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0:24

I love the theologian Kate

0:26

Bowler's allergy to every platitude,

0:30

her wisdom and wit about the true,

0:32

messy fullness of what it means to

0:34

be in a human body. Her

0:36

wisdom has been hard won at a young

0:39

age. She's best known for her 2018 book,

0:42

Everything Happens for a Reason and

0:45

Other Lies I've Loved. It

0:47

is a poetic and powerful reflection

0:49

on how she moved through learning at age 35

0:51

that she had stage 4 colon

0:54

cancer. At that time,

0:56

Kate was told that she would probably die very

0:59

soon. She had a husband she'd

1:01

loved since she was 15, and they had

1:03

a very young son. I

1:06

read her book again in preparation for this

1:08

conversation with such admiration,

1:10

several cathartic years

1:12

later, and a changed Kate in

1:15

a changed world. From the

1:17

new reality in our time of living

1:19

with cancer as a chronic illness,

1:22

to the telling of truths to our young

1:24

as we face precarity in our

1:26

collective body, this conversation

1:29

is full of the vividly whole humanity

1:32

that Kate Bowler singularly embodies.

1:36

And as you'll hear, if she hadn't

1:38

become a theologian, she might have been

1:40

a stand-up comedian. I'm

1:43

Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

1:54

Kate Bowler is an associate professor

1:56

at Duke University Divinity School.

2:00

an early name in her field of American

2:02

religious history with her 2013 book, Blessed, a history

2:06

of the American prosperity gospel.

2:09

She grew up in Canada in a proud

2:11

old Anabaptist tradition. That's

2:14

a part of the Christian Reformation family tree

2:16

from which the Amish and Mennonites emerged.

2:20

I was so grateful to speak with her before

2:22

an audience at the 2023 Aspen Ideas

2:25

Festival. Hello

2:31

everyone. I'm very happy to be

2:33

here at Aspen Ideas and

2:37

here for the first time and with the

2:40

incredible Kate. I actually

2:42

think of Kate Bowler every

2:44

time I look at the coffee cup in

2:46

my office that she sent me which says, No

2:49

Cure for

2:49

Being Human, which is

2:52

the title of another of her books which

2:54

have touched millions. So

2:57

as I believe, you know, I often

2:59

start my interviews with a question

3:02

about the spiritual background

3:03

of a life or childhood

3:04

because

3:07

I find the value is such a

3:09

soft searching place in us and

3:11

it's often a place where a lot of the questions

3:14

that we end up pursuing for the rest of our lives

3:16

emerge and that spiritual background can be

3:18

anything. It can be a presence.

3:21

It can be an absence, but there's something there. But

3:24

you have such an interesting beginning.

3:26

So would you yeah, just tell us a little

3:28

bit about the spiritual background of your childhood.

3:31

Oh yeah, I guess it's a bit of a grab bag.

3:34

My mom is probably the only person in the world

3:37

who is converted by a tract.

3:39

She was just a tract like a fold

3:41

out threefold. She was walking

3:43

in a student center and someone handed her a tract

3:45

and she

3:46

was like me? Sit her in the eyes

3:48

of God? Well, alright. And then like that

3:50

was it. And

3:53

she's like a really smart lady. She has

3:55

a PhD. I mean, she's a joy and I

3:57

just really love that about her.

3:59

So she became a Christian kind of later in life

4:02

and my dad read Augustine and he

4:04

thought like this is a

4:05

this is a worldview

4:07

and their discovery

4:10

I guess of spiritual questions

4:13

as being the thing that you can learn to hang

4:15

all of your Thought hooks on

4:17

was something that I watched them

4:20

experience and It

4:22

made me feel like spiritual questions were the

4:25

kindest most interesting nosiest

4:27

way To get to sort

4:29

of the marrow of the universe Feeling

4:32

and then we went to a Mennonite church. So it's all

4:34

just cheese eaters and furniture makers

4:37

and Yeah in Canada.

4:39

Yes, right in the middle of Canada in

4:41

the lesser-known part of Canada, you know you

4:43

I I've never done this before

4:45

but you write so wonderfully about the Mennonite. So

4:47

I want to read some of your favorite lines My

4:50

favorite lines about your religious your

4:52

your religious homeland He

4:54

said I grew up on the prairies

4:57

of Manitoba, Canada surrounded by communities

4:59

of Mennonites I learned at my Anabaptist

5:02

Bible camp about a poor carpenter who

5:04

taught that a simple life was a good one Though

5:07

most Mennonites abandoned bonnets

5:09

and buggies long ago. They

5:11

kept their concerns about the greediness

5:13

of modern

5:14

life He

5:15

also wrote I had been taught

5:18

in my Anabaptist Bible camp that there were

5:20

a few things closer to God's

5:22

heart than pacifism Simplicity

5:25

and the ability to complement your neighbors

5:27

John Deere turbo combine without

5:30

envy

5:30

Though

5:33

Mennonites are best known by their bonnets

5:35

and horse-drawn buggies They are for the most

5:37

part plain-clothes capitalists

5:39

like the rest of us. I adore

5:42

them. I married

5:43

one

5:44

And finally Mennonites are people

5:47

with the land in their blood and

5:49

a hopeless obsession with simplicity

5:51

frugality pacifism and

5:53

jello salad I'm pretty

5:55

sure they are genetically predisposed

5:58

to singing in four-part harmony

5:59

making thick braided bread and

6:02

homemade jam.

6:03

Yes, they have

6:05

some kind of pact with Satan

6:07

for the gift of song.

6:08

It's very strange. But yeah, I mean, every,

6:11

but what they can do with Jello, I found a

6:13

deli meat, sliced deli meat

6:16

one time and I stood at a buffet table and was like, who

6:18

did this? Take responsibility.

6:21

They really are a wonder. Well, so

6:24

I think I'd love to ask

6:27

what in that spiritual formation of

6:29

your childhood that universe

6:31

unto itself

6:32

taught you about being in a body

6:35

and maybe came back to you with comfort or

6:38

vexation or confusion when

6:40

your life as a young woman, as a young

6:43

mother, took that unexpected turn.

