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Tori Mick: Build Interfaith Communities. For Everyone.
96 Plays1 year ago
What does it look like to build interreligious community, when it’s mandated by the government? How can people work together to find creative solutions to complex problems?
Tori Mick is a DRE — Director of Religious Education — for the United States Army, a civilian position that provides educational content to Army chaplains to help protect and provide for the exercising of the First Amendment rights of soldiers and their families, in whatever tradition of faith and spirituality that they practice.
Tori talks about growing up in and growing out of Christian evangelicalism, lessons learned as a nomadic, third-culture military kid, the importance of naps and snacks, working with youth, surviving COVID, and so much more.
CONTENT WARNING: military, trauma, prison, conservative evangelicalism, moral injury, impacts of COVID
All of the opinions expressed in the program are explicitly the opinions of the individuals themselves and do not represent an endorsement or position held by the United States Army.
This program is produced in south west philadelphia, in the unceded neighborhood of the black bottom community and on the ancestral land of the Lenape nation, who remain here in the era of the fourth crow and fight for official recognition by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to this day. You can find out more about the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania and how you can support the revitalization of their culture by going to https://lenape-nation.org.
Visit this video’s sponsor, BVP Coffee, roasting high quality coffee that benefits HBCU students:
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we chat to ordinary people doing uncommon good in service of our common humanity.
we are creating community that builds relationships across difference by inviting dialogue about the squishy and vulnerable bits of life.
(un)common good with pauli reese is an uncommon good media production, where we make spirituality accessible to everyone and put content on the internet to help people stop hating each other.
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Transcript
The Power of Simplicity and Self-Care
00:00:00
Speaker
We have to get creative, right? And no matter what space we're in, 90% of our problems can be fixed with a nap and a snack. I think there's something that's just really beautiful in the simplicity of not overcomplicating faith.
00:00:16
Speaker
not over complicating needs. Is there always more we could do? Absolutely. But that's with anything. That's with any social program. That's with any faith tradition. That's anything. There's always more we can do.
Meet Tori Mick: Faith and Trauma in the Army
00:00:42
Speaker
It's Uncommon Good, the podcast where we chat to ordinary people doing uncommon good in service of our common humanity. My name is Pauli Reese. Fam, I am delighted to bring you today Tori Mick. Tori is an old dear friend and she serves as a director of religious education for the U.S. Army.
00:01:06
Speaker
A quick content warning off the top, we do talk a lot about trauma and moral injury in the context of their use in the US military and the impacts of COVID on the lives of enlisted people.
00:01:21
Speaker
So as always, if these things are not right for you to listen to, feel free to switch this one off and catch us in the next one. Tori talks about her work supporting the chaplains of the U.S. Army, the intricacy of supporting soldiers of many spiritualities and faith traditions, and how trauma and moral injury impacts the spiritual care of enlisted people.
00:01:50
Speaker
It was such a privilege to catch up with Tori and learn more about the work that she does in looking after the service people of the U.S. Army. Please enjoy my chat to Tori. But we met when both of us were both much more Christian than we are now, but working as participants in a Christian Joe choir,
00:02:20
Speaker
Yes. Called the Continental Singers. So it was a touring group of teens and adults who put on a show that had skips, that had music.
00:02:42
Speaker
And basically, yeah, we would put on this show every night, we would travel. And the idea was that we would be able to talk about faith through music and through skits and things of that nature. And don't call me, but I think that the Latin continent still exists. There was a COVID virtual choir video released. Oh, interesting.
00:03:07
Speaker
I could go on reminiscing forever as much as we could, and shout out to founder Cam Floria, and then the chief artistic producer at the time, I believe it was Dean Butler. Thank you both for the experiences that you created. I do want to move us forward into more of this
00:03:32
Speaker
A phenomenal, fascinating life that you live in a position that I didn't know existed.
Role of a Director of Religious Education
00:03:41
Speaker
You have one of the most fascinating current careers that I could imagine. Yes. My technical title is a director of religious education for the US Army, but yes, and a nutty, kind of crazy.
00:03:56
Speaker
I've been to seminary. My exposure to religious life in the U.S. Army was a couple of days when the chaplain recruiters would come by, those very cute, like, handsome, chiseled looking boys. They would come in, bring really nice pizza. They would have this conversation about how
00:04:18
Speaker
the army needs chaplains or would be any other of the armed services, which is true, that this role is needed. And I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit more about what the date today of the director of religious education
00:04:37
Speaker
or the U.S. Army is like? So I am one of several. I happen to be one of the directors of religious education at Fort Leavenworth here in Kansas. And so, but there are, I think right now there are 55 of us, 56 of us who are Judas around the world.
00:04:59
Speaker
So we have what we call CONUS or continental United States. And then we have OCONUS, which is the overseas folks who do this. So they're in Europe, et cetera. So, but how I can describe it to people, because it is, it's kind of, most people don't know it exists unless they're on a military installation in a chapel.
00:05:25
Speaker
And directors of religious education, we acronym everything. So we're DREs. DREs are an army construct. And so you will only see them at army locations, except if you have a joint base
00:05:45
Speaker
where two branches have joined so Joint Base San Antonio where I was last serving is one of those places so it has an army location and two Air Force locations and so you will see them if there is an army location that's attached in the Joint Basing so we have like Joint Base Lewis-McChord which is in Washington
00:06:08
Speaker
joint-mates Langley Eustace, which is in Virginia. So you will see DREs there, but largely we're only on army installations. And so what we do is we work with the chaplains to protect the Tidalton right to religious freedom for the soldiers and their families who are in our care.
