{"id":109708,"date":"2025-04-05T18:06:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T00:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=109708"},"modified":"2025-04-05T19:09:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T01:09:23","slug":"missing-general-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/04\/missing-general-conference.html","title":{"rendered":"Missing General Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Tab<\/a>
The Tabernacle Choir in the Conference Center \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Owing to our travel schedule, we missed both of the daytime sessions of General Conference today, and we\u2019ll miss this evening\u2019s session. \u00a0I regret that. \u00a0 I feel bad about missing any part of Conference. \u00a0Since my mission \u2014 and apart from the four pre-internet years that we spent living in Egypt \u2014 I think that all of the conference sessions that I\u2019ve missed could be counted on one hand, with several fingers left over unused. \u00a0As we were taking off from Salt Lake City International Airport this morning, though, it was a glorious day for the opening sessions of General Conference. \u00a0Clear and sunny, with rugged snowcapped mountains rising into the blue sky above the valley. \u00a0Spectacularly beautiful for our international and other guests.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already been able to read news of today\u2019s conference proceedings, about the releases and about the callings of new General Authorities and general officers. \u00a0I\u2019ll shortly look through the Deseret News<\/em> talk summaries; I was struck to see that Elder Neil L. Andersen spoke so strongly about abortion. \u00a0Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, it won\u2019t be very long before I\u2019ve caught up on all of the Saturday conference sessions. \u00a0And, not long beyond that, I\u2019ll be able to read all of the talks. \u00a0Which reminds me of my late friend Ann Madsen (my friend Truman Madsen\u2019s widow), and of something that I posted in remembrance of her when she passed away back in 2022:<\/p>\n

Once, many years ago, I was over in the old Joseph Smith Building on the BYU campus for some sort of meeting.\u00a0 When that meeting finished, I was trying to decide whether I should walk back to my office in another building, since I had yet another (unrelated) meeting in the Joseph Smith Building less than an hour thereafter.\u00a0 Suddenly, I ran into Ann in the hallway.\u00a0 She was a bit surprised to see me in her building.\u00a0 She was off to teach a class, and she offered to let me sit in her office while I waited for the next meeting to start.\u00a0 That was good, as I had work with me that I could do while biding my time.<\/p>\n

I sat down at her desk, in her chair, as she had invited me to do.\u00a0 From that vantage point, I noticed something that nobody else in the office would be able to see:\u00a0 Taped to one of her filing cabinets so that she could easily see and read it, she had a typed-out list of all of the speakers at the most recent installment of the General Conference of the Church.\u00a0 And, next to each name, she had a specific resolution of something that she personally intended to do in response to that speaker\u2019s remarks.\u00a0 I was both inspired and a little shamed by what I saw.\u00a0 Plainly, she was very serious about General Conference in a way that rather put me in the shadow.\u00a0 Since that time, I\u2019ve made sporadic and not very impressive efforts to follow her example.\u00a0 My results have been mixed, but I still remember the standard that she set for me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Happily, I have a copy of the conference talks from last October\u2019s General Conference with me on this trip.<\/p>\n

\"SL's<\/a>
The interior is quite attractive. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Friday night, my wife and I took in a \u201cBroadway at the Eccles\u201d performance of Life of Pi<\/em><\/a> at the George S. and Dolores Dor\u00e9 Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City. \u00a0I have to admit that I wasn\u2019t especially looking forward to the play. \u00a0I\u2019ve never read the book and I scarcely remembered the film except that it involved an Indian guy and a Bengal tiger stranded in a small boat at sea and that I didn\u2019t particularly care for the movie. \u00a0However, I have to say that I really enjoyed the theatrical performance. \u00a0The staging, for one thing, was extraordinarily clever and effective.<\/p>\n

Speaking of movies, though, I briefly recounted a little story the other day<\/a> about going up to the Salt Lake Valley with my friend Lou Midgley many years ago \u2014 to Holladay, I think, although that may be wrong \u2014 in order to catch the Sunday evening showing of an anti-Mormon film at an evangelical church. \u00a0My Malevolent Stalker and his small group of disciples have managed, as they do with almost everything that I say or do, to discern in that account deep evidence of my chronic arrogance, viciousness, and depravity. \u00a0(Feel free, if you haven\u2019t already done so already, to read my short account: \u00a0You\u2019ll be stunned at my sheer, unconcealed wickedness. \u00a0Be sure to keep your smelling salts nearby.) \u00a0Amusingly, the Stalker finds it revealing that we chose to go to a Protestant church to see the film. \u00a0That, he says, betrays our sordid and aggressively combative intent. \u00a0(People who actually know me won\u2019t be surprised to hear that I really, really, really dislike and always try to avoid unpleasant in-person confrontations. \u00a0But of course, in this case, the person in question is the Peterson of Myth rather than the Peterson of History.) \u00a0Rather than traveling to that evangelical Church, the Stalker suggests, we should have rented the movie on video (although I have no reason to believe that it was or has ever been available at, say, Blockbuster or Hollywood Video) or streamed it on Netflix (which, so far as I\u2019m aware, didn\u2019t even exist at that time \u201cmany years ago\u201d). \u00a0The Stalker is determined, though. \u00a0I\u2019ll give him that. \u00a0He\u2019s been at this, continuously and anonymously, for something like fifteen or twenty years.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, at the end of the performance of Life of Pi<\/em>, the lead actor (Taha Mandviwala) made an appeal, as is often done after such events, for donations to Broadway Cares\/Equity Fights AIDS<\/a>. \u00a0Afterwards, members of the company stood in the lobby and by the exits with red buckets, QR codes, etc., soliciting the generosity of the departing audience. \u00a0I don\u2019t blog here about my hypothetical gifts to charity, and it\u2019s an article of faith for the good folks at the Peterson Obsession Board that I\u2019m a callous, hateful, mercenary homophobic bigot, so I suppose that there\u2019s no real point in trying to pretend that we made a contribution. \u00a0That would be unthinkable. \u00a0In fact, there can be no doubt whatever that my head almost exploded when we were asked to feel charitable<\/em> toward . . . such people. \u00a0(It\u2019s impossible that my anonymous critics could be wrong.)<\/p>\n

Posted while waiting for a delayed flight in the Orlando, Florida, airport<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Owing to our travel schedule, we missed both of the daytime sessions of General Conference today, and we\u2019ll miss this evening\u2019s session. \u00a0I regret that. \u00a0 I feel bad about missing any part of Conference. \u00a0Since my mission \u2014 and apart from the four pre-internet years that we spent living in Egypt \u2014 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":32285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1269,2905,38557,788],"class_list":["post-109708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-general-conference","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-life-of-pi","tag-mormon"],"yoast_head":"\nMissing General Conference<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"  Owing to our travel schedule, we missed both of the daytime sessions of General Conference today, and we'll miss 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