Deconstructing Our False Edens
Many of us live in these “false Edens,” a space of being blissfully unaware that there is pain, heartache, and trauma which we must confront. When we consciously choose to engage our own stories and deconstruct these “false Edens” in which we’re living, we can move more freely into our calling to find true redemption on the other side.
Who better than to discuss this with us than this week’s guest, Cary Umhau? Author, speaker, activist, and advocate for those facing homelessness and hunger, Cary knows what it is to step out of the constructs of her life into living what she calls a “spacious life.”
Listen as Dan Allender and Cathy Loerzel, co-authors of “Redeeming Heartache,” speak with Cary Umhau, author of “Burning Down the Fireproof Hotel” and find parallels between their work and their stories.
About Our Guest:
Everything that Cary Umhau does involves helping people see that God is bigger than we often imagine and everybody one meets (including ourselves) is an image-of-God miracle. She’s the author of Burning Down the Fireproof Hotel (a spiritual memoir and manifesto for living what she calls a “spacious” life) and writes, speaks and teaches on that topic.
She creates curriculum for others and for her own courses which she facilitates in churches, businesses, homeless shelters and online, including Destination Deep Dive (a 12-week study for women who want to believe that there is more for them out there, with applications opening soon for the next session).
She founded SPACIOUS, a neighbor-loving, life-celebrating organization and consultancy. SPACIOUS shares open-hearted, expansive things that people are doing and creatively connects communities, often across unnecessary borders and divides.
Cary is co-founder of a DC-based hunger nonprofit, Breadcoin, that uses a community-funded food token to ensure that anyone can eat with choice and dignity at a local restaurant while being enveloped more fully into deeper community.
A grandmother and frequent roadtripper, Cary has been married almost 40 years to Andrew, and they live in the Washington, DC area.
She can be found on Instagram, on Facebook, or just send an email.
Episode Transcript:
Dan: Well, I have the great privilege of being with my delightful co-author Cathy Loerzel and we’re going to sneakily try to advance the sales of our book. But because neither of us are, well, I’ll speak for myself. I’m not that good of a promoter of the book. Uh, the real joy we get, even though we’re gonna talk about Redeeming Heartache is we get to talk with a dear friend of ours, Cary Umhau about her life. And because she’s in the book, oh, she’s very much in the book. Uh, we wanna interact with her about her life and about how she has utilized Redeeming Heartache as part of her reflection of her own sense of self and calling. So how would you name what we’re doing Cathy?
Cathy: Oh, I mean, this is just an excuse for me to get to tell up to Cary. Uh, so more than anything Cary, you and I have known each other for gosh, a long time. I think you were one of the first. Yeah. 14 years. Um, so just really grateful. You’ve been, just a dear friend and connection point for the Allender Center from before its inception. And so this is just a really fun way to, to bring you back in kind of full circle. So grateful for you.
Cary: I’m excited to be with y’all!
Dan: And let’s just say, Cary, there are so many words to use with regard to your existence. Uh, but I’ll just say that you are a author, uh, of a book that I endorsed in love Burning Down the Fire Proof Hotel, which again is such a hilarious title Burning Down the Fireproof Hotel, but I love as well, the subtitle that is an Invitation to the Beautiful Life. So as a woman who has told much of her own story, who has reflected on the reality of the gospel in a deeply broken and traumatized world, um, you’re an activist, you’re a woman who has lived well, uh, in what I’ll call a strange word, but let me use it high-society. And, uh, and so often it’s counterpart and that is you have worked well and long with folks who are homeless. So you’re a odd woman and I don’t think there’s any greater gift I can give to anyone than to say both, beautiful and odd. So Cary, anything else you wanna say a about yourself as we introduce you to our audience?
Cary: Well, I’ll start with the acceptance of oddness and how, um, this book put a lot of language to that. So I, I accept odd as a compliment and a gift and a curse all at once. So, no, that’s all I’d say to start that.
Dan: Well, I also say that you have a equally delightful and odd husband, uh, who happens to be a physician. I, I don’t know all your children, but I, I know one in particular and she is just a stunning human being and I’m not questioning that the others are not. So why don’t you just in one sense, fill out something of your world on, on behalf of our audience?
