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The Journey of Advent: Laboring with Joy and Grief
69 Plays3 days ago
When it comes to the thin spaces of our lives where we are laboring to birth life, it's difficult to overstate the power of a midwife, or wise woman, who has walked the journey before us and can offer her hope, peace, and courage along the way. For this week of advent, Katy and Tracy discuss the places where they have labored for life, and needed the guidance of another woman and where they have each gotten to provide that encouragement in the aftermath of their own hardships. With a special attention to what God has to say about the strength of a laboring mother and the hope of a midwife, this week is sacred, connective, and inspiring. Join us for the conversation!
For journaling prompts that coincide with this episode and walk you through each day of advent, sign up at Red Tent Living.
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Transcript
Introduction to Red Tent Living and 'Laboring Joy' in Advent
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Katie Stafford, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary. Each week, we share stories with the hope of seeing one another a little better and affirming each other across different seasons and perspectives. We're excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table. Hello.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, here we are again. Here we are again, talking about laboring, laboring joy. Yep. Our third, our third week of Advent. Do you have your candle? I do. I'm going to light it. Hold on. Have my matches. Yours is going.
00:00:50
Speaker
i Okay. Hang on. As you like, to me, this maybe felt like our most significant week because as I think about like.
00:01:03
Speaker
Advent is waiting and anticipation, but what kind of waiting? And a week of sitting and laboring and in what it is to be a laboring mother and what it is to be the midwife of a mother. Like we're going to look at both of those.
Exploration of Active Waiting and Emotional Engagement
00:01:18
Speaker
It's like, what kind of waiting are we called to do for God's presence in the world? Because I think some of us can look around at what feels bleak and just say, waiting for God to show up, like not a part of all of this dumpster fire. A midwife's energy is really different. Laboring mother's energy is really different. It's very active. It's very intimate. So that was present for me as I was reflecting on all of our passages.
00:01:54
Speaker
That active waiting, um you know it makes me it makes me think about about places of active waiting, no where you're not you're not passive in the waiting. I think the way that I put it is that i think I think there are places where it takes more effort to be passive.
00:02:15
Speaker
because you're having to tamp something down, almost shut something down, in order to not feel the reality of the activeness of of where you are. I think about but you know any number of waiting rooms that I've been in, whether it's waiting waiting room for for a laboring mother and delivery or waiting a surgical waiting room where you know you're waiting for the the team to come out and tell you how the surgery has gone.
00:02:47
Speaker
or the active waiting for the biopsy results or the, yeah yeah, I mean a child like doing their college exams for the first week or, you know, what whatever that is, ah you know, when you're buying a house and you're waiting for the bedding process that you have no control over, but it's like active waiting, there's something inside of you that is that is stirred up. Yeah, engaged and awake. In the case of some of those instances that you mentioned, I mean, some of them are not life and death, but the others, it's like, there's a high need that it is very difficult to numb yourself to, right?
00:03:34
Speaker
to to truly check out of like what is present and and the precarity of the moment where it's like we are working onto something and we are in thin space right now.
Midwifery in Religious Texts and its Historical Significance
00:03:45
Speaker
We're like life and death are meeting. That's a high quality moment.
00:03:54
Speaker
I loved the researching for this week. It sent me some places that I haven't been before, haven't really dropped down into. Made me think quite often of my friend Joanna, who is finishing her PhD in midwifery and what her journey has been. I think sometime maybe next season, maybe we'll have her come on and talk about, you know, she would have been a She would have been a brilliant voice like in this conversation with us for all the reasons around it. But but yeah, for the first time, like I read some scholarly articles on midwifery and and did a little more looking at the history and then digging around in these places in scripture. Just in, you know, not your typical place when you think about the Advent story, if we only contain it to what we find in Matthew and Luke.
00:04:48
Speaker
agreed yeah and in any of those passages because this is it's actually a missing narrative in both of those. Right. In both of those stories, which is, and I think you would say this too, right? As we've done our own research, and we've done our own reading and we've looked and we've looked, it's like there is no way that Mary was birthing without a midwife.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah, there were several articles I read that just called out like, hey, in ancient Palestine, she was not alone. She was not alone. It would have been one, two midwives rushed to be present. Right. Whether Joseph got those midwives, whether the inn keeper looked at her and went, oh my gosh, got his wife and said, go get them, go get the women.
