The Power of Ritual

We are delighted to share a conversation we had with Casper ter Kuile in early 2023 about the power of ritual. It feels so right for this moment, and we know you are going to enjoy it, whether you are hearing it for the first time or returning it for a second listen.

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CASPER TER KUILE

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth This is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth Where we take a different approach to the news.  

Thank you so much for joining us today. If you celebrate Christmas, we hope you are having a very Merry Christmas Eve. We are all with our families right now. And so we were reflecting on the holiday season and what we wanted to share with you. It brought us back to a wonderful discussion we had with Casper ter Kuile at the start of 2023 about the power of ritual. And when we went back and listened to it again, it felt very right and prescient for this time. So we hope that whether you're hearing it for the first time or relistening, you will love it. Casper is the author of The Power of Ritual, the co-founder of Sacred Design Lab, Nearness, and the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. His work explores how we make meaning, deepen our relationships and experience beauty in the 21st Century. Perfect for the holiday season all around. After the interview with Casper, we decided to reshare a fun conversation we had about Christmas cards when this episode originally aired.  

We love Christmas cards here at Pantsuit Politics. We especially love receiving Christmas cards from all of you and putting faces and stories and vacations and kids photos with the names that we see coming through our email and comments all the time. So we thought sharing this Outside of Politics again was a great reminder of why the Christmas card practice is a lovely one, whether we know each other in real life or not. Now, if you are looking for a last minute gift, very last minute, you're living on the edge, you can gift a subscription to our Substack premium community in mere minutes. Give someone the gift of political community that lasts the entire year long. Support our small business in the process. We really believe in what we do on Substack and believe it is going to be even more valuable going into a new year and a new administration. So the link for that is in our show notes. And without further ado, here is Casper ter Kuile. 

[Music Interlude]   

Beth Tell us your origin story. The version of you that's here. How did you go from climate activist to leading voice in rethinking spirituality and ritual and community.  

Casper ter Kuile Whoo!  

Beth We'll just start light and easy.  

Sarah Quick, real quick.  

Casper ter Kuile Well, honestly, the older I get, the more the continuity feels like it's important. Even if at the time it really felt like a lot of change. So I grew up in England. My parents are both from Holland, but they'd moved to the UK and so I was born and raised in London and then in the countryside south of London. And we were a non-religious home. In the UK it's a very different kind of spiritual religious landscape to that of the U.S. So certainly by the time I was a kid, it was kind of weird to be religious and I didn't really know anyone who went to church. And so it was kind of just an absence of institutional religion in my life. And that suited me just fine because I came out when I was in my teens and I was like, well, God doesn't like gay people. Gay people don't like God, so bye. It was a very simple break up if there had ever been anything there. And I really threw myself, as you mentioned, into climate activism. So I was trying to mobilize young people around the U.N. climate negotiations and had that classic kind of activist experience of after three or four years of really going all in, just burning out, just having nothing left in the tank was the way I thought about it. And so I didn't know what to do with my life. I finished school and I loved my studies, but I just didn't know where to go with my life. And so I ended up in graduate school studying public policy, which was a useful good thing for your resume. But I was suddenly much more interested in what these weird people across campus were doing at the divinity school. And the way I like to position those two together is in policy school we asked how do you reduce the recidivism rate? And in divinity school they were talking about why do we have prisons? And so it was just a very different kind of conversation and one that felt much more attuned to my heart. But I think also my existing skill set, like I'm not the best person to calculate a P value.  I'm never going to be a con wizard. I'm really good with people. And what I learned in divinity school was how to take the things that I already had an interest in, like building community and creating culture and kind of getting to know how to do that much more skillfully, and to connect that to a much longer tradition of people who'd been doing it too. How do you use food and song and dance and ritual to help build a sense of an us? And that just set my imagination aflame. Even though I came into divinity school as a gay atheist, I'd like to joke that I left it still very gay, less of an atheist. But it really gave me a language and a discipline for the kind of things that I cared most about, which were meaning and culture and relationships. That's, I guess, how I ended up here.  

