Episode 5: Welcome to the Wilderness with Sarah Bessey
Hosted by Jeff Chu & Sarah Bessey
This week, we revisit the first Evolving Faith conference opening message from our co-founder Sarah Bessey as she welcomes everyone to the wilderness, talks about grief and hope, and possibilities in the wilderness. Jeff then interviews Sarah afterwards about what she’s learned since those days about lament, hope, and courage.
P.S. There is some adult language…and it’s not Jeff this time.
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Show Notes
The Evolving Faith Podcast After Party on Facebook - a place to discuss episodes and ideas with other listeners.
Our storefront at Bookshop.org where you can find all of the books by all of our speakers past and present.
Sarah Bessey
Socials:
Mentioned in the episode:
Mary Oliver poem quoted is called The Uses of Sorrow. It can be found online or in her poetry collections.
Austin Channing Brown’s episode of The Evolving Faith Podcast
You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Join our 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. Learn more about her books here.
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.
“And here’s the great thing about being in the wilderness. You get to go to the heights and the depths, and the length and the breadth of the love of God in a way you never could if you’d remained inside where it was safe.”
[IMAGE CONTENTS FOR THOSE USING SCREEN READERS: Ten graphics with quotes from the episode. First graphic: Brown and maroon illustrated flourish with the Evolving Faith logo and a photograph of Sarah Bessey. Text reads: “Welcome to the wilderness. Episode 5. Now Streaming. with Sarah Bessey.” Remaining graphics have the same illustration of blue, green, brown, and maroon illustrated dots and a line drawing of an open book with a plant growing out of the pages. All quotes unless otherwise noted are attributed to Sarah Bessey at The Evolving Faith Podcast Episode 5. Text for the remaining graphics are as follows: 2. “Your grief and your doubts and your cynicism and your anger do not make you a liability to Jesus. There is no part of you that is a liability to Jesus.” 3. “You have ended up in the wilderness, not in spite of your faithfulness, but because of it.” 4. “Thank God for low bars.” Attributed to Jeff Chu. 5. “The wilderness is the place where you meet with God face to face, without anything standing between you.” 6. “The love of God is for you. It has always been for you. You are that loved, you have always been that loved.” 7. “I can't do anything to make God love me more or less and there is freedom in that. It cannot be taken away from me by anyone removing their approval.” 8. “We need to become brave because God is at work restoring all things and redeeming all things resurrecting and I want to be in on that. I don't want to miss that, because I was afraid.” 9. “And here's the great thing about being in the wilderness. You get to go to the heights and the depths, and the length and the breadth of the love of God in a way you never could if you'd remained inside where it was safe.” 10. “Never trust a Pentecostal who says she's going to pray quickly.”]
Transcript
SARAH: Hi, friends, I'm Sarah Bessey.
JEFF:
And I'm Jeff Chu.
SARAH: Welcome back to 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're all about hope. And we're 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. There's room here for everyone.
JEFF: There is room here for you.
SARAH: Welcome back friends. This is Episode Five of The Evolving Faith Podcast. Before we get started, don't forget that tickets for Evolving Faith 2020 are now on sale! Our wilderness looks a bit different this year obviously. And so we have shifted to a live virtual conference. It's on October 2nd and 3rd but you will have access to the videos on demand until April 1 of 2021. We are welcoming incredible leaders like Kate Bowler and Barbara Brown Taylor, Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Sherrilyn Ifill, Jen Hatmaker, Propaganda, Padraig O Tuama, and so so many more. Go to evolvingfaith.com and register now.
Now, today, today is the day I have dreaded. It’s my turn to be uncomfortable and cringe-y. Why are we like this? Jeff, why is it so easy to share and celebrate literally every other speaker but our own selves? I think I have lost count at this point of the number of times I've tried to quietly erase my own episode from this season, but you keep thwarting me.
JEFF: I think it's become one of my missions in life to thwart you on a regular basis.
SARAH: It's a true vocation. You’re really called.
JEFF: I believe it. The Spirit is moving. And anyway in the spirit of not just hearing our own voices. Friends, a reminder that we would love to hear from you. If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming episode of the evolving faith podcast, just call 616-929-0409 we'd like to know where you are finding hope out here in the wilderness 616-929-0409 We love hearing your voices.
SARAH: Today's episode features my opener for Evolving Faith, right at the very start of the conference. And so in a way, it sets the table for everything that was about to come. I was really, really glad that I made the decision to go first. Everything that came after was so, so incredible. So if all I did was set the bar nice and low, great, it was a good thing to do.
So I remember coming into the room that day feeling very almost overwhelmed, right, because it was a really weird and wonderful thing when something that you have dreamed about and worked towards actually becomes reality. There was almost a surreal sense when I went in to the main area there that we had at Montreat and looked out at all of these people, right, like 1500 beautiful faces and all these thousands more people on a live stream, apparently, and it was really humbling and terrifying. Like they all showed up. Yeah, that sense of being humble and terrified is pretty much how I'm feeling today. And so really nothing's changed.
JEFF: Well, so one thing has changed right since October 2018. And that is that we've become friends. Isn't it weird that we didn't even know each other before Evolving Faith?
