Anita Lustrea

In Christian settings we talk a lot about loving our neighbor and then the discussion begins about who is our neighbor. On this week's podcast, Alexandra Kuykendall joins me to talk about Loving My Actual Neighbor. Novel concept or something we are called to do? It's a great conversation encompassing a number of important practices grounded in 2nd Peter that will help us get unstuck in our attempts to love neighbor.

Most of you know I'm an Enneagram fan. I use the Enneagram with spiritual direction clients and I love how this tool, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, can transform lives. On this week's podcast, I have the joy of talking with long-time friends, Doug and Adele Calhoun. They are co-authors of a new book on the Enneagram, along with Clare and Scott Loughrige, titled Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram: A Handbook for Harmony and Transformation. It's one of the best Enneagram resources I've seen in a long time! Not only do they talk about the harmony method, but wonderful spiritual practices and journaling questions and Bible study prompts are offered for each type. If you want to know yourself more deeply and become more conformed to the image of Christ, this book and this podcast will be helpful.

Cara Meredith joins me on this episode of Faith Conversations. Her memoir, The Color of Life: A Journey Toward Love and Racial Justice, tells her story of growing up in a white bubble where everyone looked just like her. Then she fell in love with the son of a black civil rights icon. As you can imagine, her vision of color changed. Our conversation focused on how her life changed after meeting and marrying James Meredith. We look at interracial marriage in America as well as raising bi-racial children.

Grateful to be joined on the podcast by Dominique Gilliard. His book, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating For Justice That Restores, is a critical book to read if you have interest in advocating for the poor or interest in what is happening racially in our country. Gilliard says that mass incarceration has become a lucrative industry and beyond that, the criminal justice system is plagued with bias and unjust practices. What can the church do? What can individuals do?

Jonathan Brooks joins me on the podcast this week as we talk about Church Forsaken, which is all about practicing presence in neglected neighborhoods. Jonathan, known as "Pastah J," is pastor of Canaan Community Church in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. He has a master of divinity in Christian Community Development from Northern Seminary, was an art and architecture teacher with Chicago Public Schools, and is a recording artist with the hip-hop group Out-World.

Melinda Schmidt joins me on the podcast as we follow up on the ancestry topic of last week. We step into a conversation on using our gifts and teaching others to open them up to spiritual practices and scripture in new ways.

Melinda Schmidt and Michelle Van Loon join me on this week's Faith Conversations to talk about ancestry. We had a long conversation in a text thread between us talking about family and those boxes of pictures that are waiting to be sorted through. Michelle wrote a beautiful line where she said, "My bone marrow is talking." Lovely sentence. It got me thinking that we need to take this conversation from text to podcast!

Why do you or don't you pay attention to your heritage? We raised a number of questions that go along with this topic on the podcast.

It's been a while since Mike Murphy has joined me on the podcast. Always provocative, this episode is no different. We talk about Martin Luther King Jr., the late poet Mary Oliver, and we certainly touch on political things as we use Mike's Friday Rumblings from January 25, 2019, as our springboard.

Diana Shiflett has been leading people into the heart of God for years. She has been opening up the world of spiritual practices to them in the context of community. She joins me on Faith Conversations this week to walk us through a number of the spiritual practices she writes about in her new book Spiritual Practices in Community.

Have you ever thought of decluttering your heart, mind, and soul? Or do you even have a handle on what that might look like? When we start letting go of false identities, our relationships change including our relationship with God. On this week's Faith Conversations, Michelle DeRusha joins me to talk about what it means to let go of your false self to uncover the person God created. Sound like something you'd like to sign up for? Take a listen as we talk about True You.