Episode 10: Sacred Mystery and Fierce Love with Kaitlin Curtice
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Show Notes
Co-hosts
Jeff Chu
Find Jeff online: @byJeffChu on Instagram or @JeffChu on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Jeff’s newsletter, Notes of a Make-Believer Farmer on Substack.
Sarah Bessey
Find Sarah online: @SarahBessey on Instagram or @SarahBessey on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Sarah’s newsletter, Field Notes on Substack. Explore Sarah’s recent books on her website.
Featured guest
Kaitlin Curtice
Those interested in truth-telling and healing will find a welcoming, generous teacher in Kaitlin Curtice, an award-winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation, Kaitlin writes and speaks on the intersections of spirituality and identity and how those shift throughout our lives. As an inter-spiritual advocate, Kaitlin participates in conversations on topics around colonialism in faith communities, and she has spoken at many conferences on the importance of interfaith relationships. Her latest book, Native: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God, and her forthcoming Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day explore belonging, connection, and the courage to envision a better story for ourselves, future generations, and the world.
Learn more about Kaitlin on KaitlinCurtice.com, or follow @KaitlinCurtice on Twitter, @KaitlinCurtice on Instagram, or subscribe to Kaitlin’s Substack newsletter.
“To put it simply, decolonization is about reclaiming sacred mystery and fierce love in a world in which hate-driven economy and colonial oppression have reigned for far too long. ”
Thanks to our producer, SueAnn Shiah, who also provided the music for this episode, you can listen to her album A Liturgy for the Perseverance of the Saints on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, or Bandcamp and find her at @sueannshiah on Instagram and @sueannshiah on Twitter.
Transcript
Part 1: Introduction
AD: This episode of The Evolving Faith Podcast comes to you with the backing of Everything Happens with Kate Bowler. The world loves us when we are good, better, best. But what if you want to stop feeling guilty that you’re not living your best life now? Kate Bowler is a young mom, bestselling author, and Duke University professor who, at age 35, was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. In warm, often funny conversations, Kate talks with people about what they’ve learned in hard times. We can find beauty and meaning and truth, but there is no cure to being human. Listen to Everything Happens wherever you get your podcasts.
KAITLIN: We live in an era of America in which we are in deep denial of who we are. It's like the prophets of our day are holding up a mirror so that everyone can see the truth, only to find that those who might look would rather fog the mirror up and pretend that there is no true reflection. There is only what we tell ourselves we are.
SARAH: Hi friends, I’m Sarah Bessey.
JEFF: And I'm Jeff Chu. Welcome back to The Evolving Faith Podcast.
SARAH: We are so glad that you are here with us today. We are also on Twitter and on Instagram as @Evolvfaith, and we’re on Facebook as Evolving Faith. Jeff, speaking of social media, I saw a picture of you and your new little niece, Mia, on Instagram, and it made my heart so glad!
JEFF: She is a gorgeous little nugget. I got to go meet her in person for the first time, not too long ago. I was actually supposed to go at the end of April, right after she was born. But then I got COVID, and maybe that wasn't the best way to welcome this dear child into the world. But Mia is sweet and a pretty easy baby who only cries when she's hungry. Sort of like me.
SARAH: Well, she is absolutely beautiful. You know how much I love babies. And she is just, oh, just incredibly precious. I loved all of those pictures. I really quietly still miss that stage.
JEFF: I really love kids, and I'm actually okay dealing with them at whatever age. But I think it's so interesting how many of us definitely have phases that we gravitate towards more because I like babies a lot, and then I'm honestly fine to skip the terrible twos and toddlerhood and maybe even kindergarten. And just fast forward to seven-, eight-, nine-year-old life, which you get to do, sort of, when you're an uncle and not a parent.
SARAH: Well, there are definitely stages, I think, that come more naturally, right, to some of us. I was always kind of surprised by how much I liked the baby and toddler stage and thing because, I mean, I don't know. Like, I quit babysitting when I was 14, because I figured there had to be a better way to make money than that. Like, so I think that, you know, I was pretty surprised. I think a lot of the people in my life are pretty surprised by how much I have loved the baby and toddler thing. The big kid stage, like you said, is also really good. They're becoming more of themselves. And of course, now we're in the teen years here, and, you know, contrary to a lot of advertising, I think it's been really, really good. I remember, I remember somebody telling me once that both babies and toddlers are very physically exhausting, but it's the big kids and the teens that are more spirit— even big kids, like or older, like young adult kids, I would add now to that, are often more spiritually and emotionally demanding. And I think that's pretty true. But it's, it's also really wonderful in its own way. My husband was a youth pastor for a few years. I won't let you make any cracks about what a great pastor's wife I was, because that's low-hanging fruit. But I, I loved those teenagers so much. The conversations and the insight and the energy, their sense of becoming. And, you know, even now, you know, all these years later, we're still in touch with a lot of those kids. Of course, they're adults now. And so it's been fun, you know, to kind of now be in that stage of life and have our own teens. Even though, I'll be honest, I think I will probably always miss that, like, squishy “sleep in your arms” baby kind of stage.
