“Mid Season Recap & Life Updates” with Chris & Eddie

Show Notes:

The Weight might be on a brief summer break, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to listen to! We’ve got five seasons of excellent conversations, and Eddie and Chris offer their recommendations for re-listening to a few from this season. (They also share some life updates and a little advice at the end.)

We hope y’all have a wonderful summer, and we’ll see you in August with all new episodes of The Weight. 

Resources:

All of our episodes can be found at theweightpodcast.com, on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Transcript:

[INTRO] The truth is, the world is growing more angry, more bitter, and more cynical. Peopledon't trust one another, and we feel disconnected.

Eddie Rester 00:16

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 00:28

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 00:44
Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO] I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:52
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:55
Today we are doing our spring wrap up. We've never done one of these.

Chris McAlilly 00:58 But we're doing it today.

Eddie Rester 00:59 But we're doing it today.

Chris McAlilly 01:00 It's gonna be great.

Eddie Rester 01:01
It's gonna be great. We want to give you some life updates.

Chris McAlilly 01:03
Life updates. My life looks a lot similar since last time we gave life updates. Eddie's has changed.

Eddie Rester 01:08

Mine's a little different. So we'll get to that. We want to talk about some of our favorite episodes, maybe point you to some episodes that you missed along the way. And then we're going to talk about summertime, Chris.

Chris McAlilly 01:17 Summertime!

Eddie Rester 01:18
Are you doing anything fun this summer?

Chris McAlilly 01:20

I'm going to put my toes in the sand.

Eddie Rester 01:22 Toes. Which...

Chris McAlilly 01:23
And then I'm going to go to the mountains as well. I'm doing a little bit of both.

Eddie Rester 01:27
Oh, you're doing both Wow. Aren't you...

Chris McAlilly 01:29 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 01:29
Aren't you just kind of special?

Chris McAlilly 01:31
I'm not that special. I'm not as special as you. You travel now all over the country because the life update. But we'll get to that.

Eddie Rester 01:37
I travel. We'll get to that in just a minute.

Chris McAlilly 01:38

Yeah, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna kind of work through the spring and talk through some of the great episodes and maybe you want to listen to a little bit of this, it won't be very long, and go back and revisit some of the episodes that have been some of our favorites this spring. What for you, Eddie, I wonder what your favorite episode was this spring?

Eddie Rester 02:02
I've got several of them. Dana Trent's just one of my favorite people. Back during the episode,

Chris McAlilly 02:10
Now she's blowing up. It's like watching your favorite indie band blow up.

Eddie Rester 02:12
Exactly. That's exactly what it is. Her book is doing well.

Chris McAlilly 02:17 "Between Two Trailers."

Eddie Rester 02:18

"Between Two Trailers," which is her life story. It really deals with trauma, childhood trauma. And one of the things we talked about was that everybody has some version of childhood trauma. Nobody escapes it. But how we heal from that, and how we process that as adults becomes important for the people we become, and how we shape the lives of other people.

Chris McAlilly 02:38
Is this the episode where you give folks a sense of your childhood stuff?

Eddie Rester 02:42
I think I did. It's hard to remember sometimes what we talk about so in depth. So but yes, it's a little bit of my background was in that episode.

Chris McAlilly 02:53
Yeah. So and that reminds me of another episode that was kind of in a similar vein, but it was

talking about preaching. And it was with Kim Wagner.

Eddie Rester 03:01
I knew you were goin to say.

Chris McAlilly 03:02

we mentioned that she's a fan of the pod.

Chris McAlilly 03:02

Yeah, preaching at Princeton, and the book was called "Fractured Ground," and the episode has the same title. And I think Dana and Kim need to meet. I think they need to work together. Because there are a lot of parallels. One is in a memoir format. And one is in a conversation about how we process trauma theologically and in the context of church and in preaching. And Kim's idea is that trauma fractures our story.

Eddie Rester 03:33 Right.

