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 this is a bonus episode. Today I am joined by the ever-lovely Sarah Bessey to talk about how we can reclaim our lives in theology in the wilderness. We talk about what is lost when we begin to ask questions about our faith and our own lives, what happens when we change our minds, and the hope that exists on the other side of it all.
At Reclaiming My Theology, we're also currently in the midst of Lent, well, it's not just reclining my theology, it's the church calendar. But it's a space of reflection and an invitation in our space to a more liberated life and life living like Jesus as the litigator.
So if you like what you hear on the podcast and want more of that and to support the ongoing work that we're doing, or you just want access to a day-by-day Lent Indivotional, you can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash recliningmytheology. We always also desire your questions and stories of how the show has reached you. You can send those to recliningmytheology.com.
As always, thanks for all of the ways that y'all show up and sharing, rating, buying, vards, sharing kind words, and everything in between. I hope that this episode can be a softer reminder of how we can show up together and pursue healing on this in new imagination. With that, enjoy this episode with Sarah Bessey.
Sarah, thank you so much for your time. It's a delight to get to connect both personally but also in this context as we one celebrate the release of your recent book, but also just as we find ways to connect our community is around the mutual work that we're doing. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having me, Brandi. It's so nice to see you. It's so nice to see you too.
Sarah, for folks who don't know you, and I know a lot of folks out there know you from various capacities, but for folks who don't know you or don't know you in this season, I'd love for you to describe for them. What does it mean to be you right now? Oh man, I love how you frame this question. It's... So... I think like a lot of us, maybe a little bit of a complicated answer, right? I think where we've found ourselves at this moment in time.
I mean the headline stuff for... Yeah, I'm a writer, I live in Canada, and I'm a mom of four, and have been leading evolving faith, which is a community for folks who work in the midst of a bit of a faith shift for the last five or six years. But I think that like most of us, that's just the headline stuff, right? There's all the things that kind of go in and go around underneath all of that. We all have a lot of subtext, and so...
Yeah, I think that's one of the things that maybe most of us are starting to get our heads around anyway. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And I hear even in that description of what it means to be you, the reality that a lot of us are facing, that being us currently can't be fully divorced from the things that are happening in the world around us, where we are...
Yeah, inundated with images and experiences of persistent war and violence, political upheaval, and all of those things, and that when someone asks, what does it mean to be you? The individual representation of that is really challenging when we're trying to hold the collective. So I can hear some of the tension dripping in either the... What does it mean to be right now? I'm trying to do things when I lead a community, that's what I truly feel right now.
Here's all these things, and also I walk around in light candles and pray and cry, and go for walks and fight with God, and try to raise my kids, and all those things are all happening at the same time.
Yes, yes, and that's a great way to put... And I think this will actually be relevant, even as we have this conversation about these wilderness spaces that we find ourselves in, and in the ways that we pursue a faith that can hold more of us, is that being realistic about who and where we are becomes a very relevant person,
becomes a very present and pressing thing to engage with. Because I think a lot of my spirituality taught me that there was this esoteric, really good thing out there, and there was this hell scape here and a hell scape later. So you were just trying to avoid the double hell scapes, and so it's going to the esoteric place later. And so everything lived inside of me, like everything.
And so I was like, how do I feel spiritually, and how is my body impacted by seeing images of dying or dead children every day, and how does that move me not toward just prayer, but toward something that changes systems and structures, or pushes back politically? And all of that feels really hard to hold when the spiritual background I was given said, well, you just pray about it, or you just trust God, or you just have faith for a lot of us, we realize that that has not worked.
And even the emptiness of it, like I, so I came up, my religious tradition or background is more kind of a branch of neo-charismatic movement. So Pentecostal adjacent, but further down the line, right, and very word of faith, prosperity gospel, focus, that was my lane, or my background.
And so even those dynamics of that prayer is a means of control and controlling outcomes that extols prosperity, whether that's in health or finances or relationally or whatever else with your own faith and goodness, like somehow you earned it.
And then, so having to undo all of that, like you were saying, just here's the thing that you were given framework, you were given for understanding the world, and then you all of a sudden are like, well, if you're a person for longer than a hot second, you realize that that's garbage, right? That that's not not actually how things are. And what does it mean to hold and learn lament, but also presence and participation and cooperation? What does it mean to actually engage?
Those were questions that I can't say that were a huge part of how that was, and so you're having to relearn that as an adult, sometimes far into your adulthood, in a way that almost feels like relearning the alphabet or relearning how to move through kind of your life on them, very basic things. Yes, yeah, and it reminds me, and this feels might feel a little off somewhere else, but I promise it's just how my brain works, but it makes me think, you know that?
