“Stories Save Lives” with Dana Trent
Show Notes:
Dana Trent is an author, professor, and preschool drug dealer, and now she’s part of the three-timers club on The Weight. She talks to Eddie and Chris about her new book, Between Two Trailers, how to live in the present with a past that continues to live with you, what it means to go home when you feel like you can’t, and how important personal connections are when you’re trying to work through trauma.
Dana is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and an assistant professor in the Humanities Department at Wake Tech Community College. She is also an ordained Baptist minister who served as a hospital chaplain, where she accompanied individuals and their families through the passage from life to death. Her new book, Between Two Trailers, is a memoir about growing up the daughter of a drug dealing father and a mentally ill mother. Dana is open and candid about the trauma of her past, and she offers us all insight and hope for finding peace and empathy when your world has fractured.
Resources:
Dana’s previous episodes on The Weight: Breaking Good and Death, Dessert, and Paperwork
Follow Dana on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
Listen to Breaking Good
Transcript:
Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 00:03
Today we're interviewing Dana Trent. Dana has been on the podcast before. She's a writer. She's a teacher. And she's just released, recently, a new book, "Between Two Trailers."
Chris McAlilly 00:14
And this is a wild ride. It's a wild ride. I'm just going to read a little bit from you know, just the cover. "Born to drug dealing parents in rural Indiana, J. Dana Trent was a preschoole, the first time she used a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King." That's just the first sentence, it goes on from there. And it's about how she navigates really adverse childhood experiences in the context of divorced parents, and between two sets of expectations and a whole lot of hard stuff. But she finds her way forward to a story of healing wounds that ended up becoming scars.
Eddie Rester 00:58
It's a story of redemption and healing. But it's the story of the hard work to move through all of that, not beyond it, not outside of it, not leaving it behind. But doing the work to move through that to discover who she truly is. And one of the things that I, we've talked to her before, I just value her authenticity, and her willingness to say, "I'm still trying to figure this thing out."
Chris McAlilly 01:25
Yeah. How do you make peace with your parents? You know, just that question. When you've struggled with your family of origin, how do you go home when you don't feel like you have a home? You know, how do you struggle with that question? And then, and she doesn't just lift up the questions. I think what you'll find in this conversation is some of the virtues that you'll need, if you're going to find your way forward with resilience. I also think that she lifts up some practices, very practical tools that you could use today to help you navigate today. And then she also gives you some resources for how you might find your way forward. And so I don't know, this is a very hopeful episode. It's also a wild story. And so, and she's a delightful person. She's just really delightful.
Eddie Rester 02:14
And one of the things she said early on is that everybody, everybody has trauma in their story, in their history. And so whatever you bring to the podcast today, I think you're going to hear some hope and some, if you're really struggling right now, some ways forward. So we're going to let you get right to it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being with us each and every week. Thank you for sharing the podcast, and this is one I think you're gonna want to share. And it may be that you want to get the boo, "Bbetween Two Trailers" by Dana Trent.
Chris McAlilly 02:44
Stories save lives. That's the line from this conversation that I will not forget. Stories save lives. [INTRO] 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 03:03
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 03:15
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 03:30
Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO] We are here today with fan of the podcast, Dana Trent, who, this is release week for her book, "Between Two Trailers." So thank you for carving out a little time to be with us this week. Oh, Eddie and Chris and Cody, thank y'all so much for having me this week.
Dana Trent 03:45
Danahas an identity apart from just being a fan of the podcast.
Eddie Rester 03:58 Does she?
Chris McAlilly 03:59 She does. She's amazing.
Eddie Rester 04:00
She's a writer. She's amazing. It really has been fun. This is the third time you've been on the podcast. You are in an elite group...
Chris McAlilly 04:09 Here he comes back.
Eddie Rester 04:11
Of people. Well, I'm just...
Dana Trent 04:13
What?! Okay, so do I need one of those like SNL jacket? Like the five-timer jacket?
Eddie Rester 04:20 That's right.
Dana Trent 04:25
Oh, I'm so honored, y'all. Thank you.
Chris McAlilly 04:27 We'llI have to merch it out.
Eddie Rester 04:28
We'll merch it out. Yeah. You're a trinitarian guest.
Dana Trent 04:33 I love it.
