On today’s episode, Jonathan and Sy talk about what keeps them going in the work that KTF does. Hear their thoughts on:
- The spiritual and emotional practices that keep Jonathan grounded
- Why Sy only prays when he feels like it, and consumes a lot of fiction
- The importance of the image of God and living in shalom with your surroundings to Jonathan
- How Privilege and anxiety interact with each other
- Why Sy wants to show people another way of living is possible
- And Jonathan’s recent newsletter recommendation about a massive, nearly untouched national park and the important environmental and cultural questions surrounding it
Mentioned in the episode
- The Prayer of St. Francis
- Our previous episode on family court and foster care
- “Thou, Oh Lord” by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir
- The episode of the Field Trip podcast about Gates of the Arctic
- The book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
Credits
- Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com
- Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads
- Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon
- Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify
- Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram
- Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra
- Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra
Introduction
[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]
Jonathan Walton: If I hung out, and I could do this, hang out in the systemic all the time, I would not want to get out of bed. I wouldn't. Like if I just read the news and just knew the statistics and just laid my life down every day at the altar of my social media feed and my algorithm to feed the outrage machine, that would be a very, just not a fun way to live.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I'm Sy Hoekstra.
Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton. Our topic today is what keeps us going in the work that we do here at KTF when we're constantly confronted with difficult subjects. Like what are the practices and experiences and the ideas that sustain us. We'll also be introducing our new segment, Diving Deeper into one of our recommendations from the newsletter, which we have recently decided is going to be called “Which Tab is Still Open?”
Sy Hoekstra: It's not introducing it. We've done it before, we're just doing it again, but now we've named it. That's the difference.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: We’ve named it Which Tab Is Still Open?
Jonathan Walton: That’s exactly right.
Sy Hoekstra: Before we get into everything quickly, as always… No, not as always, but as we're doing in these bonus episodes, I'm asking you, please everyone, if you support what we do—and I know that you do support what we do because you're listening to this bonus episode that is only for subscribers—please go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five-star rating. And if you're on Apple Podcasts, give us a written review. The ones that we have there are great, we so appreciate everyone who has already done this, it really does help us. That's the only reason I'm taking time to ask you to do it now. It helps people find us, it helps us in the ranking and helps us look good when people look us up if we have more ratings.
So if you support what we do and want to spread our work around a little bit, that is a very quick and easy way to do it. Just pull out your phone, open Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or really any podcast app you have that allows ratings, give us a five star review. Give us that written review on Apple, even just like a sentence or two, we would so appreciate it. Thank you very much.
The Emotional and Spiritual Practices that keep Jonathan grounded
Sy Hoekstra: Without further ado, Jonathan Walton, you’re obviously a black belt of spiritual disciplines and emotional health, just a sort of, a sensei, if you will.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Oh my.
Sy Hoekstra: Should I do that? I don't know if I should say that or not.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs] It's all good. You can be facetious. It’s all good.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give us some of the things that you do to stay grounded. Some of the spiritual disciplines, some of the emotional health practices that you do to keep yourself from losing yourself in the anxiety and everything as you go through stressful news events and deal with difficult subjects in theology and politics and oppression that we talk about all the time.
Jonathan Walton: I fortunately, I have thought about this a lot, mostly because I burned out
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. That’ll do it.
Jonathan Walton: And I have anxiety, and because of traumas, little “t” and big “T” Trauma from when I was a child. I have a high propensity for control [laughs]. So I think I've had to think about it a lot so that I could not just get by in life, but actually have thriving relationships where I'm engaged with people and can show up as myself and not as a performer trying to get approval and things like that. So I think one of the things we want to think about a lot of the times is like what is our motivation in these conversations? Why are we getting this information? Why don't we want to engage, things like that. Being able to name our feelings, where they come from and the stories we tell ourselves about them, it's just like an exceptionally helpful thing when we engage with this stuff. So I ask myself those questions regularly, like what am I feeling, why am I feeling it, and then what is the story I tell myself about that feeling? So that's one simple emotional awareness thing. And I do that on a pretty regular basis in conversations. So if this is going to be like a sensei thing, like Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid…
Sy Hoekstra: Oh no…
Jonathan Walton: …like you’re doing these things… you're doing these things and they are hard in the beginning, but then they become natural. It's like, “oh, I'm not going to put my feelings on other people, I’m going to own my feelings.” And often, the reason I'm able to do that is because of the three prayers I pray each day, The Lord's Prayer, the Prayer of St. Francis and the Franciscan Benediction. Because the Lord's Prayer helps me see myself and see God. The prayer of St. Francis helps me out of that, how do I want to see other people, I want to see them in the same way. And then with the Franciscan Benediction, then the anger, the fear, the discomfort, all of those things are good. Those are things you ask for in the Franciscan Benediction: God to bless you with discomfort, tears, and sadness, anger, and then foolishness. So I think after that there's this thing called the Rule of Life that's very old, that I update pretty intentionally, instead of it being like a self actualization tool where I'm like, “I just want to be my best self.” It's like how can I use this so that there's actually fruitful fruit in my community, not just me? Where the fruit is interdependence, the fruit is not independence and my own personal awesomeness. And so being able to practice things daily, weekly, monthly, annually, quarterly, things like that to help me and my family and those around me flourish in ways that are transformative and helpful, as opposed to strictly by utility or productivity or self aggrandizement and things like that.
