“When I’ve been blessed with so much, it’s my responsibility to give back.”

About Our Guest in this episode:

Dan LaBar is an experienced educator who has spent his entire career creating and leading innovative schools that meet the varied learning needs of students at all grade levels. He knows what works!

He has led K-12 personalized-learning charter schools, an award-winning college-prep high school, a K-8 Waldorf school, and a traditional district middle school. During his 23-year career Dan has served over 9,000 students and 400 teachers spanning 22 California counties.

Dan’s view of all schools is that they are vital hubs of their communities. During the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire that burned 240 square miles in Butte County, California, he collaborated with fellow educators to create the Voices Strong United Choir that brought together students from 5 local high schools. The choir performed songs of hope, healing, and resilience that supported displaced students through their recovery process. Performances were shared locally and globally. The choir was invited to perform at the music industry’s largest global trade show and was featured in the International Voices of America media outlet which is translated into 47 languages.

Currently, Dan is principal of a public charter school serving four rural Northern California counties that offers an accredited personalized-learning program for students who thrive in a non-traditional setting.

In his spare time, Dan serves as a University Supervisor at California State University, Chico, coaching graduate students to become future teachers. He is the founder of a local Education Foundation, has served on a local school board, and mentors new school administrators.

Dan has a BA degree in History from Cal State University, Chico and three education credentials from the State of California. He anticipates completing his Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Grand Canyon University in the Spring of 2023.

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The replay of our September career conversation with Dan LaBar, innovative educator and community-builder, is now available in video, podcast, and transcript. Click “Watch Net Effect Replays” below!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin Jones: This is the Net Effect. I’m Robin Jones, your host with the Albert Baker Fund. Today we’re gonna focus on casting our nets on the right side as Jesus challenges followers to do in the chapter of Luke, verse 5.

We have listeners in countries all over the world. Kenya, Uganda, United States, the Philippines, Great Britain, Germany, Texas. They think it’s a state yes, in a country, but it really is a part of the United States. 

Thank you all for joining us today. We really appreciate that. Before we get started, I wanted you all to be sure that you know that the Net Effect is sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund, and its wonderful contributors and we have lots of programs that we offer, but our focus really is on post secondary education.

And helping students achieve their overall goals. And we provide financial assistance, needs-based assistance through scholarships, Albert Albert Fund Scholarship, and our Pass Your Blessings Forward Scholarship, which we’ll talk about later. The way you can find out about the Albert Baker Fund is go to AlbertBakerFund.org and you’ll find a page full of wonderful information and lovely links to take you to the places you need to go. 

If you’re in North America, you can click on Apply. That’s this page that’s represented here. And the dropdowns will show the different programs that we offer from Christian Science Nurses Education to North American Education to Christian Science Military Chaplains program.

And if you’re an international student, we offer programs in Europe, Asia, and Africa. So you can click on those buttons through the AlbertBakerFund.org. So if you have any questions, please go to the page and reach out to us at your convenience. 

Without further ado, I’d like to welcome our special guest today, Dan LaBar, who’s a leader in education.

A principal, works with the local college up in Chico, Chico State. He’s earned a degree in history from Cal State University, Chico. Has three educational credentials from the state of California, and he anticipates completing his master’s degree in the spring of 2023. 

Dan, we are so excited to see you and have you here today. Thank you very, very much for joining us. 

Dan LaBar: Thank you, Robin. 

Robin Jones: We are so interested to learn how you cast your net out in this wonderful world of education that you are such a wonderful leader in. 

So let’s just kinda kick it off and say why did you choose education as a career path?

Dan LaBar: That’s a great question. When I think about that “why” I think I always ask future teachers and new teachers I do a lot of mentoring. I’m in the stage of my career where I’m, I’m giving back where I ask that same question and not about casting the net, but as far as giving back.

 It’s a calling, right? Teaching and education is not a j o b. You are called to it because it is a service industry and when you are of service that is a calling. It is not just a career. 

Robin Jones: So was it a difficult choice for you to choose education?

Dan LaBar: Early on I started coaching as a very young man. I am from California and, and played volleyball. And we actually ended up starting a a boy’s volleyball team when I was going through undergraduate school in Northern California. And started coaching. I was only a couple years older than my athletes I was coaching. So I showed up to the first day of practice with my backpack from college and I said, Hey, where’s the coach?

Yeah, it’s me. So I started coaching very early on and realized that coaching and teaching have a lot of similarities, and just followed that. 

At a certain point I was coaching and teaching for many years, and I had to make a choice. And a mentor of mine who was a coach in the NCAA said, Well, Dan, do you like your weekends?

So if you like your weekends, you probably don’t wanna be a career coach. You probably wanna stay in education. So that was one kind of push pull factor. But again, that calling for helping students and especially young students, because going through schools, when you have a group of athletes, they’re selecting to participate.

But working with students, you’re working with all types and all kinds, coming from all walks of life. So that’s always spoken to me too.

I feel like I’ve been blessed in my life and when I’ve been blessed with so much, it’s my responsibility to give back.

Robin Jones: So did you map this journey out that you’re on? How has it unfolded for you? 

Dan LaBar: I mentioned coaching. And that kind of came from some of the skills that I had. And then as I got into classroom teaching with history and social science, it was something I really enjoyed.

I ended up in alternative education environments with a lot of students that struggled with different levels of behavior and it was something that I found myself to be really skilled at. I was very patient with the kids. I really had a growth mindset model of waiting for these kids to grow and into themselves and trying to give them a safe space to do that.

I was doing classroom teaching, and then I applied for a job as an in-school suspension teacher. So I had students from third grade all the way through seniors in high school who in this school district, when they were suspended, they came to my classroom.

And so it was my job to receive them and give them a safe place to land and, help view them as the amazing people and students that they are, and get them back to their schools. 

From that experience, I had an assistant superintendent that mentored me into administration and then the budget crash of 2008 in California hit and I was without a job for over a year.

My wife was pregnant with our second child. We had three kids. So I was doing my best as a new dad to be Mr. Mom at home. She’s also a teacher and she was teaching for a virtual school at home. And so we’re all at home and, this was before all the pandemic locked us down.

This was years and years ago. I was without a job and the school year came and went and I couldn’t find a job. I was frustrated. And that perfect timing wasn’t at work because I finally let go. I was like a hamster in a wheel trying to find a job and trying to apply and apply and so I let go and I said, I’ve gotta focus on my family, focus on my son, and my future, my number two, right?

My second son was born and I was letting go and just focusing on my family. And at our first postpartum appointment, our midwife said, Oh, well there’s a job in town for an assistant principal and you should apply. And I applied and a week later I got the job. And that’s been my path in administration ever since.

And that really, spoke to that idea of perfect timing that and my human will that I was trying so hard to make happen because I was worried about my family and worried, my wife wanted to stop teaching completely after her second child. And and it all just unfolded.

Robin Jones: So the job boards and the applications and all the things that you’re supposed to do, the job recommendation came from a completely different source that had nothing to do that didn’t relate to any of that? 

Dan LaBar: Right. And ever since then, in my career, it’s been that way because I’ve let go, I’ve let go of that human will of I need to be in a certain place.

That’s not my decision. I’m called to serve. And when I’m called, it is crystal clear. 

Robin Jones: How do you let go? So often I hear that from people, from folks that are Christian Scientists particularly, they say, Hey, you gotta get to a point, you just let go. 

How do you find the inspiration? How do you find the strength, the courage to just go, Okay, let go. How do you do that? 

Dan LaBar: Well, it’s the power of prayer, right? And the prayer, the very simple prayer I used is Thy will be done instead of my will be done. Right? So that was the difference maker because I had to recognize how willful I was trying to be, and that is what I had to let go, was my own will. 

Robin Jones: So you got into education. I know you’re heavily involved with charter school education. Talk to us a little bit about that and did you know what that was or how did that come about? How did you get there and what did that look like to you at the time? 

Dan LaBar: That job that I mentioned was at a charter school. It is at a Waldorf school. So getting involved in Waldorf education, which is a beautiful model of arts infused education. And each charter school is very unique and different depending on its charter.

So getting involved in that, in my town where I live in Northern California, with the university here, there’s a lot of educators and it’s very educationally rich. So there’s a Waldorf school and a Montessori school and an open structure school and, and many of them are charter schools. So that idea of choice is something that I believe is very American.

I believe it’s something that is just a natural thing for parents and families to have. So I get excited about school choice. Because I think it’s it’s something that we should all find our fit and find our community. And, without those choices, sometimes we can feel stuck.

So I’ve worked hard to make sure that people, do have choices in our communities. 

Robin Jones: Many folks may have heard about the Paradise fire that took place in your backyard, which is just north of where I live. And this fire, just so you all know, was devastating.

It went through the town like a perfect fire storm and it just wiped people out and it killed people. It just took things out and really had a huge devastating impact on the state. You had that in your backyard, Dan.

How did you find your way to practice Christian Science in such a public way and find how to help people during that really, really difficult time when people had lost everything and the school was gone and, family, it touched everybody in the region in some way, some shape, fashion or form.

How did Christian Science enter into that world for you to help with that sort of thing?

Dan LaBar: Yeah, it was a tough time and it still brings back a lot of memories. We had 90 students that lost their homes that morning. Yeah. And I was with them in a classroom and having them call their families, because many of them are still in Paradise and, trying to get out and it was a difficult day.

To your question, what role did it play? It was a healing. There was the first responders, FEMA came, It was one of the largest disasters in the world most costly disasters in the world in 2018. And FEMA described some things in some of my conversations when we would have leadership meetings about school recovery, that they had never seen that level of victims helping victims.

First responders lost their homes and they were helping others who lost their homes as well. So just that outpouring of love for your neighbor was just enormous. And then the outpouring throughout the world, just the influx of love, attention and resources that came our way was overwhelming and people mobilizing all throughout the world to help our little corner of Northern California. It was touching.

When I thought about those first responders and I thought about the role of school a lot of the health of a community is measured by the status of its schools. There’s research about that. So I thought of us being a second responder. How can we as schools come after the first response?

I was at a school that really valued the arts and as we all know, arts is that soul expression, it can be so healing. I called up a couple of music teachers that I knew. And they took that idea and they ran with it, and they brought together choirs and musicians and taught the kids songs.

And they went around to several of the makeshift schools that were popping up of students that were displaced. The high school students were singing to the middle school students, the elementary students, and even many teachers had lost their homes as well. The healing that came from that, especially with the adults that were trying to hold everything together.

It was palpable. That group was invited down to a large convention. They were able to sing there, so those kids were able to get recognized and many of those students who were singing had lost their home. So that idea, that healing can come in many forms and many ages because the students were ready to take action. They just needed a little bit of direction. 

Robin Jones: That’s really neat. In your work today, we read about and hear so often, that Christianity is losing numbers and people going to church aren’t, that’s not happening as much and church is not that important.

Having, an affiliation with a religion is ostracized, and criticized and condemned. How do you find your practice of Christian Science? How do you embrace that? How do you do that in an environment that seems to be so secularized? 

Dan LaBar: Hmm. That’s a good question.

I guess I just, attempt my best to live it. We’re all inspired and called to be Christ-like. Right. In education we have a teacher. We have the way shower or we follow that work. We are in a service industry and I always say that service is actually the verb of love.

That’s how we love. We are being of service. As a school leader, I fashion myself a servant leader. And I feel like that Christlike idea is built into service. It’s baked into it. If you are in education, you are serving and if you’re in public education, it’s like that sign on the freeway that says your tax dollars at work. We are working for one another. 

And how does that play out with faith? It’s trying to follow our way- shower, follow the Christ idea and show others and not to proselytize, not to teach those tenants, but to be that.

And those are universal truths. Especially in public schools, there’s very much a lot of separation where those things cannot be explicitly taught in public schools. So how do you do that? You’re just are a model and you’re demonstrating.

Robin Jones: I read about families that have really been challenged over the last several years. And looking back at your own experience, what kind of things have you learned, let’s say in the last five years that as you look forward those things are helping to shape and inform your path and inform decisions you’re making? What kind of things have you learned that you could share with families to help them think about things as they’re moving forward and facing some of the challenges they face?

Dan LaBar: I can think of three different things. So number one we’ve all been through something I like to call crisis schooling . 

Robin Jones: Okay. What does that mean? 

Dan LaBar: You shared the idea, you shared everything I went through up in my corner of the world. But then of course, we had this global pandemic and every student practically in the world went home.

Right, Right. And we all had this jarring shift of how education was delivered and it also opened up a lot of opportunities. Right. But I think it really showed families and parents when that intimacy of learning, literally came home about the challenge of learning. 

And how going to a place of learning can be very beneficial. So that crisis schooling idea, I think helped everyone, realize that service of education and the value of it. So that’s number one is crisis schooling. 

I was talking with a fellow Christian Science school administrator.

There’s not too many of us, but we are, I was gonna say, yeah, . And we were talking about the idea of proficiency versus growth in terms of, student learning. And I talk with my hands, as you may have noticed, and I was, kind of doing these level things. 

I never do that. 

So I was, I was leveling proficiency levels.

And, and he, he says, Dan, I need to stop you. And I was mid, mid level and he takes my hand and he says, we’re unlimited.

And just that moment has helped guide my career since, and that was, a good seven, eight years ago. And that’s something I would just reinforce with families is when we look at test scores or, grades on the report cards or all the rest, Proficiency does not always reflect growth. It does not always reflect learning.

It’s the idea of we are, human beings versus human doings, right? And as parents, we can sometimes get real caught up in the doing. Right. And we have to remember we’re unlimited and focus on the B, right? So that’s probably the second thing. And then the third thing, which I think education really helps.

With is helping students discover and uncover or recover their gifts, that they need to be exposed to these ideas or that they maybe put something down when they’re very young and they pick it back up later in their teens. And how to wrestle with those and how to explore them in healthy ways and in safe ways, you know?

So I, I think that would be number three. And that may be number four if I’d make sure, is there’s a saying in education. You have to Maslow before you bloom, and it’s it’s referring to these two researchers. And Maslow’s ideas, like, there’s this whole hierarchy of safety. Here I go with levels again, right?

Is there’s that you have to be safe and your needs need to be met before you can focused on learning, right? So I think that’s a lot of the role of the family and school is to ensure, that, that safety, physical safety of course, but that spiritual safety especially in the home is solid and present and alive and well.

And that that helps students, grow and learn and thrive. 

Robin Jones: So thinking about college education, we help students with their college education as we talked about it in the introduction. What are your thoughts about where that goes and is it still valuable? Is it still important?

And where does it fit in this post crisis Covid, where does the education now fit in, when a family’s thinking about, or students are thinking about, is this valuable? Is this worth it is it costs a lot of money and takes a lot of effort and energy to do all that.

What are your thoughts about that? 

Dan LaBar: When I think about life after high school, as I like to talk to my students, that’s my big question for them as is what does that look like? And their answers don’t always involve college or university. A lot of answers now are about, attaining a skill pursuing a certain industry or trade.

If they do want to go to college, they typically are going, they typically have a specific goal. College used to be exploratory, right? Where go try things, explore things, find things out. But like you mentioned with the rising costs over the years that’s a very difficult endeavor and a pricely endeavor to explore.

So that’s what I’m seeing with families lately. 

There’s just many ways to attain those skills, right? Those career ready or they call future ready skills, right? Preparing for jobs that we don’t know are even here yet, or maybe even exist. So the idea, I think, at least with in K12 schools, and I think that is becoming a little bit, trickling into college and universities, is that we’re really skill focused.

We want you to learn the math. But you don’t always have to know the algorithm, like the recipe of step one, step two, step three, step four. You need the quantitative reasoning, you need the math skills and the number sense to be able to do that. Some people aren’t big fans of the common core math, but that’s exactly what it’s asking kids to do, is don’t just follow the recipe, but do to the thinking, right?

Or language is the whole idea is it’s a kind of a stair step of complexity as you get, further and further up the nuances of language. Or there’s the next generation science standards and they’re focused on modeling and all sorts of different things like patterns and systems and structure and function.

And it’s not just about the content because nowadays kids can just Google it and find it. And the content is all there where the age of inform. They need the skill and the reasoning. And so I think that’s where schools are going is that we’re teaching students not what to think and what to learn, but how to think and how to learn.

Robin Jones: I wonder what your thoughts are on spiritual education, and the importance of that. So many churches had to close down during Covid and Sunday School kind of went away because there was no open church. And the impact from that has been a decline in the number of students attending Sunday School.

How do you see the importance of a spiritual education. And how do you find it? How do you get it, and why is it important in this day and age?

Dan LaBar: It is important, the wisdom that we have, to pass to one another, it’s invaluable. And if those stories in that wisdom isn’t shared it’s a missed opportunity.

I’ve seen it myself. There’s not a whole lot of other children in our Sunday School where I am. My kids go to camp and all the kids come from many different areas. And that’s when you see it, alive with within one another.

I’ve seen a shift. And my children value that because they want to share with one another. They want to learn from other children as well, not just the adults. So I think that’s important. So if that’s the way we need to do things, then the summertime it is, right? 

But the daily practice, in each and every one of our homes is equally, if not more important, those are the habits. Those are the daily habits of how do we wake up and start our day, and how do we end our day? And those are the first thoughts and prayers that we start and end with. 

Because how we will think and pray is how we will live our lives.

I think what needs to happen is the students or children just need to be taught those habits and it’s up to them to practice it. With the declining enrollment I mean, my answer is to be that lighthouse, shine your light and put it out there and, and folks will come.

You have to shine right? 

Robin Jones: So many students when they get into college, they got a lot of things going on. What are some ideas that you might have to share with them? To encourage them to embrace thinking about walking through the door of a church or, having that time in dedicated prayerful study to help support that spiritual education when they’ve got all these different things, trying to say, Well, you gotta go to this.

And what about that meeting and what about that thing and this party and that football game. What about those kinds of things? What kind of thoughts can you share about maybe, thinking about taking some time as a college student to reflect and pray?

Dan LaBar: Well, it’s not a new idea, but it’s a story I tell my students when they’re prioritizing.

Like you mentioned that the way you put it, Robin, taking time, right? It’s almost like if you take that time to go to church, you’re taking it from somewhere else. Right. But that whole idea, it’s a story. You can find it told by others, but it’s about the big rocks and the whole teacher gets in front of class and has a big jar and fills it up with rocks, big rocks and says, Is the jar full?

The students all say, yes, it. And so he takes out pebbles and pours them in, and they come in between the rocks and it fills up to the top. And is the jar full? Some say yes and some are wise to it and say, Oh, maybe not. So the teacher takes out some sand and pours it in. Okay, now we’re onto you. No, it’s not full.

Okay. Okay. Water takes some water. Okay. Now it’s full. What’s the point of the exercise? And the first student raises their hand. There’s always room for more. No, no, no, no, no. That’s not the idea. The idea is if you didn’t put the big rocks in first, they would’ve never gotten in. Right. So our day will fill up, our time will fill up.

We will be human doings, right? But if we don’t put it in those big rocks first then they won’t be valued. They won’t be prioritized. So you, I’ve had students do this. They write what their three or four big rocks are and those need to fill up their life first. And this one, this is not a big rock, right?

This is the sand and the water and the pebbles, right? It can very easily fill up our day, especially our young people. So I guess that analogy has always helped me convey that idea of prioritization. And that if church is not a priority, it will never get put in. So it has to be made one.

Robin Jones: The time has flown by really fast and I wanted to give you an opportunity before we jump into our final questions in Q and A. Anything that you’d like to share that we didn’t really cover that I didn’t ask about that you kind of think might be important? 

Dan LaBar: Hmm. I guess one thing I’ve found in my career with students and really with all of us, cuz I’m working with adults and teachers and, community members and everyone just something that’s driven me in my career.

Worthiness is a big idea. And we wanna feel like we’re part of a worthy group and that we are a worthwhile member of that group. That’s something that’s always driven me. So trying to see one another in that light and create, worthwhile endeavors.

And kinda goes back to your question about how do you do that in education, right? When you live through those tenants that we have it creates that worthiness.

Robin Jones: That’s wonderful, thanks for that. 

Will education go backwards? Or will education adapt to the modern era? What are your thoughts about that? 

Dan LaBar: Well, I don’t know if there’s any looking back and, when I think of time, I don’t think of it as that linear expression of time.

John Dewey was the father of progressive education. Maria Montessori is the mother of Montessori education. Rudolph Steiner is the father of Waldorf education. A lot of those ideas are still present moving forward, but very different from what their founders envisioned.

The constant I would see would be change, right? So going backwards, I guess that the way that the standards based education has kind of been the new way of public education, but with the common core standards and the next generation science standards, they’re still called standards, but they’re not just content standards.

Now there’s content and skills. Here I go with my hands again. And so, that idea of skills is kind of hearkening back to apprenticeships and, journeymen and trade schools. Because we need to learn those skills. But I think the difference is with the advance of technology as rapid as it’s been, we just don’t know what trades we’re preparing students for anymore.

Robin Jones: Do you think that the new technologies that have come up, like Zoom and some of the ways that education has had to adapt and embrace, do you think those will continue? Has it created kind of an affinity for that? Are there people now in education that are really embracing technology or new ways of thinking about things as we move forward?

Dan LaBar: Well, with the age of the free flow of information, I think that it’s hard that it wouldn’t do that. Because the proliferation of information students learn from YouTube and TikTok now that they learn in these small chunks and bites and the visual ways that information is presented.

It’s very difficult for a classroom to emulate or even compete with some of the ways that these high level production can present information. And that’s not bad. They call it the sage on the stage or the guide on the side. The sage on the stage version of education with the teacher at the front and the kids in rows is yes, definitely quickly becoming an antiquated idea.

So the idea now is the guide on the side, that teachers are facilitating the learning experience. And in many ways that experience is becoming more and more authentic and solving real world problems. Sometimes when students are even very young, For example I had students years ago, a science teacher did this amazing project where they found the substance and these underwater creatures that would glow.

They said, How could we design a real world product that could use that substance? And students designed a product and did the chemistry and the biology and all the rest. And it was like a, a nose spray of if someone might be infected with something that their nose would glow. It’s called nasal glow.

But that idea of the information is out there. The teacher didn’t teach them what to do. She set the project, here’s the direction, here’s the criteria, and go. And that idea of project based learning is alive and well and working in teams. And those are the skills that all industries are looking for. Team based learning and cooperation.

Robin Jones: Thank you for that. 

How is your school handling the growing number of disability labels that are being placed on children?

Dan LaBar: That’s a great question. And that I’ve seen in my career has increased. Parents are increasingly seeking answers and they’re, as all parents are doing, doing their best to be resourceful. And that is definitely one way parents are pursuing answers, is to do a, an evaluation for special education assessment with individual special needs.

How are the schools handling it? And my current school, I’m in a personalized learning school, so it’s really set up for that anyway, because we have individual plans, which each student and I see a lot of schools moving in those directions of more personalized plans, sometimes even individualized.

I see that as a trend for sure that not all students are the same and nor should they be seen that way. The idea with the labels or the stigma or even the trend towards medicating even very young children is concerning because it’s that idea of how do we see our children.

There’s definitely a lot of research that says our, especially our young men are struggling with the idea of school. There are much more young women college going. Some of our young men are struggling with the way that school is set up with the, the old idea of the Carnegie unit of instruction.

And even the, the military model of, of some of our high schools of, here’s the bell, dang, go to the next departmentalized instruction. Those are definitely antiquated ideas. When I went through high school, some of the same requirements are for my high school students. Some of those things haven’t changed and I think some of those requirements need to be updated with our legislators throughout, at least the United States.

Those need to be taken a look at because if we are really truly shifting to skills based education, because the content can be gained in other ways. We need to look at what these requirements are and how we are preparing students. So I think starting looking at those requirements will be a good first step because I see parents jumping towards a label of a disability, a learning disability, when that student is actually learning differently.

And it’s not necessarily a disability, it is just an ability in another area that may not be valued in traditional academia. 

Robin Jones: Is it also a preference for the student? Do you think sometimes they just, when they start to get to a certain age and they have a preference to how they want to learn and how they want to pursue their interest.

Is that part of it as well? 

Dan LaBar: Sure. And it’s about the habits as well. Right? So you, we were talking earlier about that habit of waking up. Our thoughts and our prayers and how we start our day and end our day. This is the way that many students are starting and ending their days. And so those are the things that have happened very rapidly.

My oldest son is 14, and he is as old as the smartphone. So he has never grown up in a world without it. 

Robin Jones: It’s pretty remarkable, isn’t it, when you think about that. There’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying as it relates to they start with it and they end with it and, throughout their day.

And that piece of the technology that we know is there. Going to that question of, are, are we incorporating that? So that we can have an impact. It’s in a positive way to help guide and see some positive results from those kinds of things. But I did have a question.

Are the conversations going in the direction that you just mentioned, are we moving in a direction we’re actually affecting positive change? 

Dan LaBar: I would say yes and no. It’s really about leadership 

Robin Jones: How can people in their communities help with that and encourage that. What does that look like?

Dan LaBar: We have seen a lot of that in terms of school boards.

The United States does have a unique structure of local control when it comes to public schools and parents are being much more active with saying, these are things we want, these are things we don’t want. And so I’d say that direct type of action is a way to influence and give oversight and also be of service back to the schools.

So we’ve seen a lot of that increase. Unfortunately some of it has been prescriptive or directive and, telling the educators what to do especially in terms of the pandemic and the response, that’s been challenging. But I don’t think that engagement is necessarily a bad thing.

I think that continued engagement with families and schools, it’s important. We need to listen to each other.

Robin Jones: Thank you. You have been extremely generous with your time and this content is so rich and rewarding. We’re so blessed that you’re willing to spend your time with us this afternoon.

If you have any questions or we can help in any way, or if you know someone that has children who are in that post secondary college vocational age and needs help financially, please reach out to the Albert Baker Fund and go to our website and we’ll be glad to help you and assist you in any way that we can. 

We’ve started a new pilot program for our students and it’s a mentoring program. Dan is actually one of our first mentors and we appreciate his support in that, in that nature. Along those lines and we’re, we also would encourage you to invest in the education of our young Christian Scientists who are out there working and sharing the leaven of truth. 

We are offering two scholarships presently. Albert Baker Fund Scholarship, and the Pass Your Blessings Forward scholarship.

We really would love to continue those and continue to support our youth. We would appreciate any and all gifts that you might have to help our youth in their pursuit of education. 

If you’re interested in connecting with Dan, you can reach out to me, robin@albertbakerfund.org and I will be happy to help connect you.

We also invite you to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And we hope that we’ve inspired you today to think about casting your net on the right side. Dan, what great ideas and thoughts you shared with us today. And again, thank you so very much for being with us.

Dan LaBar: Thank you, Robin. 

Robin Jones: And remember, it’s not just about working hard. It’s about casting that net in the right way. So thank you all for being with us, and we look forward to seeing you again on the next Net Effect.

“…you have to ask yourself, is there any challenge that’s too big for God to handle?”

About Our Guests in this episode:

Our featured guest is Jill Hamilton, President and Founder of Sustainable Energy Strategies (SESI), Inc. located in Fairfax, VA. For more than 20 years, Ms. Hamilton has provided the clean tech industry with leadership on funding and public awareness. As President of SESI, she leverages alternative fuels industry funds with public and private resources for her clients, as well as manages their federal grant programs.  She provides business plans, project management and technical support for biofuel infrastructure development, including market research, fleet analysis, equipment assessment, and fleet and retailer liaison efforts.

Ms. Hamilton also coordinates public outreach activities to promote awareness of biofuel transportation technologies; authors alternative fuel articles, presentations and speeches; manages media and and prepares alternative fuel marketing strategies. She is a staunch supporter of climate justice.

Ms. Hamilton attended the University of Missouri and graduated with honors from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois with a BS in Environmental Sciences and a minor in Education.

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin Jones: I’d like to welcome you all to episode number 50. Wow. Kind of a milestone for us.

This is the Net Effect and we are so excited to have Jill Hamilton with us today. She is a terrific, wonderful person, and I know that you’re going to be really excited to learn about the really neat things that Jill has to offer. 

So before we do, I want to make sure that you all know that we are sponsored by The Albert Baker Fund. We are really dedicated to helping students grow in their education and their career development. We help students in North America, Europe, Asia, and we have two full time employees in Africa to help African students go to school in Africa. 

I love working with all of them. So if you have questions or, you know someone that is a student and they are needing financial assistance or interested in scholarships, please have them go to the AlbertBakerFund.org and all the information that you need is right there. It’s really easy to understand, but if you have any questions, you can always email me robin@albertbakerfund.org and I’ll be glad to help you. 

Let’s get started, our guest again is Jill Hamilton and she has an incredible, wonderful company that focuses in the field of sustainability. She’s president, owner of the company.

And I want to bring you in Jill. Tell us a little bit about Jill Hamilton. 

Jill Hamilton: It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been an alternative fuel consultant focused largely in biofuels for the last 30 years. And the last 24 has been part of Sustainable Energy Strategies. That’s my company. 

This first slide depicts my pathway. How did I get to where I am?

Robin Jones: I work with students often and many of them are interested in sustainability.

They’re interested in this kind of a space and that’s such a huge window. So I thought this would be great for you to talk a little bit about your career path and how you got, where you’re going to give them a little bit of insight for what’s available or what they can potentially think about focusing in with their career.

Jill Hamilton: When you’re going off from high school, usually somebody kind of points you in the direction. And in my case, I went to very small, rural high school. And my science teacher asked me, Jill what do you want to do with your life? Where are you going? And I said, I wanted to do something for the environment.

This was back in the eighties and it’s coming off of an energy crisis at that time, similar kind of similar today. And he said, why don’t you go into energy in environment? And that really stuck with me. I thought about maybe doing education and environment, but this energy environment really, he said, there’s always going to be work to do in the field of energy.

That rings true today as well. I attended Principia College as well as my undergrad. I received a degree in environmental studies, which is kind of the precursor to environmental science today. They didn’t really have that back then.

This was 30 years ago. So when I was working during a spring break I had to work to put myself through school was so I can really appreciate what Albert Baker does and has helped. I received support similar to that and very much appreciate the role that Albert Baker plays today.

Along those lines, while I was working one of the professors asked me the same question, Jill, what do you hope to do? And I said, I really want to do something on energy environment. And he said, well, you can make trees and grasses into fuel for your vehicle. And I’m like, that is so cool.

I really want to do that. How do I do that? I worked with another Principian and Christian Scientist who through my professors, they helped me get an internship in the Biomass Office of the Department of Energy. And I did an internship and then they offered me two summer jobs and they even offered me a job when I graduated.

And I decided not to do that. Civil service was not for me, but I really wanted something where I could interact with those that were making policy change or really boots on the ground. So again, through prayerful listening although I didn’t want to burn any bridges either, they at Department of Energy really helped me get connected to a small ethanol lobbyist. 

Ethanol back then was just a few million gallons. It was kind of a boutique fuel really was just getting off the ground. There was no some of these other fuels that I’m going to talk about today, there weren’t any. I was also offered other jobs.

As most kids graduating. You applied for several jobs. I had several job opportunities for some larger consulting firms and I chose through prayer and listening to pass up those opportunities to work for this small ethanol consulting lobbying group, because I felt like that’s really the direction I was being called to go into.

This job didn’t have a lot of benefits. One of the guys that work I worked for, he said, you got to work eight hours to get paid a very minimal wage. And then the rest of the eight hours that you have to put in for Uncle Sam. So you guys get the idea, but it was a really cool experience.

I get to go see go to the White House several times under the Bush and Clinton administration got to see a lot of behind the scenes through how a bill is made, got to go to some inaugural balls, a couple of inaugural balls. That was fun, but it, but it also sometimes it’s, it’s kind of funny when we’re praying, as if you kind of stay prayed up God has a way of creating opportunities for you.

So a sister company kind of scooped me up and I without again, burning any bridges, but it was at a time when the energy bill first passed on the Bill Clinton administration and they needed to help starting up some alternative fuel hotlines and a clean national clean cities program, which I got to be a key consultant on and now have been consulting for 30 years under that program.

And that’s again prayer in action, right? 

Robin Jones: That program’s grown too, right? 

Jill Hamilton: I mean, it’s, it has grown there’s about 88 of them. And every major city is participating in that program. Yes. And that’s to help establish grant that give grants out and also help create opportunities at the local level.

I’ve told a lot of students about that’s a great place to get started in this field too. So moved on from this ethanol lobbyist to a small consulting firm, but I got to work on this national program. And that was great. It gave me experience about how to bid a contract, how to negotiate a contract, lots of small business skills that allowed me to now do what I do today.

But I was working like 50 to 70 hours a week. I couldn’t keep a date with my husband. I was flying 50,000 miles a year. It just wasn’t right. I felt like there was a need to change. It wasn’t balanced. 

I prayed and listened and that prayer, took a little while.

So I had to continue to pray and listen. Sometimes when we do that, we might doubt our prayer that it was going to be answered.

I was actually training for a marathon and running with a Christian Science friend and he reminded me that God needs to unfold your plan.

Sometimes it takes some unfolding. You need to just listen and watch. And during this period, I did again, have several job offers, but they just didn’t seem to fit for me. And so I ended up we went out to rebid it on a big contract and this is one that we’re currently managing and ended up that this small consulting firm didn’t get it.

So what that did is it allowed me to step away and start my own consulting. And I couldn’t have done that. I might’ve burned bridges. I might’ve upset people had I walked away without giving it my all. Everybody I was managing at the time either worked for the company that got the contract or they started their own consulting or they took that next step in their career path.

So it didn’t hurt anybody. It was actually God’s way of creating this opportunity for me to start my own consulting. So that’s kind of the pathway on which I kind of got to where I am and I couldn’t have done it without, of course the loving support of my dear husband too. I gotta give him a shout out.

Robin Jones: Thank you for all the husbands that are out there and I know your dear husband and he is a very dear man. I’ve owned several businesses and there’s always challenges with that.

And it’s so impressive that it’s such a young part of your career that you moved into that place with great courage. One of the first questions when you start your own business, having had to write some of those checks myself and wondering, okay, where is this going to really come from?

And sometimes you’re paying your employees before you pay yourself. In fact, that was always my approach. I took care of them first, before I took care of me, because that’s how it should be done.

You put this up here as a how to meet payroll. I love thinking about that.

There’s a lot of students that graduate, or recent graduates, and they start to think about starting their own business and thinking about how I can move. And they even today get out of school and they go, I’m going to start my own business, you know? 

So I thought this would be a really good topic to think about and address, and take a few minutes to talk about some of the things about owning a business.

Jill Hamilton: It’s so true. I will answer this by saying one of my colleagues who’s been with me 20, I’ve been in business about 22 years and she’s been with me the whole time. And we judge that based on my oldest, how old he was. Cause that’s kind of when I started about, I was about 30 years old. 

She commented, Jill, it doesn’t matter what happens. Whenever something seems to be ending, you always seem to find a new work for us. How is that? And I said, that’s divine direction right there. 

Mary Baker Eddy says, I’m going to read a quote to you, in scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all. As Jesus showed with the loaves and fishes, Spirit, not matter being the source of supply. 

That’s so true. If we’re truly trusting that God is governing us on a daily basis, governing our business and that we are listening for direction, that we are going to find it.

And those loaves and fishes are going to jump into our nets, so to speak. And that’s certainly been the case for me. I’ve been very grateful that I really haven’t had any dull time. Even though it might seem that it’s going to happen as contracts close, there’s always been something else to fill that, but that comes through being kind of prayed up if you will.

Robin Jones: I also know that in the course of your business and your practice, I am sure that you occasionally run across some of those difficult situations. And I love how you attach this healing of personal sense. I think that’s a really neat way to think about that. Tell us a little bit about what you mean by healing personal sense? 

