Seeking Justice: Listening to God's Voice in Action

**Es Chips**

Well friends, we are back with another episode of This is Crucial. If you are tuning in to the video feed of this, you are looking at the top of Amos's head because right now he is furiously writing down questions that he thinks might stunt me or make me uncomfortable. This is our first ever Ask Us Anything episode, and I have just added the fun little detail that Amos and I can ask each other anything.

A special thank you to all of you who have sent in questions. I don't know about you, Amos, but Berkeley folks showed up and sent some awesome questions, so thank you to my peeps in Berkeley. So did First Presbyterian Church of Dallas folks—awesome! Appreciate the questions you all have sent. I did a last-minute request for questions last night and got a ton, which means that I don't necessarily think we're going to be able to answer all of them, but we are going to get to a good number of them. So thanks again for those questions.

All right, to kick things off, I'm gonna do an either-or rapid-fire question list for Amos and me. Happy to also answer these questions. I actually—it's so funny because I kind of know the answers to your questions.

**Amos:** Texting or talking?

**Me:** Texting, duh!

**Amos:** Favorite day of the week?

**Me:** Monday.

**Amos:** Favorite city in the U.S. besides the one you live in?

**Me:** Columbia, South Carolina.

**Amos:** Nickname your parents used to call you?

**Me:** I didn't have a nickname.

**Amos:** The last song you downloaded?

**Me:** I don't download any songs. I mean, okay fine, the last song I listened to more than twice was "I'm The Moon" by Tedeschi Trucks.

**Amos:** Would you rather be able to speak every language in the world or to be able to talk to animals?

**Me:** Talk to animals, totally knew you were gonna say that.

**Amos:** Favorite holiday?

**Me:** I don't really have one.

**Amos:** How long does it take you to get ready?

**Me:** It's about 13 minutes.

**Amos:** On a scale of one to ten, how good of a driver are you?

**Me:** One's the worst, I'm probably at a four right now.

**Amos:** Fill in the blank: Taylor Swift is tall.

**Me:** At what age do you want to retire?

**Amos:** 64.

**Amos:** Invisibility or super strength?

**Me:** Invisibility, 100%.

**Amos:** Is it wrong for a vegetarian to eat animal crackers?

**Me:** No, it's not wrong, they can eat the animal crackers.

**Amos:** Dawn or dusk?

**Me:** They're the same thing.

**Amos:** Do you snore?

**Me:** I do snore.

**Amos:** Favorite junk food?

**Me:** Ruffles chips.

I would love to have a conversation with Joseph Campbell and Maya Angelou. Campbell wrote the book *The Power of Myth*, which was important to me early on in ministry. It is an interview of him by Bill Moyers and is a great resource for anyone interested in spiritual formation and spiritual life, as well as those who like to make sense of mythology and stories and how they shape our lives.

Maya Angelou was a poet, writer, and civil rights activist. I would love to have a conversation with her about her life and her work and how it has impacted our culture and our world. The novelist Minjin Lee is someone I would love to have a conversation with. She is known for her deep dives into the history of the stories she tells, immersing herself for years and writing from that place of history, experience, and emotion.

We have had some amazing guests on the podcast, but the most difficult episodes are those where there is not a personal connection with the guest or a shared history. I remember one episode in particular where William disagreed with something I said, and I felt uncomfortable. It took me four days to figure out why I felt so uncomfortable, and I realized it was because William disagreed with me. I'm not accustomed to people disagreeing with me, and it was a vulnerable thing to name.

People don't disagree with me as often as I hope or like them to, and I think part of it is a senior pastor thing for me, and part of it is that I can be pretty measured with my words. I'm probably not listening close enough to the moments when people do disagree with me. That's probably a failure of measurement on my part. When William disagreed with me, I was taken aback by this foreign feeling.

The most difficult episode for me was after the shootings in Atlanta. It wasn't a scheduled thing; it was a one-on-one conversation. We tried to figure out when to do it and gave it a beat. It was probably one of the more honest episodes I've had. I was able to name things about my experience as an Asian woman, the fear that I experienced that I haven't historically lived with at the forefront of my mind.

It was one of those episodes where I had to face things as they were happening to me. It was hard because it was raw, unprocessed emotion. It was terribly uncomfortable to process things out loud knowing that anything we say here is going to be captured and filed away forever.

Before we start recording, I can't believe that we're just gonna put ourselves out there again just like that, no manuscript. It's just not something that I get a lot of practice in, so all the episodes for me, just because of who I am and the fact I'm an introvert, are kind of difficult. I remember setting up those poor internet access, and that was the unscheduled one we did after the shootings in Atlanta, and it was convicting for me.

Prior to us knowing each other, I never quite had to think about violence against marginalized people as more than just something that happens to Black Americans. In our processing, not just in the episode but in the phone conversations and text messages we sent around, it hit me that violence is violence, pain is pain, hurt is hurt, harm is harm. Even if we were transformed as a society to a point where we're no longer practicing violence against each other, it still happening to like Asian Americans is the same thing.

Maybe because of lack of exposure and lack of proximity, Willie James Jennings' way of talking about the role of the church and our positionality in Acts was like—it was kind of one of those things of like, "Oh yeah, that's true," and how much do we center ourselves in the grand narrative of God's love for humanity. It kind of checked some real, like underground latent superiority about the church within the grand narrative of God's love for humanity that if you had asked me in those very clear terms, "Is that what you believe or think?" I'd have been like, "No, of course not, of course not, of course not."

I'm like, I do rest and recharge. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do