Rediscovering God Beyond Rules and Practices - Reverend Roslyn Nichols
Growing up in South Memphis, Reverend Roslyn Nichols was shaped by ideas of justice, her family, and the strong women who raised her. Our conversation covers the limitations of a black and white theological understanding, the ambiguities of scripture, and the role of justice in a Christian context. We also emphasize the importance of allowing yourself permission to let your relationship with God evolve and fall apart, and finding a safe space to ask questions without judgment.
As we wrap up this insightful episode, we reflect on the complexities of faith and how our relationship with God is not about practices and rules, but rather a relationship that goes through highs and lows. Engage in the conversation around faith and join us in unlearning religion for a life of freedom, as the incredible Reverend Roslyn Nichols guides us through her unique experiences and invaluable insights.
Hello everybody and welcome once again to the Unlearn podcast. I am your host, ruth Abigail Smith, and you have entered into our series, unlearning Religion, which is where I get a chance to talk to different people from different backgrounds to different experiences, about their journey in their religious context, and it has been an incredible series so far, and if you haven't gotten a chance to listen to some of them, please go back and do that. And for those of you who might be just tuning into the Unlearn podcast, we are all about gaining helping people gain the courage to change their minds so that they can live a life of freedom, and so today y'all are really, really excited about this guest. We have actually been talking maybe for the last hour, so I have known her for a few years in one context and have learned so much already about her in this hour that we've spent just chatting about life, and so I want to introduce you all to Reverend Roslyn Nichols. Welcome to the podcast, reverend Roslyn. I'm very glad to be here with you. I've been excited for the last hour, and I really have been, so I'm just going to share a few things that I know about her, and then I'm going to let her share some things with you about her. I know Reverend Ros because we are members of an organization called Micah Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope, and she is the current president of that organization, and so I am very, very honored to serve under her in her leadership. She is also a pastor of Freedom Chapel and she has been doing that for how long? How long have you been a pastor?
Speaker 2:Oh, the church was formed in 2001.
Speaker 1:So we'll be 22, 23 this year, and you've been in ministry for how long?
Speaker 2:28 years.
Speaker 1:28 years Yeah 28 years, born and raised.
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in 1996. Now I was ordained in 1995. I graduated in 1996. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Born and raised in Memphis.
Speaker 2:Born and raised in Memphis.
Speaker 1:Born and raised in Memphis, and what else would you want the people to know about you?
Speaker 2:Born and raised in South Memphis with an F, the 38106 and the 38126. Yes, yes, deeply Negro. I'm black everywhere I go. Come on in here, that's right. And what else I mean, really? I went to Booker T Washington and LeMorne and grew up at Metropolitan Baptist Church, where I learned a combination of justice and that my theology has been shaped by ideas of justice. So the work that I do with Micah is very much in alignment with my upbringing And, yeah, only child loved pets. Thought I was going to be a veterinarian. Clearly I went in a different direction. Sure, you're taking care of humans, yeah, yeah, that's good, and my pets are taking care of me There it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it, that's it, that's enough. And you've also, you've run for office. I did, I ran yeah.
Speaker 2:I ran for county commission once and city council once. I'm very grateful that I did not win either. In hindsight, people ask me all the time. I was asked just recently are you going to run again? Nope, not at all, but I don't regret it Either. Of those experiences very, it was a lot. It gives me a perspective on candidates and what it takes. So what I realized is that I can help, but I do that very strategically. So I was really excited when my friend and member, tarek, decided he would run for juvenile court judge And I said to him he knows this, so I'm not disclosing anything. It wasn't clear, but I, he asked, i asked everybody this is a Micah thing. I asked everybody on the team what was their self interest? What do you want out of this? Why are you in this? And I told him that I had been in two races where I hadn't gotten a win, so I wanted a win And then I wanted to have a place and a role in what's going on in juvenile court. It's funny because Facebook posted you know it reminds you of things that you've done And 2018 is when I posted. I said who do you need to talk to to get something done in juvenile court. And I said to him after it popped back up, i said look at this, look at how this has worked out Now I literally know someone to ask in juvenile court. So so, yeah, i did. I ran and I had a friend who said you don't ever take easy races, right, because name recognition is major in the city of Memphis And so. But I learned a lot and I I support people who run and I have a great deal of respect for those who take on that task because it is, in some ways, can be perceived as a thankless job, because you ain't gonna never make everybody happy. No, right? No, you're probably not gonna make nobody happy Right?
Speaker 1:No right.
Speaker 2:But. but it takes courage and tenacity, and when your heart is sincere, yeah, when you really. and I do think that you have to stay in it just long enough, because if you stay in too long, get corrupted.
Speaker 1:I was about to say there's a lot. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:You know when to when to go in and when to come back out.
Speaker 1:So you're, so you, you've, you have been. Your faith journey, you would say, has has been influenced by what? What would you say your faith journey has been influenced by? over the years.
Speaker 2:I think that the two, the two, well maybe three if I started naming people, but there are two people off the top of my head that that still inform my, my perspective and my theology and my Christology, all those big words And they boiled down to the two women that helped raise me and that would be my mom and my grandmother and then have other people, but my family of origin on both my mother and my father's side. But because of divorce I spent more time on my maternal side than I did with my cousins on my paternal side. But in that family of origin I learned, for instance, in Christian church, disciples of Christ, we take communion every Sunday and the, the table is the centerpiece, not the pulpit, not the preacher, but in DOC it's that table. But I know what that table is because I lived it every Sunday when I would leave church and go to my grandparents' house And at that table literally everybody I didn't grow up with with a children's table with Abigail right Where the adults sit here and the children. I didn't grow up in a family where children were seen and not heard. Wow, yeah, so you can sit at the table with the grown people and you can have your whole conversation with the grown people. Like the grown people. I like to tell this story. My cousin will appreciate this, my cousin Ken. One Sunday he did not like English peace And so, in classic fashion, the grown people said they're hungry children in, pick a place who don't have these peas. And I don't know Ken is two years younger than me, so he he might have been six sure, let's pick up the eight. And he said well, can we send them to them, because I am not going to eat them? And and nobody had a fit, they kind of did like you. They started laughing and they were like well, okay. And I have grown to understand that that was not often what happened in people's households. Yeah, right, yeah, that children were silenced, yeah, that was never the case.
Speaker 1:That that's. That is a unique because that that's not the case. Did you see a difference in how you approached your, your, your later years? because of that experience, i and I, i guess, in comparison to other people who may not have had that kind of freedom as a child growing up Yes, yes, i.
