Who Is Your Neighbor? with Dr. J. Derek McNeil

In this episode, Rachael Clinton Chen welcomes back Dr. J. Derek McNeil, President and Provost of The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, for a thoughtful conversation about navigating today’s fragmented world with hope, kindness, and connection.

They explore how uncertainty, institutional distrust, and cultural polarization have left many feeling unmoored. As people of faith, we are called to love God and our neighbors—but how do we do this in a world that feels so divided? 

Regardless of religious, political, or personal identity, we all feel the effects of fragmentation. We are in search of a new story—a story that can hold us together.

If you’re grappling with feelings of disconnection or isolation, or if you’ve been wondering how to engage with others in a fractured world, tune in for a powerful conversation about finding hope, purpose, and co-creating a renewed sense of belonging. 

Episode Transcript:

Rachael: Well, good people with good bodies, I would say, myself, you may have your own opinion that these are actually some perilous days to try to stay human, to stay embodied, to stay kind, to stay hopeful, to not split off the list goes on. So I am personally deeply grateful to have Dr. J. Derek McNeil, returning back to The Allender Center podcast today to help us find some language for the times that we find ourselves in and how do we love what are we called to in this time? And actually getting into too, what are some of the practices that sustain us? How do we live as such a time as this? So no big deal, no pressure. Welcome Derek.

Derek: Well, Rachel it’s great to be here with you again and I have a chance to, it’s always fun to play with you in these conversations. I do think that play is some of the times we do the most learning. This has always been true of us bodies who’ve grown up into adults. We worry more and play less, and I think play is really a wonderful space of learning.

Rachael: Yeah, absolutely.

Derek: And a statement about our bodies as well. So thanks for letting me be with you and hangout.

Rachael: Yeah. Well, as many of you already know, Derek is the president and provost of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. I’ve had the profound privilege of knowing Derek since 2011, I believe.

Derek: Yes, I think even ’10… because you interviewed me for my first job.

Rachael: You’re right. And honestly, when we start to do that math, I start to feel really old in my approaching middle age. So we’ll step away from that. But one of the things that I’ve always appreciated about you and I can recall many moments, especially when I lived in Seattle and we were in coworking space together, is many moments throughout the past 15 years where we had touch points of where we find ourselves and moments of profound suffering, disillusion chaos or fear and just pausing with you and having conversation. And you are one of the more thoughtful and courageous leaders I know. And I think part of that comes from your very hard won, but also carefully tended to embodied wisdom. And I can just recall the amount of times that you’ve invited me to pause, to lean into a thoughtful intentionality and a thoughtful integration when what is being invited is chaos and overwhelm and fragmentation, whether that fragmentation is in our bodies, in our relationships, or in a larger social collapse, so to speak. So yeah, let’s talk a little bit about where we are today.

Derek: I think those are all challenging things and you keep hoping you grow into it. You say, oh, have I reached that level? I’m growing to growing into it. I can appreciate how dramatically difficult or challenging the times have been. Certainly in terms of, usually I start off with a thing that we feel, I was with a group last weekend and I asked them, how many of you trust the institutions that you’re part of? There was one person in a group of 40 that raised their hand and said, my church. And I said, good, that’s good. But nobody else raised their hand in a group of 40 people of trusting institutions around them. And so when you’re institutions, they feel like they’re not able to answer the questions or hold you in a certain way, contain you, then there’s more anxiety, generalized anxiety. And so we all have more generalized anxiety and post-COVID world where institutions don’t feel as strong and can hold us. And there’s a great deal of political challenge. But I mean some of that is disruptive and good, but some of it’s disruptive and tough and hard. And the word is probably uncertainty. So most of us are struggling with some degree of uncertainty, whether it be our families, our work, our spiritual lives, our institutions. And so it requires us to work with each other in a different sort of way. The ideal of the individual can stand in their own two feet and do this. That’s got to be passe in this moment. And we really do need to know how to not be as ashamed of our personal lives enough to share with others. So that’s the period we’re in. I don’t recall this many things being a challenge at the same time. And so again, whatever you’re religious or political or identity persuasion is, all of us can feel our sense of fragmentation and can feel that we’re not quite together maybe in the way we thought we were. I’m not sure if we were ever fully together, but we at least had a story that allowed us to identify with what it means to be this thing. And I think we’re searching for the new story, the old story has run out of gas, particularly in terms of this country. Whether we think about it in terms of… Hey, this is why it’s interesting … patriots or not being patriots, you’re not patriotic. Well, we’re looking for story. That’s a storyline.

