Welcome and Introduction to the Event

Guest [00:00:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] Excited to be here. My name is John Dehlin. I'm your host. Also want to welcome everyone out. We're live streaming this. I had someone from Facebook reach out to me a week or two ago and said we should consider live streaming our events through Facebook. So we're live streaming on the Mormon Stories page.

John Dehlin [00:00:40] So hopefully our audience is enjoying and hopefully they can hear us. Okay, we're so glad you're all here. I want to begin by thanking club cafe at 50 west for being such gracious hosts. Jake Jensen's not here. Alicia's also helpful. Let's thank club cafe at 50 west for sponsoring us. They're very generous, very generous with us.

John Dehlin [00:01:04] This. This whole production is put on by the Open Stories foundation, which is the 501c3 nonprofit that. That allows all of the many podcasts that many of you are familiar with to happen. So Mormon Stories Podcast, the Thoughtful Faith) Podcast, Mormon Matters Podcast, Mormon Mental Health Podcast, Gay Mormon Stories Podcast, Mormon Transitions Podcast. There's a lot of them.

John Dehlin [00:01:31] We're just. We just want you to know that those of you who support the Open Stories foundation or any of these podcasts, we take your donations very seriously. We're fully transparent with the money you give. We try to be very, very good stewards of that, and this production is. Is sort of a product of that effort. So I want to thank every one of you or those of you in the audience who do contribute to one of the various assets that we have, because it makes all this possible.

John Dehlin [00:02:03] Really quickly. Hey, Martin. Really quickly. The Open Stories foundation does lots of things. In addition to podcasts, we also have been holding events. We've been holding workshops and retreats, and they've been very, very successful, and we're really happy with them.

John Dehlin [00:02:23] We have a workshop coming up soon in Phoenix, another one soon thereafter in Dallas. You can go to the Mormon Transitions page to read about those two workshops. We have a retreat coming in mid July in Park City.

John Dehlin [00:02:37] They've all been received very well. But those workshops and retreats that I'm referring to are for people specifically who are feeling themselves in a transition away from Mormon orthodoxy and sometimes out of the LDS Church altogether. And these workshops are very positive. They're very uplifting, and they're all about healing and growth in your transition. What we're really excited to announce today is that we've gotten together with Dan and with Natasha, Alfred, Parker, Gina, and others, and we've decided that we are going to hold our first retreat for. Specifically targeted towards, sort of, you know, Dan's audience, Gina's audience, people who are trying to remain faithfully and constructively engaged within the church.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] So it's August 26th through 28th. Some of you will see the flyers. Natasha Helfer Parker, who's an amazing. Not only licensed marriage and family therapist, but she's also a licensed sex therapist. But she's also been dealing with people in their Mormon journeys for 20 years. She is a believer. She considers herself a believer.

Gina Colvin [00:03:50] She's just a fun person.

John Dehlin [00:03:51] She's super fun. She's skilled. But they'll be having discussions about healthy sexuality, about healthy relationships, about healthily and constructively engaging in your church participation, raising children in healthy ways. These are amazing retreats. Dan's going to be heavily involved in this, and we're going to have more of these in the months and years ahead. So consider that. And we'll put up a URL soon as to how to register.

John Dehlin [00:04:22] But I'm super excited about that, and I just wanted to let you know that that's coming. So I'll do just a really brief introduction about what this event is about, and then we'll turn it over to the panel. I just want to thank you all for coming, and the background of this is just kind of interesting. Some of you who have been tuning into Mormon stories for a while know that I've interviewed Dan a couple times. And the most recent interview I did with Dan was sort of us going to toe to toe a little bit in terms of me sort of having struggled with leaving or being kicked out of the church, and Dan sort of resolutely sticking in his position of supporting people constructively engaging.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] And that was a bit of a slugfest in a polite way, I'd say. At least that's how I might characterize it. But that's actually not what today is about. I, you know, of course, when I was trying to stay constructively engaged with the church, I started a website called Stale DS.com that's still very much going strong. There's a real thriving support community there of people trying to remain constructively engaged. And, you know, I also, you know, we and the foundation started, you know, Mormon Matters. I invited Dan to start that podcast. And then also very proud that we brought Gene on to start to reboot a thoughtful faith.

John Dehlin [00:05:49] But in the Open Stories foundation, we basically want to try and support people anywhere outside of just Mormon orthodoxy. So the church does a really great job of supporting those who are orthodox, and pretty much everybody else is kind of left to figure things out in some ways, for themselves. And so while I was a real champion of staying in the church, there obviously became a point where I couldn't champion that anymore. And maybe at times I felt even conflicted about championing that and even sometimes felt angry and wanted to burn it all down. And so I said that jokingly. That was a joke.

Guest 2 [00:06:26] So.

John Dehlin [00:06:27] But I've been curious to see how those things would continue. And I've been really impressed with how Dan has continued to grow his audience at Mormon Matters. A Thoughtful Faith) started strong with. With Sarah and Micah, but it kind of fell down a bit. But then Gina picked it right back up. And I think A Thoughtful Faith) is one of the most interesting podcasts in Mormonism right now. I think Gina's brilliant.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] And then, yeah, you gotta applause for Gina and Dan. In addition, there is a. I hope Jerlee doesn't mind. There is a Facebook forum that is dedicated to supporting people who want to thoughtfully engage with the church. It's not for post Mormons. It's not for people who want to vent or be angry, but if there are people who are trying to sincerely remain faithfully engaged with the church. This Thoughtful Faith) group has grown to about 2,500 people. It's highly moderated. You have to fill out an application to join it, but they've done amazing things in that group. How many of you are sort of either members of the Thoughtful Faith) Group or listeners to Dan or Gina, Raise your hand.

John Dehlin [00:07:37] All right. Lots of friends in the audience. So as those things have continued to come on the scenes and thrive, I see it as a worthy movement within Mormonism, something that definitely is helping a lot of people and is gaining a lot of traction. In addition to that, I had the pleasure of meeting Thomas McConkey a couple years ago. He. He just reached out to me, and we had a little thing at Starbucks. I don't know if he drank coffee. I don't even know if I was drinking coffee at that point. But we certainly had a delightful meeting. And, you know, within a year or two of that meeting, Thomas came out

Guest 3 [00:08:13] with a really great book called Navigating Mormon Faith) Crisis.

John Dehlin [00:08:17] Navigating Mormon Faith) Crisis. And Thomas brings a really interesting developmental approach to this whole thing. And his book has really

Gina Colvin [00:08:28] had a

John Dehlin [00:08:28] lot of traction with a lot of people. And Thomas himself, as a speaker has garnered a lot of interest. So Gina was in town, and I just had this bolt of lightning that said, let's get these cool cats together and have a discussion about what they're doing, why it's important, and what it means to people. And at the end, we'll have some questions to kind of, you know, to kind of try and understand better. If any of you have compliments or concerns or questions, you can save them for the end. But without any further ado, I would like to present to you our distinguished panel, Dr. Gina Colvin, Dr. Dan Witherspoon, and Thomas McConkey. Thanks for coming.

Gina Colvin [00:09:17] Thank you.

Guest 3 [00:09:18] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [00:09:18] Super exciting. All right, well, we have a. We have a real full house, and this is a really exciting audience. You have a lot of fans here. I wanted to begin by having each of you just briefly talk about a little bit about your background that led to wanting to carve out an alternative approach. So, Gina, we've done an extensive interview with you on Mormon stories. Dan, with you quite a bit as well. But for those of you, those in our audience who may not know a little bit about your history, just talk specifically about what led you from. If you were in an orthodox place, what led you from that to actually wanting to carve out this, some might say, middle way. Gina, why don't we start with you, because. Ladies first.

Gina Introduces Her Faith) Journey

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:10:05] Oh, thank you very much. That's very kind of you to put me in the hot seat first. And can I just say, it is not. It hasn't gone beyond my attention that I'm one of one woman and three with three males. Which reminds me a little bit about going to a temple recommend interview a couple of years ago.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:10:24] I'd been corralled into it by my stake president, whose job, I think it was to get everybody to go to the temple. And I was sort of a little reluctant. And I went in there with all guns blazing, and I said, you know what this feels like? This feels like a pap smear test.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:10:39] At which point he very quickly went through the questions he didn't want to probe too deeply. And if he ever watches this, I still love you, Jerry. Do you know what I think? I actually think that a more nuanced Mormonism sort of found me, and we can get into that a little bit later. I sort of opened myself to the possibility that I was seeing Mormonism in a particular way, which wasn't healthy for me, regardless of whether or not it was true. And then I just sort of, like, opened myself to the possibility that there was much more there for me to rest myself, rest my spirituality in.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:11:26] And I need to say that my desire to spiritually flourish underscores absolutely everything. And it was a big surprise to me that I was able to. Able to do that in Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:11:41] And what about specifically your willingness to occupy a role as a spokesperson or an advocate for an unorthodox approach? What was it that kind of put you on that trajectory, that path you did?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:12:00] It was a PM message.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] I guess that's true, huh?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:12:04] Yes. I mean, originally I began blogging, and I began blogging.

John Dehlin [00:12:08] Tell us your blog.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:12:09] Yeah, Kiwi Mormon. And I did that because I just. I kind of wanted to tell my story. I didn't care if I had readers. It was just. I wanted to just carve out a place which I felt was authentic. That was me.

John Dehlin [00:12:23] She's a brilliant writer. Have you guys read Kiwi Mormon? Brilliant. Yeah.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:12:29] So I don't know that I want to be a spokesperson, but I feel so passionate about everybody's story that becoming a podcast host meant that I could pour some love into other people's stories. And I think the difference in everybody's stories is what makes the story of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:12:45] Yeah. Brilliant. Okay, Dan, tell us a little bit about your journey.

Dan Shares His Path to Peace in the Church

Gina Colvin [00:12:50] Well, as far as I have a philosophy undergraduate degree, and so I've always been big picture oriented, sort of. Sort of, oh, you're looking at me, Me, sort of oriented to the. To the big questions. I didn't mind tension. I didn't mind, you know, things not being super clear. I enjoyed the dialectic.

Gina Colvin [00:13:12] But then I decided to go on and get a master's in religious studies, and I was able to see these theories of religion for that first semester and kind of keep them at an arm distance, you know, the explanatory power that's of kind, kind of there in social sociology and religion and psychology and religion and feminism and religion and all these fields of study out there. And I was able to sort of not let my Mormonism get affected by those.

Gina Colvin [00:13:40] But then I took a class during my second semester, and it was on scripture, specifically the New Testament. And somehow or other, as brilliant as I was already, I still kind of considered scripture, this protected class of stuff, you know, these writings that somehow God really did break through in a unique way in the Western, you know, canon and things like that, and a study about, you know, the humans involved and all the forces that are going on there and all the different things behind it was, you know, crisis in some ways. But it also, as I. As I, it sort of started to feel good enough.

Gina Colvin [00:14:19] And then, guess what? All those other questions I'd kept at bay, and now I have to ask those questions about Mormonism, Mormon scripture, as well as everything else. But the beauty of that Journey for me ultimately was, and it took me six or seven years to fully embrace this was I love these world religions I'm studying. Every one of them is fantastic. And at some point early on in the game, I started to simply say, I don't care if they're true or not.

Gina Colvin [00:14:51] They're good and they're wonderful and they frame lives and they ask interesting questions of the universe and people kind of make their way through these. And I was finally able to totally relax and say my religion is one of those instead of having to be the true one of all those different things. And so I think more than anything, my journey when I came to peace was we have a great religion among other religions in the world. And all the things that I saw that I admired there, they're here. Even though we have a very more top down organization than almost any other religion.

Guest 5 [00:15:31] Right.

Guest 6 [00:15:31] Thomas.

Gina Colvin [00:15:32] You know, and it's hidden, but it was just fun to sit in there and do it. But the crisis came just through school and more questions. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:40] And I believe I met you around 2004, right. As I was trying to orient myself towards the universe.

Guest 3 [00:15:49] Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:15:50] And that's the thing.

Gina Colvin [00:15:50] I thought I was going to be a college teacher and I ended up heading up Sunstone. And that's where John first.

John Dehlin [00:15:55] And even at that point I knew that you kind of worked, you kind of had this shadow stick president sort of role or bishop role of counseling people. But even then I wasn't exactly sure how solid you were in your resoluteness to sort of make Mormonism work. And I almost remember you saying at one point that you might kind of take a sabbatical at some point and disengage. Now, I don't, I don't. I'm not saying that's true. It's just kind of what my memory is. But did you always have it in your mind that you would sort of move into this space of almost being a champion for this kind of movement? Or is it. Did it grow or.

Gina Colvin [00:16:32] Yeah, and I'm still. I don't still wear that very well.

John Dehlin [00:16:36] You what?

Gina Colvin [00:16:36] I don't wear it.

Guest 5 [00:16:37] We don't wear.

Gina Colvin [00:16:38] Well, I don't wear this champion or even this public role that. Well, like I said, I was a very skilled college professor type thing, adjunct, you know, everywhere.

John Dehlin [00:16:47] You know, it's just a tough field, religious studies.

Gina Colvin [00:16:50] And then all of a sudden, you know, and I'd been speaking at Sunstone symposiums and all of a sudden Elbert Peck decided to step down and. And I'll Apply. And the next thing I know, I discover that instead of an academic voice, and I was always kind of interested in religion at the level of public discourse. So get it out of the jargon and list where does the tire meet the road? Anyway, so the Sunstone gig came along, and then I realized within that first six months how pastoral it really was. You know, I'm producing a magazine. We're putting out symposiums and things like that.

Gina Colvin [00:17:20] But it's the phone calls and it's the emails that. That all of us receive now, that really was a big aspect of it. But in terms of being. Honestly, I thought Sunstone was kind of a big platform. Maybe 10,000 people either read or kind of in it.

Gina Colvin [00:17:37] Nothing compared to podcasts. So John kind of saw the wave, and we even did a Sunstone podcast for a few episodes. And then I kind of, you know, too many things to do in that job. But I'm grateful for you putting me back into it, even though I'll say one other thing.

Gina Colvin [00:17:56] I was blessed in that first year of real struggle to meet a fellow who served as a mentor for me still to this day. Randy, Paul, some of you have met him on my podcast or something like that.

Gina Colvin [00:18:09] He introduced me to Eugene England through his writings, to dialogue, to Sunstone and stuff like that. And. And here at this moment, when I'm thinking, dang, my religion is failing me, it must be the worst religion in the world, you know, just because, like, my parents suck. They're the worst parents in the world, you know, there's that kind of attitude.

Gina Colvin [00:18:26] I saw people engaging it in this way, and there was just subconsciously a piece that Randy had just as 10 years ahead of me on the path, you know, looking at Jean England and stuff like that, that just kind of were always there as lights to me when things got worse, that somehow or other there's a piece on the other side of the mess.

Gina Colvin [00:18:51] I think I've been on the other, mostly on the other side of the mess for a good eight or ten years now or longer. But there's no going around it. I'm a champion of going through it, and if we serve that role, great, but we're gonna fail you too.

John Dehlin [00:19:12] So you're reluctant. You're reluctant.

