Episode 1: Evolution, Apocalypse, and Remembering Rachel Held Evans
Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu
Featuring Rachel Held Evans
and with special guests Dan Evans and Amanda Held Opelt
For our very first episode of The Evolving Faith Podcast, we made the difficult decision to open with an episode both about and with our friend Rachel Held Evans. One of the original co-creators of Evolving Faith, she died in May 2019 at age 37. So together, we will listen to what was one of Rachel's last sermons entitled "Evolution and Apocalypse" - which was so Rachel - as she opens the very first Evolving Faith gathering and then we'll chat a bit about the origins of Evolving Faith and our own memories of these moments. We'll also welcome Dan Evans (Rachel's husband) and Amanda Opelt (Rachel's sister) to the conversation for a catch-up. Everything that follows on this season of the podcast has Rachel's fingerprints and it feels right for us to begin here, at the start, with her.
P.S. There is some adult language in this episode.
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Show Notes
The Evolving Faith Podcast After Party on Facebook - a place to discuss episodes and ideas with other listeners.
Rachel Held Evans
Imaginary Future by Dan Evans
On Spring Peepers, Pandemics, and an Approaching Anniversary by Amanda Opelt
You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Join our brand-new podcast community over on Facebook, The Evolving Faith Podcast After-Party.
You can find Jeff Chu on Instagram and Twitter. You can also subscribe to his newsletter Notes of a Make-Believer Farmer at jeffchu.substack.com.
You can find Sarah Bessey on Instagram and Twitter. You can also subscribe to her newsletter Field Notes at sarahbessey.substack.com.
Special thanks to Audrey Assad and Wes Willison for the music on this episode.
If you’d like to be featured on an upcoming episode, just call our voicemail inbox at +1 (616) 929-0409. Leave your first name and state or province and answer this question: How are you cultivating hope in the wilderness right now? It can be something small - a song, a poem, a practice - or something big. There are no wrong answers. Just please try to keep your answer to under a minute so we can feature a few of you every episode.
“An evolving faith is one that survives by adapting to change.”
Transcript
Sarah Bessey: Hi, friends. I'm Sarah Bessey.
Jeff Chu: And I'm Jeff Chu.
Sarah: Welcome to the very first episode of the Evolving Faith podcast.
Jeff: This is a podcast for the wounded, the misfits, and the spiritual refugees, to let you know you are not alone in the wilderness. We are all about hope. And we are here to point fellow wanderers to God. No matter where you are on your journey, no matter what your story is, you are welcome. We're listening to God to one another, and to the world.
Sarah: The story of God is bigger, wider, more inclusive and welcoming, filled with more love than we could ever imagine. And there's room here for everyone.
Jeff: There's room here for you.
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Sarah: Jeff, at last, our first official podcast episode, and are you as awkward and terrified as we expected?
Jeff: I am awkward and terrified all the time. So nothing new for me. But I've said this before and I will say it again. How in the world do writers end up having to do so much talking? It makes no sense to me at all. Anyway, we have heard from so many folks in the Evolving Faith community that they would like to hear past talks again. So with the help of our long-suffering producer Jordan Gass-Poore, we've put this podcast together. In a way this season feels like a time capsule. All of the talks you'll hear during this first season of the Evolving Faith podcast were actually recorded in 2018. And a lot of time has passed. A lot has changed. So we're going to offer our reflections on those talks as we work our way through this season.
Sarah: We really grappled with how to start the Evolving Faith podcast, and we ended up making the decision to start with what we knew would be the hardest episode for us—an episode about and actually with our friend Rachel Held Evans. I am pretty sure right now that this was not a good decision, but Rachel's fingerprints are on everything that follows, including us. And so it felt like the only possible decision, so in addition to playing Rachel's talk from Evolving Faith 2018, which she gave just a few short months before she passed away, we have invited Dan Evans, Rachel's husband, and Amanda Held Opelt, Rachel’s sister, to navigate this episode with us. And they'll be joining us for a conversation later in the episode after Rachel’s sermon is over.
Jeff: So let's get the bio bit out of the way. Officially, yes, she is Rachel Held Evans, one of the original co-creators of Evolving Faith. Rachel Held Evans was a New York Times bestselling author whose books include Faith Unraveled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Searching for Sunday, and Inspired. Hailing from Dayton, Tennessee, home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, she wrote about faith, doubt and life in the Bible Belt. She served on President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. And she kept a busy schedule speaking at churches, conferences, and colleges and universities around the country. Then, at just 37 years of age, our friend Rachel died on May 4, 2019.
Sarah: Rachel is survived by her husband, Dan, and their two children, her parents, her sister and her family, extended family, and many friends along with the millions of lives to whom her work and life and ministry made such a difference. We miss her every single day.
