A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast
Welcome to A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast, the podcast where we respond to your questions and comments on issues of faith, social justice and church life. Don't be afraid to write in and ask your question because if it matters to you, it matters to us and it just might be a matter of faith. Whether it be faith in God, faith in others or faith in yourself. We are brought to you by the Office of Faith-Based Investing & Corporate Engagement, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, and Unbound: An Interactive Journal on Christian Social Justice for the Presbyterian Church (USA). Submit questions to faithpodcast@pcusa.org. LISTENING GUIDES FOUND IN PODCAST SHOW NOTES.
A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast
Why Our Tears Matter w/ Benjamin Perry
Question for the Week:
Certain people in history have dominated a sport and that dominance can lead to boredom or the need for more diversity in talent or a lot of competitiveness, is the church similar in this way?
Special Guest: (22:40)
Rev. Benjamin Perry,
Minister of Outreach and Media Strategy, Middle Collegiate Church, and Author of Cry, Baby Why Our Tears Matter
Guest Question:
How do we live into our emotions as part of our spirituality, especially emotions such as sadness or grief? What role do they play as we live out our faith? Emotions can be a strong motivation for action but there is also a risk of being lost or caught up in emotions. How do we navigate this?
Cry, Baby: Why Our Tears Matter
For Listening Guides, click here!
Got a question for us? Send them to faithpodcast@pcusa.org!
A Matter of Faith website
Well, hello everyone and welcome again to a Matter of Faith, a Presby podcast. The podcast where we respond to your questions of faith, justice, and church life. Don't forget to write in and send us your question because,
Speaker 2:Because if it matters to you, it matters to us and it just might be a matter of faith . Hey Simon.
Speaker 1:Hey Lee . I hope you're doing well and everyone, we hope that you are doing well too. But if you don't care how we are doing, you can skip this introductory conversation and go to the timestamp in the show notes for the conversation with our guests . But we hope you'll wanna stick around for some intro conversation. Yes, Lee , how are you doing? Are you doing well? Is it cooler in the DC area? It's cooler.
Speaker 2:It's cooler. Thank the Lord. And yeah, it's, it's nice to go outside in the morning and have like a cooler breeze. 'cause that's when you know, like the tides are turning <laugh>, hopefully <laugh> , because I am, we were talking before this, I am an autumn fall creature and I really come out in my fullness in the fall. So I am really like trying to, to get there. And we're in August already, which is hard to believe. So Yeah, it's coming. It's coming.
Speaker 1:Yep . Yeah, we had a heat spell out in here in Idaho over the last week, but I think we're starting to cool down a little bit . Might even get a little bit of rain. Oh , imagine that. Yeah. I have to say folks, I'm not saying people should follow Lee on social media because they don't want Lee's inbox to just get , uh, or you know, accounts to just get swarmed. But sometimes Lee makes some pretty funny posts about the weather, especially when it's very hot. Yeah. Uh, that I, I found very entertaining
Speaker 2:Throughout . I'm try to funny
Speaker 1:The last couple weeks be ,
Speaker 2:You know, I've, I've pledged to myself to like write more and to like write more comedy stuff and so yeah. I'm glad you found me funny 'cause I am funny, but I'm more of like a sporadic funny. Mm-hmm . And I have to think about you have to, it's a very different thing when you write it, so you have to think differently. Like, I can be funny off the cuff and that's a lot different than writing them. So, but it's, yeah. Don't follow me. Y'all <laugh>. Uh, yeah, I'm , I don't know. I'm a shy person in person. I think I felt like, you know, if this podcast was like ha like got like so popular, I don't think I would thrive very well.
Speaker 1:Like if you had paparazzi,
Speaker 2:People recognizing you . I'm very shy and like in front of people, you know, 'cause I sing, I sing and all this stuff and I have, I am , it terrifies me to do anything in , in front of people. So
Speaker 1:You wouldn't wanna live like the YouTuber influencer lifestyle of like walking into a store and even just subtly being recognized?
Speaker 2:No, I like putting out content but I don't like the aftermath of it.
Speaker 1:No , fair enough.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean? Yeah. I would never be able to do that. I think I would have to go out in disguise. I think I would have to change. Yeah. I don't go out much anyway, so it wouldn't be that much different. But yeah, I don't like that. Yeah . Unlike people knowing who I am. I don't, I don't really like that, but I like doing this so it kind of comes with it in some ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 2:Or I'm talking like, I'm like, this is like, we're like Hollywood royalty or something, but Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well speaking of people knowing about things, people knew about this a while ago I'm sure because of the, the news that's been out. But we talked about this a couple weeks ago. Once again , uh, former president Donald Trump is, well, I mean
Speaker 2:He just can't get away from <laugh> . Yeah , right.
Speaker 1:You're right. You just can't get away. He has , I mean he has been found guilty of charges as to four Yeah . More charges. So we'll see what happens, if anything. Um, but just wanted to make that note. And yeah. Other folks that people probably are aware of , um, Peewee Herman has passed away. That's sad .
Speaker 2:I know. PeeWee's Playhouse. Did you ever watch that?
Speaker 1:A little bit.
Speaker 2:It terrified me. It was one of those things . Yeah , I see that . Things that scared that that little recliner coming to life was not my favorite thing. It was the weirdest looking thing in the world. But I did watch the Peewee movie and that also scared me to death where he went to look for the Alamo or something. Yeah. But I mean, Peewee the actor who was a part of that was a lot of weird things happened and it was interesting thing. But like Peewee opened up this like world of weird quirky comedy, kind of like nobody had done before. So we gotta give peewee his flowers. Yeah. And while we're giving flowers, this is way off topic , Simon, but if you haven't listened to the Nene Leaks interview with Carlos King, you need to go, you need to go listen to it. It's on the podcast talking about somebody who deserves her flowers. It's Nene Leaks. And if you don't know who Nene Leaks is, Google it.