It makes me think a little bit about Horseshoe theory, which in politics is essentially the idea that like the extremes of both the right and the left kind of Horseshoe and meet in similar places. And so you might end up with like particular types of policies or practices or even things like in the US politics around Israel and God's, I like where you're like, how are you all on the same team about this thing?
And I think that sometimes when I think about my fundamental Christian background and progressive Christianity, the point where the Horseshoe kind of connects is that change happens fast and it happens outside of you. That it's not about deeper character formation that can hold all of the stuff that you're describing.
And so I think I'd experience, and I know a lot of people in this community have experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance as we seek to be more just or pursue a better world, because right, in conservative Christian spaces, it's, you want to pursue a better world. In progressive spaces, you want to pursue a more healed and good world.
On the right, you want to pursue a more healed world. And so the mechanisms might be entirely different. The outcomes might be totally different, but the way that we posture ourselves ends up being the same, which is why I've been fascinated by this idea that you explore.
So openly about the wilderness, these kind of in between spaces between us trying to live just and whole and good lives while also rejecting the things that have placed us in harmful environments ourselves or helped or produced context where we perpetuate. And so I would love if you could talk a little bit about this idea of the wilderness, what do you mean when you talk about that? And how did you come to be interested in that idea yourself?
Yeah, I, the notion of wilderness as a metaphor is certainly not one that's new, right? I mean, it's been, it's an old and ancient one. I think the place where, where I began to really explore it was probably more than 10 or 12 years ago of just seeing it almost in my, in my mind as here's this liminal space. And so for me, like the notion of the city became almost like this stand in for certainty and conditional belonging and behaving within this proper very tiny box lane or whatever else.
And I mean, a lot of us have different reasons why maybe we cross that threshold and leave that. And it's complicated, right? It's a complicated thing to, to even talk about how we enter the wilderness or those liminal spaces in our faith where we're not who we were. And yet we're not yet sure who we're becoming.
Because some of us land in the wilderness by choice, right? Whether it's because of circumstances, I think one of the, one of the shared experiences almost all of us have crossing that threshold into the wilderness is usually something akin to grief. It can masquerade as anger, it can masquerade as theology questions, it can masquerade as a lot of different things.
But underneath it, there's usually a lot of loss and a lot of grief. And yet I say that knowing like the city's kind of built for women like me. Right? Like it just is. And so my experience of entering those liminal spaces is very different than someone who never belonged to begin with. And so then even those experiences of loss and grief are very different. And so I think that's where even the notion of wilderness emerged for us even and became kind of part of the fabric of evolving faith.
Rachel held Evans and I started evolving faith and the wilderness was this metaphor that both of us really loved. She was super into planet earth. So it was whenever we're like great nerdy loves her and down. And so like we were always talking about and and I think there was this connection as well of just wandering.
Right? And the notion of you don't have to speed walk your way through this or arrive immediately or switch one type of certainty for another type of certainty that this liminal space is actually a really holy invitation from the spirit. It's not a mark of faithlessness. It's not a mark of pride. It's I think I've heard about 16,000 different ways that people like to talk about deconstruction never once have I talked to someone who's been like, you know what I want to do fornicate.
So I'm going to go ahead and question everything I've ever believed. Like it's you know those are the things. And so people find themselves there for all sorts of reasons, but these liminal spaces and I think one of the reasons why we like the wilderness metaphor is because there is a sense of danger to it. There's a sense of unchartedness to it or untardedness to you.
Because that doesn't mean that other people haven't traversed this terrain before or that there aren't these little kind of like almost like campfires where you find each other and rest for a minute and have a sense of camaraderie or realization that like you're not as alone as you thought. And there's a lot of people who are exploring and who are questioning and who are curious or even being reintroduced to the wilderness inside themselves and the wildness that they've always carried.
I mean those are things that are all true, right? And so yeah, I just I think that's that's maybe where it started. I mean originally too. So I live in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. And so we spend a lot of time outside. And I think that's maybe part of where the idea for the book came was like these idea of like field guides of just things that you can tuck in your back pocket and carry with you from someone who's walked the path a little bit.
And could not only point out like here's some ditches that I may be wondered into or hey avoid this trail because it'll add eight hours to your hike. It's also things like here's something beautiful to keep an eye out for. Here's here's the reason why it's worth it. Here's what you're going to find on the other side of this. And that what I envisioned I think for it.