Speaker 2:I have conversations with people quite often when I tell them about my upbringing, because, particularly with African American communities, what I just described to you does not get talked about that often. Right, and it's the only way that I knew, so I didn't realize that it was an exception. I was never really told you're going to do what I tell you to do. I was, we. There was always conversation, wow, always Wow. I now respectful, but nobody said this is what respectful looks like. I just knew that I could have a conversation with anybody, with the grown people of the children, and as long as my argument was solid, as long as any of our arguments were, as long as our arguments were solid, then yeah, right. If you said something that it was stupid, sure, or it didn't make sense, so you just weren't thinking right, then you got chewed up by everybody at the table.
Speaker 1:Ain't no opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not just, but other than that. No, i can remember. And so, yes, later on I had to address questions around what that upbringing provided for me and how it was not typical for the community that I lived in. And actually I've had people say, well, you were raised like white people And I was like, no, i'm already like white people. I was already like I don't even today we'd never get. When people talk about I see on Facebook all the time when somebody says this was wrong with these children, then nobody throw no shoe at them. I'm like I don't know, i throw no shoe at me. I think I had one whooping in my whole entire life because I cut my hair off trying to be like my mother And she had a full meltdown. But when she this is another person that shaped my theology But when my mother was having a complete and utter meltdown, i mean like right, i still have flashbacks. She became a seminary conversation. But my aunt, my aunt Eleanor, her, her youngest sister, who to me is the image of grace. So I say to people my mother is the image of God for me. Well, right, that's the. I understand God. By the way, i understood my mother. Quite honestly, some people don't get that. That makes them uncomfortable. I understood grace because of my. I'm Barbara. I cut all my hair off right before first grade. My mother was melting down and I can still see my aunt Eleanor. She looked at my mother and she said Mary's just ha. And I remember thinking exactly Thank you, right, and it's mine, it's my hair. My mom has got your hair to your 18. It's my hair So. So, to answer your question, what's shaping it for? I'll give you another example. So we live in a very wonderfully open and affirming community. Now, right. I can remember elementary school, coming home, Somebody said something and I said to my grandmother that person is gay. And I was being pejorative, I was being messy, And my grandmother said well, of course they're gay, Aren't you gay? I was like no, ma'am. What is this? This is my stance. What is happening? No, I'm gay, Aren't you gay? Do you know what gay means, ma'am? And I was like, yeah, not really actually, but I know it's not a good thing And she's like it is. It means happy.
Speaker 1:Aren't you happy? Wow, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And so it's those kind of things, right? Nobody was. I grew up on a street and in a neighborhood where my grandfather, who had a third grade education, raised five children, put them all through college, including his wife to carry. His mother and sister lived next door to Dr Hooks's in-laws right So and across the street from my grandparents were Book of T and the MGs right So. I grew up with this kind of everybody lives together. We all can share. Nobody is more important than anybody else. We there were, no, we didn't have family in the traditional sense. So anybody showed up I'm gonna welcome. I had this extended family, so that is God for me. Honestly, that is my perception of what it means to live in community. I have said to folks, or I've made, i've been very comfortable with myself at this point in my life in recognizing that I understand the Bible because of my family, not the other way around, right? The church the church only reinforced what I got at home, not the other way around. And so I don't go to church to get what I need from God, because I already have that. I got that from the people that raised me and the church shaped and informed that. And when I talk to you about, about justice work, i can tell you I mean, i have some sermons Dr Loughman preached that I can recall. But what I remember more importantly, that's deeper in me, is that it felt like every Sunday might not have been, but most Sundays there was Maxine and Vaska were walking in late, but there were NAACP rallies, there were membership drives, there were we're gonna go march somewhere or protest. That was as much a part of the fabric of my upbringing, my spiritual upbringing, as anything else. Right, i had to get really very, very grown and the acceptance of myself and others was very natural. I had to get in my 20s before I started and I would say by this time I was at Mr Boulvard before I started having theology imposed in a way that I was uncomfortable with. Right, okay, i didn't have issues around sex and sexuality and all those kinds of things. I didn't have a guilt about none of that stuff was it right? I had to get that. I had to go to church to get that.
Speaker 1:So I wanna, really I wanna, hear more about that, because this whole you know I love what you said that my family and I wanna get this right.
Speaker 2:I want to make sure I have come to be very clear that my understanding of God is rooted in what I got from my family, not what I got at church, not what you got at church.
Speaker 1:So what were the things? All right. So you said you're 20s. That's when you started to see a difference.
Speaker 2:Well guilt. I didn't feel guilt about the way I walked around in the world. I mean, my parents would correct me and there were things that I did that oh, you probably shouldn't have done that, but I didn't walk around feeling burdened by you are wrong and you've made mistakes. And I never heard anything about going to hell Like go ahead?
Speaker 1:When did you? when? what was the? what was one of the most vivid memories of a church experience that you remember? something shifting.
Speaker 2:I think that I and it wasn't on me, It was observing how other people were treated. So, in those places where somebody, where a young woman, would be asked out because she was pregnant, right, and it wasn't even my story, but I realized that there, that there were places and there were levels of things that were identified as sinful. That just didn't really make sense to me And it got, and those are the things that I got in church as I got older, right, and it's probably timely because you're in college and you're moving off And so maybe people I don't I don't really have a a one moment in it, i just learned over observation and they weren't always directly related to my actions, but I gleaned from sermons and messages and communications and those kind of things that, okay, these things are wrong and you're going to go to hell And like that is So.
Speaker 1:how did you respond to that I?
Speaker 2:didn't actually. I walked around really marinating with it and trying to figure out how that coincided with what I had. Again, my default are these people that raised me Right, And how did it? how did it butt up against that and struggled with? okay, this book that we hold is supposed to be the, the, the guide for our lives, My grandfather. Again, go back to these people that raised me, my grandfather would say, and he was a deacon, he was Baptist deacon, He knocked on doors. I have people even today who walk up to me and say they came to church because of my grandfather.
Speaker 1:Right Wow.
Speaker 2:Right That kind of stuff Wow. But, and my grandfather had all kinds of Bible things. But he would say and anymore he'd say you like mystery, you like murder, you like suspense? You should read the Bible. You, you, you like mess, you like mess, you like mess. My grandfather would say when you would talk about church folks and how crazy church folks. Because church folks connect. I'm telling you. When you talk about crazy church folks and my grandfather's response was imagine what they'd be if they didn't go to church. And you'd be like, oh right, his lens was this is the best, right, this is best, this is best. So, just kind of bear, but. But when I got to seminary and we were talking about theology and Christology and all these big words, what I or or what the table of the Lord represented, i realized that I understood that intrinsically, but it was not because of what I got at church. Yeah, it was because of what I got at home. That then was supported by what I experienced at church, not the other way around. How?