00:05:40
Speaker
Call the midwife. Call the midwife. Exactly. Yeah. So... yeah that That for sure was, she was not alone. I was telling you, like of course, ah miraculous but like the tradition of Jesus's birth is recalled in other religious texts. And so I was reading an article that talked about in the Quran, there's not a midwife, but God shows up and coaches Mary to birth Jesus. So God is the midwife, which is like wild.
00:06:13
Speaker
right. But again, like this awareness of like, she needed and had someone walking her through that space. A sweet femme voice. Yes.
00:06:26
Speaker
Yes. And it feels important, you know, you and I were talking about this. If we believe that this story is real, which we believe that this story is real, this is a miraculous story. It was not contained only in Matthew and Luke, the way that it is reported there. Like this would have been, this is a story that got told again and again and again. And so not to diminish like the the canon or the importance of the canon, just saying adjacent to that there are some really interesting places and stories to read to just get a flavor of what else
00:07:12
Speaker
was being talked about. What else was what else was being said? and And frankly, what else is possible? Because there are no there were no women writing their stories down. Like many women didn't write if they did write. it just it wasn't the The reason it's not in the canon is like it wasn't honored. And so to some extent, I think many women were dependent on a man writing and deciding that their words, their experience mattered. Yeah. And I don't know, it feels like there was perhaps a
00:07:52
Speaker
cleanup. It feels like in the Christian tradition, I'll put it this way, it feels like in the Christian tradition, we have done a little bit of a cleanup on laboring language in sacred texts. If you are a part of a Christian tradition that reads the lectionary, there is no passage in the rotating lectionary that refers to God as laboring mother.
00:08:17
Speaker
There's no, like, all of that gets kind of removed from how Christians regularly engage. There's no passages in the New Testament about laboring mothers per se. Maybe the closest we get is Elizabeth delivering.
00:08:34
Speaker
Mary delivering, right? But like, there's no space for the midwife. And so you have to go back, you have to go back to the Old Testament, which not that it's pervasive with women's stories, but it is far more common, far more common to see actual stories that are around labor,
00:08:56
Speaker
midwives as characters, metaphors of God as a laboring woman, as a midwife, as a nursing mother. like That's just way more a part of the language for God and for what it is to be in relationship with God.
00:09:17
Speaker
And so I'll say this for the for for our listeners, if they haven't signed up for the Advent Experiential Guide, like those passages, we'll put we're going to put those in the Guide. Maybe we'll add a few of them in the notes that go with the show because we're not going to unpack all of that right now. i i was so It was interesting, i as I was reading some of these scholarly articles, I found that like the the first time in antiquity that the word midwife is found it cited, and these aren't like religious articles, but referenced to Genesis 3517, where
00:10:00
Speaker
ah Rachel is giving birth and and the laboring is incredibly difficult and it says the midwife turned to her and said, fear not. It finishes with, you know, you will birth this son also. And in that story, like Rachel birthed Benjamin and then died. But so interesting that the the first words attached to mid-war free are fear not and come from that that passage. And and that that felt really important to me, again, as I was kind of digging, right? And you I think you said this a minute ago, like the definition of a midwife in French, it's the sage femme.
00:10:39
Speaker
but But the idea is, you know, with women and wise woman. And so it it feels to me like midwifing is really like a wise woman offering her presence like unto withness with another woman.
00:11:02
Speaker
Right. And so there's something, there's something of an embodied wisdom. There's something that this sage femme carries with her because of what she has known and what she has experienced and where she has
Bravery of Hebrew Midwives Shiprah and Puah
00:11:15
Speaker
walked. And she offers that her presence and all of that for the sake of being with a woman and in need of what it is that she has. Yes.
00:11:29
Speaker
and That feels that feels ah you know kind of like where we're going to go as we sort of unpack some of some of our thoughts for today. you know As you and I were talking, we looked at the story of the midwives ah straight out of Exodus 1. I hadn't even heard like I had never heard her the names Shifrat and Pua until maybe eight, nine years ago. I didn't know their names until I went to seminary. Like, how did I go to a Christian high school right and a college that required classes that covered the Old Testament and never knew their names? Yeah.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, i I didn't either. I don't think I knew their names until I started reading and following Will Gaffney and found their names in Womanus Midrash and then, you know, just in some other spaces. But all of that to say, for the sake of other people knowing who they are, I'll just read a little bit. I love that. So I'm in Exodus 1 and, uh,
00:12:48
Speaker
I'm going to start with verse 15. Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives of whom the name of one was Shifrah and the name of the other, Pua. And he said, when you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women and see them on the birthing stools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him.
00:13:10
Speaker
But if it is a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.
