“A Fine Sight To See” with Sophie Hudson

Show Notes:

This episode of The Weight will probably make you laugh, might lighten your spirit, and will definitely give you a new perspective on encouraging leadership in others.

Sophie Hudson is a blogger, author, and podcast host. She has written seven books. She draws inspiration for her most recent book, A Fine Sight to See: Leading Because You Were Made for It, from the story of Moses and Exodus, and explores how we are all called to lead, whether we feel qualified or not.

Resources:

Read more from Sophie on Boo Mama

Listen to The Big Boo Cast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Buy Sophie’s books on Amazon, including A Fine Sight to See

Transcript:

Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:02
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:04

Today our guest is Sophie Hudson. Sophie is a writer. She's a podcaster. She's written a great book about women in leadership based on the story of Exodus. We're gonna talk about her, but she's hilarious.

Chris McAlilly 00:18 Very funny.

Eddie Rester 00:18 And funny.

Chris McAlilly 00:19 Yep.

Eddie Rester 00:20 And a Mississippian.

Chris McAlilly 00:21 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 00:21
And we all know the same people.

Chris McAlilly 00:22

We know a bunch of the same people. And the conversation was great. We talked about leadership, particularly leadership from the perspective of being female in male-dominated spaces. And she had, I thought, a very thoughtful and interesting perspective. We also talk about the lessons that she's learned from the Bible, specifically from the book of Moses, from the journey of Exodus, and that's kind of the center of her book.

Eddie Rester 00:50

She spends time helping us think through how the Bible speaks to all. And she's not out here trying to say, "You're wrong and you're wrong and I'm right," but it's, how do we read the Bible and speak more... Holistically? Is that the right phrasing of that? But she really, I think, helps us see more. And the book is called "A Fine Sight to See." And so it's about people who have sight in the book of Exodus.

Chris McAlilly 01:21

Yeah, she talks about her journey into podcasting and into writing, and talk about that kind of creative journey, the jump that it took for her to kind of do that, and her work with teenage girls, and the encouragement that she's tried to offer in those spaces as well, and then also just some lessons, kind of. I mean, really, it feels like, you know, the kind of conversations that you're maybe aware need to happen, but don't often happen in the context of a workplace or whatever.

Eddie Rester 01:55
And she gives a lot of wisdom that she's gleaned. I think there's wisdom in this conversation.

Chris McAlilly 01:59
Yeah, and common sense and humor, and...

Eddie Rester 02:03 A lot of love.

Chris McAlilly 02:04
Lot of love. So it was great. Really enjoyed it. She was fantastic. The Her website is... What is it?

Eddie Rester 02:11
Her podcast is the Big Boo Cast.

Chris McAlilly 02:14
The Big Boo Cast, which is a better name than The Weight, I will say. That's better.

Eddie Rester 02:17
And the book is "A Fine Sight to See." So listen, share, laugh. You're gonna enjoy this one.

Chris McAlilly 02:22
[INTO] The truth is, the world is growing more angry, more bitter, and more cynical. People don't trust one another, and we feel disconnected.

Eddie Rester 02:34

The way forward is not more tribalism. It's more curiosity that challenges what we believe, how we live, and how we treat one another. It's more conversation that inspires wisdom, healing and hope.

Chris McAlilly 02:46

So we launched The Weight podcast as a space to cultivate sacred conversations with a wide range of voices at the intersection of culture and theology, art and technology, science and mental health, and we want you to be a part of it.

Eddie Rester 03:02

Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO] Well, we're here today with our new friend and connection, Sophie Hudson. We met about seven minutes ago. Already feel like we know lots of people who are close friends or former friends. So Sophie, welcome to The Weight today.

Sophie Hudson 03:24
I'm so glad to be with y'all. Thank you so much for having me. We have known each other for seven minutes, and I think we maybe were cousins.

Eddie Rester 03:30
I think we probably are.

Chris McAlilly 03:31
You're from Mississippi. You know, a lot of people are cousins in Mississippi just by being from Mississippi.

Eddie Rester 03:37
That's right. You know Chris's people. You know one of my good friends.

Chris McAlilly 03:40

That is, for folks who are not from Mississippi, this is a thing that people do. It's like, who are your people? And then we know your people, and you know our people. Mississippi is big, small town.

Sophie Hudson 03:48

It really is. I try to... Alabama's not even the same. And we've lived here in Birmingham for 24 years at this point. It's different. And this past week, I was in Texas. We did some live shows for the podcast that I've done for a long time with my friend Melanie. My sister was there, and I looked out in the audience. There was a couple there from Canton, and my sister had found them. Like, it's just like a radar. It's like they pinged or something, and she was drawn to them, and before I knew it, they had figured out who they had in common. It beats anything I've ever seen. It's really a comfort to me, honestly, how we do that.

Eddie Rester 04:26

It really is a comfort. Because it doesn't matter where you land, almost anywhere. If you run into a Mississippian, you're going to have a connection, and you're going to help each other. That's it.

