Frame of Reference - Profiles in Leadership
"Frame of Reference - Profiles in Leadership" and "Frame of Reference - Coming together" are conversational style shows with local, national, and global experts about issues that affect all of us in some way. I’m, at heart, a “theatre person”. I was drawn to theatre in Junior High School and studied it long enough to get a Master of Fine Arts in Stage Direction. It’s the one thing that I’m REALLY passionate about it because as Shakespeare noted, “all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players”. Think about the universality of that line for just a moment. Think about the types of “theatre” that play out around us every day in today’s world. The dramatic, the comedic, the absurd, the existential, the gorilla theatre (it’s a thing, look it up) that is pumped into our Smart Phones, TV’s, Radios, and PC’s every minute of every day.
Think about the tremendous forces that “play” upon us - trying to first discover, then channel, feed, nurture, and finally harvest our will power and biases in order to move forward the agendas of leaders we will likely never meet. Think of all these forces (behind the scenes of course) and how they use the basic tools of theatre to work their “magic” on the course of humanity. Emotionally charged content matched to carefully measured and controlled presentations.
With that in mind (and to hopefully counter the more insidious agendas), I bring you the Frame of Reference "Family" of podcasts, where the voices of our local and global leadership can share their passion for why and how they are leaders in their community and in many cases, the world. Real players with real roles in a world of real problems. No special effects, no hidden agenda, just the facts and anecdotes that make a leader.
And at the risk of sounding trite, I sincerely thank my wife Ann and my two children Elisabeth and Josiah for continually teaching me what leadership SHOULD look like.
Frame of Reference - Profiles in Leadership
Healing before evangelizing: a new path for the Church
What if the most faithful thing we can do is slow down, listen, and heal before we preach? That’s the challenge and invitation at the heart of our conversation with Cathy Lins, director of Gather My Lost Sheep, whose work equips parishes and dioceses to respond wisely to trauma and help priests flourish. We talk candidly about why people in crisis often come to the Church first, how well-meaning responses can backfire, and what it takes to become a reliable place of safety rather than another source of harm.
Cathy shares practical frameworks that shift ministry from theory to practice. We unpack the “eight critical shifts” for leading trauma-informed parishes, a Good Samaritan five-step response model, and a Flourishing Shepherds approach designed for clergy wellbeing. We also explore the mental health continuum—green to red—as a simple daily dashboard for sleep, diet, prayer, connection, and stress, helping leaders catch warning signs early. From supervision and debriefing to WRAP-style plans, we outline systems that normalize support, reduce burnout, and strengthen accountability without shame.
Along the way, we confront stigma, speak to the cost of silence, and acknowledge the reality of secondary trauma for anyone who carries others’ stories. The vision is both humbling and hopeful: laity and clergy as one body, tending each other; evangelization that moves at the speed of trust; and a Church that starts with presence, builds safety, and invites healing that turns wounds into witness. If you care about pastoral care, mental health first aid, safeguarding, or rebuilding credibility through transparency, this one matters.
If this resonates, share it with someone who serves, subscribe for more conversations like this, and leave a review with one insight you’re taking back to your community.
Thanks for listening. Please check out our website at www.forsauk.com to hear great conversations on topics that need to be talked about. In these times of intense polarization we all need to find time to expand our Frame of Reference.
Welcome to Frame of Reference, informed intelligent conversations about the issues and challenges facing everyone in today's world. In-depth interviews to help you expand and inform your frame of reference. Now here's your host, Raul Labresh.
SPEAKER_00:Well, welcome to another adventure in uh interviewing excellence. So that's what I'm gonna call it today. Um welcome to frame of reference and profiles and leadership. Uh if you have listened to this podcast before, and I I trust you have, otherwise, you maybe wouldn't be here right now. But uh we uh have a long history of talking with people all over the spectrum and uh about all kinds of knowledge and activities and events all over the spectrum. And today um I've got a guest that's with me. She has been here multiple times before. And uh, whenever we have a conversation, it's always something uh enlightening and frankly something difficult to talk about. Um uh Kathy Linz is here, and Kathy is a woman that has dedicated a good chunk of her life in developing systems that help to both educate uh priests, leadership within the Catholic Church, and also focus on getting people to a healthy state where they can evangelize more effectively. Um and so she is the uh what we what would we call you, Kathy?
SPEAKER_02:You're the I'm the director of Gather My Lost Sheep.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. That's even simpler, right? That which gather Gather My Lost Sheep has been a ministry now for how many years?
SPEAKER_02:Since 2019.
SPEAKER_00:2019. That's right, because we we got into COVID and that was right before that was launching. So tell me a little tell people a little bit about Gather My Sheep and what sorts of things you do and uh all of that good stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Ross Powell We got into this whole thing because I had the experience of going to a mental health conference, okay, telling people, you know what? Research shows that people tend to turn to churches first, even before therapists, to have 90 people tell me, you're spot on. That's exactly what we did. And let me tell you how your Jesus people treated us. And I was like, Ru-Raw. This was not what I was hoping for.
SPEAKER_03:No, not at all.
SPEAKER_02:And you know, I there was a couple of things that happened. One, there were people who felt heard and seen for the first time in a long time.
SPEAKER_03:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:And people said to me afterwards, you brought a whole bunch of people healing. The other side of that was my conversation with God on the way home, going, that was painful. Wasn't really quite what I was thinking. And the Lord going, gather my lost sheep. I'm calling you to change things. This can't continue like this. This is not okay.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Well, and isn't that uh I mean the Catholic Church is um is interesting to me because their um I don't call warts. Their warts have been more visible than most religious organizations have been. Um, you know, there's been more uh you know publicized publicizing, I guess I I would call.
SPEAKER_02:Um They've caught a lot more of the attention in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, and uh, you know, part of that is the establishment of the church. It's been around for hundreds and thousands of years, so it was a a bigger giant to topple. So I, you know, of course, all the Liliputians gather on top of that sort of thing and make make the most out of it while they can. Um, but it's also the Catholic Church has been um very vulnerable about and very, I think to especially in recent years, been very transparent about no longer just denying it and trying to sweep it under the carpet, which had been part of the the philosophy, but now have really come to grips with it in a mature way to say, no, we know we have problems, we know that there's been trauma generated by some um, you know, perhaps well-meaning priests, but you know, that were traumatized themselves and did some bad things. Um, but we want to recover from that. We we are working to make it better. Um, so help us, help us make it better, right?
