This week, we asked a big question... what can Timothée Chalamet’s character in “Don’t Look Up” teach us about finding faith in tough times? No, seriously… we dig into it in a real way and Nadia Bolz-Weber is exactly the person to explore what we can take away from what she admits is a “deeply cynical movie.” Nadia is an ordained Lutheran pastor, the New York Times best selling author of three memoirs including Pastrix and Accidental Saints; Finding God In All The Wrong People, and a woman in long-term recovery. She’s an example of the ways faith can exist without dogma, exclusion, or shaming. She speaks candidly and generously as a woman with decades of sobriety and a life spent as the person who “always sits in the corner with the other weirdoes.” In this conversation, Nadia urges us to take a breath and step forward into life with courage, an open heart of acceptance, a hell of a lot of humility, and especially, a sense of humor. Show notes: Nadia’s site: https://nadiabolzweber.com/ Episode link: https://tmstpod.com/episodes/34-nadia-bolz-weber-how-we-are-really-doing Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3dhzKN3INZTtRg6TQkPuSr?si=a0a9ae43b3674c23 Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST today so you can hear the uncut interviews, attend private events with Laura and help keep TMST ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/
Tell Me Something True with Laura McKowen
Nadia Bolz-Weber on How We’re REALLY Doing
[00:00:00] Laura McKowen: Hey, it's Laura. If you're listening to this, you're not hearing the complete unedited version of this conversation. If you want in on that, you can get it by becoming a TMST plus member. Just head over to our website tmstpod.com and click support. All right. Enjoy the show.
[00:00:29] Hey, Laura here. Oh my goodness. Did I love talking to today's guest loved it. I've known about Nadia and her work for probably over a decade and she's always felt like somebody I just knew I would love talking to and hanging out with. And I was definitely right, but I had no idea how much I would need this conversation.[00:01:00]
[00:01:00] So let me introduce her Nadia Boltz Weber is an ordained Lutheran pastor, the founder of the house of all sinners and saints in Denver, Colorado, the author of three New York times bestselling memoir. She's a mother and also recently celebrated 30 years of sobriety. She writes and speaks about personal failings, recovery, grace, and faith.
[00:01:28] And as she says, she always sits in the corner with the other weirdos. Nadia is probably known to many of you, and I know for others, this will be an internal. So through her actions, Nadia, as a role model for speaking bravely and grappling with uncertainty, she's definitely not one of those people who tries to pretend like she has it all figured out.
[00:01:52] And that's one of the many things I loved about talking to her. In fact, her whole thing is about admitting she doesn't [00:02:00] have it figured out and letting us into her process. I know when I first got sober, I would have loved to have been able to sit with her like we did for this taping. In this conversation, Nadia urges us to take a breath and step forward into life with courage, an open-heart of acceptance, bunch of humility, and especially a big old sense of humor. I hope you love it.
[00:02:40] Laura McKowen: I feel like you're really amazing at giving people permission to just be wherever they are and that's what I want to do right now. So just to ground us and everyone listening in space and time, it's winter, second year of this pandemic, [00:03:00] it feels like this. It's gone on so long that I think we forget it's even going on.
[00:03:08] We've come up with new ways to put on this. Like, I'm fine. Everything's fine.
[00:03:18] Laura McKowen: So I want to ask you, because you, you know, in your community and those you touch, how, how do you feel like we're doing overall?
[00:03:33] Nadia Bolz-Weber: I think no one's doing well. And this is the thing, my best friend Jody keeps reminding me. So where are the kinds of friends that talk probably every other day for, for at least 45 minutes. And so. We talk about, you know, what we're cooking and what it was like to go to the store and what our kids said. I mean, that level of checking in.
[00:03:58] And so any [00:04:00] times I'm like, oh, this thing happened and this person did this and it was so annoying or whatever, she goes, oh honey, nobody's doing well. And it was, it's just this, uh, I don't know what to do. But have that response as often as possible right now, you know, I went to the grocery store last week to sprout and I put, I don't know, six to eight things in my basket and I look over there's one cash.
[00:04:30] Bless her heart. One with 25 carts, like snaked through the store. And I just politely put my six to eight things back where I found them and left, but like, there are no systems that are doing well. There are no people that are doing well organizations. And so, and it's interesting when you're someone who knows, I know a lot of other public figures.
[00:04:55] So I know when you're, when you do a certain kind of work, you know, other people who [00:05:00] do the same work and it's very interesting. Being privy to what people are really struggling with and then what they write on Instagram. I'm not saying they're not being false, but sometimes the voice that you hear on Instagram from people who are like public figures or influencers or whatever is.
[00:05:22] Is a pep-talk there they've had to give themselves, but they're giving it to you and it can make it seem like they already have that figured out. Like they're the dispenser of comfort and wisdom. But if you know, and it makes it seem like, well, they're doing really well. And they're just here to support those of us who aren't.
