Hank Smith: 00:00:00 Welcome to followHIM, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come, Follow Me Study. I’m Hank Smith.

John Bytheway: 00:00:09 I’m John Bytheway.

Hank Smith: 00:00:11 We love to learn.

John Bytheway: 00:00:11 We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you.

John Bytheway: 00:00:15 As together, we followHIM.

Hank Smith: 00:00:20 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my merry co-host, John Bytheway. Merry Christmas, John.

John Bytheway: 00:00:32 Merry Christmas, Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:00:33 Yes. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

John Bytheway: 00:00:37 I feel so joyful and triumphant.

Hank Smith: 00:00:41 It’s also the most stressful time of the year.

John Bytheway: 00:00:43 O come ye, O come ye to our podcast. Thank you.

Hank Smith: 00:00:45 Yes. John, fantastic week this week. We have a wonderful guest who’s with us.

John Bytheway: 00:00:54 Yes, we do. I’m so glad we’re taking time on our topic today, but first, let me introduce Jenet Erickson. She is an Associate Professor in Church History and Doctrine in Religious Education at Brigham Young University, where she teaches the Eternal Family Religion course, as well as the Introduction to Family Process course for the School of Family Life. She received a PhD in Family Social Science from the University of Minnesota. Is that, “Go Gophers?”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:01:25 It totally is. Go Gophers! Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:01:27 Go Gophers! Okay. Her research has focused on maternal and child wellbeing in the context of work and family life, as well as the distinct contributions of mothers and fathers in children’s development. As a Social Science Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Wow! She completed an extensive review of research on the effects of non-parental care on children’s development for policymakers. She’s a Research Fellow of both the Wheatley Institution and the Institute for Family Studies, and has been a columnist on family issues for the Deseret News since 2013. She and her husband, Michael, have been blessed with two children. We are so delighted to welcome you, Jenet, to our podcast today. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:02:16 Thank you so much. Such an honor to be here. Thanks, John and Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:02:19 We are just excited to have you with your expertise. John, Jenet comes highly recommended by her peers in the Church History and Doctrine Department, and that was a recent switch. Right, Jenet?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:02:33 Yes, yes, just this fall full-time in Religious Education. I had been full-time in the School of Family Life for a few years, and then when we had children, I left and was part-time and now full-time in Religious Ed.

Hank Smith: 00:02:46 Now, John, Jenet, we’re going to have to take a different approach here because we’re not looking at a passage of scripture where we can say, “Okay. What was Joseph Smith, what were his contemporaries doing?” We’re actually not going that far back. We’re going to go back to 1995. Now, it is the 1900s. So there might be some people listening who are, “Ooh, that is a long time ago, way back in the 1900s.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:03:13 I love thinking back to when that was given. I remember sitting and listening to President Hinckley give it. It was the Women’s Broadcast, and it was striking that it was not reserved to be shared in General Conference, the formal General Conference on Saturday and Sunday, but it was the week before to the women. I’ve thought often since then there’s a statement by President Oaks about the power of women being the voice for the family.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:03:39 You might have heard President Kimball talk about the role of women in these last days and that they would be a tremendous power for good, that they would rise up like a sleeping giant, actually. I think there’s something very significant about women and their connection to relationships that begins with Mother Eve in her willingness to take the fruit that a family could be born and that deep connection to the relational nature of our reality. There was a reason it was given to the women to bless all the families of the earth. So I’m grateful for that.

Hank Smith: 00:04:12 I remember when this happened, [I was a] senior in high school, I was in seminary. It was the beginning of the school year and they said, “Wow, the Church issued a proclamation.”

Hank Smith: 00:04:23 I’m going, “Okay. Wow. This must be a big deal. This hasn’t happened in a long time.”

Hank Smith: 00:04:32 The most memorable thing for me was the least how unmemorable it was because I remember thinking, “Okay.” The most fascinating part for me, honestly, was the signatures at the bottom. I was a senior in high school. My brain wasn’t fully developed, but I don’t remember being shocked by what was taught.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:04:53 Maybe we weren’t as aware in the Church. In fact, I wrote a list of questions that I think were happening at that time to some degree and have certainly increased like this one. Does marriage matter? How important is it? What about alternatives to marriage like cohabitation? Does it matter if people have sexual relations outside of marriage? Does it matter if marriage is between a man and a woman? Do children just need caring adults around them? Do they need a mother and a father? Are they important? Are children important? What are children’s rights in relationship to parents? What do parents owe children, if anything? What is the most important thing that parents do for children? Do fathers offer something different than mothers, and what is it, and does it matter?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:05:42 Just seeing how the Pioneers would never have asked these questions that in our generation these are questions that we have grappled with and we increasingly grapple with. There’s something powerful about that. There’s something powerful about being forced, in a sense, to ask questions about the deepest truths of eternity, this reality of an eternal family constructed of a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother and children.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:06:08 We’ve been asked to really deeply think about whether those things matter. Someday I think those pioneers will say, “Teach us. Teach us what you learned in that search that was generated by significant cultural questions around these deep things that we took for granted.”

Hank Smith: 00:06:27 That’s fantastic. I will mention, as I’ve been preparing this week, I was surprised to see that only five of the 15 men that signed the document are still alive. As of the time of this recording, only five are still alive. You have President Nelson, President Oaks, Elder Eyring, Elder Holland, and President Ballard. Those other 10 are gone now.