00:13:22
Speaker
So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, why have you done this thing and saved the male children alive? But the midwives said to Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. And so it was because the midwives feared God that he provided households for them.
00:13:50
Speaker
And then Pharaoh commands all of his people, saying, every son who is born shall be cast in the river, and every daughter you will save alive. What a story! ah you know All of the aspects of it I think are so interesting to me know that these women are called in by Pharaoh. As I was looking at that, you know there are Egyptian hieroglyphics that honor the role of a midwife. They um they sort of a goddess of some kind being the one who is helping a royal
00:14:23
Speaker
Egyptian women give birth, but their so their status is elevated. like There's something of the difficulty in helping or the significance in helping a laboring woman to birth that provided some some status. The courage and defiance of these two women um and that the creativity of what they tell Pharaoh Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of funny, like almost appealing to some something in him, like, you know, they're not like the Egyptian women.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's like, what was the NASA story of the women sent into space with something like 500 tampons, right? Where it was like, we don't need this many, but like the, like the lack of like attunement and understanding for men where they're like, it's a cave and a mystery. I don't know about this. We don't need to ask questions. Send all tampons.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah. It's like preying upon that ignorance. The And it just being like, it's hilarious. I guess that's true. ah Right. How would I know? But this feels important too. It feels really important to name like, the just fear and simply men were not in these spaces. These are not spaces where men go.
00:15:49
Speaker
And I do think it do think it's important. It's funny, but Shipra and Pua and Walter Brueggemann was the one who called this out. I want to give him credit. They were engaged in like dangerous, liberated work. Yes. They were taking on risk. it was They weren't sure that the king wasn't going to go, i'm I'm going to kill the two of you for not following my decree, right? so they were shrewd, but that does not mean they weren't taking on risk. And to notice, right, the king is feeling threatened. The Hebrews are multiplying in number. And what's what's happening is the fear of some sort of uprising. Yeah. Right. And so in their in their defiance, it is a defiance unto the hope of freedom.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, whatever that means. um Kelly Nicondia talks about this and Will Gaffney does as well, where it's like Shipra and Pua and the Guild of Midwives were the first deliverers in the Book of Deliverance. And like they would have been the ones to know first, the king feels threatened and were powerful and could have been sowing those seeds. right We do not have to live this story of slavery.
00:17:14
Speaker
It's interesting, I was doing some digging on some Jewish scholarly sites and I don't like, what do I know? I did a little bit of digging, but finding that, ah you know, some of of what I was reading was tied to what was lost while they while the Hebrews were in exile.
00:17:34
Speaker
and And we know some of that today. I mean, we talk about you know what what happens when when a culture is sort of overtaken right by by empire or colonized. And so the Hebrews had lost their identity. I mean, that's part of what was happening. They're just being assimilated into Egyptian culture. And in that, they're growing, but their sense of who they are is is probably not deepening.
00:18:06
Speaker
right It's like there's something being lost. And so what's happening here is very interesting. is really like you know one of the One of the articles that I read talked about that what they are doing is they are actively part of of freedom. They are actively part of the redemption.
Birth Narratives and Redefining Strength
00:18:29
Speaker
story for the Hebrew people. it's this And I think this is what you were just saying. It's like, this is the beginning. They're midwifing the rebirth of their identity. They are like conduits for the Exodus.
00:18:42
Speaker
Well, and to take that, to extend that idea and I think give it validity, Isaiah 42, which is the God as midwife passage, was written when the israel nation of Israel was once again in exile and seized in Babylon. And so once again, experiencing this like, who are we? Who is God to us? And that's when the passage of God as midwife comes. both to say like, I labor in the pain with you, and to remind them of like, the power of the midwife story, right? And that's central to their identity. And again, so we know, we know the oral tradition, like these are the stories that were passed down.
00:19:31
Speaker
This story made it into the book of Exodus, right? And so this would have been a story that by the time we get to Isaiah, that imagery would have would have hearkened back to this story.
00:19:44
Speaker
right And that liberation and life, it starts in these small, ordinary, but powerful ways. Midwifing and birth is the start of something new. It's the start of hope. it's like that's a That's a powerful image for the people of Israel. That's a powerful image for all of us.
00:20:06
Speaker
so ah you know it in in light of you know sort of contemplating this this space. I find myself thinking about, you know even even when I picture um the women that I know like listen to us here and and Have followed and have written and have been involved with red tent living, you know, I start to picture women that I know Have stories of barrenness like never birthed any children women who also have stories of orphaning and have no sense of
00:20:48
Speaker
what it is to be mothered by the woman who gave birth to you. there there's I just think there's so much that is charged and painful. We have women that have birth to death.
