Jedidiah Jenkins: On Love and Acceptance

It’s likely fate that Jedidiah Jenkins is a writer—a New York Times bestseller at that. After all, his parents sold more than 12 million books in the early years of their writing careers, when they were still married, and a duo—they wrote a series of books about walking, yep walking, across America. In Jedidiah’s latest book—Mother, Nature—he retraces their journey by car, with his mother riding shotgun. He suggested this trip to his mother because he wanted to see the world through her eyes—to understand who she is by accessing who she was—and also because of a chasm that keeps them apart. See, Jedidiah is gay, while his mother believes—ardently—that homosexuality is a sin. And a choice. Mother, Nature is a beautiful and tender love story between a mother and a son that revolves around one of Jedidiah’s foundational beliefs: That he cannot excommunicate his mother, even if she might not come to his eventual marriage to a man. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.

MORE FROM JEDIDIAH JENKINS:

Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to See if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences

To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret

Life Streams to the Ocean: Notes on Ego, Love, and the Things That Make Us Who We Are

Jedidiah’s Website

Follow Jedidiah on Instagram

TRANSCRIPT:

(Edited slightly for clarity.)

ELISE LOEHNEN: It's so nice to finally meet you. I feel like we must have friends in common, but we've never somehow crossed paths.

JEDIDIAH JENKINS: Where are you in the world?

ELISE: Los Angeles.

JEDIDIAH: Oh, I used to live in Brentwood.

ELISE: Where are you? Where, oh, okay, that's a great place to be.

JEDIDIAH: I know, I'm in a cute little cabin and I was in Silver Lake for eight and a half years, which I loved, but I lived with my best friends and I'm like, I've never lived alone and, you know, sooner or later I'm going to catch a husband and I might not live alone again, so let me try this.

ELISE: Where is your husband? Is he close?

JEDIDIAH: I don't know where my husband is. I feel that he's close. I feel ready for him, but I don't know if he's ready for me. I don't know where he is. He might be in the jungle. But wherever he is, he's cosmically looking for me too. Or, you know, maybe I already know him. You know, who knows?

ELISE: I know with books that you put them to bed, well, maybe you only put this book to bed recently, but since you're more established. I just published my first book. So it's a long, as you know, a long lead up. I don't think people realize the gap between you when you send a book into production and when it actually lands in people's hands. And sometimes things change or can change dramatically in the time, but maybe your book in some ways was the final invitation. It feels like maybe you're maybe you're that much closer to calling him in.

JEDIDIAH: Oh, I think you're totally right. So this book is like, For those who haven't read it yet, it's about my complicated relationship with my mother, and like one of the key points or moments of the book is this rift my mom has because she's conservative and religious, like Jesus is coming any minute vibes, and so she just cannot accept Same sex relationships. So all that to say, a big turning point in the book is like when I confront her about will you come to my gay wedding when it happens? It's not due anytime soon. But what if it is? And are you going to come? And I don't want to assume you're not going to come if you've actually changed your mind over the years, over the 20 years I've been out. And it was a big point of, I guess, closure or just like turning a page for me in that experience with her, that it made me feel like a big boy, like an adult,

ELISE: There was an incredible paragraph at the end about Belonging and acceptance and where we culturally are but what's so beautiful about the book is, it's a rare quality, I think, people who can really hold someone close while looking at them or giving, granting them a full humanity and not sanitizing the parts that are painful. And that's very rare to read something like that, that is so loving, so venerating, so accepting while not minimizing your own pain. Because so many of us have really nuanced, complex relationships with our parents, and if we could actually breathe into it, and own it, and recognize the ways in which it was amazing, and the ways in which it wasn't, we would be so much closer, I think, to accepting our parents. There's something that happens in our culture that's like to criticize is to negate. We really struggle with that, I think that ambivalence, but I thought it was very moving. And I thought it was interesting that your father, who only figures on the margins of the page and seems like he figures more in the margins of your life, is like, I will walk you down the aisle...

JEDIDIAH: yeah.

ELISE: And your mom doesn't think she can actually be there, but she's your emergency contact.

