We don't just have to be gathering because we we all have the same belief at the end of the day, we could actually have completely different beliefs, but we can hold that space with each other and value and honor it and ask what's next together.

And that is moving beyond just ourselves and what we want into what do we want to hold as a as a collective?

You announcer,

hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make.

We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus.

I'm your host.

Joshua Johnson, today, I sit down with author and poet Caitlin Curtis to talk about the power of story, how it forms us, shapes our communities and influences the world we're creating together.

Caitlin reminds us that stories aren't just entertainment or background noise.

They are alive, guiding the ways we understand who we are and how we belong.

In her new book, everything is a story, she invites us to see stories as both linear and cyclical, holding seasons of grief and lament but also renewal, resilience and joy.

We talk about what it means to live in liminal spaces, the gift of indigenous wisdom and how interfaith friendships and community can open us to deeper forms of belonging.

We explore how art and poetry can bring healing, how paradox invites us into a deeper way of living, and how new stories can lead us beyond fear and division toward kinship wholeness and hope.

Together, we step into the work of honoring the stories we carry and imagining the ones still waiting to be told.

So join us.

Here is my conversation with Caitlin.

Curtis, Caitlin, welcome to shifting culture.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you happy to be here.

Your new book, everything is a story talks about the importance of telling ourselves stories, good stories, stories of joy and hope and love and belonging and community and things that can actually help us connect with Mother Earth and with each other and everywhere in this world, instead of a lot of stories that we tell ourselves, of stories of pain and war and violence and genocide and the things that are happening in this world.

So I want to know, let's go back to the micro level of story.

Since we are the stories we tell, yeah, as you were growing up, what were the stories that you were telling or you were being fed and trying as you were trying to make sense of the world?

I'm excited to dive into story.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think an important frame for it is sort of the religious stories I grew up in, like I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church.

And I think that those narratives were very, very strong in me.

I think I write about this in my book native, but I remember being really little and having this moment where I was, I was looking out a window in my house, or the the trailer, I guess, where we were living, and I was thinking, I was having this dilemma, like, I know I'm really a horrible sinner, and I'm I'm A horrible human and I don't deserve any love, you know, that kind of but also, like, I'm a kid and, and I don't think I've done that many bad things, and I think that God could love me.

And I was having this dilemma because I was, you know, because I was being told, like, we're born with all of these, you know, horrible, horrible taintedness on us, and all these things that we do that are so horrible that we have to earn our love from God.

And yet, I was also like, but I'm also just a little kid who wants to know and know love and give love.

And so what have I done?

So I had to go on this journey of finding my sin, you know, like constantly trying to figure out how bad I really was, and I think that was a story that was in my personal world a lot, and stories of fear of the unknown, or fear of what's outside that bubble, and but also this curiosity of wanting to feel connected to people, so that that sort of story dilemma, and then this dilemma of, I know I'm loved, I want to be loved, but how do I earn love?

And I think that that was kind of in the background of of my life a lot.

And then the way I did find healing and sort of medicine and care is through poetry and through words since I was little.

And so the also the story that there are spaces inside of ourselves where we can find really beautiful healing and kind of hold ourselves safe in chaotic times when we're young.

And that's there too, if we can, if we can, access it.

How did you access it?

What.

What does that look like?

As you're saying, hey, there's some space in me, even though I feel like there's something different on the outside.

What did that look like?

It was retreating to my journals.

I have my I have journals from probably, I'm looking at them right now, from probably age seven or eight until now.

And some of them are really just, you know, like stream of consciousness, thoughts, many of them are prayers, and many of them are songs or poetry that I'd written and and so much of it is like, I'm trying to grasp and understand the world around me and other people's pain that they're going through.

And I'm trying to, like, alchemize that and make sense of it and write it was so much about writing to find healing somehow, and I think that's because I was longing for that.

So it was very much like close the door to my bedroom, go into this kind of safety bubble where I would listen to music, you know, my favorite CDs that I had, or the radio, or watch my favorite TV shows that were very comforting to me and write in my journals like those things gave me comfort in that sort of bubble of safety.

So art, through so much art,

art is healing, and it could really change the world and help people.

Yeah, what the world looks like.

So as you grew up and you started to reckon with other parts of yourself.

That wasn't just the religious upbringing that you had, but it was other aspects of who you are.

How did you start to make sense of the other aspects of you?

And where did you make room for a more expansive story than what you were telling yourself?