Gina Colvin [00:19:15] I'm a reluctant, you know, here. But on the other hand, I'm paying it forward, too, in some ways to those guys.

John Dehlin [00:19:23] Thank you, Thomas. So just really quickly, what is your relation to the McConkeys that we all know?

Family Ties to Bruce McConkie

Guest 3 [00:19:33] My granddad is Oscar. He founded the law firm downtown With Bill Curtin. He's Bruce's youngest brother. Okay, so that's where the McConkie. That's where I fall on the McConkie side.

John Dehlin [00:19:44] So Bruce R. Would be your great uncle. Your great uncle. Okay. Since many of us don't know much about your background, talk a bit about your upbringing in the church and your journey out and in.

Guest 3 [00:19:58] Yeah. I was raised in the Mormon Church, and it was about age 13 where I really relate to what you said, Gina, that the faith crisis, the shift in identity, really found me. I think at age 13, I was way too young to go theologizing or philosophizing about what Mormonism means and if it was for me. But I knew just on a gut level that something was wrong, wrong.

Guest 3 [00:20:24] And I kind of expressed that to the family. And I remember. I still remember this moment when I was 13 years old. It was the first time the thought had ever occurred to me. And it felt like an alien thought just floating through the ether. And it was, what if you don't go to church today? I had never had that thought in my life. It was an unthinkable thought in my family culture, and I knew it right when I had it, that no one had ever had this thought autism accompanied, let alone acted on it.

Guest 3 [00:20:52] And I remember that day I didn't go to church, and I had never seen my parents so upset. And I am unusually stubborn. And so when I saw the reaction in the family, that actually really piqued my curiosity. I thought, huh, what if I take another step in that direction? How deep does this go? And, you know, I just happened into it. But after the falling out when I was a young teenager, it just put me on a new path, which is a whole other story.

Disengagement, Buddhism, and Returning to Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:21:25] So you disengaged for how long?

Guest 3 [00:21:29] About 20 years.

John Dehlin [00:21:30] You were out of the church for 20 years? Okay.

Guest 3 [00:21:33] Give or take. Yeah. I like to be thorough when I go down a rabbit hole and make sure I.

John Dehlin [00:21:39] So you didn't serve a mission?

Guest 3 [00:21:40] I didn't.

John Dehlin [00:21:41] Didn't serve a mission, no. Ever got married? Temple married? No.

Gina Colvin [00:21:45] No.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Okay. And did you go through periods of, like, trying other religions, Atheism, like.

Guest 3 [00:21:54] Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, backing up to, you know, you touched on a couple important things there. No mission, no marriage. It means, as a man in the LDS culture, I missed every major rite of passage that we've preached, produced as a culture. And there was a long time where I wondered if I even existed. It was such a bizarre kind of Twilight Zone existence for me that I thought, well, China seems nice. Maybe I'll move there. It's got to be better than what's going on here in Salt Lake. So I really did move across to the other side of the world and just tried to distance myself from it all.

Guest 3 [00:22:28] But in the meantime, I left the church when I was 13, and it was just a few years later before I found my way to the Canzion Zen center in Salt Lake City. So I started my Buddhist studies and practice when I was still a teenager, and that's been really formative. That's really changed who I am, and it's changed the way I've come to re. Engage Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:22:51] So Buddhism is. Do you identify as a Buddhist or.

Guest 6 [00:22:56] No.

John Dehlin [00:22:57] Buddhists probably would avoid any labels because that's part of Buddhism, right?

Guest 3 [00:23:01] A good Buddhist, an orthodox Buddhist? No, no. I mean, some do. I think I just always felt really Mormon. I just knew intuitively that family, lineage, karma, my own identity, I, you know, native. I always say this about Mormonism, that it feels like my native tongue. You know, it just feels like the most natural way to express myself, you know, in the vein of worship and devotion. And it's never felt better, frankly.

John Dehlin [00:23:29] Are you talking about Buddhism or Mormonism?

Guest 3 [00:23:31] Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:23:31] Okay, right. But you're bringing your Buddhism into your Mormonism, right? It's like chocolate and peanut butter. It's like they go better together.

Guest 3 [00:23:40] Exactly. Well, I can't imagine leaving behind my Buddhist sensibilities at this point. It's really enriched my life of faith. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think you two would appreciate this. But what I've come to find is that we come to talk a certain way in a given culture, and we wear certain clothes and we do certain dances. But Buddhism really helped me kind of get beneath those surface structures of religion and, you know, tap into something that seemed to be generating it. That sounds kind of esoteric. But all I mean to say is that, you know, going to the source of Buddhism took me right to the heart of Mormonism.

Guest 3 [00:24:21] And at that point, it's like, well, flip a coin. Like, I just love the devotion and the worship and the reality of who we are. So let's get excited about who we are and who we're becoming and, you know, maybe worry less about the dividing lines of how we talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] Not just Mormonism, but Christianity, too. A lot of Buddhism and Christianity. Real quick, were you estranged from your family for all those years? Was there a point where they just accepted you and you were welcome in their graces as a Non member or a non believer. How was your relationship with your immediate, extended McConkie family during that time of being out?

Guest 3 [00:25:05] Yeah, I was really grief stricken for years. I mean, from age 13 to 18, when I was still in the home, and just this walking anomaly of an inactive Worthland McConkie son. You know, there's just no place for me. It was. It was really challenging for all of us and we lived that way. We just tried to coexist for about 15 years. That was really painful for all of us. And I had a major turning point.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] I had lived with so 15 years

Guest 3 [00:25:33] of pain and 15 years of estrangement. Yeah. Just.

John Dehlin [00:25:36] Yeah, Almost no talking, like.

Guest 3 [00:25:38] Like little talking distance. Yeah. And like, you know, living all around the world, trying not to feel how I felt when I was here at home, or what should have been home. It was so painful. And I had a turning point in my later 20s.

Guest 3 [00:25:54] It was this kind of moment that came all at once, just as a grace. But I realized that I had felt so much anger and resentment towards my family, towards the culture, for not being able to just take me as I was, that this is my life and this is how it's unfolding and there's a mystery to it. I don't understand it either, but would you please just love it? And I realized in just this moment of, you know, a lightning strike, that I was actually the one who couldn't accept their Mormonism that didn't accept me. I realized that, like, I was my biggest problem. Right. And at that point, my heart just broke open and again, and I realized,

John Dehlin [00:26:30] wait, you were the one who couldn't

Guest 3 [00:26:32] accept their Mormonism, The Mormonism that didn't accept me.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] Right. So you were being as non accepting as they were to you.

Guest 3 [00:26:40] Exactly. And the moment I saw that irony, my heart opened and that was my entry back into Mormonism. I thought, well, if Mormonism is just forgiveness and letting people be what they are and supporting them in their faith journeys, then I could sign up for that.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] So you kind of simplified Mormonism in your mind a little bit, right?

Guest 3 [00:27:03] Well, that was part of it.

John Dehlin [00:27:05] But you also, it sounds like you decided that you were gonna let go of the same judgment that was being directed towards you and that you were gonna work to build bridges, not break down bridges, is that right?

Guest 3 [00:27:20] Absolutely. And everything shifted when I shifted. When I could let go of that, my own heartache, I was able to come home again.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] So that was five years ago.

Guest 3 [00:27:31] That was like I was around 27. That was eight, nine years ago. But that was the beginning of my return. And then it was a long process of re. Acclimating to the three hour block. And that took several years. That was a bitter pill. John,

John Dehlin [00:27:47] was there ever a point where you. I mean, there, there might be some people in this audience who aren't big fans of your. Of, of your uncle. Great uncle. Is that Bruce? Bruce, yeah. He's your what?

Gina Colvin [00:28:01] Great uncle.

Guest 3 [00:28:02] I'm not sure what you mean.

John Dehlin [00:28:03] What's. What's that? What's his relation to you? Again, you say my great uncle. My uncle. Yeah. I think there's probably a lot of people here, maybe even myself included, who feel like in some ways he really damaged some really positive trajectories the church was on along with Joseph Fielding Smith and others. But was there ever a point where you realized maybe some of the more negative ways that he might have impacted Mormonism and carried maybe regret or shame in that family name or anger or whatever?

Guest 3 [00:28:39] Yeah, no, that's a fair question. I grew up in a family culture. Any family you grew up in struggles. We all have our unique pathologies and you know, the things we struggle with within our own nuclear families. And you know, my family grew up with struggles and you know, in many ways they bore the pattern of some of Bruce's struggles.

Guest 6 [00:29:00] Right.

Guest 3 [00:29:01] I think in some ways, and I want to be fair here, but I think sometimes Bruce could be rigid. Let me just see how that does with the crowd.

Gina Colvin [00:29:13] Shocking insight.

Guest 3 [00:29:15] Bruce felt strongly about things, and I grew up in a house with parents that felt really strongly about things and that culture felt rigid to me. It was hard for me to live and to flourish that way. So certainly from a young age, even before I knew where it was coming from, I had a sense that we feel pretty tightly wound in this family culture. And the flip side of that is that the older I get, the more I appreciate that Bruce had his own ministry. And I think the moment where he served in the church and really created a firm bedrock of doctrine and this is who we are.

Guest 3 [00:29:52] Its time has passed, arguably. But there was a time in the church where it was going global and we needed to cement our identity as a global organization. So. So I've come to experience Bruce in a more nuanced way and I appreciate who he was and that he was on his own path as well.

Guest 3 [00:30:12] I'll let you have a breath with that deep breath. In all fairness, I've been. In all fairness, that was like 15 years of therapy it took me to get there. If you're not there yet, it's Cool.

John Dehlin [00:30:28] I'll make it a. I'll make an appointment with you. All right. Yeah. Good. Okay. So when was there some, like, prodigal son return where? Like, the whole immediate, extended. I mean, every. Every one of us, if we stray, wants to be the prodigal child, to return and to be celebrated and to have kill the fatted lamb or whatever in the feast. Right. I mean, certainly there were familial, social, even psychological pressures or gravity to have you come back and be the triumphant sort of returning son.

Guest 3 [00:31:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:11] Is that how you were received, and is that how you're sort of viewed now?

Guest 3 [00:31:15] Well, it's interesting. I was gone for so long, you know, I missed all the rites of passage. Most of my closest friends, if anything, they think it's strange that I have gone back to church rather than encouraged me to. There wasn't any obvious incentive to come back, and I had grown up estranged from my family, so on some level, I think I'd really made peace with that. I think, in theory, I could have lived out the rest of my life not engaging with the church, and I certainly didn't have a conscious intent to. Right. But I just, like. Like I said, I was a devoted Buddhist practitioner, and every way I knew how, I plumbed the depths of that tradition.

Guest 3 [00:31:54] And literally, in an instant, I kind of woke up and found myself at the heart of Mormonism. It just happened, and it felt really natural. And I celebrate it understanding that this is maybe one of the most problematic times in Mormon history to come back. But the last thing I wanted to say is that it was funny. My parents hoped and prayed that I would come back over the years. And I think their first reaction when I actually did start to, you know, come back into the fold, they were confused that I was still so Buddhist.

Guest 3 [00:32:29] Like, you know, I think they imagined that something fundamentally would change. And, Yeah, I mean, I seek to integrate it all. I don't want to leave any of the good stuff behind. And I think Mormonism on its good days does that. It just doesn't leave anything good behind. Okay, so.

John Dehlin [00:32:47] But did they celebrate you? Did they celebrate your return?

Guest 3 [00:32:50] I think they're getting used to it.

John Dehlin [00:32:52] Okay. All right. All right. So Dan or Gina. I'm not sure. Maybe both of you can speak to this. And Thomas, feel free to jump in. I. You know, I fell in love with Kaim Potok at byu with. My name is Asher Lev. And since I've read three other Kaim Potok books, Kaim Potok was this author in the. I don't know, 70s, 80s, who wrote a lot about how Judaism sort of went from Orthodox, sort of Hasidic, very conservative traditions, sort of. And he traces in many of his books how modern strains of liberalism and progressivism transformed Judaism as it struggled to face historical criticism of the Old Testament as Jews faced the Holocaust and sort of century after century of persecution.

Parallels with Reform Judaism and Unorthodox Faith)

John Dehlin [00:33:57] And, you know, how the social strains within Judaism led to a branch, multiple branches of Judaism, but one branch in particular, Reformed Judaism, but also Reconstructionist Judaism, that today represents the largest branch of Judaism in the United States. And it happens to be a branch of Judaism where believing in God is optional, believing in Moses, the founder of your religion, is optional. And you can be a female rabbi, you can be a gay or lesbian rabbi, you can be a transgender rabbi. And it's super broad and progressive and inclusive. And also.

John Dehlin [00:34:44] It's more about the ritual and finding community and even spiritual value and enlightenment within the tradition and basically saying you don't have to choose between, you know, truth and science and knowledge and your heritage, your traditions and even spirituality, religiosity. And, you know, for many, many years, I was trying to see, could we carve this out within Mormonism?

John Dehlin [00:35:16] Yes. No. If we can't, can we create sort of a reform Mormonism? And that's had its big, long history in terms of how I've been thinking about things. But Dan and Gina, have you guys thought about the way that history has unfolded in other religious traditions and the extent to which this is sort of our time to go through these growing pains? So sort of the historical context that we find ourselves in relative to other developmental trajectories of other religions, of other religious traditions? Do you see this as that moment for us? And is that in any way what fuels what you're doing, a vision for what we can become in that same light? That's a really long question.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:36:06] It was a really long question. And I want to take issue, not issue, but question, the idea of we, because I think there is a little bit of a conceit here to suggest that in Mormonism there is one we. So I grew up in New Zealand. The way that I experienced Mormonism was markedly different than perhaps you had experienced Mormonism here in Salt Lake City.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:36:31] And so I suppose I have always bucked at the notion of a kind of a Mormon cultural impedance, imperialism imprinting itself on the way that we managed Mormonism here in New Zealand, where it was always a very syncretic tradition.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:36:53] It beautifully fused mori spiritual practice with this audacious American religious practice and held those two spaces from really, well, right up until about the 1970s, where correlation meant that there was an impinging in the expression of indigenous, indigenous realization of Mormonism or expressions of Mormonism.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:37:22] So I think that's. And this largely happened during the Mori renaissance. And I say. I think you guys say Maori or something like that, actually pronounced properly Mori. And we found a lot of that flexibility to express both our culture and our religious tradition curtailed by visiting authorities who would say, well, we don't want you to speak the Mori language anymore, you all speak English, or you can just stop that. Or the death rituals in which you can't hold that at the meeting house anymore for three days, you need to bring bodies to the chapel and you can have it in one day, you know, reminiscent of whatever happens here in your mortuaries and funeral homes.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:38:03] And so there was a huge divide between this very white American wasatch front culture and an effort to wash out the nativeness, the indigeneity of that. So in terms of responding to the question about religious tradition, traditions, this moment, I think, asks us to pay attention to the way in which Mormonism is expressed right throughout the world in its different iterations, the way it wraps around and nourishes indigenous or other cultures. I mean, I always experienced growing up, I always experienced these American authorities and I grew up in a gorgeous, gorgeous area of the church with people were so loving. I mean, I'm a bastard child of a single mother, you know, and they just enveloped and I think we've already had that discussion.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:38:57] They just housed me and nurtured me and loved me and they still do. And so when I experienced that against this very sort of americentric. I think I may have made up that word, but I used it a lot. Yeah, this very American way. And Americans would come and they had these big fricking white teeth and they'd stand at the podium with this kind of audacious confidence. They were like large flickering televisions.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:39:28] And I didn't like the way, the effect that that had on the people that I loved, they became smaller in those spaces. And that really pissed me off growing up. And I noticed it very young as well. So back to your question. Sorry, this is taking a long time, Dan.