6:45

Yeah. Yeah. I guess

6:47

because illness was that feeling of being like

6:49

stripped down to the studs and

6:51

you have to, you just, you're the bare bones of

6:53

something. And that was maybe

6:56

this

6:57

most important moment in which I realized

7:00

I'm not very much a life, any life

7:02

isn't very much on its own. And

7:05

men and I were the ones who really taught me how to

7:07

be a group, like how to be a weird

7:09

moving, alive, symbiotic

7:11

herd. They just kind of move in

7:14

and they're just like tapping on your fence boards,

7:16

trying to figure out which is rotten. And then they're

7:18

without your permission, taking your house apart. And

7:21

that's exactly the energy that I needed

7:23

when I knew that most of my

7:25

life was unfeasible. Like I was

7:27

going to have medical bills I couldn't pay. I knew

7:30

I would likely cause most

7:32

of the people in my family to have to take

7:34

out loans against their crappy

7:37

bungalows. I mean, I was going

7:39

to, I was going to take them all down. And

7:41

so to have all of them kind of

7:44

lift me up and feed me so

7:46

aggressively was exactly

7:48

what I needed.

7:50

Yeah. Somewhere you wrote, perhaps the most

7:52

oddly comforting thing about joining the Mennonite

7:54

Club, they insist that suffering

7:56

never be done alone.

7:59

I do want to also note that you,

8:03

you know, the scholarly work you did

8:06

in that chapter of your life, which

8:08

took this turn, but kind of as you moved into this,

8:10

you were a professor, and it

8:12

might sound like there's no connection

8:15

between these two things, but actually this research you

8:17

did and this writing you did was

8:19

much more than tangential, ultimately. So

8:22

I want you to talk about that, but I really

8:25

appreciate this confession in

8:27

your book where

8:29

you did all the things, including

8:31

wailing, right, and that one

8:33

would expect, and you said you also confessed,

8:36

but one of my first thoughts when

8:38

you got this diagnosis was also, oh

8:40

God, this is ironic. I recently

8:42

wrote a book called Blessed. So,

8:47

and this actually also, just before we

8:49

leave the Mennonites behind, started with you

8:53

getting really fascinated by hearing

8:55

about a new Mennonite

8:57

megachurch. I couldn't

8:59

believe it. It

9:01

broke a part of my brain that puts information

9:04

together, because I was on the Winnipeg,

9:06

Manitoba, the glories of the prairies, please

9:08

visit, has only one fast road, and

9:11

they put a traffic light up on it, and

9:13

I was sitting there at the light full of Christian

9:16

rage, and I thought

9:19

that I was watching a factory

9:21

empty, and it turns out that this pop-up

9:24

building was in fact a megachurch

9:27

in Canada's largest megachurch,

9:30

and that it was mostly attended by Mennonites,

9:32

and that people I knew had recently contributed

9:35

to Pastors' Appreciation Day,

9:37

in which their pastor had been given

9:39

a motorcycle, and then he rode it around on stage,

9:42

and I was like, absolutely

9:44

not. This is for

9:46

Americans.

9:47

And I like went on,

9:49

so I didn't care about it. But

9:52

the question stayed with me, is

9:54

what is it about all of us

9:56

that wants a story about God's

9:59

specialness? love that then

10:01

would yield itself in health and

10:04

in maybe in some wealth and maybe in family

10:06

wholeness and togetherness and I thought well if

10:08

it can happen in Mennonite world it

10:10

can happen in anywhere and that truly

10:13

began an obsession. And so you went

10:15

down this rabbit hole of what is known as

10:17

the prosperity gospel which is a Pentecostal

10:20

movement and and that's

10:22

such a big wide story also that we

10:24

don't have time to go into here but I

10:26

want to say in this room it's

10:29

so easy to make fun of something

10:32

like the prosperity gospel and some of the ways that it

10:34

gets reported in caricature you

10:37

know when we are secular and erudite. What

10:40

I really appreciate about the

10:43

book you wrote and I mean you have

10:45

your critique which one would have of anything

10:47

one was studying closely enough but I appreciate

10:50

how you so looked for

10:52

what was what is human and understandable

10:55

and what this particular religious movement also

10:58

says about the rest of us so

11:00

you know so here's a passage I

11:02

did discover that the prosperity

11:05

gospel encourages people especially its leaders

11:07

to buy private jets and multi-million dollar

11:10

homes as evidence of God's

11:12

love but I also

11:14

saw the desire to escape

11:16

believers wanted an escape from

11:18

poverty failing health and the

11:21

feeling that their lives were leaky blankets

11:24

some people wanted bent leaf but more

11:27

wanted relief from the wounds of their past

11:30

and the pain of their present they

11:32

wanted a modicum of power over

11:34

the things that ripped their lives apart

11:36

at the seams when

11:38

you see it that way you realize

11:41

you're seeing the human condition and you're

11:43

also seeing the American dream. Yeah

11:47

I thought I thought I'd written like a very gentle

11:49

history but I didn't feel like

11:52

a strong sense of identification with

11:55

like the desperation of their prayers

11:58

and hopes until I was the person

12:00

praying, like without

12:05

the ugly kind of crying and prayer, the

12:08

undignified sort of, God

12:10

save me, save me, save me. Like most of my

12:13

prayers waking up were just like save me, save me, save

12:15

me, save me, save me. I don't

12:17

want to do this. I don't want to do this anymore. Make me someone different.

12:19

Like, isn't that in your power? And that sounded

12:22

exactly like prayers that I had listened to for

12:24

a decade. And I thought, well, wasn't

12:26

I a bit, you know, never

12:28

quite above it.

12:30

And that breaking apart feeling has

12:32

oddly like served me very well, because

12:35

now I feel kind of back to the basics

12:37

of like, this, these are the things I wanted

12:40

all along. I wanted to know that

12:42

it was possible to grow up and develop

12:45

gifts that then you then get to use in the world.

12:48

And to see any dream come true feels like a

12:50

miracle. But when it's yours, you're like, man, didn't

12:52

I really hope that I deserved that? You

12:56

know, some of the things, what,

12:59

what it identified for you is something

13:02

like how we, even

13:03

though you

13:05

just have a normal life, you know, this isn't true,

13:08

but we, we kind

13:09

of expect life to be fair.

13:12

Yes.

13:12

Yes. And we're really shocked when it isn't. Yeah.

13:16

And it feels part of a, I feel like wherever

13:18

you kind of drop the anchor in your story

13:20

about spirituality, or I'm just thinking

13:22

like a big theological framework,

13:25

if you drop the anchor on, we

13:27

are made good. God loves

13:29

us. It's a pretty short

13:32

road to, well,

13:33

if God made

13:36

me to love me, shouldn't therefore some things

13:38

maybe work out for this poor, helpless creature.

13:41

And so it's, I had

13:43

really imagined that there was

13:46

going to be a strong causal relationship, just

13:48

like it is in the prosperity gospel. Is

13:50

God good? Is God fair? And

13:53

like, I wanted, I wanted fairness

13:55

in a way I'd never wanted before. And

13:58

that, so that was really.

