Sacred Light

"...Ceremony is essential to humans: It’s a circle that we draw around important events to separate the momentous from the ordinary. And ritual is a sort of magical safety harness that guides us from one stage of our lives into the next, making sure we don’t stumble or lose ourselves along the way. Ceremony and ritual march us carefully right through the center of our deepest fears about change…" ~ Elizabeth Gilbert I am not going to reveal anything that can’t already be found on the internet about the Mormon Church and their temples. Everything I reveal about the temple in this post, and any future posts as well, is from my personal perspective, and my numerous memories from participating in the L.D.S temple ceremonies many, many times. These next two posts will contain my own opinions based upon my experiences and my own interpretation of being a member of the Mormon Church for forty two years, and an endowed member of the church for twenty years. Before I dive into...

         A random but typical polygamist family in the 1800's. No Man Knows My History, by Fawn M. Brodie is an excellent book about Joseph Smith’s history. Chapter twenty four explains the immense mess with Joseph, his multiple wives, John C. Bennett, and the ugly, disgusting truth behind polygamy. This was the first book I read when I started to question the church, and what I had been taught concerning church history. It blew my mind wide open! The fact that Emma Smith didn’t follow Brigham Young to Utah after Joseph’s death was a huge problem for me for several reasons. You would think if Joseph had actually established ‘God’s one and only true church’ Emma would have stayed loyal to its teachings, the new prophet, and would have gone westward as well. Clearly, she feared being destroyed by ‘God’ if she didn’t give in to accepting the practice of polygamy, (‘God’ being Joseph in my humble opinion). In that disturbing revelation of D&C 132, she wa...

"The only men who become Gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy... Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so; I promise that you will be damned. " ~ Brigham Young I need to address polygamy before going on with my story. Polygamy is  the smelly, gigantic, disgusting ‘elephant in the room’ of Mormonism. If you have read my earlier posts concerning Mormonisms 'bat shit' crazy beliefs, then you are aware that  there is polygamy in the Celestial kingdom, (the highest level of the Mormon version of Heaven). Men can have multiple wives in that ‘climax’ level of Heaven. According to Mormonism, God has multiple wives, Jesus has multiple wives, and so can those men who reach this exalted state of being. In fact, some believe it is required to have multiple  wives to enter Heaven; my dad certainly believed that this was true. In October of 2015, I was shocked to learn of his many proposals to a woman in his ward ov...

The last message from mom came to me at the one year mark of her passing.  I recognized Thursday, May 7 th , 2015 as the one year anniversary of her leaving the body behind and re-entering the spirit realm. Even though she died on the 8 th  it was the day, not the date, which mattered to me; and, it was an amazing day reconnecting with my mom! We spent most of the day coloring a picture together.  But, that was just the beginning...              On Wednesday, the 6 th , after doing my evening meditation instead of going up to bed I was inspired to do something different. I went hunting for all of my many art supplies. I had been meaning to start doing art work again; and, at this moment, even though it was late, I was determined to begin.            I had had my mom’s roll top desk for nearly a year now. However, I had not put any of my art materials in it like I thought I would ...