On October 17, 2019, I sat in on a Tapestry facilitator on-boarding session and then, after a short break and change of venue, had my first recorded interview with Hannah and Sam. After a brief check-in about my engagement with teams, I focused the conversation primarily on the religious and spiritual connections in their work.
This page contains a lightly edited recording and annotated transcript from our conversation as well as some notes of my observations immediately after the gathering upon re-listening.
Annotated Transcript
Kyle: So I have been just out on one outing so far with … they both go by [Z], right? Yeah, with [Zoe’s] team. So I met them at a coffee shop. And it was a good was a good outing, you know? They had talked about it, I think, a little bit on their previous outing: Here’s who this guy is. Here’s vaguely what he wants to, you know, sort of talk about and they they all seemed pretty you know, sort of open to that.
And yeah, so I was there when they arrived and you know we had some to chit chat and drink negotiations and you know all that stuff. Yeah, then just kind of really informally talked about. “You know, I’m a researcher. I’m interested in media. I’m working with [Tapestry] and and we’re interested in this question of like what is a what is a [Tapestry] team, you know? So much of what happens in this organization happens, you know on outings with teams and you know among other things [Sam] and [Hannah] don’t usually get to see that.”
This habit definitely got easier as we went along in the project. It has become a natural part of our research-practice reflection space.
Oh, actually I thought about this earlier. I’m gonna sometimes say, I’m going to say Tapestry, because that’s the pseudonym in my report. So I’ll phrase it like that. If you think of it fine, if you don’t, fine. It’s not hard to just cut things out and work around things. So don’t make yourself crazy trying to say Tapestry instead of [Tapestry], but I’m going to try to remind myself to say Tapestry and if you think of it cool.
But you know like the like that you know that these teams are important and people want to know about what’s going on and and that’s part of how that part of how Tapestry can grow. And so, you know, they’re open, you know open to that I think, you know around the room. I sort of got the impression that you know figuring out what to do is always a question. So this is something something we can do. And so what we what we made plans to do next was to do, since they meet in that neighborhood usually, was to start the process of thinking about what’s the story of our team by doing a little tour, you know? So we would go, this is a pretty common media education move, you go and you take a camera and you walk around and you know, somebody holds phone and and you sort of record the tour and talk about you know, “Oh, so this is this is the place where we went that, you know, the park that we went and played in that time and such and such happened.”
And they I think thought that was a good a good sort of next step. And yeah, in the meantime, we just sort of hung out, you know. I had said ahead of time, you know, like I don’t have a big agenda other than just to tell you about this and make some plans. And yeah, we hung out. [Zoe] really likes making phone videos.
Hannah [off mic]: Yeah, I bet.
Kyle: Yeah, and so we talked about … Is that is that like a problem in their team, do you get a sense?
Hannah: No, no. She’s had various periods of YouTube obsession.
Kyle: Got it. Well she’s definitely in Tik-Tok mode now, and that, I mean, one of the challenges, as you guys have rightly recognized in this work for me, is coming into an existing set of relationships without much of a relationship and relating. And so that was an opportunity for me to be intensely interested, and know a little bit, and you know kind of a little sort of cautious mini-bond around around that. So so, you know, that was a nice nice surprise from where I sit, in terms of actually getting to know [Zoe] a little bit and her sort of life world.
So we kind of ended it there, and I think we knew that there was not going to be a meeting the next week because I think they didn’t have a mentor quorum or something. [Lucy’s] been like responsive to emails and whatnot. But it’s been, you know, it’s just slow. You know, and that’s good. You know, like I was … my advisor was here the other day in town for a wedding and so we had a nice meeting and she said like, “It sounds like it should be slow. Like, that’s the nature of the work. And it being slow is data for you.” So like don’t think of it as holding you back from doing what you need to do. Think of it as like giving you rich information about what it’s like to be on the team, all of that.” Which seemed wise and I think right in this case. And so so that’s that’s sort of where we’re at.
[Cut here for confidentiality purposes.]