Eddie Rester 04:34
So this is launch week for the book, "Between Two Trailers." There was a podcast. We talked to you about the podcast a couple years, maybe just a little over a year ago about the podcast. We knew the book was coming out. A couple of nights ago from when we're recording this, Barbara Brown Taylor helped you with the book launch in Raleigh, North Carolina. You've been in People Magazine. Other folks are reviewing the book already. So what is it been like, this kind of build up and this sudden being out there with the book?
Dana Trent 05:08
Ah, you know, BBT said it best in her forward, she said, when you write a book like this, and this is true for "Between Two Trailers," you're on a lonely, you know, desert island, just you and this book, and then launch week comes and here comes the cruise ship, right, with all these people. And I'm a person who loves a cruise ship. So I'm like, bring on the party. I was ready. I was ready to launch it into the world and to share it, you know, even though it's very vulnerable to me, I was ready, because my hope is that people will see themselves in these pages. The details are different. But all of us have complicated families. Blessed are the complicated hearts. And all of us have an idea of home. And that's what this book is about. Would you just give folks who don't know you or don't know your story, just a bit of a summary of kind of where you're coming from and kind of the background that leads to the memoir. Yes. So when I was four years old, I was expelled from preschool for peeling paint off the wall. And when I went home from school that day, and I walked into the trailer, my father, who was a drug trafficker in western Indiana said, "Well. Well, kiddo, I guess school ain't for you. I'm gonna train you up to be a hustler." And he handed me a razor blade, and he taught me how to cut drugs for his drug trafficking business in western Indiana.
Eddie Rester 06:36 Wow.
Dana Trent 06:37
So the book is about my being a preschool drug dealer, growing up between two trailers with a schizophrenic father, who obviously didn't make great choices in childcare and then a mother who was very listless and depressed and stayed in bed all the time, because she was struggling with several personality disorders. And so the book is about that experience and about those adverse childhood experiences and trauma, which we all have a glimpse of, maybe not in ththosee details. We all aren't wielding razor blades at age four and learning how to do knife fights. But we all have something in our past that is painful, and knowing that the past is alive, so how do we work through those pain points?
Chris McAlilly 07:28
My wife is a social worker and a counselor. And so I'm familiar with the language of ACEs. You mentioned adverse childhood experiences. Could you talk a little bit about that framework kind of as a tool for mental health providers and for folks in the Health Department, folks that are trying to help kids in tough situations?
Dana Trent 07:55
Yeah, ACEs arrive in childhood homes from ages zero to 17. They're in three categories: neglect, abuse, and violence. And over 64% of Americans have at least one ACE, and that most frequent one is divorce. And you may think, well, divorce may not be very traumatic, but it usually falls under that category of neglect. Because at some point during a divorce, a kiddo is often torn, or there is a contentious household or there is stress. And so 64% of us have at least 1/8. And the score goes, you know, zero to 10. My ACE score is seven, which means that I'm 360% more likely to develop a chronic disease. And also, typically, I would die 20 years earlier than my peers. So the data shows--and Chris, your wife knows this--that as your adverse childhood experiences increase, your adult health outcome get worse and worse. And so social workers do the amazing work of matching families with resources to help prevent some of those unhealthy adult health outcomes.
Chris McAlilly 09:13
One of our recent conversations was with Dr. Kim Wagner, who teaches preaching at Princeton, and she's recently written a book called "Fractured Ground" about preaching in the wake of mass trauma. We talked a lot about the way... One of the categories that she uses to describe what happens when people experience trauma or traumatic events is that their narrative fractures. And in a lot of ways, I think, you know, that's a way of kind of just naming the narrative implications of adverse childhood experiences. I wonder if, for you, you know, one of the things that you've done is you've taken the pieces of your story and you've crafted them into a narrative, into a memoir. How has the process of writing the memoir been a step towards perhaps healing, or offering a kind of meaning within the context of your story? I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that.
