Blessings for Imperfect Days

[Music] foreign [Music] welcome to all of you my name is Edgardo Colonie Merrick and I am dean of Duke Divinity School and it is my pleasure to be with all of you today for this amazing event a partnership of the Trinity forum and Duke Divinity School 3D Forum has its model thinking connecting thinking Leaders with leading thinkers Divinity School has this model with some translation uh connecting faith and learning and the intersection of these two institutions it's beautifully embodied by today's speaker my friend Kate bowler you know we are living not just in imperfect days but in very difficult days as we think of anniversaries of the invasion of Ukraine and earthquakes in turkey and Syria and personal challenges and tragedies that we may be carrying and bringing with us into this space and there are a number of ways to respond to these one way is Carnival and today is Mardi Gras and the Feast of Fools and venting and letting off steam by partying hard and that has its place there's another way the way of blessing and for tonight our speaker Kate bowler is an apostle of blessing one of the things she loves to do in our community at Duke Divinity School and that I'm so excited that she's going to be sharing with you is simply blessing and so thank you to all of you for showing up here and I am very excited about our time of blessing today in perfect days but there are blessings for these imperfect days welcome to all of you [Applause] well thank you Edgardo for that lovely welcome it's really a pleasure to get to work with you and with Duke Divinity on a collaboration that's lasted over eight years now so thank you for that and welcome to all of you joining us for tonight's sold out evening conversation with Kate bowler on finding blessings in imperfect days I wanted to acknowledge a few special guests who are with us tonight including Kate's co-author on her most recent book as well as the book good enough and the co-producer of her podcast Jessica Ritchie who is here with us today as well as yeah I'm tickled to have our board chairman Richard miles and his wife Phoebe miles and Son Christian with us today and also wanted to recognize Jennifer and Alan Peters of the McDonald Agape Foundation whose generous support has helped make tonight's program possible so thank you for that we yeah thank you we also just appreciate the fact that each one of you are here and just want to especially welcome those of you who are here for the very first time if you had friends who wanted to make it tonight but couldn't we did sell out we sadly had to cut off registration fear not we will be recording tonight's evening conversation and posting it on our website ttf.org as well as our YouTube channel by close of day tomorrow and we'll be posting photos on Facebook and the like so be on the lookout for those as well if you are one of those first-time visitors or otherwise new to the work of the Trinity Forum part of our mission at The Forum is to provide a place for leaders to wrestle with the big questions of life in the context of faith and host programs like our conversation tonight in order to cultivate curate and disseminate the best of Christian thought and invite reflection on those big questions to ultimately come to better know the author of the answers and we hope tonight's conversation will be a small taste of that for you so in an age of Photoshop filters image management personal branding and curated media feeds it can be very easy to feel like everyone around us is busy living their best life going from strength to strength smoothly sustaining professional advancement self-actualization Olympian workouts happy families and deep friendships and we alone are coping with heartache loss and pain but all of us will experience heartbreak and suffering in our lives and be confronted with losses we cannot regain hardships we did not choose and cannot shake and no matter how we might yearn for certainties and coherence or strive for control there remains a dark mystery and suffering and a limit to our understanding and agency so how and where do we find Hope and life amidst loss and pain what does it mean to find blessing in imperfect days and the lives we actually have these are obviously big questions and deep Waters with no easy answers but tonight we'll have the opportunity to hear from our guest who has grappled with such questions with remarkable honesty faith and love even in facing her own medical life sentence is a New York Times best-selling author a historian podcast host top TED talker with more than six million views and associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School her scholarly Works include blessed a history of the Prosperity Gospel and the preacher's wife but she's not only an accomplished scholar she's also a woman with a remarkable story at the age of 35 with a bright future and a baby son she was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage four cancer and told that she had less than a year to live an experience she has written about in two extraordinary Memoirs entitled everything happens for a reason and other lies I've loved and in no cure for Being Human since then she has created and launched along with producer Jessica Ritchie the podcast everything happens where she talks with a variety of guests about the wisdom distilled from their own experiences and co-written with Jessica her latest work and the new release the lives we actually have a hundred blessings for imperfect days which we've invited her here today tonight to discuss so after Kate offers opening remarks she and I will get to have a conversation followed by an opportunity for questions from all of you in the audience Kate welcome [Applause] oh my gosh I should be so lucky to have two preachers before me that was stunning this is a really special Community any look at all your gorgeous moon faces I mean come on this is a um a perfect place to be imperfect and I feel I feel so grateful it's uh it's a weird time for us to feel like we are attempting to remake ourselves I think especially not just in the last few years but even in the last few months we constantly feel the fits and starts of the momentum of our life we feel the sort of we can look down into what was once a poured slab foundation and see all the little fissures there and we may have more of a sense of the intense fragility of our lives than we find useful because here we are we are people who are changed somehow and I think that's one of the very difficult to describe truths about survival about how we are different than we were before how we want to reach for a kind of hope that things don't even always have to be as they've been we want to believe that change is possible we could be kinder perhaps than we've ever been more empathetic than we were raised to be more aware of policies that bring Justice to our neighbors and while we're on the subject of neighbors less pissy about our actual Neighbors Martha um someday Martha will see my attempts to love her and just joking and I think we have the sense consistently that we want not just to Simply pass the years but to outgrow our worst selves that each passing year might bring not just change but transformation and I think that is uh frankly the language that we are particularly good at is uh because we just finished February so we're about 100 days into not achieving our New Year's resolutions so now is almost like the perfect time to set aside our grand religion of New Year's of New Year New You surprise rinse repeat New Year New You surprise rinse repeat New Year but I think by now we might feel a little frustrated that we ought to have been different given all we've learned and how far we've come we may feel as the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca said that this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at the end just as we are getting ready to live and I think we would be lying if we didn't say that trying feels a little bit harder than it did before and that must be especially difficult for Americans to admit she said respectfully as a Canadian who wanted so much to bring it up earlier in the conversation but is politely waited