May 28, 2025 • 56 mins
Rev. Dr/ Shannan Vance-Ocampo discusses the theology of belonging with Erin Weber-Johnson, lead editor of the transformative new book, Pathways to Belonging.
The editors have generously offered a 40% off code for ordering directly from the publisher’s website with a discount : PATHWAYS
https://wipfandstock.com/9798385203321/pathways-to-belonging/#:~:text=Description,%2D%2Dincluding%20our%20faith%20communities.
PSNE 2025 Summer All-Presbytery Book Study
Schedule and Information:
Our summer book study will begin on Tuesday June 17th and run for five weeks, meeting at 12:30PM for an hour over zoom. After five weeks together in community, the second half of the summer will be spent reflecting and developing your own story of belonging, along with an opportunity to share that journey prayerfully with a spiritual companion.
Register: https://psne.breezechms.com/form/pathtobelonging
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Well, hello everyone.
This is Shannon Vance Ocampo Iuse she and her pronouns and I
serve as the general presbyterfor the Presbytery of Southern
New England, and this isConnecting Our Conversations,
our podcast space forconversations that push the
edges of our faith and help usto deepen discipleship.
The Presbytery of Southern NewEngland is a regional governing
(00:31):
body in the Presbyterian ChurchUSA.
Today's podcast episode isgoing to be a little bit more
didactic than usual, because weare going to be talking about a
program in the Presbytery forthis summer that is open to
everyone, a summer book study,something that we are bringing
back after a hiatus of a couplesummers, and so please keep your
(00:54):
eyes peeled in your email inboxearly next week for an email
invitation.
Joining me today is one of thelead editors of the book we're
going to be using, which isPathways to Belonging, and that
lead editor is Erin WeberJohnson and hey, and so we're
(01:14):
going to be having aconversation about the book and
the incredibly rich theme ofbelonging and what it could mean
for us and faith communitiestoday.
I think it's going to be areally interesting conversation
and I hope the book study willalso prove really fruitful for
everyone.
So today's a very specialpodcast episode and I am
(01:34):
absolutely thrilled to have mycolleague Erin joining us.
So welcome Erin.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Oh, thank you so much , and thank you for the kind
invitation.
I'm so excited to talk aboutall things belonging with you.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, we're excited to have you Erin so what.
I like to do at the beginningis start with introductions and
giving our guests an opportunityto introduce themselves in
whatever way makes best sensefor them, rather than me making
it up about you or whatever Ithink.
Let you introduce yourself, sotell us whatever we need to know
about you, erin.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thank you, Shannon.
I bet whatever you made upabout me would have been
fantastic.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, I ordained you apparently.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, on that note.
I am a non-ordained minister whouses she her pronouns.
I work at Vandersall CollectiveI'm a partner there where we
are a women-owned, queer-led,faith-utilized consulting base
(02:37):
out of New York.
However, I live in St Paul,minnesota, with my husband and
two beautiful boys who are 15and 13.
I call them St Jude and StSimon.
A little bit about me.
I have spent my entire career inthe church, so I found the
(02:58):
Episcopal Church.
That's where I like to say Ifound Jesus.
I found Jesus in the EpiscopalChurch in 2003.
I was a missionary there withmy husband, where he discerned
his call to the ordainedministry, went to seminary in
New York and then I discerned mycall to the non-ordained
ministry as a vocation and wentto NYU and got a master's in
(03:19):
public administration, and thenwas at Trinity Wall Street for a
few years and then at theEpiscopal Church Foundation for
10, where I did capitalcampaigns, annual giving and
strategic planning as seniorprogram director, and then, in
2018, joined Mika in thisbeautiful startup that really
(03:41):
reflects our own theologicalunderstanding of the way God
moves.
As far as my own ministry, manyof you might be wondering well,
what does this person haveanything to do with belonging,
which is a great question.
So I'm also very much a writerand this actually is my second
(04:02):
volume that I've worked on.
The first is called Crisis andCare Meditations on Faith and
Philanthropy but very much Iroot my work in a practical
theology that asks questionsabout what does it mean for us
embodied people that we are toembrace a God that loves us not
(04:23):
for what we do or for what weproduce, but for who we are, as
beloved?
And at that intersection, then,what does that mean for our own
narratives about money, aboutsustainability, institutions and
, in this situation primarily,what does it mean when we have
(04:43):
these theological notions abouthow we feel we belong or don't
belong?
What are some notions ofbelonging that have been
destructive and what are somenew life-giving ways that we can
move into in the world?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So that's a bit about what I bring today, yeah that's
great and that tells us alittle bit about some of what
your professional portfolio ofwork has been.
And you know folks like you inthe church help folks like me
and many others do the ministrywe feel called to, and so it's
(05:18):
really important and helpful andI think we're going to be doing
a lot more together.
I'm really excited.
The Presbyterian Episcopal NextSteps Ecumenical Agreement has
passed and is in now our Book ofOrder, the new one that will be
printed in about a month andwhich allows us to do a lot more
orderly transfer of clergy andcelebrate the sacraments
(05:42):
together and do other things.
It's really exciting because Ilove the formula of agreement in
the Presbyterian Church and ourpartnerships.
But I always think the formulaof agreement is too small.
So I've liked in my work I'vealways wanted to stretch it out
into other denominations andhave found successfully ways
around the formula to includethe Episcopalians and the
(06:02):
Methodists and the AmericanBaptists, because I think those
of us who are in the moreprogressive liberal mainline do
better when we do our worktogether tend to.
So I'm excited about the newthings with the Episcopalians
because we have one church inour Presbytery that's in a joint
partnership.
They share land and buildingand space and they have a joint
(06:23):
corporation between them andit's really an interesting
ministry.
So I'm excited about moreexperiments like that.
That's been going on about twodecades, so really interesting.
So I'm going to hold the bookup.
Oh, my screen is on blur, erin,can you hold the book up?
Do you have a copy?
Oh, you did, you did it, yougot it.
There we go Silly, blurryscreen and zoom, anyway.
(06:43):
So I want to talk about thebook and just jump in.
So, first of all, this iswhat's such a hard interview for
me to set up, because of course, there's over 20 authors in
this book that you know writingall these different chapters,
and you and your co-editors havebook end, forwards and
conclusions to the book, andthen or introduction, conclusion
(07:04):
Willie James Jenning from Yalewrites the book, and then, or
introduction and conclusionWillie James Jenning from Yale
writes the foreword.
And I sort of, when I wasreading the book and making
notes for today, I was thinkingwell, I want to like interview
everybody and do like 20interviews, but that's very time
consuming.
But I was like, oh, so I reallylike bring it down Right.
(07:24):
But this idea around thinkingabout our theology of belonging
and what does it mean for us asindividuals and then what does
it mean for us in community, andit got me thinking about, like,
my own sense of belonging andvarious stages in my life around
(07:45):
belonging.
So I just, if I can, I justwant to start with just a couple
things from the forward.
Sure James Jennings, because hesays a number of really
prophetic things about this ideaof belonging.
He says says you have to decide.
You want this meaning belonging.
(08:06):
Uh, some things in life aregiven to us, even pressed upon
us family, clan, tribe, nation,story, drama, quest, historical
burden, responsibility.
Um, that idea of you know wehave our biological family and
we have our chosen family, right, but some things must be chosen
(08:33):
with a depth of commitment thatreorders a life and reorganizes
desire.
Christian belonging isprecisely that thing that must
be chosen.
It costs everything to belongin this new way, but what does
it mean to?
choose Christian belonging.
I love that like openingquestion in here, like what does
it mean to choose?
(08:53):
And I think about you know,like kids in confirmation class
when we talk to them about youknow it's their choice whether
or not to get confirmed.
Their parents baptized.
Our theology in thePresbyterian church right is
parents baptize the child, andusually when they were babies,
so they had no say in it.
But now they're of an age wherethey can begin to choose for
(09:15):
themselves whether or not thisis the journey they want to be
on.
And you know, and that's alwaysinteresting, when the kids have
a different choice potentiallythan parents or grandparents, it
is, but you know.
But I also think that thatissue of choosing Christian
belonging is like all the timeright for us.
I just I wonder how those wordsstruck you when you first read
(09:37):
them, when he wrote them.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well, what it reminded me of is that it
reminds me of a deep commitmentor a vow that you might make one
time but that you keep onshowing up each day to make.
It's really interesting becauseyou have to choose what.
I think that what he describeshere is you have to choose a
particular type of belonging ifyou want it.
There's lots of belongingthat's foisted on us, but that
(10:15):
could be automatic, but the kindof belonging that is
life-giving and liberating isone that's consensual, and I
think consent is an importanttheme that we don't.
Actually it's a sub theme, butwe begin and we end an
invitation specifically withthat in mind, because belonging
itself and we say this quite abit, you know, it's the air we
(10:36):
breathe Like there's plenty nowof medical studies that are
showing what happens to usphysically, not just emotionally
and spiritually, which are very, very important too, but what
happens to our physical bodieswhen we are feeling exile, what
happens to diasporic communities, physically, and so there's
(10:59):
plenty of evidence that goes toshow that belonging is necessary
for life.
We don't exist apart from oneanother.
We can't breathe, we can'tbreathe without people, places
and that form us.
But I think, shannon, to thatend, like using like breathing
(11:23):
as like a metaphor right, likeour bodies acknowledge our
dependence when we breathe.
Right, so in belonging weacknowledge our dependence.
You know, there's this ruggedindividualism, this idea that we
must be self-sustaining.
(11:44):
Right, and yet it's a bit of alie.
Right, because we exist in thisenduring state of mutuality, of
giving and receiving our breathfrom others, finding our place
amid creative, creaturelyexistence.
Right, like we exhale and weoffer life, our sense of self
(12:06):
and our hopes.
But when we inhale, weacknowledge that we need that
breath, we need that belonging,and so I think, because it's a
fundamental feature both forindividuals and collective
people people I think that wecrave it, but the way in which
(12:32):
we engage in it is vitallyimportant, as there are
different facets thatdistinguish between, I think,
christian belonging that is ahealthy type of belonging and
all other forms that areimitations and all other forms
that are imitations.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, and also I love this idea that God is, is an,
is an essential and integralpart of the equation, right, and
?