Dana Trent 10:22
You know, Joan Didion famously said that she wrote to figure things out, and I take on that mantle as well. You know, writing is the only way I can process my life. And for all of us, the past is alive, you know, that's not unique. And y'all see that in the church, and I'm eager to hear kind of how this shows up for you in church communities, related to trauma. But the idea for me was, you know, I got a grant from the Louisville Institute in 2020 to research my home county of Vermillion County, Indiana, to research child poverty, substance misuse, and mental health. And Vermillion County is a very, very poor county. And so I started sort of, I put on my professor hat, right, and I did the data work. And I was writing about that. We talked about the podcast, and then I thought this book was going to be a story about the data, right. I thought it was going to be kind of an arm's length story. But then to your point, Chris and Eddie, I realized that I couldn't let my own trauma fester because it was coming out in other ways, in unhealthy behaviors and coping mechanisms. And for me, this book, this book is the integration of those fractured narratives. This is putting back the pieces of a divided life, which I could only figure out through writing, you know, coming full circle to Joan Didion, that's the way I figure things out, but you know, people don't have to write. There's all kinds of tools that we can do to heal those fractures. But I love that idea. And for me, the church community is a place where you go to start mending and recasting those broken bones.
Eddie Rester 11:59
I think for me, personally, that's exactly what happened for me. Some of the pieces of childhood, growing up, that the church gave me a deep understanding of identity that was not whether it was academics at school, or father is a businessman, or different things, parents divorcing along the way, and the church was able to give me identity, an identity that said, "You are a child of God, no matter what. No matter what you fail at. No matter what you achieve." And for me, that's one of those things that really has helped me. And I think what the church can do at its best is give people that kind of identity to talk about the past not being-- the past is never past. The past lives in every conversation we have. The past lives in every interaction, every reaction. I see so often, gosh, I think, I can't remember if it was a guest or someone said, we need to live out of our scars, not out of our wounds. And so many of us live out of those, the wounds, the brokenness, and it remains broken as long as we continue to live out of it. I think a lot of the... You know, we have a lot more ways to express our anger and our frustration now than we used to, and very few guardrails on that. And so much of that, I think, comes out of that.
Dana Trent 13:04 So well said.
Eddie Rester 13:06
For you, and I know your grandparents, if I'm remembering correctly, are part of your story of kind of, "okay, there's more to you than this." Say a little bit about grandparents or other folks that kind of came around you in your life that really began to help you see that you're more than just this.
Dana Trent 13:53
Yeah. And Eddie, that's so well said. And, you know, it all comes back to Jesus, this idea of Jesus didn't surround himself with perfect people. They were all wounded people who were working on those wounds and scars, that narrative. And so the church is the place where we can rediscover or discover wholeness. And Jesus is the original facilitator of that in our Christian tradition. You're 100% right. And that speaks to my grandparents. And for me, that was the glimpse of childhood, right? That was a glimpse of home that I didn't have in those two trailers growing up. And so my grandparents are instrumental in showing me a faith where hope and healing and wholeness is possible. And for me, it came through those 9:30 sharp Sunday School hours of Bible songs and Bible drills. And more important than that, it came through community, right? And feeling connected, because at the end of the day, I haven't met one single human who doesn't want to belong. My grandparents raised me and Dana Community Bible Church. They lived in Dana, Indiana, and we lived in Clinton, Indiana in a trailer out there and they were 20 minutes apart. And so in the trailer, there were drugs. My parents sort of worshipped at the altar of Dr. Robert Schuller who was a very famous evangelical TV preacher. But at my grandparents' house, you know, while my parents didn't have food because their faith didn't fill a refrigerator, I'd go to my grandparents house 20 minutes away. My aunt and uncle, my two cousins, I'd go to Sunday School class. I'd learned songs. There was food on the table. There were adults who got out of bed and who took care of kiddos and let kiddos be kiddos.
Chris McAlilly 15:46
I think that's one of the threads that runs through through your work. But it's also a deep thread that runs through the genre of Christian memoir, I think, all the way back to, you know, the original Christian memoir that was written by Augustine, "Confessions." It really is this narrative of desire for home, you know, the sense of longing, aching, desiring a place to call home, and then the places that you find yourself both maybe offering that and not offering that. I wonder, as you continue to think about, I mean, that's a part of the narrative that you're writing about is where can a person find a home. But I also think it's a deep part of the spiritual journey that I think a lot of people struggle with. And I wonder if you might talk about how that's manifested in your life, some of the ways in which, maybe some of the new discoveries through the process of writing this book about home, and then maybe something that you would offer to someone who's struggling with that.
Dana Trent 17:03
Yeah. So two things for me, you know, I was raised in western Indiana. But then suddenly, at age six, I was plucked from that gritty Midwestern drug trafficking household trailer living to North Carolina, to central North Carolina, where my mother, who was a polite southern debutante, but with severe mental illnesses, wanted to expunge my Indiana record, you know. She didn't ever want me to say I was from Indiana. She gave me this southern accent. You can see which accent won out.