Speaker 1:I'm one of those people. You
Speaker 2:Can Google it,
Speaker 1:I'll google it, we'll google it .
Speaker 2:Reality superstar.
Speaker 1:Ah .
Speaker 2:So yeah, go, go look up her. But we also wanted to , you know, mention , uh, O'Shea Sibley, and if you don't know who that is, was murdered stabbed while at a gas station in Brooklyn and voguing to Beyonce and was approached and because of homophobia and because of all the hate that the community is receiving was stabbed because of it. And it just shows that still there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of work to be done in all sorts of communities in the community. And yeah, we're just sending a lot of love and heartbreak out there because yeah, it's, it's awful and tragic and shouldn't be this way. So we have a lot of work to do.
Speaker 1:Well in terms of our question for this week , uh, this question is, I'm gonna go ahead and say it submitted by me and we're just gonna see where this conversation
Speaker 2:Goes <laugh> .
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna give some context real quick. Uh, for people that do know me, you might be aware that recently I have gotten very into Formula One racing. In fact, I think I might even have mentioned Formula One previously on the podcast. And currently we are watching history being made in Formula One, which if people dunno what it is, it is the sort of the pinnacle of car racing motor sports . And we are currently watching history being made. Um, the Red Bull team has now won, I believe 13 races in a row, which is an unprecedented feat for any team in the sports history. And the two time , uh, world champion Max Verstappen is leading by a pretty dominant margin this season as he did and well not as he did, but he is, he is winning right now and he won the last two seasons and he is , uh, one race away from setting the record for the, I believe he's one race away from um, setting the record for uh, the all time tally for consecutive wins in Formula One. And the reason I bring this up is because it is amazing to see history being made, but it also at times as a fan and as a viewer leaves me wanting because I feel like I show up every week just to watch this guy dominate and then watch everyone else squabble for the rest.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The podium positions, which is fine. There's a lot of fun action happening in , uh, amongst the other teams and amongst the rest of the field. But this leads to my question. We spend so much time talking about wanting to witness history, wanting to see dominance in sports, and then when we actually get it, I think we don't always necessarily want it anymore. Now to that said, If you are a fan of Max Fortin , you are probably just always very happy and that's okay. I'm not saying I don't like him, I'm just saying that I really like it when there's a bit more of a mix, especially for the, the top position. And as we think about faith, we think about times where I think what we're trying to think about are , whether it's our success or we, we see that person that we always knows gets asked to do the same thing in church. And you kind of hear from the same people over and over. And I just wonder if it's the same thing in the faith context. Do we get bored from hearing those same voices, from seeing the same people? Or as our conversation with um, Anna Carter Florence from last week mentioned hearing the same stories, the same scriptures. So I'm just wondering about this oversaturation of maybe particular people or particular things and does that create complacency or boredom in the faith context? Yeah,
Speaker 2:I think to a certain extent in, well, I think a clarifying, I think, well obviously sports and church are very different kind of set up in different ways. But I think people have set church up like a sport, I would say. And I do think in some spaces it is very competitive and because of that competitiveness there is this, there is this idea of, well, I have to work or get to this point to where I am on top in order for me to like feel successful or to be in the light or to be asked all the time. Like I do think there is somewhat of a competitiveness to it. But then there's also like the intersections obviously. And I , and whenever we talk about this, I think of the Williams sisters in tennis, I don't know a thing about racing, I could tell you, I don't even know who you ju who you're talking about, but I do know that in the world of tennis , tennis, especially women's tennis, the, the Williams sisters dominated that field for a very long time. But within that, because of who they were and the intersection of race, because they were black women who were also brought up in a space of, of being taught by their father and not having like the typical tennis story, but being so good and so talented and also being just like good people. That that's a thing too. I think for me it was a different type of dominance in that they push people to get on their level. I think that's another thing that is kind of, I'm thinking about . And I think people demonize a lot of people who, who are in these spaces too. 'cause you always have to have somebody to go against in , in the society. Like that's just how this toxic culture works. It's white supremacist culture. Like you have to, you have to have an enemy. You have to like bring somebody down to lift somebody up. Those types of things. So I, I see it in all those dynamics in the church though . Like I do think we ask the same people over and over again and the same people always wanna be out in the front. And that's, and in some ways that's great. In some ways that's not, especially when there's not like a intergenerational thing going on about like how do we mentor people to kind of to and ask different people to do things. But I think there is a, a big similarity in it and it can be very toxic and at the same time it can also push to think differently or challenge the institution in a way that it hasn't been before like it did in tennis.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think there's also this question about what we see as success, which we've talked about on the podcast before, but also legacy. Hmm . And what I mean by that is Max for Stepin clearly is not the first driver in Formula One to win a lot. He's in the upper tier of those that have won a lot, but he is not the only one that's won a lot. And even in the history of this particular sport, if you look at the history, different teams and a couple drivers seems to, it seems to rotate around . At one point it was Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton at one point it was uh, Ferrari and Michael Schumacher another time it was uh, ton Sena . So it, different teams, different people, but like there are eras of sort of dominance, right? If we go to the National Football League, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, there's always been this kind of dominance that has existed in a specific era within a specific period of time. And I'm just very curious about why we always tie our someone's legacy to victory. Yeah . Always. And I say that as someone who likes to win. So don't get me wrong, like in a game I like to win. It's fun, but it's not just fun in the vic in the victory itself. It's in the things that you learned and the things you did to get there. Right? It's not just about the victory itself. I'm not that cutthroat. Some people are, but when we think about church, I sometimes wonder if we get too caught up in the the legacy. Because if we were con , if we were truly caring about legacy, how could the church be dying? Because the young people would be the legacy that gets left behind. But clearly that is change because there's not as many young people as there used to be in church and in the faith community.
