Your Mother Is Still Carrying Part of You | Dr. Kristin Collier

physician taking care of the image bearer of God. I'm a Michigander. As part of my story, I've spent fifty years in the beautiful peninsula of the state of Michigan. I live up behind my mom and dad and my childhood home. I can see them from here. Part of my story is I've been with my husband for thirty some years. We've met in high school and his parents

live right around the corner. So I'm a deeply rooted person in the state of Michigan with my family, trying to live, support my parents and Tim's parents as I get older, trying to be a mom and doing the work of that. I feel like I've been called to do in the work of medicine. That's my story in a nutshell.

that happen? And you said, you know, you and your husband have been together for a long time. Who started it?

clearly or otherwise were very small minded. So because of that, like we didn't have a Bible in our home, never went to church. I didn't know who Jesus was. And then I think, as people do, we sort of sort ourselves into groups of people like ourselves. And so I

came to the University of Michigan. From my undergraduate work in the nineteen nineties, knew I wanted to study science and medicine, and surrounded myself with other people who had views like mine that religion was for people who couldn't think very clearly. Otherwise we're small minded. My anti religious bias grew, I would say, but then in it was

in medical school. So I stayed at Michigan for the University of Michigan Medical School and was able to stay on for medical residency, and was joining that time that I really, I would say, started struggling and wrestling with God. Our hospitals at Michigan Medicine have a very high acuity, and some of our ICUs have upwards of like a twenty pc mortality, And I saw things in my medical training.

I would say that most people are like mostly people right are not prepared to see, you know, babies born dead and mothers of five being brought in with catastrophic brain injuries. And so during that time, you know, I wasn't ignorant of God, like I knew. I had heard that God exists and that he's all good and he's all powerful. I'm like, well, if that's true, why is

like this like allowed to happen. And so I became very angry with God about the suffering that I saw that, you know, in my mind, I had judged as unfair and unjust and really became a very I would say, bitter person. And I get I really get now. I think why a lot of physicians have a lot of bad personal outcomes, why they drink too much, like why they have a high rate of divorce, because they see a lot of suffering, and without a coherent worldview to try to make sense of that in some way can

really destroy your person, you know. So I continued in that way, and then through the sacrament of marriage, my world became to be shaped in a different way. So my husband, Tim, like I said, had a similar upbringing as did I. But then we started having children. We were gifted children by the Lord, and it was during that time that my husband had his own existential I would say suffering. He was like, we thought he was

losing his father. At the time, he was a newly married person, and he was like, what does it mean to be a dad? What does it mean to lose my own father? What does it mean to be a married person? And so he actually was invited to church by his uncle during that time, and he went and

he became a confessing believer. And this was like, I'm not sure I am fully down for this, Like I'm not sure I signed up to marry a Christian person, Like I don't know what kind of culture part of but I'm not sure that I really understand it or want to be part of it, to be honest. And my husband Tim was really patient. He took the kids to church by himself, and I just didn't go. And now the fourth child, Isaac, was born. He was born a little bit early, not technically premature, but early enough

so if he had failure to thrive. And so I was like, it's so exhausted, right when you have four little kids, Like I didn't know my name, right, I had like a five year old and a four year old and two year old and a baby, And I was like, what is it even going on? And I was really struggling to feed him. And so one night in October when he was a baby. I out of desperation when on the internet and I was like trying to find electation consultant who could come to the home

to help me with Isaac. And this one lady called me back and her name was brand and she came to the house and she helped me with Isaac. We got through that time. A year later, Isaac turned one. I emailed Brandy and said, thank you so much for you know, coming to the home and helping with Isaac all those months, because you're the reason we made it. And she's like, why did I tell you at the time, But I'm a pastor's wife. Do you want to come

to my lady's Bible study? And I was thinking, like, no, I do not want to come to your lady's Bible study. But because you've been so helpful to me, I felt sort of like out of a sense of obligation to go, and so I went. And I was in my mid thirties at the time, and so I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but I was like, this really lovely group of ladies talking about women in the box and

what I heard that evening. Finally I would say, you know, broke open my cold heart, you know, and people are like, well,

what did you hear? And I think, as a physician, what I heard that I hadn't heard before was that, you know, someone who sees broken bodies and broken people all the time in medicine, you know, to hear like this, this isn't the way things are supposed to be, and that you know one day there will be like a resurrection of bodies, you know, to hear that as a doctor, and that you know, God took on flesh and Jesus Christ and came to die in my place, and that

someday like Jesus would take his hand and like wipe every tear away like that. I had never heard anything like that. Like to me, that was more beautiful and stunning and amazing, like than anything I'd ever heard in medical school, right, and it just made sense like that this, this, this was true. And so after that I started thank goodness because the Lord brought so many people into our lives. Just started like listening to Christian radio and reading and

talking and people prayed for me. And then a few years later I was driving in my car on the Detroit Highways to work and I just had like this overwhelming sense of shame. You know, that i'd been living my life totally is like a nightmare. And all these things that I sort of took a lot of pride in, like my memory and my medical degree and all these things, they are all just gifts from God, you know who. I felt just horrible about the way that I've been

viewing myself and everyone around me. And so I, you know, was like I want to be baptized. And then the four boys and I were baptized in twenty sixteen into the Christian Church.

we don't do it because it's easier not to. And I would imagine that Brandy probably knew that I probably would have said no, and it's you know, people don't want to be told no or be embarrassed, right, But she took this little active courage and she invited me, and and you know, my goodness, like the ripple of

fact that invitation has had has been profound. So I'm so thankful for the Lord to be you know that you can work through us and have us be part of the invitation to people to be invited to him. But that sort of how things went down interesting.

made the national news. So I bet that that's the reason that you heard about me and the work that I do Bengo.

it's San Francisco Bay Area stadium. For the work, Well, they cut out a perfect cloth to fit right over the very recognizable Levi's logo. Interesting, and the message got out, Oh you want to censor me, Well, here you go. The message gets amplified when you do that, and that's what happened with you. I mean, I think a lot more people saw your speech and were impacted by your speech and your story than would have been had people not tried to silence you.

this time working on this talk. I'm not sure anybody actually heard it, because the talk itself, I thought was really lovely and it was sort of buried into the noise. But yes, I think the attention that was brought to the really real topic of viewpoint diversity and moral diversity within medicine and free speech and academic freedom, I'm I'm happy to sacrifice my talk sort of on sort of the platform of having us talk about bigger, transcendent things

like that. And I agree there was a lot of attention brought to those questions in the academy because of what happened.

You know what field has the highest percentage of atheists? And it was biologists academic. It is so okay, maybe they're both true at the same time. I don't know. But what is your experience, because you know, you kind of described your upbringing and if you were truly a serious thinking person, faith was not on the table, and

I grew up in a very Christian home. We talked a little bit about my family and my my dad's radio show, and I grew up with every opportunity, and yet even I had falled prey to the culture about well, if you want to be a serious thinker, God is not part of the equation. What are your thoughts on that?

