Life After Doom: A Conversation with Brian McLaren

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You dream of finally being able to wake up without an alarm clock, laying on a beach somewhere beside a beautiful blue ocean.

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Instead, every month, the zeros disappear from your retirement savings, which is dwindling now because you're paying for schools you hadn't planned on, activities you hadn't foreseen, and children you'd never planned on raising. You have no social life because your friends don't want to hang out with noisy children, and you can't talk about the child that's on drugs or incarcerated or has died feeling uneasy, unloved, hopeless, like you've been pushed into a life that you can't control.

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Join me as I delve into an intimate and inspiring conversation with Brian McLaren, a former english professor and pastor. For 24 years now, he's an author, activist, public theologian, and popular public speaker. His work has been covered in Time magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. The author of more than 15 books, including Finding Faith, faith after doubt, do I stay christian? And a new kind of Christian. He is faculty member of the living school at the center for Action and Contemplation. Together, we explore the complexities of hope, the necessity of grief, and the need for new ways of thinking.

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This is a journey of resilience and courage in challenging times, one that promises to touch and inspire not just grandparents raising grandchildren, but anyone facing adversity.

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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren.

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Nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of childrearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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I planned on having quite a different conversation with Brian McLaren after he accepted my invitation to do an interview. Until I received a copy of his new book from his publicist, I'd honestly been curious about its title and was anxious for its arrival.

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I'd returned home late one afternoon after a day of running around, shuttling children to school and doctors appointments. My grandson had received a round of vaccines for kindergarten, which had added to an already challenging day. When I returned home, Brian's book was sitting on my kitchen counter.

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00 p.m. Before I'd gotten the kids to bed, and I finally had some precious moments to myself.

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I kissed my husband Goodnight and retired to the bedroom with a warm cup of tea, turning the book over and over in my hands, reading every flap, every word from the front matter of the book, as well as the letter from the senior publicist and his publicity assistant.

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Although I was tired, holding Brian's writings in my hands felt like holding an heirloom, as his words have serendipitously made an impression at significant turning points throughout my adult life. And now this man, whom I revere, like some people revere Oprah, had accepted my invitation to do an interview with me. I have to admit I was honored, but also a bit nervous. One thing you have to know about me is that I can be braver and more brazen at times than I even am aware of.

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I'm also a dreamer, and this podcast has been one of those dreams. But when the reality hit that I was actually going to be interviewing Brian McLaren, I began to second guess my dream of producing a podcast at all.

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I mean, who did I think I was writing to? Famous people and asking them if they'd support a cause like mine to help bring community and hope for grandparents raising grandchildren?

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I knew nothing about the podcast production process when I started this, and certainly nothing about interviewing experts. I had no clue how I'd begin a conversation with a man like Brian McLaren.

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But that evening, as I began to delve deeper into life after doom, it dawned on me that I might be right where I was supposed to be.

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Although the title Life after Doom refers to the turbulent times in which we are living, Brian might as well have written it for us about the traumatic life we as grandparents are living raising our grandchildren.

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The processing of emotions, and the decision to let this life either fuel us for our own doom and destruction or propel us toward wise and courageous action for an even more gratifying future is the same. Brian's book provides us with a path for the latter.

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I hope you'll find an opportunity to read his latest book, Life after Wisdom and Courage for a world falling apart. In its entirety, the insights from Brian and other writers, scientists, and theologians explore the complexities of hope, the necessity of grief, and the need for new ways of thinking, becoming, and having a sense of belonging to this life we are living.

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Here's an excerpt from the front flap of life after doom.

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If you want to help yourself, your family, and the communities to which you belong, to find courage and resilience for the deeply challenging times that are upon us. This is the book you need to read right now.

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And by the way, it is available on audible.

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I shared with Brian the story of how I became a grandparent raising grandchildren. The challenges that I faced and how, although learning to care for two traumatized grandchildren has driven me to the very edge of my sanity, it has also driven me deeper into resources that I never knew I had. Thank you so much for sharing that story. It just strikes me how in so many of our lives, surprises come that we're not part of our plan or part of our script.

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And the choice to respond with love and respond with care and respond with responsibility takes us in a very different direction than we ever would have gone before. So when I think about your story, thank you for sharing it. I think about other friends of mine who are in the same situation. It could have been from illness of one of their children.