Sy Hoekstra: And the Rule of Life itself is, what exactly, actually, what is it in your life?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, so the Rule of Life is like [mockingly serious voice] an ancient spiritual practice [laughter]. But the image is a trellis, that whenever I've heard it talked about with monks and things like that, there's a trellis like if you're growing a plant, like a tomato plant or a cucumber plant, or something like that, and you want it to grow up, or grape vine, you set up a trellis to help it grow so that it’s more fruitful. So for us, it's like these patterns and practices and thoughts and habits help us to create a structure for us to grow. I'd like to think of it more as the scaffolding of our lives. Because when you take the scaffolding away, the building is supposed to stand. So when you take away these systems or structures that you've set up, they become second nature, those things fall apart, and then you continue to do them and you are a whole person.
Like nobody is walking down the streets of Manhattan today looking at buildings full of scaffolding. When you take the scaffolding away we're supposed to be whole.
Sy Hoekstra: Well…
Jonathan Walton: Well, that's true. There’s lots of scaffolding around.
Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: And it lasts longer than it's supposed to. And for all those people in Jackson Heights, I know your plight and I'm sorry, that it’s dark on your block 10 months out of the year [laughs]. But all that to say, a Rule of Life is just an exceptionally helpful tool to be able to do that.
Sy Hoekstra: So then for you, the scaffolding—that's a good New York City updating of agricultural metaphor of a trellis [laughter]. But what do you what do you actually do? Like what do you and your family actually do on a regular basis?
Jonathan Walton: So one of the big monthly ones is I looked at every month of the year, and basically put something in there that all of us can look forward to together and or individually. So Priscilla knows that in our schedule, she's going to have at least three snowboarding or skiing trips in the winter. She knows that in the fall, she's going to have at least three or four hiking trips. She knows every October, we're going camping with our family and every September we try to go camping by ourselves. She knows there's two weeks every July where we are out of New York City. Now, I know that every Labor Day there's a chance for me to go away and her to take care of the kids, for me to just like be away from my children and my wife for a little while. I love them dearly, and I’m an introvert [laughter].
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Exactly.
Jonathan Walton: So things like that. So yeah, that's something that happens every month. And every day I am… this year for my New Year's resolution, shout out to 2024, for every post and thing that I have that is dealing with something difficult, I want to try and post and think about something that brings the light. So can I actually hang out in the beauty and the resistance, the delight and the struggle at the same time, and kind of show up fully in both spaces? That's what I'm committed to doing on social media.
Sy Hoekstra: So that one I think is more directly related to the stuff that we do at KTF Press, and you're saying that all those other things are like the scaffolding that lets the building stand. You know it's built into the rhythm of your life, that there’s things that are replenishing and peaceful coming in the not too distant future, which makes the daily stressors easier or seem like they're more, something you can overcome more easily. Is that right?
Jonathan Walton: Yes. I've got equal parts depletion and equal parts filling.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that's great. You mentioned one of your goals for this year. What are some of the other goal setting practices? I guess you talked about how you review some of your emotions. So what are some of the other goal practices that you put in place?
Jonathan Walton: Every week I write out a to do list, like every Sunday night or Monday morning, because it's usually after midnight, I sit down, I look at the to do list from the week before, I mark out everything that was done, I rewrite everything that wasn't done and I fill in the stuff for the week. I did that last year almost every week, and that's been something that's really helped me, because I can tell myself I didn't do anything and I'm worthless. That's how I feel a lot of the times, like I just haven't done enough. But if I consciously sit down and say, “Oh, these are things I accomplished this week, this is what I'm looking forward to and what I have to do next week,” and I can kind of close the chapter on one week and move forward to the next one.
That's probably the most crucial thing that's helped me in being able to engage with things that are difficult, and things that are good, because I put those things in the same to do list. So I have to spend a good 10 minutes with Maia and Everest, while also “Hey, Jonathan, you need to read this article for the newsletter.” So they're beside each other, like I go back and forth between that beauty and that resistance.
Sy Hoekstra: That’s good. I should do the look back at my previous… When something's off my to do list, it's just gone. Like I just hit complete on my app on my phone.