And that feels so important as many of us are I think because I think what I'm discovering in this season right I think there was this big there's massive wave of deconstruction that has now flattened into this dull hum where a lot of us are asking does any of this matter like if I if I straight so far from the thing that I believed in before if I don't hold the same ideas or values or practices that I did before.
Is this even worth pursuing or what is left to pursue and so I love the idea of having space to wander and I think that it's also challenging because wandering is such a prevalent image in the Hebrew scriptures Jesus basically spends all of his time walking and wandering around like if you map out Jesus's walkings like where he goes in the gospels particularly in mark it is just a doozy because it's clearly not.
It's the most practical route where strategic plan where is that it's not a multiplicative movement. See a vision for multi site campuses here Jesus.
Exactly it's exactly so I think what ends up happening though is that we have this image of Jesus wandering we have Israel wandering in the desert we have all these all these sorts of things happening and yet the images that were given or the sentiments that were given about what faithfulness is is to stay it is to stay in a singular place it is to stay in particular people's arms in their grasp in their power and I heard you say when you are you you made that like passing comment about you've never met a person.
You've never met a person who starts deconstructing their faith because I want to fornicate like I think that is it's the sentiment is silly but I think it is true in that most of us encounter when we start to walk away from those spaces or realize that they have caused us pain or trauma or done so to our people that there are all of these bad faith excuses or justifications that people who once held us institutions that once held us will weaponize and wield against us and so it feels like when you start a wandering journey there is this.
Process where faithfulness looks like staying and therefore unfaithfulness is going and so anything you do that falls outside of the spaces of non exploratory concrete certain church Christianity ends up feeling in our bodies maybe sinful problematic or something because we can flate the Holy Spirit with indoctrination and I think the wilderness is the place where I watched a lot of people wrestle with that particular tension how do I reclaim my body from indoctrinating forces that have tricked me into thinking their God.
That's exactly right. I think that's one of the things that was really freeing for me in this process was realizing I think initially and maybe because my experience my very first experience with faith shift happened long before this conversation and long before like the over saturation of it even you know where now all of a sudden it's like the word even ceases to have any meaning beyond what the person who's most certainly.
Using it means by it's right. And so there was this sense I think of that's actually is how it's set up and that is actually how how it's viewed and I remember when the very first time I started encountering like there's a half a dozen people who have written really beautifully and while indent tremendous amount of studies around the spiritual formation of these stages of life right from record to James Fowler and Brian.
Brian Claren you know all sorts of Richard or there's all kinds of things here but I remember coming across it and James Fowler's and he talked about how at that early there's like six stages of faith he talked about and at that initial stage that most of our churches are set up to support and foster tends to be very literal and it tends to be very if this then that if you do this then this will be what happens.
And anyone who questions that or says but what about or I don't know about that or this doesn't line up is I'm actually seen as like the enemy because that's how you preserve the center of the thing that you're doing. And the way that that validated even my own experiences and faith communities. You know I'm still me I just ice do you not all see this do you not all see these questions do you not have these same wondering are you not bothered by some of these things are you not.
The this you can't square some of these circles right and I think that that's one of the things even we've talked about. You know in other ways around hey you keep calling this good fruit and as far as I can tell it's killing a lot of people.
And it's hurting a lot of people and so this is can we not talk about the tree that we're all dancing around here and so I think that that realization of that's not a bug that is actually the feature of this is and that's how the the boundaries are created and offenses are created.
And so yeah there is a sense of wandering but there's also a feeling of discomfort to that because people are very invested in not understanding that you are actually in the wilderness or you have entered this stage of spiritual formation you've entered this stage of change and evolution and healing even I would argue in a lot of cases because most of us have a lot of healing to do from how we started off in this story.
That it's actually an invitation of the spirit. Yes. Yes. And that invitation of the spirit is so beautiful and so complicated because I think that well I was talking to a friend recently and we were talking about how when we are in faith spaces we don't actually analyze the animating values of the things that we're asking of people.
So we're asking people to stay in these rigid lines when we're asking people to not care about the war when we're not asking people not to care about black lives matter when we're asking people to not care about the harm that is caused by our that our theology causes LGBTQ plus people like when we ask is we're not asking what we're not asking the question what is animating that value what is animating that request.
And is the question like the one that you're just asking is it is this harmful to anyone or is the question is this about moral objectivity and I think that moral objectivity is a pretty bad God and it is one that we worship and so oftentimes like when I was taught that I shouldn't explore queerness like my own or even affirmation of anyone else is a lot of the questions that we're being asked where about like well what does the Bible say or what does God say or what the consequences if you decide what is the concept of the human being is the concept of the human being.
