In this episode, we’re joined by Tara Boothby, a registered clinical psychologist, working in BC and Alberta for nearly 20 years. She is an Experiential Attachment Focused Therapist and a certified Emotionally Focused Couples, Family, and Individual Therapist and Supervisor. She is also currently doing a second Master's degree at St. Stephen's University, where she is studying themes of theology, social justice, and literature.

We speak to Tara about her new book Love and Love’s Energy. Tara reflects on her roots in evangelical Christianity, her path into psychology, and how attachment theory can help us understand love, not as an abstract ideal, but as something embodied and deeply formative.

Together we explore the tensions many carry around faith, forgiveness, and growth, and what it means to see ourselves and others with greater gentleness. Tara offers thoughtful insight into seasons of existential unraveling and the search for a God who meets us in our questions rather than our certainties.

What emerges is a hopeful reminder: love, in all its complexity, has the capacity to heal, reconnect, and reorient us toward a more grounded and generous way of being.

We are very happy to welcome back returning guest and friend of the podcast, Julian Davis Reid. Julian is a gifted writer, musician, speaker, theologian, and pastor and spoke with us about his new album, Vocation, in particular the song Moan: For Hearts of Flesh. Julian’s work is deep and thought provoking. It often walks a line between joy and pain, mixing the two together, demonstrating how one informs the other. His work articulates musically what can often be so difficult to articulate in other ways. It speaks to a hope that does not deny reality or skirt around pain or difficult topics but rather asks, what does faith look like here and now, in the midst of this. 

If you want to check out Julian’s work (which we would highly recommend), you can check out Julian’s website, which has links to his music, both solo and other projects, as well as his music video for Moan: For Hearts of Flesh, which we reference in this conversation.

For the final instalment of our Alberta mini-series we visit Happiness by the Acre a regenerative farm run by Marcus and Sarah Reidner.

Rector’s Cupboard met Marcus and Sarah three years ago and things were tough then in the farming world. We hear about what has changed since and about what the future might look like.

You might not be a farmer, but you are likely familiar with the count-the-cost type of conversations like that which Marcus has with us. What keeps us going when we feel like doing things the right way or even the good way is so difficult or even impossible? How do we hold faith in these spaces and times of life?

Faith and the Land, Part One: Winter is Coming

Faith and the Land, Part Two: Everything Can Be Transformed

Leaving the World a Less Shitty Place with Marcus and Sarah Reidner

Soil as The Least of These with Rod Olson

Yakety Yak, Depth and Breadth of Life with Jerremie Clyde

You have likely noticed that hope is apparently in short supply these days. Talk of politics, rising authoritarianism, and political unrest reveals a present despair felt individually and collectively. Stories of effective hope can change the world.

Land of Dreams is changing the world for many people. Hearing the stories of this place might well inspire hope for you.

Because someone had hope, there is life in a place that was lacking life. If Rod and the crew at Land of Dreams can picture life and growth and transformation and community in a plot of land surrounded by major highways, then, perhaps, we can picture life and growth and community and transformation in the various desolations that surround and us.

At Rector’s Cupboard we are familiar with the question, “What can you say that might give me hope?” Well, there is a lot to say that is hopeful. One of the answers we can give is to invite you to listen to this episode. Enjoy.

Land of Dreams is located on Treaty 7 territory in Southeast Calgary. 

Rector’s Cupboard in Alberta, Canada.

We set out on a road trip to visit some regenerative farmers we first met three years ago. In this episode, Todd and Allison and Amanda speak about the trip and about a visit to the Pine Haven Hutterite colony.

It is the season of harvest, the autumn. Winter is coming. Looking at the skies and reading the news can bring about the feeling that an apocalypse is imminent. However, in the context of obvious challenge, without denying the real difficulties that are present, we found in people who tend the land and provide nourishment for the world, a faith and hope that is enlivening. We saw both the wonder of the earth and the gift of humanity.

In this mini-series, we’ll be speaking (again) with Marcus Reidner, a regenerative farmer from Happiness By the Acre and Rod Olson, an urban farmer and director of Land of Dreams.

Enjoy the episodes!

Leaving the World a Less Shitty Place with Marcus and Sarah Reidner 

Soil as The Least of These with Rod Olson 

Yakety Yak, Depth and Breadth of Life with Jerremie Clyde (We unfortunately were not able to see Jerremie and his lovely yaks on this trip)

Prairie Ranchers Beef, produced by Pine Haven Colony (also available at Two Rivers Meats in North Vancouver)

Welcome to season 7 of Rector’s Cupboard!

Do you sometimes feel like all we do is talk about America? While many Canadians would see Canada as distinct from the States, we are influenced by our neighbours to the south. In Alberta, the provincial government is supporting the banning of books. Some of the political and religious currents in Canada look very similar to those in the United States.

In the first episode of our new season, we speak with a Canadian writer and professor who has described the relationship of the neo-charismatic Pentecostal movement and the rise of Donald Trump.

