Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Welcome to SEASON TEN of the Everything Happens Podcast!

I started this podcast as a way to create language and community around some of life's most painful moments. I was so overwhelmed by the question of how do we live in the after? After a diagnosis, after a death, after a divorce, after something that changes our lives or takes it apart.

I had just been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and I was only 35. I had a two year old at home with this giant lovey Disney eyes, and I had the job that I loved, and then suddenly, I had a picture of a future that was just never going to be. So I wanted to know, like, how do we do this? How do you find joy and hope and love even after life comes undone? And after years of treatment and years of uncertainty, I guess I realized somewhere along the way that this wasn't really a one and done kind of question. This is the sort of work that evolves over time as life continues to contract and expand and break our hearts and then put us back together all over again. And so thank you for being the people that I've had along the way. These are not, of course, the conversations anybody really wants to have, but we do, you and me and this gorgeous community here.

We have so many great episodes coming to you for SEASON TEN. We're going to be talking to tender and wise and funny people about what they've discovered during their before and afters. People like Beth Moore on long faithfulness when life really doesn't work out the way you thought it did. Mary Louise Kelly on empty-nesting and rediscovering yourself after the kids leave. Rabbi Steve Leder on how tragedies teach us and how we can just see beauty somehow. Plus SO MANY MORE.

New episodes coming your way every Tuesday this Spring.

This episode also includes a conversation between Kate and her producer, Jessica Richie about their new book of blessings, The Lives We Actually Have.

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THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (releases TODAY). Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

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How do we reach for wisdom instead of self-help solutions? Much to their embarrassment, New York Times columnist David Brooks and Kate Bowler often find their books in the “Self-Help section.” David sat down with Kate at the historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. to talk about her book, No Cure For Being Human, and the twisty-turny journey of living without easy answers.

In this live, funny and poignant conversation, David and Kate discuss:

• If a life is ever complete
• How to define hope if it isn’t just a type of optimism
• The limits of stoicism
• What I wish healthcare professionals would do instead

And you cannot miss David’s unplanned pun at the beginning. It was so bad and so funny and nothing can be better.

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Find me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email for bits of wisdom, prayers, free downloads, and more.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy, today.

Need a little something to walk with you toward Christmas? Receive our FREE Advent Devotional, here.

Introducing, GOOD ENOUGH: 40ish Devotions for a Life of Imperfection. Pre-order your copy, here.

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How should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The mysterious way beauty can be found the closer we inch to death (our own or someone else’s).
• The importance of just showing up. And being you.
• Honoring someone’s memory at the same time being truthful about how human they were
• The peace that comes from acknowledging that life is full of dualities
• “If you have to go through hell, don’t come out empty handed” (Steve Leder), but no, the lessons were never, ever worth the pain

CW: suicide, adult language

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Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many of us miss the churches of our childhood and are trying to figure out what pieces of our faith to keep and which to leave behind. My guest today knows that better than anyone. Randall Balmer is a historian of American religion at Dartmouth College, THE expert of American evangelicalism, and a pastor’s kid (PK!) of a fundamentalist preacher.

In this conversation, Kate and Randy talk about:

• How to reconcile the evangelism of today with its progressive past
• The cost of a more manufactured worship experience
• Why they both value those stray moments of faith
• What (if any) hope is there for evangelicalism
• Maintaining faith when you’ve been hurt by the church

Kate ends with a blessing for when faith sometimes breaks your heart.

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Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

Subscribe to our weekly email for blessings.

No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) is now available wherever books are sold. Order your copy, today.

Looking for some short spiritual reflections and blessings? Check out GOOD ENOUGH: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Available wherever books are sold.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Historian and Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff explores the cracks in our seamless worldviews... or at least the worldviews we thought were seamless until we’re faced with tragedies of all kinds. In this wide-ranging exploration, Kate and Michael probe humanity's enduring attempt to console ourselves and construct meaning from our pain.

In this conversation, Kate and Michael discuss:

• Why truth and trust are so important when it comes to finding meaning in our pain
• The difference between comfort and consolation
• The limits of stoicism and hyper-futurism
• What it means to be hopeful
• The importance of community through pain and suffering

Michael does not denigrate anyone’s attempt for comfort, but asks us to look carefully at the consolation that lasts. He asks: What is consolation? And why do we all crave that practice of meaning-making?

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Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here.

Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter.

THE LIVES WE ACTUALLY HAVE: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days is out now. Learn more, here.

We have free Lent guides for you to use by yourself, with a group, or with your church. Click here to get started.

Leave us a voicemail and who knows? We might even be able to use your voice on the air: 919-322-8731

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices