This is the Baymaw Podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we officially wrap up our journey through history and talk about what comes next for Baymaw.

Yeah. Right here, so I want to start. I got a couple of readings I want to do today. I'm so out of character this last episode and this episode today.

So unusual for me. I got a couple of story times, a couple of readings I want to do. I want to start with one. We'll talk about what's coming next in Baymaw.

And then I'm going to close with one of my favorite readings that I always use to close with my students. I want to start here with this. It's called the Benediction. It is the last chapter of a book by Sarah Bessie.

We're going to put it in the show notes here. I'm going to link its book called Out of Swords, making peace with an evolving faith. A great read for everything, Baymaw. Just the whole book. It's fantastic.

I think I believe I recommended it on Facebook, not, you know, it was a while ago, I guess, but, but yeah, great read. I think it really resides with the spirit of what we've done now for five sessions.

So I just want to read these closing thoughts. I thought they were super good and just the words she'll share here. I feel like I'm very fitting for this point as we kind of wrap up this body of work.

And where we find ourselves on the journey here in Baymaw. So here's some words from Sarah Bessie.

You and I are sitting in a mess of half unpacked boxes, aren't we? We have a few piles here and there looks like a homemade alter to me. I know the idea of wilderness is something romanticized in literature of sermons or sermons by the now clean and tidy, prosperous ones who waxed philosophic about rediscovery.

But there's nothing romantic about the arduous task of sorting through a lifetime of questions and wondering. We sort on the threshold of grief and change.

It's a liminal space and I hope you know I'm just as dirty and disheveled as everyone else because we never stop.

You'll set out on this journey with your trunks and baggage boxes and piles and toe. And if you're anything like me, you may feel a bit of smugness.

I was certain I was I would arrive on the other side with my pet God's firmly intact.

But as the journey carries on, you will leave a trail behind you, a littering of the contents of your baggage and slowly sometimes bitterly.

It must be admitted your walk through the wilderness will become unencumbered.

You may sit by the trail and cry over the poisonous, lovely things being left behind.

You'll wonder why you're still holding on to this thing or that thing. You'll find that some things you were ready to to toss have become dear, so precious that you'll carry them in your lap to keep them safe.

But every single one of those items you leave along the trail, your cynicism, your hypocrisy, your lies, your numbing techniques, your apologetics, your doctrinal statements, your worldview, your pomposity.

And and doctrinal your opinions, your careful constructed personas, your sins, your righteousness, your secrets, all of it will become filthy rags.

And in the end, you will be nearly flinging them off the wagon. Glad to be rid of them at last, I promise.

When you find streams in the desert, the hands of those who love the gospel will be the ones who hand you just enough water to drink.

You will swallow the dust down with the cool water and cry with relief before setting out again.

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