Has There Ever Been a Single Mormonism?

John Dehlin [00:39:44] That's important. That's important stuff. Thank you for.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:39:46] Yeah, so in terms of the moment that we have, I think that Mormonism's breath is realised at the periphery, both at the periphery of the church and also in its shadows. We make a lot, I think, of Mormonism and writ Large. I suppose corporate Mormonism wants to celebrate the light, but no religious tradition happens in just light. It happens in light and shadow. It happens at centre and periphery. And I don't think we've got. We've reconciled the light and the shadow of Mormonism. You know, these kinds of conversations may be monitored as something other to the people over that direction. Is it that direction? I see Temple Square.

Gina Colvin [00:40:32] Exactly.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:40:32] Yeah, I was right. And I think the great conversation needs to bring the shadow. I mean, in many respects, we're shadow workers doing religion and spirituality in this sort of bardo space, this threshold space. When Mormonism can reconcile what's happening at the center with what's happening at the periphery, with what's happening in the shadows, with what they would like to see in the light, then I think that we've got a healthier Mormonism. I don't know if that really answered your question. That's what came up.

John Dehlin [00:41:05] No, it's important. So am I hearing you say that there never has been just one Mormonism?

Guest [00:41:12] No.

John Dehlin [00:41:13] Ever.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:41:14] And there's been lots of resistance and

John Dehlin [00:41:17] there's always been a tension, sort of dialectical tensions within our tradition.

Guest 5 [00:41:23] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:41:23] And it's always been so.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:41:24] I think so.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] So there's not this single monolithic Mormonism moving in progression. And there's a lot of people here who feel like there has been. They were raised in a correlated mindset where they felt like there was a single Mormonism. And you guys represent something other than Mormonism. They're like, you guys are making this up. You know, there's a lot of people here who just say, you guys are making up your own thing. It's not even Mormon. It doesn't even sound Mormon. And you're basically challenging even the premise of the question, saying it's always been a messy sort of fringy dialectic of a progression.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:42:03] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:42:03] Okay. Dan, what would be your answer to my really long question in addition?

Gina Colvin [00:42:07] Well, there's different parts to it, and I know that Thomas has some really good stuff because of previous conversations on. I think he thinks we're at a great moment. Moment now for a developmental shift and things. But something came up for me in the question, so I'm just going to go with it. And it's a story I haven't told in a long time. I did write about it once.

Gina Colvin [00:42:27] It was just the trigger of an orthodox Jewish woman and the role that she played in my life. And where I'm going with this, I'm taking the part of your question, like, does this idea of a reform Mormonism or some kind of even labels like progressive more. Does this occupy my brain? Am I trying to create something? So that's kind of the part of the question I'm going to do. Well, what happened in 1997? I was at the American Academy of Religion, and I was trying to get a job and all that kind of good stuff. But I was teaching, and I had a student that was going to be writing about cloning.

Gina Colvin [00:43:01] And so I went to a session on cloning at this kind of educate myself so I could engage his paper better at the end. And there was a revelation that happened in the way an orthodox Jewish woman spoke who was also a scholar. So it was like in this embodiment of a woman that had the full brain power and the articulateness and this brilliance and the ease at which she spoke about her own religious traditions. And I don't remember exactly the arguments she was making, but she talked about cloning. She really kind of talked about the Jewish nature of the body. And she got into burial and preparation for burial rituals and things like that.

Gina Colvin [00:43:45] And it was just this amazing moment for me to look at somebody who had both things going on, but she wore them so much. Well. And so here I graduated in 96, write my dissertation. I'm in my second year of trying to do a cycle. And you're here at the academy. And I wrote a Mormon dissertation. And people are like, hey, what do you study? What's your thing? I go, well, I did a dissertation on Mormon theology, you know, or something like that. And I would introduce myself as a Mormon. But I always say, but don't worry, I'm a liberal Mormon, or I'm a progressive Mormon, or I'm, you know, I also hate Tom Green.

Gina Colvin [00:44:25] I don't know if you remember the polygamist Tom Green. He was, like, really conspicuous there in the 90s in my head. And Orrin Hatch was doing crazy things. And I always was putting a but I'm a Mormon but.

Gina Colvin [00:44:36] And it was so interesting. I just had one of those, like, moments to reflect on this when I was just, like, out of body kind of noticing. The very next session I attended to after that, somebody and I started a conversation, and she just said, so what field of study? I go, I'm a Mormon theologian. And I just left it right there. And from that point on, my goal has just been to say, I'm a Mormon.

Guest 6 [00:44:59] You're a Mormon.

Gina Colvin [00:45:00] Everyone here is a Mormon. I don't love these labels. I see them as necessary evils. Right now. But, you know, there's generally no one questions that a contemplative Catholic is a Catholic. You know, no one questions any of the forms of Judaism as Jews. That's my goal to, you know, if anything. So I'm really not trying to create a particular brand here. I'm just trying to let everyone know that whatever you are, speak it and let them do the work of. Oh, well, he certainly doesn't sound like the normal Mormons that I run into. Let them do the work instead of giving the easy answer. So at least that part of your question, that's what I addressed.

Defining What It Means to Be Mormon Today

John Dehlin [00:45:39] So am I a Mormon?

Gina Colvin [00:45:41] Everyone who claims it is Mormon. Mormon for me. Yeah. I don't. I really, you know, I'm a part of this workshop and we're calling it Progressive Mormons. And you explained partly why we're. Why we're trying to attach a different crowd than the transitioning out ones. But, you know, ultimately this is just a question for, you know, healthy living and spirituality and all those kinds of things.

John Dehlin [00:46:02] Brilliant. Did you want to add.

Guest 3 [00:46:04] I wanted to ask you if you are a Mormon. I'm interested in that question.

John Dehlin [00:46:08] You really are?

Guest 3 [00:46:09] Yeah. I would love to hear your answer.

John Dehlin [00:46:11] No, I definitely feel culturally Mormon still. I mean, you saw how I sang those primary songs. I mean, that. That feels like home to me, singing a primary song. I know that makes some people angry when I say that, but it very much feels like home. Having said that, it's almost like a divorce in the sense you'll always be. Be family. But there's also a lot of trauma and problems that made it so you couldn't be together. So it's. I'm a bit conflicted, but in my heart, I still feel very Mormon.

Guest 3 [00:46:46] Thanks, John. Well, I'm happy to sing with you tonight.

John Dehlin [00:46:49] What's that?

Guest 3 [00:46:49] I'm happy to sing with you tonight.

John Dehlin [00:46:51] Oh, thank you.

Guest 3 [00:46:52] I have a little something, just kind of an image to offer, really. You know, when Gina and Dan were both talking about how Mormonism is growing, how it's changing in their own person, but also as an organization, the community, I think about the big bang, you know, the story we tell in science, like there was nothing and then there was a whole lot of something. Right. And, you know, everything that proceeded from the nothing was part of the bang. Right. It's all. All made of the same universal substance. Right. At its core, it's light energy. Einstein would say. Right. And there's something beautiful about what I hear in your voices.

Guest 3 [00:47:35] Like if we just claim our experience like, if we're in the Mormon orbit, if we're part of the Mormon big bang, and this Mormonism is screaming out into the edges of space, then everything from that bang is Mormon. Every experience we have is some kind of Mormonism. And there's a real dignity in that, and there's an incredible value in that. And I love. I mean, I got chills when you just said that, Dan. Like, I'm a Mormon theologian and like that, to me, that is evolution. And sometimes evolution is synonymous with restoration. Right. It just muddles along. It's messy, but it's happening. And we're growing into these new categories that we haven't seen before, and we don't even know what to call them yet.

John Dehlin [00:48:16] We.

Guest 3 [00:48:16] We're evolving a new language for it. But I think what really excites me is that in the structure of Mormonism and the theology itself, we're actually invited to create those new structures. We're invited to deeply participate in the restoration. So I think it's a beautiful invitation. And there are worse places and religions to be born into.

Guest 6 [00:48:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:43] All right.

Gina Colvin [00:48:44] You have a hopefulness for this moment, too. I'd love to at least prompt you to talk about that.

Guest 3 [00:48:49] Sure. Do you want to go somewhere else?

John Dehlin [00:48:52] Quick answer.

Guest 3 [00:48:54] Why am I hopeful?

John Dehlin [00:48:57] Do you see this as a historic moment or a pivotal moment or at a crossroads, you know, a great opportunity? Do you have a framing of the moment?

Guest 3 [00:49:05] Well, I mean, this is where I love the Buddhist framing. I mean, in Buddhism, we talk about every moment as potentially being the moment where we wake up to our own nature. And I think there's definitely a quickening in the Mormon culture. Just our ability to come into community together, our ability to communicate with one another, it feels like there's a quickening. And, you know, every single moment, including an especially. Especially this one. Why shouldn't it be a turning point in history?

John Dehlin [00:49:38] Okay. It's very Buddhist. So for many of us, and Gina, this is maybe a different experience than your beautiful experience. For many of us, in our minds, there really is one Mormonism, and it's the corporate correlated 15, you know, apostles and prophets that lead us, and they tell us what doctrine is. They've got the authority. And, you know, from their perspective, our job is to. And this is. In the. Let's just say in the post Mormon world, the pejorative is pay, pray and obey. Right?

John Dehlin [00:50:18] Pay your tithing, you know, worship and do what we say. And so for many who. Who, let's just say, emerge or fall out of or awaken from Mormon orthodoxy. They just. First of all, they don't even see sticking around as a possibility once they decide that it's not what it claims to be and may even be false or other sorts of things.

John Dehlin [00:50:44] And also they sort of say the church is what the brethren say it is, and the church, and they don't want people like us and we're not doing Mormonism like they say we should be doing Mormonism, therefore we should leave Mormonism. And Thomas, we'll start with you and then Dan and then Gina. What would you respond? There are many people. How many of you in this audience sort of feel that way or have experienced that?

Can You Practice Mormonism on Your Own Terms?

John Dehlin [00:51:11] Okay. What would you say to someone who said to you, you can't do your own Mormonism, you do what the brethren say, and that's Mormonism, right?

Guest 3 [00:51:19] Yeah. This is a painful question, because I know from personal experience, and I'm sure there are more people than indicated in the room that carry this pain of feeling like there's no category for them and they can shoehorn themselves into a proper category of Mormonism where they can get out. And that's a terrible choice to make. Again, I would just refer back to my own personal experience with it. I find a really powerful practice of forgiveness and noticing the way that some Mormons can't include me and making my Mormonism a matter of including them. Right. I've said this in past conversations, and I continue to say it, that, you know, in a sense, there's the church that you're talking about. I don't disagree with that at all.

John Dehlin [00:52:08] And we.

Guest 3 [00:52:09] What's the church without all of us? It's a bunch of books that aren't getting read and a bunch of buildings that aren't getting filled. We are the church. What's the church if it's not the aggregate of the members? And so if we can live into new realities and if we can tell new stories about Mormonism, how could the church do anything but change and become something new? So I'm optimistic about the power of the individual and the power of community in dreaming a new kind of Mormonism that is the kind of world we want to be in, you know, Dan? Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:52:50] I mean, I am living as a Mormon, active, teaching, priesthood, participating, being welcomed and valued by people around me and every single one of them. My wife and I marched at the Pride Parade, you know, recently, and they know who we are, and we share openly. I'm kind of a frequent flyer at testimony meeting these days. And it's never about truth claims so much as experiential goodness and gratefulness. When my daughter got married, I was just so grateful for all the forces that raised this child that has had to express those kinds of things. So that's my kind of testimony and my gratitude. But I am living this life.

Gina Colvin [00:53:42] But I'm 1989 is when I started, you know, what are we now? 27 years later. And after 10 or 11 years of hell, of negotiating that exact terrain of wow, you know, the culture versus me, little old me. And just, it just took, it just took growing confidence in myself, my own connection with God and spirit. I had a fantastic mission. But late in life, 24 years old when I went, well, a couple months shy of it, powerful spirit, spiritual experiences that kind of taught me how God and I work together, you know, kind of how to hear the voice and things like that.

Gina Colvin [00:54:27] And so that when I'm struggling, I'm grateful that I had at least I know what that feels like. But I was unable to stand being in church half the time. There was a four year period when it was maybe one out of three weeks that I could see stand to go and I'd come home madder than when I left and my wife would support me in this. And there was a couple years where I was a member of the First Unitarian congregation in the morning and, you know, doing my thing in the afternoon. But luckily I had a guy like Tom Rogers who was in my ward and I became friends with him and, you know, just at the right time, mentors and models of how to kind of, you know, be this were always there and felt authentic to me.

Gina Colvin [00:55:08] So I'm just again, more of a, if anything, if you're feeling that way now, I felt that way, you know, grateful for Randy Paul, just like take the long view, you know, grateful for the voices I have. And so if the podcasts and if the Facebook groups and all those things are serving that for you, they served that for me in the different, you know, just different earlier iterations of that.

Gina Colvin [00:55:35] But this is a powerful journey to be on. It's the human journey, I really do believe, to move from other people's authority to your own authority, your own connection, any theology, any claim that's weighed now against this entirety of my own sitting in spirit and my own weighing and all those different things. And so I'm perfectly comfortable in my Mormon skin and I'm perfectly comfortable at church. I'm sad a lot.

Gina Colvin [00:56:04] I'm sad that there's not greater depth of discussion and I do my part on the weeks that I can kind of work something in, you know, to kind of say, let's shift this to a different plane. But I can do it, and I know it can be done, but it took a dozen years to even be close to.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] You're saying it takes time.

Gina Colvin [00:56:25] Yeah. And you live into it. You know, I wish there were the top 10 things I could do. And, you know, within six months, I've mastered this. But Thomas and I both kind of know, and, you know, just from studying all the faith development theories out there in the world, it's a whole reorientation.

Gina Colvin [00:56:42] And one of the big shifts is, and it doesn't sound possible from what you believe becoming just least less and less and less important to just, you know, for me, I go, my words are belief to centering, just to feel centered in the universe, to feel comfortable in my own skin, all those kinds of things.

Gina Colvin [00:57:02] Then beliefs are just interesting, and some lead to better experiential things and some lead away from it and things like that. But there's not a single Mormon claim that I believe literally. But, boy, the gist of them, the sensibility of them. There's lots of those that I say. These are expansive and ennobling. And that's where I sit. And then I begin. I can usually take something that's lousy in church and go, ah, what's the deeper thing there? As soon as you start talking about it, everyone goes, oh, yeah, that's Mormonism too. You know, we just haven't talked about that in a while. But anyway, I ran on too long.