If you decide to live this lifestyle or whatever that's in quote. I just became a embodiment of the the cringe face emoji. Yes. But it's but but right. The question isn't does being queer cause you or anyone else harm in like a practical sense it becomes is there an esoteric spiritual fear out there of God later that should animate how you operate now.
And because we don't ask questions about this animating values are we talking about harm or hierarchy or are we talking about moral superiority are we talking about these kind of fact don't have any other words than like my overly private large education like an ideological topology where we're where we say something is true and then we create context to reify the notion that that thing is true is that is that what we're doing and I think when we don't ask questions about those animating values.
We end up in spaces where we can only see God as a figure to disappoint and the community as a community of people to be abandoned by. And so I think I've been asking a lot of questions even to the tune of what you're saying around what are the questions that we can ask and why do we ask them not just what are the questions or what are the consequences for them it's asking when I ask a question about war.
Is this harmful to anyone or is this subverting hierarchy in a way that is meaningful like how am I engaging with the necessary unhooking from moral objectivity as the only way that I decide what I do or do not believe when I have a whole body that's experiencing things that are profoundly that are profound that are profound and capable of giving me information about God Godself.
And so I think the wilderness is this interesting space where we can question our animating values in a way that there literally is no space for in the spaces that we come from. You're exactly right. You're exactly right and I think that that it does feel like a stripping away which is maybe why it feels so painful to so many of us in the beginning because it does feel like not only are you losing old versions of yourself.
But you are losing the story you told yes about the world and about your place in it and about how you relate to it oftentimes you're losing God in the way that you've understood God. And so those things come alongside of the very real currency of belonging within spaces like this which requires a script to be followed and when you step out of line the repercussions are swift because that's how it's set up.
Right. And so it's not surprising that that's so many people's experience and that's why I wonder. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if there's a way to to have that without that sort of loss because you almost have to lose an unlearn before you can have the space to re-learn or re-imagine or enter into whatever's new. It's almost like you have to leave the one room you're in in order to enter the next one.
Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. And that I see a lot of as I hear a lot of the discourse about people who are asking questions about their faith I think what ends up happening is because I do think that there is a way that our ethics and our values and some foundational things can be good fences as we explore or as we discover.
I think that's great. It's necessary to have those ethical boundaries but I think what ends up happening is we give theological boundaries or theological consequences as those fences and I do not think those are good fences because they reflect on some kind of sentiment that God is more concerned with our compliance than our whole personhood and that the love of God is not kind of wide enough deep enough good enough to hold us in our exploration.
And so I think that when ethics are not our center point and theological compliance is we will only get so far and when we only get space to go so far we will never find ourselves and God in and of ourselves. And so I think I had a hard time with even what you're describing around when we move even to the doorway of the room.
We're told like don't stray too far like it was just so ironic right now when I think about some of the most the most profound animating stories and the gospels are a son who goes away for a long time and does whatever he wants and comes back on his own terms even if those terms are bad.
Yeah. And that God is delighted to invite that person back into sonship and so I think that there is a challenge for me when people say you can only deconstruct or you can only wander or you can only explore in these ways because it assumes this character of God that isn't big enough or loving enough or spacious enough to hold all of those things and replaces it with a God who is more interested in offering repercussions like you're saying for the wandering when I've actually never seen that.
Have I seen anything that I think is God's judgment of people for their exploration I've never seen it and maybe you would say or not you but the esoteric out there far away you would say well it's because you're you don't know if you synthesize the sin or something but I just never seen it like I just never seen it what I have seen over and over again is that when people desire to have a connection to the divine and to the community that there is faithfulness along the way to meet.
Those folks where they are even after long times of wandering and drinking so maybe they're not even proud of so I feel like I'm just stuck in that a little bit these days. You were just about to find out how charismatic I still am because I've but what found a hanky and sort of waving it in your face. I think that's one of the things that is so deeply connected to the larger thing that you're saying around this moment in time the even what I would term like apocalypse I mean granted.
We're in a faith and kid and charismatic of course I love big King James language like. Apocalypse probably itself. I'll put up hours and principalities on you here in a minute when I'm talking about. I speak the language fluently I can do that. Okay good but there's this thing of around that apocalypse where it does feel like an unveiling. Right that real original truest meaning of the word that it's a revelation like that the lights are getting thrown on and all the things that we have.
Plyantly or deliberately or weren't aware we're being swept away are all there right for us to see and there's no there's no hiding any longer and so that's where that understanding of God that shift around the welcome and inclusion and goodness and generosity and wideness in God's mercy. That will that's great for you and that's a deeply healing work that I would never in a million years want to denigrate or belittle because that's often the doorway.
