Season 2, Episode 5: Natalie Wigg-Stevenson

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Transcript

Welcome to the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast, hosted by Miriam Spies and Amy Panton, which comes out of the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability. We both live and work lands that have been homes and remain homes to the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron Wendat, the Neutral; and the Ojibway/Chippewa peoples and other peoples who have cared for the land.. We are grateful for the opportunity to live and work on this land and are mindful of the need to repair broken covenants. This podcast is an opportunity to model how faith communities can engage in theological and spiritual conversations around madness and cripness. If you need a full transcript you can find videos on our Youtube channel. We want to say before we begin that topics and conversations we are raising throughout our time together are often hard!  They are hard for mad and crip people ourselves and hard for our families and loved ones. So, do what you need to do to take care of yourselves, your bodies, minds, and hearts. And now, here is our episode.

Welcome to this episode of the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast. We're delighted to have whenever what is from us when it's still here Natalie Wigg-Stevenson so thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks so much Natalie we really appreciate you taking the time to come on. Um what we usually ask our guests to do at the beginning is just introduce themselves, so I'm just going to put it in the chat here for you so just like your some what are your pronouns um tell us a little bit about your work and academic location, um Miriam already mentioned you'd written a beautiful piece for us um so that's your connection to the journal but if you could give us a visual description of yourself we'd really appreciate that for folks who need that. 

Sure um well my name is Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, I am a professor at Emmanuel College where both of you are students and let's see, she/her pronouns, um connection to mental health and disability: I live with a mental mental illness, is how I would refer to it, that I wrote about in the article for the journal and also have a number of family members living with mental health issues and disabilities as well. Um, the visual description of myself I have brown curly hair typically long but it's kind of short right now and I am what am I wearing? I am wearing a floral skirt with a jean denim me tank top today and my favorite um I'm about to show it to you guys my favorite uh necklace that I wear pretty much every day. Which is a long necklace with a diam- not not an actual diamond a diamond shape at the end of it. Can you imagine if I was wearing diamonds to this? That would be that would be very cool. I don't wear diamonds.

Wait so we'll jump right into our first question. Behind the scenes we had discussed your piece being your coming of joy when they gave you your diagnosis and so reminded the physicians when they did do that why did you think it was the right time to come out how did you find the process of writing the piece and how has it been since you came out?

Yeah that's a really lovely question. Um I had so I was diagnosed with um bipolar disorder bipolar spectrum a few years ago um probably about six months before the pandemic hit, so I was starting the pandemic trying to get my meds um sorted which was the sort of bananas time to be doing that. 

Um but I uh I had been open before about issues I'd had with anxiety and depression but hadn't quite well obviously hadn't realized that I had a mood disorder as well and so um I don't know there's a lot of stigma around bipolar I think we talk openly about i mean even when my therapist started to piece together that might be what's going on she kept saying things like but don't worry there are there are doctors and lawyers who are bipolar and they function really well and eventually I asked her well like why should that make me feel better that people who overwork themselves can do can even manage to participate in a capitalist scheme um when they have bipolar and so I sort of from the beginning started grappling with what that was all about and why that should be something that should comfort me or why I even needed comforting. 

Um but that kind of a stigma um made me question where I should share it and where I shouldn't. I had a few experiences really my first you know private sharings with people I had a couple that went really painfully very painfully and left me feeling like I shouldn't tell more people and then but even so then with my students I think it was my students who I started to get the desire to share share it with I don't particularly you know I teach around disability studies but it's not my research area, and so I hadn't necessarily thought i would write about it. Um but increasingly I would encounter students who I felt like it would be helpful for them to know it it could be empowering for them to know um but could never figure out how to share it or who to share it with or was I privileging one student if I shared it and not another and so I figured at some point i would write something that would be just the coming out. 

I feel like it was probably still about three years away and then you guys asked me to write this piece and I thought well I really love my students so I guess I'm gonna give them a story and it was sort of like I'm not saying you made me do it I just felt like it's the right time because it's something that uh I mean both of you have helped we've talked about disability and mental health quite a bit and the times we've known each other and I think you've helped me think about it more so it felt right to give it to you. 

Writing it was lovely I enjoyed it so much i thought getting to I mean you guys invited me into a space of writing at the overlap of spirituality and mental illness and that's where I live um I don't distinguish between that in significant in significant ways or like silo those parts of myself and so it felt really powerful to think about okay so how do you write from that mucky space that messy space that beautiful space um rather than and and you and you write kind of crazy like i really enjoyed writing uh I realized it's offensive language to some it's also self-descriptive language to say right from my madness right from my crazy it was a really liberating thing to be able to do. 

