Drops Make an Ocean

Kate Bowler: Here we are again. Yet another year of living like this. In communities that are fractured, in families that are divided, in a world that feels impossible to hold together. In all of this hopelessness and helplessness. Without signposts or landmarks on how we do this well. And the deep irony is whenever you listen to this, this will all feel true. I’m Kate Bowler. And this is Everything Happens. How’s that for an opener? Alright. Okay. Please don’t turn this off yet because, holy crap, do I have a conversation for you? This one will leave you feeling encouraged, refreshed, renewed, and, dare I say, hopeful. We’re going to be talking about ways we can practically reengage with our neighbors and communities. It is all about those small, faithful actions we can take right now that add up to something that looks like change, I promise you. My guest today is Sharon McMahon. She is a former high school teacher who rose to prominence during the 2020 election cycle for her viral efforts to educate the public on political misinformation through her popular Instagram account, ‘Sharon Says So,’ and now she is all of our government teacher. She is the author of a new book, The Small and the Mighty. Sharon leads an online community that lovingly call themselves the GoverNerds. And she is the exact person I want to be talking to right now as we face another year of political chaos. I wish I could just say political uncertainty, but let’s just say chaos. You’re going to love her. Here she is.

Sharon McMahon: Another beautiful experience of politics In the United States.

Kate: Right? Did you feel like your family was just barely coming together again? Sorry.

Sharon: Everyone’s looking forward to it. Here we are again.

Kate Bowler: And I like that we are in your home.

Sharon: My hometown!

Kate: We are in your environs.

Sharon: Yes.

Kate: You grew up here, right?

Sharon: I did grow up here and I moved away when I, when I grew up, I moved away, moved to D.C., moved to California, and then moved back. It’s my it’s like a real special spot.

Kate: When you encourage people to rediscover the glories of Duluth or the, because like I went to school in Minneapolis where I was, would just like to pause on the words, considered an international student and had to attend international student orientation.

Sharon: Did they offer you a translator?

Kate: They actually did give me a very helpful like like cheat sheet about like when people say, I’ll see you later, they don’t necessarily want to see you later.

Sharon: It doesn’t mean I’ll see you in an hour. It’s just like, see you later.

Kate: That’s right.

Sharon: Did it say what it means when somebody says, I’m just going to sneak past you? I’m just going to scooch on by. I’m going to sneak past ya. That’s what sneak past ya means. Anybody who’s ever been to a wedding or a crowded event of any kind will tell you, I’m just going to sneak past you. They’re, the thing that I’m going to sneak past ya, what cracks me up about it, and I used to work in the wedding industry where I might say, I’m going to sneak past you like, 100 times a night. Right. The thing about it is that by announcing it, by definition, you are not sneaking. There’s no sneaking. You’re like, I will now sneak, right? That’s not sneaking. So there’s something about this concept of like, well, I’m just going to sneak past you, where you just, like, squeezin’ in the little that. I’m curious to know if did you, did you go Macalester?

Kate: Macalester, yeah.

Sharon: If Macalester put I’m going to sneak past ya in the international student orientation packet.

Kate: From like like here ye hear ye?

Sharon: Yeah.

Kate: I’m going to make sure it gets in there.

Sharon: Now, you’re an alumnus.

Kate: Thank you.

Sharon: And so now you have some sway over as a former international student at Macalester College. Here’s my feedback.

Kate: I will I will do that immediately as part of my, my gosh. It is funny, though, having lived in the middle, like I’m from the middle of Canada. Yup. You’re also from the glorious middle. Until I lived on the coast, I didn’t really understand that so much of this country’s culture is determined by this very like bicoastal.

Sharon: Yeah.

Kate: Even just like circulation of ideas. Like whose opinion matters, who’s the go to for… It must given the, you have the loveliest community that you lead.

Sharon: I do.

Kate: And they, I imagine, want to feel like there are all kinds of voices that need to be listened to about like rising rates of groceries and inflation and just representation. Do you find that, like, there’s a maybe like a Minnesota thing going on with your identity, with your secret identity?