John Bytheway: 00:06:54 As I was preparing, Hank and Jenet, I found a talk from President Oaks in October of 2017. In that talk, he mentioned he was one of seven that was still left. So since then, now it’s down to the five, and he even talked about the fact that it may not have, I don’t remember his exact words, but may not have seemed so significant at the time, but this is what prophets can do. They see. They’re seers. They see far off that we would need some clarity on these … Those questions were awesome. I can’t wait to go back and write those down because I think there’s such an art to have the right questions. I love those questions you started with.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:07:38 As a graduate student, I remember thinking that this document, as I’m setting all this research, thousands of studies have been gathered over family. Does family structure matter? What do mothers and fathers do? All of that. To think within these nine paragraphs is more social science findings, the confirmatory findings than you could amass in hundreds of studies. Just so condensed what we have seen by experience through research just composed so powerfully in this document.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:08:11 At the same time, I think it’s important to realize that the Proclamation can sometimes be a source of pain because it holds up an ideal. The truth is all of us fall outside that ideal. We all know the messiness of family life. I was thinking family life is so filled with messiness because of this growth process that it induces. Marriage and is a profound growth-inducing experience. Children are growth-inducing.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:08:44 Then sometimes it can feel like it’s used as a baton to say you don’t belong, whether it’s LGBTQ questions or a divorced family or whatever situations might seem that they fall outside the ideal. It can feel like we can use the Proclamation, too, as a weapon instead of what it is, which is a light.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:09:06 I think this blazing source of light that it provides for us to guide us, not to shame us, but to guide us and to help us understand when we do feel pain, these truths help us understand why there is pain, why there is pain connected to divorce, why there is pain connected to the struggles of family life, whatever those might be. These help us understand that and help us grow towards that beautiful ideal.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:09:32 It is a great story of redemption. It feels like when we have the Proclamation and the Living Christ side by side, that this is not a story of perfectionism. I love Elder Christofferson’s recent words in Conference, but this is the plan, not the plan of perfectionism, the Plan of Redemption, and that the Redeemer walks beside us in this journey of family life to help us experience redemption through him as we walk towards this beautiful ideal of truths given to us.

Hank Smith: 00:10:01 That’s great. Thank you for bringing that up, Jenet. I’ve been studying the Gospel of Luke lately in my classes, and you see the Savior going outside. Some had put up these boundaries of who belongs and who doesn’t belong. In the Gospel of Luke, he just walks right past those boundaries and says, “These people belong that you had kicked out, that you had pushed away to the fringes. They belong. Come in, come in. We’re all part of this big family.”

John Bytheway: 00:10:27 I’m glad you used that word ideal. I wanted to just state something that’s right in the followHIM [Come, Follow Me] manual. It’s on page 215, where Elder Christofferson said, “To declare the fundamental truths relative to marriage and family is not to overlook or diminish the sacrifices and successes of those for whom the ideal is not a present reality. Everyone has gifts. Everyone has talents. Everyone can contribute to the unfolding of the divine plan in each generation,” and he goes on, but I’m glad you used that word, the ideal.

John Bytheway: 00:11:02 I put in my margin, I put Moroni USA, which usually isn’t words we put together, but what I meant by USA is Moroni is the ultimate single adult because his greatest contribution, his greatest work I think we could say is while he was a single adult, and our marital status does not diminish our capacity and our gifts to contribute to the world, to the gospel, to the Church. So I like that, yeah, that this is an ideal, and it’s not a present reality for everybody.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:11:39 John, I was thinking, as you were saying that, that is so beautiful to think of Moroni. There’s this beautiful statement in actually the Handbook of Instructions, and it says around the family, the whole purpose of the gospel being to strengthen the family. It says, “In this life, many people have limited opportunities for loving family relationships. That’s just reality. No family is free from challenges, pain, and sorrow. Individuals and families exercise faith in the Lord and strive to live according to the truths he has revealed concerning the family. The Savior has promised he will bear the burdens of all who come unto him.” So you think of Moroni walking beside the Savior in that journey as he comforted him during that time right outside of that ideal.

Hank Smith: 00:12:28 Yeah. Jenet, you mentioned that we are going to study “The Living Christ” or you put them side by side, and we’re going to study this next week. I like this idea of here’s the ideal, and here’s the Christ when you don’t reach the ideal.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:12:42 Yes, and when because you all, we all need Him. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:12:47 “Are we not all beggars?” King Benjamin might remind us.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:12:50 “Are we not all beggars?”

Hank Smith: 00:12:51 I love that. Thank you.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:12:53 The Proclamation starts out with all of us as the family of God. That is the whole beginning. It says, this is the plan for all of us. All human beings are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of Heavenly Parents, and as such, each has a divine nature and destiny in this Heavenly family that we are all part of.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:13:17 I’ll think sometimes the Proclamation is about our Heavenly family. So when we think of the great gathering, it’s so beautiful that the teachings of the Proclamation came in this dispensation of the gathering, and we have President Nelson speaking of the Gathering, as we are gathered temples, the Gathering of Israel into temples to receive and be endowed with the power that is part of that familial order of the priesthood, where we join the eternal family of our Heavenly Parents, sealed to the eternal family of our Heavenly Parents. The Proclamation is grounded in that truth. Every one of us belongs to a family, beloved sons and daughters of Heavenly Parents.

Hank Smith: 00:13:58 No matter who you are, you fall into that category of we are … Man, that’s great. The Family Proclamation to the World, it’s not just about your family, it’s about the big family.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:14:09 The big family.

John Bytheway: 00:14:10 We get very used to calling each other brother and sister, but it’s a good reminder that, no, this is who we are. We’re brothers and sisters in this huge family and how differently we could treat each other if we really took those titles to heart that we get so used to. When I was on my mission in the Philippines, I remember this sister that we found, I think she was less active at the time, and we kept calling her sister. Her two little kids were just giggling in the corner because it sounded so funny because we’re like, “Hey, Sister.”