Speaker 1:how, how is it?
Speaker 2:not to cut you up, but some people tell me that that that's completely wrong.
Speaker 1:That was that. This is where I'm, this is where I want to, because that that, oh good, i'm glad you said that. That's actually where I wanted to go. Why? why do you feel like, why is that hard for people to get and and and? why is it that you feel like people have said that's wrong, that's backwards? You know it should be informed the other way around.
Speaker 2:I think because we have been told that this, this book, that for me, is about people building a relationship with God, right In the thick and the thin, and the good and the bad. But there's nothing within that in in those 66 books that I have read. That does not. That says this is it and there's no questioning of it. There's no second. As the prophet Isaiah heard God say come, let us reason together. Yeah, let us wrestle this out, right, and so that's it to me, like I'm in a relationship with God. Yeah, and the Bible helps me understand that. But the Bible is not simply a list of dos and don'ts. It really is about how you wrestle with what does this mean? to say I follow God, i believe in God, i trust God. What does that look like? And the gift to me that I found embodied in my family and in the human beings that raised me is that I get a chance to wrestle with that. That has evolved in that My 20s were like, well, how do I? and I began working at Mississippi Boulevard in my mid 20s as an office manager. So I was up and close in the inner workings of of church life And I I at that time was wrestling with that. If this is supposed to be the only way I can do this, if this is about black and white, right or wrong, this is NS out, then I'm really this ain't working, this ain't making sense to me. The gift that I got at that same time was I would go on Wednesday nights before I started working. I would go on Wednesday nights with my aunt Dolores to Bible study Wednesday night service at Mississippi Boulevard And we would go to a Bible study led by the late Reverend Melvin Earl Cross. And what I loved about and remind me, i'll tell you about Sunday school when I was a child, but what I loved about Melvin was that you would come in the Bible study and he didn't have any. You got to remember this and you got to do this. It was like what do you think about this? That was, oh, that was nourishment. So you could say, well, i don't really like this, i don't even think I agree with this. I don't care if this says, i don't care if it's printed in this book and it says God said. I don't really think I agree. There was room for discussion.
Speaker 1:It was room for discussion And rejection And rejection. So I was. I was having a one of my pocket. one of my guests has been my brother.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And we we just had a. It was one of the most fun conversations we've had And we in it we were reminiscing. We went to school at Christian school in Texas. We went K through 12. And one of the things that he was reflecting on was how much people would say in school and in, in, in, in that environment, you know you have to like we were memorizing full chapters of you know scripture and second grade And you know biblical knowledge was a big, big thing. And so he was. He was reflecting on like I remember they would always tell us now when you get into the world it's going to be different. And you go, and they go want you to not believe this, and they go want you to not do this. And you just know, just remember, stay committed.
Speaker 2:You know that kind of thing Right.
Speaker 1:And so, and, and. There was absolutely no room for question, no room for doubt. That wasn't a part of the conversation. When he was sharing that, his um, he went to Howard University and one of his uh first classes class that he chose to take. It's around Greek mythology the um, the uh. The professor began to raise doubt about the Bible. It was the first time he'd ever encountered doubt Anybody.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, first time.
Speaker 1:And that and so to, to, to have to work through that mentally. You know, number one these people told me this was going to happen.
Speaker 2:Right, that's right, that's happening And I got, i got digging more.
Speaker 1:What do I do with that? Right And just understanding. And I would say the same for me in different ways, like when you're so ingrained in a system that is, um, and this was a system, i would say, in our school it wasn't necessarily in our house, our house, we, there was all kinds of conversation and questions and and learning and discussion And but, but in the school and in church it was, it was indoctrination.
Speaker 2:I'm going to you know indoctrination And it was like okay.
Speaker 1:Well, there is no, the questions Not available. It's not. it's not um encouraged to ask questions, to wonder, right, you just got to believe it. And but the reality is I think that line of thinking does a poor job of um preparing particularly young people to go out into a world that is all about questions and is all about wandering and and thinking and trying to discover. But when you aren't used to doing that and something is absolute, it's hard to engage in that.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then you either. And then I think the downside of that is that when you are confronted with those questions, then no longer you know whatever you've been given no longer applies. That's not a, that's not an answer, cause the Bible says so is not an answer, right. Then oftentimes people throw a baby out with bathwater, right? That's the thing that grieves me. So I had a high, my high school teacher, mr Ema Jean Bolden. I love Miss Ema Jean, but one day she taught, uh, senior English, dwoker English, and one day, out of the blue, i don't remember what we because but she said if your faith came with staying questions, you need to question your faith. Come on, she kept moving. That's good, and I'm gonna think, whoa, wow, right up in our school forever. I still remember that And I still know that is a problem. So we talked about spirit earlier. So there were places where those kind of nuggets, but they were, they were, they were rooted in a soul that was already being right, tealed in my life, right, because of my family. But yeah, and so that's me right, if you can't question it, why? I mean, what's wrong? What would happen to your God if your God came with staying some questions. First of all, if you go from Genesis to Revelation, everybody's saying what the world? Yeah, everybody, everybody, everybody. Once they figured out that there was something other than them, right, they were like I don't know if I understand this Right And if you don't allow yourself that, then how do you grow in this relationship? What relationship can you have that you don't have doubts and questions and confusion? How does a marriage last if it does not, if it can't hold on to questions, doubts and confusion? So why would you even have a God in a relationship that do that?
Speaker 1:So what are some questions that have that you have asked some of the most deepest, maybe more difficult questions that you've asked on your faith journey, Some that maybe you've you've reconciled, and some that you haven't.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I think at this stage at 59, I have made pieces, some stuff you may not reconcile, right? But um, well, I can talk very transparently even about the life of my church, right, Or even about my journey to ministry. Yeah, let's talk about that. Okay, so I've been to ministry. I always as much. We talked about me, uh, singing, and I've always been artistic and creative on that side. So when I first felt something about that became where I am today, i really struggled with it. I thought I'm just working around a bunch of preachers, there's no way God has called me. And my dear friend, um Reverend Dr Kozette Rogers-Gaird was who I called and I said I think God is calling, but I'm sure that cannot be the case. And she said so you're saying that God is wrong? And I was like, wait, it's not at all. I don't think you can say that like that, can you? But what I realized, to your point of making peace with something, is that what I heard around me in the world where people were being called a preach Yeah, i'm being called a preach, or I'm being called a pastor, i'm being called these things My calling was not that at all. My calling was just about surrendering. I just knew that I don't have, i have no clue where this is going, but I can no longer not yield to it Right. And up until that point I had tried all kinds of other places and they things, they were like dead ends. So I did. I wanted to go into theater, i wanted to be, i told I tell you about, i want to be Beyonce before she was born And I had close encounters. I had moments where you would think that it could have turned into that. I sang at the Boulevard one Sunday happened to be the same Sunday that Bono and you two in the audience and they came looking for me. They couldn't find me.
