November 18, 2025 • 59 mins
In this episode, I talk with Diana Butler Bass about her new book A Beautiful Year and the deeper story that sits beneath our experience of time. We explore how the Roman calendar still shapes us with the imagination of empire - militarism, consumerism, and control - and how the Christian calendar offers a counter-formation rooted in love, hope, peace, and a circular sense of time that keeps drawing us deeper into God. Diana walks us through Advent’s darkness and silence, the meaning of waiting in an age addicted to noise, the subversive beauty of St. Martin’s Day on November 11, and the power of saying “no” to imperial narratives through the ordinary practices that shape a life. We talk about storytelling, grief, Candlemas, the parables of Jesus, and how the Christian year can help us embody a different kind of presence in the world - one marked by compassion, courage, and light. This is a conversation about time, but really, it’s about learning to live a better story.
Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D. (Duke University) is an award-winning author of eleven books, a speaker, preacher, and a trusted commentator on religion and contemporary spirituality. Her bylines include The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, CNN Opinion, On Being, and Readers Digest. She has appeared on CBS, CNN, PBS, NPR, and other global news outlets. She currently writes The Cottage, one of the most widely-read Substack newsletters. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Diana's Book:
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Diana Butler Bass (00:00):
You can look at the calendar that we have
from Rome as probably one of thelongest lasting impacts of the
Roman Empire on global society.
So that means, in effect, thatRome never really goes away, and
we have the same tension thatthe early Christians did, is
that, how do you live withEmpire, and how do you live with
(00:20):
a system of time andstorytelling that's based around
militarism, imperialism andeconomic transactionalism,
capitalism and the earlyChristians did not have an easy
answer, and I suspect we won'thave an easy answer. I
Joshua Johnson (00:53):
announcer, hello and welcome to the shifting
culture podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus, I'm yourhost. Joshua Johnson, you know,
time has a way of shaping us,quietly, subtly, almost without
our consent. Most of us liveinside a calendar formed by
Empire, by efficiency, byconsumerism and by the stories
(01:15):
that the Roman world leftbehind. And because that's the
water we swim in, we rarely stopto ask what that time is doing
to our souls. Today, we stepinto a different story. In her
new book a beautiful year, DianaButler Bass invites us to
recover the ancient rhythms ofthe Christian calendar, not as
nostalgia or church trivia, butas counter formation, a way of
(01:40):
living inside the empire withoutabsorbing its imagination, a way
of waking up to a rhythm rootedin God, in love, in community,
and in a circular sense of timethat keeps drawing us deeper
rather than driving us faster.
In this conversation, Diana andI explore the architecture of
storytelling, the tensionbetween linear and circular
time, the meaning of Advents,darkness and silence, the
(02:03):
subversive beauty of St Martin'sDay on November 11, and how the
Christian year teaches us toembody a story of peace in a
world addicted to violence. Wetalk about what it means to say
no to imperialism, yes to love,and how ordinary practices,
lighting candles, noticingbeauty, tending to grief, can
reshape the way we live. This isa conversation about time, but
(02:27):
really it's a conversation aboutbecoming the kind of people who
carry light into shadowedplaces. So join us, and let's
shift culture together. Here ismy conversation with Diana.
Butler Bass, Diana, welcome toshifting culture. Such an honor
to have you on thanks forjoining me.
Diana Butler Bass (02:47):
Well, thank you, Joshua. And what a great
name for a podcast. I love it.
Shifting culture. We need to doa lot of that.
Joshua Johnson (02:55):
Yes, we need to do a lot of it. And we live in a
shifting culture as well. Sothere's two different ways that
we go about doing this. One iswe need to figure out, how do we
root ourselves in the story ofGod? One of the things that you
have written a lot and longexplored how stories shape our
faith and the Christian faith.
So how does the story that wetell about time and the way that
(03:20):
we live time, what we mark, whatwe celebrate, shape who we
become.
Diana Butler Bass (03:27):
Stories are interesting because we think,
Oh, if you have a good story,well, then everybody's going to
find it compelling and thateverybody will listen to it. But
stories actually involve anumber of different things. They
have structure, they have form.
They have heroes, they havevillains, they have larger
points. So simply, to tell astory isn't enough. Lots of us
(03:50):
have good stories, but I mean,I'm a writer, so I think about
these other aspects, and one ofthe most important things for me
as a writer, is this idea ofstructure, always trying to
imagine, what's the how is thestory shaped? What are the what
are the mechanisms by which thestory is carried? And because
(04:13):
it's just a I love, like thearchitecture behind
storytelling, if that makessense. Whenever I wrote a book
my my former agent who sadlypassed away this year and didn't
actually see my new book come tofruition, although he had a big
hand in it, he used to say, youknow, Diana, once you have the
(04:33):
structure down, you have anentire new book in your mind.
But it's until the structurethat the story doesn't make
sense to me, and so that's justthe natural way that I work as a
storyteller, and knowing thatwhat it means is I look around
to the world, and I'm alwayslooking for these deeper
architectures of meaning, thesedeeper structures of meaning,
(04:55):
when that comes to time we. Havethis pretty obvious structure.
In Western society, we think ofit as linear, and it has a
beginning, middle and end, butthe beginning middle and end
story, it's finite, and there'sa lot of problems connected with
it, especially when it comes toliving a life of faith. So there
(05:16):
was an alternative way oftelling the story of Jesus that
I never paid as much attentionto as I probably should have
when I was a little younger. Andthat is, it's not a beginning,
middle and end story, it's thestory that is structured around
the Christian year. And thatmight be a foreign concept to
some people, even people inchurches, but there's a
(05:38):
different cycle of time that ispresented through what has
historically been known as theliturgical year, or the
Christian calendar, and that's abig cycle, set of cycles about
feasts and fasts. And it is notlinear. It's actually circular
or spiral. It moves throughritual and action, and it's a
(06:03):
bit more like like a labyrinth,or perhaps a pulsar. It moves
differently than linear time.
And it's not finite. Actually,it's infinite. And if you have
an idea of history being finite,and that we live in a line, that
(06:26):
means whatever, wherever we arein the line is the most
important thing ever, and wewant to stop it, or we want to
keep it going, or we want welove it, or we hate it, and
we're constantly thinking, it'sthe end of the world. This has
got to be the end of the world.
And so linear history sets upfalse starts, and I think false
endings, if you have a differentconcept of time, which is
(06:50):
something that this spiritualtool of the Christian year
introduces, it puts the line insome interesting perspective
that I have through my life,actually found provides me with
more grounding, more depth andway of understanding things like
courage and what's important inlife that that the linear year
(07:12):
does not entirely offer. And wecan go into more specific
examples of that, but when youask generally about the shape of
time. It's a really interestingquestion. Is time align?
Actually, I'm not a physicist,but I know enough about physics
to know that there's nophysicist that would say that.
Joshua Johnson (07:32):
Yeah, exactly.
I've long been fascinatedthinking about time and how God
is outside of time that we'retrying to, trying to make time
in a linear fashion, but God isoutside of time. And I think,
you know, if God is is love, Ithink love is outside of time.
And if it, if time then emanatesfrom God in this circular
(07:55):
fashion, goes back into him andthrough him and back out to us
through the story and love. Ijust think that it's just a
fascinating concept to thinkabout. How do we actually then
imagine our life and imaginehistory, imagine who we are as
humans, if then the God thatcreated us that we emanate from
(08:20):
is outside of time, and love isoutside of time. How does that
reshape your thinking and theway that we start to figure out
who we are as humans?
D (09:37):
Diana Butler Bass
beautiful year is I'm nottheorizing about time, although
I have actually done a lot ofthinking about this. Because you
write a book about time andwrite a book about a year, you
have to reflect on that as thebackground information. So for
me, that's like the the workthat I did that is on the page,
(10:00):
but in very subtle ways. What Ido in a beautiful year is I
actually take my readers througha year and not just tell you
about it, but I show it to you,and I invite people to walk with
me through the year. And one ofthe early essays, actually, it's
a little fun to have it be soclose to the beginning of the
(10:22):
book is in the Advent section.
Advent is the first season ofthe Christian year, and it's
called a wrinkly, wrinkly time.
And you probably recognize wherethe title comes from, A Wrinkle
in Time. A Wrinkle in Time.
Yeah, by Madeleine Engle. Andwhat we're talking about here,
if people think, oh my gosh,this is going to be too heady of
a conversation for me. I wouldlike you to remember that A
(10:45):
Wrinkle in Time is about exactlythis thing we're talking about
right now. And there's thisfabulous scene, which I quote in
the book from A Wrinkle in Timein which Meg, who is the main
character, and I love the book Ifirst read. Read the book when I
was 12 or 13, probably about thesame age. Meg is as the
character in the book, and she'snot a physicist. She's She's a
(11:09):
girl who loves to read, andshe's very smart, but she's not
a science person. And thesethree mystical sort of angels
show up in the guises of oldwomen, and they're about to take
her on a journey. And thejourney is going to be a journey
through time, at time and space,because she has to move through
(11:30):
space to rescue her father, whois being held in an evil place
on the far edges of theuniverse. And so in order to get
there, they have to go throughtime. And Meg does not
understand this at all. I didn'tunderstand it when I was 12. I
still don't understand it in mymid 60s. But Mrs. What said, I
believe, holds up the edge ofher skirt, and she holds it
(11:55):
taut, and so it looks like aline. And she said, This is how
we usually think of time, like aline. And how long does it take
an ant to crawl from one end toanother? And of course, it takes
a long time. It takes a while.
And then Mrs. What's it bringsthe two edges where her hands
(12:15):
are holding the skirt taut. Shebrings them together, and she
says, This is what we do withtime we wrinkle it, and now the
ant can get from one place toanother in a second, you know, a
half a second, even. And that,to me, is what you're talking
(12:35):
about. Is that from ourperspective, it looks like the
skirt is taut and like, Oh mygosh. How are we ever going to
get out of this? But in thesense of divine time or or the
time that the angels wereintroducing Meg to in A Wrinkle
in Time, the edges actually arevery close together, and that
(12:57):
when we bring the edges to adifferent point, we see that,
like the Bible verse, 1000 yearsis a day into the Lord. And so
now, all of a sudden, the wholearrangement of the picture
around us changes, and Meg is nolonger feeling like rescuing her
(13:18):
father is a helpless quest, butrescuing her father is possible,
and that even she is a littlegirl, can do that.
