Nicole Unice and Brenda Brown-Grooms
Description
One Small Step conversation partners Nicole Unice (44) and Brenda Brown-Grooms (66) discuss their paths to God and becoming pastors. They speak about issues of inequality and racism in America and how we are at a pivotal moment of opportunity for the United States of America.Subject Log / Time Code
Participants
- Nicole Unice
- Brenda Brown-Grooms
Recording Locations
Virginia Public Media (VPM)Venue / Recording Kit
Tier
Partnership
Partnership Type
OutreachInitiatives
Keywords
Subjects
Places
Transcript
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00:06 Hello, I'm Brenda brown-grooms. I'm 66 years old today is the 15th of October a Friday and I'm in Richmond, Virginia, with Pastor, Nicole.
00:20 Well, hello, I'm Nicole Unice, and I'm 44 years old, and today is October 15th 2021. We're recording here in Richmond, Virginia. The name of my interview partner is Brenda and she's my new friend in the last few minutes.
00:39 Indeed.
00:41 Hi, I grew up as an army brat and an Evangelical Christian surrounded. By a very powerful is the allergy of conservatism patriotism in religion. My own spiritual journey has been most mystical, but after careers and fitness and mental health counseling, I found myself most aligned as alive as a pastor and a other church here in Richmond. I'm married 24 years and have three teenagers. I write books and teach for a living. I believe the ability to connect authentically and vulnerably is Humanity. Superpower.
01:20 I am a Baptist pastor and performance artist a native Charlottesville, Ian, graduate of the University of Virginia and Union, Theological Seminary in New York City, part of the Charlottesville clergy Collective, who helped Charlottesville get through our 2017 Summer of hate.
01:45 Why you wanted to participate in one small step again?
01:53 I love what you say in your bio that you believe that connecting authentically and vulnerably is Humanity superpower. I'm here because I believe that it seems a small thing may be too small, but I do believe that the thing that will sleep save Humanity from our present course of Doom, is learning how to talk to each other. I'm here because I've known about storycorps for a long time. I remember hearing an interview on forgiveness, from one woman, whose child was killed by a young member of a gang who then she befriended and became a surrogate mother to him and is so powerful. And so, when I heard about one small step and especially an interest in Richmond, I thought I want to be a part in any small way have any solution
02:53 To share just Mutual story and find that connection as a place to then talk about Solutions, really and how how we can be a part of a better world for our children and our grandchildren. It is so interesting because this such Doom and Gloom on the planet these days and everybody's going all there's nothing to be done, is everything and this is the time to do it. But I think I've asked what I think we're missing there is time to do it. Not much, but there is time this time to save the planet planet from slimy changed. But if we reach a certain Tipping Point, then we're out of time. And so we're pastors and we're helping people to find their Pat and find a voice and get aware enough to realize that there are things we can do not them. Not those people over there, but you are
03:53 I can't save the whole world, but I can do my part where I am and dagnabbit. I'm going to call Brenda. I love what you just said about. Helping people find their path cuz I feel such a connection there and I'm just curious. How did you find your path?
04:10 Well, I was actually call when I was three. You know, when your kid we don't begin to know that I experience isn't typical until we started going the other peoples houses and having dinner and doing sleepover. Well.
04:26 Am I invisible friend? Was always God. I didn't realize that was a little weird.
04:33 Until I got older and I always feel God's presence and I am as always been a church brat and I remember Sunday school reading the story of Samuel.
04:46 That means god want something. So, the next time I felt felt God present. I see a boy, do you want? When I said it cannot be that you want me to be a minister because I'm a little girl, and I'll grow up your woman that I have never seen that. And I shelved it until when I was eight. I decided that I'd become a lawyer. Okay, because I can help black and brown and poor people. And I don't know where I got this from, but I, I was convinced that if I studied to become a lawyer, that I would have a real good hedge against dementia and old age. I didn't know that word bike, but I had seen the effects of dementia on, some of my elders and I decided, I better. I better get an insurance policy against that. So there we have it law. I love that. You were 8-bit super. It's so it's so precocious cuz I've had some similar experiences where I remember actually as I was driving over here.
