Ghost & Shadows Conversation Series

In this season as 天美视频 has been looking back at the first 25 years, we, Dr. Paul Hoard and Dr. Doug Shirley, have been exploring what it means to live with the legacies and histories in our community, as well as how to engage with these proverbial ghosts and shadows, these systemic inheritances. Together in this series titled 鈥淕hosts and Shadows,鈥� we鈥檝e examined the past and looked towards the future through three essays, and we also invited colleagues to join in the conversation and share their reflections in a series of podcasts including Dr. Curt Thompson, Dr. Monique Gadson, and Dr. Chelle Stearns. This conversation with Dr. J. Derek McNeil was the final one recorded in 2023.

Our Guest for this Conversation

Dr. J. Derek McNeil is President and Provost of 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology. He holds a PhD in Counseling Psychology from Northwestern University and an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary. Prior to his tenure at 天美视频, Derek served as faculty in the PsyD program at Wheaton College Graduate School for over 15 years. He has worked as a clinician in private practice, a diversity advisor, an organizational consultant, and an administrator. His research, writing, and speaking have focused on issues of ethnic and racial socialization, the role of forgiveness in peacemaking, the identity development of African-American males, leadership in living systems, and resilience.

Transcript

Dr. Paul Hoard:
I am Dr. Paul Hoard, an Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at the 天美视频. Dr. Shirley and I have been working on this project we call Ghosts and Shadows in this season where the school has been looking back at the first 25 years and looking ahead to the next 25 years. And as we are preparing to move from this building to a new location, we’ve been exploring what are the proverbial ghosts that haunt us, the ghosts and shadows with us in our community, as well as how to engage with those ghosts and shadows, what we think about systemic inheritances. We’ve written a few essays and we’ve also continued the conversation in a series of podcasts with a few colleagues to help us reflect together.聽We invited our Provost and President, Dr. J. Derek McNeil to join us in this conversation. He’s read our essays on ghosts and shadows, and we are grateful for his insights and willingness to join in this exploration of our history, purpose, and identity and the ways we connect with each other.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Well, what a good day. Derek, thank you for being with us. When Paul and I set out on this journey, we knew that we wanted to interview you last because we wanted to seek you as an elder in our community, as someone with presidential authority and voice. We wanted to make sure that you were present in this project in some way. And so we look forward to not sure where the conversation’s going to take us. Know that you have read our blog post, which is fantastic. Thank you for investing that way. And really, now I just want to see where our conversation might take us. So we’ve been in conversations around systemic thought and Lacanian thought, analytic thought and group thought, but also trying to sort of stay grounded in our own experiences of the ineffable stuff that seems to linger in our hallways and our Zoom chats and in all the places that make us 天美视频 25 years in and 25 years and change to go. So maybe to begin, we’ve used this phrase, ghost and shadows. It kind of became our rallying point early in the project, and we’d love to hear just even as you’ve interacted with that phrase, where does it take you?

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
Yeah, it was interesting. It hit me multiple ways. One is of course the sort of obvious sense of haunting with ghost and shadows, the things lurking in the corners. I mean, that was a sort of immediate metaphor, but then some part of me also had a sense of Holy Ghost. I mean, I grew up with the Holy Ghost if you’ll and shadows could also be the things that were hidden and unintegrated. And so it hit me that way. And I think when I read the first piece in inheritance or inheritances, it made me think of, for whatever reason, my father, and it wasn’t the tough things that he passed on. I鈥檓 sure I have some habits that my wife will say, Hey, that looks like you’re really your father and that kind of thing. But it was really more of the, what was probably my mother called stubborn, slow and sentimental, I might call wise, loyal and compassionate.

So in some ways it was a desire for me to hear, feel both aspects of ghost and shadows, not simply the negative ones, but the things that have made us what we are in terms of continuity. So for me, always what we’re both working with, struggling with is the things that have contained us. They produce both a continuity and a stuckness at the same time. And how do you work with the continuity holding on to that which we have to hold and keep and that which we need to find a way to shed and find new wings for. So that was, I appreciate both of you. I say thank you to 1) the energy to do this. I think this is where we are. This is a moment for us, decide, hey, what goes forward in the Sankofa looking back, looking forward sort of way.

What do we look back at? What do we see? What do we integrate into what goes forward? And this feels like that moment. And so this is a good venture. I felt energized by it. I know it can have the kind of connotation of, oh gosh, we’re still doing that. And I want to say, goodness gracious, we’re still doing that, both in the sense of, and then, what are the things we want to free ourselves to do more? And so that was the piece I think it struck me in terms of the metaphor of ghost and shadows.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Lovely. As you’re talking, I’m reminded my own ambivalence to engage the ghost or even my own shadow. And when early in conversation Paul placed these ghosts and shadows in the Lacanian real, it seemed right, but there was also this oh moment because it is time to not be ambivalent. That sense of it’s time to engage. I agree. And so we’ve been working at that for a handful of months now. But I would say I’ve come to this project with ambivalence to, I think even in that first post I spoke of some of what I carry is, I’m not fill in the blank, I’m not a certain thing, I’m not a certain thing. I don’t have the same foibles as the dreamers or whatever it was. I’m not. And so that ambivalent part of me would like to say, well, I’m not and move on. But of course that’s not true.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
Well it’s funny because even that mantra I’m not is a part of the school’s history, if you will. I think we found it easier to say, well, we’re not, or we’re not like them or we’re not quite rigid in that way. We’re not hierarchical in that way or we’re not exclusive in that way. We’re not. And what has shifted is probably not just simply us internally, but the environment around us. So when I think about the school’s history, we were birthed in a time when things were rigid enough, status quo enough that they needed to have some breaking up, kind of like soil that had been beaten down, if you will. And so I think the church needed us to be that sort of, Hey, what’s emerging, what’s different? And so I think a lot of our definition was we’re not that, and that’s useful, necessary.

And maybe even I’ll call an adolescent, a good adolescent energy, because I think we need our adolescents to become young adults and alter the society we’re in. I mean, we need a new wave of energy and thinking. And so we’ve had some of that energy of we’re not that, we’re not that and we’re better than that. And that’s sort of grandiose sort of way. And I think as we’ve grown, gotten older, 25 if you will, and reached some degree of young adulthood-ness if I can over-anthropomorphize us, there’s a bit of what we have to declare. We are in the world, what is our role now? What are we called? And who we called to serve now? And I think that’s the juncture we’re at. But it’s frightening to let go of the I’m not that because at least they can’t critique you and you won’t be shamed for being something you’re not.

And we have to risk, not necessarily foreclosing, but integrating with the identity cycles of Erikson’s notion of there’s a foreclosure. But I like to think of that foreclosures integrating the parts of us in a way that we find a way to serve and we find who we’re called to serve. So yeah, I think it’s inherently ambivalent much like the identity crisis or stages and forgive the stages thinking, but at least for the moment and something has to emerge from that. I think we’re at that point of something emerging from that. And so generativity, if you will, but again, parts of us still are in we that really鈥� Yes, we are these things and how we step into that. This to me is this movement. This is a stepping through if you will, and saying, Hey, we’ve got to declare a bit more or else we’ll be adults who reach middle age or late age with a certain despair because we didn’t fulfill our calling. And I think we’re stepping into what it is we’re called to step into at a time when the external environment is in fragmentation. It’s no longer hierarchy rigidly in place. It is eroding and enough corruption that we don’t need to simply point it out. We need to bring our bandages and bind up wounds and in some ways rebuild walls that have been torn and broken down.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Which I think as I hear you say that, Derek, I think it speaks to a lot of obviously what we’re saying here. We have such a, well-developed muscle to tear down or to push against. And I think that there’s one form of our inheritance, which is we find something to push against because we can find meaning, we can find coherence I think, in that. But I think if we play with that metaphor of ghosts and shadows, but I think our ghosts as ancestors perhaps are calling us to, is to go beyond the against and to kind of continue the work unto that they’re against was for.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
Yes.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
If I’m not being too circular in my language there. Yes.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
No, I agree. I agree. The Old Testament text that says: Hey, tear up, root out, pull up. It’s like four, three or four destructive metaphors and then plant build or build plant. And so there is at times a need to be that destructive and deconstructing. But if it’s for the sake of only deconstructing, then I think we have a bit of a sad waste. And the question for us is when is the plant built and what’s the task of planting and building that I think is a continuation of the pull up, root out, tear down necessity. And if we see these things together as opposed to opposites, then I think we enter into what we’re calling the infinite game, if you will. It’s a longer-term thing, not just simply the moment of its destruction, it’s the story that continues and how do we stay in the story that continues and that means we’ll have seasons of pulling up and pulling down, tearing up if you will. And then seasons of building and planting, I think we’re facing the season of planting and building

Dr. Doug Shirley:
And even just thinking about (how) people are tired鈥搇istening to the faculty come back from summer, our first fall meeting this morning, a mix of excitement and tiredness, hearing Kristen Houston talk about going to the recent Department of Health meeting where they’re talking about the sorts of complaints that are coming through from mental health therapists here in the state of Washington. Therapists are obviously tired because they’re doing things that are bringing complaint and sounds like they’re doing some pretty nutty things. And so I’m mindful that I can be that nutty too. And so again, I think part of this project is this sense of where to put our energy in a season where we’ve all gotten beat up to some degree by Covid, by the rattling of the cages of higher ed, by systems falling apart around us by the desire for non-system things. But I think that that sense of exhaustion is palpable. And so even as you say, moving from something that might seem more kind of aggressive or I don’t know what to something that may be more tender, this has felt like more of a tender project to me than put a hammer through concrete project to me.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
I hear that and I would ask the question because I think you’re very right. I mean I feel that tiredness, it hits me most when I become aware of what institutional things no longer hold me. And I feel the sense of the social contract is changing. It’s like, well, how come they’re doing that and getting away with it kind of quality and people feel a little bit more unmoored. But I probably ask the both of you, if you could think this is end of summer, if you will, if you could think back this summer, what were the moments of things you were doing that gave you the most? And more than likely it’s with people you cared about and loved.

And so as some part of me, and maybe this sounds radical, is saying, Hey, as a faculty, as a staff, can we learn to love each other, which means less frightened of each other in such a way that would reenergize us? Can we learn to in some ways love what we’re called to? Because I think it’s harder if I just think about institutions, I don’t think of institutions as divine. I think of them as human constructs, but necessary. My kids needed school because they needed some socialization that I couldn’t give them that school gave them even, however it was done, whether it be in some ways limited fashion of a patriarchal society, I still needed them socialized. How do they live in this society? And when those things fall apart and it falls to me to do, I’ll be overwhelmed.

But how do we rebuild new ones? And I think it starts with us, our care and compassion for each other to say, how do we build new institutions or new interaction patterns that allow me to serve and care for you, Doug and your family as I think about your three boys? And Paul I think about you and your family. How do we build a school that doesn’t just simply draw us from us, but actually serves them and serves unto the next generation? Well, can we think about schools and our institutions doing that? In some ways, what they should be set up to do, it’s not just simply go get an education. It really is how do we socialize and prepare people for the world that we’re going to have to engage in address? How do we socialize our students for the world they’re having to engage and have to address? And some of that’s to do with trauma, but some of that has to do with can we eat?

Where do we gather? What are the meaningful things in life and how do we make meaning with other people? How do we solve our big problems without aligning with each other? And I don’t know how you solve climate change without some degree of alignment. So I think we’re going to have to shift, not think of education or institutions just for the sake of what they have done, but think what do we need now them to do and prepare us, equip us, for the challenges we have to face. And so I think that’s the positive nature of the spin for me. I mean, it moves me out of this sort of the sparing quality, our stuckness to say, what if we said by 2040 we’ll have a global collapse if we don’t get together and work on some things together. I don’t have much time to despair. And I actually think that if we don’t find a way to link to each other and align each other in certain types of ways, we’ll be facing some degree of global collapse. That motivates in a different sort of way. And I think it’s the linkage of people, which is why I like this. I appreciate your linkage with each other and with us as a faculty, as us as a school. And then in light of that, what do we do with our ghosts and our shadows?

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Yeah, I was thinking in that part of linking kind of reminded me of I think the section from this latest piece where we talk about the image versus the real. And I think that there’s a sense in which we like to think of ourselves as linked. And in many ways I think we want to have the image of a community, but without really much of the actual structure, Lacanian, the symbolic, is not actually there. We’re not actually connected, but we’d like to pretend we are. And I think that’s a lot of what was motivating for me in wanting to approach this project was the sense that there’s so many good intentions that don’t seem to actually whose impact seems different than their intentions. And what is it from our past that keeps us in these repetitive cycles. I think everybody hear what you say and I want to say amen, but I also can, in my body feel a sense of, yeah, but it’s really easy to say tha,t we don’t know how to do that.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
Yeah. It’s funny because the image that comes in my mind, Paul, is I think it was you, was it Jermaine and somebody else sitting around the table in the conference room playing games? And when you say, we don’t know how to do that, I think that’s how you do it. And so in some ways for me, I’m thinking, Hey, why don’t we have鈥� until we move鈥搘hy don鈥檛 we have a game night. I think it has to be outside all. Well, it can’t be locked in by the constraints that have constrained us If you will, and so, I can still recall the pleasure of you describing this game I had not seen before. Everyone’s smiling, everyone’s excited, and I’m like, okay, I don’t have a clue, but you all clearly enjoying this. And game night is a way of learning each other in ways that we don’t typically. And I think this is a sort of weakness of the academy is that it sticks us into constraints of a language that in some ways will inform ourselves as intellectual. And it is, but it can’t only be life of the mind.

It has to be in some ways life of the play. And that’s mine too. But we don’t give it as much credit because it鈥檚 not serious if you will, and I think there’s a lot of seriousness in gameplay about the rules of the game, the infinite nature of the game, the finite nature of the game. I think we teach our students a great deal about how to frame the world and problem solve in the world with games in a way that the academy tends not to say, oh yeah, that’s the first thing we want you to do with them, as opposed to give them information. And I think we have to play with that a bit more to say, Hey, maybe it might be better training if we put you in a game theory, game situations, and have you work with cases, that鈥檚 what cases are, how do we both learn each other and how do we learn how to in some ways engage and work together around big problems? So I think we may know more than we think we know. We may not give ourselves privilege in all the ways we might because of the constraints of what the academy is.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Is that an inheritance then, a sense of both the deauthorization, we don’t know what we think we wait. We are not authorized to admit that we know what we know, but also we get to hide in the shadow of we don’t have to know what we already know.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
That’s true too. I don’t know. That’s a question I’ll have to turn back to you, Doug. I think you kind of answered some of that. I think partly what strikes me is how do we give each other permission, which is play. And to play means the rules can’t say, you can’t have as much fun as I’m having, or I’m special and you’re not. I mean, the whole part of play is to say, Hey, we’re going to set a general set of rules that we play by and then we interact with each other around and we’ll see what happens. Well, if faculty is not playing with each other, setting a certain freedom to try out new strategies or to figure out the long game short game and interact with each other, how do we, we’re withholding a certain permission from each other. And so I think the tendency to say, well, who decided this game, what this game’s going to be? And I say, somebody did, but we did too. And how do we in some ways decide, hey, what should the rules be? And it shouldn’t be because we’re frightened to be out of order and let the game dictate some of what we internally agreed to is, Hey, this will hold us together if we decide on these type of ways to play. So this is a bit of play. I mean, in some ways you’re inviting me to play with that metaphor. I mean play a game with you all in terms of thinking game, but it’s really for me, a linking game. And can we find ways to link?

