issue, share personal stories, and offer their sense of how we can regain equilibrium. Listen in!

In this episode, Latter-day Faith co-host Terri Petersen shares with us about her life and spiritual journey with all its ups and downs. We get to know her as a perfectionist who loved everything about the church because it had answers to everything and laid out a great set of rules to follow. We then get to know her as a confused and pretty mad Mormon when she encounters issues and has to wrestle with new ideas. She then shares her reasons for continuing to stay engaged while still navigating her spiritual life "outside the garden" that she had once felt so comfortable within. Listen in!

This terrific episode features a conversation between Kimber Poon and LDF co-host Terri Petersen about moving past our fears about our changing beliefs, attitudes, relationships with the Church, family and friends, and more. Kimber is a teacher, writer, and artist who shares about herself through the somethingforsundays.substack, which is where Terri discovered her. As they talk, Kimber allows us into her heart and mind with regard to her shifting faith and how she is negotiating many new terrains "imperfectly" (are are we all!). It's a journey that involves her claiming power and deciding that she has the right to meet the world as herself, to make a dent in the universe. An especially powerful piece of that journey is the influence of careful and sustained reading of the New Testament in which she sought to find out for herself what Jesus really taught. She and Terri also talk beautifully about Alma's ideas of planting seeds of faith and "experimenting upon the word." You will really enjoy getting to know Kimber, and also a bit more about Terri along the way. Listen in!