But then you all the sudden realize that when that is true that that includes other people to and that includes other people's stories and that includes experiences that are different than yours and that includes geopolitical areas that are different than where you maybe you've understood and and you know be taught to understand.
Even the ways that those things are like deeply enmeshed with like nationalism and our place in our nations and how we show up in the world and then how we even show up and understand our our our identity right which is what I think maybe it's sometimes such a painful thing for people is because you don't just feel like you're like one of my biggest pet peeves brandy.
First going to do it. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people act like this experience in the wilderness is about trading one set of theological beliefs for another set. If I can just change my opinions or change my my theology on whatever and it's not to say theology is important because it is deeply deeply important it shows up in every aspect of our lives it shows up in how we show up with each other how we show up in the world how we show up for the questions and moments of our time.
It's super important. Sure. But that's that's not the totality of this like the totality of this is actually well going back to old language again being born again almost right like of seeing everything differently of seeing the welcome and the goodness and the love of God of seeing these sacramental nature of being alive of seeing the ways that we are interconnected with one another of seeing the ways that all of this is tied up together.
And once you relearn that that's that's not about here's here's six new answers to an apologetics thing I memorized this is how you move through your life is right. Yes. And I think that's where some of the grief and the pain maybe feels most sharp for some of us because a lot of the faith experiences that I was given and that many were given relied on toxic positivity to keep you from the kind of unveilings.
God on to you to say that the earth that the world is bad because of original sin like I just said in Christian college and a kid asked me a question on original sin and I was like I asked him straight up.
I said I said why is I straight up said does this question help you get toward answers that actually impact your life or other people because he was asking about I was I was doing talk on violence and he was asking essentially what are the origins of violence or where does violence come from does it come from where we just like it inherently like violent or does it something that we do.
And I was like how does that question help you become less violent and follow the way of Jesus that pulls us in an on violence and he was just kind of like I guess it doesn't.
And so then I was like okay well then why is that question so important to you and I've been thinking about it because it feels a little bit like that question is important because it gives a reason for why things are bad instead of just being able to say things suck and we have to deal with that and we have to engage with the fact that life is pain and struggle and that God can be good in the midst of life being pain and struggle but I could just see the way I was.
I could just see the wheels in his head turning that we're like wait a second like there maybe there's just not a reason for why things are like this that that gets me outside of myself but rather invites me into myself and so I think that unveiling that you're talking out can be so brutal because not only is our faith sort of falling apart straight up but we are being confronted with a world that is somehow much worse than Christian said it was.
But in ways that you can feel and touch and taste and encounter alongside other people it's not bad because of original sin it's bad because of sexism and homophobia and white supremacy and political warfare and power and power and the reality of our age here we are.
And so I think it's hard when we're trying to deconstruct to know more to gain something to not just swap for theological principles but what we end up doing is giving away all of the things that have held us for a long time that have been safe in a particular ideological and internal way and then replace them with a shit ton of grief about the world.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean I remember when I was young you weren't even allowed to say you were sick and in some of the faith spaces that I came up in. You weren't sick you were coming down with a healing. How's that?
Which is just again it's just the way and so again there's all of us have different types of things that we're undoing and all of us come from different kind of ways of being folks I talk to who come from more different type of background often have to grapple with and heal their view of God because they've been told like God is the one who does this God's the origin point of sin and evil God will use these terrible things and you're like to punish you and you deserve it because you're a worm and with spider held over the fires of hell.
Thanks Jonathan Edwards slave owner of theologian and so you have all of these different functions that are happening but for someone like me in the background I came up in which was the toxic positivity thing. You do end up like well God's always good God wants goodness for me God is faithful God is love this beautiful view of God very high view of God.
So you're the problem if things aren't going well so you're the problem so if you're sick it's your lack of faith if you're if someone's broke it's because they they are it's not because of systemic poverty it's not because of all these other factors that are on the go it's because of their faith or whatever else right and so even that kind of like particularity of shame.
Is a is a heck of a thing to start to undo and so I mean for sure what what boots you over the threshold might be your need to rethink prosperity or how you read scripture or a tone of theories or whatever like sure whatever right whatever turns the key in the lock knock yourself out.
But at the end of the day what you're what you're really actually experiencing is that you're going to have to learn how to be a person you're going to have to learn how to be a person in this world you're going to have to stop pathologizing humanity you're going to stop. Ask having to act like you've got a fast pass or an app hack to get out of the experience of being a person because this is this is what it is.