Dr. Doug Shirley:
You’ve used two phrases that have stood out to me already. So you’ve talked about love and then you said we learn each other, that’s not how we learn each other. I wouldn’t say that those are typical rules or guidelines of the academy. The phrase, the title of this last blog post and Enduring Beauty came from Curt, came from Dr. Thompson. As we finished our conversation, he offered it. And I think both Paul and I went that we want that, right? Because beauty is gorgeous, but often fleeting, right? Often that sense of as soon as you have it, it’s gone. And so there’s something about, as we’ve tried to follow that trail of what makes beauty enduring, we’re aware that it has to be particular. So even in this game plan that you’re talking about or the tension between the image and the real, there has to be something about moving from abstraction into the particular into how do the three of us learn each other right now in ways we haven’t learned each other before? That’s a different kind of task than the academy often sets before us.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
It does. But I think I’ve been fortunate to get to know you both a little bit outside the academy game. If you will, and I have a sense even in doing this, such a desire for us to experience something different with us as a faculty, a sort of freedom, a sort of play, a sort of intellectual exercise that’s fun, that we laugh at as much as we may cry about, and to impact our students in a way to free them even in our spaces. I think the message to students from outside the academy in the society is everybody’s dangerous and we should be all treated like we’re dangerous. And even the people socializing, you’re dangerous and you shouldn’t trust them because they’re going to do certain things to you. And it’s like, gosh, how do we change that game? The classroom?

How do we say, yeah, there are some rough parts of this game, but the whole thing’s not worth shit excuse. You can edit that out. And there’s actually some things we can learn in this game. The whole thing is not to be thrown out, but even recognizing, hey, what parts have, who could play? And how do we engage this? And maybe this is not ultimately the game, but can we even work together to find a better game? And that’s a creative act with the nest that we have and that might allow us to get free, but it’s hard to stay within the academy block to do that because right now you’re the teacher. You’re in a hierarchy. You’re going to use your power against me. You’re going to somehow misstep and then I’m a gotcha, which undercuts your power and we play this game of me trying to avoid the gotchas and you trying to get me. I’m like, I don’t like the game.

Can we change and just stay up front? I don’t want to play that one. Can we do another one? The world is coming to an end. What do you want to do with that? And how do we survive? And it’s all messed up, but how do we rebuild? I mean, I just wanted in some ways to say, can we declare as a school, as a faculty, can we play with each other enough to say, can we change the game and can we make it an infinite game as opposed to finite? You’ve got me. I got you. That’s a finite game. And so what’s gained? And that you yell at me for a couple sessions because I messed up. What’s gained by that? You feel more secure. I doubt it. And that may be the real game we’re hoping to move into.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Paul, last word?

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Yeah, I just feel full of gratitude. I mean for you, Derek, but also the others that we’ve been able to talk to. And yeah, I hope the project doesn’t end, but in a sense is, in some ways, maybe helps continue a conversation as we keep going. I feel energized.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
I hope so too. And I’ll say this, I’ll be listening for the infinite. I’ll be listening for the lovely.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Dr. McNeil, thanks again.

Dr. J. Derek McNeil:
Very welcome. Thank you.

The post Ghost & Shadows Conversation Series: Podcast with Guest Dr. J. Derek McNeil appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Ghost & Shadows Conversation Series

In this season as 天美视频 has been looking back at the first 25 years, we, Dr. Paul Hoard and Dr. Doug Shirley, have been exploring what it means to live with the legacies and histories in our community, as well as how to engage with these proverbial ghosts and shadows, these systemic inheritances. Together in this series titled 鈥淕hosts and Shadows,鈥� we鈥檝e examined the past and looked towards the future through three essays, and we also invited colleagues to join in the conversation and share their reflections in a series of podcasts including Dr. Curt Thompson and Dr. Monique Gadson.

Our Guest for this Conversation

Dr. Chelle Stearns served as Associate Professor of Theology at 天美视频 from 2008 鈥� 2023 and now serves as Affiliate Faculty. She is the author of Handling Dissonance: A Musical Theological Aesthetic of Unity and has published essays on subjects such as trauma and Christology, music and trauma, and Pneumatology and the arts. Her current research and writing are at the intersection of theology, music, and trauma.

Transcript

Dr. Paul Hoard:
I am Dr. Paul Hoard, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the 天美视频. Dr. Shirley and I have been working on this project we call Ghosts and Shadows in this season where the school has been looking back at the first 25 years and looking ahead to the next 25 years. And as we are preparing to move from this building to a new location, we’ve been exploring what are the proverbial ghosts that haunt us, the ghosts and shadows with us in our community, as well as how to engage with those ghosts and shadows, what we think about systemic inheritances. We’ve written a few essays and we’ve also continued the conversation in a series of podcasts with a few colleagues to help us reflect together. Dr. Chelle Sterns joins us for this conversation. She taught at the 天美视频 from 2008 to 2023 as an Associate Professor of Theology. We are excited to listen to the wisdom, experience, and theological imagination she brings to this conversation.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Well, back today with Dr. Chelle Stearns. Chelle, thank you so much for being here. We’ve looked forward to, Paul and I’ve looked forward to talking to you for a while. This is our project on Ghosts and Shadows and what it means to be in an institution and a learning community like ours. Looking back at the 25 years that we’ve inherited and contributed to, and then also at the 25 years ahead. Really excited to be in conversation with you probably for two reasons. One, just how long you’ve been a part of the school and the eyes and the wisdom you have for us that way. And then also any theological imagination you might have for if this project is entitled 鈥淕hosts and Shadows.鈥� How do we work with the ghosts and shadows that we inherit just because we live and breathe and move in certain places? And so in this case, this place, 天美视频. So welcome. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
It’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.聽

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Yeah. Well, I think what strikes me again is how the stories that we tell often then circle around the students. And I say we tell what I was told I’d say now coming in, there was a lot of like, oh, well watch out for our students. When I came in, there was, our students are kind of assertive. They’re aggressive, they, they’re very opinionated. These were some of the things that were sort of passed on to me as I got started. And I think what it makes me curious is what’s that reflection of in terms of us, even actually what you’re saying in terms of wanting to get a bigger picture of the whole curriculum. It’s just how much we can end up being so siloed from one another.

And then of course, then the symptom comes out in the students and how they’re metabolizing everything that we’re saying. And I think, yeah, it makes me curious about now what’s it about us right now, that’s this, that we can tell a story about students. I think that’s where it’s like, oh, it’s easy for us to talk about students as the problem or where students are. But I think the bigger than, what makes me curious is about what’s happening with us on a more of an institutional, because students, students move through us. That’s what students do. They move through an institution, but we’re the ones that stay or become it.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
I had kind a similar, even when you use the phrase whole curriculum, I thought, well, was there one? Because we’ve still worked at building a whole W-H-O-L-E, but it’s been so very difficult because we have been so this personality does this, this personality does that, and good luck sort of thing. The other thing, I guess I heard two other things when you said: good night theology is by itself triggering. Holy cow, we got to talk about that. And two, a 90 person classroom.

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Right. So the interplay of, you said half the students’ in a fetal position in a 90 person classroom, theology by itself is triggering. Whoa.

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Yeah. Fun stuff. And then I stayed for 15 years.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Yeah. So tell us about that. How did you make your way?

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Well, I’ll start with the students. I mean, I think there is something to, what does that reflect about the faculty? But there’s also, I’ll say this in a really positive light. Students after studying lots of trauma theory, students feel like they have agency. And I think that, and that’s sometimes really difficult for them because they don’t have as much power, but they still feel like they can challenge. And I remember one student made the comment when she came back later on a panel, one of the symposia, we put our bodies in the middle of the classroom and then the teachers had to work around us. And I’m like, so I think that’s a really significant thing, especially when thinking about theology. I think there’s often been times when students have come into the school, and I’ve heard this in different ways over the years: I’ve had a theology that I was basically told and told I had to assent to.

I had to memorize the right theology to remain orthodox, or I had to memorize the right theology to remain in the group. And now I’m doing this psychology, which I’ll say just human growth and development and attachment styles often disrupted the students in significant ways. And that also they were also taking that class at the same time as my fall class at that point. And so you begin to go, so they’re not just deconstructing their theology, they’re deconstructing in such a way that they’re beginning to understand themselves and their families, their own systems, their relationships. And then they come into a place where this strange person is hosting a class, even bringing in a guest speaker, and they’re supposed to trust when we’re talking about sin. And for me, I’m just like, I’m a new person. We’re going to talk theology. This is just what we do. And oh, these students have agency and they have desire to know something better, and it’s hitting up against their theology or their lives in really, really significant ways. So for me, I think at the time I was like, what is this crazy thing that’s happening? I look back now and I go, wow, it’s really amazing that students felt like they had the capacity essentially to say no. What all emerged for 90 students in a classroom? I don’t know.

And there’s probably a lot more to the story than that. But the question was how then to invest them in the work at a graduate school? And it made me realize, oh, okay, I can’t do theology in a vacuum.I can鈥檛 just talk about the Christian tradition. This is a holistic, this is why I talk about the whole curriculum. Because there was something even at that point that the students understood or felt or hid back against. And we could talk about personalities, we could talk about things like that. But the reality is we kept inviting them back into this process of thinking through their own stories, thinking through their own, where does this hit me? And I’ll say, as a theologian, I was always told never to ask any of those questions and incorporate that into theology. So here I was like, oh, these students have a lot of agency. They’re going to hit back because they care. This matters to them. So they’re not going to just come and sit blindly and repeat back the questions. They dove in. I did this project called a God Body Map and the projects that came out of that, there was art in my office all over the place. And I was like, so as much as they might be stirred up and doing things from other classes or in their own lives, they also were, oh, but you want to know my story, you want to see me?

And I was like, wow, that kind of diving in I think is rare. So there was something also amazingly compelling to what our students are. So, Paul, back to your question of what is it about us? But I’m like, yeah, students who care, they’re willing to get into the fight. They’re willing to be a bit rebellious or to do just beautiful great, great work. So that also was really stunning.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
What makes me think about, Paul, something you said last night, the gift of trauma is that it requires us to go where we don’t want to go. And, Chelle, that’s kind of been theology and trauma or the theology of trauma or the trauma of theology. I don’t know how you would put the puzzle pieces together, but is it right to say that’s a place that during your time here you settled into that intersection? Is that a right thing to say?

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Yeah, I mean for me it probably because it’s so much more of a interdisciplinary stumbling through, and it was really in some ways, students who were looking for some sort of language, some sort of what’s going on. And yeah, I’ve heard people at the school talk a lot about students coming in, very trauma-based. They have stories. But don’t we all? How did we all get to the school and teaching at the school? I mean, that’s the whole unpacking in and of itself. But I think part of that was really in some sense, I don’t know.

I think for me, there was a strong, strong sense of needing to reimagine redemption that wasn’t simply a regurgitation of penal, substitutionary atonement. I mean, Serene Jones that first put together in some ways, some of the language, I mean more recently, around why would someone, because she tells a story in her trauma and grace book about someone running out of a service during communion or during the Eucharist and being really triggered by the violent language of the death of Christ. And what do you do with these moments when the language is so reliant upon the violence or so reliant upon death? And I don’t want to say we can鈥檛 talk about the death of Jesus, but there is something to how we, and I think this is where the merging of those early years, how we tell the story really, really matters. And because the stories we tell, the stories that kind of embody our lives in many ways, shape and they construct our world.

And so I think, I began to see, even just a couple of years into the school that there just needed to be a restoring that happened theologically. And the struggle for me always was, how do I do that without losing the center of faith? We do that without losing the center of Christianity, and yet finding new paths forward that helps us think through, well, what are we being saved from? What are we being saved toward? Or even, I remember one time, O’Donnell, a couple of times, and I did a comparison between atonement theories in psychology and atonement theories in theology, and what is the balance or what is the conversation or the dialogue between these two things? And so she kept asking me, why do you need to be rescued? And I’m like, psychologically, I don’t know. But it made me realize, oh, in some ways we accept the simple story theologically, or we accept the simple story in our faith and it often answers some sort of felt need or answers something. And so that began, I call it the haunting of Christology for me. So if Jesus isn’t only that, and so instead of throwing out Jesus, I found my Christology getting deeper and deeper, wider and wider. And yeah, we could talk about that more if you’d like, but

Dr. Doug Shirley:
What it makes me ask, I love hearing you talk as a theologian who was making their way into how you do your job from a, I have to teach this content and process. I’m still working with it. And you came in under the orders, the communal orders, you don’t want to know about that. And so I’m even curious鈥� how if redemption, if your theology has gone deeper and wider, what is the redemption of 鈥淵ou don’t want to know about that鈥�? What’s the redemption of that haunting? That’s what we’re chasing. That’s what we want to chase here, is not just the what are the dirty clothes, the dirty socks in the closet that we could really get rid of, but also what are the things we need to listen to? And that might be really hard to listen to. And when we say things like, you don’t want to know about that, we miss opportunity, we miss redemption.

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Well, I think it was later on when I started reading Judith Herman and realizing whenever we shut down the stories, no matter what they are, those stories have more power. And in some ways, by not talking about these things, they just remained there and hovered over us.

And especially when it has to do with stories around even the haunting of鈥搒omething was inappropriate or someone was harmed. And sometimes this language gets thrown around haphazardly rather than. So even the ghost or the shadow of a story that wasn’t maybe even true begins to actually have power and it digs its way into the community and the dynamics. And I’ve always been amazed at how much students gossip in the background. And so those things begin to have more life that they actually should have as opposed to actually getting to know your ghosts. Or what is it? I think it’s a Rilke poem. It was quoted in Ted Lasso. So I can say this, that idea of getting to know your inner dragons. And so it almost feels a little bit like that. There are these dragons that are wandering the halls, but no one’s acknowledging them. But you keep going past them and hoping that they don’t breathe fire on you. And then you realize later on, oh, that was just a little lizard, and he doesn’t breathe fire at all. And so that’s maybe part of the dynamic as well, of when you don’t talk about it, it might have more power than it should.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
I have a Judith Herman connection, but Paul, anything you want to work on? Have you read her newest book, Shelly, Truth and Repair?