Um since it's come out I have really enjoyed moving through the world presuming people know not like I think a ton of people have bothered to read my article but I never know when I'm talking to someone um that they haven't read it either, and so it's just sort of like that's my baseline now and that is that's really liberating like something in the day that came into print I got a little nervous and sweaty I decided thought for like five minutes so I put this on twitter? Put it on twitter, and was like done clapped my hands walked away it felt so good and it felt like such a destigmatizing moment so I guess I should thank you guys I mean not I guess, I should, I should thank you guys for uh helping me have that journey.

And we're so glad that we could um, when we were thinking about making this journal, um we thought we we thought long and hard about it and um I was at a because I worked for another journal for three years, the Toronto Journal of Theology here in Toronto and so we were when I was working for that journal we were at uh I was on a like a little panel presenting about publishing and so the editor of that journal said to the students if you don't like the current climate of the journals start your own and I thought, what? We can start our own? so we he's like yeah UofT has um a whole system set up where they can give you like they'll host your journal for free there's a digital librarian who will work with you behind the scenes to get you like set up and so I thought oh my could we do this? And so we just really when we started building it Miriam and I talked and we were like we just really want to have a space like where people can just really like right from their crazy like you said and also we thought will anybody want to do this? like are we, you know, are we just going to do this and nobody's going to want to write and then we thought no we were like that field of dreams thing like if you build it they will come we're like we're just going to make this space and it might take a while for people to hear about it or like to be able to trust us enough to like want to you know write something for us but I I mean I don't know I think at least i have felt just incredibly blessed with the amount of um just like beautiful people who come forward and who want to share these really personal parts of their journey um It's just been really an amazing an amazing journey for us for the last two years. Yeah so thank you so much for being a part of it we really appreciate it. I think the way that you have more creative writing in it as well, and art, makes a huge difference for being able to speak theologically in ways that aren't otherwise possible with academic discourse, and um that especially it's like was very clear to me I'd want to be in that part of the journal because I think these questions require alternative genres for writing that don't fit within our conventional modes of communication in the academy. Totally, yeah, and um I I think Miriam and I talk a lot about like sort of removing some of that the scariness of the peer review like there are sections in our journal where you don't have to go through that slaughter which it can be sometimes, you can just be yourself we will just publish everything that just be you you know so those like the commentaries and the creative spaces where people can really really do that. We publish almost everything. We're not picky. I love the peer review process when it's done well unfortunately most people don't do it well but. Yeah, yeah

So um, all right so our next question for you um is about medication, so you mentioned in your author's note to the piece that about this concept of the lure of going up or down with your psychiatric medication so, how does the how do you experience the lure like how does it manifest for you, and why do you feel like you need to resist it?

Because the lure goes into so many like any kind of well i shouldn't say any kind of desire but as many people experience desire it goes in multiple directions at once many of which are competing with each other, so I write in the piece about you know there's a lure towards hyper productivity. I my my brain my body need forms of rest that the work i'm in does not really permit, um and I could medicate to be able to not need that rest. I could take more of to work in less distracted ways, and get stuff done, and be able to keep burning through, um so that's a temptation, because like what academic doesn't want to publish too much and who of us isn't insecure enough to want to be on a million committees and get everyone's love through service. Um we're all sort of, I don't know, I I fall prey to that too, and I think a lot of us do. Um and so that temptation is certainly there and so I want to resist that to make myself live in a more balanced way which I think a lot of very few professors do, it's a it's it's counter-cultural. Then on the other side, uh anyone who's gone into a hypomanic state knows until they get bad they're really good, um they're really wonderful, like at least for me um what I thought would just you know being a really happy person or having really intense spiritual experiences or being intensely creative for periods of time actually had a more you know complex um piece going on and so the lure definitely in that direction when I start to get a little bit bored or um I've got a creative project on the go the temptation can be just to put the meds in the drawer and let myself go wild for a little while but I also know that stuff that's damaging comes with that as well, and so um yeah I think the there's the the medical lure towards more hyperproductivity there's my

I don't want to say madness lure I don't know what the lure is that pulls me into wanting to go hypomanic, um but there's with the meds I have the capacity to figure out what the middle space is and not constrain it too much, I guess. Keep it keep it flexible.