Sharon: I mean, I lean into it, right? You know, like, I, I can turn on the Minnesota accent whenever I want to. I can. That’s one of my, that’s one of my special skills. I can be like. So y’all need to listen to me, okay? Right now, there’s way too much arguing. Pump the brakes. Right. Dial it back. This is not how we treat each other, okay? So I do think there is a little bit of that like Minnesota Mom. I can’t. It’s inescapable, right? It’s like. It’s part of my identity, my DNA. But I also find that that sort of like Minnesota mom mentality, it is easy to discredit. You know what I mean? Like, it’s it’s easy to it’s easy to discount. She’s just a mom from Minnesota. In fact, the first time I was on CNN, that was what they billed me as was a Minnesota mom. As though that is what I have to offer is an accent and fruits of my loin.

Kate: Right.

Sharon: That I like, I know how to make a bar and like a hot dish. And I gave birth to these kids over here. That’s what I have to offer.

Kate: You know, like breaking news. Yeah.

Sharon: Yeah. A Minnesota mom said something really unique on the Internet, you guys. News at 11.

Kate: When people begin to feel disempowered to the point where they’re not sure why now is a great time to get reengaged, I wonder what, like, your most intense pep talk is for those who feel like because they’ve been ignored, then it doesn’t matter?

Sharon: That’s a great question. And I think that’s like a huge chunk of the country right now, feels that way. Like what matters to me does not matter to anybody in power. What matters to me, I don’t see that reflected in leadership. I don’t see my concerns being addressed. What I see is grandstanding. I see people making themselves rich at my expense. I see people who are more interested in spending all of their time making viral tweets so that they can, you know, cha-ching on the donations. I think that’s like I would venture to say that that’s most of the country right now feels disempowered. And that’s, so that’s not an unusual way to feel. And one of the reasons I wrote this book is because history is filled with those people. We, all we have to do is just open the door a little and there are tens of thousands, if not millions of people who have felt the exact same way, who literally just kept putting one foot in front of the other and had hope that some day our collective small efforts would matter. And had they given up, had they said to themselves, forget it, it’s pointless. Our people will always be enslaved. Our people will never have the right to an education. Women will never have the right to vote. Nothing that I do will make a difference in the grand scheme of things. If our sort of collective community of our ancestors, for lack of a better term, if they had said to themselves, forget it. We would be missing out on such an incredible opportunity today. Right? We would not have what we have today. When women just show up to vote, roll up in your car. Get out of the car. Run in, grab a ballot. Vote and are back in your car in five minutes. That took decades. It took the concerted effort of thousands of people 80 years to make that happen. So my biggest pep talk honestly is to have faith that your contribution absolutely does matter, that drops make an ocean, that this is the weight of the world is not on your shoulders. It’s not on Kate’s shoulders or Sharon’s shoulders or anybody else’s shoulders, that all of the problems of the world are not yours alone to fix. And I think we can look around and so easily see thousands of problems that need to be fixed. Everything from international conflict to homelessness to the person who lives down the street who’s sick. There’s an endless number of problems that need to be fixed, and we feel like we’re doing it wrong if we’re not personally addressing all of those problems. And so I think it really helps to remember this helps me at least. That we are all given talents, desires, interests. You know, you have academic interests that have led you to study certain things throughout your life, right? I have academic interests that have led me to study certain things. I have interests in terms of groups that I’m interested in helping or causes that are near and dear to my heart. I would posit that we are given those things for a reason and that that reason is part of where we are supposed to make an impact but we can’t fix at all. And so if we let go of the idea that I’m doing it wrong, if I can’t address income inequality, global world hunger, international conflict in the Middle East, if I can’t address all of the issues at my child’s school, I’m not making a difference. But you’re not meant to fix it all. That that’s actually, anybody who says I alone can fix it. Like that person has always been a dictator, Kate. Right?

Kate: That person has a personality disorder.

