All things…Episcopal

All Things Episcopal discusses anything and everything related to the Episcopal Church

>> Clare: Hello, everyone. Welcome to All Things Episcopal, where we talk about anything and everything related to the Episcopal Church. This podcast was designed with young people in mind and as a space to learn more about the Christian faith with the Episcopal lens. So, in traditionally Episcopalian greeting fashion, the Lord be with you. Hey, friends. Today's episode can be a hard one for some folks to hear. The topics we're addressing are heaven and hell. And while we are striving to approach these two topics with as much grace and care as possible, we also know that this can be a triggering topic for some folks to hear. We invite you to take care of yourself. And if you need to skip this episode and maybe resume it at a later point, that's more than okay. And you know, we support that decision. Now onto the show. I'm going to invite my co host Riley to kick us off.

All Things Episcopal podcast features guest Mother Kelly Demo and Kelsey Phillips

>> Riley Brown: Everyone, my name is Riley and I'm one of the new hosts here on the podcast. Welcome back to another episode episode of All Things Episcopal. Today we are addressing a, uh, fun and super light topic, which is heaven and hell. I am braving this difficult subject matter with one of our very own. Well, with our very own Deacon Claire and two guests, a Mother Kelly Demo and Kelsey Phillips. Welcome, both of you, to All Things Episcopal.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Thank you. Really happy to be here.

>> Riley Brown: Yeah, we're happy to have you. A little background on our guests. Mother Kelly serves as an Associate Rector at St. Thomas the Apostle in Overland Park, Kansas. And Kelsey Phillips is not only a member at St Thomas, but also one of the students at St Francis Canterbury House at Kansas State University. Go Wildcats. Where Deacon Claire is the campus minister. We thought it would be fun for Kelsey to ask her youth minister some questions. So Kelsey is filling in for Claire today.

Mother Kelly was baptized Catholic but has never known anything but Episcopal Church

Before we dive into our oh, so scandalous show, Mother Kelly, tell us a little bit about yourself, perhaps how you found yourself in the Episcopal Church, your involvement in youth ministry, if any, and perhaps share how you were introduced to the topics of heaven and hell.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Yeah. So again, thanks for. Thanks for having me. I've really been looking forward to this. I've loved your podcast for a long time. It's really rich and a gift to the larger church. I, uh, apparently was baptized Catholic, but I've never known anything but the Episcopal Church. Not long after my baptism, my parents made their way to the Episcopal Church with my grandparents, and I, uh, like I said, I've never known anything else. It is, uh, during college, I drifted away as one does, and dabbled in New Age because It was the 80s and that's what you did. But it was. That was very lonely. I found there was no community there to be found. And it was very introspective. And so then I just, you know, I made my way back to the Episcopal Church and I haven't left since. And I am a firm believer that the world needs what the Episcopal Church has to offer. I don't have any tattoos, but if I did, it would probably be something geeky like a, uh, Episcopal shield or something like that. That's how like, nothing. That has never changed me. It's the one thing that's never changed in my life. So. And then, yeah, my youth ministry experience, I got started very early on. That's actually how I met my husband. I was helping with the youth event. He brought his kids to the youth event, and that was how we met and have been doing it ever since. I've worked at two different dioceses doing youth work. I'm now a youth minister at, like he said, at St. Thomas. Kelsey is one of our alumni, illustrious alum. And, uh, I absolutely love doing youth work. Worked in the nonprofit world for a little bit, like, international development. But, uh, all of my church work has mostly been youth work. So. And then as to the question of introduction of heaven and hell, I guess I remember a priest when I was fairly young and, and he told us, uh, our little, probably confirmation class or something, he said the door to hell is locked from the inside. And that has always stuck with me. At the time, one of the kids in my class was like, so we're locked in. And they were not getting the metaphor quite right. And he was like, no, no, no, no. Like, like if you find yourself trapped, if you are, you know, like, feel like you are in hell, it is your choice. It's by your choice. You can leave the door is, is you can open it. Um, so that it's a, it's a self imposed choice. So that's always stuck with me. That. So, yeah, that's my. That was kind of my introduction to hell, I guess.

