In this introductory episode, Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth describe their different backgrounds and how they have affected their outlooks on Christianity, and the Episcopal Church, specifically. They explore the difference between a rules based faith vs. relationship, and the different ways they connect to the Church.
Transcript
Transcription provided by automated service
[00:03] Rev. Deborah Duguid-May (DDM): Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
[00:09] Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe (MET): And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
[00:11] DDM: This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.
[00:38] MET: Hello and welcome. This is our inaugural episode of The Priest and the Prof. My name is Elizabeth, and today we just want to have kind of a getting to know you episode. Reverend Deborah and I are going to talk about kind of our faith journeys, where we’ve come from, and how we got to where we are, just to kind of ease us into further discussions about where we are as Episcopalians and what it means to be people of faith in this world. So welcome and we’re really glad that you have come with us on this little journey of ours.
[01:19] DDM: Absolutely. And I’m so excited to be sitting here with Elizabeth. It’s not often one gets an opportunity to sit down with another amazing, intelligent, faith filled woman and just get to be able to discuss our lives, faith, the world around us, and how these things impact and shape who we are. So I’m super excited to be starting this journey with Elizabeth, and for you to be coming along with us. So, yeah, so today what we’re going to be doing is really just sharing some of our own stories and journeys and what has shaped us and the perspectives that we come from so that you get to know us a little bit more in this journey.
[01:57] MET: Alright, so I’m going to start. I grew up in Texas and I grew up all around Texas. I actually grew up Southern Baptist. Now there are a lot of different kinds of Baptist. Baptist are weird. So if I tell my story and you’re like, that sounds odd. There’s a reason why it sounds odd. Let me tell you a little bit about kind of Baptist at large. And then I’ll kind of get a little bit more into specifics about Southern Baptist. Anecdotally, let me give you this. The first time my husband and I saw an American Baptist church, we were so confused because we were walking around, and I think it was Massachusetts, we were visiting Harvard or something. And there was this American Baptist church and outside of it, there was a sculpture of a dancer. And on the sign outside, it said something like, all are welcome. And we were so confused because my understanding of Baptist was that there was no dancing and that absolutely not everybody was welcome. And my husband and I were like, what is this? This is not Baptist. We do not understand what we are looking at, because Southern Baptists did not operate that way. I grew up in a church, well, one of the churches that I grew up in, I grew up in a lot of churches, but one of the churches I grew up in, to be a deacon in the church, first off, you had to be a man to be a deacon. But to be a deacon, you had to take a pledge that your children would not attend dances. Right. Now, none of the men took that seriously. Like they all sent their kids off to the, you know, cotillion or debutante balls or whatever they had in that oil, like wealthy oil town. But like you weren’t supposed to send your kids to dances. And I was also a teetotaler growing up. Like that was the most unforgivable sin was to have a drink. Wow. But in many ways, when you think of families that get made fun of on TV for being religious, like, kind of, like that was what I knew growing up. So it was very restrictive in a lot of ways. And even then, growing up Southern Baptist is different than growing up from a lot of other Baptist communities. Like I said, the American Baptist Church that we saw in Massachusetts was very different. But you have to understand, Southern Baptists actually grow out of slavery. And that’s not something that I think a lot of people really understand. The Southern Baptist Church is Southern because of the Civil War, the Southern Baptist split and said, ha ha, just kidding, we want to keep our slaves. And the American Baptists and the Universal Baptists and Northern Baptists were like, No. We don’t think that’s a good idea. So the Southern Baptist split and institutionalized slavery.
[05:10] DDM: So you’re saying, Elizabeth, that the Southern Baptist Church really emerged as its own entity, primarily because it insisted on keeping slaves.
[05:21] MET: Yes. Yeah. And it is the largest Protestant organization in America today.
[05:31] DDM: Wow
[05:31] MET: I know, right?
[05:31] DDM: God, that’s frightening.
[05:32] MET: I know. Yeah. Okay. Like that is the bellwether for evangelicalism in America today is an institution that grew out of slavery. Wow. Yeah. And I don’t think that’s common enough knowledge.
[05:46] DDM: No, no, no.