Sophie Hudson 04:37

That's exactly it. There. I've told my husband before, there are certain people, particularly a couple of guys that I knew in college, I will never be without their numbers, because I'm convinced they are so connected in the state of Mississippi that should I need anything, no matter where I am in the world, they will be able to help me. They will know somebody who can help. And so there's a resourcefulness to Mississippians that I just I never take for granted. Not a single day.

Eddie Rester 05:08
When you don't have resources, you become resourceful. I think that's the truth of our state, in a lot of ways.

Sophie Hudson 05:13
I think that's the truth of the state, I really do, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 05:15
And you've exported that over to Birmingham. You said you've been in Birmingham for 20, 24, years, is that right?

Sophie Hudson 05:21
Yes, yes. I've been here since 2000.

Chris McAlilly 05:24
So I went to college in Birmingham, at Birmingham Southern, RIP.

Eddie Rester 05:28 RIP.

Sophie Hudson 05:28

Chris McAlilly 05:29
Just rest. Birmingham Southern, if you don't know, is a liberal arts school over in Alabama that recently closed.

Eddie Rester 05:38
But whose baseball team played.

Chris McAlilly 05:40 They played...

Eddie Rester 05:40 Beyond the closure.

Chris McAlilly 05:42

Yeah. So anyway, it's a sad story. Nevertheless, Birmingham, since I was there, has changed a lot. Tell us about Birmingham. What do you you notice about the city? Kind of what have you observed over the last, you know, 20 years or so?

Sophie Hudson 05:54

It's gotten better and better. I think. I mean, just one thing that has surprised me about Birmingham. I had no idea when we moved here, one, that I was going to write books or have a podcast or, like, kind of live a creative life. There's such a rich creative community here that has been really sort of surprising, and at the same time, super energizing, like, just to live here among so many creative people. We've got a great food scene in Birmingham. We've got so many great restaurants.

Eddie Rester 06:26 You do. 100%.

Sophie Hudson 06:26

I feel like it's one of those places, and there are several places like this, I think, in the south, where it's big enough, where it feels like you have, you know, a lot of different areas within the city you can visit, but it's small enough where you still feel connected no matter where you are. And I sort of live with a tiny sense of dread that we're going to turn into Nashville. Like that more people are going to decide that they want to live here. Which is great. I guess? But the size of Birmingham, I think, is just fantastic. We have loved it here, because, one, it's close to Mississippi. My sister lived in Nashville for a long time. She's here now. She and her husband are but it's just, it's been a great place to land. It's one of those places where it's a real, personal city. And so I think no matter where you are or what you do, you're going to find yourself in conversations with people. And it's just, it's been a blast.

Chris McAlilly 07:24
Yeah, I feel like Birmingham is re-invested in downtown.

Sophie Hudson 07:29 Yes.

Chris McAlilly 07:30

And I think that's that's contributed to its kind of revitalization, and the food scene is great. And it's still the heart of the Deep South in terms of its Christian culture and Christian community. I guess, for folks who don't know your work, maybe tell, tell us a little bit about kind of your journey in faith.

Sophie Hudson 07:50

Well, I was telling y'all earlier. I grew up in the Methodist Church in Meridian, Mississippi, but much to my surprise, I went to college at Mississippi State, and I found myself after I got married, I got a job teaching at a Christian school in Baton Rouge. I'd never really thought... I'd always worked in public school. I'd never thought that I would teach in a Christian school, but it was a denomination I had never been a member of, and it really challenged me, because I was like, oh, this is a different kind of situation than what I grew up in. And then when we moved to Birmingham, I got another job at a Christian school, another denomination So, and then we joined a denomination that we had not been a part of. So I have had this really sort of hodgepodge experience in terms of my denominational background, I think, which has been really helpful and instructive to me. But the common denominator for me all the way through is that I'm somebody who is... I've always loved to write my whole life. I can't remember a time when I didn't. And back in the early part of the 2000s I was a young mama and just needed something creative, and I started a blog, which was kind of a trend the time.

Chris McAlilly 09:03 Yeah.

Sophie Hudson 09:04

So people started to read the blog, and it just led to eventually I wrote a book. Never thought I would write a book. Had never really had a desire to write a book, but then I had an idea for one and wrote a book. And so for a long time I wrote and I worked at the school and I was a mama. Still am a mama. And about three years ago, almost four years ago... No, almost three years ago, I left my job at school and now just podcast and write full time. So I just had my seventh book that came out about two months ago. And I write primarily for women, and I write primarily from the perspective of faith, but also I think they're funny. I mean, they make... I don't know...

Eddie Rester 09:50 They make you laugh.

Sophie Hudson 09:51

It's weird to say they make me laugh, but I just have always had a heart for the more light hearted side of life, the more joyful parts of life, but also kind of digging into the substance of what it looks like to live a life of faith. And so that tends to be what I write about.

Eddie Rester 10:09

And we want to talk particularly about this latest book that came out, your seventh book, which is amazing to be an author of seven books, but I also want to point out that you have a podcast, the Big Boo Cast. The Big Boo Cast, and four seasons of it. You're into your fourth season, from what I can tell.