till now but Americans are famous for trying to try and I love to being in an America room and have these thank you for putting the Canadian flag so near the door I was uh I loved Edgar what you said about our plausible responses the um the desire for escape and sometimes that can include Joy but then the other which is the white knuckling response in which we double down on an account of our own sanctification We Are wearied Who then weary and uh and that's just what I wanted to say for one moment because I have you captive for one moment but that's it's a very popular American response to imagine then in our weariness that every Act of God or pandemic or tragedy is here to teach us a really important lesson about trying and if that does not feel familiar anymore I would just go with me in your mind to the beginning of the pandemic when the American middle class seemed to experience just a surge of collective resolve we weren't trapped at home in a remaking Earth plague we were cutting down on our commute time we were spending more quality time with loved ones we were picking up old Hobbies they were just Silver Linings everywhere I heard about sourdough starters from people I once respected I foreign Ed about the shocking benefits of applying for Suburban Chicken Coop licenses Carpe DM we got a Peloton you know it there were just bucket list items they're at a check off right at home uh just think about the beach body we made from the free weights we found in the garage count your blessings be more present hadn't you always wanted to spend more time with your family I started a French immersion during the pandemic by the way I made the mistake of signing my son up for the French immersion school of my youth and they got half an hour of online learning so all I heard was like bonjour bonjour bonjour bonjour bonjour and then like 50 people trying to auto shut off children's microphones but shree you couldn't have said a more uh perfect inventory of the feeling we have then right now if we check our social media feed uh because you already know and if you haven't people mailed them to you at Christmas they it's just uh every family uh has a scholarship winner and and we are really happy for them um other people if you don't know are already living beautiful perfect effortlessly joyful lives and it's pretty embarrassing that you in particular I can't look at you though because you look so nice but like I want to be like but you in particular have not joined their ranks already I made a very simple list we were supposed to ready use this moisturizer lose any extra pounds did you really give 10 of your income to charity this year your Grandma needs a card I'm not sure you've forgiven your father wait what about that credit card debt did you finish your degree also your partner thinks you're selfish but I think the key thing is that uh and I think we can all feel it at this very moment but there is a 99 chance that your photos were not synced with the cloud and I don't know where it is but you are at risk of losing them forever and then you know there are all the real things we are sick we are tired our friends problems are eating Us Alive our kids are not well our parents are in pain someone we love is losing their memory or in a difficult situation and they are just miserable to care for and we live under the weight of the person we expected we would be this exhausting perfectability paradigm that tells us that we should try harder do better so I just have one suggestion and that's it I would very much like us all to give up on living our best lives now and if I could just tell you what a wonderful wild and awful experience it would be for you at your next social Gathering to declare it to another preferably a stranger I would love for you to use the words when they say how are you you say I'm no longer living my best life now is televangelist Joel Osteen this poor man that I wrote a whole history book just so that he could coin this phrase in 2004 but what happened is almost overnight the phrase best life now went from nothing and you can just Google engram this sucker if you like to being the perfect encapsulation of an entire series of multi-billion dollar Promises of the health and wellness industry all of our secular Prosperity gospels that we could be perfect we should be perfect and then every Hallmark movie Starlet and Oprah and cousin who has recently discovered essential oils just looked directly into their own hearts and said uh yeah I should probably do that and then we saw it on everyone's Facebook or God forbid Tick Tock account and it looked something like um surfing in New Zealand again does it ever get old or um the ultimate relationship Prosperity Gospel happy anniversary honey you're my best friend my soul mate my everything hashtag one time though I did I was I've never seen I had never seen Yachts before and I was perusing the docks and these are my walking hands actually I did need to stabilize uh and I did see a yacht that genuinely said too blessed to be stressed and you just see me on a dock just so happy so happy for him hahaha but I think the collective weight of this message is now something we see uh not only in mega churches to Burning Man this is obviously a burning man crowd so I feel I need to bring that in now to goop to your local hot yoga studio where like one woman really really really wants to explain manifesting to you uh it's also an entire section in Target it's always right beside whatever Joanna Gaines has just made and we are very happy for her but the section beside it is the Good Vibes only section in which we are being reminded that we can organize ourselves heal ourselves budget ourselves love ourselves eat ourselves whole and anything less is low self-esteem and it has become the dominant mode of how we think about what we are capable of inside a day a week a month of life we are living inside modernity's fever dream that asks us can we conquer this project called the self and if you don't believe me but you do of course because we are friends but if you didn't uh just look at the weekly New York Times list and if you were like me and you made weird spreadsheets which I do but if you go back to when it the in 1984 the New York Times was so disheartened by the Juggernaut which is this genre of perfectability that it just gave up and it made its own list and that list is called self-help slash advice slash think recipes slash miscellaneous and that's because if it hadn't no other work of non-fiction would have had a Fighting Chance that is how dominant this mode of cheap paperback religion that we have ingested which has now become fully orbed commercial Enterprises someone always has a social scientist or one psychologist who's willing to back it with a psychological stamp of expertise and because I'm a sadist I made a list of everyone's reading habits during the pandemic because I thought surely surely now when we are facing an exhausting Earth plague would be the time to challenge this dominant cultural narrative but what it did and I think so you know the answer to what happened the part where I tell you that it got worse because what it has done to all of us and so I spent all of my 20s uh for some chosen reason interviewing televangelists and I feel like you could tell that about me uh so but it was my great it was my great privilege and joy to take very seriously people who are attempting a theological framework around the feeling of being happy wealthy whole that God looks at us and just says yes don't we just want God to say yes sometimes but we have this caricature of the televangelist and televangelism and now if you look at the diffusion of this impulse into our social media habits what we can see like we're just all running 24-hour programming now what it's done to all of us is made us all into televangelists of good better best so my darlings that is just Why um it's been five years of attempting to have conversations where we thread the needle on never forcing anyone to say I would never go back or these are the lessons I learned but the truth is there is this crystalline quality to the beauty of what we learn because we have been somehow refined by something