My Mormon Résumé

“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird!”

“It’s a plane!”

“It’s Mormon Mouse!”

“Yes, it’s Mormon Mouse!”

“Wait…who’s Mormon Mouse?”

If you are looking for a Mormon-themed, religious and philosophical blog writer to read and support, and if I am applying for that job, then here are some things I would like to share with you about my personal experiences as a lifelong Mormon, or, as President Nelson prefers, “a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” I hope my “Mormon resume” will help you get a sense for just what kind of member of The Church you’re dealin’ with here. I’ve also included some personal memories for extra flavor and texture and in the spirit of the idea that everything is connected. As a lifelong member of “The Church” with a capital T and C, I’ve often felt that it seems to cast its shadow over every aspect of life, even when it doesn’t. Maybe it’s those mental braces (see my post “Braces for Your Brain“).

There have been times in my life when I was looking for a “real job,” and I would always try to keep the resume to a page or so. This is not that. The more I worked on this one, the more I enjoyed it, and the further I strolled down memory lane. Eventually I decided to also include a long list of some of the most influential art and information I’ve consumed on the road to apostasy, which, as I’ve discovered, can be a pretty good road to be on after all.

I’d like to continue to add to and edit this thing as inspiration dictates, but I don’t know if I will. For what it’s worth, here it is so far:

Mormon M. Mouse

123 Apostate Street

Snohomish, WA 98296

andrewhlee@mormonmouse.com

http://www.mormonmouse.com

Objective: To obtain and maintain a position in your mind as a Mormon-themed religious and philosophical writer whose work you actually feel like reading, without any sense of politeness or personal obligation. Actually, that’s not my “objective,” but of course it would be nice, and it sounded more like the kind of résumé word I might have used back when I really was looking for a job. I just want to enjoy writing and to hopefully do it well enough to bring interested readers along for the ride.

