Dr. Hayley Pierce: “Holy Wholly Holey Boxes”

Holy: dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred
Wholly: to the full or entire extent: completely
Holey: having, or being full of, holes.

If you’ve taken my Sociology of Gender class, a common theme throughout it is to shatter the boxes—shatter the expectations that society or others put on you, question the boxes that you put others in, remove yourself from unnecessarily constrained boxes and just breathe, exist, and thrive. I still believe in that conclusion, but I’ve thought long and hard about these boxes that we put ourselves and others in, and I’ve found that the boxes often serve a purpose, in fact, that purpose has become holy to me, and I’ll explain that. But for these boxes to remain holy, they also need to be holey. They need to allow for growth, expansion, difference, creativity, and individuality. Once these holy boxes become holey, that is where we can live and love wholly, as our whole selves. Let me take you through my journey of understanding the role of boxes, that holy boxes need to be holey in order for us to be whole, as God sees us, and to see others as whole too.

Before I dive in, though, let’s make sure we are on the same page. When I say “boxes” I mean the often-limited expectations we place on certain people, things, labels, identities, etc. For example, when I say the word “ball” we generally imagine a similar image. The type, color, and shape of the ball might vary a little bit, but we broadly have an idea of what a ball is, and what it does.

It is possible that you haven’t much considered how we form categories (I’ll call them boxes) as it is just a natural part of being human. “But the fact that humans have the capacity to categorize objects is quite remarkable, and it is one of the abilities that allows us to store an incredible amount of information in our brains… Having categories for things like “apple,” “dog,” and “ball” means that we can group things that are alike, helping us easily store new information, and helping us to make quick inferences about things we’ve never seen before” (LoBue).

What if we did not have the ability to form categories? “It would mean that every time we encountered a new object, we’d have to learn about it from scratch. The fact that we have categories means that whenever we encounter a new apple, we don’t have to learn about it; we can just put it in the “apple box” in our mind and apply what we know about other apples and safely assume that this new apple is a piece of fruit that tastes sweet and is nutritious.” (LoBue).

To someone who studies or is interested in trees, they can probably tell you a lot about these specific trees. To me, they are just pine trees, but to someone with a more detailed tree box, they have a more expansive experience looking at them—perhaps they could tell you their name and where they typically grow. The same can be said for these sports logos, to some, their sports box is limited, to others, they get various emotions looking at these images. They have a more nuanced, exciting experience when looking at these team logos. So, not only do we use boxes to make sense of the world, but we also attach emotions and significant meaning to them, and we often develop a strong emotional response to things, and people, put into those boxes. If you ask my 8-year-old son James about these sports logos, he will get fired up with a passion and energy both for and against some of the teams. We rarely hold an entirely neutral position toward a box, regardless of who or what it describes.

As a demographer, someone who studies the composition of a particular human population and the social dynamics that change that composition—I love boxes. In fact, my kind of research often exists because of boxes. Let’s imagine a large US census survey, for example, what if it was all open-ended questions. What if we asked everyone in the United States to answer the question, “how would you describe yourself?” While the responses would be interesting, how would we ever draw conclusions about the roughly 332 million people of the United States if all, or most of the answers were different? Rather, we rely on a certain number of boxes to keep things simple.

We can learn a lot of important things from boxes. For example, in my research done with colleagues Melissa Jones and Ben Gibbs, we examined the link between school suspension and early adverse childhood experiences including physical and emotional abuse and neglect, parental incarceration, exposure to household interpersonal violence, among others. The use of school suspension and expulsion is a widespread phenomenon in American schools. Yet, much of what we know about these exclusionary practices provide little insight into the personal biographies of the students themselves—specifically their histories of childhood trauma. We found that high schoolers who report four or more adverse childhood experiences were nearly four times more likely to have been suspended or expelled from school compared to students with ACE scores of 0. Additionally, we found that Black youth were 2.5–3.5 times more likely to be suspended/expelled from school than White youth. Our results support additional studies focused on racial bias in school discipline, even when considering childhood background. Our research finds that Black youth are disciplined harshly no matter their childhood background. This research used quantitative survey data, which truly wouldn’t exist without reliance on a limited number of response options. We utilized boxes to look at experiences with early adversity, school suspension, race, gender, and more. Of course, surveys are not perfect at capturing all the nuances that exist among people, but without this survey, full of boxes, I would not have been able to conduct this research and then speak to 50 school counselors about it and about integrating trauma informed practices into their school disciplinary strategies (Pierce, Jones, and Gibbs 2022).

