34 - Can We be Real Friends? A Conversation with Eve Tushnet

Speaker 1: 0:01

Oh, oh.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Gosh, oh boy, our, one of our hosts has been replaced with an alien.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Slim has a new button, so slim will use it we have new sound effects putting all of the money that people are donating.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Yeah, uh-huh, our patreon, that doesn't, that doesn't exist yet.

Speaker 1: 0:53

But oh yeah, we should send that out.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Keep an eye out.

Speaker 1: 0:56

It's all about the Benjamins right now.

Speaker 2: 0:57

That's it's. That's what it's always. That's how it's always been. That's how it's gonna be with this podcast to out here to get this cash.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Yes, speaking of no, not that Pieces podcast, where we hope to rebuild your theology at the church. The world or somebody has shattered pieces, maybe around because of money. We are your hosts slim and Malcolm, and today we're gonna talk with Eve Tushnet about spiritual friendship. Eve, how did you get to know Eve? How'd you get to meet her?

Speaker 2: 1:31

Eve. So I saw, I saw her speak at the Revoise conference. When I went back in was a 20 21. I think okay, but but really, really really enjoyed what she had to say, and and plus and and and. When I reached out to Nate to get, to get it, to get a few, to get a few hosts or to get a few Conversation partners for this, for this series he mentioned, he mentioned even I was like yes, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 1:57

I love it.

Speaker 2: 1:58

So excited to excited to learn from her, excited to learn from her today.

Speaker 1: 2:02

That's great. That's great and, as Malcolm said, we are in the midst of a a little mini series that we haven't really done a ton of mini series.

Speaker 2: 2:11

I think this is only our first one.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Yes, but we have, we're, we have a total of three beginning and Well, this one and then we'll have one more around this, this topic of LGBTQ, and so I think that began on episode 30. If you want, if you are, this is the first episode I'd say pause, go back and then and then come back to this. But we have covered a lot of different things, but we have also talked with Dr Nate Collins, talked with Grant Hartley and today get to talk with Eve, and so, looking forward to that, look forward to.

Speaker 2: 2:46

That should be fun.

Speaker 1: 2:47

But before we do that, we just I want to start fights, and I want to be in fights. Great, I think that's what God calls us to.

Speaker 2: 2:56

All right, it's time for that's a beatitude I missed, but that's all right. Terrible tweets.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Oh, you know, I do think it's a, I Think it's, I think it's part of what we should be doing that taxed.

Speaker 2: 3:12

I just you know.

Speaker 1: 3:14

I think that's what we should be doing, as Christians started fights, be it in fights. No, no, not really, but we do want to. We don't want to call out Idiosy when we see it. This is floating around on the, the Twitter sphere, on the exosphere, and we want to exercise these demons. This is from will sodo and he says if there's a fire you're trying to douse, you can't put it out from inside the house. That's actually from Hamilton. And then he says the SBC was built on the backs of the enslaved and now rests on the broken bodies of the abused. And what is he referring to? Malcolm, have you heard about all this Twitter firestorm that's been going on this past week?

Speaker 2: 3:58

around the SBC about the SBC.

Speaker 1: 3:59

I try not to pay attention to the SBC, you know it's not really our, our house, and so I agree it's not one of those things that I want to like lob grenades at, but it's it is. It's a little rough, but you know what's been going on.

Speaker 2: 4:12

Nope, why don't you? Why don't you let me know?

Speaker 1: 4:21

I feel like it's all over Twitter and and and you may not be a part of the SBC like us, and so you might be going well wide. Why does this matter? Well, we are also all a part of the body of Christ, and when one suffers, we all suffer, and so we are going to Try to extend a a voice to this and maybe give Some input or our takes on this, and then maybe that'll help us as we even consider whatever Corners of the world we find ourselves in. So last week, the SBC Signed off on an amicus brief. Do you know what an amicus brief is? That word was floated around so much that I just was like Amicus brief.

Speaker 3: 5:01

Yeah, I know what it is.

Speaker 1: 5:03

The word amicus is you think of like amicable it's. It's really like a friend of the court. He's giving advice to the court, and so the SBC is giving a friendly advice to a court case. And what is the case that is in question? It's the case of a woman named Samantha Killery and her lawsuit against the city government of Louisville, kentucky, where law enforcement enforcement employees Allegedly in enabled her years-long sexual abuse by her father, who was also a police officer.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Now, why is the SBC Giving a amicus brief to a case that does not name? The SBC Does not name Any of the their seminaries there are, their colleges, does not name life way. It's a good question, but it's being brought. It's been because it's similar to other lawsuits being brought against the SBC, and the executive committee in Kentucky and their legal counsel has apparently advised those entities to file this amicus brief Encouraging the state's Supreme Court to exclude Non-offender third parties from Kentucky's recent change in the statute of limitations for abuse claims. So the whole thing here is there.

Speaker 1: 6:25

There was a Change in the statute of limitations so that you could now go back and sue people who had had sexually abused you, and now they're trying to say let's, let's make sure we're not putting ourselves in harm here.

Speaker 1: 6:41

And so what this is doing is it's going to protect the SBC from legal liability, but it's going to harm this woman who has no connection here, has nothing to really to do with the SBC, but it's it's going to excuse that institution and it's just like this huge betrayal to abuse survivors and allies for accountability within the SBC and the. The president of the SBC, bart Barber, who has actually been trying to, I think, speak up and be an advocate for abuse reforms in the SBC At least, and the SBC has been trying to do so somewhat publicly. He was the one who signed off on this amicus brief and he's since has Given an apology for doing so. But his reasoning for signing off on the on the brief was that it was given to him and he was given him, even though it was filed six months ago. He only had had been given three hours to make it a decision on whether to sign off on it or not, and so, because it was a particularly busy day, he said, why not?

Speaker 1: 7:51

And he signed off on it and later he does Mounted apology for the SBC as a mountain apology, but the apology kind of just amounts to a whoopsy. This is, this is this is wild, like this is something that that Kentucky has started to change law so that you can Allow a child sex abuse victim to sue their abuser, to actually to seek some justice. And the SBC is saying don't same, please don't do this. And Like goodness gracious, like the SBC has asked the the Kentucky Supreme Court to take the case so they could lobby against every, basically every child sex abuser in the state of Kentucky, like there there. This is not just against this, this woman, samantha, this is against every, every child of abuse here. It's such a bad look.

Speaker 2: 8:53

Yeah, I, there's a. This is a broad institutional tendency. Institutions tend to Tend to operate and this is the way that we operate as human beings to, with self-protection as one of our most primary right goals. It's what, and and, and you know I mean there there's an extent to which we, as Christians, should, should look to. I mean, and I mean, we know that the things that are done in the dark will come to the light. We, we don't want them to, though, and when we and when we institutionalize those impulses. This is, this is essentially now, these are kinds of things that we see. So it's, it's, it is. It is lamentable that this is, that this is precisely the kind of thing that we Well, that are, that our churches are known for. Is a can, is Just that self-protective impulse, just writ, writ, writ large. Yeah, that's, it is lamentable.

Speaker 1: 9:57

It makes you have to like wonder, and I, you know, I don't know the answer, but it makes you wonder like, okay, who, who, who? Who wanted originally to file this brief? So it's it, it bar bar is is the one that's is saying like it's on me for for doing this, but like what legal counsel like? And so then, what's the motivation behind that? Oh no, this could come back on someone else important in our midst.