I see. Um I wanted to ask you um, so you you mentioned about the connection between like having a manic space and your spirituality, do you feel like the meds that you're on um, do you feel like it dulls some of your connection with God, or do you feel like you can still experience the your spirituality or your spiritual life um at all? Or in a better way, I don't know, does it like hinder the experience of God or? For me it helps, um and I know I know that's not true for everyone so I want to put that caveat on there, um there might not be as much like intense ecstasy, but I think I think part of my experience of the, well, I mean it's worth saying I'm I'm not bipolar one I'm bipolar spectrum, and so there the highs and the lows are not as dramatic as people might associate with bipolar disorder, um I did not know all these different categories before I was diagnosed, um and so, I have a controlling enough personality that I could really like, clamp down in some of those highs in ways that

made me, made me resist the possibilities that were inherent to them, and and there was a less pleasurable dynamic around that, and so while I might not go into those places of transcendent ecstasy quite in the same way I feel like because I'm on lower dose and I am on lower doses of my meds I haven't pushed them up to where have it times been suggested I could go um that actually they've sort of become a safe container for um forced spiritual exploration and knowing like, well I'm just not going to spin out of control like I have three small children like there's a that's why I resist the lure I mean they found me in in the darker times, they've found me like on the kitchen floor sobbing and not knowing what to do with me, and there's only you know, so much trauma I want to pass down to my kids-- I don't want to pass any trauma down to my kids, but of course we do, so um that that's a significant part of the resistance, I want to keep it together for them. I think probably when they're older I would I would consider being less careful with meds, just to try to explore the edges a little bit more but for now life needs to be stable with small children in it for me.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. And I still have moments of transcendence I feel like there's a levelness I I'm not seeking them like a thrill seeker in the same way, like I have a more steady spiritual practice, um yeah. But of course, of course I miss those edges those edges are pretty fantastic.

Thanks for sharing Natalie. Um, we wondered about-- about people with mental illness in the church and in 1936 in turn wasn't worth that people with mental illnesses are forgotten by the church, and we wondered if you thought this has changed, or it stayed similar since you wrote this, are we still forgotten in some ways?

Yeah, I I don't know if I would use the language of forgotten, I guess, um I do feel like in the last few years at least the churches i've been in, I shouldn't say all churches, but the churches I've been in have been more open to having conversations around mental health, I have I have in the past intentionally attended churches that um that intentionally blend uh that that intentionally draw together groups of people with and without intellectual disabilities and mental health issues and try to foster a community around that difference, and so I know uh church there are more churches trying to pay attention to that, um in the church I go to right now my church is always chosen for me my spouse is an Anglican priest so we always go to his church, um and so i'm in a pretty middle class church right now, and I think the way that mental health gets talked about is can often be, and I encounter this not just in my church, can often be about, you know, we all get pretty stressed out with the grind of capitalist living and um the the church can sometimes become the place of trying to soften the edges of that, um which is you know, it's it is important it's to certain degrees you know because people are especially in the last two years um really struggling in terms of mental health, I don't think the church attends to, I've not been in a church at least I should say, that attends to the po-- the spiritual possibilities that i think can be in uncovered in the lives of people who might live more porously. This is such personal stuff to talk about, I I do um, believe in the porosity of reality that there's a spiritual fluidity at least i understand myself to be someone who resides in those porous and fluid spaces of this realm and another, um or others, and I know that part of that would be classified as crazy, um and yet I know there's something going on in there that connects to the mad parts of me, and the theological parts of me, and the spiritual experiences I've had where there's important wisdom, and I wish that there were a church that could help me tap into that and cultivate it and refine it and engage with it, but the modern church-- so it's not that I necessarily think we've forgotten, although that's certainly I'm sure the case but more so, I wish we could just lean into the possibilities of madness more as communities of Christians and yeah if I were to find a place that could nurture my madness for my spiritual well-being it would probably be a cult, like this I don't think there's like Christian church or it's going to be so marginal, I don't know where it is, but yeah.  Do you have any idea about what that church might look like?

Other than a cult? Um, yeah I mean it would be such a space of danger and risk, I mean that's the that's the thing, I think it would be, it would have to be embracing but also exploding our categories of mental wellness and how we understand them, um and obviously that's a very danger dangerous activity to do um with people who are vulnerable and anyone any of us living in any shade of madness is vulnerable I think in this society because it's not a society that works for us, um and so I can't I think it would be small, I guess is my only-- would be a very small number of people, um leadership would have to be shared which is always super messy and not nearly as wonderful as it's made to sound most of the time, um yeah I don't know, Miriam, do you have an idea what would it look like to you?

