Kate Bowler: Oh, hello. My name is Kate Bowler, and this is Everything Happens. Today, I thought we might take a moment to celebrate the beautiful and the terrible, the things that lift us up and the things that we have to carry. One of the great privileges of my life is to be able to create things that help me bear the weight of my own life. And what a gift to be able to do that with other people. When you make something, I’m sure you’ve had this feeling a million times, and maybe especially when you thought you couldn’t do it. It always feels strange and wonderful and surreal to see it happen. And maybe even gives us a chance to express something about ourselves that would have otherwise remained buried. I think that’s why this work has become such a core part of who I am is I get to tell the truth that life is so beautiful and life is so hard. And that it requires so much more courage than we thought. We have to learn to live with our beautiful, terrible days, which is, as you know, it’s hard work, but it’s good work. I had a very fun, surreal experience recently that I wanted to share with you, and it’s this conversation I had with Judy Woodruff. Judy is like, in my mind, it is THE Judy Woodruff. She’s the senior correspondent and the former anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour. And she’s the kind of wonderful, dignified person that you don’t want to embarrass yourself around. She’s covered politics and other news for five decades at NBC, CNN, and PBS. She’s also a proud Duke alum. So it’s been fun to see her around here. But I was lucky enough to join her on stage for a live conversation at the historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC. So a big thank you to Jackie Leventhal at Sixth & I who made this event possible. We absolutely adore you, Jackie. But I was so nervous to have a professional reporter interview me in front of a live audience. So this was a sleepless night situation. But Judy is just as warm and tenderhearted and thoughtful as you thought she’d be, and I think this is the perfect conversation to wrap up this season of Everything Happens. But hey, don’t fret. We have some really fun conversations for you this summer and we’ll be back with a brand new slate of guests and conversations in September. So don’t you worry. We’ll be with you. But without further ado, this is Judy Woodruff and I at Sixth & I.
Kate: Judy, I was the most nervous about tonight because you are genuinely the coolest and this is the loveliest, warmest room of my favorite people. So thank you.
Judy Woodruff: Hey, I am I am just beyond thrilled, I am delighted to be here. Not just because you’re a Blue Devil, although that has something to do with it, but just, I mean, look at this crowd. I think if you look at this. What is it? I was told 700 people. Well, I had several friends, email me in the last few days saying they were planning to be here. So, this room is full of people who were excited to see you. So you your career is already extraordinary. Associate professor in the Divinity School at Duke University. The bestselling author, New York Times bestselling author. This is your eighth book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day.
Kate: I like to make it hard for marketing. They’re like, what’s it about? Like, it’s kind of a bummer, guys. It’s gonna feel weird on a shelf, so…
Judy: So let’s get right to the point. Is today beautiful or terrible?
Kate: Aw. So this is, this day is surreal. And I think that’s what is so strange about though, like the roller coaster feeling? Is in a moment like this where you, get the weird dignity of seeing anything come to fruition and you feel that bubbly, effervescent magic that happens when you get, a sacred moment of vocation and you get to do it with people you love. It just makes it a spectacular day.
Judy: What was it in particular that that came up inside of you that made you want to write this book and put this, this set of messages out?
Kate: Well, last year I got I got stuck in a loop, I. I don’t know if other people like to just have multiple problems, but I like, I like to know what it’s like if one problem just kind of takes me down. And, and so I got neck pain. And if you’re waiting for that story to become interesting, it won’t. I got neck pain. And that became more pain and became more pain. And then before I knew it, I was revolving around this like a human drill, and I couldn’t get out. And I know other people have other loops they get stuck in. If it’s a relationship that just won’t change, or it’s a kid that you always have hopes for, and it just it never quite ends up launching or the fragility of parents. But we we can feel it when we’re trying to tell our story to somebody else, and we can see the gentle fatigue in their eyes because we’ve told it 200 times now. But there’s like a weird despair when your problem is both unbelievably urgent and unbearably boring and and that’s the kind of year I was having.
Judy: But you did, you do write in the preface. In fact, you have a number of important things to say throughout the book. But in the preface in particular, you talk about these are these are stressful times. These are anxious times in particular. Some of us are going through health crises. And I want to ask you about that in just a moment. But you mentioned headlines and bad news. I mean, are we… I mean, how does that feel to you?