SARAH: I cannot even remember a time when you were not trying to thwart me,
JEFF: I think of all the opportunities I have missed to embarrass you publicly. And I will revel in every single one.
SARAH: Oh, can we go back into your episode again?
JEFF: Like right now, I'm going to read your bio, and I will savor every second of it. Ah, Sarah Bessey is one of the original co creators of Evolving Faith. Now she serves as co leader and co host for the community, alongside myself and our partner Jim Chafee. She's also the critically acclaimed and best selling author of Jesus Feminist and Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith. Her most recent book, Miracles and Other Reasonable Things was recently released and she has a new collaborative book project called A Rhythm of Prayer coming out this fall too. She serves as the president of the board for Heartline Ministries in Haiti. She also writes the popular and beloved newsletter Field Notes. Sarah was born and raised in the prairies and foothills of Western Canada. But she calls Abbotsford…(starts laughing)
SARAH: Do you need me to do it for you?
JEFF: I mean, I've tried to quit so you can do this whole thing yourself. But…
SARAH: if anybody gets to quit, it’s me. Go on.
JEFF: Okay, one more time.
Sarah was born and raised in the prairies and foothills of Western Canada, but she now calls Abbotsford British Columbia - or as she so endearingly says it Abbotts-ford. She's been married for nearly 20 years to Brian and they have four kids ranging from high school to kindergarten. Friends, here is the one and only Sarah Bessey speaking at the first Evolving Faith gathering in Montreat, North Carolina.
SARAH: Oh my goodness.
Hi.
This is a lot to take in.
Do you mind just giving me a second as to catch my breath before I begin Jesus?
Spirit. You are disruptive. And we love you. Would you give us eyes to see and ears to hear? Would you give us hearts that understand what it is you want to be doing in us and through us and with us this weekend? Would you help me to get out of the way? Our hands are open. We have released a breath it feels like we had been holding for a really long time. Amen.
All right. Well, welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Thoughts and prayers for everybody else who's still on Pacific Time. Who planned this? Not a good plan. I regret everything.
Special welcome to everybody who's listening on the live stream. We're really glad that you're here with us as well.
There's so many ways that I have wanted to begin our time together and to have this opportunity to be able to talk to you and share a little bit about what our vision is and our hopes are, even for our gathering here in our time together. I'll be honest with you that I have found myself really strangely weepy. Jim and I are both the weepers in this relationship. (to Rachel) You're not? Yeah.
Rachel regularly is telling us to get it together while Jim and I hold each other.
And as I have felt, you know, this, this sense of preparation and being able to get ready. I mean, I I'm under no illusions, you all know that I am like overly earnest and sincere to a fault. And I was joking with Jeff Chu last night, I said, I'm pretty sure I might be the Molly Weasley in this gang.
You know, I'm just really motherly and like to hold people and kinda want to cook for them. But also, I'm totally here to kick some serious ass if necessary. So if Harry Potter has taught us nothing, it's never underestimate the women who knit. So that's just good, that's just good theology.
I think the reason why I have been so introspective and kind of weepy and almost not really knowing how to open up this immediate session is because as Jim said, we have really been carrying you and the dream of you in our hearts for almost two years. And in a lot of ways, I thought of probably more than a dozen ways to be able to welcome you. I thought maybe I would take some time and share with you my own story of deconstruction and rebuilding and what that has looked like. And then I remembered I wrote like, 60,000 words about that already, and everybody's tired of it. You know, I wanted to kind of basically, every single topic we're talking about this weekend, things like politics and justice and art and scripture and church and feminism and all these things. I was like, I want to talk about all of them too.
But then I realized we had an entire team of people who do that much, much better than I do.
And you know, I thought for a long time about actually, you know, I wrote an entire sermon about everything that Doctor Who can teach us about embracing regeneration. I will preach it someday, but I know only 10 of you would have appreciated it this morning. You haven't had enough coffee for that yet. You need to be caffeinated to deal with full level geeks like myself and so I'll just tuck that one away. I considered even doing you know a little bit of like old fashioned like real tent revival, Pentecostal like preaching. I mean, I'm not Jonathan Martin, but I can hang.
I left my flags and my tambourines at home. So you're all welcome.
I won't tell you about the bottle of anointing oil I have hidden in my purse.
It's adorable. You think I'm kidding.
But over and over as I prayed, and I waited in that space of saying, What is it? Why is it that I feel this sense almost of, I don't know, waiting. You know, maybe in an old life, I would have called it tarrying on the Lord maybe.
I realized that it wasn't that I needed to talk about what I wanted to talk about. Otherwise, we'd probably be talking about Time Lords and knitting already.
But instead, what I actually needed to do was talk to you about maybe what you needed to hear. And so then at that place, I began to sort of wait and sit with Jesus sit in that place of open hands and just kind of say, You're always up to something. You are always up to something. So thank you for letting me be part of it. We are not performing or orchestrating or manipulating that instead, would you just help me not to miss my cue to cooperate with you? And Spirit would you do what only you can do?