00:20:59
Speaker
you know, in miscarriage or stillbirth, some who never went on to birth children. This is so charged. It feels like, uh, like there's so much that is provoked in your body around what you have known and what you haven't known.
00:21:21
Speaker
even as you and I sit and talk about this, two two white women, ah mother and daughter, who enjoy you know a depth of relationship that I think is is somewhat uncommon. I have certainly birthed, I have birthed life and I have birthed death, literally and figuratively, and and here you are carrying your first baby. there's i in i I feel like the the privilege, ah even from the posture that you and I are sitting in as we are talking about this. And it just feels important to me that we're that we're acknowledging, even just listening to us.
00:22:02
Speaker
is very provoking. And so, you know, how, what what is it? What is it that we're meant? Where's the inclusivity, I think, in the narrative? How does this extend? How do we see this? How have we even known this extending beyond like a literal birth narrative? Yes. Yeah. If we, if we take, I wonder if it's about what's coming to mind is, um,
00:22:32
Speaker
Lauren winner writes about that metaphor of God as laboring mother, which is obviously like, it's intended for universal purposes. It's not tied to the specificity of the birth narrative. But she considers the strength that we learn about God and what God is inviting us to in that. And she says, hold on, all I'll read it. If our picture of strength is a laboring woman, then strength is not about refusing to cry or denying pain. Strength is not about being in charge or being independent or being dignified. If our picture of strength is a laboring woman, then strength entails enduring
00:23:17
Speaker
receiving help and support, being open to pain and risk. It even entails giving yourself over to the possibility of death. And I think that that is ah a wider stage for all of us to sit on because all of us have known that question of like, what does it mean to be strong?
00:23:41
Speaker
What does it mean to labor for something I'm longing for or to come alongside someone who's doing the same, right? And we all have those stories and a reframing of strengths from at least what's pervasive in Western culture, Western Christian culture, which is about being on top of yourself in control,
00:24:07
Speaker
ah achievement oriented, put together, like there's a tightness to how we strive and how we define achieving that is just not present in that metaphor. What God is inviting us to. Yeah. I don i don't think we often, I don't think we often equate, uh, the strength that is coupled with surrender.
00:24:36
Speaker
and that i i'm I'm going to say, like i I do think there's something about like a laboring my mother that depicts that in ways I don't know how else to depict it. And I think we have become, probably like as women, we have become out of necessity, so resistant to a surrender that ah that's rooted in strength.
00:25:07
Speaker
we've had to defend, we've had to protect, we've had to resist, we've had to put up some kind of barrier because there has been the the impact of patriarchy and and all of the ways that women have felt the power over from men. And so at this point, i I think it's pretty embodied. I think it's like it's a trauma that has been passed through our DNA that that we just are like, oh. And the reality is in the laboring process, the the harder you fight it,
00:25:49
Speaker
the more difficult it is, the tighter your body is. the more difficult the laboring process is. And and the midwife, part of her energy, part of that like fear not, like trust the wisdom of your body, trust that your body will do what it is made to do, that it it has a knowing of what needs to happen, let it happen. Whether that is unto life or unto death,
00:26:19
Speaker
there're There is an invitation to surrender, not unto weakness, because it is the the what your muscles don't do in any other time, what they do when you are laboring, right? It takes incredible strength, so much strength, almost a strength that it is it's outside of your mind. It's not the strength of your mind, it's the strength of your body, that your body will do it. but Yeah, all of that to say, you know, what, what happens when we resist the surrender? And to me, Katie, it it feels like it makes me think a little bit about what we, what we talked about around Mary's ascent and like the yes and the no to the process, the, the, um,
00:27:14
Speaker
You can, you ah you know, I don't, I don't like this story. I don't feel included. I don't see any belonging. I don't know this, right? This doesn't apply to me. I can't relate to it. um Or, or you can enter into what I think is actually like an active suffering, a choice to suffer with.
00:27:41
Speaker
Um, or to bring, to bring your suffering to the table. You know, if your story of suffering is one of, I don't know that I'm, I don't, i I didn't get to be a mother or I don't know that I will ever be a mother.
Surrender, Suffering, and Midwifery as Divine Presence
00:27:56
Speaker
I don't know that I will ever labor. I never carried any children in my own body. That is suffering. And to extend it further, like that idea of.