Rachael: That’s right.

Derek: And we no longer collectively hold easily to the same story. So that’s our work as a people of God is to both renew the story that God has given to us in the context of the story of the country that’s fragmenting. And that means we have to find each other and reacquaint ourselves with the text. I’ve heard a lot of things about Christianity not quite in the text, that’s not quite what Jesus was saying, not quite, but they’re protective. They’re meant to draw on some protective authorization. And I’m afraid we’ve gone beyond what Jesus was saying. In some cases we haven’t grounded ourselves, that we grounded ourselves trying to recapture what we had. And that instincts a healthy instinct to recapture what we had. But it can be distorted in his actualization. And I see us distorting a lot in our actualization. Flip side is I see us distorting a lot in our attempting to be equal or inclusive of all things. And there’s tension on all sides. And so the question is what do we do as people who want to lead and support and hold? What’s our task? And it’s a challenge. It’s a very challenging moment.

Rachael: Well, and it’s interesting you say that we’re, whether it’s we’ve forgotten the story or we actually need a corrective story that’s not a new human problem or to swing one way versus the other on a pendulum that invites a lot of fragmentation and distrust and a word we use a lot in the therapeutic realm, splitting you’re good or you’re bad. There’s not very little room for complexity or not the neutral middle, but the space in between. And it makes me think of what you’re saying around, the way we talk about this a lot in the Allender Center is just that reality, that trauma, harm, hurt, betrayal, our feelings of powerlessness, they do create in us an impulse to survive that you’re saying, yeah, that’s that’s how we’re wired. We’re wired for survival. But sometimes the way in which we pursue that is really malformed because of some of the cultural and well, because of ultimately theologically just the nature of sin, which is such a breakdown of connection and wholeness and capacity to love and to faith and to hope, all those things.

Derek: And part of Shalom shattered. The woman you gave me, we were partners in this, but now it’s the woman you gave. Fragmentation. And so the immediate sort of threat response is that we break apart and i think God would desire us to break open as opposed to apart and how do we break open, which is a new emergent growth story sense of we’re in Christ as opposed to apart. And right now we’re breaking apart. And that breaking open requires a community to be grounded or safe enough in our bodies that we don’t have to make each other the threat–source of threat. So we wrestle not against flesh and blood is an attempt to say, you got to be careful who you identify as the enemy. And once we get into the us and them insiders/outsiders, it’s very hard to unlock or return to a sense of community because we see each other’s threats and then we assumptions and mythology about each other. And then we further protect ourselves by distancing. So we’re in that distancing cycle. Things are a threat. We can’t see in some ways the Christ in each other, let alone the humanity of each other, and so in some ways… In all honesty, I feel that. I’m like get away. I don’t want to have a conversation with you, I would prefer not. And how do we keep being brought back to intention? And I think a with us as opposed to he’s our power and in our corner. This is where the prophet speaks to us intention. What does it mean to be people of God? And the essential piece is love. I don’t mean warm and fuzzy, this is gritty, now. We’re into gritty spaces.

Rachael: If people knew you well, they would know you don’t mean the warm and fuzzy.

Derek: No, I do not because that which we have commercialized is weak. It’s unable to hold us through suffering. And Jesus says to Peter, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? This sort, I got to call you out of your fear. And in some ways then therefore feed my sheep. So the impetus for his ministry unto death, because that’s what is predicted right? If you said you love me. Well, you’re going to die in uncomfortable ways. So I think we in this kind of an American Christianity has gotten uncomfortable suffering. And so suffering is no longer making us, it’s breaking us. And I think suffering is meant to make us, it’s meant to something in us as opposed to break us apart.