00:06:32
Speaker
And so what that looks like for me as a DRE is the chaplains, right? They're typically doing worship services. They may be counseling. They do all of the same kinds of roles and hold all the same kinds of roles that like a pastor of a church would hold. But they also do have other responsibilities to the army that aren't just that piece.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, I as a DRE I'm not active duty. So I'm a civilian
00:07:06
Speaker
and who is hired on as a subject matter expert in curriculums, in religions. And so I come in and I work alongside what we call the Garrison Chaplain. So we have garrisons all over. That's our location basically like on post. And so the Garrison Chaplain would be the equivalent of like the senior pastor.
00:07:33
Speaker
So I work alongside the Garrison Chaplain to make sure that we are providing for all of the programs, any type of religious program that we need to provide for. So it could be, hey, we have a Protestant women's Bible study that needs, they need a room, they need curriculum, they need guidance, they need all those things.
00:07:59
Speaker
um or we have a cath like men's study or maybe we have a wicking group that wants to meet and and do something educationally and so i am the person who curates those resources um because the army while there is a separation of church and state um and that is a very serious thing so like you will never hear um an army
00:08:28
Speaker
church be called a church. They're called a chapel. Because if they're a church, they violate the separation of church and state. They are not run the same as a church. The funding looks drastically different. Even the way the funding operates is drastically different.
00:08:47
Speaker
and uh but like one of our big things because we're in a pluralistic environment we have all these different faith groups all the time um the biggest thing is you cannot denigrate another faith group so it's built on mutual respect of faith and the and the understanding that you're titled send right to religious freedom
00:09:12
Speaker
is a protection of your religious freedom or for your religious freedom.
Life and Spirituality on Military Bases
00:09:19
Speaker
So I come from a military family. Both of my parents shout out to the Air Force. Both of my parents are career Air Force. And
00:09:29
Speaker
military installations are miniature cities within their locations. So they have chapels, they have the commissary, which is where you get your groceries. They've got, if you're on an Air Force base, it's the BX, if it's the Army, it's the PX, but it's basically like your version of Walmart, where you can get clothes, you can get makeup, you can get basic household things.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, there's a gas station there is their child care centers. There are all of these different things because people lives on on poster on base, etc. And so But yeah, I think that's one of those places that people just kind of expect oh with with the separation of church and state and
00:10:20
Speaker
they would just look at you and go, hey, good luck, go find a place. And the reality is that some of the, even some of the RV locations and whatnot are so far away from progressive civilization that, and there's also a recognition on the army's part that the families that we serve,
00:10:46
Speaker
1% of Americans have served in the military. And so it's a subculture that a lot of people don't know a lot about, or they have their opinions about it from whatever news form they choose to watch. Or they have opinions about it because of their own experiences. And so
00:11:16
Speaker
But the army recognizes that there can be a spiritual component to resiliency, to their mission. It's not something that's forced. It's obviously something that the army simply says, hey, we recognize that this might be beneficial to you being a soldier in the army. And so we want to provide the resource
00:11:45
Speaker
if you want it. And there are plenty of families like at my location at Fort Leavenworth. There are plenty of families who choose to come to chapel on post because they're around other military families. And there's this camaraderie with that, that when you're a family who's military and you walk into a church off post, who maybe doesn't see a lot of military families, they don't know what to do with that. They don't know how to support
00:12:14
Speaker
with you when you have a spouse who deploys or when your kids are having trouble with the reintegration of your spouse when they come back from deployment, things like that. So, yeah. There's a couple of things that you've touched on that I think are just
00:12:35
Speaker
that are resonating for me. One, the tiny little town in the middle of central Pennsylvania where I was raised, there was a very small basin. It was called
00:12:51
Speaker
Letterkenny, yeah, Letterkenny Army Depot in, yeah, and it was even the tiny little town where I grew up. That one was a town of 350 people and they had three faith communities. How do you ask an active duty officer on potentially the one day, if it's the full day that they have off? I don't know how shifts work.
00:13:15
Speaker
to drive 10 miles to have a formative faith experience, exactly as you say, when it may not provide any
00:13:26
Speaker
actual need that they have, number one, and that community may be ill-equipped to give them whatever spiritual need to help with their spiritual needs. Number two, this notion of community is so important. I think especially as we're seeing
00:13:46
Speaker
as we're seeing spiritual communities emerge from lockdowns and trying to
Dispelling Military Life Myths
00:13:52
Speaker
find the secret sauce to get people to come back to in-person gatherings. I think we're realizing that people really need community. And the social aspect of having of an affinity group like a spiritual community cannot be underestimated.
00:14:09
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. When you think about these misconceptions or frankly, just ignorance is what else do civilians, uninitiated, uninformed civilians need to know about military life in general?