Or Amy, sorry if i'm putting Miriam on the spot. Yeah I think that there'd be chaos.

I guess-- oh sorry did I cut you off? I mean I guess as someone who lives with quite a bit of internal chaos I would want a place like I know you said earlier like we just want people to be themselves and I I don't I want to be myself in like very careful calibration with others, and so sort of like old school stuff like mentoring or peer review, I love them when they're done well because they're people calling me to versions of myself that I don't naturally inhabit, perhaps because of my own I mean generally I want to say laziness but that's a horrible thing to say obviously, but just I can't get there on my own right, if we believe in internationality I can't get there on my own, and so if I'm I'm trying to picture this church in a way that's not just me showing up with whatever I am, but as a space that actually is formative and lets me grow and lets me explore, like like in this piece I wrote for you guys I was I was trying to figure out what is that I can't articulate the space where my madness and my God overlap um I don't know how to put that into words and is it I can't even begin to imagine a community that would help me do that, uh but I think like in terms of spiritual nourishment it's what I would need I would want to be able to give that to others but where is that? And I believe the Christian messages have something to offer to that, I just don't know what to save my life.

Yeah in the classes I just finished teaching we do a couple weeks on um investigating our God images, uh the classes are on mental health and Christian theology and so one of the authors that I think well two authors that I think really help like crack open this God images in relation to madness or Anton Boyzen's work we've already just we've already talked about because he talks about um Jesus's ex-- some of Jesus's experiences in his life being psycho psychosis him actually experiencing psychosis and then you move forward a little bit and we have Jeff Hood's work um who talks about God experiencing psychosis and God being um, you know, uh like literally in a psych ward with people who are there and so these aspects of God like I I I puzzle a lot over like you know if we're made in God's images like my own OCD, my anxiety, does God have those things? Like that's what Jeff Hood is bringing forward. God must have these things, that's the only kind of God that he feels like he can relate to, a God who understands what it's like to be in those places, those those mad spaces. Um and so for some of them I've I've been I've watched my students some of them are very like oh, this is like this feels like home to me I I've not encountered this before, like why didn't I ever learn this before? And some of the students are like no way. There's no way that God is crazy, like God is not crazy. So and then there's some people who are kind of like floating in the middle, and so it's just been so interesting to see them try to like, grapple with you know we talked about like Nancy Easland's obviously her disabled God, and so some some people will say God like just definitely God is not using a wheelchair like no way my God is powerful my God is omnipotent. Um yeah it's just been fascinating for me to like ride that wave with students as they think about God like, um I I showed them this really awesome atheist website has t-shirts for sale, and one of them has Jesus wearing a straight in a straight jacket and so we just sat and we just like pondered that image together like what would we what would this mean for us? Um yeah so I think it would for me it would have to be some it would have to be that God for me, I think. I think for me it's, I mean at least in my own spiritual path, it's somehow that and not that and all of it none of it all at once and I think when I often find this when i'm teaching something that's a little out there with the students that you get the yes, this is great! And this fairly um open-hearted, not critical acceptance, or this closed-hearted, also not critical rejection, and I kind of like I in my recent book-- oh it's not so recent it's like over a year old now Transgressive Devotion I in the first chapter, I give the Father God dementia, and I say a number of times, I'm not saying God has dementia, I mean I don't even know what that would really mean but, um I want to explore what happens when we imagine God with dementia, and then sort of roll out from there, okay so what does that mean what does that mean for us? Especially for people who don't have dementia, what kind of-- how can we reimagine divine human agency? I reimagine it using postural care understandings of attunement, and listening, and inhabiting each other's spaces, and each other's, um yeah, mad spaces I guess like going into what if uh what if the kingdom of God is is God's own like faulty uh memory at work that we're invited to participate in, and for me it's important to balance why what the power of claiming something like that is but also what the loss of it is like, if I were to think of God as bipolar there would be a lot in that that was empowering, there'd be a lot that would shape how I related to God in terms of caring for that God, learning from that God, um but there would also be something in terms of like, I don't want my God to be bipolar because they might fall into like the pit of empathy to me, and then really we're just in the pit together, and I actually, there are moments where I want the omnipotent God who's going to be able to just lift me out of the pit or um yeah just revel in that difference, and so I I have found increasingly the image of God kind of language is some of the less-- I think it was important for a while but also is perhaps the less helpful right now, because it starts to collapse us and God rather than hold the attention of our difference in ways that actually make this similarness sparkle more. Did that make sense? I don't know if that made sense. Once I'm talking about a sparkly God I've uh I know that I've hit the edges of my knowing. Yeah, it makes sense. I think maybe I'm like maybe like I think i'm learning from my students learning. I'm learning from my like like sort of like trying to push them um to go to their edges, my edges are being expanded, which has been just such like a wonderful experience, um which is why I think teaching is kind of got its claws on me now because I'm I'm feeling like um it's helping me to just grow and learn so much more so, yeah.