SPEAKER_02:Looking for that opportunity to do so. Yeah. And I'll be honest, I've grown a lot in this journey because there's things that I knew from my own personal experience, from talking with people, from a lot of reading, and then there's things that you figure out along the way. Because I at first was really focused on we need to help local folks to figure out like how we can do this.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:And then how do I help the clergy so that they can help more? Only to realize how many members of the clergy have their own unresolved trauma, sure, have their own vicarious or secondary trauma because of the things that they hear. I mean, they hear all of our stuff.
SPEAKER_00:And then they have to deal with, oh my God, this is walking around, and I'm expected to do something about it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I I had a priest say to me, Kathy, you know, he said, I I realized my life was a kind of idyllic before I became a priest. Now he's like, I just it never occurred to me people had all that kind of stuff going on in their lives and were actually trying to function and go about their way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and what are you supposed to say at that point? You know, I'm sorry I've had enough.
SPEAKER_02:Can we come back to this? No, that isn't how that works.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you were saying before we started recording, too, that uh the number of people that uh uh talked about this uh the church is often the first place people go to that have been traumatized, you know, and and you know, God help us, uh there was a point in time too where they would come to the the church and be more traumatized, you know. So thank God that part is is done. Well, we're still working on that.
SPEAKER_02:That's a process. I have become certified in mental health first aid. We actually talked with people about you know how CPR works. See Mental Health First Aid is that same way of I'm a first responder and I can train other people to be first responders. And people look at me and they're like, So you can help me know what to do when someone from the community just shows up? Because when they just show up, the chances that they're in crisis is pretty good.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And and they're like, I don't know what to do. And I've had to have a number of conversations, not just with the clergy, but with the parish secretaries, with others who up to that point literally said to me, Kathy, I would have just called the police. And I said, I just want you to consider a couple things now that we've talked about how do we handle it when someone's dealing with a crisis. They're like, that probably did not help our evangelization. I thought, you think? Believe it or not, calling the police is probably not gonna cause them to come back to church. Yeah. And they're like, I get that now. I didn't get that before. They interact differently, they have a better sense of what resources are out there. They know better ways to actually interact. Sure. So we're well, do we want more of that? Yeah. We have a lot of churches who still have never gotten any of that training, never had that opportunity to step in it yet.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and we live in a country too, where a lot of that um is uh, you know, don't bother me with that. I don't have, you know, I don't want to deal with, I got enough problems of my own. Um and we're it seems to me we've gotten to uh an ugly place of not um uh not recognizing the the power there is in reaching out and helping someone. Instead, it's just like, you know, you're gonna drain my resources, or um, you know, I I want to pretend that that doesn't exist. Or I I don't know. There's just so much less empathy, uh, less uh compassion, less emotional intelligence. And I don't remember it being like that when I was a kid. I remember people being much more willing to step in and help when they when somebody was needing help. Um that's not to say that we didn't also have you know issues with, you know, oh you know, I don't know about her marrying that black man. I don't, I'm not racist, but I worry about the children. It's just like, oh yeah, right, okay. You worry about the children. Maybe that's legitimate, but it's also your racism is showing.
SPEAKER_02:So just put just check it in on here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. So you sit back and think, well, you know, are are we moving the needle forward at all? Do you think in the work that you're seeing, is it are we making progress in kind of opening these Pandora's boxes and saying, you know what, that thing's not gonna heal by its own. We got to do something about it. It might require a Lansing, it might require an antibiotic, it might require you know, a cure we don't even have right now, but we're gonna we gotta deal with it.
SPEAKER_02:So well, what I loved, and there was a speaker in Bart Schultz, was actually in, and he was talking on the Holy Spirit. Uh he actually travels the country talking on this. He's also part of the John Paul II Healing Center.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And one of the things he talked about is he said, I want you to go back to the X of the Apostles.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Look at how people lived and worked with one another. They weren't worried about, oh no, I can't spend any more time with them. It was the what can I do to support? Because we all are part of this community, and we support one another, and we welcome people continually into the community.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it was that moment where I watched this and I heard what he was saying, and I thought, that's what we need to go for. And sometimes people have this idea of, well, I have to have special skills. No, you don't. This is a wild and crazy idea. Right. I want you to work on presence.
SPEAKER_00:Listen.
SPEAKER_02:To just be with someone. You don't even have to say anything. Yeah, that listening, that but you help them know in that moment you hear them, you see them, and they are not alone, and God loves them and he's with them.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And that is huge.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that that sense of uh another human being is with me, you know, and uh, you know, people talk about AI is going to do all these wonderful things to walk alongside people and they'll feel like they have, you know, companionship. And it's like, yeah, but there's nothing quite like seeing and hearing and feeling someone's genuine compassion, um, feeling someone's genuine willingness to put aside their life for a few moments, you know, and just help you listen to comfort you within your life, right? Um and it is sometimes just as simple as listening, right? It is just being there is so powerful. And yet we I don't know. It's just like we're I don't know if it's social media that's walled us all up against one another, or if it was COVID and all of the isolation that was you know necessary as a result of that. Um, but boy, people just have seem to be. I tell you, I notice it with listening in general, that I I try to get things across to people and they just don't seem to listen. And I'm like, what the heck is well, this should not be this difficult to get you to understand what I'm trying to tell you or trying to get you to do. Um, and that's gonna make this process even more difficult, right? If we can't listen about, yeah, I I think we should do this next week with that, you know, ad that we're putting out. If they can't listen with that, how are they ever gonna listen to, you know, my heart is breaking because I just had this situation with my sister and it's just I don't know how to deal with it. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got things to do. I gotta go sell some stuff. And so whatever. Okay, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_02:Well, in some ways, I I want you to just consider that it's someone's trauma bumping into someone else's trauma.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And they haven't figured out a way to actually take a step back and allow their their inner self, that is that that you know, that heart of Jesus in us to hear because there's they're too wired about their own.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And that's that's I think is part of what we're seeing sometimes. And it's that I encourage people to pause. And there's a big difference between pausing and reacting. You know, responding means that I have to stop and I have to consider is that really the outcome and the impact I want to have on this person, on this interaction, on this relationship at this moment.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. And it's yeah, yeah, we have that what tendency to fight, flight, or fawn. Um so you know, there's things that you react to, and it's just like, ah, it's not true. Um, or there's, you know, things like, oh, I just don't want to go there right now. Um and there's other things like, yeah, I suppose that could be right. So rather rather than saying, well, tell me more about that, tell me more. I I I I don't really understand that. I guess I've never been in an experience like that, but um I want to understand it better. Can you help me with that? Um, just being willing to do that sometimes is like huge, huge thing, right? So, what are you seeing in the leadership with all the work that you're doing to try to kind of put these pieces together and kind of connect the dots, if you will?
