Episode 3 Transcript - Holy Listening with Lacy Finn Borgo

Flo: [00:00:00] Again, welcome to Blessed Uncertainty. We are so excited about our guest today. She is the author of Spiritual Conversations with Children, listening to God Together, as well as Faith like a Child. Our guest today is a spiritual director for children and just all around lovely human being. Lacy Finn Borgo.

Hi, Lacy.

Lacy: Hey,

Flo: we're so honored and happy to have you with us today. This is our guest, Lacy Fin Borgo, author of my favorite children's spirituality book, if you can't tell.

Lacy: Isn't that a great cover?

Flo: Oh my gosh,

Lacy: it's. It's my favorite.

Flo: I think [00:01:00] when I got the book, they also sent me like a print of it.

Lacy: They did?

Flo: Yeah. And I like, love the print. But yeah, spiritual conversations with children listening to God together.

Lacy, we are so happy to have you. And you've written another book since Faith Like a Child.. Which I also love very much. And we actually just talked about how we might use that as our church's book, group book coming up next.

So we're very excited about that too. Cool. This has been my second bible for the last, oh my gosh. I can't even, I can't even tell you how many people I've recommended this book to. I've bought it for all of our child ministry workers. It's my first recommendation when anyone asks.

Lacy: So you just never know what the Holy Spirit is up to.

Just really don't.

I'm really glad.

Danny: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I love it too. I take notes differently in my book, so if I hold mine up, you can't tell. I love it. Just trust me.

Lacy: There are the write in your book [00:02:00] people and then there are like, that is a mortal sin.

Flo: I also was using this for like my most intense academic year when I went back to get my M div.

And so I was, I have put in thesis like in my,

Hey that's handy. That was really handy. I just would love it if you. Could just kinda introduce yourself and talk a little bit about the wonderful work that you've been doing with children, maybe how long you've been doing this work and we can start there.

Lacy: Yeah. I'm not a children's pastor.

I feel like that's always a caveat that I should I'm not a children's pastor. I've never been a children's pastor. I admire them greatly and feel like we should send more money to children's pastors and treats and many cups of their favorite beverage, whatever that might be. Morning beverage, evening beverage, doesn't matter.

I'm a spiritual director, so I listen with people and I help them hear. How God's [00:03:00] presence is woven throughout their lives. And I meet with children in spiritual accompaniment direction at Haven House, which is a transitional facility for families without housing. And I started that work about 12, 13 years ago.

And I'm taking a little break right now. I'll be back to it soon. But I meet with kiddos in spiritual conversations and helping them hear themselves that's really important is with all the barrage of all the children could be hearing to help them hear themselves is really important. And then I help them to also hear God in their life, whatever that might look like.

And for kiddos at Haven House, there's a big range of what life can look like for them.

Flo: I think I might've met you right around the time. I'm trying to think. We met around maybe at a conference. I was trying to [00:04:00] remember the year. It might've been 2014 or 2016 or somewhere around there because we had booths set up,

Lacy: we did

Flo: next to each other, we did at a children's spirituality conference.

And I just remember feeling like you were such a kindred spirit as ann Shirley likes to say. And but I had no idea. I just feel like I had no idea. Even I remember our first my first experience of being in a session with you was you led probably probably a lot based on what you've written.

In your book or what you were writing. Maybe getting ready to write, and talking about the importance of children's spirituality and honoring that innate spirituality. And I remember you did a practice with us that where you asked us to recall a memory of God, maybe our first memory of God, and to draw a picture using our non-dominant hand.

And I remember that was, [00:05:00] I had never experienced anything like that. And I remember going into that thinking, oh, I'm going to learn about how to help children. And it was such a moment of ministry and peace for me. And everybody felt that way. Like everybody in that room was like, oh, we just received spiritual direction.

That was, and I had never experienced that before. And I'm wondering, did you always work with children? Did you work with adults first? Did you like, how did you. Find your way into that space.

Lacy: I really have always worked with children. I've worked with children, I guess since I was a children.

I went directly from, being a child to working with children as an adolescent. And I think there are lots of reasons why some of it is I love their authenticity. I love how they just show up however they show up, i, so I think I always love that there's something real about it.

And then I had my own [00:06:00] childhood wounds that I was working with. We're all working with them, whether we acknowledge we're working with them, we're working with those. And there was I had some inkling, I'm sure it was the spirit whispering. And for reasons unknown to me, I actually paid attention that learning from children was going to help my own healing.

And I mentioned in, in I think my book Faith Like a Child, and I think I even touch on it in spiritual conversations, that my early remembering of God was in a grove of Aspen trees in the LaSalle Mountains in Utah. And I just saw these little glittering leaves above my head. It was fall. And I had this sense that.

Oh hey, I think I'm not alone. And this was the early seventies, so parents were not keeping track of their children perhaps as they should. So I'm like wandering in the woods by myself. Yeah, good times. Actually [00:07:00] very good times. Yeah. And but then my theological, my Sunday school training didn't connect that.

And that's a deep sorrow, and that was a wound. I had the wonder first, but then I was, I acquired this wound and somehow in walking with kids, the spirit gave me this gift of healing through being with them and seeing all the places where God is present with them in their lives.

Flo: Do you think I, as you were speaking, I resonated so much with that because I grew up in like the wilderness of California and just wandering around oak trees until it was dark or until I saw a mountain lion on the hill and had ran inside.

