561: Emily P. Freeman: How To Walk into a Room

Music.

The return of Emily P. Freeman. We're talking about her new book, How to Walk into a Room, or should I say her new New York Times bestselling book, How to Walk into a Room. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation with our friend Emily P. And yeah, go check out her book. It's really good. And without further ado, here it is. All right, friends, it is my honor to be joined Joined today by our friend, Emily P. Freeman. How are you, ma'am? I'm so good, Luke. It's great to see you.

It's great to see you as well. I feel like the middle initial does a lot of work for you and your name. I feel like Emily P., it just carries a lot of weight. So I'm really proud of you. You made a great decision. I'm very supportive of that. Thank you. I mean, if you look back in history, and there's a lot of us who use our middle initial or who have like a middle name that we use. And I think you'll find good things if you follow that trail. Yeah.

Middle initial means substance. And that's what you are. I want you to know whenever I have like notes, like podcasts, this is a book coming up, or I reference you or I have something to, I always just write Emily P. That's the only way I refer to you in my own personal heart of heart is Emily P. Your last name doesn't even exist to me. It's not a thing. A lot of people People call me EP free. Is that going to win? EP free. That's really. It all rhymes.

Rolls off the tongue. EP free. I need to write this down. EP free. Where did that come from? Well, it's actually, it was an old email address, part of an old email address. That may be part of it. And then John, my husband, John used to be a youth pastor and some of the youth group kids like caught onto that. And they, they still like, they called me EP free for years. Yes.

And then and then now, like my team of, you know, the people who work with me on like, you know, the work that we do over here on books and podcasts, we are team EPF.

So it's EPF. It's like the initials. Yeah. It's a whole persona. Luke, really. You've done a lot of great things. Obviously, the next right thing. That was the last book, wasn't it? That's right.

And sometimes to talk about the next right thing, I feel like we need to talk about the last wrong thing. That's right. And the book, How to Walk into a Room. Like, it's a great book. That is the next right thing for us to talk about. But I think I want to talk about maybe some of the words that you wrote. And I don't mean for this to sound critical, but you wrote words that are really bothersome to me. I know. Sorry.

There was a foreword to a book in which you got, I believe, I don't know this for sure, and I don't know if it's public knowledge, but what I understood is there was some sort of threat on your family, your kids, and you were forced to write a foreword for a book. And this author the work the book was titled when the world breaks and the author I believe forced you to write words such as Jay has kind eyes in the foreword and.

Just I'm sorry that that happened to you. And as you like, move on in life, you'll probably want that sentence back. I'm sure. Yeah, I don't know. Because it's just so bothersome to me because it's just like, I read that. And I was like, I have to live with this friend in my life, knowing that he thinks he has kind eyes now. He does. Oh, my gosh. No, he doesn't. They're annoying eyes. Jason Miller. Goodness.

Everyone will agree with me. No, they will be on my side. No, they're they're not on your side. But what what I'd like about that is it reminds us that a very gifted writer such as yourself, I believe, Wall Street Journal bestselling author like that's EP free, like a very accomplished writer can still write a sentence that's that problematic. And that's that wrong. I didn't want to say wrong in that setting because you're EP free to write whatever you want. That's right.

But maybe just redact that in the future. Maybe in future printings. Yeah. That taken care of for you.

Okay let me tell you another story i have a friend from my church who whenever we communicate via email she will sign her emails with three letters p s k because once she told me that she reads the end of a book the last part of it before she starts the beginning and i said that's the kind of stuff that serial killers do. And I'm not saying you are a serial killer, but you seem like you're potentially a serial killer.

So PSK is now how one of my friends communicates with her preacher because she now has a name like that from her preacher. Do you think that your friend who does something akin to that has a possibility for murdering people?

I mean, I guess we all have that possibility right so maybe that's you know that's in her but I do think that you know someone who reads the end of a thing before the thing has begun there's there's a story there there's always a story there and I I'm curious to discover what that story is I am not one of those people I don't even like to read a dust dust jacket of a book like I would rather not know the title just I want to start right in I want to be surprised the whole way through,

Just before this started, I had to scroll to the top of this book so that I could see on the PDF the title of your book. I never watch a trailer for a movie if I don't have to. Why would you want to surprise yourself? But some people want to do that.

Some like to know the end before the beginning. name yeah anyway that's weird what is not weird is that you wrote a great book the title is how to walk into a room it is a book that helps us with one of the most central parts of what it means to be human which is like how do you know when to stay how do you know when to go how do you figure out you know what's the next step you have this line in the book the process of decision

making is one of my favorite things to talk about because it is a dynamic deeply personal and always always changing landscape, but it's also one of the things that has given me the most trouble in my life. How has decision-making given you some of your most substantial trouble in your life? I guess whoever they are, they say that we write the book we need most to read. Sometimes I would like to take them to court or to task because, and also maybe I need to wise enough to it.

Like I've said for many years, my next book should just be like how to eat an Oreo cookie. And then maybe that's the lesson I'm going to have to learn. But I think for me, decision-making like that, the crossroads of deciding a thing, whether it's to go or stay, whether it's to do this or that, to say yes or no, whatever it is, that's a space that I've always kind of struggled with.

And I think it probably stems from growing up as a good girl and always wanting to do the right thing and not make a mistake and wanting to avoid regret. And I think we all have our version of that based on our own, you know, families of origin and social location and where we come from and what happens when we do mess up and things like that. But I would say that that intersection of decision making is also a space where I have found.