I think that really probably started in my probably like college age for me, I think that in my sort of adolescent and teen years, my safety was found in the church, in assimilating to become very much like the the social cultural norms, religious norm around me and so which became my, my my safety bubble, you know, but, but at the loss of ignoring other parts of myself or my story, like being Potawatomi and and sort of celebrating or being, being someone who loves to ask questions, like I had to do that quietly, you know, like it wasn't allowed, and so trying to hold on to those parts of myself but also Be in the roles that I had, you know, and so I think that in college, you know, I was able to go somewhere that that allowed me to expand into some questions and have space for community, where I could ask those questions safely.

And that was where I really started exploring that.

And then, you know, I had my first child at 23 and so that was still young, that was still college age, but I was like, having kids, and that forced me to ask deeper questions of my identity.

You know, how did I grow up?

And how do I want them to grow up?

What do I want them to have that I didn't have?

And so that forces you to ask some big questions about who you are.

And so allowing me to dive deeper into my own beliefs, my own spirituality and also my own identity, was really important at that time.

You're asking those at a small level, with your family, with who you are, your identity, you're asking the question of, what story am I telling, and who am I and I think we do this at a macro level too.

So we're looking at like, who are we as a community?

Who are we as right now, we're in America, so who are we as American citizens, and what kind of country do we want?

Who are there's so many questions that we're asking, right and we're telling different stories.

One of the things you do to help us, to help us navigate what kind of stories we're telling.

You talk about the shape of stories and where they come from.

Can you just lay out what did you see as the shape of stories and how they start to form in this world?

I wanted to touch on this in a few different ways in the book.

So I talk about cyclical and linear stories, which are, you know, two very different ways of understanding stories in the world.

Like cyclical storytelling, of course, is very grounded in, you know, indigenous ways of experiencing the world.

A more kind of Western approach is the linear storytelling, and we experience both in different ways.

And so it's helpful for us to be able to see that, you know, it.

We see it in literal, you know, fiction that we read.

We see characters going through these different lessons, either in a sort of a linear way or a cyclical way.

And I often am trying to help people kind of break away from some of the linear stuff to understand that as people, we need cycles.

We need seasons.

We need to be moving in that way.

And then I also categorize stories as liminal, loving and lethal.

So that's also another way that stories can take shape and how we pay attention to them, is, are we sharing stories of love?

Are we sharing stories.

Stories that are lethal, that that harm, and what stories are liminal where we're not quite sure what to make of them, or we don't know the answer yet.

You know, that's a lot of stories, as well as that gray space.

And I think it's good to honor that

since you, you write about liminality, your your subsets the liminality journal you're you're really looking at liminal spaces.

What is that for you, and why is it so this place of tension and don't know really where we are?

Why is that so important for you to navigate and help us discover?

Yeah, I think when I wrote my book native, I really wanted it to be even though it was about my story is about my journey of growing up Southern Baptist, growing up in Christianity, but also being Potawatomi and and being in America and sort of working through my own stories and identity and faith, I was hoping that that book would also be a safe place for other people who are asking similar questions of identity and spirituality and that, how are we showing up fully as we are in the world so liminality.

You know, when I stumbled across this term, it just felt like home to me, because I want to be able to explore all the parts of who I am with all of its questions and all of its concerns, and that dance between the different aspects of my life and where things don't always make sense, and I think that that is very true of us as humans like we it's okay that we ask questions of who we are.

It's okay that we don't know who we are.

Sometimes it's okay that we are confused and want to dive deeper into things to understand.

It's okay that we might change our beliefs about something.

And I I want people to feel like that's allowed.

And I think in in a lot of ways, we we act like everything is much more sort of dualistic, or cut and dry or boxed up very neatly.

A lot of things aren't, aren't as neat as we hope they are

since 2020, probably a little bit before that, it feels like, to me, like we are going through an unveiling of sorts, of seeing what's behind something, and a lot of what's behind things is we're just realizing that the stories that we've been telling ourselves are coming from places where we didn't expect that There was some a lot of harm done, or there's, you know, some lethal stories that we've inherited that we actually didn't know was there, but we were being formed by those stories.

How do we start to uncover where stories begin?

What does it look like to find the beginnings of stories to know what is actually we're being shaped by, informed by

that's a great question.

It makes me think about, like, let's just look at America from an indigenous perspective.

So for being, for me, being Potawatomi, in our language, we have this word chamokman, Kik, and that is our word for America.

So for the institution of America, not for the land itself, you know, not for our lands, but this, this institution we've inherited.

And chamokman kik is loosely translated to, like the Land of the Long butchering knives.

And so like that one word carries a story inside of it, of history that that often isn't told.