13:59

Even though you'd been observing these

14:02

things at an academic, you

14:05

found that those sets of assumptions were very

14:07

much alive in you when you got your cancer diagnosis

14:09

and how you moved into that. And part

14:11

of it was, I remember reading a

14:14

history of the middle class and it said they

14:17

rely on optimism, hard

14:20

work, and a sense of lightly proximate

14:22

horizon. They're good at future thinking. And

14:24

I was like, oh, crap, I thought that was my personality,

14:26

but it turns out I was just a little crap.

14:28

So that's disappointing. But

14:32

I

14:32

think part of my belief in a meritocracy

14:35

came from the fact that I really

14:38

did grow up believing that if I scrapped it out,

14:40

that out of anything I could count on my hard

14:42

work. Yeah, and you were led to believe. You were

14:44

trained and educated to believe that. All of us were.

14:47

Well, I mean, there is a part in academia

14:50

where you do assume it'll break your heart at some point.

14:52

You should probably just give up on the meritocracy, but it

14:55

was in there. It was really in there somewhere.

15:01

So it turns out it's not fair. It

15:03

turns out all those things you believe are not true and you're on

15:05

the other side of those assumptions. And

15:09

you inherit a lot of things. One of them is a vocabulary.

15:13

I mean, you describe it as this foreign country

15:15

of cancer. And suddenly there's this new

15:17

language that you're supposed to be fluent

15:19

in. And

15:22

then these identities are very statistical

15:25

and dehumanizing, really. Stage

15:28

four, 30% chance.

15:31

Survivor, remission, incurable.

15:35

Yeah.

15:36

Yeah, I remember trying to do the slipperiness

15:38

of all the language. Like you say something like, hey,

15:42

not to put you on the spot, but coming

15:44

out of surgery, I'm like, hey,

15:47

not to make you feel weird, but like, would you mind

15:49

just looking at my chart and telling me like, what are the chances

15:52

you think that I might live? And

15:54

I say it in a tender way, like when

15:56

the lights are still out in the middle of the night in the hospital

15:59

and I don't want to put the guy in a weird

16:01

position, but I just want somebody to be honest with

16:03

me. And then I can see how quickly this

16:06

poor young doctor has to translate it into

16:08

the language of outcomes, because

16:11

they can't speak the language of certainty, but

16:14

we're just floating far away. And

16:16

then, you know, I don't know. It's

16:18

the most embodied thing and what you're

16:20

getting is completely cerebral. Absolutely.

16:23

Yeah. So, you

16:26

know, we're trained. I had the weirdest moment

16:28

where, I

16:29

apologize so much for the words that I'm about to use.

16:32

Really?

16:33

Okay, I'm not on public radio anymore.

16:35

I don't have to believe. The

16:38

dread of what I'm about to describe. But this

16:40

resident came in and in my

16:42

normal hospital room, and he

16:45

was like,

16:46

Ms. Bowler, we're going to remove a drain, and

16:49

you're just going to feel a deep pinch and a hard pull,

16:52

and then you'll be able to go home. And

16:54

I was like, you're

16:55

going to take something out like here,

16:58

now, in this normal room where everything is

17:00

like, there's a window. There's no one else

17:02

here. It's just you. And

17:05

he had been my most dispassionate

17:07

doctor, where we were in other planets

17:10

together, like apart.

17:12

For apart. And he walked toward

17:14

me like this, and I was like, oh, no, we cannot have

17:16

our hands up, like a terrified magician

17:18

when you come up to me. So I

17:20

was like, if you wouldn't mind just like,

17:22

and that should be trying to be weird, but could you just leave

17:24

and then come back and pretend to be a magician so

17:26

that I can go into a different

17:29

mental place

17:29

for you to do this? So

17:32

he came back in. There was a lot of saying, knock, knock,

17:34

knock, because it was just a curtain. He really

17:37

did it. He

17:39

left the room. He came back in.

17:40

With his hands raised. And

17:42

he was like, knock, knock, knock. And I was like, it's just a

17:45

curtain.

17:45

He comes in. He's

17:47

like, all right, close your eyes.

17:49

He pinched, hard pull. And it was

17:52

the most intensely internal

17:54

feeling I've ever had. And then

17:56

he pulls and I opened my

17:59

eyes.

17:59

My blood is all

18:02

over his white gown and what

18:04

looks like 200 feet of tubing

18:06

is in front of us. And he has his

18:08

hands up still and he goes, ta-da.

18:11

And I was like, that's

18:13

it, we're people. We're

18:17

both people in guns. That

18:21

must have been a bit of a relief. He

18:24

comes to my lectures. Yeah,

18:26

we're like buds now. But the truth is I needed

18:28

one person to cross the divide from

18:31

doctor world into magician world. And

18:34

he did it. You know, it just,

18:36

I mean, it just feels like there's all

18:38

this mind over

18:39

body, mind

18:42

over matter

18:42

and jujitsu. And actually the primacy

18:45

of the body

18:46

which has always been true is just asserting

18:48

itself. Yes, that's so

18:50

true. And even

18:51

like,

18:52

you know, when you get terrible news, I found

18:55

that I was just like, honestly,

18:57

the most precious thing in the whole world to me is

19:01

right before any surgery, everyone

19:04

leaves. And it's the worst moment

19:06

in the whole world.

19:08

And you really don't get to control anything

19:10

that's gonna happen. And until that you exercise

19:13

what you felt was agency and you advocated

19:15

for yourself and you looked things up on the internet. And

19:18

in that one moment you realize that for the

19:20

most part, your body, you're gonna be a passenger

19:23

in whatever happens to you. And then

19:25

they wheel you down a hallway and

19:27

then all of a sudden everything's very cold because

19:30

they keep those surgical tears nice

19:33

and crisp. And in that one

19:35

moment, I swear to God, every time

19:37

all I've ever wanted is for one person just

19:39

to reach out and to grab my hand. And

19:42

in that moment, someone always sees the fear

19:44

in my eyes right before the mask goes on. And

19:46

like just to feel that little squeeze. In

19:49

that moment, you're a body again, right

19:51

at the moment where you have to let it go. And

19:54

learning to let it go and

19:56

then how to try to step back into your body is

19:58

probably one of the weirdest things.

19:59

I've ever been trying to get used

20:02

to.

20:02

Wow. You

20:05

know,

20:07

so in contrast to all of that

20:10

statistical language, a

20:13

word that seems to have felt

20:15

so true to you early on is precarity.

20:19

Would you talk about what that word means

20:21

to you now? Oh my gosh. Dorothy

20:24

Day, the Catholic activist, used

20:27

it so beautifully to talk about life

20:30

living in New York

20:32

and community with people with insecure housing.