Jonathan Walton: Yes.
Sy Hoekstra: And I should… That's a good idea actually.
Jonathan Walton: That's a shout out to Flora Beck. I don't know if… oh, actually, Flora Tan now. I don't know if she's listening to this, but her reflections always challenged me. So yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: Let’s just assume Flora’s listening. She's great.
Jonathan Walton: Yes.
Why Sy Only Prays When He Feels Like It, and Consumes a Lot of Fiction
Sy Hoekstra: I come at this from such a different angle than you, man. So I will say me as a listener, if I just heard everything you said, I would get kind of stressed out and think that I was in trouble if that's what you need to be peaceful in life [laughter]. And the reason is this, it's not because anything you just said is bad, it's just because I come from such a different place, which is, I used to be very hyper-disciplined when it came to my spiritual practices. So I had prayer lists every day, like—meaning, a different list of people to pray for every day of the week. I had quiet times and just all kinds of regularized practices like that, none of which is bad.
But it was bad for me because the reason I was doing it was basically out of anxiety that I wanted to be a good Christian and do things well and be a good person, and check all this stuff off my list. And basically remain caught up with Jesus [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Yeah [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: So I would get behind on my prayer list, I would get behind on my Bible reading, I would try and catch up, it would get longer and longer. Because sometimes you're just tired and you sit down to pray at night and you fall asleep [laughs]. It just so stressed me out and I was using, we've talked about this before, I was using prayer as kind of a bad substitute for mindfulness and therapy [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Yup.
Sy Hoekstra: I had no sense of emotional health or insight into my own emotions at all, I just knew I was really stressed out. And then if I sat and prayed for a long time, I would get less stressed out, which I used to refer to as like “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding,” And I now refer to as mindfulness [laughter]. Because I realized I could actually do, I can accomplish that same sort of ridding myself of anxiety without prayer, which doesn't mean that prayer is useless, or that God shouldn't bring you peace when you pray. What it means is I was using God to achieve an end for myself. It was not a relational, I wasn't there to commune with God, I was there to use God as a stress reliever.
So the way that I stay grounded, and the way that I live in my own emotions and put myself in a place where I am more able to handle the stress of life because I'm not so stressed out by my spiritual practices all the time, is I read the Bible and I pray, and I talk to God when I actually want to. Which if you grew up like me, that idea sets off alarm bells in your head.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: Because you think that that means that you are giving into your flesh, that you are just not being disciplined, you're going to lose out, you're going to backslide and drift into the way of the world, and all these other phrases that basically mean you're going to lose out because you're not doing something in a rote way. And I really had to lean into all the scriptures where God talks about spiritual practices and worship and everything that are empty of love for him and says, “I don't care about any of that. It disgusts me. Stop doing it.” Which he says over and over again. So I did take hold of that and get kind of into the real, get into a realistic relationship with Jesus where I'm actually talking to a being who I want to be talking to, as opposed to just doing things out of rote obligation.
Jonathan Walton: And the fruit of that is a closer relationship with God.
Sy Hoekstra: Yes. Right, it is.
Jonathan Walton: You didn't backslide, you didn't fall into the sea of forgetfulness. You've actually cultivated a wonderful relationship with God rooted in your desire to be with him and his desire to be with you, and that is a beautiful thing.
Sy Hoekstra: And my desire to be with God has increased since I have stopped. Because when I wasn't doing things this way, I fundamentally related to God in obligatory ways. Like the same way you don't want to do any obligation, I didn't want to hang out with God [laughter]. That's where I was. So anyways, it's interesting that because we start in different places, and because God knows both of us, we do two very different approaches to things and we come out the other end more peaceful and happier and closer to God, because, I don't know. Because of the stuff that we did that actually correlated to how we feel. I'm just making another in our million plugs for emotional health and awareness. Everybody, we got to do it [laughter].
Jonathan Walton: It's true. It's true.
Sy Hoekstra: Oh, one other important thing for me is fiction, which is… I spend a lot of time reading, listening to, thinking about all different kinds of fictional stories. I mean, I've said before I listen to like lots of sci-fi and fantasy and all that stuff like any other 35 year old, White millennial.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: White male millennial [laughs]. But I actually think it's extremely important for us, people who are specifically called to be ambassadors of the kingdom, to be able to consistently exercise our imagination. Because we are supposed to be thinking about how to change the world on a very fundamental level, kind of all the time. We're supposed to be bringing in new realities or praying for them or trying to. I'm not saying you, man, again, me as a younger Christian, I would have felt a whole lot of pressure around that idea of, “You have to bring in a new reality.” [laughter] But you know what I mean.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: That's what we represent and that's what our God does and is after, is a fundamental change and things. This is why I'm pretty sympathetic to abolitionist politics, because they are the ones imagining the most radical changes for us, and for our society and for the most marginalized.