John Dehlin [00:57:37] Thank you, but thanks, Gina.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:57:39] So your question is whether or not it's possible for us to occupy these more nuanced positions. Yes. Just try and stop me.

Guest 6 [00:57:56] Nice.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:58:02] What I realized some time ago is that the church is weighed down by the dead weight of seamen.

John Dehlin [00:58:13] And somebody tweet that. Somebody tweet that the church is weighed down by the dead weight of semen.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:58:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:58:22] Tweet that.

Gina Colvin [00:58:23] There's going to be a meme. Kiwi Mormon.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:58:26] What's your Twitter? Semen is fine in certain contexts, but not in a spiritual context. And I think the great thing, the great moment that we're waiting for, and it will only come come. It will only be realized. Sorry, I'm filthy. I'm just filthy.

Gina Colvin [00:58:50] So there'll be a climax to this journey? Yes, it will be a climax.

John Dehlin [00:59:01] Do we need some Barry White here?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:59:03] Yeah, I think. I don't know. Just need to kind of run through my glossary of words, my thesaurus.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] You're making it hard Gina.

Gina Colvin [00:59:11] Oh, man.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:59:18] My sense is that.

Gina Colvin [00:59:19] I'm sorry, Thomas. You want to at least get one in?

John Dehlin [00:59:23] No,

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [00:59:26] my sense is that unless we claim, particularly women claim, all that Mormonism has and continues to offer us, that is not offered formally, but is there, our church will putter along in this sort of wasteland of evolution, waiting for the brethren to do something. Now, unless we women wake up to the extraordinary power that we have and we demand a sex balance, I think that the church will just putter out. It will kind of tip over into this sort of, you know, this sort of nihilistic patriarchy. It will become irrelevant. So when we talk about whether or not there is another kind of Mormon, there must be another kind of Mormonism, and that is the Mormonism that is claimed by women without looking for authority. So.

John Dehlin [01:00:28] Do I hear you saying woman instead of women?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:00:31] Like an accent thing? What I'm just might be an accent.

John Dehlin [01:00:36] Is that accent okay, woman.

Gina Colvin [01:00:38] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:38] No, I just want to make sure I. If there was. If it was a different word choice, I want to understand it. So. Okay. Perfect. Beautiful. That was beautiful. Except we lost the spirit in that exchange.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:00:51] I felt the spirit.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] You drove the spirit out. You felt more. You felt the spirit more.

Gina Colvin [01:00:55] A type of spirit.

Mormonism as Both Fertile Ground and Poison

John Dehlin [01:00:56] Okay, really quick. I know you've all communicated that Mormonism, for each of you, is a fertile ground to develop spirituality. There's many people who see it as a spoiled ground where our history is one of, you know, abuse or deceit, you know, polygamy and abusive, you know, know, marginalization of women, of hiding things, of punishing people who speak out. And they sort of see it as this war zone of carnage and polluted, sort of a Chernobyl, a moral Chernobyl.

John Dehlin [01:01:38] And why would anyone want to build a house there? Right? How do you guys, each of you. Let's do Danjina, Tom Thomas this time. How do each of you decide that in spite of Mountain Meadows massacre and Polyandry and September 6th and just all the different examples of carnage along the road that you still want to sort of put up shop in the middle of what some think is Chernobyl? Like, why not just be a good person? Why not humanism? Why not just sort of strike out with secularists and build something that isn't tainted by what many view as immoral ugliness? Was that a loaded question? But you.

Gina Colvin [01:02:28] Well, you can empathize anybody who's leave

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:02:31] the church, is what you're asking.

John Dehlin [01:02:32] What's that?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:02:33] Why not leave the church, is what you're asking?

John Dehlin [01:02:34] No. Why Try and build a spiritual home in a place that's so fragile.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:02:39] Oh,

Gina Colvin [01:02:42] well, I guess for me, autobiographically, I did build a spiritual home within this environment, so I know it was possible. It's my native language I've shared, you know, coming back when my life was so broken, to the. To the story in the Book of Mormon of the sons of Alma the Younger and just going, that's me. They made something of their lives again after this sort of, you know, trip. So can I. I don't know that they ever lived or breathed or anything like that, but that was a story that felt real to me, at least archetypically. Of course, then I did think that it was for sure, literal.

Gina Colvin [01:03:25] So, man, Mormonism was a fertile ground for me to say, I'm a person of worth. God, God loves me. There's nothing I can do. I can change. I can become something again. And of course, there's lots that you have to go through to make those transitions. But Mormonism worked for me.

Gina Colvin [01:03:45] I teased at it, so I won't spend a lot of it. When it became to get complicated again for me during the school time, that beauty of seeing Buddhism, Islam, every form of Christianity, Judaism, lived at deep levels and surface levels, and people that, you know, unthinkingly do things versus people that are contemplative and stuff like that. And saying every tradition has that. Therefore, that's what's within my Mormonism. I'm not going to say all of Buddhism is this because there's people that are really, you know, wanting the prayer flag kind of automatic universe. You know, I don't.

Gina Colvin [01:04:27] It's been too long. But, you know, that's where there's. That's where they're centered in their practice. And so Mormonism always had a bigger spectrum for me, thankfully, because of my study of world religions. As far as the toxic environment versus others.

Gina Colvin [01:04:47] There's a great phrase. It's from. From a Krista Tippett podcast. If you guys don't listen to Krista Tippett, boy, she is in my top five favorite people in the world. Somebody she was interviewing basically said, yeah, I see all the crap.

Gina Colvin [01:05:03] So they say, yes. And then their next phrase is, and. And I go about doing my thing to ease that, to acknowledge it. I'm not afraid to notice it there. Carolyn Pearson, you know, talks a lot. She's got the great metaphors about, you know, there's that polygamy tree and there's those other things, but they're in my backyard too, you know, and I Have to wrestle with them and stuff like that. So you don't want to like deny that they're there. I don't want to deny the experience of everybody here who's, you know, more damned been damaged, you know, I haven't been damaged personally by more.

John Dehlin [01:05:41] You have or have not? You have not been?

Gina Colvin [01:05:44] Not too much so. Again, I know I'm only speaking from my experience about that, but it's. I'm just. I guess this is one of the few things I came here to express. And if I'm using up all my time now, that's fine.

Gina Colvin [01:06:02] At a certain point I've just made peace that I'm never gonna be living a life where I'm going to seek total victory. You know what I mean? There's sort of good people get in and they fight a fight and they live and they die and things have changed perhaps in their lifetime and because of their efforts.

Gina Colvin [01:06:27] But that's not a reason for staying or going or whether or not I'm successful in changing it. I feel called to this life by my own story, my own autobiography, my own temperament. I have this ability to kind of like not be, you know, reactive super fast. So whatever it is for me. But there is this beauty. It's a tragic beauty, but there's a beauty in never fully being able to declare victory in this fight that we want.

Gina Colvin [01:07:01] But there are resources for the spiritual renewal. So in other words, it doesn't have to be the external validation. This changed because of efforts, but it's when you know that you're in tune with your highest self or what you're called to do. And you've got that sort of stuff coming together in you. You don't need the external, you've got the internal renewal and those sources and the energy that flows. And so every day spend some time in those energies.

Gina Colvin [01:07:30] Find those things that speak to your higher self. And I promise you, at least for me now, 10 or 15 years into kind of living at that sort of peace, it's possible, it's enjoyable. I did remember one thing. When Gene England died, Peggy Fletcher Stack called me up and said, who's going to be the next Gene England? And my first thought was who would want to be?

Gina Colvin [01:07:54] Because it seems so painful to be that misunderstood by so many people and things like that. And yet, you know, as I prepared for a while there, I got the website together for EugeneEngland.org and I did a few things like that. There was a time when I was probably going to write a biography of him. But times passed, but I saw the joy too and I experienced.

Gina Colvin [01:08:16] So amidst all this pain, amidst all this horrible things, I promise you I'm not having a non joyful life and I really do want to go to church on Sunday because these are good people. You know, not every life has to be about brilliance and, you know, depth of conversation. I'll take goodness over correctness anytime. Thanks.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:08:45] What was the question again?

Gina Colvin [01:08:46] It's about the poison. The poison.

John Dehlin [01:08:47] Why try and build a spiritual home in what some might describe as kind of a wasteland, a fraught wasteland.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:08:58] I'd have to be convinced that it is a wasteland. And I'm really compelled by the notion. I think it's Samsara, isn't it? The Buddhist notion of the burning house. Like I'm not going to make excuses for Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:09:10] Which house?

Guest 3 [01:09:10] The burning house.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:09:12] It's the idea that the house is burning.

John Dehlin [01:09:15] Oh, right.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:09:16] And so I can't make any excuses for some of the injuries inflicted upon the psychic and the spiritual injuries inflicted upon people. And I was having a chat with Christine before, just in case people don't know this about me, but there were times that I would go to church and I would think to my myself, if my brains explode and splatter all over the chandeliers, I wouldn't be surprised. There are times that I would show up at church and pull into the car park and I couldn't breathe.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:09:47] And it has been deeply, deeply painful. And as each layer of sort of mythology has been deconstructed before me, I'm thinking this place is a mess. However, having said that, I can't deny the ineffable, I can't deny the goodness that has come my way. You know, I mentioned that, you know, I have a very complex childhood and I was claimed at every moment by a member of the Mormon church.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:10:21] I was 14 years old, sitting in a prison cell at Christchurch police station wondering what was going to happen to me. And the district present comes along and he takes me, he says to me, we want you. We've always loved you, we want you. I'm 16 years old and my stepfather had a vile, vile temper and he was just merciless with me. And the Stake president's family said, come to us, we want you. And there is a generosity that exists in Mormonism that is spectacular. And I have been the beneficiary of a lot of that. And I have to say, in all honesty, all of the good things that have happened to me have happened because I'm a Mormon.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:11:06] Some of the worst things that have happened to me have happened to me because I'm a Mormon. And that's just the terrain. That's just what it is. And if I'm looking for a single story, a story of certainty, a story that is whole in its goodness, then that's just not life. Sometimes the house is on fire.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:11:26] And I talked about my sabbatical before, about leaving, and that was me leaving the house. And surprisingly, I'm nurtured in the Baptist tradition for a good year. I think I said it was six months I was on my sabbatical, but I lied a little because I'd been going to the Baptist church for about a year, where my spirituality was nurtured, where I was heard. I had wonderful relationships with the ministerial team. My kids loved going. They were like, wow, we don't have to wear uniforms here.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:11:55] And so there was just this real sense of recovering my relationship with God, my understanding of the importance of Jesus life, and then, surprise, surprise, it's a priority. Surprised me that I felt the call to go back to church.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:12:12] And I can't explain it. Just go back. And surprisingly, again, all of those things that bothered me, that claimed me, that claimed my aggression, my hurt, ceased to have the kind of potency that it had once before. Not that I couldn't see it, but I saw a different way. I used to bludgeon people with my fury. And I ruined a lot of relationships in my ward.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:12:42] You know, I'd sit by somebody and say, well, did you know City Creek and Tide and Gross Net? Da, da da, da da. And they had no idea they were terrorized by me.

John Dehlin [01:12:52] Any of you terrorized anybody?

Guest [01:12:56] Yeah.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:12:58] And understanding that my relationship with God was much more central than anything else, and that God was calling me to

Gina Colvin [01:13:05] compassion

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:13:07] and he wasn't obligating me to live a life of obedience or to these sort of unwieldy, sort of discursive priesthood structures. Not that I don't respect some of the men. And I came back. I came back really sort of unbound by all of the things that I feared before. And now people are afraid of me, particularly men, which I like. Yes, I enjoy that.

John Dehlin [01:13:45] Beautiful. I'm scared of you, if that's.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:13:47] Yeah, you should be.

John Dehlin [01:13:49] Thank you, Gina.

Guest 3 [01:13:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:51] Thomas.

The Cost and Complexity of Staying in the Church

Guest 3 [01:13:53] Well, one thing I want to say, I was struck again by what you said, Dan. That was it, that you haven't been traumatized in the church you haven't felt, not particularly for yourself, not particularly, but

Gina Colvin [01:14:02] with my friends and stuff, too.

Guest 3 [01:14:03] Yeah, of course. Yeah, I Mean, when you said that, it struck me that my deepest pain and wounding comes straight from my Mormon experience.

John Dehlin [01:14:11] You have been.

Guest 3 [01:14:12] Yeah. If there's any. If I could point to any single author of the pain in my life, it would be the Mormon Church. And so it makes your question all the more relevant and all the more poignant. And I suspect I'm not alone. I think there are a lot of people like me.

Guest 3 [01:14:27] There's a pattern I'm seeing that I hope I can articulate, which is that at some point, all of us who are in the Mormon Church, there was a point in our lives where it just held us. It held us so well. It was basically invisible. It's just the way we did things. It was supporting us, it was growing us. And all the language tonight, or a lot of it, what we hear is like. And then all of a sudden, I was really upset about the history, you know, mountain meadows massacre, September 6th, that kind of thing. All of a sudden, we're tuned into the historical problems or, you know, what on earth happened with that priesthood ban.

Guest 3 [01:15:06] How could that happen in a church like this that claims divine. Divine authority or the current. I mean, the brutal conflict with the LGBT community right now and learning how to really include them deeply. We wake up out of the womb. We're born out of this womb that just holds us and nourishes us. And all of a sudden, the bright lights of Samsara are burning our eyeballs, and we're saying, how could I have ever stayed in a place like this, right? And we're turning around and looking, looking at the parent and saying, like, how could I possibly stay in a home like this? That has been my abuser.

Guest 3 [01:15:41] And what I just want to point out is that what I see is a part of all of us that is growing into the parent. We're actually leaving behind the role of the child and learning how to be a parent and saying we can actually take care of the church in its infancy. We can actually find a place in our heart that's bigger than we think thought we were, that can include that and love that in all of its shortcomings. So the question, to me, it's not so much how do we. Like, why would we stick around and build something here with all of the problems?

Guest 3 [01:16:11] The problems are evident, and I don't make any excuses for them either. But I know in my own experience and my own growth that to include the church, to learn how to love the church, especially the parts I don't want to love, is to grow Myself and, and to actually honor what I can become. And that spiritual birthright is too important for me to give up for anything.

John Dehlin [01:16:41] So I sort of. I find myself feeling like those responses were really wise and poised and brilliant. And I also feel a strong reaction. Just a couple really quick stories to frame the question, because I like long, drawn out questions.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:17:04] Shocking.

John Dehlin [01:17:05] I remember when I was living in Chicago, I was first starting to become awakened to the plight of LGBT people. And I was trying to talk to my brother in law about it, who's a really active, devout, believing member. And I remember him saying something to the point of, yeah, you can spend your life worrying about really obscure populations, like, you know, red headed, freckled midgets, but, you know, then there's the rest of us who have to live day to day, and, you know, I can't bother myself with these sort of obscure minorities. We have to sort of go with where we are and who we're mostly with.