Joshua Johnson (13:28):
I mean, that's beautiful. So let's get into
then the calendar and the churchcalendar. And I mean, we started
off with story, and I think thatwe have started to merge stories
within Christian life in theWest, because we're following a
Roman calendar, we're mergingthe story of the Christian
(13:48):
calendar and Christian life inwith the Roman calendar. How do
you think the merging of thosestories together has shaped who
we are as people of faith?
Diana Butler Bass (14:00):
Yeah, early Christians had a had a lot of
problems. Obviously, becausethey were they were in trouble
for the word go with the empire.
But one of the problems they hadwas a problem they inherited
from their Jewish roots, andthat in a lot of Christians
don't think about this is aprimary problem of Judaism, but
(14:21):
Jews follow a differentcalendar. They follow calendar
that is primarily lunar and veryancient calendar, and it's
seasonally based around harvestfestivals and other kinds of
things that are more typical inlunar based agricultural
(14:41):
settings. And so here the Jewswere functioning with this kind
of calendar about Passover andabout their major festivals. And
then they get conquered, youknow, over and over and over and
over again in the ancient world.
And one of the groups, ofcourse, that conquers them are
(15:03):
the Romans. And the Romans don'tlike difference. The Romans like
everybody to be on the samepage, because once you get
everybody on the same page, thenyou can have power over them.
And so having a religious groupthat has an entirely different
sense of time. It's verydangerous for the Romans. And so
(15:25):
what they have to do is theyhave to figure out, how do we
accommodate these Jews who don'tsee the world in the same way we
do? And that is an uneasyaccommodation. And we see that
all if you're a Christian, youread the New Testament, you see
that all the time. In the NewTestament, the Romans are uneasy
(15:46):
with the Jews. The Jews don'tknow how to deal with the
Romans. The Jews are fightingamong themselves, and Jesus
becomes part of that fight abouthow to deal with the Roman
Empire and how to deal with theoppression, and how do then they
celebrate their own fast feastand fest. Levels, given the fact
that the Romans want to wipethem out. So this is a problem
in early Christianity, and theway that the early Christians,
(16:09):
once it becomes clear thatthey're separating from their
Jewish roots, they've inheritedtwo things. They've inherited
that Jewish tradition of anindependent spiritual calendar.
And now there lots of them are,never were Jews. They're
converting. And they'reconverting from being Gentiles
(16:32):
or secular Romans or people fromother religions that are coming
to Christianity. And so they'rethey have a there's the Roman
calendar, and now they've gottwo calendars, and what do they
try to do? And at first that's abit of a conflict, in the same
way it was for the Jews when theChristians are celebrating
(16:55):
Easter at the same time asPassover or Christians are
setting up sort of their ownholy days and their own fasts
and festivals, but then theystart borrowing stuff from the
Romans, like, when should wecelebrate the birthday of Jesus?
Oh, we know. Let's put it on thebirthday of the the Festival of
the invincible sun, because weworship the Son of God. So, hey,
(17:20):
yeah, this works. Yeah, andactually, that festival in
ancient Rome on December 25 wasso out of control that even the
Romans worried about it. Theythought it had become too wild
and unhinged, and so they werethat Romans were trying to rope
(17:40):
it in a little bit themselves.
So then the Christians startborrowing the stuff, and they
say, you know, thisaccommodation thing, this is not
a bad idea. We will appropriateRoman dates and Roman views of
time. And what that'll do isit'll sort of soften the Romans
attitudes towards us, and also,we don't have to be quite so
(18:01):
counter cultural. We can sort offit in a little better with the
world. And so that that processbecomes an uneasy alliance. It's
one of those uneasy alliancesthat develops in the early
centuries of Christianity, whenChristians are trying to figure
out, what does it mean to beChristian, and how do we
(18:22):
accommodate to the Roman Empire,and eventually, the Roman Empire
wins the upper hand in many ofthose discussions, and we don't
really even in the society thatused to be known as Western
Christendom. We don't reallyfollow the Christian calendar
nearly as much as we follow theRoman one. Yeah.
Jo (19:31):
Joshua Johnson
merging these ideas of the Romancalendar, which then seeps into
our bones and our life, and it'sjust the water that we swim in.
And so it has confused a lot ofpeople when it comes to
Christian life and Christianfaith of what we are following
(19:51):
sometimes, then I think it wouldthink that, oh, being a part of
the Empire is Christian. And wesee that with Christian
nationalism. We see that today,and I think that part of it is
this idea and sense of the storythat we're living in, and we've
been immersed in this story, isthere a way to recognize the
(20:16):
story that we've been living in,the story of empire, jump out of
it and start to root ourselvesin this Christian calendar and
the story of God?
Diana Butler Bass (20:28):
Well, I don't know it's that it's ever
possible to completely jump outof a calendar that has so much
power and is become, essentiallythe way that the whole world
tells time. It's sort ofshocking in some ways. You know,
we've got this 2000 year oldcalendar that's based around the
(20:49):
the vision of ancient Rome. And,you know, it's been modified
many times through the years,but it's still at heart the
Roman calendar. And now theother calendars that are in
conflict with it are the Jewishcalendar and the Islamic
calendar. And there arecalendars of that are used in in
China that are very ancientcalendars and calendars in all
(21:10):
kinds of different parts ofAsia. And the Buddhists have
their calendars. And so we haveall these different religious
calendars and differenttraditional calendars that are
around the planet. But when itcomes to doing business
together, when it comes tocapitalism, frankly, we all
follow the same calendar, andit's that Western calendar that
(21:33):
was based in Rome. So you canlook at the calendar that we
have from Rome as probably oneof the longest lasting impacts
of the Roman Empire on globalsociety. So. So that means, in
effect, that Rome never reallygoes away and and we have the
same tension that the earlyChristians did, is that, how do
(21:54):
you live with Empire, and how doyou live with a system of time
and storytelling that's basedaround militarism, imperialism
and economic transactionalism,capitalism? And the early
Christians did not have an easyanswer, and I suspect we won't
have an easy answer, but thefirst step is even knowing this
(22:18):
calendar exists, and steppinginto it and saying, Okay, if
there is this alternativestructure of time, that's not a
line, but is more circular,where time and eternity touch
like Mrs. What's its skirt? Whatdoes that mean about the daily
(22:40):
rhythms and simple things thatit means is that the secular
calendar has four seasons.
They're different, north andsouth, they are roughly
agricultural, but we've turnedthem into also other ways of
talking about time. Most ofthese calendars around the world
celebrate nations, militaryvictories and economic sort of
Holy Days, as it were, BlackFriday, Amazon Prime days, bank
(23:05):
holiday, that's the way peopletalk about them now, and they
they usually celebrate heroesthat are politicians or some
sort of celebrity figure,usually who did not earn that
position of her of heroism bybeing kind to their neighbors.
They earned it by being famousin some way, shape or form or
(23:30):
holding power. It's so. Sothat's what we have to live
with. And now you step into theChristian calendar. And the
Christian calendar doesn't havefour seasons. It has what six.
It has Advent. It has Christmas,which is the 12 days after
Christmas, it has epiphany, ithas lent, it has Easter, and
(23:53):
then it has Pentecost and that.
So six major seasons. And withinthose those seasons, there are
some sort of special times thatget called out that are kind of
like mini seasons. So you haveHoly Week, which is right before
Easter. And you have some neweradditions to the calendar, which
(24:14):
I think are very intriguing. Youhave the season of Creation,
which happens in September nowin many churches. And then you
have very special times of theyear. So you have the three days
that surround Easter as aspecial thing, and then you have
three days that, as we we aretogether on this podcast
recording, we just went throughwhat something that's called All
(24:38):
Hallows tide, which is a veryancient celebration of three
days around November 1, whereyou celebrate All Hallows Eve,
which we celebrate as Halloween,All Saints Day. That's where the
word hollow comes from. An oldfashioned word for Saint was
(24:58):
hollow people who are hollow,who hollow God. And so you
celebrate All Hallows Day, AllSaints Day, and then the day
after that, you celebratesomething called All Souls Day,
which is the which is mostlyknown in North America through
Latin American cultures. It'sthe day, also called The Day of
(25:19):
the Dead. And so we have thesethree special days that fall in
the autumn, and they kind ofmirror the three special days
that fall in the spring, aroundEaster time, Good Friday, Holy
Saturday, Easter Sunday. Arethere three special days in the
spring? And so, boy, that'sdifferent. You know, right away,
(25:39):
you're in a different world.
Wait a second. You mean to tellme that there are different
seasons, and not only are theredifferent seasons, but there are
different heroes, there aredifferent values, and there's a
different sense of of timealtogether. I
J (25:55):
Joshua Johnson
on Advent. Soon, it'll be thebeginning of the Christian
calendar, and that's it. And youknow, in Advent, we start with
waiting, we start with darkness.
We start with like, Hey, we'rein the dark here, and we're
waiting for something to comeand and help, because we need
some help. And so this isperfect, this Advent, this year
(26:19):
is probably a perfect time tocelebrate this darkness and
waiting period that we're in. Asyou started to reflect on
Advent, what started to stickout to you that may have been
new, even if you've beenimmersed in the calendar for a
long time.
D (26:38):
Diana Butler Bass
thinking about this year is thecontrast between the beginning
of the Christian year, which isaround December 1. Again. Now
this is more based in lunartime. This is the weird thing
about the Christian calendar,some of it's lunar, some of it's
solar, and so, so Advent isbased in lunar time, and it
(26:58):
starts right, usually rightafter Thanksgiving and in the
United States. And contrast thatto December 31 January 1. That's
the beginning of the secularcalendar. And you think about
New Year's Eve, it's parties andromance and finding your true
love and standing in TimesSquare and watching a big ball
(27:20):
drop and champagne and gettingdrunk and all those things,
romantic dinners. I mean, youcan just go with it forever. And
then Advent. The start of theChristian year is absolutely
nothing. It starts in completesilence, yeah, and it's like,
(27:40):
wait a second, What? What? Whatdo you mean? The Christian year
starts in silence, and basicallyall we do is sit in the dark for
four weeks and light candles.
That's exactly how I feel thisyear as well, sitting in the
dark and lighting candles, butthere's no big party what? But
(28:03):
what happens during those fourweeks is you begin to hear
questions. And the questions arelike, what are you hoping for?
What's your heart longing for?
Why is the world in such a mess?
