Season 2, Episode 6: Wendy Cranston & Robbie Walker

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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 the Mad and Cripp Theology Podcast! We're so glad that you've joined us today, and today we are so happy to welcome two guests, we have Wendy Cranston and Robbie Walker! So welcome to you both. 

Thank you. 

Thank you.

And we wanted to have you both introduce yourself so, name, pronouns, work in academic locations, connection to mental health and disability, obviously you're connected to the journal because you wrote for us but otherwise your connection too would be great, and the visual description of yourself for our listeners and the podcast on YouTube. So I'm going to
invite Wendy to start us off. 

Thanks Miriam! My name is Wendy Cranston and my pronouns are she/her, I'm a PHD student at Emmanuel College UofT, Toronto School of Theology, and I'm also the editorial assistant for the Toronto Journal of Theology. Um, and that is my little bit of work. Um I do some bit of um sermon uh writing and preaching for United Church congregations um for ministers who are on study leave or on vacation but um but I don't have a full time job outside of my PHD work. Um my connection to mental health and disability, I um have epilepsy, and I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 28 years old, but in conversation with my neurologist discovered that actually I had been having seizures since i was about seven, um but didn't know that that's what um that that's what was happening to me, and so yeah, and some some mental health issues are side effects of seizure medication, so some seizure medications cause, um, cause depression, and some seizure medications cause suicidal tendencies, and some seizure medications cause anger or rage side effects, so um I've experienced all of those things in trying my way through a lot of a lot of seizure medication, and uh yeah, and so um my connection to the journal, I guess um I wrote um a piece for this past uh issue of the journal on um my experience being in the epilepsy monitoring unit at Toronto Western Hospital and and I also do a little bit of volunteering on the side for Amy and Miriam, just doing uh some copy editing which is something that i kind of like actually! It's a bit of a hobby so, I like editing so
I do uh, I do that on the side, and that's how I started out relating to the journal actually was copy editing and then and then I wrote this piece, and then here I am, podcasting, and um and a visual description of myself, I um I am wearing a pair of green shorts and a white collared shirt, I have some brown curly hair that's quickly turning white, um I wear glasses, and I'm 5'3.

Thanks so much Wendy, and Robbie, how about you. 

Hi um my name is Robbie Walker, I use he and she pronouns um for now because I'm
still trying to figure out what my gender means. For work in my academic location I
live in Toronto and I'm a sixth year PHD student, PHD candidate trying to get my uh draft for
my committee done by August 31, you know, check back with me in about six weeks and
if i have a bleeding scalp you know what happened, uh. 

You can do it! 

I can do it! Um yeah, I'm I'm actually having fun, but it's a lot of, you know, put yourself in front of the keyboard and do the thing, you know? Um, so my connection to mental health and disability, I live with cerebral palsy since I was born, um fairly, fairly mobile, use uh these days it's a hot pink cane to stabilize myself when I move around in public, and it provides a little
bit of gender fuck that I that I appreciate, um and my connection to mental health, I during
pandemic I was diagnosed as having ADHD and clinical anxiety, and I'm probably on the
autism spectrum, and my meds are working well, uh so that means that usually I show up on
time to things unless I write it down wrong, which is why I was 10 minutes late and made
these good people wait for the podcast, um they're very gracious. And um the connection
to the journal, well I think I met Amy a long time, because we're in the same cohort if I remember correctly. So a long time ago, and working on the student council together for a while, uh and then you asked me at some point to do a mini lecture for your class, which was  fun, um Miriam and I met I think that day was the first time we were in the same space if I remember correctly, and I have two pieces for the journal, um and the one I'm going to be talking to Wendy about uh is called "Medication and Meeting the Devil" which is in the most recent issue. And my visual description I have sandy brown hair which is getting long, and my partner is going to chop it for me this weekend, thanks be to god, and and I'm wearing a dark gray uh v-neck shirt, uh normally I wear glasses but not today, um and I think oh and I have and I have some scruff, I have a I have a beard at the moment which might also disappear with the haircut, so.

Thanks so much Robbie we're so delighted to have both of you with us today.

Yeah, and Robbie I you and I are doing the same thing right now, showing up at the keyboard and doing the thing, so I I I feel I feel your pain, you know, so they're gonna do it!

August 31st! We're gonna do it! 

Yeah oh yes.

Oh all right so all right so let's get into it, so um we sent you some questions in advance
for you to ponder, so the first one uh, is for Wendy! so Wendy, we're just wondering
if you could tell our listeners about uh your latest visit to the epilepsy monitoring unit,
because um it sounds like it was, for me after reading your piece, it sounds like it was
a it was a huge thing for you, and we just want our our um listeners to understand the
process you have to go through, and then also like preparing, and then like what happens
when you get there, um so yeah. 

