Season 1 Recap

Take a listen as I recap season 1 and share some insights about what the first season of Soul Sojourn has been like for me.  And I'll share a bit about what is to come with season 2 and when. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen today. The life of our soul is a journey with many twists and turns. This journey has times of discovery, growth, disruption, examination, perplexity, and harmony. Soul Sojourn is a podcast that plans to explore this journey of the soul; considering the different segments of the journey, the different stops we make along the way, and the divergent paths that we can take as unique people with distinctive life experiences. Soul Sojourn hopes to provide room for diverse expressions of faith and welcomes questions and doubts about the journey of the soul. It recognizes that so often there is mystery in life and faith, questions that have no answers, and deep levels of uncertainty and precarity that are present in our lives. I look forward to what is to come, what future stops we’ll take along the journey together. I’ll see you at the next stop.

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Transcript

Intro - The life of our soul is a journey with many twists and turns.  This journey has times of discovery, growth, disruption, examination, perplexity, and harmony.  Soul Sojourn is a podcast that is exploring this journey of the soul;  considering the different segments of the journey, the different stops we make along the way, and the divergent paths that we can take as unique people with distinctive life experiences.  Soul Sojourn hopes to provide room for diverse expressions of faith and welcomes questions and doubts about the journey of the soul.  It recognizes that so often there is mystery in life and faith, questions that have no answers, and deep levels of uncertainty and precarity that are present in our lives.  

Welcome - Hi there!  This is Jenn Pedersen and I’m so glad that you’ve joined me today for another episode of Soul Sojourn, the 12th and final episode of season 1.  Today I’m going to look back over this season of the podcast and reflect a bit on the journey so far and then share a little about what season 2 will look like and when that will be launching.  

Starting this podcast has been a very cathartic journey for me.  It’s given me an opportunity to process more deeply the journey of my own soul, my soul sojourn and consider many of the stops I’ve taken along the way.  We are all growing and evolving as people throughout our lives and taking time to consider how we have grown and changed can be a very beneficial process.  And at times it can be really hard as well.  As I’ve shared, I’m a big believer in counseling - but as a part of counseling you do spend a lot of time reflecting on your life and what has happened in the past and considering how you might want your future to be different and at times this opens up raw places in your soul that need some consideration and healing.  This has been the case of me as of late as I’ve become more honest with myself about the impact of life on my soul.  But just because these times are hard does not mean that we should not press through and do the work, because I believe that’s the only way that we get to the joy and flourishing that we desire on the other side.  

As I began this podcast journey I shared some of my journey of sojourn over 30-40 years as I grew up in a very conservative Christian setting and remained in those types of settings for 20 plus years, about the people in those spaces who were a positive influence in my life - my Grandmothers and Great Aunt Joyce - women who showed me strength, love, authenticity, and hospitality.  I can acknowledge that there were good things and people within the fundamentalist tradition I grew up and remained in for so long.  But I can also see the ways that the system crushed my soul and made me feel less than in my life as a woman with strong leadership potential and talents and gifts I wanted to share with the world and church, but was told that wasn’t really the right thing for me to do - that my main focus should be my husband and my children.  

In becoming a mother, the struggles continued as I lost myself in that role and as I wrestled with the implications of having two children with disabilities and what that really meant about my faith and my God.  I began questioning the theologies I’d been taught and researching and learning about alternative perspectives present in the world. I became passionate about marginalized people in our world and rejected the toxic theology of Calvinism and exclusion.  I began to understand that the interpretation that women are not allowed to lead in the church in the world, was just that - an interpretation and that there were Christian traditions that allowed and welcomed women as leaders and acknowledged the giftings that God has given many women to lead well, with passion and kindness and determination.

With this new understanding, I stepped into leadership roles in the church and was able to more fully express my potential and it felt great.  But as with most of life, setbacks can come and just as I was stepping into the fullness of my potential - I hit a major roadblock in my life and had to take a step back and reassess and rebuild.  Episodes 1 and 2 shared in greater detail this story of evolution and change and burnout and rebuilding.

In episode 3 I talked about the addiction to certainty that I see in fundamentalist circles - this deep desire to get it all figured out and convince themselves that they have all the right answers.  I understand this proclivity - living in the gray is difficult, it feels like shifting ground beneath our feet.  Our brains are actually wired to try to put things in separate categories - black or white, right or wrong.  But the reality is that life has so much gray.  And the certainty that many fundamentalists attach to their faith and their interpretation of the Bible and how that trickles down to so many areas of their lives is simply a form of lying to themselves, convincing themselves they have it all figured out when the truth is - life is complicated and messy and interpreting the Bible is super-duper difficult.  In this episode I talked about the Bible and the challenges of interpreting it correctly - trying to understand the mindset of the authors which was quite different from our 21st century empirically based one, and the culture of the day and how those factors play into what the text was actually intended to mean.  All of this is very challenging and it’s often more comfortable to just decide you have it all figured out, but the reality is we live in the gray, in the in-between place of life, not in certainty.