Jeff: Above her desk in the basement of her house in Dayton, Tennessee, Rachel had a small handwritten sign that said, “Tell the truth.” It was a reminder to her of what she wanted to do. She wanted to tell the truth about the world as she saw it, and the love of God as she understood it. Sometimes that meant engaging in vigorous theological debates on Twitter, and calling out injustice. And sometimes that meant texting a friend, just to remind them that she loved them, and that God loved them. Sometimes that meant putting on her best public face and mustering all the energy her introverted self could muster, so that she could preach or speak and let someone who had been hurt by the church know that she saw them and heard them and cared for them.
Sarah: It's interesting to me how often Rachel was characterized as being against things because the truth is that Rachel— we misunderstand her and her work if we only see her as a renegade or a rebel, because she never was someone who just stood against things. I think to tell the truth about Rachel is to recognize what she was really for. She was for sharing the love of God. She was someone who, inspired by Jesus's love for her, poured out an uncommon and wildly generous love. She was someone who called others to do the same and who worked relentlessly for the good of all people whether they agreed with her or not.
Jeff: That was the thing about Rachel. All people were Rachel's people. Rachel was for an all-embracing vision of Christ’s Church, and the relentless inclusion of refugees and those suffering poverty, of LGBTQ people, of women and especially women of color. I think she recognized the real geometry of God. She used her writing and this gathering, Evolving Faith, to build the bridges so many of us needed to get back to God's love. She pointed us back to Jesus, to one another, and to the church. For those of you who haven't been part of Evolving Faith’s gatherings, I know it might feel a little weird to join a conversation that feels like it's already underway. But Sarah and I want you to know that we value you. And you're welcome here. We mean that. We learned that from Rachel, that the table is big enough for all of us.
Sarah: That idea of hospitality, of a really wide and generous welcome, was actually one of the underlying hopes or values or principles that we had in mind when Rachel and I started Evolving Faith along with our friend and partner Jim Chaffee. So I thought I'd share a little bit of the origin story of Evolving Faith with you all, especially for those of you who are new to us, in order to give some context to what you'll hear in Rachel's talk. Rachel and I were friends for nearly 10 years. We experienced a lot of life together, welcoming babies—she had two kids and I have four—writing books, speaking at conferences, you know, cackling over some nonsense from Twitter together, occasionally dragging people on Twitter together. We came up with the idea of Evolving Faith, after her book Searching for Sunday and my book Out of Sorts were released. Because as we were shepherding those books and those conversations in the world, that was when we began to really dream about this community. Honestly, we had no idea what we were in for when we just said, “Let's put something together, together.” And so we were honestly shocked, I think, by the response to our first gathering. In a lot of ways, it felt like we were drinking from a firehose and Rachel and I spent a lot of that first Evolving Faith gathering, the one you'll be listening to all this season, looking at each other with just equal parts of delight and absolute terror. Because we had no idea what we had done. It was messy and imperfect, but yet it was powerful and beautiful and strong, and we loved it. We loved you. We somehow managed to create this community out of our conviction that there had to be room for those of us who are in the wilderness, those of us who are looking for love and hope, those of us who were Bible nerds and LGBTQ+ and church refugees and question askers, the doubters and dreamers, the idealistic cynics, the disappointed disciples— I think what we were yearning for, then and now even, probably what we're all yearning for in some way, was just to feel a little less alone and to borrow hope from one another and be reminded that we are held, always and fully and completely, by the love of God. Rachel and I created Evolving Faith to set feasts in the wilderness. And this is a big table that we're at today.
Jeff: So friends, the next voice you're going to hear is the voice of our friend Rachel Held Evans, speaking at the first Evolving Faith gathering in Montreat, North Carolina.
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Rachel Held Evans: Good morning.
I was gonna start with like a comment about the crisp, cool fall weather in the bright leaves, but climate change. So here we go.
I want to start with something of an invocation. And this is one of my favorite poems. It's an ancient poem, but it seems so perfect for this moment and for this community.
To everything, there is a season,
a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to uproot what has been planted.
A time to kill, the time to heal.
A time to break down and a time to build up.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh.
A time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
A time to gain and a time to lose.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to rend and a time to mend.
A time to make the best of things at a time and a time to burn it all down.
(I had that in here before you made that comment… I made that part up.)
A time to keep silence and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate.
A time of war and a time of peace.
I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. But God has made everything beautiful, in its time.
I want to thank Sarah for joining me in this adventure. It's really nice planning an event with a Canadian because the hospitality is kind of built in already. And Sarah is really good at making people feel welcome. And I'm grateful for that. Thanks to Jim and to Joy for pulling this whole thing together. Thanks to everybody who's joining us on the livestream. It's good to have you here in a way. If I look a little bleary-eyed, it's because one, I'm allergic to the death of the season. And also, I brought my whole family with me. We made this an adventure. So my husband, Dan, is here, and my two-and-a-half-year-old Henry is running around somewhere. And my five-month-old Harper is getting passed around from person to person. But I'll warn you she's at that age where her butt crack makes that perfect like channel for the poop to go up if you get your chance at holding Harper, I'm sorry if she poops on you. She does it to the people she loves.