To be, I have found myself to be most open for transformation, for learning, for most open to learning from other people, from hearing God. And so it's a vulnerable place for me in my life when I look back. It's a growing place. It's not always a place I enjoy. But when I do look back on life, I think, yeah, that's something that I love to study and look at.

It's also something that has been deeply uncomfortable. But I think that's maybe why I say that is it has given me a lot of trouble because I so desperately want to make the right choice always at all times.

Dare I say you always want to do the next right thing. You dare. You dare say. Maybe we're getting a theme here. I don't think we always know how to make the right decision. And I don't think it's always easy to know when to stay in a room, when to leave the room.

I had a conversation with a gentleman named Rob Bell a couple months ago and he was talking about this change in the work that he's doing and he made this line that has haunted me where he said something to the extent of we know divorces but we don't know graduations where we understand if something's going to end because there's a catastrophe if there's a major problem but the idea that someone is just going to graduate

to a different iteration different phase of their life We don't always make space for that. We just think everything is just going to go on in perpetuity forever.

Why do you think the idea of something ending and something beginning anew is so foreign for so many of us? I think most of us don't choose to end things, especially when if they're look like they're going well. I think most of us think if we're good at something, it means we should have to do it forever. I think a lot of us are afraid to ask hard questions.

I think in some of our rooms, we might slowly over time have started to dim the lights to where we don't see what's happening in the corners. And we fool ourselves that this is better than it actually is. And. Discomfort is something that we like to avoid. I don't know if you've met people, but most of us don't like to be uncomfortable and leaving a room when it's not an obvious next move can bring about a lot of discomfort, not just in our own lives, but in the lives of those around us.

And I think we like to leave when it's obvious. I think we are looking for readiness and timeliness to line up always like I'm ready to leave and it's time to leave. And so in the sense of Of anticipated endings, like he mentioned, we don't know graduations. I think there are in the true sense. I think there are actual graduations we can put on the calendar. We know when our kids going to graduate high school or when we're going to graduate

from college. We circle those and those are the times we toast. That's because readiness and timeliness lined up. We were ready to graduate and it was time. I think a lot of times we are looking for that poetic permission to walk out. And most of our endings or most of the endings that we choose anyway, we don't get both of those. We get one but not the other.

And so it requires a sense of confidence, a sense of wholeheartedness, a sense of clarity to make a step when one of those is not our current experience.

So leaving even though I don't feel ready, that takes a lot of courage. And there can be a lot at stake. One of my more business-minded friends has this piece of wisdom that he passes on to his kids and to younger people. He says, you know, you never leave your current job until you have the next job already in hand. Like, you don't leave the paycheck you currently have until you have the next check already lined up, which makes a lot of sense.

And, you know, as a mother or father, you know, making sure that their kids can pay the rent makes a lot of sense. But what I hear you saying is that sometimes the ready and it being the right time, that they're not the same and you don't have those things lined up as neatly as we want it to be. And one of the things you said before that is that we don't like to ask ourselves the hard question. We want it to be a clear cut. All right, obviously it's time to go. Everything's lined up.

As a spiritual director, when you're helping someone to, when you're making space for someone to have these questions, how do you help them see that it's not always going to be as picture perfect as you want it to be?

It's funny, you know, talking about spiritual direction, the thing about sitting in the seat of us as a spiritual director, you know, sitting one-on-one with people who are asking hard questions and, and the real honest truth, the honest answer to that is I don't always help them see that it's not going to be one or the other. Sometimes I see it. Sometimes I see it for like three weeks or three months before they might begin to see it.

And I think that's the beauty of spiritual direction is that you're kind of holding this agenda-less space, but hopefully just like the process of sitting with someone in a space where I, as the spiritual director, it's my job to boundary that space so that they feel feel safe and they can say their words. But it's not my job to, steal their epiphanies or to tell them what to do. And so oftentimes people will force their way through and I'll bear witness to that.

And then the next time we'll meet again and we'll talk about what happened as a result of that. And so it is, it's a tricky thing, but it's like, that's like, that's where that's human. That's humanity, right? That's what we learn as we go along. Yeah.

You say in the book that my hope for you is that this book will be the beginning of the the end of your subconscious compulsion to trust everyone else more than you trust yourself, not as a replacement for God or community, but in a loving partnership with them. Why do we have such a difficult time trusting ourself in times like this?

Well, I don't know about you, but I grew up in the church. And when I did, I think there was a lot of negative narratives taught about trusting in yourself, and it sound a little too much like self-dependence and not enough like trusting God. And what I've learned over the years is that trusting yourself doesn't have to mean trust yourself only, but it can actually mean trust yourself too.

And that if what I know of the gospel is true, and if I believe that Jesus makes his home in me and that I have been given a new heart, then that means I'm trustworthy. When we look at the life of Christ and how he lived on earth, he really could have left behind a very clear, notarized document of exactly how we're to live and what we're to do in every situation. Like God could have done that easy and it could have been referenced and footnoted and there you go.

But instead, he formed a community of not even that great of people. And then he left. And so I just think like, wow, you know, maybe I don't trust myself, but God trust us. I mean, God entrusted, you know. The gospel to be shared, the good news to be spread through these imperfect, ordinary, uneducated people. And so I think that's great evidence for our own lives of, wow, I certainly don't want to trust myself to the exclusion of everyone else.