The Importance of the Image of God and Living in Shalom with Your Surroundings
Sy Hoekstra: Okay, so those are practices that we go through Jonathan. How about experiences you've had or ideas that you hold on to, that keep you grounded in the work that we do?
Jonathan Walton: So yeah, I think the answer for me is pretty straightforward and is simple, but is revolutionary, that every single person is made in the image of God. Like every single person. And every single person that has ever been, is now and will be, is deeply loved by God, to flourish, work, rule, and create in the ways that he has ordered and called them, and like, I am in relationship to that person and my delight is bound up in their delight, and my freedom is bound up in their freedom and their bondage is bound up in my bondage. And meditating on that reality, like our actual connectedness and interdependence, and whether it be a person or the planet or creation, we were made to be in shalom with one another.
I was made to be in shalom with myself, I was made to be in shalom with God. And I think holding fast to that as not just a cool thing to think about, but like the experience that we’re like, when I'm sitting on the subway, or today at jury duty, or tomorrow when I'm back at jury duty, the people that I see are made in his image. So just a quick story because we tell stories. I had to drop Everest off today and I booked a SpotHero so that I wasn't late for jury duty. I had never been to jury duty and didn't want to get fined or anything because I am scared of rules.
Sy Hoekstra: SpotHero is an app you can use to book a parking spot in New York City.
Jonathan Walton: Yes. It’s quite great. So I go to pull into the spot, or to pull into the garage, and it's a garage in Jamaica, Queens, which is a different neighborhood pretty far away from Jackson Heights. And the same attendant that I remember four years ago in Jackson Heights was at this place this morning. So I talked to him, I said, “Hey, you used to be at 88th Street.” And we talked for a little bit, and he looked like the last few years have been really, really hard. So I said that, I said, “Hey, are you alright? The last few years have been really hard.” He said, “Yeah, it's been really hard. But like good to see you.” We fist bumped and like those kinds of things.
And Priscilla would tell me, she would say, “Jonathan, to us, it's not an abnormal thing to notice and see everybody.” She said that, because when we used to live in Jackson Heights, the same in this neighborhood, she was walking home with someone from the train and she said, “Hey,” to the folks who worked at Chipotle, she said, “Hey,” to the folks who worked at Children of America, she said, “Hey,” to Pizza Sam, she said, “Hey,” to the parking person. And the guy was like, “You know people in your neighborhood, that's weird.” And she's like, “No, it's not weird actually. It's weird not to know the people who make your life possible.” [laughs] So I think just practicing that and experiencing that, and promoting that, to see everybody and notice everyone and acknowledge everyone, is something that, that's a regular experience that I'm grateful for.
Sy Hoekstra: That's really good, and I can see how that would help you understand the importance of what we do. Like meaning, I guess I can understand how it would motivate you…
Jonathan Walton: Right.
Sy Hoekstra: …to tell people the stories that we talk about in the newsletter on this show, and highlight the perspectives. How does it ground you? How does it help you get through it? You know what I mean?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, it helps me get through it because if I hung out, and I could do this, hang out in the systemic all the time, I would not want to get out of bed. I wouldn't. Like if I just read the news and just knew the statistics and just laid my life down every day at the altar of my social media feed, my algorithm, to feed the outrage machine, that would be a very, just not a fun way to live. But if I make eye contact with Everest, who doesn't know where the chocolate in her hot chocolate came from, she's just really excited about the froth and slurping it. [laughter] There's like, “Oh right, this is a real thing.” I can eat this poppy seed bagel with lox and I don't… Like yes, I know the flour is not the greatest. I know. I can lay out all the ingredients, I remember the Department of Labor and Statistics, how we're all, everything’s sourced, like that stuff comes to my head at every meal.
And I can look down and be like, “Maia and Everest and us are really enjoying this meal,” and we're grateful. And like holding those two things, so noticing that people at our table and the folks that make our table possible, who may not have a table of their own, holding that is a grounding thing, so that I can go into the work that we're doing with real people in mind, not just bylines and links in a newsletter.
Sy Hoekstra: That’s good. I appreciate that clarification a lot.
Jonathan Walton: No, I'm glad you clarified because sometimes it just comes out all this like fluffy things.
Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].
How Privilege and Anxiety Interact
Jonathan Walton: What about for you?
Sy Hoekstra: I think, so a couple of things. One, we've talked before about the metaphor of weightlifting.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Oh, yes. Yes, we did. That was a good metaphor.
Sy Hoekstra: Okay, this is… Jonathan, you're complimenting yourself right now, because this was your metaphor, but that's fine.
