-I saw the Room; I cannot Unsee It - It is There -- I Felt this Love and Connection
Recently I went through the temple open house of Washington D.C., of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is located in Kensington, Maryland. It is a landmark on the north side of the DMV, the D.C/ Maryland/Virginia metroplex. It was built to impress visually and physically, but more importantly it serves as a place to perform holy ordinances for people. In our faith, of which I have been a member all my life, we perform holy sacraments and covenants within the temple that cannot be performed elsewhere. For many members it takes days or many hours for us to attend such places, with some additional sacrifices rendered. We do our own covenants with God and Jesus on a personal level, high holy ceremonies that bring us closer to our Father in Heaven, like marriage and sealings for couples and families, which links us across generations and across time and the eternities. These commitments to living family are supremely important, but there is more. Much more.
For every living person on the earth, we know that we have hundreds of the deceased who have lived before us. Because of them we exist. We believe that this process and history is no accident, but part of the Great Plan of God. And, God has some work for them and us, still. He loves and blesses us all across the generations, from thousands of years ago until now, and He has us in mind eternally into the future. It is love and life everlasting, as we believe it to be. Jesus was sent to do His work and glory. And we are here for our purposes, too. We believe that we are commanded to reach back to those that came before us and help them in our holy temples.
As individuals we try to do our due diligence to compile the information about our ancestors, find out the key dates of their lives, try to know more about them on a personal basis. In a sense, commune with them, if you want to think of it that way. Not worship them, but to venerate, honor, and cherish them. And redeem them, and us, with them that passed, all together in God and Jesus Christ. We believe that God has blessed us through them, our ancestors, and they are connected back to our first parents, Adam and Eve; that all that wish to live with our Heavenly Father and Mother will do what is necessary to love and obey Them, and be part of one great celestial (eternal, heavenly) family. A joyous, happy throng in a place of no more pain or death. We believe it will happen, sooner or later. There is more to life than this mortal plain or sphere. We believe we came from Him before birth, and we shall return to Him again. In between, there is a bit to do.
Admittedly, some of us are more passionate about this family history or genealogical work than others. Some have the right skills, tools, patience, focus, stamina, and very often it is doable and successfully achieved by sheer "luck"; although others might call those chance discoveries and recoveries as blessings from Above, of finding the names of our ancestors and doing their temple work by searching and persistence. We consider these opportunities choice blessings from heaven, a connection to Him, and a chance to really spiritually connect to them, our defunct ancestors, too. It is a mutual or symbiotic relationship that we establish with our dear departed ones. All this through the holy temple.
So, is that enough context to understand some of the implications of these spiritual matters of members of the Church of Jesus Christ related to our kindred dead and their significance? Us Latter-day Saint believers, also known as Mormons, with our non-traditional Christian motivations? Some of us take part and invest in the family research more than others. As Malachi proclaimed, the hearts of the fathers will return to the children, and the hearts of the children will return to the fathers. Some of our hearts are turned more than others, and I wish to be one who fulfills those promises and reap the rewards of realizing it. I am not that good at it, I confess. But I have benefitted from the parts that I have participated in.
This a big deal. A holy work. A huge, massive undertaking. Although on an individual level it does not always require too much toil. Collectively, we spend millions of hours on it, genealogy; in sum billions of dollars expended to gather the names and records of those who came before. Perhaps by now it has added up to trillions of dollars-worth of expenditures and work hours. Some of us spend years and years making it happen. Hours and days and weeks and months organizing the records, then attending the temple services, and performing the ordinances for our own ancestors or others, more distant from us. Often times we do it for others that we are not related to, but in the human family sense we are all brothers and sisters, so whether I am making vicarious covenants for the sake of a deceased person from Germany, where I do have kin, or a soul from ancient China, where I do not, it is the same. We are saving our dead and redeeming our entire human family. We are all brothers and sisters: we wish to celebrate united in God and rejoice in heaven and earth.
The temple, in a sense, is a portal to the past and the future, a meeting place for all of us across the generations and millennia. Time and space come together here. We reach and strive for the greater hereafter, in the here and now, and stand in holy places in the bridge between. As the Lord and Savior did for us, in His name, we enact holy acts and commitments to unite us to Him. In peace, harmony, and love.
We are bringing all of the world into the fold, one temple ordinance at a time, which includes baptism and confirmation. To be one in Christ is the aim. See the Gospel of John 17. Read the whole thing. For those, living and passed, who wish to opt for this God ordained plan, we intend to share it with all. Rich and poor, old and young. When I was 12 years-old I was able to be baptized for my grandfather and his brother, my great uncle, and give them the opportunity to accept these holy sacraments, which is their choice to do, or not. This occurred in the Washington D.C. temple, where my family had been attending for nine years since its inception, almost always once or more a year, since it became the first dedicated Church of Jesus Christ on the eastern seaboard in the modern day. It was a 12 hour drive for us, one way.
I thought my time there as a youth was significant and holy. A very happy and solemn experience and memory, one I would recount to hundreds or thousands that I was privileged to share with over the years in Indiana, Chile, Utah, California, Virginia, Missouri, Arizona, Afghanistan, the Middle East, or wherever I found myself. I did not get to know my mother's parents too well before they passed away, but I always thought of them in this sacred place and time.
