In his April 2026 General Conference address, “A Peculiar Treasure,” Alan R. Walker teaches that becoming the Lord’s covenant people is not something passive—it is a deliberate process shaped by obedience, sacrifice, and devotion to God.
But in a world that often values convenience and immediate results, disciples may wonder: Does faithful discipleship really require that much effort? [Read more…] about A Peculiar Treasure
Tyler Golightly explains that many misunderstandings about Latter-day Saint temples stem from a modern lack of understanding about sacred space. By examining Old Testament teachings—particularly from Exodus, Leviticus, and Psalms—he shows that ancient Israelites also maintained strict boundaries around holy places, not to exclude people arbitrarily, but to protect both individuals and the community from the consequences of unprepared encounters with the divine.
The talk then connects these ancient principles to modern LDS temple practices. While Latter-day Saints no longer follow ritual purity laws, they maintain standards of worthiness and preparation to enter the temple. Golightly emphasizes that temple “exclusivity” is not about exclusion, but about preparation. Ultimately, the temple is open to all who are willing to enter into covenants and live accordingly, reinforcing that holiness is an invitation—not a barrier.
Latter-day Saint temples are considered sacred spaces where individuals prepare to encounter God, which is why access is limited to those who meet certain spiritual standards. This practice isn’t unique—it reflects ancient patterns of holiness found in the Old Testament, where sacred spaces required preparation and purity. The goal isn’t to exclude people, but to invite everyone to become ready to enter and participate.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints occupies an awkward place in the religious world. To the casual observer, we may appear to be like any other church. We worship on Sundays in normal-looking chapels, and we have a liturgy—namely the sacrament—that anyone can participate in.
This is a practice that we are comfortable talking about because it is something that we do regularly. It’s also the part of our worship that our friends can see.
In contrast to our chapels, there are temples—ornate, beautiful edifices. Only those who hold a current temple recommend can enter. Here, sacred ceremonies are performed. Only the initiated can participate in these ceremonies. Details are not freely discussed outside the building premises.
This part of our worship is something that many Latter-day Saints, myself included, struggle to talk about. We want to communicate the unique nature of the temple. But we want to avoid making it sound like we’re hiding something nefarious.
This difficulty is compounded by the temple’s seemingly exclusive nature.
To some, that nature must mean that we have something to hide—such as concealing nefarious, even satanic rituals. On a more personal and serious level, the exclusivity of the temple and its ceremonies can feel isolating to those not of our faith.
Many Latter-day Saint weddings have family members and friends of the new couple waiting outside the temple. Because they are not members of the Church or do not hold a current temple recommend.
Both of these situations lead many to ask the same questions: Why exclusivity? Why not open the temple up to everyone? Why keep people out?
The exclusive nature of the temple—and many saints’ struggle to answer questions about it—has led some people to many erroneous and also entertaining conclusions:
All these are based on real things that I saw on the wonderful wide internet.
I feel that many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struggle to answer these questions in an informed and sensitive way because we lack the proper framework to think and talk about the concept of sacred space.
After all, we live in a world today where information is readily available and nothing is hidden. In such a world, religious spaces and ceremonies closed to the public are naturally seen as weird or cultish.
Finding ourselves in a society that has no concept of the sacred, how do we as Latter-day Saints talk about this place that not everyone can enter—where we do things that not everyone can participate in? This is a difficult and unique predicament to be in. But fortunately, there is an answer.
That answer can be found in a beloved volume of scripture, the Old Testament—more specifically, the books of Exodus and Leviticus with their ritual purity laws. The texts of the Old Testament have unconsciously informed the way we view sacred space, which in turn informs the way we restrict access to the temple.
My purpose here is to build an initial framework for understanding exclusivity and sacred space based on the writings of the Old Testament.
Before similarities can be fleshed out between Israelite sacred space theology and Latter-day Saint temple theology, this fundamental question must be answered: How did the ancient Israelites think about sacred space?
The Israelites existed in an ancient Near Eastern context, and naturally they borrowed many ideas from their neighbors. This was especially true for ideas about sacred space.
For example, in many ancient Near East societies, a temple was viewed as the dwelling place of whatever deity whose temple it was.
A major part of the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, is when the gods create a temple in Babylon as a place where they could dwell and rest. The Anunnaki speaking to Marduk says:
Now Lord, seeing you have established our freedom, what favor can we do for you? Let us make a shrine of great renown. Your chamber will be our resting place wherein we may repose. Let us erect a shrine to house a pedestal wherein we may repose when we finish the work.
The Israelites thought of the tabernacle—and later the temple—as literal dwelling places of the Lord. In Exodus 25, Jehovah commands Moses to:
. . . tell the Israelites to take for me an offering; from all whose hearts prompt them to give you shall receive the offering for me. … And have them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. In accordance with all that I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and of all its furniture, so you shall make it (Exodus 25:2, 8–9, NRSV).
In 1 Kings 6, Solomon is in the process of building the temple, and he receives a revelation from the Lord. The Lord says to him:
Concerning this house that you are building, if you will walk in my statutes, obey my ordinances and keep all my commandments by walking in them, then I will establish my promise with you, which I made to your father David. I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people, Israel.
Later, in his dedicatory prayer for the newly constructed temple in Jerusalem, Solomon said:
“I have built you… an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.”
The Hebrew for the word “dwell,” used in these verses, is šākan. In this context, it involves a proper dwelling—a lasting stay, not a passing transition.
Thus, when the Lord is said to dwell somewhere, it means that He literally dwells there. The Israelites considered the tabernacle and the later temple as places where the Lord literally dwelt and lived among His people.
Because both the tabernacle and the temple were seen as the literal dwelling places of Jehovah, they were considered holy. In Exodus 29:43–44, it reads:
I will meet with the Israelites there (meaning the tabernacle), and it shall be sanctified by my glory. I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the Israelites and I will be their God.
It is the Lord’s glory—or more precisely His divine presence or kabod—that makes the tabernacle holy. But what is the meaning of the word “holy”? Despite being a near universal idea, it is actually quite a bit difficult to precisely define.