There's this quote, I think it's from Saint John Paul the Second, and he says something like, you know, faith and reason are like two wings on which the human

spirit rises with the contemplation of truth. And I heard Robbie George talking about that quote recently in a plenary talk, and he said he thinks about this idea of those being the wings on which people contemplate truth, and he said his probably George grew up in West Virginia and he used to hunt and he said sometimes when they would shoot for sport and a bird would fall and one of its wings were damaged, that the other wing would just keep flapping right and as hard as it could,

but the bird on the ground would just sort of spin around in circles. It couldn't move because it didn't have the other wing right. And I love that analogy because I do think now that I have thank goodness because of the faith that's been gifted to me, a fuller understanding of my own vocation in medicine, and I'm able to contemplate truth. And I would say, if this were something that I were writing out to you, I would have put truth at the capital tea, because you

believe truth would be a person in Jesus Christ. So I do think that part of this. You know, Yes, I was educated. I went to probably some of the best schools, I would say, around, but because I didn't have the gift of Fai, my education is impoverished. It's interesting. I think about medicine a lot because it's my vocation and I love it dearly, and I do think it's under somewhat of an attack, a spiritual attack. I would say, he's thinking worth doing or that's beautiful. I think that

God's designed, I think that it will be attacked. But I don't know the data precisely, but we do know actually that a lot of there was a stot. Even Kristen Robinson a few years ago at the same time as I will use in papers, and she did a survey of physicians, and I would agree with you that

physicians are a type of scientist. But physicians actually have different religious sort of identification than most scientists do, and that a lot of actually, as you saw, a lot of physicians will identify as having a religious faith or

some type of spiritual practice. Although most physicians are most are more religiously diverse than the US public, they have a probably a similar amount of like religious identification that Kristin Robinson said that when her survey about a third of people in healthcare actually come into medicine because of their faith commitments, like it's the thing that drives them

into medicine. And then once they get into the academy, medicine because of its you know, bias or because of its imminent frame of materialism, makes it seem like you have to like check your faith at the door to be considered a legitimate person. And then that again is really not good. We don't expect other people to empty their identities when they come in to medicine. And actually we know, actually people's faith identities are a pathway for

which people can seek meaning. And we know actually that having a sustained animation of a sense of meaning is a protective thing for you to not get burnt out in medicine. So why are we asking Christian people to empty themselves? I wrote a piece about this and the Who's in public discourse a couple of years ago. It's

called the dark canosis of medical education. Thinking about pinosis means to empty yourself, and think about the kinnosis of in Philippines too that but in medicine is a dark pronouncis, it's a dark empty and that we're asked, specifically of Christian people to empty themselves. So getting back to this question around viewpoint diversity and just diversity, I think we've done a really nice job of about thinking about the diversity and the academy, but now as much attention to

religious diversity or viewpoint diversity. And again, if we're going to have in the spirit of university, with a spirit of open pluralism a way to discuss important matters that where life literally is at stake, we should be all at We should be able to sort of sit with people who have viewsed different from our own and be able to welcome people in the fullness of who they are.

And I think that this white coat walk out that happened to me a few years ago shows that we don't do a good job of being able to sit with people who have viewpoints that are different than our own. We don't tolerate right ethical dissent in medicine, and that's too bad because it's to our own detriment, because these conversations actually need us talking about them more and not lesson to sort of put it out into the open,

because we haven't set it explicitly. The reason that the walkout happened was because I consider myself to be a pro life person. So the issue specifically was around the students and some of the academy feeling that my pro life views that in part flow out of my Christian faith delegitimized me as being able to talk. And at the top I wasn't even talking about abortion. I just

like welcome to medical school. So again it made it seem like if you are a pro life or someone who identifies as much, don't, you can't talk about anything in the academy. So I think that's that's the interesting struggle that I think we're still wrestling within the academy is how do we tolerate peopoint diversity. Are there limits

around that? And how do we sit with each other as people of goodwill who made disagree about contested topics to be able to make sure that the best arguments rise to the top and we know what we're doing here.

a way. You talk about their atheist or no religion, but I think the religion really is the science in a sense.

that there is no view from nowhere. Right as you said, everyone's coming to the table at a physical table with their first you know, principles, with their faith claims, with their view of the good. Religion people and non religious people and everyone. We say everyone's religious in someone because

they believe it's something of ultimate meaning included. And people would say, well, you're you know, you are uniquely awkward because you have faith claims, and so your faith claims are the reason that you can't be sort of a serious person. But you know, everyone has faith claims. Yes, we have as Christians, we have faith in the resurrection of bodies and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But

guess why, Like everyone has faith in something. People have faith in science, or faith in progress, or faith in mankind or faith in politics. So again, right, there's this idea that like while everything else is like this common shared morality or that there's a sort of neutrality, and

that's just not true. Someone or some view is going to inform the situation, and we should be allowed to sort of have to make sure, because it's hypocrisy not to to make sure that people who have religious or faith commandments are allowed to sort of have a seat at the table. Your question about idolatry is super interesting to me. I didn't really know what that term was. Again, I have the literacy to understand what that term meant

before my Christian baptism. But now I do realize, looking back on my life, that I agree that I had made medicine into an idol. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that, you know, I think medicine is is. Who was it that said that we're all like sort of idol making factories, one of the Protestant theologians, But it's true, right, I think that medicine is an easy thing to make into an idol. It's very glittery, it does a lot of good, it holds a lot of promise, so it's easy to sort of worship it as like

the thing that can save us, you know. And I remember when I was in my twenties, and I was in the midst of, like, you know, sort of thinking about Jacob wrestling with God. I was a medical resident and one of my chief residents, Jake, who was the year above me, developed a really bad, serious illness, and it still shocks me actually to this day that he died under our watch. You know, we had like all the best things, we had, like a worldwide expert in

his disease. We have all the shiny equipments, all the medication, all the NIHS research funding, and yet he died. And I remember at that time being so angry about that, like it seems so unfair and so unshust and like, again, if God really did exist and he was good, how could he take Jake from us, you know? And I realized at that point, which was really hard to learn, but I'm so glad that I realized that at that point we thought I had created medicine into an idol.

And at that point I realized that, you know, medicine has limits, and I need to understand from who I now now now know from whom are all our health flows is the Lord. And medicine for sure can be used in pursuit and service of mankind. But it has to be properly ordered, because once our idols come crashing down, which is very painful for me, I think the right order of things shines out of that darkness. And it

took several years for me to see that. But I do think I made medicine to an idol, and I think a lot of people still have medicine as an idol. Medicine. I think sometimes there's this, like, you know, underlying assumption that if we just and I think I carry this, you know, it's part of the Baconian project, like that if we just have enough time or enough science or enough research, that we're going to be able meda through biomedicine, right, we are going to be able to overcome the biggest

human finitude that there is, which is death. And you know that makes a false It makes up any suparity of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Medicine is not gonna be our savior. Medicine has good goodness to it, and I don't want to discount how amazing medicine has been in the lives of so many people. But it has to be properly ordered, so we don't make it

into an idol.

the way that our ancestors did. Just as you're talking, I started thinking it may be true that doctors are bearing an unnatural burden for society that society wants held together. Now. I say that because generally speaking, in our modern world, death is isolated to a sterilized environment, you know, and instead of you know what I imagine to be the case in the past, where you died at home and you had to be surrounded by the body. I mean,

not to be graphic, but you smelled the body. I mean, you experienced death on a daily basis in its reality, not in a sanitized sense, whereas now I feel like doctors and nurses and everybody in your industry is kind of holding the weight of that reality for society.

had a body, He has a body. Central to our faith is resturctive bodies, and health is something that we should shepherd. But once we start putting again health as an idol, then we start to subvert all these other

goods right that we shouldn't. So, you know, nowhere in the scriptures do I find actually Jesus preserving his life at all costs, or the martyrs, like we know, actually right, like we have the perfect example as Christian physicians that you know, health should not be the highest good and We have people all the time who choose to subvert

their health for higher goods. You know, recently saw in clinic a woman who is pregnant and she has a high risk medical condition, and she is choosing to continue her pregnancy and carry her baby even though her life is very well, maybe a risk. Right. I have a patient who's a firefighter who subverts his health all the time by running into burning buildings to like rescue animals and babies and older people. Right, he subverts his health. Right.