Years, decades later, I am raising my children a mere forty-minute drive from this holy edifice. It was closed down for a couple years in order to fix it up, to do a major rehaul and re-purposing, perhaps for earthquake proofing, a large re-furbishing of structure and interior design. The pandemic of 2020 postponed the re-dedication another two years, and then we had this open house for two months in the spring to allow all to come and see where the holy ordinances take place. It becomes exclusive to worthy members once dedicated. This is now my life-long temple, closest literally and spiritually to me, even after living in the U.S West for 13 years, and abroad another five. This building, in some ways, is my closest to being a heavenly home that I know.
All this explanation and background to get to this account: in this recent spring of 2022, not long after a military tour away from family for a year, I walked by the various rooms of the temple with my eldest daughter, beginning in the basement, passing a room where I felt a strange and wonderful sensation some possible seven or eight years before that is hard to express, hard to describe. Difficult to capture and share, but I wish to do so in this forum.
In that room, a short walking distance from the baptismal font where we begin the process of introducing the souls of our loved ones to his holy sacraments in a pool of pure water, I used the priesthood of God ordained to me, laying my hands on the heads of those living, like my daughter, to stand in for those who have since left their mortal state. We are they, attempting to bring them to God, where they have already traveled, but in this fashion they have formal purchase to all His riches and promises.
It may sound redundant to God fearers, may sound preposterous to those of other faiths, may sound odd and peculiar compared to the regular norm; all this may seem beyond rational belief or logical scientific reason, but for us, those of this faith tradition, this is the pinnacle of what we wish to do: Redeem the Dead. The whole human family, starting with our own.
What more glorious aim is there?
I walked by that room with her as a college adult, remembering that night, possibly a summer evening, I cannot recall exactly, when I confirmed mine and my daughter's own female ancestors who traced their histories to the 1800s, maybe even into the 1700s, reaching into their realm to affect a formal acceptance by them in the Lord, to confirm them members of His Church and give unto them the Holy Ghost, of which will assist them in the eternities, and bring us peace and wholeness as well.
Oneness. Peace. Love. Godliness. True joy and holiness. Reconciliation. Atonement.
Heaven. Heaven is family, as my father intimated to me not long ago. We and our loved ones, near and far.
That night, maybe in 2015 or 2016, before she could drive, before her bigger days of decisions and drives and larger life lessons and all that would come with the future, I blessed my own daughter, the fruit of my loins, the apple of my eye, my "firstborn in the wilderness" (an inside joke, an illusion to the opening chapters of the Book of Mormon), making her one with her very name sakes, my own family line, the mothers who begat the mothers and sons who would lead to me and mine.
I was resting my hands upon my daughter's head, but reaching back hundreds of years. Mothers of my mothers, parents of my parents, one eternal line leading back to the Beginning. And where did it all lead? Forever and ever, as we see and feel it.
Life is unending, and this is what Christ promises us.
I felt it strongly that night, in those fleeting moments, with my daughter, with the priesthood partner beside me urging me to continue on to another confirmation, another name and ordinance, as there were more to pronounce, more youth to assign to more names of the deceased, more names of our progenitors, our collective past and shared inheritance. I stood there in silence, feeling the moment, the name of my great-great-great grandmother, and others, her sisters, her aunts, weighing in the air and in my heart and mind with rich wonder and gratitude. The others may not have felt it, they might not have realized and understood the depth, the grandiosity, the perplexity, the wonder, the rapture, of really being connected to your own blood and genes through God.
Can you feel it? Can you imagine this? Your parents' parents' and theirs, and on and on, and on and on. Forever? Can you imagine a place where we are all together in joy and rest?
Sometimes I can. I do see and feel it. Sometimes more than others.
Sometimes I go by that room, either through my memory and imagination, or I walk by as a more casual observer in person. But my mind revels in the thought and feel of my eternal family. Not just the ones that I have known in this life, but the ones that I knew before and the ones that I will know again.
Is this too much to ask, or expect? Too difficult to grasp, or contemplate? Is it too out there to believe?
Not for me. These ordinances, blessing, promises, and places, bring me there.
I have felt the love of God throughout my life. Sometimes stronger than others. In churches, courtyards, stadiums, gymnasiums, parks, rivers, streams, beaches, fields, on unknown paths and trails, in military uniforms or in casual dress or shorts, dining rooms, restaurants, movie theaters, forts, battlefields, homes with basements and games, and kitchens with dishes and plates, delectable pies and breads and wonderfully cooked meats and potatoes and rolls, for all occasions, whether holidays or Sundays, with family and friends, by myself in base cafeterias, halls with specially designed decor, mom and pop eateries by the side of the road, drinking tea with the poor and rich in South America, supping on a carpet with a store owner in Mazer-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, or Kuwaiti officers in their make-shift diwania (a circle gathering on the floor with treats and pillows) in the barracks of our base in their country, where we spilt blood for their freedom a generation ago.
I can and have felt the love of my brothers and sisters the world over, the love of Buddhists and their meditations that they shared with me, the worship, chants and songs and breaking bread and consuming delicious food with my Jewish friends from Harrisonburg, Virginia, to Arif Jan, Ahmadia Governate, off the Persian Gulf. I have worshipped and revered with my Muslim brothers and sisters across the continents. I have celebrated with the Krishnas, who gladly shared of their sustenance and joy. And, of course I have communed with my fellow Christians from all walks and parts, of all stations and traditions.
There is a room for all of us, I feel; there is a room where it is light and bright and peaceful and full of wonder and love. There, I will be looking for my daughter, and my mother, and her mother, and on and on.
Can you see it? Can you feel it?
Can you see your mothers and fathers, and theirs on and on? Can you feel the love and care of the God on high, who does orchestrate all this for you and me and the rest of humanity? The human family.
There is room for us, there are many rooms for us.
Mansions. There are many.