JEDIDIAH: What I tried to grasp, or what I tried to just look closely at, was this paradox of tensions that is a loving relationship with a parent who is painful. And I think the framework of it being a conservative religious and a gay son is almost like an easy one, because There's like so many heterosexual, cisgender kids that didn't become the doctor that they wanted or didn't marry the person that they wanted or didn't stay in town and there's all these like tiny earthquakes and tiny death by a thousand cuts that comes from the relationship we have with our parents or siblings or whatever it is that is so difficult to grasp and our brains are so Addicted to the binary of just like good, evil, you know...

ELISE: yes.

JEDIDIAH: painful, joyful. And it's like, especially if family is anything, it's a teacher. And it's that like, if you can't figure out how to exercise the muscle of holding something in that tension, you will lose at life. You will lose important relationships. You will lose key opportunities for love and growth and you'll lose family members. Before I wrote this book, my relationship with my mom is very public, I like think she's the funniest person in the world. So I like post her on the internet a lot and people know her beliefs, because I've written about them in previous books. So people were always like, how do you do it? Like you and your mom are so sweet together. How do you do this? And that was really a big impetus for this book was me being asked that a lot and me not knowing.

ELISE: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

JEDIDIAH: I don't know how I do it. I don't know what it is, but it deserves a book length look. My hope is that people who feel conflicted, confused about their relationship with their parents, that it just makes them realize that they're not alone in that confusion and that you can love somebody unconditionally and you can have really strong boundaries and sometimes people shouldn't be in a relationship with their parents. That's very real.

ELISE: Yeah. Yes, and it's interesting to me that your mom has her strong beliefs, this focus on the Word of Scripture, or that it's the Word of God, not something that's been translated and mistranslated and interpreted over time, a scripture that has evolved to move past things that we just don't accept anymore, right? Like, there's a lot of slavery, there's tons of stuff that we're like, these are not our moral values anymore. We don't believe in this. And it's interesting how she still holds this. And I don't know, I've never experienced you two together, but it seems to me like there's no one she would rather spend time with. Like, there's this seemed like a full body embrace and this lingering question of, I don't know if my mom will come to my wedding, which then just for context, so people understand it's maybe not as much about the day, but about will she accept my the fact that I am married to a man

JEDIDIAH: Yeah. Mm hmm, mm hmm.

ELISE: part of our family or will I see her on the side? Yeah, but the fact that you didn't know, to me, feels like she doesn't isn't at least like hammering you on the daily with rejection. I mean, it sounds like you've had a fair amount of religious trauma. But it's interesting that it's still a question, even though you've spent so much time with her.

JEDIDIAH: Yeah.

ELISE: that it's not so forward in your relationship.

JEDIDIAH: Well that's the difference, and my friend, I was just talking about a trip I'd gone on with my mom, and we'd driven around the European Alps, and it was so fun, and... My gay friend who has no relationship with his mother, he goes, you're so lucky that your mom has redeemable qualities. And I was like, because like, I don't agree with her politics or her religion, but she's so fun and kind and optimistic and joyful and adventurous and silly and loving, and this was what I learned is that she leads with love and like her righteousness and certainty is in the backseat it's in the car, but it's not driving.

ELISE: Yeah.

JEDIDIAH: And some people, their righteousness and certainty is driving, fully driving. And you can't even be in the room with them because they're like, so grumpy that you don't agree with their worldview or that you're a disappointment or that you're an abomination. And I don't know, I think my mom would love me no matter how mean spirited I was, but I'm also really fun and I don't like confrontation. You know, I'm her son. I'm not like fall in line or get the fuck out of here. Like, I don't move through the world like that. I would say up to like four or five years ago, about once a week, I would get a forwarded email or like a text of an article that's like something to think about this guy, he lived the homosexual lifestyle for 10 years and then he went to a prayer vigil and got saved, and now he's married to a woman with three kids, something to think about, you know, like, she just like throw it out there. And it would happen so much that I was like, Mom, I will never believe this. You are not allowed to send this to me, anything like this ever again. And I had to really draw a boundary. And she was like, well, sorry, and then in the reply email, and she didn't again. I mean, I think maybe in five years, she sent one, like, just trying, you know, like a velociraptor testing the electric fence.

ELISE: I shouldn't laugh. I mean, but you've clearly done so much work around this that it feel it's reading it you felt on the page Hopeful, but yet not sort of triggered Which is amazing to be at a place of relative equanimity. I was just listening to this podcast with Father Richard Rohr and Just thinking about people whose certainty is in the front seat, he said the opposite of faith Is not doubt, the opposite of faith is certitude.