You know? I mean, there's thesesoft questions that begin to
build in a consciousness, whatkind of world do you want to be
(28:26):
part of and then what will whatwill make that happen? Will God
help us? And of course, Adventthen leads to Christmas, where
you where you go from thesilence and the four weeks
lighting candles in thedarkness, and all of a sudden,
angels sing, peace on earth,goodwill toward all between on
(28:48):
those who on God has favor,which is everybody you have this
glorious 12 Day celebrationthat's just like the big
blowout. The secular New Yearfalls within the 12 Days of
Christmas, which is kind ofintriguing. So the secular New
Year does match, in that sense,the merriment of the 12 Days of
(29:09):
Christmas, but, yeah, it comesfrom a completely different
source. So what a weird thing tothink. You know, here's the
here's a new year that doesn'tstart with, you know, the
blasting of a trumpet, but it's,it's a new year that starts with
this soft, wintry silence
Joshua Johnson (29:29):
that's also very I mean, you know, it's counter
cultural, because I mean our ourworld is very loud and noisy.
And I mean we live todayprimarily in an attention
economy that people are vyingfor attention constantly, and
like who could speak the mostand the loudest will get the
(29:50):
attention and will get the theauthority and the control that
they're after they're seeking.
How then does living in the thatthe darkness and the silence and
the waiting and the lighting ofcandles then then help us move
from this attention economy intoa space of centering and
grounding us in who we reallyare.
Diana Butler Bass (30:14):
Yeah, in some ways I love Advent the most
because it is the most countercultural right now. The way in
which consumerist culture worksis that, functionally,
consumerist Advent begins onBlack Friday. And so you get the
that Friday after Thanksgiving,when all of a sudden, no hole is
(30:34):
barred, every sale on buy yourpresents, be ready in four
weeks. Look what's coming. Andyou have to have the perfect
house, the perfect invitationsto the perfect parties. And you
have to be able to cook theperfect meals, have perfect
cookies, have the perfect gifts,and have the perfect Christmas
presents ready for your perfectchildren. And that's what our
(30:59):
that's what our culture isselling us, and that if you do
all of that, and you do itperfectly well, good for you,
that's when you might get yourreward. Usually what's what the
reward is. Now, if you watch alot of Hallmark movies, is that
you'll get to marry a trueprince who will somehow come in
(31:21):
the midst of the madness andwill find you, and you'll fall
in love, and then you'll havethe perfect relationship on top
of all the other perfection, andso this, and it's that that
we're selling as the message ofChristmas. And honestly, I like
having a beautifully decoratedhouse, and I love cooking, and I
(31:44):
love the baking and all thosethings around Christmas. It's.
It's full of memories and wonderand all the things that it's
full of, but the way that it'sbeen packaged by that calendar
and by our culture is ugly, andso what we have to do is we have
to figure out, how much do Iwant to go down that road, how
much of that can I embrace andkeep my heart and how much do I
(32:10):
need to choose to also be at thesame time on a path of silence,
of listening for those deepquestions and of lighting those
candles in the dark? So ineffect, we have to pick and you
can pick both, but you you'renot going to fulfill the vision
of perfection that the secularcalendar wants you to you're
(32:32):
going to be a failure. If youtake the Christian calendar
seriously. You're going to be afailure at the secular calendar
in some way, shape or form, andyou're just going to have to
adjust to that. It's very hard.
It's very hard for especiallysome women, especially, I think
white middle class women, torecognize that, yeah, you have
to, you have to pick here. Andso that's what I do. Every
(32:54):
Advent. I try to figure out,what am I going to do, what am I
not going to do, and how am Igoing to adjust secular Advent,
secular Christmas, to these, thedeeper meanings and the real
story of what Christmas is
Joshua Johnson (33:14):
in the secular calendar, you're looking at
things in terms of consumerism,imperialism, militarism, and
we're celebrating violence and,you know, hoarding money and
control and power andcolonialism, all these things
that we're celebrating, but thisChristian calendar can start to
reframe our thinking. And I knowit's not in your book, but
(33:37):
you've talked recently aboutNovember 11, which really
celebrates militarism, right?
The Armistice Day, so the end ofWorld War One, but it's also
Veterans Day in America. It's mybirthday and so on November 11,
and so it's really somethingwhere I've always had an A
weird, uneasy feeling that mybirthday falls on this day of
(34:01):
celebrating violence and war,and I just never liked it, but
in a Christian feast day,there's a different celebration
that's there. Can you tell uswhat that celebration is and how
it actually then subverts someof the things that we celebrate
(34:21):
in the secular calendar?
Diana Butler Bass (34:24):
Yeah, what we know now as armistice, Armistice
Day, or Veterans Day, orRemembrance Day. The Armistice
Day turn into remembrance inmost of the Commonwealth
countries in the Englishspeaking world, but they all
still celebrate same thing. Theend of World War One, the
victory of one set of empiresover another set of Empires was
(34:45):
basically what we'recelebrating. And we're also, of
course, recognizing the heroismthat does go along with military
service, the sacrifice thatcomes with that. And those are
real things. And so I don't wantto demean or diminish those
because that is is cruel in someways, to the survivors of the
families of those who lost theirlives. And so I do want to
(35:06):
recognize the importance ofthem, but they ultimately do
celebrate militarism, and theydo sell they they do extol
violence as heroism. Now, thetradition across so most of the
centuries of Western EuropeanChristianity was not that.
Instead, November 11 was the dayof a very important saint, St
Martin. And St Martin is afascinating guy. He lived in the
(35:30):
very early century whenChristianity was was young,
young, young. And he grew up ina family where his father was a
Roman military officer. AndMartin got exposed to
Christianity and was interestedin it even when he was pretty
young. But he grew intoadulthood, he took on the
vocation of his father, which isvery typical in the ancient
(35:53):
Roman world, as you just didwhat your dad did. And so he
embarked on a path of being amilitary officer. And the legend
that accompanies Martin's life,and it speaks to, I think, the
reality of him as well is he didbecome a catechumenate, which is
a fancy Latin word for a learnerof the Christian faith. And this
(36:17):
was a step that was beforeconversion. It was people who
were interested in Christianity,but were sort of exploring it.
It's the seeker stage. And whatyou would do is, you would you
would sit with a congregation orwith a bishop or a minister in
the in the faith, and you wouldlearn it. You would learn the
stories of Jesus. You would gothrough the practices and what
(36:38):
it was supposed to be like. Andthis could last a very long
time. Could last years to be acatechumenate. So Martin's
interest in Christianity, he'salso. So a soldier, and that's a
problem, right there. MostChristians now don't realize
that there are no, we have norecords at all of any person
(36:59):
serving the Roman army who was aChristian before the year 170 so
essentially, for 150 to almost200 years. At the beginning of
the Christian tradition, wedon't know of one person who was
any of any importance, of anyrank at all, who was a Christian
(37:23):
and a soldier, and that wasbecause the early church said
you couldn't be and that wasjust it. Pacifism was the
expected way of life. And if youbecame Christian, you were
expected to resign from themilitary, because the military
was wielding the sword ofCaesar, and usually that sword
was being wielded against thechurch. You had to choose. And
(37:47):
so Martin, he's a catechumenate,and this is the legend that I
think is beautiful. The legendis he's going down a road on his
horse, dressed in his fullmilitary regalia, and he sees a
beggar on the side of the road.
And he remembers the stories ofJesus, remembers the story about
taking care of the poor, theGood Samaritan story, and he
(38:11):
gets down off of his horse, andhe takes off his Roman cloak.
Can you imagine what thosemilitary cloaks look like? They
look like, what they look likein the movies. It's such a sign
of status and privilege andpower. He takes that cloak off
and he puts it around. Thebeggar goes back to camp, and
that night, this, this is howthe legend goes, he had a dream,
(38:33):
and Jesus appears to him andsays, Martin, this is the way.
And Martin wakes up and resignshis military commission. His
father is appalled, but he givesup his all of his privilege as
an officer in the Roman army,and he decides to follow Jesus,
(38:54):
and he becomes a monk. And hethen learns you know more, and
begins preaching and serving thepoor, and eventually, from his
that humble position. People inthe surrounding neighborhoods
hear of his holiness, and theywant to make him a bishop, and
they do. And so in the earlychurch, being a bishop was not
(39:17):
really a status symbol ofanything other than the fact
that you were giving your lifeup to serve the least of these
and that if the Romans came,you'd be the first one to be
killed. That was what meant tobe a bishop, and that was
Martin's story. And so forcenturies, on November 11,
Christians in the West, whichwas most people, celebrated St
(39:39):
Martin's Day. And it wasn't acelebration of violence. It was
a celebration of the surrenderof violence in favor of a life
of total peace, and not justtotal peace, but the service to
the poor, and part of itscelebration would be the giving
away of alms to the poor, takingcare of the least of these and
(40:02):
really just living in a sort ofexpressive, joyful way to serve
people who were in need.
Joshua Johnson (40:12):
It's a beautiful story and a celebration of peace
for so long then turns into adifferent type of celebration.
Let's bring it back into yourHallmark stories of Christmas.
Diana Butler Bass (40:23):
Well, can I say real quickly though, happy
birthday. Oh, thank you.
Joshua Johnson (40:29):
Thank you very much. It's a much better
birthday story, much betterbirthday story, and it makes me
feel good. Is like because Iassume violence. I don't I don't
want it. I want peace on earth.
And you know, back in yourHallmark story, what people are
yearning for is a prince tobasically save them, and say, I
am going to be saved by thisprince. But in Christmas, then
(40:52):
the Prince of Peace comes in,right? And he is the one who is
for all people, and he's thelight of the world. And we start
to then bring in some light. Andafter then Advent and then
Chris, Mimic, we when we getinto epiphany, you write in the
your reflection on Candlemas.
(41:17):
This is at the end of thissection. I want to read this
because I love this. It says, Wewake up the Earth. We birth new
life. We've journeyed fromwaiting to receiving, to
following, to join, joining thegreat procession of love and
justice in and through theworld. We are the light. So how
(41:38):
does following, then thisChristian calendar, not only
help us remember the story, butthen start to embody the story.
I. Of Jesus.
Diana Butler Bass (41:48):
For me, it's sort of a natural progression.
The more seriously I took thecalendar and how it unfolded,
the more seriously I began toact in my own life on the
stories that I was hearing. Andso that whole arc for me, of the
(42:08):
the winters, the winter part ofthe calendar from Advent to
epiphany. Advent to Christmas toepiphany. That's my favorite
part of the calendar, which Ithink is kind of obvious when
you read the book, because it'slike, I couldn't stop writing
about it. I had to edit so muchdown out of that section. It was
painful, but that and the andthe high point does come on
(42:32):
February 2, where you read thatselection from a holiday that
most Protestants don't know,called Candlemas, where medieval
folks used to bring theircandles to church and priests
would bless them, and then theygo on these processions out into
the world with the lit candles,and usually was read that text.
