Episode Forty: The Interview - Dr. Julie Todd

Dr. Todd is the author of "Struggling with Non-Violence," as well as a dedicated professor and advocate for social justice. In this longer episode, hear how a tiny and terrifying nun changed her life forever, in all the best ways.

Transcript

They had the spiritual directors introduce themselves first before all the participants.

And there was like maybe 30,

30 retreatants and seven,

Eight virtual directors.

And so this woman,

I can remember staring right at her across the hall.

She stands up,

She's like all of about four foot six or something,

Tiny,

Tiny little gray haired,

Old,

Old looking nun and she stands up and she's like,

My name is sister Ginny Sheehan,

And I believe in miracles.

And I thought,

This is not going to go well.

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

I'm a child of God and a child of the universe.

I am,

Uh,

The daughter of Mary and Jim Todd and sister to Jeff and Steve and Katie Todd.

Uh,

To Matthew Todd and Becky and Michael Kurtz.

I define myself very much in relation to my family.

And in addition,

I come from long lineages of ancestors on all of my mother's mother's,

My mother's father is my father's father is my father's mother's line.

And many other spiritual lineages.

I consider myself primarily a person in relationship to all creatures,

Human and other than human and universe,

And learning how to be in those relationships as authentically as I can as,

As rightly and justly as I can.

My,

Both of my parents are Methodist.

My father was born Roman Catholic.

He's a United Methodist clergy person.

And my mother's father was also a Methodist clergy person.

So I am a cradle United Methodist though,

Are my upbringing and our upbringing was,

I wouldn't say overly religious despite being raised in a pastor's family,

My mother and father,

Especially in their college days,

Which was in a Methodist college union college in Barbourville,

Kentucky,

Which is where they met,

Were very much a part of the social gospel tradition of biblical interpretation.

You know,

In the 1950s would have been still pretty early that critical historical analytical understanding of interpreting scriptures.

So I grew up in a very liberal Protestant mainline household.

And my father was a pastor when I was a child,

But,

And that transitioned to being the director of the United Methodist conference center conference and retreat center.

So much of my childhood was less involved with church than more though the church Methodist influence was always there.

I would say what I mean when people ask me like,

What does it mean to be a social justice Christian or whatever the addition of United Methodism links,

What's called personal and social holiness.

So there is no individual faith per se,

Aside from your right relationship to the rest of the world.

And so personal salvation,

So to speak,

Is less emphasized and just social relations are equally,

Or depending on your,

How deep you are into it,

More emphasized.

I'm a professor of justice and peace studies at the Ileth school of theology.

So that's something that sort of translated to my adult life as a,

What I would say,

A social justice Christian practitioner.

I was also became a United Methodist clergy person.

As you may know,

I somewhat recently divested of those orders as now understanding,

Even within the social justice framework of understanding the Christian tradition,

The hierarchy implied in Christian theology,

As well as the history of oppression,

Domination and violence within the Christian tradition was no longer something that I could reconcile myself to.

So my spirituality is shifting,

Call myself a follower of Jesus and a lover of the Bible.

But my theology is shifting much more deliberately to something that embraces the sentience and the holiness of all creation.

So struggling with non-violence is my PhD dissertation.

So in a sense it had already been written and I,

You know,

I spent however many years,

Eight years,

Seven years in a PhD program,

You know,

Researching,

Writing and putting that out there.

It was edited,

But it's not something that I've ever really thought about.

And I think that's something that I've always been interested in.

And I think that's something that I've always been interested in.

It was edited,

But it's not something that I had to sit down and write from scratch in order to publish it.

It is a research,

Qualitative research book in which I interviewed 12 veteran activists about the spectrum of violence to non-violence and their sort of ethical understandings based on their religious and or human ethical understandings of how change happens,

You know,

Really complicated,

Deep,

Structural,

Social change happens.

And in the days that we live in,

I don't know that these days are extensively different than the kinds of forms of domination and oppression and violence that we,

That have been or that will be,

But it seemed really appropriate to have the words and the wisdom of those particular 12 elders be out in the world in a way that was more accessible.