Sharon: Yes, that person needs psychological inpatient treatment. They have delusions of grandeur. Anybody who says I alone can fix it is a person you shouldn’t be following. Yeah. So I think it it helps me to know that I am supposed to make a difference in some areas and not others. And that’s not just acceptable, that’s how it’s meant to be. That’s how it’s meant to be.

Kate: It’s a lovely vocation. And people can be like, what, what like calls me into doing anything.

Sharon: Yes.

Kate: What can I. Sometimes I think like that. I know I love somebody or a cause. Or an institution. Yes. Because I’d like to make their problems my problems and everyone else’s problems. It’s just going to be. I’m going to get weird about this one issue and, and it’s going to be annoying. And caring always is.

Sharon: Kind of is.

Kate: I never thought, though, until you were describing the the sort of fatigue, how much it sounds like idealism is almost making everybody feel more tired or they’re like, well, because we’d like to imagine ourselves, I think because we’re more kind of globally aware and yet more sort of vaguely aware, we have too many forces. And then in wanting to be the kind of person who, you know, cares, then we find ourselves caring about less and less.

Sharon: I think that’s so right that the human experience has not evolved to the point where we have the ability to impact equally all of the things that are happening around the world. If you think about people a hundred years ago, they might read about a war in a newspaper that they get once a week, right? My great grandmother. Her ability to ascertain what is happening on the other side of the globe is very, very limited. And so people had a much smaller sphere of influence.

Kate: Mennonites got Lutheran newspapers from this area and stayed that stayed up to date. I remember thinking about this like, exactly what were you what were you worried about? You’re totally right, though, like economy of attention was, you know, still global, but like much more focused.

Sharon: So much smaller. And and I would I would imagine that my great grandmother or even my grandmother who was born in 1920, she did not go to bed at night worried about a conflict on the other side of the world. Now, that’s not to say that that conflict just didn’t matter or that, you know, we should just pretend conflicts don’t exist, but that she didn’t think that was her problem to solve. Right. That itwas people who lived near that issue, it was their problem to solve. And she had her problems to solve and her family to influence and her community to impact. She didn’t feel, I would imagine, like it was her job to fix everything in the world. And I do think that that that sense of good hearted idealism. This is not a this is not a a shame or a slam on people who want to help, because I hear that from people all the time. What can I do? They even ask me, you know, like I publish this newsletter called The Preamble. In the comment section, people every day are like at the end of every newsletter, can you give us something we can do about this? They want to feel like, here’s here’s somebody you can write to, Here’s a cause you can donate to. Here’s a thing, a way you can change this thing. They very much want to feel empowered, and I totally understand where that comes from. It’s always coming from a good place. I want to help. I want to be the kind of person that helps. I want to be a kind, caring, compassionate person. But I do think in some ways that is that is contributing to our sense of helplessness because we can’t impact everything that is happening in the world. Yeah. And at no time in human history have people felt responsible to impact everything that was happening that was happening around the world like we do today.

Kate: Yeah. That reminds me of you on this last week. I was listening to a generation, a full generation above me talk about what they were buzzy-buzzing about. This person’s cousin, that person’s relationship, drama, etc., etc.. And and then almost every single person I talked to in this community had specific volunteer work that they were doing. So they had this like. But the way they were talking, I realized, was so embodied. Like it was they they weren’t trying to Kevin Bacon their way to every problem. Everything was like two degrees removed from someone they actually knew in a place where they were actually connected. And I thought, I don’t think A) I’m like that, or B) I know enough people who are as enmeshed in, I mean, and so they had their specific problems. Their specific problems were there working on refugee resettlement through their churches and they were working on usually being mad that one particular charity sends out too much paper in their in their mailers.

Sharon: It’s too many mailers.

Kate: Strong words about it.