Jill Hamilton: That’s one of my favorites and I really need to submit this one. I think I’ve even written it up and I need to submit it to the periodicals. 

It doesn’t matter what your business, I think there’s times that there’s a seeming friction between personalities, quote unquote human personalities and those never go well. When we’re in that human trying to reason things out. 

I had a client who has been my client for 10 years at that point who, for whatever reason, we’ve always had no problem, renegotiating contracts this particular year. I don’t know whether we were trying something new and the way in which we manage the contract.

I was getting a lot of resistance to the point where I actually cried and I never cry over anything, but it was very upsetting. And then I realized I tried to go back and forth with them until I stopped and prayed and got myself out of the way. And really tried to trust that he is a child of God.

He’s listening to God’s voice, not just Jill that I needed to really hear what he had to say and understand it and not try to solve it, but just understand it. And as soon as I was humbled by that situation, took myself out of the equation and let God do the talking. Then that’s when I really found that answer.

Mary Baker, Eddy writes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love with capital L will force you to accept what best promotes your growth. 

I thought I knew what best promoted my growth and that didn’t get me anywhere. So I really had to listen and humbly ask God for that resolution.

It truly was God’s voice that brought us together and solved that problem. Never had any problems since then. That’s one of my issues of how to handle a difficult client. It could be staff as well. It’s whenever you prayerfully, let Love guide, you find that answer 

Robin Jones: I thought this third point, protection in the form of technology and client diversification… that’s a mouthful. Tell us a little bit about that. 

Jill Hamilton: This business has been around for 22 years. In that period, as you heard, there’s some times when things get quieter and then they pick back up. 

Over the past few years, that still small voice was telling me, I needed to look at diversifying what we did and how we did it and trying to figure out, well, what does that look like?

Of course human doubt likes to jump in and say, well, you don’t know much about that, or you’re not in that space. You can’t do that, but that’s just mortal sense again, right? That’s just not trusting our supply to God, but this reiteration kept coming to me about trying to diversify what we did and boy, did I really see a lot of growth in that? 

Not only do we go from being biofuels, transportation, but now we’re doing liquid hydrogen, green hydrogen, we’re doing hydroprojects, hydro as in water, to renewable electricity to a solar project. I’m a solar developer. Who knew! All those things couldn’t have come about without having a sense of that supply being God derived.

Robin Jones: I love all of those things. Those are really great points. I think now we should take a few minutes and start diving into the subjects. There is a lot on this slide.

Jill Hamilton: It’s really helpful to understand where we’re going if we understand where we’ve come from. 

Let’s take a look back to 2013. That’s about eight years ago, and I want you all in the audience to think about, well, how has it, how has our energy use in the United States going to change in eight years? So this is a Lawrence Livermore Lab. They do this pathways of energy.

So on the left is all the energy feedstocks or forms of energy that go into the different sources of how we use that energy, whether it’s electricity, residential, commercial, industrial, or transportation. And of course, as you’ve heard, I’m primarily in the transportation space, but let’s just look at this for a second on the left.

Well, before we go to the left that 97.4 quads of energy, let’s just bump that up to a hundred. It makes it easy from a math standpoint to think about. All the inputs on the left are percentages. So solar is less than a third of a percent. Hydro is 2.5%. Wind is 1.6. Geothermal is 0.2, natural gas is about 26. Coal 18, biomass is 4.5% and petroleum is 35. 

All these different lines are showing you where those inputs are going and how they’re being used. 

One of the ones that’s fascinating to me is that we think of a lot of electricity going into transportation, but it’s it’s 0.025%. It’s very tiny. 

Biofuels is about 1.2 quads of energy. So that gives you a little perspective on how is our energy being used. Now let’s flip it to the next slide. 

 Total renewable quads is about nine quads of energy in that last one. So here, unfortunately, it’s cutting off the top, but it’s for 2021 and it’s about the same quads of energy.

So not to worry, for all intents and purposes, our energy hasn’t changed. 

Now, in reality, if we hadn’t had a pandemic or our energy use was going up every year. And so we’re seeing it, it actually level off, but in reality, we’re probably going to see this pick back up in the next few years. So every year we tend to grow in our energy demand.

One of the biggest questions I have for you is did your prediction come true? Did you expect the changes that occurred in these eight years? 

I’m going to point it out. So solar’s quadrupled. Huge. That’s great, but it’s only 1.5% of our energy use. Hydro really hasn’t changed. 

Coal dropped in half, nearly in half.

That to me is pretty significant. That’s a huge change in eight years that we’ve taken this dirty coal and, and mostly converted it to natural gas use. So natural gas went up. Biomass went up slightly and petroleum really hadn’t changed. But to me, one of the things that’s most interesting, again, out of this is that this the electric power into transportation, which is an issue in my space really hasn’t changed.

I was really surprised to see that there’s so much energy and research and promotion going into this area, but really hadn’t seen a lot of movement yet in that space. 

I just want to give you a lay of the land before we start talking about some of the biofuels.

Robin Jones: This whole biofuel thing is really interesting to me. I’m a farm boy. And so talking about that is fun. I read this article just the other day about fuel for jet engines. And it’s like a biofuel for that. That just seems incredible to me.

What are biofuels? 

Jill Hamilton: When I first got involved in bio-fuels remember, I’ve mentioned that professor telling me trees and grasses can be, that’s ethanol. You can convert any kind of biomass into ethanol.

Now we have as part of a regulation, 10% of transportation fuel in your life due to market is ethanol. When you go to fill up your car, you probably notice a sticker that says this fuel contains 10% ethanol. That didn’t exist 30 years ago. 

Robin Jones: Has ethanol changed at all, in terms of its formula? There used to be a lot of criticism, it’s going to junk up my carburetor or fuel injectors. Has it gotten better?

Jill Hamilton: That is a misunderstanding out there. Back in the eighties there was some swelling of hoses and rubbers, et cetera. There were some problems in those early days.

If you have a boat that isn’t designed for ethanol, you can still have those issues. You really need to be careful. 

But as far as any vehicle, 2001 and newer, it’s designed to run on E15. Most flex fuel vehicles can run on up to 85% ethanol.

I think in the future, you’re going to see some more hybrid technologies that allow higher blends as well. 

Biodiesel is something that came out of a need for waste oil out of the soybean industry. They had a glut of oil and they needed a higher value market for it. 

It didn’t really move so much in the food industry. 

The soybean industry developed this biodiesel and it’s a very simple chemical process. We have it in about 5% of our diesel market. 

Renewable diesel and sustainable aviation gas are more traditional hydrocracking processes, similar to what we do with petroleum today, but just swapping out crude oil for our renewable feedstocks.

You’re going to see some investments over this next decade in green hydrogen that could either be used in transportation or in things like aviation or even rail or marine, which is harder to use electric power.

Can’t go across the nation or across the ocean in electric power. We need a liquid fuel. 

What are these biofuels made out?

Most people know ethanol is made out of cornstarch. You can also now take that distiller’s corn oil and make it into biodiesel.

You’re not taking oil that would be fed to animals, that’s still available. Anything that’s excess, they’re pulling out and making it into biodiesel. 

We’ve got soybean oil. I mentioned that’s been a kind of a waste product and that’s now being used in, and now they’re growing a lot more soybeans and there’s so much of a need for biofuels that now we’re even short in supply.

We’re looking at possibly crushing more soy beans in the United States, instead of sending them to China, for example. We’re looking at crushing them here to keep that oil here and sending the crushed meal over instead. 

Barley is also been used for ethanol, camelina, and canola oil. 

Animal fats, again, a waste product that had a low value is now being used. And about 95% of our restaurant grease is all going into the production of biodiesel. Talk about a hundred percent waste product being used and recycled. 

So fun for me interested in sustainability, seeing that happen is really a lot of fun.

Robin Jones: That’s pretty remarkable really to think about all of that excess going into something that’s productive and something that you actually use and is being used. 

Jill Hamilton: Yeah, 20, 25 years ago, you did not see that. It’s all because of this growing need for sustainable energy. 

Robin Jones: Talk to us about what’s on the horizon.

Jill Hamilton: So this is just a few. Corn oil I mentioned a moment ago. They’re now looking at ways to extract it. There are a couple of things, you can extract it out before you do other processes to make ethanol. So you can get a little bit more out. You’re not changing the crop, but you’re changing the extraction process.

The seed industry is also looking at ways of growing crops in such a way to produce more oil. 

Cotton seed oil really hasn’t been used, but now they’re looking at that. 

Algae has been on the horizon for a while, there’s such an abundance of it, but it’s still not profitable without some incentives. It could very much produce a lot of feed stock for us if we get the right incentives.

In place Cornetta cover crest. I’m going to talk if we have time later about some sustainable ag practices, cover crest is a cover crop, which is a more sustainable way of growing and doing agriculture.

And we’re now looking at seeing these feedstocks come into play for biofuels there being normally it keeps soil in place and keeps green on the ground instead of just leaving a fallow field. And if we can use those crops now to produce oil, we’re going to have a lot more feed stock.

Robin Jones: Pretty interesting, we had a giant snow storm right after Christmas and just wiped out unbelievable amounts of trees, and it didn’t really matter if it’s a hardwood or softwood.

It just took them out. And on the side of the highway, there were stacks and stacks and stacks of trees and they they were chipping them. 

We do have a lumber mill here in town and I thought for sure they would log it, but no, they chipped it up and it makes me wonder, I wonder if it was going towards some sort of biomass product? 

Jill Hamilton: Most likely not bioenergy, very unlikely. But there is some, there’s some.

I do have a client right now that’s looking at a hydrothermal liquefaction, which is similar to making a bio crude that can make sustainable aviation or renewable diesel out of it. We’re in the equity fundraising stage of that project, but that’s a billion dollar project. It’s going to take a little while. It’s expensive to do these projects. 

Robin Jones: I look at all this stuff and I think I’m perfectly fine filling up my car, going to the gas station, putting it in. I have a hybrid, so why should I care about all this other stuff? 

Jill Hamilton: With the high energy prices right now, everybody’s wondering why aren’t we doing more?

It does keep consumer prices down the pump and believe it or not ethanol in particular for light duty is better for your vehicle. The higher the octane, the better it is for your engine. If you understand much of that ethanol as a high octane, and it does really work better for your vehicle. A lot of people put out a lot of misinformation out there. 

From a standpoint of a consumer it’s cheaper and better for your engine. 

Biodiesel is about on par with diesel fuel, but you get it. It reduces imported oil. I think that’s a pretty straightforward one. We’re not sending our money to invest in other countries. We’re keeping that money here. 

Low cost pathway to carbon reductions. A lot of very smart people have done analysis on it, MIT Fuels Institute, are saying that we have a lot of legacy vehicles, the ones Robin you’re driving, the one I’m driving, are going to be on the road for awhile. 

Right now we need something that’s sustainable for those vehicles until we replace them with something better for the environment.

And in the meantime, we need to have low carbon fuels. And this is a cost-effective way of doing it.

It boosts rural economies. Basically we’ve lost about 50% of our rural economies over the past 40 or 50 years. Keeping jobs in rural economies, high paying jobs is a wonderful thing to do and biofuels is a great way to do that.

And it’s out competing other technologies in the carbon and low carbon and clean energy space. And we’ll get into that in a minute.

Robin Jones: I love what you said about helping rural economies. That’s where I grew up. You didn’t really as a student who graduated high school, becoming a farmer, the stigma was, well, if you do that, guess what, you may not have the kind of income that you want.

And so that was kind of always the challenge. It’s like, well, if I do that, I’m never going to make any money at all, you know? So it’s nice to hear that. 

Jill Hamilton: A lot of the farmers have invested in these plants and are receiving additional income from it if they’re a co-op of some sort. 

Robin Jones: We live in California and, we have some of the most comprehensive policies and laws as it relates to sustainable energy and sometimes they feel a little onerous sometimes, frankly. What does it look like across that landscape? 

Jill Hamilton: I call it paying for the true cost of our fuel there, Robin, I know it’s a little onerous, but it really is trying to assign a value for what we want to do in terms of making fuels more sustainable.

Federally what’s driving biofuels is the Energy Policy Act and the renewable fuel standard that’s in there and actually passed in 2015 under Bush. And then two years later, he signed another bill to revise it, to expand that program. So that’s been around for awhile. And it’s really what drives it at a federal level.

Here in Fairfax, Virginia, where I am, that’s what is driving it and I’m not in California, but California has its own incentives. Right? 

The farm bill, which is revised every five years is another thing that creates a lot of the loan guarantees that allow us to produce these technologies, bring them to market from a production standpoint.

It also provides grants, loans and research, other things that are really good that help us keep, keep these technologies going. You mentioned the low carbon fuel standard and you’re in California, that’s the gold standard for low carbon policies in the United States and Oregon and Washington have both adopted them.

Some states have biofuel policies and actually a lot of the states now have biofuel policies. I think Illinois and Iowa, Iowa just signed their bill today. Illinois, signed a bill a couple of weeks ago, renewing some tax credits and incentives for biofuels. 

The gold standard is this low carbon fuel standard.

And we are seeing the west coast states have adopted it and we’re seeing it come up in New York. So some heating oil and policies and Vermont and others, but the states can have as much of an influence as the feds on this, but those are the major ones. 

Robin Jones: Well, I thought this was an interesting slide. Tell us a little bit the numbers and kind of what this means. 

Jill Hamilton: Okay. So what you’re seeing on the left there is the renewable fuel standard that I mentioned, the federal policy that’s driving the use in our transportation liquid fuels market. And the one on the right is how it’s playing out in reality.

And I apologize, I didn’t put up a more recent one, but I like the parallel between these and I don’t have one with more recent numbers. 

The goal of the policy is to displace 25% of our petroleum use with renewables by 2022. Well, here we are in 2022.

So we should have about 36 billion gallons of displaced fuel, but we’re really at about 20 billion. So why not? Why aren’t we needing that? Right. The biggest reason in the corn ethanol, we would, we would do more if corn ethanol wasn’t capped at 15 billion gallons, but that’s why the lower green is capped at 15 that’s your corn ethanol.

Your blue line is your advanced biofuels. And most of that’s being met with our biodiesel renewable diesel. And then the biomass based diesel is also your biomass that you can fit in either category. It really depends on where the incentive credit is. The dark brown is our cellulosic biofuels.

 I mentioned trees and grasses to energy. That’s your cellulosic biofuel. And the reason that hasn’t come to fruition as everybody hoped is because EPA has the discretion to modify or not move forward with policy. So if there aren’t investments made and they don’t require that the petroleum industry who are the obligated parties under this bill, they don’t require the purchase the cellulosic biofuel and that kind of what do you call it? A catch 22 or a chicken and egg problem. 

This is where it’s important to have proper incentives for those new technologies to bring them to market.

Robin Jones: Do you see a move and a trend toward that direction? I would love to hear more debate, more things about that. But from the insider’s view, do you see that happening? 

Jill Hamilton: Well with this administration we do. And we’re seeing a lot of, especially you mentioned sustainable aviation fuel. This administration wants to basically do electrification for the light duty market, but what do you do for the heavy duty market?

And especially those harder to modify policies like technologies like rail and aviation and marine. And this is where they’re moving investments into those spaces. 

We’re hoping that that that will include more feedstocks. I’m hopeful that we’re going to get a lot more movement in that direction in these next 10 years. 

Robin Jones: What are some of the challenges moving forward? And by the way, those of you that are out there, there’s a lot of technical things here, but, we really wanted to kind of dive into this. We have a lot of students that are interested.

We wanted to dive into some of the specifics, but if you have any questions, be sure that you type them in the Q and A. Tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you see going forward.

Jill Hamilton: If there was a silver bullet, we would be doing it already. So all of these new technologies, these change the way we do the status quo, it requires effort. And that isn’t without problems. I don’t want to say that biofuels are without problems. 

I mentioned the need for expanded feed stock. Land use change. Right now, in the United States, the low carbon fuel policies require us to monitor land use change associated with biofuels. 

Some people debate whether or not feedstocks, such as corn, that use a lot of oil and a lot of fertilizer and a lot of water, are those sustainable? Can we scale to meet the demands?

Are we going to be able to not only have the technology, but the feedstocks?

Public policy makes a difference. If we don’t have the right policies in place, things stagnate as you saw with the renewable fuel standard. 

Robin Jones: So I do have a question that Nancy submitted and she says, ask about concerns over bio fuel redirecting of crops from food to biofuel. Do you see that as a problem, you see it as a real issue? 

Jill Hamilton: I of course am a biofuels advocate. So I’m going to have a biofuels spin, full disclosure. But most of these crops are grown for food and fuel and that’s a big misunderstanding. But all of the energy and all the carbon benefits are all going towards the energy use and not the food use of those crops.

Are we growing crops for fuel rather than food? And of course my answer is no. And why? 

If you look at this trend on acreage in the United States, after the renewable fuel standard passed in 2005, and 2007, if you look at the number of farms and the acres in farmland, it’s going down.

So that really doesn’t marry with this fear that we’re not going to have enough land for food. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pay attention to it. And there are some real challenges with land use change.

Deforestation is a real problem in some countries. Brazil, for example, is doing a lot of deforestation. So here we are, our policies United States protect against us importing these feedstocks that are coming from Brazil.

We can’t control Brazil’s policy. What we can control is how we do business with Brazil and what are we doing to incentivize them to grow sustainably, as opposed to deforestation.

This particular slide shows that that land use change. Isn’t related it’s burdened on the, on the biofuels, but it has no burden on if we are to do more oil.

And right now, as much as Biden doesn’t want to admit it, they want to produce more oil in the United States. And so this is, this is actually Alberta, Canada, but the message is still the same that then if you go after oil, you can clear cut whatever you want. There’s no obligation to hold them accountable to environmental policies. That needs to change.

This is another example of the tar sands, whereas beautiful meandering Creek and in the background and just stripped it off. Acres and acres of it. That’s another one. Just keep going. And this, this one is same thing, oil spills. If we’re doing a lot more to get oil out of the ground and don’t hold these companies accountable although we’re holding the biofuels initially accountable, that is not really equitable.

And you need to address that from a public policy standpoint. The Gulf oil spill in 2010 costs 41 billion pounds of damages. Same thing with solar. As I mentioned, I do solar development, but if we’re clear cutting forests and you can bounce the next one, Robin.

It’s not appropriate. It’s not the intention of the policy to clear cut forests to put up our solar, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it translates down to the developer. And so we have to put proper public policies in place or local ordinances. In Virginia, we’re looking at doing this and I think they’re doing it in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, I believe as well.

You can’t, you can’t take farmland. You can’t cut down forests existing from a forestry to, to put up a solar farm. So that compromises how we look at doing solar. So I I’ve kind of gone off a little bit on a tangent, but the upshot about the food versus fuel is that we are growing soybeans and corn to do both feed the world and provide fuel.

It’s not one or the other it’s synergistic. 

Robin Jones: Chris asked the question it doesn’t look like in the model and curve you showed it doesn’t look like a reduction in petroleum, but more of absorbing the growth in need with renewable alternatives.

What about reducing the need for energy? What about, yeah. What about local audience? It’s so funny. I got a buddy of mine being from Texas. We see these giant trucks and he says, Robin, I can’t believe how big these trucks are getting and how much tonnage and how big the tires are. When you start doing all that, the weight, I think there’s a good point about that.

How, what about reducing energy and then localizing energy to reduce the costs of transmission shipping and distribution. So what do you say to Chris? 

Jill Hamilton: I say amen brother, Easier said than done. I mean, I would like to see us do more in, and no question that we are trying again, this is where public policy and incentives, if there was an incentive to to, to do those things for, for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, they could do that through efficiency improvements, whether it’s proper tires or teaching drivers, how to drive better or being more local in their economies and how they purchase it.

But we also have to plan for I will tell you population growth hasn’t slowed down and energy demand is not slowing down. So what do you do if it isn’t? And that doesn’t mean that we don’t address efficiency, we should continue to do it. And I I’ve written many efficiency grants. There are some, but they’re small they’re for like $20,000 to $250,000, maybe half a million dollar project.

But most of these projects to do efficiency improvements, cost a whole lot more than that. If you’re talking about changing the way we do the way we do business. 

Robin Jones: So do you think that there really is an opportunity here for biofuels?

Jill Hamilton: So we mentioned the California low carbon fuel standard is kind of the creme de la creme or the gold standard. And this slide depicts how it’s from 2019, but it really hasn’t changed too much since then. As to how a low carbon fuel standard basically sets the policy of reducing carbon and it ramps up year after year, and biofields continue to meet the majority of that need.

So if you look at this graphic, the 39, 26 and 15% are all renewable feed stocks and 10% is ethanol and 9% is biomethane. That’s renewable natural gas. 1% is other, I’m not sure what that is. Maybe a sufficient data now, but my point about this is that we have a lot of those legacy vehicles on the road and that they can be running today on renewables and continue to ramp that up.

It doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to continue to see a migration to electric or other more sustainable pathways besides an internal combustion engine or a diesel engine. But while we have this technology in play, we’re going to sit and still need a role and an increasing role for biofuels. 

Robin Jones: So Jervis, he asks a great question. Is there a possibility to use waste food for biofuels? 

Jill Hamilton: I think that biomethane is doing that. You can digest that stuff into biomethane. You can also we’re looking at, I have a client that’s using a it’s it’s somewhat related. So you take a waste products that have oils in it. And I’m going to excuse me for saying this, but I call it the cream of the crap.

So it’s taking municipal solid waste for example, and taking the oils out of that. So yes, we can use pathways such as waste food and, and digest it either into biomethane or extract out oils. Again, the incentives need to be there, but the carbon market needs to be there. Somebody asked earlier about all right, food and fuel.

This is my one slide that I use. There there’s two points on this slide. One is that the majority of that soybean is still going to meal. Proteins and carbohydrates are all going to feed mostly livestock. Only 20% of that bean is being used to extract out for oil for biofuel, whatever biofuel you pick. But all of the carbon value is assigned to that 20% oil.

So when we think about how are we looking at carbon policies in the future and how do we is it fair that biofuel and it’s grown for food and fuel, but yet all of the carbon is going to the fuel portion of it. That’s not really a fair way of cutting the pie if you all are placing the burden.

So I would like to see public policy address that in the future and for us to make sure we realize that we’re not just doing food or fuel it’s food and fuel. So there you have it. 

Robin Jones: I just love the idea of partnerships and working towards a common goal where you can bring people together and have good discussions about things that can benefit us.

Jill Hamilton: Well, this particular partnership, I just finished a a hundred million dollar grant application. I’m glad you wanted to talk about this. I’m so excited about where agriculture is going and how it’s going to impact the biofuels industry. But also agriculture is going to affect the, this project is also, our program is also going to affect the way we grow foods, the way we use fiber in our clothing, et cetera, the entire supply chain.

USDA has put out a billion dollars to create this marketplace where not only the farmers can go, but also those that want those smart climate smart agricultural products. So from my industry, the biofuels industry wants these practices, these sustainable crops that are grown, maybe with cover crops or with less water or fertilizer And these practices have to be, have a third-party validation, but that’s what this platform is going to do.

And then we can bid on and buy or offer up that we want to buy these commodities through this platform, and this is going to change the way we look at agriculture. And so I’m so excited that we finally are getting, if not through policy, through it consumer driven incentives, some of the changes we need to see.

Robin Jones: Let’s talk about professional opportunities for the future and what’s happening now. Tell us a little bit about this. 

Jill Hamilton: There are jobs in pretty much any industry you go in, any fields you go into in, in sustainability, whether it’s stem jobs, if you’re into engineering, I would direct you to those that are doing engineering, communications and training.

I work with national trade groups and even most businesses have communications teams that deal with sustainability now and actually an environmental justice. ESG is becoming a real important part of business nowadays, and you’re actually, many of the contracts can be held. You as a public corporation, can your sustainability goals can almost be considered legally binding.

So communications and public outreach is important. Already mentioned all the policies that are around these fuels. These aren’t going to come to fruition without a lot of public policy. 

These are just a couple of websites of either businesses that are in this space, either in renewable energy or the clean, I mentioned the clean cities program earlier.

They have a lot of internships through the clean cities program through Argonne National Lab. I didn’t put Argonne up here, but the Clean Cities Program can connect you with them.

Robin Jones: It sounds like we have a bright future for yeah, it, it sounds pretty awesome.

I did want to ask you a couple of quick questions here as a follow-up. Some of this sounds a bit daunting, like way over my head and overwhelming, and it’s like, how’s this going to impact my life? 

We’re already having all kinds of challenges because as we read the newspapers every day, so can we actually meet today’s energy crisis. And can we meet the climate things that people keep talking about? What are your thoughts about that? 

Jill Hamilton: Oh, this is a great question, Robin and a lot of students have asked me that too. They always become fearful that it’s too daunting. 

You have to ask yourself, is there any challenge that’s too big for God to handle?

I’ve got a great quote and I, can I read this quote to you? It’s a Mary Baker Eddy quote that says material substances or mundane formations, astronomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of speculative theories based on the hypothesis of material law or life and intelligence resident in matter will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of Spirit.

There are many other quotes about infinite intelligence that Mary Baker Eddy talks about intelligence that it’s derived from God. And that there’s infinite capacity if we turn that over to God. And so I believe that there’s infinite ways in which we can meet this problem if we don’t get stumbled up on fear and personal sense getting in the way. 

Robin Jones: I appreciate knowing that, hearing that, certainly from your perspective. So it sounds like that may be business as usual is not, is not in our best interest.

And it sounds like there really does need to be that, as you mentioned earlier, kind of that symposium, that people come together and look to try to solve and, and find ways to figure this out. And, and you’re saying it’s not too big to solve. 

Jill Hamilton: It’s not too big to solve. There are lots of pathways we can reduce carbon if the climate changes your fear, whether it’s sustainable agriculture or woody biomass, or what have you, but we do need to get the right incentives out there and we can do that. 

Robin Jones: It’s been really wonderful. If any of you have any questions, you can reach out to me, robin@albertbakerfund.org and I’m happy to reach out to Jill, or you can contact her directly.

It’s really important as you can see, Jill talked about how Albert Baker Fund helped her when she was going through school.

We help students every single year and have been for over 50 years. So we’d love to ask you all and your friends and family to invest in the education of young Christian Scientists is so very, very important to help these students pursue a degree in sustainability and whatever else they might want to be sustaining.

Please take a moment to come to the Albert Baker Fund and look at investing in our youth. Is so very, very important as you can see. We have a shining example of Jill who is doing incredible things an incredible leader in a very, very important and current topic in the world. So that kind of shows you what you get when you do make that investment.

It’s pretty remarkable. 

Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 

Jill, you have had some very inspiring things today to say a lot of really good information. There is no doubt that you are casting your net on the right side. And we just want to tell you, thank you so much from the bottom of our heart for being willing to help for being a mentor at the Albert Baker Fund and a Career Ally as well.

So thank you so very much. 

Jill Hamilton: My pleasure, anytime Robin. For you, anything, 

Robin Jones: We so appreciate it and thank you all. It’s great to hear from you and look forward to seeing everyone on the next episode of the Net Effect. Have a great weekend, everyone.

“…it’s really about what you do every day and not what you do just in a transaction.”

About Our Guests in this episode:

Peter Fletcher of Alameda, California, has more than 30 years experience selling residential and investment properties, and is an expert negotiator in the multiple-offer settings typical of the San Francisco Bay Area real estate market. He is a trained mediator and is currently enrolled in a master’s program in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peace-Building. Peter graduated from Principia College with a bachelor’s degree in History. In his free time he loves being a “rock ‘n roll” DJ for parties, events, and class reunions.

Peter will be joined by Greg McLane of Dallas, Texas, a commercial real estate broker with a focus on developing and overseeing large, urban, mixed-use projects in Dallas, San Antonio, Tulsa, and Kansas City. Greg has impressive knowledge of all aspects of corporate real estate functions–from leasing office space, to appraising property, and selling surplus industrial facilities. Greg has n MBA in real estate from Southern Methodist University and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Principia College. He is currently chair of the Board of Trustees for Chestnut Hill Benevolent Association.

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The replay of our September career conversation with Dan LaBar, innovative educator and community-builder, is now available in video, podcast, and transcript. Click “Watch Net Effect Replays” below!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin Jones: This Net Effect is episode 49 and we are sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund. The Albert Baker Fund is really there to help those students and the Christian Science community to realize the unlimited possibilities that emerge when Christian Scientists journey together through inspired education and career development.

So, if you want to learn about the Albert Baker Fund, you can find us at AlbertBakerFund.org, and you can see all our amazing programs that we offer. We have a team in Africa that’s dedicated to African students. We help students in Europe, Canada, and the Philippines. And of course in the United States. So again, if you have any questions, please reach out to us through AlbertBakerFund.org.

Without further ado, I’d like to welcome Peter Fletcher and Greg McLean.

So we kind of have a team approach today. I’m very excited about it. So thank you gentlemen, for joining us. 

Peter Fletcher: Thank you Robin.

Greg McLane: Nice to be here. 

Robin Jones: I’m going to tell you a little bit about both of them. So I really wanted to do a real estate Net Effect, and I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to get to people that have different.

Because real estate is so big, there’s so many different pieces to it. I thought it’d be good to bring someone in from the residential side and one from the commercial side. 

Peter is from Alameda, California, and has great deal of experience in selling real estate and investment properties and is a wonderful, wonderful negotiator all throughout the San Francisco bay area.

Greg is from Dallas, Texas, my home city, but Greg is in the commercial real estate side of things and really focuses on overseeing large urban mixed use projects in Dallas, San Antonio, Tulsa, and Kansas City. 

Both of these gentlemen have an incredible and impressive knowledge of their disciplines, and I think you’re going to enjoy hearing their perspectives.

Let’s get started. So Peter, we’re going to have you up first. 

One of the things I wanted to ask you kind of right off the bat was how did you begin your career? How did you get into the real estate business? 

Peter Fletcher: Just before I went into the real estate business, I was in the title industry and I was calling on realtors and trying to help them to make more money and to use our title company. I worked for a couple of them during that period. 

One day I was sitting with a guy who had become friendly with, and he said, you’re on the wrong side of the desk. I said, well, what do you mean? I thought I knew what he meant, but, I, I wasn’t sure if he was telling me I wasn’t doing the job.

And he said, you’ve got the makeup of a real estate agent. And he said, you really should be over here. Well it took me a while to figure that one out. I thought I was where I needed to be. I eventually did come into real estate. I didn’t go to work for him right away, but later I did for a period of time.

It was surprising to me and yet it seemed very natural once I got in. 

Robin Jones: It just seems like there’s an awful lot of things you can choose from on your side of the house. And I tried to put a few of those things together, so that people can kind of get an idea of that.

How did you kind of move into the areas of your expertise? 

Peter Fletcher: Well, if you’re talking about residential real estate, it was always the goal. When I got in commercial seemed like it was a more of a business setting, professionals selling to professionals for professionals. And I saw myself as working in residential, working with just folks, helping them to find homes and income properties and so forth.

Although it’s the same license, Greg and I have the same license except that you’re in one state and I’m in another but it was always residential. 

Robin Jones: I’d like to pass the Baton to Greg and, and kinda ask you the same question, Greg. How, how did you kind of get started in your career?

How did you move from college into commercial real estate? 

Greg McLane: I got a skut job, one summer working for a real estate management company. Cause a friend of ours took pity on me and gave me a summer job. And half the time I was cleaning up the mess at a single’s apartment complex and the other half I was in the office.

And when I was in the office, it looked great. What the people were doing was great. They’d go out and see a property in the morning and come back. And talk to vendors and tenants, and then they’d go out in the afternoon and do some more work. And I said, this is what I want to do. So I was looking for ways to get into the business.

Missed several opportunities. Still had no clue what I was doing. And by the way, I think that’s a keynote. And what Peter and I talked about, there are so many things to do. And so many skillsets involved that I think it’s really difficult. To know what you want to do, but that looked like fun. And I lucked into an interview with Trammell Crow and I completely screwed it up.

And two weeks later you hired me to go lease office space for him and that’s how it started. And I’ve been doing it ever since. And I’ll say the primary difference between what Peter and I do. And we talked about this is just what he said. I typically. We’re dealing with the CEO, the CFO of some corporation or some investor.

That’s got his own money in the deal or a group of a fund or a group of friends. And so we’re working with businesses and we need to understand their business as well as what their needs are in terms of real estate. But I’ll tell you the fundamental. The thing, that’s the same between both of us.

And nobody told me this when I was in school and we laughed about this. I think the most important thing you can get out of college is a lot of relationships that you’re keeping up with because they’re going to come back to serve you later in life. 

Robin Jones: How did you do that? Cause I tell students that, all the time. I talk to them about it, and I coach them up on it. Why is that so important? 

Greg McLane: Everything that Peter and I do is based on relationships. if we don’t know that person, they’re certainly not going to trust us with a large financial transaction.

And we need to know intimately what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and what they’re going to do with the money or where they’re getting the money. You really need to understand people and you need to have a level of trust and believe me, nobody’s going to let you sell their house or buy a house forum or lease office space or buy an office building or build something for them if they don’t think you know what you’re doing, and you have a relationship, they trust 

Robin Jones: Peter, you agree? 

Peter Fletcher: Oh, totally, totally. In fact, one of the things that had felt for a long time since I’ve been in this a long time, is that shooting to be a top producer is really kind of a mythical goal.

Being a trusted agent is something that you can do. It may very well lead you to be the top producer, but that’s not the goal. And I agree completely with Greg. It’s all about relationships. Our reputation is eventually developed because of our relationships and the kind of rapport that we have with people and, and whether or not we do what we say we’re going to do, or whether we just do a lot of talking and eventually wears out.

How do you build some of the relation? What kind of skills and abilities are necessary? Not only just for building relationships. As a career professional in the real estate business. 

Greg McLane: In our world, if you’re afraid to pick up the phone and call a lot of people every day, you should find something else to do.

If you’re not going to be successful because you’re taking rejection badly, you should find something else to do. It is about meeting people. That’s what I said, when you’re in college, you have a lot of friends. You may be in a fraternal organization or you may be in classes with people.

And the more that you can start relationships with those people, the more they will find you later in life. It’s amazing how that turns to that’s just the start. 

I will tell you that my old partner used to say, there’s eight questions you want to ask everybody you meet. 

And they are: 

What do you want to buy? 

What do you want to sell? 

What you have to buy?

What you have to sell?

And then change all those questions to leasing and renting again. The point is, you’re talking to everybody and starting a relationship of some sort with it. 

Don’t you think, Peter? 

Peter Fletcher: I was trying to decide when you asked us earlier Robin to think about what tool set, what do you bring to the business and where do you see people coming from into real estate? 

Probably Greg and I would agree that they come from everywhere. Some people come from finance, some come from teaching, some come from the law. There’s any number of places that people come from and they, they can all do well.

If they bring their skillset with them and they figured out a way to match it up. Mrs. Eddy said something to the effect that, What we need most is growth in grace. And it’s expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds. And I was thinking, that’s really what we do.

We have to be patient. We don’t have the opportunities to just make things happen. We sometimes have to give a little space and let things unfold. Being loving, being caring and certainly good deeds. 

We sell property, whether it’s, in Greg’s world, it might be 30 story building in my world, it could be a condo or a mansion but in either case it’s really about what you do every day and not what you do just in a transaction. 

And so good deeds turned out to be a really good thing to do. When I go out in the morning, I do try to imagine myself being good and doing good for folks.

I have things that are on my list, Greg and I am sure every day have plenty of things to do when we leave the office. But I always think about good deeds. 

Greg McLane: That’s great. I noticed you didn’t say commissions in there somewhere. 