Speaker 1:Wow Right, nobody knows that Right.
Speaker 2:Or I did a performance somewhere and a young woman was wanting to do some more and then it would fizzle Right. It would look like it was going to turn into something fizzle And I remember grieving like what is happening? Something very simple Everybody that I knew they graduated with me. Fedex was new at the time and everybody got jobs at FedEx And I was like, okay, i got to get a job. I'm an adult, let me go get a job. I'm probably the only person to get hired in the field, in the hub. I'm like everybody got hired in the hub. How do you get a rejection letter from the hub? It's just moving boxes. And so at the time that I acknowledged my call, i was banging my head up against the wall, wondering what is God doing Right? And having to just yield. So now I can look back at these years of that journey and realize that that really was. That is what has shaped and informed everything else for me personally Is that idea that you don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to have it, but what you do have to do in this relationship and you help me if I'm not answering- your question but what a part of being in a relationship with that which is greater than yourself is the willingness to just let go and not have to control everything, and that is not always easy because you want the security of it. But that is one major piece of this journey, of my own faith journey, is trusting that, even when it doesn't make sense, that it's probably going to make sense. Fast forward to my church. My church building is in disrepair, right, my community has been impacted by a number of things And writing and coming into the pandemic you know it's like. So the things that we've experienced in the pandemic are not new things, they just have been magnified. Right. Didn't create. I heard a guy say COVID didn't create anything, it just accelerated stuff or reveal stuff. And so the things that are happening in the life of Freedom's Chapel are not things that just somehow happened, and there are many ways that I could respond to it, but right now it's just I have a greater piece post pandemic about what the outcome of the church is going to be, because the church is not mine, it's God's. I didn't decide to plan a church because I just wanted to. I resisted, trust me, and there are times when I still say I don't know. But as I've gone on this faith journey, i think some of the things that I've wrestled with have been around issues of control and expectations, and this should follow this path. And faith is not linear, right, it can go circles, it can go backwards, it can go forwards. So some of the hardest things that I've done over all of this has been just always going back to the surrender of yielding to a trust in what you don't see right, and even as I'm saying that to you, it is a daily rededication to that Cause. My humanity wants to have stuff figured out and in control. And then the pressure of the world. The things should look a certain way. I'll tell you nothing. So what does it look like to be blessed? What does a blessed life look like, right? And in the world we live in, it looks like stuff, right, it looks like this, it looks like that car, that neighborhood, that this, your church, looks like this or that, right, we have all of these things that look like blessings. And in the absence of those things, then what does blessing look like Right? I had to ask a member one time. with that building and this repair and all this, i said, do you think God is taking God's hand off of us?
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 2:Right, and the response was because that person views what it looks like to be blessed. Based off of that, the evidence of it, like the evidence of a blessed life, should look a certain way. Well, what I have had to come to terms with is that, yeah, maybe that's not even the way you should look at what blessed looks like. Maybe being blessed should have something deeper than what is visual, right? So Michael J Fox, who has Parkinson's and may fall at any moment, it can't hardly talk, but he says optimism. Well, i got it the other day. Optimism is the. It is out of his optimism that he finds his hope. He's just determined and he will say, if I quote him correctly, it's just who he's built to be. Yeah, right, and so his life is blessed, even with Parkinson's, right, he doesn't view his life as less than. But when we live in a world and there are theologies that preach and teach and make people think I need to look certain way, right, if my life is blessed, so that's.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the things that How does one go about unlearning that, like unlearning what and what a blessed life looks like? I think that's especially. We were talking earlier about just the realities of what we see in social media and all that stuff. A lot of people talk about that, we all talk about that. We know kind of the toxicity that comes from having certain pictures in your brain the whole time And it's kind of it's controlling what it is. You think right. And so that idea of a blessed life looks like this How does one go about unlearning that And, even as a second layer to that, accepting things that other people might not call blessed, like the idea of having Parkinson's but still having hope?
Speaker 2:Right Mm-hmm Enjoy.
Speaker 1:Enjoy.
Speaker 2:Hope and joy and laugh and laughter and all that life.
Speaker 1:It's such an easy thing to talk about.
Speaker 2:It is much easier, but to actually and he will own what I watched, the thing right. Oh, i'm sorry That this is hard and that it's not easy and all of that. And yet when you look at him, he has more joy and more energy and more life than people who have all the other things. So I think some of it has okay. so I'll go back I've not thought about this with Abigail, but I'll go back to perhaps now leave out of here realizing that my pathway to ministry is my path of ministry. And I go back to at some point in time when you bang your head up against a wall. Enough. Then you have to surrender and recognize that, whatever you've done well, that ain't the answer, Right, right? So you have a choice Keep doing that, right, you be stuck on stupid, or you can let go and say I don't have any clue what this is, and I think that that's been my way of getting there. But it's been a lot of heartache and tears, right, because you do have. I was. This is I've probably said this more times today than I've said in years but yeah, i want to be Beyonce, right, i want to. I was gonna be on red carpet waving at people, hey, the Grammys, all of that. That was my life. This is not fully what I signed up for, right, but I also will tell you that what I knew going through that was that that was never gonna be enough for me, that I always needed. Now I realize now that artists today feel in the voids of their lives. In many ways. They do all kinds of wonderful things. I grew up with Diana Ross and the Springs, where people just all you saw was them in music. You didn't see all these other parts of their lives, and so I think that I always knew that I wanted something that was pulling at me, that was more than what felt superficial. But the path has not been easy right, and so at some point in time you start saying, okay, i can be swept up in the darkness of disappointment and despair, or I can try to look around and see where's the evidence of light and life, even in this stuff not working out the way I wanted it. How do I want to define what I feel when I am blessed? And some of that comes to mindfulness and things where you have to be still and quiet We're not talking about Sabbath right now But how you center yourself enough where you begin to feel your body, not just thoughts in your head. So what does it feel like for Rosalind to feel blessed? And can I cultivate that if I can connect those moments where I literally feel blessed and then say, oh, that's what that feels like And then do more of that. Do more of it So that the external stuff becomes just that If within me, i feel that I'm blessed.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? It makes sense, no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so, like right now, i can tell you, in the midst of all this and there's a lot of uncertainty, i mean, you know I've got to raise my hand, build, build, all that kind of stuff Is that I probably feel more blessed today than, oh, i haven't a long time?