Even in the ways that you're describing some of the theology that has held some of that this high view of God means a low view of self and I think again if we're going to horseshoe theory this what ends up happening I think is that we start to deconstruct and then we have a low view of God and a high view of self and we still live in hierarchy.
I think someone might be triggered to be like is anger is good as God I don't sound even a question I ask it doesn't matter again. Why is this question is in it. Yeah. Does this question actually help us get anywhere. But I think I just wonder like why is it that in a lot of deconstruction spaces it's low view of God high view of self in a lot of conservative spaces it's high view of God low view of self.
And I'm like we can have a high view of God and a high view of self and let those high views of the goodness of God and the goodness of humanity shape us into a more just society but that feels so hard to do when a lot of the Christianity that we've been given has to exist in binary there has to be an either or there has to be a he is greater than me who then who is in the world like more of him less of me instead of saying oh I think John was probably really secure in.
His relationship to God I don't think he's saying like I'm the worst person in the whole world I think he's naming his role in a big story where he's not the center and that doesn't mean a low view of self it means a high view of God to high view of the story that allows him to take a high view of self and others alongside him and so I think that kind of that those parallels feel really challenging.
And I think that many of us in this is fair do not know how to pursue both a high view of God and a high view of humanity when those things have been put at odds. Well because you're basically having to relearn your entire view of how we're moving through the world right and I think that that's maybe part of the process right I think most of us go through I think especially in the early days of when you're in the world.
When you very first kind of flailingly find yourself catapulted into this thing that is no longer like a park but a thing that could swallow you whole. You do you we can over correct maybe if that makes sense because we are needing that healing and I think that that's even part of the process is that burn it down stage that steering into some things in order to steer back or to find kind of that that path that has been so elusive to us.
And so I don't know that anyone gets to skip that part the messy part the flailing part the I didn't get things right and I have some regrets part. Just as zealous as we can be in fundamentalism or purity culture or certainty we can be that zealous and unflinching and unforgiving on the other side but that's where I think that that joy of high view of God.
High view of people high view of ourselves calls us deeper calls us further in calls us to that kind of embodiment that kind of so what are you going to do differently so how is this going to actually matter in your life like that question you're asking the student right like how is this actually going to help you follow Jesus better are you looking for a get out of jail free card are you looking for a reason that you can or an excuse or are you missing the most obvious invitation.
That is here now and so yeah I think I think that's maybe some of the hard part is I think maybe we were taught or told that we get to skip that part that we just get to jump right to arrival and we don't understand that so much of what we learn is in that mess and even the the people around around us and alongside of us during that right.
Yes and I think it goes back to some of the stuff we were saying earlier about faithfulness but even the the notion that faithfulness in the way that you're describing right now is compliance is what a lot of us are taught in state what really the big word is obedience it's submission it's submission to God and God's will it's not my will that your be yours be done it's making ourselves Jesus in the garden of get sent me get me get well get sent me it's making us Jesus in those spaces and I think I wonder.
For many of us who are trying to figure out what is faithfulness right now because we yeah if faithfulness has always been obedience and compliance in a particular way what does it mean to be faithful in a season where we don't really feel like we know God or ourselves or maybe the world that we live in or if we do know the world we live in and how much of a train record is how to be in it faithfully what do you think about faithfulness in this season as you consider the wilderness as a space.