My sister Amanda Opelt is here; some of you enjoy her music and she's in the back with her baby, little baby Jane. This is my first chance I had to meet my new niece at this event. So I'm a little overwhelmed by everything that's happening.
And then of course last night when we first got all the speakers together, we had a dinner. And I walked in that room and saw all these people. And it was, I said, like being at your wedding. And Mike McHargue was like, “Yeah, but with people you like.” So it was pretty amazing to see all of those people in one place.
And then of course, I'm surrounded by family of another sort—people I've met on the internet. It's very nice to see all of your actual faces, not just those little avatars that we're used to seeing. But in this sea of faces, I see people that I recognize from years of correspondence and events and social media. And so it means a lot that you would be here to take this on with us and that you'd be here to celebrate and to grieve and to be a community together with us this week. Thank you for being here. Thanks for braving the weather and waiting in line and dealing with the traffic— it means a lot. It really does. I wish we could, you know, growing up evangelical, you could always blame that stuff on Satan. Like, Oh, well, this must be a real important conference because Satan made the weather bad. Or like, oh, the sound system is broken. It's a demon in the sound system.
We don't really do that anymore.
But I want to say that no matter where you are in your deconstruction or reconstruction process and experience, whether you've just started asking new questions, or you've been asking these questions for decades, whether you're still volunteering and active in a church, or whether you made it to the prayer chain because they're concerned. I'm on prayer chains at churches I never even went to; it's crazy.
Whether you consider yourself a believer who doubts or a doubter who sometimes believes, please just know you are among kindred spirits. You're among friends, and you are not alone. We're very happy to welcome you here.
So, I'd like to spend my time talking about two things: evolution and apocalypse. So everybody who follows me online is like, yeah, that's pretty typical RHE stuff. That's cool. And then all the people who are here for Jen Hatmaker are like, why is the opening act talking about the apocalypse? But I promise there's a thread.
So how many Planet Earth fans do we have out there?
Yeah, I mean, I'm talking about this show. Like I assume everybody here is a fan of the planet Earth, but talking about the BBC show. You’d never know it from our environmental policy right now.
So if in the last few years you found yourself screaming at your TV as a baby iguana gets chased by a pack of snakes, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the BBC series. It's a documentary series that takes viewers on this tour of the whole earth and all the habitats and all the creatures that live in the earth. And the cinematography is really beautiful and captivating. And it's narrated by David Attenborough, so it kind of feels like you're curled up in the lap of Bilbo Baggins, as he tells you all these wonderful stories about, like, the mating habits of tree frogs and bat poop and all kinds of stuff.
Well, on the first season of Planet Earth, they feature this really interesting creature called the cave angelfish. And cave angelfish are some of the most specialized creatures on earth, because they have specifically adapted to life in cave waterfalls. And they're only found in a few places on earth, and they're in these very remote caves in Thailand, kind of like the caves where those boys were trapped all those days. And unlike your regular marine angelfish with their colorful fins and their, you know, beautiful flourishes and movements, cave angelfish are ugly as sin. They are slimy and pale and kind of worm-like. They don't have any eyes. And they spend their days clinging to the walls of these caves; they can kind of feed on the bacteria that's just rushing down into their face, which sounds cool, actually.
So scientists think that what happened was, millions of years ago, a group of marine angelfish migrated to these caves to escape a climate change or a predator or some kind of change in the environment. And over time, they evolved these strange traits to survive in these really harsh conditions. So like other cave dwellers, they lost the pigment in their skin, they lost their sight, and improved other functions— other sensory functions. And then they even evolved to have these little microscopic hooks in their fins that allow them to cling to the walls of these caves like little bats.
And of course Attenborough makes it sound like these are the most magical creatures on the face of the earth, straight out of Harry Potter. But there's just these little angelfish that managed to climb up the walls of these caves.
When we first announced the Evolving Faith conference, a few years ago, a lot of people asked me, What do you mean by evolving? You know, are you saying that your faith is more evolved or more mature, more enlightened, than others? And it's funny because when I think about evolving faith, I don't think about enlightenment or maturity or some kind of spiritual superiority. I think about survival. I think about those god-ugly angelfish clinging to the walls of that cave. And Science Mike can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but in biological evolution it’s not the fastest or the strongest species that survives, but the ones that are adaptable to change. So to extend this admittedly imperfect metaphor, an evolving faith is one that survives by adapting to change: change in circumstances, change in the culture, change in one's own heart and mind, change in relationships.
An evolving faith is one that can survive the divorce, the doubt, the disillusionment, the I Kissed Dating Goodbye apology tour, the coming out, the exposure to new ideas, the betrayal of a church, the betrayal of the Church, the Trump administration, the existential crisis— but I repeat myself— the troubling biblical text and all those unanswered nagging questions about religion and science and heaven and hell that keep you up at night. An evolving faith can survive those things precisely because it can adapt to change, because it embraces those seasons of building down and tearing up, of planting and uprooting, of death and resurrection.
