Episode 5 — Creativity and Trust: Mary the Mother of Jesus and the Upside-Down Power of Vulnerability

Coming June 29, 2026

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[00:00:00] Andrew: At one point you were like, "The first response to the incarnation, the first human reaction to God taking on flesh, is two women exhorting each other to trust their experience."

[00:00:18] January: Yeah.

[00:00:19] Andrew: And I'm just like, January, why have I never heard that before? Like, have I— have I not been listening? Is like— Do, do people preach on this where you're at?

Like, is it, is that,

[00:00:31] January: oh no.

[00:00:31] Andrew: Is that a comm—?

[00:00:32] January: No, they don't. I feel like the Church kinda lost a grip on that.

If you've ever wondered why religion that proclaims unconditional love can feel so full of hatred, shame, and violence, you're not alone. And you're not wrong to want something more from Christian faith.

I'm January Jaxon,

[00:00:56] Andrew: and I'm Andrew McRae,

[00:00:58] January: and this is Theology Kills, a podcast about letting our shame and violence die so that life and love can thrive.

For a lot of Protestants, Mary the mother of Jesus is a vague figure. She makes a predictable appearance in our Scripture readings a few times a year. At Christmas, she's the young mother placing her new baby in a manger because there's no room at the inn. In Lent, we hear the story of the angel announcing her impending pregnancy. Her visitation with Elizabeth, the wedding at Cana, and the presentation of the Lord to the temple are about all we hear regarding Mary.

At best, she's treated like an irrelevant prop to the main event that is Jesus. At worst, she's trotted out as the poster child for obedience, misused to gaslight people, and let's be honest, especially women, into shutting up and submitting to the status quo.

But for all that we don't have a lot of information about Mary the Gospels leave us with a startling portrait of her profoundly counter-cultural way of Being in the world.

If you grew up Protestant, you probably heard a lot about how Jesus was fully God and fully human, but maybe not much about what it means that his humanity came from somewhere.

The church has always confessed that Jesus was divine because he was the Son of God. But Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Humanity, and his humanity wasn't generic. He wasn't just a human. He was a specific and particular human who learned his humanity at the feet of his mother.

In this, Mary's radical trust in God became more than an act of personal faithfulness. Her faith made her a mediator of God's love to her son. God created the child inside her, but Mary created the earthly conditions for Jesus to grow into the man God created him to be. She didn't just give birth to Jesus physically. She helped form his humanity as much as God formed his spirituality. To understand Mary, then, is to understand something essential about how Jesus became who he was.

Where Eve abandoned trust when the serpent raised questions, Mary doubled down on trust when the angel Gabriel raised questions. One woman gives birth to rivalry, the other to redemption.

In our last couple of episodes, we explored the dynamics of shame, desire, and violence in the early Genesis narratives. We looked at how Eve's choice to take the fruit was driven by a distorted desire. We saw how self disgust prevented her from trusting God's word that she was very good, leading her to exile parts of herself for being too much and not enough. This shame-based identity set the stage for the rivalry and violence of her son. Because he doesn't trust God to accept him, Cain stews in his shame and blames Abel for his pain until it leads to the murder of his brother.

It's easy to feel doomed when we realize how long these patterns of illusion and exile have been ingrained in human culture, but no matter how many creative ways we find to get it wrong, we have a God who loves us refuses to stop trying to rescue us from our worst habits.

Just as Eve showed us how creativity can be misused to give birth to violence, Mary shows us how creativity can give birth to the life and love of God.

At the beginning of our season, we explored the stories of Eve and Mary through the lens of what I'm calling the Creative Journey, an adaptation of Maureen Murdock's Heroine's Journey. Eve represents the first half of the archetypal cycle, the separation from her Being, the over-identification with Doing and the gathering of allies, the life of constant striving, the illusion of success, and the dawning realization that nothing about how she's living is leading to real aliveness.

In other words, the culture of domination and competition that is the spiritual fruit of disgust and shame.

Human civilization plunges into a few thousand years of being slowly, circuitously, and inexorably brought home to reality as God invites us back into relationship, away from the lies that fractured Eve's trust. If Eve's story is about the terrible violence that happens when trust is lost, then Mary's story is about the magic that's possible when trust is restored.

In the gospel of John, Mary ushers in Jesus's earthly ministry with one line: "They have no wine."

It sounds like a straightforward observation of a logistical problem. but if we look closer, we have a mirror here of Eve's temptation in the Garden, because what Mary has just named is a lack. And unlike Eve imagining herself deficient, even though God said she was good, this is a genuine and legitimate lack.

On one level, it's the lack of wine at a wedding party. This poor bride and groom are about to endure some painfully public scandal if their guests learn the wine has run out. I mean, that just isn't done at a wedding. They're gonna be judged and shamed by their entire community and both extended families, if this gets out. What should be a celebration is teetering on the brink of social disaster.

But Mary's putting words to something deeper than a moment of potential embarrassment. We are empty. We have no wine. Throughout scripture, wine is a symbol of the abundance, joy, and divine blessing that is the goodness of life with God. Mary observes that we lack that aliveness, that vitality and overflowing love, not because God isn't giving it to us, because we are busy living in such a way that we never slow down to, here's that word again, receive it.

Mary names, the ache, the emptiness, not just in this wedding, but in the whole human condition. This moment at Cana is what the Creative Journey calls the urgent yearning to reconnect with our Being. But it's not Mary's personal yearning because she's already in touch with her Being.

It's her people's yearning. It's Israel's collective yearning. It's our yearning.

In the garden, the serpent pointed to something missing, some knowledge, some power, and instead of turning to God with her confusion, Eve reached for the fruit to fill the lack herself. She grasped for control, for certainty, for something she could take and hold to make herself enough.

Mary does the opposite. She's not disgusted by the lack, doesn't judge it. She simply names it and holds it out to Jesus. They have no wine.

And at first Jesus's response seems like a rejection. " Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come." But still Mary doesn't react from fear. She doesn't grasp or retreat or take no for an answer. She turns to the servants and says, "Do whatever he tells you."

She invites them to imitate her in trusting what God will do. And they do!

And Jesus responds. He doesn't restore the wine they already had, he brings wine that's even better. The water jars meant for ritual purification are suddenly brimming with the best wine. The old structures of humans striving, the washing, the cleansing, the trying to make ourselves enough, are suddenly filled. Not because our effort finally achieved it, but because Mary opened a door and asked grace in.

In the Garden Eve takes the fruit and gives it to Adam, ushering in exile and violence. At Cana, Mary trusts the fruit Jesus wants to provide. And the result?

Instead of scarcity, abundance.

Instead of rivalry, celebration.

Instead of exile, a wedding.

Mary shows us what's possible when we live from a place of trust that if we ask, God wants to give. She names the longing, the hunger, the thirst, instead of striving to fix it, she opens herself fully to receive whatever God has in store. She lets Jesus fill the lack in a way she could never have imagined.

Trust is the antidote to exile.

The trust Mary embodies in this crucial moment at the wedding didn't come outta nowhere. She spent a lifetime cultivating it, and that practice of regular cultivation allowed her to step into the opportunity when it presented itself. Exile will not happen where trust is actively cultivated, prioritized, and repaired.

Mary is no stranger to mind blowing miracles. She's young, probably a teenager, when the angel Gabriel materializes in her life tells her something impossible is going to happen, that she will conceive a child without knowing a man. That this child will be called the Son of God. That the Most High Themself will overshadow her.

" How can this be?" Mary asks, " since I am a virgin?" Makes no sense to her at all.

This divine prophecy isn't something she can achieve. She can't single handedly make herself pregnant. She can only receive what's been offered without understanding how it can possibly come about.

But she says yes anyway. She chooses trust. Blessed is she who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled. Luke chapter 1, verse 45.

I wanna be clear that it's not some inherent character trait or superhuman effort of will on Mary's part. She doesn't just magically have a greater capacity for trust than the rest of us. She has this trust because God inspired that trust in her. The effort was God's, not Mary's. She just gets to enjoy the gift of it.

All Mary did was pay attention to what God was doing and believe it.

The the difference between Mary and us is that we keep ourselves too distracted for that trust to form, because we rarely slow down to look for what God's doing.

and the blessing she's about to receive isn't what the world would recognize as a blessing. It isn't an easy, comfortable, stress-free life. Things could have gone really badly for her here. If Joseph, her betrothed husband, had been a different kind of man, she could have been publicly disgraced and maybe even killed. She certainly knew she was facing scorn and gossip. yet she chose to step into that place of shame instead of running from it because she trusted that God's love defined her and not her neighbor's scorn.

But the gospel of Matthew tells us something important about Joseph. He trusts God, too.

Now, the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way. His mother, Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, being a righteous person and not wanting to make her a public example, intended to send her away secretly, but when he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son and you are to name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Matthew chapter 1, verses 18 to 21.

And Joseph, in his own moment of extraordinary trust, believes this dream.

He defies tradition and social expectation. He refuses to worry about what will people think, he marries Mary anyway. Mary is pregnant out of wedlock. She is absolutely not correctly behaved by the rules of good Jewish society, but as you've heard me say before, it's her creativity, not her correct behavior, that literally brings God to life in the flesh.

Joseph uses his social privilege to create the space and safety Mary requires in order to do her unorthodox creative work. He uses his good reputation and casts his protection over Mary and over the child she's conceived. He doesn't abdicate his social privilege. He uses his power to empower her.

What do you do after you've given your consent to something so beyond comprehension?

I mean, Eve also received words that disrupted her reality. The serpent introduced a new narrative that conflicted with her lived experience, and instead of returning to God to ask, is this true? she tried to figure it out on her own. The confusion severed her from her trust in God and in herself.

What Mary does with her confusion is something that might seem small, but it gives us a hint as to how she's able to stand firm in trust where Eve faltered in doubt.

Instead of isolating herself and trying to figure out the angel's words alone, Mary seeks the company of someone who affirms her experience.

Mary didn't ask Gabriel for a sign, but God, in Their kindness, gave her one anyway.

Luke's Gospel tells us, behold, your relative, Elizabeth, in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who is said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God. Luke chapter 1 verses 36 and 37.

So Mary goes immediately to visit her cousin. At that time, Mary set out and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judah where she entered Zechariah's house and greeted Elizabeth. Luke, chapter 1 verses 39 and 40.

Before Mary can say more than hello, Elizabeth is already prophesying over her, already affirming everything Mary felt to be true but had no proof of yet. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me? Luke chapter 1, verses 42 and 43.

Remember that Mary likely has no physical evidence yet that she's pregnant. She has no verification that she's carrying the Messiah. There's no visible sign that anything has changed, except maybe she's missed a period. And yet here is Elizabeth, six months her own miraculous pregnancy, reassuring Mary that what she's experienced was real. That it's possible. That it happened for Elizabeth too.