awful and in that there's a little glittering Gem and that's why uh Jessica and I who is my co-author and co-conspirator and great Joy Of My Life um we started writing blessings at the end because we thought how do we take the thing and we uh desperately attempt to resist cliches which we all love myself included um and we try to say something spiritually true which frankly is always more difficult than I expect and so this language of blessing became a way to return to the beginning which was that I had been steeped in a hashtag blessed world and I had lost the ability to say what then can we say about a God who desperately desires to be there in the particularity loves to surprise us with love and somehow a Transcendent surprise and so um we thought uh yeah I think we're ready for blessing in the midst of this and uh I asked my friend he is a wonderful Old Testament uh colleague a deep Divinity School Stephen Chapman because he's writing a book on blessing and I'm obviously a Hebrew scholar so I was like send me everything Stephen and um he had this lovely phrase where he called blessing a form of implacement like a viscose here that goes there feeling it reminds me of sort of spiritual uh interior design where you reorder all of the furniture of where you imagine things should go because in the midst of an undoing we never really get the lives we hoped for right there's and that's what we just said it over and over again it's just the lives we actually have so how do we then say in the midst of this God in the terrible and the Beautiful and the lovely and the awful let's let's just bless it all so my darlings we're gonna talk and it's gonna be great because Cherie is a delight thank you so much for having me [Applause] well thanks Kate it's always fun to talk with you that um you know in reading through not just your most recent book but um but some of the others as well struck by a certain symmetry in this you start all started off with blessed you know the history of the prosperity movement um you literally wrote The Definitive scholarly work on the history of the prosperity movement and uh your most recent book gives us a hundred blessings for imperfect days and one of the things that I was struck by is that you've said in some of some of your Memoirs that you found through your own experience of suffering that while you you consciously rejected the the tenets of the prosperity movement the god the idea that God wants us to be healthy wealthy wise popular and everything else I like popular yeah when Matthew knows yeah yeah I found the shoot internalized some of those uh teachings and so I I'd love to hear you sort of talk about how your view of what blessing is and what it means to be blessed has changed from from blessed to yes 100 blessings yes right her Majestic blessed to blessed is a uh well I I had um both my parents were academics so there was I grew up in the University of Manitoba and I hope everyone from the University of Manitoba hears me when I say I love that University but they really test manures in the fall every fall it's a historically agricultural school I did not grow up with a sense that Academia was a terribly fancy place it was the place where lovely acts of great learning happen but also they test manures in the fall and what I learned from my parents was that there can be good work but it was always going to be a lot of exhausting scrappiness because it is a because every Act is hard and so I just started climbing a ladder without assuming that I was the kind of person who climbs ladders and I just didn't stop I in part because I kept having setbacks that kept pushing me all the way down I was like the wrong way on a moving sidewalk over and over again I tried to finish my dissertation I had a health um disaster where I lost use of my arms for two years so I had to do most of uh blessed with voice dictation which honestly if I'm tired you can still hear the way I go Cherie comma but then and then it was years of infertility and then but everything was both amazing I got my dream job I married my high school sweetheart but it everything was work always and so by the time I was leveled with a stage four cancer diagnosis I had fully internalized that I am running an obstacle course and all of this depends on me and I never would have thought that spiritually I'm the kind of person who thought God have really earned this until I was so outraged that my life would end that fast after I just cleared the hurdle I was like okay I feel like maybe I'm going to introduce more spiritual language for deserve right now so um and so I found myself hoping for all of the same Prosperity Gospel dreams that I had been trying to compassionately but carefully document for such a long time and it really cured me of a kind of any kind of frankly like snobbery about prayers desperation for miracles the intensity of Hope like oh I just wanted I wanted promises and guarantees God so that sort of like pulled a thread and then like you're wearing a sweater and then you're not wearing a sweater anymore sort of theologically um so I think it's taken me a bit to kind of come back to the language because I felt so strange about it I felt like I could only say it gently ironically and then I needed to say um because at the end of the podcast it's the first time I've had a community like that that I get to be actively responsible for and I thought no like we need more than here's the here's here's Kate's didactic moment at the end like how do we ask God to and I think this is the nature of blessing is it's similar to Joy which is we can't manufacture it it is surprise and it is transcendent hope and when we just get it in our lap we think man thank you you wouldn't have been here well done wow you know another um another theme that seems to come out from your various Works um that I noticed was was truth-telling yeah and reflected in the titles that's a weird tree I don't like that you're feeling yes yeah it happens for a reason other lies I love no cure for Being Human other truths I need to hear the lives we actually have no you're right this oh my God that's terrible I did not notice that excuse me I was like they're just kind of like an implied possibly unwelcome truth bomb that's about to draw from and so I wanted um kind of what you were thinking yeah the lies that we internalize and believe the lies that we try to force on those who are suffering yes um yeah it seems like there's there's something coming out there would love to hear your oh my God I saw that Jessica passed me my diary I the the truth is almost right away I I began I began to lie to everybody I was so scared that I would be the kind of person not worth all the attention it takes to carry somebody else's life because it's not cute like the hey guess what I might medically bankrupt everyone I love it got intense so quickly that I really did um it really did was the ability to stick you I feel like you've also knew that so she's a prophet or she's very good at her job uh most of the difficult things in my life I've wanted to keep to myself yeah and then I felt the weight of the cultural scripts that reward especially in women to exhausting cheerfulness I'm supposed to be a Brazilian at all times um but it was uh and the and that even for every small thing in the midst of a tragedy that I was supposed to be grateful aren't you so glad you kept your hair I mean you get to these moments where you do have great hair Joe was actually really happy but in every other moment you're like I don't think that's the word the word Grateful is for you know so I I didn't know how to and it wasn't just that I you know you can't tell a stranger even though you're ruining every kid's birthday party with your answer to how are you not well Linda not well but um but I lied mostly to to the people who love me best because the truth was unbearable so I think I started writing because I was I needed to uh to say something even if I couldn't uh even if I couldn't say it to the people I love yeah yeah you've taught in your book in the introduction as well as the other books about the the pressure to always have a lesson and you know frankly I felt that internally even