Okay! um so, the epilepsy monitoring unit is um a place at, in Toronto, it is at Toronto Western Hospital, um downtown, and the purpose of the epilepsy monitoring unit is to um hook patients up using um a whole bunch of electrodes, uh 36 to be exact, with that are um hooked using, uh glue, essentially, all over your head, um your forehead, and your cheeks, um to record seizure activity in your brain. Um and they do this, uh neurologists and neurology departments, do this for patients who have epilepsy that is um can't be controlled with medication, entirely controlled with medication, and um is also what's called non-MRI um epilepsy, or doesn't show up on MRIs. And so this is the kind of epilepsy that I have. It is um it is not um controlled with medication, the medication that i take works a little bit, but it doesn't completely control my seizures, I have three different kinds of seizures, um that are take place in the front left temporal lobe of my brain where language and memory exist. Um and so my neurologist suggested that surgery might be a way to help stop my seizures, and so the first step towards surgery is to go to the epilepsy monitoring unit, get all the electrodes put on, and have your seizures monitored. Once they find exactly where the seizures are happening in your brain, then they do a second um stint of monitoring where they actually in um do an internal monitoring, so something is placed right onto your brain where at the point where your seizures are happening, and then after that, they move on to make a decision about whether or not you're a good candidate for surgery. So, um I agreed that I would go to the epilepsy monitoring unit, and spend time there to see if it was possible to trace my seizures. Um and so they told me that they would put me on the list and once your name came up they call you, and you have 24 hours to to show up. If you don't show up, then they move on to the next person on the list. 

So I at the time, was working at the national office the denominational office for the United Church of Canada, and I was at work one day, and they called, and I just went to my boss and said: "they have called me! I have to go!" and they we had talked about this they knew it was coming, and um and they send you a list of everything that you need to bring with you, comfortable clothes, um things that are only buttoned down because you also have uh to wear a heart monitor, and um, books, a computer if you have one, music, things to do, read, knitting if you can bring it, like things to keep yourself busy. Um now the time limit to stay in the epilepsy monitoring unit is two weeks but there was no time limit when I went. So, I went in the late fall of 2016 and I stayed for five weeks. When you go you show up, they put you in your assigned room, and the first thing they do is take away all your meds. And so, of course, like going off medication is going off medication, and so you have withdrawal and um and uh so I was sick and had the shakes, and all of those things after taking seizure medication for you know 15 years and then going off at the cold turkey. And then they uh they wait for a number of days and if that after four or five days if um just the withdrawal of your medication
doesn't um doesn't result in any seizures, then you move on to a number of other things.
So the things that I went through while I was there was um uh sleep deprivation, I had
electromagnetic stimulation of my brain, I had I had 60 hours straight of sleep deprivation
while watching skinny puppy videos, um I I I stayed for five weeks and then went home
after five a five week stay, and actually had no seizures at all while I was in the emu. I went home and the day that I went home I had a seizure like within 24 hours of getting home. Um and my neurologist asked if I was could be convinced to go back, and so I said yes so I um was home over Christmas, and then in the early spring of 2017 I went back for another five week stay. repeated all of the same things again, um and again had no seizures while I was there.

Um my hair turned white. While while I was there um from the from I
guess from the stress of it, but I still didn't have a seizure while I was there and so um
yeah and so got to the point where I I guess just didn't, um had to have a conversation with my neurologist about whether or not that was something that I was willing to go through again. And um for some people, there was the second time that I was there there was a um there was
another patient who was there and the neurologist who was the who was overseeing the emu while I was there the second time was sort of saying in frustration, like why do we have these
patients who are here and not having seizures, like isn't it stressful and the other patient
said to him like, I have three kids under six and here I am just sitting watching Netflix
all day while other people bring my meals, like this is non-stressful it's not stressful
here, and and in some ways she was right, like there were some things that were stressful,
but it's really not compared to a lot of the things that many of us experience in our day-to-day
lives, it just it wasn't as stressful as they thought that it was. 

Especially when you consider the um you consider the amount of agency that people bring to their health care decisions in Canada, I think, so the fact that everyone had made decisions to go, and chosen to be there, and and every day made a decision to stay there, like at any time any one of us could have just decided it was time to go home, pack up our bags, taken off our electrodes, and walked out the door, and so the agency that people have as patients lowers the stress. So yeah.

So, you mentioned about how stress, stress, usually brings your seizures on, or or does stress usually bring your seizures on? Because you said it was like not stressful in the unit. 

Stress does bring my seizures on. So um yes, stress and lack of sleep are the two
biggest things that bring my seizures on, so the the last seizure I had was shortly
after I finished the defense of my dissertation proposal. 

Well, that'll do it yeah. 

Yeah and as you do, yeah.

And Wendy, can you can you tell us how many people with epilepsy go to
the unit? Is it only people who have a good chance of going through the surgery, or do
other people go there as well?

Um I I don't know 100% the answer to that question. From the information that I have received from my neurologist, my understanding is that the epilepsy monitoring unit is for determining patients who would be candidates, suitable candidates for surgery. Because other ways of controlling seizures are not working for them. 

And is them-- this might be a dumb question, but is the medication that you're on, is the
goal to prevent or decrease? Is the goal like-- Would the best case scenario that would be
on this medication that you never have a seizure again, or is it that you you would be like
you would be decreasing the amount that you have? 

I think the goal, from the perspective of my neurologist, is the goal is always to
prevent seizures. To not have any seizures, because every time you have a a seizure, especially
large seizures like what are called tonic clonic seizures, um they there's permanent
damage. And so the goal is always to not have them, at all, if that is not a possibility, then the goal is to the next possible goal the next step down if you will, is to limit the number of seizures that you have.