And it feels like this thin place between heaven and earth for a lot of us. A lot of us haven't been in a space like this in a really long time. And it took a tremendous act of faith and courage for you to be here.
As we began to kind of envision this gathering I remember saying to Rachel and Jim right at the get go that our our intention and our heart behind it wasn't for you to go home from this with a nice new tidy set of answers. Right? Where you feel like maybe you have lost a lot of your your foundation or your understanding. And a lot of times this is a season or a moment in your faith development that we don't shepherd super well in the church. And we feel very alone in it. And so our heart right from the get go was never this sense of wanting to just kind of say, Here's new and better information to be a progressive sort of fundamentalist. Good job. I think what we were yearning for is maybe what we wished we would have had 10 or 15 years ago when we ourselves were going through a lot of evolution and shifting and changing in our faith, which is we wanted to feel a little bit less alone.
And we wanted to borrow some hope from one another when we felt like we had none left.
But what we were wanting really was to be reminded that we are held always and completely and fully beloved by God in this moment in our right now walking around lives, that it's not a matter of performance, or of getting everything right or ticking every box on a checkmark. That instead we wanted this to be almost like our own collective act of resistance, this flinging open wide, the doors and the gates and that we would be setting up tables in the wilderness for people to feast, that we would set up these signs along the path pointing the way that God's goodness and abundance and wholeness and healing and possibilities of resurrection. That we wanted this for you to be an incarnation of hope and the beginning of a possibility of healing. And so really my expectations were very reasonable.
You know, if there is one thing that I have learned over the years of walking this path myself, and gathering alongside people like you, all over the world, it is that almost all of us actually crossed that initial threshold into the wilderness because of grief. That is because of our sorrow, that oftentimes we can stay at that threshold in an intellectual space for a really long time, where we think about things, and we're wrestling with theology. And it's really fun to have debates. And I've never thought about this. And I'd really like to explore this idea or what this might mean, and how this might actually turn out in my life, but it is actually often our grief that is the thing that forces us across a threshold we maybe weren't even wanting to go across. And then you find yourself in this liminal place of the wilderness, where everything you thought you knew about God and about yourself and how you understand the world suddenly is disappearing like steam on a mirror. And it's in that place that we find ourselves because then it's no longer theology for an intellectual exercise for a lot of fun and having a debate on Twitter. Suddenly you feel like this is theology for you to survive, for rebuilding your life.
One theologian I've really grown to love over the last number of years is Walter Brueggemann. And he wrote in The Prophetic Imagination, that real hope only comes to us after despair. And that sounded really true to me. Do you ever have those moments where you hear somebody say something, It's almost like a bell rings in your heart? And you're like, Yes, that is true. And that happened for me, I think because I believe and I have experienced that it's only after we have tasted despair, it is only after we have known that deep sadness of unfulfilled dreams and promises and broken dreams. It's only when we have fully entered into the lament of our times that we have begun to connect with the sadness and the grief that is the undercurrent for almost all of the rage and the anger and the fear. That we are experiencing and disguising our grief up with, that it's only when we can actually name it and identify it that we begin to even see that there's a need to imagine a better way. And this is the reason why hope is so incredibly subversive for people like us because we are daring to admit that not all is as it should be. And that we have a longing for something that would be beautiful and whole and good. And we are not settling any longer for carbon copies, or a way to cut things out and say it's good enough. We need something with teeth and with strength. And so this is part of what we are gathered here to hold out for and prophesy for, and create for and disrupt into, that we are holding out for there's an indigenous theologian named Randy Woodley who calls it not the kingdom of God, but the community of creation. That this is the thing that we are holding out for, something that is communal, and something that is for the all encompassing of all of us and the land as well. That is something where there would be oaks of righteousness that would be towering, that the the fruit and the leaves of the trees for where we are planted by streams of living water would be for the healing of the nations, that it would be something that we would begin to see that our that our swords would be beaten down into plowshares, and we would begin to see joy come in our mourning and we would have redemption and justice.
And so what we want is to be gentle with your grief. I want you to make some room for your grief this weekend. Maybe you haven't been able to make eye contact with her for a while. She may actually be your greatest teacher this weekend.
And the reason why I say that, and it's not because things like anger or fear are negative emotions. I think that they’re benign, they're often great indicators. In fact, I tend to believe that oftentimes your anger and your joy where those two things need that intersection, that's often where your calling is hiding.
But I don't know that anger is a place where I want to build my home.
And so what would it begin to reimagine what life looks like on the other side of the wall that I keep hitting? The thing that I have kept very close to me and have never lost sight of as we have prepared and prayed is a reminder that we have all experienced loss. That we lost a version of ourselves, that we have lost a version of God that we lost, perhaps for some of you what you would have been in previous life called a worldview. Bless it. That maybe you've lost all the ways that used to relate to God. The ways you used to pray, the ways you used to find meaning, have all just disappeared for you. Perhaps there's a lot of people here who are so deeply grieved and sorrowed by injustice that we are like Rachel who is crying for her children. We are crying out at the gates for the vulnerable in the marginalized and the oppressed and our grief has been there with us. We have lost our certainty and our right answers. We have lost our sense of exceptionalism. Some of us have lost things that were incredibly meaningful to us like our faith communities. Some of you have lost your families. Some of you lost some of the deepest friendships of your life. And you've lost things that the rest of us can really only imagine.
