This Good Word With Steve Wiens

Steph Williams O’Brien is a pastor, writer, leadership coach, podcaster, and she’s a really good friend. She is a passionate influencer that encourages me to be who I am, ask the hard questions, and to embrace possibility and hope. Check out the full Show Notes here.

Bridget Eileen is a multi-racial gay Christian woman who has chosen to be celibate - but not because the bible tells her so. This conversation was so fascinating to me for a million different reasons - I loved getting to know Bridget and I think you will, too.  Click here for the Show Notes and to get in touch with Bridget. 

Click here for the ShowNotes. 

Lenny Duncan, author of the brand new book, Dear Church: A Love Letter From a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S.  Click here for the Show Notes. 

Click here for the ShowNotes... 

Ashley M. Wilcox is a Quaker minister and founder of Church of Mary Magdalene. She is currently writing a handbook for feminist preachers called The Women’s Lectionary, to be published by Westminster John Knox Press in September 2020. Ashley travels around the country to speak, preach, and lead workshops and retreats. Through her ministry, Ashley brings Friends deeper into their own tradition and helps those in other denominations and faiths experience God through Quaker practices and spirituality. Ashley is a graduate of Candler School of Theology and Willamette University College of Law. Before going to seminary, Ashley worked for appellate courts in Washington and Oregon. Her writing has been published in Friends Journal, Western Friend, and various Quaker anthologies.   Ashley was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and now lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her partner Troy and their two orange cats. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and make sure to check out her website for more of her writin

Brie Stoner is a musician, writer, student, and 2015 alumna of the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Living School for Action and Contemplation. She co-hosts Another Name For Everything, the popular new podcast featuring Richard Rohr. Her music, which has been featured in national and international television broadcasting, includes the production and composition of the soundtracks for the NOOMA film series with Rob Bell. Brie has published blogs for The Omega Center, The Contemplative Society, and Northeast Wisdom websites, and contributed to an anthology edited by Ilia Delio, OSF: Personal Transformation and a New Creation: The Spiritual Revolution of Beatrice Bruteau. Brie has served as content curator and podcast host for Ilia Delio's online forum, The Omega Center, research assistant to Cynthia Bourgeault, and currently serves on staff with the Center for Action and Contemplation. Enjoy!  Mentioned in our conversation:  The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr  Fall

Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev founded and leads Beit Midrash of Santa Fe, a multi-faith sacred learning community. He has led workshops at retreat centers, synagogues, churches, and seminaries across the United States, including Union Theological Seminary, Ghost Ranch, Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey, and Stony Point Center. His teaching invites learners into an adventurous exploration that engages the body, heart, and soul as well as the mind. He is an experienced spiritual director, accompanying people of many faiths. Nahum is the Scholar-in-Residence at Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe, NM and a Fellow of the Rabbis Without Borders Initiative. His new book, The Liberating Path of the Hebrew Prophets: Then and Now (Orbis, 2019), Rabbi Nahum mines Biblical wisdom to illumine a way forward. His book explores the rich territory of liberating social change as articulated by the Hebrew prophets and lived by Biblical persons. Ward-Lev examines the development of these Biblical liberation themes in contemporary prophetic writer

On today's episode, I talked about getting misunderstood - then and moving on. We can't get everybody to see what we are trying to do or understand what we really meant. You can waste a lot of emotional energy trying to answer questions you just can't answer anyway. I told a few stories from John's gospel about how Jesus refused to answer certain questions and just moved on. You can, too. Enjoy. 