Jonathan Walton: What? [laughs]
Sy Hoekstra: It's okay. You're the poet. This is your realm. We basically were talking about the idea of kind of anxiety and privilege. So meaning, there is real, honest, felt anxiety when it comes to doom scrolling on social media, or when it comes to reading all these horrible things in the newspaper, that I do not want to diminish in any way. I just want to acknowledge the fact that kind of the more real-life stuff you've been through, the easier that kind of more distant anxiety feels. So when I say more distant anxiety, here's what I mean. I spent two-and-a-half years as a public defender in Family Court. And I would have, I was the defense attorney for the parents. I've talked about this on an episode before.
It's something I'm really passionate about, go back and listen to it, please. So I was defending parents who were accused of neglecting or abusing their children or somebody's children. And that makes me the bad guy, that makes my client the bad guy in court at all times, despite the fact very often they were not bad guys who had done nothing wrong. Again, go listen. If you don't understand the system, believe me, it's true. Go listen to this past episode. But I was being just berated constantly by everybody, by judges, by opposing counsel, by the council that represented the children, because I was the bad guy. And for note, when I was doing my job, all I was doing was my job that I was hired to do that the system actually needed me to do in order for them to even accomplish their goals.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: And I would get yelled at by a judge for just raising objections that you're supposed to raise as a defense attorney, to defend your client. That it would be bad if you didn't intervene, all that kind of thing. And I'm having to defend myself for doing my job or for raising good points about the evidence that there’re like big gaps in the case or whatever. And what the other people who were yelling at me are trying to do is destroy yet another poor Black or Brown family or really traumatize them. And when you go through something like that for a couple of years, and it's very personal and it's about people that you know being harmed, it's like the real trauma and the real anxiety of reading a whole bunch of news articles about other people who are farther away from you, or at least abstract people you don't know being harmed, it's just not as hard.
And I also burned out at that last job, and a lot of people who are from the directly impacted families who end up doing defense work or whatever, they don't burn out as easily, because it's the reality that they're used to. Meaning I'm not the heavyweight lifter here. [laughs] I'm not the bodybuilder, I'm just someone who goes to the gym for a while. So that's all I wanted to say, I've had those experiences, and those helped ground me. And it's always going to be that way. Also, when I was in that job, I would not have been doing this.
I would not have been spending tons of time digesting and digging through really difficult news and difficult subjects and thinking about abuse and all kinds of other things, because I was doing that all day at work and I was utterly exhausted from that. So I also understand when people have that reaction because it’s just whatever they do all day or something. So that's one thing for me. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, I can move on. I have one other thing.
Jonathan Walton: No, I think just the reality of what you're talking about, like a lot of us, I think feel that way when we encounter things and we can fall into to the into the comparison trap, particularly as Christians, like what I'm experiencing isn't as bad as that person. And the reality is, God looks at us and sees all of our crosses, he doesn't say, “Oh man, that's a worse cross than the other person.” God actually cares that you don't know what to pick out at the grocery store. And he also cares about the kid that doesn't have any food around the corner from you. He cares for both of them. And when you grow up with food full in your fridge, and someone else has grown up with food not in their fridge and now you both have full fridges, there's an anxiety that one person won't experience because they know what it's like to live with nothing in the fridge, and anxiety you might feel because your fridge is constantly full, and you don't know what it's like to not have anything.
And that's only because you've been lifting five pounds most of your life and the other person's been having to lift 50. So it's all weight, though, and so being able to walk through life with empathy for the person that has five pounds or the person that has 50, because we're all carrying something, regardless of how we might appear. And I think Jesus invites us to have empathy regardless of how much our burdens are, whether they be light or heavy, he desires that they would be light.
Sy Hoekstra: And to help people get there. The two fridge people that you're talking about are you and me [laughter].
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, that's true.
Sy Hoekstra: I don't think you meant to do that, but…
Jonathan Walton: I actually didn't mean to do that. I was thinking about me and Maia, but yes. But you're right. That could also be both of us as well [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: I was like, “two people, one of whom grew up with food [laughter] one who didn’t, I think this is me and Jonathan.”
Why Sy Wants to Show People Another Way is Possible
Sy Hoekstra: So another thing for me and this is again, where you talked about ideas and I'm talking about experiences, that's fine. They're both in the question. It's cool. Also, your idea like the Imago Dei and all the things that you talked about are also things that hold me down. I just don't feel the need to repeat them after you said them already. When I say hold me down, I mean ground me. You know what? You know what I just ran into, Jonathan?
Jonathan Walton: What’s that?
Sy Hoekstra: To hold something down is a phrase that White and Black people use differently [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Really?
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, think about it.
Jonathan Walton: Okay.