Okay, well thank you so much. We appreciate
you explaining that to our listeners. 

You're welcome, you're welcome. It's I think with every kind of, um every kind of illness, or
or disease that people have, everyone knows the intricacies of their own of their own
disease, but it's not possible to know the intricacies of everyone else's diseases, so.

Yeah, yeah, for sure like I I know I've told Wendy this before, I can't remember if I've
told Robbie or Miriam, but my dad has had seizures a few years ago and he was having
them in his sleep, so it's like we also didn't know that he was having them, so they're they're
controlled now by his medication, but it can be a very scary it can be very scary. So,
we appreciate you sharing Wendy, thank you.

Robbie, moving on to your piece for a few minutes, you talk about meeting the devil, and then some some people in your life say you were hallucinating. Can you talk to us about about how you understand the difference between hallucination and spiritual experience? I think they overlap quite different so I'm not, we're not saying they're separate in any form, but can you talk to us about about that?

Sure, uh thanks for the question, yeah I was like I was hoping that you'd do the non-binary
uh thing because, um yeah. Uh so yesterday, just to make sure that I wasn't pulling an
answer out of my ass, um I did some I did some research just to make sure that what
I was saying was actually coherent, um but the but the primary difference seems to be, and this is what I understood in the first place, uh it seems to be social meaning and tradition. Um if and if if an experience has personal and broader, uh broader traditional meaning then it's probably distinct in some meaningful way from a straight-up hallucination, um and it's also distinct as I understand it, from a delusion which is so unusual for the person's experience that it's completely disruptive. So if if I was listening to an npr clip there was a there was a man who was raised as a conservative jew, but wasn't particularly practicing, and all of a sudden he sees the Virgin Mary and he says I have no idea why she would show up for a jewish boy like me, because it's not my tradition, right? And so, and so that that key point uh was, oh
there's something there's something unusual going on. 

Now, he said, and I thought this was really lovely, he's like I'm not sure if it was totally a delusion, because I know that that experience made me a more decent human being. Like the way that I interpreted that I really feel like I'm a I'm a kinder, more patient, more empathetic, human being. Um and so meaning making is often the distinction, because apparently, the kinds of experiences around the temporal lobe, you know if people are having visions, or hallucinations, or seeing things, uh if if God is going to mediate an experience, it's probably going to be through your temporal lobe. Um, interestingly enough. So so yeah.

So, Robbie, for uh-- do you mind if I jump in for a second Miriam? okay um so um I in the class that I teach on mental health, um and christian theology we look at a tool that was created by Sean Lucas that is used at CAMH the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health here in Toronto, and um one of the one of the ways that he proposes to um uh delineate or distinguish between a spiritual experience or mental illness is this idea of um a spiritual experience being a positive thing. So like, you want it's short and you want it to happen to you again, and often it's hard to put into words, and then on the mental illness he talks about like it's you know it's scary, it can often last a long time, a few other things so. My class and I were puzzling over like
where the prophets from the old testament would fit onto this this um chart, because
it wouldn't it wouldn't work for them.  A lot of the things that God asked them to do and
probably a lot of the things, that well definitely a lot of the things that they saw, would have
been really hard, so what do you think about that, Robbie? Because you-- was the devil
scary for you? And where would you put yourself?

So that so the creature the creature that I saw, I think that it um or he gave me the
name "Black Devil" at some point, um and the reason why I think that's probably true, is
because I remember several years later reading, totally independently, um in another book
about a young girl who uh met a creature who said "my name is Dark Sun" okay, and so I
just went "Ooh!" there was this sense of recognition. Um so for me I I think that's a reductive metric. Uh to be perfectly honest. I think I don't think, even though it was a longer-term experience, I don't think it was obsessed, um I don't mean that pejoratively, but I wasn't constantly preoccupied with, "Oh my god this is happening!" Um, now I didn't, you know there were nights and I'm like, "I don't want to be alone with the lights off!" you know, like that's you
know, when you're a young kid, right? Um yeah. 

This idea that spiritual experience always has to be positive, yeah the way that I the way that I look at that, is what's the fruit? and what I mean is the longer term impact, you know, because the thing can be really rough, right? So the rock hits the water, and think splash! But the second ring out, the third ring out, the fourth ring out, like what's that impact? And if that's positive, then you probably had a spiritual experience. If the second ring, third ring, fourth ring out, just continues to create chaos, or or even better than better um more accurately
than chaos, disorder, um you know in your social relationships, in your sense of self,
then um there might be something else going on and not just a spiritual experience, but
the thing, sorry, I I don't want to rant, the the the problem I think with an experience
like mine, even among Christians, is that there are so many of us being western, more
or less modern, you know science is the thing, anything that science can't tell you isn't
fundamentally real, uh if this is the basic paradigm that most of us are living in, how do you evaluate a negative spiritual experience? Um, you know, something that oh that was disturbing, I'm afraid, but goodness if I was Moses standing
in front of the burning bush, okay, "Hey Moses, uh take your shoes off, you're standing on
holy ground, by the way I'm about to send you to the Pharaoh, he might kill you, but
you still gotta go," um yes I might be shitting myself at that point, you know? 

