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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 like to say, remember that evil is the second smartest force on the planet, and it's far smarter than me. Evil is not about to go quietly into the night. And I say that to say, our listeners might think, oh my gosh, this is this is a great question. How can I, Curt, solve this problem? And therein is part of the issue itself because the answer is that I don't solve my shame problem. We solve my shame problem.
Marcus Goodyear:I love the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And what a wonderful way to live, connected to nature, in relationship with God, fruit growing on every tree. If you're feeling peckish, just pick a pomegranate. And also, they were naked and they felt no shame. No embarrassment about their bodies.
Marcus Goodyear:In fact, no shame at all. They didn't wonder if they were good enough. They didn't hide anything. They were fully present with each other and with God. Adam and Eve don't stay in the garden for long.
Marcus Goodyear:Pretty soon, they're hiding from God and they're hiding parts of themselves from each other. That's not just a theological problem, it's a brain problem. From the H. E. Butt Foundation, I'm Marcus Goodyear, and this is The Echoes Podcast.
Marcus Goodyear:Our guest today has spent his career asking what does it take to come out of hiding, not just spiritually, but neurologically. Doctor Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience and Christian spiritual formation. He has several books and a podcast with millions of downloads. According to Kurt, brain science helps us understand trauma and shame and also beauty and desire, creativity, and that life in the garden that God intends for us.
Marcus Goodyear:I'm here with my co-host, Camille Hall-Ortega.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Hi, Marcus.
Marcus Goodyear:Now, Curt recently spoke at Laity Lodge, which is the H. E. Butt Foundation's Retreat Center here in the Texas Hill Country. Welcome, Curt. We are so glad to have you on the podcast today.
Curt Thompson:Marcus and Camille, it's just such a pleasure. And so thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Marcus Goodyear:I'll I'll be honest. I'm a I'm a little nervous. I'm a little intimidated to talk to you. So I just wanna name that upfront. We're very, very excited.
Camille Hall-Ortega:We're fans. We are.
Curt Thompson:Very kind.
Marcus Goodyear:You're a practicing psychiatrist and a theologian of sorts. How did those two worlds come together for you?
Curt Thompson:Well, you know, Marcus, it's often we'd like to say in our work that we see our life coming at us through the windshield and we understand our life looking through the rearview mirror. And so I can say for sure that it was not some blueprinted plan in advance to do this. I think I had the privilege of growing up in this evangelical Quaker space when I was a young kid that taught me to think and pray and read and taught me to listen to my elders and, taught me the benefit of, what it means to learn from really good teachers. And so in many respects, it wasn't just what I, you know, what was inculcated into me as a kid and then as a young adult, but was also, I think, this sense of what does it mean to be taught how to think about the world? And so between my early developmental years and my undergraduate years, and some exposure to some other thinkers who really early in my college years began to teach me to ask the question, what does it mean for Jesus to be Lord of all of life?
Curt Thompson:How does it what does it mean? So no matter if you're a Jesus follower, it means I'm asking questions about meaning from a Christian perspective, no matter what it is that we're doing. And so I think as I entered into medical school and psychiatry, this was, a question that was already, I think, again, not because I had said like, oh, I want a plan to be thinking about these things as as I head in medical school. These are things that are already kind of formed in you in ways that you don't even yet know that they've been formed in you. But certainly, my spiritual fathers and mothers and those that were teaching me science, as it were, whether it's high school, undergrad, medical school, there was naturally this question of how is what we are learning about the way humans operate, the psychology and the neuroscience of human experience and behavior and so forth, What does our anthropology, what does it mean to be a made in the image of the Triune God? How is that? What is the story that that is telling? I can say I'm the recipient of the work of many, many people who've come before me, who've taught me how to be in the world in this way.