Kate: Yeah. Because it’s—I’m always loathe as a historian to say like, this time is the most blah blah. But we do have a certain, anxious fragility about us and we. We run into somebody and they say, how are you? Or we read the headlines and we just we automatically nod when we read the worst or hear the worst thing. And we think, yes, yes, of course that would happen. And we find, I think, it difficult to explain why it feels like the volume is turned up extra high on that feeling of almost embedded fear. And, and we sort of wish we could reach out and be like, but you feel it too, and you feel it, don’t you? And for some of us, it’s that the volume of our lives are very loud. But for I think on top of that, I mean… I once did a very funny course, it was 1999 and this very nice Old Testament professor let us do a course on the apocalypse, because we were worried about Y2K and our Yahoo addresses not working anymore. And so we like, searched through time, for the feeling and what, that strangely horrifying, almost delicious and awful feeling where we think we know what’s going to happen and that it will break everything. And the thought becomes sort of like the way we think about single use plastics, which is that we have no idea. We have no idea. We have no idea how that’s going to work. But every thought becomes too painful, almost. And we drop it the second that we hear it. And I think I think we feel so genuinely worried about these next few years together and in our own lives that we wonder, how will we live these terrible days.
Judy: I want to quote, I mean, there are so many things to quote that I actually told quite a few minutes ago. I said, I’d love for you to just read the book to everybody.
Kate: Welcome, thank you for coming. It’s like the audiobook, but longer. And there will be no bathroom breaks.
Judy: No, but. All right, I’m just going to read, I’m going to read a couple things. But this is this is what I want to read it. You said, “We are no longer able to be carried along by the momentum of ordinary days unfolding into other, ordinary days. Instead, we are lifted and carried by currents larger than we are taking us further and faster than we wanted to go. There are highs and lows, soaring views and stomach clenching drops.” Talk about what those currents are that you’re feeling right now.
Kate: Well, I guess one thing that immediately comes to mind is the institutional fragility that we feel. Most of us participate in structures that felt more solid than they do now. I mean, I work at a divinity school that serves the institutional church, and so I meet with pastors all the time whose very lives have constantly been breaking as they see their congregations breaking over and over and over again in these culture wars. And they think, well, there used to be these ways that we knew how to glue people together. And now everywhere we look, it seems that somebody’s job feels harder than it did before, and that all these processes that we thought we would participate in from confidence in voting to health care to, you know, just any, any name, any sector. Every time I meet a lovely person who, who spent a really long time getting a hard job and now they’ve just got this soul weariness about them, which is like, why is this harder for this long? And I think it’s I think we’re feeling. I think we’re feeling the weight of these times when we and we thought that kind of New Year’s bump was going to get us back to a sort of soaring, feel like instability, but like, what was that feeling?
Judy: We start the day, especially a lot of us who live in Washington, who have lists of things that we need to get done. And we are determined we’re going to get them done. But the reality is that, you know, it’s it’s a lot harder than that. And you do such an incredible job in this book of addressing that. I mean, there’s there are so many messages in here for, for those days when you when we feel overwhelmed.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. “We start the day behind” is so wise. Judy. That’s exactly right. Because the progress narrative, it’s almost like we we like, woke up in a fugue state and we’re like. Oh, am I doing this? I think that our, and especially for women, I would say that our perfectibility paradigm has, has really hammered into us that we were supposed to be different by now. And, and I, I would venture to say it’s the end of January and 90% of us so not conquered our New Year’s resolutions according to statistics. So yeah, but it’s it’s hard to question the thing, the value that like the sense of worth, it feels like it’s there for us if we would just reach for it.
Judy: So much of this book is about, and you set the tone at the beginning, and then you and then you return to it, our fragility. You talk about our precarity. And you talk about that as a Christian or the precariousness of life, of what we’re trying to do. But, you know, Kate, talk about why, was it the line, I think I wrote this down about you said the most basic aspect of our humanity is that we are united by our fragility. And yet we’re all trying to be really strong and tough, to get through it all. So how do you, how do you square that?