05:46 Despite his mind and I'm like, that's the word bringing this story. And I remember growing, you know, I moved around a lot and didn't very very intense personality, very strong. Even at that time. Just the way I was processing the world and I remember feeling deeply lonely, deeply alone and we had at the time, we live in California and we had this a little bit of property, a little sandstone Cliff. I could sort of scramble app, and I would go to this rock and I would sit on this big rock, the face Rock and I would commune with God and would know him and everywhere. I went even as a young child church was a place that I would feel at home, but I wouldn't feel at home because of the people off and have it actually felt isolated, but I would feel at home and I would feel a sense of justice or the holy Justice. Thanks. This place needs to be a place that's relevant and I would be mad when it was
06:46 Yeah, it was just milk. And I really think I was thinking those things at a very young age that I wouldn't process and of course I couldn't process that until I was an adult way. Like you said, you learn about other people and you're like, oh you weren't a strange lonely, child meeting with God, that was at your storage and I think we have to pay attention to those things that I was speaking to somebody. About the the passage of Moses in the wilderness was Bible say, I love Zoom Bible study. I know you never go back to regular box day. I've had it.
07:33 And what do you do if you come upon a burning bush in the desert? Well, there are several options. You can say OK, Google.
07:50 It's a bush over there and it is burning. Not going to get involved in, or you can become arrested.
07:58 This is a bush burning. I've been watching for 10 minutes and it is not consumed. I got to go see what it is.
08:09 God does that? That's dead? That said, that's me all my life. And I'm sure God is done at you. That's how God gets us. What draws that? What a Resto attention is what we seek out.
08:26 It has not been consumed. I have got to know what this is. Some people don't have to know what it is. But but if you have to know what it is, I can almost hear God. Say I love, I love that passage. That it requires curiosity. You know, it just and I think I I mean I so, I don't know you, but I know of you from just your bio, I look up to you, for your wisdom. I think that wisdom is something that's been sort of like thrown to the Wayside as if what is instant. And what is now, and what is used for? What is what is reality? And I just wonder what you think those burning bushes are in our day right now in our culture right now.
09:14 There are the there, the path.
09:18 Did the signals that we are on the path or where she gets to be on the path? We look at his and then as a nuisance or something and we wish we didn't have to Roy with the we are being signaled. Very strongly by the spirit of the direction in which we are to go. It's right there. We can only miss it if we want to miss it cuz the path laid out. I tell people all the time.
09:48 The only place we know we can live. I'm certain that. We are not the only living beings in the universe. That is not possible. I'm certain that. There are plenty of us. We just don't know where they are. I can't get there, but we've done such an awful job stewarding this planet. And that, if someone were to try to come to this planet and we could get to them, I would, and I could send the notice, it. Don't let us come because we don't know what to do with something. So infinitely, important as a whole world were about to kill our own. I wouldn't trust us on yours. I would send that message as soon as possible. I check on us a few Millennium and maybe we all got it, right? If we having just do it without, but until such time as you here, don't come because we're deadly.
10:40 We think it's in its Western culture. Western culture thinks that you just was important that wisdom is something to be avoided or or what it takes to get there is just too costly. We think that we can spend a way out of what is wrong with some Manatee. We think that we don't have to pay attention to holds that sections of the population on Earth. We think that we can decide as the United States of America that we are in charge of the whole globe. And what's important to us is important to everybody else. That's just not, so it's not. So we are global.
11:22 We are Global the world is global and
11:28 If I don't have what I need the nurse going to affect you and if you don't have what you need and that's going to affect you. I look at particular the race quite a crisis which has never gone anywhere in this country.
11:46 Is so stupid. I need a new word. I know is so judgmental to say it, but it might be back here but it is from Charlottesville on my grand great-grandmother's side. I got stock in Carter Mountain. Those are her people on my great grandpa's side. We have connection to Thomas Jefferson dead. Never, we're all cousins, but we're all cousins. So what the heck?
12:14 What are we talkin about? What are we talkin about? Are you really saying that you going to fight me over this piece of cheese? Cuz you don't think there's going to be more cheese tomorrow. Really you going to lay your life down for a piece of cheese. You can have my piece cheese. No, scripture says the cattle on a thousand hills belong to God at any given point in life. We really need a rib or two, maybe three and extremist and I only eat meat. So guess what you can have my rib. Do you know when you say that? First of all, I'd love to just hear a little bit more and share a little bit more about my experience to know, in the military and sort of, and a lot of this is only now kind of My Views are expanding evolving being confused in the military. There is always an enemy and it's important that there's an enemy because that is the way.
