Faith Matters

Today we’re honored to share a special session from Restore 2025 featuring Steven Kapp Perry, Alisha Anderson, and Ben Schilaty—three gay Latter-day Saints who have each taken different paths, and who share a deep commitment to following God with honesty, courage, and faith.
In this on-stage conversation, Steve, Alisha, and Ben share personal and vulnerable reflections on what it means to seek God when the road ahead feels uncertain, and the courage it takes to keep moving forward in faith. They explore belonging, revelation, and the complexity of spiritual life as they describe discerning and following paths that looked very different from one another’s and the ones they once expected—often amid the pain of being misunderstood.
This session was a powerful reminder that God is at work in every life, and that each person's journey is sacred. 
As Ben shares near the end of the conversation, "The stories that truly matter are the stories of the LGBTQ people that you know in your lives." That's our invitation this month. We hope this conversation opens the door to deeper connection with people in your own life whose paths may look different than your own.
We’re grateful to Steve, Alisha, and Ben for their vulnerability and wisdom.

You'll hear Steve mention a short film at the beginning of this session that tells more of Alisha’s story. It’s beautiful and moving, and you can watch it here. You can also watch a video recording of this session, including a musical performance from Steve and his wife, on our YouTube channel or Substack. You can order Ben's book A Walk in My Shoes here.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

This week, wards across the United States will be having a really unique 5th Sunday discussion centered on the Constitution, moral agency, and peace-building. So today, we wanted to reshare a conversation that originally aired in 2021.
In this episode, Faith Matters co-founder Bill Turnbull joins Judge Thomas Griffith, an expert in constitutional law, to explore the Constitution and the rapid erosion of goodwill and trust in American politics, including among Latter-day Saints. Judge Griffith sees the possibility of a serious crisis and believes that Latter-day Saints can and must play a critical role in healing today’s divides.
We’ve also compiled lots of additional resources that we hope will help as you prepare for this special Sunday lesson—you can find those on our website (faithmatters.org), and you can always find links to dig deeper into each episode in our free weekly newsletter. Thanks so much as always for listening, and we hope you enjoy the episode.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

They call him the Mr. Rogers of farming, and I think you’ll understand why. 
Karl Ebeling spent 33 years as a chemical engineer before feeling an undeniable pull back to the land and to a childhood love of farming that had never really left him. He combined his love of the earth with desire to help and heal and founded Eden Streets in 2020, a community farming initiative that helps individuals relaunch their lives and cultivate community through farming. Karl has watched first hand as the earth does her healing work in the souls of men and women experiencing homelessness, addiction, or disconnection. 
Today, he joins us to talk about the gifts of creation, and what it might look like to, in Elder Causse’s words, “grow, enhance, and improve upon” them, and what that kind of stewardship does for our own souls.
I was deeply moved by Karl’s grounded wisdom, his reverence for the Earth and by the lessons he’s learning from the natural world about rhythms, relationship, belonging, and peace. 
With planting season upon us, we hope this conversation inspires you to step outside, put your hands in the dirt, and experience the way the natural world is reaching out to heal you.
You can find more from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on caring for the Earth here.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Tish Harrison Warren on her beautiful brand new book, What Grows in Weary Lands.
From the very first pages of this book, Tish gives us language for something so familiar. She writes about aridity—those seasons of spiritual drought, exhaustion, or distance from God, when prayer feels flat, faith feels heavy, and the life we once found nourishing suddenly feels barren. 
Then she also introduces us to the ancient idea of acedia—what the Desert Fathers and Mothers sometimes called “the noonday demon.” It’s that restless belief that life with God would be easier somewhere else, sometime else, with different work, different people, a different church, or a new set of circumstances. It’s a restlessness that wants to escape the ordinary demands of love in search of some imagined future where spiritual highs are constant and faith feels effortless. 
But Tish says these experiences of aridity and acedia aren’t signs that something has gone wrong, in fact, they are experiences that Christians throughout time have understood to be a normal—even necessary—part of spiritual maturity.
In this conversation, she helps us see that the invitation in these weary seasons is not to force our way back into those spiritual highs, but to stay with prayer, to stay with the ordinary practices that have formed disciples for centuries, often staying with imperfect communities and relationships even after the shine has worn off and the brokenness becomes visible.
She makes the case that that maturity often looks less like finding the perfect place, and more like learning how God meets us in imperfect places through patience, repair, and the slow work of love.
Tish is an Anglican priest and author known for her award winning books Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night. Her new book, What Grows in Weary Lands, was released this week and is available on Bookshop.org, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. We are so grateful to Tish for coming on the podcast and we hope that you enjoy this conversation.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

Today, as we celebrate our mothers and motherhood, we’re exploring the symbols of our Divine Mother hidden throughout ancient Christianity, and what it might mean for each of us—men and women—to cultivate and integrate divine femininity into our own souls.
Our guests are Kathryn and Bob Sonntag, who joined us at Restore last year for a powerful session on ritual, wisdom, and our Divine Mother. Today, we’re bringing that conversation to everyone.
Together, we explore where the symbol of the Mother appears in ancient Christian traditions and grapple honestly with what divine femininity and divine masculinity look like when we strip away the stereotypes that can become rigid and prescriptive. As Kathryn says, the feminine is, by its nature, subtle and hidden—something that has to be cultivated with intention. And when souls or systems overdevelop the masculine and lose touch with feminine wisdom (or vice versa), something essential goes missing. Neither the masculine nor the feminine can truly flourish without the other.
We spend time on practical integration. Bob says that ritual is the way we translate meaning into action—the way spiritual truths become lived realities. And he says that ritual isn’t reserved for temples or holy days, but is available in the texture of ordinary life—in hospitality, shared meals, and the quiet rhythms of each day. When we bring intention to those moments, the mundane becomes sacred, and the deeper work of integration and transformation can take root.
This one is for Mother’s Day, and for anyone ready to engage in this deep inner work. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Kathryn and Bob Sonntag.
You can read more from Kathryn in her book, The Mother Tree, which is available on Amazon and at wayfaremagazine.org. You can read more from Bob at WayfareMagazine.org.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.