That it's trustworthy.

This is the inversion of Eve's exile from herself. Eve's mistake wasn't curiosity, it wasn't questioning. It was abandoning her inner knowing and reaching for external validation. It was trusting the serpent's story of scarcity rather than her own lived experience of the abundance and care of God.

Mary shows us how different life looks when we stay grounded in that trust. She listens to what God tells her. She seeks out a wise and reliable companion who reflects her experience back to her. And that gives her the strength to stand firm in what she trusts to be true even when reality doesn't appear to have caught up yet.

I mean, if that isn't a description of what the church is supposed to be, I don't know what is!

And notice what isn't here, too. There's a conspicuous absence of rivalry in this scene. It's not much of a stretch for me to imagine a version of this where elderly Elizabeth feels delighted by her miraculous pregnancy... right up until the minute that her younger prettier cousin arrives at her doorstep with a baby who's an even bigger miracle. Mary's baby isn't just gonna save the family line. He's going to save the literal world!

How many of us in Elizabeth's position would feel at least a little bit threatened by that?

But there's none of that between these women. There's no competition, there's no resentment. There's none of Cain's questions about who got the bigger blessing. There's just two women coming alongside one another in their creative work.

The first response to the incarnation, the first human reaction to God taking on flesh is two women exhorting each other to trust their experience.

Between Joseph's protection and Elizabeth's encouragement, Mary is strengthened to stand up under the public scrutiny she's about to endure for being pregnant before marriage. With her entire community ready to heap shame on her head, she puts her trust in who God says she is, instead of who humans say she is, and she gets on with the work she's been given to do.

This is what it looks like to trust in our Being.

It's rooting our identity, not in the fickle gaze of humans, not in worldly things like wealth or status or ethnicity or sexual orientation or gender, but in the one eternal identity. The only identity that cannot be yanked out from under us by any kind of change. Forgiven sinner.

Beloved child of God.

Because we too hear conflicting stories about who we are. We too feel the tension between trust and confusion. We too struggle to receive in a world that tells us to achieve. Just like Mary invited the servants at the wedding to imitate her trust in God, she invites us to do the same.

One of the most moving moments in Mary's story comes to us in John's gospel. It's not a miracle, it's not a prophecy. It's not a song of praise.

It's a mother watching her son die.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. John chapter 19 verse 25.

This moment is unbearable. The child she bore in her body, the one whose chubby face she tidied after meals, the one whose first toddling steps she caught, the one she raised to trust in the goodness of God is hanging before her on a Roman cross and taking his last gasping breaths.

And Mary doesn't look away.

She doesn't exile the pain and vulnerability she's feeling. She doesn't refuse to experience her own suffering or refuse to witness Jesus's. She's fully present to the godawful reality of what we humans do to each other when we've hardened our hearts against pain.

The lack of empathy it takes to crucify a human being, that's what happens when we disown our vulnerability. If we cannot be present with our own pain, we cannot be present with anyone else's. It's human to want to stop our pain, medicate it, make it go away. Of course, you wanna do that. No need to beat yourself up.

But there is a massive chasm between numbing our pain and healing it.

This capacity to be with our pain and suffering instead of exiling it is the ultimate step in healing our wounded Doing. We have to stop lying to ourselves and tell the truth about what hurts.

When Saint Paul writes in Romans that, " We rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope" Romans chapter 5, verses 3 and 4, he is not talking about some performance of martyrdom for the sake of winning cool points with God. He's talking about the spiritual and psychological maturity that's born from remaining in relationship with the reality of our pain.

If ever there was a moment where the temptation to fight back to grasp for control to resort to violence would be overwhelming, the cross would be it. This moment of watching her child die an unjust death. Instead, Mary stands as an unflinching witness to the cost of exile. Far from being a doormat passively succumbing to events, in this moment, Mary is actively refusing to blame. She is refusing to hate. She's refusing to meet violence with violence against the people who killed her child. She is creating an interruption to our perpetual human cycles of reciprocal vengeance.

She is modeling instead how to be in relationship to our pain.

Look me in the eye and tell me that's weakness.

It is in precisely this moment, when she looks most powerless and even spineless by the world's standards, that Jesus redefines her role.

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." John chapter 19, verses 26 and 27.

Jesus, in the midst of his death, is giving birth to, that is to say, creating A new family. This is more than a last minute practical arrangement for his mother's care. It's a theological reality, y'all.

Just as Mary was the model who helped the child Jesus learn to fully trust in God, and in himself as God's beloved Son, she is now the model through whom the new community of faith is to learn how to trust God and each other.

Mary is no longer just the mother of Jesus. She's the mother of the Beloved Disciple, the mother of those who follow Christ.

The new mother, in other words, of all the living.

She's the model of what it means to participate with God in the creation of the Kingdom of Heaven. Where Eve's creativity gave birth to a lie that killed our trust, Mary's creativity gives birth to a savior who dies to restore our trust.

Because what could possibly be more trustworthy than a God who loves us so much, he will let us kill him before he will exercise even a single particle of retribution against us? By dying on that cross, by refusing to fight back at us in self-defense, Jesus proves once and for all that God is never in rivalry with us, never against us no matter how much we get wrong. With Jesus's death, the temple curtain tears and communion with the Divine is restored. Our exile is eternally ended. What will it take for us to trust that?

What's that expression?

[00:24:51] Andrew: No, I just, it's really good. It's a really good presentation. At one point you were like, the first response to the incarnation, the first human reaction to God taking on flesh, is two women exhorting each other to trust their experience.

[00:25:08] January: Yeah.

[00:25:08] Andrew: And I just like, January, why have I never heard that before? Like, have I, have I not been listening? Is like, do do people preach on this where you're at?

Like, is it, is that,

[00:25:20] January: oh no.

[00:25:21] Andrew: Is that a comm—?

[00:25:21] January: No, they don't. I feel like the Church kinda lost a grip on that. Maybe overlooked something there.

[00:25:28] Andrew: It's—

It's such a beautiful, wonderful thing to see and you're just like, how, how did, and, and I gotta confess, like I read the script to this like, I don't know, three, four months ago now.

And I was like, oh, that's right. That's right. I knew this. And like, I, I let this slip and I, I guess I wanna confess it. What's her name? I think it's Kate Manne. She's written a couple books. She talks about how misogyny is a systematic thing. Generally speaking, misogyny is not something that needs to be labeled, and applied to individuals

[00:26:00] January: Yeah.

[00:26:00] Andrew: Misogyny is something that people who are raised in cultures are steeped in

[00:26:04] January: Yeah.

[00:26:04] Andrew: And live with, and live through, and in spite of, and, yeah. that's me. I'm steeped in that stuff and I forget and. it blinds me to this even after it's been pointed out to me, already. I can be re blinded, whatever. Anyway, thank you for that observation. The work of Christ in reconciling all things, it is happening there the lack of rivalry between Elizabeth and Mary, I found that to be an exciting moment to try and relive, you know, to do that little visualization of, what would that have been like?

[00:26:36] January: Yeah. I'm always astonished by the absence of comparison in stories. I mean, maybe humans in general aren't prone to it. Maybe it's just the American culture that I've grown up in and been steeped in. I don't know. But certainly the culture that I've grown up in, comparison is the thing, and there's always some external standard to be measuring up to. So it just stops me in my tracks when there's none of that here, when I would fully expect to see it.

[00:27:10] Andrew: Also the scene of Mary at the cross. Processing Jesus's death is something all Christians have to do.

[00:27:18] January: Yeah.

[00:27:18] Andrew: I feel like it's been a huge thing for me, processing this and what does it mean. Grappling with how penal substitutionary atonement is like, it's cut some grooves in my gray matter.

[00:27:31] January: Mm.

[00:27:31] Andrew: That's, that's, I have a hard time thinking outside of it, and it's a practice. Anyway, Jesus' death wasn't hidden and there were plenty of people that had to process it, but she was the first to process it. And I guess, as a mother, yeah. I don't know if I wanna say that it gave her an inroad to be able to do that, or it forced her to do it, but, um,

[00:27:52] January: I would even see that as a stumbling block to being able to do that. There's so much,

[00:27:57] Andrew: Hmm.

[00:27:58] January: really, I can't even speak to it from my own experience of this culture. I can only speak to it from my observations of other people's experience of this culture because I'm not a mother. But

[00:28:09] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:28:09] January: I can imagine that, socially speaking, this looks like a failure for Jesus, right? He's been preaching this ministry for three years and now he's been hanged for it and that looks like an utter failure of his work.

But as a mother it looks like an utter failure for her too. And I could easily imagine someone just dissolving into the grief of, this was the biggest thing I ever did with my life and it ended like this? Really? Like, yeah, sure I have other kids, but

[00:28:40] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:28:41] January: He was the first born. He was the one who was a big deal. He was the one who was going to do things for the family, and now he's gone and it ended like this? I could see that being a stumbling block to being able to be present to one's own pain and to process through it as much as I could see it being an advantage.

It could be both.

[00:29:03] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:29:04] January: Everything is complicated that way, but. Yeah, from a social perspective, she looks so powerless. But I look at that and I just see this amazing force of nature who's truly embodying what Jesus was teaching to the rest of the world.

[00:29:21] Andrew: I really liked how we did the hypothetical with Eve, right. When she had her encounter with the serpent and she could have turned to God.

[00:29:28] January: Yeah.

[00:29:28] Andrew: Said, "You would not believe what this snake is telling me! And it's kind of making sense actually." And how the could-have for Eve, that we hypothesize, was actually for Mary. Right? She did

[00:29:43] January: Yeah.

[00:29:43] Andrew: turn to God, at Cana. And like you said, it's a logistical issue. You're like, oh, there's, a problem going on here. But, the implied indictment in Eve's question of like, hold on, is this true really that you, you're, you're, are you holding things back from me?

Like, Jesus has disciples at this point, right? People are following him around. If he shows up at a wedding, I don't know if the cultural understanding was plus one in the first century, but I'm guessing he came with probably a lot more than just one.

Like, he might have had a whole crew of people showing up with him, and that could have led to the wine running short. There could have been a bit of responsibility when she addresses him and says there's no wine. It might not just be because she knows her son is special and can do something.

It may be, like, this is about you. Right?

[00:30:35] January: "You are partly responsible for this lack"—?

[00:30:38] Andrew: Yeah! Yeah. And like

[00:30:40] January: I confess, I had not thought of that.

[00:30:43] Andrew: Probably, this is one of those places where I took this passage a little too far because I'm, excited to use Girard and find scapegoating episodes or types of them everywhere.

But I don't need to unpack all that. I take your reading here today as wonderful. There's no lack of trust. Even if there is a, like, you're partly responsible. Okay. So what are we gonna do about this?

[00:31:06] January: Yeah.

[00:31:06] Andrew: What's gonna happen?

