Pause, Purpose, Possibility

Episode 15 -- Living a Life that Matters, part 1

With reminiscences of growing up on a dairy farm in Minnesota as a starting point, this episode wonders:  What really matters, and how do we know?  What does it mean to live a life that matters?  We find ourselves deep in paradox here:  that people and experiences, things and details, my life and yours can both not matter at all, and that they can at the same time matter infinitely and intrinsically.  The scattered details about the rhythms and routines of a particular dairy farm family set to the soundtrack of CCO radio playing in the barn, frozen pizza and rocky road ice cream and D&D adventures and a TV lawyer caring about folks on the margins:  none of it matters, and all of it matters.
 
This episode is an attempt – one of a collection of attempts over time and across several episodes – to try some ideas on for size.  To wonder aloud.  To sift through memory and story, panning for some grains or nuggets of possibility, to see if I can sit still and be quiet enough to catch even a fleeting glimpse of what matters.  And beyond that, to invite you ever so gently – softly, slowly now – to turn your gaze in the same direction so that we can share a glimpse together, without startling it back into hiding or scaring it into taking flight.

Episode 14 -- Friendship, Grief, and Love without Limits: Living into the Calling to Be the Person You Are

Jacqueline Bussie acknowledges that it took the sudden and tragic death of her best friend and husband, Matt, to help her to “unlearn” the cultural traps of overwork and of equating self-worth with productivity.  In this poignant and delightful conversation, Jacqueline speaks of friendship as her highest calling, of leaning into the long and anguished process of being “reborn” in the years since Matt’s death, and of embracing the importance of rest in seeking justice and in living into the calling to BE a person.  She asks – and invites us to ask ourselves: “What if I left behind all the titles & everything else and just allowed myself to love and be loved – would it be enough?”
 
Dr. Jacqueline Bussie is an award-winning author, professor, public theologian, and student of life in all its messy beauty, as well as a much sought after speaker and workshop facilitator. Her first book, The Laughter of the Oppressed won the national Trinity Prize. Her 2ndbook, Outlaw Christian: Finding Authentic Faith by Breaking the Rules won the 2017 Gold Medal Illumination Award for Christian Living and received a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her 3rd and latest book, Love Without Limits: Jesus’ Radical Vision for a Love with No Exceptions won the Reader’s Favorite Bronze Medal International Book Award for Christian Living, the 2020 IAN Outstanding Religion Book of the Year Award, and 3rdPlace IAN Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. Also, Publisher’s Weekly named Love Without Limits “a must-read for all Christians interested in inclusivity for their communities.” An active servant-leader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Jacqueline spent the last twenty years teaching religion to undergraduates at ELCA colleges and serving as the founding Director of the Forum on Faith and Life at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Jacqueline's favorite things to do are walk on the beach, read good books, ride in the front car of roller coasters, spend time with friends, and travel to any place she's never been before.
 

Episode 13 -- Winter's Light

As every season has its mysteries and magic, its occasion for suffering and wonder, ache and awe, its lessons to teach and questions to pose, so does winter. And so do the interior winters of our lives.  What wisdom might the cold and the dark of deep winter hold?  How might our search for meaning and purpose be enriched by winter's harsh rigors -- and its gifts?

Episode 12 -- The Revolution Will Have Dancing and Good Food: Living with Intention and Attention

Instead of being overwhelmed by "more, bigger, faster," what if it’s possible to live a different kind of life?  What if instead of being shackled to the hamster wheel we take tiny, purposeful, lasting steps toward depth and learning, toward sufficiency and wholeness? 
 
My guest this week is parent and teacher and professional listener Ellie Roscher.   Ellie is also a sought-after workshop and retreat facilitator, a yoga instructor, and prolific author of several books, including Remarkable Rose, The Embodied Path, 12 Tiny Things, Play Like a Girl and How Coffee Saved My Life.  Her writing appears in The Baltimore Review, Eunoia Review, Mothering Spirit, Inscape Magazine, and elsewhere.  She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in Theology from Luther Seminary.  Find out more at ellieroscher.com. 
 
One especially important way to love, she says, is to pay attention.  We’re likely to miss the many wonders of the world around us because we don’t or won’t or can’t slow down enough to listen to the sound of our own breath.  While drinking a glass of water and taking three cleansing breaths a day won’t end systemic oppression, they will shift something.
 

Episode 11: On Transitions and Ellipses -- Living into the In-Between

I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions lately.  Shifts in life.  The long, slow turn into the New Year.  Some of it has been about change, loss, grief.  Letting go, moving on.  In this episode I tell the story of three small birds that have found their way down the chimney (even though the damper was closed), become trapped in the stove, and died.  "I slowly lift each one out with the fingers of my right hand and lay them side-by-side in the palm of my left.  Each is about two, two-and-a-half inches long, fuzzy dark gray feathers (such that they blend right in to the ashes in the stove), with short sharp beaks."
 
On the day after my encounter with these birds, a wise friend reminded me of the power and importance of ellipses.  In telling a story, he marked a crucial turn by saying “Dot, dot, dot,” verbally indicating the written device … that would signal a pause, an in-between space, the cusp or hinge between what has gone before and what’s yet to come.  His speaking them aloud, drawing them with his voice – dot dot dot – immediately brought to my mind’s eye the fuzzy gray mounds laying side by side across the palm of my hand – dot dot dot.    
 
