Nadia Bolz-Weber Is Shameless | Rich Roll Podcast

[Music] delighted to talk to you today thank you for coming all the way out here I've been looking forward to this for a very long time before we get into anything I got a no you got to explain to me what's going on with this purity ring thing melting down these purity rings yeah and making a golden vagina sculpture it's nautical what is justice say it's not gold and people start visiting out about that oh why that part of it oh because of the story where people melted their jewelry into a golden calf and worship so I was thinking more swords into plowshares you know just another Bible verse where you take something that was meant for harm and you repurpose it into something healing for the community so I mean purity ring's for this thing it was really big and what's called the purity culture where girls were asked to sort of sign a card pledging that they would not have sex before marriage and then they'd put a ring on their finger which was called a purity ring which was this indication that she was not available to have sex with until her wedding night and this would happen to girls and when they were quite young you know before they knew really what sex was or who they were or what they wanted and the message was and quite often they'd be asked to get dressed up and their dad would bring them flowers and their dad would put the ring on their finger I was creepy as [ __ ] they're like 11 years old do you know what I mean it's not right and so the message basically is that your body isn't really your own it it's like sort of the property of your father and your father's religion it's the property of the church and though it's the property of your husband correct and we must maintain the purity of this that's right and so I was raised to believe that was told very directly that you have to dress modestly because you don't want to tempt the boys because and this was a direct message boys can't help their sexual impulses and so one boys you have to make sure you don't ever arouse them sexually because once they're aroused a certain point then they can't help themselves so purity culture equals rape culture these these two things are deeply related and so I just know so many women were wore these purity ring's and we're basically told to disconnect from their own sexuality from their own sensuality from any sort of erotic impulse they might have and their sexual development was sort of absconded with by religion and then later in life even if they reject those teachings they have a hard time connecting to their bodies and to their own desires and so I just thought you know so many women have these purity ring's I'm so sorry so many women have these purity ring's sitting around and I was like how do we repurpose them what do we do with them and so I was on stage at the makers event last year and was talking to the group about how I had this dream I had just finished writing shameless and I had this dream to get women to mail me their purity ring's so we can melt them down into a sculpture of a vagina and I saw Gloria Steinem was sitting in the front row and I just said Gloria I I'd like to give you the metal vagina that's made out of melted down purity ring's I was like a thank-you gift from of us all and she was like I would like to have that that's like music to her ear all right so now I'm on the hawk right so literally day after tomorrow this sculpture has been made this woman who makes my jewelry this artist Nancy Anderson for those that are listening that's the most badass belt buckle I've ever seen sweet bird studio and she is she made a sculpture out of it and it's and she took some of the rings that couldn't be melted down so they were of a different metal and she pounded them into the word freedom it's beautiful and we are giving it at this year's makers conference on stage we will be unveiling it and presenting it to Gloria Steinem every next you can't script that that's unbelievable a dream come true this needs to become an annual award though right he's an institutional has been swiped a golden vagina or every year at the makers I am I'm totally gonna pitch that yeah all right good you should how many rings did you get sent we got it like a hundred 70 rings uh-huh and the notes were devastating I mean the notes were like melted down it only brought me misery and one one woman sent in her wedding band that had a diamond and said I traded in my purity ring for this ring because the church told me it was God's will and yet it just caused me suffering until I got divorced 18 years later please destroy it I mean it was just how it was diabolical well and I got a lot of blowback actually a lot of people are I maybe I'm naive I just had no idea people would be so upset about the vagina thing but they're upset on different levels so a bunch of conservatives were were just horrified because they thought it was idolatry and then other people were horrified because even women who follow me were like I'm sorry but that's vile I'm like oh yeah how deeply have you absorbed the messages of the patriarchy that you think that female anatomy is vile like it just it was hard to even read that and then there were the really helpful women who corrected me and said actually I think you mean vulva vagina is the canal inside I'm like [ __ ] I know my anatomy but I'm just saying that's considered the vaginal image you know so is that practice still going on oh yes it's not as big as it used to be there was a book written by this man named Joshua Harris called True Love Waits which actually encouraged people to not even date to not even do more than just hold hands to be that pure and he is on a bit of an apology tour right now to be understand this man this book that he wrote infected an entire generation of people and he was when he penned this book 21 wisdom pact years old it went his thoughts were what influenced all of these of angelica's for an entire generation and now he's seeing the harm that it didn't he he feels badly actually and but the impulse towards purity is one that we see in so many different settings because on some level we love nothing more than to know who we're better than and so purity and the desire for purity shows up in political ideology it shows up in like how how paleo are you really eating you know like yeah it's gonna say it definitely manifests itself in the health and wellness space this idea that if you're gonna eat yourself to enlightenment or or not eat yourself to enlightenment yeah that purification of the physical corpus is a route to you know a greater spiritual awareness yeah yeah well it's distinction between purity and holiness which is something that you talk talking about yeah because the difference is that holiness is about connection to like moments of holiness or about being deeply connected to yourself or to the moment or to the divine or to another person to me holiness is always about connection to and purity is always about separation from it's like separating ourselves from our desires but more than that separating ourselves from the people who are impure and so holiness is about connection to and purity is about separation from but we pretend they're interchangeable because purity is just easier to regulate than holiness well purity speaks to your inherent ability to control yourself right like holiness has to do with things that are out of your control it's a good way to put it I mean like and I think for people you know speaking as you know somebody who's also in recovery like yourself you know control issues are a big part of my you know map of character defect sense of you know what the emotional landscape of of relief that you get when you are controlling something that you within your domain hmm and it gives you a sense of safety yeah and so you have I think damaged or or people who have survived some level of trauma and that kind of ascent to purity or that like mountain that you're climbing towards that gives people a true north right that they're not even aware is leading them in a direction away from that which they're truly seeking but it's it's also just a way to feel like we have the ball in our own Court exactly and so this is why I mean I thing I've written about more than anything and spoken about more than anything in my career is the idea of grace and grace is a really difficult thing for us because it means it inherently means the ball is not in our court you can't earn it it's not something that you climb toward it's something that you get and on some level we think it must if it's free it must be worthless and so I think that people instead of focusing on grace like to focus on being good and but being good has never set me free in the way that truth has and things that have interrupted me from outside of me so well I think good or the pursuit of being good is the thing that provokes the feelings of less than and shame and guilt and insecurity whereas grace is permissive right that grace is also something that you describe as being a pain in the ass from time to time like it's inconvenient for sure especially so explain when it's when the reason grace is tricky is because I want to feel like I've made myself worthy of something and if it's truly grace it means it has nothing to do with worthiness it just is and that's hard and then also grace sucks because if it's if it's true for me it means it also is true for the people who have hurt me right and I don't like definitely don't like that right and like I'm all for it until we get to that that's why I always say that like with my luck I'll be seated at the heavenly banquet between like Ann Coulter and some racist cop yeah you believe in grace it's like super uncomfortable in that way because because self-righteousness is just never an option and I love self-righteousness like I love chocolate and sounds intoxicating it is but some purity plays right into that uh-huh knows if you can really can really feel like you're more pure than your fellow person yeah not just your right on your bully pulpit to be self-righteous yeah totally well that's why it was that that moment was so interesting when I was interviewing Lance Armstrong I had that conversation with Lance Armstrong on stage at Target because that day it was so interesting when people knew I was the one I so I'm super I'm I'm like obsessed with the idea of compassion right now but not like as a virtue to adopt to be good [ __ ] that nothing's ever worked like that for me I'm not like if someone's like oh did you read that that really great book about compassion I'd be like yeah not interested but I'm so because I'm such a pragmatist I'm super interested in the effect of compassion that I'm interested in because when somebody's been in a true space of compassion right across from me it's moved the needle for me in terms of considering something I hadn't considered on my own seeing away I might have been wrong like it's a safe and it's a loose place to consider those things whereas when someone's been accusatory or challenging or calling me out I immediately get defensive or I hear it right so I'm just obsessed with this idea of what's the effect of compassion on me or even on my body in conversations and so this person I know who does trauma work they work with people in trauma I was asking them like how do you how in the world do you manage to not be completely depleted all the time taking in these stories mm-hmm and she had this image I just can't get over which is she said I imagine the heart of God like right behind my heart so that whatever that person is saying I feel it genuinely because it comes through my heart but it doesn't land there it lands in the heart of God so and then anything that comes out of me towards them doesn't originate from my own resources and deplete me it rigea nades from the heart of God it just comes through me right well that's a very like unique and specific way of imagining healthy boundaries for yourself right right right okay so that day when people knew I was the one having a conversation with Lance they um they said hey don't let him off easy like people come up to me all day and be like well when it comes to Lance everyone's gonna have an opinion or some advice wait okay but like why right so what is the endgame because we love to know who were better than right we're obsessed with it so if somebody so obviously had a fall from grace there's the scapegoating instinct in the human being is almost inescapable this is why like when Brian Williams you know when his career had that huge bump