#113: Loving Dignity (with Heather Caliri)
“There is no other pathway to healing—in ourselves or in difficult relationships—than compassion, grace, and grieving the losses that are there. The only alternative is numbness and defensiveness, and that road leads to death.”
On The Puddcast this week is writer and cartoonist, Heather Caliri. Heather’s work on finding God’s grace in awkward, uncomfortable places has been featured on ChristianityToday.com, In Touch Magazine, Fathom Magazine, Relevant Magazine.com and more. Heather shared with me how she asked the most serious questions of her faith and experienced God respond with love and dignity. That grace slowly transformed her life, and now she teaches others how to let dignity transform their lives and their most difficult relationships.
Register for Heather’s course, 30 Days to Loving Dignity
Learn more about Heather at HeatherCaliri.com
Follow Heather on Instagram and Twitter.
Bruce Kramer interview On Being
Carol Howard Merritt on The Puddcast: Forgiving the Church
Chimamanda Adichie TED Talk on The Danger of a Single Story
Become a supporter of the show on Patreon at patreon.com/jonathanpuddle.
Order my trauma-informed 30-day devotional, You Are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You.
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Don’t forget about the B-Side!
Once you’ve listened to this, make sure to check out the raw and uncut B-Side interview where my friends and I unpack the conversation in even more detail. Available exclusively on Patreon.
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Transcription
Jonathan Puddle 00:02
Hey friends, welcome back to The Puddcast with me, Jonathan Puddle. This is Episode 113. My guest today is Heather Caliri. Heather is a writer, she's been featured in Christianity Today, InTouch Magazine, Fathom Magazine, Relevant Magazine. She writes a lot about finding God's grace in awkward, uncomfortable places. She's also an artist and cartoonist. I came across her amusing, theologically provocative cartoons on Instagram and we started chatting and then here we are. Heather is launching a course all about loving dignity. And so we talked about that today. We begin by asking some serious questions of our faith, like the most real questions we can ask I think of God. And what happens when, when what we experience from God—maybe love and dignity—isn't the same as what we experienced from the church. But we don't get, we don't spend a ton of time talking about church, really it's allowing dignity to transform our lives, and how to embrace dignity in our human relationships. So that's what you can expect today from my discussion with Heather Caliri. You'll find links to all the relevant resources in the show notes, of course, and let's get into the show. Heather Caliri... it's Caliri right? I'm saying that right?
Heather Caliri 01:28
Yes, Caliri is correct.
Jonathan Puddle 01:30
Welcome to the show.
Heather Caliri 01:31
Thank you so much, Jonathan. I'm so pleased to be here.
Jonathan Puddle 01:34
I think one of my favorite pieces of yours was this cartoon, it's like a medieval depiction of like this priest, and like a penitent woman or something. And the priest, you've captioned him, giving her some kind of Bible reading plan. And, and she responds, "I'm illiterate, you nincompoop." And I thought that was fantastic.
Heather Caliri 02:06
I like I like captioning medieval scenes, because the faces are always so expressive.
Jonathan Puddle 02:13
So I came, I came upon you through... on Instagram through these cartoons, I think I don't know exactly how we crossed paths. But I didn't realize at first that you were also a writer, I just, I just saw the the artwork and, and so but, but I got suckered in because I'm like, I like theologically witty, cutting artwork. I've been, you know, a fan of other cartoonists who we can all probably fill in the blanks who occupy this space. One of whom may be Canadian. And, but but with your artwork, you've got often these really very insightful, quite lengthy, sometimes essays or reflections. And so that kind of took me by surprise. And so I began to dig into your, into your writing there. And, and I was like, okay, that that's, I think, where I swallowed the hook, because I was like, yeah, I'm really liking the things that Heather is saying, I'm appreciating the, the things you're pushing against. I also appreciate the grace with which you do it, because you clearly love Jesus, and, you know, are, are here for humans and for freedom and for growth. And I love all the bits and pieces that you embody so... thrilled to have you here.
Heather Caliri 03:42
That's so lovely to hear. Thank you. It's so funny, because, um, I would not, it is only recently that I would have called myself an artist. So it's funny to me that you and other people to have come to my work through my art because that was not the plan. My sister is the artist of the family, I was just a dabbler. And to realize that you can you can try new things and gain new skills and just stand in that identity is kind of a is kind of a thing that I'm still learning, you know that something it was hard to call myself a writer for a really long time, and it was equally impossibly harder to call myself an artist. So yeah, it delights me. Thank you for the kind words, it's really lovely to hear.