Well

I think it's my turn, right Miriam? I think so. While you're figuring it out I'll just say one thing I do I think one of the disservices we do with our students in theological education this is just like I've got to keep hammering on this, is telling them to develop their own theology, I just hate that so much because it's a static enclosed thing and I would much rather students be taught to deploy a theological repertoire that they've assembled over time, and that's where I think the liberation begins of a theology as a spiritual practice, rather than a set of decisions that we make, and so I think the nexus of spirituality, madness, image of God, all these pieces together, they're a repertoire for a spiritual practice of seeking God. And this is where the madness threads I think can become really important because of the transcendent dimensions that take place in them we're transcending our societal norms I think we're transcending spiritual boundaries, and so um that's the repertoire I want to give to my students, not it's it can be hard to break them out of the binary of do I agree or don't I agree into like, how do I how do I trope this on my path to truth?

Okay now you can ask your next question. Yeah yeah I I think Natalie, you and I have talked about this before or maybe I thought about this after you and I talked one time, but we um like for in the MPS program at Emmanuel uh where we all teach our or or our students um we talk to our students a lot about defining your own theology, and this is because like the students are working in an interfaith context so often when you're going to visit somebody at the bedside, or you're giving um like chaplaincy care in a hospital, you have to be able to like switch, and be able to relate to people who are coming from different spiritual backgrounds than you are, so you have to know, like I mean I don't know if like what I what I would talk to the students about when i was helping to teach in that program is like, you know what do you believe? You do have to really refine that, um you do have to know like what what aspects of your like the the history of your spirituality and your faith tradition you can pull forward to offer, you know, a conversation with others and then um you also have to know like kind of like what isn't your theology as well, like so you can kind of like separate it out. So yeah I guess I know I I had some pushback from a couple of other professors I'm thinking about your theology your own theology like it was this neoliberal kind of way of thinking about-- you know an individualist way of thinking about um you know this is my theology. Um but I think sometimes it can be helpful to think that way, because it gets the students to think like, how do I go out of my own box to be able to care for others who are not like me, um who need other like who might want a different kind of prayer at the bedside, who you know, that kind of stuff. Hopefully that makes sense. No it does, I so I think of it as like, uh this is a pretty cliched example, but it's like the scales and jazz my theology is the scales, and I think too often our students can stop at the scales, and what that creates at the bedside is this very um, closed version of I believe this, this person differs from me, I've got to go over here, and actually what they need if those beliefs were held a little more loosely, then they would become more flexible to actually create an interrelational experience with the person in care, I worry the "my theology" language and "I need to know my theology" language I hear students saying, um so how do I be authentic to mine while embracing theirs? And for-- you've mentioned earlier people like to visualize, I use my hands a lot so my hands are just going a bit wild right now as I try to act this out for Amy and Miriam, um that's where they run into trouble, because they're just overthinking everything, and actually it undermines the interrelationality and the intersubjectivity of the caring encounter. Where actually we're creating something together as caregiver, care provider, and the fluidity of those two roles, um and that's where I think it's important to know what you believe, but in a way that you can sort of use language to deploy in that interaction rather than um "am I going to try and convince you of this true thing?" and the-- I think the place where this began for me was I I had I had a friend many years ago, um who was dying, this was in my 20s, and I had gone to divinity school and had learned that God doesn't answer all prayer, and of course you should never tell someone that god is going to answer prayers for healing, and all the other stuff that we learn, and my friend died, um and her mom was really uh sticking with this idea that through all things all things are possible through God, and it was you know, that real encounter of like am I gonna tell this woman that God's not gonna heal her daughter? Like we can all see that she's not coming back, like her-- she's gone um but the complexity of the bedside requires something different than just what do we believe and where are those beliefs clashing.