Sarah I wonder if the word burnout that we so often use to describe people at that phase of life is even the right word. Isn't it just developmentally appropriate. Isn't that what we do in our youth? I have to remind myself all the time that my 13-year-olds legalistic thinking is developmentally appropriate. We do this black and white thing and we kind of dive in and then we sort of start to break it down and reshape it. I always think about Richard saying you have to have an ego to break it down and reshape it. It's like this is sort of this inevitable path I think people find themselves on because that is the work of your late teens and early twenties, is sort of diving in and finding your limits. It's not necessarily a bad thing. And I wonder how as you age and develop other skills and lean into community and watch other people, young people take this journey, how you think about that phase of life?  

Casper ter Kuile That's a beautiful question. The language I would use now rather than a kind of traditional burn out, it was heartbreak. Because really I believed what everyone had told me, which is that I could change the world. And I believed it because I saw other people doing it. Was so inspiring to be connected to young people around the world who were  changing energy infrastructure and who were really involved and successful in what they were doing in Australia and India and Canada, like all around the world, that those are the people who were inspiring me. And so when I felt like I had failed because there was no U.N. climate agreement that was at the rigor that was necessary,  I'd been living in that story that it was my fault. And so that's what crushed me. And so in my mind, I've moved away from that burned out language, which is kind of mechanistic and like there's nothing left in the tank, as I was just saying. And it was more about realizing that the story I had for myself about who I was in the world, it was just not true. And so I had to kind of find a new story about who I was. And so I think it's much more about a disconnect of meaning and reality than it was about not having energy.  

Sarah Yeah. When you said heartbreak, I started to tear up because that was how I felt at that stage. You just feel like it's all on you to fix it. You just think it's all on you as an individual to fix it, and you just want to grab the kids and the young people on that stage and be like, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, don't do that to yourself." Don't do that to yourself.  

Casper ter Kuile I do think we're in that situation partly because we don't have the same kind of multi-generational activists infrastructure or that experience of community where every youth movement has to create itself because it's, like, there's no youth movement, we must do this. Well, there was one 20 years ago. It's just they've aged out and they're not in relationship with us and so we don't know about it. And I think about that a lot now that I'm in my mid to late thirties. I see younger people coming on the scene with all that same energy and righteous critique, which I am grateful for because we need that. But, as you say, you can you can kind of see something coming down the line and I can't catch everyone, but I've definitely made a couple of bets of being, like, I'm going to stay close to you so that if and when this happens, at least I know about it and I can tell you you're not the first.  

Sarah Sounds like community. Yeah. 

Casper ter Kuile I hope so. And I was lucky, I should say. I had I had a couple of those mentors who paved the way for me to end up in divinity school because Charlotte Miller in particular, she was my age now, and she said, "Well, what is it that you love about singing? Why do you like bringing people together?" LI just never connected those questions to what I thought was my purpose around climate stuff. And she helped build that bridge to show me there was a place for my gifts in a broader movement, maybe not the one I had been in.  

Beth I love how you said that you like thinking about how song and dance and ritual create a sense of us. It reminds me of a conversation we were having with my sister and her husband. Our kids love the Sound of Music. We were watching the movie and talking about that moment where they're dancing this traditional Austrian dance, and about how as adults we're like looking at Captain von Trapp, seeing him in a totally different way than we did as kids and thinking like, wow, these songs are so meaningful to him and such a part of how he understands his relationship to his country. How can we get that here in America in 2023? How can we have a positive sense of national identity instead of this really negative attachment to nationalism? And I wonder if you see that kind of political dimension arising in all of this community work that you do, where people develop just a healthier expression of their connection to place when they are deeply rooted in community? 

Casper ter Kuile Well, first thing to say is I was so outraged when I realized that that piece of music was composed for the movie. It's not a traditional Austrian dance at all.  

