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Listen, Learn & Love Hosted by Richard Ostler

Episode 619: Taylor Smith, Navigating Complicated Church Topics, Creating Space and Zion

Listen, Learn & Love Hosted by Richard Ostler

Richard Ostler

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 839 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 81 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My friend Taylor Smith (married father of 5, active LDS, born in Canada, lives in Maryland) joins us to share an extended version of a talk he gave in Church back in September 2022 about his journey to better see, mourn and support those in our Church who may have a harder road to walk (women, black members, LGBTQ members, those with honest questions, etc). Taylor talks about how in recent years he has experienced a paradigm shift that has allowed him to more genuinely love and support these individuals—amongst some wrestling’s of his own—while he stays a committed Latter-day Saint. Taylor shares quotes from church leaders, scriptures, and gospel principles about how we can better create Zion—and move from saying theoretically that there is a place for everyone in the church, towards actually creating that place in reality. He becomes emotional at times when he shares some of his experiences of listening and sitting with the pain of those walking a harder road. It is hard to put into a podcast description the power for Taylor’s message. All I can say is, if you are working through a faith crisis, looking to create more space in our congregations, looking to create Zion, or looking to better support marginalized Latter-day Saints, please listen to Taylor’s powerful talk. I was deeply moved. Thank you, Taylor and your wife Judy, for all the good you are both doing in our church community. Thank you for your willingness to be vulnerable and helping to better love, understand and support others. You are making a difference. If you would like to contact Taylor, his e-mail address is [email protected] Podcast Links: Taylor’s talk via DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s89wap1atvfyfox/Taylor%20Smith%20LL%26L%20Podcast%20-%202.25.23.pdf?dl=0

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome listeners to another episode of Listen, Learn, and Love hosted by Richard Osler.

0:12.1

On our podcast today, joining me via Zoom.

0:16.2

Zoom's awesome.

0:17.5

Is my friend Taylor Smith, who lives in Maryland.

0:20.7

Welcome to the podcast, Taylor.

0:23.1

Thanks, Richard. Glad to be here and grateful for the opportunity to talk with you again.

0:28.9

Your podcast has definitely been a place of refuge in solace for me at times. And I know, I hope I

0:36.0

guess, I hope I can pay it forward and that you know some things that

0:39.9

we talk about today can do the same for someone else out there that's listening I like those words

0:45.3

refuge and solace so thank you I appreciate the guests that come on the podcast that provide that

0:50.9

for others Taylor was on episode 415. It was a podcast between Taylor, who was then and still is a

1:00.2

Latter-day Saint that's attending church and his friend, Jason Harker, who is not attending church,

1:07.4

and is no longer a believer to use that language, if that's okay, and just talking about the

1:12.4

common ground they found in their friendship. But this will be a completely different episode

1:19.0

with Taylor talking about giving, he gave a talk that I loved last September in his ward.

1:25.9

He sent me a copy and it thought it would be a terrific talk

1:28.8

for our listeners to hear. So I'm just inviting it to, I guess we're going, well, it's not

1:35.1

really going back to September of 22 in your ward, but it's just a chance to hear what you

1:39.6

shared in your ward that I thought was a great gospel-based principles approach to helping others and

1:46.9

better bring us together as Zion. So is that okay for introduction, Taylor?

1:53.2

Yeah, definitely. I'll turn it to you to go for it. Okay. Well, I guess this is a little bit

1:59.9

a background about me. You know, Both my wife and I were born in

...

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