Episode 14: Habitual Gratitude with B.T. Harman
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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
B.T. Harman
B.T. Harman is a former marketing executive turned creative strategist, podcaster, and speaker as well as freelance content creator for millennials and the brands that serve them. He is also the creator of the blog and podcast Blue Babies Pink, a personal memoir of growing up gay in the American South. More than 1.3 million episodes of the Blue Babies Pink podcast have been streamed since its debut in 2017, and it was a top 40 podcast worldwide in March of that year. B.T. also released his second narrative-style podcast, Catlick, a historical true crime saga that follows a tragic series of events in early-1900s Atlanta. B.T.’s other interests include storytelling, leadership, good design, antiques, Seth Godin, SEC football, European travel, Roman history, archaeology, and Chick-fil-A. He also serves on the board of directors for BeLoved Atlanta and the board of advisors for Legacy Collective. B.T. lives in the historic East Atlanta neighborhood with his husband, Brett.
Learn more about B.T. on BTHarman.com, or follow @BT.Harman.Writes on Facebook, @BT_Harman on Instagram, or @BT_Harman on Twitter.
“For me, habitual gratitude has been a force multiplier on my journey to emotional health and surviving the doomy narratives of the days we live in.”
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
JEFF: [Ad] Louisville Seminary is a progressive theological school located in Louisville, Kentucky, where questions are welcome and diversity is valued. They offer the master of divinity, master of arts in religion, master of arts in marriage and family therapy, and the doctor of ministry degrees, as well as their dual-degree options. All half-time or full-time master’s level students are guaranteed a 100 percent tuition scholarship. For Evolving Faith listeners, if you apply to a master’s program by December 1, your application fee will be waived. To learn more, to schedule a visit, or to apply, visit www.louisvilleseminary.edu.
B.T.: As you work through your pain, leave some room for gratitude. And when the bleeding stops and the wounds turn into scars, I would ask you to attempt to embrace the full power of gratitude knowing that the God of heaven and the laws of neuroscience will conspire to heal you.
JEFF: Hello, everyone. I'm Jeff Chu.
SARAH: And I'm Sarah Bessey. Welcome back to The Evolving Faith Podcast. We are on Twitter and Instagram as @EvolvFaith and on Facebook as Evolving Faith. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are very glad that you're here. As folks may have guessed from the title, we are talking a wee bit about gratitude today, and we'll be hearing from Atlanta's own B.T. Harman. I know we'll be getting into a deeper conversation about this in a few minutes. But right now, Jeff, I'm feeling pretty grateful for actual summer. Actual summer is here. The wild roses are blooming and the sun is shining. My kids are off of school. I am feeling like life is, is pretty much as good as it gets right now.
JEFF: I know you love your wild roses, but I'm curious what they mean to you, because I don't think we've ever talked about this. What is it about wild roses that makes them so special?
SARAH: Hmm. Yeah, I mentioned that I grew up on the prairies here in Canada, and wild roses were such a fixture of my life that I don't know that I really ever noticed how much I loved them or maybe even just appreciated them. They were, they were just, you know, always there. They grow in every scrub of a forest. They are along almost every ditch or path, you know, with the clover and the water lilies. But then I moved away for, you know, more than 20 years, and now I'm back. And in a lot of ways, returning home after that long can be kind of a disorienting feeling. It's almost like you're being haunted by your old self, which is a whole other conversation. But when I go on my walks now, I do see these flowers that I loved as a kid before I traveled the world and before I knew that these were our native plants to a particular place. Before, I had seen a lot of, you know, gorgeous and showy and lush flowers and these warmer climates, which are so incredibly lovely. But coming back and there being something about this small, really beautiful flower in these hills has really captured my heart. And now I think, maybe, I just love them for their very ordinariness. I don't know. It's like, they're kind of prickly, but they're very hardy and they bloom in harsh places and in these extreme conditions. And they bring not only that sense of beauty but kind of almost like this stubborn kind of loveliness.
JEFF: So it's kind of like a floral version of you.
SARAH: I'll take it as a compliment.