Sy Hoekstra: When Black people say like “Hold it down,” that's a positive thing.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah yeah, it is.
Sy Hoekstra: When White people say, “Something's holding me down,” that's bad [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Oh, that's so true [laughter]!
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I just like was slipping between the two of them and going, “Wait, what do I mean?”
Jonathan Walton: There you go. It's like, the White person listening to this is like, “What, was that a good thing that Sy just said?”
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, exactly. That’s what I’m saying. Our audience might be confused.
So one other thing that happened to me recently, a couple months ago that's been kind of grounding me for a few months actually, was at the Evolving Faith Conference that we went to that KTF sponsored. We had this really great talk from Sarah Bessey, who kind of runs the show at Evolving Faith, about kind of what I was talking about before, the power and importance of imagination in our faith. And obviously based on what I said earlier, that kind of jives with me already [laughs]. But she kind of gave some time for people or prompted us. I don’t remember exactly what she did, but she gave, there was some point which I was prompted to sit and imagine, just see what comes to mind, which is actually a way that God has spoken to me in a lot of ways over the years.
I'm not someone, like my wife comes from a Pentecostal background where God just says things very directly to them. No, not me [laughs]. I get indiscernible images that I have to figure out later, and not very frequently. So anyways, I'm sitting there, and I start thinking about basically a barren wasteland where people are just barely surviving, trying to find food and water that is almost non-existent, fighting over resources. Just living like there are no buildings in sight, people camping, fighting each other. And then because I'm a fantasy sci-fi person, there're like monsters around [laughter] coming after people. And the sky is super dark. The sun is out, but it's just dark storm clouds everywhere, you cannot see anything.
Then as far away as you can see on the horizon, there's light, like a bit of actual blue sky and sunlight. And the next person who came up and talked was Alicia Crosby Mack, who kind of talked about, one of the themes of her talk was, what you can do, what you have the power to do right now with what you have, like what can you actually move forward on in your faith and location and everything. The thing that kept coming to my mind as I was thinking about this image of this scene, this wasteland, was “point people to the horizon.” And that idea for me is just something that's been keeping me going. There's a lot of things that I've done in my life that I think revolve around sort of that passion.
And I think what we do here to a certain degree too, trying to show people that there is something else out there. It might be far away and might look like it's hard to get to, but it is possible for us to do something different, to live differently. That for me is a grounding idea that pushes me through reading about something difficult, because I want to tell people how we can digest this, to how we can think about it and how we can push forward in a way that actually changes how we think about the world, and somewhere down the line might actually change the world, if enough people started changing what they're thinking and doing. Again, I'm not putting a lot of pressure on myself to change the world.
I'm feeling the obligation that I feel, the real desire that I feel, to do everything that I can in my power, which is a very different place to be. So yeah, look at the horizon. I don't know if that sparks anything for you, we could move on to our segment if it doesn't.
Jonathan Walton: No, I mean, I just think about the Psalms where it says like, “He's the lifter of our heads.” We're able to look up and see out, like I look to the hills from where help comes from. Yeah. The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir has a beautiful song called “Lifter of My Head.” That's what he does, and that makes sense to me.
Sy Hoekstra: If I can find that on the internet, I'll put it in the show notes.
Jonathan Walton: Nice. Yeah, I'll find it.
Which Tab Is Still Open?: Gates of the Arctic
Sy Hoekstra: Cool. Okay, Jonathan, let's get to our segment, which we now have a title for. So I'm going to ask you, we're going to talk about something that we, a highlight that we both found a lot of inspiration from because of just frankly the creation, God's creation that we talked about in a really powerful way, and then also made us kind of dive deeper into difficult policy questions when it comes to environmentalism. So to get us into that, Jonathan, here's the question. The new name of the segment. Of all the stuff that we've been reading and listening to and telling people to read and listen to in the newsletter, which tab is still open?
Jonathan Walton: Ah! Sybren. Sy.
Sy Hoekstra: [Imitating Jonathan’s tone] Ah! [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: The tab that is still open on my phone, on the third desktop with like rabbit trail links connected to it is Field Notes. No, that's wrong.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that's the name of the podcast.
Jonathan Walton: No, it's called Field Trip. Field Notes is actually…
Sy Hoekstra: It’s Sarah Bessey’s Substack.
Jonathan Walton: Which is another tab that’s open on my desktop [laughs]. That's funny. So I'm sorry. The tab that we are talking about today on this podcast is called Field Trip. Great episode for The Washington Post about the largest national park in the US. And the rabbit trail that just leads me down is like, the Green Revolution is tied to exploitation of people and the planet at the exact same time that we are trying to stop exploitation of the planet through fossil fuels.
Sy Hoekstra: Can I give people some summary points about what happened in this episode?