John Bytheway: 00:14:52 To me, I stepped back and went, “Yeah, we say that and we get really used to it,” but the kids thought they were just giggling that we kept calling her sister because … we get used to it. Maybe this is a good reminder.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:15:05 It is literally true. Right? Literally true.

John Bytheway: 00:15:08 This is a fact. Yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:15:09 I wanted to just mention it, too. At the beginning, we hear that, “Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and that family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of his children.” I was thinking about what it was like to sit in General Conference and hear Elder Christofferson talk about the four pillars of the plan of salvation.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:15:33 Growing up, I’d heard Elder McConkie’s words referred to lots. Of course, all throughout scripture, when the plan of salvation is taught it has three core things. It has the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement, everywhere. Here, Elder Christofferson said there are four pillars and the fourth is the family and he describes the family as it supplies the best setting for God’s plan to thrive. It’s the setting for the birth of children and the environment for the learning and preparation they will need for successful mortal life and eternal life in the world to come, and how core to have the family be the setting for our physical birth and our spiritual rebirth.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:16:16 We could not have the plan. The Creation, the Fall and the Atonement are all based in the truth of the family and the central role of the family. Our biological families are our mortal families in which we grow and prepare for eternal life. So I thought he had just done something absolutely remarkable. Not new, but just clearly stated. This is a stool of four legs. The plan of salvation rests on all four of these, the family being central to that.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:16:50 I just heard Sister Beck. This is a sweet experience. I was just with her a little while ago, and I told her that we talked about her talk in our class on the Proclamation. We talked about a talk where she said, “We must teach the youth of the Church that the family is central to the plan of salvation.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:17:07 She said, “The Creation provided the setting for a family to live and the family to grow, the eternal family of God to grow. The Fall was that decision for the family to enter mortality for children to be born. The Atonement, its whole purpose is for us to be sealed to the eternal family of God and for families to be united eternally.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:17:30 So the entire plan is about family. It starts with family. The reason there is a plan is because we are children of loving Heavenly Parents who want to bring us home to them and enable us to become like them. The Fall enabled us to come into a setting where families can be born. The Atonement, the whole purpose of Christ’s work is to seal us back to the family of God and enable us to become the kind of people that are like our Heavenly Parents, that can have that level of intimate relationship. It can have that level of closeness and deep capacity for joy in family life.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:18:04 So she said to me as I was telling her that, she said, “Jenet, that talk was given to me by Revelation,” and she just teared up. She said, “I will never forget in the middle of the night being awakened and given that talk.”

John Bytheway: 00:18:18 Where’s that talk again? I’ve got to write that down.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:18:22 It’s given to the youth of the Church. It was given to the CES, all the instructors of Religious Education throughout the Church.

John Bytheway: 00:18:27 Was that the CES Symposium or something?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:18:29 Yes. 2006. Yes.

John Bytheway: 00:18:32 2006.

Hank Smith: 00:18:32 I remember it was in the Little Theater of the Conference Center. I was there. I remember being there. She said something so simple, but it really changed me. She said, “If something is anti-family, it is anti-Christ.” I remember that. It’s never left me from that moment.

John Bytheway: 00:18:51 What I like what you said here in that first paragraph, Jenet, the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.” One of the theories out there was that maybe God just made the world like a clock. I can’t remember which philosopher this was, and then He just stepped back to see what would happen, disinterested, instead of intensely interested.

John Bytheway: 00:19:16 Just yesterday with my class, we referenced the vision that Enoch had where he saw God weeping and how He’s not unaffected by us. He’s involved and wants to be in our eternal destiny. I like just restating that this is about His family. He’s involved. Our eternal destiny is part of His plan right there in the first paragraph.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:19:42 Well, let’s pick up on paragraph two. As we were talking about this, our Heavenly Father, I was thinking there’s something so magnificent in the Proclamation where it talks about our Heavenly Mother and our Heavenly Parents that we are sons and daughters in their image.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:19:57 Then it says, “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” We know that life comes from two, the union of male and female, God the Mother, God the Father. Elder Porter, Elder Bruce Porter, who loved to talk about the Proclamation, he once said, “The differences between men and women are not simply biological. They’re woven into the fabric of the universe, a vital foundational element of eternal life and divine nature and cultures all throughout time,” whether it’s yin and yang or whatever different metaphors or images that capture this reality that this male/female is woven into the fabric of the universe, that it is the essence of life. You have life created only through the complimentary union of these two.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:20:53 Of course, we live at a time that experiences challenges around gender. I’ll talk to my students about how for a long time when we talked about male and female, it was the same as man and woman. You would use them interchangeably. Then in about the 1960s, there was a recognition that we should talk about gender as different from sex, from biological sex, from chromosomal makeup. We should talk about gender, which is our social understanding of what it means to be a man or woman. It’s what are the expectations of what it looks like to be a woman, what are the expectations of what it looks like to be a man, how do they act, what colors do they wear, what preferences do they have, and so appreciating the social understanding of gender, of sex.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:21:41 That was important because you have cultural ideas that can and be distortions of that idea of male and female. So we get caught up in different ideas about all the restrictions about what a woman needs to do or be like or what a man needs to do or be like that are conformities that are unhealthy.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:22:05 I love the story of Charlie Bird, who was Cosmo at BYU, and experiences same sex attraction, would identify as gay, and he describes as a young man, very faithful Latter-day Saint, but describes as a young man being in church. He knew he was different, which is so often what an individual who experiences LGBTQ questions. They’ll just feel different, and it was painful for him, and he stopped going to Young Men. He would go to a sacrament meeting, but it was uncomfortable. He was made fun of and felt different.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:22:36 His sister follows him one Sunday to figure out where he is going after a sacrament meeting. He just tells her, “I’m different.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:22:45 She says to him, “Charlie, Jesus made flowers.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:22:52 Then she describes how the traits that he has that are his gifts are the same ones that the Savior had. So she says to him, “The question you should be asking is not whether or not this characteristic is male or masculine, but whether or not it is Christ-like,” and teaches him a whole new understanding of what gender means.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:23:15 We just have the gift in the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s, Hank, you were referencing. He breaks open some of those problematic gender stereotypes by the way that he was. He refers to himself as a mother, as a hen gathering your chickens. He gives himself characteristics that we would associate with femininity to teach us what a true man is like.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:23:43 So I appreciate that. Then at the same time I’ll tell those students the Proclamation does something very powerful for us. At a time when gender today has moved from social understanding of gender to psychological, meaning whatever I feel is what defines my gender, it grounds us in biology because President Oaks has been really clear in saying that when the reference to gender is made in the Proclamation, it is referring to biological sex at birth.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:24:17 So the Proclamation, it takes the confusion. If we were left with just psychological understanding of what it meant to be, whatever we felt, then there would be non-ending ways of being, ways of understanding oneself. The Proclamation just pulls us back into a grounded place to understand our responsibilities, our stewardships, where we will find joy.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:24:46 Certainly, there can be experiences that feel dysphoric from that, that individuals can feel like, “I don’t feel like what I think I should feel.” Yet, the Lord tells us, “There is gender. You have gender. It’s important to your path eternally, and it will bring you meaning and joy as you understand it,” and then it grounds us in the role of biology and understanding ourselves in the body, that our bodies matter, that the soul is made up of the body and the spirit, and that this biological founding to our gender is important in the plan.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:25:28 That doesn’t answer all the questions, right? It doesn’t answer all of the issues that that might bring up, but it helps ground us in seeking and appreciating the role of biological gender in this eternal plan.

