Episode 268 (Transcript): Season 11 Wrap Party!
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Quinn Nilsson for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:
CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.
SH: And I’m Susan Hinckley.
CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is We Have No Title. Well, we do. Let’s just make up our title. We’re- Yeah ... I’m not even gonna cut this.
SH: No.
CW: Our-
SH: Season 11 Wrap Party. I don’t know.
CW: And the title is Season 11- ... Wrap Party. Yay. Or something. Welcome to the wrap party. Or
SH: something. Welcome
CW: to the
SH: wrap party. Yeah. I hope somebody brought treats because we deserve them at the end of a season. Cynthia, this season has been-
CW: Yeah ...
SH: huge. Has it felt huge to you?
CW: It has felt huge for me.
I feel like, I think I’ve said on at least a couple episodes of the season, I’m punching above my weight. And I,
SH: I- I love that way of thinking about it, but I think what I said to you in response was, “I love when that’s happening.”
CW: I know you did.
SH: I love that feeling of hanging on- That’s- ... by my fingernails,
CW: so
that’s because you’re in a growth mindset, Susan. So good job.
SH: Cynthia, I’ve never been in a growth mindset ever for one second- Shh ... of my life. So if I’ve achieved that- Don’t admit that ... now- Shh ... we should celebrate that. Oh my gosh, no.
CW: Well, it sounds growthy to me when you said that you love punching above your weight, whereas I was like, “Imposter syndrome.”
SH: I guess I love it because I’m deeply interested in all this stuff, and I-
CW: Well,
SH: yeah ... I just want more of it. So, you know- Yeah ... if I’m having to climb uphill on, intellectually, on some of this, awesome. Bring it on.
CW: Awesome. Well, why don’t you explain how this wrap party’s gonna go, and then we’ll jump in.
SH: We are going to revisit some episodes from this season, and we decided to focus on our big ideas episodes, because if they’re big ideas then that means they’re big enough to bear talking more about, I guess, is how I’d think about that.
CW: For sure. For sure. I’m sighing only because they were such big ideas that I think that’s the reason we’re tired at the end of this season is ‘cause we worked- I know, I think that’s why
Really hard. Like I’m brain
SH: tired, yeah.
CW: Re- yeah. Some episodes go together more quickly than others- ... but I hope a- I, okay, I just want all our listeners to know, like our, the reason we’re tired is because I- how long would you say we probably worked on each big ideas episode?
SH: I mean, a I don’t know.
Weeks? A, yeah, a long time.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Yeah.
SH: A long time.
CW: Well, where should we go first? How about our first big idea episode we had this season was on belief.
And again, punching above my weight, this was really hard, and I felt really vulnerable doing this episode as well. But also, like if there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, Susan, it’s that words matter.
I don’t know how many times you’ve said that to me over the six years of this podcast. You need words to matter, right? How many times have you said that- right, right ...
CW: on the microphone? And I feel like this episode really drove home the point for me that as a religion, as a church, as a people, like we really need to be more intentional with our word choice because I think in our church we use words like faith and belief, and there’s probably another one to toss in there.
Knowledge. Knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. We use all of those interchangeably, and so I really haven’t stopped thinking about this episode ever since we re- recorded it a few months ago that I just h- I hope we keep talking about this because I feel like, like the topic of grace, I think, I hope tell me if you agree with this, like I feel like belief might be the second most misunderstood topic in our church- next to grace Because I just feel like we em- we emphasize the wrong thing when really, like, what was that David Brooks quote we said in the belief episode? He said something like, “We should be emphasizing longing and thirsting-
SH: Right ...
CW: rather than knowing and possessing.”
SH: Right.
CW: And if that doesn’t sound so Latter-day Saint-y to me, I don’t know what does, because I think we focus so, so much on knowing and possessing.
And so I’ve realized since this episode, okay, I wrote in our book, we have a whole chapter on fear, and I think it was in that chapter I admitted I have a really good fear dar.
SH: Oh, right. Right.
CW: Like, my antenna is always up, and when I hear fear at church, I’m like ni.”
It’s just buzzing. But since this episode a few months ago, like, I feel like I can spot lessons and comments in church on belief, so I have a belief dar now, is what I’m trying to say. Okay.
SH: Okay.
CW: Like, like, my, my belief dar has been constantly buzzing. It’s just picking up these signals in overtime as I’m sitting in church.
So those have been my thoughts since this episode, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing to have my belief dar, like, bzz, constantly buzzing, [00:05:00]
SH: But wow. I’m not sure it needs to be a good thing or a bad thing, but it can be a thing. W- we can just let
CW: it
SH: be a thing. Oh, I like that.
SH: And it could be-I like that
I mean, well, I think it, I think, personally, I think it’s a good thing, ‘cause I’m one of the people who recorded the episode about this idea. So I think it’s a good idea- There you go ... to be tuned into. But I was surprised, and I wasn’t surprised by what a big response we had to this episode. Do you feel like we had a big response to it?
Because as I think about this episode, I think it, it might’ve been the biggest one of the season. Like-
...
SH: People had a lot of feelings and a lot of things to say about their relationship with belief and the church’s relat- relationship with belief and their experience of belief, you know, within the church.
Rightfully so. Rightfully so, because it sorta, it sort of, drove home the point to me, oh yeah, this is as big a concept as I thought it was, and as big specifically for Latter-day Saints. But one of the words that you used when you were just talking that I, that got my attention was misunderstood.
You said it’s one of the most misunderstood. And Like I’m I don’t know. Is it misunderstood or is it something that maybe we understand all too well and therefore know how to I mean, I don’t wanna say weaponize maybe, but I will sometimes weaponize or at least leverage it to drive behaviors- that, that we want among church members.
CW: Good point.
SH: I feel like people put their thumb on the belief scale all the time in church situations in order- Yes ... to get the result that they want.
CW: Yes.
SH: And there’s so much that’s problematic for me with making belief the required hurdle for any kind of religious participation.
For one thing, I think it sort of perverts the entire idea of a spiritual life, ... to make belief a requirement for entering into sort of that realm of life. And I also have spent a lot of time thinking since this episode came out about how much where you’re born and to whom you’re born plays a role in our beliefs.
And our certainties. Yeah. You know? It’s like, it’s the, this always goes back to the agency question, Cynthia, and I still wanna have the agency episode because, like, how- We are ... how freely- yeah ... do people choose their beliefs, right? I mean, al- Totally agree ... also choosing beliefs, the other- ... the other conversation that will never die for me.
