Lifting the Veil: A Journey of Faith

By Katherine A. Day

Many years ago, while studying various accounts of the Garden of Eden and seeking a deeper faith and relationship with God, I began to question my role as a woman in God's kingdom. What is a woman's potential in her relationship with God? What do women do beyond the veil? What is our potential in this and the next life? Are we living beneath our privileges because we do not ask such questions? In my journey over a period of nearly ten years, I earnestly sought answers through study, writing, and prayer. This path of discovery led to surprising third alternatives and profound experiences, captured and included in this book as journal entries, email correspondence, and detailed notes from classes taught by Dr. Ronald E. Bartholomew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543993912

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Katherine A. Day

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2019

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-54399-390-5

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54399-391-2

Cover Illustration Copyright © 2019 by Adam Day

Cover design by Bookbaby.com

Book design and production by www.Bookbaby.com

Editing by McKell Parsons and Kaitlin Barwick

Contents

Foreword

Author’s Note

Introduction

Part One

Email Correspondence Excerpt

Journal Entry

The Process of Faith

Email Correspondence Excerpt

The Common Life

Journal Entry

Application Paper Excerpts

Look to Your Lord and Live

Journal Entries

Light, Truth, Grace

Journal Entry

Email Correspondence Excerpts

Application Paper Excerpts

Receive the Mysteries

Journal Entries and Miriam’s Dream

Transformation Through Sacrifice

Application Paper Excerpts

Journal Entries

Part Two

Beyond Walls

Application Paper Excerpts

Journal Entries

Purpose of the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement

Email Correspondence Excerpts

Because of Thy Son

Email Correspondence Excerpts

Abraham and Relational Orbits

Email Correspondence Excerpt

Journal Essay: Gratitude for Interconnection

Yoked with the Savior

Journal Essay: The Power of Women

Email Correspondence Excerpt

Part Three

Journal Entries, Excerpts

Email Correspondence Excerpt

Journal Entry

The Infinite and Intimate Atonement

Journal Entries

Journal Essay

Interlude

Email Correspondence Excerpt

Journal Entry: A Divine Woman Unveiled

Epilogue

Final Entries

Journal Entries

Yang Journal Entry Excerpt

In Conclusion

Foreword

What a blessing it has been to be a part of this journey. In this book, I have agreed to be known by the pseudonym Guide. As with any guide, I was not the source of the light and knowledge that Kate received through direct revelation from heaven. In her sacred journey, I was blessed—in a small part—to, at times, redirect her thinking, ask questions, or simply exclaim, Look and see! Against my better judgment, I have allowed Kate to portray portions of our discussions and class sessions in this book. While not verbatim, her portrayals do, in large measure, accurately depict how the Spirit communicated with her. To that end, my function was that of a conduit, not a well or a spring. Having said that, to the degree that these class sessions or conversations were beneficial, I am profoundly and humbly grateful. Kate, this journey was your journey, to which I was a willing and happy bystander as well as a cheerleader and, at times, even a teacher.

—Ronald E. Bartholomew

Author’s Note

What follows is a record of my own personal experience. The access provided to the reader reflects the highs and lows of this journey as they occurred. It is not my intent to present perfected ideas but rather to lay bare an honest journey of reconciliation with my faith.

The Style and Content

When I first gathered and wrote this record, I did so anonymously. I wanted to remove the individual and focus the narrative to testify of God’s desire and masterful ability to mentor us all in truth: that we are all infinitely dear to God and to other Divine Beings who are powerfully capable of reaching out to us in our sphere. Another reason I desired anonymity was that the entries and correspondence I have included in this record are often deeply personal, and I am made vulnerable and exposed in the sharing of them. Anonymity was easier on all accounts. Yet, as the compiling of this account neared completion, I was strongly advised against anonymity by interested publishers, mentors, friends, family, and eventually the Spirit. In the struggle between the two opinions, I finally came to the conclusion that I could do both: claim the account, beliefs, and weaknesses as mine but also keep the contents written in an anonymous style to serve the purposes of my original desire to focus on God’s hand in the narrative. Thus, the cover displays my name, but the contents mute the identities of specific individuals through the use of pseudonyms. Specifically, I will use Yin for myself, Yang for my husband and Guide for Dr. Ronald Bartholomew (as explained in the foreword). All other individual’s names will be replaced with initials when a name is necessary.

The reader will encounter various source materials, mostly in chronological order: journal entries, essays, email correspondences, and applicable class notes reproduced with the help of the instructor, Dr. Ronald E. Bartholomew. While the entries have been edited or abridged for clarity, the essence of each entry and the events described within are true.

