About 6 years ago I began going through a Faith transition. It radically transformed my approach to Mormonism. I was able to discover ways to move forward past much of the pain and struggles that this process caused, in productive and empowering ways. Throughout the years I have been blessed to be familiar with a large amount of incredible and thoughtful people who share our tradition, and through strong spiritual seeking I have come to the conclusion that Mormonism is where God wants me to be. I am grateful for those who have helped me become more familiar with those areas of our religion that are more expansive and inclusive than I had previously been aware of. This is the purpose of this project for me. I believe that a problem that we have in our church and in our culture is that we want to make God too simple and small, by placing him in a nice clean little box. We want to protect individuals from harm, and often do this by creating a more exclusive atmosphere, and even try to get people to do what is “right” but showering them with shame and guilt. Sometimes we do not want to imagine the complexities and to struggle with difficult issues out of fear. We want everything in the church to be perfect, and precise, when this is not the way things really work in this world. However it is my argument that this is only a small part of our culture. I believe in big tent Mormonism, and I believe this is because Mormonism is, or at least can be that way. We are so lucky to have had such incredible leaders and members of our church who promoted incredible theology and inclusive universal messages, but because of fear, their messages are often ignored. Thus in this project I will be promoting their voices. I will share a quote in each episode along with a thought of my own. These episodes will normally be about 1-3 minutes long. If there are ever context issues or points that you disagree with me on, please feel free to comment in the show notes as I would be happy to hear your thoughts. I am so excited to begin this project and to explore some of the amazing thoughts that have been shared from our leaders with you.