Robin Jones: That’s another question I have, With what’s been happening the last couple of years and the challenges that churches have had, having to be closed and go online and, and people now kind of going, I don’t know if it’s really worth being at church and making the trip down on Sunday morning, I got other things I could do. I could go bliss this house. I could go out and play a golf game. 

So both of you, I know, have wonderful characters. I wonder how has church played a role in your business and helping you stay grounded, stay centered and, and, and has it played a role for you in your business?

Greg McLane: I’ll follow up. 

Peter Fletcher: You could speak generally, or you could speak specifically. I was thinking about that question before I tuned in today and I remembered a situation where I was asked to to come up and sell a home in a city near mine for a woman who was a Christian Scientist who was going to be selling her home and moving in with her sister who was not a Christian Scientist.

There had been somebody else in advance of me trying to sell that home who was also a Christian Scientist. And it hadn’t worked at that point. And when I made my presentation, the sister who wasn’t a Scientist said, When are we going to get an Oakland agent to sell this property? And when are we going to stop seeing a line of Christian Scientists here at all to sell this home?

And I said, well, I’m not sure about that. I made my presentation and I felt good at the time about what I said. And she said, all right, let’s do it. And I got ready for the open house for the first weekend. It was particularly hot. This was in the days when we weren’t staging and that kind of thing, the house was empty.

And I was second reader at my church and I went over there directly after church and I was getting the place open. It was very quiet. It was very hot. There was nowhere to sit and I found myself kind of sinking down to the floor. 

Eventually was sort of almost nodding off. And the thought came to me, is this the best you can do?

And it arouse me and I began to think, and I began to pray and I began to recognize why I was there. And in that day, one person, one family showed up. They were from Alameda where I live, they had come because of an ad that I mistakenly put in the local paper and not the Oakland paper. And they thought, well, let’s go take a look.

Well, those folks ended up buying that house. Years later, they sold it with me, bought another home in Alameda. And a few years after that they sold that home. I think I developed a wonderful relationship with them that lasted many years until they moved away. And it was all because I woke up, and I realized why I was there.

It wasn’t to have a transaction. It was to do the good deeds. I was asleep in the job for a moment and, and woke up and that’s what happened. It’s living proof of when you bring church with you you’re not going to come away empty. 

Greg McLane: Robin, you and I talked about this earlier, but I remember distinctly as a teenager standing in the aisle at church one Sunday, a very successful businessman was there.

And somebody said to him, Al, it’s a beautiful day on the lake. Why aren’t you out on your boat? And Al turned around to him and said, how do you think I got the boat? It’s by being here. You know? What he meant was it was that was his compass. That’s how he got successful was by working on those values. I think of church membership as a discipline that keeps me focused. I’m a pretty good Christian Scientist on my own, but you can’t wallow around in your own problems all the time and be really productive.

And when you go to church, what are we supposed to do? We’re supposed to be praying for the congregation, right? We’re not praying for ourselves. We’re praying for the congregation. It’s putting us into practice against our values. It’s the discipline that gets us where we are. I think that discipline is what you need and the rest of your life to make you successful.

I’ve learned, really only in the last few years, what I’m up against the wall and I have it’s raining pretty hard or it’s dead silent and there’s nothing going on. Or we’ve got a major problem that don’t know how to handle. I will stop, close the door and say, okay, God, what do you want me to do?

Just I get it. I can’t play in this well, I’m not the one Mind you are a, okay, I’m ready to listen now and quit trying to make it happen myself. What do I do? And very often they’ll say, well, why don’t you call Peter Fletcher in San Francisco, Peter Fletcher, why don’t I call him? I don’t want to do that.

And, and then I sit there and the little voice guy comes back and said, excuse me, but you asked me for my help. So do what you want. And I go, okay. And I call Peter Fletcher and it works. It may not be that call to Peter, but it is listening for what Divine Mind is telling me to do next that gets me where I need to go.

I have found that participating in church and using that discipline of Wednesdays and Sundays particularly keeps me in focus. 

Robin Jones: I love that. I talk about the fitness that comes from the work and church. It often challenges me when there’s a discussion about a particular topic that I might have an interest in, and advocating, and others might think, well, that doesn’t make any sense, I don’t know where that guy is coming from. He’s a nut. 

So the ability to be able to, sit together and sense of a fellowship. And that fitness that gets developed, like you were talking about sitting in your office and, and, and listening for God. Those messages I have found, are certainly more forthcoming when I have been working on my mental fitness.

I’ve been working on that side of things that comes from the part of being in church, being active and listening. 

I want to talk a little bit more on education because as that’s what we do here at the Albert Baker Fund.

We support the education and development of Christian Scientists. The education world has just been so turned upside down and there are students and families are trying to figure out, do you need an education or do you need an education for real estate? Do I need an education at all? So I’d like for you both to kind of briefly touch a little bit on your pathway in education.

And if you were someone looking to go into the real estate business today, What would you say to them, about what kind of education should I be getting and what kind of background do I need? Can you, can you kind of kick that off, Greg? 

Greg McLane: Yeah, I can. And I know Peter has like a good adjunct to this too.

I was a theoretical math major in college and it’s got nothing to do with, and I didn’t even want to calculate any numbers because you have to be precise when you do that. That wasn’t my strength. But I did go back to business school. When I got into, when I got into the real estate business, I realized I was working with businesses and I needed some more technical education. 

And I took all of the MAI courses the appraisal Institute courses in there, they were really hard math. I took a CCIM math course continued to stay educated and be in courses because what I do, I have to be able to talk to a CFO or CEO and understand what they’re, what they’re doing. I have to be able to keep up with that.

We’re trying to bring value. We’re talking about demographics and population movements and economic impacts and taxes and all that stuff. That it really goes into the decision, but I I’m telling you, that’s the knife and the fork to get the work done. It’s important, but it’s still all about the relationship.

Robin Jones: Peter, you have very different track that you’ve gone down. 

Peter Fletcher: The three of us all had an experience at Principia College. I was not on track to do that in the traditional age of when I was in high school, I was having a lot of fun, wasn’t practicing Science much.

Consequently, I was kind of a non-achiever and as time moved on and I came into Science as an adult as a young adult and, and saw life opening for me, real estate is what I ended up doing, but it wasn’t where I was going. And when I eventually went to Principia College, it was as a, a young man married with a child.

I was a non-traditional student. I ended up getting a degree in history, which I hated in high school, but by this time I realized that you do well in what you love. And I actually loved certain parts of it more than others, but I did have a wonderful experience, life-changing really experienced at Prin as a young man.

I thought I was finishing my education because I’d never gotten my bachelor’s. I started working very early, but really, it was only the beginning of my, of my education when I went on to do some other things. I’m currently in a master’s program right now at Cal State University Dominguez Hills, which I’m doing online in negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building.

It feels like the next chapter for me, although I never really leave real estate. I do tend to put things on that I feel are, are sort of my next experience. And so that’s where I’m at right now. It’s a wonderful experience. And I think education is, is something that we should all continue to do.

Robin Jones: If someone is interested in getting in either one of yours, respective businesses, what kind of steps do you recommend to kind of help them get started? 

Greg McLane: I would say in our world you probably can’t do that solo. In the first place you need a license and typically you have to have a sales license for a couple of years before you get a broker’s license.

There are so many aspects. Most of what Swearingen Realty does is represent corporate tenants. So we go only represent the tenant, not the landlord, we’re all over the country. We’re doing leases and purchases for them and helping them with their real estate needs for their company locations all over the United States.

There’s a whole different industry of people who represent the landlords only. There’s a investment sales there’s okay. Which kind of property type do you want to do? You want to do retail, industrial, office, multifamily. It’s all different. So you, you sort of have to find out what’s available, what you’re good at, and you really need to be with some sort of a team.

My second job, I was making sales calls every day to tenants in Dallas. It was my first job at my second job. When I left that was with a big corporation. And I learned a whole lot of things working for a big corporation that you don’t learn just on your own. 

And that worked because I was going to be working with corporate clients, but I think it’s individual and it depends where you’re going and what you want to do, how you get there.

I don’t think you can start out on your own. I think it really helps to have a team showing you the ropes and telling you what you need to know. In our world, we start new guys out and if they come onto a client that’s going to be useful, then they pick up other team members that are here that have the experience to complete the deal.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah, that’s true in residential as well. It’s difficult to do anything on your own other than to Google things and start looking finding the way to take and pass your real estate exam is the beginning of things. Talking with real estate brokers who have offices and who necessarily are training folks to be in the business is a really good thing to do.

Almost everybody knows a realtor. So I would talk to those people that I know, who will tell me honest answers, because everything that one does is not, an easy path. 

I’d be hard pressed to ever leave real estate completely. But over the years there are times that we are growing and we’re working through issues.

Hopefully the challenges are not overcoming and that we can actually learn and become better and stronger through it. There are lots of challenges in real estate, whether it’s residential or commercial. I agree with Greg completely that we need to have help of others to to give us some helping hand. 

Anybody who wants to reach out to either of us through you, Robin, I’m sure we would be happy to help with getting them started finding some of these avenues. 

Robin Jones: Well, I appreciate that. 

Greg McLane: Peter, if I could add one more thing, I think we’ve got to go into this. Whether you’re going to be an analyst, whether you’re going to be a property manager, whether you’re going to be a broker, you are building your own business from the ground up.

And you have to be willing to put in the time and the hours and make it happen. You are alluding to that. It takes a lot of hard work. And if you’re going to go in and think you’re going to work a 40 hour week and be successful, that’s probably not going to work out for you too well, because whether you’re working for a company or an independent broker, you’re building a business and building a team around you, whether they work for you directly or not. 

You gotta be willing to put in the time and the effort to build that company that doesn’t just happen. Being an employee, there’s lots of places to just be an employee. But most people coming into real estate want to do more than that.

They want to build things. They want to sell things, they want to be their own person. 

Robin Jones: We’ve seen folks in the last several years in particular with students or recent grads who feel like, they don’t know what to do. They feel so overwhelmed. They’re not sure where to go. They don’t know if there’s a future. 

They’re thinking that this is the only time this has ever happened. This is an incredible unreal thing that that was never planned. I didn’t plan on this. I wasn’t taught how to handle this. I am sure that both of you in your career have had challenges that at the time seem like there was not an answer. There was no way to get through it. The world was collapsing. And in fact, as we listen to the news tonight, we’re all paying attention to what’s going over across the big pond over there.

Can you guys talk a little bit about maybe a specific place in looking back, where you thought it was just collapsing all around you and you found a way through it. Maybe Peter, you can take that one first. 

Peter Fletcher: When I came into real estate the market was very healthy as they say.

And I got busy right away and I thought it was going to be really easy. During the next six months, the interest rates went from, and this is going to be scary because we are interest rates now when they get into four and five, everybody thinks we’re having a problem. But the interest rates when I came in were nine and three quarters, as I recall over the next six to nine months, they went up to as high as 20%, believe it or not.

And I thought I was out of business. Nobody was calling I was calling nobody was doing anything. It seemed like the only people who are doing real estate were people who’d been at it a long time and recognized that you could buy and wait for this whole thing to go by and refinance your properties, and you’ll be just fine.

But I was a young guy and I didn’t know better. And so I took every job I could find that would allow me to continue to show real estate. And I think I had about five jobs. It was silly but it’s, it was what I thought at the time. And as time went on, you begin to realize that there’s really only one place to turn.

If you’re dealing in a world of fear, call it what you will, but if it’s really fear, then just say it right out loud. And if that’s the case, Work on that and get to that place where you can make an intelligent move forward, no matter whether the market is up or down or sideways, and that step will lead you to another step and another.

And the next thing, you’re busy and that’s kind of what happened with me.

Greg McLane: I still have nightmares so I can tell you exactly. I talked to a guy that used to land jets on aircraft carriers, and he said he still has nightmares about having to qualify for night landings in a storm.

I was in my thirties, I quit a perfectly good job. We were developing an office building the market did it was the same market that Peter was talking about our loan at the 14%.

My three partners went bankrupt and I owed $9 million that there was no way to pay back. And I had two small children and a wife and a house down the street. And then there were no jobs and they closed every national bank in the state of Texas and Oklahoma and Louisiana and probably Colorado. Yeah.

So I will say if you’re going to be in the real estate business, you need to understand that the fuel of real estate is cash. It’s money. It’s all borrowed, almost all borrowed. When the economy goes up and down money and leverage gets to be very dangerous. So you need to understand that. Nobody told me that in business school, but you find that out in real life and in my career.

And I think in Peter’s, we’ve probably seen five major downturns in the economy and you need to be prepared that those are coming. And now we go back to your question and what Peter was talking about, what do you do? 

And I liked what Peter said about fear because in my case I have a meeting next Thursday with the bank to talk about a situation that could ruin not only me financially, but for the future, that there was almost no way to recover. And so rather than doing something productive you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to talk about next Thursday at the bank. And that is fear and, and Peter’s exactly right.

What’s the solution to fear. First John says, perfect love, casts about fear. It’s a rule. It absolutely works. Divine love takes care of those things, but you have got to deal with that. And I think as a Christian Scientist, you have tools to deal with that, that you don’t. I know you can’t just buck up and try to sing a happy song and that doesn’t really work.

Because that’ll wake you up at night. It’s being able to handle the fear and all businessmen right into it. All business people have these problems. So there you go. 

Robin Jones: Anything else you’d like to add to that, Peter? 

Peter Fletcher: Well yeah. We always think we’re alone in these things, it’s funny when you, when you’re doing great, everybody’s cheering and we’re all together and everything.

And then when we’re not doing good or something doesn’t seem right, we feel so alone. And I think the way that Greg was alluding to this, that we don’t feel alone is when we turn to that source that we know totally overcomes fear and fills us with the confidence to go forward and, and making right steps.

So I would just say we never need to feel that we’re alone.

Robin Jones: How do you bring a Christianly Scientific thought to your work, to a conversation, to a negotiation, to a customer that may be, doesn’t quite look right, smell, right, talk the way you think they ought to look. 

How do you bring that Scientific thought into your work and what does that look like? 

Greg McLane: I’ll take that a little different direction than you might think. You remember the part in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy talks about cultured scholars and businessmen and perspicacity. 

You really want to be careful who you’re dealing with and what you’re thinking about them. And I do think you have to be very perceptive about your clients and your counterparts. And boy, Divine Mind, and Principle is the keynote to that, right?

Go look at the Beatitudes go look at qualities of the seven synonyms, that famous poster from the Mother Church that we all use in Sunday School, go look at those things and see if that’s what’s going on. And if it isn’t, you need to, you need to get yourself out of it. But if you’re going to have a relationship, what are relationships built on?

They’re built on trust and truth and honesty and love, right? That’s Christian Science. That’s exactly what it is.

Peter Fletcher: I don’t deviate an inch from agreeing with that. My sense of it is that our strongest intuition is it comes from above and to be discerning. And not feel as though this is the only thing I’ve got going on and I better work. I remember feeling early on that I had to work with anybody and everybody who came to me and sometimes people come for the wrong reasons and sometimes people come without honesty or at least not true honesty.

 Actually worked with people like that over the years, and it’s not that I didn’t bring things to fruition. But they weren’t very satisfying. And at one point it’s been a long time now. I realized I did not have to work with people who came to me. I had to work with people who the discerning thought said, this is the right idea here, right? 

This is an area for you to be in and consequently, those things went beautifully. Didn’t mean there were no problems. It mean it meant that you could work out those problems appropriately. And in the end you had a client that you could work with again and again, and again, instead of a one-off kind of a situation.

So I think it is what, what, what Greg is saying here, which is, is discernment. And we all have. And all we need to do is trust in it. 

Greg McLane: Peter, and there was an article in Fortune Magazine a hundred years ago that I remember reading and they talked about how no CEO ever has all the facts.

They need to make the decision they have to make. And how do they do it? And they were talking about a gut instinct or, an intuition. And those are spiritual qualities. And that’s true. I’m sure it’s true for you. It’s true for me. It’s true for everybody. I know. What do I do now? How do I do it? I don’t have all the facts.

What do I think ought to be doing? Is all about putting divine mind to work. Right. And so, okay. Go back to church, practice, then you have some tools, maybe your knife was a little sharper and you can use it for work. So. 

Robin Jones: Well along those lines then one of our listeners asks this question. What is your experience working with brands, churches on creative commercial real estate projects.

How about you, Mr. McLean? 

Greg McLane: I’m doing one right now. As it, as it happens. Okay, so let’s go back to what we’ve been talking about the whole time when Peter and I are talking about, so describe your average Christian Science, branch church membership. Is it all sharp businessmen that know what they’re doing?

They have plenty of resources and money and, and know how to do finance? No, you’ve got people that really need your help. They need your best thinking in your best training. And I think being a counselor really understanding what those people are looking for in their problems that they want to solve or there, how they want to move their church forward is vital to it.

And then how do you bring the tools of the industry to bear, to help them get there? It’s hard because Yeah, the one I’m working on right now, we have a couple of obvious things to do, and then you gotta take it back to the membership and the membership wanders off course, sometimes in their conversations because they don’t understand what Peter and I know about how it works.

So, back to Divine Mind, sharpen your knife. Here we go again. It’s no different than working with a large corporation. That is a little bit. And maybe they need some help getting back on track or a homeowner. I would think they need your best help, right? 

Robin Jones: How about you paid or anything to add to that?

Peter Fletcher: Not to add really? First of all, commercial is I leave that completely to Greg. I have sold a couple of churches for folks And those were always a blessing and they were a joy to do I have worked with people on properties that were considered commercial although they were typically having to deal with units that were above four units, which is a commercial building.

So I’ve done some of those with people, but I haven’t actually done a commercial piece for a church. I have watched people do, and do them very well. And I would love to watch Greg.

Greg McLane: Come on. 

Robin Jones: I got to ask one last question. Did you guys map out your journey? Did you kind of plan it out and go, I’m going to get these boxes you’re going to check?

Greg McLane: I deal with guys that, that get up every January 1st and put a ten-year plan together and a two week plan and they know how to do the next five minutes. And I have never done that, man. I’m not advocating that’s the right thing to do, but my head doesn’t work like that. So, no. 

Peter Fletcher: Well, I’ve done both, not always successfully. When we take time to stop and maybe take stock in what we have done and where we have gone, all of a sudden the path that we’ve been on makes a lot more sense. 

You might think like, well, I was this way. I was that way I did this, I did that. But when you look back, it’s easier to see that path and it is actually encouraging to move forward, having taken that stock. 

Greg McLane: You and I would both agree that all business basically runs around sales. You got to sell something and that’s what all business does. So I got to start off leasing and then I got into managing big office buildings and hated that fortunately, and got out of it.

And then sold industrial properties for the corporation and then built large buildings. And then I got to build my own building. I never could have planned on, it just couldn’t it. And so here we are today. 

Robin Jones: Well both of you mentioned earlier and both of you are our Career Allies of the Albert Baker Fund.

We really appreciate your willingness to serve in that and as mentors. And if anyone is interested in connecting with Greg or with Peter, please reach out to me, robin@albertbakerfund.org, and I’ll be happy to connect with you, or you can connect directly with them either one, but we’re certainly happy to help facilitate that.

They are two very special men. I feel so honored to know them both, and we appreciate everything they do. And we so appreciate that they came in here today and, and spent this wonderful hour with us. 

We have a wonderful announcement to make right before I was ready to go live. I got a call from Janie Shaw, who is our Outreach Director and does wonderful work.

We really believe in this at the Albert Baker Fund. And that’s investing in education of young Christian Scientists who are sharing the leaven of truth and they do. I witness it on a daily basis when I work with these kids and both Peter and Greg can vouch for that. 

We are so proud to announce a new Albert Baker Fund scholarship called the Pass Your Blessings Forward Scholarship.

It’s kind of come about as a wonderful unfoldment. And it’s a gift that we’re going to add to normal Albert Baker Fund scholarship in the amount of $1,500, or $125 a month for 12 months. You can help fund that. We’ve started the program.

We’ve had some success with it and when it’s awarded the scholarship will be in the name and school and class year and major of the student that you helped. So in other words, you can set up a specific Pass Your Blessings Forward scholarship for a particular student. If the $1,500 seems a little steep for you, then please consider donating to the fund, whatever it is that you can, but it’s new.

It has a wonderful, applicable, tangible need that it’s meeting. 

I work with these kids on a daily basis and $1,500 can go a long, long way. So if you want more information about it, contact. Janie Shaw. She’s our Chief Development Officer and her contact is on the website, AlbertBakerFund.org.

And remember that a hundred percent of your gift will be awarded as a scholarship to a student. So if you’re looking to pass your blessing forward, and you’d like to help a young Christian Scientist with their education. We’d love to hear from you. 

What a wonderful unfoldment this is for the Albert Baker Fund for our community and these kids, I can’t tell you how important it is today in these times for us to really show tangible proof and evidence that we’re embracing our children, our youth, they need it. They need to see that demonstrable proof. So check out the AlbertBakerFund.org, and give Janie a call. 

I’d also like to point out our College to Career Roadmap. It’s a wonderful tool for college students. We talked about it as you map out your career. Well, this really does kind of give you some wonderful inspiration and tools to be able to navigate the changing landscape that’s out there today.

 If you want to get to know more about the Albert Baker Fund, check out our website and all our wonderful programs. Be sure and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and cast that net on the right side. I can’t think of two people that do that better than these gentlemen right here.

I thank you again, Greg and Peter for all your support, we just love it. Yes. And the rest of you be sure and listen in for the next show and the next webinar. And if you have anything, any questions or you’d like to reach out to Greg and Peter, let me know, but have a wonderful weekend and see you guys next time.

Peter Fletcher: Okay. Good. 

Bye everybody. 

“I feel like this is what the world needs. How am I supposed to put this into some sort of use?”

About Our Guest in this episode:

Michael has spent the last decade serving with Navy and Marine Corps units across the country and deployed overseas. After graduating from Principia College in 2003, he returned to his childhood home near Seattle and worked with a law firm to develop programs for ethics and integrity in public policy. His love of aviation led him next to work at a regional seaplane airline, where he served as flight operations director and station manager at the company’s Seattle seaplane terminal.

In 2009, Michael joined The Mother Church’s Chaplain Training Program and began his graduate studies at the Boston University School of Theology, graduating in 2012 with a Masters of Divinity and a specialization in mediation and conflict resolution. Michael then entered active duty service as a staff Chaplain at Naval Station Norfolk, VA. In 2016, his next assignment took him to the high desert of Twentynine Palms, CA, where he served with US Marine Corps units, including 1st Tank Battalion and 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, with which he deployed to support Operations Inherent Resolve and Enduring Freedom in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, and Afghanistan.

In the fall of 2018, he transitioned to serve as Command Chaplain onboard the guided missile cruiser, USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN in San Diego, CA. Michael Currently serves with Submarine Readiness Squadron 36 at Kings Bay, GA.

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin Jones: This is the Net Effect, Career Conversations and Connections, episode 48. I can’t believe how quickly it’s gone. We have as our special guest today, Chaplain Michael Brown, Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy. 

I am your host, Robin Jones, director of the Albert Baker Fund’s Career Alliance. What an awesome opportunity, Veteran’s Day was yesterday.

What a nice tribute to have Chaplain Brown with us. He’s here to tell us how he has been casting his net on the right side as Jesus challenged his followers to do in practice. I’m really excited. 

Welcome, Michael. Thank you for being here. 

Michael Brown: Hey, thrilled to be here. Thanks so much, Robin. 

Robin Jones: Before we get started, I’d love to pay tribute to the Albert Baker Fund.

The Albert Baker Fund is what makes this possible, and we have an incredible team at the Albert Baker Fund, doing wonderful things every day. To realize the unlimited possibilities that emerge when Christian Scientists journey together through inspired education and career development.

We’re easy to find.

Just go to AlbertBakerFund.org and up will pop this wonderful website and great resources are at your fingertips. So if you have any questions, go to the website, click on those tabs, find your way around, navigate, see all the wonderful programs that we offer and then reach out if we can help. 

Let’s get started.

Let’s dive right in, Mr. Brown. After you graduated from college, you decided to return to your childhood home near Seattle. And worked with a law firm, developed programs for ethics and integrity and public policy. Right. Am I right? 

Michael Brown: That’s it. 

Robin Jones: And you also had a love of aviation that led to you serving as a flight operations director and station manager at the company, Seattle Sea Plane Terminal.

That sounds like a lot of fun. 

Michael Brown: It was. 

Robin Jones: And then you decided in 2009 to join the Mother Church’s chaplain training program. 

What led you to move in a direction that seems pretty different from where you were headed? Tell us a little bit about why you decided to do that and about the chaplain program. 

Michael Brown: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a real privilege and pleasure to share a little bit about that journey.

I left college and went back to Seattle and worked in a couple of different things that seemed very unrelated.

One of the lessons that I’ve learned is that often at the time, things seem unrelated. And then you begin to see these connections drawn between the kind of work that we were doing. And for me I was doing this public policy work and it was a very unique opportunity. 

I loved it, I learned a lot, but it wasn’t ever going to go anywhere. It was kind of project based. I learned a tremendous amount. 

It did give me the opportunity to indulge a little bit of a childhood dream to start flying airplanes. And that got me into some other circles of folks. 

Before I knew it, I did make a transition and it seemed completely different to go from sort of teaching work over to customer service and station management at an airline doing flight operations.

But we were a tiny airline there in the Seattle area, small family run business, and been doing this for a very long time. It was a neat group to be part of. 

It was an opportunity for me to go from a small office job, to learning how to work with other people.

The first time I really started leading any others in a professional sort of way, and got to have a lot of fun doing it. Cause it was just a neat place to be, a neat experience. 

The real change came after I took Christian Science class instruction, and that was really the catalyst that began to transform what was sort of a meandering post-college early career into something that was focused with purpose. 

For me, it was an interesting experience in that I was there at the end of my two weeks of class instruction. And I remember sitting in my little room doing some of the homework that we’d been given.

I had this overwhelming sense that I had learned something new and important, something very significant. I’d grown up in Christian Science Sunday school. It was something that was important to me. But I was shocked at how different it all seemed at that moment. And I remember just kind of in prayer, going out and saying, I feel like this is what the world needs. How am I supposed to put this into some sort of use? 

I had been really well supported by this airline. Being able to go in the middle of the highest kind of busy season tourist season to go and take class instruction. And I, I knew they were expecting me back there to continue that work. But when I kind of went out in prayer and I said, how is this supposed to really take shape in my life?

And the question kind of was what does the practice look like? What does it mean to practice Christian Science? And it was one of those moments in life where the answer came like a voice.

I remember it was this crystal clear moment saying you need to go be a Navy chaplain. 

Well, I, and I had exactly the same response you just did, Robin, which I kind of laughed. And I thought, Hey, I thought about this once before and the Mother Church doesn’t have a chaplain training program. So that’s funny. And then I also kind of giggled at the Navy thing because I grew up in an Air Force family. Why on earth would I do the Navy?

But that thought just kind of kept persisting. I made it back home and, and kinda got back to work, but I continued to sort of cherish that. 

At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, I must’ve been obedient enough that I started investigating and lo and behold, I found out the Mother Church absolutely was sponsoring new chaplains and training them up.

Before I knew it, I was talking to that program and beginning the journey. Kind of get myself set up in Boston, to begin that chaplain training program and it moved quickly from there. 

It’s a very active program and it’s something that is loved and supported at the Mother Church. So we’re very grateful to have that. And folks may be interested in kind of what the nuts and bolts are, how somebody becomes a chaplain, cause there’s a couple of things involved.

For me, I was out there in Seattle and I went kind of the typical path and that I contacted the Mother Church. If anybody is interested in more information on that, at christianscience.com there is a specific webpage that they provide some information for the chaplain program and in there there’s a link and that link will get you to the right person who can give you that information. 

That’s sort of the route that I took, I connected with the Mother Church. And one thing that I learned was there’s three elements that are required to become a chaplain. There’s a professional level, a master’s degree. So for most chaplains, they’re going to have, what’s called a master’s of divinity degree.

It’s a three years master’s program. And most of us in the Mother Church program have gone through a Boston University’s seminary, the School of Theology at Boston University. There’s a long standing partnership with the Mother Church there and a really solid program and a lot of cooperation. So initially I had to kind of be invited by the Mother Church to participate as a trainee.

And then I applied to Boston University. So you need that degree and then, you need an endorsement from a religious organization in our case, the Mother Church. And then you need the military side of things. So a commission from a branch of service. And for me, somewhere along the line, when I was looking at all my options it’s interesting.

I, I ended up right back where they had prayerful answer, told me I would be, and that was at the Navy. And there were a number of reasons for that, and partly who was already in the Army and, and sort of what the Air Force was looking for at the time that the Navy seemed to appeal more. And lo and behold, I realized after I’d commissioned that, that’s what that original answer was.

I should’ve just listened in the first place. It would have been easier. But everybody going through, whether they’re a Christian Scientist or not, they need those three elements, education, the endorsement from a church or a religious organization, and then the military commission. 

Robin Jones: I love this scripture that you pulled up. There must be lots of challenges that you face on a day to day. You just recently moved from one base in California to another base across the country in Florida. And you have to deploy different times. 

I was just curious about the impact that, that might have on your family and how do you adjust to all those changes? Because all of us are having to adjust to changes today in so many different ways. So how do you approach it?

Michael Brown: That’s been one of the big elements of my experiences, is learning. So personally on the kind of the inner piece of this is learning how to deal with that. And it’s been the biggest challenge for me. The sort of nomadic lifestyle that you live in the military and everybody’s service is different, of course.

There’s a lot of variety in what can happen. But for me, it’s, it has meant a little bit of back and forth across the country. And we’re actually in Georgia now, right on the border with Florida, I’m at a submarine base in Georgia and I’m close to Jacksonville. 

We were living in San Diego. I finished my tour on board a ship in San Diego. And I asked the folks in the Navy that make the assignments. I said, gosh, we’re here. My kids are settled in school. It would be really nice just to stay local. Some may realize that there’s a lot of Navy and Marine Corps opportunities in the San Diego area.

And I said, I’d like one of two things, either to stay put for once, enjoy that. Or maybe even to get closer to Seattle and return back to that sense of home. And I was told, actually, how about Georgia, which is neither of those things and kind of dramatically the opposite direction.

And it’s just part of what we faced. And that’s not just for the service member. It’s actually easy for me. It’s a bigger challenge for the family and our kids are pretty small. They roll with it, but military spouses have to kind of uproot everything and relocate and start fresh and, and they don’t arrive in that place with a built-in job like the service member does.

So it’s something we’ve thought a lot about sometimes not with the most elevated thoughts. I’m sure it’s kind of been frustrating at times. But I know one of the passages that we discussed that has meant a lot to me is Mrs. Eddy’s statement about home from the chapter in marriage, she says home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the center, but not the boundary of the affections.

And that was something that I began to work with very early on, especially leaving a place like Seattle, where my folks are and other families. And finding that, oh gosh, now I need to move across the country for school and training. And then, I ended up in Norfolk, Virginia, then southern California, a couple of times.

And to me, that concepts of saying, am I really changing home? Or am I broadening that boundary that says, my sense of home is expanding to include more and more. And that’s been really important for me and my family. And I’m grateful for that experience because it stretched me out of that kind of homebody feeling.

I want to just stay, put where I’m settled and of course everything is comfortable and stretch that a little bit and say, well, can we extend that boundary and our affections, those centered in one place maybe can grow. And of course that’s not really a geological geographical kind of concept.

It’s a spiritual concept of home expanding. 

Robin Jones: Thinking about home and your deployments and family, I’m sure that your Marine family or wherever you may be you’re looking at them as family as well.

Talk to us a little bit about this really cool place that you’re in. And, and some of the things that you were doing, and some of the challenges you were faced with.

Michael Brown: I love this photograph because this is Thanksgiving day, 2017. And we’re in a location out in the middle of Al Anbar province in Iraq.

And there was nothing there. What you see are things that my unit put up as a temporary location to provide some support to the Iraqi forces that were nearby. 

It is a location just off of the Euphrates River. I went out there to spend some time. This was a kind of a limited duration mission in this part of Iraq. And I went to spend some time with my unit because it was Thanksgiving. 

And I thought, well, if ever, there’s one of those moments where you feel far from home it’s during the holidays and something I’m conscious of in the season right now.

And so I went out there and, and this experience was so great because. Everything around you kind of says, I am not at home. There’s nothing familiar about this. It was an incredibly dusty place. The pictures don’t give it credit. So it would just swirl up around you in this sort of moon dust, it would get into everything. It just reminds you, this is not like being at home with mom and dad.

 And it can feel like there’s a distance. What, what was so neat? We sat here on this hillside kind of overlooking our camp and and shared some thoughts. At the end of the reflection that I gave, I think I talked about the feeding of the 5,000, the sense that, Hey, we may be lacking the things that we’re used to, but what elements are here that we can see kind of grow and multiply and and bring us a sense of nourishment in this and as far away place. 

And one of the things that I constantly thought about both. What are, we were stationed at home in 29 Palms, California. The idea that a lot of great things in the Bible happened in the desert.

It can seem like a place of great absence and yet most significant events occur in a desert setting. So I used to tell people, God things happen in the desert. 

So we had the service and I would and I opened it up to them afterwards. It wasn’t really a plan, but we talked about gratitude and I just said, Hey, why don’t we all go around and share something that we’re grateful for this Thanksgiving?

And they did. And, and it was cool because you can see in a picture through there, right? These guys are dirty and grimy, and we’re all sitting there with, with their weapons. We’re all sitting on MRE boxes, the meals, ready to eat. They wouldn’t like me saying this. Everybody was crying because it was this incredibly tender moment where we felt like we were at home.

And we could feel that we were not in any way, separated from all that is good and perfect. We’re not separated from a place of warmth and safety because we’re out here and it was quite cold, a cold war zone. No, in fact, we were at home and we had that sense of family and that’s something that I have found over and over again.

And these kind of extreme experiences, the sense of family that’s present there. It was a powerful time and and I loved it and it’s something I’ve constantly come back to is, that as Psalm 139 reminds us, where can I flee from your presence? 

Well, it doesn’t matter where in the world you go, and what the setting is, we’re never outside of God’s care. We’re never away from him. And it was very present and palpable here in this Thanksgiving day, it was a wonderful. 

Robin Jones: I’m assuming that there are people in that group that are from different faiths, and so what’s it like to sit down with a group of people and conduct a service and then have something so moving like that from having, different people share? What did you find in common? What was that common thread? You talked about gratitude. What did that look like as it related to all these different people?

Sometimes people have a hard time, one, sharing their faith, two, just having a decent conversation with other people. 

Michael Brown: Frankly, I think we have an advantage as Christian Scientists because as we’re trained in the practice, it’s not about that person doing it. Be under no illusion.

It’s not the effectiveness in this setting is not because I was there. I think the neat thing is to watch how God’s presence in that moment is doing the work and bringing people together. And yes, this is a diverse group, not one of them, unless somebody was really keeping a secret from me, not one of them had ever been to Christian Science Sunday school.

I did bump into Christian Scientists out in Iraq. It was kind of interesting, but they’re all coming from different places. Many of them probably don’t attend church. Didn’t grow up doing that. And what’s cool is you begin to realize that not to dismiss the necessity for church, but that’s not a prerequisite to feeling God’s presence.

These guys were open and receptive to it and held a couple of services during the day because of course, some people are on watch and standing post places, and both of them were very similar, both services and they’re feeling that sense of home, because my job is to recognize you’re not separated from God.

You’re not separated from that consciousness of good. We have a wonderful hymn in our hymnal. Home is the consciousness of good. I love that. And I used to think of that all the time. So that concept that we’re being sent forth to meet our brother’s need and find our home in every place it says, and that they can feel that too.

