Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Advent: Blue Christmas

Every grocery store speaker is now officially blasting “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” And let’s be honest: sometimes it feels like a demand. The happiest Christmas music can feel like salt in the wound when life is heavy. If this season is not “merry and bright” for you, you’re not alone. That’s why many churches will hold “Blue Christmas” services next week. It’s an American tradition that says out loud what so many feel quietly: the holidays can hurt. These services dim the lights, play gentler music, light blue candles, and make space for grief. They remind us that the story of Christmas itself is no stranger to darkness—Jesus was born into a world of oppression and fear. Joy didn’t arrive because the world was perfect; it arrived anyway. I thought perhaps now, only halfway through the Advent season, it might be a good time to take a peek at the customs and traditions and plans that you’ve got on the calendar and see if you need to make any room for grief. Maybe the invitation of Advent is not to blast the cheeriest carol until we believe it, but to prepare room for joy by telling the truth. By letting sorrow breathe. By choosing practices that gently turn our hearts back toward joy without pretending the sadness is gone. What might that look like for you? A quiet walk near some city Christmas lights. A playlist that mixes Bing Crosby with a hymn that actually makes you cry. A phone call to the person who understands the empty chair at your table. Joy doesn’t demand we silence our grief. It asks us to make just enough room for God to slip in beside it. And sometimes, that tiny crack of space is all joy needs to return. Subscribe to Kate’s Substack [https://katebowler.substack.com/] for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent [https://katebowler.substack.com/s/advent] over there, too! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Listen Again: Father Richard Rohr on Learning to Hold On, Learning to Let Go

Life is painful. Period. But are there some aspects of our faith or our posture toward the world that can change how we experience it?  Father Richard Rohr is everyone’s favorite preacher of love. Love for each other. Love from God.  In this conversation, Kate and Richard talk about: * How great love and great suffering can move us into a new stage of life  * The spirituality of subtraction * Making room for mystery of joy and suffering * His secret to staying present to God Together, might we all learn when to hold on and when to let go.https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices Subscribe to Kate’s Substack [https://katebowler.substack.com/] for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent [https://katebowler.substack.com/s/advent] over there, too! This episode originally aired November 2021. See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Advent: A Protest Song

We’ve all seen the Christmas pageants where Mary is very sweet and demure and she is wearing a tablecloth pulled from the church dining hall. Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much impossible courage Mary had from the beginning. She finds out that she is pregnant in a completely scandalous way. But what does this divinely-prepared, teenage girl do when an angel crashes into her life with an announcement guaranteed to upend all her best plans? She sings. But not a sweet lullaby. Mary belts out a protest song: “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52–53). This is not the peace of spa music and chamomile tea. It’s the kind of peace that rearranges the furniture of the universe. That scatters the arrogant and topples the unjust. God’s peace doesn’t politely avoid conflict; it writes the soundtrack for a revolution. And somehow, Mary holds all of this—terror, disruption, and hope—in her own body. She sings peace into a world that did not ask for it, but desperately needs it. And here we are, centuries later, humming along too. Subscribe to Kate’s Substack [https://katebowler.substack.com/] for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent [https://katebowler.substack.com/s/advent] over there, too! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Listen Again: Nikki DeLoach on a Not-So Hallmark Christmas

The pandemic introduced many to living with uncertainty. But for some, uncertainty has always been their norm. Actress Nikki Deloach has starred in several Hallmark Christmas movies, but her life hasn’t matched the happily-ever-after plot-lines of her characters. Nikki’s dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of dementia and her son was diagnosed with congenital heart defects in utero… all in the same week. In this conversation, Kate and Nikki discuss how to live with constant uncertainty, how to stay open to both the terror and the beauty of living close to the edge, and how to make Christmas meaningful when hope is hard to come by.  Subscribe to Kate’s Substack [https://katebowler.substack.com/] for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent [https://katebowler.substack.com/s/advent] over there, too! This episode originally aired December 2020.  See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Advent: Begin Again

Well, here we are. December has arrived (shudder). And with it, the great cultural sprint: decorations, office parties, and the annual anxiety dream about whether you will accidentally forget someone on your gift list (spoiler: you will). Some of you already finished your shopping over Thanksgiving and have a freezer full of perfectly labeled Christmas cookies. (Who are you?! Come to my house and fix my life!) The rest of us are still trying to remember where we put last year’s wrapping paper. It’s easy, this time of year, to let December carry us away. The shopping carts, the streaming playlists, the endless events. Advent, though, asks us to live by a different rhythm. The early church saw this season as one of watching and waiting—not just for Christmas morning, but for the whole story of God’s redemption. They began the year not by rushing, but by slowing down. The prophet Isaiah describes this posture well: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). The church fathers loved this verse because it sounded like Advent: strength found not in frantic activity, but in patient trust. So maybe the invitation this December is not to do more, but to intend more. To decide, amid the cookie dough and to-do lists, that this month won’t only be measured in packages mailed or tables set, but in moments of return. Little pauses of prayer. A fat candle lit on the dining room table that makes you take a breath. A quiet reminder that God is coming, and we don’t have to hold the season—or our lives—together by ourselves. So welcome to December, friends. Whether you’re ahead of the game or already behind, you are exactly where you need to be: at the beginning. Subscribe to Kate’s Substack [https://katebowler.substack.com/] for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent [https://katebowler.substack.com/s/advent] over there, too! See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.