JEFF: Moving sucks, honestly, but if you have the wild roses to welcome you back, I can imagine it feels just a little less disorienting to be greeted by something familiar and lovely.
SARAH: Yeah, I think so. I mean, in a lot of ways, the city has changed. You know, I don't, I never really kept in touch with anyone here. And so I'm starting over from scratch in a lot of ways. And yet somehow, in my mind, I just still remember. And the spruces and trembling aspen and the skies here, the clover from when I was a kid. And it's in a way that stayed with me and probably, probably shaped me.
JEFF: Maybe it's for the best that you haven't really stayed in touch. I bet some of those people would have some stories. And I think, at least that I know of, trees don't gossip.
SARAH: No, trees definitely gossip. My husband's a tree guy and he's regularly spouting these sorts of tree facts for us to enjoy. You know, trees do communicate with each other, it turns out. But I personally do not know what you mean. I was a model teenager.
JEFF: A model of what?
SARAH: Probably a cautionary tale, mostly. Shall I regale you?
JEFF: Fortunately for your brand, I don't think we have time for that tale today because we're hearing another one, and that is B.T. Harman's so let me introduce him. B.T. Harman is a former marketing executive turned creative strategist, podcaster, and speaker as well as freelance content creator for millennials and the brands that serve them. He is also the creator of the blog and podcast, Blue Babies Pink, a personal memoir of growing up gay in the American South. More than 1.3 million episodes of the Blue Babies Pink podcast have been streamed since its debut in 2017, and it was a top 40 podcast worldwide in March of that year. B.T. also released his second narrative-style podcast, Catlick, a historical true crime saga that follows a tragic series of events in early-1900s Atlanta. B.T.’s other interests include storytelling, leadership, good design, antiques, Seth Godin, SEC football, European travel, Roman history, archaeology, and Chick-fil-A. He also serves on the board of directors for BeLoved Atlanta and the board of advisors for Legacy Collective. B.T. lives in the historic East Atlanta neighborhood with his husband, Brett. Here is B.T. Harman speaking to us from Evolving Faith 2019 in Denver, Colorado.
Part 2: B.T.’s Talk
B.T.: On November 8, 2016, I posted a final essay on a long blog series I'd begun 63 days earlier. The title of that story was “Blue Babies Pink.” This was my personal memoir of growing up in Alabama as the closeted gay son of a Southern Baptist pastor. For over two months, I wrote a blog post every single day. During that time, thousands and thousands of people followed along. I later released it as a podcast, and this series really was a major catharsis for me after having been stuck in the closet for about 30 years.
Coincidentally, November 8, 2016, was the same day as a certain presidential election. I cast my vote that afternoon after posting the blog post. I went home to my place in Atlanta, gathered with friends to watch the returns and sat completely shocked just as many of you as you did. Though it was not planned, I embarked on two separate journeys that day. The first one was very personal. It was a new world, being out, learning to live as an out gay Christian man, connecting with people all over the world who would read the blog or listened to the podcast.
And more of a macro level, it was the journey of sort of what I call a new political reality. 2016 was sort of that for many of us, not just the politics of it, but how the church has then responded in this in this moment. So in those three years, I found myself growing increasingly angry, which is Christian conference speak for, “I've been fairly pissed off.” In these three years I've collected lots of reasons to be angry. There are dozens. But let me just give you the top nine reasons I'm angry today.
Number one, that people in our country still refuse to accept the basic idea that this nation was built on a foundation that privileged some and devastated others. Number two, the church folk continue to overwhelmingly support political leaders who are toxically divisive, brazenly anti-Jesus and shockingly racist. Number three, that there are large churches still teasing gay people with the false hope of orientation change. Side note, this is like Dave Ramsey encouraging people to play the lottery. Number four, personally, that I have close friends and family members who refuse to come to my wedding. Number five, that not a single one of my theologically conservative friends can explain why the six clobber verses are literal for me, but for them, parts of Scripture are nuanced, metaphorical, or just relevant for back then. Number six, that churchgoing parents still act so terribly to their kids when they come out. Reason I'm angry number seven, that previous generations of men had to master new skills like slaying wild animals, manufacturing weapons, naval warfare. Yet today's manly man can't use someone's new pronouns or drink from a paper straw without complaining. Number eight, that I still get barraged by Twitter trolls calling me that other F-word and telling me I'm going to hell. Finally, and most painfully, number nine, that my husband and I are not welcome in the vast majority of American churches. We're not welcome at their marriage classes, their conferences or retreats, that our testimony is treated like trash and that we are considered outsiders at best and godless perverts at worst. And all this pain that I've experienced has been done behind a massive wall of privilege, which has shielded me from so much. I can't imagine how it's been for those of you who've not had that kind of luck.