Cary: Well, I’m on the east coast and have grown up here. Um, grew up in Atlanta, live in Washington, DC. I do have three adult children and four grandchildren and just so much fun with them. I am Golly to them. Um, a name, I chose myself based on a character in the book, Harriet the Spy and Golly was an older woman who cared for Harriet as a caretaker and exposed her to a world. She would not have otherwise known. And I thought, what more fun as a grandparent to know that you’ll get to take them places, expose them to things that their parents, um, won’t just because we’re all different. So, um, that’s the delight I of my life, I’m a huge road tripper, um, drive a Mini Cooper, six speed and go all over the place as often as I can. Go to New York, as much as I can. I’m a musical theater geek. I do teach in a homeless shelter. I have been involved in various, um, ways of bringing people together, who wouldn’t normally meet each other often by doing things they wouldn’t normally have done.
Cathy: And tell me, Cary, um, how did you first, how did we all first meet? How did you become involved with the Allender Center?
Cary: Oh my goodness. Um, I got on your mailing list after hearing Dan speak in Northern Virginia, one time, a large gathering, I got something in the mail and had this, just one of those feelings I have to attend this. It was something you all used to do. Um, the Leadership Crucible, and I said out loud, two or three times to my husband, I have to go to this and he didn’t really respond in a way that seemed satisfactory to me. What I wanted him to say was, of course we will finance that immediately I take charge of what you want to do in the world and make sure that it happens. Um, you know, and what it turned out he was very blase because he had in fact immediately called the school and booked me into that and gotten me a ticket, um, to Seattle and a hotel.
Dan: Sneaky man.
Cary: Sneaky man. And the fact that, that work of that, um, very creative, highly unusual, um, event had on my life. I said, there is something about this place I have to keep coming back and, um, came back six months later to one of your story workshops. And, um, as Cathy said, pre Allender Center, I was just coming to, what was it at that time Mars Hill Graduate School before you were The Seattle School and, um, came to one of you, um, and said to someone on your staff and said, there’s something about this institution that I am meant to be a part of. I don’t know what that means, but if you ever need an east coast person or a DC rep, or maybe I’ll just keep coming. And, um, so I did.
Dan: What a sweet gift. Uh, again, uh, I know of many multiple conversations that, uh, we’ve had, and I think that’s part of where I want to go. You are a tripper, uh, you’re a traveler, uh, there’s something peripatetic about you, meaning not just do you like to travel, but you like to be in multiple different places. Now you don’t have the virtue of God of having that on the presence. Uh, so you, you can’t have simultaneity in all places, but there is a sense in which you traverse terrain in ways that not a lot of people do. So I’m, I’m assuming you would pretty much agree with that.
Cary: Oh gosh. That’s my most exciting, fun thing in the world is to wander and not know where I’m gonna end up and have no idea who I’m gonna encounter. And my car is set up so that it’s like a mobile unit where I can stop in response to things that I see along the way. So I have equipment. If I see somebody that needs something, gloves, food, I don’t know, whatever.
Dan: Yeah. So I’ll go back to these two words. Beautiful and odd. How is it that you came to be a peripatetic spirit-led, I will get into trouble and see what comes of redemption human being?
Cary: Well, I was a fireproof hotel that needed burning down. So um, on an actual road trip, I ran across an actual fireproof building and studied it and thought about it. And it was in Wheeling, West Virginia. And I hadn’t been planning to go there. I just felt the call to go off the road and I drove and drove and drove until I saw what I was indeed led to by the Holy Spirit and came to see that I constructing my life, um, to make sure everything was kept out just to be safe. And naturally when you’re keeping out things you don’t want, you’re keeping out things that you probably would want if you knew what was good for you. So God answered the prayers. I didn’t actually pray, uh, or the ones that I would’ve prayed if I’d prayed right. And sent me all kinds of people to mess with me, um, people that I didn’t expect. And, um, as you did say, I was raised in a privileged environment and I was raised in Atlanta and went to the same high school as the children of Martin Luther King at a different time than me. And didn’t know that there was a racial problem in my heart and my home and my country. I had no idea. And so the more that I was, um, encountering people that were really, really different than me, the more it messed with me and the more I got in touch with my own lack of being at home anywhere, the more I developed a passion to be sure that everybody feels welcome.
Dan: Somewhere and that metaphor of the home, that can’t be burnt down. Part the question of how did you see it burnt? How did you see it go into flames in a way that’s actually given life.