Robin Jones: I love how you pulled this in, man. Talk about this a little bit. 

Michael Brown: Sure. My second tour was in 29 Palms, California with Marines. I was with a couple of different units. The group that I deployed with was an infantry battalion out of Seventh Marine Regiment.

As I was mentally preparing for that work and anticipating a little bit, I knew what the mission was, and what the scheduled deployments of that unit we’re there to affect. As I prepared to undertake that mission and join my unit, this was something that I found in Science and Health as a statement of kind of what I understood to be happening.

Basically what’s the foundation for my work. 

I love this. 

The still small voice of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe’s remotest bound. That’s what I knew was happening. As we left, place A and went over to place B and we were prepared to go other places to, at the time there was the possibility of going to Asia to take a different mission there. 

And it didn’t matter where we were going, over continent and ocean.

 That still small voice of scientific thought is already there and be an audible voice of truth is to the human mind when a lion roars, this is my favorite part.

It’s heard in the desert and in dark places of fear. So I expect that I’m going off into the desert and certainly into dark places of fear. And I was in, I was in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan on that deployment. And fundamentally in each of those places in different ways, fear was being manifested.

The sense of darkness was there. And what I love about that is it’s a reminder that, certainly I’m not, I’m not bringing something, our unit isn’t bringing something new there that scientific thought is already present in those locations. God’s already there. Christian Science has God’s law is already operating.

In Helmand province in Afghanistan or Alambar province in Iraq or in Northern Syria where we were already there. And of course friends were there too. You talk about family. You asked me to send me some pictures. The connections, this is a great, not only is this a great friend of mine, but he I can’t tell you how many late nights we spent on deployment.

When you’re just out there and, and the world is sort of quiet for. Talking about deep spiritual concepts. And, and we still do that to this day. And he’s a good friend and here we are preparing to go on. I don’t remember where we were going. I think actually we were flying up into Syria at this point.

And we’re just waiting. You do a lot of waiting in the military no matter where you are.

Robin Jones: So when you’re waiting and you’re contemplating some of these places that you’re going how do you deal with fear? How you deal with a fear of the unknown, how do you deal? How do you find your, how do you find your way through the challenges that the present situation tries to impose upon you and, and move you in its way?

Absolutely. Yeah. What a great question. And, and this, the military is an extremely diverse setting in which to do work no matter what your job is. And certainly as chaplains, it’s true as well. So it can look a lot of different ways. And for me, especially on that deployment in other ways on ships I was constantly faced with opportunities to address exactly what you’re asking about.

And there was one experience in particular that stands out to me. It was really a transformative moment. I was actually in Afghanistan and we were at a really remote location. And for security reasons, we, we didn’t have any lights on at night. So we had some night vision equipment that we could use, but I was supposed to travel from one location to another.

And by helicopter, some army helicopters were going to pick us up and I was kind of hitching a ride. And I mentioned, I used to fly airplanes. I like aviation stuff. I always thought that was kind of fun to be able to hop on different aircraft. But on this night, it was late sometime after.

We’re sitting there in the dark and, and I was not excited about going just something about it felt like it needed to be addressed and that sense of fear was very present. And it was interesting because in that moment, I, I had material with me. I carried, I brought them for show and tell, and I have my little tiny Bible and Science and Health that I would carry around with me.

Well, I couldn’t really pull out a flashlight and, and read. And so I sat back with my backup against one of these concrete barriers. And I remember looking up at the stars and then that moment, of course, no lights, the stars were really brilliant out there in very rural Afghanistan. And in that moment, it just struck me.

I know this view, this is a familiar view. I’ve seen these stars before. It was clear to me, this is the same view that lane back home was looking at. We could see the same thing. I, my sense of perspective completely shifted. And and with that, I came the thought this isn’t the only thing that, go to what, go to know what you go to, what to be true.

And the 91st Psalm came to mind and where it says you shall give his angels charge over thee to keep the, in all your ways. And this idea that they will bear you up in their hands. So as I was expecting to get onto this helicopter and just waiting for the sound of them coming in, we couldn’t see them and waiting and waiting.

This, you asked me what were a couple of passages that meant a lot to me, and this is why this one it just sort of washed over me and I realized, yeah, God’s angels are right here with me. And once again, that realization I’m not, there was never a place where I felt further from home than I did in Afghanistan, by all accounts in human measurements, it was far, far away and very separate, couldn’t communicate easily, very cut off from what I knew and this just cut right through all of that.

And I knew in that moment I know exactly where I am and I know what I’m doing. And I know that God is with me in doing this work and all of that fear just washed away and it was done. And it was a really powerful moment. And then I can think of times being out at sea, on board ships and it was a different.

That didn’t seem to be the kind of threats that we were facing, but it was still far away from home and missing my family. And I’d go up on, on deck at night and look at the stars and be reminded of that. And just think what a privilege to know that we’re right here, that God’s angels God’s thoughts coming to us are always accessible, that we can not be removed from that.

And again, that sense of it doesn’t matter whether we’re taking the wings of the morning and dwelling and the outermost parts of the sea it doesn’t matter arrows by day, the threats that come at night, none of that can separate us from God. Right. And Paul says as much enrollments as well. So that’s something that I’ve had to dress, but I feel better.

Yeah. I mean, I, so I think about the Psalms and sometimes. I hear people say, well, I’m not sure the Bible is relevant. That’s some old dude talk in. And how do you, how do you find it? How do you find these scriptures, these morsels of, of scripture, the receptivity to, to the crowd that you’re in?

Because I can’t think of a more diverse group of guys coming together from all over the country and all different walks of life coming together, forming a unit. 

Oh, absolutely. 

So how does it, I mean, how do they take that when you’re ministering to them? 

Sure. Well, part of it is learning how to use the language, that kind of bridges that gap a little bit.

And one thing that I found to be very helpful, this is not didn’t come from me, but thankfully the timing was right. We like to use now words like spiritual fitness. And that to me is like, Simple, but profound concept. Especially with, with the Marines when I was with them. Anything to do with fitness is their language they want to, now they’re excited.

They want to talk about it. But that recognition that, even from a very human standpoint the military saying, we see clearly that you’re not just a body to do something. You’re not just a mind to be trained, but that there’s a spiritual component to everybody. And and we need to uplift that further.

Do you understand my job is to see people not as a mind and a body and with a spiritual component, but as holy spiritual, but to be able to use that language that says we have a place at the table to discuss the spiritual concepts and spiritual qualities. And if you can relate that to the concepts of of being a strong, effective, and tough warrior, Well now, that’s something that we’re happy to discuss.

And and so it’s, it’s our privilege to kind of work into that. These ideas of a greater spiritual depth. And one thing that I’ve found is, you may think, oh, I’m, I’m willing to be spiritual, but not really religious in any way in those settings when you’re out there in the desert and, and the pressures of combat or the, the realities of a very uncomfortable life are kind of weighing down on you.

That’s when having some familiarity with something more concrete than just a vague sense of spirituality, but center. Familiar scripture for one or solid concepts of our spiritual identity come into play and can make a real big difference in people’s lives. And that’s fundamentally what chaplains are there to do is to help walk alongside somebody and bring that perspective to them, whether you’re a Christian Scientist as a chaplain or from all the different faces that chaplains represent out there.

I wanted to get to this particular picture. Sure. And have us, have you share with us? I mean, that looks like a pretty swanky ceremony. I see a pipe organ in the background there. 

Michael Brown: It’s at a chapel. Yeah. 

Robin Jones: Oh, okay. Good. 

Michael Brown: This is actually recent and this is a Navy photo that they put up on, on the official Navy kind of images site or Department of Defense images.

I mean, this is just a change of command ceremony. It’s a somewhat ceremonial function for a chaplain, but another opportunity to shift thought just a little bit. Something that Christian Science chaplains are trained on through the Mother Church is to see something like this as an opportunity, not just to be in a ceremonial role and stand up in front of folks and say, let’s pray.

But to also gently uplift that thought and say, well, what’s really fundamentally going on here. When we think about something like command of a unit. And in this case, a summary of what’s really happening when we think about retirement, what is somebody’s career represent in the sense of accomplishment represented?

Certainly when we start thinking about memorial services, or other more solemn events like that, the opportunity to do a prayer public. It is not know the purpose isn’t to toot some horn or express some religious perspective in any competitive way, but it is certainly an opportunity to move thought, to see a higher concept of what our mission is.

And I’ve found that people respond to that really well, too. They love it. Often like seeing that there’s some greater basis for their command than just, a military ceremony. 

Robin Jones: Well, do you find that, folks in the military are open to like a church service. A lot of folks today that are really struggling with going to church, walking in the building through the doors. 

Michael Brown: And that’s not unique. It’s certainly not different in the military setting and most things in the military. Cause you’re just dealing with volunteers from, from society. And so a lot of the trends continue. So if you’re looking at statistics, absolutely. It’s not. I think if you look at pictures of chaplains holding services back in world war one, world war II, culturally, we just handled that differently.

It is different now, but every place I’ve been if ever I do hold a service and we often do as chaplains were of course, serving everybody in that unit and everybody is welcome to any service. I’m doing it as a Christian Scientist, but people from all walks of life are there as you saw in that Iraq photo everywhere I’ve gone, people come, it’s not always huge groups.

And I find that most of the real work is not necessarily done in a, in a service setting. It’s really being done in those one-on-one interactions with people. And that’s fundamentally what chaplains are there to do is to work with that individual. Who’s going through something in life. 

Robin Jones: I thought it was interesting, we were talking last week about how chaplains are organized within the Christian Science church. 

Michael Brown: That’s right. Yeah. 

Robin Jones: And I, I can’t remember, we talked about that early on. I wanted to bring that up again because I thought that’s kind of, that was new. I don’t think I knew quite how it, the organization, the church, the Christian Science church you know how that all works.

Talk a little bit about, the structure of where chaplains fall under the guise of the Christian Science church?

Michael Brown: As I was describing , the basics of how I realized some people may be interested in this and by the way, if anybody is interested in serving as a Christian Science chaplain That’s something that we’re always looking for, people who are willing and able to do that work.

Did you have to be a us citizen? I should always include that. In order to serve in this role in the U S military citizenship is a requirement. But as people go through, we do our church is one of the few that has a very structured training program. And even that training program is housed within the Committee on Publication at the Mother Church.

And people may not know exactly what the Committee on Publication is. But it serves such a critical role. It’s something that Mary Baker Eddy established and it’s a Manual based activity of the Mother Church. It serves a really wonderful role to basically if you will kind of clear out any misconceptions that people may have about Christian Science fundamentally.

In news reports or media and something that is being shared. The, the way that it’s stated in the manual is to correct impositions on public thought regarding Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy, and members of the church. 

So really to be responsive to something that’s incorrect out there, so that Christian Science is represented correctly.

Well, that’s the mission of that, that office within the Mother Church and, and those committee representatives exist in all states and, and work a lot with legislatures and governments and, and they are not just limited to the United States either they’re around the world. And there are a lot of wonderful fruitful activity being done.

So people may say, well, why is the why is the chaplaincy included in that And it’s a great question. And I think it’s really neat. It gives us a great clear sense of purpose. The chaplaincy exists within that mission set to correct and positions on public thought because we’re able to be out there as somewhat formal representatives of Christian Science and the Mother Church.

And we’re not usually responding to miss understanding or misperceptions or misstatements of Christian Science though, that does happen. And when it does in the military context, we’re kind of right there ready to do that, but it’s often almost a preemptive work, we’re there building relationships, especially with other chaplains other professional ministers that are out there from lots of different faith backgrounds and church communities.

And we have the opportunity to essentially just be a Christian out there now. And it says. Did I miss a stated this? Cause I left it out. It’s correcting your positions in a Christian manner. And and that’s something, of course we’re just doing. Hopefully being professionals out there and it does happen very often that, these ministers will say, well, I don’t know much about Christian Science, but I know that person.

And they were, they were a solid Christian. So I’m going to have, a different sense of what Christian Science might be based on that. And that’s true for service members as well at large, they’re just not often thinking in those terms, but but that’s why we’re there, we want to foster that right.

Understanding of Christian Science as a part of the Mother Church’s mission and we’re wonderfully supported in that way. 

I, I, I’ve got a couple of questions and be sure everyone, if you have a question we’d love, love to, to be able to entertain that question. So put it in the Q and a Kay Patterson is she has a question real quick and it says I have a young.

And by the way. Hi, Kay, glad you’re here. I have a young family member in the military. How do we learn the chaplain on the Navy base at Everett Washington? 

Excellent. Okay. Well there’s a couple of ways to do it. I will mention that those of us that are currently serving as chaplains are all listed in the journal, both in the print edition and online.

So any Christian Scientists or anybody, of course that wants to get in contact with us can find our contact information through the journal listing. It’s right at the end of the section of practitioners and teachers. So one option is to contact me and I can find that through the Navy system, I can figure out who is a good contact there.

The other it’s amazing what you can find off of Google just by looking at. Naval station Everett and almost always Navy websites. Aren’t always easy to navigate, but sometimes there’s a down that will say, the chaplain’s office and it’ll have a phone number or an email or something. But I’m, I’m happy to assist with any of that.

And my colleagues out there there’s six of us on active duty and, and three in the reserves across the branches. We’re all happy to assist and and make those connections too, if you need anything. And that email on the there’s a link again on the Christian Science.com page to do with military chaplains.

And that’s also a resource to get some questions answered. If you have any, or it touch with one. 

Thank you. Thanks for that question. Okay. Thanks Donna. Our S our dear sweet Donna who works for the Albert Baker fund. She’s our marketing and communications Dan, or should we so appreciate all the work she does.

She has a great question. All right. So what is a typical day like for you? What does chaplain brown do from day to day? Okay, 

well, it varies tremendously depending on which assignment I’ve been part of. Right. So but essentially most places, even if I’m on the ship, I usually have some sort of office. So even when I was deployed with the Marines, unless I was out in the field, in which case my office was like a sleeping bag or something it usually I have some central location where I actually am.

So very often, like any other job I’m going to go and kind of start my day and get settled there and figure out what is it that we need to be doing today. At different places, I’ve had assistants working with me, or I’ve even worked with other chaplains where I am right now. There’s another chaplain that I work with and she, and I coordinate kind of our activities.

Very often we are teaching classes for newly arriving folks or or something specific to do with spiritual fitness or resiliency toughness, and where I am located now, I’m often going down to the submarines and walking around. I’m one of those that is important, visit people and, and do what we call in the Navy deck, plating deck plate ministry, just to walk around and be there.

And a Marine Colonel who used to always brag about the value of leadership by walking around and very often that’s it. So we just want to be out there. The key is the more that you are around folks and getting to know them and chatting. And sometimes they’re just, silly conversations. If you’re building that sense of relationship and trust, then when the need comes and that individual finds that they’re challenged by something it’s much easier to go reach out.

And so I spend typically part of my day, at least responding to individuals who want to have. Counseling conversation just to sit down and discuss what’s going on in their life. And so I do a lot of that throughout the day as well. So where I am right now, the pace is a little bit slower than it’s been in other more operational settings.

And I’m okay with that for now. It’s good to have a little bit of change. There’s a season to things, but other places I’ve been when I was on the ship we were a guided missile cruiser, so not a huge ship, but 350 or so sailors. And I was the only chaplain there. But it kind of simplified life.

And I would try to do kind of a loop around every day, see every every department and component. And, and I think Donna, this may not be what you’re asking, but I take it as the opportunity to share one other concept that came to mind. I used to sometimes feel like, I didn’t know. W everybody on, on the ship or with a Marine Corps unit has a very clearly stated purpose.

And and sometimes I’d be in a meeting and I think, what am I here for? I don’t, I’m not, I’m not scheduling a bunch of events. I’m not representing a bunch of statistics about readiness and so forth. I tend to say things like Hey, it looks good. I think we’re doing okay. Or this, this part of the units hurting a little bit.

And I, I think I got self-conscious of that sometimes. And when I was on the ship, one thing that really occurred to me was a chaplain is there not just to be present and counsel and so forth, but to represent a higher concept. In other words, to almost serve as an ambassador for God to that meeting or whatever it is.

And that was a really freeing concept to, to realize that, we could be there to represent something. Not only a concrete, but extremely important and valuable in that moment. So I used to, when I was on the ship, I would go down to like the engine control spaces. And I just hang out while they were doing an evolution.

And it got to be that the, especially the senior folks there would ask me to come and be present when they were trying to do something. And they’re working with old equipment. Sometimes it can be finicky and they began to realize that it was different there, when the chaplain was present, something was different and that’s not because, Michael was fun to talk to or a good distraction, I hope.

But it was more fundamentally that, they recognized that there was a little shift in thought to understanding that God’s governing this complicated piece of. Just as much as, somebody that’s coming to me for prayer because of an issue with their family. And that was that’s when things began to really shift in my career where I realized it’s, there’s a deeper purpose to our presence there in these places.

And if that’s, if that’s worked into every day, then I think we’re doing okay. 

Robin Jones: That’s certainly something that we can all take with us. That’s not indicative just to your media. That’s an a, that’s something that each one of us can do. And the meetings that we participate in, whether it’s a church meeting or whether it’s a meeting that, in your office or in a family meeting, so to speak.

Michael Brown: Absolutely. And I couldn’t emphasize enough that chaplains are not unique in this. This is a this is what the practice of Christian Science. When it’s out there in the world, whatever our task may be I’ve always found Mrs. Eddie talks about businessmen and cultured scholars, right. That sense of expanding thought that clarity of thought this is applicable in all realms.

It’s neat as a chaplain sometimes because you can make it your sort of stated mission purpose, but it’s certainly true. And I’ve seen service members have talked in times with Christian sinus and, and they’re doing this as, as aviators and pilots and ship drivers and all sorts of things, mechanics, they’re bringing that same spirit of thought to bear.

I just, I get to wear a cross on my color that makes it kind of publicly stated that that’s why I’m there. But Christian Scientists are able to do this no matter. It’s certainly not something unique to chaplains. 

Robin Jones: Well, there’s another question. On the Q and a is CS chaplains described as CS practitioners in uniform.

That that’s, what they’ve heard is, is that how you feel? I mean, we’re kind of talking about that. 

Michael Brown: Yeah. I think that gets right to that point that and there was a time where we sort of used that as a tagline and, and I think the realization was that’s wonderful, but we’re not the only practitioners in uniform.

Any student of Christian Scientists that serving in the military is a practitioner in uniform. And and we have a specific job as, as chaplains as a staff officer in our different kinds of commands. And so we’re there to represent that very sometimes very openly. But the practice is not certainly not limited to the role of the chaplain.

And and I think that’s important to understand where, it’s w we have this neat opportunity because of the, the military structure of chaplaincy it’s been around since the very beginning of our branches of service. We’re, we’re just about to celebrate our 246th birthday as a Navy chaplain Corps.

So it’s, this is not a new concept. What’s so neat is that the Mother Church has been able since world war one to provide chaplains into that system in order to serve, not just Christian sinus in the military but all members under this sort of mission to, to help the world understand better.

What is Christian Science? That’s pretty 

Robin Jones: remarkable. Now I think this question is going to warm your heart right here. I’ve I understand there are upper age limits for pilots in many companies and agencies. Are there any upper age limits for military chaplains to begin or enter the service as a chaplain?

Michael Brown: There are, and it, and it varies from time to time. So it’s a tough question. It’s something that can flex depending on the sort of numbers game, the needs that are there. If you’re just starting with, and it depends sometimes how a prior service can work in there. Sometimes people are coming from having already served in the military in some capacity, but generally 40 years old is the, is the kind of upper limit.

Sometimes it’s a little bit older than that to begin that service Once you’re in, you can go well beyond that, thankfully, and, and continue that service. But in terms of starting it’s around there sometimes a little bit more, that is a question that I have no real view on what is happening at this moment.

That’s the kind of thing recruiters do, but and I, I also, I failed to ever acknowledge the fact that, I, in no way represent the Navy in these comments, right. Anytime you’re in uniform was out to emphasize I’m not representing the Navy. And so I can’t speak to some of those things that are policies.

I’m just not not up to date on. 

Robin Jones: So another good question. You, you showed your books that kind of go on those in the pocket, right? You carry with, you 

Michael Brown: sure. 

Robin Jones: Are there occasions. Where you are able to share Science and Health with R with others or whether you’re ministering to, 

Michael Brown: yeah. I had a really neat experience.

I was in Kuwait. And I heard through, I don’t remember exactly how some Christian Science, great vine out there that there was an army officer stationed not too far away in another base in Kuwait. And, and my unit would go there occasionally to use different training ranges on that base. And so he and I got in touch and I said, next time somebody going out there I’ll, I’ll go with them and we’ll have dinner.

And so I went out there and had a wonderful time with this young man. It was so neat to be able to connect. We had some other mutual connections and it was just wonderful again, to bring that sense of home. And then he said to me, I thought this was just remarkable. He was a tank officer, there’s four people in a tank and he said, one of the junior soldiers in my tank is also a Christian Scientist.

And I think he’d like to see you now. I had brought some books with me to give to this officer, but he was all set. And so we went out into somewhere. This young guy was working and loading things off of a truck and we pulled them aside and, and started talking. And, and I shared with him one of the kind of fundamentals of this work, which is that the Mother Church has sent me here for you.

And I said that to him. And cause he was telling me a little bit about what was going on and it was a pretty rough deployment for him. And And he was so moved by that. And I was, he kind of said, I feel like I should be doing more, but I don’t have any of my books with me. And so I pulled them out of my pocket and handed them to him and it just blew him away that here, he never expected this.

How is it that the Mother Church has provided this to him way out there. And I thought that was just a really neat experience. That’s, that’s a clear demonstration of God caring for this, 

Robin Jones: That’s interesting. You say that my dad served in world war two in the south Pacific. He carried a Bible and Science and Health with him into theater.

And there was a gentleman from Arkansas that was, very devoted Christian and they struck up a friendship and relationship and were able to exchange the Science and Health he and his buddy. And I actually got to meet the guy at one of the unions that my dad had when I was, when I was growing up.

It was so neat to see that it was something that just naturally occurred as of, that the willingness and openness to, to share. I appreciate all that you do and all the work that you do and the things that you do that are out there. It’s just it’s such a treasure.

Let me get this question in here. This is from Jacqueline. Please share with us some of the CS books over the years that have documented the CS chaplain programs. 

Michael Brown: Okay. Absolutely.

There’s there are a handful of things and I’ve, I may miss some of it. The Mother Church put out for kind of different reasons. After the first world war, they sort of did a report. It was an internal report about kind of the wartime services of the Mother Church. And then after world war two they did that in a more formal matter and that one’s easy to find wartime activities.

And I, I can’t remember exactly the dates that are on there ’40 to ’45, I think. And we’re ’39 to ’45. And so Christian Science, wartime activities world war one has an issue with that and world war II. And those do include a lot of the chaplain work from that era, but it’s much more than that. And the Mother Church, especially in world war one was very, very involved in a lot of things that we may not expect nowadays. 

Kim Shuette wrote a book as well, that kind of documents that chaplaincy, Christian Science, military chaplaincy over its lifetime. And that went up until I think 2004. And so some of us were not part of the program at that point, but we kinda got up through up until the current generation, if you will.

Those of us that are out there and it tells a lot of wonderful stories and other individuals have written some things and there’s neat opportunities to hear from Janet Horton and others to share their experiences through some of the books that have been published. Dick chase had some stuff as well.

So We can all kind of work together to point you towards something if you’re looking for it. But there are some neat books out there that tell these stories. 

Robin Jones: There are some great comments in the chat. Steep says, this is close to my heart. My dad was not raised in CS, but after he was a world war II ace Navy pilot shot down and in prison in Japan, a Navy CS chaplain was instrumental in his recovery from near death.

So that that’s and, and brute and the brutality of the war that ended. 20 years later, he introduced me to Science and Health. When I needed it is many world war II, Science and Health. His first textbook. 

Michael Brown: Yes. Yeah. And that’s why this is one of those, world war two ones, they made them smaller and a little hard to come by now.

But yeah, we do have small ones that we give out. Absolutely. That’s a wonderful statement. 

Robin Jones: Yeah. Terrific. Linda says, this is wonderful. Thank you, Michael, for your service and your family for their service, because she’s learned so much, she said didn’t know about the, the COP how that worked either.

That was really, yeah. It was really helpful. Thank you very much for this just wonderful outpouring of thank you’s from everyone listening and, Michael you’re, you’re a terrific, terrific man. And, and all the work that you’re doing, we just so very much appreciate it. 

Michael Brown: The stories, those comments really drive home. What I think is so important and that’s that, yesterday was Veteran’s Day here in the United States Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, it’s not unique to our country where we recognize November 11th and it’s an opportunity to, to consider the sacrifices that people make.

One of the great things of this job for me has been that I get to see a lot of those individuals in action doing their service. And that certainly includes the families. There’s no question that it’s a much broader sense of service than just somebody in uniform.

And not only have we felt that in our family here and I’ve. Absolutely in awe of my wife and kids for what they’ve done. But I’m sure so many of our listeners can relate to that and feel that kind of connection with their family members who’ve served or you’ve seen that. And so my, I also just have a tremendous amount of gratitude for everybody else that’s out there and it’s really fun to be able to have the conversation, but I know it’s, it’s a much broader conversation than just the two of us.

Well, it 

Robin Jones: is. And your, your words are so full of wisdom and thoughtfulness, and thank you for those comments. 

 If you’re not an Albert Baker Fund career ally, why not? Our students and our recent grads could use her help. A word of encouragement, a new idea, help with a resume, a professional connection, connections to the local CS community, potential internships, or job opportunities. Maybe just a warm, friendly conversation with honest feedback.

So we need more career allies. We need people that are willing to share what they know with our students, our recent grads that are out there that we help. Please, please consider that and reach out to me, Robin at Albert Baker fund. If you’re interested, we’d love to hear from you. And if you’re interested in connecting with chaplain Michael Brown, Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy, this young gentleman we have right here, reach out to me again at Robin at Albert Baker fund.

And we’ll help you make that connection. Be sure that if you do know a student or you are a student that you go to the Albert Baker Fund and see the programs that we have available as you click that little dropdown menu that says apply, and it’ll direct you to the tab that you need to open for the particular program that might be of interest.

And you’ll see, we have a chaplain tab there as well. We love to help support, the folks like Michael, that are out there that want to make that, want to make that commitment. And so we, we, we would love to help you. And we do help at the, our banker funded and 

Michael Brown: have for a long time. So it was a huge going through graduate school as part of the training program to have that assistance.

Yeah. Very grateful for Albert Baker Fund. 

Robin Jones: And you can see how that blessing Michael is blessing the world. So as you see some of them. Year-end fundraising things coming and knocking on your doorstep landing in your mailbox. Please take notice that that your funds help folks like Michael, and they are a major blessing to our world and to our local communities.

Be sure that you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We have all kinds of wonderful stories and events like this one that we have, and remember to truly cast your net on the right side, because you will find inspiring ideas when you do. And the ones that Michael shared today with us is certainly proof positive of casting your net on the right side.

And again, sir, thank you so dearly for your work and all that you do. 

Michael Brown: Thanks Robin, I really appreciate you all. 

Robin Jones: Thank you.

“I knew that it was a way for me to deepen my understanding of Christian Science.”

About Our Guests in this episode:

Caitlin Babcock and Paige Lesko worked together in the Office of the Publisher’s Agent, improving and re-organizing YouTube help videos for Concord, and created a welcome trailer for newcomers. Caitlin is an International Relations major at Baylor University and Paige is a Mass Communications major at Principia College.

Julia Schuck helped edit articles for JSH-Online and even had the opportunity to write one for the Sentinel’s Teen Connect feature. Says Julia, “I learned that there’s a lot of prayer that goes into producing the periodicals!” Julia is studying Mass Communications at University of Maryland.

Emmanuel Tekila interned in Church Activities where he helped plan the Mini-Summit for CSO’s (Christian Science Organizations on college campuses) and mapped the locations of Christian Science Reading Rooms around the world. Emmanuel is an Economics major at the University of Kinshasa and joined us from the Democratic Republic of Congo!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin: This is the Net Effect. I’m your host, Robin Jones and today’s guests are really special. This is sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund, where we want to see our community grow and prosper and see the unlimited possibilities that emerge when Christian Scientists journey together through inspired education and career development. Today, we’re going to see some shining examples of that.

If you have students, or if you are a student, or you know of a student, we would love for them to know about the resources here at the Albert Baker Fund. You can find all that you want to know about what we do, and how we help and support our community by going to AlbertBakerFund.org. Pick one of the drop down menus and find out where we can help you. So please come to the Albert Baker Fund. We’d love to get to know you and see how we can support you.

Without further ado, I’d like to welcome our guests. Today. We have Caitlin Babcock, Baylor University student in Waco, Texas. Hi Caitlin. Paige Lesko at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. Emmanuel Tekila from the University of Kinshasa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And Julia will be joining us from the University of Maryland at College Park, Maryland, in just a little bit.

Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Welcome, welcome!

We’ll start with Paige and Caitlin. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were this summer, an intern in the office of the Publisher’s Agent. Is that correct?

Paige: Yes.

Robin: We’re all interested and want to know the things that you did this summer. Tell us a little bit about some of the projects that you worked on.

Caitlin: This was the Concord YouTube help page. We were given the task of reorganizing this website, which originally consisted of a bunch of videos that didn’t have the thumbnails that you see here. Didn’t really have organization, just this random scattering of help videos that they wanted us to figure out how to put together in a way that was a little bit more accessible to visitors.

How we did that was completely up to us. We worked through the summer on designing fun thumbnails for these videos. Renaming them, figuring out how to make the website more visually welcoming, more understandable for people that just understand what they’re reading. We gave the video descriptions.

We included links to Christian Science resources and to read the Bible and Science and Health so that people who stumbled across the page and weren’t familiar with Christian Science could engage more. A variety of different updates.

Robin: Caitlin, when you’re looking back and thinking about what you’re going to do in the summer of 2021, why did you apply to work at a church during the summer?

Caitlin: I’ve always wanted to work for the Mother Church. I didn’t grow up in a lot of Christian Science communities. I didn’t go to camp a lot. I wasn’t a Prin kid. So for me it was a really cool way to feel connected with Christian Science. I also felt like the Mother Church was this thing I would hear about and read about in the periodicals, but it just felt really distant, like what do they do?

I learned so much more about the work that goes into Christian Science. I feel that even if I don’t end up working for the Mother Church, all the skills I learned are totally transferable. It was a lot of stuff, like how to connect creativity to things I might not have tried before?

Robin: How about you Paige? Why work at a church during the summer? What was the attraction for you?

Paige: For me as a communications major, I was looking for an opportunity that would allow me to practice, some of those communication skills, paired with marketing and improve on basic writing communication skills, but also some career advice that I got about two years ago was what are you passionate about?

Someone just asked me that one day. That’s a good question. You can make a laundry list of what you’re passionate about, but I think there’s a difference between what you’re passionate about and what you like. I was thinking more deeply about this, more critically about this.

And I was like, what am I passionate about? As I was looking for opportunities and internships to apply for, naturally I came across the Mother Church ones. I realized, what I’m really passionate about is Christian Science. And I would love to have the opportunity to work in an atmosphere where I can work with Christian Scientists and practice Christian Science, with my colleagues and sort of talk about that and make it an important part of my work.

And so that was just a really cool opportunity, that the Mother Church has internships available for students.

The main draw for me was just being able to have the opportunity to work in an atmosphere where Christian Science is the priority.

Robin: Emmanuel, I’d love for you to comment on that too. What was the attraction for you to think about working at a church during the summer?

Emmanuel: I feel that duty to feel more connected with church. When I saw this internship online, the first thing that really attracted me to go into that was the idea of discovering more about the administrative aspect of church.

One thing also that brought me to reply to this internship is the fact that I knew that in the internship I could really increase my daily practice of Christian Science. Whatever was being asked there, whatever we’ve been doing during the internship was spiritually based.

I knew that it was a way for me to deepen my understanding of Christian Science. I really wanted to know the administrative aspect of church.

Robin: Were you all remote when you were working this summer? How was that for you? How was that for you Emmanuel?

Emmanuel: At first, when I learned that the internship was going to be online, it’s felt a bit tricky for me, because I had to deal with the connection issue.

It was not easy at first. And then beyond the fact of not having maybe a good connection, one thing also I was really thinking about, is that you have to be in front of your computer for all of the day. Your room was like your office, and your computer your best friend, because you need to interact with people online for almost eight hours a day.

It was very challenging. It’s really asking me to pray lots about that, to see that when we have an opportunity, God is the one arranging the way and making that possible to take that step of progress.

I kept thinking that’s because progress is a law of God, nothing can prevent it from happening.

It really took a lot to stay focused both metaphysically, and practically when you work. Let’s say, if you’re being logged out from the meeting, you don’t need to feel anxious. You don’t have to get your nerves harmed, you need to stay focused. And know that because this is my right spot, nothing can just come in to prevent these fulfillments to be done.

So the metaphysical aspects of this was very, very needed. And all the support that I got from the people I was working with in the church activity department was very useful to achieve my internship in a proper way.

Robin: Paige, Caitlin, anything to add?

Paige: Caitlin and I are so used to this because this was how we worked over the summer. We’re totally good working together here.

Definitely it was a bit of a challenge and I know probably all of us were a little bit bummed out that it couldn’t be in person. I just would like to point out the effort that they really put in to make us feel like we were there.

The entire first week, the orientation week before we even met our departments, we actually got digital tours of the church and the edifices. And even the Plaza, we got to see that via Zoom, which was interesting, cause it was very shaky, but that labor of love to make us feel like we were there and included, we really appreciated that.

As a college student, the times that I’ll be spending at home with my parents is probably very near and dear to them. I’m sure my family back home was grateful that I could spend some time at home beyond a similar work schedule, with them.

A blessing in disguise, I would say.

Robin: Yeah. Caitlin?

Caitlin: One thing that really stood out to me being online was they had us do these one-on-one meetings with all the staff we were working with. They never done that before, when they did in person internships. The idea was if we were in person, we’d be running into these people in the hallway or going to coffee together. So it’s our stand-in for coffee chats. That made a really huge difference. I felt so much more connected than I’d expected to feel over Zoom. If I ever do a remote job, that’s something I really want to continue.

Robin: That’s a great idea. Yeah.

Caitlin: Take initiative and reach out to people.

Robin: It’s so important for you to do that in an internship. Maybe even one of the most important parts is building those professional connections, making new connections, talking to people that you don’t get to see every day and really getting a chance to find out the things that they’re doing and build some of those relationships that are so, so valuable.

Tell us a little about this.

Caitlin: This was the YouTube channel before we made any changes. This is what we were given to work with. What can we do with this?

One of the things we noticed right away was we wanted to make all the titles really easy to understand and separate from each other. So something like “Alternate Hymn Settings and the Study Tools Panel” probably became shortened into something more like “How to Search Hymns.”

We also made all the titles start with “How To”, so that would be a unifying aspect. We really didn’t want people to feel like they were just on some really technical help site that they had to muddle the way through.

We wanted to feel fresh and inviting. It’s very strong. It’s very organized. Detail matters.

Robin: Did you anticipate that this is the work that you’d be doing before you got there? Had you ever worked on a help page before? How did that come about for you?

Caitlin: I had not. I really didn’t know what to expect.

I learned at the end of the internship, this isn’t what they had really planned. They had a lot more ad projects set up for us to do and things just shifted. This is what ended up needing work.

We ended up getting all these ideas and ended up taking the summer, but that was really fun too. We got to see where it goes.

I think they ended up using the thumbnail we designed for some other YouTube channels too. So it became a bit of a bigger project, which is a cool example of how you’d start something and it would lead to something else.