JEDIDIAH: That's great.

ELISE: yeah.

JEDIDIAH: I love that man.

ELISE: I mean, right, I stalk him on podcasts, I don't have access to him, but I beg his people. It was on a podcast called The Sacred Speaks.

JEDIDIAH: Is it recent or old?

ELISE: It just came out maybe a couple days ago, and this host is interested in a lot of the same people that I am. He's a Jungian therapist, but he's very interested in that conversation, which is my favorite conversation.

JEDIDIAH: Gonna listen to that today.

ELISE: you'll enjoy it. But that certitude, or that certainty, It's quite impossible. I wanna read to you from your book, if you don't mind, at the end where you've write, you write, "I've noticed a general sentiment of discourse online, that lack of total acceptance is total rejection. The thought goes like this, if your family says they love you, but they can't accept your sexuality, they aren't allowed to say they love you. They don't love all of you. Therefore, they don't love you. You have to draw a boundary and say that's not acceptable and remove them from your life." And then you go on and say "that you cannot excommunicate." I thought that was so beautiful and so true and so binary, right? This is beyond, you know, son mother relationships. This is about beyond sexuality and gender. It's politics. It's our whole world, right? You are fully with me or you are inherently against me. And where do you think that that came from? Do you think this is just who we are as humans? It feels like it's becoming more and more entrenched as identity becomes so, so primary in our culture.

JEDIDIAH: Well, I interviewed Richard Rohr once, and I asked him, it was unbelievable, I mean, I've been to a couple of his like little conference things, I mean in Santa Fe, like, What a dream. And he said that culture moves in exhales and inhales and the pendulum swings and he was like, there's times of unity and there's times of atomization and so like at one point there was like one newscaster, Walter Cronkite, we're Americans, blah, blah, blah. I mean, this is like a very white centric world, but that's how it was. There was like three channels. And then now we're like, responding to that, the pendulum is swinging, and now the particularities of your identity down to the very minutiae are who you are, and we're like, all separating, and he believes society moves like this, and it's so interesting because I was thinking about this, I remember feeling it during Black Lives Matter, and now I very much feel it in the Israeli Gaza war of fall in line, total acceptance, or you are on the side of evil, and all means necessary, like, to achieve our goal. Like, burn down Target, burn down the police station, burn down Gaza, burn down colonialism, burn down... which is so interesting. It's so human, and it's so funny, because I have this inclination as a politically progressive person that... Like left of center is more humane and more human and more caring about the little guy and but it's so interesting to see how the message of Jesus and the message of Gandhi and the message of the Sufi mystics and the message of eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, all these incredibly stereotypical, stupid things to say, that those things were villainized by the left as ideologically lazy, or naive, and it's just so interesting, I just see it as like The idea of loving your enemy and seeing their humanity as opposed to turning red eyed and seeing them as something that must be destroyed is so basic, primal, and yet, we just do it. It's in our DNA. It's what we love to do, is create an enemy, rally around, Stopping that enemy and thinking that our rally is deeply righteous and it feels so good to be in a team that is righteously angry and moving. It feels so good and it is deeply scary.

ELISE: Yes. I am right with you feeling unmoored and yeah, very shaken by this moment of time, but also in the sense of, I thought we all agreed on some basic ideas. But yes, I'm, I think the wielding of righteousness is terrifying. The projection of shadow onto other people is terrifying.

JEDIDIAH: Well, it's so funny because we know this, like, we've known it since like all these books about totalitarianism and fascism and da da da da, like, step one is calling is dehumanizing your enemy and calling them animals. That is the most obvious step one of like, you're about to commit an atrocity. And that's all that's all that I've seen happen in the last four years, is whether it's our president or whether it's a movement or whether it's one side of this and that. They just are calling the other side animals. I'm like, wow, has anyone read one book? I don't think so.

ELISE: Well, and it's interesting though, too, because we are animals.

JEDIDIAH: True.

ELISE: but do you know spiral dynamics?

JEDIDIAH: Oh my god, let me be clear. I've listened to three podcasts about it. It's a very, like, white man who listens to podcasts, like, oh my god, Spiral Dynamics changed my life. I've listened to three podcasts.