Sophie Hudson 10:27
No, we're actually we're in our 17th year.

Eddie Rester 10:30 17 years!

Sophie Hudson 10:31 Which is insane.

Chris McAlilly 10:33
Yeah, Eddie has a number of challenges, but one is kind of math.

Eddie Rester 10:37
Math. So you were podcasting, like, before podcasting was cool. I mean, you, you go way back.

Sophie Hudson 10:44
Yeah, yeah. Now I should, in fairness, I should explain that there were years where my friend Melanie and I only did one episode. Like, we weren't really predictable with it.

Eddie Rester 10:55
And people were just waiting for it, right?

Sophie Hudson 10:56

Yeah, yeah. That was our whole strategy, right? Not really. We were just, Melanie had a really unreliable internet connection. We were just... We were not necessarily planners, but so I met my friend Melanie through blogging back in like 2006 and we just had a lot in common. She lives in San Antonio, and eventually we started to talk on the phone, and we would talk in the afternoons, while our kids would nap, and we would laugh all the time. And one day just really randomly, this was back in 2007, my husband said, "Y'all should have a podcast." He's always been, like, an early adopter, you know, of techie things. And I was like, okay, what do we need to do that? And he said, "I think you just need a microphone." So I went to CompUSA and bought, like, a $20 microphone. Melanie went to Best Buy and bought a $20 microphone. And that's the way that we did the podcast for probably the first 10 years, when we recorded. And then when the people who read our blogs would remind us that they like to listen. We finally decided, okay, we're going to be serious about it. We're going to make a plan. And so probably, for the last, I would say, five or six years, we've been much more methodical. We record every week. We release an episode every week. So but we do 52 episodes a year, and we have a Patreon, like, where we do a subscription model for some episodes. And so it's turned into this weird kind of job, sort of. It's been a ton of fun. And it is so silly, and there is not much substance there, but we sure do laugh, which we enjoy.

Chris McAlilly 12:32

Well, I wonder, for people who have wondered about a creative path, you know, I mean, so when you think... I just think that that's a, you know... I know a lot of people who maybe have an idea or a thought, but don't have the courage to actually just put something out there. And I think one of the things we've learned in doing the podcast is just consistency, showing up. There's some weeks that it's like, man, this is exciting. I can't wait. And there are other weeks where you do it because you've been doing it. And just like any other task or job. I guess, what have you learned about that through the years?

Sophie Hudson 13:11

I've learned exactly what you said, which is consistency is everything. I think the reason why I had some success with the blog is just because I was consistent. I just showed up every day and did it, and you try not to pay attention too much to the more objective measurements of how you're doing. You just do it because you love it. I think writing is one of those things where, if you don't love it, I mean, maybe stay far, far away, just because it's not always fun. But then I think the podcast what we learned, particularly during COVID, I think when everybody was sort of like, hey, what do we do with life now, is how much, what a sense of purpose it gave us when everything had sort of stopped, and the consistency of podcasting was such a gift during a time that was full of so much unknown. So, yeah, I think it's you just have to be stubborn enough to stick with it. And it was really because of how it grew during COVID that it started to make sense of, like, hey, maybe I do, like, not stay at school for the rest of my life. Maybe I put more time and energy into this. But I think if you haven't practiced the consistency of it, it's hard to be courageous with it.

Chris McAlilly 14:33
Consistency leads to courage. I like that.

Eddie Rester 14:35

Yeah, I like that. I think that, I think you're right that if you're going to take the big step at some point, which is handing your writing over for someone to really say, O"h, this could be a book," or "This is not a book," you have to have that consistency along the way, that you have the confidence to do that. So, yeah.

Sophie Hudson 14:55

Yeah, I would say the consistency leads to some confidence too. Not that you're so great, but just that you if you are asked to produce something, that you can actually produce it. You know, you can actually, if somebody says, "hey, we need to do a podcast episode about this," that you can make that happen.

Chris McAlilly 15:11
Yeah, I think that's right. But before you get to courage, you need confidence.

Sophie Hudson 15:16
Yes, listen, y'all, we've got a whole idea here.

Eddie Rester 15:18

I think this is a book, yeah, so.

Chris McAlilly 15:23
Consistency... confidence... courage...

Eddie Rester 15:24

We used to have some seminary professors that we would joke when they would park in the parking lot, they would have a book by the time they got to the back door of the seminary. So we just did that. We just did that.

Chris McAlilly 15:34

We know some people that have been on the podcast that every time they have a thought, they publish it. It's, you know... I think, but I also think that there is a beauty in that, that you have an audience of people that you're connected to that are seeking wisdom, frameworks, thoughts, ideas. And, Lord knows, that the world is lonely, you know, I mean, people feel isolated. And I do think that, you know, Eddie and I have experienced that along the way, that the podcast, for us, has been a way that we connect to a broader group of people, you know.