Recently a friend likened the challenges of Bible interpretation to the challenges we have today in interpreting news and information we receive as reliable and trustworthy.  I thought this was an interesting way to think about things.  Trying to figure out how to wade through all the information we receive in the age of the internet and instant news at our fingertips is very challenging and knowing that everyone come to offering us this information with their own biases is important to consider.  Interpreting the Bible has similar aspects of understanding the author and culture they were in and the culture of those they were writing to.  

In episode 4 I dove into the topic of free will and predestination and laid out some of the harmful theological perspectives that I find within hyper Calvinism.  The core foundation of hyper Calvinism is the belief in utter depravity which teaches us that we can’t rust our inner voice because we are utterly sinful in ourselves.  They say we should look outside ourselves to determine truth - to look to other teachers who have somehow overcome their utter depravity and found a way to interpret the Bible correctly.  Now if you really sit down and ask who these trusted “interpreters” are - they are predominantly older white men from the past 100 years who have somehow magically figured it all out and have it all right.  Additionally I talked about the calvinist view of unconditional election - the belief that God chooses who to have relationship and who God will condemn to hell and that we have not say in this, everything is predetermined.  As I came out of the fundamentalist world and considered the theology of hyper-calvinism I began to question these ideas significantly.  The God I have experienced, who has walked with me through years of heartache and joy - my God has pursued me with love, grace, compassion, mercy, comfort and did I say love.  And the God I know is a God who mourns with the hurting and doesn’t seek to bring harm and hell to people - the divine presence in my life wants flourishing and joy and spaciousness for all.  Calvanism is just another system of certainty that many are clinging to to give them the black and white, the right and wrong catagories that their brains are desiring.  In the past few decades our country has moved further to the extremes and our religions have as well.  My husband and I often talk about the churches we grew up in and how these hyper-Calvinists topics were not stressed or perhaps even believed by many in those churches at that time, but they are increasingly stressed and believe in the denomination we grew up in.  The denomination has had conferences focused completely on Calvinism and the 5 points of calvinism - which are more extreme theologies in the past 15 years.  It saddens us to see the churches we loved and were brought up in move in this direction along with moving to restrict women’s roles in the church to a greater extent as well.  Both my grandma and my husband’s mom taught mixed gender adult Sunday school classes while we were growing up and that is no longer allowed in this denomination.  As with many things in our culture they are just moving in the wrong direction.

Episode 5 was a fun one with my first co-host in my husband Mike.  Mike and I talked about a lot of interesting topics in this episode entitled “Gender Straightjackets”.  We talked about the gender wage gap which is still too wide, we talked about division of labor in the home the gap present there.  We talked about mental load - something that comes up a lot in our marriage.  We talked about the fact that we have yet to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment some 100 years after it was first introduced.  We talked about the inequality in women’s healthcare and the propensity of physicians over the centuries to discount legitimate healthcare concerns women present with as psychological issues.  We shared about the macho man narrative of toxic masculinity in our culture and how that reinforces patriarchal/misogynistic views and is harmful to men as well as women.  We talked about the fact that the law in our country still largely doesn’t not do a good job of holding men accountable for acting violently toward women and how many states allow for criminal sexual conduct within marriage without penalty.  

We shared how the stark gender roles that we were told we had to fit ourselves within did not suit us well as individuals and did not help us to build a strong and healthy marriage over the years.  Our title for this episode was taken from a quote by Brene Brown which says “Feminism is not just about equality for women, but also about fighting to liberate both men and women from our gender straightjackets.”

In episode 6, entitled “#Blessed”, I talked about the issue of toxic positivity in our culture at large and specifically within conservative Christianity.  In our culture at large we are pretty uncomfortable with expressing sorrow and negative emotions and within the conservative Church this is only amplified because of the narrative of attributing all things in life to the category of a blessing of God.  Even in the hard times, we’re supposed to find the silver lining, find the blessing or lessons within the trials that you’re experiencing.  Sustaining this positive mindset constantly and not being able to honestly share how crappy life is when hard things happen - when friends pass away too young, when children are diagnosed with disabilities, when loved ones get cancer or parkinson’s or MS or dementia.  This tyranny of positivity as psychologist Susan David calls it - crushes our souls as we have to work so hard to put on a happy face and have few safe places to express our grief and sorrow.  This toxic positivity is so unhelpful in life - there’s so much to grieve all around us in life - the news of natural disasters and wars near and far, the instability of governments, the illnesses, diseases and disabilities of family and friends, the economic challenges that so many face, the lack of care and concern for others that so many exhibit, the tough jobs and tough marriages and tough days and years of parenting.  Discounting the hard things in life takes a toll on our physical and emotional wellbeing and perhaps the discounting of the hard things in our culture is part of the reason so many are struggling with mental health issues. I know that this has certainly affected my own mental health at times and I’m trying to learn to acknowledge, grieve, and process the hard stuff on a more regular basis and I try to offer those in my life space to do the same. 