Robin: How about you Paige, had you anticipated working on YouTube or getting into the nuts and bolts of a help page?

Paige: I’ll have to say no, it was definitely a surprise that we had this project. I was thinking, oh, we’ll probably be looking into helping with translations of some of Mrs Eddy’s writings or something involving writing, but, we were thrown this project, which ended up being such a really, really cool opportunity to use some of the communication skills that people don’t consider communications.

If you think of a more multi-platform style of like graphic design, we got to design new thumbnails that we put on each video. It just really gives us the opportunity to sort of step out of our comfort zones.

That’s what ended up happening. We submitted a creative brief. We wrote in this document, everything that we wanted these thumbnails to envision. We sent that to one of the design teams at the church and it was really cool to work across departments and accomplish a goal as an intern. That was really, really neat.

It was really a cool opportunity to try something new and do it altogether as a team.

Robin: Did you get a chance to work with other departments and get exposure to different aspects of the work that they did as well?

Paige: We had different departments of the church actually gave us presentations as as a whole intern group as well. We got to meet people from all different departments like Practitioner Department, Christian Science Teachers, Marketing, every department we sort of got to meet with.

Specifically for OPA, Office of the Publisher’s Agent, where Caitlin and I worked, we directly worked with the design group on our thumbnail images and with the Languages Department as well. Translations is a very big part of the department that we worked for.

Robin: Let’s go to our friend Emmanuel. He’s been very quiet and patient. I understand that, you’re at the University of Kinshasa and you’re studying economics. You speak three or four languages as well. Tell us a little bit about what you did this summer at the Mother Church.

Emmanuel: I was in the Church Activity Department and one of the main projects I had to work on was mapping out the Reading Rooms for the French speaking countries in Africa, and the English speaking countries in Africa.

The job was really nice because the purpose behind this project was to know we have branch churches, but we don’t know which branch churches have their Reading Rooms inside the church, which one have the Reading Room not in the church.

We need to update the information that we have. We may have churches moving from one address to another, or changing the librarians.

My job was trying to check if they are still there. It was a nice opportunity to discover all the branch churches that we have in Africa. They come together to share ideas that can help them move forward.

Something else that I was also able to do was playing that role of taking notes. And it was a nice opportunity for me to better my skills of taking notes.

I really felt that the notes that I took really reflected what was shared in the meeting. It was a way when you are in such meetings to know what are the ideas that each branch, each field is working with? Are they facing like the situation of the pandemic, which happened last year?

It was really a way to get that awareness of what’s needed to be solved around the world. What ideas need to be taken into account and how you can react metaphysically to what’s going on in the field.

You see how practical people who are in the Church Activity Department are receiving the news.

One thing that I really love is that it’s not like the Mother Church telling people how to do things.

We all turn to God and listen to the right spots, the right direction to take. It was so amazing to see how things were unfolding peacefully until we reached the solution.

Robin: Caitlin, did you find the same thing in your work? I think you all commented to me about the importance of how you’d start your day and how you involved prayer in that day and prayer in the decision-making process.

Tell us a little bit about what your perspective is and what you gained from that?

Caitlin: That was huge. One of my favorite parts of the internship was just getting to observe all these people in my department work together in a business, but how they applied Christian Science to every detail of that.

I love the metaphysical meetings. We would talk about just how to work through the day. I wish I could do that for like every single job, cause it’s just such a great way to start out and get on the right footing.

Even when we were just doing the business things a day and meeting and having reviews, you could just see it being practiced.

People, they take their work so seriously and it doesn’t mean we’re not lighthearted, that we don’t like to have fun. Everything’s just seen as important. We’re doing this work, and it’s for the glory of God. It matters, and how we treat each other matters. You just want to do well, and you want to be responsible, and you want to do it right. It’s not a sense of pressure. There’s just so much love expressed every day.

Robin: Paige, what about you? Did this have an impact on you, and what you do, and how you do things going forward?

Paige: Definitely. I would say that just being more consistent in my practice of Christian Science on a daily basis as applied to not just, healing, but more of just, uplifting.

I find that, many times in my life. I would turn to Christian Science in a moment of weakness, and then think about it later and think, well, I don’t have to just turn to Christian Science when I’m sad or, when I’m dealing with something. It’s more of a lifestyle practice that can be applied.

What I started to do was, each morning, before I started doing my work I would do my spiritual work, which would be expressing gratitude for the opportunity that I had to be able to work with the people that I was working with.

Along with expressing gratitude, I also did some work with the Lesson. Finding the importance in the periodicals, and the different publications that the Christian Science church puts out is an appreciation that I gained. As far as Christian Science practice goes, understanding and realizing that it really applies to everything because all life is of God.

That just became really apparent to me through the work that I was doing.

Robin: Julia, welcome! We’re glad you’re here with us. You can jump right into this conversation. Tell us a little bit about how that impacted your particular work.

Julia: I was an intern with the JSH, the periodicals Journal Sentinel, Herald. I did a lot of editing work as well as some online content specialization.

Something that became very clear to me throughout the internship was that I’m praying for myself and for the church and for the cause of Christian Science in the morning, before I do anything else. It helped me feel aligned with God so that my work throughout the day was really still aligned with God.

Something that also came very clear to me while working was that those little pockets of time throughout the day, whether it’s during my lunch break or, in between meetings, to take that time and to realign my thought and and really just ask, reach out to God and say, what is it that I need to be doing to bless today?

Having those little moments of quiet, of prayer, of study really helped me know what my role was.

It helped me know what I needed to do, and it helped me understand that my work was blessing everyone just as much as it was blessing me.

I really felt that I really felt incredibly blessed. And so that was really helpful.

Robin: You used a word that I often don’t hear when I talk to students and your friends and peers, and you use the word, the cause of Christian Science.

Did that take on a new meaning for all of you? Had you ever even used that word before this summer? I’m curious to get your feedback on that.

Emmanuel, will you start with us with that?

Emmanuel: Yes. I’ve already used that word. For me, it’s refers to the purpose of the Christian Science movement. Like really, what is the purpose behind Mrs. Eddy’s church. And I think it’s really healing.

When we talk about the cause of Christian Science, we really feel that we have that sense of responsibility on what we can play, how we need to think, how we need to pray to support this.

It gives you a sense of belonging to a church and giving back to that church. So, and this is something, as Julia mentioned, we’ve really deepened that during the internship, because you got to pray for the Mother Church because each week you have what we call the prayer list.

And this is a list of things that need to be addressed during the week. And there are things happening worldwide. So you really need to take that into account. When you pray in the morning in your daily prayer. What do you need to bring that? And as the daily prayer says, you need ready to bring all the affection.

It was so nice to include those issues while praying. And that gives that that’s the meaning of that cause. So it’s really belongs to you and you need to give back to that church.

Robin: Paige, do you have any comments on that? I think that’s a beautiful, beautiful insight Emmanuel.

Paige: Everything that Emmanuel said, I completely concur. I always go back to that one question because it’s, it’s such a present thought for me recently, but it’s like, what are you passionate about? I’m passionate about the cause of Christian Science and that took on a whole new meaning from the work that we did.

To me, the cause of Christian Science is, showing and spreading and demonstrating divine Love and the power of divine Love. It’s everything that Mrs. Eddy wanted to express and wanted Christian Science to express.

In working closely with her writings this summer and studying the Manual, just really brought that home for me because, I guess before this, I wasn’t really keen on, reading the Manual cover to cover. It didn’t really seem like that much of a page turner to me. After reading that and really just diving into it I gained a deeper connection to the structure of Christian Science.

Robin: How about you, Caitlin?

Caitlin: The cause of Christian Science is something that’s always been important to me. That’s one of the biggest reasons I wanted to come. I wanted to understand how we could be a part of that.

I love what Emmanuel said about belonging. I think that’s one of the biggest things we feel, like it’s not this distant thing anymore.

You feel like you’re part of it and you understand what people are working on, and what you need to be supporting.

I totally agree with Paige about the Manual too. I got one when I graduated Sunday School. I flipped through a few parts, but it just didn’t seem relevant to me, in my work.

And that’s something that definitely changed. We went through the Manual a lot and just really worked in applying that every day.

Robin: And how about you, Julia? Anything you’d like to add?

Julia: Everybody said pretty much what I feel as well, working with the Manual, and the sense of belonging. There isn’t much to add, everyone spoke so eloquently.

Robin: I love it, what you all have been articulating, this belonging to a family. I love that you put that number one on your list of the things that you did on a day to day basis.

How did that impact you Emmanuel?

Emmanuel: When you have that sense of belonging to a family, to me, it was even increasing my readiness to serve and to contribute to the work of the team. What happens was like when you come to work, it’s not like they take you as an intern, but they take you as their colleague.

And like, they bring you to a higher rank and you already feel that you need to give back to that group of people who are really valuing your ideas.

You feel like you are meeting with all of them in real, because you develop that sense of connection. For me, it was mostly how they value the ideas that you bring to the team. It’s not like they let to just speak, but they do consider what you bring his ideas and you already feel that they trust you.

They give you project to work on. And every idea that you bring to the meeting are really valued. And I felt so good to be proud of. People are looking really very what you bring and when you see the good that you can bring them to work.

Robin: You have a really nice list of takeaways that I appreciate. What stands out to you as your top takeaway?

Emmanuel: I think I will go with the idea of improving my interpersonal skills. When I was there, it was a big opportunity for me to see that when you are in the team, it’s okay to give the best of yourself. Don’t try to go over what you can give, but just give what you have to give and do it with joy.

The job with the Mother Church was all about listening to God.

Every day you come, you really need to listen to what Christ is speaking to you. Because if you say I’m going to do this, maybe you’re not going to achieve it. But if you listen to God, you will really get the right spot. It was so nice to listen more to the Christ, then bring our human way. So yeah, I really loved the fact that they really valued my ideas.

Robin: Thank you, Emmanuel. Julia. It is your turn. Tell us a little bit about what you did at the Mother Church this summer.

Julia: I spent a lot of time with JSH. I wore a lot of different hats in JSH. But the main part of the internship was editing articles for the periodicals.

I also did some help with Bible Lens, content selection for JSH Online, the carousel that you find on the main JSH page with all of those articles that are relevant to what’s going on in the world right now. Those are hand selected, prayerfully selected. That was a really cool part.

I did not like editing at the start of this internship. I wanted to like it, I wanted to learn how to be a good editor, how to edit well and sharpen my skills with that.

I found through working with my supervisors and taking on these articles that it really is such a metaphysical process.

Once that was real to me, I learned to really, really love editing.

Robin: How did you make that transition from going well, I don’t really like this to, oh, this is cool?

Julia: I had a meeting with my supervisor one day. I was feeling very stuck with the article that we were working on. She stopped and started asking me questions about how I felt about the article, how I was feeling just in general. And we started having a conversation about the importance of editing and what her experience had been as an editor at JSH.

And she said that that editing is like taking away all of the excess and really finding the core metaphysical idea, the most important part of this article that readers are going to take away, that’s going to help readers. Once we talked about that, we started working on the article again, and it was such a more harmonious process.

When we understood that the point isn’t to take out commas and add periods and little things like that, but really is to bring forward the metaphysical idea that is really going to resonate with the reader. And that was the moment where it became much more fun for me.

Robin: I’m curious, did the rest of you have a similar experience in a different way where there was something you really liked doing, or you didn’t think you were very good at that you had to get outside your comfort zone and embrace a new way of thinking or a new skill set?

Paige: It was just really cool for me to have that really, really positive teamwork experience and just really understand the different facets of teamwork.

Not feeling obligated to take lead all the time was something I had to work on and feel like I made a lot of progress on throughout the summer. Being okay with sort of not going with my idea.

I had a couple of experiences where I had an idea that I was thinking about for something that we were doing, but someone else shared their idea and I thought, wow, like I never would’ve thought of that. That’s the exact idea that we need to go with.

Having such a positive teamwork experience does really change my outlook on teamwork and now I love to work in teams. And so I’m really grateful for that.

Robin: Anyone else?

Emmanuel: The internship has really helped me to discover that I was good in writing because I had to reach out to the field when we were organizing for the CSO Summit for the French speaking countries.

I had to go back and forth being in touch with those who are leading the CSO. It was so nice to discover that I really had good writing skills.

I discovered that I was able to lead discussions. We met with them. And I was the one leading the discussion. By the end, my manager just told me that it’s, it’s really one’s skill. And I was like, wow. So I can lead a meeting.

Those are two things that I really took from that – my writing skills and my ability to talk in front of people, just the way I’m doing right now.

I think I’m doing that well.

Robin: You’re doing just great. How about you, Caitlin?

Caitlin: For me, it was working in technology. When we first found out your project for this summer is a YouTube channel. I was a bit of an inward girl and that’s just not something that’s in my comfort zone, something I’m good, at something I’m used to.

For me, it was really learning that I didn’t have to be comfortable with the skill we were doing, as long as I was comfortable with the ideas we were expressing.

What do I want people to see on this channel? I love Christian Science. What I want about that to express?

I have this fun, artistic idea. How can I express that? I realized it’s really about the passion you’re bringing to the table and the ideas you’re wanting to convey. You can learn a skill, but it’s those ideas that are whats important.

That really shifted my mindset and for the rest of summer even if we worked on something that I wouldn’t normally enjoy, wouldn’t want me to come through with, it was always like, how can I reframe this? How can I take what I know I’m good at, what I know I enjoy, and apply that.

Robin: I love it. So many students are a little bit apprehensive about saying who they are and what their faith is, or even saying the word Christian, let alone Science, right? Talk to us a little bit about why you put this in here. I think is very sweet and very brave.

Julia: Thank you. Thanks. My amazing supervisor over the summer proposed the idea for me to write this article. We were just casually speaking one day and I brought up this story of giving my boyfriend a Science and Health, and she said that would be a fantastic Teen Connect article. Part of my work over the summer was working on this article, which published, which is incredible.

It was really healing for me to be able to write it and work on it and edit it and see it get through to being published. I think the main takeaway from it is that there is no one right way to share Christian Science and trusting in God to present the opportunity if it’s needed and trusting God to equip you with the words to say.

That was my experience. When I leaned on God, I was told that giving a Science and Health to him would be a good idea. And even though I was apprehensive, I really worked with it. It was a really fantastic experience.

Every aspect of it, writing the article, experiencing it firsthand and and working on it. It was really such an amazing blessing.

Robin: Thanks for sharing that with us. And if any of you have anything you’d like to add to that, do you feel that you can go into your world now with a different sense of confidence and a better understanding of how to share our faith with our friends and family that may not go to church or may not even appreciate some of the things that we like, and some of the things that we talk about?

Emmanuel: Personally, I’m so grateful that Julia published this article. I even emailed her to thank her for this.

I’m a member of the Christian Science Organization at the University of Kinshasa. What I always do when we are holding a Christian Science lecture on the campus is that I don’t invite people to come to a Christian Science lecture because they need to become a Christian Scientist afterward.

I do invite them to come to attend Christian Science lectures, because I know that during the lecture, it’s not the lecturer speaking, but it’s the Christ. And because Christian Science is not separated from the world of God, it is the word of God. So it’s Christ himself who’s going to be speaking to those who will be attending the lecture.

And this is exactly what Julia has done with her experience. She didn’t want to influence a boyfriend to accept Christian Science. She knew that she was not the one trying to make him accept Christian Science, but she knew that the book will talk to him. And I think this is what we need to do.

Through the experience of the internship, we really learned that Christian Science is not there out to be imposing faith to others, but Christian Science shares and really what it is. And we know because it is Christ behind that word Christ himself. We do the word Christ speaks to human consciousness as Mrs. Eddy says. So it’s not a personal work, but it’s more about praying and knowing that everyone should be aware of that’s good and that’s good cannot bring bad consequences.

Sharing Christian Science should be something more about listening to the Christ speak, than having our own opinion the mediating, the conversation or the debate.

So that’s what I took from my internship.

Robin: At any given time, did any one of you reject Christian Science? Have you guys questioned Christian Science? Are you comfortable talking about that a little bit?

Julia: I am. I grew up in Christian Science. Both of my parents work for the cause of Christian Science. I went to Sunday School. We never missed church Wednesdays and Sundays. And a couple of years ago I started to question and then I wasn’t really going to church or praying or reading the Bible Lesson or anything like that.

The comeback into Christian Science was really, it had to be done through me and only me. It couldn’t be from, my parents and their, their loving gesture to give me Christian Science as a child and to try and continue that in my life because it’s helped them so much.

And so I just realized that it really, if I was going to be a Christian Scientist, it had to come a hundred percent from me and my beliefs and I had to get there by myself. I did teeter on the edge for a little while, should I be a Christian Scientist? Should I not be?

I had a wonderful healing that brought me back into Christian Science. I think it’s okay to question. It’s okay to wonder. It’s important to find peace with it, however you find that peace.

Robin: Anyone else like to add a comment?

Caitlin: I was also raised in Christian Science and as a kid. I loved it and would have healings, I’d give testimonies. And it was great, but I think late middle school or high school, I really started to question why I believed what I believed. And I was struggling with healings and I felt like I just couldn’t understand why we knew there was a God and why we knew any of this.

There’s all these thoughts out in the world. This one religion I was raised with, can’t be it like, what are the chances? And I really went away for a little bit and was searching and just felt like I was coming up really empty, rejecting these things I’d grown up with.

I definitely agree with Julia, I think it’s has to be so individual. Christian Science isn’t something you can just go along with because your family and friends did, which I think is what I was trying to do. It has to be you.

One day I was just struggling with something and I just grabbed a Bible, even though I wouldn’t normally do that and open and it was something I read.

I just read it and I felt so much love. And I started to remember all the things I’d loved in Christian Science, like all these moments in Sunday School, of reading something and the inspiration I’d felt.

For the first time I just started noticing the love in them and the rightness, and the justice, and how we’re not consigned to be suffering mortals. I think that really shifted what I was looking for in life. And that really brought me back.

Robin: What’s the one thing you learned or appreciated about the Mother Church that you did not know or realize before your internship?

Emmanuel: I think it’s the quality of work that goes behind every product. The Mother Church really is a professional institution. Almost everything goes through so many steps of checking.

They want to be sure that what goes out is really what needs to be out. They really make sure that the message is clear when it is published.

I feel so happy to have such a church which offers such quality of work. I really love that point. And also the metaphysical work that’s goes into every project that needs to be done. It’s not just your intellectual abilities, but you need to mix it up with the metaphysical intake.

That’s why we have what we have now. So we need to be so proud of this church.

Robin: Anyone else?

Paige: Thinking about the church almost like a company, there’s positions for everyone.

So if you’re into communications, or digital design, or law, there’s a place for you to work for the cause of Christian Science. That was just a really cool idea. Even music, I’m also music tech minor and, I’ve sang all my life and just getting the opportunity to meet with people and talk about music of the church was just such a cool opportunity.

If you’re a person that can do something, you have a place at the Mother Church and you love Christian Science. There’s a place for you.

Robin: I’m so impressed with everything I’ve heard today about the work that you guys have done, your experience that you had, all the different skills that you got to develop. It’s really impressive.

There are students that I talk to and they don’t have that same experience with an internship that you guys have gotten this summer. Coupling that with the fact that it was online, that you were working remotely, it’s really remarkable. The things that you’re talking about, the things that you’re saying and the incredible work that you’ve done.

So how has it changed your career goals? Who’d like to go first with that one?

Caitlin: For me, it didn’t so much change my specific goals, more my approach to the way I look at my career.

Some advice that one of the workers gave me during the internship that I think is something I really took away is that when you’re looking for a job, the really important part of a job is the people you’re working for, and do you feel purposeful? Are you animated? Do you feel like work you’re doing matters? Are you excited to go to work every day. And if you feel like you and the company click and have the connection, then a lot of times they’ll find a position for you. Things will just work out.

That’s what I really want to look for. Not closing my mind about the positions I’m willing to be in and really looking for the atmosphere of this place… Do I agree with what they’re about? Do I feel supported here? Can I just trust that the other things can come into place?

Robin: Anyone else like to add to that?

Julia: Caitlin, I feel very similar to you and how interning at the Mother Church has shaped my thought of career and jobs and everything.

I found that I feel my best in terms of my career when I’m doing something that feels right to me, that feels like God is telling me that this is a right thing.

Working for the Mother Church opened my eyes to get rid of the self will of, what does Julia want to do, and how much money does she want to make? All those material things that get in the way of the joy and the support and all of those wonderful things that come from working a job that you feel led to work in.

That was really a big thing for me and I absolutely concur with what Caitlin said.

Robin: Paige, anything you’d like to add?

Paige: In terms of career goals and approach, I found myself asking myself two questions and one was, what qualities does this work express? And does it align with my mission?

It’s really important for students or people our age, or any age, to think about what your mission is? What you want to express through any work that you do. Look at the qualities that a company expresses or an opportunity expresses, and when we talk to those people, keep your thought open and listen and feel out the situation.

Thinking more on the qualities that an opportunity expresses rather than what can I gain from this opportunity?

Naturally you’ll gain something from the opportunity, but also thinking more along the lines of what can I contribute to this opportunity? We all have so much to contribute whether we know it or not. That’s something definitely to keep in mind.

Robin: Emmanuel, you’re in a different country and on a different continent. How do you see your career after having been exposed to the things that you talked about and shared with us this summer?

Emmanuel: I didn’t mention that at the beginning, but as I was taking the internship, meanwhile also my classes at the university. It has been really a special experience.

Doing the internship has really given me a great sense of how I can increase my productivity when working with others. I also have a clear sense on how to appreciate the good that’s happening, around us.

At the Mother Church, it’s the only workplace where you can get healed and you can heal others just by being at work. You have so many great ideas coming throughout the day that really empowers you and lets your light shine and bless others.

You really individualize the spiritual power that is in you and be the light of the world.

I really enjoyed that experience. I’m so grateful to God, that this experience has come to me. I’ve really used that effectively. I won’t ever forgets this internship.

Robin: We all owe a debt of gratitude to the Albert Baker Fund for helping our students financially with their internship. It’s such a wonderful, wonderful organization.

Your willingness to share with our community is remarkable and outstanding. You’re all wonderful people, and it’s so much fun to hear your stories.

If you’re interested in connecting with one of the students, send me an email, just send it to robin@albertbakerfund.org, and I’ll be happy to connect you.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

We’re always communicating and talking about wonderful, wonderful students that we have. These folks right here are just a shining example of the many, many students that we help. Again guys, terrific job today. You all have so much to say and such rich, wonderful inspiration.

Thanks again. Look forward to seeing you all on the next Net Effect.

“Really there’s no halfheartedness in being God’s expression.”

About Our Guest in this episode:

Trudy Palmer — Ph.D, Educator, Administrator, and Deputy Editor of the Daily Edition of The Christian Science Monitor
Trudy Palmer is a deputy editor for the Monitor Daily. After earning her Ph.D. in English and American literature at Stanford University, she pursued a wide-ranging career built around a love of words. She has taught American and African American literature at Tufts University and the University of Pittsburgh; edited a scholarly book on the blues; worked as a senior staff editor for the Christian Science religious publications; and, just before joining the Monitor, served as editorial director in the Marketing Department at Principia. In addition to her work as deputy Daily editor, she oversees the Monitor’s commentary section.

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin: This is the Net Effect, Career Conversations and Connections, episode 46. We have a truly special guest today with us. Her name is Trudy Palmer. We are so looking forward to having her this afternoon. She is the Deputy Daily Editor for the Christian Science Monitor.

After earning her PhD in English and American literature at Stanford University, she pursued a wide ranging career, built around a love of words. She has taught American and African-American literature at Tufts University and the University of Pittsburgh, edited scholarly books on the blues, worked as a senior staff editor for the Christian Science Monitor and the Christian Science religious publications.

Before joining the Monitor, she served as Editorial Director at the marketing department at Principia. In addition to her work as Deputy Daily Editor, she oversees the Monitor’s commentary section.

This Net Effect is sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund. Our vision is to realize the unlimited possibilities that emerge when Christian Scientists journey together through inspiration, education, and career development. We’re easy to find, just go to AlbertBakerFund.org. You’ll find all kinds of wonderful resources there to be able to choose from.

If you know a student, or if you are a student, and you need financial assistance for the upcoming college vocational school year, or you’re interested in Christian Science nurses training, click on the apply button and you’ll see a dropdown menu. Find the topic that suits your needs and click on it, and off you go.

The question I have for you to kind of kick things off, I just want to dive right in, is, how has or does your faith, Christian Science, play an active role in directing your career?

Trudy: Sure. I certainly believe that God has always been directing me. I’ll say sometimes I’ve listened, and sometimes I haven’t.

I’ll give you two examples of when I did listen related to my career.

I took a pretty circuitous route through college. I have transcripts from eight schools over 11 years before I got my BA. I wasn’t always trying to get a degree. Sometimes I would just see a course that looked interesting. I was basically trying to figure out what the heck to do with my life.

Eventually I graduated with a BA in English, from UCLA and by then I had reconnected with Christian Science after taking some time away.

I was praying about my next steps. I found this line in Science and Health, it is just part of a sentence. It says “growth is the eternal mandate of mind.”

I could see from that, that since my growth was impelled by God, it would be growth spiritward, and it could only be good. And so I could trust that, and I didn’t need to fear progress essentially.

The results were twofold.

It became clear I should go onto graduate school, and that worked out. And I also had a physical healing of several growths that had been on my arm for years. They just disappeared. It makes perfect sense, of course, as I had gotten this better understanding of growth as mandated by God, by Mind, then any evidence of something contrary to that was obviously going to fall away from my experience.

That is certainly one time early in my career when Christian Science absolutely guided me.

Another time, a little bit later, I was in a job that just felt stagnant. It just didn’t seem like it was maybe what I should keep doing.

So, I applied for other jobs. Crickets, absolutely nothing.

Robin: We’ve all been there.

Trudy: Sometimes I’d get the automated…

Robin: The automated decline, thank you very much.

Trudy: Sometimes I didn’t even get that. So eventually I just thought, okay. There’s obviously a lesson for me to learn here and I kinda got myself to the point, through prayer, that I was truly willing to do whatever God wanted me to do.

And if that was to stay put, I’m good. If it was move on, I’m good.

I really honestly got to the point where I wanted to be wherever God wanted me to be.

I stopped applying, not there’s anything wrong with applying for jobs, but I just felt confident in that. And I stopped looking around.

In the story, you can guess, another job surfaced. And I moved on.

Robin: So when you say you got to that point where you knew that you had to stop doing all the other stuff, what did it look like when you got to that point? Was there something that kind of happened? Was it over time? Was it a process? Because I get that question all the time. How do I know? When do I know what to do next?

Trudy: I’m not saying that it would have been wrong to apply for another job. I would say that my efforts up until I got this sense of peace, all the other applications were very much so, Hey, maybe that could work.

What I remember most clearly about the sense of peace that I gained was it was kind of like a conversation with God. I was like, okay, God, I totally don’t get it, why I’m here. Really this is where you want me? Okay. If that’s, if this is where I can best do your work I’m in.

I really did have more than once probably that kind of conversation with God. But at that point, I felt like I was at peace enough and tuned in enough that if I was supposed to apply for a job, I would know, and then I would have moved forward. It wouldn’t have been that same kind of scrambling feeling that I had before.

So I’m definitely not trying to say don’t apply for jobs, but you just want to be impelled divinely to do so if possible.

Robin: I really appreciate that. I hear that from folks and they go, I’ve been praying, I don’t hear anything. Or, I’m not sure what to do next.

It’s so nice to hear that, it does come, that sometimes staying that course helps a great deal.

Trudy: I still didn’t understand why I was there. But I was confident that it wouldn’t make any sense for God to have me someplace where I wasn’t making the most of the talents God had given me.

Even though it humanly didn’t make sense to me, it’s not like that changed, but I really just felt confident that God was in charge and I was willing to follow God’s way.

Robin: I was able to go back out to some of the camps this summer, where I do workshops with the staff. One of the topics that I cover in my workshop are transferable skills.

I love that you’re willing to talk about that because that’s a really hard thing for people to get ahold of.

For students and recent grads, how does that work and what is a transferable skill and what does that look like?

Maybe you can talk a little bit about your thoughts about transferable skills and what those look like?

Trudy: I’ve had a somewhat wide range of jobs. I’ve taught college. I’ve done administrative work in higher education. I’ve been in publishing. I’ve been in marketing and now journalism.

It’s not been a sort of necessarily obvious straight course.

I think what’s important is to be very clear about your skills.

I’m not just talking about skills that you have learned at school, or practiced on a job. I’m talking about all sorts of skills that you’ve had and used in your life, in your family, in your friendships, in whatever.

I think of those skills kind of like ingredients, and you haven’t done whatever the next job is. But you’ve used a lot of those ingredients. So if you think of that next job, sort of as a cake that you’ve never baked that’s fine. It is new, but you’ve used a lot of the ingredients that are going to go into that cake already.

In my case, critical thinking, teamwork, communication, thinking about the audience, brainstorming, being detail oriented. There’s just a million skills.

Here’s an example of when I combined those skills in a way that was new and, and the skills were familiar, but I put them to get together in a way that was definitely new to me.

When I was hired at Principia in the marketing department, I had never done marketing. I brought to them other skills, other ingredients.

I was well familiar with writing, with editing, with knowing the audience, with managing details, with meeting deadlines. There were all sorts of elements that I had, but I definitely had not made that particular cake before with those ingredients.

So of course there was a lot to learn, but having identified my skills for first of all, you kind of need to do that in order to talk in the interview and get the job, but also it also, it just gives you a kind of context and confidence for knowing that, okay, there’s going to be a lot of new coming at you, but Hey, it’s not like you’ve never written before.

It’s not like you’ve never edited. Not like you’ve ever, never worked with a team before. So you can not feel so freaked out about what’s new, right? That’s true of my situation now, when I moved from Prin to the Monitor, oh man, Monitor journalism and marketing, it couldn’t be more different,

I’m still writing, mostly editing. I’m working with a team, I’m meeting deadlines, and paying attention to details. All of those ingredients are still there. This is yet another kind of cake, but all of those ingredients are still there.

You just don’t want to feel overwhelmed by the new. At this point I have a lot of jobs that I can bring things from, but they don’t have to be things you learned in a job. Teaching is an important skill and maybe you taught your baby sister or something, it doesn’t have to be on the job.

Robin: I think that’s such an important point because there are many ways to acquire skills that that our desire or the, there are many ways to, to find what to find like volunteer opportunities or, clubs there’s there’s ways to gather those skills that, that isn’t isn’t in a work-related environment, but still transfer over into a professional resume because it’s a skillset.

And if you’ve learned it, if you have it, then you can certainly demonstrate to someone though that you, that you’ve got it, you’ve kind of got it in your bag, so to speak.

Another topic that I love that you brought this up, I just think, and this may be the hottest topic out there, particularly for students and recent grads.

Employers are always bending my ear about work ethic. I can’t tell you how you know I am, so they’ll, they’ll go on and on and on about work ethic. Just a quick plug – I came back from all these camps and boy, one thing that a camp counselor learns is a work ethic. They’re on 24/7. It’s such an incredible skill that they learn while they’re there.

Talk to us a little bit about work ethic and what does it mean to have a work ethic?

Trudy: That is a really important point and I will say that I’m going to do my best, period. So whatever’s put in front of me, I’m going to do the best I can with it.

And that’s sorta what it means to me. And in more detail, that means I’m going to take ownership of it. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to collaborate and work with others and all of that by any means, but I’m not, I’m almost certain I’m not going to go, I dunno. I just can’t do that. I might say, I don’t know, but I’m not going to leave it there.

I’m going to do whatever it takes to get it to where the person who knows that is, or for me to find out, whatever it takes, I’m going to see it through to completion. And I think that sense of ownership is a big part for me of having a work ethic.

It’s sort of like thinking of your work, having your byline.

Occasionally I write and that will have a byline, but mostly, yeah. What I’m doing has served me. Doesn’t have my byline editors. Obviously you don’t have their byline on the articles. But you kind of want to feel like it’s there. And so you want to be able to say, yeah, I’m proud of that. I did my best.

Really there’s no halfheartedness in being God’s expression. There just isn’t. The Psalms are constantly saying, praise God with your whole heart. And Jesus said the first and great commandment is thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and that’s the first and great commandment with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind.

So really I think that that’s our nature as God’s reflection. You think about a sunbeam reflecting the sun, it doesn’t on a cloudy day say, it’s cloudy, I’m going to. I’m going to kind of take, take a little break here. It just doesn’t do that. It’s going to shine fully, no matter what, it’s just it’s nature.

And I think that is how reflection works for us. That is actually putting herself wholeheartedly come into something comes naturally. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it does come naturally. And we just need to be willing to give it expression. Now, this is different, I want to be clear than being a perfectionist.

The perfectionist is almost well, I don’t know if, how often it’s helpful. There’s that expression, perfection is the enemy of the good I think or something. Right. So I’m not talking about perfection, I’m talking about giving it your whole heart.

So you’re going to do the best you can within the budget or within the deadline or within whatever the constraints are. You are going to give it your all. So to me, that’s what a work ethic is.

Robin: Well another part of that is thinking about the kind of work that you’ve done and what you’ve done.

You said, I’m always going to do my best, I started out working, I’m going to work hard to do my best.

I’m wondering, has doing your best always turned out perfectly?

Trudy: Oh my gosh, no. No, absolutely not. Of course not. No, but that’s okay. You do your best, and then you learn what you could do better next time. That’s also frankly, part of a work ethic, that you’re not just sort of sitting back going, oh man, I’m cool, done.

You are saying, yeah, I gave it my all, I think maybe next time I could go farther in this way.

Robin: Looking back on your background in looking at, as far back as you’d like, what do you draw from, what has helped you gain that confidence to work at it the best or to be the best, or, have that sense of persistence when maybe you’re failing or things aren’t turning out so good.

Tell us a little bit about that?

Trudy: Well there’s kind of two sides to it. To be perfectly honest, I think it began for less than ideal reasons. I was in a pretty dysfunctional family growing up and my survival strategy was I’m just going to be really, really good and kind of stay out of trouble that way.

And so, I was obedient. I was a parent pleaser, I was a teacher pleaser, that was just how I survived. Maybe that sounds good. It’s actually not the best. A lot of that is good, but it’s not the best way to either practice failing and recovering, or to just be an independent thinker.

That was my situation.

The other piece was that I grew up in a generation and a class where it was really important to represent the race well. And so that fed beautifully to being a good girl, pleasing adults, all of that stuff. So to be honest, that’s how it started. But I did at least then have the experience of seeing that doing well was satisfying.

Eventually that shifted from being a people pleaser to wanting to do my best for myself. That’s certainly a better approach, but it doesn’t mean that others aren’t going to have any role in what you’re doing, and what motivates you.

I’m thinking about other people all the time in my work, I’m thinking as a writer and editor, I’m thinking about the reader, what will make it clear? What will make it persuasive? What will just make somebody think all of that?

I think it comes down in a way to service. I kind of think that most every job ultimately has an end user. Whether you’re a driving Lyft or you’re designing a bridge or whatever you’re doing, waiting tables, there’s some end user.

Now your position might be quite far away from the ultimate end user. But if you think about most jobs having an end user, then most jobs I think are service jobs.

Essentially a service job means that you’re loving your neighbor. And that is the second commandment. We started out with love God with your whole heart. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

So if I’m right about that fact, that most jobs ultimately lead to an end-user, then they are a way to serve others. A way to love your neighbor. What I’m saying then, in a wrap up way, is that having a work ethic is being wholehearted, loving God, whole heartedly, and serving others, loving your neighbor as yourself.