Eddie Rester 17:34 That's right. It always does.
Dana Trent 17:36
It always does. God bless the South, right.
Eddie Rester 17:38 That's right.
Dana Trent 17:40
But it was this idea of I left home when I was six, and I had to erase home. And so for me, it was a matter of survival, because I was scared to death that my mother, the one parent I seemingly had left, would abandon me. And so home was always that complicated idea of geography and trailers, and subsidized housing when we moved to North Carolina, and then homelessness in North Carolina, bankruptcy, which happened to my mom and I, once we moved. And so it was always a complicated idea of people and places. But what strikes me about Christ and about the church's narrative, and Augustine especially, too, is this idea that Jesus didn't have a permanent home place. He didn't have a house with a picket fence and nice garden for folks to come over for happy hour. He found home when he went out and taught and preached, and he made home where he was in community. And so I think for folks who struggle with going home to a place because home is triggering or home with abusive or violent and they can't physically go home, I think Christ offers us that consolation and that hope that home is where people are, people who love us, people who offer us hope, people who offer us the message of repair and reconciliation and resilience. That's home.
Eddie Rester 19:11
One of the things that is also a thread through your book is just a sense of redemption. That's part of your story. When you think about your parents, and both of your parents have passed away now. And so how did the relationship with your parents end before they passed away? And how has the redemption of that continued even beyond that, of those relationships and your understanding of them?
Dana Trent 19:38
Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't know if y'all have this experience. Tell me if you do. Sometimes death makes it possible for us to have a different kind of relationship with our parents that isn't possible in life.
Eddie Rester 19:55 Right.
Dana Trent 19:56
And for me, that was that redemptive aspect, you know, because my father was this quasi-cult leader from western Indiana, who thought himself a prophet and cast visions, and obviously was schizophrenic. My mother was the debutante southern beauty queen, who had severe anxiety and depression and spent months in inpatient psychiatric hospitals, and really was never able to repair and redeem her childhood experience of her father's suicide when she was 19. And so for each of my parents, the truth was always triggering. And so a truth about redemption, a truth about self awareness of mental illness or chaos or trauma was not possible for them in life, and so for me, the redemption came when I knew they were finally at peace. And that was when I was 36 years old, exactly seven years ago. And so this idea of you know, Mary Carr says you should not write anything down. You need to take seven years, right?
Eddie Rester 21:06 Right.
Dana Trent 21:07
And let a story percolate. And that's really been true for me too, like I needed that sort of... You know, you don't want to wish for people's death, right? So you do what you can while they're living, but there is a piece afforded to us, that redemption, that sometimes just isn't possible in life.
Eddie Rester 21:27
I think that's so important, because so many people that I've encountered as a pastor through the years have not been able, I mean, that's part of their struggle is that they can't make peace with their parents who their parents are their parents influence on them. And I think that's hopeful, because, again, not that you wish for anybody to pass, but that the work of redemption and relationship continues even after the physical relationship ends. That God continues to work on you, and the vision you have and the peace that you can receive from that. And I think, for folks who... I just think that's hopeful, because so many people... I mean, I'm 53 years old now. I'm the old man in the room here, as Cody and Chris remind me quite often. But now I'm in that, my peers and I are are in that in-between phase where now your kids are somewhat grown, your parents are aging, and you're just kind of in-between caring for still kids and caring for parents. And so a lot of folks, there's built up resentment, or, you know, just struggles with parents that didn't save or different things. And so, yeah, I think that God continues to work. How did you, while they were living, kind of carve out an understanding of this is who they are yet, this is who I am, so that their choices didn't always define your life and your life choices. Because you went to college, you went to Duke Divinity School, very different trajectory. So how did you begin to differentiate in there?