SPEAKER_02:I'm having a lot of conversations with bishops. I have been at different national conferences, um, participating in the International Safeguarding Conference, the National Catholic Partnership on Disability. Last night, I just completed my fourth year with the Archdiocese of Vancouver for their review board, talking about like how do we look at our guidance? How else do we do the work that we do with the priests? Are there things that we can change in their training that helps them have that self-care and have the support of a greater community?
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So, right now, a lot of that isn't happening. Part of what we've been putting together, because we started out with trauma-informed parishes as our first initiative. We've created flourishing shepherds as our second initiative.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And so literally it's a multi um process where the first phase where we look at it and say, we're going to help the top leadership of the diocese actually understand what is trauma, what's its impact, what does that mean, what does secondary trauma actually look like? How do you actually do things and apply trauma-informed practices? How do we make that actually come alive within the parish and the diocesan setting? What does that mean for a system?
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:The second phase is looking more of the, okay, so from a leadership standpoint, this and now you know it's go time here. What's the system for supervision that we're going to have? What kind of things for accountability will we have? Not because we're looking to beat people up, but we're looking to say, how can we help accompany them?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:How can we help them have a system? We were talking earlier about with the mental health continuum. Canada has done a lot of work with that with vets. Okay. The idea being that if you can look across the continuum to say wellness on one side, let's call that green, and then maybe we're struggling a bit, that's yellow, a little bit more, that's orange. We're dealing with illness now, that's red. We're moving across that continuum continually. When you actually start to break that down and say, so how are my daily ate daily eating habits? Hmm, I ate all crap all today. I might be in the orange there. Um, hey, how's my laundry doing? Hey, how's my housekeeping doing? How's my prayer life doing? How's my all of those things? If you can start to break down what it is that's in your daily life and start to track to notice when am I doing well? When am I in the green zone, and when am I not? What knocked me off schedule? And then if I'm in the yellow zone, if that's a prime opportunity to say, can I phone a friend? Who else can I bring in that's that's gonna be a support to me at that moment, versus orange and red, where I may need to actually be get talking to a therapist or someone else. And ideally, if we're in the red, having a system that actually allows each priest to have a what do you know what a rap is? The rap is that opportunity to help create a document that says, if I am not mentally well enough to manage my own affairs, this is who I want to be in charge, this is how you will know that someone needs to step in. These are the actions I want you to take. These are the things that will tell you when I'm well enough again to take management of my own affairs once again. To actually have that in place. Because if you follow what's happening around the country right now, we have a number of suicides that have happened. And the numbers are not they're not um better than the general population. They're about the same as the general population. So we've got to realize that people are in trouble.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Is there uh you know, I think we've talked about this before when we've had conversations, but um what would you say to a person that's wondering, uh, you know, is this part of my life? Am I traumatized and I just don't even know it? Am I, you know, are there warning signals that are that I'm that I've got orange flashing all all over the place? You know when your car goes bad, you at least have an engine, you know, check light that comes up. Are there engine checklights that you think uh are really helpful for most people to just be aware of?
SPEAKER_02:It's been a couple of things. I've talked to you about like different types of trauma, the acute traumas, the you know, sexual assaults, the uh and that's amazing to me how many people have come forward and said, I experienced this, and others were like, me too.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I've never told a soul before.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um it's well, you realize all the different types of traumas that are out there, but it's also the flashbacks, the times that you can feel like you've shut down the relationship problems that you have. If you actually start to look through the adverse childhood experiences studies, they will talk about all the different implications that it has because you experience things as children. So I always look at it as um, you know how there are certain skills you learn to do to get along with each other as kids? Right. You couldn't learn those things because you were trying to survive.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So it's hard to learn how to play well with others as an adult. So believe it or not, when you have those kind of difficulties in your adult life with your relationships, that's usually a telltale sign to say you've got some things going on.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And and the more that we talked about, because I come from an experience of living with some of those impacts myself. I've had people come in to some of the workshops that I've been to and I've sat taught and said, I realize I have unresolved trauma. I do those things that you're talking about. I act in those particular ways. And so they're like, it never occurred to me before, but now suddenly it like makes more sense why my life isn't working the way that I thought. That's probably the biggest thing that I hear how often is my life's not working. And I can't put my finger on why it's not working.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think that there are people that are actively engaged in not realizing it? I mean, uh, is that a survival mechanism that keeps us from you know saying, I I have a problem here. And I I wonder if if there isn't um almost a black hole that if you've been victimized, that we tend to see everything about our lives or can see everything about our lives as being another process of victimization. So, and in that spiral, it seems like people get to the point where they just lose the capacity, the desire, um, the insight necessary to say, I don't want to be victimized by this anymore. I want to take steps to get out of it. They're just, it's it's like the knees have been cut out, right? I mean, they just don't have that ability to bend anymore or flex anymore because they've been so wounded by things. What what how do you get people to wake up? You can do stuff about this, goodness, don't just sit there.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and sometimes it's realizing like, is it authority issues? Do you have issues with people with authority? The other side of this I always think about is the stigma. I mean, I think about before I ever went for the first time to actually talk to a therapist, um, you don't do that. Crazy people do that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Right. What's wrong with you?