Kate: Well, I guess I can hear it too sometimes in the way that so much of the narratives we have about before and afters play out, because almost all of us have had some kind of before and after in our life where some, some difficult thing kind of pulled the thread of a sweater, and then we’re just not wearing a sweater anymore, like it’s over. And in the narrative of afters we just need to get back to before, like, well just let me, let me just undo the damage. Let me get back to certainty. Let me get back to that durable feeling that we had where we were some kind of whole. And and I guess, I guess because life stayed harder for longer than I thought it would, then I realized I would need to try to grapple with different language that would help account for why I could just never get back, and that maybe it wasn’t quite so terrible. And there was, there is this really funny image I had about, so I’m a Mennonite, and we are constantly building things and, so we, we bought this really garbage bungalow in, Durham, North Carolina. And when we bought it, it had like an Elvis tribute room and like, it had mini golf carpet, which I really love for just a quick game. And, and most of our 20s was, like, rehabbing and discovering the cockroach nest of every new, every new cranny. And that was, it was like it was part of my feeling that everything was amounting to something, like every every paint job, every, like, young marriage “let’s get at it.” But I was building a life and. And it felt really reasonable. Like when I first moved in, we couldn’t afford anything and if anything broke, it would have just leveled our entire situation. And…and then when, tragedy came calling, I, I guess it was the first time I realized that all of it, lovely as it was, was really bad math. That, like, if I thought about everything I bought from the dishwasher and the ten year warranty that I’d had to talk about with my mother in law for a really long time, and the furnace that was just about to give out all the time, that if I added up every part of the house and the shingles that we had, just had like all kinds of help getting exactly aligned, that all of it would have to magically continue to work forever in order for me to be able to afford my life. And then when everybody in this unbelievably embarrassing way had to bring us food and help us pay for the what it would take to fly out of state for medical care. And on and on and on. I guess I just realized that it was a kind of magical thinking that I’d seen a lot in the prosperity gospel. Where someone’s life would break and they would be so quick with. Well, your dishwasher broke, I guess you didn’t tithe. Or your marriage failed, I suppose you’re not praying enough. But that we create these causal connections constantly, we re-enchant a world to try to make it controllable again. And haven’t I always sort of participated in this process of imagining that every single thing I was doing was supposed to be great math.
Judy: I think. I mean, if people people know that you’ve done just a remarkable thing in that not only being, you know, working your way, working your way through this diagnosis to a much better place today, but still going through complications. You were just telling me in the green room that as you were writing this book, you were experiencing terrible pain every day, but you’ve managed to to find your way through it. Yeah. How much can you share of how you did that? Because whatever, whatever people here may have experienced in their own lives, I think we all at some point, will have a glimpse of that.
Kate: Yeah. I was a little bit horrified to have a new and exciting problem. But it was so bad that I really only had one hour every day where I could think because everything hurt. Like leaning, standing, laughing, looking, listening. Everything hurt and by about 1 p.m., you could kind of see it on me that I couldn’t quite hear you anymore, and that all this sort of veneer of cheerfulness was wearing off, and then you just kind of see all the rough edges, and then by 2 or 3 p.m., I was like, I was lying in a bathtub trying to just get the weight off of my joints, crying into my hands, thinking that this was just another version of everything being over. And that’s like that weird slippage of the mind where you’ve where all despair feels the same. And so I to be honest, I think this is why I’m so obsessed with that very small space we have in any day. In any weekend, any year, in any life, to have a tiny opportunity to try. And the language of like limited agency is very appealing to me. And I think that’s why I’m so obsessed with self-help and everything-is-possible-ism, is in my own life, I’ve somehow sometimes just had my days squeezed down to a small bit, and in that version, everything hurt. And so I and I’d maxed out all my drugs, and I didn’t want to go back on narcotics full time because they make me extremely itchy and irritable. I’d run out of options, and I… You know, you go see your general practitioner named Cathy for a very reasonable $20 co-pay. And now you’re onto those $55 co-pay appointments with Brad, who only has availability in two months. And you’re on a cycle of seeing Brads forever. So I just tried a little experiment. My joints are so hypermobile, but I was in so much pain, I thought, well, what if I tried, a super aggressive strength building, plus physical therapy, plus massage on a three day cycle. And I spent most of my days doing some kind of thing like that, and I was like, just let it. You’re going to be in so much pain. You’re going to be pain anyway. Just try it for four months and see if it works. And so there’s a lot of just light car crying. But I slowly built up more strength so that I could, and, and I found some better health care providers that helped me make some tweaks. And I slowly unspun this awful. But the trying is what, like, you can see the crazy in my eyes, you know? But, like, the trying is what I feel the weight of is within a day. You just get a second where you could just try. And most of us don’t even get that feeling because no one’s there to help us figure out how to try. So if I can ever climb out of something, I feel just full.
Judy: Well look at you. You look fabulous, incredible. You would never know that you went through this war, this battle. Can we just give Kate applause for what she’s done, right?
Kate: Thanks.
Judy: There are lessons in this book, for every kind of day, for the best kind of day, the worst, the worst kind of day. And I wanted to I, as I said earlier, would have been happy to just have you read the whole thing. But before I do, what is it—talk for just a moment about what the difference is between the self-help part of what you are so good at and Christian self-help, because every every message in here is accompanied by, yeah, verse from the Bible, New Testament, Old Testament. Yeah. What’s the difference?
