Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Naughty by Nature is a show about finding a god that accepts all of you.
Filmmaker, performer, and former-Evangelical Christian, Treen (Katrina Lillian Sorrentino) is on a mission to find humor and wisdom in all our spiritual journeys, whether we’re being born again or deconstructing from toxic religious relationships.
In this cheeky and subversive series about how to keep the faith, Treen talks with guests about how they processed their religious baggage and carved out a unique spiritual path for themselves.
Oh, and God will be there too, played by a different mystery comedian on every episode.
To join us on this hilarious ride make sure you follow the show, subscribe to our channel here YouTube.com/@nxnpod, and follow along on Instagram @nxnpod for more goodies!
Produced by:
https://www.rainbowcreative.co
https://www.verna.studio
https://www.treentreen.com
Treen: Welcome to the Naughty by Nature podcast. I'm Treen and I'm your reluctant host on this vulnerable ride. This is a show where we confront what the Christian church told us was taboo through storytelling, humor and a little role playing so that we can be born again on our terms. In each episode, I have invited a different comedian to “play God” in order to help us reimagine a god big enough to hold the fullness of our humanity.
Treen: God, are you, uh, are you ready to kick us off?
GOD: This is Episode 7, Born Again, Again.
Treen: God, first off, how are you doing today? How has your week been? What is up?
GOD: Uh, yeah. No, thank you for holding space about that. It's been, it's been an okay week. Like I'm a part of a poly, polycule.
Treen: Wow.
GOD: Um, up here. And so it's just been like a lot to handle, but it's just nice to be around people that, you know, kind of get me.
Treen: For sure. You're speaking, that is music to my ears. I'm so grateful to have you, God, on our show. What I'm about to say probably won't surprise you, but at this point in my journey, I'm personally over organized religion, like the organized part. I don't like it, makes me feel weird. Does that make you feel offended that I'm saying that?
GOD: That you're against organized religion?
Treen: Yeah.
GOD: No girl. No girl. Like, I am all about. No girl. I mean, like, my eyes have been opened up since I joined this polycule. So, like, I just think I think anything that keeps you contained, I am not about it. Like, just feel it out.
Treen: Wow. God, again, so grateful to have you here on this show. More about you soon. I'm going to introduce our guest. So on today's episode, we're joined by my friend Hailey Mitsui, who is a Spiritual Director and Somatic Practitioner. Hailey, do you want to say hi to God and to our listeners?
Hailey: Oh my gosh. Hi God.
GOD: Hey girl. I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity.
Treen: We're both fangirling over here.
Hailey: Yeah, yeah, huge.
GOD: I love stans. I have a lot of them. But, like, I don't let it get to my head.
Hailey: That’s that’s actually really good to know. Because sometimes God can come across a little arrogant. So I'm glad to know I was, I was wrong.
GOD: Yeah, we're going for a rebrand. How you doing?
Hailey: I think I'm okay. That, I will go with okay, question mark.
Treen: I think that's the statement of the season. I think I'm okay. Actually, don't ask me what I'm doing. I would rather just not go there. So I wanted to share with everyone that Hailey and I met at Richard Rohr's, The Living School. I was finishing up the program while you were starting. I mean, it's only two years, so we overlapped for a year there. Um, and we're here today to discuss what life has been like after deconstructing from our more rigid evangelical roots. Um, spoiler alert. I know that you Hailey now still identify as a Christian, which I'm so excited to unpack and get into the nuances of, but we're here to share with everyone what our post Evangelical lives have been like. I'm not saying that my life is better. No, no, I am. My life is, I'm definitely, it's better. I'm definitely better.
Hailey: That's good.
Treen: But, you know, that betterness has been so hard won. What, how do you feel?
Hailey: I mean, yes, exponentially more liberated is definitely how I feel. There's the, there's the grief of losing belonging, um, but when you really become aware that belonging is so conditional, it, it kind of loses its, um, its cuddliness, I suppose. So yeah, liberated. Sometimes I though, I feel like I'm in a free fall. Like, will I ever hit the ground? No one knows. I don't know. God, do you know?
GOD: Yeah. But like, I just like fuck around and find out, you know what I'm saying?
Hailey: Yeah, I hear that. I hear that. Thank you.
GOD: Also, Hailey, I'm asking for a friend cause obviously I know the answer to this, but when you say belonging as conditional, like that perked up my ears, I want to hear more about that.
Hailey: Oh, I often think of it very viscerally, like I had to chop off parts of who I was in order to belong to a specific community, most specifically kind of Evangelical Christianity, and after a while, I realized how actually violent it was to me, um, to sever my being from these other parts, you know, my sexuality, my racial identity, my, so much of how I view the world I had to kind of compartmentalize, and so once I started sharing those things in these Evangelical spaces. Oh, hey, what about this? Or what about this? It's very quickly like, nope. If you're gonna talk about that, you can't be here. And I was like, oh well that sucks, this isn't as much of a home as I thought that it was.
GOD: Yeah.
Treen: Yeah. God, I'm wondering if that's kind of how you feel, because if, like, folks, for example, knew that you were in a polycule, would we reject you? Do you kind of have to keep parts of yourself private from us on, on Earth?
GOD: Well like the tea is that like Angel Gabriel gave me such a hard ass time when I like came out. He like gate kept, if you will. So like, it was like picking and choosing like people that…
Hailey: That joke just has like it unfolds. It is unfolding in my mind.