I got to know Katey Zeh when our mutual friend Erin Lane introduced us, and I’m so glad she did. Katey has experience working as an advocate for women and girls who are being trafficked, which has greatly informed how she reads the bible. The result is her brand new book, Women Rise Up: Sacred Stories for Today’s Revolution. Katey speaks the truth of the abuse, oppression, and erasure women have endured in the stories told in the Scriptures, much of which is still happening in the world today. Click here to enjoy the episode. Connect with Katey: Katey’s Website Twitter Instagram Katey’s Podcast: Kindreds (with Ashley Peterson) “I don’t know anyone who more seamlessly marries her scriptural imagination with an activist sensibility than Katey Zeh. She is a reliable, skilled, and (thanks to be God) altogether human teacher who is not afraid to trouble the waters of some of our most beloved (and forgotten) readings of biblical women – and their enduring witness in our modern lives. If you are looking for a

This is a rebroadcast of an oldie but a goodie - I think you might agree that it has aged well in the last two years.  Have you ever experienced that awkward moment when someone asks you a question, and you know they want an either/or response, but you just can't go there? Have you ever wanted to demand a better, more expansive question, one that respects the nature of your answer, and the fact that their small question can't contain the truth of your nuanced answer? Well, well, well. You need to get to know Mu. Enjoy! Links: Music kindly provided by Sisters of Murphy (songs: 17 and Green Over Red (Radio Edit). Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. And - I meant to mention this but forgot: Listen to this fabulous interview with Krista Tippet and Padraig O Tuama to hear more about Mu. 

On this episode, I talked about how to know when to voice that disagreement, and how to know when to keep silent. I posed five questions you can ask yourself to decide whether or not it's worth it to have that disagreement. Enjoy! 

My friend Nate Pyle is a great writer and also a compassionate pastor, who knows about pain and loss firsthand. Professional uncertainty, the intense impact of mental illness, and the struggle to build a family after infertility and a lost pregnancy have left Nate with more questions than answers. One answer he has come to, however, is that God regularly gives people more than they can handle, regardless of the well-known cliche that says otherwise.  In Nate's book, More Than You Can Handle: When Life's Overwhelming Pain Meets God's Overcoming Grace, he shares his own story, the stories of others, and a fresh look at the life of Jesus, in order to help people deal with life's inevitable pain.  Enjoy!  Music on this episode: Julie's Song by Joel Hanson

Alia Joy is the author of Glorious Weakness: Discovering God in All We Lack. She writes poignantly about her life with bipolar disorder as well as grief, faith, marriage, poverty, race, embodiment, and keeping fluent in the language of hope. She lives in Central Oregon with her husband, her tiny Asian mother, her three kids, a dog, a bunny, and a bunch of chickens.  Make sure to connect with Alia on her blog, on Twitter, or on Instagram.  Enjoy! 

When Jon Sweeney and Mark Burrows were reading Daniel Ladinsky's gorgeous translations of Hafiz, they had an idea: What if we translated the work of Meister Eckhart into poetry? The result is one of my favorite new resources: Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart. If you like Rumi and Hafiz, you are going to love this little book.  Meister Eckhart was a thirteenth-century priest, mystic, and nearly a heretic. A wide range of current spiritual teachers and mystics, including Richard Rohr, Eckhart Tolle, and Rudolph Steiner, credit Eckhart as being an important influence on their work. In addition, Eckhart's work has influenced 20th century American Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition. In our time, as many of us are hungry to experience God through mystery, paradox, and an embrace of the unknown, Meister Eckhart is a good guide.   Enjoy.   

Mary and I worked really hard to create an epic Harry Potter birthday party for one of our boys, and it was coming together in such an awesome way that I shared in on Instagram. And it WAS an epic party, in all the good ways, UNTIL it was a complete and utter disaster. Ha! Instagram fail.  What does it look like to choose to courageously show up face-to-face with your weakness, your limits, your concerns, your half baked ideas and your ambivalence when it's so tempting to only reveal your curated self? In this episode, I talk about all of that.  Oh, and if you'd like to see those Instagram pics, go here.  Enjoy. 

Homeostasis is the ability your body has to regulate temperature, produce or reduce glucose, eliminate toxins, fight infection, and many other things - without you even thinking about it.  What if you had a way to regulate your emotional state of being? Instead of getting swept away in anger, or fear, or shame, what if you could notice those feelings without judging them, allowing yourself to feel them fully, but then separate your self from your feelings so you don't get swept away?  In today's episode, I talk about cultivating the ability to have feelings rather than allowing your feelings to have you. Enjoy!