Speaker 2:And I think it's because a lot of young people realize that the way the church has been set up to win, I mean it started when the church became like an imperial force and then it started when the church was involved in everything in the world. And, and it started when the church was involved in colonization and created colonization. And we're still, I really do think we're, I mean we're still battling the ramifications of all of that now. And I do think young people just don't want to be a part of any of that. And I think that's something that we have to realize no matter how progressive we are, no matter how conservative we are, no matter any of it, the legacy of our institution, unfortunately the negative is outweighs the positive. And I do think that in the, in the realistic world and everything outside of the church bubble, that is the case that people think the negative outweighs the positive because that's what we've seen. That's what we've seen happen. Not everybody sees the relationships people have. Not everybody sees these kinds of things. And what it comes out is what is put in front of like Tom Brady, I don't know Tom Brady's life. I mean some people do, but the only thing that is seen to the outside world is the winning and the victory and all of these things. And so there's like this idea that's like kind of the opposite of the church. I think It's like we've seen what the church has done and this legacy, what you have left, like the people within it may, they may talk about love and hope and everything else, but the large thing that is in people's faces that is actually happening that we're seeing is the negativity of it all. And I think a part of legacy is to the play of, especially with sports people , it's like again, people want to see the negative in things. And I mean that's just comes with being out there in the world. But yeah, I think, I think legacy when we're talking about the church versus like a particular person, it's, I don't think it's a good one that I , and for me being in the church, I know there's good in it. Like I know that, but everybody else, if you're not in it and all you've seen is the other end of it because it's such a, it's like in your face, that is the legacy and we're what in a domination of 1.2 million people, that's a small bubble to see the good that the church can do. And if you're not in it and all you see is what's on the outside, which is very important to see. I think the church has missed that, like the impact of that.
Speaker 1:And to the Tom Brady example, I , I'm pretty sure that we talked about this on the podcast when Tom Brady announced that he was coming back for uh , his, what was his actual final last season with Tampa Bay. That decision, because he is a, a superstar and in the public eye it was pretty, it seemed pretty obvious from the outside looking in that that cost him his marriage.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So
Speaker 1:It's like there are costs to these things and to try to add to this legacy that he already had. Yeah. Which I think is something else that we can do in church as well is that we sometimes, you know, we there we wanna, we wanna , we outstay are welcome too long mm-hmm <affirmative> and kind of just gotta let things change, let things go. And I also just don't want it to seem like we're just like hating on the church as an institution right now. 'cause that's not really where I, what I'm trying to do with this question and with this conversation, I just think it's a question around what is it we're trying to achieve? What did we achieve? What are we trying to achieve? Whether it be at a denominational level or it's just at the congregational level in our own community. Yeah . And what is the history that is already around us that we maybe we're aware of, maybe we're not. And do we want that to continue? Do we want that to change? Because I think that that's an important thing to think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we have to think about it hard. Like it's what people see on the outside. That's what they gonna see. It's like that's what they're gonna see. Like they're gonna see it and that's how it works. Until they, they get to know something. There are many people in this church and not in this denomination, but in the Christian Church in general that I used to put on pedestals and now not so much 'cause you learn <laugh> . It's just like, 'cause people are people, you know? And an institution is made by people and that is what's gonna happen. And, and I think sometimes thinking about legacy too much and how we are going to be remembered because I'll go ahead and tell you there are not, when I am dead and gone, I could care less about what exactly I am remembered for. I would much rather people be in a better space of living than they are now. That's my thing. I don't necessarily care what you think about me now or what you think about me then. But I do think what is the legacy of the church? If we're leaving people better than what they were and not exactly how we are going as a church, we're gonna be remembered because I'll go ahead and tell you in the history books, they're not gonna write about your relationships. They're not gonna write about organizational charts. They're not gonna write about anything that we are so connected with right now. They're going to write about the swooping broad thing that the church did or didn't do. That's how it is. And who is writing that too ? And the only way we're gonna know as to what happened during this time, if , if we read every social media post <laugh> has ever been put or somebody has wr written, somebody writes, multiple people write 20 books about what happened. You know ? So I think for me, the church, this question makes me think how we can live in the now and respond to what's happening now instead of, well we need to be looking into the future. It's just like the Kingdom of God analogy. Like it's happening now. How do we bring it now? And even when we say, you know, we're not looking into the future, we kind of are because we're basing everything on, well, will we still be here or will we not? And I say it all the time, but like it's because we are not in the now and we're thinking too much about legacy and about ourselves and what we're gonna leave. I don't, you know, it's, it is what it is. But I think sometimes it's a little, the legacy becomes interesting to me in that way, depending on who it is too. You know, I think that's, it definitely depends on who it is .
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well folks, why don't you write in and let us know what you think about whether it's fame, success, or legacy as also as repetition and whether that leads to sort of complacency in the church. Write in and let us know what you think about all of that . And we hope that you'll enjoy our conversation with our guest for this week. Who is Reverend Benjamin Perry, the Minister of outreach and media strategy at Middle Collegiate Church and he is also the author of Cry Baby . Why Our Tears Matter. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Ben.