And that, you know, the firstthing we see in the Bible,
genesis, is all about belonging,god and creation, that the
creating of creation, right, theordering of creation, is all
about belonging and all aboutyou know what is our appropriate
(13:09):
spot in that, which is not, ofcourse, domination, but is
integration, and without healthycreation, we don't breathe,
right, we don't breathe, and soit's the most basic and
foundational element and it'salso everything, right, so
there's just it's, it's, it'sglobal and it's universal in
(13:33):
that way.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well, and I want to say that that is a big part of
the why, of why we wrote thisbook, because there is all of
these cascading crises right, Iknow, I laugh with my business
partner Mika, like I'm reallytired of saying these are
unprecedented times.
I'd like some good old, boringprecedent of times.
It'd be really great.
(13:55):
But the cascading crises of thepandemic and economic
challenges and, oh, george Floyd, we just remember George
Floyd's murder Years, yeah,weekend, that's right, and
January 6th, and so the toxicsoup of racism and sexism and
ableism have led to this veryodd moment in our common life.
(14:18):
Together and through it all youknow, shannon, you know each of
us were caring for families andloved ones and discerning what
it means to be in community amidchanging technological changes
and new understandings ofneurodiversity.
I should say Dr Dustin Bedekand the Reverend Dr Glenn Bell
(14:45):
and I.
What we really came to is thatbelonging is the question of
this generation, but it's alsothe question of every generation
, right?
It's the question of ourancestors who continue to form
us and those that will comelater on.
And so how we define andarticulate it, what are the
(15:05):
practices that we transfer, whatare the ways that it's both
affective reality meaning likewhere we receive these whiffs of
home aligning with where we seeit, real, intangible form.
This is what we wanted to payattention to, and realizing that
(15:27):
, even though the three editorsourselves do represent some
level of diversity, we representdifferent generations and
economic realities certainly, aswell as very different
theological places in ourspectrum of life.
Together we recognize that weare one very small piece of the
(15:51):
conversation.
So that's why we brought somany different authors, who are
very, very diverse, to have theconversation, because we
recognized that it wasn't just amatter of seeing a bit of, and
it wasn't just like thiselephant model of oh I see part
(16:12):
of the leg and you see the othertrunk, but rather there are
truths that overlap and thenthere are truths that exist
parallel, and we wanted to havea conversation to flesh those
out together.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, it's so helpful .
I also, you know, love that atthe beginning it's named and Dr
Jennings again names this and itgets talked about in other
essays in the book about thiswarping of belonging that has
happened in Christian theology.
And I'm just going to read oneother short piece from him.
(16:44):
He said too often we have madeChristian belonging into a
prison that strips us of allties and burdens us with a
string that forms only a ball,ever turning onto itself the bad
record of Christian belongingmodulated into horrific form
with colonial Christianity andthe arrival of racial belonging.
(17:09):
With racial belonging weentered a white wasteland that
we are yet to escape, wherebelonging became a property and
life became a series ofenclosures that run from the
body to our families, from ourpeoples to nations, from our
labor to our loving.
(17:29):
That just really, you know, rangout to me in so many ways.
You know the five-yearanniversary.
I can't believe it's been fiveyears since George Floyd was
murdered it feels like it wasyesterday, right but also that
(17:55):
there's just so much going on atall times, a large amount of my
time outside of the UnitedStates and the global South.
I certainly resonate with thatidea of a wasteland and property
.
This missionary adventure,misadventure that we've been on
in the global South asChristians in the global North,
and the way that we tied thatmissionary enterprise to the
capitalistic and militaristictaking of land and people and
(18:16):
then telling them to adopt atheology so that they would
belong in the right way with theright kind of church, with the
right kind of Jesus.
Right, I mean, it's very deepand twisted in those ways.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Those ways and and it pervades our, our life together
now in so deep and hostile ways.
What you know?
One of the things?
So my chapter is one of thefirst chapters and and it talks
about how.
So the word belonging actuallycomes from the 1400s and it was
(18:49):
meant only to be used forobjects.
And it was meant only to beused for objects, so it was
supposed to be aroundsituatedness, right, like, oh,
set that LaCroix over there onthe table, it belongs with the
rest of the cans, you know, putthe cows in the yard, that's
where they belong.
Right, that's they didn't.
It wasn't supposed to be aroundpeople.
(19:10):
Yeah, right, it never was to bearound people.
Right, it never was.
But when it did start toinclude people, when our idea of
bodies was that some bodieswere objects and I want to name
we might focus on one period oftime, but we see this all
(19:32):
throughout the Hebrew scriptures, we see this throughout all New
Testament, right, bodies beingused as objects rather than as
beloved creatures of God, right,right.
But what happened is that whenwe started to use belonging for
people, then we started to asksome really hard questions.
(19:54):
That to your point and to whatDr Jennings was describing.
What are the practices thatbelong?
What do I have to produce tobelong?
How do I make my measure?
What does it mean to be inalignment?
And these questions then invadeour souls today.
So you know, from a worker'spoint of view, for example, how
(20:18):
many hours a week do I have towork in order to feel like I
belong here?
How do I have to prove my worthat church?
How many hours do I have tovolunteer?
So I feel like people feel likeI've got skin in the game and I
belong right here.
So I feel like people feel likeI've got skin in the game and I
belong right.
You hear these things come up inreally sneaky ways that show a
(20:42):
clear sense of needing to put acommodification to our work.
That is false.
We were not created to becommodified.
We were not created to put adollar sign as to what our hour
is worth.
We were not created to belongpurely for what our product
(21:05):
could be, and I want to say theabsence, then, of true belonging
.
It kills our souls, right, likeit kills, kills, but it also
kills.
It functions like a parasitewithin the core of our being.
It.
It slowly eats away at what weneed to live and thrive and grow
and it it renders us unable toextend ourselves to others.
(21:28):
Right, we become really carefulabout uh, you know boundaries
are good but we become verycareful about.
You know, boundaries are goodbut we become very careful about
not being used because we don'ttrust others.
And as our inner life growsthin, we grow less able and
willing to extend trust andkindness and attentiveness.
(21:50):
That emerges, and I've seen itover and over.
We pray less, we become cynical, we become questioning of
people's motives and ourinstitutions then become hollow.
They become ways in whichpeople prop up just for the hope
(22:12):
of sustaining the institution,rather than creating communities
of belonging that provideliberation in life.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, that anxiety cycle, that fear cycle is such a
killer to a sense of communityand belonging.
And this is what I love aboutpreaching and looking at
scripture, because you know, thehuman condition is all over
scripture, that's right.
Oh, we have still not figuredourselves out, lo, these many
years, right, I mean, it'samazing.
(22:42):
No, I mean the human conditionis everywhere.
And I remember the late PeterGomes talking about the Psalms
and he said I always tell peoplethis story, I just loved it,
and I'm sure he told it amillion times probably.
But he had a woman come to himat one of the parishes that he
served before he went to Harvard.
(23:02):
And this young woman, a mom inher forties, came to see him and
she had just been diagnosedwith aggressive breast cancer
that was going to kill her rightVery quickly.
And she was just distraught,absolutely distraught, of course
, and angry at God, and angry,and said you know, what should I
do?
What should I do?
And he said you know, I alwaysrecommend people read the Psalms
because every human emotion andcondition is in there.
(23:25):
Your rage is in there, yourgrief is in there, your sadness,
your joy, everything's in there, right?
And so I just I think of thatwhen I preach that, that that
story he shared, because I dothink the human condition is all
over the place in the Bible andit's both the broken human
condition you know there'sthere's plenty examples of, of
the brokenness of humancondition and slavery, even in
(23:47):
the Bible, absolutely all overthe place, and uh, and then
there's these amazingcommunities and redemptive
stories, and you know it's allin there, right?
You know our the blessings andthe brokenness, and so I just, I
really do think it it can,scripture can take us to those
(24:07):
places when we need to reallylook at what's happening to
ourselves, what's happening, youknow, with belonging.
I just want to finish with oneother piece from Dr Jennings,
and I'm going to put this pieceaway, but he said he's talking
about you know, then, I like howhe uses this Christian
belonging is this prison, and ittakes us as a string that makes
(24:30):
a ball and it only turns in onitself, and then he talks about
unraveling the ball.
He says intimacy forms aproject of living together with
difference, accepting new waysof being in the world, with new
people, and this is ultimatelywhat church, what the gathering
is supposed to be thepresentation of Jesus's body,
extending strings into the livesof all and allowing the lives
(24:54):
of all to then extend into thelife of God.
He fixes that curled up youknow ball and unfurls it as he
closes here, and I love thatimage of you know.
There's, you know, strings andpieces of us that go out into
God and come back to us and goout into community.
(25:15):
And we're, you know we're inthis interplay between ourselves
.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Another author of the book, diamon Hardis, speaks to
this in a beautiful way as well.
He is what's called a rovinglistener and has done just a
remarkable job of showing us adifferent way of creating and
fostering belonging andcommunity, where by listening
(25:44):
and by creating you know there'slots of formal ways to do asset
mapping, but the way that hedoes it is from a place of our
community has so many strengthsand has so many gifts, and so
what do I need to do, what arethe questions I need to ask so I
can hear the stories of thesestrengths and gifts and then, as
(26:09):
Dr Jennings' metaphorical ballunravels a bit, where we start
to see where people areconnected, then how do I form
new connections?
Right, he is brilliant at it andthe way that he has described
it and the volume I really wantto highlight to you all, briggs,
(26:30):
just a fresh sense of hope forme that we do the work and we
don't always see the product ofwhat we do, and that is okay
Because, as Patrick Reyes writesin his second chapter or third
chapter of the book, sometimesthe work we are doing we do for
(26:50):
the generations to follow, andthat's good too, that's a virtue
.
Yeah, we're doing somethingreparative with we do for the
generations to follow, andthat's good too.
That's a.
That's a virtue.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, we're doing something reparative with what
we do.
