If the temple has infinite meaning–if there is no “meaning” that the current temple ceremony cannot assimilate, including the idea that we should don hyena costumes, put rings in our noses, and belly dance every time there’s a full moon–then it is, in effect, meaningless. And if the ceremony is indeed meaningless–simply an empty place holder for inviting God’s spirit–there’s no reason to say “Jesus” rather than “Buddha,” or “hearken” rather than “ignore.” Language is unstable, but it has constraints. By committing ourselves to particularity, by insisting the ceremony be conducted in one particular way following one particular script, we’re severely limiting the range of acceptable interpretations.

I’m not denying God can touch us through particular “vehicles.” I’m just insisting it’s unfair to use spiritual flights of fancy to dismiss those “vehicles” from the discussion. They’re inescapably meaningful, and if anything, spiritual experiences only serve to underscore rather than neutralize their meaning.

I don’t claim to have access to God’s perspective. But I’m perfectly competent in English, and I have no trouble deciphering the relationship in which the temple ceremony structures women, men, and God. And it’s a particular relationship, not one conducive to infinite possibility.

The gospel of Christ is submission and humility before God in light of our infinite worth. It does not matter what form that submission and humility takes, so I am willing to follow the Lord’s current structure in this. At the very least, I don’t feel qualified to make judgments on how it should be changed. Perhaps it is true that our leaders are flawed in the way they guide the temple ceremonies, but if it is, I am certainly not less flawed.

The doctrine of submission . . . of sacrifice . . . is not an intuitive understanding, nor one that can be easily explained, but it is one that, once revealed to a person, enlightens everything. It is like wearing glasses for the first time. Suddenly, everything is clear and you didn’t even realize you were seeing fuzzily before.

I think I see what you are saying about the spiritual realm. I would agree in the sense that no realm exists independently of the others, and differ in the sense that I do not see the physical realm superseding, or even being equal to the spiritual one, particularly in regards to temple worship. We are, first and eternally, spiritual beings. None of God’s commandments, not even this physical life, can truly be understood without looking through that Spiritual lens. The Spirit connects us back to our memories and selves before we came here. Remember, that we developed far more before we came to this earth than we will while on it.

The temple, especially, has the express purpose of inviting us to reconnect more strongly with our spiritual selves. For a short time while on this earth, we are meant to let go of cultural, emotional, mental and physical boundaries and commune directly with God. The rituals are the vehicle by which we occupy our physical and mental selves so that our spiritual self can be freed for greater revelation. In a sense, the rituals themselves are almost meaningless, but because of their purpose, they hold infinite meaning.

I believe that many can attend the temple, without truly attending the temple. I have done it myself, before. Knowing the ritual by heart does not mean that a person has actually participated in it. But, as we seek to understand the symbols and rituals of the temple by humbling ourselves in prayer and fasting, our eyes are once again opened to knowledge that has been temporarily taken from us, and then that knowledge can be built on in the context of our physical, temporal selves. Therefore, the true experience of the temple can never be written, except upon our hearts and in our characters. Likewise, it can never be depicted or discussed outside of the proper setting, because the proper setting is the greater part of the experience.

In any case, I see a couple of different questions here. One is whether God is good. Unlike Kiskilili, I’m willing to start with that as a premise, though I agree that it’s not necessarily the most straightforward interpretation of our sacred texts. Another has to do with the way in which God is involved in the Church. I think I can see a difference between holding a strict notion of infallibility in which “the Church can do no wrong” (#27) and between holding that “God is at the head of the Church,” so there is no reason to fear change. (#23) However, in the context of this specific issue—possible changes to the temple ceremony—I’m not sure that I see a practical distinction between those positions. In other words, unless I’m misreading SilverRain, she’s maintaining that such changes wouldn’t be problematic because (a) God is good and (b) God is running the Church in such a way that he wouldn’t allow harmful changes. And while I’m at least willing to seriously entertain premise (a), I have some doubts about premise (b).

