Hello and welcome to Reclaiming My Theology, a podcast seeking to take our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress. I'm your host, Brandi Miller, and as we continue this series on empire, in the thick of it, y'all. I am joined by my friend Tracy G to talk about desire. This conversation feels important to me in a series on empire because what empires need to maintain power is compliance, conformity, and assimilation.
And the more that we lose our desire and abdicate our desire to someone else, the more that we are able to be manipulated by the forces that be who would make us fearful or seeking security in people that cannot save us. So as we reflect... on the church's relationship with desire and what that means for us in this season, the invitation really is to become more fully yourself. More fully yourself in your body, in your work.
in your passions and the projects that you pursue over the next four years and beyond as we live in the U.S. empire. With all of that, please receive this invitation to join me in conversation with Tracy G. All right, Tracy, I am so excited to have you on the show today. I feel like I should have had you on a long time ago for a lot of other things, but this is a wonderful opportunity to do so. So thank you for being here. I'm so happy to be here.
There are several reasons why you're here. One is because you are an expert in a very particular area of life right now. And that I think is super, super important. And two, because you are a friend that is having some big life moments right now. And that's wonderful. And so I know folks may not.
know you. And so for folks who don't know you, I would love for you to describe as you know, this is coming. What does it mean to be you? This is a very good question. I love that you asked this. I live in Los Angeles. So Some of what it means for me to be me right now is just being in the midst of a lot of collective grief. So I was talking to someone and they were like, oh, yeah, you know, these things happen and then everyone gets numb and they move on. I'm like, oh, no, no. L.A. is not numb.
I think everyone is very aware, very present to this bigger sense of collective grief. And yet there's also beautiful things, celebration in the midst of this. So people that I know and love are having this... These amazing things happening in their lives, and yet also it's in the backdrop of grief. So I had this extremely awkward moment that I created because I was at Costco last week with Benny, who was my partner, and...
He and I were loading up our car and I looked like two cars over and there was two folks loading like 25 bottles of champagne into their trunk. And I was like. It caught my attention. I did my own thing. I looked over again. I was like, hey, congrats on whatever it is you're celebrating. And they're like, oh, thanks. It's actually a funeral. No.
I wanted to melt into the pavement. And then, you know, so I was like, how do you make it? How do you take an embarrassing moment and process this? So I threw it on the internet, wrote something about it on threads. It was fascinating to see people's response. Some people are like...
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Champagne at my end of life celebration. Yes, let's do that. That's how I want to go out. And other people like, oh, no, no, no, that's not appropriate. So there's very strong camps. Anyway, so I've been musing on this maybe a little bit too much. Which is this image of champagne in the midst of grief. That's kind of how life feels. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in this particular moment. Can you tell me a little bit in the midst of...
how you're doing and all of that, what the work you do is and your sense of vocation at this time in your life. My vocation is as a coach and consultant. I'm writing, you know, so I get to work with people one on one. I get to lead workshops and facilitate workshops. These are some of my favorite things to do. I think my sense of my deeper sense of vocation underneath that all is I'm just.
endlessly fascinated with people who are they how have they been uniquely made by god how do they bear the image of god in their lives and how do they live that out so that's Kind of what it all boils down to. Like that's what's at the center of anything that I do pretty much. And I so appreciate that because I think that a large part of our culture right now, because there is so much noise in the kind of social media affect that we have in our politics and all of that.
It can truncate people into monolithic categories rather than people who are, as you're saying, like endlessly fascinating and called and good. And so today we're going to talk in that realm about desire, because that is kind of the thing that right now you are in.
expert on. And I know that we're in the series on empire and it could feel really confusing to folks why I would be doing a conversation about desire in the midst of it. But this is one that I've wanted to have and haven't totally known how to bring because it can feel like bigger topics like capitalism. authoritarianism, propaganda, oligarchy, like all of that would feel more important.
But I haven't been able to shake this need to have this conversation, specifically because for me, in the midst of this new administration, I can feel myself shifting internally toward this survival mode or to an activist mode, and maybe losing some of my connections to the core of
who I am in the midst of that as I attempt to do good or to be good in some way. And so I've been reflecting on that and what it feels like in my body somatically. And I'm aware that empire and evangelicalism have taught me similar messages about design. that are really...
complicating this current moment that many of us are in. And I think a lot of folks are probably feeling that. And so as we get started, I would love if you could give us a baseline about what we're actually talking about when we talk about desire and how this became important to you, because it feels, again, I can hear my own religion.
background being like a conversation about desire is either sinful or it's frivolous but talk to me about what you are thinking about when you're thinking about this word desire for sure I think it goes beyond you know what do I want for lunch Although that can be an important question. I think to me what it represents is the ability to have space to listen to your life. So Parker Palmer talks about that. I love his book.
Let Your Life Speak, where he discusses this concept, this idea. And I love that. Essentially, to me, when I think about desire, that's the heart of it. It's being a person who is able to truly listen to their life, to discern what is their best way of showing up in the world, what is their way of making a difference, but starting from a more interior place of...
Who have you been made to be? And what does that look like? So to me, desire, the heart of desire in engaging with that is listening. That's really good. And can you distinguish a little bit for me then? The difference between say desire and purpose or desire and survival, because I think that some of us can get these words all mixed up. And there are a million white guy habit books that are like all about purpose, but they're masquerading themselves under desire.
desire or denigrating desire is this lesser thing. Can you talk to me a little bit about those distinctions? Because I think it will help us to make sense of the theologies that we're given around desire, because they, to me, are a doozy. They really are. They have done a number on us. And I think I use that word intentionally because desire often feels quieter. It feels less flashy.
more personal more true if you're going to ask yourself that question what do i really want my life to be about that has to come from such an authentic place in who you are And I think sometimes when we get drawn into conversations about purpose, it sort of triggers this reaction to put ourselves aside or override ourselves or... pursue something that feels worthy and noble. And I understand that instinct. I can empathize with that a lot. I think it often comes from a really good place.
But it fundamentally also is from a very disembodied kind of experience of ourselves, which I think empire a lot of teaching that we've gotten in church. has reinforced and really deepened in us so to me it's about it's it gets more to a return to yourself and a return to what truly is who you are in the world That's really good. And I think it's helpful because I think on the conservative side, there is this you lose yourself for the sake of collective security or safety or power. And so you...
