Faith moves through seasons, for sure. Sometimes questions bring us to places where we feel a bit lost or separated. Debie Thomas's approach to faith as a storied theology challenges the conventional beliefs. Her insights offer a refreshing perspective on the dynamic nature of faith, inviting us to embrace our evolving spiritual journeys.
Debie is the author of “A Faith of Many Rooms”. She is also a columnist and contributing editor for The Christian Century. Debie’s perspective is one of an explorer, a believer, a doubter, and a wonderer.
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Episode Notes:
You can learn more about Debie Thomas and order her books through her website: debiethomas.com
In this episode:
(00:00) Welcome to Compass
(04:26) Questioning God's gender and accountability for events.
(07:20) Interpreting ancient stories and understanding their context.
(12:38) Faith is a mystery that sparked curiosity.
(14:16) Shift from self-driven faith to communal spirituality.
(17:06) Support from others sustains me on journey.
(21:46) Creating opportunities for intergenerational connections is beautiful.
(23:50) We want stories with struggle, growth, support.
(27:04) Compass community explores spirituality, recommends podcast episodes.
Related episodes
- Cultivating everyday spirituality
- Discovering evidence of the Divine
- Beats, peacemaking and authenticity
- Why people are leaving church
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Thank you for listening, downloading, and subscribing.
This episode posted on March 20, 2024
Episode Transcript:
Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:
Welcome to compass, finding spirituality in the everyday. My name is Ryan Dunn. Are you sometimes afraid to ask questions about faith and spirituality? Does doubt scare you a little bit? Do you have some questions that you're skeptical about ever finding the answers for? This is the podcast for you, and this is a great episode for you as well. If you don't mind me saying, in this episode of compass, I spoke with writer Debie Thomas. Debie's spiritual journey has been marked by inquiry. At an early age, she had questions about the nature of goodness and divine responsibility. She openly wondered why people attribute all the good in the world to God yet often feel from expressing frustration or anger about life's hardships. Does that feel a little bit familiar, perhaps? We're gonna get into Debie's journey and explore how she reconciles all of this stuff in faith today.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:05]:
If you appreciate the value that our show brings to your day, we'd be incredibly grateful if you could take a moment to leave us a rating and review. Your feedback not only helps us improve the show, but it also makes a huge difference in helping more listeners like you find us. Here's how you can leave a rating and review. On Apple Podcasts, open your Apple Podcasts app on your phone or computer, search for Compass, Finding Spirituality in the Everyday, and then scroll down to the ratings and reviews section. Tap the stars to rate the podcast. And if you have a moment, write a few words about what you enjoy about the show in the review section. On Spotify, you just have to launch the Spotify app on your mobile device and head to our podcast page. Below the podcast title, you'll see a rating section represented by stars.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:57]:
Tap that maximum rating to rate us. Although, Spotify doesn't support written reviews yet. Those stars really do count. On YouTube, head over to the YouTube channel and find the compass, finding spirituality in the everyday. After watching an episode, hit the like button to show your support and leave a comment to tell us and other viewers what you thought. Your comments help increase our visibility on YouTube and grow our community. And don't forget to subscribe and click that bell icon so that you never miss out on our content. Alrighty.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:28]:
As noted, we're talking with Debie Thomas, author of A Faith of Many Rules. She's also a columnist and contributing editor for the Christian century. Debie's perspective is one of an explorer and a doubter and a wanderer like you. So let's meet her on the Compass podcast. Welcome to the Compass podcast, Debie. Thank you so much for joining us. How goes it with your soul this morning?
Debie Thomas [00:02:55]:
Oh, well, thank you, first of all, Ryan, for having me. It's a privilege to be here. It goes well with my soul. We are finally getting some sunshine here in California, which is a nice thing. And this is Lent, which is a really meaningful season for me, so I'm doing well. Thank you.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:11]:
Yeah. Well, now that you've brought up this season of Lent, is there a practice that you're taking on through these 40 days or something that you're leaving out?