[00:05:41] And that is not the case, man. I keep saying to people like, I'm trying to be honest right now people are like, how are you? I've had a rough few months, man. I've it's been a hard hit. Our baseline now is grief. Basically. There used to be a turn-taking aspect to grief. If I was grieving, you [00:06:00] probably weren't.
[00:06:00] You could come alongside me. You could give me comfort and support. That's gone. Baseline is grief now. Yes. So like, I'm trying to say. Like I've had a hard hit the past few months. I'm not showing up in the same way. I normally do. I'm a little low, you know, lower energy than I normally am and I'm okay. And I truly am.
[00:06:28] Okay. Because from 30 years of sobriety, it has given me an emotional weight bearing structure in my life. Do you know what I mean? Like, it can withhold lots of weight, actually. It doesn't mean I don't feel the weight. It doesn't mean I'm not affected by the emotional weight, but I can bear a lot because it's like, you become sort of anti-fragile in a sense.
[00:06:56] Laura McKowen: That's such a good word. Anti-fragile [00:07:00] yeah, no, I totally, I totally feel like sobriety prepared me. The past couple of years. And there were, but there were points when I, when it was too much, you know, there were points when it's not been okay. But I have been okay. I've been okay. Things haven't been okay, but I've been okay.
[00:07:20] Right. So I totally know what you mean. So how are you, how are you now? How are you doing like today?
[00:07:28] Nadia Bolz-Weber: On my girlfriend chat my group texts with my, my women. One of them popped on hadn't been on for a couple of weeks saying that they they're like cautiously hopeful suddenly. Like they're finally feeling some hope and a couple of them popped on and said, I'm finally feeling hope.
[00:07:50] And I guess if you asked me how I am today, I am feeling a little bit of hope. Only because those women are feeling a little bit. I don't [00:08:00] personally have any right now, but the fact that these women who are brilliant, powerful, incredible women are star. And they're honest, they're not, they're not full of vapid optimism.
[00:08:11] You know, the fact that they're willing to be vulnerable enough to say, I think I'm feeling a little bit of hope that gives me a little.
[00:08:20] Laura McKowen: This is a theme you keep coming back to and, and you actually listen to one of your, the moth talks that you gave, it was about this trip. You took to Jericho and writing the, like how riding a bus off the side of a mountain was like your worst fear, like, and how you, you were there with these people that you didn't really want to get to know, basically that you're not a good joiner.
[00:08:48] You keep talking about. And you do this in your writing and you do it everywhere that you. Are part of like, you've learned to be part of like, where, how [00:09:00] did you learn that I have a guest, but how am I
[00:09:06] the grace in a, in a, in a support system, like rowing
[00:09:11] Nadia Bolz-Weber: club? Sure. Yeah. Like my Amy. So I just feel like I should confess some fiction. I, that story of having a panic attack in front of 30 super nice Lutherans from Wisconsin while in the holy land. And then feeling humiliation of that, not being a good joiner.
[00:09:33] I think I was there, like, I want to say nine years ago. And I just walked the Camino. Do you know what the Camino is? Okay. So I just walked this thousand year old pilgrimage. Everyone talks about the Camino family. I was, I was like 10 days into it when I texted my best friend. The Camino is hard when it ends up you don't like most people. [00:10:00] So, I mean I eventually, three weeks into the Camino, took a taxi cab ahead a whole stage to get away from the people. But I heard, but I want to say something about that the day after I broke away from the group, because I was in my head so much. These people are annoying you because, because you're a horrible person, because there are other people on the trip who are unfucking bothered.
[00:10:33] They are unbothered by the Canadian mansplainer who happened to start the same day as we did. And I couldn't shake off right there, unbothered by this. And so I thought, because they're good people and I'm a horrible person. This is why I always have this struggle. And. I finally escaped. I got ahead a day and then I did 10 days.
[00:10:58] No, actually [00:11:00] two weeks totally alone, like completely alone. And I was blissed out. And on the first day I was, I started laughing. I couldn't see any other programs. I, uh, I was on my own. I start laughing. If somebody saw me, they'd be like this woman's lost her mind because I start laughing out loud and then I stopped and then I just like start laughing again.
[00:11:23] But the reason I was laughing is like, the folly of the whole thing, the folly of thinking, I will finally be a different person than I am. And I am here to report that has not really happened. And so I realized it was a moment of acceptance actually of myself, because I said to myself, Nadia, you are a keen observer.
[00:11:53] Of yourself and of other people and maybe that's your brilliance, but [00:12:00] maybe it also precludes you from ever successfully being part of a group. And that's okay. Oh God, I love that.
[00:12:12] Laura McKowen: I'm so glad you shared it. We're going to talk about acceptance. Because to me, that's like where this is all going. Okay. So I want to talk about faith.
