Dear Becoming Ones:
Today’s Sunday Substack is a Substack Conversation with Dr. J. Kyle Gregory — a jazz musician, an educator, and a pilgrim, like me, on the way. Together, we wander through many things, including the big G word.
I’m inviting us into these conversations with fellow travelers who are also learning to walk the unfinished road. I believe conversation is content in this age when we are too often expected to passively receive information — from the news, a pastor, a teacher — and call it truth. This is our call to reclaim discernment as a sacred skill, especially in this moment of collapse and confusion.
I think of my days at Grace Bible Study back in Abilene, TX. I loved the sweeping experience, being carried by the music, but the theology — oh, the theology never quite fit. Even then, I resisted the rigid containers that Western theologies built for wonder and mystery.
When I found my way to Logsdon School of Theology and Dr. Dan R. Stiver, my mind was flung wide open. Dan beckoned me to the threshold of my own imagination, introducing me to the works of Derrida, Hegel, Heidegger. Those texts didn’t just inform me — they formed me. They taught me that ideas have a life of their own, that experience is not an afterthought but the ground on which theology stands — just as feminist theologians have always known.
So when I sat in those pews at Grace Bible, I let the music wash over me, even as the lyrics sometimes sat awkward on my tongue. Later, I found artists like Caedmon’s Call, then folk musicians, then Derek Webb once I moved to Chicago — music that offered an imagination large enough to hold my wrestling.
I have been on a pilgrimage of listening my entire life — listening to the world, to the genuine within myself, and to the sparks of the genuine within you. This is the work of narrative intelligence — the wisdom to recognize that our stories are unfinished, that our conversations are fertile soil for another possible world. It’s how we participate in the imagination economy — a world where creativity, connection, and shared story are more valuable than passive consumption.
May this conversation with my dear friend Kyle invite you to listen deeply — to jazz, to questions, to the silences in between — and to the experience that stirs your spirit awake.
Enjoy this Substack Conversation. Enjoy the way.
With you on the way,
RCE+
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