Do Episcopalians believe in heaven and hell? Yes and no

>> Kelsey Phillips: All right, so we're gonna, we're gonna jump right in then and continue on that topic. We're gonna start at the most basic level, most fundamental level. Do Episcopalians believe in heaven and hell?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Yes and no. I would say yes. So an individual level, probably universally, all Episcopalians believe in heaven and perhaps hell to some degree. But I would guess virtually every Episcopalian has sort of different images and understandings of each as a church. Yes, we do believe in heaven and hell, but I think as we enter into this Conversation. I think that there's several things that we should keep in mind as we enter into this conversation. The first is that we enter into this conversation with great humility. Like, we don't know, obviously, M. We don't know. We don't know if there's a heaven and hell. We don't know what happens when we die. And because of that, I think historically, humanity has, on this topic in particular, very much leaned on the imagination of artists for our understanding of God and for the afterlife. And that, I think, is both for better and for worse. Right? I think of, like, Dante's Divine Comedy, which is an absolute slog of a read, but it follows the author through, through hell and purgatory and heaven. That story, without knowing it, has informed so much of our collective imagination about what hell is. Between that and, like, Paradise Lost and then, you know, Michelangelo and you've even got, like, Led Zeppelin and you've got movies like All Dogs Go to Heaven. It's a cartoon, for crying out loud. So, like, we have let artists inform so much of what, what, for better and worse. Uh, like I said, I think we just have to be cognizant of how easy it is to believe. Uh, there is a big white old man in the sky and angels sitting on clouds, because those are the images that we see. And so we have to really stop and question that. So that's the first thing. We have to enter into this with humility and knowing that how our beliefs are formed by images. The second thing is that it's super important that we remember that all language about God, about anything in the afterlife, all of this is insufficient. We do not have the language to talk about the divine. So we use the language that we have that gets us into using imagery and, like, gender. And that's where we get, like, Father and bread of life and the idea of the Trinity. We have to use that kind of language because that's all we have. But it's also very, very limiting. And so I just think that's an incredibly important thing to remember that God the Father God is not gendered. God, the Trinity, three in one, one and three. What in the world does that mean? It is only one God, but we have to use this, these various languages, images and language to try and explain something that is ultimately not explainable. And finally, I think the most important thing is, as we go into this con about heaven, and particularly about hell, is that number one thing is that God is a loving God. God loves us and wants nothing but a loving relationship with Us, period. Hard stop. That is the cornerstone on which everything else is built.

>> Riley Brown: Okay, moving right along then.

The Episcopal Church defines heaven as the completion of our relationship with God

As you were talking about the old white man in the sky, maybe it's best for us to start with the good place first. What is heaven? What does the Episcopal Church teach about it, and how do you understand it?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: I think both heaven and hell can be experienced here on earth as well as after we die. And so we get glimpses of both. Uh, I personally have experienced both in my life, glimpses of such profound goodness that it's breathtaking, but also really hellish, uh, times where I did feel absolutely trapped like that. My priest and my childhood talked about. The Episcopal Church defines heaven as the completion of our relationship with God. And I really, really love that definition because generally, we think about heaven as a place that we go to, again because of all of that artistry and imagery that we have. But God is not contained in a place. God is, however, a relationship. And that's why, in the Christian tradition, we use the language of Trinity. God is relationship. That is the very essence of God. This divine conversation of love, then, we believe courses throughout creation, um, and happens on this level of existence, like in our lives. But I think that there is so much more beyond that. We just don't know. So heaven is when we are able to enter fully into that conversation and we know and we have a completion of our relationship with God. There's. There are several traditions, cultures that use different terminology, but like in the Celtic tradition, there's thin places that are. Where the veil between this world and the next are, uh, is thinner, and you have glimpses of what is, what is beyond. I think that there is just so much more that we don't know and we don't understand. And ultimately, I think it's good.