The Hebrew root for holy, qodeš, denotes something as being set apart from the world. Kurt Goldammer describes “the holy” as “the entirely different.” He writes that “the holy is not just different from all things human. It is also different from the normal world and the temporal [or profane]. If something is holy, it is sometimes literally set apart entirely from the rest of the world and it must be kept that way.
According to the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, “What is holy and what is profane are to be strictly distinguished, with the latter not allowed to come into contact with the former.”
This concept of holiness was central to how the Israelites thought about and dealt with sacred space. It is also the most important concept for Latter-day Saints to understand as we interact with the relevant Old Testament texts dealing with sacred space.
In the minds of the Israelites and other ancient Near Eastern peoples, the primary way that the outside—or profane—world interacted or came into contact with the holy was through impurity.
Jacob Milgrom writes, “Impurity is the implacable foe of holiness wherever it exists. It assaults the sacred realm even from afar.” If the profane were to come into contact with the holy, whether indirectly or directly, the consequences would be catastrophic for the offender and the community.
So what exactly were those consequences?
Three episodes in the Old Testament shed light on the subject. In Exodus 19, the Israelites are far beyond the Red Sea and have reached Sinai. The Lord reveals to Moses that He wants to make Israel a kingdom of priests and a holy nation by covenanting with them and giving them a law.
Not only would He be giving Israel a law, but the Lord would also come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all people. This was a momentous occasion, which is why the children of Israel had to prepare for it by washing their clothes and abstaining from sexual contact for three days.
There was also one very important commandment which they had to keep while they were at the mountain:
Be careful not to go up to the mountain or to touch the edge of it. Any who touch the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch them, but they shall be stoned or shot with arrows; whether animal or human being, they shall not live.
The Lord would eventually invite the Israelites to join Moses on the mountain. But any uninvited crossing of the threshold between sacred and profane warranted immediate execution at the hands of the people.
For God to come down to Sinai and converse with Moses, no one could contaminate the mountain—and the people were to be the enforcers of this prohibition.
Jumping ahead a little bit in Leviticus 10, the tabernacle has just been dedicated, and as signified by the appearance of the glory—or the kavod—of the Lord in the sight of all Israel, it was now considered holy.
For the Israelites, this theophany surely must have been a wonderful and awesome—in the literal sense—experience. One which surely no one would forget.
Except two rather important individuals seem to have forgotten—Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron and members of the priestly caste.
In their enthusiasm to officiate in their priestly office, they seemingly forgot the now holy nature of the sanctuary and the need to keep the profane out. They took their censers and offered unholy fire before the Lord such as He had not commanded them.
Nadab and Abihu brought coals from an outside—or profane—source into the tabernacle tent itself, thereby contaminating it. The universal order had just been violated.
And the consequence for such a crime? We read:
“And there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.”
For the individual offender—or offenders in this case—the consequence of profaning the holy sanctuary could be immediate death by the hand of God.
However, the Israelites did not believe that the impure had to physically violate the bounds of the sacred in order for contamination to occur. The sins of the people could also indirectly contaminate the sanctuary, and thus the sanctuary itself had to be purified.
This belief was the motivation behind the various purification or sin offerings as prescribed by the Torah.
Why did the sanctuary itself have to be purified? Jacob Milgrom writes:
“God will not abide in a polluted sanctuary. To be sure, the merciful one would tolerate a modicum of pollution, but there is a point of no return. If the pollution levels continue to rise, the end is inexorable; God abandons the sanctuary and leaves the people to their doom.”
It should be noted that in the view of the Israelites, Jehovah was not a strict God who arbitrarily and capriciously smote the people for the smallest of inadvertent ethical or ritual wrongs.
The contamination brought upon the sanctuary by such wrongs was cleansed through regular sin offerings described in Leviticus 4.
The well-being and prosperity of the entire community and civilization was at risk if the sanctuary was not purified quickly—or was profaned repeatedly. Continual profanation of the sanctuary through intentional wrongdoing would bring the judgment of God on the people.
Now we come to Ezekiel. In Ezekiel, the prophet is shown in vision the idolatrous practices and worship of foreign deities—abominations, as the prophet refers to them—taking place within the temple complex at Jerusalem.
The children of Israel had violated the sanctity of the temple by building and worshiping idols, as well as worshiping deities or objects that were certainly not related to Jehovah.
The Lord says to Ezekiel:
“Mortal, do you see what they are doing? The great abominations the house of Israel are committing here to drive me far from my sanctuary?”
Ultimately, God’s presence leaves the temple, and the people are delivered to destruction as a result of their continual sin.
The people have polluted the sanctuary with their ethical—and more importantly, their ritual—sins to the point that it was impossible for the presence of the Lord to remain there.
It is hopefully obvious that—at least in the Israelite worldview—people’s lives were at stake when it came to holiness.
Contact between the holy and the profane or impure meant, at best, almost certain death to the offending party—and at worst, contact between the two would lead to the divine presence of Jehovah being driven from sacred space.
Such an action would bring cataclysmic levels of death and destruction to the community, as illustrated by the eventual carrying away of the people to Babylon.
And for those of you wondering how this could all possibly relate to us as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—don’t worry.
Everything should start to make a little bit more sense from here on out.
Improper interaction with the holy would bring death—either by the hand of God or man. Thus, access to the holy was strictly controlled and limited.
In some ancient Near Eastern cultures, one would have to pass by a set of guardian statues in order to enter the temple complex. These guardians were thought to ward off demons and protect the sanctuary from being defiled.
The tabernacle and later the temple at Jerusalem did not have such measures. But there were other means of protecting the sanctuary. To illustrate this, we’re going to step away from the dizzying rules and regulations of the priestly text for a moment. Instead, let’s turn to the warm, soothing embrace of the Psalms.
Psalms 15 and 24 are thought to be part of a gate liturgy. A festival procession would make its way to the gates of the temple complex. There, a priest would ask the leader of the procession if the members of that company met the ritual and ethical requirements to enter the temple complex.
The leader of the procession would then affirm that they did indeed meet the requirements. This liturgy served as a way to both:
The 24th Psalm reads:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul into vanity (or what is “vaults” in the NRSV) nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob (or as NRSV translates it, or that seek the face of the God of Jacob).