Beth That is gutting. I might need a moment with that.  

Sarah [Crosstalk] always be sneaky like that, man. Dad-gummit!   

Casper ter Kuile Exactly. I know that scene, and the question is a good one. Well, I'll say just for my lived experience, I've always had multiple national belongings. And so in some way that's made it. I now have three passports, which is bewildering. But it's made any love of country always there's got to be space for multiple loves. And I think that's made it more safe in my mind to love one, because I know it's not in opposition to another. It can sit next to. And I think that's how we have to think about a love of place. It's not that this place is better than anything else, loving it is never oppositional. It's  always particular. And that's the thing that maybe gets lost even within. And national love is the particularities of place. And that's why I love thinking about family traditions and local customs. And when I meet someone from a new town, I'm always curious what do you love about the place that you live? Learning that Battle Creek, Michigan-- and forgive me, this is also deeply ingrained in capitalism-- has like a national serial day because that's where the Kellogg's headquarter is. And so they have a day where all the cereals are free and they're all lined upon the table.  

Sarah I'd like to go.  

Casper ter Kuile Me too. Whatever weird and wonderful tradition your place has, I think it's something to lean into. And it's the particularity that that's the thing to love, not the the compare-ality. I just made up a new word.  

Beth I think it's nice.  

Sarah I like it thought. It's good. Good job.  

Sarah Listen, one of our most popular Instagram posts this year was about local festivals. People went off. People were in it. They loved it. We started talking about a lentil festival, but now there's like a list of 50 festivals I'm going to have to go to.  I think that particularity is such a good word though, because I see that not just in in our political discourse around place, but also our political discourse around identity. I think there is something really powerfully important about the discourse around masculinity. I'm raising three boys and I think we've identified what we don't like about it, but we're having trouble articulating what is to love about positive masculinity. And I think that the part of it why we're coming up short is because we want to intellectualize it and create in our own brains. And I think what's so powerful about your work is that your naming like, no, no, no, community and ritual is a place to form these places with each other, not on this individual journey.  

Casper ter Kuile It's so hard to hold these two things in tension. The older I get, the more I think about that. Like being able to live with Paradox without freaking out and running to one of them is probably the sign of wisdom. But, yes, we need particularity and we need community. And those two things are in tension because to be in community we have to have something that we hold together and that means a willingness to kind of, yes, subsume our individual immediate needs and desires to what is healthiest for the group. And if we want our particularity, it's about centering ourselves. And this is Robert Bela's work that I'm drawing on here, but thank God we have lived in an age where a lot of the structures and the hierarchies of-- and I'm talking here about Western world, which were deeply patriarchal and deeply classist and everything else, that we've tried to interrupt those systems and structures. And certainly as a queer man, I am super grateful for the freedoms that have come with that in no way complete, in no way finished, but nonetheless, some progress. And yet, as that pendulum has swung from a society of structure and hierarchy towards one of more freedom and individual choice, more and more people feel disconnected, lonely, and like every interaction with someone else you have to navigate because I don't know who we are in terms of status to one another. If I know it's my job to be subservient to you because you are a higher status, then I know what my role is in this encounter. If we have to figure it out every time we meet someone, it's just much more complex. And I think that's why you're seeing so much interest in the conversation about identity and particularities, because we're trying to figure out, well, who am I if I'm not the function I serve in society? That might be overly complex. But what I see happening now is a kind of desire to find some new structure that hopefully maintains the freedoms that we have, but also gives us some way of being in relationship to each other that isn't dependent on our own creativity. Because if I have to go and like builds the container for a relationship every day, it's exhausting. And I think that's why everyone's just like, I can't even.  

Sarah Think about that politically  in a context of not just societal, but our media environment. We're bombarded by like these new societal minefields. We're bombarded by all this incredible information which also feeds those societal minefields, like, it's a lot for our brains.  

