Announcer (00:00:04) - This is Dream Power Radio. The place where your dreams turn into reality. Here is your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:00:13) - Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Certified Dream-Life Coach Debbie Spector Weisman. This is the place where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams and how you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love. And rediscover the truth of who you really are. I'm going to get a little personal now and share something I've never mentioned on this podcast before. I was raised as an Orthodox Jew and up until eighth grade I went to Hebrew Day School. The school itself wasn't built until I was in second grade. So during first grade, they rented space in a building on the boardwalk where I lived. One of my happiest memories was on Fridays, and when the weather was nice, our teacher would walk us down to the jetty where we'd have our Shabbos party celebrating the Sabbath day, which of course was the next day on Saturday. We sat there eating challah, drinking grape juice and singing songs.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:01:12) - I remember thinking to myself, how much fun that was. And if this is what religion is all about., I'm all in. But the following year, when we moved into the new school building, they hired a bunch of teachers from an even more Orthodox community not too far away. Even at the time, I thought they were zealots. They preached a religion that was built on fear and so many thou shalt nots that I've lost count. All those things they referred to as sins didn't sit well with me, especially those that just simply didn't make sense in the world I lived in, such as not being allowed to wear shorts or a bathing suit in the summer, or like telling me it was a sin to be friends with non-Jewish people. One of my good friends was my neighbor who happened to be Methodist, I didn't want to stop being friends with her. And I didn't. But it didn't stop the conflict and guilt I felt inside me. By eighth grade, I was through. I didn't want to have anything to do with my religion anymore.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:02:12) - But as a lot of teens are wont to do, I threw the baby out with the bathwater. It wasn't until it was time for me to raise my own kids that I realized that some of the ideals that were taught to me were worth embracing, such as those I learned way back on that jetty at the beach. Things like love, community, faith, and the belief that there is a power greater than us that we can turn to help guide us through life. And certainly, I believe now that it's impossible for us to have a dream life without embodying those ideals. We're going to talk about these beliefs and more with my special guest today, retired Pastor Kathleen Penning. Kathleen was one of the first female pastors in her religion and spent many years leading congregations mentoring seminary students, and in recent years hosting a radio show and a podcast. She has written a book about her experiences called The Tilted Halo. Welcome to Dream Power Radio, Kathleen.
Kathleen Panning (00:03:11) - Thank you, Debbie. It is such an honor and a pleasure to be with you today.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:03:15) - Oh, I'm so excited to be talking with you because I don't talk specifically about religion on this program. But faith is a very important part of this. So I want to ask you, do you make a distinction between faith and religion?
Kathleen Panning (00:03:32) - Yeah, that we can easily do that. Faith is the internal part of us, and religion is sometimes how we express that. And there are formalized ways of doing that within different faith groups. And so a lot of people these days, like you felt, have some issues with the formalized parts of things, and it can get to be tough. And if there if people are not allowed to ask the questions and to explore those things, it can turn people off.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:04:09) - It is so true. And I can say from my own experience. What about God, you know, God with a capital G. Do you make a distinction between God and what other people might say is just a higher power?
Kathleen Panning (00:04:24) - For me, no. I can embrace both of those. How people experience who I call God can be different. And how people understand God can vary from faith to faith. What I look for is the commonalities between all of those. And if what somebody else is expressing is based on love and forgiveness and grace, to me that's all the same. If, as you talk about it's based on fear or separating people out and saying, this is my group, the in-group and other people are no good for some reason that it doesn't fit well with the God I know from both Christian and Jewish Scripture. And so I have more of a difficult time with that understanding of God than with talking about nature, universe, spirit, type of ideas.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:05:25) - How do you talk to God?
Kathleen Panning (00:05:27) - Oh gosh, that can be different in many different kinds of ways. Prayer. Kind of what most people would think of as close your eyes type of prayer. It can just be a conversation. In my book, I talk about a time where I kept a journal and had some very, very, very long conversations with God because it was a difficult time in my life and I would mentally be talking and thinking and writing and sharing anything and everything with about my feelings and arguing with God, being angry with God.
Kathleen Panning (00:06:02) - All of those things to me are very acceptable. There are examples of those within the Book of Psalms for Jewish and Christian people, and throughout many centuries of literature, of faith communities, and so we could share anything with God.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:06:20) - This is true. One of the things that you shared in your book is that you felt you had a calling, and that's what led you to become a pastor and go through all those years of working in seminary and all of that.