This tendency to group into boxes is particularly useful for grouping things around us and for grouping humans, at least in some cases, such as in survey design. When applied to humans, though, things can get a bit more complicated. These kinds of labels are often attached to our own identities, or the identities we perceive about others. Boxes often allow us to find “our people”. For example, being Children of God is one of the most inclusive boxes I can think of. All humans, no matter what, can fit inside this box. And the best part about it is that this box of being a child of God can be so meaningful, even when it is so inclusive, and perhaps because it is so inclusive. Just because it is something that applies to everyone, does not mean that it can’t be personal and real at an individual level. I am no less a child of God, just because you are one too. We are not fighting for space in this box. Or in any box, for that matter. We can be united in this holy box as children of God.

Some identities that we have are visible for any onlooker, while others are not so visible. Regardless, identities can be holy, whether people see them or not because who we are defines our experience with the world around us. Thanks to an amazing suggestion from my colleague Jane, in my Introduction to Sociology class at BYU I discuss hidden identities on the first day of class. Simply, identity is like an iceberg, some aspects of a person’s self-construal are visible by an onlooker, while many aspects are “under water,” not visible or readily revealed, often because that identity is personal and tends to make life more complicated to navigate if some of those identities don’t match what is popular, dominant, or privileged. I have each student anonymously write one of their hidden identities on a piece of paper that I collect after class. I then compile their identities in a list. Amongst my hundreds of students, here are a few of the identities they chose to share:

Anxiety, depression, biracial, sexual assault survivor, only child, bipolar, introverted, self-conscious, eating disorder, first to go to college, parent, social, non-mormon, loss of a parent, Native American, suicidal, experiencing a faith crisis, mixed sexual orientation, early returned missionary and the list goes on.

The silence in the room, when I read this list each semester, is palpable. I always ask the students what they think about the list. They’ve mentioned that they don’t feel as alone, or as different as they previously thought. They learned that everyone has struggles and hopes and hardships. They learned to be careful about the comments they make in class because we are not all the same.

At the end of one semester, a student emailed me a personal short story, including the following excerpt:

“One Monday turned out to be especially eventful. In the first class that day, we talked about identities, and anonymously, I came out to the entire class. When my professor read my submission out loud (“feeling like I don’t belong because of my asexuality”), it was all I could do to just sit there and try to keep my sobs from shaking my body.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. Had someone learned something new that day? Had someone figured out their own sexuality? How many queer people had been in that class? How many ace people had been in there? How many people had sat there, with tears of their own on their face, thinking, I thought I was the only one? It was that day that I made a decision, or maybe came to a realization, or maybe both at once: I am here to help people.”

Finding companionship and comfort in a shared box, or a label, or an identity and sharing your boxes with others, that, my friends, is holy. Letting people know that you are here, that the things both above and below the iceberg matter, and being loved because of, and not despite these boxes is a holy gift to receive and to give.

When I was thinking about our tendency to put people in boxes, I thought about one of my favorite examples, Jesus Christ, and one of my favorite parables, The Parable of the Lost Sheep. Often times in our anxiety to live God’s commandments, we focus on everything we should avoid to remain righteous, we construct a “this is what it takes to be a good member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints box”. But this tendency can become dangerous when we start to look at life like the Pharisees, who fixated so much on staying uncontaminated from the world that they quantified everything, focused on outward obedience, and turned commandments into a measuring stick. “We should never look at the gospel as a series of limitations or rules. Instead, we should see the gospel how Christ sees it, looking for all the good we can do through it and all the change we can make by it” (Wagner).

In Luke 15 it reads: “Jesus drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him and the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them!” Jesus spake this parable saying, “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing. And he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying, rejoice with me for I have found my sheep which was lost.”

In this parable, the shepherd leaves the 99 in the open field to go after the one lost sheep. Jesus couches this idea in a question that is meant to draw the hearer to action. Will we leave the 99 and go after the one lost sheep? Jesus took the form of the servant and became obedient to the point of death to save us. In order to participate in the mission of God, we too must leave behind some things and go after those who have been “lost.” What prejudices, misconceptions, ideals do we have to leave behind in order to humbly, truthfully, lovingly approach those who may be different, unwelcomed, and misunderstood? We must leave our comfort zones and selfish desires to join God in the mission for the lost sheep.

When Christ was here, he was continually in the pursuit of lost souls, and it was for this reason that he came to Earth to dwell among us. Just as he left the 99 to find the 1, he constantly acted, he went out of his way to come into communication with those who were lost, and he exhibited such kindness towards lost souls that they drew near to him. I am not surprised that the Pharisees looked upon the congregation that was in the presence of Christ and noticed it was the fallen women of the town, the riffraff, the dirty, the sinners, the unwanted, and instead of repelling them, Christ receives them, welcomes them, and loves them. I cannot tell you what all the Pharisees thought of Christ, but they thought as badly of the Lord as they possibly could, because of the company which surrounded him. And so, Christ designs in this parable to defend himself. Not that he cared much about what they might think, rather to tell them that he was seeking the lost—and where should he be found but among those whom he is seeking. Should a physician shun the sick? Should a parent shun their child? Should a community shun their members? Should a shepherd avoid the lost sheep?