You abdicate your desires in this kind of culty sense where you say, what I desire doesn't really matter that much because if I abdicate my desire to somebody else. then I'll be okay. And I think progressives do this thing where we're like individualism is bad. And so we move away from individualism into collectivism, but we abandon ourselves and call that collectivism instead of taking more indigenous approaches to it, which says that
the health or the well-being of the individual is often reflective of the common good or the collective and so I think a lot of the time regardless of whether you've been in conservative or progressive spaces there is this abdication of desire for the sake of Either ideology or an ideologue or the common good that makes things really complicated. And in both ways, frames can frame.
desire or the repression of desire as a moral imperative. And to me, that's where I get a little bit stuck in the spirituality of it. And so I'd love if we could talk about that a little bit. And some of the theologies that we learn around desire, because I mean, my brain immediately goes to...
Eve desired the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. And it was like the literal thing that caused the downfall of humanity and caused sin to enter the world. And so even from like page two, we've already got it fucked up. And so I think that there's a lot of ways that our theology just in.
these kind of drive-bys and use of stories can mess us up pretty thoroughly. And so could you talk a little bit about the theology of desire that you were given in evangelicalism? Definitely. I mean, I think I... From very early on, because I didn't grow up Christian or anything like that, but I think some of my earliest impressions were that God is on one side. What I want is on another side.
Those things are diametrically opposed. And being a mature person, being someone who wants to take my faith seriously, wants to take my relationship with Jesus seriously. I need to do everything I can to suppress what I truly want. And while I understand that I'm not trying to promote people being immature or...
doing harm because of, you know, in the name of doing what they want. But I realized that sort of very simplistic, very binary understanding of those things just never grew beyond that point. So I think I hit this point where I was like, I've been... a follower of jesus for 20 years this is still the message that's gone through other parts of my life have grown and developed and i've i've gained nuance in these things but this is something that has stayed very
Black and white, you know, very binary. Your desires are selfish. They're against the will of God. They're bad. And if you want to be someone who is faithful or takes your faith seriously, let's say. then you can't care about what you want. That no longer matters. And so I think I've just, and I've talked to so many people who have had that experience as well. Yes. And it feels to me really connected to what a lot of us would reject.
on the surface ideologically, but still haven't unearthed from our bodies, which is this Calvinistic idea that we are utterly depraved, that original sin enters the world through Adam. So every person is born inherently evil or bad. And therefore the core of...
who you are is this wretched thing in need of salvation instead of this thing that God has made in you as creator to unearth and to discover and to nurture like a garden as though your life is a garden. And I think for me, because I was taught that desire... was coming out of an inherently immoral place, that the only appropriate or holy response is sacrifice, obedience, and death to self.
And so, but what that always meant in my world, or at least in my community, was you die to yourself for the mission of your leaders. And so you're not dying to yourself for love for Jesus. It's always this abstract thing that's far away. And the framing, I think, became much more nefarious because this notion of heaven.
was weaponized as a way of saying, you suppress your desires. Now you give up your desires now because your ultimate desires are going to be fulfilled in heaven in this abstracted thing sometime later. And so
Leaders were given a ton of power and control over people's lives by saying it is morally good for you to repress your desires because it is for the sake of a greater cosmic moral good. Definitely. Or it's for the sake of... god's will but when you pause for a moment you say but who is defining that who is saying what that means or what that looks like yes it's very much that so it's very much in service of
a leader's agenda or what they deem as important or how they interpret God's will. And it's prioritizing that. so much so over the individual. And I think I've talked, you and I probably both talked to so many people whose experience of faith or revisiting that has to do with that sort of override function that a lot of us are used to.
to come back and say, no, no, no. What does it mean to actually listen to my body? Listen to myself. Trust that there is good in me. I've been created out of good and for good. It's a very... It's really tricky. It can be really tricky. Yes. And I think in that one of the places where it gets tied in our bodies and in our morality or in our...
maybe our moral imagination, is that desire is almost always tied in a lot of evangelical teaching to temptation. And the resistance to temptation, if we think about what James says about temptation or... the story of Jesus being tempted for 40 days in the wilderness. It's that this overcoming of temptation, this offering up of desire in some way is somehow very good. And so when you tie it to something as...
evil sounding or problematic sounding as temptation. Right. I think James says it really strongly, like something to the effect of... Each person is tempted and dragged away by their own desires and they're enticed. And then desire is conceived and gives birth to sin and sin gives birth to death. It teaches us that obedience equals a suppression of desire and a suppression of desire.
allows us to have this like glorious life with God rather than looking at those stories with more intention and seeing their strong connections to empire. Because when I look at those stories, like Jesus being tempted, the thing that he's being tempted with is power, prestige, and seizing glory for himself. When James is talking about temptation, it's about the marginalization of the poor, the exclusion of people in the community.
There's this blanket moralism that gets put on desire rather than saying there are these certain desires that the Bible is constantly warning against, but most of them don't have to do with your desire to be a parent or your desire to...
Help people in your community experience good or your desire to bring laughter to people. You know, those kinds of things get lumped into the same category as sexual sin and power and greed and all of that. I just think that's so problematic and so ingrained in me. I love your analysis of that. I think that's a huge point that I think so many people would be helped to think.
more about to untangle because i think you're absolutely right i think what happens is there's just one there's only one category for all of anything sort of close to this idea of desire it all gets lumped into the same but then what happens Why I care about this so much is I've just talked to so many people that then because of that, there's just a whole piece of them that's shut down.
shut down to themselves shut down to the spirit like they they do not access it because it has just been put into that box and hidden away and Yeah, I love how you're naming those very specific things because I think that's where much more clarity and nuance about what are we actually talking about when we talk about this is... So important because wanting to, you know, take advantage of people and steal their data and, you know.
commit atrocities, we sort of label that as the same thing as exactly what you said. I would love to be a positive force in my neighborhood. Like, yes, everyone, those are not the same, right? Like, let's get clear on that. Yes, we're like thumbs up to that. But then we're like, but desire is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. First John says so. You're like, damn, I just like I love.