We've gone way off uh topic here though I think have we? Oh no, it's it's good, it's good when those when that stuff happens. Yeah I think I still need to think about this a bit more I mean, because my partner is from a different faith tradition like my partner is Muslim so how do we find our common ground? um how do we talk about God and know that we're talking about the same

thing? The same entity? um. Do you have to be talking about the same entity? I I don't know, I I would like to think that we are, but I don't I don't know. Something for me to puzzle over, I guess. I've I've found with my Muslim students and my Muslim colleague Naveen, I've been really struck by how having conversations around practice and characters uh recently Naveen and I fell into this great like uh conversation about devotion to Mary, which is not something I practice, I'm not catholic, um but-- I mean I love Mary-- but um yeah, it was in this like centering around how do we relate to Mary, like it was this character, because she's kind of different in our traditions, that began to open up different prayer practices for each of us, and it didn't feel like there-- and I've had this with Muslim students as well, where we've started digging into like Ramadan and Lent or sets of practices we might engage um but kind of take that God question of the table, but I think when we write a manual with our multi-religious environment, we just don't have answers to this stuff, because I find myself constantly thinking I'm wrong, and just holding on to the thing in the moment while I need it. Like I don't know, I meant that as a real question, I have no idea if we need to have say that's the same God or not. But I also feel responsible to the metaphysics of it all. Yeah, yeah I these are good questions to ponder late at night. I wasn't metaphysically irresponsible. Not on a Friday afternoon. That's very true. We can be metaphysically irresponsible after a couple of glasses of wine, I think. Yeah I was gonna say cocktail hour. Two hours maybe then we get metaphysically irresponsible. That's right. Um okay so uh moving forward-- Oh, sorry, I think I just accidentally put that in the chat but only to Miriam. Okay I'll put put it back in the chat there we go. Okay, so uh we're gonna just sort of pivot a little bit and talk about um Augustine, so in your piece, you suggest that Augustine may have known madness. And so when you were when you wrote that I was thinking about his conversion experience in the garden where he hears a young child-- I think I think the young child says like "take up and read" or something like that? Um so besides the voice hearing, can you say more about why you think he's mad? Yeah. Um I think the best theologians probably were, at least by our definitions of madness, like I mean I have told therapists before I hear voices and then I'm sort of like oh gosh should I not have told them that and it's like I

Should i have said that on this podcast? Um but I think a lot of people who have, who haven't told their therapist so they don't get classified as mad and I had a great psychiatrist once who's like oh no that stuff just happens, now we've got to figure out if the time that it happened was madness or not. And I loved her she was awesome, she was like no that happens normally, uh and then there's the times that it's madness and that's our work to discern the difference. Um so I guess I I'm aware it could be an act of self-projection, but when the the I engage Augustine and Schleinmacher in that piece, in reading both of them and having my own spiritual experiences, I feel like I enter worlds that I see shadows of them in, I feel like we're moving in similar spaces together and words they've put on pages have rung true to me, and I know I've accessed that truth from a place inside myself that could be categorized as mad by the standard regimes of mental health. And so, I guess It's a playful thing to say I think he was mad, less like here, you know, I'm less like here's the list of diagnoses I could give to him, like maybe Jesus was having the psychotic episodes, but they wouldn't have been called that back then, so the power of the language to define seems really important, and maybe Jesus was just doing some stuff that we would now categorize in that way? I don't I mean I don't want to romanticize psychotic experiences either, but um. Yeah, I think they saw the other side. Whatever the other side or sides are, and uh I've been there with them and they've helped me navigate it. Oh my gosh you guys, what if the church of madness had Augustine as its priest? That would be very cool. That's going to piss off a lot of people. i think i would put Origen on the on staff too because I'm just I just did a whole section about him in my dissertation, so I think he should be there too. Yeah and then let's throw in a female mystic for good measure because that's what every theological project needs to do.

Julian of Norwich would be my my vote. I'm always dedicated to Beatrice of Nazareth but we can have them both. Ah, yes. In our in our fantasy church. Yes.

That sounds like an awesome church. 

We just have to make sure Augustine doesn't talk too much. Oh yeah. Yeah, and you may need to tweak some of his theology.

Um. Yeah, I think. But I mean I'm not an Augustine scholar so other people could correct me. So Amy, he can't bring all of his own stuff? Um. What wouldn't we let him bring? Um.