Yeah. But so, so I read something online from Jim Palmer the other day that I just wanna share a quote from because he articulated this so well. And he said, “The pattern is so obvious that it is almost invisible. The religion a person considers sacred truth is usually the religion of their family, culture, geography, and historical inheritance.Most people do not arrive at their religious worldview after a comprehensive investigation of the world’s competing claims about ultimate reality. They do not spend years objectively evaluating every major religious tradition, philosophical system, and metaphysical framework before reaching a carefully reasoned conclusion.They inherit a story. They are born into a language, a culture, a community, and a set of assumptions that become the lens through which reality itself is interpreted. This does not mean their beliefs are false. It means their beliefs are situated. The problem begins when people forget this. Religious certainty often presents itself as though it emerged from pure reason, divine selection, or unique spiritual insight. Yet if most of us had been born somewhere else to different parents speaking a different language, we would likely be defending an entirely different set of convictions with equal confidence. The beliefs that feel self-evident to us frequently owe as much to circumstance as they do to careful examination.”
CW: Holy moly
SH: At last someone said it. At last Jim Palmer said it. I love the idea of our beliefs being situated. I love that word choice- Yes ... right there. I feel like it communicates so much, and that if you pulled a lot of us out of that place in which our beliefs had been situated it would be fascinating to see what happened to our beliefs.
CW: Wow, Susan. Okay, 100% set that quote aside, and we will revisit it again when we have that episode on agency/free will or whatever we’re gonna call it. Right,
SH: whatever it’s gonna be.
CW: Right. That is gold. Good find, my friend. That’s,
SH: That’s- that’s pretty good ...
CW: That was a good find. All right, let’s talk about sin, which wasn’t a Big Ideas episode, but it was a voicemail episode.
SH: It was, and [00:10:00] it’s definitely a big idea.
CW: Oh,
SH: Yes. Like, it could have been a Big Ideas episode. We just decided we wanted to hear from listeners, ... about that, so we branded it differently. Let’s just say it that way.
CW: Well, one of the things I will always be the most proud about i- in this whole podcast project is our voicemail episodes, because I think each time we have a voicemail episode, we have at least a dozen women’s voices- and men, some brave men as well- Yeah, sometimes ... but usually at least a dozen folks will send in. Anyway, I’m just really proud of that, that we just keep giving the mic, handing the mic over to others as well. And so usually each season we try to have at least one. Sometimes we’re lucky enough and we end up with two episodes that are just voicemail driven, and this season it was sin, and so it was.
Right. It was definitely a big topic. And whenever we have these voicemail episodes, I’m always saddened by the messages we get. I’m touched, I’m surprised, I’m encouraged. I’m ... I mean, all of the adjectives, all of the emojis, Susan, is like- Yeah, right. All the emojis surface for me when we have these episodes and the sin episode definitely checked all those boxes for me again, and I was thinking dang it, I can’t stop reading Father Greg Boyle.
His three books, anything he says I will listen to because just my whole spiritual practice now is to try to love more. And I just feel like when I read anything by Father Greg Boyle, I get to the heart of love in about five seconds.
And in his latest book, Cherished Belonging, he wrote that sin is an old world map.
SH: I love that.
CW: Isn’t that good?
SH: Oh, it’s so good.
CW: Like, when we talk about sin, it’s like we’re looking at an old world map from a bazillion years ago. And I think we un- I think now in society, I hope, we understand enough about, like, human development and psychology, anthropology, all of that. I think we understand enough about that now to understand that sinning, I’m putting air quotes around sinning happens when we are hurt or wounded.
And so the antidote is healing.
SH: Right.
CW: Because it’s healed people who change the world. And Father Boyle said in a CAC meditation, he said, “Is the love of God looking down on a sinful world in need of salvation? Or does our God see a broken world in pain and in need of healing?”
A question worth asking.
SH: Yeah. It is a great question, and I had another question occur to me as you were sort of setting that quotation up, which is, do you ... how do you think our leaders think about sin? I mean, I ask that question because you, you said you know, m- hopefully at this stage in the world’s development, we understand that sinning occurs when people are hurt or wounded.
Do you think that is a mainstream LDS belief- No ... or could become one without requiring a big shift in the- ... the way that we approach our messaging about sin?
CW: I think it could be c- I think I think I have hope on this one. I think it could become that, I wanna say quite easily. I don’t think it’s a big stretch to convince people that hurt people.
Right. Like, that’s what sin is, is- Right.
I don’t know. What do you think?
SH: I don’t know. I’m trying to think specifically what the hurdle would be for most members, and I think that f- I don’t know, as I think about it, I think the problem would be that it would give too much weight to our humanity.
It would give too much legitimacy-
...
SH: To the, to our humanity, I think, for them to approach it that way.
CW: Interesting.
SH: I mean, you know that I s- That’s not what I thought you were gonna say ... Well, you know that I sort of have a thing about having felt like most of my life as a Latter-day Saint, I was sort of being asked to transcend my humanity in some way.
Yes. Right? And so I feel like if I were to say, “Look, humans get hurt, humans get wounded, and as a result they make unfortunate choices sometimes, and that this is a problem we need to approach with healing,” I mean, I think it would be like the way sometimes people have a hard time accepting alcoholism or addiction as a disease.
I think it’s the same kind of- ... shift that’s required. I think there are some people who are like, “Whatever, I stopped drinking. You can stop drinking. Stop calling it a dis- a disease. It’s a bad choice that I made.”
CW: Okay. I have a personal story I want to tell ‘cause it’s coming up as you are talking about, you know, our humanity and
Okay, here’s the story. So my mother has two [00:15:00] brothers who passed away quite early in life, I believe both of them from alcoholism.
SH: Okay.
CW: And they had really hard lives, my uncles, my tios. And my mom has said to me over and over about the choices these men made in their lives, she says, “I know that there is a loving God who will see what my brothers came from.”
This makes me cry. She said, “Because my dad,” she said, “My dad would take my brothers into corn fields, like after they had like mowed down the corn or something, and he would make them kneel in these corn husks that would like cut their knees, and then he would beat them And my mom said, “I know there is a loving God who will take all of that into consideration at the judgment bar.”
And so as you say that, Susan, it would put our humanity kind of to the forefront.
SH: Right.
CW: I actually have a lot of hope in that because-
SH: Okay ...
CW: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think my mom could tell that story in a sacrament meeting talk and have anybody be like, “Yeah, but...” Like, I think there’s, I think that story elicits tremendous com- would elicit tremendous compassion and be like, “Of course.
Of course God will see their extreme woundedness
SH: I mean, I wanna think that, but honestly, when you started that, telling that story, I wasn’t sure where it was going to go because there was an equal part of me that thought it’s going to go to her mom saying their lives could have been so much easier if they’d made better choices.
Which I feel is like the most-
CW: Okay, I see what you’re saying ...
SH: Mormony s- lens through which people sometimes look at other people’s lives.
CW: Yeah. I... That’s a really good point. So
SH: I love that story. I love that story. I love that it surprised me. I loved that it showed me maybe that I am too cynical sometimes in the ways that I look at our membership general membership of the church and their approaches to things.