Cary: Defenses broken down, becoming a person of tears, becoming a person who is very often drawn into, or, or finds myself in situations of trauma and grief and distress and, um, pushes in to those places. Um, I was just wrecked. I was wrecked, um, through every kind of, of relationship. Um, I laughed one time. My husband sent me flowers and he called the florist in, in his way with, which is very few words sometimes, Um, he told them to say, thank you for marrying me. And the florist wrote, thank you for marring me and left down the “Y”. So when the flowers arrived, I thought, yeah, even marriage, um, we, even in especially marriage, we have marred one another. So I kept that card at the forefront way in front of all the ones that said sweet sentiments, cause it was more true. So, um, allowing, allowing myself, how do you allow yourself to be wrecked or not wrecked? Um, I had cancer at a young age, breast cancer. And, um, I’ve been thinking about the word reconstruction a lot lately because I was reconstructed. And, um, this is not a video chat, nor will I subject any of you to it. But if you saw the way I was reconstructed post breast cancer, it’s not normal looking. It’s not what one would wish for. And I think as a person coming from the south, thinking about reconstruction in our nation, what we, we have so many places of poorly, the poorly put back together situations, um, that needed to be deconstructed. Um, so I, so many, many of those looking at false Edens, that was a phrase that you used in the book that I really appreciated, um, and saw for myself places where I would demand Eden, but then where I would fit into a false Eden, get a lot of praise for doing something and look good enough on the surface that it kept me going for a while, but God in his mercy lets those places crash. And um, so finding that reconstruction was a poor, um, or my attempts at reconstruction were poor substitutes for ultimate redemption.
Cathy: And Cary, as you, I mean, you’ve been on this process for, for a while. Um, and, and uh, you know, for those people who are just kind of getting into this work and starting to understand even their own structures of, of having a life that’s filled with false Edens needing to kind of deconstruct it or let it burn down. Um, what would you say to the, those folks about their process or kind of what’s ahead of them or even some encouragement, um, for, for the freedom that comes on other side even though it’s painful.
Cary: Well, quite obviously I’d say get the book as a blueprint, um, because your book hit me at just the right time and it has kind of hit me. Um, I will go back to it two or three times and I write all over my books and I’ve turned up a bunch of pages from the bottom, which means come back and reflect on this and from the top, which means something else to me. Um, so I would, I would direct people there, which might be obvious, but I loved where you started of… With getting people to name that all is not well, all is not right. Um, often that’s obvious to us and we might therefore pick up Redeeming Heartache as a title thinking, I would love some redemption in the heartache, but even people who are not naming the heartache, um, don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be afraid of naming it because, oh, this book brought me so much relief just to name some of my own categories to name, um, beauty. But I think one of the things I got super excited about in the book that people will find relief in for themselves, whether they’re already naming heartache or not is, um, both of your own, um, spaces of honesty about your own failures, because I know you both as strong people, good people. People I would follow. I know you both as leaders, but, um, Cathy, you particularly went into some stories about, um, a somewhat recent season for yourself of coming to the end of some strengths or facing the shadow side of some strengths and needing some, um, respite and redirection internally, you know. I don’t know what, like I do know language you’d put to it cause I read it, but um, but, um, that will be such a gift to people and thinking about their own stories because there’s so much permission there to not be consistently and perfectly fabulous at the things that we are in fact really strong and beautiful in. Um, and that was, that was such a gift, you know, I didn’t know much of that, about your story. Um, and so to read that, um, just so much permission. But also, when you’ve written a book as you both have, and as I have, you… you bleed, you labor, you… there’s no worse torture and no much more fun at the same time, somehow. So you have bled to produce this book. I was thinking about the book of the medium being the message. The fact that two of you wrote, the two of you wrote it together with different guests, with different voices. I think that called me as a reader. And will invite others to think about the necessity of collaboration, the necessity of bringing the priest, prophet and king or queen together, not just internally as you talk about, but in finding partners and collaborators with whatever we’re called to do in the world. So that was that was beautiful. I have experienced that at the Allender Center in general, that your programing is both created in a way that includes all of those structured in a way that feels safe, prophetic in a way that calls something forward and priestly and this administration of people. But as much as I had participated in programs there before reading the book just as a different level because I can engage it without the anxiety, frankly, that comes for me and being in group and being out of my milieu, I can sit under my weighted blanket, on my couch with my, you know, whatever beverage and take in as much as I can for the moment. It’s dense and I will I’ll keep going back over, and it hit me at a season of deconstruction and reconstruction where I’m in a little bit of a sabbatical moment.
