Mellifera, I agree – you’ve given us a fascinating perspective on this. Especially – “So instead of temple patrons, we have to think like temple workers because that is who we are in the home.” Thank you!

My first thought is, At the temple everybody is nice to each other. (Very few exceptions.) That’s it! I think that’s the #1 expression of sacredness that transcends the boundaries of temple and home. You can’t do ordinances at home, but you can sure treat people with respect. Kindness and charity are the essence of Christianity. Now obviously kids aren’t born knowing (or caring) how to do this and have to be taught over many many years of encouragement and correction. Which brings to mind point #2, that in the temple there are very clear expectations as to behavior. Do you ever find yourself thinking in the temple, on the occasional times when you feel frustrated with something, “I bet if I flip out on this temple worker, then I’ll get my way.” No. That is very obviously not ok. You learn to wait. Again, kids don’t have the inhibitions that adults do. That’s why they are given adults to help them understand and be able to cope with the social norms of consideration and patience that we learn, through the temple, are our highest standard.

I also liked someone’s commenting that in the temple we move at the pace of the slowest member of the group: how sad would it be to be left behind at the temple? The corollary skill to this is not only remembering to wait, but to not sit there and fume about how you’re being slowed down. See #4…

#3: People working at the temple are united in their purpose. You don’t have the recommend desk guys going “Boo! Baptistry drools!” and vice versa. They see their jobs as little portions of a bigger whole and recognize that they need each other to achieve the whole point of their own selves’ being there.

Applying this one to family can be a little tricky. Families really did used to need all their members, children included, to pull together to support themselves, but prosperity has made total cooperation somewhat unnecessary. I knew an LDS family therapist who told me, “Every family should have some kind of family business. Even if it’s just selling ice cream cones twice a year at parades. People and especially children just need something more compelling to rally around than doing dishes! ‘Wow Margie, thanks for putting the silverware away, we really couldn’t have pulled through without you.’ No, not very inspiring.” I often wonder if this is not the same need that SAHMs express when they feel frustrated to tears with the unfocused-ness of herding their kids all day. Activities going on in the home- gardening, tailoring, selling eggs and milk, and all other kinds of family business- used to be at least half the family’s living- income was only part of the story. And the whole family had to work together in order to make it happen. Kids felt needed and important and family members felt closer because they accomplished important things together. That’s what those ropes courses for businesses are all about- they’re just trying to recreate what every farmer kid used to have with their family. One of my goals when we have kids is to never do chores alone- I was doing dishes at 5, so I know it can be done. : )

(If you want a more solid example of what I mean by this, I just have to put in a plug for my buddies the Jeffries family. They’re not LDS- they’re a bunch of pig farmers up in Vermont. But if you want an example of a home patterned after the temple, these guys are it. Check out their far-too-absorbing-for-your-own-good blog at sugarmtnfarm.com/blog)

#4- And my final thought, The temple is not about efficiency. Of course we try to do things more in a smooth fashion than otherwise. That just makes for a good experience. But even when we have 500 initiatories to do, we still do them with dignity. Those are people, and this is not a soul factory- it’s the House of the Lord.

What a revelation. It’s kind of like saying, “Your kitchen is not a food factory. It is a laboratory in which to work together.” Kind of changes the point of dinner prep a little bit. I’m sure this all sounds awful idealistic but I think ideals are also one of the temple’s main points- having something to aim for.

There are other things I’m thinking still, but it’s late and I need my beauty sleep in a baaad way. : D Hope this continued to make sense until the end.

For me, being a patron at the temple vs. working there has turned out to be vastly different experiences. Being a patron is a lot like coming back to your parents’ house for Christmas during college: all you have to do is show up on time and mind your manners, and everything else is taken care of. Even when you participate in the chores, somebody else still masterminds the effort. Then you go back to your own life and all the sudden you have to go back to deciding what to cook, chore triage, juggling your schedule etc etc. That’s what actually working there is like (but still nicer than real life because it’s still the temple.) I’m not trying to patronize anybody’s temple experience here- that’s a temple lady no-no!- just explaining the HUGE shift in perspective that I experienced.

So, the point of all this is, I think maybe the problem with the “home should be like the temple” equation is that when people think “temple,” part of what they think of is “the serenity and calm of having everything taken care of by someone else,” because that’s a big part of the experience of the temple: being served by others. And it gets real obvious real quick that that is one principle that we as adults cannot apply in the home. So instead of temple patrons, we have to think like temple workers because that is who we are in the home.

When we discuss the temple being a “house of order,” let’s give an example of the typical temple shift setup. There are about 30 sisters per shift, and there are certain things that need manning (or womanning- as since I don’t know the brothers’ side so well I’m going to just talk about the sisters’ side. But I assume we’re all working on the same thing!):

-X number of ladies to staff the locker room
-X number of ladies to stand at various posts throughout the temple to help people get where they’re going
-1-2 ladies per endowment session to help out
-X number of ladies to help out at the veil
-X number of ladies to do initiatories, etc
-X number of ladies in the baptistry

Temple workers rotate through their various posts in ½ hour chunks (that’s why sometimes they stalk you around the temple. They’re really not trying to be creepy.) Plus everybody needs to have a lunch break scheduled somewhere, time allowed to newer workers for study and training, make sure you have sisters who speak the appropriate foreign language in the right time and place, and you need to know when live ordinances are coming through so you can schedule your super-solid ultracool temple ladies to them.

That’s a lot of scheduling to juggle! How do they do it? Well, they have this amazing sheet that has a standard schedule of jobs: ie “Line 1” starts with attending the first endowment session, moves on to the locker room for 2 half-hour chunks after that, then does initiatories for 2 hours… etc. I’m somewhere down on Line 19 doing things like Recommend Desk Bouncer Lady and the occasional stint in initiatory or baptistry.

And- take heart, Saints!- there’s always something that goes wrong with their schedule. Temple workers don’t show up, somebody runs low on blood sugar and needs to take their lunch break early, a Spanish-speaking lady came and wants to do initiatories but there aren’t any Spanish-speaking workers in there at the moment, etc, etc, etc. Luckily for the shift coordinator she does have that handy little schedule showing her (1) What the general needs are, and (2) where everybody is in case she needs to find them and switch them out should a change occur. The crossing-out-and-retooling starts right at the beginning of the shift when they find out who’s actually there that day, and by the end of the temple shift the coordinator’s clipboard has more red on it than my final paper for French 321.

So, what this means is… The temple works because they have a solid basic plan that is extremely, extremely flexible and based on moment-to-moment needs!

Another interesting point about their ability to fit their plan to the moment is that the shift coordinator really has to know her girls. Sister X speaks Spanish, Sister Y doesn’t but has the Spanish initiatory memorized anyway, Sister Z is creaky and can’t stand for too long so we don’t put her in standing posts, Sister J is hypoglycemic so she can’t help supervise an endowment session- too much time without snack breaks. And so on and so forth. Each sister who works there has her own individual strengths and the coordinator needs to work with those strengths so that the temple really performs. Kudos to my amazing shift coordinator Sister Peterson- wherever you are, you’re a darn good temple lady.

****I still have more thoughts on temple/home brewing, but this post is already long enough. That is, thoughts brewing on temple/home. Not home brewing at the temple. Er… more to follow.

My aversion disappears by changing from “goals” to “purpose”. Funny how over time we can get edgy about nuances like that!

Everything in the temple serves a purpose. (Yet, I think of temple “goals” as the now-abolished practice of committing to your leaders how many ordinances you will do that year.)