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The Journey of Advent: Carrying Peace with Katy Stafford and Tracy Johnson
67 Plays10 days ago
“Carrying” life of any kind is a personal journey for each life bearer. As we carry life within us, nurturing it until it is ready to be born into this world, we come to understand our motivations, our hopes, our fears, and our purpose in new ways. The same was true for Mary. For the second week of Advent, Katy and Tracy reflect on what carrying life meant to Mary, what shalom looks like in the world, and how we all can embrace peacemaking in our everyday lives. How might you bring shalom into the world this Christmas season?
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 Podcast
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.
Exploring Hope, Peace, and Presence
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello. Hello.
00:00:30
Speaker
We're back for week two. Happy Advent. We are. We are. um Yeah, i'm I'm excited to talk today. We ended last week kind of pondering the precarity of hope and like that sometimes hope is borrowed and sometimes hope feels like that single candle just flickering in the dark.
Understanding Peace as 'Withness' and Presence
00:00:58
Speaker
and where we're gonna be this week is ah a little bit about we're we're in that second stage of birthing life. So it's about carrying, it's the longest stage. And we're gonna be engaging with peace a little bit. And what you and I have been talking about is that peace is about withness, it's about presence. And caring is about being present with your own body. So that's a little bit of the space
00:01:30
Speaker
that we're gonna enter today. I was just gonna say is I'm finding myself thinking that we often think about like hope as a light, right? Hope is light in the dark. But I think it's actually, it's so appropriate to name that peace and the desire for peace and peacemaking is another, it's another aspect of what it is for there to be light in the dark. So probably important to light the peace candle.
00:02:00
Speaker
I agree. Yes, I have ah this whole week is I've been preparing for this. I this is my Christmas candle downstairs by the fireplace and I have just had it lit right. I love to light the candle before I read and journal and As I was preparing for this, as we were preparing for this, we both felt like lighting our candles for these coming weeks is going to be important. so i just It's lit already and I just brought it up to my office with me. Great. I i too have a candle that I light. I'm going to light mine. and Anyone who's listening at home can light one or
00:02:42
Speaker
If you're following it along in our Advent devotional, you can light your candle throughout the week as you're going through the ah prompts that we have that kind of unpack what we're talking about today even more. Yeah, definitely.
00:02:57
Speaker
I was thinking about what you were saying about like the source of the light. And it it feels like if the light for hope is external and it's a candle, the light for peace is internal. And it's it's a quiet glow and a restedness within our bodies.
The Deep Meaning of 'Shalom'
00:03:16
Speaker
And so you're we're talking about we're actually talking about the word shalom.
00:03:23
Speaker
Um, which some of our listeners may be really familiar with. And some of our listeners, I imagine have heard that word and don't, and and don't really maybe have a broader context for what that word means. Um, so we're going to dip into that some today. Also, this is kind of been your, this was your, your week to choose who we would talk about. And so who did you choose?
00:03:53
Speaker
for peace and for caring. Yeah, I I chose Mary this week. I think. Mary is perhaps the most obvious choice, but I just couldn't get away from.
Mary's Realization of Her Role
00:04:12
Speaker
Like, as we're looking at her season of caring and specifically what Luke chooses to tell us about Mary, like we get this I feel like we get this beautiful window into the life of Jesus's mother because Luke chose to told tell the story of her going to visit Elizabeth for that main three, like her mid three months of pregnancy. She stays with her cousin, Elizabeth. And that's it is in that context with that dear friend that we have Mary's Magnificat, which is one of the most
00:04:51
Speaker
famous hymns of Christian tradition. um And I can I can actually read that to kind of ground us in the time. That sounds great. Yeah. Hold on. Let me open. Let me open this up. All right. I'll give it I'll give it a little bit of the the preamble like her going. So in those days, Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country where she entered the House of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
00:05:20
Speaker
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy, and blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
00:05:50
Speaker
And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me. And holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to
Mary and Elizabeth's Companionship
00:06:14
Speaker
generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
00:06:20
Speaker
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors to Abraham and his descendants forever. And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned home. It's such a ah I think I felt drawn to Mary because that speech is so fiery. like it's It's so impassioned. It has such clarity around it. And I think as a woman who's carrying a baby, I wanted to dig a little deeper into... Mary had a sense of what she was bringing into the world and what it was about for her.