People of multiple genders, you know, you're like, okay, what do we do with that? That's so real. And so I also wonder if you can talk a little bit about that, because I think this is where some of the connections of empire get really strong. where we can talk about desire as, again, a moral imperative or this devaluation of self as a moral good, or we can talk about it as...
evading personal fulfillment for the greater good. We can talk about all of those things. But my temptation is to temptation is to talk about desire in terms of vocation or activity or hobbies rather than to talk about identity. on the religious right, a huge portion of how we frame desire is about
suppressing anything that deviates from the norm that is established as a pure and right good. So it makes sense of the transphobia that we're seeing right now, the anti-LGBTQ sentiments, the anti-immigrant sentiments. Because when we talk about desire, we're not just talking about something outside of us that we're
like exploring or engaging with, which is how I'm tempted to think about it, but more something that might be inherently in us that we're discovering and finding a place for in our lives. So can you talk a little bit about identity as it relates to desire in that way? I love the term that you
I don't know if you just came up with that on the spot, but I love that idea of a moral imagination. I think that's so beautiful. I really need to sit with that more. But yeah, I think that it goes back to having... an imagination for yourself that can allow for this kind of exploration, that can allow for you to be able to say, oh, maybe there's something more to me and who I am.
than just somebody who everything I ever wanted is selfish and bad and evil. And that really, I find it to be one of the most, I don't know what the right word is. practical or sort of everyday experiences of feeling that tension or that rub. So I notice a lot, this a lot sometimes when people are really blocked to even try to.
ask themselves what they want, it brings up a strong reaction. Sometimes people will literally use the word, it's terrifying. They feel scared. They feel afraid in their body, like deep fear in their bodies because of it. And I think it does go to this. It goes to these identity questions. You're right. It is about some of those external things, but I think it does. It is it comes out of and is shaped by how we imagine ourselves and how we imagine.
who we are in the world. And again, oftentimes, if all we have is just this, I'm evil, I'm completely depraved, there's nothing good in me, then how do you then approach these things? It really changes versus being able to say, no, actually, let's go back to pre-fall genesis let's go back to how we were intended to live in creation and with god and with one another that is in us as well so it's not to ignore the reality of evil in the world obviously but
It's to say, actually, if we can return to how we were formed and how we image God, there's something much more expansive about how we can relate to this part of ourselves. Right. And in that, it feels like this kind of recovering or reclaiming in the language of the podcast of This weird way that we talk about the desires of the flesh, which is this thing that then gets interpreted as anything that isn't abstractly spiritual.
Because when something is abstractly spiritual, someone can call you to lose your life to it in any way that you can. And then we're like, you died to yourself. And that was... so good of you, and you gave it all up for the cross of Jesus, and Jesus is so proud of you. And then I start to, you know, you and I both worked for the same evangelical organization for a long time, and a lot of the stuff that we applauded of students was,
This deep sacrifice of self to other people and a projection of competency over the development of character. And so I've been thinking as I was reading your book and as I've been thinking about desire of this intersection of character and competency. that gets really lost when we don't know our desires because the thing that we're being shaped by or led by
are leaders who have motives and agendas for how we would build their little kingdoms on campuses or whatever things. I can't even remember the tagline of the organization now, which is kind of great that I can't remember that now, but it's, you know. World Changers Develop, something like that. I was like, oh, it's not World Changers all for the good good. It's just...
It's this building of an empire, a small or smaller Christian empire that then feeds the global empires that we're a part of. And so I've just become really tired and frustrated by the ways that we...
I mean, and you use some of this language in some ways or the opposite of this language. We make people die to themselves and they can never come alive to themselves without having to do all of this work to find who they are. And so I'm wondering if you could even talk a little bit about that idea of coming alive to yourself, because.
Even before we talk more about empire and some of the other things, I think having that maybe as a grounding point might be helpful because I can imagine some folks feeling some panic in their bodies even as we talk because the conversations about desire... Like, yeah, you said terrified. I saw the word dread. But maybe like when it feels a little bit like looking at the ocean, you look at it and you're like.
There's a lot of stuff in there that I don't know. And what happens if I start to swim out and dive down and see what's under the surface and see what's deeper and deeper? And so I think the dying to ourselves in the least spiritual way leads us to a deep, deep fear of discovery. Yeah, I think this idea of aliveness is something that is part of that fascination that I talked about.
endlessly fascinated with how is it that people come alive? What does that mean to them? What does that look like? What does that feel like? How do they describe that?
How do they come to understand that and articulate that? Because I just think this is so essential. And so sometimes when, like you said, I love that image. If it feels like an ocean that just feels too vast, I always think it's such a... generative place to start is just to begin to notice in yourself unedited unfiltered what truly makes you feel alive, makes you feel great in your body, makes you feel joyful and energized. And what does not?
So simply noticing that I think is a really, really essential place to begin. And it is a way I think that we let ourselves come alive and invest in our own sense of aliveness. So that to me is always the starting point. I always want to understand that about the people that I'm talking to and help them understand that for themselves because I think that is essential because really...
What you want, it needs to come out of that place. But a lot of times if we've had these messages or this sort of conditioning, we don't trust that. If you notice it at all, which sometimes you don't, but if you notice it at all, you treat that very distrustfully. I've seen this happen over and over again. Ooh, and sort of assigning like the worst motivations to any of what you find. And that's not helpful. Right. That does not create the kind of space and self-compassion that you need to.
work within the parameters of your own aliveness basically to understand that for yourself um so a lot of times even if you are taking time to observe you're usually it usually comes with a lot of self-judgment yes and so I think a lot of the work can, it's so essential in that inner work to unhook those things and just to say, it is what it is. You know, your aliveness comes, that's part of how you image God.
What is a more generous interpretation of these things? How do you trust that? How do you listen to that? How do you not try to filter it away? I love that phrase, generous interpretation of self. Because I think that there's also like this generous interpretation we need to do of the text as we come to it. Because even as you're talking about... This what should be a discovery process coming with a lot of self-judgment, I think the undergirding feelings of that judgment are shame and guilt.
that if we are taught that the phrase, the scripture that was always used in my world was like, God's ways are higher than our ways. So if something feels hard, it's like you do the hardest thing or the thing that most overrides your desire, your desire not to violate someone's agency and evangelism or your desire.
Not to basically become part of a culty organization or your desire to take space or not have to spend every minute of your life in a religious institution. And it replaces, it says that desire. Isn't a high desire like God's high desires are or the high calls. And then you start to override that with guilt and shame that then become the motivating factors. And I think for me, I didn't know what I wanted for a really long time because.
