Practices That Weave Us Back Together with Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining

Ilia Delio welcomes back Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining to probe a live question for faith communities today: when our concepts of God become narrow—or distorted—how do they derail spiritual growth and even undermine justice? Hillary names the fears that keep churches clinging to old power structures, and offers a pastoral imagination big enough for an evolving, more-than-abstract God. From “theology police” moments in grief care to the responsibility we bear as Christ’s body, she invites a shift from transactional religion to a life transfigured by love.

The conversation moves into language itself. Do words like Christ and God still help? Hillary shares why she often leads with “Spirit” in wider settings, why the church still needs a reclaimed Christ-language, and how wisdom and creation-energy weave through our lives. Drawing on her Indigenous heritage, she describes practices of reciprocity with the land and how those experiences shape a joyful, resilient path forward for St. Columba’s: centers of prayer and discernment where head and heart meet, contemplation births action, and hope endures.

ABOUT REV. DR. HILLARY RAINING

“The emotional and physical lives of our ancestors… fundamentally affect our emotional and physical lives as well… The practice of gratitude… changes—not only those who practice it—but also the generations that follow.”

The Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining is an Episcopal Priest serving as Rector at St. Columba’s in Washington, D.C. She is also the founder of The Hive (www.thehiveapiary.com), an online spirituality and wellness community. Actively involved in the Episcopal Church, she served on multiple committees and as a professor and consultant for various Seminaries. She is also a published writer and a sought-after public speaker. With several degrees and certifications in theology, liturgy, psychology, trauma integration, yoga, and forest therapy, she seeks to empower others through healing and spiritual direction while leading innovative ministry projects.

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Transcript

Robert: Welcome to Hunger for Wholeness. In this episode, Ilia welcomes back the Reverend Dr. Hillary Raining to explore where theology meets the mission of the church. How do our concepts of God and even distorted theological motives derail spiritual growth or undermine social justice? Later, Ilia asks whether we still need the language of Christ and God at all. Does it help or does it harm? Hillary also shares her experience with indigenous spirituality and how she is leading her community into a more vibrant future.

Ilia: We haven't done all that well in updating God getting out of 0.5 up to 0.8. And I don't know your thoughts, I'd be interested in your thoughts, but I really think God is now a problem. So Georgetown teaches a course, The Problem of God. I used to say, why is God a problem? But I see that problem more so today, especially in this volatility between fundamentalism, whether Catholic or Protestant, and those on the more liberal side trying to reconcile science and religion and move forward.

Hillary: Well, I think, first of all, it goes back to fear again, to start with, of many different ways. In some ways, those of us who are clerics have a lot to lose if the way the church is structured suddenly changes, right? And the image of God that is portrayed, especially in those male-heavy sorts of denominations in particular, have a lot to lose if suddenly some of the power structure changes. 

Beyond that, I think if we are able to look at God and the vastness, almost unknowability in some ways of the vastness of God, to not just be limited to a concept we can understand, but actually something that is also evolving, is I think terrifying to some people. If they grew up thinking about God as one way and perhaps they find comfort in it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they are happy with a God that's very judgmental and scary, but it's still the God they know. And to actually have to change that, to expand it, is a very terrifying proposition sometimes. And not even terrifying, I'll give it a more pastoral example. 

I was once at a very small church, and it was the church I grew up in, and my Sunday school teacher had just lost her teenage daughter. And it was absolutely so sad. The whole community was grieving. And she said, "The one comfort I have is that she is now an angel with God." And somebody walked in the room at that point with his little theological hat on. He said, "Well, actually, humans don't become angels afterwards. They're two separate classes of creation." And walked out, and you could see the fear now on her face, the pain. His theology maybe was right, but on the other hand, where was the pastoral care in helping her change and maybe widening where her daughter could be. 