Sam: So I’m interested. I’m kind of interested in the … how do I want to say this? Your introduction to [Zoe’s] team and your reception. If I don’t know how much you mentioned [Hannah] and myself. So I’m just kind of interested to see if what kind of influence we have with these teams that work so independently. So what I’m trying to get at is … We know those mentors. So was there a trust for with you know, was there already an in-built trust or a trust afforded you because [Sam] and [Hannah] said you’re safe or kosher or not. I mean, I just I wondered how if there was if you sensed any that we had any influence on their participation.
This strikes me as a really important point. Sam seems to be wondering about the relative impact of the amount of time a team has been together, and a part of Tapestry, compared to the frequency of contact with the co-directors and organization, and how recently that contact took place. I believe this question suggests that Tapestry operates under the assumption that trust, a sense of group identity, and perhaps even shared capacity for action are connected both to team longevity and to “relational intensity.” I think that the specifics of how these growth scaffolds operate and interrelate are a matter of ongoing curiosity and learning for the organization.
Sam: Yeah, I would think so. I wouldn’t have expected you … But it just dawned on me that, it’s an exercise … It’d be interesting to see if we didn’t have a long, if we were doing an introduction to a team that was shorter term, whether they feel same relationship. Or maybe they but maybe they know who we are because they’ve been closer to us more frequently or more recently.
[Cut here a brief conversation about individual mentors, which included me sharing that Yesenia didn’t seem to recognize me from the mentor dinner.]
Kyle: I will say it was pretty clear that, you know, they … they certainly have a … They are aware that they have a story related to the fact that that they lost a mentor and felt, I thought, pretty comfortable and pretty natural talking about that. I felt like it was a well integrated part of their group identity.
Hannah: And I think that this is going to be a really interesting time for you to be sitting with them and we’ll do everything we can to help make sure that happens in the next couple months because [Yesenia] is talking seriously about moving to New York in the spring. So capturing that team’s story while she’s still the original member I think will be really poignant.
Kyle: So I’ll keep working with [Lucy] to keep meeting with them. And maybe we’ll plan on just kind of independently keeping you guys posted after when I go out on visits.
Sam: No, but if we were I hope you would say something. But so, I mean one of the I mean one of the two longer-term teams that would actually be able to interview with you is a sibling set. Would that be of interest to your research to see how siblings view the experience different? Or would that make any difference?
Sam: They won’t talk about each other. They don’t acknowledge each other.
This is one of those times when it becomes clear just how well Sam and Hannah know the participants and some of their relational dynamics.
Kyle: That’s true, your as you were talking. I did think, “Oh, well, forms-wise that would be a be a little easier.”
[Cut a brief discussion about connecting with Zoe’s caregiver.]
Kyle: So that’s a little bit of just the update. I just have like a whole list of questions and probably won’t have time for all of them. Don’t don’t hesitate about cutting me off for when you need to go. Let me pull up my question list here.
Kyle: So if we got out out of here, so if you were walking out by 4, is that is that good? A little earlier?
Hannah: Well, we probably need to be walking out about 3:45.
Kyle: Well, let’s start and you know. I am very happy, by the way, to come out sometime and you know not make you guys have to be with me and you know in coffee shops and whatnot. So this doesn’t need to be the, in fact I hope won’t be, the last sort of formal interview.
So the thing that is like the most actively on my mind right now, and is probably like the set of questions we could get through, is like this the story of Tapestry. You know, my advisor really help me reframe, you know, not not every inch of this project has to be documenting the time you spend with young people. You’ve been embedded in this organization and that has value certainly for you and hopefully for them, you know, already. And so I’ve been you know actively thinking a lot just about the sort of interesting hybrid nature of [Tapestry]. The sort of kind of religious, kind of not, this sort of … faith-adjacent is this language that I’ve been using.
I’m looking for a narrative turning point here, in other words.
Hannah: [Laughs]
Sam: Wow. [pause] Well it’s sort of a complicated question. Because it’s, I mean, it was a journey, right? And in that journey that began with the the thought that we would plant something that looked traditionally churched only to come to the conclusion that we weren’t going to plant anything that looked traditionally churched, only to discover that we planted a church that doesn’t look like church.