I'll do it. Yeah.

Lacy: Those are some good survival skills you had.

Flo: Yeah. Yeah. But [00:08:00] the disconnect between like wonder and being outside and that that's separate than spirituality, like that's separate is like the thing that I feel like has infiltrated faith spaces and is so harmful to children specifically.

And I just wonder, do you find spiritual direction, a place where that. Where the spiritual, where you you can find the spiritual in every place.

Lacy: Yeah. I th I, yes. I think one of the gifts of childhood spirituality is that children have a very wide consciousness. So they're taking in all these inputs and they don't have Quaker Douglas steer calls these hardened categories.

They don't have these hardened categories like spiritual, not spiritual. God, sacred. They don't have that.

Flo: Yeah.

Lacy: And that permeability is what gives them [00:09:00] that wide consciousness to take it all in.

And what is beautiful about what I call the third half of life, and I know the math doesn't work, but Yeah.

Mathematician. So is that we can. We can come back and embrace that wide spirituality and that depth where our categories got a little deep and we can be both deep and wide.

And I think spiritual conversations is that place where we can both embrace the deep and the wide.

We can say, oh, actually these categories are permeable.

And the hard conviction, this, that the Jesuits give us, which, that God is present everywhere.

Flo: Yeah.

Lacy: Everywhere.

Flo: Yep.

Danny: I'm curious about, it seems like everyone who takes children's spirituality seriously has near the front of the book that children are whole people.

Lacy: Yeah.

Danny: And as I listen to you [00:10:00] and Flo, just the, it seems like that lack of understanding of children being whole people is very much connected to the lack of understanding the world as a whole world.

Lacy: Yeah.

Danny: Can you speak to the Yeah. The insistence and I, it's a tragic question, but when you talk about a child being a whole person, what are you saying?

Lacy: Yeah.

I'm saying that they are complete and fully human and fully able to welcome and engage God as they are in the very present moment that they find themselves in. And that's true for every single human being who has ever lived.. And I think I wrote the second book, faith Like a Child, because children's pastors were coming to me and saying, we can't get [00:11:00] anybody to work and we need some help.

We've got kids who are eager, but we don't have any adults. What's, what is that? So I got a little bit curious about that. And I think if we, the more that we do that we let ourselves be healed, our childhood selves be healed by God, the more we will experience children as whole.

So there is some correlation between us seeing ourselves as partial as children and how we see children as partial.

Danny: That one of the sentences that I loved in the book was just that children want to tell us the truth about themselves. So that we'll know them and just how much of that is lost as we get older and how much is hidden. But yeah, just that, that desire to, I want you to know me, [00:12:00] so I'll tell you about me and what holy space that is to be invited into.

Lacy: It's the most precious vulnerability I think there is. To let ourselves be seen. And when children let themselves be seen and heard by us, it is it's a wonder we don't rip our shoes off. Yeah. And maybe CS Lewis is right. Were we to see children as they truly are, we would be tempted to worship them. Yeah. They're that magnificent.

Danny: Yeah. And the more, yeah, I think the, just the depth and the width that you're talking about, the more I have I taught elementary school for 10 years, Bible, so similar. A lot of healing in my spirituality.

It was a backstory. I was

Flo: Yeah, I just laughed so hard.

Danny: Think it's hilarious that I grew up with a cult, but I really [00:13:00] did and I didn't get much. Good. In term, I have relationships. There are people I love. And that last, but the, in terms of healthy spirituality Yeah. Negative on the negative side of that. And yeah. Teaching kids was that healing space.

And it's funny I, not funny, but it seems like the more interaction we have with children, the more these things. Evident and real and true. And there's even this hopefully in a gracious way, like not everybody sees this. And but yeah the more interaction we have with the kids that the deeper,

I feel like this conviction goes.

Lacy: Yeah. Danny I grew up too with in a tradition that really did a lot of harm with end times kind of things. horrible fear shaping a picture of God that eats away at children at night. It's just detrimental stuff and being asking questions of children, where do you see goodness?

Where do you [00:14:00] experience beauty? When do you feel most alive or most near to God? It was that started tinkin away at that fearful God and I, and it was, and I thought, wow, this just makes no sense. This fear filled, hateful God makes no sense.

Danny: Certainly not actually awe inspiring.

Lacy: No.

Danny: Yeah.

Lacy: No. And in fact you have to you almost have to do a mental trick of taking a fearful God away from reality. If we are going to be really present, fully present, and live in reality, no fearful God lives there.

Flo: Wow.

Danny: Yeah. And no, no whole person demands that kind of psychopathic,

Lacy: no

Danny: allegiance.

Lacy: No. So

Danny: the idea that a whole god would...

Lacy: [00:15:00] yeah. And we see this nothing in the life of Jesus. Christ is our hermeneutic.

Flo: I am wondering if it might be, if it might be helpful for folks to hear what, like a spiritual direction session is like with you, with children. I got to take, so I got to take a spiritual direction training course with Lacy last fall a year ago. And Terra McDaniel, both of you, just wonderful humans, but felt really fortunate to be able to take this course and be also getting in practicum hours, doing spiritual direction at our church with our, some of our kids, and learning all of the things that you are saying are exactly what happened.