You know that, but, but to us, we're seeing like, okay, the beginning of this nation as we know it, was formed in violence and was formed in the removal and the pushing out of our people.

And that is so powerful to me that one word can speak that history, and so for us to hold on to that and understand it, that would, you know, reshape the way we view all of America's history and and who we are as a young nation, and how we're coming to know ourselves, and what healing might look like.

So that's, that's an example that comes to mind for me, as we can't ignore history, because history is stories, and it's cycles of stories that cycle in and out.

And so how can we, like, go back to something?

And in the book, I write about how stories are alive.

So what, where do we find the birth of a certain story, you know, who spoke it into being, or how did it show up in the world?

And then how do we trace the life of that story and see how powerful it can become.

One of my big things that I want to do in my life is I want to break cycles of violence in every way and actually then share new stories that we could live into a new story that breaks cycles of violence and trauma and grief and pain and loss and all of these things.

How does stories shape that?

Is it possible that these cycles of stories can actually be remade?

Can we break and get out of the cycle into something new?

Is healing possible through story?

I think.

So I think that we, like we mentioned art earlier, like the the incredible power, power of storytelling that shows up in an art like in in music, in painting and poetry, I mean in film, like the the ways that we use art to influence the world is incredible.

And in the darkest times when things feel the worst, I just am reminded of how powerful art is.

Like when when covid happened, and all of these artists and musicians were going on to Instagram and just singing from their homes, like just to remind us that we're connected, I found that to be incredibly moving.

And the morning that our current president was elected, I wrote four poems, because that was what, how I needed to alchemize what was happening was to write poetry.

You know, I think that we need to recognize the cycles that have been perpetuated, the stories that we've been telling, and then we need to be able to name those and ask, what could be next too.

You know, I mean, it's, it's one thing to kind of try to stop those cycles, but then what are we building next, and what does it look like?

And at the end of the book, The last section of the book, is about, you know, oak trees, once they're fully grown, they drop acorns again, and some of those acorns become new trees, and some of them just become compost.

And both things are needed and necessary, and so it's important for us to ask like, what stories are we going to allow to become the dirt again, to compost?

And maybe those are some of those stories of violence that we want to change, and what stories do we want to grow for future generations?

And I think sometimes we can easily name those.

I think sometimes it's harder to name those, but, but usually we're in the middle of the transformation, like we we're we're often in the middle of it, you know, so it's, it's hard to see the beginning or end when we're in that the liminality of it, and we're living through the story,

if we're living through the story, and liminality of the story that we're in, is there a way to zoom back?

So what does it look like to zoom back?

So we could see, kind of see what's going on with the story.

I think when you're in the middle of story, you could cause more harm than before if you don't actually reckon with the story that you're living.

So how do we how do we see it?

How do we know it?

This makes me think of this metaphor I often use when I'm leading retreats and stuff, and it's this, like Band Aid metaphor.

So I talk about with, for example, like Indian boarding schools.

The boarding school era is not something we often talk about in the United States.

We haven't really dealt with that reality and and so I've shared before.

You know, it's like we have this as a nation.

We have this, like, gaping wound on our arm.

And instead of like, looking at that wound and trying to figure out how it got there and what it's doing, we just put a bunch of bandages on it and hope it'll go away.

And we might mention the wound.

We might talk about it a little.

We might, you know, acknowledge that it's there, but we're going to just quick fix it and put some bandages on while we don't recognize that underneath those bandages, this wound is just festering and it's not healing, and it's getting worse and and if we were to take all the bandages off and look at this wound and name it and see, how did this get there?

What caused it to get there?

What healing needs to be done, to really take care of the wound from from the inside of what it is, and then bandage it and let it do what it needs to do.

How might that be different?

So as a nation, how can we come to terms with who we are and be honest and name that and ask what healing might look like?

That's kind of that to me.

That's that stepping back idea, and that's why I wanted to write the book.

Because stories grow from the micro to the macro.

They start small and they they become societies.

They become full cultures of people.

Is born from a story.

So, so we need to, like, give stories their their honor, because they are powerful, you know?

And so for us to step back and say, Okay, here's here's the story, I'm going to follow its life cycle and see where it takes me, even that is a really powerful exercise.

And I encourage people to do that, like pick a story and follow the life of that story and see where it takes you.

I think that's that's really important.

Do you have a poem that you can you could read for us that can actually help us dive into this topic.

Let me read this poem.

I wrote a poem about st Bridget and Jesus, and like sitting down to lunch with them.

I really love this one because it it was really meaningful for me.

And actually, I writing poetry is a very spiritual practice for me.

And I wrote this poem after returning from Northern Ireland.

