Joshua Minden (00:03):
Hey there. Welcome to stories and other things. Holy. My name is Joshua Minden, and before we dive into what this podcast is all about, I'd like to take you behind the curtain to give you a peek at what we've been working on for the past many months. I've been working with the incredible Dr. Terry Nelson Johnson to figure out the best way for us to share something that we both deeply believe in, the power of stories to change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. We've tested different formats, played with various approaches, and frankly had some pretty amazing conversations along the way. What you're about to hear is taken from one of the first times Terry and I sat down as we began to try to figure out what this podcast would become. While our format has changed, this conversation captures exactly why we started this journey in the first place. It's a glimpse into what happens when you sit down with a masterful storyteller like Terry Nelson Johnson and just listen. The episodes to come will look a bit different, but the heart of what we're after remains the same. Creating a space where stories can do what they do best, connect us, challenge us, and remind us what it means to be human. Stay tuned for an excerpt from that early conversation.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (01:30):
Bless us the Lord, for these gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through cre. Lord, Lord, lord, lord, Lord, just grounds me. Just saying it grounds me the number of times I said it is comical and also very, very holy. So I love imagining saying that at the dawn of this stream that you and have had for quite some time, and I am grateful for the gift that got us to this moment and imagining the gifts that may come from our being together under these circumstances.

Joshua Minden (02:14):
Amen. I was thinking back to how you and I got our start from a collaborative standpoint, and I realized, oh, it was me sending you my notes about an idea for a podcast for Beloved back in March of 2020. Yeah. Maybe look at us

Terry Nelson-Johnson (02:41):
Now.

Joshua Minden (02:41):
I know, right? It only took us four years. Yeah.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (02:45):
I am not good with dates, but when I began to do some freelance things and grade schools began to call and say, Hey, can you, oh, my first, what do you call it when you give the speech of graduation?

Joshua Minden (03:12):
The commencement.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (03:14):
The commencement.

Joshua Minden (03:15):
Yeah.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (03:16):
Here's my first commencement exercise invitation. A colleague at Loyola Academy a couple years ahead of me, really good guy, rich Clark, remarkable. He apparently had a very severe case of hemorrhoids, which I didn't really wasn't familiar with that at the time, but it was debilitating. So one can only imagine. So he calls me at the 12th hour and says, Hey, I don't know if you've ever done this kind of thing, but I'm supposed to do commencement exercise for a eighth grade class, and I cannot go there. I told him, you'd be great. So my entree into this realm of speaking of the soul in a freelance kind of way was the product of a colleague's case of hemorrhoids, and then somebody else who was there, a grade school teacher said, could you come and do that? Something like what you did? And then somebody else said something.

(04:27):
Pretty soon there were these little invitations and the spirit was doing what the spirit does. Core characteristic of love is flow. At some point I thought, I need a name. I should name this. Aside from my professional affiliation with Lo Academy, names are important to me. So I pondered for a while and stewed and what have you contemplated. I don't know exactly how it emerged, but just the name stories and other things, holy came to soul, mind and heart as soon as it did that phrase, I love so much soul chiropractor, I thought of the name stories, wrote things holy, and it was like, that's it. That's it. I loved it. From the moment it manifested itself in the little womb of my soul and then emerged into my consciousness, I just fell in love with it. And I thought, if I never do one other thing, and I've had the privilege of affiliating my life with the phrase, I am the most blessed little guy in the world, and now that's probably 35 years ago, more or less. I remember I had little business cards, and I'm not a business card kind of guy, but when I picked him up, I was like, oh my God. Passed him out. And people look at it, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm like, I'm not sure I do either, but I love it. So all these years later, we find ourselves returning to the soul of that.

(06:19):
Those words put together, and my love for the idea, for the poetry and for the soul of stories and other things, holy has not ebbed one iota. So it feels like a homecoming to me. Like, oh, so we get to do stories and other things, holy and live into the next iteration of that in the world.