[00:31:07] January: Creative opportunity. No need for blame.

[00:31:10] Andrew: Yeah.

Yeah. At one point in the presentation, you call out that Eve reaching for the fruit, this isn't someone being punished because they were curious. It's not curiosity that's driving her at that moment.

And I think you said you'd heard an interview between Philip Pullman and one of the narrators of his books talking about the value of curiosity, and maybe being a bit dismissive of faith and thinking, well, what do we need faith for? Actually, curiosity would be just great by itself.

And anyway, I was curious if you could tell me a bit more about what Pullman was saying and your response to it.

[00:31:47] January: Yeah, absolutely. It is an incredibly popular interpretation of that scene, to imagine that Eve's sin was curiosity. We often talk about that, at least in pop culture that isn't Christian.

I don't know if that's talked about differently in actual churches, 'cause I'm not sure I've ever heard an actual church talk about it. Which also says something interesting, doesn't it?

[00:32:11] Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

[00:32:12] January: But yeah, I, I have been a huge fan of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books. They've changed my life multiple times. They're just incredible, incredible stories. And I was super excited when a sequel trilogy started to be released, 30 years after the original books came out. I got super stoked about that, and the third volume of that trilogy just got released last month. So of course I downloaded it and tore through it.

And there is a delightful interview at the end of the audio book between Philip Pullman and Michael Sheen, who's the actor who narrates the audio book series, and who is a personal favorite of mine.

And at one point Pullman is talking about how he was invited to give a guest sermon And he chose to talk about the virtues rather than the vices. He didn't wanna talk about what we have to avoid. He wanted to talk about what we have to cultivate.

And I don't think that he actually said this in the sermon, but he was talking to Michael that given his druthers, he would really like to kick faith out of the list of theological virtues and replace it with curiosity, because he interprets faith as blind acceptance of doctrine and dogma

[00:33:23] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:33:23] January: without thinking about anything. And from that definition, man, I can relate to that sentiment.

[00:33:30] Andrew: Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kick it out.

[00:33:32] January: Yeah, absolutely. That is. Yes. Please. Goodbye.

[00:33:36] Andrew: That's theology that kills, yeah.

[00:33:38] January: Exactly! Exactly. Total agreement there. But that is not our definition of faith here on Theology Kills.

If we're defining faith as the ability to relax into the presence of someone who is unambiguously fond of you, that gets into Attachment Theory territory to me, and what Attachment Theory tells us is that children who don't have a stable enough relationship with their caregiver, which is to say don't have enough trust in their caregiver, don't have as much access to curiosity.

[00:34:11] Andrew: Hmm. Oh wow.

[00:34:13] January: They're either perpetually anxious and constantly monitoring for the presence of their caregiver because they don't really trust that they're gonna come back and take care of them very well, or they've been so hurt by whatever it is about the caregiver that has transgressed their boundaries or the caregiver isn't well attuned or whatever it is, but the child will check out of the relationship entirely and is just listless and isn't interested in anything.

It's really, really distressing actually to watch these videos of this research that they've done. so I don't necessarily recommend going to watch them, if you're sensitive to that kind of thing.

But it's something that I'm very interested in and passionate about. And so when I put that next to a definition of faith that is about trust, and is about being able to relax, faith is actually the prerequisite for curiosity.

[00:35:06] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:35:07] January: We cannot have curiosity at all unless we have sufficient trust in and relaxation in the presence of someone larger than ourselves who makes it safe for us to exit our comfort zone and explore the world a little bit. And so, I am deeply attached to the actual theology of faith.

I, I want that for everybody. I want everybody to be so secure in their trust that God loves them, that they're able to explore and be curious and not have to be anxious, and not have to be self protective. And that to me would be the Kingdom of Heaven, if we didn't have people having to worry about and be anxious about and fight over resources because they just knew that they had access to that directly from God.

And I think that the curiosity and the learning that that's gonna open up, I mean, I just dream about that world. And I do my very best to live into it so that I can model that for the people around me.

[00:36:12] Andrew: Yeah.

I think the incompatibility of certainty and curiosity, can be fleshed out a bit. I think it's, on the one hand, fairly clear that certainty can mean you know, and you know you know it, and it's for sure.

[00:36:29] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:30] Andrew: And I'm assuming this is probably what Pullman has in mind, as a form of certainty that can kill curiosity, but also certainty can mean You know exactly what it is that you have to find out.

[00:36:43] January: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[00:36:44] Andrew: There's an answer to this, and I gotta get this answer, and I'm gonna do, and this I think is where we're getting closer to how we understand what, Eve was doing when she's reaching for the fruit.

[00:36:56] January: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:36:57] Andrew: And that falls short of curiosity as well, I think. Yes, it's a pursuit for an answer that you don't know yet, but there's a certainty in that you've got the question right, and framed so firmly and squarely you, you know exactly what an answer could be. And I mean, so many times when Jesus is asked a question, he's reframing their question and telling a story. it just happens so much.

And there's also a lack of curiosity in that sense. And so it seems like with curiosity there's at least a bit of idle wonder. You can just be curious, and if it's not an answer and an answer doesn't present itself, it's okay. There's a comfort in the fact that you're just, you're just looking to see, and that includes even if you don't see anything.

[00:37:44] January: Mm-hmm. It's much more receptive. Yeah.

[00:37:48] Andrew: Yes. And whereas I think Pullman could have been caught a bit in a sort of acquisition mindset with regards to what counts as curiosity or not.

[00:37:59] January: Certainly he's interacting with people who are caught in it.

[00:38:03] Andrew: Yeah.

Yeah. Obviously, like, very creative dude. So I, I don't think he has a problem workin' his way around the Creative Cycle, yeah. There's no doubt of that.

There was a professor in college one time that talked about, and I don't know where I'm going with this, but I wrote it down 'cause I wanna hear your take on it. I still don't know what I make of it, but it stuck with me, this analogy.

He talked about the difference between jurors and detectives. And he's using this an analogy for theological work, but he says, well, with the juror, you're expected to be dispassionate, you're just taking in the facts. And if you have too much investment, you need to excuse yourself, you don't belong there. And you just take in the evidence, weigh what's there, and make a decision.

As opposed to a detective who, in his telling of it, saw the dead body.

[00:38:55] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:55] Andrew: Knows that there was a crime that was committed. And there must be justice. This has to be solved. This isn't something to sit around and be dispassionate about. There's a murderer out there,

[00:39:05] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:05] Andrew: that needs to be brought to justice. And I, I remember Dr. Smith saying that, maybe, you know, maybe we need to be a bit more detective. Like if you've run into God and you've had this encounter We don't need to be dispassionate.

[00:39:20] January: Mmm.

[00:39:20] Andrew: but I recall that didn't entirely sit well with me. I the critique of the juror and their dispassion, I could hear that But there was something unnerving about a detective running around just trying to find a, like, even, even then, I didn't have. Girard to help me always be suspicious of people that are ready to lay the blame and like need the crime to be there so that somebody can be guilty.

Like, but still. there is a certain lack of curiosity with the dispassionate well, like, I'm just, I'm just like any other. You know, Joe, that they pull off the street.

they'll show me the evidence and I'll call it like I see it, and if it weren't me, it'd be somebody else. And like, that's the answer. there's a certain lack of curiosity there, but also on the other end, where there's this heated emotional bent to your pursuit, where like you have to have this answer and it needs to happen now. It seems a genuinely curious person isn't gonna be that pressed, either.

And so I don't know if there's, is there another character in addition to juror and detective or, I don't know. What do you think as a theologian, do you feel like a juror or a detective or one more than the other?

[00:40:28] January: Yeah, it's a good question. I think the connection for me comes back to story. That it seems like the juror's job is to not tell themselves any story whatsoever and to just let the evidence tell them a story. And that's good as far as it goes, when we're talking about a court of law.

But it's not a way to go through the world. We humans are narrative creatures. If you don't have a story, you don't have anything in you. You don't have anything that's guiding your actions, you don't have anything that's pushing you to curiosity. There aren't any questions to answer if there's no story.

[00:41:03] Andrew: Hmm.

[00:41:04] January: And so that seems alarming to me. And then on the detective side of things, it seems like the problem is that they're too certain of the story. I know what the story is. I'm confident that my interpretation is the only correct one. Therefore, I'm not going to get curious. I'm just going to get assertive about what the outcome needs to be in response to the story that I have compiled based on the evidence that I have seen.

And that's dangerous too because that story is only ever partial at best.

I was talking to somebody the other day about whether I think scripture is inerrant, and I was sort of like, I mean, scripture is inerrant the way that gravity is inerrant. It just is a thing that exists. So yeah, it's inerrant in that it is what it is, but it doesn't mean anything until we interact with it and interpret it.

And do I think our interpretations are inerrant? No, I don't. No, I do not.

[00:42:06] Andrew: Yeah.

Apart from sacred scriptures, when does that word get used meaningfully? Something that's inerrant.

[00:42:16] January: Mm.

[00:42:16] Andrew: And let's keep it in the realm of texts. What kind of text can be inerrant?

I was thinking like grocery list maybe.

[00:42:25] January: Mmm.

[00:42:26] Andrew: Maybe there's some things that you need and if you leave them off, forget to put them on the list and get home. Ah. That's an error.

I was thinking of lab reports in science class.

or like a problem set in math. But like, an essay? I don't think I could look at an essay and say, meaningfully, that it's inerrant. I mean, can you imagine reading a poem and being like, oh, this poem is is inerrant. Like, what? What does that mean? And I know that the people that get up in arms about inerrancy make room for metaphor. They clarify it by saying that there's no assertions that are made that are inaccurate, I guess. I don't know how they put it, but yeah, it seems problematic to me, kind of in the same way that we've talked about with the help of James Alison through Herbert McCabe that says, God is not one of the gods, right?

[00:43:18] January: Yeah.

[00:43:18] Andrew: If you've got a category in your head for the divine, well, their god does this, that god does that, and our God—

Already at this point, we know you're not talking about the Maker of Heaven and Earth. At least if you're gonna hold to the monotheistic way of doing stuff. And so I sort of see the Bible as similar. Like if you, if you're saying it's inerrant, well, I mean it is sacred scripture and there's all sorts of sacred scriptures across this planet and yeah, there's comparisons that can be made, but when we speak of inspiration and the uniqueness of Christian Scripture, it's not 'cause it did everything exactly right.

It's 'cause it did something that no other text has done.

[00:43:59] January: Yeah.

[00:43:59] Andrew: And so. I guess that's my hangup with inerrancy. It feels like a category mistake that leads people down the wrong path when it comes to interpretation.

[00:44:09] January: Yeah.

[00:44:09] Andrew: It it creates this idea of what Scripture's supposed to be before they have a chance to allow the Holy Spirit to guide them in reading it.

