Because of Erin’s comment I read through the post again and fixed a few minor typos. Single-character things.

Thanks, Erin. You know I love you.

(Are you waiting for 10/10/10 to post on your blog again?)

What’s the point of being a child of deity if it’s more like how my sister is “mommy” to the sweetest dog in the world, rather than actual offspring?

When my missionary self met neo-pagans, (i.e. Wicca) that’s where I started, because then they saw a reason for a savior.

she no longer believes that after she dies, she can become a God and create world.

If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t bother with the church at all.

Another one I found interesting but decided not to write about or ask her about is how she clearly has decided that masturbation is for her yet it’s not something she’s ready to make jokes about yet. I imagine it’s hit her standup by now, but if not, it’s weighing on her enough, she’ll have to expunge it sometime.

The creation thing — she doesn’t represent that aspect of LDS cosmology very well at any point. So I wonder too about her relationship to that doctrine.

1. I found the ending rather sad, mainly because she doesn’t really come to any satisfying conclusion about which direction to pick. I also thought it was a rather odd ending for a memoir, since memoirs generally end with some a more tidy conclusion (however manufactured it may be).

On the other hand, the whole book is about Elna feeling torn between two worlds, and ending the memoir ambiguously may be a more honest way of approaching the matter.

2. My brother found the “what I believe / what I used to believe” lists pointless. I figured that they were there as guideposts to help no-Mos navigate the world of faith. I was, however, thrown by something listed in the last one, where she says that she no longer believes that after she dies, she can become a God and create world. That particular belief doesn’t seem to have much to do with the story she’s telling in her memoir, but it is a fairly central tenet of Mormonism, so I was surprised to see her toss it out without any explanation. (I.e., what made her change her mind about that and what else has gone with it?)

3. Elna’s story, the concept of the “radical middle,” and the gap in the “passion / pop curve,” have all got me wondering if the problem with marketing to the middle group in Mormonism isn’t that the group doesn’t exist, but that the group isn’t very stable. I.e., the conservative Mormon market is self-reinforcing, and the non-religious market is equally stable, but the market in the middle is mostly composed of people who are trying to reconcile themselves to one camp or the other, which means that they won’t be around as long-term consumers.

I’ve heard of that article, but I understand it’s not online.

Well, if the book’s big enough, TMZ will dig one up for us….

Anyway, I seem to recall that there might be one pre-thin Elna picture floating around out there. She wrote an article for ELLE magazine a few years ago about her dramatic weight loss and the choice to get plastic surgery thereafter. I seem to remember there being a before and after picture in the article.