@ Sea With Justin Mcroberts

During my time as a pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church, I was in an ongoing conversation about the relationship between LGBTQ folks and local churches. And over the years, regardless of all the different kinds of settings in which that conversation was happening, it kept bringing me back to this very particular biblical imagery. Moses and his people were on the edge of a body of water that they could not safely cross with the armies of Egypt, bearing down on them from behind an impossibility. Any change necessary for a peaceful, free future was just off the table, something very new, something not just unprecedented, but unexpected and very unlikely would need to happen. It has pretty much always felt that same way to me in the institutional conversation about sexuality and gender and identity, and communal religious practice, that any change necessary in order for a peaceful, connected communal future, to be possible just seemed off the table. For that reason, then for several years, I've turned my at

Hello, and welcome to episode 100 of the @Sea podcast. We launched this thing on April 30th, 2016. And 100 episodes later, here we are. I want to pause right here at Episode 100; you do a couple of things, two things very specifically. The first one is simply to say thank you, thank you for listening for paying attention, I do not take for granted at all, not for a moment, that you offer your attention your time to this podcast, anything that I do, but specifically today, this podcast, thank you for paying attention. If you are a patron, doubly Thank you, because not only your attention but your actual contributions make it possible for me to do this, to take care of equipment costs, and also to free up the time it takes me to invest in these conversations, to do the research, I am enriched by this work. And your support allows me to continue to enter into it. So thank you very, very, very much. Thank you also, and very specifically to Dan Portnoy, who is the producer of this episode, and really the vast majo

A few years ago, I was invited to participate in this event. I don't remember what the event was, as a speaker, I was there to story tell, tell some stories and teach. And when the organizer introduced me, he said singer, songwriter, musician, Justin McRoberts. And I remember like, I wasn't mad, but I remember feeling like misnamed, or, like, I wasn't even offended, but like, it just didn't feel right. His context for me has had been music like he listened to a lot of my music growing up, and, and that's how he came to the knowledge of Me. And so even though I was there, to do something other than music, I didn't even have my guitar. He recognized me contextually, as a singer-songwriter. I wanted him to call me an author. I was like after my second book was published, I was like, I wanted him to call me an author, speaker. But he saw me differently. I think that discomfort is at least part of what happens at times in relationship to tools, like the INIA Graham, that there is a fear there's a discomfort, there

Whether you are a kid or you have kids, or you like kids, or you were a kid, or whatever, I think you're gonna like this project and the songs on it and you can pick it up from us directly at www.thedudeandthebird.bandcamp.com or beginning February 22, you can listen to it and all your favorite streaming services. Check it out.

Oh, the enneagram. It is, like many tools, so often misused or misapplied. It feels to me that a lot of folks are stuck between some form of infatuation with the tools or their type and some form of annoying disdain with the whole thing.I’m not a fan of the enneagram. Not the way people are fans of the Boston Red Sox or Manchester United. I like what I see happen in the lives of people who Jim Gum is a certified teacher of the Narrative Enneagram. There are many approaches to the study and application of the tool and, having worked with Jim in a few settings, I really appreciate his take. Specifically, Jim introduced me to the idea that knowing myself by way of the enneagram is ultimately about knowing my type; it’s about transcending my type and knowing myself as a whole. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation. I think you’ll dig it.

Sometimes what looks like compromise is not compromise at all. Sometimes it’s the hard choice to be a constant and a light in a shady and unstable environment. And sometimes it means being the one willing to be humbled and be wrong and change and grow in a stuck and calcified culture. I remember, after a few years working within a religious institution and experiencing the disillusionment that often associated the end of an institutional season, I started to believe that the most courageous and just thing to do when corruption or institutional failure reared its ugly head, was to leave; to walk away from relationships and organizations and systems I felt were broken or wrong. And sometimes that’s true; sometimes saying “I can’t be here if things are going to be this way,” is the best and right and most fruitful move. But sometimes it’s not.I was deeply moved by artist Propaganda’s recent reflection about sitting at the table with institutional power and remaining in relationship to an organization rife with l

Just as there are artists who work at the edges of a culture, pushing boundaries and breaking rules that need breaking, there are also artists doing essential work closer to the heart or center of a their chosen culture. For two decades, Mike Donehey has taken the sacred trust of folks at the heart of his culture and led, lovingly and faithfully. Mike and I click well, so my conversation with him started even before the recording did. You’ll pick it up in the middle of us talking about managing a diverse set of projects. Check it out. 