But I do think that there is evidence in scripture that we can trust ourselves to. Yeah. It seems that the church is very suspicious of anyone who trusts themselves because there's been a way that it minimizes the importance of communal discernment or it minimizes, you know, trusting some of the passed down wisdom that we have in scripture.

And it's almost like it's either or like, well, I'm going to trust myself independent of all the wisdom of the church, or I'm not going to like trust myself at all. And there has to be like some, I hear you saying like that there's some dance that happens between all of that together. I think some of the early stages of faith formation, that's, that's the mindset. That's the thinking, which is black and white, sort of like this is right or wrong.

And we're looking for some authority and someone to tell us what to do and what not to do. And that's, developmentally, that makes sense. And I had a conversation with Sarah Bessie recently, and she pointed out, and I agree, that a lot of our churches stay there. We kind of stay in that, like, it's this or that, and we don't want to cross because people get just too confused, and they might be led astray. But I think that as we grow in our faith, just naturally, there's going to be nuance.

There's going to be a lot of, well, it depends, which, again, Again, we don't like to be uncomfortable, and we don't always like to enter into the discernment process that takes, number one, a lot of time and cannot be rushed. I think God is deeply inefficient when it comes to showing us what might be next or what we might need to do. I think he's. I think a lot of times God is really uninterested in what we do next.

In some ways, I think he's deeply interested in who we are becoming, but that's not always my top priority. Yeah. Yeah. One of the last sessions that I had with a therapist once hinged around a conversation about my certitude that I went to a certain job because this is the one and only place God wanted me to be. And I thought, no, I'm really, really grateful for where I am, but I think God cares more more about who I become than, you know, where I'm doing what I'm doing.

And he said, no, no, no, I can't be right. And I was like, this can't be a good relationship. This clearly isn't, this isn't right. I don't think God wants me to be in this room with you right now, but we like that. I think there's a certitude that comes with it. There's this.

There's a robust certitude that this obviously is the right thing to do because there's only one place that God wants me to be instead of a bigger conversation that's messier, that involves involves god's trust in you like part of being made in the image of god is that you have the ability to follow the spirit's leading and to interpret that and i know that you don't give techniques in the book but you do give a nice acronym that's p-r-a-y which

like obviously it can't be wrong if it's the acronym is pray i mean right come on foolproof so here the here are the four things you talk about point and call remember your path acknowledge presence and then the fourth fourth one, yield to arrows. For my listeners who are trying to figure, okay, I'm in decision time. I need to figure out the next step. I need to figure out if I'm staying in the room, walking out of the room, if I'm in a hallway right now.

And I want to think about this. Can you give a brief kind of overview of point and call and then remember your path and then acknowledge presence and then yield to arrows? Sure. Well, point and call comes from the Japanese Japanese railway system, which is the best in the world. And the reason is because they engage a safety practice of pointing and calling.

For example, they don't just notice that the signal is green, they'll point to the signal, the screen, and they'll say it out loud, sort of a bodily thing. James Clear talks about this in his book, Atomic Habits, to develop some habits, like we can do that in our own lives. And for the discernment process, pointing and calling can be helpful because I think a lot of times when we have a decision to make, or we're trying to question, you know, think about, should I go or should I stay?

Just for example, at this job, we jump from our discomfort straight to anxiety. Decision about going or staying. And I think we skip a lot of things in the middle. So pointing and calling in this situation can be helpful to take stock or sort of take an inventory of the current room to carry the metaphor out that you're in with say it's your job and pointing and calling it what is true. What is good and beautiful about this room?

Did I choose this room or did it choose me? If I chose it, what's changed? Or if I've been here since I was born, if it's a family business, You know, what do I still love about it? What's what's uncomfortable about it? Are there corners of the space that I'm that I've been avoiding that I've not been honest about? Is this a place where I'm the person who has the power? And if so, what do I do when my power is threatened?

Who else has the power in this room? And what do they do when their power is threatened? What's going to happen if I walk out to the people left behind? And what might happen if I stick around? out. So these are just questions you can ask yourself. I offer 10. There's a ton more you could ask, but it's just a way of pointing and calling and saying, okay, it's an awareness practice of this is what's true. Yeah.

Can I jump in? So you mentioned the 10 questions and the one that stood out to me the most was the one that you just mentioned, which is number six, as my listeners will know soon when they read the book, the question about who has the power in the room. Why is that important to call out the power dynamics of the metaphorical room that you're Well, I think until you ask yourself the question, sometimes the power dynamics are not obvious.

And because of that, I think there are times when I've stayed in rooms longer because I have been sort of submitting myself subconsciously to the authority in the room. But it's not a choice I made. It's just that's the narrative. That's the script that that room holds. Yeah. But when I stop and think about, wait a minute, who has the power here? And is that an authority that I want to submit to?

Is that authority that's in alignment with my core values, that it's in alignment with who I am and where I want to be and who I want to serve? And I think another question that kind of goes along with that is not just who has the power here, but who's missing from this room, who's welcome in this room, and who's already left the room? I think those are important questions. And a lot of times the person or the people with the power, that's a direct line between who's welcome here and who's not.

So I think those are important questions to ask, and they're not always ones that are, top of mind. It's just like, well, this is just the way it is here. But when you start asking questions, you're like, oh, but, oh, but actually this is the way it is here. And let me be aware of that. So we're pointing and calling out, like, these are things that we need to understand about what the room is.