Mormon Achievements and Experience

  • Lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
  • Parents married 50+ years and both from big families. Dad is a middle child of thirteen from a lifelong member family. Mom is the oldest of eight from a lifelong non-member family. She joined The Church as a teenager after meeting my dad, and waited for him while he was on his mission in New York. Both have had many callings over the years, including Relief Society President, Young Women’s President, Seminary Teacher, Bishop, Stake President, and Mission Presidency Counselor.
  • Pioneer stock: I am a great, great, great grandson of John D. Lee through the fourth of his nineteen wives, Sarah Caroline Williams. If you don’t know who John D. Lee is, Google him.
  • Baptized and Confirmed – December, 1986
  • Primary: I never really liked or felt comfortable in primary, although I had some nice teachers who seemed to like me and I liked them. I was an early bloomer, always bigger and more developed than everyone else and I was never comfortable speaking or singing in public at the time (and primary did not help, I think it only made it worse). I remember enjoying writing in journals and memorizing The Articles of Faith in one class. I always dreaded singing and sharing time I think, and two particular memories stand out. Once, as part of sharing time, we had to watch a video that included a clip of an old and decrepit Ezra Taft Benson singing “I Am a Mormon Boy” to a group of young children and I remember thinking that it made me feel a creepy feeling and wish that I wasn’t a Mormon Boy, but I figured I didn’t have much choice. There was also that time that a well-meaning Primary leader put a too-small cowboy hat on my too-big head and asked me to lead the other kids around the halls of the church building pretending we were a pioneer wagon train, probably singing some pioneer themed song as we walked and walked and walked. I felt mortified but I went along with it and got through it somehow. The Primary programs gave me the worst feeling though. I disliked those the most, especially as I got older, as I felt incredibly awkward and like I stood out like a sore thumb. Back then, Daylight Savings Time usually occured the day of the Primary program, and there were at least a few years when our clocks had not been set back yet and I was delighted to learn I had an extra hour to myself before the dreaded performance.
  • Ordained to The Aaronic Priesthood – 1990
  • Played Church basketball and softball: 1990 – 1994, including on two especially memorable teams – one was an undefeated Deacon’s Quorum basketball team, and the other was a Priest’s Quorum softball team I was invited to play on when I was eleven years old, and we made it to the multi-stake regional softball tournament.
  • Attended and/or participated in Church roadshows, talent shows, and plays, as did my older brother. I remember him in an ear of corn costume in one particular road show and acting in a stake production of Our Town when I was still in primary.
  • Participated in multiple father/son outings (both church and extended family) and large family reunions of 100+ at The Ensign Ranch in Cle Elum, WA.
  • Attended Youth Conference – The Ensign Ranch, Cle Elum, WA – 1994
  • Attended EFY at Rick’s College in Rexburg, ID – 1995. This included the first and only dances I ever went to. I danced. I was friendly and talked to people. And I never went to another dance (or EFY) again. When I got home I felt like I wanted to be the most righteous person in the world for about a week, and then the magic wore off and things went back to normal.
  • Early-morning seminary graduate – 1997
  • Ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood – 1997
  • Patriarchal Blessing – 1998
  • Temple Endowments – The Seattle Temple, 12/29/1998. For now I think I’ll save writing more about the temple for later, though I will share that the first r/exmormon post I ever made was titled “Short sleeves/white Crocs/no socks at the temple.”
  • Full-time missionary service: Boston, MA (Spanish), 1999-2000, district leader and zone leader, two baptisms. When I received my mission call and saw that my mission president was Dale Murphy, I took that as a divine sign of some kind because I’d written Dale Murphy a letter as a kid asking him if I should become a baseball player or go on a mission. He never answered that letter – until he became my mission president, that is. I decided to count my mission call as my answer.
  • Married in the Seattle temple – Bellevue, WA, 2002, (and still married to my high-school sweetheart as of 2023)
  • Two kids – 2007, 2010
  • Priesthood Blessings: Received blessings when I was sick, troubled, or going back-to-school many times over the years as I grew up, gave blessings of healing, comfort, or counsel many times during and after my mission. Almost always dreaded giving them due to wondering if I was worthy enough or if they would work.
  • Spiritual Experiences and Testimony: I remember multiple times when I felt troubled in some way, prayed for help, then opened my scriptures randomly and thought I found exactly what I needed. I felt strongly at the time that these experiences were literally answers to prayers and obvious evidence of the reality of God and the truth of The Church and The Book of Mormon, especially the time that I randomly opened to “Nephi’s Psalm,” which begins in Nephi Chapter 4:16, and read and considered it closely for the first time – it seemed so obvious that I’d been guided to a very special message from the Lord to me. I have very faint memories (and I’m not sure how reliable they are) of trying out “Moroni’s Promise” (Moroni 10:3-5) a few times and feeling like God answered me by saying “you already know that it’s true.” This kind of answer stayed with me for quite a while and I remember feeling it in other contexts as well during high school and while I was on my mission. On my mission, I wrote in my journal about an experience my companion and I and our branch mission leader had of blessing one of our investigators who was dying of stomach cancer. He got better and experienced some sustained improvements leading up to and