What does the church teach about hell and how should we think

>> Kelsey Phillips: All right, so I've got the lucky job of transitioning over to talking about the bad place. What does the church. Yeah, right. What does the church teach about it and how should we think?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: There's a great resource, a great website that is an Episcopal glossary, and it goes through all sorts of different terms. And so I actually went there. But there's also in the Book of Common Prayer, our catechesis, and it's got some great answers to these kinds of things. So, as a church, our theology says that, um, that hell is eternal death in our rejection of God. So, again, that's the language of cutoff. Right? It's that relationship, but it's being cut off. It is this, and I'm quoting here, the state or separation from God. And it's closely related to the concept of the, of free will. We may choose to accept God or reject God. He will not be forced. Or, uh, we, excuse me, we will not be forced by God to receive God's love. And then it says hell is a permanent, imminent state of separation from God that can be freely chosen, not God's angry punishment for misdeeds. Now note that it. And, and I love that because again, it goes back to that relationship. It's not a place, it's a state of being in, in relationship or not. Now the tricky part is where it says that hell is a permanent state of separation from God. And I think that that is a place where I and others disagree. And this is where I tread lightly because I may be heresy and the hosts have, have promised me that I won't get in trouble. But I, I don't, I don't think that separation from God is necessarily permanent. I just think God is too big. And that if, say we, you know, we die in a hellishly sinful state and, I don't know, we meet Jesus face to face and we try to run away, I, I just don't think there's permanence in that. Like, if we believe in an eternity, I just don't think God's gonna lose us. So, um, this idea of hell, I think it's also to remember it. It also actually started with Plato. It's not a, like a Christian or even a Hebrew idea necessarily. It started back with Plato. He's got a myth called the myth of er. And that's where we first got this vision of heaven and hell. And it was sort of introduced the popular idea of a soul, that, that human beings have a soul and that souls face consequences. Now the apostles taught that death was sleep and that everyone would then someday be awakened at the resurrection or they would be destroyed. But there was not a place or a time of torment. Either you were with God or you just weren't anymore. So that's, that was what the apostles teaching. So then the early church fathers sort of began to combine those. They combined this Greek philosophy of Plato along with this theology that the apostles were teaching. And they sort of brought back the idea of heaven and hell as a place of torment. Interestingly, the idea of burning in hell, it became popular with those early Christians who were seeing Christians being martyred, burned at the stake, that they, they liked the idea that their tormentors then would someday burn eternally. Like there was divine justice in that. However, we don't worship Plato we don't worship the apostles, we don't worship the early church fathers. We worship Jesus. What Jesus had to say about this was, in my father's house, there's many rooms. I'm gonna go get some ready for you. Which to me is very open and very welcoming and very lovely. And I think that that is the picture that we need to hold onto and let that inform our theology.

There are different Episcopal positions on hell, including universalism and annihilationism

>> Riley Brown: Okay. It feels like we're orbiting this kind of, uh, this question about different positions on hell. You kind of. We're kind of talking about infern a little bit, this idea that hell is this place of punishment. We're talking about universalism a little bit. As you, uh, mentioned that hell is described in the Book of Common Prayer as permanence. But you said that you might disagree with that a little bit, which I think for the record, you're in good company. I know if you've read the great divorce by C.S. lewis, that's something. In that book, the main character is always offered a chance to go to heaven, right? So we have these positions, universalism, annihilationism, infernalism, all these sorts of things. Is there one Episcopal position on the bad place or hell?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: So in the Episcopal tradition, we develop our theology through our three legged stool, right? Scripture, tradition and reason. And then that theology is articulated in our liturgy. So if we look at that, um, there is, it's complicated. So for instance, in Scripture we have a lot of, well, you know, in the Old Testament, just a cursory reading of it, God looks very, very judgmental. But as, as we look at the New Testament with Jesus, you know, Jesus's teachings, the apostles, things like that. You did hear a lot of, you know, outer darkness and wailing and gnashing of teeth and things like that, which would imply that there is a hell and people will go there. And it's kind of a done deal. However, in 1 Corinthians you have. For as in Adam, all die, so in Christ we will all be made alive. So that's something that universal salvationists look to as scriptural evidence of everyone. Ultimately, the relationship being, with God being restored. Scripture, uh, can be a little complicated about it. Tradition, also complicated. When we look at the tradition of, uh, the ang, you know, our Anglican tradition, we have beautiful poetry of like George Herbert, we have theologians like Richard Hooker and like you mentioned, C.S. lewis, the great Divorce. I love to talk about the last battle in Narnia. The image of, uh, Aslan people who, you know, the last battle had happened. It was, it was sort of his book of Revelation, you know, the end of Narnia, people were coming to Aslan, and the judgment would happen. Like, his face wouldn't change. Creatures from Narnia, people from Narnia would come and they would look at him, and his face never changed. But those who knew him saw a loving, welcoming face. And those who always worked against him or hated him would see him, his face, being angry, but his face never actually changed. That was their shame and their own judgment, and they would run away. Personally, I'm more of a Tolkien fan. He was Roman Catholic, so his theology is slightly different. However, he has some really, really beautiful writings about his whole, uh, cosmology and his creator and things like that, and has another great story that is akin to the Great Divorce called Leaf by Niggle. That is so delightful and lovely. Highly recommend. Anyway, in our tradition, we also have something called the Harrowing of Hell. That is when Christ descended to the lower parts of the earth, is what it says in Ephesians and also in the Peter, to bring good news to the dead. So that tradition says. And it's. It's celebrated on holy, uh, Saturday. So, like, Christ died. And it's the. The tradition goes that. That Jesus went to hell to burst open the gates of hell and everyone who had lived before him. So essentially everyone, you know, like all the Old Testament folks and. And everyone who lived before him, Jesus cleaned out hell, right? And broke open the gates. Harrowing. I love that word. It's, uh, kind of a word.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Nerd.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: And it's. It's like raking. Like, he totally, like, took a rake and cleaned it out. Cleaned out hell completely, but also burst open the gates, like I said. So, so again, there is no more power there. So that's a part of our tradition. And then finally, reason and experience to me goes back to what I said before, that God is a loving God, period. That is my. That is my experience. So, um, you have all of that, and then you look at what. How do we express that in our liturgy? Well, we look at when someone dies. What do we have to say about that? If our theology is expressed through our liturgy, when someone dies, we wear white, just like we do at Easter. It is a celebration. It is good news. And so. And we had this beautiful passage at the beginning of the service from Paul's Letter to the Romans, which, by the way, when he wrote Romans, he was absolutely on fire. I love that book. He said, for if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord. So then whether we live or die, we are the Lord's possession. And that just says it all to me. That sums it up.