Chris McAlilly 03:33

And then the question is not just how the pieces get put back together, but how you gather those pieces up, honor them, and then find your way into a new narrative. And she does a remarkable job of bringing her research to bear and she's just a delightful person.

Eddie Rester 03:50

Yeah. And what I really liked was her perspective wasn't just always on individual trauma, but communal trauma. Churches, communities, schools, go through significant trauma and how we deal with that as communities matters.

Chris McAlilly 04:05
And I'll tell you one way that we deal with it, and I am making a transition. We do it through food.

Eddie Rester 04:10

We do it through food. So we've got a couple of food episodes this this season. We've got John T. Edge who writes about food in the South. He was actually the one that started us off this spring. And that's got... We don't get to do a lot of live interviews, live podcasts. Everybody's on zoom.

Chris McAlilly 04:27
We've got to get back to that. We're gonna have to. If someone's out there and wants to give us a large donation to fly people into Mississippi, we would happily receive it.

Eddie Rester 04:34
Exactly. I think some of them would probably want to fly privately. But...

Chris McAlilly 04:38 And we will also.

Eddie Rester 04:39 We could go.

Chris McAlilly 04:40
Also, we can go to where they are.

Eddie Rester 04:41 We can go.

Chris McAlilly 04:42 That would be fine.

Eddie Rester 04:42
I go to a lot of plane rides. We'll get to that in just a minute. But the other one was Hunter Evans, who owns Elvie's in Jackson. I'm eating there soon. Excited going to brunch there.

Chris McAlilly 04:54 What are you going to eat?

Eddie Rester 04:54
I usually get this this duck hash brown thing, a few eggs.

Chris McAlilly 04:59
I didn't know you were a duck hash brown guy.

Eddie Rester 05:00

I like it. It's very good. It's very good. But Hunter talks about his love for Jackson. He's honest about the challenges of Jackson, Mississippi. But he is committed to a vision of not just work, but a vocation, living out who he's called to be there in Jackson, Mississippi.

Chris McAlilly 05:18

Yeah, I think culture is upstream of a lot of the problems that we see in politics and otherwise. And I think some of the most creative people move to places and see possibilities that others of us don't see. And if there's going to be a broader kind of social or cultural, a social or political renewal, I think in some ways, it will start by folks investing in cultural renewal. And I think that Hunter is one of those people. And I was very inspired by that conversation. Those were the food episodes. And now I'm forgetting what else we talked about, because now I'm hungry.

Eddie Rester 05:58

One of the people that was fantastic. I didn't know anything about her. Kayla Craig, "Every Season Sacred," back in February. She's written a book that really helps parents talk about faith with our kids, but not in a pressure, oh, if your kids can't recite the entire Bible by the time they're four, you failed as a parent. Very much freeing parents to here's how you raise your kids in the faith in the midst of lives that are busy and crazy and overwhelming. And it's a resource I wish I had had, when I was raising my kids and things were busy, crazy, and overwhelming.

Chris McAlilly 06:33

She gives the language and sometimes one of the hardest things to know what to do is to talk to kids about faith in a language they can understand. And she gives language for prayers and liturgies, for the simple and ordinary parts of life.

Eddie Rester 06:50 Right.

Chris McAlilly 06:50

Not just the really difficult or the really joyful times. And the goal of it, I think, is that you adopt, as a family, a certain kind of rhythm and your kids begin to take on board this idea that life is sacred. And she is herself a mother and does a great job of offering some of the wisdom that she's learned along the way. You know, I'm thinking about, you know, the power of story. I know that one of your favorite episodes this season was Neil White.

Eddie Rester 07:27 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 07:28
Tell folks who Neil White is.

Eddie Rester 07:29

So Neil White is a New York Times bestselling author. He wrote "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts." But now he helps other people tell their stories. He runs a publishing company. He helps people figure out how to do the writing. Sometimes he ghost writes with other people, helps people write their stories. But I ran into him actually, in a store here in Oxford just yesterday, and he was so delighted. People have been finding him, talking to him about the podcast.

