Episode 6 — Creativity and The Body: The Scapegoating of Embodiment and How Communion Puts an End to Purity Culture

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[00:00:00] January: We have all perpetrated violence. Even if it was just against our own soul. We have all done that. That is, I think, what it means to be a sinner. And that’s not anybody’s individual moral failing. Again, that’s ‘cause we all got born into a mimetic culture where this was rampant. Of course, that’s what we learned. Of course, that’s how we learned to cope.

And, we have the responsibility of saying, "Okay, this is the world that we’ve been born into. What can we make of it? How do we get creative? What other ways are possible besides what we were handed?"

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,

[00:00:53] Andrew: and I’m Andrew McRae,

[00:00:55] January: and this is Theology Kills, a podcast about letting our shame and violence die so that life and love can thrive.

For five episodes now, pregnancy has been our guiding metaphor for human creativity, and it’s pretty hard to have a pregnancy without a body. Yet for much of Christian history, the human body has labored under a legacy of shame and blame it doesn’t deserve.

The end of the book of Revelation, the end of the Christian story, is not an escape from the physical world. It is the Kingdom of Heaven fully embodied in the physical world. The new Jerusalem made manifest on Earth, and God walking alongside us in friendship.

If we want to see “thy Kingdom come on earth,” our faith must get physical. We’ve got to heal our dissociation and come home to our bodies. We have to learn how to listen to what God is speaking to us in and through our physical sensations. And most importantly, we must repent of the violence we continue to inflict on bodies, our own and others, because of misunderstood theology.

It was Saint Augustine who popularized the argument that original sin is transmitted physically, that material birth is the mechanism by which sin spreads from parent to child. If sin is carried in the flesh itself, then a newborn child enters the world guilty before they’ve even taken their first breath.

While not all Christian communities shared this view, Augustine’s interpretation has dominated the Western Church tradition for more than 1500 years.

That cultural inheritance colored the early Christian imagination so profoundly that it continues to shape sacramental theology today. The claim that the body is inferior to the soul was imported to Christianity from Platonic dualism. The idea that matter is unstable, temporary, and corruptible, while the soul is the eternal, rational true self, renders the body a kind of spiritual liability to be constantly controlled and managed. But this reveals an obvious problem: if bodies are fundamentally corrupt, then Jesus couldn’t have become one.

The incarnation itself contradicts this assertion. God didn’t rescue us from our bodies. God came down into the body and inhabited its hungers, its hormones, its limits, its needs with divine presence. Christianity’s central claim, that God “became flesh and dwelt among us,” uniquely undermines this belief.

And yet these notions of the body as something fundamentally sinful, impure, and corrupt aren’t fringe ideas. They’re historical teachings that have shaped central tenets of canon law, pastoral practice, liturgical norms, and everyday moral philosophy for millennia. And every single one of us, whether we know the history or not, has inherited the impact of their legacy.

So I have to ask, what if our history of vilifying the body has actually been victim blaming? What if bad theology has been scapegoating our physicality to promote a deceitful myth of spirituality?

Many of us have a tendency to consider our thoughts and desires to be the part of us that’s really us, and our bodies as just some inconvenience we have to lug around in order to have our thoughts and desires. But as I hope we’ve established in our previous discussions of mimesis, our desires and ideas are actually the part of us that’s collective. They’re not unique to us. They’re inherited from other people and the family and culture around us.

The body is the part of us that’s inherited from God alone. The body is the only part of us that’s completely specific and particular. No other human in the entire history of the cosmos will ever occupy your exact physical form in its exact location, in space, in its exact moment in time. Your body is the source of your uniqueness, not your mind.

That idea can come with a whole boatload of baggage for those of us who exist in bodies that our culture says are bad or broken, or defective or ugly, but I wanna be unequivocal here. Your body is not the problem. The fallen culture that demonized your body is the problem.

Too many Christians still instinctively treat the body as morally hazardous terrain, something that must be controlled with rigid self-discipline, purified with regular sacraments, and generally rescued from its hellish existence by Christ’s divine intervention.

That sure doesn’t sound to me like the freedom, peace, and love of sharing in Christ’s life.

In First Corinthians chapter 12, St. Paul describes the Christian Church as a living organism made up of many members, all interdependent, none more valuable than another. The body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? [1 Corinthians 12:14 and 17]

This passage is often read as a call to unity or diversity, and it is that. But what if Paul wasn’t reaching for a convenient metaphor, what if he was naming quite literally how bodies work at both an individual and a collective level?

What Paul described sounds remarkably like what Internal Family Systems calls a Self-led system, the state in which every individual part has an essential role to play within the whole, and where peace comes not from control or suppression but from every part’s joyful, wholehearted participation.

Internal Family Systems, or IFS is a model of healing that sees every human being as made up of many different parts. You might have a part of you that’s always trying to get things right, a part that procrastinates, a part that feels invisible, a part that gets mad and lashes out to protect you. These aren’t random mood swings. They’re members of your internal system. Even though they might drive you a little nuts by fighting with each other and causing you inner conflict, your parts are all trying to help in the only ways they’ve learned how.

IFS offers a fundamentally non pathologizing approach to these inner conflicts. Rather than silencing or exiling the parts of us that stir up inconvenience, it invites deep listening and honest curiosity. And as it turns out, when every part is welcomed, listened to and gently unburdened of whatever lie they’ve been laboring under, something beautiful gets revealed:our Self.

In IFS language, the capital S Self is who you truly are beneath all the trauma and defense mechanisms you developed to cope with living in a fallen world. The Self is not separate from the body but profoundly rooted in and shaped by the body. The Self is calm, compassionate, curious, creative, and inextricably connected. It can’t be wounded or traumatized. It can get buried under the noise of your other parts because, just like Jesus, the Self is inherently nonviolent. But it’s never irretrievably lost.

Which is why, whenever I read Paul through this lens, I hear him inviting the Church into that same radically nonviolent posture, a harmonious system where the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Where the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. Where we stop amputating the parts of ourselves or each other that don’t live up to our inherited ideals about what’s right, proper, healthy, or good. Where instead we get curious and extend care when someone’s acting out. We ask how we can support them. We ask what needs aren’t yet being met.

Just as in Paul’s vision, there are no dispensable members of the body of Christ, IFS says that there are no bad parts of us. There are only parts that are disoriented, that are burdened and distracted by lies. The parts that seem less valuable may actually be the ones with the most priceless gifts to contribute.

Which brings us back to the question that has haunted Christian history. If this is Paul’s vision, how did Christians end up with such negative beliefs about the body? If Paul’s vision is one of radical integration, a body in which every member is honored as indispensable to the whole, then how did we end up with Christian thinkers who taught that female bodies were misbegotten males, who used Scripture to justify the enslavement of dark-skinned bodies, who stood by in silent complacency as Jewish bodies were destroyed en masse, and who still subject LGBTQ+ bodies to the torture of conversion therapy?

Nearly every violence we humans perpetuate has its roots to some degree in disgust for or disrespect of the body.

It’s my belief that this disgust stems from a misunderstanding of Christian holiness.

Theologically, holiness isn’t a moral category. It’s a relational category. Holy is a descriptive attribute of God’s very being. God is holy because God is Other, radically distinct from the ordinary world. In other words, holy behavior does not produce a relationship to God. A relationship to God is what produces holy behavior. Holiness is something we receive. Not something we achieve. The effort is God’s not ours.

What holiness means for Christians is that we have been set apart from what the world considers normal by our participation in Christ’s life and our devotion to God’s purposes.

The trouble germinates if we try to imitate God’s Otherness by focusing on purity rather than on participation. Because it denotes separateness, holiness can all too easily slide into rigidly policed boundaries of behavior and tradition, at which point disgust becomes a virtue. Disgust, in the words of Pixar’s animated film Inside Out, is the emotion that “keeps us from being poisoned, physically or socially.” Disgust defines the boundaries of our being, both of our body and of our psychology. Just as desire draws us towards something that we aspire to be, disgust shoves away what we want never to be.

Disgust is useful when you’re dealing with, for instance, spoiled meat. It’s catastrophic when you start pointing it at human beings. When we mistake purity for holiness, disgust becomes a primary spiritual instinct.

We guard our purity by reflexively pushing people out of our collective “us” — by pointing an accusatory finger, exiling the contaminant, and then congratulating ourselves on having successfully avoided someone dangerous.

This is how a theological category becomes a social weapon.

If Christians reduce holiness to purity, we replace God’s divine relational Otherness with a neurotic obsession over contamination that results, without fail, in violence. Because if holiness is about avoiding contamination, then every vulnerable body becomes a threat. Every difference becomes suspicious. Every weakness becomes a liability. Every person who doesn’t match our imaginary ideal of “the good Christian life” becomes someone we feel justified — even obligated — to exclude.

Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, in their recent book Eucontamination:Disgust Theology and the Christian Life, make the argument that disgust is often mislabeled as fear because it’s more socially acceptable to admit that we’re afraid of someone than it is to admit that we’re disgusted by them.

And yet we create fat phobia by treating large bodies as disgusting. We create transphobia by treating non-binary bodies as disgusting. We fuel racism by treating black and brown bodies as disgusting. We fuel ableism by treating bodies with disabilities as disgusting. We fuel sexism by treating feminine bodies as disgusting, and we fuel ageism by treating elderly bodies as disgusting.

Disgust at bodies becomes disgust at people, and disgust at people becomes structural sin.

If we’re honest with ourselves, disgust is everywhere in contemporary American life.

But none of this comes from Jesus. None of this comes from St. Paul. All of it comes from a pre-Christian world in which the sacred and the profane were kept separate with strict purity codes. Recall René Girard’s three pillars of religion, which you heard us talk about in our episode on Blame as Internal Violence:

Sacred taboos restrain our violence. They inhibit us from doing something that might cause social scandal.

Sacred rituals vent our pent-up violence by giving us periodic experiences of collective catharsis.

And Sacred myths disguise our violence as righteousness, giving us a group identity as the good guys.

In theory, the taboos of a religious purity code are meant to constrain our violence, but in practice, they often end up justifying it. Purity gets wielded as a license to exile, scapegoat, punish, or eliminate anyone who doesn’t fit the expected mold.

We are infected by a vision of holiness that generates violence because it treats the presence of another’s vulnerability as a threat to our own spiritual safety.

But what if Christian holiness isn’t something fragile, we have to defend? What if God’s holiness is not a boundary we ought to draw, but an invitation we ought to extend?

Because what could possibly be more distinct from, more separate from, more divinely Other than our human world of violence, rivalry and fear than a God who inhabits our flesh Themselves, whose blazing Spirit scours us clean from the heart outward rather than from the outside in, who achieves this transformation not with punishment or dire consequence, but with undeniable, incontrovertible affection?

If holiness is God’s own life shared with us, then it cannot be contaminated by contact with human weakness. In fact, Scripturally, it works the other way around. Jesus’s holiness is more contagious than our sin. Far from being contaminated by what is unclean, true divine holiness restores, gathers, integrates, and heals what is unclean.

The whole arc of Christian scripture is a story of God seeking embodied, covenantal intimacy with humanity, not recoiling from our sin and failure.

Jesus Christ is the one who collapses the purity system entirely by revealing that in the words of St. Paul, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor. 1 Corinthians 12:22-23]

I wanna talk for a minute about Paul’s language around the flesh, because misinterpretations of Paul have done an appalling amount of damage to bodies.

When Paul contrasts the flesh with the Spirit, he’s using a very particular word to make his point. The Greek word he uses to critique the flesh is sarx. It doesn’t mean our biological bodies in the sense that we think about that word today. The Greek word for our bodies is sōma. Sarx, while it does translate in the literal sense to refer to the soft tissues of a living creature, in the sense that Paul uses it has more to do with the way a creature is living.

That’s pretty abstract, so I’ll give you an example. The human brain relies on a chemical called oxytocin to produce feelings of love and connection toward people we perceive to be part of our tribe or in-group. But that exact same chemical contributes to feelings of aggression and conflict if we perceive that person to be outside our personal in-group.