Kate: According to Target, there is no difference. It’s all the same. And it’s so funny. They look almost identical, if you, if you are looking at any set of paperbacks, and that’s because, like, the American obsession with self-help really took off in the late 19th century as part of the American experience of cities. Is people in close proximity, especially people experiencing dramatic inequality, are going to want explanations for why some people seem to have all the luck. Why do some people climb to the very top and other people fall all the way down? And so American self-help goes into the very first dime novels, and then Good Housekeeping magazine, and it becomes the accessible, democratized language of you can do it, but it very quickly becomes not just a kind of pragmatic language of like, here’s like life hacks, quick tips and tricks. It’s actually mostly resting on a set of metaphysical assumptions, which is to say, beliefs about the power of the mind that all good things like boomerangs, like you throw it out and all good things will come back to you. And then conversely, if you say or do the wrong thing, then all bad things will kind of come back to you. And so self-help really doesn’t ever stay secular. It’s almost always a set of religious beliefs. And so that’s why Christian self-help kind of was weave-y hands in with it from the very beginning and began to look and sound quite similar. The problem is, two is that, I mean, the Judeo-Christian tradition has it does already have a rich language for a similar thing, if they’re both trying to track progress. Well, people who are trying to improve in the life of faith also want a language of progress. But we are kind of hoping that our language looks a little bit more, not just like progress, like we are. Hopefully we are changing, but to what? And so the language that’s so lovely is that of like sanctification. How do we somehow not just change and become better, you know, capitalist citizens, but maybe, like, grow in our virtues? How do we become more loving, more joyful, more peaceful, more…? But the problem is, is that the second you get like the image of the latter, then you start playing show and tell. Like, look at me improving. And, and so the very first pictures of a praying woman on Instagram was born. And, and so it began. But the problem is, is that the lovelier version is so close to the exhausting hustle monster version. And so it really takes wisdom, like in my own dumb heart all the time, to kind of pull apart what is this exhausting, individualistic language of always do better, and what is sanctification?
Kate: Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back after a few messages from our sponsors.
Judy: It, clearly the messages here go, go to all of humanity. It’s it’s it’s written for an American and a Canadian.
Kate: Thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you. She listens to Canadian news every day and I think it’s just for me. She knew that out there, of the 33 million people that I, her greatest fan, needed to know that.
Judy: Yeah my husband who’s sitting there knows that every night at 11:00 I’m listening to the CBC radio. So, but, and, Kate, the other thing you say, I mean, as as I start to ask you to look at, to read some of this, is the roof always caves in. That’s kind of depressing. Did you really have to. Can you really? Did you really have to write that?
Kate: I really like the idea, though, wouldn’t it be nice if the next book had just said, “That’s kind of depressing.” — Judy Woodruff. I would like, Judy, if I could keep that, lock that in my heart.
Judy: Well, well, well, let’s… There were a number of chapters in here. I mean, again, I could have I have a million questions for you that I think were especially, written for Washington. “For a terrible day.” “When you need a break to stop trying to fix everything.” “When you need to forgive.” I thought, I was struck by that. “When someone has done you harm,” I mean, you you take all that, “quieting an anxious mind.” You have something here for for, for us all.