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It could have been from death from severe drug addiction.

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And so there are more and more folks in this situation. I'm so glad you're providing a chance for other folks to know they're not alone in this journey. I'm very passionate about the fact that there were no resources for us when we started.

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We lost our community of friends.

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Yes. I asked my husband when we began to come up for air, what do you think is the most challenging part of this for you? And he said, I think having to cope with these grandchildren, along with the fact that my son and my daughter in law have abandoned their children, there were drugs and mental illness involved. Coping with all of that at the same time. Yes. And I hadn't even thought about that until then. I was dealing with all the immediate needs of the children. Yes. And he had the grief of a parent and the grief of a grandparent.

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Yes. You know, my wife and I have four adult children, but when our kids were little, our third born was diagnosed with leukemia. And by the grace of God, he made it through. But we had three and a half years of daily chemotherapy. And obviously, it's an experience you never forget. But I remember looking at my mother once, and I realized how much I was feeling for my son and how worried I was about my son. And I realized she was simultaneously that worried about my son and her son. It's something I think, until you've been there, people don't understand. It's true. I'm not sure, if you're aware of these statistics, but I wasn't until I became a grandparent raising a grandchild.

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2.7 million children in the US are being raised by kin right now, and those numbers are growing. All of these numbers are growing. 18,000 grandparents in Montana where I live, are raising their grandchildren, 1000 here in the Flathead valley where I live alone. We can talk about the issues, in particular that grandparents are coping with. Not only are their kin, but their age and the struggles of physical exhaustion, health issues. I speak to many grandparents. There's one couple I know in particular that are both in wheelchairs, and they're taking care of three young children. Oh, my goodness, yes.

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And then that grief of the loss of retirement goals, that's the doom and gloom feeling that a lot of them have. Many deal with financial issues. My husband and I are fortunate enough that we can feed our family, and many struggle just by doing that. The absence of friends, a feeling of aloneness, not being able to speak about things that other people really don't want to hear about, children that are addicted to drugs, incarceration. I'd like to get your help in speaking about faith as a theologian and how that can serve as a source of strength for grandparents that are in this role. And many of the people that I speak with, of course, there's all of different faiths at different stages in their faith, and many of them are non believers. How can we speak about faith with them?

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Well, as you know, Laura, I was a pastor for 24 years, and one of the things I would say about my experience as a pastor, if I'm really going to be honest, and we can't afford anything less than honesty, is a lot of people. Their faith actually did not make them better people. Their faith did not serve them well. The kind of faith they had made them more brittle or more judgmental, or it caused them to torture themselves and punish themselves. Just let me give you an example. You think of how difficult it would be to be in the situation you were in, and then imagine if they'd been raised to say that everything happens for punishment for someone, and then on top of all the struggle of raising grandchildren, would then be, I must not have been a good parent and have some feeling, maybe God is punishing me. See, at that point, faith stops being an asset and becomes a kind of a pathology that makes people's lives worse.

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On the other hand, in all my years as a pastor and when I look at my own life, there is a kind of faith that makes people more gracious and makes their love more spacious and gives them more resilience. And it does all the beautiful and good things that we would hope. And I suppose this is something that I would want to say to all the dear people who are listening, is that we can take some responsibility for the kind of faith we have.

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In other words, if you go to a church where you subcontract out to the pastor or the priest or the rabbi or whatever to do all your thinking for you, or you give them permission to set everything up in your mind and heart for you, they may not know what you're dealing with, and they may set up something inside of you that works okay for them but will be destructive for you. So one of the things I would say to folks is that we have permission to take responsibility for the kind of faith that we develop. And as we get older, that might be something we're a little more willing to give ourselves because we've lived long enough to know that faith can work miracles and it can cause tragedies, too. That's true. Any particular rituals that you can think of that might be beneficial for the people that we're speaking to? Yes. Well, you mentioned the importance of centering down, of having some kind of meditative practice, and let's start with that. I think for folks who are at an age where it's not easy to go running after a seven or nine or 14 year old, we need extra help in tapping into the reservoirs that we have and in not wasting any of our precious energy in worry and anger and bitterness and blame.

