This week’s guest is artist Stephanie Stalvey. You can see her full bio here. She is the artist behind Instagram’s @stephanie.stalvey.artist.
Stephanie was a “90’s church kid” attending various evangelical churches when she was young. She took her beliefs seriously, and it wasn’t until her twenties that a sudden loss forced her to question whether life was as simple as she’d been taught.
When Stephanie became a mother, she truly left fundamentalist religion. “I needed to let God expand into whatever God might be.”
Now she lives without a label, allowing her values and beliefs about humanity and divinity to change as she changes.
Her art speaks to those of us who’ve left religion, reminding us that “…we are, in our hearts and in our inner essence, good and pure and sacred and not depraved.”
Links
Website
https://stephaniestalvey.com/
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/stephanie.stalvey.artist/
Recommendations
Blankets by Craig Thompson
#AmazonPaidLinks
Quotes
“As I’ve grown up, particularly as I’ve become a mother, it kind of makes clear the parts [of childhood] that were really like drinking poison but then they’re also attached to every good memory you’ve had…”
“…deconstruction, as we call it…it’s learning to think about things in a more nuanced way, less black and white.”
“Becoming a parent was the end of fundamentalism for me.”
“If [Christianity] is supposed to be ‘the antidote to shame,’ then why are people dying of shame?”
“Kids, especially when we’re very young, we need the opportunity to be real, to be difficult, to be angry, to be demanding, and to still know that we have safety and security from our parents…”
“You can’t really have both. You can’t say that God is a good parent whose unconditional love and mercy is going to heal the wounds of humanity with the same punitive, authoritarian paradigm that inflicted those wounds in the first place.”
“[Becoming a mother] was, for me, a truly sacred experience, a holy experience.”
“It was so important…to give myself permission to just be and to be able to ask myself questions that don’t have a predetermined answer…”
“I needed to let God expand into whatever God might be.”
“…we are, in our hearts and in our inner essence, good and pure and sacred and not depraved.”
“I believe that it is in the presence of compassionate witness that the parts of us that are the most destructive and the most nasty have the opportunity to heal.”
“I think that by letting myself shed all of this bullshit about ‘biblical literalism’…I could finally see and actually be in more true alignment with the principles of Jesus that I value.”
“Things don’t have to be literal to be true.”
“[God] is a word that means such different things to different people.”
“I think people heal when they have permission to be fully honest and know that they are not bad. I think that intimacy cannot be coerced or forced or else it becomes oppressive and unconditional love isn’t an ultimatum…”
Interact
Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast
Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!
Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/
Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/
Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist
Attribution
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11 This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all my supporters on Patreon. If you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to go through it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous, you can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion we have merch if you would like to have a T shirt that is about secular grace or the graceful atheist podcast mugs, notebooks, all kinds of things check it out. Arline has set up our merchandise shop the link will be in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, our lien interviews this week's guest Stephanie Stalvey, Stephanie is an amazing artist she grapples with motherhood, purity culture, sex family, her own personal deconstruction process and her own spirituality. You can find her on Instagram at Stephanie dot Stalvey dot artist. Stalvey is spelled s t a l ve y. There will be links in the show notes. Here is our Lean interviewing Stephanie Salvi. Arline 1:52 Stephanie Stalvey, Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Stephanie Stalvey 1:55 Thank you. I am so excited to be here. Arline 1:58 You and I have tried a few times to get up there and have this conversation. So I'm super excited. Let's see I got back on Instagram like October 2021, I think and I somehow found you and I have followed you since and I'm so thankful that you're on the podcast, your artwork, everything is so great. And you, you are a guest that I've had repeated. I've had a few people say hey, can you get Stephanie Salvi on the podcast? Hey, can she be on the podcast? So yes, your artwork is? is known. So to our audience. Stephanie Stalvey 2:27 Oh, that's so cool. I'm so so excited. That's nice to hear. Arline 2:32 The way we usually begin, it's just tell us about your spiritual the religious environment of your childhood. Stephanie Stalvey 2:38 Oh, wow. Okay, the religious environment and my childhood. Yeah, that's why I feel the need to make this entire long form comic is to try to explain it. Yeah. So I was I was born in 89. In like the Midwest, right. So I have been like thinking a lot about what it meant to be a Christian in America, in the Midwest in the late 80s. And, you know, just what that meant, psychologically, for me, and my siblings, everything. So that is kind of like, I don't know, the beginning of where I started making these comics was to explore that. But my dad was, at the time, he's worked like in some capacity in ministry since I was born. But at that time, he was in like, his role as like the president of a international missions organization. So it was like church planting, church leadership, and also international missions. So we would do like some summers in like, the Ukraine, church planting that kind of stuff. And my dad was one of the people who like, I don't know, in the late 70s was like born again, on a college