Witt's End

 There are pagan aspects to Christmas celebrations. I think it’s about time that we recognize that and stop fighting about it. The winter solstice is December 20th. That night is the shortest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. It’s the summer solstice and the polar opposite in the southern. It has cultural and religious significance throughout the world.  Historically the celebration of the birth of Christ was moved to this time of the year. And an amalgamation of pagan, folk, marketing, and Christian traditions have led to the celebrations we have today. It deeply influences them. To the point that some Christmas hymns have winter references. When historical records demonstrate it was the spring. That change has caused over time to have a hybridized holiday. The modern Christmas with a Christmas Eve Midnight Mass and program, then Santa leaving gifts in a stocking or under an evergreen tree. It's beautiful. But note.  We wouldn’t have the holiday we have today without A

 So it's been awhile. But one thing has been reverberating in my brain over the last six months. It was a whisper a few years ago. But seeing this chart a few months ago. It changed a lot for me. Especially how I view some people. Understand some people.  The Sex Spectrum This is a chart (and it's corresponding link) demonstrating the sex spectrum. Now for most people when they hear the term sex they think in the binary. Male or female. The problem is it is a bit more complex than that. The chart above demonstrates a spectrum from unambiguously male on the right to unambiguously female on the left with mixed or dual expression in the middle.  There's a lot on this chart to take in from genetic, gonadal, and hormonal standpoints. Something so simple for most people in society. Male or female isn't so easy.   Further research led me to realize that 1.7% of the population has an intersex trait and .5% have a clinically identifiable variation . Now that may not seem like a

 It was a dark few days leading into Thanksgiving. Lost an NCO I admired to his demons. A high profile shooting targeting a wider demographic I identify as a part of. Weather got cold, wicked icy. Yet I'm content to look past that on what I'm thankful for. A lot.   I have a new job I love. I'm doing good. I'm learning a lot. And the opportunities are only growing. Working with a demographic I care about. It's a blessing. And I have an office. With a window. Might not be the greatest view. But it's light, it's snow. I need it.  Music releases lately have been amazing, inspiring, and pushing me. I have a way to carry me again.  There is a chance to federally codify LGBT+ marriage rights. Need I say more. Oh wait. The Church supports the legislation to codify gay marriage. My heart is beyond full  I'm getting more answers on my health and easier access to appointments. It's just going to take more time. More work.  I have a few close friends who are hap

Falls coming. Leaves are changing. And maybe I am too. So it was General Conference weekend. That biannual (semi-annual?) time of year. The leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints addresses the body of the church.  Given some of my current struggles and misgivings it may seem strange to some that I watched all of it. Pen in hand. A notebook open; my old journal that's been beat down. A lot of furious ink and scratching. My increasingly difficult handwriting becoming increasingly indecipherable. But I did find some clarity. I still have some misgivings. I'm still searching, striving for answers. But I got some clarity. My faith. My spirituality. My relationship with divinity. It's foundationally there. Stronger than ever.  I'm done focusing on the little minutia. I'm looking at big picture, larger challenges I'm having. Fundamental, "me and God" stuff. Five things. Hesitations. I'll elaborate. But here they are. 1. Submission a

 I haven't found anyone who intellectually investigates our faith that doesn't think we're weird and/or crazy. And that's ok. It may seem like a strange thing to say, but honestly, we stand out. We're strange. And faith is the antithesis to intellect and logic.  During times of crisis like this we need to recognize what we look like. We need to recognize what others perceive as a potential disconnect between our faith and our scientific/secular understanding.  It also leads to those of us who struggle with faith. Who have a separation of thought and idea. We can come across as contradictory at best to hypocritical or spineless at worse. I'm here to address one aspect of that. Where my faith lies. Where it is on my path of experience, life, and growth. I'm not here to reconcile it with my faith, my struggles today. I will address it again. But not yet.  Spirituality is unique to the individual. For me, my spiritual growth and experiences are distinct from my