In a similar vein, Psalm 15 reads:
Oh Lord, who may abide in thy tabernacle, who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart; he that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor.
As stated in these passages, only those who met certain conditions—that is, moral and ritual purity—could pass through the gates and be admitted into the sacred space.
These psalms illustrate that the conditions involve not just ritual purity, but the correct treatment of others. As Othmar Keel put it,
The chief wall which separates God and man is ethical misconduct toward one’s co-religionists.”
However, being able to enter the complex did not guarantee access to the sanctuary or its rituals. Only the priests could perform sacrifices on the altar in the courtyard or access the sanctuary itself. This regulation was enforced under penalty of death.
Common lay persons had access to the courtyard. But there were still restrictions on
in that space.
For instance, they could not approach the altar and offer sacrifices there. Even if the Israelite were a male descendant of Aaron. There were further rituals and requirements that had to be met in order to officiate.
Potential officiants needed to be
before they could begin to offer sacrifices or enter the sanctuary. In addition, they had to live by additional requirements not imposed upon the lay people.
But even being a priest did not automatically grant one access to all areas of the temple. The Holy of Holies was limited to the high priest alone—and it was only accessed once a year.
If the high priest were to either:
he would die, since that was where the Lord’s presence resided.
The high priest was also required to wear additional clothing. He had to follow stricter purity laws than those of the normal priestly class. All of this was to avoid the high priest both defiling himself and the sanctuary.
Ritual and ethical preparation was necessary to approach or encounter sacred space. Encountering the holy was serious business to ancient Israel.
Even within the sanctuary complex itself, there were grades of holiness, with additional requirements and preparation necessary. Only if one was prepared to enter sacred space and met the necessary requirements would they participate in what Keel calls the “holy other energy” active within the temple.
So then what does all this mean for Latter-day Saints? As mentioned in the beginning, Latter-day Saints will find they have a great deal in common with Old Testament Israelites when it comes to the ways in which we view sacred space.
As signified by the engraving on nearly every temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we view temples as literal dwelling places of God—where one can go to encounter Him.
The Lord even says as much in modern revelation in Doctrine and Covenants 97. He states:
And in as much as my people build a house unto me in the name of the Lord, and do not suffer any unclean thing to come into it, that it be not defiled, my glory shall rest upon it. Yea, and my presence shall be there, for I will come into it, and all the pure in heart that shall come into it shall see God. But if it be defiled, I will not come into it, and my glory shall not be there, for I will not come into unholy temples.
Elder James E. Talmage writes:
A temple is more than a chapel or church, more than a synagogue or cathedral. It is a structure erected as a house of the Lord, sacred to the closest communion between the Lord himself and the holy priesthood and devoted to the highest and most sacred ordinances characteristic of the age or dispensation to which the particular temple belongs.
The Lord wants His covenant people to think about the temple in the same way the Old Testament Israelites did. Access to a place imbued with holiness must be limited to those who have prepared themselves for such an occasion.
For a lack of preparation—or more precisely, worthiness—on the part of an individual brings spiritual danger.
It is interesting to note that—similar to the Israelite tabernacle and temple—access to holier areas of a Latter-day Saint temple requires that one be initiated into a priestly class of sorts by being washed, anointed, and clothed in priestly garments.
However, in contrast with the Old Testament priestly class, the initiatory rite in Latter-day Saint temples today is not limited to those of a specific lineage. Rather, all members of the Church who have the requisite capacity and worthiness are able to be initiated into this priestly class and participate in rituals in the holier spaces of the temple.
While initiation into a priestly class is still required to ascend to the temple, this initiatory ordinance is available to every member of God’s covenant people that are willing to live the additional requirements that come with it.
Latter-day Saints also do not have a concept of ritual purity in the same way as the ancient Israelites did—and this is a very important difference to keep in mind when drawing parallels between modern revealed beliefs and practices and those of the Old Testament.
Latter-day Saints do not need to cleanse themselves after bodily emissions, avoid pork and shellfish—thank heavens—or avoid those with skin diseases in order to be able to enter the house of the Lord.
In contrast, access to the temple is determined by a willingness to demonstrate worthiness, which is a comparatively abstract concept signified by worthily holding a current temple recommend.
This worthiness entails not just moral righteousness and obedience to revealed laws, but also a belief in the foundational claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In his book The Holy Temple, the late President Boyd K. Packer writes:
“After a temple is dedicated, we do not feel we own it. It is the Lord’s house. He directs the conditions under which it may be used. He has revealed the ordinances that should be performed therein and has established the standards and conditions under which we may participate in them. It should not be surprising that there should be limitations as to those who may receive these ordinances and those who may witness them. It should not, therefore, seem strange that the temples are held sacred, for all who will prepare themselves by repentance, by baptism, by preparation and worthiness to meet the qualifications may enter therein to participate in the ordinances offered in the house of the Lord.”
Every person who is willing to join the Lord’s covenant people and live by the requisite worthiness standards is able to enter and participate in the ordinances of the temple.
The Lord will deny entry to no one that comes to His house with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
“Holiness to the Lord,” “The House of the Lord”—these two pronouncements are engraved on nearly every temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we take them literally.
The Lord has told His saints that—like the tabernacle and temple of the Old Testament—the latter-day temple is His dwelling place that contains His actual divine presence, or His glory. It is this fact that makes these edifices holy.
The holiness of the temple requires us to maintain a distinction and separation between the holy and unholy just as in times of old.
As Latter-day Saints, we do not need to struggle to explain the limited access to our temples. Our beliefs about sacred space have been shaped and informed by the Old Testament, and we can—and should—turn there to explain the holy nature of our temples.
Holiness is certainly not about keeping people out. It is about ensuring that they are prepared to encounter God in His house. The Lord wants all of His children to choose holiness.
The General Handbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints puts it this way:
The temple is the house of the Lord. Entering the temple and participating in ordinances there is a sacred privilege. This privilege is reserved for those who are spiritually prepared and striving to live the Lord’s standards as determined by authorized priesthood leaders.