20:34

And if you compare how

20:36

she describes it with other theologians

20:39

who imagined like a stable universe

20:41

full of certainties, I just love

20:43

the way she describes precarity as

20:47

contingency, the fragility

20:49

of your life, the feeling like things can be

20:52

taken away in an instant, but not

20:54

like it's a bad thing. It's

20:58

not the thing that we have to get over to get back

21:00

to the person we were before. And

21:02

I found that really emotionally satisfying,

21:05

because what if the new is just the way it's

21:07

always going to be? And that I'm never

21:10

imagining that a return to a solid foundation

21:12

is probably braver

21:14

existential work than I had been ready

21:16

to do, but that I need to be ready to do.

21:49

Support for on

21:51

being with Christa Tippett comes from the Fesser

21:53

Institute. Fesser supports a movement

21:56

of organizations that are applying spiritual

21:58

solutions to society's toughest problems.

22:11

I wonder if you'd also talk about really

22:14

how your sense of time

22:17

utterly shift on

22:20

so many different levels. Yeah. Well,

22:23

yeah, right. It's just this outcome language and

22:26

the pretend certainty of like for

22:28

the first year I thought that

22:30

all of it was the last time. So it was

22:32

the last Christmas. It was the

22:34

last spring

22:37

buds. It was the last everything. And

22:39

that had a beautiful and terrible

22:41

beauty to it.

22:43

And also as a nightmare for family experiences

22:46

in which you're like, we're having an experience.

22:48

You're shrieking into the wind.

22:52

But after

22:54

the initial sort of cliff became

22:58

more kind of

23:00

vine to vine feelings, I got really

23:03

good at the interval between scans. So

23:05

at first it was three months and I got amazing

23:09

at 90 days. I could get a scan,

23:11

make a new plan, live a life, throw a costume

23:13

party, just take a trip.

23:17

And then it kind of became six months. And

23:21

now it's been a year. And the

23:24

beauty of that is I can

23:26

feel the fullness of how much,

23:29

it's almost like I need so

23:31

much life to be on one side of the seesaw

23:35

in order to manage how terrified I am to walk

23:37

up to the edge again. So I don't

23:41

know how to live exactly

23:43

with life as a chronic condition,

23:45

but I did know how to think about horizons

23:47

in a way where I knew how to right size my hopes

23:50

in relationship to time. Yeah,

23:54

you know, when you write about, right,

23:57

and so it turned out.

24:00

But there were three different

24:01

kinds of cancer this could be. And

24:05

the third one, which they called the magic cancer

24:08

a theme in your health journey, meant

24:10

that it was treatable.

24:13

And that's a perfect word. I wouldn't have

24:15

used that word. I think that's right. Is that a good...

24:18

Yeah, that's a perfect word. Oh, yeah. I

24:20

have to say, one of the things you are

24:22

so clear about is how

24:24

awkward we are, not only with

24:26

our own suffering, but with the suffering of others. And

24:29

if I say anything up here that is not

24:31

good, you tell me. Oh my gosh. But

24:34

your poetry with words really does

24:35

help with the... Because

24:39

most of the words we use are just blunt instruments.

24:41

Like I remember this one woman

24:44

sat down with me

24:45

and she over dinner and she turns to me and she goes,

24:47

and you're terminal.

24:48

And I was like,

24:50

oh no.

24:51

Oh no, terminal means

24:53

I can know for sure when I'm going to die. And

24:55

she goes,

24:56

good for you.

24:57

I

25:01

was

25:01

just being like a consummate little positive

25:03

thinker. I have a treasured bad story.

25:05

Wait, wait. But the one story I really

25:08

like that you tell is I think you're

25:10

wearing a Tanya Harding costume.

25:13

Is that a party?

25:13

Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about

25:15

that. I was

25:16

dressed as Tanya Harding. And she said,

25:18

we were all dancing.

25:20

And someone looks over across

25:23

the group and is like, so I guess I'm going to be

25:25

a good person.

25:28

And I'm like, so I guess

25:28

you didn't die. Or something like that. And I was just like, not

25:30

yet. You're not really sure what you're

25:32

supposed to say. I think

25:35

you also

25:35

wrote, I said

25:36

not yet, internally reconsidering

25:38

my commitment to passion.

25:45

Oh my gosh.

25:47

Yeah, there was a lot of like,

25:50

that things will be great in heaven. As

25:52

heaven is your

25:53

true home. I was like,

25:54

do

25:56

you want to go first?

25:57

It's really good.

25:59

an awful and wonderful and

26:02

terrible. But yet, I do

26:04

it all the time to other people. Like, that desperate

26:06

effort to connect with people means that I'm bringing

26:08

up awful issues all

26:09

the time. They're like, they were actually, this is a children's

26:11

birthday party cake. Not

26:14

really where I want to talk about my

26:16

bladder cancer. That's fair. OK,

26:20

let's go back to time. We'll probably

26:22

come back to this. All right, so I

26:25

also have this image

26:28

of when something like this happens. And

26:30

I think maybe all of us have

26:32

our own personal individual example

26:34

of what that something is. There's

26:37

a before and there's an after. And all

26:40

of life is divided

26:42

that way. I mean, I think the pandemic was that civilizationally.

26:45

That's

26:47

also a different way of living

26:51

in time. And I wonder,

26:53

as a theologian, because I've been thinking a lot in these

26:55

last years of the pandemic and

26:57

the biblical notions of, and

26:59

it's not just the ancient Greek, which also

27:02

translated into New Testament

27:04

thinking, of Chronos

27:06

time and Cairo's time. Did

27:08

you think about that? Well, Kate,

27:10

tell me Chronos versus Cairo's again. Because

27:13

now you're being beautiful and cosmopolitan lady,

27:15

and I want you to say. No, Chronos

27:18

is actually the way we've organized our society

27:20

as

27:20

though it works like a clock. It's Newton. One

27:23

thing follows the other. And it's the time

27:25

of deadlines and schedules and calendars

27:28

and accomplishment that is progressive

27:31

across time. And then

27:33

Cairo's are these moments of in-breaking,

27:36

that disrupt everything that

27:38

came before. And it can

27:40

be an instant. And it can be a century.