It's true that my reasons to be angry are many, and I suspect for everyone in this room your reasons are quite larger than nine. There have been days when these thoughts have been suffocating. There have been days when the news has hijacked my mind. There have been days I've argued on Twitter with some guy named JohnPiperLover316. It’s not untrue.
There have been days, there have been days I've brooded over some religious leader who has yet again said some ridiculous thing. And there have been days when I am just completely despondent at how church and government have failed us. Even trying to come up with a talk for this conference was a struggle because I found myself in a very angry place knowing that many of you have felt a lot of these similar emotions.
In the last few years, these days have become so common, I coined a term for those days and I call it “doom rehearsal.” Doom rehearsal is the habitual consumption of assumed despair, the habitual consumption of assumed despair most commonly found in places like twitter.com and etc. But it is the assumption that the world is only and always getting worse, that those who hate us will win, that justice is losing, and that things will really never get better. Over and over and over again, I've brooded, I have dwelt, I have reveled, I have bathed my body in bad news and then drank the water. Worst yet, I have been a coconspirator in this doom. I've consumed this despair, and I've helped to distribute it via social media.
My online emotional emissions have polluted others and been quite, quite toxic. I'm a storyteller by trade, so to make a living, I have to create art for myself. And this has been extremely problematic for me in the last few years because I've discovered I can't create art when I'm rehearsing doom. I know some of you in here create amazing art out of places of anger, and I respect that. That is not the way it works for me. I just get completely angry and can't focus on anything the rest of the day. It took a while for me to realize that my work was being completely sabotaged by this sort of aura of doom that I was immersing myself in each day.
The emotional energy that I should have been harnessing to direct towards creating art, creating work, and putting truth into the world was getting siphoned away like a massive black hole. Admitting that I was giving my emotional energy to this kind of doom was honestly my first step out of it. However, what really transformed me was deciding to reinvest that emotional energy in a new and specific direction.
At first, it felt silly. Next, it felt like Pollyanna. After that, it felt like a massive waste of time. But then, it began to feel like a miracle drug and a life raft and an unbreakable dam, holding back the despair of life. Everything changed for me when I got serious about habitual gratitude. Habitual gratitude. I'm not talking about your Thanksgiving Day Facebook posts. I'm not talking about random outbursts of gratitude. I'm not talking about the occasional paroxysms of gratitude that happen when you again see something on Facebook calling you to be grateful. I'm not talking about the recreational use of gratitude. I'm talking about the habituated, compulsive, repeated discipline of gratitude, something that perhaps has been mentioned to you in your faith journey but not quite so seriously. Today we're going to get very serious about that.
For me, habitual gratitude has been a force multiplier on my journey to emotional health and surviving the doomy narratives of the days we live in. So that's what I want to talk about. If you've spent any time around the Christian faith, you've probably encountered moments where it seems like Scripture and science do not align. I suspect many of you have had that moment. When it comes to gratitude, this is not the case. As it turns out, the Bronze Age Bible writers were way ahead of their game. Calls to gratitude in Scripture are so pervasive, you skip right over them. They're so, so common.
Here's just a few. Psalm 118: “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever.” 1 Timothy 4: “For everything God created is good and nothing is to be rejected if it's received with Thanksgiving.” 1 Thessalonians 5: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4: “Don't be anxious about anything but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” In Scripture, the call to gratitude bolsters our faith in an invisible God, while giving our souls a reprieve from the bleakness of life, from doom rehearsal. And the data confirms the ancient wisdom. In the last 30 years, there's been an explosion of research around gratitude.