You know, I also would shit myself. 

You know, I'd also be curious about what is this bush and why
aren't you being consumed? Like I think I you know, my science brain would be like what's
that? Um, yeah so the so this the metric sometimes about negative and and positive is simplistic, so. Rant done. 

We like rants here, it's all good. 

Thank you.

Mir, uh do you want me to? 

Yeah, go for it.

Oh okay, sorry! This is what happens when you're writing your dissertation. Our dissertation
brain right now people I apologize. My brain is like fried. All right, so um, right, so we wanted to ask you both to talk to each other about your relationship with healing, and we know that this um this can be a painful topic for some people to talk about, um so we want to hear what you think about it, um and also, you know, what maybe even what you've been taught about it growing up, and what you think about it now, we were talking before the podcast started about um how important it is for us as people who are studying theology to constantly have, like make space for ourselves to evolve, and um and pivot, and move, and like be able to change our opinions on things, so we might look back at this podcast in five or ten years and go, "What the heck was I thinking? I I totally don't believe that anymore." But that's okay, so we just want to say it's a safe space for us to to investigate and explore um some ideas uh here together. So, Wendy would you mind um, would you mind starting us off like maybe one kind of like way in would be thinking about um how you uh write about healing in your piece? 

Sure, sure. I will say, um, I think i'll just take a moment and start by saying thank you for asking me to write that piece. Because, I think that some of the some of the thoughts that I had around um around healing were un unclear to me. And maybe even still are a little bit, um and it's an ongoing conversation like medically, and theologically. Um and I think that that is often the case for a lot of us who are for whom like medical treatment is almost like a part of a regular part of our daily lives. And having, or figuring out, the relationship between all of those conversations with doctors, and medical appointments, and medicine, and what's working, and what's not working, and the and the theological aspects and how our theology fits with the actual decisions that we're making in doctor's offices on a daily basis, and that was something that I when my neurologist asked me if I was willing to go back to the emu a third time, and I was I was just like I'm I don't think I can right now, maybe someday I could, but I don't think I can, and I it took me a long time to figure out why I just was so opposed to the idea to go a third time and I think this is mostly what I write about in in my piece in the journal, is that I had the sense while I was at the emu, that something wasn't right. Like, like my body was reacting in in ways to things that my mind was sort of had this sense that I had gone in with this with this incredible sense of hope that I was just going to come out the other side
as a candidate for surgery, I would have surgery, I would not ever have seizures again, no more
seizures, ever! and of course that was almost absurd, and so when I sat down with my neurologist to talk about going a third time, I said, "I want you to tell me, very honestly, how many patients do you have that have had surgery who have no seizures. Like, zero seizures.
Are actually completely healed of their seizures?" And he said, "I don't have that. None."
I said, "What am I doing here then?! And, and he said people who have had surgery that I would consider to be a success, used to have like 15 seizures a day and now they have
one every six months. That, my neurologist said, is a success. That I think is a success. It's like, okay, well, fair enough, like, and so, what it means to be healed, is like my neuro-- my neurologist said, is it means alive. And I, I wrote this in my piece, I said I realized sitting there with him, like this the idea of healed is a metaphor. It it's very contextual, and it's and it's very
dependent on what what your context, your body, your it's your own person, your theology, like it's so it's so subjective.

And so I want to be alive, absolutely, but I also asked him questions like, "What patients do you have that are post-surgery that work?" and he said, "None. I have no patients who
work." and I said, "Okay, then I need to think about this, because if I'm going to go through
another round of the emu, and then, if they actually managed to track my seizures, I would
have to do like, a surgical round of the emu, and if that worked, then I would actually
have surgery, and then even the surgery doesn't guarantee that I would be seizure free, I
would just have less seizures than I have now. And, where my seizures are are where
all of my short-term, long-term memory, and languages, so I said, "What's the likelihood
that they would do surgery, or I would have surgery and I would come out the other side
and not be able to talk?" and he said, "That's possible." And I said, "Or what's the likelihood that I could come out and I could still form words, but I would do something like pick up my glasses, and know that they're glasses, and know what they're for, but not be able to make the neurological link between knowing what it's for and being able to say the word, 'glasses'." And he said, "That's possible." So then, that begs the question, what is healed? Is it alive or is it quality of life? 

And what does your what does the United Church or your your faith tradition have to say about this, um what brings you comfort, or about healing, or what what would you like to challenge, um about healing that you've been taught from the United Church? 

Um my Church I guess I'll have two things to say, first of all, my Church was so supportive
while I was in the emu, I don't even know what to say about that. Except I'm profoundly
grateful for the support that I received from my Church at all levels. My congregation,
my family, who is a Church family, my my work and job environment that is a Church, my coll--
my work colleagues were so supportive, like my Church was so supportive while I was there
I could not have managed being in the emu for 10 weeks without the support of my Church
in the way that they supported me. And I am forever grateful for that level of support.
And the way that people came and visited, and and and shared that the sense of United
Church Theology I guess, was that that I felt that there was a sense that I had very difficult decisions to make, but that they were mine to make. That the definition of healing or illness
wasn't somebody else's to be placed on me, they were about my person, and my body, and
the support that I received was that God loved me, and people wanted me to know that, and
they came and continuously told me that, and the decisions were mine.

