Conference and Restore

Last week, I didn't share any of my thoughts about general conference. So here are the talks that I thought were the highlights of the weekend:

Kristin M. Yee: How awesome to have a single woman of color being open about coming from a less-than-ideal home and discussing forgiveness!

James W. McConkie III: I loved the analogy of everyone carrying a corner of the bed to help those who are suffering. What a great way to liken the scriptures.

D. Todd Christofferson: I love the analogy of the body of Christ and this doctrine of belonging. More of this, please.

Gérald Caussé: I loved this talk about caring for creation, including the planet but also fellow humans. And I loved that he talked about being creators ourselves. I worried that he would just talk about having children, but he talked about adding "our own constructions." And when he did talk about having children, he made sure to include teachers, leaders, and other roles. Perfect!

J. Anette Davis: Like many others, I was sad to see Sharon Eubank released. But from what I've seen so far, Sister Davis seems to be a worthy replacement. Hers was a beautiful expansion on the idea of belonging that Elder Christofferson explained on Saturday.

Then this weekend, I attended a different kind of conference, one that, frankly, spoke to my soul more than most of the general conference talks. Recently I learned about the organization Faith Matters, whose "goal is to provide a powerful and widely engaging platform for exploring ideas, practices, and initiatives that provide deeper engagement with our faith and our world." This weekend they hosted a gathering called Restore at the Salt Palace, and I was eager to go. I even took a day off work to attend.

This gathering included some of the best Latter-day Saint thinkers of our time, and there were several presentations that I found insightful.

Jeff Strong was a mission president whose mission was part of a sort of pilot program that focused more on service projects than on proselyting. It sounded like a resounding success. In my own mission in the late 2000s, the culture kind of looked down on service. But I think it's way better than tracting, which I referred to as "eating shirts"—as hard as I might try to eat my shirt, it's not going to yield any results.

Joseph Grenny talked about the Other Side Academy. Grenny had two sons who ended up incarcerated, and one of them became cellmates with a hardened criminal, who in turn contacted Grenny. Various turns of events led to the creation of the academy, which helps habitual criminals turn their lives around. It was very inspiring.

Patrick Mason is a professor of Mormon history at USU, and I have really enjoyed his work, including a book he wrote for Faith Matters, Restoration. He spoke about our hopes as the Restoration enters its third century.

Then on Saturday, a Protestant pastor named Brian McLaren talked about how religion was originally practiced in nature, but for centuries now the theologians have been "avid indoorsmen" who live their lives in square buildings with square doors. He invoked the idea of reconnecting religion with the planet.

Jared Halverson is a BYU professor who apparently makes very long YouTube videos explaining the scriptures. His presentation was entitled "Don't let a good faith crisis go to waste." He explained that many things in life follow the pattern of Creation, Fall, and Atonement. Many people have a Creation-level faith, where everything is good. Then for many, there's a Fall-level faith, where everything has fallen. But it's still progress from the Creation stage. Then people can proceed to an Atonement-level faith, where things are better than they were even in the Creation stage. 

There was a lunch break, and after I went and got lunch, I was prepared to spend the break reading one of the books I bought. But a random dude got up and invited people over to have informal discussions about the conference's presentation. So I had a good conversation with a few strangers.

Brian McLaren spoke again about four stages of faith: simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and harmony, including what the stages look like and how people can transition between them.

In addition, there were musical numbers that embraced different styles of music than we typically see in Latter-day Saint services, and there were hippie-dippie meditation sessions. 

It was such a good conference. These are my people.

Then after the session, I had enough time for a magnificent North Canyon run in the evening. This is the best time of the year for the trails.

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Here's pumpkinundation roundup!

The Crumbl pumpkin roll cookie seems like it can't decide whether it should be a pumpkin roll or a cinnamon roll. It's a cakey cookie with cream-cheese frosting and cinnamon topping. It's good but not great. 7/10.

The Crumbl caramel apple cookie was more like a sugar cookie with caramel topping and apple-flavored frosting. I especially appreciated the real apples on top. I'm not sure it was entirely like a caramel apple, but it was a wonderful cookie! 8/10.

The Kneaders pumpkin muffin top was fine but a little dry. 7/10.

I had this Yogi Pumpkin Spice Herbal Supplement (tea) leftover from last year. If you like herbal tea, I guess it's fine. 6/10.

The RubySnap Autumn cookie has chunks of butternut squash in the cookie base. RubySnap has creative flavors, but there's something a little odd about them. 7/10.

And the RubySnap Ghoul-friend cookie is a traditional pumpkin chocolate chip cookie, with some cream cheese frosting. Nothing unusual. 7/10.

The Taco Time pumpkin empanada has been around a long time. It's basically pumpkin pie filling in a cinnamon-covered tortilla. 7/10.

The Oui by Yoplait Pumpkin Caramel Coconut Dairy Alternative Yogurt wasn't as good as the actual yogurt version. It didn't stick out to me. 6/10.

Thomas' Pumpkin Spice Bagels are the best of all the pumpkin bagels with pockets of pumpkin flavor. 8/10.