Jonathan Puddle 04:33
You're welcome. I noticed that "artist" was buried a little further down in your bio, and I had wondered about that. That's interesting. What comes first in these Instagram content pieces, is it the drawing or the writing or is it synergistic?
Heather Caliri 04:48
Um, oftentimes, oftentimes I start with the writing. And just because that is the at that point, at this point in my life I've been writing for 20 odd years and it's just easier for my brain to go there. And then I'll have I'll usually write and the reason my stuff is long is because I'm always wordy. So usually I write like a really long thing and then I'm like, shoot, somehow fit... those character limits on Instagram constantly bedevil me. So I'm like, Okay, I've got to cut this. And I've got to, like, usually chop it up into a series. And then I think, Okay, what, what image would capture this? What, how would what would go along with this? Although lately, I've noticed sometimes I come up with a cartoon first. I think now that I'm gaining a little bit more confidence, umm, in my, in my, just my identity as an artist, my brain thinks visually a little bit more easily. But yeah, usually it's the writing first.
Jonathan Puddle 05:53
Cool. So what, tell us about your story and what brought you here? You've been writing for 20 years. That's cool. You've got kids?
Heather Caliri 06:00
Yeah. Yeah. So I, um, I grew up like many of us did, in a fairly dysfunctional family, there was some real trauma when I was, when I was younger, particularly with my my brother and my sister, they kind of went through a lot of, there was abuse in my family, mostly aimed at them. And I was the "good kid", I was the, you know, in, I put that in severe air quotes, you know, that I was the golden child of the family, like literally blond haired and blue eyed, which... ummm.. and there was both the sense of like I needed to achieve, and that I was ashamed because as kids we're really attuned to fairness. And you want to believe that you're good because of the things you're doing. So I was really punching that, you know, achievement punching bag pretty hard. But also knowing that's actually not, it's not, it's not deserved, my treatment, my difference is not deserved. So that I, you know, really, my sister became a Christian largely because some of the things that she was going through, and largely because she was suffering, and she would bring books home to me and I being the reader that I was, would read everything. And when I was about 13, we had been kind of a nominally Christian family, but we weren't going to church at the time. And I knelt by my bed and prayed the sinner's prayer. And then I was like, "Well, now I need to achieve for Jesus", right. And we sort of coincidentally went back to church really quick, like after I prayed that prayer, and I got involved in the youth group in high school. And unfortunately, we had, like my very first experience of Christian community, we had an abusive, high school youth pastor who assaulted a friend of mine over the period of several years. And then after that, I went to college and got involved, I went to school in Texas, and the buckle of the Bible Belt, and was involved in a very conservative, Christian parachurch ministry. And those two things, you know, we had the dysfunction in my family growing up, and then a super dysfunctional and unhealthy youth group, and then a very kind of punitive theology and very rigid theology. And I'm like, I'm the golden child, I will achieve, I will do all of the things that I'm supposed to. And by the time I left college, I fell apart. I started to really reckon with some of the... What happened was, I be I became quite depressed. And my therapist pointed out that I was depressed. And I was shocked because I was not a person who got depressed. Clearly that was for the weak people, you know. And when I realized that I was depressed and just enraged at my family, and... just volcanic right, and this was in the course and I'm sitting on my therapist's couch, and at the beginning of the therapist's pointment I had no idea what was going on in my life. And by the end, I realized I was depressed and my insides were on fire. And I just thought, "What good did faith... what good was my faith?" If it had provided no insight, no tools, no ideas to help me understand what was going inside on inside me. None of it had helped. And I was like, "If Jesus could not help me understand, just even the feelings within me. What the hell was I doing being a Christian?" I mean, it really was like, what good is this? It was over the next year. I took stock of my spiritual life, very nearly lost my faith, which I want to be honest, like, I don't think the goal is to be able to label ourselves Christian. Like I I fully accept and understand when people are just like, you know, this spirituality itself may become toxic to people and I don't want to hold myself up as some sort of like, this is not an achievement thing to hang on to the label Christian, but I did find meaning and connection to God, there was a night where I was on the couch deciding, okay, I'm not going to become a Christian, I'm not going to be a Christian anymore. And I felt a voice in my head-ish, you know, that thought process say, "I'm not going anywhere. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I am not going anywhere." And I was like, who is this person talking to me? And is this even possible? Like, is it possible for me to stay a Christian and not have to do anything I don't want to do is that even a... is that even possible theology? And I was like, well, if it is, that sounds like a way better option than anything I've been doing up till now. And I, I really, it really took me another 10 years to fully believe that voice. But 10-15 years we're talking because that is radical. That is a radical idea. But I believed enough to be able to say, okay, we won't completely abandon the label Christian right now, but we're going to have to do some negotations here. And it was really, I thought it was gonna be a hard sell on God's part, it was really more of a hard sell on my part to let go of that achievement-oriented, punitive, shamed theology that seemed to come so naturally to me. And so, you know, the deconstructed... deconstruction started then, but it really I mean, it has it takes forever, it takes, it takes the work of of decades, and of our lifetime to really embrace that sense of God loves us, period. Right? Um, so yeah, I, I began writing after college. And my two rules were: I don't talk about family and I don't write about faith. So now, I'm writing a faith-based course on relationships. That's heavily, heavily in you know, about my own journey with my family of origin and with other familial relationships. So you know, I broke all the rules.