I love this way of approaching it like what is what is faithfulness I think in this moment and I think one of the things I think is one of those things that I grapple with a lot personally and I think part of the reason why is because one of the areas that I had to personally deconstruct was this evangelical hero complex the idea of it's not just a
idea it's up to you to save the world and it's up to you to save everything and you have got to sacrifice everything on the altar of almighty ministry or like whatever else and I watched as people were just chewed up and spat out in service to the churn of this thing and just you know destroyed mentally physically emotionally
and emotionally spiritually because they were trying to be faithful and yet so I deconstruct all of that I get very very comfortable with a smaller life and a more steady life and a very engaged life in my actual place I stop separating the work of my life into two piles that are somehow in my head working against each other
and so things I do that are sacred and here's the things I do that are secular and here's the things I'm doing for Jesus and here's the things I'm actually just doing laundry or looking and bringing food to my neighbor or whatever right and so healing that divide I think actually has given me the path of what faithfulness is if that makes sense
like instead of looking at it as what is the big sexy sacrificial thing that is going to make the mission's newsletter or what in all the places and moments of your life what does it mean to be faithful what does it mean to embody the things that you actually hope for about the world what is what is the thing that you are going to dare to let yourself have some hope for
and so one of the ways that I have found or a path of faithfulness that I have found in this and it's I envy the people who who land in these things and they're able to be like here's six steps and it'll guarantee I guarantee it'll work all the time because that's just not the world that we live in but one of the things that has been helpful for me I will offer this has been that notion of naming what I am for instead of just what I am against
and that has been a path of faithfulness for me in this moment in time for instance that's good especially when I think a lot of us are overwhelmed or having to rethink ways that we've been taught to view the world ways we've been taught to view our place in the world or our communities place in the world or whatever else or we're relearning things that we may be never knew when we should have known or whatever
it's important to name what you're against and that matters it's it's deeply important to be able to do that but not stopping there and being curious about what is it I'm actually for and then how can I live into that in the dailyness of my life not as this big sacrificial submissive obedience kind of narrative but in the how
I'm actually showing up in my life if this is a thing I'm hoping for if this is a thing I want to be for then how am I going to actually what am I going to do different or how am I going to show up in that and so that this that little shift in perspective of not just against but also having room for and moving towards what I want to be for gives me a path to contribute or build or be part to participate but also not to center myself either
right but to see myself as part of what is moving in that direction and what I genuinely believe is the movement of the spirit and what I genuinely believe is an invitation there to cooperate with and co-create with and even collaborate with one another on that path of yeah this is this is a thing that we believe about God this is this is if I think that God is generous and loving and inclusive and welcoming that's going to change how I show up in my in my life right
yes or should yes yes and that will change how I approach what I am against right like I think that a lot of the work I've done of being in being against systems of oppression and and violence and in whatever is is learning how to live a like a smaller and more sacred life alongside people that change me such that I would know how to do the work
exactly I did a lot of screaming into the void in the early on screen was a time and the time and I was like I I screamed into that void and you know what I did and screaming into the void myself you weren't we we we could have done it yep I it made me feel good about myself I made other people feel bad about themselves which also made me feel good about myself but didn't actually help me to be more grounded in the things that I said I was about
and so even as we've been in this journey with the community around purity culture I think that conversation on one of my four versus one of my against is a really profound and interesting one and I'm not trying to make you talk a bunch about purity culture or something but I do recognize that there is we've been taught like don't have sex don't lose your virginity don't whatever but instead of saying oh I'd actually have a really good and fulfilling sex life I would like to have that's the
should consent responsibility and respect that makes it so that I am against sexual violence but in a way that's practical and not just ideological and so I think a lot of what the church has done in being just against things particularly in this purity culture movement is that it has created no context to actually live a safe and good and just in
responsible and consensual world even if some people say that's what they want the culture itself doesn't allow for that and so I think saying in this season what we are for like oh we're not just like against the abstract concept of virginity but we're for knowing your own body and knowing the stories that dictate what your romantic and sexual sensibilities it are like that that's a really different question and so I know that plays out
differently in race and patriarchy all of the sorts of things but I do think that naming of what we're for allows us to operate more ethically and I think in a more faithful way in the things that we are against because we actually know we have a taste of the world that we're aiming for rather than just an abstracted fear about what the world shouldn't be right exactly and then even to your point like the horseshoe you went back in the exact same thing again right and so that sort of pathway
is it's a more difficult one because to your point like it's it's fun or not fun but if there's there's a there's a sense of I don't know this is what I meant about how I'm not really great at thinking on my feet but there's this if there's more
distance to me within it of don't don't settle for just the scream into the void right because then you can look around you and you can say you know what does it mean in my actual community what does it mean within my province or state what does it mean in the larger world but also what does it mean with the person who's sitting right beside me and what is this thing that we're trying to build and be and how we actually want to move through the world and I don't know that we get to cultivate that
kind of hopefulness by accident like it feels like it has to be very purposeful because everything around us is saying something different or has created a framework that almost has to be untangled in order to have that level of of even hopefulness and possibility I feel like to there's even an invitation to imagination there then maybe we've forgotten
which to me a lack of imagination often feels and sounds a lot like despair right this is the way it's always been this is the way it will always be I can't find a way clear I can't whatever else I couldn't even imagine for instance sexual ethic that didn't revolve around purity culture and virginity or whatever else right and so almost feels like snatching back something from those jaws of despair when you dare to imagine and you dare to like even have some kind of ball of death.
