The Federal Government is Broken. Our Communities Don't Have to Be.

Elizabeth Oldfield helps us think about loving each other well, together.

I’ve received so many messages from local friends over the past few days asking a version of “what can I do for Minneapolis?”

I’m asking myself, too.

One thing comes to mind that gives me a sense of peace: I am certain that if ICE begins a large operation in my community, my church will find a way to be of service. It has a long history of partnering with other organizations, working for justice, and finding a way to put love in action. This gives me peace because it reminds me that I do not have to have every answer. I have things to offer the world. My offering is most potent when it is one piece of a much larger puzzle. So right now, perhaps my most important work is continuing to lean into building my church and its ministries and partnerships.

Sarah, Maggie, Alise, and I have been intensely discussing what Pantsuit Politics can offer right now. We shared our immediate reactions to Minneapolis and the killing of Renee Good last Friday. More information continues to come out, and we’d like to give you a more considered reaction this Friday. We want to read and analyze the work of local journalists, especially, who are in the process of putting pieces together: DHS policies and memos, video footage from every conceivable angle, the response of local law enforcement, and the ongoing ICE operation.

Today, we are offering something that speaks both to a much bigger picture and to the daily practices we try to cultivate. Sarah met Elizabeth Oldfield on a Common Ground Pilgrimages trip and found her infectious in the best way. She couldn’t wait to have Elizabeth on the show, so we recorded an episode with her right before we took our winter break.

I want to tell you something from behind the scenes: Minutes before we recorded this conversation, I learned that my friend Thomas, a 37-year-old father of six, had died in the hospital. Thomas’s family is a bright light in my church congregation, and I had just started getting to know Thomas better this year. His death was a shock and tragedy. I logged on to record with Sarah and Elizabeth. It was the first time I had met Elizabeth, and I knew I wasn’t myself. I shared what had happened and that I was feeling it. Elizabeth asked me, a stranger to her, “How can I love you well in this moment?”

Sometimes I feel a little weird when our episodes aren’t about headline news. I worry that listeners will feel disappointed or frustrated. I worry about missing people. I think what I want to share with you is that I feel this episode is not about headline news, but it is aligned with it. What’s working in Minneapolis right now is the kind of community that Elizabeth describes in Fully Alive. What’s broken right now in our country results from the disconnection Elizabeth describes.

I hope sharing this episode feels like loving you well, and I hope we can continue to ask that question here together in the days and weeks ahead.

-Beth

P.S. Our listener, Erin, heard us share that Elizabeth would be joining us for an episode and reached out. Erin happens to work with Elizabeth’s U.S. publisher and offered to gift 5 copies of Elizabeth’s book, Fully Alive, to listeners. Comment on this post to be entered to win. For this opportunity, comments are open to both free and premium subscribers.

Topics Discussed

• Tending to the soul in turbulent times

• Outside of Politics: How to Form a Commune

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Save the Date! Pantsuit Politics Live Show in Minneapolis: August 29, 2026

Elizabeth Oldfield

• Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times (Elizabeth Oldfield’s book)

• The Sacred (Podcast hosted by Elizabeth Oldfield)

• More Fully Alive (Substack by Elizabeth Oldfield)

• Living in a Commune: What I’ve Learned (The New York Times)

• Your Social Muscles Are Wasting Away. Here Is How to Retrain Them. (The New York Times)

Books & Authors Referenced

• Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (Dacher Keltner)

• Monks in the Casino (Derek Thompson)

• I and Thou (Martin Buber)

Organizations & Initiatives

• Common Ground Pilgrimages (Founded by Vanessa Zoltan)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:11] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. We here at Pantsuit Politics are still feeling very caught up with Minnesota, Venezuela, Iran. We’re absorbing the news that the Department of Justice is threatening Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell with criminal charges. That is all on our minds today.

Beth [00:00:35] And we are thinking about what we can do best in this moment because we’re not reporters. We have the best conversations when we’re able to rely on the work of lots of other people, when we see what reporters and journalists have unearthed, and then we can bring our own processing and analysis to it. And we’re still just learning a lot about what happened to Renee Good, about the kind of training that ICE officers are receiving, about policies and procedures. There’s just a lot still coming out. The information environment is very fluid and evolving. And so we have given you our initial take in Friday’s episode from last week. We’re going to come back with a more considered take this Friday, but we really felt like the best thing we could do right now is give this a few days so that when we talk about it again, we are speaking with the most robust set of facts in front of us that we can.

Sarah [00:01:28] Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is our current media environment, our current political environment that centers emotions and attention. And that’s relevant, but I really want to find a way to ground myself in facts and truth and in broader, concrete, realities. And a person that I have been looking to a lot to think through this type of new way of being is Liz Oldfield. I met Elizabeth Oldfield this fall on a Common Ground Pilgrimage trip to England. She was the chaplain on the trip I led about Pride and Prejudice. And I fell for her heart immediately, as I think most pilgrims on the trip did. And I wanted to get to know her better, I wanted understand her work. Elizabeth is the author of Fully Alive, and the host of The Sacred Podcast. So I immediately got Fully Alive on audiobook and started listening to it. And I found that framework I had been looking for. Like, just this idea of I want to acknowledge the problems of the world. I want to acknowledge my anxiety and grief and sadness about everything that’s going on in the world, and I want to cling to something a little more concrete. I want to find practices, not just reactions, that help me move forward in our world and the world as we inhibit it, not as the way I wish it was. And so, we invited Elizabeth here to talk with us about that. The New Year felt like a great moment in which to do that. And so we had a really, really wonderful conversation with Elizabeth and we wanted to share it with you today. It’s about hope and faith and being fully alive with each other, no matter what’s going on in the world or being fully live with each in this world as it currently is full of tragedy, and oppression and pain. And I think you’re going to find this conversation restorative and a beacon of light in a tough moment. And that’s why we decided to still share it, even though there’s a lot of hard things going on and calling for our attention right now.

Beth [00:04:15] I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people locally asking, what can I do for Minneapolis? And I shared that question. It’s something I’m thinking about a lot. Something that I know and take comfort in is that if there were an ICE operation in my community, like the operation unfolding in Minneapolis right now, I know that my church would be organized and responsive and find a way to be of service to our community. I know it. And would be partnered with lots of other organizations. We are doing all the things that you can do to be connected to the community and to have a philosophy of care right now. And until, unless we have that moment of this particular type of challenge in our community, I think one of the best things I can do is continue to be part of building that and connecting myself even more deeply into that place that I know will respond to whatever comes and respond in a way that’s consistent with my values. And that’s something that I really take from Elizabeth’s work. Whatever kind of connection it is to a church, to a nonprofit organization, to a friend group, wherever you plug in, I think she’s really onto something that being plugged in somewhere makes all of this more weatherable because you really do feel like you’re together and you’re not the only decision maker and the weight of the world is not on your shoulders alone. And Elizabeth has taken that very, very far in her life. And so in Outside of Politics, you’re going to want to stick around to hear about how she basically started a commune with her family. She’s going to tell us what it’s like to live with other adults in the same house, trying to share practices and values together. You are definitely not going to want to miss that part of the conversation.