Sharon: It’s many mailers. I don’t want this much mail from this one group. You know, my husband’s mother, my mother in law, who’s since passed away. When she retired, her husband worked for the federal government. So they moved around the country all the time. But when they retired, they retired to the small town that she grew up in. And when I say small town, I mean like fewer than 1000 people. Very small town in the south. And she over the course of her retirement, she she retired when she was relatively young and healthy and she had a long, long life living in the small town. She and her friends slowly took over that town. I would like somebody to make a TV show about Nancy and her friends, okay? Because this woman slowly took over the election board, the library board, the school board, the community center. Name any small town organization, she was at the helm of it or was best friends with the woman who was. This entire town was basically being run by a bunch of 65 year old women. And I’m like, frankly, that we need more of that.

Kate: I’m into it.

Sharon: We need more retired 65-year-old women totally running this country. That is what we are missing. Truly, there’s nobody no one who was better able to, like, make things happen, get things done, knows everybody, up in everybody’s business, knows who to call if the plumbing is leaking. Right? Knows all the things.

Kate: It’s such a good analogy for what we wish we could do with policy.

Sharon: Yes. Yes.

Kate: It would be nice if we knew who to call, who’s going to pay for the plumbing.

Sharon: Yes, precisely. And so, but she was she was very concerned with her community. But she did not feel it was her responsibility to become the secretary of state. Do you know what I mean? She was not like, let me fly around the country, round the world, and be like, gonna meet with Moammar Gadhafi. No. But you know what I’m saying? Like her, she did what she could, where she was with the resources available to her. And she made a huge difference in that community. She and her friends, she then enlisted her friends. Right. And she and her friends did far more than the one person, she alone could have done.

Kate: I like this caring small. I like that. I find that so, because I feel I feel ridiculous most of the time, well just in general, but especially when trying to solve a, I don’t know, intractable problem.

Sharon: Right? Like, how do we fix the global banking crisis? I have no idea. I’m the wrong person to ask about that.

Kate: I feel like I’m constantly crying over single-use plastic. Because I’m in a situation where I’m like, I am not in charge. I’m not doing enough.

Sharon: Right? What am I supposed to do about coal-fired power, coal-fired power plants in China? What am I personally supposed to do about that? And yet I’m supposed to lose sleep over it. Right. And so we’re asking people to lose sleep over something they cannot have any, there’s no possibility for them to impact that. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t care about the environment and that somebody shouldn’t be talking to China about their coal-fired power plants. But that person is not me. Okay. I have other jobs. I care about other things. I have other skills. I have other education. I have other spheres of influence.  It’s not speaking to Chinese billionaires. It’s not my sphere of influence. Nor is it yours, I would imagine.

Kate: You don’t know me.

Sharon: You don’t know nothing about me. You know, I highly doubt that when Nancy died that she would have said, like when she was on her deathbed, I don’t think she would have said I didn’t fix the coal-fired power plants in China. I didn’t fix single-use plastics. She would have felt like she did a lot. She would have felt like she did things that mattered, that kids ate and read and played at the pool and that they had fair and free elections in her little town. And she would have felt like what she did really made a difference to somebody. So because she was willing to work where she was, you know, with the resources available to her.

Kate: Yeah. I like that. It’s such a great argument against American hyperindividualism. And it’s such a good argument for, feeling, I don’t know as to scale as we are. Like, I’m thinking of those when when they first when, the very first like big box stores were built and we felt weird walking by them. And then you go on a little main street and you see that everything is just one story or two stories tall and you realize, like this is to scale. Like I’m only this tall. So for living in this Ikea-feeling world.

Sharon: Yes. Yes.

Kate: I imagine just like, no, we can just bring it back to Main Street. We’re only this tall.

Sharon: You know, one of the things she always told me about when somebody in their town died.

Sharon: Yeah.

Sharon: All of the other people in the town, and of course, this is sort of a gendered perspective with a small town in the South. Born in the 1930s, women cleaned right and cooked. That was the idea. But everybody in their town would while they were at the funeral, while the family was at the funeral, would go to the person’s home who had experienced the loss and completely clean the house from top to bottom. Like ten, ten people who probably barely knew you because they were not at the funeral. Right, they weren’t close enough to you to go to the funeral? Ten people would descend on your house so that when you got home, 2 or 3 hours later, your house would be completely cleaned and your fridge would be full of food. And this was the culture of this small town. And yes, small towns can be toxic. And we’ve all seen the movies. You know.