Debie Thomas [00:03:21]:
So, in our church, we're together reading, Kate Bowler's book of devotion and blessings, Lenten blessings. And so moving through that together with my community is really wonderful, because she opened up this really vulnerable, honest space to talk about real life, which is, you know, always refreshing.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:40]:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. A great way of communicating and, comes from such an honest space. And well and really, I've I've noticed through your writings, so so do you. And, I wanna get into some of your story a little bit. We can go way, way back. You mentioned early in your book that, you were kind of a a brat who was asking all the wrong questions growing up, in the church.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:05]:
So what were some of the questions that you found were getting you in a little bit of trouble or that people were just feeling a little bit irksome about?
Debie Thomas [00:04:14]:
Sure. So I mean, really young, you know, what about the dinosaurs? You know, the Earth doesn't really have a bowl of water, like, on top of it. So what's up with Genesis?
Ryan Dunn [00:04:25]:
Yeah.
Debie Thomas [00:04:26]:
Why is God a boy? That was a big one for me. Oh, and what does it mean for me to be also created in the image of God if God is male? That was a question I wrestled with from Talbot all the way into an adult TED. It was a really tough one. And then I think, you know, why do we give God credit for all the good stuff, But then we're not allowed to be angry at the bad stuff.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:48]:
Mhmm.
Debie Thomas [00:04:48]:
That was one that yeah. My Sunday school teachers did not like me for those questions too much.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:55]:
Would they try to answer, or was there a dodge?
Debie Thomas [00:04:57]:
The the dodge was usually we need to have faith. You know, these things are mysteries. We are small and human, And God is big, and God knows things that we don't know. And so we just have to have
Ryan Dunn [00:05:07]:
more faith.
Debie Thomas [00:05:08]:
It's just put me in this position of shame, because then, you know, the frustration I went was, well, then there's something wrong with me because I don't have enough. My faith is not big enough to to encompass these questions and to let them be.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:21]:
Oh, so if you're unsettled by the questions, then it's just a yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're not, not picking up what God is putting down in a sense. Yes.
Debie Thomas [00:05:31]:
Exactly.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:33]:
Are you asking similar questions today?
Debie Thomas [00:05:37]:
I think so. I but I think I've made my peace with the questions. Like, I've decided that the fact that I'm asking is a sign of a robust relationship with god. It is not a problem. I don't mythologize that. The fact that I'm asking means that I have a stake in this game, that I care, and, and that God is big enough to meet me in those questions.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:59]:
I
Debie Thomas [00:05:59]:
have let go of my anxiety about finding answers because some of these questions just don't have answers that we can know at least this sign of eternity. So, but the asking is valuable in and of itself because it means that I'm engaged.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:14]:
Well, I'm curious. You have a position of leadership in your church and have probably been put in the Sunday school teacher type of role. When you come up against some of these imponderable questions or questions that you don't know the answer to, how do you typically respond? Sure.
Debie Thomas [00:06:34]:
Well, our whole approach in the church where I attend now with, especially with children is to invite them to wonder. We don't offer the stories of scripture as black and white. We offer them, as places that people can explore. Step into the story. What what do you notice? What do you wonder? And we even ask, this is based on the the, Agave play curriculum that we often use for children Yeah. Which invites us to ask, if you could lose some parts of the story and still have all the story you need, what would you leave out? You know, so, for example, if we teach Noah's Ark, right, story, which is a really problematic story for kids. Yeah. And I knew it.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:17]:
Dive into the whole version of it. Absolutely.
Debie Thomas [00:07:20]:
So invite them to ask what part of the story, you know, work and which parts would you leave out if you could? And in now there'll be the children of the same. We'll leave out the part that God made the flood happen to kill people. Mhmm. And then we sit with that and go, okay. So what if these ancient people experienced a terrible disaster, and they were trying to make sense of it, and trying to think about how God could still be good and gracious to them in the midst of trying to understand something really complicated that happened in nature. And that just opens up a space for them to to think about it differently without attributing certain monstrosity to God. So that's just kind of an example of how we approach it.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:57]:
Yeah. Well, isn't it wonderful that we kinda give permission to wonder like that within a a children's ministry setting? But I wonder if we feel a sense of moving towards wonderment within adult settings.
Debie Thomas [00:08:12]:
That's a great question. I don't think we do enough of it. Mhmm. I think we have an anxiety about that, that people will just sort of wander off. We need to keep people in the room of a certain kind of orthodoxy. And if they wander too far, then, well, then it's not Christian anymore. Yeah. And I think a lot underneath that is this real anxiety about God, that God is some kind of, like, fine China teacup.
