Stina Kielsmeier-Cook: The Search for Community
Season 2, Episode 3 of Messy Jesus Business, hosted by Sister Julia Walsh
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IN THIS EPISODE:
In Season 2, Episode 3, Sister Julia Walsh talks with Stina Kielsmeier-Cook, author of a spiritual memoir: Blessed are the Nones: Mixed Faith Marriage and My Search for Spiritual Community. They discuss Kielsmeier-Cook’s search for understanding and community, after her husband deconverted from Christianity and became a “None.”
“In some ways, I was just writing because I wished I’d had something to read that connected with my experience that wasn’t purely couched in this language around how do I bring my husband around to my side, versus finding grace and love and God’s goodness in and through something that I wasn’t expecting and yet, is not unredeemable,” Kielsmeier-Cook explains.
Kielsmeier-Cook recognizes that a desire to find our place amidst uncertainty and old expectations is a journey most people face. “I think in a lot of ways it’s messy because it’s reckoning with…smashed ideals, and recognizing that this path looks different than I thought it would but maybe this is actually the journey that God had for me all along, and that there are companions here too.”
Also in this episode: wrestling with questions from outside and inside a faith tradition or church community, bridging protestant and Catholic divides, and the Nuns and Nones movement.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Stina Kielsmeier-Cook is author of Blessed are the Nones: Mixed Faith Marriage and My Search for Spiritual Community, which was just released in September.
She works as Director of Communications at the Collegeville Institute, where she is also the managing editor of Bearings Online. She calls the frigid northland her home, where she raises children, keeps the libraries busy with her insatiable reading habit, and admits to often running late for church.
CONTEMPLATIVE MOMENT:
Our Contemplative Moment in this episode of Messy Jesus Business is adapted from the opening prayer located here.
MESSY JESUS BUSINESS is produced, hosted and edited by Sister Julia Walsh with production assistance from Charish Badzinski.
Email us at messyjesusbusiness@gmail.com
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