[00:12:25] I feel like it's crazy to have you on and not just go for it, but about the comforting grounding, as you say, like grace and grit type parts of faith. Yeah. You know, there are all these legit conversations about dividing and dehumanizing ways. Faith is used against people, and we don't need to talk about all that.
[00:12:45] There are places where that's happening and they should be. I've been having those actually on here too. I don't have any particular faith at all, but I, I am a very spiritual person and I feel, I love the word [00:13:00] faith. So I want to talk about faith that grounds us, whether someone is in a community or.
[00:13:07] Because I work with a lot of people in recovery, lots of them have stuff around God and faith and they just can't do it. Some of them don't feel like overall faith has no. A great word for people, but it's the best word that I want to, I want to talk about it. I want to say faith and maybe redefine it for some people.
[00:13:29] So to start this off, so Mikel, who you met, the producer is part of your community. And he pointed out that you've been thinking about how faith and prayer is portrayed on TV and film. Something you've been talking about lately. And you said these portrayals are either garish and embarrassing or over sentimentalize, delusional, fluff.
[00:13:53] And you said rarely do I ever see faith portrayed in ways that are familiar to me or that feel like [00:14:00] they have grit and grace. And you referenced that final prayer scene and don't look up yeah. Where Timothy shall amaz character is this unlikely source of faith and spirituality in the film. He's a great vessel for what faith could look like, because he doesn't look.
[00:14:19] Anything that you know, that we would traditionally say, God comes in that package.
[00:14:24] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah. But those are the only ones I trust. I mean, when it comes down,
[00:14:29] Laura McKowen: right. That's why it works. So. For people who haven't seen it, uh, when the media is about to hit the earth, the key figures are sort of gathered around this final meal and someone suggests that it might be appropriate to pray over the meal and he steps up, well, we're not the most religious here in the Mindy household, but maybe we, should we say amen, should we do that? I don't know how to somebody just say, amen.
[00:15:05] Timothée Chalamet’s character says, I got this, dearest father and almighty creator. We ask for your grace tonight despite our pride. Your forgiveness, despite her doubt. Most of all, we ask for your love. See us through these dark times. Mainly face, whatever is to come in. Your divine whale is courage and open hearts of acceptance.[00:16:00]
[00:16:06] Wow. You got some church game.
[00:16:19] Nadia Bolz-Weber: That just made me tear up. I just think I could spend hours cataloging the crimes and misdemeanors of religion. Honestly, I could. And I've done a lot of that. And yet, There's like a need in the human being. That religion has always met. I mean, religion has fashioned itself in endless variety, human faith communities and practice and symbol systems and scriptures, and, uh, you know, ways of marking the year, have our abundant [00:17:00] throughout history.
[00:17:01] Every time in place, we have done that as humans because there is a need and us that it meets. And I get that. We live in like this increasingly secular age. But I just don't think that those needs have gone away. And so that's why at the end of the world, what did people lean towards? They didn't say, Hey, I feel like we should join hands and do some affirmations.
[00:17:33] Right, right. It wasn't power of positive thinking. It wasn't manifestation the fuck. Are they going to manifest at that point? You know what I'm saying? Jesus. I mean, it's not, you know what I mean? It's none of that. It's like falling on your knees. I love that. I love that song at Christmas. Oh, holy night, where it says fall on your knees.
[00:17:56] Like there are moments where. The fuck [00:18:00] else do we have at our disposal? And so I, I loved, I loved the words of the prayer to talking about like, look despite our pride and despite, you know, everything about us, we request that some sort of divine presence be around us that we can face what is to come with courage and open hearted accepted.
[00:18:25] Oh, I mean, isn't that what we need right now is we just need some courage and open-hearted acceptance, you know?
[00:18:34] Laura McKowen: Yeah. I think that's why, well, and it works somehow. It works in that movie. There's very few actually sentimental moments in it that aren't so over done, they're meant to be. Parodies of whatever that is, they're portraying and that movie it's a cynical, very cynical.
[00:18:58] Laura McKowen: But that, that part isn't [00:19:00] in Jennifer Lawrence is an atheist, his girlfriend and she leans over and kisses him and says, it's beautiful. So yeah, we've tried to just get rid of religion and you're absolutely right. It comes back because we are it's, it's part of who humans are and when we take away formal religion, as we've understood.
[00:19:19] It gets replaced with other types of religion.
[00:19:21] Nadia Bolz-Weber: A hundred percent, my friend David Saul wrote a genius book last year called Secular Society, which is basically making the case that for of what you just said, that we think we've gotten away from so many aspects of religiosity because excited for you know, organized religion, but truly we're just substituting them for other things.
[00:19:44] Like, instead of really trying to only think pure thoughts, now we try to only eat pure food, right. Instead of yammering on about how much time we spend at church, it's how much time we spent at the gym. I mean, the, [00:20:00] the way that we're earning our. Ability to think of ourselves as good and righteous that hasn't gone away.