Dana Trent 23:16
So, you know, first, like, backing up, that's the Eastertide message, right? That death doesn't have the final word, right? And that there is resurrection. And there is hope, beyond death. And so I know as pastors, you all preach that. And you also share that in your pastoral care session. And I think for me, maybe I'll relate to the next one, too, is that I really didn't differentiate. From a young age, I became that little helper Revy, as my mother called me, short for Reverend. I became the human Tupperware container, the little girl who always kept her hands open, so that my parents could fill up whatever they needed at that time. And I never learned how to be my own person. So when I say "between two trailers," it means I was a midfielder, right, between two trailers literally, but also between two parents who wanted two different daughters, between two parents who extended empathy outward to other people that never extended empathy to each other, between two parents who were keen that I would continue to be the perfect Enneagram 2 people pleaser-helper-minister, such that I really didn't develop my own identity until they died. And I want people to take away from this book that that work can happen sooner. You don't have to wait. You can begin that journey. It just takes a little, a few morsels of courage and a few tools really. But that didn't happen for me until after they died. And that's far too late, you know. This book is the book I wish I had had 20 years ago.
Eddie Rester 25:05 Wow.
Chris McAlilly 25:05
So if the book is the map, and you know, it's not going to be the map for everyone, but for some it may very well be the map that helps someone orient themselves within confusion or chaos or fracture in their own story, what are some of the steps? Or if courage is, accessing courage and hope, those seem like two of the virtues that are needed, are there other virtues that you would lift up? Or are there other steps at the beginning of the journey that you would name?
Dana Trent 25:42
Yes, so two things. My parents always said they were mental health professionals who had mental health records as thick as phonebooks. Right. So that meant that they had been on each side, both as the helpers and the patients. And on Sunday mornings, when they would each side, both as the helpers and the patients. And on Sunday mornings, when they would watch the TV preachers, they would take their keys out of their pockets and jingle them in front of my face, and say, "Budgie,: which is what they called me, "the only difference between us and them is who's got the keys." And what they meant by that was that they knew that they may be the ones locking patients in today, and they may be the ones locked in tomorrow.
Eddie Rester 26:19 Oh, wow.
Dana Trent 26:20
And so yeah, right. I mean, it's that awareness for anyone whom the world had marginalized, subjugated, or oppressed, my parents taught me that through and through, you always have empathy for those who they called beat down dogs, you know. Look for the ways you can help folks whom society has rejected. Now, they didn't often extend that to each other. But that was the first lesson for me. So I had to pull out that empathy, that muscle memory and exercise it on myself and on them when I was writing the book. And one of the ways I did that was to shake those mental Polaroids, you know, we all have those memories. And so shaking them out, seeing what's there. And my healing came from journaling. Every day, I have journaled since sixth grade. And that has been my way of seeing what is happening in my heart, my soul, and my brain. And people can start that today, you know, just exploring the pain points, because Eddie, you said something a minute ago about anger. We have so much anger in our churches, in our denominations, in our counties and our country. You know, the pundits and the politicians want us to remain angry and divided, right. But a chaplain once told me, and maybe y'all heard this, too, in CPE, that behind anger is always pain. Always, always. So you know, folks to be curious and ask the why questions about those pain points.
Chris McAlilly 27:49
So, I'm coming back to Kim Wagner. I don't know if you've read her book, but it is extraordinary. It would... The two of you should be in conversation with one another because I think the intersection... I mean, ultimately, Kim, if you're out there, if you're listening, you should be teaching Dana's book to your kids. And then also, Dana, I think, you know, I think pairing these two episodes together would help pastors figure out alright, your stories, stories of pain, and a story of where things fracture, but then how do you preach out of that? And, if you're not a preacher, if that's not your vocation, it really is, how do you begin to make sense out of that? And one of the images that stuck with me from from Kim's conversation was--and it was lifted up when you said, "shake the Polaroids"--one of the things that she said, there are these pictures, these memories that are like pictures. And if you were to like take a box of pictures, physical pictures out, in the wake of death, or at a hard moment, you just throw them out on the dining room table, and you just pick one up at a time and you study it. And the words that you used were "explore the pain points." And in some ways, that's not a narrative, right? It's not yet to a through line from beginning to end. But there is meaning there. You can kind of explore the pain points, you can pick up one picture at a time, you can look at it, you can set it down, and it may be nonlinear. It may not be a beginning, middle and end, but you can pick one up over here and you can pick one up over there. And that process can help get you to a point where you can actually tell a new story. It's just a really powerful idea to me, and I still hadn't figured out how to preach like that. But I do think that that in some ways is the work of lament, and I think it's one of the ways that you get from wounds to scars.