Let us all strive to have clean hands and a pure heart—and invite others to do the same—so that we may all be made holy by encountering the Lord in His house, is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Lynnette Sheppard teaches that modern parents are raising children in a time of intense spiritual conflict, where ideas and influences can pull even the faithful away from Christ. Using the example of the stripling warriors’ mothers, she highlights that the most powerful preparation for children is not perfection in parenting, but deep personal conversion and consistent discipleship.
The talk emphasizes that agency is central to God’s plan, meaning parents cannot control their children’s choices. However, they are responsible for teaching faith, obedience, and trust in God. Sheppard explains that doubt is a natural part of life but should ultimately lead individuals to rely more fully on God. By choosing belief and modeling unwavering trust, parents can help their children develop the spiritual resilience needed to remain faithful, regardless of life’s challenges.
Raising faithful children starts with parents who are deeply converted themselves. Even in a world full of doubt and confusion, children learn to trust God by watching consistent faith, obedience, and belief modeled at home. You can’t control your children’s choices—but you can prepare them to choose Christ.
Lynnette Sheppard is a writer, gospel enthusiast, parenting coach, and host of the Stand with Lynnette podcast. On her podcast and social media platforms, she aims to help Latter-day Saint women stand firmly with Jesus Christ and raise righteous, well-prepared kids. She graduated from BYU with a degree in Family Science, but most of her practical knowledge has come from hands-on experience raising her five highly determined children, four of whom are now grown.
She is currently in the process of publishing her first book entitled “Stripling Mothers.” In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, cooking, working as a temple ordinance worker, and being a grandma.
Okay, so I want to start out with a question. By a raise of hands, who out there in the audience loves to read fiction? Where are my fiction readers?
Okay, you are like my people. I want to be like you, and I am like you in the fact that I too really love to read fiction. But when I get involved in a good fiction story, my whole life tends to disappear except what’s on the page.
And so I have a hard time focusing on any kind of work. My house is a wreck. Do I even have children? I can’t remember. And if I do, I really hope they don’t need anything because I am unavailable for consults until I find out what happens to my new fictional friends.
And as you might imagine, this can become a little bit of a problem. My productivity, my availability for the people in my life that might need me, just kind of goes in the tank.
And so I can’t allow myself to read fiction very often. But when I do allow myself that luxury, I almost always choose World War II historical fiction. I don’t know—there’s something about that genre that just grabs me and pulls me in.
And that is ironic, because I also really hate sad stories. If somebody’s going to die in this book, I’m out. I don’t want any part of that. That’s not entertainment that I want to partake of.
And yet, World War II historical fiction—I know before I ever crack open the cover of one of these books that there are going to be parts in this story that are going to tear my heart out and smash it into a million pieces. And I’m not going to like that.
But as I’ve thought about this whole dichotomy in my life—why do I keep coming back to this genre? The best thing that I can come up with is because of the resilience of the human spirit that emerges in the face of these really challenging circumstances.
And the way people step up and have courage in the face of nearly impossible odds, and goodness transcends even the darkest of circumstances. That is so inspiring to me that I’m willing to put up with a few tears.
So I keep coming back. But oftentimes when I’m involved in one of these stories, I put myself in the story. Their story becomes my story.
And so I think, what would it have been like for me to be living in these times? Maybe raising children in these times where the whole world is at war and millions of people are dying, and every family is touched in a really personal way by the tragedy and hardship of war.
And there are great, unprecedented moral questions like, what will happen if I stand up for what I believe and I help a neighbor or a friend, and that could very well cost me my life?
These were some of the real struggles that real people were wrestling with during that time. And when I put that side by side with what my life is like today, I will choose my life every time, because I feel like in comparison I have it better in so many ways.
I was not cut out for war. I cannot handle tears, you guys.
But the reality is that we are living in a time of war today. It might look different. The battles might be different than they were back in World War II and the physical battles that happened then.
Although there are physical battles happening at different places in the world today, the kind of battles that I’m talking about are battles of words and ideas and confusion and chaos that are pulling even the very elect away from the light of Jesus Christ.
And they might be different, but these kinds of battles are no less dangerous.
And what makes it even more scary, at least for me, is that a lot of these ideas that are causing so much confusion are directed toward children. And that, as a parent, can be terrifying.
Those of us who are raising kids today feel the weight of that.
But the reality is that the Lord has called each one of us. If we are here today, if we are an adult today, whether or not we are currently raising children, he has called us to help guide and bear and rear and lead a chosen generation of youth who were born into a world that is corrupted every whit.
President Russell M. Nelson said our youth were “foreordained by God to do a remarkable work to help prepare the people of this world for the Second Coming of the Lord and are among the best the Lord has ever sent to this world.”
We have often heard our prophet say similar things about the young people who are growing up today. And prophets before him, for generations, have been saying similar things about the youth of their day.
And I will be honest, sometimes I hear something like this and I wonder if the Lord sees the same kids that I do. (The ones who maybe forget to brush their teeth sometimes, even though their dad, in this case, happens to be a dentist.)
Or the kids who seem incapable of speaking above a mumble or answering a question with more than a barely audible grunt.
Sometimes I’m tempted to look heavenward, throw my hands in the air, and say, “Did this one slip through the heavenly cracks? Because I’m pretty sure she belongs on the remedial squad, and I can do nothing for her. So please fix her, Jesus.”
Maybe you can relate. If we’re raising children today, I think we can all relate to that.
But if we believe that our prophet speaks for God and our youth were indeed foreordained by God himself to help prepare the people of this world for the Second Coming of his Son, then what does that tell us about how God feels about you and me, and this generation of parents and leaders and adults, who must prepare them for that great work?
Because they are here to do a great thing according to this prophet. We are here to do a great thing, because they will not be able to do their great work unless we do ours first.
And the Lord knows exactly what we are up against. He’s not blind to the challenges of our day. Nothing that is happening in the world now or that will happen in the future is or will be a surprise for him.
And yet, he handpicked each one of us to come to earth in this time of great spiritual turmoil and to raise his elite set of latter-day warriors.
And that says something about his trust in us.
He trusts us a lot, and he knows us personally. And I know that feels daunting—this is a big work we have to do and I don’t really know how to do it.
But I hope it also feels empowering that the Lord does believe in us.
