A Sunday Walk

By Carl Toro

Are you religious, formerly religious, raised religious, or know someone who is? Or perhaps wondering how someone could believe in a religion other than yours?

Have you ever found yourself wondering how and why an otherwise intelligent person, seemingl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Toro
• Release date: Feb 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781917116206

Book preview

A SUNDAY WALK

A Book About Honesty

with photography of the Yuba watershed

Carl Toro

Copyright © 2023 Carl Toro

All Rights Reserved.

No Part of this book may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

ISBN(Paperback):978-1-917116-06-0

ISBN(Hardcover):978-1-917116-07-7

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A lifelong Mormon, who together with his wife had raised their three children to be believing Mormons, Carl finally renounced his faith and his religion.

‘A Sunday Walk’ was written in an autobiographical attempt to explain and understand how a person otherwise guided by reason and logic could have believed in the easily disprovable for so long. It also endeavors to explain and understand the courage and intellectual honesty it took to make a very difficult decision, and the positive changes that resulted.

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DEDICATION

To Meegan

A Sunday Walk

a book about honesty

Carl Toro

Nevada City, CA - c. 2020

PREFACE

For me, a Sunday walk is not just a walk through nature on Sunday. The walk is symbolic, as is the specific day of the week, Sunday.

It seems fitting, since my Sunday walks have in some degree inspired this book, that as its pages meander through the chapters of my life, these chapters are accompanied by a sampling of my Sunday walk photography, mostly of rivers, lakes, and mountains in the northern Sierra Nevada. For me they are an integral part of the narrative.

If nothing else, this book is an intellectually honest account, as I deal with my story of self-examination and the subsequent courage it took to make difficult and fundamental changes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEDICATION

PREFACE

1. AN END AND A BEGINNING

2. EARLY YEARS

3. MY PARENTS

4. MY SIBLINGS

5. HIGH SCHOOL

6. A MORMON YOUTH

7. A MISSION CALL

8. MISSION PREPARATION

9. KOBE JAPAN

10. CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

11. MISSIONARY LIFE

12. AIOI

13. MT. FUJI

14. A BRIGHTER SIDE

15. ANECDOTES

16. CONSTRUCTION AND FIG PICKING

17. A MISSION COMPLETED

18. HOME AGAIN

19. A BODY IN MOTION

20. SACRAMENTO

21. OUCH

22. A BUTTERFLY’S WING

23. A MODEST PROPOSAL

24. NUPTIALS

25. SHOESTRING

26. AN ADDITION

27. CHURCH STUFF

28. ANOTHER ONE

29. DOUBTFUL

30. FURTHER ADDITION

31. TRYING SOME MORE

32. SHERRY

33. THE SPIRIT

34. BIG MEETINGS

35. INVESTING

36. PARENTING

37. UPBRINGING

38. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS

39. SHAPED

40. BUST A MOVE

41. A HOUSE

42. NEW COMMUNITY

43. PREMISE

44. A GOOD QUESTION

45. FEELINGS

46. ONWARD AND UPWARD

47. THEY GROW UP

48. FIRST WORLD WORRIES

49. A CUPBOARD DOOR

50. A STRAW AND A CAMEL

51. A NEW DAY

52. CONSEQUENCES

53. LIFE GOES ON

54. I BIT MY TONGUE

55. A BELIEVER

56. AT FIFTY

57. A SWERVE AND A MISS

58. A BIT OF DRAMA

59. ALIGNED

60. A DESCRIPTION

61. WHAT I WANT

1. AN END AND A BEGINNING

Memory can be an odd thing. I still remember the book about Mormon history I had just finished and the sofa I was sitting on when I allowed myself to fully and completely acknowledge something which had slowly become impossible to ignore: namely, the church into which I was born, the faith to which I had devoted my life, the religion in which my wife and I had raised our three daughters, was not true, was not what it purported itself to be. I can recall this memory, this moment of full acknowledgement, as if it were yesterday.

I was at our home in Nevada City. It was a quiet afternoon, and I was by myself, just me, the book, the sofa, and this realization. This realization that my church was not true, even though I wanted it to be true. It was not the restored Gospel here on the earth, led by a prophet and founded by a holy martyr. It could not be what I had been led to believe, by people I had trusted. Years of thoughts and questions aside, this moment, this moment of admission, was to me a singularity— a singularity which has since become a stark dividing line in my life.