campus type of type of thing, which I think is really common. And he came from like, an abusive household in Detroit. You know, just like a lot of pain and dysfunction in his childhood. So then, when he's kind of introduced to this particular like, born again, like very proselytizing version of Christianity in college, like I think it offered him a way to you know, use his gifts and connect with people and have, you know, social structure and there's a lot of ways in which it was like really good, I guess. My mom, on the other hand, was like, raised by my grandfather, who was a Methodist pastor, Priest, everyone We call the Methodist. But he was also like a chaplain. Army chaplains. So yeah, and they were like, opposite of abusive childhood. My grandparents on my mom's side were like the best sweetest Indiana people but she's so she had like kind of the raised Methodists, which is like kind of a more mild I think version than what my dad had. So then by the time that I was born and my, my sisters are raised, like in the 90s, we were just whatever it is called Christian, right. So it's like kind of a homogenization of everything. My I have like this brilliant friend, Dr. Michael Thompson, who he wrote an article about this, in particular, how like in the 1970s these figures like, how Lindsey and Francis Schaeffer, like one of the major things that they did was to create that homogenization of Christianity where like, as before, you would have like these separate ways of identifying, you know, your Christian identity. But then, like, after this, it was just like, No, there is Christian and there is not Christian. And it kind of like takes away the option that there's any other way to like, understand or practice your faith, which I think is really interesting. I definitely think that that kind of continued, and that was my experience, even in my 20s I think my version of that was probably like gospel coalition, right. Like, you know, God was like, you know, Chandler and Piper and Tim Keller and Driscoll and all these guys. Yeah. Hello, Barry. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All Yeah, I'm sorry. Morning. But, but yeah, the way that they were talking about it, it's just like the gospel, right. There's not, there's not any other version. But then I guess, I went to a Christian Elementary School. And then, like, when I was like, 11, we moved from Ohio to Orlando. My dad, you know, we had some hard years, like our family had some hard years. And we kind of got cut off from the church that we had been in since I was a kid. Found a new church. And yeah, so we joined like a new church here when I was maybe 1413 or 14. And then my dad got involved there. And my mom worked in childcare and we were very involved in that church. And yeah, it's just a lot of a lot of wild experiences there. We had. Actually, the the pastor of the church, he end up taking his own life after this really kind of Yeah. Public and terrible, like extramarital affair, things that was just like all the shame that surrounded it. And, yeah, it was like, it was extremely something that, you know, someone we'd loved and had to mourn. But it also, I think, that was a really big moment of reckoning for me where I had to sit and say, I think all of this is a lot more complicated than than I've ever been allowed to think it is. Yeah, that was like in my very early 20s. And yeah, I think that this entire the entire process for me, it's just been gradual. It's been gradual. So when you asked, you know, what was the environment, it's hard because it's kind of touches everything. But that's what I'm interested in thinking about recently. Arline 9:38 For the most part was growing up in the church like, good memories, hard memories, or just a lot of both. Stephanie Stalvey 9:45 Yeah, it's hard because it's my only memories. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. So that's another thing that I'm interested in. Thinking about in the work is As I've you know, grown up, and particularly as I've become a mother, it kind of makes clear the parts that were really I mean, just like drinking poison. But then they're also attached to every good memory that you've ever had a bunch of really positive things that like, enrich to you and every person who loved you into existence. So there's nothing about the process of deconstruction, as we call it. That is easy. And I think that's the reason for it is that it's just, it's just not complicated. It's learning to, or it just is complicated. And it's learning to think about things in a, you know, more nuanced, way less black and white. Yeah. Arline 11:01 And it's like thinking, you mentioned Matt Chandler. You know, he, he made the offhand comment in one of his sermons that we're doing this where we've deconstructed because it's trendy, it's cool, it's sexy, and it's like, no, we're, yeah, we're pulling apart, something that some of us have been taught since we were babies. It's our whole community. It's our family. It's our, I mean, like, just all the things that are most important to us. Like, no one's doing this, because it's the cool thing to do. So, so when did you you said it's was a it's been a long thing, like, when did you were there questions that you started asking or anything specific that happened to kind of start you going okay, something's not right. Stephanie Stalvey 11:43 Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's interesting that you mentioned that about Chandler I listened to that man speak. Like, it has to be hundreds of hours. I had this. Okay, you know, when they had like, the old iPods that like, you know, Arline 12:06 the mp3 players? Stephanie Stalvey 12:07 Yeah, there's a church every year on there. Arline 12:12 I had all the John Piper sermons to run to I was running. I'm supposed to be jogging. I was listening to this foolishness. Sorry, I interrupted you. Stephanie Stalvey 12:20 Go ahead. No, please, that. I, I understand. I understand. The most recent comment that I made actually was like, included some of the quotes from the explicit gospel that he wrote, whenever that was, like, 2011 or something. I'm not sure I read it. I