I’m still thinking this out, so I don’t know how much sense it will make, but I also would question the notion that the Spirit itself can be posited as a context for interpreting the ritual—or at least, as an independent context. As I understand it, the Spirit communicates through human faculties—telling us things in our mind and in our heart, for example. I’m not sure the spiritual is best understood as a completely separate sphere of human existence (though it often gets framed that way, as when people talk about the “physical” and “social” and “intellectual” and “spiritual” realms of life); I think of it more along the lines as a dimension of the other realms—the spiritual is an aspect of our experience as physical beings, as social beings, as intellectual beings, etc. The danger of talking about spiritual experience as a discrete category of its own, I think, is that it then gets cut off from the rest of our lives. And when it comes to ritual, our experience of it is inevitably shaped by things like culture (which is of course tied up in language), conscience and reason (however you define those terms), even our physicality. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I don’t think it would make sense to say that one understood the ritual through the Spirit instead of through those other factors, because I see spiritual experience as mediated through those kinds of things.

So I’m thinking out this hypothetical—what if, tomorrow, the gender differences in the hearken covenant disappeared altogether, and women and men both committed to follow God directly? Theologically, how might such a change happen? One possible model is of course the 1978 revelation model, in which God explicitly says, don’t do it this way anymore—do this instead. But it might also conceivably be along the lines of the 1991 changes. I’m not aware of anyone citing new revelation as the reason why certain elements disappeared—and as can be seen on this thread, many maintain that the essential substance of the ceremony has remained constant, despite permutations in form. The former kind of explanation would leave us with the kinds of questions we now have in discussing the former priesthood/temple ban (e.g., does this mean that it was never inspired?) The latter, on the other hand, would leave us trying to make sense of how the contemporary model was in some sense the same thing as the model which preceded it. In this particular example, I can imagine the explanation going either way—attempting to show how patriarchal principles still informed the newer model, or attempting to show how equal access to God had been there all along.

With the latter approach, I think one of my problems is that I’m not sure I accept the idea that there’s some “real” ineffable covenant underlying the form in which it’s linguistically expressed at any particular moment. In a nutshell, I’m skeptical about the possibility that language can ever be complete separated from our apprehension of the universe. I certainly believe that experience can go beyond our ability to fully articulate it, but I would also point out that our experience is always already “contaminated” by language, as it were—it doesn’t happen independently of it.

Anyway, back to the more practical question, it seems to me that people should be held to the particular covenants which they made—I think it’s morally problematic to make covenants which might morph into something else in the future. However, it also seems that there should be some kind of mechanism to ritually switch over to the new covenants, should such a change happen. As far as I know, there is no way to do such a thing. And the very fact that there isn’t any such mechanism strongly suggests to me that the Church interprets all the changes in the ceremony along the lines of my second model above. But I still wonder—what does it mean that my generation of women are pretty much bound to hearken, whereas our mothers are committed to obey?

And while I agree that the scaffolding and the window are not unimportant, and there is certainly nothing wrong with wondering why God chose them, I choose to ask God to explain Himself when and if He chooses, and meanwhile focus on enjoying and understanding the view.

And if text is merely a scaffolding to a transcendental experience, as I think you’re suggesting, my position is nevertheless that that text, that scaffolding, is significant in itself. Because if any language would lead the pure in heart to the desired transcendental experience, why the insistence on this particular language, on this particular form that our ritual takes?

Walt Whitman wrote,

I will take each man and woman of you to the window and open the shutters and the sash, and my left arm shall hook you round the waist, and my right arm shall point you to the endless and beginningless road along whose sides are crowded the rich cities of all living philosophy, and oval gates that pass you into fields of clover and landscapes clumped with sassafras, and orchards of good apples, and every breath through your mouth shall be a new perfumed and elastic air, which is love. –Not I–not God–can travel this road for you. –It is not far, it is within the stretch of your thumb; perhaps you shall find you are on it already and did not know. –Perhaps you shall find it every where over the ocean and over the land, when you once have the vision to behold it.

Maybe the temple is only the window through which we view an ineffable landscape. But to my mind that doesn’t nullify the significance of the window itself. On the contrary, the window determines the lens, frame, and location from which we view eternity. So I think it’s perfectly legitimate for me to wonder why God chose the shape, structure, and position of this particular window.

In any case, I don’t begin with an assumption that God loves me or believes that following his commandments will make me happy, because I think that belief should in part be contingent on my understanding of sacred texts that mediate my experience of God, and that interpretation doesn’t flow very naturally from our sacred texts, in my view.

“perhaps one point on which we disagree then is whether conscience can even exist separately from our perception of God’s will? Is that a more helpful way of phrasing it?”
No. That introduces an entirely new concept. To me, the way you are using it, conscience means feelings/intuition. That is how I’m using it here.

