Talk like a Mormon: Moving through the Ranks - Young Women

Just as boys progress through organizational ranks in the Mormon Church, so too do girls. Beginning at the age of 12, Mormons girls are said to be part of "Young Women's," short for "The Young Women's Organization." There are three ranks or groups within the organization. On Sundays, the three groups meet separately for classes. They also meet collectively with the Young Women's presidency within the ward, both on Sunday and for activites during the week (remember that "ward" is the word both for the local congregation, which is determined entirely geographically, and for the actual meeting house where the ward congregates). The presidency is a group of women chosen (or "called") by the ward leadership (the bishop and his councilors - all male) to work with and guide the young women. Young Women's President is a bit of a banner "calling," or position, within the ward. A woman would never aspire to it, since callings don't work that way. But most women, at least publicly, would be thrilled and honored to be called to the position, since it is pretty much expected that the young women they work with will regularly comment (at least at church) on what an example the president is to them. Each rank or group within the organization would also have its own presidency, chosen from among the young women within the group. The three ranks are:

1. Beehive: 12- and 13-year-old girls are called "beehives." Since girls are never allowed to attend "Young Men's" (i.e., priesthood), or boys "Young Women's," I can't tell you precisely what beehives do during their classes. I do know that all of the young women have "values" that they spend a lot of time reciting: "Faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity." Each value has an associated color, so when the Young Women's presidency decorates for a ward event, it looks a bit like a gay parade of rainbows. As neophytes in the organization, beehives probably spend some time learning about the values - and learning to recite them endlessly in just the right order. For the mid-week activites, beehives tend to get paired up with deacons (12- and 13-year-old boys). These regularly occurring, social (and sometimes service-oriented) activites where boys and girls co-mingle are called "mutual" (short for "The Mutual Improvement Association"). Here's a sentence that correctly illustrates the ways these terms are used: "There's a new beehive in the ward - I saw her at mutual last night." Incidentally, beehives are not called by that name because of their preferred hairdo. The beehive is a symbol selected by Mormons for themselves (and, by extension, for Utah) because they regard bees as industrious workers. Why specifically the symbol is attached as a name for 12- and 13-year-old girls is probably best answered by a serious Mormon historian (or Wikipedia). Rest assured, however, that most Mormons themselves haven't given this a lot of thought; beehives are simply what girls in this age group are called because the Church says this is what they are called.
2. Mia maid: 14- and 15-year-old young women are called "Mia maids" (the first word is pronounced "my-uh," like "Mayan" without the "n"). The term comes from M.I.A., which in Mormon parlance stands for Mutual Improvement Association (see above). Over time the acronym began to be pronounced as a word and spelled as a proper adjective. One would never call these young women "maids"; they are always referred to as "Mia maids." Again, I don't know exactly what they do in their meetings. It's probably telling, however, that young women would know at least some of the special responsibilites of young men (that deacons pass the sacrament, for instance), whereas young men don't know what young women do - in large part because there are no rituals, duties or assignments performed publicly by young women before the entire ward, as there are by young men. As a boy, all I really knew with certainty about Mia maids was that they liked to giggle a lot and alternately flirt with and mock teachers (that is, 14- and 15-year-old young men). But then, so did I...
3. Laurel: Laurels are lovely, all fresh-faced and virtuous - at least in the Mormon imagination. Since they are 16- and 17-year-olds, they are young women in body and spirit, as well as in name. By this point you have surely already anticipated that I really don't have a clue what they do in their classes, either. My guess is they spend some time working towards an award, called "The Young Womanhood Recognition Award," which is a medallion worn on a chain. I know this only because occasionally during Sacrament meeting (the main meeting during the three-hour block of meetings on Sunday - the one where the entire ward meets together regardless of age or gender), laurels who have earned the award are recognized. Lucky laurels get to date upstanding priests (16- and 17-year-old boys who hold the priesthood), since dating is officially allowed beginning at the age of 16. Ideally the dates would be double dates (there is safety in numbers), and the laurels would find modest but pretty earrings to match their award medallions.

The Organization Religion

Mormons are highly organized people. This cultural characteristic is probably a holdover from the early days, when the members of the church were forced from place to place: from New York they went to Ohio, then to Missouri, then to Illinois, and then finally to Utah. Tight organization was a survival technique. Brigham Young, who led the Mormons to the Salt Lake valley, has been called a modern Moses for leading his people on a great exodus through the desert to what they decided was a promised land. To accomplish the migration, Mormons stuck to a tight organizational model whereby they were placed in various "parties" and then as separate parties drove their wagons and pushed their carts all the way to the Great Salt Lake. Establishment Mormons today trace their lineage to individual parties that crossed the plains (you might think of it as akin to the Boston Brahmins citing the ships they crossed over on). I’m fifth-generation, but I’m not quite “Mormon Establishment” enough to be able to cite an ancestor who belonged to one of the very first parties who crossed the plains to Utah. Mine came a few years later.

