I taught a Relief Society lesson recently on the importance of temples and temple work. Usually I can figure out a way to approach a topic that I feel good about, but in this case I came up against a wall of hypocrisy so high, I couldn’t see any way over or around it. I didn’t know whether to try to find a sub, or just ignore the assigned topic and teach something else, asking forgiveness rather than permission if the presidency was unhappy. I stewed about it for weeks. Eventually, I tried praying for some direction on how—or whether—I should approach it.
I always pray before I prepare a lesson. I want to be inspired to know what’s most important, what will benefit the specific women in our group, and if I might have a unique slant to explore that could open us all to a larger perspective or broader understanding. These prayers usually help, and in this case did. Although the answer wasn’t really what I was hoping for, or expecting.
It occurred to me that perhaps I should approach the lesson on temple work as my whole and honest self, acknowledging my struggle with the subject openly. I felt the distinct impression I’m not the only one facing the challenge.
So I prepared accordingly, showed up with an extra dose of nerves (and a large bag of candy bars), took a deep breath, and started my lesson by saying, “I have to teach this lesson, but I also have to be honest. I really struggle with the temple. Attending is extremely difficult for me. I have a recommend that’s going to expire, and I haven’t used it once except to buy garments at the distribution center.”
Some of the women in the room looked a little shocked, some more amused, but I sensed they were interested.
I explained that I needed a real discussion about the temple, and I had just fired the first volley by offering my own sordid truth—that I hardly ever go. I reiterated that attending the temple is not peaceful for me. That my difficulty is personal, evolving, and complicated, but that I also feel sure I’m not alone.
Then I referenced a recent BYU devotional by Eric Huntsman, “Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces,” in which he urged us to create “…environments that are, on the one hand, places of faith where we can seek and nurture testimony, but are also, on the other, places where our sisters and brothers can safely question, seek understanding, and share their pain.”
Shouldn’t Relief Society be just such a space? Why would we gather to discuss the gospel if not in an attempt to help each other figure out ways we can actually apply it to our messy lives?
I explained that I believe real dialogue begins when we move beyond the usual conversation points, the polite niceties that we are expected to offer as answers in church, and so faithfully do. To really talk about the temple, we’d need to expose our beliefs, our questions, our faith, our personal experiences, our testimonies, our struggles, our individual minds, and deeply guarded hearts.
They looked nervous.
I suggested that there are probably a lot of people who struggle with the temple but never say a word about it. There are plenty of plain, easy to understand reasons why this would be so.
The sealing ordinance gets right at the heart of what our work is meant to be about within our families. But because that occurs in the temple, it also creates one of those places where the rubber really hits the road in Mormonism. There are specific rules governing everything about the temple, there is much that can be confusing or unclear, we’re unable to discuss it widely like we do other things, it can feel like a very isolating worship experience, and for these reasons we tend to just sit with our questions or discomfort. Sometimes for a whole lifetime. Yet the temple is Mormonism’s Ultimate Big Deal. The stakes are high. The stakes are also high in everything surrounding family, both the ideal we hold up in church every week and the ones we are born into, or create and then live with.
There’s nothing like feeling you can’t talk about it to give a thing the wrong kind of power.
In the talk I was assigned to use, Elder Renlund said something I saw as just the opening I needed to begin an honest, robust discussion of the temple and our experiences with it. He said, “Family relationships can be some of the most rewarding yet challenging experiences we encounter. Many of us have faced a fracture of some sort within our families.”
I suggested that perhaps we should begin by getting a snapshot of the room, so I asked these questions, and requested that people raise their hands:
—Who has something that could be described as a “fracture” somewhere within their family?
—Who has someone who isn’t eligible to attend the temple?
—Who has someone who hasn’t experienced the sealing ordinance?
—Who has someone who is not a member of the Church?
—Who has someone who has left the Church?
—Who has someone with whom their relationship is difficult?
—Who has someone who identifies as LGBT+?
—Who has divorce in their family?
—Who has someone with a sealing that creates a sticky situation we trust will be sorted out later by someone smarter than we are?
—Who has polygamy in their family?
—Who doesn’t fully understand all the implications of the sealing ordinance, as it pertains to what our next life will look like?
—Who has questions about any part of their temple experience?
—Who’s felt sadness because they or someone close to them was excluded from participation in an important family experience or event because it involved the temple?
—Who’s experienced any kind of pain in association with the temple?
The answer, apparently, is pretty much everyone. Almost without exception, all hands were up. I figured they would be, if people were willing to be honest at all. What I didn’t expect was that there would already be eyes full of tears.
That took me by surprise, because I thought I might have to work hard to break through the barrier that protects and prohibits us from talking honestly about this revered centerpiece of our Mormon experience. I expected I would have to beg for an honest temple discussion. Instead, their eyes were begging me.