Jonathan Walton: Absolutely, I'm firmly in the rabbit hole, bring them to the light.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So it's a podcast about national parks, but this episode in particular is about a park that neither of us had ever heard of before, called Gates of the Arctic National Park, which is 8.5 million acres of land, which is like you can fit Death Valley and the Grand Canyon and the Glacier National Park and the Everglades and Yellowstone, and like three other parks inside of this park and still have room. It is enormous.
Jonathan Walton: It's hard to fathom.
Sy Hoekstra: It's north of the Arctic Circle. The whole thing is north of the Arctic Circle. The only way to get there is by sea plane because there's nowhere to land. Like you have to fly in on something that can land on water. And it's just millions and millions of acres of mountains and forests and pine forests, obviously, and lakes and rivers, and then like shifting wetlands. There are bears and caribou and all kinds of wildlife, and there are indigenous people who have lived there for a long time. Obviously, the longest time of anyone who's living there. Then there are some people who’ve lived there for a bit longer, but basically the park on any given day has 27 visitors, because it is so difficult to get to, and because you have to basically be an expert survivalist to..
Jonathan Walton: Right right right.
Sy Hoekstra: …not die while you're there. So this podcast is kind of about a proposed road that they want to build through the park, that they might be able to build through the park. It's going to be 26 miles long to get to a copper mine, or a mine that has a bunch of minerals, but the most important one is copper.
Jonathan Walton: Right.
Sy Hoekstra: And the reason Jonathan was just talking about the Green Revolution is that copper is essential for a bunch of green technology, like solar panels and electric vehicles. So the mining companies are playing up the Green Revolution is the reason they want to create this mine, this huge open pit mine which is…
Jonathan Walton: Open pit mine. Yep, the worst kind.
Sy Hoekstra: …bad [laughter] for the environment, and then have this road that obviously a bunch of other development will be around. So the whole episode was just about people who are resisting it for all different reasons and how much damage you would do to this otherwise pristine national park for what the company estimates would be two billion pounds of copper, which is nothing. Which is just nothing in terms of the scale of what America actually is going to need on an annual basis. It does not remotely cover what America would need just for one year in the not too distant future to produce the amount of green technology that we think we need. So all right, Jonathan, give us your thoughts.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, man. All right. Two quick things about this podcast, which is why the tab is still open, is one, they follow this man who is the son of a guide that lived in the park before Jimmy Carter made the land…
Sy Hoekstra: A park.
Jonathan Walton: ...government land. Made it a park. And one of the things that he says, his father used to take like wealthy Europeans out to hunt and fish and things like that. So the son is like, he doesn't do that, but instead he just takes people out into the wild. So the son says he has this recurring dream, really, which really is a nightmare, that he wakes up one day and there's just a city around him and he's like, “How come I didn't see this coming?”
Sy Hoekstra: How did it sneak up on me? Yeah.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. How did it sneak up on me? So there's that and you juxtapose his nightmare with the sounds that just start the podcast. Like you hear the water, you hear the plane engine start, you hear the silence that is, that I think the podcast so she says her, her ears shifted away from processing sound to seeking out sound because it was so quiet. So the amount, just the production value for this entire thing is just elevated to another level.
Sy Hoekstra: Listen, The Washington Post is good at making podcasts [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Post reports, all that. it's a great podcast. And so for me, I just kept thinking to myself, again, it's like my Tesla, the car that we have outside, the solar panels we have on top of our house, those minerals don't come from nowhere. I am connected, the power in my house is connected to this place that we want to exploit. We want to build this, you might blow the top off the ground…
Sy Hoekstra: Of a mountain.
Jonathan Walton: …pull out minerals for 12 years, and then just leave it there, which is what's going to happen. So it's the reality that we live in this tension. And so the resource that, the other resource that made me think about was Palo Alto, the history of California and capitalism, that we cited as another resource some months ago.
Like the reality that deindustrialization has, we actually can't live the way that we're living, for things to thrive. So it challenges me to think to myself like how can I live in such a way that this man's world, the indigenous people who are there, their world are not compromised for my comfort? Their desires and ways of life are not stripped away because I want to continue my way of life.” There has to be a way for both of us to be able to thrive in ways that are transformative and helpful for the generations of kids that we’re raising and look forward to.
Sy Hoekstra: That was some of the most difficult stuff was listening to the native people that she interviewed processing through whether to fight or whether to go along with the development in order to preserve whatever aspect of their culture they can preserve. Because the development is inevitable, and they need the money. And like I just, I don't know, you can't blame anyone for going either way, I don’t think. It's people making the best of a hard situation.