because he didn't actually falsify a news account he exaggerated a personal story which by the way we all have done and every single time we do it it creates an icky feeling in us and those icky feelings build up and we have to do something with them so what do we do we wait until someone like Brian Williams comes along and we just throw all of our icky [ __ ] that we don't want to tell anyone on to them and then we have to kill them right it's this collective way of relieving the anxiety we think that's gonna make us feel better that's right but actually it's like empty calories it completely is I mean self-righteousness I always say feels good for a minute but only in a way that peeing your pants feels warm for a minute you know then you smell bad it's called okay so I'm having this conversation with plants and I and I just hold on let me just say one thing I got I don't want to interrupt you but like this was my first exposure to you and everybody needs to know like you're all right so Nadia's gonna interview Lance and it's in the round at this very cool event called the Tucker project and your opening line yeah okay you are okay so I once feel okay this is where I'm going all right so just so you know they had asked me Nadia would you so I'm really interested in compassion right now I'm only really experimenting with it I don't want anybody to be impressed like I am just I'm dabbling in compassion okay so but I'm thinking about it a lot and they said would you have a conversation on stage with Lance Armstrong and I said yeah I totally would right then they said would you have a conversation on stage with Sean Spicer and I said no [ __ ] that guy just to say my my ability to be open in compassion yeah [ __ ] limited okay so I I get to that day everyone's like give him a hard time and I sit there and I have that image of compassion of having God's heart behind mine and and sort of being open to this human being across from me as a person with a unique story and that most of which none of us know right most of us don't really know this human beings full story and and I said to him opening thing I said was Lance I see from my notes that you took drugs you weren't supposed to and then you lied about it and then I said oh my god I did that [ __ ] so many times it was so great and every long did it take you to figure that line out it was just that day I was like always this gonna happen and so just broke the ice totally and everybody there was like this shell verse there's a catharsis not just with him the whole I don't know if you remember I said you raise your hand audience if you at any point in your life took drugs you weren't supposed to enlightened people like yeah I did that [ __ ] you know yeah but there's also a lot of yeah but correct I got that again it's tricky with Lance you know I see the grey and I've interviewed him for this podcast and I got the same thing like art you know you weren't hard enough you were too hard everything I mean everybody's got an opinion on this guy and my agenda was I want to understand this person better who's on the receiving end of you know a lot of criticism and a lot of celebratory Pat's on the back like how confusing for a human being and how many people on planet Earth have been as high as he has gone as low and that's inherently fascinating completely incredibly human to explore that yeah I just I really liked him and we had this rapport that we developed the day before and and just kind of I I really like I'm like look dude I know you're an atheist but you need it pastor you know so it's just like I'm this person's pastor on stage and he had a friend there known him for 18 years and seen him interviewed a million times she's like yeah you he was different you know it was I truly was I felt compassion for him truly it wasn't I didn't put it on and so now I'm just interested in that the effect that that heads but I'm also interested in like what is it that people wanted and why why do they want you to be tough on him what is the need within us to do you know day me yeah because like Lance Armstrong has never done [ __ ] to me as an individual right nothing he's never done anything to me so why would I need you know some catharsis by hearing him say something I feel so weird what is the seat of that in your mind it's that thing of we love to know who we're better than and in some way it keeps us from having to do our own work and look at our own stuff when we can point to somebody who's worse yeah we love that well you have an interesting perspective to bring it back to the purity ring's with the community of women who propagated this you know philosophy for generations when you went back and looked at your own like journals when you were a young person in a very conservative church right yeah yeah yeah it was interesting because so people who are raised in really conservative settings that we're ultimately the thing it has in common is that it just gives you extremely dualistic thinking so you're raised in this sort of construct of there's good or bad you're right or wrong you're in you're out or us or them saved or lost and so we're seeing that more than ever right now for sure and so the but that man when when that's where you stay in spirituality and religion that's the beginner course man that's like just developmentally that's the beginner course but so many people are stuck there and so I was given that construct of like good or bad right or wrong and dualism so you can take the girl out of fundamentalism but it's much harder to take the fundamentalism out of the girl because when I left I just replaced it with really radical leftist politics and ideologically it was just very similar in terms of so dual the stinging there's no gray you know and so what I realized is the anger I had about that religious upbringing dissipated and I felt like I was free and something was sort of almost healed inside of me when I was able to look back at that religious upbringing that gave me dualistic thinking and not view the upbringing dualistic aliy when I was able to look back at it and admit there were things that were beautiful and saying that didn't feel like a betrayal of that little girl who was hurt that's when I was free in other words transcending this either-or mentality yeah black or white yeah binary perspective and moving towards both and totally so when I guess two things can be simultaneously happening yep so when I could go over their subtlety here there's good and bad in the religious upbringing that gave me dualistic thinking that was the magic that was the point and we're so reticent to to do that I think to see to admit there was something good in something that hurt us because it feels like it's a betrayal of the part of us that was hurt yeah and to bring it to the to the purity ring's and like this journal that you had it was this idea that the purity movement is so inherently regressive and and awful and we can wince at it now and yet at the same time to recognize that these women were trying to help younger women find their place within a community that wasn't really recognizing them totally so it was this Christian charm class that I that me and the other 11 12 year-old girls 13 year old girls went to every week I assumed just by spending time with me that the fact that I was in a girl's Christian charm class it [ __ ] shows doesn't it it does yeah it's tough you're still reacting against that no man I'm charming as [ __ ] so it worked but but so I found the old workbook including this like how feminine are you quiz which I included in my book and I scored very low and and I was looking at this ridiculous workbook and across from the how feminine are you quiz was a Bible reading verse chart and a calorie counting chart I mean this is precious right and so but I looked back with on it with this blend of sort of anger and tenderness because these women who were teaching this class is like man if this is the only currency if your femininity is the only currency that you have to broker anything with in this subculture there was something very sweet about the fact that these women were trying to help us make the best of it yeah and that's the end that's the end yeah yeah it's beautiful to be able to inhabit both of those ideas recognize them and allow them to live you know in their own space amongst each other and I think that's relevant to you know how you approach someone like Lance mm-hmm you know how can you have compassion for him I have compassion for him I'm not him I don't I don't presuppose to understand what it's like to be that person and be faced with those choices and I think people that judge that without you know and have you know walking a mile in his shoes so to speak it's just it's not fair this is why I'm so committed to an idea within Christianity that most people really recoil from and I understand why they do but it actually is the idea of human sin because I think that that word has been conflated with like immorality in a way that I find unhelpful but when I use it there's a guy named Francis buffered who wrote a book called an unapologetic and I read it once a year and he wanted to use that concept of human sin but he knew that the term that word was problematic and so every time in his book that that's what he meant he substituted this the human propensity to [ __ ] things up I'm like okay who's gonna be like I don't doubt that you know what I mean so the fact that there is some inherent flaw in the human which is the reason that simians all a theologian says the system keeps throwing up errors you know like we all have this human propensity to [ __ ] things up and one of the things that I've found like I've been doing more and more speaking in like the Wellness community and for some reason I'm in that scene now that well I feel like the transformation that's offered in these subcultures is Israel but I think we'll always be limited if it bypasses the darker aspects of being human because the way in which like one of the places we do see the true transformation of the human heart is in like the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and you know what the twelve steps takes very seriously is the human propensity to [ __ ] things right it does not bypass that no it not only does it recognize it it embraces it yeah completely and without judgment I mean that's fundamental to the whole it's your it's the basis of belonging to that community yeah and so your your particular breed of Luth but Lutheranism is to accept sin as part and parcel of the human condition but you're really kind of reclaiming what that means and translating it in a way that's different from perhaps our conventional notions of what it is to be a sinner or to sin yeah I told it I mean I in Latin I have tattooed on my wrist similar used to set piccata which means simultaneously Center in st. we're all a hundred percent of both all the time nobody's like 8020 so it sort of deflates these really lofty notions of purity in a sense to go we're always going to be a mix of these two things and so what that helps do is that you're actually never surprised do you know what you're not going to be surprised if a human being does something awful and you're not gonna be surprised if a human being does something beautiful right right I will never be an idealist I couldn't possibly be an idealist about any human project but I'm really idealistic about God's ability to redeem the human propensity to [ __ ] things up like we can be the people who [ __ ] things up and something beautiful can still happen out of it I'm like whoa like that's the these are the moments of faith that I have but you could be idealistic about holding space for somebody to step into you know a better more fully expressed version of themselves right I mean that's kind of what yeah what you're doing with the church like there's some Christians with traditions that believe in like Christian perfection and like progressive sanctification I could never buy into it ever ever ever but I think we do we do get the opportunity to grow in wisdom yeah I think we can increase the wisdom we have in the world and it does not decrease the fact that we have the propensity to [ __ ] things up that doesn't we certainly have that and it's exactly like a a like you learn in the rooms to not judge somebody who comes back from a relapse it's like well of course he drank we're you know we're alcoholics like that's what we do the miracles that we didn't do it today it's cool come on back any and you learn empathy and yeah you learn to reserve judgment