You are the light of the world.
And so how do we bring light?
(42:56):
And as a writer, that's what I'malways trying to do. I'm trying
to bring a new story to theworld so that we are shedding
light into very shadowy places.
I don't like the language ofviolence at all. It's very hard
to avoid it sometimes. You know,I know you're in the middle part
(43:17):
of the country and that I don'tknow how your listeners are,
your friends at your podcast, alot of people who have had
sympathy with Trumpism or withChristian nationalism, and yet I
I live in a place where I'mpretty well known, and also a
place that has been veryresistant to that. I'm in the
United States. And so people askme all the time, you know, how
(43:41):
can we fight How can we fightMaga? How can we fight Christian
nationalism? And my answer is,well, I don't want to fight it.
And I don't, because as soon asyou walk toward that, the form
of Christianity that's at thebase of these political
movements that are so strong inthe United States right now is
the idea of warriorChristianity, or warrior Jesus.
(44:03):
Essentially, Jesus is the newCaesar, and that love translates
into imperialism. And as soon asyou give this the language of
the story of war, you'rebasically affirming that story.
And so what I usually argue isI'm not trying to fight it, I'm
(44:26):
trying to burrow under it. Theonly way I can figure out how to
do that is to burrow under itwith stories of love and stories
about community and storiesabout the Prince of Peace, who
calls everybody his friends. Andand doesn't pick up a sword when
(44:50):
a sword is called for. I mean,most of us, if somebody, if the
Roman soldiers were coming forus, and you know, one of Jesus
friends actually did pick up asword and try to attack the
Roman soldiers and cut off anear of one of the folks who's
arresting Jesus, and Jesus said,No, that's not the way. And
instead, Jesus walked right intothe heart of Imperial violence,
(45:14):
and it was Imperial violencethat killed him. So that seems
like it would be a tragedy, butin the Christian year, that's
the main point. And then thequestion is, for Christians, how
do we echo that in our ownlives? Are we willing to not
(45:36):
fight violence for violence, notpick up the sword when the sword
is even cast at us, but insteadwalk into the Imperium, walk
into the Empire, and just keeptelling a different story. And
that's what Jesus did over andover and over again. And he the
(45:57):
Romans beat up on him pretty badfor it in the hours before he
died. But then after, and thisis the Christian story as well,
after he dies. And this that,that that the silence of Holy
Saturday, which is an emptysilence, not the silence of
waiting, like the silence ofAdvent, but the silence of
(46:17):
heartbreak, the silence ofmourning, the silence of grief.
That silence takes over for avery short period of time, and
then the resurrection story. Andthe resurrection, you know, some
people think of it just as like,well. That means everything's
going to be well in the end, youknow, whatever. But what it
(46:39):
really means is it's God's no toEmpire. God says no the Empire.
Serial violence, even a violencethat kills my son will not have
the last word and that this isit. I'm going to do something so
dramatic, I'm going to changethe narrative itself, the
(47:00):
narrative of death. And that'sbeen the main threat that empire
has against almost has againstall of us, is that if we don't
go along with its plans, it willkill us. Well, guess what? We
Christians follow a God whoalready dealt with that. And so
that's those are the realities.
(47:23):
If we shift to the story and wesee, oh my gosh, Imperial
violence is already defeated.
Now, how do we live and and thatactually is the end of the
story, because in the Christiannarrative, that whole dramatic
scene of the death andresurrection and God's no to
(47:46):
Imperial violence that happensin the middle of the story.
That's not the end of the story.
The next six months on theChristian calendar, my favorite
season, my second favoriteseason of the year is what's
called ordinary time. Anordinary time is literally just
a time about us as the peoplewho follow the way of Jesus, and
(48:12):
whether or not we're going totake him seriously. And every
week, there's some new storyabout something Jesus taught, or
healing of Jesus or or a way oflife story and an exchange
between Jesus and one of hisfollowers, that also winds up
being a kind of a teaching aswell, but is a little different
(48:34):
than just Jesus getting up in aclassroom on the side of a
mountain and telling peopleblessed are the poor, you know?
So it's something it's somethingmore relational. So you have
these kinds of and then at theas we read through those
stories, it's like, well, wait asecond. I can do that, or wait a
second, I'm called to be theGood Samaritan, or I'm called to
(48:55):
not be the judging older brotherwhen the prodigal son returns
and all those kinds of things.
So the second half of the storyis about us and how well we do
with following Jesus and livinginto God's no to imperialism.
Jo (49:13):
Joshua Johnson
in Ordinary Time as you walkthrough this. And in a beautiful
year, you're talking theparables, which are the stories
of Jesus that he's saying, andyou're walking us through some
practices to help root us andactually follow the way of Jesus
and body that. But then I mean,as you're explaining that this
(49:34):
no to imperialism, talk about abeautiful year, talk about what,
what beauty that is of this noto imperialism. This, this yes
to peace in Shalom and a way ofsaying enough. And we could tell
a story and a story of love,
Unknown (49:56):
what is really briefly, because we don't have a lot of
time left, but really briefly,what's the story of love that is
carrying you right now? Oh, oneof the stories that's carrying
me. I want to relate one fromthe book, just because that's
what our conversation isprimarily about. I've been in a
I've been in a mood this year.
Diana Butler Bass (50:19):
I don't know there's something that happens.
I'm now in my mid 60s, and awhole different way of being in
the world begins to develop, ifyou're sensitive to it, in that
decade. And I've been thinkinglots about my parents,
especially since my dad diedwhen he was 62 and my mom died
when she was 72 so I'm very muchbetween the death of my two
(50:42):
parents. So I've been thinking alot about my parents. And there
are a number of stories about myparents in this book. And the
way that I tell the storiesabout the Christian year is that
I do talk about specifictheological things, and I try to
always bring up kind of quirkyinterpretations of Bible
passages, but it's not pedanticand it's not dogmatic, and I'm
(51:05):
not telling anybody this is theway you must believe about these
particular things that Jesus didinstead, I as a writer, as a
teacher, I'm always searchingfor these very homey, ordinary
examples that unfold somemystery that is larger than who
we are. So there's a story inthe Advent section about my dad,
(51:29):
and it is a story about beauty,and it's a story about the
mystery of time, and it's also astory about some sadness,
because part of a beautiful yearis being able to unfold grief, I
think, and sadness, and all thewhole range of. Human emotion
into a narrative that giveslife. And so the story about my
(51:53):
dad, December, 22 21st or 22ndis in the western in the
Northern Hemisphere, the longestnight of the year, and the it
falls always falls at the end ofat the end of Advent. And a lot
of churches in recent years,recent decades, have adopted
(52:13):
doing something that's prettyinteresting. It's called a Blue
Christmas service, because withthe darkness and with the
holiday combined and all thatpressure to be perfect, a lot of
people in our worlds are,Christmas is hard, and it can
especially if you lose someone,or you've been confused and
(52:35):
doubting or depressed during theyear. You're sick, you got a bad
illness, you know, baddiagnosis. I mean, lots of
terrible things happen in life.
And so churches, seeing thatdecided that on the longest
night they'd start havingLongest Night services, and
they're often referred to asBlue Christmas. And it's a time
when you open up a churchbuilding, it's usually candles
(52:58):
and Healing Music and poetry andjust a recognition of the other
side of Christmas. And sothere's an essay in the Advent
section that is called BlueChristmas. And I tell this story
about my parents, how every yearwhen I was a little kid, same
(53:18):
thing happened over and over andover again. It was a ritual at
my house. My dad was a florist,and I grew up in this very artsy
kind of house, and my my motherhated my dad's taste around
Christmas time because my dadthought the most beautiful thing
in the world were Blue Christmaslights. He loved Blue Christmas
(53:42):
lights, and my mother absolutelyhated them, and every year
they'd have a big fight aboutthe Christmas lights. And my
mother and I, like I said, I canremember the whole thing, my
mother would say that she wantedthe house to have white lights,
because white lights were whatthe rich people had, and that
was classy. I grew up in thisvery working class family, and
(54:04):
so my mom was always in thispursuit of classiness, and so
white lights were classy, andblue lights, you know, who has
blue lights? And so, so shewould, she would be on this
crusade, and then she decided tochange her crusade one year,
because white lights wasn'tworking with my dad. And so she
changed it to colored lightsbecause they're more cheerful
(54:26):
for children. But my dadwouldn't relent, blue lights.
And so this one year, I wasprobably about seven years old,
I remember being outside, andwhile he was putting up the
lights, and I was ostensiblyhelping him, you know, and as we
put up the lights, and I justwatched him such he was so
(54:49):
dedicated to this work andmaking the house beautiful,
these lights outliningeverything in blue, and it was
so crisp and cold. And we lived.
We lived in Baltimore City. Andit just so happened that as he
finished, it started snowing,and I remember asking him, Dad,
(55:17):
why do we have Blue Christmaslights? And he took my hand, and
we stood there with just thisvery light snow falling, and he
said, because they're prettywhen it snows. And that was my
reflection for Blue Christmas,and that takes us to a different
place. Instead of remembering myparents conflict and how that
(55:40):
shaped my childhood in so manyways, I remember my dad and
holding my hand in the snow. Andyou know what? He was, right? It
was beautiful when it snowed.
Joshua Johnson (55:53):
Well, that Diana is a beautiful place to end this
conversation, which wasfantastic. A beautiful year is
out as we're recording it onNovember 4, which is release day
for a beautiful year. It's outanywhere books are sold, and it
is a fabulous, fabulous read.
This is something where youknow, as you know, I go through
(56:15):
it and I want to read as I'minterviewing people. I really
didn't want to read all of it. Iwanted to savor the book. I
wanted to say I just wanted,like, read it over the year and
savor it. It's so beautiful. AndI'm going to, and this will be
my, my Book of the Year. And sothank you, Diana, for this
(56:35):
beautiful work that you put outthat you're helping us root
ourselves in the story of God,into an alternative story that
the that Imperial. Realism andmilitarism and consumerism wants
to tell us that we couldactually live inside the empire
in a way where many Christiansfor centuries have been able to
(56:56):
do and root herself in a timethat is circular and not linear,
that it emanates from God, fromlove, and we could tell better
story and a story of love, andnot a story of hate and violence
and corruption in this world. SoDiana, this is wonderful. Is
there anywhere you'd like topoint people to? How could they
(57:17):
connect with you? Anywhere youwant them to get the book?