Your wounds and your grief… Listen to me, Church. I'm going to say Church a lot this weekend because this feels like church to me.
I want you to understand and hear from me that your grief and your doubts and your cynicism and your anger do not make you a liability to Jesus.
There is no part of you that is a liability to Jesus. That you are right where you need to be. In fact, it is one of the deepest beliefs of my heart, that you have ended up in the wilderness, that you have landed in this place, not in spite of your faithfulness, but because of it. That it is the invitation of the Holy Spirit that has led you to this place.
And so I want you to understand and know that there is room for your whole self here with us. That you do not need to pretend to be less sad than you are. You do not need to pretend to have it more together than you are. You do not have to pretend to be less angry or cynical. If you feel hopeless and uncomfortable. We know that it is a huge risk for some of you to be here and we are grateful that you trusted us.
A lot of you are in very different stages in this process as well. Some of you are just at the beginning moments, are beginning to sort of pull down these edifices that were built around you, were given to you and now we're starting to feel really tight and constrictive and you're wondering if faith is really ever supposed to be just a really small, tight, narrow white room that you've kind of been in. And you are the ones who are welcome here if you're just embarking on all of this.
And some of you have been sitting in the ruins for a really long time. And you need to know that you are welcome here.
And some of you have hit a point of actually beginning to re envision and reimagine what rebuilding would look like. That you want to create something beautiful and life giving, and joy filled and honest and unexpected, that you are the ones who are now building these kind of homemade altars in the wilderness and you're handing water to one another and saying Hang in there, it gets better. Keep walking, it gets better, keep pushing, keep leaning in, and it gets better.
And all of you are welcome here. Some of you might have even hit the point where you've begun to forgive the people who built the edifice you had to tear down.
Maybe you even began to forgive yourself.
That's a big part of what a lot of us have to walk through. And some of us you know, the truth is Is that we are all still evolving. We are all still changing and shifting. And sometimes maybe weekends like this are maybe just a marker in the sand saying we survived. We made it this far. In my house, we call stubbornness, faithfulness, sounds more churchy.
So good for you for being faithful.
And there is room for you in this place. And in this moment.
You know a lot of times it feels like when we find ourselves at a crossroad of faith, or crossroad in our spiritual development. Oftentimes, we almost believe or get this idea in our head that there's there's only two options that we have. And those options are that we either need to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend that everything is fine. We double down on it. This is fine, everything's fine. There's nothing to see here. I'm just gonna keep shoving all my questions, all my doubts, all my wonders all my aching under the shelf under the shelf. We're just going to keep doing this as long as possible. Look how fine we are. Or we think that our only other option then is to burn it all down.
I'm guessing which group of people I have in the room. I mean, I've lit a few matches.
But part of I think what we are here for is at a certain point, you realize you're sitting in a pile of ashes. And we want to begin to reimagine perhaps the possibility of a third way away, that actually takes us through the wilderness alongside of one another, not alone and fully embodied.
I wanted to warn you at the get go to that you're probably going to have your toes stepped on a time or two. That you will be challenged by maybe styles, or people who are different than you are, who think differently we have worked really hard to assemble a team team here who are very different from one another, in style in theology and in belief because we believe that everyone's here for someone. And I wanted to also give you permission. I would even say permission maybe encouragement if I wanted to go like straight King James, I'd say exhortation. So I exhort, exhort you to do what works for you.
If there are practices or moments or things that are happening that you have been missing, and you want to lean into whether it's things like communion or devotions or singing or corporate prayer, or whatever else, we welcome and want you there, but you need to understand that if that is not helpful for you, you are fine with us. If you need to sneak out. Nobody's going to judge you at any moment. You need to do what works for you and look after that. And there is space for you to be able to have that. But I would encourage you - exhort - to stay open stay open for the possibility of resurrection in places you thought were dead.
Stay open to the possibilities of renewal, and restoration of things you thought you would never feel breathing again.
One of the things that I have found to be incredibly true about the wilderness is that this is a place and this is a moment in our lives, when we encounter - without filter, or measure without condition, or boundary with intimacy and beauty and strength -that wild and inclusive and generous, welcoming, healing power of God. That this is the place where you meet with God face to face, without anything standing between you.
And so one thing I wanted to tuck into your heart and into your mind as we embark on all of these incredible conversations over the next couple of days is I wanted to remind you, I wanted to hear at least from me, that that love of God that is so wild and generous and inclusive and welcoming and invitational and creative and disruptive, that that love of God is for you. It has always been for you. You are that loved, you have always been that loved. One of the things I would like to ask you is what you actually let yourself believe, even if it's just for a day or two, that that love is kind and patient towards you. That it is kind and it is patient with you.