Kate: They won’t let you dance.

Kate: But I love this idea that you are connected to other people in your community, even if they’re not your best friend, even if they don’t have a dinner at your house on Saturday night, that the right thing to do is to care for someone in their time of need. And everyone knew that when you left for the funeral, you left your back door open because you know that people were going to show up. And I love that. I think we’ve gotten away from that. And we now just doomscroll about all of the problems that we can’t fix instead of addressing ones that we can.

Kate: We’re going to be right back after a break to hear from our sponsors. Don’t go anywhere. One issue that’s really important to you is the eradication of medical debt. And you or your Governerds have been very effective.

Sharon: We really have forgiven so much medical debt. I know. I mean, it really does help that we partner with this incredible organization Undo Medical Debt, but we’ve forgiven over $300 million of medical debt.

Kate: Holy crap.

Sharon: And you can make an argument that medical debt shouldn’t be a thing like, I don’t disagree with you.

Kate: Sure, everything like that can domino its way back into I guess I have to get a medical degree and then start my own hospital and create a different system.

Sharon: That’s right. That’s right. Sometimes people. Are critical of other people’s efforts because they don’t believe that what they’re doing is changing the system sufficiently. Right. So should we say to, you know, Corrie Ten Boom, the Jews that you saved by hiding them in your home? It didn’t stop Hitler. Now that, what a waste of your time. Nobody thinks that, right? The people who you know. Do we say to Harriet Tubman: the people who you saved on the Underground Railroad. You didn’t end enslavement. Sorry. Wasn’t good enough. Right? We don’t we don’t have that belief about people who we hold up as heroes from the past. But yet we want to apply this standard to people today. You’re not doing enough to address the systemic issue of A, B and C, so your your efforts are in vain. That’s very discouraging to people.

Kate: Yeah, it really, it really is. Everything you care about. Insufficient.

Sharon: Insufficient. What you did means nothing. Good try, but no.

Kate: Especially to when we’ve had medical debt is something that I.

Sharon: Yeah.

I mean. The very first time I got sick, we, it almost bankrupted my family and being in this sort of gaping hole of bio-capitalism and not having any structural solution, it’s been really meaningful for me to know that there are people out there working on structural solutions while then I can just be at that moment like the patient.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah.

Sharon: You know.

Sharon: Yeah. I, I look at these things working on, you know, the acute issue and then working on the chronic issue. But those are things that should both be happening at the same time. Right? And maybe chances are good that your interest in a topic is in one lane or the other. I liken it to a patient comes into the emergency room with a gunshot wound, and while they’re doing the imaging of like, where is it, can we get it, etc.. They discover that this patient has cancer. Right? The patient needs to live through the night in order to treat the systemic issue, the chronic issue of the cancer. We need both. We can’t just be like, yeah, I’m really sorry you’re bleeding, but the cancer is, till we hear cancer, Big Pharma. You know what I mean? Like, that idea is stupid. Right? That’s stupid. That we would let people die because Big Pharma. Right.

Kate: Like, also whenever I’m sad, if you could just say Big Pharma in that voice, that would make me really happy.

Sharon: Big Pharma.

Kate: You’ve been working on this long before your husband needed.

Sharon: Yeah.

Kate: It was pretty recently that your husband had a very it was very dramatic. And was it surprising to?

Sharon: Oh yes. For anybody who doesn’t know, he went to his normal yearly checkup one year and was fine. And the following one year later he was in stage five renal failure, with absolutely no indication at his one-year visit prior that he was that he was having problems. He was experiencing symptoms like feeling tired. Like it was hard for, like he’d get to the top of a set of stairs and be like, why am I so tired? But just thinking maybe I’m not in shape anymore. Maybe I need to work out some more. Like not attributing it to any kind of systemic issue and goes to this visit. And the doctor called him right away because, you know, when you go to your yearly physicals, you get bloodwork.