Sophie Hudson 16:08

100%. Melanie and I would say the same thing. And even this past week in Dallas, when we, you know, had the live shows, it's the neatest shorthand to have with people who show up and the main connection you've had is just that they allow you to come into their homes or their cars or wherever, for an hour a week. And it makes connection so easy. I don't know. I do agree. I think that we're lonely and we're isolated and we're polarized and all these things. And so whatever we can do to try to be people who show more compassion to one another and care for one another.

Chris McAlilly 16:50
Just all these C words, that's great, so...

Sophie Hudson 16:52 I'ts just true.

Chris McAlilly 16:52

Consistency leads confidence, which leads to courage, which leads to connection and then compassion and then care. I think this is a book, yeah, so.

Sophie Hudson 17:00
If we do not write this book, I'm going to be real disappointed. I'm gonna feel like we just wasted our time.

Chris McAlilly 17:04
We're just trying to hop on to the BooMama bandwagon here.

Eddie Rester 17:07 That's right.

Chris McAlilly 17:07
That's what we're trying to do.

Eddie Rester 17:08
If you've got a publishing company, we could really, we could really do some good work here.

Sophie Hudson 17:14 Yeah. I agree, I agree.

Chris McAlilly 17:15
Yeah, you just have to come up with a name like BooMama, but for Eddie, just a differen name.

Sophie Hudson 17:20 Well, for sure.

Chris McAlilly 17:20
He needs something better than just Eddie.

Sophie Hudson 17:24
The only reason I was BooMama was because I started a blog when we were all still scared of the internet.

Chris McAlilly 17:29 "BooMama." That's awesome.

Sophie Hudson 17:29

And we thought that everybody was going to hunt us down, you know, and try, I don't know, like a ring of thieves was going to show up at our house. And so if I could do it over, I would just say Sophie Hudson, but I gave myself a nickname, and...

Eddie Rester 17:44
There's some anonymity there, see, so when...

Chris McAlilly 17:46

No, it's good. But I do think that that, yeah, the anonymity, I think, especially with a sense of, if you're not courageous, you know? I mean, I think that, like, and I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about myself. Like, I've tried blogging, and I've certainly not been consistent with it. Every time I've attempted to write in public, beyond "I've got to do this," I've always shrunk back from that task, you know. I always have. And so...

Sophie Hudson 18:12 Do you you like to write?

Chris McAlilly 18:13
I love to write. And I do, I mean, well, I preach every Sunday, and, so.

Eddie Rester 18:17 Yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

Chris McAlilly 18:17

So there's that task, but then beyond that. You know, there have been times where I've... It's just hard to stay consistent. You know, it's any, I think, anyone who's... I think writing is a... I mean, it's painful. It's suffering. It feels... To me, it feels like that. Maybe it doesn't feel like that for everyone, but it feels like suffering.

Eddie Rester 18:35 Well, when we...

Sophie Hudson 18:35
You may be coming at things from a slightly, uh, heavier theological weight and maybe a more scholarly perspective than I am. There you go. I think that's probably real fair to say so.

Eddie Rester 18:53 Well...

Chris McAlilly 18:54 Well... Go ahead.

Eddie Rester 18:54

I was just gonna say this latest book that you've written. It has a very directed audience, and I think that's one of the things that drew me to it, when somebody sent us an email about it. It's called "A Fine Sight to See: Leading Because You Were Made for It," and it really helps, I think... I don't know if demystifies the right word. I'm not sure what the right word is, but it really cuts through all the clutter of women in leadership, particularly Christian women in leadership. So what was, why was this book, at this time, important for you to write?

Sophie Hudson 19:30

You know, leadership's one of my favorite topics, just in general. I think I'm kind of a nerd about it. I love to notice it. I love to call it out. I love to think about it like it's just, it's a topic that I love. The last seven years that I was at my school here in Birmingham, I worked primarily with the high school girls. It was more of a discipleship job. It was not a teaching job. And I just, over time, thought about how we'll name certain things in our faith spaces as leadership, but not necessarily with our young women. We will call it something else. We'll encourage them to serve and to help. We'll encourage our young men to lead. I don't think it's malicious. I don't think it's deliberate. I think some of it's cultural. I think some of it's denominational, but I just kind of, I just noticed it. And then I started to think about, as, you know, when I was growing up, was I encouraged to lead? And I was, because I had a father who would still tell you to this day, you can do anything you want to do. You know?

Eddie Rester 20:35 Yeah.

Sophie Hudson 20:36

You just got to get in there and get after it. And so, because of kind of my family dynamic, I think I was encouraged to lead. But as I've, you know, gone into different churches and things like that over the last 10 or 15 years to do speaking or whatever I've just felt this... Not a void, but just kind of a weird perspective, or you might even say a division, sometimes, on what it means for women to lead. Now, all denominations are going to lean differently on that. There's nothing new under the sun, as far as that's concerned. And I don't want to argue with anybody, but I do want to encourage women to walk in the fullness of the gifts that they've been given. And I think a lot of times those gifts get minimized and sometimes even ignored, because we don't attach leadership to it. And so I just so I had all this rolling around in my head. And running parallel on a different track is a long-standing fascination with Moses, and, you know, I always say, who's been dead for a very long time, but has so much to teach us about leadership. And so it was sort of like the perfect confluence of those two things, and just the realization that Moses and his leadership, that can teach women just as much and as well as it teaches men about what loving leadership looks like, what faithful leadership looks like, what it looks like to lead when you don't necessarily think that you're qualified to do it. And so that's sort of how this book came to be.