Camille Hall-Ortega:I love it. Now, would love to just get kind of a baseline definition for a couple of things, because obviously this is some heady stuff, no pun intended. We're using the term, I had to, we're using the term neuroscience. Also I know we will of course refer to kind of the area that you are studying most recently, which is that interpersonal neurobiology. Can you give us sort of a baseline understanding of those pretty complex topics?
Curt Thompson:Yeah, I mean, I think, but one thing to know is that like neuroscience in general, it's kind of made its way into the cultural conversation. You know, I mean, people now, they slap a picture of the brain on a yogurt and you're gonna buy more yogurt because they go, oh, it's brains. It's good for my brain. We're hearing a lot about this these days. Interpersonal neurobiology in particular, I find to be so fascinating because it is a way for us to imagine human beings that actually, what's so striking to me is that the science itself around this field is teaching us that science itself is not the final common pathway for how we know everything that we'd like to know.
Curt Thompson:And what it is, interpersonal neurobiology, my friend and colleague Dan Siegel coined this phrase now more than twenty years ago, it is a phrase that it represents a collection of a number of different scientific disciplines that all have a stake in asking two questions. One, what is the mind? What is it? Now granted, it's not asking the question of what's the mind's purpose, Let alone what is a human being's purpose? That's not a question for science to answer, but it is asking the question what the mechanics?
Curt Thompson:What are the mechanics of the mind? What does it look like? And you come to find out that we typically, if you were just ask your person on the street, well, what is your mind? We have a pretty narrow view of that. And this is a much more expansive view because we have this working definition that the mind is an embodied and relational process.
Curt Thompson:Right? So it's the brain and my body and relationships that are interacting. It's a system. So that is what we would say the mind is. But the second question is, what is a mind that is flourishing?
Curt Thompson:What does that look like? I can give you the content, the abstractions of, oh, it's the brain and the body and the relational interactions and all the nonverbal cues and all the things that have correlation in my prefrontal cortex. But that's different than saying, well, what does it mean for me to flourish as a human being? And this then gets to other questions that gets close to this word that we call teleology, right? It gets close to purpose. What's my meaning? But not exactly. But it does, we would say that a mind that is flourishing is a mind that is flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable.
Marcus Goodyear:When you say mind, is that a substitute? Is that shorthand for brain or are you thinking of something that's bigger than brain?
Curt Thompson:Yeah, in this world, interpersonal neurobiology, IPNB, interpersonal neurobiology, we would say that the mind is something that is beyond the brain.
Marcus Goodyear:Okay, okay.
Curt Thompson:Because, you know, we ask people like, gosh, if you're, how do you know that you're anxious? Well, I know that I'm anxious because my heart rate is up. My palms are sweaty. Right. So if you get rid of your cardiac system and your palms, like you're not it doesn't really like your brain's not gonna be doing much for you.
Curt Thompson:So I have to have my entire body. But what does it mean when I say I walk into the room and see Marcus and Camille, and I see the kindness and the softness in their smiling faces and the softness in their voices? And why is it that when I encounter that, my heart rate reduces? I become more relaxed? Like what, something's happening between us.
Curt Thompson:That is my mind is reading something and so...
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah. That interpersonal component.
Marcus Goodyear:Yeah.
Curt Thompson:Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear:One of the reasons I like the podcast form so much is because it preserves some portion of the body. I mean, there's a digital representation of vocal cords and then, you know, it's received in somebody's earbuds or through their speakers. So there's this kind of, it's digitally facilitated, but there is some sense of physical body between us.
Curt Thompson:Right.
Marcus Goodyear:You were talking about flourishing and you've also talked a lot about being known. Do you connect the idea of flourishing to the need to being known, to the need to be known?
Curt Thompson:Absolutely. And I would say, you know, on one hand we can again look at the mechanics, like we would look at the train engine and say, oh, here's how it works. When people are deeply known by one another and there's scientific language for how we would go about that, what does it mean for me to feel felt? For example, this is where we get into all kinds of attachment research and so forth. But again, that's different than saying, what is the story behind this?