[00:20:08] And then leveraging that to assess how good and righteous others are in comparison to our efforts and our accomplishments in these things.
[00:20:19] Laura McKowen: That's the big payoff. And when it goes dark politics is what I think at first, you know, people get religious in their politics and then it becomes, it's not like they have ideas anymore.
[00:20:31] Nadia Bolz-Weber: The ideas we have them. Yeah. It's ideology. I mean, that's why I say like, I really do think our drug of choice right now is just knowing who were better. Then I find the. Ubiquity of ideology to be extremely disturbing right now. If I feel a lack of hope, it's not COVID it really isn't. COVID it's us. [00:21:00] It's the fact that our, our worldviews in our view of each other have been so manipulated for cynical gain of.
[00:21:11] You know, businesses, I feel like we all need a cleanse, you know, like a huge cleanse of all of our assumptions about ourselves and other people and because it's, so it's just so toxic. And I don't know. I don't know where the path out is, you know? Well, I was going to ask
[00:21:35] Laura McKowen: You, how do you, how do you do it on a, you may not know the path out.
[00:21:38] I don't know that anybody does, but how do you do it on a day-to-day level? How do you get, how do you check yourself?
[00:21:45] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah, I mean, I it's, so not like creative or sexy or interesting. It's just like, I asked myself, hold on. This thing you're so upset about, is it actually happening right now? Like, is it real, [00:22:00] do I know with certainty it's real and is it happening right now?
[00:22:04] And, and if not, then what is real and happening right now? Like who, who are the people who are actually in my life, not the ones that I'm having reactions about who aren't in my life, you know? So I just try and get back to the present moment. The present situation. Sometimes even the room I'm in, you know, I mean, we, we, we don't have an unlimited amount of emotional energy in our lives and we squander so much of it, reacting to things that.
[00:22:37] Actually that reaction in us is very profitable to clickbait and ad revenue. It's so pernicious. Yeah. I mean, I was the subject of a fake news story, uh, in 2019. So I got to see how it worked and it was fascinating to me and I, I won't go into the whole thing. I mean, unless you're [00:23:00] desperate to hear, but it was.
[00:23:03] There was one line that I said in an interview of a gay man, man, snag men's magazine and like Pittsburgh, right. A conservative news organization. That's prone to not like me, that like doesn't have written stuff against me before took that one line changed the whole wording of it perfectly crafted a headline that was genetically modified to stoke the moral outrage of conservatives, honestly.
[00:23:29] And then they published. And so what happened was this? It was so cynically crafted for that reaction for a certain population. They were a victim of their brain chemistry in their reactivity before they even knew that's what was happening. And they're like, this is what's wrong with the world click. And then that person gets ad revenue.
[00:23:50] Right. And I saw it happen and I saw it spread. And then I saw. Different news outlets, writing version of the story that this per this one was so [00:24:00] gross. And then I got the sick feeling, cause I was like, oh my God, how often has there been a headline that was genetically modified to stoke my liberal moral outrage?
[00:24:14] And I'm like, oh my God, this is what's wrong with the country click. And then that asshole gets ad revenue. And it was humbling when I realized that. Yeah.
[00:24:25] Laura McKowen: So sometimes we have these moments ourselves where we get it's, our pride gets interrupted, I guess. And we get to experience what it's actually like.
[00:24:36] So you said something though, like going back to what helps you of just going into the room that you're in there's and this, this goes back directly to sobriety for me because I was in this yoga teacher training. Many years before I got sober. But. I talk about the story in my book, where that the teacher, we [00:25:00] would all go, we'd have these like weekend long sessions.
[00:25:02] And then at the end, everyone's kind of tapped and just emotionally rod. And we would share how we were doing. And one of the guys, and I, I had worried about my drinking for a long time, but I would never vocalize it. He stood up and said, just seemingly, you know, just like, no, no pretense, no caveat, no nothing. He just said, I'm afraid I can't stop drinking. The whole room went silent and our teacher said he was so amazing. He said, of course you can, are you drinking right now? And he said, no. And he said, okay, how about right now? He said, no, he said, how about now? And then we all kind of started to like smile. Never forgot that because it was happening right now, addiction is [00:26:00] more complicated than all that.
[00:26:01] But what was happening right now is that he was just sitting in a room with a bunch of people having done a bunch of yoga. And he was saying something honest and he wasn't drinking right then. And I remember that story all the time. Like the past two years, it's just been like, it, it, it got me through early sobriety.
[00:26:22] And it got me a lot of times through 2020, and last year, it's like, what is actually happening right now? Because what would happen is I would pick up this (phone) and I would think someone's coming to get me. I'm fucked. We're all fucked. What's in there. That, is it just for you as an acceptance? Is it presence? Is it faith? Is it what, what is in that, in that room when you go, okay, what is happening right now?