I just didn't even think about it. Like I just created like an on and off switch where desire would come up and I'd be like, but that's not the mission or that's not the higher calling or that's not the. spiritual reality that I'm not of this world and I'm not of the flesh. And so I'm just trying to like move into something that is far away from desire rather than hearing some of the questions that Jesus asks people where I think about John 1 30 ish.
35, I think, where Jesus is walking along and says to two of his future disciples, what do you want? And their response is so silly. They respond to him by saying, where are you staying? And his response to them is, come and see. And so Jesus invites them on an exploratory journey.
of not knowing what they want, rather than saying, your mind's just not on higher things. Like you didn't know that I was here calling you to be disciples. Jesus doesn't do any of that guilt and shaming, but instead says, you don't know what you want? Come find out. And I think that that invitation from Jesus is a much more generous interpretation of how God is than God just outside of us being like, my ways are always higher than your ways. So just do the hardest thing.
Absolutely. I love that passage. I love that you brought that up. I've been kind of low-key obsessed with this passage for years and been sitting with it because also the context of what that it comes in because the prologue of John. is so huge it's so cosmic right it's like the word was god and the words with god and the word became flesh dwelt among us like you have that whole section that's just uh this vast picture of god
And then you go to John the Baptist talking about Jesus, interacting with people about who Jesus might be, who he isn't, sort of questioning his identity and talking about that. And then so you get other people talking about Jesus. But his first words in the whole book of John are that question, what do you want? And I just think that's profound. I sit with that and I'm like, that's the first thing that he says.
And yet our experience of trying to ask ourselves that question is this one of guilt and shame and all these other things. So that feels incongruent. Yes. That doesn't feel right. And then even if you were to say, oh, you're proof texting. That's one verse. That's one section. But if you go on and you look and you see how he interacts with people when they come to him in their need for liberation or healing or.
what have you what the things that they're bringing to him he's never not usually oh that's no no no like how can you want that that's so selfish right healing for your for your child no that's That's not what I'm about, right? He enters into it. He steps into that. So I think that whole section is just so fascinating. Yeah, and again, a generous interpretation of how God would treat.
the ones that god created feels i don't know i just sometimes i feel like i'm going bananas because this should not be this hard yeah and yet in One story you tell in your book, and I've heard this verbatim, is that you are doing a workshop on desire, a class on desire, and then some Christian dude is, but not all desires are good. Yes.
I'm like, no shit. Does that really need to be said? Of course not all desires are good. But one more. And are you, are you, I've literally, when someone has said that to me, I've literally said to them, what do you think I'm saying to you right now? And then they just. go over I'm like what are you hoping to accomplish and there's like sin and evil and I'm like do you think that's what I'm doing and they're like no and I'm like
Then what are we doing here? Yes. Why are we doing that? Yes. And so I would love if we could talk a little bit about Christian culture and empire and how they suppress desire kind of practically, because we can talk the theological, but there are these ways where there are phrases like that.
where someone, but not all desires are good. And I'm like, again, this is not helpful. But what are the ways that Christian culture and empire suppress desire? And to what end? Because again, the like David Platt, radical, Francis Chan, multiply, like all of that.
That goes through my head really, really quickly. But I'm curious what you see when you think about Christian culture and empire. That's so funny. I've gotten that out of my head, so that's helpful to remember. There's a book called Cultish. by an author named Amanda Montel. She's a linguist, and she studied the language of cults. Like, how do cults speak? What are their terms? And she has this idea that I think is so helpful of a thought-terminating cliché.
So it's like a saying that is used within organizations. And again, she's like very broad in what she's talking about, what she means cult all the way from like Jonestown to like SoulCycle, you know, so she's sort of looking at lots of different. sort of context and degrees of harm she has this idea of a thought terminating cliche which is just like something that is said within an organization to sort of shut down further discussion
You can't, there's something, it's something you can't really respond to. You can't really reply to. And I think Christian culture has a lot of that, right? But not all desires are good. Or, oh, but God's ways are higher than our ways. Or you should be about God's will, not your will. Like, oh, that sounds so great. How do you argue with that? Right? How do you come back for that? Until you stop and think you're like, but wait, what are we saying?
Yeah. What is really behind this? So I think some of that is it's so knee jerk. It's so ingrained in us and we haven't questioned it. So part of the beauty of some of these conversations, I think, is to begin to ask who's benefiting. from shutting all this down for people what who is the benefactor of this because it's not us it's not our journey it's not our thriving it's not our liberation it's not our ability to
to healthy resistance and what's needed. And so I think it really, yeah, it's something that is just kind of unquestioning. So that I love, that's why I love that idea of a cliche and it sort of just like shuts it down. You're like, okay, great. We all just parrot these things and they sort of reinforce each other. And then to that, we internalize it, which is, I think, that source of the self-judgment that comes about.
Yeah, and in Christian community in particular, to step away from or to question those cliches is to make precarious your own participation in those communities. If someone says... oh, not my will, but God's be done. And I'm like, is that God's will? Then suddenly I am like a Jezebel out here questioning the will of God in someone's life instead of being like, maybe you don't need to give like...
60 percent of your income to the church god forbid you know and i think god would or oh i'm like i'm like why do you i would ask students why did you do that thing and they'd be like well i'm not of this world and i'm like maybe you should be like a little We're in this one because like you are, what is the old black cliche of so earthly or so heavenly good?
so heavenly something that you're of no earthly good, basically. Like, you're so spiritual that you basically accomplish nothing. And I was even watching the, I've been following for the first time in years, the national championship. playoffs for college football.
What I kept hearing from these quarterbacks at the end of every game was like, Jesus bless or God bless. First, I just have to give glory to God because God gave this to us. And so there's this desire that they have that they're interpreting as being fulfilled by. my God. And what that thing is, is football. But because these are like white guys doing like an American white guy thing, we're like, wow, God did give you that. God gave you the desire to be a good football player. And then I'm like,
I have a, like a fiance. That's a woman. And people are like, that desire sucks. And I'm like, does that suck less than little Riley Leonard being like, Jesus gave me or did not give me this football game. And so it's interesting that. Within Empire, those cliches are acceptable for some people, but not acceptable for others. I could say God brought me what I think is like the person for me to spend my life with.