Like just, there's no going in there and being like, okay, I'm leading you to God now. That's not what it's like. That's not at all how it works. No. And they'll be like,

Lacy: oh, lemme show you [00:16:00] how I can X, Y, and Z. And

Flo: you know what that mean? Earlier when you said you weren't a pastor, I was like, but I think that the that maybe more than or think, or at least pastors should be more like spiritual directors than a lot are.

And just accompany people. I think that would be actually why healthier for churches. But maybe if you, yeah.

Lacy: Would you like for me to walk?

Flo: A little bit.

Lacy: Want me to walk you through what?

Flo: Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Lacy: Cool. At Haven House, it's dormitory style and these are kids, these are families without housing.

When they first come to Haven House, they generally are invited to meet with me. They only have to come once. And I gave a lot of pushback around that. I was like, why do they even have to come once? But anyway, this was a negotiation with the wonderful leadership at Haven House that we came out to, that they had to come once, but I said, you only have to stay two minutes if you get in there.

I'm always like, backdoor back door. Should we break? So they [00:17:00] come in so they get to meet with me once and in what, 13 years there? I've only had one that didn't come back.

And so kids like to kids long to be listened to. They really do. So they will, when they meet with me it's dormitory style and I need to honor the fact that we need a window and a door.

So make safe space. So I have, I took a piece of, this is ridiculous, but it works. I took a piece of canvas and some plexiglass and I glued. I hot glued it 'cause I can't really sew either. And so I hot glued this piece of plexiglass in the middle of a piece of canvas. I put it on a shower curtain rod and hang it on two nails.

Good times. But I painted the words holy listening on the front with with what I thought looks like a candle. But a kid once said to me, that's a nice unicorn. Whatever. Hey interpretive art is really what it's as we get ready to a child, we enter this space at the same time.

[00:18:00] And this just levels that I'm always shifting the power in their direction. So we enter the space at the same time and we take off our shoes. For some children, they're eager to take off their shoes. Some children are not. But I take off mine and there's a white blanket and it has little green leaves on it, and we sit down on this white blanket together and I make it so that their back is to the door because there's not, it's loud at Haven house.

There's a lot going on. And and I don't want anyone to read their lips, but people can look through that gorgeous canvas plexiglass door and see us sitting there. But with the child's lips not facing the opening, they can't hear anything. Yeah. So we're honoring safe space for everybody. They, we sit down on this blanket together, and then I have a battery powered candle.

I'm not fire trustworthy so it's a battery powered candle. We, and the child turns the candle on when they're [00:19:00] ready. They are in charge of the light. So when they're done, they turn the candle off and leave. But we turn the candle, they turn the candle on, and then I have, generally speaking, I have a set of images and children project their inner life onto what's in front of them.

So they pick some images and some of the images are Jesus in modern ways with children. Some of the images are nature or art, but they pick the image. I say, would you pick a picture that helps us understand how you're arriving today, how you feel right now? So they pick it and they put it on a little plastic easel by the light.

And in that we're creating sacred space right in the middle. This is actually the toy room at Haven House. So there are broken down toys that line the wall. So it's like rife with distraction. Good times. But we're staying on this white blanket. They pick the image and then [00:20:00] there's like a rhythm in what we call this holy listening.

And that is, there will be an a different opportunities to recognize. So we're listening for what? Recognize in your life where there is goodness, beauty, truth, wonder, awe. And those are fingerprints. I call them God's fingerprints in the world. And then the second movement will be to respond to what we recognize.

So I will have on either side of the blanket, one or two options to recognize. One or two options to respond. And I have little holy listening stones, and they have just some random simple drawings on them. And again, the child will pick three stones to tell three stories about something good or beautiful or true or any story that they want me to hear.

And they, then they tell those stories. So that might be one, another might be, do you know the little cre, the [00:21:00] little characters from inside out? So at some point you could get those when Kmart was around. So this is how old, how long I've been doing this. There was a Kmart at the time, and I, so I have a little bag of those.

Characters and so they could pull 'em out or tell me three stories that have to do with anger or joy or sadness. So they're really they're projecting some stories onto these. I also have a set of stuffed creatures. One is shaped like a drop of water. One is shaped like fire, and the third is like stone.

So is there something in nature that tells of goodness of goodness, beauty or truth? So they'll, so they tell me those stories and I listen and I ask them open-ended questions. How is that for you? If they come in with God language, I will use God language if they don't. I don't, and that's key. And I learned this early on [00:22:00] with two children and all names by the way.

And all details have been changed to honor their stories. One was with a child who hi, he and his mother had left their home due to domestic violence, and the church had supported the dad. So any god language was not friendly for this little, this young friend of mine. So saying, how does God love you?

Or how have you experienced God would been God rejects us.

So that's not helpful. So I don't use that language. I would say, tell me what good happened today. And he'd tell me about, the lunch lady who gave him two desserts. God's presence in the lunch lady who gave him two desserts.

Another one was a little another young fellow who, when his sister died, everyone said that Jesus took his sister because he needed [00:23:00] her. He did not want anything to do with Jesus who took his sister.

And no one actually a lot of the, there's a lot of church involvement in Haven House and everyone keeps talking about Jesus.

And I realize it resonates with a lot of people. But for this little guy, he's no thank you. Yeah. And so we talked again about he, he had an eye for beauty, little artist. So good. I would say, what's beautiful today? what did you encounter? That was beautiful. And boy, he was paying attention to an oak tree through a few seasons.