CW: Well, I don’t know that, I don’t know that makes you cynical because as soon as you said it, I was like oh, duh, I see what she’s saying,” and yeah, you’re probably right. And maybe my mom is just someone who real- And I do believe my mom really is someone who understands love. She really understands love, so maybe she is further along- Right, right
the path than- Right ... most of our friends in the pews. I don’t know.
I don’t know. None of this was in our notes, listeners. Like, I’m just... Susan and I really are... This is a very casual conversation, and so I don’t even know that I’m so much more prepared to say that, but I love the question you’re raising about how maybe we collectively see sin, and would it be a big shift or an easier
SH: shift?
Yeah, I’m super interested in this now, so thank you for giving me even more to think about this one. I don’t know whether to apologize to our listeners or to say you’re welcome to our listeners for the fact that you and I are doing The Living School which I mentioned for the millionth time.
But so we on some of these... Like, we... I don’t know about you, but w- it was when you were talking about Greg Boyle, I was thinking about going and hearing Greg Boyle speak in Albuquerque last fall and how amazing that was for me, and, like, the love- Yeah ... that I felt sort of pouring- Yep ... off of him, right?
And something’s aspirational for me. Like, I looked at him and I thought, “Man, I, I would love to get to what you are.” And I felt- Oh ... I felt like that was like that would, like there was really some distance for me to travel in order to- ... realize love in my life in the ways that he has, right?
...
SH: I say all of that as a preface to the fact that I’m gonna use yet another quote from our, from Richard Rohr in our Living School materials that I just read, like, this week, and put it in these notes because, I don’t know, it crystallized something for me about this discussion. And he said this: “The movement we made in the last century of not calling addiction sin, but calling it a disease, I think was a major movement.
There’s very little freedom when we sin, very little freedom. We do not do it. Virtue is an ultimately free action. Sin is when you’re most unfree.” We can’t not sin.
We can choose virtue, I guess is what... I mean, I guess that’s the distinction that he’s making. And again, all of this, I think, goes back to the idea of agency.
Agency. And this is the thing I love about all big ideas, Cynthia. They all have their fingers laced together somewhere. Yes. Yes. Like, if you just follow the idea, it’s gonna jump you right into another one, I [00:20:00] feel like. That’s one of the tests of a big idea. But I think as Latter-day Saints, we could talk about sin probably for the next two- Yeah
full seasons, and have only- Potentially ... scratched the surface of it.
CW: Well, speaking of big idea topics that are all laced together, let’s just jump into our next big idea, which was piety. And I don’t know how we could detangle sin and piety if we wanted to, like
SH: 100%. Yep.
CW: I love that they were back to each other. Yep. But I wanted to highlight a social media comment that we had received after this episode came out.
She said, “Wow, that part about trying so hard to be above,” she put that in air quotes, “above being human. Wow. Piety doesn’t get us where we are trying to be present, connected thinking, thinking about more than our own salvation.” Anyway, I could just- ... see, like, the wheels were turning-
...
CW: In her mind as she was leaving this comment for us.
And for the millionth time, like, how does piety serve us exactly? Like, to what end? To what end, Susan, are we to be pious? Like, if my goals are, and my goals are similar to this comment of presence and connection, then piety isn’t what we need to be working on. Piety’s a red herring, and yet I feel like I spent my whole life believing what I was taught, that the more righteous I am, the more connected to God I can be.
SH: Right.
CW: And that never really worked for me.
SH: And I think that gets back to as I think about those words, the more righteous I am, the more connected to God I can be, like, why would that be? I guess because you’re more pure?
CW: Because no unclean thing- Right ... or no unclean person can enter the presence of God.
Yes. That’s what I wholeheartedly absorbed.
SH: So it is about-
CW: God couldn’t stand to be with me ... purity. Yes, it’s about... Yes.
SH: Okay, I have so many problems with
CW: this. You should have problems with this. You should.
SH: Well, part of why I had to pause there and my wheels are turning is that I’m thinking like, how has piety served me in my life really?
CW: That was my question for myself.
SH: How,
CW: To what end?
SH: Well, I mean, I really love looking like a good Latter-day Saint to other Latter-day Saints.
I love having social capital in my church or, like, having Mormon cred, right?
I like the position that gave me and what it- ... qualified me for, right?
Same.
SH: So, like, piety could function that way. Did I ever think it was, I was ever getting more... Did I ever feel more pure as a result of piety?
I don’t know the answer to that. I’m gonna have to sit with that. I’m not totally sure. But as I think about it, I’m not gonna say that it ever made me feel closer to God, because I really feel like piety is about the least altruistic thing-
...
SH: About my religion. I was r- I was really doing that for anyone except myself.
Even if the goal was just to get me closer to God that’s just- Yes ... for me, right? Right. I just wanna feel closer to God. I wanna feel more godly, I guess, or more holy or more s- I don’t know. I don’t know what. I was listening to an old, like 12 years old, On Being episode with Nadia Bolz-Weber recently, and she said something that I can’t stop thinking about.
And she said, “I love the emphasis on grace. The fact that God always is coming to us.”
CW: Ah. “
SH: There’s nothing we do to make our way to God. God is continually coming to us and interrupting our lives and wanting to be known.”
CW: Yes.
SH: And I feel like piety really is nothing but trying to claw my way-
...
SH: To God, right?
It’s building my own tower to climb closer up to heaven when I don’t think it ever occurred to me that there would, there was nothing I could do to make my way to God. But that way of looking at it, that Nadia Bolz-Weber way of looking at it, is a way for me to release, like, all of those... I mean, so many unhealthy things-
CW: Yes
SH: for me are tied up in that. So, so many.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And I feel [00:25:00] like, I guess that’s why I feel like getting the rug totally pulled out from under me, that forced release of my unhealthy ideas and my small ideas and my fearful ideas about God, I guess I- that’s why I feel like that reset was the best thing that ever could’ve happened in my spiritual life.
And I mean, actually in my religious life, because I was on this false piety treadmill-
...
SH: My whole life. I mean, I really was.
CW: Wow. Okay, I have a million things I wanna say to what you just said. I’ll just say this. Like, could ... You used the word, like, reset, the reset button. So could anything have reset your relationship to piety other than the rug getting pulled out from under you?
SH: That is a great question. It’s a great question. And I do, I’m gonna keep thinking about now, I can see, is this idea of the old world map. Because- ... I’m like, piety was a country on an old world map- ... that I was using. But my new map really does not have those kinds of borders, I guess, is what I would say.
I’m not defending borders around the country of piety anymore.
But I did put a lot of energy into that in the first half of life. We’ll just say it that way-
...
SH: For simplicity.
CW: Well, I have a feeling now that we opened the Pandora’s box of piety, it’s gonna keep surfacing in our conversations, Susan.