That's a good question I-- so-- okay, are we like, importing him as he was like in the year 300 or whatever to now? Or is he like is he like has has he grown and lived, and he he's still alive and we're putting him in the church? I love that we're entering all the theories of time travel. Is this Back to the Future? Or, is it the Shining Girls? Like, what is our paradime of time travel? Is he a zombie, has he lived this long?  Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. You can let you can bring him however you want.

Personally I I mean I had to read confessions for my exams, I I really, I like him but I know I've heard from a lot of women that some of his theology has been detrimental. Of course it has, all theology has been detrimental. Mhm. Especially to women? Yeah. Um but do we do does he have to tweak himself, or do we allow him to come in just as he is? I mean, I guess now I've been publishing long enough that I'm horrified by some of the things I published 15 years ago that I would try to clinch from the record, so if I can't let him in I can't let 25 year old Natalie in either. Not that I was 25 15 years ago, I just forget my age um yeah, 28, 29 year old Natalie can't come in either and so. Yeah I don't know. Let him in. Okay, he can come. he in in the if i'm not running the church obviously, obviously I have power issues here, I was picturing my church um and I was sharing the space um but yeah of course he, of course a lot of stuff he's said has been used in terrible ways um. I don't know. I want to let him come in for a minute and like maybe defend himself? Not defend himself, I don't want some guy defending himself but like I'd like to hear what's going on there and if he'd want to revise. Yeah.

Good stuff. Yeah.

This been the center for conversations so far. And we wondered if you had any questions for us.

Yeah, well I mean we were chatting a little bit before we came uh online here, and or before we started recording, and I had um mentioned that in conversations with anything in particular but also um with you Miriam, that I'd begun to sort of rethink how um in the teaching relationships how we should be imagining accessibility and accommodations, what it means to start admitting out loud that um teachers might also have health needs that go unarticulated, how we make sure our students are sort of legally protected but also for me it's trying to think how that baseline of accommodation is so low and I want to think how do I um how do I support my students into into growing um and and learning in the most full way that I can. And so just the sort of mess around that with teaching, and while also again like not I mean times that have been most damaging to me personally in my work are when I've been trying to care for a student who has a particular set of needs and I have sacrificed too much on my side to get those needs met because I fear accessibility services is not doing it and that's not okay. It's bad modelling for my students, it's finding a non-expletive word quickly here, it's really bad for myself I can't do that, but how do we-- Accessibility services doesn't do it. No, no, it doesn't.

I know it doesn't and and there's privacy issues, you know I can't ask students, so I've been increasingly you know, in the accessibility part i'm like blah blah legal legal legal you're totally covered, um but would you want to have a conversation about um yeah, how to flourish with this like, uh and I think I've realized you know when I was seeking accessibility and accommodations for my own condition, it would have been really nice to have been asked how can you flourish in your job moving forwards? um how can you-- yeah how can you still feel like a part of this community, how can you still bring the goods that you want to offer to this community to it, how can you still grow as a teacher and a scholar and an administrator in this community. Um. yeah. It's not like I wanted to be projected I wanted to be I wanted to figure out how to still be on my own path in community. And so that's what i'm trying to think about with students, but I feel like we spend a lot of time making sure the accommodations are met and filing paperwork around stuff related to that and chasing students to have them, and.. Yeah, I don't know. So I I know that Amy we've talked about that and I found our conversation was really helpful, so. Yeah, yeah, I think for me like I like after you and I talk-- I think we talked-- I think it was last year around this time or like a little bit before this time last year um when I was teaching solo for the first time. And um I think I feel like I'm getting better at just like asking students like, is there anything that you need help with right now, kind of in the accommodation sphere? Please, email me um and we can always talk about what you need. And sometimes like I mean I I like I've gone through the accommodation process with accessibility services and I understand like they're social workers, they're on your side, they're trying to help, but there's some stuff they just like can't-- they don't have accommodations for like quirky things that people might need? Like I okay I have one really weird accommodation, because i get really bad migraines and so I can wear a hoodie in class and sunglasses like that is a strange accommodation which probably not a lot of other students would either notice or care about, but if a professor were to ask me like why do you look like that Amy, can you please take off your sunglasses, like I would always let them know like I, like before class starts like a lot of the times I have to wear sunglasses because like the light like tries to kill me when I open my eyes um but like I've I've had students ask me for help around like taking care of family members who are really sick, um also like when they're dealing with like um going in and out of the hospital, um for mental health stuff, they may not like you're not gonna stop by just their comment like disability services first before you go to the hospital, so some of these things are like real time, um and I've I think I've really been appreciating that more like thinking about my own experience as a student and then like being able to sort of like give back a little bit. Um yeah, and and also trying to be mindful of the balance. Um where like you said, we want to make sure we're like honouring our role as somebody who needs to like, move the class forward so we're following up with them making sure that the work is done as well. Well I think I mean I am a lover and very frustrated of practices of universal design, I love them, because if they're embedded in the course structure then there's already enough flexibility for students to access it in multiple ways, and something like I think the majority of accessibility letters I see are this student needs an extra week to do an assignment. If they ask you for an extra week you give them the extra week. I'm like well, that becomes normalized so that now every assignment for a student has a new deadline, but the student can't meet that deadline either, it's not like giving instead of having to hang it in on the first you hand it in on the seventh, that seventh is still an oppressive deadline and so i've heard: well, every student can have their own deadline. Like, do you have any idea how much work that would be for me, to give each student their own deadline? Like I don't have that capacity. 