[05:46] MET: So, and the other thing that is very important to understand about specifically Southern Baptist is one of the differences between a lot of mainline Protestant churches and Southern Baptist is when you think about Baptist, specifically Southern Baptist, is it is a very individualized faith. Like people kind of joke about it sometimes, but like, so if you’re an Episcopalian or a Lutheran or whatever, you get baptized as an infant. If you are, I can’t speak to all Baptists, but if you’re a Southern Baptist, you, it’s, I say this and you’re like, that sounds very weird. It does sound very weird. To be saved. You pray a prayer to ask Jesus to come live in your heart. And then you are saved And then you get baptized. Okay. All of that is very strange. But what that means is you have an individual relationship with Christ. So you’re not baptized as an infant. You are baptized when you ask Christ into your heart.
[07:02] DDM: So salvation really begins with the human choice rather than with God saving and love.
[07:09] MET: So on the one hand there’s this like dogma that you are saved through faith and grace. But on the other hand, you have to take an action to be saved. So there’s this kind of counterintuitive part of the faith that I, like I didn’t really understand the contrast of it until I was much older. And then I was like, that’s a little bit weird, but I didn’t, I just didn’t put too much thought into it. That also means there’s something called an age of accountability. So like I was baptized when I was 6, which is very young for a Baptist, but they were like, okay, well, she seems to really understand the theology and the symbolism or the whatever of it. So they let me be baptized. But there’s this idea of the age of accountability, which means it’s really kind of macabre. But if a three-year-old dies, they don’t think the three-year-old is going to hell, that three-year-old is probably going to go to heaven because they aren’t old enough to understand that they should have asked Jesus into their heart at that point. They aren’t old enough to be held accountable.
[08:16] DDM: Wow. I know. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.
[08:19] MET: It is very different.
[08:20] DDM: Very different from Episcopalian.
[08:22] MET: Yeah, very different because it’s all about like your individual relationship with Christ as opposed to that kind of communal approach to the faith. And because of that, one of the things that I know is very different from a lot of mainline Protestant religions is there is very little emphasis on things like rites, communion, et cetera. It is all about how you relate to God. And that also means there’s not a lot of church hierarchy, right? Like you don’t relate to God through the priest or through the hierarchy. It is all autonomous.
[09:00] DDM: Wow. Very different. Yeah. Very different.
[09:05] MET: So if I still seem confused about what’s going on around me, that’s why.
[09:10] DDM: Yeah, it’s so interesting. Well, it’s interesting that you speak about, you know, how, you know, being Southern Baptist and that emerging out of slavery, because my journey was obviously beginning in South Africa. I was born, my grandparents are from South Africa. And for myself, it was growing up under apartheid. And I know for many people apartheid is a concept right but for those of us who are living in South Africa apartheid affected every aspect of our lives. It affected where you walked, it affected what transport you could take, it affected your school, it affected your jobs, it affected who you could marry, it affected, I mean there was not an aspect of your life that apartheid literally didn’t control. And you know I didn’t particularly even grow up, funny enough, I didn’t even really grow up I would say in a particularly religious family, we would go to Christmas services on Christmas Day, and we tend to go to whichever church was sort of nearest. I don’t think we had any particular sort of commitment because we basically never went to church. And so I think growing up, I never really thought about the church at all. The church just didn’t really feature into my thinking. But when it did start to was when I kind of got to the sort of mid teens and I started to feel like my entire worldview was unraveling. What my parents had taught me, what the culture and society around me was teaching me, really just started to absolutely make no sense at all. So for instance, we were taught to really fear people of color. There was this little phrase, Swartkhfar, which basically meant black danger. Wow. And literally, you were taught from a very young child to be afraid of people of color. And it was almost as though people of color were contaminating. This is a big issue, you know, like a kind of like clean, unclean, purity sort of things. You know, people were contaminating. So I remember as a little child, and if I tell you, I must have been 5, 6 years old. And I was in a shopping center and the ladies that tend to pack the groceries, you know, they’re often tended to be people of color. And I’d gone to go and get the grocery bag from this elderly woman. And she reached out and she, you know how you take a little child’s cheek and you’re like, you know, just to say, oh, you’re such a cute little child. So she took my cheek and she kind of did that. I was horrified because I’d been told that if somebody of color touches you where they touch you would have a big black mark like a birthmark and I remember rubbing my cheek so hard all the way on the way home that it actually started bleeding I’d rub through the skin because I was just so scared that I was gonna end up with this big birthmark, you