Jonathan Puddle 12:42
Rules and bones, right?
Heather Caliri 12:44
Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 12:46
Thank you for sharing that. That is... that is really something. That's profoundly affecting. "I'm right here. And I'm not going anywhere. And you don't have to do anything you don't want to do."
Heather Caliri 13:02
There's just so... The idea that we're not coerced.
Jonathan Puddle 13:06
Mhmm.
Heather Caliri 13:07
I just... like everything is coercion in our society, right? Everything is coercion in the church. Like, we are so afraid! And what would it look like for us to not be afraid?
Jonathan Puddle 13:23
Honestly, if God is actually holding all things together, like Paul says in Colossians. If, if there's actually nowhere we can flee from his presence, as the psalmist writes, or as again, Paul says in Romans like, like—I tell people quite frequently, that's kind of the bedrock of my theology—Romans 8:38-39 was printed on a plaque and my grandparents bathroom. As young as I can remember, I've been sitting there doing my poop, reading on the wall: "For I am convinced that nothing can separate me." And yet, like you said, for that to settle in our bones, in our core, in our... in our cellular structure,
Heather Caliri 14:21
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 14:21
and inform the way we live, we, I mean, I know I'm quoting a ton of Scripture, but that's just where my head is at because I am trying survive my own life right now. I mean, perfect love casts out fear. Why does... why John? Why John? Because fear has to do with punishment.
Heather Caliri 14:41
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 14:41
Is what john says. And so isn't that fascinating? All that.
Heather Caliri 14:47
Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's funny to me just how deeply at the bone level, that kind of punitive thinking is, I mean, like, I was writing about it, and I just thought like, this is the logic of children, right? Like children are so black and white. And so like, if you do this to me, then I do it back to you with emphasis, you know? And it's so like, if we're, you know, I don't, I'm not so sure about the whole Original Sin thing. But if we're talking about, like, what is sort of the brokenness that's at the heart of all of this, I think it's that sort of child-like, black and white, punitive, "I'm going to get you back" kind of thinking that just is so deep in us and that fear of... and I think it's about that fear of losing our attachment to those that we love, that not being heard and understood and have our needs needs met. It's just really hard. It's hard not to go there. And it's the spiritual work of our lives to really live out something different than that, you know?
Jonathan Puddle 15:56
Yeah, absolutely. The voices I've been reading right now, in contemplative prayer practice, and different things relating to the human condition, and suffering... is really pushing me in the direction of "we're just vulnerable." We are profoundly vulnerable. And we didn't choose to live here in the first place. So no action of our own, no consent, that we give to living as human beings, we are here profoundly vulnerable. And we discover that so much of human life is painful.
Heather Caliri 16:38
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 16:38
And accompanying that, I think, is probably a very deep-seated existential rage. That, that we are vulnerable and that we didn't choose to be and, and somewhere in there is this wild incarnation where God become... God does choose to become a human, and then willingly dies. And so somewhere in there for us is an invitation of well, "Choose life, through death," and all this weird mystery, which, which is really taking the very beginning to the very end. And so let's spend 100 years trying to figure out how to do that. But I mean, that's everything that you've just spoken of as well: depression; anger; betrayal; our, our families of origin not being safe places; discovering this use universe is not a safe place. And, and then, in very strict, fundamentalist, religious frameworks, we were never given permission to admit to those rages, or those frustrated... those fears and pains. Right? We were just put into the box. And God was put into the box.