Curt Thompson:Is it that we are creatures for whom that is such a crucial thing? Like, how did that come to be? For instance, why is it when we read then the text of Genesis chapter two, why does God go out of his way to say it's not good for the man to be alone? That's not a good thing. It's not complete.
Curt Thompson:Why does it have make the comment? Why doesn't he just make like two humans to begin with? And why doesn't he just say, Oh, we're just gonna continue this process? There's commentary. There's something to be said that is not just a commentary about this current state of the human, but it's also a comment that is a harbinger of what's coming.
Curt Thompson:But the person who loves God is known by God. And he, you know, he says this again in Galatians, this notion that if I love God, we might say, you know, he doesn't say the person who loves God knows God. The person who loves God is known by God. And when he's talking about that, he's not just talking about, oh, is a person by whom God knows all the facts. It's one thing for, you know, your third grader comes home from school and you've already gotten a call from the teacher and say, you know, Marcus had a tough day today.
Marcus Goodyear:Yep. Yep.
Curt Thompson:And I'm the dad and I now know that Marcus and I know things I know things about Marcus before Marcus knows that I know things about Marcus. I know the facts and the teacher can download me all the facts, but that is a very different kind of thing than for Marcus to be known by his dad. And for me to say, Marcus, tell me about your day. For us to have the felt experience of being known, like this is not and this is where it's important. Like, I'm gonna be known deeply, not just because I transfer facts to you about my day, but because in that moment of telling you the story, I'm not just giving you information, I'm giving you myself.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Wow. There's so much there, Curt, and it's all just really good. I'm wondering what happens, can you tell us some of the things that happen when in the brain, when we feel known?
Curt Thompson:Well, this gets to some of the mechanics that we like to talk about. If you imagine, we would say that, one of the metaphors that I use when it comes to, oh, what does a mind look like? How does mind operate that's flourishing? We would say, oh, if you imagine an orchestra, right? An orchestra has typically four sections and it has a conductor.
Curt Thompson:And we know that each of those sections need to perform well. They need to be differentiated. But they also then need to be able to listen to the other sections in the orchestra. So I'm playing my part, but I'm listening to another part, and we are talking to each other back and forth. And so that takes a lot of work.
Curt Thompson:That takes a lot of practice for us to do this over and over again. And we as an orchestra don't tend to self organize this very well. We need a conductor. And so we need somebody to help this process along. And in the brain, the place where all of this comes together, the conductor, if you will, is the anatomical location of this, is the middle prefrontal cortex right here in our forehead.
Curt Thompson:It's the location where all this comes together. But in order for that to happen, for the things that I sense and image and feel and think and do with my body, that's a five word shorthand for what the mind does. We sense, we image, we feel, we think, and we do with our bodies. In order for that to happen, I have to go to conductor school, my middle prefrontal cortex, in order for it to develop so that I can bring all these sections of my orchestra, my mind's orchestra, on board to be integrated, as we've got differentiated and linked. I need to have a human relationship that can enable my mind to do this.
Curt Thompson:I will not do this by reading books. I will not do this by just watching YouTube. I will not do this as a self made creature. When we come into the world, newborns come into the world, 100,000,000,000 neurons give or take a few 100,000, and about 20% of those neurons are ready to go and to do what they need to do in order for that newborn to get to infancy, to get to toddlerhood and so forth. The other 80% in order for them to come online require the interaction with another human being.
Curt Thompson:And there is this sense in which, you know, we live in a culture that teaches us to be able to do life on our own. But the story that we believe we live in is one that says it's not good for the man or the woman to live by themselves. And the brain science would tell us this, that when I'm in isolation, not only do I as an individual become more anxious, but I become more anxious because the different parts of my mind that typically are intended to function in concert, orchestrally, they also become more isolated. I become more isolated from you and become more isolated from within myself. Different parts of me are cut off.
Curt Thompson:And the way that I then cope and manage with that is to do all kinds of other things that the Bible would, you know, the Bible would call idolatry, the Bible would call sin, we would call it addiction.