That's really beautiful to hear Wendy. I'm so glad that they were that they were
with you. Thanks for sharing. What about you, Robbie? What's your what's your relationship with
healing?

Oh goodness, um, so I'm going to try and be uh playful, which is a big part of my dissertation
work because I'm doing conversation between queer and pentecostal uh theologies so in
order to stay sane, I think uh sorry that's not the word I wanted to use in order for
me to stay centered and still have fun with it, I think, I appreciate the queer sort of way of saying "Why don't we play with this idea and see what happens?" So the space to explore that you mentioned earlier is really important, so, I'm just reflecting on what Wendy said, so the piece that I definitely got from my tradition growing up was the sense of being surrounded by love, in very practical ways, you know, if I was in distress there was going to be someone
who took care of me, sometimes they didn't even have to take care of me because the Church
community was safer than my family of origin, uh sometimes, you know, and so and so the
adults around me loved me thoroughly and would often filter uh bullshit that I was that I
was getting in my home environment, right? Um, and so that's lovely. Um I was also taught,
um to believe in the literal healing ministry of Jesus, the stories in the gospels about Jesus healings probably happened almost exactly as they were written, um and that this is um it's not typical, you know, in our daily experience, but it's normal, you know, this is this is something that can be legitimately expected, prayed for, you can practice uh making yourself available for this, um and again I I was taught very gently about that, and adults would pray for me, and it was it was usually a really lovely experience. 

Um but as I was reflecting yesterday I realized that I don't often ask people to pray for me nowadays, because I don't know anyone who actually thinks I'll be better when they're
done praying. Uh, okay, like, you know? It's and so it's like well, and I'm not sure if I believe I'll be better when I'm done praying, and and scripturally, I'm not sure because I believe that Jesus healed organic illness it's not on me at some point, it's like it's I get to so the attention that I have listening to Wendy, is that lately in my life I'm really grappling with how seriously I think the divine takes human agency, you know, and and adult friendship with Jesus you, know Jesus' language about, "I have never called you slaves, I call you friends." and that and that metaphor, is like uh when people say friendship is political, okay, it really is, like your friendships tell you the kind of world that you want to see, okay? So when Jesus says, "I call you friends," it's like, oh okay, what does that mean? And so there's this agency about I get to be an ambassador for the kingdom of God, you know, um where I go occasionally, um I
get to say to people, the Heart of God is like this, you know, um the Kingdom of God is like, you know? And the words drop and things change, because people realize that they're deeply loved, and that God cares about their agency, and their bodily integrity, and all these things, and hardly anybody actually trusts that prayer is gonna work.

And so it's like, "Lord, I trust you, help my lack of trust." You know, um is sort of where, is sort of where I am. And so I really appreciate Wendy's reflection about healing has something to do with quality of life, you know, and and that context matters. But my personal struggle these days, is I do actually want the divine to disrupt me if I am living below what's available, on on some level, it's like come on, I I give you permission, Holy Spirit, to interrupt me, you know, and circle, nope this is the way it's going to go, because that's the that's the pentecostal story, right? We're at a prayer meeting, and we're waiting for this thing called the Holy Spirit, what's the Holy Spirit? Right, but they're but they're in prayer, in the upper room, and suddenly from heaven, says the text, you know this wind and the fire distributes, and they start speaking
in tongues, and it happens to be all the languages, or language groups of the Roman Empire, and all of a sudden people can communicate across class barriers, and national barriers, and
all these things, and all of a sudden people can communicate about God's marvelous deeds
of power, okay? But where are the marvelous deeds of power? okay? Uh you know? And and
how are they available, and and if I'm looking for them, how do I do it in such a way that
you're, whoever you are, your skin doesn't crawl, in a negative way, when I show up because
I'm trying to colonize your experience, and put it on you, right? Not interested. But I am interested in everybody that I meet knowing that there's something so profound, and juicy,
and and firing on all cylinders, in some way, that can become more and more available because
of the Kingdom of God. So this is my Anglican tradition coming in, this is my queer theology
coming in, and this is still I'm a pentecostal void deep down and I just can't get it out of my bones, hallelujah! um, that's difficult but that's difficult, right? And so here's the playfulness, about I don't know what to do with the crunchiness in my bones, with some of this stuff because I don't want to have cp, and I don't think I'm going to have it tomorrow, meaning when I'm raised from the dead, I I don't, and people disagree with me, and God is a big girl, she chooses her own friends. Sermon done. 

Thank you, thank you, Robbie that was a great sermon. Um I want to ask you one question um about what you said about how does one practice making oneself available for healing? How do you do that? 