Heather Caliri 17:50
No, definitely. I mean, I think I'm interested to hear what you're saying about our rage. And like, what are we going to choose? I there's a, there's a, an interview, a single interview, I listened to it about like six years ago, it's from the NPR show On Being with a guy named Bruce Kramer, who was at the time about to die from ALS, which is a very difficult degenerative disease. And he talked about how, and I talked about this in the course, it's been such an inspiring thing to me, he said, "I knew that I was not going to be cured, but that I could be healed." And he talked about how all of us, you know, we look at someone with a degenerative disease as if they're sort of set apart, they are facing a fate worse than death, but it's actually just death they're facing and that we all are facing that and that we all at some point will be dealing with some amount of incapacity and disability. This is just part of the human condition. And that he found that living with and reckoning with ALS, not in a trite kind of platitude way, but with a real "What does this condition have to teach me today?" How can.. he had this wonderful quote. "How do I live into the the demands of what is beyond me today?" And he talked about how, in the middle of ALS, there was no cure, but there was always healing. And I think the choice that God places before us is that acceptance of our vulnerability, of the fact that we often did not choose the situations that we were in or that even if we did choose them, maybe we didn't know, really what we were getting ourselves into, that so much of trauma is not consenting to the things that are done to us. And yet we have this amazing choice to embrace life, in its fullness, where we are, in whatever circumstance. And that sounds like crazy talk, like, let's just be honest, it sounds insane. And it sounds unfair. It sounds like, like, how could that possibly be okay? And yet, all I can see is that the people that I admire most are facing the most awful circumstances, and somehow in the middle of that, they cling on to some kind of beauty and some kind of hope. And they, they let go of self pity, which they are more than entitled to. And instead, they choose, they embrace something different, they embrace a different, more generative story. And so I am just sort of left with bewilderment about why that is necessary. Quite honestly, the rage is real, too. Sometimes I'm like, "What the hell? Why is this the plan?" Right? But if I have to choose, if I have to choose, and there are really only two good options: to give into bitterness, or to choose something more life giving. Well, I mean, what the hell, I don't really want to choose the bitterness. Because I see where that leads, I see what kinds of people you become, and what you do to other people in the middle of that... like, okay, well, that's crappy. So okay, Jesus, fine, like I'll choose the lifeline. But, yeah, it's just... it's so it's so confusing. And I do not understand. I mean, I continue to not understand why, how some of us are able to choose better, and why some people say stuck and afraid. Because again, like, we have good reasons, we are so vulnerable. And life is so bewildering, and I don't understand everything that happens, but I at least can choose to, to turn towards light each day as best as I can.
Jonathan Puddle 21:52
Yeah. Yeah, and that's it. And if and if coming back to your, your pivotal experience of God, if he is here, and isn't going anywhere, and isn't actually asking us to already be healed, or to heal ourselves, possibly just to surrender to the reality that he is here. And that he is capable of drawing us towards beauty out of this pain. In the midst of this pain... I lay on the couch, I had a very dark day of depression yesterday, it was very, very painful. And I'm handling it very well, but it's just very painful. I lay on the couch, my wife and I last night, and it was like, "Do you wanna watch TV?" "No, I don't wanna watch TV." In the end, we just laid on the couch and prayed together, which is actually something we do very rarely. Because we serve in church. And so that's where we do those things.
Heather Caliri 22:57
Hahaha.
Jonathan Puddle 22:58
But I just, I could barely pray. And but I just said God, I just need to know that you know how this feels. And I felt a very, very powerful rush of emotion. And a very keen sense of solidarity. That's all. Didn't solve my problem, didn't make me feel... didn't stop the pain. But, but I but I felt a solidarity in suffering and the God who suffers with us—which hopefully is not too awkward of a segue—which dignified me.
Heather Caliri 23:45
Mmmhmmm.
Jonathan Puddle 23:45
Which gave me yes, like dignity. Because especially with depression, one of the things you find with all kinds of illness, one of the things you lose or you think you lose, is this dignity.
Heather Caliri 23:59
Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 24:00
Certainly with a debilitating condition like ALS, the example you just shared, or even I remember sitting with my grandfather for the last seven or eight days of his life and just watching all his strength ebb out of him. You know, I'm coulda feel like I coulda catch it in a glass and and there's this dignity that perhaps has always been an illusion. And death just reveals it, reveals us for who we have always been our frailty and our vulnerability. So anyway, all of that is to say you are just about to release this really wonderful looking course that... I read through a bunch of your material. And it's called Loving Dignity.