Jonathan Walton: Right. And the reality that this is a, what year, this is 2024. So let's say this is an 800 year old conversation…
Sy Hoekstra: Oh yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Walton: …where people show up, they're going to take it, and the arguments start to happen. It happened in Hawaii, it happened with indigenous people here, like all of the, in the Americas, like “Hey, do we want to help? Hey, do we want to trade? Hey, do we want to…” and then this reality of like, “No, I trust them. No, I don't. Yes, we should. No, we shouldn't.” And like these are old conversations, which now we get to listen to, and struggle with and wrestle. And what does it mean to be present to the struggles of indigenous people?
Sy Hoekstra: So this made me think, like I live in Manhattan, where you cannot see the actual nature that used to exist, it's all covered up. Even the central park or whatever, that was all put there. That's not the actual ground of this island. We put that on top of a bunch of other stuff. And it actually made me… so Jonathan, this is some, maybe some background. Jonathan and I are both people who like nature a lot and very easily slip into worship [laughter] and awe of God's design when thinking about nature and animals and everything. And I actually teared up thinking about the fact that that this untouched wilderness that they're walking us through that you have to go to like the farthest reaches of Alaska to get to now in America, to get actual untouched land, that used to be Manhattan.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: This island used to be forests and hills and surrounded by a couple of big rivers and a bay, and a couple other smaller islands. And the Lenape lived here in that environment for since forever. And I love New York City and still the stuff that we lose to create a place like this is so sad. But at the same time just hearing, I don't know. It's haunting. It's hauntingly beautiful is what it is. That listening to a podcast like them capture the audio of a place like this. And especially so for me, for someone whose world because I'm blind is mostly audio.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And to what you're saying about how it all used to be that way, Maia was saying to me one time, I think it was this past summer when we were going to an RV trip, because we have the resources and that's part of our rule of life is to go out and be reminded that mountains are bigger than buildings [laughs]. And the things that we build and construct are small in comparison to things that God has made. And when we came back, we were in Cold Spring, and there's a view, like a vista or a viewpoint like in Cold Spring. It's a beautiful place if you live, or if you're in New York, and you want to just get an hour away. So we're standing there and Maia looks out and she goes, “Did everything used to be like this?” And I say, yes. And she said, “Even the city?” And I said, yes. And she said, “Man I wish the Europeans never came.” I said, “Oh snap” [laughter]
Sy Hoekstra: The bluntness of children.
Jonathan Walton: Right. It gets at something right?
Sy Hoekstra: It sure does [laughter].
Jonathan Walton: Like, what would the world be like if? And this isn't, you don't have to throw out all Europeans, but like, what would the world be like if we did not see it as something to be wrestled into submission, and solely productive in a way that our dominant culture perceives productivity? Like, what if that just had never been? And I think to go back to the other point, we talked about imagining things, Sy. Like we have to be able to imagine a different way of being in the world. And being in nature and listening to this podcast and wrestling with that haunting beauty and attention, I think that's one way for us to do that. And I think doing the newsletter, doing the podcast, continuing to wrestle helps us to shape not just a fantasy world, but an actual redemptive world where God redeems the stuff that we've made to be something beautiful.
Outro
Sy Hoekstra: Amen. Let's wrap it up there.
Jonathan Walton: Cool.
Sy Hoekstra: Thank you all so much for listening and supporting what we do. We hope this gave you a window into, I don't know, how we do what we do, and how we think about the resources that we think about in the newsletter at a little bit of a deeper level too. Please again, if you support this, if you enjoyed listening to this show, go give us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Give us a written review if you're on Apple Podcasts. We so appreciate it, it really actually helps, which is why we keep asking you to do it.
Jonathan Walton: Yes, it does.
Sy Hoekstra: So please go do that. Well, I'll just go back, I'll just go into the credits. We're going to have some more announcements coming up about stuff that we're doing this year. We have big plans folks, but we're not quite ready to give you a ton of information yet, but you will be hearing more from us in the coming weeks about cool things that are going to be coming to KTF Press.
Jonathan Walton: Very cool things.
Sy Hoekstra: Cool things! Our theme song is “Citizens” by John Guerra. Our transcripts are by Joyce Ambale. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess, and for the next bonus, you'll probably be hearing from us before this, but the next bonus episode will be in February and we will see you then.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
[Tapping sounds from Jonathan’s mic]
Sy Hoekstra: Your thing is bumping up against the mic, and by the way a lot.
Jonathan Walton: Oh sorry, I was typing.
Sy Hoekstra: Oh, you're just typing. You’re on mic, Jon. I mean, you're on camera. If you're just typing while I’m talking, people are just seeing you just typing [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: No. No, they actually can't see me typing [laughter].
Sy Hoekstra: You're just yawning. You're like reading a book.
Jonathan Walton: No, no [laughter].