and it's given me just this expansive capacity to love humanity in all its forms right and without judgment and I see that reflected in your congregation yeah I know you're recently moved away from that but you know over the last however many years that you were ten you know they're like that's the closest thing I've ever seen to a a Oh 100% that was on purpose because look people are so much more frequently speaking honestly like honestly about their lives and connecting to God into one another in church basements than in church sanctuary yeah yeah I never really thought about that I was like wow the honesty that's going on in the basement is incredible it's such a beautiful thing that this movement has created to help people heal yeah and then upstairs right on Sunday there's so much [ __ ] yeah it's the human competition extravaganza once again you know so I yeah I think that I like people have asked how is being part of a 12-step community influenced you as a pastor and as a theologian and I'm like it's impossible to answer that because I was 22 when I started showing up to church basements and I'll be 50 in April so literally my brain hadn't even finished developing yet and so I learned how to be it what it meant to be a human being and a [ __ ] grown-up in those rooms and what spirituality looked like and what honestly honesty looked like so it there's no way for me to tease it apart what was that and what was something else and what about organizationally I mean when you look at the movement 12-step movement and how its continued to grow and expand and you know maintain a level of integrity with its roots in a world in which institutions particularly the church is you know falling on the sword of its own inherent flawed humanity that runs it yeah there's something to be gleaned from that Oh totally totally I mean I know what we tried with house for all sinners and saints is that for instance we we were we said look we're anti excellence pro participation that is such a counterintuitive thought when it comes to organizations I got to the point where I wouldn't accept speaking invitations from any organization that had the word excellence and its title so the so what they said they were against excellent yeah if they were anti-air we go so like we didn't we never had a five-year plan we never had a vision statement we never had a mission statement we were anti excellence Pro for it like all of the things that these institutions of churches think will save them we said no thanks hmm all the things that the church consultants are telling churches they should do and focus on we said that's not true and and subsequently you'd be hard-pressed to find a Lutheran congregation in the United States of America that has more young adults in it yeah what's interesting is that you did it within the construct of of the organization you didn't just rent a space and say okay I'm my own church you're doing it within the construct of the Lutheran Church yeah and they totally at some point you convinced them to be permissive enough to let you do it in this non-traditional yeah but you know why because being a Lutheran is is its foundational II just a theological identity what is Lutheranism well it's like you know in in 1517 this Augustinian monk you know nailed 95 theses to the door the Wittenberg Church and was like here are 95 things that I think were [ __ ] up in with the church and we need to stop as a way of trying an invitation to a conversation and that sparked the Protestant Reformation and ultimately he was a pastor and he said he saw how the teachings of the church were harming the people in his care and he was more loyal to the people than he was to the teachings of the church which is what I'm trying to do in that book but on but Lutheranism is is very different than other Christian systematic theologies and the fact that the focus is grace it's on being good it's not on these lofty ideals of progressive sanctification it's it's closer honestly to the 12-step stuff where it's like oh yeah you can't do this and but God can do for you what you can't do for yourself and it is the closest Christian theology to that notion which is why I was drawn to it because I'd been sober for some time by the time I was introduced to Lutheran theology and it it gave me language for what I'd already experienced to be true and so since Lutheranism being Lutheran as a theological identity I'm a very Orthodox Lutheran theologian technically and so because the denomination trusted me as a theologian they they have never questioned me as a practitioner there's something super punk-rock about that it's almost war punk rock to say I'm gonna do this within the organization than it is to like trash the organization and do your own thing because that would be a lot easier it's much nicer person so it's very convenient for somebody to look at you and go oh all the tattoos and the potty mouth and you know it's you strike a very unique pose and it allows people to project a whole sensibility now but you know and it's more it's more complicated than that because you're this social progressive but you're also very much a theological traditionalist don't lay yes I know so it's like a conundrum you know what I'm using recently in interviews is like the in so many ways I'm not the story because the tattooed foul-mouthed lady pastor story is interesting for five minutes and not five minutes it's you in the door those years ago yeah it does but the real story is what shifted culturally in America that's created a situation under which I'm who people want to listen to when it comes to religion that's the question so in your opinion how do you answer that question what did shift Authority I think what authority looks like has completely changed and in a way that a lot of institutions make sure you're talking that a lot of institutions haven't paid attention to that ship and I think for a long time we wanted leaders to be on a pedestal and to be the sort of example of holy living or whatever and yet there's a way that all of the institutions that we have experienced have sort of disappointed us because every time we've looked behind the curtain we've not actually found the Wizard of Oz we found scared little men and women pulling levers trying pretending to be big right well it's a it's an abuse of trust and a level of duplicity right that just leads people further and further away yeah but the reason we had institutions to begin with has to do with the Enlightenment really I mean because in it like in in in the past what ever had authority was whatever our grandparents and great-grandparents had experienced and trusted to be true that's what authority was for us you didn't question it and the reason is because things weren't shifting very quickly culturally right you could you could trust it well things shifted very quickly like during the Enlightenment and suddenly we have this like elevation of human reason and everything sort of shifted and so what happened and we got things like penicillin stuff like that but now we have institutions that were developed in order to hand over the goods that the Enlightenment promised us right and so now you don't trust anything in the past you can only trust things that are sort of new and inventive so what this is where we have banking we have universities we have hospitals we have denominations so all of these institutions were established after the Enlightenment to deliver on the goods okay the promises of the Enlightenment but then what happened as we end up with like the Vietnam War and Watergate and clergy sex scandals and that's where we pull the curtain back and we go oh these institutions became more concerned with perpetuating themselves and protecting themselves than they were with delivering the thing they said they were about right and because they're run by humans yeah totally that's the big drop right right right so I think we're in this weird time right now we're human where it you know I Esther Perel will say like so many big decisions were always decided for us before now you know that we we weren't there weren't all of these options on the table and that now so much weight is weight weighs on the individual to make big big decisions that it used to be the either institutions or your culture or your religion was deciding for you and that's a first in human history yeah I think it's a very recent development too extremely recent yeah you know I've heard you talk about like kids growing up with you know choose-your-own-adventure or stories like they have to they have to imagine that you know the endings of their own stories now and everything is super personalized to meet your own unique agenda and I think there's a there's a downside to that and I think it plays out in and ideas around faith which I know you talk about but also in in kind of snowflake culture too you know like everybody's super precious and I think that tends to alienate us as much as it does unify us but like it's perming my specialness right every variety is the only way that you're allowed to relate to me and for me to approve of it right right and you see it with you know you got tattoos for a long time but like tattooing is a way of distinguishing yourself and if you kind of you know explore that with somebody like hey tell me about this then it's almost like offensive so it's like you can't really win in that conversation yeah right right yeah yeah I think the weight the weight of all of these choices of self-expression and um can actually kind of create a lot of anxiety how do I know I'm choosing right or have I weighed all the options or you know I mean things we never even had to decide before so it's something that we we inherently want to be ruled well i v benevolent dictator i think i think that we need load-bearing structures uh-huh you know and that's what religion it's very this is the first time we've had cultures that weren't religious like in human history so there was a way in which religion was a load-bearing structure in terms of understanding who we were understanding morality having a symbol system for for imaging the divine for marking the year together there's a function that that religion has played in in throughout human history that I feel like even though the institutions of religion have heard a lot of people I just think it's just not time to dispense with that idea entirely and it's a really recent idea in human history that you can just choose your own symbol system that's that's new well the foundations of religion are are crumbled you know and there's a there's a you know a crisis of trust in those structures and those institutions which i think is why people are like well i feel like i can i'm i like to listen to Nadia well I think it's just because I I really do try to be very forthcoming with my shortcomings and with things I've gotten wrong or should I don't know you know there's not the curtain someone yeah there's nothing you're gonna like find out that's right like at one point I was like that's also like something that you learn in in a a totally like own those flaws and and you know find the empowerment and the vulnerability and to not actually have shame about it I mean that's the thing is like I believe in the power of grace so strongly that I have no shame in admitting why I need it mm-hmm so then people feel like they can trust what I'm saying also like self incrimination is like my go-to rhetorical move and that allows me to be more horrible to people because I'm nice to you but you can connect with you and I've heard you speak it's very you know it's not just it's it's a it's a it's a incredible experience to hear you speak and I can feel myself connected to a message that you're putting out there and it makes me reflect back on my experience as a young person going to church and just sitting in these pews thinking what am I doing here I can't I understand what they're talking about I'm falling asleep why is that guy swinging that rope with the terrible-smelling he's dressed up not like I'm an Episcopalian yeah like an elementary school I just found the whole thing totally bizarre and I was like she used about what I was supposed to get out of it it wasn't that I had it wasn't that I was traumatized by it I just didn't understand it and I didn't understand why everyone felt compelled to go like I was getting nothing out worded to any of it in times of crisis at all not in a in an organizational structured yeah in a non-denominational kind of spiritual way yeah you know I found God in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and