27:43

I think we may be in one of those centuries. Yes,

27:46

that's lovely. But it is this. It's the

27:48

before and the after, with capital B and capital

27:50

A. I guess I thought a lot about, my

27:53

friend Luke Brotherton said this, where he was like, oh, you're

27:55

in apocalyptic time. And I was like, whoa,

27:57

creepy. And yes. How's

28:01

the sense of fragility, the world is about to

28:03

end, even if it's just yours. I

28:05

mean, we felt it collectively. I

28:07

remember taking a class on apocalypticism

28:11

in 1999 with Y2K

28:13

and we were all like, what's gonna happen? But

28:17

where we sense collectively our fragility

28:20

and then we are likely to

28:22

make rash decisions, which

28:24

is actually one of the fun parts. But what

28:26

is the, well, I can't believe this is escaping

28:28

me, but what is the actual Greek word, what does

28:31

it mean, apocalypse? It doesn't mean the cataclysm

28:33

to end. It means revealing. It means, yeah,

28:36

a veil being lifted. Yeah,

28:39

yes. Which you see

28:41

the bright clarity of approximate ending.

28:46

And then some people thrive

28:48

in that scenario. And

28:50

then other people- And it's very hard on most of

28:53

us. We can't live there forever. No,

28:55

we can't live there. And then as opposed

28:57

to ordinary time, which is

28:59

how most calendars are organized or religious

29:02

and otherwise. And then tragic

29:05

time, which is the slowness

29:08

in which you can walk outside and wonder why

29:11

anyone would have the right to eat a decorative salad.

29:13

Because like, don't you know that? And

29:16

that feeling of don't you know that is also

29:18

like a intense liminal season.

29:21

And we also can't live there forever. Right.

29:24

I do, I see.

29:27

You got very, very impatient. You

29:29

probably still are about people complaining

29:32

about aging.

29:32

I try to be nice.

29:35

I do. I am kind of a dick

29:37

about it though.

29:39

Depending. Yeah,

29:42

I guess maybe for a bit. I think

29:45

it was in part because I just, I would reach the edge

29:47

of my brain every time people

29:49

were planning for retirement. And

29:52

I just couldn't picture the

29:54

sort of stability that lets people's sort

29:56

of brain unravel into these nice long

29:59

loops. And so, yeah,

30:01

birthday parties, retirements, I

30:04

wasn't at my best. But in my defense, I

30:06

work with almost exclusively 75 to 80-year-olds because

30:09

I live in one of the only remaining gerontocracies,

30:11

the university,

30:12

which I cherish. And so all of my

30:14

friends were 80, and they understood. They

30:16

agreed that it was ridiculous. Yeah.

30:18

But also, I think

30:21

you would deploy your fantastic

30:24

wit because what

30:26

a luxury, what a privilege it

30:28

is to age for

30:31

you looking at another life where you were

30:33

measuring your life

30:35

in two months or three months or six

30:37

months, increments. I mean, that was what I think. I

30:39

know people who, every cancer has become

30:41

a chronic illness in our time, which is miraculous,

30:44

but also a

30:45

very new way to live. Because when you would go for

30:47

your two months, you were only given another

30:49

two months to live. Yeah, okay. You weren't

30:51

given the rest of what you would have thought would be the rest of

30:54

the life. I think, too, I was feeling

30:56

so frustrated with... Like,

30:58

I'd had this very surreal experience where I wrote

31:00

an op-ed, but accidentally included

31:02

all my information, very close to the

31:05

end, where Gary from Indiana

31:07

could email me. And there was a lot

31:09

of Garys from Indiana who

31:12

wrote to email, like to suggest

31:15

advice for how to live. And in their

31:17

versions of, like, in my long

31:19

life, I've learned that. I

31:22

think that just broke a part of my heart that imagined

31:25

that I would see all the accumulation

31:27

of everything I'd ever worked

31:30

for, especially in the university

31:32

where, I mean, every book takes a decade.

31:35

So we think... And you had done it. You'd

31:37

just... You were walking that path.

31:40

Let me feel it. Let me feel it, Gary.

31:42

Um, only

31:44

one time though, truly a guy named Gary from

31:47

Indiana, wrote me this super jerky

31:49

note, and then on a church bulletin

31:51

and then mailed it to me, which

31:54

was a brave move, because his

31:57

church's email address was right there. And

31:59

so I...

31:59

I just emailed Gary's pastor.

32:01

Dear Gary's pastor, I am

32:03

a professor at a divinity school. I

32:06

also teach pastors. We

32:08

can imagine that Gary was

32:10

not listening during your sermon. That's

32:13

what I needed in that moment. Did you ever

32:16

hear how that story went? The pastor's back,

32:18

it's getting down. He

32:20

did it,

32:20

GED.

32:22

So I really wanna ask you about,

32:27

I wanna ask you about God, which is such an

32:29

inadequate little tiny word that doesn't

32:31

even, you know, where somebody were pointing

32:33

at rather than describing. I don't

32:35

know if, I mean, one, I

32:38

think that occurs to me is, you

32:41

think about this a lot, I thought about it a lot

32:42

immersing in you, in your story.

32:45

It is such a strange thing about us,

32:49

as creatures that we

32:51

have to hit bottom or face our

32:53

mortality, right? That we have to come

32:55

to the end of what we thought we knew and where our

32:57

capacities give out

33:01

to often grow and deepen

33:04

in ways that were not

33:06

accessible to us before. So

33:11

I don't know, it feels to me like it's a little bit about if you

33:13

believe in God, what does that say about God? What

33:16

does that say about God?

33:19

Right, wow.

33:23

Yeah, and that is one of the, I

33:26

think one of the hardest things to summarize,

33:29

which you just did so beautifully about the, unless

33:33

we feel our own breaking, it is

33:35

hard to grow.

33:36

And yet our culture has descriptions

33:39

for that, you know, that everything

33:41

happens for a reason or that

33:42

it made me who I am today.

33:45

And none of those get

33:47

to, they

33:49

don't encapsulate the fear, oh

33:53

my gosh, like the fear of

33:55

like, waking up in the morning and thinking it was

33:57

a dream and then remembering again. Like

34:00

the feeling like not

34:02

a bit of your effort is ever going to remake what

34:05

you're losing and what you're taking away from everyone else. When

34:08

I think about what my spirituality means in

34:10

the context of cancer, I think I

34:12

mostly think of that. Like not

34:15

the easier

34:17

bits where I like could

34:21

re-attract or have

34:23

a worldview anymore. I just

34:25

like I needed the, it's

34:29

that feeling where your like toes are curled over the edge

34:32

and you can sort of feel the upward draft. And

34:34

like I needed in that to know that

34:36

there was a God who

34:39

could love me in that situation without

34:42

me then believing that my

34:44

love was going to earn me back what

34:46

I had lost. So yeah, I think

34:48

that was one of the weirdest experiences

34:51

I've ever had really was I had

34:53

been a kind of an earner striver type as

34:55

you can imagine, especially

34:58

even with spirituality. Like I just, I wanted to be

35:00

good. And then in

35:03

the hospital as I felt so

35:05

angry and so broken,

35:07

I felt really, really loved,

35:10

like bizarrely loved

35:14

by other people, but

35:16

weirdly also about God. And

35:18

I really kept that to myself because

35:21

it felt embarrassing, honestly, and hard to describe

35:24

because it was, because it didn't mean that I wasn't

35:26

unbelievably angry. I just felt somehow

35:29

like cherished

35:32

in my one ridiculous

35:35

life. Like my death would matter

35:38

even if it felt like it wouldn't matter.

