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This weekend I was reading in Joseph Campbell’s the Hero with a Thousand Faces about myth from different cultures and how they have certain common themes. One I was reading about was the Belly of the Whale, a symbolic place we enter that transforms us, and we emerge as new people. Campbell talks about various temple rituals throughout the world and how they filled this purpose to symbolically change people and put them in touch with a different realm (or maybe perspective is a better word than realm). I struggle with the sexism in the temple, but if that were removed, there really are some powerful things about the temple experience that are like entering the belly of the whale and being transformed:
– being likened to royalty and washed / anointed as such (reminding us of our best selves and potential)
– making successive covenants to be able to withstand the divine
– joining as a community to supplicate God
– connecting with generations that lived before us
– contemplating the creation story as an allegory for life
– returning to our divine selves
Now on a cynical day, which is probably 9 days out of 10, the temple is a place where I go to watch a dull movie I’ve seen a million times and be alternately bored and insulted for two hours. But on a good day, maybe there is transformative power there.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Now on a cynical day, which is probably 9 days out of 10, the temple is a place where I go to watch a dull movie I’ve seen a million times and be alternately bored and insulted for two hours. But on a good day, maybe there is transformative power there.
No nap? It isn’t just the temple. When I sit down (and I am usually sleep deprived most every day) I just start snoozing. The only time I don’t is if I have had a few Coke’s before hand.I’m all ears on this subject because I really struggle here. The reasons I love the temple despite the issues I believe ought to be addressed and the further changes I believe ought to be made all center on what I see as the cosmic messages embodied in the interactive play of the endowment and the underlying concept of uniting all humanity as a real family of Heavenly Parents. I don’t take any of it literally, but I love it for what it symbolizes as a whole. I think there is a transformative power in a symbolic journey that begins with a new birth, moves to a cleansing and anointing with really cool promises, includes a heros journey interactive play that takes one from a fallen, hopeless state into the presence of God and ends with a promise of eternal companionship and ultimate progress and growth.
There are details / elements that I see as culturally outdated, but the grand morality play it all symbolizes is awe-inspiring for me.
I also love that women are endowed with the Priesthood and administer ordinances in the temple – and that an apostle finally has said so publicly. I just wish all of the membership had listened closely to what Elder Oaks said and begun to understand it.
The First Christian Church where we have Pioneer Club meetings has a “belly of the whale” room. I think it is called that because it has no windows and can get really dark if you shut out the lights.
I have twice seen it used as Jesus’s tomb – which fits the change and transformation metaphor perfectly.
I vacillate on the temple. At times I’m convinced that one of the missions of Jesus was to do away with the traditional temple and that the temple was a thing that was not meant to be restored. When Jesus died the veil in the temple was rent, the barrier between man and god had been removed. Access to god was no longer limited to a small select group of priests. Sometimes I feel like we undid some of that effort in our restoration of the temple. I can also see how modern day temples fit in perfectly with some of the symbolism that I feel pertains to the restoration.
I guess it comes down to the temples serving different functions in society at different times in human history and thus carrying a different set of symbols.
nibbler wrote:At times I’m convinced that one of the missions of Jesus was to do away with the traditional temple and that the temple was a thing that was not meant to be restored. When Jesus died the veil in the temple was rent, the barrier between man and god had been removed. Access to god was no longer limited to a small select group of priests. Sometimes I feel like we undid some of that effort in our restoration of the temple. I can also see how modern day temples fit in perfectly with some of the symbolism that I feel pertains to the restoration.
Nibbler, this is exactly how I currently feel about the temple. I have to roll my eyes when people use the phrase that your body is a temple to shame people who have tattoos, or who don’t follow the WofW, or something like that.1 Corinthians 3:16 – Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
2 Corinthians 6:16 – And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
To me, it seems like scriptures like these are talking a lot more about how to treat your body, but more about what Christ’s atonement actually accomplished. It didn’t just do away with the need for sacrificing animals to repent of our sins, but also gave us the ability to actually become a living temple, which we can use to repent of our own sins without going to a physical temple with our offering. That’s just my personal interpretation. I know the LDS doctrine of temples has taken on a much broader meaning of the purpose of the temple, but I tend to think of the modern temples more as what Joseph Smith intended than what God intended. Again, just my own personal perspective.
All good thoughts. Most times, I feel I’ve been in the temple long enough, with still and quietness for a long peaceful period, I come out reminded of the world…almost like I forgot where I was for a while. That is nice.
That makes me thing about the myth or image of the belly of the whale and a transformation…like I need separation for a time from the busy life to be reminded of the importance of what I should be striving for.
More than the ceremony or words or actions in the temple…that feeling of separation from the world is most transformative for me.
Thanks, HG. Good thought on this whale story.
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