just in preparing for this you know wanting to extract extract the lessons um that's so natural though because it's wisdom right I mean it's a quarter turn away from the garbage version yeah and we are meeting making creatures um and yeah I was just struck by um well you said in your introduction I'm going to quote you you are loathed to say I learned lessons no I hate how suffering people are forced to say this but you also said that you you have learned a great deal about your faith in particular and you've put it this way about the beauty and character about a God who walks with us to the edge and so I would love to hear your thoughts on kind of both what you've learned through um this incredible journey and then also what you would say to someone who is in the midst of their own suffering and feels like they don't have the consolation of some distilled lessons to take from The Experience right and like we are always lucky if we survive long enough to get lessons yeah mostly we're just trying to you know it's Wednesday and we're doing something awful and and everyone else is doing it awful with us and then we are and we endure um I think maybe the first lesson I was um was just a surprise I felt uh I felt so bizarrely deeply loved in the days and weeks right after my diagnosis that felt entirely up against the Deep horror and anger I felt but I felt in the most embarrassing way deeply deeply loved by God while I was actively so angry and uh that felt like it stripped from me the feeling like I needed to be good anymore I I mean I took up swearing that lent like I wasn't uh Pious I think is the word we're reaching for um but I felt so loved that it did transform my understanding of whether what my effort is for so I I guess after that I started thinking a lot about what we expect from God and that sort of has been in my attempt to really try to learn from other people in my own experience like what can we then say about the god of being with about the indispensability of interdependence the cruelty of the way our culture talks to and about the suffering in medical bankruptcy should not be the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country it is it is wild it is wild to me what we do to the suffering so but I think in that what I so I I'm like in the lessons language I'm kind of intense about like so what then can we say and I I do um I do believe that God draws near to the suffering I really do I think that is God's Great a game not saying that he absolutely loves them more but he definitely loves them more or at least he makes us feel that way every now and then you know it was fascinating how you described what you just sort of alluded to that um you know in the days and weeks immediately afterwards when it was a crisis before it became chronic um you felt the presence of God so palpably yeah uh and you you talked about something else that happened um that came with almost the realization the Deep realization of Frailty infinitude and you talked about how the world around you and the people um in it you saw not only with Clarity but with um with sparkle I think is the word that you use yeah um is there something about Frailty infinitude that clarifies or even bedazzles you know it's true I mean it's the way uh like if you like when you if you ever get to make a human with your body and you know you look at them or when a friend looks at you and just can't and seize everything and loves the absurdity of you like it you've it love is in every terrible and beautiful detail so when I think when you I think when we feel our own stories like our beginning middles and ends um the totality of it starts to feel so extra beautiful and awful because the never enoughness I guess like a thought um so poor Duke Divinity School I wander around there having a lot of spiritual feelings and we have this really sweet Professor named Warren and like he should not be the person I'm like Warren I worry I don't have good enough self-esteem you know but like he's a scholar of early church fathers and that's not his specialty we don't have psychologists on staff for these problems but um I was like Warren do you think that because I'm hung all out when I look at the world then I feel so beautiful but it it I feel like I will starve to death you know and I think that but I think that's what love is that they'll never be enough and he gave me a great book on the uh appetites in the early church fathers and I think we both agreed I might not be wrong I'm not certain we agreed I was entirely right but uh every beautiful thing I think to me that's the feeling uh I always worry that I should have the sense that so much Beauty creates completeness but I I don't think I've ever felt that way is and I think that's the way God loves us is just more and more and then more you know you had mentioned when you um well after you got your diagnosis that you were essentially looking for um for strength and sustenance um and quickly realized I think maybe quoting or at least paraphrasing you that that thankfulness would not get you to wholeness that there were and you know we're so often especially when things are at least you know mildly rough you know kind of you know told to counter blessings um and gratitude of course is a virtue we are not just called but commanded you know to be grateful in all things um but it would be curious like what you found the limits of gratitude yes because so often it's applied to people in the midst of their terrible things as an incredible solution to the problem of suffering um it's usually a different way of just saying uh you should shouldn't you be grateful for is very similar to the words at least you which at any uh relative icing is so it's so painful when you're um when you're just when when even the lovely Things Are I mean it all the I mean frankly all the best things are also burdens right the way we love each other anvils the way that we care about each other stuck in one place forever loving them caring about their problems I mean it's it's horrific what love does so I mean even when we're asked to name all the good things I think this is why I find the Gratitude framework to be very very limiting because it's not just the it's not just the vices or the suffering that we're trying to endure it's just it's mostly how much we love and belong to each other that breaks our hearts open so I I did find that like I I did honestly have a big white board where I would add up um lovely small things but I was I tried not to make a gratitude list but it was a gratitude list I just needed to say uh that blood work nurse was really nice or um the the lobby doesn't smell like grilled cheese anymore but it helped me and I think this is when we say God bless this day it's a similar act when we say God help me notice the things I would not have noticed and it's an it's an imperative God bless this day you said you'd be here so bless it you mentioned um the response at least you okay and you know I think one thing that so many of us have kind of grappled with is wanting to be um a help a blessing a comfort um to people who are suffering more than us and being afraid we're gonna you know stick our foot in it or whatever um I would love to hear your thoughts on how one is a blessing to the suffering oh that's nice show me what a thoughtful question because I think people have different sort of personalities of blessing maybe you're the first responder person who runs in has a very loud voice honestly we do need that yes person that person will get you the pillow that no one is getting you um it's maybe you're the food bringer and then your blessing is that of oh I really like this my grandma used to make it maybe you're a great planner and next Wednesday you actually will carve out time to pick something up and drop it off I think our our the inventory of the thing that feels effortless to us is usually the better place I think to lean into to that act of moreness because almost everybody will want we will all say the wrong thing yeah it's I say the wrong thing constantly even though I wrote a whole appendix to hand out to family and friends in an act of just a wild hubris um because I think because the trick is