This is a really melancholy and earnest episode. My friend Avery is joining me to discuss the right to grieve and to experess our fear and pain. We also take on Mary of Bethany's perspective of being unable to see a loved one in pain and fear and not being able to take that away, yet validating and comforting them in their experience.
If you need some somberness for Holy Week, you've come to the right address.
Also, Avery - in addition to editing the episode - has provided some time stamps for orientation:
0:00 - 3:21 Introducing the topics
3:22 - 9:33 First story: John
12:1-8 — reading; discussing Judas
9:34 - 14:19 Hierarchy of luxury — judging the spending of poor & disabled persons, activists
14:20 - 16:17 Mary had to use oil on Lazarus’ body not long before; now she can use it on Jesus while he’s still alive to appreciate it — “Give us our flowers while we’re here”
16:18 - 18:03 Diluting people’s message after their death — MLK, Jesus
18:04 - 28:59 Mary affirms Jesus’s identity and mission when no one else does — versus avoiding, blaming, denying, or trying to fix disabled persons’ pain
29:00 - 34:08 The oil will follow Jesus through his suffering; comfort to Mary as well; it’s hard to feel helpless as the person suffering or the person watching that suffering
34:09 - 41:08 Second story: Mark 14’s Gethsemane story; comparing the disciples’ sleep to coping with reality by shutting our eyes
41:09 - 48:20 Jesus took the time and space to sit with his grief; disabled people deserve to grieve their own experiences without it “betraying the cause” — allowed to settle into the Gethsemane of things
48:21 - 50:21 community members who affirm your experience make all the difference; it makes sense that it’s the women who “get” Jesus because they know what it’s like to have their pain & reality dismissed
50:22 - 57:03 Our personal troubles — finding safety and comfort in the space Jesus has carved out in Gethsemane; teaching ourselves to sit with others in their Gethsemane
57:04 - end support from friends in the things we “can’t not do,” but that lead to pain