Camille Hall-Ortega:You're speaking to some of it there. You talked about isolation. You said that babies are born with 20% of what they're needing there, but that 80% we're learning over time and that we continue to do that. What happens if that 80% is not, we're not getting that 80%? What are some of the other things other than isolation, both in the brain and what we see for ourselves?
Curt Thompson:Yeah. So we typically talk about humans as being people who emerge into the world, we grow from being newborns into whatever we become, as being people who are either unformed or ill formed. There are those of us who experience the rupture that exists when people don't pay any attention to me. Right? And we all have listeners here who've grown up in homes where certain elements of my orchestra, if you will, that just weren't you know, I grew up in a family where, you know, you weren't allowed really to get angry at your parents.
Curt Thompson:If you did, there was gonna be a price to pay. So the whole notion of being angry, I learned, felt dangerous. It it it now I I didn't have parents who were abusive at all. My I had I had I had you know, I grew up in a loving Christian home, whatever that means. Right?
Curt Thompson:But I I didn't have abusive parents. But I had parents who were, you know, who were anxious and who needed to make sure that they were doing things the right way. And so like, you just didn't cross my dad. You didn't talk about being here. So what does that mean?
Curt Thompson:That means an entire arena of human affect that is true for every single person on the planet that you actually have to be able to experience and name and regulate all the things I had no access to. It doesn't mean that I wasn't feeling things. It means I'm working really hard to keep that section of the orchestra out of the concert hall, and this is problematic. So it's unformed. It's unformed.
Curt Thompson:But we have others who grow up in families where there is everything from, you know, horrible stories of trauma and abuse, where shame is just thick and heavy laden. You know, how many people have I taken care of? Patients of mine who, know, they will say, no, I grew up in a loving Christian home. Which of course means like that's code for like, Well, things were not nearly as good as we wanted, but we just couldn't talk about these kinds of things. I remember a patient of mine who said, I grew up in a loving Christian home.
Curt Thompson:And then I asked the next question, which was, Who was in charge of discipline in your house? Because these are the questions that you ask maybe in a psychiatric evaluation, but maybe not at a cocktail party. Although you could try that. People either want to talk more with you or less with you if you ask them that question. And when you ask, well, who is in charge of discipline in your house?
Curt Thompson:He said, well, it would be my mom because anytime my dad got involved, who was a deacon in the church, violence would break out in the kitchen. Oh. So how is it? How is it that a person says, and this is a person in their forties, well educated, successful, how is it that they tell a story, I grew up in a loving Christian home, and yet the data is otherwise? So even the way we tell stories, we tend to tell them as a way to cope with either our unformed or our ill formed experiences of life in which we're developing all kinds of coping strategies to somehow contain all of my anxiety that comes because I've had shame applied to me.
Curt Thompson:There's been certain ruptures that have never been repaired, big and small ones. And again, this is where the gospel is such an important thing because Jesus is coming and saying, all you who are ill formed, all of you who are unformed, y'all come. Y'all come. And of course, this is tricky because the moment he beckons me, I both long for this. Like, oh my gosh, who calls me?
Curt Thompson:Who calls me? And I might also be wary of it. Right? The woman who's got the bleeding problem that we read about in Mark chapter five, who knows that she has a problem and she comes and she's clear about how what the problem is and how we're gonna solve it. And it's like commando healing.
Curt Thompson:We're gonna get in, get the job done, get out. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody gets seen. It's all until he says, stop. Who touches me? And then it's like things get difficult for her. Because there are other parts of her story that she's not even considering that are really bigger issues in need of healing.
Marcus Goodyear:That's such a great story. I'm glad you brought that up because she's seeking healing and carrying shame as she seeks it. I mean, she's afraid to approach him directly and just, I think comes up behind him and touches his cloak.
Curt Thompson:That's right.