00:14:29
Speaker
And I'll prompt by saying one of the things that you told me as we were beginning, and we were half joking about the seizure of classified documents of Mar-a-Lago, which was in the news at the time when we did the pre-interview, but then broadened it to talk generally about government and military life in general, is that a lot of those sorts of things that we think of as the uninformed, that we think of are very secret and very sexy,
00:14:56
Speaker
and must be very intriguing, are actually just lots of really, really boring things. Yes. That is very true. So things like, in fact, I'm sitting in an office, right, that has brown walls. Right. There's nothing, you know, there's not a lot of color. Everything's brown or camo or, you know,
00:15:24
Speaker
And that's just like a funny like quirky thing. So I always try like anything that I've put out to people, whether it's like marketing stuff or whatever, I try to jazz it up with color because there's just there's not there's not color to it. But. Sure.
00:15:40
Speaker
You know, so for me one of the areas so my specialty is youth ministry And that's where that's when I got my masters in shout out to Memphis Theological Seminary and I am super passionate about teenagers specifically third culture kids, which are kids who have Grown up typically they're going to be military kids diplomats kids or kids of
00:16:10
Speaker
business people who have grown up outside of the culture which they were born in and outside of their parents culture. And so it creates this third culture dynamic. And so, but with that comes its own set of challenges. I myself am a third culture kid. And what that means is that people look at my life, I have moved 18 times.
00:16:40
Speaker
Um, people look at my life and they go, or they look even at my resume and they go, what's wrong with her? Why has she not stayed in one place long? Why?
00:16:55
Speaker
you know, what happened that you like, what bad thing happened that you've moved to that many times. Right. You know, and they automatically go to like something really horrible. And that's not the case at all. I happen to be a gypsy in every sense of I
00:17:16
Speaker
love the nomadic kind of lifestyle. I love being able to pick up and go. I love the opportunity to experience new foods, new cultures, new people.
00:17:32
Speaker
It doesn't mean that it's easy by any means because it's not, but I think that I am better at what I do and I'm a better just human being by all of the world experiences that I have been afforded and really that the Air Force
00:17:54
Speaker
some of it was when I was a child and my parents were in the Air Force. The Air Force afforded me those opportunities. But on the flip side, it's a double-edged sword because
00:18:08
Speaker
There's also this sense, so when I was growing up and my parents were active duty, the word resiliency kind of became the buzzword. It was the new thing, it was the big initiative. The military kids are resilient. And yes, that is true. We are resilient. It's also the word that I hate the most.
00:18:37
Speaker
in reference to teenagers and in reference to children because we've morphed as culture does. We've morphed from our military kids are really resilient, yay, and like cheering them on to our expectation is that you will be resilient, just deal.
00:19:01
Speaker
And there are times like even me having moved 18 times, having lived the military life, there are times where I am not resilient. There are just not it. And, you know, like there are times where I miss my friends.
00:19:22
Speaker
And I miss pieces of wherever I called home. And I miss, you know, different things that come with living away from my family and living away from, you know, what I know. Maybe it's culturally buckies, right? Like, I don't have buckies up here. There are times where I do miss buckies. So I'm like, man, it would just be really nice if I could get some fever nuggets.
00:19:50
Speaker
And so, I think the mindset with that has to be that
00:19:58
Speaker
Um, you know going back to your question about like what are things that civilians should know, you know that Every military family is different Every military family has their own set of challenges Um, it's a really bad assumption to assume that the person who's in the military is a man, please don't Because there are tons of military families that the wife is serving um and not the husband which is awesome and um
00:20:28
Speaker
But they largely live just like you do. They have the same issues that go along with being an adult human in this world. And sometimes those issues are, hey, I've got a single parent for six months because my spouse deployed.
00:20:56
Speaker
Or sometimes it's, you know, hey, there's issues with my housing right now. I can't find housing. I've got to live in the hotel for a while. Like, you know, I don't have a permanent address yet. Like all of those things. And so, you know, I think, but there there's this sense of sacrifice with it. Like, you know what you've signed up for.
00:21:23
Speaker
when you enter that lifestyle, if you will. Maybe not to its fullest extent, but you understand what you are signing up for and
00:21:39
Speaker
And so I would just say, you know, yeah, if you do see a service member, you know, think them, ask them about where home is, ask them about their life. They would love to tell you, especially I know, you know, you see service members in the airport all the time, right? Because they're flying to wherever. So, but don't be afraid to talk to them and ask them about, hey, what's it like?
00:22:06
Speaker
because they have fascinating jobs too. They
Creative Problem-Solving During COVID
00:22:12
Speaker
get to do really cool things. When my parents were in, my parents worked the space shuttle launches in California. They were security forces, and that's what they did. That was a large part of what they did in their early careers, which I think is so cool.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it just, you know, so they do. And most of them, for me as a military kid, I want people to know me in that way. I want people to know that, hey, I've lived in a bunch of different places.
00:22:56
Speaker
or to be invited on Thanksgiving because you find out that I'm not going home wherever home is, you know, or, um, you know, yeah. I mean, I don't know. It just, it's such a, that's such a big question. Yeah.
00:23:16
Speaker
Because there's so many things. But yes, you are not wrong. And that's most things that are top secret, not sexy at all. Not even, like, y'all, like, no.
00:23:29
Speaker
But it is worth saying for the radio edit that we did seek clearance from your base supervisor to be able to have this conversation. We did. So we did follow the right channels. So that is in place. And that disclaimer, I promise NSA, that disclaimer will be in all of the
00:23:54
Speaker
all of the audio and the YouTube and et cetera. And I don't speak for the army. Exactly. Both of our opinions are our own opinion. Absolutely. Big disclaimer.