we're we're trying to learn to keep Pace with each other's hopes right right you don't want to get too far ahead that you're like everything's going to be and you don't want to get too far behind that you can't lean into uncertainty with them and I think blessing lets us kind of like key into the gift of intense presence without saying presence fixes it presence just says In This Moment how can I how can I just like match your pace you know earlier when you were speaking you mentioned um the language of agency that we all we don't believe in it do we I mean entirely go ahead we all love to think that we have agency and not only agency but you know also perfectabilities you're talking about you know you you have a bunch of books about limits infinitude you know and really it's not a very DC Book you know what I mean it's not a like um well you know in many ways it's rare it's very gutsy you know in that um you have books on on finitude and limit and constraint at a time when I'm always like I hope you like this medium sad book I and if your life is going well I'm actually happy for you you know frankly at a time when you know an unlimited life is all the rain I mean I think oh my God you know there's a car called The Infinity No Limits is an advertising slogan a sportswear company a documentary this book was right next to um uh unlimited a book called something like unlimited you I was like oh boy I feel like I'm part of the limited view series oh yeah and so one of the things I would love to kind of hear you kind of expand upon is um you know when we when we put too much faith in agency yeah um how does that affect our not only our capacity to bless yeah but our capacity to receive blessing right right and I mean theologically too it's so complicated based on which tradition that we fall into we have uh Christian Traditions based on you know uh lie down God is doing all the work just enjoy the fact that you're going to be saved and it's going to happen enjoy the ride um and we have uh ones of sort of hyper sanctification and I mean there is language of Christian perfectibility that runs through many strains especially Pentecostalism so come out sometimes based on how we're what our framework is we have a different story about how much God wants us to do and which I will settle here tonight the answer is just joking um but like a healthy account of limited agency in which we have more language for our own um you know yes in in Christ we can all do do all things um but uh but not always today it allows us to recapture I think a humility that is always embarrassing we don't really want help why would we it's it's awful and it's usually inconvenient but people will need to save us and will we will need The God Who encourages them to do so so our account of limited agency is the reason why we have the church is because we will need all members all people all kinds all ages all types people we don't like people we do and I think it also encourages us um to choose a god who's already chosen us so weirdly in the both we'll find our limited agency is always going to be my favorite category for let's let's bless whatever let's bless whatever is happening today one of the other things I I loved about your works is that um it points to the beauty of our creatureliness you know our our embodiment our Humanity the way that God created us I think about um I think Wendell Berry once talked about how he could see the division of the future basically being divided into people who wanted to be creatures versus people who wanted to be machines oh it's lovely yeah and um you know and just the contrast to you know all the constraint and Frailty that comes with being embodied you know we see kind of a movement afoot of you know Tech Bros who basically want to download their minds um who you know a turn towards being a machine whether it's just be in terms of unlimited productivity I met someone who has a staff who monitors his biorhythms and I yes would just like to say that we did not have similar World Views but he seemed really nice you know and I I would love to hear kind of what you make of this both um you know as someone who is a professor of Christianity a Duke Divinity School but also someone who has um who has suffered the constraints and pains of embodiment as well hey it's just a weird right it's like the that our finitude now is the enemy that death is an embarrassment to us I mean yeah are I noticed this so I study self-help books and I really noticed that too with the like I've been reading a lot like I've been reading hundreds and hundreds of them by myself so just pardon the intensity you'll see in my eyes in a moment um but uh especially the books about the last quarter of life I think what they keep describing is sort of um an empowered second middle age as if you'll find new things to be ambitious about and I think what what it's struggling to do is to feel is to I mean because we'll never say it we'll never say I've lost things I can't get back we'll never say I can't go back to before it's always it's always Younger You better you I read one the other day you can become chronologically older but cellularly younger and I was like you're doing a lot in your basement but I am not doing in mine but I I think we I think we are especially in our story of reinvention we we've over oxygenated the atmosphere to a point where we can now it's just it's it's this but it's this top of Everest we will see endings we will need be we will need people to reflect back to us a story we can no longer tell I don't know if we're culturally ready for that yeah we're going to turn to questions from all of you in the audience in just a moment but before we do um Edgardo mentioned Carnival tomorrow is Ash Wednesday which I guess is sort of a national holiday for Frailty infinitude I know the bummer season has begun and I'm very excited and um you know given that you have a couple of books now on on blessings and uh for different occasions would love to hear about how your own experience has made you think about uh the practice of focusing on our own Frailty not just physical but also spiritual our sin and our mortality and the reminders that lent brings yes because I do think it's it's a relief like I did initially think oh no I'm suffering and now I have to take on the practice of suffering this seems like a lot of work um but I think what's such a relief for all those of us who are tired is that it it's lent doesn't just ask us to necessarily always pick something up but we can set something down in the knowledge that we are following God on the downslope and we are learning how I mean just with this cryogenically what not business we're going to Walt Disney all of our futures um is that we are learning to tell a story in which uh Jesus's own suffering is not an embarrassment Jesus is tears and bleeding and and and betrayal and loneliness aren't then an affront to our our our perfect God I think feeling an intense solidarity with the the God who knows intimately our finitude is I mean I think lent is a great time if if people are just having an awful time to just feel the church learn to speak our language and then if we are on the upswing a little if it is our time for in which we can um take on those lovely additional practices I I do think we are we are rehearsing the story of our ends and I think with all hard things we need practice so we learn in Jesus's death our own and then and we we learn in Resurrection the long end of a big story but we're gonna we need a lot of reminders so we have 40 days we got a whole it keeps happening yeah all right we'll come to this which is often the most dynamic part of our evening conversations and that is you're hearing from you all and your questions and those of you who have been to a trinity Forum event before know that we have a few requests to accompany any of your questions one we ask that your question be brief and succinct uh that your question be civil and that all questions be in the form of a question so we have a few mics that will be roving uh just wait till you are recognized and if you could stand and uh say your name and then your question that'd be great Mary we'll start with you on