I’m the primary pianist, and so I’ve seen R. nearly every Sunday over the past few years. She’s a bright and polite young woman who comes to church regularly with her mother. She just turned 12, and graduated from primary into young women’s. And like a typical 12-year-old, R. is just starting to turn into a young woman. The boys aren’t, that I can tell, paying her any attention yet, which is probably a source of mixed frustration and relief. Meanwhile, she’s a month or so into YW, and valiantly trying to make that awkward social adjustment. <\/p>\n
Last Sunday R. and her mother were giving talks in Sacrament meeting. Excellent, I thought — a good chance for her to start the public speaking that most LDS youth experience. She stepped up to the stand and announced that she had been asked to speak on . . . the law of chastity.<\/p>\n
To her credit, R. valiantly plowed through a talk that was (thankfully) heavy on vague generalizations and platitudes and completely bereft of any detail or as-applied discussion. She didn’t seem too thrilled to be talking on the subject and I really can’t blame her. There she was, a new twelve-year-old just a few weeks out of full-time primary, standing up in front of the ward to explain that her body is a temple. (It was kind of jarring to see this young face that I had seen so regularly in primary, talking about her body at all.) <\/p>\n
I suppose there’s a bright side. From a youth-speaker perspective, the worst is now behind her. Her next talk will probably be on some innocuous topic — faith or prayer or genealogy –and she’ll breeze right through it. <\/p>\n
And perhaps the chastity talk will be effective. Maybe being forced to stand in front of the ward and recite platitudes about chastity (as her mother sat behind her!) will in some way sink in, make an impression, make her decide to live the principles. (Though I have my doubts about the effectiveness of such generalized counsel). Maybe some other person in the congregation benefited. (And even if not, perhaps the talk will be effective in an unexpected way. Perhaps poor R.’s social reputation is so shattered from having to talk about chastity that no boy will give her a second look for years to come! Who says bishops aren’t inspired?)<\/p>\n
And then, a few minutes after it began, R.’s first talk was over. She quietly took her seat, and the meeting went on. I breathed a sigh of relief. <\/p>\n
Welcome to the world of youth speakers, R. It will probably get better from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m the primary pianist, and so I’ve seen R. nearly every Sunday over the past few years. She’s a bright and polite young woman who comes to church regularly with her mother. She just turned 12, and graduated from primary into young women’s. And like a typical 12-year-old, R. is just starting to turn into a young woman. The boys aren’t, that I can tell, paying her any attention yet, which is probably a source of mixed frustration and relief. Meanwhile, she’s a month or so into YW, and valiantly trying to make that awkward social adjustment. Last Sunday R. and her mother were giving talks in Sacrament meeting. Excellent, I thought — a good chance for her to start the public speaking that most LDS youth experience. She stepped up to the stand and announced that she had been asked to speak on . . . the law of chastity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}