Sarah [00:06:12] And we have a lovely opportunity; our listener Erin heard on Tuesday show that we were having Elizabeth on today and Erin works for Elizabeth’s US Publisher and reached out and wants to give away five copies of Elizabeth’s book to listeners of the show. So if you want a chance to win a copy of the book, head to our Substack post for this episode and leave a comment. We’ll select five people randomly for those comments. Comments will be open to all subscribers free and paid for these episodes so everyone has a fair chance to win. To find the post, go to Pantsuitpoliticsshow.com and it will at the top of the page. And without further ado, Elizabeth Oldfield. Welcome to Pantsuit Politics. I am so happy you are here. Working with you on the Common Ground Pilgrimage was one of my biggest gifts of 2025.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:07:11] Thank you so much. I felt the same and I am delighted to be here.

Sarah [00:07:14] We’re so happy to have you. So when I got back from the pilgrimage, I read your book, Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. And I think that everyone should read it in the whole world, perhaps twice, because here’s what I think you did so brilliantly. I think when you live today in the year of our Lord, 2026, it is tempting to think, particularly because of our modern technologies, that we are facing challenges never faced before. And perhaps in some ways and under some rubrics that is true, but I think what you do so beautifully in your book is say maybe, but practices available to us are universal to time and place and challenge. And I just think that is very much needed. There’s just a temptation to reinvent the wheel and you’re like, hey, we don’t have to do that.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:08:22] People have lived through hard times before shock.

Sarah [00:08:27] Yeah. So where did you get the concept of, okay, let me go to some of these Christian practices and put them through the filter of our modern times? I love the way you formulate the seven deadly sins through modern challenges. I’m obsessed with it. I’m thinking about doing it through civic virtues and vices. I think it’s so good.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:08:46] Oh, nice.

Sarah [00:08:47] Because you even get into that. You do some of that, too. So how did you come to this formulation?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:08:56] Oh, I needed it myself. I think everyone has their temptations. Before we even get into the sins, I feel like we all have our favorite hard feelings. Some people go to sadness. They’re like sad and low, depressed. And some people go to rage and anger. And there’s people like me who go to fear.

Sarah [00:09:22] I’m all alone. I’m the only one who’s ever felt this or been challenged by this.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:09:28] Interesting. Okay, we should talk more about that. For a long time, I didn’t know this about myself. I’m not a worried person. I am a positive person. That’s fine. All the while creeping existential dread was just tiptoeing up on me. And then I had kids and the state of the world began to get heavier and heavier and various things happened in my life. And in about 2019 I had this period of being like, wow, I feel so deeply unsteadied by how turbulent the world is. This story I birthed, that we’re basically on an upward march of progress, is like cracking and bending and warping underneath our feet. And that background of peace and prosperity and progress being the norm, couldn’t hold me anymore. It felt like I couldn’t my soul. And I had some background in the church. Became a Christian, then I was an atheist, and then I was on my way back into being a Christian, having completely failed at being an atheist despite my best efforts.

Sarah [00:10:29] Same. I was a terrible atheist. I lasted 48 hours. It was bad.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:10:33] Yeah, somewhat reluctantly, on my way back into the church, had this incredible realization that the Christian tradition is an apocalyptic tradition. That in its stories and its rituals and its practices and in its central figure, it has a huge amount to say about “end of the world” like ends of worlds, that it is a set of letters to a small group of communities struggling (this is the New Testament) with the most remarkable challenges with the fall of Jerusalem, with persecution, with the future falling apart, and there’s something in there about finding steadiness, even as everything around you is unsteady. And I have this like, oh my goodness, this what I need. I need to figure out how the natural instability of the world, which when we let it, or at least when I let it, just triggers me into anxiety, panic, hoarding, tribalism, anger, all these... I’m really interested in the collective psychology of this. Like the formation of living with at least the news cycle telling us that everything is terrible and getting worse. What that does to our souls, I was like, I can feel my soul shrinking. I can fill it pulling back into myself. I can film myself finding other people more unbearable. Like I’m losing hope in the future. This is not the kind of person I want to be. And so this question that actually came from Vanessa Zoltan, who founded Common Ground Pilgrimages, who is an atheist, very steeped in her Jewish practices, she provoked me with this question, which was, if it is the end of the world, and we can’t control that, we can’t know that, that’s like basically above our pay grade. Loads of people have thought that down the centuries. But what kind of people are needed and how do we become them? And that unlocked for me this understanding of what sin might be, of what these virtues might be, of the kind of person I wanted to be becoming. And it was such a relief because it was like, okay, now I know what I can be working on and what I want to orient myself towards. And it’s really helped.

Beth [00:12:48] It is not shocking to me that Sarah loved the seven deadly sins running through your book because for a lot of 2025 Sarah was like, what if we bring back hell? Do you think we just need to bring back a smidgen of hell to make people feel like some stakes...

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:13:01] Sarah, have you gone all the way around and back to where you started?

Sarah [00:13:06] Just a sprinkle, guys, just the idea to people.

Beth [00:13:11] And so I really was interested in you coming out of the gate with like I’m going to embrace the idea of sin, but I’m going to embrace it with a with a particular formulation. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:13:28] Yeah, this was a big surprise to me. My faith is very important to me, but I spend most of my life and I’m most interested in speaking into spaces where that is not everyone’s background. That’s much more common in the UK, right? At least until recently, the default, particularly among people with a certain level of education, where I live in London, was that Christianity was something of the past. That it wasn’t relevant or interesting. In fact, it was possibly harmful. And that’s my normal. Those are the kind of spaces that I have operated in. So when this concept of sin as this very psychologically realistic and also somehow liberatory frame became clearer and clearer to me, I was like, oh no, I can’t write about that. How can I possibly use that very loaded three-letter word? But I couldn’t get away from it because my definition of fully aliveness, the kind of life I want to live to be growing into is one that is relational. Is in right relationship with my own soul, my own deep self, if you can’t handle the language of soul, like not the cravey, grabby, scared, childlike bit-- although she needs a lot of compassion and care-- but my deep self which I think actually knows how we flourish around meaning and purpose and belonging. And be in right relationship with my soul, in right relationship, in intimate, vulnerable, trusting relationships of mutual care and interdependence with other people. Which frankly helps with almost all the problems of the world, and in this like intimate loving relationship with divine love.

[00:15:01] But I’m primarily writing for people who maybe don’t know what they think about that God bit because that’s a big word- put it in square brackets through the book. And I think even if you’re not sure what you think about the God bit, this idea that relationality and interconnection is aliveness makes sense across a lot of traditions, a lot of psychological findings, but we don’t know how to live it. And so then the question was, why not? What’s stopping us? Why is it so hard to live in interdependence? Why is so hard to live in relationship? And for me, at least part of the answer is sin, is disconnection, is fracture. And Francis Buffen calls it the human propensity to F things up. Luther on Augustine used this phrase, “Humanity turned in on itself.” That sin is this instinct in us, not outward towards connection relationship, but inward, like an ingrowing toenail. And that sense of the contrast between those two postures, those two modes, just felt very true to my lived experience and what I was seeing in the world. And interestingly, even people who have no particular religious frame, when I speak to them about it, they’re like, oh yeah, that actually makes quite a lot of sense.

