2 Samuel 17 | The Cycle of Violence

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with KJ Ramsey, trauma therapist and author of The Place Between Our Pains, for a conversation about what happens when the faith language you’ve published books about stops working—and why joy might still be available in the middle of a medical crisis that isn’t resolving. Topics Covered * What happens to us spiritually when every complaint has to come with a caveat, and why that splits us in two * Why being a trauma therapist didn’t spare KJ from trauma, and why she thinks that’s actually good news for the rest of us * How to be in your body when your body is the site of the pain, starting with how you’d talk to a five-year-old who skinned her knee * Why she stopped judging her own silence when she lost the ability to pray or describe God at all * A definition of joy that doesn’t require your life to get better, offered from a seat where things are actively not better Timestamps:01:00 When Hope Functions as a Gag Order04:00 Why It’s Still Hard to Let People See You10:00 Having the Language and Still Being Battered by It15:00 Embodiment When Your Body Doesn’t Feel Safe17:00 Your Body Is a Person, Not a Problem to Fix24:00 When the Words for God Stop Working28:00 Forsaken as Loosened for the Sake of Expansion33:00 Joy as the Presence of Love37:00 For Anyone in Something They Never Would Have Chosen40:00 Finding the Book and KJ’s Work

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Kat Armas for a conversation about what “empire” actually means once you strip away the buzzword—and why decolonizing your bookshelf and diversifying it are not the same project. Topics Covered * How empire shifted from a ruler over his own people to an ambition that metastasized, and why the US is an imperial state even without an emperor * Why the Bible’s language is so imperial, including Heaven itself, and what that tells us about the people writing it * Who gets to decide what counts as wisdom, and what changes when you notice wisdom in Scripture is a woman shouting in the street * Why empire has no imagination (it’s been running the same tired playbook since Rome) but we do * The Quechua hummingbird story that reframes what meaningful resistance actually looks like Timestamps:01:00 Why “Empire” and “Decolonize” Became Buzzwords04:00 A Working Definition of Empire07:00 How Imperial Ideology Gets Woven Into Faith13:00 The Bible Isn’t an Anti-Imperial Manifesto16:00 What Cuban American Formation Reveals That Western Readings Miss21:00 Empire Begins as Story, Then Calcifies Into Systems26:00 Imagine Smaller: The Hummingbird Drop31:00 Empire Doesn’t Just Live Out There, It Lives In Us37:00 Why Liturgy Is Subversive42:00 Finding Kat’s Work

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Anna Rollins, author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a “Good Girl,” for a conversation about the shared script underneath purity culture and diet culture—and why knowing the promise is false doesn’t make it stop working on us. Topics Covered * The pattern Anna kept finding in her own private writing before she had a name for it, and what scarcity, smallness, and shrinking appetite had to do with each other * Why “control your appetite and you’ll be safe” persists even for women who see through it, and the very real thing it’s rooted in * What internalized fundamentalism looks like once the original system is gone, including inside body positivity * How to tell rigidity from conviction, and where each one shows up in the body * What “reclaiming appetite” actually looks like on a normal Tuesday, and why it’s rarely about food Timestamps:01:00 Noticing the Pattern in Her Own Writing03:00 Why the Promise Is Durable Even When You Know Better06:00 Fundamentalism That Follows You Into New Systems11:00 Wellness Language as Code and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders13:00 Telling Rigidity from Conviction18:00 Shame, Guilt, and Where the Hope Lives20:00 Why Healing Body Shame Shifts Your Relationship With God24:00 Reclaiming Appetite on a Normal Tuesday31:00 For Anyone Still in the Middle of It35:00 Finding the Book and Anna’s Work

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Kristin Mockler Young, author of The Other Side of Certainty, for a conversation about what certainty is actually doing for us—and why the thing we were handed as faith might have been a tool for detachment all along. Topics Covered * The cynical-but-true reason certainty appeals to people who don’t know what to do with hard emotions or injustice * Why a faith that shatters and a faith that holds questions often come down to how the hard thing arrived * What people gain when they trade black-and-white belief for something roomier, and the loss almost nobody escapes * How certainty gets tangled up with identity and belonging, and why your people find it easier to let you go than face their own dissonance * The question Kristin is still sitting in, and why she’s not rushing to resolve it Timestamps:01:00 What Certainty Is Actually Doing for People04:00 The Difference Between Rooting Yourself in God and in What You Know About God09:00 What You Gain and What You Lose14:00 The Disorienting Moment You Notice the Cracks16:00 Authority vs. Power and How We Got Out of Balance17:00 How to Practice Curiosity When You Weren’t Trained For It20:00 Sitting in Not-Knowing Without Rushing23:00 The Question Kristin Hasn’t Resolved25:00 Finding the Book and Kristin’s Work

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, I sit down with Tyler Hill for a conversation about what changes when you start your story with belovedness instead of brokenness—and why the exhaustion so many of us carry comes from chasing something we’ve had in our pocket the whole time. Topics Covered * The breathwork session that gave Tyler a visceral image of the womb, and what it revealed about his very first knowing * Henri Nouwen’s three biggest lies (I am what I have, what I do, what others say) and how they become the raw material for a false self * Why belovedness isn’t spiritual bypassing, and what Tyler learned about it from people in prison who can’t hang their hat on their morality * The unexpected first spiritual practice Tyler prescribes, and why it involves $100 and an outfit you actually love * What’s hardest to let go of when you awaken to your true self, and it isn’t the theology Timestamps:03:00 The Six Months When Everything Fell Apart05:00 “Nothing to Prove, Nothing to Lose” and Why It Felt Like a Lie11:00 Baseball Tyler and the Making of a False Self18:00 The Practical Cost of Living from the False Self22:00 Belovedness That Isn’t Cheap Grace or Positive Thinking26:00 On-Ramps That Don’t Feel Like Obligation30:00 The Burning Bush and the Practice of Curiosity38:00 What You Have to Let Go Of46:00 Why Belovedness Requires a Feminine God47:00 How to Know You’re Living It, Not Just Believing It53:00 Finding Tyler’s Work and Monday Morning Blessings