Seven years ago, late on a Brisbane autumn afternoon, I found myself sitting in the office of The Very Rev’d Dr. Peter Catt, Dean of St John’s Cathedral.
It was not a place I expected to be. I knew very little of Anglicanism at the time, and only slightly more of Peter.
Following a conservative Baptist upbringing, a daring flirtation with atheism in high school, and a marriage of convenience with Lutheranism in my later teens, I was much more interested in pursuing career dreams as a radio announcer than giving any more time to God-talk.
And yet, a deep soul hunger – that annoying existential restlessness – continued to bob up. It felt, at the time, like an intrusive weed in the garden of ambition and advancement I was working really hard to curate.
Despite all attempts to numb this ache with our culture’s best answers of individualism, competition, distraction, and achievement, it kept on coming back.
Having come across Peter around the time of the Cathedral’s Sanctuary movement and being struck by his wisdom, his honesty, and his quiet strength, he seemed the perfect person to begin exploring some of this inner-wrestling with. Very generously, he’d made time on a number of occasions for me to throw my biggest questions at him.
On this particular afternoon, we had been talking for an hour or so about all sorts of things when a question hit me.
“Have you ever thought of starting a podcast?” I asked, innocently. “I feel like plenty of people have rejected faith for many good reasons, but the Christianity you’re living is something very different. I think it’s something a lot of people might want to hear about”.
I’m not sure I meant to imply “with me” in the question.
In fact, I’m not sure I meant anything by the question at all. It is entirely possible that the conversation may have just lulled a little, with my question being merely an attempt to fill silence in the way many slightly socially anxious people like me do.
Whatever the case, the words had been spoken, and something had been started.
Peter looked at me for a moment or two, before walking down the hallway and inviting The Rev’d Suzanne Grimmett into the conversation.
Sue had, apparently, suggested the same thing to him the day before. She had even bought recording equipment.
And so, it was decided. Suddenly, I was one-third of a podcast aiming to explore an open-minded, nonviolent, non-dualistic faith life.
Rob Bell once said that in any family, community, workplace, relationship, or tradition, there is always an unwritten list of the things you’re not allowed to talk about and the questions you’re not allowed to ask.
He goes on to say that all the life is found in those questions. The list of forbidden things is where the juice is.
I had felt this fear of ‘straying’ into forbidden areas quite distinctly in every faith community I’d ever been a part of, and so the openness of this new project was slightly disorienting at first.
“Am I actually allowed to ask that?” is a question I put to Sue & Peter often in the first couple of years of the podcast. In every instance, often to my great surprise, “yes” was their answer.
I vividly remember our first episode with The Rev’d Dr Greg Jenks, who, when I was pressing him to find some meaning in a particularly brutal Old Testament story, bluntly responded “but what if that part of the Bible is wrong?”
Again, my most frequently asked question followed.
“You’re allowed to ask that?”
Apparently, yes. The roof did not cave. The sky did not fall.
Whatever we mean when we use the word God, it seems that it is a mystery large enough, loving enough, and safe enough to handle a question or two.
With that freedom fuelling us, the journey has been an extraordinary one.
Each conversation has been so liberating, so life-giving, and so helpful in so many ways. There are a few particular episodes, though, that carry a particularly rich personal meaning for me.
Only a few months in, we had Girardian scholar James Alison join us for a deep-dive into why and how humans keep on falling into the trap of scapegoating. I remember driving away from that recording thinking that, for the first time in my life, Easter made sense.
As a product of a purity-obsessed evangelical Christianity, Nadia Bolz-Weber’s liberating reminder that intimacy is one of life’s greatest gifts, and all gifts are given to be enjoyed, healed something deep inside of me that I’m not sure I consciously even knew was wounded.
There was Dr George Trippe, an extraordinary man who has gone on to become a very dear friend, whose introduction to the Jungian way of understanding soul has been the most deeply formative framework for living a human life that I’ve come across.
Sarah Augustine shared a haunting insight with us that has shifted my entire way of viewing ministry. She highlighted how so much of the way faith communities have acted over so many years has been aligned with the patterns of colonisation, viewing the ‘unchurched’ as Terra Nullius – empty ‘soul’ land to be claimed and converted – rather than viewing each person we meet as a fellow explorer on the way, full of their own rich, diverse, unique experiences of the sacred to be shared.
Then there was the Rev’d Jacqui Lewis, reminding us that, just as is true in the birthing process, the place we are most in pain is often precisely where something is trying to be born inside of us. Ever since that episode, whenever I have encountered inner-pain, loneliness, frustration, emptiness, anger, confusion, or longing, Jacqui’s question has become such a helpful one: what is trying to be born in me here?
Dr Alexander John Shaia spoke to us of his life’s work exploring the fourfold path of the soul – moving from autumns of change, through winters of suffering, into springs of new life, and maturing into summers of growth and service. I was in the midst of a very bleak winter when we had the conversation, with Alexander’s wisdom reminding me to read the first sacred text – the story of creation itself – as a teacher of how this whole thing works, reminding us all that spring follows every winter.
Barbara Brown Taylor might be the guest whose humanity, wisdom, and authenticity has left the biggest imprint on me, though.
It was about half-past-eight at night in her part of the world when we finished our first episode together, and after another half hour of conversation post-recording, I remember her telling us she was off to put dinner on now.
Peter, Sue & I looked at each other in a slight state of shock, as it dawned on us that she’d delayed her dinner until 9pm just to talk with a few Australians she’d never heard of. And she’d made it feel like it was us doing her a favour!
There have been so many golden moments in both conversations we’ve had with Barbara, but the one that stands out most is when she paused briefly mid-conversation, took a deep breath out, and summed this whole mystery up in four beautiful, healing words: “it’s all about freedom”.
And then there is the wisdom of my two co-hosts, such as Sue’s oft-repeated line that “life will always out”, and Peter’s constant reminders that we are, in the end, little more than the stories we tell.
To have been able to be a part of this journey alongside the two of them has been, I think, the greatest gift of my life. Almost everything I hold most dear today has, in some way, emerged from that one afternoon back in 2017.
As I reflect on it all, what stands out most of all is the spirit that has been present within every conversation.
It is a spirit of freedom, equality, creativity, authenticity, laughter, and joy.
It is an experimental spirit of openness, unknowing, and curiosity, with each of us always having very little idea where the hour that lies ahead of us may lead.
It is also a spirit of togetherness, with so much of the life emerging from the relationality of the whole thing.
Over the journey, I have stumbled again and again into the same realisation: “This is why people have called it good news for thousands of years”.
It was Peter who suggested On The Way as the title. His reasoning at the time was that he had been struck by an awareness that he was – that we all are – always just “on the way”.
More than one hundred episodes later, we really are no closer to any destination. But what a great thrill it is to be able to be on the way.
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