A lot of us grew up hearing that a strong faith is an unyielding faith, that our commitment to Jesus is measured by how little that relationship changes. Now, I'm not saying my faith is better or stronger than anybody else's, but my faith just couldn't survive like that. Jesus seems pretty intent on changing my mind about things. The spiritualist Ram Dass likes to say: “Faith is not a belief. Faith is what's left when your beliefs have been blown to hell.”
And I get the idea that a lot of people in this room have had our beliefs blown to hell, if not in the last decade then in the last couple of years. Brother Jonathan, who spoke earlier, likes to describe the events of the last few years as apocalyptic. Not in the Left Behind sort of way, but in a truly biblical sort of way. In the Bible, the word “apocalypse” means an unveiling, a disclosing. An apocalyptic vision or event reveals things as they really are. it peels back the layers of pomp and pretense to expose the true forces at work in the world. So when St. John essentially says, in the book of Revelation, the Roman Empire may look like a mighty and blessed superpower, but in truth, it's this ugly beast that devours the oppressed and quenches the prophetic words of the people of God.
Over the course of the last two years we've seen as white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched the streets, emboldened by a president who has their back. We've seen immigrants and refugees turned away, dehumanized, blamed for every ill of society. We've seen the voting rights of people of color, the dignity of our neighbors with disabilities, and the civil rights—no, the existence—of our transgender and nonbinary siblings under siege every day, day in and day out. And we've seen the degradation and objectification of women normalized, as an acceptable part of a culture where just, hey, boys will be boys. And worst of all, we've watched as a sizable percentage of people who identify as Christian claim these things as God's will and baptize them in the name of that unholy American trinity of patriarchy, white supremacy, and religious nationalism.
And I have to say, honestly, I was shocked by the election of Donald Trump and his support among white evangelicals. But you know who wasn't shocked? My friends of color. My Black, brown, Asian, and Indigenous friends saw this coming from a mile away. They didn't have to have an apocalyptic event for their eyes to be opened, because they'd been living in this reality for years, proving once again that prophetic voices always speak from the margins, and we would do well to listen to them.
So if we were to triage the victims of this administration and the culture that produced it, a bunch of disillusioned evangelicals would not be among the most seriously injured. That said, I know that for a lot of us who were raised evangelical, in that tradition, who met Jesus under some revival tent or at Vacation Bible School, the grief right now is raw and real. And so I want to hold space for that grief right now. I don't want to dismiss it as silly or naive. You have every right to be sad. You have every right to feel disappointed and betrayed. You have every right to feel angry. You might not have noticed this from my Twitter feed, but I'm angry too. And sometimes I like to hide that anger behind cynicism. Because I don't want to admit that, deep down, I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting for the pastors and leaders who raised me in the Christian faith, who introduced me to Jesus, who taught me everything I thought I knew about truth and morality and decency, to say, “Of course we don't support taking migrant children from their parents. Of course we don't think it's okay to grab women without their permission. Of course everything we taught you about truth wasn't just a big lie. Of course, we believe Jesus meant it when he said that whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.” I keep waiting and waiting and waiting, and I'm embarrassed to admit it. But every single time that doesn't happen, I'm disappointed. I'm hurt. I feel let down every single time.
Here's the thing: I would rather be angry than apathetic. I'd rather be sad than cynical. I'd rather lean into all of this hurt and frustration and confusion and doubt than numb myself in an attempt at self-preservation. Because as the patron saint of vulnerability likes to say— everybody knows exactly who I'm going to quote right now— Brene Brown: We can't selectively numb ourselves. So if in an effort at self-protection we numb ourselves to the pain of this present moment, and to the inevitable grief that comes with a changing and evolving faith, then we will numb ourselves to all that remains beautiful and hopeful and good and wise and resilient in this world and in one another, which is what this weekend is meant to celebrate.
When we numb in an attempt to protect ourselves from disappointment and risk, we stop taking action. We stop turning over tables. We stop marching with Black Lives Matter. We stop showing up for the hurting and the lonely and the sick. We stop taking the risk of following Jesus even when there's no guarantee. If our faith is going to survive in this environment, it's got to be tough enough to take a beating and tender enough to be moved, to be changed, and to take the risk of love.
I've heard people say that I'm sort of like the head of Evolving Faith and Sarah Bessey is kind of the heart, which makes sense. So it's kind of ironic that the charge I want to leave you with this weekend is feel your feels.
I'm not gonna cry but: Grieve what you have lost. Rage against the injustice you see around you. Laugh deeply with your new friends. And hope. Hope, even though it's risky, even though there's a chance you're going to be disappointed again. I can guarantee you, you're going to be disappointed again. You're going to be disappointed this weekend by something. There's not gonna be food or coffee or something's gonna go wrong. Or someone will say something deeply offensive from the stage.
