Not everyone can give this talk–among other things, not many people can get away with a Larry Summers joke–but I think it is a wonderful example of a talk that is about Jesus and mothers, in their proper order. (And about Indonesian cross-dressing beauty queens…)
Another Mother’s Day Talk PSA
May 8, 2012 by
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
Fantastic talk. One for the ages.
Great read Kristine! I love the NT references on the abundance of love v. scarcity. The foreign roles of gender expectations to set the tone for the paradigm shift was fantastic. The final note of mothers giving status and respect more than expecting it left me a tad bit raw since both my MIL and mother are the competitive types who are passive attention seekers. *Sigh*
oh, thank you!
Wonderful talk! I’m going to pilfer from it shamelessly for my own Mother’s Day talk. I think every Mother’s Day talk should begin with Muslim modesty in cross-dressing beauty pageants. Thanks K. I needed this.
Hey! That’s my dad! I’m a lucky, lucky daughter.
And for anyone who wants more details about those Indonesian cross-dressing beauty queens (with pictures!), some shameless self-promotion: http://purplepetra.blogspot.com/2007/05/here-she-is-miss-central-java.html.
Yay! Thanks, Petra!!
Wow, what a great talk. I’m sure I came across the print version in Dialogue a while back, mentally categorized it as a “sermon” (which typically ranks near last-place in my LDS reading queue, just before poetry), and therefore never got around to it. My loss.
Fabulous! Thanks Kristine.
Also, why don’t we ever use this opportunity to talk about the origins of Mother’s Day and peace activism? Oh wait.
Best Mother’s Day talk I’ve ever encountered, hands down.
Poor Larry Summers. Since we’re discussing Mother’s Day and the subject of women is supposed to be dead to him, I will take up the cause of his mother, who was my department chair in graduate school.
She treated me well.
Given Summers’ reputation for arrogance and the alleged influence of mothers on their children’s behavior, some might find that to be an interesting tidbit.
Wow! What a great talk! Thanks for linking (and publishing), Kristine.
I missed that talk when it was originally given in our ward by Lant last year, because I was away “mothering” our daughter who had just given birth to her second child. I heard about the talk from many people, so thanks for sharing! It was just as fascinating and insightful as it was rumored to be.
That talk is alive to me. Thanks Kris for pointing us to it.
“If we are worried about getting respect and getting
status and getting honor and think in scarcity terms, we are
tempted to detract from others, to try to get just a little more than
they do.”
This is profound.
I loved the part about putting in more than we take out. Why is that so hard for so many of us?
I remember that. A fantastic talk.
Stunning.
Thanks, Kristine – and to think it was delievered in the building I used to attend. I wish I could have heard it live.
A Christ-centric MD talk. What a great example to us all!
Reading Lant’s talk is almost as fun as watching a BYU football game with him in his basement.
Not bad for someone who hasn’t climbed Everest.
Ben: name-dropper.
Pretty boring talk. Uplifting to the speaker and his scholarly back-stratchers. I’m sure the rest of the audience was like, “heh? Thanks a lot for that one!”
Seriously, Phil? I promise the congregation was riveted–I mean, how many talks involving cross-dressing beauty pageants have you ever heard??
#22 – When reading printed words on a page, without the benefit of the Spirit brought to the actual meeting by the speaker, the entire process of communication is changed in a fundamental manner. In that setting, all one has is the message of the words – and calling the message of this talk “boring” is something I have a hard time wrapping my mind around.
I could understand something like “weird” or “inappropriate” or some other such dismissal (although I wouldn’t agree with it), but “boring”? I don’t think anyone in attendance could describe it that way, no matter how they felt about the content.
And “scholarly back-scratchers”? Thanks a lot for that one! Now I have to go scrub my brain out with soap.
I was out by the second sentence: “One cannot talk in church on Mother’s Day without venturing into territory like women’s role in the Church and its relation to motherhood.” Really? It’s actually fairly simple.
I loved the discussion on scarcity versus abundance. Such an important message. The pie is big enough and to spare for all of us – more of us need to understand that. And all we have to do is put in more than we take out. Brilliant!