[00:26:53] Nadia Bolz-Weber: I try and like, I try and just think what what's the most real thing, right. [00:27:00] Like is the most real thing that maybe five years from now, I won't have the same income and won't be able to afford the house that I just bought. Is that the most? Is that the most real thing? I mean, we do have to think about the future.
[00:27:14] It's not, I mean, there, there are ways that there's some planning that, uh, is, uh, is not about idea to undertake, but. My boyfriend's a software guy and he talks about one of the worst things you can do when writing code is called pre optimization, where you think, okay, I'm going to think about the contingencies in the future.
[00:27:35] Things that could go wrong or things that we might need this code to do. And I'm going to now in the present, right? That. And he goes, it's the kiss of death. And I think that emotional pre optimization can be the kiss of death too. It's like, I am, I get anxious about how I might have anxiety in a [00:28:00] situation that is coming up. That's a waste of my fucking life.
[00:28:09] I mean, so the ways it it's just, it really is the most. Basic spiritual teaching that the present moment is the most real thing. What is happening right now. And it's very hard. I am in a holding pattern in some pretty big stuff. Some medical tests, some big stuff right now that I am just waiting could be life-changing or might not happen.
[00:28:38] And there is fuck all I can do. About it, but I'm in the holding pattern. So it's like every time my mind starts, it's getting, it's like a chew toy for my brain. I kind of go hold on there's stuff. Now I could be, I could actually have started making a soup already with the amount of time and energy [00:29:00] I've spent either.
[00:29:02] Lamenting what I did or didn't do or others did or didn't do in the past, which isn't real anymore or worrying about what I might do or not do, or what might be taken away from me in the future, which is not real right now. And I mean, that's why in John's gospel, it says. There are so many, I am statements used to says, I am this, I am, this God is this.
[00:29:26] And it's not, I was this, or I will be this, but I, the I am-ness of the divine, it means that it is present in the moment we're in always.
[00:29:39] Laura McKowen: Yeah. One of my favorite sayings in the big book, which I'm not an AA person but I love the 12 steps. And one of the lines that I absolutely love speaks to this it's, you know, God is everything or he is nothing.
[00:29:57] What will you have it be? Because what I was going to [00:30:00] ask you next is what if the moment does suck? What if we do get the news? What if, what if you sit there in the moment and you're just in extraordinary pain, what do you find that, that.
[00:30:14] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah, that's a good question. I think, I think the best thing we can do is honor the realness of it again, because if we try and escape, we're just sort of. You know, anytime I don't deal with some big emotions or some big truth, I want to escape it. It doesn't go away. It just sets up a refugee camp in my lumbar usually. And I end up with back pain.
[00:30:45] Nadia Bolz-Weber: But the point being like, I think the answer is the same. If that is the most real thing, then we have to. Acknowledge it like, like the prayer said, like except [00:31:00] courage and open-hearted acceptance, you know of, yeah, this sucks. It's not going to suck forever.
[00:31:08] Laura McKowen: I have found even it's almost in the moments of the most extraordinary pain when I, when I drop really all the way in which means trying to get, get rid of all the stories, the spinning out. And I've been always met. Bye. What, what feels like God, to me in that moment, more than anywhere else, pharma, when I'm feeling joy or when I'm feeling happy or when I'm feeling, you know, just cruising along.
[00:31:39] Nadia Bolz-Weber: It's in that suffering, that place, wholly suffering. I mean, I mean, that's a sort of. Basic tenant of my, my sort of Christology is the idea that, that God is present in the specially present and salient in human, not causing human [00:32:00] suffering, but bearing it alongside of us for being a theologian. I feel like my own beliefs have gotten so much more simple. Than they've ever been. Yeah. I think it's just hard though.
[00:32:13] Laura McKowen: Simple, simple takes a lot of experience and work. You see?
[00:32:18] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Well, it was a lot of, uh, degrees to get there. Experience, but like, what it is that the mystery. You have a first, it is. So, you know, those space pictures where they're like Hubble, telescope pictures, where they, they zoom out and out and out and it's like, here's our planet, you know, here's our moon sun, our solar system, you know, and that's the point at which I'm like, okay, I'm good.
[00:32:52] Or maybe our galaxy and then I'm like, I would have been a great medieval person. Like just the dome. I'm very comfortable with the dome, [00:33:00] but more than that, right? It's like an act of aggression against me when they keep going. So they just keep going. And so then they're like an art galaxy as part of this cluster.
[00:33:12] And that cluster is a big point of this huge thing. And this year, you know, they just keep going in the mind cannot, cannot comprehend it. Okay. We have yet to find life as we define and understand it anywhere else, anywhere else. I know that's and then like, somehow it's here and we get to be a part of it.
[00:33:38] You're going to be conscious. The fact that, that that happened. The origin of that happening to me is God, somehow mysteriously the origin of that happening is God. And it, and it had to do in some way with grace [00:34:00] because we couldn't earn the right to be here. All our virtues could never earn the right for the sun to rise up.