Those are really the sort of core of a good work ethic and certainly whatever task, however, mundane or whatever it may be, if you can think of it in those more spiritual terms, it will uplift it. I think.

Robin: Your insight to that is so helpful and has such great perspective. To kind of carry that on further, and I think now more than maybe ever since we’ve had this transition from working in an office to work in our homes and working in our home office and working in our home studio, and now we’re all thinking about a balance, and, and people are shifting their thought.

I wonder if you could share with us how you’ve managed to balance work and life and your career and family and business and health and all that. Those seem to be the dominant topics of folks today.

Trudy: I have to be honest and say that on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, I’m probably not the best at work-life balance. It tends to tilt towards work.

I will say that two really super important things in my life have overall, well, maybe not every single day or every single week, but overall they have balanced my life so that it’s much more than work.

Those two things are family and church.

I’ll tell you a little bit about family. I adopted my daughter as a single parent. I wanted to adopt since high school, whether I married or not. As time went on, it was kind of hard to know whether marriage was going to be in the picture. Should I move forward on my own? Should I give up on the idea altogether? She’s almost 30. It’s not that uncommon to adopt a child on your own now. 30 years ago it was a little unusual.

Robin: That was a big step.

Trudy: Yeah. And, and so I just didn’t know if I should move forward with it. So I was kind of fraught over it all and I remember I will never forget one night in graduate school. I was actually babysitting this little kid and she was in bed and I was just like, stewing over all of this.

And then I don’t know, I read, I guess the, this sentence that just the very first part of this very long sentence, Mrs. Eddy loves long sentences, but the very first part of this sentence, it says ” “this is the doctrine of Christian Science, that divine love cannot be deprived of its manifestation or object.”

Suddenly I realized, oh, I am going to have an opportunity to have this whole hearted loving experience. Maybe it will be a child. Maybe not. Maybe it’ll be a business, who knows, but here’s why. Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation or object. So that means that I have to be both the manifestation and object of God’s love.

So the object part was easy. I had lots of friends, extended family. I certainly felt God’s love. But what mattered that night, I realized, was that I couldn’t be deprived of being the manifestation or expression of Divine Love, because if so, then that would mean that God was deprived of part of His manifestation of love.

And that obviously can’t be of omnipotent and infinite Love. So. I suddenly realized it was a guarantee. It was a given. I was going to have an opportunity to manifest or express love in this whole hearted, challenging, engaging way. And like I said, maybe be a child, maybe be a business maybe, I had no idea what it was going to be.

But I felt totally certain that I was guaranteed that, and had to be, not because of me, but because of God. God wasn’t going to be deprived of it.

At that point, after that, I was at peace. I had no more clue whether, what it would be for a long time, but I really did feel confident that couldn’t be deprived.

And, so I did then wind up adopting this little girl, totally a match made in heaven. I know you can ask her if she agrees, but I think she would agree at this point. Maybe not when she was in high school.

Anyway, and back to the original question. So family was a real balance to work. In terms of work-life balance. There were just limits, and wonderful limits, that family imposed on how much I could overwork.

The other thing that continues to be a really wonderful balance is church.

It fluctuates how many committees you can be on and you give more some years than others. But participating in church has been such a blessing. It’s really been a boon to my growth, my spiritual growth, and It just gets you to think bigger than yourself to think about your congregation and your community, the movement, the world.

So over all these years participating in church has been another really, really good way to bring a sense of balance into life. And I would just say not completely unrelated, but when it comes to church work, I would just say to everybody, if you ever have a chance to be First Reader, do it. It is like the hardest total blast, aside, perhaps from parenting that I have ever experienced.

It is just the best.

Robin: That’s an interesting topic is particularly I appreciate you bringing it up as it relates to students and recent graduates. I think they struggle with church more than most, and trying to figure out if it’s worthy, if it’s worthwhile, they have time to do it.

There’s all kinds of arguments that kind of come into that. So I think it’s so important to hear from someone like yourself as to why that’s been such a blessing to you and how you’ve been able to bless others by being a part of a church and and the congregation at large kind of a thing.

Trudy: I recommend it. It’s really about service, but it is also, it kind of keeps you honest in a way, just in terms of you know how sometimes you wouldn’t make the effort to do something for yourself, but you’ll make the effort for somebody else?

I think that may be just kind of the nature of the human condition. I don’t know.

In a sort of similar way, church, I have found just brings out the best in me. When I think I would not make the effort for myself, or have nothing more to give, then church just calls it out of me and it is such a blessing for me.

I’m hoping it’s a blessing for the churches I’ve been a part of too, but it is just such a blessing to have that something bigger than you pull out of you more than you knew you had.

There’s this interesting statement in the Manual. It says God requires our whole heart, kind of bringing us back to what we talked about before, God requires our whole heart and He supplies within the wide channels of the Mother Church beautiful and sufficient occupation for all its members.

That’s a really interesting statement. I don’t think it means that all Christian Scientists are literally supposed to work for the Mother Church as in getting a paycheck from the Mother Church. Though I will say that two times I’ve done it. I’ve loved it.

One is now with the Monitor. I’ve absolutely loved it. And if you have that opportunity, I recommend it. But I don’t think that’s what that statement is saying. I think it’s saying that working for church, whether in that kind of an official capacity or in your branch church or, however you are working for church, is an important part of your career, of your life work.

At this point, anyway, that’s my understanding of that statement. It has certainly been proven true to me that it has been an important part of my life’s work and a really key way to love God and love my neighbor.

Robin: I have a question for you that just came in. So you kind of talked about this a little bit, but let’s just kind of revisit it a minute. The question is, did you map out your journey?

Trudy: No. If so I’m a really bad cartographer.

No, it’s been, kind of all over the place. No.

I did think when I was in graduate school and wondered, is this really what I should be doing? I did think well it could be a good way to make that other thing that you kind of want to do in terms of being a parent and possibly as it turned out a single parent, It could be a way to kind of make that work, maybe summers off because this was teaching college.

They tend to be a little bit, sometimes more liberal communities and, back then single parent adopting maybe would benefit from a more liberal community. That was one time when part of what sort of helped me persevere through graduate school was, I guess you could say mapping out.

You see how much that mattered.

I didn’t stay in that profession. So no, I was not mapping anything out. It was very much a one thing leading to another.

Robin: As a follow-up of that question, are you where you thought you would be?

Trudy: Well, no, and here’s how much I’m not. My father was a journalist and I think in my childhood rebellious- ness even though I was really, really good, I sometimes thought other things.

And I do remember thinking I am never going to be a journalist.

Here I am at the Monitor. Now I’m not a reporter, but so no, I, I certainly never intended to be, but I also, as I then got older and all of that stuff. It wasn’t just being rebellious. I never dreamed I could be at the Monitor. I didn’t think of myself as a journalist. It was beyond my wildest dreams that I could be at the Monitor.

So I did not have the vision of how my skills would be transferable enough to get to be at the Monitor.

Thankfully they did. And I was ready, willing to step out on that. So no, in a literal sense, I am absolutely not where I thought I would wind up. I am so much in a happier place than I would have dreamed.

The one thing I would say is that there is a kind of through line. And I think that that often winds up being true for people.

I can see my daughter’s through line, even though she’s done a lot of different things. And for me, I’d say my through line is that I do love working with words.

And so when I was teaching, I was teaching literature. Whether it’s marketing or whatever. I have pretty much always in some form been working with words.

So there is that through line, but it’s certainly has developed in ways far better than I ever could have imagined.

Robin: It sounds like early on you loved words and you love the whole idea or the things around that, obviously you picked English as a major.

The questions come out, how do I find what it is I want to do? I have this interest. How do I find that? Where do I go to get that information? How would you answer that question?

Trudy: Well I would first say that English was my second choice. What I really loved was theater. And too long of a story to tell. The long and short of it is all those transcripts I had with me, which weren’t even trying to get a degree. And UCLA had a ceiling on the number of units you could have. And by the time I got there, I didn’t have enough units left that they would allow me to fulfill a theater major.

The thing that I could fulfill, because a lot of those units were related to English and would transfer, the thing I could fulfill was an English major, which obviously I liked I had taken those courses, but my point in saying that is it would just be good not to be completely fixated on the one and only thing I want to do.

And to be open to what, all the things that you care about and enjoy. And I would say, that led me toward teaching and it turns out that wasn’t for me. That wasn’t for me the best fit. So I think. It is good to be doing. It’s really lovely if the main sort of task is something that you enjoy, but it’ll come, it’ll get dressed in different ways.

Some will be better. Some will be worse. That’s all fine.

It doesn’t always have to be that you’re in your perfect burning passion position.

Robin: So a question from Sydney is what principles of Christian Science guide you as you choose words for whatever you write.

Trudy: That’s a good question.

I would say that I definitely feel like I try to write in listening mode. So that I am listening to God for sort of where this thing is going. And what’s the key idea to convey and the best way to convey it.

Here’s one example. A Daily Lift that I wrote a while ago. It had floated through my head, oh, you should do a Daily Lift on that.

I had done one about George Floyd’s murder and then when the Chauvin trial was going on, I thought, oh, you should do something about that.

Literally that flitted through my head and it was gone. And then one morning I woke up really, really early. I’ve learned when that happens to say, okay, Father, is there a reason I’m supposed to be awake now?

Is there something you want me to do?

And it came back to me. You should try writing that. So I did. I didn’t have all the time in the world, because I had to go to work.

I just sat, I’d write. I’d get stuck. I’d stop. I’d listen, I’d write some more.

Get stuck. I’d stop. I’d listen.

By the time I needed to jump in the shower, I had this thing that I could send to them. Well, it turns out that so that’s that morning and it turns out that that was the afternoon when the verdict came out.

So it was able to be in a timely way, shared with listeners and the kind of version of it went into the Monitor.

It was a wonderful precious time of communion with God. I’m not a particularly fast writer. I had a few hours. It was just like, oh wow, I actually listened to God say, get up and write.

I actually listened this time and it met a need for people. It was timely. So that was a kind of really lovely example to me of the ripple benefit of listening.

Robin: One final question. You’ve been so gracious. Thank you for answering all these questions. It is from William and William asks, the phrase “to injure no one” that the Monitor has, he asks, has that ever come up while deciding things at the Monitor?

Trudy: I think it is kind of always with us, both that one, “injure no man, bless all mankind.”

The other thing that she says about the Monitor, in the first editorial, is to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent. That is always in our thought. That is always what we are trying to do. Now, we do it better sometimes than others, but that is always what we’re trying to do.

It’s interesting because not everyone at the Monitor is a Christian Scientist. So we are also always sort of translating that concept, taking it out of Christian Science terms and putting it in terms that feel accessible to everyone. So yes, we are always thinking about both of those statements.

And as I said, sometimes executing better than other times, but that’s our North Star.

Robin: You have been fabulous. We so appreciate your willingness to be with us this afternoon. Good questions. It’s just been terrific.

If you’re not an Albert Baker Fund Career Ally, why not? Our students and recent grads could use your help. A word of encouragement, a new idea, help with their resume, mentoring, a professional connection, potential internships, or job opportunities.

Maybe just a warm friendly conversation could be of great help. So please reach out and connect with them. And follow us with the ABF Career Alliance. If you’re interested in having a conversation with Trudy, reach out to me, robin@albertbakerfund.org, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and join our group on LinkedIn.

Thank you Trudy, for your inspiring ideas you shared with us today and your continued support of the Albert Baker Fund. Trudy is also a trustee with the Albert Baker Fund. And it’s just been great having you today.

Trudy: Thank you. Grateful to be here

Robin: And thank you to the incredible team at the Albert Baker Fund for helping put this event on, this webinar series and supporting the Net Effect. If I missed a question, I’ll get to it. Send me an email.

Remember it’s not just about working hard and casting the net as Trudy shared with us. Let your prayer lead you and into casting your net on the right side. So again, if you have questions or want a conversation please reach out to me, robin@albertbakerfund.org.

Thank you all. Good afternoon. Look forward to seeing you next time on the Net Effect.

“I never stopped praying and I never stopped putting one foot in front of the other.”

About Our Guest in this episode:

Chris Harbur
Chris has worked with over 20,000 children, ages 7+, across the US doing everything from teaching sports and acting, to mentoring young people in crisis through Crisis Text Line, and running the Impact Team at DoSomething.org, the world’s largest non-profit for young people. His team at DoSomething.org directly led to some of the largest world-wide volunteer efforts in history including the collection of over 100k pairs of jeans for homeless youth in 3 weeks, the donation of 30k pieces of sports equipment for kids in low income neighborhoods, and the clean up of 5 million cigarette butts in a month!

Over the past 10 years, Chris has worked as a coach to develop new methods for engaging kids to be active and healthy. Not only does Let’s Go Play get children excited to go outdoors and engage in exercise, it’s also a safe, creative space for them to talk about the things that matter to them most, bolster their self-confidence, and give them a life long love of sports.

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The replay of our September career conversation with Dan LaBar, innovative educator and community-builder, is now available in video, podcast, and transcript. Click “Watch Net Effect Replays” below!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin: This is the Net Effect. I am your host, Robin Jones, Director of the ABF Career Alliance. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We’re here to cast our net on the right side.

This Net Effect is sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund. To learn more about the Albert Baker Fund, go to AlbertBakerFund.org.     You’ll find all kinds of information about the incredible programs that we have and our worldwide outreach. So again, thank you to the Albert Baker Fund.

Thank you to the staff of the Albert Baker Fund, the incredible team that we have there for supporting this wonderful series. It has been highly successful.

Welcome Chris Harbur, CEO of Let’s Go Play New York.

I met Chris in New York at one of our Career Alliance networking events a few years ago. He reached out to us and we became fast friends quickly.

Welcome to the Net Effect.

Chris: Thank you, Robin. It’s a pleasure.

I love the Albert Baker Fund and every thing you guys are doing. It’s such a beautiful thing. So thank you for what you do.

Robin: Well, thank you, and thanks for being a Career Ally. We really appreciate your supporting us.

As you were growing up as a child, tell us a little bit about the countries, the schools, and give us a little background on you.

Chris: I went to nine different schools growing up, in five different states, and three different countries.

That’s just kind of who my family was. My dad’s work changed quite a bit. And we just sort of rolled with it.

It definitely teaches you about culture. It definitely teaches you that you gotta be flexible. You gotta be able to roll with the punches.

Getting to go to three high schools in three different countries and getting to go to so many different schools, it allows for that freedom, that flexibility.

You gotta be kind of sharp because you’re going to have to start over with a whole new group of people who don’t know about you, don’t care about you, and you just got to find a way to roll with it and be flexible.

So it taught me a lot.

Robin: I thought it was really interesting when we were talking beforehand about your direction and how you landed, where you landed, but it really started when you transitioned from high school to college and you decided to go to a conservatory.

I love this story. Tell us about how that unfolded for you.

Chris: It was wild because I think for my whole life, I thought I was going to be the second basement for the Boston Red Sox. And then I had the rudest awakening when we moved from Switzerland and the Bahamas for high school to Florida, which is like the most talented baseball players on planet earth.

And I literally had no chance. And I was like, yeah. Okay. So that dream has gone. So now what?

I was a senior in high school. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And I ended up going out for a high school play.

All of a sudden, I was like, oh my gosh, I love this. And I found out about this conservatory at University of Miami in Florida.

And I was like, I want to try to get into that school. And so literally on my way down to the audition to get into this conservatory, that only takes 20 people a year, you can see the photo right there. That’s the theater we performed in. I was learning my material, learning my monologue. Cause I just didn’t know any better.

I wasn’t, I didn’t realize you had to, spend months looking for material. And so I show up and I do this monologue for this panel of people who are going to basically decide my future. And they asked me one question about the monologue and I was like, huh, I’d never thought about that. I just learned this in the car.

Robin: Had you acted in high school? Had you done anything like that before?

Chris: I had done one play my senior year of high school, when we moved to the U.S., and that was pretty much it. So I had no background, really no idea what I was doing. Everybody auditioning had songbooks headshots, agents.

And I was like, what is all this stuff? And I was literally learning a monologue in the car.

So they were basically like, well, why do you think you should get into this conservatory? And I was like, look, I know what I just did was not very impressive, and I’m sorry.

I am not going to bring any baggage to this.

Whatever you teach me, whatever style of acting or singing or dancing, I will be all in because I literally don’t know anything about this.

They loved it. And I ended up getting in, and I performed at this theater, did my first musicals and all sorts of stuff. And had this really tremendous experience, and it was really wonderful.

Robin: What was it like performing with some really talented and gifted students or actors who probably had portfolios, and had been acting since they were five years old. How did you manage that?

Chris: That was difficult. I learned my first lesson in comparison and being really careful with how I’m comparing myself to others, because it was crushing, especially the first year or two.

I was so far behind everybody else. A lot of them had been dancing, acting, singing their entire lives. And I had just started a month prior.

It was a really, really big lesson in figuring out who I was, what unique qualities God had given me to express.

They weren’t the traditional ones. I couldn’t do the best triple turn. I didn’t have the best monologue. I didn’t have the best baritone voice.

Robin: Had you ever danced or anything?

Chris: On the first day of dance class, the teacher had to keep me after class because I had all the dance stuff put on incorrectly.

I was wearing nothing the right way and he had to like draw charts for me. I was lost. Totally lost.

Robin: How did you just be so lost, and yet still willing to keep doing it every day?

Chris: That’s such a good question. I’m a pretty spiritual guy. Early on, I just realized that you’re going to feel a little bit tossed around in the sea of life sometimes. And you might feel like you have no idea what you’re doing and everybody else around you is killing it and you’re doing a horrible job.

That is how I felt most of the time. I think recognizing that each one of us does have really wonderful qualities, unique qualities, I clung on to that and just recognized that if I was supposed to be here, God was not going to drop me in this top 10 conservatory and then leave me to go up in flames.

There was going to be a way for me to shine. As I went through those four years, I found little things here and there that just made me feel like, oh, I can do this.

It might be a very small sliver of this one thing. I found out I love stage combat. I was really good at remembering choreography, I loved the physicality of it and was very good at that.

And so I was like, okay, I get something, and then slowly start to grow in confidence. I’m not going to say it was easy. It was a challenge.

Robin: You work your way through college and you do all these different things within college. Tell us a little about the transition from college, into the professional world.

How did you get there?   What did you decide to do, and why did you decide to do it?

Chris: In the senior year of college, as an actor, you basically have to be like, all right, you’re going to go to New York City or Los Angeles. Those are kind of the two options that they throw at you.

I remember feeling like I have no idea. I just didn’t have a strong sense.

What happened was, I went to this audition where like 10,000 21 year olds show up in the biggest ballroom you’ve ever seen in your entire life in Orlando.

Robin: I just can’t imagine that.

Chris: It is wild. You go into a warm-up room and there’s like a thousand people warming up, and like screaming…

Then they drag 50 people at a time into this huge ballroom. And you are looking out at a thousand industry people who hopefully, one of them will give you a job.

You have a 30 second monlogue, and a 30 second song, and you do it for all of them.

The hope is that one of them will be interested in you and will be like, Hey, come work for us, and wherever.

Robin: How do you decide what the 30 second I’m going to do this and 30 seconds singing I’m going to do that. How do you decide that?

Chris: That’s one of the good things of going to a school that has a good theater program. They prepare you, they know who you look like, who your type is, and what kinds of material you should be doing.

So, thankfully, I was prepared for that one. I did not learn that on the car ride to Orlando.

So what happened is I do this audition, and a couple of companies are interested in me and you go to their hotel room and you talk to them about it.

One of them was this really wild, but intriguing job called Missoula Children’s Theater. You and another actor drive across the entire country, basically doing shows with the local kids in each town that you’re in.

So you show up. Our first week was in Napa, California. You roll into Napa, California. There are a hundred children waiting for you. You do a two hour audition, pick 60 of them, start rehearsals, and on Friday, you have an hour long production of The Little Mermaid that you perform for the entire town.

Robin: I’ve worked at camps,. It’s like 60, you don’t know anything about them. And you go, okay, we’re going to make this production with these kids and we’re going to put it out there and everybody’s going to come and it’s going to be fabulous. It’s just amazing.

Chris: It was ages 5 to 18. So there was a wild range that we had to work with. And this was a very professionally produced piece of theater. We had lights, music, costumes, sound, the kids had 60 pages of lines they had to learn in three days, by the way, cause it’s only a week. And then you pack it up, say goodbye to the kids and you drive to the next state.

And I did this for 15 months.

Robin: And it was like every week for 15 months?

Chris: Every week for 15 months. Yeah.

Robin: Wow.

Chris: I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life. I think only when you’re 21 years old and you have the zest of life as strongly as you can, can you handle a job like this.

I finished 15 months and I just like fell over. I just like slept for a week. It was very intense.

Robin: After the 15 weeks, and sleeping for the next month, where did you go then?

Chris: My best friend who I met in conservatory is like, dude — move to New York. You can sleep on an air mattress in my bedroom.

You can start auditioning, and we’ll get you figured out.

He had already started a show called In the Heights, which was off Broadway and is now a movie.

And that was his off Broadway and Broadway debut. So thankfully he had already been there for a year, doing the show In the Heights.

What was neat is that when I arrived in New York City, sleeping on his air mattress, he was like, Hey, we’re doing this new show. It’s going to be off Broadway. And we need a male swing.

A male swing is a someone who learns like every male part in the entire show. And then at any given moment might have to jump in and be one of those parts. And so that sounded terrifying, but I was like, whatever, I’m in New York, this is what I wanna do with my life, I’m in.

A day before this show, we started rehearsals. Someone dropped out, and I had a role in the show and an off-Broadway production, a brand new musical. It ended up being just a tremendous experience for me, meeting new people in the industry, getting my feet wet in New York City.

That was the start of a pretty fun acting career for me in New York City.

Robin: That sounds like a fairly easy transition. You have something you could hit the ground running with right out of school. And then you made a little money and had some really good experience. And then you do this audition and you end up in a leading role.

I’m sure that you had lots of challenges. Thinking about those challenges, what helped you? What helped you think through those kinds of things as well?

Chris: The first thing that I realized that I was really having a trouble with was anxiety. I had a tremendous amount of anxiety about moving to New York City with no connections, except for my best friend. I had tremendous anxiety about not having any money.

I had tremendous anxiety about going into a field with the most talented people in the world.

In one of my first auditions in New York City, there were 50 guys in the room auditioning for this TV role, and every single one of them looked like a better version of me. They were taller, they had better hair, they had nice cheek bones.

I was like, come on, like, what’s the deal?

That created in me quite a bit of anxiety. I recognized very early on in my career, I was going to have to get a handle on this thing.

I don’t know if this is how you’re supposed to pray, but a week before I moved to New York City, I was like, Look God, I’m freaked out about this.

I am very scared about moving to a huge city with no money with no means. I just didn’t know what I was going to do.

This verse from the Bible, which is one of my favorite verses of all time: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding, and in all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

That was in my heart, and I knew that if I could trust in the Lord with all my heart, about my finances, about my career possibilities, about my friendships, about anything, that there would be a path forward, but I needed to go all in on this.

I needed to really trust.

And so, I made a pact with God. I was like, God, if you promise to provide for me, so I can live and pay rent in New York City as an actor, I will pack my bag and I will be on the next flight out of there.

I don’t know if that’s the most eloquent prayer one has ever prayed, but I was 22, scared, and that’s what I went for.

And I really did put aside that fear and that worry and just trusted. I think that led to like some pretty incredible things that happened very early on for me.

Robin: I wonder if you might share a little bit about this incredible thing that you got involved with?

Chris: A couple of years into New York City, I’d done a couple of musicals, a couple of plays, a few commercials, all these things. This audition that ended up being in Philadelphia, came across my desk.

And I was like, I do not want to spend a day on a bus to Philadelphia to audition for something that could be a student film. I had no idea and they don’t tell you these things. I felt very led, and guided to go do it. And I was like, all right, I’m in.

So I auditioned for this movie. I ended up getting the lead in it. It was called The Descending. My mother was very happy. I played this psycho like killer.

Robin: Very nice thing for a Christian boy.

Chris: I have a hostages. It’s a pretty like, cutter kind of film. But it was this incredible experience and I ended up getting the lead that you can see my little face there on the post. I ended up traveling the country with film festivals. We won a bunch of awards. It was like this really incredible experience for me getting to travel and do these things.

And then I got back to New York City and I was like, all right, I’m gonna make such a splash back in New York City. And I go show all these casting people, this movie poster. And they’re like, yeah, we don’t really care. And I’m like, what? That’s my face! Come on people.

And they just didn’t, and it was just kind of a rude, kind of a rude awakening with how difficult it is to be in the industry.

But I’m very grateful for this and all that it taught me for sure.

Robin: So where did you go from there? You’ve had some success, obviously. What happened then?

Chris: This is now the part of the story where it’s my first big career transition.

I know there are probably people on this Zoom today who are thinking about a career transition and who are career transitioning.

I just felt it was time for me to move on. I didn’t really get to a place where I felt like I could sustain myself as an actor. And I was getting a strong sense that it was time to move on.

What I did is I said, all right, I’m going to do one more year in this business.

I have three goals. If I don’t meet any of these goals in the next three years, it is time to move on. I had a great experience. And so after a year I didn’t hit those goals. I didn’t make it to Broadway. I didn’t get into a TV series where I was a regular. And I didn’t have anything that was like paying me enough to essentially pay New York City rent, just being an actor.

And I was like, Hey, all good. I loved my 6, 7, 8 years. It’s time to move on. But what I realized about career transitioning is I actually wasn’t sure what other humans did for a living, because I had only ever been an actor.

I just didn’t know. I didn’t know what people did. Once again, an opportunity to get quiet with God, the universe, and be like, where do you need me? I know you gave me these kinds of neat skills, I want to use them. I want to be used.

What came to me is to send an email to 10 of my friends and tell them I’m leaving acting.

I have no idea what to do. What do you guys think I should do? This is the best plan I had Robin.

I got all sorts of terrible advice. Like you should be a lawyer go to law school. I don’t need any more school, I’m good on that front.

One of them was like, you should talk to my friend. He works at this nonprofit in New York City that works with teenagers, check them out.

I went to their website and it looked really, really interesting. So I found this company, I figured out how to get in for an interview. And ended up working at this company called DoSomething.org.

It’s the largest nonprofit for young people in the world. They essentially have 5 million teenagers and you can go here, sign up for a volunteer activity in your own community. And you can get started. And a lot of times you don’t need the help of a parent or a guardian. They can do it on their own.

The reason that they hired me is because I convinced them that I could make volunteering a little bit more fun by gamifying it, by turning it into a giant competition.

So you can see down on the screen there 5 million jeans donated. Well, several hundred thousand of them were from this initiative that I tried by pitting colleges against each other in a national leaderboard competition where they battled each other to see who could collect the most jeans for homeless kids.

It exploded and the CEO loved it. She gave me my own team of people and it turned into this really fun creative thing.

I ended up working there for three years and learned a ton about having bosses and working at a desk and using Google, the Google suite of products, all things that I’d really never done before.

It turned out to be a pretty enriching experience.

I remember going in for the interview and thinking to myself, I bet they’ve seen like 20 people today for this job interview.

I think it’s possible that like, no one did anything interesting or different. I treated it like an audition. So my theater background is like, okay, how do I frame in 60 seconds the most intriguing story about who I am, what I come from, and what I could give to this position.

Framing is something that you learn in acting school. You learn with the sort of theatrical background. I came in starting to talk about my experience in a really concise, quick way. I saw an intern wake up in the corner and I’m like I was on to something!

Having a theatrical background, knowing how to just sell yourself in a more interesting way to connect and talk to someone in a way that is authentic and loving and compelling, because you have to do that onstage, or the audience will fall asleep, much less an intern in the corner.

It impressed them. I think they were like this guy’s got something going on that we want in our ethos, in our pipeline and do something. That really did help.

Robin: So you were there for a few years, and had obviously really good success. What led you to leave or do something different or think about making another big career switch?

Chris: After a few years in this company, I started to have panic attacks and the anxiety became really, really bad.

We had a lot of pressure on us to perform at an extremely high level. It was only 50 people on staff, servicing 5 million teenagers. We had these huge companies, Jet Blue, Coca-Cola, all these companies breathing down our necks to perform, and do better, bigger things each time.

I wasn’t sleeping well. I’ve learned a lot here, but I don’t think this is for me anymore. I’m not sure I’m meant to be in an office environment, especially one that demanding.

My second big career change was coming about and I knew I had to get out.

My Christian Science teacher taught us about something called a spiritual bath. You wake up in the morning, and you get really clear about who you are, and about who God is, before anybody else tells you who you are, or what your day will be like.

You just sit and have that communion with God every single morning. And this is a time of my life, where I leaned on my spiritual bath more than I ever have before.

I remember leaving, having once again, absolutely no idea what to do with my life. I knew I didn’t want to work there, and I didn’t want to be a firefighter, and I didn’t want to be an actor again.

So those are the only three things I knew now. The one thing with this career transition is I decided I was not going to let anxiety or fear dictate any decisions during this second career transition.

Robin: That’s a big deal, man. That’s the thing I see, that just cripples people. The fear, the anxiety, the worry. You mentioned pressure. Those are all synonymous. How did you come to that and how difficult was it to get to a point where you felt like you had some strength and confidence in that?

Chris: I’m going to be honest about this and this might not be very popular amongst Christian Scientists, amongst spiritual people. It was a very, very messy road to pull myself out of this panic and this anxiety. Sometimes we read the periodicals, we hear about healings and things, and it just feels like, wow, that was amazing, and it’s got this nice tight pink bow on it. This was not a pink bow healing. This was messy.

I felt so bad at times that I was like, God, I will literally do anything to not feel so panicked all the time. I started going to therapy. I started working out more. I started taking anti-anxiety medication. I know this is not going to be a popular thing to say. I was in dire straits and I was really scared.

I started changing a lot of things in my life. The one thing that did not change in my life, the one thing that I stuck to through all of this messiness, is I never stopped praying and I never stopped putting one foot in front of the other.

Even days where I could barely pull myself out of bed, I knew that I had to get up and do my spiritual bath. I knew that I had to keep reading mary Baker Eddy’s works. I had to keep reading the Bible. If anxiety woke me up at three in the morning, I was going to get up at three in the morning and I was going to do whatever I needed to do, to pull myself out.

It was a really messy road, I have to say.

Robin: I hear so many people say, well, I just quit going to church and I just quit doing this. And I quit praying. I quit thinking, I quit.

Why did you continue to hold on to prayer? Why did you continue to move, and stay where that was a part of what you’re doing and looking for searching and try to discover that peace, to where you found that peace, to address those issues of anxiety?

Chris: Really good question. And I had days where I wasn’t sure I could do anything. I knew in my heart that even if it was the faintest light that I was going to be okay. Because God loved me even on the days where I was like, does God love me? Cause this sucks. Even the days that were just really, really challenging.

I’m out of work. I have no idea what to do. I’m paying $1,200 a month for a tiny studio in New York City. I had bills to pay.

Robin: None of your family lived there, right?

Chris: No, my family was spread out all over the U.S. No, I didn’t have any family. The sense that, no matter what I was doing, whether I was taking medication, whether I was going to therapy, all these things that are, I think are sometimes frowned upon, I had to remove the judgment about that because I felt very judged.

I myself was judging myself. And I felt the judgment from others. I had to remove that first. I don’t think God talks to us in a way that makes us feel badly. I don’t think God shames us. I don’t think that God makes us feel badly.

So every time a thought came that said, Hey, you suck because you’re taking anti-anxiety medication. You’re a bad Christian Scientist. I would think to myself, would God say that to me? Would God do that?

It did take some time, but eventually I was like, you know what, if God’s not saying it, I’m not going to listen to anymore.

I’m just not going to do it. I’m not going to shame myself every single day about this. And it was not easy.

Eventually in that line that God only says really loving, wonderful, empowering things to us, and if it’s not, we don’t have to listen, step-by-step I just started to kind of pull myself out a little bit, day by day.

Robin: And found the light and inspiration. How did you come to the next piece where you were starting to make decisions and how did that materialize for you?

Chris: So I’m pulling myself out of this thing. I’m in my second career transition, with really no idea.

I make this pact with God to not have any worry about this. What if this was fun? Here’s a crazy idea. What if my next career transition was fun? Like, let’s just try it, even as an experiment. It’s funny, because once you remove the fear, you really do free up creativity.

You can just let this creative spirit just talk to you and move through you in a way that you can’t, when you’re just feeling constricted.

The thought came to me, have a little brainstorm party for yourself with 10 of your best friends, bring them into your house and let them think about your career for you.

I set up my little New York City apartment and every station was a different part of my new potential life they had to think about. What were my best attributes? My favorite station was give me the names of three interesting people who are doing interesting things and write down their contact info so that I can talk to them.

It yielded some pretty interesting stuff. I ended up calling these people who lived in Denver, Colorado, and California, and I just went and visited them. Because I promised this transition was going to be fun.

I flew out and I met with a guy who ran the student center at Pepperdine University.

I met with these female artists who made experimental art in the desert of California. Not that I was going to do one of these things, but it just freed me up in a way that let me just let God talk to me more clearly.

I’m walking around this botanical garden in Denver, Colorado, and all of a sudden the idea for my next thing just dropped into my lap and I’m like, oh my God.

The idea was, do a fitness program for kids that marries video games and movement so that you can activate the kids who have low confidence or don’t feel good about themselves or don’t like activity or movement or sports. And it was just like, oh my gosh, I love that idea.

I called a friend in New York City, a mom who had a kid who fit this description perfectly. Didn’t like an afterschool activity, didn’t like to do anything, had low confidence. And I told the mom, I just had this idea. Are you crazy enough to try this? Let me pick your kid up next week from school and we’ll try it. And if it sucks, I won’t even charge you. And if it’s good, I won’t even charge you.

I just want to see if this thing can work. And she’s like, all right, let’s do it! So I found the kids’ favorite video game. I researched it online and I basically built his video game, which was like this pirate thing where they find coins and go on a scavenger hunt. And I built it for him in Central Park. So we went into Central Park together.

I had this big map that I made. I’m the worst artist in the world. And he was collecting gold coins and he had to do different fitness exercises to beat these bosses and discover these treasures. And the kid loved it and the mom loved it. And she told all of her friends and within a month I had sold a year’s worth of classes with kids all over New York City.

And I was like, oh my God, I need a website. I need a name of my company. I need insurance. What are these things? And it snowballed from there. It was unbelievable.

Robin: Well, it’s pretty remarkable, and it’s an incredible story. What creativity, it’s just amazing. So you ended up developing a website, you’ve got business and you’ve got people.

Tell us a little bit about how you came about the name and about what you’re doing with this.

Chris: I wanted to call it Let’s Go Play because I felt play is one of my favorite things. As I was researching, I found that it is instrumental for a child development that they have moments in their day, to feel like a kid, to play, to create, to get outdoors, to move.

This idea of using video game terminology, for instance, one of the things in our two hour sessions is everything is broken out into levels. So the first level is like, all right, you’re going to run to the three turnaround, catch this ball.

They complete the level. Okay. Level two. Now you’ve got to hop on one foot over to the tree. Catch two balls. It feels like their favorite video games because they’re leveling up at the end, they win a wristband, and the most fun thing, which I think you also have here, Robin, is we make a 60 second video of our session together so that the kids can go home and show their parents.

The parents and their grandparents, and everyone gets to see them running and jumping and playing, and we add filters and music, and this is the thing that this kid can have and feel good about.

It’s just play, and a lot of parents have told me that their kid comes home and feels more confident, is happier, gets through their homework with more joy.

What was amazing, that I had not realized until recently, is this is like my Christian Science practice. Right? I’m not sitting in an office taking phone calls all day, but like I’m out, in the field, working with kids helping them feel more joy, helping them feel inspired and loved and safe.