35:41

Would you inherit some of

35:43

that

35:45

from the spiritual world of your childhood?

35:48

I guess I

35:50

wonder if, because everybody,

35:53

a lot of people get that. I also

35:55

had a religious upbringing

35:58

that I wouldn't return to in that form.

35:59

But I feel like I did.

36:02

This was transmitted

36:04

to me that

36:06

behind this world there is love. And

36:09

I wonder, and it sounds like you had

36:12

that too and it came back to you in the most improbable

36:14

time. I don't think I'd ever felt

36:16

this sort of strange, we're

36:18

getting to the edge of my ability to describe things well,

36:20

but like transcendent feeling. Because

36:23

as much as I am a massive emoter, I

36:26

haven't had a very emotional spiritual

36:28

life. I just kind of had a set

36:30

of beliefs that I really like and

36:33

kind of kept on trucking.

36:34

So often true theologians. So I

36:36

was like, it looks good. And

36:38

it fits together and great. But

36:44

the feeling where I didn't even know

36:46

who I was anymore, except that

36:48

I could tell that one hook I could hang

36:51

it on was with the knowledge

36:53

that somehow I was loved.

36:57

Totally in the field loved, you know,

36:59

burdenatory loved. But like,

37:02

I think it's just, I

37:03

had spent so many months before I got

37:06

diagnosed being treated so badly by

37:08

the medical profession. I had been turned

37:10

away so many times for care. And

37:12

so by the time I got there, it was state

37:15

war. And that feeling of being worthless.

37:17

Really

37:19

I think that was the,

37:21

that was the,

37:25

felt worthless.

37:27

So to feel loved felt

37:30

like.

37:32

I wish

37:34

I were sitting close. Would

37:37

ruin that jumpsuit. Sorry,

37:42

I never bring clean it. I really

37:44

regret it. Oh my God, thank you. Well,

37:47

truth is off. So

37:52

yeah, we have just lived through this collective

37:54

trauma facing our mortality with the

37:56

pandemic with so much loss and

37:59

such a.

38:00

Such an experience of precarity.

38:03

And I think that these patterns

38:05

that you describe and

38:07

this need to control, which

38:09

is so natural, so understandable,

38:12

to control the narrative, like it was also

38:15

directly present in this. And

38:17

you gave a commencement address at McAllister.

38:20

And what was it? I

38:23

went to this hippie school that I love so much, McAllister

38:26

College,

38:26

just a drum circle away

38:28

if anyone ever wants to visit. So

38:31

what was

38:34

it? It was the 2021 commencement

38:36

for the class of 2020 and

38:38

the class of 2021. Oh

38:41

my gosh, those poor sweeties. Like they got nothing.

38:45

That it was your, you said to them, it is my

38:47

great privilege not to lie to

38:49

you.

38:50

I'm like the worst commencement

38:52

speaker ever. There

38:55

will be no reaching for the stars. There

38:58

will be no anything is possible.

39:01

But I felt so bad for them

39:03

because they, I mean, they, they graduated

39:05

into just nothing. And then these

39:07

poor little stragglers came back a year later

39:09

to put their hat on and I was so

39:12

happy for them, but it felt, it

39:14

was kind of, it was, it was perfect for

39:16

me because I could go to a group

39:19

of like

39:20

survivors

39:22

and just say, wow, we

39:24

are, we really are changed,

39:27

aren't we? And the regular probably kind

39:29

of platitudes

39:29

won't work on us, will they?

39:32

But I don't think we're saying that out loud

39:35

enough. And it's, again, it's

39:37

understandable, but we,

39:38

we really want and physically need

39:41

in our bodies to know that it's going to be okay

39:43

and that we can get back to normal. And

39:45

in fact, you, you wrote somewhere about

39:49

so many people who are so bad with

39:51

your suffering, or so bad with somebody else's suffering,

39:54

but you had this friend

39:56

who is a pediatric oncologist, Ray, and I,

39:59

I feel like you offered

40:03

these

40:03

college graduates the

40:06

graceful, generative

40:08

presence that he offered you.

40:12

He was so good to me, because

40:15

it was one of those pediatric

40:17

oncology.

40:20

I mean, that is a ministry and a calling.

40:23

And

40:25

what I learned

40:27

from him from other doctors

40:29

who are so good at that feeling, because what

40:32

I realized what hope is, isn't sort

40:34

of the skipping to the end, just

40:36

telling me everything's gonna be okay, which is wonderful

40:38

too. But it's the feeling where someone keeps

40:41

pace with exactly where you're

40:43

at, and helps you find the edges

40:45

of what you can hope for. And so

40:48

I got great advice. When

40:51

you make a hard decision, I had to make a decision

40:53

about this really

40:56

intense liver resection, where

40:58

I could either choose to take almost all of

41:00

it, maybe down on the table, take almost

41:03

part of it, and then most of the cancer would grow

41:05

back. It was all bad choices.

41:07

And he was like, you need whatever

41:10

we decide, and kind of let me run

41:12

to the end of my thoughts. We'll put

41:14

it on the counter, and we'll say, in

41:16

this moment, I can say to myself and others,

41:19

I really did the best with what

41:21

I knew. And in all

41:23

of our hopes, it feels good

41:25

to say, not everything

41:28

is possible, but what is possible

41:30

today, and then emotionally

41:32

land on that in a way that's satisfying.

41:35

That felt like wisdom to

41:37

me. I was really

41:39

struck by how he asked you,

41:44

did he say something like, how are you doing? Are

41:46

you doing, I don't remember this. Something

41:49

about, he said, he doesn't,

41:50

he doesn't have a video, and

41:52

later you're like, wow, that was really good.

41:54

He said something

41:56

like, are you okay? And

41:58

you said to him, I don't know if that was the case.

41:59

question. I am except for about 10 minutes

42:02

a day. Yes. And he said to you,

42:04

I think most people would say great.

42:06

You're okay except for 10

42:08

minutes

42:08

a day. And he said, what are

42:11

those 10 minutes like? What are those 10 minutes look like? Yeah.

42:14

Yeah. And that was that that was so healing.