13:14 Morale and culture are built. But I feel like in the church there always had to be an enemy to and there is the sense of like we got to be on a mission to go somewhere together. But I never heard anything about two things that you are very passionate about which is the care of the Earth, the creation and race. And, and that just wasn't a part of my story of what I was taught. Now. We should be clear and I don't think that's the story. The Bible, the story of the Bible is a very different, but the story of what I was taught, what seemed to be important was not those things and you're so passionate about them and I'm wondering, do you have any luck with Creation with race? Obviously, you're a woman of color, please. I'd love to hear more but I want to know what about that? But we may be that you seen that you would want to correct? Maybe that is part of the way that I was raised. Why don't you say more about your system?
14:14 You helped a lot and I think that again sometimes you're just in it and this is what I really appreciate about. All the kind of thought about majority culture. Makes you believe that? That is the default and when you think it's the default that's owed, like demeaning and diminishing to other people's, I know this is what's normal. So in my this is what's normal life as a as a white one and a privilege. What was normal is, you know, the church is about the real relationship to Jesus. It's about making sure that people get into a relationship with Jesus and the military and the church were very closely connected. And although I don't remember, being told this explicitly, it did seem implicit that God was blessing America to be this power in the world to bring peace to bring democracy to the world. And again, not something that I would recognize at the moment, but then as I
15:14 Left. Culture and been here in Richmond, which is not a very strong military Presence at all. I find myself in this, ambivalent like, might, my family has served for Generations in the military. My brother is active duty in the military and is it is a hero, a truly, his character, his his strength, and he and he loves the Lord. But on the other hand, I'm like,
15:37 I don't know what I think about all of this Divine Nation blessed to be. I'm not sure about that message. And I don't know how to get to reconcile those. And it's only here in, in more conversations with particularly people who were raised in like the historical black church where it seems like know about definitely was not the same messages. Those are not that isn't quote-unquote normal. That is very, very specific and I want I want to be a part of not assuming that certain things are God's will God's way normal that aren't? That have not been and I don't represent our whole, you know that the church has experience in America religion and life is that
16:24 African American woman born in the latter half of the twentieth century in the southern part of this country. That means having very specific. Yes. Number one, America is its aspiration as an African-American. I know very well, we have not become America is not America. It's it, it has them chance of becoming the last several years. Have diminished that chance greatly but I've never not understood that America is not itself, not yet. The other things that goes together with that understanding. As when I was a little girl, I'd watch what we did in church. I knew at 3 that I said, you can't be calling me to be a medicine because there are men. And then when I after I said that I started looking and go. What is that?
17:16 On that we have had the same experience. Wait, wait until I began. I begin. I listen, I talk a lot. But I also listen and I like stuff to make sentence and when it doesn't make sense I go, I have this conversation with that so that you don't that doesn't make sense. What does it mean? What am I supposed to do about that? Is that my business? I mean, I got a lot of stuff I want to do but I'm kind of stuck on this little nonsensical thing. What can we do about that? If I listened?
17:59 To the way the church and American politics describe me as a loan, little brown girl from the south of the United States. I was nobody. I would never be anybody and I would be fine with that. And our said to myself and to God, I think you would do a lot of trouble to get me here. And I'm going to honor that, so, whatever the church or the world tells me. I'm not going to listen to that. You tell me who I am. And I believe that and what God, let me know. I'll never cry. Already cried over your credit. I am God's.
18:48 And I can go anywhere. God sends me and I can do anything. God asked me to do and God will make sure the universe will fold in on itself to make sure that I have what I need to get done with God. Sent me to Earth's to do but it's not just me. Does that for you for all of us as my old mail to say there's plenty good room in the father's Kingdom. So I don't have to be jealous of things and resources. I need what I owe that whatever I need I have and whatever you need. You can have and anything any system which it interferes with the free flow of what God is. Giving us is wrong by definition and it when it's wrong that way, it catches my attention.
19:45 I'll system of money makes no sense. It really doesn't make any sense. I'll Healthcare System. Makes no sense. It makes no sense. People are are struggling after this pandemic end. This. Well, folks are getting unemployment checks. And so they're not going back to work. Know the pants did it to help people realize that they've been used and abused people, pay them wages that are way too small to do to move the world. And folks are finally saying, no, I want to stay away. I'm not talkin about something that I don't deserve. I'm just asking you to be fair and we're getting a little mad. So we're not just asking anymore. This is how it's going to be, not asking. What's yours. Not asking for know, what's not mad my, I deserve a fair livable wage, and if you want my services, that's what you going to have to pay bless your heart.
