The previous thread closed before I could finalize my edit changes on the post about Linda Reeves. Thanks (by the way) to RFM posters cl12 and Devoted Exmo for your kind remarks. See http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1035267

*****

Linda Reeves is the Second Counselor in the General Relief Society Presidency of the LDS Church. Statements uttered by her in yesterday’s Women's Conference were insensitive and articulated in poor taste.

Regarding the December 17, 2010 fire that gutted the interior of the Provo Utah Tabernacle, Ms. Reeves said, "God didn't cause the fire, but he allowed the fire to strip away the interior . . . he saw the [Provo] Tabernacle as a magnificent Temple, a permanent home for making sacred, eternal covenants."

What a pathetic, demeaning, out-of-touch, wannabe-elitist comment! A women trying to sound like one of the revered apostles (I’d gladly make the same comments if one of the 15 Apostles had made the above statement).

For over 100 years the Provo Tabernacle has been a wonderful setting for all kinds of musical events. It has been the home for numerous choral and instrumental performances, especially the organ department at BYU-Provo. To my knowledge, there has been nothing announced to replace the historic edifice or the organ (and probably won't be for decades). Musical venues and instruments are often the lowest priority for LDS Inc. (except for Temple Square – the global PR center of the LDS money making machine).

There’s a hard to find article on the internet called, “A History of the Provo Tabernacle Organ.” It's rather short and has some nifty photos. See http://archive.is/C3PAw

The article describes a contract between the Office of the LDS Presiding Bishop and a pipe organ builder for a complete rebuild, enlargement, state-of-the-art new console and a brand new pipe façade to the building’s historic 1907 Austin Organ. The project began in 1991. The majority of the work was completed by 1996, other additions were finished in 2001, and the gorgeous glittering façade was added in 2003. No dollar amount is specified. However, such an undertaking would have cost at least $400,000-$500,000.

I’m sure the Music Department and public at large was thrilled with the new instrument and the impact it would have on the lives of all, especially the students. I'm confident that everyone involved in this significant investment believed this would be an enduring musical contribution to bless the lives of future generations. What joy!

Sadly, the loss of this instrument has been agonizing to many. There were huge renovation costs incurred prior to the fire by the Church, and yet the devastation and heart ache in the music community seemed completely inconsequential to Ms. Reeves last night while she spoke from the pulpit of the great and spacious building.

The Mormon God permitted the Church to spend all this money. The Mormon God was impotent and could not tell his prophets to abolish the massive organ renovation and enlargement process because he was going to allow the building to be disemboweled by fire a few years later.

The Mormon God didn’t care how poorly the widow’s mite was exploited by the Office of the Presiding Bishop. The Mormon God permitted his Church to squander hundreds of thousands of dollars. He allowed the interior to burn down. He was merciless towards generations of gifted musicians who will sustain substantial grief for this tragic loss.

The omnipotent Mormon God sent a stinging rebuke to his choice covenant people at the base of the Rocky Mountains – that you aren’t deserving of a concert venue or a grand organ anymore to express and share your talents for the benefit of others – for I, God, made a big boo-boo – I forgot to tell the Church authorities not to spend my precious tithe dollars on that organ restoration project since the desires of my heart really was to produce another tithe generating Temple down the street from the one situated next to my Mission Training Center.

Ms. Reeves, from the tops of the mountain and from the shadows of the everlasting hills, may a thousand trumpets sound in unison to bring down your apathetic wall. May a seismic cataclysm obliterate your callous disregard for the real tragedy of the Provo Tabernacle fire. May your beloved golden idol be dashed into itsy bitsy pieces – that venerated golden calf which huffs and puffs with all his might all the day long and yet fails to make a single musical peep clutching his faux Trompette en Chamade. Your comments were nothing more than a wretched exhibition of perverse Mormon tripe, of Mormon inspiration, and of Mormon whatever you call it. I cannot find adequate words to express my innermost disgust. Your remarks were nauseating, obtuse and downright appalling.

I hope you and yours will find joy serving in the new International House of Handshakes and partaking of the necessary “unalterable” ordinances of salvation that keep changing from one generation to another.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2013 03:11AM by jiminycricket.

+1

But it was a major venue for musical events ever since I've been in Utah Valley. It was a huge loss.

God could have at least warned them to remove the instruments before burning it.

"God could have at least warned them to remove the instruments before burning it?" Well of course he could have. But that would have required revelation.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2013 03:17AM by jiminycricket.

Huh.

This is the last place I'd expect to see such a passionate defense of a mormon temple, I mean indoctrination and brainwashing center.

Interesting.

I don't think jiminy was defending the temple at all. They were criticizing the churches ability to manage money. Weird that you would think such.

No, God's Bitch.

Another clueless opinion by a person in a position of power....go figure.

Ron Burr

I don't know Sister Reeves, nor have I ever heard her speak. However, the notion that "God" somehow controlled the 2010 Provo Tabernacle fire just so the historic, beautiful insides could be "stripped away" to make room for yet another temple (down the road from a perfectly good one that is NOT overcrowded, and a mere 5-minute drive up I-15 from the in-progress Payson temple) makes me very, very angry.

The Provo Tabernacle was not only a gorgeous, irreplaceable historic building, it was a beloved community gathering spot. Several of my children performed in that building with their school choirs and musical groups; I also had the privilege of singing there with a choir I belonged to for many years. Commencements, graduations, concerts, recitals, programs, holiday celebrations... the Tabernacle hosted all of these over the decades. Many of the events were free of charge and anyone was welcome to attend. Even after I stopped attending or believing in TSCC, I loved to go to events there just because it was so beautiful and the acoustics were so good.

Now, all of that is gone. Instead of community celebrations and gatherings, we'll have a building that only a few people can get into (by obeying and by paying 10% of their gross incomes forever). Family members will be excluded from weddings held there. Those who enter will pledge everything they have to a church that controls them and preaches blind obedience, works against equality for women and LGBT rights, and constantly lies about its own history and origins.

The knowledge that TSCC completed a massive and expensive organ restoration project just a few years earlier, only makes Reeves' remarks more smug and self-justifying. Ain't it wonderful, folks, that God saw fit to burn up a beloved community gathering place and its beautiful new organ, just so it could be re-purposed as an exclusionary location for bizarre secret 19th-century rituals?

Bow your heads and say "yes," please. That'll do.

She did her undergrad work at BYU and went to the last five law school convocation ceremonies held in the Provo Tabernacle. (I don't know how many j. Reuben Clark convocations were held in the Provo Tabernacle, but they were held there for as long as either of my parents can remember.) In the middle of her third and final year of law school, my wife was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, which she'd had her whole life, but clerical errors prevented her parents from being notified of the diagnosis when she was a neonate. She was sick her entire life but doctors couldn't figure out what the problem was until she was 22.

The thought of her graduation ceremony in that magnificent old Provo Tabernacle was what kept my wife going. Then, on a December morning while we were in California so that I could interview for residency positions and my wife could consult with a California CF specialist, we woke up to see on the TV news the Provo Tabernacle in flames. It made my wife physically ill beyond what she already was in the first place.

I know my wife wasn't thinking clearly to have considered giving up everything she'd worked for just because of a fire in the site of the scheduled law school convocation ceremony, but at the same time, I don't think a just God would have done such a thing to my wife as to deliberately sit idly and watch the interior of the Provo Tabernacle to be destroyed without somehow giving her a little more strength and insight, For that matter, there were people who had much more invested in that beloved old structure than my wife did who were hurt even more deeply.

I call bullshit on Linda Reeves' statement.

Of course there was no other way to convert the Provo Tabernacle
into a temple other than burning out the whole interior.