beyond his baptism by me, but several months later when I was living in another area I received the news that he had died. The kind of spiritual witness that I thought was supoposed to come to people when they took Moroni at his word and prayed about The Book of Mormon, came to me in the MTC in 1999. It was in a big group meeting with hundreds of other missionaries. I don’t remember much about the context, but they showed us a movie up on the big screen – I remember it being a movie theater quality experience and I still don’t know what movie it was exactly, but it showed Jesus appearing to The Nephites in Ancient America. When He started healing people, “The Spirit” testified to me that what I was watching really happened and that it was all true, all of it. I remember feeling warm all over, especially from the chest up, my eyes filled with tears, and it felt like the movie I was watching and the feelings that were coming were all made specifically for me, and that while this spiritual revelation was something that I welcomed, it was also something that was happening whether I wanted it to or not.
  • Primary and Church Talks: Every 1-2 years when I was a kid, I think, and I’ve probably spoken in church 7-10 times as an adult.
  • Home Teaching and Ministering: Many experiences over the years doing home teaching, the best ones being with my dad when I a kid, but my wife and I also had some interesting experiences trying to help a particularly quirky family in one of our wards in Portland, OR and we enjoyed making friends with one of the single sisters on my route as well. Not counting one particular person with whom I developed a real and personal relationship that continues to this day, the interest that various home teachers and ministering brothers have shown in me and my family over twenty years of marriage has been extremely infrequent and insincere. Sometime maybe I’ll write about the last person I tried to “minister” to who had emergency brain surgery, how my assignment to them was changed without checking with me, and how I finally asked to be released from ministering assignments indefinitely.
  • Church Callings Over the Years: Teacher’s Quorum Adviser, Full-Time Missionary, District Leader, Zone Leader, Sunday School Teacher, Elder’s Quorum Teacher, Home Teacher, Sunday School President, Ward Executive Secretary, Assistant Scout Leader (resigned shortly thereafter), Assistant Ward Mission Leader, Elder’s Quorum Teacher, Sunday School Teacher, Stake Roadshow Writer and Director, Elder’s Quorum Presidency Counselor, Primary Teacher.
  • Faith Crisis: It started in 2014.  That was the year my long-widowed mother-in-law died of cancer shortly after retiring from her job. Then a brother-in law’s parents both died, my wife’s best friend’s mom died, and my best friend’s sister died. It was a year or so of the most funerals I’ve ever been to.  That was also the year that I quit my calling to be in charge of our ward’s contribution to the Stake Roadshow.  I’d written an original short musical play that I was also acting in and directing.  The Bishop wanted to approve my script, and he and one of his counselors didn’t like a few of the jokes and asked me to change them. I still remember two of the unapproved bits – one was a bishop character joking in a ward council meeting about the High Council being the “dry council,” and another was when an alien visitor from another planet referred to the ordinance of baptism as a “water-immersion ceremony” in a funny alien voice. In talking with my Bishop’s counselor about their requests, he even went so far as to imply that I was violating my temple covenants if I didn’t change the jokes because I was “speaking evil of The Lord’s anointed.”  We went back and forth about it, and the Bishop even came to my house to have a long emotional talk where he cried and prayed for me, eventually even offering to let me have it my way if I wanted, but I decided to quit instead.  Ultimately the show did not go on without me.  It was the first time in my life that I was really not ok with something The Church wanted me to do (in this case the Bishopric, representing The Church).  All over a few silly jokes, and it easily could have gone very differently and never even been an issue with a different Bishop.  But the Bishop’s offense at my jokes and his insistence on trying to get me to change them pointed me towards a larger and more important idea: if The Church felt that creative work I was proud of and had worked hard on was inappropriate and needed to be censored, then maybe I myself was inappropriate and needed to be censored, or else maybe I did not belong in The Church.  The jokes in the script were like a symbolic tip of the iceberg – there was far more to me below the water than just these jokes, and while I was fine with all of me, even the unseen parts, it felt like The Church, would not be. Within a few weeks of the roadshow rejection fiasco, I watched the series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.  This was the sharpest and most meaningful testimony turning point for me.  I remember after one particular episode I had finished while I was home alone, an episode where the immensity of outer space was discussed, I went outside on our back porch and looked up at the sky and thought about what I’d learned, and a very clear feeling came over me, as clear as any of my previous spiritual experiences I think.  As I looked into the sky and thought about the immensity of space, I felt very clearly for the first time in my life, that there was no God.  At least not the kind of God I’d been taught to believe in all my life. This epiphany about the immensity of outer space vs. the location and character of God was joined by a related curiosity.  I found myself wondering how all of the interesting science and history I was learning about in Cosmos squared with the teachings of The Church.  This led me to the internet shortly before my 36th birthday to research The Church for the first time in my life. It was the first time I had ever looked up anything unfaithful.
  • Inactive in The Church since March 2020 (also inactive September 1997 – March 1998, and January 2002 – April 2002)