So it's those sorts of things that I don't think the church has done enough teaching on in a pastoral way. Because if we're only saying it has to be this way, and if you don't believe it, you're going to hell, then people are going to cling on to what's keeping them out of hell. So some of it's pastoral, some of it's bad theology, some of it's just the fact that some of us had pensions wrapped up in the way the church is as it is. It's all sorts of things.

Ilia: No, it's the theology police or church police. They're going to ensure that the real God is not tampered with or deconstructed. It goes back to very much in a sense what the early psychotherapists I mean psychiatrists like Freud and Jung. Freud especially, he had a problem with religion because he did feel that it was this deep, deep repressed sense of the need for something like a God. 

Now I don't think Freud was correct. I think Jung even tried to get beyond that idea. But what we do fear is divine responsibility, that we are to bear this God within us. What would that mean for us? And I think in that Not Yet God book that I wrote two years ago, which was very challenging and remains challenging for a lot of people, I think I was trying to say that God does not so much exist. God's not some big being who's watching over us and judging everything we do, but God is coming into existence. So God doesn't exist. John Caputo says, "God insists, God invites us," or puts out the possibilities of what we can become, but we have to choose, we have to work with God in that becoming. 

So I think we have a hard time getting around the fact that God may not be fully God yet. Like, what if God is coming to be God in and through us? And people are like, "That's heretical, or the world's going to fall apart." And I'm like, "No, it is falling apart." So obviously, whatever you're believing isn't really working right now. Maybe we just like to pause and step back a little bit. But we fear, we have deep fear. And so even your example of the angels, humans don't become angels. Oh, come on. That's medieval theology. We're still arguing about this in the 21st century.

Hillary: How many angels can dance on the head of that pen? We have to find out. It's the most important thing. I so agree with what you're saying that maybe the biggest fear of all is how much responsibility we have because we are Christ in the world. You know, I always say you can't half-ass baptize somebody, right? Like, so when you are baptized and when we follow the Romans theology of Paul, it means that we are putting on the body of Christ. And we mean that completely. 

Like we could wear a name tag now and say, "Hi, my name is Christ." When I preach that to people, they go white. They almost don't want to hear it. Some people don't even want to put a Jesus fish bumper sticker on their car in case they drive a little too violently. So it's that sort of responsibility that should scare us in the right way so that we feel the weight of responsibility, but then also feel the gift of that kind of invitation that God would want us a part of God. It's truly tremendous.

Ilia: It is, I completely agree. And I think I always liked Gandhi's thing where he said, "I really am attracted to Christianity. It's a great idea, but it hasn't yet been tried."

Hillary: "I'd love to see a Christian once or twice." Yeah.

Ilia: And there's something there's something really true about that. It has been tried certainly by people throughout the ages, but mostly by those who have been the mystics who have had that deep experience of God in their lives. I'm thinking of people like Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero and Dorothy Stang and Dorothy Day and so many people who are deeply not religious in some kind of methodical Sunday thing, but their experience of God was such that they could not not do anything more than give their lives wholeheartedly.

Hillary: And this goes back to what you were saying earlier about the social justice piece. When we are this tapped into the Christ within us, of course we will live a social justice life. Every person you named on that list strove to make this world better for the entire humanity and many of them ecology as well, right? Because it is the emphasis of saying, "If we are to be one in one another, if I'm to see the Christ in you, I can't help but work for your justice." But it actually starts first with that deep conviction of heart, and that's what will sustain the good social justice work. You will burn out otherwise if you don't have that hope and that joy that we were mentioning earlier. It is a path to burnout. Ask any social worker. It's one of the highest turnover jobs that you can get. You need to have that joy and that hope motivating and that's where it will come from.

Ilia: I think we're always thinking, because we're very pragmatic, especially in this culture, like if we really work at feeding the poor and helping the poor and helping them, that we're going to actually resolve this problem of poverty and homelessness. And I'm like, well, no, it's not that simple. And we may never see a resolve to these problems, because hopefully, and here's really the irony of the whole thing, what is resolving these problems has nothing to do with religion. 

