Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Draper Temple Open House

On Monday I went to the Draper Temple open house. I got tickets awhile back and had enough for most of my family to go. It was good to be with everyone.

My feelings through the open house were not at all what I expected. I've been trying to figure out how I feel about this whole church thing lately. I've been trying to do a lot of the things I "should" do. I thought my feelings surrounding the temple would be different than they were. I was suprised to be honest.

Recently I had someone in my life make me feel like I wasn't good enough. They based that on my activity in the church. I regret it now, but at the time I let it get to me. I felt like I had to prove myself. I should have never let myself get that low.

I realize now that they pulled out the church card becasue they were too weak to be honest with other things. It wasn't me. It wasn't that anything was wrong with me. Because honestly, if they truly knew me they would know that my spirituality is very robust and strong.

Unfortunately, that day as I walked through the temple it was all very raw for me. Even tho I have completely written that person out of my life (and no longer grieve about it), I still struggled with the fact that I ever let them make me feel that way. As I walked through the temple that day it ate at me...

I find myself angry with it now.

The temple was really pretty tho. It had a lot of gorgeous accents and was well done. Temples are always like that.

I have been thinking about it a lot tho. I remember when I went through the Vatican in Rome. I was impressed with it all. Yet I couldn't help but feel that all that wealth could be used better elsewhere. There are so many needs in the world, I'm not quite convinced that having all that wealth in one area is putting it to good use.

I am starting to feel the same way about temples. I know that they are "A House of the Lord." But would he really want to live that extravagantly? He was, and I beleieve always will be, a humble man. He was giving and caring. Wouldn't he support using that wealth somewhere else?

There are so many people that could benefit from it....

I am all infavor of making the temples beautiful and elegant. Only the best for the Lord... but do we really need to import granite and wood from Africa and China? What's wrong with what we have here in Utah?? Do the brides really need jewels on the handles of the lockers in the brides room? Come on girls... get over yourselves. Feed children in Africa instead. :)

1 comment:

Zannah said...

You know, one of my favorite things about temples is how they're clean and beautiful but generally pretty simple. Compared to the Vatican (which kinda made me want to poke my eyes out by the end) temples are the most humble buildings. In some ways, our temples feel fancy because our church buildings are so plain, when really the temple-fanciness level is about the same as other denominations' church-building-fanciness. I don't know about specific origins of materials, particularly for Draper, but they usually like to highlight the area where the temple is located.

For example, the celestial room in the Copenhagen temple is GORGEOUS, but decorated with traditional Scandinavian stuff, light-colored wood with lots of hand-painting. The doorways were surrounded by hand-painted detail, so it's beautiful and representative, but not expensive. Or take the Bountiful and Mount Timpanogos temples - all of the detail in the woodwork is actually paint as well; the Church is all about trompe l'oeil. Don't worry; the jeweled drawer pulls were definitely fakes. And the Church spends waaaaaay more money on humanitarian efforts than they do on temple construction.

And one other thought: spirituality and faith and churchiness are all very different things. Frankly, I'm *not* a naturally spiritual person. Faith comes easier to me than spirituality. What really matters is what YOU are comfortable with, and if your spirituality is robust (nice word, btw) and you're happy that your spirituality is robust, then Mr. Stupid can suck it. And there's not even a reason to feel dumb about letting someone else get to you; we all hit low points every so often. Thus, I say unto you: meh.