Breaking Out of the %*$# Box

Warning! One unnamed host (who knows who he is) used some choice phrasing that may strip the grease stains out of your earbuds. Our genteel, refined listeners and sensitive types are advised to find a different episode.

That said, this one got real. Très piquant! So, you know, don't listen with your kids in the car. And probably don't recommend it to Aunt Darla, who already thinks you're a heathen for watching R-rated movies. In fact, don't listen to it at all. There's nothing here you can't live without. Not a single takeaway of note. Really, we'd recommend something more, you know, edifying. 

But if you're not put off by such debased verbiage, or if you're just curious what "getting out of the box" means, or what even is the box and who's telling us what boxes we should be in now, and what's going on? Then you're probably going to have to listen. Just don't come whining to us later.

For bolder, blunt writers and publishing types who feel beaten down, or who long for some honest truth, and/or a different kind of supportive, generous community, please enjoy freely. And please direct all hate mail to Aunt Darla.

Publishing Disrupted is at PublishingDisrupted.substack.com

Mick Silva is at MickSilvaEditing.substack.com

David Morris is at dvdmorris.substack.com, LakeDriveBooks.com, and Hyponymous.com.

Transcript

Mick 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to Publishing Disrupted. I'm editor Mick Silva.

David 0:06

And I am publisher and literary agent David Morris.

Mick 0:10

And we are two former Christian publishing industry professor professionals, I can say it, uh, learning to navigate the massive independent book market.

David 0:20

Yes.

Mick 0:21

Woohoo. Yes. And I I think as in being in publish in disrupting publishing, we need to be unprofessional. Absolutely.

David 0:29

Yeah.

Mick 0:30

More unprofessionalness.

David 0:32

Yes. I want to be unprofessional. Damn it. Damn it.

Mick 0:37

Cursing filth and foul and swears. Dirty swears!

David 0:40

Well, Yeah. I mean, unprofessional can be just like creating chaos. Right.

Mick 0:47

Instead of order.

David 0:48

Yes.

Mick 0:49

No. Yeah. Yeah.

David 0:49

Let's break out of the boxes. There's too much order for sure.

Mick 0:52

Well, and we we went to too much um Christian education and schooling and churching and all of this in our early years. So now we just want to mess things up.

David 1:03

Yeah. And we're kind of stuck in that pattern, too. You know. We we just want to be children because we never got to be children. But now we can't stop. Oh my gosh, that's so genetic. We can't actually grow up.

Mick 1:14

Our poor children, you know. Who's gonna be the adult here? Anyway, we're already getting into it. Uh many recent changes in the industry have kind of forced us into this role of disrupting. And so we we want to continue to disrupt um in good ways the book publishing industry. But we we also believe that books still matter and uh more more than ever in some ways. So uh basically having both shifted from traditional Christian publishing uh roles, uh in specifically evangelical Christian, but we want to discuss challenges and opportunities we see for authors in this space. And and as we continue to work with people like our our guest in the last episode, Marla Taviano, who are identifying some of the just you know discomfort um that they're experiencing, whether that's you know, having published in Christian publishing and now feeling a little bit outside of the the mainstream, or feeling like "why am I being shunned or not not even considered for publication?" Um it's because maybe you're falling into a gap, you know, between general and Christian markets that's that's always existed. Um, in many ways, I think has gotten better by some measures, but then has also gotten worse. And and I think some authors I hear from all the time are are continuing to see this and just extensions of that old, you know, messy middle where you don't fit in the in the marketplace.

David 2:43

So the messy middle is always there. Yeah. And um yeah, it's just it's sometimes when I think there's no getting back to like chaos and organization when there's no uh when there's no organization, you tend to think that your messy middle is small. But it could be that it's really big.

Mick 3:04

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's one of the problems that we have is all the authors think that they're the only ones. Yeah. Or or maybe they it's just a small, you know, offshoot of misfits. Right. It's not right, which is actually the majority.

David 3:18

Which makes me want to come back to something we were talking about before the mics were turned on, and that is um so I'm gonna keep I'm gonna try to keep identities really, really vague here. Smart.

Mick 3:28

Yes, yes.

David 3:29

But um we were talking about how there's an author that we know. Um well, let me just put it this way there's an author that I was chasing early in my Lake Drive books existence, um who is a grandchild of a very, very well known You'd know the name Evangelical author and figurehead. Right. Um and that that grandchild completely deconstructed.

Mick 4:04

Yeah.

David 4:05

I mean, you know, everybody has their own sort of ways of defining that and their own means and their own experiences that they're coming from and that they're going to, but completely outside of the world that this person was destined for, you would think. And then um I just heard last night about a very similar situation, a grandchild of a very, very, very famous, iconic, iconic um you know, um evangelical figure and um iconic from a book publishing point of view. Grandchild has is is not is not there, is not in that world.

Mick 4:54

Not in the camp anymore.

David 4:55

Right. Yeah, right. Um anecdotes, okay. Right, sure. Maybe outliers, uh statistical deviations off of the bell curve. No, not really. I know, right? That's how it wants to be painted. There's a and there's a um there's uh a new, I'm not sure, like nonprofit org that's forming for ex evangelicals um called uh 2012. Okay. Headed up by Heather Kronk. Um and I'm and I'm happy to name that out loud. And I get their emails and I think she's been getting, you know, she has read up the latest statistics. Right. I mean, I mean, we've all read about how the religious nuns N-O-N-E-S, they're comprised of a number of of different folks. Um you could even but I think she's made extrapolations to how many people are actually ex-evangelical, ex-evangelical. And the number she's using is 15 million. Wow. Out of a country that's 330 million, um, you know, 15 million is I don't know what that is, 7%. But um that's that's a significant number. And that's just some something that's identified by social studies surveys, um and and sort of very stark categories that we assign to these things.

Mick 6:22

That's that's self-identified, right? So that's people who are willing to acknowledge it.

