Angie Jenson | Photograph by Adam Williams
Editor’s Note: This is from the monthly column for the We Are Chaffee Podcast, written by Adam Williams. The column is published in two newspapers local to Chaffee County, Colo.: the Chaffee County Times (Buena Vista) and The Mountain Mail (Salida).
‘We Are Chaffee Podcast’ with Angie Jenson
One of the recurring areas of conversation on the We Are Chaffee Podcast is spirituality and faith. It’s one of those matters of human experience that touches us all in our own ways. Even if by a chosen absence of a faith community or spiritual practice in one’s life.
Angie Jenson and I recently dived into her upbringing in the Mormon Church – and her having sought excommunication from it as a young woman.
That seems like a very courageous and bold, difficult and scary kind of experience to have, especially at a young age. And for Jenson, raised in a Mormon family and community, it was lonely.
“I had never heard of this excommunication thing. No one in my family, no one in my community. It’s interesting because a decade later, I found quite a few people in Salida that have left the Mormon Church. And it’s interesting because I’ll sit with them and I’ll talk, and I’ll be like, ‘Well, what’s your story? How did you do it?’”
It sounds like the process has changed, simplified. From Jenson’s telling, there is a convenient way to extract oneself from The Church online nowadays. But when she did it, she had to face an intimidating exit interview: a young woman, alone, defying the will of a group of older men who would prefer she just quietly slip away for a while rather than officially renounce it all.
Jenson followed her heart. She persisted, despite the uncertainty. In time, she found affirmation.
“I went to Sri Lanka. It’s hard to remember, but maybe a year after I left The Church. I was with some young monks and I was just there as a volunteer. And one of the confirmation moments of my life that I made the right decision was, I was sitting in the monastery and the monks started to do their chanting. And I remember getting the goose bumps. Really, the hair standing up, and feeling this spirit.
“And I said, ‘Wait a minute. I can’t feel this spirit here. This only belongs to the Mormon Church. What am I doing? I’m feeling this connection to the spirit, and I’m in a Buddhist monastery.’
“And that was very confusing to me, but also confirmation of like, ‘Oh yeah, God is too big for just one religion.’ That seems common sense. And now to me at age 47, that’s obviously common sense. But to a young 25-year-old that grew up in The Church and didn’t know anything different, that was a big move. That was a big scenario. When you grow up with a belief system, it’s hard to exit that and do something totally different.”
As for many of us who have flung ourselves afar in the world and come back filled with experiences that have changed us, Jenson kept exploring. “When I got to travel, that was where magic occurred,” she said.
“World travel has been my book to learn from. I’ve traveled internationally every year, mostly since the age of 20-ish. So world travel, and just seeing things in different people in different ways, different cultures, and I’ve had the ability to do that just because I haven’t had family and commitments, and I work a seasonal job. And so I’ve been able to do it every year, at least a month or two of travel internationally, and that’s been just a part of who I am.
“It’s really magical, and I think that was a big part of my spiritual growth is trusting and just going with the flow. I wish everyone could have that experience to see the world in real life, not just through social media or news media, but to actually experience a new culture.”
Jenson and I talked about more than faith and travel on the podcast, of course. As with all the conversations I’ve had with more than 70 of our neighbors in the Chaffee County community, we run deep and wide throughout the humanness of it all.
We Are Chaffee is about getting to the heart of it, seeing each other honestly, learning from each other and strengthening the community. In ways that run truer and deeper than the emotion-stoking artifice of social media and the national news media.
So if traveling the wider world is a reach too far, well, they say “local is global.” We all can learn and grow and share something deeper right here at home. Yeah, that’s what We Are Chaffee is about.
Listen to the We Are Chaffee Podcast, with new conversations publishing weekly at wearechaffeepod.com and on all podcast players (e.g. Spotify, Apple Podcasts). It also airs on KHEN 106.9 FM community radio at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays.
Adam Williams is host, producer and photographer of the We Are Chaffee Podcast. Listen and subscribe to the monthly email newsletter at wearechaffeepod.com. Follow @wearechaffeepod on Instagram.