Island on a trip, and it was a time for me to, you know, I'm trying to, I'm in a liminal space of asking questions about my own spirituality always, because we always are, but thinking about, you know, Celtic spirituality and Christianity, and the colonial Christianity we've inherited here in the United States, and as an indigenous woman, and how, how am I understanding who I am and the the context of who we are?

And so I was reading a lot about st Brigid, who is this very liminal person, you know, and she's so well respected.

She's a Celtic goddess and a Christian saint.

Yeah, let me.

So she literally is someone who lives in liminal space, and that's beautiful to me.

So I wrote this poem based on that.

I'd like to sit down to a long lunch with st Bridget of Ireland and Jesus of Bethlehem and have a conversation about liminality.

I'd like to know about that water to wine situation and what it means to rest, how it feels to wander hillsides tending to people's deepest needs.

I'd love to understand how to bring people together at water wells of healing when everyone says we are better apart, I hope they'd ask me how I can be quiet yet full of fire, and what it means for each of us to have lived in the time we lived in, what it means to show up liminally In a world that doubts the power of paradox.

I'd like us all to tell our favorite stories of Mother Earth and remember the cultures we come from and the ones we constantly return to, the ones that hold us even when we forget ourselves.

I'd like us to grieve the things that aren't as they should be, colonialism and genocide, oppression and hate, and right then and there, hold each other's hands and promise to never give up on the power of kinship and belonging, then I'd like us to finish our cups of coffee, brush the dust from our shoulders and vow to meet again in the other world, the Milky Way, in the highest heavens, so we can look around together at every moment when the people found each other's sacred centers and decided to get it right.

The power of paradox is something you know that you you mentioned there in your poem that we've forgotten the power of paradox.

I think in America, we've forgotten the power of a paradox.

One of the things I appreciate for some reason.

As I'm talking to people in Britain for this podcast, we talk about paradox a lot.

I mean, paradox comes up a lot.

It doesn't come up a lot when I'm talking to you Americans, and we're living in a moment right now in America where it seems like there isn't room for a both and there isn't room for paradox.

There's only room for one story on one side and one story on another side, and people can't hear each other because they don't believe the other story.

How do we reshape paradox story within culture that is so binary as it is at the moment.

This is some that's, this is the question I'm asking right now too, because it is.

It's really frightening.

I live in a community of of people who have very mixed political beliefs, you know.

So we're a purple area, you know.

And I think about this a lot in our community, like, what it means that you know that the neighbor next door has a very different political belief from you, but if you need to go to the ER, they're the person that you're gonna have to call to take you.

And I think about things like that, like, Where does our kinship override our belief systems or our value systems?

And I'm not, I'm not saying that it always does, and that's the really difficult thing.

Like, we can't ignore the systems and structures that we have put in place, or our political system and how we've created it to be this way that that we have these parties that are pitted against one another.

And I do think that we were digging deeper and deeper into this, this like unwillingness to sort of enter into any of the liminal space with one another, and I think that that causes more violence, and it it certainly causes more pain.

And so I don't know the answer, and I feel like it's one of these stories that we're we're in the middle of it, and I don't a lot of people are writing about apocalyptic times, meaning it's an unveiling.

It's an unveiling, like we're clearing the dust and seeing our nation as it is, as it's always been, like we're seeing the truth of of what we've created, and it's kind of all coming to a head now.

And that's that's a really scary thing to think about.

But then I I remember storytellers and poets and musicians who have been sort of speaking truth into those spaces for a long time, who are like seeing something that we're not always seeing, you know, who are recognizing patterns and things that we don't always recognize.

And I.

That those are the people I want to be paying attention to, because they help me see beyond the arguments.

Do you know, like we these, these things we're fighting over, are very real.

They are lethal stories.

They are it's, it's a lot of pain, and it's, it's the reality of violence, and yet, can we see beyond it or around it, or through it in any way?

Is that possible?

I think it is possible, and I think there are people who are doing that, but they're not going to be the popular ones.

Is there any indigenous wisdom or storytelling aspects that you have found that could help us see, through or around what this is I

mean, I think a lot about just what our ancestors have gone through.

I've seen a number now of indigenous people writing about like we've been through Apocalypse before, you know, like we've known, we've known times like this for our people, and we knew that things were getting worse, and we held on to our stories and who we are, and we got through it, and we, you know, we gave to future generations.

I think something that I that I hold a lot, at least for my lifetime, and I talk about this with other people, especially in retreat settings, is like, imagine this liminal space of your life, where you exist.

You have your ancestors who came before you, and you have those future generations that are going to inherit what you give them.