know what Yeah, yeah. So like, one of the things that he said, and I remember just feeling like scared to have doubts when when I heard this part, you know, because he would always just like, kind of mock and humiliate in order to like be funny, I guess. But it was something about like you, you're the bat, you're the kid in the backseat of the car, a four year old in the backseat of the car, you're gonna scrutinize how God governs. Do you know how small you are, you know how insignificant you are? And, you know, it's like the laughter in the audience after that. And I wanted to make that comment because I'm a mom now. Sorry. Okay. It just makes me so angry. Yeah, that this kind of stuff got told to us because, you know, follow the logic if we're the four year old in the back of the car. Who is who's humiliating us for having questions? What kind of a parent is so threat threatened by a child's by anything a child might do? So yeah, becoming becoming a parent was I think, really. It was the end of it, kind of fundamentalism, for me in my mindset, but it had been years before that, that I'd been kind of thinking about things that I want to say that when when my pastor took his own life, which was maybe 11 or 12 years ago now. That's when I first started to ask myself Okay, we have this It's kind of like a script within the church for how to explain when something like this happens, whenever there's a scandal or you know something, it comes out that another pastor has done something or has a secret life or struggling with addiction or is having an affair or whatever it might be. We, we say like, oh, well, this was an individual sin issue, right? This was separate from the system this has it's not indicative of anything dysfunctional in the way that we're running church. This is this one particular guy. And it just didn't work for me. Like if I knew it wasn't true. I knew that you couldn't just like, explain away, well, he wasn't a real Christian or something like that. And I just said, if, if this is supposed to be the antidote to shame, why are people dying of shame? Why? And, you know, it seems to me that there were just a bunch of people who are genuinely trying their best operating within a system that wasn't working. And so, I mean, I started to let myself ask these questions. I think that there were, you know, years that I had to let myself be angry. And and I think I was I was angry about the way that a lot of my family's best intentions to be good and do what was right. Were steered in the direction of something. So that like, ended up hurting us all. So like, you know, when my parents were young, and they wanted to be the best kind of parents, they could like every other Christian parents in the 80s. They go by the books by the Christian people, who are what James Dobson Focus on the Family. And they instructs my mother who would never have hit us, to spank us and to do these like punitive things. Because that's what God needs you to do. You know? Yeah, so so once I became a mom, which my son is about to turn four. It was just, I mean, it's such a transformative experience in so many ways, but the definition of love could not be anything less. For me, after that, there was no, there was no way. And, you know, I, I was learning and reading a lot about secure attachment. In, you know, the developmental early years, and kind of the way that kids, especially when they're very young, we need the opportunity to be real, to be difficult, to be angry, to be demanding. And to still know that we have safety and security and love from our parents that our parents is not going to leave. And way the insecure attachment kind of forms when a child learns that they have to suppress their own difficult emotions in order to avoid being screened at hid abandoned humiliated. And, you know, I just kind of mapped that on to well, this is, this is kind of the paradigm, this is the framework that has been applied to God, I think. And you can't really have both, you can't say that God is a good parent whose unconditional love and mercy is going to heal the wounds of humanity with the same punitive, authoritarian parent paradigm that inflicted those ones in the first place. Yeah, Arline 19:37 like 100% Everything you just said, like my, my husband, he realized he couldn't believe anymore before I did. And His thing was after he had become a dad, like he was like, I shouldn't feel like I'm being a better parent to my children. Because, like the way we were taught because again, we're Calvinists John Piper monstrous Got all the things was like, God has predestined some people to go to hell forever and we have to be okay with that. As like, what my husband's big thing was, God could do harm to our whole family and we would have to be okay with that because God is always doing what's best. And it's like, this is not loving, like no matter how many different ways we tried to make it, work it that's not loving. And, and I for a long time was trying to make it make sense. I was like, Okay, maybe weren't maybe Calvinism is not right. Let me find another version. And it was just like, we couldn't look at the way the world was, in the way Christianity said God was and make it and make it make sense. Stephanie Stalvey 20:43 My heart just like hurts hearing it. Arline 20:46 Yeah, it was, it was very, it was very emotional for my husband. Like it was really, really, it was really hard for him. Mine was different. Like my realizing I couldn't believe it's different. So becoming a mom, like, how may I ask if you don't mind? How did that transform you beyond just physically like, talking about becoming a mom the, like, I see in your artwork, and we're going to totally get to your artwork, but like we I see in your artwork, just the divinity of a woman's body and like the ability just so much. So yeah, how did? How did all of that change? You? Particularly? Yeah, Stephanie Stalvey 21:29 no, thank you. Um, yeah, it's, it was for me. A truly, I mean, sacred experience, a holy experience, it continues to be. But it's the most it's the most incredible thing for your body to create a human being. And for then your body