Diana Butler Bass (57:22):
My publishers paid my publisher this time
around, new publisher for me asMacmillan Publishing, they list
the book, and then they have awhole bunch of potential buying
options. And I know a lot ofpeople have very strong feelings
about where they're buying booksthese days. And if you are one
of those, people find an optionthat you like, not one that you
(57:45):
hate, and try to figure out howto support not empire, as you
buy the book and always, youknow, go to your local library
or ask your local bookseller toorder it for you.
J (57:59):
Joshua Johnson
Her sub stack, the cottage isone of my favorites to read. So
it's great. So you should go andsubscribe there as well. Diana,
thank you for this conversation.
It was a it was honored to talkwith you. So thank you so
Diana Butler Bass (58:14):
much. Great.
Let's shift culture together.
Amen. Amen. You you.
You can look at the calendar that we have
from Rome as probably one of thelongest lasting impacts of the
Roman Empire on global society.
So that means, in effect, thatRome never really goes away, and
we have the same tension thatthe early Christians did, is
that, how do you live withEmpire, and how do you live with
(00:20):
a system of time andstorytelling that's based around
militarism, imperialism andeconomic transactionalism,
capitalism and the earlyChristians did not have an easy
answer, and I suspect we won'thave an easy answer. I
Joshua Johnson (00:53):
announcer, hello and welcome to the shifting
culture podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus, I'm yourhost. Joshua Johnson, you know,
time has a way of shaping us,quietly, subtly, almost without
our consent. Most of us liveinside a calendar formed by
Empire, by efficiency, byconsumerism and by the stories
(01:15):
that the Roman world leftbehind. And because that's the
water we swim in, we rarely stopto ask what that time is doing
to our souls. Today, we stepinto a different story. In her
new book a beautiful year, DianaButler Bass invites us to
recover the ancient rhythms ofthe Christian calendar, not as
nostalgia or church trivia, butas counter formation, a way of
(01:40):
living inside the empire withoutabsorbing its imagination, a way
of waking up to a rhythm rootedin God, in love, in community,
and in a circular sense of timethat keeps drawing us deeper
rather than driving us faster.
In this conversation, Diana andI explore the architecture of
storytelling, the tensionbetween linear and circular
time, the meaning of Advents,darkness and silence, the
(02:03):
subversive beauty of St Martin'sDay on November 11, and how the
Christian year teaches us toembody a story of peace in a
world addicted to violence. Wetalk about what it means to say
no to imperialism, yes to love,and how ordinary practices,
lighting candles, noticingbeauty, tending to grief, can
reshape the way we live. This isa conversation about time, but
(02:27):
really it's a conversation aboutbecoming the kind of people who
carry light into shadowedplaces. So join us, and let's
shift culture together. Here ismy conversation with Diana.
Butler Bass, Diana, welcome toshifting culture. Such an honor
to have you on thanks forjoining me.
Diana Butler Bass (02:47):
Well, thank you, Joshua. And what a great
name for a podcast. I love it.
Shifting culture. We need to doa lot of that.
Joshua Johnson (02:55):
Yes, we need to do a lot of it. And we live in a
shifting culture as well. Sothere's two different ways that
we go about doing this. One iswe need to figure out, how do we
root ourselves in the story ofGod? One of the things that you
have written a lot and longexplored how stories shape our
faith and the Christian faith.
So how does the story that wetell about time and the way that
(03:20):
we live time, what we mark, whatwe celebrate, shape who we
become.
Diana Butler Bass (03:27):
Stories are interesting because we think,
Oh, if you have a good story,well, then everybody's going to
find it compelling and thateverybody will listen to it. But
stories actually involve anumber of different things. They
have structure, they have form.
They have heroes, they havevillains, they have larger
points. So simply, to tell astory isn't enough. Lots of us
(03:50):
have good stories, but I mean,I'm a writer, so I think about
these other aspects, and one ofthe most important things for me
as a writer, is this idea ofstructure, always trying to
imagine, what's the how is thestory shaped? What are the what
are the mechanisms by which thestory is carried? And because
(04:13):
it's just a I love, like thearchitecture behind
storytelling, if that makessense. Whenever I wrote a book
my my former agent who sadlypassed away this year and didn't
actually see my new book come tofruition, although he had a big
hand in it, he used to say, youknow, Diana, once you have the
(04:33):
structure down, you have anentire new book in your mind.
But it's until the structurethat the story doesn't make
sense to me, and so that's justthe natural way that I work as a
storyteller, and knowing thatwhat it means is I look around
to the world, and I'm alwayslooking for these deeper
architectures of meaning, thesedeeper structures of meaning,
(04:55):
when that comes to time we. Havethis pretty obvious structure.
In Western society, we think ofit as linear, and it has a
beginning, middle and end, butthe beginning middle and end
story, it's finite, and there'sa lot of problems connected with
it, especially when it comes toliving a life of faith. So there
(05:16):
was an alternative way oftelling the story of Jesus that
I never paid as much attentionto as I probably should have
when I was a little younger. Andthat is, it's not a beginning,
middle and end story, it's thestory that is structured around
the Christian year. And thatmight be a foreign concept to
some people, even people inchurches, but there's a
(05:38):
different cycle of time that ispresented through what has
historically been known as theliturgical year, or the
Christian calendar, and that's abig cycle, set of cycles about
feasts and fasts. And it is notlinear. It's actually circular
or spiral. It moves throughritual and action, and it's a
(06:03):
bit more like like a labyrinth,or perhaps a pulsar. It moves
differently than linear time.
And it's not finite. Actually,it's infinite. And if you have
an idea of history being finite,and that we live in a line, that
(06:26):
means whatever, wherever we arein the line is the most
important thing ever, and wewant to stop it, or we want to
keep it going, or we want welove it, or we hate it, and
we're constantly thinking, it'sthe end of the world. This has
got to be the end of the world.
And so linear history sets upfalse starts, and I think false
endings, if you have a differentconcept of time, which is
(06:50):
something that this spiritualtool of the Christian year
introduces, it puts the line insome interesting perspective
that I have through my life,actually found provides me with
more grounding, more depth andway of understanding things like
courage and what's important inlife that that the linear year
(07:12):
does not entirely offer. And wecan go into more specific
examples of that, but when youask generally about the shape of
time. It's a really interestingquestion. Is time align?
Actually, I'm not a physicist,but I know enough about physics
to know that there's nophysicist that would say that.
Joshua Johnson (07:32):
Yeah, exactly.
I've long been fascinatedthinking about time and how God
is outside of time that we'retrying to, trying to make time
in a linear fashion, but God isoutside of time. And I think,
you know, if God is is love, Ithink love is outside of time.
And if it, if time then emanatesfrom God in this circular
(07:55):
fashion, goes back into him andthrough him and back out to us
through the story and love. Ijust think that it's just a
fascinating concept to thinkabout. How do we actually then
imagine our life and imaginehistory, imagine who we are as
humans, if then the God thatcreated us that we emanate from
(08:20):
is outside of time, and love isoutside of time. How does that
reshape your thinking and theway that we start to figure out
who we are as humans?
D (09:37):
Diana Butler Bass
beautiful year is I'm nottheorizing about time, although
I have actually done a lot ofthinking about this. Because you
write a book about time andwrite a book about a year, you
have to reflect on that as thebackground information. So for
me, that's like the the workthat I did that is on the page,
(10:00):
but in very subtle ways. What Ido in a beautiful year is I
actually take my readers througha year and not just tell you
about it, but I show it to you,and I invite people to walk with
me through the year. And one ofthe early essays, actually, it's
a little fun to have it be soclose to the beginning of the
(10:22):
book is in the Advent section.
Advent is the first season ofthe Christian year, and it's
called a wrinkly, wrinkly time.
And you probably recognize wherethe title comes from, A Wrinkle
in Time. A Wrinkle in Time.
Yeah, by Madeleine Engle. Andwhat we're talking about here,
if people think, oh my gosh,this is going to be too heady of
a conversation for me. I wouldlike you to remember that A
(10:45):
Wrinkle in Time is about exactlythis thing we're talking about
right now. And there's thisfabulous scene, which I quote in
the book from A Wrinkle in Timein which Meg, who is the main
character, and I love the book Ifirst read. Read the book when I
was 12 or 13, probably about thesame age. Meg is as the
character in the book, and she'snot a physicist. She's She's a
(11:09):
girl who loves to read, andshe's very smart, but she's not
a science person. And thesethree mystical sort of angels
show up in the guises of oldwomen, and they're about to take
her on a journey. And thejourney is going to be a journey
through time, at time and space,because she has to move through
(11:30):
space to rescue her father, whois being held in an evil place
on the far edges of theuniverse. And so in order to get
there, they have to go throughtime. And Meg does not
understand this at all. I didn'tunderstand it when I was 12. I
still don't understand it in mymid 60s. But Mrs. What said, I
believe, holds up the edge ofher skirt, and she holds it
(11:55):
taut, and so it looks like aline. And she said, This is how
we usually think of time, like aline. And how long does it take
an ant to crawl from one end toanother? And of course, it takes
a long time. It takes a while.
And then Mrs. What's it bringsthe two edges where her hands
(12:15):
are holding the skirt taut. Shebrings them together, and she
says, This is what we do withtime we wrinkle it, and now the
ant can get from one place toanother in a second, you know, a
half a second, even. And that,to me, is what you're talking
(12:35):
about. Is that from ourperspective, it looks like the
skirt is taut and like, Oh mygosh. How are we ever going to
get out of this? But in thesense of divine time or or the
time that the angels wereintroducing Meg to in A Wrinkle
in Time, the edges actually arevery close together, and that
(12:57):
when we bring the edges to adifferent point, we see that,
like the Bible verse, 1000 yearsis a day into the Lord. And so
now, all of a sudden, the wholearrangement of the picture
around us changes, and Meg is nolonger feeling like rescuing her
(13:18):
father is a helpless quest, butrescuing her father is possible,
and that even she is a littlegirl, can do that.
Joshua Johnson (13:28):
I mean, that's beautiful. So let's get into
then the calendar and the churchcalendar. And I mean, we started
off with story, and I think thatwe have started to merge stories
within Christian life in theWest, because we're following a
Roman calendar, we're mergingthe story of the Christian
(13:48):
calendar and Christian life inwith the Roman calendar. How do
you think the merging of thosestories together has shaped who
we are as people of faith?
Diana Butler Bass (14:00):
Yeah, early Christians had a had a lot of
problems. Obviously, becausethey were they were in trouble
for the word go with the empire.