Marcus Goodyear:Which makes me think, first of all, that I love your book, The Soul of Shame tremendously. It touches me on a deeply personal level. But also we're talking about hiding parts of ourselves from ourselves and silencing portions of the orchestra. And I would love to hear you share a little bit about some practical ways that we can create habits, spiritual formation habits perhaps, to help us cope with shame and move beyond shame?
Curt Thompson:Again, you know, we'd like to say, remember that evil is the second smartest force on the planet. And it's far smarter than me. And, even those things that we want to begin to do to live as God has made us to live, evil is not about to go quietly into the night. And I say that to say, our listeners might think, oh my gosh, this is a great question. Like, how can I?
Curt Thompson:I'm listening to this. My individual self is listening to this. And how can I, Curt, solve this problem? And therein is part of the issue itself because the answer is that I don't solve my shame problem. We solve my shame problem.
Curt Thompson:That's the way it has to be done. And so I think the first step that we would, we It's a practical step, but it's an easy It's not complicated, but it's not easy to do. That is, to our listeners, I would say, okay, first of all, how aware are we of the degree to which shame plays a role in our life? And most of us I mean, some of us may be very aware of this, but most of us are unaware of the ubiquity and of the subtlety in which shame operates. And so part of how we respond to that is, first of all, to recognize that this will be a lifelong journey of allowing ourselves to be healed. We begin to experience shame as early as 15 to 18 of age, which means we've been practicing it, first of all, for a very long time.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Wow.
Curt Thompson:And it began long before we have language whereby which I can understand why it is that I'm feeling what I'm feeling. I'm just trying to get through my day coping with this in a number of different ways. So I create all kinds of practices unknowingly that not only help me cope with it, but at the very same time reinforce it. If I feel ashamed when I walk into a room about a certain thing, I'm going to work really hard to make sure that I don't say that certain thing.
Curt Thompson:And the very act of not saying that certain thing reinforces the very shame that I have, making sure that I don't let anybody know about the certain thing. Until someone else comes for me and says, Kurt, tell me about that certain thing. I'm like, oh my gosh, really? Like this is Jesus saying, who touched me? Yeah, not moving, not leaving.
Curt Thompson:And so can you name a person or two people to whom you would be willing to name for them and begin the practice of making a list? Here are the things that I'm ashamed of. And of course we might have, oh yeah, okay, I have my list of like, you know, four things that I'm ashamed of. And then you start to see, oh, each of those four things has like a 100 subsets.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yeah.
Curt Thompson:It's just everywhere. And so this is the other thing that's important. The healing of shame is not when God comes to heal our shame by myself allowing myself to be known by others and by my also being an agent by which you could be known. I'm not doing this just to heal my shame, just for me to feel better. I'm doing this because in the course of that, I have energy that is released for me to create beauty and goodness that I didn't have access to that energy before because I'm burning it all just trying to contain the shame.
Curt Thompson:I've got these three guys that I meet with every Tuesday morning for the last twenty five years, and without these guys, I'm a dead man. Because this is where we come to name all the things, all of our longings, all of our griefs, all of our hopes, all of our joys. We want to be fully known. And we are imperfect at this. But this is a very long winded answer, Marcus, to your question about practical steps.
Camille Hall-Ortega:It's a good one.
Curt Thompson:Who would be the person, who would be the one or two people to whom you would be willing to take the step of revealing your story to, asking them to do the same, assuming that if it's true that where two or more of you are gathered, the spirit is in the room and is going to go to work.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Curt, you're talking about something, vulnerability, at a very deep level. That's a pretty scary thing. And you're mentioning this community component of the necessary community component to vulnerability. How is it that we take those first steps even when we're really afraid? Is there something that we do at a young age that I'm speaking now with my mom hat on, I've got three kids, young kids. Is there something we do at a young age that encourages this vulnerability, especially within community?
