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“Not Only for Yourself, but for the Entire Tribe”

temple salt lake city reunion meeting afirmacion affirmation

October 3, 2013

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Channeling All This Positive Energy into Action

With over 400 attendees, the Saturday evening program of 2013 Affirmation conference was the best attended session in Affirmation history. We celebrated our LGBT Mormon identity; we met fellow LGBT Mormons and allies; and we received wide public attention, not only from media stories and blog entries but also through our own live broadcasts and YouTube clips. The videos of Barb and Steve Young alone have already been watched around 8,000 times!

Perhaps more importantly, the Affirmation conference re-energized us. This is a good time to remember what Carol Lynn Pearson taught us on Saturday morning: “Your learning is not only for yourself. Your learning is for the entire Tribe.” So let’s share all this light and channel all this positive energy into action. Write to Randall Thacker, volunteering to help Affirmation. Make plans to attend our Nauvoo retreat. And let’s share everything we experienced and learned with our folks back home. Writing about his experience at conference, Point Foundation scholar Cary Crall expressed it this way:

“This is the unique role that I see our community playing in the human drama: a powerful horizontal tribe lacing through and weaving together the isolating vertical identities of race, religion and class that so effectively divide us from one another. There is much good that comes when we gather. After all, the cities and neighborhoods we have chosen to inhabit are now some of the most desirable in the world. But even more good can come when we return to the places from whence we came, bearing the love and healing of one who has transcended difficult things.”

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