my spiritual growth as as you know taking me through you know an exploration of many different types of faith and and experiences and practices and teachers and the like and I haven't settled into one particular perspective on that but I've learned from all of them yeah yeah well one thing that Astaire said I'm just quoting like smarter women though myself um she said that that it's easy that the one of the things that religion offers is that in times of of crisis and of pain when we're collapsing there's something to hold us like like it's easy to come up with rituals and practices and stuff in times of birth or weddings but when [ __ ] hits the fan there's something there to hold you that there are these sort of rituals or prayers that have been worn smooth by generations of the faithful in a way that can kind of bring us comfort when you can't just create your own thing on the spot when you're in a position of crisis and pain I thought can that be can can you have that connection without the baggage that comes with the incident that's the question that's literally the question right now I mean I when I left Christianity for a decade I couldn't have anything to do with it I was you know after I left the church I was raised in so when people say like look a lot of us have to leave for for reasons of self-preservation like I get that I ever judge it but I think that there is a path to integrating our religious upbringing rather than rejecting that eventually there's that kind of work that can be done - even if it's just you know there's this prayer my grandmother said when I was going to sleep every night that's still really meaningful and I'm gonna integrate that into my life you know that that that's a part of wellness to me to be able to do that so I've been just sort of inviting people into considering what that might look like and it doesn't have to be a betrayal of the part of you that needed to reject it for good reason to say yeah but it still formed Who I am on some level and I want to make friends with that part of me yeah well there is something timeless about these stories in the Bible and the truths that are you know laid within them and that's something that Rob Bell has helped me a lot with you know in his effort to kind of reclaim this art form that is the sermon and to really get into you know the history behind the history and the nuance behind these stories and trying to divine you know the truths that are there that are buried within them and there's something incredibly beautiful about that totally but I found that I can enjoy that and explore that without having to go to a certain location a certain day of the week sure you know yeah I love the Bible I mean I I love the text so much and it's like this endless endless reservoir of meaning and every time I just don't really it's always given it's always handed over the goods you know and so this idea that it has this one meaning for all time that some old white man decided generations ago is insane like if you think it's a I think it's like a living tradition and so you're gonna see something in the text today that you hopefully didn't see yesterday because you've lived one more day so I feel like it always has something to offer about human folly about the nature of the divine whatever it is like I love the biblical text I'm interested in how you found your way back but I think in order to really understand that like we need to like understand you need to go to the beginning a little bit yeah so you grew up in the Church of Christ yes it was called so that's a very from what I understand a very intense yeah it's like Baptist plus right it's and your parents were we're pretty hardcore in this tradition yeah I mean it was just our whole lives you know I went to church three times a week for 16 years yeah and people can oh where is your experience as a young person going to church three times a week that's well you know the thing about anybody's childhood is you don't know it's weird until you meet other people and hear their stories and you're like oh my mines weird then you know so I didn't know it was weird I mean and there were as beautiful things about it there's something to be said about being raised in a community and we did sort of carry each other through difficult times and celebrate and joyful times together and and I was just I'm I was so used to gather like you said showing up in a location every week with the same people doing the same thing I was so marked by that that on some level I've tried to recreate a healthy version of it my whole life right so then what leads you I was gonna use the word astray I don't know if that's the right word but like you start exploring drugs and alcohol at some point like what happened okay so what happened is that I was really sick as a kid so I had an autoimmune disorder and it one of the one of the things that happened is it caused fatty tissue to build up behind the bones in my face so my eyeballs themselves were pushed forward out of my head so they bulged really far out of my face to where my eyelids couldn't close and you could see a lot of white around the entire iris so they looked like they were falling out of my it was very weird looking and so I had that eye disease from ages 12 to 16 because they couldn't do all the surgeries to correct it until the bones in my face stop growing so it's like the worst years yeah because a lot of people when they're in middle school they think they look like an insect I literally did and so I think I just always thought like one of two things can happen if you have that experience you can either maybe become like a diminished person who tries to disappear or alternately you can go oh yeah [ __ ] you right and that's what I did so I had this anger about how I was treated that I'm really grateful for because it that anger preserved something it did protect something in me that remained unharmed but it ends up if you mix a lot of drugs and alcohol with that either it's not the best combination yeah so you know I started using I think when I was 15 and then left the church when I was 16 and yeah just it ends up like I had that thing where did you just don't have the off switch you know mm-hmm was it drugs alcohol everything like what was the drug of choice I did a lot of drugs I did a lot of coke and you know a bunch of other stuff but um it never never kicked my ass the way alcohol did so for whatever reason alcohol was the thing that if I had won this switch went off and I could not I couldn't stop so that's ultimately the thing that was the hardest for me yeah but you got sober so yeah I did get sober young yeah I'm Sarah was there an intense bottom there like what brought you into the rooms it's such a young age well I mean there were some physical things just like I had sores on my hands that wouldn't heal and you know there were like there were I wasn't well and I didn't have money to go to treatment and I'd been I was estranged from my parents because I was such a [ __ ] and um so I had to kind of white-knuckle it and the first time I sat in a meeting I heard there was a blustery quality to my alcoholism like to me I was like look at how good I am at being a sloppy drunk I gave her sub bravado to it right and I mean that's part of the disease like romanticizing yeah fetishizing totally know and then just surrounding yourself by other people who are just as bad so you don't have to notice that you're not doing so well so but when I sat in a meeting and I heard the honesty spoken about what that really feels like what it's actually like to live that life I start crying like they were speaking the truth about it and I didn't it took a while like I didn't I didn't I just thought I could kind of get my [ __ ] together and go back out there and I thought you know it would help me maybe figure out how to not be out of control as much right and but I wasn't sure I belong there you know it was one of those things and so I it was this there was just this one day and I was at a women's meeting and I was maybe maybe five days over and really shaky I mean I am like I couldn't stop bouncing my Photon you know it was I I was shaking and my nerves were jangled and everything my skin felt like the rough side of velcro and on and there was this noise from the floor below like someone had dropped a pan and I jumped out of my seat but like no one else moved and this woman was sharing and this is when you could smoke in a a meetings and she's in the middle of sharing and and I jump out of my seat no one else moves and like immediately she turned to me and she went that'll pass so anyway about prayer I was saying you know like and there was something about how immediate she said that that I went oh [ __ ] she no she's not like that right she knows exactly what's going on there was no judgment there was just recognition and I thought that combination of no judgment but recognition and just naming it I just went oh [ __ ] I I am in the right place you know and and those like suburban housewives saved my ass you know so and that seems like that's that that ideology kind of informs how you deal with your congregation right like recognition without judgment yeah I guess I hadn't thought of it like that yeah yeah yeah and state you stayed sober ever since yeah yeah 27 years yeah so then you what you're like working in restaurants and you're doing stand-up comedy and yeah there's no there's not a lot of church happening at that point no not at all I was actually really involved in like exploring sort of more goddess stuff and like women's spirituality because it was there was such an intense patriarchal male-dominated thing and the Church of Christ like I honestly did not hear a woman pray out loud in a church so I was 27 like you couldn't women couldn't even be Usher's in the church that I was raised down so there was I had to bask in like the female image of God for a long time to heal something inside me before I could go back to my own symbol system and what pulled you back in well I met my my now it's husband and I'd never heard of Lutheran's except for I guess maybe Garrison Keillor like I had never I didn't know what a Lutheran Hoss and and he was like really involved in like Christian social justice and I was like [ __ ] is that's a thing I think seemed I'd never heard those two things go together and so he sort of introduced me to more progressive form of Christianity and I was just I was just fascinated that that even existed and you know we moved out to California and I vary but grudgingly started going to this Lutheran Church that had this gay pastor and going to this adult confirmation class at night and just I just soaked it up I I had no idea that you could believe those things I none so it was like the thing I still loved which was Jesus plus stuff that seemed just real and genuine and like easy to believe because I knew already know it was true like when they said we're simultaneously Center and saying I'm like [ __ ] man that that explains a lot that's super helpful thanks guys and then what what compels you to go to Divinity School and welcome a pastor it's there were two two things the first time I had that hit of oh I think I have like quote a calling was when my friend PJ committed suicide and he was a polka comic and also in recovery and I had not been to Divinity School or seminary at this point but when PJ died our friends just turned to me and we were like well you could do the funeral right and just literally because I was the only religious person in my friend group the the only thing that qualified me and I said okay and it it was like this it was at the comedy works in downtown Denver and it was packed and I was giving his eulogy and I just looked out and there were all these like academics and comics and queers and recovering alcoholics and I just thought oh man ease these people do not have a posture and then I went gonna have to be you oh damn you know so that was my first hit about that like trying to notice a sense of being called yeah well I I felt called to be a pastor to my people not to fit in some box that the institutional Church has for if that's a job you want you know what I mean those are two different things right like you could minister to these people in a way that no one else that you knew could yeah yeah so that meant I had to start a church from scratch I there was not one that existed yeah I wouldn't because no burns let you they did well I looked around Lutheran Church of super nice people but like nobody looked like me my friends