JEFF: I think it's great when kids become more of themselves and those selves happen to be likable and kind selves. My older nephews, they're 16 and 14, and the 14-year-old is definitely more emotionally communicative, for which I'm thankful. It's fascinating to me how he's found words at his age to express things that, as a much older human, sometimes I feel like I've only just discovered the vocabulary. And also, I agree it is so spiritually and emotionally exhausting. While I was in Massachusetts with my sister and her family, we also went to the 14-year-old's middle school graduation. And I sat in that auditorium thinking middle school is the absolute worst. You could not pay me enough money to ever relive what those kids are experiencing right now. So God bless each and every one of those young people for surviving middle school, and God bless every one of those teachers who feel called to that good and holy work.
SARAH: Middle school is like, middle school, junior high. It's like it's, it’s whole thing. I remember when my eldest was very first going into middle school, actually, maybe it was our second, but there were these conversations that the teachers had with us as parents, like right at the beginning. And one of the, like, number one points that they made was reinforcing the importance of things like showers and wearing deodorant. And it was just so clear to me that these teachers were, like, speaking out of their trauma almost.
JEFF: Those are good and self-sacrificial and holistic teachers.
SARAH: Absolutely. Mia is a ways off from all of that, though.
JEFF: And made the world keep her as innocent as possible for as long as possible.
SARAH: And smelling nice for as long as possible. Amen. So, and for all of us, may some of that be restored, that innocence. But when I think about—look at me doing a nice segue—but when I think about someone who exists in the world well, I think of Kaitlin. Kaitlin Curtice. So it's really good that we're gonna be hearing from her today.
JEFF: It's always good when you announce your segues. I think that is the mark of a professional podcaster is the commentary on one's own segues.
SARAH: This is like my second rodeo, so I know what I'm doing.
JEFF: Kaitlin has such a pure heart, and if my niece grows up to be something like Kaitlin, I will be super happy. So let me do her official bio bit: Kaitlin Curtice is an award-winning author, a poet, a storyteller, and a public speaker. She is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and she writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity and how that shifts throughout our lives. Kaitlin also speaks on these topics to diverse audiences who are interested in truth-telling and healing. And she participates in conversations on topics such as colonialism in faith communities, and she’s spoken at many conferences on the importance of interfaith relationships. Besides her books, Kaitlin has written online for Sojourners, Religion News Service, Apartment Therapy, On Being, SELF Magazine, and more. Her work has been featured on CBS and in USA Today. She also writes The Liminality Journal. And she lives in Philadelphia with her family. So, here is Kaitlin Curtice, speaking to us from Evolving Faith 2019 in Denver, Colorado.
Part 2: Kaitlin’s Talk
KAITLIN: Boozhoo [Ojibwe for hello]. I'm Kaitlin Curtice. I'm so glad that you're all here. And I'm honored to be here, and everyone who's livestreaming, thank you for joining us and holding this space with us. Today in my talk, I'm going to begin and end with a prayer. These are prayers from my first book, Glory Happening. If you're uncomfortable with prayer, I believe that these are also poems. So if it's better for you to think of it as a poem, just think about it that I'm reading you a poem. Let's pray.
Oh, Mystery. If we have tried to place you into a box, break it. No mold can hold you. We searched the surface of the earth to understand you because we are your imprint. But we cannot understand. Only the kind glimpses you give us can suffice. And indeed, they are everything we need. Teach us to look out to your bigness, to fall freely into your holy abyss, into your depths where we see more glimpses of kindom things. It's safe and good there, and it is where we long to be. Bring us to you, the one who is not here or there. Not this or that. We do not even understand how we long for you, how we burn in our bones for your presence. It is simply our need. Pull us closer still. Iw. Amen.