Kate: You get paperwork later.

Sharon: Yeah, yeah. The doctor called him immediately and was like, you need to come right back in because they wanted to ensure that there was not a lab error. Right, and like, not a mistake in what they were seeing. So they repeated the test and it found the same thing. And they got him a, an emergency referral to a nephrologist. And that was a few few days later after that. And so from the time he went in for his yearly physical till the time that he saw a nephrologist who said you need a kidney transplant was less than ten days.

Kate: Oh my God.

Sharon: To go from 0 to 60, that was very shocking. Of course he was, he, by all appearances, was healthy. And have been perfectly healthy the year before. So, yeah, there’s a whole process for how you get a kidney transplant. And ultimately, my mom ended up donating a kidney to a stranger so that Chris could get a kidney from a stranger as part of a donor chain.

Kate: Oh my gosh.

Sharon: And he is now coming up on his four year anniversary of his kidney transplant.

Kate: Oh my gosh.

Sharon: Yeah. And we did hear from his kidney donor who is what they call in the medical community a Good Samaritan donor. That’s the actual term that they use is a Good Samaritan donor where somebody donates a kidney or a portion of a liver into the donor pool system without an intended recipient, just like somebody out there could use this portion of my liver or could use one of my kidneys. And you group whose job it is to figure these things out will choose who this should go to. And he was a 26-year-old electrician from Texas who was working on a job inside of a hospital, listening to a podcast while he’s working. And the podcast episode was talking about living organ donation. I don’t know what podcast it was, but he thought to himself, I could do that. And on his lunch break, he called the National Kidney Foundation and got information about the donation process. And it’s a very, very lengthy process to determine even if you’re eligible. I have undergone the process, so I’m very familiar with how much work it is. You have a very clear picture of your own health when you are being examined to see if you are eligible to donate your body part. He went through the organ donation process and they were like, you don’t have anybody in your life that you’re trying to donate this to? And he said no. And so Chris got his kidney. His kid- Chris nicknamed his kidney Magnus. That’s its nickname. It’s very mighty powerful Viking kidney in his mind. And we heard from his donor and he his donor was feeling frustrated that they were going to make him wait a full year before he could donate a portion of his liver.

Kate: Okay.

Sharon: He thought he’d be able to do it after six months. And they were like, you really should wait a year to, like, fully recover before you do that. And he was like, I just kind of wanted to do it like, now.

Kate: Oh my gosh.

Sharon: So my mom’s kidney went to somebody in Wisconsin. We don’t know who. And, you know, all of that stuff is confidential. And if they the donors and recipients want to get in touch, that’s done through, you know, a social worker at the transplant center. So we don’t know who her kidney belongs to now. Yeah. But yeah, he pandemic was very challenging time. And it’s challenging when you are immunocompromised and will be forever. And there’s nothing that will ever change that. You have to be immunocompromised to be able to have this donated organ. And at the beginning of the pandemic, when there were no treatments or vaccines or anything available for anybody yet, people with donated kidneys had a 30% mortality rate. So if you contracted Covid, you had a 1 in 3 chance nearly of dying. And amongst people who did not die, a very significant portion of those people lost their donated organ. So it was the pandemic was a very isolating time for us because of his very, very real medical issues, not some perceived theoretical issue, but a very real chance that he could die, leave his young children. Yeah. I mean, the pandemic was challenging for everybody for a variety of reasons, but this was like another layer on top of it.

Kate: To see people through the lens of how, whether they cared about the immunocompromised during that time, the ways in which they cared, the ways in which they didn’t care. I Imagine that was– it’s difficult to know how, how to love people when You’re desperate for the kind of grace that makes your life possible.