Additional Achievements and Experience

  • Paid Work Experience: Paper route helper, Little Caesar’s, The Exxon Tiger (summer, 1996 – Jackpot convenience store grand openings), Extra on a commercial for Nynex where I met Richard Sanders of WKRP in Cincinnati, clean-up crew for Peter Pan Seafoods in King Cove, Alaska, The Olive Garden, eleven years of apartment management work with ConAm, BRE Properties, and Guardian Management, LLC, minor role in a community theatre production of A Spider’s Web by Agatha Christie (they gave us each fifty bucks!), Extra on an episode of CSI in Los Angeles in 2002, licensed Real Estate Broker 2012 to present, started a family real estate investment business in 2012 and a collectibles business in 2021.
  • Volunteer Work Experience: Kate’s Kitchen in Holyoke, MA, Heritage Manor in Lowell, MA (I’ll always remember batting balloons with residents, calling bingo, and improvising my role as a mad scientist in the haunted house – thanks to Wanda, the less-active activities director we were fellowshipping), Merrimack Valley Food Bank, Marlborough Community Cupboard, Blazers Boys & Girls Club in Portland, OR, Snohomish Food Bank.
  • Interests and Skills: Art, Books, Movies, Music, Plays, Restaurants, Sports (baseball first), Television, Travel, bowling, collecting, driving, Duolingo (Spanish), golf, hitting fungos, juggling, LEGO, Simply Piano, thinking, walking, and writing. When I was a kid I wanted to be a baseball player, and I played baseball and collected baseball cards. I was a good hitter and even won a home run contest at the Kingdome right before a Mariner’s game. When it came time to transition to high school baseball, I got the lead in the spring play as a freshman, a role that involved kissing a senior girl. The play was Rehearsal for Murder, and that was the end of competitive, organized baseball for me. I went on to thoroughly enjoy becoming a Thespian, making friends with the drama kids, taking trips with them to Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and acting in Rehearsal for Murder, Harvey, Splendor in the Grass, As You Like It, The Nerd, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and the one-act plays “Here We Are,” “Hello Out There,” “The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife,” and the original “When the Light Comes On” (actor, writer, director).