So I want to open with a few things about myself. I was born in Oklahoma on Chickasaw Land to a mother of European descent and a father who is a citizen of the Potawatomi nation. I grew up in a Christian household, moving between New Mexico, living on the Pueblo Res to Oklahoma many times before landing in Missouri in a predominantly white, small Southern Baptist town.
At that time, my father left our family and my parents divorced, and it was, in a way, I was disconnected from my Potawatomi identity. My journey with the land has been one of disconnect and reconnect as well. And as an adult, I have been on the journey of understanding what it means to be an engaged citizen of my tribe, to be someone who relies on, trusts, and listens to Segmekwé—Mother Earth—as she speaks.
So as I reconnect, I recognize that my journey of decolonizing has not spanned nearly as many years as so many people I look up to: so many that have been on this stage, so many who I call my mentors, activists and authors that I draw encouragement from. So my process, I often sum it up in this phrase that I like to use: I wouldn't dare call myself woke when there's still so much waking to do. And likewise, I would also say this for today: I wouldn't dare call myself decolonized when there's still so much decolonizing to do.
So what is decolonization? To put it simply, it is the work of breaking down systems of colonization. So for me, as a mixed European and Potawatomi woman whose inner and outer voice has been silenced, especially by the church, for a long time due to the lingering effects of assimilation, I am reclaiming who I am. I am wrestling with all parts of my identity, with my white privilege, with my Anishinaabe feminism, with my spirituality.
We live in an era of America in which we are in deep denial of who we are. It's like the prophets of our day are holding up a mirror so that everyone can see the truth, only to find that those who might look would rather fog the mirror up and pretend that there is no true reflection. There is only what we tell ourselves we are.
As our dearest Rachel said, "The prophet’s voice is routinely dismissed as too critical or too bitter if she happens to be a woman, but she always challenges from a place of deep love for her community.” If someone lives in denial long enough, avoiding their own pain and trauma, scab after scab becomes a scar. And then no one can remember what the original wound was. No one can bring up the conversation. And so no one heals.
So enter our prophets, enter our mystics, enter all of you, enter the birds of the air and the healing waters and the land who has always been speaking, if only we listen. We must remember who we collectively are to know how to envision a decolonized spirituality. This is not a one-time thing—this is a forever process. It is holistic. It is cyclical. This is not a straight timeline kind of thing. So why is it important that we talk about decolonizing our everyday life?
I want to share with you a section from my book that comes out next year, and this book is about my journey with decolonization. It's called Native: Identity Belonging and Rediscovering God. This book is organized through the Potawatomi Flood story. This is a story about renewal, about beginning again. That's what we're doing today. In the midst of chaos, we are asking what it means to create a better world. So this is from Native:
“Our spiritual realities do not exist in a vacuum. To be connected to our own spirituality, we must be connected to the spirituality of others. This means that our spiritual life is directly tied to institutions that police the spiritual lives of others.”
Indigenous ceremony was banned until 1978 in the United States and is still restricted today.
In 1978, the American Indian Religious Freedoms Act was passed by President Jimmy Carter so that indigenous people would have protection for religious ceremony, a right that is often not been protected but actually violated by the government. We have always been here. So what does it do to our spiritual essence to know that we will be punished for expressing our ways of knowing mystery? And how does that actually affect our connectedness as a whole?
Colonization and white supremacy steal so much from indigenous peoples, from black peoples who are stolen from their homelands and enslaved in the United States. We cannot deny that this history is a spiritual one.
So today, my spiritual liberation is tied up with the spiritual liberation of all of my relatives who face oppression, whose bodies are policed and told that they are less than. Are we not working to be liberated together, and are our spirits not bound together to fight institutional injustices that have existed in America since its beginning?
Everyone who joins in this space joins us in the work of fighting systems of dehumanization. You are joining in the lifelong work of decolonizing. We are bearing good fruit in hopes of creating newness in the world—newness that comes every time we engage with and experience the divine. The work of telling women that we do not matter as much as men do in society is dehumanizing. It is damaging to the soul. The way that Christianity has sometimes appropriated and erased Jewish history and promoted anti-Semitism is dehuma— dehumanizing. So decolonization is a spiritual matter, just as it is a physical, mental, social, and political one. We have to see it in a holistic light.