John Dehlin [01:17:47] And his point was LGBT people, some small minority, they're almost not that even substantive enough to think about. And then I fast forward to a friend that I had at Utah State University who had been with her partner for, let's just say, eight, nine years. And I asked, I mistakenly called her partner her husband. And she said, oh, I'm not married. And I'm like, okay, well, cool. And she said, my partner and I have decided that until marriage is available to everyone in the United States as an act of solidarity, we're not going to partake in it.

John Dehlin [01:18:25] And so we'll get married as soon as everyone in the United States has the same right. And it was just to say, until we're all welcome, we're not interested in being a part of the franchise. And so to like, mix another metaphor in, if you look at the way intellectuals have been treated people excommunicated, if you look at the way women are in some ways held to a second class status and people advocating for feminism have been excommunicated. And then you look at sort of the gut Punch that was November 2000, 2015, where in very real ways, a substantive and important part of our population were basically said, you're not wanted and you're not welcome here.

John Dehlin [01:19:15] And then you add to that a knowledge about, like, the suicide epidemic that is in the LGBT community, right? How. How did those successive sucker punches not just take you out? And how can you see the church metaphorically on the Titanic, throwing people off the boat, and yet you're willing to stay on it and enjoy the benefits of membership? While so many people have been kicked off. And it sounds like a charged question, but it's really not accusatory. And I'm not even asking you to. I'm not even asking you to defend yourself. It's not. You're not. Not on trial here. I'm saying those must have been sucker punches for you.

John Dehlin [01:19:57] And I'm guessing they continue to be. And I'm guessing you of all of us have deep sympathies for these populations that have been told you're not wanted. How did you make that work for you? And we'll go, Gina, Thomas and Dan.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:20:14] I think that's a great question, John. It's a question that Thomas and I did about podcast. I asked him, how do we keep doing Mormonism when showing up seems like an affirmation of the institution when it's so deeply, deeply flawed? And I want to acknowledge my personal feeling about each of those sucker punches. I mean, that was just wounding, wounding. Spiritually, deeply wounding. And for me, one of the. The biggest sucker punches that I received was when Kate Kelly was excommunicated. Kate Kelly is a friend, and I love her dearly.

John Dehlin [01:20:55] And you're on the Ordained Women board right now?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:20:57] No, I was on the Ordained Women board recently.

Guest 5 [01:20:59] Okay.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:21:00] Yes. And the reason I say that is that I was at the action in October 2014. 2014, and I was talking to Joanna, 14. Yeah, I was talking to Joanna Brooks, and I said, I'm not sure. I was in San Francisco anyway. And I said, I'm not sure if I want, you know, if I'm going to go. And we debated it, and she convinced me to come. And the minute I said to myself, okay, you're going to go, I mean, I'm not one for big, squishy, sort of fat spiritual experiences. They sort of are more sort of meandery in me. I was struck with how utterly vital showing up was at that point. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences. And it surprised me. Knocked me for a six. That's a cricket term. I'm sorry. For those people, cricket is a game.

John Dehlin [01:21:49] Knocked you for a six.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:21:51] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:21:51] Okay, got it.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:21:52] Sorry, I had to translate. I was really, really surprised by it, and I was surprised at the depth of feeling at that event. And so when she was excommunicated, it felt so at odds with the spiritual experience that I received. And I think a lot of us feel that, that there is a tension between the way that we experience the spirituality that we feel in these progressive moments, in these moments of wanting evolution and Change for the church and what the church is doing.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:22:27] Is this still on? Okay. And I met with my stake president after that happened, and, well, he asked to see me, and he just gave me a chance to cry and to weep for that. And because he's a priesthood man, he didn't convey one way or the other about whether or not he felt that Kate should have been excommunicated or not. But I felt waves of empathy for him. And that at that point, told me that there is a bigger story than just right or wrong, that, you know, I could occupy that place in Mormonism because there were enough people. And I was just beset with calls from people, former bishops, who said.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:23:06] Who reached out to me and said, I know how you feel about this, and I'm really sorry. And you should know that if I was that woman's bishop, she would not have been excommunicated. That was wrong. And so.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:23:20] So it wasn't just one story, like her excommunication was a million stories shared all over the world. And it just so happened that my spirituality was sustained inside the church. So I don't know if that answers your question, but for me, I didn't experience it as just this monolithic kind of clear, black or white, that the greatest sustenance, spiritual sustenance, I got was inside the church. And it continues to be that way.

Guest 3 [01:23:50] Can you help me understand the question better, John? I'm just trying to feel it.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:23:55] Yeah, I feel like I haven't answered it. If you don't understand it.

Guest 3 [01:23:58] Well, no, you know, it's changing. It's a restoration process, this question.

John Dehlin [01:24:06] Yeah. I mean, there. There are important, beautiful, wonderful people who have been told they're not welcome, they're not wanted. And for some, it comes down to a matter of privilege. If you happen to be straight, if you happen to be cisgender, if you happen to be middle class, white, whatever it is, smart enough, enough family connections, sure, you could have your cake and eat it, too. You can. Can have the privilege of membership and of affiliation and be the celebrated prodigal son returned, but in some sense, you're doing that in the face of a lot of people being kicked out and turned away.

John Dehlin [01:24:54] And how are you not in some ways complicit, either by lending your name or your money or. Or your time? How are you not complicit in the damage being done by others? And how can you. How have you been able to remain a member in the face of that, you know, that position the Church has taken with so many People who now don't feel welcome.

Guest 3 [01:25:19] Yeah, no, thank you. That really helps. The first thing I want to say is that I just feel the tremendous pain in the. The question. And I appreciate that you're willing to feel the pain and give voice to the pain. It feels incredibly real to me, and I don't know how I could be participating in this moment in Mormonism without being really honest about the pain that you're speaking to. So I appreciate it. I appreciate how you ask it and how you're willing to feel it.

Guest 3 [01:25:46] And my answer at the moment is I just don't know. I don't know if going to church makes me complicit in all of that or if it's helping. I hope it's helping. And I don't know if coming here tonight and gathering the Saints and hopefully holding a space where we can grow together and let go of some pain together and heal and create a brighter future together, I hope that, but I don't know if it will. All I can say is that I bring an attitude of experimentation. Like, I'm willing to take big risks and experiment with, like, how can we probe this system? How can we make moves to get things going again?

Guest 3 [01:26:21] I can't be okay in the church. I can't be okay as a Mormon until my LGBT brothers and sisters feel as welcome as I do at church. I just can't. So how we get there, I don't know. But I'm here, you know, Like, I'm throwing everything I have at it. And I love you guys for doing the same. Everybody,

John Dehlin [01:26:48] just a moderator's pause. I have to say how much I love the answer. I don't know. I almost never get it. And I love it. So, all things aside, I love. I love that answer.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:27:00] I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:27:01] I think sometimes I don't know.

Gina Colvin [01:27:02] I don't know how I did it.

John Dehlin [01:27:03] Can say so much. So thank you, Thomas.

Guest 6 [01:27:06] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:27:06] Dan.

Gina Colvin [01:27:07] Just quickly, three things came to mind. And I grieved. I grieved until I couldn't, you know, a good six, eight weeks before I found any kind of zest and optimism again. You know, Jerrolee, my good friend here, we're moderating a thoughtful faith. We, you know, eight hours a day, we're just trying to process all this pain that we all feeling and all this confusion. And then I got, to me, the double blow was President Nelson. Like, it's a revelation because it was, you know, I got enough of a sense of how corporations work and institutions have evil, you know, inadvertent evil, but how they can really dismiss people and do all that stuff.

Gina Colvin [01:27:56] But when, you know, he actually went and said this in revelation, that was giving me another But I'll let you know what happened helpfully. The thing came out on Thursday. Sunday morning I'm talking with Carolyn Pearson and Mitch Main on my podcast.

Gina Colvin [01:28:12] Later that week I put together another one where we're trying to read the tea leaves. So my podcast helped me process out loud. Two weeks later we did four parts with Bill Bradshaw and Daniel Parkinson, John's cousin, and Natasha Helfer Parker on the sociology and the science and all that stuff about lgp. So I luckily had a forum in which to talk and to grieve openly as well as to wrestle. So I felt like I was able to still do something good in the world at the same time that I was grieving. So I was really, really grateful for that.

Gina Colvin [01:28:47] But you know, again, I really can't say enough about the saving practice of something every day where you and God are alone, or you and the universe or whatever it is are alone, every single day where you can scream and process out loud and stuff like that. And I've never once felt rejected by God, universe or something for throwing out pain and fus and things like that to God.

Guest [01:29:16] Sure.

Guest 3 [01:29:20] Head turned.

Gina Colvin [01:29:22] No, you know, certainly early on I would have, you know, but not now. So those are my three things grieve together. But at a certain point you move on. And now this is not really the question, but at some point I have made peace with you. Look at Mormonism is going to survive. It's not going to explode and be off the face of the earth. If I'm capable of and I think I'm showing that I am capable of staying in and being a witness for the good things to give voice to the pain of the people who are missing because of these struggles or something.

Gina Colvin [01:29:56] If I can do that, it feels like a good thing. Like Thomas says, we don't know that it's not an unadulterated good. William James says, we never know what our good is, our actions are good until we hear the cries of the wounded left in our wake, you know, in other words. But we still act.

Gina Colvin [01:30:14] So I'm able to do it. I'm trying to be sensitive to see the LGBT young man there and make sure he is acknowledged and welcomed on a Sunday. And I miss having some of the voices here that would have been doing the same.

John Dehlin [01:30:31] Another moderator, Paz I've certainly had a love hate relationship with what my friends Represent. But recently I made some really aggressive posts on Facebook about how people who stay in the church, maybe they're complicit in the harm that's done.

John Dehlin [01:30:55] And from two different channels. One is from Winnie Montgomery, who's one of the Mama Dragons who read this beautiful story from the Mama Dragons Story Project about why she stays. And then the other example, one of my favorite people in the world, my cousin Brett Parkinson, he's here. His daughter Greta gave me a very similar response.

John Dehlin [01:31:23] The response was from both of them. I, I go to church every Sunday to be there for that young gay or lesbian child or young adult or adult who would need a friend in that context where if I weren't there, they would feel a little bit less safe, a little bit more brutalized. And I go to help be a bomb and a support to those people.

John Dehlin [01:31:52] And I thought to myself, myself that that's an argument I have not found a negative response for. In fact, in some ways it feels like a very sacred decision. Knowing how punishing church has been for me for someone to decide in spite of the punishment, I'm going to go to be that support for people who might need that support most.

John Dehlin [01:32:15] That's one of the most powerful things I've heard. So I have maybe I'm surprised a bit that I'm even holding this event tonight. And it's certainly not because I want to stand as this position being the one that I advocate explicitly. At the same time, I have a bit of a renewed reverence for those who feel like, called to this position because who else is trying to be that positive voice for. From within, both for positive change, but also for those who are still suffering within.

John Dehlin [01:32:50] So I find a lot of beauty there. So sorry, that's my editorial moment. So that's. I'm going to clap for you. Still with a love hate relationship, but with a lot more respect as well. So where do you see us going?

John Dehlin [01:33:13] You know, there's this, you know, the past couple years have been kind of brutal and there's a lot of people who have jumped ship and there's a lot of people who want to say that the church is sort of going to reach this tipping point where they're, you know, the future may be a lot less bright, that maybe even the church will, will go the way of Protestant Christianity and other Western religious traditions where it's going to start being in decline. And in some ways, maybe even it's the sinking good ship Zion, in a sense.

Where Is the Church Headed?

John Dehlin [01:33:54] Where do you guys see guys and women? Where do you See this heading, woman? I mean, do you live with the threat of being punished by the church? Do you see this taking hold, what you're advocating for, taking hold and growing? Do you see people rising up, leaders from within to try and cut it off? And how are you seeing the future of the positions that you're advocating for?

John Dehlin [01:34:26] I think it's, should we do Thomas, Gina, Dan, Is that all right? We'll go in that order. What's the future for what you guys are representing? Or do you even have a sense for it? I know you're gonna say, I live in the now.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:34:40] Say, I don't know, he likes it,

John Dehlin [01:34:41] or I don't know, I don't know.

Guest 6 [01:34:44] John.

Guest 3 [01:34:48] I have a thought about that, and it's a little bit of a developmental perspective on it. Almost by definition, when we grow, when we move through a transition of identity, we feel repulsion towards the former stage that we're leaving. Like whatever we were before, we find it totally distasteful, totally inadequate. We want to distance ourselves from it as much as possible. It's to say that when we develop, which we all do, we run the risk of divorcing ourselves from the prior stages of development that is actually our root bed. It's the former stages that get us to the actual crown of the tree. It's how we come to blossom. So I see an incredible opportunity in the moment right now in the Mormon Church, which there's unmistakable growth. I mean, the wisdom coming from people tonight and the wisdom sourced from the collective membership of the church.

Guest 2 [01:35:46] Church.

Guest 3 [01:35:46] It's profoundly growthful and evolutionary, and new things are happening. The temptation is to take one step forward and then take 10 steps backwards by divorcing ourselves from the very system, the very root bed that nourishes us. So I hope for a future of Mormonism where we learn to hold one another and really learn to see ourselves and the people in every single stage of development, of faith, every moment of transition for every member. If there's a way that we can actually honor the dignity of it, then maybe we'll create a culture where people honor the dignity of our own transitions.

John Dehlin [01:36:26] Beautiful. Gina.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:36:28] I feel like you're asking me to prophesy, which is wonderful, and see and reveal.

John Dehlin [01:36:35] Can women do that?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:36:36] Oh, yeah. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:36:37] Let's see it.

Guest 5 [01:36:38] Let's see it.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:36:38] Yes, they can. I believe that there's an energy working, particularly among women. I think there is a spiritual force that we are collecting around us, and that. So this is me in the spirit of prophecy. Yay. Verily, Verily, verily, verily. A day will come where women will rise up in their awesome power that they will no longer ask men for the priesthood. They will claim the priesthood that they already have. And it will be a sight to behold. And that will change everything.

Guest 5 [01:37:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:28] All right.

Guest 6 [01:37:29] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:37:30] Love it.

Gina Colvin [01:37:31] Got chills.

John Dehlin [01:37:32] Got chills. Dan, how do you follow that up? It's a mic drop. Well, drop the mic.

Gina Colvin [01:37:38] I'll quote scripture. I'll quote scripture.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:37:42] Thus saith Sophia,

Gina Colvin [01:37:45] a person might put forth their puny arm and stop the mighty Missouri river or whatever that was, than to stop what's flourishing here.

John Dehlin [01:37:53] You know, that's bold.

Gina Colvin [01:37:57] Well, not that we're going to become dominant in the church, and I'm not even positive that we should, you know, but that comfort level with truly being ourselves, openly saying, you know, that part of Mormonism doesn't strike me. Well, here's where I concentrate on and just being able to share from your personal experience in church. I really think that as we share with each other on the Internet, we're learning the power of our own voice and people are going to no longer be silenced. And so for those that change, we're going to change the community just by naturally being there.

Gina Colvin [01:38:35] Let me say something maybe controversial. I want the church to go super fast, you know, in the directions that I think. But I think there's actually a property for organizations at this level and I'm not positive that we're not at about the right pace. Certainly I'm going to say, you know, 20% faster, please, or something like that.