20:45 Well, I I mean first of all, the reason I teared up is your words are so powerful. And I know that they are what God spoke over you. But they're also what got to speak over everyone. Listen. I'm in the sight of your powerful gays and I'm like, yes, this is and what you said about this free flow of of just trusting that the universe will align. It will it will actually turn to where God is calling you because you're needed in the kingdom. And when I when I got teary it was because I thought
21:21 If only if only my ears have been inclined to that earlier, you know, is to the right to the right and to hear that and, you know, just so many things that I resonate within your story. My grandfather, the military one that is very, very strong. Powerful leader. Really wanted me to be a judge to be a lawyer, and I went into the ministry. He thought that I was wasting my life and we had this exchange before his death and he was really sharing his beliefs. He was sort of an agnostic atheist. He's really nice and but he would engage. And we would I was in seminary. I was 22 years old and here I am having this conversation that I don't know in eternity where that conversation and any important, but it's what you said, you know where I am studying to become a pastor still, not believing that there will be a way for me. I actually ended up with a counseling degree because I didn't. There wasn't any women in any of my classes.
22:21 And a my husband and I are pragmatic and he was like baby girl. I will pay for 7 a.m. He was paying for Cemetery with his work, but he's like there's not going to be a job for you. What are you going to do? And I was like, you're right. What am I going to do? So in God's way, he brought me into the into the therapy sort of industry and the counseling space, which is what I needed, cuz I was bossy. Nobody needed me later. I was black and white and bossy, and I I felt like the world was like, hey, here's what we're going to do. You're going to spend the next eight years listening. And then after that, we'll see what's next, and see what God did and written world really be like, wow, you guys really needed a counseling degree. That's what that's what the world needs you to have. This is not. This is not always know who
23:21 I just I wanted to share just that word of like how good it is to hear the truth and to know that that's the truth for all of us. And you know, we know the truth will set you free and I thought you said earlier about this situation with race is stupid and yet, I feel like you've you've you've actually expressed hope not false optimism, but actual hope. And I, I just wonder right now in your life. What is that looking like, you know, you have in your bio about the 2017 Summer of hate. Obviously. I think my my own my eyes were beginning to really be opened and I was being awakened to the reality. That's the, the privilege of being white is, you can, you can just turn it off and not experience it. But my youngest brother is adopted and he's Korean and we adopted him at a time where adoption and international adoption was not very common as in the 80s. No support. I mean everything about it.
24:21 And he struggled, and I remember having this light, I would be mad when people look at us. I am 11 years old. I'm like, what are you looking at me like that? And so, when this happened in Charlottesville, and I, I sort of had this conviction, like, I've been living in this city and I, I stay with my words that I care about these things, that I was raised in a home with multiple in a biracial home. But yet, this is not something I have to deal with, but this is now bubbling up and and from nap in our very short, few minutes from 2017. Till now, what have you seen? What is the path that God has laid out for you with your wisdom in this season. They you for the the vote for wisdom. I'm not sure if I have that. But anyway.
25:12 I don't watch much TV, but for some reason I was seeing because
25:18 New Amsterdam this week that bit this week and there was this white family that adopted a biracial girls. He was half black half white and
25:33 Her family look white, but because she didn't and she was in the emergency room and they didn't know what was wrong. They thought that she'd made a suicide attempt. And it happened that she hadn't Tomatoes, suicide attempt. She had taken some skin lightening pills all she wanted to work quicker. So she took way too many and that she ended up in the ER and her parents. Well meeting good people saying what's wrong, man? And the Herr doktor happen to be an African-American man. He said she's having trouble struggling.
26:09 With being in this family. We love her. We've never made any difference, she's at, but she is different to me. She feels it. And what tip Will child over? The edge is she is part of a dancing troupe or something and she forgot her tights and his kid to go back and get them. And when she came back to get into the gym, the woman at the door, the teachers, the door said you can't come in. She is but I'm a part of the truth. And the woman says, there's no way you are part of the buy you, your black. We don't let y'all in. And so the, finally, her teacher comes out who runs the program, and says, why you out here so late? And she tried to tell the woman, she says, because, and she said that you just overreacting, so he obviously black child and a white setting, white parents, like sister white, school-wide neighborhood. And she's feeling the effects of being different, and that neighborhood. And when she's feels, when she's in the middle of feeling,
27:09 That she's being gaslighted, what happened? You didn't happen to you and and we don't have to talk about it cuz and the doctor says, very wisely to the parents. I know you love her, but she did say, she just but you say, you can't let your discomfort on the subject and not help you to help her deal with that because your discomfort is killing her. She got to talk about it somewhere. And if you're not going to acknowledge the difference, please don't ever say to me. I'm color blind cuz you just said to me, that you not important.