David 6:26

Yeah. But when you right, willing to acknowledge it in a survey or of some kind doesn't count all those who are going to church less, less frequently than they used to, um, those who are kind of struggling and they're still in church. There's a there's a different ways of looking at it. Sure. Um much wider movement going on than just, you know, if you can put a number on one, if you can put a number on something, it probably means it's kind of like that thing where, you know, if you're in a classroom and you have a question, it probably means everyone a lot of other people have that question. Well, these 15 million are probably the fifth are probably the one student who has the question and has raised their hand. That's right. So who who else is there? So we're not alone, getting back to what you were saying right ago, which I think I totally got away from. No, no, yeah.

Mick 7:14

I think well, just recapping, like uh prominent evangelicals having children and grandchildren that are defectors of a sort, um, or at least are acknowledging that they have some reservations, whether that's about the um actual theology or the method in which it's being promoted, I think that you know deserves some parsing. But like we particularly you and I uh have so much knowledge, like I've used the term overchurched before. It's a very useful term to me. I feel that every time I I'm confronted with anything having to do with with church these days. Um, the church at large, capital C, I feel very differently about because that's an ideal. That's something that I mean, I think, you know, whether you like it or not, you're part of the church because you were born into it. You know, it's kind of like my chemical makeup. I can't help but be part of the church at large. Yes, right? I represent something to people, whether I like it or not. Um, do I go to church? Hell no. Do I do I feel like I belong in church? No. Hell no. I never have. And I never, I don't feel like I ever will, but I'm not gonna say never. Uh-huh. Would I like to find that ideal Capital C church in a community and in a building? Of course I would love to find that. It's not like I'm against it, but like people who say that they're not going anymore, it's different than they sit than those who say, I don't believe this anymore, right? That's yeah, that's not the same thing. And so I think they get like relegated to this outlier status kind of reflexively by the in-group and the in-crowd who says, Oh, well, you have questions, you have doubts, that must mean you're deconstructing. No, I think it's just natural, it's normal if you're like confused or you even just have a question, seek out the answer to that question instead of like doubling down on what you're supposed to believe. Yeah, that's all that means to me. Um, we we could go on and on, but like uh I think that's that's important because um we had talked about what do we want to talk about this time? And you said, let's talk about your book. And I'm like, Well, let's let's talk about your book, because I like like like the idea of losing faith, because yours is a dissert, it came from a dissertation, but it's like uh you know, losing faith is what you're all about. Like you have studied this, you like studiously studied this certain way, yeah. Yeah, but like as a doctor of of you know yes psychology, like this is and and religion, like I think this is really um significant, and it's part of the the reasons for my deep respect and appreciation for you. And um, I mean it it has created our friendship, it's created this podcast. I just feel like um, yeah, you were my boss for a while, but like people don't know all of the history that we're coming from and that that we have. Like, I I'm pretty open about the fact that like I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just wanted to write, like kind of my whole life. I just wanted to write books. Yeah. And so it made sense for me to go toward editing. And it made sense for me to go toward Christian editing because that's where I was coming from. I was a Westmont grad. I had some of the, you know, um I had a BA so I could get hired. You know, I had some of the credentials that I could follow that path, and I just did. So I sort of fell into it. Yeah, but I've always wanted to write. You fell into the boxes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and now I don't. Now I'm just kind of like, oh, I don't know. I don't know that I even want to be called a Christian sometimes. Yeah.

David 10:50

Um the boxes. I I I that's a really tired um metaphor. Sure. Being out of the box or in the box, or no one ever talks about being in the box. They just say, let's get out of the box. Well, what is let's talk about let's talk about for a minute, like what's what does it be like, what's it like to be in the box of the box? Do we even know what's inside the box? Most of the time we're not talking about that. Right. Usually it's a phrase that's used to like disrupt, or that's not even I don't even mean that in a good way. It's disrupt you in a bad way, I think.

Mick 11:20

Sure. Yeah. Almost as a bludgeon, like, you know, be quiet or else you're out. Yeah. Yeah.

David 11:26

Yeah. Or or let's just distract ourselves from the key problem that we're really that's really in front of us and go find other problems to solve that don't really matter that much.

Mick 11:35

There you go. Yeah. Spiritual bypassing. Yeah. Yeah, that happens a lot. Let's let's define spiritual bypassing. Uh, you know, when you put a memory verse on something.

David 11:43

But you were you were like we fall fall into the boxes. Um I I've been thinking about this too in terms of um just uh you know, commerce and marketplace, bureaucracy, um you know, the post-industrial society. Um you know, we we all find our way into uh like the structures that are there. Right. Um and that's uh you know, that isn't always a structure that is healthy. Um it may seem like millions and millions and millions of people are in those structures, uh, but it doesn't mean that they aren't, you know, um maybe the worst version of those structures. And the United States, you know, we're the wealthiest country in the world as as as we hear. Well, that probably means that some of the structures that we use are maybe the worst versions of them.

Mick 12:48

Exactly. Healthy.

David 12:49

The most the most if there's gonna be toxic capitalism, oh it's here. Right.

Mick 12:54

Right. And that undermines the integrity uh of of everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just morality in general. Right. Let alone Christianity.

David 13:04

So whether it's like a religious system or uh like a I often think I think about my daughters too, and the worlds that they're you know, they're trying to find um their way from the college degrees that they have, the backgrounds that they have. Um, you know, it's sort of like you gotta pick something. It's like that moment in the with the high school guidance counselor. You know, you gotta, here's all the things that you can pick from.

Mick 13:30

That was the question at Thanksgiving. What what are you, you know, what are you studying? What do you got, what do you want to do?

David 13:35

Yeah. I was always, you know, in in in the ensuing adult years, especially when I my kids were younger, and I was thinking about some of these things, I guess sort of inadvertently. I used to say to myself, I want to start keeping a list of all the jobs my high school guidance counsel never mentioned. Yeah.

Mick 13:52

Right.

David 13:52

You didn't even know. There are a ton of roles out there in the world. Exactly.

Mick 13:57

And uh more now than there used to be, even I think about the the box.