Kyle: Can you remember the marks at which those things emerged, or those thoughts?
Hannah: It maybe have been even later than that. It may have been more like a couple a couple years in.
Sam: And an understanding they weren’t going to fund any building or any of it. So we would have to raise money for a building, raise money for everything. And we had come to him and said we don’t think we can collect a traditional congregation because most of our mentors are people of no faith or a nominal faith.
To put a finer point on it: I think “being a decentralized community” might mean using media to show the whole community the life and work of the parts, even more than Tapestry already does.
Which isn’t part of the spiritual nature of what we were doing. But it’s when we I think started to really take a closer look at what it means to be a decentralized community. And how can we embrace that and live into that, which is still a conversation we’re having and I think you’ll help us discover a lot of things about that as well.
Sam: Maybe there was an interim step as well where we thought that as opposed to starting something … As we went around to churches, we realized that there were there was a lot of space in most churches. I mean they were they were … worshiping communities were very small. So that maybe we would be affiliated with congregations and so we would try to recruit teams out of congregations hoping that we could thread Tapestry into into existing congregations. But then they had no interest in that. So, you know, then I think we moved on to “Maybe we just give up church completely.” Which then was a challenge because how do you act as a priest in a organization, how do you act priestly in an organization that doesn’t want a priest? But now the narrative is I think we’ve planted churches all over the place. It’s just …
Kyle: Churches of three to four?
Sam: I think every team is its own church. So I think the team that you’re interviewing gathers every week, they share stories every week, they tell their own scriptures, whatever’s important in their lives, and then they end up breaking bread. So, you know, they usually break have meal together and create community and take care of each other. And in some ways the mentors act as the … I was going to say in some way the mentors act as priests. I mean that’s the priesthood of all believers. But in some way that youth does as well. It’s sort of a full participation of …
Kyle: The youth is, the youth is sort of the convener or the person at the center of the gathering or whatever.
Sam: And it’s and, you know, so the challenge is … So my question about the, you know, did they have do they feel connected to a larger [Tapestry]? Because you know, I think we we started with the idea that if you had a hub and then spokes with points along the periphery and those points would come back to the hub … We’ve given up calling it back to the hub and saying how does the hub continue to support what’s at the periphery. And understand that they … are the center. Each one of those 24 hubs is its own church and doing the important work of church with themselves. And how do we continue to support them? How do we feed them?
Kyle: So so you two as directors, and the All Tapestry events, and other bits of infrastructure—am I hearing you right that you’re you’re you’re now trying to ask the question: How can those things serve / support / structure what happens around around the city? Is that right?
Hannah: Yeah, and I think what you’re doing is also honoring that.
Sam: Right.
This exchange clarified for me not just the co-directors practical theology of faith-adjacent relational practice (tradition from within?), but also how they viewed the role of the mode of storytelling I would be facilitating with teams (co-authoring sacred texts?).
Hannah: I think it’s a really important piece of it. So we had a big conversation, that I think we talked about with you, in the spring when we went on a retreat and really talked about … instead of being an organization where we are the leaders and we’re saying this is what is important—you know, this is our scripture and these are our traditions and this is what we do and how you do it—how do we learn from what is actually happening organically in these communities, these small churches that have formed? And how do we learn from that? So kind of reversing that script of what you think a religious community normally is.
Kyle: Reversing the script because …?
Hannah: Because we’re not telling them what should be important to them.
Sam: It’s It’s not a set canon.
Hannah: Yeah.
Sam: It’s a, it’s allowing them to write a canon. And that’s why I think what you’re doing is so important. You’re allowing them to name the cannon that they’re writing as opposed to [Tapestry] giving the script. If you create the periphery or the space and letting them fill it the way they need to fill it is what’s important.