Sharon: It is really challenging. And people that you thought were, you know, your really good friends to see how little they actually cared when push came to shove, you know, to see how little they were unwilling to make even a very modest temporary sacrifice or even I wouldn’t even call it a sacrifice. I would call it an inconvenience, a modest inconvenience, a modest accommodation for a short period of time. We’re not saying don’t. We’re not even asking you to change your lifestyle or anything of that nature. But to see how many people were unwilling to do that or who would only do it, but make snide, snarky remarks about it. Or the number of people who acted as though or who even professed that people who were immunocompromised, people who are disabled, somebody who was elderly, you know, the people who are most susceptible to falling ill during the pandemic, to see how little their lives mattered to other people. That again, that American rugged individualism of like, what I care about is me. And other people, not so much.

Kate: Yeah.

Sharon: It was very eye-opening and very isolating.

Kate: We’re going to take a quick break to tell you about the sponsors of this show. We’ll be right back. I don’t know how to put this as a question, but this year’s going to feel so fragile. It’s funny that whenever this podcast comes out, that sentence will make sense to people.

Sharon: That’s right. It can come out tomorrow and come out in five years. Still true.

Kate: And I, there’s this accumulated thing where. We learn things and we’ve been through things and we’ve been wounded by others who haven’t, who haven’t helped carry our lives forward. And then now, in the eternal now, it’s going to require a lot of grace again for other people and from other people. We’re going to have to get back in the mix of being interdependent, and for a lot of people, it’s going to feel like, oh no, now there’s just another way for people to hurt me with their with their causes that never seem to include mine. How might we counsel love when we know we’ve been like, recently hurt? Yeah.

Sharon: That’s a great question. And, you know, it’s going to look different for everybody. Obviously, I don’t have one platitude that I can feed people with that’s like, here’s how to fix all of our ills. But I do think it helps to think about this, you know, sort of topic from the perspective of what might, what might the most generous interpretation of this event or this request or this person’s actions or their words? What is the most generous interpretation look like, and what might I react? In what way might I react based on the most generous interpretation? I think we have really gotten into a knee jerk, everything you say is offensive kind of. And that’s coming again from a place of deep wound that we perceive everything as a, as an offense, as an intentional offense. But that’s a really difficult place to leave, to live a life of joy from where everything is a slight, where everyone is out to hurt you constantly, where everybody’s request or needs, or that it’s all it’s all part of some grand conspiracy to deprive you of your life and liberty or, you know, whatever it is, it’s not a very pleasant way to live your life. Yeah. And I think we all want lives that are, that have a deep amount of joy. Right? Isn’t that something all people would want for themselves? Is. Is a life that includes joy. Doesn’t mean constant happiness, constant state of bliss, constant feelings of being, you know, manically happy. But we all want to experience joy in our lives. And it seems to me to be somewhat of a joyless life  if our perceived interpretation is constantly one of offense and slight. And it seems like we might be able to find more space for that kind of compassion, grace and joy if we interpret what other people say and do with the most generous lens possible.

Kate: Yeah. I totally agree. And when I think about the 26-year-old electrician somewhere out there just pops into his mind that he can give to someone else. And then acting out of that spirit of generosity.

Sharon: Yeah, I was just thinking the other day like he is if he hasn’t just, he’s about to turn 30. You know, the idea that, like, I’m turning 30 this year and I’ve already I don’t know if he went through with the liver donation, but I’ve already donated a kidney to somebody who would surely have died without it. Somebody whose four children now get to have a dad longer. My husband, Chris, is perhaps the most volunteer-y kind of guy you’d ever meet. If there’s a thing to volunteer for, he’s doing that thing. He’s been the United Ways Volunteer of the Year. Some sometimes I’m like, ehy did you volunteer for that? Like, it’s so much volunteering. Is there. Is there? This is literally something he does regularly. Is there a dairy that has too much milk? And the children at the schools haven’t ordered that much and this milk is going to spoil? Chris will pick it up and Chris will bring it to the homeless shelter. He will literally show up in his truck and they will put it in the back of his truck and he will drive it to the homeless shelter. You know, that’s just like one example of the amount of time that Chris, who is a very, very selfless person, the amount of time that Chris spends volunteering for things, and this has always been true. But the idea that, again, because this person, this electrician, donated his kidney, Chris is able to continue impacting hundreds, if not thousands more people.