Sarah [00:16:16] And I think this is where the Venn diagram of your work and our work, particularly your work on The Sacred, starts to really blossom for me. And it’s like somebody’s sort of turning the color up. I mean, the hell thing for me is I can tell you sort of the journey. The first part I heard somebody describe vices, and I was like, right, gambling, pornography, greed. Like these were vices that we were taught, for most of humanity, to avoid that they were rotten for you. And there became a part of small L liberalism that was like, oh no, we don’t need vices and virtue anymore, everybody can just pursue their own pleasure. And you can’t really have virtues we’re striving for, which I think people are very, very hungry right now, if you’re not going to have vices you’re avoiding. You kind of have to have the two sides. And I was listening to a conversation where people were talking about greed and like the market is the only virtue. Like that became the neoliberal, that progress, the way we get to progress and the way keep moving forward is with just the market will be our ideal. And I think that we have reached the end of the road with that. I think we have arguably built some structures or torn them down, whatever metaphor you choose, that this pursuit of our own pleasure, because of that inwardness, because that can become toxic, this pursuit of what makes me comfortable, this pursuit of what is easy, this pursuit of what never forces me to think about how my actions affect other people. I mean, it’s like the fullest embodiment of the tragedy of the commons.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:18:15] Yeah. And I think almost all the great wisdom traditions have striven to find language for the multiplicity of the human heart. We want to be like humans are fundamentally good, and then trauma or bad relationships or whatever gets in trouble, oh, humans are fundamentally evil and we’re just selfish and they need constraining. Most of us know this. In my tradition, we call it the flesh and the spirit. There’s Freudian language for this. There’s the shadow in the Jungian tradition that almost anyone paying attention to their inner world knows there are the things that we crave in the short term. You could use the language of dopamine. There’s the things that satisfy shallow hungers in us. And then there are things that are deep longings that help us be fully human. The thread underneath the book is formation, because I believe humans are really malleable. We’re always becoming, we’re always changing. And we can be becoming people that are so driven by those kind of craving dopamine fleshly desires, which they’re not always terrible things, but sometimes we’re using them in ways that are avoiding honesty and connection, avoiding other people, and avoiding the courage to live a fully relational life. Or we can allow ourselves being oriented towards these lives that I think most of us know deep down we want lives that are courageous and honest and have integrity and also are full of joy. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure. I am an extremely powerful advocate for pleasure. I just think I don’t want to be using short-term pleasures as an avoidance of actual life.

Beth [00:20:06] I am concerned about access to experiences of actual life for a generation of people for whom technology is so-- prevalent doesn’t even feel like the right word. It is what life is. I am thinking constantly about a piece that Derek Thompson wrote last year called Monks in the Casino, where he describes young men who really do live their fullest lives online. And in that piece, this came to me as you were talking about this deep longing we have for each other. He says that the trouble with these young men isn’t really loneliness, it’s the absence of loneliness. There is no desire to have in-the-flesh experiences with other people. And I just wonder how you think about that, given that we’re in a year many people will tell us is going to be defined by artificial intelligence? Like, where do we sink into realness?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:21:12] I’ve written various pieces on my Substack about my extremely high conflict around the use of AI. AI sober is the phrase I used for a long time. And then I found it creeping in in various pragmatic, hopefully limited ways. But my fundamental fear is the way these technologies are forming us. My theory of formation, and it’s not mine, it’s the classic one, is that basically whatever we pay attention to is essentially who we will become. The mirror that we stare into will shape us. She says having watched back to back Nashville episodes all week in order to manage my Christmas stress levels. And I think there are like centuries of deep theological reflection on this and there is powerful neurobiological research about neuroplasticity that backs that up. So I have a friend called Sarah Stein and Brian, who talks about social atrophy and her argument, and I think it’s a powerful one, is that neuroscience shows that basically social interaction, particularly in our bodies, is the hardest work that our brain does. And it’s what kind of defined us as a species. Purely within an evolutionary frame, even on this call, our ability to read each other’s faces, to read each other’s voice inflection, to pick up cues, to keep a conversation flowing, it’s the hardest work a human brain can do.

[00:22:53] When we stop doing it, our brains literally shrink. You can see it on brain scans and it’s one of the reasons during COVID that dementia accelerated for the old people that were left alone. It’s like muscle wastage when we are not together, particularly in our bodies. And the scary thing about it is it becomes a very vicious cycle because once you’ve had that wastage, being with other people feels such hard work that you find it deeply unpleasant and then you withdraw further. AI is not requiring that level of mental or emotional, or I would argue, spiritual energy, because it is constantly adapting to what you need. It’s doing the work for you, right? It is this, at least at the moment, perfect servant, this obsequious praise machine. And the way that is going to form our brains, the way it’s going to make the very real difficulties of being together with human beings, because human beings are really annoying even at their best, the pathway looks clear to me that our ability to tolerate the hard work required to be together can only go down because of our uses of AI, and that will accelerate all of these things that we are struggling with. I think the fracturing of relationships is behind almost every major global issue that we’re dealing with. And so a big part of me is like, unplug it, burn it down. And then I’m like, oh, but it’s so convenient, which is the sinful nature of my soul.

Sarah [00:24:28] Okay, so here’s where I’m at though. Here’s where I’m bumping up against things. So I read your book and I was like I’m going to do everything she told me to do because I love it. I love a ritual. I love a practice. I will do all of these for the new year. I’m so excited. And I believe in that. I believe in controlling what we can control. And also because of the global nature of our issues, which we share in the UK and the US- rise of populism, rise of hateful rhetoric, anti-Semitism, violence, you name it, we’re all doing, I always think of you guys as sort of like our older sibling a little bit further along the road. And I hear this, I think people get it. I don’t really think, at least not in our audience, there’s not like a big argument about what’s going on out there. I think there’s even a desire to do what we can do as individuals. But I’m also hearing an increase even down to like politicians talking about, yeah, but we want more. We’re tired of fighting with each other. We don’t want all this hateful rhetoric. We need purpose driven in our politics, but there’s also not a great history of societies trying to guide people towards what it means to be a good life as a group. We screw that up sometimes very, very, badly. But I feel that hunger for, yeah, but what are we going to do together? How can we fix this together and not just on our own? And I’m wondering, especially with your work on The Sacred and your conversations there, do you have some ideas?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:26:11] So on The Sacred I’m talking to people from radically different tribes and perspectives and trying to listen with curiosity and empathy and model. I mean, it’s very grounded, again, in the Christian nonviolent tradition from the New Testament, but it’s a set of practices and postures that people have used in all kinds of settings and places, which is just frankly a radical commitment to the full humanity of every person, no matter how deeply we disagree with them, no matter, how threatened they make us feel, no matter angry they make us feel. And you see it in all the great social movements that have ever actually been effective at calling us up a higher, at speaking to the best of us, to the still small voice in us that does, I think, or can orient us to the good. And so that dogged sometimes naive feeling reminder that I’m constantly reminding myself of because it does not come naturally. Feels like an important thing that we are seeing more and more appetite for, right? People are bored in their filter bubbles. They’re aware that they’re being manipulated into rage and anxiety. They are looking for quieter spaces. But you and I, we’re all working on podcasts, knowing how to make something that is a countervailing force within an information environment that is largely forming us in such unhealthy ways is something that I think is a complicated integrity question. And then I’m increasingly a fundamentalist communitarian. I don’t believe in the individual. I think all of this attempt to solve this on our own, there’s some value in it, but largely unless we are together, nothing changes. Like we are too weak to not be formed by these collective forces.

[00:27:49] So for me that meant we’ve basically bought a house with another family. We live with three other adults with our kids. We’re very committed to being part of a local congregation, even though it drives me nuts and institutions fail us and disappoint us and frustrate us. And then increasingly I’m like what does it mean to be people of like local civic loyalty who show up, who know our neighbors? In our house we have this project we’re trying to map our street. It’s a really long street. We want to know the name of everyone in every house and we want to know what they need and it’s a long, slow process because people think we’re weirdos from the commune and that means they don’t trust us yet. Yeah, weirdos from the commune. We have to keep explaining we’re not a polyamorous commune actually. We are a Christian commune. No judgment. So those kind of just like small, non-sexy, non-original. It’s not going to sell some fancy new wellness product. It’s the things that humans have always done. It is basically what can you do to move towards other people rather than away from each other. And that’s hard work and. It’s so rewarding and so much more interesting than the opposite.