Speaker 2:Well, joining us on the podcast today is a very special guest. We have Reverend Benjamin Perry, who is the Minister of Outreach and media strategy at Middle Collegiate Church and the author of Crybaby Y r Tears Matter. You can also find Ben at fatefully BP on Twitter, Instagram, and now threads. But welcome Ben to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1:I'm delight to be here. Yeah, we're really grateful to have you on so you can tell us why do our tears matter, Ben <laugh>. And speaking more to our question that we have written in from a listener, how do we live into our spiritual emotions as part of our spirituality, especially emotions such as sadness or grief? What role do they play as we live out our faith ? Emotions can be a strong motivation for action, but there's also a risk of being lost or caught up in emotions. How do we navigate this? What would you have to say to that, Ben?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for a really long time I think people have received a message that they should be suspicious of their emotional life, particularly when it comes to faith and knowing God. We're told explicitly and implicitly that emotions are something that come from us, lead us away from true faith, which comes from objective reasoning. That whole tradition of systematic theology. That the proper way to know God is by reading, you know , good theology, tmm and thinking the appropriate thoughts and prayerfully and objectively discerning God's call on our life and answering. And I actually think that that misses a incredibly crucial way that the Holy Spirit moves in our lives. Our emotions are not a distraction from God's presence in our life. They are a manifestation of God moving within us. And I think the more we begin to reframe our own understanding of our emotions so that we start to listen to them as if they have something important to tell us theologically, the less I'm concerned by fear of will I get caught up in my emotions? Is it going to be a distraction from my faith? Is it going to move me away from where God is calling? I actually think we are so far away from that place, so enthralled and enraptured in this posten enlightenment hangover of monumental importance of pure reason that we would have to do an awful lot of pendulum swinging the other direction. For me to be really concerned that that for most people is going to be the serious risk in their lives, I think much more likely is that there are a lot of people who are suspicious of what they feel because they have been told that it's not an authentic source of theological inspiration. And so when I think about my own emotional life, part of the reason why I wrote my book is I went through this decade where I didn't cry. And it wasn't only that I didn't cry, it was be , in some ways I talk about crying as the reverse of the canary in the coal mine. That by the time we extinguish weeping, we've actually seriously numbed a huge portion of our emotional, emotional life. That crying is oftentimes the last thing to go. And I look back on this decade where I had completely extinguished tears. And in order to do that, I just cut out the part of me that felt deeply and that period in my life was the period where I was most lost. Whereas grappling with internalized homophobia and gender dysphoria where I was so palpably uncomfortable within my own body, not because I had done something wrong, but because I was listening to cultural voices that were telling me that part of how God created me was something to be ashamed of. I'm so glad that in my early twenties I went through this project of emotional reclamation where I taught myself how to cry again and more to the point taught myself how to feel deeply again because that process gave me back something that I had lost. And all of a sudden I was able to occupy my own body in a way that I had not for years and years and years. And what was really fascinating to me is that this process of emo emotional reclamation happened at exactly the same time that I found my faith again. By the time I was at the end of college, I really didn't go to church at all. When I did, it was mostly because I was singing , uh, or, you know, playing music in my home church. I really didn't have much of a connection with any kind of faith. I ran away to seminary, which is an odd thing to do if you're somewhat disconnected from religion. But mostly just to find myself , uh, because I had this palpable sense of, of being lost and disconnected from who I wanted to be. And I figured, well, you know, maybe three years of <laugh> of sitting in a weird gothic cathedral in New York , uh, will, will help me understand that. But it's not a coincidence that that period of emotional reclamation was also the period that led me back to my faith. I really believe that in significant ways, faith withers, if it's not tied into genuine feeling, a general relationship with God. And I don't think we can have a truly relationship if we don't feel deeply in the same way that I think personal relationships wither if we're not sufficiently committed to an authentic emotional life.
Speaker 1:I like that you connected emotions to being from the divine and not just this thing that is purely human. This thing that is like just, it's just us. This is, you know, this is a human problem. If we, you know, this is a part of what the human condition and what you've said , you , what you're telling us is that no, this is very much a part of the gift from God. And if we are made in the image of God, then this emotion is real and it's okay to feel that. And it , this is a particularly timely conversation for me personally. I, I go back and forth with a couple people in my life who we like to say we process things differently. And especially like emotions. You know, you have internal processors and external processors. Um, and if folks haven't heard of those terms, internal processing would be someone who goes and thinks about things on their own and then maybe comes back to a conversation, maybe says how they feel, maybe they don't. Um, the external processors someone who usually will be talking about the way they feel , um, and sort of verbally processing through that. And there's not a right or wrong way to do it. But as someone who is, who identifies as an internal processor, it's interesting when I'm around people who are externally processing, or I might even say more emotional, yes, I see Lee raising his hand <laugh> as a I am
Speaker 2:One, which is why we compliment each other
Speaker 1:So well . Yeah . But it's interesting because as someone who, who works through his own emotions in one way, I think, and especially in a way that maybe isn't, or at least I don't think it's as public as maybe other people's ways of working through theirs is it's can be off-putting. But actually what you're saying is that no, it's okay to feel those emotions and it's okay to give voice to them, whether that's internally, externally or whatever else. That's all of that is, is real and valid. And I think that's really powerful, especially , um, as you know , like being male identifying too, we're often taught through a toxic masculinity society, like don't show emotion. And often what that means is that we just stifle them and tell ourselves not to even have 'em . And then we go on. And that that does emotional damage to us for potentially for the rest of our lives. So I really appreciate what you had to say.