Heather Caliri 24:44
30 Days to Loving Dignity. Yeah, I had a similar moment when I was going through a really hard... I went through therapy to kind of heal and repair and reimagine the relationships that I was struggling with. And there, it was just awful. Just so much so much darkness revealed, so much of my own complicity and brokenness revealed. Hope, like I had gone into the process hoping that things, that relationships could change, and some of them did. And some of them did not. And it was like experiencing a death, except people were still alive, right. And there was a moment where I prayed, I love the Book of Common Prayer, and I was praying the nighttime thing, and it said, it was just about how you are worthy to be praised by happy voices God, and at all times, and I just thought, there is so much—am I allowed to cuss on the show? I think I'm allowed to cuss.—There's so much shit. I am seeing real life just excrement of brokenness, every place in all of these relationships. And yet there is at all times I am invited into the, into the praise of something that is good, of someone who is not covered in excrement, that is not covered in shit. And I am... that is accessible to me at any moment. And I am, I am part of that at every moment. And nothing, none of the shit that is around me can really get at the core of who I am. Because that goodness is present with me at all moments. And it was I just realized, like, it is worth it, the suffering. It's not that the suffering itself is good. But the fact of being able to participate in goodness in the middle of this and reach to the growth that I knew that I needed so desperately to reach for that healing. That Bruce, Bruce Kramer said, it gave all of it dignity. And it helped me to mourn and grieve the things that could not be, knowing that there was something that was good. On the other end, it wasn't what I wanted. Right? It wasn't all of the redemption that I was hoping for, but it was good anyway. And I was ready to do anything to move towards that. Whatever it cost, and that knowledge gave me dignity. So there is dignity available to us and the real in the middle of really awful situations. So yes, in the middle of depression, yes. In the middle of debilitating disease, yes, in the middle of dying relationships. There's always this dignity to reach for. And what I, the reason why I made the course is I feel like in the church, we talk about relationships with platitudes, right, like we, you know, love conquers all things. And I go around, and honestly, like, there's some really amazing people in church and my church, but a lot of people who just seem stuck, and bewildered and afraid, and I have been there. And sometimes I don't feel like we get very honest talk in church. It's like that sort of that old adage of like, you know, oftentimes... I had a pastor Carol Howard Merritt, say, you know, one of the places that she's seen the most regenerative Christlike conversations are in the church basement during AA meetings. Like oftentimes, those are the places where people are really honest about how bad things are in a church. Instead, we come and we present our prettiest faces and at home, you know, we're not speaking to our spouse, and our children can hardly look us in the eye, and we don't even know what to do. Like, it's not like it's our fault. It's just so bewildering, that we don't even know what to do. So my hope in this course, was just to share some of the hard won knowledge that I picked up along the way, because I'm not, I'm not a trained therapist. I'm not a pastor, I just lived it out, which is all that any of us are doing, you know, and did a ton of... a lot of reading because I didn't know what else to do. Because I think that there is good, wonderful theology in the Christian faith to help us with this stuff. But it so often gets reduced to platitudes and sort of like easy, surface-level assurances that all will be well, that we don't really know how to apply it to what we're actually going through in our relationships.
Jonathan Puddle 29:32
Yes, so real, so real. Also, I love Carol Howard Merritt. She was on the show like, two years ago, I need to have her back on the show. It's been a long, long time. I have been the victim of character assassination, like systematic character assassination, both times in the church, once by a colleague and once by a... quasi colleague, shall we say, a partner in ministry. And it's devastating.
Heather Caliri 30:07
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 30:07
And, and destabilizing. And I had no language to describe what I was experiencing. I'm a relentless optimist who sees the best in everybody. And this is one of the things I'm unpacking with my therapist is, if someone's wrong, it's almost certainly going to be me, in my internal framework of the world, at least. And so I have spent years contorting myself. And it's interesting because I assumed it was about performance. And it's not so much about performance for me, as it is about I just don't want to think that someone else is wrong; to me that's dishonor. And so I'll probably be, I'm most likely the wrong one and stuff, then I do do all this contortion and dishonouring of myself and all this painfulness that takes place. But I remember inter... trying to intersect this experience of character assassination with forgiveness, because that was a really big value in the ministry I was a part of, and I mean, it should be a value for all Christians, but as many especially racialized people will point out to you, or victims of trauma in the church, forgiveness has been weaponized and, and very effectively, to control people and to not disturb the status quo and all this kind of stuff. So. So I mean, at a mile high view, when I looked through your coursework, you're you're talking about forgiveness, you're talking about boundaries, you're talking about loving people, in a costly way without being a doormat.
Heather Caliri 31:59
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 32:00
And I'm like, Oh, yeah, yeah, this... I feel like I have kind of struggled my way through to a functional system here. But but but I, but I might throw everything I've done out in decide it was actually not that good. So I would love to hear a bit on the, on some of your your thinking on this matter and how we affirm our own dignity and that of others while also like being okay, so this, this was wrong.
Heather Caliri 32:29
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 32:30
What happened. Speak to me.