And the thing I love about this is that then these very places that we have fought where our places of weakness become our places of strength, that the very places where we have felt dry and parched, and empty become the places where rivers of living water begin to stream and we begin to realize that you are so loved, that you are so loved, that this love is what is holding us. And keeping us. As we were driving out here I was reminded of the words from Paul over in the book of Ephesians, where he says, I asked God that with both feet firmly planted on love, that you would be able to take in as all God's people should, that you would be able to take in the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. That you would reach out and experience the breadth and test its length and plumb the depths, rise to the heights that you would live a full life, full in the fullness of God.
And here's the great thing about being in the wilderness. You get to go to the heights and the depths, and the length and the breadth of the love of God in a way you never could if you'd remained inside where it was safe. This is your place to actually encounter and experience the fullness that your life would be. A full life, not a life of spiritual or intellectual dishonesty. But instead it would be a life that is full in the love of God. And so I would encourage you, as you embark on these days, to see your evolution, to see this moment in your life and in our time, that you're wandering in the wilderness would sing with an ethic and song of love. That your evolution would be shaped by love, that you are evolving not into someone who has better and righter answers. But we are evolving into people who are more loving, people who are more deeply acquainted with what it means to not only understand our own belovedness but the compassion and loving kindness and goodness of God for all of us.
And I'll be honest with you, the reason why that is, is because it turns out that that way through the wilderness, the way that we have been looking for and longing for and fighting for that, that path out and through and in the middle of all of that has only ever been love. That is our only ever deliverance is love. And this is the place where we end up finding ourselves. And so I wanted you this weekend, Church to understand that we rejoice over you, that we rejoice because you are here. We rejoice that you are where you are. It is our prayer that you would taste and see and experience the love of God in a way that perhaps you haven't felt in a really long time that you would find a lot of company out here in a wilderness that you thought was empty.
I want to pray for you really quickly. And I mean, at this time. Never trust a Pentecostal who says she's going to pray quickly, this is true.
At the end of everything, I'll be praying for you all on Saturday night before we all head home as well. So I'll save most of it for there. But let me just say this. I pray that you would sense the delight of Jesus. That you would know somehow whether it's through conversations with one another you would be sensing that She is holding you tight. That you will be blessed with discomfort and wonder and curiosity. I pray that you would learn, that you would be challenged.
I pray that you would be quieted by love this weekend. That all your striving and your wrestling and your hustling, and all of your frenzy around these things, there would be a pause on it, a moment for you to know that love is with you. And that love is mighty to save you that that love is your home and your path, your calling card and your witness.
And so Spirit we asked you, would you do what only you can do this weekend?
Would you breathe new life into our tired and exhausted and broken hearts? I ask that you would assure, that you would sweep into our preferences and our opinions with fresh wind and fresh fire. I pray that you would all experience Your wild and inclusive and generous and invitational welcoming love and I pray that you would surprise us with hope. And with joy.
Amen.
JEFF: Sarah, I think it's hilarious how you always say you have nothing to say. And believe me when I say that this is meant with all the love in my heart. I don't know if it's you or a Pentecostal thing, but nothing to say seems to take at least 25 minutes. Look, I grew up Southern Baptist so I can appreciate it. Anyway, that was a really beautiful 25 minutes. It reminded me that you have plenty that's life giving and wonderful and important to say.
SARAH: Don't think I fooled by you being nice, but I don't know if we're going to get a chance to actually share the benediction from Evolving Faith this season. But I remember standing up to give the benediction at the end of our two days together and telling everyone because they all stood up telling everybody to go ahead and sit down because it was going to take a while and they all laughed and I was like, No, seriously. It's adorable that you think I'm kidding, but like, sit down. We're going to be here for a minute because apparently my motto is like Why say something in 15 minutes if I can say it in 45 or an hour. You can take the girl out of the Pentecostal tradition, but you will take the long form sermon from my cold dead hands. We are barely getting warmed up after 15 minutes. So I think I deserved commendations for only being about 25 minutes. I would probably perish if I had to preach in mainline denomination on a regular basis.
JEFF: It would be a series in one morning. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is the theme of lament. I know that many of us have been thinking more about the place of lament in Christian life, especially in a time of such righteous anger and sorrow. And honestly, this isn't a practice I grew up with. So how do you actually practically lament?
SARAH: You know, I think that that's part of why I wanted to talk about it during that talk is because it is such an under appreciated and overlooked spiritual discipline and one that honestly has never come naturally to me. I don't know if that says much, you know, personality or just even how you're wired, but also I come from a faith tradition that is very much the, you know, happy clappy, we've got the victory, prosperity gospel kind of variety, which is a whole other podcast episode. And so the narratives that I came of age in the faith with were very much ones that celebrated the victory, right? You were never getting sick, you were coming down with a healing. You know, we only celebrated really simple wins. And so the idea of lament was almost perceived as a lack of faith. And so one of the things that actually gave me a path to learn how to practice or make room for space for lament came from Frederick Buechner. And he wrote, it was a bit of a riff off of King Lear. And he wrote that “the weight of these sad times we must obey and must obey just because they are sad times, sad and bewildering times for people who try to hold on to the gospel and witness to it somehow, when in so many ways, the weight of our sadness all but crushes the life out of it.”