But let’s just lay all our cards out on the table right here, because I bet there are some of you out there thinking things like I have thought in the past:
“Okay, the Lord’s trusting me to do this really great, important thing so that my kids can do this really great and important thing, but maybe they are making choices that are not in line with that great and important thing.”
“And if I can’t teach them well enough for them to do their great work, then I am failing. I’m failing my kids. I am failing the Lord. I’m just a hot mess, and I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.”
If you have felt this, you are in really good company. I think we have probably all felt this at some time.
But I find comfort in knowing that faithful parents have been in this same boat since the dawn of time. Since Adam and Eve.
Think back—Adam and Eve, first mortal parents on the earth, walked and talked face to face with God. One of their children killed his brother.
If we don’t have children who are physically killing each other, we are winning. We’re doing all right.
But I have no doubt that Adam and Eve did their best to teach their children about covenants and commandments and God. And still, they used their agency—some of them—to walk far away from them and from God.
The same thing might happen for you and for me, because agency is real.
It is so important to the Lord’s plan that there was a war in heaven fought over it. Lucifer was cast down because he sought to destroy the agency of man. That is one of the big reasons why he was cast down.
So when our kids use that agency to do things that are not in line with what we have taught them, we can find comfort again in knowing that God knew this is how it was going to be.
If anyone knows what it is like for children to walk away from them, it is our Heavenly Father, because a third of his children didn’t even make it to earth.
They chose not to follow him even in the days before. And how many children since coming to earth have been in that same boat?
He knows we can’t control our kids’ agency any more than we can control the weather. We don’t have control over that.
He did not give us control over that for a good purpose, because agency is critical to his plan.
Yet he still says: “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
That brings me comfort, because when I hear those words in regard to this big important task of raising and preparing children, what I hear is: “Hey, Lynette.”
Because sometimes that’s how the Lord sounds in my mind. It’s not formal. It’s,
“Hey, you listen up. Hey, Lynette. You cannot save your children, but I can.
So do the very best that you can. Teach them about me. Teach them how to find me. Teach them how to develop a relationship with me.
Do your best with your work. And then trust that my grace is sufficient to cover you—to cover all of the mistakes that you make as a parent, to cover your children and all of the mistakes that they will make on their way back to me, to cover all of the things that you do not now understand or that don’t seem to make sense for you.”
“My grace is sufficient. So trust me to do my work.”
To me, that brings great peace, because I know that I’m not doing this work alone.
He’s on my team, and he’s reaching out to my kids in ways that I cannot. So I can trust him with that.
But just because we can’t guarantee any outcomes of how our kids will turn out in the end, and whether or not they will choose God, that does not mean we should throw up our hands and say, “Well, they’re going to do what they’re going to do, so I guess I just won’t try.”
That’s not going to get any of us anywhere.
And there is a lot we can do.
So we’re going to talk about what we can do to prepare our kids in the best way that we know how to do the great work that God is counting on them to do.
Now, what I have learned about this—as I have thought about it and studied about it and prayed about it as I’ve raised my five kids. (I just have one 16-year-old left at home—so we’ve spent a lot of time on our knees praying about these children.)
And not until relatively recently did I find what I believe is a blueprint that we can follow as parents as we’re trying to raise righteous children.
This would have been helpful information 25 years ago, but hey, I’m sharing it with you so hopefully you can take it and run with it.
This blueprint I discovered was from a group of women who all went from lives of sin to lives of covenants and commandments and faith.
And once they were converted unto the Lord, not a single one of them ever fell away. That is how converted they were.
And not only that, but they were able to raise a generation of young people—their children—who were strong and firm and courageous and undaunted and perfectly obedient in the face of really challenging circumstances.
Now, who were these women and what can we learn from them about raising modern children today? You might recognize them from this verse:
“They had been taught by their mothers that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed the words of their mothers, saying, ‘We do not doubt our mothers knew it.’”
You probably recognize this if you’ve been in the Church for any period of time—that this scripture comes from the story of the stripling warriors.
And we all know this story. We’ve read it a million times. We’ve taught it a million times. And we all know what happens.
But have you ever thought about why Mormon, when he was compiling the plates and abridging and leaving some things in and taking others out and adding his commentary here and there—why did he choose to include this little detail about their mothers?
I cannot speak for Mormon, but I know that he saw our day.
He told us that he saw the widespread wickedness and commotion that would be happening in our day.
And I like to think that he also saw faithful parents like me and you doing our best to raise faithful children and struggling to know how to do that.
And I wonder if he thought, Well, maybe if I include this little detail about their mothers, that might pique their interest and make them think: How did these women do it?
Because these mothers of these stripling warriors—or as I like to call them, stripling mothers—were somehow able to raise their children to walk off to war at a moment’s notice, with no prior experience, even though they were all very young.
And they did so with courage and faith and hope in God.
Some experts believe these boys could have been as young as 12 to 15 years old.
So imagine with me, if you will, modern-day deacons, teachers, maybe some really young priests—2,000 of them—marching off to war with courage and faith, singing the praises of their mothers.
Can you picture it? Because I have a 16-year-old and I can’t.
It’s a little bit hard to imagine. But these women were somehow able to do it.
So who were they? What do we know about them?
Now, there’s a lot that we do not know about them.
But a friend recently taught me that success leaves clues.
And so, for the next few minutes, I invite you to put on your detective hat with me and we’re going to look for clues in the scriptures about these women—about these mothers—about how they were able to do the things that they did in preparing their kids.
So let’s talk about some of the things that we know.
We know that these were Lamanite women who were converted by the missionary efforts of Ammon and the sons of Mosiah.
And prior to their conversion, they were in the darkest abyss and the most lost of all mankind because of the traditions of their wicked fathers and the many sins and murders they committed.
So they had a past. They had a colorful past.
And after their conversion, they left that sinful past behind, completely removed themselves physically from it. They changed their names. They didn’t want to be known as Lamanites anymore. That brought a lot of baggage that they didn’t want to carry.
So they changed their names to Anti-Nephi-Lehies. Now, that’s kind of a mouthful. So sometimes I call them the Ammonites or the people of Ammon.
And I may use those three terms interchangeably here today.
We know that they buried their weapons of rebellion, and they covenanted never to dig them up again lest they lose their souls.
Again, this is one of those iconic stories. We know about them burying their weapons.