The day I went to Lake Michigan, the original home of my people, for the first time, it was a perfect windy spring morning in April. My dear friend Amy drove us in her minivan 40 minutes away from the city to a small town with trees now inhabited by people of Dutch heritage. We drove up to an area with a playground and picnic tables, and we climbed a set of stairs to reach the water. Growing up around these tiny lakes in the Midwest, my imagination did not lend itself to what Lake Michigan might actually look like. So when we took that last step of the uphill climb to look out at the beach before us, my breath caught in my chest. White sand, waves, deadwood, teenagers huddled under blankets and towels, wind, memories. I took off my shoes, and I walked as fast as I could. Amy, trailing behind me with her camera, she said she'd capture this moment for me, photos that would tether me to this place for years to come. Photos so that I can remember. The quiet presence of the water lapped in and out, and with every wave I watched and I listened. And I whispered, “Migwéch Mamogosnan, migwéch, migwéch” over and over again. A prayer of gratitude for this moment that held me. And as I prayed, as I laid tobacco over the water's crisp, iridescent skin, it told me to remember.
The water has supplied life to us and nurtured us, and we are simply recipients of gift upon gift. The water asked me to imagine the before. Before the stairs were built to bring us to the shore, before there were paved parking lots and playgrounds, when it was just the people and the land, there was no room for colonized thinking or actions. When it was just the people and the land, we built fires and grew wild rice, honoring the harvest as it came to us. When it was just the people and the land, white supremacy was not an option.
We stayed there for about an hour, collecting pebbles and shells to take home, a piece of driftwood that sits in my home today and tells my own story back to me. I was in Michigan for a conference, but before it started, I needed to see the water. The water that my people knew. The water that the Potawatomi people still know. I felt like a stranger to a land that knew me.
I felt like the prodigal son from that New Testament story returning to a father with open arms, except the thing that took me away was the gunpoint of forced removal. The land and the water tell stories that we cannot conceive of even when we listen. And so we have to trust them. We watched the water and let it give whatever it needs to give, and we receive it with open arms. This is the way.
It's difficult to imagine our cities as something other than what they are. It's difficult to think of them without buildings and streets and storefronts. But if we can remember that they were once lands inhabited by indigenous peoples, cultures who stood on this ground, who acknowledge the sacredness of the hills, the mountains, the waters, many people who still do, maybe we remember that the land is still sacred. That it is still a space that we should inhabit while honoring it and honoring the people who care for it.
For the world to survive, for true justice to take place among us, decolonization must be a goal. We must fight against systems of settler colonial oppression, systems like toxic patriarchy and capitalist greed that give no care to the land. We must do it for the sake of all of us. Telling our stories in those spaces and remembering.
Carolina Cisneros* is a prophetic Tejana poet, and she says in this piece she wrote for On Being that storytelling is a lifeline in her family, a fuel that continues to lead her to decolonizing. This is what she says: "In the nook of my grandfather's arm, I learned of Moses and how he freed the Israelites. I wept as my grandfather recounted, working in the cotton fields under the laborious sun that nearly turned his body into a leather purse.” Carolina reminds us that prayer is poetry, that poetry is storytelling, and that even our painful stories lead us out of bondage of white supremacy and into liberation for ourselves and those around us. Decolonization of our spirits is not just for the oppressed. It is a gift for everyone.
Just as growing pains hurt before the actual growth takes place, it hurts to decolonize. For some, it hurts like hell. And then one day we appear on the other side of it, our stories told in all of their truth. Just like that, we gather and we bathe in healing waters. And just like that, everyone is made clean. Everyone is seen. With so many conversations on white supremacy, hate, racism, toxic patriarchy, we aren't going to get anywhere unless we consider narrative. We've got to talk honestly about the story America is telling itself and the truth of where we come from. That we were built by settler colonialism, by one group, and later, more groups pushing out another group to create a culture that identifies itself by toxic empire. If we start there with that recognition, we will move forward just as I have moved forward in my own process of healing. When we name our trauma, when we name the parts of our story that have been in hiding, we come closer to naming the truth. And when we name the truth, we call our fear into the light. We face it.
“I think of a good conversation as an adventure,” Krista Tippett said. If conversation is an adventure, so, too, are the stories we tell within these conversations, the glimpses we get into the lives and experiences of others. Maybe we are all just barely getting started. Maybe we are all transforming whether we know it or not, and we are simply to hold on and wait to see what's on the other side. In the Ojibwa creation story, instead of what we might imagine as Adam and Eve, Original Man was given a wolf to be his companion on the earth. So they traveled the earth, naming and loving all the creatures as they went, creating community and kinship. They told each other's stories, they built community. And when the time comes, Gitche Manitou (or The Great Spirit) separates them, tells them to go on their own journeys, always repeating those stories they share together. What we learn from Original Man and the Wolf is that our time is limited. While we are here, we invest in our own stories and in our own healing and in the stories and healing of others. We walk the earth, and we learn what it means to be communal. We honor the work of transformation and recognize that we can't possibly truly transform unless we are actively decolonizing along the way.