SH: How would it not?
CW: How would it not? I have a piety-dar now as well.
SH: Right?
CW: I spot it everywhere now, and I’m like, “Wait, what? Why are they trying to convince me of their goodness, righteousness, wholeness- Right ... piety, piousness,” Right ... cleanliness, purity. Like, to what end? I don’t know. I just keep saying that about piety now over and over when I think about it. To what end? To what end? Where does it get me? Spoiler, it didn’t get me anywhere.
SH: It landed you right on this podcast, Cynthia.
CW: It did. It did. It did. No, it really d- anyway, let’s move on. Okay. Let’s move on. All right. Our episode on the Beatitudes. Man, talk about punching above our weight.
SH: Okay, this one was the first one that was like a real, like felt like a huge reach for me.
CW: Oh,
SH: good. I just felt like I had no right- ... to be talking about this. Like I had no particular insider knowledge about this, but-
...
SH: So I loved doing the dive on it.
CW: I loved doing the dive on it too. Oh my gosh, for all the reasons we already said on the episode, so this is just a follow-up.
This is just a PS that we’re gonna have for the next few minutes about that Beatitudes episode. But I- we got a comment on this episode from a woman named Malia on Instagram, and it’s a kind of a long paragraph, but you could tell the exploding head emoji maybe was occurring for Malia, and she said this about our Beatitudes episode: “I had some thoughts about the idea of how the covenant path squares with the Beatitudes, and I wanted to share this thought a few times on different topics.
My relationship with the temple has fluctuated over my faith life. Times when I have needed to go for peace, and times like now, where I don’t feel p- pulled to go there and don’t feel peace. But I liked what I heard on a podcast that the temple is meant to turn us into the type of people that will go out and live a Christ-like life by lifting up the poor and needy.
It is to turn us into a people that will be ready to live a Zion life. So maybe that’s how the Beatitudes and the covenant path can be reconciled. All the emphasis on covenant in the temple right now, while it’s often interpreted to be about your own eventual exaltation and perfection, maybe it’s really supposed to be part of sanctifying you now in this life to be more to make you into the person who will be those things, meek, humble, seeking justice, et cetera.
And side note, the temple is not the only way that you can become that.”
SH: So many things-
SH: that I wanna say about this.
CW: Well-
SH: Do continue.
CW: Go ahead Do continue. Well, I don’t know that I have much to say other than I, I love it when people hear our episodes, and then they kind of have their own big ideas-
SH: Right, right
CW: kind of surface as a result, so that makes me happy. But I also feel like, okay, at first glance, when I read this comment, I thought, “Wait, are we talking about piety?” Like is sanctifica- if she says, you know, maybe the temple’s really supposed to be part of sanctifying you so that you can be more Christ-like and like go out into the world and do good things, I’m like, is that...
Is sanctification the same as piety? Because if it is, I’ve already released piety, so I’m [00:30:00] releasing sanctification, but is sanctification d- I don’t know, what do you think? Are those the same? You’re my wordsmith friend.
SH: Okay, well, here is what a really smart word person- Says in response to that.
CW: Okay. “
SH: And it ain’t me.”
CW: Oh.
SH: No.
CW: Stop it.
SH: That, no, here’s what I did. What’d I do, Cynthia? I Googled sanctification because I wanted to start to understand- Oh. ... some of the nuances of this word. I didn’t know off, I can’t answer your question off the top of my head.
Okay.
SH: So I started looking around at it, and sanctification, I mean, in simplest terms I guess, would be like to be made more holy, right?
CW: Yeah.
SH: To be made holy. Closer to God, all of those kinds of things. That we were just talking about piety being the preferred vehicle of choice for many Latter-day Saints trying to accomplish that in their lives, right?
But I love her idea that... Okay, well, first of all, one of the things she said that gave me pause was she uses the word interpreted.
“While often it’s interpreted to be about your own eventual exaltation and perfection.” And when she said that, I was thinking, “Wait a minute, was I just interpreting it that way, or was it presented that way-
Ah ...
SH: to me?” And so when you hear leaders talking about the temple and about the covenant path, how do you feel about that?
CW: Oh, I absolutely feel like it’s presented that way. Okay. I don’t feel like I absorbed anything that maybe I shouldn’t have absorbed.
SH: Right. Okay. So me too. I mean, and so since it’s two of us, obviously everyone feels that way, right? Obviously. Let’s just universalize that right now.
But I, but then I reread her sentence and I thought, okay, maybe she’s saying this is how leaders have interpreted it.
CW: Oh.
SH: And so that either way, I think that, I think they’ve presented it that way, and so I think it’s a safe guess maybe that is often their interpretation. ... You know, let’s just say it that way.
But so I think that there can be broader interpretations of that word sanctification, where it becomes a good thing and not necessarily a false piety kind of thing. I like that. Okay.
SH: Yeah. So I went looking around to see, like, what are other people saying about this? Okay. And I came across something on a website that I’m gonna just say right here, I don’t know this guy.
I tried to look up a little about who he is, and I have a really strong suspicion that I would hate most of his religious ideas, okay? So I’m just gonna put that right there. Okay. We disagree on almost everything, I think, just based on what I could see. But I did like his take on this so much, and so even dumb people like me are allowed to have good ideas sometimes, and so we’re gonna just take this good idea regardless of how our theological agreement or disagreement is happening in the background.
Anyway, this is what he says. His name is Brian Schneider. I will link to his website. He says this: “There is a danger in sanctification, a false pride that can creep in. This often happens when people see sanctification as a stairway upwards. They imagine that they were saved at a certain point, and as they climb the stairs of holiness, they become increasingly aware of their progress.
They feel they’re getting better and better, seemingly ascending into heaven. Their self-perception becomes one of self-improvement. I am convinced that this is the exact opposite of how the Spirit works to sanctify us. Sanctification isn’t a stairway upwards to a higher and higher rung of holiness. No, sanctification is downward soul work.
Now imagine a different picture, stairs descending downward, spiraling deeper through the heart.” Sanctification as path of descent
Yes
CW: Yes
SH: And I think that’s the description that our listener was giving us about how the temple and the covenant path could function. Love it. Can you imagine the covenant path spiraling deeper and deeper through the heart?
Oh. Going downward, drilling down into your heart.
CW: That’s gorgeous.
SH: Yeah. It’s a beautiful idea, and one that I feel like if I got up and talked about it in sacrament meeting, probably a lot of blank stares and maybe- ... some people getting up to go to the bathroom.
Yeah. That’s what I think.
But for me, it’s like one of the first shifts that’s ever made me think, “Okay, maybe I need to think a little bit more about covenant path.”