Treen: Yeah. It wasn't a lag on our part. It was a really smart joke that just continued giving.
GOD: You have to really like pick and choose like who you come out to, but like, okay, so the question is. When I came out as polycule, were people accepting or was like the belonging conditional?
Treen: Yeah.
GOD: And like, as God, like, I know for myself, there's unconditional stuff going on. Unconditional love. You know, when I opened up my relationship with myself, also, my polycule is the Holy Ghost, Jesus, and myself.
Treen: Well that's not surprising.
GOD: Yea the second I opened myself up to more people, like, you know, it started to turn around.
Treen: More on your polycule later. Before we jump in to the questions, I just wanted to share that despite recent events, recent events in our country in which it feels like our country is once again controlled by a conservative Christian majority. Statistically, Evangelicalism is on the decline as 10 million people now identify as Ex-evangelical. And anecdotally, I wanted to just ping that back to both of you and ask, like, how accurate does that feel despite what we're seeing politically?
Hailey; God, I'll let, I feel like I should let you go first.
GOD: Thank you for giving me that space again, Hailey. I'll just speak freely and honestly. You know, when you're like at a party and you're like talking about something that you can tell the other person doesn't want to talk about?
Treen: It’s sounds like this is like really close. This might've happened recently to you God.
GOD: Yeah. So basically I was at like a house party and like there was this person like really going on about like controlling women's bodies, trying to just really like pigeonhole the conversation. And my eyes were drifting, like I wanted to leave the conversation, and so I'm just glad more people are catching on to that feeling of like, leave the party.
Treen: It was better at home.
GOD: It was better at home.
Hailey: I mean, anecdotally, this feels very true to me too. I'm a Spiritual Director, and what does that mean, who totally knows, but basically I accompany people on their spiritual journeys, and I particularly work with queer and BIPOC people recovering from spiritual or religious trauma and I would say ninety percent of the folks that I see grew up in some kind of Evangelical context and are not there, um, for pretty similar reasons. They were not given this place of belonging, and so they've had to move on and sort of expand what, what's beyond, um, what does a spiritual life outside of kind of the walls of Evangelicalism look like? So I think I'm in this really niche world though, where I would say like, yes, almost everyone I know falls into this category of former Evangelicals. Um, But, yeah, it definitely doesn't feel that way sometimes when you look at the national political landscape.
Treen: It's true. It's a both and, as our teacher Richard Rohr would say, and it's been funny because in producing this podcast, I've exposed my algorithm on socials to, like, actual Christian influencer content. And that world is really, like they are doing the most in the actual Christian influencer world. I've been exposed to some things, like the trad wife movement is really doing well. It's solid. It's just, all I can say is I've seen things that I'm like, I was surprised that this is still existing in the way that it is in our country. And yet, obviously it's not a surprise considering what we're seeing, but I find, I found it to be maybe hopeful is not the word, but validating of my own experience to see that Evangelicalism is actually on the decline. Okay, so Hailey, I'm gonna ping it to you. Would you love to share with us like, you know, an abbreviated version of your religious journey to date like take us through childhood until now, what your religious journey has been and how you identify?
Hailey: Yeah. I, yeah, I grew up, uh, Christian, but ah interesting sort of flavor, I suppose, or, or recipe where my family's actually very progressive, socially, politically. But a lot of my family is very conservative, extended family. Um, and then my parents, for reasons that still remain a mystery, sent me to a very conservative Evangelical private school for middle school and high school. So that's where I always say I was very indoctrinated into this worldview, um, you know, we had purity week, uh, once a year where every day there was a pastor preaching to us about saving ourselves for marriage. I had a purity ring. We did purity pledges, just a really obsessed with purity, question mark, all everything about what that means. And just kind of as a extreme people pleaser, and I just, like, fell right in line with all of that, um, theology and ideology, and I, I would say, sadly, or just to my disappointment, I didn't receive, like, a counter narrative at home, necessarily. My parents weren't also preaching those same things, but they didn't, um, like, provide any nuance or context when I would come home, like, saying all this wild shit from school. Really obsessed with the end times, you know, this is right when Left Behind was coming out, you know, very obsessed with sort of in but not of this world, so only listened to Christian music, only went to Christian conferences, Christian camps, you know, was very like that culturally Evangelical, not just theologically, but I will say that my, my Dad's side of the family, I'm half Japanese, my, my Japanese side of the family is, um, Is, is a lot Buddhist in the extended family, so we also grew up going to temple on death anniversaries, so I was exposed to other things, which I think was really helpful in the long run. Um, it was confusing at the time. Yeah, ultimately, kind of all of my life, I knew they were good people of all religions, um, which was something my school really didn't want me to, really, didn't want me to think or believe. Um, and then I was also raised in a very social justice oriented home. Um, my, my grandparents were in the Japanese internment camps and were some of the only families that really spoke about and advocated against, um, sort of the marginalization and the illegal incarceration of people, even up until now, they're largely involved with a lot of, um, immigrant rights work. And so, I, I grew up with all of these parts kind of being mixed in and, um, honestly, I'm so grateful I went to a big public university after graduating that then continued to expose me to different people and different worldviews. And I don't know that I had a breaking moment as far as