Debie Thomas [00:08:34]:
And, you know, what if God shatters? And, I think we need to have more courage than that. God is not a tea cup. God can handle the most intense questions. And, you know, scripture is testament to that. People railed against God. They raged. They wondered. They grieved.
Debie Thomas [00:08:53]:
They fought. They wrestled. This is part of faith. It's not the antithesis of faith.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:58]:
Yeah. One of the key words of the Psalms seems to be why. Why? Exactly. The authors of the Psalms are are fairly anxious people who are struggling really to not just make sense of of God, but everything that happens in their world.
Debie Thomas [00:09:13]:
Exactly. Exactly. And they're often writing from context of deep trauma. You know, we're reading these accounts of a deeply traumatized people, a colonized people, and enslaved people and exiled people. And so of course, their relationship with God would be contested and hard. And that should give us permission, you know, to be able to engage in those ways too.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:33]:
Yeah. And yet we fall into this trap where the faith community kinda becomes this place of of movement towards certainty and definition.
Debie Thomas [00:09:43]:
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:45]:
Well, this is why I think that that your book, A Faith of Many Rooms is gonna connect with so many people because there's a longing out there for, a sense of mystery and a freedom to ask the questions and to process through. You note that one of the reservations that people have about defining faith, especially Christian faith, is that it can be pinpointed into being too blank, you know, too inhospitable, too masculine, as you've already noted, too narrow or too particular. Was there an event within your own life that that broadened your understanding of of what Christianity could be outside of those 2 blank bounds?
Debie Thomas [00:10:33]:
Sure. So, you know, I grew up in a pretty cloistered evangelical community. And so Okay. I kinda didn't know that anything else existed, or if everything else that existed was wrong. You know, we uniquely in our faith community had figured this out correctly, and other people who claimed to be Christian were just, you know, wrong. And that, you know, when you're offered that as a child, you kind of okay. That's what the grown ups say, and it is what it is. And then I think it happens for many people.
Debie Thomas [00:11:02]:
I went to college, and suddenly, you know, the world got a lot bigger. I was meeting Christians from very different traditions, traditions, you know, more liturgical traditions, mainline traditions. I was meeting people of other faiths or no faith and having to be in conversation with them. And first of all, realizing these are really wonderful people. These are these are not these are not you know, I was taught that they were all just bad.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:25]:
Yeah. They're not leading me towards the dark side, really.
Debie Thomas [00:11:28]:
Yeah. They are complex and interesting, and they're asking really, you know, wonderful questions that I care about too. And then I ended up taking some classes. I took a history of Christianity class, with a feminist scholar. And, oh, my goodness, talk about having my world blown open, right? Suddenly learning that in the early decades of Christianity, women were leading, women were apostles and deacons. And, and then learning about how that kind of closed down as Christianity, as the institution wrapped itself, you know, around a more patriarchal way of of doing church. All of that was brand new to me. And suddenly, I just realized there's so much I don't know.
Debie Thomas [00:12:10]:
There was so much that was walled off from me. And now I, okay, my curiosity's peaked. I must know. And I have to unravel this and figure it out.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:20]:
For a lot of people, they come up with questions like that, and their, their perspective gets broadened. And then they choose to leave behind the faith of the past. But that hasn't been your story. You've stayed in the faith. Was there something that kept you moored within the faith?
Debie Thomas [00:12:38]:
It's a great question. I've asked myself and I, you know, Ryan, I don't there's a sense in which faith is a mystery, right? And I and I'm grateful that my journey did not include completely leaving. I mean, I I took vacations. You know, there were seasons when sitting in church and listening to certain kinds of sermons was so painful. You know, I really felt like there was no oxygen in the room, and so I I left. Or when reading the Bible just became so hard because I no longer knew what the Bible was. So there were definitely seasons of stepping away. But I think what brought me back was curiosity, was a sense of this is a very big tradition.