It's really frustrating to just "know" something but have no remembrance of the process it took to get there.  Think about something that just "clicked' for you. Something that made sense immediately. Something that took absolutely no effort for you to learn. Call it talent or aptitude. Think about something that fit you. Immediately required no work.  I think about how I learned to read. How I learned to speak. Which came first in some ways. They just happened. There isn't a lot of baby talk. There wasn't time spent on phonics. They just happened. But true reading came first. Easiest. I always was voracious in reading. I just digested the words. Easier than I could express them. That's a pattern of my patterns. I saw connections others didn't explain. I still see random patterns others don't, and I can't explain them. When I've talked to other people they talk about sounding out words, having to work from letter sounds to larger piece

 This way may be a struggle for some people. I don't think it's going to be on "either side" of the issue. It's just me placing words to my very tumultuous thoughts. I've been ruminating on too many night shifts on this one.  There has been an AP article  exposing horrific sexual abuse over the course of years. Sexual abuse that occurred after a bishop reached out to the church's hotline. The article was then rebutted by the church . They call into question some of the timeline and reporting. The day of the church's rebuttal an Arizona judge ruled clerical privilege would not apply in the case and no records could be withheld. Also there was a podcast  released with more information with the author of the original article. For many members of the church the response from the church was enough to assuage any fears. It increased their confidence. Why question anymore? Why feel uneasy? Why doubt?  I wasn't one of them. This has been gnawing at me for

 You ever have a night where you just feel like crying? Out of the blue, for no reason, the tears just start piling up behind the eyes? Now I'm not talking about depression. I've been there, I have t-shirt. That's more pervasive than what I'm talking about. It's in more facets of your life.  No I'm talking about a sudden cloudburst of emotion. A wave out of nowhere. For a moment, a few hours tops.  This happens to me every once in a while. Sometimes the tears come unbidden, other times I can hold them back for a day.  Tonight I could hold them back. It's weird, this isn't nostalgia. It's not mourning for someone lost. It's not an acute sadness. It's not listening to the song or watching a movie that triggers it. No this hits faster and harder. As best I can tell, it's the powder keg blowing it's lid. It's a oxygen cylinder with too much pressure. It's the dam breaking.  We all have stress in life. We all have ups and downs. An

 If abuse can be prevented and isn't, that's a tragedy. Period. I worry that is what has been lost in some of the conversation surrounding clerical privilege, reporting, hotlines, abuse, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Now I'm not writing here to go into details of this specific issue. I'm not here to look around at other similar situations like Spotlight, Camp Kanakuk or others. I'm not here to talk about the military abuse. No I'm here to talk about something different. The various responses to abuse and trauma. And how it's been lost. There are two main reactions I keep seeing two main reactions to this. One that the church did nothing wrong and just followed their legal obligations and this set of revelations is an attack against it. Or the opposite response, that the church is only about self preservation of the institution, all else be damned. Both are not talking about victims of abuse. And how to help them.  See when someone exp

Today is my anniversary. Wedding anniversary. And I've never missed my old facebook page more. Years and years of photos and memories are gone. So I'm putting these memories in some places more permanent. Where they can matter even more.   See Emma and I have been through a lot. We've shared a lot of photos, a lot of trials. And a lot of laughs. No one makes me laugh more. Makes me more sure of myself than her. From the moment I met her. To Now. I'm in Awe.   No one I know is more compassionate, capable, or motivated than my wife. And I get to call her that.  Four kids (and a crazy cat in the middle) later and I'm amazed at where all we've been. How far we've come. We've survived a military enlistment, multiple moves, multiple job changes, a pandemic, and we're here. Emma racked up a bachelor's degree summa cum laude while managing a house of four kids and working at school with the older two. Now she works in Health Information Management and i

 I've said this before. Politics requires compromise of one moral values. Whether religious, spiritual, humanistic you have to compromise. It doesn't matter if you're left or right politically. You're compromising.  I come to this from a religious background. One of faith and both spiritual and religious. And it's a struggle.  Most of us religious will at some point struggle with dogma, have a faith crisis, struggle with rectifying a doctrine. Religion isn't cookie cutter make to fit. Politics aren't either. They're bigger than us and that requires a compromise. Let's own it and talk about it a little bit more. It's not a bad thing.  We all have a set of morals. For many of us it's developed through our religious practices, cultural norms, or human experience. We know for ourselves what's right and what's wrong and we have drawn our ethics around how best to observe that. From person to person it varies.  I can't write about this