Chris McAlilly 22:12
So what are the things that you would point out about Moses that you think would particularly resonate?

Sophie Hudson 22:17

Oh, gosh. Listen, Moses is all of us, I think. His life was shaped from the very beginning by women. You know, there's this, there's all this language of sight in the book of Exodus, particularly in the first half, seeing, looked, sight, vision, all these words pop up over and over. And so there's just this big idea, I think, in Exodus that the quality of our sight is connected to the quality of our leadership. But Moses's life was spared when he was an infant by women who could see. So his mother saw that he was a fine baby. Miriam saw him in the Nile. Miriam saw Pharaoh's daughter see him. There's all this sight going back and forth. So Moses's life is marked by sight. And then the first we hear of him as a grown person is he goes outside, he sees a Hebrew fighting an Egyptian, and when he sees that, he lets his anger lead him to murder somebody, which is not ideal. And so from that moment on, I was just like, Okay, we all sit in shame to some degree. He exiles himself to Midian, and when God calls him out of there, it's because Moses turns aside to see the burning bush, to see what God has done. And so I think if you kind of watch Moses's progression from shame into very reluctant leadership, into sort of stepping into the fullness of that leadership, you just find lesson after lesson after lesson about what it looks like to love the people you've been called to lead, to trust God, to remember what God has done, and to trust the fact that even if you do not feel qualified, God actually has equipped you. So I don't know. Those are the things off the top of my head I think that Moses reminds me of.

Eddie Rester 24:11
I just, and not just Moses, but all, almost all the people God calls into leadership, male or female in Scripture, are not the people we would choose.

Sophie Hudson 24:22 [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 24:23
You know what I mean? They're not.

Sophie Hudson 24:25

They may not seem ideal. Usually, he will get them, he will pull them around to his way of of seeing people and to thank him. But yeah, I mean, and that's why I think Moses is all of us, you know? I mean, he's just somebody. He's made a huge mistake. He's given into shame, you know, by putting himself in Midian. And he very reluctantly comes out of it.

Eddie Rester 24:49

And I think that's the, you know, we all think of Moses, leading people through the water, through the Red Sea, and there's this big moment. But all of it before and after that big moment is either he feels like he's not qualified, he's unsure, or later he's frustrated.

Sophie Hudson 25:09

Oh, he's so frustrated. It was some grimy work he was called to do, right? Like it was just, it was every verse was the same as the first, which is like the Israelites would remember, and then they'd forget again, and then he tried to remind them what God had done, and then they'd forget again. And then they get ticked off at him, and they didn't have what they wanted. And so that, the whole commitment between Moses and the Israelites, the way he sticks with them, and the way that they continually listen to him despite the fact that they're so frustrated, there are tons of lessons in there for all of us about what it looks like to be committed to the work we've been called to do.

Chris McAlilly 25:54
Who saw, beyond your father, who saw leadership in you?

Sophie Hudson 25:59

Oh, gosh, it's interesting, because of the spaces where I've lived and worked, I don't know that I've heard the word "leadership" necessarily a whole lot connected to me. But I will tell you this I told this person this about a month ago when we joined the church where we were members, here in Birmingham for like 20 years, I went into.. We were starting a new Bible study. I don't know what you call it. Like a season, a series or something. And I went to the meeting about it, and one of the pastors on staff, like, from our initial meeting, he, for some reason, he identified me as a leader. And I don't know that there had been anybody outside of, like, my house who had referred to me that way, much less somebody in ministry. And it stuck with me, you know. And so I would say for sure, that particular pastor. But then I think that there have been other people over the years who have really challenged me in that way, and particularly women in my life who have assured me or kind of called me to higher and better or affirmed something that I felt like I was supposed to do. I feel like that's probably been my safest spot in terms of hearing reliable, dependable voices to just essentially keep going. So I mean, my friend Mary Jo, my friend Anne, my friend Melanie, who I do the podcast with. I have a couple of Bible teachers who I really love a lot, who've invested in me. And so I think, you know what's interesting, and I don't know if this is a southern thing or if this is a female thing, but just how we can be conditioned to dismiss those voices and just think, oh, it's no big deal. And it's been a challenge for me to actually listen. If that makes any sense at all.

Eddie Rester 28:08

It does. Somebody once told me that when somebody gives you a compliment, don't deflect it. Thank them for it and own it. And I think that's difficult for folks at different seasons of life, but I think also sometimes, again, culturally, sometimes, we don't value women in roles of leadership or other things, so. I've got two daughters, and so sometimes I worry that they've been trained to just continually deflect.