It's actually technology. AI and technology has made education more affordable. It has actually made food more available in various parts of the world. So there's actually data from scientists in Belgium to show that with technology, that evolution is actually a progress towards something that is more beneficial to humanity on the whole. And so sometimes we leave out these kind of developments that are happening in technology as part of the solution. I think religious people have this idea. And there's a little bit, this is what I think also, it seems a little bit of a guilt trip as well. Like, “I live a really comfortable life. I definitely don't want to touch that comfort. I definitely don't want to give my house away to anyone.” But if I do something good for another it will bring a blessing, right? So if anything happens, God's gonna say, "Oh yeah, I saw that you gave money or food or you helped this person and yay for me." Two points. But it has nothing to do with that. 

A transformed life or transformed world is something very different. It's just a different mindset and you're kind of driven. Like the people who have really made a difference are driven by a fire, a fire of love within them, that they can't rest until they rest entirely in God, and God is pulling them to make this world more godly.

Hillary: There are two things you said I want to respond to because I'm like, yes, 100% to everything you're saying. The one is the idea that we're ever going to be able to do more than Jesus did in his own lifetime, and nothing was solved in Jesus's lifetime. People were healed, things happened, but he died under Roman occupation and tells us, "The poor who'll be with you always." So for us to not try would be a sin, but for us to also think we will do everything in our lifetime is a different sort of, to use air quotes, sin here. And I think then about the temptation of that. 

When I think about Jesus's time in the wilderness and the temptations he faced, I think the one, I don't know, after being 40 days without food, maybe turning rock into bread is the biggest temptation. But it could have equally been when the devil says, "Hey, just kneel down in front of me here and then you can change the heart of every person. How tempting for Jesus to be able to just quickly wave a wand and just cure the world's problems just like that. I could imagine that would be very tempting, but he didn't do it, which tells us that we can't make an idol of any one cause as good as it may be. We can't make an idol of our efforts either as magnified and in good intention as they might be, because otherwise it just becomes a transaction. And this was the other thing I thought about, that sometimes religion just becomes a transaction. I'll do good to be able to get into heaven. 

And hopefully what we're learning in this late stage capitalism hellscape that we're in is that transaction doesn't lead us anywhere. It's not about just, "I do this, quick pro quo." That was the way of the Romans. They did quid pro quo all the time. Jesus comes and tells us it's not about that anymore. It's not about worth or production. It's about living love so fully that you will find that deep connection to the Christ principle.

Robert: If theology can divide, what practices still have the power to weave us back together? Hillary  reflects on wisdom drawn from indigenous traditions, and what it means to lead a community in the 21st century. Then Ilia presses the question, do we still need the words Christ and God?

Ilia: I've always thought the problems of the world are a mirror of the problems of the human heart.

Hillary: That's right.

Ilia: There's something deeply unraveled within us. There's something that has become deeply disconnected. And when I say it has become disconnected is because if you go back, I mean, eons ago to early, early civilizations, early tribes, archaic religions, where actually I was reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, "Raining Sweetgrass This Summer," an indigenous...

Hillary: A treasure. A treasure.

Ilia: ...beautiful, really. But that kind of ancient sense of belonging to a whole, to live in this... And so it wasn't labeling trees and plants as ecology. It was that these were my sisters and my brothers and living in this world of gratitude and reciprocity and mutuality where religion wasn't even singled out as, "Oh, you're doing religious things." It was a way of life.

Hillary: That's right.

Ilia: And I think what we've done is we've used language to parse out and carve up our world so that this is what a religious person does and this is what a secularist is and this is what... And so we have all these little dots of categories and we've lost sight of the whole because we've lost the whole within us. We're so busy trying to interpret the language we're now entangled with.