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Right, And then some of it is that is good preaching stuff. You get refined, you know, you go through the fire and you come on the other side and you realize, wait, you know, I must be made out of stuff that takes fire. But I think that you, Woodrow Wilson, when you're going through hell, keep going. Yeah, You know, don't stop here, Right. Or another quote of my dear friend, Jose will say no, don't ever. Say it can't get no worse Cause. That's cause she said oh no, it can't always, it can always get worse. My favorite is it cause hell ain't got no bottom floor, So it'll flow you on. Just stay right there, Cause it can go further down. And when you come, to some places where you realize okay, okay, okay. And then you know it's that sick and tired white who wants to wake up every day, mad, you know, or hurt, crying and grieving. So I think I have been. I've gone through tests and I've had places where life just didn't make sense. Well, I'll give you another example. It's very personal. My mother smoked. It was the only vice she had. She didn't even start to choose in college And from the time I can remember myself as a child. Child like elementary school. What I wanted was for my mother to stop smoking whole life. Now I was born in 63. So there were no warnings about cigarette. My mother smoked while she was pregnant.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:She and I always knew in my spirit that that smoking was going to be her undoing, And so when my mother passed from COPD, I was really pissed with God.
Speaker 1:Oh, i was good at this. Like, this is the one thing I'm gonna ask you for.
Speaker 2:And my mother did quit smoking, but by the time she quit smoking the damage was done, right, and I love that woman When I tell you she's the image of God for me. So I ain't talked to God, like I ain't got nothing to say to you. Yeah, because the one thing I asked you for, right, and that went on for a nice little period of time, i would get up and preach and pray. I could pray, write all the answers for you And I'd be like, yeah, and I wasn't faking it. I mean, i'd be talking to God for you, right, i just ain't got no conversation for you. It's kind of like when you live in a house and the parents say, go tell your dad that it's such and such. What is that?
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:And one day I was walking my dogs And just as clear as day I heard what. Who, for me, was God Say don't ever think I don't hear you. There are things you don't understand, and that was it. I stood in the middle of my street and I bawled, and primarily because I was heard, right, and that is the relationship that I have with God now that I would not have had had I not weathered that. Wow, right, is that even when things are not making sense, even when it's not adding up, even when things are wonderful, at the end of the day, what holds me is that I know God hears me. Even if the answers that I get, or even with what looks like on the outside does not match what I want, i still know that I am heard, and being heard for me is more important than whatever the result of it. Did you hear me? Wow, right. And so to know that, for me, the one who is greater than all right, who knows all, let me say omnipotent, omnipresent, all them, omnis right. That the omni hears me and loves and cares for me And loves and cares for my mother. My mother had a life. She had to live. Yes, right, what in my life was her life And she lived it the way she wanted to live it. Who couldn't fault that? So it's those kind of tests and trials, if I'm making sense to you, that how I have over the and some of it is not so much letting go of the other expectations or the expectations that the church imposes on us, as much as it is leaning into the place where I feel God was most present in my life And that really is in that family of origin where I got the foundation of how I see God and how I am in relationship with my neighbor as myself And how I today view who Jesus is right, very much flesh, very much human and very much testing and pushing boundaries.
Speaker 1:Right, i love that.
Speaker 2:Jesus, oh, like for real, just for real right. So when people put Jesus in a box. I'd be like you can't put baby in the corner. What passage are you reading, people? Yeah, I don't know how you get to the New Testament and have a Jesus this old, holier than now. Yes, polished, I ain't got nothing Right.
Speaker 1:That's not there. I don't even know what you're reading. I don't even know. You don't even really have to have much high level of comprehension to get that. No, you don't.
Speaker 2:No, just read it And you can even actually get that in King James And who help? Oh Jesus, who get right. You can even get that in these and that house. I don't know how you read And I honestly don't know how you read the whole book. Yeah, and come to the conclusion that this is about what you do or don't do. I had a person who said to me because my grandmother was, we grew up thinking she was the patriarch. My grandfather was the grumpy old man. Yes, and my grandmother, because of who she was and how she functioned in the family, she was our go-to Right, and it wasn't until my grandfather passed that I realized the reason why my grandmother could be the person that she wasn't in our family was because she had that person who she knew, at the end of the day, was gonna have a back Right And somewhere in the journey of all of that family is who I've come to know, who God and who Jesus is. And they took text in ways that just never were about. It has to be this or that. So this is where I was going with that. So my grandma signed all the checks that we needed money. You know, we went to mama. We also went to everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Everybody used her credit. I remember going by and closed with my grandma's credit card And I said that too in a gathering of people. We were talking about families and relationships And this person, very well educated, also very similarly trained, said to me well, roz, that's not right, man is the head of the household And that's you know. And I was like, well, i don't really know what you're talking about, and so your grandfather should have made those decisions. That was in his purview. And I said, well, that's me, this is me. I said, well, i think it was me. If it's somebody, it seemed to be working for him. And that person's response for me was, well, just because they did it didn't make it right. And I was like, because that's how people I think that's how people get caught up Absolutely, and I think that's why somebody who has their own version of authority and their own understanding, and if they come off as if they know Bible better than you know, then you'll start questioning yourself And I remember thinking, well, it's a check. I mean he went to work, he just I mean it worked for them. Why is it? I had another incident, but this is where you might not want to do it. So I don't think that, i don't think that people, i think I'll unlearn That I don't have, i don't think I unlearned it, i just never really accepted it, but that I think God honors covenant. I think. First is a covenant. Yeah, right, you make a covenant with another human being, you make a covenant with God. That is what God honors. Marriage is what It's like baptism. For me, baptism is an outward expression of an inward decision. So you marry to make sure everybody else knows what you feel about the covenant, which means that you can have a covenant. In my opinion lots of people don't agree with me You can have a covenant and not have a marriage in the way we