00:24:14
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:25:10
Speaker
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00:25:41
Speaker
You know, it depends. It depends on the day. The Midwest is different, right? I come from the South. I come from San Antonio and Baton Rouge. And I come from football and tail dating and tacos. And I mean, football's different here.
00:26:10
Speaker
Although I will say people are very big fans of the Chiefs. So fair enough. She's not college ball, which is okay. I'm not a Chiefs fan. So I just kind of don't tell that to people. But, you know.
00:26:29
Speaker
The other piece that I think is particularly fascinating, and the one reason why I happen to have heard the naming of the town at all, is what you described as Leavenworth is also home to military jail. Yeah, so Leavenworth is home to the largest maximum security military prison in the United States.
00:26:53
Speaker
how do you look after the religious wellbeing of a person who's not even incarcerated in state municipal federal pen, but military pen? So I partner with them. We have chaplains who are assigned to, we call it the DB, the discipline barracks. And so we have chaplains who are assigned to the DB, to the jail. And we have more than one jail on Leavenworth.
00:27:24
Speaker
because not everybody is in maximum security for the rest of their life. Some are here for more minor offenses and so are only here for a couple of years.
00:27:36
Speaker
But, yeah, so I we're in what we call directorates. And so my directorate actually differs like here at the at the local chapel differs from the Deanies directorate. But we recognize that, hey, like there's not a there's not a DRE assigned to the jail. Sure.
00:28:00
Speaker
it's very locked down. You have to have all these passes and clearances and checks. With that, I partner with the chaplains there when they need support because we have a bunch of very smart chaplains as well.
00:28:21
Speaker
but who are potentially over tasked, et cetera, have a lot to do. And so, for instance, I worked a project not too long ago. One of the chaplains came to me and said, hey, our literature library, so where they keep all of their kind of religious materials, our literature library is really like, we just, we need to revamp it. We need to add some new things.
00:28:46
Speaker
Um, we've got some funding we want to we want to do that We have at the time 14 faith groups represented and we um need to Like we need to add resources for each of the faith groups. Can you create a list for us? And so that was I spent about a month and a half working working on creating a list of good resources
00:29:11
Speaker
that met all the criteria that didn't denigrate other feet groups and doing all of those things. Then passing it along to the chaplains for, hey, when you guys have money and you want to purchase these or if somebody who is currently being held in the DB requests,
00:29:34
Speaker
you know is is I don't know whatever faith group they are maybe they're LDS and and they need resources then they've got a list because not because chaplains in the military are still one particular faith group
00:29:50
Speaker
um, so each of the top ones have to have an endorser and so they're endorsed by that for instance the catholic greece are endorsed by the archdiocese of military services um and with an endorser the endorser says you can only as it would be on outside of a military installation you can only you know perform these rights and rituals at this time and you can do these are
00:30:17
Speaker
This is what you can do as a pastor, basically. But our chaplains have to function in a pluralistic context that they don't necessarily know all the time. They do get schooling and things for it, but we have hundreds of approved faith groups that we can support.
00:30:44
Speaker
Is it fair to ask a chaplain to also support or to also know the ins and outs, the holy books, the traditions, the rituals of hundreds of faith groups?
00:30:59
Speaker
No, that's complicated. And they would still be studying. Like they would never actually be chaplains. They would just be really studying. And so that's where I as a DRE gets to come in because I get to meet a person who deep dives for them and finds them what they need and kind of partners with them in that. That's such a pragmatic solution to such a complicated problem.
00:31:26
Speaker
Well, and so the Army views my position and any DRE position actually as an educator. So we're not listed as clergy, we are educators because it involves that prop to come, that curriculum, that research, those pieces. And I like to think of myself as
00:31:53
Speaker
as, yes, an educator, but also like the out of the box problem solver, right? Because the military has a very unique set of needs. So I'll use my previous location. I was a joint base San Antonio during COVID.
00:32:10
Speaker
And if you don't know anything about Joint Base San Antonio, I was at Lapland, which is where basic military training for the Air Force and the Space Force happens. And if you know anything about basic training, you know that you are basically with this group of people for the seven and a half, eight weeks that you are in basic training, you eat, sleep, or breathe together, basically, for your entire eight weeks.
00:32:38
Speaker
But what we ran into was with COVID, everything locked down. We had all of these, I'm going to say kids, all these trainees who were coming in from all over the United States, all over the world, really, to come and be a part of basic training.
00:33:04
Speaker
they were potentially bringing COVID with them. This was before vaccination. This was before anything. And so they had to start looking at, do we need to quarantine them? And so there were these processes put into place, right? So one of the things that would happen when they would identify COVID that they would get quarantined
00:33:24
Speaker
But then you had these trainees who were sitting in a room by themselves, who were 17, 18, 19, 20 years old, sitting in a room by themselves for 14 days.
00:33:38
Speaker
by themselves and with no real interaction with another human, I believe if I remember correctly, they got their phones, because you don't normally have your phone, so they at least have that connection to the outside world. But if you have ever been a human who has not had contact with another human for a couple of days,
00:34:05
Speaker
Things go south very quickly, specifically with your mental health. And so all of a sudden, we had this unintentional kind of mental health issue coming up that our chaplains were counseling.