Oxytocin isn’t itself good or bad. Or more precisely, it’s both good and bad at the exact same time. Whether the chemical produces love or produces violence depends on its interaction with something else. It’s relationship, in other words. The way to make us more loving isn’t to add more oxytocin or subtract it. It’s to redefine who we think of as our in-group.

Our capacity for sin is tangled up with our biological hard wiring. Augustine was right about that much. But the actual problem doesn’t lie in the body itself. The body is capable of just as much good as bad. The problem lies in the body’s interaction with a culture or a spirit — either the fragmenting spirit of Cain’s rivalry, born of Eve’s broken trust, or the integrating Holy Spirit of Christ’s love, born of Mary’s commitment to trust.

So although I do wanna be clear that it’s not a literal translation of the word sarx, the meaning I understand sarx to be pointing us to is something more like decomposition. It’s a breakdown of the relationships that bind an organism in structural integrity. When we are living according to the flesh instead of according to the Spirit, we are living as a fragment instead of as a whole Self.

Because there’s another important place where the word sarx is used in the New Testament. It’s in John chapter 1, verse 14. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Well, if sarx is supposed to be the sinful nature of humanity, what then are we to make of John saying Jesus Christ became sarx? He didn’t become a sinner. That doesn’t track. But if we understand that Jesus Christ — the avatar of divine wholeness became an individual human fragment in order to dwell among the rest of us fragments, well suddenly the picture makes more sense.

Jesus doesn’t reject his culture’s purity system. He actively redefines it in ways that were viscerally shocking to the people around him. Jesus’ entire ministry is a slow, steady dismantling of our fragmentation, of the instinct to recoil from contamination. And he doesn’t do this from a safe, symbolic distance through magic spells or thoughts and prayers. He does it with hands and breath and spit and skin — with his actual body. The very bodies others treat as dangerous are the ones Jesus moves toward.

When a man with leprosy kneels before him, every visceral instinct should tell Jesus to recoil. Instead, Jesus reaches out and touches him. The healing that follows isn’t a reward, it’s a revelation. God’s holiness is not threatened by human disease. It flows toward ill health with restorative contact. Jesus disregards disease disgust.

When a bleeding woman reaches for Jesus, listeners are meant to be scandalized by a violation of Leviticus 15. By the laws of Moses, her touch contaminates Jesus, and the whole crowd saw it happen. But by the holy grace of God, they witness Jesus healing her instead. He doesn’t scold her for crossing a boundary. He calls her daughter, publicly restoring both her body and her belonging. Jesus disregards contamination disgust.

When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, she’s astonished that he speaks to her. A Jewish rabbi speaking alone with a woman considered adulterous was unimaginable. Her gender, her relationship history, her ethnicity, all of it signaled impurity to Jesus’s contemporaries. But Jesus serves her living water and entrusts her with his message for her community. Jesus disregards ethnic and gendered disgust.

When he reclines at the dinner table with tax collectors and sinners, religious leaders are scandalized, not simply because these people are bad, but because they’re considered socially and morally contaminating. Jesus eats with them anyway, touching the same food, breathing the same air, treating them not as pollutants, but as companions. He disregards social disgust.

When a woman regarded as sinful anoints Jesus, touching his feet with her hands, her tears, her hair, and even her kisses, every polite instinct in the room screams scandal. The physical intimacy of her gesture horrifies the onlookers. Jesus, though, receives her gesture as an offering of love, and he defends her dignity against every raised eyebrow in the room. Jesus disregards moral disgust.

When Jesus encounters the Gerasene demoniac among the tombs, a man literally living among the dead, the most unclean space imaginable to Hebrews, he doesn’t back away. He steps in without flinching. Christ restores a victim whose village had cast him out. Jesus disregards death and shame disgust.

In the very sacrament of the Eucharist itself. Jesus instructs us to eat his flesh and drink his blood In deliberate contravention of Levitical purity. Through Holy Communion, all the fragmented parts of humanity are restored to wholeness in the Body of Christ, joined by him not just to each other, but to every saint who ever has or ever will take the bread and wine into themselves. By disregarding our disgust, he’s creating the template for a future without it.

The Eucharist redefines holiness not as a fragile purity, but as a robust catholicity. All the parts of the Body working together for God’s glory. Our holiness is revealed to be no result of our own action, no definite set of correct behaviors, but an inevitable transformation within us, resulting from our relationship to Christ and our day-by-day participation in his life.

Over and over Jesus crosses the boundaries disgust uses to protect itself — not for tawdry shock value, but to reveal that those boundaries never belonged to God in the first place.

The pattern culminates in Acts chapter 10, when, after a vision from God contradicts Peter’s own internalized purity code, the Holy Spirit descends on a community of Gentiles who should have been outside God’s holy boundary. But God has shown me, Peter says, that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. Verse 28. I now realize how true it is that God shows no partiality, but accepts from every nation, the one who fears him and does what is right. Verses 34 and 35.

And what does it mean to do what is right? Not to correct our behavior, but to beat our swords into plowshares and love. To love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love each other as our selves.

Peter discovers that holiness is not the protection of what has been but the creation of something entirely new. Behold, I am doing a new thing Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? Isaiah chapter 43, verse 19.

Jesus unveils a holiness that looks like a whole different universe — because it is.

God’s holiness is not a state to defend, but a gift to give away. It’s not the absence of contamination, but the presence of divine love.

Even in his resurrection, Christ’s body bore the scars of what he’d undergone, and so will we. We can’t erase our all too human history of bodily harm. We can only grieve it and heal it. The scars will still be there.

But in Christ, every body — ill bodies, bleeding bodies, psychologically fractured bodies, blind bodies, sexual bodies, wounded bodies — is revealed as a place where God is unafraid to dwell. If holiness is God’s own life shared in and through us, then disgust has no authority in God’s Kingdom. We must learn to care for every body as if it were a part of us, because in Christ, it is.

We must let Christ transform our contempt into contagious communion.

[00:28:01] Andrew: So, January — yeah, I really like the clear and concise description of holiness and how it’s different from purity.

[00:28:08] January: Mm.

[00:28:09] Andrew: And yet there’s stuff in here that’s really new for me. Because the idea of holiness being an extreme other, I think that’s always been preached at me since forever. But that holiness is not avoiding contaminants,

[00:28:22] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:23] Andrew: actually holiness is being a contaminant.

[00:28:27] January: Yes, exactly.

[00:28:28] Andrew: And so, I like how you went from something that was very familiar to me, and I’m like, yeah, yeah, I’ve always heard that. And then this other thing that’s totally new and it’s just like. But I’m still like, how do I fit this together? Holiness is this extreme Other, and in being made holy, I’ll be made other.

[00:28:48] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:49] Andrew: It felt like in the presentation, it was sort of like, other to a fallen world trapped in cycles of sin and stuff. But it also seems like being made other psychologically to the picture of ourselves that we hold in our head.

[00:29:01] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:02] Andrew: We’re something other than that. We’re made other even to ourself.

[00:29:05] January: Yes.

[00:29:05] Andrew: And I mean,

[00:29:06] January: Very much.

[00:29:07] Andrew: that’s a really abstract, weird way to just say, we’re growing. We’re growing.

[00:29:12] January: Yeah,

[00:29:13] Andrew: You are what you are, but you’re not that. You’re, you’re becoming. And that growth is the activity of holiness. When holiness is active, it’s growth.

[00:29:21] January: It is the participation in the eternal generation.

[00:29:24] Andrew: Yeah. And enjoyed thinking of Jesus becoming fragment. I think in some iterations of this presentation, you were using the word shard.

[00:29:35] January: Mmm.

[00:29:35] Andrew: And like

[00:29:35] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:35] Andrew: Jesus became shard. And if I think of myself as fragmented, which isn’t totally hard to do, but generally somehow I’m outside and beyond it all, looking in at all these fragmented things like I’m just gonna put pieces of myself together, but no. Jesus becoming, shard. Me being fragmented. The cure to that — the cure? — the resolution, the exhaustion of fragmentation to the point where it becomes wholeness — that is necessarily some other.

The fragment needs an other. That’s what makes it a fragment.

[00:30:09] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:11] Andrew: I don’t know. So all these kinds of thoughts are weaving around in my head, and I sure wouldn’t have been able to put ‘em together so clearly and succinctly as you did in that presentation. So that, that’s why I liked it.

I’m still not sure I, I’ve totally, got an appreciation for what we’re saying here. It’s like, I don’t know, it’s, I feel like I am like… I can repeat the words ‘cause I can think through it on a certain mental level, but

[00:30:35] January: It’s just a seed. It’ll keep unfolding.

[00:30:39] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, so my reaction is, whoa, this is cool! That’s, I guess that’s, that’s it. That’s what I can say for sure. This is really cool. Yeah.

[00:30:52] January: I’ll take that. That’s a start.

[00:30:56] Andrew: I liked how, when you brought in Peter and were quoting him, and what does he say about — so I’m not gonna call anyone

[00:31:03] January: impure or unclean. Yeah.

[00:31:05] Andrew: Right? Like the idea of the purity code is it gets you in a position where you can move from the profane or normal into the holy times and places, right? But you had to get the purity stuff straightened out first. And so effectively what he’s saying is, I’m never gonna say that anyone is not ready to encounter holiness.

[00:31:24] January: Yeah.

[00:31:24] Andrew: There’s no one who’s not ready.

[00:31:26] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:26] Andrew: And yeah. You don’t have to clean yourself up. It’s interesting. Like that would be, that’d be a preacher point for guys that stood up in pulpits in my youth.

[00:31:37] January: Mm.

[00:31:38] Andrew: No. You don’t have to clean yourself up to meet God.

[00:31:41] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:42] Andrew: People would say that, but then they followed up with like, God’s gonna clean you up.

[00:31:46] January: Yeah.

[00:31:46] Andrew: Or something.

[00:31:47] January: Yeah.

[00:31:47] Andrew: And it’s still, it’s gotta be this cleanup action.

[00:31:51] January: Yeah, there’s still the message that there’s all these parts of you that are unacceptable.

[00:31:55] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:31:55] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:55] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:31:57] January: Yeah. I had a really interesting moment the other day. My particular neighborhood, there’s a church on like every other block. It’s kind of bananas. I’m assuming that’s probably not that uncommon for many places in America, but I haven’t traveled that much, so I don’t know. I have nothing to compare it to! Anyway.

So yeah, lots of churches in my neighborhood, but of course with the decline of the Church in America, lots of those churches are also closing their doors and gradually going out of business And so one of the biggest buildings ended up getting, and this is just too funny and kind of an icon of our times in my opinion, but it was bought out by a Buddhist monastery. And remodeled into a Buddhist monastery in the middle of town. And they have meditation classes.

[00:32:38] Andrew: Nice!

[00:32:38] January: So at one point I looked into oh, can I go there to learn something?

[00:32:41] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:32:41] January: Because of course I grew up with, father who has a background in Eastern religions, so none of that is unfamiliar or weird to me.

[00:32:48] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:32:49] January: That very much appealed to go learn something new. And their homepage of their website had this whole thing about this is a sacred space. If you are unwell, don’t come in.

[00:33:02] Andrew: Wow.

[00:33:03] January: And part of that is I’m sure just if you’ve got a cold, don’t come give it to everybody else, but

[00:33:09] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:33:09] January: the way that they phrased it, it was very deliberately left open to psychological unwellness and not just physical unwellness. We want you to stay home.

[00:33:17] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:33:18] January: And I was like, there’s been no point in my life when I would’ve legitimately called myself well, so like...

[00:33:25] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:33:26] January: I don’t feel like I can go there now.

[00:33:30] Andrew: Wow.

[00:33:31] January: And yeah, it was a really eye-opening thing to experience that in contrast to my personal experience of Christ, and coming to the Christian Church, and like, bring all the unwellness. This is, this is the place where it gets healed. this is where we do something about that.

[00:33:50] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:51] January: And even it doesn’t get healed. Paul had a thorn in his side forever. That was a thing. He didn’t get rescued from what he was wrestling with. Maybe it’ll get healed, maybe it won’t, but you’re not ever unwelcome here just because you’ve got stuff that you’re struggling with.