SPEAKER_02:Well, and and things that because I have experienced abuse, my abuser would tell people, she's crazy, you can't believe anything that she says. So I was like, Well, if I actually go do that, then I would be admitting that I really am crazy. You know, who wants to do that? That would make them right. And then which just then keeps you caught in yet another trap. Right. And so it becomes the okay, how can I get past that? And sometimes you just have to hit rock bottom or your life just so not working that you're just like, I'm desperate to try anything at this point.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna and it's because it's that painful secret, those secret sorrows that we have that we don't tell anyone about. People are desperate to find some place where they can just have that conversation. I have found that the more I talk openly about these topics, the more that people come and talk to me afterwards to say, can I share with you something? And they just want to be heard.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And in that moment, there's a little healing.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, you provide a safe place, right? Um, because you're not gonna come at it from a judgmental, you know, pulpit, if you will, um, but come at it from a sympathetic, I've been there, I know that is a really difficult thing. You've got a battle ahead of you if you want to work your way through this. Let me share some of the things I've learned, which I've always appreciated, actually, about your your ministries that you're you're not um, you know, not a lot of people are trying to turn this into you know self-help books and you know, doing book tours and making all kinds of money. But you your first and foremost thing has always been helping people to heal. Um, and that's a genuine thing, not a uh a marketing ploy. So for lack of a better, you know, way and it you know, it's that'd be nice if some money came along with it, so at least you didn't have to worry, you know, how am I paying the rent this month? Um so, but uh, you know, the the fact that that genuine care and compassion and empathy for people that are hurting, because you've felt it, you've faced it so deeply yourself, um, it's really remarkable. I mean, congratulations on you know not turning into a mean son of a gun, you know, because that would be really easy to do, right? A lot of people do it. It's uh, you know, a habit formed by many people within our society and our nation. So uh uh do you what would you say to someone that needs the encouragement to face it and is really struggling? I mean, it's just it's so ugly, you know, to think about and and and try to process that again. Because we spend years building walls so we don't have to do that, because it is so painful. And I mean, if you're you know a seven, eight, nine-year-old kid and you are sexually abused by someone, it it takes years for just the realization of what happened to occur, and then to figure out how that's affecting you as deeply as it it is and does, um, it's an easy thing to run from and it's a hard thing to stop running from.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna throw something in here though, just for something else to kind of like mix things up.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, good.
SPEAKER_02:Hey back in the day, we didn't talk about it, and that's why it's something that remains to be resolved.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:What if we actually did deal with it when kids have those experiences? Sixty-four percent of adults experienced adverse childhood experiences as kids in the US.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a lot. 60 percent. 64. 64. And so it becomes when I'm 64, Ringo Star? Okay.
SPEAKER_02:But I but but that would be a huge shift right there if we actually were able to because they wouldn't have to bury it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And the other thing that I think is so interesting is how often people have said to me, can't you just leave it buried? That's actually the worst thing that could happen because as long as it's not dragged out into the sun and cleansed and cleared, it will continue to eat you alive. It will continue to cause inflate inflammation, it will continue to damage your organs, it will continue to do it.
SPEAKER_00:But doesn't that speak to the terror that people feel when they are you know led to begin to discuss it? It is so paralyzing. I mean, I think there there's that sense of it's almost like they're in front of this huge lion with the or you know, tyrannosaurus rex, and the teeth are right there by you. It's like, are you kidding me? You're asking me to stick my head in that thing? Are you nuts? You know, so it's just like, no, I'm running, I'm running. Get away from get your damn tyrannosaurus rex out of here, too, you know, kind of deal.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I look at it, I guess I I'm gonna share from my own life.
SPEAKER_00:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:That's what I pray that God doesn't chase you down like he did me, because apparently I'm a little stubborn.
SPEAKER_00:And there you heard it here.
SPEAKER_02:I say that because God uh was like, we need to talk about that. I'm like, no, we don't, and we're gonna leave that alone. Thank you very much for playing.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sorry, who do you think you are again? God? I'm really sorry, but you must have me confused with somebody that's obedient.
SPEAKER_02:So uh and it was so interesting because I got called into county court and state court and federal court for jury duty, and the my cop friends were like, no one is that lucky. And it was always cases regarding violence. And the last one with the federal, the they asked us, did anybody have an experience with gun violence? And I put my hand up, several other people put their hands up, and who does the judge call on? Makes me tell in open court what my experience was. And then what, ma'am, has that been dealt with? And then turn to the rest and said, Does anyone else have a story like hers? You're all dismissed. I got it. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? It was that experience. It was having so many medical problems and having them finding so much scar tissue on my body that I didn't expect them to confront me with.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm like, Lord, I can't keep doing this. And it's like, or we could talk about it.
SPEAKER_00:I with the FCC about it. With the FCC chairman, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.
SPEAKER_02:And it was literally the I could do this all day long, or we could talk about it.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right.
SPEAKER_02:And that's literally I was like, I give up. I I'm exhausted, I can't do this anymore. I had to hit that rock bottom.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Well, and isn't, I mean, my experience with my trauma has been um that initially there is that fear factor that is just, I don't even know if I can tell anybody about this, right? If I tell no one's gonna believe me, and it's just it's so awful that it happened. It's so awful what it did to me. Um, that you know, you you you're like pent up, pent up. And then the minute you let it go, though, you open it up, it's it's not necessarily floodgates, but all of a sudden I remember kind of having this experience of what the hell was I so afraid of? You know, and I I really think that that's the point where the spiritual warfare is going on so heavily because you know, the enemy of our souls knows if I can keep this shut up, I've got power. But the minute I let I lose that ability to keep it shut up, I lose all my power because I'm always going to start turning to the Lord for hell, but what am I supposed to do about that?
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's just so it's just like so, but uh And that's one of the things I love because it was one of those moments where I was called by the Lord to take it to the Adoration Chapel, make a list of the good and the bad in my life, sure, and then have him say, now that you've made that list, reread it, who are you because of the good and the bad?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And I was like, What? Right. He goes, No, who are you because of both?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And I said, Well, who I am is compassionate, who I am is someone who can sit with people who have great pain because I know what it's like to have great pain.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And he said, and that wouldn't have been possible if the bad hadn't been there too. Right. And he said, Do you grasp and realize the devil can no longer hold this over you?