And then within the context of that,

My own interpretation of struggling with non-violence is not only suggesting that people generally speaking might learn to how to be in social struggle using non-violence,

But actually if you have a commitment and a claim to non-violence being the kind of social struggle in which you want to engage over against violence,

Say the use of different forms of violence,

Then we need to sort of examine ourselves deeply and internally within ourselves,

Particularly if we are white people who come from a social location of a fair amount of privilege,

Racial privilege,

Class privilege,

Christian privilege,

Generally examining all of those things for the way in which we might even use non-violence to hold oppressive social structures in place versus using non-violence to dismantle,

To confront,

To disrupt,

To destroy the structures,

Which actually in fact then privilege us,

Because there are still many ways in which people of privilege will use non-violence to try and pacify and squelch and keep more radical forms of confrontation with oppressive structures,

Institutional forms of violence at bay.

So it's really asking people who believe in non-violence to struggle with that,

That commitment as a way of holding ourselves accountable for what we say and how we walk in the world and that non-violence is non-violence if we want to hold it as a means of struggling in the world,

It has to be investigated just like any other commitment that we have.

It's about saying my life exists within systems of power that both privilege me.

And in some cases,

Depending on our identities also oppress me and how do I learn to see myself in light of those structures of power and be willing to confront the institutions and the relationships that I have in which I am comfortable in order to shift those power differences or potentially shift those power differences.

And it's extremely uncomfortable.

It's yeah,

It's a weighty book.

It's not for fun,

But I really want to recommend it to people.

And it is probably very,

Iliafian,

It's a very Iliafian book.

One story that comes to mind in relation to the word miracle.

So totally it's not,

It's related unrelated.

So a bit of a yarn,

So I'll see how it comes out.

And I've never told this story in public.

So you'll have an exclusive here.

There are many people in my private life who have heard this story,

But it's a very,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very important story and I'm very,

Very grateful to have heard this story,

But it's a story that begs to be told in relation to the word miracle.

As I mentioned briefly,

I was a United Methodist clergy person.

I was ordained in 1996 in the Southern New England Conference of the United Methodist Church.

And I was appointed as the sole pastor of a church in Lynn,

Massachusetts Christ Church,

Christ United Methodist Church.

And I want to start by saying that it was the most sacred work I probably have done or will ever do.

And I learned so much and I was so young.

I look back now and they were very patient with me and we loved each other a lot.

I'd like to say though there was,

It was a church in a formerly former Milltown,

Lynn,

Massachusetts is famous for one of its GE plants that,

You know,

At some point in time employed like 30,

000 people or something.

So by the mid nineties,

Deindustrialized,

You know,

A lot of poverty and racism and just a tough,

A lot of the,

Just like the city I live in now,

Lawrence,

Massachusetts,

Economic downturn and just suffering the consequences of globalization and the movement of all local business out to suburbs and white flight and all of these things.

I was appointed to this church that had a lot of,

There was a lot of neglect,

I think that had happened to it and there was a lot of interpersonal conflict in this church financially.

It was struggling,

Of course.

I mean,

It was like so,

So,

So,

So many small United Methodist churches,

Small Protestant churches,

Doesn't matter where right struggling with primarily older congregation who had been so faithful to the church and its ongoing existence and in many ways sort of always hearkening to the glory of the past when the choir was huge and the Sunday school had 150 kids in it and all this stuff from the forties and the fifties.

And it just wasn't that anymore.

And then you have younger,

You know,

Some younger folks coming in,

You know,

The older people primarily,

But not all white and younger people in the neighborhood,

You know,

Not white,

Lot of struggle,

Say they want to change,

Say they want to grow,

Don't really want to grow,

Don't really want to change.

Anybody who is like a clergy person who's listening to this is going to be like,

Uh huh,

Uh huh.

So it's like so many churches,

So much change.

And I really was a social justice oriented person,

A community person.

I wanted to be involved in the community.

They said they wanted me to be involved in the community,

But they kind of were a little like,

You're always in the community and you're never here.

Just all this to explain that,

You know,

Two,

Three years into it,

I was so burned out.

I worked constantly.

I'm single person,

Just,

You know,

Young,

Don't know my boundaries.

Like I'm not trying to blame anything on my own.

Like I'm not trying to blame anything on anybody.

Overachiever,

Super high functioning.

And I really actually was also raised in seminary to be like,

You have to take care of yourself.