[00:34:05] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:34:06] January: The irony of that is not how so many people experience the Christian Church. So many people are leaving Christianity and going over to Buddhism because they find it more accepting, and yet here was the difference, like right on the homepage, just, yeah, don’t come here if you’re unwell.

[00:34:20] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:34:21] January: Which basically just means don’t admit to yourself if you are unwell, if you want to come here.

[00:34:26] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:28] January: And so, yeah. There was some interesting stuff in there.

I did want to nuance the purity language and conversation a little bit. Just in terms of like, I don’t want to risk sounding like I’m vilifying purity either.

[00:34:42] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:43] January: I was using it as kind of a contrast to contamination in the context that I was talking about it in the presentation, but purity in the sense of God’s kind of holiness, purity in the divine sense, is more like being purely yourself. Being essentially you and being fully whole,

[00:35:02] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:35:02] January: fully integrated. So purity is not necessarily a bad thing either. We, we are actually aiming for that in some respect.

But there was a way in which the language was getting tangled up with this whole contamination thing and needing to be free of contaminants. And I was like, that’s, that’s not the purity that we’re after.

[00:35:23] Andrew: Yeah. No, you just stirred some gray matter way in the back of my brain, and it popped out this memory. I would’ve been a sophomore in high school maybe.

It’s soccer practice. every afternoon, four to six, during, you know, during the season we would’ve run a couple laps to warm up, and we’ve done stretches and stuff and the coach is doing something. So we’re not quite like, we don’t know what we’re doing yet, but we’re ready. And I remember one of my teammates like.

I mean, it was just a beautiful day, and we’d been on the grass doing stretches and as we stand up, I, I think I remember him having like grass between his fingers and he just kind of like, smells the grass and lets go. And he’s like, I feel pure.

And, for some reason, I was just like, what, what is he talking [about] ?

And he’s, kind of a funny guy, but not really a particularly deep thinker like, usually he was cracking a joke about something. But this just felt like a genuine expression and stuck with me.

I, this isn’t the first time I’ve thought of it. Like I, I remember like, what is he, what is he saying? I don’t know, but I like it. Like, what, what is he? And it was a bit contagious, so I’m like, yeah, I’m feeling good too. Like, what’s up coach? What are we doing next? I’m ready.

Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know why, uh, I hadn’t thought of that in a while, but yeah, I feel pure. It does seem like purity can be defined almost over and against impurities. Purity isn’t really purity so much as unadulterated.

[00:36:53] January: Exactly.

[00:36:54] Andrew: And that’s, that’s flipping it. And so how do we, yeah. That’d be interesting to think through maybe a little bit more here. When is purity something that isn’t defined over and against impurities?

[00:37:04] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:05] Andrew: When is it something that’s just a fullness, I guess? Purely yourself. That’s how you put it, right?

[00:37:12] January: Yeah. Yeah, and I wanted to use a word like distilled and I was like, no, that, that even connotes getting rid of impurities too. Like, fuck, what else? What else can I say?

[00:37:24] Andrew: Yeah.

I mean, is it integration? Is it that quote-unquote “cure” to fragmentation?

[00:37:34] January: I mean, that’s what I keep falling back on. I haven’t found a better way to describe it yet.

[00:37:38] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:37:39] January: Yeah. That language of wholeness and integrity seems to me the New Testament picture of God, as embodied in Jesus Christ. That’s what that’s circling around, again and again and again. Being wholly oneself.

[00:37:53] Andrew: Wholly, W-H?

[00:37:56] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:57] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:37:57] January: Correct.

[00:37:58] Andrew: So when there’s disgust — disgust will happen.

[00:38:02] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:03] Andrew: It is a part of being human. It will always be there in both the physical and social forms.

When is disgust actually protective and appropriate, and when does it become violent?

[00:38:19] January: Really important question. Yes. The Hoard siblings talk about it in their book, Eucontamination, but the example that they used that I really liked was, “Disgust is really important when it’s helping us decide what we should or should not eat. It’s terrible when it’s helping us decide who we should or should not eat with.”

We don’t wanna be pointing this affect at people. That’s when it turns into a weapon. When it’s a question of who needs to be cast out, we’re in big trouble.

[00:38:51] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:38:52] January: You and I have talked about this a little bit before, but the phrase that they used, this idea that fear helps to protect us from threats that we can see, whereas disgust helps to protect us against threats that we can’t see. Whether that’s because they’re microscopic and invisible, or whether that’s because they’re social threats and we’re trying to protect against betrayal, that kind of thing.

Disgust can be really, really important when it comes to protecting us from germs and spoiled meat and unsanitary conditions in general. When it’s a question of what am I choosing to take into my body or not, then disgust can be lifesaving. But I think you and I have talked before and, it felt important to bring it up again that anytime that we are pointing or disgust at a person, that should be a red flag in our brains and we should be looking for a different way to handle that situation because chances are good, there’s violence happening. Something has been weaponized.

[00:39:50] Andrew: Wow.

[00:39:52] January: Are there counter examples you can think of off the top of your head? Am I talking outta my butt?

[00:39:58] Andrew: No, no. I was just thinking of a phrase that unfortunately I’ve heard too many times, not that I hear it a lot, but like, so-and-so’s dead to me.

[00:40:05] January: Mm. Yeah.

[00:40:06] Andrew: Hadn’t occurred to me to couch that in terms of disgust. Like, corpses are disgusting.

[00:40:11] January: Yep.

[00:40:12] Andrew: In a way that you don’t want to be close to them. I mean, I don’t know. Funerals work. Open caskets work in our culture. There’s a lot of work goes into making them not as disgusting as they might be, but there’s other cultures where you kinda hang out with the body

[00:40:27] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:28] Andrew: for a week or so in the house. And like that’s just part of it. Yeah. So maybe that’s, I don’t know. I was wondering if that phrase they’re dead to me was actually, if there was some disgust psychology underneath that or not. It might just be a metaphor too, for “I don’t care.”

[00:40:43] January: That would be a great question to ask professionals with more expertise than we have. But my immediate reaction to that is yes, absolutely. Because what are we saying when we say somebody is dead to me, we’re saying that I have exiled them from my experience.

They’re not allowed in my experience anymore. They haven’t ceased to exist, hopefully. We’re just drawing a boundary where they’re not allowed to be part of me. And that, by definition, exiles the part of us that actually is connected to them. That person is part of me somehow, somewhere. And if I exile them, then I exile a part of myself.

[00:41:19] Andrew: It’s hard to even make sense of it because it’s not even true, is it? If somebody in your life is dead, that they’re no longer a part of your life, like

[00:41:27] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:28] Andrew: That’s, that’s not how death actually works.

[00:41:31] January: Not when, not when we’re doing things healthy. Yeah.

[00:41:34] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:41:35] January: Yeah.

[00:41:36] Andrew: I mean, yeah, there is real loss. I don’t mean to say death is nothing or inconsequential. But the idea that death allows you any sort of freedom from, or necessarily prevents you from having any intimacy with like, that doesn’t really track,

[00:41:54] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:55] Andrew: I don’t think, with the way humans actually relate to those people that have passed on.

[00:42:01] January: Yeah. So, yeah, I would strongly suspect there’s some disgust at play in that.

[00:42:07] Andrew: Yeah. Because if they’re not actually talking about death and what death does, when they say they’re dead to me, they’re actually talking more about disgust and their own, desire to block something out completely than anything relating to death.

But yeah…

So if you stop thinking in terms of purity, like full stop, you’re just done with it, it’s dead to you. You’re done thinking in those terms, right? And you are only thinking in participatory terms. What’s changed when that happens?

[00:42:40] January: Mm.

[00:42:41] Andrew: It’s never that all or nothing, but if there is a trajectory, where you’re moving away from purity in terms of like, oh, dear me, I could get filthy with this stuff. I need to, you know, lift up my pant legs and tiptoe through this cesspool and get out the other side quick, quick, quick. That sort of purity type thinking compared to, what do we have here and what can, this is messy, but things tend to grow in a mess, don’t they?

What could grow here? Right? Like that sort of thinking.

[00:43:11] January: Yeah.

[00:43:12] Andrew: What is it that changes when we go from one way of thinking to the other? Are we just changing our mind about something or is there something concrete that is changed?

[00:43:21] January: I kind of want to say that it’s our heart that has changed.

You know, connecting back with what Christ says about it is from the heart that all of the evils come like, yeah. And it’s also from the heart that all the goodness comes. Both-and. And this change of heart, therefore, because we as humans are creating all the time whether we’re aware of it or not, if we can stop using our creativity unconsciously to create division, to create violence, to create disgust, to create walls, and we can instead use that creativity to create bridges, to create connections, to create relationships.

I mean, there’s a way in which my imagination can’t even go all the way to what could possibly change because it’s so big. It’s such a paradigm shift. I don’t know that I can think beyond the world that I grew up in.

[00:44:22] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:44:23] January: I can imagine bits and pieces of it. I can imagine like, so I think I’ve talked to you before about my tendency to need to make space between myself and other people.

Just in terms of like, for me personally, a low threshold of past this point I’m going to be overwhelmed. But certainly when I was in, let’s say immediate recovery from my life completely imploding. I needed a lot of distance from other humans and from social mimetic influences in general

And, in retrospect, that was very much for me about really not having a sense of self and needing to know what was me, and what was other people. So there was a level of disgust playing a role in that, in that boundary of the self. And my boundaries were way too fuzzy, way too porous. So things had gotten in that were not good for me. Were really not good for me.

So I had to withdraw myself to a distance in a lot of ways. And there are unfortunately relationships that have at this point, I think probably passed away, because of me needing that space in order to remain, quote-unquote “me.”

And now six, seven years of healing later, I would have so much more capacity to be with those people and those relationships in a way that I didn’t at the time. So when I look at the difference between those two experiences, that helps me imagine a future where if people have done their inner healing, they’ve had the resources to do the self-reflection, to realize the places where they’ve been violent, to do the work of healing that behavior pattern to find more life-giving ways of being in the world.

I can just imagine this incredibly generative human landscape where it’s not like pain doesn’t ever happen. It’s not that relationships don’t ever get bruised, but that repair is always on the table. It’s always available, it’s always timely. You know, we’re not waiting 20, 30 years to heal a relationship because somebody hurt me so bad.

We’re not institutionalizing people in prisons because actually we have the tools to reincorporate them into community and to restore those relationships after a crime has been committed. We probably have lower levels of crime to begin with because people’s needs are getting met before things get to that point.

There’s just so many ways in which that could materially transform our world beyond what I can even imagine.

[00:47:11] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:47:11] January: Because it’s so big and so sweeping And we are very much in the messy middle of that process, we’re not at the end of it. We see that the end point is possible. We see that there is a way to get there.

Christ has given us the way to get there, but it’s gonna take a while yet. It’s been 2000 years and we still got a lot of work to do.

[00:47:31] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:47:34] January: What comes up for you with that question? What do you imagine being concretely different?

[00:47:40] Andrew: I don’t know. I did have a thought this week. You were telling me about the dream, is it interpretation? Or the dream analysis class that you’re taking? Or what is it?

[00:47:49] January: Uh, I think she calls her method Dream Experiencing because the idea is that it’s much more embodied.

[00:47:54] Andrew: Dream experiencing. Yeah, that, uh, so yeah, I think I shared with you when you told me about it, that I’d had a couple recurring dreams and one of them, I was dumbfounded when I realized, I was like, oh, I wish I could fly in my dreams. I hear about people doing that, that’d be great.

And I was like, wait a second. I have flying dreams all the time! But it’s just, I’m never flying. I’m always just floating. And it’s this tenuous situation of like I’m bobbing around and caught in the wind, basically. And usually it starts with a jump. And I know what I’m doing, and sometimes it’s just a regular jump, but then I get caught and I just start going up, up, up, up, up. And anyway, you had mentioned that how part of this experiencing the dream is realizing that, well the things you encounter in your dream are you, right?