ELISE: Well, I'm with you. I'm not an expert, but I love it. And I'm trying to find the right conversation partner for a podcast about it, because it was interesting this week feeling so unmoored. I was like, wait, I need to stabilize myself in some sort of worldview to understand what's happening. And spiral dynamics to me feels like the closest example of the need to push to the next level as we see green just like go wild and the recognition that all of these tiers all of these levels of the spiral have tremendous amount of value and that they're all present in all of us and across the world in different amounts and potencies, but that to deny any of them is a fallacy for people who aren't listening, I'm gonna just, should I just tell people the basic levels? I'll do it really fast, but so that understand what we're talking about. So beige is started 100, 000 years ago. It's instinctive. It's living off the land. It's the basic need for food, water, sex, shelter. Then emerge from this level purple, which is spiritual, magical, this idea that...

JEDIDIAH: and what you're saying is as you achieve the first level and you reach a harmony there, you move to the next level.

ELISE: Or a disharmony

JEDIDIAH: oh, yeah.

ELISE: I think that it's like you get to the edge of beige and you're like, there's something more or this...

JEDIDIAH: I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ELISE: And so then purple comes which is this idea that this animistic magical world where a cow dies because God's mad. But these things, these themes are still present, right? This is religion, the observance of rights, a passage, seasonal cycles, they all have their beautiful Moments. And then from there becomes red, which is the egocentric. You start to see the formation of the ego 10, 000 years ago. It's full of threats and predators. I'm just reading from this sort of primary document. Wanting to be I/ me dominant, fear based conquers outfoxes stands tall. But this is like the formation of the beginning of a different type of culture. Then we move into blue, judicial, religion, organization, hierarchy, government, checks and balances. From there we get into orange, which is sort of the advent. This is 300 years ago, rationalism, the desire to dominate the environment, we get medicine, we get science, we also get a ton of consumerism. From there we get green, which is this communitarian, egalitarian, every story counts, every person counts, no life has greater value, we're all sharing this planet, there's lots of beauty in green, but then it starts to deny the validity of the other levels and or their existence in other parts of the world. And so you get green saying like, screw consumerism. It's like, well, don't you enjoy your house? Do you like the electrical, are you happy to have an ambulance? It's self righteous. And we're trying to get to the next tier, which is yellow. That's not beyond binaries, but is a little bit more adaptive, practical, holding all sides, cognizant of the Whole. Anyway, that's Spiral Dynamics. I love that I'm, like, trying to teach Spiral Dynamics in this moment, but it is... We're there.

JEDIDIAH: Yeah.

ELISE: All right, tell us more about it.

JEDIDIAH: no, I mean, I don't know more than you. I just love when someone systematizes what's going on and you see that we're all just like part of this giant abacus machine. Like I love thinking of Maslow's hierarchy of needs as well. Just where are you? If you're freaked out about your rent and feeding your kids, you're not meditating and watching clips of Ram Dass because you're like, I don't have time for that. Like, I don't need self actualization right now. I need food. The way we all fit into this life. I don't know.

ELISE: Apparently, they were friends, Claire Graves and Abraham Maslow. So this is supposed to be the animation of Maslow.

JEDIDIAH: I can imagine that their theories were improved by sitting around with a cocktail talking. My friends and I often talk about, because I'm obsessed with the concept of like, what are your primary subterranean motivations? Like, what are we doing this for? Like, are you working for 10 years at this corporate job and you're getting stocks and you're doing this and you've got this for what, like, are you going to die here or do you want to start your own thing? Are you like happy in this push situation? Because living in Los Angeles, I'm sure Brentwood is exactly the same as it is over here, is there is a very interesting overlay, and maybe this is how it is in every city, where keeping up with the Joneses is such an a wild experience in LA, especially when you're younger, like LA might be the only city I know of where you can be 25 and your friend is living in a 4 million house that they got from tiktok money and you're a barista and can barely make your rent, but your best friends and you hang out all the time and it's just like this really weird experience where it's just like the schism, like my friend group, some of them have millions of dollars and some of them have 30, 000, and that's it. And it's like, and that's how it's been for years. And, all that to say some people start to really get claustrophobic in their own life and they're like, How do I make more money? How do I make more money? How do I especially as you approach 40, which, by the way, fiscal responsibility, I believe in that, like, you should figure out a way to be safe with your life and like, have some backups. But I have really realized that I do not care about having tons of money. I do not care. I care About having a cute house, a small house, and maybe another small house, like in the mountains, but a shack, you know, and I'm on Zillow. There are 150, 000. I mean, I might have to go to home Depot and fix them, but how fun.

