Some Thoughts on General Conference
General Conference is coming up. I’ve seen a lot of speculation and rumors flying around about this or that big change that might come. I generally don’t put much stock into rumors, so while I hope some of the speculation I’ve heard is true (and I hope some other speculation I’ve heard is false), I’m taking a wait and see approach, and I’m trying not to get emotionally invested in any of the speculation thus far.
I didn’t grow up in the church, so I don’t have childhood memories of watching conference. I think I may have caught a session or two on TV when I was a new member as a teen, back in the day when the local public access channel would broadcast it as part of their public service programming. But the first time I remember making a whole production of it was when I was in high school. A friend of mine invited me over, along with another mutual friend who attended church without his family, to watch conference at her house with her family. We ate food and watched church on comfy couches. I don’t remember any of the talks, but I remember how wonderful it felt to share the experience with others.
We don’t really have much of a liturgical calendar in Mormonism, but General Conference is the closest we get in some ways to the experience. I sometimes even jokingly refer to it as “The Feast of St. General Conference Day”. Some talks are sublime, some are mundane, and some make me want to yell at my television screen. (If I have to hear another strawman talk directed at singles that makes it clear that the speaker has never had a meaningful conversation on the subject with an actual single person…) Despite my complicated relationship to conference, I still kind of love it.
Most of the time, I watch it at home alone while attending to various projects – house cleaning, furniture assembly, quilt making, etc. Occasionally I’ll get together with friends for a feast while watching and discussing. No matter how I watch it, it feels like the whole weekend is a trip to another place outside of time – kind of like some sort of churchy vacation from the comfort of someone’s living room.
I’m sure many more pixels will be spilled in talking about this or that thing said at conference, and I’ll probably participate in those conversations. Some of the talks will uplift me, and some won’t. I’ll probably be moved to both happy tears and frustrated/hurt tears – though I’m hoping for more happy and less hurt.
Please pass the cinnamon rolls!
Liturgical calendar. Yup!
Cinnamon rolls. Yum!
I love this, Trudy. I think GC is the best/most consistent collective ritual that we have as a church. It’s probably second to taking the Sacrament every week, but GC is definitely a quirkier, more fluid cultural phenomenon and I always think it’s fascinating to see/hear how people do it. I have no idea if/how my family will watch from halfway around the world when most of the sessions are at night (record them and watch over two weekend days with our family, like we used to? stay up late and watch a session live?) but I’ve been thinking a lot about how people do conference. Loved this post.
This is lovely, Trudy. I grew up in the “mission field” so remember long drives to sit on folding chairs to watch something that my Utah-residing family had already seen. I hated it.
When I moved to Utah and people watched it on TV, I saw it as a day off from church- I wasn’t very “active” in church in Utah- I found church fake and formal and unwelcoming to non-Utahans.
The last time I went to a conference viewing was about a decade ago- we drove an hour to sit on uncomfortable plastic chairs to watch a video TAPE that most church members has seen two or three weeks before. We brought a dish as it was a potluck, but no one else brought anything, so they ordered pizza. On a Sunday. No judgement, but I was over it.
Now I listen to audio conference at home .sometimes live, sometimes not, pending my time zone. Because of this, for the first time ever, I love conference. I never even liked it before. I listen to all of it as I do fishes or clean house because I like listening to the whole thing. As a family, we play one talk from conference every morning for as long as it takes to listen to the talks twice. That works for us and I like it.
I’ve never had the home and cinnamon roll experience, but it sounds nice. I’m hoping for happy changes this time, too! Thank you for your post and reminding me of the liturgy in Mormonism (I think we stole the twice annual conference thing from the Methodists? Does that make it borrowed liturgy?).