some room or some hopefulness for almost the baptism of your imagination to become that more sacramental place of no my my actual live body this actual experience and this this body in this place with these people at this moment in time what what is that going to look
like for me and what can I what could I what is a little bit of hope I could wrestle out from that and maybe lean into or chase for a little while yes yeah and in that making room for imagination we make room for nuance for nuance in ourselves and for nuance in the world and for nuance that
honestly the scriptures weren't really trying to do like that people aren't really trying to do and to say that I can hold two ideas at the same time and not be like oh my god I'm serving two masters now that I can hold that something like in this conversation on purity culture that
something is not it's not a structure of relationship that I would use for my own life but that might be meaningful and good and sacred for another person and that I can hold that my imagination can have enough room that that can exist and I can exist and that I can hold those without judgment
or the need to control and that I can imagine a world where people can be fully themselves within their values and that's none of my business and so I think that when we get to have imagination we also get to say some stuff is not my business because I can imagine a world that we have co-existence
of multiple things at the same time there can be a both and and that actually feels a lot like Jesus to hold complicated in between spaces with differing people and allow it to be space for all of them to show up in a particular way and so I think that that's really really meaningful and I
guess I wonder then as we close what is it what is the piece of advice that you would give to someone who is trying to practice imagination and practicing a new world as they wonder and as they hold the grief of the world that we talked about at the beginning that is ever-president all around them
yeah how would you how would you walk someone into imagination in a world of grief and in in this space of wilderness so for me one of the ways or one of the pathways that or practices maybe is a better way to put it it has been letting myself love the world again and not like in a general
sense right the way that we were maybe be like well first of all we were taught not to love the world right to to despise the world hate the world to be a sense whole other whole other conversation so there's that you have to undo but then even there's this idea of like in general you just love
the world love the world you know and I think this was really early days of the pandemic for me where I almost had this sense of um what does it mean to love the world in particular as opposed to in just in generalized terms or big wide overwhelming terms even I think maybe
because my life got so small in those those first years um of this and there was this invitation of all right what what does it mean to love the world in particular what does it mean to um to open up room for love to grab hold in a very particular sense as opposed to a very general sense I
remember hearing this one um interview on cbc um with this uh wonderful indigenous poet and Billy Raid um to bell court and he had this line in his poem where he said to love someone is to consent to being devastated by them and I think there's almost this sense of consent to loving
and particularity like what he illuminated there of being able to say it might break my heart to love this it might break my heart to love this person it might break my heart to love this particular movement or cause or this thing that I'm putting my energy and my time into um it is going to
break my heart and I'm going to consent right at the get go to to that likelihood because that's the the price of loving is grief and it always comes and collects but that particularity is what led me to things like the actual kids in my home and what they need and needed and we
have some higher needs in our home what does it mean to love this in particular and and take joy in this what does it mean then to love things in particular well it looks like minus 40 at the food bank asking car after car what kind of protein they want this week right and this is this
kind of level of particularity in learning to love and in particular helped re-baptize my imagination for the larger invitations of love and faithfulness there around us because it stopped being abstract and it stopped being an enemy or it stopped being a danger zone or a ditch
and it became a practice in your actual real walking around embodied life right now as opposed to for some day for for the really holy people right or the ways that we've even separated out who gets to be the people who are doing this work and the rest of us are just pufotter or you know
part of the machine or whatever else right it's no there's there's an invitation here for us and I think that that's been one that I have found to be a good practice to love something in particular to help learn to love the world again it's almost like it created an on-ramp if that makes sense
that's so good and I think that's true of I don't know if a lot of us would name it in that exact way but I think an invitation to or a sudden love for the particular is a lot of what has led to many of us on these journeys that were on and so I appreciate the specific invitation
to one choosing to things that many of us have already felt but to do that as a life practice as a guiding value as an approach to life that is full of meaning and goodness outside of just needing to say again what we're against or sitting in fear of consequence all the time because
I just think the love of God is bigger than that and yes and that is such a wonderful invitation so I hold that invitation dearly myself and and hold that for our community here too it's such a big deal it's so good well for folks who want to hear more about this journey and some of your points like
one I just I love hearing the candor with which you bring your story and the irreverency with which you cannot understand your own experiences it can look back and be like wow I was really doing a doing a white lady in Canada thing and here's what I learned yeah where can people find your work
where can where can people engage with more of the stuff that you're doing out here oh thank you so I guess just my website sarabessy.com and you'll find links for this book all the other ones as well as to evolving faith um socials all that kind of fun stuff but yeah that's that's probably
the a good entry point I guess if people are at all curious. Well thank you so much for your time it's such a joy to get to talk to you and to get to work through some of these in between sort of conversations where we're not just talking on the justice issue or the theological issue but the how we are in those spaces and how we are people who can maintain our full humanity in the midst of
them and so I so appreciate being companions on the journey to do that together. I'm so grateful for you Brandy I'm so glad that our paths have crossed and um also that you are now stuck with me so thank you sir.