Chris McAlilly 07:58
So many people listen to the podcast that they just find...

Eddie Rester 08:01
He didn't say, really, how many. Probably three. I don't know. But he said people have talked to

him about the podcast.

Chris McAlilly 08:07 Hundreds.

Eddie Rester 08:08 Probably thousands.

Chris McAlilly 08:09 Thousands.

Eddie Rester 08:10 Millions. That's probably...

Chris McAlilly 08:11 Probably not millions.

Probably not millions.

Eddie Rester 08:12 Probably not millions.

Chris McAlilly 08:12
There're not that many millions that live in the state of Mississippi.

Eddie Rester 08:14

That's right. So but he really was thankful, because people understood that, really telling your story. And he really encouraged people. Write your story down. Not to get published, not to ever turn it into a book. But just to be faithful. Writing your story is something that we can all do.

Chris McAlilly 08:31

Yeah, I'm looking back through some of these episodes, and "Stories Save Lives," that was the Dana Trent episode. But that is a theme of the spring is just the power of stories. Danjuma Gibson talks about the power of story of some of the folks that we think of as saints, particularly saints that were working through the Civil Rights Movement, folks like Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Jr, and looking through their eyes, looking through their story for the wisdom of how we might navigate our stories. That episode was really powerful.

Eddie Rester 08:31

Couple episodes about the church, I want to highlight those if that, if you're wondering, how do we do this? How are we, in this moment, this strange moment, culturally that we're in, what does it mean to be the church? Angela Patterson, who is studied psychology, studied media, and does deep dives into the lives of really Gen Z, people ages 13 through 25, and what does faith look like for them? What is purpose mean to that age group? What can the church offer them? And the hopeful thing for me in that episode was that Angela says that there's a lot, actually, that the church can help people frame faith, that the church can help people understand where they see the sacred in the world. She says this younger generation sees and understands sacred but sometimes they don't have language and they don't have a lens for that. The other one is Andrew Root, who wrote a book called "When the Church Stops Working." And it's kind of a play on words, but a lot there about looking for our watchwords. How do we find the things in our church, that's really embedded into the DNA of our churches and live out of that?

Chris McAlilly 10:25
Yeah. So the idea would be that God works in the future, in light of how God has worked in the

Eddie Rester 10:31 Right.

Chris McAlilly 10:31

And thus far, the Lord has helped us. Here I raise my Ebenezer, those kinds of phrases. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God. Those are things that we can remember, and it can shape our attention and our hope for the future. Another person who offered that perspective was David Watson, in an episode called "The Faith that Shapes Us." He said, we don't have to reinvent the faith in every generation, we inherit the faith. And in inheriting the faith, we inherit all of these memories, all of these words of who God has been in the past, and how God will be at work in the future. I was preparing for the summer sermon series here at the church. And I was reminded the story of Hagar and Ishmael. And one of the things that that story is the first time that the word "wilderness" was used in the Bible. It's first time somebody went into the wilderness. And at the backside of the story, Hagar says, and that she named God, "the One who sees me." You know, and I've been thinking about that all day, this powerful idea that we don't have to make stuff up. We can go back and receive the riches of the tradition. And that can be offered to the next generation in a way that can give them better health outcomes, more hope, like all kinds of wonderful things, and lead to flourishing lives. It's been a great...

Eddie Rester 11:59
It really has been a great season.

Chris McAlilly 12:00
Great spring season. We've now just talked about almost every episode. And so you should just

go back and listen.

Eddie Rester 12:04
Just go back. The whole thing. You've got to summer to do it. This summer, we will be releasing episodes from the backlog some from this season. We've got...

Chris McAlilly 12:12 So many good espisodes.

Eddie Rester 12:13

Chris McAlilly 12:16
As we mentioned before, The Weight's just a huge deal. It's just blowing up around the country. We don't want you to miss.

Eddie Rester 12:21

Don't miss out. But so maybe if you're new to the podcast, watch for those episodes to pop up on Thursdays, listen to them, and they may lead you to some other episodes from previous seasons. I'm thankful for the work we've been able to do. I look forward to the restart in the fall. It just introduced us to so many amazing people around the country.