  "Now I have to live with the knowledge of what could be and the disappointment and frustration of letting myself get to where I am. There’s a lot of factors to this. Medications, health concerns, night shift, diet complications. But I have to face reality. I wasn’t fat then. But by medical definition I am now. And my body is struggling because of it. I have to address this now. But how do I do that in a way that’s healthy to my psyche. This is where I’m going to break from a lot of medium articles. I don’t have the answer. I’m trying to figure it out. Because the lack of answer is actively harming me. That’s why I wrote this." https://medium.com/@witt.case/ive-hated-my-body-so-often-549193daddac

I spend a lot of time with bodies that are damaged, broken, harmed. Seeing what can go wrong oftentimes overshadows the biological marvels of the world around me. And there is so much to be thankful for. So much that it's hard to put them into words. The ability we have to stop harm and to help heal is incredible. But it's not without limits.  I've spent time in ICUs, long term care, hospice, surgical suites, urgent cares, ERs (emergency rooms), and EMS (Emergency Medical Services). And in that time I've been astounded by what we can do.  Technology, chemistry, our understanding of biology have made it to the point that we can save so many people. We can maintain life through artificial means to a point inconceivable to previous generations. Dialysis, bypass, ECMO. So many wondrous and astounding interventions. But they come at a price. We can keep a brain dead person alive. We can keep hearts beating when the rest of the body is shutting down. But we cannot stop the de

We’ve all seen the memes, read the tweets, seen the TikToks, I can have friends with a different opinion than my own. I can have people in my life with different lifestyles than me.  I think all of us can. But all of us leverage point where an opinion or practice becomes too much. Where an opinion becomes too much for a friendship to bear. That’s hard to hear. I know but hang on.  We can’t have a familiar relationship with everyone. Not even a friendship with everyone. That’s ok. Not establishing a relationship just means you’re not establishing intimacy and expectations. We can’t open up to everyone. It’s just not feasible. And that’s something we need to realize moving forward.  It doesn’t mean you won’t be kind. It doesn’t mean you won’t be respectful. It just means you’re not letting someone in.  It’s ok to set that boundary based on what someone espouses to believe.  Where’s that line? I can’t answer you, but I can answer it for me. Here’s the long-winded explanation.  Let's s

Where do we draw the line between our religion informing our morals and values and imposing it on others? That separation is real. “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics of geometry.” Thomas Jefferson "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" John Adams "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." Thomas Jefferson That's the political governmental separation. We can look on the religious side as well. “claim no privilege but what we feel cheerfully disposed to share with our fellow citizens of every denomination.” Joseph Smith and the First Presidency How do I impose my religious views on othe

 I struggle with the idea of calling out sins in others. It usually just makes me feel like a hypocrite.  See I take the idea of taking the beam out of my eye before working on the mote in your brother's eye very seriously. I can't build people up or take them to where I am very effectively without being really really honest about where I am and where I've been. Part of that may be some of the peer support training I have. The idea that being in recovery, having that experience can allow us the ability to be an example to others. Be a coach, a help, and at times a mentor. But it has to be based in experience.  There's a reason most substance abuse programs want counselors who have the experience of addiction themselves. There are aspects of the process of recovery that are hard to explain if you haven’t faced the fire and hardship. There’s an authenticity missing. I think similar principles can apply to the gospel.  Now really important caveat here. One needs not pursue

Someone asked me why I care so much about Roe being overturned. Why I'm talking so much. Why I this position and others that seem contrary to the majority of my faith. It's not the first time I've been asked something similar. I think I need to talk about why. It's simple and it's threefold.  First I used to be anti immigration. Second I used to be homophobic. Third I used to be entirely pro life. Things change. ---- The first shift was in regards to immigration. The largest shift happened as a missionary. I began as a 19 year old that thought no one should cross illegally. That it was a crime. It was harm to me and my family. I had some sympathy for those who left troubled lands to come to our own. I mean heck my grandmother was first generation from Germany. But that was the end of it. Not only did I have limited sympathy and a lack of knowledge I had a lot of bad jokes too. I'd be lying if I said some weren't racist. Things changed. I spent time on the gr