Temple clothes are neither attractive nor holy, and seeing a large number of your immediate and extended family, a few neighbors, and a bunch of unknowns congregated in all that gear (for me) felt about like walking into the music video for Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" only more white and fewer shadows. It wasn't fun. Had we been 8 year olds prepping for a Christmas pageant I might have felt better about things.
What's the story with these awful hats? Who's the butcher, who's the baker, and who's the candlestick maker here? Why doesn't anyone else feel as ridiculous as I do? And why the fuck are all the women veiled? Seriously, why? Being segregated by sex was already weird enough, but the veil was really going too far for me.
Why had no one shown me these clothes before stepping into the temple locker room or how to wear them before sending me into the endowment session? What did they mean? Why were they so ugly and poorly made? Is this really what we'll all be wearing in the Celestial Kingdom? Is this how God dresses?
I wasn't sure I should be taking out my endowment that day. Maybe I wasn't ready. Maybe I just had to sit through it and it would all come together. The Church and the Gospel made perfect sense to me at the time, so surely the endowment ceremony would eventually come into focus too, right?
Doubt your doubts! This can't be as bad as it seems. Oh look! The women get to remove the veils from over their faces now! See? It's not so bad.
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