Other than a few teen necrodunking trips, I was able to avoid additional exposure to sacred clubhouse secrets by leaving tscc shortly after graduating high school.

I consider that avoidance as one of the luckiest breaks of my life. I was a somewhat atypical but still BIC TBM girl living in the 80's morridor. I had a dewy-eyed, idealistic (utterly ignorant) dream: I wanted to be romantically and breathlessly whisked off for eternal shrink-wrapping in the temple to some cute RM who was as horny - er - spiritually hungry as I was.

Yet it came to pass that before I became deeply desirous of factual information - and in respect of my TBM mom's sensibilities - my exmo-still-married-to-my-mom dad didst refrain from the unrighteous relayment to his seed of titillating temple tenets...'till well after I'd begun exiting on my own terms.

At such time he didst give mine ear discourse of the lard's endowment, at mine own seeking. Penalty oaths were prayerfully pilloried which didst make the hairs of my stiff-neckedness stand straight up. And it came to pass that mine Halloween costume, The Bride of Frankenstein, was resultantly really radically righteousness-ous-ly.

Whatever. My costume smote the heads off of all others that year.

(record needle scratches violently)

Eh, since that time, I've read chunks of the endowment ceremony here and there over the past 25+ years. It has hardly held interest for me, being so far removed from it.

Until this afternoon, I've never "sat through" an endowment session in its entirety until watching a nearly 2 hour recording of it by someone using a hidden camera - and from what I understand on RfM and elsewhere, it is the very rare live version with "actors" (choking with laughter at this description) instead of the probably far more enjoyable movie.

What can I say -- I had nothing better to do.

It almost tempts me to reactivate, pay tithing for 6 months, etc, get a recommend, and go to see for myself how utterly inane, boring, repetitive, inane, repetitive, inane, embarrassing, boring, inane, repetitive and freakishly cultic it all really is.

As an idealistic very mormon girl, going through that entire rigamorole just once would have eternally traumatized me. And that's without the bloody pre-90's penalty oaths.

This is what they're spending all that money on, building these temples with egregious hotel lobby decor? [falls out of chair laughing]

Look, I don't have the answers to life but the sermon I get out of my episcopal priest about priorities every Sunday blows the boat out of the water in matters of contemplating what I'm here for and why. There are no definitive answers. But love trumps all, and the temple is about as far from love as it gets.

Kudos to the ex-mos here who were temple session enthusiasts. You are masochists of the highest order to have subjected yourselves to such regular self-abuse.

Yea, verily I say, it didst fucketh our minds for quite some time.

Awesome...lol

winecountrygirl, FreeRose, freckles:

Raising my 2nd glass of Malbec to you all tonight, and the view in our rear-view mirrors.

To the road ahead!

mindscrewing cult so early. One of the best things I did (the worst being JOINING the sick TSCC at 20) was insisting on taking out my endowments (really) after turning down the bish's mission suggestion (another good choice). The creepy endowment ceremony sent me packing shortly after. Well, that and being so friggin exhausted I couldn't think straight.

Glad you are FREE!

I can still remember my WTF moment when I first went through and experienced the death rituals. This was around 1972. I did the ritual about 25 times and had enough, My slow disassociation with the cult started at that moment.

Keeyrist, 25 times with the death penalties still in use?

Damn dude. You were hard-core :-D

[Can't say I wouldn't have traveled down that road, as young and thoroughly brainwashed as I was.]

And now that I would that ye might know that after my father, apostate paternal unit of frogdogs, had made an end of continuing to perpetuate the grievous wrongs concerning his seed, it came to pass that the lard of the fridge spake unto him saying...

Fook that sheet! Enough already!

Major props to all who sat through the utterly laughable but deadly serious cult-worshipping endowment ceremony more than once. I can't imagine the cognitive dissonance, let alone the desire to run screaming in the other direction due to creepiness factor alone. Those elderly, forgetful men in white suits and matronly zombie women mumbling and bumbling around, muttering things that have absolutely nothing to do with real human life, compassion or love is scary beyond compare.

What a farce beyond imagining.

I wish all temple survivors continued healing, loud laughter and light mindedness in all arenas of life.

the temple was the beginning of the end and the end of my belief


write your own story on the book of life!

-thus saith the fridge

Thank you so much. Seriously. As someone who went to many, many temple sessions ... I really did need that healing. And still do. I was really in deep.