There is power in attending to the ellipses in our lives, dwelling in the turn from what was to what might be.  Just being in it for a while. In threshold times we are invited to honor, grieve, appreciate, and learn from what lies behind us; breathe in the often astonishing, iridescent details of the here-and-now; and begin to turn to wonder about what’s yet to come.
 
 

Episode 10: Words Make Worlds

This episode will drop one day after the annual holiday honoring the life and legacy of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr…. and some three months into the horrific war between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East, not to mention the ongoing war in Ukraine, and deepening political divisions in this country.  King managed to see beyond violence and hatred; his words and his life heralded the possibility of a different kind of world, and more just and life-giving way of being.  In my far-reaching conversation this week with my guest Jeremy Schraffenberger, we talk about (among other things) how words make worlds, and about whether it’s possible to do our work, to live our lives, in ways that people will stop killing each other.  We also talk about the Beetles, music as a means of gathering community, and about the malleability of memory in being human.
 
Jeremy Schraffenberger is editor of North American Review – the oldest literary magazine in the country, dating back to 1815, and a professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, where he has taught for fifteen years. He is the author of two books of poems, Saint Joe's Passion and The Waxen Poor, and the forthcoming chapbook American Sad. In addition to writing, he says he strives for mediocrity when playing piano in a local band called The Favorites. He believes in radical mystery and the transformative experience of making and engaging with art. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with his wife, the novelist Adrianne Finaly, and their two young daughters.
 

On Trying Something New, Part 2

The turn of the calendar is often an occasion to reflect on where you’ve been and where you’re headed, to turn a fresh eye or open heart toward what you want to live into.  Some folks are big into making new years resolutions – I’m not among them, so this episode isn’t about that.  Instead, you’re invited to listen in on a living room conversation among friends.  We wonder with each other:  What's been sparking for you since our very first episode last fall, about Trying Something New?  What makes the difference between change that we experience as loss to be grieved, or as possibility to be embraced as an adventure?  What do we make of the “liminal” or space-between invitation to change, and our decision about whether and how to respond to the invitation? And in the spirit of what Annie Dillard says in her book, The Writing Life: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”:  How can we practice being who we are, and are becoming?

Change, Resilience, and Nature in the New Year

My kids grew up loving the "Magic School Bus" books and animated PBS series.  I had great help as a parent from the teacher in those stories, Ms. Frizzle, who was always reminding the kids (including my own): "Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!"  Michaela Rice, our guest today, has much the same attitude when it comes to experiencing and learning from the natural world.  In this conversation, she speaks with great honesty about the healing power of change and resilience in nature, in her own journey through depression and burnout, and her boundless gratitude for nature in the face of climate doom.
Michaela (she/they) is a Minnesota State Parks and Trails Interpretive Naturalist and was previously a research biologist for the state. Michaela has her Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Gustavus Adolphus College, and a Master of Science in Wildlife and Rangeland Management from Texas A&M University-Kingsville. As you'll hear, she is very excited about all things nature. The curiosities, wonderment, serenity, and complexity of natural processes caused her to pursue a career science. Now, she gets to share those precious moments with visitors to Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse state parks on the North Shore of Lake Superior. A highlight of her days is in connecting people -- especially children -- to the world around them through wellbeing practices, art, observing wildlife, and experiences like berry picking in the summer.  Michaela has a passion for helping injured animals and volunteers with the University of Minnesota Raptor Center. Michaela strives to be an ally in her community by speaking up and speaking out against daily prejudices and creating a sense of belonging for others.

Awe and Light: A Little Holiday Pause

The holidays are powerful times to celebrate the light that shines in winter's darkness.  They also tap into our capacity, our need, for awe and wonder.  The light of the holidays includes the awe-some and awe-inspiring light that we can bring to the dark places of fear and despair, hatred and brokenness of the world. 
Our "practice to take with you" this week is from Kelsey Maddox, who shares delightful stories of her family's experience of "awe walking."  She tells of a recent experience with her 11-year-old son which, she says, "pulled me away from my to-do list and all the swirling going on in my head about making the season magical or important, or the day good for my children, and the world a good and safe place -- it pulled me away from all the tendrils of the DOING-that and took me into this moment of BEING-that, of being in awe."

Burnout and Belonging: Being Present in Your Own Life

My guest today is my friend, the poet and educator Tristan Richards.  She talks with me about her own version of a journey that I’m guessing is familiar to many of you: a journey into overwhelm and burnout, fueled by the tangled morass of unrelenting professional demands and personal loss and grief, all while struggling to figure out the relationship – and distinction – between career and calling.  We wonder together, what does it mean to be truly present in your own life?
 
Tristan is the author of two self-published chapbooks: Not All Challenges Are For Us (2022) and The Year Was Done Right (2019). Her poems have been published in ALOCASIA, Writers Resist, trampset, Preposition: The Undercurrent Anthology, the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride, and Firethorne. Tristan is most well known for creating and facilitating "Unfold: 30 Days of Writing in Community" (a daily poetry writing online workshop every April for National Poetry Writing Month) and other writing workshops. She holds an MA in Leadership in Student Affairs from the University of St. Thomas and a BA in Communication Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College. You can find her on Instagram at @tristanjrichards or at tristanwritespoems.weebly.com