John Bytheway: 00:25:41 I equate that with Nephi’s what is forward. I just thought it was a good way to say we’re trying to move toward Christ and He is our True North.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:25:53 John, I love Christward and answer to these questions around gender. It is so powerful. I think when we think about gender, in mortality, we have probably shadows of what eternal gender looks like, but we don’t know all that that is, and I think the Redeemer’s plan is to help us understand that, help us, that pointed to Christ, we can understand what that eternal gender means, recognizing that mortality is not the source of that eternal gender, it likely contains shadows out of it, right? We don’t see perfectly what that eternal gender looks like, but keeping our hope in Jesus Christ, Christ word will teach us, right? He can reveal to us what that means.

Hank Smith: 00:26:40 It reminds me of this statement in the Proclamation, and I’m moving maybe too far ahead, but it does say happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, our True North, Christward. Sorry to jump ahead though there.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:26:57 No, Hank, I don’t know if there’s any more powerful place in that. The new Proclamation on the Restoration, there’s a statement that says, “This Church is founded upon the cornerstone of the living Christ.” I have often thought if we said this family, this life is founded on the cornerstone of the Lord Jesus Christ, that’s what he’s teaching us. My life is founded on Jesus Christ. My family is founded on the Lord Jesus Christ, and this Church is  founded on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:27:29 I’ll never forget sitting amidst a group of religious representatives, people from different faiths. As I was talking about the plan of salvation, we’d all just been asked to share some, and all of a sudden before I was going to present I thought, “I’m the only one here who knows that I will be resurrected as a woman, and that I existed as a woman before, and that I have a Mother in Heaven who has a body, and I am in her image.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:27:55 Our belief just at once dignifies half the human race, right? It establishes the reality that we as women, our gender matters, that it is divine, that we are embodied as our queenly Heavenly Mother, and it establishes that beautiful maternal relationship that we have that is eternal.

John Bytheway: 00:28:14 You walk by the primary and they’re in there singing, “I am a child of God,” and not even knowing what theological dynamite that is, that it’s not a metaphor, that it’s really a Father and Mother in Heaven. I think we’re unique in that. I don’t know everything about all of the different denominations and beliefs, but the idea that God is an exalted man and mother in heaven and exalted woman is I think unique to us, isn’t it? Wouldn’t Satan want to make that kind of fuzzy?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:28:52 Yes. So much, John. It means everything to literally come from them, to literally have that eternal relationship of child, and mother, and father, daughter, and son. The next part that we get in the Proclamation talks about how spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan with that eternal divine destiny as heirs of eternal life is the most glorious story to think that’s my destiny, that’s the plan, each of us, and that’s work of families. Families play such a central role in enabling that process. We depend, unlike all the other species on the earth, human beings are born totally dependent for a long period of their life. They’ve got to be fed, clothed, cared for, and nourished, and nurtured.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:29:45 That reality means so much that our physical setting for birth has so much to do with this developmental process that enables us to experience spiritual rebirth. That’s what Elder Christofferson is talking about. This is the setting for physical birth and preparation for spiritual rebirth.

Hank Smith: 00:30:04 If you ever see it, almost any other animal born within a couple of hours, they’re able to run away from predators, right? A little infant, a little human infant, it’s going to be a long time before-

John Bytheway: 00:30:17 Not so much.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:30:17 Yes, a long time.

John Bytheway: 00:30:17 It’s going to be a while.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:30:21 Okay. This beautiful next part is the divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and live in families eternally. There it is, just that whole first section is you are part and an eternal family. This is your divine destiny. “I’ve given everything.” The Lord’s saying, “I’ve given everything possible to enable you to experience joy in eternal life in families.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:30:52 Remember President Holland saying, “It wouldn’t be heaven if Pat weren’t here. It wouldn’t be heaven for me.” President Eyring talking about what would a child, if you asked them what they would want more than anything, “I want to be with my mom and dad. I want to be with my family,” that that’s what eternal life is and in those relationships.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:31:12 The next part and, Hank, maybe do you mind reading the first commandment, that paragraph?