[00:48:34] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:34] Andrew: They’re a part of you or something it’s, it’s not so much a visitation from some other. And so I was like, well, ‘cause I’d had that other dream about this giant snake that was slithering by the door, whatever. Pretty clear who the other is there. But I was like, well, who’s, who’s the other?

And then it occurred to me, I was like, it’s the world. I’m up in the air. I’m jumping away from Earth. There’s never other people in this dream. there’s a consciousness of the potential for other people to see me flying.

[00:49:05] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:05] Andrew: And I’m like, ah, that’s gonna be weird. People don’t fly. People are gonna look and see me. But what can you do, you know? Flying. And, and when you’re up, I don’t know how to come down.

[00:49:17] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:18] Andrew: Sometimes I do, but I don’t know how to do it intentionally.

[00:49:20] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:21] Andrew: Like there’s no landing procedure. And there’s always a fear of falling.

[00:49:25] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:26] Andrew: I don’t think I’ve ever fallen.

[00:49:28] January: Mm. Interesting.

[00:49:30] Andrew: But anyway, it’s just occurred to me that maybe the other is the landscape, or this just, the entirety of absolutely everything other.

So yeah, so when we’re thinking through a question of like, what’s changing when you stop thinking in terms of purity and start thinking in terms of participation, I was like, ah, yeah, this dream does, not seem to indicate that I’ve, at least in as much as I’m experiencing this dream, I have not made that change.

Right? Like, because there could be no more distancing than see you later, Earth. I’m gonna check you out from a distance, right? Like that’s,

[00:50:04] January: Absolutely.

[00:50:06] Andrew: pretty sure that’s terms of purity, with regards to how I’m that’s getting parsed.

It’s not, I mean, I don’t feel disgust when I’m looking. But it is always looking down. I’m never looking up or at the clouds or anything. I’m always looking down at what’s below me. The fear does seem to be there, but it seems to be attached to falling. Not the world. But yeah, if I ever have that dream again. Maybe I’ll be like, “Hello, world!” or whatever the computer programmers type. Like, Hey, earth.

Maybe that’s what I do next time I, I have a floating dream. Yeah.

Have you done the presentation yet on the three different approaches to conflict and their antidotes? Or—

[00:50:45] January: No, I think that’s the next episode.

[00:50:47] Andrew: That’s what’s coming up next. Yeah.

So yeah. Preview for that one, yeah, my, my approach to conflict is always the, what is the standoffish one or the,

[00:50:56] January: Yeah, Move Away. Peace out. Eliminate the relationship in order to eliminate the conflict.

[00:51:02] Andrew: Yeah. Peace out. Even when it looks like I’m acquiescing, I’m actually just,

[00:51:07] January: Hmm.

[00:51:07] Andrew: I don’t think that’s what I’m actually doing.

[00:51:10] January: Hmm.

[00:51:11] Andrew: I might let other people think that’s what I’m doing.

[00:51:15] January: Sounds awfully lonely. Tell me where I’m wrong.

[00:51:23] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:51:26] January: But yeah. The difference in paradigm is the difference between constant division and constant relationship building. And one of those approaches will lead to death and everything falling apart. And one of those approaches will lead to life and growth.

And you know, as humans, the systems of nature, we are meant to do both of those things. Sometimes things need to come apart so that something new can be built. We have composting; that’s a thing.

I do not mean to disparage the boundaries that we need between us, but if we had a social paradigm that was about building connections instead of about building walls, this world would look a whole lot different.

[00:52:09] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:52:10] January: And what is our responsibility as Christians to participate in the creation of that world on Earth? I feel that responsibility very keenly, and maybe I’m taking on too much responsibility, right? It’s not me that’s making it happen. It’s God. There is a degree to which I could probably relax about this, that I have not succeeded in relaxing about it.

[00:52:34] Andrew: Yeah, we, um, you mentioned Mark chapter seven,

[00:52:38] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:38] Andrew: and there’s a couple different episodes. But it wraps up with the statement that Jesus makes. He makes it publicly, yeah. It’s not what goes into your mouth that makes you unclean, but it’s what comes out. And the disciples they’re like, wait, so what was that parable all about?

[00:52:55] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:55] Andrew: So I mean, that’s all he said. That was the extent of it. And he does have some short parables that are only a sentence long here and there, but that one, at least to the disciples that was a parable. Uh, kind of like, okay, wait. What?

[00:53:06] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:06] Andrew: What do you mean the stuff that goes into your mouth does not make you unclean? Like, um...?!

[00:53:11] January: Yep.

[00:53:11] Andrew: And they needed some clarification with that. And is God ever lifting up the hymn of the divine garment so as not to get it dirty, whatever, and trying to like, make their way through a mud puddle without getting sullied? Is that ever happening for God?

Does God ever say, Ew, look at that mess?

[00:53:34] January: What do you think?

[00:53:35] Andrew: I feel like I’m leaning toward no.

[00:53:39] January: You’re thinking about it very deeply. I can tell.

[00:53:42] Andrew: Yeah. Sin is depicted in, my church tradition as something that’s intolerable to God.

[00:53:49] January: Mm.

[00:53:50] Andrew: And that God’s holiness is so grand, infinitely so, that the presence of sin is such a dishonoring thing.

[00:54:00] January: Offensive.

[00:54:02] Andrew: Yeah. And we all know Jesus became sin, but I guess you gotta make sense of it as like, well, okay, so God held his nose for three days or whatever and

[00:54:10] January: Yeah.

[00:54:12] Andrew: But I was gonna say wasn’t happy about it, but I was like, well wait, then there, there’s that verse about the joy set before him. So like, um, like it doesn’t, it does not… the idea of a disgusted deity, I think I can make sense of that when I’m thinking about Girard’s understanding of the archaic sacred and how pagan pantheons get built, but that the maker of Heaven and Earth would be disgusted?

I have a hard time computing. I mean, computing. Yeah. I don’t have a hard time imagining. I know people that feel like they’re speaking for God when they speak, disgust, but I, maybe I’ve trained myself to do it, it just feels like projection so much that like, okay, this is what they wanna pretend God’s feeling because that’s what they’re feeling.

[00:54:56] January: Mm-hmm. And they exist at a system that hasn’t made it okay for them to speak honestly about their feelings, so they have to project it. What else can they do with it?

[00:55:06] Andrew: Yeah, no. We talked about how, the Hoards explained that it’s so hard to say that you’re disgusted, so we’ll use language like fear and you’re afraid of something, ‘cause that’s more socially acceptable.

[00:55:15] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:16] Andrew: But God can be disgusted. Because God’s so, so holy and can’t abide this.

[00:55:21] January: Yep.

[00:55:22] Andrew: And you’re just like, well, it just makes no sense though. Lord, I guess. But it’s God. Like what? God can’t handle.

[00:55:28] January: It doesn’t make any more sense than God being afraid.

[00:55:31] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. God’s gonna be disgusted by something? Like, what do you mean? Like how does,

[00:55:37] January: What would that even look like?

[00:55:39] Andrew: What disease is he gonna catch, right? Like

[00:55:41] January: Exactly! Exactly.

[00:55:46] Andrew: What, what’s happening? Like what, what knock to his prestige is going to leave him sulking in the corner thinking like, that wasn’t right. I’m more righteous than they realize. They shouldn’t have treated me. I, they don’t know the truth. Like, none of that makes any sense.

And so, yeah, I don’t there’s any reason to see the divine as disgusted. And if I ever do slip into that, I think I’m gonna be pretty quick to turn around and ask myself a question about why am, why am I convinced that so revolting.

[00:56:21] January: Mm-hmm. Just get curious.

[00:56:24] Andrew: Yeah. I didn’t explicitly ask, what does nonviolent participation look like when harm to bodies is ongoing and systemic?

But is there more to that that you’d like to talk about with regards to okay, it’s systemic, it’s happening, and if we’re just quiet, it’s gonna keep happening.

[00:56:41] January: Yeah.

[00:56:42] Andrew: So if we’re gonna participate, it’s gonna be somehow shape or form contrary to where everybody else is floating downstream. So how do we do that in a nonviolent way?

[00:56:54] January: Yeah. I mean, we could do an entire podcast season just on that question. It’s a big one.

But I am encouraged rather than overwhelmed by the size of the options available, because it means that we have so much creative space to choose from. And that can be hard, right? You ask any professional creative, they’ll all tell you they actually want some guidelines for a project if they’ve been given a commission.

Any designer’s nightmare is like, oh, we don’t care what you make, just make it cool. Great, great. That guarantees that I will deliver something you did not have in mind.

[00:57:33] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:57:34] January: You’ve gotta gimme some constraints here.

And I feel a little bit similar when I look at the options for nonviolent participation in a world that is violent. There are so many options that it’s like, what is this supposed to look like for me? I don’t freaking know where to start with this blank page. And that’s really intimidating.

And so many of us get stopped in our tracks because the options are too overwhelming and too intimidating. And ask too much of us. They are costly. It is costly to show up in the world in a way that does not fit with the world’s paradigm. There are consequences to that, and I think that part of following Christ is accepting those consequences more and more every day. Moving toward that, at least, even if we can’t begin there.

But my primary concern as a coach and an artist and someone who has to live in the world is always don’t, don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good.

[00:58:37] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:58:38] January: Don’t get so hung up on doing it right, that you never do anything at all. ‘Cause that’s so easy.

And so my question is always, where can you start in your life, right now, where you are, with what you have? And that’s not always gonna look like what the latest trend is for, you know, social justice, this, that, or the other thing.

I’m not saying ignore that feedback, that information from our culture. The wounds are finally beginning to be named, and that is a good thing. Definitely listen to that.

See if there’s any place where the things that are socially talked about are something that you have the power to address. If you do, and you have energy in that direction, great, go for it. But I think so many of us feel helpless and paralyzed today in the face of the overwhelming size of the work to be done, because we think we have to do this whole list of things.

You know, I have to do this to be anti-racist. And I have to do this to be not ableist. And I have to do this to be not sexist. It’s just a whole new list of laws to follow. And if you do it anything less than perfectly, then you are bad and you are cast out and you are canceled and

[00:59:53] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:59:53] January: that’s just it. that’s you as a person. You’re bad. Bye.

It makes sense to me that we’re all terrified of that. I won’t say we’re all terrified of that. I’m terrified of that. I’ve been on the wrong end of it, unfortunately.

[01:00:05] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:00:05] January: But what if the change could be so much gentler? What if it wasn’t about forcing ourselves to behave in a certain way for the sake of social justice any more than it’s about making ourselves behave in a certain way for, you know, Jesus.

It’s not about toeing a line and fixing our behavior so that it aligns with a particular picture. Even if our picture today is 2000 years ahead of the picture that was handed to us in the gospels 2000 years ago.

We’ve learned a lot. We have scientific developments. There’s all kinds of things that we are doing better as a species now than we were then. And there’s so much more to go. And what if the very change itself that we are talking about, the creativity that we wanna see, what if even that process didn’t have to be violent?

And that includes not being a violence against your own soul.

[01:00:58] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:00:59] January: If you are a person with physical disabilities who does not thrive on marching in protests, you have other gifts to give this change. I don’t know what they are. Maybe you don’t even know what they are. Maybe you need help figuring that out. Okay.

But doing an inventory of, and this is a technique that I learned from Caitlin Metz, who is just this amazing, author, podcaster, parent. They have a fantastic book, Feel Something, Make Something.

It’s literally about how to make friends with your feelings and experience them as allies in your art practice.

[01:01:35] Andrew: Hmm.

[01:01:35] January: Which is just the best thing ever. And so Caitlin has this fantastic way of framing the justice making process. In terms of, start with an inventory of what you have.

What are your resources? What do you have available? What do you have lots of? Maybe you don’t have a lot of money, but you have a lot of free time. Okay, that’s a resource. Maybe you’re not that good at writing letters to senators, but you’re really great at crocheting and knitting. Okay, make an inventory of the things that you have available that you can give joyfully.

