I Heart Sister Beck

I got to go to the general RS meeting with my mom and sister yesterday and it was lovely. a) my mom brought Mini Brie, b) I got to chat with Anne, and Scout afterward, c) President Uchtdorf is dreamy and there was a kind of hilarious general swoon when he got up to speak. But mostly I really like Sister Beck.
She talked about understanding the role and responsibility of Relief Society, its duties and its potential. Her talk was the same kind of hardliner that we've come to expect and which I'm so glad for. Not only because I'm a pleaser/masochist, but because I really believe that the [women in the] church have so much and so widereaching a potential for good. We forget this. We hide behind insecurities and mundane responsibility. I tend to think of Relief Society as something to keep us busy or something else to check off a list, but it was put in place by the Lord, by revelation to contribute in a major way to building the kingdom. When we minimalize its place in the church we minimalize the sacrafices and contributions of the women who work to make it great, as well as our role in the church.
I've felt agitiation here as well: that RS is all centerpieces and fluffy nothingness...but there's more there and, as I thought Sister Beck reasserted, can be even more.
It comes back to this theory I hold, one I've developed in response to feeling out of place or underappreciated or pigeonholed or ignored in the hierarchy: if leaders are really earnest about the "motherhood is the most important thing you can do" deal, if they mean what they say and if we can believe that, than their pushing women toward the home isn't marginalization or subjugation (or reverse sexism or whatever) but really is honor and trust and responsibility. Do we believe them? Do we think they're trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

Sister Beck visited Armenia while I was serving there. She talked about pioneers, about how all those who go before are pioneers. We were stuffed in a too-warm (and lovely) meeting house in Yerevan and I was worried about a couple of my investigators (and the fact that I'd ended up sitting right next to an elder--my companion had wandered off somewhere). I was impressed then, when she was on the YW presidency with her straight-forward articulation and tenacity. She appealed to me as down to earth and real.

After her address at conference last year, I got caught up in the controversy. My great friends had much to say about "that Beck woman" and I know there was a big to-do generally. But to me it seems like the same people who argued against Sister Beck's hard-line approach are the ones who dislike two-facedness in the church, who resist the programs that seem to them extra-curricular, that they also argue for a more earnest, personally challenging approach to gospel living. It seems to me like this is what Sister Beck is proposing: she reminds us what the leaders of the church have said and challenges us to live it fully.


Lately I've been a little frustrated in my spiritual circles (I haven't jumped into my ward and have just begun institute). I want to pep-talk. I want to shake them and say: wake up! This is the most important/crazy/interesting stuff we know about or will ever know about!! Why are we speaking in cliches? Why are we so bored? Why aren't we sharing? I know I tend toward extremes and I think that's why I like Sister Beck. Don't beat, don't soften, encourage certainly, but let's wake up everyone and do this thing. There's much to be done.