Beth [00:29:13] You started to answer this, I think, with the map of your street, but I just keep thinking about at what scale can we be together? I think that the despair that can creep in when you pay attention to politics is a matter of scale.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:29:28] Yeah.

Beth [00:29:29] And when you feel outmatched by something like technology, by international governments, by war, I keep trying to think through if I want to be more connected with the other people, at what scale is that really possible?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:29:46] Yeah, I think of myself as sort of downwardly mobile because like a lot of us, I was an idealistic student. My first jobs were at the BBC. I was like, right, I can change culture to be a more healthy, humane culture, more open to death. If I can just get my hands on the levers of media, right? And I was, like, oh, that’s not an easy thing to do. So then I went around to think tank, I was going to change the policy landscape. I’m going to be in systems change. I’m going to be part of these people trying to fix the wicked problems of the world. And now I live in a commune. The sense of like, actually, the humility for humans to go, “What is in our hands and what can we do?” It’s largely local and relational as most things are. My question with that is always, am I a coward? Like, if we all stop working on the global scale stuff, then we cede the ground to the sorts of people who have no interest in anything other than profit and power. So that worries me about that. But basically, yes, human local scale, ideally in our bodies as much as humanly possible is where life actually is and the formation that keeps us fully human, I think.

Sarah [00:30:58] I mean, if we’re doing that locally, the beauty of a democratic system and grassroots organization is that you should empower leaders who would rise and are reflective and responsive to the local communities that form them. That’s the idea. I know that we’ve gotten farther away from it. I think right now we’re about to face midterms in the United States. I can’t help but see anyone running for Congress right now as a deeply hopeful act because it is a cynical institution that has ceded much of its power. And so if you’re still signing up to go, I want to try. God, I’m happy for you. I’m like, good for you, because it’s a deeply cynical place. So if people, especially challengers are like, no, I think I can add some humanity. I think can show up and bring something important. And again, in theory, if you’re doing that, if you are responsive to a local community participating in institutions that are big, I just think we’ve lost that structure. We want people to save us instead of empowering people to do the work that is reflective of our values.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:32:18] I do quite a lot of coaching now with people working in parliament and working in government and working on social change. I see a lot in the deep heart of those people. The metaphor that I keep coming back to is this. There was an episode of the West Wing where there’s a nuclear power leak, one of my sacred texts is like the ethical conundrum is the president sent these people into the nuclear reactor to close the leak and they’ve got hazmat suits on, but the suits will only last them that long. And the trade-off between the impact on the lives of the people in the nuclear reactor and the reactor outside. And so I keep coming back to this thing of like how do we build people better suits? Like for people going into the nuclear reactors to try and turn off the taps, like people running for Senate, how did they have the spiritual core strength, the steadiness of soul, the rooted communities of accountability and encouragement that are going to notice the formation that happens in the nuclear reactor of these systems and help-- that’s making me cry-- have their back in that deep way of like you are going to be changed by this. Let’s make sure you’re changing in the right direction. How do you take so seriously the poisonous will pump into your veins if you’re not careful that you stay yourself for long enough to do some good. And I think that’s the only way we see the system working. It’s when people rise and they rise held. And they rise defended, not in a like where do I get the money from? But where do I get actual real human community from that will go with me even when I’m the busiest person in the world?

Sarah [00:34:03] Well, because I think to your formulation and to your, as we say in the South, you did a lot of reminding me of my raising when I was reading your book. We say, remind me of your raising like...

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:34:18] Not like raisins as in dried grapes.

Sarah [00:34:20] No, not raisin. Like, raising with a G, but drop the G. Like raisin, like how you were raised.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:34:28] Is the raisin some metaphor of the South?

Sarah [00:34:31] No. Could be. No, just raisin.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:34:35] Remind me of my raisin.

Sarah [00:34:37] Which is back to the myth what you were talking about, like what you are born into, that we would get to this place, culturally, where we’d be done. Where we’d have articulated the best values of a society, democratic values of tolerance and acceptance, and then we’d all could just live our individual lives because we’d have reached the destination. When that was never going to be the case because institutions and cultures and societies are built by humans who are deeply flawed, and power corrupts and greed is ever present. And wrath is always there to tempt us and gluttony and lust. And so, I was in this battle with myself of like there’s nothing we can do about it because our culture now is so built on these market principles and this greed and this cruelty coming from the very top. And so we’re powerless in the face of it. And I thought, no, that’s always been true. Again, it’s not a new problem. This is what happens in human societies, even human societies built on democratic principles, even human society’s where we have made an enormous amount of progress. And just this reminding of like, no, this is the battle we have to fight because it’s the battles we fight as individuals. So, of course, it’s going to be the battle we fight in community, both locally and nationally and globally.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:36:17] Yeah. And I think that realization really helped me because a part of me felt entitled. It felt entitled to a safe, prosperous world in which I didn’t have to demonstrate moral courage or personal restraint. Pixar animation called WALL-E, and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but it’s like the world is covered in rubbish...

Sarah [00:36:37] I think about it every day. Every day those people in their little floating machines. Every day.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:36:44] Yeah. That is the end point of humans allowed to pursue our craving short-term desires. And it’s horrifying. And everyone who sees it knows it’s terrifying. And yet every day we keep making these choices as if that’s what we really want. And when I say we, I mean I. That said, as you were talking about the thing that-- this is going to sound super pious, but it’s like Jesus came under a cruel and rapacious and tyrannical empire. The early church was figuring out how to love each other and share what they had and show up for their neighbors, badly because they were humans, but doing it with this luminous commitment that there is such a thing as the good, there is a such a thing as love, there is just such a thing of justice, there is the such a truth. And the human call has always been, how do we reorient and reorient and reoriented and reorient towards that, despite all the forces trying to distract us from that or tell us that that’s naive and irrelevant and impossible. And it might actually be harder now because we haven’t been trained for it. We’re all like muscle atrophied, but I’m much more interested in that. I’m more interested when I die will I have just capitulated to the warily vision of what a human is and be extremely comfortable and have gathered a load of consumer crap for great kitchen island and very smooth skin? Or will I have become someone who in theory could lay down their life for their friends? Because that’s no greater love, right? That’s the epitome that even now, I think. I spoke to this psychologist called Dacher Keltner who wrote a book called Awe, which is amazing. I said, “What makes people feel Awe?” And he said, “It’s not what you think. Nature is not the number one thing. The thing that makes people feel awe most reliably are moments of moral beauty.” And I said, “What is a moment of moral beauty. I don’t understand the phrase.” And he says, “Basically, no greater love than this, is someone that would lay down their lives for their friends. When you see someone sacrifice themselves for someone else, humans feel awe.” We still know. We just need the structures to help us remember because we forget.