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So having a practice where we can see what's going on inside, a simple way to think about it is we've got to check our own gauges. Is our fuel tank empty or full? Is our thermostat overheating or under heating? What are our own gauges? Some people might think I need 20 minutes to do a contemplative set in the morning. Listen, if you can, that's great. But if that's not where you are yet, here's what I recommend. You give yourself five minutes to check your gauges. How am I today? What emotions am I feeling today? How tired am I today? And to just start by acknowledging where we are, and here's a way to say it. To have part of my inner being not only think of the well being of grandchildren who I have care for, but the well being of their caretaker, which is me and my spouse, if that's appropriate. Because one of the most important things anyone can do for the children they have care of is to take care of themselves. So to pay attention to just a few moments, how am I?

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If we could take a few moments at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, that would be a really, really big start. And if folks have faith in God in those few moments, they can, in a sense, take all of their cares and say, I'm not the only one handling them. To in some sense have this feeling that God, that the spirit that's with us, has our back and cares and to know that in expressing our needs and our fatigue and our fear and our pain, that we're not alone in that. And if a person doesn't have faith in God, I think there's even a way that they can allow some inner part of them to be their own inner parent. If I can say it that way, to look at yourself, the way a loving mother or father would look at you, and to hold yourself with that kind of compassion, sometimes it might just mean looking at yourself and saying, you know, whatever it is, I'm 65, I'm 75, and I have care of these small children and I'm doing a lot, and I've got to be easy on myself and I have to have compassion on myself.

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To me, that would be one of the best simple practices that folks could give themselves permission to indulge in.

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I think that's wonderful advice. How important do you think it is for grandparents to have a supportive faith community, and how can you suggest that they engage if it's physically or mentally challenging for them? Well, the first thing I'd say is if you can find a faith community that welcomes you as you are and your children as they are, the children you have care for as they are, this is a great gift, and I think it's worth sorting through some that proved to not be helpful. Again, I'm speaking as a pastor and I want to let people know something. There are many churches that need people, and they want people to help the church. I'm just telling the truth here. I wish this weren't true. But they need people, and they need people to help the church.

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And they aren't primarily thinking of how are we here to help each other and to help the people. So when you find a community where you sense there is a full cup of love and people are trying to overflow in love for each other and you are ready to enter into that, that's a phenomenal gift. There's something Jesus said. I have a bit about this in this book.

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Jesus had this very simple saying, wherever two or three of you gather in my name, I am there with you. And here's a way that even people without any explicit faith could understand this. When you get together with two or three people in the name of love, love is there, right? If you have two or three people who bring love to a circle, love is there.

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And that love will bring benefit to everybody in that circle. And to find a place where love is there, oh my goodness. That's a gift.

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Because all of us need a place where we're not always in the caretaker role. I think it's super important. And even better, if you have children who need a community to have a positive peer pressure from some good kids, and where you have positive peer pressure and support, peer support from others who love children, that's inestimably valuable. People might think, oh, I don't have the time for it. But sometimes there's something you can do with an hour or 2 hours a week that brings you far more benefit than the investment of time.

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That's one of the reasons why I've started this podcast, to create a community for these people who cope with judgment or other issues that have caused them not to trust. Love is the greatest thing. And when you have a community that supports you without judging you, it is love. Yes. A memory is just coming back to mind as we're talking. During my years as a pastor, I'll never forget one Sunday, there was a woman who showed up at church with two children, young boys, I'd say maybe nine and eleven or ten and twelve. And she came up to me after the service and said, look, I need you to know I'm an atheist. I don't believe anything, really, but I recently became a single mom. I've got these two boys, they've got a lot of energy, and they've seen a lot of things that boys their age should never see because their father was abusive to them and to me.

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And she said, I just realized my boys need some positive male role models in their lives, and I can't provide it. And so I hope you don't mind if I'm here. I'm not really interested in religion or spirituality. I hope it's okay for me to just be here for the sake of my boys. And I said, of course, I'm so honored, and I'm so impressed with you that you would want this for your sons, and we'll do our best to be a supportive place. One of the kind of beautiful things that happened over the next year or so. We had a period in our service where people could speak out, something they were grateful for, some concern they had. And one day, this woman spoke out during that time, and she said, I don't really know if I believe anything. I don't really know if I can pray, but I'm really thankful that I'm in a place that's letting me explore that. And a few months later, she spoke up again. And what happened is you just watched her have permission for her own kind of inner life and inner spirituality to come alive.