Should we even talk about heaven and hell? Uh, is it just a waste of

>> Kelsey Phillips: All right, so switching gears a little bit away from this, like, collection of beautiful literature and pieces of art surrounding this and all the good, uh, that, you know, we can. We can draw from these topics. We do know that in reality, these two topics, particularly hell, have caused a lot of harm to a lot of people. And so in light of that, and in light of the fact that we, you know, can't possibly know everything about the afterlife, should we even talk about heaven and hell? Uh, is it just a waste of our breath?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Yeah. So my man Tolkien, he says that all human stories are really about the one story, the inevitability of death, right? It's just out there. It drives the death. And our knowledge of our own mortality drives so much of our lives. It is our fear of lack of purpose, so many fears that we have. So for us to not talk about it is not only irresponsible, it feels, like impossible to not talk about it. And. And certainly, as the church, if we don't give teaching and guidance and hope and comfort around these questions, you know, there are people who say that heaven and hell is a human construct because we are cognizant of our own mortality. St. Jane Goodall. Just recently, I heard a beautiful quote. She said, you know, death, this her next great adventure. Either there's something or there's nothing. And if there's nothing, well, there's nothing. But if there's something. And she said, and I believe there is because of experiences that I have, I and others have had, then, you know, what. What a marvelous adventure. And so, um, I think that not talking about it is. Is an impossibility. I was thinking about this, and I went back to. When we were in seminary. I was working with a group of people, children in Sunday school, and I had them draw pictures of what they thought heaven was like. And it was really interesting. But that was the. It was hilarious, actually. But that was the first time I sort of realized the correlation of ideas between how they pictured heaven and what they thought God, the nature of God, was. Now, of course, at that young age, their ideas about God sort of were conflated with the ideas about their parents, right? And also developmentally, in their. In their spiritual development, they, you know, you're in a certain place where God is definitely the parent, the overseer, things like that. But if. If they were in a more loving, warm household, their heaven looked a lot different than the really strict, uh, uh, you know, household things like that. And their understanding of God correlated to that. And that is why I think it's important to talk about heaven and hell. What we think of heaven and hell is intrinsic to how we view God and then ultimately what our relationship with God will be. And that relationship with God in the end is really what matters. And so if we fear going to hell, like if we live our lives in fear, ah, of all the decisions that we make and we are afraid all the time that we are going to go to hell, well, that says a lot about what we believe God to be and what our relationship then with that, uh, God is going to be. But if we don't fear death or hell, and we believe that God is nothing short of all loving, well, that offers us a completely different kind of life. Right now I do want to acknowledge, uh, I think they're, they're using Dante's imagery. I think there's a special circle of hell for preachers who, uh, who preach damnation and scare people. It really, really pisses me off. It hurts so much in the name of Jesus. And I just feel like that is so wrong. The very first time I preached a young person suicide was, it was many, many years ago. And I remember talking with the school counselor and they said there had been a suicide just a few months previous to that. And all the kids showed up and the preacher just damned this kid to hell for having committed suicide. And the kids were completely traumatized and I was so angry about that. So, like, that was all I could do was, in this sermon that I was preaching was like, try to convince these kids that their friend was not eternally damned. And it just absolutely broke my heart. Bad theology like that can separate people from God and uh, it breaks my heart.