John Bytheway: 00:31:16 No, not at all. The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for his children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:31:42 That paragraph has a whole lot. I wanted to stop for just a second about this idea of children. There’s this interesting account of the founder of the Harvard Sociology program. There were two co-founder, Sorokin and then Carle Zimmerman. Carle Zimmerman ended up writing a book where he looked across civilizations, ancient Egypt, Babylon, starting with Syria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, the European empires, and he’s looking at the rise and fall of nations.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:32:13 His question as a sociologist was, what was the role of families? What was their place across this rise and fall? One thing that just was so striking is that at the peak of their creativity and progress, and all of them had this cycle of rising and falling, the family was so central, and it was a particular way of viewing the family. It was an orientation to the development of children within families.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:32:42 So he would say that at all civilizations at their peak and of creativity and progress, the orientation of society was to the nurturing of children within families, that there’s something powerful when a society is oriented around the development of children that facilitates the best in that society.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:33:04 It’s made me think a lot about what is it that children do for us. What is it that this looking towards nurturing life in families, having children, bearing children, what is it that it does for us? You can just see, right. If you just looked at, first of all, what it means to the GDP, we really depend on life to sustain economies. There’s no question. So just those goods that enable survival are really around children, how our policies are changed, how we think about alcohol laws and movie ratings and just all the things that are shaped by concern for the most vulnerable and that it betters us.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:33:42 We see data that it’s in having children that parents return to church, right? They’ll leave religion. In having a child, they want to go back because they remember that they want what was better for their children. They want that setting. So it just invites better. So Sorokin, who was with Zimmerman, says this powerful thing. He says, “Whatever may be the virtues of age, they cannot compensate for the vitality, vigor, courage, daring, elasticity, and creativity of the young. A nation largely composed of middle aged or elderly people enfeebles itself physically, mentally, and socially, and moves toward the end of its creative mission and leadership.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:34:29 That’s Harvard’s founder of the sociology program, but he’s just saying, he’s commenting on our culture, of dramatic decreases in fertility rates and other things, and what it says of about a society that is not looking to the future and the nurturing and development of children, and what it means to its own stability, creativity, generativity, productivity. So children do a lot for us. Hank, you-

Hank Smith: 00:35:01 Wow. You wouldn’t even think of that.

John Bytheway: 00:35:02 Never even thought of it. Dude, try to think of a world of … That’s so funny. Think of a world where everybody’s middle-aged or seniors.

Hank Smith: 00:35:13 Enfeebles itself.

John Bytheway: 00:35:14 Yeah. People are leaving their blinkers on all over the freeways.

Hank Smith: 00:35:21 Well, that’s interesting, though. As we focus on raising these young people, it brings out the best in all the adults.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:35:29 Yes. Yes. Hank, I loved, and you referenced before we even started this podcast, you referenced what it meant to have children, and how they bring out … They expose you to yourself in the most powerful ways.

Hank Smith: 00:35:44 Oh, man!

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:35:44 I’ve got this great quote about that, but I was just thinking, there’s something so remarkable about marriage. Sorokin calls it the marriage family school, that this cultivation in children, he’ll say it stimulates married persons to release and develop their best creative impulses for surely the mission of molding their own is as nobling as the creation of a masterpiece in the arts or sciences.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:36:13 So you just think Elder Hales once gave a talk and he spoke to the women. He just said, “We often think about children as a trap for development.” That’s kind of the culture, right? Your life ends in the nurturing of the young.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:36:28 I believe strongly that women need to develop their gifts, and talents, their capacities, their education. I believe so strongly in that, and that may mean doing things simultaneously, education as well as children or some contributions community-wise or professionally as well as children, but we cannot diminish the power of development that comes in the nurturing of children.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:36:53 So Elder Hales just says, “Motherhood,” and I would add fatherhood, “is the ideal opportunity for lifelong learning. It is exponential, not linear.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:37:03 Just think of the learning process of a mother throughout the lifetime of her children because the needs are so varied and far-reaching. In the process of rearing her children, a mother studies child development, nutrition, healthcare, physiology, psychology, nursing, medical research, and educational tutoring in many diverse fields, math, science, geography, literature, English, and foreign languages. She develops gifts in music, athletics, dance, and public speaking. The learning examples could continue endlessly, and thinking about what children can bring out in us because we care so deeply about their growth and development.

Hank Smith: 00:37:40 That’s incredible. That’s a huge takeaway that I’ve never thought of because by far, the most I’ve worked at pushing myself to become better is in my marriage and in being a parent, right? Not in my career or my Church calling, even though those bring out good things I think in me. By far, being a parent and being a husband have pushed me to try to be something better.

John Bytheway: 00:38:05 I’ve had to relearn algebra. I thought I was done. When your child is sick or injured or hurting and you’ve gone through that, you would trade places with them so quickly, “Just give this to me,” and helping them through suffering is quite an experience as I’m sure you both know, and I’m sure our Heavenly Father knows and thinking about, “God so loved the world, He gave His Only Begotten Son,” and, whoa, the suffering that happened there. Those all contribute to being a parent. I love that whole thing, especially going through school all over again with your kids as they go to school and parent-teacher conferences. I think I learned this once.

John Bytheway: 00:38:59 I mean, I know of someone who’s been a Single Adult all her life, never married, but is a world-class auntie that is an aunt to and gets involved in their lives and helps them and nurtures them as well in her place where she is.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:39:18 John, you and I both know, I was single for a long time. I think you were, too.

John Bytheway: 00:39:21 I was.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:39:21 I think it’s remarkable what a special role you can have in your family, what an important role, all of these individuals, these relationships that we have shared in the nurturing of life. I need the village of everyone who helps me with my children so much. We depend on one another in that work of nurturing altogether.