00:28:08
Speaker
suffering, surrendering, surrendering to pain for the sake of some life. We know that everywhere. We know that in the rupture of relationship, we know that in um a diagnosis that completely transforms the length of our life and what our life is going to be about.
00:28:30
Speaker
We know that in the death of a dream that we felt called for, called to, we know that in the deconstruction of a faith that we felt so sacred. like you cannot walk a life on this world and not know suffering. And so the the question is, will I surrender unto the change that is happening for for the other side? Will I
00:29:07
Speaker
to take our language from week one, like, will I borrow the hope of someone further down the road, a midwife, who's walked this path before and believe that this suffering, there's life on the other side of it. Not that it that it happens for a reason, not that there's a purpose to the suffering, but that I have life waiting for me on the other side of this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:29:35
Speaker
And I just, as you were talking just now, like eight i I found i found that that what was coming up inside me was like the face of another woman that that is basically saying like, fear not, I am with you. Fear not, I am with you. And isn't that the message of Advent? Like the witness of God is really what we are, that is what Emmanuel is, God with us. And I think that that's like a snippet of what we get in the face of the midwife, right? and
00:30:14
Speaker
that like The call to midwifery is both a, like, I get to extend God's presence in the world. I get to be the face of God because I've i've met him and I've known him or i've I've met her and I've known her and I can i can remind someone in the thick of it.
00:30:35
Speaker
that she's here, and it's a willingness to wait for God to show up, right? It's not you being the end-all for somebody else, but it's you saying, I know who God is. I know God's coming. Like, fear not. So it's it's an early taste of who God is, and it's the courage to keep pushing and believing that God is going to meet me in my unique moment of pain.
00:31:04
Speaker
if you if If you have walked through suffering and and you have you have stayed you have stayed with it, you haven't tried to exit it with some sort of early redemption story or like you've You've actually like just dropped down in and known what it is. Like, okay, I have to surrender to to a process. I don't even know what the process is, but I am here and I am surrendered to it. I believe what part of what happens on the other side of that is that you become a woman who knows like advice is not what you have to offer.
00:31:50
Speaker
there there is not There are not five steps for how to survive whatever. right What you know on the other side is that what you can offer is just your face, just like the hope that is within you that you can lend to another while they wait to discover their own story of hope, their own story of redemption from from whatever it is. It is really, it's not about not about words. yeah it's It's about witness. And it's like, I just to look into the eyes of somebody else and to see in their eyes, like, hey, I know.
00:32:37
Speaker
I was sitting, you know, this part of my story is a very traumatic breakup, a very traumatic relational rupture. And I was sitting with another woman who has just recently been navigating that.
00:32:55
Speaker
and As we were talking on the phone, I was very struck by like there's to have walked it through myself. There's a spacious room that you sit in together. Yes. And we cried in that room and I could cry before she said anything because I didn't. I knew right. I knew all of.
00:33:21
Speaker
the feelings. And we laughed in that room, because you know, irreverent things were said that were funny, that you know are funny if you've if you've lived it. And what I felt like I could bring most frequently was affirmation of feeling like yes, yes, and it will be like this and permission, like There's time. You don't, you don't have to rush any of that. And that's going to fall into place. You can trust your body. You can trust the grief process. This is going to fall into place. And that, and that was not that that was it, but like, that's the crux of it. That's the work. Yeah, it is. And that's what you have.
The Sacredness of Shared Suffering and Vulnerability
00:34:11
Speaker
to offer and it isn't it doesn't, you don't offer it from a platform or in a sermon or and you know maybe in a book, but I think it's just really, it's more intimate. It's what you offer in a birthing room. It's what you, you know you're not Instagramming it.
00:34:36
Speaker
No, you know but but when I think about you know what it is in the places where I have known suffering, some of some of what the most beautiful work I get to do now is is that spacious room that you talked about. is I don't want to say it's my joy to be in that room and Like that is a room that that that depicts the joy, the labor, the grief, the suffering. And and it's ah and there's something there is something holy about it.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's it is. I would agree. and I wouldn't use the word joy. I wouldn't even use the word choice, but it is. And maybe this is kind of like what midwifing is like when there's a knowing in your body and you've been faithful to the work in your own body, right? You haven't amputated something.
00:35:37
Speaker
You don't have scar tissue that you have scar tissue, but not like stuff that you haven't processed. Like you settle back in and you're like, I know. I know this room and I'm not afraid of this room. Right. And so I can be here. And I can be here with everything I was longing for when I was here the first time. bright Right. Right.