It could be I’m not the only one who’s finally ready to talk at church. Ready to do the real work of connecting the dots from a gospel of ideal principles to myself and my life. Those few honest questions at the start of a lesson sort of broke the room open in one of the loveliest ways I’ve ever experienced as a teacher. It leads me to believe that if Mormons will ever get comfortable being our whole, honest selves with each other, it could transform the Church and teach us the gospel of Jesus Christ in a more real way than any curriculum ever will.
Susan Meredith Hinckley is an AZ artist/writer who loves desert living, running, unanswerable questions, wind in her hair, and a bit of green chile in everything else.
32 Responses
Thank you for this. Bless you. Wish I could clone you and bring you to my branch. Your inspired and sister-centric teaching is DESPERATELY needed out here in the relief societies of the mission field!!
Correction: Christ-centric and sister-friendly teaching is what I meant to say! 🙂
Thank you! I like “sister-centric” as well. I think we could do with more of that.
Beautifully expressed, I love your courage to present a lesson like this. Bless you!
Thank you, Jan! It did require some courage, but I felt truly rewarded for my willingness to try. I hope to become more courageous in many areas of my church life. We deserve a diversity of voices that reflects our diversity of members.
Excellent approach! All any of us really need is to be heard, but I find myself long for the rest of the story.
I keep returning to your idea of “longing for the rest of the story.” This is a perfect description of so much of my lifelong relationship to the members of my church. Thank you for that.
Wonderful! Thank you for sharing.
Real women discuss real life. Good for you!
I struggled when I hear Eric Huntsman’s statement: “…environments that are, on the one hand, places of faith where we can seek and nurture testimony, but are also, on the other, places where our sisters and brothers can safely question, seek understanding, and share their pain.”
I’m just not sure how, on a practical level, it can be both at the same time. If I am someone that enjoys the Temple, and finds peace there and I am seeking to be nurtured in RS, how does listening to a lesson that is all about other’s concerns with the Temple uplifting for me?
Thanks for your comment, Lily. The lesson was by no means wholly focused on people’s problems and concerns. My intent was only to show that we all approach the topic from an individual place, and that none of our real lives are 100% reflective of the ideal. And that even if you do struggle with the temple, you are not alone, and can benefit from discussion of it. We heard many uplifting personal stories. It was the best sharing I’ve ever experienced during a RS lesson, but I think that happened because I was willing to be vulnerable first.
I’ve been thinking more about this. I want to tell you a bit about the discussion we had. Thanks for giving me a reason to reflect more on it. Elder Renlund started me with good material—he connects some really interesting and beautiful dots with temple work in the talk I was assigned. To me, the talk has an unconventional slant. But the comments I got went so far beyond Sunday School answers. There was a woman who talked about trying to work through forgiving an ex husband through her time in the temple (she has not been successful.) A woman who told about losing a child, and the only reason she’s been able to stay in the Church is because the temple gives her some kind of crazy hope about a thing she can’t make sense of or survive any other way. A woman who said that the temple, and garments, have been ruined for her since her husband left her. She feels betrayed by all of it, hopes to return some day, but finds nothing but pain there now. A woman who said she works on Sundays and can’t have callings, so everyone assumes she’s inactive. She finds no joy in attending church, when she manages to, because people aren’t nice to her. She feels judged. But somehow the temple connects her to Mormonism, bypassing the ward experience. A woman who told about her children having left the church, but an experience she had in the temple has somehow made her stop worrying about that. No longer a “problem for her to fix.” So the comments were what one might deem “faith promoting” but in an unconventional, unguarded and refreshing way.
Thank you Susan. I can see how that would be uplifting for everyone and yet a safe place for those with questions.
Susan, that is so beautiful. I ache for these kinds of conversations at church.
Me too, which is why I’ve finally (finally!) started opening my mouth. Somehow my decades of silence reached critical mass. If I need to hear something, I’ve realized I may well have to be the one to say it. Just having it in the room seems to help me, regardless of who says it.
Because we are supposed to mourn with those who mourn an give them comfort. Not every single lesson can speak to everyone, but everyone can still gain from the perspective and experience of others.
Yes! That’s one of the things I’ve had to realize as a RS teacher—I will not reach everyone in the room. No one does. So I’m trying to reach some who perhaps haven’t been reached as often as they should have been. So far, I feel like it’s working. There are some women who undoubtedly don’t resonate with my style of teaching. That’s what the candy bars are for.
Wonderful. Thank you for showing that it’s not an either or—we can explore the beauty of something while still acknowledging that there can be pain and complications. You handled this so well. It sounds like you created a judgement free zone where everyone’s feelings and experiences could be validated without negating anyone else’s. Tricky stuff.