00:07:15
Speaker
i think Each person carrying life, whether metaphorical or physical, like they have a purpose that they're about and Mary knew what this was about for her. And I wanted to dive into that a little bit. I love that. I love that it's the interplays between Mary and Elizabeth and sort of hearkening back to to what we what we named last week around how the women who are in the lineage, and Elizabeth isn't in there, right, because she's the mother of John the Baptist, but Mary is, but how the women who are listed in Matthew 1 have all known something of weaponized stigma.
00:08:01
Speaker
um And so Elizabeth, Elizabeth has known the humiliation of barrenness, the way she talks about herself, she talks about her her disgrace among men She has known something. So Elizabeth is a woman who shouldn't be able to have a baby because she's too old. And Mary is a woman who shouldn't be able to have a baby because she's unmarried. Elizabeth shouldn't be caring because the day has passed, right? And Mary shouldn't be caring because her circumstances are not aligned with with what would be appropriate. Yeah.
00:08:46
Speaker
right And so that that that just it feels like that that's some of the context for the the conversation between these women and the interplay between them that I think is part of what you just read in Mary's Magnificat. Yes. And they both are attuned at different ways to the societal pressures surrounding them because of all of that. right like I think as we take in Mary's words, we start to get a pretty clear picture of some things she's known in her life. So she's known what it is to experience humiliation. She's known what it is to experience affliction and misery, contempt, prejudice. Even that word she says about hunger,
00:09:45
Speaker
that that could be physical hunger, that could be something that she's experiencing, or it also means like deep ache and need and desire. like So she's she's a woman who's known, pronounced longing, and who's felt shame. Yeah, yeah. um But that that feels like a lot to dip into, you know just just right there.
00:10:14
Speaker
um And and i I can't help but think about how anemic the spaces I've been in it for most of my life, you know maybe maybe up until the last 15 years or so around this story um and around the Magnificat, which is kind of to me always felt sort of ridiculous. Like this 16 year old girl is making this incredible statement of God's goodness and overarching proclamation. Yup. You know, and I am, and and it always just felt kind of unreal. Yeah. You're like, okay, Luke just popped this into Mary's mouth for his own purposes. Right. And some of it, and
00:11:08
Speaker
And I think we're going to maybe get into this as we sort of take apart what some of these words actually are. Some of it is tied to how how this the the Greek has been translated, let alone how the Aramaic, because Mary would have been speaking in Aramaic, how that made its way to Greek.
00:11:27
Speaker
and then how and how the Greek has made its way to us and and the inevitability of ah how some of what we read now and some of how we read it now is is through a lens of power and power over. Yeah, yeah there's a ton of power dynamics here and kind of this over this like overcoming way that we want to read the gospel message and the energy of that that has come to be so familiar I think in evangelical circles yes it does have a like I think we're inclined to read it with a tinge of empire right
00:12:12
Speaker
Yes. Unless you, unless you purpose to, you really can't read it any other way. um part Particularly if if you are white. Because, you know, and unless you have known something of stigma, unless you have unless you're very aware of that,
00:12:37
Speaker
You've known what it is to experience racial trauma. You've known what it is to feel othered, tied to sexuality or or race or or maybe you know some sort of difference that you carry in your body in some other way, unless you're very aware of that and you read scripture through that lens.
00:13:03
Speaker
youre you you will read it with a tinge of empire.