Chris McAlilly 12:46 No doubt, and we...

Eddie Rester 12:47 Around the world.

Chris McAlilly 12:47

We're excited about the fall. And we're beginning to make plans. And part of those plans involve thinking through what are the conversations that we need to have, personally and professionally, that help us answer some questions. And I feel like this might be a good point for us to transition and maybe talk about life updates. I'll give you my life update.

Eddie Rester 13:09 Give us your life update.

Chris McAlilly 13:10
What I did yesterday, and what I did today are the same. And my kids are a little older. But I'm basically doing the same stuff.

Eddie Rester 13:17 Same thing.

Four previous seasons. And so...

Chris McAlilly 13:17 What's your life update?

Eddie Rester 13:18

My life update is that after leaving Oxford two years ago, Audra and I moved back to Oxford, Mississippi, in March. My role at the church in Jackson ended at the end of the year, actually a little bit before that. And so I spent a season of just prayerful discernment. Where's God leading me? What is God calling me to do? I spent the end of the year, first part of the year having conversations with great people all over the place and ended up in a conversation with a guy named Derek Baker who leads a group called Dickerson Baker. They're a consulting firm. They do a lot of nonprofit consulting. And for several years now, they've wanted to launch a division to do church consulting. And so they've been looking for somebody to do that. We had an incredible conversation, set of conversations really, with different staff people. And in March, I went to work for them, launching this church division. There's a group years ago, that was, lots of people know, called Cargill Associates that, back in 2022, Dickerson Baker kind of absorbed that group. And my directive is to build a group that can help advance the church. And so I get to use all of my experience and conversations and just kind of bring to life a group that helps with leadership development, resourcing, helps with coaching of pastors, staff searches, a lot of different things that we'll be doing in the years ahead. We're just in the early stages of putting the wheels on it, and we'll see. We'll see where it takes us. But I'm very excited. I do travel a lot. I got stuck in Dallas for two days recently, and that was... It was... It was not fun.

Chris McAlilly 15:06
A lot of people travel in and out of Dallas these days. I want to ask you about your work. But before I do that, I want to ask you about the season kind of between things.

Eddie Rester 15:17 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 15:18

If you'd be willing to talk a little bit about that. I think that there are a lot of people that get-- this is my observation. And folks in their 20s are just trying to figure it out. "Can I do the thing?" And then some people get to a place in their 30s, where they are able to do the thing and are successful at the thing and get to whatever the height or the pinnacle of their thing is. And then I observed something happens from like, 40 to 45, where you do the same thing over and over. And the question is, "Can I do this forever?" And then you get to a certain point around 50, where it's like, "I don't know if I can do this forever." I saw a little bit of that in you.

Eddie Rester 15:56 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 15:56
You know, and I wonder as you have imagined something new, kind of what you learned in that season of being a little bit wandering in the wilderness and coming out the other side?

Eddie Rester 16:06

Yeah. You know, it was wandering the wilderness. I have joked before, I was semi retired. And then my girls, just they remind me, I was unemployed, basically. And so it was the season of, you got up in the morning... and you didn't have anything on the calendar. Maybe I had a meal with somebody or phone call set up. But you know, so it was this weird, awkward moment. A couple of things that came out of it. One was I wrote a lot. And that was a godsend for me. I'd wanted to write a lot through the years and that really anchored me. I'd get up in the morning, and that's the first thing I would do is write. The other thing was, and this was something that just God whispered to me going back into last summer, that all would be well. And what's funny is that a week after my last Sunday at the church, I went to a silent retreat at a monastery in Coleman, Alabama. Who knew that they have multiple monasteries in Coleman, Alabama?

Chris McAlilly 17:08 Alabama is a weird place.

Eddie Rester 17:10
It's fantastic. But the mug that I picked up to drink my coffee in late November, said, it was the quote from um... from her. Mmhmm. "All will be well, and all manner things will be well."