think about it Right Now. Let's be clear I don't believe in shacking because I believe in civil law. I believe there is something for the protection of that relationship, the things that you do to honor Right. But I made the mistake one time of telling a group of very grown people in a singles ministry that I didn't think they would, they weren't going to go to hell. I'm telling you It was. Yeah, it got me in some hot water, but I still stand by what I said. And the conversation went on where we got to talking about fornication, yep, yep, and my thing is out of the book of Revelation. It talked about how Babylon fornicated, played the prostitute, bartered herself away, and so for me, that is what fornication is. It's about how you barter yourself, how you use another person. So in that conversation it didn't come up. when it blew up out in my face was somebody said well, it's the holidays, this gathering was around Christmas time, thanksgiving time. And somebody said it's the holidays and I won't be by myself. And it was this person, and I mean sex is good, it's really great. And I said do you even care about this person? And the response was no, i don't really care. And I said that's fornication, because you can't treat another human being like that. They're not a tool or means to your end And that is an unlearned right, because every I will say this, not in well, my mother did believe you know you don't want to have sex because you can't wear white when you get married. I don't even like white, but this is the same woman that I grew up with the joy of sex on the bookshelves And I never got this notion that this was sinful. You're going to go to hell. But there was context and a right and I don't like to use right and wrong, but there was an appropriate place. I don't believe in shacking, because I've seen too many people standing on the edge of a family relationship when they didn't handle a business and somebody came get you refrigerated And that's right. Right Because, and I just think that's asinine. So when we got to marriage equality, it made sense to me because I don't believe in shacking, so I don't believe in it. I don't care. I don't care who you with. Right, i'm gonna need. If you're gonna hang out there long enough. I'm gonna need y'all to wrap that up Right. So, when you got to go to the hospital, you're gonna get it Right. That's it. That's an. That was a learned and unlearned right. So I didn't have that until church made so that's what I'm talking about. In my 20s, i didn't have that until church made me think, oh, this is wrong, oh, you're going to. I remember talking to another mentor about being celibate in my 20s. Oh, i'm being celibate. And my friend said to me are you celibate because God told you to be celibate or you just ain't found nobody yet? And I remember Ruth Abigail clearly thinking why ain't that the same? Right, i found somebody. What? No, i would not be celibate. I'm 59 years old, i still don't think right, i still don't find nobody. It just doesn't add up to me. Why am I going to hell for doing something all of creation does? Everything in creation is doing it. It's spraying, for God's sake, all around us. It just didn't make sense to me. And then, as I studied right, because you do have to study and I understand what fornication is And it's just not two single people having sex is really about how you are treating another human being Then I'm like y'all don't even know what y'all, i don't even know what y'all making a big issue about. And you can be very married and be doing that, not valuing another human being.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You just got a license Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But you ain't right, paul's the better married than the burned. I'm thinking, no, Paul, we don't even know that true about you. That's really that's sometimes you marry and burn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. Well, that's true, That's right. I mean, it's all in it.
Speaker 2:So that would be the pivotal right, That would be the big life lesson in the 20s.
Speaker 1:This. Let me tell you something this is giving me so much of life because there's so much, and I know we're on a schedule and we have to, but I, that whole, no, no, i could be here talking to you for hours, no, but I do think, like I love that example, because I do think that example I don't know what is very much a put marriage, sex and marriage are put on a pedestal in the church. And so you know, throughout this entire conversation you have made a very clear distinction between what you received at home and what you received in the church. And even in that example, there are so many people who receive that from the church before they receive, or if they receive it at home at all. How would you, how would you, as a pastor, help people to unravel that and unlearn that for themselves, whose primary teacher has been an institution that has really narrowed a lot of things and not left room for a deeper understanding, right, more of a, like you said, black and white, right and wrong kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Some of it at this stage is so. You know the story of the Ethiopian Union and the. Bible. That encounter is what evangelism looks like to me. So I'm not going out to try to find somebody to try to tell you this if you ain't ready to receive it. But if I walk up on you and you get the book and you say how I'm supposed to learn, if somebody don't teach me, then we can have a conversation. Right, i look for those moments where I can have that conversation, because everybody's not ready to hear that. And if you're not prepared to hear that, then you will abuse the freedom that you have in God, right, you will really take advantage of that And then you'll just go spiraling out in the lulu and la-la-land. But? and so when I had that conversation with that group, there were those who left that group, despite the explosion that happened after the word got back to, the preacher told me I'm going to go to hell with the heads. And somebody asked me do you fundamentally believe in marriage? I'm like, yes, i literally believe in marriage. But I don't believe. It's just about the superficial stuff about who you are having sex with, right, i also understand that scripturally, the people were trying to hold on to land, and land had to do with who the son was and how you're going to keep the land. It had nothing to do with the stuff that we've made it out to. It literally was negotiating. And so I have those conversations with folks who are ready to have those conversations. I realize that if you're not ready to have a conversation, that I can possibly do more hard than good. I can give people permission outside of where I'm trying to get you to go, which is where I and the same has to do with LGBTQ and how I've come to understand no, we're not sending nobody to hell. First of all, you ain't got no key. You're not the manager. They haven't hired you to manage hell. So I but I can very solidly, i tell people I stand on the word of God, i'm not making this stuff up And I've done the work. I do say don't come for me unless I send for you And don't bring your Sunday school theology to me. And we can also conclude that there are some ambiguities within our sacred text that are just not that black and white. How are you going to celebrate a king, as in David, who raped another woman, snatched and killed her husband And then you build a whole whole thing off of his leadership because oppressed people that I'm off subject, but oppressed people value somebody who could fight Right.
Speaker 1:And that's who David was. He was a warrior.