Rachael: Yeah. Well I wanted to name just very vulnerably what you’re putting words to, especially with this kind of political, religious, social moment of fragmentation. Some people can maintain the integrity of their family and their closest community and it really is outsiders. And then there are those of us where those fault lines are within our home, our family, some of our most beloved people. And it’s really terrifying to be questioning, I dunno how to love you. I’m scared of you. It’s making me vulnerable today. The fear, I’ve been working out with some beloved people in my life. It’s like, oh, in some ways you are how you have become my enemy. But there’s a cognitive dissonance because you’re also beloved and I don’t want you to be hated and to become what I have perceived for you as my enemy, and then you feel the same. So we really can’t come to any common ground of ideology. But then there’s that fear of like, well then you’re not doing the work. You’re complicit in the harm. And so this question, what does it mean to love in a time where love does feel like, oh yeah, I have to grow in my capacity to love in the tension. And also I think what you’re putting words to and to relinquish my desire for power, at least the power of this world, I think we’re meant for power and to be empowered. But yeah, this question of Jesus to Peter knowing what is to come multiple times, he is like, and this is, you’re going to be sifted and it’s going to be fine. It’s going to be also horrible. Just come back.

Derek: You’re going to go through it as opposed to get around it. Well, you’re really identifying in that longer story of Peter because if you look at his call, Peter’s call is basically, wow, this is a magician and he can make fish jump into nets. We’ve been fishing all night and it didn’t happen. What kind of power is this?

Rachael: That’s right.

Derek: And then Peter recognizes that power and says, Hey, I’m not worthy. And it’s shame. His shame is woundedness is how he’s grown up. He’s not worthy. Jesus calls him, I’ll make your fishes of men. But he must have at that moment some grandiose hope that he’ll be special. It’s when Jesus says to him, look Peter, and this is after they’ve been struggling, the disciples who’s the greatest. That’s when he says to Peter, by the way, Simon, I’ll go back to your birth name. If you’ll your origin family of origin name… demanded the sift you all and you’re going to be sifted is in essence. But I prayed for you that you would not be extinguished, which is different than lose hope. That you would some ways have the resilience to come back. I prayed for you to have the resilience to come back after you in some ways have been sifted, you’ve been fragmented, you’ve been broken, you’ve suffered that you would come back and Peter says, no, no, no, not me, and it’s not going to be me. I’m going to with you to the grave and Jesus said, well, you won’t know, you won’t before the crow speaks three times. You are in some ways going to fall. And so in some ways it’s an interesting thing to have the one we look towards who hold us together, say to us, you’re going to suffer. You’re going to go through what I guarantee you is that you won’t fail because I prayed for you, pray for. That’s what we have to in some ways in terms of our imagination to say, Hey, these are tough times, these are challenging times, these are ing times. But I trust that Christ has prayed and supplicated for us on our behalf that the Holy Spirit is in ways speaking on our behalf that we would not be extinguished, that we would not go away. And then the three, do you love me’s make a bit more sense. The first love is agape. Do you love me? Sacrificially. Peter’s response, love like a brother. I phileo. He didn’t even respond back in the same type of love. In the text in John and he says, again, do you agape me? Well, I love you, I love you. And then the third one Jesus gives in, he says, okay, do you love me? And Peter says, yes, you know I love you. And then he says, there’ll be moments where you go where you didn’t want to go, but Peter has to be broken of his desire to be something in the world in a certain type of way because he imagined going with the Savior. I’m a part of the Savior’s crew. And in some ways he’s being told you’re going to sacrifice your life so something has broken in him and it appears broken in a way of service as opposed to fleeing and broken apart. So you’ve identified for me that story that how do we face into suffering and it can’t be done alone. This is a dilemma with trauma. So much of trauma happens alone in isolation. And this is a suffering that’s not meant to be done alone. It’s meant to be done together. And we have to find each other to weep together and to mourn together. So that’s some of a harder task because usually when I feel like I want to cry, I want to cry in private. And I don’t want you to feel the shame that I feel that I feel broken in this way. And this is what the love of Christ does. It says, I don’t see your shame. I love you. I don’t push your shame on you. I love you. I embrace you in a way that actually pushes your shame away. But you need me to say, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? So that’s the moment we’re in I think. We’ve got to actually find each other in a moment when we feel naturally wanting to shy away from people who look like us, who don’t sound like us. Are not in our categories. Who want to fight us within our families about your beliefs. And I think the only strategy for that is for us to get, I heard someone say courageously curious… to get out of the ideological argument we’ve got to ask questions. The ones you’ve already mentioned, tell me what frighten you. I think that’s one of the most pivotal questions we could ask people who want to fight with us. Tell me what frightens you.