I believe we have embedded memories that we do not even realize we collectively hold. And in these spaces together we must lean into the work of remembering. Together, we hold space. Together, we ask who we are, who we've been, and who we want to be. I would never attempt to tell you how to decolonize. I believe that as much as this is a collective work, it is deeply personal, it is spiritual, it is mental, it is emotional, it is intimate work that we have to take on for ourselves. But we know that there are collective answers to decolonizing the systems around us, specifically the systems that oppress. So what does a shared vision of decolonization mean for all of us, for so many of us, from so many different backgrounds? For me, it is almost always when I go outside and I sit beneath years-old trees and by wise, ancient waters that I am reminded.
When I am told that I am a small, dust-to-dust thing, then I begin to ask how I can look outside of myself to see others the same way. Because we share our dust to dustness, we share in the fact that we are lovable still. If we are collectively calling the earth Segmekwé, sacred as she is and was created, then we have to stand against the systems that seek to destroy her. Systems like colonization and capitalism. And we have to ask if any system can truly protect her. This is where things get dangerous. We must inherently be activists. There, we can have the space to examine the systems that we participate in, systems like colonization and white supremacy and white privilege. Then we can ask those questions as we love one another. Then we are transformed, and we have the trees to thank for that. And we have the sacred love that never ceases to envelop us and ask that we envelop others. We are seekers who are journeying toward wholeness, toward what is sacred. We are looking for it. We are evolving. And that means that we are never done asking questions, and we are never done making room.
Today is a significant day for me. On this day in the year 1838, over 800 Potawatomi people were one month into marching 660 miles from Indiana to Kansas, where they had been removed from their homes and forced at gunpoint to trek to a land that they did not know and had not seen where many more of them eventually died. Children and elders died along this march called the Trail of Death, their feet taking step after step after step after step. Why? To survive. So that future generations might know the whole story. Not just the stories of pain and trauma but the stories of resilience, of mystery that is always interjected into our lives. They marched so that I might know today how to decolonize.
Episcopal priest and citizen of the Choctaw Nation Steven Charleston says, “There are no fences we can build around the vision of God to contain it or explain it.” To put it simply, decolonization is about reclaiming sacred mystery and fierce love in a world in which hate-driven economy and colonial oppression have reigned for far too long. In a different world, our Potawatomi ancestors wouldn't have marched, and the peoples of this land wouldn't have been removed. In a different world, the Amazon rainforest wouldn't be on fire. In a different world, we wouldn't have built nations through the enslavement of black peoples and pressured them to forgive their oppressors before they are ready to forgive. In a different world, women wouldn't be heard— would be heard, and feminism wouldn't be controlled by patriarchy. We have not inherited a utopia. We have inherited things like white supremacy and hate. Therefore, we've got work to do. Therefore, we've got hope to sustain. Therefore, we've got to keep marching. And I believe in us. Let's pray.
Oh, Mystery. I have discovered you, and I am discovering you. In the watchful hours of night, I watch my little ones, and you watch me. In the bright light hours of the day we play, all of us. We work and toil back into the waxing moon shadow. And there, we quiet down again. There, we are discovered. And there, we discover. I am discovering you, Being all-knowing, who seems to give all to me, you are giver and bringer and all in one. Treasure and surprises seek me out when I am most unseekable. You seek me, find me, pour me out, and fill me up again. May we discover and in discovering, find the healing of ages. May we discover kin-dom come, kin-dom coming, kin-dom forever and always and into every horizon we've yet to unearth. May we discover the journey of discovering all of you, all the beauties of you and depths in you, and widths bounding through you. Beckon us to you, sacredness and the path beneath our tired, anxious feet, and rest us at the edges of ourselves—the unexpected places where horizon meets holy horizon. And we are bound by no shame, covered by no fear. Iw. Amen.
*Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros is a Tejana poet and writer whose work focuses on Latinidad and faith. The On Being piece that Kaitlin references can be found here.