to sustain and nourish that human being. So it's like, by my, my milk, my blood, my tears, this, this soul, this human being has come to life. And it just felt I was hearing kind of like the words of the sacrament, my body broken for you. But then I was I was thinking about it all these different levels on like, a, kind of, like a cosmic level. I when he was young, I read through, you know, some some cool 1970s Like feminist literature, like, the great cosmic mother and stuff about like, prehistoric Metro focals societies, and you know, God, God as a woman as womb. And I just, it felt, yeah, it just, it felt like the kind of transcendence that doesn't bring you out and away from your body, but deeper into it. Yeah, and, and I think, for me what that was to, I became a mother kind of at the very end, or I think I became pregnant at the very end of a long season of pain and mourning. And I mean, even just like, kind of a nihilistic perspective towards life. I was, I didn't know the way out and, and don't think that in a way like that, becoming a mom did. It broke me back open in this like, really spiritual way, I think. And I felt his full permission to just like, be as earnest and honest as possible. We brought we brought him back to church when he was little. Because we're, we're sitting there is like, the middle of the night and breastfeeding. Tommy, is I'm talking with my husband, and I'm like, Should we bring him to church? He's like, I'm surprised that you want to and I'm like, Well, I don't want to deny him anything. You know, and again, you have that kind of push and pull where there's all of these. There's all these things that I think are profoundly just like good for humans like Community and ritual and meaning and I don't the faces, the the traditions, all of this stuff is just, it's human. It's, it's in us and we do need it. And I think that for the past, like, however many years it was before he was born, I was just so aware of the way that those needs are those hunger, that hunger for the divine, that hunger for tradition, made me vulnerable to manipulation, and heartbreak and fanaticism and radical thinking, you know, that it makes those that hunger that human hunger makes us susceptible to that kind of stuff. But the hunger is still there. And I still, you No, need to eat a human. Yeah. So it was it was a painful experience, because we, we brought him back. And it's a bunch of loving people. And I'm, you know, they're cuddling your baby, and they're watching him and I'm sitting in the, in the auditorium. And the person is talking about how our sin makes us unworthy of the love of God, and there's no bigger small sin. And even my, even my little kid, this was the quality of a might little kid taking a book that isn't hers and writing her name in it. Even that sin is enough to keep her out of heaven. Yeah, and I just we got back into the parking lot got into the car and I just cried and I said, I can't I can't have him growing up thinking I'm bad. I can't have him grow up thinking I deserve to be put to death. Yeah, I won't. It's not he isn't it's not true. I won't let him hear it. And then I started like letting myself access the the points of pain and my own childhood where I was a little girl who heard that. And, you know, I, I remember being in second grade in chapel and hearing the same thing about you know, Jesus died the death you deserve to die. And like meditating on the crucifixion as something that ought to happen to me for my you know, whatever it was in second grade, my willfulness my disobedience, my tongue. And going back into the classroom, and just pinching my arm as hard as I could and saying, This is This is nothing compared to what you did take this pain. Oh, wow. Yeah, and I just, I've had to just go back to that little girl and just continually show her a lot of love. Yeah. Arline 28:26 Yeah. And we have to read reparent ourselves, like parents, our own little selves. Like, I didn't grow up in the church. But I grew up in a in a home where I was just kind of the third will my dad really, if they were going to have kids, he wanted to have a boy he didn't really want. So it was just kind of I was just kind of extra. And so it's like, I have to go back to little Arline, sometimes and just be sweet with her the way I would like, I saw a meme. My kids say, Mom, you're always the means everything's so amazing. But it was just talking about how we become the parent we needed when we were kids. Oh, yeah. Like, yes. Like you for your for your baby. Not always not a baby anymore. Your four year old now, like, you're able to be the mom that that sweet boy needs in a way that that, you know, it's crazy. Being a parent, it's hard. It's difficult. There's so up and down. But like the love you have for him and your ability to to know from inside your body. What this is not good. I can't let my baby grow up believing these things. Because you know what that harm is like? Stephanie Stalvey 29:41 Yeah, yeah. I think it's, it's been complex for me too, because I resisted because I'm, you know, my mom was an incredible mom. And so I'm like, Well, I don't need that. I don't need that. But I think everybody does, you know, because everybody's paying ants are human beings. And, and, you know, when I'm with my four year old, and you get triggered by the tantrums of your four year old, I will, I'll feel a little Stephanie. I'll feel four year old Stephanie try to say, I got this, I'll handle this. I'm gonna go toe to toe with this kid to step in and say, Actually, I'm a grown up. I'm self regulation. So let me take. I literally I do I have conversations I can recommend like, Ooh, there she is. There's four year old. Arline 30:41 Yeah, emotional regulation. Like it's hard. I, oh, my goodness. This is what we need as parents, all the other stuff you can figure out. But if you can just stay calm, who have your when that sweet little prefrontal cortex that is not fully developed, goes just offline, you got to we've got to stay online, we've got to stay. So may I ask, Where are you now? I get all the beautiful, like divine feminine vibes from your artwork. And I'm just