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So here's the interesting thing. The extra stress of taking on care of children can drive us to the edge of being able to survive. Right. But it also can drive us deeper into resources that we never knew were there. Resources of deep connection with other people, deep connection with ourselves and with the divine. Yeah. It has taught me to love myself in a way that I never could before in my messiest moments. Yes, yes, yes.

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And one of the gifts, I think, just meeting you for the first time today, the gifts that I think you give to folks who listen, is you're honest about that, and that's something we need. We just need places where we can be honest about how messy life often is.

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True. That is what brought me to the wall, that actually brought me closer to God in my faith.

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Yes. And showed me that these challenges never end until you die.

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And it isn't so much how. What we go through, but how we cope with it. You talk about in part four of your new book, live after doom, that when we can get through that difficult part, be able to hit the walls and receive the new vision on the other side of that, the beauty that God intends for us, despite the tragedy. Yes.

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That was the most beautiful realization that I've had that inspired me to share this message in this process to others in the situation that I'm in. Well, it might be useful if I mentioned the way I structured this book is around a pattern that is not original to me, but it's a pattern that really goes deep into christian faith tradition and other faith traditions, people who are familiar with language like the dark night of the soul. This comes from that same tradition, but it's a four phase process. You could think of it as letting go, letting be, letting come and setting free. Letting go where this community has to go through a process of saying, I had a retirement plan and I'm having to let go.

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It's been interrupted. And I either have to let go of these children and my commitment to them, or I have to let go of my plans and those are difficult. Letting go of my expectations, letting go of my comfort. There's a lot of letting go that is not easy and there's no shortcut around it. And we have to be in a place where people give us permission to name it and to not make it sound like it should be easy. It isn't easy to let go. And it takes as much time as it takes. Unfortunately, in a situation like you were brought into and like so many of these grandparents have been brought into, you have to get on with making lunches and cleaning up messes and solving fights and everything else while you're going through your own letting go process. And you know, I mean, that's hard for a person in their fifties, sixties or seventies to do. But you know what? It's hard for a person in their twenties to do as well. And we may even bring a little bit more maturity to it, but it's hard no matter how you talk about it. And then the letting be part is where we say, okay, this is my new reality. I have to accept that this is my new reality. And there comes a time of accepting that. And then the letting come phase comes where we start to say, well, there might be some new joys in this, there might be some new learnings in this. I might meet some people I never would have met. I might end up leaving a legacy I never thought I would have left. And we can't force those things. They have to come to us as we're ready and as they become clear. And then that leads to a setting free where we're able to say, okay, this is my life for now, and this is what now I'm free. Let me see what possibilities come up and let's see what creative ideas come now for dealing with this new reality. So that fate, that little pattern might be useful. It is.

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That process, I think, is one of the most beautiful things that we can share with children that have gone through trauma.

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Yes. The tenacity that it teaches you, the lessons that that four phase process teaches you, is a beautiful gift to be able to give to our grandchildren and this society. Yes, yes. And what strikes me, as you say that, is that as you're going through it yourself, they need to be going through it because the childhood that they could have wished for and that we wish, would wish for any child they're having to go through the painful process of saying, well, that's not the childhood that I have had or I'm going to have the number of adults who are going through their lives still trying to recreate a lost childhood. It's very sad and usually doesn't go well. And eventually they're going to have to go through that letting go process to say, the past I wish I had, I've got to let go of it. It's not the past that I actually have, but that creates a new freedom. And isn't that really wisdom? I think so. I think so. I do, too. Yeah. There's a famous prayer. I refer to it in the book from the twelve step world. It actually came from Ronald Niebuhr, a great 20th century preacher and philosopher and theologian. And he said, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And so much of wisdom is having some sense of what can be changed and what we cannot change. Yes.

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What spiritual advice can you give to grandparents that might be coping simultaneously with the grief or loss of their own children while they're raising their grandchildren to help them cope with those feelings? They're complicated.

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They are so complicated. They are so complicated. A couple of things come to mind. Three of the most basic words in the spiritual life are the words I'm sorry, the words thank you and the word please. There's an I'm sorry part.