Speaker 2: 10:22

Well, yeah, I mean if you're, I mean if you're legal counsel, I mean the one of the one of the primary purposes of legal counsel is to protect a particular institution. And so when that, when, when that is seen as Even though that's this person's job, when that's seen as kind of the be all end all, regardless of, you know, regardless of whether or not something is right, well then you know I mean that like as an, as an act of protecting that institution. Sure, it fulfills that purpose, but but, if it, but, but there are other, there are always these kind of competing, competing values. When you look at, when you, when you, when you look at any any position like that, and sometimes you know you got to ask the question of whether the institution, if it does particular things, whether it's worth protecting.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Yeah, yeah, I mean the, the, the woman named John Harris who has another podcast, bodies behind the bus and and and she she writes am I living on another planet? In what world do we praise whoops as a transparency and humility of kind of amounting what the president's response was. This wasn't accidentally forgetting to hold a door open while someone is behind you. This is removing the opportunity for justice from child sex abuse survivors in all of Kentucky, and I think that's absolutely right. Just it's, it's wild at it. The response is like I, I'm sorry I did that, so so now it's kind of like what do we do? This is like the conversation we had with Duke on like reparations, like there's something more that has to be done.

Speaker 2: 11:51

They're just sorry and added on to this. I mean, there's all there's already, they're already a number of kind of bad faith assumptions that enter into this conversation too, because of what's been going on in the last few years with the SBC anyway, and so this is this can be seen as kind of a straw that bricks the camel's back for people, because this is just what this does. Is this just reinforces what people have already right, what what people already Already thinking no, is going on in that denomination, this becomes one kind of one more example of of of what people can describe it's a toxic culture.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Yeah, yeah. Ben Marsh writes if the SBC actually wanted to preach the gospel to Samantha Killery, it would demand that the local church take up an investigation into the SBC pastor who failed to report her abuse and would pull all Credentials if they didn't like. Yeah, that's like. This is how we start to make things right, and so I just think this is something that, again, we're not trying to beat up this particular denomination, because we can. We can lament many denominations, name them, we will think you know, have say things to lament about, but this is just something I think we have to go like. Just in general, this, this is horrendous and there's, I think there's, still time to make right on it, and so if you are truly as a, as a Denomination, or truly as leadership in that like, if you truly do want to make a change, that now, now's the time.

Speaker 1: 13:18

So just saw this thing blowing up on Twitter and at first I had no clue. I was like I don't even know what amicus means and I just seen a very strong take. So I'm like it took me a minute to actually like go in and decipher, like what actually happened, and then you read and you're like, oh my gosh, this isn't something that we would, we should, ever fight over. But speaking of things that we shouldn't ever fight over, we got some more terrible tweets, y'all. I'm sorry we got. We got some. This is from Everyone's friend. Apparently, 693,000 friends have viewed this. This is from Eric Kahn.

Speaker 2: 13:58

Oh yeah, who is a Kahn man?

Speaker 1: 14:00

This is good.

Speaker 2: 14:02

This is a good one.

Speaker 1: 14:03

He says there is no moral obligation to adopt children, not from the ghetto, sudan or Russia. Okay, contra the trendy movement led by Russ Moore and David Platt, the gospel does not require adoption. In fact, it is often unwise and detrimental to do so. Loving your own is natural, not sin.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Loving your own is natural and not sin. Sure, no, I mean Jesus agrees. It's also not sufficiently Christian in the sense that what do you mean?

Speaker 1: 14:51

Jesus agrees that it's natural. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Loving your own is that there's nothing wrong with that. He uses the example when we talk about, when he commands us to love our enemies, or even when he gives the command to lend to one another without any expectation of return. He's like look, pagans love their own family, pagans love people who love them, and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 15:23

And what good is that.

Speaker 2: 15:27

What good is that? But there's a lot going on in that tweet. There's a lot of. It begins with the ghetto. Yeah, I mean the ghetto is Sudan and Russia, so I mean there are a few, there's a lot there. One is.

Speaker 1: 15:45

People accuse him and he responds to a lot of the tweets. In one of them, his argument is from 1 Timothy 5. And he says but if anyone does not provide for his own, especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith in his horse and unbeliever. So that's his argument, that it's just providing for your own. Sure, sure, okay.

Speaker 2: 16:07

So, but here's the thing, that's a base level. I mean, you caring for your family is a base level, just expectation of humanity. You got kids who care for your kids. To turn that into a condemnation of adoption is just an interesting move, because what's that?

Speaker 1: 16:36

first, sentence there is no moral obligation to adopt children, which is true.

Speaker 2: 16:44

That's, on its face, true. You also have the, not only the I mean subtly, not so subtly racist, but mostly in dealing with both race and class, in that description of calling out, quote unquote, the ghetto, sudan and Russia. There's offensive stuff there, but in the phrasing of there not being any moral obligation to adopt, it's true. Second, sentence.

Speaker 1: 17:17

He says not from the ghetto, Sudan, Russia. Contra the trendy movement led by Russ Moore and David Platt, the gospel does not require adoption.

Speaker 2: 17:25

Okay, I mean that's Regardless of what somebody thinks about, would his talk about this trendy? Whatever, there's nothing in the gospel that says that all of us have to adopt children. True, that's true.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Third sentence. In fact, it is often unwise and detrimental to do so.

Speaker 2: 17:48

And this is the kind of thing where you could. If you look at the experience Well, not only, I mean, you can think of adoption and the ways that it can be seen as an industry you can look at some of even the experiences of some children who have been adopted. When you look at their identity formation and all these kinds of things, there are things that there are children who have been harmed through that process. That's something that does exist. It's not saying that that is definitional of the act, but, yeah, I can see where he could make that, I can see how he could make that kind of claim.

Speaker 1: 18:29

Yeah, okay, and the last sentence Loving your own is natural, not sin.

Speaker 2: 18:33

Loving your own is natural, not sin. So this is. And when you put all of that together, what you get is a different picture than each of those sentences considered individually, because this is also the kind of thing that those who would affirm particularly Christian nationalism, this is the kind of reasoning that that comes from. It's this homogenous principle thing which comes from racist roots, but this assumption that we all prefer to be with people who are like us, and so it's just better to keep it that way. And so that then manifests itself in a, because he's not just saying that adoption isn't required, he's making the argument that adoption is bad.

Speaker 2: 19:42

Yeah, and that's not yeah, and he uses it's kind of dodgy because he's not saying it's that all the time. But the main point is, if you think about adoption, I want you to think of something that's bad, which is interesting because it's also notable that when Paul describes our relationship with the Lord, adoption is a really big and significant image for him.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Yeah, the Romans 8,. We've been given the spirit of sonship to be adopted as sons of God. This is integral to how we relate to the Lord and our understanding of our status with God.

Speaker 2: 20:26

And so there is a so there can be a beauty when a family adopts a child and brings them in as one of their own. There's a real, I think, kind of gospel-centered beauty to that. There can be. I see that in your family. But this is this broader. It just points to this broader thing that's coming out of, I think, a lot of I said a lot of these folks who he's the language of this white Christian nationalism stuff, whether it's like, look, stick to your own, just stick to your own kind and stop all this mixing. That's basically what it sounds like, and not only stick to your own kind and keep all this mixing out of it. But that's right and that's what we know. You're most comfortable with that, so just stick with that and be proud of it. It goes back to the other two that we were talking about, about the whole slavery in the Bible thing. It's like, look, there are all these things that all these liberals want you to be, want you to feel nervous and ashamed about.

Speaker 2: 21:46

You don't need to have to. You don't have to Look. Actually, these things that they're saying is wrong is actually right. It's right and it's natural. Here's the thing Like for me. It is not a moral argument to me to say that something is natural. It's not a moral argument. It's like me saying a lot of people are doing something so therefore I should do it. That's not a moral argument. My morals are not guided by what, by what by. They ought not be guided by what feels right to me, what a whole bunch of other people are doing. But that's not. Those things don't have, those things ought not have moral weight in my reasoning. Often they do, but they shouldn't, and this is, but this is one of those situations.

Speaker 1: 22:36

Yeah, and I'll respond to this in one, just biblically and then one personally. So biblically, I mean, this is just Okay, not required to adopt, but we can look at James 1. 227, religion that God, our Father, accepts as pure and voluble, is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world? And so it is actually not just not option I mean, this is not optional to care for orphans, to care for children who do need a place, and his tweet here is giving nothing of that sort. It's just saying there is no moral obligation to adopt children and it's often unwise and detrimental to do so. Versus what the Bible is saying like. No, this is actually required of us to think through. How do we care for them? I know he's not saying that.

