I’m on a Podcast!
A few weeks ago my spiritual director, Carin Huebner, asked if I would be willing to talk about my experience of spiritual direction on her podcast, and because she and her work have changed my life, I said yes.
Especially since moving back to my hometown last summer, I spend a lot of time thinking about evangelicalism and the way my life has been shaped by its expectations and assumptions.
I grew up into a version of Christianity that was deeply, intensely self-critical. The aim of everything was to be close to God, but if you didn’t feel close to God, it was probably your fault. Therefore, I learned to search inside of myself, to comb through my actions, thoughts, and motivations, incessantly questing for whatever deviance that might be responsible for my dissatisfaction.
From the time I was a child, I was steeped in the Calvinist principle of total depravity: that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of that sin is death. Of course, that’s just biblical — part of ‘the Romans Road,’ a series of verses throughout the book of Romans that illustrate the path to salvation. Total depravity, also known as pervasive depravity or radical corruption, refers to the Calvinist belief that, as a result of original sin, the entire human race is totally corrupt and driven by the power of evil, with no human faculty left untouched by sin. The language is striking, but the belief is excoriating.
“Our hearts are restless till they rest in You,” Saint Augustine wrote—so any restlessness my teenage heart felt suggested that I wasn't resting in God, that I was doing it wrong, that I was still riddled with the sin to which I was born a slave. I got trapped in these endless cycles of self-censure and self-abnegation, and I clung to that iteration of faith because I believed that I was worthless without God.
I don’t think it’s possible for someone who has come to these beliefs on their own, in their own time, and by their own volition, to comprehend the impact such teachings have on a child. Spiritual direction is a place where I’ve been able to name and explore that damage, and I’ve been able to wonder about relationship with the Divine separate from my evangelical programming and baggage.
The podcast episode came out on August 16th, and I put off listening to it for nearly two weeks. Michael and I were making dinner in the kitchen last Saturday when he suggested that I put it on. While I connected my phone to the speaker, I felt a wave of resistance rising in my body: fear.
“I hate the sound of my own voice; what if it’s terrible, maybe we just shouldn’t listen to it,” I said.
“McKenzie,” Michael said. “It’ll be good. And we can turn it off at any time.”
He seasoned pork shoulder on the stovetop and I chopped cucumbers and fresh heirloom tomatoes from my farm into a cucumber-tomato salad and we listened to the podcast and I was startled to find myself really proud of the episode Carin made. Our conversation together reflects on my spiritual direction journey in a way that (I hope) feels moving and true.
You can give it a listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts: http://www.carinhuebner.com/blog//ep-46-client-feature-space-to-be-heard
You can find more about Carin and her work here: http://www.carinhuebner.com
