Temple Open House

[dareka]

I recently attended the open house for the Saratoga Springs Temple. It was beautiful, to be sure, but it seemed very strange to me. It had been years since I'd been to an open house, but I don't remember it being so strange. In each area they had two volunteers who recited memorized explanations about that particular area. The volunteers all had smiles and they recited their lines mechanically. It came across as very cult like, I thought. If I toured a Scientology facility, I imagine it would be similar.

Have any of you experienced this before?

[Angel]

When we enter a space that was once a sacred place of worship and now serves as a museum of memories we can embrace the impermanence of forms. To reflect on the transformative nature of human endeavors and the evolution of our mind and consciousness.

Perhaps mix nostalgia, sadness, the sense of loss for the false shallow sacred - mix in a deep sense of gratitude and understanding for the spiritual journey, try to embrace what we all share and seek - find unity even in diversity - love, understanding, and compassion.

[Red Ryder]

Same thing happened in the Mesa Az temple open house.

It was very odd.

[sparky]

They are probably trying to make it more personable than just having printed signs in front of each roped off room saying things like "This is where sacred covenants are made" or "this beautiful room is where brides prepare to make sacred covenants" like all the open houses I've been to.

It doesn't sound like this new approach is better.

[Red Ryder]

Sparky, you bring up a good point.

The signs are impersonal. Having members creates an opportunity to serve but they really don’t want the members to speak freely about the temple experience.

So they come up with a dialogue that sounds robotic.

When we walked through the open house, the lady gave her two sentence speech and suddenly stopped talking. Everyone waited for her to continue. She didn’t because she only gave a short blurb. So the awkwardness of everyone’s attention waiting for her to continue became the weird moment. Then people just turned and walked to the next room.

Funny story, when we went the first time, my wife took a non-member co-worker. She asked about the underwear and wondered how that all worked. Which made it comical listening to her explain Mormon garments while walking through the temple open house.

I think the open houses are primarily focused on reassuring the members that their country club is cool.

[wtfluff]

I'm surprised they don't present all attendees with a list of "Approved Questions." (Here is the list of canned questions for which volunteers have been trained with canned answers...)

I'm glad no-one invites me to these any more. You've seen one Polygamy Palace™, you've seen them all. I've wasted enough of my Fluffy life in those gods-awful buildings.

[moksha]

Having members creates an opportunity to serve but they really don’t want the members to speak freely about the temple experience.

Can you imagine having these Temple workers go off script and start describing the Nude Clogging Dance Ceremony to non-members?

[dareka]

Thanks for the responses. I'm glad to know it wasn't all just my imagination. I'm hoping I won't have to do that again.

[Hagoth]

I remember a similar creepiness,factor at the Draper, UT temple open house. But the thing that really struck me as weird was the way every available square foot of wall space was occupied by a picture of Jesus. Even weirder, they used the same few Corellation-Comittee-approved pictures (you know the ones) over and over again, so you would see a picture on one wall and then round a corner to find yourself looking at the same freakin' picture. But then, when I returned a couple weeks later to do an endowment, I saw they had taken most of the Jesus pictures down. Such a transparent display of overcompensating for their own i security about the cultiness of the place.

[Cnsl1]

Having members creates an opportunity to serve but they really don’t want the members to speak freely about the temple experience.

Can you imagine having these Temple workers go off script and start describing the Nude Clogging Dance Ceremony to non-members?

Now, c'mon, I've never seen a nude clogging dance. You make the temple seem weird, and we know it's not weird it's just a little different, especially your first few times. You've just got to keep going over and over and pretty soon, line upon line, precept upon precept, you'll begin to understand the deep mysteries... like why do you have to be nude for the dancing, and why does everyone say it's clogging, when it's clearly not clogging when there's no clogs to clog. You'll start to understand WHY it's so close to clogging and how the original cloggers were given the dancing rites but of course many precious parts were lost only to be restored in our day through Joseph Smith, which is why it resembles traditional cloggery but actually is actually the true pure form, with all the kicks, sticks, and penalties. So please don't even call it clogging, cuz it's not.