So for me, lament, in my path of lament has been learning to obey the sadness, to not try to explain it away, or gloss over it, that acknowledging that even at the very start of Evolving Faith was really important to me because my own deconstruction, you know, that really kind of, you know, I would say, really kind of, that threshold crossing that I kind of talked about in there that, you know, it's about, you know, 15 - 16 years ago now. It was really launched by grief. Right? I had pretended to be fine for what too long and so, learning to lament, to obey the sadness allowed me to actually begin to heal right? to name What was broken and wrong or sad or and unjust because, you know until we name the thing until we find a way to work through that grief until we learn it is okay to feel sad. Even as Austin said in her sermon, a couple episodes back right? to feel angry, to pray and shout and cry, we will literally never be able to rejoice with even any authenticity because we haven't learned to weep with those who weep. And that I think includes ourselves.
JEFF: So you're talking about naming grief. But earlier you also spoke of grief being a teacher. And I found that image really compelling. And I wanted to know what have you personally learned from grief?
SARAH: Um, I hate your questions. Okay.
You're very good at this. This is an interesting question. To think about, I think from this vantage point where we find ourselves now, when I gave this sermon, there was a lot happening behind the scenes for me. I had within that year been diagnosed with what will be a lifelong chronic illness that had meant major changes in my life and Evolving Faith that Evolving Faith was actually one of my last public speaking events for a long time. As I surrendered my vocation to preach, and travel and there was a lot of layers of loss there. I had been on a steady path of loss in my capacity and losing who I was before in my old life and even my identity, I think, in a lot of ways, right? And that sped up a lot after that event. And just a few short months later, one of my best friends lost her teenage son, and of course, the thing that was the most I think devastating for you and I that we've walked through together was losing Rachel, which still feels completely impossible. And so for our friends who are listening, even right now, and as part of the Evolving Faith community, I can imagine that almost all of us are kind of filling in our own blanks here, right that none of us gets to live our life unscathed or unmarked by sorrow.
JEFF: I think all of our lives are marked by sorrow, if we are willing to stop and consider that, but maybe many of us just choose not to.
SARAH: Yeah, you know, I think that that is one of the biggest shifts for me, from my childhood faith or the faith tradition in which I, you know, grew up which really highly valued the illusion of control. That was a realization that, Oh, I'm really not in control. And it's not why me but why not me? Right, but life is equally tough but also fragile. And I think that I have become more acquainted with that fragility and that loss of control since that conference, which has been good for me. And the thing is, I think that we can talk about grief, like, I don't know, the way that it irritates me the most, if I can be that honest, is that it's like sanctified or precious, right? Or even theoretical, like we'll talk about it like it's somewhere up here. But the truth that a bit grief that I've learned is that it is a very, it has a weight, and a loneliness. And I don't have the nice and tidy answers that can suffice or fix anything about that. I think the biggest thing that grief has taught me even the gift of grief, I would dare to say now from this, this place in my life anyway. You know, in this in the same spirit of Mary Oliver's poem, right? “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift,”
And the gift of that darkness, the gift of the grief was beginning to know and truly, live within the truth that God is with us. I think I always skipped over the name of God being Emmanual, that God is with us. But now this the the teaching of grief for me has been that it's God with us not only when we are winning, or when we have the victory, or when we are shiny and happy and everybody thinks that we're amazing, or we're never sad or never angry, that for me, it means that God is with us in that hospital room. And God was with us at that graveside. And God is with the ones for whom the good news maybe is truly good news and those who just even aren't sure yet, or have had it weaponized against them right? that God is with everyone for whom the truth is maybe not yet true. That God is with like, literally with the mourning, and the scared and the sick and the angry and those of us who have had to learn that really great and terrible knowledge of the presence of God and are thin and weary places. Grief taught me that the love of God and the presence of God is kind and patient. And I'm grateful for that.
JEFF: That is so beautiful. Thank you. So there are a couple of times in your talk where you mentioned courage and risk. And I think those are related to the naming of and the teaching from grief that you just were discussing. And I think of the courage it takes to show up in a space like this one, to ask those bold questions and to do that hard work, not just to deconstruction, but also of reconstruction, to know when to build on grief rather than simply wallowing in it. And I'm wondering what advice or strategic insights you might have for folks to understand how to build up that kind of courage.
SARAH: You know, that's a funny one for me because I'm actually not a naturally brave person at all. My primary motivation in almost every scenario is to avoid conflict. I have always found it, I don't know, odd my vocation has led me to the kind of work that I do, because it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense actually, on the surface, right? that a lot of the work that I do that requires a lot of, you know, courageous conversations and conflict, right? politics, patriarchy, all these other kinds of things, justice. And so for me, learning to be brave has been learning to practice bravery. I think I used to think that being courageous was something you either had or you didn't. And maybe that's true to some extent. Maybe there are some people who are more geared towards being brave or fearless. Learning instead that it is actually a practice, that it's like a muscle you can build up, that it gets familiar, the more that you begin to walk it out.