Speaker 2:Right. But then you get to Jesus who is saying how about we just stop fighting? Maybe we can turn out the cheek? I ain't turning out the cheek. I don't feel that. So I think that I love to have the conversations with people. as I've gotten older and more seasoned in ministry with Abigail, I don't feel I'm not fighting them. fights with folks who need black and white because there are probably a season in your life where you need it to be A or B because too much will overwhelm you. There's reason why you learn ABC's in first grade, because you're going to be a sentences later. But if you're not ready for that, then there's no need of me trying to have that conversation. But when I run into folks who are willing, then it's the most thrilling part. When I catch folks who are really very curious in a very hopeful way. What deeply troubles me the most in the world today is the notion And let me say this My church upbringing was blessed Absolutely. I don't have no regrets, I ain't been, but I've been in three churches my entire life The church of my baptism, that's Metropolitan, Very solid foundation Rooted in justice, work and faith. You cannot I don't know how people do Jesus and don't do justice. It makes sense to me. And then Mississippi Boulevard, which just kind of gave me a whole larger view of the vision of church. I remember Pastor Jackson walking down the hallway one day on Reigns Road and saying I see a fleet of offices. Now there was no fleet of offices. Here's how I say a fleet of offices And we turned around And next thing we knew there were offices and there were people. And so the vision of this thing called church being more and greater and larger, and that you can dream big dreams all of that that's very important shaped and defined me. But at the same time, at this place in ministry I'm not trying to convince nobody, right? I don't. Yeah, i'm not. I long for folks who don't want to throw baby out with bath water. It deeply troubles me when people I don't know how the only way you knew God was to go into a building. I have nothing, That's not any.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:But I do understand that there are people for whom that was what they were really raised on that, in order for me to find God, i've got to go to this place, and I think that is such a disservice to what Jesus built, because it was not a building. It was all relationships And I think in 2023, what our community is lacking is the recognition of the community and not the place, right, when I think of what the church has been able to do, when it views itself as a community. We're coming up on Pentecost, right, and it was about people coming together for a common goal and a common place and a common community. Black Church in America is foundational for all of the wonderful things that we've built up. It's problematic, right, but you get businesses, you get, you know banks schools, you name it. That was because of community, and I said to someone recently we have fundamentally lost that And because that we're like sheep, scattered with, nobody convenes together And so we have all of these things that we're struggling with that. If we could at least be together on one accord about that And that's what I grew up with. I literally grew up. If someone stood up and said we're gonna go march down here, then the people are like where Yep, right, and you're gonna go. We've lost that kind of communal like-mindedness And it has been to our detriment, and that, to me, is what the body of Christ really offers, or a group of people who are moving out of a faith expression can do together. And you see that all around. You see that all around.
Speaker 1:I love hearing you talk about. I was just reminded this past weekend from a sermon that my father he preached, and one of the tenets of it was just talking about how destructive discouragement can be And how it just talk about the helmet of salvation and how the helmet is. It is a protector of your mind And afterwards I personally lately have been going through some difficult things. It just mentally and just kind of discouraged in some ways. And I went back to the office and I had a moment with my parents that I'd never had. I mean, i ended up crying, which they don't see me do ever, but I just needed to release that. But one of the things I thanked them for was I am so grateful for the foundation you all laid at the house, because if I didn't have that I wouldn't be able to have that, because these sermons they're good but they can't get you what you need alone, right. And I do feel, for people who don't have that experience, that they had a family that was rooted enough in faith, deep enough, to give it to, and not just in word, but indeed. How do you live, how do you function? My siblings and I reminisce all the time like people ask us PK's y'all problems. We are to some degree, but in our own ways. But we had, we recognize we had a different experience than a lot of pastors' children.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, okay, you really did. I can honestly say You weren't expected to be perfect?
Speaker 1:No, and I can honestly say one of the starkest things is my parents lived what they preached. And it was not a double life.
Speaker 2:Right, i hear a lot of that from you. You hear a lot of that.
Speaker 1:And so I was able to thank them for because it has impacted me so much to the point where the most difficult seasons of my life.
Speaker 2:I lean on that, not on the sermons that I listen to every once in a while.
Speaker 1:So in that, i think the experiences that you described that I know I've had are fairly unique. You know If, from what I've hear from people as we close out our conversation, i'd love for you to share to those like how would you encourage people who are like I need to unlearn some things. In my faith journey, in my religious journey, i need to unlearn some things I've learned about religion, but I don't know how to do that because I don't feel like I have the depth, the foundation, the background that it takes to really go through that. I'm a little afraid This is all I've ever known And now I'm seeing these things that may be not be adding up. So how would you encourage somebody to even start that process?
Speaker 2:Well, the first is to give yourself permission. I mean, it sounds simplistic, but to give yourself permission to be all right, that what you have had will need to fall apart, all right, it needs to, just kind of, you need to be willing to, and then you may take it apart brick by brick, by brick. But well, i'll go back to say this has to be the person for whom they realize that what they have is not serving them. And you say that to the wrong folks and it sounds like well, your religion is not supposed to serve you, you're supposed to serve your religion. But your relationship. See, this is not about a practice of a thing, it's about a relationship. If you don't fund a and I don't know of a relationship that does not go through some seasons of highs and lows, and so if this place in your faith journey and in your relationship with God is problematic, then you've got to give yourself permission to allow whatever that is. Keep stop trying to make that be that thing and just let that fall apart. Right, vivica Fox in Kingdom Come it's the movie I love. And LL Cool J she's busy being. She's that wound up tight person. Right, gotta make everything right. Everything's got fit And he looks at her and he says a line. I say it oftentimes in these moments like this conversation. He said let it just be wrong for a while. How about we just let it be wrong for a while? right, if God is who you understand God to be, or who God should be, strong, your understanding of God should be broad and wide enough for you to be able to say I'm done with you and it's still be all right, that's right. Well, right, that's right. I mean, if we believe the creator, right, who is omnipotent, all of them, omnies, all of them that you should be all right, and if your fear is that you gonna go to hell or it's all gonna fall apart, then what foundation have you laid for your faith? Because I just I don't see in the book that we hold, i don't see that, and I don't know how you live that faith. So part of it is giving yourself permission that it can fall apart and it can be rebuilt, right? That's the potter wants to put you back together again. This is the last part. It's all right, and the second end is that you need to also, you've got to find some path that allows you to ask the questions and not feel bad about asking all the questions. I don't know where that is for everybody. Some people find that they, just they completely abandon whatever there was in their upbringing and they find a whole other path, and for me that's wonderful. I have a friend who has left the United States and is living her whole best life somewhere else and has fundamentally rejected all of what she had. But when I look at her, she is living a whole full life. Because I just don't. I don't think that the God that I serve is bound up in 66 books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, i just don't think that God ends at revelation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Right. I just think we got enough to work with. Yeah Right, just work with this. That you can, yes, people should give yourself permission to let it go. And yet I still go back to get to what is at the essence of it. And you do need community, yeah, and you do need to find a safe place where you can ask all of the questions and still stay in community. If you could do it just with God alone, that would be fine, but you really can't. You really need some other people. That's right That will allow you to have your doubts and your fears and not condemn you in any of those things, and yet not let you slide all the way down the rabbit hole where you can't get back out again. Right, you need some people who know how to say hello down there, okay, it's time to come back, that's fine, right? My mother said to me once in a season in my life where I was just really really, really struggling, right, and I just wanted a quick answer and resolve it quickly. And I was telling my best friend on the way over here And she said I just want to fix it. And my mother looked at me and she said I know you And I know when you get ready, you'll work this out. And she went back looking at the television And I stood there with Abigail with big crocodile tears, because that was the I had. Every everything that made sense to me was collapsing, right, and it was like but what I held on to was that one. I knew my mama loved me, yeah, and I knew she knew me, and so what sustained me was that she knew that I had the capacity. So I didn't have, i didn't figure it out in that moment, but one day after the next, i rebuilt my life based off of she know me And she what she sees in me. I just need to figure out how to see it myself. So, when you allow your life to completely fall apart, and sometimes that's really right Spiritually, i'm not saying you won't pay your bills, right. Right, but it's okay for to. I mean, is that not? we're coming up on Pentecost, is that not crucifixion? Right That everything?