Speaker 2: 23:27

He's choosing his words carefully here, and so he could argue one way or the other, but there's all and there's I didn't mention this, but there's the dehumanization of the poor, of children in students, children in Sudan and Russia and stuff like that. Those children are props in this tweet. They're props that he's using to kind of make this particular point. And this is the thing about dog whistling it's without really saying what he means. You get it. You get it.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Yeah. And then my other response is personally, as a dad who has one biological and two adopted kids, I will agree with you there is no moral obligation to adopt children. There are some people who should not adopt. However, I feel like that is not the only way people can get plugged in and care for orphans. There are so many other ways to do so. Some are called to do that, and we'd love to encourage more to do that. There is plenty of need.

Speaker 1: 24:45

In Waco, here where we're at, I think, there's, I think, 430 kids still seeking a placement right now, currently needing a place, and so that's just fostering, not even an adoption, and so that alone, I think there is a moral obligation as Christians for us to consider how to care, and so, amen, let's do that.

Speaker 1: 25:09

But also, I do think it is hard, and as one who I've asked prayer for we are in the throes of an enormously hard two months, we'll say enormously hard year with one of our kids, and it is just extremely difficult. And so I would say but I would still never, ever, ever say that it was unwise or detrimental for us to do that Like as hard as it is I mean, I freaking love that kid and for you to say like this is unwise or this is detrimental, like we're a better family because of it. And this is past week, that same kid is getting bullied by other kids and one of the kids says you should go back to the adoption center. Just get out of here. And I just, oh, my blood boiled, I wanted to go up there. And he's getting in trouble for fights at school. Now I'm like I want to go get into fighting your school.

Speaker 2: 26:26

Oh, go outside of kids head Gosh like, like this is absurd.

Speaker 1: 26:33

So it just feels like what he's doing in this post is, as you said, just trying to get people off the hook to alleviate burdens of our consciences. I'm with you. Not everyone should, should, adopt, but someone has given the illustration of it's as if you came to a river, you were walking in the woods, you come up to a river and you see a bunch of babies floating on the river. Some are called to come in and pick those babies up and foster and adopt. Some are called to go. Hey, where are these kids going? Oh no, some of them are going off the. The river is going towards a waterfall, off the cliff, and they're going to go get that where where the kids end up. And that's where I think some are called to then care for those.

Speaker 1: 27:16

As we see from you know, many kids coming from foster care end up in the prison system. So how do we, how do we care for them there? And then some are called to go. Why are these kids ever even coming into the system in the first place? And then they're, they're, they're called to go upstream and look at the systems and the structures that have built this. And so there's just, there's so many ways. And then you could also just say like well, how do we care for parents that are doing this? And you could, you could be a licensed child care to do babysitting. There's so much, so so many requirements to be able to babysit kids from foster care and things like that. There's there's so much else that you could have said versus alleviating burdens, of saying, ah, there's no moral obligation, like, but I guess that's just also just Twitter. He just wants to get a rise from people. Like but like. Is that really the way we should be using our, our platforms and like?

Speaker 2: 28:06

ah, so this is, and and this will be the last thing I'll say this cause this is, this is interesting because what he's what he's talking about is particularly the especially more recent trend of particularly interracial, interracial and international adoption, yep, which is why I keep going back to this Christian nationalism thing, because it is, because the the narration of what it means to love your own is is specifically in the context of race and nation. And so, because, so, because, so, because of that, like that's what this, that's what this is a conversation about, and so there are and the fact of the matter is is that there are there, there are clear difficulties in interracial adoption and international adoption, because race as the construct, as the construct that it is, is one that is fundamentally meant to divide us. Which, which, also, which, which, and one and one of the things that that also means is that if you are a white parent, you're raising a black child, there are going to be elements of there. There, there are, there are going to be elements that you, that you as a parent, are not going to like. There there is going to be a, there is going to be, unfortunately, in this country, there is going to be a gulf. There is going to be a gulf of experience, because the way that you're going to experience the world and the way that your child is going to experience this world anyway are going to be, are going to be different.

Speaker 2: 29:44

Similarly, if I, if, if, if Desiree and I were to, were to adopt a child from Chile, like there, there's going to be, there's, there's going to be difficulties, right and so, but like that, that in and of its like there, there's no, there is no like, there's no moral catech. There's no moral category to that, to that difficulty. It's just, it's a, it's a difficulty, it's a difficulty, yeah, the difficulty, yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:19

Once one starts to ascribe moral value to that, you start to, you start to go down some roads that, in this case, started and and also end with, you know, these broader, more dangerous understandings of, of nationalism and and racial supremacy and all these kinds of things. So so yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:42

Well, well, thank you, Eric, for your, your, your wise words.

Speaker 2: 30:47

I do not thank you for your numerous trolly tweets, but yeah, fine, and it the.

Speaker 1: 30:53

The funny thing is it was so bad that people I would normally very much disagree with were also calling about it, just like some people just tweet like this.

Speaker 2: 31:01

some people just tweet like this thing also just to get a rise out of people.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Yeah, I know it's like, do I even touch it? I know what.

Speaker 2: 31:08

I know what you're doing. Oh, you did. You did slip, you did.

Speaker 1: 31:11

We talked about it for how long we talked about it.

Speaker 2: 31:13

I don't want to talk about it anymore, uh-huh.

Speaker 1: 31:14

You know what we should do. We should bring Yvonne. Yeah, all right, let's do that. Great, all right.

Speaker 1: 31:30

Well, we are now at the star of the show. Here we get to interview and talk with a new friend of ours, Eve Tushnet. Uh, Eve is a freelance writer, blogger and award-winning author of Gay and Catholic Uh in her most recent book, Tenderness, a Gay Christian's Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God's Extravagant Love. She's also written two novels, the editor of the anthology of Christ's Body, Christ's Wounds, and has contributed to several books, including Sex and the Spiritual Life. Uh, and she has written on the paths of love available to gay Christians for a wide range of publications, including America, American Conservative, Commonwealth, Christianity Today, and she's Been for Atlantic, New York Times, Washington Post. Uh, seems like she's done everything, Um, and she also writes and speaks on the arts, which I just found out, uh, this morning. Um, that you most important maybe attribute that you have here is that you are a, a, a reviewer of horror movies. Is that right, Eve? Yes, oh, nice, we have found such commonality, not just in Jesus but horror movies. Nice, oh, I love it.

Speaker 2: 32:39

This is something that we're yeah, we're big horror fans.

Speaker 1: 32:41

Avid fans, we'll go together to watch these Um.

Speaker 3: 32:44

I did a thing for American magazine that was, I want to say it was like seven or ten international Catholic horror films. Okay, so if you want like Catholic horror beyond the exorcist, you might enjoy some of those. Okay.

Speaker 1: 32:59

I want to, yeah, find that link and look that up.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Is there a top? Is there a top three? Is there a top three? That you have Three, three of these international?

Speaker 3: 33:06

Oh yeah, it certainly depends on what you like. Okay, so the tenth victim is an Italian thriller from the sixties. That's both very funny and very kind of a really fascinating sort of slice of life of that time. Okay, neither heaven nor earth is a very creepy film set in Afghanistan among French soldiers. Who it's there? Actually? There are two horror thriller movies set in Afghanistan in which a mysterious force begins decimating a particular group of soldiers. The American one is more action heavy and the French one is way more existential.

Speaker 3: 33:45

So, everybody's living up to their natural.

Speaker 2: 33:46

Yeah, I mean that. Yeah, that sounds, that sounds right.

Speaker 3: 33:51

I don't know what that. And the third one there's a Filipino movie called seclusion or seclusion, about a possible case of either sainthood or demonic possession in a young girl who comes to a monastery where seminarians are preparing to enter the priesthood. That's a really beautifully shot film. I had to watch it twice because I could find two illegal copies of it. I did look I did actually look, one of which had English subtitles but the print was really bad, and one of which you could see how gorgeous it is, but I could understand nothing.