SPEAKER_00:Right. I'm a huge Star Trek fan. You know, this you probably I hope you know this about me. Anyways, um, and there's a wonderful one of the movies that they made with the original uh cast, uh Star Trek V, where they have this whole God thing, and you know, uh Spock's half-brother is, you know, become the sort of guru that takes away people's pain. And, you know, of course, all these people are following him blindly now because he's taken away their pain and he's shown them a higher way of being. And he gets, you know, even McCoy and Spock, you know, is help is able to help them relive the experiences that were the most traumatic for them, right? And then he gets to Kirk and he's trying to do the same thing with Kirk and Kirk's like, no, I want my pain. I need my pain. My pain is what makes me me. So I thought, wow, that's a really, really profound thing. And very, very, very true that you know, we tend to run from our pain, but our pain is integral to how we learn to cope with the world, how we learn to interact with people in the world. Um, that's that's really fascinating that there is that, and I don't know exactly what it takes. We have free will, you know, we definitely have free will. We can continue to choose to block it up and you know, shut it down and try to keep, you know, just la la la la la. We're not dealing with that today. I got other things to do, you know, rather than just confronting it and saying, you know what, what's the worst thing that's gonna happen? Um, you know, uh because it carrying it around, I think you're right, you rock bottom. You gotta get to the point where it's just like, I don't want to carry this load anymore and learning that, you know, there are other people that will help you with the load, but you gotta, you know, identify what the load is.
SPEAKER_02:So and to take advantage, you know, address the opportunities that are there. I I remember the very first time I went to a retreat called Grief to Grace for people who have experienced sexual assault.
SPEAKER_03:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:I was so surprised when I got there because all of these people were talking openly about the abuse that they had experienced. And I was like, what is this place?
SPEAKER_00:What's going on?
SPEAKER_02:Because that was something that was always so secret, and we never talk about that. It was just like, wow, wow, this is like this is incredible.
SPEAKER_00:Way too much information, people. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But but but to be able to have freedom and to be authentic and not have to be afraid. And I think that is the greatest, one of the greatest gifts we can give people is just to be with them, not because they're somehow bad or warped or it. They've had painful experiences and we love them. I had this conversation. I when I because I've traveled the world and you're probably like, yeah, yeah, I know. I was down in uh in um the down in Mexico and Guatemala, and there was an area there where there was human trafficking going on with, and it turns out the church wanted to do an activity where they were actually working with um trying to bring the young ladies out of the brothel.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And in their mind, we'll help those women. Well, the more I did interviews, the more I found out that the women were 11 to 13 year olds who had been brought over from one of the other countries who were poor and the families just needed some place for them to go. And the lady said, I will take good care of them, I'll give them good jobs, yeah, not so much. And uh they were trapped in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Funded by the Epstein Corporation, no doubt.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and and it was an interesting thing because I asked them, I said, if you are successful in getting them out, which is going to be a problem because they're being held, they're not, this is not something they're choosing. Who among you is going to be their friend? And they looked at me and I said, here's the thing no one wants this life. But if there's the choice between this life and having to deal with your judgment every day and your unwillingness to be with them in that moment, you might as well stay where you are because it's not any better out outside of that.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I love that.
SPEAKER_02:And so it's and they looked at me and I said, you know, you have to have new friends, a new way of being, a new everything just to rebuild your life from something like this. You're gonna need to be there every day, checking in on the and no, you can't just teach them to run a bakery as 11-year-olds. You actually need to realize you're dealing with children who've been through a lot.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And they just looked at me and they're like, this changes everything about how we're gonna do this. This is and I'm like, this is now our challenge. This is what we're called to. And and and we're no different here in the States. We have people who are struggling with all kinds of things. We're called to be Jesus to them.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah, and there's so much of that that is ignored. Um, I guess that's what I was trying to get at a bit before, too, is a sense of um we just don't seem to give a damn about our neighbor. You know, we we've defined, you know, all of these reasons to not help people because they're threats in some way, you know. Um, you know, for the life of me, some of the biggest, you know, complaints that people have about, you know, this other type of person who makes a choice about sexuality or whatever. Um, you know, you you have the sense of, okay, I get that you don't agree with that. I get that that's not the lifestyle you would choose, but that doesn't absolve you from being loving and compassionate and caring and trying to understand where that person is coming from so that you can continue to have a relationship with them as a human being and as a Christian who should be caring for them, you know, who should be the first one to listen, the first one to sit down at the well and say, tell me about your seven husbands, you know, whatever. Um, and uh yeah, it I just I don't know that there's a cure for it in a in a place where you don't even acknowledge that there's an illness. Because we do, we are uh I I'm afraid to say we're a very sick country right now with a lot of very sick people. And unfortunately, some of them are in leadership roles, you know, and they have been throughout the course of the church, too, right? People that have been traumatized, people that have had you know difficult, difficult situations and never healed from them, never had the opportunity to deal with them in any you know meaningful therapeutic way. So here we are, you know, on the 21st century.
SPEAKER_02:Right. I I know this is gonna sound odd, and you're gonna be like, have you lost your mind, Catherine? I'm like, I know that already.
SPEAKER_00:That's not a big deal.