Heather Caliri 32:34
I will opine! Yeah, no, I totally hear you about the, that "I can't possibly blame this other person" thinking because I think that that is hammered into us. In the church, you know, we are told that the greatest sin is pride, and that we always need to be, you know, not looking at the plank, you know, the speck in our brother's eye, but looking at the plank in our own and I do think that there are, that can be a stumbling block. But I've talked about how we have these, you know, the, the writer Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of a single story. And I think that that story in the Christian faith of, you know, "Pride is the greatest sin. And all of us are sinners. And therefore we need to repent of our own personal sins, and not worry about those sins of other people." It's like, no, we should not be standing in judgment, but we should have some discernment about how healthy people are. And we also, like if you have been through trauma, if you have been abused... For me, my own personal sins were not the biggest stumbling block between me and a full relationship with God, it was my shame! My shame was the biggest stumbling block and the trauma, undoing, you know, you learn how to cope with trauma in order to survive it. And those coping mechanisms work only up to a point and after that point, shame or, you know, constantly making yourself smaller in order to stay safe, safe from the people who are unhealthy in your life... that will not be a good long term coping mechanism for you. So in my case, yes, absolutely. I blamed myself, and felt ashamed in my own heart for all of the ways that my family had been dysfunctional. But I was the youngest child in a family, I did not have any agency to change that situation. So blaming myself did not make sense. It did not make sense. It did not help me get healthier.
Jonathan Puddle 34:42
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Heather Caliri 35:48
And so if we, if we constantly are just saying, "Well, I should focus on my own sin and not worry about other people's," we can ignore the systemic issues that are around us, and give people a free pass that are actively sinning against us. And it also does not help us to speak prophetic words of correction, and, you know, health into those systems, right? Like, I could not have an honest conversation with my parents about how their choices affected me if I was only thinking about how I had failed, right? As, as a sister, or as a daughter, or as a child of God, I had not... I had no prophetic way of standing up in my family and saying, "The ways that we all interact with each other are broken, and they need to change." Because if you're only looking at yourself, you can't look at relationship, right? It takes two people, right? It always takes two people or more than two people really, it's so complicated. So I think...
Jonathan Puddle 36:54
Can I just say...
Heather Caliri 36:54
Yeah, go ahead.
Jonathan Puddle 36:55
Thank you. This is amazing. And I'm just like, Oh my gosh, yes. In, in the evangelical fervor, and maybe evangelical is not even the right label for everybody, but whatever, in the fervor to move people away from pride and self righteousness, and, and like you said, this one story that we had of the speck in your brother's eye versus the log in your own... we were only equipped in with an egocentric tool!
Heather Caliri 37:28
Yes, yes.
Jonathan Puddle 37:29
How ironic is that?
Heather Caliri 37:31
Yes, I know. Totally. Right. It's very backwards. It's very backwards. And I think you know, if you have been more... I mean, and also, I do not think it's an accident that so many of the systemic sins in currently in Christianity are about our abuses of power. And those words of like, "You need to worry about pride, you need to worry about the speck in your, in your I mean, the plank in your own eye." Those are prophetic words to people who have power.
Jonathan Puddle 38:00
Yes, yes!
Heather Caliri 38:02
They are prophetic and difficult words for, let's say, white men in our society.
Jonathan Puddle 38:08
Yeah.
Heather Caliri 38:09
They are not necessarily prophetic words to people who do not have power. I mean, we all need to be worried about our self righteousness, and that's always a stumbling block for all of us. But that might not be our primary difficulty. And at least for me, as a woman, I needed to worry more about naming the ways I had been shamed and sinned against and actually, you know, flushing all of that toxicity out of my system and no longer agreeing with the lies that had been told me and I wasn't even the primary person shamed in my family system. So my brother and my sister had a lot more work to do and healing their own... all the lies that they had been told, you know. African American brothers and sisters, gay brothers and sisters have been told lies about who they are, and their primary struggle is probably not going to be with believing they are better than they actually are.
Jonathan Puddle 39:10
Right? Right. That's been one of the pushbacks I get on my book, right? It's called You Are Enough and so right off the bat there's there's there's a segment of the church that's like, "Well, mhmmma mhhma hmmhaa" and and I do my best to be gracious. But there's this part of me that says, "Are you kidding me? Do you? Do you need more reminders about how much your efforts to do good fail and fall apart to nothing around you? Am I unique in being keenly aware of how much I'm in need of a Savior?"
Heather Caliri 39:45
Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 39:45
"Can we take that for a bloodied granted, please?" And then figure out what to do next? Because I don't need any more reminders about how busted up I am.