So our lifetime, right now, in all the ways that we interact with everyone around us, with ourselves, with Mother Earth, like we are, we're creating ripple effects that that bleed out to our ancestors who came before us and to the future generations who are coming after us.

And that's that's a teaching I constantly keep in the lens of my own heart and work and mind, because it it hold, it keeps me held like in the reality of my own life, kind of keeps me accountable in a way that I'm the work I do is for my ancestors and for future generations, and I think that wisdom could help us.

It's like coming to terms with who we are, but dreaming of who we could be and who we want, you know what we want to pass on.

So can you just contrast Indigenous storytelling to storytelling of like white European settler storytelling, like seeing a different way of story can help?

Yeah, I mean, I I'll go back to the linear encyclical, because I think this is really, this is something I I share a lot with people like, I'll talk about my my work day and my work, my work life.

You know, I'm, I'm an author and a public speaker, so I have to sort of create my own rhythm of my day and and so I have to be very conscious of working through sort of the the hustle culture and very consumerist extractive culture that is publishing and is social media.

And as creators, we're always trying to find new, clever ways to be seen.

And it's it can be really exhausting and really difficult to keep up with.

And so that's kind of the like, if you do this, right, you'll get this.

Like, if you, if you work hard enough, this is the result you'll get.

That's a very Western colonial way that we've inherited those messages.

And then I can think about, you know, what if?

What if my work life followed the seasons?

And what if, every few months I stop and I examine how my days are going, and I ask questions of who I am and how this is working.

What if every season, I reevaluate and I set different goals, and they are goals that are realistic for me, and I allow those to play out in my life, and that has helped me tremendously, and I talk about this, especially with other creatives, allowing them to be human, because we we cannot push and push and push constantly.

It's not sustainable for us, and it's not realistic, but we have inherited those stories that we we need to show how hard we're working, and we need to make that very visible, you know, and we need to ignore our bodies telling us when we need rest and we need to just work harder and push harder.

And I, I was doing that, and I got shingles a few weeks ago because my body was telling me, this is too much.

This is too much for us.

But I was like, I've got to launch this book, you know.

So I'm like, living this story right now, all over again, even though I already knew the lesson, I have had to relearn the lesson.

And that is, that's the cyclical story, like, that's the way that I'm having to return to myself over and over as someone who's been an author for decade, you know, but I'm, I'm still learning this lesson, and it's not about the linear all the time.

It's not about, you know, what we can earn and what we can get if we work hard enough, you also have to surrender.

I think that the progress of the modern machine in our modern age that we live in is that we're going to get, get more as more money, more power.

Or we're going to actually be able to live in a box where we could control our environment, we could have electricity.

And so that means work never stops, right?

You could do work at one at 1am if you're like, Okay, I need to get some more work done.

You don't even go back to the cycles of the sun and night.

And, you know, we're not even going through the day cycle anymore.

We're just in this, like, this controlled box where I could just, we don't know what's up anymore.

Yeah, so how do we ground ourselves with with the rhythms of Earth, and how can we actually tell a story that we're actually connected more with the earth than we are in this, this Western, modern world we live in.

We're not connected with earth

anymore.

Yeah, I mean, it's more there.

There are more ways to do it than we realize.

Like you can step out in the morning and and greet the sun.

And that's a really that's a really helpful thing to do for a number of reasons, for health, for mental health, for spiritual health, to start the day with gratitude and like, welcoming grandfather sun as he's rising is really special.

So just to step outside and let your body get some vitamin D is really good.

But even just like read, read books based around nature, like read nature essays, read poetry that reflects something of the earth.

If you can't go on walks in nature, if that's not available to you or possible, read and listen to to people who talk about the earth you know.

Read, read books that explore even if it's like science of the earth.

You know, watch nature documentary, because we do have to reframe our story with Mother Earth.

And I often have people do journaling practices where they write love letters to Mother Earth, because that reframes the way we think about the Earth as a commodity, and it becomes like a relationship with another person or a being.

And so if we begin to write letters to this person, well then obviously they have to be real if we're writing them notes and speaking to them.

And so how might that begin to change the way we understand even climate work, or the ways that we're interacting with the earth in each other, so it's possible.

And read indigenous people's work, listen to indigenous music.

You know, I mean, we've been grounded in the ways of the earth for a long time.

So learn about the seasons through our lens, if that's helpful.

But there is so much out there, and I'm grateful for that right now, because I think a lot of people are hungry for it.

I think so many people are hungry to live in a more cyclical, seasonal, connected way.

And so if we can even just start small, you know, we don't have to overhaul everything right away.

That's overwhelming, like, start with one book.

Start with 10 minutes a day outside, standing in the sunlight, just meditating.

See what that brings up, you know, and allow that to be a starting point.

One of the the places in your book that you you talk through is about merging stories with others.

What does the the merging of stories look like with other people, maybe interfaith stories and stories of the rest of humanity that is not just our story.

One thing that I have deeply valued from social media is some of the colleagues and friends that I've made in so many different circles, and that has been huge gift to you know, when you find someone online and you really connect with what they're saying or what they're sharing, and so you send them a message, or you send them an email, and and then it sparks this connection and friendship like that's that's such a gift that social media has and does give us.

There are beautiful people out in the world who are doing really good work, and we can find each other.

And so that has been my experience with so many different writers and other authors and and my interfaith work as well, that is something that is so beautiful that our stories don't have to be the same.

They they shouldn't have to be the same.

But when we, when we come together for the sake of listening and learning from one another and doing that as like a committed, slow work, that we're not we're not listening to each other's stories and entering into those relationships so that we can, like, fix something right away, but we're coming into it so that we can learn and have that exploration of one another's experiences that is really powerful and is a much more sustainable way to engage with one another.

And I think that that is where kinship is sort of born, and so many of my interfaith relationships.

The forward of the book was written by my friend Simran Jeet Singh, and he has been one of my closest friends in the interfaith world for a while now, and I'm so grateful for him and for him to write the forward for the book like is one of those.

Moments where he's naming our friendship and and and sort of sharing how he's grateful for my work, and now I'm so grateful for his work.

So we can merge in so many ways that are unexpected.

And I invite us to be surprised by the ways that people show up to each other, because I think that if we hold that expansive vision, we might find people in places we never thought we would.

That's a What is that?

beautiful example.

As you're looking at at your different spaces that you actually live in.

Have you seen a an example of of a community or somewhere that has been telling different stories, that they come together.

They've listened to one another, they take space to listen to one another, stories, merge those stories and start to find healing in community.

Yeah.

I mean, I've seen, I've seen this in a lot of ways.

Actually, I did some work with, yeah, I did.

I did this, and I write about in the book, I did this project with the Aspen Institute and the Baha'i of America.

And we, we, a number of us, came together and wrote a publication, sort of dreaming up the future of America as it could be.

How could it be different?

What are our dreams for it?

And of course, I wrote a poem and shared a poem in this publication, and different people wrote essays based on where they're coming from and their backgrounds.

And then we all got together in DC, I guess it's been two summers ago to celebrate this book, and it was so beautiful to be in a room with other people of all sorts of backgrounds and beliefs, and we were just like coming together to name, name things you know, to name here's where something hurts or here's where something is broken.

How can we come together and dream of a new way forward?

And that was such a gift, and I I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of it, because it's created really great friendships, and reminds me that, you know, being a writer can be very solitary work.

You know, we're we're just sitting in our space, we're writing, and we're hoping that what we're writing is going to make sense on the other side, and that, you know, that we're giving enough to the reader.

And as lonely as it is, it also, for me, is such a communal practice, because I think of the people who inform me and shape me, and those people you know have become part of my community as I write.

And so, yeah, that was a really beautiful experience.

What happens when, when we're we're we're giving stories, and our stories are either not received or we're not getting stories back.

And I think that's that happens a lot, is we feel very lonely in our story, that our story isn't heard.

What happens when stories are not actually held and heard?

I think, I think that you're right.

That does happen a lot, and it creates a lot of pain, you know, and I think that's where a lot of I think that's at the root of so much loneliness in the world.

And I think it's interesting too, because social media can be such a powerful form of storytelling, but it can also make it really hard to share our true story, you know, like we want to share a story that is easily taken in by others, easily digested, you know, and so we kind of might make it more palatable to the reader on social media or to ever scrolling by instead of sharing, kind of the nuance or the complexity or the liminality of the story, like these are the things I'm struggling with.

And does anyone seen me and that that is really hard.

And I do think that in so much of sort of the othering and rejection that's happened, I think that those people have found each other and are beginning to form their own circles within that othering.

You know, like I have friends who run, my friend Gareth Higgins, runs, you know, so many storytelling events and and he's bringing people together based around the power of story.

And many of those people are might be the people who have felt othered or have felt, you know, like they they haven't found a place for their story.

So sometimes people just need to know your story might not be palatable to certain people, but it's safe here, or it's safe in this context, and you can share it, and you don't have to be afraid.

And that's where we have built really powerful communities of people who are coming together because they didn't fit the boxes.