Because I came into the practice of faith through a distinctly protestant doorway, I didn’t know, early on, what to make of the Catholic of veneration or even emphasis on Mary, the mother of Jesus. The way I’d heard the story told, Mary was almost a bystander to her own pregnancy; a tertiary figure watching the Spirit of God and a few angels conspire to bring Good News to the planet. Of course, like so many others, the older I’ve gotten and the more I’ve actually wrestled with God as a part of my faith experience, the more I’ve needed models and examples for what faith and faith practice look and feel like in raw human form. Mary’s “Yes” is a model and a guide to me. What would have happened  if, when I was presented with my ownreligious breakthrough moment,I said something more like Mary said.Because she didn’t leap directly into the story with enthusiasm and a smile.She paused, like Mary Magdalene at the threshold of Jesus’ tomb years later.What if I were to have said, “I don’t want this” or “I don’t think

In recent years, I have noticed a kind of uptick in conversations and the pace of conversations and the intensity of conversations about mental health come the holidays. Some of that has to do with maybe the shorter days, some of that has to do with being around people who might be triggering, or just some difficult family dynamics, the pressure of spending a whole lot of money or not spending money. It's a kind of intense time and so it seemed an appropriate time to release this conversation with Andi colder. Andi is a licensed therapist, she is also an author, and she works at that wonderful dynamic intersection of mental health, spiritual practice, religion, and science. The place where we all live. I had a delightful conversation with her turns out we have a little bit of personal history. I've benefited from her work, and I've mostly benefited in recent years from paying attention to the way she talks about engages in, and guides other people through conversations about that really turbulent intersection

Near the heart of the Christmas / Advent Story is the expectation that God is going to offer a gift. The head-fake in this Bible story is that, when those waiting come upon and/or are given that gift, it’s just a baby. And I know folks have surrounded Jesus’ birth with all kinds of magic imagery, sparkles, and theme music since then. But for people who had been waiting for some kind of momentous, earth-shattering socio-cultural and political sign of change, that had to be at least somewhat confusing and disappointing. If this was the gift, it meant having to wait. again. In fact, according to the timeline in those same scriptures, the next time there is anything of significance to be made of the life of Jesus, it’s 30 years later. And then, after 3 years of work with a small community, Jesus is arrested and those following him have to wait. again. And then he is murdered by the State (at the behest of religious power) and those following him have to wait. again. Here’s the thing; I don’t think that process ev

During the first season of the podcast, I got to talk with Dominique Dubois Gillard about his book “Rethinking Incarceration.” One of the things we talked about was the difficulty and opportunity to steer the ship, even slightly, in institutional spaces already (and often blindly) dominated by whiteness and privilege. His most recent book dives directly into that very conversation. Subversive Witness coaches and encourages readers towards a leveraging of one’s privilege rather than simply being another critique of the problems that come with having it. I loved the book and, as always, loved talking with Dominique. Check it out

This will take on a bit of a confessional tone. A few years ago, Dr. Christena Cleveland talked on my podcast about the need for black leaders to steer away from trying to influence white spaces so often. The effort, she clarified, to change white minds about whiteness, should be executed by white hands. Not because of a hatred or distain among black leaders for the people in white-centered cultures, but as a matter of workload, exhaustion and, in a sense, effectiveness. The translation and code switching needed in order to establish not just trust but a baseline of knowledge just wasn’t worth it for a lot of black leaders, who could be spending their time organizing and inspiring in black spaces where agreements about life experience are already made. For example, more often than not, a room of non-white persons doesn’t need convincing that the black experience of the legal system is profoundly different than it is for white persons. As she is so keen at doing, Dr. Cleveland delivered that truth with a fair

“If you really wanted to help, you’d up and move to Africa.”It was a few minutes after I’d just spoken at a college chapel and a particularly fired-up student was trying to convince his classmates to resist child sponsorship in favor of a more radical and, in his mind, more holistic response to the problem of extreme poverty. His suggestion that a serious person would uproot their entire lives in response to the information they’d just been handed is as dramatic as it is… problematic. See, aside from the white-savior complex that response borrows from, it also ignores an often overlooked opportunity the privileged have, because of our privilege; access to the hearts and minds of other, privileged people. Because, somewhere in the mix, that student was right that there is a link between the way people like me live and the tragic circumstances in which far too many other people live; that I should change the way I live if I’m serious about changing things for folks in extreme poverty. But/and… one of the opport

“Sometimes, God gives us glimpses into the enormity of the work at hand, not to increase our capacity to do a larger work or more work but so that the work we can do becomes more vital and less optional. We are compelled to do the work we can do because we cannot do all we want.”I wrote that on the way home from a 10 day trip to India with Compassion international. It was, to be entirely honest, a life-altering trip for several reasons, including a very humbling breakdown I had on day 9 of that trip. Guided by our hosts, a small group of us got to visit several church communities who were helping to feed, educate and provide medical care for kids who, without the open door of the Commission program, would most likely live without those necessities. Of course, I’d been on trips like that before. I’d seen extreme poverty in Central America, South America, Kenya, Uganda… and yes, it was always heartbreaking. But (and I know I sound distant, privileged, and desensitized) I was never entirely overwhelmed. I pretty