Gina Colvin [01:39:05] But, you know, I changed, you know, I'm talking about a 10 year change for me, you know, of the real wrestle. That's pretty dang fast.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:39:14] Fast.

Gina Colvin [01:39:14] And just because I'm ready, I have to allow everybody else, you know, to change with me and I have to honor that. I was that certain. Sure, this is true. We got the tiger by the tail. I know everything about the heavens and my place within them. And how can, like Tyler Thomas says, I'm rejecting myself if I don't hold place of love and stuff for like, and say grateful that I was able to journey. And so I had Christine Haglin two or three years ago on my podcast and she said something and I'm not going to do a great job with it. But she, you know, as we're talking about change within the church, she says, you know, yeah, I want this.

Gina Colvin [01:40:03] But my mother, who gave her whole life in the paradigm of correlation and patriarchy and finding her place and saying that she's happy and content and all that stuff. She is beginning to see what I'm revealing in my own life. But I don't want her to feel like this isn't her church anymore, too. So in other words, I do think there's this right pace, this incrementalness of just more people showing up who are like us, who are speaking up and things like that that will move us along. And certainly, you know, leaders are always going to be called, probably from the more conservative core. But, you know, when you're raised in an environment like Thomas talks about, it's all invisible to you.

Gina Colvin [01:40:51] You're going to. Naturally, women's voices are just like, how can you deny the power and the spiritual gifts? And at a certain point, they're going to be like, I've done that. It was fun. 15 or 20 years. I just thought, this woman will be the greatest bishop on the earth, you know, and more and more people are gonna. Are gonna just see that naturally or

John Dehlin [01:41:15] that gay man or that lesbian woman

Gina Colvin [01:41:17] or trans person without even thinking it'll work. But, you know, we're all ticked because it's not going as fast as we want it to. But I'm going to at least say,

John Dehlin [01:41:30] well, yeah, say it again.

Gina Colvin [01:41:32] She says, wait till the women really do rise up with their voices. Like she's.

John Dehlin [01:41:36] Did your battery go? Did your battery go out? We may have a battery go out. Did you want to repeat?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:41:46] I just said, I think we're working at a man's place. Wait till the woman rear up.

John Dehlin [01:41:49] Oh, okay.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:41:50] We're working a lot quicker.

John Dehlin [01:41:52] Beautiful. So if that doesn't come back on, Dan, I'll need you just to hold it to your mouth like a microphone and share it with Gina. So one question. For those of us who have been kicked out, or for those of us who just said, beautiful story, I can't abide, and they've chosen to leave. What do you have to say to them? Dan, you go first, then Gina, then Thomas.

Messages for Those Who Have Left or Been Hurt

Gina Colvin [01:42:26] Just.

John Dehlin [01:42:26] Nope.

Gina Colvin [01:42:27] Oh, yeah, sorry. Just keep growing. Just don't. Mormonism didn't work for you. Don't think that that's every religion, you know, to me, there's a spirit. I think our lives are better when we're in dialogue with this deep core as well as what we say and think. And I think science and religion both have important things to say. And so I keep that dialogue going. But don't just think because a particular brand of Mormonism that was in your house versus my house, you know? Okay. Don't you know I'm saying don't treat that as Mormonism altogether. Hopefully you'll consider other things, but just keep growing. I truly, you know, it doesn't seem like it, but I'm destination neutral as far as being within Mormonism. But if you're going to leave Mormonism,

John Dehlin [01:43:18] what do you mean by that? So to somebody who's like, God's out of the picture for me, this is the only life I have. I'm an atheist, I'm an agnostic, and I don't want to ever step foot in a church again. What do you say to that person? It's what you just said, but go

Gina Colvin [01:43:37] ahead and say it. Yeah, go down that path. I certainly tried. And, you know, again, it's gonna sound like, oh, you'll come back, you know, like. Like that sort of thing. I'm just saying I believe that I know from my own experience that my life is better when I'm not relying just upon my brain, just upon my own will, just upon my. Those things. Just about logic, that there's a. There's centers of energies and levels. Religion at least is comfortable talking in those. In those fields and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:44:07] It's more than emotion.

Gina Colvin [01:44:08] Just don't cut.

John Dehlin [01:44:09] Yeah, it's more than emotion. It's more than community.

Gina Colvin [01:44:11] I felt emotion, and I've had profound spiritual experiences. They are not the same to you. I mean.

John Dehlin [01:44:18] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:44:19] You know, and again, not lots of people. I haven't had that. Yeah, that's right. But there are befores and afters in my life. I'm forever changed by this experience. And even though I'm living my regular life and I'm doing things and I'm getting all caught up in drama and stuff like that, eventually those always kind of remind me and say, oh, well, this can't be all of it, because you got to hold that intention with this. And so I'm grateful for profound spirit, spiritual experiences, grounding experiences. These ones that, you know, I don't remember the movie Contact with Matthew McConaughey talking to Jody Foster about this. It's like, you know, science couldn't touch this, you know, with his. That kind of accent and stuff like that. I'm grateful for those. Even though I'll forget.

John Dehlin [01:45:09] That's a Texas microaggression, by the way.

Gina Colvin [01:45:12] I'll forget. I'll forget those things. Things in the daily drama. But I would love to have everyone just be at peace with themselves and the universe and all that stuff. I really don't think I've made a decision based upon the afterlife or am I pleasing God or anything like that. In 15 years, it just somehow or other I found it. I found something. You know, it's obviously a continual thing and I feel like I'm still growing and God's, you know, or the universe is serving up different things for me. But I don't even remember where the original question. I just rambled. I rambled too long.

John Dehlin [01:45:55] But, but, but I, but I also heard. So I heard you say, whatever path you're on, follow it, follow it.

Gina Colvin [01:46:01] And I hope it includes something like this. That's what I would say.

John Dehlin [01:46:04] And I think I heard you say keep growing and developing. Don't give up on growth and development, even if religion isn't a part of.

Gina Colvin [01:46:14] Exactly. And God was a trigger word for me for a while. Spirit was a trigger word for me for a while. I mean, again, I trusted that I have had an arc of growth and I. Every, every idea. Early in my marriage when I was going through all this, I'd serve up to my wife, you know, I would be trying it on for some size, but she thought I was forever there. So golly, explore everywhere. And if I can tell you anything, I don't think that God cares one bit whether or not you're Mormon, if there is a God, you know.

John Dehlin [01:46:45] But you said if there's a God. Yeah, well, I talk like there is. You talk like you have a relationship with the God.

Gina Colvin [01:46:51] Well, I have faith in God and God's an easy language for me.

John Dehlin [01:46:55] But for you, you're a bit agnostic.

Guest 5 [01:46:58] Sure.

Gina Colvin [01:46:58] I don't know what God's like or something. I would say for me, I'll just share probably why I'm. I felt, I feel like I'm on, I called it earlier, the human journey. And it's this movement from self centeredness and from other people's authority and stuff like that into my own self and this. And again, a philosophy, temperament and all that stuff. I'm okay with both. And ness. And I'm okay with, you know, mythic truth and symbolic truth. I just have a real comfort level with that. I lost my train of thought. But it has to do with just.

John Dehlin [01:47:46] I was asking about God and whether there's a God for you.

Guest [01:47:49] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:47:49] Oh yeah, yeah. I was going to give you my little. Honestly because of this. And this feels like the natural thing. I just. The thing about Mormonism is so great is it's calling us to just keep growing forever. Right. And so to me, it's just like I imagine myself down the road if I kept on this path. I can at least see the Mormonism sort of affirming a personal deity. But then I was you telling and Thomas, I had a non. Dual experience a few years ago, you know, where I, you know, I really truly felt like all categories are possibly, you know, there. I've always kind of said, you know, Buddhism talks about, you know, eventually you stop reincarnating and the drop returns to the ocean.

Gina Colvin [01:48:37] And I was like, oh, what a loss of the. The personal that that would be. But I haven't experienced it, you know, but that was the closest thing I had to say. And it was more like less of a loss of me and more of a gaining of everything, you know, and again, it's an experiential thing that I barely have.

John Dehlin [01:48:55] Interesting.

Gina Colvin [01:48:55] Have touched around. So I don't know that there's a God, but it's language that works for me. And if you listen to me on the podcast or something, the God I'm believing in is always compassionate. You know, there's. There's.

John Dehlin [01:49:09] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:49:09] You know, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:10] Beautiful. Gina.

Gina Colvin [01:49:15] So what about somebody.

John Dehlin [01:49:16] What would you say to the. What would you say to the. The people who've been kicked out or the people who felt like they had to leave, or even the people who say, I'm just not interested in religion, Anything that smells of religion. Well, what's your message for them?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:49:30] Okay, very simply, number one, for the people who have been kicked out, when I'm an apostle, you will be reinstated to the church.

John Dehlin [01:49:38] If you want to come back so

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:49:41] that you can choose for those people who want to leave, God bless you. You're still my people. I love you. And flourish. That's all.

John Dehlin [01:49:54] That was a shorter answer than dance,

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:49:56] but that was a really.

Gina Colvin [01:49:57] Every time and I feel conspicuous about

John Dehlin [01:50:01] it, it's giving me a hard time. Thomas.

Guest 6 [01:50:03] Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:50:04] What comes to mind in the moment? I love the doctrine in Mormonism that we all bear the light of Christ.

John Dehlin [01:50:12] Right.

Guest 3 [01:50:12] That we're made of the same stuff as divinity. And for people who have been kicked out, for people who are leaving, who just can't make it work if the language of having the light of Christ doesn't work, I would say that we all have a basic goodness and that we can trust that basic goodness. So I'd say to those people, trust your basic goodness and you will love where it takes you and who you become in doing that.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:50:43] Nice.

Gina Colvin [01:50:45] Can I jump in again real quick?

John Dehlin [01:50:47] Super quick.

Gina Colvin [01:50:48] Okay.

Guest [01:50:49] Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:50:51] Yeah. I'm already conspicuous. I said that if you're going to leave Mormonism though I hope you'll leave the most robust version of it and not a cardboard version of it. Thomas said something a month or so ago when I was in a setting with him. You know, if you're still in pain, if Mormonism is still triggering for you, if it's still this thing, then that's a sure sign that you have work to do to make peace with it in some way. Again, it doesn't mean that you're going to make peace with it and I'm going to be back in it, but somehow or other, we have to have a healthy relationship with all of our homes and all of our stages, like he was talking about. I don't know if you wanted to.

Guest 3 [01:51:30] No, that's good.

John Dehlin [01:51:35] Is this working? Is this on? Can you hear me? Okay. All right. I've really enjoyed our conversation. It's way better than I even anticipated. And I have high expectations.

Gina Colvin [01:51:48] What's so funny?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:51:49] Nothing. Nothing, John.

John Dehlin [01:51:50] I had high expectations. Now's the time to open up the mic. So I would love anyone who is interested, who loves, who wants to thank these beautiful people, anyone who's angry at them and wants to yell at them, anyone who just has a sincere question, the mic is yours right here. Please cue up and contribute a little bit.

Audience Q&A: Spiritual Practice and Personal Struggles

Guest 2 [01:52:16] And

John Dehlin [01:52:19] can someone tell me what time it is? Shout it out.

Gina Colvin [01:52:24] 9 12.

John Dehlin [01:52:24] 9 12. Okay. Yeah. Let's get 5 or 10. Steve?

Guest 6 [01:52:31] Yeah?

John Dehlin [01:52:32] If you want to be on camera, just thumbs up as you walk to the mic and Steve will shine it. All right, Go ahead. John Ogden, right?

Guest 5 [01:52:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:42] I just have a. Just a pragmatic question. Just what is your daily spiritual practice look like in unorthodoxy?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:52:53] Who are you asking, John?

John Dehlin [01:52:54] So go Thomas, Gina. Thomas, Gina, Dan. And brief answers.

Guest 5 [01:52:57] Yes.

Gina Colvin [01:52:58] Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:53:01] Thomas, what is our practice in unorthodoxy?

John Dehlin [01:53:04] What's your spiritual practice? I'm looking for ways to grow spiritually in unorthodoxy. I'm looking for pragmatic suggestions of how to do that.

Guest 3 [01:53:14] Yeah. Well, I'll just say that in the different traditions, a really classical polarity is stillness and movement. And I found that really being intentional about bringing stillness into my day dynamizes the movement. So from stillness to motion every day. But the stillness is so key, and our culture probably won't give it to us. We have to take that for ourselves.

John Dehlin [01:53:44] And does that take the form for you in meditation, Mindfulness practice?

Guest 3 [01:53:47] Well, call it anything, I don't care what it's called. But you just. The stillness. Anything can happen in that so being still. Moments of just stillness, being still in the body and the mind and the spirit.

John Dehlin [01:53:57] Five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, whatever, whenever it comes. Stillness. Gina.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:54:04] I struggle with being still. And I also struggle with, like, kneeling, praying, because I think our body weight, you know, like our body sort of, you know, physicality as women isn't conducive to kneeling. I prefer the whole notion of just sort of lying and allowing, you know, whatever in the cosmos to rest upon me. You know, I'm in this, you know, and I'm speaking as a woman and a womanist. I'm in this sort of, sort of odd space where I'm having to shuck off the notion that the only deities that I can access, the only practices that I can access are really sort of male centric, full of masculinity. So I would say that my daily spiritual practices are working on my own practices as a Mori woman. And what rests in that in conversation with other women, it's sort of an emergent thing. So I can't give you.

John Dehlin [01:55:00] Yeah, that was great, Dan.

Gina Colvin [01:55:02] It's evolved for me right now a half hour a day, quite productive protected time. Usually 5 to 10 minutes worth of reading. I've been doing a lot of Richard Rohr lately. I did some stuff on addiction and recovery, so I was kind of in the big book for a while. And then I just try to sit.

Gina Colvin [01:55:25] There's, you know, I'm not really a mantra meditator or something like that, but there was some somewhere along the line a while ago. I can almost like find a channel, a stillness channel or sort of a flow state channel. And usually within a few minutes I can kind of get there.

Gina Colvin [01:55:44] Things will come up for me that I don't really want to deal with right now. So I keep a pad of paper next to me to kind of, oh, that's a thing for today, or something like that. And I just try to just see what comes up. Sometimes I certainly go longer than the half hour, but I always try to at least have, I'd say a 20 minute practice of some sort of meditation, contemplation.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:56:05] Thank you.