And then the next step is we have to remember the path that we're on. How do we understand like the path that we're supposed to be on? I think when we think about, you know, I wrote a whole book and have a whole podcast called called the next right thing, which implies moving forward. And it is. When we have a decision to make, a lot of times, probably what we would imagine is sort of a path that is before us, but it's shaded or dark.

And we're trying to find the light we're trying to find, or maybe several paths we're trying to find the quote unquote, right one. I would say that one of the things I've learned is the best indicator for future decisions are decisions that we've already made. And a couple of poets have written about this. One is Lynn Ungar, who talks about how the path is behind us, that really the only path that is, is the one we've already walked.

And so what might it look like for us to engage in a regular practice of reflection to see about where has my life brought me up till now? You can ask yourself questions like, what's been life-giving? What's been life-draining in my life up till now? Now, when have I said my most favorite and most sure yeses and my most favorite and my most sure knows these can all be clues to the path behind us. And that could help us know what may be next. Yeah.

One of the other people you quote, I think it was in that section is Iris Murdoch, who said at crucial moments of choice, most of the, I'm getting something wrong with the font. Like it keeps getting smaller. The number is the same, but as I get older, the font seems to change. Okay. At the crucial moments of choice, most of the the business of choosing is already over. Gosh, this is really embarrassing. The font has not changed and maybe it has. Okay, explain to me how a crucial moment...

That cracks me up that I couldn't even read the word. It was like there's a hyphenated is on different lines. It's a long word. It's a big word. It's a very big word. Crucial. Yeah. Crucial moments. Okay. Most of those have already been accomplished by the time you're actually making the decision. That's acknowledging like the path behind us has already led us to where we are. That's right.

How do we come to understand that those things have already come to completion, even when we're still making the quote unquote decision in our head? I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier, which is so much of discernment and decision making is about the person you're becoming.

Because when you're on the spot and it's time to make a choice, and this is maybe in a quicker, you know, the Iris Murdoch quote is maybe speaking to something where you've got to make a decision and you've got to make it now. And the idea is I can't I can't take a break and cultivate my character real quick. That's something that happens over time. That's something that's developed as part of my formation.

And so once you at the crucial moment of choice, most of the business of choosing is already over. Like so much of the choice I'm going to make is built in. It's baked into the person who I am. And so I think that's why formation, spiritual formation is so important and understanding and knowing, you know, who you are and what you long for and how those things are at play in every decision. Because when that moment comes, all that's going to influence what you do next. Yeah.

So we're pointing a calling. We're remembering our path. We're acknowledging presence.

One of the things that you had this interesting phrase, spiritual personality. Mm-hmm. Were and how they express love for God, but maybe you're like a little introvert, a little, contemplative baby, and you grew up in this church, you might grow up thinking like, wow, I must not love God, or I don't know how to love God because my most natural way of doing that is maybe in a room by myself or out in the woods.

So there's these different ways, and in Gary Thomas's book, if you read it, he talks about nine of them, and these are nine different ways that we can love and express our love for God. Yeah. And so my friend and colleague, Dr. Keith Kiesler, talks about those nine pathways and kind of changes them a bit. Isn't it fun to like riff off? Everything's a remix.

We can riff off of things other people have done. And so he talks about those as personalities where it's and he kind of changes them a little bit. I sort of kept with Gary Thomas's there, but did use the spiritual personality because I think it's less a path we travel and it's more kind of something that's intrinsic to us. It might be that we change over time, that we figure ourselves out over time.

But I think a lot of these are just kind of built into like, this is how I made and how I connect with God. And the reason that's important is because that comes into play in the way we make decisions. It comes into play in how we connect with the presence of God as we're acknowledging God's presence. How I connect with God is deeply important to my decision making process, but only if I'm aware of the fact that there are different ways to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a quote from Portland seminarian, Mary Kate Morse, who has this question,

what embodies you with God and what gets you back to yourself? That is such an important question for me personally. Like I've had to name, okay, I have to do these certain things. These are things that bring life to me. I did not grow up in a charismatic home. I grew up in the churches of Christ where I still am. So the idea of what connects my charismatic friends and coworkers, it is not like there's no flags involved. There's no dancing. seen, we read the Bible like God intended.

Okay. That's what we do. And so for me, I have to name those things to go, this is something that has to be part of my life. It's not going to ever change. There are definitely more ways that like more things, more people are coming to the party, but this still is always going to be there for me. Is it hard for many of us to be able to name those ways that like, this is how I connect to God. This brings me back to myself. I think it depends on you.

I think that what you just named is one of the scripts that comes with the room that you're in, the faith community that you're a part of. The script is, we read the Bible as God intended. It's the right script. It is the correct one. Right. It's the correct script. Sure. I hear you. I hear you say that it's the correct script. You're such a good spiritual director. That's great. What I hear you say. But I do think that, so for some of us, it comes as easy as that.

I think the more difficult might be for your children who might start to question that script as they grow up. I'm not saying your children in particular, but for our children. It got very real. But if they, if they begin to experience God differently or, or don't experience God in the way that you might, or your grandparents might, or whatever the case might be, I think that's where it might get, that's where it might get harder when the script you were handed doesn't seem to fit.