It was somewhere in the early 2000s when I got a package in the mail from a friend, who had just taken a job with an organization that purported to rescue people from slavery. And I've got to admit, and especially at the time, it was something of an embarrassing admission that I had no idea that that was a need. It blew my mind.There are people in slavery, there are still people in slavery. And it still does actually kind of blew my mind, but in a different way. Since that time, I've had the opportunity, the privilege to be a partner with a few different organizations that do exactly that work. They rescue people living in slavery, they imprison and prosecute the men, predominantly men who run black market, slave organizations.And two things continue to pop up for me.The first being what I just mentioned, that it's awful, it's tragic, it's actually mind-numbing, that human beings would sell and buy other human beings, specifically that human beings would sell, or buy children.Secondly, I'm saddened at not jus

I ran into a friend recently whom I haven’t seen in a while. And at first, I didn’t recognize him. Some of that had to do with the time between meetings. But more of it had to do with context. The last time I saw him was in California in the Sierra Nevada foothills.This recent meeting was in a town called Goshen, Virginia. He and I were walking into buildings adjacent to one another and caught each other's eye. Then we did “that thing;” just staring at one another quizzically and awkwardly until he (his name is Mike) said “McRoberts!?” There were hugs and high fives and that “guy” hug with the clasped palms thing in the middle. I’m guessing you’ve had a similar moment: seeing someone or something you know well enough but in a context that threw off your expectations. Them? Here? No.. that can’t be. They belong somewhere else,… right? Part of what has been exposed in my religious training is that this happens to me, in relationship to God, somewhat regularly. An “encounter” or a moment of clarity is cast into

In the book Prayer: 40 Days of Practice, I take a swing at unpacking the word “spiritual;” not an effort to redefine the word for all users, but an effort to expand its application to meet my own experience and expectation. I do so by way of a kind of allegory; one in which a young man visits a religious guide of some kind, I think I call him a priest in the actual chapter, and shares that something feels wrong in his connection with The Divine. He describes it as a kind of pain in his chest; one he experiences most keenly at night when he lays down to reflect on his day. After describing the discomfort in some detail, the young man expects a particular kind of “spiritual” response from his priest friend. But that priest friend reaches into his bag to retrieve an antacid, saying “Son, you have heartburn.”My hope is that the story expands a readers’ take on what it means to think of themselves spiritually. That, instead of “spiritual” matters being those that are disembodied and separate from financial, social

A few weeks ago, I was in a contraption with a few folks my age and older who were voicing concerns about all the “information” kids get online. During that conversation, statistics were thrown around about how much data we’re subject to. Apparently, every person creates something like 1.7 MB of data every second, which amounted to 2.5 quintillion data bytes per day. ThatIsA Lot At some point, someone said something about kids knowing too much. I don’t remember the exact phrase but it was something along the lines of “it’s just too much information. They’re overwhelmed.” That.. gave me pause. Something about it rang true, but not entirely. You see, I wonder if the hang-up here isn’t that there’s too much to know; I wonder if it’s that I feel responsible for caring about all of it... or even too much of it. And saying I don’t care about everything can be a slightly troublesome thing to say. Because “everything” is a very long list and it includes things you might think are REALLY vital; maybe even essential. S

When I am asked what I do, I often say that I try to prove language for the process of faith and art. I think that does a decent job of describing my work, even if it’s a bit nebulous. Thing is, language shapes and defines cultures; the difference between one culture and another is often a matter of difference between the words we’re using for the same things.. or even the same experiences. This is why David Dark is one of the very few second-time guests on this podcast. His very peculiar and precise use of language stretches my imagination to reconsider the words I’m using and more seriously consider many words I avoid. In this second conversation, we cover a lot of ground (as we often do when we talk), but spend the lions share of our time on, not just a word, but a name: Reality Winner That name, and the life of the woman that name references, has been a lightning rod for David on many levels. His continual responsibility to that names has brought to life conversations about what it means to be a patriot,

It’s likely you’ve heard something like “You’re being emotional.” Or “let’s not bring emotions into this.” And it’s likely that, when you heard it, it was said in the context of the conversation is about something very, very serious; something serious enough that, were we to “get emotional” or “bring emotions into it” we would complicate it and muddy it. That has been my training (cultural and institutionally) as well.That the more real and consequential the thing we’re talking about is, the more important it is that we distance ourselves from whatever feelings we might have and rely on the numbers. Don’t get caught up in sentiments. Look for the bottom line or at least the dominant trends. Now, I don’t have the time or space here (nor, if I’m honest, the expertise) to dissect what is meant by “feelings” in a lot of these moments; what I am comfortable saying is that it’s a pretty bold move at any point to look at a list of vital human traits like:Intuition Memoryor even triggered responses or trauma and enti