I also loved I saw you knowglimpses of my own story and
some of the writing and just thereal human.
I loved in your essay how youtalked about going into this
diner and someone said oh, Iknow you're a Weber, right, you
know because of your face.
And the Weber face is real,shannon, it's strong, oh my gosh
(27:16):
.
Well, so years ago we were inGranada, in the south of Spain,
which is where my husband'sfather's side of the family was
from before they came toColombia.
Now they came 500 years ago andthey were the conquistadors.
So you know, bad things, verybad things.
Ok, but we were walking inGranada and this woman was
walking towards me on the streetand she looked.
She was the spitting image ofmy father in law's sister.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Tia Gabriela and.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Tia Gabriela.
She just passed away inNovember, so blessings upon her,
but she was sort of a littlebit of the family terrorist.
I have to say Everybody wasafraid of Tia Gabriela, like she
just was.
She was a tough cookie, youknow, like she loved everybody.
But she was tough.
And I had this moment of panicon the street because I thought
I was like, oh no, I'm introuble.
(28:02):
What did I do?
She's coming like she's walkingdown towards me in the night.
And then my next thought waswait a second, shannon, snap out
of it.
There's no way she, there's noway.
(28:37):
She's too elderly, she can'tfly across the ocean anymore.
But I mean the gene pool isstrong, right.
I mean it's amazing whathappens.
And so I, when I was readingthat story about Weber face, I
thought, oh my gosh, yes Italking about how his preschool
and elementary school teacherswould tell his mom not to teach
him Tagalog, his native language, at home.
That happened to us.
We raised our daughterbilingual from birth and I had a
number of parent-teacherconferences when she was little
where they would tell us don'ttake her home to Columbia for
the summer, don't speak Spanishat home with her, she's going to
(28:58):
get behind in school.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And we would have to tell the teachers, like you know
, take a hike in a very nice wayand this was at a, this was in
a religious education, she wasin Catholic school, she was at
the lower school where myhusband taught at the at the
upper school, and so theseresonances, like I think people
as we read, as I hope, as folksread the book, that they will
(29:21):
find resonance and story wherethere'll be like, oh, I see a
little shard of myself in hereor a little piece of my story,
uh, in these things, because, uh, you know, uh, we're all
walking the journey together.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
We are walking the journey and it's a complicated
one.
So, you know, in my chapter Italk about how odd it felt to
feel like, oh, I belonged hereand yet I, why?
I didn't understand.
Why did I?
And especially because I triedso hard to belong in other
places and was that right?
(29:58):
What is the relationship to mybody and relationship to are and
to live in a way that is one ofdignity?
(30:19):
Um, without shame or apology?
You know another, another, um,there were two authors as well
uh, that, uh, describe what itmeans to be neurodivergent or
specifically autistic in theworld.
It was fantastic, yes,Absolutely, and I think you know
we talk about neurodivergenceas a disability, and here they
(30:43):
they describe it as a a belovedgift, one in which, at creation,
we were all together, we wereall beautifully diverse, and it
was only a bit of a colonialmindset perhaps I'll use that,
that's my language that said,who's thinking is right and
(31:03):
who's thinking is different,right, and so I was really
struck by that.
And then, oh, we have got afantastic author who writes
about AI.
And what is that going to dofor our belonging and what?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
is it going to do?
That's the question of the day,right.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I listen to some podcasts on AI and I recommend
them to people, but I always say, like, don't listen to this
podcast, like you'll scare yourpants off, like you're going to
get really upset.
But I do think it's importantto listen to, but it's it's like
there's there's positive andnegative use to it.
Right, I mean, but what's itdoing to us?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
So so on the negative , of course you know we're we
begin to wonder what is oursthat we've created, what are the
unique facets of our being thatwe're transferring and what is
being lost in the transfer.
I want to say also, we createda bit of a complex conversation
in the volume because then wehad Mike Dando, who talks about
(32:09):
Afro, futurist, speculativedesign.
That's a lot of words.
I'm just going to name that wasa lot of words, but what it
comes down to and how he hasused AI positively is he works
in primarily communities ofcolor middle schoolers.
He brings kids together andsays your community has
(32:30):
strengths, dream about what yourfuture might look like.
Your community has strengths,dream about what your future
might look like.
There are no boundaries and he'she talks about, you know, for
communities that are often toldwhat they can't do and what are
the limits to what their lifetogether will be, what it means
for people to begin dreaming ofof, of a world that looks like
(32:51):
them, out of words that aretheir words and mediums that are
their mediums.
So he utilizes hip hop, heutilizes comic books and there
are all sorts of creative workthat comes from this and he
utilizes AI in a positive way.
In that way he tells of onegirl who said you know, I can't
(33:12):
really imagine a future and bythe end had created a superhero,
that her superpower was herculture, and all of the stories
that came from her culturebecame what built her up for the
world.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So I want to say.
It's complicated, it's allsorts of things.
I'm so excited to read thisbook with others and to hear
other people's reactions, andbecause we all have a belonging
story and it's like every day ofour lives, right.
So I just think it's going tobe so interesting.
So I have to tell you, erin,halfway through reading the book
, I wrote myself a note becauseI was thinking about the design
(33:53):
for this summer book study thatwe'll read together and we will
work ourselves through over fiveweeks, the five sections June,
july.
And then I was thinking, oh, andI'll have people, you know, do
some journaling in August, wasmy first thought.
And then I got halfway throughand I was like, oh no, in August
I'll give some prompts andpeople can write about their own
(34:13):
story of belonging.
And then I get all the way tothe end of the book and there's
this invitation from you and theconclusion about writing a
story.
I'm like, oh, great minds thinkalike.
And so the other thing I loveis that you know, in your
introduction and in theconclusion, you offer
invitations in both spaces aninvitation as people begin and
(34:37):
an invitation as people end thereading part of it, which is not
the end, of course, and so Iwould.
I just I wonder if you couldreflect for a minute about this
interplay between invitationsand belonging, because I just
think it's really interestingthat you start and stop with
those two ideas put together.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Absolutely Well, as Dr Jennings said, you have to
want this, you have to want thisand and and.
In that wanting there's thechoice, and so we believe that
through invitation, one makesthe choice.
What I want to name, too, isthat, for those that are
(35:21):
listening, your story, yourwords, your experience is vital
to this conversation.
The conversation hasn't justended when the volume ends.
You are important, and so, withthat in mind, we offer the
invitation, because we want theconversation to keep going.
(35:43):
We want to find one of the othercrises I believe is happening
is we don't see a lot ofimagination, because, you know,
these false notions of belongingstrips us of life and strips us
of our ability to dream futurestogether, right.
So by sharing vulnerably, bygiving of the resonances like
(36:04):
you have beautifully embodiedalready in our time together, by
unraveling some of these othernotions that we've held and
saying what is ours to hold andthen what is ours to let go of,
we can begin to experiencecollective vulnerability.
That's necessary for sharedthriving, for shared loving,
(36:27):
because if we exist in a stateof mutuality, if we exist in a
state of codependence or notcodependence, counterdependence
that means that I am me onlybecause you are you, and we have
to be able to invite eachother's conversation in order to
be who we are together.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, my idea for August is that people will get a
prompt every week to help themdeepen this sort of journaling,
writing practice during themonth around their own sense of
belonging, with some differentprompts, and that those who want
to can be paired up withsomeone else to check in with a
(37:09):
couple times and to go back andforth and share with each other
and hopefully, somebody new thatthey haven't met before or that
they didn't know and, in trust,can share with them, which
that's sort of my hope for thesecond half of the summer is
that people have thatopportunity and also that it's a
summer book study, so peopleare going to dip in, they're
(37:30):
going to dip out because ofsummer schedules, but that it'll
be there for you to come backto and so, yeah, so I was.
I'm hoping that that way ofusing that invitation will be
fruitful for others.
That's what I'm thinking of.
Right way of using thatinvitation will be fruitful for
others.
That's what I'm thinking ofright now as a way to gather
voices and also to gather peopleas they would like to be, to
(37:53):
create a structure forconversation.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I can call her now, reverend Dr Mihi Kim Court has a
fantastic chapter where shetalks about too many cooks in
the kitchen, yes, and what itmeans to create these spaces of
care that look specifically likeyou, and I would love for the
(38:23):
conversations that take placethat you are engaging in to be a
place that reflectsspecifically it doesn't reflect
necessarily some prescription,and that's something that we
really shy away from.
In the volume right, we talkabout different facets.
We've got five that we thinksort of guide and create
structure, but rather werecognize that, because this is
(38:48):
a polyvalent definition, becausewe exist only in seeing the
glass darkly right, we need thereflection of your bodies and
your stories in order for us toget to be more mindful of the
totality of belonging.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, and I'm also.
One of my other hopes for thisis that this idea of belonging,
when you, you know, lead apresbytery, a governing body
like ours, it feels reallydiffuse, very different than you
know.
My first two calls in ministryI've had four calls now, two in
the parish and two in judicatorywork and you know, when you're
(39:28):
in a congregation the communityis tight and much more bound
together.
And this Presbytery, of course,is three states.
It's New England which is hyperindividualistic.
That's the culture of NewEngland.
If you go two towns over or onetown over, you've gone to the
(39:49):
moon, and so the states are verydifferent, the cultures are
very different.
We have wide economic disparityin the presbytery.
We go from, you know, onepercenter communities to
immigrant communities that arelargely undocumented, to
everything in between.
(40:11):
I always tell people the onekind of community we don't have
too much of in this presbyterythat I had a lot of in my
previous presbytery is ruralcommunities.
We don't have a lot of ruralchurches.
We only have one in thispresbytery.
So we're very urban, suburbanbut and very beach oriented.
You know, the churches kind ofstring out along the waterways
(40:32):
and so holding community andholding belonging with each
other in adjudicatory is such achallenge.
And so, you know, one of mydreams is, as we talk about this
book is is to talk about thatright Is, talk about what is
belonging in that, in thatcontext, because it's such a
multi-layered thing to thinkabout belonging, and for all of
(40:55):
us.