And the color of those leaves, that's where he was encountering God. So I ask those questions and they're not always, they wouldn't always tick all the right religious boxes because I'm meeting the child where they are. And then after they tell me a story, and if with that story sort of has a we in the Quaker tradition would call a weightiness to it.

Then I would say, how would you like to respond to that? So it [00:24:00] may be if they have God language, how would you like to respond to God or how would you like to respond to love? And then on the other side, there are response options. They might have some clay. They could create a sculpture. I have a little bag of Legos.

They might make a Lego creation. We have watercolor paints. Can I tell you washable markers over permanent. You're welcome. Also, silly putty gets stuck in carpet. So you're welcome again, just two free bonuses.

So we recognize we have opportunities to respond, and then at the end I ask if I can give 'em a bless, give them a blessing.

And that blessing is, it's fancy Chapstick lip balm. And it's, and I just make, it has a smell on it.

And we say, sometimes we can't see God but we can catch a whiff of God's presence. And I ask their permission if I can put it on their hand. I hold their hand. I say their name, if I were [00:25:00] to say, Danny, God loves you very much, or I might say love is surrounding you, remember that you are never without God.

Never without love, and with this blessing that I put on your hand. You remember that? Okay. And that's how we end. Holy listening. It lasts anywhere depending on the child. Again, they turn the candle off when they're done. It lasts anywhere from I've had some really, some younger ones last 15 minutes. I've had some older ones where I was like, really? You gotta wrap this up. We've been in here long enough that it's, we need a snack and a nap. So 30, 45 minutes. So yeah. That's what it's like. Oh man.

Flo: Danny, can you imagine if we'd had this as children?

Danny: Which I think

Flo: sobbing

Danny: reminds as I listen, there is a way of looking at faith in God in the [00:26:00] world that would call what you just described. Or describe it as not having faith.

Lacy: Yeah.

Danny: And I think the contrast I think what you just described is so full of faith. If we're looking for just the mustard seed, it's not what you're describing that is, that's already so much bigger than any seed in a sense.

And just even how that with Jesus takes the child and says, this is power, this is the kingdom. Yeah. I'm just in awe of like the faith that it takes your, I think the conclusion of the book is mystery.

And as I read that Yeah. Curious to ask you about and maybe I'm just wanting you to agree with me.

Yeah. How much faith it takes to trust Jesus is with people, regardless of what we say or in the silence or that the spirit, here's how I'll frame the question. Sorry. I love the part where you talk about the difference between aiming and listening for what the spirit is already doing. Instead of aiming at behavior modification.

Can you speak to that difference [00:27:00] between aiming and listening?

Lacy: Yeah. I think Danny, you were touching on exactly how it impacts the adult, which is it must deepen our trust. Yeah. But back me up on this. Incarnational faith, which is what, this is what we're talking about.

Incarnational faith requires trust. It requires trust and Christian philosopher Dallas Willard helped me with this word, faith and trust. Like he encouraged, whatever people wanna say about that. But he encouraged swapping out the word faith with the word trust. Because trust is faith with legs on it.

And so I think Yes, exactly. It challenges trust. And our life with God is an eternal life of deepening trust. If it isn't deepening at every moment of our life, we might wonder if it's still alive.

And I think, talking about [00:28:00] aiming versus it's like prescriptive versus descriptive. It's lived versus distance. I think a lived faith is the one we're looking for. Abundant life. Happens in this present moment, but I think it's absolutely a challenge. Let's just name it, it is a challenge.

It's an, it's the Holy Spirit whispering to us. Will you trust me?

Danny: And wake up to this is happening. Whether you see it or not,

Lacy: this is happening. Whether you see it,

Danny: there's an invitation to participate and to just, yeah.

Lacy: Would you like to have a front row seat?

You're gonna trust is the ticket.

Flo: Yeah. And to build on this I remember in our course there being a lot of emphasis on not making meaning for the child in those spaces also. So even even when the big, profound moments happened hold it in!. I had a moment this week [00:29:00] with with a story I was telling 'cause we use godly play in a lot of spaces I'm in and

Lacy: wonderful.

Flo: And telling it to a group of kiddos that I don't think, I don't know that all of them have any faith background, so maybe not any God language, but we were talking about the light and of, and how people love this light so much they wanna be part of it and lighting the candle. And a little child said that ca the candle flickering looks like a heartbeat.

And I was like, oh my gosh. Okay, hold on. You wanna I just,

Lacy: yeah. The sermon opportunity was loud.

Flo: Yeah. But just in those moments, glimpsing that and being able to let that child have that as that moment and not making it more or less. And I think just your insistence on giving children agency is so important like that they don't have to come back, that they don't have to receive the blessing. There's so much there that is sadly missing [00:30:00] from a lot of faith spaces.

Lacy: I think when we don't, when we are more aggressive, I'll use that word, aggressive, when we make meaning for the child or when we fill the space for the child or when we don't let them have their decisions.

Some kids say they don't wanna a blessing and they leave, they're done. They might in the middle of holy listen, be like, I'm done, light off. I'm like, oh, we didn't get closure. I need some closure. Yeah. When we do that, when we hold ourselves back, what we end up doing is we give them the opportunity to hear their hunger.