Kate: It’s funny, because I think so much of it comes out of, like, a lovely, attempting to be comforting thing. And then I just because I want the half step before that thing and that when I. Yeah. I dunno, I just likem I remember there was something in there that I was like, oh, yeah. In the midst of the worst things that have happened to me, I realized that no one was going to show up to apologize. People who have hurt us rarely apologize. Natural disasters and disease will almost never say they’re sorry. And even if it felt silly to say I want an apology from my cancer diagnosis, I really did. So if you need one too, here’s a blessing for when life isn’t fair. And for what it’s worth, I’m really sorry that happened to you. You know, feelings. Actually, you know what happened, Judy? It was weird. I was walking in my neighborhood listening to my sister talk about a problem. And I just want you to picture, like, freshly mown grass in a suburban normal, idyllic setting. And then I felt this weird kind of rubber snap feeling on my ankle. And then I was a very attentive listener. And then I noticed that I was mildly limping. And then I noticed I was really limping, and then I was like, I should probably, maybe wrap this up for a second. And I was like, Amy, sorry, I think I like I got like a, I don’t know, like a wasp or something like that. I gotta figure this out. And so then I wanted to buy a house and I was like, hey, so it feels like there’s just like some kind of weird, ripple-y pain. And my husband took out the mirror and was like, oh, that’s, that’s a snake bite. And so I went to the hospital with so much chillness that I first went to urgent care, and those poor, sweet women were like, get out of here! Why are you here? And I was like, oh, not the right level of emergency. And then I went into the hospital and I feel part of it, going into the hospital, it was it’s the first time I’ve ever, because you’re allowed to yell, “I’ve been poisoned!” Because you go to the front of the line and. I felt so, like at ease because I’d been to that same emergency room for absolutely ridiculous situations. But this time I was like, guys, take your time. And then they measure it. And they do this whole Sharpie thing, and then the snake bite guy comes out and his name is Dan. And like, that’s his only job. And Dan is like, yeah, you’ve been poisoned. And we’ll need to do the invenomation process. But then they’re looking through my chart, which is so long and they look so stressed out. And I got to be like, “You might know me from such things as…” But what was kind of oddly beautiful was, I was so they had to keep me in emergency because of the envenomation process, at which point I became a superhero. And then they don’t normally keep people there, so they’re not totally sure what to do with you so that you kind of just sit in a corner. And if you’re me, you’re just like, hi, hi hi, and like, sharing stories. But it offered me this very weird redo for a place where I’d had this very traumatic experience of having a sudden diagnosis and and being absolutely terrified that that was kind of the end of everything. And so I had this long, I had a long purgatory, and I had an an overnight in which, you know, they come check on you every few hours. And I was sitting in this, dark room with all the beep, beep of all the hospital equipment and this lovely nurse. Oh, yeah. And I got to meet the guy who does all the rat experiments, which is the same floor. And, like, but this lovely nurse came in and I said, and she was going through my chart, and I just said, you know, it feels strange to be in exactly the same place, like a full loop, but having such a different experience of my own, like participation, my own control and what’s happening to me. I have to admit, it feels really kind of unlike an odd gift to be able to have to feel more like myself in a very surreal situation. And she said, and I. And she was like, well, what, what what happened before? And I was like, well, I, I came in here all the time and you guys sent me home with Pepto-Bismol, and it turns out that I had stage four cancer. And this woman, she was like, look, I. I just lost my husband last month. And I was like, Hun, why are you here? She was like little, like just young. And she’s like, but it’s just because this place. And I was like, oh right. Like, this place, the urgency it it makes, it feels, it feels natural when you’re experiencing such a terrible crisis. And I was like, so this is the place where life feels like, the highs and lows are intuitive together. And, she said she was just looking through all my stuff, and she said, you know, like. I just want you to know that, I know it doesn’t mean anything from someone like me, but, what they did to you was absolutely wrong. And I just want you to know, on behalf of all of us, like mercy, she’s like, I just want you to know, I’m really sorry. And like, I just thought it was kind of wild that sometimes, you really want an apology? And sometimes the person that was never going to be the person that was supposed to give it to you does. But what a gift. When someone can just, like, hand it to you like a present. So I. I’ve just never gotten over what, how lovely it is, the way we give our dignity back to one another. I tried to send her a thank you note, but it turns out there’s like 12 people who have her name. And I kept sending it to the wrong person. They’re like, mam, this person seems really nice, but that is not me. And I’ll be like, dang it. I never got to find her.
Kate: We’re going to take a quick break to tell you about some of the sponsors of our show. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.
Judy: We, you and I were talking a little bit about this earlier. About, about and we’ve touched on it here about the country is going through a tough time right now. We are as divided, it feels like we’re as divided in a personal way as we’ve ever, ever been. Not just that we disagree, but we think really bad things about people we don’t agree with. What thoughts do you have about that? About how we should all be or some of us thinking about, people we have profound disagreements with politically and, and and not just about how much, how big the budget should be and what to do about, you know, climate change. But thinking, okay, if they think that, then their values are not my values. They must be a bad person. How do you think about that.
Kate: It’s so hard because it has risen to a level of like palpable disgust, that there’s so many things that then trigger the feeling of disgust in, in, in strangers. And it comes from such a desire to protect our own tender hearts from from things we’re genuinely afraid of. We are afraid. So of course we’re more uncharitable un quick trigger, or more, the I mean I guess the the bit that has feels really lovely about my job right now is I get to hear about the universalizing element of of people’s difficult times and in pain. It is this like it’s just the… Is o-negative the universal blood? Yeah. I feel like suffering is this sort of o-negative situation that it creates so much natural empathy. If you could just see the facts of somebody’s life without all of the bumper stickers. Yeah. And I find that if I can get to a place of and it’s really weird, but it is kind of one of the—it’s one of my weird, specific prayers where I’m like, God, show me the thing. Like, show me the thing that’s the key, it’s the key to empathy. Because if I see that one thing, it’s going to be so much easier for me to forgive blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But I, I do find it a little shocking that since people are in so much pain right now, you. Yeah, that empathy feels wildly scarce.
