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When my husband and I were first married, we lived in Miami Beach, in an area with a high concentration of Orthodox Jews.
I knew a bit about Judaism from a world religion class I took in college, but living among the Jewish people, I watched and learned from their daily practices. We became accustomed to seeing families walk to synagogue on Saturdays. We saw how they prepared for Passover and the High Holy Days.
During the Feast of the Tabernacles, they built temporary shelters outside their condominiums or on their small patios, where they ate their meals. At night, I would crank open the windows and listen to them chant in Hebrew until dawn.
As a devout member of my own faith, I found their worship inspiring. It made me want to live my own religion with that same consistency.
On April 23, a temple for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, opened its doors to the public in Springfield.
For members of the LDS Church, this is an exciting event, one we have been anticipating for several years. A temple is different than a meetinghouse. For one, we don’t hold Sunday services there, with a sacrament, Bible study, and primary for the kids. Instead, the temple is a place where we make promises to God both for ourselves and vicariously for our deceased ancestors.
Like many major religions, we have sacred spaces, rituals and ceremonial clothing. What we do in the temple is considered sacred. On each of our temples are the words: “House of the Lord; Holiness to the Lord.”
Unlike our meetinghouses, the temples are not open to the public. There are certain standards you have to meet to enter the temple. But for one more week, our temple is open to anyone who would like to visit. If you are curious about this structure in your midst, I invite you to come and take a look.
Most people know about our faith from The Book of Mormon musical, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives or the Hulu miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, which are all such thoughtful, nuanced media portrayals of how we live our lives.
Or…maybe not. These shows bear little to no resemblance to my own life, or the lives of most Latter-day Saints. In fact, I rarely see accurate, nuanced media portrayals of any faith-based experience, because the kind of daily practice that most religious people live doesn’t make for good entertainment. It is quiet and internal. It happens as a person kneels in prayer, reads scripture or supports a sick friend with a hot meal. It happens through visits to the elderly, or in an especially attentive early morning Bible study for our youth.
It is easy to mock and ridicule another person’s beliefs when we see them from the outside, splashed across the cable networks or on a billboard advertising a Broadway musical. As humans, we want to put people in boxes and affix labels, which is unfortunate, because we have so much to learn from one another.
Years ago, I sat on a long flight between a devout Muslim and a devout Hindu. As we got chatting, we began to share about our different faith practices. What we found was how much we had in common. Our doctrines were different, but interwoven in our practices and lifestyle, we found so much that connected us. We all felt that our beliefs not only enhanced our lives, but gave us great purpose and meaning.
That three-way conversation is one I will cherish forever. Here’s another memory I hold fast: One year, during our Miami years, the Easter season rolled around. We had been dyeing Easter eggs on a Saturday morning, and took a break to visit the park.
While we were there, a Jewish family stopped at the playground on their way home from synagogue. It was the week of Passover, and I recognized in the mom the exhaustion I often felt during intense holiday times. She sat on the bench for a brief respite while her kids climbed the jungle gym. As children do, her young son wandered over and began playing with my 3-year-old. This sweet Jewish boy was eating matzo and offered a piece to my child. My own son reached out, his hands stained bright blue from dyeing Easter eggs, and took the cracker.
That moment between a Jewish child and a Latter-day Saint, of the bridge between Passover and Easter, was not lost on me. It comes so easily to children and much harder to adults. But when it happens, it is deeply meaningful.
In that spirit, I invite you to learn more about the Latter-day Saints who live and worship in your community. The public open house for the Willamette Valley Temple runs until May 9. More information can be found here.