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That is what we're talking about when we talk about needing grace and mercy and forgiveness, where we say, I may have made some mistakes, or we may have say, I don't have the best attitude about this right now. Or we say, I don't think I'm doing an a plus job. I think I'm doing a b job right now. And I wish I were doing better to be able to acknowledge that we have regret that things didn't turn out differently and that bringing of regret to God, whether it's regret about my actions or regret about somebody else's actions, and acknowledging them without having to fix them. And see, here's where trying to fix them can get us into trouble. I made a big mistake.

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I regret it. I've got to fix it. So then we become obsessed with trying to prove ourselves or undo history or write something that may not be able to be write it at this point, or I'm tired, so I'm going to work harder. Well, that might just make us more tired. Right? So being able to just express our regret, I'm sorry. This is the way it is.

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I regret this. And then thank you. To be able to notice the blessings that are around us even in the midst of a bad day. And I think we've all had that experience. You're walking down the sidewalk and you're looking down at the ground because your head is sort of down. You're downcast. And then in between your feet, you see that little dandelion growing through a crack in the sidewalk, and you just seeing that little flash of yellow and green and you think, you know what? It's possible for life to come up through some pretty hard times.

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And that little dandelion preaches you a sermon that you never could have heard from a preacher. And you just are thankful. Thank you for that moment of inspiration. Or you're walking down the street and everything is miserable, and this Robin is singing from a tree nearby like it's the best day that ever happened. And you remind yourself, oh, things are bad for me. But thank you for that, Robin. That's reminding me that there's still joy in the world.

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And then the word please evokes when we have to ask for help and we're allowed to say, I don't have enough wisdom. I don't know what to do, I don't have enough strength. I don't know what to do. And to say, I need help, I need help. And to be able to pour that out to God is a first step, and that helps us pour it out to other people. Maybe what some of us need to do is consult a professional and just say, I really need help. I'm at my wits end. Thankfully, people who are listening reached out and found a podcast that's giving them some encouragement and resources. But reaching out for help and being able to say, I'm at the limits of my own strength. I need help. See, that's a way better reaction than just getting bitter and angry and blaming somebody. It's her fault I'm in this situation. Well, that's not going to make things better. But coming to that place of being able to name our needs and ask for help, that's a spiritual practice that I think could help people.

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Great advice. I definitely encourage people to read the book life after doom, wisdom and courage for world falling apart. It will be available May 14.

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Yes, although I just got an email from somebody who got theirs in the mail today, so I guess it's out there in the world. So it's nice to know.

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I hope you'll also put it on audible. Yes, it's available.

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Which is especially important for people raising small children. That's

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00 a.m.

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Pacific time, the online event courage and resilience, yes. In which you will explore the complexity of help and grief and discuss how to find courage after feeling hopeless and people can register@cac.org.

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Courage, yes. And your podcast, learning how to see what a refreshing podcast.

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Well, thank you. As you know, there's some great joy in being able to curate conversations like this. And folks will especially enjoy a conversation I had with my grandchildren that just came out a couple of weeks ago. Some of the most heroic and courageous people who brought their wisdom and their compassion and their just basic goodness to bear for the lives of children are people in your situation. In the situation of listeners to this podcast, of all the people that we see as heroes, it's people in this situation who, in my mind, are amazing heroes. I also think through the course of my life the number of adults I've met who are wonderful human beings, and they had a very rough start. And it was grandparents who intervened and literally saved their lives. There's a lot of them out there, and that's a legacy.

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Yes, it is. Well, thanks, Brian. I really appreciate your valuable time. It meant the world to me. Well, thank you for doing this beautiful work. And I think both of us together send our love to all the folks who are listening doing this holy, beautiful, caring, morning till night, seven days a week. Worthwhile work. Thanks for joining us today on grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity. If this message made an impact on you, please share it with a friend and on social media.

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If you'd like to contact me, you can leave a voicemail or an email through our website at www.

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Grandparents raising grandchildren.org or message me through our Facebook page at. Grandparentsraising grandchildren nurturing through adversity Brian McLaren can be reached through his website@brianmclaren.net, and be sure to check out the center for Action and Contemplation@cac.org as well as Brian's podcast, learning to see Dont miss the first episode of season six, seeing Nature as a child, in which Brian interviews three of his own five grandchildren.

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If you listen to Apple or Spotify or another broadcasting platform, please leave a review there. Your reviews help us reach more people that need this community and and to hear our message. Remember, you are not alone, and together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.