[00:34:08] Ever. And so to me, the whole origin of the universe is the heart of God, this incredible grace that, that life gets to exist. And we get to eat pizza for fuck's sake. We get a pizza and I have a dog, you know what I mean? Like unbelievable. Okay. So, but what that means to me is that. That's that God or the divine, that grace is our source.
[00:34:36] That's where we came from. And that we live in a world that has so many difficult things that there's pain, there's beauty, there's suffering. There's love all of this stuff. And that what it means is. As a human being, moving through it, we all try to like so many of us strive to be righteous, strive, to be good, strive, to have virtues, to be a good Yogi, to be a good [00:35:00] Christian, to be all this shit.
[00:35:01] And I'm like, I want to write a book that just says try less hard. Mean like you said, everything that we need, we have. Already we have access to it. That source, we get a draw upon it when I am a cold-hearted bastard. And I do not have enough compassion for the person in front of me. It's actually okay.
[00:35:22] Because I can draw upon the, this incredible source of compassion in the divine. Always connected to and will always be connected to. So that's what I mean when I say there's enough, there's enough forgiveness. There's enough, grace. There's enough, love there's enough mercy compassion, all of those things.
[00:35:42] And it doesn't have to originate from us. It can originate from our source. And then somehow when we die, we are united again with that source and on the most basic level, that's it. It’s just, it's so simple.
[00:36:06] Laura McKowen: Why can't we, why are we made in such a way that we fight that.
[00:36:13] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah. Well, why did Timothy Chalamet amazing prayer include the word pride in it? Like despite our pride, you know, I don't know, but that's the garden of Eden story, man. It's like, it's never enough for God to be God and us to be creatures.
[00:36:33] We want to be God.
[00:36:35] Laura McKowen: We need something to do here. You know,
[00:36:38] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Like couple projects…
[00:36:40] Laura McKowen: Adventure. Yeah. We need, we need, we need some kind of adventure. I honestly feel like that's like, yeah, I could go on down a whole tangent. How do you hold the work that you do now? How are you holding it today?
[00:37:00] Nadia Bolz-Weber: With like enormous gratitude, to be honest, because somehow I get to be a person for a living.
[00:37:07] I mean, all I do is just kind of try and be as honest as I can about what I struggle with and, and what I feel like helps aluminate things for me. And. Changes me if only by a degree, but it's a degree I needed to be changed by, you know, I, I mean, I just try and be as honest as I can in my own life. Inside my own heart, that, and that I share that with other people and they find it meaningful.
[00:37:33] My friend Curlin, she's a, a priest in Portland and she describes it. The work that I do is like basically sneaking into the cathedral, looking around for the most beautiful, valuable stuff, hauling it into the front yard and slapping a free sign on it. Like. You don't, you don't have to be a member of the cathedral.
[00:37:55] You don't have to co-sign on all of the stuff that's challenging in [00:38:00] order to get like the really valuable, beautiful stuff out of this Christian teaching practice, I'm uninvested. And if people intellectually assent to the same theological propositions, I do. I don't care.
[00:38:13] Laura McKowen: That's why it works.
[00:38:16] Nadia Bolz-Weber: That's why it works. Yeah. So I guess I'm just grateful and I'm, and I, I remain con convicted that, that even, even the church can't kill the gospel. I mean, that's saying a lot because we have tried. Yeah. So I. There's something. So I think that the story of Jesus is just the most true thing in the world in some way.
[00:38:45] And like even the church can't destroy it.[00:39:00]
[00:39:02] Mikel Ellcessor: Hi, I'm Mikel. I'm the executive producer of tell me something true. And I co-created the show with Laura. We built TMST and our online community with the hope of creating a sane spot on the internet. We're really passionate about the ad-free nature of this work. Our belief is that this project worked best if we're not hustling to keep advertisers happy, and we keep our attention on you, the TMST community, and this is where you can play a major role. TMST plus is the membership group that helps to keep this podcast going. Whether it's through a monthly membership or a one-time contribution, TMST plus members are vital to this experiment. As a TMST plus member, you get to join Laura for member only events, send in questions for the guests, hear the complete unedited interviews and connect with other TMST community members. You know, sometimes we feel like we can't make a difference in the world. With the TMST [00:26:00] plus membership, you can be keeping this space alive and thriving for a one-time gift or for as little as 10 bucks a month, you can find the link in the show description and then please head over to TMSTpod.com right now to support the show. And thanks.
[00:40:31] Laura McKowen: Let's go back to pride, pride and forgiveness. They're not exactly two sides of the same coin, but often pride drives behavior that isn't great. And then this need to seek forgiveness. What do you think about those two things and how they relate and your experience?