Debie Thomas [00:13:22]:
People have been asking these questions for 1000 of years. And if they were able to continue, then I can find a way to so that leaning into that, I guess, that communion of saints or that the fact that there's an ancestry here. And it's not just about me, that helped bring me back as well.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:38]:
I love that image of kinda taking faith vacations. I mean, not that, you know, I want people to have a sense that they need to leave their faith behind for a bit, but just in that feeling of comfort, like, there's an ebb and a flow. Yes. And that having a bit of respite even from something as as profound and meaningful as as the faith community can be a a little bit healthy. When you've been called back from those vacations, do you generally find it's because of, a sense of calling beyond yourself, or or are you having to do the work?
Debie Thomas [00:14:16]:
Oh, that's yeah. So that's been a big shift for me from this idea of faith as something that I do. I have to make it happen. I have to go to not only go to church, but go with just that right, you know, sensibility, the right emotional architecture, and, like, with my sheer piety, just the force of my, you know, love of Jesus, I'm gonna make something spiritual happen. That's a tremendous burden to put on yourself. You know what? It's painful to do that. It's very different to approach faith as God is doing this, the spirit is doing this, and the larger community holds this with them. So for example, it might be Sundays when I'm sitting in church, and we, you know, adjacent properly beside the Nicene Creed, and I'm thinking, seriously? Yeah.
Debie Thomas [00:15:00]:
This is not happening today. There are parts of this that are just, like, buggers. But people who are sitting all around me, they hold it for me that day. They recite it not just for themselves, but on my behalf. And then maybe 2 Sundays later, I'm in a really good, strong place and the person sitting next to me is really struggling. At that point, I hold it for them. So that we're in this together, it's communal and collaborative and not just me and my Jesus and me and my bible figuring it
Ryan Dunn [00:15:27]:
I identify with that. A number of times where I've been in the worship setting and especially when it comes around music and and people are super into it. And I have a sense of guilt for not having the emotional response that those folks have. It's refreshing to think about, well, maybe they're carrying me in this moment in which I do feel detached and
Debie Thomas [00:15:49]:
Yeah.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:49]:
Not feeling an emotional asset to my faith.
Debie Thomas [00:15:55]:
Yeah. That's a lot of pressure to have it be to have it all come down to your affective experience. And I was really taught that way. You have to feel you have to feel Jesus, you have to feel Jesus' arms around you. And I would just think I don't, that's just not how I am in the world. I don't Yeah. You know, I can maybe count on one hand the number of times I have felt that. But to to come to a place where I can trust that this truth is true regardless of how I feel about it on any given day.
Debie Thomas [00:16:22]:
It doesn't depend on that.
Ryan Dunn [00:16:26]:
One of the chapters that I really identified with in your book is when you talk about lostness and, said it in the sense of we kinda wander and lose our way, and that's not altogether bad that, that we can discover some beautiful things through through being lost and wandering. My fear is that when I'm lost that I'll never be found again. Yes. Yes. I'll stay out in the wilderness. How do you keep lostness from unraveling your faith?
Debie Thomas [00:16:59]:
Such a great question. I think you tell people that you are lost. You don't go off by yourself.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:06]:
Okay.
Debie Thomas [00:17:06]:
You have people who are kind of tethering you or at least checking in on you. That's been really important to me. I lean pretty heavily into the the the temptation story of Jesus, as Mark describes it, you know, in Mark's very, very short version, there's no big elaborate narrative, there's just the spirit threw Jesus into the wilderness. He was there for 40 days. And there were wild beasts and angels there with him. And so that that combination of like, the Spirit is there, Jesus is there, wild beasts are there, and angels are there. All of these things coexist together in the wilderness, which means that really hard things are gonna happen. You know, they're gonna be the wild beasts.
Debie Thomas [00:17:48]:
There's gonna be the danger and the risk. But there are also angels. There's also care. There's also surprising moments of rest and nourishment and love, those will come too. You just have to learn to look for them. You know, angels in the wilderness look different from angels, you know, when you're sitting in church and you feel lovely. It might be a different a different kind of, manifestation, but there is still grace in the wilderness.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:15]:
Well, it sounds like you found a very healthy and supportive community of faith right now in your church. Were there certain signs that you were able to pick up on that suggested to you, like, oh, this would be the right community of faith for me?