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
I need to, I just bought it. I heard her do a seven-minute interview on NPR when it first came out. And I was really struck by her sense of what do people who have experienced violence really want in the process of healing.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
And how all of our systems are rigged against that really largely. And she does this thing, she gives us this idea of a moral community. She’s talking about legal reparations for folks who have endured trauma hardship, but she also talks about the moral injury that comes to bystanders in community who have watched something problematic happen. So you take this sort of perpetrator, victim dyad, but the idea that that’s always surrounded by a community and the community experience is injury. But we load up the, let’s say, whether it’s two groups of people or two individuals or whatever, we load up the players, perpetrator and victim, but everyone around needs restitution. And so this argument that when we seek restitution in a more dyadic form between victim and perpetrator, the injury and the moral incongruence that sits in the community doesn’t get resolved. And so when that doesn’t get resolved, that injury perpetuates, which I think then sort of feeds this haunting that you’re talking about, around why stories then become bigger, badder. Is that going to hurt me too? I’m already injured, but I’m more injured by my own complicity and there’s not a chance to do anything about that. And so I have been really taken by that. She’s largely speaking of that, again, in a legal system, what it looks like to seek a moral community from a legal perspective. But man, oh man, I just wonder what does that mean for us? For instance, where have we been bystanders injured in processes and therefore adding to frameworks that are not helpful?

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Yeah. Paul, I don’t know if you want to jump in there.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Yeah, no, I’ve got a lot of different thoughts in terms, especially when we think about, I’m not as familiar with Judith Herman’s work, so I don’t have as much to throw in there, but there’s a lot of categories and ideas that you’re both bringing up. Having a minute, trying to get my thoughts together and all that. Well, because I think even I won’t want to shoot and yell an Amen with my own work around inner passivity in particular and what happens in this kind of communal sense of when you’re not the active agent, but you’re still benefiting from the agency of other people. And this way that we are together and that we end up a form of complicity that’s sort of this disavowed hidden complicity where we may not be the ones that actually did the thing, but we still benefit from it. And so we let it be, and that becomes this way that we both then pretend we’re not guilty, and so try to avoid that conscious guilt.

But it’s these stories that continue to haunt us, that stay in us. And yeah, I guess I’m putting that together sort of slowly with some of the things you’re saying actually in terms of our own school and these stories that when they’re passed on to us or when we see them or when we’re a part of them or when we hear of them, there’s a sense in which we’re already in it, whether we were in the room when it happened or not, and they’re kind of continuing to float around. And I think, yeah, the question is, we don’t want to go into, let’s name ’em and somehow exorcise the demons. And I think that’s a lot what our blog posts, Doug, is about trying to not do that. Also, not pretend they’re not there, but is sort of like, okay, so what’s another way through to listen to them, to give them so that these stories can be told and therefore hopefully transform the stories. So the dragons can be the lasers, like you say, Chelle, and that we can now have a relationship with them and that we can be transformed in them.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
It makes me wonder, so if I put together what I hear each of you saying, so, Paul, inner passivity and, Chelle, agency of students, it makes me wonder, even this thing we were talking about earlier of students are able to say no, students are able to kind of do things that maybe we don’t even feel free to do as faculty. It makes me wonder about our inner passivity related to something not quite conscious around here. I’ll look at it in myself. For instance, I could see myself adding to a dynamic where a student’s behavior is, let’s say problematic or something, but because they have agency and because they’re able to say no, something in me wishes that I could have said no in the ways that they feel free to say no. And so even if the way they’re doing it ain’t great, something is like, oh, that. And so even that, I think your phrase just now, Paul was like, well, let me let it be right. And so then even what happens to me when I’m in a classroom and there’s this impulse in me, well let that be because there’s an inner passivity in me that says, well, at least somebody’s getting it, even if I don’t get to get it, either past or present. That’s a helpful frame.

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Well, yeah. And you bring it back to鈥� every student that comes in is bringing, if they’ve been in church, if they’ve been in a community, so they bring in their whole family, but if they’ve been raised in a church, they also bring in that whole church community or the multiple church communities that they’ve been a part of. And let’s say they didn’t have a good experience or the theology that was given to them, for example, not to bring it back to theology, but let’s bring it back to theology. And a phrase that I started using in class is kind of a theology of gaslight lighting, that sometimes when things have come up or just from their own experience in these, whether it’s in their family, whether it’s in a church community, that essentially then they get silenced or they’re told that there’s nothing to see here.

These are not the droids you were looking鈥揻or those Star Wars fans out there鈥揵ut there’s something in that process where they see something and they go to name it, and then they’re just said, no, that’s not really real. And so in some ways to have paths of intellectual development, paths of psychological development, paths of maturity that allow them to have the agency to say, I don’t know how to name this right now, and all the things that are coming with me, I’m now not responding to you as a teacher. I’m actually responding to my church community back home or to my mother or to my father, to whomever, that pastor who鈥搕hat stupid youth pastor or whatever that said that weird thing or had a pattern of, kind of name your thing that’s there. And the problem is that then you’re not really in the classroom as an academic space. All of a sudden you’re in this very psychological space. I’m like, well, now we’re not talking about theology anymore. Now you’re talking about your experience with your youth pastor who probably had very minimal either psychological or theological training.

I have great experience. I have great stories from my growing up in a Baptist church as a woman that also come out. And that’s the other funny thing. Now we’re getting into 鈥淲hat am I responding to when the student says that?鈥� and now there might be this battling of past ghosts in the classroom. Am I actually addressing the student or am I addressing something in my own past that? And so yeah, you begin to see that moral injury or that community that’s around us that has helped us understand who we are or maybe named us in inappropriate ways or deceitful ways, or you need, as a woman growing up in a Baptist church, it was kind of like, why don’t you get back in the box? This is what you’re supposed to be as a woman. Stop asking the questions you鈥檙e asking and don’t study theology. You need to go back to these roles. These are the biblical roles. And I’m like, no, those are cultural roles. So all of those things begin to kind of swirl around when we begin to have these conversations. So again, kind of coming back to what happens when someone begins to name something in a classroom, even if it’s inappropriate, they’re beginning to understand, oh, I don’t have to live in the silence that has haunted me in a way, that has caused me to disbelieve my own reality.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
I love what you’re bringing up there. I mean, there’s so much in there, but one of the things that caught me was that I think I felt is that tension when you said this is no longer an academic space. And the tension that reels, because on one hand, that’s how beautiful, that we’re not stuck doing just academic stuff, that we’re not decontextualizing our information, that we’re allowing our students and ourselves to be real and for this to impact them. And also, I think I’m aware just in my own classrooms of how that can also become really problematic because we actually are here for an academic purpose, and there is an academic side to what we want to do here. And like you said, in a class of 90, that’s not how you do group therapy. When you’re doing that kind of work on people’s stories and helping ’em do that, there’s reasons that there’s the frame that we put in for it that’s not there in a classroom. So yeah, I just find myself with that.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
It speaks to what you’ve been saying, Paul, of this tension: we haven’t known whether to call ourselves part of the academy or not. We kind of came in trying to act like we weren’t really a part of it, but of course we are a part of it. And so that me, not-me thing. And so you strike me as someone who has very clearly made their way in the academy. You have a place in the academy, you’ve owned your place in the academy. Have you heard Paul talk about this thing of, or even just if we say it now, this sense of, well, we’re not that we’re not your traditional school. We’re not. Are we a training center? This confusion around, are we academics? Are we not academics? Are we allowed to talk academically with each other? So I wonder if you have anything, have anything there?

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Yeah, I mean, it has been nteresting in an American, not a British sense. When Brits say interesting, it’s like, oh, you’re dismissing me. But it has been an interesting tension the entire time. But I think the way I’ve begun to think about it is: you do your own work. You do your own academic work, just like you do your own psychological work so that you’re prepared in some ways to be more improvisational in the classroom or in what you ask students to do, that there’s a little bit more of a give and take or a back and forth. And so I find myself just reading a lot more, retooling my classroom in a way that I probably wouldn’t have in other places, because in some ways, the stirring of the pot or the stew that is the classroom often has shifted and changed so much.

I mean, 2020 with George Floyd and the Black Lives Matters movement really rising up and the conversation in the entire country around racial tension, racial inequality, it rose in such a way that that’s a great example of, well then what do you do in your classroom? That鈥檚 not something that’s just going to stay outside neat and tidy, but in some ways, that was a bit of how I was trained to be a theologian is that you ask the isolated question. I mean, it’s a very modernist way of understanding it, but when you are inviting these things into the classroom, you have to be ready to improvise. And so just like a jazz player, you know your chords, you know how to change. So here鈥檚 a great鈥揑 have a friend that used to play at Canlis here in Seattle with Jack Brownlow, who was a great jazz pianist way back in the day in Seattle.

And so one thing that he used to do to our friend is he would just change keys in the middle. And our friend was a bass player, so he had to learn how to keep up with, if he changed keys in the middle of a song, partly because if someone ever came up and started singing with him, that’s what he would do to get ’em to stop singing. But that’s what we do in the classroom all the time, is all of a sudden we have to change keys and figure out, well, do I know how to play this tune in any key with any mood, with any kind of context, rather than I’m the content holder and you as students are the people who are, this is the banking model in education. And so in many ways, we, by entering into this, we are academics because we keep up and we read more and more, we become aware of things. And I realized that when I talk to people at other seminaries, especially around theology, most people go to college or go and get their PhD and then they teach the same thing for the next 30 to 40 years.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Yeah.

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
They don’t go and go, oh, well, I guess I should read a lot of Black theology now. Oh, I guess I should read some feminist work. Oh, I guess I should. That’s just not normal. But to survive at this school, oh my goodness, that was one of the first things I began to do, is fill in the holes of my education and wonder, well, how does this more contextual theology work into how the tradition has gone? And so that’s a very long, but I’m like, for me, that’s where the academy has really helped me. I can go to a conference and I can hear Willie Jennings and J. Kameron Carter talk about, well, what is, and, Brian Bantam, this is a session I went to a long time ago about 鈥淲hat’s the future of Black theology?鈥� And I’m like, well, I don’t think I’ve read any Black theology.

And so that becomes this kind of entry into, okay, so now I can dive deep into something that I have little experience of, but yet at the same time have being invited into because I am a part of the academy. And so in some ways, it’s always an opportunity to be curious, learn just a little bit more, dive a little bit deeper and realize, oh, people are asking the same question I’m asking only maybe from a different perspective or the shift happens of. So how does that help me to go back and rethink my own work as I go along? So I think of it as a dynamic back and forth.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
That’s really helpful. That helps put words to, I have patience for a lot. Well, I hope I have patience for a lot of things, but one of the things I don’t have much patience for is when students start saying, well, we’re just guinea pigs. You’re just trying out this new thing. We’re just guinea pigs. Because I, me, there’s the immediate response that I hear you speaking to of like, well, we could be doing the same thing we’ve done for the last 10 or 20 years. I would much rather be in a place where we’re trying to listen to Covid, for instance, and what does it tell us, as opposed to, wait, we got to get back to what we did 20 years ago. So that’s really helpful. Yeah.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Yeah. No, and I love the framing of the academic side is what facilitates unto something else. It’s unto a freeform, a jazz in the classroom. And I think sometimes it’s pitted as opposed to that, it’s this stuffy thing that is either about our own trying to be pretentious and whatever else we’re doing, as opposed to, no, this is my words. This is how I play. This is the way I go play, is that I’m going to go read a book on something and then play with these ideas. That is a form of play for me, and that’s what I want to invite the students to. And that’s what the way I hear what you’re saying, Chelle, is I want to saturate myself in more of the conversation that I’m inviting students into so that wherever we end up going in the classroom, I feel comfortable to be able to go with them. I have touchpoints in there. And to guide them in that and to help, not just to tell them what it is, but to continue to bring frame and context and to then point them in directions that are going to be more interesting for ’em.

Dr. Chelle Stearns:
Yeah, and I maybe bring it back to, as we’re talking about ghosts and shadows, of working with the story rather than trying to control it and saying, no, this is the right way to go.

And I think in the classroom it’s always a challenge. [DS: Yeah.] One thing that’s very, very live right now within American Christianity and North American, Canadian and American churches is the conversations around LGBTQ issues. And it’s not just kind of like, it’s no longer, what do we think about this? It’s now you’re either in that part of the denomination or that part of the denomination, or you’ve now been kicked out of your denomination, and so the lines are being drawn. So whatever we’re talking about in the classroom, really it has taken a whole new life within. So if I think about my own academic work, and I do, I see doing theology, doing my own theology as an act of prayer. It is a deep part of my own spirituality and my own faith. And so I don’t just kind of randomly read things. This is part of my, what God is inviting me into.

And so it helps to deepen my own faith, but so that when we are in the world and things are really beginning to shift, I mean, these are the students that are coming into the classroom who are like, I got kicked out of my church, or These are their own ghosts and shadows. I got kicked out of my church. My church got kicked out of its denomination. I was on the floor when the denomination was having this conversation, and I realized how much I was being erased by so many people. Or I feel terror when someone talks about LGBTQ+ issues because I have a different opinion than them. And so all of those things are being, it’s center stage in the church right now, and I realize how much, if we aren’t in some sense, if there’s not a school having these conversations and really talking well both theologically and psychologically about what’s happening in the church, and they’ve always been by kind of bifurcated. We realize this is where we get to, we begin to have doctrine over humanity, cradle over unity within the church and a lot because people feel deep, deep terror, get back to trauma in the church. And I’m like, so what ghosts and shadows are within the church that so many denominations right now cannot actually have good conversation and keep the family system together.

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Ghost & Shadows Conversation Series

In this season as 天美视频 has been looking back at the first 25 years, we, Dr. Paul Hoard and Dr. Doug Shirley, have been exploring what it means to live with the legacies and histories in our community, as well as how to engage with these proverbial ghosts and shadows, these systemic inheritances. Together in this series titled 鈥淕hosts and Shadows,鈥� we鈥檝e examined the past and looked towards the future through three essays, and we also invited colleagues to join in the conversation and share their reflections in a series of podcasts starting with Dr. Curt Thompson.

Our Guest for this Conversation

Dr. Monique Gadson is a licensed professional counselor, consulting therapist, educator, and podcast host. She received her B.S. in Business Management from The University of Alabama, her M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Troy State University, her M.S. in Spirituality and Counseling from Richmont Graduate University, and her Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Amridge University. Dr. Gadson hosts the podcast, 鈥淎nd The Church Said,鈥� which discusses church and culture from a Christian counseling perspective, focusing on mental and emotional health and the church. She provides counseling and consulting services through her practice, Transforming Visions, LLC., concerning issues such as grief, trauma, anxiety, depression, marriage and family care, relationship challenges, questions of faith, and spiritual abuse. Her areas of professional and ministerial interest include premarital and pre-engagement education/counseling, individual development, effects of trauma on development, family-of-origin influences, relationships, marriage and family therapy and education, the intersection of theology and psychology, and the Church and mental health ministry.

Dr. Gadson served on the staff of a church for 16 years as the clinical mental health counselor. She also has served as an expert contributor to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs for a video-based training series for chaplain services, and as a consulting therapist for several churches and organizations. She has taught several courses in psychology, counseling, leadership development, legal and ethical professional development in marriage and family therapy, systematic evaluation and case management, and human development. Presentations at professional conferences include the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and the American Association of Christian Counselors. Passionate about individual development and relationship education, considering these as means of discipleship, she believes the cornerstone for a healthy society is the love for one鈥檚 self and others fueled by a love of God.