aren't hanging out there I have to culturally commute from Who I am - who the churches and I just thought that's exhausting okay so paint the picture of the church of all sinners and things well it is really like you said that weird combination that I'm like this you know kind of punk rock girl but also theologically Orthodox but liberal but you know this weird the same with that church because it's really liturgical so we use this traditional liturgy so it's traditional but it's not conventional right and so um we're in the round and all of the jobs are shared except for the preaching like just different people do it when you walk in your ass do you want to lead part of the liturgy right you could read the gospel or surf communion or do whatever just by walking in off the street we're like hey guess what we trust you with the holy things just could you walk to the door and and there's so many different kinds of people it's super queer probably a third of the conversation congregation is clear my dad describes it as like high church at the Star Wars Cantina right and it's totally acapella so we didn't ever know anything to feel like a performance and so we're in the round and it's in its acapella four-part harmony like it's like sitting in the middle of a 200-person choir yeah that's why so all the music comes out of the bodies of the people who came like that too that's just so profile right there's a pure there's a I was gonna say purity heard there's a there's an honesty or something elements all about that all right yeah and and you said something I thought was really interesting you said that you need to be deeply rooted in tradition to disrupt with integrity to innovate yeah mmhmm yeah so it's this yeah this weird combination of respecting these traditions in the same way in a a it's like well there's the twelve traditions like like there's all kinds of insanity happening yeah at a big a a meeting but there's this reverence and respect for the tradition that's right but every group is autonomous and so they're all different like every a a group decides what are the rules of what you know how's the format going to be what's the vibe do you know so there's all that freedom but the the reason there's so much freedom is there's that load-bearing structure that's holding it together uh-huh of tradition and the face of that load-bearing structure is you mm-hmm and if you're wearing the collar mm-hmm you don't always do that you do you do always well not every so it if I'm it if I'm leading liturgy like literally Sunday I preached at the Episcopal Cathedral in Portland and yeah I had the collar at a stall at all the whole shebang and there's a there's a power and a symbolism and a tradition that's built into that but there's also you have to admit like a separation that occurs as soon as you adorn that there is that a wait is this person more pious and I does this person know more than I this person is in control and what they say matters more than what is for sure yeah until you hear me preach and then you're like oh not she's just like she's just like I am never the best Christian in the room ever but yeah but at the same time I liked it I liked wearing the collar because the collar represents the office that I'm holding and so in a way all of my four balls don't have to be the last word because I'm just holding an office on behalf of the people and they're allowing me to hold that office and they want me to hold that office and to be set apart to do something really specific on behalf of everyone and in that way it really worked right mhm you tell this funny story about what happened when the church the churches started out it was like your friends in your living room and then it was like 40 people or 50 people but then you got some press in Denver and they're like The Bridge and Tunnel crowd like it was the front page of the other post and when it came out I was texting people like hey uh where do you buy a paper it's like I think several of it I don't know like nobody in my congregation to read paper but you know who takes the paper sixty year olds from the suburbs and that's who caused my congregation to double in size overnight yeah so suddenly soccer moms and dads and Dockers show up to like you know take a peek at what's going on yeah and that's that that's a challenge to your sense of your your ability to Eman to emanate grace right like this is challenging your idea of what you thought and wanted this it was organization it was horrible because I just thought you could show up to any mainline Protestant Church in the city and see a room full of people who look just like you like you're messing up are cool man like yeah it was horrible and and then I called a friend and I was like dude have you had a similar congregation I was like have you ever had normal people mess up your church and we always had this thing about like we of welcoming the stranger is part of our values and so right away always think of welcoming the stranger is thinking thinking that stranger is the one who's ostracized but what if that stranger is the person who's the mainstream totally person totally he's like well you guys are great at that if it's like a transgender kid but sometimes the stranger looks like your mom and dad I was like well [ __ ] you and then so what happened was we had this meeting because we were going like I was like we gotta we gotta do something and but I had that phone call and it felt like this divine heart transplant you know again and I told the group like hey might I call my friend and he said this because I thought what the meeting would be would be all the people who were there originally would say who they are and why the church is important and then the people for whom it wasn't really for them would like self-select out like this is my evil plan and that but then I told on myself at the begin of the meeting that I had that phone call and then Asher was like well as the young transgender kid who was welcomed into this community I just need to go on record as saying I'm really glad they're people who look like my mom and dad here cuz they love me in a way my mom and dad can't right now and I was like oh [ __ ] meeting over so it's like the spiritual truth all right I'll see you guys Sunday but now the part of that story that people don't know is that the very people had a hard time welcoming just a year later even so for years now I cannot imagine it being house for all sinners and saints without them that it's impossible for me to imagine the church without them we're not us without them and I think that was chapter 14 or something in the book pass tricks and there's this couple that are that fit that description who show up and they're just the altar there that just the best volunteers they do so much work they serve all the time they're incredible and the first time they showed up to help do all this cooking for Operation turkey sandwich they had t-shirts made that just say chapter 14 yeah and it makes it even weirder that you have though that the crowd is diverse in that way oh yeah cuz you walk in there like I'm unclear with all these people have in common right and that brings it back to the similarities were they a right yes it's like that's the only place I've ever been where you see this intersection the most unlikely community of people to intersect with each other yeah they shouldn't maybe the way total yeah but now also it's interesting because there's such a culture of turn-taking in that community that even the people who on the surface seem like the broken ones you know we don't have the designated broken people in the community that I have seen the people who have maybe some more complicated lives in in a heartbeat turn and be of service to the really stable people in a way that only they can but don't we take turns at being the broken one hopefully yeah I mean in a healthy way we do if it's a healthy ecosystem of a community that's what should be happening so you founded this church and you've grew it to prominence and recently you decided to move on yeah yeah so why why why is that well because it was real I started talking about my departure the first year of the church so it was super important to me as the founder to not for that church to not have founder syndrome so it was something I had my eye on and I spoke out loud about from the beginning and so it was just important to me to leave at the right time and the fact that I was able to leave while they still loved me you know it's like better to leave a month too early than one day too late time to think it's part of that victory because of the ego identification that takes place like oh I'm the cult leader here yeah part of it but on it was because I loved it because I loved that church and I wanted what was best for it and I couldn't I couldn't stay for the wrong reasons you know and so what happened was the the person who took over for me we worked side-by-side for three years so the last three years of that I was at the church I was part-time and and Reagan amber and a gay Episcopal priest was full-time so it was a slow transition am i right and now you're touring around talking at fancy you're getting golden vaginas no you know early this is the third year I spoke at the Nantucket project and this year they were just like you know which just like would you preach a sermon this year yeah it was just it was like limousine liberals and atheist Jews you know I was like I preached the hell out of a sermon so it's been it's really fun being a public theologian and just being invited into spaces right you get to you get to just travel to all these different venues and do what you do as opposed to being I can find you a certain space but I ask myself the same question if I'm speaking at makers or Nantucket or a wellness conference as if I'm or if like you know a year and a half ago I let a day retreat for all of the bishops in the Church of England right so all of them I asked myself the exact same question no matter who I'm in front of and it's what what is the most pastoral thing I can say to this group of people like I have to dig into this like what is the thing that's hard in their lives what is unspoken what is something that is that is that what's a hurt that this community might share what is a struggle how can I speak honestly enough about that to bring some kind of hope from outside of them into the space like I ask myself the same question no matter who I'm speaking to is how can I be their past or even if it's for ten minutes and how much you go into it you get up in and you know channel the vibe or do you never you plan this whole thing out right never channeling the vibe is not gonna be good for anyone no lazy i well i i i i speak from a man I mean now we're just having but I speak from a manuscript and like my sermons are 1,500 words and I it like when I was preaching you know every other week at house it would take about 15 to 20 hours of work to write a 1,500 words which is like what 10 or 15 minutes 10 yeah Wow yeah but but when I was a comic I learned economy of language I mean that's the one thing you might not know about that community of comics is that the highest compliment within that community is to say have you seen so-and-so's act and they go no II got that are they good yeah they're a really good writer so how they use language is simplicity of it correct right and you don't know that a stand-up act is written in a sense maybe not words on a paper when it's well done it looks like it just blows oh no they know every horse haws between a word they use a very specific word if they used one extra word in a bit it wouldn't be as funny so I don't know how anyone manages to be a preacher without being a comic first but the comics get to get get up in front of crowds and work out their material over time you don't have that that opportunity no they aren't writing a new 10 minutes so let's talk about the book why sex I mean there's an obvious answer to that of course but why invest this amount of time and intention into writing a book calling for this Reformation on how we think about sex it's like really vulnerable sir I've been doing it on this stage during the tour but every time I'm like oh so I so I'm ordained and one of the most liberal denominations in the country but I had to sign a document that said when I was ordained I would be so I would be faithful in marriage or celibate in singleness and what I well that was just or you can be brought up on charges to be honest and so it's not even our theology it's like we borrowed it from