Dan: Hmm, well, I’d love to hear when you think of the categories of orphan and stranger and widow, what, what struck you, what captured you, what did you begin to see and look at because you, you are, you’re one of those folks that I look to and learn much from, but it’s so honoring and thank you for naming that we have offered something of goodness. But when you went through that process, what, what did you see that you had not seen before with those categories of, of, of trauma?
Cary: Well, I was interested in the fact that, of course, if we’re to be like Jesus, we each would have elements of all three where I tend to think of the ones I feel more comfortable with at comfort being relative because, I hate the execution of a prophetic role in many ways. And, um, I, but I also appreciated you giving language as the Bible does. So not original probably to the fact that no one really envies being a prophet, no one particularly wants to be one and then usually are considered weird and strange and hated. So that was, that was comforting. Um, actually.
Dan: Start with that though, how do you see and how have you lived already in that prophetic role?
Cary: Well, I really annoy people when I’m on a team. Um, and I know we’re meant to talk about the joy of the, of what we can bring to the kingdom. I get that. Um, but I annoy people when I’m on a team because I have all these ideas that are really weird and I think they’re great. I, I produce a lot of ideas, but if you’re on a team, people say just shut up. The, every idea you come up with, somebody has to execute. We don’t wanna hear about more ideas and that one’s just not in the mainstream and we’re not gonna probably get to the that. And we’re not gonna really do that. Um, on those tests where you say, you know, word association, cat, most people say dog, and I would say burglar. I mean, I just, I’d never come up with the thing that the team that the team thinks of. So I’m annoying, but it means that I see things that everybody’s not seeing and I’m maybe the Andy Hardy character for the older folks might remember that, you know, let’s put on a play today. You know, I’m always coming up with, you know, let’s put on the show, let’s do a thing. Um, so I, I think, I, I think I live that in a lot of ways. Um, I don’t know. I, I love calling forth things that are not as though they were, or I, I guess that’s classic Abraham Roman stigma, but to say, you know, wouldn’t it be great if, um, is just part of the prophetic thing. I’ve always come up with ideas of things that we just have to do.
Dan: Well, and we, we, we build a strong case between the interplay of trauma as a stranger and something of the calling of the prophetic voice. So what have you come to understand more or different with regard to your own strangeness?
Cary: Well, the, certainly you use the language of, you know, hell no, as long as, as long on my watch, hell no, to whatever. For me, that would be somebody feeling left out, somebody knocking at the door and it not being opened, somebody not being welcomed in. So that certainly comes from my own story of feeling on the outside or like I never fit or was never the cool kid. And some of the cool kids have told me, they thought I was one. So, um, it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t think I was. And, um, today I saw a bumper sticker that said I used to be cool and I wanted to pull up next to that person and say, how do you know? And I, I never was so, you know, wish you could talk back to bumper stickers through. Um, so I dunno, does that answer that just, uh,
Dan: It’s a lovely beginning to be, you know, your world would have looked like you fit extremely well, but your sense was you didn’t and in that not fitting, um, it, it, it costs you immensely. Um, again, that’s part of, you know, as much as I’m thrilled to promote Redeeming Heartache, you’re Burning Down the Fireproof Hotel. I, I, it’s a powerful memoir narrative of something of, you know, the frame of how you came to need to have this, uh, unburnable life. Um, so I don’t want you to have to go through your own book other than to, in one sense, help the audience get a better sense of… you would’ve looked so much like you were very cool and fit very well, but you know, you didn’t, how come?
Cary: Man, I can’t even wrap my brain around that cause I just, you know, immediately thought of myself with braces and stubby pigtails in a dorky orange polyester outfit. Um, yeah, I, I grew up in a family with a dad who was an alcoholic. He had quit drinking, but um, and never drank again. He made it 61 years without taking another drink, but um, didn’t address the underlying issues and there was a lot of hyper vigilance required to be in that home. And um, I was scanning the horizon to stay, keep my nose clean and stay safe. Um, you know, as I think I need you to restate the question cause even in that, um, answering I fled as I go back to thinking about what it felt like to be other.