I think it's in line with the forgiveness. one time my cousin and I, we'd have weekly conversations And for me, precisely the idea of, well, okay, so if the Bible is sacred scripture like a lot of other sacred scriptures, but it's different and it's it's unique, how? I know I'm supposed to believe this. I'm a Christian. Christians believe this book changed the world. But how? What did— Girard really gave me a concrete answer to that. These texts do something that no other text had done. And it's changing the world.

[00:44:46] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:47] Andrew: The world is a different place now, and it's not just 'cause people were mesmerized by Ooh, line in this is perfect and there's no errors.

[00:44:57] January: Yeah.

[00:44:57] Andrew: This is something that's changed us. And so, a willingness to always see a next step.

I remember talking with Will one time, and one day I was like, Will, you know?

I think, in heaven. There are gonna be preachers I mean, there's probably no pulpits in heaven, but like preachers are crafty. They'll MacGyver a pulpit outta something and they're gonna stand up and they're gonna preach penal substitutionary atonement in heaven. It's gonna happen.

This was shocking to me, this like, when I get to heaven, I'm gonna be hearing preachers preaching penal substitutionary atonement.

So I started doing the thought experiment of like, well, what if I'm chatting with Jesus when we're walking around and one of these guys is preaching?

Like, what would happen?

And in my mind, I saw Jesus just kind of stop and I was like rolling my eyes, and, and Jesus was like, let's listen for a little while and see what he has to say. And. I didn't have exact dialogue in this thought experiment, but it boiled down to like, should, should somebody say something?

Should, should you maybe say something, Jesus Jesus Do we really wanna let this happen? And I see Jesus as sort of like, you know. this place is eternal. this is eternity. Welcome. This goes on.

Mental gymnastics are going to be finite. You can only keep that up for so long. It'll be okay. It'll be okay.

Now, of course, all of this is not because like I'm literally thinking like what's beyond the veil and after I'm dead, what's gonna happen and all that stuff. But just yeah, heaven has come to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. It's here and now. There are people in my circle preaching penal substitutionary atonement.

That does not mean that heaven is obstructed in any way, shape, or form.

[00:46:43] January: Yep,

[00:46:43] Andrew: I can, I can relax a bit.

[00:46:46] January: Mm.

[00:46:46] Andrew: Not that I have relaxed about it much, but I could.

[00:46:49] January: But you could! If you could figure out how to.

[00:46:52] Andrew: Yeah. Jesus would be perfectly fine with it. He would actually probably encourage me to relax a bit about it.

Stop and listen a little more closely. Yeah.

[00:47:02] January: Mmm.

[00:47:05] Andrew: So that's why if someone asked me if the Bible was inerrant, I would, I'd say hard no. Hard no. That's not an adjective we want to apply to this book.

[00:47:17] January: Yeah, I'm not interested in changing or throwing out anything that's in that book. I think that every word that is in there is in there for a reason, and we have a responsibility to wrestle with it until it blesses us. But am I gonna be too attached to how I interpret it and how I understand it, or even how the church interprets it or understands it? Even after 2000 years, we're still capable of making mistakes there, which we're learning right now in the process of incorporating our LGBTQ+ folks into the Christian community.

[00:47:47] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:47:47] January: The Church is gonna have to change their mind about that 'cause they're just plain wrong right now.

Obviously I have opinions about this, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and speak with certainty there, which is, which is another interesting angle to the whole thing. Something that my pastor says is that certainty is a gift of the Holy Spirit,

[00:48:04] Andrew: Oh.

[00:48:05] January: that there are things that we can be absolutely certain about. And that that comes from the Holy Spirit.

[00:48:12] Andrew: Interesting.

[00:48:13] January: But the kind of certainty that comes from the Holy Spirit. It's not factual, it's relational. you're not certain of an interpretation of data, you're certain of your relationship with and to a Person. It isn't anything that shuts down conversation or shuts down relationship.

[00:48:34] Andrew: Mm.

[00:48:35] January: If it's the Holy Spirit, our certainty can only ever open up relationship and conversations because if I trust completely in God, that my behavior or lack thereof is not the thing that is gonna define whether I'm okay with the creator of heaven and earth, I'm free to get curious about what somebody else thinks about it, what their experience of it has been.

And that's completely non-threatening to me because I am certain of God.

[00:49:02] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:49:03] January: Not because I'm certain of my interpretation.

[00:49:06] Andrew: Hmm. Yeah.

[00:49:07] January: I was gonna add too that I think another angle of curiosity for me, if you will, is what role curiosity plays for God in all of this. Because curiosity is one of the foundational core characteristics of the capital S self in IFS,

[00:49:26] Andrew: Ahh.

[00:49:26] January: and that to me is the piece of us that is God. But how do I square that with my deep feeling that there is a God who is omniscient. What does curiosity look like for somebody who already knows every possibility of everything that has ever existed because they created it?

And so I look for it in Jesus a lot of the time because, and I, I don't have any conclusions about this, I just know that when he heals somebody for example, almost every single time he asks, what is it you want me to do for you?

[00:49:59] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:50:00] January: A leper shows up and he doesn't just assume, oh, you must want your leprosy cured.

He asks them,

[00:50:06] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:50:06] January: what is it you think you need right now?

[00:50:10] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:50:11] January: And I just, I don't have any conclusions about that. I'm just sitting with that tension of what does it mean that Jesus asked questions of people. Jesus got curious about the inner landscapes of the folks that he was talking to.

And I think I see that as a tool of becoming , right?

That, one of the things that I do as a coach is I help people become a new version of themselves by getting curious, just asking questions that they've never considered about their own lives and their own stories and their own inner landscapes. And they can't arrive at those conclusions without somebody outside them to ask those questions and invite that insight.

and that the point of asking those questions is for the other person to come into greater being. They become aware of parts of themselves that they didn't know that they had, and then they can go be that person on purpose.

[00:51:05] Andrew: Hmm.

[00:51:06] January: And that's a lot of what I think I assume Jesus is doing when he is asking those questions, is that he's inviting us into the self-awareness of, oh, oh, what is it that I want?

[00:51:16] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:51:17] January: Rather than just assuming like, obviously I want my leprosy healed. Is there something else that I would want more? I wonder.

[00:51:25] Andrew: Yeah,

[00:51:26] January: There's something that Jesus is inviting into being with those questions, I think.

[00:51:31] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:51:32] January: So then that got me thinking. If a person then has more being as a result of these questions, that's more being who's able to then love. And so what if curiosity for God is not about not having information, and going in pursuit of gaining information that's a question, because that to me feels very acquisitive.

[00:51:55] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:51:55] January: There's an objective in there somewhere. And that's not what I see Jesus doing. What I see Jesus doing is inviting the other person into greater being. And so then that connected with what you had said about the Trinity and the eternal generation of God. And I was like, is this what curiosity means for God? Is curiosity the engine that powers the generation of love itself?

Is curiosity literally how love gets generated in the world?

[00:52:24] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:52:25] January: Because it's what brings specifically us, as humans who are capable of loving in the image of God, into greater being, into greater existence, into greater awareness.

I don't know if I articulated any of that very clearly, but my mind was just like,

[00:52:41] Andrew: Yeah, no, no, I love it.

Did you talk about curiosity being a seed for love? Why is that rolling around my head? You said that right?

[00:52:49] January: Nope, that was all you. Totally agree with it, yeah.

[00:52:52] Andrew: Okay.

[00:52:54] January: Because that does also feel like what's happening in an IFS session as well, when the Self is bringing curiosity. What that does is it brings greater relationship into being.

[00:53:05] Andrew: Yeah! Yeah, it's not like the capital-S Self is like, oh, come here, you little part. I love you so much.

[00:53:12] January: Yeah.

[00:53:12] Andrew: That's not the feel of it is.

[00:53:14] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:14] Andrew: It's definitely a curiosity of, wait, what's going on? And, I don't know if it's safe or not, but I'm in the habit of assuming Jesus knows all sorts of stuff being God.

[00:53:24] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:25] Andrew: The same with the Self. And so it's like if a question's not so much, oh, I wonder what the response is gonna be, but it's rather, okay, let's, let's let you say this out loud and see what happens. I'm really curious to find out what happens when you answer this question out loud, What is that gonna do in you? The curiosity is directed toward the person and the relationship more than any sort of knowledge that might be acquired.

[00:53:50] January: Yeah. And that's, that's my question is maybe curiosity in its ultimate form, its divine form rather than its earthly form, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with acquisition of knowledge. What if literally just about generating relationship?

[00:54:07] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:54:08] January: It is creating a bond between us when we get curious about each other and ask each other questions. Even if I knew the answer or thought I knew the answer, the act of asking the question still does something alchemical to the interaction.

[00:54:27] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:54:27] January: And it becomes more than just the sum of what we brought into the room initially.

[00:54:33] Andrew: No, I think you're right.

[00:54:34] January: And that's what I see Jesus doing left, right and center is, inviting us to think more deeply about who we are and discover aspects of ourselves that we haven't stepped into yet. He's always calling that forth out of the people that he's talking to. Even when he is yelling at the Pharisees! Right? Right?

The hope of that is that they're gonna realize, oh shit, yeah. We're getting this wrong.

[00:55:01] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:55:01] January: Do they do that? No. Do I do that when I get yelled at? Probably not, no. I, I probably double down on defensiveness.

[00:55:10] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:55:10] January: But the hope is always there, that there is an invitation to something different. And he's always looking for the thing that's gonna reality check us, if you will.

[00:55:21] Andrew: This is a personal question, but I'm curious, if you're wanting to share when you're doing parts work and you feel like you're being Self-led to ask a question of a part, are you surprised by answers frequently or not?

[00:55:38] January: Mm, yeah. Constantly.

Yeah.

[00:55:40] Andrew: And is that surprise? Do you think that's the Self being surprised, or is that the part asking a question it's never asked before being surprised?

Or is that a line that can be drawn?

[00:55:52] January: That's a good question, and I'm not sure that I can draw a particularly clear line there. I definitely feel like the surprise is frequently more in the part than in the Self. I think that what my Self feels most frequently is just a really deep gratitude, like, thank you for being willing to explore this with me 'cause I know I'm asking hard questions.

[00:56:16] Andrew: Hmm.

[00:56:17] January: I definitely feel a great deal of delight, especially when a part has a realization that, oh, the way that things have been is not the way that they always have to be. That's always, amazing. I'm so happy for them when that happens.

And then another thing that I feel like happens is that when I am surprised, I'm not surprised by their good intentions. I'm not surprised by the fact that they want to help. I'm not surprised by who they'd like to be in this system. I'm surprised usually by the stories they're telling themselves, the limiting beliefs that they're carrying, the burdens. I'm like, where did that come from?

[00:56:58] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:58] January: And I'm genuinely curious about it. I'm like, honestly, I don't understand. Where'd that come from? Please tell me!