Rachael: Tell me what frightens you.

Derek: Because that’s a movement towards you, not the shield of ideology you’ve put up in front of you. Tell me what frightens you, and you shared that of I’m frightened that I’ll have to be in this relationship with family members I don’t want to be in relationship with. So those are some of our, I think our body and spirit challenges. And I think we’re in a body and spirit space right now.

Rachael: Yeah, I mean I’ve heard you, and I think this is somewhat, you’re putting words to, you’ve actually, I think your leadership for even our small organization, you’ve used language of crucible that we’re in a crucible. And I hear some of the echoes of that in this reminder of suffering and self-sacrificial suffering, which has some distinction with trauma. I’m just thinking theologically for people who are raised in context where it’s like, well, all suffering is ordained by God and for is purposed for you. And it’s like, well, there’s some nuancing there, right? But we are in a crucible moment. And I’ve also heard you share stories and use language around neighboring, and that’s a part of the mission of the Seattle School, this capacity to really be equipped to love God and to love neighbors. But I think both things we need to remember are a part of our story. And I hear you putting words to that. I’m like, we need each other and we don’t just need our kind of split off echo chambers. We need each other and we won’t always be able to choose who is our neighbor and we will still have need of each other. So go with that where you will. But

Derek: Yeah. Well, I’ll start with the need each other. I want to push it beyond just simply acquaintances… is that we belong to each other, which is weightier than just, Hey, I need to talk to you about this… I belong to you and I’ll belong to you to eternity. So what does that mean? So it grounds it bit deeper. The story of neighbor. I share this story one because I feel like I’m still in school with God, obviously we all are. And in September of last year, I was talking in convocation about who is your neighbor and the story of Jesus engaging with the lawyer and the Good Samaritan story, it really is a case study that Jesus is offering to talk to a lawyer who is trying to impress or test Jesus and goes into this story. And so I shared that story and I was really trying to say to people, in this moment and this is before the elections, in this moment of political tension, who is our neighbor? And the one who serves is the answer, the lawyer, the one who takes care. I didn’t say the Samaritan because the Samaritan and Jews have tension. So didn’t anyone say the one who one does service? Well, not a month later, roughly about a month later, I have a neighbor who, European American woman, older woman who walks with my wife, used to walk with my wife with our two dogs. And so they have dogs and I have kind of an acquaintance of this person, so to see you and do a lot of waving and we’ll have occasional conversation at the mailbox and things like that, but not really trying to engage her. And there was one evening around seven one night, I just dropped my wife off at the airport and thought, Hey, I’m going to have a quiet evening, I think watch the TV I want, I can have the food I want, I can do all the things I want. And she texted me and said “Hey, could you help me?” This one neighbor, “can you help me get home?” She lives a little more, a half a block away. And I thought, well sure. She’s recently been diagnosed with cancer. And so she started chemo treatments. And so it’s just getting dark. And as I get outside, she’s just to my right neighbors sitting on the neighbor stoop next to me. And so I go over take 10, 15 minutes to walk her home, it’s less than a five minute walk, it’s a couple minute walk. As soon as I stand her up, she was sitting down, she begins to become nauseous and she just begins throwing up. I’m thinking this going to longer than I thought, because she was just very fragile getting up and very reactive to any sort of movement made her nauseous, to the point where we get her in front of my house, and she’s having such trouble walking I brought out a chair for her, a wet washcloth to wipe her off because she’s nauseous and sick, and I’m carrying her bags at this point and I said are you ready? I giving her time to get to her house. It took us 45 minutes to get to her front door. I’m thinking all this what are we doing? Why are we out here? I don’t want to be out here. In some moments I am wrapped around her because I’ve got to hold her up, her body weight and carrying her bags. And for me, who grew up in a context where Black men don’t have this familiarity, White women in public, it was a very unnerving, an older woman, I’m thinking, I don’t want anybody drive by thinking I’m trying to take advantage of this woman.