And my dream scenario is to be sitting around a fire with my friends, drinking mezcal, and talking about spiral dynamics. That is like when I think about what I'm doing on this planet, it's that. And every single thing I've ever written, every book, every blog, every anything, comes from those conversations, every thought I've ever had is bubbling up and becoming crystallized in those conversations, and that's the moment I'm always trying to get back to. And that life is not for everybody, but that is truly my life goal, is to do that and make my life to where I can do that until I'm dead. And we talk about that a lot with my friends of like, you're anxious in your job, you're trying to get this, you're trying to do that and make more money and whatever, but for what? Like, where are you going? Aspen? Is that where you want to be? with those people? Like, I don't know, where are you headed?

ELISE: Yeah. Well, and life creep, you know, I'm very conscious of that, and my parents were both very poor growing up, and my dad was a doctor in small town Montana, and so they had a nice life, but have always lived dramatically within their means in a way that sort of drove me crazy at times, you know, like is a three connection flight day really worth saving a hundred dollars?

JEDIDIAH: Obsessed.

ELISE: we really all have to sleep in the same hotel room? We do. And it hasn't given them full peace, my mom has her own irrational anxiety about money and fear of becoming a bag lady. But they have a fair amount of peace. And I live in a tiny house. And yes, I live in a very nice neighborhood. But, similar to you, my wants are not endless. I am at the end of my wants. And I don't want a life that's so big and unbounded that I am on putting myself on a treadmill with on an upward incline and don't know how to get off or scale down or live in a smaller way. It's interesting thinking about your parents, too, and their origin story. I had never heard of the sensation that they walked across America, but talk about this sort of rambling adventure, it's very different.

JEDIDIAH: It's so difficult to parse out the influence of parents and how that affects your entire worldview. But both of my parents in their 20s and early 30s walked across America for five years and became writers and wrote books about it and traveled and work. And my whole life, my parents have been writers, so I've never seen my parents go to work. I mean, I lived on a farm, so my dad would go like feed the cows, but they're like, he's like there. I mean, my parents divorced when I was young, but when I was there, like they're around and because they had such an alternative and strange life, that I saw that model of just like, Oh, do this, then that, and then you go and get this degree, and then you go work in the big building, and then this happens. Like, I saw the unconventional life as normal.

But I also saw, and I think this also created a certain scarcity mentality in me, or something, my parents were very popular and famous in the early 80s, and then their divorce and the chaos that followed, like, crashed and burned their stars. And so I grew up where the book deals dried up the money dried up the divorce was sad, I grew up like where we couldn't fly on a plane. We slept in the same hotel room. Every trip was a road trip, like only camping like we didn't even stay in hotels we had like a the world's shittiest pop up trailer. But that was and there was that tinge of the fall of rome where it used to be so different we used to be flown first class and a car waiting a car service. There was that sense of tragedy in it all, which I barely perceived, but now with hindsight, I didn't receive, but it made me think that the gravy train can end, so don't live above your means. That was very much in my psyche, which I carry into my adulthood very much.

ELISE: Yeah.

JEDIDIAH: I love having enough money to eat out at restaurants whenever I want. And, you know, if something's cute on Facebook marketplace, I get it. But like, I do not have the like, Ooh, I need a Tesla. I don't feel that thing, I'm just like, no, no, I don't want any debt. Cause also as a writer, you know, this, you get paid in chunks that are very spread out.

ELISE: Yes.

JEDIDIAH: and you don't know when you'll be paid again. I mean, really, and where you're going to find the next thing. So you might get a chunk of money. That's cute. And you're like, wow, this is a lot of money in my checking account. But then you're like, is this the last money I'll ever make? Do I have to live on this for a decade or for six months? I don't know. So it creates this scary thing about it. That is the life of a freelance or the life of a creative or the life of an artist. So there's a lot of us out there, but I don't know it is so interesting how your parents influence everything even outside of what they meant to influence.

