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The Echoes Podcast dives into real-world questions about community, faith, and human connection. Guided by hosts Marcus Goodyear and Camille Hall-Ortega, each episode explores personal journeys and societal challenges with inspiring guests—from faith leaders and poets to social advocates—whose stories shape our shared experiences. Through conversations with figures like Rev. Ben McBride, who moved his family to East Oakland’s “Kill Zone” to serve his community, or poet Olga Samples Davis, who reflects on the transformative power of language, we bring to light themes of belonging, resilience, and the meaning of home.
From the creators of Echoes Magazine by the H. E. Butt Foundation, The Echoes Podcast continues the magazine's legacy of storytelling that fosters understanding, empathy, and action.
We think of hope as this thing we put on something. Put we hope in a person. We hope in a device or an object. You brought up Lydia Dugdale, and I loved the way she defined hope. And she says that the things in the world cannot bear the weight of our hope.
Marcus Goodyear:Hi, everyone. We are deep into the second season of the Echoes Podcast. When we launched this show, almost two years ago, we made a pretty deliberate choice that we wanted the conversations to speak for themselves. We would bring in the right guests. We would ask them real questions, and we hoped that something important would find its way to you.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Which I think it has. We're nearly two seasons in here. We're in our second season. And so it just feels like a good time to sort of pause for a minute. No guest today.
Camille Hall-Ortega:It's just me and you, Marcus.
Marcus Goodyear:I know. It's no guest to hide behind. Right? I feel a little exposed, which is I don't know. That's like the story of my life.
Camille Hall-Ortega:It's probably good for us. Right? It's I feel a little bit of the same, but I think it's good. And so I thought we could just spend some time reflecting on what the show actually is.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah.
Camille Hall-Ortega:What we're hoping for the people who are listening, what we hope for ourselves, what we're getting out of it.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. And also, I think to share some stories about how these podcast episodes don't stay in the studio. We talk about them a lot in the foundation. They help inform. They've become almost an internal comms tool for those of us who work in the foundation. But more than that, we have been hearing back slowly from listeners. And it was really encouraging to hear these things that we record in the studio having a life of their own.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah, absolutely. I have experienced some of the same where folks are, you know, it's a conversation starter that we're asking questions that people are really thinking about and wanna converse with us about even, you know, off air. And I think, yeah, that's a gift. And today really is about us kind of talking about that sort of thing of what is the Echoes Podcast? What do we hope to accomplish? What particular conversations continue to draw us back in?
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. What what sticks with us and sharing that back with you? And so, Camille, I'm gonna turn this on you. Why? Why do you do this?
Camille Hall-Ortega:That is a good question. I know that, you know, going into this whole venture, there was a lot of uncertainty. I had not cohosted a podcast before. But I think, but what drew me was this idea that these guests that we invite, these conversations that we're having, they're worthwhile. They are sometimes tough, a lot of times really fun, they can be lighthearted, we can laugh together.
Camille Hall-Ortega:But there are these questions that sort of get at the core of who we are as people and who we are together as community. What does it look to go through hard times and lean on others, whether they're light or heavy, or tough, or perfectly reflective of who we are as people, they are questions and conversations that can stick with us because they matter.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah, I mean, the mission of the H.E.Butt Foundation, to tell stories of wholeness, to help people find transformation that they can take back to their communities. I mean, for me, that's a lot of what motivates these conversations. How can we highlight people who are doing that work, who've experienced some kind of transformation that they're spreading? They're becoming agents of wholeness.
Marcus Goodyear:And I never get tired of talking with incredibly smart, incredibly thoughtful people.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:And learning from them and just being somebody who gets to ask questions of folks like Andy Crouch and Dave Neinhaus and Lydia Dugdale and Sally Lloyd Jones. And then last season, John Guerra with his confetti cannon story of of Easter gone haywire for him. But to to go to your question, I think the the one this season so far that really, really stuck with me most was Dave Neinhaus, which is the episode titled What the Church Gets Wrong About Suffering.