Rachael: It’s dangerous.

Derek: And my anxiety about… so I felt that sense of what it means to be the priest or walking by somebody beaten up on the road. So I kept asking her, do you want me to call an ambulance? I can call an ambulance for you. She would not let do that. I’m thinking, this is somebody else’s problem I’d like it to be somebody else’s problem. Let me get you to your door. It took us 45 minutes up and down, sat down in the grass, getting up from grass. I’m thinking there’s cars driving by. I’m standing over this woman. I don’t know how people don’t think I’m doing so bad to her and I’m waiting for the police to show up at this point. I get her to her front stoop and she’s so sick that she doesn’t try to get in the house. She just gets on her stoop and curls up in a ball on her stoop. The end of the story is it me three hours to get her in the house on the couch and drinking water. I’m thinking I had a free evening, it was free, but God employed it. But I say tell this story because in the middle of this me asking, God, what are you doing and why am I out here. That tends to be when I’m in crisis, what are we learning? I want to learn it quickly and let’s get it over with. And in the middle of that, this phrase came back to me, the question, who is your neighbor? And the immediate response inside me, and her name’s not Sadie, but I’ll call her Sadie. Sadie is my neighbor. And in that moment I felt different about her. I actually said I began to love her. I have an affection. I text her now, say, how are you feeling? What’s going on? So I have a texting relationship with her. I didn’t have a relationship with her before because something in that three hours tied us together. I saw her in what would be shameful positions to be sick and not be able control her body fluids. And so that sense of all of us going through this together, I had a real live experience of who’s your neighbor? It was not abstract anymore. There’s some part that knows we are in a place where the lesson is no longer abstract. It can’t be an abstract lesson anymore. It has to lesson where we’re embodied. Where we’re experiencing other people in their pain and how do we reach out in the pain? And I’m not one move towards the ambulance, I’m the one who goes home when I see the ambulance, I’m going home. And here I felt caught in a situation where the person who I had acquaintance who I now feel like she belongs to me. And in that three hours she belonged to me.

Rachael: And I also hear at great cost, not just for your free evening, but for your personal safety in a story, a socialized, racialized story that you don’t get to just sidestep in this moment of who is your neighbor or you didn’t feel like you had very valid reasons to be like, I can’t be your neighbor. You got to find someone else to be your neighbor.

Derek: That goes wishing and slightly prying on that… Can someone come? And no one surprisingly, and this is after the fact, no one stopped. No one came out and there were multiple cars driving by. That made me even more sad because there were moments when she was sitting laying on the ground. I’m thinking no one stopped. No one asked that question. And so it was stunning to me how we have gotten so self-protective. We can no longer feel safe doing that. And I understand that the safety, but I think we’re going to be pulled. People of God pulled into situations that are beyond our safety. We’ll be led in places we would not choose to go. And some of our purpose is found in that. And that’s what I think who is my neighbor is what is my purpose? What am I called to do beyond what I want to do, what am I being called to do?

Rachael: Which I think bumps up against, it’s like it’s that maturity conflict when we’re in healing process. Because so much of a healing process at times is actually creating boundaries because maybe you’ve been under threat and forced to do many things that you’re not meant for and you’re not called to do. So that growing maturity of when there actually is more of a choice that we won’t always get to choose our comfort or choose our self-protection or choose our very good and honoring boundaries.