We subvert our health all the time, even as parents, I would say, we subvert a health in some way. So we can't make health into an idol. And also I think we could fall into the other trap where we really are sort of not we're so we're so focused on like this gnosticism, like oh as christions, like it's really our spirit and our soul, and that's the thing that goes to the Lord, and that we think that our body doesn't matter, right, and that we don't take care of it. So I think trying to sort

of think about that ordering properly. The question of death is so important. There's a great book that I read from my friend Jeff Bishop when I was starting on my philosophical understanding of medicine, and it's called the Interspatory Corpse. So Jeff says that which is true that you know, a couple hundred years ago, in medicine's attempt to become

a hard science, it tried to. It can't fully, but it tried to distance itself from the Church, and doing so try to sort of leave behind all transcend it in metaphysical goods, and in that framework then of materialism. Then basically, Jeff says, because there's no escaton or there's nothing that happens after death, that death is like the end of medicine. And he said that we're all just innticipatory corpses. So the title of the book is Into History Corpse. And he says that the dead body then

becomes normative in medicine. And he says that this is played out because the first patient that you get in medical school is a dead one. It's the cadaver in

the gross lab. And so he says, if that's true, and if that's the framework by which most people are operating, then medicine is like a nihilistic practice, like what are we doing to take care of anticipatory corpses, you know, and then you start to see yourself as inspiratory corpse at best, right, the worst case scenario is that even within that you starts seeing life is just in people. It's just bags of blood and bones or molecules in motion,

and medicine becomes a nihilistic practice. So medicine has a you know, I think unique relationship with death. Society does in particular. I mean, I think medicine does have a front row seat to the reality of death. We see death all the time, you know, as you said, I can still remember the smell in my nostrils of the cadaver that I dissected in gross lab like twenty five years ago. But we've seen death up close, and you

know how horrific it is. That should provide us space for productively wondering about our own mortality and about the meaning of death. But because we it's uncomfortable, and because we're busy, we push it away. And I think again that causes distress in healthcare providers and the feeling from

the public that we can overcome death. There's an interesting piece that I read a few years ago that says that oftentimes, like because death is considered to be the ultimate enemy because again there's nothing after that, and we need to sort of you know, try to fight it at all cost. This leads to this right idea of like, you know, people being on machines when they should at home without the burdensome you know, ventilator or ecmol or hymandialysis.

But also about sometimes how when we when medicine does like a code, when someone codes, and you know it's someone really who should be allowed to have their natural because they've died at that point, most of them, right, that we basically like do this big show where medicine has this resuscitation and and like this whole sort of like sort of ritual around that because because death is like, to some of us, the biggest affront that there is,

because it's a failure of us. And again, like it's that idea that you said of like this burden, like we are carrying the like right survival of humanity on our shoulders, and like it's up to us to like overcome death and if we can't, we have to put on this show. And like you know, so it's really really complicated. And when medicine doesn't think about death properly and our health properly, and or the vocation properly. What happens is people suffer. So yeah, I think death is

really something that we should be talking about more. And I think the general public isn't have a good death that you said, because it's something that happens to other people or when it happens to people in our family, it's so walled away that we really don't have experience with it, as you said, until someone like you know a lot of my I'm I'm a gen xer. Right the first time sometimes some of my friends have seen death is you know, when their parents are approaching death.

And right if you said two hundred years ago, we would have lived, you know, in a place where our animals, we would have seen our animals eye at home. And again not to say this is a good thing, but like people would have you know, lost siblings and birth and you would have seen, right, your family and there'll be death and we would have more of attention to like what that looks like and not those opportunities are hard.

And I'm not saying that we shouldn't like try to, like, you know, help people live, but it's just the proper ordering of these things that I think is important. As you said, so we don't create an idol or that we don't sort of think about these things in a way that's so low that we are have a disregard

for the body or for our lives either or we don't think about them at all, right, or we just don't think about them. And that's that's really one of the things that I'm getting at is when you sanitize death, it becomes almost fictitious until it hits home, like you said, when a parent or a grandparent, or God forbid a sibling or a child. And so we don't see death, and then when we do, I don't know that we approach dying well.

I think I should as a physician. I think of the great physician himself, Jesus Christ, as my role model. And I think about Jesus weeping right at the loss of Lazarus. And if the divine physician can weep and cry and more in death, you know, so can I, you know. And I think of all the identities of Jesus that I relate to the most as a physician, it's, you know, the the image of Jesus Christ, as you know, the suffering servan acquainted with grief like I am acquainted

with grief, like physicians are acquainted with grief. But as Paul says, we're not left in that grief, right, We're not left into the grief of like people who have no hope. And what our hope is and what particularly that hope refers to, I believe is the hope and the resurrection. So yes, I can lament and I can work hard to take care of my patients. But I'm

not left in that despair. I can look forward to this to the day right in the New Jerusalem when the reseruction of the bodies, and as C. S. Lewis said, someday everything sad will become untrue. That's where my hope lies.

That's a false hope, right, and that could be costly in all the ways, Thank goodness, because I think, you know, without hope, right, we are we are left in despair, and so we have to have some hope. So where's your hope going to be? Is it going to be in the truth or is it going to be in your digitized consciousness with the tech bros. You choose, you choose.

I think you have a unique perspective on at least how you define it.

is a human being or what is a person? And they're like, no, I do you think about that when like that's what we do is we take care of human beings, like in persons, Like are those who are those terms the same? And maybe people don't think those terms are the same, Like what are the consequences of that? So it's interesting, but like we don't engage these questions of death, personhood, health, right, we just sort of we

assume we sort of know what those things are. This's actually wildly different ideas out there about what those terms mean. So again, after my Christian baptism, I realized I had a very thin view of health and I need to understand what that means. It's interesting, you know, there are many good definitions of health out there. There are many

bad ones. Lehne Cass, who's you know, is head of the President's Council Bioethics under George Bush, and as a physician and about athesists, his definition is interesting and his definition is health is like the well working of the organism as a whole. I'm constantly in a debate about people with thought definition. I think that's an interesting definition, although I still think it's a little bit too narrow.

So what is not a good definition of health is sometimes when I ask students like about the definition of health, people will say, what health is the actuence of disease. I don't think that's a good definition of health. It's very impoverished as really no positive view of human flourishing

at all. So one time I was asking this question to students and a medical student raised her hand and said that she had been an anthropology major at the University of Iowa before coming to med school, and her senior project was asking farmers in Iowa what is health? And she said her survey found that time and time again, the farmers would say stuff like I don't consider myself healthy unless like the soil on my farm is healthy, my crops are healthy, and my animals are healthy, and

my neighbors are healthy. And it was like this beautiful vision really of like health is like Shalom. I was not taught health at Shaloman Medical School at all, and I have since that time come to start to understand, actually health is right relationship. Health like none of us

are fully live by ourselves. I'm convinced of that, and I'm convinced that like health has to be realized in relationship, not just like on the horizontal level of like health with our bodies, with creation, with our neighbor, but actually on the vertical plane as well. We have to be in right relationship with the Lord from whom all our health flows. So I've started to think about health's right relationships.

Some of my critics think about it's too broad of a vision of health, where I think that while working at the organism of a whole is too narrow, So maybe the sweet spot is somewhere in between. But I've started to like use that as my framework to think about to think about health, and I think actually even without like theological commitments. I think there's a lot of social science out there that show is that actually health

is best realized in a relationship. There's a lot of studies that show that, like loneliness is just a big of a risk factor for bad health outcomes, as like smoking is or you know, hypertension. There are many studies that show that, like your relationships dramatically affect your physical and mental health. There's a really interesting studies synames I show.

There's a talk that I give about health is Relationship, and there's a slide from the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which is like one of the top academic journals in cancer, and it shows that having a protective marriage is just as protective for you against bad cancer outcomes as like traditional chemotherapy. And people use like scientists are like that

can't be real, and I'm like, it's real. So it's really interesting to think about our relationships and how they affect our health, and so what can we do to be relationally oriented towards one another. Again, I mentioned mcntyre at the game, and I think about McIntyre here and sort of this view of health I think that is being pedled. What would McIntire say about this current view of health, I think that's being pedals. So health is relationship. I don't think is the view of health that might

many people are operationally working under. I think what's currently especially in I would say the academy or secular society being would say sold because it's not their view of health. Of health is that you are most healthy or most flourishing as a radically autonomous, self sufficient person, free from any un chosen obligations, free to like self author your life and your body from moment to moment, you know, and first of all, like, none of us are fully autonomous.