Speaker 2: 34:33

Interesting, interesting.

Speaker 3: 34:36

I'm not telling you to go and download that from YouTube.

Speaker 2: 34:40

Yeah, no, I mean, I didn't hear that you never had a chance to watch seclusion.

Speaker 1: 34:43

Seclusion. This is great. We're gonna have so much homework to do in mouth first. Is there any non-international? Is there any ones that just you know, American classics. Are there ones that you just like I love because I'm actually introducing my wife to. She's going through a whole list and she used to hate horror movies but now she's gone through like tier one. We're in tier two, we're not yet to tier three, where I think I put like the Conjuring and the Nun and things like that, but we're in the tier two section right now.

Speaker 3: 35:12

I mean, you know, for specifically things about God and Christianity, the exorcist is just impossible to be. Just is so good.

Speaker 1: 35:21

Did you see the new one?

Speaker 3: 35:25

I've not seen the new one. Okay, and you know, if she's into the older style, one that people have not always seen or heard of, that is really effective is Carnival of Souls From the 60s. It's, I think, the only or one of the only movies that director ever made and is like a creepy spooky, very atmospheric.

Speaker 1: 35:50

Yeah, that's great. That's great. I think the besides just probably just a longing to be scared and the joy of horror movies.

Speaker 1: 36:01

I also think there's a lot of what I found. I used to do youth ministry, and a lot of our youth were already seen these horror movies and I was like I guess I'll go with you, Although I'm not sure I feel about us doing this, but I had some of the best theological conversations afterwards than ever, Like I'm like would it be better for us to see the Lego movie and talk nothing about Jesus and God and spiritual life or the Conjuring and talk about like is there life after death? Is do what happens to your souls? Yeah, so that's great. That's great as well, as like beautiful horror movies like the Babadook and things like that that just you know even more deep and more beautiful.

Speaker 1: 36:40

I think that's. I think it's my wife's favorite now is the Babadook we're not here to talk about that.

Speaker 3: 36:47

Maybe we should be good, she likes the Babadook. I will suggest paper house paper house, which was made more for a younger audience, I think but interesting because it's the 80s, I think gets extremely dark and goes way harder than you would think, even what?

Speaker 2: 37:04

all the 80s.

Speaker 3: 37:06

It was four.

Speaker 2: 37:09

Oh, the 80s.

Speaker 1: 37:10

We just, we just showed our kids ghostbusters this weekend. You know 80s. It's rated PG.

Speaker 2: 37:18

It has not PG moments in it. You're like PG means something different at the 80s than it does in 2023.

Speaker 1: 37:24

Goodness, our kids should not be listening to that. So that was fun. Well, let's transition to why we're here. That's great, that's great. Could you just tell a little bit of our listeners? I know I kind of gave a little bio intro to yourself, but maybe a little bit of your background and your journey as a writer and a thinker.

Speaker 3: 37:48

Yeah, let's see. So things about me that are relevant. I grew up in Washington DC. I was raised more or less is there a between secular and reform Jewish and didn't have. You know, I had sort of ambient contact with Christianity Christians are everywhere but didn't have any real deep engagement with people who could talk about their faith in a way that resonated with me. Until college, when I entered a philosophical debating society, largely because I heard that they had free drinks and discovered that a lot of what the Catholics in the group it was a very religiously and philosophically mixed group but I was really shocked at how much what the Christians at that time were mostly Catholics. What they were saying really resonated with me and found my oh, I actually skipped a whole big thing, but which was coming out. So by that time I was by college.

Speaker 3: 38:53

I was already out as a lesbian and had been for a while. I had a very sort of standard realization at the time when all your friends start talking about boys, that you're having many of those same feelings about a girl. And because of growing up in a very progressive environment, it was not a shock to me or sort of like a traumatic realization. In many ways the opposite. It was good to have kind of a name and a community and be like oh, that's what that is. My parents had gay friends. It was just sort of like not that weird or troubling. In high school, my best friend who was also gay and I started the Gay Straight Alliance at our school and so this was like, and at the time basically all I knew about Catholicism is what I think a lot of young people today would now associate with Christianity that a lot of people tell polling agencies and whatnot when they ask what do you associate with Christianity or what do you associate with the Bible, they'll say it's anti-gay. And that was very much one of my first associations, also both because of stuff in the media and also like you'd go to a Pride parade or whatever and there'd be always the little group of counter protesters who are yelling horrible stuff and with signs that say Jesus loves you, go to hell, kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 40:23

And so it was really shocking to me how much I was finding myself compelled and really drawn in by the vision of God that these Catholics I knew were presenting God as creator, as someone who was responsible for the depth of meaning and beauty that I found in the world around me, in the physical world, in art. They were basically like yeah, you're responding to a real thing, you're responding to the handwork of God. And so today I began reading some of the theology that they recommended, st Anselm's Credes Homo, or how God Became man, which was really important for me. It's about what is the purpose of the incarnation and the crucifixion, and it's really beautiful. It's sort of a fascinating.

Speaker 3: 41:19

It's a fascinating. It's extremely medieval in that it's very philosophically minded and not particularly interested in shocking you with the violence of the crucifixion. I think that's important too, and I did delve into it. I think that also is part of what made it so powerful for me. But for Anselm it's just he has a mind that's really focused on harmonies and on what is most beautiful for God to do, what would be, and for him that means what's most balanced.

Speaker 2: 41:54

Fitting this plays into his language Fitting this.

Speaker 3: 41:56

Yes, I was not going to say fitting this, but yes, I got you.

Speaker 2: 41:59

I'm tracking.

Speaker 3: 42:04

And it just it was a way of thinking about justice and mercy that was really new to me, frankly, and really beautiful and reassuring, really how to put it. He's just incredibly confident that God loves you and will do whatever is necessary to rescue you and will find some way to somehow outweigh all the horrific stuff we see all around us. So I was basically having this later, maybe to cutely compare it to coming out, because it was kind of a falling in love experience, except that the woman in this case was the bride of Christ.

Speaker 1: 42:51

That's great.

Speaker 3: 42:54

And I was increasingly drawn in and ended up becoming Catholic, getting baptized and confirmed at Easter of 1998. I was out to everybody. I did not have any real sense of how the church's sexual ethic would affect my future. I didn't understand it, I didn't like it. I was asked for explanations of it and had been given explanations that range from interesting but not persuasive, or even beautiful but not persuasive to straight up like no, that's wrong, that's definitely bad.

Speaker 3: 43:35

And yet you know, I didn't really, I think because I was coming in from the outside. On some level I really did perceive my choice as be Catholic and do the Catholic things or don't be Catholic. I know that it's different if you grow up in it and your negotiation and you're coming to terms with all that often does not feel quite like that, because you start from a place of childhood faith and then you have to kind of build from that. But for me it felt at the time like there was a sort of outside object or a doorway and it was up to me whether I went through the doorway and I kind of just had to say, well, do you trust the church on this question, even if you don't understand it and don't want it, and I really wanted the Eucharist.

Speaker 3: 44:28

So I said to myself okay, I think I do, I think I do trust the church on this. I went through the doorway, got baptized, etc. And then basically have spent the entire what is that now? 25 plus years since then, kind of working out what that meant, what the actual possible futures are for somebody who goes through that doorway, what the good futures are, which is you know, which I think is not the question that a lot of our churches are really encouraging gay people to ask, even when they're trying very hard to be pastoral, they're not really thinking in terms of what are the possible? If you end up buying what we're saying, what does your future look like? And that's basically the work that I've been doing in writing and now in a nonprofit called Building Catholic Futures ever since. That was an incredibly long minute but I hope at least somewhat interesting sense of sort of like where I'm coming from.

