Faith Matters

Today we’re excited to welcome back Thomas McConkie to celebrate a new season of another Faith Matters podcast he hosts: One Heart, One Mind. Together, we dig into the story of Mary and Martha, which he recently explored in an episode there.

Drawing on decades of contemplative practice, Thomas’s read of this story is that it may be inviting us to discover the kind of presence that allows us to carry the stillness of Mary into the action of Martha. It’s a new understanding that means we don’t have to leave divine presence—whether we’re at the Savior’s feet or getting dinner on the table.

In this conversation, we also talk about how easily even an invitation to grace can become another item on our spiritual checklist—another way to feel like we’re falling short. Thomas invites us instead to turn toward that wound with compassion, and to remember that transformation doesn’t have to begin with fear, shame, or even striving for self-improvement. It can begin with the recognition that we are already and completely loved.
Thomas has a remarkable gift for helping us slow down and experience these ideas rather than simply think about them. We loved this conversation, and we hope you will too.

You can find Thomas' book At-One-Ment here, and find even more from him at LowerLightsWisdom.org.

Thomas also shared his insights into the Mary and Martha duality in an episode of Proclaim Peace, a portion of which has been adapted for print and included in the brand-new print issue of Wayfare specially created to accompany your Advent and Christmas celebrations. Get your copy here, or become a Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive one in the mail — and take a look inside the issue here!
The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

If Isaiah has ever felt impenetrable, start here. With Come, Follow Me taking us into Isaiah over the next couple of weeks, we’re sharing a special crosspost from Proclaim Peace, which is another Faith Matters podcast that we produce with Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
In this episode, Jen and Patrick sat down with Reverend Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, a Christian nonprofit dedicated to social justice and peace.
Today they are exploring Isaiah 58, which Adam calls his favorite text in the Old Testament. It's a chapter about fasting and about what happens when religious devotion stops changing hearts. The people in this story are fasting faithfully and getting frustrated that God doesn't seem to be noticing. They learn that a meaningful fast has more to do with who we feed, who we make room for, and how we treat each other.
Adam shares some ideas for making our own Latter-Day Saint Fast Sundays more meaningful, and a simple prayer practice he’s returned to for years. 
We hope that this episode helps Isaiah feel less distant and moves you to become a "repairer of the breach" like Isaiah calls for in this chapter.
Find Reverend Taylor's book A More Perfect Union on Bookshop.org or on Amazon.
The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chaves from Faith Matters.
Maybe some of you relate to the stomach-dropping feeling I get when I’m asked to speak in church. If you’re anything like me, those 12 minutes can loom over your whole week.
Today, Ben Crosby and Isaac Richards join us to talk about how to give a talk! How to prepare and deliver a talk with confidence and share a message that will be nourishing for your congregation.
Both Ben and Isaac teach public speaking at a university level, and they’ve just completed an anthology of Latter-day Saint speeches spanning our entire church history—a fascinating window into how we’ve talked, taught, and testified, and what’s shifted about that practice over two centuries.
Despite how central these talks have always been to our Sunday experience, they note, almost none of us are ever taught how to actually give one.
So today: tips and tricks to make your talk less daunting, four methods for delivering and preparing one, and help finding the voice that’s authentically yours. We hope this conversation leaves you feeling a little more prepared for the the next time that call comes.

Find 5 helpful principles from Ben Crosby here, use the discount code S26UIP for a 30% discount when you order the book, and get a look inside the book through a collaboration with Wayfare Magazine.
The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today, we decided to bring back one of our favorite conversations with Casper ter Kuile, because he'll be joining us this next week, September 24th through 26th, at Restore:Connect. 

Casper has spent years exploring the changing landscape of spiritual life in America, especially the new ways that people are finding belonging, meaning, transformation, and even sacredness as traditional religious participation declines. 
About a decade ago, Casper and his fellow Harvard Divinity School classmate, Angie Thurston, wrote a fascinating report called How We Gather, looking at the ways that millennials were finding forms of spiritual community in seemingly secular spaces, from CrossFit and SoulCycle to social justice movements. 
Since then, Casper has continued exploring how we create meaningful spiritual lives. He co-hosted the beloved podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. He wrote The Power of Ritual and launched The Nearness, an online community built around exploring life's big questions together. 
In this conversation, Zach Davis talks with Casper about what he's learned from years of studying and working at the edges of America's evolving spiritual landscape.
We are so excited to share it again since Casper will be joining us next week. If you don't have your tickets for Restore:Connect yet, now is the time. We would love to see you there so you can hear more from Casper and so many other incredible speakers. You can go to faithmatters.org/restore for tickets.
The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we're joined by Colette Lafia, a spiritual director, poet, and author whose newest book Leaving the Shore: Experiencing Poetry as Prayer invites us into a different way of meeting the divine than we might be used to.
Much of our faith language often centers on effort—perseverance, pressing forward, fighting the good fight. Colette offers a somewhat gentler direction: the idea that relationship with God can look much more like surrender than striving.
One of the most vivid parts of the conversation is Colette's take on delight. She traces it back to relationship: the moment she stopped approaching God as someone to plead with, and started experiencing the connection as something to simply enjoy. Her point isn't that discipline or commitment don't matter—she still believes in practices that cultivate a spiritual life—but that delight can carry us there without so much of the striving we're used to.
We felt like this conversation is an invitation to loosen our grips on outcomes, on certainty, even on the idea that connection with God has to be earned, and to notice what opens up when we let delight and creativity lead instead.
The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!