But one of the problems they hadwas a problem they inherited
from their Jewish roots, andthat in a lot of Christians
don't think about this is aprimary problem of Judaism, but
(14:21):
Jews follow a differentcalendar. They follow calendar
that is primarily lunar and veryancient calendar, and it's
seasonally based around harvestfestivals and other kinds of
things that are more typical inlunar based agricultural
(14:41):
settings. And so here the Jewswere functioning with this kind
of calendar about Passover andabout their major festivals. And
then they get conquered, youknow, over and over and over and
over again in the ancient world.
And one of the groups, ofcourse, that conquers them are
(15:03):
the Romans. And the Romans don'tlike difference. The Romans like
everybody to be on the samepage, because once you get
everybody on the same page, thenyou can have power over them.
And so having a religious groupthat has an entirely different
sense of time. It's verydangerous for the Romans. And so
(15:25):
what they have to do is theyhave to figure out, how do we
accommodate these Jews who don'tsee the world in the same way we
do? And that is an uneasyaccommodation. And we see that
all if you're a Christian, youread the New Testament, you see
that all the time. In the NewTestament, the Romans are uneasy
(15:46):
with the Jews. The Jews don'tknow how to deal with the
Romans. The Jews are fightingamong themselves, and Jesus
becomes part of that fight abouthow to deal with the Roman
Empire and how to deal with theoppression, and how do then they
celebrate their own fast feastand fest. Levels, given the fact
that the Romans want to wipethem out. So this is a problem
in early Christianity, and theway that the early Christians,
(16:09):
once it becomes clear thatthey're separating from their
Jewish roots, they've inheritedtwo things. They've inherited
that Jewish tradition of anindependent spiritual calendar.
And now there lots of them are,never were Jews. They're
converting. And they'reconverting from being Gentiles
(16:32):
or secular Romans or people fromother religions that are coming
to Christianity. And so they'rethey have a there's the Roman
calendar, and now they've gottwo calendars, and what do they
try to do? And at first that's abit of a conflict, in the same
way it was for the Jews when theChristians are celebrating
(16:55):
Easter at the same time asPassover or Christians are
setting up sort of their ownholy days and their own fasts
and festivals, but then theystart borrowing stuff from the
Romans, like, when should wecelebrate the birthday of Jesus?
Oh, we know. Let's put it on thebirthday of the the Festival of
the invincible sun, because weworship the Son of God. So, hey,
(17:20):
yeah, this works. Yeah, andactually, that festival in
ancient Rome on December 25 wasso out of control that even the
Romans worried about it. Theythought it had become too wild
and unhinged, and so they werethat Romans were trying to rope
(17:40):
it in a little bit themselves.
So then the Christians startborrowing the stuff, and they
say, you know, thisaccommodation thing, this is not
a bad idea. We will appropriateRoman dates and Roman views of
time. And what that'll do isit'll sort of soften the Romans
attitudes towards us, and also,we don't have to be quite so
(18:01):
counter cultural. We can sort offit in a little better with the
world. And so that that processbecomes an uneasy alliance. It's
one of those uneasy alliancesthat develops in the early
centuries of Christianity, whenChristians are trying to figure
out, what does it mean to beChristian, and how do we
(18:22):
accommodate to the Roman Empire,and eventually, the Roman Empire
wins the upper hand in many ofthose discussions, and we don't
really even in the society thatused to be known as Western
Christendom. We don't reallyfollow the Christian calendar
nearly as much as we follow theRoman one. Yeah.
Jo (19:31):
Joshua Johnson
merging these ideas of the Romancalendar, which then seeps into
our bones and our life, and it'sjust the water that we swim in.
And so it has confused a lot ofpeople when it comes to
Christian life and Christianfaith of what we are following
(19:51):
sometimes, then I think it wouldthink that, oh, being a part of
the Empire is Christian. And wesee that with Christian
nationalism. We see that today,and I think that part of it is
this idea and sense of the storythat we're living in, and we've
been immersed in this story, isthere a way to recognize the
(20:16):
story that we've been living in,the story of empire, jump out of
it and start to root ourselvesin this Christian calendar and
the story of God?
Diana Butler Bass (20:28):
Well, I don't know it's that it's ever
possible to completely jump outof a calendar that has so much
power and is become, essentiallythe way that the whole world
tells time. It's sort ofshocking in some ways. You know,
we've got this 2000 year oldcalendar that's based around the
(20:49):
the vision of ancient Rome. And,you know, it's been modified
many times through the years,but it's still at heart the
Roman calendar. And now theother calendars that are in
conflict with it are the Jewishcalendar and the Islamic
calendar. And there arecalendars of that are used in in
China that are very ancientcalendars and calendars in all
(21:10):
kinds of different parts ofAsia. And the Buddhists have
their calendars. And so we haveall these different religious
calendars and differenttraditional calendars that are
around the planet. But when itcomes to doing business
together, when it comes tocapitalism, frankly, we all
follow the same calendar, andit's that Western calendar that
(21:33):
was based in Rome. So you canlook at the calendar that we
have from Rome as probably oneof the longest lasting impacts
of the Roman Empire on globalsociety. So. So that means, in
effect, that Rome never reallygoes away and and we have the
same tension that the earlyChristians did, is that, how do
(21:54):
you live with Empire, and how doyou live with a system of time
and storytelling that's basedaround militarism, imperialism
and economic transactionalism,capitalism? And the early
Christians did not have an easyanswer, and I suspect we won't
have an easy answer, but thefirst step is even knowing this
(22:18):
calendar exists, and steppinginto it and saying, Okay, if
there is this alternativestructure of time, that's not a
line, but is more circular,where time and eternity touch
like Mrs. What's its skirt? Whatdoes that mean about the daily
(22:40):
rhythms and simple things thatit means is that the secular
calendar has four seasons.
They're different, north andsouth, they are roughly
agricultural, but we've turnedthem into also other ways of
talking about time. Most ofthese calendars around the world
celebrate nations, militaryvictories and economic sort of
Holy Days, as it were, BlackFriday, Amazon Prime days, bank
(23:05):
holiday, that's the way peopletalk about them now, and they
they usually celebrate heroesthat are politicians or some
sort of celebrity figure,usually who did not earn that
position of her of heroism bybeing kind to their neighbors.
They earned it by being famousin some way, shape or form or
(23:30):
holding power. It's so. Sothat's what we have to live
with. And now you step into theChristian calendar. And the
Christian calendar doesn't havefour seasons. It has what six.
It has Advent. It has Christmas,which is the 12 days after
Christmas, it has epiphany, ithas lent, it has Easter, and
(23:53):
then it has Pentecost and that.
So six major seasons. And withinthose those seasons, there are
some sort of special times thatget called out that are kind of
like mini seasons. So you haveHoly Week, which is right before
Easter. And you have some neweradditions to the calendar, which
(24:14):
I think are very intriguing. Youhave the season of Creation,
which happens in September nowin many churches. And then you
have very special times of theyear. So you have the three days
that surround Easter as aspecial thing, and then you have
three days that, as we we aretogether on this podcast
recording, we just went throughwhat something that's called All
(24:38):
Hallows tide, which is a veryancient celebration of three
days around November 1, whereyou celebrate All Hallows Eve,
which we celebrate as Halloween,All Saints Day. That's where the
word hollow comes from. An oldfashioned word for Saint was
(24:58):
hollow people who are hollow,who hollow God. And so you
celebrate All Hallows Day, AllSaints Day, and then the day
after that, you celebratesomething called All Souls Day,
which is the which is mostlyknown in North America through
Latin American cultures. It'sthe day, also called The Day of
(25:19):
the Dead. And so we have thesethree special days that fall in
the autumn, and they kind ofmirror the three special days
that fall in the spring, aroundEaster time, Good Friday, Holy
Saturday, Easter Sunday. Arethere three special days in the
spring? And so, boy, that'sdifferent. You know, right away,
(25:39):
you're in a different world.
Wait a second. You mean to tellme that there are different
seasons, and not only are theredifferent seasons, but there are
different heroes, there aredifferent values, and there's a
different sense of of timealtogether. I
J (25:55):
Joshua Johnson
on Advent. Soon, it'll be thebeginning of the Christian
calendar, and that's it. And youknow, in Advent, we start with
waiting, we start with darkness.
We start with like, Hey, we'rein the dark here, and we're
waiting for something to comeand and help, because we need
some help. And so this isperfect, this Advent, this year
(26:19):
is probably a perfect time tocelebrate this darkness and
waiting period that we're in. Asyou started to reflect on
Advent, what started to stickout to you that may have been
new, even if you've beenimmersed in the calendar for a
long time.
D (26:38):
Diana Butler Bass
thinking about this year is thecontrast between the beginning
of the Christian year, which isaround December 1. Again. Now
this is more based in lunartime. This is the weird thing
about the Christian calendar,some of it's lunar, some of it's
solar, and so, so Advent isbased in lunar time, and it
(26:58):
starts right, usually rightafter Thanksgiving and in the
United States. And contrast thatto December 31 January 1. That's
the beginning of the secularcalendar. And you think about
New Year's Eve, it's parties andromance and finding your true
love and standing in TimesSquare and watching a big ball
(27:20):
drop and champagne and gettingdrunk and all those things,
romantic dinners. I mean, youcan just go with it forever. And
then Advent. The start of theChristian year is absolutely
nothing. It starts in completesilence, yeah, and it's like,
(27:40):
wait a second, What? What? Whatdo you mean? The Christian year
starts in silence, and basicallyall we do is sit in the dark for
four weeks and light candles.
That's exactly how I feel thisyear as well, sitting in the
dark and lighting candles, butthere's no big party what? But
(28:03):
what happens during those fourweeks is you begin to hear
questions. And the questions arelike, what are you hoping for?
What's your heart longing for?
Why is the world in such a mess?
You know? I mean, there's thesesoft questions that begin to
build in a consciousness, whatkind of world do you want to be
(28:26):
part of and then what will whatwill make that happen? Will God
help us? And of course, Adventthen leads to Christmas, where
you where you go from thesilence and the four weeks
lighting candles in thedarkness, and all of a sudden,
angels sing, peace on earth,goodwill toward all between on
(28:48):
those who on God has favor,which is everybody you have this
glorious 12 Day celebrationthat's just like the big
blowout. The secular New Yearfalls within the 12 Days of
Christmas, which is kind ofintriguing. So the secular New
Year does match, in that sense,the merriment of the 12 Days of
(29:09):
Christmas, but, yeah, it comesfrom a completely different
source. So what a weird thing tothink. You know, here's the
here's a new year that doesn'tstart with, you know, the
blasting of a trumpet, but it's,it's a new year that starts with
this soft, wintry silence
Joshua Johnson (29:29):
that's also very I mean, you know, it's counter
cultural, because I mean our ourworld is very loud and noisy.