like, this doesn't work anymore. It was just this slow unfolding of the more I kind of connected to myself and the more I showed up as myself in these spaces. And that is someone that can be contrarian at times that doesn't just accept things as they are but wants to be curious about them. The more I kept pushing up against those things in these religious spaces, um, the more I was like, I don't know if I can continue to be in alignment, um, and be here. I guess there is a moment when it all kind of came to a head, um, there, there were really two defining moments, like one was around queer inclusion at the church I was going to. There were, the leadership was very against it and I brought it up reoccurring and was finally just shut down so many times I stopped talking about it. And the second was, you know, after Michael Brown was murdered in 2013, 2014 when the Black Lives Matter movement was really becoming this mainstream awareness, and my church at the time that I went to in San Diego really refused to engage with it in any way. And I was told, we, we won't talk, we don't want to talk about things that make people uncomfortable and what I heard there was we don't want to make white people uncomfortable because I can tell you all the BIPOC people sitting in this on the, like in these pews are exceptionally uncomfortable that you're not addressing this. And so the hypocrisy of it all really did just kind of, um, explode, I suppose, in that time. And, and that really did lead to the, to the deconstruction, to the finding Richard Rohr, and reconstructing a more contemplative Christian practice. But then, once I reconstructed into contemplative Christianity, it's very, very white and, and very privileged. And then I had to deconstruct out of contemplative Christianity into more of my own just experience. And you know, so it's been, I call, it's this continued deconstruction, reconstruction, deconstruction, reconstruction. And one day I hope to learn that, like, I am the only one that can tell me what to believe or what is true. Right now, I still, like, half look to myself, half look to books and, and, and experts and people with PhDs and these other things to, like, tell me what to believe, but I, I foresee a time when I can fully ground, like, what is true in my own lived experience, but I can't say I'm there yet.
Treen: I don’t know who really is? I mean, God, it’s what you've been trying to teach us to do all along is to find the answers within, but you know, some 2000 years later, we're still, still not getting that. Thank you so much for outlining that, I was going to say, well, I think that's our episode we're good, God…
GOD: I know. I was like, all right, let's wrap it up. That was the most beautiful thing to say ever.
Treen: Yea that's so beautiful.
Hailey: What about you?
Treen: I was raised Catholic. And so for me, the way that that transpired is like, at least Chicago, Italian, German Catholics, it's, it was so, you know, man in the like giant capes and hats that it felt Completely intangible. I, all I knew was we had to show up at this time, we had to be silent. And then my sisters and I would look for like dirty words in the Bible and like make each other laugh as we're like sitting in the pews, you know, I mean, I joke about this, but I truly didn't even know that there was a third member of the Trinity until I became an Evangelical because it was completely checked out. Like I was in Sunday school every week, but it was just, it kind of felt like it was like detention, like we were all just messing around. But when I became an Evangelical, I think the reason why it resonated is because culturally I was like, Oh, I guess this is what I am. I'm from this lineage. I guess I should pay attention. But to be honest, like the music was really good and the people were really hot and no one was wearing a cape that freaked me out. And I was like, okay, my pastor gets like cappuccinos at the local coffee shop. I can relate to him.
GOD: Hot
Treen: Until like you, you know, I had to, sort of bifurcate my social justice work. I was making a documentary about Trans asylum seekers at the time from Mexico. And when I would talk about the project in church, I noticed myself censoring that they were Trans, and I would really just like sell them on the immigration part. But then when I was with my queer friends, I noticed I was talking about what it was actually about. And so there came a point where I remember we screened the film and the pastor's wife came and she was like visually upset by my film because I was elevating Trans rights. And for me, that's when I knew I was like, I'm going to have to find something else because this is just not, not okay with me. God, when we started questioning what was going through your mind, were you like, yes, I'm getting my, my team back together. Were you worried you were going to lose us forever?
GOD: You know, I'll say it like this. Have you ever been at a party and you're talking to somebody and, and you like really understand what they're talking about? And then they like walk away for a little bit to go like to a different party. And then, you know, they come back to the party and they talk to you again. In essence, that's how I felt. If that answers your question.
Treen: That makes a lot of sense.
GOD: I was really struck by both of your stories and how, um, you both mentioned a third um, in one way or another adding a third, um, so I just wanted to point that out. Um, but yeah, just like really beautiful, like so beautiful.
Treen: So are you saying that the nature of all reality is that there's, there's always a third or maybe a fourth or fifth?
GOD: Yeah. Like there's always the thesis, antithesis and then the synthesis. There's always going to be the third. There's always going to be the third.
Treen: The third. I honestly think the more the merrier.
Hailey: Yeah, but like three, God's saying three.
GOD: Yeah, but like, yeah, but like, I'm pretty specific about what I want.
Treen: You're still in charge.
GOD: Yes. No, like I'm really working on this. I've gotten a lot of feedback from my partners that I can be a bit, you know, controlling, so I'm allowing you to, yes, there could be more than three, but I couldn't have been more clear that I like three.
Treen: So with all of that, I know you said that you, you discovered the Christian contemplative path, and then you deconstructed from that. How do you identify now? Like if someone, I wouldn't do this, but if someone was like, what are you now? What would you say?