John Bytheway: 00:39:47 It was so cool to have my son, Andrew, come home from Iceland and suddenly it wasn’t just mom and dad saying, “Let’s do scriptures.” It was Andrew, “All right. Who’s in charge? Okay. I want you …” and his younger brothers looking at their older brother going, “Wow! Andrew loves this.” I just felt this, “Oh,” this relief like, “Look, we’re all in this together, and look, now they’re helping and teaching each other.” I shouldn’t just say, Andrew, my daughter, Ashley, too, same thing, coming home from a mission and being so fired up, all helping us with each other in a family setting, “Hey, do you want to take home evening tonight? Okay, great. I’ll just buy the pizza, you take over.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:40:35 Hank, I have to go back. I love your comment about Michael Novak. He says, “The raising of children brings us each breathtaking vistas of our inadequacy.” I think he captures that. I mean, this incredibly brilliant Catholic scholar who’s just saying, “Here, this brings me breathtaking vistas of my inadequacy,” and then he says this, “My bonds to them hold me back from many sorts of opportunities.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:41:02 You get that. As a single person, there’s some freedom that’s very different, right? Yet he says, “These do not feel like bonds. They are, I know, my liberation. They force me to be a different sort of human being in a way in which I want and need to be forced.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:41:21 I think even if we’re not mothers and fathers, whenever we are given to the development of others, that is goodness, that is godhood. Then we become a different kind of person. We become who we want to become in that process.

Hank Smith: 00:41:36 Wow. That is just beautiful. I remember that, especially that first baby. We had little Madeline and the doctors told us. She was on the scale. You go in and she’s on the 107th percentile for her head size. “You’re thinking, “Well, we’re great parents,” right? She was always on the very, very bottom, off the chart on the other side. It was called Failure to Thrive.

Hank Smith: 00:42:03 So every time we took her in, she’s still in the Failure to Thrive Zone and we’re going, “Oh.” I remember one time she got dehydrated and they said, “We’ve just got to get her drinking. You just got to do anything you can to get her to drink.” Here she is just-

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:42:17 Tiny.

Hank Smith: 00:42:18 … a newborn, tiny little thing, and you’re just holding her. I remember I had a little dropper. I would get a little, not even an eighth of a teaspoon, and I’m giving her a little drop, hoping it stays down, just a little at a time here. I am doing this for hours. It’s a fond memory now, which is odd, but it was just me and her. Sara was able to get some sleep and I’ve got my little dropper and I’m trying to get-

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:42:44 Trying to keep her growing. Ugh.

Hank Smith: 00:42:47 Yeah. Just get a couple of teaspoons to keep her down and she’d lick her lips or whatever, and then occasionally spit it all back up and we start all over again.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:42:56 Who would you do that for? I remember getting up right over and over again with our baby and thinking, “Who would I do this for?” Yet, I cannot stop myself. Literally, every part of me has to respond, right? Sorokin calls that, he’ll say, “That fountainhead of unselfish care and spontaneous help is the foundation of moral life.” It’s just that this sacrifice. It begins at home in the cradle of the helpless baby that we learn the art of selflessness, of giving for the life of another. It’s a special relationship.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:43:31 John, when you reference the Lord weeping in Enoch, and thinking I’ve watched my parents, that my mom will say to have a child is to have a heart walking outside of your body all the rest of your life, you care so deeply for their wellbeing. When they suffer, you suffer. It is a very atonement-like experience. Just what the Lord is teaching us in this process is such a gift. It’s why we need them so much. We need those relationships so much.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:44:00 You know what? I was so grateful this year. For a long time, there’s been commentary, “Oh, kids make you less happy,” and because you’d see in the marital happiness when we’re looking as sociologists or psychologists, you’d see this dip after people have kids, marital happiness goes down, and you get it because you’re 2:00 AM in the morning and you’re wondering, “Are we even married anymore? Where are you in this story?”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:44:23 Yet, it’s so beautiful that consistently people would say, “But children are meaning. They’re the essence of meaning.” So 2021, guess what happens? The data shows something entirely different. It says children mean greater happiness. We knew that was true for fathers. We knew it was true for mothers to some degree, but more meaningful lives, less lonely, deeper and more connections, happier.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:44:44 Parents find childcare to be much more exhausting and much more meaningful than their professional activities. They rate parenting as their greatest joy and believe the rewards of watching children grow are worth the cost. It doesn’t come without cost. It brings tremendous meaning. Now, we see that happiness is measured, right? It’s people with children that are less lonely and experiencing greater happiness. Their gift.

John Bytheway: 00:45:09 I’m so glad you mentioned that because you do feel the hard parts, but you feel the joy, too. So my 15-year-old was playing his last football game and he got in for two plays.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:45:25 His last game.

John Bytheway: 00:45:26 Yeah. In the second play, he is a defensive back, and he is covering his guy and he goes up and one-handed intercepts the ball and falls down with it. There was this crazy man in the stand screaming, “Timothy! Timothy!” Then I realized it was me.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:45:51 Who is that?

Hank Smith: 00:45:54 Everyone’s looking back.

John Bytheway: 00:45:54 It’s this crazy man yelling his name. I was just beyond. It was so fun to see and see his teammates jumping around him and look, it’s making me emotional just, that’s my boy. I think, hopefully, there’s heavenly experiences that are like that.

Hank Smith: 00:46:14 Jenet, I’m looking at this paragraph. “Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness.” Further down, “Husbands and wives will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.” It seems like such a sacrifice in that paragraph that this is duty and obligation, but what I’m hearing from you is you’re saying these are commandments, but they end up, yes, sacrifices that end up becoming investments.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:46:50 Yes, and blessings to us.