You say not getting endowed was one of your luckiest breaks. Well my lucky break was that I never got married ... so I wasn't installed in the trap that is temple marriage that makes it so hard to extricate oneself from tscc in later years when one realizes the utter bullshit of it all, but can't get out because of a TBM spouse.

After seeing so many on this thread and in real life go through that, I consider myself lucky indeed.

Yep, I suppose we count our lucky breaks where we can.

If I hadn't caught the good fortune of leaving tscc before hitching my wagon to an RM, one of the next best things would've been for me to continue as a 'faithful' single LDS woman without all the attendant responsibilities of being a wife/mother. That would have meant living with the loneliness and feelings of unworthiness that single older women in tscc seem to endure for no good reason.

I'm married 22 years to never-mo DH and we're childless by choice, so there's still a semi-weirdness of being an oddball in our wider society/culture.

What I would love to hear about is a former TBM couple - now exmo, of course - who wanted to be sealed in the temple as young adults but who never wanted to have children, so they bucked church teaching in order to remain childless.

Totally an oxymoron according to doctrine: if you are young, want to be married, but don't want kids, Stan has you in his grasp. Have kids and Stan will go away!

My understanding is that the conditioning runs so deep as to result in those who go to the temple - if they can't have kids due to biology - feel compelled to adopt regardless of any misgivings on having a family?

Wonder how many TBM women there are who know they don't want kids. Ever. Yet feel compelled to remain within tscc and be 'faithful', try to find an eternal companion, talk themselves into wanting to be a mother, etc.

Talk about a no-win situation, forced at such an early age when most young adults are still figuring out who they are and what they want.

So wrong, and on so many levels -- not the least of which is the impact it will have upon the kids that result from such a union. Marriage in general is a 50/50 shot at best. Throw cult-pressured demands to produce children with a barely-known new spouse and guess who's likely to get the shortest end of the stick?

My heart aches for all who feel compelled to march to such drums.

For 2 months I went once a week. I had to stop because of the repetition of it all. How the fuck didst I endure such a trial as that? I played other movies in my head when the film rolled. Team America played a roll in getting me through all that.

I cannot imagine drive any significant distance to subject myself to that.

cheezus, I don'st knowest howst thou didst sucht thingst.

You'rest strongerst thanst I amst!

Cheezus!!! Can also be used as an exclamation of disbelief in this case.

or I would have forever wondered what I had missed out on--even if I read on the internet or saw a video, I would have been suspicious that I had missed something. They made it seem SO SPECIAL.

My younger sister (inactive since teens) every once in a while defends mormonism. She even liked on fb a Brigham City temple picture the other night because some mormons told her they would put her name in on the temple prayer roll and another of my parents' neighbors told her that they "feel" our mother each time they go to the temple. So--now my very, very, very "not worthy" sister is all caught up in mormonism again, though she'll never change enough to go back. It doesn't matter what I tell her--how hideous it all really was--she keeps thinking I must be lying.

So--I saw it. I experienced it. AND when it came time to stop believing, I didn't have to ever wonder again.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2013 09:03PM by cl2.

cl2, you bring up an interesting point about your sister

I wonder what she'd feel if she got herself temple worthy now, and started going?

It's easy to hold something as mysteriously holy, sacred, righteous and awe-inspiring... until you are confronted with the reality of how ridiculous it really is

If she's never been perhaps all that would be needed for her to start on the path to ex-dom is to take out her endowment ;-)

As sad as it is, I never agreed to get my TR (yep, I was even "worthy" at one point between the age of 18 and 23) because I had no desire to be forced to wear garments. I wore modest clothing at all times until the age of 15. And then, from 15 until 16, only wore immodest clothing for marching band practice (in the Texas heat from 2:45-4:45 after school every day. Too hot in 110deg weather to wear knee length shorts and t-shirts.)

Now, knowing what I know, I think I would have left TSCC much sooner if I had gone to the temple. No way would I have tolerated that BS

Nothing like the spectre of having to don those fugging garments to make one temple shy.

They never entered my mind but I categorize the topic simply as one of those things I hadn't given much thought to -- yet also knowing they would have quickly become much-hated in my first endowed summer or two.

I am convinced that my best friend avoided getting her recommend at 19/20 - after I left tscc but while she was still active - because it would've forced the garment issue. As a single attractive young woman she just couldn't wrap her brain around worrying about sleeveless tops in 95 degree heat. Can't say I blame her - or any other sane adult for that matter.

The temple is simply one of the biggest, most elaborate, most expensive scams EVER to be pulled on a collective group of people. Bernie Madoff has nothing on TSCC.