That's where we might begin to have to explore like, oh, so what is my spiritual personality? And do I have one? And I would say you do. Everyone does. I think. Yeah. You think? Yeah. I mean. So we're asking these questions. We're asking these, you give a 10 questions. There's multiple questions. A lot of questions, right? It's just like Jesus. Just like, give me the answer. It's maddening. Who's really my neighbor? Like, just tell me.

Just tell me who my neighbor is. I'll do it if you just say it. I know. So in very Jesus fashion, spiritual director, Emily P, EP free, as we call her, is just giving you lots of questions to think about. And one of the things that most of us don't like about questions is that on the other side of questions is that we could stumble into a new answer. And we don't like new answers because that causes change. You reference Sharon, America's government teacher. That's her online persona.

And she has this line that you reference, anyone who changes their mind based on new and better information. I'm so anxious that I'm going to misread one of these words now. I'm going to get this one. Anyone who changes their mind on new and better information is criticized and denounced. So it disincentivizes people from using critical thought when in reality, the ethical thing is to change your mind on new and better information.

We're not set up. We have to figure out what side of the aisle we're on, where do we stand? Are we in truth together? And that's not how the spiritual process works for most of us, is that we have this constant repentance, this new way of thinking. How do we give ourselves permission to do something that culturally we're de-incentivized from doing? Well, I think before we can even give ourselves permission is we have to be convinced that we're going to be okay.

It's deeply counterintuitive to start poking at something that seems like it's sure, especially when it's connected to your belonging. And I think that's where that's really the root of it is changing our minds in some situations threatens our belonging. And none of us would willfully or joyfully or want to volunteer to be cast out of the center. And so I think that's really the root of it. It's belonging that if I change my mind, I'm not a part of this group anymore.

Yeah, that that seems about right. I think there's been a lot of conversations about how people will vote against their own personal interest because it helps them remain a part of whatever political group that they want to be a part of.

So if, you know, I'm whatever, and, you know, let's say I'm upper class and my party disincentivizes the upper class from the way that we set up the world, I would rather be a part of my world and have you vote against what, you know, is best for me as an upper class person. Clearly that's sarcasm. I'm not upper class. But the point is, like, we really want to be a part of our group. And so even at our own lack of flourishing, do we just have to name that?

Like, hey, I naturally don't want to change because I want to be part of the group, even if it's not good for me. Is that what you're helping us do as a spiritual director? I hope what I'm helping you do is when the day comes, when you are proximate to a person or situation that offends your current stance or position, and you love that person, or the place where they are is different from what you thought it would be in the narrative that you've been given.

I would hope that maybe this book or this conversation that the book starts would soften our hearts a little bit, if nothing else, to not be afraid to be curious. Do you think most of us are afraid to be curious? I think it depends on what it's about. I think we're happy to be curious with things that we think we know where it's going to end up. But I would say that sometimes curiosity to some can look like a threat or it can look like being too permissive or I don't know.

No, I think it can look like a threat in some situations. Well, because it disrupts the status quo. It disrupts the rhythm and the flow that we're all a part of in a community. Like I do this part, you do that part. You know, I play this role for you and you play that role for me. And if I'm being curious as to what like this next iteration of my life looks like, then it's problematic because I play a role in your life. And if you can't count on me to be X, then how can you be Y?

Well, and there's a lot of certainty at stake. Like, once we've established certain things that we have said are certain, if you start getting curious about those things, then it's like, wait, wait, wait, that's not the agreement. Those things are set. And so I guess it comes down to, you know, we have to begin to just, you know, point and call at the things we call certain and maybe just allow ourselves to at least be honest about, okay, no, this one is non-negotiable.

And listen there are some things that are non-negotiable I think we should all have some non-negotiables but being curious about them doesn't have to threaten them it could just make them stronger but I don't think curiosity has to mean the house is falling down I think.

That curiosity is a threat when we know what we're holding on to isn't that stable. If I have this tenant of my life that it is, I believe Jesus is God and I believe God is love. I'm very confident in that. And I don't have a problem with you being curious and asking questions about that because I feel like that's going to stay in the test of time that I'm a part of a long stream of people who've been a part of this for literally for thousands of years. You can can question that.

But if you questioning something that is less certain for me, I become uncomfortable because I'm not at a place where I want that to be poked around because I know it could fall over. Yeah. That's a great point. You talk about, first of all, thank you for saying that's a great point. I appreciate that. You also have kind eyes. See, thank you. I feel like you just say that flippantly. I don't even think it means anything at this point. Do you want me to write it down? Yes, I would.

After what my eyes just did to me a second ago where I couldn't read I want to take a picture. The font is extreme. Like there's, I'm going to, this is going to be my Instagram. Okay. You talk about yield to arrows, P-R-A-Y, Y, yield to arrows. Establish rhythms and rituals for ending and beginning. I love the word ritual because we don't do rituals very well. There's a gentleman named Richard Rohr out in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And he has this line where he talked about our culture, especially he was talking about, I think male spirituality in this context where we're so devoid of rituals that like we don't have things to demarcate like when something new is. And he told the story, which I don't know if it's true or not about post-World War II, where Japanese soldiers returned home and there actually was this ritual where they say, thank you. What you've done is helped our country. It's served your community.

It's done what we needed you to do now. That's over. And we need you to be more We need you to be more than just a soldier. We need you to be men. We need you to be fathers. We need you to be husbands. And this, that stage of your life is over. And there's a new ritual of this ritual is ushering you into a new space. When we don't have rituals, how do we ever know when it's time for us to graduate to the next phase of who we are? So what kind of rituals can, can do that for us?