Hank Smith: 00:46:52 They paid dividends. Yeah.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:46:53 Yes. Oh, Hank, I love that. I’m glad you tied that together. I have this wonderful colleague. He talked to me one time about this idea and he just quoted Section 132 and he said, “Look at what the Lord teaches us about children. He promises us glory.” What is the glory of God? Children are the continuation of the seeds. They are the glory of God. They are the way God glorifies himself. Then we’re taught, “Except you abide my law, you cannot attain to this glory.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:47:23 So cultures that are abiding by law, what that means is the capacity to bring children into this earth, in families that are nurturing and the growth and development of that society. It’s this beautiful what we see in 4 Nephi. They were given in marriage and you just see this growth and development of a culture rising to its fullest in this orientation to development of children within families, marriages, and that that is abiding by law, and it is God’s glory eternally. So we need them.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:47:56 Hank, I don’t want to skip the part that you also talked about. You also read about, “We declare the means by which mortal life to be created is created to be divinely appointed, that the sacred powers of procreation.” As a graduate student, I was at the Heritage Foundation. I had been asked to read a book that was talking about some of the implications of the sexual revolution.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:48:17 When we talk about sexual revolution, it was essentially this idea that people should be free to express themselves sexually just as individuals outside of whatever kind of constraints. In some ways, it was women reacting to a reality that men had been able to have sexual relationships outside of marriage without any implications for them. It was labeled liberating, right?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:48:39 Yet, I was reading what had happened. I was reading about what had happened to the sexualization of women, reading about what had happened with out-of-wedlock childbearing. It’s going from 6% to 41%, now nearing 50%, and in some demographics, more than 50%, 73% in some low income demographics.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:49:00 What that had meant to women, to children, and it was deeply painful. I went into this mentor that I had and I said, “This is hard.” He was Catholic and he said, “When Eve took the fruit, she took both sides of the fruit. We are learning about what this precious instruction about where we use sexual powers being within bounds God has set why that is so important, why that matters because we’ve seen the fruits of when that does not happen.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:49:34 So when you think about women, what’s happened to women because of that call it rapes on college campuses, just all of the tragic consequences when that beautiful sexual power is used outside of those bounds, what it has meant for women and children and men.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:49:52 There’s an author recently who published a book called Cheap Sex. It’s a hard title, but he’s a fantastic scholar. He was just looking at the languishing of men. We have a time when men are not obtaining college degrees at the same rate as women. There’s a big growing gap. It started in the ’80s and has grown, just kept growing with women more likely to obtain college degrees, and also working age men who aren’t working. It’s like you have this massive increase in just men not attaining, not achieving.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:50:23 He was describing what it meant to have a time period prior to this when a woman would say, “I’m not going to engage sexually with you until you are marriageable,” which meant you’re going to be able to provide for me, and you’re going to be a certain kind of person that I’m going to want to entrust my life and the children who come from that life, too. When that breaking apart of sex and marriage and children happened with the sexual revolution, where they were literally broken into pieces, these three cores that had been bound together are tossed apart.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:51:00 Then you have a languishing of men. He would say, “Men have languished.” There isn’t the structure that invites their best development. It’s why when men are married, they earn more, they save more, they are less risky in their behaviors. There’s just a purpose to their life that is part of that beautiful structure.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:51:26 John, as you described that love for that child, you’d do anything. You’d develop anything. You’d work as hard as you could to provide for them. You’d sacrifice and grow, and that is protected. We haven’t appreciated enough how that’s protected by the structure where sexuality happens that when it’s reserved for marriage, it invites better. It invites growth. It protects both children, women, and men.

Hank Smith: 00:51:52 Yeah. I’ve told my students that in New Testament times you’d have an arranged marriage and you have about a year, and if there’s no house prepared, there’s no marriage.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:52:03 Wow. Wow.

Hank Smith: 00:52:05 This young man has to create a home for his new family to live in or else the marriage does not happen, and that prompts the best in you, right?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:52:18 Yes. Yes.

Hank Smith: 00:52:19 To move forward.

John Bytheway: 00:52:19 Yeah, incentivizes you. One of my heroes in this world is Elder Bruce C. Hafen, and he gave a talk at the World Congress on Families in 1999.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:52:32 I was there. Remember this.

John Bytheway: 00:52:34 What?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:52:35 Yes.

John Bytheway: 00:52:36 Oh, my goodness. I heard he got multiple standing ovations in the talk. One of the things he said, which was where you were going, and I’m going to roughly paraphrase something about the women’s liberation movement had, in fact, liberated men from responsibility and that, hey, if we want to be as sexually promiscuous as the men are, that didn’t help anybody. Anyway, that talk, I think you could Google World Congress on Families in 1990. Was it Geneva? Was it Switzerland?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:53:18 In Geneva, yup.

John Bytheway: 00:53:19 Elder Hafen’s talk, and he’s I think a family law attorney, right?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:53:24 Yes. That’s right. “The Moral Force of Women,” “The Moral Power of Women.” Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:53:29 An amazing talk to go back and read, but I was struck with that idea that the sexual revolution, instead of the best outcome, men should be more responsible, instead trying to say let’s all be promiscuous, that was even worse. I thought it was a fascinating observation that Elder Hafen made.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:53:55 Yes. It wasn’t liberating, that it’s interesting in that there’s a wave of feminism prior to the 1960s in England. You might see it, right? Mary Poppins votes for women. One of the-

Hank Smith: 00:54:06 I remember that.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:54:07 … mottos, one of the mottos was votes for women, chastity for men. Isn’t that interesting? They realized the best, the most powerful place is within those bonds of marriage, sexual relations and rights for women to own property and vote as well. That’s the strongest kind of dynamic that we can have for women, and it’s true. The safest place for women and children is within the bonds of marriage. That doesn’t mean every marriage is that way, but when we look across broad swaths sociologically, the greatest likelihood of her being protected from other forms of abuse is within marriage, and children as well.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:54:47 That gift of that instruction, though, I just think the sacred powers of procreation and also tells us how beautiful that they’re divinely appointed, that sexual relations are intended to bring tremendous joy, connection, relationship, growth, development to couples. They’re divinely appointed.