Cathy: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I get that. I think that’s the power and also the terror of reengaging, these stories, right, is that, you know, even in a split second, we can be brought back to a flood of memories, a flood of emotions. And even, you know, when we’ve been doing work, like you’ve been doing work for over a decade, if not longer than that, Cary on your own story. And yet here we are and it’s split second, you know, it still feels like live wires and, and it can flood the plane so quickly. And I think that’s something amazing about our humanness and also something that can be really intimidating around going back into story because we know then inevitably when we step back in, um, you know, it’s, it’s still alive in us. Um, and, and so even for you to be willing to come on to a podcast or to, to keep engaging and for your heart to be still tender enough, to be able to be flooded, shows something of the work that you’ve done to dismantle the fireproof hotel, um, because if you were still living in that bind, you wouldn’t be so tender to the emotions and the reality of your story coming back in so quickly. Which is encouraging
Cary: And yeah, thank you. I also, as I was, um, doing some events, book tour kind of things around my own book, the first question always was, wow, how, how, or why were you willing to be so vulnerable? I would not have put that out there. You were pretty honest. Um, and I, I think that I’ve felt a calling that someone has to go first in a lot of settings and that when we can show up and say, here’s where I’ve suffered, but that’s not the final word. Here’s um, what I’m seeing God doing out of it if imperfectly or if, you know haltingly then, um, someone else says, oh, maybe I can survive looking at my story. Maybe I can, maybe there’s beauty to be had from the ashes.
Cathy: Yeah. Do you find yourself still surprised when, when you’re able to tap into it quickly
Cary: Tap into which part,
Cathy: The, your, your story, the trauma, like when you felt the flood of emotions come back.
Cary: I don’t find it surprising. Cause it happens all day. But yes. Also you think, okay, I’m 61 should I’ve have done a lot of engaging and my stories shouldn’t I be past this but, um, yeah. I’ve I was thinking about how this year was so traumatic. I mean, obviously for so many of us collectively, um, and then also in my closest group of friends, um, my best friends have had a very high percentage of loss of their children and our best friends have lost both of their children within 14 months this year. And, um, so I have been, uh, hand-in-hand with grieving folks this year. And so at the end of the year, when we look back, I think I was framing it as, oh, what a hard year. Oh, what a hard year. Um, but as I, and it was, but as I engaged your book, I was so encouraged to see, um, I am gifted to be with people in the deepest grief and I can cry with people. And I also and I hope that the timing of, and the proportion of, um, on this are more good than bad. I also can say, we’re also gonna have a dance party. And that was something this year with all of the grief, all of the hard stuff, my husband and I said, you know what? People need more than anything? They need to dance it out. We just got enough words. And we kept saying, somebody needs to have a 2020 hindsight dance party. So we had it, we got a band and we did a COVID safe, it’s all over. But then we found out it’s not really all over, um, dance party spread out in an inappropriate way, but somehow to hold those two things, in tension, um, the book helped me see how it wasn’t just, um, heartache was in the past and redemption is the, you know, either, um, cause an effect. I’ve had heartache now, I will have redemption. No. So, you know, to answer your question every day, the swirl of, wow. I was just asked a question that wasn’t even a really hard question and went back to feeling in my body, like a four-year-old, unable to remember the question, but able to, in one sense, reconnect to the two of you and keep moving, but also know that that’s just normal, uh, normal to hold both normal, to sit with someone and just ball our eyes out and then say, we gotta dance for a minute. We got, we gotta move. We gotta fund the, the both and.
Dan: Absolutely. Well, one, one of the problems I have with what I’ve spoken, uh, which I won’t take back that you are, are beautifully odd. The dilemma is the way you live. I’ve looked at over many years and thought you’re one of the most normal gospel kingdom driven human beings I know. So in one sense, what I’d say is you, you are life actually is more of what could be true. I, I can use the word should, but could be true on, on behalf of others. Like you, you have the ability, um, to hear the Spirit, as I’ve said, I, I could almost tell stories that I’ve heard from you with regard to encounters with homeless men on the street, in one sense, not helping, but being part of redemptive process for both of you. And in that sense, I, I want to come back to that question of what has brought you to be so normal gospel, but so unusual with regard to how at least I’ll say for me, how many of us live?
Cary: Well. I may not. I get your point, but I’m not sure I get the question. So maybe…
Dan: That seems to be the case…
Cary: Can you rephrase? You’re saying what has brought me to that point?
Dan: How can you be so normal and not so normal?