So yeah, don't know that I'm necessarily surprised by who they are

[00:57:13] Andrew: Mm.

[00:57:13] January: at their core. I am delighted when that gets revealed.

But I don't know if the surprise that I feel about that is in my Self or in my part. It kind of feels like it's more the part.

My Self more frequently feels like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. Yeah, I really get that. I really get that.

I don't know. Did that answer the question at all?

[00:57:39] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, I'm reading your own question back to you here. do you think a lack of wisdom is a prerequisite for curiosity? If we think we know a thing, we aren't gonna get curious. So what if the lack we perceive as a deficiency to be fixed is in fact the required state for us to live into our God-given capacity for imagination.

[00:58:05] January: Yeah. I'm still chewing on this and I would love to hear your thoughts on it too. I think that it connects to what we were just talking about in that wisdom as we're talking about it in, for example, the book of Proverbs, wisdom is essentially another word for the Holy Spirit.

[00:58:22] Andrew: Mm.

[00:58:22] January: And so if we're talking about that wisdom, that's what gives us curiosity.

[00:58:27] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:58:28] January: Knowing something about something is just gonna make me wanna know more about it most of the time. But I think that's very different than wisdom in the Garden, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That what Eve was trying to fix in herself, the perception of a lack of wisdom, yeah. Maybe it just comes back to the story that she was telling herself about it, but the attempt to fix the lack caused problems. And it shut down her curiosity. She was certain about the story she was telling.

[00:59:05] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:59:06] January: And so I, I do think that there is a lack of, maybe wisdom is the wrong word there, the lack of knowledge.

[00:59:14] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:15] January: That is a prerequisite for curiosity.

[00:59:17] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:59:17] January: Because there has to be a question.

[00:59:19] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:59:20] January: There has to be a question that we're trying to answer. If we can know, I mean, I, I literally have nightmares about a world where we know everything there is to know, and there's no more questions. I'm like, I'm done. What even is the point of life if it's not curiosity? This is, this is terrible.

Why would I wanna live in this world? So, yeah, maybe I phrased the question wrong. I don't know that it's a lack of wisdom so much as a lack of knowledge, and that that lack actually is a gift to us because it ushers us into greater aliveness.

[00:59:53] Andrew: Yeah.

Yeah, I'm with you with rephrasing the question. My first hangup was with the word wisdom,

[00:59:58] January: Mmm.

[00:59:58] Andrew: and yeah, putting that in contrast to like, certainly it's not unwise to be curious.

[01:00:04] January: Yeah.

[01:00:04] Andrew: And so

[01:00:04] January: Exactly. Yeah.

[01:00:05] Andrew: why would a lack of wisdom. So, but I get your point, It seems like, if you have room to learn, it means you've built a harbor that's designated for the unknown.

[01:00:16] January: Hmm.

[01:00:17] Andrew: And that takes work. And it's not easy. And it must be done with wisdom to build a harbor that works because when you meet something that's unknown, it's probably most likely you're gonna mistake it for something that you've already known.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I know what that is.

[01:00:31] January: Yeah.

[01:00:32] Andrew: Or you're going to deny the encounter. Eh, that that didn't happen. You just won't accept that it exists. And curiosity means you have this harbor that's ready to take in the unknown and give it a space and a place, and so you actually recognize the unknown.

[01:00:54] January: Mmm.

[01:00:54] Andrew: like, you meet it, you're like, hi! I know you.

[01:00:56] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:57] Andrew: I mean, I don't know you, you're completely unknown me, but I, I know, I know you. You're the unknown in my midst. And that calm acceptance and welcoming of this other-who-is-unknown, that's curiosity. And to me that, that fits very close to our definition of faith. If this interaction is working, you can be comfortable in the presence of something that is, while it's unknown to you, it's not a threat.

[01:01:27] January: Because the bigger reality is not unknown to you.

[01:01:30] Andrew: Exactly.

[01:01:31] January: Yeah. We really need the relational trust with something that's bigger than us to be able to pursue curiosity to its, I don't even wanna say limits, 'cause the whole point is that it doesn't have a limit.

[01:01:46] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:01:48] January: But yeah, to keep pursuing that and not just settle into our own comfort and our own certainty.

[01:01:54] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. That's getting me excited about something I wanna share with you.

[01:02:02] January: Okay.

[01:02:03] Andrew: I wanna say that. with regards to being bold enough to break the taboo, is the way you put it.

[01:02:10] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:10] Andrew: And we've talked about it before, again, taking straight from Eucontamination and the Hoard siblings, it's done through joy. I think that's where they end up going.

Like, that's joy at the margins. Right? Joy, where there shouldn't be, is how this unravels.

Okay, so we were talking about how certainty can be problematic because it can derail curiosity, and curiosity's a good thing. You know, like we want to keep that train on the tracks.

So, Certainty, you do what you're gonna do. And thank you for some of the stuff you do. Good stuff. I am right now in a room that's covered in carpet. And it's not lava and I do not expect it to be lava at any point.

And when I stand up, I'm just gonna walk around. I am certain, right? Certainty can do some stuff that's good. But if I'm personifying Certainty, you will always take a back seat to curiosity every time. You will assist in investigations, but you will not shut them down.

[01:03:15] January: Hmm.

[01:03:17] Andrew: All right. I feel like we were kinda saying something like that and then I was like, and you said this too. I do shut stuff down. There are times when I have zero curiosity. I think the example that you mentioned is one I completely agree with, I have zero curiosity in any way about finding some sort of gay or lesbian representation in Christian scriptures. It ain't in there, it's just, it's not there as far as I'm concerned.

Like if somebody comes up to me like, okay, let's, let's read through all the passages where nuclear weaponry is mentioned in, uh, the holy Scripture. And I'll be like,

[01:03:58] January: Whoa!

[01:04:01] Andrew: I can get further there. I'll be like, "Maybe in Deuteronomy somewhere? I think they say, don't let your war fighting get so crazy that you cut down the orchards," right?

Because like, okay, fight your war, but don't make it intergenerational. there's a level of how bad your war, you know what? Like I can run with that.

[01:04:18] January: Interesting.

[01:04:19] Andrew: But like if somebody comes up to me and is like, well, let's think through all the gay and lesbian representation I, I have zero curiosity.

I am not looking for it because I've seen too much.

Now, there was a time when I was curious.

[01:04:34] January: Mm.

[01:04:35] Andrew: And that was when I was on the other side of this issue. I had this memory. It's a beautiful memory and. Our listeners may not know this, but many times I'll be saying like, yeah, I'm not sure this is gonna go on the podcast, but this, I want this to go on the podcast I'm 16, 17 years old. In a summer camp. That's a music camp. It's a Christian music camp. It's a Christian acapella music camp. We go and we learn praise songs for a week and then the weekend comes and we go around to different churches and sing the songs that we learned. It's Sunday afternoon, so it's the end It's the last performance. And one of our friends comes who's been a part of our youth group, was not able to come this year, but she came to the final performance there, and she came with her new girlfriend.

[01:05:22] January: Hmm.

[01:05:23] Andrew: And so there's whispers. Like, wait, is she with, is she...? So we are all in the Sunday school class, downstairs in the basement, like 60 kids crammed in this room and we're all wearing matching shirts 'cause we're about to go upstairs and sing praise songs.

Everybody's sitting on the floor and all over the place. Of course she's with us, with her girlfriend, and the teacher, he's probably 22 or three at the time. I'm not sure what his lesson was supposed to be exactly, but he's like, had some encounter where he was with a good friend and some people drove by in a car and yelled some slur or something. And he's not gay but his point was like, you know, that could really hurt. We don't wanna be mean to people.

And there's a little boy, I say a little 'cause he was actually kinda short, but he was younger too. And he just gets this look on his face. And I don't wanna repeat too much of what he said.

[01:06:21] January: Mm.

[01:06:21] Andrew: But I remember him saying, "It's just, it's just so disgusting! Why would anybody ever choose to do that?!" And like, and this weird, like I remember looking at him and he was kind of standing and there's a sea of faces around him. And I was like, who is he looking at? Who is he talking to? Why is he

[01:06:42] January: Mmm.

[01:06:43] Andrew: And then my friend with a girlfriend there with her who's hasn't introduced her as such, but like she knows what people are thinking.

[01:06:51] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:51] Andrew: I can still see her face too, and she, she has this huge smile on her face and she's like, "Disgusting? Why is that disgusting? I don't get it. What's disgusting about it?"

And they're like, all these people wearing the same shirts, like, like the image of uniformity everywhere. And she's just like

[01:07:15] January: Uh-huh.

[01:07:15] Andrew: in the middle of it, smiling! And

[01:07:18] January: Wow.

[01:07:21] Andrew: There was a seed of curiosity in that moment. 'cause I didn't want to be with that one kid who was sneering his face.

[01:07:29] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:31] Andrew: Even if I couldn't be on the side of my friend and her girlfriend. I, I just knew I couldn't because 'the Bible', right?

[01:07:39] January: Yeah.

[01:07:40] Andrew: But the discomfort I felt, I think there was something of curiosity there.

[01:07:46] January: Yeah

[01:07:47] Andrew: We went back to the campground later and she and her girlfriend are like giving each other piggyback rides while they're playing carpet ball.

[01:07:54] January: Yeah?

[01:07:54] Andrew: And like you do not need to be in a piggyback disposition to play carpet ball, but they were, and they were having fun.

I wish. Man, if I could go back today, right? As like a grown man, just walk into that room, and go over to like 16-year-old me, 17-year-old, and just. Stand up, walk over there. and, give her a high five, because that was awesome!! Like, I, I don't know.

I, I couldn't do that. Right? Because I knew what the Bible said.

[01:08:27] January: Yeah.

[01:08:27] Andrew: But I, the discomfort was curiosity still. So I could be curious about it then. Apparently I was, 'cause I, I clearly have changed my position. But,

[01:08:36] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:37] Andrew: I ain't curious today.

[01:08:40] January: Mm.

[01:08:40] Andrew: Because I, like I said before, I've seen too much in a way,

and what I mean by that is I've stopped to read some of these passages that people are using. They get called clobber texts. I had had people talk about Genesis 19

Okay. This might be uncomfortable some listeners. It might be a walk in the park for a few others, but this is a thought process that I was guided through. Let's just imagine, okay, you can do it too, January. Let's just say you're a gay man.

[01:09:09] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:09] Andrew: Right? Just imagine. Let's say you're a gay man, And let's say that you're excited, and I mean like Not Safe For Work excited. Like you

[01:09:20] January: Got it.

[01:09:21] Andrew: You're schemin'. Like And let's just go ahead and say you've got no morals whatsoever. Zero morals. All right. And you live in Sodom. Okay. There it is. And you're in a mob of other gay men, and none of them have any morals either. Okay. How does that play out?

What's gonna happen next?