Um well I want to say two things at once. That's a really good question, wow! So, I think one of the ways that I do it, um is that my posture toward myself, and toward others, is I refuse to
shame, blame, accuse. Just, absolute refusal. Um so some of the language that I heard growing
up about, "It might be your fault that you still have cp, Robbie, because you lack faith." Well, the scripture seems to put it on you, O Christian leader, if someone isn't healed,
because maybe, the fact that they put their body in front of your face, and said "Please
anoint me," or "Please pray for me," that is a profound level of trust. So that's availability,
just taking the risk about what's going to happen when I put my body in front of your face to pray for. That's availability, but I also think listening prayer, contemplative prayer, is one way to do it, um I think sitting sitting in silence and saying, um, "Hey Jesus," and I I I mean this literally, because I will often do this, I'm like, "Hey, Jesus, I have two questions: number one, is there a lie that I'm believing about you that you would like to challenge?" And I listen for a response, and I don't necessarily know if all the thoughts I hear are gods, or whether it's coming from my wisest self. Because, I think when you practice a thing, because we practice the Christian tradition, right, we practice our spirituality, so our bodies tend to start doing things automatically at at some point, and you know for me it's like, I will never jaywalk, you know, the people who can automatically weave their way through traffic, I'm like, that is not something my body will ever be able to do, but for for a great many people there are things that our bodies sort of do automatically, because they're dispositions, right, so, so, we can
practice, um that sense of listening, and the second question I ask is: "In exchange
for the lie, what gift do you want to give me?" 

Um, and so and then I listen for an answer, and I remember that I was prayed for, uh once, and the guy was on a schedule, it was it was a lovely flaming pentecostal prayer, like "In the name of Jesus!", you know, like it was that sort of, it was that sort of prayer, and I was having a great time, because that's the language I wanted to hear, you know, and but he ran out of time, now he had a five-year-old kid running around, and his wife was upstairs, and it was in pandemic over the phone, and he ran out of time, and that's okay, except that I was left with the impression that he thought if I wasn't healed by the end of the hour that we spent together, that there was something on my end that was interfering, and I sort of went, "Oh, okay" so I sort of, well, "Jesus, what's the lie that I'm believing about you?" And he said, "You believe I have forgotten you." And I said, "oh! sorry," you know, so you know there's a gentle sense of, "I repent" you know, like, "Sorry, Jesus. But what's what's the gift?" "I have not forgotten you."
and there was the sense of I see you, you are loved, it's not it wasn't even a sense of be patient, it was "I haven't forgotten, I see you" You know? And that was that was profound, and so you know given the crunchiness at the end of the interview that I had with this guy, overall it was lovely because I heard the language and practice that I understood, and I had the capacity to sort of hold the pieces that didn't quite fit at the end of that encounter. Um, and then the last thing I want to say, just even though I want to caution people, um that most of the resources
that I'm currently aware of come from people that will uh have problems with queer folks,
and and it's part of their narrative, um there are very gentle resources to read about, here's
really basic non-invasive ways of praying for, you know, practice, it's like what happens
when you show up, and what do you want me to do for you, and then step by step you sort
of pray through an interview that takes about five minutes, and you just keep practicing
until something happens, and there was one guy, he's like look it's biblical to pray
for healing for people, uh and you check what they want, right, don't assume that someone
who comes up with an obvious disability-- quote unquote-- obvious disability wants you
to pray about that thing. Respond to what they want, right, and then you pray. But he
said-- his name was Charles Craft-- he says, "Look, I give you permission to pray 50 times.
5-0. And if nothing happens that's remarkable enough to notice by the time you reach 50,
you can stop and never pray for anybody ever again. But, if something remarkable enough
to notice happens, between 0 and 50, you have to start again from zero and keep going. And
he said I have never met anybody who ever got to 50. Now, now, that might, you know,
your mileage may vary because I think, I think, the the playfulness of that experiment is
real. Um, but I do find it remarkable that he says no one I've ever given the experiment
to gets to 50, because this is Jesus' sense of humor, so, availability, yeah.

Thank you Robbie, that that's that's a huge help, I I love how you um talked about the risk and
then the praying aspect, so we appreciate you um going through that with us. We were
wondering if um you both have questions for each other, either about what you talked about
regarding healing, or about your pieces more broadly, um that you that you submitted. So,
Wendy I wonder if if you would like to start us off, do you have a question for Robbie?

Um, yeah, I do, I have um I have two reflections and one question. I like it. Based on your
um based on your article actually, I, reading your article. Um my two reflections are there
were two things in your article that I had to look up, so I'm just going to tell you
what those were. I had to look up biopsychosocial model. I did not know what that was. And I
also need an explanation about the excluded middle in relation to Christianity, because
I know what the excluded middle is in relation to like, Aristotelian thought, but I do not know what it means in relation to- I'm at a loss. 

I can I can give a really uh quick response to that one, thank you to the question, yeah! Um, so I'm getting it from uh from an Evangelical Missiologist by the name of Paul Hebert and he talks about that often, um, contemporary westerners have a two-tier level of reality, so we have the bottom layer, which is the things that our senses do, okay, and then there's a thick
ceiling, and then the divine, uh which is usually also considered the private realm,
right, the divine's upstairs, you go upstairs to your bedroom, and you do your private thing,
okay, and then you come downstairs and you're in public. The excluded middle is the sense
that almost every culture has of ghosts, spirits, demons, angels, strange happenings, thin places, um, you know, all of that is what he calls the exclusive middle, and he says it is it
is integral to the Christian worldview to acknowledge the excluded middle as a real
existential factor in how people live and respond. And we and we forget it to our detriment,
so. 