Transcript

Dr. Paul Hoard:
I am Dr. Paul Hoard, an Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at 天美视频. Dr. Shirley and I have been working on this project we call Ghosts and Shadows in this season where the school has been looking back at the first 25 years and looking ahead to the next 25 years. And as we are preparing to move from this building to a new location, we’ve been exploring what are the proverbial ghosts that haunt us, the ghosts and shadows with us in our community, as well as how to engage with those ghosts and shadows, what we think about systemic inheritances. We’ve written a few essays and we’ve also continued the conversation in a series of podcasts with a few colleagues to help us reflect together. We are grateful for our colleague Dr. Monique Gadson, accepting our invitation. Dr. Gadson joined 天美视频 in 2022. We are looking forward to engaging with the perspective she brings as our newest faculty member.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Well, I am smiling because a long awaited conversation with Dr. Monique Gadson is upon us, Monique and Paul and I have been talking about this kind of conversation for a while. We’ve been having a bunch of these kinds of conversations off screen. But here we are on screen to, Monique, ask you about our project to invite you into this project that we’re working on, that we’ve called Ghosts and Shadows, and that we believe means something. Maybe it’s helping us to keep our own sanity and mind and what’s about us in the midst of a season where we’re looking back at 25 years and looking ahead at 25 years and saying, who are we and what is this? And even as we now know we’re moving buildings like the proverbial ghost in the closet, what are the ghosts in the shadows, whether it’s the red brick building or the community of learners that we are, what are the ghosts in shadows that are with us?

And how do we think about things like systemic inheritances being a part of an ancestral line, being a part of intergenerational flow and where stuff gets hung up and where it flows freely and what helps things to flow freely. So like with Curt, with Dr. Thompson, one of the things that we worked on was in his framework, a track two type of way of engaging both narrowly and otherwise where, help me, Paul, if I misspeak it here, but where with intention and purpose we choose to hover, not unlike the spirit hovered in the Genesis account, creating order, seeking beauty and goodness, not just sort of giving into limbic craziness, but in some ways knowing that that track one in the trenches, disordered, chaotic way is in all of us and we have to engage it in some way to bring about order to seek goodness. He left us with this notion of durable beauty that both Paul and I went, what is that?

But we want whatever it is, we want it. So anyway, it’s that conversation that we want to invite you into. So thank you for being here today. We’re recording this so we have it. So this is to as much stimulate our minds and what we’ll write next. So welcome. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Monique Gadson:
Very excited.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
I love, again, my sense is that you’re going to warm up here in just a moment and we’re going to hear some good stuff. So even what you just heard me say, are you already thinking or feeling something in terms of what I just said?

Dr. Monique Gadson:
Oh yeah, thoughts are abounding for sure.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
I figured. Would you share whatever you’re inclined.

Dr. Monique Gadson:
So I guess just to start off with, thank you guys for engaging me in the conversation and inviting me to be a part of it, especially as the newborn, if you will, the newbie. So there are probably advantages to that. There are probably a lot of disadvantages to that, but we go forward anyway. But I guess my first initial thought, well my first initial thought that I’ll start with, is how courageous of you all to take on this project? Because I think it can be just so easy to know that there’s an elephant in the room, but not will wanting to be the one to say, do you think that there’s an elephant in the room or do you see the elephant in the room? So I think that it is really courageous and really bold. And when I say bold, I’m thinking more of a boldness with a spirit of adventure if you will. Not so much like this, I kind of hold this superior positioning and I’m bold enough to tell you this. I don’t feel it’s that way. I think it’s more of a boldness with a sense of adventure where it can be, again, so easy to tuck your head in the sand and just kind of, but to say, Nope, we don’t want to do this. We want to confront it, we want to look at it, we want to call it by whatever its name is. And to then decide how do we want to deal accordingly.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
I love your boldness. We just, were talking with Andrew who’s off screen, who’s going wing-walking. I hear echoes of wing-walking even in that sense of we’re trying to adventure here. I like that. I like that. One of our prime intents, I’ll speak for you Paul, and you tell me if it’s wrong. I know it’s not wrong, but tell me if you would add, is to do something generative. We’re not here to bash, we’re not here to crash the plane. We’re here to find a different sort of wind beneath our wings, so to speak, that could carry us a long way in the days ahead. So thank you for calling that bold. I feel that I feel the difficulty of moving into this, but I do also feel the excitement of like, oh, I could actually think better. I could actually find my mind if we were to stay on with this project.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
And just to add, I think what’s drawn me to this personally has been this. There’s something that I don’t know and I feel very tuned to not knowing there’s something that I don’t know what it is. And I think Doug, our little blog posts are sort of you and I’s attempts at trying to name it, but they feel really insufficient. We don’t know what it is because hopefully even engaging you can feel the like, oh, there’s something we don’t know happening here. And I think inviting Curt and Monique and Chelle and others to kind of dialogue with us is trying to help invite your words to help us get closer as we move into this not knowing into that openness of track two that Curt talked about of like, okay, yeah, we all sense it. We’re using the word elephant, the way we talk about the elephant in the room, but I have no idea what it is, but here’s some words for the felt experience of it for me. Yeah. And with that, maybe just curious, Monique, what’s happened for you, especially as the newbie, I’m thinking of as the newest member of the faculty, you’re the one joining and there’s an element of that perspective of you haven’t been around long enough for it to become normal yet. You can feel this isn’t normal at times. And so as much as you feel open to maybe what are some of those moments been like for you?

Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah, so it’s really interesting. It’s been, I guess I would say kind of an awkward place to be because part of me would wonder, is it because I’m new and everyone else kind of knows the language and it’s like, oh yeah, this is when we, this is what we call, or this is where mother keeps the blah blah, blah. You kind of like, oh, okay, Paul, I know you and I have so often described it as that in-law thing. So when you’re coming into a new family, it’s like, okay, well where do you keep the towels? So you almost feel awkward to ask the question because everybody else knows. But also what has been interesting to ask the question is when it is not known. So there is very much this sense of like you’re saying there is a thing, but we can’t really put a finger on it.

We can’t really say what it is. I do believe the experiences that I’ve had, the naming of what we think it is is probably not what it really is. It’s usually kind of what gets or who gets scapegoated if you will. So it is been, in the beginning, it’s kind of sorry about my very naive questions, but with you, a curious person by nature, I am an asker of the question, if you will, as my father would always say. And so by asking those questions, I believe, as Doug is saying, I think it generates something if we have the courage to ask the question. So that’s kind of been the best way. I guess I can try to explain it where being new it is this, well, I just don’t know, but now it’s not, I don’t know because I’m new. It’s like I don’t know because it is that skeleton or that elephant.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Yeah. Well I love what you said there, Monique, whatever we think it is is probably not. Right. What actually, if a myth holds a people together, part of what helps to preserve the myth is we can’t really actually get to what it is and its truth or veracity or whatever. We just like, the myth actually falls apart when it gets named and articulated. And so there’s something about that. But I’ll tell you what, I’m really drawn, your father calls you the asker of the question.

Is that right? Yeah. You said of Paul and I that we are bold, but you we’re here in part because of you, because you’ve come in and stirred up. You’ve come in and been the asker of the question in places like faculty meeting where you’ve said, what are you people talking about and what are you doing to the elephant? [MG speaking] No, I’m paraphrasing, just kidding. I’m paraphrasing. But what you have, even the elephant, you are the one who in a faculty meeting said it’s like there’s an elephant in the room that we’re not talking about. And so you said to us, I don’t know if I can trust you people, if you’re not going to actually actually want to try to articulate, we may get there, we may not get there, but if we’re going to dance around this thing, instead of trying to look at it, I don’t know if I want to be a part of you people. Which led at least in my memory, to something like a 90 minute unprecedented faculty conversation around all of the elephants that exist in our system. We developed a list. Am I remembering that? Does that sound right to you all? So you being an asker of the question, it seems to me even as you enter the system, our system, you have been asking questions that we needed to have asked.

Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Well the kid who points out that the emperor is naked, no really willing to say, I don’t see the clothes. And I think being new enough in your own boldness or history or being willing to be the one that acknowledges the not knowing as opposed to sort of, I’m going to play the part and I think, and I would put my own joining in this. I’ll play the part I learned to adapt to whatever system I’m in, which both works for me on a survival method, but also doesn’t help, helps me then adapt to become part of a system. Doesn’t question the system very well. And so your willingness to come in and say, no, no, that emperor is naked, I don’t see any clothes, forces, is that I think in some ways the healthy shame of like, yeah, no, no, we’ve been playing something. We’ve been playing something. There’s a shame that I think is a deserved and a healthy like no, because this isn’t who we want to be. We can be better than that calling us.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
I hope it’s okay for me to say here. I’ve heard you say you’ve had the word shame on you given to you in a loving charging way in your past. And so maybe even that’s what I hear Paul saying of this is a project about shame and it’s not a project about mean, those ghosts and shadows may point towards what Resma [Menakem] calls dirty pain or something that isn’t so healthy, but also maybe a healthy shame where we got to say, oh yeah, I have been playing that game and maybe that’s not a good game for me to play.

Dr. Monique Gadson:
I think that when there is either an unconscious or maybe semi-conscious survival mechanism that is in operation, then what we are gearing toward is how do we survive? So I guess maybe some of that that Curt has been talking to you guys about on that level. And I think that when we are stuck in that mode, I think our imaginations are gridlocked. And that’s some of what Friedman will talk about. The imagination will have this gridlock. We can’t think beyond just what do we need to do to survive. And so I thought it was really interesting and part of your blog where you guys talked about how does this institution stay relevant in the midst of all of the other kind of changes that are taking place, but it feels as though there is this sense of to stay relevant means to survive, and then that means I’m stuck in my survival loop.

You know what I’m saying? And I think that maybe unbeknownst to us, we find ourselves swept up in all those changes, even though we’re trying to figure out how to stay relevant. I think that we inadvertently get swept up because when I hear the language or when I read the language, how do we stay relevant when all other things are being tossed to and fro? That’s like the words I like to use. So staying relevant, how is it that we can be the tree that may bend but won’t break, right? So yes, we are going to feel the rusting of all of the things that are happening externally and how is it that institutionally we have that non-anxious presence to be able to say, yeah, everything can swirl around us. I mean because it will, every generation of students, every two to three years, four to five years, whatever the case may be, something’s going to come in and something’s going to blow in that is happening societally, culturally, nationally, wherever else. It’s just all of these things are going to be happening. But if an institution I feel is going to survive, it has to say yes, we can address what is happening and also how is it that we remain a non-anxious presence? And I think that in order to be able to do that well, you have to get out of survival mode. You have to get out of that cycle that feeds, this is what we do to stay relevant, which you may exist, but I don’t know that you’re staying relevant

Dr. Doug Shirley:
In our text threads, even just staying connected with each other. And in the conversation leading up to today, Paul, you said, I think it was you that said, or one of you two said, so then it’s sort of like we create these dramas to show that we exist and that we’re needed, but it’s not actually a move. If I listen to what you’re saying, it’s not a move out of survival. It’s actually that same looping, but we create dramas to keep the loop going so that we know that we exist.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
I mean, when you thrive in chaos, you’re going to create chaos to thrive. And so then I think there’s a confusion of is this the chaos that like you’re saying, is being blown on us or is this also us making sure that it’s always there? Because maybe part of our inheritance is we thrive in chaos. We were born out of chaos. And so there’s a tendency that almost a growth out of it that we don’t know how to make. And so we’re sort of stuck in a loop. And I hear that even in, I think something that was thrown out earlier today that’s been a recurring theme that you’ve said, Monique, in our faculty meetings, which is like we perform as faculty as a school, we perform and we perform fairly well. We know how to put on a show, we know how to do things.

So our external, what we present to the students, to the world, to the rest is one thing. But I think that it doesn’t lead to that non-anxious presence you’re talking about Monique, because we don’t know how to talk to each other, the roots of the tree that the invisible part of us that isn’t seen outside isn’t sturdy. And so I think there’s this desire for us to, what I hear you trying to cultivate mess, Monique, is can we talk to each other so that conversations that nobody else ever needs to hear about so that when we go out there, it’s not a performance, it’s a living out of conversations we’ve already had. And I think even this conversation, the meta point here is maybe very 天美视频 of me that we’re having a conversations being recorded for other people, but the three of us have been having a conversation for a year. This is not the first time we’ve talked with you about some of these things, Monique. Not that we were rehearsing this, but that I think this conversation being recorded would’ve been inappropriate if it hadn’t come out of a year of us sitting on it wrestling with each other.

Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve agreed had there not been prior conversation with you all to really have a firm understanding of what do you want to do with this? Where are you going with this? So yeah, to your point, I don’t think that this conversation, well, it could have taken place, but I do believe as you say, it would have been along lines of being very performative. And I just believe that I think as the clinician in me that may be, cannot sense and discern whatever that is that’s going unnamed without saying we need to name this at some point. We need to name it at some point. I’ve seen it too many times over the decades that I’ve been doing the work that the thing that we’re trying not to name is usually the obstacle to the thing that we keep saying we’re trying to get to. So yeah, I can remember working with couples and as you mentioned that dancing around and okay, there’s some tension here and everything is good and some tension there and everything is good. And I keep going, what’s the tension about? What are y’all not telling me? I said, I really feel like there is something you’re not telling me. And boy, when they told me Kapo, but it was on the other side of that beauty emerged and not only beauty, there was a stability.

I’m thinking of a couple who has spent over 20 years together and never married, never married. And I’m kind of going, whoa, this is a long time to be together and have the desire but never fulfill it. What do you guys afraid of? What are you not telling me? What’s keeping you from doing this thing? And when they finally named it, and of course all of the chaos ensued behind the naming, but when the calm came, so did the stability, the marriage took place. And as far as I know, marriage has been going good. Every now and again, they’ll pop up and just say, Hey, we’re doing well. And I’m like, great.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
What my mind did with what you just said that I think was wrong was my own couple’s mind when, oh, she’s saying that they had a piece of paper that said that they were legally tied, but they weren’t actually acting like they’re married, but you are saying no, they literally didn’t even do the deed to have the piece of paper that said that they were married. Which I think even that back and forth fits some of what I experience in our ranks as faculty. Are we married? Are we in, do we have contracts? What do the contracts authorize us to do and not authorize us to do? Can we have a contract but not actually be in? If we’re married are we actually married? Are there parts of us that we’ve kept from getting married the whole time out of fear and trepidation and survival needs? If we don’t talk to each other as intimate partners and that can just be as good friends and colleagues鈥搘hat’s keeping us from that?

Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that question has to be asked. I think that that question has to be answered at some point because if not, if we are talking about this, these inheritances, then you’re going to continue to pass that on, generation to generation. They’re going to continue to get that until there is someone who is going well. So questions can be asked, but again, and there can be attempts to answer, and apparently the answers are not sufficient because still in this place. Yeah.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
Well that makes me go back to the, I think a word you threw out earlier, Monique, which is trust that there’s, what do we not trust in? What is it we don’t? Do we not trust each other? Is there a system? Where is this because the lack of trust I think is there, and you’re saying, Doug, this lack of commitment of a marriage or if we want to use that metaphor, whatever, but there’s not a trust. And I think that’s what I hear us trying to name, that there’s this appearance of connection. There’s this appearance of community and there’s this lack of trust when you get into maybe the inner workings of us as faculty where there’s sort of, we’re made sense of it that all of us in the psychology side, we’re clinicians. So we’re sort of also have our private practice and we’re professors. And so there’s a way that I think that’s also an excuse of, are we actually in on this thing? Are we actually there? We actually committed to what this is, and do we trust each other? Do we trust the institution? Do we trust? I don’t know what, but there’s that, I think a lack of trust that comes out where we’ll perform for the kids,

But behind closed doors, what else happens that I think we’re trying to figure out?

Dr. Monique Gadson:
And I think that’s exactly what it is. It is a trying to figure it out that in and of itself is going to require a degree of emotional investment and energy for that matter, that some may not have, some entity, some parts of the system may not have not want to have for various reasons. And I really don’t even, I’m hopeful that when I say that, I don’t say that in a way that sounds like it’s trying to villainize someone. Not that, I mean, I just think that these things are legitimate and I think that they are real. And as I so often say in classes, especially when we do consider systemic thinking, we are reflecting something from somewhere, some grander, macro, eco, whatever else, old system, right? We’re reflecting that. And so often, like I say to the students, if we are supposed to be agents of change and training individuals to be agents of change, if we cannot enact it, then there’s a problem. There’s a problem.

We are stuck somewhere. We’re colluding with some self-deception perhaps or something that is not happening. And I do believe that part of it is the, I know you guys use the language of the fantasy, where I think that there is this fantasy that the outcome is a kumbaya-ish feel. And I say to the students sometimes that I don’t know that that’s necessarily where we are trying to get for the next step. That’s a lot to try to accomplish when we live in times that are so extremely polarizing. That’s a lot to try to get your arms around and contain and try to accomplish. And I am saying, what do you do just in the next moment, like your next step? What do you do with that dynamic between you and that person or your client that you’re sitting in front of?

I think that there is, I think that we’re just paralyzed in place. We’re stuck in place, and I do believe that part of that is that societal, emotional process. I think we keep transmitting stuff and I think that that is going to continue to be transmitted because majority of humans want the quick fix. And usually these types of issues are not quick fixes. You have to be in it for the long haul. That’s why in part is important for an institution, an individual, a leader, to have a non-anxious presence. Somebody has got to be steady when all of the cultural and emotional and educational and all the other things are going to be up in arms and changing as many times as we can blink in a day, something, someone has to be that beacon to say, I stand and I shine and I don’t change from that. Something has got to continue to call to say, here’s the way, this is the way, come on, this is the way. Yes, the water is choppy. Yes. That’s a scary conversation to have. Yes, that is a hard thing to name. Yes. That’s a hard thing to face. Yeah, that’s a hard thing to even confess, whatever it is. But if you have, and we know this, y’all know we know this when we talk about that, co-regulation, so if we have that steady presence, that non-anxious presence, perhaps that can

Be securing enough where people will be willing to say, okay, there’s a journey ahead, but it’s going to start with one step. Right.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Monique, thank you. There’s a stillness in me that I did not have when I came, so thank you.

Dr. Monique Gadson:
Thank you all. I appreciate you.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Alright.

The post Ghosts & Shadows Conversation Series: Podcast with Guest Dr. Monique Gadson appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

To start the series, psychiatrist, speaker, and author Dr. Curt Thompson joined us for a conversation. In 2023, he gave a fascinating talk at 天美视频 and we were intrigued. Listen to this conversation as the three of us play together in these liminal spaces. [Note: this conversation has been edited for length.]

Our Guest for this Conversation

Psychiatrist, speaker, and author Curt Thompson, MD, brings together a dialect of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and Christian anthropology to educate and encourage others as they seek to fulfill their intrinsic desire to feel known, valued, and connected. Curt understands that deep, authentic relationships are essential to experiencing a healthier, more purposeful life 鈥� but the only way to realize this is to begin telling our stories more truly. His unique insights about how the brain affects and processes relationships help people discover a fresh perspective and practical applications to foster healthy and vibrant lives, allowing them to get unstuck and move toward the next beautiful thing they鈥檙e being called to make. Through his workshops, speaking engagements, books, organizational consulting, private clinical practice, and other platforms, he helps people process their longings, grief, identity, purpose, perspective of God, and perspective of humanity, inviting them to engage more authentically with their own stories and their relationships. Only then can they feel truly known and connected and live into the meaningful reality they desire to create.

Transcript

Dr. Paul Hoard:
I am Dr. Paul Hoard, an Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at 天美视频. Dr. [Doug] Shirley and I have been working on this project we call Ghosts and Shadows in this season where the school has been looking back at the first 25 years and looking ahead to the next 25 years. And as we are preparing to move from this building to a new location, we’ve been exploring what are the proverbial ghosts that haunt us, the ghosts and shadows with us in our community, as well as how to engage with those ghosts and shadows, what we think about systemic inheritances. We’ve written a few essays and we’ve also continued the conversation in a series of podcasts with a few colleagues to help us reflect together. We are excited to have psychiatrist, speaker and author, Dr. Curt Thompson with us.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Well, hey Curt. Thanks so much for being with us. The last time I was in the same room with you was on 天美视频 campus. You were kind enough to give a keynote at the gala, the 25th anniversary gala that we hosted here at 天美视频 a handful of months ago. And I was really taken by the keynote that you gave us. And so Paul and I have been working on this project that we call Ghosts and Shadows, where we’re trying to articulate really the ineffable, the things that are hard to reach out and touch and say and speak and grab, but that we know are there and we know are probably pulling at us, tugging at us, calling to us in ways that are probably pretty urgent and pretty active and pretty pervasive. So with that, with what you were saying about track one and track two, how an institution, how a system, how a community can move and can move with intention and purpose and such, again, was really striking to us.

So glad to have you here. As I listen to Curt, I think about, okay, so for Paul and me and every other faculty member and staff person at 天美视频, we will have our ghosts and shadows moments of where we got that security, where we didn’t get that security growing up. We bring our family to work, so to speak. We create all the group theory and organizational stuff where my mind is hanging out is, okay, so now we’re in this institution of higher ed where we’re supposedly all adults, but we don’t always act that way. And let’s say we’re hovering, we’re wanting to move between track one and track two. As I was listening to you talk, I was thinking about we used your Anatomy of the Soul text for a handful of years, and of course I taught called Interpersonal Foundations. And I want to say maybe it’s towards the end of that text, maybe you’re working with Romans 12 and the importance of differentiation of body parts of the whole, but that sense of the renewal of the mind that comes in and through the body and in some ways each part having a part that it plays, trying to play a part that isn’t its part to play.

And I think again, that comes back to that’s what Paul and I are trying to work at, right? Is not some paternalistic, let’s tell the system how to get itself together, but how do we deal with the ghosts and shadows that are with us internally in psychically, but really sort of across this learning community.

I know a framework for you is confessional communities. So this sense of here we’re trying to do this higher ed thing that is so rife with so many problems, so much promise, but so many problems. And here we are at this sort of interesting point, 25 down, hopefully 25 to go, and we are trying to say what does beauty and goodness look like, especially in community and especially in a community that hasn’t, when you’re talking about that dad who comes and says, that was me. I raised my voice. I didn’t need to, or I was tired, I didn’t need to talk to you that way, or I didn’t need to talk to mama that way, whatever it is, especially in a system where we haven’t necessarily been inclined to speak to each other that way we have a real problem speaking to each other, adult to adult, human to human, beauty and goodness and shadow to beauty and goodness and shadow. Can we sort of parlay this conversation into how could this look for us in this community as we think about growing a sense of security together?

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Well, I would harken back to I think earlier in our conversation when I would, I’m now just completely imagining something, spitballing something and thinking like, oh, if the two of you had a room, you like, look, we’re going to start with a small group. We’re just going to start with somebody with a small group and see what it does. We’re going to pick people that we think would be willing to try this on. I’m making this up, I don’t know if this would be wise or not, but we’re going to pick six or eight other people and we’re going to say we want this institution to be more than, and we have the experience of longing for beauty and goodness, and we are aware of shadow, we’re aware of it. And again, these are my words and I’m aware of how shadow can keep us on track one and do things in ways that are not helpful. And we want to live increasingly in a space where more of the opportunity that track two gives us is something that we can access. You see like, oh, what would you think about that? They might say, oh, okay, that’d be good. And then you say, so here’s what I want. I actually want the opportunity for all of us to talk about the pain of the shadow.

Because one of the things that we talk about in the confessional communities is that it is not too difficult for people. Well, it is less difficult for people to talk about what their longings are in very general abstract terms than it is for them to talk about their longings in very concrete terms in the room until and or unless they have named their griefs. And by name them, I don’t just mean made a list of them. I mean, I’ve brought my experienced grief into the room with the vulnerability that is associated with that. And I’m taking the risk of telling you, this is my grief about what happened here, about what has happened here, what is happening here. The very act of doing this is just scaring the living daylights out of me because I’m worried about what. This is the other thing we do in a group, we will say, well, I’m worried what other people will think. What are the people which named

Because until I, this whole moving from the imagination to incarnation, the more I move toward incarnation, the more I actually have agency to do something in real time and space that gives my body a very different experience of being with the shadow in the room with someone else who is not leaving me with the shadow, who’s being hospitable to the shadow. And in so doing, allowing the shadow to be transformed, at which point I can then more easily say, I want to build a relationship with you, you with whom the story I’ve told actually for a while is that you don’t like me.

That’s the story I’ve told. Well, because let me just give you one example of something that happened between you and me, but I think what we have found is that when people are able to name their griefs, we talked about it, we are people of belonging. We are people of grief, but my longings remain much more vague and much less embodied in their naming before it had lessened or until I name my grief and I can’t name my grief in the abstract because if that’s where it stays, I am not actually able to do anything with it in an embodied way.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Then our longings were remain in abstract too.

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Right? Exactly.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Which I think there’s all this, this phrase 鈥渓ove well鈥� that has been circulating in 天美视频 for a long time. My wife tells the story of having done therapy with the child of a Seattle school graduate who the parent was saying to the child, I just want you to love well. And my wife turns to this teenage kid and says, do you know what that even means? Because I got no idea. We have phrases like this I want to 鈥渓ove well.鈥� What in the world does that even mean? Right?

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Right. It sounds good, right? Yeah. But your body knows. Your body knows. I know when I’ve been loved well when I sit in the room and tell you a hard thing just about me and you’re compassionate, let alone when I say to you, you really hurt my feelings when you said that, and you say, oh, gosh, tell me more about that.

Dr. Paul Hoard:
And I would say the flip side of that, I also know when I have been told that I’ve been loved well, and I don’t feel that, [oh, dude], or when the words, I think when we’ve leaned so far into the imaginary, into the words, into the sounding and the impression that as if yet that incarnation as you called it, the actual us togetherness is not there. And I think, thinking of context, right? Everything from Seattle to Western culture to maybe 天美视频, that’s definitely one of these aspects that I think is there that you’re talking about, Doug, that we can then pass on these words that then become even more and more empty and more and more almost the negation of the very concept that perhaps it was originally intended to speak to. Now love well is in place of loving. Right?

Dr. Doug Shirley:
And even reminds me, so Curt, we’re going to do an interview with our colleague Monique, and Monique is the newest of the faculty to come to us, and she’s been saying that to us, Paul, this sense of we do these things Curt called residencies, where we have our low resident students who come two to three times a year. They come on campus, they do a whole bunch of stuff, and it’s times when the faculty gets together. And so we will do, one of the things we did in this last residency was to talk about the spiritual work that we all find in our vocation. It was lovely, it was personal, it was connected, it was vulnerable. But Monique comes along and says, this is interesting. We do this in front of students, but as faculty, we don’t necessarily do this with each other. So there’s almost this performance. We do it as a performance, but then we stop when the curtain draws, then we stop doing it.

So it has taken her, I think, even with her new eyes and again, even, and what’s interesting about Monique is she lives in Atlanta, so she is the first faculty member to be here, not here. The rest of us. Paul can catch a ferry to the campus. I can drive 40 minutes down to campus. Monique’s got to hop a plane. And so there’s this interesting thing of even she has a sense of difference that she brings where she’s able to look in and go, something’s fishy. It kind of comes back to this thing of we need other people to see us. She’s come in to see really some of the places where, how did you just say that, Paul? The words that we use end up negating the very thing that they were intended to signify in the first place. She’s been one to say it kind of smells like that in here.

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m struck, one of the phrases that we use repeatedly in our communities is this notion that whatever we’re talking about isn’t really ultimately true for us until we feel it in our chest. It doesn’t mean that it’s not true in the abstract, but it’s not true for me ultimately. That God loves me isn’t true until I feel it in my chest and I not, and it is that to it to respond by believing.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Well, and that makes me think about Paul, your blog post around, I think some of the folks who have been a part of our community, kind of wr large since we’ve begun, probably what they have felt most in their chest is a sense of fragmentation. So the transformation didn’t run its course, let’s say, but somehow in the middle of the track, one, track, two rhythm, not rhythm, they got stuck or we got stuck even in how we interacted with them. And fragmentation was the deliverable, so to speak. That is a big part of our collective history thus far. A lot of fragmentation, a lot of polarization, A lot of this is either the best place to go or the worst place to go.

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Would you

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Say that, I just wonder, Paul, I’d love to hear what you say, Curt, would you add to that, Paul, anything you would say to that?

Dr. Paul Hoard:
No, just that I think, I mean, one, I am always coming from my context of I’ve only done two years there, so what I speak to is what I felt and seen, but only in my two years having been a part of the system. So not knowing beyond just some of the stories to pass down. But I think the other part that I go to when you talk about that fragmentation is also being curious about how that was survival at one point, how the fragmentation was necessary, kind of like you were saying, Curt, earlier, that depression, the anxiety, the symptoms that our patients bring to us is actually their minds working correctly. But there’s something that, there’s an aspect of the context. There’s a part that we don’t understand, which is why it is disjointed. And so it makes me wonder what made fragmentation necessary and why do we keep passing that on? I can’t remember the story, but the story of the family, that big leg of lamb, and every time they do it, they kind of cut it at this particular point. And then sort one day the child asks, why do we cut that? And the mom says, I don’t know. And then ask the grandpa, and the grandpa says, well, I don’t know. And then eventually you find out it’s because the great grandparents just had small pans, but it’s been, it was this necessary solution to a problem that doesn’t exist anymore.

So instead of us then splitting on, let’s kill the fragmentation, like you’re saying before, Doug, is like, I want to actually listen to what it’s telling us.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Right?