Sophie Hudson 28:36

Yeah, yeah. I told, I worked.. My principal the last few years I was at school is a guy named Sean. He's one of the best leaders I've ever worked for. He's just one of those people who there's nothing he's going to ask anybody to do that he's not willing to get in there and do himself. Very affirming, very encouraging, and I learned so much from working with him, but I will never forget, and I write about this in the book. One day, Sean and I were headed into a meeting, and I'm pretty feisty, honestly, like, if somebody wants to know my opinion, I will share it. And Sean was so used to that side of me and so welcoming of that side of me, but I knew there were many places where that side of me was not welcome. And I told Sean, after we kind of talked through what we were going to meet about, I said, "Don't worry, I'll do my best to be appropriately deferential in the meeting." And he died laughing, and as he was walking out of my office, I said, "But make no mistake, the number of times you have been required to be appropriately deferential are 0.0." And I do think there is a dynamic, whether it's cultural, denominational, whatever it is, where women do tend to feel like they have to be appropriately deferential. And one of the things that women have said to me over and over since this book came out, as I've gone and done different book signings, it's just the heartache they have had from receiving the message that they are too much, that they need to dial it down, that their whole selves are not welcome. And I think that you know that... I don't know that any of us would want women to have to pay that price for operating in the fullness of their gifts. But for some reason, it seems to happen pretty frequently.

Chris McAlilly 30:20

You said the word dynamic, but what I thought I heard you say is dymanic, which is... Very different. Very different phrase. You can write a book on that phrase, dymanic. Not a very good dynamic. But yeah, I do think that... What do you think it's important for leaders who are male in the church or in other spaces to know or to hear that we might not know or that we might not hear?

Sophie Hudson 30:50

Probably, I think it's important to know that a lot of cases when women in spaces considered to be male-dominatedspeak up, they expect to get pushback, not because the idea is bad, but because they may have overstepped what the cultural norms are in that situation. And that pushback usually leads to diminished sense of confidence and a feeling that your voice is not welcome. And that's tough, you know. I think also, I think sometimes men are not as aware of what it's like to sit in spaces, meetings, services, conferences, where it's the predominant voices are male, and where you hear very few women's voices. And what that communicates, I think a lot of times, really unintentionally, but what it communicates is that the men's voices are the more important voices, and those are the voices that we need to be listening to the most. And you know, that's not true. So I think just, there's a whole path I think that women are navigating in male-dominated spaces that, a lot of times, men aren't even aware is there, you know? Because I think men sometimes, and this, listen, the last thing I want to do is to over generalize. I know there are exceptions to every rule. But I think sometimes what men can't appreciate is the emotional, spiritual, mental toll it takes to figure out how you have to navigate a situation just because you don't share the gender of the people who have the majority. I hope I said that diplomatically.

Eddie Rester 32:43

No, you did. You really did. That's one of the things that when you come out of seminary, over a third of my class were female who were becoming pastors, and you just kind of in seminary, you have this sense of, you're all equal. You're on this playing field. Even if it wasn't reality, it was kind of sense. And then I would talk to my friends three or four years into the ministry, and you know, I just remember I said, "Why don't you just do this," to one of them one time. And she responded, "Because I've got these other things I have to tend to to get to that point, Eddie." And it was just, it was a very eye opening moment for me, realizing that, oh, it's a maze of things. Where I just get to go straight from A to B, my friends are having to have conversations that I never have to have and deal with pushback that I never have to deal with. And it was, I think that's an important thing for men in leadership, men in where women are in leaders over them, to realize that there's a different dynamic that we don't even know.

Sophie Hudson 34:01

Yeah, it's almost like this was, this is, maybe, I don't know if this is a good analogy or not, but it's almost like if you go into a workplace as a man. You go into, let's say you go into a new church. You're almost able to work a straight outline in terms of what your approach is, how you're going to develop relationships, how you're going to establish certain systems, all this kind of stuff. I would say, for a woman, typically, that outline is going to come with some sub points, and some sub points within the sub points. There are going to be some tiny, little dotted Roman numerals in there, some lower case letters. Like, the outline is going to be a little bit more complicated. Again, it's not, I don't, I really don't think that in most cases it's malicious. I just think that there's a shorthand a lot of times in environments where the people who are the decision makers are mostly men. It works differently for women, and it's just, that's just how it is, I think. You know, there are just different dynamics.

Chris McAlilly 35:08

I think, one of the things, so I've recently gone back and just been reading the Bible again with, you know, the lens of gender and just the lens of male and female in mind to try to kind of understand some of the broader cultural dynamics that are at play in the conversation in American culture. I've also got a 13-year-old. I mean, there are all kinds of reasons why I've been thinking about the Bible in these terms. And one of the things that I've found most helpful is to read the Bible with commentary from, whether it's a biblical scholar or it's a preacher or a teacher who is female. And so just kind of engaging one of the books of the Bible with the benefit of a conversation partner who is female has been incredibly helpful. And I think that's one of the things that you're offering is a book about leadership, about Moses, from your particular social location. I think that that's a very helpful lens. And one of the things I've found... So one of the people I love to read in the Old Testament is a woman named Sandra Richter. Sandra Richter, she's from, I'm not, I don't know where she's serving now, but I know she's been at Wheaton, California. I think she's out in California. Anyway, nevertheless, she read, she's an Old Testament scholar, and she really draws the attention of her readers. The book that I read is called "Epic of Eden," and she talks about how deeply patriarchal the book is. I mean, the book is just like so profoundly patriarchal. And so then you have women who are exercising agency in these maybe what appear to be small ways, but they're actually massive ways. I think about the Hebrew midwives, who intentionally--I mean, it's like an act of civil disobedience. They don't obey 100% the pharaoh's orders to kill all the babies. And they're the, I mean, I think they're the big, massive heroes of the first part of the book, in a lot of ways.