And so what does it mean in apresbytery, what does it mean
when we, when we think aboutconnectionalism, being the body
of Christ for this place,connected to each other?
So I'm, you know, I'm curiousabout that, and I'm also curious
about this idea ofinterrogating our theology of
belonging, which is somethingthat happens in the book as well
(41:16):
, as you know, interrogatingwhat it means and interrogating
the theologies that got us towhere we are and maybe reframing
those for where we need to go.
I appreciated some of that inthe book as well, because
there's, I I sense, a lot ofinterrogation in the book as
well, but in a open andinvitational kind of a way.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And I want to name too that the invitation
absolutely is to interrogate andit's also to dream of a new way
to be, and I want to hold bothin tension because I think both
are necessary for this momentand are crucial happen In
(42:05):
institutions right now.
We see deconstruction of socialsystems, we're seeing a lot of
deconstruction of relationshipsas we're deconstructing our own
theology around what it means tobelong and who to belong to.
I think that there's a crucialneed for us to imagine what a
God that loves us, because weare wonderfully and beautifully
(42:25):
made, because we are gods rightLike to start naming what we do
know together and claiming thatas our own is vital practice as
well.
Glenn Bell does a beautiful jobof that in his chapter, I think
, of creating sort of a foil formuch of the interrogation.
But saying this is what I knowto be true as well, and this is
(42:47):
what we can invite, and let mesay it's not a one size fits all
situation.
Rather, it's very contextuallyand locally based.
But imagining together is goingto be a crucial practice, I
think, in order for us to beginliving as neighbors and that
neighborliness that WalterBrueggemann always talks about,
(43:08):
about what it means to be incovenant.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, no, it's really helpful and I hope that the
considerations will be rich foreveryone.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
You've talked a little bit about it, but any
other hopes and dreams about howthis book will get used in the
larger church that you all hadas you put it together and as
you worked with this cadre ofwriters.
So when we, we were very clearwhen we, the three of us, got
together, there's there's allsorts of institutional realities
at play, even for the three ofus.
Right Like Dustin is anacademic, and there's always the
publish to perish mentality,glenn is nearing the end of his
(43:54):
career, and there's always thisidea of what does it mean to
have a story and to live intoyour story.
And then there's always me as aconsultant, and what does that
mean?
To want to inform theconversation, but more from the
margins.
And when bringing all thosedifferent considerations to bear
, one of the things that thethree of us were very clear
(44:14):
about was that our primary goal,our only goal, was for it to be
an active care for the peopleand communities that we love,
and so I hope that it will beused just for that, as an active
care.
I hope that communities willreceive the invitation and that
(44:38):
bonds of trust will be builtthrough the conversations that
are created.
I hope more judicatory bodieslike yours will utilize it, but
I also hope that individualsread it and start to feel breath
in their lungs again, feeling asense that they can breathe
because they're unlocking thingsthat they were holding, that
they didn't know they wereholding.
(44:58):
I hope that it provides a senseof hope for those that are
doing the work but are doing soin unimaginable hardships and in
ways that it doesn't feel likethey'll see the good anytime
soon.
I'm actually reminded this isnot related to the book, but
(45:22):
it's where I am seeing hope asan active belonging.
Our dear friend, the Reverend DrDerek McQueen, is the pastor at
St James Presbyterian Church inHarlem and he's absolutely dear
to Mika and I, and his churchwas broken into on the 130th
(45:48):
anniversary of their beingtogether and much was stolen and
many things were destroyed, andwe started a GoFundMe for him
not for him for the faithcommunity, started a GoFundMe
for him, not for him for thefaith community, of which he's
very much a part of, and it'sbeen remarkable to see the way
(46:11):
in which people have given, manyof whom don't know Derek, many
of whom maybe only know Mika orI but I think that there was a
desire to give as an act ofrepair and as an act of building
something new again, to say wecan dream something better
(46:34):
together, and so that is where Ifind a lot of my hope as well.
Is that, um, that in so doingthis work and talking and and
being with one another as God'speople, we begin to repair.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
That's really helpful .
I uh I appreciate that thisPresbytery is beginning those,
those practices of repair, umand uh.
Some of that has been throughthe journey we've been on the
last six years of we worked witha consultant on anti-racism and
(47:12):
developed a team and that's nowwoven into the life of the
Presbytery.
We're nowhere near where weneed to be on that journey, but
we're.
We're taking it right, which Ithink is an act.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
You have to choose this, choose it.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
And then, um, uh, we had our Presbytery meeting a few
weeks ago and this rural churchI talked about a few minutes
ago, um, is going to be closed.
Uh, in the fall, their, theirministry life cycle has come to
an end and it was a circuitousroad that got us here.
But the land they have about22-ish acres and 22 and some
(47:53):
change, and the land is going tobe gifted to the Nipmuc people,
the original tribe in the area,and they're going to develop a
community center out of ourbuilding.
Because, of course, the historyof the land grabs in New
England in the colonial periodwas not just kill and murder
(48:15):
everybody but move them off theland to faraway places so they
can't come back.
Well, those faraway places aretoday Quebec or Wisconsin or
Kansas.
You know they're not that farnow, but they were then.
You know it was like the endsof the earth then.
And so our partners up inNorthern New England wanted to
(48:36):
return some land and foundeveryone was on the other side
of the border, that was left.
You know the ancestors thatwere left of that, of that tribe
.
And so they have people thatcome back to this land and this
territory, this part ofMassachusetts, from faraway
places to return and to bereconnected to the land, and so
(48:57):
they're able to use the spacefor that and then also use it
with those who are currentlyhere and based in Massachusetts.
And we heard some reallyinteresting stories about things
that elders are teachingyounger generations reteaching
them how to hunt, reteachingthem how to be on land,
(49:18):
reteaching language, and so itwas a very powerful moment to
have a few folks from the tribejoin us at the Presbytery
meeting and share just a littlebit of their story, and we'll
have a ceremonies, a series ofceremonies, in the fall to do
this, return and are working onthat now and have a great team
in the Presbytery working on it.
(49:39):
And so these are.
These are things we probablycouldn't have imagined a couple
of years ago, but that arebeginning to happen, and I do
think this helps us to belongbetter and to know where we came
from.
And again, like you said,belonging is something into the
future for generations that wemay not yet see and even know.
(50:01):
And I asked one of the eldersof the church at the meeting.
I said how are you feelingabout this?
How are you doing?
Your church is closing?
And she said oh, I'm just soexcited.
I'm excited for a couple monthsfrom now, driving down the
street and seeing childrenplaying in the fields.
That's what I'm excited about.
I'm so excited this ishappening, and so for her there
(50:22):
wasn't this grief of her churchclosing, but this promise for
the future that she was holdingon to and shared with me just
briefly in a conversation.
And so you know, these are thesacred, holy moments in ministry
right when we really seebelonging taking on very
different forms and you canimagine a future, but we
(50:43):
probably can't imagine all of it.
And so that's very, very specialstuff, and so I hope we can
talk about some of those stories, because we've all probably
participated in something thathas been reparative in some way.
It may not be something aslarge as that, but it could be
something in a relationship orin a community and that helps us
(51:11):
to deepen belonging as well, soI'm so grateful for this book
and these stories that are herein it.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I am too.
Actually, it's been a greatgift to work on on it.
You know, um, we it wasinteresting.
It's.
What I want to name is thesequel to crisis and care, but
but it's set up in the same wayas that.
It's set out to be meditationsor reflections.
It's not set out to be like um,a checklist or and, and also we
(51:40):
were very careful to say thatpeople are going to have
different access points anddifferent theological
understandings, and so to try towrite to a broad audience of
people so that there's nobarriers to entry, and so that's
something that I think issomething that we held
(52:00):
throughout, and so I inviteeveryone who's listening to dive
in at wherever you want.
The chapters do not necessarilybuild on one another.
You can take each oneindependently and go at your own
journey.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Yeah, and they're bite-sized.
I appreciated that, so I readit in series.
So, as we close up Erin, wecould talk forever and forever,
I know, but I like to ask peoplesort of a closing question
about life and work and ministry.
There's a podcast I listen tocalled Outrage and Optimism,
which are good words for today,right, and so what's sort of a
(52:41):
place in your work that maybeoutraged is too strong a word,
but where there's struggle,Right, and a place in your work
where you see hope?
Presbyterians, of course, liketo call the struggle depravity,
but we won't, we won't go thatfar today In an ecumenical
conversation, we love to talkabout our total depravity.
So, presbyterians, so, but youknow where's the struggle and
(53:07):
where's the hope and uh, and Ithink we're all kind of
somewhere in between those twothings.
But what's it like for youthese days?
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yeah.
So um in our clients, what I'mfinding is, um In our clients,
what I'm finding is, withdepravity, with outrage, I would
say that in the absence ofknowledge, in the absence of
knowing what's ahead, in theabsence of having clear
(53:37):
structure geopolitically, withall the different crises that
are happening and, frankly,being exhausted from the
pandemic, you know, peoplearen't always their best selves,
and so I think that the thingthat makes me unhappy and angry
more and more is that lives aretreated carelessly, and I see
(54:00):
that carelessness in my work.
A lot People are taken forgranted in and throughout church
and institutions in ways thatare really painful to watch.
I think that what brings mehope, what brings me a lot of
hope, is that just this morning,mika and I finished a fantastic
(54:22):
capital campaign, and it wasfor a church and adjudicatory
body, a camp conference centerthat had a church on it and a
adjudicatory body.
It was a very large situation.
They didn't think that theycould do it and they did it, but
in so doing, they repaired manyof the disconnects that were
(54:44):
taking place in the localcommunity and had an opportunity
to reconcile with many of thelocal leaders there.
And so that I think, whenpeople think about raising money
, they think about the thingsthat will happen at the end, but
the process itself was one thatwas really quite reparative,
(55:05):
and that's what brings me hopetoday.
Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yeah, there's always resurrections happening.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
We are an Easter people.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, it's a great place to leave it.
Thank you so much, erin, forbeing on the podcast for our
Presbytery, this podcastconnecting our conversations.