Beth [00:39:07] So as people are thinking about the structures that help us remember this year, what practices do you recommend? Short of moving into a commune, which we will talk about in a second because I’m sure as people have heard that word, their brains have been like, hello, follow-up questions, ladies and gentlemen. Short of that, like if you’re just kind of beginning to think about scaffolding, that’s the word that most resonated to me in your book, talking about how this can be a daily decision. You really need to just surrender to some practices, just decide this is what I’m doing and then keep showing up for it, whether you feel like it or not. What kinds of practices would you recommend people be thinking about?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:39:53] I really find this idea that I am like a wayward plant that needs trellis. Very helpful. Like I can be formed in a manner of different directions. My attention can spin and the market wants my attention. So what is going to help anchor me in the vision of the good and the vision of the human, and in my case, like the love of God. What do I need? And so none of it is new or sexy or original. As it turns out, there are centuries of people coming to the same conclusions again and again, which is that you commit to some sacred text or a sacred text and you read it regularly, right? I spent some time in the evangelical church that had like real emphasis on quiet time, and then I went far away from that. And now I’m in my second naivety and like, oh, turns out when I read the Bible regularly my ability to know what I think is important holds up. And Sarah and I have worked with groups of people for whom that’s not the sacred text. But I think reading with rigor and commitment and in community, some stories that ground you in the kind of world you want and the kind human you want to be becoming, it’s really important. I think collective ritual, whether that’s in a congregation or wherever else you can find it-- I don’t actually know where you find it except for a congregation, which is another reason I’m reluctantly back in church. But I think anywhere where you are using your bodies with people, where you were singing, choirs, kind of get to it a little bit, like acts of collective service, have some of the ingredients of it, congregational time.

[00:41:26] And then in our community, we’ve figured out this rule of life, which is just basically what are the things that we want our lives to be defined by and how do we make them come first in the schedule and everything else come afterwards. So we pray together. We have a practice every other Monday we have an open table dinner. And almost every week I’m like, I’m too tired. I don’t want to cook for 16 people. I really don’t want people turning up at my house, but it’s immovable, we do it. And so I don’t have to decide. And I have never regretted it. I’ve never regretted choosing to live our values in that way. And we have disciplines of celebration. That’s key. For me, the only way to sustain a life that’s even slightly and very hypocritically morally serious is lots and lots of joy. Like we have to celebrate together. That’s why all the religious traditions have fasts and feasts. It’s why we have times of singing and dancing and silliness and rejoicing because otherwise we just get hard work and numbed out leisure is the market alternative for that and I’m not interested. I don’t actually find watching Netflix back-to-back Nashville episodes-- she says to her own soul-- that joyful.

Sarah [00:42:37] I love discipline of celebration. The words together feel so right to me. I’m also obligated to tell you the show runner from Nashville is from my hometown of Paducah, Kentucky. Legally, in fact, obligated, to tell you that. And, listen, there is a place for-- we’ve been having a debate inside Pantsuit Politics about art and the value of art that challenges you versus entertainment. I probably would put Nashville in entertainment, not art, but that’s okay. I think that just those structures and the routine, and like you said, like we just-- I think about this podcast. I think about Beth always saying her experience on a dairy farm trained her for a podcast because you just got to do it. You got to do it and milk the cows. And sometimes when I don’t feel like doing it, it’s still is life-giving. And having the conversation and that’s what I tell my kids about church. I just want to have a time where we think about what it means to be a good person. Because otherwise you can get real busy and you don’t ever think about what. It means to be good person and to contribute and to be in community. And so to have those triggers to say, wait, whether it be in the morning, whether it’d be around the table in the evening, whether it would be once a week or once a month to say, like you said, when I leave this mortal life, what will I have contributed? What will I have done? I really like Scott Gallowa when he’s working on this-- he’s got a new memoir that’s all about a more positive idea of masculinity. And I don’t think it’s limited to men, but this idea of like were you a net taker or a net giver? Like, did you just take or were you in a surplus for society?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:44:25] And I think the thing that’s helped me with this because I’m motivated by pleasure, not by duty, not a strong willpower person. I’m an Enneagram seven, if that means anything to anyone. So I’m not in natural disciplines and structures. I’m not like a productivity person. I’m a not a self-improvement person. That grind it out way that this could be taken does not appeal to me at all. I’m like a life of desiccated, joyless duty because of some imposed vision of what a proper and respectable life looks like, snore, no interest. But a vision of like humans is fully alive, right? And as life, as this remarkable adventure, this kind of Tolkien thing when Sam says to Frodo, like, it’s like in all the good stories, Mr. Frodo. The darkness is real and we want to turn back, but there is good and it’s worth fighting for. There is light and it is worth standing in it as much as we can. And that, I think, headiness to me is more meaningful. That’s what I want. I want meaningfulness and I want connection and I don’t want relationship and I want to intimacy. And in order to do that, I do actually have to say no to some of these shorter term, dopamine-y, trigger-y forms of formation that make me a very convenient consumer and producer in the world. This is ridiculous, the way I have to talk myself into this kind of life. I’m like, what does it mean to be a like rebel to the formation of this world and prepared to be someone who’s like in a sleeper cell for a different kingdom? And then it’s exciting enough for me to go for it.

Sarah [00:46:11] Well, it is. It’s memento mori. I mean, the market tells you you’ll live forever. That’s why they put young people everywhere in every single ad, right? The lie is that you have plenty of time to do it all. Don’t worry. If you buy this product, if you get this skin cream, if you do this, if you go on this vacation, you can have it all. You can have the pursuit of whatever short-term pleasure and the pursuit of that short- term pleasure will just magically create the sort of long-term prioritization and joy and fulfillment that you seek. And it’s a lie. It’s a lie.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:46:44] Yeah, it really is.

Sarah [00:46:46] I can’t thank you enough for this book because I do think that you really get at the lie in a way that-- look, you do such a good job of putting all this together and saying like we’re not going to talk about God yet. Don’t worry. We’re going to put it off to the end. Because I think, look, this is what I tell people when I recommend this book. I’m like, the British don’t have the same evangelical baggage in so many ways that Americans have. That’s the first thing. And I do think you do a really beautiful job of saying, I’m just going to share these structures. There’s no contract here. You don’t to sign on a dotted line. You don’t have to memorize the Nicene Creed before any of this can become relevant or true for you. And this is my journey and I’m going to share this, what I have learned and that you can take or leave any of it that you want. And I think that that, while offensive to the entire right-wing evangelical podcast world, because they actually do want a contract, they’d prefer you sign it in blood, if at all possible. I found completely refreshing as someone who has struggled within that culture over the course of my life. Now I’m Episcopal. So now I’m like fully on the British side of things.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:48:15] So, it was that motivation, because basically, I am like, we are in trouble. Whether it’s uniquely trouble, probably not. But it feels like we’re in trouble, we need wisdom wherever we can find it. And particularly in the UK, it’s like, the Christian understanding of the human and how we flourish and what is good for us is locked in this box that you cannot access until you are baptized in full immersion, right? Like, Alain de Botton’s atheist philosopher, and he says the most annoying thing about Christians is the insistence that you eat everything on the plate. And I’m like how do I liberate some of these incredibly profound ideas and insightful wisdom? And, for me, God is the heart of it, right? I don’t think I’m hiding that. I’m like if you want it at their end, this is the heart of the thing that is what anchors it for me. And if you can’t stomach that or you don’t know what to do with that, this is still wisdom, this is still humans who’ve suffered and struggled and gone through many other ends of the world, have passed this stuff on hand to hand and so much of it is good and beautiful. So thank you for saying that because I do want it to be a kind of book that even if you really are not sure at all what you think about this whole God question could still be of some use.

Sarah [00:49:29] Well, and you clearly live out that wisdom on The Sacred. It’s not like you’re just inviting people who agree with you and take the whole plate.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:49:35] That’s not so boring.