Okay. Okay, thank you. And then my question is about um a line that you had in your article
that was, "Jesus considered illness exacerbated by evil spirits or not, to be the enemy of
God." And then move from there on to talk about um pushing against the idea of um, Christian
practice through prayer, or or interpretation, or whatever, that that places blame and shame
on people who are ill about their illness, and I feel like I'm missing something in between
those two pieces. Like if illness is the enemy of God, is that
not sin?

Yes, but whose? Um, and so I I think, 

--Okay--

right, 

--I need more.-- 

yes so um so I think, okay so here's the so I also like i believe in, you know, scientifically and and also spiritually, I believe in emergence, right, so there are multiple levels of reality, and depending on where you are, it depends on the questions that you ask, so physics, right,
chemistry, chemistry and physics give you biology, but biology doesn't reduce to chemistry
or physics, and it moves up and up and up and up so that eventually you get like human
spirituality, and communities, and institutions, they all emerge but don't reduce to these
other to their underlying factors, um, so. The church fathers often use language about
every created thing is called a creature. Just, they just use that language, so if if
something is created it's called a creature. Every creature worships. So I don't know whether
that implies, you know, pan psychism that somehow everything has mind, I'm not sure
how that works, but everything that's created worships in a way that's appropriate to where
it is in reality. But sin, the fall, um intersectional oppression, whatever language you want to
use, affects all of reality all the way down. Including the way that matter works, including
the way that institutions work, you know, all of those things. And so I don't think it's appropriate to blame a human being for their illness. Um so how I would say is I I love you, you are under attack by an enemy of God. It is not your fault, we are in a war zone, you know, one of my favorite authors says, "The reason why the world looks like a war zone is because the world is a war zone," Um, because there is a real conflict between the Kingdom of God and evil. Um, evil's not gonna win, because evil is much smaller than the divine, but if we're if we're sitting in enemy territory, as human beings, then evil is going to appear, quite often, in our in our experience but that doesn't mean I'm to blame, your to blame for illness, it's just like, oh you're an image-bearing creature, and you are under attack, um and so let's see what we can do to break that attack off. Um, you know, is how is how I would play with that. Um yeah so I think I think there are lots of ways, you don't have to use warfare imagery if it makes you uncomfortable, but there are lots of ways of distinguishing between illness is the enemy of God, and somehow you are to blame, there's a whole multiple levels of tissue paper uh that that Christians are often really bad at sorting through. That perhaps we should become better at discerning. Okay.


Yes Wendy, i i think we all just witnessed
your brain explode. 

I'm-- I didn't mean to put that on you, Wendy but I just sort of
watched your brain explode a little bit, and I didn't mean to do that to you, I'm sorry.

No-- I sometimes just think I-- it-- no-- okay.

Oh, I would love to hear the thought that
you just had. 

The thought that I just had, was that I often find myself in situations
where someone says Christians and I know that I am not included, even though I consider
myself a Christian.

Okay, thank you, because that will that will
let me become more aware of, um, what I mean when I say Christian, yeah. Yeah, that's fair. 

And that was totally fair about my brain exploding.

Sometimes, sometimes I enjoy uh enjoy provoking
that, but only if you experienced it as mostly it was gentle. 

It was totally fine, it was totally fine. 

Okay. oh cool.

All right, those were my questions. 

Thank you, thank you. Do I get to, do I get-- 

Yea.

Okay. 

Yeah, yeah go for it. 

Wendy I-- 

Come on over to the other side.

Neo on the Matrix, yes. Gesture, yeah. Um, no it's I uh. Well, there were there were two, uh there were two moments, so one of them, uh has to do with a question, and then I just had a couple observations, sort of like you did for me. uh first of all I I loved your line about um "Spoiler alert, if you're ever supposed to come into the unit, stop reading now." Uh, you know, and I just sort of burst out laughing, because I'm like, yeah, yeah, so I loved how just even by using that language there was this sense of, oh um I almost heard it as I am I am being subversive, this is an expose, you know, in a fun sort of journalistic way that I thought was really lovely. And then there was, if I recall correctly, there was a line where you said "Jesus won't say to me: 'little girl get up'" And I kind of went, oh, my my heart just sort of went, uuggh.
Um, but I acknowledge that, like, that even is where I am, like if if my tradition, if the Pentecostal and Evangelical traditions, are even mostly right about what we think about healing, and cure, and the Ministry of Jesus, then why is there such a profound disconnect, you know, between the stories of Jesus and the gospels in our contemporary experience, um so yeah, it just sort of hit my heart about oh I I don't expect Jesus to come to me and say, "little girl get up." 