I think the other thing too that was helpful for me was acknowledging that just because I finally did the brave thing, I said the thing, sent the email, I went to the meeting, I did, I had the conflict, I did whatever I needed to do, that I wouldn't always be rewarded with everything turning out well. Right? I think I thought that Oh, if I show up and do the thing, then surely all the path will open before me. No, that's not true. Right? Sometimes the thing that you are most afraid will happen happens. Sometimes you lose people. Sometimes you lose relationships. You can lose your church, you can can lose community and belonging. Right? And Jen Hatmaker talked about that in her episode last week.
But the other thing that I realized is that it's worth it. Right? It's worth it. being courageous is a practice and a spiritual discipline. And so in terms of like, advice or strategic insights like I don't, I've never really been like a, hey, here's three steps to do anything. And I don't think that that's really how most things work. But one of the things, Well, a couple of things that have helped me. That being becoming courageous was deeply rooted in learning that my identity was first and primarily as loved, that God loved me, all of me, and that I had worth and value not because of what I did, or believed or professed or accomplished, but simply because God is actually love. And so in that sense that gives me the most courage is knowing I can't do anything to make God love me more or less and there is freedom in that. It cannot be taken away from me by anyone removing their approval.
And so the other thing I've learned too, is that you can't usually be brave all by yourself, that we need each other. But being together makes us braver for me being around really strong and confident. dangerous people in particular has made me stronger and more confident, according to some of the churches that our listeners go to also dangerous. You make me braver, Jeff, your friendship has definitely made me more courageous.
I know I'm going on a bit. And so I'll just simply add this I think, to wrap up that question again, going back to the fact that Pentecostal might say something in 15 minutes if you can take 45, I had to learn that getting braver had a purpose beyond myself, and an end game even, right? that it would it would definitely be enough if it was just about me getting my shit together and becoming a grown up lady, but I have had to learn that bravery has, its communal. I didn't need to become braver just so I could like live my truth and give the establishment the middle finger or be more right but I needed to learn how to speak up and speak out and take a stand and be in conflict because God is at work in the world and I have good work to do in the world. We all do. We need to become brave because God is at work restoring all things and redeeming all things resurrecting and I want to be in on that. I don't want to miss that, because I was afraid. And we can't do that if we're always afraid of conflict or afraid of evil or afraid of injustice or even honestly, just the ordinary things of being disliked, of being afraid of being disliked or misunderstood or misrepresented.
JEFF: So I think we have your next book title “Getting Your Shit Together and Becoming a Grown Up Lady.” I think it’s so Sarah Bessey.
SARAH: I don’t know. That definitely falls into like a certain brand of like white Christian lady literature so maybe that would be good.
JEFF: Anyway, when you're talking about being afraid now you're speaking my language, because I know intimately what it means to be afraid. So as a person too often governed by fear, and I hate how good you are at convicting me of that. It really resonates when you talk about togetherness, because the only way I can get through this life and through my fear is with other people. So I want to go back to a phrase you use near the start of your talk, which has stuck with me. You talked about borrowing hope from one another. And I'm curious, who are you borrowing hope from these days?
SARAH: That's a good question. Again, you with the questions. I you know, I'm always really have these last couple of years honestly, I've gotten a tremendous amount of hope from the Evolving Faith community. You have all been so engaged, and so brave and unwilling to concede Jesus and the church to religious nationalism, or white supremacy and patriarchy, I feel very fortunate to be part of this really good and dangerous community, the way that they loved us through all of our transitions these last couple of years and changes and losses, our own grief, the way that they have lamented with us and hoped with us has been really beautiful and I'm really grateful for that. I also borrow a lot of hope from some of the theologians and who have deeply shaped my own imagination, I think especially the last number of years. Those people who read scripture from the margins or what Austin called reading from the underside, right? These theologians and teachers and leaders even like the ones we're listening to right now, in this season, or even next season, they give me such hope.
I borrow a lot of hope from my friends, who know how to lament and also laugh sometimes in the best, in the same conversation. And my kids, maybe that's a bit of a cliche answer, but it's true, right? My kids give me a tremendous amount of hope. They see the world really beautifully and with a lot of enthusiasm and they keep me grounded in the reality that includes not only grief and lament, but also joy, and good work and fun and laughter.
I do borrow a lot of hope from ordinary life. Honestly. Small things like cleaning my house or reading a really good book or going for a walk in the woods or, you know having a crowded table in my kitchen - obviously pre Coronavirus.
But I borrow a lot of hope from the vision of shalom that I find in the Gospel. And it's still incredibly compelling to me. I see a vision there of flourishing that includes everyone and I just have not been able to get over that. I really believe in it still, I borrow a lot of hope from like Isaiah, for instance, right? I often return back to certain passages in that book in particular to remember all right, like, right, this is, this is what we're moving towards that the desert and the parched land. We'll be glad that our wilderness will rejoice and blossom. We talk a lot about wilderness here at Evolving Faith and that vision of the wilderness being a place of rejoicing and blossoming, that sort of language and that vision for the world. That gives me a lot of hope.
JEFF: Okay, you're gonna get a little bit of mercy. This is the last question. And this is something I've really been thinking a lot about. You end your talk with a brief explanation of love. And we end this podcast every week reminding people that they are loved. So, what makes you Sarah feel loved? How have you learned to receive love? How do you do it?
