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A report from a long and busy Wednesday

A report from a long and busy Wednesday

Last updated on: August 22, 2024 at 11:50 am by Dan Peterson

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A report from a long and busy Wednesday 2024-08-22T11:50:55-06:00 Dan Peterson

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An aerial view of part of Temple Square, in Salt Lake City, as it appeared prior to the current major alterations and renovations. The North Visitors Center, with its three dark windows and small dome, is now gone, as are the annex building north of the Temple, which is currently enclosed in scaffolding. New annex buildings are under construction. The Tabernacle itself is still functioning, and the tree-covered Conference Center in the upper lefthand portion of the photo, which is larger than it may appear, continues in full operation.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I was really busy yesterday — that’s why I didn’t post a blog entry for Wednesday — but I think that, for journalling purposes, I’ll write up a note on what I was doing.

I spent the entire day with Larry Eastland , of what is now been renamed the John A. and Leah D. Widtsoe Foundation, and Salam al-Marayati, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. It began with a breakfast with Larry and Salam, over which and after which we discussed the small book that Salam and I are to write — entitled Understanding Our Muslim Neighbors — under the auspices of the Widtsoe Foundation. It will be the fourth in a series that already includes Understanding Our Jewish Neighbors, Understanding Our Catholic Neighbors, and Understanding Our Evangelical Neighbors, and that, after ours, will feature a fifth volume entitled Understanding Our Eastern Christian Neighbors. Each volume features both an adherent of the named religious tradition and a Latter-day Saint. If the response is good, Larry and the Widtsoe Foundation hope to continue the series with books that are focused on the religious traditions of Eastern Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

I had already written my half of Understanding Our Muslim Neighbors, but Salam is now coming on as the Muslim co-author for that volume and my portion, which was (to a significant degree) written in response to prior content, will need to be revised if not altogether replaced in order to respond to what he writes.

I think that this is an extremely worthwhile project, and one that is badly needed, today more than ever before. Besides, it gives me an opportunity right now to broach an interesting and controversial issue (see “Opinion: An unprecedented opportunity to teach our kids about the world’s religions”) and to mention a book that I really admire — all the way down to its clever title — and that I recommend to anybody who has been or ever will be invited to attend a ritual or a celebration of another faith (e.g., a wedding or a funeral or a bar mitzvah or a confirmation) and that I wish that I written myself: How to Be A Perfect Stranger: The Essential Religious Etiquette Handbook.

Back, though, to my journal-writing.

I headed up quite early to Salt Lake City, where we had originally been scheduled to take Salam to Welfare Square and the Church’s Humanitarian Center. However, he had already visited those two facilities during an earlier visit to Salt Lake City, so we spent that time discussing the book instead, which was really quite fruitful.

Then we drove out on I-80, past the Salt Lake City International Airport, to the Bishops’ Central Storehouse, where we were met by the senior service couple, J. Christopher Lansing and Erlynn E. Lansing, who head up VIP Hosting for the Church. (They stayed with us for the rest of the day.) The Bishops’ Central Storehouse is a vast and very impressive facility. (For devotees of the late Christopher Hitchens, of course, that will be “impressive in a negative way,” since the Storehouse is a blatantly obvious specimen from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™.) We toured through and around the Storehouse by golf cart.

Afterwards, we headed back into downtown Salt Lake City to the Capital Grille, where we had lunch (but did not participate in the Summer Wine Event) with Elder Carl B. Cook of the Presidency of the Seventy.

From lunch, we headed over to the FamilySearch Library, where two members of the staff — one of them of Palestinian Christian Arab background — gave a special presentation to Salam, including documents relating to his parents’ immigration from Iraq in 1963 and photos from his high school days in Tempe, Arizona, and articles by and about him that he had forgotten. They gave him a good overview of what the Library does and how non-Latter-day Saints can use it.

Then we walked over to the Tabernacle, where Richard Elliot gave us a demonstration of the Tabernacle organ. Did you realize that there is a second, much-smaller nineteenth-century organ located at the back of the Tabernacle. I didn’t know that, and I couldn’t see it. But Brother Elliott played it for us from the main console up front, and then actually used it in the final song that he performed for us, which was a rousing arrangement (his) of “Come, Come Ye Saints.” To an extent, it imitated the march of the pioneer companies traveling from east to west. It was marvelous.

We were met at the Tabernacle by (I think), the director of Church Security, who showed us a facility that I didn’t know existed and certainly would never have expected to see. And I think that’s all that I’m going to say about it. We had this privilege because Salam and our Church Security host are friends, having been involved for years with the federal Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

We walked from that fascinating experience over to the Conference Center, where we spent time looking at exhibits in the lobby and then admiring the enormous and beautiful auditorium itself, and then we walked to the Church Office Building, where we enjoyed dinner on the top floor with Elders Matthew S. Holland and Peter M. Johnson of the Seventy.

It was a very long day — I returned home about 13.5 hours after I had left in the morning — but a very good one. I enjoyed it, and it was good to get to know Larry Eastland and Salam al-Marayati much better than I had known them before.

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