totally like, projecting. So tell me where are you now as far as spirituality? Or are you anywhere? Stephanie Stalvey 31:30 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Um, so for going back to like that car in the parking lot. Where I was like, I can't do this. I think too. I was talking to my husband. If anybody reads pure, they know how perfect my husband is. He's. But I was just like, I don't know what I think. I don't know what I believe. I don't know what I am. I don't know how to identify, I don't have a label. And I'm, I don't know if I should bring into the church or not. And I'm scared. And he just said, you don't have to know. You just don't have to know right now. It's okay, we can just be. And it was just so important for me to hear that. To just give myself permission to just be and to be able to actually ask questions that don't have a predetermined answer that I don't have to get to. I don't have to make myself thinks something or another in the end. And I needed to let God expand into whatever God might be. And and so yeah, I'm, I'm just a very naturally really curious person. And I spent a lot of time reading and exploring and through things like therapy actually, kind of what we're talking about similar to like parts work, right. I don't know if you're familiar. Arline 33:22 Are you familiar with boundless and free on Instagram? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Tony George has been on the podcast. So she, she acquainted me with parts work and things like Yeah, Stephanie Stalvey 33:33 so it's like, Richard Schwartz internal family systems. And it's this idea that we have these different parts of ourselves with different motivations. And so that kind of became a theme in my work, too, I have, you know, try to illustrate to the part of me that's just like wild and rebellious versus the part of me that is more like a like a good girl like a loyalist. But part of my healing has been about recognizing the value of each part. Stop being demonizing and being at war with different parts of myself, and getting in touch with what I think is the self like the true self. So I, I think that this is a this is like a spiritual belief of mine, that that we are in in our hearts in the inmost essence of the human heart is is good, is pure and sacred and not depraved. And I believe that it is in the the presence of compassionate witness, that the parts of us that are the most destructive and the most nasty, have the opportunity to heal and transform and For a long time, that parts of me that, you know, I thought were just sinful, and I needed to cut them out, and I needed to go to war with them, when I was able to approach them and say, I don't want to kill you, I don't hate you. Even if you are doing something that is not helpful, that it's not right, whatever it might be, I don't hate you. That was that was something that allowed me to soften to witness the pain that they were carrying to see who they were protecting, which usually whatever behavior they were engaging in, at one point, kept me alive. And so I could see this is how this is how I was, I stood up and defended you when you were to. And you know, I could just honor these parts of me. And I think that we honor them from from the self, which is, which is the part of us that I think is divine, I think that it's like the DNA of God. I do. And you know, it's, it's interesting, I'm now at this point, I'm not going to church. I am very much like letting myself to label this kind of like just communion with with God as, as I feel you know, it's. But it's interesting, because I think that the fundamentalist framework that's just so got its hands around religion that it seems like it's the same thing as religion. It kept me from being able to actually see like the parts of Christianity that from the time I was younger than most dear to me, which is kind of the same thing with the image of God as Jesus touching the flesh of a person that everyone else has decided is disgusting, and disposable. And just not telling them to do anything different but saying, I, I am willing to touch you and witness your pain and empathize with you and I'm not interested in dehumanizing you, or telling you that you're bad or wrong or to change or something. And that that being the place by which we heal. And so I think that by kind of letting myself shed all of this bullshit about biblical literalism, and like, you know, just like the patriarchy, patriarchal hatred of poetry and archetype and parables, frankly, you know, good point. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, and I'm an artist so that's kind of like my thing, like, things are not they don't have to be literal to be true. Also, you know? So I think that once I kind of shed those things I could finally see and like actually be in more true alignment with the principles of Jesus that I value. And I went back and I'm like, Okay, well, in kind of the evangelical world or in the fundamentalist world, Jesus is reduced to the role he plays in the salvation equation. He's the one who dies you know, yes life his life and his teachings are like very relevant to them it's he's just like Jesus dies to absorb the wrath so that you don't have to go That's all he is. And it you know, so then you you miss anything that he said and that's I think the way that so much of Western Christianity was able to end up like becoming the thing that put Jesus to death but yeah, I think that we just, we find God in the mystery of, of so many other things. I think that is a word that just means such different things to different people like I think it was like Alan Watts who said You know, he he was kind of like in the 60s would interpret like Eastern real religious ideas are kind of like a more western audience. But he's like when a Christian is talking about Lord Adonai, he's talking about the boss, he's talking about the one at the top of the political power structure to whom obedience is due. Whereas like, the Hindu is talking about God, they're talking about the inmost essence of all life that dances the universe into existence. Whereas, you know, like, I was speaking