But because of anti-queerness, that desire is denigrated as a non-thing from God. And then someone could say, God's ways are higher than your ways. God has a bigger plan for you in celibacy or something. But if some random immoral dude who decided he was going to follow Jesus six minutes ago after being a total sexual deviant?
We'd be like, yeah, but he really, he's called by God and God brought him the right person in the right time. Or Trump can say things in his inaugural address like, God chose me to save America. And he's reflecting a desire.
that's coded in all of these ways that will be like, yeah, that's good because he said God. And so the stuff that he's doing must be connected to good. And so I think that a lot of the religious and imperial language make it difficult to know, like you're saying, what people are saying because the... cliches don't allow for any kind of conversation about what we actually mean by those things. Because then I could say, you know, if I was like an evangelical, like I was, you know,
in 2008 or something, I could be like, wow, Donald Trump is like really picking up his cross to become president again in such an old age. And I'm like, that man's just trying to avoid prison. There's some really practical reasons that this man desires to be the president. It's not because he loves Jesus or he loves you. Like, it's not any of those things.
So the convolution with those cliches means that we get really confused about the motives of people who say that they have our best interest at heart. And that I think leads to cultiness in a way that is notable. Yeah. we need a yeah it's it's deeply frustrating and to put it lightly
I don't even think frustrating is the right word. Yeah, like you said, lightly. I think it's dangerous. And so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how these kind of institutions shape how we relate to our own desires. Because especially right now, many of us are just panicked, stressed, trying to override things in us that we might have been moving toward because they seem frivolous in this moment.
And so can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think there's just some deep consequences to when we suppress. And this is a particular political moment where the suppression feels so easy to tackle. Like I even, I work at a church and we're like, what is our role in this moment? And it would be so easy.
easy to stop our individual lives and just go all in on the church thing and call it spiritual and lose ourselves to that. And so I'm just curious what you think about that. That's such a complex and hard.
issue and question, I think that in general, institutional health, one of the measures of institutional health is how much space it can give for the individual in its midst because I think sort of mediocre institutions they don't allow for that space they don't ask that question to begin with and if they do they're really not interested in that like i had someone tell me once i don't i don't want the people on my team to ask what they want
I want them to do what I want them to do. Yes, that's that's very honest and that's very real. So I think it has to come out of. An understanding of people not just as a means to an end or as squeezing out their labor, but to really see them as human and to want to make allowance and space for.
that humanness to exist ourselves. So regardless of how institutions do with this, regardless of how healthy an institution is at making space, I think a move that we can make for ourselves is to say, I'm going to... care for this so i think there there's an earlier version of myself that sort of trusted institution to look out for me in that way to tell me what i should want
And then to say, yes, that must be the best thing that I could want for myself. And so in that way, you were using the word abdication, which I think is a really important. word and dynamic to pay attention to because when you're doing that it's in essence abdicating your own sense of agency on your life and I think it's often much more helpful to say
No institution can do that for me. Even the very best, healthiest organization can't really do or replace that work for me. There's a sense of who you are. Again, a listening to yourself. That only happens between you and yourself. So I just think that a lot of times people... want to sort of look to an institution or other people to do that so it can look a lot it can mean like an institution as a whole as far as like its stated mission it can mean like
leaders that you look up to or you know supervisors and such and just say oh they must know more than me right that's always like a it should be like a suspicious thought to yourself now like yeah they would know better
then I would know for myself. I think this is a move to say, no, actually, yes. So don't hear me the wrong way. I'm not saying that we can't take input from people. We can't learn from people. Obviously, no. But there's... a way that I interact with this part of myself that is fundamentally different, where I'm choosing not to abdicate that work to an organization or to anybody outside of yourself, really.
Right. And some of what I'm hearing you say, too, is that is even talking about I think a lot about childhood development because of the people in my life. And that maturity and character and morality are things that we learn and develop as our brains develop. And that imitation is a part of maturing. Like when we are.
Growing up as our prefrontal cortex is developing, imitation is a way that we test out who we are and that we engage. But I think what happens is that religious authoritarian leaders or authoritarian leaders at large make imitation the end goal that the more so I'm watching Republicans do this all over the place Republicans who were like just run-of-the-mill white bread Republicans are now trying to act more and more Trumpy to attract the MAGA base because the imitation
is what gives power and the power is what gives a degree of acceptance or recognition or notoriety. And so... imitation instead of being a part of our developmental process becomes the end goal. And I think in progressive spaces, we do this where we start to police what is progressive enough.
And so if someone is not imitating our version of progressivism in who they are in a way that we find acceptable, we say that that is no longer good or right or that their desires are bad, their core is bad. And I know that can, for me, come to these questions of intention versus impact. I was just, you know, I came up in a really progressive, you know.
Third tier private liberal arts college environment where people were really up in arms about how you could be a good progressive. And it was like intent doesn't matter because of impact. Like impact always matters more. And I'm like, yes, impact matters more. But intention does matter because it. helps us to know something about our desires. And so I think progressives get it twisted when we start to police how people can be.
And never look at people's intentions because the intentions tell us a core desire that we can then nurture rather than expecting imitation and conformity that leads to power hoarding and...
monolithic senses of ideological purity in either camp. Definitely. I think this is the way that white supremacy and patriarchy have influenced leadership and even how we understand that to mean if... if you respond if you are open to someone's leadership it means that you want exactly what they want right or if you are a leader you know i've heard so many people talk about passion that way is like this underneath that is the assumption that
Everybody should care about this or interact with this the way that I want to interact with this. So it's almost like a like a projection of. their own desires on other people or their will to say yes this is what it means to to be a leader even is like how you image that like you should want exactly what i want versus to say no actually i think
There's another version of leadership, which is to ask people, what is it that you want? What is meaningful to you? What does that look like? And how do we get there? And how can I learn from you in return? Which is very different. Yes. Way to even conceive of that. Yeah. And I'm convinced in that that it cannot be attached to fear. Because as I think about this last election cycle and even the stuff in Springfield where Trump and Vance.
conjured this story about immigrants eating dogs and cats. Springfield, people in Springfield were like, that's not happening. But there was a way that because leadership and authoritarianism said, hey, this is a thing you should be afraid of. Now I'm going to create this problem and I'm going to be the solution. It's the same thing that happened with TikTok. Oh, Trump, we're confident that Trump's going to do something. They're like, oh, great. Trump did it. And you're like, you.
created the problem and now you are the solution and you feel good about that because what you did is made people feel afraid or like they were lacking. And so people then bend the knee to these leaders and lose part of their own sense of desire because it's covered in fear of lack. or fear of loss, rather than a sense of loss of self. And so one of the things I used to say to students was,
Your body is the only home you'll ever live in. You need to know your own body and who you are at your core. But I found that a lot of getting two points of desire was a lot about unearthing fear and being like... Do you need to be afraid of that? What does being, I live in Seattle. What does being afraid of hypothetical immigrants eating hypothetical animals from the lips of Donald Trump?
