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

Today’s episode explores sexuality and spirituality as God-ordained realities. Ruth is joined by Rev. Dr. David Hughes and producer Colleen Powell, to discuss church and cultural distortions—repression, purity culture, objectification, and abuse—while affirming sexuality as a “very good” gift meant for joy, love, and generativity, including for singles and those not sexually active. In conversation the three share formative experiences as they relate to sexuality, observations on ministry power dynamics; purity culture’s impact, and more.

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:

A Church Called Tov, by Scot McKnight

Know My Name, by Chanel Miller

Hear Me Quickly, Lord by Ted Loder

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Led by the Spirit 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

Ruth welcomes Tiffany Childress Price and her husband, Bobby Price, into a conversation focusing on their experiences with neurodivergence as a physiological reality and place of encounter with God. Tiffany explains neurodivergence and “twice exceptional” (2E) brain differences in her sons, describing asynchronous development and the advocacy burden when children are misunderstood, labeled, excluded, or shamed in school. Bobby shares receiving an autism spectrum diagnosis in his 50s after his sons’ evaluations, naming lifelong masking, the grief of not feeling included, and the relief of language that affirms God’s inclusion. Together they reflect on rejecting moralized views of brain difference, practicing curiosity, radical acceptance, deep Sabbath rest, and recognizing gifts such as sensitivity, discernment, and compassion.

On Substack this week, Tiffany shares the different ways their family practices Sabbath as a place of radical and life-saving rest.

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:

Maus 1: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman

A Liturgy for All Bodies, by Kimmothy Cole

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Led By the Spirit 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 TC Alum Jake Partridge for a conversation on mental health. Jake shares his story of three major depressive episodes and ongoing anxiety, describing depression as prolonged, reality-coloring despair, isolation, languishing, and a loud inner critic, and anxiety as obsessive, control-seeking mental overdrive. Together they discuss biopsychosocial-spiritual integration, the role of medication in “raising a baseline,” and the influence of transitions and attachment insecurity on faith. Jake describes learning to “rest the mind,” make peace with God’s love, and meet Emmanuel in weakness, offering encouragement to seek help at the pace of grace and cultivate compassionate, appropriately bounded community.

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:

Invitation to a Journey by Robert Mulholland

“How Shall I Pray” (poem by Ted Loeder)

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Chasing Butterflies 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 we have a special episode with two people very close to the hearts of our Transforming Community. In our first conversation Ruth welcomes TC alum Christine Boye in a conversation that was recorded in January of 2025 about illness and mortality as part of the experience of being human. Christine was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer in June 2019, discovered she was pregnant the same week, and learned in September 2022 that the cancer returned and spread to her liver, bones, and lung; she continued to navigate stage four cancer for over two years while parenting three daughters and serving part-time at church. Christine shares about her journey with cancer, and the humbling loss of control as her body weakens. Ruth and Christine discuss agency in medical decisions, meaningful ways others can accompany her, and the grace to live present while facing the future. Sadly, Christine passed away four weeks after this interview was recorded.

The second half of the episode includes a conversation with Christine’s husband, Paul, where he and Ruth reflect on re-listening to the original conversation with Christine, now 15 months later, honoring her desire for deeper conversations beyond medical details. Paul shares the pain of wishing for more time, unresolved questions about agency and choices at the end of life, and the trauma and mystery of Christine’s rapid decline after coming home from the hospital expecting continued treatment. They discuss mortality, disappointment, and what it’s like to sit with God in quiet, experiencing both God’s silence and presence through settling, memories, and guidance for decisions Christine couldn’t help plan.

These conversations are tender, honest and incredibly vulnerable about facing our own mortality and the mortality of those we love.

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:

Being Mortal, Atul Gawanda

All the Honey, Rosemary Trommer (the specific poem was  For When People Ask)

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Led By the Spirit 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

Ruth welcomes Rev. Dr. Prince Rivers to discuss becoming human with God in our bodies through the complicated embodied realities of race and ethnicity in the United States. They reflect on current events in May 2026, including a Supreme Court ruling challenging Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, racial profiling, and immigration fears, and Prince describes the heightened anxiety, hesitation, and economic insecurity he sees in his congregation. As a parent, pastor, and leader, he shares concerns for his children, the strain of counseling laid-off workers, and the impact of shrinking educational resources for Black and brown students. They emphasize the need for deep listening, empathy, and reimagined formation—including justice—grounded in scripture, lament, and hope, and Prince speaks to the whole church about solidarity, resisting colorblindness, and honoring the incarnation.

Over on Substack Prince shares the practices that have helped him to stay faithful in hope and keep him working in this area of being human in the midst of pain.

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:

Won’t You Celebrate With Me (Poem by Lucille Clifton)

Music:

Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist Tender Moment 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