Reading this I thought of a comment, written in frustration, that I feel like I am only catching every third or fourth thought, and only every tenth chance to serve. Increasing this analogy, even every third, or every tenth number still goes on to infinity.

Thank you. I needed this now.

I’d just like to be in the room where the table stands.

You have given me a fundamentally new perspective on something: totally surprising, delightful, and astonishingly simple. Once you see it, it is so simple, you feel foolish that you didn’t see it all along.

This post is not about any one specific person — it’s not about Jack, and it isn’t even about me, in particular. (I made up the silly “Ardishood” because I so hate the word “personhood.”) It’s about all of us, individually, and anyone’s individual set of God-given gifts, regardless of gender, regardless of priesthood, regardless of parenthood, regardless of any other quality which we use to separate each other into groups.

I’m not calling anyone — including Jack — immature, at least not in a way to distinguish one person from every other mortal. All of us, in mortality and probably for a very long time hereafter, are immature and have limited perspective. How can anyone claim to be other than immature, or have a perspective other than limited, or think that I’m claiming to be otherwise myself, in the context of infinity and eternity? My mortal immaturity on occasion makes me long for certain gifts I don’t have, rather than developing those I do have, or remembering that one day I’ll have any necessary opportunities that I lack today. That longing, which sometimes sinks to coveting, is a common consequence of occasionally losing sight of eternity.

And no, I don’t have it all worked out, and no, I don’t claim to have resolved all the difficulties in my life or yours with regard to womanhood and priesthood and motherhood and any other kind of -hood. I can *know* something deep in my soul without always understanding it with my head or feeling it with my heart. I falter at times, just as I suppose you do. I can *know* something is right without having the wisdom and strength to live up to it all the time. You can’t possibly guess how hard or long or often I have struggled and still struggle to find practical resolutions for the problems and paradoxes you claim I am glossing over.

And finally, no, I don’t endorse all the comments left here, even when I haven’t specifically argued against them.

As for your parting shot, good luck with that.

To start quantifying the blessings and responsibilities within the infinite and boundless Gospel of Jesus Christ into the physical realm of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” is extremely short-sided. The mortal sphere in-which human beings operate under the guidance of revelation and faith is but one small stepping stone in the infinite magnificence of Eternity.

I did not fully understand this concept until I experienced the work and teachings within the Temple. The blessings and privileges which we can be granted by our Father in Heaven are limitless. They can’t simply be counted on our fingers and put through a calculator to display some sort of inequality in the temporal realm.

Any Priesthood holder who deems himself “better” or “greater” than a woman who does not bear the same responsibility, as the Doctrine and Covenants put it, “Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.”.

This is why I have difficulty in understand why someone would feel some sort of jealousy for this. Priesthood power and responsibility isn’t a badge or an award to wear. It is a power that can only be “maintained…by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned”. There is no need to feel “less” than someone else, precisely because the animosity and jealousy is most certainly not reciprocal by the humble, worthy, Priesthood holder.

As a father and husband I feel the utmost respect and honor toward my wife and mother of our children. She is light-years above me in both gifts and righteousness. I am humbled by her innate ability to nurture our children, run our home, and comfort me in a way that I could never understand. She did not need an external power granted upon her to obtain this gift – it was something she was born with.

In my opinion, if God requires men to receive a gift through the laying on of hands based on requirements of righteousness, yet a woman needs no such external bestowal or requirement for her gift, it says quite a lot about which gender is the predisposed higher being in the eyes of God.