And it is their hunger that draws them to Christ. If we feed them before they hear their hunger, then they're drawn to us. They are not drawn to Christ. And this is a them and Christ relationship. I wanna get out of the way.

Danny: The Lacy, this is the first time we've spoken, but you seem like a very gentle person.[00:31:00]

Pretty sure. I trust you at this point. And Flo also been friends for 15 years. There's a gentleness. I. I think I have a tenderness that's part of my makeup and all these spaces but I see in both of your faces and I've been told that it exists in mine. It's follow the spirit. Jesus is always speaking all these things.

And as soon as there is a I love the story about the kids have to go pray. That's absurd. I'm letting him go after two minutes. There's this like there's this fierceness, there's this firmness and it hear, it makes me think of Jesus and maybe even shifts the expression I imagine on his face when he says, it would be better if you were tied to a millstone and thrown in the ocean.

Then obviously than harming one of these kids. But even it would be better for that to happen to you than for you to make a child go pray. It would be better for that to happen than for you to force something and tell this kid, I love them if they say this formulaic [00:32:00] prayer. I just, this is, again, not a question, but just I see that in you and I am reminded of Jesus and see him and that passion and that fierceness

In a, in an encouraging, inspiring way.

Lacy: He is fierce for children. I love in the stories of Jesus drawing the children, letting them come to that, he's indignant to the adult, to the adults who are kind of body guarding him. He's indignant. He's back it down. Come to me. I, that, that has healed some of my own wounds.

Danny: I think it even speaks to his desire. It's, he's back to the meaning making. He's not, and I'm teaching you a lesson about spirituality. He's I would rather be with the kids. Yeah. And the authenticity and the real, so if you go debate over there, go figure it all out. Go count baptisms.

I'm gonna be over here with the

Lacy: And don't you think it's tied? It's so deeply [00:33:00] tied to his trust in the Trinitarian community of which he is a part of. Like he has deep trust. He has such deep trust that he goes to the cross. He does. That requires trust. To set your face. He trusts the father, he trusts the spirit inherently.

Of course. Come on kids. Yeah. Whatever you've got is great.

Flo: I love your phrasing of the Trinity, this community of love and love's family. I definitely put that in my thesis and there's so many footnotes that are like, Lacy Finn Bogo.

Lacy: That is so encouraging to me because no one never knows,

Flo: I, yeah, no, thank you.

I know, but no, it's so important. But I love that idea of just even included in, in, in God is this rejection of this individualistic life that Western [00:34:00] Christians have adopted, that it is like this is a family of love that you are invited into and that you're part of it.

Lacy: Ultimately, it just doesn't hold individualism doesn't hold. It, eh, you can might pull it off for a day maybe, but it doesn't hold.

And we're not made from that. We're not made for it.

Danny: Yeah. And if we get in touch with our true self and our deep hunger and thirst, we won't settle. That's another CS Lewis, right?

We settled. Yeah.

Lacy: Yeah.

Danny: I'm curious you talked a little bit about your childhood and there being trauma and wounds and that and you've mentioned Dallas, Willard and Quakers, have you. Did you have a journey to becoming a Quaker? Because Flo and I would love to just take these things out and join you on the Quaker journey.

Lacy: I, I, when we got into this thing, I was like, I don't have a collar.

Danny: There's some humor in this. Yeah.

Flo: [00:35:00] It's like the, yeah. I don't think at this point, I don't know if you've seen the, like little logo we have, but it's two priests shrugging, like with the collar, so it's like that,

Danny: we're making fun of the collar.

That makes sense.

Lacy: Yeah, my, my journey to I, my seminary education is at a Quaker school. So it was at, I started at George Fox they, they switched their name halfway through To Portland Sim. But my doctorate is from George Fox. And. I would say we're probably working at, about 30 years ago is the first time I read Richard Foster, and that stirred something deep in me.

I did attend an Anglican church and actually COVID put the kabosh on that. That's a longer different story. But one of the things I, I sit, I've, so I've sat with Quakers since 2022 in our local town. And really it's only about sometimes five, [00:36:00] sometimes 12, if it's Easter, not really, but of us.

We sit in a, we have a Quaker meeting and it's unprogrammed in the basement of a Lutheran church who lets us rent a room. But I, when I'm in Boston, I go to Quaker meeting in Boston and, but it has a bit of that root for me of it has to do with the accuracy and generosity for which Quakers see children.

And indeed every human being.

They have a high, I think, view of the anthropology of a person. That's deeply appealing to me.

Danny: Yeah. Which was the question under my question is did children lead you to this place of being Yeah. The Quaker and the weightiness that, that I love that journey, I think, anyways, I think that's, yeah.

Something the three of us likely share just these

Flo: Yeah.

Danny: Children have left us [00:37:00] more comfortable in the quiet than the

Lacy: yeah. Yeah. I, and I think it has to do, at least for me, with being comfortable with mystery. I hadn't realized this too. Yeah. Until our friend Flo, Ellie Beatty pointed out, like both of my books end in a chapter in mystery.

I'm writing a book now. I thought, oh, I think I have to end it in mystery. I think I got a thing here and I didn't even know it. So I think it has to do with mystery. There's room for mystery within the Quaker Fellowship. And I need to be, I think, you know what? It draws me to Catholicism.

I'm deeply Ignatian. I think it's the mystery.

Flo: Yeah.