Eddie Rester 29:45
I think it's also the work of true friendship. I mean, true community helps you sort your story because you can, as you get to know people, you can reflect your story off of theirs, you know. You know, I see in Chris certain things that I didn't have in my family growing up, or things that I did have that were different. You can kind of begin to help sort things, "Oh, that was normal. I'm not the only person who experienced that," or, or "Oh, I'm glad that this was part of my story." I mean, it helps you begin to sort.
Dana Trent 29:57 Yes.
Eddie Rester 30:15
Now I want to go back to what you said a few minutes ago about home. You know, I was thinking Jesus didn't have a home, "The birds of the air have nests, foxes have their dens. I don't have home." But home is where we find community. And so where did you begin to really experience that and find that? Because I think that's, you know, as the Surgeon General says, we have an epidemic of loneliness.
Dana Trent 30:40
I'm so glad you brought that up. Thanks, Eddie, yes.
Eddie Rester 30:42
And so, and everything I read right now, particularly about Gen Z. And you know, Jonathan Hite just wrote a book about Gen... Anyway, I think this is one of the pieces for the church, but for us as well to find healing, is to find home with other people. So how did you begin to find that? How do you see that as a part of your story, or just what people need?
Dana Trent 31:08
Yes. And to your point, Dr. Murthy, you know, says we have to establish a culture of connection, right? And Jesus is the original, in our tradition, the OG of the culture of connection and community. And I love the image, Chris, of those Polaroids on the dining room table, you know, and may it be so for us as church. And two things come to mind. The first is preaching this lectionary year on Mark one. Unclean spirits, right. That's my favorite, favorite, favorite Gospel lesson in the whole wide world, which I know makes me a very unpopular preacher. But what I love about it is because Jesus spoke to the man. He saw the man. He acknowledged the man. And I think so often--the man with the unclean spirits, for those who are unfamiliar with that narrative. But it's this idea that so often we ignore, right. We ignore the folks in church that are hurting. We ignore the folks in our community who are hurting. We are unwilling to be that culture of connection. And one of the ways that first saw it is in my classroom. You know, I've been a professor for 13 years, and I know exactly what you're talking about, Eddie, with the most anxious generation. That is true. The data shows it, and my experience as a teacher of freshmen and sophomores shows it, too. And so one of the things I do in my classroom that we can do in the church, is that every class period, every small group, every fellowship time, every worship service, you know, you can encourage church folk to say, look around, and talk to the person next to you. Tell them one thing about your day. Or if you see someone in church you don't know, go introduce yourself, even if you talk about the weather. It's this idea of, again, fostering community and belonging. And Jesus was so good at that. He wasn't good at small talk, right? He went deep, quickly.
Eddie Rester 33:01 Right.
Dana Trent 33:02
But the church is really good at small talk. And that's an entryway for us. And so I tell my students, I begin every class with a think, pair, share. I give them one thing to think about, which is what we do in church all the time when we preach. And then one thing to pair up with another person and to share what they thought about. And then the big sharing and community of let's share with each other, because like a student at Duke Divinity School told me two weeks ago, testimonies save lives.
Eddie Rester 33:33 Right.
Dana Trent 33:34
Yes. And in our epidemic of mental unwellness, and our suicide rates and our rates of anxiety and depression, stories save lives, because we feel less alone.
Eddie Rester 33:50
A couple of weeks ago, at church, here at OU, the sermon was a conversation between one of the pastors and a man who's in a small group, young father, but his story... It was well crafted, well done, but really connected with so many people. And I think and so many of our... So many folks who come on the podcast talk about the power of story. And I really feel like if we're gonna find healing, it's through one another's stories. I just don't think we... Because the church has always been come sit and soak, hear... The preacher will preach. You will face the preacher. You will march back out the same way you came in while the music plays that people have not--and for a lot of good reasons, too--people have not seen the church as a place that really can build helpful, healthy, healing community. But this, I think, is our moment for that.
Dana Trent 34:56
It is. Bishop Jo Bailey Wells over in the UK says, roots down, walls down. Proximity reduces prejudice. And that's true in our church where so many of us feel so angry and bitter towards each other. And so to your point, our willingness, instead of sitting and soaking and making it linear in and out, our willingness to walk that labyrinth. And the same path that leads us in together in community towards the illumination in the center is the same path that leads us out in spiritual practice. But it leads us out as changed people. And we can't do that if we keep that arm's length, right, and intellectualize the gospel, and intellectualize each other. Because, you know, in my college classroom, I say no computers, no cell phones, and Lord have mercy do I get a ton of whining on that. But sure as the world, they realized that these pieces of technology or these stoic ideas, you know, they are a wall. They're a wall to communication, and they are a wall to connection. And I think so many times when we put down those walls, and we listen for story and humanity, that's when the connection happens in church and outside the church.