Hailey: Yeah funnily or or oddly enough, I do still identify as a Christian and going back to our shared teacher Richard Rohr, something he said once that really that really resonated with me was, he was like, if I was born in India, I'd be a Hindu, if I was born, you know, wherever, somewhere else, I'd be something else. But I was born in Kansas, and I was raised in a Catholic family, and so I'm Catholic, and, and he likens it to, to it being like how your native or whatever language you speak natively, you know, it's like, uh, so it is the language that you translate all other spiritual spirituality through. And that felt really true to me. I would say functionally, I'm like a Universalist. I believe that no one has, um, a monopoly on truth and that we all have, uh, there, uh, truth is, is revealing itself to us everywhere through all people and all things. But, you know, language wise and, and framework wise, like, I, I am a Christian. I think that is how I interpret the world through, for better or worse. Um, I was actually just recently talking with, um, a Palestinian American Christian. And we were talking about Christian Zionism, a whole nother conversation for another time. Um, and we were talking about how are we in relationship with Christianity? And he, um, he was, I was saying how I prefer to think of it as like a Christian wisdom or the Jesus wisdom tradition is sort of how I think of it. And he said, yeah, he's like, I'm on a journey. And like, my question is, can we reclaim Christianity as the Indigenous Palestinian wisdom tradition that it was created as? And so that's where some of my curiosity is, you know, it's been so colonized and so aligned with power and empire for so long, I don't know if it's possible to truly um, parse out the Indigenous wisdom there outside of all the context, but that's some of the journey I'm on. I also see it as a political identity that I need to, I am responsible for reclaiming because of how much damage is being done in the Christian, under Christian name and theology. I see it as a, a strategic political identity to also inhabit.
Treen: Uh, there's so many things that I want to pick out and say but going back to the, you know, Indigenous wisdom movement that it was, because Jesus was a Palestinian Jew who also, you know, we have quite extensive theories and evidence that he traveled to other spaces and learned Indigenous spiritual traditions of other cultures and yeah, the moment that, you know, it was co-opted by empire, colonized, we have the traces, you know, still inhabiting us today, but it's really the imperial like agenda of that versus the Indigenous wisdom that it was meant to disrupt. So I think that that's so wise and also, it just brings me so much grief because I, I feel like that's the constant struggle though, that we're at in the world at large, like, yes, we could tell people and prove like, no, these are the roots and the origin of this, but it's almost like, unless you have ears to hear that, it's not, they're not going to listen.
Hailey: Absolutely.
Treen: God, what's the deal? Why are you being so aloof with your agenda? Um, you know, why, why has this wisdom been so hard to uncover?
GOD: Yeah no, I hear you. No, I, no girl and I hear you. Um, I really do hear you on that one. I guess I would consider myself a soft determinist. And I think there has to be a little bit of, I'll lead you to what I'm trying to say, but I'm going to leave a little bit of, um, choice in there. I don't know though. I mean, sometimes I'm a little, I mean, like, can I speak freely?
Hailey: Please.
GOD: Are you ever at a party and you're like saying something and you're like, what am I going on about? And then like later the person you're talking to is like, Oh wait, I totally get what you were trying to say.
Hailey: Yeah.
GOD: That's sort of my MO.
Treen: That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like you're way more relatable and like us then we even realize and you set something in motion and you're kind of watching where the pieces fall and you're like, Oh, should I have said that there should I have taken that back there, but it's kind of in motion now.
GOD: No. No. Yeah, like one thing about me I'm an overthinker, but the one thing I was like really, you know set in stone about was, hey mama lesbians like that one was me for sure. That one was me being like, guys pay attention to this and that's catching on. Um, so just like pay attention to the queer spaces, I'm usually speaking through there the most.
Hailey: Ain't that the truth.
Treen: That's good news.
Hailey: How about you Treen? Where are you at these days?
Treen: I'm changing my answer in real time as I hear you speak. I would say that I identify as highly spiritual. It's the lens and the vehicle through which I look at everything. I just don't really have a name for it anymore. I know that I'm severely allergic to empire and anything with that type of agenda and also know that just by being a human that is participating in systems, I'm complicit in some way. So trying to give myself grace while looking at the way I live my life critically and always orienting it back to love, knowing that that work starts within me. The more that I can hold space for love and generosity and life and generativity, the more that I will be able to create that in every space that I walk into, and every human that I interact with, and every part of nature that I touch. I guess, where I'm at now with all of this is I do sort of lean into a theory that behind all of this, there's unity and oneness and universal love. And I think that this concept of like good and bad, these binaries are really something that humans created to make sense of that permission slip. Like God has given us like utmost permission and freedom and we're the ones who created camps and systems to make sense of it all and in so doing, yeah, there is good, there's a lot of good and then there's a lot of bad.
Hailey: Yeah, totally.
GOD: There's always a mysterious third option…
Treen: Right.
GOD: It's just a better way to…
Treen: It’s just a better way to say that, that's what you were gonna say, God?
GOD: Oh I did it again. Jesus is always like, girl you don't need to control. Oh, I did it again.
Treen: You touched on this a little bit but what aspects did you feel were really silenced when you identified as an Evangelical Christian and then what aspects felt safer?