the very front row actually you know that it's Mary hi Mary come here often yeah okay thank you okay oh you're gonna hold it so you don't trust me you're right okay okay 100 questions you can answer anyone you want I want to know what role Community played for you as you journey through sort of the very Darkest Days of suffering um and how Community helped transform you and then the other one I'm reading Sarah coakley's book right now on spiritual healing and how would how would you define healing or make meaning of healing this side of things yeah so thanks great two massive and great questions comma Mary [Laughter] um I guess the first song Community is uh and this like happened in different stages I have found especially around a crisis it is a lot easier to Galvanize Community with a chronic life it is harder to maintain the same friends you did before I have almost none of the same people in my life that I did initially I think it just went on for too long yeah um what that taught me though is the um in is that we can never even if we want to be the heroes of Our Own Story there's kind of no such thing as heroic suffering when in the end everything that needs to be done will be done for us so I had a I was so far away from my family and I didn't have I mean I just I had my school and I was like well guys we were colleagues I guess someone's taking me to the hospital this week uh but uh it taught me so much about the church because they have all these bonus features uh clerical callers um anointing oils in like every gym bag I guarantee you this man has both a clerical collar and anointing oils somewhere in that bag and that's a true fact they just pop it on in terms of um something I interest you in working at a Divinity School but that taught me so much about the humility required to be loved like I I would wake up sometimes and I'd be wearing socks I didn't put on which is weird but Thea an Old Testament had knitted them for me and I still find that it's like one of the most verticals so that's fine anyway I'm for it um horrible um uh healing is a long story isn't it I started Faith healing for such a long time so I've been to like hundreds of Miracle rallies and so I and uh I do believe that instantaneous and miraculous and lovely things can happen but so often a story of healing is is mostly the story about God saving the world and that it might not be in my time or my body or and it is so hard to sit with both especially when you don't see someone experience the fullness that they frankly deserve so it's always lament and it's always hope but they're you know weird Pinchy hands was where that ended here anyway thank you for your question other questions right here in the middle if you could stand up that'd be great oh yeah that's fine um hi Kate hey um I work with little kids um and I know sorry you're doing great yeah they are struggling right now yeah um and I'm curious because I knew you have a son like how do we support our young ones and I'm like snorting up here now yeah but um nothing of an answer but like what are the messages like what are we grappling with right now like what can we be passing on to them to like hold space for what they've been through while grappling with what we've been through yeah oh hi and it's all on the surface I imagine where they really tell you they really tell you everything ah I I think uh when I was talking earlier about the intense fragility of Our Lives I think we feel that so acutely when we look at um so like even how we're experiencing time if it has a lightly or not lightly apocalyptic quality which makes uh environmentally um peace on Earth and Goodwill to all men fragility of our democracy and structures we feel the erosion of it and then I'm sure we feel well hey I'm part way through but what about you lovies so I think apocalyptic time is always a really difficult time to feel that generational transmission is because we have to tell a story of hope that is also true but doesn't feel true at that moment and I um I think one of the I I think one of the only comforting things is saying we actually have a lot of Christian language about different kinds of ways to love people in time that apocalyptic time is a good um way of being honest about a future that feels unclear but kids are also lovely in ordinary time snacks bedtime stuffies like they're really good at teaching us how to move back and forth and and they are and they are really lovely uh also at the kind of interdependence that we are all basically relearning so it is awful and so necessary what you're doing and the tragedy you feel sounds like you are just seeing the world clearly and beautifully so well done you right there on the edge all right I I was greatly blessed upon graduating Duke University in 1979 walking out of the Baccalaureate service in the chapel to be handed a blue leather bound to Duke Bible in which the first page was the the first by law at the University which I wasn't aware of until then it essentially said that unto these ends always shall be the purposes of Duke University to equip graduates to live lives glorifying to Jesus Christ the son of God and my my question which really maybe is for your deed and to take back to Duke is in 2014 the trustees of Duke University redacted the name of Jesus Christ from the first bylaw of Duke University and I feel like a blessing has been stolen from me in that and even for for all graduates of Duke so uh we should live lives glorifying to Christ I I would ask that the first of all of Duke University be restored thank you what was the question in the form of a question I think it's okay why was Jesus Christ redacted from the first by law of Duke University I'm betting you weren't there when that happened so all right um other questions for Kate I have a bunch of people oh there we are in the corner hey friend so much great wood paneling in this room isn't there I should know by now okay I just want to thank you for your tears and also the woman who asked the last question for her tears and I've been brought to tears multiple times over hearing you speak and I would just love to hear your own kind of Reflections on the role of Tears the meaning behind tears how you've seen that in your own kind of Journey yeah has what a lovely I have never thought of it that way and uh I guess I guess maybe um like when we get to The Place Beyond because the word right is I think it's consolation like that place right after language where we're like right at the edge of what we know how to say and the impossibility of it is like we just look over the cliff and um and uh when I um I promise this is a thing um right after I got sick uh my colleagues got together to pray for me and like not uh sweet luxurious trinitarian round out prayers like ugly embarrassing humiliating love like They begged God for me and I saw people cry I've never seen cry and I can't tell you how much that has stayed with me because I didn't cry nearly as this much because so many of the cultural scripts about um progress and respectability were I'm good on script but life Off Script meant uh like a lot of uh unwanted humility and I think that's when I see someone with a great Dignity of being embarrassed because we love something and it feels impossible I just feel very lucky I feel lucky when I see someone else I feel a little embarrassed when I see it myself so I'm not watching this video Cherie um I I wish I will but I will respect all the work you put into it yeah they are on the hi hi there how are you good so um as an ordained minister I have a question for you and what kind are you if you don't mind uh what do you mean what kind of ordination you are ordained into a tradition I'm ordinated into the PCA your PCA so I think one of the struggles for for ministers is doing what your asking for and what you're you're rightly advocating from the pulpit on a regular basis yeah because people don't want to keep coming back to a church where they get the Psalms in their full reality and they get Mary and Martha confronting Jesus saying you know if you'd have been here yeah this wouldn't have happened and so what did you say you know I've talked a lot of faith you know Faith people and