00:34:27
Speaker
And so they were counseling all these trainees and everything was, I'm lonely, I'm homesick, which homesickness is a very normal counseling trend for basic training, but it turned into
00:34:44
Speaker
This is more than just loneliness. This is starting to develop into depression. This is starting to develop into anxiety. This is potentially starting to develop into suicidal ideation. And so we had to sit down as a Chaplain Corps, as a team, and say, okay, what can we do
00:35:04
Speaker
and in because we provide support right like we're we're not in charge there but we we do provide spiritual support what can we do to provide support to help mitigate mental health crises because we already know like in america the mental health crisis is larger anyways but what do we do to help mitigate that mental health crises when they're here um and so one of the ways that we
00:35:34
Speaker
became out of the box with it was We started anytime we'd find out that there were trainees who were quarantined We would say hey, do you subscribe to a particular faith? If you it like if they would contact a chaplain because a lot of times they would contact your chaplains to talk to somebody because a big big
00:35:59
Speaker
thing that people don't know or a lot of people don't know chaplains in the military have 100% confidentiality. They're the only people so yes when you talk to a chaplain a chaplain cannot
00:36:14
Speaker
say anything, they cannot be taken to court to testify about, like, it is 100% confidential. So a lot of times they would, you know, they wanted to talk to a chaplain. And so if they called a chaplain, the chaplain would ask, Cain, do you subscribe to a specific faith group? Because chaplains don't counsel in their specific faith group all of the time.
00:36:41
Speaker
sometimes because of need, right? Like sometimes a trainee, if you don't request a specific faith, you know, you might get a chaplain of a different faith. And that's part of the pluralistic context. And the chaplains, shout out to the Lackland team, the chaplains were very equipped to handle those things. But
00:37:08
Speaker
So they would ask and if they came back and they you know, whatever the faith tradition was that they had a faith tradition They'd then come to me and say okay. Let's let's get him a packet and we would basically create
00:37:23
Speaker
packets of resources, of things for them, of devotionals, of in whatever faith, maybe daily prayers, maybe liturgies, whatever it was. But we would try to create something for them that allowed them to practice their faith
00:37:50
Speaker
when they couldn't because they were quarantined, but also allowed them to potentially experience their God in the midst of this suffering and this isolation because we were all going through it. Right.
00:38:14
Speaker
You know,
Fostering Simplicity and Care in Solutions
00:38:15
Speaker
and so that was, but yeah, so part of my responsibility was just coming up with these out of the box. Like, even when we started to open things back up, we couldn't open them back up where they had previously been because we had, we had like room restrictions, right? So we could only have half the people that we would normally see. And so then it was, okay, now we gotta find twice the space.
00:38:42
Speaker
Where do we find space? We can't just build a building. That's not how that works. No. You know, so yeah, a lot of.
00:38:54
Speaker
A lot of what I do, one of the things that I love about what I do is that I get to bring that to the table. I get to be that out of the box person who says, hey, maybe let's try it this way. We've recognized that the tech trainees were walking back and forth to class every day because they don't typically have vehicles at that point. So they're walking back and forth to class every day.
00:39:17
Speaker
But what do we do when we drive or we walk back and forth? A lot of times we listen to podcasts. That's our thing. And so recognizing what are the generational trends? What is this generation into? And then building off of that to provide religious support and getting outside the box with it and trying different things and being OK to say, hey, this didn't work.
00:39:46
Speaker
We ended up doing, building out just discussion questions for a couple of different podcasts for different faith groups and had somebody from those faith groups and a soldier from those faith groups who facilitated those questions.
00:40:05
Speaker
Um, and so they could and they and it was something that they could do in their dorm So they would listen to the podcast the podcast You know was generally 30 minutes to an hour they'd listen to it through the course of the week and then You know, whatever night they picked like they could literally sit across the hall from each other while they were social distancing But also have a discussion about the podcast that they were listening to so wow
00:40:31
Speaker
What an elegant solution to, once again, a very complicated problem. Just wow. We have to get creative, right? Like, no matter what space we're in, I don't think that our problems are so complicated that they can't be, like we were talking, we actually started talking a little bit before we pressed record. 90% of our problems can be fixed with a nap and a snack.
00:40:56
Speaker
Yes. That's a really very small view of the 5,000 feet view, but I think there's something that's just really beautiful in the simplicity
00:41:11
Speaker
of not over-complicating faith, not over-complicating needs. Is there always more we could do? Absolutely. But that's with anything. That's with any social program. That's with any faith tradition that's
00:41:29
Speaker
anything. There's always more we can do. And so it's my hope that the families that I serve and the population that I serve, that they come to the table knowing that they're loved, that they're cared for, and we're doing the best that we can to serve them in the ways that they need, but that we're also seeing them
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah. And seeing them for who they are, that they can come to the table and be 100% authentically who they are in whatever that looks like, in whatever that mess is. I'm not the norm for
00:42:06
Speaker
an army DRE, if you will, because I tend to color a little bit more outside the lines. That's my, that's my passion, my, my love, my, you know, I know I don't like a briefing slide that's white with, with black text, like,
00:42:23
Speaker
Never will you find me super excited to create that kind of briefing slide You will find if you were in my office you would find I collect religious kitsch toys. Yeah, and so I collect from any faith and so I have like a buddy Jesus piggy bank that's like
00:42:44
Speaker
is Jesus like this, and I have Pope soap, which has it's, yeah, I mean, it's just a little bar of soap that has, I think it's Pope John Paul's face on it. And I have, you know, a sign that says inhale tacos, exhale negativity. Like I have all of these things all over my office because that's who I am. That's my personality and I want people
00:43:09
Speaker
you know, when they encounter me to realize like, yes, I do. I work for the United States Army. I work for the United States government. I am passionate about that. I am passionate about the opportunity that I have to serve my country in that capacity. But
00:43:29
Speaker
But what that doesn't mean either is that I have to, that I can't come to the table being 100% authentically myself. Because I won't do well if I can't come to the table and be authentically myself. I mean, who does really?