We do not always know who is lost, sure, we may think there are obvious signs to look for, but that does not tell us who is lost in their hearts, in their faith, or in their communities.

I have the Minerva Teichert painting “Rescue of the Lost Lamb” hanging in my office. It serves as a reminder that I should be careful how I place my labels on others, or what boxes I put them in. Many silent sufferers would be overlooked if I make assumptions, make judgements, and put up walls. Rather, the painting reminds me to seek out the lost, to follow them over hills and into the desert, to eat with them, and to love them. We each have a shepherding responsibility. How do we begin to search for a sheep if we do not know who we are looking for or where they might go. If we only care to see the top of the iceberg, and won’t accept that what is below the water is just as much a part of their identity as what we can clearly see, then we will not truly know our sheep enough to help them.

We do not know how long the shepherd looked for the sheep. We do not know what sacrifices the 99 sheep who were not lost had to make as they awaited the return of the shepherd, and we do not know the sacrifices the shepherd had to make on behalf of the 1 who was lost. But in the end, when the shepherd and his 100 sheep are reunited, I am sure that they were not thinking about all they had lost. Rather they are celebrating their reunion.

So instead of fixating on all we can’t do or all we have sacrificed, or differences we may have with those who are lost—let’s focus on the good we can do and be ready to act. Focus on finding the Savior and helping them to find the Savior, but realize, in the end, we are ALL sheep to be found. He is the one who is there to lift us, who makes us more than we ever could of ourselves, and who is there to carry us home (Wagner).

Jesus was not deterred by the “lost” box in which the sheep found itself, nor was he distracted by the “not lost” box that the 99 sheep were seemingly in. While these boxes are important for determining who is lost, and who is not, a holey box allows these experiences to look different for everyone. Someone who may appear “lost” to another, may be entirely at peace. While another who appears “not lost” may actually be yearning for comfort and connection. This is where these holy identities need holey boxes.

I have encountered this experience many times in my office as students come to talk to me. They sit in front of me, with the “Rescue of the Lost Lamb” painting behind them and share their souls. They share what is good in their life, what is hard, and what is making them worried and scared and happy. And you know what, they continually challenge my former black and white thinking that I’d use to determine who is lost, and who is safely in the fold. If I let an overly simplified “lost” box guide my interactions with my students, I would be forced to assume that many were unhappy or misguided in their choices, instead of listening to the joy and happiness they have found in their holey holy boxes. Conversely, if I didn’t dig a bit deeper for the students who appear safely in the fold, I wouldn’t learn that they were in fact feeling lonely and lost.

Before I had the honor of teaching thousands of students here at BYU, a lot of my boxes were black and white. I was trying to force all of Gods creations into simple boxes. I was trying to force myself into simple boxes. But my students started to poke holes in the boxes I had created. These holes allowed air to flow into the boxes I had around things like, membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, even how love and happiness should look. Holes where freedom, creativity, and individuality could seep in and permeate the walls of the boxes that were actually quite important to me. These once black and white boxes took on a gradient. It allowed me to see the world and myself and these boxes as a gradient rather than strictly black and white. It allowed me to love my students without the limits of the hole-less boxes. Rather, I learned about them and their boxes and the individuality that colored those boxes. As I learned these things, I also grew to feel immense relief that it is truly just my job to love, rather than judge. I feel like I can breathe and thrive in a way I never could before—by letting myself and my students feel whole, just as we are, without constraints and limitations.

This expansion from black and white thinking into a gradient applies to all things. We learn in Genesis that God created the light and the dark and the land and the water, which are the opposite ends of each spectrum. But those things are each just that, a spectrum. As there is light, and dark, night and day, there is also a sunset and a sunrise. There is dusk and dawn and, at least to me, the beauty of a sunset exists because there is not constantly a sunset. It is the diversity that makes each experience within the spectrum of light worthwhile. Similarly, there is land and there is sea, but there are also marshes and bogs. Very rarely in our world, if ever, is there a perfect binary.

Falling back on this kind of binary categorization can have negative consequences. Indeed, if you were to form categories for groups of people, you could easily make a false assumption about someone based on their category membership. In fact, this behavior is the very definition of “prejudice,” which is the tendency to make assumptions about someone purely based on their membership in a particular group. (LoBue).