So, I think my question is, oh, um, one other very quick thing, I uh personally I loved when you when you went into your neurologist, and you sort of said, "now I have a different set of questions," like you referred to earlier about, "Will I talk? Will I be able to work?" You know, what does it mean to be healed? You know, and like like you mentioned earlier, you know, I just sort of went, oh, okay that's his metric, you're alive, and I went, okay I understand. And then you sort of said the-- I almost saw it in my head as a sliding scale, about, you know, if someone's having 15 seizures a day and it drops to one in six months, it's like, hallelujah, that's a redemptive curve if I've ever seen one. On, on, one level, you know, um, but the quality of life thing, and the sort of uh nosy questions, uh is how I nicknamed them, the difficult but real questions that people ask, it's like ask all the nosy questions of the neurologist go ahead, I really appreciated how practical um that was in dealing with the situation, so my question is what is your experience of Jesus, and how do you take the stories of of healing and do you have any experience of Jesus, you know, coming to you, or of or of healing prayer even, that you found helpful. Perhaps not in a pentecostal, in the name of Jesus! sense, but what sort of experience do you have of healing prayer that you found helpful and life-giving that mediated the presence of Jesus to you?

Um, thank you, for that question. I um I think I'll start by saying that while I
hear you, and what you're saying about your your disappointment about my line of saying
that I have no expectation of Jesus coming to me, and saying, "get up," I think that one of the things that's important to-- I don't know if realize the right word, or acknowledge, is that we, too, are coming to our faith, our collective Christian faith with maybe two different world views of it. Which is where my question about illness came from, and where your reaction to my my Jesus magic, is coming from. That-- I don't feel sad about having said that, that doesn't cause me pain or sadness, I guess, because I don't understand illness in the same way that you understand illness. I look at the person that I am, and I see that epilepsy is a part of that. And
so, I am created in the image of God, and that is a part of who I am. That is not I'm created in the image of God and I have this tumored piece-- Nuh uh. I do not understand myself in that way, and so, when I go to take my medicine every day, morning, and evening, and I go to my doctor's office, and I go to the emu, then it's not that I do not have a relationship with God,
and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and the Trinity, and the Communion of Saints it's that I go
there, and Jesus is with me. And the that sense of presence and so when I pray, I pray for presence, for courage, for strength, for these things that I need in order to carry on with my life the way that I am. Not to be split apart to get rid of a piece of it, like I-- that's just not how I view what my life is. And it's true, I I won't deny that I wish that I didn't have seizures anymore, I do wish that, but the truth of the matter is that's what my life is. And it's a completely different world view, I understand, but it's-- 

I'm not sure it's I don't hear it as completely different, um
because I have, in my own experience, I have a lot of overlap with what you said, um so
can I, can I, ask a-- can I ask a follow-up?

Yeah. 

Um, okay, so I think the thing that I grapple with most, um because my experience is that most Christians raised in mainline traditions have a theology of the image of God that you just articulated beautifully, but there is this, I am the image of God, everything that occurs in who I am as a person is part of the image of God, um so, the question that I have practically and theologically, is what is the-- is suffering part of God's image? Um, yeah, like how how do you understand suffering in relationship to being the image of God?

I think that suffering isn't the image of God, I think suffering exists. Okay. And God knows that suffering exists, I mean, how would God not know suffering exists, after the cross?

Right, right, right. 

Like that would seem absurd, almost to say that God did not know that suffering
existed, but to-- I don't know, I don't I don't I don't I don't know if the way to say this is to
say feel comfortable, or believe in, the idea of of of of the created world as a dualism. Where there's either good or evil, and it's like, so black and white, it's it that doesn't work for me. It doesn't-- it just it doesn't-- it doesn't work. It's so much more complex, the created world
we have is so much more complex. 

I think um, so, thank you, because what what that says uh, how I heard that, is uh Robbie has not communicated well that she is non-dualist, um and I think that evil exists, um and should
be resisted, uh and so there is a difference between complexity and complicated, right?
complicated is: the wires have melted and you will never extract them, uh you know and
this is just the mess you have to deal with, and complex is: if you pick through the weave
carefully enough, you can pull the strands apart, uh, so that's, you know, so both uh
both exist in the world, um and so I I I apologize uh that I haven't communicated that I believe
in non-duality, um, yeah, and and I'm and I'm pleased um that I'm hearing we both affirm
that suffering is not part of God's image, um, so.

Well thank you both for a hard but important conversation to have as we learn where each other is coming from and have discussions so thank you for your first trip here um to think, and curse, and all that jazz that goes on. Sorry, my brain is almost gone now. We just wondered if there were any final words you would like to share today. So maybe Robbie can begin just really short, anything you missed that you want to share, and then Wendy can end us off. 

I think what I want to say um is I feel that I have learned a lot. And I hear a great deal of agreement, but I also feel that for people coming from where I come from, it is important
to communicate gently and well, because, because, misunderstanding around disability, mental health, healing, is very easy to come by. So. Thank you all. Especially Wendy, if I can say so.

And Wendy? and then thats all. 

Um, Robbie I want to echo that I learned a lot today as well. This was really a fabulous conversation so, um, Amy and Miriam, thank you for having us on, inviting us, and uh and Robbie thank you very much for the conversation, and your patience with with the places for which I am ignorant, I appreciate it very much. Um it was a great conversation.

Thank you for your patience with my hyperlexia.

Thank you both so much and thank you to our listeners today.