Speaker 3:Well , I think it's beautiful in telling that you began your comment with remembering that we're creating in God's image. Because one of the things that we see in the Bible is a God who feels emotion and take a text like, you know, Jesus wept. Oftentimes we focus on that as a sign of Jesus's humanity, but we don't think about the incredible theological thing that's happening there, that God is weeping. God is feeling something so diff, so deeply that God changes. God is in this process of being different because something has happened in the world and now God is responding to it in an emotional way. And so if we are created in God's image, it is totally backward to look at our emotions as if they were some kind of deviation from that imago de because what we see in the Bible is this God who feels. And so when we look at our own emotions, we have to see them reflected in that, that divine image. It's this weird paradox where we look at our intellectual lives and treat them as if there's no way that we could possibly be deceiving ourselves, that somehow our thoughts couldn't possibly be coming from somewhere other than God if we arrive at this place of quote unquote rational theological discernment. But somehow our emotions must be this deeply suspicious place. 'cause clearly that's coming from us when, again, in the scripture we see emotions as something that are deeply holy. And so I think we need to treat them with the same kind of theological seriousness that we have always treated the kinds of systematic theology that have been deemed worthy of , of serious thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And speaking as a very emotional human being, <laugh>, I, it took me a very long time to, and, and I, I have a similar experience as you have, like when I was growing, when I was little, I mean, I was always told that like I was very emotional. Mm-hmm . Like when I was small, like when I was a child, like everything I thought or everything I felt everybody knew about it. Like everybody had an idea of how Lee felt. But as I grew older and learning, like kind of not, not wanting to be a burden on people or not wanting to kind of like put a lot of things on someone and then like, I kind of bec and then also like just going through the discovery of like finding your sexuality and your identity and all these things, it does really create a perfect space for you to be emotionally numb and emotionally unavailable. And it really does kind of create this barrier that does take a lot of practice and a lot of work. And I don't, I don't know if people even realize that. Like sometimes it is work and intentional ways of doing things to bring those things back to the surface. And now, I mean, I, I have tapped back into that and it is, and sometimes also people don't know how to handle it. That's another thing. But I wonder about kind of a two-prong question. How do we do that work within ourselves? If we are that way, what does it look like in our communities to kind of do that emotional practice and those work to bring that up? But also how do we as people of faith and in the community be able to handle that mm-hmm. <affirmative> . And that is something that I wonder as well, how do we do the work within ourselves, but also how do we as people who are supposed to be walking with others, how are we to equip ourselves to even handle the emotion? Because a lot of times, I know in a lot of progressive circles, it could be so focused on, you know, justice and like, there's no time to stop and we have to keep going. And there is no, there is no time to breathe and say like, how are we doing? How are people feeling? What is going on? So I wonder about that as well. Yeah .
Speaker 3:As it relates to the individual, one of the things that I think is helpful to remember is that actually a lot of the fears we have about the way our emotions might be greeted, if we are willing to reveal what we're feeling, a lot of those fears aren't actually grounded necessarily. In reality, when you dig into the research on crying, one of the things you find is that by and large, when people see someone else who's crying, they are moved to compassion. They want to help, they wanna offer assistance, they feel closer to that person than they did before. And I think a lot of us move around with this sense that if we really did show the world exactly what we were carrying, that the world wouldn't be able to handle it. And this isn't to say that there aren't gonna be times when, you know, we bring our emotions into a place and we don't get the kind of response we were hoping for. But actually that really hasn't been my, my experience for the last decade where I've been really intentional about trying to be more open with my emotions. Generally speaking, I find that people receive that emotional vulnerability with kindness and gratitude because it opens an opportunity for them to do the same. I was on a podcast with Kevin Garcia recently and talked about the privilege of going second, that if you cry in a space, it gives somebody else that privilege of not being the first person to cry. I think so many of us are moving around with all of this loneliness and angst and pain, and we have this delusion that we are the only ones that feel it, particularly right now as we've all just moved through a a three year pandemic that's still ongoing. We have all personally and vicariously suffered in ways that have left none of us the same. I think part of what we need to do is just honor that and admit that that does not have some kind of personal failing. It's just what it means to be human, to live surrounded by so much pain and suffering. And to be honest about how it affects us, sometimes people ask me, you know, how can I learn how to cry again? And I, I don't think that's really the right question. And the better question is, how can we learn how to feel again? 'cause if we can really learn to reconnect and reattach our emotions, the crying will come. I know a lot of folks feel like they have all this stuff locked up inside of them that they wish they could let out. They wish they could cry, they wish they could be more emotional. But there's this block. And so the, that end point of just letting it out becomes the, the goal, the intention. But particularly for folks who have created or been subjected to so much emotional numbness, that's a really hard place to start. I think the place that is more logical to begin is by being curious about our emotions. Really asking ourselves what are we feeling, giving ourselves permission to name that, to treat it as something important. And if we start doing that, the rest of it will follow. And then the second part of your question, how do we change that collectively? I do think that part of the way we change that collectively is by having the bravery to change that personally. That if more and more of us have the courage and willingness to bring our full emotional selves into a space, it doesn't take that many people doing that to change the tenor of a room. And you're not wrong. Lots of people are uncomfortable with emotions, particularly other people's outward , uh, demonstrative display of emotion. But I think that discomfort, again, speaks to people's own discomfort with their own emotional lives. And so to some degree, I, I think we just have to be willing to s to move into that discomfort because that discomfort isn't yours. You have not done something wrong by bringing your emotions into a space. And if somebody else isn't able to hold space for what we are all feeling, that's work that they need to do. And I'm not trying to shame anybody. I'm not trying to, to say that people are wrong or bad for being uncomfortable with displays of emotion because all of us, particularly in the US have have moved through this very westernized frame that treats emotions in a particular kind of way. So this is a, a cultivated and inculcated tendency, again, not a personal failing , but a structural problem. But I think that the more we're able to just name that and own that and have the willingness to, to say, you know what? I'm gonna make things uncomfortable <laugh> , that is what actually leads us to healing because this numbness is just gonna keep making us sick.
Speaker 1:So we've, we've talked about it, about feelings and emotions in sort of a very, at a very personal level. And I'm curious at sort of a more, a more macro level. Uh, we've, we've seen examples where maybe, and I'm gonna refer to some previous product cast conversations we've had. For example, we see times where in the church and in justice movements where emotions are so important to being the motivation for pushes for justice and pushes for change. Yeah. Which I think is absolutely like, and it's because people were willing to let that, maybe we call it righteous rage, <laugh> , uh, you know, fuel, you know, you know , fuel their work. But I think that we also at times see moments where, and I don't wanna say someone's emotions are misguided, because that feels very odd, especially in the context of this conversation. But , um, and I'll just go ahead and say it. We've had conversations where we've talked about what we might call particularly like white rage. And what I mean by that is where there's, there's an injustice and then white people get, they get mad about it as they should be, but then it's often what their actions are at the detriment of not including the voices of people who are, who are most impacted. And they stay stuck in this sort of anger stage mm-hmm . <affirmative> . And they never, I don't wanna say grow out of it, but they ne they aren't able to see outside of it. So what would you say to about that, about trying to, both allowing ourselves to feel those emotions, but also not let those be the only emotions that are, are maybe driving our actions?