You've read books and heard podcasts all about it. It's all extremely Google-able. Most of these hundreds of research studies confirm the same thing. Gratitude rewires the neurological connections of the brain, yielding lots of positive outcomes. So, here are a few of those findings.
Let's start with Harvard Medical School. Quote, “In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.” End quote. Two researchers at Penn discovered that when participants delivered one letter of gratitude to someone per week, their happiness increased by 10 percent and their depressive symptoms decreased by an astonishing 35 percent. One study from Berkeley, here's a quote, “Gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions.” End quote.
This study suggests that gratitude is helpful, quote, “not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals, but also for those who struggle with mental health concerns.” End quote. And finally, it's well documented that materialism decreases psychological well-being. Multiple studies have shown that gratitude acts as a psychic antidote to materialism. And I love this. You guys know what the tenth commandment is. It's the really kind of weird one that didn't really make sense when we were younger. It's the one about not coveting your, you know, your neighbor's house or their wife or their donkey or whatever it may be. And this one always felt strange to me. It always felt like, do not kill, do not lie. This all makes sense. Don't covet? Doesn't feel like it makes the top ten, you know? It's like, it's like it was snuck in to kind of round out you know, an even number. But I think this last commandment is a call to antimaterialism.
I think it was sort of preemptively inserted into Scripture for the social media age, seeing as how now all we do all day is consume the materialistic needs of others. So whether you're a saint or a skeptic in this room, wherever you are in your faith journey, you can take a deep breath, know that the Scripture, the ancient wisdom and the data can confirm that gratitude is fairly awesome.
Personally, I've cultivated gratitude in four distinct ways. I only have time for two. Number one is to compare down. I am exhausted by the phrase between Pinterest and paintings on kitchen walls, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” This phrase is half true, but actually comparing up is the thief of joy. Constantly comparing our lives to those who are wealthier, prettier, and go on more amazing vacations is an absolute recipe for misery. This is why Instagram is so diabolical. When done properly, comparison can be the chief of joy. Habitual gratitude calls us to compare down to those who have less, those who are struggling. I didn't say, “Look down on those people.” I said, “Compare what we have to what they have.” And this becomes a massive generator of humility and gratitude. It forces us to stare at the beautiful things in life. And this is why I love history. History is just one big compare down. Foraging for food, barbarian invasions, bubonic plague, child labor. I would not have fared well. Domesticating animals. Can you imagine the people that had to domesticate cats? I mean, it's a, it's a horrifying thought. So, habitually comparing my life to those who have it worse or have had it worse has been incredibly powerful.
Number two, my second strategy, I call it “cultivated awareness.” Cultivated awareness. And I use the cultivate here intentionally to hopefully paint an image of someone sweating and digging and cultivating something in a field. An example would be, do you remember 10 or 20 years ago when cellphones were kind of new, and in a large setting like this, there may have only been 100 cellphones, but probably 10 of them would go off. Because human beings had not cultivated an awareness about governing the sound of their phone. In this room today, there are probably close to 2,000 or 3,000 cellphones. You might hear one or two go off. We have all cultivated awareness through fear of embarrassment and through repeatedly being worried about our phone going off. It's a cultivated awareness. This is what I'm talking about. So habitual gratitude is forged in the same way, reminding ourselves about the beautiful things in life.
So this is what I've done over the last three years as a defense against the culture of social media, doom in particular. And so I cannot explain the psychology behind it. But as this has become a habit, it has morphed into an autoresponse. An autoresponse to the dark days of life. So if you ask me, “B.T., what are you grateful for?” Here is what I will tell you.
Number one, I'm grateful when I step in gum. It reminds me I own a pair of shoes. Number two, I'm grateful for traffic in Atlanta because it reminds me I own a car. Number three, I'm grateful for a tight-knit community of friends who loved me through the closeted years and who filled the void of those who've walked away. Number four, I'm grateful for my body, for the gray in my beard, the emerging wrinkles on my face and for my forehead, which is too big. Number five, I'm grateful for my conservative Baptist upbringing. Though it was not perfect, I learned and grew in so many ways. Number six, I'm grateful for a God who says I'm loved, for an ancient faith that transcends millennia, that transcends the drama of 2019. Number seven, I'm grateful for my mother. She holds a traditional view of sexuality but has learned to love my husband so beautifully. Number eight, I'm grateful to be gay. I'm grateful to be gay. For the agonizing years in the closet. That pain has become my Rosetta stone, giving me deep empathy by translating the pain of others into a language I can understand. Finally and most wonderfully, number nine. I'm grateful for my husband who loves me well, surprises me at work with a donut, writes love notes, tucks them into my wallet, and whose companionship has brought me more peace and thriving than I could have imagined.