So how can I structure a class that allows students the flexibility but also protects me from having to spend send each student five emails to get their assignment in which I recall you getting quite a bit from, Amy, and then you and I would have to have an hour long meeting to make a decision about-- you know I don't think-- Yeah --and to not realize how much is behind the scenes, and universal design doesn't take into account the teachers needs either, and no I sort of think it presumes an omnipotent and omniscient professor to go back to our previous divine images. So, yes it's a broken system and I know that the folks at accessibility services are on the students side, I think that there's a presumption of opposition that we are not, and that um so so I treat those as yeah this is the baseline. This is what you've got legally, and but I would much rather figure out together what we can create together for your learning, and and then in that, I feel this article that I wrote for you guys has really empowered me to say a much more openly and calmly than I did before I have me-- i have needs I I work 9 to 5 I might be the only professor in the world who does, um, I'm down with that. I work 9 to 5. Don't get me on the weekends, um don't get me after five o'clock on a weekday, I'll see you tomorrow, you know? It's these are my limitations, and so what can we figure out together where, you know i'm passionate about my students learning I hope that that's clear, but um yeah. It needs to happen. I don't know I don't know how to do it yet, but I'm trying to figure it out. 

Yeah, I don't know how to do it either. My disability is obviously obvious. It is, so so for me it's it's a matter of getting them comfortable with me, with my speech, with my movements, and and they also have that limitations of time and energy that they need to account for. But I haven't figured it out, how to-- how to-- have all my accommodations and their accommodations and their trust in my capability for teaching. It's so messy, and I think students, um, get the legal effort and accommodations but they're not for profs, that is scary  for me too cause it would be easier to hire someone who's able-bodied or able-minded rather than me in the church or in general.

Yeah, I think I could not have written this piece for you or be having this conversation right now, if I didn't live my job at Emmanual and be pretty like, happy with the idea of spending my whole career there, because I have now put a bunch of stuff out into the public sphere that makes me not so hirable in other contexts because if you hear someone can make boundaries on their life and wellness, what other university is going to want to hire me? Emmanuel haha you're stuck with me! Because my accommodations came in after the fact, but yeah.

And, and obviously it's I have the capacity to hide my um, to hide my conditions if I want to so that's.. if you want to, yeah. 

Amy, do you have thoughts?

Uh. no, my brain's kind of fried right now actually.

I thought you guys were gutsy to schedule this on a Friday afternoon. Yeah we always do-- we we usually try to do journal stuff on Fridays just because like the rest of the week and.. I think I'm just-- my my brain is just fried because i'm trying to like hurry up and finish my dissertation, so hence the fried, um. Yeah, that'll do it. Oh yeah. Um, well we just have one question left, um and that is how do you take care of your soul while you're doing this work? Hmm. I try really hard every day to get up before my children, I have a prayer practice, a yoga practice, a poetry practice, um that's that's these days, so I get up I have a lecture divina practice meditation, I do some yoga, and then make a little coffee, um and then read little Rilco while it's brewing, so that's my on my good days. I think right now i'm managing that three to four days a week, um I'm trying to get up to six. I know that I'll never hit seven, and uh accepting that's good too. That sounds very beautiful. Well thank you so much for this wonderful, meandering, holy

conversation today. I can always promise meandering. It's like my spiritual gift. Not staying on topic. I love it. It's very-- it's very nice

I enjoyed this, thank you. Thank you.