Babies and the Veil

It's often said in the LDS Church, as it is in others, that newborns and very small children are very close to God and enjoy greater spiritual perception than adults, teens and older children. In Mormon speak we say the Veil of Forgetfulness that keeps us from remembering our pre-Earth life is very thin for new arrivals here on Earth. I don't think it's official doctrine or anything, but it is a widely held belief. I always thought this special sensitivity was an awesome baby power that deserved our admiration and respect. Babies were closer to God than the rest of us. They didn't have to doubt about God and his plan. They remembered things. Special things.
 
But I also couldn't help but wonder why the hell they didn't seem to have a clue about what we were doing when we prayed as a family. It seems like they would at least show some excitement about our attempts to commune with God and even more excitement for God's attentive listening in. Instead of smiling up at Heavenly Father's loving face and basking in the window of spiritual bliss we've just opened, babies act like total heathens during prayers. In church too. They cry, they scream, they play, they eat, they shit, they hit, they sleep, and many other non-spiritual things. It was enough to make me doubt they had any connection to pre-Earth memory at all.

The temple - the Celestial room

This was the ultimate dream.

I had seen pictures of different Celestial rooms over the course of my life and had been through at least two temple open houses, but for some reason I thought passing through the temple veil into the Celestial room would feel more satisfying. I was hoping for a feeling a relief, acceptance, gladness, and maybe even pride. Instead it felt like I had just stepped into a hotel lobby full of weirdoes and all eyes were on me, the new guy. What I recall is hoping for a chance to reflect and maybe feel the Spirit so I might feel better about the whole endowment experience because what I was feeling was anxious. I was anxious to get out – out of the clothes, out from under everyone’s eyes, away from expectations – and get an explanation of some kind. 

Somewhere in my mind I had been harboring the idea of really awesome Gospel lessons taking place in the Celestial room. Where was the 12-yr-old Jesus when he was teaching in the temple? Why had my dad referred to the temple as “the Lord’s real university”? I hadn’t learned much of anything in the endowment. The story of the Creation and the Fall were old news and the Freemasonry stuff fell far short of the Mysteries of the Universe. Where did all the teaching and learning take place? Were we all waiting around for the temple teacher to show up? Did we need to move to another room?

No? No. No lesson. No discussion. No real time to reflect and pray either. Almost everyone wanted to head home right away. Only a few family members hung around a bit.

Why did it all feel like such a letdown? Why didn’t I get it? I couldn’t help but doubt, nor could I help doubting my doubts just as I had been trained to do throughout my life.

 This is exactly how it feels. Quiet, sanitized, empty.

The temple - passwords

I had a hard time understanding why our Heavenly Father would require anyone to know a password to obtain His glory and live with Him in the eternities, but that's what Mormonism teaches you in the temple. For those of you who want to be prepared just in case, it goes a little something like this:

"Health in the navel, marrow in the bones, strength in the loins and in the sinews, power in the priesthood be upon me and upon my posterity through all generations of time and throughout all eternity".

Assistant, "Eve", sentinel of the Veil 

OK, so there's a little more to "passing through the veil" than just that. You have to do the Freemason handshakes with someone who offers his or her hand to you from the other side of the veil, you have to summon that person by knocking, you have to be accompanied by a temple worker who acts as an intermediary between you and the hidden hand shaker. If you want to know how it all goes down just go to your favorite search engine and the mysteries of Heaven can be yours within seconds.

Why would God require all this bizarre back and forth and recitation of cryptic blabber about strong loins and generations? It made no sense to me. Where was Jesus waiting to accept me with open arms? Why did God have to send someone to open the doors to His Kingdom instead of coming Himself? Where was God in any of this?