SARAH: That is…that is another good question. Um, you know, it's maybe an interesting one too, because now that I have studied - I mean, progressive Christian alert, we're gonna talk about the enneagram - But now that I've studied the enneagram a lot more, because I now genuinely believe actually that that's like the gift of my type. I'm a type nine. And so maybe I don't get to take a ton of credit for it, that we are able to abide within holy love in a way that that feels very natural. Almost like a like, who we actually are, right? That receiving and giving love but genuinely abiding in that is part of how we are made when we're healthy. And sure enough, you know, it is actually my absolute core conviction. The thing that I think I know more than almost anything else that I know in my life is how deeply and completely and fully loved we are. There are times when I wish that I could let people live in my brain for a while, like they brought a holiday because it is a nice place to live from right that can being so convicted and having that as your core wiring that you are loved. And you are loved, and you are loved, that we are loved.
And I think maybe an answer your question about learning how to receive love or how what that means. I think the thing right now in this season of my life that is making me feel loved, or know love is particularity. I wrote a bit about this actually in a recent essay for my newsletter, because particularity is something that has actually felt like it's been saving my life during this last couple of months, but even I would say even last couple of years right? global pandemics and political upheaval, our own personal losses and griefs, and at our last Evolving Faith in Denver, which would have been last October, just like a million years ago. Remember traveling? planes and people hugging seeing each other? I can't even remember that life.
But Dan, Dan Evans shared with us some of unpublished excerpt from Rachel's unfinished work and it referenced this poem by Daniel Ladinsky, which was inspired by Francis of Assisi and he says, I think God might be a little prejudiced. For once he asked me to join him on a walk through this world. And we gazed into every heart on this earth and I noticed he lingered a bit longer before any face that was weeping. And before any eyes that were laughing and sometimes when we passed a soul in worship God too would kneel down, I have come to learn, God adores his creation.
And Dan shared a lot that day that will probably be eventually available. And I want to honor that process, of course, but Rachel's theme was about her yearning to be loved by God specifically, not just generally. And that has stayed with me since that gathering because it gave me language. I mean, I think especially that that visual of God lingering with any face that is weeping, any eye that's laughing and kneeling with a very particular sort of love. And it named the thing that I needed named, which is that I think being loved means loving ourselves in particular, right loving one another loving this world in particular, not in general, but in particular functions as both this invocation and benediction. learning to love this, whatever this means for you in particular even a few times a day invites the presence of God or at least my awareness of it. And it blesses and names a sacred, or God already dwells. And that has been a really nice surprise for me. I think one of my greatest spiritual gifts is that I'm really easily pleased.
JEFF: Thank God for low bars.
SARAH: It really particularly lends itself well to that. So simple things like, you know, my eldest daughter's in high school now, but she still likes to hold my hand when we're driving. Or my husband, you know, brought me coffee this morning because he knew I would have forgotten to get it before you and I started recording or even when I had surgery a few months ago, and you sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. So I'd have something pretty to look at while I was laid up in the same room for eight weeks straight, right. These are particular things and I feel seen in particular, not in general, not like, oh, everybody's a beloved child of God. But like you Sarah. I love you. So I think for me the invitation then is to try to love in particular to write, love the freckles on my daughter's nose and the way my son tries to walk and read at the same time or my mother's hands or the tree in our backyard or you know the people that are in my community or in my life. These things are particular to me. And so I love them
JEFF: Friends thanks for listening to this episode of The Evolving Faith Podcast. As usual, you can find all the links mentioned and a full transcript in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com. You can also buy all our speakers books on our new storefront bookshop.org/shop/evolving faith. And you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @evolvfaith. For now, you can still find me on Twitter at @JeffChu and on Instagram @byjeffchu.
SARAH: And I'm over on Twitter and Instagram as @sarahbessey too. We also have a podcast community over on Facebook so you can come and hang out with us. It might be the only thing that's redeeming Facebook right now for me. So come and hang out with us by searching for The Evolving Faith Podcast After-Party. The podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu along with Jordan Gass-Poore'.
JEFF: Our music was written and performed by Audrey Assad and Wes Wilson. And don't forget tickets for Evolving Faith 2020 are now on sale at evolvingfaith.com. We have set a big rowdy table in the middle of the wilderness. And together we're having a feast of rice and stir fry. We have saved a spot for you will see our stories and songs wonder and curiosity, renewal and redemption to
SARAH: Man, if you can bring brisket fried rice again, I'm just going to get saved all over again.
Next week we are featuring Dr. Wil Gafney as she offers us the opportunity to experience an evolution in our interpretive of Scripture through the richness of womanist biblical interpretation. It is such a good one, folks. If The Evolving Faith Podcast has meant something to you or you have liked it, please go ahead and review it on Apple podcasts in particular, it really does make a huge difference your likes and subscribes and shares and honest reviews set up a candle for other people to find us out here in the wilderness. So thank you for taking time to do that small thing. It could make a world of difference for someone who's lonely out here.
JEFF: And until next time, friends, remember that you are loved.