I keep thinking about the women who showed up at the tomb on Easter morning. On the days when I believe this story, I'm struck by the fact that they showed up— shout out to everybody who knows exactly what I mean by that. On the days when I believe this story, I'm struck by the fact that they showed up with burial spices. They showed up ready to walk through the rituals of grief, and say goodbye to their friend.
That was women's work in those days, tending to those vulnerable things. But it's only in tending to the vulnerable things that we can expect to witness a miracle. I can't promise you resurrection. I've been told when you're planning an event to underpromise and over-deliver. So I cannot promise resurrection. But I can promise you companionship. I can promise you friends for the journey. I can promise you fellow travelers to help you carry those burial spices. And as we tend to the vulnerable things together, may the God of every season, the God of cave angelfish and autumn leaves, the God of survival and if not survival then death and resurrection, bless, preserve, and keep you, now and forever. Amen.
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Sarah: I have really dreaded listening to this sermon. Listening to Rachel's voice again, I think maybe dread is not quite the right word, but I don't know what I was really anticipating. But I took some time to listen to it quietly and privately before as we were preparing for this episode. And the thing that surprised me was how strangely comforted I was—and how often I laughed, because it was just so quintessentially Rachel to speak of death and resurrection, of hope and disappointment, of a time to mourn and a time to dance of evolution and apocalypse. Even permission for our faith to evolve again, even though now we're doing that on the other side of losing her, and so hearing her voice again, it was good. Not easy. But really good.
Jeff: It was really hard. It was good, but it was really, really hard.
Sarah: Mm hmm.
Jeff: One thing that struck me listening to that talk was Rachel's mention of what she called the unholy American trinity of patriarchy and white supremacy and religious nationalism. I guess what heartens me is that she was never willing to concede anything to those systemic sins. And at the same time, she was always ready to offer comfort and solidarity to any of us who were hurt by them. I don't get how she did it. She was always, always hopeful and always, always eager to get back to the good and holy work, not just of pushing back against these things, but also of offering a better, more life-giving way. If anything, that unholy trinity seems more present now than when she said those words. And I know I'm not alone in missing Rachel's voice in these times, these troubled times, because it's obvious to all of us that there's so much work that still needs to be done.
Sarah: Yes. I think one of the things that I found really refreshing and even instructive in my friendship with Rachel and in working alongside of her for these years is that she was never someone who saw hope as something that was easy or blind to the realities of what was in front of us, that she was able to hold and name things like that, while still turning her face towards what it would look like to dismantle them, what it would look like to live into something that's better. Another thing that really struck me when I was listening to this was, again, like most of us who preach or or teach in a church context, we’ll often start off by reading the text, reading a passage of scripture. But unlike the rest of us who are a bit more prone to peddle in certainties, after Rachel would read the Bible or read the text to the congregation, I heard her do this at Evolving Faith and also in other conferences where we were speaking— she used to say exactly what we heard there in that sermon where she said, “On the days when I believe this.” And I loved that about her. It spoke to me of her humility and honesty. Her wry admission of her own doubts. Her humor and refusal to take herself too seriously. Every time I heard her say that, there was just this audible sigh of relief from everybody in the room. And when she said that at Evolving Faith in particular, I tucked that moment into my heart, because I remember wishing that I had that kind of courage to be that hospitable. And it was a beautiful moment, I think, that really typified both her posture and I think the posture that we are even now wanting to cultivate. So at this point in Evolving Faith, she was sharing this message and I was sitting actually just behind her on stage. And I remember having this little blue notebook and just taking notes like crazy because, holy smokes, she could bring a word. And I have this almost body memory, like a visceral kind of memory, of just looking over at her in this moment and thinking, God, I love being alongside her. Just ridiculously fortunate to do good work with a good sister like her at my side. Just being at her side is probably one of the greatest honors of my life. And so with that in mind, I want to turn towards two people who have been fully at her side. And so joining us now are Dan Evans, Rachel's husband, and Amanda Opelt, Rachel’s sister. Hi, you two. I'm glad you're here with us.
Dan Evans: Thanks for having us.
Amanda Held Opelt: Thank you, Sarah.
Jeff: So I will be the one to ask the first hard and difficult question. How are you doing? And I know in this time and place, it's hard enough to answer that question, given everything that's going on in the world. But, Dan, let's start with you. How are you, and how are the kids?