David 14:03

So so in a way, though those boxes, those boxes were very, I don't know, creatively, uncreatively listed in a high school guidance counselor's, you know. Almost like there were just a few categories.

Mick 14:18

Database, yeah. And then maybe a couple of offshoots from that.

David 14:21

Yeah, yeah. I remember I went to high school in Northern Virginia, kind of like a affluent, highly educated Washington, DC Beltway, transient professional society.

Mick 14:34

Wow. Yeah.

David 14:35

Oh, I've thought it's very specific. Yeah, and that's that's where I spent my adolescent years in. It was talk about lack of identity as an adolescent. Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah. All you want to do is smoke pot when you grow up in a place like that. Yep. Um so uh uh yeah, yeah. So I that that you know all all of the all of a lot of my fellow students at this large, successful high school that always scores really well and it's listed in. It's I would just noticed the other day, it's listed in these in magazines, top, top high schools in the country. Right. Um, a lot of them would say, Oh, I want to be an engineer. Yeah. Well, what the hell is that? Right. I mean, I don't even know what that is. Kind of I'm like a I'm a 11th grader. I'm like, what do you mean, engineer? I want to go into engineering. Trained? I mean, that might have been at the dawn at that time, it might have been at the dawn of um computer science. Yeah. So there was a lot of that, that phrase was around a lot. Remember computer science?

Mick 15:32

Yeah, before IT.

David 15:34

Yeah.

Mick 15:34

Right. Yeah, right.

David 15:36

Yeah. Um, programming.

Mick 15:38

That was definitely not me.

David 15:39

Yeah, it wasn't me too. That was part of it. It wasn't neither one of us. We had our silly computer class. I was good at math, but man, there were limitations there.

Mick 15:47

At least you were good at math. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's probably why you're a publisher and I was an editor. I'm just words. I'm I'm words only.

David 15:55

Yeah. But these boxes kind of um they aren't always help healthy. Yes. And we can get caught up in them. Right. Um, and I do wonder if now we're at a time when um the boxes are uh are they're just they're falling apart, you know, they're frayed, like an old cardboard box. Got some sun bleach, a little bit of water damage there, a little bit of just like you ever seen cardboard that's just you know, like uh especially like the cardboard that you store stuff in year after year. It's like it's just getting frayed from a lot of not so useful.

Mick 16:34

Yeah.

David 16:35

Uh so um yeah, I I wonder about the time that we're in right now where um you know, maybe maybe there's there's new boxes. Yeah. This will get old after a while, this this metaphor, but it's it's already old. But uh but maybe they're smaller. Yeah, okay. There's more of them and they're smaller. Yeah. And you can go find new ones. I think there's I think something's going on with that. Yeah. Um yeah. Yeah, you know, I I I don't know. I don't know. It's it's you know, the you know, every society needs like infrastructure, you know. Sure. We need people who can build roads and lay wire and set up radio towers and cell towers and wind farms and um you know manufacture goods. Yeah. Um but it's become so uh, I guess when I think about it in terms of book publishing, it's become so um, you know, mega corporate. Everything's owned by a few people, right? But um I forgot, I saw a stick statistic from the other day from one of my authors about how um if you look at the income of the the top one percent and you spread it around with to everybody in the nation, everybody would have an annual salary of a million dollars. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So the the that's definitely something in our era is yeah, you know, when people talk about oligarchy and plutocracy, and you know, a lot people there there's very few people who have power. And that's that's probably something that's gotten worse. Yep, yep, for sure. And um when I think about my health insurance bill, which my health insurance premiums, which are definitely going up by threefold. Wow. With the new year. And I'm on a I'm on a limited income. Exactly. Isn't that small business easy? Yeah. And I I we're gonna be able to handle it, but I can think of a lot of people who aren't right. And they're gonna fall off of reasonable healthcare. Totally.

Mick 18:43

I think about our own kids. No, I would not be here if uh Sherry didn't have a job that was doing our healthcare. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

David 18:49

It's it's kind of you mean you have some kind of illness or something? No, no, no.

Mick 18:53

I well, yes, but um I I have I have to have health care. Yeah. I'm I'm over 50. I I have You would be in a job where you couldn't be having a a podcast recording. Right. I would have to have a job, exactly. I couldn't just shoot the breeze. Um no, I I I think I I love what you're talking about in terms of just like the boxes, and maybe there's smaller boxes, and we can kind of self-identify again in different ways. Yeah. And there seem to be more more boxes, more up more options in terms of defining your identity. Who can we be? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

David 19:27

Yeah, so I mean, this was something I kind of I've kind of brought up as a topic that we might get into. And it it's that question of like where are we going right now? Where where is everything going? Um people I'm sure people are wondering that right now. Uh-huh.

Mick 19:42

Yeah. About this show.

David 19:44

Yeah. Where's this show going? But you mean in general, yes. Yeah, please don't think about that too long, reader, because you're gonna listener, because you're gonna stop listening. But um, yeah, well, well, you know, I mean, we've I've been and you've been very much embedded in this ex-vangelical space that we were talking about earlier. Yes. And there's a lot of uh criticism that goes on within that space of existing boxes, of existing institutions, of the behaviors that have gone on. Sure. Of the outcomes it's had on us spiritually, psychologically, physically even. Yep. Um and that's gonna continue. That's not gonna end. There's plenty of there's there's so much work to do in uncovering these systems because these systems continue. Right.

Mick 20:34

Um you can say you've yeah, deconstructed or you want to get out of it, right? But it's still in you.

David 20:41

Absolutely. It's embedded. I mean, just in the word goodbye, yeah, it's gotta be it's a shortened version of God be with you. Yeah, right. Now that's sort of uh overstating things because you know, phrases can take on new meanings that are detached from their words.

Mick 20:55

Sure, and people don't use it to say that anymore.

David 20:58

But yeah, that is where we're coming from. It's just an example of how embedded you can be in things. That's right. Um, you know, Christmas time every year. It's it's it's it's a it's a certain holiday. And there's loads of people who don't who didn't grow up acknowledging this as a time to mark the calendar with and take time off from work, right? Because of and so on. Yes. All thanks to Charles Dickens. Yeah.