Curt Thompson:Well, I think this is, you know, one of the, some of the beautiful news about interpersonal neurobiology, one of the things that we learn, you know, how many times have we heard someone say, well, dad, you know, my dad's too old. He's too old to change. And the good news about what the brain science is telling us is that it's never too old to change. I mean, figure, look, why does God God calls Abraham when the dude is 75. He calls Moses when he's 80.
Curt Thompson:Like, he's just like, I don't know, maybe he's waiting for guys that are just like they got nothing to do. They're kind of close to retirement, then now we're going to get help. These are people that we're going Sarah. Right? He's asking people he's asking people who are vulnerable.
Curt Thompson:Like you think like, oh, he chose Abraham. Is it possible that he chose Abraham specifically because he's married to Sarah? Someone who's barren, someone in this way. It is never too late. And so it doesn't matter like how many times have we said parents, they hear me talk about rupture and repair and they're like, Oh my gosh, they suddenly become aware what they've done to screw up their kids.
Curt Thompson:And like, look, the only way you don't screw up your kid is just don't have them. That's the only way you don't Speaking screw up your as a parent of two adult children, they would confirm that, right? Yeah. That's the only way that Kirk could have not screwed up his kids. And this notion though, that if I am gonna be curious with my children from the get go, I'm gonna be asking them to talk with me about what they feel.
Curt Thompson:Now, not because whatever they feel is gonna be the rule of law, I want them to learn how to regulate what they feel, and I want them to allow me to be an outside brain that can help them learn how to do this. But I want them to become familiar with all of their mind and have the experience of being known by me in order for them to have had the practice of, oh, this is what it means to be fully human. And we say like, gosh, how do we do that? Yes. Marcus, you have a question.
Camille Hall-Ortega:That's what we're going to ask. How do we do that?
Marcus Goodyear:That's right. So how do you find those people? I mean, I hear you saying that healing requires community, being known requires community, both to be known and to be that community to others. And yet I also know there are communities out there that are not going to be healthy for us. How do we find the right kinds of community?
Curt Thompson:So the first thing I want to affirm is that God, more than we might know, God knows how hard this is. Paul Borgman wrote a book called Genesis, the story we haven't heard in which he asks this question. And the first time I considered it, it just kind of like knocked me back off my feet. He said, who knows how many people God asked to go with him to Canaan before in Abraham he finally found someone who said yes? Oh, yeah.
Curt Thompson:We don't know because we don't have any stories there. But we do know that when Jesus comes on the scene, he asks all kinds of people who say, no, I got to go bury my dad. No, I got to do this. No, I got to do that. People who started to follow him and they don't.
Curt Thompson:You know, the whole book of John, you get from chapter 5 to chapter 10, and it's just a great departure of people. And then he says to his disciples, will you too also leave me? So the first thing to know is that God knows that this is hard to do, and we would love to have someone, for Marcus and Camille, to ask Curt this question and say, just call 1-800-GET-THE-FRIEND
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yes.
Curt Thompson:Right?
Camille Hall-Ortega:Yes.
Curt Thompson:You find a friend? And the reality is that this takes courage and it may take asking several people. Our work at the Center for Being Known, we have resources there. We are creating space in this little nonprofit for people to become part of a confessional community.
Curt Thompson:You can do that online. We do that. We have intensives and we have training programs in our practice here in Northern Virginia. So there are ways that you can, through those organizations, you can find them. But I will also tell you, you can go to, you know, we have this little podcast called the Being Known podcast. One of the seasons was on what does it mean to be in a confessional community? But the courage that you're talking about is really the thing that is the most difficult to muster. And so I would say, if you're listening to this and you're like, gosh, I want to be in a community like that. Say, where can I find one? The question is, no, how am I going to create one? The question is not how am going to find one?
Marcus Goodyear:The thing I love is this idea that we're set free from our shame. We're brought out of hiding specifically to flourish, specifically to be creative, which reminds me of a talk we heard at Laity Lodge. I didn't hear it in person, but we've heard it in our archives. It's Charlie Peacock, who is part of an artistic community, probably an artistic confessional community, he might even say. And he's talking about creativity. And we would love to play this for you. It's from 2006 at Laity Lodge, Charlie Peacock, and get your your take on it.