Many Christians today are motivated in their faith primarily by fear of hell

>> Riley Brown: Yeah, that's, that's a nice segue into our next question, which kind of you're, you're touching on already. Many Christians today and throughout history have been motivated in their faith primarily by fear of hell. Turn or burn, repent or perish. Many of us have heard these or something similar from Christian pulpits. As you mentioned, this service for a person, uh, who committed suicide. This obviously isn't the most healthy perspective on the afterlife, this Turner Byrne mentality. But if we believe that there is such a thing as the afterlife, what role should it play in the life and faith of a Christian?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: So turn or burn, repent or perish is a really easy way to control the masses. And I think that that is why it has been so popular for People in power to use, to talk about, um, a more loving picture of. Of the afterlife, of what happens when you die. I think it frees us so that we fearlessly. And in saying that, I'm not like, advocating dangerous behavior or something, BASE jumping or like, free solo climbing or something like that, but it's living in the knowledge. Living in the knowledge that this life that we are living is so deciduous, that we exist in such a minute sliver of time. Even if we live to be a hundred years old, that little sliver of time, we can live it to the fullest with the belief that whatever is next is good. And what a beautiful way to live. 1 Corinthians, Paul talks about a seed and how a seed cannot become what it's supposed to become until it dies. And it's not a seed anymore. So the seed dies and it becomes something so much more. And I think it's really important to remember that, that and Kelsey, I'm sure you remember me. I, uh, preach this all the time. We have to keep growing. Like, while we're here on Earth, we have this little sliver of time. God is always going to be too small because we cannot fathom the expanse of God. We can't even, uh, imagine the expanse of our own physical universe. And God is way more expansive than that. And I'm not talking, like, just in size, but in. In presence, expansive down to the molecular level. So as we try to understand and live into God and we slough off the old, like this seed, we have to always keep moving forward, growing, allowing all the time for more love, more grace, more compassion, more justice, more goodness. So. So this idea of, uh, turn or burn, repent or perish, is just, for me, way too small a vision of God. God is just too big for that.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Okay, so kind of stemming off of that. If we're operating from a standpoint of, you know, not using Turner Burn, not using repent or perish, which I am all for, but I'm here to play devil's advocate.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: What?

>> Kelsey Phillips: You know, if there's.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: That was another movie. I hated that movie. If there's no punishment, uh, in hell.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Or no reward in heaven, or not one that we can picture in that kind of visceral sense, what is the point of living a good life, of being a good person?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: So I think the only purpose or meaning to that very small sliver of time that we have on this earth is to live by serving others to make someone's life here in their little sliver of time a little bit Better. I think a life of service, a life of making choices for the good is the only life that's gonna bring meaning, uh, and joy and purpose. And it's not because of what like will or won't happen when you die, but it makes our time here in that little sliver of time so much more rich and full and free and not anxiety ridden or angsty or guilt ridden or angry or fearful or all of those other, you know, more negative things that come with um, either, either destructive choices or the guilt and fear of going to hell or whatever. So I think we choose to live a life of service so that our minute little time here is better and lived with purpose.

So one of the things that has been coming up a couple times is challenging hell

>> Riley Brown: So one of the things that has been coming up a couple times is challenging this idea of, of um, you know, like to go back to two questions ago, turn or burn, repent or perish. This, which you might call infernalism, this idea that hell is not simply a place where you go if you uh, don't like God or the place that's locked from the inside, like you mentioned at the beginning, but a punishment, uh, for the way you lived your life or something like this. And oftentimes the way the gospel is presented to a lot of people is that, that Jesus saves us from that punishment. We start with the punishment and then Jesus saves us from the punishment. So praise Jesus. Given how we're talking about heaven and hell and uh, these kind of different differing perspectives, what role does Jesus play in that perspective? What does Jesus save us from, if anything?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: I think Jesus saves us from ourselves. The life of Jesus helps us to understand our purpose. Like I was talking about before, like what our job is. So the life of Jesus gave us an example of how we live our little sliver of time. The death of Jesus gave us a visceral image of the profundity of divine love that is available to us when we open ourselves to it. And then the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that's what allows us to live without fear. He gave us this vision again that is just so much bigger, that is outside of time and space, that pulls us out of our little small thinking into this just mind blowingly huge life in Christ that is filled with light and love and good. So that to me is Jesus saves us from our insular self importance, you know, our insular again fears and things like that. He has broken open those gates that we build around ourselves, around our heart. He breaks that open.