Sophie Hudson 37:07 For sure, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 37:08

Sophie Hudson 37:10 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 37:10
So just, I guess, just to put a fine point on is just the- as I talk over you, my apologies.

Sophie Hudson 37:18 [LAUGHTER]

Chris McAlilly 37:18
Let me finish my thought, okay. I apologize, patriarchal, but, I will stop talking and let you talk.

Sophie Hudson 37:27

No, you're so right. Like, you have five women at the very beginning of the book of Exodus. You have Shiphra, Puah, you have Jochebed, Miriam, and Pharaoh's daughter. Five women who shift everything with... I mean, Jochebed, too, Moses's mom, like, a little civil disobedience. She had her child. It's not the stories that you necessarily got on the flannel board in Sunday school, right? Like, We would get Moses in the basket going down the Nile, but we didn't see Shiphra and Puah. We didn't hear those stories. When I was writing the book, I actually, I wanted commentary from women. I wanted commentary from all kinds of people, but I was really interested in commentary from women. And there's a woman named Carol Myers who is a professor. I think she's a professor at...

Eddie Rester 38:21
at Duke. Yeah, she was my professor. I was about to mention her.

Sophie Hudson 38:24

Well, you're the luckiest, because her research and her commentary on exodus was huge for me as I was working through this book. And I think that it's really interesting, and this is too much to get into, but when that same patriarchal lens, how it is shaped my understanding, as a young person, even in my 20s and 30s, of different people in the book. Like I think Paul has really been sort of weaponized at times, in patriarchal ways that aren't necessarily fair. And so I do think. don't know. I think it's an interesting way, and I think it's an important way to look back at scripture through the eyes of women who write commentar and women who can give us a more complete historical context for what we're looking at when we dig into scripture.

Eddie Rester 39:24

Recently, I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell, and he was talking about historical figures, and he said, it's not that we want to say this person, we've read them completely wrong, and they were just an evil person, right? There are layers. On one layer, they were a hero creating Democracy in America. In another layer, they were slave holders. At another layer, you just had to pull back the layers. I think what Carol Myers did for me was that, was that she kind of just... She's like, okay, you know, this level of the story. Let's pull that back.

Sophie Hudson 40:01 Right. Right.

Eddie Rester 40:01

And one of the things she taught me was, when you look, the Bible tells stories of men as heroes, but women as heroes as well. But one of the important things that you read over and over and over in Scripture is that the power to name the children, which was huge, because names in scripture imbue people with who they are, right? I'm preaching about Naomi this Sunday, which means pleasantness, but at one point she says, call me Mara because...

Sophie Hudson 40:32 I'm bitter.

Eddie Rester 40:33

Because I'm bitter. But that power to give the children their future comes from, and name their future comes from the moms, over and over. So Carol, when you said her name, the people listening can't... I just, I was so excited, because she was such an important part. She wrote a book called "Rediscovering Eve."

Sophie Hudson 40:57 Yes.

Eddie Rester 40:58
And if you're looking for just a great book. She and her husband were in Time magazine because they were kind of like, they discovered stuff at the time of Indiana Jones that, like, they called them the modern day Indiana Jones. Yeah.

Sophie Hudson 41:11 I didn't know that!

Eddie Rester 41:12 Yeah, yeah.

Sophie Hudson 41:13 Okay.

Eddie Rester 41:13
So anyway, anyway, I'm going to stop now. But it's about, how do we continue to read scripture, pulling back layers.

Sophie Hudson 41:21 Yes.