Lacy: The mystery of it. What I love about Eastern Orthodox was, which was a real discernment time for me. It's that they left it in during the Great Schism other, the other Catholicism. We weeded it out and then built it back in through through the monastic threads.

Eastern Orthodox. They left it in. They're like what the heck we're [00:38:00] Greek?

Danny: Yeah. You're describing, Ignatian, Jesuit, Quakers. That is it. Yeah, you're,

Lacy: yeah. That is

Danny: what? Yeah. That's what I wanna be. Yeah,

Lacy: me too. I'll let you know.

Danny: Okay. Where two or three are gathered, here we go. That's

Lacy: right here on the Jesuit Quaker. Two With a collar, one with without.

Danny: It's so funny. All three of us have been trained in a new spiritual direction, so there are these silence and we're all just eh. It's fine. Yeah. Awkward.

Lacy: Awkward silence. We like it.

Danny: Remember with 20 minutes,

Flo: no. One of the. I had been writing a curriculum a while back, and that was actually why we were at this conference together is I had a curriculum that had written for an organization called A Rocha that was about creation care. It was like a [00:39:00] VBS style camp for churches, for creation care for kiddos.

And a lot of at least in the curriculum at least once a day, we wanted a mindfulness contemplative kind of station. I always joke it's like the VBS for introverts, but I think every kid, introvert or extrovert really loves it. Or resonates with it and wants. A moment of quiet.

But the you know, adults are so scared. They're so scared of what if it feels awkward? Or what if they start talking? Or what if this happens? And I've never thought about it as being comfortable with mystery as being a link to being comfortable with silence. But this is like just blowing my mind.

'cause I'm like, oh yeah. I think the folks that have the hardest time would've also been the ones that want like a script and answers, and this is how you do the thing. And and I'm not wired that way. And so I think, yeah, being able to sit in silence feels [00:40:00] natural. But I was always surprised, like the adults were so scared and I would just want to be like, just look, just try it. And then they do. And then they're like, I can't believe it. I can't believe, like all these kids, like almost falling asleep in the grass.

Lacy: Know. Yeah. Isn't it?

Danny: And so much of the fear in the mustard seed faith that I think has less faith that even the question of who will tell them they need to repent?

Who will tell them to be convicted? And you have a lovely story, I think a 14-year-old who in the space where you say the Holy Spirit can go places. I can't, can you tell the story about this 14-year-old who the spirit took to conviction? And again the phrase you used is she realized she wasn't living her true self. Yeah. Just how in that space...

Lacy: you'll have to remind me, is that the one who took money from her mom's wallet?

Danny: Yes.

Lacy: Yeah. Yeah. I would have to reread the details yeah. Of that story, [00:41:00] which I haven't read recently. But. But that is very common, that if we will give children the opportunity to listen to themselves, that they actually I love the definition of confession as being to tell the truth about ourselves.

It is to tell the truth about ourselves. And I'm convinced that when we confess, when we feel conviction, we should feel better once we say it. If we feel worse, then we probably weren't confessing. we were probably groveling and shame and forced guilt.

So anytime that there is conviction and that we confess, we should feel better.

Actually. It will lead us to a consolation. That's simple. Ignatian spirituality, it will lead us to a consolation if it doesn't probably, we are more strangled than we are free.

Danny: Yeah. Truly just [00:42:00] nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of with our true selves there. So freeing.

Lacy: Yeah. Yeah.

In my own life too, every time lint rolls around, I'm like, okay, whatever practice I choose, I will wanna be discerning that. It leads me into freedom.

Or else it's leading me away.

Danny: I don't know if that this is like great podcast material, but this is something I learned about a year ago. Do you have you heard that when Ignatius was brought in and they decided to make him a priest, which he wasn't. Real gung ho about he had to go back and learn with children.

Lacy: He didn't he?

Danny: And I, that to me is, that's where it all became magical, is him having to go to that space and learn all of these things as an adult, but with children and just, hit the wonder that he parts of the world.

Lacy: Doesn't it make you wonder, Danny, like what did he [00:43:00] learn from him that he brought to the exercises?

What did he learn about imagination? What did he learn about humility? Ignatius was, he was always accommodation. Like one of the Ignatian, principals is to accommodate. Directors accommodate. Did he learn that from the kids?

Danny: Yeah. I, it's so freeing opening. It's, yeah.

I love it so much. I heard, I read Daniel Barrigan a favorite Jesuit of mine. He told a story about how Ignatius, when he was an old man just cried all the time at the beauty of the world. And then he refused to pick a flower because it belonged to everybody, not just him. And just that space of, I'm part of this, the wholeness that we spoke of at the beginning, that just such a childlike.

Wonder,

Lacy: this is again, I'm just gonna follow your thread, whether it's podcast material or not.

Good times. We're having good times. I went to Manresa this summer and I did an eight day spiritual retreat where. Where [00:44:00] Ignatius Saint Ignatius got the exercises in the cave.

Danny: Oh, wow.

Lacy: Yeah. It's a contemplative retreat. So it was like eight days of silence and five hours a day of meditation. Holy moly. Right? Yeah. That's a whole, that's another podcast.

Danny: I hope you took Jenga.

Lacy: That's the truth. I was talking to everyone by the time it was over, like dogs, flowers.