We talked about a couple ofresources today.
We're going to link those inthe podcast notes, the book,
information about the study, allof that.
I'm absolutely thrilled thatwe're going to be delving into
(55:35):
this amazing book and series ofthought essays and theologies
this summer and really excitedto see what the Spirit will do
for us in this encounter witheach other.
So thanks, erin, for bringingthis to us and thanks for being
part of connecting ourconversations.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
Shannon Thanks.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Well, hello everyone.
This is Shannon Vance Ocampo Iuse she and her pronouns and I
serve as the general presbyterfor the Presbytery of Southern
New England, and this isConnecting Our Conversations,
our podcast space forconversations that push the
edges of our faith and help usto deepen discipleship.
The Presbytery of Southern NewEngland is a regional governing
(00:31):
body in the Presbyterian ChurchUSA.
Today's podcast episode isgoing to be a little bit more
didactic than usual, because weare going to be talking about a
program in the Presbytery forthis summer that is open to
everyone, a summer book study,something that we are bringing
back after a hiatus of a couplesummers, and so please keep your
(00:54):
eyes peeled in your email inboxearly next week for an email
invitation.
Joining me today is one of thelead editors of the book we're
going to be using, which isPathways to Belonging, and that
lead editor is Erin WeberJohnson and hey, and so we're
(01:14):
going to be having aconversation about the book and
the incredibly rich theme ofbelonging and what it could mean
for us and faith communitiestoday.
I think it's going to be areally interesting conversation
and I hope the book study willalso prove really fruitful for
everyone.
So today's a very specialpodcast episode and I am
(01:34):
absolutely thrilled to have mycolleague Erin joining us.
So welcome Erin.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Oh, thank you so much , and thank you for the kind
invitation.
I'm so excited to talk aboutall things belonging with you.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, we're excited to have you Erin so what.
I like to do at the beginningis start with introductions and
giving our guests an opportunityto introduce themselves in
whatever way makes best sensefor them, rather than me making
it up about you or whatever Ithink.
Let you introduce yourself, sotell us whatever we need to know
about you, erin.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thank you, Shannon.
I bet whatever you made upabout me would have been
fantastic.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, I ordained you apparently.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, on that note.
I am a non-ordained minister whouses she her pronouns.
I work at Vandersall CollectiveI'm a partner there where we
are a women-owned, queer-led,faith-utilized consulting base
(02:37):
out of New York.
However, I live in St Paul,minnesota, with my husband and
two beautiful boys who are 15and 13.
I call them St Jude and StSimon.
A little bit about me.
I have spent my entire career inthe church, so I found the
(02:58):
Episcopal Church.
That's where I like to say Ifound Jesus.
I found Jesus in the EpiscopalChurch in 2003.
I was a missionary there withmy husband, where he discerned
his call to the ordainedministry, went to seminary in
New York and then I discerned mycall to the non-ordained
ministry as a vocation and wentto NYU and got a master's in
(03:19):
public administration, and thenwas at Trinity Wall Street for a
few years and then at theEpiscopal Church Foundation for
10, where I did capitalcampaigns, annual giving and
strategic planning as seniorprogram director, and then, in
2018, joined Mika in thisbeautiful startup that really
(03:41):
reflects our own theologicalunderstanding of the way God
moves.
As far as my own ministry, manyof you might be wondering well,
what does this person haveanything to do with belonging,
which is a great question.
So I'm also very much a writerand this actually is my second
(04:02):
volume that I've worked on.
The first is called Crisis andCare Meditations on Faith and
Philanthropy but very much Iroot my work in a practical
theology that asks questionsabout what does it mean for us
embodied people that we are toembrace a God that loves us not
(04:23):
for what we do or for what weproduce, but for who we are, as
beloved?
And at that intersection, then,what does that mean for our own
narratives about money, aboutsustainability, institutions and
, in this situation primarily,what does it mean when we have
(04:43):
these theological notions abouthow we feel we belong or don't
belong?
What are some notions ofbelonging that have been
destructive and what are somenew life-giving ways that we can
move into in the world?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So that's a bit about what I bring today, yeah that's
great and that tells us alittle bit about some of what
your professional portfolio ofwork has been.
And you know folks like you inthe church help folks like me
and many others do the ministrywe feel called to, and so it's
(05:18):
really important and helpful andI think we're going to be doing
a lot more together.
I'm really excited.
The Presbyterian Episcopal NextSteps Ecumenical Agreement has
passed and is in now our Book ofOrder, the new one that will be
printed in about a month andwhich allows us to do a lot more
orderly transfer of clergy andcelebrate the sacraments
(05:42):
together and do other things.
It's really exciting because Ilove the formula of agreement in
the Presbyterian Church and ourpartnerships.
But I always think the formulaof agreement is too small.
So I've liked in my work I'vealways wanted to stretch it out
into other denominations andhave found successfully ways
around the formula to includethe Episcopalians and the
(06:02):
Methodists and the AmericanBaptists, because I think those
of us who are in the moreprogressive liberal mainline do
better when we do our worktogether tend to.
So I'm excited about the newthings with the Episcopalians
because we have one church inour Presbytery that's in a joint
partnership.
They share land and buildingand space and they have a joint
(06:23):
corporation between them andit's really an interesting
ministry.
So I'm excited about moreexperiments like that.
That's been going on about twodecades, so really interesting.
So I'm going to hold the bookup.
Oh, my screen is on blur, erin,can you hold the book up?
Do you have a copy?
Oh, you did, you did it, yougot it.
There we go Silly, blurryscreen and zoom, anyway.
(06:43):
So I want to talk about thebook and just jump in.
So, first of all, this iswhat's such a hard interview for
me to set up, because of course, there's over 20 authors in
this book that you know writingall these different chapters,
and you and your co-editors havebook end, forwards and
conclusions to the book, andthen or introduction, conclusion
(07:04):
Willie James Jenning from Yalewrites the book, and then, or
introduction and conclusionWillie James Jenning from Yale
writes the foreword.
And I sort of, when I wasreading the book and making
notes for today, I was thinkingwell, I want to like interview
everybody and do like 20interviews, but that's very time
consuming.
But I was like, oh, so I reallylike bring it down Right.
(07:24):
But this idea around thinkingabout our theology of belonging
and what does it mean for us asindividuals and then what does
it mean for us in community, andit got me thinking about, like,
my own sense of belonging andvarious stages in my life around
(07:45):
belonging.
So I just, if I can, I justwant to start with just a couple
things from the forward.
Sure James Jennings, because hesays a number of really
prophetic things about this ideaof belonging.
He says says you have to decide.
You want this meaning belonging.
(08:06):
Uh, some things in life aregiven to us, even pressed upon
us family, clan, tribe, nation,story, drama, quest, historical
burden, responsibility.
Um, that idea of you know wehave our biological family and
we have our chosen family, right, but some things must be chosen
(08:33):
with a depth of commitment thatreorders a life and reorganizes
desire.
Christian belonging isprecisely that thing that must
be chosen.
It costs everything to belongin this new way, but what does
it mean to?
choose Christian belonging.
I love that like openingquestion in here, like what does
it mean to choose?
(08:53):
And I think about you know,like kids in confirmation class
when we talk to them about youknow it's their choice whether
or not to get confirmed.
Their parents baptized.
Our theology in thePresbyterian church right is
parents baptize the child, andusually when they were babies,
so they had no say in it.
But now they're of an age wherethey can begin to choose for
(09:15):
themselves whether or not thisis the journey they want to be
on.
And you know, and that's alwaysinteresting, when the kids have
a different choice potentiallythan parents or grandparents, it
is, but you know.
But I also think that thatissue of choosing Christian
belonging is like all the timeright for us.
I just I wonder how those wordsstruck you when you first read
(09:37):
them, when he wrote them.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well, what it reminded me of is that it
reminds me of a deep commitmentor a vow that you might make one
time but that you keep onshowing up each day to make.
It's really interesting becauseyou have to choose what.
I think that what he describeshere is you have to choose a
particular type of belonging ifyou want it.
There's lots of belongingthat's foisted on us, but that
(10:15):
could be automatic, but the kindof belonging that is
life-giving and liberating isone that's consensual, and I
think consent is an importanttheme that we don't.
Actually it's a sub theme, butwe begin and we end an
invitation specifically withthat in mind, because belonging
itself and we say this quite abit, you know, it's the air we
(10:36):
breathe Like there's plenty nowof medical studies that are
showing what happens to usphysically, not just emotionally
and spiritually, which are very, very important too, but what
happens to our physical bodieswhen we are feeling exile, what
happens to diasporic communities, physically, and so there's
(10:59):
plenty of evidence that goes toshow that belonging is necessary
for life.
We don't exist apart from oneanother.
We can't breathe, we can'tbreathe without people, places
and that form us.
But I think, shannon, to thatend, like using like breathing
(11:23):
as like a metaphor right, likeour bodies acknowledge our
dependence when we breathe.
Right, so in belonging weacknowledge our dependence.
You know, there's this ruggedindividualism, this idea that we
must be self-sustaining.
(11:44):
Right, and yet it's a bit of alie.
Right, because we exist in thisenduring state of mutuality, of
giving and receiving our breathfrom others, finding our place
amid creative, creaturelyexistence.
Right, like we exhale and weoffer life, our sense of self
(12:06):
and our hopes.
But when we inhale, weacknowledge that we need that
breath, we need that belonging,and so I think, because it's a
fundamental feature both forindividuals and collective
people people I think that wecrave it, but the way in which
(12:32):
we engage in it is vitallyimportant, as there are
different facets thatdistinguish between, I think,
christian belonging that is ahealthy type of belonging and
all other forms that areimitations and all other forms
that are imitations.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, and also I love this idea that God is, is an,
is an essential and integralpart of the equation, right, and
?