Profound Acceptance: Mary's Choice
00:13:05
Speaker
And so I know for me, I mean, it's not that I haven't known other, but it it has taken intentional choice to find different voices to learn from who have known that stigma, who have known what it is to be the victim of empire.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yep, agreed. And I think if today we're taking Mary's words at their face value, we we are choosing in the context of scripture to say Mary spoke these and what does it mean that she did? And I think to your point, Mary knew all of the kinds of othering that you're describing. And so we do have, you know, a girl 14 to 16, somewhere she is in her early to mid teens. And I think what she's speaking is for herself. And I think it's a disservice to say she she is also speaking a little bit bigger, right? We all have the 16 year old in our lives who are dissatisfied with the world, and they feel very passionately about it. And they make big statements. And
00:14:20
Speaker
I think what we're seeing in Mary's story is there's room for that. And sometimes those voices are particularly clear eyed about what what's not embodying peace. They're sort of raw and unsanitized. They are. Yeah. And they're not interested in political correctness. Look, this is how it is for me. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker
so I think where I want to start, to stay with Mary, we talked about last week, we were talking about Bathsheba and we were comparing with Mary and that like Mary's story starts in such a striking way because the angel Gabriel gives her a choice of whether or not she is going to participate in the birth of Immanuel. And she says, let it be so. And that word, let it be, for those who study Greek, who know it well, it's genomai, which is like, let it become, let it happen. um It is a very experiential word.
00:15:29
Speaker
And it's tied to this word ginosko, which is like to come to know through your body, to experience it. It's not this Western way of knowing that I think most of us are so comfortable with where it's logical. therebral Yeah, cerebral. No, it's like let this happen within me and I am, I am gonna learn from it. So Mary sort of enters into a choice in that moment to come to know a truth through her body. And I think what we're wanting to parse out and consider playfully together today is what did she come to know and what therefore was bearing life about for Mary.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, i I think one of the things that that I found myself thinking about this week also is that is that mary Mary says yes to Carrie, but essentially she's she's she really has no idea what this is going to... This is not your typical right that from the from From the very moment that the angel speaks to her, even though she may know something of women birthing babies, because she's old enough at this point that she has probably been in the room, and she she's being taught, right she knows something of that.
00:16:59
Speaker
But she has no idea what it's going to mean that this baby is going to magically appear inside of her womb. And what is it going to mean to carry this? She has no idea how Joseph's going to respond. She doesn't know what her father's going to say. She knows there will be condemnation like that. It's a foregone conclusion. But I think that's really she's saying, yes, I will carry whatever this means.
00:17:28
Speaker
even on a more like ordinary mundane level, she like you can't know until you know. Right, you're discovering that. Yeah, totally, right? Where it's like every day of carrying is like revealing new sensations and questions. Is it normal? Is this it? like And then coming to settle in it. So it is this continual disruption. And then this meeting of yourself in new ways as you're like coming into mothering your your hormones, your body, you're like all of that is like, it's transforming. And so she's experiencing day by day transformation. And she's also experiencing day by day pressure from like
00:18:17
Speaker
outsiders looking in, having thoughts about what's happening inside of her. And so I think as we look at her speech, it's like, Mary's clearly accessed a centeredness with Elizabeth. Like she, she has an inner peace, knowing what she's about.
00:18:38
Speaker
I think it's so certainly interesting and and I'm going to say like there are no coincidences. The provision in Elizabeth is older. Elizabeth is is a cousin, but probably more like the age of an aunt. She's beyond childbearing years. Right. So maybe she's 55. Yes.
00:19:00
Speaker
And so, and so Mary goes to her and so she's not going to a woman who has known what it is to carry babies. Yep. yeah That's not who, she doesn't go, gosh, well, who do I know that- Who's done this? Who's done this? And actually like Gabriel's the one that says, like your your cousin Elizabeth, like almost, almost a nod to there's provision.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah, right. you're you're gonna You get to go to someone you know and you trust who is older and wiser and not your mother. And oh, by the way, has something happening in her body also that is very unexpected and miraculous. who i was thinking about I was thinking back to a conversation after I had Libby. I i was very sure I did not. There were no more babies.