Charlie Peacock:This creational capacity of the human being is very much about what it means to express our human integrity. We are creative people made in the image of God, made to be creative. We are relational people made in the image of God, made for relationship with God and others. And it's there that sin has done its damage. God's word, his earth and his sky, what he has spoken into being is no longer full of care and full of provision, is it?
Charlie Peacock:God's will and his way are no longer the controlling story. So what is the controlling story? It's things like self interest, self importance, fear and distrust. Man is definitely moving in the opposite direction of God and integrity because man says, I will dominate my creation. So he moves from dominion, which is a good thing to domination.
Charlie Peacock:He moves from stewardship, which is a good thing, to ownership. He moves from covenant relationship to self rule. I want to be a person of integrity. But this is really what's at the root of human integrity, to understand that you are made to be a person who stewards creation and you're made to be a person who stewards relation as well. You see, you're furthering God's dreams for the world.
Charlie Peacock:You become an active participant in it. And it's the same way with relationship. Your relationship, which starts with God, you learn your identity through that. That pours through you out to others.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Curt, what do you think?
Curt Thompson:Well, I think the first thing I would say is what I feel. I feel I know Charlie and I feel comforted by hearing his voice. I feel the fullness of the picture that is coming into my mind when he talks about what he's talking about. Beauty and goodness and what is true in the world. We know those things by what we sense and image and feel long before we know them by what we think in brain time.
Curt Thompson:And so when I hear Charlie describing these things, again, reminds me of the very nature of how the Hebrew Bible was written. Right? You read the first page and you're like, oh my gosh, like, you've got some brilliant writers who are doing this. Right? Because they're not they're like great screenwriters.
Curt Thompson:They're not explaining every jot and tittle. They're showing you a god who, before anything else, is an artist. And then he turns around and says, let's make humans to be like we are. Wow. But he expects us to come to the page ready to do our work.
Curt Thompson:He's not just spoon feeding us because he wants us to do the work of becoming, being full participants in our becoming. And you know, one of the things that we would say about, you know, evil finds beauty to be anathema. It can't tolerate that. And so when it comes to use of shame, way, you know, we'd like to say, look, shame in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's just part of the created order.
Curt Thompson:It's a signal about something going in a way that is disintegrating. It's a signal. Our problem is not that we have it. Our problem is how we respond to it. There are people who behave in certain ways for which shame should be the absolutely the response that they have.
Curt Thompson:But the point of how evil wields it, it's not just to make us feel bad, but when we experience it, we do things with violence to cope with the world, whether it's violence toward myself, violence toward my sisters or brothers. It is violating shame. Is a violating neuroaffective experience. But the thing that it really does is that it keeps us from creating. Keeps us from imagining beauty.
Curt Thompson:I now have to cope with it and that is the energy I have to burn to contain and is energy, cope with that is energy I do not have available to create, co create with those with whom I have different beauty and goodness in the world. It is evil's way of keeping beauty from being made, from us being who we were supposed to be.
Marcus Goodyear:Yes.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Wow. And that's what I love this framing. It's, of course, this clip is reminiscent of what you've been talking about, which is this framing of how did God intend things to be? What purpose did He create us for? And so to think about, to create and to be in relationship with others. And this notion that we should look at the world in that way to remind ourselves what we're missing. What could bring us closer with God? What could bring us in closer, better, more loving relationships? It's just good.
Marcus Goodyear:And Camille, what the world is missing because we're part of this orchestra. Right? There there we are the orchestra, like you were saying earlier, but we're part of an orchestra. And if we don't play our part, it will not be heard.