Hillary: Boy, I couldn't agree more. And if your audience hasn't read that book, they really must, it's a treasure. I'm very blessed on my mother's side to be part of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa and spent my 40th birthday with my tribe on a vision quest where a few people were allowed to go out and sit on the land. So I got to sit on the same parcel of land that's now this nature preserve because the tribe preserved it. And it's where my grandfather was born on the same little island. And you go out there and you spend three days and three nights without food, sleep, water, or shelter, and you're just, or company. So you're just there by yourself, right? You find a place to sit on the earth. And what they describe it as, as a way of being an energy exchange with your first family, which is the land, where you are being healed by the land then you are healing the land as well.

I think where they really have an understanding of this growth mindset is that when you enter into a time like this, you're not doing this for yourself to have some sort of great experience. As you can tell, fasting may not be that much fun. But rather that you are growing in your capacity to be a better elder and a better part of that system of the world. If that's not a Christ principle, I don't know what is. We're not doing it just for us to have this great little, look at me, I'm a saint on a hilltop. I am growing in my capacity to help have the heart of Christ. They may have not used that phrase, but you can see, just as you're saying, it's integrated, it's about creation and ourselves being one, and it takes a full body approach to how we can heal this world. And it also doesn't leave humans as just the bad guy in the system. I was a part of healing the world as much as it was healing me, But that only happens with that balance when we see the unitive principle.

Ilia: As you were talking, I was reminded of Raymond Panikkar's notion of the Christ, the Christophany. It's not that we have to be like, oh no, I'm a Christian or I'm not a Christian. It's that we've got to get away from that. That thinking is now, it's more divisive sometimes than ever. It's that there's a deeper reality that the one who lives in that part of love within is already in a sense manifesting that love in their unique, God is shining out in their lives in a particularly unique way. They're Christophanic, right? And so Christ is alive in this particular fractal of life and that's the beauty. 

The beauty of the body of Christ is the fractals of love that are incarnated throughout the whole of this ongoing creation. And when we parse this notion of Jesus Christ, when people are still not sure what Christ is that? His last name? Is that, will it be Christ and there's no other Christ? And I think to myself, oh my God, did we really deflate… Like taking this incredible balloon that's just filled with air and life and deflate it to just flat. And so there's something about that, your experience, I think is really incredible and beautiful. And the other thing is we have so much to learn from archaic or indigenous religions and primal religions. We wrote them off as pagan...

Hillary: Back to that patriarchal western mindset. It was relegated to like the mystic weird stuff, you know?

Ilia: ...and we need to eradicate this paganism, right? And get God on track here. You are a leader in the church today. So where do you see, you spoke about hope, you live hopefully, but what do you hope to do at St. Columbus, for example? to help bring that community of faith into a vibrant 21st century future. And what do you hope for in terms of the larger world? Absolutely.

Hillary: Yeah, one of the beautiful things about St. Columba's and the Hive that I work with as well is that people there know that they are often engaging with God on the head level, which is wonderful. They're hungry to learn more, but they also know that it's time to help the head speak to the heart and let the heart take the lead in some ways. And by that, I mean actually forming these centers, these kind of Christology centers, these groups where people are able to sit together and learn how to pray and process together to experience. 

So what I hope to do and what we'll be doing into the next year is to kind of start this center of, you might call it joy and reconciliation if you want, but where we are in learning how to embrace this Christ principle such that we're learning to pray like the mystics did, actually teaching people how to meditate, or if meditating doesn't work for them, what are other avenues for them to find that Christ within themselves? You know, we tell people, "Oh, have you prayed about it?" But we haven't really taught people that depth heart prayer. 

So the first step is to teach meditation and to teach that centering prayer mentality. Then, once we have a deep practice in place, is to start discerning what it is our vocational call is from that heart place. So these will be real places of both centering in prayer and then action in the world, really an inhale and exhale, if you will. It will include a meal together. It will include spending time in nature together. And yes, some study, because we need to help people learn a better theology. But the study will be a little bit of light teaching and much more experiential. You know, like if you learn this principle, how are you feeling it in your life? How are you actually living it in your life? 