Kyle: So so so there’s a spiritual and/or religious—I’m always interested in your thoughts on the distinctions—component. In that there is gathering. In the structure of the gathering, the the activities that are done there having some parallels to a Christian gathering, for instance. What other ways do you feel like? What other ways do you feel like these are churches or this is a church or this is what … you know, the spiritual part of that, the religious part of that, your identities as priests. Talk to me more about that.
Sam: You want me to answer?
Hannah: I’m just formulating thoughts. [Pause.] We haven’t done a lot of, I mean, we haven’t. We sort of talk about this but we haven’t ever like systematically answered that question, which would be good thing to do.
Sam: Sort of.
Hannah: We have?
Kyle: It could be sort of a good thing or you’ve sort of done it?
Sam: I mean, I think we’ve started … we’ve done pieces of it, I think, don’t you? I think the training is, I mean, it sets a tone for … we’re very intentional about the language we use. We apologize because many of our … many of the mentors will say “I’m an atheist,” or “I’m a Hindu” and “I want to have that respected.” But we, you know, we apologize to say “We’re going to use a religious term here.” You know, you’re building sacred space.
This is an interesting moment of role convergence for me: The pastor in me here’s Sam preaching, pretty unambiguously. The producer hears “good tape.” And both of these signals put the researcher on alert that this is important stuff.
So in some ways we’re … we’ve done … you know, so we set them up, and I think what you’re referencing is we haven’t, in some ways, we haven’t completed the circle. When they come back out, how do we close that circle, in some way: with liturgy are an altar or—that we share, not necessarily with them. You know, if it’s if it’s the hub / spoke, I’m I don’t know. It’s that’s too circular. If it’s a figure eight. It’s, you know, we believe, and what somebody has reflected to us, what, you know, that center that we bring is holding that presence of God throughout [Tapestry].
I would want to say that they deal with it in private moments of, like, spiritual direction but not in moments of public liturgy. (As it were.)
And that’s what we don’t do very well. We don’t take the demonic and that comes back to us through the facilitators and then hold that to the light, so it’s dealt with at the altar. And that’s the missing link. But I think we set it up pretty well for a religious experience.
Hannah: Yeah, I mean honestly probably where I got stuck in the question is my own traditional … just the use the word church. Because in five years my concept of what church is has completely shifted.
Sam: Yeah.
Hannah: This weekend there was a guy installing a new dish disposal at my house. And my landlord said, “Oh, Lenny goes to church. He’s really into it. He’s really into being a Christian.” So I was asking Lenny about his church and it’s Something Something Missionary Church. He said, “We have people out in 37 countries and you know all over the world.” But he said “If you’re not doing that, then you’re just having a …” What did he say? “You’re just having a party with your friends” or something like that. And I was like, “Yeah, I agree with that.”
So I think, unintentionally, we also reverse that equation of … I mean in ideal form, church should be where you go to get refueled to do that work. You know, it’s just a pit stop, you’re getting charged up to go back out there into the mission field. My experience of being a priest in a traditional parish was that that was always a struggle. People thought that those two hours on Sunday morning was, was it. And so one of our original goals was was reversing that equation. If you start with the work, then what happens, and what what coalesces around that and gathers around that?
So yeah, it doesn’t look a lot like what I knew to be church for the first 35 years of my life. But is it spiritual and is it, you know, gathered around God? Absolutely. And it, you know, someone pointed it out to us too, someone who came to observe. And driving him to the airport, he said, “Well, you know, we say this every day in morning prayer: ‘Wherever two or three are gathered, you know, Jesus said I’ll be in the midst of you.’ That’s exactly what you’re doing. You literally have the three people and, you know, can you see that child as Christ in the center?”
Turning point.
Hannah: Yeah.
Kyle: That moment and that conversation was an ‘ah-ha’?
Sam: That’s when we stopped trying to build a traditional church, trying to pull people back to the hub, and just let it sort of started decentralizing. So the trick becomes, how do you feed people when they’re at a distance? And so that spiritual center needs to it … it can’t sit in itself. It has to continue to emanate out all the time.
Hannah: Yeah.
A little bit of loving pushback at their deficit self-assessment.