The intended audience

It is true that the specific yearnings and discoveries recorded here intertwine heavily and are influenced by the culture, scripture, and doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have found I cannot alter the text to fit a more general audience and still be true to the account. And yet, in my mind’s eye, there is continually the vision of a woman sitting at a table reading this record.

She does not find herself in the same places of worship as I do and is not prone to using the same cultural terms of faith as I am, but she loves what I love and resonates to the same truths as I do. She hears the same voice calling her.

We share the same heart. She may be many or few, but I feel inspired to invite that woman (and that man) to still consider venturing into the possibly unfamiliar context and culture of this record. If they do, I believe amid the unfamiliar, they will also hear a familiar voice. Perhaps I feel this way because I have been that woman. To use a metaphor of author Michael Wilcox¹: As I have chosen to center the fixed foot of my life’s compass in the teachings of Jesus Christ, I have certainly been strengthened and have grown in faith by pondering the teachings and writings from sources more common to those of my faith. Yet I have also stretched forth my searching foot to gather in truth found beyond the sphere of my familiar culture, believing with M. Wilcox that God has scattered truth as widely as the stars. In this outward reaching, I have been enriched and have gathered resonating, transformative truths from sources of various creeds. And for each I give thanks, [that] at each divine juncture when my life has met with theirs, my wings expand and I touch [God] more intimately.²

A note about the title

The title Lifting the Veil came to me on December 28, 2018, while I was writing the journal entry that is now at the end of this record. It came unexpectedly to my mind with that feeling of divine guidance I have come to know and trust. After participating in a temple ritual a few days later on January 2, 2019—which happened to be the same day I was scheduled to meet with Brother Bartholomew to discuss our desire to publish the manuscript—I found that the title held meaning I could not have known on December 28. Truly, God lifted the veil of my understanding. He revealed even more to me about the yin role of women inside the flow of godliness. I believe God desires to continue lifting the veil. This is a time of increased revelation from God to His children here on earth—more about divine women and their role in our lives is yet to come. The timing of all the events on January 2 speaks that to my heart and is continually tender to contemplate.

Lastly, I pray that any weakness on my part will not become a barrier to those who read but will instead witness of a broader message that I hope this record will convey. That message is this: Christ and those Divine Beings who are invested in and integral to His work are not hampered in leading us to the answers of our yearning hearts by our imperfections—flawed individuals are all they have to work with. There are no walls, except those we create, to a greater communion and progression with God. God does not give revelation only to prophets and seers. God’s Spirit can speak to you. God will speak to you. Open the channel. Do the work that is required. It is the greatest work we have to do.

—K. D.

---

1 Generalization of a culture, an age, or a religion is prone to misjudgment, dismissal, or ignorance, but when we contemplate humanity one life at a time . . . ultimately our compassion is expanded and our empathy enlarged. We gain in charity. We become more inclusive. We open ourselves up and invite wholeness. . . . The vast range of human possibilities and human experiences broadens us and we are enlivened by it. Part of God being God consists in this universal but intimate view. We will not be able to develop his heart within us with only a surface understanding of our fellowmen—or with alienation because of difference, whatever the source of that dissimilarity. . . . Having studied most religions, philosophies, and approaches to life, I believe and I affirm that truth and goodness and beauty in their most mature form are found in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. . . . Here I will place the fixed foot of my compass. . . . Placing the fixed foot is only half the task, not the whole of life’s journey: We would draw the circle. We have another foot to consider—what will we do with the searching foot? Unfortunately, too many religions and cultures . . . draw a tiny circle surrounding their own position and feel comfortable with life. Truth is too grand to be found in such small dimensions. It is scattered around the world, God distributing his wonders as widely as the sower throwing grain. God would have the harvest cover the whole field. . . . Our Father in Heaven is a light-giving God and dispenses it as widely as the stars. Michael Wilcox, 10 Great Souls I Want to Meet in Heaven (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2012), preface.

2 Meister Eckart, Intimate in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky (New York: Penguin Group, 2002), 101.

They overflow as we overflow

circle; dance

yin flow—yang flow

yield; receive; center; abide

yang flow—yin flow

circle; dance

we overflow as they overflow.

Introduction

As the record presented in the following pages heavily utilizes journal entries and email messages to communicate its message, I found it a fitting suggestion that the following journal entry be removed from the end of the work and serve instead as its introduction—especially since the Lord has given me a love of circles through this journey. So we will begin at the end and circle backward.