Debie Thomas [00:18:31]:
Sure. So as I was going through the kind of deconstruction process, leaving my childhood faith tradition, I wandered all over. I went to all different kinds of churches, for a while. For a while, I didn't go anywhere. I just sat at home and tried to do my own thing. Mhmm. And then we moved out to California about 13 years ago, and, I walked into this Episcopal church on a Sunday morning. And for the first time in my life, I saw a woman, an Asian American woman, preach and preside over the Eucharist.
Debie Thomas [00:19:02]:
And I sobbed straight through the liturgy and sat there and cried because I had never seen that before. I didn't know that was possible. It was, it was beautiful. And to see the love of God embodied in someone who looked like me. And, you know, that's okay. That is not only okay, that is good. And here's a picture of the kingdom of God broadened, beyond anything that I had conceived of. So, yeah, I immediately I called her the next day, and then I I, you know, I annoyed her for months with my questions.
Debie Thomas [00:19:36]:
I was always in her office. But what about this? What about what about salvation? What about sin? What about the Bible? And she very patiently did that work with me, gave me things to read, told me it was okay to be asking these questions, so I knew this was a place to stay.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:52]:
Are you like that in all aspects of your life?
Debie Thomas [00:19:56]:
Like, intense and full of questions and kinda tortured. Yes.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:00]:
Your words, not mine. I was just thinking, like, would you take the the initiative to, call up somebody in a different setting and ask them all those questions?
Debie Thomas [00:20:11]:
Yeah. I mean, I think in this particular case, I was just hungry. Like, I knew I needed something. I needed a faith community. I couldn't do it by myself. But I was also very, very scared of being retraumatized by any kind of conservatism that would close the house down again. That would just make me feel like I didn't have space. So I was cautious and curious at the same time.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:33]:
Well, when you were on that faith vacation early, vacation from the community of faith, from the church, so to speak. What was it that you felt like you were missing? Because so many people, they they take their vacations and they're like, I don't I don't know if anything's missing, and they'd spend an awful long time there. Was there something that just was No. No. And I
Debie Thomas [00:20:52]:
I honor that. And I think for some people, you really do need to have a long stepping away, and I'm not I don't blame anyone for that. I think for me, because I had grown up so sickly in community, you know, I was a preacher's kid, and we were always at church. That that was where our not just where our spiritual life happened, it was where life happened.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:10]:
It was
Debie Thomas [00:21:11]:
where our friends were, and so to move move away from that completely felt very lonely. I I wanted, I mean, you know, I'll admit it. I wanted, like, the potluck dinners and the, you know, the place where you bring your kids, and there's other moms who can, like, share stories with you. And, you know, I wanted the fullness of that community to do life with. And I missed that too much to stay away too long.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:36]:
Okay. So in large part, it was the fellowship. We don't have a whole lot of structures in our society like that anymore, do we?
Debie Thomas [00:21:43]:
Absolutely. And specifically, like, intergenerational fellowship. Mhmm.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:46]:
You know,
Debie Thomas [00:21:46]:
we're so compartmentalized in our in our age groups and in our little tribes. And to actually have a place where, you know, where my kids could you know, there'd be somebody who's 85 years old who will talk to them and, like, sit with them, who is not a relative, who's not necessarily grandpa or grandma. That's beautiful, for me to be able to engage with a teenager and have them not, you know, kind of eye roll and walk away and maybe just we'll have, like, a little conversation for 2 minutes. That's a beautiful thing. And you're right. There are very few spaces now in American culture where that happens outside of church.
Ryan Dunn [00:22:18]:
Again, we're talking with Debie Thomas, author of A Faith of Many Rooms. In the book, you bring up this idea of storied faith, or, actually, I guess it's storied theology. How does that storied theology differ from just kind of a typical belief or or a basis of theology?
Debie Thomas [00:22:37]:
Sure. So, again, you know, what I grew up with was was a very belief oriented, belief centric faith, which meant that all of Christianity my salvation came down to my making an intellectual assent to certain propositions. You know, Jesus is the son of God, God is Trinity, you know, you like the the creed. And I Yeah.
Ryan Dunn [00:22:58]:
It seems very dogmatic. Right. Right. Right. Check off the the things that you believe, and if you hit all the marks, you're in.
Debie Thomas [00:23:06]:
And you're in. And if you if you have doubts or questions about any of them, then you're out. It was a very clear line in the sand. Either you're in or you're out. And, you know, that's not how we do most of our lives. Our lives are more complicated than that. They're they're embodied. You know? They're our emotions play a role.