Dan: So the “how are you doing?” question gets asked a lot, and I still haven't found the right answer, because so much of it depends on context, right? Like, today, all the immediate things are going well. So in that sense, I'm doing well. The kids are fed, I'm mostly fed. So, like, the day-to-day stuff, doing, we're doing well. But then there's like the other level, right? Where it's, like, how are you doing emotionally and all this. And that is something that I just, I'm learning to kind of carry with me. Like, the bad and the good at the same time. And, like, I still have a lot of grief. I think I've cried more this week than Rachel and I’s entire marriage, because there's just a lot of there's a lot of difficult things. We're recording this— it's June 5, that we're recording this, right? So Rachel's birthday is June 8, and she would have been 39. And that's in the back of my mind. And so I'm carrying that with me as I talk about how I'm doing. But then also I want to say we're doing well, right like today was a really hard day because I finally decided it was time to design her grave marker. So I went out, and I went to the funeral home, and while I'm there, it's like, well, how am I doing there? Well, I cried there, you know. But I don't think that crying— One thing I've learned is that like crying and grief, these things like, it's almost a skill, an ability to have these feelings and not feel, like, shame about them and just have them exist. And so in that sense, I'm actually doing well, like, I feel I'm learning how to deal with feelings better over this last year, better than I have a good bit of the rest of my previous life. So in that sense, I feel like I'm more connected. And I'm doing well there. So that question is— it's hard to quickly answer.
Sarah: Mm hmm. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I get that in terms of just there's what's happening in the exact moment and then everything that's happening underneath and constantly and always that's there. How about you, Amanda? How are you doing?
Amanda: Yeah, I I think that first year of grief is sometimes still so much about survival. You go into a bit of an autopilot mode, or I don't know sometimes I feel like it seems like I'm watching myself out of body a little bit and watching my family out of body a little bit. I guess that's a way of protecting yourself from the rush of feeling everything at any given time. So yeah, I think I've felt that tingling numbness a lot and now things are starting to fall out a little bit as you realize, This is real life for the rest of my life. And yeah, I miss Rachel. There's like a million conversations I want to have with her—the kind of things you can only talk about with your sister. And, you know, I'm not sure it ever gets easier. But as Dan has said, you do get stronger and there are a lot of really good things. My daughter's going to turn two soon. I'm looking outside at a beautiful field and a mountainside of horses running down towards the creek right now. I guess it’s just that Buechner quote. It says, like, Here's the world; terrible and beautiful things will happen. Don't be afraid. So just holding those two things in tension. So we're, we're, we're okay. We are okay.
Sarah: You've both been so generous to share publicly, just whether it's in writing or in essays and even on social media, with everyone, and we're just so grateful for how open- hearted and generous you've been. And you both have written incredibly beautiful and intimate, honest reflections, I think especially right around that one-year mark, or, you know, around so many milestones that we're sort of touching on right now. And for everybody who's listening, we'll link up to those in the show notes. And you'll get a chance to read down and Amanda's words firsthand, it's pretty incredible. I did have one question for you, Dan, that we actually ask of the Evolving Faith community often. And it's going to be part of this podcast moving forward as we incorporate the voices of the people who are in our community. And this is a really hard question to even ask. And so if you don't want to answer it, you get to say nowhere. So it can be as general or as particular as you want as silly or serious, whatever it is. I mean, to be perfectly honest, my answer to this question would probably be having baths but… So the question is, where are you finding hope right now?
Dan: So first, I have to talk about what I learned because I had to find out if I have hope. And so, first I learned, like, I have this tangled mess of simultaneous feelings, right? Like, grief can exist along with laughter. Then I realized somehow I do have this stubborn hope. And it's encased in, like, vines of grief. And then I learned that even when wounded, I still exist, and there's some core that's resilient. I can still change the diapers, I can still get the meals ready— like, something is still moving forward. And it slowly turned into, like, a superpower where it's like I learned I can do these incredibly difficult things, right? Like the time during Rachel's sickness, and then death, was a time where I had to do many— I had a lot of difficult choices and had to do it in not-ideal circumstances, and with a result, a crushing result, right, because she died. And so I kind of carry that with me. And every time there's something of a challenge that I run into in daily life, it's like, Man, I've done harder things than this, right? So I have this almost like a superpower feeling of like I can, I can still do this. A clarifying point came when I realized that after Rachel died, I got to keep what we'd already done as much as anyone can ever keep what's in the past. Like, in a way, everything in the past is equally lost already, right? So before I can understand hope, I have to understand, well, what did I lose? Because if I've only lost the things in the past, as much as anybody else has lost anything in the past, what did I actually lose? And what I learned was I lost what we'd imagined we'd have. I lost our imaginary future. Now, now that I understand what I lost, it's like, Okay, now let's go back to this question. What gives me hope? Well, it gives me hope that we still have a future in which to build good things. It gives me hope that people not yet born will read Rachel's words. Like, the thing that gives me hope is those kids that carry the signs during the protest. Those are the things that give me hope.
Sarah: It's beautiful, and hard and impossible, and so good.
Jeff: That is beautiful. Thank you, Dan. Amanda, I have a question for you. In Rachel's talk, she discusses the evolution and resilience of her faith. I'd love to hear a little bit about the evolution and resilience of yours. What's changed for you over the past year? And what has sustained your faith?