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Yeah. It reminds me of this whole notion of, you’re familiar with: It’s often more helpful to ask the question of what happened to you rather than what’s wrong with you. And so, I mean, we are so often caught in just trying to manage our symptoms as we are trying to cope. That the notion of reflecting that would, because that’s so much of a track one posture, the notion of being curious about what happened such that I find myself where I am is hard to do because I am by myself. That’s how I’m living. I’m living in an isolated mind鈥檚 experience. And in order for me to ask that question, it often requires someone else to ask it first. And being with someone who can say, what happened to you? What happened here? What happened here at the school? What was the event that felt fragmenting?

Again to put it in? And of course, people are loathed to say these things because the whole storytelling thing, if I say what happened to me that I’m going to have to say that it was John who did this, or Sarah who did that, and I feel like I’m blaming you, actually. We’re not really talking about John or Sarah. We’re really talking about you. It’s your story that we want to hear, and we’re going to have to invite you to trust us to know that we’re not going to hold John or Sarah in contempt while we listen to you tell your story. Nor am I going to hold you in contempt if your story involves me. I’m not going to hold myself in contempt either.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Curt, I’m aware of time.

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Yeah,

Dr. Doug Shirley:
I’m aware of time. So I want to ask you this question because just before we started recording, I think your word was demand, right? You spoke of this demand for something more and not a demand that is obligatory, but a demand that is calling. Even as you’ve interacted with us, is there any demand you would bring to us today, even to this project, to your sense of what we’re trying to do, to what you know about minds and institutions and the work

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Of the spirit and all the things? Yeah. Would you bring any sense of demand?

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Oh gosh. I think even as we’re talking think, oh, what do I really mean by that? We’re like, I believe that Jesus places demands on us. And I think what I really mean by that is what I mean that Jesus places demands is the same thing that I mean when I say that if you want to build a skyscraper, that gravity is going to place demands on your project. It is not going to do it with condemnation. It’s not going to do with contempt. It’s not going to do with derision, but it is just the way the world is and there’s no getting away from it. And likewise, this is what I hear Jesus posture being: the way the world is that you don’t want to allow me to heal your wounds, then heaven’s not going to work for you.

It’s just not going to work. If you are having a hard time imagining giving me your story, healing’s not, it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be tough for you. Jesus was, Mark’s rendition of the rich young ruler just really captivates me because it’s the one doc that says he looked at him and loved him and then said, there’s one thing that you lack, and he missed the look or the look undid him. Maybe he didn’t miss it. Maybe he saw the look and the look was too much, but it’s a look, this is the look that we’re going to get. Jesus isn’t going to apologize for being himself when he looks at you and he doesn’t look away, and he looks at you with someone who’s like, come on, come be with me. But you’re going to have to give up. The part of you that really just thinks all you have to do is work really hard to get me to love you. That part, it’s not going to work here.

And so there are those demands. So I don’t know that鈥hat demands do I have? There is the part of me that longs for you all to, you are sensing things. And if you’re sensing things, I would interpret that. My sense of that is like, oh, the spirit is on the loose. The spirit is knocking on doors, spirit’s opening cupboards. And I would want you to hear Jesus’ voice saying, don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Or at the very least, don’t be afraid to be afraid. And I hear you saying, oh, look, you guys are getting after it. This stuff is percolating. This stuff is moving. I hear you talking. It’s like, oh yeah, these two cats are, they’re going to have a hard time not doing something about this.

To which I would want to say, please listen to the spirit and take one step at a time. Take one step at a time. My guess is you probably have a sense of some other people in your space that would be open to starting a process, three or four people maybe. It might not even be a whole room full. It might be three or four people. And if that works well, then you say, oh, we’re going to take the risk of inviting three or four more people into the process, and we’re going to name this and we’re going to do this work thoroughly. We’re going to do this work patiently. That’s how the most durable beauty gets created over a long time.

But it always requires risk. It always requires vulnerability. It always requires our willingness to make mistakes and know that, okay, Jesus is not worried about the mistakes. He’s too busy being with them. And then what are we going to do next? And the last thing is, I would want you to, I be just becoming so increasingly, the Trinitarian theology has just got me by the shirt collar, and in Luke’s version where Jesus says from the cross, father, forgive him for the, I’m like, why doesn’t he just forgive him? Why doesn’t he just say, y’all we’re good. You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m going to forgive you. I go, oh my gosh, he’s asking for help. I don’t know if I’m hanging on the cross. Maybe I need somebody else to start this process and I’ll catch up when I’m ready. You know what I mean? Not trying to make this be, not trying be whatever, but you know what I mean. The sense that we need help doing these kinds of things. And so I would want the two of you, or I would want you to be supported from something that is outside of you, outside the system, to say and terms, yep, this is really hard. This is really hard. Let’s keep trying.

Dr. Doug Shirley:
Yeah. Yes. Well, thank you for doing that in part with us even today. Thank you for saying yes to the conversation, and yes to the play, man, durable beauty. That stuck with me too. Holy toledo, we going to have to do something with that durable beauty. Well, Curt, bless you.

Dr. Curt Thompson:
Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Alrighty, y’all have a good day. You too. Alright guys. Thanks. You too. We’ll see you. Bye.

The post Ghosts & Shadows Conversation Series: Podcast with Guest Dr. Curt Thompson appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

In this fourth and final podcast of the series, Derek asks Dan and Keith to give blessings and speak into the school as we go forward into the next 25 years.

Our host for this miniseries:

Dr. J. Derek McNeil started at 天美视频 in 2010 as Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs before becoming the fourth President of 天美视频 in 2019. Since joining the institution’s leadership team, Dr. McNeil has been integral to our achievement of regional accreditation, the reimagining of our curriculum and degree programs, the securing of millions in grant funding, and the launching of . Prior to his tenure at 天美视频, he served as faculty in the PsyD program at Wheaton College Graduate School for over 15 years. Dr. McNeil has worked as a clinician in private practice, a diversity advisor, an organizational consultant, and an administrator. His research, writing, and speaking have focused on issues of ethnic and racial socialization, the role of forgiveness in peacemaking, the identity development of African-American males, leadership in living systems, and resilience.

Our guests for this miniseries:

Dr. Dan Allender co-founded 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology to create new training at the intersection of psychology, theology, and culture in order to equip people to serve more effectively in the dynamic contexts of the 21st century. From 2002-2009, Dr. Allender served as the first President of what was then known as Mars Hill Graduate School, navigating the young institution through crucial formative years and transitions. Guided by the support and leadership of 天美视频, in 2011 Dan Allender, Becky Allender, and Cathy Loerzel founded the to steward the legacy of his unique and innovative methodology for the healing of trauma and abuse. He hosts the podcast for the Allender Center and continues to teach in the classroom and at conferences. Dr. Allender is the author of multiple books, most recently Redeeming Heartache co-written with Cathy Loerzel. Before founding 天美视频, he previously taught at Grace Theological Seminary and Colorado Christian University.

Dr. Keith Anderson first joined 天美视频 as Academic Dean in July 2006. In May 2009, he became the school鈥檚 second President, succeeding Dr. Dan Allender, a role he held until his retirement in October 2017. During Dr. Anderson鈥檚 tenure, 天美视频 received full accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools, added new faculty and staff, and launched the . Prior to 天美视频, Dr. Anderson had held roles in ministry and in academic administration at Northwestern College, Bethel University, and the University of Sioux Falls. He is the author of multiple publications including Reading Your Life鈥檚 Story: An Invitation to Spiritual Mentoring.

Resources:

• Our mission of training people to be competent in the study of text, soul, and culture to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships is embodied in our graduate school, the Allender Center, and the . Our commitment to provocative, challenging, nuanced Christian writing is held in the twice-yearly print and digital journal and also the regional journal .
• Check our out 25-Year Anniversary page and our story and visual timeline to join us in this season of looking back and looking ahead.

Episode transcript:

Podcast Introduction: Welcome to the 天美视频 Podcast, where we hold conversations at the intersection of text, soul, and culture. 天美视频 of Theology and Psychology is a graduate school and seminary in Seattle, Washington, on a mission to train artists, pastors, therapists, and change-makers to join God in the restoration of their communities through transforming relationships. In celebration of our 25th year as an institution, Dr. J. Derek McNeil, President and Provost of 天美视频, invited Dr. Dan Allender, Founding President and Professor of Counseling Psychology, and Dr. Keith Anderson, President Emeritus, into a conversation on the past, present, and future of our calling and community. Listen in as they describe the original hopes and dreams from our founding days and the continuing values of engaging in discourse, scripture, and stories. In this episode, Derek, Dan, and Keith give blessings as we go forward into the next 25 years. Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy this conversation between Derek, Dan, and Keith.

Derek: Well, we’re coming close to our, this is, I call this an initial conversation. What do you want to say into the school as maybe a blessing? My father, I appreciated him so much. He took every moment he had to bless his grandchildren and he would name each one. And he knew them well enough to say, Hey, this is what I hope for you. This is what I want for you. This is what I want the future to be for you. And so he would go up and down the line and misname each one. And I’d love before we got off, but the two of you to take a moment and name some things that you want to speak into us as part of your鈥搉ot living legacy, if you will鈥損art of your life with us.

Dan: Well, I, I’ll begin by saying that, as it’s been stated in other cases, my presidential place was accidental. But the reality is we had the immense privilege of being able to pass the presidency on to, truly, a man of such incomprehensible goodness. And that is Dr. Keith Anderson. And for him to be able eventually to pass it on to you, Dr. McNeil, it is one of the legacies of the school that is remarkable leadership in the midst of the kind of humility, the kind of madness, the kind of labor that’s required. And so one of the things I would say is may the passage of this school in the years to come, continue to have leaders like the two of you, and indeed enough of a sense of the reluctance and accidentalness of my own leadership that the intersection of great competence, great character, and great accidents, may that be one of the benefits of our lives as it passes on into the institution in the future.

And then the second thing is, again, a kind of epistemic humility. We have something to offer, but we have so much more to learn. And I certainly know that from the dreams of a young 45-year-old to now 25 years later, the amount of boldness bound to hubris is in some sense heartbreaking. But also I’m very, very proud of the founders who began and the founders who came soon thereafter, and then the new founder founders. I hope the school is always being founded, and that 50 years from now that there will be the sense that you are called to create what is central to living out the gospel in this day. And if we have leaders like the two of you and a heart to found itself again and again, I think the next 25 years, which I indeed don’t plan to be around for, but nonetheless commend and say that there is a future for this institution.

Derek: Amen. Thank you.

Keith: Yeah. Who knew? Who knew we’d be talking about Jubilee, you know, instead of talking about can we make it through the next budget cycle? Can we make it to the next, whatever, the next semester almost. But, yeah, one of the things that, one of the main things that I would want to say is Abraham Heschel, one of the great Old Testament scholars, a Jewish rabbi, a man who looks more like a rabbi than anybody should, and he’s got this huge beard and these fierce, intense eyes as he looked out. He said the entire of scripture for him, the Old Testament for us. But the entire essence of the scripture could be summarized in one word: Remember, remember, remember what God did in taking us from, and through the Red Sea and to the Promised Land. And for me, it is, one of the reasons why we need to keep returning to the founding vision and returning to those founders who had that kind of bold anointing, I think, is because I’m utterly convinced that you all, Dan, were given an anointed mission. Now, I don’t know how it all came about. I don’t know if it felt anointed at that point or if it felt like some evening around pizza and whatever else. Who knows. But there is something that is, I want to say to the school is remember the mission: text.soul.culture. To my ears that is gospel, and,I went to a text seminary, and so we talked about was how my voice was going to be heard through preaching, through hermeneutics, through systematics and all that. I value all of that. But soul.culture, it’s not one of those, where you get to pick one of those. It’s this sacred collision between all three of them, if you will. And it’s, so there鈥檚 that, it鈥檚 remember, remember, remember the mission, remember that this is truly anointed by God, and if there’s going to be a jubilee, it’s going to happen because that gets remembered. And metabolized in the lives of everyone going forward.

So there’s a part of me that also wants to say: stay the course on the things that are so foundational in the truest sense. There are a lot of things that are sand and not rock. And part of the role of the coming leaders in 天美视频 will be to figure out, first of all, what time is it? Good leaders know that they have to figure out what time is it in the culture, in the life of the organization or the movement or institution. And also what time is it in our larger context in North America and in how we try to relate to the rest of the world. So there’s a part of it, I want to say: stay the course.

We haven’t always done that. We all know that. Others know that. We know that we’ve zigged off the trail sometimes and we need to get zigging back onto the trail or zagging, I don’t know which. But there’s something about staying the course in the ways that we have just honored story, honored the narrative. Dan’s teaching on this is beyond profound. You are a story. You’re not a compendium of thousands of unrelated random stories. You are a story and God is co-writing that story, or you and God are co-writing that story. So if that’s the case, can we practice that going forward?

Derek: Amen. I love both the sense of journey narrative. The constraint that leads to freedom Who we are. The constraint that leads to freedom. Thank you both. This has been a lovely conversation. We鈥檒l do it again. And I appreciate the gifts you have given and given your lives to and how you’ve seeded into us and continue to do so. And in some ways a blessing forward. We will need that blessing as part of our story forward. These are the things that hold us in rough water. And so thank you both.

Dan: Our privilege. My privilege, it’s good to be with you. And I look forward to the next field trip that the three of us get to take.

Derek: Will do.

Keith: As do I. Bless you both.

Derek: As well.

The post Looking Toward Jubilee Podcast Miniseries | Episode 4: A Blessing As We Go Forward appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

In this third podcast of the series, Derek, Dan, and Keith imagine the future as they explore the theme of our anniversary celebration: Looking toward Jubilee.

Our host for this miniseries:

Dr. J. Derek McNeil started at 天美视频 in 2010 as Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs before becoming the fourth President of 天美视频 in 2019. Since joining the institution’s leadership team, Dr. McNeil has been integral to our achievement of regional accreditation, the reimagining of our curriculum and degree programs, the securing of millions in grant funding, and the launching of . Prior to his tenure at 天美视频, he served as faculty in the PsyD program at Wheaton College Graduate School for over 15 years. Dr. McNeil has worked as a clinician in private practice, a diversity advisor, an organizational consultant, and an administrator. His research, writing, and speaking have focused on issues of ethnic and racial socialization, the role of forgiveness in peacemaking, the identity development of African-American males, leadership in living systems, and resilience.

Our guests for this miniseries:

Dr. Dan Allender co-founded 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology to create new training at the intersection of psychology, theology, and culture in order to equip people to serve more effectively in the dynamic contexts of the 21st century. From 2002-2009, Dr. Allender served as the first President of what was then known as Mars Hill Graduate School, navigating the young institution through crucial formative years and transitions. Guided by the support and leadership of 天美视频, in 2011 Dan Allender, Becky Allender, and Cathy Loerzel founded the to steward the legacy of his unique and innovative methodology for the healing of trauma and abuse. He hosts the podcast for the Allender Center and continues to teach in the classroom and at conferences. Dr. Allender is the author of multiple books, most recently Redeeming Heartache co-written with Cathy Loerzel. Before founding 天美视频, he previously taught at Grace Theological Seminary and Colorado Christian University.