It's such an important conversation because so many times, and I think about the COVID years, so much ended without fanfare or marking. And I think we're still carrying around some loose ends from that. I think we're going to be unpacking that for a really long time, honestly. Graduations without notices, people died without funerals, people had weddings without a crowd. It's like this gaping wound in our collective psyche.

Shaky and and then we just we just kind of kept going and i would say that even beyond covid i think that's a that's one that we can all kind of relate to we do this all the time in our own lives because we're always leaving rooms and entering new ones and sometimes it's really small things but there is something you know when that when we leave even if we're not ready or or we're ready but it's not time you know all all of those things aren't necessarily lining up

but sometimes things end and there's just no closure like it's like we got to leave this room, but it doesn't look like what I had hoped or imagined this ending would look like. There's no final speech. There's no toast. There's no party. There's not even a chance for me to explain myself. This is not the nature of this ending. When that happens, for me, I have found to.

Engage in tiny rituals that i make up myself okay can be really helpful tell me more for example one one ritual that i've done several times it's some endings that have just gone differently than i thought they would was i made a list this was my little ending ritual of what i'm bringing with me and what i left behind because we would love for a room to be like especially if we leave a room and it was like that room's not for me we want to just paint it all in

villainous colors and be like And it was a terrible room. But the reality is it wasn't. Nothing is all terrible. And so I think a helpful practice for me was to name the gifts of the room, things that I am bringing with me. But also it was helpful to name the things I'm going to leave behind. Like these are things that I'm not bringing with me. Now, am I still going to have to deal with them? Probably yes.

But to make a conscious choice of literally writing it down as a tiny ritual to say, this thing has ended. Here's the gifts. Here's the burdens. I'm going to lay those down. And now I'm going to move forward. Even just, you know, I think I also think of the elements of earth, water, wind and fire of having small ways to mark things using one of those elements, like from anything from lighting a candle to mark an ending to having a bonfire to mark an ending.

It could be, you know, standing with your feet in the ground and just making that ending yours. Sometimes those are the things we have to do in tiny ritual language in order to grab onto some closure because it's not going to come otherwise. Like we're not going to get a tied up bow. We have to bless like the tangled up necklace that we get. We just got to bless it like there. Okay. There it is. And that can be a tiny ritual. No, that's good. The tangled up necklace that we get. That's yeah.

That's spot on. I know that metaphor now that I have daughters. I didn't have a whole lot of necklaces in my life before, but like it's, it's tangled up. It's not perfect. It's not the way you want it. You know, you described, you know, people, my mom passed passed away during COVID. And so, you know, it was a funeral in my friend's backyard and it didn't look

like a normal funeral, but it was important. And I had a friend- A couple of weeks ago, his mother passed away and he was talking about what he was going through and how he was feeling about it. And I'm not sure how into Brazilian jujitsu you are these days, EP free. I don't know if that's a big part of your life or not, but I'm gonna go with this metaphor because it's a friend of mine from jujitsu.

And I talked about like one of the weird things about the jujitsu culture is that you have a belt ceremony to promote yourself, to be promoted from one level of proficiency to the next. And I said, in many ways, like a funeral is a promotion ceremony that you are going through. You're not the same person anymore. Everyone went through a massive loss and the version of yourself that existed before your loved one passed away, it's not who you are anymore.

You need something to say, you're a different person. That old phase was wonderful. It was what it was, but you aren't there anymore because they aren't there anymore. And I don't think we always name what's actually happening in these rituals. That's exactly right. And I also think the process, we can engage in rituals in the process of ending. For example, I was in a time where, you know, part of my spiritual life and just things that were going on in my own life, it was hard for me to pray.

And I recognized the things that were routine, routinely helpful for me spiritually were no longer doing the thing they used to do for me. So I couldn't pray the way that I was familiar with praying. And so instead, I started to write haiku. It was not like the traditional Japanese, like the. The real way. It was like the middle school way that our language arts teacher taught us, like five, seven, five syllables. And I filled it in with articles.

I mean, it's just terrible haiku. That's what I'm telling you. However- Do you have one that we can determine if it's terrible or not? I started, maybe. He continued. I started to pray that way though. And I wrote them and I would number them and I wrote, I don't know, did I write a hundred of them? Maybe. Maybe I did. Not all at once, but just over time. But then I started to find like, this was a tiny ritual for me. It was a tiny ritual engage.

It wasn't necessarily marking an ending, but it was marking the process of something was changing in me. And it doesn't mean that God had gone away. It just meant that God allows many access points for my relationship to grow. And for whatever reason at that season of my life, the old way wasn't working anymore.

And so I found this new kind of playful way. And I'm really grateful for that. Yeah, that's great. I'd be even more grateful if we got a list of maybe not a hundred, but a few of them just so that we could determine how good they were. Listen, spoiler alert, there are several in the book. So you'll have to read them there. Something else in the book that you actually did right.

When we discern it's time to walk out of a room, especially if it was a difficult decision, we only know what we're leaving. We don't know what's waiting in the next season. I'm learning that in some way, something new is always waiting. There is a hopeful resilience, a hopeful trust that I hear in the way that you've come to understand when you're walking out, go to the hallway, go into a new room, that there is a hope that something new is waiting for you.