Autonomous a myth, and even if we could be, like, why would we want to be so insud I think a McIntyre who would say, actually, you're not, you know, most healthy as some pivo solo automaton like seeking to create your own reality. But instead your most healthy is is McIntyre would say, in these networks of uncalculated giving

and graceful receiving, he would say, and I just love that. Again, there's this relationality there, and he would say, like, we're all on a scale of disability and actually you should be live, you know, in gratitude for the people who take care of you when you were a dependent infant, and we should live with antistary gratitude for the people who will take care of us when we do develop

chronic illness for advanced stage. So again there's us relationality built into that definition of what it means to be human and to be flourishing. That I really think is like missing in our current discourse, but needed again if we are going to have a type of cultural response and answer to the disembodiment, to the loneliness, to the suicide, and to some of these healthcare which I say are not healthcare in my farmwork practices of things likthin asia,

physicianist suicide. The last thing I'll say about that, just because we're talking about like death and relationship and how to die and productive wondering. One of my favorite authors, leylah Bresco Sargent. She wrote a book this year called The Dignity of Dependence, which again talks about relationality and how dependence is actually integral to the human experience and not something that's a temporary embarrassment that we should try to like, you know, get rid of or hide. She

says that like in the culture. When there is a type of error that we see about how we're living, let's say the adoption of physician assistant suicide or some other practice, she said, oftentimes the culture will hear Christians pointing out their no to that practice, and they'll hear them no much lotter than our yes. So they don't we say no what abortion, or no a physician assistant suicide, or no to youth in Asia. But they're not true.

We're saying yes to so again, I think as Christian people, we have something radical to say, as you said, about what a good death looks like, and we should be able to inform the narrative a bit and also live that out in Christian community, for people to have their moral imagination shaped about what a good death can look like and also how to live. If the last thing I'll say about that, my friend Charliekimosi wrote a book

this year. It's called Living and Dying Well. It's a Catholic response to physician assistant killing is the subtitle, and he talks about, right, this isn't just a choice of like how to live. We shouldn't obviously have a goal of how to live well. But he says there is like this you know work or this practice of like dying well, that also should be something that we should understand how to do. We shouldn't just think about it at the moment we're like in the units or the

ICU with like a dying person. That is not the time to get your like education on the fly, when you're all tired and emotional. This is something we all should be pondering. It's not easy to do. We need to do it in the moral community and with discertainment, but it's something that we have to do if we're going to be able to sort of think about dying well, not only in our own bodies, but with the people

around us whom we love dearly.

as you said we are not machines. I immediately went to hearing a phone call that my dad was on. So my dad was diagnosed about eight years ago with stage four mantle cell amfoma. What you hear stage four, you think that's death, which it didn't. Was not the case. He's in remission, Gloria God. I remember him getting on the phone with a very well respected doctor that was a friend of a friend, and he said, Hank, you're going to be okay. There's really good treatment for this,

but you need two things. Do not get a body mechanic. Get a healer. So the importance of a healer and your home. You can go anywhere in the world for treatment, do your best to stay close to home and your support network, because that is worth way more than whatever added advantage you might get by going to Texas or you know, Singapore or wherever it might have been. So I saw that in him, and it was true, And I mean there are so many different ways that that

I think that is true. And the nurses and doctors all said, you have no idea how big of a difference you are all making in his treatment by coming here every day, by being here with him, and the same thing a couple of years ago, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I really think that our relationship together going through that, Absolutely it's a huge part in her healing. Butlutly, and this is something that I've

been thinking about a lot. Just you've been talking. I do want to get to that we are not machines, but getting back to the idol of health, you know sometimes, and I've been thinking about it the whole time we've been talking. And I'll send you the book. There's a book called The Theology of Illness by Jean Claude Larch and he talks so he talks about in that book, and I'll paraphrase once again. I need to memorize it

because I talk about it all the time. That I remember reading and thinking that how could that be true? That good health can actually be evil if it keeps you from right relationship with God. Yeah, And so that idol of health can actually be an impediment in so many ways. And that I bring that in the context of my wife that cancer. You know, somebody the other day and they asked, in response to a video that

I put out there, They said, is cancer beautiful? And I said it can be and I don't say that to be cute, because I have real in the game. I mean, do Yeah. I don't know if I could just make wave a magic wand and get rid of cancer. I don't know, but I saw the impact that it had on my wife for the positive, and so many of the older people in our church came up and said, cancer, this is good, brings you closer to God because and this is also what I'm getting at, and I'm out loud.

That's what I mean about ignoring health and how when we don't see it, it becomes mythical in a sense. Oh that's not going to happen to me, and so we cease to ask the big questions. I think in our modern era we're not asking the questions that have been age old, like even do I believe in a God?

I think some people aren't. Even they might think about it for two seconds and the answer is I don't want to believe in a god because that I'd have to live differently, something along those lines, right, But I said a lot, tell me what comes to ye.

by Abraham Heshel, the Jewish, thelogian. He said he gave an address to the American Medical Association, I think it was in the seventies. It was called patientist person. He said something like, you know, medicine shouldn't just be some kind of impersonal practice on sick bodies, but it should be a personal vocation on ill persons. And that's like such a different framework if you see your patient as a sick body versus an ill person. I think that's

really fascinating and I really lament sort of. I have an interested narrative medicine, which is the use of language and stories in medicine. I think a lot about language, and I think a lot of particularly about language that depersonalizes or dehumanizes certain members of population who staging to be finding convenient. Like I'm very very interested in language

or on abortion discourse, in particular. But it's one of those things that I think sometimes this mechanistic view of ourselves and our patients comes into medicine and it's really to the detriment of like what we're trying to do, and it's impossible to see your patient as a person with a mechanistic framework. So I think the way that this happens, which I've talked about before, is that you know,

I get how that happens. I think a lot of young people, which is right, they come into medicine and they do want to take care of people, like they say, I want to take care of people. People matter. I guess saw my grandma got sick, I saw how she was treated. I want to do things differently, right, And they're very idealistic, which is good. And then they come into medicine and there is so much science to learn

your receptors. You're from acology, right, like your histology, and what happens is you know, I always I always tell students, you know, think about the first time you look at something under the microscope, maybe when you were a kid, like an old fashioned microscope when you have to close one eye, and I say, you know, we'll wonder what you looked at. Maybe it was a slice of an onion off your mom's counter, or a drop of pond

water or a splash of blood. You know what has to happen for you to look into the microscope, Well, you have to close one eye right, and that one open eye becomes like a scientific or technical or mechanic lens. And what you see under that microscope is totally beautiful. But now I always tell them, now what you pick yourself? Like looking up and gazing at a patient like lying in the bed in front of you, who's like saying to you, as a doctor, please help me, Like what

do you have to do to take care of him? Well, you actually have to see him with both eyes open. Medicine has to be a both eyes open type of vocation to see the person in the bed as actually a person, not just like a bag of receptors. And that other eye, I would say, is your antidote to the mechanic eye. If she a scientific eye, it's the I would say, the moral eye, your religious eye, your ethical eye, your spiritual eye. But what happens I get it.

You're so busy in med school because it takes so much time honing that scientific or technical lens, that the other eye becomes like atrophied or sometimes God forbid, you're told you better not open that eye and his work because that eye is nonsense, it's mythology, it's nonsense. It's going to get in the way of what you need to do. Right. So, then, but you're not going to see with that one eye. You're not going to see. You can't see that person as an image bearer of

God with your scientific eye. You need the other eye to give that binocular vision to this person in front of you. So that person lying in the bed isn't just a messy organism. But you know, a person, someone's mother, sister, like love, her best friend like that. That's what people deserve to be seen in the fullness if they are, and you need both, like you need your scientific eye.