And that, you know, the firstthing we see in the Bible,
genesis, is all about belonging,god and creation, that the
creating of creation, right, theordering of creation, is all
about belonging and all aboutyou know what is our appropriate
(13:09):
spot in that, which is not, ofcourse, domination, but is
integration, and without healthycreation, we don't breathe,
right, we don't breathe, and soit's the most basic and
foundational element and it'salso everything, right, so
there's just it's, it's, it'sglobal and it's universal in
(13:33):
that way.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well, and I want to say that that is a big part of
the why, of why we wrote thisbook, because there is all of
these cascading crises right, Iknow, I laugh with my business
partner Mika, like I'm reallytired of saying these are
unprecedented times.
I'd like some good old, boringprecedent of times.
It'd be really great.
(13:55):
But the cascading crises of thepandemic and economic
challenges and, oh, george Floyd, we just remember George
Floyd's murder Years, yeah,weekend, that's right, and
January 6th, and so the toxicsoup of racism and sexism and
ableism have led to this veryodd moment in our common life.
(14:18):
Together and through it all youknow, shannon, you know each of
us were caring for families andloved ones and discerning what
it means to be in community amidchanging technological changes
and new understandings ofneurodiversity.
I should say Dr Dustin Bedekand the Reverend Dr Glenn Bell
(14:45):
and I.
What we really came to is thatbelonging is the question of
this generation, but it's alsothe question of every generation
, right?
It's the question of ourancestors who continue to form
us and those that will comelater on.
And so how we define andarticulate it, what are the
(15:05):
practices that we transfer, whatare the ways that it's both
affective reality meaning likewhere we receive these whiffs of
home aligning with where we seeit, real, intangible form.
This is what we wanted to payattention to, and realizing that
(15:27):
, even though the three editorsourselves do represent some
level of diversity, we representdifferent generations and
economic realities certainly, aswell as very different
theological places in ourspectrum of life.
Together we recognize that weare one very small piece of the
(15:51):
conversation.
So that's why we brought somany different authors, who are
very, very diverse, to have theconversation, because we
recognized that it wasn't just amatter of seeing a bit of, and
it wasn't just like thiselephant model of oh I see part
(16:12):
of the leg and you see the othertrunk, but rather there are
truths that overlap and thenthere are truths that exist
parallel, and we wanted to havea conversation to flesh those
out together.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, it's so helpful .
I also, you know, love that atthe beginning it's named and Dr
Jennings again names this and itgets talked about in other
essays in the book about thiswarping of belonging that has
happened in Christian theology.
And I'm just going to read oneother short piece from him.
(16:44):
He said too often we have madeChristian belonging into a
prison that strips us of allties and burdens us with a
string that forms only a ball,ever turning onto itself the bad
record of Christian belongingmodulated into horrific form
with colonial Christianity andthe arrival of racial belonging.
(17:09):
With racial belonging weentered a white wasteland that
we are yet to escape, wherebelonging became a property and
life became a series ofenclosures that run from the
body to our families, from ourpeoples to nations, from our
labor to our loving.
(17:29):
That just really, you know, rangout to me in so many ways.
You know the five-yearanniversary.
I can't believe it's been fiveyears since George Floyd was
murdered it feels like it wasyesterday, right but also that
(17:55):
there's just so much going on atall times, a large amount of my
time outside of the UnitedStates and the global South.
I certainly resonate with thatidea of a wasteland and property
.
This missionary adventure,misadventure that we've been on
in the global South asChristians in the global North,
and the way that we tied thatmissionary enterprise to the
capitalistic and militaristictaking of land and people and
(18:16):
then telling them to adopt atheology so that they would
belong in the right way with theright kind of church, with the
right kind of Jesus.
Right, I mean, it's very deepand twisted in those ways.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Those ways and and it pervades our, our life together
now in so deep and hostile ways.
What you know?
One of the things?
So my chapter is one of thefirst chapters and and it talks
about how.
So the word belonging actuallycomes from the 1400s and it was
(18:49):
meant only to be used forobjects.
And it was meant only to beused for objects, so it was
supposed to be aroundsituatedness, right, like, oh,
set that LaCroix over there onthe table, it belongs with the
rest of the cans, you know, putthe cows in the yard, that's
where they belong.
Right, that's they didn't.
It wasn't supposed to be aroundpeople.
(19:10):
Yeah, right, it never was to bearound people.
Right, it never was.
But when it did start toinclude people, when our idea of
bodies was that some bodieswere objects and I want to name
we might focus on one period oftime, but we see this all
(19:32):
throughout the Hebrew scriptures, we see this throughout all New
Testament, right, bodies beingused as objects rather than as
beloved creatures of God, right,right.
But what happened is that whenwe started to use belonging for
people, then we started to asksome really hard questions.
(19:54):
That to your point and to whatDr Jennings was describing.
What are the practices thatbelong?
What do I have to produce tobelong?
How do I make my measure?
What does it mean to be inalignment?
And these questions then invadeour souls today.
So you know, from a worker'spoint of view, for example, how
(20:18):
many hours a week do I have towork in order to feel like I
belong here?
How do I have to prove my worthat church?
How many hours do I have tovolunteer?
So I feel like people feel likeI've got skin in the game and I
belong right here.
So I feel like people feel likeI've got skin in the game and I
belong right.
You hear these things come up inreally sneaky ways that show a
(20:42):
clear sense of needing to put acommodification to our work.
That is false.
We were not created to becommodified.
We were not created to put adollar sign as to what our hour
is worth.
We were not created to belongpurely for what our product
(21:05):
could be, and I want to say theabsence, then, of true belonging
.
It kills our souls, right, likeit kills, kills, but it also
kills.
It functions like a parasitewithin the core of our being.
It.
It slowly eats away at what weneed to live and thrive and grow
and it it renders us unable toextend ourselves to others.
(21:28):
Right, we become really carefulabout uh, you know boundaries
are good but we become verycareful about.
You know, boundaries are goodbut we become very careful about
not being used because we don'ttrust others.
And as our inner life growsthin, we grow less able and
willing to extend trust andkindness and attentiveness.
(21:50):
That emerges, and I've seen itover and over.
We pray less, we become cynical, we become questioning of
people's motives and ourinstitutions then become hollow.
They become ways in whichpeople prop up just for the hope
(22:12):
of sustaining the institution,rather than creating communities
of belonging that provideliberation in life.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, that anxiety cycle, that fear cycle is such a
killer to a sense of communityand belonging.
And this is what I love aboutpreaching and looking at
scripture, because you know, thehuman condition is all over
scripture, that's right.
Oh, we have still not figuredourselves out, lo, these many
years, right, I mean, it'samazing.
(22:42):
No, I mean the human conditionis everywhere.
And I remember the late PeterGomes talking about the Psalms
and he said I always tell peoplethis story, I just loved it,
and I'm sure he told it amillion times probably.
But he had a woman come to himat one of the parishes that he
served before he went to Harvard.
(23:02):
And this young woman, a mom inher forties, came to see him and
she had just been diagnosedwith aggressive breast cancer
that was going to kill her rightVery quickly.
And she was just distraught,absolutely distraught, of course
, and angry at God, and angry,and said you know, what should I
do?
What should I do?
And he said you know, I alwaysrecommend people read the Psalms
because every human emotion andcondition is in there.
(23:25):
Your rage is in there, yourgrief is in there, your sadness,
your joy, everything's in there, right?
And so I just I think of thatwhen I preach that, that that
story he shared, because I dothink the human condition is all
over the place in the Bible andit's both the broken human
condition you know there'sthere's plenty examples of, of
the brokenness of humancondition and slavery, even in
(23:47):
the Bible, absolutely all overthe place, and uh, and then
there's these amazingcommunities and redemptive
stories, and you know it's allin there, right?
You know our the blessings andthe brokenness, and so I just, I
really do think it it can,scripture can take us to those
(24:07):
places when we need to reallylook at what's happening to
ourselves, what's happening, youknow, with belonging.
I just want to finish with oneother piece from Dr Jennings,
and I'm going to put this pieceaway, but he said he's talking
about you know, then, I like howhe uses this Christian
belonging is this prison, and ittakes us as a string that makes
(24:30):
a ball and it only turns in onitself, and then he talks about
unraveling the ball.
He says intimacy forms aproject of living together with
difference, accepting new waysof being in the world, with new
people, and this is ultimatelywhat church, what the gathering
is supposed to be thepresentation of Jesus's body,
extending strings into the livesof all and allowing the lives
(24:54):
of all to then extend into thelife of God.
He fixes that curled up youknow ball and unfurls it as he
closes here, and I love thatimage of you know.
There's, you know, strings andpieces of us that go out into
God and come back to us and goout into community.
(25:15):
And we're, you know we're inthis interplay between ourselves
.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Another author of the book, diamon Hardis, speaks to
this in a beautiful way as well.
He is what's called a rovinglistener and has done just a
remarkable job of showing us adifferent way of creating and
fostering belonging andcommunity, where by listening
(25:44):
and by creating you know there'slots of formal ways to do asset
mapping, but the way that hedoes it is from a place of our
community has so many strengthsand has so many gifts, and so
what do I need to do, what arethe questions I need to ask so I
can hear the stories of thesestrengths and gifts and then, as
(26:09):
Dr Jennings' metaphorical ballunravels a bit, where we start
to see where people areconnected, then how do I form
new connections?
Right, he is brilliant at it andthe way that he has described
it and the volume I really wantto highlight to you all, briggs,
(26:30):
just a fresh sense of hope forme that we do the work and we
don't always see the product ofwhat we do, and that is okay
Because, as Patrick Reyes writesin his second chapter or third
chapter of the book, sometimesthe work we are doing we do for
(26:50):
the generations to follow, andthat's good too, that's a virtue
.
Yeah, we're doing somethingreparative with we do for the
generations to follow, andthat's good too.
That's a.
That's a virtue.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, we're doing something reparative with what
we do.
I also loved I saw you knowglimpses of my own story and
some of the writing and just thereal human.
I loved in your essay how youtalked about going into this
diner and someone said oh, Iknow you're a Weber, right, you
know because of your face.
And the Weber face is real,shannon, it's strong, oh my gosh
(27:16):
.
Well, so years ago we were inGranada, in the south of Spain,
which is where my husband'sfather's side of the family was
from before they came toColombia.