00:19:59
Speaker
ah were not going to be any more babies because birthing Libby was absolutely terrifying. So dad and I had gone to, we were in Michigan, we were at John and Mary Jane Hamilton's and Mary Jane and I were walking on the beach and Mary jane ah mary Jane's daughter is, I think Jenny is probably 10 to 15 years younger than I am, probably 10 years younger than I am. Anyways, we're we're walking on the beach and Jenny has just found out that she is pregnant and and that wasn't totally something that was expected. You know, Libby's one and one and change is sleeping at Mary Jane and John's house. And we're walking and Mary Jane is is asking me, she's like, can you even imagine? And I was like,
00:20:45
Speaker
you know no you know i I know we're done, that feeling of being finished. And it was it was not long after that. you know A few months later, and and I was calling Mary Jane to tell her you know that I was pregnant with Ellie. And and I remember like the shared, there was something important for me about being able to call her.
00:21:08
Speaker
and have that conversation with her, harkening back to the walk on the beach that day and the things that we had talked about and the things that we had said. And then she and she was an important presence. like With me, Jenny was carrying her last baby. I was carrying my last baby. And Mary Jane was kind of like holding this interesting space in between her daughter and And her friend, which is, you know, I've never been like a daughter to her. I've always been like a friend and she held that. And there was this witness, this camaraderie, this knowing that felt so important in that season. For me, as as odd as it sounds, around the stigma of being 41 and pregnant when none of my friends were, and and it wasn't necessarily planned by us. Planned by God, not planned by us. Yeah. I i connect with that. like Not necessarily the stigma piece, but I do think there's just a
00:22:18
Speaker
reality to carrying a baby that like can feel isolating because you're like searching and you're wondering and you're fearful for whatever reason and the moment that it gets shared like the moment that you and specifically shared with a woman I think like whether they like Mary and Elizabeth. It's like, I don't need you to have done this before. I just need someone in it with me who believes me and who who can mirror back. I think there's a power in that.
00:23:00
Speaker
um i I'm kind of reading this week and thinking about Mary and Elizabeth's story. I was reading a devotional by Joan Chister and chittister and she talked about the uniqueness of their relationship and that Mary sought out Elizabeth like in a space where Elizabeth couldn't fix anything right like she couldn't make the men believe Mary she couldn't change the societal norms but she's still who Mary went to for like
00:23:34
Speaker
a sense of withness and togetherness. And in the in the devotional, Joan Titister refers to this UCLA study. It was a follow-up to, you know, there's popular wisdom that in moments of stress or trauma, we we invoke a sort of a fight or flight response. And all of the research that yielded that conclusion was done with men.
00:23:59
Speaker
And for this study, they did it with women instead. And they found the most common response of women in times of stress is to tend and befriend.
Women Seeking Community in Stressful Times
00:24:12
Speaker
and they come close and they they focus on stability and tending to one another and tending to the community. And so like they chaos. They bring this backbone that lets community continue flourishing, even amidst violence, harm, unrest. And that's Mary and Elizabeth to a T.
00:24:39
Speaker
Well, and and I think it's so interesting, Katie, because what what what we are discovering, continuing to discover, like, you know, in the realm of neurobiology and how how does wholeness, wellness, like, happen? um and And we know, like, the way to put it is that it's withness.
00:25:02
Speaker
It's presence. It's what happens when mirroring neurons meet one another from my brain to your brain, the physicality of attunement and co-regulation. These are the things that bring about healing. And it's so it's so interesting that that study revealed that women seem to have an innate understanding of that in a way that men do not.
00:25:29
Speaker
who I can't help but go to that in our DNA, what has been passed down to us as women, whether i ever whether you ever carry and bear a baby from your body, you came from a woman's body. You know something intrinsically of the importance of witness.
00:25:52
Speaker
yeah and I think for Mary, it's like if we if we reframe her words in the Magnificat, it's like this was not about achieving external peace. This was about being seen and witnessed and speaking to a loved one, a piece that was cut like her withness with herself, her withness with Elizabeth, her withness with God. That's what was.