00:43:54
Speaker
I'm thinking about all of this language of being ourselves and being authentic. And now with COVID, how we've adapted, we've changed. One of
Non-Ordained Roles and Personal Faith
00:44:06
Speaker
the things that, as you were talking, that I was realizing is both of us are religious professionals. We've been engaged in working in church life all of our lives. Both of us have been to seminary, but neither of us.
00:44:21
Speaker
are ordained in any particular tradition as a clergy person. But I suspect the answer to this question is a problem that a lot of clergy people deal with as well. I'm thinking about the work that we do as religious professionals, and then we also have personal spiritualities as well.
00:44:46
Speaker
I wonder, as you have been in a position where you see very much how the sausage is made, helping other people have meaningful experiences of faith and spirituality, religion even, do you feel like that has impacted your personal spirituality?
00:45:08
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I grew up in a largely conservative evangelical context. Sure. Me too. Yeah. I grew up United Methodist and I happened to go to a United Methodist church that was more conservative. Celene's more conservative. Sure.
00:45:30
Speaker
And I, you know, did my undergrad and served for a number of years and then went to seminary after serving in the church for a couple of years. Going to seminary was amazing and life-changing. I think it's one of those things like if you are a Christ follower, I think
00:45:54
Speaker
that you should go to seminary or just audit a seminary class because they're fascinating. And because you encounter, that's really a place where you encounter people who differ, like truly differ in beliefs because you come from different contexts. I had that, I was serving in a town that
00:46:21
Speaker
it was a rural farm town shout out to Fulton Kentucky they're the home of the banana festival look it up it's great um but yeah i was serving in this rural farm town and
00:46:37
Speaker
I was completely out of my element. I moved to go to seminary from Dallas, Texas, one of the largest cities in the United States to Fulton, Kentucky. There were 1,300 people in Walmart. And when I got there, not only was it culture shock, there is one stoplight in the town. There is
00:46:58
Speaker
there is poverty, there is lots of families who live under the poverty line, are on some sort of social assistance, things of that nature. And I had come face to face with the reality of America.
00:47:24
Speaker
in a way that I hadn't, you know, you talked about a little bit like when we toured on Continental's about how you'd see the other, the other side of things, the other side of how we grew up. And that was really the first time for me.
00:47:40
Speaker
that I slammed into that in a way that it engulfed my life. There wasn't a way for me to read more about it, to get away from it. I was living in the midst of largely rural poverty. Not all of it is rural poverty, but largely in the midst of that.
00:48:08
Speaker
It was heartbreaking, but incredibly beautiful. And one of the things that I would say still continues to shape my fate and shape my walk because I had I was a youth pastor there. And I had kids who I had decided because because I was like, OK, well,
00:48:35
Speaker
the youth ministry can be built on love and grace. I firmly believe that any organization can be built on love and grace. That was the way that I strove to partner with God, if you will, to create a youth ministry and create
00:49:00
Speaker
humans, like help be a part of the creation of humans that were good people, were good citizens, were aware of what was going on in the world, but also didn't look at their circumstances and say, I can't get out of this. I can't change my life.
00:49:23
Speaker
and that's not that that can sometimes happen with poverty because you talk about a lot about poverty can be a cycle um and and my big thing was like I had several kids who were farmers um and I didn't know a farmer I had never met a farmer in my life I mean I you know like it just it wasn't part of my upbringing right like yeah so
00:49:51
Speaker
You know, but, but I had foreign kids, I will never forget this. I had a kid, instead of doing highs and lows, which is a typical kind of youth group, like, Hey, what's your high for the week? What's your low for the week? Um, my question was always, where did you feel like you saw God and where did you feel like God was absent? And then we would pray about those things. And, um, I distinctly remember one night at youth group, he said, we need to pray for rain. And I was like,
00:50:21
Speaker
Why? Like it rains all the time, like whatever. And he was like, no, Tori, like it doesn't. And if we don't pray for rain, the crops won't grow. And my family won't be able to see people. Seventh grade, seventh grade. And I went, oh my gosh. And he, like that just completely blew my mind.
00:50:44
Speaker
Because never had I thought that a seventh grader, number one, but also that this kid who grew up in this rural town would internalize the responsibility that he felt like he and his family had to feed people because they're so passionate about it. So stinking passionate about it, about farming, about agriculture.
00:51:11
Speaker
life changing for me because I went number one heck yeah teenagers can do all the things but also number
Navigating Faith Diversity and State Separation
00:51:20
Speaker
two that's a very basic simple prayer
00:51:30
Speaker
That's a simple and yet his faith in that moment was so powerful. It was, I believe that God will provide rank, but we do have to pray for it. Yeah.