<<<<TRANSITIONAL MUSIC>>>
SARAH: If you’ve been listening to and loving this podcast, join us for Evolving Faith 2022, the live virtual conference. It’s on October 14th and 15th. So many of us are engaging in good, hard, holy work right now to cultivate love, reimagine and build a faith that works not only for us but for the whole world, and to find our way in the wilderness together. We need to be reminded of what matters, about who is alongside us. We need connection and inspiration and good conversations and laughter, and we need some hope too. We are gathering not in spite of these turbulent times but because of them. So please join us. We have set a big, rowdy table in the middle of the wilderness, and together, we will have a feast. We’re saving a spot for you. Go to evolvingfaith.com, and register today. You won’t want to miss this moment with this community. It’s pretty special. Okay, now back to the show.
Part 3: Conversation
SARAH: I love Kaitlin so much, and I'm really glad that she's going to actually be back with us at this year's Evolving Faith again. But I, I love that line, and I've thought often in the years since about that line that she had near the beginning when she said, “I wouldn't dare call myself woke when there's still so much waking to do, and likewise, that she wouldn't dare call herself decolonized when there's still so much decolonizing to do. And I know that the word “woke” has become, I don't know, a hijacked and almost pejorative in some conversations, which is, it's really unfortunate because there, there is still so much waking up to do, and that line, since hearing her say that, it reminded me of Maya Angelou's famous quote. She said, “I'm always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‘I'm a Christian.’ I think, ‘Already? You already got it?’” I'm working at it which means that I try to be as kind and fair and generous and respectful and courteous to every human being. And I love how Kaitlin places herself in the journey rather than in an arrival. And I think that's, that's helpful modeling for all of us, and it's such a different model of leadership than the ones that are usually centered.
JEFF: I guess I don't really understand folks who think they've arrived as if there's a point at which we could possibly say, as human beings, “Well, I guess I've done enough growing.” And one of the things I appreciate about how Kaitlin talks about her process, and I want to be clear that this is her process, specific to her personal history, as well as the context in which she was reared and the culture of her ancestors. One of the things I appreciate is that she helped flesh out what exactly decolonization means because honestly, I struggle sometimes with words like these that have become pretty jargony because people toss them around so casually. And I'm often left wondering, what does decolonization actually mean to you in practical terms? How do you understand colonization’s effects on real humans and real creatures and the land itself? And Kaitlin helps us to see. For her, it means reconnecting with mystery and rediscovering some different facets of the divine and knowing the stories of her people and honoring the land and its many lessons. I find that incredibly powerful and tremendously helpful.
SARAH: Exactly. No, exactly. It's not a matter of buzzwords or a progressive Christian bingo card, because Kaitlin is giving this beautiful path that is, like you said, deeply personal for her. She even says that she wouldn't begin to tell someone else what that process would look like, which I think goes back to the process or the path that she mentioned, which actually reminded me of things that you have said over the years on this podcast, but also in other places, I've heard you say this. Because she spoke about the decolonization, I don’t know, process, being a forever path, you know, one that is holistic and cyclical rather than this straight, sort of cause and effect, you know, linear sort of experience. And you've talked about how your way of storytelling reflects that too.
JEFF: Few things irritate me more than folks who claim they're farther along in their faith journeys or, if you want to use the word, their deconstruction or their decolonization or whatever, whatever process you want to insert here, I— it frustrates me because it is not linear. There isn't one road map. Anyway, I'll save my full rant for another day. To your question, maybe it's been part of my own reconnecting with my Chinese heritage that's reminded me of how cyclical our seasons and, indeed, our lives are, that things are constantly growing and then dying back and growing and then dying back. But it's not just that we keep coming back to the same place—that's not what I mean by cyclical. It's always different. We're always learning and growing and the soil is changing, and I hope it's for the better. And one thing I've learned in the last decade or so, which has been really freeing for me as a Chinese person, is that Chinese argumentation, Chinese storytelling doesn't typically go thesis, statement, defense one, defense two, defense three like I learned in ninth grade. I have described it more like maybe an eagle circling above its prey, round and round, closer and closer, until eventually, it locks in. Or, maybe less brutally, it's like a robin who goes out and gathers a bit of grass here or a length of string there. And slowly and slowly, she tucks a piece here, a thread there, and eventually, you have this full nest. To allow myself to tell stories in one of the traditional ways of my people has felt risky and vulnerable, because it can feel unfamiliar both to me and to my audience. And sometimes they even critique it, because they think it's weird. But it's something that I'm doing for me, because how we tell stories matters. And there are a thousand and one ways to do it beautifully. And I'm trying to come back to a way that honors my ancestors.