Guest 3 [01:56:06] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:56:07] Thanks, John. Next question. Hey, I've been listening to this therapist named Brene Brown, and she kind of makes a connection between shame and certainty. Like the shame that we feel produces the certainty that we need to feel. And I feel like it's so present. I'm wrestling with it so much every time I go to church. Like the need to feel shame almost like. Or the, like the pressing the shame onto Me personally. And then also the need that I need to declare certainty also. And I'm just wondering if that's something that you currently wrestle with as well, or if it's. You have someone specific you want to direct it in any of the. All right. Volunteer if you got something. Shame and certainty. Is that the kind of.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:56:59] Thanks for your question, Tussie. Shame. I don't anymore. I used to, but I felt that that was just unproductive. So I struggle mostly with feeling guilty about anything. And certainty, I also find really unproductive because, you know, I think my faith is, you know, increasingly, whatever it is, God has wrestled my hand open so that I hold my faith with less of a tight fist as that nice lady who wrote that Monkey Town thing, Rachel Held Evans. But that's been an evolution. But certainly in terms of spiritual nourishment and power, holding the uncertainty as something sacred has yielded much more spiritual and fulfilling results. And I think shame is deeply unproductive. That's not to say repentance isn't unproductive or renewal or change is unproductive, but shame is just, you know, I think it's an evil.

John Dehlin [01:58:08] So there's a lot of people queuing up. Any quick addition to Gina. It's okay to pass. If you got a response, just keep it.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:58:16] Thanks, Tessie.

John Dehlin [01:58:17] Is that good tan?

Gina Colvin [01:58:18] Yeah, just something I was just gonna say. There are different temperaments, and I. And so the fact that not everyone has that particular thing, I think that's almost a product of just kind of a temperamental thing, which there's no judgment of good or bad or, you know, but it's certainly a challenge that I honor and hope that you'll, you know, find success for.

John Dehlin [01:58:40] And Brene Brown's a big thumbs up. Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:58:42] Brene Brown's amazing.

John Dehlin [01:58:45] Next question.

Guest [01:58:46] Well, thank you, guys. This question's more for Tina. I think a lot of. In fact, if not most of the feminist Mormons, they feel that a lot of the ethical problems that we have in the church stem from the structural imbalance. So how do you cope with that? We saw how Kate Kelly went, and it's just. I think that a lot of. Especially the friends I talk to, they say, you know, there's no way. It's too authoritative. There's no way. I mean, how do you. How do you cope with that?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:59:22] I see this other places. I'm mostly a woman. And so my feeling is that, like, I don't ask. It was really difficult for me to go to ow and ask to be led into Because I'm a brown girl. Like, brown girls don't ask.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:59:38] So as a womanist, what I want to see is the reconciliation of the sexes. And I'm not saying that in a sensualist way, that all women need to be this way and all men need to be this way, that masculinities and femininities need to be reconciled.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [01:59:51] And so that comes from here. It doesn't come from permission from anybody else. And I think that as women, it is a spiritual practice to understand the power that we have, the enormous sexual power that we have. And I'm not talking about shagging everything.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:00:10] What I'm talking about is that being present in our bodies, claiming our bodies. Power, power as women and bringing that into the church. I mean, that's phenomenal. Think about it. All of these women claimed their sexual power, their huge feminine power.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:00:29] Imagine, you know, the watershed that would happen, like, on a daily, you know, on a weekly basis at church. Like, it's enormous. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Guest [02:00:40] So are you advocating for more of a grassroots movement where all the. All the women kind of retake that power in order to kind of move up through the. Through the authority?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:00:51] No, not move up through the authority. Claim our own authority. We don't need male permission for what we already have.

John Dehlin [02:00:59] And I think that'd be an interesting follow up, how to do that. I'm sure it sounds awesome, and I think it is awesome. And I'm sure you're wondering how to do that, right? In an award. And that's probably its own podcast, but.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:01:11] All right, let's put a pin in that.

Guest [02:01:13] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:01:14] Thank you.

Guest 5 [02:01:16] Hi.

Guest 2 [02:01:16] I'm really excited to ask this question because it's been months, so I'm asking it even though it's probably offensive. Hi, Gina. So you'll probably want to, like, unfriend me on Facebook after I ask this one.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:01:27] Happy to do that, but.

Guest 2 [02:01:28] And John, if it's. If. If there's a psychological answer to that or a. And psychology answers it, then I'd love to hear from you too. But at this point, you know, maybe it's because my wife left and I'm fresh, I'm 10 months out. But when Tyler Glenn spat on Joseph Smith, I don't even think that was a show. I think that's justified almost, because all the history that I've read, except maybe the Kirtland Temple, I think is just bullshit.

Guest 2 [02:01:53] But even though I feel that way and I feel as strong as Tyler does, I will feel pulls to come back, and that's why this thing is so interesting to me. But then I'll think to myself, maybe I'm thinking that only because I like to think at least I have this personality to accomplish things in life and just a personality to be very driven and motivated and be great, and if I allow for the shelf to fall even further, and. And then I'll just feel like a slug, and there's no point to life, and who am I? What's my identity? And I won't do anything in life.

Guest 2 [02:02:32] And I feel like you three are obviously very successful. Gina, I know you are. And so that maybe it's just that personality. Yeah, you guys, I don't know.

Gina Colvin [02:02:43] But Gina, for sure, not financially, but

Guest 2 [02:02:46] you guys are so driven and have that personality that. That just. That innateness that you have is what really in large part drives you to be Mormon, because you have this identity to begin with. So do you feel that that's fair? Am I off? You know, et cetera?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:03:01] I think it's fair. Yeah. We're just big mouths.

John Dehlin [02:03:04] Yeah, she has big mouths. She says.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:03:06] Yeah.

Guest 3 [02:03:09] I didn't get your name. I'm sorry, Rich.

Guest 2 [02:03:11] Oh, it's Rhett.

Guest 3 [02:03:12] R. A T. T. Rhett, yeah. Just listening to your question. I want to ask you, like, what matters to you right now? You know, like, sounds like you're in a moment, and, like, your life is really reorganizing. I just wonder, like, what's next for you?

Guest 2 [02:03:28] So, like, professionally, for instance, I want to start a business, but I'd get so obsessed buying books, like, instead of. I had, like, a few leads to follow up on a day I was at benchmark books, like, buying Michael Quinn just so I could read more. And I get obsessed, and I only will. I'll read. I'll only be able to work, like, a few hours a day, and I'll obsessively study Mormon history. And it's like, this is not helping me at all. Like, this is not helping me in my own life goals and things. And I just feel like I know a lot of my

Guest 2 [02:03:55] friends who have, like, these life goals, and so they can't even start reading about Mormon history or getting caught up in the LGBT stuff, because then they're gonna get totally screwed over in their lives by thinking about everything and everything that isn't the life goals. Right. So that's me.

Guest 3 [02:04:10] Thank you,

John Dehlin [02:04:14] love, for vulnerability. Did you have a response for.

Guest 3 [02:04:20] Well, you know, I'm just going on an intuition here, but it would feel really powerful to just name what you want. I mean, you're talking about a perception of what the three of us are doing. One of the three of us being successful and the other two kind of a little bit. No, but seriously, I mean, I just listening to you and being present to you.

John Dehlin [02:04:42] Right.

Guest 3 [02:04:42] I want to hear, like, what you want. Right. And if you can name that and claim that,

Guest 2 [02:04:50] get my wife and I back together, that'd be another one. I don't know. Like, I'm happy to talk about it more, but why don't we have more time to talk? And I don't know if that was getting to the question of just. I just feel like personalities often keep people in the church.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:05:06] I think you're right.

John Dehlin [02:05:07] Certainly a factor.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:05:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:09] And I like what Thomas is saying here, like Brett, and it ties back to what Dan said about just. I like the question, what do you want? And I like the. The suggestion to follow the goodness. Like, yeah. What if this is an opportunity for you to discover who it is you want to be and what it is you want to be? And what if this is an opportunity for you to get on your path and church, no church. Like, it's your path. And what if you were to be able to, after the pain, after the processing, after the screaming and yelling and frustration, what if after that processing, it began this beautiful journey for you and it becomes the best thing that ever happened to you when it seemed like the worst thing that ever happened. What if. That's. What if? That's the question and the opportunity for you.

Guest 2 [02:06:04] So when I have more money, I'll ask you to be my psychiatrist.

John Dehlin [02:06:09] Thank you. Thank you for the question. It's beautiful. Thank you. Thanks for your open heart vulnerability.

Audience Q&A: LGBT Issues, Women, and Authority

Gina Colvin [02:06:17] So I'm wondering in what ways we can encourage a dialogue in our communities about spiritual experience, when often church leaders sometimes encourage members to keep quiet about uncorrelated spiritual experiences.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:06:32] Thanks, Anders.

Guest 3 [02:06:33] Thanks, Anders.

Gina Colvin [02:06:37] Well, it seems to me that probably it's the. Those ones where people are like extreme and look at me and this phenomenal thing happened to me, and they're mostly probably reacting to those. I would say, as far as. If you have spiritual experiences that come up for you to share, my guess is they wouldn't have any problem with that because you're going to warm that with. And here's the effect that it had on me.

Gina Colvin [02:07:07] This is why I'm transformed for the better for this rather than I'm just trying to impress you because I'm, you know, I got the flashbang, wowie, zowie kind of thing going that I'm guessing that they're doing. But I've never gone wrong in a class meeting in these last 10 or 15 years where I kind of. You know, it's a skill set to almost like, talk, you know, across experiences, to simply say, you know, when this subject comes up for me, I go here, and here's why.

Gina Colvin [02:07:43] And that's just talking about spiritual experiences. That's talking about life journey. And that's what I would say. But I don't know how to have formal conversations about it, you know, so

Guest 3 [02:07:54] can I jump in on that? I love what you're saying. It's what it's up for me, Anders, is I just think about the long history of dysfunction in Buddhism, of how do we talk about awakening? And the moment one person talks about I've awakened, then the ego's online and everyone's talking about, did that guy actually awaken? And we're comparing our spiritual experiences. So what you're pointing to is it's a clear and present danger in any spiritual tradition that we have authentic experiences and they're empowering and they can go to our heads.

Guest 3 [02:08:24] But like Dan, you said so beautifully, I just wanted to echo it, that if we manifest the virtue of the experience, forget the storytelling and how special it makes us that we're enlightened or whatever, if we just manifest the virtue of, like, I'm just totally in love with you. I love everything about you. I love your life. I love that I get to be in fellowship with you. I don't know a lot of Mormons or anyone otherwise that isn't willing to be loved that way, you know, so it's.

John Dehlin [02:08:55] One of my favorite people on the planet. Dr. Brett Parkinson, my cousin, please. Next question.

Guest 6 [02:09:00] I love my cousin.

John Dehlin [02:09:01] Thank you, cousin.

Guest 6 [02:09:03] I came tonight expecting to agree with all of you and to be enlightened and to walk away spiritually fed. Instead, I come along way frustrated. And that's a good thing because it's challenged the way I think. And here is the frustration You've described a church tonight, that sounds terrific. A church that is moving forward, that's progressing, but that's not the way I see it. I don't think it's the way the institutional church sees it. Were there general authorities here, I think that they would find this very upsetting. We are still governed by the proclamation of the family. What happened in November is fresh for many of us.

Guest 6 [02:09:46] If my gay son were still alive, I think that proclamation would have killed him. Killed him twice. So my question to you Is how do we stay in this church and be good citizens? And full disclosure, I still do go to church.

Guest 6 [02:10:05] With that still looming in the horizon, what is our duty to our LGBT brothers and sisters and those who have been disenfranchised if we continue in the church the way we have and we make good when we go to church and we're polite, isn't it like golfing at the country club that excludes blacks or Jews or anybody else that is not like those inside?

Guest 6 [02:10:29] So I want to know what you all think is the best way for us to fight this. My wife said, just like my daughter Greta, that the reason she's going to go to church is so she can tell people that she thinks the policy is wrong and she wants to reach out to those young gay people. I want to know what you all think is the best way for us to handle this, because as far as I'm concerned, that's the elephant in the state and not just the gop.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:11:00] Go, Dane.

Gina Colvin [02:11:00] Well, I've certainly talked around that a time or two, at least earlier tonight, and maybe that's what frustrates you.

Guest 6 [02:11:06] Yeah, right. And don't talk around it. I want this spoken directly to. And I don't. I want to put you on the spot because I know that you are very good on your feet.

Guest 3 [02:11:16] You're all good on your feet, but

Guest 6 [02:11:17] I think we need some direct answers.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:11:21] You done?

Gina Colvin [02:11:26] I came to the conclusion probably 10 years ago that if I were to have had a gay child, or even now if one came out, and they say, dad, it causes me so much more pain that you're in the church, you know, I would absolutely be completely gone. My guess is, for lots of people, though, they can see that I am fighting. I am out there. My wife and I ended up both bearing our testimony a time or two ago about LGBT things and pain and whatnot. And so we're doing our part within the church. And so the. The fact that I'm temperamentally able to do that, that I'm autobiographically positioned in such a way that I can do that. I am fighting. I'm fighting as hard as anybody else, I believe, but I'm not making nice on Sunday necessarily. So that's where I think maybe the.

Guest 6 [02:12:38] That's great on a work level, but I'm talking about at an institutional level, what can we do to move the institution? Because it took 100 years for our black brethren and sisters to be able to enter the temple. I don't want to wait another hundred years.

Gina Colvin [02:12:54] True.

John Dehlin [02:12:57] Gina, You Take a stab. And then, Thomas, if you have a

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:13:00] stab, I come from a democratic socialist republic of New Zealand and, and we, you know, I was percolated in the grassroots and the power of the people. So I don't make nice at church, honestly, you know, I say, yeah, I'm going to pour some love and compassion, but I never make nice.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:13:20] And I've made it very clear where I stand. And I just, you know, and I see people, you know, some people very afraid to do that because it's painful. It changes your identity. You risk social shunning. And I know that this monolithic sort of institutional church feels like it's impregnable.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:13:43] But I also know that over time the church has responded to a mood, to a feeling. That's what they do. And I just, I mean, I guess it's just hopeful. Maybe it's pie in the sky, but I just think that, I mean, I just hope that people would show up with courage and speak their truth and tell their stories. And when you see, I mean, gospel doctrine is the worst. Do you know there's all these disembodied heads with arms like that, women who shrink and say nothing because these, you know, these big chested men are always putting up their hands and putting the kind of period on fricking everything.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:14:20] It's like, for goodness sake, shut the hell up. And I think it's time for us to own our voices, however unpopular it may be. And if it's just you and a ward doing that work, then that is sacred work. That's holy. That's what I have for you. Brett.

Guest 3 [02:14:43] Yeah, I just want to say, Brett, Man, I'm just like really feeling George right now. George is Brett's son. I just want to reiterate that I'm really not okay until your son has an honorary place on the pew in the community. I'm absolutely not okay with it and I'm not going to stop. I don't know what to do, but I'm not going to stop.

John Dehlin [02:15:16] You're not going to stop what?

Guest 3 [02:15:18] I'm not going to stop showing up and participating. I'm not going to stop showing up in activism and being alive and being embodied and saying this hurts too much. To be a part of a church like this, it has to change.

John Dehlin [02:15:38] Love you, cousin.

Guest 5 [02:15:41] Hi, I'm anonymous and I don't want to be on camera and I'll tell you why in just a sec. Listen, I love that religion you guys are introducing. In fact, what are we going to call it? Because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has already taken that name.

Guest 5 [02:15:55] You know, I don't know. There's such a disconnect. I think I know we sit here any given weekend night down at the Marriott center is filled with thousands and thousands and thousands of students, while the orthodoxy at the pulpit will lay down what the LDS Church really believes and what our tenants really are.