And that's that's such a beautiful thing, but it takes time to find each other sometimes, and that's hard.

I've seen some people like, Hey, here's a story of harm.

Me and my community, we've been harmed.

And they ended up they build a story platform of being against one thing, and they never move into a place of, how do we actually have reconciliation healing on the other.

Side and tell a better story.

What's the move to a better story?

What's the move to healing and not just staying in what we're against?

Right?

That reminds me of so many of our like Deacon, you know, Faith deconstruction, spaces that we want to deconstruct and we want to step out of the harm that, you know, the harmful institutions or communities we've been a part of.

But if we stay in that, against against against, it's really hard to ask what we're building on the other side of it.

So, and that's very true.

Like it it's it's easier to stay in that than to transition to the next phase of what are we going to build then?

And and I am, I really value people who have, you know, are moving from that space into Okay, well, then what is next and what is possible?

It's it's really important for us to be able to hold our our rage.

You know, as someone who grew up not allowed to be angry, you know, that was like a really bad, sinful emotion.

It's really empowering to be able to be angry about especially about injustice.

But we can't stay there because it'll burn us up alive, you know, because it's not sustainable.

And so the dance between having that fury and rage and then alchemizing it into something is really important.

And again, I think that's where art happens.

It's when we alchemize, you know, a team of dancers take something really horrible that's happened, and they work through it, and they alchemize some beautiful new dance routine into something that's healing for the audience.

Or someone writes a book from their trauma and pain, you know, and it's harder to do that in groups.

When you've created an organization, or you're, you know, it's like when it's when it's a bigger level, and you're very much trying to position yourself in a certain way, that can be difficult, but at some point it'll sort of break, and you have to ask yourself, what's next?

What's next?

And that's always like, what's next is, what story are we going to choose to tell on the other side of this?

Because something, something's going to have to be told there

in that position.

I think moving into a new story, one of the things that moves us from stories that are just about me and my people into stories that are about others as well.

Yeah, how do we move our focus, our gaze, from just stories about me and what I get from this world into stories for other people?

Yeah, I write about in living resistance, even about how our, you know, our routines of self care and self love aren't meant to just stay inside of us that they they should overflow somewhere.

And I think that that is, that's even a reframing of what self care is, that it's not just, you know, only for us, it is for us, but it informs how we show up in the world.

So if I'm truly taking care of myself, if I have learned to love myself, well, then I might see someone else who's struggling to love themselves well, and I might say I see something in you that you're struggling with.

I want, I want to share this with you.

I want to be on this journey with you, and it's for them, but you're using the tools that you've had for yourself in understanding that, and that's like a that's a really beautiful, connected way to show up with others.

And the hard thing is, when we don't see anything in common with someone, that there is this, well, how do I practice belonging with them when they're so different from me?

And that's even a story, I think that we have to reframe that, that we don't have to be a like to care for each other, and kinship is so much deeper than we have the same interests.

So we're kin.

You know, we belong to each other because we like the same political party or we like the same music.

How do we actually belong to one another?

Because at the end of the day, we have to see something in one another.

See and that's where we're we are lacking that like we aren't seeing the value in one another.

We're not seeing the value in certain people, but other people have earned our value, and that's a really problematic way to see see each other.

So we have to step out of ourselves and be willing to kind of enter into the stories of others.

And that's interfaith work is like that too.

We talk about like we don't just have to be gathering because we we all have the same belief at the end of the day, we could actually have completely different beliefs, but we can hold that space with each other and value and honor it and ask what's next together, and that is moving beyond just ourselves and what we want into, what do we want to hold as a as a collective?

Is there a way to do that with people that we believe are inflicting harm?

And so we like if there's room for everyone, there should be.

Room for everyone I know belonging.

And that's, I mean, that's probably one of the hardest things to do, is okay, they're inflicting harm.

How do I make room for for them?

What does it look like to show up and tell a story with them?

Is it possible?

Sometimes I'm not sure.

So maybe I'm not.

I don't know how to answer it.

I because you can, like, right away, we can think of very specific examples of, like, how would this ever work, you know, or, like, another part of my liminality is like, I, I mean, I've lived in very I've lived in communities where my beliefs have changed very much from what I grew up with, and what allowed me to change was exposure, exposure to other beliefs and peoples and cultures and values and that.

But now it's interesting coming to who I am.

Now I'm not necessarily demonizing the people who are like the people I grew up with.

Yeah, I am.

Do I agree with them?

Do I see harm?

Yes, but, but I also grew up in it.

So I I know what it was like to be in those spaces.