Curt Thompson:Right. I think the other thing that's crucial for us to remember is that it's easy for us to think about what God wants, what God's vision is for the world, what God's vision is for us to be doing. Think it is equally important for us to recognize that God is not just wanting us to do something, God is trying to turn us into certain kinds of people. God is wanting us to become. And so I'm not just creating, my mission is not just to create beauty, my mission is to become an artifact of beauty in the world.
Curt Thompson:And this is, that in of itself is very, it's ugh, right? The whole notion, you know, women and men, they have our own particular ways of being uncomfortable with this because of how the whole notion is misused and so forth and so on. And yet, will we be able to tolerate the king looking at us in the new heaven and new earth and turning to our friends, looking at us, pointing at us and saying, he, she, is the most beautiful thing I'm looking at at this moment? Like, it makes me nervous. Because of, you know, because the way shame plays a role for us.
Curt Thompson:But this is the thing, if I feel, if I have a sense that my beauty coming into the world, I walk out of my front door every day, are we able to imagine without arrogance, without shame, that my beauty is going to make the difference in the lives of the people whom I interact today? Not my beauty compared to somebody else's, but the very light that I am walking in means I am an agent of that light, that I am becoming a greater icon of attraction to other people. That will also perhaps be unlike, you know, unwittingly like, you know, off putting to others who are having trouble with this, for whom beauty is just way too much. Intimacy is way too much. Yeah.
Curt Thompson:And evil doesn't want any of that happening. And so we'll often use shame as a way to keep it from happening. And this is how we understand that the healing of shame doesn't just make us feel better. It leads to my becoming different. And so therefore being able to do different in the world.
Camille Hall-Ortega:Kurt, this is all so, so, so good. I am just grateful for your time because we gotten such good answers and food for thought things to think about. We spoke a little bit about your book, The Soul of Shame, and I believe your newest book is The Deepest Place. Where can people connect with you and find your other resources and books?
Curt Thompson:Oh, that's very kind. Thanks for asking. So they can I think the first thing I would say is we have a podcast? I say we, my cohost Pepper Sweeney and I and our producer Amy Cella have a podcast called the Being Known Podcast. You can find it on all your streaming platforms.
Curt Thompson:Is that the way you say it? Streaming platform? I like it. I'm parodying things people tell me to say.
Marcus Goodyear:It's a great podcast.
Curt Thompson:Yeah. And there are lots of things that we talk, including the books. Talk about the books there among other things. Our most recent offering has been on rupture and repair.
Curt Thompson:You can find my website, curtthompsonmd.com. For those who are curious about these confessional communities, the Center for Being Known, it's thecbk.org, are some ways to find out about that. And you can see me on Facebook and Instagram as well.
Marcus Goodyear:Thank you so much for being with us here today.
Curt Thompson:We're grateful. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much.
Marcus Goodyear:The Echoes Podcast is written and produced by Camille Hall-Ortega, Rob Stennett, and me, Marcus Goodyear. It's edited by Rob Stennett and Kim Stone. Our executive producers are Patton Dodd and David Rogers. Our original music is by Johnny Rogers. Special thank you today to our guest, Doctor Curt Thompson.
Marcus Goodyear:Curt, do you subscribe to Echoes Magazine?
Curt Thompson:I do, and I receive every issue and look forward to it when I get it.
Marcus Goodyear:Thank you so much. We're so glad you do.
Curt Thompson:I just want to say it is just a deep reminder of the many times I've had the privilege of being at Lady Lodge and all the good work that the foundation is doing. I'm just really grateful to have been with you. Thanks so much.
Marcus Goodyear:Thank you. Thank you for coming out. Thank you for reading. Whether you, listener, are able to come out to the lodge or not, you can subscribe to Echoes Magazine. It's free.
Marcus Goodyear:It's at echosmagazine.org. You'll receive a beautiful print magazine each quarter for no cost. You can find a link in our show notes. The Echoes Podcast and Echoes Magazine are both productions brought to you by the H.E.Butt Foundation. You can learn about our vision and mission at hebfdn.org.