know? And so these were the kind of things, but then you don’t end up with a birthmark, so you start to ask yourself, did it was just because I rubbed really hard or actually would I not get a mark? You know, I mean, this is even as a kind of a little child. And then I think as I grew older, I mean, I remember one of the clearest stories was when I was about 12 years old, my father used to work in medicine and he was taking a patient, transferring a patient who had been, he was having some sort of brain damage. He’d been in an accident and so was transferring him to a hospital that specialized with brain surgery and I was always interested in medicine and was going to go into medicine. And so my father said, well, why don’t you come back on the back of the ambulance, sit with the nurse and she can kind of teach you and kind of go through things. So I did that and I remember halfway through They hadn’t given him enough sedation and so he pulled out the IV and so blood was like spurting all over the back of the ambulance. So we got to the hospital about an hour later, we got to the hospital they were transferring him to. They took him in And I remember, and this particular person, this patient, happened to be a black man. Took him into the hospital and again in a partita, this was a hospital only for people of color. And I remember we were all standing around and they stripped his clothes, stripped everything off of him and he just lay there and it was my actually to be honest It was my first time ever seeing a naked man and I remember at the time thinking why is nobody putting a sheet over him? Why is nobody covering him? There wasn’t there was no desire to do that, right And that for me was absolutely horrifying. I was like, why are you not protecting his dignity? Why are you not covering him? They were so rushed. My dad then sent me back to the ambulance and he said, Debs, please, we don’t have, we’re short staffed, please just take a bucket of water and clean out the back of the ambulance, the blood. And so I went back and got a bucket of water from one of the staff members and started cleaning out. And I remember the smell of the blood. And as I cleaned, I was looking at this blood and I thought, it’s red, just like my blood. He bleeds just like me. Therefore, he must feel pain. And you know that for a South African growing up because you were literally taught black people don’t feel pain, which is why when they were going to hospitals adequate pain medication was never given, right? And so at age 12, it was like this realization that what I’ve been taught is completely untrue. It’s just not true. So my entire worldview almost started to, I would say started to unravel and just this feeling of betrayal, being betrayed by my culture, being betrayed by my family. And I think it really set me where I just started to feel like what was true anymore in my life, like what is real, you know. And so there was actually some churches that used to actually go into what was called the townships in South Africa, you know, under segregation, and they used to go in, and it was more kind of like preaching and that kind of thing. But I started going because I wanted to see with my own eyes what was happening on the other side. And literally once I started going into the townships, the entire worldview just collapsed because I started seeing police brutality, I started seeing unimaginable poverty, dehumanization. And I think for me it was the utter horror of what my community was doing and the lies that my community was telling, not just the world, but telling even to their own children. You know, That’s a really deep sense of betrayal. And so ironically for me, I think my entry into the church was really, I want to say through politics, but not through politics as an ideology, but rather politics as a movement for human rights. And so what I found in the churches, and this is, I need to say, not all the churches, but in your kind of Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, you know, those kind of churches, they really held up this vision of a completely different way of being. And it was a vision of a community and a way of relating as people that I had never experienced in South Africa, right? So it was really that another world is possible. And it was something that so inspired me, something that I thought, oh my God, like we can do this, like we could create a world like this where every person is loved, every person is seen as sacred, treasured by God. And so I literally fell in love, I would say, first and foremost with the vision of the kingdom of God. That’s what inspired me, you know, is that another way is possible. And so I went to seminary and I think in South Africa, I really experienced for myself a really beautiful blend between personal faith. Because like you know how you speak about the Southern Baptists, you know it’s not that we didn’t have personal faith because we were undergoing so much violence so much suffering so much utter pain that I don’t think human beings could have stood in their own strength or even as a community. Like I remember the number of times like just in absolute worship like people would just open their hearts and just be like almost like fainting and collapsing and just praying like “God give me the strength because we don’t have it to get through what we’re going to have to get through,” you know? So there definitely was, I would say, a very strong sense of personal faith in the sense of really needing God to sustain us with God’s strength. But at the same time, I think there was also that very deep sense of the Spirit of God inspiring and strengthening us to build another world.