I know what it felt like to not want to ask questions and to not want to step over certain lines, and that it was a very fearful, scary place.

So I have this strange empathy for those bases, because I lived in them when I was young, and now I'm outside of them.

And that doesn't mean that I could enter in and just be great.

You know, I have dreams where I, like, probably a few times a year I'll have a dream where I go back to my, like, childhood church, like as I am now I show up and it's never good, you know, it's always, like, very awkward and very fee.

I feel it in my body as I'm dreaming like this is really hard, so that's probably means that's a dilemma I'm working through.

Still, it's hard.

I have a lot of respect for organizations and people who are trying to walk that line and like, bring bring different people together for conversations.

And all I can say is that stories are so powerful because they helped change us, and the exposure to different stories helps change us, like the exposure to different stories I had in college helped change me.

One of my best friends was an atheist, and so I loved her and I and I loved who she was, and I wanted to understand who she was so we were, we took care of each other because, almost because we were so different, we wanted that like that mattered, because we wanted to know and love each other well, and if there's a foundation of that at all, then we can walk through that with other people.

There often isn't that foundation.

That's the problem.

That's a story we need to tell differently.

But, but stories are powerful because they bring people together in ways you might not imagine.

What hope do you have for everything as a story?

I hope

that it gives people just the freedom to look at stories differently, like I did not want it to be a book about here's the right story and here's the wrong story and here's how we're going to fix things.

Because I don't know how we're going to fix things, necessarily, but I know that storytelling is powerful to help us fix things, and so I wanted it to be a book where we can just step back and see, okay, stories are everywhere, and they are incredibly powerful.

How do we hold space and respect them?

And like, choose to be a part of what they're telling and choose, like actively choose to tell better stories.

And I hope that something in my book, any small thing, can encourage people to do that.

Beautiful.

A couple of quick questions I have at the end for you.

One Caitlin, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Oh my gosh, that's a loaded question at the end.

Oh, my goodness.

It would just be like to to really learn to feel and understand how loved she is, that that love that she tries to give to other people is also there for her if she needs it, when she needs it, that's

Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend beautiful.

I'm reading.

Oh shoot, I always have to see the books I'm reading because I'll forget.

I'm reading care of the soul, care of the soul, by Thomas More, and I'm always reading something by John O'Donoghue.

He is.

He's an Irish storyteller and poet and writer and theologian, and he's just everything that I read from him is so full and deep and and helps me do this, the stepping back to look at things from a bigger lens, which is really important for me as a writer, to be able to have people who help me do that.

You're the second person this week that has talked about John O'Donoghue.

How can people go get everything as a story.

Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to to get that?

And then, is there anywhere you'd like to point people to you, to connect with you, and what you're doing?

Yeah, I'm bookshop.org.

Is awesome, just because it connects you to your local bookstore.

So that would be great.

And then you know the best place to connect with me, the community I love.

So much is my sub stack, the liminality journal.

I'm doing a lot of like, behind the scenes and sharing about writing the book, and we're doing a guided read along as well.

But it's just been, it's just such a great community of people who are asking really deep, beautiful questions.

So that's like, if you want to hang out with me online, that's the best place to go.

Excellent.

Well, go get everything as a story.

It's a fantastic book.

I love it.

I'm going to go back to it and read it a couple more times, and just, I want to sit with it even more than I have so far.

So it's really well worth getting.

It's also worth getting all of Caitlin's other works.

Caitlin, I'd love for you to Yeah, just close us out here with with a poem.

This is just one of those poems that's about looking for God.

At some point in our lives, we declare that we are going to find God, going to explore the world and demand an explanation for all that has gone wrong and all that we desperately hope to change along the way.

How does one find God?

Because at the end of the day, what makes one place holy and another place secular?

What makes one person saintly and another one heathen?

Perhaps, at the end of the journey, we find only mirrors, mirrors on walls, in the eyes of other humans, in the presence of every living creature in the touch of a tree's rough bark or the swell of an Ocean's wave.

Quite suddenly, we are aware of our own beloved smallness.

And quite suddenly, we realize that we were never meant to find God, whatever God is.

We were meant to acknowledge that we were always, always the mirror ourselves, hands over our hearts, looking into the sacred and understanding that the sacred is looking right back Exactly?

Where do we look?

Caitlin, thank you for this beautiful conversation, and thank you for your work and what you do and holding the liminality of life for all of us, so that we could enter into space, that we could find the sacred, we could find community and belonging and love and the stories that we Tell.

And so it was beautiful.

Thank you.

beautiful well.

Thank you.

You.