Where do you find that confidence that something new is always waiting? Well, I'm still growing in that confidence. And I would say new doesn't necessarily mean mean perfect and it doesn't necessarily mean that I'll love it, but it will be new and God will be with me.

And that's something that when we talk about something I'm confident in, that's something I'm confident in because I guess the track record of God's faithfulness has been built enough within me as I have left rooms and walked into new ones that I'm like, you know, all these times I have left these rooms, it's deeply sad and the grief is warranted because Because I know what I'm leaving, but I don't know what's waiting.

And it's always something new. Hmm. You, you have three kids, twins, twin daughters, and a son. And so obviously one of your daughters is your favorite. I don't need you to say which one it is, but you, you have two daughters, a son. You probably like the daughters more than the sons. I think that's just the right answer. We're not going to pressure you on that. I was just kind of acknowledging what's in the room. There, nothing. Okay. You're at that like empty nest phase of your life.

And I am seven years is behind you on that. And I have terror about that, that has come to be somewhat mitigated, but it is a fear that I have of walking out of this phase of my life into the next one. And it was difficult for me. Like I had this really tough season where it was just in my head about it.

And I was like, oh, just kind of terrified because I didn't have that sense of hope that whatever the next phase of my life would look like would be something that there would be something new waiting for me. And it was hard for me to name what that was, But that's ultimately like what the anxiety was, is that what had given me this amazing gift that I never imagined to be the epicenter of like my existence, being a dad, like it's just, I absolutely love it.

That the very thing which gave me that would also give me the next phase of my life. And until I named what that was, it really had this like incarcerating effect on my soul.

And so the idea of trusting that there's always something new is very meaningful in a very tangible way and like for some of us we're trying to foster that sort of awareness of what god is going to do and so one of the things that you have referenced throughout the book is naming what god has done in the past because typically the best predictor of future behaviors past behavior i hear you talking about like i can trust going forward because i can look going backwards as someone's trying

to learn how to do that how would you help them name some of the ways that they can they can see that so that they can have the confidence in the future. I think when you talk about parenting, of course, you would have that feeling and that fear of emptiness when you're seven years away from it, because it's almost like the version of Luke, who is ready to walk the kids out the door, doesn't exist yet.

You just don't exist yet. And so you don't have the resources that you'll need because you don't need them yet. And so I think that's true when it comes to lots of transition spaces, the thresholds of our life, if you will, as we enter into hallways, is that we can look back and notice not just what happened or what God did, but also the person who we were at that time. At that time, and how the grace needed for the moment arrived, but not a second sooner.

And I can look back and name those times when that was true. And I mentioned it before, but I still think it's true. You know, I talked about paying attention to what's life-giving and what's life-draining, but I also have a regular, I make lots of lists, Luke, but one list that I make regularly is I write down things I'm learning.

It came from like in 2014 i had this great idea that i was going to copy oprah and do what i know for sure you know she does those like what i know for sure in her magazine and i thought that was so cool and i was like i'm gonna write down 30 things i know for sure and share one every day in the month of whatever it was and i started a list and it was like i had like two and a half things and i was like this i don't know anything for sure because i could write down a

lot of things i knew But I couldn't. It was that for sure bit that would trip me up. So instead of doing that, I decided to change it a bit and write down what I was learning, because that was more fluid and more friendly and a little more approachable. But that's become a practice for me now for since 2014. So it's been a decade where I just write down what I'm learning on a monthly or sometimes quarterly basis.

And I think that's one way of looking back and recognizing ways that God met us, that we met ourselves, that other people met us in the midst of transitional times that could have been really scary. But those helped me then know and name and notice arrows moving forward. Like, oh, this was an arrow in the past that led to where I am now. Wow. And probably similar arrows I can pay attention to moving forward. And when I say arrow, I just mean sort of like, that's just another way of saying

just doing the next right thing. Yeah. Oh, that's fun. I love that. And I remember seeing you post about that things I'm learning compared to things I know for sure. I think that's a great exercise. Barbara Brown Taylor had this great big bit in one of her books a couple of years ago where she talked about how how she used to have like this big chest full of certitudes that she could hold on to.

But as she has aged and become more mature, like that certitude container shrunk all the way down to the size of a shoe box where there's things that I'm certain, like it's gotten smaller and smaller, but the things that I continue to learn seems to be a different category where there's always something new that God's mercies are truly new every morning, that you're learning God's faithfulness in new ways that sustain you.

And one of the things that you name is one of my My favorite lines from Suzanne Stabile, where one of the questions on, like you said, you do like checklists, which I think the lists are wonderful. They're God-given, right? God has checklists, I think, or at least God would if God had a phone. But the line from Suzanne is like, what is mine to do? And I've heard Suzanne say that for years. What have you found so meaningful about that line? Yeah.

Well, Suzanne, you know, she's an Enneagram too. So I don't know how much you talk about Enneagram language here, but she, that's a specific question that she has found to be helpful for her because if she doesn't ask herself that question, she finds herself doing everything.

And, and so I think in my own way, I resonate with that, that especially when it comes to various spaces of our lives, things that we're questioning, or honestly, we haven't talked much about this, but when other people are questioning spaces that we are, are settled That we're going to stay in. There can be a lot of temptation to like do what you can to convince them to see it your way or to do it your way or like, but don't you see how great this is?