Debie Thomas [00:23:21]:
Our relationships play a role. We have seasons. We we move. There's an arc, a trajectory in our lives. And I think story captures more of that, that we're always in movements, that we're coming into contact with other characters in the story, and that affects us and shapes us. That God is also in the story with us. You know, God is simultaneously the author and the participant in the story with us. And story gets us room to wrestle.
Debie Thomas [00:23:50]:
Right? It'll be a very boring story. Nobody none of us wants to read a story in which, you know, everything was good in the beginning and everything was good in the end. The end, like, no one will read that book. That book will not sell. We want stories that have people struggling, overcoming things, learning things, discovering things. And so isn't that a much more interesting and robust way of thinking about faith, that we will learn, we will unlearn, we will have adventures, we will have tragedies, People will come alongside of us and help. People will annoy the heck out of us, and that's okay too. It's a much more, I think, rich way of looking at
Ryan Dunn [00:24:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that gives us then the room and encouragement to ask some of these questions, rather than just the idea of, well, I was taught this, so I believe it.
Debie Thomas [00:24:42]:
Right. Right. And even the idea that, you know, we should, we should believe at the beginning what we believe at the end without any change.
Ryan Dunn [00:24:49]:
Yeah, I
Debie Thomas [00:24:50]:
think that's a problem. I Christian Wyman in his memoir, my bright abyss has this beautiful line where he says, if I believe at 50 what I believed at 15, but I haven't lived. Because life moves forward. We we should constantly be evolving and changing. That's another thing. Not something to be afraid of.
Ryan Dunn [00:25:10]:
Good. Well, as we're recording this, I'm not even sure that the book is released yet.
Debie Thomas [00:25:15]:
Soon. So out, March 19th.
Ryan Dunn [00:25:17]:
That's right. Okay. So might be jumping the gun a little bit in this final question, but, for you, the process of of writing that book is done. And, you know, now it's just kind of talking about what you've already accomplished. Are you already thinking about what might come next? Is there a second book in there?
Debie Thomas [00:25:35]:
Oh, I'm thinking yes. Well, it's there are possibilities. But, actually, right now, I'm in seminary. I just started seminary this past summer. So right now, all the writing is, you know, research papers and theological reflections. And Mhmm. And so it didn't, like, keep a lot before I get around to having space for another book.
Ryan Dunn [00:25:53]:
Yeah. Okay. Understood. Yeah. When I enter seminary, there was a, an elderly gentleman from the congregation who warned me, don't let him take your faith And you go to the head there theological school.
Debie Thomas [00:26:06]:
From a lot of people don't let them just like fascinating to think about. So far that hasn't happened so far. It's been Yeah.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:14]:
Well, I think the the warning that comes is that in some ways, they will rattle your faith. It the process of it when you're asking such deep questions and being exposed to so much, it it is a unsettling experience.
Debie Thomas [00:26:27]:
It is. That's true.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:28]:
And that's where that comes from. But it's also a tremendously growth encouraging experience as well, I
Debie Thomas [00:26:35]:
think. Yeah.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:37]:
Yeah. Again, because we're given that space to, to offer the questions, and to really wrestle through what it is that we believe and why.
Debie Thomas [00:26:46]:
Absolutely.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:47]:
Well, Debie, thank you so much for spending this time with us and thank you for giving us these words that I I found often articulate maybe questions that I had or ideas that I had that I wasn't able to put into words myself. So I really appreciate what you've asked.
Debie Thomas [00:27:03]:
Thank you so much, hon.
Ryan Dunn [00:27:04]:
Thank you for being part of the Compass community. We look forward to continuing to explore spirituality in the everyday with you. You might wanna listen to another episode of Compass. I recommend it. And if you liked this episode, then I recommend episode 125, cultivating everyday spirituality with my friend, Abigail Broca. Another good episode would be number 120, discovering evidence of the divine. It gives some framework for dealing with tough questions of faith as well. And again, while you're listening, leave a rating and or review.
Ryan Dunn [00:27:38]:
The Compass podcast is brought to you by United Methodist Communications. That's all for this week. We'll be back with a new episode in 2 weeks, so I will chat at you then. Peace.