It is difficult to convey the emotions and feelings which attended this acknowledgement. Foundational beliefs, teachings, and concepts which I had always known to be true, I now knew could not be true. Things I had always looked forward to, and expected, had become only impossible dreams and hopes. Things I wanted to be, could never be.

It would be hard for anyone to look at my life thus far and say that I had not given my church and my faith a fair shake, that I had not tried hard enough or long enough. My entire life, 50 years up to this point, was nothing but a Mormon life. I was born into the church, baptized at 8, ordained to the priesthood at 12, went on a mission at 20, met a Mormon girl and got married in the temple at 26, raised three children completely immersed in the mormon religion, and remained true to my church the whole time. In other words, I could check off every box on the checkoff list called A Male Mormon's Rites of Passage. I had been sincere in my efforts, kept the standards, and said I knew my church was true. Together with my family, I had sacrificed much. My whole life had been lived based on the premise that I belonged to God’s one true church, and it was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And yet, there I was on that sofa.

It is difficult to put into words or explain the courage this acknowledgement required. The courage to purposefully jettison five decades of life investment does not come easy. The courage to say to yourself first, and then to everyone you know, I was fundamentally wrong, commands a high price. It would have been much easier, simpler, and more convenient to remain where I was. Keep going to church, keep putting doubts and concerns on that mental shelf in the back of my mind, instead of honestly examining them. It would have been much easier to continue along the path I had trod my whole life. Keep closing the door on the large cupboard lined with shelves where I had placed all my concerns and doubts, shelves which, unbeknownst to me, had finally run out of space.

Oliver Wendell Holmes was right when he said, Certitude is no test for certainty. In other words, just because I feel certain about something does not make it certain. Much of my former certitude had fled, and, ironically, it had been chased away by reality. Reality, however uncomfortable, was the path demanded by my newly found knowledge. Or rather, it was the path now mandated by my willing exposure to evidence. I was left without a choice. My own integrity demanded it. My worldview had drastically and forever changed— into what, I was not yet sure.

This singularity of acknowledging to myself that my church was not true precipitated many new thoughts and feelings that washed over me in waves as I sat there on the sofa. I was a grown man who had raised a family when this realization happened, and one question quickly rose above the rest: How was it possible that it had taken me so long to come to this realization? How, especially when the flawed nature of my beliefs and convictions were not really difficult to expose, once I summoned the courage to look. Once I summoned the courage, after being slowly and almost imperceptibly backed into a corner by an unrelenting, grinding, glacier of evidence.

Sitting there on the sofa, I had many thoughts going through my mind, and foremost among them was my family. One central teaching of Mormonism is that ‘families are forever,’ but my pained suspicion was that this change could divide my family. What about my three children, teenagers now, how would I tell them? How to say to my daughter Julia, You know all those soccer games I did not let you participate in because they were on Sunday, and playing soccer on the Sabbath day is not something members of our church do? I’m sorry. How easy was that going to be for me to say, and how easy for her to hear? What about my eight believing brothers and sisters? Brothers and sisters whom I flattered myself maybe looked up to me in some small measure. That surely was about to change, and likely not for the better. How would I break the news to them? What of my church friends? (And most of my friends were church friends.) What about the people I had baptized as a missionary?

What about other things, non-religious things, that I believed in? What else was I mistaken about, or in the dark about? All of these and many, many more were questions with ramifications that would have to be dealt with, now that Pandora’s Box had been opened.

I sat on the sofa knowing that all of this would involve upcoming and unknown changes, some of which would prove to be quite difficult. How does a person end up in such a tangled predicament? For me, it all started at birth.    

2. EARLY YEARS

I was born in 1960 in San Jose, California to John and Beulah Toro. Born in the Covenant, as they say in the Mormon church, meaning a member from birth. Sherry, Charlotte, Steve, Darlene, Heidi, Jim, Sue, Dave and Becky are my siblings, ten including me. The Mormon church is not unique among religions in encouraging large families; however, it does a better job of accomplishing it than most.