27:47 God with your great deal of trouble to get us here. Just the way we are and there's no way in the world. You can look at me and tell me you don't see color. I'm very very Brown.
28:02 So I have trouble with lies and I'll call you on. I might be kind of nice when I do it and probably not, but I could be the halfway gracious if we're going to have a conversation. We're not going to lie. We just don't tell the truth. I understand and I'm getting I took the back road to get to you cuz we're going to be uncomfortable. We have been uncomfortable with the state of race from forever. We relied on God and each other and about if we telling lies about history and undo, all of that, we have to say, stop.
28:42 This is what it is. This is what happened. I can't change the past it is and I don't ask white people to be guilty. There's nothing more dangerous than guilty, white people. You can't do anything with Gill. I'm not asking you to be guilty of asking us to say what's true. This is what happened and the result of what happened is this. If we going to fix what happens, we have to face what happened. Nothing can be fixed and will not be faced. And we have yet to face still work past. We still got to face it as uncomfortable as it is. That's the only door we have, must go through it and we both because we don't even like to have a headache and his Society, we think somehow, we think is odd and not natural, that human beings would have eggs.
29:42 Peyton. Occasional leg will know. That's part of the human contract, the big things, the important things cost, and they are hurt.
29:57 Right after the Ahmad, arbery murder. I went down to visit Pastor Don Coleman, who is just a fixture and the Richmond spiritual world. He sits on his front porch, and Churchill, and I was heading down to it, to spend some time with him, and just sit with him, and my young son. My son, who at the time was 17. I said, why don't you come with me and he brought his girlfriend to, and we all sat on the porch together, Pastor, Don. And if, you know Pastor, Don is a very powerful presence and we were sitting there on the porch. Overlooking Richmond really overlooking. Where the slave trade happened, which I lived in Richmond for 18 years. We didn't know nothing about it. So, you know, what else I do? People hate. Do you know, the party doesn't have to be part of your story and he and he leans in and he looks he just the lasers in on my son.
30:53 And he's like, Charlie. I want to talk to you. The I like penetrating gaze and I'm like in my heart. I'm like, oh Charlie you better do me, right? Right. Now. You better. Do your mom about your dog is iCarly.
31:09 If I told you you hurt me, what's your response?
31:14 AC starts saying they said, I told you you hurt me.
31:18 And I'm looking at my son and thinking come on baby and he goes, I'm sorry. And he said, that's what I'm talkin about. You don't ask me how I heard, but wait, but why I didn't hurt you. I didn't hurt you. You start with empathy with recommend, then we can have a conversation. And and for me it's not about guilt to your point. Cuz I'd like you said, I'd love to know more about what's a guilty white person, you know. Said it is a dangerous person to me. It's not. It's about, am I willing to put myself in someone's shoes and say, can I hear your story? Can I grieve and lament for your story? Not second-guess, the story, that's the human together. Let's be human together and and maybe it's a little bit of that being the woman pastor. And and if one more person ask me, how are you? The pastor's wife, know I'm the pastor and you have enough of those experiences that you wonder does anyone like
32:18 And that's I don't want to I don't want to appropriate that story to make that the way that we engage with race, but I do think there is that place where when we're human together. We do not at work, is what I noticed us doing in this Society particularly is
32:41 It's like you telling me that your leg hurts and I'm staying with my leg hurts. So yours doesn't.
32:51 Serious, that's what we do. Yes, your your experience is not a whole lot of experience. Ride is not the whole I can only talk about what I know. But I I Stand My Ground. I know what I know, but that doesn't mean you don't know what you know, why was it when? Yeah, yes, I was going to win win by the car 2 days ago and the bumper sticker said equal rights. For everyone. Do not mean I'm equal rights for you. It's not pie. There's an abundance that's available and I appreciate so much what you said to about equal, even some of the standing up. And then people say, hey if I'm going to put the weight of the world on my shoulders and make this country happen, I need to
33:51 Parent, paid a fair wage my husband. I were talking about that and I thought, have you ever calculated how much money you have if you get paid $15 an hour? And I said that, I said to have you thought through if you're a single mom, and I sat with a single mom of someone who wanted comes in a tough spot. And I was just there to be with her and she explained to me her situation. She had a high school degree. No college. Education found herself pregnant as a three-year-old.