SARAH: Which reminds me of how Kaitlin talked about how much place or land also influences and shapes how we do that, which you just explained so beautifully that the places where we belong shape how we move through the world. She talked really beautifully and compellingly, I felt, about coming home to Lake Michigan and of her experience walking there and being among the water and the rocks.
JEFF: Anyone who has not stood on the shores of Lake Michigan cannot fully appreciate just how transcendent and life-giving that body of water is. And I think for Kaitlin, coming back to a place that has meant so much to the Potawatomi was tremendously powerful. I think there's even a sense of awe built into one of the indigenous names for Lake Michigan, which is Michigamme, meaning big water.
SARAH: You know, I've had, I've had similar experiences of feeling at home in a place where my ancestors lived or even in places where I lived for a time. And then my soul would put down some roots there, even returning there now, you know, years later, it still feels like there's, there's roots there. So when, it makes me curious, because when you hear Kaitlin talk about that, are there places that that kind of conjures up in you? Are there places where you feel like your soul finds some sense of spiritual home or belonging?
JEFF: One thing that my grandparents did when I was growing up was to remind me frequently of what my ancestral village is in southern China. So I know the name and I know where it is. And I know that on some strange level, I belong there, even though I've never been there. And then there's Hong Kong, where both my parents were born. That city to me has always felt like a soul place, even though my Cantonese has deteriorated. To ride the Star Ferry, which even now costs less than fifty cents, I think it's one of the biggest bargains in the world. As I cross the waters of Victoria Harbor, and I think about how those waters stretch all the way across to California. It's one of my favorite things to do in the world, and there's something deeply moving to me about it every single time I do it. And there's some grief for me in saying this, because I actually have my "Free Hong Kong" shirt on at this very moment. Hong Kong isn't what it used to be. The Hong Kong that was home to me has been destroyed by the communist regime in China, which is as much a colonizer as the British were. I guess the other place I'd say right now, and it surprises me a little bit to even say this, because we don't actually have real roots here other than the ones that we've put down over the past two years, is Grand Rapids and specifically, our little neighborhood in Grand Rapids. We have our little house, which we're pretty sure is a turn-of-the-century kit home out of a Sears catalog. We have our sweet tree-lined street with the park at the end and the farmers market three blocks away and the community garden three blocks away. And when I'm walking Fozzie for the umpteenth time of the day and Tracy down the block cracks a joke about how often we do this, and then we come back, and I pick some chives and harvest some spinach from the backyard to make an omelet for dinner. I feel like Tristan and I have done okay making for ourselves a sense of home in a world that so often hasn't offered home to folks like us. I can sit in my rocking chair on my front porch and live into my grandpa self and say, “We're doing it.” And we've done okay.
SARAH: That's beautiful. I feel, I feel very similarly about a village in Scotland on the Isle of Lewis. Basically, if you go to like, the far northwest coast of Scotland and then cross the water over to an island, those, those are my people. So, you never have to wonder why I am always more comfortable in a colder, damper climate and hand knits. Those are among the ways of my people. So, that island is where my mum's people are from. And we have these many-times removed cousins there who remember my ancestors and, and hold space for us still, right? My mum went back on a pilgrimage a few years ago, and she was, you know, welcomed home as this like, long-lost daughter, even though it had been her own grandparents who are among the MacLeods who had emigrated.
JEFF: You're actually a relatively lucky white person in that regard, Sarah. One of the things that Kaitlin talks about is how much has been taken from indigenous people, black people, other people of color as a result of colonization and white supremacy. But I think it's worth just a brief mention, and Willie James Jennings writes about this in The Christian Imagination, that it isn't just the colonized who lose in the process of colonization. It's also the colonizers and the settlers who lose some of their own humanity and some of their own rootedness as they dehumanize others. That sense of rootedness that they lose, it's one of the costs of trying to grab more and more and more for themselves. And part of the tragedy is that so many people don't even have any idea that they've lost something. I remember when I was reading Jennings, thinking about my college roommate, who when I asked where his people were from, he got this blank look on his face, and he said, “I have no idea.” His ancestors had severed their rootedness. Colonization costs everyone.