And I mean we live todayprimarily in an attention
economy that people are vyingfor attention constantly, and
like who could speak the mostand the loudest will get the
(29:50):
attention and will get the theauthority and the control that
they're after they're seeking.
How then does living in the thatthe darkness and the silence and
the waiting and the lighting ofcandles then then help us move
from this attention economy intoa space of centering and
grounding us in who we reallyare.
Diana Butler Bass (30:14):
Yeah, in some ways I love Advent the most
because it is the most countercultural right now. The way in
which consumerist culture worksis that, functionally,
consumerist Advent begins onBlack Friday. And so you get the
that Friday after Thanksgiving,when all of a sudden, no hole is
(30:34):
barred, every sale on buy yourpresents, be ready in four
weeks. Look what's coming. Andyou have to have the perfect
house, the perfect invitationsto the perfect parties. And you
have to be able to cook theperfect meals, have perfect
cookies, have the perfect gifts,and have the perfect Christmas
presents ready for your perfectchildren. And that's what our
(30:59):
that's what our culture isselling us, and that if you do
all of that, and you do itperfectly well, good for you,
that's when you might get yourreward. Usually what's what the
reward is. Now, if you watch alot of Hallmark movies, is that
you'll get to marry a trueprince who will somehow come in
(31:21):
the midst of the madness andwill find you, and you'll fall
in love, and then you'll havethe perfect relationship on top
of all the other perfection, andso this, and it's that that
we're selling as the message ofChristmas. And honestly, I like
having a beautifully decoratedhouse, and I love cooking, and I
(31:44):
love the baking and all thosethings around Christmas. It's.
It's full of memories and wonderand all the things that it's
full of, but the way that it'sbeen packaged by that calendar
and by our culture is ugly, andso what we have to do is we have
to figure out, how much do Iwant to go down that road, how
much of that can I embrace andkeep my heart and how much do I
(32:10):
need to choose to also be at thesame time on a path of silence,
of listening for those deepquestions and of lighting those
candles in the dark? So ineffect, we have to pick and you
can pick both, but you you'renot going to fulfill the vision
of perfection that the secularcalendar wants you to you're
(32:32):
going to be a failure. If youtake the Christian calendar
seriously. You're going to be afailure at the secular calendar
in some way, shape or form, andyou're just going to have to
adjust to that. It's very hard.
It's very hard for especiallysome women, especially, I think
white middle class women, torecognize that, yeah, you have
to, you have to pick here. Andso that's what I do. Every
(32:54):
Advent. I try to figure out,what am I going to do, what am I
not going to do, and how am Igoing to adjust secular Advent,
secular Christmas, to these, thedeeper meanings and the real
story of what Christmas is
Joshua Johnson (33:14):
in the secular calendar, you're looking at
things in terms of consumerism,imperialism, militarism, and
we're celebrating violence and,you know, hoarding money and
control and power andcolonialism, all these things
that we're celebrating, but thisChristian calendar can start to
reframe our thinking. And I knowit's not in your book, but
(33:37):
you've talked recently aboutNovember 11, which really
celebrates militarism, right?
The Armistice Day, so the end ofWorld War One, but it's also
Veterans Day in America. It's mybirthday and so on November 11,
and so it's really somethingwhere I've always had an A
weird, uneasy feeling that mybirthday falls on this day of
(34:01):
celebrating violence and war,and I just never liked it, but
in a Christian feast day,there's a different celebration
that's there. Can you tell uswhat that celebration is and how
it actually then subverts someof the things that we celebrate
(34:21):
in the secular calendar?
Diana Butler Bass (34:24):
Yeah, what we know now as armistice, Armistice
Day, or Veterans Day, orRemembrance Day. The Armistice
Day turn into remembrance inmost of the Commonwealth
countries in the Englishspeaking world, but they all
still celebrate same thing. Theend of World War One, the
victory of one set of empiresover another set of Empires was
(34:45):
basically what we'recelebrating. And we're also, of
course, recognizing the heroismthat does go along with military
service, the sacrifice thatcomes with that. And those are
real things. And so I don't wantto demean or diminish those
because that is is cruel in someways, to the survivors of the
families of those who lost theirlives. And so I do want to
(35:06):
recognize the importance ofthem, but they ultimately do
celebrate militarism, and theydo sell they they do extol
violence as heroism. Now, thetradition across so most of the
centuries of Western EuropeanChristianity was not that.
Instead, November 11 was the dayof a very important saint, St
Martin. And St Martin is afascinating guy. He lived in the
(35:30):
very early century whenChristianity was was young,
young, young. And he grew up ina family where his father was a
Roman military officer. AndMartin got exposed to
Christianity and was interestedin it even when he was pretty
young. But he grew intoadulthood, he took on the
vocation of his father, which isvery typical in the ancient
(35:53):
Roman world, as you just didwhat your dad did. And so he
embarked on a path of being amilitary officer. And the legend
that accompanies Martin's life,and it speaks to, I think, the
reality of him as well is he didbecome a catechumenate, which is
a fancy Latin word for a learnerof the Christian faith. And this
(36:17):
was a step that was beforeconversion. It was people who
were interested in Christianity,but were sort of exploring it.
It's the seeker stage. And whatyou would do is, you would you
would sit with a congregation orwith a bishop or a minister in
the in the faith, and you wouldlearn it. You would learn the
stories of Jesus. You would gothrough the practices and what
(36:38):
it was supposed to be like. Andthis could last a very long
time. Could last years to be acatechumenate. So Martin's
interest in Christianity, he'salso. So a soldier, and that's a
problem, right there. MostChristians now don't realize
that there are no, we have norecords at all of any person
(36:59):
serving the Roman army who was aChristian before the year 170 so
essentially, for 150 to almost200 years. At the beginning of
the Christian tradition, wedon't know of one person who was
any of any importance, of anyrank at all, who was a Christian
(37:23):
and a soldier, and that wasbecause the early church said
you couldn't be and that wasjust it. Pacifism was the
expected way of life. And if youbecame Christian, you were
expected to resign from themilitary, because the military
was wielding the sword ofCaesar, and usually that sword
was being wielded against thechurch. You had to choose. And
(37:47):
so Martin, he's a catechumenate,and this is the legend that I
think is beautiful. The legendis he's going down a road on his
horse, dressed in his fullmilitary regalia, and he sees a
beggar on the side of the road.
And he remembers the stories ofJesus, remembers the story about
taking care of the poor, theGood Samaritan story, and he
(38:11):
gets down off of his horse, andhe takes off his Roman cloak.
Can you imagine what thosemilitary cloaks look like? They
look like, what they look likein the movies. It's such a sign
of status and privilege andpower. He takes that cloak off
and he puts it around. Thebeggar goes back to camp, and
that night, this, this is howthe legend goes, he had a dream,
(38:33):
and Jesus appears to him andsays, Martin, this is the way.
And Martin wakes up and resignshis military commission. His
father is appalled, but he givesup his all of his privilege as
an officer in the Roman army,and he decides to follow Jesus,
(38:54):
and he becomes a monk. And hethen learns you know more, and
begins preaching and serving thepoor, and eventually, from his
that humble position. People inthe surrounding neighborhoods
hear of his holiness, and theywant to make him a bishop, and
they do. And so in the earlychurch, being a bishop was not
(39:17):
really a status symbol ofanything other than the fact
that you were giving your lifeup to serve the least of these
and that if the Romans came,you'd be the first one to be
killed. That was what meant tobe a bishop, and that was
Martin's story. And so forcenturies, on November 11,
Christians in the West, whichwas most people, celebrated St
(39:39):
Martin's Day. And it wasn't acelebration of violence. It was
a celebration of the surrenderof violence in favor of a life
of total peace, and not justtotal peace, but the service to
the poor, and part of itscelebration would be the giving
away of alms to the poor, takingcare of the least of these and
(40:02):
really just living in a sort ofexpressive, joyful way to serve
people who were in need.
Joshua Johnson (40:12):
It's a beautiful story and a celebration of peace
for so long then turns into adifferent type of celebration.
Let's bring it back into yourHallmark stories of Christmas.
Diana Butler Bass (40:23):
Well, can I say real quickly though, happy
birthday. Oh, thank you.
Joshua Johnson (40:29):
Thank you very much. It's a much better
birthday story, much betterbirthday story, and it makes me
feel good. Is like because Iassume violence. I don't I don't
want it. I want peace on earth.
And you know, back in yourHallmark story, what people are
yearning for is a prince tobasically save them, and say, I
am going to be saved by thisprince. But in Christmas, then
(40:52):
the Prince of Peace comes in,right? And he is the one who is
for all people, and he's thelight of the world. And we start
to then bring in some light. Andafter then Advent and then
Chris, Mimic, we when we getinto epiphany, you write in the
your reflection on Candlemas.
(41:17):
This is at the end of thissection. I want to read this
because I love this. It says, Wewake up the Earth. We birth new
life. We've journeyed fromwaiting to receiving, to
following, to join, joining thegreat procession of love and
justice in and through theworld. We are the light. So how
(41:38):
does following, then thisChristian calendar, not only
help us remember the story, butthen start to embody the story.
I. Of Jesus.
Diana Butler Bass (41:48):
For me, it's sort of a natural progression.
The more seriously I took thecalendar and how it unfolded,
the more seriously I began toact in my own life on the
stories that I was hearing. Andso that whole arc for me, of the
(42:08):
the winters, the winter part ofthe calendar from Advent to
epiphany. Advent to Christmas toepiphany. That's my favorite
part of the calendar, which Ithink is kind of obvious when
you read the book, because it'slike, I couldn't stop writing
about it. I had to edit so muchdown out of that section. It was
painful, but that and the andthe high point does come on
(42:32):
February 2, where you read thatselection from a holiday that
most Protestants don't know,called Candlemas, where medieval
folks used to bring theircandles to church and priests
would bless them, and then theygo on these processions out into
the world with the lit candles,and usually was read that text.
You are the light of the world.
And so how do we bring light?
(42:56):
And as a writer, that's what I'malways trying to do. I'm trying
to bring a new story to theworld so that we are shedding
light into very shadowy places.
I don't like the language ofviolence at all. It's very hard
to avoid it sometimes. You know,I know you're in the middle part
(43:17):
of the country and that I don'tknow how your listeners are,
your friends at your podcast, alot of people who have had
sympathy with Trumpism or withChristian nationalism, and yet I
I live in a place where I'mpretty well known, and also a
place that has been veryresistant to that. I'm in the
United States. And so people askme all the time, you know, how
(43:41):
can we fight How can we fightMaga? How can we fight Christian
nationalism? And my answer is,well, I don't want to fight it.
