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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Many years ago now, I found myself sitting in the office of a BYU faculty colleague.\u00a0 I had been with her in a meeting in her building and, forty-five minutes after it concluded, I was scheduled for another appointment in that same building.\u00a0 She, though, was teaching a class during that intervening hour, and she offered me the use of her office while I waited, so that I wouldn\u2019t need to walk to my own office across campus and then to walk back again.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Hers was a rather small office \u2014 she was a part-time instructor at the time \u2014 and I ended up sitting in her chair at her desk and doing a bit of my own work.\u00a0 From that vantage point, I could see a two-page list posted on the wall \u2014 though somewhat hidden behind a file cabinet and plainly meant for her eyes only.\u00a0 It was a list of speakers from the recently-concluded General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u00a0 To the right of each speaker\u2019s name was a brief, practical, specific, one-sentence resolution, inspired by that speaker\u2019s conference remarks.\u00a0 Each named at least one particular action or change that she intended to undertake, in response to what each speaker had said, over the next six months.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m putting it very mildly when I say that I was deeply impressed.\u00a0 In fact, truth be told, I felt more than a little rebuked<\/em>.\u00a0 I realized that, although I have listened live to virtually every conference address delivered over at least<\/em> the past four decades or so, I hadn\u2019t been listening nearly as carefully as she was.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Frankly, I still don\u2019t.\u00a0 I admire her seriousness about General Conference, but I continue to fall short.\u00a0 Nevertheless, I admire her example, and I continue to think about it and to want to emulate it.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I still listen to all of the conference speeches live.\u00a0 Typically \u2014 always<\/em>, really \u2014 I\u2019m doing something else while listening.\u00a0 I go through stacks of magazines and papers.\u00a0 I walk on our treadmill.\u00a0 I organize books.\u00a0 I can\u2019t just sit there.\u00a0 But what works best for me, ideally, is to read the speeches again thereafter, in the conference issue of the Church magazine or online.\u00a0 One each day.\u00a0 And, as I do so or shortly thereabouts, I try to listen for impressions, for indications of what I should do in relation to the speaker\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In this way, I try to make conference a source of personal revelation to me.\u00a0 And, in this way, conference isn\u2019t merely a set of repetitious talks on familiar themes, as some like to dismiss it.\u00a0 I\u2019m actively involved with conference when I do this, not merely a passive listener.\u00a0 And, thus, General Conference becomes an ongoing twice-annual spiritual challenge to me.\u00a0 I look forward to it, I enjoy it, and, however modestly, I profit from it and progress by it.\u00a0 I love General Conference.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And the news of thirteen new temples that was announced at the very end of today\u2019s closing session, to say nothing of the announcement of a \u201creconstruction\u201d of the Provo Utah Temple \u2014 the word suggests, to my mind, something along the lines of what was done in the case of the Ogden Utah Temple \u2014 was icing on the cake.\u00a0 Conference ended on a very high note.\u00a0 I love to hear about new temples.\u00a0 As the Prophet Joseph Smith wrote in a letter to the Saints not many weeks before his assassination in 1844:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBrethren [and sisters],\u00a0shall we not go on in so great a cause?<\/em> Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren [and sisters]; and on, on to the victory!\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n You may perhaps be aware of Sharon Osbourne and her husband, Ozzy, the heavy metal singer, songwriter, philosopher, public intellectual, and moral exemplar. \u00a0Here\u2019s something that she said in 2005 about settling in Los Angeles:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the first things I bought for the house was a big old-fashioned telescope, which I kept in the living-room area. And the first thing I did every night when I came home was go to the spyglass and look out across the city to the Mormon temple on Santa Monica Boulevard. On top is a golden angel blowing a horn that glints at sunset. It was my ritual, a way of anchoring myself. And at night, with the city lit up, it was breathtaking. And I built a hot tub on the top terrace where you could sit and look out at it all glittering beneath you.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Somehow, I rarely make it back to west Los Angeles, to the area of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA, where I earned my doctorate) and of the Los Angeles California Temple, where my parents were sealed relatively late in their lives and where, as married adults, my brother and I were sealed to them<\/em>.\u00a0 It was \u201cmy\u201d temple when I was growing up; it meant a great deal to me, and it still holds a special place in my heart.\u00a0 I would like to attend a session there again.\u00a0 But my travels seldom take me to that area these days.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get to it this time, for example.\u00a0 Nor last time.\u00a0 I\u2019ll need to make it a specific and deliberate goal.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a column that my late colleague Bill Hamblin and I published in the Deseret News<\/em> back in 2015.\u00a0 The topic to which it\u2019s addressed has been on my mind, for some reason, as we\u2019ve been driving around here during this trip:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCalifornia\u2019s explicitly Christian heritage\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sharon Eubank\u2019s conference talk on Saturday evening offered an absolute treasure trove of blood-curdling horrors from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSister Sharon Eubank: \u2018I Pray He\u2019ll Use Us\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>
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