What if “thoughts and prayers” aren’t the problem—what if the problem is when that’s where we stop?

Gayle and Natalie wrestle with prayer, action, James’ insistence that faith without works is dead, Bonhoeffer’s costly grace, and the difference between caring and simply saying we care. And, along the way, Dolly Parton gives us a pretty good picture of what faith looks like when it gets its hands dirty.

Prayer matters. But maybe prayer isn’t the end of our response.

Maybe prayer is where our response begins.

Can there really be a place where God is absent?

In this episode of Unbound Love, Gayle and Nataliecontinue the conversation that began with Natalie’s pilgrimage through places connected to Etty Hillesum and the Holocaust. This time, they wrestle with a much harder question: Can a place become so filled with suffering, cruelty,and evil that God simply isn’t there?

Natalie begins with a haunting poem preserved from Auschwitz that describes Birkenau as a place “forgotten by God.” That language becomes the launching point: When we call somewhere God-forsaken, do we actually believe God has forsaken it? Or are we describing what happens when human beings become so disconnected from God—and from one another—that their actions become godless?

The conversation turns toward a challenging theologicalpossibility: perhaps there are no places without God unless human beingscreate them. God may remain available, but we can become so separated fromcompassion, empathy, and one another that we no longer recognize—or choose to participate in—the divine presence around us.

Join us on this journey as we explore the idea that humanbeings are remarkably capable of convincing ourselves that our desires are God's desires.

What makes a pilgrimage different from an ordinary trip orvacation?

In this episode of Unbound Love, Gayle and Natalie explorepilgrimage as intentional travel undertaken with an openness to encountering the divine. Natalie reflects on a recent journey through Amsterdam, Deventer, Westerbork, Auschwitz, and Birkenau, following the life and final journey of Jewish writer and spiritual seeker Etty Hillesum. The conversation begins with the idea that pilgrimage is not defined solely by the destination, but by the attention, intention, and spiritual openness we bring to the journey.

Join in on this journey of pilgrimage!

What does it mean to prepare to stand in the places where history happened?

In this episode of Unbound.Love, Natalie is getting ready for a journey to the Netherlands that will take Natalie into the life and world of Etty Hillesum, the young Jewish Dutch writer whose remarkable diaries and letters chronicle her inner and spiritual life as the Holocaust closed in around her.

Before the trip begins, we talk about the anticipation of visiting Etty's home and other places connected to her story. Who was Etty Hillesum? Why have her words continued to resonate more than eighty years later? And what might it mean to encounter the places where she lived, wrote, wrestled with God, and tried to hold onto her humanity in the midst of an increasingly inhumane world?

Our conversation meanders through Etty's life and writing, the Holocaust, faith in the presence of unimaginable suffering, memory, human dignity, and the importance of refusing to look away from history. We also wonder together about what happens when we move beyond reading someone's story and prepare to walk into the physical places where that story unfolded.

This episode is the conversation before the journey—filled with history, questions, anticipation, and the hope that encountering Etty's world might have something to teach us about our own.

Pull up a chair and join the conversation as Natalie prepares to walk in the footsteps of Etty Hillesum.

Join Rev Gayle Tabor and Rev Catherine Lyle as they discuss Love through the lens of Christmas movies

Join Rev Gayle Tabor and Rev Catherine Lyle as they explore what it means to find peace in a time when it doesn't feel peaceful.

Join Rev Gayle Tabor and Rev Catherine Lyle as they explore Hope in a time that feels hopeless

Join Rev Gayle Tabor and Rev Catherine Lyle in a discussion about Thanksgiving, favorite foods, with a little theology and advent thrown in in their meandering style.

Join Rev Gayle Tabor and Rev Catherine Lyle as they discuss the election. Outcomes, laminates, strategies for coping.

Join Rev Gayle Tabor and Rev Catherine Lyle as they discuss Halloween. From the history to favorite candies, we meander through this conversation.