Growing up, we moved around quite a bit. San Jose, Fresno a couple of times, Sanger, Auberry, and Selma. With the exception of San Jose, all were medium or small towns in central California. My parents never owned a house, employment often was unstable, and we always were very poor. As a kid, the concept of being poor was there, but without significant meaning or context. My awareness of poverty has increased with age and has only been better understood as an adult raising my own family. How poor were we? So poor that only twice can I remember going to a restaurant, both times paid for by others. Only once a vacation, to Arizona to visit our Aunt Alma. I remember food being less than abundant and very limited in selection. Once, when I was little, I went to a drive-in movie and saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarves; I didn’t see my next, my second movie, until I was a junior in high school. I was raised without TV; partly cost, mostly principle. I worked construction jobs in my teens and gave part of my paycheck to my parents, and it seemed normal. Suffice it to say, we were poor enough that I now know that poverty is not a virtue.

In spite of our poverty, I have mostly fond childhood memories. I had friends, did well in school, played with my siblings, had plenty of chores, enjoyed being outside, and went to church. I went to church every single Sunday without exception. My life was infused with the Mormon version of Christianity and a Mormon version of reality. Both of my parents were very devout and expected their children to be the same, and we were. They were also very strict, though in my memory, and towards me, never with malice.

Like most religions, Mormonism has various rites of passage. It starts as a baby when you are blessed in front of your church congregation, usually by your own father, if he is a worthy priesthood holder. If all goes as it should, the next rite of passage is baptism, at the age of eight. As an eight-year-old in the Mormon church, you now are considered to be answerable for your actions and able to make an informed decision to formally join the church. You have reached the so-called age of accountability. Even though you might still believe in Santa Claus, you are wise enough to choose your church. My vague memory is that the event of my baptism made a rather anticlimactic impression on my eight-year-old self.

Upon turning twelve, Mormon boys can, and are expected to, receive the holy priesthood. This priesthood, we were told, is literally the authority to act on God’s behalf here on earth. And I, as a twelve-year-old boy, had this priesthood conferred upon me.  Girls, of course, are denied this opportunity, being the wrong gender. I received this Aaronic priesthood, the lower level of two priesthoods, from my father in an ordination ceremony when I turned twelve. This mostly just allowed me to pass the sacrament of bread and water to the congregation on Sundays. It did not help me play football or basketball any better.

During all my childhood going to church meetings, the church’s teachings, doctrine and dogma were also taught and reinforced at home. Our family had daily family prayer, prayer over meals, personal prayer both morning and night, reading and discussing the scriptures, discussions of right and wrong, and the fact that there were right ways and wrong ways, with not much in between. The Mormon church does not deal in very many shades of gray, certainly not fifty. While not all of my family life was directly church related, much of it was, and any of it could be.

3. MY PARENTS

My father came from a large family that had immigrated from Estonia in the early 1900s. The political unrest in Russia, and by extension, Estonia, seems to have been the impetus for the move. The story goes that upon arriving in New York, my father’s father was robbed of most of his money. Regrouping, he and his family eventually homesteaded in Wyoming. Life on a farm and cattle ranch, without much to start with, was a difficult proposition which included cold, harsh winters and not much food. I remember reading a part of my father’s sister Julia’s diary about her discovering a partially burnt baked potato in the fireplace when she was cleaning out the ashes. You would have thought that she had found a large chunk of the finest Swiss chocolate, she was so happy. My grandfather was a hard man. He was tough on his children and tougher still on his wife. My dad spoke fondly of his mother and siblings, but he never said much about his father, other than that he had been a medical doctor in the Red Army, prior to immigrating to America.

Like all of us, my dad was partly a product of his environment. When I was a young child, he seemed like a good enough parent. He would tell stories, explain things, especially how things worked. He and my mother introduced me to gardening. My dad taught me what foods and practices he considered healthy and unhealthy, shared with me his love of classical music and his disdain for, and utter lack of understanding of, popular music (if you could even call it music). He taught me an Estonian folk song that I still somehow remember, held forth on the government and very conservative politics, taught and expected me to read the scriptures and pray and pray and pray, helped me build projects, got me in trouble when he felt it necessary, spanked me when he thought that was needed (frequently enough, usually with his hand or a belt), helped me with Cub Scouts--being particularly interested in the Pinewood Derby races--and taught me to respect my mother and not hit girls.