And I really was so sincere when I asked the question about the way covenant path would function up against the Beatitudes. I th- I think it was in- Yeah
the, this conversation where I asked that question. Yeah. And I’ve sort of banged my head against that since we recorded that episode, but this is the first time I’ve seen a way in to that conversation- Love it ... between those two things. So anyway, something to think about. [00:35:00]
CW: Okay. I just love... ‘Cause yes, it was in our Beatitudes episode where you, like you said, genuinely, honestly posed the question, like how we can square covenant path-
SH: Right
i-
CW: in a conversation about Beatitudes. And I think as Latter-day Saints, since we do hear so, so, so, so much about covenant path talk at church, that if there is a way to nuance that, I’m showing up for it.
So I love that you opened the door to that through the idea of descending. I’m-
SH: Well, and I liked getting a glimpse that’s out there, that’s being talked about out there in other religious traditions as well.
Even some that I find very little meeting point really-
CW: Yeah ...
SH: between our theologies. It’s good stuff. Perhaps this is a good human idea that we’re all wrestling with a little bit in the world right now.
CW: All right. Our episode on letting go, our Big Idea episode on letting go, this one was your idea.
SH: Yes, it was.
CW: You were the one that wanted to have this episode,
SH: These are my white knuckles, Cynthia.
CW: Those are your
SH: That’s why.
CW: Why didn’t you choose a picture for this episode of, like, white knuc- like a woman on a rollercoaster- Because I
SH: wasn’t that smart
with white knuckles. I don’t know why I didn’t. Oh, that is funny.
CW: A listener named Susan left a comment on Instagram about this episode, and she said, “I particularly loved when you were talking about un-work. It’s true, members are not allowed to just be on the covenant path. Church messages are deeply infused with the idea that one must be constantly striving, accelerating, growing, increasing, serving, et cetera.
It’s all about eternal progression after all. And remember, if you aren’t constantly growing your testimony, you’re gonna lose it. It was exhausting. To ease up at any time for any reason was a moral failure.” And then she pastes in a quote from Marvin J. Ashton that actually had, I guess, resurfaced in a Liahona article just a few years ago, sh- where he said, “To become a winner in the race for eternal life requires effort, constant work, striving, and enduring well with God’s help.”
She closes her comment by saying, “After years of maintaining that grueling pace, I simply couldn’t do it anymore. I especially was unable to generate the constant emotional intensity they wanted me to have. It wasn’t sustainable. I just want to sit here for a minute or maybe several years and just be.”
SH: How about that quote, Cynthia?
CW: No likey.
SH: I mean, there it is. To become a winner in the race for eternal life. I know. Oh
CW: my gosh. I have such a strong natural aversion anyway to any talk about being a winner that, ugh.
SH: Yeah. I don’t know. That quote is really something. It has everything in it. It’s like the poster child for everything that I like to preach against, I guess.
You know? It really really is. Like, there’s a reason that we internalized some of this stuff.
CW: Oh,
SH: There’s a reason. And it starts like that, right? Yeah.
CW: Right. Right.
SH: It was explicit.
CW: I, going back to what you said earlier about how all these big idea episodes are kinda interwoven, her comment made me think, I mean, it could’ve easily have been a comment about our Sabbath episode, right?
I guess what I’m taking away from this is that maybe we just need to have a letting go episode every season.
SH: Oh, I think we absolutely could, and if you and I could have some letting go phone calls between seasons- ... that would be really great. Because I could use it every day.
I was thinking about letting go in approaching this episode. I was thinking about how the, how it’s a concept that really functions within each of the big ideas that we had, or that we- Yes ... took on during this season. Yes. So, like, there’s some component of it in all of it and in changing the way that we- Totally agree
think about some of these things, and the way that they function in our lives. Like, how can you have a conversation about confirmation bias for instance, withna- without thinking about letting go? Without
letting
SH: go. You know, I mean, and it just works that way with all of them. So letting go might be the ultimate big idea in my life right now.
Anyway it’s, like, it’s a way to get from here to wherever I wanna go next. Wherever I wanna go next in any front of my life, it’s gonna require me to let go. It’s gonna require me to be willing to lay down my own old world map- Yeah ... and stop trying to follow something that simply isn’t d- doesn’t go.
It doesn’t show the way to, to where I wanna be next.
CW: All right. Our next Big Idea episode on confirmation bias. I don’t know how [00:40:00] everybody else felt about this, but I loved finally being able to have this conversation. I don’t know, what did you-
SH: I think our listeners loved it, too.
CW: Okay. And- What are your takeaways?
SH: M- I mean, my, it’s not so much that I have takeaways, it’s that sometimes when I sort of dabble in a topic, the universe starts to hand me things that-
CW: Yes ...
SH: are related to that topic, right? And that is what happened to me, and just as I was preparing for this conversation we just had this whole unit in the Living School talking about confirmation bias, and then the unit after that had all these other things in it that went into the same ideas, developed the same ideas.
Oh. And it comes from Brian McLaren, all of this material does. No
CW: surprise
SH: there. Which is no surprise, right? And so just to sum up his approach to it, okay, he said this: “We develop a story or system in our minds, and whatever doesn’t fit, our brains exclude it, because we only want to judge new information based on the information we already have that we’re comfortable with.
And so our old information and our old trusted authorities create a screen.” And that idea of a screen-
CW: Yeah ...
SH: this is exactly like what I’m talking about- ... of where I am now and where I wanna go next, my confirmation bias. It reminded me of, like, the iron gates that President Uchtdorf talked about- Yes
in his talk, right? Yes. These big old rusty iron gates of the things that we know. This is, I think this is the screen that Brian McLaren is talking about. And so there are two other things that he said after that I wanna talk about, and the first is community bias. He says, “Community bias, it’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t see- Yes
or what our community doesn’t want us to see.” Yes. “You could think of this as a community confirmation bias, and our identity is wrapped up with the community we belong in, and it’s very hard for us to accept some ideas if they will put us out of sync with our community because that will rob from us our secure social location or identity.”
I can’t even think of a better-
...
SH: Exhibit A for community bias than my experiences as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There’s some serious community bias operating in this community, and probably every religious community, definitely every high demand religious community, I think.
CW: Well, and I think one of the definitions, I’m making this up right now, one of the definitions I’m gonna say, one of the requirements of being a high demand religion is the community involvement. I mean, think about it. Susan, I went to church six days a week growing up. Six days a week.
SH: Right,
CW: right. Five days for seminary.
Plus mutual on like Tuesday night or Wednesday night
SH: Right,
CW: right ... plus Sunday. So ev- so six days a week, and five, six, se- what is that? Seven, eight times a week
I mean, that’s just bananas. So I don’t think we could emphasize enough to people who have never been in a high demand religion just how involved the community is for Latter-day Saints
SH: Or has been historically.