“I’m only demanding he explain them to me if he expects me to follow them.”
Perhaps this is where we differ. I don’t believe God expects me to follow them, only asks me to. Because I love Him and long to be with Him again, I am willing to align myself with Him, if I can. That is more important to me than any other thing.

“but who decides what that context is?”
That is what I’m really trying to get at, and apparently not communicating well. God decides the context, and communicates it through the Spirit. If a person cuts themselves off from that communication for whatever reason, they have no hope of understanding. The final responsibility for understanding rests with the individual.

And I think you are reaching a part of what I’m trying to say. Text itself is a symbol. Language is a symbol. If one begins to treat words and language as discrete entities independent of context, or neglects to try to understand the context in which those symbols are presented, one cannot hope to understand the meaning. It is the meaning of the language that is important, not the language, not the words. And no language is perfect at conveying meaning, just as no symbol is perfect at communicating the whole of what it means. And, with the assumption (and belief) that 1) God loves you and 2) He wants you to understand and follow His commandments with a willing and joyful heart, you have to be able to let go of your own understanding and trust Him to teach you. I can say from direct personal experience that it is impossible to understand the symbolism of the temple, let alone any other of God’s ways, without first letting go of pride, of demands of any kind.

But I feel I have said all I can say as clearly as I can say it. There are others who can speak more plainly than I can, but I feel that should I try any further, I’ll only confuse things more and not add to the feelings I’m trying to communicate.

So SilverRain, perhaps one point on which we disagree then is whether conscience can even exist separately from our perception of God’s will? Is that a more helpful way of phrasing it?

I’m also not demanding that God explain policies that I disagree vehemently with to me. I’m only demanding he explain them to me if he expects me to follow them. I haven’t yet encountered an explanation for patriarchy that strikes me as moral, so in the meantime I’m rejecting it.

I think we’re in agreement that reason has application not just to moral issues, which is why I’m qualifying “conscience” as “moral reasoning;” also that text is an “appeal” (as Sartre put it) that is created in the reading of it. I didn’t mean to imply that text is inherently offensive outside of any context, or inherently anything for that matter.

But, just for fun, let’s play Reader Response Theory and think about the implications of saying that the meaning of the text isn’t inherent in the text. This serves to decenter my perspective that, for example, our liturgy is demeaning to women. This is just the liturgy as constructed in my personal encounter with the language from my perspective and my context. But by the same token we now reach the ineluctable conclusion that the liturgy is not inherently holy, either, nor does it inherently honor women; this is just the liturgy as constructed in the personal encounter of someone else and their particular context, which we also decenter.

Symbols are appropriately interpreted in their context, but who decides what that context is? Is the Old Testament the appropriate context for understanding the current temple ceremony? Freemasonry? Our own personal associations, as recipients of the ceremony?
Since a symbol’s meaning isn’t inherent, but derived from context, on what basis can we say it has a “true meaning”? That’s what’s unstable.

Catholics profess papal infallibility, but don’t really believe it.
Mormons profess that they don’t believe in prophetic infallibility, but they really do.

The prophets are not infallible, they are just never wrong

Also, conscience to me is not reason. I can reason out many things which are unconscionable. You will note that it is God’s way to teach us His will in both our minds and hearts. I have learned that patience is an important aspect of this process. I will not demand of God that He satisfy my understanding in my time and how I demand it. Rather, I ask and approach Him humbly, asking Him to enlighten both my mind (reason) and heart (conscience). And, based on His past dealings with me, if He tells me that the answer will not be yet, I am content to trust Him and wait upon His greater understanding. That is not sacrificing reason, it is being patient and trusting God. It is also not without pain. It can be very painful to be patient in some cases.

Additionally, symbols may accrue meanings, true, but not all symbols mean all of their potential meanings at every time. Take the pentagram, for example. It does not mean the same thing on the side of the temple as it does on the door of a pagan, which does not mean the same as it does to an actual worshiper of Satan. That is why all symbols must be interpreted within the context they are used. When you strip a symbol of context, you strip it of meaning. When you change its context, you change its meaning. The symbol does not destabilize the context, it enriches it.

And remember. There is no such thing as an offensive or inoffensive text. The offense resides in the reader . . . and the context in which the reader resides.