Mother Kelly says many people are scared about the concept of hell

>> Kelsey Phillips: Okay, so we're kind of at the grand finale, what everyone's been waiting for. But I think you've actually kind of realistically been processing these questions the whole time and kind of putting this out there already. But the question that we have for you is, Mother Kelly, are we as a collective humanity, are we good? Are we going to make it out of this okay? So many people are scared about this concept of hell from what their pastors have told them, what they've heard in sermons. So how would you go about giving comfort to these people? Uh, how would you give them the confidence that they need to not be afraid that they're going to a good.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Place in the end? That every single created being is such a divine work of art that is so uniquely precious and needed in the kingdom that God's not gonna lose that. That like. Like jewels at the Louvre. God's not going to lose us. I go back to the little kids and their drawing of heaven as a correlation for what they believed about God. I don't believe in divine judgment. If there is something like divine judgment, I think it's the image of the refiner's fire, where we slough off like the seed, that which is not fully ourselves. I think that God is absolutely coursing through creation, through every fiber, every atom, every molecule and beyond, just pulsing through with so much love that when our little sliver of time on this planet is up, there's no way that God's gonna let go of us. So, yeah, we are good. We are good. But, uh, here's the kicker. That also means all of us are good. And I love this quote from Archbishop Tutu, who said, we may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low. So I think we have to keep in mind and. And to me, that also, as we think about people who we are quite sure they would be in hell, we have to know that they, too will be standing next to us. And, you know, they will have sloughed off that which is not truly themselves as well. And we will stand in the mercy and grace and loving lo light of this divine creator. So, yeah, we're good. We're good, Kelsey, we'll see you there.

>> Riley Brown: Well, that's comforting to hear. Thank you. Thank you for that, Mother Kelly. Um, and thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and for being willing to answer our questions about such a heavy topic.

We have six more questions for you to answer on All Things Episcopal Podcast

Before you go, though, we have six more questions for you. But don't worry, these are much shorter. Something, um, new we're doing this season is having a rapid fire segment at the end of every episode. Something I also did at the end of the episode I helped out with a couple weeks ago. We will ask you a question and you give us your knee jerk answer. Are you ready?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: I can do this. I've got this. Yes, I'm ready.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Yeah, you got it. All right. High church or low church?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Yeah, I love me some smells and bells. I'm gonna have to go with high church.

>> Riley Brown: Favorite part of the liturgy.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: I love the beginning just before we process in. Cause you never know what's gonna happen next. But then I also love the epic, uh, when I'm, uh, when I'm saying the liturgy. And just before we consecrate the bread and wine, I've started to put this big, fat silent pause to just let the spirit move and do what she's gonna do during that time. So that's another favorite moment of mine.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Okay.

>> Riley Brown: Talking about, oh, uh, sorry, their wires crossed there. Scripture, tradition, or reason? Pick one.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Can't do it. My stool.

>> Riley Brown: Come on, you can pick one. I had to pick one.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Uh, yeah, that's the, that's, that's the beauty of having, uh, free will.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Okay.

>> Riley Brown: That's a great cop out, I guess. Okay.

>> Kelsey Phillips: All right.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Episcopalian. Okay. Okay. This one's gonna be easier. Told you.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Vestment color that you vibe with the most.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Man, it is hard to be Episcopalian and have your favorite color be purple because you get so much grief from, uh, people like, do we have, like, aspirations of being a bishop, but it just happens to be my favorite color. It's always been my favorite color. I don't want to be bishop, but it's. It's my favorite color.

>> Kelsey Phillips: Okay. And would you rather Easter vigil or Christmas Eve service?

>> Mother Kelly Demo: There is something very magical about a Christmas Eve service. I have a lot of really wonderful memories of, like, acolyting at, uh, Christmas Eve services and, you know, snow falling when you come out and. Yeah. So I love pageants and all of.

>> Riley Brown: That, uh, church potluck. Must have.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Have all things potatoes.

>> Riley Brown: Well, there you have it, everybody. Thanks again, Mother Kelly, for joining us today. We appreciate your time.

>> Mother Kelly Demo: Yeah, uh, thank you for asking me. It's, it's, it's been a lot of fun. I really have appreciated you guys and the work that you do.

>> Claire: Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more about all things Episcopal on the Diocese of West Missouri's communication Pages, please visit dio westmo.org podcasts backslash and in the Diocese of Kansas, please visit edokformation.org WordPress.com All Things Episcopal Podcast All Things Episcopal Podcast is a production of the Diocese of West Missouri and the Diocese of Kansas in association with Resonant Media.

>> Claire: Sam.