Speaker 2: 45:37

That's perfect, because that's also what I think one of the things that we want to be able to kind of bear witness to, especially in this series. So, given what we believe to be the Christian sexual ethic that is often at least when I think of how the gay folks I know immediately kind of interact with that ethic is okay. Well, this seems like it's a fundamentally restrictive, like that. It's a fundamentally restrictive message, because that's the only context in which it's been narrated in terms of don't do these things, don't live in this way, and there hasn't been as much of the kind of necessarily creative work of thinking through hey, but no, like what are the kinds of relationships that God is not only calling us into but are actually more beautiful than anything we could ever imagine?

Speaker 2: 46:40

And this is one of the reasons why we wanted to kind of especially talk to you about how we ought to understand friendship, because this is one of these things that is, I think, largely under, I think especially in I'll say especially in Protestant Christian circles, but it's remarkably under theorized and also undervalued. I mean, I think about this especially. I mean we look at, I mean I think, for example, the statistics of men. Men don't have a lot of close friends and that's an issue I mean I love, I mean Slim's one of my best friends, one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast but those are relationships that are, I think, not only kind of necessary to human flourishing, but there are also things that I think remains kind of woefully under theorized. We're hoping that part of this conversation can be kind of working out some of those things, but especially in the context of hey, like what does it mean for us to invest in, especially the flourishing of our game, lesbian brothers and sisters specifically?

Speaker 1: 48:15

So, given that what you're a lot of your writing kind of the concept of spiritual friendship, it seems to be central to your work. Can you explain what it means and why that's important in this context?

Speaker 3: 48:32

Sure. So let me think how I want to do this. So the book spiritual friendship, where the term comes from right or at least I don't, I apologize on getting this somewhat wrong where I found the term, yeah Is the dialogues on spiritual friendship by medieval Cistercian monk, elred of Rivault English monk, welsh, I believe, in origin and these are dialogues that are coming that are really fascinating, mix of ancient understanding of friendship that would be familiar to people in red, aristotle and very specifically Christian. And what's fascinating in those dialogues? If you read them now, a whole lot of things to me kind of leap out at you, including how much friendship shapes Elred's practical daily life and also his spiritual life.

Speaker 3: 49:46

In terms of his life in the monastery, a lot of what he's doing is managing the need of the monks for his friendship. So his, their abbot. He's again if I get anything in the terms wrong, I apologize he's the head of the monastery, he's responsible for the care of all of them and yet, also as a human being, they all want his time and there are some that he is particularly resonating with and truly having that kind of soulmate friendship with, especially among people named Ivo. You can argue that, as with a lot of our great writing about friendship, spiritual friendship, is a memorial work. It's a tribute to Ivo after his death, and he's simultaneously very aware of that. He can't, as a monk, give all his time to this one monk. It's just to Ivo. He has responsibilities to everyone and they get hilariously jealous of him.

Speaker 3: 50:57

There's this to me perfect moment where he records or not records. I mean, he made this. You know he. This is all fiction essentially, but I assume based on a real event or based on the realities of the situation. He has a real monk. Walter scold him for scold a third party for taking up too much of his time, and the integration has had enough of you already. It's my turn, and you know, and even within that he finds a way to really convey to you the deep intimacy and love that he had with Ivo. It's very reminiscent to me of Jesus, who is obviously the friend of all the disciples, male and female, and then also has that especially intimate friendship with John, the beloved disciple, and it that becomes, you know, when you're not actually personally you know the son of God. I think it becomes harder to manage that on an emotional level and you do see already working through some of that stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 51:57

And on the spiritual level, he shows you friendship as the way that God loves us and the way that we can love God, and, specifically, friendship as a site of sacrifice. He uses it. There's a beautiful passage where he explores the love of David and Jonathan and the covenant that they make together, and it focuses pretty tightly on Jonathan's willingness to sacrifice for David and you. It was the first time that I really considered him, jonathan, as a Christ figure, someone who gives up his royal place and in some sense, you know, takes the form of a slave, takes the form of a shepherd, in order to for the shepherd to become king, to be exalted. So it's a way of thinking about friendship that has the theological richness and depth that I think we are more used today to hearing in a context of the love of a parent for a child or spouse of love.

Speaker 3: 53:00

I think you're a lot more likely to hear someone fairly casually referred to marriage as an image of God's love for us, or certainly parental love. And you know, I think I think about this. When I was first really exploring the stuff, it really struck me that Jesus says greater love has no man than this to lay down his life for his friends and I was like but if you walked around the street and just ask people what is the greatest love, to lay down your life for, your like blank, I think most people will go with child, maybe parent or spouse, but essentially nobody would say friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 53:41

Jesus does and Elred's work is really this very kind of personal, very practical look at what it would mean to live as if your friendships could be the site of sacrificial love that mirrored the love of Christ for humankind and for your own soul. So that's a kind of like you know that's a medieval monk talking about medieval monk things in a book on paper.

Speaker 3: 54:14

But it's in a certain way kind of like a crystallization or encapsulation of something that plays out in a lot of different contexts, of the possibility of a friendship that is much greater than any friendship that we know how to publicly recognize today. And I think we keep noticing that these soulmate friendships exist and arise still to this day and we try to come up with ways of talking about it by inventing terms like bromance right, because we know that there's some, that some people and this is interestingly regardless of sexual orientation some people find that person of the same sex who just is like their other half, who just kind of their heart sings like they open their hearts to this person. We could talk for hours, you know this person, I could tell anything which is one of Elred's criteria for friendship is that deep openness and honesty and transparency. And yet at right now it's very difficult to recognize that kind of love outside the context of sex or romance. And that means that if you all, you know how to put this, one way that gay people begin coming out to ourselves is realizing I want to spend my life with someone of the same sex.

Speaker 3: 55:55

I, you know there's a deep, intense longing that you know, I would say pretty much always includes sexual desire, if you bother coming out as gay, but isn't restricted to that and has also like a deep element of longing for love and intimacy. And if you don't know what to do with that, if you don't have any sense of how can that be lived well as a Christian, then it becomes pretty devastating because it's no longer just about making sacrifices in your sexual life, which, if you're, you know like I think the Catholic sexual ethic is notoriously restrictive to everybody and everybody struggles very hard with it and you can hear married couples telling you about their struggles with you know, contraception versus natural family planning and not not being able to use IVF in the situations of infertility, and a lot of other things that are genuinely like, clearly very hard for people. But now, if you don't have a model for what you might call ordered same sex love, same sex love that is equally life shaping and devoted and rich, now this whole part of yourself that you know is real and exists begins to be seen as distorted, damaged, sinful, bad for you and that becomes a much harder thing to believe is true, which creates a kind of real internal cognitive dissonance and also, like it really damages your view of yourself, right, if you know this to be a form of love and you know that God is love and that God made you in his image to love and be loved. Now, suddenly, all those relationships with yourself, with God, with other people, begin to be really distorted and you begin to question kind of like, do these people who are trying to shepherd me actually know anything about love at all? So I would say it's like the question of what can the proper role of friendship be in the life of a Christian at its highest is really important to everyone, because anybody again regardless of sexual orientation, might be called by God to this kind of soulmate relationship with a person, with another person as a friend. But for gay people it's especially pressing because many of us because we have to find some way of understanding the longing for love that we have known from the beginning was a part of our orientation.

Speaker 3: 58:33

I don't want to go too far on this. I don't want to say, like the real thing, that you know if you're gay, that just means you're really called to friendship. I don't think it's quite. God doesn't really do it that way and everybody's experience is very different and it won't necessarily resonate for them, but I will say that having those models of life-shaping love between two people of the same sex really can shift your idea of what is my orientation, trying to tell me Is there anything to be learned here? Is it purely temptation to sexual sin? If so, why is this like that? And heterosexuality isn't like that? Or is there some good thing that could be here in my longings as well?

Speaker 1: 59:19

Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2: 59:23

We're gonna. I really want us to get into that. I also have a question. This is a normal list, but it's still just weird. We're gonna keep this going. Why is it so hard, I think, for us to disentangle an understanding of love from sex and romance? Why is that? I feel like we all know that it's really, really hard. Why is it so hard to help me?

Speaker 3: 59:56

I mean, I don't know Answers I have heard people give that seem plausible. In part are economic changes and that's obviously gonna be a kind of self-reinforcing vicious cycle.