42:16

Yeah. Because it's that, you know,

42:18

2am, 2pm self, right? 2pm

42:21

self, we've got day planners. I

42:23

mean, people call us and we've got

42:26

the semblance of normalcy,

42:29

but like 2am.

42:30

Like, who are we? What are our big fears?

42:33

And, you

42:34

know, I stopped sleeping. And so

42:36

I would just wake up and it was

42:39

the scariest time of night.

42:42

Because there's no one to call. And

42:45

you're still you, you know, you're not

42:47

some like fugue state person, you're still you

42:50

with all of your regular delusions, and then

42:52

just bonus fears. And

42:55

I've really come to realize like knowing that that part

42:57

of ourselves is still us. And

42:59

reminding myself of that at 2pm.

43:02

I'm not a composed

43:02

person.

43:05

I'm somebody who needs to be like

43:07

bubble wrapped and hemmed in by other people's

43:10

perceptions of me because I will at some point

43:12

in 24 hours, I will lose it. Yeah.

43:14

Um,

43:18

you said something beautiful about touch

43:21

a while ago. What was it? What was

43:23

it? Oh my gosh, I don't know about feeling of

43:25

touch when you're like coming undone. And then

43:28

I just think I also think

43:30

that's something we

43:32

were just very disembodied in this culture.

43:34

And

43:36

I wonder if you have kind of a

43:39

how you think about embodiment,

43:41

even as a theologian,

43:44

or how this experience of being embodied,

43:47

including something like really

43:49

something really has such primacy

43:51

as the important one. I remember you

43:54

wrote about

43:56

when you went through that first passage of

43:58

surgery and you couldn't touch your I

44:01

couldn't touch you. And how exhausting

44:03

that was to not be able to touch.

44:06

Yeah. Yeah. I had

44:08

a port and a chemotherapy bag so I had

44:10

to hold around, you know, I had to hold on my chemotherapy

44:13

fluids with me for a lot of the week. And

44:17

then, you know, you can't lift a certain amount. So I

44:19

would see this little fishy-faced

44:22

chair running around and like the ache

44:24

of touch. And then the wanting

44:26

to be like not medically

44:28

touched

44:29

all the time.

44:30

And I

44:32

do think it's kind of

44:34

an amazing thing that our minds can

44:37

do that we can, especially when we suffer,

44:39

we can go in and out of our bodies. We

44:42

can kind of put it down for a minute, which

44:44

is our body's wisdom and response

44:47

to trying to avoid the implications

44:49

of trauma. But

44:52

the ability to have people who help bring

44:54

us back to ourselves, I

44:57

don't think I had enough theological language to

44:59

do that. I needed to borrow other people's

45:01

because at first I thought, well, I

45:05

just remember calling another person with chronic pain

45:07

and she was like, Oh yeah, mostly I just feel like

45:09

a kind of garbage bag of

45:12

jello and car parts most of

45:14

the time. But the feeling

45:16

then in that moment when you suffer is like, well,

45:18

do I lose everything? Do I lose? I

45:20

think what I realized too, I was losing

45:23

the feeling of being young that

45:25

I had gotten too old too fast

45:28

because I really had tried to cram it in.

45:32

You were kind of trying to cram it in before you got

45:34

sick. Yeah, I have like a in it to win

45:36

it.

45:37

And I would like set

45:39

dates. I'd be like, if I just make it to 50, you

45:41

know,

45:43

and then you have a million friends who are 50

45:46

and they're like, Oh, love, you know, everything

45:48

comes undone. Everything

45:51

gets put back together. We do this over and over.

45:53

So

45:54

finding ways to try to come back

45:57

into a body that I kept putting aside has taken

46:00

me longer, a lot longer than I thought.

46:02

I think because I didn't realize that I was

46:04

grieving, not just the experience of mortality,

46:07

wanting to feel my age. Yeah. And

46:09

then,

46:10

you know, and then not being sure how

46:12

to survive, I guess.

46:15

Do I get to be superficial again? You know,

46:18

do I get to... You get

46:20

to be funny again. I think you were funny the whole way

46:22

through. Thank

46:24

you. Love you. Thank you. Are

46:27

you 40? No? Yeah, I'm crushing it. I'm...

46:31

Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel young

46:34

again? Because you really are. I know people turn 40 and

46:36

I think they're not. But we can tell you from another

46:39

place on the spectrum.

46:40

Yeah. Very, very young. Well,

46:43

I think the absorption of the like,

46:45

aging is an effing privilege. Yeah.

46:48

Has really helped me feel great

46:50

about birthdays. Not

46:53

ever as an accomplishment, but as that feeling

46:55

where you get to look behind you and feel... sort

46:58

of like see all the little breadcrumbs scattered

47:01

around leading you to the like, the

47:05

sparkliness of that moment. And

47:07

that's usually just like reminders of crap other

47:09

people did for you. Accomplishments

47:11

you had that you promptly forgot and then decided

47:14

weren't important and came

47:15

up with new ones. All

47:16

the small absurdities

47:19

that make us human, I guess. you

48:01

What at this point is your

48:05

working definition of hope?

48:07

Yeah.

48:10

I think before I would have said it was something

48:12

like certainty. Like I might have looked from a

48:14

doctrinal perspective and been like, well,

48:17

Krista, thank you for asking. I actually have six

48:19

things about God I'd love

48:19

to show you.

48:22

Because we have a big, depending

48:24

on your story of faith, you know, it's a long

48:26

time scale. That

48:29

it's the consummation

48:31

of the earth and the great

48:33

triumph of good or evil, etc., etc.

48:37

But I think hope

48:39

now feels like God

48:42

and love is like

48:44

an anchor that's dropped way

48:47

in the future. And I'm just,

48:50

along with everyone else, being slowly pulled

48:52

towards it. And that feeling

48:55

won't always feel like the details

48:57

of my life has somehow clicked into

48:59

place, and that I get to feel the fullness

49:02

of my life. But that ultimately that

49:05

this is a good

49:06

story. It's just not

49:09

only mine.

49:13

And

49:14

if I ask you just, you know,

49:16

right now today,

49:17

how

49:18

would you just begin to

49:22

think out loud about

49:25

what your sense is of, you

49:27

know, what the evolution has been of in

49:29

your body and your understanding of what

49:33

it means to be human?

49:35

Really small question. But I

49:37

know you're up to it. What does it mean to be human? Yeah. I

49:41

think it started in that one feeling where

49:44

something broke, where I had thought

49:46

it was that I could stack up, that

49:49

it was an accumulation,

49:51

that it was some kind of

49:52

building feeling. And

49:54

then that's a life. But that's like

49:57

a very bucket listy, you know,

49:59

collect all the things.