You're laughing right now. I wanna let people know you're doubled over in laughter. I can only assume because you're imagining some orgy. I don't know. Yeah, maybe? Probably? A lot of nonsense.

[01:09:57] January: Yeah, they're going to the club. They're gonna go party. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:10:01] Andrew: They're gonna go party!

[01:10:02] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:03] Andrew: They're gonna have some fun!

Like what?

[01:10:05] January: Yep.

[01:10:06] Andrew: But then one of 'em is like, oh hey, um. You know, I saw these two guys go into Lot's house. Let's all head over there and rape and kill those guys.

I mean, that, that, that makes zero sense. That's not a story that anyone would tell like that. That is a story of. This, made me think of this movie Mississippi Burning, came out in the eighties it starts out this FBI agent, white guy from New York, comes down to investigate a hate crime because none of the local officials are gonna do it. They go to a diner, and he sits in the colored section the day he arrives.

Who does the Klan target?

Not him.

[01:10:51] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:52] Andrew: The black man sitting next to him.

[01:10:54] January: Mm.

[01:10:55] Andrew: When he sat down. Right?

[01:10:57] January: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:10:59] Andrew: This is a clear message about who belongs and moreover, who gets to decide who belongs.

Okay. Lot's been there for a while, but he ain't one of them.

[01:11:10] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:11:11] Andrew: He does not get to decide who is welcome.

[01:11:14] January: Yeah.

[01:11:14] Andrew: And who gets accepted and who is brought in and this is the clearest way to send that message. That's, that's what this story is.

[01:11:26] January: Yeah.

[01:11:26] Andrew: And this reading, it actually makes sense of the more difficult part of this when Lot would offer his daughters. How does that make sense? Well. And again, I mean, trigger warning for folks that don't want to hear it. But like, this is a misogynistic text, in that it comes from a culture where women are traded.

[01:11:46] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:11:46] Andrew: And if you wanna prove that you're an insider and you're part of the clan. That's what marriage is for.

[01:11:53] January: Yeah.

[01:11:53] Andrew: That's what women are for.

[01:11:54] January: Trading property. Yeah.

[01:11:56] Andrew: And that's what Lot's doing. It's like, no, no, no, no. I am one of you. See, like that actually makes sense giving. Giving girls to like a bunch of gay men that like not the gay reading is so laughable.

Yeah. Give the homophobes and I mean, homophobe in the technical sense of the word, not as a slur. Because the only reason to read Genesis 19 this way is because you're scared

of LGBT inclusion. That's it. It's a way to rationalize your fear.

[01:12:32] January: Or your disgust.

[01:12:33] Andrew: Yeah. Let's give those who want to be disgusted everything they want.

Okay.

Alright. All the men in Sodom are gay. Truth, not one of them was gay. But what I just said is historical speculation, so let's give it to 'em. All of 'em, all the men are gay, right? But. Every man in Sodom?! I, I don't even think what it's, it's Fire Island, right? Is that the place south of Long Island, the gay men in New York would spend the weekend?

There was like a ferry I don't even think that place was 100% gay men. there's always some straight dude who just can't help himself.

Like, oh, right, what's going on here? Like, like,

[01:13:15] January: well, I mean, if you wanna party

[01:13:18] Andrew: Exactly!

[01:13:18] January: go hang out with the gay dudes!

[01:13:20] Andrew: Exactly.

[01:13:21] January: That's way more fun than the straight club!

[01:13:25] Andrew: The whole, the whole city. All of Sodom, everybody, January, they're all gay. Okay? Like this makes zero sense, but let's give it to 'em. Let's say it. They're all gay, all of them, they're all immoral.

Now that much could well be true 'cause they are about to do something that's an abomination, but it has nothing to do with their sexual orientation. It's about making plain who has power.

[01:13:50] January: Mmm. Yeah.

[01:13:52] Andrew: Now, Am I saying that there weren't any gay people in antiquity? No. But Am I saying that being gay is a recent phenomenon Yeah. I'm not interested in finding gay or lesbian representations in scripture because I fear it's going to be revisionist and wishful thinking. I'm just as uninterested in imagining I found straight representation in scripture, for the same reason.

Every straight person in Bible times lived in the closet. Really? Yeah. Really. Okay. That's what I'm saying.

There were no boys and girls just being friends. And so there were no boys and girls deciding to be more than just friends right.

Now, did hanky panky happen? You know, of course.

[01:14:46] January: Humans be humans.

[01:14:48] Andrew: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's, Yes, yes, yes, of course. But if they were two men or two women, they kept that activity secret. And if they were one man and one woman, they kept that activity secret.

[01:15:04] January: Yeah, and at the same time people like the Ethiopian eunuch for example, who do represent in some way people who were different, sexually speaking, in the context of their culture. We can't put labels like gay or lesbian or transgender onto that experience, but definitely the experience of being, to a degree, a social outcast because of something associated with sexuality, that is a common thread.

And those, those experiences do exist in scripture and in addition to the Ethiopian eunuch, Jesus explicitly says, there are some people who were born this way and there are some people who were forced into this lifestyle by violence. But there are some people who choose this lifestyle for the sake of the Kingdom, and this can serve the Kingdom just as well as marriage can.

And maybe even better, right? Like so

[01:15:57] Andrew: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, when his, when the disciples are like, wait a second, why, why would anybody get married then? And Jesus totally does not back away from that cliff. He's just like, yeah.

[01:16:07] January: Yep. This isn't for everybody.

[01:16:08] Andrew: Uh-huh.

[01:16:08] January: Not everybody's gonna be able to hear this.

But if you can, see about it.

So, yeah, it's definitely a mistake to apply modern characterizations of gay or lesbian or transgender or whatever onto historical documents and figures. That's a category error, because those concepts didn't exist or weren't interpreted in the same way in the ancient world as they are today.

[01:16:38] Andrew: Yeah, Yeah,

There is a distance between us and the text as modern readers reading ancient scriptures.

when we talk about somebody being gay, just in normal sense of the word in modern parlance, it refers to an orientation. Pick any ancient city, whether or not it gets rained on by brimstone, there will be the same spectrum of orientations.

[01:17:00] January: Yeah.

[01:17:00] Andrew: Findable within that population. Because as orientation just is. Or at least that's how I understand it. And, and so this stuff doesn't have to have been discovered to be. It is. Yes, there were queer folk living through Bible times. But being gay today in the modern world is not principally about sex and sex acts.

Your orientation is your orientation. It just is. I'm not saying it can't change. I'm saying that you aren't the one orienting your orientation. It's not you, it's not your doctor. It's not your local pastor or faith healer. Not even TikTok can do that. Like, that's just, and,

So when I say, there wasn't one gay dude in all of Sodom, was there any 30-year-old gay guy in Sodom lamenting the fact that he could never explore intimacy that he'd had with a special boyhood friend?

No, I'm gonna say no, not even one. Or conversely, was there any gay guy in Sodom exulting in jubilation that he and his lifelong boyfriend had been exploring an intimate relationship for decades and thank God they've been born in tolerant Sodom so they had license to practice it openly? No, that guy wasn't there either.

Like that didn't happen because. Every single gay man in Sodom was closeted, and every single straight man in Sodom was closeted too.

I cannot unsee the ridiculousness of the "gay reading" of Genesis 19.

[01:18:47] January: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[01:18:50] Andrew: Does that mean I'm too certain?

[01:18:53] January: Mm.

[01:18:54] Andrew: Have I derailed my curiosity? I wanna say no. But I'm pretty sure I sounded pretty livid and dogmatic just now as I went through,

[01:19:07] January: I would've gone with sarcastic, but yeah.

[01:19:10] Andrew: Yeah, there was plenty of that too.

Yeah.

But no. Like, does there come a time and how do we know it's okay to be like, no, I, I ain't curious about that no more.

[01:19:19] January: Yeah.

[01:19:20] Andrew: What's,

[01:19:21] January: yeah,

[01:19:21] Andrew: That's a real question. I'm confident that there are people that would hear me say that and know me well enough to take my sarcasm for what it is and still be like, uh.

You are being closed-minded about this, like

[01:19:35] January: mm-hmm.

I think where I make the distinction — because we all, we need certainty to function in the world to some degree. In order to feel stable enough, we have to be confident enough of certain facts, in order to not just be like a hot mess curled up under the bed clothes forever and ever, amen. Right.

[01:19:57] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:19:57] January: So we have all decided on a bunch of things that we're gonna take as certain, and what those particular facts are for any given human are gonna be different. Thus, half the reason that we have all these conflicts, but we're all doing it. That is a completely human thing to do, and it's not a moral failing to engage in certainty.

[01:20:17] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:18] January: The difference that I see between deciding where you stand on scripture and what it means to you and how it's going to inform your behavior, which is what I hear you talking about as certainty, and can you talk to somebody who holds the complete opposite view and still be curious about them?

[01:20:39] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:40] January: And their inner life? And why they hold the position that they do?

[01:20:44] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:45] January: And not just go into that conversation with an agenda of, I need to convince them otherwise because I am certain about this thing.

[01:20:52] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:52] January: I need them to be certain about this thing because, 'cause that's actually an insecurity. Right? The only time that I need you to be absolutely certain about something is if I'm not really certain

[01:21:02] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:21:03] January: about my position.

[01:21:04] Andrew: Exactly.

[01:21:05] January: And I need that mimetic like reassurance that what I believe is actually okay, because you believe it too. if I'm totally certain about my position, I'm completely free to be curious about yours.

[01:21:18] Andrew: Yeah, yeah. And what's so great about that, that. Thank you for inviting me to be curious about the people

[01:21:26] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:21:26] Andrew: who have this position. Because that coheres with the earlier picture back when I'm in high school, right. That seed of curiosity

[01:21:35] January: Yeah.

[01:21:36] Andrew: is a person.

[01:21:37] January: Yep.

[01:21:37] Andrew: Is my friend. Like I was like this.

[01:21:40] January: Yep.

[01:21:41] Andrew: That's the side I need to be on. and I can't 'cause of, but that doesn't seem right, like it's a person.

[01:21:50] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:21:51] Andrew: To be curious about a thing, an interpretation, an exegetical method or a theological principle yeah, maybe there's not a whole lot to lose when you lose curiosity in that kind of stuff, but if you lose your curiosity in a person, you've lost a hell of a lot. That could be very dangerous.

[01:22:12] January: Yeah.

[01:22:13] Andrew: Yeah.

So if anybody wants to talk to me about Genesis 19, I will not ridicule, I'll not ridicule your position, although I do feel obligated to say that this clarity that I came to, to, comes from a, woman named Kim Daily that got interviewed on a podcast by Mike Maeshiro. That reading was received. I didn't just up and read Genesis 19 like I should one day.

[01:22:39] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:40] Andrew: I was guided in that reading and I don't, I don't wanna pass this off as something that I didn't receive from somebody. So,

[01:22:46] January: Yeah.