Speaker 3:Yeah. The, the first part of your question, you're absolutely right. Not just in a personal way, but in a larger collective way. Emotions have been at the center point of so many social movements for just change. I mean, think about something like a Black Lives Matter protest that's not just a exclamation of anger, it's also a proclamation of grief. Someone we loved has died and they shouldn't have someone was killed and they should be living. And it's precisely the potency of that grief, which is why you get large scale militarized response, rubber bullets, tear gas . If grief was not so powerful, if it didn't seed the kind of large scale social response that it does, the government would not respond with such violence. So we should always remember the incredible power that being honest about how we feel has to create the kinds of social solidarity that lead to large scale movement building. And you are totally right that there is a whole bunch of large scale emotional response that is grounded in the exact same evils that we would like to uproot. And that is a complicated thing to hold. And it's why I think so many people treat emotions with such ambiguity because it's not always clear what the appropriate response is. And because we are so used to seeing something like tears weaponized and used in this kind of aggressive vulnerability by, you know, for example, evangelical martyrdom complexes, we get really suspicious of seeing somebody else's tears because we've seen tears misused like that. We have a response to anger because we see the kinds of white rage that are so often granted power. And I'm gonna say something that I , you know, might be a little, a little controversial, but I actually don't think the right response is to say, oh, that person is faking crying. Or, oh, those emotions aren't real. Sometimes I think that's probably true, but I actually, for the most part, I think people's emotions are real. They just are grounded in things that we need to uproot. Uh , they're grounded in the myriad oppressions that dot our political landscape. You know, people will look at very real problems and blame, you know, scapegoats they've been handed who are not responsible for them, but the rage they feel is very real. And so what, what do you do with that when somebody is angry and furious and holding bigotry towards someone who is not responsible for the problem that they're talking about? You know, someone who looks at the wide scale dismantling of American manufacturing and blames immigrants instead of the way that, you know, predatory capitalism is hollowed out , uh, industrial centers across the nation. And I think if you, if you go right at the rage and you say, you shouldn't be feeling that the person only gets angrier because what they hear is, you're not hearing me. You're telling me that this thing that I feel isn't real, and I know it's real 'cause I'm feeling it. And so that all that does is it more deeply entrenches me in that place. And now I am angrier, the better thing to do is to be cur . And then again, this really works better with somebody who, you know, like, this is, this is a much better response when it's your grandfather who has these opinions than you know, somebody on Twitter who you don't know at all and you're trying to, you know, have this kind of exchange over dms or something. Like, I , I don't think that kind of, you know, disembodied conversation really produces much of anything useful for the most part. But when it's somebody who we know or somebody who's, who we're at least interacting with in real life, even if it's somebody, you know, maybe at, at our church who's an acquaintance, we don't know particularly well if we can be curious about what they're feeling and say things like, it sounds like you're really angry. Why do you feel that way? And then keep asking questions about the emotion, keep drilling down to the center of that. I think very often we find that the kinds of volatile, extroverted emotions that people are so wrapped up in often have roots and much deeper, more vulnerable emotions like fear or loneliness or isolation. Again, that's not, that's not an easy answer. It's not a, it's much simpler to just write that person off and say, you know, they're, they're racist and angry and and awful. And like the <laugh> those things may be true. Uh , but if our intention is to actually change the situation and not just to, you know, score political points, I think being curious about the emotion that someone is feeling is a better way to go about it. And that, that is, there is privilege all wrapped up in that, that statement. I , in my book I talk to , uh, Dylan Marin , who hosts the podcast conversations with people who hate me. Uh, and it's this brilliant, incredible project where he reaches out to people who have sent him horrible, horrible things online and invites them to a one hour conversation like this. And when I was talking to him, he was over and over and over again, deliberate about saying, listen, this is not a universal call to empathy or saying that you, you know, if you're not able to empathize with this other person, that you're a bad person or that you should go out and find the, the angriest, most violent white supremacist and invite them to tea . This is not, this is not that call. And so many people have incredibly good reasons to not feel empathetic or to feel like they just can't be empathetic, or that they've been asked to be empathetic toward the same kind of person again and again and again, and don't get that same kind of empathy returned to them in kind. And so I'm not trying to wipe away any of those realities 'cause they're, they're really very true. But Dylan says that if we're able to stretch the walls of our safe space a little bit and extend some empathy towards someone who we might otherwise cast away, that it holds the potential to change that relationship and to plant seeds of a broader transformation.
