ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

Tomorrow we drive from Cheyenne back to Chicago. Here’s a summary of my thoughts on this trip:

My presentation on female priesthood in early Christianity at Sunstone – Went better than I ever would have dreamed. I was surprised to see in the program that I’d been given one of the bigger rooms, and even more surprised when 40-50 people showed up to hear me speak. I’m told that I was an interesting enough speaker, so that’s good. I loved getting to meet Maxine Hanks, and her thoughtful feedback on my paper was just wonderful.

There are some things that I could have done better. I had planned on speaking from the lectern using my Netbook and didn’t realize that my Netbook would be required for the PowerPoint, so I wasn’t facing the crowd very well as I had to read my own slides. We had some issues with the lights in the room as well. I tend to chronically mispronounce words (it’s just something about me) and since I wasn’t reading from my notes, I mispronounced several names and place names that I should have gotten right.

All things to be improved next year. I’ll be pursuing publication on this paper and will soon be doing a guest post for fMh summarizing my arguments and evidence.

My participation on Kaimi’s panel – Went better than I expected, given my admittedly minimal preparation. Kaimi and John Dehlin and Kristine Haglund all had such interesting things to say, and I had . . . funny jokes about Star Trek and electric fences. But my remarks seemed well-received in spite of all that.

Mormon Expression Podcast Stuff – I went to a dinner with the other panelists on Thursday night to discuss the upcoming live banquet, then attended the banquet on Friday night. It was all great fun and it was nice to meet everyone. There were recording problems with the live banquet and I’m not sure if it will be making a public debut; we’ll see. Thanks everyone for supporting me on that, and kudos to John Larsen for putting together such a great banquet.

Other Meet-Ups – On Sunday morning, we had breakfast with Eric, who comments here and at LDS & Evangelical Conversations, and his wife. It was really fun to meet them.

Today we drove down to Denver to visit the Museum of Nature and Science and met up with Seth R. from Nine Moons and his wife and kids.

I also got to see my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and nephew in Provo again.

Some Thank Yous – Thank you to crazywomancreek for opening your home to us and letting us stay with you for three nights of our trip.

Thank you to my husband, for coming out here and supporting me in my first ever public speaking engagement, for running my slides, for staying at my side through all of the meet-ups and presentations, for taking care of our daughter, and for holding my hair back while I puked on Sunday night. During Kaimi’s panel, Kristine talked about loving someone and going with them and supporting them even when you don’t agree with them. You are what I think of when I think of that.

Thank you to Cris and Shannon Robinson for watching Harley for us all day on Friday and giving us the night off to ourselves. Harley thanks you for the four years of missed Christmas and birthday presents.

Thank you everyone who supported me with encouragement and prayer. I really have the worst anxiety attacks about my work and your encouragement means the world to me.

Sorry to the people in Utah whom I wanted to meet up with but never got the chance. It was just such a busy week for me.

See you all at Sunstone next year.