Speaker 1: 1:00:11

You're speaking about this language here. He's like oh interesting, sorry, there's a.

Speaker 2: 1:00:15

We have a joke on the podcast. There's a timer for how long it takes for me to mention political economy. So you did it. That's beautiful. He was like, oh, interesting pattern going down.

Speaker 1: 1:00:26

I didn't know that. I was just asked the question.

Speaker 2: 1:00:29

We'll see where it goes. But please, please, please, please, please keep going.

Speaker 3: 1:00:40

Basically, as the economy begins to rely more heavily on people moving out of traditional rural society and into cities and being more socially mobile and generally economically mobile, it becomes very pressing who are the people you take with you and we see that in America today.

Speaker 3: 1:00:58

Right, if you get a job in a city far away from the people you love, if you have a spouse, your spouse will almost certainly come with you, and if they don't, everyone will understand that that's very hard and will sort of try to support you as you maintain that relationship over the long distance and expect it to be temporary. But if you move away from your friends, that's just sad and you'll try to zoom with them. And that becomes again self-reinforcing, because then a lot of economic and political institutions are set up to assume that the nuclear family is the family that you have. And when people are, like you know, agitating and organizing for benefits for families, they are going to be thinking in terms of those relationships and it becomes harder to think of it in terms of a family of choice. So that's one that strikes me as plausible, all these general. This is why it's so simultaneously important and kind of funny to have the political economy timer, because you really can do it with everything. Oh.

Speaker 1: 1:02:08

Malcolm's loving this. I didn't plan this?

Speaker 2: 1:02:15

I'm just asking questions.

Speaker 3: 1:02:21

And then two there are various stories you can tell about the Reformation. I don't consider myself an expert in them, but the Reformation simultaneously makes celibacy more problematic in basically every context that it happens in. I think that's sort of uncontroversial and also specifically, at least in the Lutheran influenced context. I know Luther himself writes very beautifully about married love, spousal and parental love, and makes that more central to the idea of who the Christian is in a way that's genuinely radical and that would have felt very foreign to say someone from the time of Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. There are things in there that I think, again, a lot of his writing about that is very beautiful and he's sort of onto something in terms of that beauty, but it comes at the expense of his intense antipathy towards celibacy and toward non-married ways of life. And that's coming directly from his own experience, of course, and I think that that's got to be part of the story as well.

Speaker 4: 1:03:37

That, if you Let me, think how to put it that that is not the right way, but that's what I think that would be very Matt expanding about.

Speaker 3: 1:03:48

he talks about religion, not just the basic general mention of religion, which I If you already see married love as one way among others, not even the best way it's sort of a thing that Christians do and we're going to try to manage it as best we can Then I think it is and again I'm not actually saying that that's the ideal way to see the love between spouses, but it does leave a lot of room out there for people who are not living that way. It makes sense then to look at the other relationships that they might have. There's a whereas if married love is the normative path, then it becomes easier for it to become a sort of the only path in a lot of ways. Right.

Speaker 3: 1:04:40

Yeah. That's so. Those are the two main stories that people tell, and I don't know to what extent either of them really fully explains a pretty huge sea change. The reason I mentioned the economic transition first is that you can watch this transition happen as nations that did not go through the Reformation go through the transition to modernity. I think.

Speaker 2: 1:05:06

Russia is a good example. This is one of the things that I also blame the Reformation for, in the sense that it comes off, and this is something that Beth Bar and others have talked about in the sense that it also cuts off spiritual options, especially for women, where, at least in some of these contexts, convents are no longer an option and just the ideal spiritual life, especially for a woman, is as wife, and that's also that gets to be more socially restrictive and all those kinds of things. But yeah, there's like a swinging of a pendulum from singleness and celibacy essentially being the spiritual ideal to actually no marriage is the spiritual ideal and you get people, I think, kind of eaten up through that process.

Speaker 2: 1:06:20

But that's helpful, I mean just for me, as I think about both the economic and in some ways kind of theological things that can lead to that growing inability, I think, for a lot of us, to extract sex and romance from this broader category of love.

Speaker 1: 1:06:41

And so you painted. Maybe some of the reasons that it's hard is we've elevated some other loves marital love or familial loves and so it kind of lessens friendship love. I'm curious, do you have categories, or are there written categories to friendship love? When I was a kid you had a best friend and it was one person that was your best friend. But now kids these days- Kids these days man.

Speaker 1: 1:07:13

Best friends is a status level and you might have 10 best friends, what's doesn't make sense logically, but they're in that status of best friend. Is there, theologically, maybe a way of describing that? Like people that you're like, these are the people I would die for and then these are like my acquaintances. Is there a way of thinking of it that way?

Speaker 3: 1:07:33

I think so, I would say in terms of what's existed in the past. That makes sense to me. There's the whole. It might be three parts, and the only two parts I remember are carnal and spiritual. But there's the whole distinction between carnal and spiritual friendship and again, I should have read up on this again before coming on. But again, there may be a third category that I'm missing here. That would be like a sort of subcategory of what I'm going to call carnal friendship. But carnal friendship is basically you have reasons that you want to be with a friend. It could be reasons of status, it could be, and that was historically a lot more true than it is now. It could be reasons, but I guess now we would in fact talk about networking as something like that making connections would be a form of carnal friendship.

Speaker 3: 1:08:20

It could be that you share vices, it could even be that you just like hanging out with them, you'd like to crosswords together or whatever, but you don't go D and then the spiritual friend would be the person who to use language that again, we're really used to hearing about marriage is the person who's helping you get to heaven, the person where that friendship becomes, the two of you journeying together in Christ.

Speaker 3: 1:08:48

So that's one way of thinking about a hierarchy and in that understanding you could certainly have multiple spiritual friends, as Elrond himself clearly did. Within the traditions of publicly recognized friendship, the East and the West kind of divide in how they think about things. From fairly early on, from prior to the great schism, I think the West develops a tradition that is much more centered on the model something familiar to the model of Jonathan and David who make a covenant. That's just the two of them, as far as we know. They do not do that with anybody else. They marry. David famously has all kinds of things going on with women, but he does not have another friend like Jonathan, and vice versa, and that actually held true in the West as long as our understanding of publicly recognized friendship really lasted, where people did things like wedded brotherhood which is one of the terms that people used or vowed friendship.

Speaker 3: 1:10:01

As far as I can tell, it seems to have exclusively and again I apologize if there's been better scholarship or I'm forgetting stuff. You would have one, you would have the other. Usually in the records we have it's two men that, maybe because they left more records, their lives were more recorded, maybe because it's often about uniting households and families and they were the ones who had the power to make that decision. But you would have the friend who you entrusted with your home, your finances, care for your children. If you died, various religious obligations, if you died again to pray for your soul, to have masses said for your soul. Similarly, for a long time, hermits. One of the things that fascinated me as I began reading this like Saint of the Day calendar thing is that you find all these days where one of the saints for that day was a hermit and you'd be reading along like oh, this hermit went off in the woods to pray and be with God with his friend blah blah and you're like so how is he a hermit?

Speaker 3: 1:11:02

And it turns out that this is actually sort of normal Most people who were hermits were not actually totally.

Speaker 4: 1:11:08

I don't know if it's lots of people, not totally, I'd say they would have someone who was again sort of like their co-journier on this.

Speaker 3: 1:11:19

In Eastern Christianity, the model that was used was more brotherhood and sisterhood, and so models of adoptive brotherhood, where you could choose someone to be your brother as recognized in the eyes of God. Those models tended to come out of monastic life, unsurprisingly.

Speaker 3: 1:11:39

I guess, have more involvement from the hierarchy of the church. I believe it was a lot. I don't think the Western traditions really ever incorporated a blessing from a priest or anything of that kind, whereas the Eastern ones often did. You could have multiple people involved and there could even be a union of man and woman as brother and sister. All of these traditions, as all the different ways that we try to love each other, had their problems. And if you're thinking to yourself, gosh, I don't know about that. You know, having a vowed relationship with a woman who's not your wife, I don't know about that. Like, yes, you have accurately predicted some of the stuff that will come up, but it's you know, but those are kind of categories and ways that people have tried to think about.