I need to have my scientific eye to be a medicine physician, right, but I also in the fullness of what I do, so for me to maintain meaning in the work that I do, so I don't become a burnt out machine, and so the person isn't seen as a machine. I knew that second. I and medicine just doesn't do a good job honing that eye because I invoke some you know, spicy questions of meaning and right worldview and transcending goods and the divine that medicine doesn't

have a lot of literacy around. But yes, I have a very big interest in language, and I think this machine language is bad and it's a threat to our anthropology, especially as Christians that people are made in God. And what last thing to say about that is, I think, you know, there's more and more adoption of machines into our daily lives of some way, and I think the threat isn't that we're going to start to see the machines as human beings, but we're going to start to

see ourselves as machines. Right, That's the anthropological crisis that I see. So someone who cares about and writes a lot about lately, like Christian anthropology, that to me is the biggest thing. And I was just starting to understand what that meant when I wrote that white Coat talk

about we are not machines. As I was coming out of this idea, I've seeing myself as a machine and seeing my patients as a machine, and like the way that that was leading me down a bad path, not only did the patients deserve to be seen not as machines, but when I started to see myself as a machine, right, that's that's that's a that's a disregards my own dignity.

little too you know, this is it. And they failed to see me as a person who I hay, these problems are whatever. And I finally found a doctor who he opened with. You know, I told him my whole story, and I've developed type of chondria. As I get older, you know, I get white coat. And he just he started by saying, I'm glad you're here. And he told me a fear that he has like that. I thought, really, you've got that. And then you think, well, okay, somebody

might think that it's ridiculous. That I'm scared of X. Well, he just told me that he's scared of why and I thought, yeah, I'm not. Well, that's it. And and we both saw each other and he just kept saying, I'm glad you're here. We put too many labels on things, and we went through and I still don't like going to the doctor. Sure, But while some people are different,

my wife she's a champer. I mean, she she went through everything and and and she just she always says, I'm I hope that I die before you because I don't want to take care of you if you're ever seen. But I really, really I'm glad that you're out there putting that into the universe, that the task completion is not care. We are more than lab work.

sexual trauma for women veterans. We talked about high risks of you know, suicidality, especially the first year back we talked about how there is no like lab test for trauma, right, there is no scan that I can run on somebody to like understand who they are or like what they've

been through. And so the most important I think, especially in our age of like we have we have a you know, pet CT and an MRI and a full body scan, and we have all these like biological markers like those can be helpful if we understand how to use them. But still the most important tool that I have for liken nderstanding what's going on with my patient actually is story. You know, and read a share on Who's the Mother narrative us and says right that like

medicine should be centered around story. It's the only way that I can like take you know, when a patient has a symptom or a concern or a fear, they often come to see me about just being able to like offload that burden and for me to absorb it in story and to carry it like again, help share this burden of this worry and then we can process

it together. But for many of these things, the only way I can uncover what's happening with them and know who they are and then understanding because I know who

they are. I mean, I've had my patience for twenty five years, so I do know who they are, and I know what their their goals are and what we struggled with, and then I can understand like what ares most to them and how we should proceed, and like there's no algorithm that can tell me that, there's no chat GBT that can tell me what to do, there's nothing, there's no scan that tells me right, it's through stories.

So we cannot marginalize the importance of how medicine you should be considered as like two moral agents coming together in this covenant of sorts, exchanging stories and seeing each other as two persons, and that if we need to use some machines right as a scan or something, that's fine, but they should not ever come in the way of those two people coming together. So I saw I speak a lot about AI lately, and there was a diagram

that I'll show, which I think is so disturbing. Actually it's from a prestigious journal, and it shows AI as like a partner in healthcare, and instead of just the patient and the physician, there's like a triangle and it's like the AI, the patient and the physician and it's like this triangle and I was like, no, no, no, no, Like, anytime you put something into that sacred dynamic, we should be really sure we understand, like what is happening there,

because that is probably one of the most sacred dynamics that there are. I would say, I mean husband and wife, obviously mom and baby, but physician location is pretty sacred too, and I think we need to be really careful about who or what gets in the way of that because that is something that is precious and we should safeguard that, just like we safeguard marriage. Right. So yeah, I'm very

worried about, you know, sort of like. There's this piece and First Things I think a few years ago that I love, and it talks about the machine apocalypse, and the writer talks about how, you know, I think, you know, my day when we grew up and there were movies about the apocalypse, it was like this big fiery, you know, explosion. One day, everything just blit up right and blew up.

And he says something like, but what if actually the apocalypse comes so slowly that we don't notice it, and then it's like this chip chip chip chipping away of our anthropology, and I was like, yep, that's what it is, right. It starts with the machine language, and then it starts by like making us have affection for machines by anthromorphizing

them in like movies. Then it comes with like starting to see ourselves in our neighbor's machine, and then glorifying machines, and the language changes and the anthropology changes, and all of a sudden we have paved the way for like a post human future, right, and the techno grows like are winning? Right? It just becomes like the slow chipping away of like what is a human person? What does

it need to be human? And this machine ideology is I think the way that that that's happening, and I think we should be very thoughtful to God against that, because again, image bearers of gods are not machines, and they never will be right.

in high school biology. It's not something that I generally look into for fun. And I looked at it and I thought, wow, that is fascinating. And I actually got into science for you know, as deep as I could get, which you do a good job at bringing the cookies down to the bottom shelf. But I started to read into your work on relational biology and it floored me. I meant, this is interesting on so many different levels.

Could you just explain, as if you're talking to me and my family here, young kids, what relational biology is?

by ourselves, and that God in his own relationality. If we think about trinitarian theology, but also the fact that we are only known because we are sons and daughters of God, and we are creative by God's purchased into relation. That if God himself is relational in his person, which he is number one, and if He is the creator of all of our science, including our biology, then we shouldn't be a surprised, I guess to say and to understand that we are relational even on to the level

of ourselves. And I think that's so beautiful. And relational biology is definitely manifest in many ways. The ways that I have written about it. The most I'm most in it, especially as a mother, is around the maternal fetal medicine and maternal fetal biology. So the the paradigmatic example of relational biology is between mom and baby and their relationship. So briefly, what happens in a relation of biological constructor there is that we know that early on in pregnancy

that baby and mom share each other's cells. So, for example, the baby will send some of their cells across the placenta and go into maternal circulation, and those cells insert into mothers various organs and tissues and they start acting like the cells around them, and like any good relationship, some of the mom cells across across the placenta and

go into the baby. And what happens is that, you know, those cells are like you know, if you think about the baby cells that go into the mom, Yeah, they are half mom, but they are like but also from a distinct person. Yeah, the mother's immune system doesn't attack those cells and actually allows those cells to integrate into tissues and those cells start working like the cells around them. That is like radical mutuality at like a cellular level,

you know. And it's one thing I think for me to think about boy, you know, as a mom, I if I'm out and traveling or I'm met with my boys, to think about like that I have cells for my boys and my body. But the fact that those cells are like active and working inside me is like such a beautiful like relational gift from God. So for example, we know that you know, these cells have different ways

that they work. So for example, it's been shown for example, if a woman has a cesarean section, that those cells from the baby will migrate to that side of injury and start making collagen with the mother's body to help her heal from her wound from her sea section. Like it's just amazing, you know, And you know, I think again getting back to my definition of health that I think is being sold that I told you about earlier, that like, we are these radical automatons, radically autonomous people

who are solo and unencumbered. This science of what's called maternal fetal microchimerism migochimerism is the presence of a distinct amount of cells of a different person in someone else's body. So this maternal feal microchimerism that it's called really throws that radically autonomous view of ourselves and our biology up on its head because in reality, actually we are not solo,

radical people walking around fully autonomous. But the reality of biology shows us that actually many human beings are walking around with fromants of other human beings in their bodies, and that's radical. My favorite example of it actually is there's a book called mom Genes g. E. N E. S. And the book, the author talks about how there was a story of a woman who's one lobe of her liver, which was damn wage, was totally rebuilt by these fetal

cells in her body. And the story was made even more poignant because the baby had been killed through an abortion. And again, like it's this idea that like, you know, none of us are biologically like we think of ourselves these these biologically separate people, but so many of us

have cells in our bodies from other people. And it's just a beautiful, beautiful, I think picture of the relationality of God and how he designed our bodies and created ourselves to be relational, not just the macro level like we talked about in relationships and marriage and cancer outcomes, or there have been really cool studies that show actually that the most important thing that can product a person from getting delirious in the hospital when they're sick, it's