Count your many blessings. Count them one by one. It's not just a song, it's a way of life. And please don't misunderstand me. I know many of you are going through really hard things in this room. You're working through faith issues. You've been betrayed; you've been misled; you've been victimized. And I have complete and total empathy for that. And I'm not going to stand on this stage and tell you to slap on a smile, sweep your pain under a rug, and just be grateful. That is not my message.
All I'm asking you is this: as you work through your pain, leave some room for gratitude. As you work through your pain, leave some room for gratitude. And when the bleeding stops and the wounds turn into scars, I would ask you to attempt to embrace the full power of gratitude, knowing that the God of heaven and the laws of neuroscience will conspire to heal you.
In several weeks, I'm releasing a new podcast that follows a remarkable series of events that happened in Atlanta in the early 1900s. My favorite character from the story is W.E.B. Dubois. Having a good public school education in the state of Alabama, he was left out of my history teaching or perhaps I slept through class, either could be possible. If you don't know W.E.B. Dubois, the man lived to be 95 years old, and I promise you, he saw virtually the worst of what America had to offer. He was an African American sociologist, author, and historian born in 1868, the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. He's best known for his fierce activism, advocating for the rights of Black people through one of the most horrifically racist times in American history. We're talking lynching, Jim Crow, and the brazen disenfranchisement of African Americans. In 1957, he wrote a letter that was to be opened upon his death. This was sort of his farewell address. And so in 1963, he passed away. They opened the letter. It was short, but it reads like a dissertation on gratitude.
Here's an excerpt. Quote, “I have loved my work. I have loved people and my play. But always I have been uplifted by the thought that what I have done well will live long and justify my life, that what I have done ill or never finished can now be handed on to others for endless days to be finished, perhaps better than I could have done. And that peace will be my applause. One thing alone I charge you as you live: Believe in life. Always, human beings will live and progress to a greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth. Goodbye.” End quote. So as you live, believe in life. And so, dear friends, I would ask you, boldly confront broken systems while holding to a fierce belief that good will triumph in the end. Thank you.
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Part 3: Conversation
SARAH: [Ad] If you’ve been listening to and loving this podcast, join us for Evolving Faith 2022, the live virtual conference. It’s on October 14 and 15.
So many of us are engaging in good, hard, holy work right now to cultivate love and 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, who is alongside of us. We need connection, inspiration, 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.
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SARAH: So this was a surprising talk for a lot of folks in the hockey arena, I think. I don't know if this sort of content or invitation is very common in a lot of the conversations that are swirling around deconstruction, which is maybe why I found it pretty refreshing. But B.T. did start us off with an important practice as part of gratitude, because, you know, gratitude isn't about bright-siding. He took the time to really specifically name what was making him angry at that time. And I don't know if people usually put anger and gratitude into the same space, but he did it in a way that I think is really helpful.
JEFF: Obviously, there are forms of expressing gratitude that can be about unhealthy fixation on what doesn't suck. But, you're right. B.T. specifically programs against that. And he says it's important that we name our anger and acknowledge injustice. There's so much going on in the world that merits anger and even our righteous rage. We should be angry about and rage about unfairness and poverty and bigotry. And the question is, what do you do with that?
SARAH: Hmm. I think we pay attention to it. You know, I can't speak for anyone else, but being angry isn't something that most of us have been given permission to experience or feel or even articulate. And some of that is just garbage theological teaching. But even allowing ourselves to be angry, to name what is making us angry is, I hope, I think it is, I think it's an invitation to care and to engage.