Dr. Keith Anderson first joined 天美视频 as Academic Dean in July 2006. In May 2009, he became the school鈥檚 second President, succeeding Dr. Dan Allender, a role he held until his retirement in October 2017. During Dr. Anderson鈥檚 tenure, 天美视频 received full accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools, added new faculty and staff, and launched the . Prior to 天美视频, Dr. Anderson had held roles in ministry and in academic administration at Northwestern College, Bethel University, and the University of Sioux Falls. He is the author of multiple publications including Reading Your Life鈥檚 Story: An Invitation to Spiritual Mentoring.

Resources:

• Our mission of training people to be competent in the study of text, soul, and culture to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships is embodied in our graduate school, the Allender Center, and the . Our commitment to provocative, challenging, nuanced Christian writing is held in the twice-yearly print and digital journal and also the regional journal .
• Check our out 25-Year Anniversary page and our story and visual timeline to join us in this season of looking back and looking ahead.

Episode transcript:

Podcast Introduction: Welcome to the 天美视频 Podcast, where we hold conversations at the intersection of text, soul, and culture. 天美视频 of Theology and Psychology is a graduate school and seminary in Seattle, Washington, on a mission to train artists, pastors, therapists, and change-makers to join God in the restoration of their communities through transforming relationships. In celebration of our 25th year as an institution, Dr. J. Derek McNeil, President and Provost of 天美视频, invited Dr. Dan Allender, Founding President and Professor of Counseling Psychology, and Dr. Keith Anderson, President Emeritus, into a conversation on the past, present and future of our calling and community. Listen in as they described the original hopes and dreams from our founding days and the continuing values of engaging in discourse, scripture, and stories. In this episode, Derek, Dan, and Keith talk about the theme of our 25-year anniversary: looking toward Jubilee. Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy this conversation between Derek, Dan, and Keith.

Derek: I want to spend a good amount of time talking about, hey, what do we dream? Since we began as dreamers, what do we dream for the next 25 years? We have a lovely title for our 25th anniversary: Looking towards Jubilee. And the notion of Jubilee is 50 years of people. So if people had a question, you’re 25 years old and you’re talking about 50, what does that mean? And so we’re at a present moment looking towards the next 25. And so the question becomes, what do we hope for? What do we see God doing in us? What is our intentionality into the next 25? See my little dog stirring there. Forgive her, she鈥檚 settling in.

Dan: I think that’s a good image for what the future holds. And that is, like digging a nice spot on the couch and creating a context where greater comfort, and again, not convenience, and certainly not the avoidance of conflict, but where there really is the ability to hold the beatitude 鈥淏lessed are those who mourn.鈥� And we are in a period of mourning. [Derek: Yes.] And that needs to be one of the contexts. We鈥檙e not therapy. We’re not a place merely to come and heal. But if healing, significant heart transformation, is not part of the educational process, then again, the core assumptions of what began the school would be indeed denied. So I just know for myself, what I’m hoping for is that the latter years of my life become not merely productive, but actually more of the presence of Jesus and who I am and what I do. And again, as simple as that may sound, I find learning Jesus more and more and more complicated, but also more deeply satisfying.

So that’s what I hope we become even more鈥損eople who look at terms that have been used over the last 30 to 40 years, like evangelical, with鈥搉ot as skewing it鈥揵ut also saying what that word has become in many people’s worlds is not the reflection of the gospel I know. So how we engage politics, race, disparity, income, the issues of economic models, how we address the reality of trauma, will be a constant coming back to: May you form yourself, Jesus, within me and within this institution. So one of the things I would say is I want everyone from the person who persons the front desk to every faculty having that sense of the christological compulsion or the sense that nothing is to be thought, taught, reflected on that does not at some core level come back into the story of Jesus. So that would be one of my hopes, that we become even more christologically, Jesus-focused in everything that we are, in everything we do.

Derek: Okay. Dr. Anderson.

Keith: Well, and for me it comes back to the鈥揑 think one of the most profound parts of scripture that doesn’t always get studied very carefully. And that is what happened in the return from Egypt, from Babylon rather, to the Promised Land? And it just fascinates me because what Ezra does, first thing he does, as, I think before they have even unpacked anything, whatever they carried on camels or however they got there. But what did he do? He built a tower and stood up there for two days, if I remember right, and read scripture to them and centered them and anchored them in the story that had been metabolized for them as a people, the story that had allowed them to survive years in Babylon. But then the other thing that he did, that to me is just a powerful image for the kind of theological education that is rare, sorry to say, that it’s extremely rare, but that is the image of the synagogue. What they did is they created a place, and sadly it, it required a minion, a quorum of 10 men. That’s the sad part of it. It was men only. But what they did is they set a table, put the Torah down in the middle of it, and then they stood around and argued about what it meant. And clearly, as we go back into history, we see that these were passionate arguments, sometimes heated arguments, spirited to be sure, but they argued about the meaning of this defining text. And from that then, they were able to move forward.

And I think when I think of the discourse that’s going to be needed, so easy to go to the political divisiveness and that discourse, I think it has to start elsewhere. I think it has to start, for many of us, in our communities, in our churches. I was doing some teaching the other day and I found this etymological treasure again recently in Latin, the word person is persona. And in Greek, it’s prosopo. And here’s what it means. A person is a human being, is a person face-to-face, face-to-face, as they are in relationship, in community, working alongside, working in mission. So we’re only human. We’re only fully human, at least, when we are in relationship, face-to-face with God, with others, certainly with ourselves. But it, it’s that face-to-faceness that, can we do that in the classroom? Can we do that? I don’t know how we’re going to get to a place and we seem to think we’re going to get back to a place where we used to do it politically. I don鈥檛 quite see it.

Derek: I don’t think we’re getting鈥�

Keith: But can we do it? Do it with each other. And

Derek: I think too, you speak of, even addition to the building a place of home, really, I hear that as building institutions, rebuilding institutions that can hold the scripture. And there’s much more in this age, we’re moving into the need for prophetic. And I see the institution having to be, needing to be more prophetic, needing to in some ways speak both in terms of interpreting the times but having a sense of what would be the movement in these times? What would be the movement of the people of God in these moments? And I really do see us in some ways accentuating this notion of, we are training people to be healers and builders. The brokenness requires a certain healing, and the trauma requires a certain healing. And then the rebuilding of institutions that have been corrupted or no longer useful, that which had to be torn down to be resurrected again, to say, we center ourselves in these things.

We center ourselves in text, but really the God who knows us: we are God’s people. And so I think there’s a prophetic moment that we’ll have to enter into because of the external environment we’re living in that is quite fragmenting, quite wound, wounding in deep ways, has its own set of debauchery and fascism, and the need to call us towards a way of living, I think. And a movement of people who call towards a way of living will become increasingly louder for us. And so this is the challenge, I think. I love this sense of movement because that means we have to be dynamic and live in the culture that God has called us to live in. So Keith, I don’t know if it’s just in the classroom anymore. I think it has to be on the corner. It has to be places where we call people to kind of, Hey, this is a place where God was, how do we reclaim this spot for God in that sense.

And I don’t mean it in the old sort of conquer way, I mean in the presence sort of way. How do we become friends in this place? How do we become partners in this place? And I think we’ll be moved out of the building in some ways and into saying, what is life and how is life lived? And how do we offer not just values, but commitments? How do we offer commitments of how to live together with some sense of a Christocentric nature? So these are interesting times that we’re in and interesting times to not just simply to survive, but thrive in with a trust in something more.

The post Looking Toward Jubilee Podcast Miniseries | Episode 3: Looking Toward Jubilee appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

In this second episode, Derek, Dan, and Keith describe the tensions, trauma, and challenges of the current social environment. How can we live into discourse as people of Christ? How can we invite each other into difficult conversations, setting a table and sustaining a banquet through our disagreement? Next week鈥檚 podcast will include a glimpse into the future of 天美视频 with these three Presidents.聽

Our host for this miniseries:

Dr. J. Derek McNeil started at 天美视频 in 2010 as Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs before becoming the fourth President of 天美视频 in 2019. Since joining the institution’s leadership team, Dr. McNeil has been integral to our achievement of regional accreditation, the reimagining of our curriculum and degree programs, the securing of millions in grant funding, and the launching of . Prior to his tenure at 天美视频, he served as faculty in the PsyD program at Wheaton College Graduate School for over 15 years. Dr. McNeil has worked as a clinician in private practice, a diversity advisor, an organizational consultant, and an administrator. His research, writing, and speaking have focused on issues of ethnic and racial socialization, the role of forgiveness in peacemaking, the identity development of African-American males, leadership in living systems, and resilience.

Our guests for this miniseries:

Dr. Dan Allender co-founded 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology to create new training at the intersection of psychology, theology, and culture in order to equip people to serve more effectively in the dynamic contexts of the 21st century. From 2002-2009, Dr. Allender served as the first President of what was then known as Mars Hill Graduate School, navigating the young institution through crucial formative years and transitions. Guided by the support and leadership of 天美视频, in 2011 Dan Allender, Becky Allender, and Cathy Loerzel founded the to steward the legacy of his unique and innovative methodology for the healing of trauma and abuse. He hosts the podcast for the Allender Center and continues to teach in the classroom and at conferences. Dr. Allender is the author of multiple books, most recently Redeeming Heartache co-written with Cathy Loerzel. Before founding 天美视频, he previously taught at Grace Theological Seminary and Colorado Christian University.

Dr. Keith Anderson first joined 天美视频 as Academic Dean in July 2006. In May 2009, he became the school鈥檚 second President, succeeding Dr. Dan Allender, a role he held until his retirement in October 2017. During Dr. Anderson鈥檚 tenure, 天美视频 received full accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools, added new faculty and staff, and launched the . Prior to 天美视频, Dr. Anderson had held roles in ministry and in academic administration at Northwestern College, Bethel University, and the University of Sioux Falls. He is the author of multiple publications including Reading Your Life鈥檚 Story: An Invitation to Spiritual Mentoring.

Resources:

• Our mission of training people to be competent in the study of text, soul, and culture to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships is embodied in our graduate school, the Allender Center, and the . Our commitment to provocative, challenging, nuanced Christian writing is held in the twice-yearly print and digital journal and also the regional journal .
• Check our out 25-Year Anniversary page and our story and visual timeline to join us in this season of looking back and looking ahead.

Episode transcript:

Podcast Introduction: Welcome to the 天美视频 Podcast, where we hold conversations at the intersection of text, soul, and culture. 天美视频 of Theology and Psychology is a graduate school and seminary in Seattle, Washington, on a mission to train artists, pastors, therapists, and change-makers to join God in the restoration of their communities through transforming relationships. In celebration of our 25th year as an institution, Dr. J. Derek McNeil, President and Provost of the 天美视频, invited Dr. Dan Allender, Founding President and Professor of Counseling Psychology, and Dr. Keith Anderson, President Emeritus, into a conversation on the past, present, and future of our calling and community. Listen in as they describe the original hopes and dreams from our founding days and the continuing values of engaging in discourse, scripture, and stories. In this episode, Derek, Dan, and Keith talk about setting the table. Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy this conversation between Derek, Dan, and Keith.

Derek: That brings us to a little bit to thinking about now: we are in a social environment that’s challenging, quite challenging, particularly around institutions though. What does it mean to be a desire, to be a movement, in a time when institutions are failing and what does that mean for us? And I’d love for the two of you to speak a little bit to that as we face institutional challenge and questions of where we are now. And I know not just simply questions internally, but we’ve had questions externally to where we are now. But I’d love to hear your thoughts and feels on those sorts of things.

Dan: Well, certainly this is a conversation, not a full-fledged answer, but at least from my standpoint, we live in a polarized world that has become more deeply divided and enraged and looking for scapegoats. And in some ways, that is the most phenomenal opportunity to engage how Jesus became the scapegoat and how, in one sense, the whole goal is an engagement with the human heart or what could be called psychology and theology, or better said, the reflections from a biblical worldview. How do we build the bridge between the realities that divide us? And there is no one, no person but Jesus that can engage that. But Jesus is, shall we say, not controllable, not easily pinned-downable. And in that, Jesus is not of the left and he’s not of the right. So I think part of where we are as an institution is, how do we build bridges to simultaneously offend the left and the right, but in doing so to expose the reality that all of us struggle with our own form of idolatry, our own desire for empire, for control, for management, of all the chaos that we live in, how do we tell the truth about ourselves in a way that tells the truth about our larger culture that actually opens the door to the power of the gospel and both Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension鈥揳nd the fullness of the story of God. That鈥檚 what I think we are attempting to do, certainly stumbling at times, but attempting to do in the context of this day.

Derek: Certainly it feels that’s the challenge. And I think you put it well. It gets fuzzy when Jesus gets fuzzy. I’ll say that in that way. When Jesus gets hijacked to the left or to the right or refused, rejected from the left or from the right in whatever form, we lose a sense of, I would say even ethical, moral, but deeper than that, a spiritual direction. And that has been the challenge of the current in some ways. It is how do we hold Jesus? And the fear of this is鈥� Jesus is a part of our past as opposed to Jesus is a part of our future. And sort of, what do we look forward to, and is being lost for a rejection of what was. And I think that’s interesting. Again, Keith, I’m thinking about this language of movement, this sort of how do you, in the midst of a movement, something that’s dynamic, hold onto something that feels to be whole. And what I mean, I don’t want to say true, cause I think that word’s being battered around, but whole and full and a full spiritual sense of things.

Keith: I came across a note the other day from a dear friend of mine from my years in Tacoma, and the pastor, pastor at their, this is a woman, long story about her, but this is a woman who had climbed to the summit of Mount Rainier, I think, 12 times.

Derek: Whoa.

Keith: She is a tremendous mountain climber. And when she knew that I was in training to attempt that for the first time, she said, Keith, I want to tell you how to climb a mountain. And it would’ve been a great book title. She said: Hike. Talk. Zigzag. And what she meant by the zigzag was particularly for your knees on a descent. But there’s something missional, I think in what we’re talking about now in the zigzagging, instead of鈥搕here’s no straight line and we’re so thoroughly polarized that it will take a mighty work of the spirit and a long road around to get to where we can be together. And some of it is that: being together. We kind of don’t know how to do that anymore. I was in a coffee shop this week, and, there was, turned out to be the pastor of a local church, but he had a book that I had read, and I stopped and said something about it, and he kind of looked up and said, “You read this book?” And yeah, we started talking about it. He’s in a church now here on Whidbey Island, and they’ve lost a hundred people in the last two years because the politics are wrong, because they can’t talk to each other anymore.