Thanks, Heather. I felt lucky that it worked, but then I think I only felt confident enough to take the approach I did because I was following inspiration to go the direction I did. It wasn’t something I did lightly, or on a whim. So I would have stood by the approach even if it hadn’t been well received, because I could be pretty sure there was someone in the room who needed it. Even if I was the someone.
I think that is an important question, Lily, and one I struggle with constantly as a Relief Society teacher. Trying to find the sweet spot where everyone is nurtured in some way. The only thing I can think to answer is that maybe sometimes it is our job to acknowledge and appreciate somebody else’s discomfort, which is NOT a pleasant space to sit in. As a totally active but less orthodox believer, I spend a lot of time at church hearing points of view that, at best, don’t resonate with me at all, and, at worst, frustrate and demoralize me. But I think those brothers and sisters have a right to feel the way they do and that it does me good to be reminded that everybody’s faith works in a different way.
I don’t know the answer, but my instinct is that I am there as a teacher to both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as they say, and everyone is both simultaneously comfortable AND afflicted in their own unique ways. It makes sense then, I guess (or I hope?), that my sisters might feel a little of both of those things during lessons I teach.
Thanks for this. I do feel that as teachers we have a responsibility to both comfort and make uncomfortable, because discomfort is where growth occurs, isn’t it? There’s no growth without a stretch of some kind being required. So I always ask my sisters to stretch a bit, to think about something in a new way or consider a different point of view. I don’t think I’d feel I had much to offer the RS if I didn’t do that. They can read conference talks on their own time.
Thank you so much for this post, Susan. As an RS teacher I am constantly looking for ways to nudge the door open to thinking about things in ways that push my sisters (and me, too!) beyond the standard set of rote answers. Just last night I was talking to my husband about the challenge of walking the tightrope between validating and challenging preconceived notions in the delicate setting of a church meeting.
This experience sounds absolutely beautiful, and I find it so inspiring. I know it will be on my mind for a long time to come as I prepare my own lessons. Thanks!
I find your experience very heartening. Thanks for having the courage to take the first step so that others felt free to open up. And thanks also to the engaged, questioning commenters here. I’m glad to share the pews with all of you.
Amen to the great commenters here, you being one of them. Thanks, Jason.
Thank you, this is beautiful.
I would love to feel open to discuss some of my concerns, especially with. The temple, but as they say, once you see something, you can’t unsee it. So I worry about planting seeds of doubt or discontent in someone where there wasn’t before.
I understand your concern, Sarah. But I also think we have a charge to mourn with, and to comfort. As a teacher, I can approach topics from a more sensitive place if I understand and acknowledge the realities of the sisters in my specific lesson. By asking my questions at the beginning, everyone was able to visualize something that is actually true in every lesson we participate in at church—that we come from a tremendous diversity of life experiences, and that affects both what we need at church, and what we have to offer others. In a reply to one of the comments above, I told some of the specific experiences that were shared. The tone of the lesson was uplifting, precisely because the experiences shared were real, diverse and personal. It truly felt like hands-on lifting.
Thank you for being a leader to open the dialogue. So well said!
Wow. Thank you for this. Both for the beautiful example of RS lessons going well (there is hope!) and for your openness with your own struggle. I have never felt fully settled with the temple (I was up all night after I received my endowments, pacing the floor, wondering “What did I just do?”) but recently it has become a place so full of anxiety that I went from going once a month to once a year. I so wish I could talk to someone about this in a faith promoting way. I am curious what other questions you asked. I read above about some of the experiences the women shared, but what were the questions that prompted such openness and non-cliche answers?
This is a great question, Jenny. I’ll need to go back and look at my lesson to answer it. But one thing I definitely remember was how little of my prepared material we got through—once I started the conversation rolling, it wanted to keep rolling. Everyone seemed to have something they needed to share. And that’s a big part of what I loved about it.
i saw this on twitter, but had no idea you wrote it. I was raising my hand also. I have a child, who in YW, has expressed she doesn’t want to go to the temple. What do I say? She young, so its easy to ignore her doubts, but I want to take them seriously.
Have you talked to her about why she doesn’t want to go? My girls all had a pretty good understanding of the issues that have made it difficult for me to attend the temple every time since I first went 37 yrs ago. My issues were not necessarily their issues, although we do share a few. They also saw it was important to me to keep a temple recommend though, which speaks to something else entirely. I hope you’ll keep talking about it with your daughter, Shantel. Try to understand her concerns, share your own honest feelings about it, and don’t be surprised if her desire to do something that requires she receive her endowment first is strong enough to overcome not wanting to do it. Or not. You’ll love her either way.