Kyle: So I’m going off my script here, but I think that’s interesting. So so there’s a sense—and I mean, I think I heard you saying this before in the point about the way the trauma gets passed around—you know that there’s this real sense of, the way the energy is moving around in the organization is … it’s dynamic and and sort of integral to everything that’s happening. I just heard you say, “How do we how do we put energy back in?” You know, I think? Like how do we how do we feed people? I mean, my sense is that people seem fed a little bit. Like, how do you how do think they’re getting fed? What are what are you doing? What are they doing for each other?
Hannah: I think the the key piece is that they’re not ever isolated, not ever alone in it. I mean, and we say that to people, you know: From minute one, you’re going to be part of a team. You’re never going to be a superhero in this. You’re not going to feel the whole weight of that, of that trauma on your shoulders. I had experienced that personally as a mentor very strongly. And so I didn’t want that for our volunteers.
So I think they’re fed by each other in a lot of ways, just knowing that they’re supporting each other. We’ve had very few instances of problematic team dynamics. I think people really do—it’ll be interesting to see what you hear—but I think they really feel that team work, and that they are a network and support for each other.
The food-as-communion dimension certainly came forward in Team Z’s story.
We literally feed them a lot. We talk about food so much in this work, all the time. We’ve talked about food with almost every team, partly because of the connection to trauma and youth not being able to regulate. If they’ve had periods of not having enough food, if things are tight at home, they’ll come to these All Tapestry events and just eat themselves silly, until they’re sick sometimes. But it’s where people have always gathered, right, is around a meal? So teams just end up doing that together a lot. We end up doing that. I mean, we order so much pizza for trainings, for the community events, for you know taking mentors to dinner, to just sit and talk to each other and meet people on other teams and know that they’re part of much bigger team. So usually the literal feeding and the spiritual feeding are connected, as I so often are.
Sam: Yeah, I think we also, we also remind them constantly … First of all, we constantly thank them and express gratitude on behalf of whomever for their work. But I think we also remind them that—this would be interesting to know, how it affects their … how important it is—but we constantly invite them to know they’re the gift. That they possess everything. That they’re the gift. That just being themselves is a gift to the universe and give to themselves and a gift to their team and a gift to the child.
And and it’s interesting how many of them begin wanting to fix, because we’re a culture of fixing, and how many then have this transformation when some—I mean, there’s no definite point whether it’s year one or two or what—but at some point, so many mentors will say to us “We get the gift of presence. Just being present to somebody just listening to somebody. But just being present, just being physically present, and allowing me to just be me allows them just to be them and to discover them.”
And, I mean, I can’t think of anything more that Jesus was about than trying to encourage people to see the gift that is them and finding their own identity in God. And these mentors, I mean, if that—to me that’s priestly work. And that’s what these mentors do: they allow … but but they become more and more the priests, right? They discover more and more about who they are and their own gift to to their to their life. And they, you know, I assume they themselves had probably not been told often that they’re gifts to the world. That some of them have their own stories. And … yeah, that’s huge. I think that’s big for people to know, to learn that presence is, that they carry a presence that is powerful and transformative and that can cast out demons and can cure sickness.
Hannah: No. And actually when you say that … I think that our volunteers are pretty self-selecting. We’ve known that for a long time. And it’s … fairly early on we learned that we needed to not think about the ones that didn’t follow all the way through as failures on our part but that that was a gift to us, because we didn’t want to end up with volunteers who didn’t want to pursue this. And we’ve always thought that that might be mainly about the trauma piece. And it probably is, I mean, that’s a key factor. But it occurs to me that those might also be people that don’t want to be on a team. This model attracts a lot of people because they want the support, but there’s also a vulnerability of being on a team. We were talking about at lunch, like, that was something she recognized that they they weren’t living into that fully at the beginning and that was important. So I think our teams that have really been together for a while, they’ve learned to name their own struggles and what they’re running up against in their own souls in doing work.
There are little stock phrases Sam and Hannah use regularly (here she is self-conscious about “Tapestry is a team sport”), and I think these show points where they’ve converged on a sort of canonical translation of a faith concept in a secular way.