Hailey: All right the first thing that comes to mind when I hear you ask that is, is really intuition was something that I felt, um, I had to detach from. Um, I think some, a cornerstone of Evangelicalism is, is a very literal interpretation of the Bible and a very heavy emphasis on apologetics and being able to, like, have correct theology. And so when I had these intuitive experiences that felt in contrast to the, the, the, the literal interpretation of the Bible that I was handed, I was like, nope, no, no, no, no. Can't think that. Can't feel that. So really like a disembodiment, I think, largely had to happen. There were obvious, there were moments of deep embodiment at the same time. But, um, but yeah, a lot of detaching, um, from my, from my intuition. Um, I, honestly, I think that's the biggest thing. That's kind of the root. There are lots of, I mean, there's the very super superficial things of like, because I was one of the only people of color at my school, like, I, and was often one of the only people of color in the Evangelical spaces I was in, there was a lot of, like, just, hating of my own, how I looked, you know, straightening my hair every day and, and, and wanting to present differently than I am. That was painful. Definitely my queerness was something that I was not at all able to, um, explore and I kind of excused that by being like, well, like, I'm not a lesbian. I do like other genders, so I guess I should just only do that because it's, you know, if I can, I should. And so there was just all these parts, um, left yeah, dormant and unexplored, um, so I've, I've definitely felt in my 30s that I'm kind of like a 25-year-old sexually and sensually and all of, like, these other parts. What felt comfortable in that space, or? This is part of why I still identify as a Christian or why I still think there's something redeemable about organized religion to an extent, is that it always gave me a place to plug in, to like use my talents and my giftings and to feel like I'm helping people, you know, we're always, you know, you're organizing to see folks at the hospital and you're organizing meal trains for folks that are home for some reason, you're praying and you're connected to your elders, like there's all these beautiful parts of the church that I do like, lament, um, are not a part of our everyday society, because I do think the roots of my organizing and mobilizing skills come from my raising in, in a church context.
Treen: Yeah. Like I was, it was funny when I was thinking of my own question, like, what are the redeemable redeemable aspects? I'm really grateful you pointed some, I was like, there's none, there's none. But Jesus did create hospitals, you know, and, and I do, I do miss that sense of like, both in worship, that sense of coherence that we were all creating and that, that ability to then tap into your own, like center and channel and listen to God, spirit, whatever you want to call it, that, that sense of connection with self and other in that space. And then the service. Yeah uh, which I don't find as easily accessible in other spaces. God, any, any comments about, about that?
GOD: I’ll just say that like, yeah, it's so awesome just to see people finally getting what I've been like saying, you know? You know, and I'm always saying this, if, if, if I'm in your head and it's a yelling, if you're, if I'm yelling, that's not me. If it's a whisper, that's my, that's me giving you some intuition, okay? So yeah, I'm just, you, you guys have two thumbs up from, from me.
Hailey: Would three thumbs be better?
GOD: Three thumbs? I just started to think about it. No, thanks for pointing that out.
Hailey: Okay. Okay. Good to know.
Treen: So three cums, three cums? Wow. Three thumbs.
GOD: Please don't talk about my personal life. That's, that's bedroom time. Let's not talk about that.
Treen: Three cums would be okay though? I just want to clarify that?
GOD: That's fine, but just neither here nor there.
Treen: God, what's been the difficult, the most difficult thing that you've had to change your mind about?
GOD: What a beautiful question. No one's, in my eternity, no one's asked me that before.
Treen: So welcome.
GOD: I had to change my mind about how, in which I wanted to ease people's minds. When I first started I thought it had to be a way that was immediate, you know, it's sort of like Oh, my son, Jesus. He wanted to go to the beach one day and I was like, okay. He was like two and I was like, okay, you want to go to the beach? We have to put sunscreen on. We have to, you know, you have to pack the car. I have to do all this stuff. And he was like, okay. So we started putting on sunscreen, packing up the car and it was taking longer than he expected. He started to get fussy and he was like, no, I just want to go to the beach. And I'm saying, this is what it looks like to go to the beach. We're gonna have to pack up the car, put on sunscreen. It's gonna take longer than you expect. And so, that's what I'm just sort of realizing is that, like, people can say what they want, and I'm trying to get them to where they want to go in the safest way possible. I don't want him to get sunburned. But, you know, I just have to, like, like you said before, give it time.
Treen: Understood. And I'm, and then ultimately is that, was he impatient and that's what led him to walking on water.
GOD: You know it was a childhood thing. He had a weird fascination with water, turned it into wine. And I said, we don't need that. I didn't need that miracle, but you know, you let kids, you let kids be kids.
Treen: Yeah they got to figure it out for themselves.
GOD: But he did have a weird fixation on that for a few years.
Treen: When I became Evangelical, when I was born again at 23 in a kiddie pool in New York, um, I remember that I sort of took on this like fake and phony persona of purity. I like, I started dressing like really bohemian, wearing lots of like flowers and flower crowns. And I stopped swearing.
GOD: I remember that. I said, she is, she is fucking around and finding out. Yeah.
Treen: She is in her holy era. I, uh, would not swear. I didn't drink. I, um, re, re-virginized myself. So I had sex before marriage. I had sex before marriage.
Hailey: Yeah. What is the logistics of this? Was this surgical?
GOD: You like put back your hymen together? I’ve never. What does that even mean?
Hailey: This is a procedure I am unfamiliar with.
GOD: This is news to me.
Treen: I'm glad I can teach God something. I, um, you kind of do put your hymen back together if you, if you have sex when you're 20 and then you don't again until you're 26. Anyway, long story short, I remember that I wasn't able to express those aspects of self, which now I see as just so human and I can so deeply relate to what you're saying of like, yeah, when I deconstructed and when I was 30 and when I left my marriage, I truly was running around like a 21-year-old on Spring Break for a couple of years and I don't judge that version of me at all. She had a lot of fun and she had to get some things out of her system because those parts of me were not accepted being a Evangelical.