Marcus Goodyear:And in that book and in the podcast, he explains this a little bit, that so many Christians are used to the idea of the dark night of the soul and darkness as God's absence and something to be aware of and and to work through, like Saint John of the Cross and the dark night of the soul. And he said, But in the Bible, there are two things. There's the deep and the darkness. The darkness is over the surface of the deep. And he explains that for him in his reflection of the scripture, he has found that the deep stands for chaos and uncontrollability.
Marcus Goodyear:It's the the waters that are crashing about us. And he says when when God withdraws and leaves us in the darkness, that is an opportunity to grow.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:God is trusting us to grow.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:But when we're in the deep, when we're in the chaos and the uncontrollability of the world, that's that's just part of being alive. You haven't done anything wrong. And it's not great, but you can find God in there.
Camille Hall-Ortega:I love what you said, Marcus, especially because our time with Dave was one of my favorite times as well, because so much of what he shared stuck with me. I think probably what I would highlight there for me is that mental health and mental health struggles can be such a taboo topic, especially in our society, but especially in the church. And so what I loved about Dave is that he is leaning so hard into the fact that when we share our vulnerabilities and resist and struggle against these ideas of taboo topics in the church, we encourage others to do the same. I love that he can just get across those ideas so eloquently. I also, when I'm thinking about episodes that stuck with me, yeah, for me too, Sally Lloyd Jones is such a gift.
Camille Hall-Ortega:She is just, her mind is a marvel, in my opinion. Her mind is a marvel. And so that time was just so sweet with Sally. And I enjoyed that she was able to talk about not just because as a children's book writer, you would think that she would have a lot to say about what her books are teaching kids.
Camille Hall-Ortega:But we had so much of our time with her, was her talking about what kids have taught her. I think that was so sweet to see that it's because she is able to connect in those ways and learn and hear and listen to kids who are so often kind of tuned out, right? Like you're just young or that kind of thing. No, she has this gift of connection with children that very clearly informs her beautiful art and her spirit is just gorgeous. And so what a gift that conversation was to me.
Camille Hall-Ortega:I'm curious also, Marcus, if you saw any through lines in this season, if you saw any sort of themes come across the episodes that we shared.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. I mean, this feels a little strange, and I don't know how much this through line is just because we kept bringing the questions to people. But there's there's been so much talk in some of the episodes about A. I. We've come back to that several times with people.
Marcus Goodyear:For Andy Crouch, it was staying human in the age of AI. So that's an episode specifically about it. But it came up with Lydia Dugdale. It comes up with several of them. And for me, the anchor that I look to now from the season so far on this topic is when Andy Crouch talked about a Goethe poem, which I did not know was a Goethe poem called The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Marcus Goodyear:So it's where it's the origin of the Disney cartoon with Mickey dressed up as the sorcerer's apprentice and and all of the dancing brooms. And he says that A. I. And technology in general is our attempt to find magic, to find a cheat code for the world, he says.
Marcus Goodyear:He says, we want to we want to be lazy. I don't think he uses that term, but it's it's like we we want everything to be so efficient that we find ourselves going to the gym with a forklift because we think the gym is about lifting weight. And it's not. It's about self transformation. And so trying to be honest about what technology does, A. I. In particular, just because it's so I mean, even since we started this podcast, it's grown so much.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Oh, gosh. Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. It's a little it's a little hard to keep up. And that that came up over and over. Everybody else, I think, is also thinking about this.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yes. For sure.
Marcus Goodyear:How about you? Was there a through line that you found?
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah. I think the the same for me would be not specifically AI, but perhaps loneliness and technology and how those two things can marry and create tension and sort of play. And yes, certainly Andy Crouch stuck with me just thinking about the work of relationships and how God meant it to be and how we were created to be in relationship with one another, and how technology can make that better and easier and more efficient and how it can also create crutches and can make us more disconnected when often it's intended to help connection. And so, yeah, I think about how Andy talked about that. And I think about, I hearken back to season one also when we talked to Warren Kinghorn and several guests about how we're lonelier than ever and what that looks like.