ELISE: Another way in which makes you an outsider insider or between two worlds or present to multiple realities that I think is needed and essential in our culture right now, where when we are sort of defining ourselves by the static emblematic ideas and not even as much as like at the same time, everyone's like everything's mutable. Everything's variable. It's so interesting how we are in one way is pushing past boundaries and binaries. And then at the same time, like, how do I nail down my identity with as many studs as possible so that I can own this corner or speak from the authority of this particular identity? So interesting this like the mutability and then also the fixedness that I think we're Experiencing.

JEDIDIAH: yeah I think that is what i'm trying to do in this book, is just paint a picture of it like nature, the universe, speaks in metaphor, and one of its truest things is paradox, is holding two things that are both true at once. I remember laying in bed, I was probably 12 and before I go to bed, I'm thinking about the universe because my brain suddenly works and I'm like, how can space be infinite? Infinity makes no sense to my mind. So then I'm imagining space expand, expand, expand. And then I hit a wall, which is the edge of space. And then I go, okay, so let's say if space isn't infinite, well, if you get to the edge of space to the wall, what's on the other side of the wall? There has to be something on the other side of the wall. There can't be nothing. And so I remember thinking in that moment, those two scenarios are both impossible, but then also finiteness is impossible because there must be something on the other side of the wall. And I remember laying there being like, oh, I actually think the computer brain that we have is not designed to understand the wholeness of reality. We're stuck in a partial understanding.

ELISE: Yeah.

JEDIDIAH: And that my little 12 year old right now is like, Oh, okay. I guess I'll never know. Whatever, maybe we do know, but that to me was this first taste of a thing that keeps being reaffirmed by the metaphor universe of like, yo, this is my fundamental lesson, is that like, you've got to understand that you will have to hold things in attention, and that's how you move through.

ELISE: Yeah. Yes. And then also the tension of being, simultaneously another paradox, but both part and whole and This is you know Wilbur again, but this like Jed's a whole person and you're part of a family structure and The way that we look for those alliances to create a whole intact system. I don't know, it's interesting like the together apartness of Life and longing.

JEDIDIAH: The metaphor never ends. One side says, the only thing that matters is inhaling, and the other side says, the only thing that matters is exhaling, and you're even when you walk, each step, you're falling in one direction. And then you take the next step to fall in the other direction, and if you just step in one direction, you fall fucking over. It's like everything is telling us the truth, and yet we can't get it.

ELISE: I understand everyone's desire to for simplicity And certainty again, and those types of answers and, and wanting, you know, to take it back to your mom for a second, the way that we project onto our parents some sort of ideal. I don't even know if it's an archetype, but there's that moment where you've arrived and you return. I thought you wrote about that beautifully too, like how the arrival is so anticipated and then as soon as you're there, you're like, let's get home. Let's go, like, let's get out of here. That moment when you turn on the beach, I've been there where you're like, all right, we're done going. Let's get back as fast as possible. But where you talk, you're in the car, and you're like, say more, and you write, "I take a moment to interrogate my expectations. What do I want from her? I want understanding. I want to see that she has grown wise and poetic from life. I want her to analyze and reflect." And you write about the generational differences that we've all been taught to unpack every moment and look for the moral of the story. But what do you want? Besides, obviously, acceptance. Although, what would that do? Maybe this is an inane question, but your mom and her beliefs, and you write about that, too, I think, really beautifully. Like, how you don't want her to lose her belief. Like, how destabilizing that would be. How would you feel if she said, oh, yeah, my belief system is wrong. I'm wrong.

JEDIDIAH: I became a writer truly because I fell in love with CS Lewis when I first started reading and the way he writes and the way he makes an argument was just so compelling to me. And one of the things that I realized he did in his writing is he would always imagine the alternative and he would walk through what that would be like if that happened. So like, If you're saying like, why is there pain in the world? Why is there suffering? And then it's like, okay, well, let's imagine there isn't, what are we talking about? And he would walk through that like thought experiment and you realize the absurdity of the alternative, or you realize how great it is, whatever it is. It was just this idea of like imagining the scenario. And I think about like, wow, if my mom at 75 just said the Bible isn't real, I've been lied to, it was written by men to control women, whatever. I would be so thrown and I mean, it took me all of my 30s to deconstruct just a childhood of that, you know? And deconstruct and rebuild a worldview that makes me feel safe.