before, like, ancient humans, I think, actually, we're able to get in touch with archetypal kind of representation of, of God as a woman as a boom. And, and yeah, I think I'm doing what I said before, like, we're, I'm trying to step lightly. And like, be cautious because I am aware of how the hunger for God does make us more susceptible to manipulation like cult, like behavior, and it's not just in Christianity, it's absolutely not. Not at all. Oh, yeah, it's like, in all kinds of, of spaces. And I've even been like, since in like, these kind of more like New Age bullshit. Things and, and I just want to be aware of it. But I'm also I also am a human being and need sanctuary and connection and meaning. And for me, right now, like you, when I, when I'm meditating on the way in which I'm connected to every other person, and the way in which every other person is, is important and valuable, and, and sacred in this way that doesn't change and worthy of love. And when I am participating in this eternal mystery of love that's when I feel close to God, I would say Arline 42:41 I guess I identify as a humanist or an atheist. But everything you say, like, we have this need for community for connecting to the natural world to other people. There are rituals that are meaningful to Pete like that. We have Sasha seconds book, small creatures, such as we she's like, just because we're humans, and maybe gods and goddesses, they they don't exist. But yeah, rituals, we need rituals, we've always had them and they've always been helpful to us. And, and yeah, there's just so much that, like, you were saying, the church has kind of cornered the market on community and ritual and tradition and all these things. Whereas really, we need to figure out, like, how can we find those things without having to also sell our souls and values to morals that are just immoral, like things, beliefs that are harmful? You know, all that. And, yeah, I love that you've been able to figure out like, what works Stephanie Stalvey 43:45 for you? Well, I mean, I don't think I've figured it out. I think I'm very much in process. Like, this isn't like, Oh, before, and now it's now everything's okay. I think it's, I think these kinds of conversations, even like between the two of us who like have experienced so much of the same things in the same hurt and can connect in that way and and talk and wonder and share and witness each other. I think that that's part of it. For me, I think that's been part of what has been helpful. And and like I was saying about fundamentalism, not being you know, necessarily like the content of your beliefs, but almost like a style of thinking. Yeah, I try to be aware of that too, as I'm like exiting. Fundamentalist thinking that I don't replace it with like, well, here's the new thing that I cannot question and here's the new people that are bad and here's the new you know, just doctrine and way to preach. I don't think I think that the point is about being intellectually, right. And that's what happened with fundamentalist Christianity is that like, they say You're saved by faith, but it's faith in the right thing. It's faith in the right set of ideas. And yeah, I think that I think there's more to it. I think that people heal when they have permission to be fully honest. And know that they are not bad. I think the intimacy cannot be coerced, or forced, or else it becomes oppressive. And unconditional love isn't an ultimatum. So if I want those things, I want to, you know, move towards intimacy with myself with the divine with the people in my life. I have to switch to, to something more liberated, and unmoving, you know, and fluid. Something more akin to a dancer and unfolding. It's different season to season and it's okay. It's okay. Arline 46:25 I need to be reminded of that. Because yeah, I can very much see myself becoming convinced something else is right. Like, even even after I went through what one of our former guests calls rage learning, it was like, here's everything I was not allowed to be taught, I'm going to learn it all. And my husband, he was like, You're starting to sound like a fundamentalist atheist? And I was like, Oh, that's a really? Oh, you know, like, I had to sit with that for a little bit. And, like, you know, realize I was, because, yeah, fundamentalist submit comes in a lot of different forms. But it is, it's like, this is the correct thing. And I can't learn or hear from anything else. And I was like, I don't want to be like that. I want to be able to read. Like, I don't know, there's a, there was a dance of the dissident daughters. Like, that was part of my deconversion reading, reading that book. And I was like, hold up, like, I've never thought about God in this way. And this was when I was still a Christian. So I was like, I was on my way out, but I didn't know I was on my way out, I don't think right. But it's like, I would need to be able to like hear from Sue Monk Kidd and her story, and I still need to be able to like read. I don't know, Bertrand Russell. I'm just coming up with names, you know, and be able to hear from people who have come to different conclusions or like you said, are just willing to let things stay fluid so that I don't become like nope, now I'm correct in a different way like that. Yeah. It's it's prideful. It's it's unhelpful and unhealthy. Yeah. Stephanie Stalvey 47:59 I think that's in the in your title of your podcast, who is graceful atheist is that you know, just like fundamentalism doesn't just belong to religion. Grace and into kindness and empathy and compassion doesn't just belong to God and your like belief in God or whatever. Yeah, I think that it matters how we treat one another and I you know, I don't want to dismiss like pursuit of what is true and good because I think that's you know, 100% important I don't want to discount that. So like doing the the rage learnings and stuff that I I think it's important it's important part of the process and, and it's good to keep pursuing learning stuff. I mean, that's what what being a human is, but I think that the core principles that I've arrived at are ones that hold space for people