JEFF: Yeah, the anger is still there. And when it's there, but unacknowledged, I think it ends up seeping into our behaviors and our relationships, our dreams and our actions and our reactions. It doesn't just evaporate if ignored as much as Enneagram 9s might like to believe it does.
SARAH: Listen, I don't come on this podcast to be called out in such a fashion. Even if you are completely right about my hope that ignoring things will just make them go away. Don't disabuse me of that notion.
JEFF: It has been a little while since one of us submitted a resignation letter. So, anyway, I really appreciate B.T.'s emphasis on gratitude. Early on in our relationship, Tristan started this practice that's been really important to us. We don't do it every night by any means, but it's a regular thing. Right before we go to bed, we each name three things that we're grateful for, and especially on a downbeat day or after a hard day, especially when we've been struggling, it matters to be able to think through even those worst days and find three things that we can give thanks for. Sometimes it feels like a discipline, and I think it's wonderful that B.T. named that. When he uses the phrase “habitual gratitude,” he suggests that it does take practice because habits don't just happen. They require repetition.
SARAH: I love that language around, you know, habitual gratitude or cultivating gratitude. I think it's really close to that old Christian word practice, like we're practicing over and over, working that thing that we are hoping for right into our minds and our souls and our behaviors. And so I really love that practice that you and Tristan have. It's a really good and vital thing. I do that in a journal now and then, just like a quick short list of the gratitude for the day, especially honestly, like you said, on the hard days.
JEFF: So as we've discussed briefly on previous episodes, I played the violin when I was a kid and I practiced certain pieces so often that my fingers still know the movements now. And I think that's the kind of thing B.T. was talking about. You do the thing until it becomes almost inscribed into your muscle memory. And in this case, the muscle is the heart.
SARAH: Well, I think that's, that's a spiritual discipline. I don't know, you know, if I can use that language, maybe spiritual practice is better. But as he said, it's almost this act of defense or resistance, even to remind ourselves of what we are fighting for, of what's beautiful and good. One of my favorite verses in Scripture, and I do know that I say that about all of them every time I do this, but it's the one over in Philippians that encourages us to think about whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right and pure, lovely, whatever is admirable, if it's excellent or praiseworthy. And I think that maybe that's even what the wild roses are to me. As we talked at the beginning of the episode, that habitual cultivation of awareness of something beautiful that was really helpful. And I think a very practical practice that B.T. brought to us at a moment when, you know, we were pretty actively grieving. A lot of us had been angry, were processing pain. That was a very helpful thing, I think.
JEFF: Yeah. And it's not either or. It can be both and. We can do multiple things at once, physically sometimes but also emotionally holding both anger and gratitude. Which brings me to one thing that I want to name that made me somewhat uncomfortable, even as there was so much that rang true to me in this talk. And that's where B.T. encourages us to compare down. I get what he's saying and I don't want to mischaracterize it. But I also wonder whether he didn't really understand how it would come across worded like that. I just don't think we need the hierarchy. We've got to have a broader imagination. You don't have to look at someone who has less or who has been through worse to feel gratitude. Something about that just doesn't sit right with me.
SARAH: Yeah, I felt that, too. You know, it might be a missed wording choice. But, yeah, comparing down doesn't feel right. I know I've often heard that in the context of social media, which is where he was focusing in that moment, that we do have a tendency to compare our real lives with someone else's highlight reel, of course, which isn't fair or right, you know. But that language of comparing down even to past generations isn't, it's not how I think about it either.
JEFF: There's something disconcerting to me about turning those who are less fortunate into spiritual object lessons or some sort of tool for our benefit. It's a little dehumanizing. I remember when I was a kid waiting in line in a church parking lot with my grandmother for government cheese. Poverty is part of my family's story, and there's no shame in that. But the poor aren't there, even in part, so that those who are richer can feel more thankful. And rather than comparing up or down, how about not comparing at all? I think it's possible to be grateful just because something is good. We can be thankful for the sunshine, just because it feels warm on our skin and we can be thankful for food just because we're nourished. We can be thankful for a gentle breeze, just because it provides respite from the summer heat. None of that requires comparison.
