“Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected.”
— Tony Campolo
The March Equinox brings Easter and a dense collection of rituals that significantly eclipses any other Christian holiday. Which made me think of rituals that have made a difference in my life. Especially one that I remodeled to be more consistent and centered on the Christ Easter celebrates.
Years ago, I participated in an endowment session at the Salt Lake Latter-day Saint temple once a week for a year. A friend was a veil worker for the red-eye session, and I asked if I could tag along. What my motivation was for doing this is lost to memory. I was in my 30s with a young family. Before this, I would go sporadically, but attending the temple wasn’t my thing. It was even less of a thing for my good wife, who found it bewildering and even soul-crushing. If you knew her story and why, you would understand.
But back then, experiencing the temple weekly fostered an unanticipated appreciation for it. These were live sessions, and I found it easier to focus on the language and purpose. Every live session was somewhat fresh due to different actors and new mistakes. My imagination filled the spaces between the words, and I could wonder and meditate on and what a phrase, sign, or token might mean to my life in that moment.
Because of that weekly pilgrimage, I was able to memorize the phrases associated with the marks in the garment, such that I could repeat them when I put the garments on at home. But about 3 years ago, I felt a hunger to make them my own. To have them inspire me to focus on the core of what I believed Jesus was about and what I was to be about. My remodeled version doesn’t contain any of the wording from the temple but is inspired by the marks in the garments:
The right knee, Mark of the Will: I seek to feel and understand God’s heart and mind and bend my will to theirs.
The navel, Mark of Nourishment: I seek to live in gratitude and reciprocity with Mother Earth. I hunger to receive and share wisdom, beauty, and compassion wherever it may be found.
The right breast, Mark of the Square: I seek to be right with God by doing right by all of Their creations.
The left breast, Mark of the Compass: Jesus is my compass, my North Star. I seek to follow him by living his two great commandments. To love God with all my heart, might, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself.
I realize some might read this and find it really weird. Others might find it sacrilegious, I get the weird. Not sure I understand the sacrilegious. I’ve been going to the temple off and on for 47 years and have seen it change—a lot. Some will say, “Yeah, but that is the church making the changes—prophets and apostles.” True, but at least one recent president/prophet has said this:
“And to each of you who has made temple covenants, I plead with you to seek—prayerfully and consistently—to understand temple covenants and ordinances. Spiritual doors will open. You will learn how to part the veil between heaven and earth, how to ask for God’s angels to attend you, and how better to receive direction from heaven.” – President Russel M. Nelson, October 2021 Conference.
And in February of 2020, President Nelson initiated a “#HearHim” campaign with these words: “I invite you to think deeply and often about this key question: How do you hear Him? I also invite you to take steps to hear Him better and more often.” He reinforced this theme in the following April 2020 conference.
Scholars outside the Latter-day Saint faith have called Joseph Smith a religious genius. Imaginative is a word often used. Believers would add “inspired.” The temple ordinances were barely sketched out when he left the earth. I’m comfortable that Joseph would be delighted that I or anyone would seek to make his, or any ritual, more personally connecting—more internally created than outwardly mandated. But more importantly, I’m confident that God is good with it.
And if the temple or church or even God isn’t your thing, then find or create ways to make remembering and living what matters to you material—visceral—meaningful. Use your imagination and come up with rituals that help empower you to do good. Because in the end, doing good is what rituals should be about:
“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” -Micah 6: 7-8.