Kathleen Panning (00:06:32) Mmm hmm.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:06:33:) Do you believe everybody has a calling of one sort or another?
Kathleen Panning (00:06:39) - Yeah, I do, and it can be expressed and experienced in many different ways and can be that, that urging to do something different. It can be what some people... I mean, I've met people who have said as a child they knew they wanted to grow up to be a reporter or a cook or something like that. It can be in alignment with our passion and our gifts and usually is. So it comes in many different ways and many different forms and whatever somebody's own gifts are and talents those can all be part of, and I believe are part of our calling.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:07:24) - What about trust? Does faith call for trust and what if you feel that you can't trust? How do you turn that around?
Kathleen Panning (00:07:34) - Oh, gosh. Yes, faith does call for trust it because, I mean, we-- I don't see God visually. I've never received an email from God. You know, no neon signs that say do this or whatever. Uh, I have never seen an angel. So some people talk about having seen angels, but I haven't had that experience. It comes from within that you build that trust, taking little steps and saying, okay, this is going to work. Some people take that big leap of faith, as it's called sometimes. And, okay, if this is really what you want me to do, I'm going to try it. And it does. It takes courage to sometimes. So trust can be built on courage. It can be built on just the idea, taking a deep breath and trying something new and different and seeing maybe it doesn't work, but then trying it again in a different way.
Kathleen Panning (00:08:36) - Listening to other people as well. Hearing their wisdom and their guidance. God can speak to us in many, many different ways, and that's all how we build that relationship with God.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:08:50) - Because sometimes you don't realize that it's God or the higher power that leads you to people or lead you to situations, and there's something greater than us that allows us to do that.
Kathleen Panning (00:09:04) - Oh, definitely.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:09:06) - Definitely, yeah. A lot of people also struggle with things like doubt and worry and, it could make you doubt yourself, doubt your abilities. How do you embody the idea that you do matter?
Kathleen Panning (00:09:22) - Before I talk about that, I want to say something about doubts. There are many people who say you should not doubt God, that that's bad and wrong. There is an author, Reverend, I think he was a doctor also, Frederick Buechner wrote a little book called Wishful Thinking. And it talks about different words that many people use in faith. And he has a definition of doubt in there.
Kathleen Panning (00:09:49) - And one part of that definition is something I dearly love. He said doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving, and so the doubts can kind of nudge us and get us moving in different directions. So that could be very useful.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:07) - When you're feeling those doubts, how do you embody the idea that you matter?
Kathleen Panning (00:10:16) - Those doubts. If we understand that doubts aren't bad, that they can be part of faith. They can be part of the way that God is communicating with us and that we to me, the idea that we all matter is just a given. But I know that a lot of people don't feel that in many ways. There are many forces in our world, in our culture, that try to tell us we don't matter. And especially as women, sometimes we get pressure to say, oh, you're not as important as some of the men type of idea. But God created everything and everyone, and God did not put any part of this as second best.
Kathleen Panning (00:11:04) - And that includes, depending in my understanding of the book of Genesis and the creation account, that includes women. Women are not secondary to men in the creation accounts in Genesis. When we read those as they were intended in Scripture, and not through the cultural veil that's been put through them. So we all matter just from the get-go. And sometimes it's reminding ourselves of that. It's hearing that from within. To know that you're alive. You have gifts. You have talents. That means you matter. Just by the presence of being. You matter and that God knows who you are. Another thing is that Scripture tells us that God knows the hairs on our heads. And I don't know about you, but I lose a bunch of those every day when I comb my hair. And they're turning different colors these days on their own. And if we think that God is that intimately concerned about the birds or the air, the flowers, then God is definitely aware of who we are and that we matter to God first.
Kathleen Panning (00:12:29) - And that means we matter in the whole scheme of God and who God is and what God's doing.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:12:36) - Oh, what a powerful message and a powerful one to end this segment. We're taking a short break. Now we are speaking with Kathleen Panning about faith, and we'll be right back.
Announcer (00:13:23) - Welcome back to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:13:30) - Yes. Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman. And we're talking about faith with Kathleen Panning.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:13:37) - Okay. I think you had mentioned earlier that you had some struggles when you were becoming a pastor, going to seminary school and seeing the men getting all kinds of job offers. And it was hard for you to start. Actually, you were kind of a pioneer in in your field at the time. Now, did you have a question of faith at that point, and if so, how did you deal with it? And do you think that women today face, if not the same challenges, but different challenges and with being women?