ELISE: Yeah.

JEDIDIAH: I forget, I think I write about it in this book, about how existential crises are for the young and middle aged, because you can deconstruct, and then you've got time to build a new house. But if you're, like, having an existential meltdown in your 70s, now, granted, people are living longer, and I hope my mom lives to be 140, but I don't know, like, I'm fine. You, like, fall asleep with a smile on your face because Jesus has got your back. Like, I'm down. I I'll be fine. To think of her weak and not feeling like God's got her back. I don't like that. It would make me sad. But, I mean, you know, there are alternatives. I know lots of people who love Jesus and love gay marriage. Lots.

ELISE: Yes. I would. Is it a majority at this point? Would you say?

JEDIDIAH: oh, that's a good question. I bet you it is a majority of Millennials and Gen Z.

ELISE: Yeah.

JEDIDIAH: would identify as Christian, but they're like, it's fine to be gay. I'm so intrigued by generational blind spots. Like I bet you, my grandparents were not down with interracial marriage. Like they never said that, but like, when you look at the polling, like in the sixties and fifties, it was not cute. They were like that shouldn't happen, you know? And then all of a sudden, by the time millennials get around, we don't even think about it like at all. And it's just like we, Gen X, whatever we were raised in this like different scenario where all of a sudden that conversation is like not something people are fighting about anymore. And I think about what is the blind spot when we're 70 and the young whippersnappers are doing something and we're like, that's wrong? And they're like, you are so stuck in the past.

ELISE: Yeah.

JEDIDIAH: My theory is it's going to be, I think that the young Jen alpha and below are going to date and have romantic romantic relationships with AI, like in the movie, her, which I love that movie. I am convinced that that's coming and we will be like, you're not allowed to do that, that's not a real human or a real relationship, and not in my house, you're not dating a robot, I'm sorry, that is not a real person, you can't have real emotions. We're gonna be so in knots about it, and the young people are gonna be like, I'm in love. I'm sorry, you can't stop me.

ELISE: Well, we'll finally be talking about like, what is consciousness? What? Right. Yeah, I feel like people already are having relationships with AI. And we move past so many binaries without really clocking them in our culture. And looking at sort of, I guess you could, you would call it progress, but evolution and it is interesting to think about where our blind spot or cultural shadows are in this moment in time.

JEDIDIAH: They exist.

ELISE: oh yeah, a thousand percent. Part of it I see is like this part of the denial of death, part of the denial of quote unquote darkness. And this clinging to purity, a different kind of purity, perfectionism, righteousness, where it's like, I harm no one. Are you kidding? Like, my existence here is a dream. It's like, well do you use technology? Who mined those Like this unwillingness to look at all the death and despair on our planet that drives our lives. And that's, I think, one of the big cultural hypocrisies. Is it's very painful to look at. I'm not saying that we we can spend our lives examining, but we see the trails of it. We can go there. We can look at our supply chains. We can look at what's happening in Armenia or Syria or, you know, all these parts of the world. And I don't know. I just, I come back to this place of feeling like I know a lot of people died so that I could live.

JEDIDIAH: Hmm.

ELISE: And I know a lot of people suffered for the advantages that you and I have today and the creature comforts of life in America. I know that, but I think a lot of us want to disown all of that and project it onto other people and sidestep the cycle of life, which is hard, it's hard, but there's, you can't abdicate that, you know.

JEDIDIAH: So true.

ELISE: We each have our own piece of it, and then there's the big cultural part of it, but it's staying in the fire, unfortunately, when it's so much easier and feels so much better, as you said, to get into our righteous rage and say like, it's your fault, and you're the villain, and If you weren't doing that, then this over here wouldn't happen.

JEDIDIAH: I yeah, I really feel like the moral test of a human growing towards enlightenment, I mean, it's back to Richard Rohr, like the full circle conversation is order, disorder, reorder, the stages of enlightenment. And I think order is conservative, like old time religion disorder is liberal progressive. Fuck that. Fuck the man. Let's burn this place to the ground and start over and then reorder is everything belongs. And each thing has its place in moderation and the dance between the two is what makes anything possible.

ELISE: Yeah.