[01:22:47] Andrew: Thanks to her and if you're interested, she gives a very fun hour long interview,

[01:22:52] January: Well, let's put a link to that in the show notes.

[01:22:54] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, definitely. We'll do that.

[01:22:57] January: That was delightful. Thank you.

[01:23:01] Andrew: Well, no, thank you for letting me share that and inviting that question and helping me think through certainty.

[01:23:08] January: This is a complicated question, but I wanna know what, if anything, does it change for you if Mary isn't a one-off "Miracle Mom", but the icon of Christian discipleship and kingdom anthropology as lived in a violent, sexist, imperialist, ancient world?

[01:23:27] Andrew: What do you mean by the icon of Christian discipleship and Kingdom anthropology?

[01:23:33] January: So icon versus idol. She's not

[01:23:36] Andrew: Mm.

[01:23:36] January: the person we're supposed to worship for doing this. She's just the picture that points toward the direction that we can move.

And so she's sort of the archetypal figure who embodies this new way that Jesus has been preaching about and has brought into the world through his life and death and resurrection.

And here she is living it in this social context that is incredibly messy and it's set up against her as a woman. And there's all of these forces of violence at work, both within us and in society and on an imperial scale and. The idea for me that the person who was first responsible for living this new anthropology actually wasn't the disciples. It was a woman I feel like there are so many discussions about, well, we'd really like to live the way that Jesus talks about, but we have to exist in the real world. And I totally get that argument. It's complicated, and I ain't gonna judge anybody for any of the decisions that they make about how they're gonna enact any of this.

I'm gonna try to hold them accountable with love when I can, but I ain't doing this shit perfectly. Like what am I gonna do? Stand in judgment of somebody else? Uh-uh, no. But here she is a person who had potentially some of the least social power to do anything about changing these systems that are at work.

And yet here she is doing it anyway, and becoming the icon for the rest of us to imitate in addition to Jesus, and then later in addition to Paul.

[01:25:18] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:19] January: So we have this constellation of figures in the early church that we have the benefit of imitating all of them.

[01:25:26] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:27] January: But, I, I don't know. There was something about that that was very interesting to me. I felt like it kind of exposed my excuses for, for half-assing things sometimes.

[01:25:40] Andrew: Mm.

[01:25:41] January: And and I do feel like Mary just too often gets dismissed, at least in Protestant theology. She doesn't get talked about enough.

She's just this like, well, we're, we're supposed to worship Jesus. We're not supposed to worship Mary, so we're just gonna like, sweep her under the rug over here and wave her around as the Miracle Mom.

But yeah, it calls me to greater account someone with so little power was able to do this 2000 years ago when they didn't have nearly as much safety and social standing as I do today.

[01:26:09] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:26:10] January: So what am I gonna do with that? ' cause it feels like a responsibility.

[01:26:15] Andrew: Yeah.

I think at least in John, the word miracle is the same as the word for sign.

[01:26:22] January: Mmm.

[01:26:22] Andrew: And so the way you. kind of put "miracle mom" in scare quotes of like, oh, you know

[01:26:28] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:29] Andrew: Fantastical creature thing. Supernatural miracle mom.

[01:26:34] January: We've somehow reduced her and distanced her at the same time. Yeah.

[01:26:38] Andrew: but if Miracle Mom is motherhood as sign, you know. This is

[01:26:42] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:43] Andrew: Indicator that points to, and shows, the direction of the Kingdom.

[01:26:47] January: Mm.

[01:26:48] Andrew: But yeah, that seems to be the essence of what you're getting at with icon. So it's funny, you can read the word "miracle mom" in a couple different ways. I've thought about this as an issue of just like, oh, Jesus can walk on water, so he's awesome. check it out. is that what's going on or is there a lesson here?

[01:27:04] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:04] Andrew: Right. Is it a sign pointing us to something? So, yeah. But your work and your comment about Mary and Elizabeth. Believing each other when they meet.

The thing that annoys me with how people read miracles in the gospel texts, with regards of, you know, turning Jesus into a superhero who's big and awesome and powerful,

[01:27:23] January: Yeah.

[01:27:24] Andrew: Instead of interpreting what these are signs of, what it shows.

[01:27:28] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:29] Andrew: Yeah. I think I've done the same thing with Mary, I've chosen the miracle mom, wild occurrence of supernatural, like.

[01:27:37] January: Shenanigans.

[01:27:39] Andrew: Yeah, it's easier to hear that story and be quote unquote moved than to actually stop and digest what's occurred and what's being indicated.

[01:27:48] January: Hmm.

Well, that seems like a perfect note on which to start wrapping up our episode, but I do wanna make sure that we cover this week's practice because trust building is, to my mind, a foundational component of discipleship. Even though Christian trust is something we practice through interpretation and attention, it doesn't live in our heads alone. It shows up in our bodies.

And so the exercise that I want to introduce here is called the Creature, the Controller, and the compassionate Witness.

And this one comes from Martha Beck. I think it's in more than one of her books, but I'm pretty sure she talks about it in her newest one, Beyond Anxiety, very specifically. And it's essentially a Self-compassion exercise, but we're gonna do a little bit of broad spectrum parts work at the same time. You're gonna wanna get comfy. We're gonna need your hands free for this one.

[01:28:38] Andrew: okay.

[01:28:39] January: So you are gonna put your hands out on the desk, or on your knees, or whatever. In front of you, palms up.

And you're going to imagine the part of you that you maybe get frustrated with sometimes 'cause it causes you to do things that they were not to plan. Maybe you messed up the schedule 'cause you were too busy napping. Or maybe you were really excited to work out and then got distracted and you went and did something else with the afternoon. The part of you that is just constantly interrupting the things that you think you're trying to do and that you get frustrated with, and can you picture that part of yourself as an animal of some kind?

[01:29:20] Andrew: As an animal?

[01:29:21] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:29:23] Andrew: Hmm, hmm.

Right now, I got that creature from My Neighbor Totoro in my head. Um, that's not quite an animal.

[01:29:36] January: Great. I love it.

[01:29:38] Andrew: Okay, Alright.

[01:29:42] January: We're gonna need a name for it though. Do we just call it the Totoro?

[01:29:44] Andrew: I, we'll call it Totoro, I guess. Yeah.

[01:29:46] January: Great. Okay, so you've got a Totoro. I love this so much. You're awesome.

So you're gonna picture a Totoro that's like mini figure size kind of standing in your left palm.

[01:30:00] Andrew: Oh, okay.

[01:30:02] January: Just imagine it there.

And once you can picture it, of see if it's aware of your existence. Notice what it's doing, and tell me what it's doing.

[01:30:18] Andrew: It is just sitting there.

[01:30:21] January: And how are you feeling about it?

[01:30:23] Andrew: Yeah, I'm a little annoyed.

[01:30:26] January: Perfect.

[01:30:27] Andrew: Yeah, I think I'm a little annoyed. It's, uh...

[01:30:32] January: What's annoying about it?

[01:30:33] Andrew: Is it lying down, or not? I can't even tell.

That's annoying. I can't even say get up, 'cause I don't even know if it's lying down or not. Is it standing up or is it sitting? I don't, I don't know. Yeah.

[01:30:54] January: Great. Well, that's your Creature.

[01:30:55] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[01:30:57] January: So then find the part of you that's annoyed by this, that wants to tell it to get up, but can't even feel justified doing that?

[01:31:05] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:31:09] January: What image would you give that part of you?

Hmm.

[01:31:15] Andrew: What would I.

[01:31:17] January: What's the first thing that popped into your head?

[01:31:20] Andrew: I'm not sure that thing has, it's like gotta step out of that, right? To see it.

No, yesterday actually like this exactly happened. I, I didn't have classes this morning. So yesterday was kind of more like a Friday

[01:31:33] January: Mm.

[01:31:34] Andrew: than a Tuesday. And there's all sorts of stuff I wanted to do and I, I wasted hours on this cell phone game where you sort nuts that screw onto little bolts by color or whatever.

So it's just these little puzzles, but it's supposed to be pleasing 'cause it, makes sounds and vibrates when you're screwing and unscrewing the bolts.

Anyway. and the whole time I'm doing this, I'm just like, why am I doing this?

I knew that part was there the whole time of like, you gotta be kidding me, but. It is the part that was like, yep, nope, I ain't kidding you. This is what we're doing today. Uh, that part was, was just so overwhelmed. And so I'm trying to imagine, I'm trying to like, what did that, who was, , and I haven't even bothered to look.

Even now, Totoro is not looking at me at all. And that's part of the annoying.

[01:32:26] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:32:27] Andrew: It doesn't make eye contact.

[01:32:30] January: Hmm.

[01:32:30] Andrew: So, yeah. What would be the part that's annoyed with Totoro? How could I, What would that look like? What does it look like?

[01:32:40] January: Mine's a Victorian governess.

For some people it's like a drill sergeant kind of a character, or a particularly strict teacher.

[01:32:49] Andrew: All right. I can picture somebody holding a schedule, maybe on a clipboard.

[01:32:59] January: Hmm.

[01:33:02] Andrew: Yeah. 'cause if, they're holding the clipboard and then holding it in their hand, but they can put their hands on their hips in exasperation so that they can't even see the clipboard. Like, that's it exactly. they're not even looking at the schedule anymore. That's, that's, that's the image.

Yeah.

[01:33:19] January: Okay. What shall we call that part?

[01:33:24] Andrew: My Day Planner.

[01:33:27] January: Okay.

[01:33:28] Andrew: I got Totoro and my Day Planner.

[01:33:31] January: Awesome. So on your left hand, you've got a mini Totoro. And on your right hand, you've got a mini Day Planner, and that's your Controller.

And see if you can, just kind of feel how each of them feels about the other.

Tell me what you're noticing.

[01:33:50] Andrew: Totoro does not seem the least bit concerned with anybody's gaze whatsoever.

The Planner needs somebody to be making eye contact. I feel like the Day Planners.

[01:34:04] January: Mm. '

[01:34:05] Andrew: cause because it can't look at, like, it's not getting anything from Totoro, so it's looking kind of up at me like, do you believe this guy?

[01:34:12] January: Mm.

[01:34:12] Andrew: Right. Like, it needs, it's, it's not comfortable being alone in its own world. whereas Totoro seems to be.

[01:34:23] January: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[01:34:27] Andrew: But yeah. How does it feel when it's the Day Planner's not looking up at me, but it's looking at Totoro? How does it feel?

[01:34:35] January: Or when it's looking at you.

[01:34:36] Andrew: Or when it's looking at me.

It's, it's wanting it to go back to our, uh. Yeah, our Creative's Journey. I think it's seeking allies. It wants to share this exasperation. It wants that feeling to be, validated,

[01:34:50] January: Mm,

[01:34:50] Andrew: by seeing it in others.