Especially after I became a parent with my own three wonderful daughters, I came to realize some things about my father that could never have been appreciated or noticed when I was just a kid. My father’s upbringing was different than my own, and mostly not in ways that could be considered good. Looking back, it seems he had a hard time emotionally connecting with his children. I have no memories of him being interested in my situation or life in any meaningful way, and I only received admonitions or counsel that had church-based roots. I also had many chores which I was expected to perform. Not by way of a purposeful attempt to instill a strong work ethic or impart a lesson on the value of work, although that was an unintended consequence, but simply because there was work to be done and children to do it. As a young kid and all through high school, I had an interest in and an affinity for sports. Basketball, football, baseball, swimming, etc.; I enjoyed them all. To my father, these sports interests of mine appeared as curiosities, as wasted time and energy, meaningless and trivial. Of the many, many sporting events I participated in, my parents never attended a single one. It didn’t seem that odd at the time, and it wasn’t until one cold, rainy day while standing on the sidelines of one of my daughter’s many, many soccer matches (something which I mostly enjoyed), that I realized the stark difference between how I parented and how I had been parented. Not by way of judgment, as I understand that their world was different from my own.

Later in my life, after I left home, I mainly stayed in contact with my mother. I would talk with my father occasionally, if he answered the phone, but it was of little substance, usually church related chit chat, until he turned the phone over to my mom.  I never thought to solicit advice or help from my father, and none was ever forthcoming. I do not ever remember getting a phone call or a letter from him. Again, at the time it did not seem odd or out of place. It was just my normal, and his normal as well. Another part of my normal was that I would occasionally send money home to my parents, even though I was hardly able. It seems my dad in some ways did not have what it took to stay employed in one place for very long. Certainly not long enough to develop earning potential. Money was chronically short, with never enough to go around.

In his heart of hearts, my dad was a thinker and an inventor. There seemed to be a causative relationship between this and our chronic poverty. Add to the recipe an abundance of offspring, and things became even more intractable. In my memory, he never had a job for very long, never had a career. For many years, he was involved in developing a soil moisture monitoring probe that mostly had agricultural applications. The need for the potential product was there, the concept semi-sound, but the business acumen was sorely lacking. He worked on this device for years, and success was always just around the corner, and ultimately remained there. He loved to tinker and build and was adept at both. The product of his environment, he was naturally frugal and kept things, rather than throw them out. I still possess one of the few items that I inherited from him, a collection of about eight or ten ¼ hex nuts on a wire ring with a label in his distinctive handwriting that reads damaged." He saved stripped, bent or otherwise damaged hex nuts. It is hard for me to appreciate the mental process that went with that.

My father was a WWII veteran who served stateside in the US Army helping develop and refine radar, although he talked about his military experience hardly at all.  He had a keen understanding of electricity and electrical devices. For a number of years he owned and operated a small electrical repair shop in Sanger, California called Warranty Electronics. I don’t know how or why that ended, but I do remember the used, red radio he gave me and listening to music and stories at night before bed. He also liked to explain how things worked, especially if you showed some interest, and I usually did.

My father was a flawed man, a man of unrealized potential. He was intellectually inclined, capable of understanding and discussing complex matters, helpful, loved classical music, enjoyed gardening, was pious to a fault, unassuming, a man of unquestioning religious faith, a follower, a dreamer, and someone who did okay considering his circumstances. Without looking too hard, it is easy to see some parts of him in myself. I think he loved his wife and children in his own way, although I will never know.

At his funeral I gave the eulogy. After the standard recitation of who, when and where, I spoke about my dad, John Toro, as a person and what he meant to me. After all was said and done, I think he passed on to me more good and less bad than he had received. He allowed me to start at a better place and from a better vantage point than he had started from. I guess we all hope we can do at least that.

When I think back on my mother, a sense of fondness pervades, perhaps in a slightly sentimental way, which fondness for some reason does not attach to many memories of my father. Sometimes I miss her, and I would love to be able to speak with her again, to hear her laugh. To ask her about her garden, what she made for dinner, and about her cute grandkids. To have her tell me only the good things about everyone, because my mom did not say bad things about people, even the deserving. If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all, were words from my mother.