You're told over and over what a wonderful, beautiful, enlightening, spiritual experience you're going to have. You're promised wisdom, serenity, an eye-opening experience like no other, and then you go and reality hits. What's a poor Morgbot to do? Of course you go along with it, or you risk coming face to face with the fact that what you've been taught by the very people you love and admire is all horseshit and you belong to a cult. Seriously, how else can you describe what goes on in the temple but cult activity?

When I went in 1979, we were still slitting our throats. During the whole thing, I kept thinking, when do I get the wisdom? When do they give me that enlightenment? Where's the beauty? Where's the peaceful feelings? I watched the movie and thought it was stupid. Yes STUPID, boring and poorly acted...repetitive and teaching me nothing special. I thought, Why are they making me move this stupid robe back over the other shoulder? What's up with the Pay Lay Ale? Why do I have to suddenly know by heart all these passwords and handshakes I just heard ten minutes ago and put my knee against this old guy at the veil? When was over, I was thinking what? what? WHAT??? And then the next day I had to do it all over again before I got married!

On the way home from Washington DC to PA for our reception, I said, "I thought it was weird." You could have heard a pin drop and then they shushed me because we didn't talk about the temple outside the temple and don't worry, you'll learn more every time you go. Uh, no. I didn't. I hated it and only went under duress, probably no more than 5 times in all, but each time I wanted to be anywhere but there.

Yup, it's a scam. A big hilarious practical joke and there's an industry in temple garments to prove it.

The worst of it for me was, before I went, I was ready to intellectualize everything. Blonde, Utah PYT's just out of high school got weirded out because they weren't mature enough, I told myself. So I took it all very seriously, and pretended that my deep understanding of doctrine made it not weird, creepy and BORING.

But I knew, in my heart of hearts, as the say, that it was weird, creepy and BORING. It's not that they didn't understand it cause it was too deep and metaphorical it was because there was NOTHING to understand. It is all Emperor's New Clothes to me- on Fast Sundays when people talked about the peace and enlightenment they felt when they went to the temple, or how satan tried to keep them away, but they prevailed, what they're REALLY saying is, "I went to the temple and I pretend like I get it! Suck it, plebes!"

ugh.

DebbiePA Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Yup, it's a scam. A big hilarious practical joke
> and there's an industry in temple garments to
> prove it.

I wondered about that- remember a few years ago when they made garments super cheap? It was 1/3 of the price or something, saying that they did it in order to make them affordable to everyone in poor countries, but who actually makes them? How much profit do you think there is in them?

My cousin and I were having a conversation in my Aunt's bedroom, after she had died. My cousin, who had happily left Mormonism several years ago, asked, "Did your mother believe in the temple?" My mother was the daughter of a GA. I told my cousin the truth, that my TBM mother and father never went to the temple, and they didn't wear garments. I told my cousin that my mother took me into her bedroom to show me her temple garments, before I got married. It was awkward and hushed, like the time she instructed me about sanitary napkins and tampons.

In my mother's day, all the garments were one-piece, and women had two choices of styles: "open-crotch" (I won't go there right now) and "flare leg." Let me explain the "flare leg." There was a center seam and two, separate, extremely wide legs. A woman had to take care of her business through one of the legs! I was in horror of this, until my mother showed me her own garments. Now, as then, no one is allowed to make any alteration, changes, or addition to the sacred temple garment, for fear of punishment from GOD. My mother showed me how to take apart the center seam, and sew the flare legs together, so the garment was like a one-piece mini slip. Regular underpants could be worn under it, which was much more sanitary and modest. (My aunt used to cross her legs in such a fashion that one could see up the flare leg, and see absolutely all there was to see.)

Mother had bought tons of beautiful lace in Europe, and she never had told me what all that lace was for. All her garments had wide lace at the bottom, so they were like standard-length slips. She had also cut off the sleeves and sewn narrower lace around the sleeve holes and neckline. These looked like lovely, lacy lingerie. She said, "I couldn't let my husband see me in the garments, the way they were."

After hearing the story, my cousin said, "You've got to see this!" She opened her mother's chest of drawers, and took the garments out. They had the identical lace on them! We died laughing! My mother had made a whole drawer full of illegal garments for my aunt.

that's hilarious! I remember seeing my dad walking around on Saturday mornings in his one-piece garments. It sounds like your mother had some fashion sense. What she did was pretty innovative considering what she had to work with!