Kathleen Panning (00:14:13) - For the first part of that, I wasn't questioning my faith as I was waiting for my first position, which took nine months, and most all of my male colleagues had positions probably about the time they left and graduated from the seminary or shortly thereafter. But I knew because things were still so new with having women as pastors within the church, that it would take longer. And so I tend to be sometimes a very patient person, sometimes too patient, I think. But so I was waiting, and I was doing some part time work in a congregation that was without a pastor.
Kathleen Panning (00:14:59) - So it wasn't like I was just sitting around doing nothing. But there was that struggle. And the reality was that as a woman, the basic thought was you got to take whatever they will give you. And for me, it wasn't that God was not part of this, but it was the change, the cultural change within us as human beings. You know, the whole idea that pastor...He or she...You know, the image I grew up with as a pastor was always male. It was there was no question about that. And so I knew that for a lot of other people, that would be a very strange transition. And it was finding that first position being the only female in a probably female pastor within probably a 60-to-90-mile radius of any denomination that I was aware of, any Christian church was a little bit like, okay, I never set out to be a pioneer. That I wasn't somebody out waving the flag for women's rights or anything like that.
Kathleen Panning (00:16:13) - But yes, there are still areas where women are still pioneers and still are fighting to be seen as capable and as equal. And we know that there are not nearly as many women in positions as see in major corporations. Pay is still not equal for men and women in the same kinds of positions in business and oftentimes in ministry as well. So yes, there are still a lot of those same struggles, and there are still professions where women are definitely in the minority. And that can be a real challenge. You're going into a male world and where that's not always welcomed with open arms, so it's still there.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:17:07) - Unfortunately, yes, it is, but one of the ideals that you stress in your book is that the message that anyone carries inside them is what's important, not the wrapping that it comes in. So can you elaborate on that?
Kathleen Panning (00:17:21) - Yeah. One of the incidents I talk about in the book was the first position I had was to small rural congregations, and like I said, I was the only female pastor within about a 60-mile radius, 60-to-90-mile radius at that point.
Kathleen Panning (00:17:39) - And it was totally new and different for anyone to see a woman in that role. And there was a funeral at one of the congregations. The rural church. The town church was in a community of whopping 650 people. So small town. But the rural church was out kind of at a crossroads on a highway. And there was a funeral there. There was a gentleman who, as we were leaving the cemetery after the committal, came up to me and told me that when he saw me come out at the beginning of the service, he thought to himself, female, I'm not going to get anything out of this. But then he said, you know, I got a lot out of this. And the gift was that he went past the visual difference and hearing a different pitch of voice and listen to the message. And the message, if we're true to the message, is the same. And even the male persona is different from one man to another. If it's a male pastor, they don't all look the same.
Kathleen Panning (00:18:56) - They don't all have the same pitch of voice. But there's something about being male that everybody just associates with. And then you get a woman in there and, yeah, the look is different. There's another little incident that's not in the book where the last position where I served in a congregation was in the south of the United States. And there was a service not long after my husband and I started there as a team ministry. And I came out at the beginning of the service, and there was a young girl who was a niece of a member, and she and her mother were visiting the congregation. They were not part of the same Christian denomination. And after the service, the member told me that her niece, when I came out, asked, is that an angel? Because I was wearing kind of a whitish robe, and she had no other frame of reference to think about a woman in that position. And so, yeah, it's breaking barriers. It's opening people to new possibilities. But the message is the same.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:20:12) - And that's the thing to remember.
Kathleen Panning (00:20:15) - That is. Yeah.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:20:16) - And I think you opened up a lot of people's eyes by doing that when they realized that, oh, there's something here. Also talk about being when you have faith, you have faith in yourself, and you decide that you want to go after that dream, whether it's a new job or maybe a new career or moving to a new place or a new relationship, whatever it might be. And you start at it and you're not getting the results that you want. How do you know if you give up too soon?
Kathleen Panning (00:20:51) - Boy. That's a loaded question. And it's something I'm still dealing with in now the transition I am in this time in my life.
Kathleen Panning (00:21:04) - At the end of the book, I talk about three things, and one is to stop, stop and be quiet. Stop all the busy stuff that we're doing and really sit and listen. Listen to what's in your heart. Listen to what you think God is sharing with you. Listen to other people and take that sometimes with a grain of salt, because what they say may not be what you want to hear. And so you gotta be able to balance that out. But listen. And then that's part of the stop. And then listen and then evaluate, filter through all of that stuff and see what is it. Is this something you're doing just for you? Is there something bigger there? Is it something that can benefit yourself? Yes, but maybe other people as well. And can you keep going with that without ruining all the relationships around you, without ruining your health and well-being as well? And those are difficult questions. I mean, the example of Thomas Edison. He worked on creating the light bulb. I think he did something like 10,000 attempts before he got it to work -- the incandescent light. You know, how many of us would have the courage to keep going? And after 10,000 attempts or 990.