You know, and there are spaces that I stayed in for a really long time and people left and I was like, what? What's the deal? And then I ended up leaving those spaces and I'm like, oh, I get it now. But that was not theirs to do to bring, pull me with them.

And it's not mine to do to pull someone down and stay. And I think, I think that's an, an important question for us to ask in big and small situations of life. And I thank Suzanne for, for teaching us that. Yeah. I probably am the only pastor to ever struggle with this, but there was a phase of my life where I felt like it was my job to try to talk people in who felt like they needed to leave the church that I was a part of.

And I'm sure I'm the only pastor to ever be like, Hey, it's so great here. Don't to use your sing-song voice, which I really respect. As I've gotten older, I find no interest in doing that because if they're telling you, it means they've already decided. Most people aren't, which tells me a whole lot about maybe my relationship to some people if they're only telling me when the decision's already made. There are some limitations.

I'm not trying to put all that on my, what is mine to do? It's not mine to be everyone's best friend. That's not my But what is very exhausting is trying to thwart what someone else has already decided they're gonna do. And. You can't change someone's mind when their mind is already made to do something. All you can do is to bear witness to, hey, I'm here for you. Whatever I can do for you, let me know. I'm always going to be an ally, a resource for you wherever you are.

But the idea of trying to get people to not leave when they've already committed to leaving, even if it's the wrong decision for them, in my opinion, you just can't change people's mind when they're ready to go. When I was in college, I went to school to become a sign language interpreter and I had to take an acting class as part of my course of study. And one of our assignments was our teacher gave me secretly the assignment and she said, your partner's partner thing.

She said, no matter what your job is to keep your partner in the room. That's your job, no matter what happens, but you're not allowed to touch your partner. And she told my partner something else that I didn't know. So it was like an improv thing. So we started and he immediately starts to walk out of the room and I like run in front of him and I'm like, hey, don't you? And it was this whole thing of getting him to stay in the room.

Well, she had secretly told him, like, no matter what she says, leave the room. You're leaving the room no matter what she says, but you're not allowed to touch her. And so it just was this, like, I still remember it embodied this feeling of like, my assignment was to get him to stay and he was bent on leaving. And it was just this like helpless feeling of like this, but this is my assignment. I'm supposed to have him to stay. And I think a lot of us live that out.

And it can be heartbreaking, especially when, you know, you're talking about relationships relationships or deep belonging or, you know, decades of connection that you feel like you're losing. And even sometimes, you know, as a parent, you see your kids making a mistake, maybe. And like some of the most painful things is to allow them to make their own mistakes. And obviously, what's mine to do is to try to keep my kids safe, but it's not to keep my kid from failing ever.

So those are, I'm not saying it's easy, but I do think it is an important question to ask. Yeah, as a parent, I really want my job to be to prevent them from ever being in pain or to ever hurt or to ever fail at something. But unfortunately, I don't think God has given me the ability to do that. And barring any sort of like Iron Man creation that I can come up with to have that sort of power, it's probably never going to be mine to do, unfortunately.

And that's really discouraging as a parent because I don't want that. But one of the things you referenced in the book is the old assumption that many of us believe that we can grow without suffering. And that like, that's just not reality. Like suffering is how we all grow. And that's not very fun. It's terrible news. Yeah. Very, very terrible news. I don't want to end on that though. Like we're at the end of the conversation, but I feel like I want to end on something positive.

Oh, let's do this. I meant to ask you, Priya Parker. I don't know if I'm saying her first name right. She has this line where she says, every room has a script. For some of us right now, the idea that a room has a script that we're in is very foreign to us. But every room we're in does have like this, this theater, like that's being performed right in front of us. How do we name the script at the room that we're in today? Well, I think if you think about like, there's a classroom, right.

But, but a preschool room has a different script than a, than a college lecture hall. I mean, we just know now you start to know like, oh, okay. I get it.

Also our family of origin, we have scripts when we go home for Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever, you know, there are, you know, your grandfather tells a story and everybody knows, Like we've heard that story a thousand times, but our, our role is to laugh because if you don't laugh, then you're disrupting the family lore, the script that we all play. It doesn't have to be a negative thing. It's just, this is how we do stuff.

And so I think recognizing that all rooms come with scripts is an important part of pointing and calling of naming where we are of knowing what's true here.

And then it can help us know, like, is this a script I want to be a part of? And sometimes the answer is, yeah, it's great here. This is great. I'll, I'll, I'll read this script. And then some of us have been going off script our whole lives. So that's when we start to – people call us the black sheep of the room or whatever it is. So I think that Priya Parker talks about the art of gathering.

So she talks about it in the sense of gathering spaces and paying attention to the space that you're in. Because the reality is we all may have, and this is true of every room or family or gathering that we're a part of, is that while we all may be in the same room, we might be in the same congregation of a church, if you will, and we might be all hearing the same preaching or songs.

We are having a shared experience, but we are not having the same experience because we all bring our own narratives and scripts into the room, too. So the room has a script, but so do we. And so recognizing that and giving ourselves room and permission to explore those things, I think that's an important part of discerning whether or not it's time to stay or go. Yeah, that's great. The book, How to Walk into a Room, it's great. It's a great resource.

And congratulations on the book. It's great. And thanks for taking the time to talk with me again. This has been fun. Thanks, Luke. Thank you. And I forgive you for what you said about Jay. Thank you for watching!