Speaker 2:And I've learned, and the work that I've done, yet , it's not everybody's calling to do so and have used this before, but I used to preach and supply pastor in a lot of rural churches in Tennessee. They would always send me out because I sounded like <laugh> . They did <laugh> and I knew their context and I knew, you know, where they were coming from, farmers of , of huge agricultural culture. And there was one church where the people were very emotionally charged about the things that were happening in the country, issues, like completely like homophobic and all these things. And I knew that, I knew it was a very conservative church. And you go in and the other thing is, I learned without expectation. And I think that's also tied to our emotions because I think expectations often can charge us within our emotional state. Like, if I already have an assumption about you when I go in, that's not good for me. <laugh> , that's, I've already have this like emotional disdain for you, even though I don't have a clue who you are, even though I've heard you, you might have said something at some point, but I mean, I heard a lot of terrible things, but I also had a lot of conversations. I also never told them that I was a person because of my own safety. And I think that's also something, yeah . That I think people not also in the community, but also outside should understand that it's like, how come you couldn't be authentic la da ? And I was like, well, I was protecting my own emotional state and my own space, but I later learned after I left that church because I moved away, their new minister who they hired said, you did more good than you thought you did, because everyone, a few people have said that they couldn't imagine a gay person being in their pulpit until now. And so there's these ways of, and that's not for everybody. And I kind of risk some things going into that space. Yeah . But at the same time, our embodiments may be the things or where we're from in our context, maybe the things that are in our authenticity and who we are are the things that can create change. Because I never acted any different. But it is a, it's not for everybody. And I do think in some ways it is, it is the people who can kind of, you know, risk a little bit more. And there is privilege to it, and it is like this , um, not saying it wasn't easy, but it , it is interesting when you actually get to know folks and the source of emotion, which is, is always fear, almost. Um , it's always fear. And, and I think that that is something that is hard and something to navigate always in this work because we do want to be safe in what we are doing. But yeah, it's, it's a complicated matter.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. And you're 180% right, that it is not a universal calling. And again, that's part why I'm always really , uh, deliberate about saying that Yeah . Is not your calling if you know that about yourself. That's not, again, a sign of a personal failure, you know? No . Um, but if you do feel called towards this kind of work, one of the things that I think is really essential, particularly for the kinds of engagement you were talking about, is having a deep knowledge of your own emotional life. Being able to be emotionally attentive to yourself is a prerequisite for the kind of really hard engagement work that you're describing. If you wanna have a conversation with somebody with whom you vehemently disagree, you need to be really , and you want it to go somewhere productive and not devolve further into sort of spiraling conflict, one of the things you need to do is be really attentive to the way that what they are saying makes you feel. And again, not to say that those emotions are wrong or invalid. In fact, to the beginning of our conversation, they may very well be that Holy Spirit moving within you saying, oh my God, this thing that this person is saying is making me feel this kind of righteous indignation, this righteous fury, because their words so palpably violate God's love. And that hurts me, and it breaks me and it makes me angry. And that anger is not a bad thing. But if we want to actually be in that engagement place, we need to be aware and cognizant of how it is shaping our responses. Because if we're not careful, that anger can be our only response to this other person. And again, you know, not to say that it's wrong, but from a purely utilitarian perspective of, you know, how can you actually have a productive conversation? How can you move someone from where they are to hopefully a place a little bit closer to God? You gotta be aware of the what you are bringing into the space. And the only way that you can do that before you know it happens, and you're thinking about it in retrospect, is by being really attuned to the way that you are feeling. That's one of the, the real gifts from, you know, those of us who've gone through , uh, clinical pastoral education , um, is you do a whole lot of work about, you know, how are you making sure that you're not being shaped by unintended emotional transference? How can you really be attentive to what you're feeling in the moment before you respond so that you give yourself just that three seconds, that five seconds to, to breathe and think and shape something that hopefully will be an olive olive branch instead of a closed fist.
Speaker 1:And what I appreciate about this conversation as a whole is that you're reminding us that if we are to be people of faith, it does not mean we are without emotion. It may not always mean that we're , um, going in completely emotionally filled all the time either, but we are allowing ourself to feel the feels and feel the things, and then we can decide what to do with that and how to proceed with that. Uh, so it's not really an either or. It is a, it's a, it's a case by case , but it's also a , a recognizing the reality of what we are feeling in the moment and just allowing ourselves to be, which is not something that we're encouraged to do. And I think that's a really important reminder for, for everyone.
Speaker 3:It's not, and, and also I, I want whoever is listening to this, if you are in a place where you are numb, not to think that this is somehow a sign that you are not a faithful person or that God has abandoned you or God does not love you, or that you have somehow sinned or moved yourself away from God, because that numbness almost every time and all the interviews I've done when I've talked to people about, you know, why they stopped crying, why they stopped feeling deeply. I don't think I've ever done an interview where someone said, well, you know what, one day I woke up and I said, I don't wanna feel deeply anymore. Because our feelings, when we're able to actually embody them and, and live into them feel good. It feels good to be embodied. It feels good to, to express how we're feeling and to have other people listen and hold that it is humanizing in the full sense of the word. Almost everybody who I've talked to who has entered into a place of numbness, has gone there as a protective measure because they either watched somebody's tears, invoke animosity or aggression, or they were explicitly or implicitly told themselves that it was wrong to feel that way. It was wrong to feel that deeply. And a lot of people walk around now as adults with all of this shame that they're not emotionally available in the way that they would like to be, and that shame isn't theirs. But if you are in that numb place, one of the things that I think it's good to ask is, is this thing that once served you still serving you? Is that numbness still protective? Or is it actually keeping you from being the person that God's calling you to become?
Speaker 2:And we talked about earlier, but it is a very, well, it's a theological claim, I think that we aren't fully over yet, that God doesn't change
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:<affirmative> . And I think we still hold on that to that even no matter what circles we run into when it comes to the Christian faith , I really do think it's so deeply ingrained in us about like the perfection of God or the perfection of Christ. And like all these things. And as you said earlier, there are so many co there's so many stories within the Bible that God changed god's mind. Mm-hmm . And the rainbow is a symbol of that <laugh> . And, and I think that story, we often say we all , uh, I often heard it as this big judgment story, but in reality it was a, it was a moment where God was like, oh, uhoh, I sh I should have done that <laugh> and I'll never do it again. And because of the suffering that, and I think that if we really believe that and we can let go of these, these very, in many ways, oppressive ideas of who God is, that also reflects e the , the work that we can do too . And it also gives us permission to say that is not exactly a theological statement to say that I can't feel something because even the divine feels and changes minds and can cry like all these things. And it's, it's just so important for us to also remember that even no matter where we are in the church world, because that has been such an , an ingrained idea of what the divine is without when in throughout the centuries, the divine and all of its manifestations changed their minds a lot. No matter what story you read about the divine. So very emotion .