Sarah [00:49:39] And so I really think our audience is going to love both your book and the podcast. And I also know that they have questions about the commune, so we’re going to talk about that up next. When we were on the Common Ground Pilgrimage, when people found out Elizabeth lived in a commune, she finally had to be like, “’Okay, for dinner, if you would like to talk about the commune and have questions about the communes, I will be over here at this booth.” And she did a little workshop on the commune.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:50:12] I did.

Sarah [00:50:13] So tell people about the Commune. Which also you got interviewed in the Times, in an editorial in the Times about this too. Because I was like, it countered your name in my New York Times. I was, like, whoa, wait, I know her.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:50:25] Yeah, I’ve got another piece coming out hopefully following up on that. So, yes, my husband and I and our two kids live in a not massive London family house with three other adults. And my housemate is about to have a baby, so we are expecting.

Sarah [00:50:44] See, now this is the biggest selling point for me personally.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:50:48] Maybe just personally.

Sarah [00:50:49] No, I mean, on the way back from our pilgrimage, I got to put a stranger’s child to sleep on the plane who was crying. And it was the top five most, like, achieving moment of my existence. I wouldn’t stop talking about it. He was like you went to England and all you talk about is the baby on the plane. I’m like because it was the best thing that happened to me in my life.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:51:08] Yeah. So, this is my hope that what happens is we make their first year less relentless. And we get to hold a cute baby and then not have them in our bedroom at night.

Sarah [00:51:19] Yes. The dream.

Beth [00:51:23] Yeah, I hope so. I mean, we’ve talked all the way through, like, this is going to be a moment of reorientation and really there’s no guarantees that it will work for everyone as we go forward. Because the thing about moving into a community is you cannot not be aware of all of the ways it can go wrong and all the horror stories. But I think we moved in with this much less hippie commune, more monastic inspired sense that we wanted to be part of each other’s spiritual formation and we wanted it to be oriented together towards the good and create this collective trellis and collective scaffolding. We live as a household. We share most of our money. We take turns cooking. We share all the chores. We pray together three times a week at 6.45 a.m., which I loathe, but I do, and I know it’s good. And we live a common life. And the cost of it, which are a lot around like convenience and autonomy over my time and not having to deal with people when I’m in a great big mood and hiding my worst self from other people except my spouse, are so far outweighed by this sense of mutual care and mutual covenant and just feels like much closer to how humans have lived and are made to live than all these little hutches where we bear all our burdens alone.

Sarah [00:52:54] But how’d you get there? Because I’m sold. But how did you do it?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:52:59] It was hard. It’s really hard work. So we asked out a bunch of our friends from church, and they all said no. My husband and I basically went around proposing to people, and they thought we were mad. So that didn’t work. And then we eventually met two of our now housemates who had both lived in community houses in their 20s when they were single. And then we spent a year basically dating each other. Praying together, visiting places, and reading books and asking conversations about our childhood traumas and our communication style and how would we do with conflict, and what is our vision and what are our values? And really hard-headed. We had small children and I was like I’m not moving into a house with people unless we trust the bones of them. And once we figured out that we did want to do it, then there were all the structural financial challenges. It was really hard to rent together. It then was really hard to get a joint mortgage. Like none of the systems are set up for it. And we had to hack our way through with this very dogged determination. So now we mentor other people and help other people find their way through. But the absolute foundation stone is finding your people. Because if you have a bunch of people who are equally committed, you can usually hack together a way through the systems. But finding your peoples involves-- you’ve got a platform, you’ll be fine-- being the weirdo at parties to say, “Has anyone ever wanted to live in a community house?” And then eventually you sift out the other weirdos in the room and you find each other.

Beth [00:54:38] I need to ask some logistical questions, if I may.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:54:40] Go for it, Beth.

Beth [00:54:42] There are five adults. And how many children?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:54:46] Currently two. One in embryo, in utero.

Beth [00:54:51] And like how many bedrooms and bathrooms are you talking about?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:54:55] There are five bedrooms. There were four when we bought it. We put a wall back in, which the builder was like, no one ever asks us to do this. So my husband and I share a room. My kids are now early teens and they are a boy and a girl and we finally cracked and gave them a room each, but they shared until they were quite old in order to allow us to have a guest room and a work room, which we no longer have. And then there is a couple in the other room and a single woman in the other room. So we have turned one of the living rooms into a guest space because there is a very strong thing in Benedictine tradition that having space for guests is a holy thing. But our guest space is very crunched right now. It’s like 1,800 square foot house and it’s in a terrace. And then we have one downstairs loo and we just turned the big upstairs bathroom into two bathrooms in order to reduce the traffic. No one has an ensuite.

Sarah [00:55:52] No one has an en suite.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:55:54] Okay. Sarah says in a voice of awe.

Beth [00:56:01] And how do you handle things like laundry? Like what is the banal of living like this like?

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:56:10] So we currently do our laundry as separate families, because as it turns out, the laundry of a family with children is radically different from the laundry of people without, and so it didn’t feel fair. So we mainly use the laundry, then our housemates seem to do one load a week. We take turns cooking, so one adult a day cooks, and then we divide all the other things. So my housemate is the quarter mistress. She really likes knowing what’s in the cupboard. She likes doing the shopping. She like doing the stock take. I have not shopped since we moved in together. We have another housemate who’s very across like the finances and the insurance and the WIFI. It sort of falls into more traditional gender roles, which I’m slightly conflicted about but also fine with. My husband his head of estates, so he leads on DIY. And then I am the gardener. We have a big garden. I am a gardener and I’m also the like forward planner. I’m like, what’s coming down the line? Let’s write an agenda. Let’s make sure we’re keeping on track with this. And we put most of our salaries into a joint account and then all of our costs come out of that joint account. We have a joint mortgage. We don’t have any of our own space except our bedrooms. So it’s the more intense version of doing this. You don’t have to do it in this intense way. I think if we weren’t in London and we could afford it we would have got like a building with a flat with like three apartments and then shared space on the ground floor. But we can’t afford it, so we’ve done this version.

Sarah [00:57:41] Wow! I just think that, to me, because it has to be so purposeful, you’re doing things a lot of families like wish they did, but don’t. I think a lot people would feel less stressed and more fully alive if they were really focused on their finances because they were putting them together with another family or really focused on a five, 10 year plan. I mean, it’s like you have a trigger that you have to be... It’s just purposeful living and you have to do it because you have other people there.

Elizabeth Oldfield [00:58:13] And it has given me skills that I now use in all my other relationships. My marriage is better because of what we’ve learned about intentional conversations and not avoid avoiding conflict and saying what you mean. Because living with other adults requires a lot of emotional intelligence. We piss each other off. Someone’s using the kitchen when we want to use it. Someone’s forgotten to tidy up. Someone’s sawed off a branch of my precious wisteria without asking. Like there are semi-regular, minor moments of friction. And I think in a marriage, you sort of either just nitpick at each other or you ignore it and blow up at each other. Or they’re all manner of other dysfunctional approaches. But in a community, you have to find the structures that allow you to name those things and to navigate them and to understand each other’s tolerances, and to the question that I asked before the show, to learn to love each other well. And that has made my friendships better. I’m more intentional on my friendships. I say what I mean, I don’t pretend I’m not upset when I’m upset. I apologize quicker. This relational hygiene that you have to have in a commune, or intentional community, a micro-monastery, then is just like basic relational skills as it turns out.