And, yeah, there’s a lot of vulnerability in that, and not everyone wants that. But it’s part of, I think just by the model being a team, “Tapestry is a team sport,” I say all the time. You know that that’s part of it and that you’re going to have to rub shoulders with other people basically all the time.
[Brief exchange about timing of our leave-taking from this interview.]
Sam: I just wanted to say the whole narrative around what his church has been really fascinating for us.
Kyle: Yeah, and I hope you don’t I hope you don’t hear any kind of normative judgment for me.
Sam: No, not at all. We need to begin somewhere, so.
[Brief exchange while Hannah takes picture.]
Sam: We had that conversation in [retreat location], we were on retreat. And [name], he’s a good friend, he said, “You know, you all have, you all are using the wrong narrative. And if you just reframe frame what you’re reframe what you’re doing …
He was talking about how Karen Armstrong and others have been looking at those traits that connect the world’s major traditions. I forget what Karen uses, maybe compassion, you know, in all religious traditions you find compassion. And he was saying, “But what you at Tapestry are finding is that actually it’s not a religious trait. It’s a human trait. That you have atheists who are showing compassion every week. And, you know, you have a spectrum have a spectrum that shows that across the spectrum people, there are people who are motivated to show compassion, and that’s something that’s universal.
There’s a clear connection here between my concept of faith-adjacency and “deconversion” scholar James Nagle’s concept of “religiousness.”
So he was that he was saying, “You’re … by looking at … by not excluding those who don’t claim religion, you’re actually embracing them in a in a way that religions have been exclusive. You’ve been embracing and allowing them to find ways to be religious.“
It’s really, it’s really fascinating. It’s really sent … I forgot that “two or three are gathered” was pivotal. That was a pivotal moment. And that conversation in [retreat location], which is still young. We’ve only been processing it for six months or so. You know, it’s a real, there’s some theological shifts that have to happen to me.
Important caveat for my whole project really.
And it may be our mentors would hate all of this language. They would hate to be saying they’re a priest, that there’s a, you know, the they’re religious, that is something … And yet, you know, with the language, I think I can’t think of anybody we’ve ever met who’s self-selected that would not acknowledge that there was something profound and engaging and transformative happening … once you get over the logistics of how do you get three people together.
Kyle: Yeah, I mean I was so struck in your characterization of the lives and styles and ages [chuckles] of the of the mentors. I mean how many churches are in a situation where, where they’re saying, “Yeah, most of people you would be working with are twenty-somethings who, you know …” So clearly there’s there’s a there’s a shift there that it seems like [is] allowing you to tap into something that those mentors who might think derisively of you aren’t tapping into, it seems.
Sam: And I think your work is inviting Tapestry then to name, for those those individual entities to name, that experience. Right? So as [Hannah] was saying, we’re not collecting and writing a canon that they have to ascribe our follow. Nor do we want to name their experience. That would be that would be equally as destructive or, I don’t want to say wrong, I think it’s destructive. Because it’s not our experience. We can only create the space, and they’re going to have the experience they’re having.
First significant nod to connection between “you are the gift” organizational ethos and my self-understanding of participatory research ethics here.
And then you are going to, it seems to me, Kyle, that you then perform the, give them the gift, or allow them to have a … you give them a place … you gift them with space to begin to name and to foment that experience in a safe place. And to me, how, I mean—and I understand why, we all three of us at his table understand why—but for 2,000 years, we all are professionals who have been told we’re to name the experience for others. The liturgy is to do this for you. And if you’re a good person, you come to this service. And the reality is, we rarely allow, we rarely allow those in the congregation to begin to name their own experience.
Kyle: Yeah, you talked about, you talked about compassion. You know, to the extent that you have a sense for what’s happening out there. Are there other words, other practices, other ways of naming your sense of like what is the, what is the activity that … you know, not playing Uno, but like the the sort of broader activity of what happens on outings in the organization.
Sam: Hope, presence, recreation, and communion. I think we actually live into our guiding principles. They’re pretty broad. I mean, as principles, they’re very broad.