the Baptists I'm like can we give it back to the Baptist so I didn't think about I was married at the time and I was married for almost 19 years to a really really good good man who I couldn't say something bad about but we never connected like it just never happened so it was we were roommate to co-parent and so there was no physical or emotional intimacy in the relationship and that was really it was so it was this quiet painful secret I had and I dealt with it by doing Crossfit five or six days of meetings like lifting 160 pounds over my head a regular basis and having you know quarter inch long hair and whatever but so when we divorced when we divorced it there was no acrimony or lawyers and he's found love he's remarrying and he's very happy but when I got together with my boyfriend and connected so intensely to someone emotionally and sexually it was so good for me like it would I describe it as like this exfoliation of my whole spirit and it was good for my brain chemistry and my body and at my heart and like everything just kind of softened like people who know me for a long time there I'm a different person than I was three years ago and um and so then I had to go on tour though so we were together for like a week and a half and then I had to go on this three and a half week tour in Europe to support the UK and German edition of my last book so I had all this stuff swirling in my head like going oh my god this is amazing and then I'm like why did the church make me sign something saying I wouldn't do how is it better for my church if I'm not getting laid it's like I understand like you know don't [ __ ] the flock as a baseline ethic you know but um I just was puzzling and my boyfriend is not Christian he's not part of that tradition and I texted him I was like I gotta talk to you right now and so was like really unwarranted urgency I was like why do you think the church is tried to control sex or so long and without skipping a beat he goes I just assumed the church saw sex as it's competent and then I went I'm writing a book so flush that out like explain explain this idea of sex competing with the church well when he said it it's one of those moments where I didn't know exactly what it meant but I knew it was true and so it was almost like my exploration of why that thing was clearly true and I think it's that there's a trend there can be a transcendence you know sex can can can have a almost transcendent quality to it but also we're seeking to connect deeply to ourselves into another thing at the same time and I think that we want yeah we want transcendence and connection and employment and wholeness and we can get that through religion and sight both things are sort of and so I think that because there's such a mystery to it that I think that it's easier to say no this is a thing that's dangerous that we have to control and have boundaries in a really particular way certainly there aren't very many institutions that have done more to create the guilt and the shame and these horrible human emotions around sex and sexuality that have led to you know repression and all of the you know it'll be gotten manifestations of what it's like to live in that space and you know religious not alone in that regard but it's certainly at the top of the yeah in terms of being well the difference I mean obviously the culture gives us really damaging messages and the commodification of sex and the desirability like you have to have a particular type of body to for it to be worthy of desire all that [ __ ] but that but the but the culture has never said that those messages are actually from God in the way that the church has you know to say the creator of the universe is is saying this message and one of the things I'm saying on my tour is like look shame like shame has an origin but in the Garden of Eden story it says that Adam and Eve were naked and and unashamed until they listen to a snake right and so to me that says shame has an origin and it's not God that um shame doesn't originate from God's voice shame originates from voices who say that they are speaking for God like the snake dead and that's different yeah it is interesting I mean obviously there was a time when human beings walked around naked and didn't think twice about it that's correct but it's so strange when you think about how we're all hardwired to feel bizarre if not you know self-conscious if not ashamed to be naked like what is what would be wrong with just this is how we are naturally brought into this world to walk down Fifth Avenue like why is that not okay yeah yeah yeah you know but it certainly isn't yeah so what happened you know like deconstructing that how he got to this place yeah and the role that religion has played in fomenting that yeah well I mean that's um I think that there's a lot of power to be brokered if you can say that you are speaking for God and and and saying like I'm on God's mouthpiece and and I'm going to tell you how you should be living and how you should be feeling and where your money should be going you know I mean Martin Luther did that right I mean he was he had some concerns with some of the fundraising tactics of the Roman Catholic Church you know that were hurting his people and it's because the church was saying hey you can't question us because we're speaking from God God wants you to do this you know and it's always this religious camouflage to say well it is written or like God wants you you know when really it has to do with brokering power and controlling people and there's a rich history of that in religion so explain the kind of thesis of the book and how this plays out so the thesis of the book is that if the teachings of the church are harming people we should rethink those teachings it's pretty basic like we should never be more loyal to an idea or a doctrine or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people and so to have this sort of that's that's the essence of Lutheranism righteous is like Martin Luther's whole thing exactly what I mean it's not exactly what he did but I'm stealing his move I always do I mean and I also propose an alternate sexual ethic you know but that's not legalistic or shaming that allows for difference and and that is that stealing a move from Luther again is that when he wrote the small catechism he was talking about the ten commandments he's like the Ten Commandments are more than just avoiding bad behavior like the fifth commandment thou shalt not kill that should be a freebie right like we most it's like the middle square of the bingo card right like we can all just cross it feel good you know at least we know we got one right you know and he's like hey hey hey not not so fast that it means we should love and fear God so that we don't harm our neighbor in any way but we have a concern for their well-being and to support their flourishing so it's not just the absence of harm it's the presence of good yeah actually having to do something as opposed to avoids just just being super awesome at like not doing [ __ ] all right which is what a lot of conservative Christianity is like it's it's basically being good at not doing certain things right some of which are you know human impulses right I mean sexuality certainly being totally first and foremost among those like just being this machine that's constantly repressing right right right well that's when that's when religion is is nothing but a reward and Punishment program yeah I'm dualistic thinking within religion it just is basically like you know God is this angry capricious bastard who is with a killer surveillance system like is giving you reward pellets for good behavior and little shocks for bad behavior that is that is a foundational view of God that a lot of very conservative Christianity sort of holds well there's few things that can provoke shame on the level of sexuality yeah totally totally but those message but to sort of dig in and go where'd that even come from I spent two years interviewing my parishioners and just saying like what message did you receive from the church about sex in the body and then how did that message affect you and how have you navigated your adult life and I was surprised how many people were just immediately willing to share those stories people want to get free from this stuff they really want to get free and so there was a willingness there that I was shocked by nicely so what are some of the more notable examples of that of the stories yeah oh yeah I mean they're like there are you know young married couples who did everything the church said and waited to have sex till their wedding night so they're told their whole lives that sex is sort of dangerous and sinful and you know you have to keep it at bay but they finally get married they could not flip a switch in their brain in their bodies on their wedding night and suddenly go to having sex be joyful and natural and life-giving right and really have a lot of struggles because of that in the church they sell in this package deal they're like if you wait the sex will be awesome and there you have no language for it or experience or you know you're left trying to connect frayed wires suddenly you know you or gay men who never reported the sexual assault they experienced in church because the church told them being gay was a sin or women who experienced marital rape when they were 20 years old and when they told their church the church because there's a verse in the Bible that says women are to be subject to their husbands there's no way it could have been rape I mean it's not hard to draw a direct line right so how do we move past all this well there's this thing about just [ __ ] saying the things out loud in just super basic way that is an amazing starting point because then when things are brought into the light and into oxygen they have a chance to heal which they never will win their secret and so light light even just the smallest amount of light can scatter darkness right but darkness has no effect on light and so to be able to just say the things out loud is in itself healing and to hear other people's stories and to go oh my god one yeah just that is healing you know this is back to a a like I have nothing to offer the world except for regurgitating yeah hey and you know is somebody who wrote a book called shameless and somebody who's worked very hard to overcome your own issues you know to be shameless yourself like you don't harbor shame about your past because you've shown the light on it you know and I under gone a similar process it's incredibly empowering and I think when you can then communicate with that level of honesty and vulnerability what you went through it gives everybody else permission totally there's a sigh of like right relief right and that creates connection and empathy and that trajectory forward for their own healing that's all I've ever done that's my I'm a one-trick pony because what I want if I'm gonna do that if I'm gonna say something like jeez you know what talking about being a sexless marriage is not easy you know but the only reason I definitely when you're the person that everyone's looking to to be the wiser ones right and so but there's only one reason to do it and because when I do it I found that it creates a space around me that allows other people to step into this space and feel a little safer to admit what that thing is for them and it's a form of leadership I always call screw it I'll go first yeah that's it yeah well it's also sharing your experience experience for telling people tell you should do this and be this way no never which kind of religion is all about but you know in like ten year is a pastoring house for all the sinners and saints I never once told somebody what they should or shouldn't be doing in terms of their sex life uh-huh and having a community a spiritual community that's based on Grace and on just being a beloved child of God and on the fact that yeah you're simultaneously Center in st. we all [ __ ] up and we can move on because there's grace for all that when that's the main message it ends up people make pretty good decisions for themselves without the church having to tell them what those look like I was at the gym this morning and I was listening to an interview with you I had like earbud you're I had an earbud in like one ear and there were three guys and they're working out they're kind of like they're very alpha you know like jacked up dudes and one guy says what he says I'm gonna push her exactly what he said but it was something like I've got a bullet for Nancy Pelosi