SPEAKER_02:We when they did the Eucharistic Congress, the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, the bishop who was in charge of it caught a lot of flack because they actually didn't address clergy abuse. Okay. And they were like, How could you have this big event and that was nowhere to be seen? And so they actually did a follow-up webinar specifically on it. And Awake, which is one of the organizations that works with survivors, did a follow-up discussion.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And it was so interesting because though the members who came together were like, once again, what we really want from the bishops, what we really want is healing. Why won't they give us healing? That's really what we so want. And I looked at them and I, you know, the Holy Spirit just was like, here, let me help you. It was that moment where I said, You do realize that right now, because of your therapy and your trauma recovery work, you have more human formation than the bishops and the priests do. And there was this, what? I said, I've talked with bishops and priests. I've talked about you know where they're at in their struggles. And literally, you can see light bulbs going off around the room, and they're like, they can't help us because they can't give what they don't have. And literally they were like, I actually feel sorry for them. And they're like, I never occurred to me like they they have an emptiness and a well that is not filled that they can't draw from. Like that gives me a whole different perspective. And that's where I come from and say, like, so how do we fill each other up? I I've had this conversation with some of the diocese staff. And I said, you all act like there's the head of the body of Christ, Christ Himself, and then the laity. And somehow you clergy are out here somewhere just kind of flopping around. I'm like, this is a wild and wild idea here. What if the laity and the clergy are together the body of Christ? What if we actually have a responsibility for each other? It's not just your job to tend us, it's our job to tend you. And he looked at me and he was like, no one has ever said that before. I don't know that I've ever actually allowed Lady to help tend me. I'm like, this is just something to look at because God didn't set us here to say, Lady, good luck, here you go. Right. Work those clergy for all their worth.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, expecting anyone to have all the answers is a recipe for disaster, you know. And, you know, God helped them. A lot of priests liked being in that position. You know, they were, I I I think some were um, you know, intoxicated by the idea of how all these people are looking well. I I have to have the godly answers for them. You know, and it's really easy to get taught caught up in an ego trap that says, you know, I am the mouthpiece of God. It's like, you know what? We're we're all called to be the mouthpiece of God and the hands of God and the heart of God. We're all called to do that. And, you know, God help us, part of the reason our our country's in the way we are is because the church has not been that. You know, there have been pockets of it here and there, but largely when you got people, you know, sitting up and you know spewing out nonsense, yeah, it's like, okay, why isn't anyone in their congregation or somebody that's higher up in the leadership of that organization saying, uh, hold on a second. You know, that that that is very non-Christian, what you're you're spewing out right now. We don't seem to have that, you know, in a lot of circles where we need it. So I'm I'm glad to hear here that someone is saying, you know what, we need to take care of the shepherds too, because the shepherds need a shepherd association or some shepherd training or something that says there's a new kind of wolf out there now. And we want you to understand that this wolf doesn't look like the old wolves used to look like, is a different kind of look, and he will fool you if you're not care. You know, there's that that sort of thing just was never happening.
SPEAKER_02:And I think that's a shift that I'm even seeing now because I see more and more bishops coming forward and acknowledging their own mental health challenges that you didn't see before. Sure. Because of course, we've got to be strong and we've got to be tough and we gotta be, and I'm like, that's not real.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and until we can actually talk about what our struggle is and ask for help when we need help, they're gonna have a tough time.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, and how do you help anyone else when you can't help yourself or allow yourself to be helped? Eventually, you're just gonna run out of steam or you know, you run off a road somewhere or you know, something to just end the never-ending litany of misery, you know, kind of thing. Um Well, you've got some new sources now too. You were sharing with some of the tell tell us about that. And I I wanna I'll take the information that I've got from you too, and I'll post that on the website so people can scan things if they want to get some of these resources themselves.
SPEAKER_02:I created some documents for priests specifically so that they could be looking at how do we make our parishes more trauma-informed. So one is called the eight critical shifts for leading a trauma-informed parish. What are those things that we need to shift just a little bit to pay attention to and notice what's happening with trauma? Why is why are people responding the way that they are? Why is it, you know, because oftentimes we have, as you said earlier, the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Those are the things that are actually happening. I actually get to tell a story about like, if my amygdala thought I was trying that a lion was trying to eat me, how would it respond?
SPEAKER_01:Flop.
SPEAKER_02:And people, well, that that's the worst one that says that it this is happening. The lion's gonna eat me. So you'd throw yourself to the ground. Right. Yeah. You know, but it's in explaining that I had a room full of people at the National Catholic Partnership and Disability Conference look at me and say, I've seen people behave in those ways. It never occurred to me that it was their amygdala running the show and they were having a response to what was happening and just trying to figure out how to be safe.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And I said, Here's the game. Can you be curious? And I said, you know, I was given the example of me having a flashback. And I said, So when you see that happen, I can understand where you may initially think, what is wrong with her? Wrong question, not really helpful. And I realized trauma-informed practice would say, What's been done to her? Yeah, if you turn to me at that moment and asked me that, I got nothing. The amygdala is running the show, I cannot even answer your question.
SPEAKER_03:Right, right.
SPEAKER_02:So the more important question is, what can I do right now that would help her feel safe? And I said, and when you see that behavior, is it that she's mentally ill? Or is it that her amygdala is running the show because it knows something you don't? It knows what the past trauma was. It remembers that when this happens, we are in serious trouble and we have got to take action, even if in fact we're not in serious trouble. You know, and in that moment, and they look to be like, that's not mental illness. That I said, that's just the brain operating regularly as God designed it. It happens for all of us. For some of us, we just are triggered a little bit more often than others. And safety, what can help turn that tide? Knowing that they're safe, knowing that we're gonna do what we can to help protect, we're gonna be there and they we're gonna be trustworthy, we're gonna be countable. That will help people heal and cause that amygdala to help relax.
SPEAKER_00:Wasn't that the second tier of the Maslow pyramid is safety? So after food. So, which you know, you gotta have that. If you're ever gonna get to that top of the pyramid, you gotta have safety.
SPEAKER_02:And if you don't have shelter and you don't have food, I let me tell you, safe is not one of your choices at that moment.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and you're not safe either there, right?
SPEAKER_02:So, um, but okay, and you know the X one is the five-step framework for responding to trauma in the Catholic Church. It's the Good Samaritan framework. Okay. It's noticing. I mean, are we noticing something different about someone today than what I would have known about how they normally behave?
SPEAKER_03:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:It's actually taking the time to ask and say, is everything okay? Is there anything you need to talk about? And then if we realize is because in that moment of someone truly listening, you probably are gonna have people in tears and people letting you know about that secret wound, that secret suffering that they have. Sure. It's that opportunity then to just tend.
SPEAKER_00:I remember uh Winnie the Pooh Eeyore being asked about Eeyore, how are you today? I'm fine. Thanks for noticing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But how often do we not even notice? Right.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we just let people go on by, and it's just like, well, you know what? There goes you as well. So uh sometimes it's like I wish somebody would notice how upset. Well, well, you know, you didn't do a good job at yourself, buddy. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and and ultimately what I'm hoping that people will do is that we actually help them shelter.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I found something that I thought was a wonderful piece. It came out during during COVID. I talked about how if people lose their housing or people lose their job, they don't actually need more therapy at that moment. What they need is help re-establishing their housing, help re-establishing their financial security, having a purpose in life, and having a network of relationships of people who are there to support them. And my premise is that as missionary disciples, so often when we do evangelization, we're off for the quick win. Oh, quick, I got them in. Okay, we're good. Quick wins are not going to happen when people have been impacted by trauma. Right. We're gonna need to go at a much slower pace, help them feel safe, recognize they're gonna test us several times to say, but are you really safe?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Um and then a couple times more because they can.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Just because you say I'm gonna be safe doesn't mean I'm gonna be safe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then maybe, you know, six years and months to a year in, maybe then we can have a conversation about evangelization.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know about that. That sounds a little risky to me.