Chris McAlilly 41:22

Yeah. And I think, yeah, as you do that, I do think it's important to say that the Bible has resources within itself to critique itself, you know. So at the very same time that it is a patriarchal book, I think that's... You can read it. There is a way of reading that and saying, all right, well, let's now be done with this old book, because clearly, they didn't have their act together, and we got to move on, you know. But I think that there are resources with it, you know. And I think faithful wrestling and engagement can lead to, you know, I think some really interesting, faithful reads. And ultimately, I think the way to think about it would be, just as you guys were talking about, you know, Shiphra and Puah, the two Hebrew midwives. They had a sense of the truth and justice and righteousness of God, you know. And that's embedded in the text. And so they were acting in that direction. And I just think that, like there is a sense in which we ought to trust that those senses or the nudges that you have in that direction are worth pursuing. And I think if there's someone listening and they feel kind of, I don't know, timid or not courageous, or, you know, exploring that and doing that in public in a way that you could connect with other people, I think is powerful. And I do think that's one of the most interesting things about the internet. Coming back to your explorations with BooMama, you know, is that there is a decentralized dimension to it. You know, we're reading the Bible, not through the conventional channels of whether it's a denominational authorization, or through these institutions that have always been trustworthy, all that stuff is gone. You know, I mean that people's engagement with a source based on the credentials of the authority of the institution. A lot of that stuff is being set to the side. And what is happening in that space are faithful readers of the text, faithful voices that are emerging as leaders, as they develop platforms, as they write, as they engage. And so I think what you're doing is not only offering this book, but you're also kind of carving out a path, and I think it's one that maybe more more folks ought to pay attention to. So I'm incredibly grateful to engage with you and to hear your story and to hear about your book, and I've enjoyed this conversation. It's been great.

Eddie Rester 44:04
One final question for you. I've got two daughters. Chris has one daughter. Cody, our producer, has one one daughter.

Chris McAlilly 44:12
Lot of kids, but one daughter.

Eddie Rester 44:13
Lot of kids. He's got like 50 kids.

Chris McAlilly 44:15 A lot of boys,

Eddie Rester 44:16
A lot of boys. Maybe not quite 50.

Chris McAlilly 44:19
Not that many. That's an exaggeration.

Eddie Rester 44:23

What would you say to young women? What would you hope? What do you wish someone maybe had said to you? Or what, from this book, would you want them to make sure they heard?

Sophie Hudson 44:34
They get to run free. They get to run free. The assortment of children, just that you have mentioned, they're going to have a variety of gifts among them. They can trust that those gifts are on purpose. And my hope would be that however they feel convicted and convinced by the Holy Spirit that they're supposed to use those gifts for the greater good and for the glory of God, that they could run on paths that are unhindered, and that they could live their lives in ways that would not lead to bitterness or cynicism or self doubt, but they would have the confidence that comes from knowing you are treasured and beloved by Jesus. I think that the thing that really cemented whether or not I was going to write this book, for me, is in Deuteronomy. I had been all the way through Exodus, and I looked at the very end of Moses's life, when God has told him that he's, you know, his life is going to come to an end, and he's not going to ever inhabit the promised land, but he can go up and he can see it. And one of the last thing Scripture tells us about Moses is that his vigor was unabated and his sight was unhindered. And I think that whole notion that, and I know he was physically fit, specimen wise, you know, I get that part, but that whole notion that we could be people who do our best with our limitations, with our challenges, but trusting that God has entrusted some things to us, I just think that notion of getting to the end of life with unhindered sight, that's what I want for the generations behind me. That's what I want for the young women behind me, to be unhindered in terms of how they know God sees them, and then to be people who never lose sight of what he's called them to do. Just want them to be whole and free.

Eddie Rester 46:38
Amen. Amen. Sophie, my new friend. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. The book is "A Fine Sight to See," and the podcast is the Big Boo Cast. So thank you.

Sophie Hudson 46:50
It's real dumb. It's real dumb.

Eddie Rester 46:51 It's gonna be great.

Sophie Hudson 46:52
It's real silly. We talk a lot about football. Congratulations to all of y'all, by the way. You're having quite a year.

Chris McAlilly 46:59
Who's your football team? We didn't talk about that.

Eddie Rester 47:01
She's a Mississippi State Bulldog.

Chris McAlilly 47:03
Oh, you're... Oh yeah, yeah. My wife went to state and, yeah, it's been tough for the Bulldogs lately.

Sophie Hudson 47:08

It's been tough. It's been tough. I mean, when I, if I can say I watched Ole Miss beat the Georgia Bulldogs, and I kind of felt happy for y'all, y'all should know how bad it is for me right now. I mean, that should really tell you something.

Chris McAlilly 47:19
It is. It's bad. It's bad. It feels like it's been 50 years since 2014.

Eddie Rester 47:25
The Promised Land. Levy's gonna, he's gonna be your Moses.

Chris McAlilly 47:28
You don't have to make a comment, Eddie. Eddie needs to make no comments because, you know, he's riding high. He's winning, winning at life. Eddie...

Eddie Rester 47:39
Leading our fantasy football league as well.

Chris McAlilly 47:41 Oh my gosh!

Eddie Rester 47:42
I thought I'd throw that out there.

Chris McAlilly 47:44

That is not cool, man. You're gonna do that on the podcast?! You're gonna throw out the fantasy football league on the podcast? You're gonna dump that at the end of this. We've had fantasy football league on the podcast? You're gonna dump that at the end of this. We've had

Sophie Hudson 47:57
I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I really do. I respect it

Chris McAlilly 48:01 Wow. Wow.

Eddie Rester 48:02 Sophie, thank you.

Chris McAlilly 48:03
We'll have to have you back for a conversation about football.

Sophie Hudson 48:05 Okay. Anytime. Always game.

Chris McAlilly 48:09 All right, talk to you later.

Eddie Rester 48:11
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 48:19 If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]