at all different points in their life and for the different parts of myself as they come up so the one that's like that wants to dig her roots down more into something traditional and the one who wants to you know, tear tear things down or, or pull them all apart. You know, they're all valuable each one of them. I can listen to and care for each one of them. Like we said, like inner children. Doesn't mean that I have to do whatever they're telling me but I'm not scared of them anymore. I love that Arline 50:06 Tell us about your artwork for anyone who is not already familiar with your comic or your other artwork. Like, tell us all about it. Stephanie Stalvey 50:15 Okay, yeah. Well, we Arline 50:19 will link to everything in the show. We will we will send everyone your way. Stephanie Stalvey 50:24 Yeah. Ah, okay. So I mean, I've just I've been an artist forever. And, you know, lifelong art kid and I went to art college and got an art degree that I took out too much money for and inhaled a bunch of paint fumes. Wild Times, but But yeah, I've always loved comics. I've always been making comics in one form or another. I really love how intimate they are. How can like accessible and personal and almost like camp? I really I love that they're like low art that they're not like gallery art. I love everything about comics. But yeah, when when my baby was little I started painting a lot more with like wash and watercolor because oil paint was like, you can't have that around a baby and probably shouldn't have around yourself but toxic painting more like small and at the time. Yeah, I was to like, the great cosmic mother, the the womb of the world. I am, you know, we are born off the Earth. This is you know, all the stuff that's still true. The Mother, Mother Earth is as our mutual home, we are children of the universe. getting back in touch with nature, there's so much but we can talk for years and years. Animals, all these kinds of stuff going through my through my brain. And I'm, you know, I have to process it through my art through painting about it. That's how I do it. That is, it's, it's how I synthesize my current reality. It's also how I meditate on what I think is beautiful and true. There's just a high to it. Like, I mean, artists know. But then I started making comics, too. I think I started making church kids in like 2020. So I just I had this image in my head, the the first one I made was that that one that black and white comic, where were the church kids, and we were raised. Without gradients, everything is black or white. And what it means to grow up with these ideas of things being so absolute, what does that mean now that we've woken up in the whole world is Shades of Grey. And so I was like, Well, this is visual, I need to visit this. And then I just started writing. And I was like, I just need to write everything. That it that being a church kid was at this point, like I had no idea that there was like a online deconstruction community. I just started posting my comics, and you know, it's just wild, they kind of took off. And so most recently, I've been posting like a serial comic about my experience with purity culture. I love it. I love it so much. It's so great. What do you what do you like about it? I don't know what to talk Arline 53:44 about it? Well, for me, my husband and I didn't grow up in the church. We became Christians in college. So we got like, bits and pieces of like, of course we read. Not I kiss dating the bikers, because we're already in college we read boy meets girl, I guess was the other one that he wrote. Oh, yeah, I know. And that was like, the courtship book and like, all that kind of stuff. So we got that kind of stuff where like, I wasn't supposed to initiate he was fat, blah, blah, blah, all that mess. Anyway, and I was like, I already had a bad reputation. People were like, are you sure that God has? And he's like, Yes, I'm sure. And now we've been married 18 years and like is like being married. So anyway. Oh. And overall, it was fun. But um, the comic like I just, I love like I how do I say this? So I don't love memoirs, but I love comic book version memoirs. So I've read like Raina tell Jimmy or stuff, and I've read some of Shannon Hale stuff and she grew up Mormon but she's still Mormon, but she grew up woman. And so it's like, just seeing knowing that you and your hubby are so married and seeing like how gracious he was and how patient he was and how and the way like it breaks my heart also the watching like your little inner diet or mine. The log of like, what am I doing? Should I be doing that? And it's just like, This poor girl was having to go through so much more than just like, figuring out how to date because that's just hard enough as it is. And so it's just and it's beautifully done. The artwork is beautifully done. And like you said it, I imagine it's taken off, because so many people have had such similar experiences high school, and college and oh, Stephanie Stalvey 55:28 yeah, everybody, and it's, but yeah, I find that like, when I can just sort of forget how many people are reading it and just say, oh, like, let me tell, like the truth. stuff that happened. And, you know, if some, if it's something that I think is, like, funny looking back, like, I think it's worth, like laughing at some of this, because it's, it's kind of absurd. So I wanted to make something that like, was a little bit sexy. Um, I'm getting some parts that I think might be just for Patreon. But I wanted to make something that's like a little bit sexy, a little bit funny, but also really earnest. And just, like, actually, mortgages actually say like, what happened. And when I do that, it's crazy. People are like, this, this is also what happened to me and then we can find each other in the comments end up being so cool. And I get connected to so many other people that either like went through it or they're still kind of like processing awful, traumatic things that are still affecting their life and their, their marriage in their relationships. And I I think that the comic is cool, too. Because it's a way that I can make something that I'm like a really