André Gagné is Chair of the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. He is also a host of Spirit, State and Society, a podcast exploring how the global Pentecostal and charismatic movements intersect with politics, culture and society.

We speak with Gagné about his 2024 book, American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and End Times. Gagné’s book is enlightening if somewhat disturbing. His work speaks not only to the American context, it also brings to mind similarities and differences in Canada.

If you’d like to find Gagné’s work, such as his podcast and recent articles, you can check out his Concordia faculty page.

Expository Preaching – this style of preaching that seeks to detail the meaning and intent of a particular biblical passage.

“A shadow war on libraries”, CBC The Fifth Estate, February 7, 2025

“New Alberta school books order bans explicit images of sexual acts”, CBC, September 8,2025

“Man arrested after driving child-size pink Barbie Jeep through Prince George, B.C.”, CBC, September 8, 2025

We kicked off the season with two tastings. The first was a lovely 15-Year-Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whiskey from Balblair Distillery, in the North of Scotland.

For our second tasting we went a bit more local with Barrel-Aged Family Reserve Gin from Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery. This gin is not your typical gin. While we tasted it neat, if you wanted to mix this, Ken suggests trying a blueberry tea cocktail, with hot tea and an orange slice to bring out the citrus and oak notes in the gin.

In our final episode of season 6, we are pleased to speak with Angela Reitsma Bick, editor of Christian Courier and co-author of the newly released book Blessed Are the Undone, which explores faith deconstruction in the Canadian context.

Angela joined us while in Vancouver on the national tour for the book, and we talked about why so many people in Canada are stepping away from church—and how we might begin to understand, rather than fix, that reality. Blessed Are the Undone doesn’t rush to offer answers or prescriptions. Instead, it makes space for grief, honesty, and a deeper look at the fractures that often go unnamed in church life.

This conversation invites us to consider how listening—really listening—to those who’ve walked away can become a kind of faithfulness in itself. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next season!

This is our third and final instalment of our series with Orthodox theologian and friend of the Cupboard, David Goa. This series has focused on the topic of fundamentalism, how it is expressed within the church, from several sides. If you haven’t listened to the first two episodes in this series, we’d encourage you to go back and take a listen to them before diving into this conversation.

In today’s episode, Todd and David speak of the challenge that encountering the living God presents to fundamentalism and how this challenge is hopeful for those professing Christian faith. Discussing the work of William Cavanaugh in his recent book, The Uses of Idolatry, we consider how encountering the living God is fundamentally unmanageable. This unmanageability can be experienced as distressing and fearful for people as it can be at odds with that which we assume is certain, is foundational, that which we may hold sacred. But in this place, we can come to understand the presence of God rather than our presumptions about God.

We hope that you have found challenge and encouragement, perhaps, hope in these conversations. Thanks for listening.

If you’d like to explore these ideas more, we invite you to read the books that these conversations have largely centred around.

Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us, Gary Saul Morson and Morton Shapiro, 2021

Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers of the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, Gary Saul Mortson, 2023

The Uses of Idolatry, Williams T. Cavanaugh, 2024

This is the second of three conversations we had with friend of the Cupboard, David Goa, on the topic of fundamentalism. If you haven’t listened to part one, we’d encourage you to do so before diving into this conversation.

In this conversation, Todd and David consider the question, If not fundamentalism, than what? David observes that our capacity for conversation, particularly with those with whom we have profound disagreement, has shrunk, exacerbating the polarization that many feel.

How can we relearn this critical skill? How can we relearn to see the Other as human rather than issue or stance? How can we reach across the divide in love rather than push away in fear?

As David says, this is small, slow work, and it is always particular. But it is vitally important work.

You have likely heard, and perhaps said, that we live in a world that is very polarized. Too often, communities of faith have contributed to this polarization rather than offered help or healing to a divided world.

David Goa has been, and continues to be, a formational voice for Rector’s Cupboard and for the work of Reflector Project.

David has been running Philosopher Cafés in his home province of Alberta, Canada around the topic of “The New Fundamentalisms and How They Divide Us.” He has drawn from the work of Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro in describing how openness to the other person is a more hopeful and faithful way of living than being closed and fundamentalist.

Saul Morson refers to a notion that he calls the “congregation of the blessed.” This is the idea that anyone and anything outside of a particular group becomes seen as suspect or even evil, “Where people belonging to one faction (or faith, or denomination) feel that they are not just in a particular party, but are part of the congregation of the blessed, fighting demonic forces.”

David and I recently had three conversations about the new fundamentalisms and the possibility of finding a better way forward in faith, belief and worldview. Part one of this series considers how fundamentalism, rigidity and suspicion of others can be unfortunately understood as faithful when it is actually fearful.

David Goa is a thoughtful and helpful guide through a consideration of how our faith and worldview might grow up past a kind of spiritually adolescent fundamentalism.