Now they came 500 years ago andthey were the conquistadors.
So you know, bad things, verybad things.
Ok, but we were walking inGranada and this woman was
walking towards me on the streetand she looked.
She was the spitting image ofmy father in law's sister.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Tia Gabriela and.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Tia Gabriela.
She just passed away inNovember, so blessings upon her,
but she was sort of a littlebit of the family terrorist.
I have to say Everybody wasafraid of Tia Gabriela, like she
just was.
She was a tough cookie, youknow, like she loved everybody.
But she was tough.
And I had this moment of panicon the street because I thought
I was like, oh no, I'm introuble.
(28:02):
What did I do?
She's coming like she's walkingdown towards me in the night.
And then my next thought waswait a second, shannon, snap out
of it.
There's no way she, there's noway.
(28:37):
She's too elderly, she can'tfly across the ocean anymore.
But I mean the gene pool isstrong, right.
I mean it's amazing whathappens.
And so I, when I was readingthat story about Weber face, I
thought, oh my gosh, yes Italking about how his preschool
and elementary school teacherswould tell his mom not to teach
him Tagalog, his native language, at home.
That happened to us.
We raised our daughterbilingual from birth and I had a
number of parent-teacherconferences when she was little
where they would tell us don'ttake her home to Columbia for
the summer, don't speak Spanishat home with her, she's going to
(28:58):
get behind in school.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And we would have to tell the teachers, like you know
, take a hike in a very nice wayand this was at a, this was in
a religious education, she wasin Catholic school, she was at
the lower school where myhusband taught at the at the
upper school, and so theseresonances, like I think people
as we read, as I hope, as folksread the book, that they will
(29:21):
find resonance and story wherethere'll be like, oh, I see a
little shard of myself in hereor a little piece of my story,
uh, in these things, because, uh, you know, uh, we're all
walking the journey together.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
We are walking the journey and it's a complicated
one.
So, you know, in my chapter Italk about how odd it felt to
feel like, oh, I belonged hereand yet I, why?
I didn't understand.
Why did I?
And especially because I triedso hard to belong in other
places and was that right?
(29:58):
What is the relationship to mybody and relationship to are and
to live in a way that is one ofdignity?
(30:19):
Um, without shame or apology?
You know another, another, um,there were two authors as well
uh, that, uh, describe what itmeans to be neurodivergent or
specifically autistic in theworld.
It was fantastic, yes,Absolutely, and I think you know
we talk about neurodivergenceas a disability, and here they
(30:43):
they describe it as a a belovedgift, one in which, at creation,
we were all together, we wereall beautifully diverse, and it
was only a bit of a colonialmindset perhaps I'll use that,
that's my language that said,who's thinking is right and
(31:03):
who's thinking is different,right, and so I was really
struck by that.
And then, oh, we have got afantastic author who writes
about AI.
And what is that going to dofor our belonging and what?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
is it going to do?
That's the question of the day,right.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I listen to some podcasts on AI and I recommend
them to people, but I always say, like, don't listen to this
podcast, like you'll scare yourpants off, like you're going to
get really upset.
But I do think it's importantto listen to, but it's it's like
there's there's positive andnegative use to it.
Right, I mean, but what's itdoing to us?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
So so on the negative , of course you know we're we
begin to wonder what is oursthat we've created, what are the
unique facets of our being thatwe're transferring and what is
being lost in the transfer.
I want to say also, we createda bit of a complex conversation
in the volume because then wehad Mike Dando, who talks about
(32:09):
Afro, futurist, speculativedesign.
That's a lot of words.
I'm just going to name that wasa lot of words, but what it
comes down to and how he hasused AI positively is he works
in primarily communities ofcolor middle schoolers.
He brings kids together andsays your community has
(32:30):
strengths, dream about what yourfuture might look like.
Your community has strengths,dream about what your future
might look like.
There are no boundaries and he'she talks about, you know, for
communities that are often toldwhat they can't do and what are
the limits to what their lifetogether will be, what it means
for people to begin dreaming ofof, of a world that looks like
(32:51):
them, out of words that aretheir words and mediums that are
their mediums.
So he utilizes hip hop, heutilizes comic books and there
are all sorts of creative workthat comes from this and he
utilizes AI in a positive way.
In that way he tells of onegirl who said you know, I can't
(33:12):
really imagine a future and bythe end had created a superhero,
that her superpower was herculture, and all of the stories
that came from her culturebecame what built her up for the
world.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So I want to say.
It's complicated, it's allsorts of things.
I'm so excited to read thisbook with others and to hear
other people's reactions, andbecause we all have a belonging
story and it's like every day ofour lives, right.
So I just think it's going tobe so interesting.
So I have to tell you, erin,halfway through reading the book
, I wrote myself a note becauseI was thinking about the design
(33:53):
for this summer book study thatwe'll read together and we will
work ourselves through over fiveweeks, the five sections June,
july.
And then I was thinking, oh, andI'll have people, you know, do
some journaling in August, wasmy first thought.
And then I got halfway throughand I was like, oh no, in August
I'll give some prompts andpeople can write about their own
(34:13):
story of belonging.
And then I get all the way tothe end of the book and there's
this invitation from you and theconclusion about writing a
story.
I'm like, oh, great minds thinkalike.
And so the other thing I loveis that you know, in your
introduction and in theconclusion, you offer
invitations in both spaces aninvitation as people begin and
(34:37):
an invitation as people end thereading part of it, which is not
the end, of course, and so Iwould.
I just I wonder if you couldreflect for a minute about this
interplay between invitationsand belonging, because I just
think it's really interestingthat you start and stop with
those two ideas put together.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Absolutely Well, as Dr Jennings said, you have to
want this, you have to want thisand and and.
In that wanting there's thechoice, and so we believe that
through invitation, one makesthe choice.
What I want to name, too, isthat, for those that are
(35:21):
listening, your story, yourwords, your experience is vital
to this conversation.
The conversation hasn't justended when the volume ends.
You are important, and so, withthat in mind, we offer the
invitation, because we want theconversation to keep going.
(35:43):
We want to find one of the othercrises I believe is happening
is we don't see a lot ofimagination, because, you know,
these false notions of belongingstrips us of life and strips us
of our ability to dream futurestogether, right.
So by sharing vulnerably, bygiving of the resonances like
(36:04):
you have beautifully embodiedalready in our time together, by
unraveling some of these othernotions that we've held and
saying what is ours to hold andthen what is ours to let go of,
we can begin to experiencecollective vulnerability.
That's necessary for sharedthriving, for shared loving,
(36:27):
because if we exist in a stateof mutuality, if we exist in a
state of codependence or notcodependence, counterdependence
that means that I am me onlybecause you are you, and we have
to be able to invite eachother's conversation in order to
be who we are together.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, my idea for August is that people will get a
prompt every week to help themdeepen this sort of journaling,
writing practice during themonth around their own sense of
belonging, with some differentprompts, and that those who want
to can be paired up withsomeone else to check in with a
(37:09):
couple times and to go back andforth and share with each other
and hopefully, somebody new thatthey haven't met before or that
they didn't know and, in trust,can share with them, which
that's sort of my hope for thesecond half of the summer is
that people have thatopportunity and also that it's a
summer book study, so peopleare going to dip in, they're
(37:30):
going to dip out because ofsummer schedules, but that it'll
be there for you to come backto and so, yeah, so I was.
I'm hoping that that way ofusing that invitation will be
fruitful for others.
That's what I'm thinking of.
Right way of using thatinvitation will be fruitful for
others.
That's what I'm thinking ofright now as a way to gather
voices and also to gather peopleas they would like to be, to
(37:53):
create a structure forconversation.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
I can call her now, reverend Dr Mihi Kim Court has a
fantastic chapter where shetalks about too many cooks in
the kitchen, yes, and what itmeans to create these spaces of
care that look specifically likeyou, and I would love for the
(38:23):
conversations that take placethat you are engaging in to be a
place that reflectsspecifically it doesn't reflect
necessarily some prescription,and that's something that we
really shy away from.
In the volume right, we talkabout different facets.
We've got five that we thinksort of guide and create
structure, but rather werecognize that, because this is
(38:48):
a polyvalent definition, becausewe exist only in seeing the
glass darkly right, we need thereflection of your bodies and
your stories in order for us toget to be more mindful of the
totality of belonging.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, and I'm also.
One of my other hopes for thisis that this idea of belonging,
when you, you know, lead apresbytery, a governing body
like ours, it feels reallydiffuse, very different than you
know.
My first two calls in ministryI've had four calls now, two in
the parish and two in judicatorywork and you know, when you're
(39:28):
in a congregation the communityis tight and much more bound
together.
And this Presbytery, of course,is three states.
It's New England which is hyperindividualistic.
That's the culture of NewEngland.
If you go two towns over or onetown over, you've gone to the
(39:49):
moon, and so the states are verydifferent, the cultures are
very different.
We have wide economic disparityin the presbytery.
We go from, you know, onepercenter communities to
immigrant communities that arelargely undocumented, to
everything in between.
(40:11):
I always tell people the onekind of community we don't have
too much of in this presbyterythat I had a lot of in my
previous presbytery is ruralcommunities.
We don't have a lot of ruralchurches.
We only have one in thispresbytery.
So we're very urban, suburbanbut and very beach oriented.
You know, the churches kind ofstring out along the waterways
(40:32):
and so holding community andholding belonging with each
other in adjudicatory is such achallenge.
And so, you know, one of mydreams is, as we talk about this
book is is to talk about thatright Is, talk about what is
belonging in that, in thatcontext, because it's such a
multi-layered thing to thinkabout belonging, and for all of
(40:55):
us.
And so what does it mean in apresbytery, what does it mean
when we, when we think aboutconnectionalism, being the body
of Christ for this place,connected to each other?
So I'm, you know, I'm curiousabout that, and I'm also curious
about this idea ofinterrogating our theology of
belonging, which is somethingthat happens in the book as well
(41:16):
, as you know, interrogatingwhat it means and interrogating
the theologies that got us towhere we are and maybe reframing
those for where we need to go.