What does that fear do for you? And what that fear does is it points us to give power to people who we think can solve problems that are not problems. And so much of conservatism and empire is saying this is a problem.
Here's why you should be afraid of it. And here's why you should give me the power to do that thing. And so I think a lot of us forget our desires in the midst of that because fear is such a powerful force that overrides that we can't get to that point. It's part of why I'm so committed to this conversation about desire right now.
Because I think a lot of us are going to spend the next three to four years being deeply afraid of every day and everything that comes down the pipeline and not know how that actually fits into our lives or how we can rightly respond out of who we are. I think that's so good, Brandy. I think that, yeah, fear is being sown very intentionally. It's being used strategically and weaponized against us. It's very dysregulating. I am actively trying not.
to tune into that fear. And I'm still feeling it in my body over here in LA, California, you know, I get that. And but I think you're right in that I think over these next four years. I think it's all the more important then to really examine what is that fear saying? How do we unpack that for ourselves? How do we create safety?
within our communities for one another and to create that space to explore these things. I might be biased, but I truly think that's one of the most beautiful things we could give our time and attention to in these next four years. I think that's so true. And it pulls us from this sort of militaristic. I mean, maybe what I'm thinking about is that in our politics or in our Christianity. There can be this phrase that I bend the knee to Jesus or I lay down my crowns before the Lord. And so.
And it's this representation of saying, I sacrifice everything. We'll say, the woman with the alabaster jar gave everything she had, or the widow with the one coin gave everything she had, and we spiritualize that. I'm not going to de-spiritualize that. I think we can spiritualize.
it appropriately, but it is to say that we bend the knee to Jesus. And that if we then say, okay, we bend the knee to Jesus, but we take Romans 14 and say, obey your governing authorities, then we are then in effect bending a knee to political leaders as a proxy.
for God. And then if our Christian leaders are bending in need of those political leaders and they're in authority over us, I can only think of the old school umbrella where it's Jesus is at the top and then there's men and then husbands and wives and children all underneath these progressively smaller umbrellas. But I think that there's this idea of bending the knee that goes that way. But fear and loyalty to people who have never expressed loyalty to us will always put us in places.
of fear and panic and bending the knee because we don't know what else to do. And I think that some of us, when we feel overwhelmed about what to do, instead of saying, what do I want? Just say, what can I do or who can I offer this up to in hopes that they will indirectly make my life better? And if any of us know anything from the Biden administration, like they did a ton. But the things that we wanted them to do, like.
Some of the practical things they did not do. I will not say they didn't do anything. I will not do that. I'm like a card-carrying Democrat in that way. But like there are a lot of things that we tried to get them to do that they would not do. And we put a lot of stock in that. And it made things deeply disappointing. And instead of saying like.
How's Joe Biden going to save us? Which sounds so stupid when you say it now. What do I want and how can what I want help shape my future, my current, my present into a sustainable reality right now, even in the midst of all of the things that would... seek to disconnect us from desire. And so I'm wondering if we could talk a tiny bit about that because...
We've named some things around fear and security, frivolousness or the idea that desire is impractical, a sense of urgency in our own lives. Desire is just too hard. Can you talk a little bit about how you think about those blocks to finding desire or finding what it is that we desire? I think about I thought about this a lot because I watched people trying to.
take beginning steps to wrestle with their own desire and would immediately even even like in their best intention even with all of their heart trying to move towards that would immediately come back with this like resistance force field of like other things that would push back on them so you name that like fear and insecurity a sense of does it matter these things will never happen like all of these
Just a very strong kind of thoughts back that would, again, shut down a whole conversation. And so the way that I tend to think about it is to try then.
to look at that from the standpoint of what if you're trying to unpack what you really want there are some primary things to pay attention to and then there's a whole host of secondary things that may be somewhat related but shouldn't be the main thing so yes i'm not trying to ever tell someone they shouldn't feel afraid or they shouldn't feel insecure you know from the get because i think it's important to listen to those things but i think it's much more helpful to start with but but what
Does it look like for you to be really in touch with your aliveness as we talked about? What does it look like for you to have imagination for yourself?
to be expansive in that, to be generous with yourself, to be gentle, to give yourself room to explore. That's oftentimes a really important counter because a huge... barrier for a lot of people is just like yeah i literally had someone say what is the point of naming what i want just to you want me just to name a bunch of things that will never happen i'm like okay that's a real feeling all feelings are welcome however um that
that's not going to help you move forward if you stay in that place. So how can you give yourself just a little bit more room to explore, to play, to not know? to engage with the mystery of this because I think some of this work is really sometimes mysterious and it has an invitation to step into uncertainty, which I talk about a bit in the book.
That's uncomfortable, but I think it's necessary to really do this well. So yeah, I think those barriers are so real. But oftentimes I find that just the step to name them. and to articulate them. You know, I always come back to that brain fact where once you articulate something, it moves from one part of your brain to your frontal lobe.
I just think that can be really important and very helpful. So even just to stop and say, okay, what are my barriers? What are the ones that are unique to me? What are the questions that immediately pop up that make me want to shut this down? Or what is scary about this? Just that alone sometimes relieves some of the pressure. Yes. And it feels that feels so important as a counter narrative to maybe the three things that come to mind for me that feel.