[00:40:51] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Well, I think pride in being proud of something are two different things. So I think it's, it's important to say that like I'm proud of the podcast I [00:41:00] created. Right. But to be prideful about something that's very different. I guess I think of pride as the sort of, um, the way in which our ego does not help us. And so there are a million ways that my ego will defend itself.
[00:41:17] Against any kind of narrative that's different than the one it needs to sustain its idea of itself. It will, you know, it will resist criticism. It will see faults in others in never see it in itself. I mean, there, that's just like this, this human thing. And there's this theologian at Cambridge.
[00:41:40] Actually he's the brother of the guy who wrote secular society. He did this amazing lecture at the Mockingbird conference a couple years ago about sin. And he made a suggestion that I've just run with, which is, you know, sin, isn't these, you know, delicious, naughty things that, that bad people do in [00:42:00] private and should know better than to indulge in sin.
[00:42:02] As he says, it's hiding in plain sight as cognitive bias. And I was like, oh my God. Things like, wow. Confirmation bias, right? The fact that I saw this video, it's like, look, unless you're a, you know, you have graduate degrees in science and you're conducting experiment, experiments that are replicatable and then reviewed by a team of your peers.
[00:42:30] You're not doing research. You're Googling shit that you already agree with. If that's called confirmation bias, it was just such a genius
[00:42:45] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Well, I mean, when people hear the word sin, they, they usually think of, you know, these naughty indulgences that you shouldn't participate in.
[00:42:54] But he's saying that he thinks it really is. Sin is just a state that [00:43:00] human beings have. Like, we like. It is a continuum, the continual imperfection of human beings. It's the fact that no matter what we actually want. The system keeps throwing up errors. You know, we keep breaking relationships and systems and the planet and like, like it does
[00:43:22] Laura McKowen: The lacking inside of us that just does.
[00:43:25] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Yeah, there there's a guy named Francis Bufford who wrote a book called Unapologetic. And he says that sin, he considers sin the human propensity to fuck things up. That's his definition. Right. And so Simeon goes on and says, look, it's actually. Cognitive bias. That's how we know that this is who we are, is that there are a million ways that our pride, our ego, well, Change the information coming in to suit itself.
[00:43:56] Yep. You know, the fundamental [00:44:00] attribution error it's saying it's attributing. Like if, if you get a job, a really great job, I'm like, well, uh, it's nepotism because she knew someone there. If I get a really great job, it's because I worked hard. Right. So that is just part of human beings. And it's hard for me sometimes because so much of the self-help wellness community rejects any kind of human culpability.
[00:44:33] It's bizarre to me. And so. I mean being an alcoholic, it, you know, I have to sort of go, where am I being? Self-seeking dishonest, resentful, fearful. It's a continual assessment, honestly, and that's not low self-esteem, that's just being accurate. You know, it's just kind of being realistic
[00:44:55] Laura McKowen: . I want you to clarify what you mean by that or the [00:45:00] self-help and wellness industry won't acknowledge human capability. What do you mean?
[00:45:05] Nadia Bolz-Weber: I feel like there's an entire industry that relies on our dissatisfaction of ourselves and our bodies and, and the world and our lives. And instead of saying, there might be parts of that, that you created yourself, instead no, instead of saying you might have some culpability in your suffering, it might only be 15%, but that's the only fucking 15% you can do anything about.
[00:45:39] Right. Instead of like looking at ourselves and going, may they sort of off. A lot of goods and services to make you feel better about yourself instead. And I'm like, look in last year, a single mom working two jobs on the verge [00:46:00] of poverty, blah, blah, blah, blah. I seriously doubt. You, you know, white women at the yoga conference, that lack of self care is your actual fucking problem.
[00:46:12] But what do we, but what do we want to hear? You know, you need, you just need more self care. And it's like when the, when your whole world is about you anyway, that's not a problem. That's not your problem. Yeah, no, no. We don't like to hear. Responsibility. Nope.
[00:46:28] Nadia Bolz-Weber: If it, if, if there is a quote solution spiritually that doesn't in some way, Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
[00:46:39] It might for a short time give you a sense of wellbeing, but it will never actually heal you. Hallelujah.
[00:46:49] Laura McKowen: Yeah. Well, I, I, that for me is the bottom line. Of recovery that I was taught by a woman who went before me. Didn't think of it [00:47:00] myself wouldn't have allowed it to be true myself, but it was that I'm responsible for my experience.
[00:47:07] It's not my fault. Lots of things are my fault. My trauma's not my fault. And I'm all, you know, million other things, but I'm responsible for my experience.
[00:47:14] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Right, right. Instead of an external locus of control for every single aspect of your life, right?
[00:47:20] Laura McKowen: I mean the whole, what relief, at first it pissed me off, but then. How else? Do you have any freedom you don't or any kind of agency?