I appreciated some of that inthe book as well, because
there's, I I sense, a lot ofinterrogation in the book as
well, but in a open andinvitational kind of a way.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And I want to name too that the invitation
absolutely is to interrogate andit's also to dream of a new way
to be, and I want to hold bothin tension because I think both
are necessary for this momentand are crucial happen In
(42:05):
institutions right now.
We see deconstruction of socialsystems, we're seeing a lot of
deconstruction of relationshipsas we're deconstructing our own
theology around what it means tobelong and who to belong to.
I think that there's a crucialneed for us to imagine what a
God that loves us, because weare wonderfully and beautifully
(42:25):
made, because we are gods rightLike to start naming what we do
know together and claiming thatas our own is vital practice as
well.
Glenn Bell does a beautiful jobof that in his chapter, I think
, of creating sort of a foil formuch of the interrogation.
But saying this is what I knowto be true as well, and this is
(42:47):
what we can invite, and let mesay it's not a one size fits all
situation.
Rather, it's very contextuallyand locally based.
But imagining together is goingto be a crucial practice, I
think, in order for us to beginliving as neighbors and that
neighborliness that WalterBrueggemann always talks about,
(43:08):
about what it means to be incovenant.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, no, it's really helpful and I hope that the
considerations will be rich foreveryone.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
You've talked a little bit about it, but any
other hopes and dreams about howthis book will get used in the
larger church that you all hadas you put it together and as
you worked with this cadre ofwriters.
So when we, we were very clearwhen we, the three of us, got
together, there's there's allsorts of institutional realities
at play, even for the three ofus.
Right Like Dustin is anacademic, and there's always the
publish to perish mentality,glenn is nearing the end of his
(43:54):
career, and there's always thisidea of what does it mean to
have a story and to live intoyour story.
And then there's always me as aconsultant, and what does that
mean?
To want to inform theconversation, but more from the
margins.
And when bringing all thosedifferent considerations to bear
, one of the things that thethree of us were very clear
(44:14):
about was that our primary goal,our only goal, was for it to be
an active care for the peopleand communities that we love,
and so I hope that it will beused just for that, as an active
care.
I hope that communities willreceive the invitation and that
(44:38):
bonds of trust will be builtthrough the conversations that
are created.
I hope more judicatory bodieslike yours will utilize it, but
I also hope that individualsread it and start to feel breath
in their lungs again, feeling asense that they can breathe
because they're unlocking thingsthat they were holding, that
they didn't know they wereholding.
(44:58):
I hope that it provides a senseof hope for those that are
doing the work but are doing soin unimaginable hardships and in
ways that it doesn't feel likethey'll see the good anytime
soon.
I'm actually reminded this isnot related to the book, but
(45:22):
it's where I am seeing hope asan active belonging.
Our dear friend, the Reverend DrDerek McQueen, is the pastor at
St James Presbyterian Church inHarlem and he's absolutely dear
to Mika and I, and his churchwas broken into on the 130th
(45:48):
anniversary of their beingtogether and much was stolen and
many things were destroyed, andwe started a GoFundMe for him
not for him for the faithcommunity, started a GoFundMe
for him, not for him for thefaith community, of which he's
very much a part of, and it'sbeen remarkable to see the way
(46:11):
in which people have given, manyof whom don't know Derek, many
of whom maybe only know Mika orI but I think that there was a
desire to give as an act ofrepair and as an act of building
something new again, to say wecan dream something better
(46:34):
together, and so that is where Ifind a lot of my hope as well.
Is that, um, that in so doingthis work and talking and and
being with one another as God'speople, we begin to repair.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
That's really helpful .
I uh I appreciate that thisPresbytery is beginning those,
those practices of repair, umand uh.
Some of that has been throughthe journey we've been on the
last six years of we worked witha consultant on anti-racism and
(47:12):
developed a team and that's nowwoven into the life of the
Presbytery.
We're nowhere near where weneed to be on that journey, but
we're.
We're taking it right, which Ithink is an act.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
You have to choose this, choose it.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
And then, um, uh, we had our Presbytery meeting a few
weeks ago and this rural churchI talked about a few minutes
ago, um, is going to be closed.
Uh, in the fall, their, theirministry life cycle has come to
an end and it was a circuitousroad that got us here.
But the land they have about22-ish acres and 22 and some
(47:53):
change, and the land is going tobe gifted to the Nipmuc people,
the original tribe in the area,and they're going to develop a
community center out of ourbuilding.
Because, of course, the historyof the land grabs in New
England in the colonial periodwas not just kill and murder
(48:15):
everybody but move them off theland to faraway places so they
can't come back.
Well, those faraway places aretoday Quebec or Wisconsin or
Kansas.
You know they're not that farnow, but they were then.
You know it was like the endsof the earth then.
And so our partners up inNorthern New England wanted to
(48:36):
return some land and foundeveryone was on the other side
of the border, that was left.
You know the ancestors thatwere left of that, of that tribe
.
And so they have people thatcome back to this land and this
territory, this part ofMassachusetts, from faraway
places to return and to bereconnected to the land, and so
(48:57):
they're able to use the spacefor that and then also use it
with those who are currentlyhere and based in Massachusetts.
And we heard some reallyinteresting stories about things
that elders are teachingyounger generations reteaching
them how to hunt, reteachingthem how to be on land,
(49:18):
reteaching language, and so itwas a very powerful moment to
have a few folks from the tribejoin us at the Presbytery
meeting and share just a littlebit of their story, and we'll
have a ceremonies, a series ofceremonies, in the fall to do
this, return and are working onthat now and have a great team
in the Presbytery working on it.
(49:39):
And so these are.
These are things we probablycouldn't have imagined a couple
of years ago, but that arebeginning to happen, and I do
think this helps us to belongbetter and to know where we came
from.
And again, like you said,belonging is something into the
future for generations that wemay not yet see and even know.
(50:01):
And I asked one of the eldersof the church at the meeting.
I said how are you feelingabout this?
How are you doing?
Your church is closing?
And she said oh, I'm just soexcited.
I'm excited for a couple monthsfrom now, driving down the
street and seeing childrenplaying in the fields.
That's what I'm excited about.
I'm so excited this ishappening, and so for her there
(50:22):
wasn't this grief of her churchclosing, but this promise for
the future that she was holdingon to and shared with me just
briefly in a conversation.
And so you know, these are thesacred, holy moments in ministry
right when we really seebelonging taking on very
different forms and you canimagine a future, but we
(50:43):
probably can't imagine all of it.
And so that's very, very specialstuff, and so I hope we can
talk about some of those stories, because we've all probably
participated in something thathas been reparative in some way.
It may not be something aslarge as that, but it could be
something in a relationship orin a community and that helps us
(51:11):
to deepen belonging as well, soI'm so grateful for this book
and these stories that are herein it.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I am too.
Actually, it's been a greatgift to work on on it.
You know, um, we it wasinteresting.
It's.
What I want to name is thesequel to crisis and care, but
but it's set up in the same wayas that.
It's set out to be meditationsor reflections.
It's not set out to be like um,a checklist or and, and also we
(51:40):
were very careful to say thatpeople are going to have
different access points anddifferent theological
understandings, and so to try towrite to a broad audience of
people so that there's nobarriers to entry, and so that's
something that I think issomething that we held
(52:00):
throughout, and so I inviteeveryone who's listening to dive
in at wherever you want.
The chapters do not necessarilybuild on one another.
You can take each oneindependently and go at your own
journey.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Yeah, and they're bite-sized.
I appreciated that, so I readit in series.
So, as we close up Erin, wecould talk forever and forever,
I know, but I like to ask peoplesort of a closing question
about life and work and ministry.
There's a podcast I listen tocalled Outrage and Optimism,
which are good words for today,right, and so what's sort of a
(52:41):
place in your work that maybeoutraged is too strong a word,
but where there's struggle,Right, and a place in your work
where you see hope?
Presbyterians, of course, liketo call the struggle depravity,
but we won't, we won't go thatfar today In an ecumenical
conversation, we love to talkabout our total depravity.
So, presbyterians, so, but youknow where's the struggle and
(53:07):
where's the hope and uh, and Ithink we're all kind of
somewhere in between those twothings.
But what's it like for youthese days?
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yeah.
So um in our clients, what I'mfinding is, um In our clients,
what I'm finding is, withdepravity, with outrage, I would
say that in the absence ofknowledge, in the absence of
knowing what's ahead, in theabsence of having clear
(53:37):
structure geopolitically, withall the different crises that
are happening and, frankly,being exhausted from the
pandemic, you know, peoplearen't always their best selves,
and so I think that the thingthat makes me unhappy and angry
more and more is that lives aretreated carelessly, and I see
(54:00):
that carelessness in my work.
A lot People are taken forgranted in and throughout church
and institutions in ways thatare really painful to watch.
I think that what brings mehope, what brings me a lot of
hope, is that just this morning,mika and I finished a fantastic
(54:22):
capital campaign, and it wasfor a church and adjudicatory
body, a camp conference centerthat had a church on it and a
adjudicatory body.
It was a very large situation.
They didn't think that theycould do it and they did it, but
in so doing, they repaired manyof the disconnects that were
(54:44):
taking place in the localcommunity and had an opportunity
to reconcile with many of thelocal leaders there.
And so that I think, whenpeople think about raising money
, they think about the thingsthat will happen at the end, but
the process itself was one thatwas really quite reparative,
(55:05):
and that's what brings me hopetoday.
Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yeah, there's always resurrections happening.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
We are an Easter people.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, it's a great place to leave it.
Thank you so much, erin, forbeing on the podcast for our
Presbytery, this podcastconnecting our conversations.
We talked about a couple ofresources today.
We're going to link those inthe podcast notes, the book,
information about the study, allof that.
I'm absolutely thrilled thatwe're going to be delving into
(55:35):
this amazing book and series ofthought essays and theologies
this summer and really excitedto see what the Spirit will do
for us in this encounter witheach other.
So thanks, erin, for bringingthis to us and thanks for being
part of connecting ourconversations.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
Shannon Thanks.
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