Why can’t this be a Christian Science practice? It sort of felt like it was. It had this sort of divinely led aspect as well. It just blew up really quickly in a really wonderful way.

Robin: How did COVID impact this? What happened when COVID started? It must’ve impacted your business in some way.

Chris: New York City was one of the first and worst cities hit with COVID last year.

I had to shut the company down immediately. Obviously I’m taking absolutely no chances with the children. I made the call very early on to just shut the business down, which was obviously hard. We didn’t really know what was going on at that point in March of last year.

Once again I had an opportunity to get quiet with God and be like, all right, I don’t have a business right now. What would you like me to do?

It came to me to go down to Florida, to hang out with family and see what would happen. I came down to Florida, crashed with family, started doing some virtual Let’s Go Play classes, which was kind of an interesting, messy work in progress, but ended up being really fun.

Then this new thing entered my heart where I started realizing that if my Christian Science practice was potentially with these kids and helping them feel loved and inspired and safe, could I expand that? I had all this time on my hands now. I wasn’t able to really run this company.

It started coming to me to talk about Christian Science more. And I know that might seem very obvious to some people, but it kind of freaked me out, the idea of just walking up to a stranger or a friend, or someone I really cared about a best friend, and being like, Hey, there’s this book Science and Health.

I wanted it to be in a way that didn’t feel Bible thumpy. I wanted it to feel authentic. It was just burning in my heart that I needed to start talking about this stuff more in a way that didn’t feel like I was proselytizing or judging.

It actually started on the New York City subway. I was reading Science and Health on the subway, cause everybody reads on the subway. This homeless guy walks by me and he’s asking for money, is asking for food and then literally looks at me and he goes, or anything else that could help? And then walks away.

Robin: Message from God, right?

Chris: I said, God, this feels weird to me to talk about this stuff. So you’re going to have to make this very clear. And God made it super clear that day.

This homeless guy is about to get off the train and I’m like, well, what am I supposed to do with this? Do I give him a book? There were all these people staring at me.

This is weird. I don’t want to be weird. I went over to him and I was just like, Hey man, I’m reading this book I love. And there’s the statement. She says: “to those leaning on the sustaining infinite, today is big with blessings.” I was just thinking about that. What do you think that means? I would love to hear what you think.

The guy looked over at me and he looks down and he reads the sentence and he’s like, I think it means we’ve got to take the steps that lead upward, not downward, and he gets off the train. And I was like wow!

It just blew my mind. I realized there can be authentic ways for each of us to share this stuff. Eddy says over and over in her biography, we have to circulate this book. We’ve got to talk to people about this stuff. And in a way that does not feel proselytizing or condescending or judgmental.

I had this genuine interaction with this guy and I was like, okay, so I can do this. So now what? It came to me to talk to my best friend about it. And I went to my best friend. I was like, Hey man, I’ve been reading this book. Do you want to read it together? And he’s like, sure. And so we met in a coffee shop every week and the craziest things started happening.

He started having healings, which is another thing that I was like, right. We forget, this book heals me and my family, obviously, but a random person, who’s never read this? He was on a Broadway show and he had a really serious neck injury. And he was reading literally one of the first lines in Science and Health.

I walk into the coffee shop and he’s like, dude, I don’t know what just happened. My neck is perfectly fine. And he’s like, I think it was because of something I read in this book and I was like, I think you’re right. It clicked in that moment. Right. This book heals, because we know it heals, and we hear testimonies that we read the last hundred pages.

But when you see your best friend who has just experienced a tremendous healing, for me, it connected the dots. And I was like, okay, I get it. I’m awake now. What do I do next?

It kind of just spiraled from there. Those were some really pivotal big moments for me.

Robin: That’s pretty incredible. Now you’re in Florida, you got your business up and running again, and things are moving in that direction. Where are you heading now?

Chris: That’s a really great question. I don’t know if I know the answer to that. I have a lot of Florida kids now for Let’s Go Play, which has been a dream to have all new families, all new kids. They’re super excited.

The other thing that has started to really open up and develop is, after my best friend, we read Science and Health together. We got through the whole book. He had incredible healings. He started healing his cat, his wife, his new twins, and every week it was something, it was bananas.

I started talking to other friends about it and people I met in coffee shops and people I met at parties and started Science and Health book groups for people who had never read Science and Health.

Every week on Zoom or in person, I have a couple of people, a couple of different groups, none of them have ever read Science and Health or known anything about Christian Science.

We’re all reading through the book together and we chat about it and every single person in every single book group, and I had a four at one point, has had a healing. Every single time it blows my mind.

I don’t know fully where that goes. I have Let’s Go Play with these kids that I’m working with and I love so much. Continuing on with these book groups and seeing where it goes. What really surprised me is the people in the book group started calling me for prayer.

They started asking for healing. I was like, oh, yeah, I took class instruction. I took this course for 12 days. A practice started. And so now I have people calling. That is sort of opened up in a way.

I realized from all of this stuff that when we do something that feels purpose full and purpose driven and right to us, you can’t believe the stuff that will unfold.

You have to check the fear, and check the anxiety, and as much as possible, not let it play a role in the decision making.

Robin: I love that. It’s remarkable, incredible, and awesome and wonderful. It’s why I asked you to be a guest because I just love your practical approach, your authenticity and the earnestness that you demonstrate, my friend. It is just so incredible.

When did you know that you were winning against fear? When did you know that you started to have those wins and those victories and what was it that helped drive that, and get you that victory that you started gaining that confidence that you needed to deal with those horrible pressures and worries, and anxieties and all those things?

Chris: Really good question. I’m definitely not an expert by any means. I still have days where that voice, which I know has no power, it’s still pretty loud. It’s definitely still a journey of mine.

Fear and anxiety play a far, far smaller of a role and their voice is much more muted than a couple of years ago.

When did I feel like I started winning the battle more? To be honest, it’s when I started talking about Christian Science. I don’t know if that sounds like the most obvious thing, but it happened when I was sitting in my Association which is after you have your class instruction, you come back every year and your Christian Science teacher gives you some really wonderful tools.

I’m sitting in that room with all of these amazing spiritual thinkers. God, this feels so good. And I was like, why am I not doing this more? Why am I not like cultivating this kind of environment more in my life? Why am I not talking about this more? Why am I not thinking about this more? That burned inside of me for like six months until I started implementing it more into my life.

Once I started talking to my best friend about it and watched him have healings, once I started incorporating it into my work with kids more and just started thinking about it more. It helped me win.

I just didn’t feel as freaked out anymore because I knew I was doing something that was purposeful and loving and healing.

When you feel like you’re on purpose, when you feel like you’re doing something that is uplifting others, when you’re asking the question each day, not what can I get from this day, but what can I give to this day? And you reframe it. It doesn’t leave as much room for error to creep in, for fear, for anxiety, for depression, for worry.

These are very challenging things. Eddy talks about unselfing the mortal purpose. We have to un-self. Become more unselfish in our action. I think that’s the key. I really do. I’m still trying to work through it, but I th I think that’s what I would say to that.

Robin: I love that. I think sometimes we forget that it does take that effort. Sometimes it does take the consistent effort to push and to humbly and thoughtfully consider, on a daily basis, that movement forward.

Often we want, Hey, I want it now. I’m tired of feeling like this. I don’t like to hurt. Take it away. Get rid of the pain, just do something. Cause I can’t take this anymore.

Talk a little bit more about your spiritual bath today. What does it look like when you take that bath in the morning today, when you’re living in Florida and that wonderful new house you got there my buddy.

Chris: So how does my bath look different now than 10 years ago? That’s it’s a good question.

As we go through these struggles, I think as we learn these lessons, whether they are with a nice little pink bow on top, or it’s like, what is this circus going on right now? We absolutely learn something from each and every one.

I remember having a chat with my buddy two years ago, we were playing softball. I’ve never seen this guy sad. He was sitting under a tree, looking so sad. And I went over to him and I was like, Hey man, like what’s going on? And he’s like, my wife just divorced me yesterday and I have no idea what to do with my life.

My heart just broke for him. And we were talking and he said to me, He goes, this is the craziest feeling, and I don’t even know if I should feel this way, but I know that me going through this right now, as horrible as this feels, I’m going to be able to have a little more empathy for somebody when they go through something like this.

It blew my mind that in that moment, he could already start to understand that this will bless other people. I think it’s that, that no matter what we’re going through, no matter how horrible it feels, you will get to sit with someone under a tree and be like, you know what?

I know how that feels. I really do. And that will bring them comfort. If nothing else I know that’s true.

It adds richness to your prayers. I think it adds richness to your career. It adds richness to all your social interactions when you’ve been through things and have stories to tell and can just have a deep compassion and empathy for everybody else walking around on this planet.

Robin: It sounds like to me that you’ve removed some form of judgment of yourself and that also then impacts that for others. It looks like today, there may not be as much of that as there once was in your spiritual path, then it sounds like you kind of got that dirt done, it’s down the drain.

Chris: Definitely, definitely a work in progress. I realized that shameful, judgmental thoughts about yourself basically just lead you into a circus that I don’t want to be a part of. The more that just becomes very clear, the more you’re like, yeah, this isn’t serving me. Maybe it’s time to rethink this or let this go a little bit.

Robin: You’re remarkable my friend. I so treasure the short amounts of time we get to spend with one another, but man, what a incredible journey you’ve had so far.

I just love the opportunity to be able to visit with folks like yourself and hear your stories and all the inspiration. It’s just incredibly inspiring, but we’ve got to got to move into that closure state. And if you all would love to visit with Chris, we would love for you to visit with him.

All you have to do is go to the ABF Career Alliance and do a search for Chris. His career connection is there, or you can email robin@albertbakerfund.org and I will be glad to get you connected. Chris is a Career Ally, been one for several years. He is representative of the type of people that are willing to share their ideas and their thoughts and help students and career changers and folks who just want to go, Hey, man, I love what you had to say. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Again, Chris, we so appreciate that you’re willing to do that.

We also have job postings that we post on our career connections and jobs board. I just posted two new ones today, technology specialist and early childhood support teacher in LA.

And then we have some others that are, that are still posted like associate director of admission. So be sure that if you are seeking a job, we do have some jobs that are on there. We don’t have a ton of them, but boy, we have a wonderful storehouse of career allies that are willing to help folks just like Chris.

Be sure that you’re following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

My friend, you have been throwing your net on the right side. I want to follow you around for a little while. I think my net needs a little tuning after listening to you today. I got some holes and I need to fill them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time today.

I just love everything you’re doing. I appreciate all of that good work and your time and effort that you gave us this afternoon.

Chris: It’s my pleasure. I love what you guys are doing here. I love your community of spiritual seekers that listen to these things. I’m always available, open, happy to help and we can get under that tree together and chat, I’m happy to do that. Thank you for having me Robin.

“Explore career opportunities through the Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps!”

Apply here: ComfortersCalling.org

About Our Guests in this episode:

Emily Mattson
Emily developed a love for nursing others at a young age, but didn’t realize that Christian Science nursing was an option for a career path. Through her time in the National Leadership Council and at Principia College, she started thinking more about how to serve the cause of Christian Science and was quickly called to become a Christian Science nurse shortly after graduating. Since then, she has become listed in the Christian Science Journal and has journeyed around the country, nursing in facilities, individuals homes, at youth summer camps, Principia College and as a part of two Christian Science Visiting Nurse services in California. She’s based in Sacramento, California where she enjoys paddle boarding, backpacking and fostering dogs.

Josh Kenworthy
Josh Kenworthy is a Christian Science nurse at the Chestnut Hill Benevolent Association, near Boston. Originally from Australia, Josh obtained an Advanced Diploma of Contemporary Music from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and worked as a professional drummer and drum teacher. He then made the switch to journalism, obtaining a Bachelor of Journalism from Monash University in Melbourne and worked in that field in Australia and the US. Throughout this time, a deep and growing desire to understand God and love humanity through the understanding and practice of Christian Science led him to his current role as a Christian Science nurse. Throughout this time, a deep and growing desire to understand God and love humanity through the understanding and practice of Christian Science led him to his current role as a Christian Science nurse.

Lauren Wienecke
Lauren Wienecke has been a Christian Science nurse at The Leaves in Dallas, Texas, since 2016. Her love of the Bible and Christian Science, and desire to follow Jesus’ teachings and example of selfless service to others, continues to be the reason she loves working as a Christian Science nurse.

Jennifer Johnson and The Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps
Jennifer Johnson is Executive Director of The Leaves, in Dallas, Texas, and serves on the Recruiting Team for the Youth Action Committee of the Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps. She also worked for 8 years as the Business Manager at Sunrise Haven, the Christian Science Nursing facility in Seattle. Jennifer has a deep love for Christian Science nursing and hold a Master’s Certificate in Nonprofit Organizations.

Jennifer will share information about the on-site internship opportunities through the The Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps. These are 3-month and 9-month paid internship experiences for college students and young adults to explore careers in Christian Science nursing and nursing facilities administration.

Applications to join the Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps are due on August 15, 2021.

Apply here: ComfortersCalling.org

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here

Join us live for the Net Effect!

The replay of our September career conversation with Dan LaBar, innovative educator and community-builder, is now available in video, podcast, and transcript. Click “Watch Net Effect Replays” below!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin: This is the Net Effect, Career Conversations and Connections. I’m your host, Robin Jones director of the Albert Baker Fund’s Career Alliance.   We have some special guests for you today.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this program. This is going to be packed full of inspiration and ideas. And I can’t wait for you to meet our guests.

This episode is really going to be about casting your net on the right side. And you’re going to see some real good examples of that.

This Net Effect is sponsored by the Albert Baker Fund. We provide a combination of loan and grant awards to support the education of Christian Scientists around the world. We encourage each of our recipients to pass their blessings forward.

Today is going to be focused on Christian Science nursing. I’m going to come back to this later and we’ll talk more about how you can receive financial tuition assistance from the Albert Baker Fund.

We’re going to focus on the Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps.

That may be a new term for many of you out there. After this episode, you’re going to be real familiar with it. I thought it would be really good to start with some folks that are actually working in Christian Science nursing, and some young adults.

The Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps is focused on college students and young adults.

We’re gonna meet Emily, Josh, Lauren, and a little bit later, Jennifer, so that you can see firsthand and hear firsthand from three very special folks that are already working in the Christian Science nursing field, in different parts of the United States.

I want to welcome Emily, Josh Lauren and Jennifer. Jennifer is also the Executive Director for the Leaves in Dallas, Texas.

Welcome you all. We’re going to start with our dear friend Lauren.

Lauren, let’s start with the camp counselor, where you were as a camp counselor, in your journey. And let’s talk about what that looked like for you.

Lauren: I went to Cedars Camps as a camper and then later as a counselor for a long time. I loved it. I love the opportunity to work with young Christian Scientists learning about the Bible and Christian Science, Science and Health, and applying the principles of Christian Science in their daily activities. It was just such a fun avenue for learning and demonstrating Christian Science.

Robin: Once you graduated from school, where did you go at that point?

Lauren: I played soccer at Principia College. I stayed back and coached at both the College and the Upper School for a couple of years. I loved that. I love the avenue of learning about God and Christian Science.

I really wanted to do something that was very Manual based. Christian Science nursing came into my thought. I loved as I started working as a Christian Science nurse, just how Manual based it was, and also how biblically based it was.

I felt like it was a great fulfilling of Jesus’ commands, teaching to love your neighbor as yourself and love God with your heart, mind, and soul. After he’s washed his disciples feet, it was like, if I’ve done this to you as your Lord and master, you ought to do it to your fellow man.

Through my training I’ve gone through, I’m getting to be a genuine disciple of Christ Jesus. I love that. It’s been wonderful.

Robin: I love that quote. I put that in there, you shared that with us and you had several other quotes, but this one really resonated with me.

I love the idea of feeding the hungry and thirsty and give them a drink. I wonder if Emily or Josh, if that resonates with you guys as well? Do you find that in your nursing practice as well?

Emily: Of course. I think all of us Christian Science nurses, even if we use different passages or come to it in a different way, I think this passage guides us all.

Josh: What I love about that idea is, Jesus pointed in numerous times in the gospel, he mentions food and drink and gives a literal sense of those and that the human need for food and drink. Also it gives us that quiet translation of what those ideas are spiritually.

What I love about Christian Science nursing is it really is supporting both. As we care for our fellow men and women, and very practically helping with nourishment and all of that, but also really seeing that each patient is being fed spiritually and supporting an atmosphere that allows for that to happen.

Robin: In your journey, help us see when that pivotal moment took place, where you said, okay, I want to go this direction. What was some of the thought processes you went through with that?

Lauren: What I really enjoyed with the Christian Science nursing bylaw was that it was so specific and so defined as to what that means. There’s really thorough and wonderful training as to feeling confident and to fulfilling that bylaw.

In my work, when someone’s needing help, it is Principle that’s answering. That bylaw is what’s showing up and that it is a demonstrable knowledge, it’s the practical wisdom, the proper care. I really loved how grounded that was. It’s all the same bylaw, and that’s across the field. It’s great to have that bylaw founding.

Robin: Your journey took you into a Christian Science nursing facility in Dallas. How did you get there?

Lauren: It was my mom that brought it to me. I grew up in Oklahoma and she knew of The Leaves. She knew what I was wanting to do something new and she brought up The Leaves.

I really loved what I saw. They were able to provide housing. It was just a nice situation, a complete package. It was very fitting. We have an instructor here at The Leaves and mentors and everything.

It felt so complete. It was easy to move into working in The Leaves and I’ve loved it.

Robin: How long have you been working there?

Lauren: It’s been about five years here. It’s been wonderful.

Robin: How has the training been and the mentoring? What’s that been like for you?

Lauren: It’s been both at The Leaves and also up at the Benevolent Association, Chestnut Hill and I really enjoyed that.

The program that The Leaves does is the one that is taught out of the BA, the Christian Science Nursing Arts.

I’ve loved it. My first class was down at The Leaves and then my second class was at the BA. We do about a four and five week class time with the instructors there. And then I’ll come back and there’s mentors at The Leaves who can do some on the job training for a couple of months with me until they feel that I’m ready to work on my own.

Then when the next class comes up, I get to go do that. In that way, it is fun too, because I’ve gotten to meet other Christian Science nurses both at the BA and other facilities will also send their nurses to go through that training courses.

It’s been really fun just to see the quality of Christian Science nursing that’s throughout the entire field, through those classes, and be able to bring that back to my work here at The Leaves and just feel invigorated. It’s a great collective work and really fun to be a part of.

Robin: It’s so wonderful to learn all that, and I’m going to pass it over now to Josh.

Josh started his professional career as a musician and drummer in Australia. So tell us a little bit about how you got started and your journey, and let us learn about Josh!

Josh: My journey’s been interesting and a winding one is as I feel like God has continually shaped my life and uplifted my desires and my sense of what life’s about.

I grew up with Christian Science. From day one, the branch church I attended is, is I believe the most remote branch church on the globe. It’s about as far from Boston as you can get.

Growing up, I had some lovely healings. I always felt like Christian Science was taught and showed us the truth as Christ Jesus taught it. Through healings that I had, I just had this increasing hunger to understand it and demonstrate it. It didn’t feel like my doing.

In my late teens, I was always very on fire about things, sports and music, and just loved the freedom of expression of soul in all of those things.

I started to pursue a career in music, in late high school, and went with that right up through post high school then went to a music school and then worked and taught professionally in that space.

I loved it. And outwardly, my life was wonderful. I had good friends and just what felt like a very full, enriched life.

But deep, deep down there were some more fundamentally pressing spiritual questions. And that spiritual hunger, that desire to understand God, just kept knocking at my mental door.

As I kept praying and striving to understand Christian Science better, it sort of eventually unfolded for me that while I loved music, I felt like the world surrounding it, and particularly for me, my motives in doing it, weren’t big enough for what I was learning in Christian Science about who we are and my need to love humanity more broadly.

I grew up with the Christian Science Monitor and I always had a deep interest in the world, and this hunger me unfolded to branch out and to understand the world and know more about the world and how it works and sort of embrace humanity more.

Shortly around the same time as that transition happened, I took Christian Science class instruction. The relationship I was in fell away.

It was very hard to let go of it first, but it felt like I was being asked to just focus on spiritual goals.

So I moved to the other side of Australia and pursued my degree in journalism. During that time, it was a lot of wrestling, a lot of overturning in my thinking and my heart and continual growth. Not without its struggles, but it felt fruitful and deeply meaningful.

I finished my degree in journalism and then lovely things unfolded for me to then work in the field in ways I couldn’t have expected. I ended up working in finance journalism, which I had no interest in until this opportunity came up and it just felt right.

What I noticed throughout this whole time is that while these human shifts were taking place and I was exploring, and my desires were being uplifted, the core focus, the sole hunger in me was to understand God and to know what it meant to love.

To love God with all my heart, and to learn what that meant for loving humanity. Being a member of The Mother Church by this stage and working in branch church work, I found myself… Mrs. Eddy tells us there is plenty of employment within the Mother Church for all its members.

I wasn’t necessarily consciously thinking about that, but I found that my desire was just to channel everything into that purely spiritual focus and to see the scientific, spiritual dimension to all of the different offices and opportunities to work directly for church in, as Lauren said, these Manual based activities.

My work eventually took me to the United States and I worked in journalism here as well. This unfoldment in my experience was so wonderful and it just felt so right. And God governed the timing of things happened in ways that I couldn’t have imagined.

I wanted just to keep my thought close to God and I want to be directly involved in this ministry of Christian Science healing. I wanted to really understand what that is and to see as much of it demonstrated as I can.

There was a point one day in my previous work where I was sitting at my desk and just reaching out inwardly. I opened my Bible on my desk to look for some inspiration. I know Mrs. Eddy used to do this all the time. She would open her Bible and always find inspiration.

I cannot say that it’s true for me. Sometimes I open to a genealogy or something that I’m not yet seeing the deeper meaning there, but on this occasion, it it really spoke to me.

It was Jesus speaking in Mark, and he said it’s Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them. And their great ones, exercise authority upon them, but so shall it not be among you, but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister and whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be servant of all. For even the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.

It was like everything I’ve been doing, had been channeling this good direction, but something in me really felt like I can of mine own self, do nothing. I sort of felt like I was spinning my wheels a bit.

And yet felt like God had more for me to do or something different for me to do. So I started to just cherish this meek feeling of wanting to be in that place of service and just humility, because I knew that I needed it so much.

The job I was in wrapped up and it didn’t feel like a disappointing thing. It felt much more like an opening of the way and just loved that, that job as well and that time, but then it was just a real opening up.

First, I thought it was all over the place a bit and sort of thinking, what do I do next? And as the dust settled Christian Science nursing sort of stood out like a mountain peak on the mental horizon. Some lovely timing and things unfolded for that to all work out and for it to be a seamless transition into Christian Science nursing, and Christian Science nurses training at the BA.

It’s just been such an incredible practical support as I’ve grown in my ministry as a Christian Science nurse, and this is just a really vital support to that, to being able to meet the bylaw that Lauren was talking about

Robin: That’s a real interesting journey from the further hinderest outposts of the world into the backyard of The Mother Church. That’s pretty remarkable, Josh.

Emily, it’s your turn to say howdy. And tell us about your unique journey.

Emily: I loved hearing about how Josh and Lauren learned about Christian Science nursing, and I feel like mine was a little bit different because I feel like Christian Science nursing was knocking at my door for a long time.

I started when I was younger, when I was in high school and maybe even in middle school. I started volunteering in a capacity that had me caring for developmentally disabled individuals, non-Christian Scientists.

Through that, and then filling my summers throughout college, at Principia, I worked at Twelve Acres because my uncle had lived there in the past.

I ended up working at Olive Glen after I graduated just to fill the time and never really thought that Christian Science nursing was something that I was going to stick with full-time.

I actually ended up moving to St. Louis and working in the Peace Haven office, in an administrative role.

I remember, I woke up one day when there was just one hour every month that I would be covering the nursing floor at Peace Haven.

All of their Christian Science nurses were having their monthly meeting. And that hour I looked forward to that hour every month.

And that was the highlight of my month. One day I was like, why don’t I do this full time?

I love caring for people. I knew that after graduating Principia and how it’s so nice to be in a Christian Science community, I was really searching that in my post-grad life as well.

It was almost an overnight decision. Christian Science nursing has been there for me for as long as I can remember. And it’s just been knocking on my door and patiently waiting for me to realize that was my calling.

It was a lot of little experiences throughout my life that all added up to me realizing that Christian Science nursing was something that was natural for me to do as my career.

Robin: Your training has been a little bit different than Lauren’s and Josh’s.

Talk to us about your training and the direction that’s taken you. And tell us a little bit about that.

Emily: I’m not familiar with the training at all the facilities. But I do know that some facilities have a training program of their own.

For me personally, I was trained at Olive Glen in Sacramento, but with the curriculum from Le Verger, which is in Switzerland.

That curriculum is a little bit different.

Number one, it’s based around the Socratic method. You ask the question and ask for an answer before you give the answer, if that makes sense.

It’s a one-on-one classroom. The different programs are similar in terms of how many weeks or hours you’ll have in the classroom.

It’s a little more focused on perhaps not nursing in a Western facility or not nursing in a facility at all.

Certainly all of the programs have a foundation in the metaphysics and why we’re doing the work that we’re doing.

This curriculum focuses a little bit more on maybe being in someone’s home without these Western supplies.

How would you work through this? How would you care for this person with what’s right in front of you?

That has translated well into my work. I work a little bit more as a visiting nurse or as a private duty nurse. More recently, even though I love facility nursing, I definitely fell in love with Christian Science nursing at Olive Glen and the other facilities that I’ve been able to nurse at.

I appreciated the one-on-one aspect as well.

Robin: A visiting nurse, what does that mean? What’s different about that than working in a facility? Tell us a little bit about what that looks like and what the work is for folks that may or may not know about what a visiting nurse is?

Emily: I mentioned private duty nursing as well. Private duty nursing is working in someone’s home.

And that could be shifts of time during the day. Or you could be there 24/7. And that’s a little bit more catered towards helping someone just go about their daily activities. That’s bathing and dressing, mobility, helping them get meals and such like that. A visiting nurse is based on shorter increments of time.

And so a visiting nurse service might visit for a maximum of one or two hours a day. And it’s a little bit more of a supplement to that person’s day rather than helping them carry out those ordinary tasks, daily tasks.

If someone can take care of themselves for the majority of the day, but might need someone to stand by while they take a shower or help them with that shower.

Maybe they just need some help with a bandaging, cleansing and covering need. And so it’s shorter visits. And then also a lot of the visiting nurse services around the country respond to immediate needs as well. And so we would respond to a need with someone who might need someone there quickly.

But of course we were always there and in the right time and then perhaps being able to support until they find care from a private duty nurse or a facility.

Robin: This is from Emily. She asked the question, what has been the most challenging aspect of being a Christian Science nurse as a young person, and how have you prayed about it?

Lauren, would you be willing to jump in first and answer Emily’s question?

Lauren: Sure. I’m not really sure if I can say anything about like specifically as a young person per se, but I think maybe just the thought of like supply for the long term, but just as far as payment.

I think there’s been a lot of great progress with that, recognition of the value of Christian Science nursing by organizations and facilities themselves and just trying to help the Christian Science nurses in that way.

I just prayed about that with divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.

As a Christian Science nurse, that’s what we’re doing every day, is reflecting that love, that love is reflected in love and knowing that giving it doesn’t impoverish, us and ideas are infinite, infinite resources of soul.

I have just seen that in every way that my needs are being met.

I’m sure every Christian Science nurse can attest to, but that’s the first thing that jumps out to me.

Robin: How about you, Josh?

Josh: In terms of supply, and the practicalities, it’s such an important thing. Being in service to God is not about poverty. There’s been so much wonderful work by all sorts of individuals in the background to continually support and explore ways to bring up the rates and pay and all sorts of things for nurses, Christian Science nurses around the United States and elsewhere in the world as well.

I love what Lauren said about pointing to those spiritual ideas, to take to heart what Jesus said about seek ye first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.

I’ve never found that not to be true and not just sort of just enough, but a relative sense of abundance. To really know that the way our needs are met doesn’t always have to be, you provide a service and payment is rendered for that service.

In my experience, the way I’ve seen, taking that promise to heart and putting all our eggs into one basket, which is that we are heartedly trusting that substance is a spiritual thing and comes from God.

By investing in spiritual riches, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. That is not an abstract thing or an impractical thing.

It’s really actually fun to test those scientific laws and see that time and time again, God meets our needs and in practical ways. But also to trust that it is daily supply and Jesus did say, it’s about daily bread and that includes the practical supply and the spiritual ideas and inspirations that bring forth that practical supply.

I’ve never found wanting in pursuing spiritual good. Coming into Christian Science, nursing has been a wonderful thing as well.

Robin: Emily, I know you have personal goals and you’ve been moving around and you like to travel a little bit. , Have you found a similar thing that going into to the nursing profession and the Christian Science nursing profession, have you been able to see some of your goals being met?

Emily: Absolutely. Even after I started Christian Science nurses training, I still in the back of my mind thought, you know what, I’m a recent graduate and I want to be traveling the world and I want to be still as serving the needs of different communities around the world.

That has been just such a working out. Because number one, serving this community has been such a blessing.

Certainly that is fulfilling enough. It’s also been nice making my own schedule for when I am taking cases. And so within that, in my time off, I am able to travel just for leisure. I’ve also really enjoyed finding volunteer opportunities outside of my work.

I satiate that desire to be working with global communities or, quote unquote marginalized communities within my local area. And so it definitely everything that I thought that I would be. Maybe missing out on by not pursuing a career, other careers that I’ve been thinking about.

I’ve found other ways to implement those in my daily life, through volunteer work, or just by scheduling myself in a way that lets me have chunks of time to get that travel bug as well.

Robin: Those are some great insights into some really important questions for particularly students that are still in school or recent graduates that may be thinking about, where to go and gosh, if I can make a living?

Can I pay my bills? Can I do the things that I want to do?

Jennifer, welcome! Jennifer is the Executive Director at The Leaves in Dallas, where Lauren works.

We wanted Jennifer to come in because she’s been working so judiciously with the Christian Science Nursing Youth Service Corps.

There are some wonderful opportunities that we wanted to make sure that everyone knows about, learns about. So I wanted Jennifer to be able to come in and maybe talk a little bit about some of these programs.

I traveled the country and I’ve talked to tons and tons and tons of students and recent graduates and, they always bring forward this idea of wanting to serve.

And I say to them, do you think about serving the cause of Christian Science and how many ways there are to do that?

I wanted Jennifer to jump in here and talk a little bit about what that looks like. Welcome, ma’am thank you.

Jennifer: Nice to be here, thanks Robin.

I love it when Mrs. Eddy talks about loving more and serving better. Christian Science nursing is an inspired atmosphere to be able to serve church in.

This program is for 18 to 30 year olds. It’s going to give a general overview of what it’s like to work in Christian Science nursing at different Christian Science nursing facilities across the nation. They’re very flexible programs.

You could be going to college and still be in this program and there’s a three month program and a nine month program, part-time or full-time, and it pays $15 an hour.

At the end of it, you get a financial education award that you could use towards college or towards a Christian Science nurses training program.

We start in September.

Robin: That also includes housing. Is that correct?

Jennifer: It does include housing. So if you are a college student who really could use some housing, while you go to college, and could use $15 an hour, why not serve church while doing it?

One of the things that I really liked and the 400 Beacon Street book that’s out, Mrs. Eddy, when she’s interviewing people to come work in their house, she tells them to be asked, what would you do for Christian Science?

Our panelists, you can tell that, their full heart is in serving Christian Science and serving their fellow man while doing it.

If that is an interest to you to serve your fellow man, and to serve church, there are different roles that you can do that in. You will get a general overview in each of the areas of a facility.

So you’ll learn a little bit about Christian Science nursing. You could learn a little bit about HR administration, marketing. You can learn about the culinary arts, if that’s your passion. Maintenance and housekeeping is also available. So everybody could get a general overview and serve the amount of time that they want in each.

Robin: I love the idea because there are a number of students that want to find experience. They’re torn, they’re being told you gotta get an internship. You gotta go find experience. You gotta do this, you gotta do that. So opening that door to say, Hey, Look over here, we’ve got some of those opportunities and I can bet you that you might find if you’re one of those students or recent graduates, you might find a plethora of experience from lots of different projects and job opportunities when you work with a facility because there’s loads of things that can be done, and there are people willing to let you do it, right?

Jennifer: That’s right, definitely.

Robin: Talk about some of the different places that are out there. We’ve listed all the facilities that have the training program for the Youth Service Corps. Talk to us about that.

Jennifer: These are all of the facilities that have signed up to be part of this program.

You could go to New York, Princeton, New Jersey, Dallas, Texas Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or St. Louis.

Robin: Well, that’s all across the country. Are there a number of spaces? Is it limited?

Jennifer: There is a limited amount so apply today. The deadline to apply is August 15th, to start in September. We would like to send two participants to each facility. Once we fill up, we fill up.

Robin: I’m curious from Emily, Josh, and Lauren what do you guys think about this program? How do you see it? Do you think it’s a good one? Do you think these are good opportunities?

Emily: Absolutely, yeah! I love the component that introduces them to all different aspects of what goes into life at a facility, whether that’s nursing or in the kitchen. That is so valuable, because we really are a team.

That’s great to get a taste of how everyone’s working together.

Robin: How about you, Josh?

Josh: Yeah, wonderful. Just so grateful for anyone and everyone who is doing work to support Christian Science nursing, the Christian Science nursing ministry, and all of the support.

There’s so many roles that support Christian Science nursing, particularly at a facility. There’s such a need for more Christian Scientists to come forward and fill all these roles.

It is such a support to have Christian Scientists wanting to unselfishly serve the Christian Science nursing ministry.

I’m so grateful for everyone who’s working to provide the infrastructure to make that possible. I would encourage anyone who has it in their heart to really want to serve in that way to come forward because I’m sure any facility would welcome it

Robin: Lauren?

Lauren: Thank you. I would agree. One thing that I loved about working at The Leaves and the other facilities that I’ve gotten to visit is the quality of individuals that you get to work with. Seeing their example, their life and their thought, their selflessness, is such a blessing.

The introduction into an organization where the sole purpose is to witness the efficacy of Christian Science healing, and God’s presence and power in our lives, it’s great. I think it’s a great program.

Robin: It seems so impressive to me, the training that goes on across the country, in these different facilities and each one may have a little different approach to it.

You guys are very confident in being able to walk into a room and face whatever it is that you might have to face with a sense of knowing what to do.

I would love for you to just comment quickly, maybe on the training, Lauren and how it’s benefited you and your progression through it.

Lauren: It’s not talking about procedures or formulas. Here are some tools. Here is what you can do in certain situations.

They’re just things that are constantly practical, no matter where you are, whether it’s a facility, home, the soccer field, so on and so forth.

One of my favorite ones for example, is you’re thinking about how to turn away from the physical senses without turning away from your fellow man.

It’s just so practical. I’ve seen time after time that the love that’s in your heart, it’s expressed, and how you’re caring for the individual, that Love guides.

Love, inspires, illumines, designates and leads the way.

We get to see that daily.

Robin: How about you, Josh?

Josh: I’ve taken a number of classes in the Christian Science Nursing Arts program here at the BA. It’s an indispensable support to preparing ourselves when we already have that heart and now lives have been readied and prepared to want to have that desire to meet that bylaw of Christian Science nurse in the Manual of The Mother Church.

The Christian Science Nursing Arts program for me has taken that desire and then helped to bring it forward in a practical way.

To meet that bylaw sounds simple on the surface, but there’s so much depth and dimension to each one of those aspects.