Kate: We can be part of the donor chain. That’s so lovely.

Sharon: Because you know what the work Chris does is possible because of what that that guy from Texas did, right? Like, it’s all it would be easy for him to be like. And then what did my kidney do? Nothing. Went to that one guy that one time. You know, like that fatalistic view of, like, what I do doesn’t matter, that nihilism, I think, is a really, that we need to intentionally turn away from that line of thinking, that deep seated belief that what we do absolutely does matter.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah. That hope makes more hope makes more hope. That’s what makes a Chris. That’s what makes more milk.

Sharon: I know. I know. You know, and that Chris was raised by a mom who took over her little town, you know? That she didn’t know when she was raising her kids, that this is who she was going to be.

Kate: All these starters and joiners.

Sharon: Yeah.

Kate: I have loved your book. I have loved the spirit with which you remind us that we belong to each other. And also, you’re so funny. Thank you for being my friend. This has been an absurd joy.

Sharon: Thank you for having me.

Kate: I think we can all just take a deep breath after that one. The weight of the world is not on your shoulders alone. Those small, fateful actions really do add up. And we could all take a note from that 26 year old electrician from Texas. I say it all the time. There is much about our lives that we can change and so much that we can’t. And living means finding that square footage of limited agency. Of asking, what can I do today with the resources I’ve been given and the tug in my heart that asks what is mine to do? Maybe you do want to sign up to be an organ donor or start smaller and schedule an appointment to donate blood. Maybe it means stopping by a neighbor’s house to introduce herself and bring cookies. Maybe it means volunteering for your favorite political cause or writing a letter or email to a political leader about an issue that really matters to you. Maybe it means asking your kids’ teachers what supplies they’re running short of or cleaning up trash in the park down the street for no pat on the back at all. The world was never meant to be saved by just one person’s sheer effort. It takes all of us acting faithfully, trusting that the nudge we’ve been given matters. So, my dears, this is a blessing for us. All of us trying to have hope on this day with these problems, with these our small, faithful gifts. Blessed are we with eyes open to see reality. The sickness and loneliness, the injustice of racial oppression. The unimpeded greed and misuse of power. The violence of intimidation. The mockery of truth and disdain for weakness and worse, the seeming powerlessness of anyone trying to stop it. Blessed are we who are worn out from cynicism that we feel we’ve earned. God, when we’re tempted to throw up our hands and surrender, anchor us in hope. Remind us of what is ours to be done. Those small, faithful acts that add up to something bigger than ourselves. Something that looks a lot like realized hope. Amen.

Kate: Let’s celebrate other people in our lives who do as well. Like Sharon’s amazing mother-in-law. Or that 26-year-old electrician. Tell us about a friend or ancestor or coworker who is great at these small, faithful actions. Call and leave us a voicemail at (919) 322-8731. We want to honor them. And before you log off whatever listening device you were using, would you do me a favor? Would you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? It helps get this show greater visibility. And while you’re there, make sure you subscribe because you do not want to miss next week’s episode. I’ll be speaking to my friend, the incredible Christy Watson. Christy is a nurse and writer who has so much to teach us about what it means to prioritize joy in whatever season of life we’re in. A big thank you to my team and our partners for all the work they put into this podcast. Lilly Endowment, the Duke Endowment and Duke Divinity School support all of our projects, and this podcast is made by much more than me, the nicest people ever: Jessica Ritchie, Harriet Putman, Keith Weston, Baiz Hoen, Gwen Heginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Iris Greene, Hailie Durrett, Anne Herring, Hope Anderson, Kristen Balzer and Katherine Smith. I mean, dream team. For real. I’ll talk to you next week, my dears. And in the meantime, come find me online. I’m @katecbowler. This is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.

Sharon: I’m just going to scooch on by. I’m gonna sneak past ya.