actually a presence of a loved one at the bedside more than an iPad. And technologies like the body we ourselves are gift and relationally therapeutic agents in our own selves. And also the level of the cell through the mom and babies exchange of cells, and we think that those cells actually influence later, our mother's risk of reduced to risk of cancer. It's certain the brain, right, and we

know women's brains are changed after pregnancy. And like any good relationship, the cells from the mother come into the baby, and we think that these cells can be responsible for spacing out of future siblings, can actually be the signal for like lactation. And because the cells go back and forth like that second, if the mother were to get pregnant again, right, some of the cells from the baby, first child, right, go back across the placenta, so siblings

can share cells. And you know, it creates these like intergenerational cellular sharing. It's so cool to me. And when I first read about this, because there's many there are many articles I've written about this topic for Notre Dame's Church Life Journal, but there's a lot of like PubMed our scientific articles on the hard signs of beautifultural micro Marizona. But there's a lot of it in like late publications

like The Atlantic and such. And when I started researching this topic, I was like, you know, I've had I'm a scientist, right, I'm a doctor. I study biology. I've had four children. I never once heard about this topic ever in any of my pregnancies and MOBI visits and any of my scientific study. Why is that? You know? And I can guess why that is, but like, that's just a shame, you know, because again, thinking about stat.

not a pastor. I want to use this to criminally, but it's probably the most pastorally therapeutic talk that I give because usually there's someone in the audience who comes up with me after and be like, oh my gosh, like I lost my baby or I lost my child, and I always sense them I maybe was still with me, but now I know from biology from science that they are,

you know. And I think that if we I think we really truly in the public narrative and in the scientific narrative fully acknowledged the beautiful reality of the mother baby relationship. It would make it would make practices like abortion harder to accept. I think the more that we can marginalize the dignity of our prenatal sisters and brothers, the easier it is for us to discard them as

part of throwaway culture. So I think the narrative is just inconvenient to the academy to highlight and what happens then is amazing things like pregnancy, and amazing you know, other realms of our science become disenchanted, you know. I know Mac Swevera is sort of the person I think about when I think about this enchantment. But it's true. If we start disenchanting some of the most enchanting experiences of our lives, like pregnancy, that's just a real shame,

you know. And moms deserve to understand really what's happening, you know, in their person and their bodies with pregnancy and feedo. Maternal mega chimerasm is such a beautiful thing, you know. So I'm glad more people are writing about it. I'm glad that it's getting out there a bit, but as yeah, it's it's it's again I think if we if we think about though, from where this comes. It comes from the Lord who designed us to be in relationship, not just again at the level of our bodies, but

the level of ourselves. And this feedom maternal mega chimerasm is just one example of that. I mean, there are many of them, but I think that's such a beautiful one.

I said it was, it was such a treat because oh ah, and then I started reading it, I almost didn't believe it.

this synergy that you're talking about. Another thing that i'd never heard of before I knew and I was talking to my wife and she was I didn't know that either, is that the placenta is the only organ in the human body that's created by both by two people.

cooperation and shared by two people. Yeah, And I sometimes when I talk about I talk I like talking about those Santa which is a very very like nerd niche thing. But sometimes when I when I when I'm talking about it, I'll use the slide of the Sistine Chapel ceiling of like man reaching out for God, right and their fingers

are touching. That's what happens in early pregnancy actually, is the mom and baby are like reaching out for each other, and they're like making this placenta, which is this shared organ through which they interface and belongs to both of them. It's really beautiful. Again, that's part of the relational biology. So sometimes I'll talk about that in conjunction with FETO material microplimism. Yeah, it's really cool.

the moment of conception, that's an eternal soul. And if your child died two years after you gave birth to it, you you you wouldn't. Oh well there goes like I'm not going to tell anybody. And even to the point where I mean, this was controversial for some people. My parents always counted the miscarriage for sure, always well, you know, so, how many kids do you have? Nine to the point where when and I never did count it as a

sibling because I felt uncomfortable cultural my wife. It's like, your parents keep saying they have this amount of kids, but I'm doing the math and I don't. There's one missing woman now, and I think that the way that we talk about things matters and totally anthropologically what we believe. Acknowledging that that child is a child, and then the story that you told about boarded child healing the mother, right, I think only further elucidates that reality.

heard from so many women. Layelabresko, sergeant I mentioned before, has talked about this and written about this, that she's had several miscarriages and she does not feel like to send in particular sort of counts the loss of those human beings. When sometime she goes into visits and she talks about her miscarriage history is anything like significant because Madison oftentimes really sort of has this paradigm, well that's just a clump of cells, or it's a potential person.

Really wasn't a full person yet or wasn't just like a heavy period or you know, and actually, like so many moms know that thoughts that's their baby that they lost, just and said, just like if they were to lost a baby two weeks postpartum. And before I was a Christian, I remember hearing people say, and I've asked them sometimes how many children you have? And someone we would say, well, I have nine, and you know five five with me and five are with the Lord. And I was like,

what does that mean? Like, you know, I was like, that's crazy to me, right, But now I know that

that's true again, and again why this matters? It matters a lot, right because again thinking about mourning the loss of our prenatal children or postnatal children and community and not having to go through that alone and normalizing these topics right that are really hard, and being able to shoulder the burden of infertility or pregnancy loss or miscarriage with others and understanding again like there are ways to

do that well. But also, as you said, the spillover about yes, how do we see, right a two hour old member of Homo sapiens who was created in a lab through IVF or how do we think about an

early stage miscarriage. Right. So again, if we believe that which was not a religious claim, actually there's a scientific claim that it's true that a new member of Homo sapiens begins at fertilization, you know, then that gives a lot of clarity to give us a lot of clarity about ethical topics like not just miscarriage an abortion, but

IVF and a sister reductive technologies. So yes, the way we think about things matter, and Lessie I'll say about thinking about abortion and relationship in particular is that I started putting that practice as someone who was militantly pro choice for forty some years, and now I think about abortion in a different way. But about you know, is

abortion health care? You know? And again putting it through the frame of a right relationship, I would say, I mean, there's a lot of reasons I could say that abortion does not health care, but through right relationship, it's a

destroyer of relationships. Abortion destroys the most valued relationships that there are between mother and baby, father and baby, grandparents and baby society, baby, and actually the right relationship between health care provider and baby in nocoherent model of health care, would I say that myself, as a physician, should aim directly at the life of one of those patients in

the room and call that healthcare. I once heard thinking about health as relationship and pregnancy and abortion, that the reason that society sometimes feels off and lonely sometimes is that we're literally missing millions of people who should have been here, but they're not because they've been aborted, and

we feel our absence from time to time. Again, that's that health is relationship, right, So yeah, I do think the way we think about, talk about, and acknowledge our prenatal children matters.

and she had one miscarriage that we know of, so eighty would you say that it's true that my mother still has cells from all eight of us in her.

I love what you keep saying. The word awe, I think right, and I think right when we have a sense of awe and wonder like that, it really is a type of worship. Right, we should like be falling to our knees about how beautiful that this, that this is because it didn't you know, God doesn't didn't have to create things this way, but he did, and we should like have on wonder and beauty about how beautiful these topics are. I you know, after my Christian baptism,

I obviously saw things in a different way. And I remember going after early on after baptism, went to Grand Rounds, which is our scientific conference in the Department of Medicine every Friday, and it's usually a pretty dry basic science talk, and uh, you know, people, you know, depending on your level of interest in hard science, people's interests in these

topics vary, of course. But I remember going to one of the topics and it was a it was a basic science researcher who studied the adrenal gland and the dream glands are these glands that sit on top of the kidney, and his lifetime of research actually was just

on this one receptor on the adrenal land. And he showed it like a like a picture of what the sort of schematic of this receptor looked like and all these other things that had to like intersect with the receptor and what that receptor turned on, and that this this protein that was made and this this sort of sort of you know, scaffolding of like cellular sort of activation that happened as a result of this receptor. And it was just like this one receptor on this one

gland that nobody thinks about. And I honestly, someone started crying in the audience, you know, and I'm like, I have through so many talks like this as a Zionis and just been like whatever, but this is like I feel like worshipping right now. It's so beautiful and that's just one receptor and you have never heard of and you don't even think about and you will never know if I talk about it, like what it even does. And it's crazy. And I was like, oh my god, literally,

oh my god. You know. Yeah, so again this enchanting people like, well, doesn't your faith take away I'm like, no, no, that my faith has caused me to see my scientific work in like technicolor. You know. Thank God. Right now I have the two wings, so I'm not just the one winged person put myself around in a circle.