Hailey: Yeah. Are there things that, that you miss? It's okay if not.
Treen: Just thinking about re-virginizing myself.
Hailey: I honestly like, there's, the capitalist part of me is like, there's money to be made here. You know? Like, if we could tap into this, like, Evangelical.
Treen: Right identify a pain point.
Hailey: Yeah I'm hearing like a hole in the market.
Treen: Yeah. Identify market fit and then to scale, right? That's how business works.
GOD: Buy low, sell high.
Treen: That's what I'm saying. Um, I think the parts that felt safer are the parts that we are still, I think, all looking for was belonging. I still, to this day, don't have a space in which I feel as much belonging as I did in those spaces. Now, in order to belong into those spaces, I had to repress a lot of my authentic self. So I would say the space that is most closest to that today, where I can show all parts of me, is improv. Which is why I love improv. I do this multiple times a week. I love going into a room and like screaming and rolling around with a bunch of other adults and like adult kindergarten. That's just the best, but that's my version of that. I haven't really found that elsewhere. And, and also within the comedy space, you know, again, I think what's lacking is what you mentioned about service and, and giving back. So that's why there wasn't an allure in church for sure.
GOD: The one thing I will condemn is, uh, I'm coming in hot, but you know, no, the one thing I will condemn is, well, I don't know, I've just seen a lot of Christian comics and those are, those are some where I'm like, I mean, guys, please, some of the jokes that like, you know, as God, like comedy is really sacred to me. So when it's kind of fucked with then, I'm just like, please don't. So I'm glad that you're reclaiming, you know, yes and, Zip, Zop, Zop.
Treen: Zip, Zap, Zop.
GOD: Yeah, thank you.
Treen: Hailey, what do you feel like Christianity though, you alluded to this in your beautiful story, which is where the episode probably should have ended, but here we are. What do you feel like Christianity gave you that you're still living into today?
Hailey: I do think that the church and the Evangelical church in particular really instilled this belief in caring for the whole person. Sadly, um, we didn't do that very well in that space, again, back to the conditional belonging, but there was this acknowledgement of like, you are a person with spiritual needs, you are a person with financial needs, you are a person with, um, you know, like, who needs to eat and be fed and have shelter. And I think that is when, you know, coming back to this conversation around, you know, where do we find belonging now? I think a lot of our communities fall short because they are so specialized, like, they're like, oh, we are, we're all, you know, I do pottery. So it's like, okay, we're all potters and we do pottery every week together. But like, there's so much else about me that I don't bring into that space, you know, or I am an organizer, um, but, like, these organizing spaces don't always, like, it's so, um, go, go, go, action, action, action, there's not always, like, a place to really integrate that I'm also a spiritual person, that I'm also a person that deserves and needs ease in my life, and the church almost set this unrealistic goal. I don't know. I don't want to say that. I don't want to say it's unrealistic. They set this, they did set a bar for community that I, that once the veil was lifted, it didn't feel so safe anymore, but it left this imprint of like what it can feel like to be a whole person in community with other people that I think I'm grateful for that imprint. I still desire to. to either be a part of or support in creating a community like that.
Treen: I mean it's just it's so weird that we learn this way but I wish I could have like just circumvented that whole weird moment I went through in my 20s where I had to like re-virginize myself and re-purify myself and like become a Christian, but I can't and it's just I can't go back and do that. And also, I don't know if I would be the person that I am today had I not gone through that. And so sometimes I lament that I'm 35 and I'm almost 36 and figuring these things out. I wish I could have existed longer in this fledgling version of myself that feels like she's just discovering who she is and just discovering her voice because sometimes I judge myself as feeling like well I'm too late to have discovered that and at the same time the thoughts that i'm having the jokes that I'm writing the work that i'm making would not be the work that I'm making, the things that I care about had I not gone through that. So, it really was like a ringing out sort of, of discovering my personality. Agonizing as hell, but I, I wouldn't trade it.
GOD: Don't they say, um, fall if I may, but let the woman I'm be, let the woman I'm becoming catch me or whatever?
Hailey: Ooh, I've actually never heard that. I love that.
GOD: Yeah.
Treen: It’s beautiful, God.
GOD: Ugh, guys. It was a Tumblr post, I think.
Treen: How do you feel like your life has changed the most from your Evangelical days until now.
Hailey: Oh my God. Yeah.
Treen: Is it better now? Jk. But is it?
Hailey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's definitely better now. I mean, I was, I would say a hundred percent ruled by shame in my Evangelical days. It was just a lot, a lot, a lot of shoulds. Never good enough. And, um, yeah. I mostly don't feel that way anymore, you know, like the combination of Evangelicalism and capitalism, you know, and, and Asian family, it's like, you are what you do, you are what you do, you are what you do. To be able to tap into occasionally just that the enoughness, the I am enoughness, which I don't think I had access to in the slightest when you, when I was Evangelical because you're conditioned that you're a pile of shit that Jesus, God, you had to send your son to be murdered so that I could like not go to hell. I mean, that's a lot of pressure to put on a child to live up to. So I think I was always trying to make my life worth that sacrifice. And I don't feel that way anymore, I feel that I am a deeply good and beloved person, that fucks up, of course, but that, my, my center place is of belovedness, and that is fundamental different, a fundamentally different way to live.
Treen: God, how does that make you feel to hear finally saying that out loud that we know that we're loved and that whole weird story about your son needing to be this lamb, it's it's going it's going away.