[18:12] MET: I think, first off, that’s an incredible story. And the fact that the faith led you to do that kind of cultural unlearning is very inspiring. And it says that the faith is still doing the kind of work in the world that like I want it to do. That’s amazing. The other part that speaks to our project today…
[18:45] DDM: Right.
[18:45] MET: So the idea that that personal relationship can be so fulfilling and refreshing. When my background led into that personal faith, the way it happened was so individualistic, right? Like the way Southern Baptist configure that personal faith leads to a very, almost liberal market kind of personal faith, right? Like it’s a very, I mean, the, that’s why so many evangelicals fall into that kind of politically conservative, trap really, because when you think about my personal faith with Jesus, it becomes all too tempting to think about it in terms of my personal faith at the expense of everybody else. And that is a danger.
[19:51] DDM: Such a distortion of the gospel.
[19:53] MET: Yeah, right. And that’s one of the reasons why I eventually left that part of my faith behind. I remember, so this story is nowhere near as inspiring as what you just shared with us. But I remember when I was like, I don’t know, 18 or 19, and I was at the church that I had gone to throughout junior high and high school. I had come back from college and I was at the, you know, college age Sunday school class or whatever. And they were reading Acts or something, one of the chapters from Acts, and it was the class discussion part. And the church was living in common and sharing what they had and whatever. And I remember sitting there and I’m kind of looking around the room and I’m thinking, does anybody else, I mean, everybody else is reading the same thing I am, right? I raised my hand and I was like, this is Communism, right?
[20:45] DDM: I mean, that’s what- Yeah, yeah. Socialism, communism, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
[20:48] MET: You know, your church, they were a bunch of Commies, right? And the response was, “We don’t need to hear from you anymore.” Are you joking me? Like, okay. And that was when I was like, I don’t think I am welcome in my own faith anymore. And that’s when I started visiting other churches because I thought my parents told me to read the Bible and take it seriously. And I did. And when I did, it became clear that I was not welcome in my home church anymore.
[21:20] DDM: Oh my God. And that’s a hugely painful experience.
[21:24] MET: Yeah. I mean, people talk about religious trauma and I never thought that applied to me until just recently and I started thinking about it. I was like, oh, I do think I’m a little bit messed up.
[21:36] DDM: Yeah. I mean, it leaves very deep scars. It leaves very deep scars. You know, you say about the South African situation, coming out of the early church with that incredible beauty of that blending of the prophetic tradition and its deep spirituality. You know, but there is a second part to that story, because after we came out of liberation, it was almost like the church went into a time of crisis where they were really having to ask themselves in South Africa, why are we here? We’ve now got liberation. We’re building this kingdom of God, this society of full equality. So what now is our role? It just so happens that in South Africa at that point in time, the HIV/AIDS crisis was, it was a pandemic, right? And so the churches threw themselves into that movement. But unfortunately, in engaging with the whole HIV AIDS situation, what you started to see in our churches was there started to be that personal morality creeping in. Right? Where it started to become, I would say, almost like a kind of a puritanical theology started emerging, which we hadn’t had prior to liberation, right? But prior to, like under apartheid and that, this was not a focus really of the churches at all, the mainline churches. But then suddenly post apartheid, it was almost like, well, who are we now? What is our role? And so they started to almost be this like moral, I don’t want to say moral police, but moral beacons maybe with a lot of judgment thrown in, you know, in our communities. And I think what started to happen is we almost started to place this puritanical view of sexuality on our communities that had actually never seen their sexuality through really that lens in quite the same way, right? And so for me, it was quite horrifying to watch how churches that had been so liberating and life-giving, inspiring and transformative, started to morph into something that actually really, ironically, started to dehumanize people again, because it was a way of almost teaching a theology where you couldn’t accept your full sexuality, who you were, right? And so it was almost like, well yes, you’re on the path and on the journey as long as you abide by these kind of moral, moral kind of requirements. And that was something new that really started to creep into the church. And then of course that spilled out into the homophobic teaching, you know, that kind of really wasn’t there when I entered in the church. I mean, it was not even an issue, you know. And unfortunately now it’s grown into a very unhealthy focus that I just think betrays that vision of God we were given under apartheid, you know, and in scriptures. And of course, that’s why I ended up here. So, you know, I think for me, there was this incredible beauty that drew me in, but then as time moved on, I also saw how as circumstances and context shifted, unhealthy teachings really could begin to emerge again. I guess that shouldn’t surprise us because the church really is a community of human beings seeking to follow the Spirit of God and build the kingdom. But we’re humans. Do you know what I’m saying? We’re the same human beings that are in our families or in the churches. You know, so none of us are perfect. So, you know, I guess always in the life of the church, there is the stories of beauty and inspiration, and then there’s the shadow side. You know, and how do we as people of faith, but also people who have critical thinking capacities, how do we navigate that so that we stay in a healthy relationship, not just with God and our faith, but also equally a healthy relationship with our communities, and particularly with people who are being dehumanized or marginalized in our society. Yeah.