I started thinking, wait a minute, if this is true, then it gets even more interesting when you think about Jesus and the relationship that he has r with his mother.

that affirmed life issues. And so my project was feedo Maternal microcrimeras. And that's how I worked on that, you know, project for like a year and was able to develop it and write about it and such. It was the only I think I was the only medical doctor. They were like theologians and philosophers and humanitarian professors and priests and people from different fields. So anyway, so I, you know, had just my baptized. My theological doledge was very poor.

I knew a lot about science, and I was like writing up this piece, and as part of our work, we had like workshop the piece, you know, with the group, and so I was pitching my talk and I still remember, I still can remember where he was standing because it also hit me like a ton of bricks. It was Bill Madison, who's a theologian and he was at Notre Dame, and Bill was like, Kristin, Wow, He's like, can you think about the implications that this would have for right,

for Jesus and the Blessed Mother. And I was like, oh, my goodness, right, rights, how beautiful? Right, and really again, as a non Catholic person even thinking about this idea of like the importance it would hold for Catholics around, you know, taking in the Eucharist and the thinking about the Body of Christ and thinking about the relationship between the Blessed mothers, someone who's highly exalted as she should be,

and her son. It's really beautiful. So yeah, so you know, then started thinking about this the god Bearer and the Theotokis, and I was asked to write a piece specifically on the theological implications is a Nobulo Jenio was like, you know, sort of like with all humility, tried to do the best I could with it. But by the theological implications of the god Bearer or the Theotokis carrying the souls of Jesus with her forever and ever, and that was written up.

It was so cool. It was written up actually for a Christmas edition of a magazine in Spain. A couple of years ago, and it was so fun to work on because I really got to explore that specific dimension of the blessed mother having the cels of the you know, of the incarnate son Lord Jesus Christ in her body. I mean, it's it's it's it's beautiful, it's amazing. And again, thinking of my pre Christian bias that Christianity was a faith,

I used to think that was anti woman. Now understanding actually that the role of women in the Bible and the fact that like God didn't have to do it this way, but he chose a woman to like carry you know, the incarnate logos and to be born at

the person of Jesus Christ through through a woman. And actually again as a scientist, hopefully I'm not embarrassing you, but also so like through the uterus, like the Uterus is like a redeemed space like held the son of God, right, Like that's amazing, and like like wow, like so cool, so cool. So yeah, so that's such a cool topic.

you're ey, a synergistic relationship. But then, what are the theological implications? I mean, what did you say?

my oven, if you've heard that before. So basically, the baby is the bond the universe of the oven. Okay, and again like that's not scientifically true. There actually is this like crossover of the baby's cells and your cells like this isn't just some like metal lead box and there's like this thing in there that then you just you're carrying as a vessel. Right, there's actually this interchange

of we're not machines there, you know. So again like again, how I'm verydercenting this topic theologically but also you know, biothically and practically. Like again, like this idea of this sharing of cells I think really comes into our discourse around IVF, surrogacy, pregnancy, but even around pregnancy, sometimes abortion discourse, people will say, well, actually abortion is healthcare because you know, it restores the woman's body to back what it was before.

And I was I actually, like, we think those those cells actually you're never your body actually, thank god, is never the same after pregnancy because we think these cells cross very early. But getting back to your question about theology, I mean, I think I just you know, there are many implications for this theology. I just think again about

you know, the idea. Again I'm very interested and again writing this piece right now about sort of the idea of like thinking about Protestant theology of the body and thinking about the role of the body and the body is not incidental at all to Christian doc drin and is central to the body. And in our current discourse we have a low view of the body and we privilege the mind is like the seed of the self

and all the implications of that whatever. But thinking about Jesus's body, you know, and and and and part of him being in his mother, you know is Protestants obviously we don't. We don't have the same theology of Mary

as the Catholics do. But again, if we think about from Catholic theology, which I'm not a Catholic, soy you tread into this space with humility and lightly that you know she is forever the theotokis like she is forever the God Bearer, because you know in Christian theology she is, she is alive and can interest we can you know, Christians, can you know go to Mary with intercessory prayer and sash and she still is carrying him. For Protestants, we

don't have that same theology. We shouldn't be afraid to exalt the Mother of God. She is. Without her, we wouldn't have our Savior in the way that we know him to be, is Jesus Christ. But to think again that like you know, I think every mother can relate to the story and the gospel accounts of a mother losing her son and about how Mary obviously did lose her son in a way obviously he was resurrected and overcame death. But even when you went to go to a son to be with the father, that he still

is with her in this bodily way. And again, like there's so much I think the stories of scriptures are so meaningful to me just because they remind me Like if I read the Psalms, I'm reading stories that people have prayed over and cried over for like thousands of years. That gives me this historic continuity with grief. And you know, I think about women who have lost babies, are people who feel distant from their children, even estrange from their

living children. And I think about there is nothing that like the Lord doesn't understand, and that like we, we are told so many stories of people who understand in the scriptures, and like the blessed mother Mary, like she gets maternal grief, she gets maternal separation, and also like it's a beautiful reality that she, like us as a human being, like had her baby with her like in her body. I don't know, I just think about that and just think about how it didn't have to be

that way, and it just helps me. Like, you know, I have a high view of Mary even as a Protestant, but it just again makes me think about her in this way too. That just is like even I don't know, more exalted And I hope as a Protestant that's okay to.

pack deserve and so that I guess that just was

My question is did this science change the way that you thought about the Mother of God?

eyded on. It shows actually Jesus Christ portrayed is the good Samaritan, and he's literally carrying us on his shoulders.

And I talk about usually use that that image as a way to talk about carrying burdens and how oftentimes like carrying burdens in the scriptures is nowhere portrayed as something pathetic or something that we should avoid, and instead I think of the of Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross of Jesus Christ, and then I talk about sort of carrying burdens in society and how that's going to have to be done if we're going to think about having a cultural resistance to things like euthanasia and suicide

and all of this. Yes, I mean, I think, you know the progressive revelation that you know we all are given and that I think you know, I love the story in the Gospels about how you know, faith comes

in these stages of sight that we sort of see. Yes, I'm so thrilled that you know, because of my thank God, interactions with Catholic people and Orthodox brothers and sos, and my Catholic brothers and sisters, and people of different traditions and scholars that have taken the time to over time sort of unfold the ribbon of the faith to me, and also people who have been able to help me see scientific realities in the work that I do. My reverence for sure of the Blessed Mother of the Theotokis

has only continued to increase. And I, you know, as someone who has my feet in some different spaces, I don't think, like you know, any tradition like owns this language, you know, I think these are concepts hopefully that we all can sort of speak about and with humility and

be able to talk about because they're beautiful. So yes, to answer your question, Yes, the theology informs the science, and the science to me informs of theology, and they are these integrated whole of my binocular vision that's helped me to see things, everything, including the Mother of God in more technic color. Isn't that great and isn't that beautiful? That's the way I think reference and worship shed maybe

should should progress right to have this continually distantensive enchantment, and to not be progressively disenchanted, which I think so many, so many people sadly are in that state.

In the East, we consider a theologian to be somebody who knows God. And that's a small distinction with a bigness.

meat lego gnosticism. She calls it, where our bodies are just meat legos and we just move around these legos of meat and doesn't have to mind me, like there's no man need to move around legos of meat, you know, because medicine has this s low view of the body, and I think society has becoming a low view of the low vy of the body, and how that influences our visions of healthcare, our visions of different biotleupal issues, our care for ourselves, what we may engage in or

may not engage in. Yeah, I think nacissism is like the worst form of dualism, and that dualism is infected. I think some Christians way of thinking about the mind, body, soul medicine obviously, and the consequences of that are real, as people who encounter each other as living and dying bodies.