Camille Hall-Ortega:And for me, I think that through line of loneliness and technology and sort of how those two come together can be seen throughout because we see things like mental health coming up and we see that come up. We see things like addiction come up with Ian Morgenkron. And we talk about creativity with Sally Lloyd Jones. And we think about again, how so many aspects of technology can be really helpful in all of those things, in relationships, in creativity. And then they can also become problematic, the dark side of all of those things, where we can become addicted, where we don't want to put our phones down long enough to have a conversation in real life.
Camille Hall-Ortega:And I think reflecting on these things, being able to talk about these things in real time with real folks, especially with the amazing guests that we have been able to welcome, these experts that are researching these things or speaking about these things on a regular basis or living out these things on a regular basis is amazing. But it's also just sort of food for thought for us and for our audience, for our listeners to go, am I picking up my phone too often? Am I disconnected from the people around me because of technology? Am I using technology as a crutch? Am I lonelier than I have ever been, even though I have the opportunity to be more connected than I've ever been?
Camille Hall-Ortega:These are things that are hard to think about that are difficult to reflect on. But just having these conversations during our podcast episodes and being able to spark conversation outside of the time that we're recording our podcast is important and helpful to me for sure.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. The the idea of our relationship to technology is something that's almost always on my mind. I this is something I was very aware of as we were raising our children. They're both out of college now. And I have had to put a lot of barriers in place for myself with my phone especially, but also with my computer.
Marcus Goodyear:I now often don't take my computer home or I take it home turned off so that I you know, there's that reboot process. If I need to, I can reboot it, but it's not just flipping it open. Same thing with my phone. I have an app on my phone that blocks about 90% of what my phone does at six. I can turn it off, but it takes about three minutes to turn all of those blockers Wow.
Marcus Goodyear:And I do turn them off probably two, three times a week when I need to do something on my phone. So it's not, I'm not rigid or weird about it, but I just find it helps me be present with my wife. It helps me be present. We went to the Kerrville Folk Festival this weekend and I left my phone at home because I'm going to the Folk Festival. I don't need a phone.
Marcus Goodyear:I need to be present and listen to these incredible artists who've flown in from all over the country to play music on the guitar and with the violin and with the keyboard. And, you know, a friend of mine texted me in the middle and wanted to connect at the folk festival, and I didn't get that text. And so I apologized to him the next day. But it's absurd that we would feel that we need to be always available all the time and instead of just being present. And I I think that the the key to not feeling lonely in part is to to just be aware of the relationships in front of us.
Marcus Goodyear:And I mean, you're talking about the the complications of relationship and friendship. And I think technology has caused me at times to believe the lie that relationships can be cleaner than they are. And that they're just always messy.
Camille Hall-Ortega:It's messy.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. They're just always tense. Maybe because I'm in every relationship I'm in, and I'm a naturally tense person, as you know. But like like working through that mess and and giving grace to the real people across the table from you.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:You just can't you just can't replace that. If you try to, you're being something other than human, I think. I don't know.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah. No. That's right. That that relationships are naturally messy. It's making me think of one of our first episodes of this season, which was with Doctor Patton Dodd. Oh, that's right. I'm just thinking Go Patton. Of I'm just thinking of how he was so vulnerable and honest in his book about his father and his family and his mother. And how, yeah, he paints a really tough picture of how relationships can be really hard.
Camille Hall-Ortega:And I think about Mark Roberts. I think about Mark Roberts talking how relationships can change over time and how as we are getting older and we're in the sort of last third of our lives, how things can be, well, you're not there yet, you're not there yet, but how things are different, that you're in a different season of life. And I think a lot of that for me hits home for me personally, but also for me as a mom. I think about how am I to be raising my kids to value relationship, to value connection, to understand the benefits and the harms and the dangers of technology, to be thinking about what it looks like to fall into addiction, what it looks like to grieve well, thinking about Lydia Dugdale. So, so much so much of what we learn, I don't just think about me or my community and the people around us, but also I think about it from the vantage point as a mom.
Camille Hall-Ortega:And what can I take from this conversation that could be helpful to me and my parenting?