Joshua Minden (06:45):
It's a real privilege to be a part of that. And yeah, it's funny you've made that comment a few times in recent, in the last year and a half or so, as we've talked about different evolutions of our work, and you've always just kind of dropped it at the end of the conversation as a note. It's like, I really liked that title, so if we ever wanted to go back to that, and so when we had lunch together here just a month and a half ago and we had that beautiful conversation about giving new life to this effort or another, yeah, that name came back. I was like, oh, that could really be it. So yeah, I'm glad to be here doing stories and other things. Holy with you, and it's a real privilege.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (07:45):
Yeah, amen. It sort of begs for a little bit of a conversation about, well, why stories and how are they holy and do say organically? I think what happens in me is I think I come from an Irish heritage, and so that storytelling gather around the hearth, laugh and weep. I've never been to Ireland. I don't have great affinity for the green country or whatever we're supposed to call it, but I think the storytelling part lives in me, and so can't be a storyteller without being a story lover. And a lot of the ways that I do my life in terms of theology, soul, spirituality, deeply organized organically around the experience of story.

(08:56):
So I hear a story, I encounter a story, and sometimes they're not presented to me in the form of a story. They're an encounter as Pope Francis would say, and that something about some kind of experience deeply enters my soul, my spirit, my imagination, my consciousness. And then it takes on the form of a story, and then I have the privilege of telling the story. And in telling the story, community happens, theology happens, and the story infuses the story. The story is like a sacrament. It bears what it points to. And so if you share the story with passion and joy and sorrow, all the things, then you can do the theology off of the story. For me, theology without story makes no sense. I mean, it's a good idea. I like theological ideas, but it's much less compelling to me when it's divorced from or not emerging out of a story. So stories and other things, holy, it's not like cute. It's not a cute title. It's soulful, and it says a lot in a poetic form. It communicates a great deal about how I experience life, god, soul. And so I return to that sense of profound gratitude that I get to live a little bit of my life back under the umbrella of this particular language of stories. I think only

Joshua Minden (11:08):
I love what you said about this importance of the relationship between theology and story. I think about my own experience when I was exploring my Native American ancestry, this same theme became increasingly prevalent. I remember at the Anaheim Religious Education Congress in 2013, I went to a workshop and it was a panel of Native American or American Indian storytellers. And I approached this amazing lady who was on the panel afterward, and when I walked up to her, she smiled at me, she knew me, and it was just a really compelling, and I explained to her, all of the women of my family are Cherokee, and I'm just exploring my ancestry and reconnecting with these roots. And as soon as I said Cherokee, she's like, I know. I looked at her head tilt like, what? She's like your cheekbones. It's all over you. I see you. I see you. I see you. Exactly. It was a deep intimacy moment in a weird way. How do you have intimacy with someone you've never met? Yes. She just saw into me in a beautiful way, and she gave me the gift of, she honored that what she saw, and she invited it out. And so she told two stories during her part of the panel discussion and she said, well, those are yours now.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (12:56):
She said,

Joshua Minden (12:57):
Now you are a storyteller. And so those are your first two stories.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (13:01):
Wow, that's

Joshua Minden (13:02):
Beautiful. And start with that. And I'm devastated to admit that I never did remember the first one, but maybe it wasn't for me. It went another way. But the second one, I still carry, and it really, festered isn't the right word, but

Terry Nelson-Johnson (13:20):
It

Joshua Minden (13:21):
Lingered in me. That's a profound way. So I also know that I have my own compulsion to the technical, the theological, systematic side of things. And I always know that that's where a lot of things in me go to die. It's really fascinating, really interesting, and not at all life-giving because it is divorce from stories and lived experience. And I think it's a big part of what I hope this conversation will continue to be about is getting us out of dry bones and decaying ideas and into how these ideas, the story of Christ relates to our lives.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (14:18):
Yeah, that's a great segue into an experiment. Should we have an experiment? Should we do an

Joshua Minden (14:26):
Experiment? I love experiments.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (14:28):
Okay, so we'll see how this goes, but this is how it happens for me in September of 2022, I think maybe 21, 2 and a half years ago, something like that. Yeah.