I’m honestly not sure that it is to the same degree anymore. Now, if you’re a seminary student, then you are gonna be at that sort of-
CW: Yeah ...
SH: you know, apex of, Yeah ... involvement. But even not be- not ever having gone to seminary I still grew up in a church that kept me at the church building-
CW: Yes ...
SH: so, so much.
Everything revolved around what was going on at our ward building growing up in Utah. It just did. And I don’t know if it’s still that way. We’ve talked about that, and we could debate it, but I think that there’s something about belonging to that community that was, like, so integral- ... to who I was and how I thought about myself and my place in the world that yeah, of course, my biases were going to defend themselves to keep my standing in the community.
Absolutely.
CW: Okay. This is dov- this part of our conversation is dovetailing really nicely with that Jim Palmer quote you started out reading, kind of about agency and free will- Right ... because I think when we have that episode, we absolutely are gonna have to talk about community bias.
SH: Gonna make a note of that right now, so thank you very much
CW: Because it is the water that we have been swimming in our- Yes
entire Life. And so all the grace to you and me and all of our listeners.
SH: Right. Yeah, there are good reasons.
CW: The good reasons.
SH: Yeah. For, there are good reasons for all the ways that we feel and
...
SH: the experiences that we’ve had and the things that are difficult for us to let go of.
CW: Absolutely.
SH: Like, there are really good reasons for that.
And then just one other thing I’m gonna say about all of that Brian McLaren confirmation bias messaging was that [00:45:00] he said, “If I were to say people can’t see what they can’t see, that’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. They can’t see what they can’t see until someone helps them see it, or maybe a new life experience comes along that helps them see it.”
I know that was my experience. I think it was your experience. Yes. I think it was so many people’s experience, and really, I hope that’s the experience that our listeners have sometimes listening to this podcast, that when we say something that they’ve never seen before, it at least gives them an idea to sit with and consider in the light of their own- Yeah
experience and potentially their own biases and just under- see, I guess try to come to some self-understanding of how it has served them, whether it continues to serve them, and how it can get them to where they want to go next.
So Cynthia, myth
We’re back to myth.
CW: So soon?
SH: I loved this episode. How did you end up feeling about this episode? ‘Cause this is the one that had you shaking in your shoes a little bit when we approached it.
CW: Yeah. I’m really shocked at how well this episode went off. Like, I just think, my goodness, there are a lot of landmines-
SH: Right
CW: to avoid, or to just go ahead and step on and blow up people’s worlds when it comes to- yes ... I don’t know. I was really nervous, and I feel like it went off a lot better. Let that be a lesson to me, Susan.
SH: Okay, but I think that we got more pushback potentially on this episode than we have on any episode I can think of for a long time.
But also I wanna say that was social media pushback- ex- exactly ... and I felt like it was not people who had listened to the episode. They just saw that we were talking about approaching the scriptures as myth and couldn’t really live with that. They couldn’t let that stand unchallenged. Okay.
CW: Yeah. You know what’s funny about you saying that just now is as I was working on these notes the last couple of days, I went through some of those social media comments, and I copy and pasted some of them in here-
Okay ...
CW: in our notes for today, and then I went ahead and deleted them because like you just said, I didn’t get the feeling that these were people who had listened to the episode or that- Right, right
were regular listeners. Some of them even seemed like, i- is there such a thing as a Mormon bot? I don’t know.
SH: Yeah, no. Didn’t we decide that there are because we looked at some of these profiles, and they weren’t real Facebook profiles There is such a thing as a Mormon bot- Okay ... or at least Mormons who open Facebook-
CW: Okay,
SH: yes
profiles under false identities and then comment on things. And then to,
CW: and,
SH: and- That is
CW: a thing ... antagonize women- Yes ... and a podcast they couldn’t give two licks about. Right. Like, that just boggles my mind, but anyway.
SH: Yeah, I don’t even wanna think too much about all the implications of that idea of Mormon bots, but-
just to say that there was an aha moment when I started looking at who are some of these people, and found out- Yeah ... that they aren’t really people at all. But all of that, h- where- whatever the origin of these comments was, it just goes to show me how deeply uncomfortable a conversation this still would be for most members.
And yet it’s not a new idea and it’s not a radical idea really. I came across a C.S. Lewis quote shortly after we recorded this episode that I just loved. I had to stop on my walk and write it down immediately- Oh ... which was that... I mean, and anything from C.S. Lewis is, you know, one, not gonna be too radical.
He’s one of the few non-LDS writers who has been consistently quoted in general conference, like, throughout- ... my lifetime, right? So, like, everyone’s a fan in the Christian world of C.S. Lewis or many people, even mainstream Latter-day Saints- ... are fans of his thinking. But he sa- he wrote this: “Reason is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.”
And so the idea that we have to approach something, anything, and in this case we had been talking about the Bible through a lens of imagination in order to get to the thing kind of behind or beyond- ... the thing is not a new idea and not really that radical an idea. So I’m n- I’m not sure why it still feels so deeply challenging, I guess, for Latter-day Saints.
We do not trust imagination, period.
CW: Yeah
SH: Like you’re not allowed to imagine freely even about change you’d like to see in the church, right? Right. This is the imagination committee that we talked about. Like, I’ve never felt at liberty to talk about [00:50:00] change because then there’s a criticism implied, and I feel like with the scriptures you’re not really allowed to talk about looking for bigger meaning because there, that means that the meaning that, that is there isn’t enough somehow or isn’t right or doesn’t get to the heart of...
There’s not enough there for you already, I guess.
CW: That C.S. Lewis quote, that, that last half, “Imagination is the organ of meaning,” makes me... Oh, it just makes me really sad that-
...
CW: That ha- that hasn’t been a part of my Latter-day Saint experience, to just sit there and imagine what different scriptures could mean, different, extract different meanings, right?
We’re very much handed the one and true meaning.
SH: Right.
CW: And that’s it. The thinking has been done. The
SH: thinking has been done, yeah.
CW: And the, and it just makes me think about re- remember when we had our episode with Kathryn Knight Sontag on mysticism, and I said for funsies I went to the church website and I looked up mysticism, and it said, like- sorcery, false prophets. Right.
SH: Yes. Yes.
CW: So I think we very much do not trust imagination.
SH: I think that’s true because, could mysticism exist without imagination?
CW: That, it-
SH: Like, I don’t think
CW: so. No.
SH: I don’t think so.
CW: But I’m just connecting those dots here for the first time- Yeah ... going, “Oh, okay.”
SH: We
CW: don’t- No, we don’t
SH: trust it ...
CW: We don’t trust imagination. We don’t trust mysticism. I- if it can’t be measured, I guess we’re not gonna... I don’t know, the first half of that C.S. Lewis quote, “Reason is the natural organ of truth.” Oh, we like that. We-
SH: But now you’re kinda blowing my mind with that because, like, does God exist outside of human imagination?
