Oh hello, my name is Kate Boehler and this is Everything Happens.

There are some people who are just lean-in kind of people. They're the ones who don't

block your unanswerable questions. You know the ones you asked during college, maybe 2am,

that you feel a little embarrassed about wondering still. These are the people who don't shy away

from your unsolvable issues, who show up on impossible days, in the hospital, at the funeral.

At the court date, who allow us to show up as our full selves. The people who walk with us

all the way to the edge. These are the kind of people who really understand the practice of

presence and it's something I really hope that, wow, I mean, that we can just all really learn to do.

How do we create spaces of deeper belonging and friendship when the people we love don't always

have easy to solve problems? And how can we learn to stand with them in uncertainty, in the

mystery of it all? My guest today lives this out so beautifully. John Swinton is professor of

practical theology and pastoral care at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and he's the founding

director of Aberdeen's Center for Spirituality, Health and Disability. He worked as a nurse for 16

years in the field of mental health and learning disabilities and later also as a community mental

health chaplain. I just feel so grateful to get to sit down with him as part of Duke Divinity

School's Theology, Culture and Medicine Certificate Program, which is this program that creates

opportunities for students and clergy and health care practitioners to come together and reimagine

contemporary practices of health care in light of the Christian tradition. He is an absolute dream.

You're going to love him. Here he is.

Don't I can't believe we get to do this. I can see you in your life's self. Yes, I'm me to see you.

Do you mind taking me back to the um, or source, the beginning of John, because you are this

combination of professions that I find deeply compelling? You're a three in one.

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