But Totoro feels so much heavier.

[01:34:55] January: Interesting!

[01:34:56] Andrew: I don't know how to describe, like, I can actually feel it in my hand, it feels like.

[01:35:01] January: Interesting.

[01:35:03] Andrew: They're mini size, right? So

[01:35:04] January: Yeah.

[01:35:04] Andrew: A little smaller than a softball, but this is, it's like definitely heavier than a softball sized pool ball would be. It feels really heavy.

Yeah.

[01:35:20] January: So you've got your Creature and you've got your Controller, and then just notice that you're still you and you are not either of those parts.

[01:35:30] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:35:33] January: I saw you take a big breath right there. What was that about?

[01:35:37] Andrew: I don't, I dunno.

[01:35:40] January: What do you notice? Just noticing that you're separate from these two.

[01:35:44] Andrew: Uh, I don't know. I'm not sure.

[01:35:51] January: How do you feel about each of them?

[01:35:54] Andrew: I'm sitting here thinking about like why Totoro is such an innocuous person. There's something inherently lovable and adorable about it. It's non-threatening, even if it doesn't do much.

[01:36:06] January: Mm-hmm.

The idea is just kind of to notice, and you're doing a great job of noticing it already, just notice that the Totoro. doesn't respond to the Controller at all. It doesn't even really understand what the Controller's talking about. It's just kind of like, you're there, but you're just making these weird noises and faces and like, okay, it doesn't have language.

[01:36:28] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:36:29] January: You can yell at it all day and it's not gonna do any damn good, ' cause it just doesn't understand what the problem is.

[01:36:35] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:36:35] January: Right?

[01:36:36] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:36:38] January: Yeah, and that's your Creature self. Our Creature self does not have language. No amount of scolding is ever gonna motivate it.

It just exists, and it tells us what our needs are, and it's gonna go to some pretty drastic lengths to get those needs met if it has to. Including being a lump and keeping us playing a cell phone game for hours at a stretch if what we really need is rest.

[01:37:06] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:37:10] January: And then the Controller has all of this frustration ' cause they're trying to get the creature moving and nothing they're doing is working. Does your Controller feel tired to you?

[01:37:21] Andrew: Yeah, I think, I don't know. I don't know. And it goes to what I think it does feel, is just unseen.

[01:37:28] January: Mm.

[01:37:28] Andrew: And the fact that I can't tell whether it's tired or not would only confirm.

[01:37:33] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:37:33] Andrew: That feeling of being unseen.

[01:37:37] January: Yeah. What do you feel when you notice that it feels unseen?

[01:37:43] Andrew: Well, that's unfortunate. But it's, it's certainly not, it can't be surprising,

[01:37:50] January: But you feel some empathy for it.

[01:37:53] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:37:54] January: Yeah. Can you just let it feel the empathy for a moment?

What are you noticing?

[01:38:04] Andrew: Yeah, I think,

I think I was feeling, or sensing a, there might have been a bit of a conversation there. I don't know. There was a sense of naïveté that I was imposing upon my Day Planner of like, wow, you. You really think the world's a place where you can just go out and do stuff, and get it done, and then, and that's what happens.

And um,

[01:38:25] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:38:26] Andrew: Just have to, all you need is a plan and then you execute it and you gotta schedule stick to it and things are gonna get done. And it responded it referenced a lecture on ancient Greece I heard one time, where the professor was talking about Delphi and the Oracle at Delphi.

[01:38:45] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:38:46] Andrew: And how, It was sort of maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy of like, everybody goes there to find out what's going on and then it becomes a center of knowledge just by virtue of everybody's there to find out what's going on. Then everybody knows at least a little something. So it's not a bad place to go if you're trying to figure things out. But there was something about gases or vents, that would happen at Delphi and

[01:39:09] January: mm-hmm.

[01:39:09] Andrew: And there was an archeologist, that worked with a geologist or something that pursued the possibility that there was some sort of fissure and geological formation where they found something that modern people didn't realize about the geology that the ancient people did. Just because they took the ancient writers for their word, rather than just assuming, oh, the Oracle at Delphi talks about gaseous stuff from the earth, like.

Who knows what else And anyway, he says that when people go to college and get educated, they set aside their naïveté and they turn toward this sort of skepticism and it's like. there's a cleverness or whatever of just being able to shoot down every idea because you can see through it.

And then you push through that, and there's something that he called enlightened naïveté where yes, you're naïve and you know it.

[01:39:58] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:39:59] Andrew: And that's how you're going to proceed. And you're in a better position to learn than anybody else.

[01:40:05] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:40:06] Andrew: With that. And so, yeah, my initial response was the naïveté here is so glowing. I, like, I didn't, I really don't think I was being condescending it was genuine, genuine naïveté.

Mm-hmm.

And then I heard you know, there's, there's enlightened naïveté You know that, right? Like it was, that's your, that's your lecture. The one that you like to tell people about.

So you of all people know that that's a thing. Do you think I might not have some of that?

[01:40:34] January: Hmm.

[01:40:36] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:40:37] January: Well, ideally the practice. Is just to quietly sit there with those parts of you pictured on each hand and to speak kindly to them. May you be happy. May you be well. May you be free. That kind of thing. Yeah, just practice sending them good vibes.

What happens if you try that?

What do you notice?

[01:41:10] Andrew: Yeah, my, my Creature palm feels warm.

[01:41:15] January: Hmm.

[01:41:16] Andrew: I told it it could be alone as much as it wanted to, but it didn't have to be alone.

[01:41:22] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:41:22] Andrew: And, um, I found it hard to to send good vibes toward my Day Planner 'cause

[01:41:29] January: mm-hmm.

[01:41:30] Andrew: I couldn't. I dunno if it's 'cause I couldn't convince myself that it would take that seriously or not.

Or if I was, maybe I was the one not taking it seriously. Yeah. So anyway, I found I guess it was a sarcastic, I said, may your, may your naïveté be so enlightened that it cracks open the surface of the earth. Um.

[01:41:53] January: Hmm.

[01:41:55] Andrew: I'm not sure why that's how I worded it. It doesn't seem genuine, there's a snideness to that, that didn't need to be there.

[01:42:02] January: You've got another part getting in there, who's maybe mad at the Day Planner?

[01:42:06] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:42:08] January: The idea is just to practice recognizing both of those parts as part of you, but also separate from that Witness self. We use both hands because by using both hands we get both hemispheres of the brain involved, both the right and left hemisphere.

[01:42:25] Andrew: Hmm.

[01:42:26] January: And sending that compassion and sending that empathy can help calm down our nervous system really significantly, and take us out of anxiety and back into creativity.

And it kind of seemed like your body language was relaxing a bit as you were doing that. Was I getting that right?

[01:42:43] Andrew: Yeah,

Maybe so. I feel relaxed. Yeah.

[01:42:52] January: Mm-hmm.

How was it doing the exercise?

[01:42:55] Andrew: Yeah. It was, it was a little surprising how tangible the Totoro was. Like, I really felt like, I was like, there was a weight there in my palm.

[01:43:06] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:43:06] Andrew: It was, I mean, my, my hands are resting on my legs here, but it, yeah. That was a tangible presence.

[01:43:12] January: Hmm.

[01:43:13] Andrew: And the Day Planner, 'cause I was imagining a person, felt like, I could feel the feet pushing right there where they were standing.

[01:43:21] January: Hmm.

Yeah, I wanted to pair that exercise with this episode on Trust because doing this kind of conscious tending to our parts and deliberately sending compassion can really go a long way toward, if not completely healing the shame narrative, then at least providing some of that witness. 'Cause one of the things about shame is that it tries to get us to hide and can make it very difficult to allow ourselves to be seen. Which you were describing a little bit of there with the Day Planner.

[01:43:53] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:43:55] January: And so making a regular practice of, acknowledging both our Creature and our Controller self and offering kindness to both of them, can start to build those neural pathways and undo some of the automatic shame spiral a little bit.

[01:44:10] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:44:11] January: Does that make sense?

[01:44:12] Andrew: Yeah, that's neat. Thank you. Thank you for taking me through that. That's neat.

[01:44:18] January: This is not a trick question, but do you think you would do it again?

[01:44:20] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I had something tangible there. I felt like I was interacting perhaps with real parts, but it, part of me also feels like it's sort of me just imagining and theorizing.

[01:44:31] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:44:32] Andrew: Which I know is not, that's not what actual parts work is, but I don't know that it's counterproductive to parts work.

[01:44:41] January: No, I don't think it is at all. That's something that Liz Gilbert talks about, that one of the first questions that most people ask her when she talks about the Letters from Love practice is, how do I know that this isn't just in my imagination?

How do I know that there's actual Love talking to me here.

She was like, if we're being honest, we don't. We don't know.

[01:45:01] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:45:02] January: We don't know. Maybe this is completely your imagination talking to you. But isn't it nice? like, isn't it.

[01:45:10] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:45:11] January: Isn't it teaching you to expect to feel that loved? It's still doing something in us that is changing us in a way that is healthy and transformative. So maybe it is completely happening in our heads and in our imaginations. Okay.

[01:45:27] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:45:27] January: Do it anyway. Imagination has real power, and that's the whole point of this podcast, right?

The reason that creativity matters is because what we're imagining becomes real, even if it's only subconsciously that we're creating it.

[01:45:44] Andrew: Yeah. yeah.

[01:45:46] January: I think I'll take pity on our audience and wrap this up here 'cause I know we could keep talking about this stuff for weeks. So, uh, Andrew, why don't you tell our listeners what they can look forward to on our next episode?

[01:45:58] Andrew: Next time, we are going to continue our conversation on creativity by questioning what it means to be a body. Yes. Bodies. We've all got one. you'd think maybe we'd see our body as somewhat, I don't know, valuable or precious even.

I mean, we should each see our body as an irreplaceable treasure.

These things, man, bodies are awesome and yet.

A body makes for such an easy target. Our bodies so often get taken for a ride and not with any fun connotations. No, I mean, taken for a ride purely in the exploitative sense.

How is it that that is so often happening? And what do we do about it? That's next time.

[01:46:52] January: You've been listening to Theology Kills, a podcast about letting our shame and violence die so that life and love can thrive. Your hosts are January Jaxon and Andrew McRae, and Season One was written and produced by January Jaxon.

[01:47:08] Andrew: Our theme music is Things to Do In a Day by Simon Lepine.

[01:47:13] January: Theology Kills is exclusively listener funded. If you'd like to support our work or go deeper with practices, bonus content, and community conversations, join our Patreon at patreon.com/theology. Kill. Podcast. You can find everything we're making at www.theologykills.com.

[01:47:33] Andrew: That's everything we have for you today. Thanks for listening, take care of yourselves and each other,

[01:47:38] January: and we'll see you next time.