and like my ar-15 is like on the way and then some other guy like patted him on the back and said something similar like affirming that and this really weird conversations going on in front of me and like I'm a progressive liberal but like whether you're a conservative Republican or a / good like talking about killing the Speaker of the House and like being giddy about that and like your assault rifle and I was like I was out of my mind right and I was like you're in my ear but and you're talking about grace and like the inconvenience of it and I'm thinking I wanted to like intervene in this conversation which is very would be as an introvert that's not something that would be natural to me and I was like how do I what is the where's the grace here like what am I supposed to do yeah I know and I end up doing nothing yeah yeah what I was thinking I wonder what Nadia would have done here or what she would have advised well the thing about both like the grace thing and the compassion thing which are super related is they are 100% never my first impulse ever so my first reaction to almost everything is [ __ ] you oh so I but anger still there oh my god it will never go away so this is where the whole being like Christian perfection or progressive sanctification or enlightenment I'm like I don't buy it because to me grace for myself and compassion for myself is is that I don't get a personality transplant that my first reaction is always going to be [ __ ] you and that's okay and I can have grace for that I almost never stay there but I almost always start there I just move really quickly to something else now and so if I were to judge myself on oh my god I can't believe that was my first reaction again self-flagellation you know repression double down on my efforts wasted right it's okay like I'm always gonna have a little thing about booze you know it's not but that you get the reprieve you know you get a neutrality to it but it doesn't go away and so same with whatever our defects are that I'll always have that as my defect and it's okay and it's helped me at certain times in my life so my first impulse is never how do I extend grace to this person but I often will eventually get there and it feels so different in my body my reaction to things and my response to things feel different in my body so my reaction to that [ __ ] you everything's tense I guard myself I feel stuff you know it feels different but when I can do the work and go okay what would compassion for this person look like it feels different in my body yeah and the growth or the evolution is in the half-life of the reaction before the more considered response yeah yeah totally no okay [ __ ] the [ __ ] you is gonna happen but that's gonna pass quickly and I'm gonna get to the more evolved yeah I'm just this i don't i think it's unrealistic for me to have some expectation that my first reaction to things are is ever going to change so that first reaction has so much less power when I'm not fighting it and judging it when I have made friends with it and I know it doesn't have to be in proceed yeah I noticed in the book that you really kind of restrict your focus to your own experience and then the experience of your parishioners or these people that you interview and you don't get into you know this the scandals of the clergy or anything like that so it's not a broad referendum on sexuality in the church in general it's more about how we can have a healthier relationship whatever wherever you find yourself on this sexual spectrum yeah it was important to me to stay in my lane people are like well did you bring up the Catholic clergy thing right or what about Islam and like not my traditions that's not my story at all you know why would I it wouldn't be okay for me to stand above a culture or a tradition I'm not a part of and critique it I can critique something from within my own life and my own experience but I just have no interest in going outside that but boy I can't wait to read more and more about people within other traditions asking these same questions and hearing what their answers to am are well there's something interesting about the timing also because we're in a cultural moment right now where there is discussion and dialogue about the diversity of sexuality in a way that I've never experienced you know in my lifetime seeing all these new variations you know the duality of male/female yeah we are like in a way you know 52 like I'm catching up yeah trying to like understand what's going on and I find it fascinating and then you know you're writing this book and we're seeing these changes in culture and in religion like why now like why do you think why is this the moment hmm I don't know but I did I did write a piece for The Washington Post last spring about how it feels apocalyptic because the word apocalypse means revealing just means to see what's underneath you know and then it's a big revealing of what's been going on for a long time you know sexual harassment is just a ubiquitous experience in women's lives that we have been socialized to de-escalate and to deal with and so the fact that we're going hey guess what this has been happening for a long time we all share this experience is just revealing what's already there and we have to keep going we have to I mean we have to dig in and do that work to say what's just the truth about this you know I mean I haven't had nearly as many horrific experiences as other women in my life I think I do have the benefit of having like a really sort of dominant personality and also I'm a really large woman so it's a different like six six one six one yeah about 170 so I have Nana CrossFit I don't do that anyway you don't know I only do know it's super embarrassing I only do yoga like you do what's up you know I'm single I be like well these festivals is doing yoga I know we're talking about compassion and like being in yoga positions it's super embarrassing anyway so the but we all have but I have all these stories about it too and that women are socialized for our own safety and our to try and deescalate situations so that they don't get worse and what that ends up looking like for those who were perpetrators is it looks like we don't mind and it's not that we don't mind it's that we're trying to survive and so I am I'm all I'm here for this I'm a I'm here for it I understand there's there there are some some negative aspects to this moment but for the most part I think there are a lot of people who are who who have second thoughts before they do before they sexually harass someone you know before they step over that line and because they're actually for the first time are like repercussions right right well certainly that's happening you know I think that it's been successful in that regard and I think it's only gonna continue and it is it is it's about time mm-hmm it's long overdue especially when you know you get to like in looking at your book and kind of diving deeper into your work to see how deeply rooted these these unhealthy traditions are like how far back they go and how like entrenched they are so much so that it can delude you know an otherwise intelligent person into you know ascribing to these traditions just because that's the way it's always bad but it runs deep I mean when you're given messages in God's name those those go down to again are created place so how is this book being received by the traditional religious community is it considered controversial or being embraced or I just came out I would know you wouldn't know you don't be all day attention to that no I mean I have a thing where I'm seeing I know that there are people who have read this book this week and have gone to these book events who are saying oh my gosh thank you it's time I'd never felt seen in a church before I've you know someone's speaking about my experience I'm here for the Reformation it's healing I cried the whole time so the people for whom because that question I ask before I speak what's the most pastoral thing I can say to someone that book is a pastoral book and so the fact that people are feeling well pastored by that book in terms of their own stuff around sex and religion then the what I was hoping people would experience when they read it they are experiencing so to me it's a success right but then they don't have a church of all sinners and saints that they can go to Sunday well you have their organization yeah I mean like it's a thing in my denomination you don't get to go back me until at least a year and so I started the church I felt the most comfortable being in and like I am also in a place where I'm like where's my Nadya Bowles whoever wears some huge tourniquets you know doing all that work so I can show up you know so I'm I'm with everyone in the like I don't have a place to go but so I don't I don't know what what to do about that because I I can't start another one that won't almost killed me but in terms of refraction I do I do know that both I try and have clarity about the fact that both my for lack of a better words like my fans and my critics these are both like passionate groups of people who are equally distant from the truth so the people who are my fans are just as just as far from the actual truth of who i am as my critics are and neither groups are very reliable sources of information about myself to myself yeah if you if you read all you know everything at your fan say and you choose to believe that then you have to choose to also believe all the bad things that's right and you know what most of the time both the praise and the criticism of other people is more about them than me of course its praises you know so so now that you've stepped out and you don't have this affiliation with the organization anymore how do you navigate like the ego pitfalls of like being this you know sort of you know public intellectual at large who's speaking about these issues that are that are very heightened and emotional for a lot of people like you become this brand almost right and there's a lot of trepidation you know that comes with it yeah well the antidote for me personally is that my private life is very small and super boring like I don't it's just my I spend my time alone or with my boyfriend and sometimes with one of my kids if they're around and you know I've been doing this volunteer work in the women's prison when I can and I go to my a group and I have a sponsee and I just spend time cooking and I like there's nothing there's nothing super cool or interesting about my private life it's small and simple yeah and then the public stuff I do the public stuff and I'm glad I get to do this like I'm glad that I'm like a person for a living like you're a person for a living yes weird yeah it's awesome if you can get it you know but but then I just have this clarity about most of my life is my private life and that's like not even interesting at all yeah I do go to my yoga class I just started a book club in my yoga studio because I just didn't know who these people were and I don't have a church so I'm like I'm actually really lonely right now I have a beautiful I'm still with Eric and I have this gorgeous relationship but my daughter's in college I rabbit community yeah she's in college so like I just like anybody want to just do some you can't even go to your own church and like sit no I'd do anything to go I'm desperate to go it's so you there that's weird that needs a Reformation why can't you just show I think it's right they need to leave them without me for a while I know I have to wean themselves off the not energies it just they're doing it on their own and it's beautiful and they're making different kinds of choices maybe I'm in feeling free and like they're doing great and I don't want to mess that up and I wouldn't anyway I wouldn't get involved literally I just want to be able to show up to worship everyone well what is what's Jason Flom doing with the Church of rock and I'm confused well I don't know I'm not sure what it is yet but he just posted on Instagram the other day like things are happening something's going on like I wasn't sure what that meant it's gonna be like in a couple physical location yeah it's gonna be a vegan restaurant and a venue and I I'm like projecting or that you're involved in that or you are you okay so I met him at the Nantucket project and I preached that sermon to the limousine liberals and the atheist Jews and then he came up he goes I'm opening a church this weekend in Vegas yeah it's a pop-up thing and I'm like who is this guy was he talking right and then he