enfleshed podcast

We kick off our podcast beginning with a conversation among the three enfleshed co-directors talking home and liberation.

Robert Monson (he/him) is a runner, musician, and a Black theologian committed to softness, contemplation, and liberation for all. As a recent seminary graduate (with distinction), Robert studied in depth the intersection of Black Liberation Theology and womanist theology. Weaving together these two strands of liberation have been important work as well as other liberation based theologies. “How can we help facilitate community and provide answers to a hurting world that is reeling?” remains an important question in his work. While in school, Robert’s scholarly work was recognized and presented at various national conferences/outlets. Podcasting (two shows) and writing remain important aspects of his daily life as well as marathoning the latest Star Trek show(s).

M Jade Kaiser (formerly M Barclay) is co-founder and co-director of enfleshed. M wonders, wrestles, and works in the places where spirituality, activism, culture(s), and creativity entangle. Over the last decade, they have had the pleasure of collaborating and working in spaces and movements of shared longing and action such as Texas Freedom Network, Faith in Harm Reduction, SURJ, UmForward, Reconciling Ministries Network, ONE Northside, and other collectives of organizers, religious communities, and creators. In their spare time, they seek out creaturely encounters and enjoy working with stained glass.

Rev. Anna Blaedel (they/them) is co-founder and co-director at enfleshed. For the first five years of enfleshed, Anna served as theologian-in-residence. They bring an attentiveness to the intersections of spiritual, academic, and activist engagement. Through enfleshed’s “moments for common nourishment,” a bi-monthly column, they bridge the forefront of religious scholarship and a passion for reimagining our ordinary, common, messy life as the site of Divine unfolding. Building on their study of theopoetics, relational philosophies of enfleshment, and anti-racist, feminist, queer and eco-theologies of liberation, once a month they will offer words for a sustaining, grounding, and enlivening spirituality in our current context.

Anna Blaedel (they/them) is co-director at enfleshed, where they tend to the theopoetic intersections of spiritual, academic, and activist engagement. Anna chaplains University of Iowa students, and is a doctoral candidate in Theological and Philosophical Studies at Drew University’s Graduate Division on Religion. Waking before dawn, lingering in poetry, being an aunt, retreating to the woods or their basement woodshop, tending the garden, sharing silence, and feeding people delicious food are some of Anna’s favorite things.

Special thanks to our guests for this episode:

Brittany Taylor, M.A (they/themme): Brittany is a practitioner & embodier of Healing Arts Justice, Equity, & Reparations serving us via their custom ritual curation, community wellness instruction, and personal development coaching.

Rev. Shana Chivon (she/they): Rev. Shana Chivon finds home in their audacious, Black, queer, gender non-conforming, sacred body. They labor with love at the intersections of trauma-informed community care, anti-racism and creating thriving, inclusive, divine spaces. She is the founder of Chaplain for the Culture, an online spiritual care community, a writer, educator, doula and a voracious reader. Rev. Shana Chivon is a Reiki practitioner and teacher that advocates for non-linear approaches to wholeness that feature and reference a loving, affirming Creator, who they often refer to as their transformative non-binary bestie. Rev. Shana believes that practicing liberative living for themselves and those in their community means encouraging us all to lay into radical truth telling, radical rest, radical joy and radical wellness. She is the mother of a 16-year-old son that inspires her to fight to ensure that this world sees him as a treasure and not a threat and is planning a wedding to her best friend and fiancé, Ingrid, that will feature all the black cookout classics with a touch of classic soft rock at the reception.

Special thanks to our guests for this episode:

Brittany Taylor, M.A (they/themme): Brittany is a practitioner & embodier of Healing Arts Justice, Equity, & Reparations serving us via their custom ritual curation, community wellness instruction, and personal development coaching.

Rev. Shana Chivon (she/they): Rev. Shana Chivon finds home in their audacious, Black, queer, gender non-conforming, sacred body. They labor with love at the intersections of trauma-informed community care, anti-racism and creating thriving, inclusive, divine spaces. She is the founder of Chaplain for the Culture, an online spiritual care community, a writer, educator, doula and a voracious reader. Rev. Shana Chivon is a Reiki practitioner and teacher that advocates for non-linear approaches to wholeness that feature and reference a loving, affirming Creator, who they often refer to as their transformative non-binary bestie. Rev. Shana believes that practicing liberative living for themselves and those in their community means encouraging us all to lay into radical truth telling, radical rest, radical joy and radical wellness. She is the mother of a 16-year-old son that inspires her to fight to ensure that this world sees him as a treasure and not a threat and is planning a wedding to her best friend and fiancé, Ingrid, that will feature all the black cookout classics with a touch of classic soft rock at the reception.

This mini episode is a reading from our Moments for Common Nourishment column. Read the full piece here.

Special thanks to our guests for this episode:

The Rev. Dr. Eric Thomas is the associate professor of Bible at General Theological Seminary in New York City. And the pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church, a historic African-American congregation located in Brooklyn. And Eric’s work centers queer of color critique as a means to cultivate features where freedom and flourishing are available to all of God’s children on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

James Howard Hill, Junior – pronouns he, him, his – is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University. He teaches courses and conducts research in Black study, religion, history, and culture in the United States. Cultural criticism in theory, theologies of liberation, theo poetics, religion and ecology, political theory and critical theory.

Robert Monson is a runner, a musician, writer, Black child of God and theologian doing research at the intersection of Womanist and Black liberation theology – and I will add one of the 3 co-directors of enfleshed.

This mini episode is a reading from our free Liturgy Library. Check out the whole library here.

This mini episode is a reading from our Moments for Common Nourishment column. Check out the whole thing here.

This mini episode is a reading from our liturgy library. Check it out here. 

Special thanks to our guests for this episode:

The Rev. Dr. Eric Thomas is the associate professor of Bible at General Theological Seminary in New York City. And the pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church, a historic African-American congregation located in Brooklyn. And Eric’s work centers queer of color critique as a means to cultivate features where freedom and flourishing are available to all of God’s children on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

James Howard Hill, Junior – pronouns he, him, his – is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University. He teaches courses and conducts research in Black study, religion, history, and culture in the United States. Cultural criticism in theory, theologies of liberation, theo poetics, religion and ecology, political theory and critical theory.

Robert Monson is a runner, a musician, writer, Black child of God and theologian doing research at the intersection of Womanist and Black liberation theology – and I will add one of the 3 co-directors of enfleshed.