[25:56] MET: It’s so interesting that we came from such radically different places. And we are both Episcopalians because we wanted a place of relationship and we wanted a place of wholeness and we wanted a place of love and authenticity. And yet we appreciate such very different things about the faith and Episcopalianism. And I know we’ve talked about that kind of offline before about like what we pursue and what we want out of our relationship with the church and with the deity, however, that may be revealed to you. So I wonder if we could take a few minutes to kind of talk about like, what, what grounds you in this thing that you are doing? And I can follow up with that. But I know that’s something that we will probably explore throughout this project because I think it’s really important for people to see that this faith is multifaceted and there’s many ways to plug into it.
[27:19] DDM: Absolutely. Oh, 100%, 100%. I mean, so for myself as well, I mean, it wasn’t like I came into the Episcopal Church. I started off in the Methodist Church, but very quickly I found myself joining the Anglican seminarians, and Anglican is obviously the Episcopal church and the rest of the world. And so I found myself going with the Anglican seminarians, funny enough, to the offices, waking up, and I mean, I was in my 20s, right? I was still clubbing, right? But I would get up and be at church at 06:00 every morning for the morning office, and I’d be back at 05:00 for the evening. And I think for me what the Episcopal or the Anglican tradition gave to me was the beautiful gift of a rhythm of prayer. So it didn’t matter whether I was exhausted, it didn’t matter whether I was a little hungover, it didn’t matter whether I was feeling really devastatingly sad, all right? It didn’t matter whether I was going through a depression, it didn’t matter whether I was going through a depression, it didn’t matter whether I was feeling great. There was this rhythm of we joined together and it wasn’t individual prayer. We’d all gather together and we would pray together. And sometimes you just say those words and other times those words jump off the page and your heart just bursts And at other times you’re like, what am I doing here at 6 in the morning? You know, but but prayer for me became It became almost like breathing It almost became like a spiritual breathing, you know, because we don’t just breathe when we’re happy, right? We breathe through everything, right? And we can’t sustain without that breath. And so prayer for me really became that spiritual breath, that spiritual breathing, and doing it in community, doing it with others. So, you know, that’s been, I think, the offices and the hours of prayer, that for me is just a beautiful gift in the, not just in the Episcopal Church, but in the other traditions. The other thing that I love about the Episcopal Church is the stress with symbols. You know, like I think and what I love about the Episcopal Church is that it’s not ideological. I don’t experience it, let me say. I don’t experience the Church, Episcopal Church, as ideological, right? It’s much more about symbol. And what I love about that is symbol is so open-ended, you know? So when we speak about symbols, I mean, for instance, the chalice, right? I mean, the chalice can hold the blood of Christ, but it can also hold my blood in the places where I’ve been wounded. It can hold the blood of anybody, the shed blood of anyone in our communities who’s been violated. The chalice can be the womb, the womb out of which the blood is shed and new life is born. I mean, there’s so much richness just in one symbol. And then we’re surrounded by light. And we’re surrounded by so many symbols that can speak to us in different ways, but I think can also even speak to an individual throughout their lifespan in so many different ways. You know, and a symbol isn’t interpreted in a right way or a wrong way. There’s just many ways. So, you know, that’s one of the things that I love about the Episcopal Church is just that openness to genuine diversity, you know, not just diversity in our bodies and genders, but diversity in our thoughts, you know, and in our experiences. And I think the Episcopal Church betrays itself when it tries to become ideological and no longer embrace that diversity. So I think those are some of the things I love about the Episcopal Church. And then of course, for myself, I just love that emphasis on, you know, It doesn’t matter whether you’re a male or female, you can become a priest. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sexually active or celibate, you can become a priest. It doesn’t matter if you are transgender, gay, anything in between or none of the above, black or white. I mean, I love that intention to be all inclusive. Now, obviously we’re a human community. We’re not always getting it right, but there’s that intention. And I think that for me, that fits. It feels like a community I can live into. So I think those are some of the reasons for me why I find myself in this tradition and not getting blisters on my feet. Most days.
