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AJB Recommends: Podcasts That Bring Comfort

Are you in a place of fatigue from the news? I have three recommendations for podcasts that bring comfort.

I listen to a lot of news and politics, and I’m still spending some part of my listening time every day to learn more about what’s happening in our nation and around the globe when it comes to COVID-19. Oddly enough, I feel fatigued by all the coverage of this topic, and yet I also scroll past stories about other things. 

One of my friends told me a few weeks ago that she had stopped watching the evening news because it had started to feel voyeuristic. Like she was peeking in on the misery of other people, but she was doing so without responding with any sort of loving action. If she wasn’t going to do anything in response, she wasn’t going to watch.

SO, if you find yourself in a place of fatigue from the news, or just in need of encouragement that addresses some of the underlying angst and pain of our present moment, here are three podcast episodes that bring comfort and I’ve found helpful this week:

PODCAST: Interview with Richard Rohr

One, about the nature of love and forgiveness. It gave me so much to think about, and I was so encouraged to think about love as “givenness.” 

PODCAST: Interview with Professor Kate Bowler and Dr. Sunita Puri

Two, I was grateful to hear Duke Professor Kate Bowler (she is also an author and speaker and was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a few years back) talk with Dr. Sunita Puri, a palliative care doctor. They discussed how we try to face uncertainty with information when sometimes we need instead to learn how to live with courage in the midst of that uncertainty.

PODCAST: Interview with Krista Tippett and Stephen Batchelor

And three, I actually haven’t even listened to this one yet, but I’m going to recommend this interview between Krista Tippett and Stephen Batchelor on Finding Ease in Aloneness just because she always does such a beautiful job and the topic seems just right for this moment.

I’d love to hear what is keeping you in the present moment while also bringing you encouragement and comfort. 

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

More of AJB Recommends
Penny’s Gift of Encouragement Is a Gift to Me
Where Is God When People Suffer {Ep 106}

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

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Less Distraction and Paying Attention

Distraction—largely in the form of entertainment and busyness—keeps us from love. (So does fear, and so does injustice, which I’ve been talking about in the podcast. But for today, I’m thinking about distraction.)

Right now, I’m as distractible as I ever was. I keep my phone in my back pocket. (And, lest the idea of a back pocket confuse you, that’s the back pocket of my one pair of yoga pants with pockets.) I pull it out and scroll through Instagram. I check in on multiple news sources. I check the weather. A lot. But truth be told, there just isn’t as much to distract me as there was two months ago. It is easier to pay attention.

Lately, this means I’ve paid attention to the aches and pains in my lower back. Instead of just medicating with Advil, I’ve wondered what emotion is prompting that tension. I’ve paid attention to our kids, and I’ve had a chance to get to know them better. I’ve paid attention to the promptings of the Spirit, so when a friend comes to mind unexpectedly, I reach out. 

And when a gorgeous (if chilly) spring day came along, I paid attention. I paid attention to the sky and the grass and the bluebirds—it is a gift of pure grace to see the blue of a bluebird. I paid attention to our children and delighted in hearing what five celebrities they each would invite to a dinner party. (We all agreed on Beyonce. Otherwise, it was all over the map.) 

This season of less distractibility is an invitation to pay attention—to our bodies, our hearts, our longings, our fears, our dreams. It is an invitation to pay attention to the quiet, gentle, whisper of love.

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

What Having a Baby with Down Syndrome Taught Me About Distraction, Fear, and Love
How Our Kids Are Coping During Coronavirus Crisis
How to Receive God’s Love

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

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Where Is God When People Suffer {Ep 106}

Over the past few years, I’ve become more and more convinced that love is the foundation of all reality. Love is the deepest truth about God, about creation, about humans. So where is the God of love when people are suffering?

Of course, our lived experience often seems to contradict any idea that “all we need is love” or “love lifts us up where we belong.” Our lived experience even seems to contradict the idea that “God is love.” This present moment of coronavirus has included both heroic and ordinary stories of love, but it has also included the horrible reality of divorce rates that skyrocketed as soon as Wuhan province in China opened its doors, rising numbers of calls to domestic abuse hotlines, and an ever-increasing narrative of suffering and death due to COVID-19.

God and Suffering

Where is the God of love when so many human beings are suffering?

I certainly haven’t stumbled upon some perfect answer to this question, but in today’s podcast, I do talk about how Jesus helps us understand a God of both love and suffering. I talked last week about how distraction, fear, and injustice keep us from living in love. This week I’m talking about how voluntary self-sacrifice motivated by love allows us to participate in love. 