And I was doing all the things I thought I could possibly do to take care of myself and resting and taking a day off and just anything I could do.

And I burned out many,

Many,

Many,

Many,

Many times.

I also drank and smoked a lot of pot,

Just to be perfectly honest.

And had a whole,

Cause I wasn't like grew up in Massachusetts.

So I wasn't too far from all of my high school friends and I'd like this extended group of people.

And I don't want to go so far as to say that I had like a double life as that's a like kind of exaggeration,

But you know,

I had my sort of like our pastor doing all the things by day,

Drinking,

Smoking a lot of pot with my high school friends.

And I like honestly just tell these stories now I'd be horrified to think.

And I always thought like someday I'm going to be totally screwed.

I'm going to get pulled over in the city where I'm a pastor.

I'm going to be on the police blotter for DUI.

Like I always thought that was going to happen to me because I was,

I was going out and coming home and drinking.

And so that's how I coped,

Especially drinking.

And I,

At some point in time,

I can't even tell you exactly what like was this turning point where I'm just like,

I am not okay.

I can't get out of the cycle of work holism.

I don't think I have a drinking problem.

I don't,

This is just what I have to do to cope.

And I need to like go away or do something like my friendships,

My relationships are in shambles.

Like there's just nothing good going on.

And I think I must've heard my own Bishop of the United Methodist Church at the time,

Susan Hassinger say something in some context publicly,

Where she would go to this retreat center and spend a long time in silence.

And it was her way of rejuvenating.

And as I thought,

That's what I need.

Like it seemed like no amount of self-care could possibly balance out what the kind of,

I was putting myself through work-wise.

I'm like,

I need to go on this extensive silent retreat.

That'll give me all of this,

You know,

Time and space I need to restore and rejuvenate myself.

Cause I was a mess.

Eastern point retreat house.

I remember,

I even called the Bishop and said,

What's the name of the place you go?

Tell me about it.

I scheduled a retreat.

It was in May of 2001.

So I literally have no idea what I'm doing.

It's Catholic Jesuit retreat house.

I'm going eight days of silence.

I actually had practiced Zen in the past and I really did have a practice of quiet,

But eight days of silence was a lot.

And I show up at this beautiful retreat house.

It's in Gloucester,

Massachusetts.

It's on the coast,

Rocky,

Typical New England.

When you think of like Maine with the lighthouse and all of that,

It was in Massachusetts,

Just like that.

Gorgeous,

Gorgeous,

Gorgeous.

And all I know is that when I get to the retreat house,

I'm gonna have eight days of silence and two other things happen.

You have a spiritual director who's assigned to you that you meet for 30 days.

And you have worship Catholic mass.

Every day in the evening.

So these would be like the only two places in which you really like have voice or talk to someone or like in mass you sing and all these kinds of things.

Listen to a homily.

I'm not Catholic again,

I'm Methodist.

So I've never had this kind of experience before I go to the retreat center and just before sort of like the very first thing that happens,

You go to your room and there's this little piece of paper that says your spiritual director is,

And then they write in the person's name and it says Virginia Gini Sheehan.

Actually,

I think it's a sister,

Virginia Gini Sheehan.

So I know my person's name and then you go into this big hall and everyone introduces themselves and all the spiritual directors and all the priests who live at this Jesuit center,

Introduce themselves,

Including ourselves.

And then once you're done introducing yourselves,

You go deep into the silence.

So I can remember the hall.

It was like,

The hall,

It was like chairs that were facing each other in,

In rows.

And they had the spiritual directors introduce themselves first before all the participants.

And there was like maybe 30,

30 retreatants and seven,

Eight spiritual directors.

And so this woman,

I can remember staring right at her across the hall.

She stands up,

She's like all of about four foot six or something,

Tiny,

Tiny little gray haired,

Old,

Old looking nun.

And she stands up and she's like,

My name is Sister Gini Sheehan,

And I believe in miracles.

And I thought,

This is not going to go well.

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

I can't believe that I got the miracle lady.

Like this is such BS.

I cannot believe I got this pint-sized little,

Whoever Catholic nun,

Who's going to be the miracle lady.

I was pissed.

I was like,

All right,

Whatever.

Guesses I got Sister Gini.