This is one of the complication of boxes—on their own, they are rarely nuanced and expansive enough to do people justice. Without holes, they are too constraining. Our boxes are, at least at first, defined by the world around us—our family, peers, media, religion, education, culture, all tell us what a box should look and act like, so we often inherit the expectations of the boxes from the people and the institutions that precede us. But life experiences, an open mind, and an open heart, shapes those boxes into new and holey forms.

I have learned that boxes are complex, and they should be. In some ways, learning that others identify with the same box that you do can be extremely fulfilling. Or even learning that others identify with a similarly stigmatized box, even if the exact label for it is different than yours, you still feel less alone. It is this exact experience where the boxes become holy. They are uniting and comforting. We are placed on this earth to experience the beauties and wonders of it—finding commonalities is one of those ways to feel divinely connected. What is more holy and Christlike than seeing someone for who they are, wholly, and loving them?

As the list of hidden identities from my Introduction to Sociology class, and the Parable of the Lost Sheep show, we are all a bit lost, just in different ways.

Being “lost” is one of those really challenging boxes. When I say someone is “lost” we all start to imagine a series of complex, often negative things—the “lost” box is generally not where we want to find ourselves or others. But maybe this is a great place for all of us to start practicing the art of making boxes a bit holeyer. Take some time to think about your “lost” box—how do you determine when someone is lost, how does that make you feel, why do you think you feel that way? Here is where it gets trickier—think about how that “lost” box is helping, or perhaps hurting, those you put in that box, even possibly yourself. Is there a way to allow for more wiggle room—to see a world in which someone you see as “lost” is in fact, not? Or see that the fears you are attaching to that box are keeping you from loving others wholly, just as they are? Or, is your “lost” box keeping you from recognizing one of lives basic truths—that each of us are lost and need to learn to rely on Christ?

There are countless times throughout my life when I thought I was broken and lost—that I wasn’t fitting the box in the ways I was told I should, or the ways that I thought I should. Similarly, there are far too many times where I exhausted myself by judging the ways other people poked holes in their boxes to make them work better, or seemed to thrive while I thought they were just “lost.” My judgements quickly turned to jealousy. What I’ve learned, though, is that the boxes were broken, not me, and not those around me.

We are all just doing our best to find happiness in a world of complicated boxes, and relying on Christ’s help can be a sure way to get there. But having the support of those around us can sometimes make all the difference. Forming categories is essential for our everyday lives. But the same tendency that allows us to sort objects into boxes can also cause us to put people into boxes, which has some obvious downsides. To fight our natural tendency to want to categorize, it’s important to remember that while categorizing objects is incredibly useful, it is often more useful to think of these boxes as holey—meaning they can be unique and different than expected. Be open to being surprised and enlightened, rather than holding tight to a strict box that is probably not serving them, or you, anyway.

Our Heavenly Parents have created a world of beauty. While all the things in this image fit in the flower box, they are each unique. I don’t think anyone would choose to replace all the diversity of flowers in this image with just one type of flower. It is the same with individuals. Forcing all individuals into one box is like replacing the flowers. We are trying to take the diversity and creativity of God’s children and replace it with a single box that our earthly minds have created and accepted. We are constraining something that is bigger than I think our earthly minds can grasp. Sometimes I think God is up there saying, leave my creations alone. Let them thrive as I have created them. Let them exist in these holy, holey boxes in which I have placed them, and love them wholly, just as I do.

It has been an absolute honor to watch students begin the same journey that I am on—turning black and white thinking into a gradient. Seeing these complicated boxes as both holy and holey, in order to love themselves and others wholly. I am grateful for the grace that students have given me as I have occasionally, though unintentionally, fallen back into my black and white thinking. It has been one of the holiest paths to walk as I learn to love myself and others without the limitations of hole-less boxes. God’s imagination, creativity, and power are so much greater than all of the boxes in the world—let’s not be afraid to embrace these holy wholly holey boxes. Let’s seek that holiness and embrace that holey-ness so that we can wholly embrace God’s love for us and for the community we have together.

References

LoBue, Vanessa. 2022. “Why We Sort People Into Boxes: Infants’ ability to categorize objects can transfer to people.” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-baby-scientist/202211/why-we-sort-people-boxes.

Pierce, Hayley, Melissa S. Jones, and Benjamin G. Gibbs. 2022. “Early adverse childhood experiences and exclusionary discipline in high school.” Social Science Research, 101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2021.102621.

Wagner, Danielle B. 2023. “A new take on the parable of the lost sheep may change how you see yourself in the Church.” LDSLiving. https://www.ldsliving.com/a-new-take-on-the-parable-of-the-lost-sheep-that-will-change-how-you-see-yourself-in-the-church/s/85971.