Heather Caliri 39:55
Oh, totally. Well, and the crazy thing is, so you know, narcissism is kind of a buzzword right now. And that is honestly a lot of the a lot of the stuff that I'm writing about in my course, a lot of the stuff that I'm speaking to, but narcissism is not actually an excess of pride at its root, it is a problem of deeply disordered self attachment, self identity. If you do not have a good relationship with yourself, you try to project this image of being all knowing, all powerful, all wonderful. It's that projection, that's narcissism, but at its core, it's still about vulnerability, it is still about shame. So maybe that person needs to be spoken to about their pride. Yes, absolutely. And their sin, yes. But at its root is still about our deep need to belong and know that we're Beloved. And for some of us, there are extra things in the way of getting to that. But at its core, that is what we are all struggling with.
Jonathan Puddle 40:56
Yes. Can you talk a little bit to this thing about punishment and love, especially as it relates to wrongdoing and injustice? Because I am watching, like, there's obviously so much evil that is being brought to light as it should be. And I talk a lot about on the show about all these different systemic injustices. But I, I am concerned, sometimes in certain things, I see that it feels like there's a... that punishment is like a ditch that we can fall into on the other side. And and surely Love is a more univer... like there's got to be a flourishing where, where somehow even perpetrators... where there's a path to redemption for them. And I know in these conversations, it's, we have to have this nuance, because because it's not the victims' responsibility to to bring healing to the perpetrator, right? Categorically no, you don't have that role. You don't have to do that,
Heather Caliri 42:09
Right.
Jonathan Puddle 42:09
It's not on you. But if but but... but you're bringing love and dignity together in a place of agency, how do you navigate some of that even just at a relational level when, in what you teach?
Heather Caliri 42:25
I think I think for me, the dignity part is, who do we... who are the people we want to turn into? And if we lean towards punishment, if we learn lean towards getting some of our own back, we will be following in, falling into exactly the same trap that turned the people that hurt us into the people that they are. So we kind of like that's why I say it feels unfair, because God only knows it is understandable! And even I think God's real anger at injustice in us that desires punishment for wrongdoing, like that is a natural, and even sometimes a good... like there should be consequences. And there are consequences, but they are not ours to bring into being.
Jonathan Puddle 43:21
Hmm.
Heather Caliri 43:23
And so I you know, I was I'm really inspired by the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates. He's a writer for The Atlantic and has written several amazing books. And he talked about how—he's not a believer—which gave him more credibility, and he talks about, you know, growing up his parents were, you know, very into the Black Power movement. And he talked about, you know, reading about, you know, the kingdoms in Africa that showed that, you know, people of African descent had every bit as much civilization behind them as any European, right, and that was very healing for him. But he realized at some point that there was like a picture of an African Queen who was sitting on one of her subjects as her throne. And he thought, that's exactly the same thing that was done to us later. And he thought, "What do I want to turn into?" And he recognized that in this civilization that was so inspiring to him, there were also the seeds of that kind of oppression, that it was every place and not just limited to white people. You know, we perfected the art and spread it around the world, but like, it is part of every civilization and it is a trap for every single human being. So if we are not going to become the people that hurt us, there is only one pathway available. And that is not the punishment route. That is the, "Yes, there are consequences for what you've done. I may not be able to be in relationship for you. With you. But I am not going to try to beat you over the head with what you've done, I am going to try to..." In the course I talked about having a hopeful imagination for people. So trying to see the person that you've... that has hurt you, seeing them as much as you can, made in the image of God. Imagining what they would be like, if circumstances had been different. You know, I was talking to my husband the other day, and I was talking about someone who has hurt me deeply, with whom I have a very difficult relationship now. And I thought, and I said, you know, was I at eight years old, better than that person at eight years old? How do I even know how we ended up in such different places? I don't even know, it's certainly not because I'm just so great. Like, what, as an eight year old, really? And yet, we made different choices. And we ended up in very different places. So at its core, we need to try to imagine the person God created that person to be and also to just mourn. Because anybody who is hurting people the way they're doing, the way that people do, in awful, terrible ways, has been through something that's awful. So say, for instance, white people have been complicit in this, you know, genocide and enslavement. And that has real effects on white culture. Now, we are all living out the numbness and apathy and lack of empathy. And oh, my God, look where it's gotten us! We have not been winners from that history. Right? So let us let us stand and grieve what has been lost to us in our culture, the losses that you know, while we also affirm the the terror and the pain that we've inflicted on other people, groups, like yes, all of that at once. And we have to have compassion for ourselves where we are, as much as we also need to take responsibility for it, those things go together. And the more we shame ourselves for just being terrible, awful monsters, the less likely we are to take up responsibility for it. There is no other way to get better and to heal these relationships, than by compassion, and grace, and constantly, you know, constantly just grieving the losses that are there. The only other way is through numbness and defensiveness. And that road leads to death. It just does.