34:24 What is she supposed to do? Because does anyone know how much they care is for a three year old? And and you don't have a college education and you need to get us or you will you would like to move for the certification but that cost money and it's not great to live at home with your mom and that relationships real toxic. But where you going to move? And I really stopped there and thought
34:47 What I what I've been trained to believe, is that every problem is solvable, if you work hard enough, and I sat with this woman. I thought this is not a solvable problem. You can't solve this problem. And so, you know, we did, we pray and the next time I saw her, she said it just God were it did work it out, but it's stayed an unsolvable problem. And I know I needed that conversation. Maybe more than she. I needed a moment where I was like, oh, wait a second. It's my privilege. That has me thinking that if you were working hard enough, you're going to work it out. I haven't been exposed to enough intractable situations that are not. The person's fault to be a compassionate enough. First of all human beings of all Pastor to really sit and say these are not, these are problems that are going to require systemic change. Not personal Chase.
35:47 Entitled, here's where the dead things come back to living in them from the song communion with Maverick music together, the words struck me and you were talking about how angry you were at the church, him growing up because it is where did things are supposed to come back? And if we overlay it with our biases without foolishness and We Don't Preach god of the god of, of Plenty and a free-flowing for everything, we end up making the plate, the church a place of death
36:37 It honest. And all of us. It is not their fault. If people come to the church, looking for Hope and help, they've come to the rice plate. If we are not the right place, then we have got it wrong. So true. You know, it is Ezekiel passage the valley of dry bones and end in that passage. Of course, I got acid is going to set him and do you think that these Dry Bones can live? And sometimes I feel like we're in that moment as, as Believers and end where wherever anyone is on the spirit. Spiritual Spectrum, the belief in something more. I hope that goes beyond and I think we're being asked that question. Can these Dry Bones live and you are, God has prepared you to be a part of the gate that leads the charge. We need.
37:37 In this age, we need empathy because the Thomas was so deep and it's the ballet as dry as filled high with bones and people are dead and dying and they're looking for life.
37:57 Looking for kindness and looking for folks not to judge them. But to say you are God's daughter. You are God's son. You're worthwhile.
38:13 I was thinking about them, but I forgot I was at Landing First Baptist in Main Street. A few a little before the pandemic. They had a youth conference and they're all kinds of kids when they're primarily white kids. And I have a burden for them because I don't know if white parents realize, but if you follow the party line in this country, your white children recognize that you're right to own a gun or just have your freedom as far more important to do than they and they got that teach children are not dumb. They understand, they got it. I am not as important to my parents as their rights whenever they are. Okay. I'm not as important. I may not even be on the list, but I know I'm nowhere near the top of so differently because they believe differently and end.
39:13 They're looking at the the time they give them where in Richmond, Virginia and the truth of the matter is part of the culture, that's left over from slavery. Is that black folks raised white children, and we haven't done that in the whole bunch of years or so. They're a bunch of white children have not been raised their mommas and daddies don't know how they're not invested and I don't know how and the children are dying on the van. But I don't, I have friends, they ate, they have meals with their families. I know people who send their children that they let them go anywhere and they leave teenagers. They end up at the Filipino ladies house because she cooks every weekend, and they can come and eat at that table. There's no food or the carrot sticks in and celery, and their moms fridges, but nobody 6 to meal. They don't know where they are. Nobody's listening to them and their breasts.
40:13 If you look at the black lives matter, Lord knows there African-Americans and brother brown people. But there is many more white because they have looked at their parents, mores, and morals, and found them wanting, and there's no place for them. There's no people always go where there is money. That's stupid. That's where he started the conversation. Do you at Age 3 me at 10:11. We were aware of the world and of the gaps. Yes, and our children are aware of the world and of the gaps and I I'm part of that. I am not generation of, you know, well, I need to go be a judge, you know, I need to go in and when you are that career-oriented it was my was in my temperament to do. I have to be sick.