Having a demonstrable knowledge of Christian Science practice, but then also to have the practical wisdom necessary in a sick room and to be able to take proper care of the sick.

I think there’s so much that goes into that. It’s such an amazing training in the sense that it doesn’t just give you some sort of formulaic, if you say this, do this.

It provides all those practical skills. It really refines your thinking and gives you those skills and the confidence to do that.

Knowing that we have standards within the field of Christian Science nursing through these training programs, it gives the public a right sense of just how serious we are about this and that it’s not just something we do on a whim, but that there is a proper preparation and high standards demanded for the care that we do.

Robin: Jennifer, would you like to jump in on that? I’d love to hear from you as well.

Jennifer: There’s definitely different training programs and they all seem to serve an individual need.

I think that they all put out great Christian Science nurses. So if you have an interest, feel free to look one up and see what would work for you.

To apply for this program, you should go to ComfortersCalling.org. This is a new national service initiative. This is our first time doing it, so we really hope to have everyone’s support, even if you’re not in the right age range, perhaps you know somebody in the right age range and can send them our way. We would appreciate it.

Robin: One of the questions comes from Margaret. Is this a ministry for you all and is being obedient a challenge? Who’d like to jump in on that one?

Emily: I have a quick answer for that. Yes, it’s absolutely a ministry. And one of the things that I love about being a Christian Science nurse is that we’re not a Christian Science nurse just for our eight hour shift. Or, however long our shift is. It’s not just when we walk into the facility we’re a Christian Science nurse and when we walk out we’re just Emily.

Being in the mindset of nursing, my fellow man, 24/7 and being ready and available to meet that need whenever I’m called upon.

I appreciate that being a Christian Science nurse is not just the job, but it really is how we live our lives. I find such joy in that.

Robin: I’m going to ask this question from Priscilla. As a Christian Science nurse, how are you applying Christian Science to see that idea of career unfolding for you?

How about you Josh?

Josh: Mrs. Eddy talks about somewhere in Miscellaneous Writings about God guiding every event of our careers. Everyone is going to have such an individual journey.

I wouldn’t pretend that I can speak for everyone, but I think in terms of the way Principle unfolds in our experience, I see at least what has led me to understand and to bring out more and more of a sense of purpose and meaningfulness and a sense of feeling like I’m in my right places is to make my job as simple as which is to love God with all your heart and soul mind and love our neighbor as ourself.

I think it’s very easy in this day and age, which is so data-driven and analytical and it’s all about networking and all that, which is not to disparage any of the good and those things, but at least in my experience, the demonstration of career as an unfolding thing, getting to the point of becoming a Christian Science nurse and of course, the way that continues to unfold is, seems to be a lot about refining, constant refinement through spiritual growth.

That study. And then of course, Christian Science nursing provides this wonderful avenue to demand of you to go up higher in your spiritual understanding.

I’ve just found that instead of focusing on sort of the human circumstances, the way it might look or, what I want to do or what my goals are, to constantly make that one goal of loving God and loving my neighbor as myself.

Just bring that into sharper and sharper focus and to grow in my love for God. I love what Mrs. Eddy said about we are obedient as we love. And so refining, what does that mean to love? What, what does that really mean?

That constant study and practice. I find focusing on that just takes care of the human details.

Robin: For each of you individually, do you find it more important to be broadening your horizons in the practice of Christian Science? Perhaps through church work or studying broadly or deepening your current area of focus as a Christian Science nurse, perhaps both? Love to hear how each of you approach your career development.

Lauren: If I understand the question correctly, I think it it goes hand in hand. Because with the Manual bylaw, that is the founding, the first requirement there, that demonstrable knowledge of Christian Science practice.

I’ve noticed that with that desire to love that Josh was just talking about to serve, love God and neighbor as yourself, that unfolds and just brings opportunities of advancement.

What I’ve noticed here at the facility is that when there are home cases that will come up that I’ll be called to be a part of, or just my own experiences with family members, different ways in which there are opportunities to advance my practice of Christian Science nursing.

Along with that, there’s always a demand to go up higher in our understanding of God’s presence and power and the efficacy of Christian Science. I think it goes hand in hand.

Emily: I definitely agree with Lauren. I feel like every experience I have at church or in my Christian Science nursing work that it all benefits each other and supplements each other.

I think that any experience that we have and the study that we do will benefit the next step that we take. They definitely go hand in hand.

Robin: Without question, you’re so talented. It’s so incredibly assuring to me to see this vibrant group of folks that are committed to this Christian Science nursing.

In my own family, we have been so blessed to have nurses close by. To be able to, to meet the needs of our family. We raised a number of kids and our kids were always active. There’s always been occasions for our whole community to witness the efficacy of Christian Science nursing.

I’ve been a coach at our local high school for a number of years, and our kids all went through high school and they always had wonderful support from a local Christian Science nurse that was as good as any support they got from our incredible training staff from our high school. And they were great. There’s 35 people in that training staff.

So when they talk about getting training, they are getting training. I can personally attest to the training that nurses receive because I’ve seen it with my own kids and I’ve seen how quickly they respond to that training.

You have my, I get a little choked up. You have my, thank you, my thankfulness for the care that you all give to our wonderful community. It’s fabulous. It’s fantastic.

If any of you that are out there know of potential young adults who might be a candidate for this, don’t hesitate to reach out to them and share with them about this amazing program.

I want you to know how the Albert Baker Fund is supporting Christian Science nursing.

I told you at the beginning, go to the AlbertBakerFund.org and click the little tab that says Apply. You can see that right up there.

I’ve circled it in big red, and there’ll be a dropdown menu for Christian Science Nurses Education and how you can apply for tuition assistance with these wonderful facilities and training programs that are out there.

We encourage you. Don’t be bashful. Give it a real good prayerful consideration, particularly if you’re a student or a recent graduate.

If you are interested in serving, I challenge you. Think about serving the cause of Christian Science.

It brings about healing. It brings about an incredible spiritual reward and a sense of fulfillment and career development. I’ve seen it. I’ve witnessed it.

These wonderful people that are here today are shining examples of the talent that we have. So if you want to connect with Lauren, Emily or Josh, you can do so through the ABF Career Alliance.

Do an informational interview, I recommend it. Ask them the questions that you didn’t ask today and talk to them one-on-one and we’ll be happy to help facilitate that.

Where do you go to apply? Tell us that website address again, Jennifer.

Jennifer: ComfortersCalling.org.

Robin: Okay, one more time.

Jennifer: ComfortersCalling.org.

Robin: Great. If you’re interested, share this with your church, send it to your board, ask them to send it out to the congregation. If you have family or friends, send it out to them, give them the opportunity that we’ve all had today.

And this recording is going to come out in a, in a week or so, be sure and share that recording when it comes out with the people that and love so they can hear firsthand how this amazing program is going to be blessing our community.

Be sure and keep in touch with the Albert Baker Fund for these incredible events like we’re having today, like us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and connect with us on LinkedIn.

Today we got some definite good fishing. If I had my pole and my net, I think my cup would be running over. It’d be full of the fishes of these wonderful ideas and wonderful inspiration from you all.

You have been terrific. I appreciate it. Our community appreciates it.

Thank you so very, very much for spending your time with us this afternoon.

Look forward to seeing you for the next episode. Have a great weekend.

“ I hope that anybody who’s trying to embark on an artistic journey will go for it, and not to be afraid and not give up.”

About Our Guest in this episode:

In addition to numerous stage and screen credits, Tricia Paoluccio is an accomplished artist who has elevated the classic art form of flower-pressing into unique design partnerships with luminaries in the fashion, publishing and music industries.

Most recently she collaborated on the design of the gown Taylor Swift wore on the 2021 Grammy Awards Red Carpet. Tricia says her goal is to celebrate the resilience and beauty of the wildflower through her art.

When not pressing flowers into vibrant floral designs, Tricia is a versatile actor and producer. She recently guest starred on Blue Bloods in NYC, where she played a judge. And the indie film she starred in, A Portrait of a Young Man, is currently being submitted to festivals.

Tricia produces and stars in the web-series mommy blogger, a comedy co-created with playwright, Eric Pfeffinger. Mommy blogger is being developed into a TV show, with the new title of LIKE ME, and is now being pitched to networks.

Her Broadway debut came as Brittany Murphy’s understudy in the role of Catherine in the Tony Award-winning revival of A View from the Bridge. Other Broadway credits include Julie Taymor’s The Green Bird and Fiddler on the Roof as Chava. Off-Broadway highlights include originating the role of Donna in the comedy Debbie Does Dallas, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, and Carol in Edward Albee’s Lady from Dubuque.

Tricia grew up on an almond farm in Modesto, California. She’s an avid baker and crafter who loves dividing her time between NYC, where she lives with her husband and two sons, and her Modesto farm. In addition to her many creative and artistic pursuits, Tricia finds time to volunteer in the NYC prison system, which she has done for the past 9 years.

Connect with Tricia here:

• Personal Instagram: @triciapaoluccio
• Art Instagram: @modernpressedflower
• LinkedIn

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here

Join us live for the Net Effect!

The replay of our September career conversation with Dan LaBar, innovative educator and community-builder, is now available in video, podcast, and transcript. Click “Watch Net Effect Replays” below!

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Transcript of Episode:

Robin: This is the Net Effect, Career Conversations and Connections, episode 43. We have as our special guest today, Tricia Paoluccio. We’re so happy that she’s here with us.

I am your host, Robin Jones, Director of the ABF Career Alliance. Welcome, Tricia.

Tricia: Hi, thank you for having me.

Robin: It’s so nice to see you, and we appreciate you taking time out of your busy, busy schedule to be a guest today. I thought we would just jump right in. You’re an actor, right?

Tricia: Yes.

Robin: And an artist, and you kinda got your start acting, am I right about that?

Tricia: Yes, I moved to New York to become an actor when I was about 20. I’ve always been artistic and love to make things.

When I first moved to New York, I brought a little flower press and handmade papers and would make little cards and collages and sell them on the street or in boutiques while I was starting out as an actor.

I joked that for, 20 years, my acting career has helped pay for my artist habit because being an artist is very expensive.

So I like to say that acting is my day job and the art was my fun hobby that I loved.

Robin: So when you started with acting, how did you get rolling with that? Were there some special things that happened? Tell us a little bit of how you got started with it?

Tricia: It was a different time back then. It was before the Internet and social media and I would answer ads in the newspaper. There was a newspaper called the Backstage. My first job I got without an agent, without any help at all, was a Broadway show. I was Brittany Murphy’s understudy in a Broadway show called A View From the Bridge with Allison Janney and Anthony LaPaglia.

That’s really how I started my professional career. Ever since then, I’ve done quite a few Broadway shows and off-Broadway shows and a lot of television and film and voiceovers and commercials, and basically anything you can do to make a living as an actor I did in New York and do. So I’m really grateful and I’m proud about that. That I’ve been able to make a living as an actor up until this point.

Robin: So when the pandemic hit and you’re in New York, that was the epicenter of all of this.

Tricia: It’s such an interesting time to remember how we were all stunned and were like, is this real?

I had a friend that said you should go to your parent’s farm. You have a place to go. And so we bought tickets, they were like $75, it was so cheap or something to fly. And I called my parents like, are you sure? I’m like, yeah, I think we’re going to come home just for a couple of weeks till this blows over.

We ended up quarantining in their little cabin in the foothills. And it was a really special time. had a bunch of projects that I was working on where I needed flowers. I thought, if I am stuck in New York City, in an apartment, during this pandemic for months, I’m not going to be able to do my art.

So I said, you know what, we’re going to go quarantine in nature. We flew out the day that the schools decided to close. So we came out to California. Then we stayed five months. And I was able to pick and press thousands of flowers from my parents’ property and their farm and my sister-in-law’s farm.

I made a lot of art during that time.

Robin: Tell us a little bit about, how you got started with that, was that a hobby that you had that you mentioned earlier, why wild flowers?

Tricia: My mom gifted me a little book by a British artist named Penny Black and she made beautiful little handmade cards with pressed flowers.

My brother built me a press, and I started just doing it for fun as a hobby. And it became something that I really became passionate about and I always really loved it. For 35 years now, I’ve been making press flower cards and little collages, and it’s just something that I’ve always loved.

I had visions that it could be something more than what it was for all those years. I thought, oh, I’d love to write a book someday. I’d love to, put this on objects. And, but I didn’t really know how to do that. The technology wasn’t there for me to do that.

A couple of years ago, I had this idea. I started making digital copies and here’s one. This is a copy. It’s not real. It looks so real. Right. When I realized that the technology could enable me to do that I thought, wait a minute, why can’t this be on fabric? Why can’t this be on the wallpaper and wrapping paper?

Why is everything floral that we see water colored painted or drawn? Why can’t it be the real imagery? I couldn’t believe I had come up with something I thought was pretty new. So I started devoting myself to capturing all of my pressed flower art.

Rather than just selling the originals, I started photographing them in super high resolution so I could expand them and experiment with scale. A neighbor of mine knew what I was doing and knew some of the fashion houses that have reached out to me. I had quite a few different people in the fashion world reach out to me.

Someone at Steinway knew about this and they said, Hey, we have this idea. We’d love you to wrap a grand piano for us. And we are connected to this gallery in New York City and we showed them your website and they’re very interested in having a showing of your work.

All of a sudden I had this opportunity and I was so grateful because of the pandemic I was here in California and I made dozens of works of art.

So I was really ready to go.

Robin: And when you were ready to go, they were ready to have you go, right?

Tricia: It worked out so beautifully. Never in a million years could I have ever envisioned that I would have a gallery show in New York City. It’s just so prestigious and beyond what I thought I could ever pull off.

I was so grateful to be handed this amazing opportunity, to create that piano, that I was able to produce a lot of music videos and offer it to so many different performers and artists.

It became a symbol, I think, of the arts coming back alive in New York City to me. It’s a really special exhibit.

Robin: How do you find the inspiration? How did you find the courage and the confidence to launch it forward and how did it just materialize for you?

Tricia: Right before the pandemic, I had a very exciting meeting with somebody that wanted to do a collaboration with me, I couldn’t believe it. I was blown away, so excited. And then the pandemic hit and it was done.

There was no word from anybody, no contact, nothing. I remember being at the cabin and being just hit with a wave of grief, like, oh no, I can’t believe that I almost had something so exciting and it’s gone.

I remember just so clearly that in the same second that I had that feeling, I had another thought come to my consciousness, which was like, no, nothing good can be lost. And the good that you built and created, it’s not lost. I just, in a very simple way, just chose to say okay, I’m going to believe that. I just held on to that.

I everyday picked and pressed one little handful of flowers. I was very methodical about it. Very simple about it. I didn’t think about the future. I didn’t think about what I was making. I wasn’t trying to make beautiful art or inspiring art. I didn’t, I just, every day went to work.

And then, one by one, all of the opportunities that I thought I lost, came back, and I was ready because I had worked all those months without any indication that any of that good was going to come to fruition.

I did the work, and whenever I started to feel down or worried about things, I just said, no, no, I really felt like what is that, what is that phrase, where I stand is holy ground. I felt like that time period where it was so full of uncertainty and seeming loss, I thought it was a really, actually crucial, important time to be an artist.

Robin: So you’re, you’re casting your net on the right side, right. Instead of allowing fear and all those things to come in, you really were pursuing your passion. Do you pick the flowers yourself?

Tricia: My parents have acres and acres in the foothills and they have a beautiful farm here in Modesto. I have wonderful farmer neighbors just down the street, my sister-in-law’s next door. Everyone’s very generous letting me just pick and pick anything I want.

I have about 10 flower presses going at all time. So everything you see there, literally everything you’ve seen in all my art, I pick everything. I press everything. And it’s a very lengthy process. I’m actually teaching my class tomorrow on how to do this. That’s one other interesting provision that during the pandemic, I discovered Zoom and I started teaching classes on this, how to do this on Zoom. It’s been amazing how many people are interested in. It used to be, I would beg my friends, do you want to come over to my house? I’ll bake, cookies and serve tea and I’ll teach you how to press flowers. And all my friends, these are good friends, good people.

They’d be like, I’m sorry, busy doing the homework, doing laundry. Nobody cared.

And now every time I launch this class, I have hundreds of people from around the world that want to learn how to press flowers. It’s very amazing. I feel so grateful that the pandemic did allow people to slow down, look around them and say, Hey, what can I make with my own two hands? And this is something that anybody can do.

Robin: And it really is a family thing, right? , You mentioned your brother building the press. And how about the kids? Did they get involved?

Tricia: No, they like to tease me. They’ll be like, like when they see all my press flowers laying around, they’ll say, mom, this is garbage? And I’m like, no, no. That’s like my precious baby, you know? And so no, nobody’s really into it, but they’re all very supportive.

Robin: Where do you go from here with this? What are your thoughts for the future?

Tricia: I just partnered with two incredible people in the fashion industry who create and launch brands.

And I have about 30 emails sitting in my box of people wanting to collaborate and make something with this art form. I want to build it right. I decided to partner with these people. And so we are set to get to work, to try to see where we can take this because I I know that it can branch out into more fashion and to home line and paper stationary.

I feel like I’m creating a real business, so I’m very excited about that.

Robin: What other projects have you worked on while you’ve been in this state of transition and launching a new business. Are there other things that are happening?

Tricia: Yes, there’s something very exciting. I don’t know if I’m really allowed to talk about it, but I’m going to talk about it. Cause I’m so excited. So in addition to this, during the pandemic, we got an email from a theater that Gabe my husband had worked at, called Florida Studio Theater.

They said, listen, we got a PPP grant. And if there’s a one or two person show, you want to write, we can offer you this grant, if we approve of it. And for about 20 years, I’ve had an idea of a two person musical. Because I know probably doesn’t look like it. You probably can’t envision it, but I can channel Dolly Parton, and I have my whole life.

I’ve always been able to sing like her and sound like her. I played her in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium. I did the Broadway musical Nine to Five. I did all the demos as Dora Lee before the show went to Broadway and I did the ad campaign as Dolly. And did Sacramento Music Circus production of Nine to Five.

I’ve always had this little thing that I could do that brought people a lot of joy. I always wanted to write a two person show about like an über fan and his fantasy friendship with Dolly Parton. An opportunity for me to sing all of her amazing music. I didn’t want to be Trisha. I didn’t want to talk about me.

I didn’t want to have it be about me at all. I wanted to, I just wanted to be her, and talk like her, and have a conversation with someone, and get to sing all those songs.

So we got the grant. We wrote a two-person musical, our lawyer loved it and said, I know Dolly’s lawyer and sent it to Dolly. She read the script, watched the Zoom reading, listened to the recordings.

I have professional recordings of me singing the songs like her, and she loves the show. She approves of me. She had one note to fix one little thing.

And just yesterday we got the signed contract. I’m going to brag now.

Look.

So she gave us the grand rights to her show. I don’t mean to be too biblical, but my cup runneth over. There’s too many good things happening right now. Look at this!

That’s Dolly Parton’s signature, everybody.

Robin: Oh my heavens, that is so fun!

Tricia: She’s like, I approve of Trisha playing me forever and all time.

Robin: How fun, that is so great!

Tricia: You know, I cannot believe it. My age, and my stage of career, that this could have happened. It’s really wonderful. If I ever, feel like, oh, no things aren’t working out or I’ve lost this… I’m going to remember this period of time and say, wait a minute. I can’t believe all of these years, decades of working towards something, working on honing, something has led to this great, amazing fruition. I’m just, I’m blown away.

So anyway, that’s a two-person show, that’s going to be on a little national tour. We just had a meeting today that people want it in the UK.

We have the worldwide rights for this musical. So I’ve got to work really hard the next couple of months. Well, my fingers can be dirty and short making all this art because then I’m going to be like, that’s my brand managers are going to take this and run with it.

And I’m going to be doing a musical as Dolly.

Robin: And singing and dancing, right?

Tricia: That’s right!

Robin: I do have a question as it relates to the flowers in the project. Actually, it’s not my question, it’s Betsy’s. She would like to know how you relate the art of the flower, and beauty, to God to the divine Principle, to that grand intelligence.

Tricia: You can’t believe the perfection in a flower, it’s just unbelievable. And so there’s something so pleasurable and beautiful about working with nature like that.

I didn’t have an intention to try to create something that was inspiring or happy or beautiful.

I really didn’t. My job is very, very practical. I pick the flowers, I press them. I know how to do that well. I understand the craft of how to do that. I’m very good at gluing, but I give all of the artistic credit to God, to mother nature, to his creation because I didn’t make this. I’m really just shepherding it from one form to a different form that can be saved forever.

At the gallery show it was really moving, how many people walked in and said, oh my gosh, I feel so happy right now, just being. And I knew that they were happy there. They’re surrounded by God’s creation. I really don’t feel a sense of ego, like I’m this great artist at all. I just feel like I absolutely just get out of the way.

All I’m doing is taking care of the botanicals and the way that keeps them the most beautiful. As I’m laying them out in the composition, I really just am following direction. I’m not willfully putting it this way now. I just instinctively lay them out and they turn out the way they turn out.

I feel like the process for me being an artist, when it’s really good is when you’re most out of the way, when you’re the clearest reflection, or the clearest windowpane for something else to shine through, that’s when the art is good, you have to get out of the way.

Robin: Do you have any advice for a new person entering into the business? I’m not sure if they mean artist or actor, so let’s just look at it in general, what would you say for someone entering into a new business today, being a business owner and being entrepreneurial you’re whole life?

Tricia: Well, I, I read a wonderful Christian Science article decades ago that really has stuck with me. And it’s about a young man was talking to his father about wanting to become an actor and he was gonna move to LA and be an actor.

The dad said, son, I want you to remember something about the horse and buggy business. The horse and buggy business went out of business because their sense of themselves, their identity, was that they were a horse and buggy business, and not in the business of transportation. And this is crucial because if you are holding onto this idea of yourself as an actor, as a painter, that’s what I am. And if I’m not doing that, I’m not doing my art, you’re in trouble.

You have to say, wait a minute, I’m in the business of telling stories, of creating beauty, of disciplined craft. Those are all translatable between being an actor, being a visual artist, being a good baker, being a gardener.

These are just qualities of life. When you have that very expansive view about what your career is, you’re never unemployed. You always have the opportunity to be a good storyteller, or to share beauty, or to express soul through music. You don’t have to have a paying audience, to be an artist, or to be a performer.

It’s the small mortal mind, ego thinking that thinks that I’m not validated until, unless I have X and here’s the truth. It’s like, once you’re in a Broadway show, you’re like most people, when you’re in a Broadway show, you’re dying to get out of that Broadway show. You’re like, what’s my next Broadway show going to be?

People don’t stay satisfied in that. It’s not satisfying. After a few weeks, you’re like, oh my gosh, I have to do this show again, eight shows a week. I got to get out of this, and where’s my next job. This is not satisfying. So you can’t be like, oh, once I attained that, then I’ll be happy.

Every single celebrity that I know is like, oh, what’s my next job going to be? You can’t have this mystical fantasy about like, oh, as long as I hit that goal, I’ll be happy.

The way to be happy as an actor, as an artist, is to be really clear about what your real career is. It’s about expression, and not about that end result.

I could never, in a million years, envision that my artwork would be in high fashion or on a piano. It’s not how I envisioned it, at all, but it turned out to be so great.

Robin: That’s often how it works, isn’t it? When we really find that inspiration and we get immersed in it, and then that pursuit of that passion, it does allow for things to unfold that you never thought or would never even considered might happen.

Tricia: Right.

Robin: Thinking along those lines and, looking at your career, moving forward and then looking back, what do you say to folks, that are challenged a little bit and say, yeah, I just don’t know if I can. It’s all coming together for Tricia, but I’m not sure what to do with this? What do you say to them?

Tricia: Well, inspiration can hit anybody at any time. And there are so many people that I know that have not had the amount of credits on their resume as somebody else. Some people have had very few job opportunities, but they come up with an idea that’s theirs and they make it happen. And so, there’s no excuse.

You could create a little vignette that’s 10 seconds long, that’s just perfection. That’s so funny. Or that’s so truthful. That’s so spot on. You can put it on TikTok. We live in a amazing time of opportunity to be someone creative.

I created a web series a couple years ago, I was so proud about. It got picked up. It was optioned. I never sold it, but I don’t regret one second of that time.

It’s about a wannabe blogger with 17 followers, who forces her husband to quit his job, to devote himself full time to the family culture and the making of her blog.

And every episode is their attempt at making a video for their followers. And the characters are real narcissists who have delusions of grandeur. It’s making fun of the mommy blogger culture, influencer culture, and social media. I had a blast doing it. It was so fulfilling. It was so creative.

I didn’t get paid a dime. I spent a lot of money on it and never got paid. But I don’t regret it. It was wonderful.

You cannot go into this business thinking the world owes you something, they owe you nothing. And if you stop, no one will remember you.

My kids don’t even know who Marilyn Monroe is. They don’t know who Cher is. They don’t know who Barbara Streisand is. I’m like, I failed you as a mother. You don’t know these icons. This doesn’t last. All you can do is be in the moment of your life.

Let these great ideas come to you. They’re available to everybody.

There’s not just some people that have access to these good ideas, and some people don’t have them. It’s really about what you do with them. And this is where I think, gosh, being a Christian Scientist is a wonderful thing. When you take it out of personality, it’s like, I don’t give credit to myself for good ideas.

I feel like Christian Science life or practices is about staying receptive and open. The ideas that are meant to hit you, in your consciousness, will hit you and you can make something with no money. My press flower art, you don’t need a dime to make something stunning.

Robin: Tell us about the workshop that you’re doing?

Tricia: I teach a two hour workshop on Zoom. I sit here and I pick a bunch of things ahead of time and I have in the basket, and I show people exactly how to do it, the principles of how to press flowers so they don’t turn brown.

And I can’t believe that when you Google this or YouTube it, people are giving a lot of false information or information that’s not helpful. I feel like after decades and decades of doing this, I really know how to teach something, that’s so specific.

Now people care. I can’t believe it.

My husband’s really cute because he used to help me with my Zoom and he would see that there were people that were in the class and then they would ask for the recording to watch it again. And he’s like, who wants to watch that again, I’m like, I don’t know. People like to learn how to do something. I don’t know.

I have people from around the world, I have 350 people signed up tomorrow to take this class. I’m so grateful. I think I’m a pretty good teacher because I embrace all the mistakes.

When a mistake happens, I always say, ooh, I’m so glad you saw that because now I can show you how I would solve this problem.

The viewer just gets to sit back and relax and just watch the show. And I’m talking, talking, talking, and then the last half an hour, I answer questions.

It’s been really rewarding. I like it because I feel a lot of the people that I teach are women who have a desire to start their own little business. I love this idea that there’s no competition in this world, right? I’m not in competition with the person in Texas who wants to press bridal bouquets for the local brides. That’s her place, and I have my place I’m doing and somebody else has their place.

I like this idea that I’m enabling these people to be better at a craft that they could make money doing. It feels good to support women businesses. I’m saying that because 99% of the people that take this class are women. There are a few men that have shown interest.

I think people are enjoying getting back in touch with making something themselves, with their own two hands, the time that that takes. My dad always said that people are depressed in modern day society because they don’t have to wash their clothes in a river. And I think there’s something to that.

To be active and focused on an activity that’s just looking and touching beautiful flowers is it’s such a pleasurable way to spend an afternoon.

Robin: So, if someone is interested in attending your workshops, will you be doing more of these in the future as well?

Tricia: I do it once a season. So this is my spring class and I won’t do it again until the summer. I don’t know that date yet. I found that it’s best to do it once a season. Once in a while I do other workshops like collage making or gluing. I have a funny idea for a book called the Zen Art of Gluing because I really think there’s something about very tedious tasks that seems like what, how can that be inspiring?

I think there’s a lot to learn about how to do that well. I’ve taught a class on how to do that specific thing. I like teaching arts and crafts, much more than acting. I have no desire to be an acting teacher at all.

I like to be an actor, but I like teaching art. I really do.

Robin: When you said earlier that the technology’s helped you and really bringing this forward in a way that you weren’t able to before, what things do you do with your art besides the piano? Can you do wallpaper? Are there other things that you do with that?

Tricia: About 15 years ago, I made a calendar. I made artwork and I made this calendar and I mass produced this calendar and I still have it. And it makes me laugh because it’s so grainy.

It is so not a high resolution scan or photograph. It just looks like a bad Xerox copy. And I’m sure that those kinds of copiers or printers were available to, high-end books or art books, but not to a normal person like me. What I discovered a few years ago was that I could take a work of art, huge work of art, this big and take it to a company and they would put it on a flatbed scanner, or they would put it on the wall and photograph it with the camera that enabled them to get a super high resolution image.

So a flower that’s like this can now be blown up in scale, like to be this big, but with all of the detail. And that makes all the difference. It doesn’t look like a cheap, bad image. It looks so lifelike. And what’s so fascinating with that piano, is people say, oh, are those real flowers?

And I’m thinking to myself, the rose is this big, like, there’s no such thing as a rose of this big, but because it’s so realistic, it’s an illusion, and people go, it’s real.

Robin: It’s hard to imagine, it’s so unbelievable. I’ve seen some of the other things under your Instagram page and it’s like, is that really a flower?

Tricia: Yes, it’s a copy. It looks so three-dimensional, the shadow and all of that. It looks like you can touch it. This one that’s next to me, doesn’t that look like you can touch that?

Robin: Yeah, it really does.

Tricia: It couldn’t do that before. That’s how technology has enabled me to can really think outside the box and what can I do with this imagery and these collages and these designs?

Robin: I’m going to go back over to the acting piece of this and this may be a little tougher question. So today there’s so many opinions and it just seems like everybody’s all over the place, and extreme this and extreme that.

How do you keep yourself grounded? How do you keep yourself in that place where you feel God’s presence. How do you keep yourself in there and not get mixed up?

Tricia: I’m not saying I don’t get down when someone criticizes my work. , I want everyone to like me, not everyone likes me. Not everyone will like my show.

Not everyone will like my art. There are people that say, gosh, that, Steinway’s ugly, it should be black. And I’m just like, it’s black underneath. This doesn’t get me down. That stuff doesn’t get me down.

Robin: Yeah, I think for some people that’s one of the things that keeps them from diving into something or trying something new.

Tricia: I grew up with a dad, who’s an inventor and his whole life is about trying, and making, and experimenting, and building, and then it doesn’t work. And he is the happiest, most optimistic person. Nothing can get my dad down. And I grew up with that. I saw that every day. And so then I just think I’m blessed with that ability to be totally optimistic.

I really believe that I’m always going to get every job I audition for. And then I do it. I do my best. And then, you know what happens? I have total amnesia about it. I can’t even remember what I auditioned for yesterday. Just decades and decades of being in that state, it’s just become really natural to me.

If I were to ever speak to young actors, I would say, oh, just get ready. Because the only way to do this without becoming someone who has to numb themselves with alcohol or drugs or food or something, is it have that state of mind, like you cannot care. You have to just be so into it. So committed and then have total amnesia. So I think that’s just practice of letting go.

My mom is on here right now. We like to tease her that she’s used to winning. So when she loses, she’s like shocked. I’m used to losing. So I’m never shocked when I lose. That’s just par for the course. It doesn’t bother me.

Robin: I got a question. My wife, Libby, says one of her favorite comments that you make about your work at the gallery, was when you mentioned the individual beauty of the wild flowers and weeds, correlating it with embracing humanity, seeing the beauty and appreciating something that is typically cast away and considered undervalued and sometimes worthless.

She says I love how Trisha shows that truth in her art and brings that joy and is inspiring so many to not discount something or someone, but in love in a bigger way.

Tricia: Oh, that’s so kind Libby, thank you for remembering that. You articulated that better than I did.

One of the murals I made, which was huge, featured a lot of weeds. And you can’t believe how gorgeous these weeds are. And these are weeds that I found literally growing out of the sidewalk. These weeds weren’t watered, they weren’t fertilized. They weren’t weren’t tended to, they just grew.

I feel that’s what we need to be as artists, keep on growing. And even if you don’t get any validation or sunlight, or water or anything, you just keep on growing, you know? I really love that you appreciated that sentiment.

Robin: Trisha, any closing comments, any thoughts that you’d like to share?

Tricia: I think it’s so nice that you’re doing this, and I hope that anybody who’s trying to embark on an artistic journey will go for it, and not to be afraid and not give up if the first thing that happens doesn’t work out.

It’s all about the journey, you have to just really love that step-by-step journey of it and not have an outline of how it’s going to go, where it’s going to go, get really good at something. And you can do that.

Robin: When you start a project like this Dolly project, how long does it take to prepare for that and then get it in motion where you’re actually on the stage?

Tricia: I had to act as if it was going to happen, just the same way I do with my flowers. I had to act as if it’s, it might happen. These, these jobs that I had. Even though I had no word of them. I had to act as if, so I’ve been singing and practicing and I’ve been trying to get back into learning my guitar because I really have a vision. I want to at least play a few songs, pretend to play, because I don’t really play, but I just booked my ticket today. I’m going back to work with the musical director on the music.

We have commercial producers. It’s a tricky time with the pandemic. Theaters are being cautious about reopening. So if it wasn’t this state of the world I would have a different answer for you. So it’s a little up in the air, but I’m sure in the next couple months we’ll have a official announcement for sure.

We just got the signature yesterday from Dolly herself. So now we can really move forward with confidence. If you guys are interested in that show, follow my regular Instagram, not Modern Press Flower, because that’s where I’ll share any acting stuff.

Robin: Tell us again where that is?

On Instagram, it’s @triciapaoluccio and then my Instagram for my art is @modernpressedflower.

Thank you. It’s probably time for us to start closing out. If you’re interested in connecting with Tricia, please reach out to me, or you can reach through the Career Alliance.

If you have never been to the Career Alliance, it’s ABFCareerAlliance.org. We’d love to have you come visit. We have some incredible resources there. We do have some new jobs on the website, student outreach, head volleyball coach.

ABFCareerAlliance.org. It’ll take you to the connections and jobs board, and you can do the searches there for the new jobs, plus the existing jobs and career connections that we have posted.

Again, one last time, we have a special workshop coming up with Dr. Don Asher, America’s job search guru. It’s a two hour, two day workshop. It’s going to be really good, really special. Don is famous for making these kinds of things fun and really resourceful. So check out ABFCareerAlliance.org, where you can register, and look forward to seeing you guys there.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And remember, this is the Net Effect. Just as Jesus challenged his disciples to do, I challenge you to cast that net on the right side and Tricia, oh my goodness. Your net is so full, I don’t even know how you get it up. I don’t know how you do all you do.

Tricia: I don’t know. I need help, I need God’s help right now.

Robin: Well, it’s just incredible to see the success and to see the fun things that you’re doing. It is so wonderful to see that talent being manifested in such beautiful work. I wish I could have got you to do a little more Dolly, but we’ll just wait for the really polished stuff.

Tricia: Oh I could do one little song.

Let me see. I’ll do:

Here you come again,

just as I’m about to get myself together

you waltz right in the door

just like you done before

and wrap my heart around your little finger.

Here you come again,

Looking better than a body has a right to

and shaken’ me up so that all that I really know

is here you come again, and here I go, here I go.

Robin: Oh, gosh, that is so beautiful.

Tricia: I’ve been singing her since I was six years old!

Robin: Oh, fun. How fun for you! Well, thank you, Trisha. You’ve been so generous with your time. We so appreciate it. How fun.

Tricia: Well thank you very much! Thank you. I hope you all come see Dolly show when it happens!

Thanks everybody. Thanks for indulging me.

Robin: Okay, you bet, see you soon, bye-bye!

Tricia: Bye.

Get the help you need to find the job you want!

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