It was in Manresa up on this hill is where he had the vision over the river Cordova about, that all is loved by God and they've got a spiral there with a well that's sunk down deep. And the spiral is like this metal kind of monument kind of thing that's just in the ground. And they have the names of mystics carved in it and oh, it's a special [00:45:00] place.

Danny: Yeah, it's

Lacy: where the deep and the wide of God just reaches out and holds every living thing from flower to human.

Danny: Flo has a song I think you would love, it's called, it doesn't have to be that hard. Oh, yeah. In these spaces they're not always easy. Like I, I'm a father of four and if you, if they start a podcast about what a good listener I am, it might be a short podcast. So it's not always easy, but it's simple. Yes. That thin space of the mystic that are just aware of the simplicity in the grandness of it all.

Lacy: Yeah. Yeah.

Danny: I'm glad you told us that story.

Flo: Yes. Following that I I was thinking about how and talking to parents whose kids I've done spiritual direction with now, and a lot of parents in our com faith community have [00:46:00] some deep, pretty deep childhood wounds and from religious spaces and carry those with them and have gone through their own faith deconstruction, but are like, so afraid

Lacy: Yeah.

Flo: Of handing this same trauma to their children, but they want something for their children. And so it's so hard because I feel like there's this temptation to just be so hands off that you're like nothing.

I don't, I won't even mention God. Don't wanna traumatize you, and I remember when my kids were growing up, I would always be like, you don't have to do this because when I was young, blah, blah. And they like, they don't have that trauma me. So they're like, why are you telling me this?

Lacy: Me too. Girl, me too.

Flo: That's unnecessary information. But I, but then, in my own deep research of children's spirituality, learning that first of all, like I want them to know that there is God that loves them. Like I want them to [00:47:00] be, carry that, know that. And learning about even just how a child spirituality helps them become more resilient.

There's like all of this overlap now between psychology and spirituality that's so good. Finally. Yes, that's like coming to light and we're finally not like pushing those two things into these binary categories and as fighting against each other when that's not how it, it is at all.

But I think in that sense, sometimes, parents get afraid and want to throw everything out.

And so the parents that are, that I'm talking to a lot are like, how can we keep some semblance of faith, how can we nurture our own children in their spirituality, give them agency lead what they're doing? And I wondered if, a lot of times these parents have come out of these faith spaces where it's here's the book, here's the devotional that you do with your kids every day for 30 minutes or whatever.

And it's it is not nobody that doesn't work and nobody wants to do that [00:48:00] anymore. Especially we're talking about post COVID, like nobody wants to go to a place, go anywhere. Let alone we're gonna start a devotional with our kids. And that's just not compelling or appealing to me as a person.

So why would my kids want to sit and do a workbook or something? So I think like even these, I always tell my parents like to read your book. 'cause I'm like, you don't have to be a spiritual director to implement these ways of being and listening with your kids at home. And I think this is one of the best ways that they can engage in spiritual formation with their kids at home, is just touching on a few of these ways to listen and to point out wonder.

And so I wondered if you could, if you had just like a couple of tips for parents if they were, if yeah, if they were curious about how to engage in, in spiritual conversations with children. I know you have some in your book, but if you could maybe tell us a couple of ways for maybe [00:49:00] our parents and caregivers.

Lacy: Sure. I think one that I've never thought of until just now, when you ask me, I'm asked this question fairly often. So I have the two canned answers that I, in my head, but I just kind, but one just came to me that I never thought of before, which is if we wanna be fully present to our children, that includes our spiritual life.

So if we don't tell them. We don't give the, we don't have to give 'em the gory details. There are some things that are just private between us and God, but that's how we are fully present.

If I'm having a bad day and my kids know I'm having a bad day, 'cause I'm a little bit prickly, so I might say gosh guys, I'm a little bit prickly today, but I'm talking to Jesus about it and I'm trusting that he's gonna help me not be a jerk later, it's as simple as that. Letting them in on our full presence, which includes our life with God. Yeah. So I wonder about that. My canned answers are one [00:50:00] is help them know the gospels and you don't have to sit down and do a devotional on the gospels, over a meal tell a story about Jesus that, one, one that, that I've been, that I've been living in for about the last week has been when the friends let their their paralyzed friend in down from the roof. They pull the tiles off, they pull the tiles off, and for the first time I, the, for the first time I've been a, I've been a Christ follower reading the gospels since the fourth grade.

For the first time I thought, man, that had to scare the crap out of that paralyzed guy to be drug to a roof. And I thought, man, he really trusted his friends. He really trusted his friends. So I wonder, just tell those stories. Yeah. Tell those stories. When you're at the McDonald's. And dipping your french fries in your milkshake. Cause you should, if you're

gonna go to McDonald's you should do that.

On the, in regular, let the stories from Jesus', not [00:51:00] only his birth, his death and his resurrection and ascension, but his life. Be part of your everyday vernacular. And that way when a kid says, I'm having this thing happen at school, or whatever you say, is there a story from Jesus' life that might speak to that?

And they know those stories 'cause you've been telling them, around the, when you're fishing or hanging out or whatever. So I think Jesus's stories, they give us a hermeneutic. He's the hermeneutic that we see our life through. So give them to him in everyday ways. And then the other is to pray a simple examine.