The primary Christian framing mechanisms against desire are the over-spiritualization of obedience, submission, and sacrifice. And I can hear some white evangelical pastors like voice in my head being like but jesus calls us to those things and i'm like i i believe that i love the bible i believe that and i believe that
people have the ability to hear from God what the things they are to obey, submit to, and sacrifice are, and that blanketing what that looks like for people will kill their ability to engage with desire. Because I think that in over... Expression of obedience will kill imagination. An overexpression of submission will kill exploration. And an overexpression of sacrifice will kill creativity. And so if you can't have creativity and imagination...
and some level of exploration, you can never figure out who you are. And so I think an outsized expression of those three things and an over-spiritualization of those things. Right. destroys the primary thing that I think humans were made for, which is to be creators. God creates humans in God's own image. The image of God that is given to us in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is as creator. And so if we cannot access the creative parts of us because of that overexpression of obedience...
sacrifice and submission, we will find maybe like even a portrait of Jesus that cares so much about his death and resurrection, but does not care about his life. And so I think for me, part of... Reclaiming Desire is also about reclaiming Jesus and like an appropriate relationship with Jesus that honors the 33 years of life that he lived, not just the three days in which he died, you know, or the five days or a week in which he died and was resurrected, you know?
Yeah, for sure. There should be 10 days technically, but this is not the point. My brain went into like factual mode and it was not helpful. I'm here for it. Yeah. No, I think that's so good. I love how you express that, that sort of over... what was the word you used over commitment to obedience over commitment to sacrifice yes these are values that we can have and that we can still hold to that none of this is meant to say let's chuck that
Let's not care about it. Let's all become like super selfish. Like that's not the core of what we're talking about. But it is, I think, saying what is the appropriate relationship to these things? How do we hold?
again for me it comes back to so much of like how how can we get away from binary thinking that just locks everything down into either you care about obedience or you do not and you're you know so it's no i think there's a lot of room in there there's a lot of things that this question can beg but we have to give people room to begin to try to explore that because as you said when you don't
You don't find yourself and you don't find those things. Yeah. Yeah. And just a quick note that hierarchy will kill that in us all the time because we will always be taught to look to someone higher than ourselves for... input on what we should or can desire or what desires are appropriate, pure, moral, right, correct, all of those things. And so I think that some of us have very loud...
Christian messengers in our life that are dictating what our desires are. I think about a lot of my friends who got married way too early because they... were told what their desire should be to be as a parent or to be as a wife or a husband or for sex or how they should engage with those things. And so this telling people what their desire should be, right, it's a conform your desires to the likeness of Christ kind of.
things instead of saying, what is the likeness of Christ? And I'm like, maybe the likeness of Christ is God become man being fully himself in a way that brought people life and healing. And it's not just a sacrificial lamb to be murdered on your behalf. And so... how we view leaders and how we view Jesus will, for many Christians, necessarily shape how we engage with the validity of our own desires.
because it's just so costly not to engage with this. And so I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit of a sense of the cost of our own, even as maybe the question I'm asking is more around, as you've been a coach, you have all of this kind of anecdotal
evidence of the cost to people not engaging with their desires and what happens when they do. So can you give me a little bit of narrative around how that has worked? Because it feels so important in this moment. I love that. I had a conversation just a couple... I had a conversation recently with someone who had hit retirement age. So he was 65, had had a very successful career in his field. Very, you know, what you should want, like success in that.
sense. He was a committed member of his church and community, volunteered, you know, all the things and had built this life. But at retirement was reassessing and trying to look ahead to say, what should this next chapter be about? And I remember asking me this question of like, I've noticed there's a difference between the things that I truly want that make me feel alive and the things that other people want from me.
And that they tell me they want me to do more of. I've noticed that those things aren't the same. My question is, does that difference matter? And I think even in him asking that, I heard it as... him searching for permission searching for what he kind of I think already was hinting like he knew to be true yes it does matter but
was looking for that, yes, it's okay for you to pay attention to this. It's okay for you to want this. And I just, that conversation has really stayed with me because I think that's where it is helpful to think about. the brevity of life. And for this person, he was not going to be able to get away from this question, as I think all of us. will hit that point at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. But yeah, so as we talked about that, I was like, yeah, I think that really matters.
So what could it look like if you were to spend this next season of your life leaning into that? What might be beautiful about that? Because also what's at his heart is he really wants to be of service. to other people. He really wants to contribute to the world and to his community. And I think that's so beautiful. But I think for him, it was important to be able to say,
That's where you're going to get to because that is also, I think, how we're hardwired is to want to contribute in that way. But can you trust?
that the way that you do that will come if you give yourself enough space to explore some of these questions first it'll feel scary because it's non-linear it's not logical it's you cannot like chart it or map it but you But if you can give yourself that room, I think you're going to discover something that is you being your most alive self and doing that in a way that really matters for the people around you that you care about.
so I think again that's just really stuck with me because I thought that was such a perfect expression of what it feels like to wrestle with these things And I so appreciate the distinction in that between competency and desire. Is this thing that I've been good at or done forever the thing that I actually desire? And I maybe want to name too that this is the importance of justice work in a lot of ways. Like most justice work that we're doing.
trying to create a world where people have space to ask those questions. And I think that so much of it becomes the baseline thing, which is we want people to be able to eat or to have access to affordable health care or a place to live. But the question beyond that question is...
And so people can live lives that are, I mean, the Christian word we use all the time now is flourishing, that allows space to make room for desire. And so I think the work of justice in these critically chaotic moments. is to continue to contend that we can make room for people to engage with their desires and to not just have to survive life in such a way that they just do things that they're good at or even bad at and hate.
instead of things that like might bring them desire. And I think it's why it's helpful that early we separated it from vocation. Because I think about women in my family who... you know, were born in the 50s or the 30s or the 20s and who did not have options on who they could be vocationally. But as I've found my grandma's love for... house plants and how good she is at growing them and making dirt mixtures. I'm so proud and I can see this desire.
breathing life and like literally creating life out of things in a way that has been so life-giving. I think about my great grandma making pies and breads. And I'm like, I don't know if that was like her greatest desire, but I know it's something that they did and they enjoyed and they did for survival. And so... the things that we desire can be the things that help us survive. But I think that there is this, that helpful distinction between
what I like, what I'm good at, what I have to do to survive and how I can make space in the micro. And so I'm wondering as we move toward closing in some way that... One of the things that I think you do that's really helpful, one is that the book is full of all these practical tools, like every chapter has something really practical to do. And I think, again, as I really...
laud you as a really good trainer that comes through so strongly in the very practical ways that you don't leave people behind. Because I think if I were to turn to someone, even after this conversation and say, okay, what do you want? That's not going to be helpful. How do you help people break up this? process of engaging with desire differently, particularly in seasons that are full of busyness, anxiety, stress worry, all the things.