00:51:43
Speaker
So yeah, I would say, it continues to affect, having grown up in this more conservative and then moving towards something that looks a little less conservative as I've studied, as I've just done deep dives on different subjects, but also in the context of what I do, it's my responsibility to learn about these other faiths.
00:52:12
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's also my responsibility the army Because of the separation of church and state cannot ask me about my faith and they cannot hire me based on my faith and so Faith is not something it's it's this funny kind of conundrum because personal faith is not something that I talk about at work because they they can't decide That because of my personal faith
00:52:41
Speaker
I can't serve a faith group that's not my own because of the separation of church and state. And so it's something that I recognize it's this really unique kind of place to be in that, yeah, in the interview process, they can't ask me
00:53:04
Speaker
They can't ask me. And so there is a piece of that that is really freeing as a female who has been in ministry because there are spaces where I am not allowed
00:53:19
Speaker
as a female. I'm not allowed to serve as clergy. I am not allowed to serve, you know, I'm told, shut up in color. You can't be a worship leader. You can't be any of these things. And that's a really hard place for me to be.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah, and it's not something that I agree with But there are there are places that that would not hire me because I'm female would not hire me because I'm not married. Yeah And so I am seen as half of a person and not a whole person. Yeah, because I don't have a spouse and so Yeah, and and those are the places where the army is like yet. We don't care. You can't ask about that
00:54:05
Speaker
And so that's a really, to me, a beautiful thing because I think so often in church, it's taken on a bigger part and context than it really should. And it's taken on more importance than it really should. So people stop looking at what are the gifts and graces that you bring to the table and start looking at what are the ways that you can't fulfill your call?
00:54:34
Speaker
that we don't feel like based on our perceptions that you can't fulfill your call. Well, as you said, there's so much just love and grace in that because there's an element of dogma that is removed when
00:54:49
Speaker
the sect specific components of religious practice are no longer a barrier, which I just find fascinating because yes, you're absolutely right. There are many places where your identity markers make you ineligible for ministry and not just in Christian traditions. And that same thing could be said of so many different identity markers that are held by so many people.
00:55:14
Speaker
I wonder in those moments that get very difficult, that get tiring, fatiguing, exasperating, what are the little graces that help keep spirits high when morale is low and times are done?
00:55:35
Speaker
So music has always been a really big part of my life. And we actually, the chapel that I work in has, the sanctuary area for that chapel has a Steinway. And Steinway piano, yeah, it's beautiful. And it's been well taken care of. And so a lot of times for me, if things have gotten really complicated, I will,
00:56:03
Speaker
I will go down and just play the piano for, you know, take a break, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, just a brain break. I also make a point every day is it is rare that you will find me eating at my desk, eating lunch at my desk, because I like to have the brain break. And so I will, you know, work, work, work.
00:56:30
Speaker
But then brain break and I will find a different, even if I bring my lunch, I'll sit in a classroom and I read a book. I love reading. I love learning. Right now I'm reading the letters from Ignatius of Antioch to the church. So because one of the, one of the groups that I'm currently serving as the Catholic population parent for 11 were
00:56:54
Speaker
and so and of course we're in we're in the deep throes of sacramental prep for a lot of our folks and so that is while that is not my faith tradition that is something that it's important for me to know more about and so i actually went to the priest we have a phenomenal priest right now and i said hey
00:57:19
Speaker
if I wanted to start because I have a good working knowledge of Catholicism, I said if I really wanted to like deep dive as if I were potentially going to convert to Catholicism, if you will, where would you have me start?
00:57:38
Speaker
like, what would be the text that you would read? And he said, Ignatius of Antioch, start there. And I was like, okay. So I jumped on Amazon and got the letters of Ignatius of Antioch and have started. And so, yeah.
00:57:54
Speaker
You know, but I think there's also I think it's really important that there's balance, right? So at the end of the day, yes, we work with people. Yes, we work in a faith setting, but we are still very human. And we still need rest. We still need time away. We still need all of the basic things that come with being a human. And this is still a job.
00:58:22
Speaker
And I think when we get to a place where we make our professions the entirety of our identity, we lose ourselves. We lose our ability to be 100% authentic. And so that's something that I am really particular about is making room for what are the things that I like to do on my days off. Setting those boundaries of, hey, if you call me on my day off,
00:58:52
Speaker
you're going to have to, you're absolutely going to have to leave me a voicemail. And I might listen to it. I might wait until, you know, my next day. But trying to create those boundaries, even though I don't have a family in the traditional sense, right? Like I have a dog. My parents and my brother do not live
00:59:15
Speaker
anywhere near me. So I take time to reconnect with them. Maybe it's phone calls or it's FaceTime to friends or it's things of those nature.
00:59:31
Speaker
or just things that I love. I went, there's, I've got a good friend from college who lives near here. She was like, hey, there's this big sunflower field that has millions of sunflowers every year. And they're, they only exist for like two to three weeks. Sunflowers are the Kansas state flower. Let's go. And I was like, okay, let's go to the sunflower fields. You know, so finding
00:59:58
Speaker
finding those little ways to kind of feed myself, if you will, do things that I love, do things that I'm passionate about outside of anything that goes on at the office, because it can't be my identity. If it becomes the whole of my identity, I will lose myself.