And I don't, because as soon asyou walk toward that, the form
of Christianity that's at thebase of these political
movements that are so strong inthe United States right now is
the idea of warriorChristianity, or warrior Jesus.
(44:03):
Essentially, Jesus is the newCaesar, and that love translates
into imperialism. And as soon asyou give this the language of
the story of war, you'rebasically affirming that story.
And so what I usually argue isI'm not trying to fight it, I'm
(44:26):
trying to burrow under it. Theonly way I can figure out how to
do that is to burrow under itwith stories of love and stories
about community and storiesabout the Prince of Peace, who
calls everybody his friends. Andand doesn't pick up a sword when
(44:50):
a sword is called for. I mean,most of us, if somebody, if the
Roman soldiers were coming forus, and you know, one of Jesus
friends actually did pick up asword and try to attack the
Roman soldiers and cut off anear of one of the folks who's
arresting Jesus, and Jesus said,No, that's not the way. And
instead, Jesus walked right intothe heart of Imperial violence,
(45:14):
and it was Imperial violencethat killed him. So that seems
like it would be a tragedy, butin the Christian year, that's
the main point. And then thequestion is, for Christians, how
do we echo that in our ownlives? Are we willing to not
(45:36):
fight violence for violence, notpick up the sword when the sword
is even cast at us, but insteadwalk into the Imperium, walk
into the Empire, and just keeptelling a different story. And
that's what Jesus did over andover and over again. And he the
(45:57):
Romans beat up on him pretty badfor it in the hours before he
died. But then after, and thisis the Christian story as well,
after he dies. And this that,that that the silence of Holy
Saturday, which is an emptysilence, not the silence of
waiting, like the silence ofAdvent, but the silence of
(46:17):
heartbreak, the silence ofmourning, the silence of grief.
That silence takes over for avery short period of time, and
then the resurrection story. Andthe resurrection, you know, some
people think of it just as like,well. That means everything's
going to be well in the end, youknow, whatever. But what it
(46:39):
really means is it's God's no toEmpire. God says no the Empire.
Serial violence, even a violencethat kills my son will not have
the last word and that this isit. I'm going to do something so
dramatic, I'm going to changethe narrative itself, the
(47:00):
narrative of death. And that'sbeen the main threat that empire
has against almost has againstall of us, is that if we don't
go along with its plans, it willkill us. Well, guess what? We
Christians follow a God whoalready dealt with that. And so
that's those are the realities.
(47:23):
If we shift to the story and wesee, oh my gosh, Imperial
violence is already defeated.
Now, how do we live and and thatactually is the end of the
story, because in the Christiannarrative, that whole dramatic
scene of the death andresurrection and God's no to
(47:46):
Imperial violence that happensin the middle of the story.
That's not the end of the story.
The next six months on theChristian calendar, my favorite
season, my second favoriteseason of the year is what's
called ordinary time. Anordinary time is literally just
a time about us as the peoplewho follow the way of Jesus, and
(48:12):
whether or not we're going totake him seriously. And every
week, there's some new storyabout something Jesus taught, or
healing of Jesus or or a way oflife story and an exchange
between Jesus and one of hisfollowers, that also winds up
being a kind of a teaching aswell, but is a little different
(48:34):
than just Jesus getting up in aclassroom on the side of a
mountain and telling peopleblessed are the poor, you know?
So it's something it's somethingmore relational. So you have
these kinds of and then at theas we read through those
stories, it's like, well, wait asecond. I can do that, or wait a
second, I'm called to be theGood Samaritan, or I'm called to
(48:55):
not be the judging older brotherwhen the prodigal son returns
and all those kinds of things.
So the second half of the storyis about us and how well we do
with following Jesus and livinginto God's no to imperialism.
Jo (49:13):
Joshua Johnson
in Ordinary Time as you walkthrough this. And in a beautiful
year, you're talking theparables, which are the stories
of Jesus that he's saying, andyou're walking us through some
practices to help root us andactually follow the way of Jesus
and body that. But then I mean,as you're explaining that this
(49:34):
no to imperialism, talk about abeautiful year, talk about what,
what beauty that is of this noto imperialism. This, this yes
to peace in Shalom and a way ofsaying enough. And we could tell
a story and a story of love,
Unknown (49:56):
what is really briefly, because we don't have a lot of
time left, but really briefly,what's the story of love that is
carrying you right now? Oh, oneof the stories that's carrying
me. I want to relate one fromthe book, just because that's
what our conversation isprimarily about. I've been in a
I've been in a mood this year.
Diana Butler Bass (50:19):
I don't know there's something that happens.
I'm now in my mid 60s, and awhole different way of being in
the world begins to develop, ifyou're sensitive to it, in that
decade. And I've been thinkinglots about my parents,
especially since my dad diedwhen he was 62 and my mom died
when she was 72 so I'm very muchbetween the death of my two
(50:42):
parents. So I've been thinking alot about my parents. And there
are a number of stories about myparents in this book. And the
way that I tell the storiesabout the Christian year is that
I do talk about specifictheological things, and I try to
always bring up kind of quirkyinterpretations of Bible
passages, but it's not pedanticand it's not dogmatic, and I'm
(51:05):
not telling anybody this is theway you must believe about these
particular things that Jesus didinstead, I as a writer, as a
teacher, I'm always searchingfor these very homey, ordinary
examples that unfold somemystery that is larger than who
we are. So there's a story inthe Advent section about my dad,
(51:29):
and it is a story about beauty,and it's a story about the
mystery of time, and it's also astory about some sadness,
because part of a beautiful yearis being able to unfold grief, I
think, and sadness, and all thewhole range of. Human emotion
into a narrative that giveslife. And so the story about my
(51:53):
dad, December, 22 21st or 22ndis in the western in the
Northern Hemisphere, the longestnight of the year, and the it
falls always falls at the end ofat the end of Advent. And a lot
of churches in recent years,recent decades, have adopted
(52:13):
doing something that's prettyinteresting. It's called a Blue
Christmas service, because withthe darkness and with the
holiday combined and all thatpressure to be perfect, a lot of
people in our worlds are,Christmas is hard, and it can
especially if you lose someone,or you've been confused and
(52:35):
doubting or depressed during theyear. You're sick, you got a bad
illness, you know, baddiagnosis. I mean, lots of
terrible things happen in life.
And so churches, seeing thatdecided that on the longest
night they'd start havingLongest Night services, and
they're often referred to asBlue Christmas. And it's a time
when you open up a churchbuilding, it's usually candles
(52:58):
and Healing Music and poetry andjust a recognition of the other
side of Christmas. And sothere's an essay in the Advent
section that is called BlueChristmas. And I tell this story
about my parents, how every yearwhen I was a little kid, same
(53:18):
thing happened over and over andover again. It was a ritual at
my house. My dad was a florist,and I grew up in this very artsy
kind of house, and my my motherhated my dad's taste around
Christmas time because my dadthought the most beautiful thing
in the world were Blue Christmaslights. He loved Blue Christmas
(53:42):
lights, and my mother absolutelyhated them, and every year
they'd have a big fight aboutthe Christmas lights. And my
mother and I, like I said, I canremember the whole thing, my
mother would say that she wantedthe house to have white lights,
because white lights were whatthe rich people had, and that
was classy. I grew up in thisvery working class family, and
(54:04):
so my mom was always in thispursuit of classiness, and so
white lights were classy, andblue lights, you know, who has
blue lights? And so, so shewould, she would be on this
crusade, and then she decided tochange her crusade one year,
because white lights wasn'tworking with my dad. And so she
changed it to colored lightsbecause they're more cheerful
(54:26):
for children. But my dadwouldn't relent, blue lights.
And so this one year, I wasprobably about seven years old,
I remember being outside, andwhile he was putting up the
lights, and I was ostensiblyhelping him, you know, and as we
put up the lights, and I justwatched him such he was so
(54:49):
dedicated to this work andmaking the house beautiful,
these lights outliningeverything in blue, and it was
so crisp and cold. And we lived.
We lived in Baltimore City. Andit just so happened that as he
finished, it started snowing,and I remember asking him, Dad,
(55:17):
why do we have Blue Christmaslights? And he took my hand, and
we stood there with just thisvery light snow falling, and he
said, because they're prettywhen it snows. And that was my
reflection for Blue Christmas,and that takes us to a different
place. Instead of remembering myparents conflict and how that
(55:40):
shaped my childhood in so manyways, I remember my dad and
holding my hand in the snow. Andyou know what? He was, right? It
was beautiful when it snowed.
Joshua Johnson (55:53):
Well, that Diana is a beautiful place to end this
conversation, which wasfantastic. A beautiful year is
out as we're recording it onNovember 4, which is release day
for a beautiful year. It's outanywhere books are sold, and it
is a fabulous, fabulous read.
This is something where youknow, as you know, I go through
(56:15):
it and I want to read as I'minterviewing people. I really
didn't want to read all of it. Iwanted to savor the book. I
wanted to say I just wanted,like, read it over the year and
savor it. It's so beautiful. AndI'm going to, and this will be
my, my Book of the Year. And sothank you, Diana, for this
(56:35):
beautiful work that you put outthat you're helping us root
ourselves in the story of God,into an alternative story that
the that Imperial. Realism andmilitarism and consumerism wants
to tell us that we couldactually live inside the empire
in a way where many Christiansfor centuries have been able to
(56:56):
do and root herself in a timethat is circular and not linear,
that it emanates from God, fromlove, and we could tell better
story and a story of love, andnot a story of hate and violence
and corruption in this world. SoDiana, this is wonderful. Is
there anywhere you'd like topoint people to? How could they
(57:17):
connect with you? Anywhere youwant them to get the book?
Diana Butler Bass (57:22):
My publishers paid my publisher this time
around, new publisher for me asMacmillan Publishing, they list
the book, and then they have awhole bunch of potential buying
options. And I know a lot ofpeople have very strong feelings
about where they're buying booksthese days. And if you are one
of those, people find an optionthat you like, not one that you
(57:45):
hate, and try to figure out howto support not empire, as you
buy the book and always, youknow, go to your local library
or ask your local bookseller toorder it for you.
J (57:59):
Joshua Johnson
Her sub stack, the cottage isone of my favorites to read. So
it's great. So you should go andsubscribe there as well. Diana,
thank you for this conversation.
It was a it was honored to talkwith you. So thank you so
Diana Butler Bass (58:14):
much. Great.
Let's shift culture together.
Amen. Amen. You you.
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