Mick 21:24

Yeah. No, it's funny because I was thinking about all the holidays basically started as pagan rituals, right? Or or as uh even fertility um celebrations. And and some of those still happen in in other countries, but not here. No, we yeah, we made them all Christian at a certain point. Now they have to be Christian holidays and stay Christian holidays, otherwise people get mad at you. Right. Like, well, but that wasn't Christian to begin with, like Krampus and you know, whatever else. I mean, we can import from other like like I have roots um you know that I don't even know about because I'm I'm basically a mutt. I'm I'm an Americanized um I mean obviously great grandparents were immigrants, but like, you know, I'm so far removed from any of that. I have to like it's like pulling teeth out of my grandma to get any information from her about her parents. So I don't even know what what I'm coming from, let alone in my own life, in my own experience, what was actually going on. Right. So to to define the box I'm coming out of is part of this this struggle. And when we talked about um what we're gonna discuss, you said let's talk about my book. I'd say the answer to the question you had asked me, like, why are you writing? Like, where is that going? My my whole reason for writing it was kind of like to figure out what is this box? That was the whole reason I went to focus on the family as my first job. I had to convince myself to be like, okay, this is basically like you're a mole investigating where it is you come from. Yeah, like if you want to understand what the box is you want out of, like understand the box first. Yeah. What is it? How does it operate? What are the people like there? Why do you want out of it so bad? Yeah. Like I had to define that, and that's my first few chapters is defining the character's uh dissatisfaction. It's basically a Jerry McGuire beginning. Yeah. Like, I am done with this, I don't want to play this game anymore. But why? What is the game that I'm trying to define here and why is it so uncomfortable? And and basically what I came up with, and and I mean it's Dr.

David 23:29

Dobson and it's all the stuff I was raised with, but like when people hear Dobson and focus on the family being an extreme version of the box.

Mick 23:37

I mean, I would I would say cult, but I think a lot of people emblematic would not, for sure. I say at least fundamentalist and however you term that very traditional view of uh the family and the role of the family in society, and of which I you know, if you take religion off of it, I I don't disagree. Like, we need structure in in in order to like you're talking about different boxes and jobs that you could have, like you need a family in order to have like a foundation. Obviously, your roots matter, but like you don't have to like have all of this old testament Christianity put onto it, like honor your father and mother, or else God's gonna smite you. Like, that's basically how it's offered in that box. And I learned very, very I spent five years there, but I learned very quickly that there are the ins and there are the outs. And it's it's kind of a it's it's a pretty stark reminder when you walk down the halls in focus on the family, and I'm sure it's still this way, even after Dobson has left. But like the the execs and people who are higher ups basically were always, I mean, obviously they they were signaling this with what they wore and how they acted and behaved and the people that they would talk to, but like even walking down the hall, you do not acknowledge the execs. The execs will not acknowledge you, you do not ex acknowledge them. Yeah, yeah, you're supposed to walk on the other side basically in the hallways. Like when I was there in the unwritten rule or unwritten rule. I didn't know about this rule. You just observed it on verbal. And I asked someone who was in my department in the book publishing wing, which was basically the little pirate ship that was off to the side. You know, we we called ourselves the you know the party. Because we were kind of the defectors. Always, you know, railing against the people who said we couldn't do that book because it wasn't orthodox or whatever. But like they would I I mentioned it to someone and they're like, Oh, yeah, yeah, you you you're not supposed to like even make eye contact with them basically as I this was an unwritten rule. They're the priestly class. I guess it was something it felt like that. The sense of order order, yes. It felt like hierarchy. You're an underling, clearly, by the fact that you're not wearing you know the three-piece suit and don't have the red name badge, you have the blue one. Like it was it was very much a a social order in that place, and I think that's that's kind of what we're seeing in America now.

David 25:55

And these are the executives that were probably doing corporal punishment to their children.

Mick 26:00

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, they probably did. But you need to give them respect, right? And this is the thing, like you need to know your place.

David 26:07

Not to to draw too fine a point, listeners.

Mick 26:10

But which if if let's get back to the point, like to me, the the point I'm making is it's authoritarianism. And and I wouldn't say it's exclusively that, but that's a primary distinctive of the box that I'm talking about when we when we say fundamentalism and you know, right, however you want to term this cult. Right. It's like you do not question the authority of those that God has ordained to be over you. Right. Because if you do that, yeah, you are disrupting the order.

David 26:37

So, so what happens when you get out of that authoritarianism? Right. Let's say you've identified that box and you've seen this is what it is, and you realize you've been in a structure that, you know, structures are good, right? Well, no, sometimes structures ha look like they're good, they have the overall frame, right? But there's actual toxicity, if not outright poison. Sure. Yeah. And that's that is feasible. Absolutely. There are examples, obviously. Well, and I was gonna say broad ones, giant society, nationwide ones as well as smaller group toxicity structure.

Mick 27:15

And and you need to uh identify how those are affecting you.

David 27:18

Yeah, so what do you do when you are out of it? Um I I think that that that the the let's look at it in the just the brightest possible way for a moment. The possibilities are amazing, they're endless. It's it's like you've been set free. It's freedom. Yeah. We just we both came up with that word.

Mick 27:41

Absolutely freedom. It it feels like what they were promising from the pulpit in church all my life that I couldn't understand. Yeah. What what is this freedom that they're talking about? Because to me it just feels like chains. Right. To me, it feels like bondage. Yeah. The freedom that they've been talking about only happened when I for finally said, I don't agree. I don't like the way this is feeling to me. Other people might have had a different experience at focus. I that's fine. I'm not sure.

David 28:08

Freedom doublespeak. It was freedom used as a double speak word. To me, it always felt oppressive.

Mick 28:14

I can't deny that. I'm not supposed like like my soul wasn't allowing me to deny that anymore, and I just had to get out. So you could say, Well, that was your choice, and sure, I guess it was.