And then make another list. And make a list of, where is your heartbreaking when you go through the world? What is upsetting to you? What wounds do you see happening around you? And this doesn’t have to be on a global scale. This can be in your neighborhood. Who are the people around you who are suffering?

And then look at those lists side by side and see if there’s any overlap. Is there any resource you have that somebody else appears to be in need of?

[01:02:39] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:02:40] January: And can you find a creative way to do that? Justice doesn’t just have to look like marching in protests and writing letters to senators and doing all of these things that the media presents as this is how you do social justice.

Justice can look like spending time with your neighbor’s kids because she’s working three jobs and doesn’t get home until 10 o’clock at night and they need somebody to be with in the afternoons, but she can’t afford childcare.

Okay, maybe they come hang out at your house and maybe you share your love of knitting with them. They learn a new skill, and you guys spend time together, knitting or crocheting blankets for homeless shelters. And just having time together and enjoying each other as people, while you’re doing something that you love that’s helping someone.

And that kind of thing on its own is not going to quote-unquote “fix” what’s broken in the world. I mean, we don’t want to get to a place where all we’re doing is enabling the current system to continue existing.

There’s different ways in which these elements interact. We’re not trying to just plug the gaps in the current system to prop it up. This system is gonna have to pass away.

[01:03:53] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:03:53] January: It is fundamentally incompatible with the kingdom of heaven. It is violent, it is retributive, it is rivalrous. It’s not going to last.

[01:04:03] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:04:04] January: It’s going to collapse at some point. And a lot of people are gonna get caught in the crossfire when it happens. It’s already happening. It’s been happening for all of human history. This is the decay process of a system that does not work. And we have the creative capacity to participate in creating something different.

And if that starts with an afternoon knitting circle, great. Start there. It does not have to be big. It does not have to be splashy.

I would make the argument that I want it to be something that’s joyful for you. ‘cause that’s the only way that it’s gonna be sustainable. The only way you can keep something up over the long haul is if you’ve got that joy fueling you.

Otherwise, it’s just gonna be exhausting. It’s gonna take life out of you and that just becomes another violence.

[01:04:52] Andrew: Yeah. I think it might’ve been the Nagoskis’ Burnout book toward the end where they make comment along the lines of, that sometimes the most important thing you can do is the smallest thing that you can do.

[01:05:04] January: Yeah.

[01:05:05] Andrew: Sometimes the smallest thing that you have to do is the most important.

[01:05:09] January: Yeah. For another example, we have terrible, terrible wildfires here in the Pacific Northwest. And so there’ll be sometimes weeks or even months at a stretch where it’s literally not safe to go walking outside because the air quality is so bad. It’s full of smoke and sometimes literal ash. It can get outright apocalyptic.

But we have a, a neighborhood coffee stand and I used to be a barista, so of course I make friends with all the baristas in the neighborhood ‘cause solidarity.

And, their little coffee stand building doesn’t have any kind of air conditioning or proper insulation. So they’re, you know, when it’s summer, they’re sweltering with all of these machines running, and then it’s a hundred degrees on top of it, and they’re kind of losing their minds.

So they have to have the windows open, but then also there’s smoke outside so they can’t breathe. Like, what are they supposed to do in that situation? And literally there was a statewide warning about the air quality being toxic and their boss wasn’t letting them go home from work and close the shop.

[01:06:11] Andrew: Wow.

[01:06:11] January: And even if he had let them, would they have wanted to go? Because most of them need that money. So,

[01:06:17] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:06:17] January: how do we deal with that? And so I was just like, look, I’m going to the store and I’m buying them an air purifier for the shop. Because even though that is, to a degree, propping up the existing system,

[01:06:29] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:06:29] January: it’s not the solution of making sure that they have a fair working environment, which is what I would’ve liked to give them. But what it did that I didn’t really think about before I did it, was it communicated to them that they were worth that.

[01:06:45] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:06:46] January: That they were worth somebody thinking about, that they were worth somebody making an effort for them.

And it was really fascinating to see the way that that shifted some perspectives among them. I mean, they’re not, you know, always used to being treated the best. I don’t know if anybody out there has been a barista, you’re familiar with the abuse that you can receive for that job.

[01:07:08] Andrew: Oh really? You gotta take some flack in that job.

[01:07:12] January: Turns out. Yeah.

[01:07:13] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:07:14] January: Yeah. But yeah, it may not look like it’s going to break down the system, but every human being that you remind that they are a person worth valuing, that is a change.

[01:07:25] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:07:26] January: That is one piece of violence that’s no longer perpetuating itself in the world. Start there.

[01:07:33] Andrew: Yeah. No, that’s beautiful.

I feel like I need to rehearse the Sunday school lesson we’ve been going through the last two weeks. What gets called the Lord’s Prayer shows up twice and in Luke, it’s a bit more condensed than it is in Matthew.

[01:07:46] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:46] Andrew: And in Matthew, it seems to be set in a context where the emphasis is on the forgiveness, meaning the verses following really drill into the forgiving point. And that is sorta kinda the central part of the prayer. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

But with Luke it’s more about the asking and it turns to that parable about the, uh, persistent neighbor,

[01:08:09] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:10] Andrew: who has had a guest come over and doesn’t have anything to feed. And so he goes to his neighbor, he’s knocking on his door, and the neighbor’s like, I can’t. Everybody’s in bed. And of course I can’t, doesn’t mean anything more than, look, I’ve got a good excuse. It’s midnight. Like, what are you, what are you doing?

And Jesus’s point is look, I tell you he’s gonna open the door and it’s not ‘cause you’re his friend or he’s, it’s not ‘cause of the friendly feelings, it’s because of your persistence.

[01:08:34] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:36] Andrew: And apparently some say boldness, but I think James Alison suggests reading that as shamelessness. Because of your shamelessness.

And there’s a couple different ways that shamelessness can be used. Either you’re run by shame or you’re not.

[01:08:51] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:52] Andrew: And if you’re run by shame, then either you’re hiding something about yourself from the world and not letting anybody see it. Or maybe hiding your entire self from the world like you’re allowing shame to drive you.

Then there’s this next level being-driven-by-shame that’s so ingrained that you’re hiding from yourself. You won’t let yourself see how awful things are. And,

[01:09:18] January: Yeah.

[01:09:18] Andrew: and that actually looks like shamelessness. That gets called shame.

And like, you know, I forget which politician said it first, but like, have you, no shame sir? This sort of like, ugh, why don’t you feel bad?

[01:09:28] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:28] Andrew: And the person just can’t allow themselves to even consider the possibility that there’s any wrong they could have ever done. That sort of absolutist stance is also being run by shame.

[01:09:40] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:40] Andrew: If you refuse to allow yourself to see it, then it’s…

[01:09:43] January: Yep.

[01:09:44] Andrew: But the shamelessness of the person knocking at the door is not that kind of

[01:09:49] January: Right.

[01:09:50] Andrew: shamelessness where the one is saying, “Shame, shame? Impossible! There’s no shame.” Whereas the other shamelessness, hears shame and it’s like, “Uh, shame? Yeah. Yes, indeed. And, um, all the same, I have a friend over that I don’t have any food.

You see the shame and you’re aware of it, but it doesn’t run you, it doesn’t,

[01:10:13] January: unbothered is the word that’s coming to mind.

[01:10:15] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:10:16] January: Yeah.

[01:10:17] Andrew: You’re unbothered by the shame and that’s when Jesus turns to, and this shows up a little later in Matthew, but immediately after that he says, ask and there’ll be an answer, knock and the door will be open seek and you shall find.

And I paused during the lesson and I was like, does that sound right? Like, does that, does that fit your personal experience, that when you knock the door is open when you seek?

[01:10:46] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:47] Andrew: And people were quiet and my dad was like, no.

I was like, thank you, dad for being. I was like, you know what? We’re reading the Bible. We might as well be honest about it, right. That doesn’t… and I was like, I don’t know the answer.

[01:11:07] January: Yeah.

[01:11:07] Andrew: I try not to have an answer, but that, I mean, that was the time I didn’t necessarily.

[01:11:11] January: mm-hmm.

[01:11:13] Andrew: But it doesn’t seem like there’s a time limit on this.

And later on, my cousin once-removed, I think I’m related to everybody in this class, maybe, I don’t know. And he’s, he’s like, you know, I — to circle back around — because the idea of well, the Bible says it, but it’s not true to me. That’s not the kind of thing that usually gets said in our church.

That kinda sets people on edge. Like, wait a second, we’re not allowed to do that.

[01:11:36] January: Yeah.

[01:11:36] Andrew: So he circled back around to that. He was like, you know, maybe, because Jesus also talks about like, if you being human fathers know how to give your kids a fish, or not give ‘em a scorpion, when they ask for a fish, how much more does your Father know how to give?

Whereas in Matthew, it says good things, in Luke, he says the Holy Spirit.

[01:11:56] January: Mm.

[01:11:57] Andrew: So it’s not even this plurality of like, you can give good gifts, how much greater are the good gifts that — it’s just, how much more will the Heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit?

[01:12:08] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:12:09] Andrew: And so, Yeah, my cousin once removed was like, you know, maybe it doesn’t feel like there’s a timeline for the stuff that comes, but the Holy Spirit is immediate.

[01:12:18] January: Mm.

[01:12:20] Andrew: And I really, I was so glad to hear that. I needed to hear that because the Holy Spirit, I do believe it is that immediate that it shows up in the asking before there’s even an answer.

[01:12:33] January: Yeah.

[01:12:33] Andrew: The asking is enough for the Holy Spirit to be present.

[01:12:37] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:12:37] Andrew: The knocking is enough. Whether the door is opened or not, the Spirit has a place in the very knocking. And when you are seeking a way to create a healthy environment for your neighbors to serve coffee, you did not find the healthy environment, but you were seeking.

[01:12:58] January: Yeah.

[01:12:58] Andrew: You were seeking. There was nothing else that that can be construed as other than seeking. And even if you didn’t find, that was enough for the Holy Spirit to be in that place. And had you not been seeking,

[01:13:11] January: Mmm.

[01:13:11] Andrew: asking yourself, how can we make this better, right? Where would the Holy Spirit have been?

[01:13:16] January: Hmm.

[01:13:17] Andrew: Where would there have been room? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s the best way to read that passage, but that’s… Yeah, hearing your story there certainly did draw out that immediacy of the Holy Spirit to be in our questions even before we have the answers, and to be in our knocking even before the door is opened.

Yeah, I was glad to hear that. It’s funny, when you’re trying to teach a class, it seems like the best part about it is what you learn from other people, but yeah.

[01:13:44] January: Yeah. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. That’s, it’s really resonating for me again with IFS, that there’s so much anxiety about there not being a Self in there anywhere, but if you go looking, by which we mean you get the parts to step back and make the space. Make room for it, it’s just there.

[01:14:05] Andrew: Hmm.

[01:14:06] January: We gotta make the room, but we don’t have to wait for it to develop. We have to wait for the results to manifest. For sure! Therapy takes years, but the Self is there right away. The Holy Spirit is there right away. And that alone is the beginning of transformation.

[01:14:27] Andrew: Yeah.

So January, how do I tell the difference between my body telling me something that is true, and then when I’m just feeling anxiety or there’s trauma dressing itself up as somatic wisdom or something?

[01:14:44] January: For things like trauma that live in the body, it can get very, very well, it can feel really tricky to identify what’s the voice of my body versus what’s the voice of my trauma? And the first important note, that they’re not the same thing. That the trauma is a different thing that is existing in your body, it is being hosted by your body, but it is not your body’s voice.

And it feels very important to acknowledge that there are a lot of people out there, and I was one of ‘em up until about five or six years ago, for whom those two voices are indistinguishable. I didn’t have any way of telling what was my body versus what was my trauma.

I assumed that everything that was my trauma was my body talking to me. This ended up resulting in a lot of mistrust of my body because trauma narratives would get me into situations that were not good for me. And then I wouldn’t always know that was the trauma talking and not my nervous system.