Judy: And and it’s and it’s being felt in the church in, in in our faith experiences as well. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s, we will see it play out in the months, in the months to come. But I think we may have we may have pain, pain to watch. Speaking of which.
Kate: And that’s, can I do your endorsement to your next book?
Judy: I turned the page. It just said.
Kate: “That’s kind of depressing.” —Kate Bowler. The Judy Woodruff story.
Judy: Kate Bowler, thank you very much.
Kate: My darlings. You guys.
Kate: I can’t even begin to tell you what a joy it is to make these episodes for you all. My team and I talk about this stuff all the time. We’re trying to figure out how to pick out interesting conversation partners and read a zillion books and shape conversations that will, we really hope, offer you and me fresh language and moments of transcendence as you realize that you are really, really not alone in whatever it is you’re facing. This is my favorite part of the job, and I can’t thank you enough for listening along, for sharing it with your friends, for leaving reviews, for telling us who you are and who you want to hear from. We love being a part of your lives. It has been some of the loveliest, deepest parts of who we get to be. So thanks guys. And this is a wrap for season 12. But do not worry. My team and I have been working on some very fun treats for you over the summer. Make sure that you’re subscribed to the show on Apple or Spotify. If you know how to, just look for the button that says subscribe. That’s how you get it done. And we will be back in September with brand new conversations for season 13. You cannot get rid of us that easily. But before I go, you know that I have to bless the crap out of all of us. And this is a blessing I wrote from Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day for when it’s not fair. And it’s the one I talked about with Judy when I described wanting the apologies we often don’t get because there was that incredible nurse who, oh my gosh, I would just love to hear from and meet again. That one that gave me the most precious gift, which was an apology that wasn’t even hers to give. But it healed something inside of me that day. So thank you, beautiful stranger. And this then, is for you all.
Kate: A blessing for when it’s not fair. The last time anyone let me say it, tears in my eyes, straight from the heart, I was a child. Didn’t anyone tell you life isn’t fair? So I swallowed it up. But God, without hearing you, say it, “My love, this isn’t fair,” I am heartsick. I ate this sadness and it became embarrassment. I ate this disappointment and it became bitterness. God, let me hear you again say, “My love. This isn’t fair.” You will give me strength to take another step and courage to face my circumstances. But before the doing and trying and getting back up, you simply look at me and say, I love you, I’m sorry. Let me bless this heart sick day.
Kate: So bless you, my dears. And hey, if that blessing resonates with you, I am so sorry this has been so hard for so long. May your beautiful, terrible days also be filled with reminders that you are never, ever alone. So glad we get to do this together. And this is the groupie part of my groupie project, which is my life. And this is all thank you’s. So if you’re still listening, hang on to hear the multitudes that bring you Everything Happens week in, week out. It really does take a village. Work. Love. Life. All of it. A big thank you to our generous partners, Lilly Endowment, the Duke Endowment, and Duke Divinity School. Thank you times a million. And thank you to my team. Jess Richie, this project has been your—I don’t want to say lovechild because it makes it sound weird—but your special love and what a great gift to see your brain and heart at work. And thank you, too for Harriet Putman, for always reading ahead and all the work with the guests. And gosh, you guys, you do it all. Keith Weston, Gwen Heginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Iris GreenE, Hope Anderson, Kristen Balzer, Jeb Burt, Sammi Filippi, and Katherine Smith. Thank you. Listeners, they pray for you. They talk about you, think about you, write your blessings, send you cards, answer emails, read your comments, write discussion questions for every episode, transcribe every conversation, develop devotionals or resource guides you might like. Put these conversations on YouTube. Pull clips to share on social media. Think of new ideas for conversations and book recommendations that we think you’d like. Basically, they are the best and we are obsessed with you. I know I speak for the whole everything Happens team when I say what a joy it is to serve you. Thank you. We really do love you and we don’t want you to miss anything we do. So sign up for our weekly email at KateBowler.com/newsletter and find me online at @KateCBowler. I’m even on TikTok. Until next time. This is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.
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