Formal Education

Graduated from Shorewood High School – 1997

A.A., Shoreline Community College – 2004

B.A., English, Portland State University – 2006

Informal, Self-Education

I’ve always liked making lists. What follows is summaries and highlights from a much-longer list I started about five years ago when I began trying to keep track of everything I had ever read, watched, or heard that I felt was affecting my gradually dissolving testimony of The Church. At some point I realized the list could go beyond religion and include anything tha I felt had influenced my ever-growing conviction that things are not as they seem. Anything from stand-up comedy to true crime documentaries was a candidate for inclusion, as long as it connected in some way to my new way of thinking and to finding out what’s really going on behind the curtain.

  • Scripture Reading
    • The Old Testament (x1), The New Testament. (in progress), The Book of Mormon (x5), The Doctrine and Covenants (x3), The Pearl of Great Price (x4)
  • General Conference Talk Reading Project
    • In the summer of 2013 when I was still a fully believing member of The Church, I set a goal to read every General Conference talk that had been given in my lifetime, from October 1978 to present. It began as a surprisingly faith-promoting and spiritual experience for a couple months, then fizzled out for some time, then continued off and on over the years even as I became more skeptical. I completed my goal on 03/02/2022, having read every conference talk from October 1978 through October 2021, for a total of 3,279 talks. I estimate this to be the equivalent of about 8,000-10,000 PDF pages. I recently started reading talks again, and am keeping up with new conferences as well as reading through the rest of the 1970’s that is available on The Church’s website.
  • Mormon Scholars Testify
    • I read all 357 testimonies on the “Latter-day Saint Scholars Testify” section of the website fairlatterdaysaints.org.
  • Other Mormon-Themed Reading
    • Bamboozled by the CES Letter by Michael R. Ash, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith by Fawn Brodie, The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion by Teryl Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith by Teryl Givens and Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps:  How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life by Teryl Givens and Fiona Givens, “Letter to a Doubter“ (from Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture Vol. IV) by Teryl Givens, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson, Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt by Patrick Q. Mason, Truth Seeking by Hans Mattsson with Christina Hanke, Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy by Colleen McDannell, When Mormons Doubt: A Way to Save Relationships and Seek a Quality Life by Jon Ogden, Lying for the Lord: The Paul H. Dunn Stories by Lynn Kenneth Packer, An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins by Grant Palmer, Restoring Christ: Leaving Mormon Jesus for Jesus of the Gospels by Grant H. Palmer, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men by Carol Lynn Pearson, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Greg Prince, Gay Rights and the Mormon Church: Intended Actions, Unintended Consequences by Gregory A. Prince, The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church by Jana Riess, Devil’s Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy by David Roberts, Letter to a CES Director by Jeremy Runnels, Debunking Fair Mormon’s Debunking by Jeremy Runnels, 35 editions of Salt Lake City Messenger, 150+ BYU Speeches, the entire contents of the website MormonThink.com, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1, The Standard of Truth: 1815-1846
  • Mormon-Themed Podcast Listening Experience
  • You Tube Video Watching Experience
    • 42 videos by The Atheist Experience, 40 videos by Dan Vogel, 43 videos by Flacker Man, 174 videos by Thinker of Thoughts, hundreds of videos about religion, science, and philosophy, including videos from or featuring: Bart Ehrman, Bill Nye, Book of Mormon Central, Closer to Truth, Fair Mormon, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints, Galen Strawson, George Carlin, James Randi, Ken Ham, Lawrence Krauss, Matt Dillahunty, Mike Licona, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Carrier, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Scientology Network, Sean Carroll, The Thinking Atheist, William Lane Craig, and many others.
  • Other Notable Reading, Listening, and Watching
    • Books: Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins, Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide by Richard Dawkins, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer by Bart D. Ehrman, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harrari, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, Free Will by Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, Lying by Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris, Combating Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens, Mortality by Christopher Hitchens, The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Widespread But Can’t Be Computed by Christof Koch, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are by Robert Plomin, The Chosen by Chaim Potok, Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions by James Randi, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, “Why I Am Not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell, The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc., by Galen Strawson, Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
    • Movies and Television: Abducted in Plain Sight, Accidental Courtesy, Allen v. Farrow, Amend: The Fight for America, Believer, Big Love, The Confession Killer, The Confession Tapes, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Cosmos: A Spacetyime Odyssey, David Blaine: Reel or Magic, David Blaine: Street Magic, Derren Brown: Miracle, Derren Brown: The Push, The Devil Next Door, Dexter, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Disjointed, The Family, A Friend of the Family, An Honest Liar, The Innocent Man, Jesus Camp, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, The Keepers, Long Shot, Magic for Humans, Making a Murderer, The Mormons, Murder Among the Mormons, Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, Ozark, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Polka King, The Rehearsal, Religilous, Requiem for the American Dream, The Staircase, Tell Me Who I Am, Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru, The Unbelievers, Voyeur, Westworld, The Wife, Wild, Wild, Country
    • Waking Up, a meditation app by Sam Harris: Series: The Alan Watts Collection: Not What Should Be, Sense of Nonsense, Coincidence of Opposites, Seeing Through the Net, Myth of Myself, Man and Nature, Limits of Language, Relevance of Oriental Philosophy, Mythology of Hinduism, Introduction to Buddhism, Eco-Zen, Taoist Way, Intellectual Yoga, Images of God, Jesus: His Religion, Spiritual Authority, Image of Man, Democracy in Heaven, Religion & Sexuality, Veil of Thoughts, Divine Madness, We As Organism, On Being God, Mysticim & Morality, What is Reality, Mind Over Mind, Philosophy of Nature, The Cosmic Drama, Spectrum of Love, Love of Waters, Game of Yes and No, The Smell of Burnt Almonds, Spiritual Alchemy, Introduction to Eastern Philosophy, On Taoism, Way of Liberation, Introduction to Hinduism, On Hinduism, Religion of No Religion, Wisdom of the Mountains, Diamond Web, Transcending Duality, Four Ways to the Center, Worldly Religions, Ecological Awareness, Education for Non-Entity, Nature of Consciousness, Transformation of Consciousness, The Psychedelic Experience, The Psychedelic Explosion, Turning the Head or Turning On, The Importance of Space, Time and the Future, Future of Comnunications, Future of Religion, Future of Politics, Birth, Death, and the Unborn, Pursuit of Pleasure, World as Play, Play & Survival, World as Self, Individual and the World, and The Power of Space. Sam Harris: The Logic of Practice, Mental Training, Begin Again, What is Mindfulness?, Don’t Meditate Because It’s Good for You, What is Progress in Meditation?, The Cure for Boredom, The Last Time, Gratitude, Solving Problems, The Power of Regret, The Necessity of Thought, Mindfulness & Meaning, The Power of Thought, The Lessons of Death, The Veil of Thought, Just Begin Again, The Path and the Goal of Practice, The Nature of the Self, Looking for What’s Looking, The Social Self, Lose the Monkey, Having No Head, Self & Other, Along with Others, Looking in the Mirror, The Art of Doing Nothing, Where Are You?, Consciousness, What is Real?, The Mystery of Being, On Gurus, A Moral Illusion, Space, Time & Attention, Spiritual Materialism, Gradual vs. Sudden Realization, The Paradox of Identity, Cause & Effect, Thoughts Without a Thinker, Choice, Reason & Knowledge, Love & Hate, Why Do Anything?, James Low: Beyond Interpretation, Constellations of Thought, Naked Awareness, The Field of Experience, The Mind Itself, There Is No Error, Beyond Attachment. Conversations: “Nondual Mindfulness” by Loch Kelly, “Natural Awareness” by Diana Winston, “The Nature of Awarness” by Rupert Spira. Practice: Introductory Course Completed. Life: Series: Jonas Kaplan and Sam Harris: Science of Mindfulness, – Part 1, Science of Mindfulnes – Part 2, Social Emotion. Conversations: “Psychedelic Science” by Roland Griffiths, “The Art of Living” by William B. Irvine.
    • 50 episodes of Making Sense with Sam Harris