Guest 5 [02:16:20] But here we are, just maybe a hundred of us in a bar in Salt Lake City talking about how we're on the precipice of breakthrough, of how suddenly our views are going. Going to permeate the fortress lds. And suddenly our wishes of inclusion, of love, of relaxing truth claims are suddenly going to spring into a fruitful reality. I mean, the bite is I'm the atheist, but am I the only one that goes to church every Sunday? Because that's where I am.

Guest 5 [02:16:56] People ask me why it's a quiet time to sit next to my wife and hold. Hold her hand. But it's also of my community that I grew up in, that I'm generations in, that I served a mission for that I married in the temple for that I served in presidencies that I gave my heart, my mind and my soul to.

Guest 5 [02:17:15] And I sit there and there is such a disconnect. Gina, you talk about women receiving the priesthood. I. No doubt they'll receive the priesthood probably 30 to 50 years, years after everybody else receives the priesthood in this church.

Guest 5 [02:17:30] And to say that, Thomas, you use the word esoteric, that's a great word. But sometimes esoteria will distill into something that's palpable, something that's visceral, that's something that could even be a doctrine. But these ideas discussed tonight, I just don't. I see them. It's like Givens, you know, Terrell and Fiona Givens. Wonderful people, good hearts. Flowery words that just float above the reality of the ground, but never quite distilled, do they? They're just a bunch of words that I'm like, going, well, what was said. What was said here tonight? What? Let's do better. Let's. Let's show up and no offense, Thomas, let's. I'm showing up all the time.

John Dehlin [02:18:14] And.

Guest 5 [02:18:14] But. And Gina, you say something and I'm sorry, I'm grouchy. I'm just grouch.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:18:18] Grouchy.

Guest 5 [02:18:18] Because there's not anything said. There's. There's limits to what you can say if you want to keep your membership. That's the reality. Dan, I followed you. You're one of the most annoying human beings on the planet to me because I love listening to you. You have such gems to me. Such gems. And you said some things tonight that just. My heart just like, man, I want to just come up and hug you, but I want to come up and shake you, like. Because, correct me if I'm wrong, you're still an LGT apologist. You still defend the limited geography theory. Right? You still have or do you.

Gina Colvin [02:18:54] I heard this.

Guest 5 [02:18:55] I've heard this in past.

John Dehlin [02:18:56] No, I can vouch for Dan.

Guest 5 [02:18:58] Okay. Any truth claims that you still no. Adhere to? Okay, well, then I know I've heard things wrong.

Gina Colvin [02:19:04] Sensibilities, you know, But I've listened to

Guest 5 [02:19:07] your podcast for a long time, and I don't think I pulled that out of thin air. I think they're was a time. And I've listened to you when you.

Guest [02:19:12] With.

Guest 5 [02:19:12] With Brian Dalton. When you've interviewed Brian Dalton.

Gina Colvin [02:19:15] That was an interesting.

Guest 5 [02:19:16] Yeah, I mean, he cleaned your clock for me. I mean, because, I mean, it's just. There's a time to sit down and say, this is what is and this is what it isn't. And that's what I just don't get a lot of here. And maybe it's my thinking, maybe it's. Maybe I've got that old Mormon black and white thinking. I don't think so. I'm ready for nuance. But there comes a time when truth is truth, that there are facts are facts, and. And there are things that work and things that don't work. And this church is pile driving, pile driving, concrete, whatever you want to call it, indicators that don't point to a more inclusive church.

Guest 5 [02:19:50] We have proclamation of the family. We're doubling down on exclusion of our GLBT brothers and sisters. We are setting channels that are going to be hard to take out in years to come. Yet here we sit, like I said, just a hundred of us maybe in a bar in Salt Lake City saying we're on the precipice.

John Dehlin [02:20:10] All right. Beautiful. I love that. Isn't that beautiful? I love that. Okay.

Guest 3 [02:20:15] Yeah, just for a second. I didn't get your name.

Gina Colvin [02:20:18] You don't want to be named.

Guest 5 [02:20:21] I am still in the church. Like I said, I'm an atheist. But I sit in the church because it's my family, it's my people, it's my sidewalks that get. It's my sidewalks that get shoveled ruse that receive my atheist nails scouts pulled behind my atheist boat. And you know what I'm saying?

John Dehlin [02:20:39] Yeah.

Guest 5 [02:20:40] So fires built by these atheist hands you know, I love that.

Guest 3 [02:20:44] Brother.

John Dehlin [02:20:45] Good, brother. Brother, good.

Guest 2 [02:20:46] Brother.

Guest 6 [02:20:46] Brother.

Gina Colvin [02:20:47] You had a fit. Great. In Utah in the 1870s.

Guest 3 [02:20:50] I want to.

Gina Colvin [02:20:51] Kingdom, man.

Guest 3 [02:20:52] I just want to echo Gina's sentiment. You know, she said a moment ago that women are already powerful. Women already have the priesthood. They don't have to ask permission. I'm not asking for permission to worship this way. Not waiting for the church in a hundred years to, you know, include the esoteric in its practices. I'm just doing it right now. That's it.

Guest 5 [02:21:14] What, to exercise the priesthood in this organization. Gina.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:21:20] What?

Guest 5 [02:21:20] To exercise the priesthood in this organization.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:21:22] I never said we ask to receive the priesthood.

Guest 3 [02:21:25] That's not what I'm saying. I'm just pointing out that the way the question is framed, it's as though we're under the church's thumb. And I don't live under the church's thumb.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:21:33] Me neither.

Guest 3 [02:21:33] I feel powerful.

Guest 5 [02:21:34] No. And that's super. But to participate in this church.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:21:39] I still participate, but I don't. I'm not hailed by the institution. I do it on my own terms. And that, to me, is spiritual activism.

Guest 5 [02:21:48] Yeah, but do you not understand how that comes across as vague as a kind of a. That's not how. Like I said, I sit every Sunday in church. I know how it works. I know what.

John Dehlin [02:21:59] Got it.

Guest 5 [02:21:59] You talk about it.

John Dehlin [02:22:00] Last. Last word. Go ahead.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:22:04] We're vague.

John Dehlin [02:22:04] You're too esoteric. You're too vague.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:22:06] We're esoteric. We're vague, but we're also exercising moral imagination. And I think that is what's necessary to spark a conversation where people can find their feet in the church in the way that they want to. I think this is a sacred conversation, as kind of pie in the sky as it may be. I think that, to me, is powerful. And I know that what you want is. You seem to want to have something really certain. I don't think we have certainty. What we have is a conversation.

John Dehlin [02:22:34] And there's power for you. Of a conversation. Sacred conversations.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:22:38] Sacred. Yeah.

Gina Colvin [02:22:39] And I say, right now, your gaze is on the institution. I probably polarize and go to the community, and both are essential. And so to me, the church is not the institution. To me, those BYU students, a third of them are not hearing those words in lockstep. You know, I trust the intelligence and the brains and the life experience.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:23:03] And.

Gina Colvin [02:23:03] Oh, that doesn't sit right with me. You know, when you're young, you still kind of. You're kind of. The story is running you. This is how I get ahead. This is what my life is going to look like and stuff like that. But all those experiences and feelings that they're going to have are eventually going to flower and there will be change. So I just don't. I reject the idea that just because it's preached that it's heard, you know. Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:23:27] We have three more. We have three more quick questions and we'll have some quick responses to quick questions.

Guest [02:23:33] My name is Elisa and I apologize. I came in a little late so I missed some of the conversation. It's been interesting. When I found out the truth about the church, I had been in the. And I tell my friends, you know, just complete and utter sheep like person had turned off my brain when my family joined when I was seven and I was told this was true for

John Dehlin [02:23:56] the sake of time. Just because we're running out of time.

Audience Q&A: Privilege, Priesthood, and Personal Authority

Guest [02:23:59] Jump to the question, what you're saying. I guess it's less of a question, but here's what I wrote. There's a lot of talk about privilege and understanding that and here's my feeling, just even in the last couple questions, is that you are privileged in your boldness and your self empowered personalities. I had no way to feel, I had no self empowering ability to question, to do anything other than exactly as I was told. My question to you is how do you really teach priesthood? How do you really talk about a relief society? When somebody in my relief society mentioned evolution, the gasp in the room like, how do you really see it to people? Can you stand up and say, yeah, I actually think that's kind of bullshit, but here's what I learned from it. Or do you kind of, you know, wash it over?

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:24:56] So this, Regina, for me, I say it, but I don't say bullshit. I think bullshit. And I say, mmm, I do have a question about that.

Guest [02:25:04] Yeah, they'd listen better if you said that.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:25:06] What's that?

John Dehlin [02:25:07] They'd listen better.

Guest [02:25:07] They'd wake up and listen better if you said that.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:25:11] I just say it sometimes.

John Dehlin [02:25:13] Yeah, okay. Gina says, just say it next. I know that penultimate question, the ultimate,

Gina Colvin [02:25:19] the question I'm pondering in my mind and the thing that I think you said is how you move from other people's authority to your own authority. And in this dogmatic, authoritative church, it seems like you've picked the most. One of the hardest institutions to do that. I have sat in interviews with where the stake president has put his elbow on my recommend saying you have to do what we say you have to do. If not, I'm not going to sign this.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:25:47] Oh, I hate him.

Gina Colvin [02:25:48] And so. Me, too. He's obviously not. And, you know, I've been in the bishopric where unfortunately, a McConkie was one

John Dehlin [02:25:58] of the state presidents.

Guest 3 [02:26:00] How was the last name spelled? Was it I, E or E? Y?

Gina Colvin [02:26:03] And, you know, his format was question answer, question answer.

John Dehlin [02:26:09] It's just so authoritative.

Gina Colvin [02:26:10] So I want to know in particular, a particular instance about how you would deal with being told, you will do what I say you will do because we have all the power. I mean, you're choosing to be in

John Dehlin [02:26:21] the most authority of the church. Got it. Three quick answers, just. Dan.

Guest 3 [02:26:27] Dan, okay

Gina Colvin [02:26:30] with all this? Well, I haven't had it. I haven't had. I mean, I was not allowed to ordain my son to the priesthood. I wasn't prepared for that moment. I let it go ahead. I even let that bishop do it because my son was excited to do it, all that stuff. But I had moments of grace in that moment and stuff where I shared that I didn't agree with what had happened and things like that. I don't know that, you know, if somebody's coming at you that hard, sometimes you have to do tai chi or something like that where you just, you know, you pivot and counter that sort of energy.

John Dehlin [02:27:08] But Dan has a really good episode on Mormon Stories with Tom Kimball on Stages of Faith) very early on, where he talks about how he dealt with that and grew from it. Check out that podcast. It's one of my best. Last question.

Gina Colvin [02:27:21] Oh, I thought everyone was going to ask.

John Dehlin [02:27:23] Hi, I'm Alex.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:27:24] Hi, Alex.

Gina Colvin [02:27:24] Hi, Alex.

John Dehlin [02:27:25] So I guess the. I wouldn't even say it's fully formed yet, but I have kind of a basic direction for it. So we have the example, as recorded in the Bible, of Jesus being quite the rebel, quite the dissident rebel, didn't conform to social norms by any respect, and he did not pull any punches, especially in moments, whether we have recorded where he says that I am here to turn brother against father, to be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. And so I think about that we have the aspect in the gospel of universal love and inclusion that God intends, and then also that aspect of division. And so basically my question boils down to how do we unify, but also how do we divide in a productive fashion? Tension of unity.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:28:28] And that's a Thomas question.

John Dehlin [02:28:30] All right, Thomas, you get the last word.

Gina Colvin [02:28:33] Stillness, movement.

Guest 3 [02:28:36] Just naming the Paradise Paradox is powerful. Just acknowledging that we need both of them to thrive as a Christian community, as Latter Day Saints. I already feel invited to live into that with you, Alex. Yeah, it's beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:28:52] All right, thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Boy, the time has flown by really fast for me. I hope it has for you as well. Really quickly, Thomas, Talk really quickly about your book. Just real quickly.

Closing Remarks and Resources

Guest 3 [02:29:11] Yeah, we have books in back. Come chat to me.

John Dehlin [02:29:13] And it's called. The book is.

Guest 3 [02:29:15] It's Navigating Mormon Faith) Crisis, and it's about transformations of faith in a Mormon context.

John Dehlin [02:29:22] So how much are you selling them for?

Guest 3 [02:29:25] 20 bucks.

John Dehlin [02:29:25] 20 bucks in the back. Also available on Amazon.

Guest 3 [02:29:29] Thanks, buddy.

John Dehlin [02:29:29] Yeah, check it out. Gina, Plug your. Plug your stuff really quick.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:29:33] Well, I'm gonna plug the food because I was asked to plug the food.

Guest [02:29:37] The food is good.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:29:38] You should come for the food and share feelings about the food.

John Dehlin [02:29:41] The food here.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:29:42] Yes, that's what I was asked to say.

Gina Colvin [02:29:44] Tip your weight, staff.

Gina (KiwiMormon / A Thoughtful Faith) [02:29:47] Listen to a thoughtful faith podcast and ring my bell. Kiwi Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:29:51] Kiwi Mormon Thoughtful faith podcast. Beautiful. Thank you, Dan.

Gina Colvin [02:29:56] Mormon Matters is pretty much every week or every nine or 10 days. We put you through several hours. So don't digest it all at one. It's never homework. Don't listen to anything that you're not interested in. But we'll be there and hosting, hopefully good discussions. I'm excited to work with Natasha on this. She'll certainly be the leader and for our listening audience.

John Dehlin [02:30:19] What is this?

Gina Colvin [02:30:20] Oh, yeah, this is coming up the end of August. We're going to do like a Friday evening to Sunday right before dinner kind of retreat. We'll feed you. We'll have a bunch of different sessions. It'll be professional, you know, psychologists, counselors, family dynamics, sex therapists and things like that. I'll probably throw in at least one session on religious framings or something like that.

John Dehlin [02:30:46] But check out the retreat.

Gina Colvin [02:30:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:48] All right. Go to Mormon Master of Thoughtful Faith) to learn about this retreat. August 26th to 28th. It's been a joy to have you here again. This is brought to you by the Open Stories Foundation. Please support any of these podcasts.

John Dehlin [02:31:04] You can donate. Monthly donations are great because we can sort of rely on a revenue stream which allows us to hire staff and to serve more people. People. So please support the Open Stories foundation or these podcasts with your tax deductible donations.

John Dehlin [02:31:19] They will continue to bring much goodness to current and future generations. Thank you for your support. Here we have workshops and retreats at Mormon Transitions or at these websites. If you want these deep, immersive one day or three day experiences where you can meet with others and really heal and grow in whatever space you're in. So thank you for your support. Thanks to all who made this possible. Thanks to Club and Cafe at 50 west to these beautiful participants here. To all of you for coming. To all of you in Internet land for joining us. Please tune in again for more Mormon stories, a thoughtful faith, Mormon matters, Mormon transitions, gay Mormon stories, et cetera, et cetera. Have a beautiful night. Drive home safely. We love you and thank you for coming.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.