Speaker 3:Well , that's why , it's why I love tears so much in the context of the Bible, because they are almost always linked to this kind of transformation. Whether that's the transformative power of grief when something horrible is happening and you read about, you know, the rendering of garments and the weeping and gnashing of teeth, that that emotional experience that takes God's people from this place of trauma and moves them through it
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Inside of their bodies. And in the case of the exile literally and physically, so that there can be some kind of return on the other side. That that grief, those tears are a part of that transformational process. And it's true for God too. When Jesus weeps before Lazarus is raised, one of the breathings I love of that text is that Jesus isn't actually sure whether or not Jesus can raise for Lazarus. Yeah . Jesus was certain that Jesus could heal. Lazarus writes to Mary and Martha, this sickness will not end in death. But by the time he arrives, Lazarus is already dead for days . And Jesus weeps and perhaps Jesus is weeping because Jesus isn't certain whether or not Lazarus can come back. And that weeping is that transformative process within Christ that makes possible the subsequent re uh, resurrection or Jesus weeping, looking upon the city of Jerusalem before he goes through the crucifixion. And subsequent resurrection, weeping is part of that transformational process that takes God from one place to someplace else. And I think all of us kind of know that's true in a visceral way about our own crying. It's one of the reasons why so often people cry in these liminal spaces. People cry in hospital waiting rooms. They cry in airplanes, they cry in cars, they cry in stairwells. Oftentimes, people, it's not actually in the moment that the, the really heavy thing is happening that people cry. It's when they leave that space and they find themselves somewhere between that thing that they are processing and wherever they are headed, that all of a sudden the body just starts to let go of all of this stuff that's carrying within. And we experience viscerally in our bodies something moving through us that takes us from where we are, towards where we are headed. And I just love the way that that is reflected in the biblical text. And I love what it says about God.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of your book <laugh> , we would love to give you time to talk about crybaby, why our tears matter a little bit more explicitly. So tell us a little bit about the book, what we can expect, where we can get it, all those things. Yeah, we'd love to hear about it.
Speaker 3:I would love to. Yeah . So the Cry the book starts with some of my own experience being someone who didn't cry for more than a decade to learning how to cry, learning how to feel again. And the second chapter digs into the research on crying, asking, you know, if crying is physiologically and psychologically beneficial, why don't we do it more? And the middle chunk of the book looks at all the social forces that inhibit crying. And then the last third asks, if you could get rid of all of those, what would a culture shaped by more open, weeping look like? And I really wanted to do some constructive theology in this. It's, it's a book that sort of straddles the line between , uh, secular and , and theological reflection. It has some memoir threaded through it has lots of interviews with everybody from theologians like Jackie Lewis and Rubber , Ben , uh, Kelly Brown Douglas to TikTok Stars like Nick Cho as the your Korean dad, TikTok channel. And , uh,
Speaker 2:Love it,
Speaker 3:Teachers and actors and all kinds of people. 'cause I wanted lots of different voices to reflect on the power of tears in their own life. But what I really wanted to do is not just sit in that deconstructive place of talking about all the ways that social forces have an inhibit are crying. And I think that's really important. I talk about it and I devote a big chunk of my book to it because I think it's important to understand that those kinds of suppression forces are not incidental. That they are deliberate and calculated because weeping, concede the kind of solidarity and interconnected life that will free us from them . So the people who are invested in the world remaining the same, want to suppress weeping, but I didn't wanna leave folks there. And so the last third of the book is the part that's nearest to my own heart, where I'm really trying to reflect on what I've found in community, the way that I see folks raising children differently than perhaps the way that I was acculturated as a child, and reflecting on all the ways that we need to change, and particularly what it means to be living on the brink of climate catastrophe. What can weeping offer not as a panacea or something that, you know, magically cures everything, but as a source of real and genuine help fuel that we need to transform? And you can find it anywhere. Books are sold. Your local bookstore. If you don't wanna buy it, go take it out of your library. Ask your library to carry it. If you can buy it's amazing gift <laugh> to a first time off author like myself. But really, most of all, I want you to read it. I also recorded an audio version of it that's available on Audible. Um, but I , I poured so much of myself into this little book on crying, and I'm so excited for you to
Speaker 2:Read it, <laugh> . Well, we're, we're excited for you too . So, congratulations. And we, the la one of the, our guests that we had a , a well, a couple weeks ago, she mentioned a lot of things about the book industry and everything else that we didn't really know about. So just a reminder, everyone, if your library doesn't have it, request it because they'll order more. If a bookstore doesn't have it, request it because they won't order just one. They'll order a few. So it's just like a drink at a bar. You know, I , other day I asked for a beer and they didn't have it. And I was like, you know what? And it was a beer made in Palestine, and I was like, every and every time somebody says they don't have it, I'm gonna tell 'em to get it because it'll support the business. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . And they won't order just a few. So it's just like a bookstore. So if your bookstore doesn't hold or carry it, request it and they will buy it, just so you know. Yep .
Speaker 1:Thank you Lee . And we'll be, and we'll be sure to have a link to the book in the show notes as well. And Ben, thank you so much for this wonderful conversation and for coming on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. It was a delight.
Speaker 2:Thanks everyone for listening to this episode of a Matter of Faith , the Presby podcast. And thanks for Ben for being with us and for that wonderful conversation we have you subscribe wherever you get your podcast and leave us a review and hopefully five stars. It really helps the podcast. If you have questions for us, send the Fate podcast@pusa.org and check out our website, a matter of faith podcast.com. We will talk to you again next week.