Women play an integral part in history, including in biblical history. In many contexts, they are seen as mere side characters, and often aren’t even recognized with a name. However, we know that women are not just sidebars: they are main characters. They love, they birth, they lead, they prophesy, they teach, they heal, they wage war, and they testify.

Author and Episcopal priest Rev. Alice Connor is here to share some of these women’s stories with us today. She recently wrote the book, Fierce: Women of the Bible and Their Stories of Violence, Mercy, Bravery, Wisdom, Sex, and Salvation, which is a follow up to her book Brave: Women of the Bible and Their Stories of Grief, Mercy, Folly, Joy, Sex, and Redemption. Alice talks about how the Bible is R-rated because it is real, and our real lives (not the ones we post on social media for all to see) are definitely R-rated. When we read these women’s stories within the Bible for what they truly are: raw, honest, full-bodied, and whole-hearted, we not only see them for who they are, but we see ourselves as well.

About Alice:

Rev. Alice Connor is an Episcopal priest and a chaplain on a college campus. She wrote Fierce: Women of the Bible and Their Stories of Violence, Mercy, Bravery, Wisdom, Sex, and Salvation, How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World, and Brave: Women of the Bible and their Stories of Grief, Mercy, Folly, Joy, Sex, and Redemption.

She co-wrote an article for the Journal for the Study of the New Testament called “Mantic Mary? The Virgin Mother as Prophet in Luke 1:26-56 and the Early Church.” That’s academic-speak for “Hey, maybe Mary the mother of Jesus was more than a mom and actually had a word of challenge to speak to us? Just sayin’.”

Alice is also a certified enneagram teacher and a stellar pie-maker. She lives for challenging conversations and has a high tolerance for awkwardness. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband, two kids, a dog, and no cats.

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It’s okay to be inconsistent in our faith practices. God doesn’t expect perfection.

In this episode, Pastor Kelsey reminds us that it’s okay to be human.

The reason so many new year resolutions fail is because we expect perfection from ourselves. We get off course or miss a few days, and we throw it all away. The same can be true with our faith and prayer practices. We might set an intention at the beginning of Lent to journal every day or read the Bible every morning, and that is a beautiful thing to try! But remember - you are human. Kids get sick, work projects take up space, there’s a leak somewhere, your hormones are out of whack or mercury is in retrograde. Whatever it is, remember that life happens and it’s okay to acknowledge that sometimes our good intentions can be set aside for a few days. It doesn’t mean you have failed: it means you are human.

Links mentioned in the episode: 

Blyth Barnow’s Instagram post @femminary: “Lent is not a diet plan”

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What if faith was never meant to be something we get right?

In this tender and honest conversation, Pastor Kelsey sits down with writer Val Hystek to talk about perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the deep desire many of us carry to be the “good girl” who gets faith, motherhood, and life right.

Val shares pieces of her story, including her experience of secondary infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss, and how those seasons unraveled the version of faith she thought she needed to maintain. 

Together, we explore what it looks like to stop striving for perfect and instead embrace faith as a practice — something lived, questioned, wrestled with, and held with compassion.

This episode is for anyone who feels tired of trying to earn God’s love, exhausted from performing goodness, or unsure how faith fits into the messy realities of real life.

Because faith was never meant to be perfect — only practiced.

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About Val 

Val Hystek (she/her) has always been a writer, but becoming an author was an audacious dream for a 90s kid.

After completing her Honours Specialization in English Language and Literature Degree from the University of Western Ontario, Val went on to become a primary teacher at an inner-city school in Ontario. She is married and a mom to two girls, Savanna (10) and Paisley (6).

After experiencing secondary infertility and three recurrent miscarriages, Val began to write again, trying to find Jesus underneath the pieces of her shattered faith.

She now writes for her online community, both on Instagram and Facebook, and is on a year's sabbatical from teaching to travel and write a book.

She is creating a space where good and holy work can be messy and wild by giving wonder, loneliness, questions, doubt, beauty and anger a voice.  This community is stubbornly seeking after the heart of Jesus in a posture of curiosity and discovering just how wide and how deep the love of God is.

I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother. - Psalm 131

Lectio Divina is a spiritual practice that invites us to slow down, breathe, and spend a few quiet moments with God. Together, we’ll listen to scripture, reflect, and pray. You don’t need any prior experience or expertise; just a willingness to pause and listen for God’s love within and around you.

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Connect with us:

Website: dancingpastor.org
Subscribe to our weekly devotional: Embody Faith
Instagram: @pastorkelseyb
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An invitation to breathe, ground, and begin again - together.

After a season away, we’re beginning gently, by tending to our bodies and souls. We’re all carrying a lot of stress, grief, and overwhelm right now. Our nervous systems, collectively, are a bit fried. In this episode, we explore what it means to seek an abundant life in the midst of a hurting world, and how prayerful, embodied practices can help us find healing and calm, without ignoring reality.

Pastor Kelsey helps us explore how stress and trauma live in our bodies, and then guides us through simple, prayerful, embodied practices that can help regulate our nervous systems. Those practices include breath prayer, grounding, shaking, cold water, community, and song.

If you are feeling exhausted, on edge, or simply longing for a softness in your body and spirit, this episode is for you.

Links we mention:

Listen to Minister Blyth Barnow's episode on Holy Harm Reduction and the impact of community with addiction.

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Website: dancingpastor.org
Subscribe to our weekly devotional: Embody Faith
Instagram: @pastorkelseyb
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Come experience God’s love, go embody God’s grace.

In this short intro episode, Pastor Kelsey shares the heart of Faith in Motion as a place to explore what it means to have an embodied faith - a faith that comes alive in how we live, move, and love. In this space, you are invited to experience God’s love within and around you, and gently called forward to embody that grace in the world.

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Website: dancingpastor.org
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Instagram: @pastorkelseyb
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For Black History Month, we are going back through the archives and listening to the voices of some of the incredible Black Women who have been on the show.

Prolific author and speaker, Lisa Sharon Harper, joins us this week, speaking about how we are all made in God’s image and called good, and how often we forget that - about ourselves and about each other. She shares her journey of discovering what the “very good Gospel” is and offers that good news to us, inviting us into the vision God has for the world, and a profound belief that God’s peace is possible.

About Lisa

From Ferguson to New York, and from Germany to South Africa to Australia, Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. A prolific speaker, writer and activist, Ms. Harper is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment and common action. She hosts the podcast Freedom Road which features guests who are leaders in the faith and justice movement.

Ms. Harper is the author of several books, including Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…or Democrat (The New Press, 2008); Left Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (Elevate, 2011); Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (Zondervan, 2014); and the critically acclaimed, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right (Waterbrook, a division of Penguin Random House, 2016). The Very Good Gospel, recognized as the “2016 Book of the Year” by Englewood Review of Books, explores God’s intent for the wholeness of all relationships in light of today’s headlines. Her most recent book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World--and How to Repair It All, draws on her lifelong journey to know her family’s history, exposes the brokenness that race has wrought in America, and casts a vision for collective repair.

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