In episode 7 I welcomed my second co-host, my amazing daughter Isabella to join me for a talk about Systems of Oppression - a big passion of hers as a social worker and certainly a passion of mine as well.  Isabella offered a definition of systematic oppression from the National Equity Project which said this:  “Systemic oppression is systematic and has historical antecedents; it is the intentional disadvantaging of groups of people based on their identity while advantaging members of the dominant group, including in areas of gender, race, class, sexual orientation and language.”  She shared about how this ultimately means that there are aspects of our society designed to provide advantages to some people, and create obstacles and disadvantages for others.  We see this in income and wealth, in our laws and in mundane everyday examples.  Bella shared about the myth of meritocracy in our culture - this idea that everyone has an equal chance to succeed, a similar concept to the bootstrap theology I had spoken about in previous episodes.  This idea that if we all just work hard enough we all have equal chances to succeed which is statistically untrue.  Bella talked about intersectionality - the idea that the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination combine, overlap, and intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.  All the systems are deeply intertwined.  

And as I mainly sat and listened to my 25 year old daughter share from her heart about her passion to help build a more just and equitable society I felt a wave of pride wash over me.  Bella is an amazing young woman who is smart and articulate and beautiful inside and out and I was so honored in that moment to be her mom and her friend.  And I had the feeling of being so proud to have raised such an amazing kid, a feeling of wow - we did more than okay with this one.  Much of who Bella is at her core is of her own making - thankfully she has forged a very different path from the one I walked in my 20s.  She has found her way to authenticity and trusting her inner voice much younger than I did and I’m so proud of her for that.  She is not willing to be anything less than the amazing, big personality that she was born to be, she’s not willing to put herself in a box and make herself smaller - thankfully she didn’t get that same message in her upbringing that I did - or she just rejected it sooner.  Recently we were at Dinner and Dialogue together, Bella attends regularly, and we were talking about the challenges that women face in the world - how we’re told we are too much.  Bella said her attitude is “If I’m too much for you, you can go find something less.”  I love that and am adopting that attitude as well.

In episode 8, my friend Martha came on to talk about her experience of growing up in a liberal Christian setting.  Martha is a new friend who I’ve just gotten to know in the past 6 months.  Martha has had a big life, with a big career and I hope to have her on to talk about that in the future, but for this episode we focused on her experience of growing up as the daughter of a very liberal pastor who was an activist during the 1960’s and committed to issues such as civil rights, women’s rights, poverty and environment.  Martha shared the term progressive is a newer term that wasn’t used during her years as a young women and that being liberal for her activist Christianfamily meant being for education, civil rights and social services; having a tinge of anti-business.  There were a number of pastors in her extended family and they all served in liberal church contexts.  A powerful story Martha shared was of her father responding to her doubts about believing in God or anything by asking “Do you you believe any baby that is born deserves the same opportunity as any other baby?  If so that’s enough.  That shapes how you see the world.”  What a wonderful basis for a faith and Martha has lived this out in her life in various ways and continues to do so.  In the tradition Martha grew up in she doesn’t ever remember being told she was sinful, but instead told that she was a child of God.  And she also shared that faith was a much more communal than a personal thing in the tradition she grew up.  Martha continues to believe that doing things collectively together with other people of faith is so imperative.

In episode 9 I dove further into the topic of intuition and authenticity, topics I had briefly touched on in several of the previous episodes.  In this episode I shared some more of my journey of learning to trust my intuition, my inner voice with greater clarity and let go of the shoulds in life.  I shared excerpts from Parker Palmer’s wonderful book “A Hidden Wholeness:  The Journey Toward an Undivided Life”.  In this book Palmer writes about the blizzard of the soul we often find ourselves in which can lead us to feel that we have been separated from our own souls, but in reality we will always find our way back home to our own soul.  I shared how I had been wandering in a blizzard for a long while and how I am finding my soul again, I’m coming into a spacious place of living and faith and existence where I am unwilling to be anything but my absolutely authentic self.  But as Palmer also writes about, choosing wholeness and authenticity is risky business - tis makes us vulnerable in ways we would rather avoid.  And yet I believe it is absolutely essential in order to live a full and joyful life.  For so many years I tried to fit myself into a mold that I didn’t fit within and I did not live in a place of authenticity and as a result I could not embrace wholeness in my life.  I’m moving toward a place of greater and greater wholeness in my life and I agree with Palmer’s assertion that it is risky.  I’ve found it to be exhilarating and wonderful and life-giving and extremely challenging and filled with sorrow and grief as I’m letting go of people and ways of viewing the world that no longer serve me well.  I’m working to uncover the seed of self that Palmer talks of - the spiritual DNA of my own uniqueness that was encoded within me from birth - one that I abandoned for many years.  This work is good and fulfilling and hard damn work all at the same time.  Finding your authentic soul self is a lifelong journey that will never truly be complete and I’m thankful to be more fully on that journey during this season of my life.