Of course, it wasn't called Utah when the first Mormons arrived in 1847. To them it was Zion. Mormons were and are big on finding (or forcing) parallels with Biblical Israelites. Brigham Young is the stand-in for Moses. The Great Salt Lake is the Dead Sea – and a river that flows into the Great Salt Lake was named by Mormons the Jordan River. The Salt Lake Temple is Solomon's temple. The Salt Lake Tabernacle (where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir – or “Mo Tab,” as Mormons affectionately call it – sings) is the tabernacle in the wilderness, where worship occurred before the temple was built. Even polygamy, it should be noted, was something Joseph Smith took from the Old Testament.

Once the Mormons arrived in their Zion, the church hierarchy again organized the population, using terms that still hold today. Larger geographical areas (throughout the world at this point, and not just in Utah) are divided into "stakes." This term was originally used because stakes are what hold a tent firm to the ground, and a tent is what the Israelites used for their tabernacle while traveling in the wilderness. Stakes in turn are divided into "wards," which are essentially local congregations. Wards meet in buildings that are called ward houses or chapels, and some ward houses are larger because they also function as stake houses or stake centers, where a combined conference of all wards in the stake may occasionally occur. When Mormons say they are going to the stake house, they don't mean Sizzler.

Because the boundaries of stakes and wards are set centrally by inspired church leaders, individuals do not choose which ward they wish to attend. Instead, Mormons are automatically members of the ward in which it is divinely determined that they live. In other words, just as you can't choose your family, you can't choose your ward – unless you opt to sell your house and move. And just like a family, a ward becomes close, in no small part because you spend so much time with your ward members.

But Mormons aren't only organized at the level of the community. There's also a lot of pressure to be organized at the level of the peer group and the individual. When I turned 12, I was, like all active boys of that age, ordained to the office of a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood. The Aaronic Priesthood is called the "lesser" or "preparatory" priesthood (holding it is meant to prepare you for the Melchizedek Priesthood, which active adult men 18 or over can hold). Ordination to the Aaron Priesthood is a major rite of passage for Mormon boys, something akin to a bar mitzvah for Jewish boys. The analogy is particularly apt since the first office of the Aaron Priesthood, that of deacon, allows boys to take an active part in the administering of the most important weekly ritual: the passing of the bread and water (Mormons may not drink alcohol of any type) during the sacrament portion of the main meeting on Sundays.

Before church on the first Sunday I was eligible to pass the sacrament, the leaders of the deacons' group (deacons themselves) came over to teach me the carefully orchestrated patterns of passing. The plan wasn't unlike a secret football play dreamed up by the boy president of the deacons' quorum. We each had numbers that told us where to sit during the first part of the meeting, where to stand as the older boys who blessed the sacrament handed us our trays of bread and then water, and what pattern we'd branch out in to make sure that every person present got a chance to eat a little piece of that blessed Wonder bread and drink water from a tiny disposable paper cup. If you were assigned the number one position, you got to go up on the stand and serve the bishop (the lay leader of the ward), who, out of respect, was always offered the bread and water before anyone else. If you were a number three you took the front half of the left side aisles. If you were a number eight you did the very back overflow rows, where latecomers and moms with fussy babies sat. Just like a quarterback, the president of the deacons' quorum might assign you any number, so it was important to know the play well. Mess it up, and the whole holy ritual might look disorganized, and the bishop might have to stand up to ask whether there was anyone who did not have a chance to partake of the sacrament. No one wanted to be the cause of that humiliation.

New deacons were almost always given the number one position, and I am proud to say that this part of my story is not an anecdote about failure. I performed beautifully that first time as the deacon who served the bishop his morsel of bread and his splash of water. And I successfully served all other people (the speakers, the choir, etc.) sitting on the stand, as well. If the bishop did have to get up later that Sunday to ask whether everyone had had a chance to partake of the sacrament (because he suspected not everyone had), it wasn’t my doing.

Careful planning and organization were encouraged at a personal level, too. It was also at the tender age of 12, after being ordained as a deacon, that I was encouraged to start organizing my life with a day planner. Franklin planners (now called Franklin Covey planners) were all the rage at church when I was growing up in the 1980s. Just as you were expected to bring your copy of the scriptures each week to church, you also brought your day planner. This was probably a real necessity for a lot of members, since church meetings, church activities, and church obligations throughout the week were so numerous that they could literally take over a person’s life. It turns out that organizational skills are just as necessary for the survival of modern Mormons as they were for those pioneer ancestors.

Those same obedient youth who were using Franklin planners at church were also using them at school. I, on the other hand, found that the (totally awesome) Trapper-Keeper was working well for me at school, and already at that age I was interested in keeping my academic life separate from my religious life. So I didn't bring my Trapper-Keeper to church. I did bring my scriptures to church (that was non-negotiable), but I resisted the pressure to purchase the Franklin (even just for church use) and attend classes on how to use it. There must have been youth leaders who shook their heads sadly at my disorderly obstinance. I imagine them saying, in a meeting where they discussed the progress of each of the youth, "He thinks he can get by without one, and perhaps he can for now. But what will happen once he's an adult and has a job and a wife and children and a church leadership position?" Then a cliché, much loved by Mormons, springs to mind: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And, ultimately, fail I did – at least at organizing my life within the hard boundaries of Mormonism. My organizational skills, however, are what many a supervisor has called heaven-sent.