David 28:27

Well, let's let's put this in like um a manuscript writing kind of question. We often will talk about in memoir, for example, that uh you know there's there's storytelling, but there's also self-observation that helps the reader find themselves within the book, within the character that you're describing, which is you in that particular memoir. Um so or or you know, one of the challenges with memoir is is it's it's tough to sell because it's really reliant on you and your story. Right. And if nobody knows you and your story, then you know, they have to be introduced to it and they have to be has to be something they like. They might like it once they start reading it. Yeah, but but that has to be validated externally before they'll make a purchase decision of a book. Exactly. That's that's the issue at hand here. Um, and and there's ways of making that happen, and we won't we don't need to get into that now, but we often tell them, you know, like even from a marketing point of view, bring more analysis into the memoir. Good. Bring more takeaway. What have you learned from this experience? You don't have to be pedantic, you don't have to come up with a you know 10 point system or anything like that. Right. But but make uh at least make observations about what you think was happening then using your voice now and and what it was maybe telling you about where you need to go. Right. So that comes up a lot in the books that I work on. Now, especially with Lake Drive books. Sure. Um, you know, I I think of um I think of Catherine Spearing, who we've mentioned several times in her book A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts. Yep. Um, the insidious subtle nature of spiritual abuse and life on the other side, which is a phrase we underlined on the top of the subtitle. Um she talks a lot about building a life once you're out of these systems of abuse. Um, and and if you get to know Catherine, she's got a lot of things going on in her life. Yeah. Um, really, you know, fun stuff like uh improv, kickboxing. I hope she doesn't mind me saying all this stuff. Oh, I know. Um and that's not it. There's more. Right. Um and uh travel. Uh I think of um I think of Becky Garrison whose book comes out in uh the end of January on uh uh Gaslighting. It's called Gaslighting for God, How to Save Yourself from Spirit, a satirical guide to how to save yourself from um uh spiritual narcissists. Yeah. And she takes aim at at the narcissism in that in in the boxes that we inherit. And and not just evangelical, but spiritual spirituality in the United States in general. Yeah. I define that in the broadest sense of the term, whether it's evangelical Christian or whether it's body, mind, spirit, um, you know, new age guru types. Yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to sound so stereotypical there, but no, no, it's it's true.

Mick 31:30

Or oversimplifying. It's a religious mindset, right? Yeah. I know the right.

David 31:34

But she's trying to equip readers to spot the spiritual con. And to be able to, once you do that, you can reinvest yourself in what is a healthy community. And she spends a little bit of time talking about that in the book. Um, sometimes that's not what people want to read about, too. Sure. Yeah, like they don't they don't want to know what's good for them and they just want to read about what's bad. Well, it's it's helpful to identify it. But it's there, and and she if you get to know Becky, she'll talk about how she's found it in um craft culture in the Pacific Northwest in particular. Very true. She trans has transitioned a lot of her writing from being in the religious space to writing about music festivals and uh whiskey and and a whole host of things. Um and she talks about how she's found community in brew pubs. Um or you know, I I think of Krista Brown, who wrote the book Baptist Land, right? Um uh a woman who uh is is well known for her story of having uh suffered and been the victim and survivor of um clergy sex abuse in the Southern Baptist world that did not acknowledge her abuse. But she talks about how in her life now she's in a fresh kind of paradise.

Mick 32:52

Wow.

David 32:52

I don't know those are exact her exact words. I think she uses the word paradise, yeah, but isn't that something? Yeah, a fresh I mean I'm just gonna put it that way. Right, a fresh kind of paradise. That's life on the other side. Exactly. New kind of a paradise. Yeah, we're not talking about heaven here, folks. We're talking about on earth. She's found something, yeah, whether it's you know, uh helping her daughter and helping her granddaughter, um, just it's it's sort of like, oh, I'm living a life now.

Mick 33:21

Yeah, I think Marla Taviano would would agree with this too. Uh she was alluding to some of it last time we uh in at that episode, which I I think we all kind of recognize, we being the people who have um been disrupted and now are responding to that challenge with, well, I guess if you're gonna call me a rebel, I am a rebel. And what does that mean? Right. Well, it means I'm taking back authority to make up my own mind and have my own critical thinking about things, and I'm not going to allow that to be just taken away from me because someone says that they heard from God on high that they're my authority figure. I I guess I'm in a different camp now. And identifying that was really important to me in my sort of deconstruction journey, whatever that means. Does that mean that I'm continually going to be a rebel and I'm never gonna, you know, submit to any authority? Well, I'm I'm probably already submitting to a lot of authority in my life. I've just decided that they're trustworthy. I know what that means now. I know how to evaluate something that I didn't know how to before. I was just given what makes something trustworthy. And I had never tested it for myself before.

David 34:33

Right. Because submitting to authority in the best sense of that phrase is structure. Right. It is it's necessary, it's shared governance.

Mick 34:43

Yes, it's shared experience. I would say necessary and needed in everyone's life to have some sort of authority guiding them and even deciding a lot of the decisions that you know it's very tact taxing and tiring to have to lead yourself in every single way. So you need some sort of authority, you need to be able to do that.

David 35:04

But in our background, we were always told it has to be it has to be the triune God.

Mick 35:08

No, right. And like what does that mean? Well, that means a human being who's interpreting what that triune God says. Right. That's what that means. But that feels like such a limited And I was like, no, I'm gonna well, a lot of people will say this. Well, then go to the Bible directly. Yeah. Because then you're not getting a human interpretation, which never really talks about the Trinity. Yeah, you're still importing a whole lot of interpretation that you need to deconstruct.

David 35:33

It's such coded language, the triune God. Like, what does that even mean? And like, good luck.

Mick 35:37

People would say they read the Bible and they became a Christian. I'm just like, good luck with that. Because if you read the whole Bible and you became a Christian, yeah, I defy you to make sense of it. But what what on your own?

David 35:49

What kind of how would you name the authorities that you do submit to now?