49:59

dozen experiences,

50:02

go to Machu Picchu. I

50:04

hope

50:05

you have your green smoothies feeling

50:08

and I would do that all the time with like building my morning routine

50:11

and always imagining that something just had

50:14

to be

50:14

like checked off.

50:16

And I think once I knew that

50:18

that's the feeling of that is

50:20

really satisfying but you know

50:22

in any second in your life you're sort

50:25

of like wearing a sweater and then one

50:27

thing pulls the thread and then you're just not wearing

50:29

a sweater anymore. Knowing

50:31

that I think we really

50:33

did transform a

50:34

feel I don't know how to describe it it's like

50:37

a

50:37

feeling I had about myself that felt

50:40

a little like I don't

50:42

know if it felt like pride but

50:44

it felt something like being self-constituted

50:47

and when that was gone that

50:50

humility I think that I learned

50:53

by being devastated. I

50:56

just it changed how I see other

50:58

people and so I feel like I recognize

51:00

it so much more quickly than other people that cracked

51:02

open feeling and then that kind of changed

51:04

my work is I feel not

51:07

in any way dispassionately about other people.

51:09

I feel intense and

51:12

which you see so much crazy in my eyes right

51:15

now but like I feel inside

51:18

out and I don't think I ever want

51:20

to lose that. Boy

51:23

is that something that it's

51:25

hard won right because again

51:28

we don't learn to be to live inside

51:30

out and it's not rewarded and it's

51:33

a vulnerable way to live. That

51:37

softness.

51:39

But you see it in other people right and then

51:41

you know yeah yeah like you're

51:43

my people yeah and I

51:45

can see that from a hundred miles away.

51:49

So that first academic

51:51

book or maybe I think was your first was blessed.

51:54

Yeah

51:55

and recently you've taken to writing blessings

51:58

which is actually a practice.

53:59

of your books where you were

54:02

having a conversation with your father, I think,

54:04

and I think maybe you said that

54:06

you wished you were a superhero, and he

54:08

said, you are a superhero, I

54:10

just wish you didn't have to be. And

54:13

I kind of feel that way sitting with you here.

54:16

We're also, you've

54:18

become such a teacher through

54:21

experiences, no one would

54:24

ever wish that you had to have, that

54:26

you are our teacher, and I'm

54:28

sure I seek for everybody to say, so

54:31

what a gift it is to have you here in the

54:33

flesh.

54:34

I'm a little bit too busy.

54:36

I'm a little bit too busy. I'm

54:39

a little bit too busy. I'm a little bit too

54:41

busy. I'm a little

54:43

bit too busy.

54:45

So, I thought to

54:47

close, and these will be our last words, I

54:49

would just ask you to read, to offer

54:52

one of these blessings up. Yeah, is it a sarcastic

54:54

one? Because some of them are spicy. You like, no,

54:56

I think you like this one. I

54:59

feel so good. Look at this. This is

55:01

a real trust fall. Yeah.

55:02

You could have written something in the middle, and I'd still read it.

55:04

I just want you to know.

55:06

Oh, this is about befores and

55:08

afters. And the thing at the end

55:11

is like a thing my sister said

55:13

to me on my worst day.

55:16

All right, my love. Thanks for being, isn't

55:18

she honestly the most spectacular human being?

55:20

Surely?

55:21

Oh. What

55:23

is it? Next

55:26

level. Next level person. All

55:29

right, my dears. This is a blessing

55:31

for befores and afters.

55:33

If you've ever had a moment where things came

55:36

undone bigger and small, then this is all

55:38

for you.

55:39

Blessed are you when the shock

55:42

subsides, when vaguely

55:44

you see a line appear that divides

55:46

before and after.

55:48

You didn't draw it, and

55:50

you can barely even make it out.

55:52

But as surely as minutes add up to hours

55:54

and days, here you are, forced

55:57

into a story you never would have written.

56:00

Blessed are you in the tender place

56:03

of wonder and dread, wondering

56:05

how to be whole when dreams have disappeared

56:08

and part of you with them, where

56:10

mastery, control, determination,

56:13

bootstrapping, and grit are

56:15

consigned to the realm of before where

56:17

most of the world lives,

56:19

in the fever dream that promises infinite

56:22

choices, unlimited progress,

56:25

best life now. Blessed

56:27

are we in the after, loudly

56:29

shouting, is there anybody here? We

56:33

hear the echo, the shuffle of feet,

56:35

the murmur of others asking the same

56:38

question, together in the knowledge

56:40

that we are far beyond what we know. Show

56:44

us a glimmer of possibility in

56:46

this new constraint that small

56:48

truths will be given back to

56:50

us. We are held, we

56:53

are safe, we are loved,

56:56

we are loved, we are loved, and

56:58

best of all, we are not alone.

57:01

Thank you, money. Thank you,

57:03

Kate. Thank you, everybody. Thank

57:21

you.

57:44

Her

57:51

books include Everything Happens

57:54

for a Reason and Other Lies

57:56

I've Loved, Blessed

57:58

a History of the American.

57:59

and prosperity gospel, and

58:02

most recently, the lives

58:04

we actually have. 100 blessings

58:07

for imperfect days. She

58:09

also hosts a podcast called Everything

58:12

Happened. Special thanks

58:14

this week to Tricia Johnson, Kira

58:17

Stein, and Kitty Boone,

58:18

and every loose at the Instant

58:20

Idea System.

58:31

The On Being Project is Chris

58:33

Hegel Loren Drummerhausen Eddie Gonzalez

58:36

Lillian Vo Lucas Johnson Suzette

58:38

Burley Zach Rose Colleen Sheck

58:41

Julie Seipel

58:42

Gretchen Honnold Paul Trego Tuma

58:44

Gautam Shrikashen April Adamson Ashley

58:46

Herr Amy Chatelain Cameron Moussar

58:49

Kayla

58:49

Edwards Tiffany Champion

58:51

Juliette Dallas Feeney and Anissa Hale On

58:53

Being is an independent, non-profit

58:55

production of the On Being is

58:57

an independent, non-profit production

58:59

of the On Being Project. We

59:02

are located on Dakota land. Our

59:04

lovely theme music is provided and composed

59:07

by Zoe Keating. Our closing

59:09

music was composed by Gautam Shrikashen.

59:12

And the last voice you hear singing at the end

59:14

of our show is Cameron Kinghern. Our

59:17

funding partners include the Hearthland

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Fetzer Institute, supporting a movement

59:29

of organizations applying spiritual solutions to

59:33

society's toughest problems. Find

59:35

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59:43

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Learn more at KaliyaPeya.org. The

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59:59

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Endowment, an Indianapolis-based

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