Derek: And I think that’s the challenge too, is to be able to distinguish that from a moment of retraumatization. And at times it felt, could feel close to say this to someone, but I do think you’re right when we say calling. I think there was moments… to me, it was an irony for me to be saying the students, you ought to love your neighbor and a month later who is your neighbor? And so that felt like I was supposed to be there at that moment when my wife was just out of town and this woman who’s not a Christian who asked me, help me get to my door, help me get home. And there’s something about us being people who are open to experiences where we’re helping people find home, or get home. How do we in some ways, in own fears in our own sort of risk…trust God in those moments of calling. I want to make sure they’re calling as opposed to just trying to be helpful. If you have a desire to save people and yey… not likely. You may not be the one at that moment. That’s probably who I’d say I’m not sure that’s calling for at this moment. So there has to be degree, I won’t call preparedness, but openness for what God might be doing. And this is just another narrative as opposed to protective. I think there’s some healing that has to happen enough to be in that of openness. But I do believe, again, some of the pieces that are important for, again, crucible in this notion of crucible, there’s a bit of alchemy to it. Where something is pressured to become more valuable, whether it be heated, some sort of catalyst either by pressure or by heat or by furnace. And the crucibles a container for that. And that raw metal material is put into that container and then compressed or heated up in such a way that increases value. Well, I think in the same way without a container, it’s not a crucible. It may be a crisis. It’s simply a crisis. And so what’s the container for these things? I think there’s also a sense of a community, if this is done alone, I think you have to be careful. The community piece becomes really important and also some degree of intentionality has to be a part of this. So it’s not just simply, again, you’re in an impetus because you’ve had issues with saving your family, now you’re going to save someone else. I think there has to be some developmental intentionality and then a crisis can become a crucible. It again makes something of you, shapes you, increases your resilience. But I think there conditions for that as opposed to just jumping in if you will.

Rachael: Well, I wonder if we could play a little bit with some of those categories to just give people more imagination. So when you say there has to be a container, what are some of the containers?

Derek: Yeah, I think for instance in the moment for me that can be both spiritual, psychological and relational. When I met my neighbor outside my door, I had very much been studying Who was your neighbor? I mean, this was the container for me. And so this is the story that comes back to me in the midst of this where I’m like, oh, I did ask that question of other people. I hadn’t asked that question of me. Here I am asking that question of me and it felt very much like an embodied learning experience. I think sometimes the container is a group of people, small group who can hear a story or hear what hurt or hear what has been difficult and challenging and give you in some ways feedback on this is what we hear and we’re here for you as the containing part. We’re here for you. We won’t let you drop and hit the floor. And I think that’s a lot of the work of the Allender Center in terms of why we do small groups, is a container function. It emotionally says you’re not alone. I think that intentionality is something often that God may be inching you towards, challenging you with. You’ve been asked the question more than once or you’ve been with the question more than once, and that it seems to lead to another step. So Peter, as an example, do you love me? Is not a new question for him because he gets annoyed. Well, why are you asking, you know it already? This all why you keep asking me that? You know it already. And Jesus doesn’t mind irritating in that regard and therefore then serve, serve. So I want to those distinctions. There’s usually some sense of in our call, the intentionality, the shaping of us, the forming of us, but not without a container. And I think not without a community.

Rachael: Yeah, no, that’s a good word. When we’re in crisis, even when that crisis can become a crucible, we’re still in our bodies. And I feel this right now in this particular moment, I feel tremendous overwhelm. And I have a lot of tools at my disposal. I am working on the communal tools because I am far more the person who’s like, how can I provide myself what I need to find some grounding and regulation before I need to depend on other people because that also feels dysregulating, that I might need other people. That feel’s scary, no one’s going to come. Or if they do come, they won’t be able to help. I mean, that’s some of my story playing out. There’s been a lot of healing there. I think being a Christian, being called to be not just in my own body, but embodied with other people. It’s a growth edge for me. But I’m wondering if there are practices or tools that we can, I like the word practices because I think especially with just such a time as this, we actually just see a lot of practice growing different kinds of muscle memory. And even what you’re putting words to the intentionality piece is like, yeah, we need nudges and reminders and invitations that keep coming. We need someone to repeat three times something. So curious if there are practices you’re turning to or might be helpful for such a time as this.