Mick 35:53

Right. Now there's an interesting question, because like what does that mean?

David 35:57

And what is it's very stark language, submitting to an authority. We could probably say it other ways, but that's bringing back some dots and stuff. What systems do you what systems do you subscribe to? Yeah. What systems do you participate in? Sure.

Mick 36:12

That are healthy. I would I would say so. I mean, if we're talking spiritually, I you know, I'm I'm gonna go with like love. Like, where do I sense that I am loved? And how do I understand, how do I know what love is? Love is still what I see in Jesus laying down your life for that person, like being able to say, what I want doesn't matter, what you want matters. And this this is a very like um existential, like golden rule based understanding of love for me. It's like I want what's best for you. Right. But what what I see most in the world, even when people say they love you, they're still being motivated by a very selfish aim. And and that's a difficulty that I had from the very beginning when my parents wanted to indoctrinate me and saying that it was love.

David 37:04

How would you put it try try try to take it outside of that frame? How would you put ascribing to love in a broader social um venue?

Mick 37:17

Sure. I mean, well, we could talk politically, but I I think just with friends, with with people who are interested in you. Uh I think it was uh John Updike who said he's probably only friends with people who actually find him interesting because we respond to people who are interested in us. And and that's just the way we are as human beings. But there's there's often, I mean, if you get to talking with someone, there's often this point at which it's like, well, I I feel like they're doing more of the talking and it's more about themselves than it is about me. They're not really interested in who I am. Yes, they don't really want to make a connection with me, they just want someone to talk to. And it's like, you know what I mean? Yeah, like, and that's not love.

David 37:56

That's how many of those relationships do you have? Yeah, do we all have a lot?

Mick 38:01

Like, why does it always feel like I'm giving out and not gaining anything from it? Yeah, yeah, and that's happened a lot in our lives, right? So I I feel like Christians will typically have this bait and switch where we're taught, at least in evangelicalism, right? Be someone's friend so that you can lead them to Jesus. And that's that's having an agenda. And I I had to get away from that kind of thinking, even when it was really covert and subtle, it was still trying to lead someone in the way of faith. And I I just felt like that's that's a very selfish aim. Ultimately, you yeah, sure, you care about their soul, but it's like you want what you want for them what you have. To me, that's like a right, do you want to learn from them? Do you do you want anything for them to like ask you? Because like you could learn something from everyone if you had that mindset, right?

David 38:49

But okay, so let's let's just push this a little further. Like, how do you ascribe to that outside of strong ethical human relationships, which is what you just described? Yeah. I mean, there's things I'll just just go and again to, I mean, let's just talk about like um you know, you all we all get our licenses at the division of motor vehicles. We all submit to that authority, right? Um if you want to drive. And and and we tend to think that that there's nothing, there's absolutely nothing of spiritual value in something like that.

Mick 39:23

Right.

David 39:23

There's no no like the DMV is the last place where you're gonna go have a spiritual experience. But what if that wasn't true? You know, I was at the DMV to get my license renewed because I it had been long enough that I hadn't had my picture redone.

Mick 39:35

Oh wow, yeah.

David 39:36

And um I had to sit there, I had my waiting time to be called up. Took your number and yeah, and to just sit there and see the different kinds of people who came in. Um and I I always kind of I okay, that's fascinating. I kind of wondered for a minute, like, well, okay, where's all like I know there's like some really wealthy people in this town, but I don't see anyone like that here. Yeah, you know, where where are those people?

Mick 40:01

Don't they have to renew their license?

David 40:03

Or I don't see, you know, maybe maybe it was just the hour or the the day of the week where when I was there. Um but is there, you know, but that is a system that we ascribe to. Sure. That we give authority to. That we give authority to that um it creates structure for our lives.

Mick 40:23

Uh people are bound to the rules of the road by it.

David 40:25

Right. It it creates order, it creates goodness, um, it helps us it creates a sense of cooperation. And yet we don't give it and and it brings us together in a way too. Right. And especially in the even if it's in the DMV office. Yeah. But we don't ascribe any metaphysical or spiritual importance to it as a as something of value.

Mick 40:53

Well, it felt like that when I was 16. Spiritual, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was like a passage. I am free. Yeah. That was my first experience of like feeling, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have this little bubble I can ride around in by myself and nobody else can tell me what to do in it. Right.

David 41:08

I think it's the it's it's like when we grew up evangelical, where there was always this separation between us and the world. And we could never, you know, like I I'm one of my other authors talks about how um her family shunned public libraries. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Or I was listening, I was I was uh channel surfing on the radio the other day, and I came across a conservative Catholic broadcast, and the the past the priest was talking about the ACLU. ACLU owned public schools.

Mick 41:38

Oh, wow. What they don't own schools, um, but they're influence. We were taught to sort of fear the public space.

David 41:47

Yeah. It is a literally that's right.

Mick 41:50

And set apart, that's what Christians are.

David 41:52

And yet there's something there that is is valuable. Like put down your Bible for a minute, everybody. You know, don't go to church for a moment, stop going and show up in a civic space because that's valuable too. Yeah. Um there, you know, there's like a moral horizon there as well. And uh how do we how do we engage with that? Well, maybe you know, maybe it doesn't replace church, but you know, how is church pulling you away from exactly that and that life? How much money are you giving the church when you probably ought to be paying taxes? Time, attendance, Mr. Mrs.

Mick 42:34

Renee, money, all of your resources are tied up. You you are not free to give in the world because you are giving at church. Yeah, totally. Right. That's your ministry.

David 42:45

We've gotten a long way from like kickboxing and improv that cataloging.

Mick 42:48

No, I think this is good because that's that's what then go toward. Getting us out into the world with interests, yeah, with um bird watching and mushroom hunting is what I've chosen.

David 42:59

Right. Investing in our communities, yeah. Uh, with our with our time, treasure, and talents.

Mick 43:06

Yep. Three Ts. Yeah. The other Trinity. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. And I think we can invest in so many more ways when you're not tied down to what someone else says the structure of your spiritual existence has to look like.