Jonathan Puddle 47:32
Seriously. Wow. Oh, man. Friends, I think we all need to go and sign up for Heather's course.
Heather Caliri 47:42
Haha! Yes, please.
Jonathan Puddle 47:45
Can you just tell us a bit about how it's delivered? What, what the setup is and where people can go and find more?
Heather Caliri 47:51
Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to heathercaliri.com/dignity to find a link that will get you to the place where you can actually buy it. Um, it is. So this is, I'm offering it from now until the course... until June 7. So if you go now, and you order before June 1, you will get the course which is self-paced, it's really designed so like 15 to 20 minutes a day, you can do one of the lessons over the weekdays and and over the course of a month, you will get all of the course content. In addition, if you sign up before June 1, you'll get access to a free Facebook group. So that will have, there's a workbook that goes along to the course. So we will be discussing some of those workbook questions in the Facebook group. There will be live Q & A is with me so you can submit... I actually really, really love advice columns. I basically want to be Dear Abby.
Jonathan Puddle 48:52
I know, they're like, like sanctioned Christian gossip.
Heather Caliri 48:55
Yes, exactly.
Jonathan Puddle 48:57
"Oh, yes. I want to privately admit that I have the same problem and no one will ever know."
Heather Caliri 49:02
It's awesome. So you can you can submit and allow me to play Dear Abby. And I also did interviews. That's why I was interviewing Carol Howard Merritt. She's one of the experts that I came in... that I asked to come in and talk about. She specifically writes a lot about spiritual abuse. So how do we have loving dignity in our churches? How do we grieve the very real losses that we've had and yet also move towards love and away from punishment? I have Melanie Dale talking about parenting and Bronwyn Lea talking about you know, relationships in the church. So there are some really great experts, oh, Tasha Hunter, who's a licensed clinical social worker, so experts to kind of round out what it is that I'm seeing. And yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be great. I'm... the first cohort of the class, people, like one of the women said "I wasn't sure what to expect" and she she said that the relationship that she picked to look at for the course, that nothing has changed but... issues are still there... but she feels more at peace about it because she's questioning some of her own shame that was keeping her locked up into this sort of difficult, guilt-ridden relationship. And now that she realizes she doesn't have to feel shame, she can actually choose, "What kind of relationship do I actually want to do here? And so far as it is up to me, how do I live at peace with this person?" You know? And I think that we all have that opportunity. I think that way is open to everyone, no matter what relationship we're talking about. The way of peace and dignity is there. It just can take some creative imagination in order to find it. So yeah, you can go to heathercaliri.com/dignity to sign up.
Jonathan Puddle 50:54
Awesome. Friends, you'll find those all in the show notes, of course. Heather, would you pray for us?
Heather Caliri 51:02
Yeah, absolutely. Lord Jesus, God, I just want to acknowledge our rage. I am angry, Lord, that so many of us suffer. I am angry, Lord, at the ways that I am involved in that suffering. I'm angry that there are not easier ways to redeem our relationships, or I would like it to be simpler, I would like it to be more clear cut. I would like the pain to go away like immediately. I'm thinking of Jonathan and his depression and the ways that his character has been assassinated. I'm thinking of my own life. And of friends and family who are suffering Lord, we would like it to be easier but Lord, since it is not easier, we pray for strength. We pray that we would not take burdens onto our own shoulders that are not our own. We pray that we would have creativity and and hopeful imagination for these difficult relationships. And Lord, I pray that we would depend on you that it would be your power that changes us that changes our relationships, and that we would truly have an easy yoke on our shoulders when it comes to each of these relationships. I pray that you would redeem all of these things that we are struggling with. I pray all of this in your son's name, amen.
Jonathan Puddle 52:44
Amen. Thank you, Heather. Friends, I highly, highly recommend you head over to heathercaliri.com/dignity. You will also find it linked in the show notes of course, as well as some of the other podcasts and resources that she mentioned, she brought up during our conversation. Registration for her course, "30 Days to Loving Dignity" closes on June 7 and as she mentioned, there's some perks for signing up before June 1. So head over to heathercaliri.com/dignity, sign up for her course, I believe it is going to be a life changer for many people. So, much love to you all! Thanks for tuning in. If you'd like to know more about me and what I'm doing, you'll find me at jonathanpuddle.com. You'll find the show notes for this podcast there as well. You'll find links to the B-Side for this podcast there as well. And you will find the transcribed text of this podcast if you would like to read over any parts of it again or you have a friend who would benefit from being able to read the text that is over there. JonathanPuddle.com and my writing's there, links to my books are there. Thank you so much for being here today. Much love, Grace and peace to you. Godspeed. We'll talk soon.