Like my father, she came from a less than ideal family situation. Her mother, Esther, was Danish. When Esther was a young lady, she left Denmark with the goal to travel around the world, but reality intervened when she met a man and settled in Pasadena.  I have a few memories of my grandma Esther, mostly of a stern and grumpy old lady, someone who would yell at a probably overactive young boy to stop running in the house. These are the sum total of my grandparent memories. All I knew about my mother’s father was that he was a chef, and a good one, that he had reddish hair, and that he was an alcoholic who had died fairly young in a car accident. My mother’s older sister Inger was the only aunt I knew, and a very good one she was. Aunt Inger and her children, ‘the cousins,’ lived in Sanger and then Fresno and were a part of my life as a child growing up. The cousins were all older than me, and some of them did exotic things like go to Europe or grow their hair long. Aunt Inger’s husband, Uncle Leland, owned a gas station, smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, and had tattoos because he had been in the Navy. Such are the memories of a child.

In my family, my mom pretty much ran the household. She assigned chores and made sure they happened. She cooked the meals and cleaned the house, inside and out, making sure her children helped, whether they liked it or not. She was in charge of the garden and the animals. She was a well-practiced expert at making do with very little. She canned and dried fruit, and she made bread from wheat that she had ground into flour. It is from my mom that I learned how to cook, and to enjoy cooking. She never used a recipe that I can remember but was rather a-bit-of-this, and some-of-that, type of cook. She baked bread in large fruit juice cans, so that she could fit eight upright loaves at a time in the oven. I can still see her oiling the inside of the cans with a small rag on a stick dipped in oil. Round slices of whole wheat bread baked in a fruit juice can was a staple, and sometimes one of the only staples.

Flowers, vegetables and fruit were all part of my mom’s gardening, and being in the fertile and agriculturally rich central valley towns of California helped my mother’s gardens thrive. We had large gardens that provided food for the dinner table. Sometimes we were able to even have a complete dinner meal from the garden, something I remember well. Roses, zinnia, Dutch iris, nasturtium, dogwood, naked ladies, orange blossoms, and pansies are just a few of the flowers that I associate with my mom. Many of these I have planted around my house, and they provide me with ongoing satisfaction and pleasure. We lived in the central San Joaquin Valley where almost anything grows, and farming and agriculture are the dominant industry. We would go pick apricots, nectarines, pears and peaches and bring them home and dry them on the trampoline, and then my mom would put them in quart jars. Fruit as good as candy, all winter long. With permission from many local farmers, we would glean almonds and walnuts in the autumn after they were harvested, and we would crack and eat them all winter long. Going out in the cold and picking up walnuts off the ground for hours was not the funnest thing in the world to do as a child, and it took some parental encouragement.

Like my father, my mother was pious and very religious. She had converted to the Mormon faith as a young adult, and as a woman, her worldview was a stalwart Mormon worldview. Her faith seemed without question. She raised her children to be the same, and it by and large worked. She deferred to my dad at home, as he held the priesthood, and in the Mormon religion, that matters. Her devotion was to her family, and she worked tirelessly for her children. She taught us to love each other, love our fellowmen, and love and trust the church. Two out of those three have stuck with me. As I look back on my mom, her simple faith was without nuance. She was not inclined to question, she was inclined to obey.

She was kindness, generosity and concern for others personified, perhaps to a fault. One of my earliest memories encapsulates the kindness and forbearance she exhibited. I must have been four or five. The house we lived in then was in Fresno, and it had a tile entry with a wall on one side that did not go all the way up to the ceiling, and a living room on the other side of that wall. On top of this short wall was a vase. Well, one of the cardinal rules in the house was that you did not throw a ball of any kind inside. Go outside and do that. I can even remember that it was a football that I threw. The vase came crashing down onto the tile and loudly shattered. I quickly went to see the damage and was closely followed by my mother. She knelt down next to me and just started to cry softly. No words of anger, or reminders of the stupid thing I had just done, or the reasons why we didn’t throw a ball in the house, just softly crying. After a moment she gained her composure and told me the vase was a special present from her mother and that it was very old and had come from Denmark. Even as a young boy, I felt worse than if I