SPEAKER_02:So you know what my dream is, is at the very end, the fifth step, people will be healed to a point where they can actually hear the evangelization story and become missionary disciples themselves. Do you have any idea what a powerful witness it is to have people who have been to the brink and are sharing about their life now? It's huge. We imagine what would be possible in our evangelization if we had those those folks out talking.
SPEAKER_00:That makes me think of um, you know, the the people listening to Jesus talk, and they the remark is made that he spoke with authority. You know, there that authority is the genuineness of he he not only knew what it was to live among us, but he knew it was coming too. So you know, talk about having a compassionate capability. I'm gonna die for your sins. I think I know a little bit about what you're going through.
SPEAKER_02:So but you know what I also think it was great that he did? He didn't just lecture them. Yeah, he asked a lot of questions.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Asking questions gives people a lot more room to really start to think it through themselves.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Sure. So and source number three. Source number three of four total, right?
SPEAKER_02:Uh specifically four priests, because we have so many priests, like 45% of priests have at least one symptom of burnout. And I wish I could say it it was better in the Protestant churches, but that it's not. And when we're talking about our young priests, priests who are younger and in their first five years, they're running at about 60% burnout. Most of them never make it to five years. Those are not good numbers. And it's partly because they either come into it with unresolved trauma or they're now dealing with their secondary trauma and they have no system in place to actually process it. When you think about therapists, when they not that they are therapists, but they hear people's stories just like therapists do. When they listen to people's stories, they have a depro a debrief process with a supervisor so they can talk about what particularly they've had particularly hard cases. Who can I talk to? Can I take some time for myself? Do I have a room where I could go just to help release what just happened here?
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:You know, when people are upset and they need that. So we need that for our priests. And now here's where I'm going to go next. What if we had our bishops who are actually helping our priests with that? And what if our priests, in fact, help share that with their staff? Because the more that we actually engage with people who have experienced trauma and welcome them in, the more that our lay members are going to be exposed to secondary trauma. And our missionary disciples are going to be exposed to secondary trauma. So do we have a process in place that allows them to debrief what kind of things just happened? That they have a self-care plan, that they are wear and realize, hey, if this starts to happen, if I start to get really cranky and I'm not patient for people anymore, I may be going down the wrong road here. I need to stop back and say, what can I do? And I said, you know, we have this idea of, oh, I'll go with you and I'll evangelize with you, and it will be the two of us together, and it'll be great. Yeah, this is probably going to be much better as a tag team, where we say, how do we create this community of support so that different people in the community can help with different things for this person as they're walking towards wellness?
SPEAKER_00:Well, and you think about that, how how wise that was to even set us them out as two by two so you had somebody to check in with, you know, somebody that has seen you up close, knows you know pretty much who you are, what looks normal for you, and what's, you know, what's going on, Philip. I you know, you seem kind of stressed.
SPEAKER_02:So you're having a good day today or anything you need to talk about?
SPEAKER_00:Paul, I'm not sure about your last sermon there. He's even a little out there. So, but uh yeah, it is uh there's a reason for that, you know. But again, you have to have a relationship with someone where they call you on things. You know, I think of you know the Jimmy Swaggerts of the world. How did he ever get to that point? Where were the people in his life that just say, uh, you know, Pastor Swagger, there's some bad things going on here. Uh oh, you just know look at well, no, no, no, no. There are some bad things going on here. How can I help? So, uh, but instead of you, I'm gonna just gonna hide that, I'm pushing that down.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, that's what I appreciate about reading the Acts is that you see in there, and Peter, how often that uh the apostles corrected each other, that fernal correction fraternal correction needed to be there. Yeah, we need to call each other out once in a while to say, um, it might be time to just to check ourselves here before we go any further.
SPEAKER_00:Hmm. Hmm. What a concept. Well, and you have the Ananias and Sapphira's too are like, you really thought you could come in and lie to the Holy Spirit, huh? Okay, that's something How do you see that going? Uh the men who dragged your husband away are now at the door and are gonna take your body away too. So just so you know, uh not a good plan.
SPEAKER_02:Well, but I do appreciate the fact that as you listen to scripture uh at mass at least, last Sunday's first reading was from Amos, and he was correcting the uh people there because they said, Well, your religiousness and your spirituality are very disjointed. You have it that this I have to be original uh religious and pious and this, but you have no concern for the poor. And it's like you you can't be one or the other, you need to be both simultaneously. You need to have a concern for the poor and for the others while you are in fact faithful to what it is that you should be doing. We have a tendency to go one or the other, and then it does we wonder why this doesn't go well.
SPEAKER_00:Did Amos live in Cuttahae, Wisconsin? I'm just wondering. I'm just wondering. Sorry, couldn't resist. Cuttae, I pick on the Cuttahay all the time because I grew up in Bayview. We're just north of Cuttahae, so cut a high, Cuttahei. I'm sorry, but uh it's a long time history of picking on you guys. So it's not gonna change anytime soon. So, but I'm sure there's wonderful people there. I really know they are. So, but anyways.
SPEAKER_02:But you asked me, like, how do we get ourselves? It's taking the time to listen to what the Lord has to say.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:You know, exactly just kind of listening to that. And I'm gonna throw one more thing out there that I've learned new this summer. Did you know that there's increasing research that shows that dementia is actually tied to unresolved trauma?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I saw something. Where was that? Um, just I think it was in just in some articles I was scanning through on Substack and you know, the research that's going on. Like, now that makes complete sense. That, you know, because there are so many people that I've known that um in my just my direct family circle that got dementia, got it in a serious way, and they all had unresolved trauma in their lives just from bits and pieces of things they would talk about. And I'm like, have you ever talked to anyone about have you ever you know gotten professional help with that? And like, no, I I don't know it's just like, no, that's that's a pretty serious situation. I don't think you're recognizing just how deeply stuff like that affects people. Um, and you know, I you can see probably what's happening is the brain is going on overload. It's just saying, okay, spent a lot of time, a lot of energy trying to put this thing down, and now I'm just damn tired. So I'm gonna make you you're gonna start thinking, yeah, here you go, here's life on a platter, and you just put that bladder together any way you want to, and no one's gonna. But again, I always come back to this.