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. You brought up Lydia Dugdale, and I loved the way she defined hope that we think of hope as this thing we put on something we put. We hope in a person. We hope in a device or an object. And I mean, a real person, like I put my hope in my parents or put my hope in my children or my spouse.
Marcus Goodyear:And she says that the things in the world cannot bear the weight of our hope. Instead, she reframes hope as a habit, a discipline to orient ourselves toward a future good that is clear and possible that we can reach. And I think that that is that message has been really helpful for me to return to this year because it's been a hard year. You know, we had these July 4 floods back in Kerrville, and I have been in a community that is struggling to regain hope. And so to to acknowledge that hope doesn't always feel hopeful.
Marcus Goodyear:Sometimes hope feels like a discipline and a choice. I am going to choose that the future will be good. Yeah. That's been quite liberating because I have to choose it sometimes a lot, way more often than I would like to admit. And and I think technology sells us false hope. It sells us easy hope. And it can't be easy. It's gotta be this discipline. It's gotta be a decision that requires commitment.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah. You're bringing up Lydia, Doctor Lydia Dugdale, and I think of her and then I just think of all of our guests. And I think we have these heavy hitter guests. And I'm wondering if you like me have felt nervous bringing on these really smart, folks are intimidated because I know then I would be in good company. I'm curious.
Marcus Goodyear:Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think the most recent one. Well, I was a little starstruck with Ian Morgen Cron. My my daughter and I took a trip to Big Bend where we bought his book, The Road Back to You, which is was sort of a big Enneagram book. And my daughter was 15 and she had just gotten her driver's permits and we're driving to Big Bend. And we hiked we hiked three nights in the backcountry of Big Bend, Camille, and you have to carry your water.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah, wow.
Marcus Goodyear:We were carrying 32 pounds of water into the mountains with us and Ian Morgan Cron's book. And it was seriously. That's it was it was life changing for us. It was a core memory for my daughter. We saw bears. We, it was incredible. There was one point where I thought we were just going to die out here. That's how and people like that was not a melodramatic thought. It is dangerous.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:And we were so remote. We didn't see people at one point for twenty four hours. Were entirely by ourselves in the wilderness. And so to to bring that experience to the man who wrote the book that helped shape that experience for us was it was intimidating and helpful. I mean, he I actually after that conversation with him, I went to an AA meeting that week to sort of rediscover 12 steps firsthand. I was so inspired by the way he talked about it.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah. Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:How about you? Who are you nervous about?
Camille Hall-Ortega:Oh, gosh. Well, yeah. Definitely Lydia. But I was very, very nervous for Alyssa Wilkinson. I was thinking I was thinking this New York
Marcus Goodyear:Times film critic.
Camille Hall-Ortega:The New York Times film critic. And I love movies, but I confessed to you and to our producer Rob Stennett beforehand. I was just thinking, I don't know if she's probably reviewing a lot of the movies that I see because I like just like light kind of deal. And so I thought, I feel very as to borrow a term you use Marcus, I felt very exposed. But then actually, it was just wonderful.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Alyssa is so with it and very well rounded. So I did not feel like she was silently judging my movie taste. But instead we had conversation about how film and art really shape who we are and our histories and our futures and our communities. And she, as always, was just so insightful and it was wonderful. I really enjoyed it, even though I was very nervous for sure.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. Yeah. She was great. What what do you hope listeners are getting after these sessions, after they listen to a podcast? What do you want them to do?
Camille Hall-Ortega:Honestly, I hope that they experience something like what I experienced, which is, of course, we have plenty of background work that we do to prepare for these podcasts. But after these conversations, I walk away each and every time, which don't say that lightly, each and every time after each of the conversations, walk away, and I have a moment of reflection. Think there is something or often many somethings that was food for thought for me. And so I hope that our listeners hear an episode and gain some food for thought that they can reflect on personally, but then maybe with friends, maybe with family, maybe it sparks questions, good, healthy questions that they can ask people in their lives that they trust, people in their lives that they wanna build trust with. And that those questions can possibly lead to something more. Maybe not. Maybe it's just the questions. Maybe it's just the conversations. But I hope that the time is a spark for sure.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah.