September 27, 2018

While in our family scripture study this morning, we reviewed the next conference talk in succession from President Nelson. The prophet’s words in the April 2008 General Conference pressed upon me:

If families fail, their glorious eternal potential cannot be realized. Our Heavenly Father wants husbands and wives to be faithful to each other and to esteem and treat their children as an heritage from the Lord. In such a family we study the scriptures and pray together. And we fix our focus on the temple.³

I felt impressed to stop and share some understanding with my children that has come for me on the topic of the temple. I will try to recreate here in my journal what I shared with them.

A few years ago, while in the habit of weekly temple attendance, I began to see and feel things while serving there that would haunt me throughout the rest of the week. The questions that developed as I pondered this change in my perspective bled into my everyday life and begged for resolution.

First, I saw an emphasis upon men—their premortal purpose, mortal role, and future potential. Women’s role, purposes, and potential were missing, as I saw it. I realized that years of temple attendance had built within me (because of the emphasis upon Adam in the Garden of Eden account included in the endowment ceremony) the subtle message that as a woman, I did not have the same potential as a man to progress in my relationship with God. There would always be a go-between, or at best, I guessed that the work of divine women would be separate and apart from the work of God the Father or Jesus Christ and the holy men in training to become like them. I was told most likely that the work of divine women was in raising spirit children, but what did that even look like? I believed that spirit minds must grasp ideas and concepts with more ease than mortal minds, and I did not imagine spirit bodies needing the same nourishment and care as mortal bodies. I imagined spirit children to be so independent that I couldn’t imagine anything to our role in raising them. Also, in my home, and my friends’ and family’s homes, husbands and wives shared the work of raising the children, so it didn’t feel right that divine women would be given this role separate and apart from divine men. So if I have a Heavenly Mother, who is She? What does She do? What is She like? Why was She so absent from our mortal experience? Why are there no divine women represented in scripture? What will I be doing, and what will I be like? Maybe I was wrong, I would often joke sarcastically. Maybe divine women wouldn’t have anything different they would work on, and we would just be reabsorbed back into the man’s rib.

The answers that came—in deeply personal and often miraculous ways—I have since struggled to articulate. Words feel insufficient and empty. In truth, trying to describe this journey with words might be as helpful as giving someone a feel for what a home is like by showing them only the building plans rather than letting them visit the house—or even better, giving them time to live in the house, make memories there, decorate it, organize it, etc. And that experience is wholly different from the one a builder would have in creating the home. Such were the deeper layers of understanding and experience God has provided on the topic of my place, purpose, and power as a woman. What I learned and continue to learn through such divine mentoring cannot be related fully by a rough sketch with words. Each woman (and man) can only glean such truths and understanding for themselves in the same way those wise virgins did who gathered oil for themselves in the well-known parable.

Nevertheless, in an effort to aid those seeking similar truths and to witness of the ways in which God can and will mentor us, I was encouraged by Guide (who had been an essential part of that mentoring) to compile some of the written records of my journey—to figuratively invite others into my home. In my doing so, God has added new layers of meaning and mentoring to what came before. And recently, I’ve felt better able to describe what I have learned from the building plan perspective:

First, there is no regard to gender in respect to our eternal progression. When attending temple ceremonies that depicted the Adam and Eve story, I was tempted to believe there was a message in Eve being created after Adam and the earth—in Adam helping with the creation of the world and not Eve. Subconsciously at first, and later brought to the forefront of my mind through introspection and discussion, I realized that I had come to believe the message was saying that my potential as a woman to help in God’s work would not rise to the same potential as that of a man’s. I have since been taught powerfully that such a message was never intended by the Church of Jesus Christ or by God’s voice as recorded in any true faith. There is no wall and no limit to what a woman (or man) may experience in their journey with God except for those walls and limits we create ourselves. The tempo at which that union and reception of grace from God grows and flows is determined by the tempo at which we receive what is offered. It is a journey that is infinite in its uniqueness and intimate in its depth.

I still await and seek for more to be revealed about divine women. But an important part of my journey thus far (as captured in this record) has been how God is opening my eyes to see what the temple—and all of life—teaches about eternal relationality and the flow of godliness. Both of these ideas are symbolized so beautifully in my mind by the yin-yang symbol. The degree to which men and women learn to give and receive of that flow to each other is proportional to the degree that the power of godliness can flow to, around, and through us in the world as a whole. What is important is not the separate roles of men and women but the flowing roles of men and women—we must think with circles, not lines. Godly relationships of men and women (in and outside of marriage) are essential and elemental to life continuing, thriving, and progressing. Therefore, I know with a surety deeper than the marrow of my bones that this means divine women are interconnected to all the ministrations we receive and to all the creation that takes place in this universe.