SPEAKER_02:This is a warning to us to say we really do need to help people intervene sooner rather than later. And I know it's scary, and I know it's well, but what if they because for most of us it was like we're so certain that we're going to be overwhelmed with emotion that we will never survive it, and then we actually get through it because that's what's like, why do I have to go through it? Why can't I just go around? That's not the option. You must go through. Sorry, and we'll live, but it's hard to see it at that moment.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:I always come back to the uh the truth will set you free, but only after it makes you miserable.
SPEAKER_00:That's very honest, very genuine. I like that. So but I don't want to be miserable. Well, too bad.
SPEAKER_02:But I also look at thinking that's a huge challenge to Christians of all kinds and everybody else for the matter, right? To say, what if we actively worked to help people resolve their trauma sooner rather than later?
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. Doesn't get as deeply rooted then, for one thing. But and source number four.
SPEAKER_02:Number four is specifically for bishops.
SPEAKER_00:This one's brand new.
SPEAKER_02:This one's brand new, and it's one that we've been putting out to talk at the highest levels of leadership. Okay. The very things that I was talking about earlier about introducing leaders, having a system for supervision, and then actually looking to say what partnerships are you creating? What things are you doing to actually build the network and the ecosystem that actually helps support priests? Okay. Because right now we don't have that. We I mean, if somebody gets in trouble, we may ship somebody somewhere, but we have no system in place for debriefing, no system in place to say, what if we don't have to get to the red zone before we hit we intervene? What if we because how many of the things that we've seen happen have happened because of the risk-taking behavior of trauma?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Well, and yeah, and not catching those warning signals were who is it, um, Father Marseille that they recently did the documentary on and talking about how his abuses just you know got out of control completely and yet weren't confronted supposedly because of the success of his ministry. It's like we don't want to rock that boat too much. Um you know, and you think about that, uh, excuse me, but how unchristian is that? So um, and that that erodes the trust, right? It erodes the people's willingness to even confront their trauma because it's like, well, I'm just gonna get more traumatized, you know, if that's the the state of the union. And yet recognizing those things, and then I I'm sorry, I think there's a certain amount of conus that's necessary in people too to say, you know what, this is not gonna be easy to confront this, but we've got to because the seriousness of it and the consequences of not confronting it far outweigh the uncomfortableness I'm gonna have right now in confronting it and saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not just sweeping this under the carpet. Sorry. Uh there's too much damage that's been done. And it's not just to the people you're damaging, but the damage to you needs to be healed as well.
SPEAKER_02:And that's where, you know, we and it damages the entire community around you. Sin is never an individual thing. Sin is a community experience.
SPEAKER_00:It's a community sport, yeah. Right. You're like, oh my god, really? So yeah, and it I mean, when you think of that, I in in theater we always would talk about there's um this process you go through as you're developing a character, and you have to understand from the get-go that no one, no one sees themselves as an antagonist. So, you know, the worst, the biggest slime bags you can play on stage, you have to find a way to understand how they made the choices that they made that made them that scumbag, right? And I can guarantee you they're not thinking themselves, if they're thinking of themselves as a scumbag, they're actually wearing it as a badge of honor. But they're they're totally justified in what they did. So, you know, to to take that this next step, right? We we have to learn how to see these people that we think are just awful, awful human beings, and say, but what happened to get them to that point? What what was the thing or the things? Well, I don't care. Okay, well, then you're just admitting and you know, reconciling yourself to the problem always being there. Because if we don't figure out what is is happening, we have no way of healing, no way of stopping. Because it you're you're gonna just keep going. Yeah, you don't have any way of even recognizing what things to prohibit. It's like, you know, well, we think if you have more vitamin A, you'll be better. Well, all right, fine.
SPEAKER_02:So you know, my favorite article that came out at Lent, which just talks about this very thing, is c titled was Sin Makes You Stupid. It literally is like once you have some, you lose any ability to see that there's anything else wrong. And then so you just double down and then you triple down and then you quadruple down, and it's just like, stop me, stop myself.
SPEAKER_00:I like that. Remember, remember America's sin makes you stupid. So yeah, that I can buy that in a big way. Or sin or stupid t-shirts. There'd be a there's a merch line there, I'm sure. So any Kathy, uh, I can't thank you enough. It's how you kind of called out of the blue, and I'm like, we we had great timing there too. You were calling me like, I'm in a meeting. God, listen, then I'd think I gotta call her back when I get done. And of course that doesn't happen because I'm me and I don't have a brain half the time. So, but I can't thank you enough for just taking the time. I know you're just in town briefly, it sounded like, right?
SPEAKER_02:I just kind of popping in. I thought I'm gonna take a chance and excellent.
SPEAKER_00:I'm glad you did. Kathy is the executive director, right? The president, CEO, however you want to call it, uh, Feed My Sheep.
SPEAKER_02:Gather my lost sheep.
SPEAKER_00:Gather my lost sheep. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02:That's okay.
SPEAKER_00:I have somebody else that's a feed my sheep person, too. So, but gather my lost sheep.
SPEAKER_02:So in the ministry is primarily devoted to uh evangelization and uh organizational leadership. We're applying trauma-informed principles to each of those because our goal is to help people be able to hear the gospel. They can't do that without healing first, and that applies both in the pew as well as our clergy.
SPEAKER_00:What a concept, huh? Boy, let's heal the people that are healing the people and we'll all be healed better, won't they? Oh, yep, yep, yep, yep, they will. So thank you so much, Kathy. Thanks for sharing. And if you people want to find out more, they can come to the website and I'll have at least these sources that they can scan.
SPEAKER_02:Where else can they go to?com.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Gather my lost sheep. All one word. Gather my lost sheep at gmail.com. How much easier can it get? So, and just remember that gather my lost sheep. It makes complete sense too, right? And who's gonna do that? The shepherds, right? And who are the sheep? We are! So, but anyways, thanks so much, Kathy. Great talking with you again. Take care. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