But I didn’t know, until I really went back and studied the timeline and the context of this decision, that they made that choice when war was upon them.
This was not an arbitrary decision because they had already decided that they didn’t want to fight anymore.
But they had heard that some of their old friends—the Lamanites who didn’t convert with them—weren’t happy with these new converts.
And so, rather than accepting their former friends’ decision, they decided that they were going to destroy them.
And so they were making preparations to come to war against these Ammonite converts.
That is when they had to decide: We already said we weren’t going to fight, but are we really going to stick with that? Are we really going to do it?
And so the king called everyone together into this big meeting, and he gave a rousing speech where he thanked God for allowing them to repent of their many sins and murders, for taking away their guilt, and helping them to feel light and peace and turn their lives around.
And then he pled with everyone in attendance that day to keep their swords bright by burying them as a testimony to the Lord that they would never again shed blood.
And with that testimony, they would make a three-part covenant: that they would die before they killed anyone else, that they would give rather than take, and that they would labor abundantly with their hands rather than spend their days in idleness.
No killing, no stealing, no idleness.
These three things must have been the three things that they were most worried about going back to.
Maybe they were even as much as addictions—that if they had a little bit, they might totally turn back.
And they didn’t want any part of that.
So everyone there that day—all these Ammonite converts—made this covenant.
They buried their weapons deep in the earth. And they did so with war knocking on their doorstep.
Pretty soon the Lamanites did come upon them in battle.
All these Ammonite men marched onto the battlefield, unarmed, and laid down upon the ground and prayed to God and praised God, while their former friends killed 1,005 of them with no resistance.
This courageous demonstration of faith inspired some of these Lamanites to throw down their weapons and join them on the ground.
And they became, from that point forward, part of this group that was forever faithful.
And this was eleven years prior to Helaman’s march with his stripling warriors.
So the men who were on the battlefield that day—these were the fathers, the grandfathers, perhaps some of the older brothers of the stripling warriors.
And those women— their mothers– they probably weren’t in battle that day. But they were there to pick up the pieces.
They had to decide what they were going to do from that point forward.
Did they go back and dig up those weapons and say, “We didn’t realize how much this covenant would cost us. I think maybe we can defend ourselves. Is that okay?”
They didn’t do that. They turned their faces to the future and they marched forward with faith.
And they were, from that point forward, forever faithful.
They didn’t question God.
They believed in his ability to deliver them, even if they had to sacrifice everything in the process.
Now, what do you think these future stripling warriors, who were children at that time, learned about faith from their parents from this one scenario alone?
They knew that their fathers were martyrs—that they gave up everything for their faith.
And they knew that their mothers were forever faithful after that—that they did not question their faith, that they picked things up and moved forward.
And not only that, but remember these more than 1,005 Lamanites—we don’t have an exact number—who joined them that day after participating in the slaughter of their loved ones, they joined them.
And these Ammonite women welcomed them, along with any men who were left.
I don’t know how many there were in total. But they welcomed these repentant sinners into their midst.
And I think about that in the context of this quote from President Nelson: “One of the easiest ways to identify a true follower of Jesus Christ is how compassionately that person treats other people.”
So what did these stripling warriors learn about being a true follower of Jesus Christ by watching how their mothers treated these people who participated in this horrible act?
They had a past too, though, remember, because they also had sins and murders on their conscience.
And they knew what it was like to repent and change their lives.
And they told these Lamanites who joined them that day: You are welcome here. We will welcome you in.
And they treated them with compassion.
So what else do we know? What else do we know about these Ammonite women?
So they were obedient. They were honest. They were upright.
This concept of obedience shows up again later when Helaman’s young army—Helaman observed that they “observed to keep God’s statutes and his judgments and his commandments continually.”
So they were obedient to God, these young warriors.
And in battle, they did obey and observe every word of command with exactness.
It is also interesting to note that right after Helaman praises their obedience, he says this: “And I did remember the words which they said unto me—that their mothers had taught them.”
So who did Helaman credit for the perfect obedience of these young warriors? Their mothers.
I invite you to imagine an alternate scenario for just a minute.
Imagine that Helaman took command of these 2,000 young men. It’s not like he was a military commander before that—he was a prophet.
He was out preaching the word, and they wanted him to be their leader. And so he agreed to be their leader—of these 2,000, again, deacons, teachers, priests who had no prior experience.
And it was his responsibility to make sure that they were as safe as possible.
He was leading them into battle. So there were some risks, and they knew that.
I imagine that Helaman felt a little overwhelmed. I think I would have in that instance.
But what if these young men had decided, “Well, I am just going to do whatever I want because I don’t need Helaman telling me what to do. He’s not the boss of me. I can do whatever I want”?
It’s not hard to imagine the scene of chaos and carnage and likely bloodshed that would have ensued had these young men decided to be stubborn instead of obedient and compliant.
And in looking back with the lens of history, and the words that Mormon has given us about them, it’s clear that their obedience is what saved them—their obedience to Helaman’s every word of command and their obedience to God, who then stepped in and orchestrated this miracle.
So it’s not hard for me to connect those dots and say they were saved because of their obedience, right?
That’s how they were able to successfully get through those battles—not without wounds, but without death.
And I think about that in the context of what we’re trying to do today, in raising latter-day spiritual warriors in a culture where obedience is not really glorified at all.
Right? It’s like my personal authority is king over everything else, and I can do what I want, and I can discover my own truth, and this is what is prized in society.
But we’re trying to raise children who can be obedient.
Because if we want latter-day spiritual warriors, is it hard to connect the dots to say, “Well, Helaman’s army was saved because of their obedience. Will our kids be saved in the battles for their faith because of their obedience?”
I don’t think it’s hard to make that connection, for me.
If we want our kids to be saved spiritually, they have to learn to be obedient, because obedience is the first law of heaven.
But kids learn obedience at home.
And so if we’re not emphasizing that, if they don’t learn to be obedient to us as their parents, they’re likely going to struggle to be obedient to prophets, to be obedient to commandments and covenants, and to God.
Again, obedience is the first law of heaven.
So that’s something to think about as you’re preparing your kids for what’s coming.
Obedience is a vital piece of that.