41:13 That one's got to look this way, but success comes at a cost and the cost is children. Now that this is in no way a judgment, but for me personally, nobody prepare me. And I I was just talking with a friend about this newspaper paired me to say in your young years. You can have your first child at 25. Now you should plan on 25 years of self-sacrifice and then we can return it. We could Circle back. Nobody tells us either way. I just feel driven to do anything. But yet, in that, all of these other things we learned, when we sacrificed, when we put our, a new put others needs before your own, and I've done it poorly, I have done wrong way. But by the grace of God, my children are alive and well and I'm still learning and they're still learning. You probably done it much better than, you know, because your children are you
42:13 Next Generation has to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. I feel. As we watched the first one? I feel that and I hope I hope it's been enough is enough by the things that they will face things. We never imagined you. So, if we give them the morals, if we give them the understanding that they are loved.
42:39 And if there's plenty of room in the universe for them, they may get a little confused but they'll never be lost. Do you have anything else that you would say to me as a mother of two white sons?
42:57 Yeah.
42:59 I think you probably have, but I think it's particularly for boys.
43:05 We have to.
43:08 Listen to send cuz you know Mill pastures the reason of good if they're if they're any good because they've got a very well-developed feminine side.
43:23 They have to be.
43:26 Caring human beings, if you care.
43:31 If you care now, you have been how many funerals have we done, you? And you've seen people and you look at them, you realized something hurt them in their lives and they decided that they would never going to hurt that much if you can make that pack of the universe in your. So you can make that pack. That which means you're never going to feel too many high. Is he not going to get too many loads? You was going to come in the middle. You can make that back. But the most important thing that I've discovered in my 66 years is to love and be loved.
44:03 Yeah, it hurts like hell.
44:08 And somebody always has to say goodbye first, but that's not enough reason not to do in love anyway.
44:20 Anyways, if you talk to Matt.
44:24 I'll be fine. We want to keep them from hurting and that's just not possible. That's right. That's not let that go first of all, but you teach them that they are and if they can love me, then you got
44:42 Jewels for Sons, thank you. Thank you.
44:53 Well, I'm Brenda. I wonder if there's any kind of last words. I feel like we've covered lots of big Casino race and our own experience with our gender and the mystical journey of knowing the Lord and creation and how we show up. And I wonder if you have any final words that you want to share with me, or just share your heart about where we are in the world right now in 2021.
45:20 We have.
45:23 A chance again.
45:25 Takes about a millennium for these epics to come round and it's come round again.
45:33 Another chance, I'm not sure how many more we have, but we have another chance to get this ride to, to turn the world upside down. We have the gifts. We have the people. We just need the well.
45:46 Peed.
45:50 We need to recognize that what it takes to live everybody needs and everybody needs and I'm the two of my system. Your system. Are you at church, your religion, and your institutions work against that we have to decide to let them go.
46:12 We can build a new world, and we're going to have to build it on the rebels of this one. Yet. It can be done. But we've got to build critical man. Enough of us got to agree in time that we've got to do this rather than that or more to the point that we're going to do something rather than nothing about you, you know, there's two, you know, this as a pastor, there's two words for time in the Greek gyros. Gyros. Kronos, Kronos time is chronological. We know that words chronograph time watch stopwatch. Kairostime is a moment of opportunity, erotic moment. It's a moment of divine opportunity. Yes, and I think that the struggle that were in is a Kairos, at the moment, for every single one of us, have things are being on.
47:12 Done, things are being deconstructed, and it's an opportunity to say. Who do I want to be? At the end of that conversation with Pastor Don that I told you about, he turn not gays to me and he said, I knew you would you knew he did? You know, he did it on his Bible and he said,
47:33 This is the moment and it's going to cost you.
47:37 It's going to cost you. It's going to cost you relationships and friendships and I was like it comes at Cost but if we know that this is a moment of opportunity that is so intensely short and our time on Earth is so short. He's going to have to have a few moments to make an eternal difference in conversation. Not not because you have so many likes and it's not, it's because of the people at your children and your grandchildren. It's one conversation at a time. And if we could just get out of the self-pity of what's hard right now and say what is hard right now, that actually is an opportunity to be different tomorrow.
48:27 Let's take it like let's do it. Don't hold on to that stuff. That isn't like you said, you've got to let go if it is not serving this moment and that is such a hard word to hear, but it's so true and it's so freeing because God is Not confined know, we put this box so it doesn't seem to prefer to work. We need to, we need to be in there. But from from Noah to Moses to Esther same story over and over. Same story. She uses the unlikely and the unexpected and the non-traditional to accomplish his purposes with a big old grin to do with just you and you and you little girls in your own little ways, right? And look what he's done. Well, thank you so much.