Suffering Isn’t the Worst Thing

The bottom line is that suffering isn’t the worst thing. Separation from love is the worst thing. Our typical daily lives—filled with distraction, fear, and injustice—often keep us separated from love. This disruption in our daily lives is an invitation to connect to love. 

(To hear more on these ideas, listen here, and to get future episodes, subscribe to the Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast.)

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PODCAST SHOW NOTES

Casey Cep in the New Yorker on the gift of church: https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/the-gospel-in-a-time-of-social-distancing
NT Wright in TIME: https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/
NYT on politician turned Jesuit: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opinion/sunday/cyrus-habib-jesuit.html
CS Lewis quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/221026-a-man-s-physical-hunger-does-not-prove-that-man-will
Bloomberg Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-31/divorces-spike-in-china-after-coronavirus-quarantines
Philippians 2:1-10
Romans 5:8
John 3:16
From White Picket Fences :

“The privilege of whiteness and wealth can become a wall against the privilege of being human, loved not for status or performance but simply loved, and able to give love in return not because of obligation but in grateful response to an invitation. I have been given much that I do not deserve, and my very real social privilege has cut me off from others as much as it has also made my life comfortable. But social privilege is not the end of my story. The real privilege of my life has come in learning what it means to love others, that love involves suffering and sacrifice and sleepless nights and tears and heartache and great gifts.It makes sense to talk about privilege in terms of access to private clubs and schools and bank loans and preferential treatment by authorities. It makes sense to expose the injustices of privilege and call for them to be rectified. But there is also the privilege of cleaning the wounds of people you love, of participating in healing and new life, of becoming vulnerable and needy and receiving love and care. There is another type of privilege, privilege that connects instead of divides, that shimmers through the air like a link of light, available if only we stop counting the coins and look up.”

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

Coronavirus, Suffering, and Two Questions About God
Reflections on Suffering… and Love
COVID-19, Privilege, and What Keeps Us from Living in Love {Ep 105}

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post Where Is God When People Suffer {Ep 106} appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

Praising God in Sorrow, Just Like Jesus

I mentioned last week that Penny and I have been singing worship songs together lately. It is such a gift to me to turn off the news and sing or to just listen to words that affirm the love and goodness of God. I’m learning the importance of praising God in sorrow.

I also mentioned last week that I noticed this little sentence in the Gospels about what happened in between The Last Supper and Jesus’ agonized prayer in Gethsemane. In between this tender and poignant final meal together and a wrestling match of prayer in which Luke records Jesus sweating drops of blood, the Gospel writers record that Jesus and the disciples “sang a hymn.” 

I wondered out loud to my husband what they would have sung together. He offered to ask a friend who is a rabbi, and I learned from Rabbi Bachman that the traditional songs after a Passover meal, going back to the days of Jesus, are Psalms of praise. Specifically, Psalms 113-118. 

In the midst of deep sorrow, confusion, and pain, Jesus praised God. 

I do not want to overshadow the grief and confusion and pain so many of us are feeling and experiencing right now. I do not want to advocate happy-clappy gratitude or toxic positivity. But I do think I can learn from Jesus’ insistence on naming the truth of God’s goodness even in the face of suffering and death. 

Jesus celebrated his final meal on earth among his friends and his betrayer. He set out into the dark of night, knowing what was coming. And he sang a song of praise.

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

Coronavirus Crisis and What the Bible Has to Say {New Podcast Season}
The Foundation is Shaking: Coronavirus and Living in Love {Ep. 103}
Coronavirus, Suffering, and Two Questions About God

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post Praising God in Sorrow, Just Like Jesus appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

AJB Recommends: What to Read, Listen to, and Watch This Weekend

If you’re wondering what to read, listen to, or watch this weekend, I have recommendations for you!

Reading Recommendation

It’s hard to believe that a rising political star, who also happens to be blind, would decide to renounce a life of success and ambition and embrace life as a priest in service to others. But that’s what Cyrus Habib has done. Not only that, I read about it in the New York Times, and the article begins with these sentences: “In the market for Easter Sunday inspiration? Try the parable of the blind man who gave up political glory for Jesus Christ.” In a time when many people are thinking about what matters most, this story is both inspiring and challenging in all the best ways. 

Listening Recommendation

I skipped this episode of The Bible for Normal People when it came out in February. I can’t remember exactly why–probably because I (wrongly) thought that a conversation about emotions and the Bible didn’t apply to me. But I’m really glad I missed it then because I got to learn from Alison Cook’s gracious wisdom now. Especially in a moment when many of us are facing “negative” emotions like fear and grief, this conversation provides great guidance in how to understand and deal with emotions from a Christian perspective. 

