If you’re new here, you may want to sign up for email alerts or subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for reading!Dr. Kathy Larsen has been a regular reader, commenter, friend, and selfless supporter of TempleStudy.com and many others, and has sadly been recently told that her cancer is returning. It sounds like it [...]
The title is a bit of a mouthful, but let me explain.
I have been a ballroom dancer since I was about 12 years old, or about 15 years. It has been quite an experience being involved with this subculture of ballroom dance, which has made up a large portion of my life. During the summer [...]
President Monson spoke at a regional meeting in the Conference Center yesterday, as reported by the Deseret News. The focus of his counsel was to put our homes in order. This is wise counsel since the Dow dropped 500 points today, the biggest drop since 9/11. We are living in troubled times, and I suspect [...]
I was doing some research this morning when I stumbled upon a very interesting passage from a book published in 1916 by Levi Rightmyer entitled, The Light of Truth as Revealed in the Holy Scriptures. The entire text of the book is available for perusal on Google Books here. The author is not LDS, although [...]
There is a great article over at LDS Views by Dr. Alonzo Gaskill in which he discusses the differences and similarities between Catholic prayer and Mormon prayer. It is quite interesting the comparisons he makes, particularly those with prayer in the temple. I believe this article is from his latest book Know Your Religions, Vol. [...]
As most people know, it is a tradition in many parts of the world to bake up a birthday cake for a friend or family member celebrating a birthday. Typically this cake is decorated nicely and topped with birthday candles, one for every year of the celebrant’s life. When the time comes to eat the [...]
Someone recently asked me the following:
Perhaps you can explain how a person who finds the [temple experience] to be … troubling should express those feelings.
This was my reply, with additional edits:
Mark Greene posted a comment a few days ago on my multi-part paper The Genesis of the Round Dance that I thought was very insightful:
In thinking further about your interesting paper on the genesis of the ring dance, I remembered that there is a marvelous example of a prayer circle and therefore a type of [...]
Some of our critics have been quick to contend that our modern temples and practices have no relationship whatever to the temples of ancient Israel. This is a quick judgment indeed. If one is willing to open their eyes that they may hear, and their ears that they may see, then many marvelous [...]
I hadn’t made this connection before, but it seems to jump out at me now like red ink. I knew that the School of the Prophets was a select group of brethren who participated in an effort to prepare themselves for the missionary work, but it also had a much more spiritual side with [...]
One of the criticisms leveled at the LDS (Mormon) practice of temple worship is the seemingly dissimilar forms of the ordinances when compared with those found practiced by ancient Israelites in the Bible. It is true that the forms of the ordinances and sacrifices are different, but their meaning and symbolism remain the same. [...]
A group of researchers has just begun a two-week excavation at the well-known Stonehenge site in England in an attempt to discover, once and for all, the meaning behind the mysterious ruins. According to current scientific dating, Stonehenge dates back to about 3000 B.C., but it has perplexed archaeologists for years as to the [...]
In my readings on mudras I found other information on the Tian Tan, or Temple of Heaven, that I thought was interesting.
The Tian Tan is a Taoist temple in Beijing, China, and its construction dates back to the fifteenth century when it was originally named the Temple of Heaven and Earth. This temple has [...]
The Encyclopedia Britannica reports what is speculated to be the origin of the letter “E” in our modern alphabet:
The letter E may have started as a picture sign of a man with arms upraised, as in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing (1) and in a very early Semitic writing used in about 1500 BC on the Sinai [...]
The word orant, or latin orans, is a noun form of the verb orare, to pray, and describes an early mode of prayer practiced by the first Christians. From Wikipedia we read:
Orant is a type of gesture during prayer in which the hands are raised, set apart, and the palms face outward. It was [...]
An exhibition back in 2000 at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, which was curated by Yael Israeli and David Mevorah, shows artifacts from the early years of the Christian church. The exhibition was entitled “The Cradle of Christianity“:
The exhibition attempts to synthesize the literary sources with finds that have been excavated in this country, particularly [...]
“Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth” (Psalm 54:2).
Dr. Nibley indicates that this type of prayer or “cry of distress” by David is similar in tone to the words of the Lord on the cross when He said, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my [...]
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