October 2003. I was a missionary, and our top investigator agreed to watch General Conference with us at the stake center. I was worried she was bored throughout the session, but she later told us that it was though the speakers were talking directly to her, that she felt the Spirit more powerfully than she ever had before in her life, and was the experience that finally convinced her to get baptized. She is still active today, and is part of the stake choir that will perform at a nearby temple dedication in January.

Now listen: do I remember a single talk or lesson from October 2003? I do not, and neither does she. We couldn’t name one solitary talk from that fateful General Conference if our lives depended on it. But then, the speakers were the absolute least relevant part of conference. I have found that to be an eminently healthy approach to take towards GC.

Indeed, David A. Bednar once taught in conference that if the only thing we hear in GC was the words spoken, then we weren’t listening hard enough. I sometimes genuinely wonder if he had thought through the full implications of that statement–for if the words are the least important part of his talk, then why bother listening to a single word he has to say in the first place?^[1]For that matter, when President Nelson threw Hinkley and Monson and Benson under the bus by saying that the colloquial use of “Mormon” has been a “victory for Satan,” I wonder … Continue reading

But then, maybe that really is the point, whether he meant it consciously or not: there was a general conference talk, but the LORD was not in the talk; and a great and strong wind that rent the mountains, but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. Like in Jazz and Low and Lou Reed and, just, so many others, what’s most important is what’s not being said at all. Therein the Spirit lies, and nothing else matters.