Watching Recommendation

As I mentioned on this week’s podcast, we’ve been watching The Good Place as a family recently. Each episode is funny and thought-provoking, and every member of our family enjoys it (though it is definitely crossing lines of appropriate content with our 9-year-old #youngestchild). Each episode is also only 22-minutes, which makes it a perfect way to cap the day. The premise of the show is that Eleanor Shellstrop (played by Kristen Bell) has mistakenly been transported to “the Good Place,” the place where exceptionally good people go after they die. She needs to try to figure out how to become a good person in order to try to stay there rather than be found out and end up in the Bad Place. And watching it just might get your kids to wonder out loud about what it would be like to want to serve each other in love (that story is on the podcast if you’re wondering…)

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Read, Listen, Watch! Here are some more suggestions:

Coronavirus, Suffering, and Two Questions About God (article recommendations)
Stories of the Saints Book Recommendation (kids’ book)
AJB Recommends: Privilege and Race Podcasts

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post AJB Recommends: What to Read, Listen to, and Watch This Weekend appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

Postponed Speaking Events, Grief, and Gratitude

Today I expected to be speaking at the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, MI. I was planning a new talk about the relationship between love and justice, and I was excited to share some thoughts about how injustice keeps us from experiencing the fullness of the love of God for ourselves and for our neighbors. 

Postponed Events and Gratitude

The Festival, as with every other speaking event on my calendar (as with graduations, sports seasons, concerts, etc. etc.), was postponed until April of 2021. I’m grateful that I’ll still have the chance to speak. I’m grateful to be home with our kids right now. I’m also grateful that technology allows me to continue to speak and connect with people through the Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast. 

Postponed Events and Grief

But I am also grieving the loss of these events. I love being with people in person, and I love what happens when we gather together. One month ago, I was speaking at Trinity Episcopal Church in Southport, CT, about White Picket Fences and how we can participate in God’s loving action to heal our communities of social divisions. Recently, the rector of Trinity sent me this photo above and a note of thanks for our night together. I look back on that evening with a mixture of gratitude and grief.

I suspect that these recent weeks of social distancing, economic insecurity, and medical concern have left many of us in a place of both gratitude and grief. They are two poles of human emotion, two poles of genuine human experience. When we are numbing ourselves, overworking ourselves, or entertaining ourselves, we can ignore or avoid the grief. We often also miss the gratitude. But now, many of us are living in that uncomfortable reality of our very vulnerable humanity. We live with gratitude. And with grief. 

What are you grieving today? What are you grateful for?

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

Gratitude and Grief
How Our Kids are Coping During Coronavirus Crisis
A Model for Race and Justice Events

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post Postponed Speaking Events, Grief, and Gratitude appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

Consequential Strangers and Social Distancing

I was out taking a walk in our neighborhood yesterday, and I happened to cross paths (at an acceptable social distance) with a man who moved here last year. We don’t know each other well, but we tend to see each other in the course of our typical routines. In this time of social distancing, we haven’t seen each other at all. 

After we chatted a bit, and after I realized how delightful it was to bump into someone unexpected and have a three-minute conversation, I remembered the term “consequential stranger.” When we were moving from our old neighborhood, someone pointed out that I would miss the “consequential strangers” in our life. The lady who works at the dry cleaner. The crossing guard for the kids in the morning. The elderly man who walks his dog every morning. 

I’m in pretty good touch with my inner circle of people. I live with four of them. I text and talk regularly with my sisters and my closest friends. But we are all missing out on the chance encounters with that next circle of people in our lives. And we are all missing out on the grace and beauty of consequential strangers.

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

COVID-19, Privilege, and What Keeps Us from Living in Love {Ep 105}
Social Connection in a Time of Social Distance {Ep 102}
How Can We Love Our Neighbors in a Time of Coronavirus?

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post Consequential Strangers and Social Distancing appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

Privilege, Social Divisions, and COVID-19

In White Picket Fences, I write,

The privilege of whiteness and wealth can become a wall against the privilege of being human, loved not for status or performance but simply loved, and able to give love in return not because of obligation but in grateful response to an invitation.

