Making change, with our tiny little feet

Most of us can't do much, in terms of effecting big changes in the Church and its culture. But the little we can do counts.

I got some bad news last week.

It was actually a couple of things, and they landed on the same day. I’ll spare you the personal details, but as I sat on the train on my way to work, it made me wonder what I should even do next. I was a little bit unmoored. In one part of my life, things had not worked out like I’d planned, and I needed to re-evaluate my next steps. In another was a brush with mortality that was simultaneously expected and sudden.

I put my headphones in, and opened Spotify to find some music to listen to on my commute. But when I searched for a song,¹ the screenshot below is what I got. It was a little too on-the-nose for the day I was having. I couldn’t find the hope I was looking for.

I’ve been writing on this Substack for over a year now. I’ve been buoyed up by finding many more like-minded individuals in the Church than I’d ever expected—people whose deconstruction or faith expansion has led them to a stronger, more durable faith, and who also acknowledge challenges inherent in our Latter-day Saint culture. I’ve tried to use my voice, no matter how weak and no matter how much it shakes, to explore topics that I find challenging and under-represented in our LDS dialogue (including, recently, both patriarchy and complementarianism, which were scary to talk about publicly).

But for those of us who want to effect change, in our Church culture or in our society at large, it can feel like a losing battle. Both are extraordinarily slow-moving. We talk, and talk, and demonstrate our passion, and recruit others to get involved. But no matter how hard we work to convince people that our wards should be welcoming, that we should treat each other as the spiritual siblings we are, and that Jesus really meant it when He said to love our neighbor, we still find ourselves and others unwelcome, treated poorly, and unloved.

But, as seems to happen when I’m feeling that despair, I heard a message the other day right when I needed to hear it. It came from a colleague of mine. He introduced me to a Chinese folktale called (as far as I can tell, in English) “Holding Up the Sky.” It goes something like this²:

One day an elephant saw a hummingbird lying on its back with its tiny feet up in the air.

“What are you doing?” asked the elephant.

The hummingbird replied, “I heard that the sky might fall today, and so I am ready to help hold it up, should it fall.”

The elephant laughed cruelly. “Do you really think,” he said, “that those tiny little feet could help hold up the sky?”

The hummingbird kept his feet up in the air, intent on his purpose, as he replied, “Not alone. But each must do what he can.

“And this is what I can do.”

This isn’t a rah-rah pep talk. Some of us are seeking change that will never happen, or at least not in our lifetimes. I can’t say, and I won’t, that if we just stick with it then we’ll be blessed with the fruits of our labors.

What I like about this story is that the hummingbird doesn’t have any guarantee at all that the sky will be held up, should it start to fall. He doesn’t know if he’ll be successful, or if his effort will matter or even be noticed. He’s willing to put in the work because he believes in it, even if he’s the only one doing it. And without knowing if it can succeed, or if it is destined to fail.

It also stuck out to me that the hummingbird in the story is holding his feet in the air in case the sky falls. It hasn’t started falling yet! And maybe it won’t. Maybe the things that seem so dire to us won’t actually happen the way we fear they will. That’s a best-case scenario.

This message—that success and failure are both on the table, no matter how hard we try—isn’t one that we see show up a lot in the scriptures. We’re used to, instead, the kind of cause-and-effect messages that say if we put in the work, we’ll get the results we want. Like this one, where Paul is talking to the Galatians:

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

But of course, Paul isn’t talking about the work of moving church culture. He’s talking about the law of the harvest; he’s saying that if we sow good works we’ll reap eternal rewards. Instead, there’s a variation on this verse that shows up in Doctrine & Covenants 64 that speaks a little more to me on this topic:

Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.

The broad context of this verse is that the Saints were laying the foundation of the Church itself, and the marvelous work of its restoration. I like to think that this is still going. We’re still laying the foundation of this great work, in what President Russell M. Nelson has called “just… the beginning” of the restoration of the Church. And the Lord doesn’t want us to stop, with the well-doing. He wants us to push through in building the Beloved Community, in being of one heart and one mind, in becoming Zion.

And that requires all of us. You might be familiar with Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech—Brené Brown popularized it in her book Daring Greatly. Some of it bears repeating here:

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds… who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

President Roosevelt knew that the effort was worth it, for the effort’s own sake—even if failure is a possibility. And as Dr. Brown adds:

If you show up and are seen, if you go into the arena, if you create, if you want to be courageous, you will get your ass kicked — that is the one guarantee.

I got my backside kicked last week. Maybe you did too. But this is your reminder to keep doing the work.

If you’re trying to love others as Jesus Christ did, you’re doing the work.

If you’re speaking up for marginalized groups when they can’t speak up for themselves, you’re doing the work.

If you’re teaching your children, or other people’s children, to break a centuries-old generational heritage of racism and sexism, you’re doing the work.

If you’re resisting the urge to judge and hate those who think differently than you—even if you’re just trying—you’re doing the work.

You might not be seeing results from it, or feel like your voice matters. You might feel like your feet are so small, that when the sky comes crashing down there’s no hope that you’ll be able to hold it up.

You won’t be able to do it alone. But each of us can do something.

1. The song I was looking for was “Hope” by NF.

2. As told in Margaret Read McDonald, “Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About” (Linnet Books, 1992).