As I have thought about all that I have learned from these incredible women—which I don’t even have time today to scratch the surface, there’s so much—I invite you to go home and study the story on your own and try to find those pieces that are relevant to your life.
But what I have learned, I think, that transcends everything, is that if we want to raise modern-day spiritual warriors, we first have to be converted.
Because our personal conversion is going to be our kids’ first line of defense in the latter-day battles for their faith.
It’s not going to be their only line of defense, but it’s going to be their first line of defense.
Because who do they learn about conversion from? Who do they learn what faith looks like in action from?
They’re first going to learn that at home.
Like these Ammonite women, who never gave their kids a reason to doubt where their loyalties lay, I think we have to think about that in our own homes.
Do our kids know what we believe? Do they know because of what we say?
Do they know because of what we do? Do they know because those things are congruent?
How do they know? What do they learn from us about conversion?
I love these words from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland:
“Our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. And even as we anxiously watch that arrow in flight and know all the evils that can deflect its course after it has left our hand, nevertheless, we take courage in remembering that the most important mortal factor in determining that arrow’s destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow.”
As latter-day parents and leaders and grandparents in Zion, we are the holders of the bow for the rising generation. The significance and importance of our work cannot be understated.
And because of that, I want to go back to the stripling mothers and their parting counsel to their sons as they were going off to battle.
This is the counsel: If you do not doubt, God will deliver you.
I think about that in the context of this is the last thing their mothers had taught them.
And this is the counsel that gave them courage to walk into battle when they were so young, and to believe that God would deliver them if they did not doubt.
Because their mothers had never given them any reason to doubt that they knew what they were talking about.
And so in today’s world, I think a lot about doubt.
It’s kind of on the forefront of a lot of the work that I do on social media and online.
It almost feels like doubt is elevated above faith in importance or significance, like a badge of honor.
If you’re doubting your faith, it’s like this gateway to personal authority and freedom.
And it’s hard to navigate that world and hold on to your faith without falling into that pit of doubt.
So how can we do that? That’s a big thing we’re trying to do.
Many years ago—like 20 years ago—I came to a crossroads in my faith that I was not expecting, that I didn’t know how to navigate.
It threw me for a major loop.
I was in my young 20s at this point.
Prior to this, I had always just believed.
I had had experiences that reinforced that belief and that testimony, and I never had any reason to doubt that all the things I had been taught by my parents and at church were true and real and good.
When my husband graduated from BYU, we moved our two young kids across the country to Ohio.
Prior to that point, I grew up mostly in Gilbert, Arizona, which is like “mini Utah.”
Then I went to BYU, which is a culture in and of itself.
And then I moved to Ohio, where a lot of the people that I interacted with hadn’t even heard of our Church.
And if they had, they had some interesting misconceptions about what we believed or how we lived our lives.
They lived their lives very differently than I did.
So it was – almost–culture shock for me.
It threw me for a major loop that I was not expecting.
Shortly thereafter, my husband was called to serve as the ward mission leader in our ward.
And so we often had missionaries in our home, and they would bring their investigators—or as they call them now, their friends.
They would bring their friends over, and we would have missionary lessons in our home.
There was this one time where they were teaching a Muslim man.
He was not interested in joining the Church, but he was curious enough to listen to the lessons and to see what it is that we believed.
During one of these lessons, he was talking about his belief of Jesus Christ—what he believed as a Muslim.
He believed that Jesus was a good man and a prophet, but not the Son of God, not the Savior of the world.
And as this young twenty-something, I listened to him talk about his view of Jesus Christ.
It hit me, maybe for the first time, that I was part of this tiny religious minority.
Who was I to claim that I had the truth?
There were so many people in the world that didn’t even believe in Jesus Christ, let alone in the Book of Mormon.
So how did I know that it was true? Who was I to say that?
For months after that, I wrestled with some really difficult questions about my faith.
Where everything had once felt so clear, now everything was muddy.
I didn’t know what I believed.
I questioned everything—down to the reality of Jesus Christ as my Savior. I couldn’t even claim that anymore.
And I didn’t really know how to navigate this.
Thankfully, it was in the days before social media, because I think that would have complicated it a million times.
But I continued to go through the motions—to go to church, to say my prayers, to do the things.
But this cloud was heavy in the air.
One night I was praying. I honestly don’t remember what I said—probably just praying for clarity, to know the truth.
And then I heard these simple words, with such clarity in my mind: You already know it’s true.
And with those words, peace rushed over me. It brought warmth to my heart and tears to my eyes.
I thought back to everything that I had experienced up to that point in my young life.
The ways that God had shown up for me and testified to me again and again that the gospel was true—that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and that, because Joseph Smith was a prophet, the Book of Mormon was the work of God and the word of God.
I had miraculous answers to prayers while studying the revelations found in the Doctrine and Covenants.
And as I thought back on all of those things in the context of all of this doubt that I was trying to navigate, it just became clear in a second.
God has testified to me all throughout my life that this Church is true.
And I just forgot about that for a minute because doubts came up and just kind of took the place of all of that experience and that faith that I had had up to that point.
And so I learned a lot. I learned a lot from that experience.
One of the things being that our questions, our doubts, the things that feel challenging to us right now, they do not throw a wrench in God’s plan.
They do invite us to trust him with all of the things that we do not understand.
And as I’ve thought about this trust, this building of faith, I’m kind of a person who likes to know the end from the beginning.
I want to know how this path is going to end up before I ever take one step on it.
I want to see the whole path.
And that’s not how God usually works with me, unfortunately.
But I want to know all that God knows. I want to see all that God sees. And I’ve thought about that—can I do that? Can I know all that God knows?
In thinking about that, and thinking about the reason why we’re here in mortality, I asked myself: what would it have been like if we already knew everything that God knows?
We could still have our agency to choose, but would we want to choose anything other than eternal life with our Father if we knew that that was the reward at the end of the path?
And it just kind of made it clear to me that agency, as we know it, would be different.
It would eliminate all or most of the opposition that we face, because we’d already know everything.
It would already be clear.
In 2 Nephi, in Lehi’s beautiful discourse about the plan of salvation, we learn that without opposition, there could be no righteousness nor wickedness, holiness nor misery, good nor bad.