Speaker 1:that you then people didn't.
Speaker 2:They didn't expect no Jesus. They were looking for David. They kept working. Can you beat up the empire? Can you tear everything down? And he was like, yeah, now we're going to do nothing. I don't even have a place to lay my head tonight. I don't know how it's going to work out, but we're going to make this work out. But you get all the way to what looks like complete disaster. Yeah Right, and that is when new life showed back up. And so, if we give ourselves permission to realize that at the end I've said this to my folks at church at the everything leads back to life. Yeah, Scientifically life is not, you know, our energies neither created nor destroyed, just changed forms. That's it, yeah, so if you just kind of function through life and you don't have to divorce yourself. somebody said this to me in the last year. you don't have to divorce yourself from your science. My undergraduate is biology, yeah Right, so you don't have to divorce yourself from what, what is factual and scientific work, just to have your faith. But it's okay if you, if life. my last comment with every moment now. I planted these roses in the pandemic. I had to dig them up to fill in my pool. When you dug them up, me and the guy both said you're probably going to lose these roses, and these roses have a whole testimony. That's not a story. but he stuck them back in the ground. I looked at him. I thought man, my roses is going to be dead And I just let him go. I came out there and there we go. The guy came by to do some yard work And I said I think I'm going to replace his roses And he said well, no, this is right, he just needed to cut. he said to me. he said you just need to cut them all the way back.
Speaker 1:He said I think it's something right.
Speaker 2:One right here, one right here, anyway. He went out there and cut them all the way down, looked like they were nothing And I got roses growing. That to me, is symbolic of a walk of faith, and so people that who need to be you know you give yourself a mission. If everything that you are thinking and believing is no longer serving you And I don't mean that in an idolatrous kind of way, but you are struggling based off of what you think you're supposed to believe, then give yourself permission to say I don't think, i believe that no more, i still do that at 59 preach. It's four Sundays in a month. I preach three. Sometimes I preach other places. They might even invite me And even now I am all right with acknowledging yeah, i don't have to think this way all the time. And if it's no longer functioning, again goes back to. My theology is rooted in a woman named Mary. But you know, my mother would say you don't hold on to stuff. You hold on to things as long as they serve you. Yeah, if they don't serve you, why do you still have stuff in my house? Sure, she would be haunting me right now. But to somebody who is saying this ain't working for me, no more. Give yourself permission to surrender into that and trust that if God is who you understand God to be, that God will catch you. May not be the way you think, may not be all wrapped up in something. You know it ain't going to be at the conference where you're going to shout and fall all out, but in a very quiet and wonderful way. Allow yourself permission to let go. And then you do have to find some community that supports you, and those people don't have to be church folks. Amen, absolutely, they don't even have to practice the same faith you practice. Yeah, i am better because of the people around me whose faith traditions are completely different from mine. Yeah, i can deal with you, know, I shouldn't say deal with. But I can be in conversation with the children of Abraham, because we all, pretty much we don't like each other. Christians, you know, we think we're in charge of everything. Sure, with the baby of the family, that attracts babies of the family, that's right, it attracts babies. They always think, they think and everybody came before you got anyway. But you know, find some other people who have different beliefs, people. somebody asked me why was I a Christian? Why was not a Yeruba priestess? You know, because our people grew up and I said to the person I said, let me tell you, fundamentally I'm spiritual. So if I've been raised by Yeruba priests, i probably be a Yeruba priest. But I was raised by some people who believe in Jesus and I ain't mad at Jesus. It's been, it's been doing. I've been all right. You know I don't sometimes like but I'm, you know, so far we have been, you know, so far we ain't broke up completely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we good Right right.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we don't talk to each other. Well, I actually talk to Jesus God, sometimes I don't talk to Me and Jesus have regular conversations, But you know, I sometimes say I don't know what you up to. And I've come to understand that God is not put off by any of my foolishness. Yeah Right, not at all, that I am created in the image and likeness of God.
Speaker 1:So God knows me right.
Speaker 2:And knows that. there she go. She'll be back, though, right, okay, i just. this is a rambling. This is not. this is a rambling. Nobody's going to listen to this.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you something That is the two people that listen to this podcast will be blessed. I, i, i listen. I appreciate that I have been. my soul has been filled with this by this conversation with every girl, my soul has been filled as well.
Speaker 2:This has just been.
Speaker 1:I just can't have expressed to you the delight I have. I'm grateful that you asked me. This is, this has just been so good And I and I think, um, i really do believe in freedom, i believe in a free life, i believe in life, i believe that we are the abundant. Life is a free life.
Speaker 2:I believe that That's right.
Speaker 1:Um, and I think you're a very, you're a beautiful picture of what freedom looks like, you know, in the abundant life, yeah.
Speaker 2:Truly. You know, some days I'm bound.
Speaker 1:I mean well, you know, that's all right.
Speaker 2:Shake off some shackles. But yes, I do believe that, otherwise what's the point?
Speaker 1:What's the point?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And that's, and that's part of why I think this conversation is so important, you know, for people to have internally, externally, because religion has bound so many people and it's just not meant to do that.
Speaker 2:That's right. Organized religion, empire religion, Constantine's religion, pick a person, right, It's just jacked up. Jacked up. What otherwise is fundamentally wonderful?
Speaker 1:Which is beautiful And, like you said, the book you know, in this case the Bible that we read, is a free book.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's free book, it's a free book And it's made up of people who are forever saying I just don't know what's happening.
Speaker 1:And I just I definitely you know I. So I am so, so, so grateful for you being on here And and and this has just been so good And I don't know I'd love to keep talking about stuff. There are some things that's like, oh we, we could have spent another hour on that. I love it. So thank you for being here, thank you Truly. I don't know how to end these. Okay, And, and, and that is a staple, And if y'all, y'all have been listening long enough to know I don't have an ending. But thank you for listening to the alert podcast And we will see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, ruth. Abigail, go in peace.
Speaker 1:Thank you once again for listening to the unlearned podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then.
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