GOD: Well, first of all, I said that as a joke, you know when that came around that was a bit and people took that and ran.
Treen: Gotta be careful what you joke about.
GOD: But no, I really did write down, make my life worth the sacrifice. Ugh, I really relate to that. It just, it really heartens me that you are realizing that there, that there, there can't be shame in that. You know when you like are at a party and you're like, you make like an edgy joke.
Hailey: We maybe need to have someone vetting your bits moving forward.
GOD: Yes. You're like, I was kidding. And then they make a whole like religion out of it? Oh, it happens all the time.
Treen: And then Pontius Pilate takes it and runs with it and then you know, skews the rest of history.
GOD: Wait, who's Poncho? Who's that?
Treen: Pontius Pilate. Wasn't he the guy that like…
Hailey: He was like the governor.
Treen: Wasn't he the guy that like…
Hailey: That ordered…
Treen: Jesus, Jesus's crucifixion, right? Am I making that up?
GOD: Oh, I remember him.
Treen: It’s like a deep cavern in my, it just like, I opened up like a weird little door inside of a door and then I was like rarrr.
GOD: You know what I thought of? I don't know if they have this Treen cause you're also from the Midwest, but I'm also from, I'm from, I'm from everywhere, but…
Treen: Right, but also Iowa.
GOD: You remember Poncheros. But also Iowa specifically. Poncheros.
Treen: Yes.
GOD: That's what I thought of when you said that.
Treen: Got it.
GOD: It's a Mexican restaurant.
Hailey: Okay.
Treen: Different, but they believe in Pontius Pilate I bet.
Hailey: I bet. I bet. Yeah. I bet so.
Treen: I bet Pontius Pilate is alive and well at Poncheros. I'm just guessing.
GOD: He is. I made him live forever there. He's the chef. He's the head chef.
Treen: Well, actually, I want to know, God, is your life better now that you're in this polyamorous relationship? Yeah, and you can be open about it?
GOD: Yeah, my life is better. I think, uh, I really had to dig deep into what, you know, what the structure that I built for myself was like what that was really serving? And for me it was very protective. Like, no, it's just going to be me and one other person. And I was like, uh, like there could be more. So I would say life, you know, in polycule, a lot of fun, a lot of fun, a lot of fun. So, but yeah, there, there's just never a dull moment. Uh, but it's just teaching me a little bit that, um, you know, I can be in the gray.
Hailey: Yeah.
Treen: That's beautiful back to your point Hailey about shame, I've felt this for a while now like when I was so concerned about being good but it was imposed on me from I actually was more selfish because if goodness is just something that I'm doing to like get a gold star or to go to heaven, it's not authentic and like inherently motivated and so I found myself not being an authentically generous and kind person because the whole foundation of my reality was based on shame and guilt and fear and ultimately like this God that would punish me. And when I've stripped off all those layers and deconstructed from that, uh, and I do genuinely believe in a source, a creator that is with me, that is in it with me, that loves me, that I love, I'm more inherently motivated to be good and to be kind and to be generous. So I think it's it's really misplaced this like top down you have to be good because I do wonder how much more generous and loving the world could be if there wasn't that imposition, that imposed structure on it?
Hailey: So agree. Yeah, I am having this memory of riding in this, like, Uber with these girls I didn't know when I was in Mexico City, and somehow we were talking about, are human beings inherently good or inherently bad? And I was the only one who believed that human beings were inherently good. They all believed that human beings were inherently bad. And they're like, well, what about, you know, this and this, and pointing to all the ways that humans have, oppressed each other over our existence. And I'm like, that is, those are systems, not people, and yes, people create systems, but back to our, back to our buddy Richie Rohr, he says, individuals are not capable of sinning. Systems are sinful. So it obviously doesn't mean we don't create harm, but if we weren't in harmful systems, I really don't think that we would, that we would enact harm. And so I'm hearing that in, like, you being liberated from this harmful system has allowed you to, to access this, like, generosity and kindness that was being, um, like, obscured within, within your Evangelical context.
Treen: Yeah, doesn't Richard say, like, the only place that evil really exists is when a system becomes so large of an entity that it becomes a nameless, faceless being, and that is where evil can be housed because it becomes too big for any individual to dismantle?
Hailey: Yeah.
Treen: That always like, oh, just hit me in the heart because I feel that like that is white supremacy, that is the prison industrial system, that is all of these things that have now become faceless, nameless, too big to dismantle, too big to control. Not one person can take them down, it's going to take, you know, a flock, a fleet of humans to dismantle.
Hailey: Yeah, exactly.
Treen: We're on to our last question, y'all, and it's hopeful. Well, depending on how we answer. Imagine we are 200 years into the future. Do you think people still have faith at this point in the future? And what is your vision if you could choose for the, for the world?
Hailey: Hmm.
Treen: Casual, I know.
GOD: I know the answer, so.
Treen: Go for it, God!
GOD: Well, no, I'm just saying, of course I know the answer, so I'm just letting you guys take the floor.
Treen: Oh, right.
GOD: I know what's hap, I know what happens, so I just wanted to be honest about that.
Treen: I always forget you're already there.
Hailey: This is like, how close can we pin the tail on the donkey?
Treen: Yeah, let us know if we're getting hot or cold.
GOD: Oh, I will. I will.