I, I lost a lot of trust in my intuition because of that entanglement. I’m speaking as someone with a fair degree of privilege in that department too, where I lost way less trust than a lot of people have. For all that I’ve been through in my life, and I have been through hell, I’m still on the shallow end of the trauma spectrum in a lot of ways. There are people who are dealing with an even greater depth of bodily mistrust than I was.

I exist at a weird intersection of body experience. So I am a white woman. I am cisgender. I pass for middle class. We’ll put it that way. And all of those things give me a certain level of social privilege in the world. There are all kinds of body experiences that I will never have the first clue about because of those privileges that I walk around with. Those experiences are invisible to me. I can’t have them because that’s not my body.

I also exist in a body that is fat and always has been. I have experienced body shaming pretty much as long as I can remember my entire conscious life. I have spent a certain amount of my life dealing with some very significant chronic pain, and there are multiple causes for that that I don’t have to go into here. But I know what it’s like to live with a body that just hurts all the time, and that really does not feel like a friend. Really does not.

The intersection of perpetual body shame plus perpetual chronic pain. I mean, I, yeah, I did not trust my body, I’ll tell you what. Anything I could do to shut it down and numb out and get the heck out of there was those were my coping mechanisms.

And so part of my coping mechanisms ended up being, I mean, I think anyone could legitimately have called me addicted to alcohol. I didn’t consider myself addicted to alcohol because as soon as the traumatizing context disappeared, so did the addiction. But that’s how addiction works, right? It is a coping mechanism. Addictions and compulsions and many kinds of chronic illness even are not character failings or personal individual problems.

They’re symptoms of a human body being asked to live in an inhumane system. That’s what happens.

[01:18:06] Andrew: I think the AA way to say that is that your addiction is not the problem. It’s the really lousy solution you found to the actual problem that you haven’t addressed yet.

[01:18:18] January: Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah.

Yeah, it was the only solution that I could come up with in the place that I was. And if that’s the place where you are, bless you. I’m so glad that you found a way to survive. I’m so glad you’re here.

[01:18:32] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:18:32] January: I’m so glad you’re still fighting.

[01:18:34] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:18:34] January: There are better ways out there and if there’s anything that we can do to support you in finding those better ways, you know, hit us up on Patreon. Let us know what you’re struggling with. I can’t promise that we can help with anything. We’re only human, but I care. I want to help those things ‘cause I’ve been there.

And so when I talk about body stuff, I’m not talking from some intellectual abstraction. I am talking from my own lived experience, which is limited in particular ways and very deep in others.

The question you asked was, how do we separate the voice of our body?

[01:19:12] Andrew: Yeah. How do I know when it’s the voice of my body telling me something. And we’re assuming here that our bodies are knowledgeable and they know things,

[01:19:19] January: Yeah.

[01:19:20] Andrew: and that we can hear from them and yet at the same time, anxiety can speak, trauma can speak in ways that are not somatic wisdom. They’re coping mechanisms that are reliant on deception. So yeah, how do we know what we’re hearing when we hear this stuff?

[01:19:38] January: Mm-hmm. The best answer that I can give — and this is another place where I don’t mean to blanket recommend one form of therapy to everybody because that’s absolutely not appropriate, but IFS is an excellent tool for this — and that is to get to know the voices.

Someone who’s in a family is never going to mistake the voice of their spouse for the voice of their five-year-old child. It’s just not going to happen.

[01:20:03] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:03] January: Because they hear those voices all the time.

[01:20:06] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:07] January: One of the things that we humans are really good at is not hearing any of those voices or not listening to them consciously, as if they are voices that we can listen to.

The more time that we spend just attending, listening to those voices and relating to them. Not necessarily letting them drive the bus ‘cause that’s a terrible idea sometimes, but yeah, listening to them, relating to them, assuming that they have good intentions, over time that distinction will become clear.

[01:20:38] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:38] January: That’s not a satisfying answer ‘cause it’s not a Five Easy Steps to Whatever, right? But that’s unfortunately not how humans work.

[01:20:46] Andrew: No, no. But it is a very helpful answer because I’m asking the question, but I’ve got it pre-framed for like, once I can tell the difference, then I know which ones I need to tune into and which ones I need to tune out.

And you’re saying no, no, no. We’re not tuning out anything, like

[01:21:00] January: Exactly.

[01:21:00] Andrew: the difference isn’t listen or not listen, the difference is know who you’re listening to.

[01:21:06] January: Yep.

[01:21:06] Andrew: And yes, you do want to hear from anxiety.

[01:21:09] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:21:10] Andrew: You do want to allow trauma to speak. Right?

[01:21:13] January: Yeah.

[01:21:13] Andrew: Because in fact, that’s actually something special if those parts can get to a point where they can actually speak believing that they’re being heard.

[01:21:22] January: Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons that trauma happens is because nobody’s listening. Right?

[01:21:26] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:21:27] January: The solution to that is not to stop listening to it. The solution is to listen more.

[01:21:32] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Drawing it back to the IFS framework is helpful for me because, not that I’ve had a lot of success with it, but it makes sense and it clarifies what we’re doing when we’re listening, and that it’s not a matter of, you know, seizing onto some moment where you have the be all, end all, Grand Poohbah of spiritual guides speaking and like, oh, I found it so I can listen.

Drawing that distinction, maybe after the fact, okay. But at any point you wanna be listening to who you’re talking to.

[01:22:03] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:03] Andrew: Um, that is helpful with regards to the difference between my body telling me something true and my body telling me something that is just anxiety ridden and trauma coping. Okay. Whichever it is, you’re gonna listen, like

[01:22:19] January: mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[01:22:21] Andrew: you’re gonna take the time. Yeah. That’s important.

[01:22:24] January: Yeah. I mean, I made that comment about it being like your body’s hosting this thing. There’s two different ways to think of that, right? There’s your body’s hosting a parasite, and your body’s hosting a guest.

[01:22:35] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:36] January: It makes a big difference if we think about things as this is a guest and it might be a guest who I don’t necessarily want to stick around forever.

[01:22:45] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:22:45] January: There might need to be some significant boundaries to make sure that your property stays intact, if this is a guest who doesn’t really know how to handle themselves, or is a five-year-old toddler, you know. They can cause some pretty big havoc.

But that doesn’t mean kick them out on the street. That doesn’t mean cruelty, that doesn’t mean violence. It just means healthy boundaries.

[01:23:05] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:23:05] January: And showing up for both yourself and for them with integrity.

[01:23:11] Andrew: Well, if the body is trustworthy and even if it’s anxiety or trauma that’s speaking, there’s something that is being reflected. What do you do with a body that’s just chronically in pain, as you mentioned has been part of your experience? Or a body that’s ill, dissociated, generally dysregulated? Where’s the trustworthiness in that?

[01:23:33] January: Yeah. it’s incredibly hard when you have a body and you’ve been set up with an expectation of what bodies are supposed to be like. ‘Cause most other people are able-bodied. And then you have a body that doesn’t live up to that expectation, that cannot ever meet it for one reason or another.

That is devastating. There’s a lot there to grieve, and it’s okay to grieve that. I do want to make the distinction that I don’t want to push anybody into thinking of themselves as only their body. ‘Cause that actually comes with a whole host of other major problems.

You are much, much more than just your body. And, disowning our body limits our quality of life, limits our capacity for experience, limits what is possible for us. So when I talk about restoring trust in the body and learning to listen to it, and learning to have these conversations, I am again, not making a moral prescription here. Or at least that’s not my intention. I can understand if people are hearing it that way, but that’s not what I mean. What I’m trying to say is that there is an aliveness here, if you can find a way to relate to it nonviolently.

And maybe you can’t! And that’s again, not a personal moral failing. It’s a product of the system that you exist in. If we existed in a culture that had a system of care for people who are chronically ill in our midst, and that respected their limitations and celebrated their gifts and thrilled at what they have to offer the community, those people would be having a very different experience of life.

It might not be such a problem to trust their body if the system that they existed in with that body was different. I cannot for the life of me remember who said the line, but I heard a quote sometime in the last few months and it’s just stuck in my brain forever now, which was, “Shouting self care at someone who actually needs community care

[01:25:34] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[01:25:34] January: is one of the ways that we fail people.”

[01:25:37] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:38] January: And that’s what I see happening with this. If we’re living in the Kingdom of Heaven, there is a social system that supports these ways of existing in the world. It, it can’t necessarily fix the problem. ‘Cause guess what? You don’t need to be fixed.

[01:25:51] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:52] January: Like, if that’s just how your body is, that needs to be accepted. And I will be the first to acknowledge how hard that is. That is, that sucks. And that takes grieving. Yeah, absolutely. I am not advocating that anybody just feel shiny, happy, smiley about all of this all the time. Fuck that.

But we have an opportunity with this dream of the Kingdom of Heaven to reimagine the way that we’re doing culture, the way that we’re living as humans. And if we did have a social system where these ways of existing were socially supported and valued even for what they have to contribute, it feels to me like that’s a place where the burden is on the rest of us who don’t have this particular challenge to live with.

That’s not their job to fix their attitude. It’s my job to fix the world that they have to live in. What can I be doing to make this world a little bit friendlier for that person?

[01:26:54] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:26:55] January: I’m a very big believer in this idea that everything God has given me has been given to me with which to serve my neighbor. Everything I have is supposed to go through me to others. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t get to enjoy it! Definitely I think God wants that!

[01:27:11] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:27:12] January: We get to delight in what we’ve been given! It’s not just for self-flagellation and enslavement, right? “For freedom you have been set free,” not just to select a different set of burdens. But that is a responsibility. Everything I have needs to be stewarded.

[01:27:28] Andrew: And it is a violence, right? We would call this violence, when there’s a world that is requiring people to live in a way that their bodies cannot accommodate.

[01:27:37] January: Yeah. I would call that a violence.

[01:27:40] Andrew: Right? That there would be institutions, violent institutions, and like

[01:27:44] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:44] Andrew: how do we name those institutions as violent without slipping into scapegoating saying you’re the problem.

[01:27:52] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:53] Andrew: And your violence is, look at what you’re doing… because very often is an institutional thing or a systemic thing, and yet when it comes to drawing attention to something that’s going wrong, the easiest way to do that is to point at a person

[01:28:05] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:28:05] Andrew: who’s doing it the most wrong

[01:28:07] January: Yeah.

[01:28:08] Andrew: and making them the quintessential-ness of all that’s wrong. And that’s, that, that’s basically scapegoating, isn’t it?

[01:28:15] January: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I don’t claim to have the be all end all answers for how do we fix humanity?

[01:28:25] Andrew: Yeah. You don’t, you don’t know how to do that yet? Oh, okay.

[01:28:28] January: I don’t know how to do that yet.

[01:28:29] Andrew: We’ll do that in Season Two. Season two of Theology Kills. Might not get to it in Season One.

[01:28:39] January: Yeah. We’ll, we’ll get right on that.

But in seriousness, I mean, it, it is a serious question that we have to wrestle with in the world that we exist in. And the answer that I have arrived at, and I would love to hear if you feel differently about this or if there’s some other way that you have learned to handle this.

Where I have arrived at is to be able to name the injustice out loud when it’s happening. To be able to say, I see this happening and this is the person who’s doing it, and this is the system that’s responsible. I can be gentle about it. I can have grace for it,

[01:29:15] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:29:15] January: but to also be unflinchingly honest about it. And the importance of being a witness to these things that are happening.

And at the same time that I’m doing that, I am looking at that form of violence that’s happening and I’m looking at myself and I’m going, where am I doing this exact same thing. Where can I stand in solidarity with this person and be alongside them in their journey to do better? Because I know I have to do better too.

[01:29:42] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, it’s like there’s a parallel between standing in solidarity with victims and simultaneously modeling the self-awareness of repentant perpetrators, right?

[01:29:55] January: Yeah.

[01:29:55] Andrew: Like, uh, I don’t know if that’s the exact word, but there are,

[01:29:59] January: Yeah, we have all perpetrated violence. Even if it was just against our own soul. We have all done that. That is I think what it means to be a sinner.