00:26:24
Speaker
generating this calm and this language about this is what I'm about in the world. This is who God's showing up to be. It wasn't it wasn't these big forces of empire. She hadn't known that yet. She wasn't sure that's what God was going to do. like That's not the story here. It is both smaller and grander than that. It is It is more of a ah spiritual experience that she's knowing because of right relationship. I think woven into it is like in the in in the midst of trauma and violence and the unknown, there there is also something that I think she's borrowing from what she has heard
00:27:13
Speaker
the stories that have been passed down to her and something of what Gabriel spoke to her. So those those words, you know, where he says that, you know, the Spirit of God will come upon you ah and the shadow ah of the Almighty will be over you.
Divine Protection in Mary's Story
00:27:31
Speaker
As I looked at like that word for overshadow and and what that means, the possibilities there, one of the things that I i saw there is that it kind of refers to like this cloud, the same harkening back to the cloud that guided the um children of Israel. You know, it was like a pillar, a cloud that they followed. and And there was something protective of that and this kind of overshadowing
00:28:02
Speaker
ae I think is some protection and and so she has heard that story that's been passed down to her and I think the angel is telling her like that that will also be available for you there will be protection and I think being sent to Elizabeth you know back to my work provision there's There's something protective of what's embryonic in her um as she's meeting with Elizabeth, and I think then she declares that. like That's part of the declaration is, you know I have also known something of God's protection in the midst of humiliation or in response to, I don't know, but but I feel there are elements of that that
00:28:49
Speaker
that are at play because her situation is not, her situation doesn't change. She goes to Elizabeth and she is still very much at risk. So as she returns home, she returns home to her father, she returns home to Joseph, she turns home to see what what what will happen. Yeah, yeah.
00:29:11
Speaker
So it's a it's a provision in the now and sort of a girding up, a preparation for what what is to come. and you I know you did some deeper looking on Shalom. what What did you find, what feels important as we're talking about Shalom and what what it is, what it means? like what do you what what What do you want to share about what you discovered there?
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, I feel home is always there are books and books. And every time I read those books, it's like there's no satisfying single snippet per se, like it's, it's deep, it's all encompassing, it has to do with place, it has to do with time, it has to do with relationship ultimately is like what was true in the garden, God's vision for the world. I pulled a ah quote from Lisa Sharon Harper's book, The Very Good Gospel. um And i I think this starts to get there. And I think this maybe starts to get to what was happening for Mary when she was sitting with Elizabeth.
00:30:30
Speaker
Lisa Sharon Harper writes, evidence of the presence of God's kingdom is thick. Wherever and whenever people stand on the promise of God that there is more to this world, more to life than what we see. There's more than getting over, getting by, or getting mine. There is a vision where there is protection and where love is binding every relationship together.
00:30:55
Speaker
And there is a promise that as long as we follow God's way, there will be life, healing, and love. That's kind of the idea of God with us now, right? Like it's not all right. That book is beautiful. I highly recommend what that.
00:31:16
Speaker
every level of relationship in the world. She looks at Shalom with yourself, Shalom across gender, Shalom across nations, Shalom across races. It's really, really good. But like that's that's one of her concluding thoughts in the final chapter of how do we lean in now in everyday ways to what right relationship looks like?
00:31:42
Speaker
in in my own life I've come to believe or come to know is a better way to put it. I have come to know that that For me, Shalom has unfolded as as their as there the space in me has grown for all of my own stories to belong. um the The stories of of my own of my own life before before I ever met and married dad, the stories that are part of our marriage, the stories that are part of you know the five of you that are here, the stories that are part of the five miscarriages that I had, that's been my work.
00:32:20
Speaker
and and continues to be my work for there to be this sense of shalom in me that all the stories can belong. They can all be here. They don't they don't have to have a linear through line that makes sense. It's not that they're all okay because there are there are stories of tragedy and of loss and of betrayal and places where I've known a lot of powerlessness.