Sarah [00:59:28] Okay, this is a debate I had this weekend, and I’m so glad you’ve said all this because now I’m going to pull you into it. I was having a conversation about sibling relationships through the lens of like adult sibling relationships and what I want from my children. And I was saying I’m trying to teach my boys just say it. If their girlfriend pisses you off, if someone says something that hurts something about your parenting approach, just say it. And two other people who had a bunch of siblings-- probably important to note, I’m an only child-- said, no, you can’t do that. Like you can’t share your every opinion with a sibling or that won’t work. But I’m like I’m seeing siblings in my life, adult siblings in particular, they swallow it in the pursuit of I don’t want to hurt their feelings, what’s it going to matter anyway? They’re not going to change anything. And so then the intimacy shrinks and it just goes away because they are so trying to keep the relationship in a direction that they don’t want to hurt each other, especially when they live far apart. And this is probably the key to the difference, right? It’s when you don’t live close and you certainly don’t in the same household. And I don’t expect-- as much as I would love my children to live in a commune together, probably unlikely, and they might live far away. So how do you do that? How do you maintain that?

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:00:59] So it comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning about sin. If you think of sin as like this terrible hellfire shame thing, then that just doesn’t make sense. But if you think about sin as any decision that disconnects us, you begin to see it everywhere. And some of them are really well meaning, right? Like these ones. But we have learned again and again in the community if fully aliveness is-- there’s a Jewish philosopher and theologian called Martin Buber, and he talks about I and thou moments. Moments where we see and are seen, unmasked, and undefended. Any dishonesty between you, any hiding, gets in the way of that. And so the discipline in our house of saying you hurt me or that frustrated me or I don’t understand why you did that, it’s always uncomfortable. Like we have these house nights where everyone knows we’re going to have one of those conversations because we try and actually schedule them in. And we have to be like how are people’s emotional energy? Do we have to do it? My housemate Hattie is really good at making us do it. And it’s always awful in the moment because you can’t help but go into a threat response of feeling defended or defensive or angry or embarrassed or humiliated or any of these tender teenage things that are still so in us. And when you stay in the trouble-- sometimes we call the community like the Sisters of St. Brene. Like Brene Brown’s whole thing about stay in the trouble, clarity of kindness is kindness. When we stay with it because we’re more committed to the relationship than we are to our emotional comfort, then you always come out the other side and are like, oh, I love you.

Sarah [01:02:46] I’m sorry, I had to write that down. Committed to the relationship more than emotional comfort. Writing that down real fast.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:02:55] We’ve been living together for five years and there’s still things about my housemates like we had one the other week where we had to talk about some relational ick. The feeling afterwards of, oh, I understand you better, and you understand me better, and we are in this together, was so powerful. And that bond that we have, because we have done this hard work of moving towards each other rather than away from each other when things are hard, means that there is a rigor and a robustness to our relationships that I don’t really have anywhere else except my marriage. And that gift of like-- actually, we weren’t friends before we started this process. We don’t actually have like that much in common. We’re not the same age. We’re not necessarily the same background. These aren’t just people that I would naturally be friends with because they’re just like me. What we have feels much more like siblings in the way that really works. Like, aren’t yours and your mine. And we drive each other nuts. And we’re in this together. And yeah, those practices are really, really profound. I think me realizing that everything that you don’t say-- and you have to say things kindly and you pick your moment and it’s not right just to spew over people, but everything that don’t you say is a brick and a wall between you and the other person has really helped.

Beth [01:04:16] Where that mutuality is not currently present, because I think if I’m listening and thinking, oh, I really desire this, but I’m not sure anybody else does; how do you advise, especially if you’re like a church leader or a teacher in a classroom or someone who is responsible for cultivating a certain culture, how do you advice people to start down that kind of road?

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:04:49] That’s a really interesting question, Beth. I haven’t been asked it in that exact format before, so I don’t want to just sound off with some half-baked thing. What immediately made me think of is the question often comes, particularly from younger people in their 20s who are struggling with friendship. I think that generation because they spent so much time on the devices, friendships are really, really hard. And the thing I often say to them is you do actually have to be brave and be the person to invite others into it and that will entail some rejection. And so moving into a community house isn’t the thing for everyone, but some structures and practices of relationship can be moved towards. And so being the person to say, could we all have dinner together like once a fortnight and share honestly about how we’re doing? And could we honor that commitment to each other and say that we’re going to show up unless we’re really, really ill or there’s an actual emergency? Could we try that for a term and see how that makes us feel in terms of our yearningness levels and our meaningfulness levels? And the person brave enough to make that invitation and to say, I’m looking for this, I am looking for depth and I’m look for relational commitment will be disappointed statistically. And that is the only way you find the small number of people in your existing network who are currently ready. But my experience is that there are more people hungry for this than we think there are. And when we can create a safe enough invitation, people are so often met with like, ugh, yes, please, thank you. I’m so bored of how we’re engaging. I’m so disconnected. I’m lonely. But it is risky and I can’t pretend that it’s not going to hurt.

Sarah [01:06:33] I think what people need when you were talking about those conversations, I want you in like the most specific way possible, because I think the rigor is the repetition and learning that I can step into this emotional discomfort. I think people’s expectations is if I have this conversation, I think that expectations are jacked because people never do it. So when you have those moments with your housemates when you’re saying, this hurt my feelings. It’s not like they never do it again. It’s not like they’ve never hurt your feelings again. But when you come out with something positive, when you feel heard, when you felt like you heard, wrap some expectation around that, because it’s so hard to say like you just got to do it. Because I think people’s expect-- we’re spinning up here about what those moments will look like.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:07:36] Yeah. So I think what the house gives us is a really secure frame of expectation that these will happen and that they are in service our relationships for each other. So, I wonder, and I’m just thinking about this, like the thing that I sometimes advise people is if you want to experiment with this, if you’re like, there’s actually a relationship in my life where I know there’s a wall, I know there’s some emotional disconnection because there’s all these things I’m swallowing down and there’s probably things they’re swallowing down. You go what is the most calm situation we can be in? What about a long walk? Often it’s, as you know, from parenting, no eye-to-eye can be helpful. And then the frame is everything. So when I’ve done this with my friends, I’ve been like I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that I love you and I want you in my life until we die and I care about this friendship. And because I care about this friendship or it might be a sibling thing, I would love us to have a little bit of honesty about the things that are feeling a bit sticky. And I want to sort of share what’s on my heart and then I want you to listen to what’s on your heart in service of our relationship. Because just dumping on someone or just criticizing them or just complaining about them, of course, no one wants that. Of course, that’s going to cause relational carnage. There’s a theologian called Willie Jennings who talks about in his Pentecostal church, they said it’s totally all right to be angry with people. And it’s often important to express your anger with people, but when you do so, you have to hold their hand. And that is the kind of model that I think we need. Yeah. Like in order to know you and you to know me, we need to talk about this. And if you don’t do that frame, if they can’t hear that motivation, of course, they’re going to be like get away from me.

Sarah [01:09:24] Well, and I think what you were articulating, first of all, the sibling experience in families, I would even broaden this to families generally. We think, well, you are going to be in my life till I die. So I don’t have to do anything about it. You know I love you and you know we’re going to be in this family till we die. Or there’s all this shared life experience. If your kids are the same age, if you’re in a shared friendship, you’re the same life phase, there’s this sense of like-- we talked about this in our book, like with friendships so much of what you learn forming friendships through young adulthood, through educational experience, we even sort people and they’re like you’re the same because you’re the same age, you’ll be best friends. And so there’s all these shortcuts that keep people from articulating the thing, from focusing on the structure because we’ve built in these shortcuts.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:10:24] It means we stay on the surface a lot of the time. And it makes me a complete weirdo and sometimes has really freaked people out.