And that’s not anybody’s individual moral failing. Again, that’s ‘cause we all got born into a mimetic culture where this was rampant. Of course, that’s what we learned. Of course, that’s how we learned to cope.

And, we have the responsibility of saying, okay, this is the world that we’ve been born into. What can we make of it? How do we get creative? What other ways are possible besides what we were handed?

And this is where the work of creativity becomes so much more than just:Oh, I made a pretty piece of art. Definitely make the pretty piece of art! You will never hear me bad mouth that! I am an artist. That’s, that is, yes – do all the art. Do all the art!

And, the consequences of our creativity are much, much bigger than just what I drew, or what I sang or what I designed.

All of that has the potential to be building something much bigger or tearing it down. Nn, I dunno about tearing it down. Impeding it temporarily. Slowing it down. Slowing it down is how I would put that.

[01:31:21] Andrew: I mean, are there ever times when our body is the problem? Like it’s just persistently pulling me towards something that’s harmful for me. Is that ever a paradigm for what’s going on? Or is that just a simple way to scapegoat my body?

[01:31:40] January: I’m not gonna give any simple, straightforward answers there because human experience is complex and I won’t presume to speak for everybody. I’m sure there are scenarios that I cannot begin to imagine where something might be necessary to survive, and I’m not going to shame that or badmouth it in any way.

And at the same time, addiction is a real experience. That is an experience in the body. Right? There’s a chemical craving that can happen. Sometimes it’s just psychological. I say just, as if our psychology is separate from the body. It’s not.

But yeah, there can be times when the body is telling us that it wants something and that want is taking us in a direction that is maybe not the healthiest.

I would classify that not as the body telling a lie, but as our interpretation of what it’s saying, being off, we have misunderstood its language somewhere and made a bad interpretation.

[01:32:40] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:32:41] January: Something that I have dealt with in the past, there would be periods, and I live in Seattle, so sushi is a thing here.But there would be weeks where just all I wanted to eat was sushi. I wanted it for breakfast; I wanted it for dinner. Like, don’t feed me anything else.

And what I was eventually able to figure out was that I was significantly low in salt in my system and my body had just associated oh, I always put soy sauce on sushi. So that’s a salty thing. And so that’s what my brain had flagged as like, if you go toward that, we’re gonna get the need met.

Well, once I was using mineral salts in my cooking instead of going to get sushi problem relieved. So yeah, I think that it’s again, that question of intimacy. How well do we know the voice of our body? Do we actually understand the language that it’s speaking? Have we taken the time to get to know its signals?

And this is another place where the society that we exist in lets us down like nobody’s business because nobody is helping us learn how to do that.

[01:33:39] Andrew: So if the question is, yeah, if my body keeps pulling me towards things that harm me, how is that not my body being the problem? The answer is that’s you misinterpreting your body there, there are no bad parts, is that what we’re saying?

[01:33:54] January: Yeah, I mean it’s a combination of you got born into a system that basically guaranteed you were gonna misunderstand your body, and then, yeah, you misunderstand your body. Of course you do.

[01:34:06] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:34:07] January: We don’t need to blame anybody for this. It’s not anybody’s fault. It, it’s just a reality that we have to meet and get creative with.

And so, yeah, the need that your body is expressing, that’s never gonna be a lie. That need is real. The body can’t communicate anything but it’s truth. that’s all there is. It’s the only thing the body can speak.

[01:34:33] Andrew: Sorry, my brain needs to say this out loud. I don’t know how to make this connection.

[01:34:38] January: Go for it.

[01:34:39] Andrew: If we’re misinterpreting our body, it’s ‘cause we’re raised in a place where we just never learn that language.

[01:34:45] January: Exactly.

[01:34:46] Andrew: And the initial patriarch of the Israelites was defined as the resident alien. I think his father got called, I’m trying to remember, didn’t Terah get called out of Ur of the Chaldees, but he didn’t actually keep going. He stopped in Haran or some place.

But Abraham finally, yeah, that was him just trucking along constantly in a place that he was the outsider.

[01:35:11] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:35:12] Andrew: And yet this was his place. This, this was what was promised. But was very much the outsider and I’ve always tried to parallel that to the idea of the inbreaking Kingdom of God that’s coming to earth, right?

And that I, I live in a place, but I’m called to live in what’s coming, not what’s here. And so that makes me someone who resides in this place, but in essence, I’m an alien to it.

[01:35:36] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:35:38] Andrew: But when you were just talking about being born into a culture that doesn’t teach us how to listen to our bodies, it was that same framework, like we’re resident aliens in our own body.

[01:35:48] January: Yeah.

[01:35:48] Andrew: We have been born into this place, but we don’t know the language.

[01:35:53] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:35:54] Andrew: It seemed like there was a parallel or a pattern there that I’d always thought of on a societal level and it just, all of a sudden it just collapsed down into a solitary individual sort of level, which isn’t usually how I think through things.

And it was like, oh wow, that was. So, I don’t know if that makes sense what I’m saying or not, but

[01:36:10] January: Yeah, Yeah. And the things that happen to us at the collective social level happen to us individually and the things that happen to us individually repeat themselves at the social level. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:36:23] Andrew: Maybe you’ve told me more about the Body Compass exercise than I remember. I’m aware that it’s a practice that we can do. It has to do with familiarizing ourselves with ourself, our body. Yeah, how does this work? What do we do?

[01:36:36] January: The Body Compass practice is one of the ones that I use most often from Martha Beck’s Wayfinder training that I graduated from. I have a particular focus on reconnecting people with their physical experience, so that they can have access to that other half of their brain when making decisions, and have access to the nonviolent options. Because if we don’t know what our own system is asking for, then it’s very easy to make decisions and choices that are a violence against our own soul, even if they’re not a violence against anybody else.

[01:37:11] Andrew: Yeah,

[01:37:11] January: And that’s one of the things that I’m most passionate about helping people put down and cease that particular form of violence. Even if we can’t stop wars between nations, I don’t have that power. I don’t know anybody in politics. I have no influence in that sphere.

[01:37:29] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:37:30] January: But I do have the power to stop the violence within myself, against myself. And that, you know, they have that phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats. We tend to dismiss the tiny things that we ourselves can do and think that it doesn’t count in terms of the bigger picture, but the bigger picture is made up of the tiny things that we can do.

[01:37:50] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:37:50] January: So anything we can do is contributing to that. Any amount of healing that we can do is healing that is not left on the shoulders of the next generation. So great. Like, why would I not wanna do that?

So the body compass exercise is kind of exactly what it sounds like. It’s a compass for making decisions that tunes into the very specific signals that your body sends when it wants to do something or doesn’t want to do something.

And your body processes information way faster than your actual brain does. Your cognitive thinking brain comes online after the actual experience has happened and rationalizes it in retrospect.

[01:38:30] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:38:30] January: It’s not necessarily we think about it first and then we do it.

And so this is a way of learning who we are more deeply. And learning what it is that we actually want without having to intellectually figure it out.

[01:38:45] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:38:45] January: Like we don’t have to get inside our own psychology and pick all of the pieces apart to understand what we want. The body just knows, and it’s gonna tell us. We just have to actually slow down enough to listen to it.

Because that’s the other thing. Is that this information doesn’t just come up fast.

[01:39:01] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:39:02] January: It takes a minute for those signals to simmer to the surface of cognitive awareness and that processing speed can get faster and faster as you practice it. You have to build the neural pathways for it to happen more quickly.

But if you do practice it and it does become easier, you will find your creativity opening up because suddenly there’s all of these options you didn’t know you had, that your body can move you toward, that your brain couldn’t have come up with because they didn’t fit in the picture of the universe that you were currently constructing and operating in.

[01:39:33] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:39:34] January: So all of that was a very long-winded way of saying settle into your chair. Take some deep breathes.

[01:39:48] Andrew: [breathing]

[01:39:48] January: See if you can feel the skin of your feet.

Maybe we’ll just start with a super quick light touch body scan to check in with the various parts and make sure that there’s signal coming through.

[01:40:07] Andrew: Okay,

[01:40:08] January: So check in with your ankles, see what you’re feeling there.

And then check in with your shins.

And your calves.

And then your knees, what have they got going on today?

And then your thighs. Your quads.

And check in with your seat. See if you can feel yourself supported.

And notice your gut. What’s happening in your belly right now?

And notice your chest. How’s your posture? Nothing has to change. We’re just noticing.

[01:41:10] Andrew: Not good. That’s how my posture is.

[01:41:19] January: Yes. Hello, Left Brain Judgy.

We’re not abandoning you, I promise, but we are gonna ask you to step back for just a minute here.

Check in with your shoulders and biceps. How are your arms feeling?

And your elbows.

And then your forearms.

And bring some attention down into your wrists and your hands and just notice what you’re feeling, if anything.

There might be some tingling, there might be some warmth, might be a sense of some electricity, or there might be nothing at all. Whatever there is is fine. We’re just noticing.

And then bring the awareness up and check in with your throat and your neck.

Check in with your jaw and your cheeks.

Notice your mouth and your nose.

And then bring the awareness to your eyes and your ears. See if there’s any tension that wants to be released.

It doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, but it can relax if it wants to.

Check in with your eyebrows and your forehead.

All the way up across your scalp to the crown.

How’s that feeling?

[01:43:28] Andrew: Yeah. No, that’s good. I haven’t done a body scan in a while.

[01:43:37] January: All right. Well, we’re gonna start the body compass practice then, and we’re gonna do the negative experience first, because then you’ll have a chance to shake it off and then we’ll do the positive experience, and that can be the one that you stay with

[01:43:50] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[01:43:52] January: going forward.

[01:43:52] Andrew: Yeah, that seems nice.

[01:43:54] January: So what was this negative experience that you had?

It doesn’t have to be the worst thing that ever happened to you. We’re just looking for something that was definitely negative on a scale of zero to negative 10.

[01:44:07] Andrew: Yeah. Um, Thursday, I started listening to this song that I wrote about 10 years ago for a very, very happy occasion. Buddy of mine was getting married. He asked me to write a song. He knows that I’m not an accomplished musician, but I’d made him laugh numerous times over the course of years that we knew each other with silly songs.

I always considered it a bit of a reward. I think any friend that you get to laugh it’s sort of a reward in a sense of like, ah, yeah, that’s great. I love it when people are happy.

[01:44:40] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:44:40] Andrew: Yeah. I like making him laugh. So anyway, yeah, I wrote this song, performed it at his wedding. And he had a terminal diagnosis when he got married.

[01:44:52] January: Hmm.

[01:44:52] Andrew: Think he lived for two or three years, maybe four after. Anyway, it was a gift. it was a fond memory, but it stirred up something.

[01:45:06] January: Mm.

[01:45:06] Andrew: And I don’t know exactly why I, and I’m thinking this is what it was. ‘Cause I had plenty of work to do that day. But once I completed the things that I couldn’t shirk off without having really bad repercussions, basically I showed up to class, I taught the lessons and then I just started playing this video game.

And it, It gets kind of hard for somebody like me who doesn’t really play video games. Like it gets, it gets and so I’d gotten to a point where I’d basically decided, okay I’ve had as much fun as I can have with that game. Anything else is gonna be a chore.

Uh, so we’ll put that away. That had happened already a few weeks before, but I, I was like, all right, I’m gonna go in there. I’m gonna beat some bosses that I ran away from.

Yeah, and just playing the same boss and I knew what I needed to do, but I couldn’t make my fingers do it ‘cause I’m not an actual gamer. Like, I’m not actually skilled at this stuff.

And so it was this weird, yeah, I don’t wanna call it desire ‘cause It was not a good thing I was doing. I just, I don’t know if I was absorbed into the game or I just dumped myself into it, but it was immense frustration.

[01:46:17] January: Mm.

[01:46:18] Andrew: And futility trying to do something that I can’t do, but I feel like I should be able to, like the know-how in the abstract is right there and I can’t do it.

And, in some perverse way that just felt right, and I wanted to sit in that space of futility.

[01:46:42] January: Hmm.