Second, the efficacy of the ordinances performed at the temple was a question for me. I had been influenced for years by words spoken by Melvin J. Ballard that emphasized the need to use our time wisely on earth. He taught, It is my judgment that any man or woman can do more to conform to the laws of God in one year in this life than they could in ten years when they are [in the spirit world].⁴

I realize now that my understanding of these words caused me to subconsciously erase the possibility of progress in the spirit world while we await our resurrection. I saw that most of the ordinances of the gospel in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints related to after the Resurrection, and based on Doctrine and Covenants 130:2, which states that the same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, I did not believe that there was an enforced physical separation between spirits until ordinances were received. Because of these ideas, I couldn’t grasp what changed for a person beyond the veil while they were in the spirit world because of the work we did at the temple. All the answers I was given or had read seemed insufficient and steeped in tradition, not necessarily in truth. I knew if I could understand these questions, it would give me greater purpose and enthusiasm for the work done in the temples of the restored Church of Jesus Christ.

Recently, while reviewing and pondering journal entries where I had recorded these questions and their mutations over the years, I went to the temple to participate in sealing ordinances for the dead. In the middle of the proceedings, the sealer had us all stop and rest from kneeling because there weren’t enough people to rotate. During this lull, I felt a question materialize to ask the sealer concerning this desire for greater understanding. I asked how the person’s life changed in the spirit world because of the ordinances we performed, having just heard several times the words to the sealing ordinance that spoke only of promises given that applied after or during the Resurrection. The sealer and his assistant both shared some insights that I had heard or considered before but that hadn’t gotten to the root of my question. Then, seeing I was not assuaged, he shared a time when he had felt that same question come to his mind while taking a family name through the temple. He described how he realized each ordinance changed that person’s life in the spirit world just as they had changed his life while on earth by making those covenants. This thought has produced more fruit as I have pondered it, but in the moment, it was not as impactful. Then a woman who was a patron like me spoke up. She said that she had always envisioned those in the Spirit world who had not received the ordinances as having a figurative wall blocking them from further progress. When the ordinances are vicariously performed for that person, that wall crumbles and they are able to progress forward in their at-one-ment with Christ.

I wrote in this journal after that experience: Only those who know how often I wrote of a wall in my struggles to know my potential to grow in proximity to God as a woman, only those who know of the vision of the city and the wall that I received that one dark night when the emotional pain was so real that I considered ceasing my activity in the Church—only they would understand how this woman’s words concerning a wall would powerfully pierce my heart, bringing understanding.

Sitting in that sealing room with ever-moistening eyes, another door unlocked in my mind and heart. I came to understand that the work we do in the temple is to remove walls. God had done that for me with the help of others. I could now turn and allow Divine Help to flow to another.

Returning to the temple since then, I have continued to understand: The work of God’s temples is to connect children of God with their Heavenly Parents; to graft branches to The Vine; to make possible the channel through which the power of godliness can flow, nourish, cleanse, heal, and enliven a precious son or daughter of God. Each ordinance, each covenant, and each sacrifice to keep those covenants increases the connection and that flow. Eventually, just as the graft to The Vine becomes whole and complete, we are not sure where we end and God begins. We become one (see John 15:1–12 and 17:21–23, 26).

Our baptismal covenants are the formal commitment and statement of our desire in every moment to be grafted in—to center our life in Christ, always remember Him, and take upon us His name. As part of that ordinance, we receive God’s formal commitment to at-one with us, guide us, and give us the grace we need—the flow of godliness increases. We decide, in essence, to let Christ lead the dance of time in our life through His promised gift of the Holy Ghost. We learn through trial and error to follow that guiding hand rather than to resist or try to lead. We trust the future to Him and focus on the present steps we are being asked to dance. We learn how much more beautiful that dance becomes when we follow His steps with love and gratitude. Then, the washing and anointing, the endowment, the sealing . . . each progressive ordinance and covenant—and the sacrifices we make to keep those covenants—increases our centering and enables us to participate more fully in that divine dance—the flow of godliness.

I felt that day in the temple a witness that a person in the spirit world can experience this same process while in the spirit world. We are able, through service in holy temples, to open channels of godly growth in another’s life. Regardless of any weakness (perceived or otherwise) in the mortal administration or teaching of those ordinances, this purpose remains. What a beautiful work that is, and how merciful and generous of the Lord to allow us to be a part of that flow.

---

3 Russell M. Nelson, Salvation and Exaltation, Ensign, May 2008.

4 Melvin J. Ballard, Three