love um you know Prosperity Gospel people so what if you could if you could sit into a room of pastors and say Here's what you should do on Sunday here's here's how you should transform your regular messages what would you say well thankfully that is a part of my job because they still make me Teach so I do teach pastors on this uh topic because I think you're right it's and two and not just cannons inside cans but there's we're sort of dropping down weight on different parts of the story and so Psalms are beautiful about this uh Proverbs very bossy extremely bossy um and I think I think one of the one of the lovely things about seeing pastoral formation is you see like they run the scales right theologically up and down and they learn to tell all the stories creation eschatology and in this one I want them I want a lovely minor chord in there that they know how to play in the right seasons but also um Jesus will be born as a baby and not a king and it will uh it will feel like an ember glowing and there will be moments where there will be no tears necessary because we will feel so loved so I just want them to learn to play all the scales I'm just especially good at some of them back there yep I want to ask a question about this what you talked about is this very American pursuit of trying Hey sorry do you mind standing up so I can see your lovely face hey sorry hi um and I think that there's sort of this as you mentioned this Twisted way of of trying to be younger trying to be more prosperous but I also know so many people who are trying so hard to make the world a better place and I wonder if you could speak a little bit to acknowledging our own limitation in the face of so much need you know of poverty and homelessness and the climate crisis how do we acknowledge that we're not enough when we see so much that needs to be done yes that's right like in pairing that language of limited agency with structural need and also we have a fixed structural language to account we have language of Injustice we have commands to uh love Mercy etc etc so I think and I think we see this fatigue especially among our our our Justice seeking friends and hearts and those who attempt structural change so uh I think those I think the the like the the needle that's so difficult to thread right now is like not to fall back into hyper agency you specifically will change the world even though I actually kind of believe it about you um and acknowledging deep fatigue without them having such an inflated sense having like too great an apocalypse that we can't tell a story of Hope I I am limited agency can be a gift but we're like we're trying to calibrate our efforts with our resources at every moment and that I think is like um I really like the language of prudence which is such a wonderfully 19th century word but it is it is the wisdom to discern and I think for that I just feel I can see that I want so much for then all of us to have such a an intense account of our own battery checks where we can then with humility say I can't you will we will let's go uh Quinn in the back there if you could stand I like that you have a fireplace and I'm seeing all the parts of the room oh he gets the microphone it's a big day sorry for another pastor's question oh hi um as you spoke I just had in my mind the Book of Ecclesiastes yeah and I'm curious what you would like to say about that book what's your history with the book how do you read it now um what do we do with it as a Bible scholar I will say um generally because we all know I don't like to Veer outside of my Lane uh if you ask me a lot about American history I will begin it was the late 19th century but I will say because I'm messing around a lot more in scripture than I feel responsible for um but the Canon inside the Canon which is Ecclesiastes Psalms skipping past parts of the Deuteronomy imperative because I'm not good at it um an early tendered and scared church I mean there are easier parts of this to tell when uh when you're living in your own incompleteness and you're trying not and you're trying to borrow language of um a fear without hopelessness so in those in those scriptures I I then also like to balance it with the very small promises I think we do get surprising piece confusing Joy um the ability to look at somebody else's pain and somehow know that it is beautiful isn't that odd I mean pastors that's the reason you do it is you go to the center of the universe with other people you see their beginnings and ends and then you feel somehow a part of the like substratum so in all of that um I do like our small promises I cherish our language of Despair but all of it is practice because as far as I mean I'm sure you can tell this about me I would Veer toward exhausting optimism if you left me on my own I would star in a reality show about a woman who gets cancer and she's pretty excited about it but but scripture gives me different language a few more questions right there thank you um thank you so much for this I've been thinking all throughout this evening of just my own experience of professors when I was a student and how inscrutable they were and how detached they were um and you are so generous with your story and your life and your wisdom and I'm just curious how you hold those identities together and what your generosity with your own story has maybe been able to unlock with your students and also if you're seeing any shifts even like elsewhere in in your school or in Academia that kind of yeah brings out the personhood a little more well that's thank you for that compliment that's so kind uh I try to respond by being a like a cruel and impartial uh greater uh each each person more disappointing than the last but you know I did learn something so I was reading a history of uh I love you know self-help obviously as you can tell but um it had an interesting comparison between the forms of academic learning that I've been trained inside uh that the goal was impartiality versus a certain kind of and self-help is predicated on a certain form of uh first second person persuasiveness and that and one favors originality and the other um uh copy paste copy paste and I thought that was such a helpful distinction for the kind of knowledge then that I I got better at I I really I've written some written some good histories um but the problem was when I was sick they couldn't then say the true thing that I hadn't been trained into saying yet and I I do feel lucky because I did learn a lot about how to write a memoir from another colleague at the Divinity School Lauren winner who wrote a lovely book Mud House Sabbath and girl meets God and so I I've seen I've seen beautiful examples in other people but I think what it was training me out of was the idea that I could sort of keep my chips until the end and then when there when the end was going to come sooner I was like well I'm screw it I hate this and this hey guys I'm pretty you know um I hope it's made me uh a better teacher because I think I'm clear about my own presuppositions then I was but I like I know what's at stake at least for me yeah right there you could stand up thank you for your books and your podcast um always cry and laugh at everyone and appreciate how you help us to get to a place where sometimes we don't want to go but you don't feel alone my question would be so when you're in a dark place and it's cloudy yeah how did you get to the point where you got to this point where you could write a book on blessings like what process did you go through how did you overcome the darkness so you can see the light yeah and to be able to and do you really believe it every time were you just forced totally to accept the blessings yeah what a great question because I think all of us need to get to that point where we know they're there but we just can't feel it or we don't want to be there because we want to feel the hurt so what was your process to get to that because I think it took a while because we didn't get the blessings book first yeah yeah you got this super pit of garbage book first yeah but we're glad we got the blessings eventually the truth came out and the Hope was there but we would all love to know what your process