Finally in episodes 10 & 11, my new dear friend Donna Haff-Grambau joined me to talk feminism.  Donna is another phenomenal friend who has come into my life in the past few months and has been such a gift to me.  Donna was an activist in the 2nd wave of feminism movement in the 1960s and has been an advocate for bringing women’s voices to the forefront her whole life.  Donna lived in Boston in the 1960s and 70s and was part of the Boston Women’s Health Collective which wrote the groundbreaking book “Our Bodies Our Selves” - the first book to talk comprehensively and openly about women’s health and sexuality.  Just before I met Donna I had become familiar with this book.  Donna shared about her feminist awakening as a teenager and about the misogyny she experienced growing up as a young girl and as she went off to college at the University of Michigan.  She went off to college thinking that would a place that would welcome her fully as a women with smarts and beauty, but faced discrimination and commonly came up against the notion that if you are an intelligent woman you are not attractive.  We talked about the challenge of being true to ourselves as we grow and evolve all the while working within the system to bring about change.  We talked about child protection and domestic abuse laws that were enacted in the 1960s and yet how far we still have to go with this.  Donna shared the idea from Sheila Firestone in Sexual Politics that “The personal is actually political”  The longstanding power structures within our culture have largely been institutionalized and will take much work and many years to dismantle, but we must keep working toward this goal.  Donna shared about the challenges that occur between women as we try to move forward toward greater equality and about the importance of realizing the power of sisterhood; the power of the connection between women because of our shared experiences.  

And that brings us today.  This first season of Soul Sojourn has been an amazing experience for me.  I’ve been able to pour my heart out in new ways and process parts of my journey in ways I had not before.  This season has been so cathartic and energizing for me as I began this project and am journeying toward a more whole and authentic me.  A longtime friend who lives far away told me she’s not totally sure what I mean when I say I’m a very different person because she doesn’t see me regularly.  And perhaps I don’t seem so different on the outside.  I still do a lot of the same things I did before - I am a musician who sings in choirs and leads worship regularly and is starting a new jazz/Broadways band and teaches music lessons, I am a wife and mom who takes care of my family and home albeit with more and more of an equal division of labor in our home between my husband and myself; I am a friend who continues to invest deeply into my relationships and who loves meeting new people and making new connections; I am a creative who loves to design beautiful things to make the world a more beautiful place.  All of these things are the same, but how I approach all of these things has changed - I come fully into spaces and no longer make myself smaller.  I offer my opinions and intellect with confidence that they are valuable and worth sharing, I have had conversations with some in my life who are uncomfortable with the new bigness of my whole self who are in the process of deciding if they can make the adjustment to this new me - some will and some won’t; I’m trying to be less of a people pleaser - trying to care less what others think of me and just be okay with who I am, what I believe and what I know to be the right path for me.  Some people will not like my newest sojourn on my soul journey - they won’t appreciate the changes that are taking place in me and would prefer I go back to my old, less than self.  But for me that’s just not an option at this point.  Embracing the fullness of who I am and feeling greater freedom to express myself is bringing me great joy and fulfillment.  I feel like I can breathe fully for perhaps the first time in my life.  

I want to say a big thanks to all my guests from season 1 - Mike, Bella, Martha, & Donna.  I’m so thankful you were all willing to come talk with me about life and some of your passions, to share from your experiences.  Those were some of my favorite episodes for this first season.  So you may be wondering where the podcast goes from here.  Plans are in the works for season 2 which will include more great interviews with others about their own spiritual journeys, their soul sojourns through life.  And I’ll keep unpacking some of the issues from fundamentalism that have impacted my life and continue to impact so many.  I plan to take a little break for summer fun and trips and to work on getting some podcasts recorded and ready to role of for season 2 which will be coming out in August.  I hope you will join us then as we continue this journey together.

To all who listened to this first season - a big thanks to you.  I have been honored to have many tell me they are enjoying listening to the podcast.  I so appreciate you taking the time to listen and joining me on this journey in your own way. I do hope that throughout this first season you were encouraged to think about some things in a different ways and expand your own perspective on the various topics that were explored. I hope you’ll come back in August and join me for season 2 of Soul Sojourn as we continue to explore the journey of soul. I look forward to what is to come, what stops we’ll take along the journey together.  I’ll see you at the next stop.