uninterested in like preaching anything. You know, I don't want I don't want to be some kind of like, suppose it expert on anything. I just want to tell my story. Yeah. So yeah, it's fun. And, and I'm kind of, I'm working on that being like, like, pure being basically, part of what will hopefully be like a longer form, memoir that all kind of, yeah. Yeah, I'm a school teacher. And it's just about to be summer. So for that. For me, that's gonna mean just like, back to the drawing board, literally. Like, I'm just gonna be drawing. Summer. But yeah, it's really cool. There was a good 10 week stretch where I posted 10 pages a day, and are not day cheese. Oh, my God, no, no, no, that would be completely impossible. But you know, let myself not be a machine and take my time when I need to. But I want to get back to like a more consistent schedule, because it's fun to just as an artist to like, make something and then immediately be able to share it. Like, I feel like I'm back in high school, like drawing in the margins and like passing it to somebody be like, check this out. I just made this. Arline 58:32 So we have a few more minutes. Do you have any recommendations, books, podcasts, or their artists or their people telling their stories, any, any recommendations for our listeners that have had things that have helped you? Oh, my gosh, that you just love and want to share with others? Stephanie Stalvey 58:49 I just love. Um, whoa. If you like my comics, you probably already like Blankets by Craig Thompson. It's the most brilliant thing I've ever read. Arline 59:05 I'm not familiar with this. So this is great. Stephanie Stalvey 59:07 Oh, he does. Okay, so it's like, I think he wrote it in 2003. But it's a graphic memoir, and it's similar. It's about his first love. But then he also kind of leaves in his childhood and kind of his relationship with his brother. I think it's Wisconsin. He grew up but it's also fundamentalist Christianity, and it's it's his process of coming of age, and it's just achingly beautiful. And I think that if anybody like knows Craig Thompson, they probably can see like, what an influence. He wasn't even if like the way I draw. Okay, if you haven't already, like go get that. Blankets. So really incredible book. That's really beautiful. Arline 1:00:00 Well, Stephanie, thank you so much like this is just this has been such a lovely experience. I'm so glad I got to see you face to face on here. And then our audience gets to hear your story. This was so beautiful. Thank you so much. Stephanie Stalvey 1:00:13 Oh, I think you're just so lovely and wonderful. And I want to, you know, take you out there how? Keep talking? Arline 1:00:22 Yeah, yes. I would love that. I'm always here for coffee. Stephanie Stalvey 1:00:26 Yes, no, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. It's been really nice to have the chance to say it out loud in order. I'm not used to Arline 1:00:38 it out loud. Yes, it's it's almost therapeutic to just get it all out at one time. Stephanie Stalvey 1:00:43 Yeah. Arline, you just give me a free therapy session. Arline 1:00:47 Nice. All right, Stephanie. Have a fabulous weekend. Thank you. My final thoughts on the episode. Oh, this was such a lovely conversation. Stephanie, telling her story. You can see the love, like you can hear the love she has for her family, for her husband, for her baby for her own self. Like it's just absolutely beautiful. And the processing that she goes through when she's trying to understand like, things that happened in her past things that are happening today, relationships, all that like, it comes out so beautifully in her artwork. It's just it's all it's also moving. The way she portrays motherhood is just absolute perfection it it's incredibly moving. For me as a mama. I loved this conversation. It reminded me of something Jimmy wrote on the blog, I think he was he was talking about different worldviews and life philosophies and all these different ways we can see the world and it's just, it's beautiful when we can take from all different kinds of truths that we have found throughout the world, not necessarily from nonfiction things, but like just truth that we have seen or experience or read about in the world, pull that together to create a life or philosophy of life that is good for ourselves. And it's good for the world around us and for the people. And like that's what secular grace is is what humanism is, is just doing, feeling thinking as many different ways as possible. What is good? I don't know even the word good feels like not enough. And it can also be very trite. But yeah, I love what Stephanie is putting out into the world. I loved hearing your story. This was a lovely, lovely interview, I loved David Ames 1:03:00 the secular gray started the week is about connection. Whenever I'm on someone else's podcast I talk about the ABCs of secular spirituality. That is all belonging and connection. The connection part is what we heard in this conversation with Arline and Stephanie to people deeply connecting about important things and learning from each other and feeling literally feeling that bond between them. My personal view is that our longing for the divine for the transcendent for God, what have you is really a longing for connection with other people. We've said before, a number of times, the human condition is the need to be known and the need to be loved. And it is when we connect with one another that we are known by another human being that we feel the most fulfilled and spiritually satisfied, for lack of a better term. Next week, we have returning guests Daniel Daniel is an active member of the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. He is also a social scientists with a background in psychology in addiction and various other fields. He and I are talking about the psychology of apologetics. You are not going to want to miss this one. That is up next week. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful human beings. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast From the atheists United studios Podcast Network Transcribed by https://otter.ai
gracefulatheist.com 