Hank Smith: 00:55:04 Brigham Young brought that up when there were the great evils of the world. One of the great evils was labeled polygamy, and they were trying to throw these men in jail in Utah and he said, “How many men in Congress have their mistresses?”

John Bytheway: 00:55:21 You see, that’s okay, but-

Hank Smith: 00:55:25 That’s okay. You’re creating laws of the great evil over here of polygamy when you have of the most promiscuous life of all. He called out their hypocrisy, the blatant hypocrisy of what they were trying to say.

John Bytheway: 00:55:42 Let me throw out a name that probably most of our listeners will not remember, but do you remember Elder Mark E. Petersen, Quorum of the Twelve? 1969, so before you were both born, but I was around, and I don’t remember this from conference, but I love short, powerful quotations because then I can memorize them with my limited brain capacity, but Mark E. Petersen said, “Humanity will rise or fall through its attitude toward the law of chastity.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:56:16 Wow. Yes.

John Bytheway: 00:56:19 We’re seeing that here in that last paragraph four. “Employed only between men and women lawfully wedded as husband and wife.”

Hank Smith: 00:56:28 Yeah. Jenet, as you were bringing this up, I just thought the damage done by unchaste men on this planet has been just astronomical.

John Bytheway: 00:56:37 Yeah. Go read Jacob, Chapter  2 and 3 in the Book of Mormon, right? Really lets the husbands and fathers have it in those two chapters. He says you’re beginning to labor and send in your thoughts. Maybe some had turned thoughts into behavior, but he really lays it on. Those are powerful chapters. I mean, if the Book of Mormon was written for our day, that was a good one to save for us, Jacob 2 and 3.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:57:04 Yes. Oh, that reference to the tender hearts of the women and children, he’s so sensitive to that.

John Bytheway: 00:57:10 You’ve come up here. Yeah. “You’ve come up here to hear the pleasing word of God, which healeth the wounded soul. I’m so sorry. I have to enlarge the wounds with those who are already wounded.” It’s just, “Oh.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:57:22 I do want to say, I think as we talk about the challenges around sexuality and, Hank, as you highlighted, what damage is done, that we can develop a lot of anxiety and fear around sexuality and not realize right in here in this same paragraph, the Lord is teaching us the power and gift of sexuality within those bonds. We have these statements from Elder Holland, “such an act of love between a man and a woman is or certainly was ordained to be a symbol of total union, union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family, their future, their everything.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:58:03 Sexual intimacy is not all only a symbolic union between a man and a woman. It is the uniting of their very souls, but a symbolic of a union between mortals and deity. They are, in mortality, one of the ultimate expressions of our divine nature and potential and a way of strengthening emotional and spiritual bonds between husband and wife. The adversary would want to taint sexuality, would want us to fear, would want us to feel anxious about it, would want us to not talk about it, would want us to keep it in the dark, and I think the Lord is saying, “Pull this powerful gift into the light. Teach about it so that it can be what it’s intended to be in marriage.”

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 00:58:42 There’s growth around that, right? There’s growth for couples in understanding the gift of sexuality and marriage, the complementary between men and women, the uniqueness that pressures growth and development, and it is intended to be what Elder Holland so powerfully describes, this symbol of total union of hearts, hopes, dreams, this gift of divine sexuality, pleasure in its most beautiful form given to us by God within these beautiful bonds. When it is outside of that, it’s destruction to the very core of the souls who would be so blessed by its beautiful use.

Hank Smith: 00:59:19 Thank you so much for saying that. Yeah. We could do a better job. Absolutely, we could in teaching our youth. Not so much bad, bad, bad, but timing, timing, timing, right?

John Bytheway: 00:59:31 Timing. Yeah. I think President Monson said. It’s not because it’s bad, it’s because it’s so good to wait to Alma, to Shiblon, “Bridle your passions.” He didn’t say, “Destroy your passions.” Bridle them. I love to emphasize with the teenagers, bridle your passions, the ye may be filled with love. You got to squelch that, but just like you said, timing.

Hank Smith: 00:59:56 John, I’ve often told my students that it’s like drinking orange juice and brushing your teeth. They’re both good. You just have to get them in the right order or you’re going to have a bad experience. You drink orange juice after you brush your teeth and it’s not as good. So sexuality and marriage, if they come in the right order, are both wonderful experiences.

John Bytheway: 01:00:19 Well, I love Jenet, the words you used. Boy, I mean, I want to go back and read on the transcript some of these beautiful ways you’ve put these phrases together, how bonding and beautiful it is. I think you are quoting from Elder Holland’s talk “Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments.” Is that the talk?

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 01:00:40 That’s the talk, John. Such a powerful talk.

Hank Smith: 01:00:43 He gave a shorter version, General Conference, called “Personal Purity,” but they’re one and the same.

John Bytheway: 01:00:50 It is something we need to teach our young people. It’s just that when we see a TV show or a movie that, “No, shut that off.” It’s not the procreative act that is the problem. It’s when, where, how it’s being cheapened, degraded, commercialized, sold like a product. That’s the issue.

Dr. Jenet Erick…: 01:01:12 Yes. Captured so powerfully.

John Bytheway: 01:01:17 Please join us for Part II of this podcast.