Speaker 3: 1:12:28

How do I love someone in a way that is neither they're my brother in Christ, the way everyone is, nor they're my spouse? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:12:40

Yeah, this is good. We need to take a very quick break, but we will be back in just a minute.

Speaker 1: 1:12:49

All right, Sorry for the brief intermission. That break is brought to you by our sponsors. Yeah, like you know, Pfizer.

Speaker 2: 1:13:03

Yeah, would have ads in that section if we were out here doing this podcast for money. So let's get back to our conversation. So one of the things that came out of our conversation with Nate a few weeks ago was I think there are a number of things that we put in the marriage-only box that don't need to be restricted to the marriage-only box. There are things that are in that marriage-only box I'm thinking about sex especially but there are things that are in that marriage-only box that need to be there. But I think there are also things that just fit into the human intimacy box, things that are kind of just necessary to our foreshadowing and things that ought to be elements of our friendship. Can you help us disentangle that?

Speaker 3: 1:14:01

a little bit Sure. Yeah, I think that's something that I noticed a while back and that I was trying to find language for what I was talking about that people wouldn't read as a euphemism for sex. So I would say, you know, like I have a longing to love another woman, I have a longing for intimacy with another woman, and all these words were treated as sort of like an algebra problem where X always equals X, Whatever good thing is put in X. And ultimately I was like, okay, no, that's the problem, right, it's not.

Speaker 3: 1:14:37

You know, it's that we have, for a lot of reasons, used a lot of these words as euphemisms for sex and tried to I'm not trying to found that the surest and often only place that we can find that kind of shared life, devotion, commitment, these are other words that I've tried that people have reacted as if I had said sex is in sex and marriage, and I, you know, I obviously fully agree that there are things that are only within marriage and there are kinds of you know, I think how to put this for individual married people also.

Speaker 3: 1:15:40

So there's like a cultural category or religious category of things that are only for marriage, and then there's also an individual category of things that are only for our marriage and that can be. You know, I think people's experiences of that category can sometimes color how they relate to other people's ways of articulating and talking about their needs. So a really obvious example of this is kind of like do you tell your spouse everything that your best friend tells you and vice versa, or are there certain things that are always gonna be within kind of the private sphere of the two of you? And, honestly, depending on the relationship, I think I've seen both of those answers be the right one.

Speaker 3: 1:16:26

But, there are times when you really are gonna need to be able to tell your girlfriends, as they say, everything, and there are times when you really are. You know, there are relationships, there are marriages, where part of what makes them work is that preservation of a space that is just us, where no one will ever know what happens in that black box. But I think that to me, then, is not really a reason to be suspicious of the whole category of transparency and intimacy outside of marriage. I think that you can really see it with people who are not married. What are the things that they are longing for?

Speaker 3: 1:17:13

Some of them, you know, for a lot of people, obviously, sex is something that they want, and people will sometimes articulate the entirety of what they long for in terms of sex. I think, you know, the whole in-sale thing is kind of, as far as I can tell, misogynist way of talking about a life that is lacking in intimacy and reducing that to. There's no woman who I can use as, like, a sexual pest dispenser. But more sympathetically, I guess you know, like and like, I'm sympathetic to that too, even though not to the way it's expressed. But like the.

Speaker 3: 1:17:50

Thing at the core of that is incredibly human and it's in some ways Adam's loneliness, you know, of not having a help, me not having one who is like himself. And I guess I'll say two things to that. One is to kind of deepen it by saying there's a movie notes on a scandal that's about. Well, it's a very sad movie about a very sad woman who's been alone for a very long time and has made her very messed up. And one of the things that she says at a certain point in the movie she tells a story of I think it's a bus driver I forget what the situation is, but she's like handing her ticket to the bus driver, I think and she touches the person's hand and it's the first time another human being has touched her physically in like decades or whatever, and it's overwhelming to her and she kind of can't handle this, both the sudden intimacy, the vulnerability, the thing that it reveals about her life and the thing that it feeds in her. Like we are mammals, you know, we need to be near the heat and warmth of another mammal and one who is like us, and she hasn't had that. And it's the moment when you really it's like the walls fall down and you see into this life and I will say it's really important simultaneously to find a lot of ways for people to have intimacy and to have physical touch, like hugs and whatnot, and not be scared of each other's bodies. You know Not, these men don't have to stand 50 feet apart at all times. You know they're not. You guys, I think, are not actually cactuses, but also it is really.

Speaker 3: 1:19:41

There is a core level at which, if you don't have that deep underlying certainty that Jesus is actually your friend and is actually one like you who can meet that need, you're probably gonna end up resentful and envious and trapped in a lot of ways. That there has to be a kind of like we can talk about. This is actually something that comes up a lot. As I try to say, there are deeper models of friendship. There are ways that you can have a life that is completely shaped by friendship. You can make a covenant with your friend that can be your life partner.

Speaker 3: 1:20:16

But I don't want that to then say and those people are the winners, those people have found love. There are more ways for you to find love. But if you can't find that person, you're still out in the cold and there's no one who you can turn to, who truly knows what you're going through. I would always say there's probably someone in your life who you can find, who you can talk to and begin to sort of reach out to other people, who you can touch and feel and see.

Speaker 3: 1:20:48

But also there's a deep core level where it truly is only God that meets our loneliness, and that's the way that I will sometimes probably to easily put it is. It's true that Jesus is not gonna hold me at night, but also there's no normal human being in the world who could have gotten me sober Like only God could have done that. There are things and levels of loneliness and sorrow and kind of the term everyone kicks around is brokenness, that ultimately only God can touch and the ways that we, the moments when he works through other people, are very beautiful, but he can also work without those ways.

Speaker 1: 1:21:41

Yeah, that's so good. You can just hear the passion and the beauty even in your voice and just the care for this topic, and we're trying to figure out how to paint these better futures for us to all have. But we're in this context on LGBTQ, but for, let's say, we have people listening in now and they're going. Okay, I want that. I want that type of friendship. What advice, practical advice, do you give to someone who wants to go? One maybe, like how do I choose who to go deep with? And then how do I go deeper to get away from the surface level talk about sports or whatever hobbies to deeper life, you know, like deep, good, good friendships that are willing to, as you talked about, like giving your kids over to when you die and things like that.

Speaker 3: 1:22:43

Yeah, on one level I almost I want to start answering by kind of saying this is not a question with an answer, by saying that there are two contradictory answers. That both makes some sense to me. Ailbert is very much like you should test your friends. He actually like proposes particular tests that you can give them without their knowledge, like you tell them a thing that you say and you say don't spread this around. And if they spread it around, you don't tell them more things and they're not your friend. To me this is simultaneously like insightful, especially because of his deep belief in transparency as a core aspect of friendship, and also kind of creepy and I'm a little like okay, but I won't do that. So now what? And a lot of the people who do talk about spiritual friendship and friendships that are in some way sanctifying or based on virtue will say well, you find a virtuous person and you become that person's friend.

Speaker 3: 1:23:46

But there's a novelist, dan Barden, who wrote a very fun noir novel called the Next Right Thing. That's set in recovery community and he himself is in recovery, is in 12 step recovery, and he really gets that from the inside. And when he talks about the role of friendship in that book he says well, the way that alcoholics and almost started, was Bill Wilson going to the hospital, I think, in the place where he was, and saying I wanna talk to the worst drunk here. I wanna find the worst person, because that's the person that I will relate to and that in many ways there's that kind of transformation of meeting in one's brokenness that can become then sanctifying, that can become kind of like these are people you don't really need to hide anything from because they also have had sketchy, messed up lives. They will. There is no need for a facade.

Speaker 3: 1:24:53

Is this really how an actual individual 12 step meeting or encounter with a particular person in recovery will go?