David 43:21

So it's an investment just not just in in self. Right. Like I just I do need to get away from these structures and I need to find out who I am and sure and find out what interests me because I was never really allowed to have an interest. Yep. Like I like, you know, I wasn't allowed allowed to pursue a lot of different kinds of things. Um but valuable yourself. Like some of my friends in high school, you know, knew about things like you know, rock music. Oh, yeah. I didn't even know anything about it. No, I've yeah. Like, whoa, you can like this stuff? That's okay.

Mick 43:53

Yeah, try it out. That's a that's a valid experience. There's oh, there's art there. There's spiritual meaning in these songs. Yeah. So so investing yourself in other ways. Also in society.

David 44:05

You're you're investing in what's interesting to you, but also you're engaging with others. Exactly.

Mick 44:10

It's not just a selfish pursuit. That's right. If you go far enough in any of these pursuits, you'll find a community. Yeah. And that it is about uh sort of bonding and connecting with that community. There's a uh a friend of Sherry's who does uh bug night at speciation ailes here nearby, and yeah, I'm giving her free ad now, but like I think they just had another one. But every time she does it, there's more people that show up and they're running out of room because it's like some nerdy pursuit of like finding out about the bugs in your local area. And you know, like who knew there were so many budding entomologists, but like yeah, there are, and you just put something out there, and then people can be like, hey, I like that weird thing too. Yeah, that's the time we're in right now, folks.

David 44:55

Oh, I have to and it's exciting. Yeah, I have to tell you, I was I was talking about we were talking about um uh the talking heads and David Byrne, who's having like his third or fourth comeback. It's a big one this time, it's a big one. You see, it seems like I'm seeing him everywhere. Not like last time, he's back again, yeah. Yeah um, and uh, but I love it. And yeah, and I was just remarking about how you know he's just so nerdy and weird. Totally always been. And one of my daughters said from the back seat, we were driving back from somewhere. She said, I think, I think, you know, I think we're in a time where people crave weird. That's true.

Mick 45:32

I was like, Oh my gosh, people crave weird. Do you hear that, Robin? So my friend Robin Horn, who's a uh going to be a famous author someday. Yeah, I'm trying to convince her very slowly, listens to our podcast like faithfully. Oh, and thank you. Used to hear weird as a put down, right? It it is, I mean, most of the time used as a put down. Yeah. Freak, weirdo, misfit, outlier, whatever it is. Yeah, you're outside of our box. And we want to it's basically a pecking order thing. All right, hierarchy, authoritarianism, we want to now bullying, shun you, beat you up, whatever it is, and we're gonna say you're weird. We have all those voices in our heads. Yeah. But we are in a time right now when the world has been so disrupted in so many ways that people are looking for new meaning, new identity, new structure. A lot of people are going towards some pretty bad stuff. Let's go toward the good stuff, folks. I want to like encourage the community of people who have self-identified as book readers. Yeah. In any way, shape, or form, whatever that looks like. Yes, comic books are books. Please come to our party. Yeah, uh, if you have an interesting uh You're having a comic book party? Weird interest. Well, just they're invited to the party. Oh, okay. Because they're real books too, in general, yeah. Graphic novels are real books, yeah. Right? Kids' books. Yeah. I don't care what kind of books you read. If you're a bookie person, you've got weird interests, you need to put those out there and share them with the world because being a weirdo is exactly what we're talking about. You're not allowed to be a weirdo in the box because people will, you know, pigeonhole you and say, Oh, you don't belong here. Well, then get out of that box. Like clearly that's not where you you are finding your identity, like you want to find a new identity somewhere. There's plenty of other boxes out there. Yeah. And it's not that they're evil or you're a heathen or you're going to hell for some you know interest that you have. Find out more about that interest and and crave it.

David 47:23

Such a great word. Is finite.

Mick 47:25

Yeah, you're not going to be here forever.

David 47:26

Specifically for Robin, what was the advice? Oh, yeah.

Mick 47:29

No, like like except don't. Don't leave Robin hanging. Sorry, Robin. The the idea that you're if you're weird, embrace it. Embrace your weirdness. The more you do that, the more you follow that curiosity, the more you're gonna find where you do truly belong, and you're gonna be able to identify a box that you didn't even know existed before. Yeah. Maybe it exists already, maybe it doesn't. You could create a new box.

David 47:48

Right. But like that's it's valuing curiosity over content. To me, it's the dynamic of con of curiosity matters more than and you'll find you'll find like matters more. And you'll rec and you'll recognize others for whom it matters more, regardless of the content.

Mick 48:04

It matters more than people who have said, This is a box I want to belong to, and you need to belong to this box too. And it's really important, and I'm gonna assert my whatever dominance over you or authoritarian, internalized authoritarianism to say that you should submit to this box. Yeah, anyone doing that to you, fuck them right out. Yeah, that is not allowed anymore. And I'm sorry I use that word in uh very rarely, yeah, yeah. But seriously, these people do not love you.

David 48:34

Say it calmly, your face is still the same color and everything.

Mick 48:36

Yeah. That's good. Well, they need to be uh fucked off in love, obviously. But like I think we need to like uh give people permission to self-identify and to say, okay, this is who I want to be in the world.

David 48:50

Yeah.

Mick 48:51

And even if it's wrong, they'll they're gonna find it out. Like, give them a little while to figure out that whether they belong in that box or not. But like anyone telling you that you have to belong to a certain box, that needs to be questioned. I just I feel like that's not okay.

David 49:06

So for an author who's writing a memoir, yeah, um, how how do they come across uh craving weird, showing curiosity? I mean, is that is that what we want to see in books that we publish going forward? Let me just put it that way. Oh, that's a great question. Like, what do I want to see? Uh right. You know, that I want to know what I want to know where to go. And I think these authors with their experiences can help us see that. I think that is the job of the writer, right? Is to help us envision. Um, it's kind of like why we do this podcast because because together we we we are creating a dialectic where we're trying to figure things out. That's right. And hoping the reader, hoping the listeners come along. Well, sure.