SARAH: That's so true. It, it just is. I remember hearing, or learning when I was a kid, that even, that the USA was a bit different in that regard to Canada. Like we were taking kind of that multicultural model, and the States took more of that melting pot kind of stance. And I can see your college roommate and even in my husband and his family, you know, compared to ours, which I mean, granted, that's a very small sample size for an anecdote. But, you're right, it is. It's a loss and it's a tragedy that we don't know that we've even lost sometimes. And so we opened our episode with Kaitlin's words about the era of America being one of, of deep denial. And I think that's true for a lot of cultures and a lot of nations outside of the United States as well. She spoke about that mirror being held up and that impulse that we have to, kind of, or that we can have to pretend that there's no reflection. And so, I'm wondering what sort of reflection you feel like we're seeing right now. I see a very similar thing happening in Canada right now that the times, this moment is a mirror being held u and there are vast groups of people who either want to pretend that away or tell a different, even false story about it.
JEFF: I think the answer to your question depends on who's included when we say we.
SARAH: Mm-hmm.
JEFF: I will say this, and, you know, I'm rarely a half-full kind of person, right? I do not see a half-full glass, pretty much ever. I see so much grief, so much heartache and violence, so much inequity and discrimination. And also, especially when I have my travel writer hat on and I visit a new city and I taste the food, I have to say, I see a United States where representation of our full range of cultural diversity and giftedness is at an all-time high. I see more stories from more points of view finding an audience. So I want to be fair, when the mirror is held up, there is sorrow, and there is joy. There's devastation, and there's delight. There's horror, and there is so, so, so much hope.
SARAH: It is there. And I think that's really good to be reminded of right now. And it's more meaningful when it comes from you other than me, who tends to be like all the glasses are nearly full when there's, like, a little bit left in the bottom. So you will not be surprised by this, but of course, I love, love, love, love how Kaitlin prays. She leaves a lot of room for us there. She describes it also as, as poetry or as invitation. But there is some really good work that is happening when she does this. And so I love even, in her books, if people have read either of her books, she weaves poetry and prayer into the pages. She sort of enters into that final poem or prayer by reminding us that there aren't any fences to build around the vision of God. And that really the path of invitation here is to reclaim sacred mystery and fierce love.
JEFF: Look, I'm never going to say no to a prayer that urges us to unexpected places where we're bound by no shame and covered by no fear. I want to go there. What would that be like? And anyone who ever gets there, please send me a postcard, because I want to know. And this is one of the reasons we need writers and voices like Kaitlin's. In her fierce gentleness, in her loving labor, she issues us invitations we might be afraid to offer ourselves. She reminds us that it's okay to risk. And for folks who feel alienated from traditions like prayer, she gives us a different take that might be a way back into something that really matters. And she also tells us we're not alone. If we're decolonizing, perhaps that is one of the most important things we need to be told, because the colonizer isolates and splits up and divides to conquer. To say we are not alone and we will not abandon each other, God is with me and God is with us, that is one of the most powerful things we can do—both when we are saying it because we believe it wholeheartedly and want others to know, as well as when we're saying it because we're just trying to hang on to hope ourselves.
SARAH: That's a good word, Jeff Chu. That's a good— that's a whole sermon.
[ Instrumental Music: It Is Well With My Soul by SueAnn Shiah ]
SARAH: You can find all of the links mentioned on today’s show as well as info about the soulful Kaitlin Curtice and her work in the world, as well as a full transcript of this episode in our show notes. Those are over at evolvingfaith.com/podcast. And you can also find me, Sarah Bessey, at sarahbessey.com for all my social media links and the sign-up link for my newsletter Field Notes, my books, all those sorts of things.
JEFF: You can sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com and find photos of my occasionally failed attempts at growing things on Instagram at @byjeffchu. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Jeff Chu and Sarah Bessey, along with our gifted colleague SueAnn Shiah, who also wrote and recorded our music. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Evolving Faith Podcast, and until next time remember that you are loved.
JEFF: Throughout our time together at Evolving Faith, there’s one thing we’ve heard over and over from you: We need community. Being in the wilderness can be really lonely. You can feel too isolated—even those of us who are profoundly shy introverts. We all need companions for the journey. We need folks to accompany us and be alongside us.
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It is free to join the Evolving Faith Community. Our desire is that you might find some fellow travelers in this oasis with whom you can feel a renewed sense of belonging and maybe even some hope. So come, explore, and share. All you have to do is go to community.evolvingfaith.com and sign up. We can’t wait to greet you. See you there.