So Sister Gini,

Sister Gini turned out to be straight up spiritual warrior.

Okay.

So despite this flowery,

Almost like cute miracle language,

She was really something else.

There's a lot,

A lot,

A lot of stories I could tell about those eight days.

And I'm going to just try and focus really on the end because that's,

That's the punchline.

But what I'll say about some of those days is that I had some tremendous,

Tremendous,

Tremendous embodied experience of God's love in which,

For example,

God took,

Took possession of my hands and caressed my face and told me that God loved me in which when I wanted to escape,

I convinced myself on the Sunday.

You got there on like a Thursday by Sunday.

I'm like practically out of my mind because I've been quiet for three days.

And I want to escape from myself and know something's happening to me.

And I can't,

I don't know what,

But something's happening.

And I decide that I'm going to get in my car on a Sunday morning and go to a Methodist church to worship,

Which was the stupidest idea because there's probably nothing more I could have gotten out of the local United Methodist church worship service than I could have gotten at this retreat center.

I got in my car and I turned it on and I heard the words in my mind or my heart inside of myself that said,

Don't go.

I got,

I was so mad.

I banged on my steering wheel and I was like,

I don't want to go.

Like I just wanted to get away from myself.

So these are the kinds of experiences I had a few,

Just these experiences of just God being like with me on top of me,

Like knowing what I needed and every minute.

Those would just be two examples of like very significant interventions of God in my life,

Trying to keep me in place to tell me something I needed to know.

And now we're on day seven,

Night seven,

Really and we're at mass,

Right?

So you have mass at night and met your spiritual director during the day and had mass at like five o'clock right before dinner.

And I'm at mass and I don't know why,

But I'm crying so uncontrollably.

I cannot even live with myself.

Like I don't,

Again,

I don't have any idea what's going on.

I know I'm going home the next day,

But I'm not,

I don't know what's wrong with me,

But I am just openly weeping throughout the whole thing,

Which is not like me.

Like I'm a pretty reserved Yankee.

Like,

You know,

I'm not crying in public much as weeping in public.

So after mass sister Ginny walks up to me and she's like,

What's wrong with you?

By now I realize like,

She's no joke.

She's the miracle lady,

But she's no joke.

And I'm like,

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm just crying.

I literally am completely out of control.

No idea.

She says,

I want you to go into the Mary chapel,

Which was a chapel I had prayed in a lot facing the ocean.

There's a statue of Mary there.

She's holding Jesus child.

One of these typical Jesus thinks,

I want you to go in the Mary chapel and I want you to get on your knees and ask God what's wrong with you.

And I was like,

And she was like,

I want you to go into the Mary chapel and get on your knees and ask God what's wrong with you.

I was like,

Okay.

Okay.

So she's like,

And so you're going to do this and then it's time for dinner.

You're going to go to dinner and then you're going to meet me in XYZ room after dinner.

And you're going to tell me what God said.

I was like,

Okay.

She's like,

You promise me,

You're going to get on your knees in that room.

You're going to go eat dinner.

You're going to come to the,

I can't remember the extra word.

I can't remember the extra word.

You're going to come to the,

I can't remember the XYZ room.

You're going to tell me what God told you.

So I did.

I went to the Mary chapel.

I got on my knees and I,

I mean it didn't take long.

I calmed myself down a little bit and I said,

God,

What's wrong with me?

And I hear you have a substance abuse problem.

And I was just like,

And I knew it was true,

But even so I was like,

I was like,

Um,

Can I hear that again?

Just to confirm.

I was like,

Oh my God.

And I had this,

Like,

And it sounds like kind of a weight lift off me.

Like I just knew it was true.

Even though like I hadn't talked to sister Ginny about drinking,

About smoking pot,

About my high school friends,

Literally nothing,

None of that.

I don't even know what I talked to her about.

But I'm like,

Oh my God,

What is this information?

And then I go and I eat.

And I know that I have to go tell her.

So I go,

We sit in the room.

I mean,

She wastes no time.

She's like,

What did I do?

I was like,

She's like,

What did God tell you?

I was like,

I think I have substance abuse problem.

And as soon as I said that,

Like this huge weight lifted off of me.

And she said,

She leaned really close to me.

It was a very small room.

And she was like,

I know what your problem is.