Kathleen Panning (00:22:44) - When do you give up and say this is never going to work? And most of us probably give up too soon. And there's many people who've said that people in a small business or with an idea and invention, they give up just before that breakthrough would come. So it's hard to know. I don't have a pat answer for that one, but you gotta know when the time is right to keep going and when it's time to stop.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:23:17) - And do you find it helpful to go.to God or at Higher Power and ask for this?
Kathleen Panning (00:23:21) - Oh yes, most definitely. That's part of the listening that goes on. That's definitely part of the listening.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:23:29) - Something that goes sort of hand in hand with that is the whole idea of second guessing yourself. Having to deal with that also.
Kathleen Panning (00:23:38) - The same sort of thing is, does this work? Is this going to work? And I have second guessed myself many times in ministry and since retiring. I talk about the radio work I started doing in the book, and I it started with somebody calling me and saying, hi, would you like to be interviewed on her show? And it was with Doug Llewellyn and Jim Masters from KUTV news blog Talk Radio.
Kathleen Panning (00:24:06) - So, okay, I did the two interviews. It was something fun. I did it kind of just to have some fun with it. And then I get a call from somebody saying, hey, I heard you write your interview. How would you like to be interviewed on our station? Okay. And then somebody saying, well, she'd be a great host. Okay. So I went and did six months with that station as a host. But their platform, the way they were doing it, they were going through a merger. Things just did not feel good, did not feel right. And I was done when my contract was over. But I've been getting phone calls from somebody else. Another station? And I ignored two of those. The third one came, and I called back and said, please stop. You know, the intention was, please stop calling me. I'm done with radio. Well, I wasn't done with radio. I... that was a whole different platform, a whole different way of doing the show, which I did for five and a half years.
Kathleen Panning (00:25:13) - And so when I was ready to quit something and second guessing that this isn't for me type of thing, it's what is God spirit universe putting in front of us in the midst of that and to listen to that, to take a look at it and to see maybe, maybe we're not done with this, maybe this is the way to go. Maybe it's a slightly different way of doing something. But it may still be very much what we need to listen to and be a part of.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:25:49) - What would you like people to get out of reading your book?
Kathleen Panning (00:25:54) - I'd like them to know that life is a journey. Faith is a journey. And that, most importantly of all, you're not alone on that journey. First and foremost, God is there. God, spirit, universe, however you understand that is there with you and for you, not against you, but for you to be part of that journey and that it can be an awesome and amazing. It's going to have its ups and downs.
Kathleen Panning (00:26:27) - You're going to have some maybe times to backtrack or, you know, whatever feels like one step forward, two steps back at some time. But that doesn't mean that God's giving up on you, or that you should give up on yourself, or give up on your dream and where you believe that is supposed to go. So it's about learning to listen, to listen to yourself. Listen to what you believe God is calling you to be and to do.
Kathleen Panning (00:26:59) - What is that dream that you've maybe had up on a shelf? That nudging, that what I refer to as a calling that you stuck away because you didn't think it was possible. It is possible. And listen to that. And to how maybe to get that to be true.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:19) - Well, Kathleen, how can people find out more about you and your book?
Kathleen Panning (00:27:23) - Well, my website is Kathleen, a panning.com. Put the in. It's Kathleen a p isn't Peter Piper picking a peck and I n g.com. That's the easiest way to find me and to get to know me.
Kathleen Panning (00:27:45) - I am on LinkedIn. You can find me with my name there. I am on Facebook sometimes, not as much as I could be, but I'm also on Facebook and LinkedIn and those are the easiest places to find me. And when the book comes out, it'll be splashed all over the web page in the website.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:28:05) - Wonderful, Kathleen, thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today.
Kathleen Panning (00:28:09) - Thank you Debbie. It's been an absolute pleasure and an honor to be here.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:28:15) - We've been speaking about faith with Kathleen Panning. I hope you've enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Until next time. This is Debbie Spector Weisman saying, sweet dreams, everybody.
Announcer (00:28:29) - You've been listening to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Specter Weitzman. For more information on Debbie or to sign up for her newsletter, go to Dream Power Radio.com. This has been Dream Power Radio.