Vanessa Zoltan, PRAYING WITH JANE EYRE: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice

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Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vanessa Zoltan, podcast host, atheist chaplain, and author of Praying with Jane Eyre joins Zibby to talk about her book and the path that led her to write it. After not feeling connected to prayer while enrolled in divinity school, Vanessa tried to approach Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre as a sacred text. Vanessa and Zibby talk about how what it means to connect on a spiritual level with a secular book, what she loves most about the popularity of Vanessa's podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and the influence her family's history with the Holocaust has had on her life and her work.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
0:07.1	If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
0:12.9	Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things moms don't have time to do.
0:17.9	All the authors have been on this podcast. Also, check out my TikTok at With Zibby and Tracy. My other podcast, Sex Talk with Zivie and Tracy. Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium. And of course, my new publishing company called Zivvy Books. And now back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids. Hi. Hi. Hello. Enjoy the show.
0:40.9	Vanessa Zoltan is the author of Praying with Jane Eyre, reflections on reading as a sacred
0:45.7	practice. Vanessa is a chaplain, podcaster, and owns Not Sari Productions, a feminist production
0:51.5	company based in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a non-denominational chaplain whose work is dedicated to treating secular things as if they were sacred.
0:59.4	Her podcasts include Harry Potter and The Sacred Text and Hot and Bothered.
1:03.9	She is the author of Praying with Janeair, which we discuss, and was really awesome.
1:07.9	Welcome, Vanessa.
1:08.8	Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm so
1:11.9	excited to have you on. Thank you so much for having me on. I am excited to talk about your book and your
1:17.2	podcast and your whole approach to reading a sacred text. This is like speaking to the choir here,
1:24.4	preaching to the choir. Tell me, okay, talk about the book, your idea for the book,
1:29.7	the whole pivot to divinity school, and how you sort of arrived at using Jane Eyre's inspiration.
1:36.4	Absolutely. So I grew up as a Jewish atheist, grandchild of four Holocaust survivors. So atheism was sort of hard one. And I worked
1:48.6	in education for 10 years. I always wanted to be a teacher and that's what I went to school for.
1:53.7	And then worked at education nonprofits. And obviously we need wonderful people in education.
2:00.7	But the educationprofit world sort of
2:03.5	chewed me up and spit me out. I really found it dispiriting that I think we as a country just
2:09.4	don't believe that black and brown children deserve to learn. Otherwise, we would fund schools
2:15.7	irrespective of property taxes, right? And pay teachers more and do all
	...

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