I'm blessed to be at a church whose mission statement is to live God's love. My emphasis always on that is the live part of that, because you can't just think it, you can't just talk about it. You actually need to live it. So that's part of what we're hoping to do in this new season is really start a center for this so that people all over the city will be able to come and find it.

Ilia: Do you think we need the language of Christ? Or does that language, does the language, does religious language like Christ or God, do hopeful words today, or do they get in the way of that deeper love that you're describing?

Hillary: Boy, language is so important in these conversations. I will admit that I often use spirit or Christ. Christ consciousness tends to be a pretty inviting phrase or spirit truly You'll notice from previous conversations I think part of our issue in the church is that we have not we have not tried to understand More about the Holy Spirit itself. In fact, sometimes the Holy Spirit I think it's locked in with the second person of the Trinity, which is it and I'm not asking us to parse it out but I am asking us to take it pretty seriously. 

The word spirit itself, to me, is so inviting. When I talk to people who are not Christian and I talk about "Hallie, how's the spirit moving in your life?" They know what I'm talking about. It's fascinating. It's a word that has so much meaning. It actually helps as a shortcut for people to know about it. On the other hand, I think in some ways, we need the word Christ at least within the church for two reasons. One, Jesus has really been, as the name, has been co-opted, I think, by especially the evangelical wing of Christianity, who talk about Jesus all the time and have claimed his name in a way that I think people now associate, again, with that judgmental mentality. 

So I think we need to either reclaim the name Jesus or find a way to use Christ so as to not lose the goodness of what Christianity could be. And the second piece, because I think it will help people understand their tradition as a fuller living within themselves, as we were saying before about that baptized mentality of wearing Christ, and maybe help open up Scripture a little more, understand what these prayers are even about. And a lot of it needs to be rewritten, but at least have an understanding. So perhaps when we're talking wider, spirit is a better word, but I do think the church needs to be reacquainted with its own vocabulary.

Ilia: I always like to ask people, what do you think the Spirit is? What is God's Spirit? When you use the language of Spirit, what do you convey here?

Hillary: Yes, for me, I think of Christ as the Word of God and the fullness of the meaning of that, the actual speaking something into existence, the incarnation becomes word. I think of spirit as the wisdom of God. The idea that wisdom was there at the very beginning is almost this creative energetic force. You might call it creation energy itself, right? The thing that moves through us and not just helps us grow, but actually helps us discern. 

I think there's not just a nebulous piece to the spirit, but also has a concretized within how each particular one of us lives it out. And so you can already see where the trouble is. Where does the Christ begin? Where does the spirit begin? But I think it's so necessary because we are, we're not just spirit trapped in a machine. It's the integration of the two. We are fully incarnate and fully spirit. So to me, it is that thing, that principle of life itself, the wisdom.

Ilia: Yeah, I like that. I think of the spirits for like as the weaver the Spirit is the weaver and what is being woven is the form of the Christ in this particular...

Hillary: Beautifully said.

Ilia: So as our time is up, what are your final words to our listeners?

Hillary: Just keep that joy, keep that joy. For those who are Christians and for those who follow the Spirit, we're resurrection people. We should look like we have a hope about us. We should look like we actually believe that there is something bigger than just our small efforts in the face of what could feel like impending doom. So my greatest hope is in the Spirit, is in Christ, and to keep that as a joyful principle as we look for that wisdom that comes from the Spirit.

Ilia: Oh, that's wonderful. Well, Hillary, your congregation, your church should be very blessed to have you...

Hillary: Thank you.

Ilia: ...and great things in DC and beyond. I look forward to being in conversation, an ongoing conversation, and we'll see how the Center for Christogenesis can play a role in your work at St. Columba's.

Hillary: Thank you. And thank you for all that you bring to the world. We need your voice. So thank you for being there.

Robert: Thank you to Hillary for joining us and for her closing reminder to hold on to joy always. Coming up on Hunger for Wholeness, we're thrilled to welcome back biophysicist Gregory Stock as he and Ilia continue exploring how evolution and technology are reshaping what it means to be human. As always, I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.