Temple noun. A literal house of God on the earth; when you enter its hallowed walls, you feel wonder, awe, and the reassurance that you are in the right place.
Change verb. To make something different from its original state. After receiving your endowment, your dad stood with you in the celestial room and told you about some of the changes he had seen in the temple over the years. These seem like a softening. Over the next several years, you too see change: there’s a shift in the number of times that you stand and sit in the endowment.
Quiet adjective. An absence of noise and a presence of peace and clarity. When you were twelve, you were surprised when a temple president told your youth group that they were the quietest to ever enter the walls of the Portland, Oregon temple. Now that you’re twenty-one and a Baptistry temple worker, you turn off patron phones left in coat pockets and usher hundreds of young people through a queue every Saturday morning. You realize how very noisy the temple can be.
Hmm interjection. A sound, often involuntary, denoting that more thought and reflection is required before a full response can be given. You speak to a former roommate who has left the church, in part because of the temple ceremonies, and when she tells you this you say “hmm” because your experience with the temple in the past decade has been so very different than hers. How can she find the temple so stifling and hurtful, when you have found it such a strength and a joy?
Everyone pronoun. Each person, an inclusive group that excludes no one and can create a sense of belonging. You’ve heard substantial changes have been made to the temple endowment and everyone is excited. A friend organizes a group of seven women to go to the temple together. You drive the two and a half hours to the temple. Everyone loves the new endowment. Everyone except you. You are no longer part of everyone.
And conjunction. A word which joins things together. You experience a panic attack and a miracle—a prolonged panic attack while sitting through the endowment, overwhelmed, and then, in the celestial room, a miracle, as you read a few comforting verses from the Book of Mormon and the clouds literally part so the sun shines through the stained glass and falls directly on you. In the months that follow, you experience self-realization and burning doubt—self-realization that through the course of your life, you had truly come to believe that God saw women as less than men, and now you know that it’s not true; and burning doubt, for the new introduction to the endowment insists that the covenants have not changed, but if changing the direction of a covenant is not change, then what is?
Around preposition. Located on all sides; completely surrounding. You return to the temple, praying for a better experience. During the endowment you feel, for the first time, the love of your Heavenly Mother around you, helping to carry you through.
The definite article. A word which indicates something of a familiar or known quantity which no longer needs to be specified. For instance, after the temples close for the pandemic and then slowly reopen, when the prophet invites church members to attend the temple, you already know that the prophet refers to Russell M. Nelson and the temple refers to any of the temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When you attend the temple, you’re shocked to discover that all of your favorite parts of the endowment have been removed. You have a forty-minute panic attack during the session, and when you leave the temple, you decide you may never come back. The temple is no longer a known quantity.
Quite adverb. Very, especially, to a large degree. You are quite distraught. Every time you think in depth about the temple you have a panic attack. Every time the temple is mentioned in church, your chest tightens, your heart races, tears threaten to escape, and you are quite certain that you want to hide.
How interrogative adverb. A question word which asks, in what manner or way is something possible? How, you plead in your prayers, how do I go forward? How, you ask your therapist, how do I better manage my anxiety? How, you beg the stake president during your temple recommend interview, how do I change how I feel about the temple?
This demonstrative pronoun. Something with close proximity, as opposed to the word that, which indicates something further away. This is the temple, you say as the substitute teacher to the five-year-old primary class, and you bear a testimony of it, realizing you still have a testimony. This is the temple, you say as you bring your 12-year-old daughter to the baptistry for the first time and hand her a white towel, as you once did for thousands of other young women.
Adaptation Theory noun phrase. The principles or framing used to understand an adaptation (a creation based off of something else). For instance, scholar Richard Stam proposes that it is unhelpful to judge adaptations on fidelity, or how close they are to the original object. Rather, an adaptation can be weighed by analyzing its essence and its goals, whether translation, transformation, dialogization, signification, etc. You hear there have been even more changes to the temple—much bigger changes. Instead of asking “If the temple is so important, why couldn’t God have revealed a perfect endowment from the start?”, you decide it might be healthy to think of different versions of the endowment as different adaptations of a truth that we can’t fully see or experience right now.
Temple noun. The literal house of God on the earth, a place where the mysteries of God unfold in mysterious ways, and where change and transformation of the self is ultimately possible. You go to the temple with a friend and, as you participate in the ceremonies of the endowment, you feel a measure of peace.
Katherine Cowley‘s debut novel, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, was the winner of LDSPMA’s Praiseworthy Award for Best Suspense/Mystery novel. The book was also nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and was a finalist for the Whitney Awards. Her other novels are The True Confessions of a London Spy and The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception. Her Mormon short fiction has appeared in the Mormon Lit Blitz and Segullah. She has taught writing classes at Brigham Young University, Mesa Community College, and Western Michigan University. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her husband and three daughters.