Cary: Well, I think it’s important to pay attention to what gets repeated and what makes us cry. And I could not stop crying when I read in your book that the church is not at the forefront of coming alongside the stranger. And I, I, I mean that just, that just wiped me out it was not a new thought at all, but just to see it in print and say, man, those are not the places where this is happening. And thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven is what we, what we pray. And then we don’t expect to be part of the answer to that. Um, or we forget that we are the answer to that. Um, or the method, so I think it feels normal to long for something totally different, but it’s, it’s not always normal. We’re, that’s where we’re supposed to be. But we lock up in the fireproof buildings or stay safe or… man.
Dan: Yeah. Any stories coming to mind of, again, encounters you’ve had that brought you not only a sense of the privilege, but also a redemption that was for you as well as for others.
Cary: Well, this is a story of being not normal, I guess I was heading downtown one day to the shelter where I’m involved and about two hours before I was supposed to go, I just heard what I understood to be God’s voice saying, there’s a lady downtown that needs some shoes and I want you to get her some. And I didn’t really think that was that weird. I texted a friend more for accountability, and I said, Hey, apparently there’s the lady downtown that needs shoes. I’ll be getting her some. Pray that I find her. So I took my credit card, which I wouldn’t have otherwise needed, and my metro subway card jumped on the subway. And when I got off, I started looking at everybody thinking checking everybody’s feet out. Everybody looked fine, got to the shelter, which is a men’s shelter, and thought, Well, I guess I misheard. There’s not going to run into any ladies. Now I’m early. What am I going to do here now? Stepped inside and there was at the front desk with the intake desk, a woman who was very bedraggled looking, really, really dirty hair, ripped up clothes and she was saying to the men at the desk, are you sure there’s not a single pair of women’s shoes in this building? And I looked down and she was barefoot. And I said, I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been looking for you. God told me to go get shoes for somebody. She was not even amazed. She said, OK, cool, can we go to Walmart? And I was like, wait, wait. Do you understand this is like, really cool. This is really cool. So before… This is exceptional. So this was for this was for me. I mean, yes, he got some shoes in the end. She convinced me she needed or she didn’t need to convince me. I could tell she needed shampoo. I could tell she needed razors. She asked for those. She asked if we could buy some thong underwear that she had always wanted to try and gotten a cute little orange dress and some purple grape juice and some animal crackers and some cigarettes. So she got all of that, and she said, how much did you spend on me? And I told her and she said that’s a lot. And I said, you’re worth it. And she said, I am, aren’t I? As she stood up a little straighter and as we went outside, I said, can I just say a little prayer together? And she said, Yeah. And we wrapped our hands, wrapped her arms around each other, and my hands are in her super dirty hair. And I’m thinking about God knowing every hair on our heads and knowing her as a little sparrow downtown that needed help and knowing me as a little sparrow uptown that needed to be involved in someone’s life. And as she said, you know, this was mutually beneficial. And I thought, yeah, totally like, I’ll never forget this and my entire life, and that is worth so much more than the price of these shoes and deodorant. But she said, yeah, well, you got me some stuff I needed, and I taught you how to speed shop the Walmart. Yes, indeed, it was totally mutually beneficial. And as the light changed and it was, I needed to leave, went across the crosswalk. I stopped mid crosswalk and looked at her and we screamed in unison towards each other: I love you. And I’ve never seen Jessica again. I don’t know if I’ll see Jessica again on this Earth. I don’t know why I was involved in that. I didn’t call the social worker. I didn’t solve bigger problems for her, but I was totally changed. And that is not a normal story. That is not a normal life. How do you how do you make sense of that? It doesn’t make sense.
Dan: Yeah. Well the courage to burn down what might be at one level, a lovely edifice to actually see created something of the majestic work of the kingdom of God. Again, it’s where if we’re willing to lose our life, there is a life to be found and to be given. And, you know, I, I I’ve actually heard the Jessica story before, but it’s like all good stories. Like I could hear it a hundred more times and each time have my own incredulity or question. And then the sense of surprise that the Spirit delights in bringing us back to ourselves, but also on behalf of others, uh, it is such a rich gift to have you with us. And I wish indeed more time. And another day more time, other than to say thank you for being a reader of our work, but even more a reader and a hearer, uh, of the work of the Spirit of God.
Cary: Well, what a privilege and thank you for laboring, literally to give birth to this. Thank you for what you did to bring this into the world. And I do just so commend it to people. I will sit with it probably a couple more times going through it and, um, I’m grateful.
Cathy: Thank you, Cary. Thanks for being with us today. Really appreciate it.
Cary: Loved it.