I mean, maybe God doesn’t. None of us can prove that, and the fact that none of us can prove that means you can’t really reason your way all the way to God, can you? Doesn’t it require- Nice ... a leap of imagination at some point? And yet we are not taught to trust that
...
SH: That process of engaging that part of our brain.
It’s a
CW: slippery slope.
SH: It’s a slippery slope. I heard a Faith Matters episode recently. Oh, I went back and re-listened to it. It wasn’t a recent episode, but where Mike Petro, your favorite and mine- ... was talking about, quote, “More than literal reading of scripture.” So yes, there’s value in whatever the literal interpretation of those words on the page might be, but that there also could be something more than literal.
And I think that’s that leap into the imaginal realm, right? And I think that’s what C.S. Lewis is talking about when he’s like, “Well, if you wanna get to meaning, you gotta be willing to step a little bit into imagination.”
CW: Love
SH: it. And one of the things that Mike Petro said when he was elaborating on this way of looking for larger meaning within scripture that I just loved, he said, “When we don’t understand it and it doesn’t make sense, it can be an invitation to think more deeply and look for a meaning worthy of a God we believe in-
A God of love.”
So like if you can’t approach scripture with an idea that you’re open to imagining a meaning that is in line with the God you have imagined, then I think scripture is not gonna do a lot of heavy lifting in your life, I guess.
It’s gonna do a lot of confusing, which does happen for people.
Scriptures are contradictory. They’re ... I mean, there’s like, there’s-
Yes ...
SH: all kinds of crazy stuff in scripture, right? But I think approaching them as an invitation to step into this imagine, this imaginary not imaginary, what’s the word? Imaginal realm of- ... spirituality invitation to step into that realm.
If you don’t see scriptures as a doorway to get you there it seems to me that they’re a pretty limited use.
CW: Okay, Susan, do you hear yourself right now? Do you hear how non-Latter-day Sainty you- Dang it ... sound right now?
SH: I’ve stepped- Like- ... right out the door of the building. No.
CW: Everything you’re saying, I’m loving, and it is delicious to the taste, and yet- i’m sitting here thinking, “That is not-”
SH: No, it’s not. I wonder what, I
CW: wonder- “... that is not what I was taught.” ...
SH: if I’m ever gonna get asked to teach Relief Society again, Cynthia.
CW: I don’t know, but it’s good stuff, my friend. So anyway, slippery slope.
SH: Slippery slope. And I’m sliding fast.
CW: Yes. You are, and I’m loving it.
I’m loving it.
SH: Okay, Cynthia, last but by no means least, Sabbath.
Okay. Shortly after we recorded this episode I did, I was doing a little searching online for one of the [00:55:00] women that I had quoted in this episode, Ruth Haley Barton, and it came to my attention that she has a podcast, and then it came to my attention that she had a whole episode about Sabbath with one of your favorites, Cole Arthur Riley.
Oh. And so I had to pull that up immediately and also send it to you. But part of the conversation that they had, I really loved, and so I just wanna visit that really briefly here. And Cole Arthur Riley says, “It’s the audacity to face the demands of this world and proclaim, ‘We will not be owned.’”
And then Ruth Haley Barton expanded on it, and she said this: “When we practice Sabbath, we are saying to this world, ‘You do not own me. I am not owned by your values. I am not owned by your schedule. I am not owned by your consumerism. I am not owned by somebody else’s priorities for me. On this day, I am not owned by anyone else but God himself or herself.
I am proclaiming where I belong and who I belong to.’”
CW: Okay. Amazing.
SH: Amazing. And it was sort of an expression, it was such a succinct expression really of the whole idea- Yes ... of the liberation theology idea- Yes ... of all of the letting go of things of this world idea. Everything that I really wanted to say about Sabbath was pretty much expressed in that small quote.
Well,
CW: I was just gonna say, okay, to our listeners who don’t know, you have no idea how often Susan and I hit stop after recording an episode, and then Susan will text me or I will text her something we’ve run across, like Susan just- Right ... read to you, and saying- Dang it ... “Dang it. I wish I had this for the episode,” to which I’ll be like, “We already recorded an hour and 10 minutes, Susan.”
Right. “We couldn’t have squeezed it in anyway.” But as you’re reading those two quotes by two amazing women, I will not be surprised, Susan, if you write this down on a sticky note and you put it on your mirror for a while.
SH: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. If anything has a hope of getting me to reevaluate- Yes ... my relationship with Sabbath, this would be that thing.
CW: This would be that. It’s gorgeous. So I’m glad- It’s beautiful ... I’m glad it made it to our season finale ‘cause now I’m gonna put it on a Post-It note because I, because like we said in the episode, genuinely I really would love to explore the idea of re-imagining Sabbath and what it could be.
So I like that.
SH: More to come, Cynthia.
CW: Yeah. Well, okay, hopefully everyone knows that we have been offering transcripts for the last few seasons. We have one volunteer, Celeste- Right ... bless her, who she makes the rough draft. She runs our MP3 through Descript, and she comes up with the transcription, and then she has a nice volunteer.
Thank you to all those who help volunteer to clean up a transcript. And anyway, so there are a million people that use our email, it seems like. Susan, you use it, I use it, like, Celeste uses it, right? So many people use our email to get all the work done for At Last She Said It, and so s- sometimes I have to go in there and I’m looking for a specific email, and I saw the email between Celeste and the volunteer about getting the Sabbath episode transcribed, and I had to giggle because the person who was transcribing it said, “Yeah, I wasn’t really excited for this topic.”
But then, “Wow,” she said, “Wow.” And I want to say along with her, I get it. Wow. Like Sabbath is a tired, old, tiny topic that you and I just even wanted to m- I mean, aspirationally big. I don’t even know if we could’ve. I don’t even know if we made it big, Susan, but we tried. We tried to not make it a tired, old, tiny topic.
Right. Right. We just wanted to show some imagination around it and expand around it and to breathe maybe some new life into it. So-
SH: I,
CW: I
SH: had not seen that email. Thank you so much for sharing that with me, ‘cause I just knew it, because I knew that would be my response also.
CW: So good. So good. All right.
Well, we have a couple minutes left. How about we just do something fun for a second? For the three people- lay it on me ... who are still listening- Okay ... Susan.
SH: Yep. We’re gonna reward them, or-
CW: We’re gonna reward- Or not. Or force them and keep them hostage to listen to us for a couple more minutes. But okay, for those who don’t know, Susan and I, we have, our workload is divided up really well.
We always say to each other, “Best team ever.” Because Susan does things that I have no idea what she does about to get the podcast up and running, and then I do some things, like editing, that Susan has no idea about.
SH: Right.
CW: So Susan, what is something you do to get the podcast out into the big world that I don’t know anything about?