[00:47:27] Nadia Bolz-Weber: You know what I'm saying? Like it's just, it, it is amazing. I I'll tell you how I know this all to be true is because my podcast, the confessional, I stopped doing it because it was impossible to book. It was impossible to book guests for it to find people who a had a real confession.
[00:47:53] Like something that was an actual confession, B H we're self-aware enough to talk about their own culpability to [00:48:00] really dig into what stories they were telling themselves, what they learned as a result of all that stuff. And see, we're willing to have it be public. It is almost impossible. I even went on Twitter.
[00:48:09] I was like, Hey, do you guys listen to the confessional? Do you have a good confession? If so, you know, that involves you causing harm in some way to somebody else. Email this email and we got 30 self-pitying emails, 30 emails that day of people who were just waiting for someone to assignment to ask them how somebody hurt them.
[00:48:35] And those stories are readily available to us at all times. And, and there's a part of our process where you have to go, yep. This happened, this happened, this happened. I'm going to deal with. Tell the truth about that. Um, but victim hood is optional. It is, it truly is. And that's not blaming the victim.
[00:48:59] That's saying [00:49:00] you are so much more in your life than that. One thing that somebody did to you also take some responsibility for your fear life now. You can, it's
[00:49:12] Laura McKowen: the only it's also. Yeah. I mean, we could go on about this for hours, but it's the only self-respecting message to give anyone to, you
[00:49:20] Nadia Bolz-Weber: know, but you're not going to want it for, I mean, the worst line in the big book is talking about resentment and it says, if you look back far enough, you will find that at some point in the past, Made a decision based on self that put you in a position to be harmed.
[00:49:37] I'm like you will never become an influencer on Instagram with that kind of shit. Never, never. Nobody's going to be like, yeah, bitch. Yes. Thank you. Fire
[00:49:48] Laura McKowen: emoji. Yeah. Mauter no people don't want to hear that. I know it's funny. I'm writing a book right now and the chapter that was the hardest for me to write in this [00:50:00] conversation is actually really helping me.
[00:50:03] It's about nine things, nine statements. And the first one is it's not your fault, but the second one is it is your responsibility. And that's been the hardest chapter for me to write for months. Just trying to just giving myself the permission to say what I, what I feel is true, because I'm, so I know the feedback will be everything you're
[00:50:23] Nadia Bolz-Weber: talking about, but you know what?
[00:50:24] I want more than anything. More than a feeling of wellbeing, more than, um, a higher self-esteem. You know what I want, where they think fucking freedom. I want freedom. I want to be free from my shit. I want to be free from my resentments. I want to be free from the things other people did. That hurt me. I want to, all of it.
[00:50:47] I want to be free from all that bondage more than I want, you know, a sense of wellbeing or affirmation. Yeah. And it's like, this is instead of [00:51:00] having a culture of, of real true honesty, we have this culture of affirmation and it's fine. It's not horrible. Only gets you so far.
[00:51:14] Laura McKowen: Speaking of freedom, what does freedom look like to you now? What does, what does joy look like to you now?
[00:51:26] Nadia Bolz-Weber: Ah, that's a good question.
[00:51:28] Laura McKowen: We'll just go with today.
[00:51:34] Nadia Bolz-Weber: You know, a lot of it is acceptance. It really is like, there's a thing in the big book. It says we ceased, fighting everything and everyone, you know, and so I, there are things that I cannot it's that serenity prayer thing. There are so many things I cannot change. So I think this acceptance this going.
[00:51:59] [00:52:00] Cause again, when I say being in the present moment, what's the most real thing. All those things are. True. And so any fighting I do about what's true, doesn't get me very far, but it really distracts me from what might be true in the moment. That is beautiful. And I'm not noticing it because I'm too wrapped up in something else.
[00:52:25] You know, there, there is always. An invitation in the, in the present moment. There's something there's some invitation to notice something beautiful, to be grateful for something that you forgot to notice that day. There's always that it's so simple. So like my whole, like joy, happiness, hope there's nothing terribly extravagant about it.
[00:52:51] It is really the simple stuff. And I was listening to a happiness researcher saying people think we will have this feeling of [00:53:00] joy in the future. When our housing remodels finally done. When we finally replaced the car, when we get that graduate degree, we think these big things out there that we want the fulfillment of our plans and desires and aspirations.
[00:53:17] That will be the thing that unlocks this feeling of joy and contentment in our lives. And happiness researchers tell us that is not true. The thing that allows joy and happiness in our lives is how much enjoyment and contentedness do we have in our daily, regular, quotidian lives. That’s it.
[00:53:47] [00:40:55] Laura McKowen: Alright, thank you so much for being with us today. If you want more TMST head on over to TMSTpod.com and become a member. Members get access to the full uncut versions of these conversations, previews of upcoming guests, invites to join me for members only events and access to our members only community where I hang out a lot. We decided from the beginning to make this an independent project, we don't have sponsors and we don't run ads.
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