Flo: Yeah,

Lacy: I love a simple examine and the examine, not as in an examine of consciousness. Let's see where you have really, ran it off into the ditch today. Not that, but an awareness examine where you look back through your day and you look for all the goods. Everything good that happened.

Name it. Everybody name it. What was it? [00:52:00] Augustine said, we need to be a, an hallelujah from head to toe. Make a list of it. Put it up in your home. Get crazy with the Post-it notes.

All the goods that you've experienced. Maybe in our world today, we really need to cultivate the capacity to see the good, and then I like to use the next movement.

I like to use the grace and grace, meaning the places where it didn't go as I'd hoped it would. And there's grace in that. There's God's redemptive work in that. So what are the graces? So it could have been the time I was prickly with the kids and I was like really short. It could have been the time for them when they didn't do well on a test and they feel really not good about that.

What is the grace in that? What's the grace? And then we look for tomorrow in the examine. What is tomorrow gonna be like and how can we ask God to meet us there? Would you meet me? I've got [00:53:00] this friendship that's not so great and I'm nervous about it. Will you meet me there? And doing a simple examine the goods, the graces, what is tomorrow?

When we pray that together as a family, it shapes our seeing. It's a lens.

Flo: Yeah.

Lacy: And it lays down a neurological pathway. We're learning this more and more. It lays that pathway down for our seeing in the future. I think if you do those three things, because now I've added three, used to be two, now it's three.

Be fully present to your kiddos, including your spiritual life.

Flo: Yeah.

Lacy: Know the gospels like the back of your hand. Just tell 'em like you tell this, like we tell the stories of the princess bride.

You know what I'm saying? Mawwiage is what brings us together.

Danny: That's a good Anglican.

Lacy: No, that's good.

That's exactly like love. Twue love. Okay. Anyway, and then pray the examine. I think those just [00:54:00] do those three. Maybe that's helpful.

Flo: Oh man. Yeah.

Danny: To the adults as well. Those are

Lacy: it'll shape adult, spiritual life.

Flo: And such, again, such an honoring a way to say even in the the graces being honoring of your true self and who you hope your true self to be.

And not a shame spiral that you're confessing these things to a God that wants to catch you doing something bad. Yeah.

Lacy: And I think when we use the word grace for the areas that we feel like went a little, our knees got a little wobbly or something, I think that acknowledges God's redemptive work and isn't redemption god's business.

Family business, isn't that it? Redemption is that's God's gig bringing all things. So there's both hope in it. There's acknowledging the reality of things. And not a drop of shame.[00:55:00]

Flo: Yeah. Oof. Amen.

Lacy: I think we've had enough of that.

Danny: Yeah. Yeah.

Lacy: Yep.

Danny: Yeah. And just to not have to control anything. What freedom to just receive.

Lacy: It's just an illusion anyway, isn't it? Yeah.

Danny: I really do. In pastoring, I'm gonna be overly simplistic, over really simplistic, but there is this divergence and spirituality with the folks who have suffered in a way where the illusion of control has been taken, and people who haven't and or, there's a very small group, but some people do and double down on control, which that's not my space to get into, but yeah. The, when that's taken, the surrender. It's not a masochistic surrender.

Lacy: No.

Danny: But just a I was held even in this horrible story.

Lacy: Yeah. The conviction that [00:56:00] there is nowhere where God is not. Yeah. Nowhere the deepest of depths, the darkest of places God has been, will be and is present.

Danny: Amen.

Flo: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you Lacy.

Danny: Thank you for being with us. So good to meet you.

Lacy: Oh man. Now I feel like I need to go on a road trip so I can meet you person.

Danny: Come on. Yes.

Flo: Come on over.

Danny: Come on over. Love to have you and yeah, just a joy. And I'm excited to read. The book you're writing and also faith Like a Child. Yes. That is up next at St. Mary's.

Flo: Yeah.

Lacy: Awesome.

Flo: Yeah, I got to read that. I think I actually listened to it. So I listened to your Sweet Voice while I was on a mini sabbatical last summer in [00:57:00] California. And so I it was the perfect thing to listen to. Yeah.

Lacy: Oh, you heard me. I think I told I told our class that I in recording that I had to say the-- I hadn't thought about having to pronounce the words I wrote, and I had such a hard time with unfathomable.

Danny: Oh

Lacy: yeah.

Seven takes of unfathomable..

Flo: Yeah. Yeah. No. Thank you again so much for being with us. Lacy Finn Borgo, author of Spiritual Conversations with Children, listening to God together and Faith Like a Child and something new coming out. Thanks again so much. I'm, so I feel again honored to know you and to learn from you and to just be in this work adjacent to you this time in the world.

I'm just pretty thankful, so

Lacy: I'm so glad. I'm [00:58:00] so glad we're all on this planet at this particular time. Listening as best we can.

Danny: And I guess we are all co-founders of the Jesuit Quakers

Lacy: That's exactly, we're the original members. I feel

Danny: the first step in children's spirituality is bylaws. So somebody write that up, so we can get nonprofit status.

Lacy: That's right. That's right.

Danny: Thank you so much.

Lacy: You're very welcome.

Danny: So great to be together.

Flo: Thank you.

Danny: Hope you have a great day. Peace.

Lacy: Bye friends.

Flo: Peace.

Danny: Bye.

Thank you for listening to another episode of Blessed Uncertainty. Special thanks to Kyle Lock for producing his brother Adam Lock for our logo