How is everyone not talking about Elder Ballard?

I know that everyone comes away from General Conference with different thoughts, different favorite speakers. And clearly, I tend to not favor those talks that everyone leaves Conference talking about. Example: Elaine S. Dalton. She is a lovely woman who has a 'missionary-style' of speaking that I automatically tune out. Plus, she keeps trying to tell me all women are meek and...I'm not. (I have some serious ideas and feelings about gender.) But it's really a prideful thing for me. Like I'm the one with the pride (always) In fact, I was so unaffected by her talk that I didn't even realize that she mentioned her tour with the BYU Folk Dancers. So you know, that's embarrassing.


So I know my taste is a bit different than others, but I am seriously blown away right now that the only talk that actually brought me to tears hasn't been mentioned by anyone.  M Russell Ballard's talk "This is My Work and My Glory" was absolutely wonderful to me. I think the reason I am so surprised there is no chatter about it (other than some memes about tomato plants) is that there was so much hype about women praying for the first time in General Conference but no one noticed his talk on the Priesthood that mentioned men and women the same number of times?

Now, don't get me wrong, I was very excited about women praying in General Conference. Remember how I'm a feminist? I haven't clarified my feminist ideas on the interwebs mostly because they are still forming and changing and all that. And the interwebs has a permanency about it. However, suffice it to say that my ideas of feminism definitely include women and the Priesthood. It's a topic I've wondered about a lot, especially since my host family experience in New Orleans, Louisiana with the folk dance team last summer. My host mom and I discovered that we are like long-lost friends who must have known each other in the pre-existence. I remember that we were driving home from church and I was definitely planning on a beautiful nap (it was our first and only free Sunday all tour) but we couldn't stop talking! And this topic was what really brought us together.

Here are the two quotes that meant the most to me from this talk.

The powers by which the heavens and the earth were created is the Priesthood. 

Men have the unique responsibility to administer the Priesthood, but they are not the Priesthood. Men and women have different but equally valued roles. Just as a woman cannot conceive a child without a man, so a man cannot fully exercise the power of the Priesthood to establish an eternal family without a woman. In other words, in the eternal perspective, both the procreative power and the priesthood power are shared by husband and wife. 

Now, these quotes are important to me for the following reasons. 

1. For the first time in my memory, a talk about the Priesthood in a  general session didn't say "Men have the Priesthood and women have babies". Because women don't have babies, men and women have babies. Which brings me to my next point
2. He very clearly linked the Priesthood with the power of creation, and the power of creation is very clearly a power contingent upon both a man and a woman. Even the creation of the universe, being a creation, must have involved female. See Michelangelo's Creation of the Man for details. Clearly this isn't doctrine that anyone has said. So I'm totally allowing for the possibility that I'm wrong.
   
   

   

   The artistic line of God's power comes from Christ (the baby whose God's hand is on) through Eve (the woman who his arm is draped around) to Adam.

   3. They also allude to the fact that marriage, being the highest order of the Priesthood, is already shared by men and women. (Again, my interpretation, I will allow the idea of my wrongness.) 
   
   
   
   
   There are probably plenty of other feminists who don't feel like this talk was enough. And I will say that I don't think this is the end. But to me it was a clear step (albeit one of more steps that I hope we will take) to a more full understanding of the Priesthood, and that's all I want. I am not demanding anything, I just want a more full understanding. And for the first time in the years since I've been pondering this issue, I received some confirmation from Elder Ballard that I'm not a crazy person. Which confirmation, apparently, brought me to tears. 
   
   
   I just hope I'm not the only one who saw the importance of this moment.