Chris McAlilly 36:17
Are there other practices that have been helpful for you? You've talked about scripture reading, particularly the stories of Jesus. You talked about journaling. You've talked about putting down technology. Are there any other practices that you find helpful, as you've kind of navigated your way through to the capacity to actually tell the story in a public way?
Dana Trent 36:43
There's two in particular. Being willing to ask the why question, right? Being curious about each other helps us move from bitter to joyful or bitter to understanding. Why do you believe what you believe? Why are you feeling pain? You know, all the tell-me questions, right? Seeking to understand even my own parents in my own story. And then another tool that I use for everyone, and I wish the church would do this more. So pastors, pastors, I hope you will choose to do from your bossy teacher as a piece of homework to do on Sunday morning. It's just take a deep breath. You know? Job 33, verse four, "the Spirit of God is within me, the breath of the Almighty gives me life."
Chris McAlilly 37:31
All right. Let's go. Job. What? What was that? I gotta write it down. I didn't write it down. Job...
Dana Trent 37:37 It's Job 33, verse four.
Chris McAlilly 37:39
Job 33, verse 4. And it says...
Dana Trent 37:42
And it says this. So you inhale: "the Spirit of God is within me." Exhale, "and the breath of the Almighty gives me life."
Chris McAlilly 37:56
Eddie didn't want the blessing because he didn't do it.
Eddie Rester 37:58
I didn't breathe in and out.
Chris McAlilly 38:00
He didn't want the blessing.
Eddie Rester 38:01 I'm sorry.
Chris McAlilly 38:02
Dana was offering the blessing and the practice and Eddie rejected it. Eddie, tell me more about why you rejected Dana's advice. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Dana Trent 38:11
Tell me more. Chris, I love it.
Eddie Rester 38:11
You've done... But I don't feel like you're asking to understand right now, Chris, I feel like you're asking simply to judge. I'm feeling very judged right now.
Chris McAlilly 38:20
I'm very curious about why you didn't do that.
Eddie Rester 38:23
Well, I was looking at my notes. I've been taking copious notes of what Dana's saying.
Chris McAlilly 38:30
Is there anything... Tell me more about your notes. Is there anything that you'd like to say to
Dana?
Dana Trent 38:36
Well, just a side note, this is legit turning into a "Between Two Ferns" interview. It makes me so
happy.
Eddie Rester 38:42
Which we were joking before we came on that "Between Two Trailers" for me just it triggers
"Between Two Ferns," which if you don't know what that is, don't go look it up.
Chris McAlilly 38:52
No, do look it up. It's awesome.
Eddie Rester 38:53
Go look it up. It's a very funny thing.
Dana Trent 38:54
Do look it up. It's very theological, right?
Eddie Rester 38:56
You know, one of the things that I learned about myself in the past year, as you talk about screens and things, is that often I would bring my computer to take notes, I'm putting that in quotes right now, in meetings. But what I found was it gave me a gateway to check my texts, to check my email, to go on Facebook, and not be present. And so I give a commercial for this technology. It's called the reMarkable. It's just basically a note taking screen. That's all it does. Doesn't connect to anything else. But it allows me when I need to take notes to be present with people, rather than to be distracted from people. And what I've learned about myself is that, you know, we all think we can multitask well. Nobody can multitask well. That's the biggest lie ever. And then, in moments when we need to be present, like in your class, when students need to be present for the lesson, for the wisdom or to be present with each other, we all really I think, in our day and age, need to begin to think clearly about, okay, what's distracting me from this moment? And how do I, when I feel like I have to pull my phone out, how do I acknowledge that's going to distract me? And how do I? So anyway, you've given just lots of different directions I've been thinking about. One thing... I want to hear from you some encouragement for folks, because there's some people listening right now who feel trapped, whether it's a toxic relationship with a spouse or a significant other, or maybe they're caught in a friend circle that really isn't healthy, or maybe it is with their parents, what would you say to them today, other than to run to the far side of the nation to escape? How can they begin where they are to think about their life in a different way?