And without those opposites, “there would have been no purpose in the end of [our] creation,” which would effectively “destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes.”
So without opposition, there would be no purpose to our creation.
And that would destroy the whole plan of God and his purpose.
His work and his glory is to save each one of us—to bring about the immortality and eternal life of man.
That is his whole goal, and everything that he does supports that singular goal.
And if that’s the case, then we can’t know all that he knows, because in order for him to save us, we have to experience opposition.
And that is where faith comes in.
And that’s perhaps why faith is the first principle of the gospel—because everything else hinges upon our ability to have faith.
But that doesn’t make it easy.
That doesn’t mean that we’re going to be here in mortality, especially now, when there are huge questions that don’t seem to have good, clear answers.
And we pray for those answers.
And sometimes those answers don’t come, because maybe that’s just not something that God has revealed quite yet.
And so it invites us to trust him—to trust in his omniscience, and to trust that he’s got it all under control.
Because if his plan is to save me, then can I trust him with all the parts of that plan that I don’t now understand?
Because I have to learn to walk by faith.
For me, that answer has been yes. I can trust him. And I don’t know all the things and I don’t have all the answers.
And I imagine that I probably won’t in this life have all the answers or know all the things.
But I know that he does.
And that is enough for me.
But each one of us is going to come to some point in our lives where we have to wrestle with some of these big questions.
Maybe it’s that we’re having a hard time aligning our personal experiences with the doctrine of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
Or maybe we’re having a hard time navigating a really challenging relationship with one of our kids, and we don’t know how that’s all going to work out.
For all of us, it’s going to be different.
We’re all going to be asked to wrestle with different things. But the only way that we will be saved is through Jesus Christ.
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
And so, I invite you to consider, as you’re wrestling with whatever it is that you’re wrestling: do you trust God?
Do you trust him enough to anchor yourself to him no matter how hard the wind blows, no matter how many people you know and love decide to walk away from the Church?
Will you anchor yourself to him?
Will you choose to believe that he’s got it all under control?
That he’s going to cross every “t” and dot every “i” and make every person who turns to him whole?
That’s his goal.
Will you do that? Will you choose to believe?
Because belief is a choice.
This isn’t something that just happens or it doesn’t.
We can choose to believe even if we don’t have all the answers.
Will you choose to believe that if you do not doubt, God will deliver you?
Will you choose to teach that to your kids with all the energy of your heart—that if they do not doubt, God will deliver them?
And if we do that, if we have that unwavering certainty, as Elder Holland said, then our kids will always be able to say:
We do not doubt our mothers knew it.
And I leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
In his October 2025 General Conference address, “Forsake Not Your Own Mercy,” Elder Matthew S. Holland taught a compassionate and clarifying truth about God’s mercy and our tendency to withdraw from it. Drawing on the story of Jonah, he showed how feelings of fear, shame, or inadequacy can lead individuals to distance themselves from God—not because mercy has been withdrawn, but because they mistakenly believe they no longer qualify for it.
Elder Holland firmly corrects this misunderstanding. Divine help is not reserved for those who have already fixed themselves. God’s mercy is active, immediate, and available precisely because we are imperfect. [Read more…] about Forsake Not Your Own Mercy
In his October 2025 General Conference address, “The Family Proclamation—Words from God,” Elder Ronald A. Rasband testified that The Family: A Proclamation to the World is not merely a cultural statement or institutional guideline, but revealed doctrine given by God through His prophets. He explained how the proclamation came forth through prayer, prophetic councils, and spiritual unanimity—and why its teachings deserve reverence in every generation.
Yet its clarity has also made it controversial. As social views on family, marriage, and gender continue to shift, many struggle with how the proclamation fits in a changing world.
This raises a common and sincere question:
Should Church leaders be more open to current social views rather than asserting fixed doctrine about the family? [Read more…] about The Family Proclamation—Words from God
In his October 2025 General Conference address, Elder Quentin L. Cook taught that while the Lord is hastening His work across the world, discipleship remains deeply personal: it is a covenant journey built on steady effort, not flawless performance. He emphasized that even as converts and longtime members feel inadequate or underprepared, the Lord invites all to progress along the covenant path with faith and patience.
A common misconception arises here: If I don’t understand everything or live flawlessly, am I really ready for temple covenants? [Read more…] about The Lord Is Hastening His Work
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by Mike Parker
(Mike Parker is a long-time FAIR member who has graciously allowed us to use materials he originally prepared for the Hurricane Utah Adult Religion Class. The scripture passages covered in his lessons don’t conform exactly to the Come, Follow Me reading schedule, so they will be shared here where they fit best.)
Class Notes [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 129–131 – Mike Parker
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by Autumn Dickson
In case it was ever in question, we believe in exaltation. As I worked on this post, I felt like I was addressing a non-member even though it’s usually members who look up Come Follow Me posts. In the end, I decided to keep it that way. Even if non-members don’t look up this content, we can learn how to potentially respond to those who question our beliefs.
So let’s talk about exaltation. [Read more…] about Come, Follow Me with FAIR – Doctrine and Covenants 129–132 – Part 1 – Autumn Dickson
In his October 2025 General Conference address, Elder Brik V. Eyre taught that our lives “will fundamentally change if we better understand who we really are.” He testified that we are not accidents of creation or mere products of circumstance—we are beloved sons and daughters of God, endowed with divine potential and accountability.
Some faith traditions see humanity primarily as creations of God—beautiful, but passive. Elder Eyre reminds us that the restored gospel restores a higher truth: we are children of God, heirs with Christ. That single shift in identity changes everything—from how we face trials to how we use our agency. [Read more…] about Know Who You Really Are
In his October 2025 General Conference address, Elder Gerrit W. Gong taught that living the gospel of Jesus Christ means creating space for everyone in His restored Church. “The spirit of ‘room in the inn,’” he said, “includes ‘no one sits alone.’”
Critics sometimes claim that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn’t truly inclusive—that its members are friendly only within familiar circles or cultural comfort zones. From the outside, this can look like cliquishness or indifference, especially when visitors or those who feel different are unintentionally overlooked. [Read more…] about No One Sits Alone