00:36:01
Speaker
If you haven't been in that room and you try to be in that room with somebody, you can cause some damage. Yeah. Well, if you haven't wanted to be in that room, I was talking recently with ah with a woman who, and you know, has suffered like a couple of back to back miscarriages. and And part of what we were talking about was like really unhelpful.
00:36:26
Speaker
women that that she has encountered that have that I'm going and to use your word that have amputated their own process following miscarriage and so like couldn't be in the room and I don't know that this woman actually knew what she needed and until we were in that conversation and I began to put words to what I knew of that room. and And she felt her body settle and she was like, I thank you. I didn't i didn't even know I needed this space. Yeah.
00:37:01
Speaker
but you know it when you feel it. like You know it when you're not getting it. You're like, this is not what my body needs. Right. Well, and and sort of and is this all there is? Right? Is this all there is? Yeah. so And I remember that when I had my first miscarriage, I had nowhere to go. I didn't know anybody. Nobody was talking about it. Nobody I knew had ever had a miscarriage. or There's nowhere to go. And I was left alone and really wanted out of that.
00:37:30
Speaker
So as I think about us shifting to the rhythm of, okay, we're looking ahead, we're we're leaving this room together. I feel like the question that we're asking here is what will you do with your pain? And what will you do with your joy? Both. And like, I don't know, where are you sitting with those two questions as we... im I think for me, I'm just struck really by by the beauty of the invitation of the word midwife and and and of the kind of the vision that it casts because it it says like you're your your pain matters.
00:38:26
Speaker
and becomes part of what creates in you the wise woman. A wise woman knows that room. A wise woman has sat in her pain and a wise woman has also embraced joy. And she has that to offer the the capacity and the spaciousness to sit with in pain.
00:38:52
Speaker
and And yet her face offers something of hope that says like, and there will be joy again. Maybe not today, but there will be. And also offers the face that says like, this is painful and joy is four pushes away. Yeah. Right.
00:39:12
Speaker
Yeah. It is all of that. But I think that's, that was the beauty for me of like this invitation for this space that we've been in. And I think that, that is what I'm kind of carrying out is really the, that image of a midwife and letting it extend beyond you know, the the very obvious definition to what we as women um are are invited to with one another. and And I don't want to totally leave men out. That's not my goal. um It's not that men don't offer that. They can, you know, for sure. So I know we have men that listen to us also. and um
00:40:00
Speaker
I had a great conversation with your brother yesterday that as you were talking about sitting in that room that you were in with that, he he was just sharing a similar story and where he knew he had hope and and like witness and spaciousness to offer somebody. So it's for all. It's for all. Yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
trauma or a rupture and who've done the work. Yes. Good words on the other side of it. Yes. Yeah. I think as I as I contemplate, I think there's this constant wooing and false security of like, if I make my life really small, I can make it really safe. If I bring my people close, like in this chaotic world,
00:40:59
Speaker
almost like quarantine, right? If I quarantine us away like I did in COVID, I can keep us all from the really bad. And that conversation that I was referencing, like very deeply reconnected me to like, life's lived in the peaks and the valleys. And like, the goodness, the redemption of our stories, the life that we're living, the life that we're waiting for happens in these bigger moments. And so like,
00:41:34
Speaker
leave leave the safety of your little keep a little bit. What does it look like to extend your hand to another woman? What does it look like to say, I need something? What does it look like to risk vulnerability? What does it look like to, yeah, like where where have you been the wise woman?
00:41:57
Speaker
Where are you? And maybe that's what I want to say. It's like part of the invitation, I think, is like, how will you sit with your own self and what you have known, the places where you have stayed in a room of pain and suffering and what has been yield is a wisdom in you. Right. And you you can be generous. Yeah.
00:42:23
Speaker
And keep living, yes risk, keep going for something that might leave you shattered because that's where love is. Love shatters us. CS Lewis has a beautiful quote about that and about what happens to a heart when it gets locked and wrapped away too safely and how it atrophies.
00:42:47
Speaker
um And i I feel like the invitation of Advent is risk life. Life that knows death, life that knows harm, life that knows joy. I feel like you just set up, you just so beautifully set up, you know, where we're headed in our final episode next week, where we talk about love and body. Well done, Katie. We'll have to come back to that.
00:43:15
Speaker
Until next week. Until next week. Yeah. Until next week. Offer your midwifing in the ways you can. Good words. All right. See you soon. See ya.
00:43:29
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by myself, Katie Stafford, and edited by Erin Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson, and all our