Kyle: Do you do have much … after the training … After the training, what opportunities do the mentors have to be reminded of those principles?
Hannah: We need to leave in five minutes.
Sam: I hope the facilitators are, I mean, they have a very pastoral role as well. Pastors to the pastors, priests to the priests, being able to, you know, is … The mentors go into, as I like to say, go into the trenches every week. They go into the, they go into the tough neighborhoods, into tough house—houses that are really struggling, places … lives that are really struggling, into shadow places. And they need, they need pastoring. And so the facilitators I, we hope, are the ones that remind them every week, and instill in the mentors that sense of hope. And be present to the mentors, and have some communion with those mentors, and have some kind of recreative or recreation, re-creative conversation. I don’t know if I can say that.
This turn-taking pass feels important.
So I think having pastors to pastors, who are in the trenches. I mean, I just admire our mentors. Every week, they just go to really hard places in this city, that most of the city won’t go. And they do incredible work. They’re not advocating to change. They’re going in there and making change.
Hannah: And I think the primary activities that we ask people to do are to be fully present, which is in a lot of ways countercultural. It’s not something people are used to doing in their work or even their relationships, and to be listening as their primary vehicle of being present. And I think that’s … it’s just a real paradigm shift, for youth and for them, to be there just because. And it’s not their job, and to really be investing their whole self in it.
Kyle: [inaudible question]
Hannah: Yeah, probably, because she needs the… [end of recording]
After assembling the recording into a single audio file and doing my best to clean up the sound, I immediately listened to the audio and made the following notes:
- We get a song sense of credibility, trust, and memory being intentionally brokered in this organization.
- It was very interesting how keen they were for me to get independent impressions of what’s happening in Tapestry, of how folks feel. They had a lot of curiosity and desire to learn about participants’ sense of affiliation with Tapestry, which is really cool.
- The question about potential interesting in work with siblings is a good representation of how I frame the work for others.
- Obviously, all the “how is this church?” stuff is rich. The gathering-telling-eating formula. The pause after the second question, especially. The part about canon and participants’ power to choose meaning.
- I was really glad to hear their thoughts on the trainings “religious” convening power, and especially the explicit discussion of the multivalent symbol of the labyrinth. The point about sacred space and how it shapes meetings and other aspects of the experience seems very important.
- The point about stories of shadow and darkness was powerful.
- I’m noticing that when your interviewees are preachers, there are moments where they slip into that powerful voice. I think those moments signal a great deal of reflection and emphasis.
- The “demonic” thing is throwback to earlier discussion of trauma.
- Hannah’s story about the church with the missionaries was interesting, and hearing her affirm that she agrees with the mentality of the importance of being out there doing work and not just gathering for a social outing.
- They identified two turning point moments in Tapestry’s development: the “two or three are gathered” observation, and the conversation on retreat (“They’re making space for people to practice religion who wouldn’t otherwise.”). [Upon subsequent listens, I would add the conversation with the local leader who strongly influences funding.
- Hannah’s past “isolating” mentoring experience is part of Tapestry’s “origin story” for sure.
- The food part important. That section also agrees well with my “meeting other mentors” observations from the picnic.
- An interesting turn of phrase: Gratitude offered “on behalf of whomever.”
- Sam’s note about mentors transitioning from “fixing” to “presence” stance is helpful, and has a good moment connecting their work to Jesus’s example.
- When talking about spirituality and in other places, I once again notice a companionable silence around the table.
- “Space” is a gift in the form of a container for letting others name their experience.
- I need to think more about engaging with the deficit language I think I’m hearing in the “going to trenches/dark places.” [Upon subsequent listening, I would want to add here a wondering about whether a certain amount of acknowledging the challenges the youth face is inevitable and necessary for a trauma-informed system.]
And upon spending many hours listening to, reflecting on, and annotating this interview, I’m struck by the radio producer’s guidance that the first time someone tells you a story, it will often be their best take. In some sense, I think the whole dissertation is encapsulated in this conversation.