01:00:25
Speaker
That's so incredibly well said. I'm thinking of veterans and the world that you've described where being a soldier is the entirety of an enlisted person's experience and how we, as the religious professionals, how we can be a part of helping that sort of
01:00:52
Speaker
acclimation to civilian life. So this leads a little bit into my final question, and I suspect might be one way that you answer for it. But the final question that gets asked to everybody is, what do you want the world to look like when you're done with it?
01:01:18
Speaker
I want to have been the person that somebody else needed. I want to have been the person that I needed when I was that age. I want to have been that person for somebody else. That somebody who encountered me laughed or felt like it was okay to be authentically themselves or, you know, fell in love with
01:01:48
Speaker
whatever. Yeah. It's kind of, it's kind of a cliche Christian term, if you will. But like, at the end, I just want to be told, well done, good and faithful servant. Yeah. And whatever that looks like. You know, my passions are with marginalized people groups, marginalized faith groups.
01:02:13
Speaker
That doesn't always put me in great places with people that's not Some of those those places and spaces are not welcome or welcoming And there's a lot of unknown with that, you know There's a lot of people who who look at what I do or look at my passions in those things and go Number one, how did you get there? But number two, why would you ever I?
01:02:42
Speaker
you know, why would you, why would you ever support something that looks so drastically different from how you grew up or what you, what you knew?
Tori's Vision for Positive Impact
01:02:52
Speaker
And, um, and so for me, it's just, beauty can be found in anything. Yeah.
01:03:01
Speaker
But I think it's our responsibility to remind people that there is beauty around them, even if it's just the daisy popping out of the cement on your, on your walk to work or, you know, you're walking down the sidewalk to get a sandwich or whatever. Um, yeah, you know, I want people to,
01:03:27
Speaker
I want people to feel like they have a stronger faith, that the world isn't always on fire. I think it will always feel like it's on fire. But there are places where things are not on fire. And yeah, I don't know.
01:03:58
Speaker
When I'm done with it, I hope that I leave people better than I found them. And I hope that I leave these faith groups that I encounter better than I found them, not necessarily by my own doing, but just by being a person willing to
01:04:17
Speaker
stand next to them, to be an ally, to fight for their ability to worship, to have education, and to learn in their faith tradition. What is one small thing a person like me as a civ can do to at least be more mindful of
01:04:47
Speaker
what sorts of spiritual needs our service people have and how we can at least be, if we can't necessarily help in meaningful ways, how we can at least be more informed about what is needed
01:05:15
Speaker
or not cause more harm. Yeah. Honestly, community, right? Community is such a big part of how a military family and single soldiers, how they
01:05:38
Speaker
moves through the world. They're in a community at work of people who they call in the army, they call them battle buddies and the Air Force, they call them their wingman. But, you know, they're battle buddy. They're people who they do life with, the people who would take a bullet for them. Be willing to to be that person
01:06:07
Speaker
Be willing to be, not that you will be a battle buddy in its true sense of, but be willing to be in community with somebody who looks different, maybe somebody who doesn't subscribe to your faith context. And let it be okay. We don't have to agree.
01:06:36
Speaker
I don't have to agree with your faith tradition to support your faith tradition, to support your right to worship freely, to support your right
01:06:50
Speaker
to have incense at your service. But I can make a difference in making sure that your faith tradition is advocated for in the spaces where I am sitting at the table. And so yeah, things that are interfaith are a great way in my mind
01:07:14
Speaker
are a great conversation starter because most communities, most large communities in the city have some sort of interfaith something that goes on. Lots of colleges have interfaith things that go on.
01:07:31
Speaker
largely we insulate ourselves, right? Like we protect ourselves, we look for people who are similar. And so I think it's this constant striving of, you know, while it would be really normal for me to gravitate towards maybe one group or one person, maybe looking for the people who are on the margins.
01:07:55
Speaker
who are different, and just having a conversation. It doesn't have to be political, it's not something that you have to, you don't have to agree on anything. But even just the willingness to sit down and listen, because at the end of the day, I think so many people just want to be heard and known, right? Yeah.
01:08:22
Speaker
just heard unknown. And so what would it look like as faith leaders as we could be the people who allow others to be heard unknown in spaces where maybe they've never been heard or known before. Maybe their families, they've never been heard or known. Tori, thank you so much for
01:08:46
Speaker
for being on the show, for lingering and sharing with us all of this incredible grace and wisdom and laughter. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate getting the opportunity to tell people a little bit more about what we do.
01:09:04
Speaker
and about the difference that we get to make. My thanks to my guest, Tori Mick. You can follow her on Instagram at Tori Mick. Thank you so much for tuning in to Uncommon Good with Pauly Reese. This program is produced in Southwest Philadelphia on the unceded ancestral land of the Lenape Nation, who remain here in the era of the fourth Crow and fight for official recognition by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to this very day.
01:09:33
Speaker
You can find out more about the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania and how you can support the revitalization of their culture by going to Lenape-Nation.org. Our associate producers are Willa Jaffe and Kia Watkins.
01:09:48
Speaker
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01:10:09
Speaker
We love questions and feedback. You can send us a DM on social media or an email at uncommongoodpod at gmail.com. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, wishing you every uncommon good to do your uncommon good to be the uncommon good.