[01:46:46] Andrew: For I don’t know, probably eight, nine hours? The rest of the day.

[01:46:54] January: Hmm.

[01:46:55] Andrew: Didn’t eat lunch. Got this splitting headache around seven o’clock. So, I’m sure my body had been talking to me quite a bit, but that one I actually heard. But, it was kind of like, yeah, I hear you, whatever. But I wasn’t conscious at that point of even, this is my body talking to me.

It’s just like, oh, I have a headache. I didn’t eat lunch. This is stupid. Why am I doing this?

[01:47:22] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:47:23] Andrew: And I just continued at it for another few hours.

[01:47:27] January: Hmm.

So describe the scene to me. Where are you sitting when this happens?

[01:47:32] Andrew: Right here in this chair.

[01:47:34] January: Okay.

[01:47:35] Andrew: Yeah, looking at that monitor, probably hunched over a little bit, holding the controller.

[01:47:42] January: If you close your eyes for a minute, if that feels good to you, and I guess you don’t have to use your imagination to picture yourself there since you’re currently sitting there, but

[01:47:51] Andrew: Yeah, I’m right there.

[01:47:54] January: you kind of step into the memory of that day.

And just in your imagination, what, in retrospect, do you notice in your body about how it’s feeling, just what sensations are coming up?

You mentioned the headache already, so we’ve got that. What do you feel now as you step into the memory?

[01:48:22] Andrew: Yeah, I got a little heat on the crown of my head. I think I’m noticing.

It seems like there was some tension between the eyes. You had some frown lines going on there a little bit. Am I wrong?

Yeah, I can imagine that would’ve been happening. There’s a bit of tension in my legs, I guess. Tightness quads.

[01:48:45] January: We’ve got tightness in the quads, in the forehead, and some heat on the crown of the head.

And if you had to rate the whole experience between zero and negative 10. How negative was it?

[01:49:01] Andrew: Uh, like a 2, yeah. I don’t know. I mean, yeah, clearly the headache was a four or a five. Yeah.

[01:49:08] January: Shall we call it negative 3, overall? Just average it out?

[01:49:12] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:49:13] January: Okay. If you had to give a name to that particular set of sensations.

I know I’m springing this on you, so you can take your time. It’s okay.

[01:49:24] Andrew: No, no, no, no. Uh. Self-indulgent frustration, I think is what I’d call it.

I think that’s… yeah.

[01:49:40] January: Okay. Now you’ve moved to making meaning of the experience. That’s not what we’re aiming for.

[01:49:45] Andrew: Okay. Alright. Okay. Uh…

[01:49:51] January: Just in terms of that particular set of physical sensations.

[01:49:56] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:49:56] January: You know, you could just call it the tightness feeling, but it seemed like it was more complex than that. We’re aiming for a name of the physical experience that will help you recognize it again.

[01:50:08] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, tension, I think would be the word. Hunched tension.

[01:50:17] January: Hunched tension. Mmkay, we’ll go with that. Good job. Now you can shake it off. Literally wave your hands around, stand up, shake it off.

[01:50:26] Andrew: Are we done with that? Okay. Okay.

[01:50:28] January: All right. So now we’re gonna repeat that process, but with a purely positive moment or memory. And it can be as simple as the last great meal you ate. Just something that’s uncomplicatedly positive.

[01:50:51] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, the most uncomplicated, positive. It’s still, it’s a couple weeks old, but it’s still like I, I love thinking about this, my buddy Keith has a newborn baby, his first child. And I hadn’t met the baby yet. went to see him and meet their baby, and they live about an hour away. So. It’s not easy to drop in.

Anyway, he needed some help moving a few couches for his family, his in-laws. And that meant that there’s a good excuse, yeah, to go see him. Jumped in the car, was listening to a good audio book on the way there. And…

Sorry, I’m just noticing a, not a body thing, but it’s just a similarity between both of these experiences was just kind of like, oh, today’s over. We’re just doing this now. Like that’s, that’s exactly the same, except it was just like, yeah, whatever’s going on. however we can be helpful.

So the joy came, really — yes — the baby was super happy. I got to hold him there for at least, I don’t know, it felt like half an hour, maybe it was only like 20 minutes.

But still like he was happy, I guess he was what, six weeks or two months maybe.

[01:52:04] January: Hmm.

[01:52:05] Andrew: And uh, so that’s nice. Yeah, happy babies are fun. But relaxed, happy parents are really fun, too, you know?

[01:52:17] January: Absolutely.

[01:52:19] Andrew: Not all parents, and I’m sure they’ve had their days, like who doesn’t? But he’d make comments to me on the phone. We talk on the phone regularly, and he was like, yeah, man. it’s just doesn’t really matter much anymore.

It’s just like, is Calvin happy? Yeah, he’s happy. Yeah, I’m happy. That’s, that’s like, that’s like enough, you know, he made some comment along those lines and, and I got to, to be a part of that.

Yeah, that was fun. Then we moved some couches, came back and brought some pizza and watched, yeah, this was before Christmas and Home Alone was on, like it always is.

[01:52:58] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:52:59] Andrew: And so rewatched that for the umpteen bajillionth time and yeah.

[01:53:06] January: So as you’re describing that and kind of stepping into that memory, what do you notice happening in your body?

[01:53:16] Andrew: Yeah, it feels like my breaths are a bit more profound. I don’t know. Hunched tension. There might be a shallow breath that’s going on with that too.

[01:53:26] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:53:27] Andrew: Because this feels different.

[01:53:29] January: Breathing easier.

[01:53:31] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:53:31] January: And what else? I notice that your forehead is more relaxed and your voice is calmer. Seems less tight.

[01:53:41] Andrew: Yeah. Relaxed is definitely a word that gets it.

Yeah, I mean, I was kind of reclining on the couch there with the baby. He’s right there on my chest and

[01:53:53] January: It seems like there’s a smile there. What you thinking?

[01:53:56] Andrew: I just, yeah, I know I was holding the baby. I don’t actually do that a lot, so I mean, in the moment I was probably like, oh wait, what do I do? Don’t let its head fall off.

And yeah, so I mean there probably was some tension I was not like able to put myself in a completely comfortable position while holding a baby, ‘cause that’s not something I’m very practiced at. But, um. Yeah.

[01:54:23] January: Well, is the relaxation and the breathing easier, is that enough to give it a name?

[01:54:28] Andrew: Yeah, my feet feel like they’re on the floor. Not that they weren’t on the floor before, but I kind of feel that a bit more.

[01:54:34] January: Mm-hmm. Now you’re noticing it.

[01:54:37] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:54:41] January: So rate the sensation on a positive scale from zero to 10, and then you gotta give it a name.

[01:54:48] Andrew: Okay? I mean, the experience itself was an absolute blessing. I’d do it again any chance I got. But as far as just like the physical sensation that I, I’m attaching to this, it doesn’t seem super extraordinary.

So I’m thinking If the other one was a negative three, this would be a positive two on a negative 10 to 10 scale. A Stone Still positive 2. It felt like there was no need to go anywhere.

[01:55:14] January: Mm.

[01:55:14] Andrew: That’s the feeling. It’s just like,

[01:55:16] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:55:17] Andrew: and like a happy stone. You know, it’s just sitting there. Yeah.

[01:55:24] January: So we’ll go with positive two. It’s a positive two. If you say those words, if you say Hunched Tension versus Stone Still, do those words recollect the sensations?

[01:55:34] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. The Hunched Tension, there was something in the shoulders there, and the face is kind of that.

[01:55:41] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:55:41] Andrew: Yeah, this area. Whereas yeah, the Stone Stillness, it feels like it. Yeah, there’s more going on at the feet, I think, than anything, but it extends all the way up, I guess.

[01:55:56] January: Well, great. Congratulations. You’ve

[01:55:58] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:55:58] January: Calibrated the yes response and the no response in your system. One set of

[01:56:04] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:56:04] January: yes and no responses, and obviously this is an exercise that’s meant to be repeated regularly to continue developing the nuances of what’s a yes and what’s a no from your body.

You don’t only have one set of each. But it’s something that you can use now to check in with yourself moment to moment as you go through your day. “Is what I’m feeling right now closer to Hunched Tension, or is what I’m feeling right now closer to the Stone Stillness?”

[01:56:31] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:56:31] January: Oh, I’m feeling a lot of Hunch Tension. Wonder what would move me closer to Stone Stillness in this moment.

And that’s what I mean about the creative options. “Oh crap, I’m feeling something right now that I really don’t like. There’s this circumstance or this belief or this experience that I’m not enjoying. What action can I take? What agency do I have to shift that experience? How can I get creative?”

[01:56:57] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:56:58] January: One of the core tenets of our Wayfinder Coach training is that the goal is to exist in perpetual creative response to whatever is present.

[01:57:06] Andrew: Okay.

[01:57:07] January: And that, just felt like an articulation of what I see as my task in Christian discipleship as well.

[01:57:15] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:57:15] January: That the goal of Christian discipleship is to be able to be creative in whatever set of circumstances shows up.

[01:57:23] Andrew: Yeah, yeah.

[01:57:25] January: And specifically and especially, to be able to create alternatives to violence in any given moment.

And that includes violence against ourselves and violence against others, and violence against the environment or animals. Right? All of it.

[01:57:39] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:57:40] January: It’s all interconnected. Well, how did that feel for you doing that exercise?

[01:57:47] Andrew: No, I, yeah, I guess a bit awkward. That’s not, I don’t, don’t listen to my body regularly.

[01:57:55] January: And how do you feel about that? And it’s okay if the answer is, you know what, I’m perfectly fine with it. It gets me through the day.

[01:58:03] Andrew: No, I, I don’t think I am. I did, um, today I listened to the seventh chapter of the Nagoskis’ Burnout book. That’s when they talk about rest and sleep.

[01:58:12] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:58:13] Andrew: And I was just like, wow. I mean, I always knew, like, sleep’s important — I’ll do that. That’s important. And I, I never do. And then just listening to just how important it is.

[01:58:26] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:58:27] Andrew: Yeah, that sort of got me thinking I need to be more friendly. Like friendly to my body. I think that includes offering plenty of time to sleep, but yeah, listening and like knowing what is it saying?

Yeah, I can already imagine that there’s probably. The hunch tension, I think there’s probably a Twitchy Hunched tension version of that one that might be a little further down the negative spectrum, where this eyeball ball right here starts

[01:58:51] January: Mm, mm-hmm.

[01:58:52] Andrew: doing, doing that thing

[01:58:55] January: And what’s further up the scale on the positive side of things?

[01:58:59] Andrew: Yeah, there’s, when I’ve completed a physical chore outside, I don’t think it happens inside as much, but it’s just, yeah, I was swinging a grubbin’ hoe or doing something like diggin’ a post hole that it’s not fun to do that stuff. But there is a moment just shortly afterwards where it’s just kind of like low key exhilaration. The body’s just like, ah, yeah, it’s right. You know, that sort of — a bit hoppy. Yeah, I could feel a bit hoppy and something just got done. That would be a six or a seven. I’ve felt that before, regularly.

[01:59:40] January: Well, does that feel like a good place to wrap things up, or is there more that needs to be said?

[01:59:45] Andrew: Yeah. No, I think so. Yeah.

[01:59:50] January: Well, great, then we’ll close out this episode. And what do our listeners have to look forward to in the next episode, which is about integrity?

[01:59:59] Andrew: Yeah. So I don’t know if we offer a succinct definition of integrity.

They will get, I believe, a crystal-clear picture of an anxiety-free integrity. This isn’t a rubric that you hold up against others or yourself in order to measure shortcomings. Integrity is something that is perfectly happy to enter into whatever mess you find yourself. That’s what people can look forward to hearin’ next time.

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.

[02:00:51] January: Our theme music is Things To Do In a Day by Simon Lepine.

[02:00:56] Andrew: 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 Kills Podcast. You can find everything we’re making at www.theologykills.com.

[02:01:15] January: That’s everything we have for you today. Thanks for listening, take care of yourselves and each other,

[02:01:21] Andrew: and we’ll see you next time.