I was like,

You know what my problem,

I think I was like,

I think I'm crying.

I think I just knew.

I just told you what my problem is.

She's like,

No,

I know what your problem is.

I know what your problem is.

I was like,

Where's me freaking me out.

I think I just told you what my problem is.

She's like,

Here's what your problem is.

And so I'm sitting back.

I'm like,

Oh,

Wide-eyed and what?

She's freaking me out.

Like she's being super aggressive again.

And she says,

You go to your little church every morning.

You have this long list of things to do that you know you're not going to accomplish.

You're feeling the stress of the day.

You go to your office,

You talk to your secretary.

She tells you six things you don't want to hear.

You sit in your office all day long,

Trying to get two things done in your list.

Everybody's coming into your office,

Interrupting you all day with all their problems.

And you have,

You know,

The end of the day,

You're kind of getting to the end of the day.

You realize you haven't eaten anything.

You go across the street,

Get a sub,

Come back in.

You work while you're eating.

You go to the finance committee meeting at night.

All they do is fight.

They blame everything on you.

At the end of the day you literally have not done four things on your list of 29,

000 things.

You walk out to your car,

You turn the key before you put it in drive.

You tell yourself,

I can't wait to have a drink.

I was like,

I don't think I told her any of that.

I'm like,

How do you,

I mean,

It was like the exact description of my day.

I mean,

I'm sure I had told her about my day and I probably had told her that I drank it.

I don't really know.

I don't know.

She told her that I drank it and I don't remember.

And she says,

Do you,

And I was like,

You're freaking me out.

That's exactly how my day goes.

She's like,

Do you know why?

Do you know why I know what your problem is?

I was like,

No,

You're freaking me out.

I don't know why you know what my problem is.

She was like,

I know why you're,

What your problem is,

Is because I'm 17 years sober.

And if you go,

And I don't know if you're an alcoholic or not,

But if you go home tomorrow,

Cause tomorrow was the last day,

Right?

If you go home tomorrow and drink,

You're going to die.

And I don't know if you're going to die tomorrow.

Are you going to die in 10 years from now?

Are you going to die a spiritual death that torches you to the end of your days?

But if you go,

If you're an alcoholic and you go home tomorrow and you drink,

You're going to die.

I was like,

Oh my God.

I mean,

She just knew I,

She had like one shot at me.

She's like,

So she's like,

I want you to go back in that Mary chapel on your knees all night long under the moonlight with Mary and ask God to help you stay sober for the rest of your life.

So,

Which is what I did.

And she's like,

I want you to meet me tomorrow.

There's the last thing we do is have mass at like noon,

And then you leave.

And I want to talk to you before you leave.

I did.

I spent my night crying on my knees in the Mary chapel.

I,

You know,

Had mass walked up to her and she said,

Couple,

She said two things.

I have your phone number.

I just want you to know I have your phone number from your application and sometime within the next year,

I'm not telling you when,

I'm going to call you at your home and ask you if you've had a drink.

Okay.

So when she's,

And so she,

Then she took me by put her hands on both of my shoulders,

Stood right in her four foot,

Nothing frame,

Looked right up at me and said,

See,

You're a miracle.

I was like,

Oh my God.

And I had judged her,

You know,

That's right from the day one,

I was like,

Miracles,

What a bunch of crap.

And she's like,

See,

You're a miracle.

And I haven't drank since then.

And my 20th anniversary of my sobriety is May 9th,

2021.

And that's my miracle story.

And yes,

With this amazing interview,

We've reached episode 40 of Bite Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us.

If only we open our eyes to it,

Whether you choose to listen to our bite-sized offerings for that five to 10 minutes of freedom in your day or the longer interviews,

We're grateful you're here.

I need to thank my wonderful guest,

Dr.

Julie Todd,

For sharing her story today,

As well as the creators of the music used.

Chilled Music,

Sasha End,

Agniese Fomagia,

Lylo Sound,

And Kevin McLeod.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You can find links to other episodes,

To art,

Books,

And people who are making this world a better and more beautiful place.

Thank you for listening,

And here's my one request.

Be like Julie.

Ask the hard questions.

What's wrong with me?

What do I need to fix?

And then,

Then be ready for the answers,

Whether they come in large or small packages.