goes can I fly you out would you give us a blessing for the opening and I looked into what it was and we talked for actually seven hours that day and um and I said yeah because I'd liked what it was about and if somebody wants me to show up as a clergy person and give them a blessing it's that's my work to do and so in the morning I had to do a keynote address at the National Verger convention at the Cathedral in Denver sober jurors are the laypeople who look maybe a little bit like they're on the faculty of Hogwarts and they have a stick and they and they lead they're the they're the ushers for the clergy and stuff right so they they lead the procession with the stick of urge right into the cathedral and they boss all the clergy around tell them where to sit which they need that because we're an undisciplined bunch right okay so it was the National Verger convention so the bishop the Episcopal bishop of Colorado is introducing me and I'm in the cathedral and I'm addressing the führer's and I go from there to dia and fly into Las Vegas and meet Jason Flom and at the Life is Beautiful festival they did a pop-up of the Church of rock and roll and Greta Van Fleet played right in this tiny venue maybe a hundred and twenty people half of whom were deaf or hard of hearing all of us were equipped with these vests that um that oh my Coptic yeah and so on our ankles and our wrists and we had these vests and it was hooked into the sound system it vibrated with the music and so the hearing the heart of hearing the Deaf the hearing people were sharing an experience and at a concert whether you could hear or not was a pro fad like that's inclusion you know and in greta van Flav's playing for like 120 people and I'd give this blessing and yeah it was great so I think she's trying to he's getting funders and gonna have like actual locations that are venues and vegan restaurants and it sounds fun yeah but it's not like a church well to Jason if you charge it okay well it's the Church of rock and roll I guess right and and they have these things that they're about like like you know all of this stuff that they believe this it's like you know be optimistic and be welcoming and be brave and you know all of this stuff and I was like hey I believe in those things and so I'll bless this thing right it was yeah it'll be cool to see what he does with that yeah I agree he said he's a good guy I mean you spent what he's not on the board of directors of the Innocence Project for 25 years that guy is he's done a lot he's done a lot it's crazy he's mean he's uber successful in their music this guy's a legend but his his work the wrongly accused is kind of amazing it's inspiring yeah he's a good guy so what is it that you want people to take from shameless like who's it for um it's for anyone who's felt ashamed of their sexual nature because of something someone told them in God's name you know it's for anyone who's had to keep their love life secret it's for anyone who hasn't fully connected to their own erotic response systems because of religion you know who have not experienced flourishing or who have a gay son and they're like outsiders in their church now because they support their kid who's awesome you know I mean there's so many people out there have been damaged by the Church's teachings around that stuff I actually say in the book like look man if you look around your life and your church and you only see like cisgender heterosexual straight couples who married their one true love and never masturbate or look at porn and if only had sex with their partner and it's still really good and they've had nice Christian children and like so like the Church's teachings has it have only caused flourishing and people are actually glowing with the satisfaction of living in quote God's special plan for Humanity like if that's all you see in your life and no one's been hurt by any of this [ __ ] this book is not for you the I'm sure those people exist everyone else yeah you use that example like the crop circles right there a circular fades when you're flying in an airplane you're like why are these round not square and it's not that they're it's not that they're round it's just that the irrigation goes in a circle and what's outside of that circle doesn't get fed yeah and the people that don't fall in there plant it in circles it's watered in circles and so the the water doesn't get the center pivot irrigation system doesn't allow water to get to the edges and I'm like God planted a lot of us in the corners and the center pivot irrigation of the Church's teachings around sex and bodies and gender doesn't include us but there's the church and then there's the teachings and the text and what's counterintuitive about what you're saying in the book is that the answers that you seek or the Reformation that you're advocating can be found in returning to the text right right which is not what you expect you expect like a big [ __ ] you and we're going to do our own thing yeah but you know a lot of times the source of the harm can be the most potent place for a sealing you know so I think going back to the text is the most powerful move you can make yeah it's gotta be really painful for a lot of people though just to even gather the courage or the gumption to even face this yeah it's these events the past you know I've done five this week and they're been you know 500 to 800 people in each one and are they in churches yeah it's in churches and I talk about why I wrote it and I always have another voice somebody who is mostly people women of color who have a different social location to talk about their experience as well and but we have these cards that say you know I'm ready to be shameless about dot dot dot and people have been filling them in and they're so powerful I mean everything from I'm ready to be shameless about like my aging body I'm ready to be shameless about how much weight I gained after I was raped or I mean it they're intense you read them out loud like like testing at Nantucket project where they were reading though exactly where I got that that's where I got the idea and I read them out and then somebody was like I'm ready to be shameless about having really great sex after my 79th but so then people feel left less alone I want them to feel less alone and then I wrote this benediction that I give at the end and then I we just blast princess kiss and I invite everyone to dance and they do you can tell that they want to move like they want to express the freedom that they're starting to feel and it's been powerful that's cool how many more cities do you have to go all of them no no you just seem totally on the road yeah no I I go home for a couple days and then I think I have like seven or eight more cities yeah well let's close it down with one with the world okay what am i doing you're here to take advantage of that no I wanted to say I wanted I wanted to like address or have you say something to the person who's listening who who doesn't have a connection with faith or perhaps like lost their connection with faith in whatever tradition they find themselves and like what is it about faith and connection that that you find to be so important as part of the human condition and how can that person find their way back to a place of of incorporating that into their life well in a way it's not like a super popular sentiment but I just I don't feel like I'm enough in a sense that I do think having a power that's more than just me and accessing that is has transformed my life in that that's possible and available for anyone regardless of what they believe or what sort of you know faith they have that that there are things that accessing like having a connection to our source and to the divine allows us to undergo a certain type of healing and transformation that would be very difficult for us to do just as our own on our own as individuals so that's the power of it to me and and there are things like people who are raised religious and had to leave sometimes they're still like hymns that are dear to them or prayers their grandmother sad or whatever and I think just finding those things and integrating them back into our lives on our own terms can be really healing and it's like this spiritual reclamation project and and it's okay to do that it's who you are and it's fine because your symbol system forms you in a way that's hard to escape so making friends with it on your own terms as an adult can be yeah it could be healing when you said the word hymns I had a flick up almost like a visceral physical negative reaction to that like every yeah like everything all the trappings around everything churchy yeah just repels me interesting love hands okay only if there aren't it's not like anything happened to me yeah it's not like you have some trauma no it's just like mm-hmm I'm sure I'm not alone what's it like was it was it a huge part of your upbringing or was no not huge I mean it was all I knew yeah it wasn't like front and center like you it was you know we went to I went to Sunday school and we would go to church on Sunday and then it was just on you know kind of occasionally and then it was holidays but what's interesting as my parents have found their way back church there's a church across the street from home where they live in Washington DC and that's become really a super important part there life and that was not the case when we were growing trusting well that's all I knew and um I just never even even when I wasn't part of it I didn't I could never pull off being an atheist you know and uh did you try it you were trying that well no I just admired it I think in others and there's this guy Frank Schaeffer who said this thing hit Francis Schaeffer a famous of angelical as his father but Frank said in an interview I think with Terry Gross she was asking you know like well you're after all that like you still are part of a church aren't you any good yeah I am and she goes why and he goes look all I know is that like if what I wanted more than anything in the world was to be an atheist all I know to do is to just pray to God to make me one I that's like I can't not be this thing on some level if I wasn't an alcoholic I'd drink everybody like the same like circular very good cool well delightful to talk to you I enjoyed it best of luck with the book like 85 pages into it so I still have a ways to go but I'm really enjoying it and it's important work that you're doing you know you're really exposing people and and and opening them up to ideas around faith and religion that I think most people haven't been exposed to myself included so well also I just I want people to have better sex it's as simple as that I mean I feel like it's a pastoral concern of mine that like I won't good sex man I feel bad about oh my god absolutely no not feel bad about you yeah shame and sex man that's tough my publisher when I said I'm gonna write this he goes did you literally scan the horizon for the biggest giant and you're like well I'll take that one down right definitely there's definitely a gorilla in the room to tackle with this one so it's cool it's awesome I love everything you're doing super glad to have had this time with you so thank you if people want to come in here you speak is that I these are open to the public right yeah there's only a couple cities that have tickets left it's mostly sold out but I think maybe Oh New York City for sure they're still tickets for New York but if you go to Nadia Bulls Weber you have a schedule up there right I would imagine think so yeah for sure and at sarcastic Lutheran on Twitter aster yeah sarcastic Luther yeah yeah you're pretty easy to find yeah all right well thank you Thanks see ya oh wait you're gonna do a prayer no no I'm good you are I just assumed yeah yeah is there one in here right around the corner [Music] you

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 43,692

Rating: 4.5682282 out of 5

Keywords: 12-step, aa, addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, anonymous, atheism, athlete, bible, christianity, church, drugs, faith, forgiveness, gender, God, grace, guilt, health, holy, Inspiration, Jesus, lance armstrong, lutheran, nadia bolz-weber, nantucket project, pastor, pastrix, podcast, prayer, purity, recovery, reformation, religion, rich roll, rich roll podcast, saint, saints, self-help, sex, sexuality, shame, shameless, sin, sinner, sinners and saints, sobriety, spirituality, tattoo, vegan, wellness

Id: N5IGNNvE6r4

Length: 115min 18sec (6918 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2019