We were minutes away from the special “Easter Devotional” concert at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Newport Beach when Mona told me she was feeling nervous.

“Why?” I asked.

She said she had not been to a Mormon concert. I wasn’t quite able to grasp why she was nervous, but later, when she explained further, I completely understood. She’s Hindu. I can imagine when I go to a service with her, which I plan to do, I’ll be a bit apprehensive, too. Will I know what to do, pick up the right cues? You never want to embarrass yourself in a place of worship. But then I keep coming back to the first time I visited the Islamic Educational Center in Costa Mesa to talk to Imam Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini. I was worried about making some sort of stupid gaffe, but I realized quickly I needn’t worry. Like any place of worship, the mosque was welcoming, calming, peaceful.

When we arrived we almost immediately met Tom Thorkelson, LDS’ director of Interfaith Relations for Orange County. The typically avuncular Tom greeted us with his trademark toothy smile and embraced Mona with a big bear hug. I was a bit surprised as the two had never met, but that’s how disarmingly friendly Tom can be. And it worked. Mona felt welcomed and we both enjoyed the concert put on by the Orange County Mormon Choral Organization, the Orange County Mormon Choir and Youth Chorus led by music directors Brandon Stewart and Brett Stewart and accompanied by musicians Carol Cole, Graham MacRobie (organ), Debbie Brown (flute), Graham Arnold (oboe), Ben Randall (horn) and Leah Cecil (harp).

Their artistry was beautiful and spiritually uplifting. A particular highlight for me was their rendition of “Sometimes it Causes Me to Tremble.”

In all, it was an interesting day of ecumenism for me. Mona attended Catholic Mass with me in the morning and, as I mentioned, I want to return the favor and experience a Hindu service. I haven’t really studied Hinduism since college and I want to learn more about it. In fact, I’m on a mission, as the coordinator of our weekly “In Theory” column, to learn so much more about the world’s religions, which I find are all beautiful and fascinating.

Ironically, tomorrow I’ll be attending former Pilot editor Bill Lobdell’s party to celebrate his book, “Losing My Religion,” which chronicles his disaffection with faith as a religion reporter who covered some of the worst cases of hypocrisy, particularly the aftermath of my own church’s handling of the sex-abuse scandals (something I’m especially ashamed of). I’m looking forward to it. I think the faithful should do a lot more to reach out to the nonbelievers anyway. Some of my best friends in the world are atheists, but that doesn’t mean they are any less moral or ethical than I am. In fact, I especially admire their high character since they don’t believe in an afterlife as a reward (neither do I, as a matter of fact. We shouldn’t live moral lives in the expectation that we’ll be rewarded. We should do so because we just should. It’s selfish otherwise).

P.S. The picture above of Tom is from a recent trip he took to the Amazon. We didn’t have enough room to run it with his recent column on the trip, but I think it just shows what a fun-loving guy he is.

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