was so we could get there too yeah oh lovey oh that was a grab bag of compliments in there too so thank you um I I guess it also depends like on when you're going through the horrible time what is the emotion that's so difficult to acknowledge because for me it was anger like I was a friend I was I was horrified and I didn't have any because we can't say deserve so I was very stuck on that for a bit for people who naturally turn to anger it might be sadness that they can't access so sometimes I guess what it took the unsticking for me was about allowing myself a wider spectrum of spiritually true things to say about awful feelings and like not Pious Hope just like unsentimental no Precious Moments so for me it was anger for other people I think it's sadness and also I needed a bit to scrape away all the aren't you just glad that because I could barely bring myself to acknowledge how um how I think I think honestly what it was was I didn't think I was gonna get it I I was like I think I'm going to die really politely I don't think anyone's going to know and then will I've said anything at all um so uh I found the kind of like um Hulk style breaking out part was what I needed uh because I feel the script I I'm from Mennonite world we Farm we build Furniture you can't take us away from an unopened box of Ikea furniture but we are we are insanely polite about our pain so and and church was like that too churches at 1205. hope you weren't expecting a healing that would take until 12 20. so I needed a script breaking moment where I felt permission and then I needed other people who had who had learned how to keep because it's the keeping on right we can all do almost anything for a week can we do it for a year can we do it for because despair is like at the edge right what if I can't do it God what if I can't do it God what if I can't do it so just having a minute and seeing other people who just say but even if you don't but even if you can't I'll be right on the edge of that with you that is what God's presence is to me is like in the moment where I can't anymore that lets me say all right now we can now we can talk yeah because the rest is just performance you know we'll take one more question for Kate whisper because we have Micro s yes indeed okay that's suggestive I like how Whispering works I saw a hand in the back there yes if you could stand hi Kate hey um when terrible things happen I think there's a feeling of anger that it shouldn't be this way yeah and where can that feeling still exist even though you need to like move on or well I actually need to keep living even though something terrible has happened so yeah what do you do with that sense of just pure frustration that it shouldn't it shouldn't be this way it shouldn't this is a design flaw I've said this over and over again God there are some design flaws honestly I mean I I constantly I'm like uh sorry why do we have to die there are great interesting theological answers I still feel the horror of it I think anger or confusion or rage to me is like saying something about the goodness of our creation God you love what you made this is good right so I think in there I don't I just honestly I don't mind it when someone is like what in the actual I'm like that is a good that is a good theological place so I think even if we're not always saying a good thing about the animal we can say a good thing about the beginning God you made this didn't you also kind of want something really lovely to happen so Kate thank you oh my goodness lovelies [Music] [Applause] thank you and in just a second I'd love for you to close us out by reading a blessing reminder there's a few things to say before had be a great way to to end first of all we just want to commend Kate's new book to all of you there will be signed copies in the back for sale for 25 so hope that you will Avail yourself of that also want to mention another invitation that should be available to all of you on your chair which is to join the Trinity Forum society which is the community of people that make the mission of the Forum providing a space to wrestle with the big questions of life in the context of Faith like we've done tonight possible in addition to being a wonderful community and promoting the mission of the Trinity form there are a number of benefits involved including a subscription to our quarterly readings we have many readings in the back for sale as well a subscription to our daily list of what we're reading curated reading recommendations and as a special incentive for doing so you will get your own free and signed copy of Kate's book tonight so of avoid the line and join the Trinity Forum Society I also just wanted to mention a couple of events coming up many of you are familiar with our online conversations our next one will be on March 10th with Caitlin Beatty on her book celebrities for Jesus we have a a whole raft of online conversations coming so be sure to check your emails for that and also wanted to mention not only our Trinity Forum readings for sale but also the launch of our next book club box to try to catalyze and encourage more reading groups across the country so if you are interested in that please grab one of us we would love to talk to you more about becoming part of that movement in fact if the Trinity Forum staff would just stand up and wave their hand that would be great so you know who to go to for more information as we wrap up it's always appropriate to end with thanks and there are many people to think who make an evening like this possible I want to thank our partners in this effort Duke Divinity School and Edgardo along with his colleagues Betsy Poole who is here and Dan struble who is not just thank you for the collaboration it's been a really delightful partnership thank you to our sponsors who have helped make this evening possible to the folks who make it all happen clay Blackmore our excellent photographer who's around here somewhere my Cracker Jack colleagues Nikki Sheffield our events coordinator who today is her last day on the job this is her Swan Song Our brand new colleague Tom Walsh our new VP of operations his first day on the job along with development director Molly wicker and uh the communications director Brian daskem our excellent interns Josh alif at Parker coat Sarah Malik volunteers Lexi Marion and intern emeritus and sure thank you so much for all that you've done to make tonight possible again thank you Kate for a wonderful conversation and maybe you can hear them she's the very best isn't she she's like kind of attentive and like cheers I'm gonna um so uh I have the great blessing of my life is actually um someone who openly fights me on every Public Act of speaking which is why I didn't tell her that Jessica Richie will you come up and read this blessing you're gonna be so mad she has a terrible attitude and an incredible she's a wonderful preacher and a beautiful writer and she is uh she's one of my very best friends in the world so just will you bless the crap out of this beautiful group um with uh with this one because I like it okay I love you for this Ordinary Day Lord here I am how strange it is that some days feel like hurricanes and others like glassy seas and others like nothing much at all today is a cosmic shrug my day planner says rather conveniently that I will not need you cry for you reach for you ordinarily I might not think of you at all except if you don't mind let me notice you show up in the small necessities and everyday graces God be bread be water be laundry be the coffee cup in my hands and the reason to calm down in traffic be the gentler tone in my insistence today that people pick up after themselves for once be the reason I feel loved when I catch my own reflection or feel my own self-loathing fluttering in my stomach calm my spirit lift my mind make this dumb ordinary day my prayer of thanks amen bless you thank you Jessica thank you Kate pleasure let's do it again yes let's do it again thank you to all of you for coming have a great night let's do it again [Music] thank you

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Length: 84min 32sec (5072 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023