Chris McAlilly 17:26 Is that Julian?

Eddie Rester 17:27 Julian, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 17:28 Julian of Norwich.

Eddie Rester 17:29

Julian of Norwich. Thank you. And so. So that was just comfort for me. All would be well. So as I entered into this season of being in between, carrying with that. I had a lot of friends, Chris, you are among them, who occasionally had to remind me, Eddie, all will be well. And you know, what was glorious was every conversation led to another conversation led to another conversation. You know, I got to talk with random people, that people would say, "Call this person," or "Call that person," and you know, just every conversation was encouraging. And I think part of me wanted to hole up and to just go under a rock for a while. But my friends wouldn't let me do that, old and young, wouldn't let us do that. And looking back now, I'm thankful for that. And if, I would encourage you, if you are in an in-between place, one of those spots right now. There are friends around you who want to cheer you on, who want to pull you out from under the rock. Let 'em.

Chris McAlilly 18:37

I think that's a good word. And I wonder what did you, you know, beyond kind of... I think that's helpful. It kind of provides a map. What did you learn about yourself? And what did you learn about God in that season?

Eddie Rester 18:51

I think we'll start with the second question. I think just God's faithfulness, just in little places. You know, I can't remember who said this either. You probably, since you knew Julian of Norwich, you may know this one too. You know, there's nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred. I felt like I learned, every moment in life has potential to be sacred, every meal, conversations. God just kept showing up in the strangest places. I showed up at Oxford University United Methodist Church, first Sunday of Advent. And just everything in that service spoke to where I was, from the music... Y'all, the church started Advent a Sunday early. Chris, you broke the rules there.

Chris McAlilly 19:43
I did. I did it for good reasons. If you want to learn those reasons, you can come and talk to me.

Eddie Rester 19:48

So, I think that. And then I think for me, what I learned was just keep, keep leaning in. Keep leaning in to the God who's going to show up. Keep leaning in to the God who doesn't abandon, the guy who sees, that all will be well. I mean, there was one time I texted some friends I said, really I'm in a place where you just need start texting me every few days, "It's gonna be okay." You know, since I was in elementary school, I had a job. I had work. And I didn't, and that was different. But God was faithful, and God was present, and God wasn't different. God was consistent. And that's what matters. That's what I learned mattered.

Chris McAlilly 20:31
So what about for you? What did you learn about yourself?

Eddie Rester 20:35

I think my proclivity to productivity is a danger to my soul. I remember, one Saturday or Sunday morning, laying on the sofa early in the morning, I was like, "We've got to figure out what we've got to do today, Audra." And Audra was like, "You can stop. It's okay for you to stop." And I had, it had been so long since I had been given permission to stop, that, one, I learned that my wife is very wise. And two, I just need those moments just to stop.

Chris McAlilly 21:20

Yeah, that's wisdom. And I appreciate your sharing it. And I am grateful that you're in a new place. And I'm grateful that you made it through. But I'm also grateful for the lessons that you learned during that season. Because I think that there are people that need to hear it. And so thank you. And

Eddie Rester 21:37

And let me offer this. If you're in that season, come find me. Reach out through the podcast. Find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. Don't do the Twitter's anymore. It's too dark. Find me. I'd love... We'll set up a zoom or if you're around Oxford, let's go have coffee. I'll buy you lunch.

Chris McAlilly 22:02
That sounds good. Thank you. Thank you, Eddie. And thank all of you for being with us for a little bit over 20 minutes. We won't keep you all day today. But we're grateful.

Eddie Rester 22:13
Becasue we want you to go listen to another episode.

Chris McAlilly 22:14
Go listen to another. Yeah, we just want you to be on just a steady diet on repeat of The Weight podcast. Just let it soothe your soul.

Eddie Rester 22:23 Thank you for listening.

Chris McAlilly 22:24
Thanks for being with us today. And we'll see you next week.

Eddie Rester 22:28
[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 22:37

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]