I first recorded a podcast with mathematician & musician Eugenia Cheng in 2018 after reading her book "How to Bake Pi." I loved our conversation and so was delighted when she reached out to me last fall about possibly recording another podcast, this time on a different topic.

I'm grateful for Eugenia's openness, vulnerability honesty in talking about this difficult subject. To learn more about Eugenia, you can go to her website.

My guest this episode is Benjamin Saulsberry, the Public Engagement and Museum Education Director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi.

The story of Emmett Till’s lynching and murder has long had a haunting effect on me, partially because I Iive about a mile north of the church where his funeral was held in 1955 and I went on a personal pilgrimage a few years ago where I walked 13 miles from that church to his grave site in suburban Chicago. A story about Till’s death was published in The Atlantic last summer and it was there I learned about the Till Center. Benjamin was kind enough to speak with me about the center and its goals for racial reconciliation and justice.

ABC is running a mini-series this week called “Women of the Movement” that is based on Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley and I thought it was a good time to air this podcast now.

One of the benefits of doing a podcast is it gives me the opportunity to reach out to people whose work I’ve long admired and see if there’s any chance they’d like to talk to me. It’s always a joyful surprise when many of them say yes. That was the case when I heard from Kathleen Norris and when she agreed to this conversation. I was greatly formed in my early days of ministry by her books, “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith,” and she’s written numerous other poems and books, as well, including “Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life,” which we talk about in this episode. Kathleen recently wrote an article in The Christian Century entitled "We have to be willing to begin again: This is true of failures in writing, in faith, in life itself.” She writes about failure in this article and that, of course, inspired me to reach out. You can learn more about Kathleen on her Facebook page and subscribe to her e-newsletter at Soul Telegram. To learn more about my ministry and back episodes of this podcast, you can go to my web site. Thanks again for listening.