Speaker 3: 1:24:59

Obviously not always, but it's a totally different idea, of sort of like, how do you pick friends? And that makes me and the fact that that also seems to work real well makes me somewhat question the project of figuring out how, in terms of practical, real advice for people who are like, yes, but I'm 30, I'm not in school anymore, but I have a lot of ideas. I for a long time I would beat up on CS Lewis's whole thing in the four loves about how married people look at each other and friends look outward at a common project and I was like this is ridiculous, like I'm sorry that you're English or whatever, but married people are allowed to look at their children and have that as their common project, and you know, and friends are allowed to look at each other and love one another and to like be there for each other as human beings. But in terms of how to find a friend, I actually think that's not a bad Way of thinking about it.

Speaker 2: 1:25:57

Is the U2 moment, find a common project.

Speaker 1: 1:25:59

Isn't that the U2 moment of like. Oh, you too like this, this band. I don't think CS Lewis talked about a band.

Speaker 3: 1:26:09

From U2, in fact the band yeah, you as well.

Speaker 2: 1:26:14

Thank you the you as well moment. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:26:20

You know, the way that I personally have most often found friends has been actually to be involved in a common project, in part because you have to care enough about the common project so that when it is hard to be around the person, you stick it out for the sake of the project. And it's by doing that that you get to see them in a lot of different seasons and become friends with them. So I would basically say, like what's the thing that you would do, even if you wouldn't make a friend from it? Go and do that and get to know the other people who are equally passionate about it.

Speaker 2: 1:26:55

So, as we think about yeah, because we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll wrap up soon as Slim and I think about caring for and pastoring a congregation where we want to both deepen people's relationships with the Lord as well as deepening the relationships with one another, I think one of the one of the significant witnesses, witnesses of the church is hey, like people can actually, people can actually live lives of deep of, of deep solidarity and deep and deep friendship, because this is actually the way in which the Lord has called us to live. And so, so, with that, so with that in mind, like what, how, what's what, some, what's some practical advice that you could have for you, get out for us, and being in, being in, in, in attempting to kind of create those opportunities, those and those and those spaces and those spaces for folks.

Speaker 3: 1:27:54

I mean, I sort of have three, I think, off the top of my head. One is just really noticing the relationships of friendship and chosen family and sort of like the more hidden or unnoticed loves that people are experiencing, and find ways to honor them. If you know enough about the people at your church to know when one of them has a best friend in the hospital, you know, maybe send a casserole over the same way that you would do if it was a spouse, sort of start thinking those terms of what do we do for people when they're struggling in their marriages? Okay, how can we look and meet that same kind of suffering? People in friendships are chosen family or you know other like that means getting to know them, inviting that, you know, saying this is a thing that we want to do on a quasi theological level.

Speaker 3: 1:28:52

I do not know what you all's general practices in terms of blessing but, like certainly in the Catholic Church, we bless every darn thing, like we bless throats on St Blaise Day.

Speaker 3: 1:29:03

I went to blessing of pets on St Francis's Feast Day this year, got our cats blessed and we got our cats blessed and one of them bit a kid.

Speaker 3: 1:29:22

Oh, a blessing of friends, you know, on Mother's Day a lot of churches will say if anybody here is a mother or plays the role of a mother in someone's life, can you stand up and we'll do a blessing on Father's Day. Similarly, you could easily pick a day to be the day that you do that with friends and you can even tell people. Next week we're going to be doing a blessing for friends. If you have a friend who doesn't come to this church anyway, why don't you bring them then and we can bless that friendship. The third thing is knowing the people in your community who are living in different vocations, who are living lives of service, who are living lives in intentional communities which we didn't really talk about in these deep friendships, and have a kind of like role of dex, so that they can be mentors to others who are interested in those ways of life. That, I think, is again something that we kind of know how to do when it comes to marriage and family and haven't quite thought to do with other ways.

Speaker 1: 1:30:24

That's good.

Speaker 1: 1:30:25

I think I just love your writing on this and I just think, but also your passion talking about this, because I think this is something that is so desperately needed and that we in our society as you said, just like in, whether the political economy or just our society if someone moves away, we're like that's just the way it is.

Speaker 1: 1:30:45

We almost have conditioned ourselves to not want to be vulnerable with anyone, because we were like, well, is this friendship going to last? So then we were wondering why we're all so lonely, because we've not actually put ourselves in a position to actually have those deeper friendships and yet we desperately need them. I think when we do find someone like that, we go okay, this is different intimacy that we all need. I think the church can really learn from our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to this is something that is like you can lead us in. Would you say that the two books that I mentioned in the beginning one is more horizontal and one is more vertical, oh yeah, Well, I mean, I just think Tenderness is a better book.

Speaker 3: 1:31:38

It's less tightly tied to my own experience, but definitely gay and Catholic is much more about relationships with other people. Tenderness is very directly about your relationship with God, but on the subject of friendship, it is tenderness that goes deeper in the biblical models.

Speaker 1: 1:31:55

Yeah, that's so good.

Speaker 2: 1:31:57

Love it.

Speaker 1: 1:31:58

We will link both of those in our show episode notes because I think just some beautiful and just the title there of Tenderness, I think it's just. It is a very tender book and speaking love to people who, and to anyone, us who doubt God's love, just to feel, experience God's extravagant love For those who for a long time have been told to be rejected. What a gift that is. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3: 1:32:27

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:32:29

So we'll have you on again for our horror movie podcast Boom.

Speaker 2: 1:32:32

Yeah, sorry, the off-shoot, the off-shoot horror movie podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:32:36

Or episode? Yeah, sure, sure, the Holy Ghost. You know you can do this for like hours. Yeah, yeah, the Holy Ghost podcast. We already got the theme. You got that Okay. I'm sorry, I'm wasting our time Eve besides fighting your books and reading all those articles and movie reviews. Do you have an online life that people can follow and see what you're up to?

Speaker 3: 1:33:10

Honestly, I think the easiest way is I have a sub-stack. It's just eveteshnetsubstackcom. That's mostly short book reviews and sort of like, but it'll always link to my longer essays and more sort of substantive writing. The sub-stack is for fun stuff that I didn't think was really able to be published anywhere, but I will link to the other like real stuff that I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 1:33:32

That's good. That's good. Well, let me close with. When I was reading one of your books, you referenced Ecclesiastes 4 here, and I'll close with that. Ecclesiastes 4, 9 through 12,. 2 are better than 1 because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up, but pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one warm alone? The one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A quart of three strands is not quickly broken, and just the beautiful power of friendship there Our Lord sees, and that you are highlighting in your beautiful good work. So thank you so much, eve. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 1:34:17

All right, we'll talk to you later. Wow, it's a good time. She's just brilliant. You can tell she has been thinking about this stuff for a long time. She's done so much research history. I mean, it's just wild.

Speaker 2: 1:34:32

I was planning for it to be a podcast without political economy, but you know, yeah, she said it can show up anytime.

Speaker 1: 1:34:41

You lucked out.

Speaker 2: 1:34:45

Just be ready, be ready, that's great, all right, y'all.

Speaker 1: 1:34:50

Well, hey, this is the last episode that we have interview, but our next episode is going to be our questions and answers podcast about this whole subject. So if you have yet to shoot in a question, maybe something you can go back to listen to these episodes to spur it, go for it and you can shoot that in at hello at theologyandpiecescom. We know that there's some things that we're stirring up that you're going. Well, what about this, or how does this play out this way? We would love to talk through that some more. So next time on that, but you can still then write this question. Hello at theologybeautiescom. Find us on Instagram or Twitter.

Speaker 1: 1:35:25

As we always say, the best way to support this work is to give it a rating and review, and so if you haven't yet to do so, would you do both rate it, review it, and if you've already done that, would you share this episode with somebody. Thanks so much, y'all. We're delighted to be able to talk about spiritual friendship and futures. We will see you guys in two weeks. All right, see y'all, because I know you and you and your creativity, speaking, and people who live in this place are coming back. Thank you.