Hailey: Man, you know, my ins my, my gut reaction is that human beings will never that we are inherently meaning making creatures, and that we will never know, we will never have the knowledge that you, God, have, we'll never actually know, and so we're always going to be trying to figure out who we are and why are we here on this planet.
GOD: Warmer.
Hailey: So my hope would be that empire religion has been faded away and maybe it's replaced with more localized and more, um, specific, like contextualized wisdom traditions that people can still find guidance and belonging and intergenerational wisdom and healing in, but maybe that have some amount of flexibility and don't have to be literally etched in stone. I don’t know. Those are my initial thoughts. What do you think, Treen?
Treen: I'll give you my hopeful, hopeful projection. So I've been reading this book called The Chalice and the Blade in which archaeologically this woman discovers, I mean, it's probably no surprise to you that archeology as we know it is through a male gaze. And so they've completely, the whole history of God's like that checks out. Um, the whole history of archeology has been filtered through this male perspective when there is abundant, abundant examples of feminine spirituality and specifically Venus figurines littered across, across Europe, across Egypt, across all these spaces, right? But they, these theorists, ascertained that they didn't live in matrilineal societies, which of course, like my, like, feminist, you know, before I started reading this book, I was like, oh, we, let's just go back to matrilineal way of life, we'll be so much happier. But she was like, no, we actually didn't live matrilineally. We lived in gynocentric societies in which the sexes were viewed as equal, just different. The one thing we were aligned on was that we come from vulvas and uteruses and we are in reverence to life itself. We're in reverence to creation itself. We're in reverence to our planet and to each other because this is a miracle, this is a gift. And she said, that since we went from chalice societies to blade societies, that enact war and harm on each other, and apparently we lived, like, in peace for a couple thousand years, like, it was like a long time where we were able to, like, grow food and stay in one place, but we lived harmoniously. Um, she said that, evolutionarily speaking, if we continue living in the blade society, it's actually going to destroy us, like we're not going to survive because now in the era of nuclear warfare, like we're going to just wipe each other out. We have to go back to this time that we can see in our history. And I believe is like still encoded in our bodies somewhere. We have to go back to this time where we were and we knew at least how to coexist, celebrating difference and honoring something larger than our own individual, you know, stamps. So I would like to say that humans in 200 years, our consciousness has been expanded because we've all been doing so much plant medicine that we are remembering this time that we were in chalice societies and we can save our species but…
Hailey: Yeah.
GOD: Wow.
Hailey: May it be so.
GOD: Do you want me to give you the answer?
Treen: Yes. God.
GOD: So it goes from chalice society to the blade society to red solo cup society.
Treen: Got it.
GOD: Because the house party, the house party I've been referring to this whole time is what's going to happen in 200 years. We're all going to be at this house party. Everyone's going to be each other's exes. Everyone's going to know one another. But we're all going to be at this party together.
Treen: We're all going to be playing beer pong for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.
GOD: For richer, for poorer.
Hailey: In sickness and health.
GOD: In sickness and health yeah it's also a wedding.
Treen: That's kind of in line with Revelations.
GOD: Yeah, yeah. I already said it. I already told you what's going to happen.
Treen: God, thank you so much for being with us here today, even though I'm post religion, I'm personally not over you. So thank you so much for holding space and for letting us hold space for you. And I just want to share with everyone that today's guest was Hailey Mitsui. Hailey, can you tell folks how to find you and support you and work with you?
Hailey: Yes. Um, so as aforementioned, I am a Spiritual Director and a Somatic Practitioner. So I have a private practice where you can come and work with me if you're navigating spiritual questions and journeys. And, and then my somatic practice is just, um, more like a trauma, post trauma coaching practice. So if either of those pique your curiosity, you can find me at haileymitsui.com H A I L E Y M I T S U I.com or I'm haileymitsui on Instagram are probably the best places.
Treen: Awesome. I'll make sure to link those both in the show notes. And today, drumroll please, our omniscient commentator and God was played by Jordan Hull. Jordan, can you come on camera?
Jordan: Hey! This is God's hat, by the way. Please don't flirt with me.
Treen: You've already, you already have enough, enough going on.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah.
Treen: Jordan, how can folks follow you and your comedy and your acting and what you're up to?
Jordan: Um, I am Jordan E Hull H U L L on Instagram. Um, and that's usually, that's, that's all I can do social media very well. I don't like it. So that's where you can find me.
Treen: Otherwise, well, they'll have to find you performing in person somewhere.
Jordan: Yeah. Go to UCB. I'll be hanging out there.
Treen: Lovely. Well, thank you both for being on today. And, um, y'all that's Season One of the Naughty by Nature podcast dropping right after the birthday of the man, the myth, the legend, who inspired it all, Jesus Christ.
Jordan: Woo! My partner, and also son.
Treen: Your partner, and your son.
Jordan: My third, and also son.
Treen: And happy holidays to everyone. Merry Christmas if you celebrate Christmas. And just want to say as we sign off that I think you're absolutely perfect. And to just, please, stay naughty.
Hailey: Yeah.
Treen: Thank you so much for listening to the Naughty by Nature podcast. Did you like that and want to enjoy it all again? Well, we've got visuals, baby. Watch and subscribe to our YouTube channel at nxnpod. Also hit the follow button here to be alerted to following episodes and take one tiny second to tell us what you think with a rating or review.
It truly helps us grow. Thank you for listening and I'm wishing you all the best in living your unabashedly free and freaky life.