In this episode, Ruth closes our podcast season on “becoming human,” reflecting on an incarnational spirituality that is lived in the God-ordained reality of our bodies rather than bifurcated from them. She invites listeners to notice what they now know, what questions have surfaced, and how suffering and honest inquiry shape theology and spiritual leadership, calling leaders to stay present to bodily experience in themselves and those they shepherd. Ruth closes with four practices—paying attention to the body, caring for it, praying with it, and biospiritual focusing—and concludes by once again reading Brian Wren’s “Good Is the Flesh” as an embodied blessing.

Season 29 is titled Becoming Human: With God in Our Bodies. Our goals this season are to confront the dualism between life in the body and life in the spirit, to hear stories of people who experienced their bodies as a place of encounter with God, and to explore the connection between the integration of life in our bodies and our spiritual lives with our leadership. We will be having deep, spiritual conversations with friends of the Transforming Center about their very human experiences in their bodies and how they’ve experienced God in and throughout these experiences. We will explore God in concrete bodily realities like gender, sexuality, race, ability, aging, illness, and death, to name a few.

Mentioned in the Episode:

Tarry Awhile: Wisdom from Black Spirituality for People of Faith by Dr. Selina Stone

Our Bodies Our Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor (Christian Century, Jan 27 2009)

Who Decides What My Body Means? by Brian Bantum (Christian Century, March 29, 2017)

This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley

Good is the Flesh by Brian Wren

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Innocence from Music in Solitude

Springs of Living Water from Music in Solitude

We’re on Substack! “On the Journey with the Transforming Center” is our home for “reflection, conversation, and connection with our transforming community.” It includes thoughtful reflections from Ruth Haley Barton and the Transforming Center team, as well as alumni and friends of the Transforming Center, occasional special video teachings and guided practices, and space to interact with our content and respond with how God is working in your life through the posts. This is also where you find all of our podcast patron content! There are free and paid tiers. We’d love for you to join us over on Substack.

Support the podcast! This season patrons will receive special bonus conversations with each of our guests. Become a paid member of Substack today to receive these practices and so much more!

The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders. Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!

*this post contains affiliate links

This week, Ruth is joined by retired pastor and spiritual director Bill Shereos for a conversation about aging and diminishment as God-ordained realities. Prompted by the deaths of close friends and family, Bill reflects on accepting physical limitation, resisting a cultural bias that sidelines older people, and learning dependence as a spiritual practice. They discuss transitions as “running with the baton,” the importance of grieving (especially for leaders who officiate funerals), and how accompanying parents in death awakens daily awareness of mortality and the possibility of “giving away” one’s death. Bill names a shift toward smaller spaces, simplicity, and contemplative prayer, while Ruth reframes medical care and strengthening the body as ways to glorify God.

On Substack this week, Ruth and Bill talk about ageism and ways churches and communities can begin to heal it.

Season 29 is titled Becoming Human: With God in Our Bodies. Our goals this season are to confront the dualism between life in the body and life in the spirit, to hear stories of people who experienced their bodies as a place of encounter with God, and to explore the connection between the integration of life in our bodies and our spiritual lives with our leadership. We will be having deep, spiritual conversations with friends of the Transforming Center about their very human experiences in their bodies and how they’ve experienced God in and throughout these experiences. We will explore God in concrete bodily realities like gender, sexuality, race, ability, aging, illness, and death, to name a few.

Mentioned in the Episode:

Insane for the Light, by Ron Rolheiser

Aging Faithfully: The Holy Invitation of Growing Older, by Alice Fryling

Psychology says the reason older people stop caring isn’t apathy- it’s actually the highest form of self-awareness

 A Confession and Reconciliation for Our Aging Bodies  by Reverend Leanne Clausen-Demonte

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Yesterday Today Forever from Music in Solitude

We’re on Substack! “On the Journey with the Transforming Center” is our home for “reflection, conversation, and connection with our transforming community.” It includes thoughtful reflections from Ruth Haley Barton and the Transforming Center team, as well as alumni and friends of the Transforming Center, occasional special video teachings and guided practices, and space to interact with our content and respond with how God is working in your life through the posts. This is also where you find all of our podcast patron content! There are free and paid tiers. We’d love for you to join us over on Substack.

Support the podcast! This season patrons will receive special bonus conversations with each of our guests. Become a paid member of Substack today to receive these practices and so much more!

The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders. Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!

*this post contains affiliate links

This week Ruth welcomes writer Jonathan Merritt for a conversation on the intersection of our sexuality and spirituality. Jonathan describes growing up at the center of conservative evangelical culture as a Southern Baptist leader’s son, internalizing damaging stories about homosexuality that produced shame, secrecy, and hiding. He recounts experiences of God’s presence, guidance, and “shattering” as the great iconoclast, including being publicly outed in 2012, leaving his church context, and entering a wilderness of discernment. Both Ruth and Jonathan connect on their shared experience with pastor fathers and the ways their identities did not live up to expectations. Merritt reflects on the long, costly work of reaching across a fixed chasm with his parents through private, intentional conversations, emphasizing patience, waiting, and letting God be God in others’ lives.

On Substack this week, we are sharing a very special conversation with pastor and TC alum, David Hughes, who shares his perspective as a father coming to terms with his son’s sexuality.

Season 29 is titled Becoming Human: With God in Our Bodies. Our goals this season are to confront the dualism between life in the body and life in the spirit, to hear stories of people who experienced their bodies as a place of encounter with God, and to explore the connection between the integration of life in our bodies and our spiritual lives with our leadership. We will be having deep, spiritual conversations with friends of the Transforming Center about their very human experiences in their bodies and how they’ve experienced God in and throughout these experiences. We will explore God in concrete bodily realities like gender, sexuality, race, ability, aging, illness, and death, to name a few.

Mentioned in the Episode:

Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice, by Stephanie Paulsell and Dorothy Bass

Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, by Dorothy C. Bass

The End of Sexual Identity, by Janelle Williams Paris

Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr

Conversion Therapy Dropout, by Timothy Schraeder Rodriquez

God in the Dock, by C.S. Lewis

The Place Where We Are Right by  Yehuda Amichai

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Dusk from Music in Solitude

We’re on Substack! “On the Journey with the Transforming Center” is our home for “reflection, conversation, and connection with our transforming community.” It includes thoughtful reflections from Ruth Haley Barton and the Transforming Center team, as well as alumni and friends of the Transforming Center, occasional special video teachings and guided practices, and space to interact with our content and respond with how God is working in your life through the posts. This is also where you find all of our podcast patron content! There are free and paid tiers. We’d love for you to join us over on Substack.

Support the podcast! This season patrons will receive special bonus conversations with each of our guests. Become a paid member of Substack today to receive these practices and so much more!

The Transforming Center exists to create space for God to strengthen leaders and transform communities. You are invited to join our next Transforming Community:® A Two-year Spiritual Formation Experience for Leaders. Delivered in nine quarterly retreats, this practice-based learning opportunity is grounded in the conviction that the best thing you bring to leadership is your own transforming self!

*this post contains affiliate links