In this week’s episode of the Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast, I talk about what privilege is, what it is not, and how unearned social advantage can lead to unjust social divisions. The coronavirus has demonstrated these unjust social divisions as racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups are experiencing the disease differently, with a proportionately higher number of African American and Hispanic people dying as a result of COVID-19.⁠

My hope in this episode is to begin to identify the things that keep us from experiencing and participating in God’s love. I talk about distraction, fear, and injustice. If we can identify what keeps us from love, that’s the first step in finding ways to turn away from those things and towards the full life God has for us and those around us.⁠

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

COVID-19, Privilege, and What Keeps Us from Living in Love {Ep 105}
Defining Privilege Part One: What Privilege Is Not
Defining Privilege Part Two: What Privilege Is

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post Privilege, Social Divisions, and COVID-19 appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

COVID-19, Privilege, and What Keeps Us from Living in Love {Ep 105}

In recent weeks during COVID-19, we have seen acts of extreme and ordinary self-sacrifice. Doctors and nurses are working around the clock and putting themselves in harm’s way. Parents are teaching their children while trying to keep their jobs. Single people are living in isolation in order to protect their neighbors. Organizations like the conservative Christian Samaritan’s Purse and the liberal Christian Cathedral of St. John the Divine are working together to care for those in need. Crisis can bring out the very best of human nature. 

COVID-19 and Privilege

But in recent weeks, we have also seen extreme and ordinary selfishness and injustice. Scam companies are selling fake products. Children in impoverished communities have little access to schooling. Our social divisions by race, ethnicity, income level, and education are exposed as a disproportionate number of people of color die from COVID-19 and wealthy people can use their means to protect themselves more readily from infection. 

Philippians 2:1-4 offers a vision of an ideal way of living in a time of COVID-19 when privilege often divides. It paints a picture of encouragement, comfort, sympathy, and mutual care. “Consider others better than yourselves,” Paul admonishes. “Do nothing from selfish ambition.” 

It sounds lovely. But living it out feels nearly impossible.

COVID-19 and Human Nature

In today’s episode of the Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast, I talk about how the COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the most glorious aspects of our human nature—our ability to care for one another with selfless love. It has also laid bare the worst aspects of our human nature—not only individual selfishness but collective injustice that divides whole groups of the population from one another. 

What keeps us from living out of love? I talk today about how distraction, fear, and injustice, all keep us from experiencing love and from loving our neighbors. 

It is stunningly beautiful to see the self-sacrifice of so many people during this time. It is heart-wrenchingly awful to see the way our social divisions and privilege lead to greater suffering and separation. My hope and prayer are that we would see these problems more clearly so that we can make choices together to turn away from fear and toward love.

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Podcast Show Notes

For the Life of the World podcast (Miroslav Volf)
Article in Washington Post by Sarah Pulliam Bailey re Samaritan’s Purse and Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Philippians 2:1-4

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

COVID-19, Holy Week, and Preparing for Suffering with Love {Ep 104}
AJB Recommends: Spiritual Podcasts During COVID-19 Crisis
Defining Privilege Part One: What Privilege Is Not
Defining Privilege Part Two: What Privilege Is

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post COVID-19, Privilege, and What Keeps Us from Living in Love {Ep 105} appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.

Singing and the Coronavirus Shelter-in-Place Situation

One of the effects of the coronavirus crisis is that Penny and I are singing together. Our new daily schedule involves the two of us being alone together in the kitchen for breakfast most mornings, and we have discovered that we both like worship music. So every morning, she makes avocado toast, I put together a bowl of berries, yogurt, and granola, and we sing. 

I think it was this gift of singing praises with my daughter that helped me see that in the Bible readings that tell the story of Holy Week, after the Last Supper, the disciples and Jesus sing a hymn together. After dinner, before Jesus goes into a wrestling match of prayer, they sing.

In celebration and in mourning, in love and loss, in faith and in fear, singing can take us out of ourselves, connect us to each other, and connect us to a truth beyond our own understanding. 

I am not grateful for many aspects of the coronavirus shelter-in-place situation. But I am incredibly grateful for the daily gift of singing with my daughter. Who would have thought that singing and the coronavirus would go together in a sentence?!

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Want to read more? Here are some suggestions:

COVID-19, Holy Week, and Preparing for Suffering with Love {Ep 104}
Penny’s Gift of Encouragement is a Gift to Me
Penny’s Prayer During COVID-19 Crisis

If you haven’t already, please  subscribe  to receive regular updates and news. You can also follow me on  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Twitter,  and you can  subscribe to my Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts , and  Spotify , as well as other platforms.

The post Singing and the Coronavirus Shelter-in-Place Situation appeared first on Amy Julia Becker.