Yes, that question can feel deeply unhelpful. So I love that you named that. I think it comes back to listening again. Practice listening to yourself. So I talk about this a little bit in the book, but I did this thing for 40 days and just did one thing every day just because I wanted to. And it became this sort of habit, like a practice.
I felt all the things we talked about, all that guilt and shame and judgment as I was doing it, literally like planting tomatoes and being like, oh, my God, am I going to hell? You know, like it was right intense. But I think. Some of what I've loved about that space was just like, it was just a process of listening to what I want, moving towards it, taking a small step of action.
And so for folks that are finding themselves like, yeah, I want to explore this, I think giving yourself some of those baby steps. And yes, obviously, like the ultimate things of what we're talking about are deeper. But it can really be in those. So I love your examples like houseplants. Yes. Or bread. Or what is it that just for no other reason than just it's good for us in our souls?
to practice this for ourselves because that those are muscles that we build up and that only helps us in this process so if this is something that feels really outside of your experience or thinking or something you want to grow in, but it feels intimidating, I think these small ways to practice in day-to-day life are so profound. Yes.
And I think I want to offer one word of grace to people in it, because I think that as I've tried to uncover Desire, the shame that's come up has not been necessarily around the cosmic. It's been around...
how I've tried to pursue those desires in ways that have not been good for me or for other people. And so like a desire for I know a lot of people I pastored or mentored or ministered to felt a lot of shame about how they were in romantic relationships. And so they're like, Oh, I need to do like a is so evangelical ministry, but I'm going to do like a dating fast for two years because I keep having these like dysfunctional relationships with women in my community. And I'm like, okay.
There's actually something to that. There is something like making space for that. But then when they start to date again, they're full of hyper vigilance and shame over what they did before that prevents them from being able to get the thing that they desire or develop the thing that they desire, which is companionship. relationship. Or it could be that there's a desire for money that causes someone to be, or for security maybe, that causes someone to be really reckless with their money.
having that core desire to have what you need and to feel like you can provide for the people around you and offer people something is shrouded in a mistake that you've made in the past or like a desire for. influence in something that really matters to you justice-wise made you like an arrogant little prick in a progressive space. And I'm like, okay. The core desires themselves are not...
bad things, but can be pursued in ways that are kind of chaotic and bring up shame. And so I think there's space to offer ourselves grace for the ways in which we might know our desires, but run from them because the ways that we've pursued them in the past may have been dehumanizing to us or to other people in some way. way and that's part of growing up like part of growing into ourselves and coming into ourselves regardless of how old we are and rediscovering ourselves
is allowing our past experiences of chasing desire not be hurdles that prevent us from chasing the core desires themselves. Look at the story of Abram and Sarah. Core desire to have kids in a family. How they pursued that? totally messed up, has a redemptive arc. And so I just think that we can start to have grace for ourselves in that journey and allow ourselves to weigh our experiences rightly, even as we come to find ourselves in...
less urgent ways. I love that. I love that. Yeah. Sorry, the one other thing I will say that keeps coming to mind is that I just think the afterlife, the idea of the afterlife makes people, regardless of what you believe about it, makes people...
really bad at this because it makes us non-urgent. Finding desire actually doesn't become a thing that we think is important because there's something that we can't see farther away that's much more urgent. And I just think that the work of knowing our desire... at a baseline will help us know our motivations and why we do a lot of the things that we do. And it's just a part of being grown. And so I think that we can start to separate the...
Everything has to be cosmic and just be like, no, everything gets to be human because that's what we are. And so I think there's some kind of invitation to be really human and to be kind of messy in. this pursuit of desire, because I don't think what you're suggesting is that this is a linear process where you listen to your life and then suddenly you're like...
light comes on. There it is. There's my desire. I think there's like a lot more that you describe around experimentation that really matters, but can be really scary for a lot of us who have self-policed long enough to not know how to do that. For sure. For sure. I love that.
Can you talk a little bit about your book? I would love as we're closing out for you to, if you have any last words for folks who are undesired, I'd love to hear that. But also if you could just give a pitch for the book, because it's really, really lovely, Tracy. Thanks, Brandy. This book was the distillation, I think, of all these conversations and my attempt to try to hold them together and look for what was underneath them. So yeah, I...
I loved writing it. There's so much of my heart in there. I think one of the best compliments that I've gotten on it so far that's been really meaningful to me is someone said that it felt really kind. And I love that. That's my heart for people is I'm really rooting for people in this book and really...
want to be someone that can be a kind voice in this process, which can often be fraught and complicated. And so I'm really hoping that comes through on the page. But yeah, that's my heart for people. That's so good. And what I will say to folks is that many of us have never been told that our desires are good. Many of us have never been told that our desires matter.
And so this process can be deeply intimidating. And what this book does is it, because it's a broad book, not a Christian book, it offers a lot of non-triggering ways to think about desire because it's not attached to God's core desire for you. or the like, inherency of your humanity and God's cosmic story. It's like not any of that. It's a very practical guide, like a self kind of a self help guide to
finding what you desire. And so I think for folks who have only done that through the lens of atomic habits or highly effective people or, you know, habits of highly effective people, like all of those sorts of things that tend to masculinize. purpose and feminized desire and all of that. This book is a really, like you said, kind and gentle on-ramp to desire in a way that I think just the feeling I kept having was of like a balloon blowing up and expanding, like that there's a slow...
like making room for air where there wasn't air before, like room for something to grow in a gentle way for folks. And so if you have questions about desire right now or even interpreting your experiences in hindsight, this book is like a really beautiful tool. to practically do it. And it's like really, I think I haven't done it, but from what I can tell of it as a person who's done so much group training.
would be so good in groups of people to bounce bounce ideas off of to think about yourself in the context of other people who know you well and so it's a great resource for that so i will give links to that book yeah anything else you want to add to that just I'm so honored. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you for being here today, Tracy. It means the world. My pleasure. Thank you for joining for another episode of Reclaiming My Theology.
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Y'all, we so appreciate you helping us to make this work happen. We know this work is more important than ever. We have a lot of things coming down the pipe, even as Annie and I are in these seasons of transition and a little bit of life chaos, honestly. we're so grateful for you in it i want to continue to make content that helps us to do a little bit better together we want to do it with y'all see you next time