Dana Trent 40:56
It starts with going home. That's what I discovered in "Between Two Trailers." You have to go home. You don't have to go home literally, especially if home is triggering or home and violent or home is a place of abuse. But you have to come home to yourself. And for me, home was where the war was, you know, it was the battlefield. But a battlefield is about people. It's about wounds and rage and injuries and the casings of blown up lives, literally. But home is also where the healing is. Because you have to go back and uncover the pain. You can do it by shaking the Polaroids. You can do it with deep breath. You can do with journaling. You can do it in a church community. You could do it with licensed professionals, like Chris's wife, you know, or your therapist. It's this idea of you do have to go home because that is how the injuries, those fresh wounds, scar over. Because the past is always alive, it's always with us. But we cannot let those wounds fester, because we know what happened. We know that infections come. We know that illness comes. We know that it bubbles up no matter what. And so at the end of the day, we have to go home, and "Between Two Trailers" is about telling people, for anyone that wants it, there is always a path home.
Eddie Rester 42:30
I have been thinking about William Faulkner, every time, you know, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." We cannot cut ourselves off. As you grow older you learn, the moments of childhood, whether it was with friends or enemies or families, it doesn't die. So figure it out, invest in it, go home through it to find your identity, your true identity in Christ, and pull those pieces back together of who you truly are.
Chris McAlilly 43:06
I do think that... I do think that is the power of Easter is that it does give a narrative structure for deep, deep pain. And, you know, this idea that Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, that gives a narrative framework when you don't have a narrative framework for navigating your way through the hardest, most difficult, most traumatic situations of life. And it says that God goes to the most abandoned and forsaken place that any human being could ever go. And in that place, Jesus cries out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Particularly in the Gospel of Mark, and then says, "I will not forsake you." You know, that on the far side of the worst thing that could ever happen, that you could ever do or that somebody could do to you, or even death, "I will not forsake you." It's a powerful, it's just a powerful truth, if you allow it space and room in your heart to take root. We had this conversation with Danjuma Gibson, who is a professor in Grand Rapids.
Eddie Rester 44:18 At Calvin.
Chris McAlilly 44:19
Calvin Seminary. And he goes back and he talks... What he's doing is he's going back and looking at some of the civil rights heroes, and exploring their stories of pain and courage and resilience and, ultimately, hope. Two particularly from Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Wells. And one of the things that he talks about is you've got to explore your story 100 times, 150 times until something new can take root in the structure of your story. And I've held on to that. That's a really powerful idea. And I think I take the same encouragement from what you've offered Dana, just your willingness, the courage that you have to tell your story and to do it in a way that allows us to explore our own stories in light of the kind of... I think of memoirs like cartography. I think of them as offering us these trail maps through the wilderness of life. And, you know, if we have the capacity to go deeper and deeper in our stories and tell them over and over again, sometimes you discover things. You discover that your story does have these connecting points to the structure of the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus. And ultimately, you can find your way to something like hope and healing. And you've offered that, I think, to us today, and so I'm super grateful for that.
Eddie Rester 45:49
Yeah. Dana, thank you for your time.
Dana Trent 45:51 Thank you so much.
Eddie Rester 45:52
I know you got a busy, busy schedule, and you worked us in in launch week and very grateful for that. So thank you for that.
Chris McAlilly 46:00
Go out there and crush it. Just go all over the country and all over the world.
Dana Trent 46:05
Well now that I've got my three-timer jacket, now that I've got my three-timer blazer from The Weight Podcast, I'm ready. I'm ready.
Chris McAlilly 46:11
You've sat with Barbara Brown Taylor. I know. But now you've sat with Eddie and Chris and so you're ready.
Eddie Rester 46:17
What a great week you've had.
Chris McAlilly 46:18 You know, just awesome.
Dana Trent 46:20
An amazing week. Oh, "Tetween Two Trailers," "Between Two Ferns." It's amazing. Like, does it get any better than this? And thank y'all for your messages of redemption, reconciliation, hope, home and community and learning from history and our elders and learning from each other and also learning from the Gospel narratives. Thank you all for also providing the map.
Eddie Rester 46:41 Amen. Thank you, Dana.
Chris McAlilly 46:44 Peace and blessings.
Dana Trent 46:44
Thanks y'all. Thank you so much.
Eddie Rester 46:46
[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 46:54
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]