And when I think about the present of 天美视频, to me it is, it is all about discourse. Can we set a table where not only the left and right, and I mean you can pick all of the opposites, all the binaries that you want, but can we set a table for people to actually be together, first of all, and can we disagree? One of my direct reports in his first day on the job asked me a question that became very important to our work together. Not a question that a new employee has ever asked me before. This question was: Keith, I want to know how are we going to fight? And the one who’s laughing the loudest there, the one who’s laughing the loudest there, was the one who asked the question. And I said, naively, we’re going to fight fair, Derek. And he said, no. And we talked further until I realized what an important question that is. Can we disagree? Can we fight and come out of that as brothers and sisters in Christ? And my answer is yes, painfully. It’s going to take a lot more than just a few slogans and something on a t-shirt or a sweatshirt that says we can do that.

Derek: I agree. And I appreciate where you have held onto that and discerned what I was asking. And I think part of my joining the school was a belief that we could create enough space to do so. And it’s never, never ideal. It’s never perfect. But I felt like even then, if we couldn’t tussle, then how would we sit with each other in honesty as opposed to void? And the option of not tussling is to avoid. And that will always be the struggle of the school as well. Do we engage each other honestly, and commit to being with each other through difficult times? Or will we flee, will we kind of trauma response, Dan, a bit of fight or flight? How do we actually live into co-regulation?

We just had a meal with staff and we were trying to get staff to come back into the building. And one of the things we asked them, questions about what do you want to see in the next 25 years? And was sitting with some folk and they said, we want to see the reconciliation of folk who’ve left, folk who’ve been with us. And, in my bones, I feel like this is who we’re called to be as people of Christ: reconcilers. That doesn’t mean warm and fuzzy, that means struggling and tussling and remaking, renaming each other. But I do believe that’s what鈥檚 called for. And so Keith, you’re right, that notion of discernment, we’ve actually begun spending time as staff, and at some point with students, really working through what’s it mean to be people of discourse, people of talking about difficult topics, people of struggling with tensions that don’t easily resolve, particularly an external environment. And that feels to be part of our, who we’re called to be in this sense. Dan, I’d love to hear you and your thoughts about where we are and how you see us living into discourse.

Dan: Well, I think you’ve named it well in a traumatic age and in traumatic responses, the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, we’ve talked about that in many other contexts. But it is very hard in the midst of trauma to slow down, to open up, and to be truly curious by being able to admit that I have much to learn and much to understand. And that’s what鈥檚 required in the middle of any kind of major change. The ability to slow down and listen and to actually take in that there is something being said I need not just to rebut, but actually reflect. And in that, it is a hard thing to hold both the reality of being harmed and experiencing harm while simultaneously being open to the one or to the ones that either symbolize or actually are the ones that brought you harm. So again, developmentally, it’s back to how do we bless our enemy.

Now how do we actually love our enemy? And who do we call an enemy, on what basis? So those categories are realities that I believe we have begun to address. But have to be even further addressed. And again, not to excuse, but to say, the fact that we’ve made it through up to this point, one of the most difficult eras in terms of the Covid, two and a half years, it’s pretty stunning. And the fact that we’ve been able to sustain most of all that we have been meant to accomplish, even if it’s been slow and jagged, there has been a sense that we’ve been falling forward, and with some degree of care helping one another back up. So I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do in a really egregiously difficult time. And it’s not satisfying. I’m proud, but I’m not satisfied in terms of what we actually set out to accomplish, what we’ve done through so many iterations of this school’s founding, flopping, refounding, redeveloping. And I do think that’s our core calling. Can we invite one another into difficult conversations where even when we get triggered and have the normal鈥搒hall we say traumatic response鈥搘here we can actually sustain a banquet to listen long enough even when there is deep and significant disagreement?

Derek: I love that. Can we set a meal before each of us? Can we invite each other to the table? And I think that is a continuous request. You’ve moved away from the table again. Come back. You’ve moved away again. Come back. You’ve moved away again. Come back. And can we both be host and invitees? Because sometimes I want to move away from the table and sometimes I’m hosting the table, and that sort of play with both of those things. And I do think you’re right. It is such a hard thing to live in tension when the world is in tension. It is much more, we’re more prone to look for a distraction, addiction, if you will. And the challenge I think of the school is how do we find, and again, this is where I think we’ll need Christ more deeply than maybe we’ve even needed Christ in the past, to help co-regulate us and to help us see our way through to be invitees as well as inviters to this table and banquet.

The post Looking Toward Jubilee Podcast Miniseries | Episode 2: Setting the Table appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Introducing our host for this miniseries:

Dr. J. Derek McNeil started at 天美视频 in 2010 as Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs before becoming the fourth President of 天美视频 in 2019. Since joining the institution’s leadership team, Dr. McNeil has been integral to our achievement of regional accreditation, the reimagining of our curriculum and degree programs, the securing of millions in grant funding, and the launching of . Prior to his tenure at 天美视频, he served as faculty in the PsyD program at Wheaton College Graduate School for over 15 years. Dr. McNeil has worked as a clinician in private practice, a diversity advisor, an organizational consultant, and an administrator. His research, writing, and speaking have focused on issues of ethnic and racial socialization, the role of forgiveness in peacemaking, the identity development of African-American males, leadership in living systems, and resilience.

Introducing our guests for this miniseries:

Dr. Dan Allender co-founded 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology to create new training at the intersection of psychology, theology, and culture in order to equip people to serve more effectively in the dynamic contexts of the 21st century. From 2002-2009, Dr. Allender served as the first President of what was then known as Mars Hill Graduate School, navigating the young institution through crucial formative years and transitions. Guided by the support and leadership of 天美视频, in 2011 Dan Allender, Becky Allender, and Cathy Loerzel founded the to steward the legacy of his unique and innovative methodology for the healing of trauma and abuse. He hosts the podcast for the Allender Center and continues to teach in the classroom and at conferences. Dr. Allender is the author of multiple books, most recently Redeeming Heartache co-written with Cathy Loerzel. Before founding 天美视频, he previously taught at Grace Theological Seminary and Colorado Christian University.

Dr. Keith Anderson first joined 天美视频 as Academic Dean in July 2006. In May 2009, he became the school鈥檚 second President, succeeding Dr. Dan Allender, a role he held until his retirement in October 2017. During Dr. Anderson鈥檚 tenure, 天美视频 received full accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools, added new faculty and staff, and launched the . Prior to 天美视频, Dr. Anderson had held roles in ministry and in academic administration at Northwestern College, Bethel University, and the University of Sioux Falls. He is the author of multiple publications including Reading Your Life鈥檚 Story: An Invitation to Spiritual Mentoring.

Resources:

• Our mission of training people to be competent in the study of text, soul, and culture to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships is embodied in our graduate school, the Allender Center, and the . Our commitment to provocative, challenging, nuanced Christian writing is held in the twice-yearly print and digital journal and also the regional journal .
• Check our out 25-Year Anniversary page and our story and visual timeline to join us in this season of looking back and looking ahead.

Episode transcript:

Podcast Introduction: Welcome to the 天美视频 Podcast, where we hold conversations at the intersection of text, soul, and culture. 天美视频 of Theology and Psychology is a graduate school and seminary in Seattle, Washington, on a mission to train artists, pastors, therapists, and change-makers to join God in the restoration of their communities through transforming relationships. In celebration of our 25th year as an institution, Dr. J. Derek McNeil, President and Provost of the 天美视频, invited Dr. Dan Allender, Founding President and Professor of Counseling Psychology, and Dr. Keith Anderson, President Emeritus, into a conversation on the past, president and future of our calling and community. Listen in as they describe the original hopes and dreams from our founding days and the continuing values of engaging in discourse, scripture, and stories. In this episode, Derek, Dan and Keith talk about the original dream of 天美视频. Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy this conversation between Derek, Dan, and Keith

Derek: In this conversation, I just want to, first of all, to whatever audience is listening, kind of welcome Dr. Dan Allender and Dr. Keith Anderson to a conversation really about our past, our present, and our intentions and hopes in the future. I want to begin with that question of, Dan, maybe particularly for you. I have often said we have been a group of dreamers, but I’d love to hear from you, maybe begin, and Keith join in. What was the original dream? What was the original hope for what this school, this institution might be?

Dan: Well, thanks, Derek. It’s so sweet to be with the two of you. The fact is, the dream was survival. Could we actually create something that would give us employment plus a chance to live out what you’re asking more clearly鈥揳nd that’s what was the dream. And I would say three things. The first is we wanted to be an environment where people could engage the deep doubts that they bring. And that simple phrase of “I believe, help my unbelief.” I’m a believer. I’m an unbeliever, but I certainly know I need help. And I wanted to be part of an institution that could allow that to be not only acknowledged, but part of the actual pedagogical process of engagement of scripture of our lives. And that’s the second element of, I wanted an environment where our stories could be exegeted, where the reality of reading scripture was also part of reading our lives. And so those two were dominant goals of can we engage doubt and admit we need help, and do we have the opportunity to engage story. And then the third was, I just needed a job.

Derek: That third one is not a small and insignificant one.

Dan No, no.

Derek: It reminds me too 鈥揑’ve said this before and it’s even on our website. We are a place鈥揺ven early I can hear鈥� a place of conviction and a place of discourse. There are questions that we have always struggled with and try to, in some ways pursue Christ in the answer of, and we’ve had our moments, certainly had our moments, but I think that’s still with us. I think that’s still a part of who we are. Keith, I’d love you to chime in on that. I think you picked up the dream in another spot.

Keith: We can certainly talk about the guild, founding guild as dreamers. We can also ask, as I asked many times when I first came to the school, what in the world were they thinking? 1999, who sets out to start a school with no money and hoping to have jobs? I get that part, but there’s something that is so bold and Spirit-given in that kind of founding. And it just fascinated me in all of my years at the school鈥搃s鈥揑 don’t think anybody intended to found an institution. If anything, and I’ve said this any number of times, that I think what really was founded was more of a movement and a movement. I love these around deep doubts, around engaging our stories through scripture, which there’s no better teacher for us on how to read our own stories than to read scripture well and to really engage that.

So there was the sacred crazy boldness. When I came to the school, we had been, I had been, part of schools that were at least 150 years old. And so this was crazy brand new. What does this mean? And for me, what it became was the reality that not only was there an initial, original group of founders, but we’ve been refounding the school, if you will, time and again with different people. And there are lots of heroes in the story of Mars Hill Graduate School, Western Seminary, Mars Hill graduates, all the names that we’ve had in 天美视频 but not all of them were presidents.

Derek: Yes, yes. I like, too, the sense that we have been weaving a story together and we often talk about God’s story, our story, but we’ve been our story collectively weaving together with God’s story. And I hear in both of you the sense of this commitment to scripture, the narrative of scripture as a way of discovering and revealing our own story and that being part of this sort of founding, not just simply ethos, but DNA.

The post Looking Toward Jubilee Podcast Miniseries | Episode 1: The Original Dream appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Quotes

鈥淭o what extent do we think that God actually took on our humanity?鈥� Dr. Chelle Stearns

鈥淕od is aware of the wounds of our body, the hurts to our soul, the aspects of our spirits that are downtrodden 鈥� God is not simply elevated and distant, but close, and probably we feel the hunger for closeness most when we are in pain. So the sense of aloneness that can come from pain and the sense that god is with us, coming alongside people to engage them in woundedness, in another type and depth of healing.鈥� Dr. J. Derek McNeil

鈥淭he presence of God isn鈥檛 just solidarity, this is a presence that works on the world constantly. It calls to us into a way of being that doesn鈥檛 accept the pain and suffering in the world. And that鈥檚 the other side of it – it鈥檚 not a given that there is suffering, but there is fierce resistance against it as well.鈥� Dr. Chelle Stearns

鈥淚t raises for me 鈥� puts me in the mind of thinking not about 鈥榟ow does God fix it,鈥� but 鈥榟ow does God live presently in it with us?鈥欌�� Dr. J. Derek McNeil

鈥淪o what body, what kinds of bodies are enough, are full enough, are really human, to the point of imagining Jesus taking on their flesh?鈥� Dr. Chelle Stearns

鈥淲here does our brokenness fit with our hope of restoration?鈥� Dr. J. Derek McNeil

鈥淣o wonder people responded to Jesus the way they did. He actually saw their faces, confronted their sorrows. It鈥檚 not just that he healed people and touched them, he saw who they were and this deep longing we have as humans, regardless of where we come from, but yet we each have that deep sorrow within us of we just want to be seen for who we are and known more deeply鈥攏ot just deeply but being known truly, honestly, warts and all.鈥� Dr. Chelle Stearns

Resources

• Watch Dr. Chelle Stearns speak on 鈥�Lament and Hope Through a Trauma-Informed Theology鈥� at our Seventh Annual Stanley Grenz Lecture
• Learn more about , author of 鈥淏lessings for a New Baby鈥�
• Read

The post Theology & Trauma with Dr. Chelle Stearns appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Earlier this year, Dr. J. Derek McNeil sat down for a conversation with one of his life-long friends, Dr. Howard Stevenson, about trauma and resilience, especially as these topics relate to African-American men and boys. Dr. Stevenson is a clinical psychologist who performs research and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and is the Executive Director of . Throughout his career, one of the questions that has driven Dr. Stevenson鈥檚 research is: Does it matter when we talk to our children, particularly children of color, about race? Understanding not only our individual stories, but the stories of the collective group of people we are a part of, shapes our resilience, capacity to struggle, and ability to thrive.

During their conversation, you鈥檒l hear Dr. McNeil and Dr. Stevenson share findings from their studies on race and resilience, personal stories from their families, and the most surprising thing Dr. Stevenson encountered upon visiting Michael Brown鈥檚 high school one year after his death.

鈥淩esilience as: 鈥楬ow do you navigate adversity within a particular frame or narrative that people have about you?鈥欌�� Dr. Howard Stevenson

鈥淚n this moment there’s a sense of privilege to have a sense of telling your own story as if it is individual, unconnected to a larger narrative notion.鈥� Dr. J. Derek McNeil

鈥淥ur job is to help you fall in love with your own story. When you tell your own story it addresses all the health and well being issues we often struggle with. Who am I? Do I use my voice? Should I shapeshift or not shapeshift? What鈥檚 the cost? In your own narrative you get to make better choices.鈥� Dr. Howard Stevenson

鈥淭raumas that come through the stories that are about you, you know you have to live in them or outside of them or create new meaning in them, and I鈥檓 realizing that鈥檚 a lot of what socialization is about with my family鈥攁ttempts to buffer the collective narrative by giving an alternative narrative and an alternative meaning.鈥� Dr. J. Derek McNeil

鈥淲hat does it take to raise a healthy village? You want the leaders in that village to see both and鈥攂oth you as an individual and as part of the collective鈥攁nd those two don鈥檛 have to be embattled or denied. You hold the individual accountable but also the community accountable to a certain expectation to not swallow the kool-aid of false narratives.” Dr. Howard Stevenson

Resources to Go Deeper

• Read T
• Watch Dr. Stevenson鈥檚 TEDTalk,
• Learn more about
• Read more about

The post A Conversation about Racial Trauma and Resilience with Dr. Howard Stevenson appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.