Mick 49:48

Like if you feel something when we're talking, there's a reason for that. Yeah. And you want to invest that in some like important way. Uh first off, I would say like for a memoirist specifically, it's got to be about you first. Like you need the permission to be able to say, This is for me to figure out my story for myself. Yes. Like you you're not writing a memoir for anyone else. Right. At a certain point, yes, it does become more of an edit, like considering what the author, what the reader needs and what you need and sorting those two things out. And then if it's for you, like put it aside and you know, not not everything. I mean, obviously, there's just a universal journey you're trying to find there. Right. And I think as the edit process takes over, it's more like, is this universal? Does this speak to everyone or is this particular to me?

David 50:33

So if you can find uh the word that's coming to my mind is transcendence. Good. If you can find what's transcendent about your story, right, then you will be connecting with what other people are the transcendent other people are also seeking.

Mick 50:46

And and people misread this all the time if they haven't done this process, they haven't tried to write a memoir. But the more specific it is, sometimes the more universal it also is. So I'm not saying take out all specificity because we need that in the story to be interested in it. Right. But like it's got to connect to something else. Like you might not have had the exact same experience as someone, but you can relate to it. And I think that's where we're drawing the line there. So if you're looking for how do you define like a new box out of the memoir that you're writing, or I think this applies to any book that you're writing, honestly.

David 51:20

Yeah.

Mick 51:21

Why am I doing this? What am I after? What am I looking for? I would say it's the freedom, right? Not necessarily just to question, because you might be starting there, like in my book. I was starting there. Like, should I even accept this permission to question the box that I've been in forever? Yeah. Uh that's where I started. Other people might be starting further down the line or even earlier. Like, who am I in the world? That might be where you're starting, or you might be starting like even further down, where it's like, I've already identified the box I don't want to be a part of, but I feel like yeah, sort of lost in the world, like a misfit, and I I need some sort of structure or organization principle to figure out where I belong. Like, I think a memoir is typically going to be about that journey. Right. Journey to find freedom in who you truly are. And that you know, takes many forms.

David 52:08

What what how do you describe that? And like what like are you get are you staying in the narrative the whole time? Are you backing away? Yeah, not necessarily. Are you um I I talked about this earlier where you're using your observational voice. Right.

Mick 52:23

Um yeah, reflecting on your own life from outside of yourself. Yeah, that's really good.

David 52:27

Right. And and maybe you're doing it in a specific context, but you're still you're still providing that reflection, that reflective, you know, um dynamic.

Mick 52:38

Exactly. Looking back is often necessary. You may not have specific flashbacks or something relative to your past, but you're gonna be talking probably about your parents at some point. Right. Or at least, you know, their influence on you, I would say. Just be and that's what makes it very fraught with peril. It's difficult because you don't want to ride anyone under the bus, or you know, there's there's things that have to be done. But I would say again, Anne Lamotte will always tell you as a memoirist that she uh had to get over the fact that you know, if people wanted to be written about warmly and lovingly, well, they should have behaved better. Right. And it's true. Yeah, like you have to tell yourself, like, look, if this happened to me, it's my story. That that's for me to tell even the interpretation of it, the way it felt to me matters. And you've got to say that that needs sharing and that has to be expressed. Now, how you express that can can be softened or changed, or even names changed, whatever, and that typically is better to be done in the edit process.

David 53:45

Yeah. I do think getting to that transcendent observation, it doesn't have to be just one thing, it can be a series of things that maybe they lead up or they say one big thing, but um I think that takes time with your manuscript. Yeah, looking at it, going back and back and forth with it, and then you know, looking at it and going, Oh my god, I can't believe I just realized what's happening here. That's right. And then that will happen over and over again. And then actually putting that into words. Yeah. Even though you're kind of exhausted and you're and you and it might happen like in an editing process. Sure. Like you're going, you're going through the manuscript. More often than not. Like you're going through the manuscript the even like the like at least the second time, if not the third or fourth time, you're going through it and going, Oh, oh, you didn't realize what you were. Yeah. I need to write, I need to put that in here. Yeah.

Mick 54:37

Or it takes someone pointing it out to you. Yeah. Being like, I really like how you phrase that. That's what I do when I'm editing. Yeah, I want I do that a lot. I don't like that.

David 54:44

They don't see what they've written. Yep. This there's something really important happening here. I want to hear you talk about this more in your own words.

Mick 54:50

Yeah. Yeah. Or they they don't realize it's it's unusual or or you know interesting. And you go, okay, well, but dig into that some more and tell me more. Yeah. And it's not necessarily that all of that's going to be useful, but it's useful to the person who's writing it.

David 55:02

Well, I so badly want all this to like point to like a clear defined set of rules for how we're just to live our lives now. That's probably just internalized box for you. We're almost at an hour now, and then we have to do that. You have to reject that. That's oh, it's the internalized box thinking, probably. I don't know. Yeah.

Mick 55:17

Seems like it. Like we yeah, we I mean, just just for like kicks and giggles, let's not do that. Yes. Let's let people figure out what they want to take from. Yeah. If you're in that process, stay in the process. It's not comfortable. It's supposed to be not comfortable. Why do we think life needs to be comfortable?

David 55:34

Yeah. I don't know, but but we do. So well, I do think there's there's the freedom. Yeah. And there's there's a lot of because that's on the other side. There is the paradise to embrace, and it is existing here in the now. Yeah, that's that's good too. Right. I I think sort of naming what that is. There's freedom right here in the world. Take a moment as well. Take a moment to acknowledge it, even if it's even if it's fleeting.

Mick 55:58

Look at that.

David 55:59

I feel like you just sort of like brought it all together there.

Mick 56:03

You couldn't help it. Yeah. All right. Thanks for being here, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Um, thanks for listening, everyone. We'll we'll maybe have more of a point next time. So or not. But if you're still in process, stay there and um enjoy it. Get all you can from it because it's for you. And we'll catch you next time.

David 56:24

Awesome.