JEDIDIAH: And it's trying to like go through those stages of life and you can't skip a step. I don't know. I think the theme of this episode of your podcast is go listen to everything Richard Rohr.

ELISE: But in a nutshell, how do you think about your faith? If you have faith, it seems if you have Richard Roar, you have some version, and if you're into spiral dynamics, there's some container for you. Who else do you read and look to? Who's shaping your perspective?

JEDIDIAH: I would say the four horsemen of my mind are Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Thomas Merton, and James Baldwin.

ELISE: Mm.

JEDIDIAH: I mean, there's probably like 10 horsemen, but the open spirituality of Mary Oliver, where she can just like look at a decomposing lizard and just like love it. that is where I want to be. I'm just obsessed. And then this, the moral clarity and like agrarian, whatever Wendell Berry is, I just like die for him. I love clear thinking and I love a reverence for just this like experiment of being alive that these people have. I would say my spiritual experience is just curiosity. I am so down for whatever is real. I am so down. I don't care what it is. If the left behind series is true and we are going to get raptured at any minute. Oh my god. Great I'm ready like, i'm ready to be left behind I'm, like, okay. Well, I didn't follow that absolutely batshit story. How could I be expected to? It's batshit. And so if i'm left behind I shouldn't go there. Anyway, I don't want to go there. That sounds terrible So like i'll just be here and burn whatever so it's like i'm very down for whatever is true

ELISE: Oh, I love it. To be raptured. Well, congrats on another beautiful book.

JEDIDIAH: I'm so happy.

ELISE: you're so happy about the book?

JEDIDIAH: Yeah. It's like you said, the runway is so long. Like I turned this in a year ago and I got my first copy of it in late February, like the readers copy. And my friends were reading it and they were like, Oh my God, this is going to change lives. I'm so like, Oh my God, my mom, I don't know. And they're like, when can I give it to my mom? And I'm like, November. That is so long from now. Like we're going to be different people in November. So it's finally here. I'm thrilled.

ELISE: Well, anything that opens up the wedge of between mothers and mothering that opens that aperture a little bit to let everyone tell the truth about their lives in the most loving way, I mean, that's one of my passions as a mom and having a mom who is complicated and not complicated in so many ways, but I wrote a New York Times op ed earlier this year when my book came out about the ambivalence of motherhood and how loving your children and loving mothering are often synonymous in our culture and that we don't really allow our moms any space to have their own feelings about their lives.

So somehow, particularly I think for girls, whatever you do impugns the choices that your own mother made and or is a reflection either of what she wants you to carry Forward or a disavowal of everything that she gave you. I don't know, it is the most primary relationship for so many of us. But to not really be able to air it and talk about it and in some ways like your book, to me, read as When I was talking about holding your mom close and looking at her, it's like you almost are able to depersonalize her beliefs. I know that they're so strongly held, but it just didn't seem in any way to color her love for you. I don't know, the more we can air these relationships out and make them as multivariate as they are, I think the more healing there is for all of us.

JEDIDIAH: My God. I wish I could print what you just said on the back of this book before it comes out. Too late. Oh well, hopefully they listen to this podcast. That was exactly what I'm trying to get at and I could have never said it better.

ELISE: Oh, thank you.

I love Jedidiah’s mind and it’s really a beautiful book and about so much more than sexuality and religious fundamentalism. It’s about adventure, and love, and wanting to see the world through other peoples eyes, including those who don’t have the same beliefs. It’s also about aging and watching the evolution or the change in people that are formative in the creation of our own lives, and our own identities, and watching them change and being to let go of the physical—I think it’s hard, it’s not something that I want to think about or look at with my own parents. So the book is really a beautiful study in aging, and in the book he writes: “The erosion of dreams seems to be a feature of aging. When you’re young, you think, Maybe I’m good at Ping-Pong, or graphic design; I’ve never tried. Maybe my future husband is a doctor, or firefighter. I haven’t met him yet. Maybe I’ll be famous. Maybe I’ll be a teacher. I haven’t opened many doors, but what if the best, loveliest thing is behind the next one? There’s a chance, right?” And I think there was something so moving about him undertaking this journey that his mom did with his dad so long ago. To see how the landscape has changed, to see how she changed, and in someways the ways she hasn’t changed at all. So it’s also very much a testament to time, love, and how we all move through the world and are changed for it and by it.