Sarah [01:10:30] She’s not a weirdo. She’s just a delight. The way that she was so deep is the most charming thing about her and I love her so much and I’m so sad she lives across the ocean.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:10:38] Thank you, Sarah. However, you have seen the best of me in a lovely hotel with reading Pride and Prejudice.

Sarah [01:10:45] It is true. We were taking long walks and had no one to take care of.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:10:48] Exactly.

Sarah [01:10:48] All the same.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:10:52] It makes me very intense. And because I hopefully have a sense of grounded in my belovedness because I’m like if I know the love of God, I can actually tolerate other people misunderstanding me or not being impressed by me or all these kinds of things. I’m, like, I want real relationships with people so much that I am prepared to risk seeming intense, coming off as weird, occasionally accidentally helping people because the intimacy, that’s worth the cost. And I honestly think that’s true for almost everyone. But we’ve talked about muscles, like small practices, small experiments, little offers that we make towards people, trying things out within our comfort zone and seeing who it is that will meet us and who actually can’t cope with it and can’t tolerate it and it’s just not there yet. And in that case, you just have to figure out how to love people as they are and be like I have some sadness around it that I need to grieve healthily. But you are not able to meet me at this level, and that may change one day, and I’m here for you when it does. But right now, I don’t want to be coercive with this. It’s got to be an invitation that is for as much for the good of the other as it is for us. Who are you going to go and talk to, Sarah?

Sarah [01:12:08] Beth. Beth has to take all my intensity all the time. It’s her literal job.

Beth [01:12:14] We have scaffolding.

Sarah [01:12:15] We have so much scaffolding.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:12:17] She can press stop on the recording.

Sarah [01:12:18] Well, and honestly, I don’t know if you feel this way about The Sacred, but we have this with our listeners because of the way we talk and the things we talk about. It’s not when people are like I know it’s a parasocial. I’m like, it’s not really because you do know me and I know you because I know that you sign up to listen to our- weird things that start with public policy and end up about philosophy.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:12:41] A little sprinkle of hell.

Sarah [01:12:42] Yeah, a little sprinkle of hell or deep philosophy or deep moral quant. So I know you’re in it in the same way we are. And I think that’s why this community, even though formed across the internet, although more and more in person, not surprisingly, is so special. Because I think that’s what people are hungry for. And I know if you’re listening to Pantsy Politics for several hours a week. The same. I get it.

Beth [01:13:08] Well, and the big thing is that we’re going to do it again at a time and you know what that time is going to be. And I do think that as much as I feel like totally overwhelmed every week when I sit down to work on my calendar, I do you think more of us want things that are just they’re going to happen again. And so it doesn’t feel so high stakes and it doesn’t feel like a decision. It’s just a thing that we do and there’s security in the fact that we’re going to do it again.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:13:47] Choice can be tyrannizing. Sometimes I’m like I am scheduling, I’m committing to this thing, and it’s a gift to my future self. And sometimes I’m, like, oh, thanks, past self. Sometimes, I think, what did you do? Why have you signed me up to this? But it is a way of intentionally orienting ourselves. Our calendars are basically a statement of what we think is important, and the people that we are trying to become. Although loads of me wants to be able to choose exactly what I want to do in the moment depending on what I feel like, it doesn’t actually lead me anywhere that good.

Sarah [01:14:24] Well, and that’s why, like, as we’re in this calendar vibe right now in January, I think the older I’ve gotten, the calendar I cling to it’s the whole year on a single page of paper. You print it out and I love it. I love because the older you get, the faster time gets and you realize a year is not that long and seeing it all together and being like, wait, I only really have a handful of weekends here, and what are they going to be doing? And you can almost see it as a color-coded prioritization, all on this piece of paper. And it makes you think about your years that way because they do go so fast. And the urgent overwhelms the important. And so if you can look at it like that and think it’s going to be December in two hot seconds, and what do I want to feel when it shows up? It’s exactly what you’ve been articulating over and over again. Like, what’s important to me? How do I want to live?

Beth [01:15:28] And, look, the next book that I need you to write about this is orienting two different seasons of life. Because the big challenge for me with time right now is how am I fully alive and also my children are too. And I just find that to be the quandary of middle age.

Sarah [01:15:49] Yeah, how old were your kids when you wrote this book?

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:15:52] I started when they were about-- oh gosh, time is concertinaed. Five and seven, maybe?

Sarah [01:16:02] We need another book when they’re 15 and 17.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:16:06] That gives me enough time. I’ll be okay.

Sarah [01:16:09] Okay, so perfect. Love it. We put some stuff on your one sheet of paper a few years in advance.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:16:16] So the other practice I didn’t mention is Sabbath, which has been really powerful for us as a community. And obviously it’s a very embedded Jewish practice and some Christian denominations use it, but not in any of the ones I’ve been raised in. Because it’s not just like future commitment to do beautiful things. It needs to be future commitment to rest and rest that’s not just passive leisure entertainment consumption. Although there’s some space for that. It’s actually the minute I turn off all my devices something happens neurobiologically that I’m like, oh, where am I? Where am I in my life? Well, the urgency has gone down. I can think. I can notice the beauty of that particular shrub or whatever it is. And so unplugging and withdrawing from the haste and the busyness to be just with the people that I love, to have a time of worship or a time of like creativity maybe for you or whatever it is. That is almost as formative as everything else. I think it’s like the necessary withdrawal in order to be able to show up with some stability in the rest of life.

Sarah [01:17:27] And that is so important right now because this is the siren song of January too, which is striving, grinding.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:17:35] What can you achieve?

Sarah [01:17:36] Get it done, version 2.0, like let’s do this. Do you do your Sabbath over Saturday or Sunday?

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:17:44] I said to a Jewish friend about this, I was like, are you okay with this? And she was like, meh, it’s fine. The Jews are used to it. But we do Friday night, light a candle, family dinner, device is off. This is a constant fight within the house and in the family. Like, are they actually going off? Are they all going off? The best weekends are when we get the kids to hide them. We’re like put them somewhere we can’t find. And then even if there’s an emergency, we can’t turn them on again. And they love it because they see that we’re addicted. And it’s a way of saying to them, this is not just a self-control problem. This is like someone is out to get us with this. And then we do it until Saturday night, which you have to really change how you do Saturdays. You have to plan. If you’re seeing other people, that’s complicated. There’s always a good reason to switch them back on. But I would say 50% of the time I manage a whole 24 hours or sometimes the whole weekend. And that is just like absolute magic.

Sarah [01:18:47] Thank you for coming on our show. I love you so much. It’s just a total gift.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:18:52] I’m really enjoying meeting you in the presence of Beth. Like having met you, the contrast is really cracking me up in this beautiful way.

Sarah [01:19:00] Yeah, it’s a real yin and yang situation.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:19:01] Yeah, I can see how this salt and pepper thing works. It’s great.

Sarah [01:19:06] Haha! And I hope you will come back on Pantsuit Politics again.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:19:11] Oh, anytime.

Sarah [01:19:13] Thank you so much.

Elizabeth Oldfield [01:19:14] Thank you.

Sarah [01:19:17] Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for listening and to Elizabeth for joining us. Don’t forget to head to our Substack page, paintsuitpoliticshow.com, and comment on this episode for a chance to win one of five copies of Elizabeth’s book, Fully Alive. Thanks again to Erin for making that possible. It will be open to all subscribers free and paid, so go comment and enter for a change to win. We’ll be back in your ears on Friday with a new episode. Until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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