Last week I let the first anniversary of this blog pass without notice. I’ll not let a far worthier milestone also go ignored: today marks ten years since my endowment.
I’ve loved studying the endowment in the intervening decade, repeatedly revisiting the endowment itself and spiritually reverent texts about it that I’ve read both before and after my own endowment, my favorite being Hugh Nibley’s “What Is A Temple?”
Sometimes we go through dry periods where nothing significantly new comes up–no major new relationship, or life event achieved, or song heard or movie seen…or religious height experienced–and we might despair that no such new vistas will be on the horizon at all. I once felt that way about my gospel study, and was thus doubly surprised when I came across John Welch’s “The Sermon at the Temple and The Sermon on the Mount.” Where many other scholars have only seen in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount a random collection of ethical sayings, Welch sees 48 specific points, in order, correlating it with the LDS Endowment. It was an earth-shattering observation, and has profoundly improved my temple worship ever since.
Though I’ve been blessed with my share of insights and impressions in the temple, the most powerful experience that comes to memory is the most generic: Continue reading