SH: I think it’s pretty much everything I do on a Monday.
CW: It is,
SH: but give me
CW: something
SH: specific. Before the podcast comes out on Tuesday. Something specific. [01:00:00] Okay, so I go into our show notes, and I find the links for everything that’s in there, and it usually means, I mean, maybe not usually, but we don’t put full information in those notes generally, and it requires some sleuthing for me to get to the original source or- get to something, you know, with a working link that I can give people or get to like I’ll go into Goodreads and pull up the books that we reference, because then I go in and add those to our book section on our website and with a link to that. I mean, there’s just a lot that goes into getting that information from our sort of disorganized-y, jottings in our show, in our episode notes when we record, the ones we record with and getting it packaged in a usable way for listeners. So I hope people do take advantage of those, because I do put my heart and soul into distributing that stuff. Because the thing is, anything that made it into those notes, we loved enough to bring it into an episode and build a conversation around it.
CW: Yeah.
SH: So I, I feel very affectionate toward all of those sources. How about you, Cynthia? What’s something that you do that I have n- no idea?
CW: Okay. Something that you have no idea that I do is, okay, we have interlude music, right? Right. In every episode. We break it up into sections, and we have probably about 30, 30 to 40 interludes that I recycle and use from sea- Okay
I try not to use an interlude more than once a season. In fact, I never do. Okay.
Okay.
CW: So our listeners can’t see it. I’m gonna show you. You can hear my papers rustling, people. So I have three pieces of paper. Each one says season 11, season 10, season nine. Anyway, so I-
SH: You make note of which one you used
CW: Yes. I write down every interlude and what episode I used it on so that the next season when I’m trying to find an interlude, I go back and I say, “Oh, okay. I haven’t used that one for seven months or whatever, or 20 episodes or something.” And so I go ahead and use that interlude. But what’s hard about it is The titles of these interlude, okay, here are a couple of these titles.
Cozy Evening Chillin’ .
SH: Yes. I mean, that makes me think of Sabbath. Is that what you used it for?
CW: I don’t e- no, I didn’t actually. I’m
SH: teasing. Well,
CW: I know, exactly ... it’s a
SH: ridiculous title.
CW: It’s a ridiculous title. Another one is called Inspirational Uplifting Acoustic. In other words, they tell me nothing.
Nothing. And so depending on the conversation we have, some of our conversations lean more serious, and so I’ll be like, “Oh, I haven’t used this interlude in 20 episodes. I’ll go ahead and use it,” and then it just doesn’t fit. Like it’s- Oh, sure ... too upbeat or something. Anyway, so that’s something you don’t know about, is that sometimes finding the, just the right interlude music for an episode is harder than you would think.
Because I have, like, 30 or 40 to choose from, and sometimes it gets a little complicated, because I don’t wanna take a serious moment and then break it up with a jam chicka jam chicka jam. You know? So that would, that
SH: just-
CW: Okay ... is offensive.
SH: Okay, but here I’m gonna say that nothing that you do is harder than I think, because it’s all just wizardry and black magic to me, Cynthia.
I have- Bless you ... no idea what you do, and I stand in awe. And the thing that’s so beautiful about the way the work breaks out on this podcast is that you don’t know what I do, and I don’t know what you do. But it all gets done, and therefore neither one of us is at liberty to quit, because the other person- Right
could not rebuild this thing. Right ... we could not plug someone else into your job. It could never happen. And so I’m afraid we’re in it for the duration, my friend.
CW: We’re in it together. Perfect. Well, Susan, I hope you have a lovely summer break. If we had yearbooks right now, I would write in it, “Stay cool.”
SH: That’s hilarious, because did you read my draft of Worthy Stuff that comes out tomorrow? I signed people’s yearbooks at the end, and it says- Ah ... “Stay cool.” We’re the same person, Cynthia.
CW: Ah. I love knowing this. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That’s too funny. Well, stay cool and have a great summer.
SH: Let’s hang out a lot.
CW: Exactly.
Oh, goodness. Okay. Let’s hit stop.
Voicemail 1: Okay, go with me on this one. It’s gonna make you laugh. I was just listening to the episode about our shadow and dealing with the shadow, and I was trying to talk to my husband [01:05:00] about it, and we decided that it’s very difficult to have shadow aspects of ourselves that we can’t really name. And then I’ve just been working on how people use symbols in spiritual practices and different symbol sets that people use, and I was looking at tarot decks as part of that research, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a deck of cards that was all the different aspects of the Church?”
Some of them might be stereotypes, some of them might be symbols that are inherent to Church culture. And could I possibly please have one so I can use it so that when some of my shadow self comes up, I can actually pull that card and, you know, my judgy Molly Mormon card or my I have to be a missionary card or, you know, listen to the bishop card or the prophet speaks for God card, you can’t talk to your own intuition, whatever that would be called card.
Like, wouldn’t that be hilarious? I think that would be so much fun. I need this tool, but I don’t really have the spiritual, like, capacity to be that sassy, and I need an artist. We need an artist to get involved. So please make that, and then I will buy one so I can use it to work on my shadow.
Thank you.
Voicemail 2: Good morning, ladies. Coming to you from California on my way commuting into work. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the most recent episode discussing the Sermon on the Mount. And it made me think of a book I read recently by Howard Thurman called “Jesus and the Disinherited.”
And you may know Howard Thurman. I don’t know. I didn’t until I read this book. He is a theologian philosopher. Many of his writings inspired Martin Luther King in his speeches and sermons and ideas. He’s a Black man from the South, and the book addresses a question. When he-- when Howard Thurman traveled to India, there was a man that he had lunch with there who kind of challenged him, asking how it is that he could be Christian when Christianity was a part of what had oppressed his people.
And this short little book is basically Howard Thurman’s answer to this question: What does the gospel, the teachings of Jesus Christ, have to offer to those who are oppressed, whether it be in slavery or in poverty or in suffering circumstances? It’s a beautiful book. It really expanded my thinking. Of course, the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes is a key part of it.
So just wanted to flag that for both of you and anybody listening. I think it fits right in with the beautiful discussion you had in your episode this morning. Thanks so much, ladies. Really appreciate all you do. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
SH: Me too, and the other shoe will be- Ah ... when you go to listen to it, and I go, damn it,
CW: damn it.”
Maybe.
SH: But look, right now my line is moving. It’s like everything is going perfectly. I don’t- Yeah ... I don’t
CW: know. I know. Fingers crossed. Okay, here we go. All right.
SH: Give too much, Oh, gosh, I... What’s
CW: the right word? Okay. L- let’s just skip that Facebook comment. Let’s go-
SH: Are you sure?
CW: Yeah. We’re at- Okay
we’re at one hour,
SH: so. Oh, ouch. Okay. Well, we just had one more. That’s cool. Yeah.
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