[31:51] MET: And so that’s really interesting. And this is going to be a fun project because for me, the reason my faith is important is because it does provide an ideology and a philosophy for me. Not like really dogmatic, but like the reason I pay such close attention to my faith in Jesus is because I appreciate him as a political radical.
[32:15] DDM: Right? Right.
[32:16] MET: Right. Like Jesus said, feed the poor. I take that seriously. That feeds into my ideology, right? Like Jesus challenged systemic power.
[32:26] DDM: Yep.
[32:26] MET: For me, that’s a really important part of my ideology, right? I’m not saying Jesus gives me a political system to follow, but for me, when I think about my faith, I think about it providing me a framework through which I understand the world. And that’s what I mean by it providing me like an ideology or a philosophy. I don’t mean like Jesus tells me to be a Democrat, first off, he wouldn’t tell me that. But secondly, that’s a whole other episode.
[32:56] DDM: Absolutely. I’m looking forward to that one.
[32:59] MET: That aside, But my faith does provide me with an ideology and a framework. Right? Like my faith tells me don’t bow to empire. Right? Yes. Like that’s an important part of my faith because Jesus was the first person to be like, yeah, I give to Rome what’s Rome, but also maybe like pay attention to relationships instead. Right? Like that’s an important part of my ideology and I get that from my faith. Does that make sense?
[33:28] DDM: A hundred percent. And I wonder if it’s a way in which we’re defining ideology.
[33:32] MET: Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it.
[33:34] DDM: Yes, because I think without a doubt, there’s no way you can take the gospel seriously and not have this inspiring vision of another world and another set of ethics, 100%.
[33:46] MET: Yeah, and that’s what I mean by a philosophy and ideology.
[33:49] DDM: I think my problem with the word, for me, the problem with the word, my problem with the word ideology is when people co-opt that vision and ethics into some form of a political ideology that often then ends up becoming something other again than the gospel.
[34:06] MET: No, no, no. All I mean by that is, I appreciate Jesus as a radical.
[34:11] DDM: Oh, absolutely.
[34:12] MET: And I 100% believe if we don’t think of Jesus as a radical, then we lose an important part of the faith.
[34:21] DDM: 100%. I mean, there’s no way he would have ended up on the cross if he wasn’t a revolutionary radical.
[34:26] MET: Right? Like, this is something I talk about in my classes, right? People who are loved universally don’t end up crucified, assassinated, right? Like choose your political leader. Absolutely. Like Martin Luther King Jr. We love him now, but he wasn’t a super popular guy. Right? These are the things that happened.
[34:44] DDM: Gandhi. Gandhi.
[34:45] MET: Like maybe that’s crass, but like we have to think about the reality of the situation. We think of these great historical leaders and we’re like, oh, he was so great or she was so great. But I mean, they are not universally beloved and we can see that in their end story. Anyway, sorry, that’s…
[35:03] DDM: No, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
[35:06] MET: That is what I mean by a philosophical or ideological connection to my faith.
[35:12] DDM: Yes. And what I love about the Episcopal Church though, is that even in the midst of all that, there’s always that sense of, let’s just keep the diversity of the opinions, the discussion, the debates on the table. I like that. I like that openness because I think it’s so easy to get, like I watch in this country, how people have got stuck in frameworks, you know, whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican or, you know, they tend to be after a while pretty confining, you know, and maybe quite damaging, you know. Yeah. Elizabeth, this has been a wonderful conversation.
[35:56] MET: Yeah, yeah. I feel like we’re off to a good start.
[35:59] DDM: Yeah, looking forward. So I should also just say to anybody who is going to be listening to this, if you have any interest in any subjects that you’d like us to speak about or just to hear some about perspectives on them, please don’t hesitate to be able to share those with us because we’d love to engage with you in whatever ways possible.
[36:21] MET: Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, Priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
[36:53] DDM: Music by Audionautix.com,
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