SARAH: Mmhmm. I liked how B.T. acknowledged that many of us are in pain or have been betrayed. I think that was very true in 2019. But it's, it maybe feels particularly true for many of us right now. And so it was really important, I think, when he said, you know, “Let's not pretend that you're not angry or hurt or devastated or in pain, but even in the midst of that, that it's good to leave that room for, for the practice of gratitude”. I really loved his line at the end when he said, embrace, pardon me. I really love that line at the end when he said, “Embrace the full power of gratitude, knowing that the God of heaven and the laws of neuroscience will conspire to heal you.” That's a really beautiful way of putting that, and I think it's a practical thing that will serve us well in the wilderness seasons. It's complex and unique to each of us, but I think he modeled that really well.
JEFF: So in the spirit of making some room, I thought maybe we could end our conversation today each naming three things we're grateful for. Sarah, do you want to start?
SARAH: Sure. Sure, I'll start. And maybe we'll put this prompt over in the Evolving Faith online community, too, over in the podcast group so you all can have a chance to jump in and share yours as well. I'd love to read them. But, which actually probably would be my first one, I'm really grateful for the Evolving Faith community. It's been a bit of a surprise to me over the past few years as this has kind of organically developed and grown. But it does feel to me like an oasis. It's a bit of a sanctuary for us, for a lot of us. And I'm really grateful for all of the folks who continue to show up and engage and contend, even for what they're hoping for. I value that. I really value our shared spaces and values and even our shared stubbornness and faithfulness there. I'm grateful, I'm grateful for how much I enjoy my kids and our life together. I don't take that for granted. And there isn't honestly, probably a day when I don't get into bed just grateful for my husband and our family and our home that we have cultivated here, you know. Even wild roses, too. And I'm grateful for you, you weirdo. You're a gift and I don't know if anyone fully appreciates or understands how good you are right to the core of you.
JEFF: You say that now, just give it time. I do feel seen in being called a weirdo and I appreciate that. So my three things right now. First, I'm grateful for friendship. I was a pretty lonely kid, and I honestly didn't imagine a day when I thought I would have really good friends, including you. So friendship means a lot to me. Second, I'm grateful for the little rhythms of our life here in Grand Rapids. Tristan makes coffee every afternoon, for instance, and just before we started recording, he knocked on the door and brought me a glass. It's those tiny gestures that add up to a life. It's the walks with Fozzie, who is snoozing on the couch right behind me. It's the conversations about what to have for dinner. It's the odd inside jokes. And I guess, third, in the spirit of your wild roses, we have a hydrangea bush right outside our house. I didn't know that's what it was when we moved in because it was January and everything was dead. Then a few months later, this bush starts producing these big leaves, and a couple of months after that, these giant mop heads of gorgeousness. And because I am who I am, the first time I cut a few stems and brought them in the house, I said to Tristan, “That is $40 of hydrangeas right there. And it didn't cost us anything.” I did nothing to deserve the hydrangea. It was just there before we came and I don't take particularly good care of it. And right now it is in full flourish in blue and white and pink and purple. The hydrangea are the embodiment of grace itself, and I am grateful for them, even if I don't know whether the word hydrangea is singular or plural or both.
SARAH: You can find all of the links mentioned on today’s show as well as info about B.T. Harman and his work in the world as well as a full transcript of this episode in our show notes, that’s over at evolvingfaith.com/podcast.
You can mostly find me at my newsletter, Field Notes, these days which you can find at sarahbessey.com—that’s almost the only place that I’m sharing much these days—but I still show up on social media now and then as @sarahbessey in all the usual places.
JEFF: Sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com. Occasionally, I tweet at @jeffchu, and more often, you’ll find me on Instagram at @byjeffchu. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, along with our thoughtful and wise 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.
[ Instrumental Music: It Is Well With My Soul by SueAnn Shiah ]
JEFF: Throughout our time together at Evolving Faith, there is 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. And we need folks to accompany us and be alongside us.
So we are delighted to invite you to join the Evolving Faith community online, a new space we’ve created—and we hope you will co-create with us—for better conversations, deeper connections, questions big and small, and content that we hope will be inspiring and meet you where you are.
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.