That has a real consequence. This is again, this isn't just some idea, but I also I like that distinction a ton that I think sometimes our faith can become so intellectualized or we're so sort of like in our heads that we forget to like, as the young people say, gotten like touch grass, like have you stood barefoot on your grass today or this week or this month? And many of us would be like no, and our ancestors wouldn't have even fathomed and that like many of us

haven't been outside for like weeks, what does that even mean? Right? So, I think part of the enchantment that I think, to me, I would say, I can't speak for everybody part of I'm just looking out and to the creation right now, and I'm like, you know, my goodness, Like part of the way to protect ourselves from becoming disenchanted is like getting out into creation and like putting our feet in the grass and like, yeah, as someone who's talking with like a lot of books by me, you know, getting

outside is like to God's creative order, being with his people's that's where theologies at, you know, that's how we've done like understand, that's how we get to that, as you say, not us to know about God, but know him.

this is commitment to reality. Where are we most eager to ignore reality?

That's just like this vibe that you have and it's just like this you know, whim that you would have, or preference like you would have for pistachio ice cream. And what I say is actually your conscience. The goal of your conscience is that you align your way of thinking with the moral structure of reality, is what I usually say. And people are like, what does that even mean? You know, what is what is Kylie you're talking about?

That's just like some weird thing. Because why it's weird right some people is some people would say that doesn't exist, there is no moral structure of reality, right, because that sort of assumes that there is like truth, right, that there is actually some like non subjective reality and it's bizarre. But there are so many people that believe that there is no right, objective truth and that reality is like whatever you want it to be.

entertaining ourselves to death thoroughly. We're not. I mean, you talk about like the concept of a concrete reality that exists, whether you accept it or not, is anathema in our society, you know, where it's like no, no, no, no, Dave, you have your truth and Kristen has her truth and you are not allowed to question it, right, And so I mean the reason I stuttered, I probably shouldn't, but it just one of the main things that comes to my

mind is the gender situation where you're forced to say, well, now this is now you know, you know, my son packs is now Patricia or whatever, and I have to acknowledge that and not just like they can live that reality, but you have to subscribe to that reality, right, right, And there's this kind of strange dance that happens. But really more than anything. That's where my mind initially went.

And I know that that's what, but that that that is also I think my hesitance on this podcast says a lot of because I'm thinking, well, oh, what happens when this person listens to it. This person listens to like I always knew you were a bigot, and now you confirmed it. And and just this this inability to discuss hard ideas or reality or the big ideas right

because it's offensive. Well you you use the phrase the cream rises at the top, right, or like somebody, uh said something about science to me the other day, well, this is why people don't believe science, and I kind of well, I said, well, and he'll see you're doing it.

And I thought, well, historically speaking science, science, great scientific achievements have always occurred because someone said, wait a minute, you know there there always took one person to challenge the norm and then things change, right, And so all that to say I just commitment to reality to me really just means like you talk about touching grass, it's

like grabbing something that will not float away. Because I think I just imagine that with all these you know, ideas and kind of the creation of identity in any way. I just see people floating off into the ether. And and I want to live in alignment with reality because really another word for reality is truth, and you use the term capital T truth. So I want to live in alignment with Christ. So this is really I mean, it's commitment to Christ.

but everyone should have this goal right. We have to be truth seekers and truth speakers right, not just seeking it right, but also speaking it And as someone once said, like telling the truth is a revolutionary act nowadays, you know. And he talks about how this I listened to just listen to this podcast or was an interview that was done with him at a plog for our plenary. It's on Spotify. But he said, like, you know, which is true. I just haven't heard it in this very clear way

that we used to live in. You know, again this is a little bit simplified, but just for our categories or epochs, right that like you know, the medieval time there was this sort of this age of faith, right, and then the Enlightenment there was the age of reason. And now he said, we're in the age of feelings, and the feelings really is the way that we sort of discover truth. And then there because like any sort of like you know, challenge to our feelings is like

not had and like where that's gotten us? So interesting? There? Yeah, I do think my current I mean, there's so many ways in which people are And I like that you said too, which I agree with. I think someone once said, right that like wonder is the path to wisdom. It's because we have time to sort of like have this time to be like I wonder why you know I exist? Or I wonder why like you know this? Or that we don't have time to wonder because we're so distracted.

So I'm so glad you talked about like entertaining yourself to death, and which gets into is all these other issues. But we don't make time to productively the wonder about these big topics to our own detriment. So I think in my own space of medicine and bioethics, I think the thing where we are most detached from reality. It's a hard question, is and it sort of maybe gets to a little bit to your answer, is that the fact that there is human nature is something that is

created as such and that we've lost sense of. I would say teleology. You know, that like we were created sort of with this purpose or end in mind, and that human nature is a thing. Mary Harrington gave a talk for Hillsdale DC at hills LDC. It was the First Things lecture she gave. It was on YouTube a few months ago and it was published in First Things. The piece is called Timophobia about how she talks about how there's this phobia around Thomas Aquinas and some of

these thinkers in certain circles because of various biases. But she talks about right, which I think is such a cool phrase. She says something like human beings are not just you know, Adams arranged human wise, and she talks about again this idea of human nature and sort of gnosticism, and so people really think it's a radically bizarre statements even and can be controversial in some circles to say that actually there is such a thing as human nature

and the givenness of our bodies. So I think thos we're most out of touch with reality. And again, you know, since you brought up the topic of gender, you know there is just like on the topic we've tocolate today, we talked about so many difficult challenges, but you know, miscarriage and abortion, and we briefly touched on you know, I mentioned euth in asia and sort of gender dysphoria. There is so much trauma in these spaces, right, and

we have to have a response to the trauma. And the question is like, what does a compassionate response to suffering look like in these space It's not that we shouldn't think this trauma is real or that well we shouldn't like address these people who are hurting, because there are people hurting in these spaces, and so there is

you know, different ways that we can do that. But especially in my vocation, when our commitment is should be to do no harm, I need to understand like, who are what I am treating to whom I am accountable and have to hone my conscience in order to align

itself with the moral structure of reality. So I think in my situation how this comes to play in biomedicine is, you know, there is not a commitment to reality, and when we think about a commitment that human nature is actually a thing that is given, there's a loss of teleology and even this idea of conscience again just being some vibe or some feeling, I think, is what is risen to the top and we lose sight of the fact that there is actually a moral structured reality or

actually there are some things that we should not be engaged in because of the created nature of the world in God's law, and there are some things that are illicted for us. Those are the things to me, as a bioethicis and a doctor that we have unhooked ourselves from that have the biggest consequence in terms of divorcing ourselves from the reality of the truth. And there are many multifold reasons of how that comes to bear, but

that to me is the current concern I have.

aches and pains, my various things. And so I am no longer under the illusion that I am disembodied, and nor should I ever want to think that I'm disembodied, as we just talked about, So I really am very feeling the fact that you know, as I would believe, we don't just have bodies, but we are bodies, and in my embodied person, I feel really close in a really good way to the reality, the tangible reality of my people, my mom and dad and my husband who

I've known for thirty years, and my sweet boys. I also feel really you know, God's God's you know, sovereignty and his protection and his love feel really real to me too. I you know, as we talked about earlier in the show, I went through something really challenging professionally a couple of years ago, and I've had some tough

professional challenges since that time. And I'm reminded that, you know, you know, just thinking about privileging our health and our safety that you know, safety, you know, isn't the absence of danger, but the presence of the Lord. And I really feel God and in a way that you know is very real to me. I'm very thankful for that. I know that that period is you know, can can wax and wane from any of us, but right now very thankful that that He feels really real to me.

So I'm so thankful for both of those, both of those spaces beautiful.

I hope our paths crossed in real life and in a real way, that way, in body way, you know, sometime in the future, and I thought that will happen.