Amanda: Ah, wow. In some ways I feel like everything has changed. Like it's like I woke up on a new planet. There's something about losing your older sister who is served as, like, your kind of true north and your compass your whole life without you even knowing it. When you lose that person, everything gets a bit turned upside down, and you ask about resilience and faith and I just can't help but think of this story. My friend Sarah shared a story with me this week and it's actually a Native American legend and some places I've read say it's Sioux and others say it's Apache but it's a story of a very old woman who lives in a cave at the edge of the world. Maybe you've heard this story. And her whole life, she's been weaving this beautiful garment, like the most beautiful garment in the world, the most beautiful garment you could ever imagine. But one day, she turns her back. And in a moment, her pet dog starts pulling at the threads and unravels the whole thing and leaves it in a mess on the floor. And rather than despair and give up, what the old woman does is she finds the threads that are closest to her and simply begins weaving again. Like, I can think of no better picture of maybe the moment or the season when your faith comes unraveled. And that's maybe a little bit of a shameless plug to Rachel's first book, Faith Unraveled. But the task and I think the calling in that moment is to simply pick up whatever thread you see right in front of you and just begin weaving. Start somewhere. And gosh, I think that's an image that's pretty important and powerful for these heartbreaking days that we're living in. Like, we might not be able to imagine the beautiful tapestry put back together or imagine the whole garment put back together. But you can be faithful to pick up whatever thread, like whatever holy thread, is near you and start weaving. And I think that's what I've been trying to do this year is just weave my little threads in whatever way that I can. And, like, so what are those threads? Well, I think there's a thread that says Christianity has survived worse than my own personal faith crisis. And it's a thread that says that the Bible, like, as mystifying as it is sometimes, is still the most powerful and relevant book I've ever read. It's a thread that says, I don't know, the story of Jesus is a story of suffering, and that there's dignity and beauty and suffering and that God shows Himself most powerful when He shows Himself to be a servant. And that's, like, pretty revolutionary. And there's a little thread I'm trying to weave that says that I'm yoked to Jesus, meaning that there's still work to do. And Rachel had this another sign posted above her writing desk that said, “Show up for the work.” And I think that's what I'm trying to do is just show up for the work. And it's a little thread that says somehow as void as His presence can feel sometimes experientially, I still think and I still sense You're there, through all the changes, and all the things I've unlearned and relearned, that He is still guiding me. Like He still seems to be guiding me. So, yeah, I think I'm just kind of trying to weave the little threads this year.
Sarah: Mm hmm.
Jeff: That's a beautiful image. And maybe it's some small solace, that in so many cultures weaving is something people do in community, right?
Amanda: Right. Women are great at weaving. I've had some good women around me, some good elders around me, and I mean, like elders in the faith and some good, good people around me to weave together. And that's been really important.
Sarah: You know, one of the things that has become very clear, I think, over the last number of months is how seamless Rachel's life was. How it didn’t matter whether you knew her in one context at home or out at work or at a conference or on the page, or even on Twitter. She was the same person, in every single place. There was no, you know, forward-facing Rachel or something else that was hidden, and yet at the same time that that's true, the two of you knew Rachel in ways that the rest of us simply can't or wouldn't. So I guess the question I had for both of you is, what would you want us to know and remember about Rachel? Is there something about her work or her witness or her life that you think is really important for the folks who are listening to this to remember, or to hold close, even as we begin to move forward?
Dan: Yeah. So as many people know, Rachel was a huge Alabama Crimson Tide fan.
Sarah: She loved me even though my husband's a Huskers fan.
Dan: Right. And we went to a game, an Alabama game. And as we're walking in, there's this giant statue of Coach Saban. So Coach Saban's the current coach of Alabama. And Rachel rolled her eyes. Because she just thought it was absolutely ridiculous that anybody would have a statue built to them while they're still alive to see it.
Sarah: Hmm.
Dan: And so there's so many times when I just think, like, she didn't cast a shadow because she kept shining light on other people. And so people would be, like, they might say to Amanda or me or like, you know, “You're not in their shadow.” It's something that didn't even matter. It doesn't even really ring true to me when it's approached that way because, like, the kind of person that Rachel was was the kind of person that would roll her eyes at that statue. Like, she would kind of think it's ridiculous that we're having this conversation about her like she's anointed, you know. And to her core, to her core, she was a good person. That's all.
Sarah: Okay. Thank you for that. Amanda, did you have anything that you wanted to share?