00:32:46
Speaker
And those stories, they can they can be, and it can be well because of how I have come to know the presence of God in those places. Not in some, I know it up here in my head, but like I have experienced the presence of God in the stories that I didn't think it was possible for him to also be there.
00:33:09
Speaker
um And I know for me, and I and i i think this is some of of what we see with Mary and Elizabeth, and and maybe the outgrowth of this, is that like i my capacity to to bring and be a presence of Shalom and peace has grown as as my discomfort with stories that I didn't know how to let them belong has diminished, right? So even around around your brother being gay and the work for me, like that that was such a difficult story to find peace in our community.
Accepting Difficult Stories
00:33:51
Speaker
And like, what would that mean? And there was so much unrest in me.
00:33:55
Speaker
that you know Stephen feels like such a gift because because that reality for him caused me to do my own peacemaking work. with Where does that story intersect with me? Where is God with me in the midst of that? And so I'm not i'm not just an LGBTQ ally.
00:34:20
Speaker
Right. i and And I wouldn't even, i I am, but that's not how I put myself out there in the world. I i am the mother of a child. Like I know this story in my body. I carry it and I am at peace. And so um that that has just, there's a generosity that I can have. It's Mary's journey. It's yeah saying in your body,
00:34:50
Speaker
let it be. yes And it's bearing life and extending peace because you've come to know a new truth in your body. Right. that It's like a, it's a consent to carry that. And I think that was, that's even part of it. Like am I at war with this story? And am I at war with the fact that God has allowed something? It's like, is he actually asking me to carry? I don't have to.
00:35:20
Speaker
I can choose not to, not to carry the story in my body. It will require othering. There will be loss and there will be division. And there will be things that for me feel incompatible with the gospel. But I do have a choice. How will I carry? That to me rings true of what we see with Mary. That brings a home to the Magnifica.
00:35:46
Speaker
that no longer sounds quite so absurd. Like we said at the beginning where we're like, what? And like, these words aren't true, right? Like injustice still reigns. Like what's happening for Mary doesn't magically get better. But when you reframe it like that, when it's like, this is about
00:36:07
Speaker
consenting and letting so the stories come to rest inside of my body. And it's about the fact that from there, I can bring life into the world and I can share peace that is not dictated by external forces. It's not ideological. right It's not Instagram posts. It's something I live calmly and daily because I've known it to be true, because I've wrestled with the stories and wrestled with God and come to be at home in myself. And I think we all like we all have that invitation right now. What begs to me is the question like, where where are you at war?
00:36:52
Speaker
What are the stories that you are at war with? is it Is it a cancer diagnosis or the dementia of a loved one? Is it the betrayal from a spouse? Is it the child making choices that are breaking your heart? Is it is it the undocumented neighbor that you have that needs your help. it like what Where where is it is it that Trump will be in the White House? Is that what you're at war with? but like Is it the loss for Kamala and what that means that a woman of color was not honored in our country in the way you were hoping? like What is it? What are the stories that you are at war with?
00:37:38
Speaker
and and And is there an invitation? Is there is there the possibility of carrying, of offering your ascent and consent to wonder and and ponder and welcome that that God wants to be with you instead of you being at war? Yeah, that's good. That's that's where we sit this week. I don't think we need to go anywhere else. I think i Mary's invitation.
00:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is too. And let's not miss, like it's the invitation of a 16 year old girl. And so I think that's the other thing I'm going to say is like, you know, who are the young voices? Who are the young voices speaking raw unsanitized truth?
00:38:30
Speaker
That feels foolish. That feels foolish and too big, too much, and they don't really know. And they actually, they actually are speaking something profound that needs to be listened to. I love that. Good to sit in. Good to sit in. Good to be with you. Thanks for all your work, all your research and everything on this. You too. It was good. Looking forward to next week. Me too.
00:38:59
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