(14:52):
I had a hypertension emergency, which is blood pressure, high enough and long enough to cause organ damage, potentially. Came out of the blue, got up that morning, worked out for more than an hour, got to work meetings, lunch, zoom. It was during our zoom time, and I alerted the people on my last Zoom meeting. I have a hard stop at three o'clock because I'm taking my wife on a picnic to a beach in Highland Park where they have built coves into Lake Michigan, only in Highland Park, which you build coves into Lake Michigan. And it lent itself perfectly to open water swimming. And she had been wanting to find a place to open water swim. We live close to the lake. It's a lot of open water, but it was too open. So I'm like, I got it. This is open, but not too open.

(15:47):
You're going to love it. And it was like a gift I wanted to give her to find this place. And so I was very excited. I have a very low excitement threshold, so it's not like it didn't take a lot. So I have everything in the car, all the beach stuff. We're going to stop and get dinner at the school place. We'd like a picnic dinner, and it's September, so can't go there too late. It's going to get too cold. So I'm like, three o'clock, I tell these people. So three o'clock comes, I'm like, all right, got to go. And I went to hit the leave meeting button. You're familiar with that one?

(16:20):
And

(16:20):
I kept missing it. That's weird. And then I finally just got up and closed my computer. Then my desk started to turn into a Ouija board. It was very odd, and I must've been sitting down too long, whatever, put my stuff in my briefcase, walked out to my lobby. And then I realized that I was physically really compromised. And I said to our receptionist, who, I have a very fun relationship. We tease each other a lot. And I said, I'm in trouble. And her normal response should have been, you're always trouble. You're Mr. Trouble. I'll get you in trouble. You want trouble. And she didn't say that. She said, 9 1 1 trouble. I said, yes. Then it just started.

(17:11):
I was on the verge of unconsciousness while waiting in the lobby, it seemed like forever. The paramedics came, got me into an ambulance. It was chaotic, got to Rush Presbyterian, rush his medical campus into the emergency room, was there for a couple hours. It was in the middle of Covid, so one can only imagine. And then at some point, I just started to go, we see that on TV all the time, and you think, but I sort of knew I'm leaving now. And then Bells went off and people did everything one could imagine to your body. At that point, I was in and out of consciousness, couldn't talk. My tongue was really swollen, was seen sort of triple. There's only one person that was continuity throughout this time, and however I could pray, one of my prayers was, don't leave me just this one person. And I was feeling this profound pinball experience of regret, gratitude, terror, peace, and wanting to pray.

(18:38):
The only things I could pray were prayers that I knew by heart, which I reflected back on a lot. And I would pray for a little bit, two seconds. It was all chiros time, so who knows how long, and that was, and then I'd be scared for four seconds, and then I'd feel deep regret, and then I'd feel this wave of gratitude. So now I'm dying. And the woman that I didn't want to leave me returned the favor or the grace, and sure it wasn't part of her protocols, but she bends over my face, takes my face in her hands and just starts to say, don't leave me. Please don't leave me. She doesn't say us. She uses the first person pronoun. I don't know how many times she said it, but the way I conclude this portion of the story is I can't prove it, and I don't know her name, and it's not on any chart. And my confidence that I'm here participating in the inaugural stories and other things holy happening is the product of her request that I not leave her.

Joshua Minden (20:07):
Thanks for joining us for this preview. It's my hope that by hearing some of the backstory, you'll be even more excited to participate in this journey. We call stories and other things wholly. Just a reminder, this was a peak into the early development of the podcast. When episode one launches on Monday, October 21st, the format will be fairly different, where the story will be the centerpiece of the episode and its themes will drive our conversation in a different way. Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at Stories and other things, holy.com. Each week you'll receive an email with a link that week's episode, as well as a short reflection and what we like to call grace exercises. Grace exercises. These come in a few different forms, typically either a question, a prayer prompt, or a nugget of thought to use as a lens as you travel through your week. Don't forget to share stories and other things wholly with your friends, loved ones, and chosen families. You can find us at our website stories and other things, holy.com or on social media, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, all the ones or on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. From both Terry and myself, thank you for joining us for stories and other things who.