Amanda: Dan, I really resonate with what you said. Because after Rachel died, I had so many people tell me, “You know, you don't. Yeah, you don't have to live in Rachel’s shadow.” And I just didn't even understand the statement. Rachel never made me feel that way. And Rachel was, she was really such a self-reflective person. She was so passionate about her convictions, and yet she was always humble enough to stop and to listen. change your mind or ask forgiveness or admit that she'd been wrong. Like, being wrong was always a possibility for her. She always had that on the table. And she had this, like, innate sense of when she crossed the line into virtue signaling or self-righteousness, like, she knew how to pump the brakes or direct us to other voices when she needed to be silent. And I think she knew that the road that leads to the kingdom is, like, truly narrow, not in the sense that it shuts people out or keeps people out, but more that—I think I've heard it described this way—is that it's just a very specific way of living. And like few can find it. Like the way of humility is really hard and hard to find. And somehow she found it. And she pursued it. And it was just part of her DNA. It was in her. And I think Jeff and I were talking at one point that we have no idea how it was that Rachel is able to make everyone feel truly seen—and so seen. And I think it was because she was humble enough to believe that everyone deserves to be seen. I think the only other thing I want to add is that I think Rachel really, really loved the Church. And I think the Church in America made this, like, really quick pivot from the apologetics movement to the apology movement, and Rachel truly thought there was a lot that the church needed to repent of. And she also believed in the Church—like, believed in who she, the Church, could be if she rose up and walked in that manner are worthy of her calling. Her criticism of the church was, I don't think was ever done out of contempt or cynicism, but out of love. Like, out of deep, deep love and deep, deep hope. Like, I think at her core, Dan, you said she was good. I also think at our core, she had hope. I think she was filled with hope. As hard as it is to be a hopeful person in a heartbreaking world, I think she had a lot of hope. And that's that one more little thread that I'm trying to weave right now.
Dan: Something I learned from her, like, I've been thinking about this for a while. But I learned, like Rachel didn't do things— didn't do everything perfectly. Like, there's stuff that she didn't do perfectly. Like, it's just how it is. But what I realized is like, the reason she didn't do everything perfectly is because she decided to put her effort towards the right things to do. Like maybe she left the sink, like, the sponge in the sink or something, where I wouldn't want to leave the sponge in the sink. But it's because she's like, contemplating how to make the entire world a better place. So it's like she didn't do things perfectly. She just decided to do the right things well. And she decided that's where she should put her effort. And it's something that I'm trying to incorporate now. And there's a big part of me that wishes I could take what I've learned from all of this and bring it back in time to her because she just had a lot of things right and she had her priorities straight.
Jeff: And I can say that I am more hopeful, more generous because of her example. Maybe slowly I'll become that person who doesn't leave the sponge in the sink—right now because I'm an asshole, and maybe someday I'll have some better priorities like Rachel.
Amanda: That's exactly the word I think of when I think of Jeff Chu. Said no one ever, except Jeff Chu.
Sarah: I think we have our first meme!
Jeff: Dan, Amanda, thank you so much for doing this hard thing with us, friends. We are so grateful. We love you.
Sarah: We love you both so much.
Dan: I simply ask that you do what Rachel did for me and edit me well.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Amanda: Jeff and Sarah, we appreciate you and all you're doing for Rachel's legacy. She loved you guys.
Sarah: Love you guys.
Jeff: Rachel's fingerprints are on this entire season of our podcast and really on all of the Evolving Faith. You will hear her name often, and so I won't pretend we aren't still heartbroken. But I also know and I want you to know very clearly that she wouldn't be too happy with us if we turned the Evolving Faith podcast or the Evolving Faith community into a shrine for Rachel.
Sarah: I mean, I'm not ruling out a statue. But…
Jeff: Sarah.
Sarah: Oh, fine.
Jeff: She would want us to serve you well, to have some laughs, to love each other well, and to not lose sight of the story, to not lose sight of each other, particularly those for whom the story is not always true.
Sarah: So with that in mind, I thought that we could begin to wrap up this episode by repeating Rachel's own words there at the end. Because that feels to me like she spoke out the work of this podcast. We cannot promise you resurrection. But we can promise you companionship. We can promise you friends for the journey. We can promise to help you carry those burial spices, because we are attending to the vulnerable things together. So may the God of every season, the God of cave angelfish and autumn leaves, the God of survival and, if not survival, then death and resurrection, bless, preserve, and keep you, now and forever. Amen.
Jeff: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Evolving faith podcast. You can find all of Rachel Held Evans’s books—Faith Unraveled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Searching for Sunday, and Inspired—wherever good books are sold. Ask at your local indie bookseller and they will be able to get them for you. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @evolvfaith. You can also find me on Twitter at @JeffChu and on Instagram at @byjeffchu.
Sarah: We also actually have a podcast community over on Facebook so you can come and hang out with us by searching for the Evolving Faith Podcast Afterparty. And I'm on Twitter and Instagram as @SarahBessey. All these links are in our show notes too, along with the transcript of the episode.
Jeff: If you would like to be featured in an upcoming episode of the Evolving Faith podcast, just call 616-929-0409 and tell us where you're finding hope out here in the wilderness. That's 616-929-0409. I feel like a televangelist asking you to call in but no request for money. Just call and let us know where you're finding hope. We would so love to hear your voices.
Sarah: You can also head over to evolvingfaith.com to sign up for our newsletter and to register for our 2020 live virtual conference coming up in October. That's it for us today, friends.
Jeff: And until next time, remember that you are loved.
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