Camille Hall-Ortega:What about you?
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. I mean, I hope they review us and give us five stars.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah, that'd great.
Marcus Goodyear:I mean, I'm kidding. I'm sort of kidding.
Camille Hall-Ortega:I'm not kidding. Yeah. They could also do that. Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. I I've the thing that I have felt in these conversations is how close we all are to really deep conversations if we open ourselves to it. Now, I mean, in some ways, we have the luxury of talking to these people from Duke University and all over who who have pretty, pretty big bonafides.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yes. Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. But but coming prepared to a conversation requires just just thoughtfulness and awareness. And I'm I've been trying to bring more of that to all of my conversations with my friends in a way that doesn't require anybody to be, you know, a Duke University professor. I keep picking on Duke here. It's just it's so easy to say.
Marcus Goodyear:It's so fun. So, you know, I think what you said that it would be a spark, but that it would be a spark for connection. And, you know, that could mean kind of the social media thing that you share an episode with somebody. But I think it's more likely sharing the content with somebody. You know, I talked to my dad and we're having a conversation.
Marcus Goodyear:I say, Oh, that reminds me of this episode of Tim Schreiber's podcast from last year, or it reminds me of this episode from this other podcast I love recently from Curtis Chang's podcast, The Good Faith. And I'll just sort of share a little anecdote, not in a way that pressures him to go download and listen to it, but just brings it into the conversation and helps a little bit of God breakthrough, maybe.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah, I I really like that this time and this podcast connects so deeply to the mission of the Butt Foundation. And Marcus, you have shared with me before, and I'd love for you to just reshare here how you see this space and how it connects to space people have described as loving before, which is Laity Lodge and how it's sort of this this open door, if you will.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah. When I came to work in the foundation in 2005, so twenty one years ago, twenty. Yeah. One of the first things I did was go to Laity Lodge and went to the Cody Center, which is their art their art studio and exhibit space. Lady Lodge is one of the programs of the foundation and John Cobb's egg tempura paintings were in the center inside this tabernacle thing, and they were so beautiful and so theologically rich.
Marcus Goodyear:You can find this online if you you look for John Cobb's paintings. And then I went into the Great Hall and I heard from over the years just absolutely incredible speakers like N. T. Wright and Albert Bergman and on and on and on. And those speakers and the content of those retreats shaped me into the person I am.
Marcus Goodyear:Transformed my life. I feel this burden doesn't feel like quite the right word, but I feel this impulse to try to bring that vision to others as much as I can, not in a not in like a savior complex way, but just this I just want to share it more. And we have six thousand hours of audio from Lady Lodge over the years. And we've always struggled with how can we bring what happens at the lodge to a broader audience? We don't want to manufacture anything.
Marcus Goodyear:We just want to share some of that goodness. And so much of what happens at the lodge is is really relational. It's being able to hear wisdom from N. T. Wright and then have dinner with N. T. Wright because the retreat is so small.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:You can't do that if you're just turning N. T. Wright into, you know, a collection of audio talks that you download into your brain. And so hopefully by having these conversations with people, it's as if we're at the lodge, at a table, having dinner, me, you, our speaker, and our listener.
Camille Hall-Ortega:I love that, Marcus. I'm really glad that we took this time. We have maybe a couple more episodes to wrap season two, and then we look toward the future, maybe season three. We hope. We hope you'll listen.
Camille Hall-Ortega:We hope that you will like and subscribe and download and write a review and send to your friends because that definitely helps us out. But really, we mean what we say when we say we hope it's a spark for you. So I'm glad we got to take a moment, a pause together, Marcus, and just reflect on our time thus far. Thanks for the convo. Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:Doing this work with you, Camille, has been one of the highlights of my professional life. I have loved this podcast. It's so much fun.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yes. Back at you when I mean it. Thanks.
Marcus Goodyear:Alright. Thanks, everyone. Keep listening.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Keep listening.