Derek: There are, and it’s interesting there varied. Again, I would first go back to and spirit practices. I think you’ve got to be doing something with your body, whether it be walking, exercising, some movement, the necessity of movement, I’ll say it that way. And however you’re moving, there’s something about our bodies being able to turn off some of the hormonal pieces or least shut, slow them down, shut them down a bit more by moving. And so we’re made to move, if you’ll say that way. How are we moving? We’re made to move. And we’re also made to be careful about what we eat. And getting plenty of water. And so the challenge for me daily is that I get enough water because I’m, it’s not unusual for me to, oh, this all happened six hours. I haven’t had any water. And so I have to discipline myself around those sort of body pieces and sleep. And so they basically erodes. I think within that there’s a communion part to body too. Not just simply fellowship together because we saw each other, we had good time, but we’re co-regulating with each other. Who is a community that’s safe enough for you to commune with? And in that sense, it’s not just anybody. Sometimes church is not a safe place. And so that’s not the place to commune. You cannot find co-union with folk there. And so who are the folk who you can commune with? I think the other piece is there needs to be play. And this is one that Dan poked me with. I appreciate not just practices but play and how do we play, how do we find people we can play and enjoy? Because all these things are necessary for body stimulation, reading a book and part of the author saying that we’re in a period where the body states are being altered. So psychedelics, whether it be sex, whether it be other sorts of drugs, even music and exercise that constantly bombarded with options for altering our body states. And so I actually think we’re in a space, my education experience “life of the mine” and that doesn’t discount the mind, it includes the mind, but we’re in life of the body. And for us as people, we’re being offered altered states all the time, even if it’s staring at my phone and seeing how many people liked what I just posted. That is a body experience, has to be, yes, has to be attended to. And then spirit. And I think spirit is a transcendent quality of our spirit with other spirits and God. And how do we in some ways find ourselves in our rituals and rituals are containers. They’re holders. We currently don’t have the bells in our building, which you know very well. I’m like, okay, we’re about to move. I said, the bells have to be there because whether you’re conscious of it, not the bells hold you, they give you some predictability. So when the rest of the world feels very unpredictable, what are the rhythms that we establish? And it may be our personal rhythms to help us feel grounded and help us feel connected. And that’s a spiritual piece. Sometimes reading text, it may be communion or Eucharist. What are the rhythms? And so when Christ says, do this remembrance of me, it’s as much a grounding, but it grounds us also in the story. And so how do we rehearse this story that we’re given the story of Eucharist, this is my body. This is my flesh I give to you. It’s a story. It opens up the whole narrative of Jesus’s sacrifice on our behalf and it grounds us again in the cost, I think those are some of the, I mean it’s maybe a little abstract, but those are some of the things that help us to feel like in the midst of the storm, I can hold on in the midst of this, I can actually feel other people holding me. And I do think there’s moments when we say, I can’t hold myself any longer. I need someone to hold me. And that’s shame oriented stuff. Most of us fight tooth and nail not to get there. But that’s, I think what it’s called for that I can trust the people, they’re safe enough around me that can hold me when I can’t hold it together and I can be me with them.

Rachael: I mean, I can say being a mom of a newborn infant, emerging toddler child person, I’ve never been… So that’s been a certain kind of crucible that I’m really grateful for how it lined up with this time in our history and our world because it has broken me… your language of you can be broken apart or you can be broken open. And I feel like it’s something that has opened me. And I’ve never needed more mothering than this season. And it pushes against every kind of individualistic. I can do it on my own. You can talk about the village all day long, but that sense of just, it’s not shameful to need help to need care, to need reminding to need communion and coregulation. And so I just was thinking, oh yeah, that’s a ritual that’s deeply grounding for me, but is also simultaneous. It’s like it’s the container that is actually breaking me open and making me new and expanding my imagination and expanding my humility and vulnerability and expanding my hope and capacity for probably more receiving love as well as giving love. Well…

Derek: That’s beautiful. Well, lemme say that’s just lovely and that makes me teary because you’ve just shared in some ways what hope for all of us that we have that resonance, we find that sort of resonance, the healthy enough mothering that we feel attuned in a way that heals and that the circumstances outside of us don’t have to change because we feel attuned internally. We feel spiritually and attuned in way that holds us. And Christ says pray for us. Christ says pray for us. So thank you.

Rachael: Yeah, thank you. I’m going to hold onto that and ponder that. It’s recalling a lot of language in Romans 8 as well, and it’s good to remember that on days when, yeah, the suffering feels too loud or feels isolating or fragmenting, so deeply grateful for you, for your willingness to come and play with me in this way and for your leadership and just for your humility as well, to be a learner, to ever be a learner and to share what you’re learning with us. So thanks for being here Derek.

Derek: Thank you.