Casper ter Kuile And we don't have the communities that we're in where we encounter one another across difference to know that we're not always dangerous to each other. I want to be careful about how I frame that. There are absolutely times where there is real danger. But the narrative I think of us versus them becomes so much more toxic when you don't have any thems in your life that you love. And so I'm really interested in that kind of strategic question of, how do we build containers of relationship where I don't have to like you to love you? That's really missing.  

Beth Well, and layered on top of all of that is a particular form of status where the kind of earnestness required to even figure out what these containers are is a little bit unsophisticated. We don't use words like trust and honesty and loyalty without a little bit of an eye roll or something. That's my professional background. I came up through the legal profession, and being in a very well-respected firm, I just noticed that earnestness was not for us here. That belonged to another social class. We wouldn't name it that way, but it did. And so getting to do the work that we do now, where we're constantly saying, "Well, what value is exhibited through this political work," is really refreshing and it also requires an undoing of all that learning. So I wondered, because you're so good at just leaning into that earnestness, if that's something that you've deliberately cultivated in your work or what sustains that for you?  

Sarah Well, and not for nothing, Harry Potter was like that door to earnestness for so many people, that's why it's so beloved. That is why that text is sacred, as you would call our beloved, because it allowed that earnestness again. I really think that's part of its appeal.  

Casper ter Kuile I think that's so insightful. Gosh, I'm not sure I am very good at it. I'm hesitant to say it. But I think maybe one of the things that I grew up learning, our household was very open in the sense that my mother ran a bed and breakfast in our house. We always had people staying. Our kitchen was always filled with someone, and that was deeply frustrating as a child. I hated it because it meant I wasn't getting the attention I wanted. And of course I was the most important thing. Plus, I had three sisters, there was just a lot happening. But I think the thing I learned from my mother is that everyone is interesting once you get them talking. And that's certainly the way I think I live-- if I have enough sleep and I'm not running on on empty. But, yeah, once you get people talking, there's always something that's interesting and therefore something to love. And so I think with that kind of foundational assumption about the world, it's just a different way of entering into it. That's not always how I am. I don't want to paint myself in any sort of saintly way, but it certainly is there when I when I show up with that kind of orientation. And when you believe it enough-- I think maybe this is one of the things that I do-- is that other people then dare to believe it, too. And so with the Harry Potter podcast, I was never an expert in tech study or an expert even in Harry Potter. A lot of people know much more about that series than I do. But with Vanessa and Ariana, our producer, we were able to model something, I think, that made it safe for other people to do that, too. And they took it in wonderful hundred different directions from what we did. We had people setting up small groups and all sorts of other wonderful things. But just returning to a text with the kind of intention and attention and repetition over time, it made something new that was possible. That was really exciting.  

Sarah Well, and I think that earnestness, that invitational energy is cyclical in the same way like loneliness can be. We did a show on loneliness and we talked about if you're alone and then you feel excluded and then you start to distrust your interactions with other people so you seclude yourself. And in the same way, if you are earnest and sort of open hearted, even when people treat you badly you have enough muscle memory to continue to lean in, to continue to engage in. And podcasting I think is a particularly good venue for this because of that repetition you speak to around rituals in your book, like, you just show up. And Beth always says it's like the dairy farm, the cows have to give milk. So we just got to go out there and we have to engage and open ourselves up again and do it again and continue that work because there is a part of our brains even on these very deeply emotional levels. I'm using brains and I think I probably should use the word spirit, which is what you speak to, like sort of that spirituality that is both higher level but also needs that  daily repetition. Muscle memory is not the word I need. It's like a spiritual habit and that's what builds it and it builds on itself, both good ways and bad.  

Casper ter Kuile I mean, the other thing that strikes me is for us with the podcast, (and I'm sure this is true for the two of you as well) like at the heart of that project was just a really deep friendship, it was just love. When you feel invited into something like that, it feels good, right? We all want that. And so in every project that I've done that succeeded, I've never done it by myself. It's always been with someone. And I've just had to learn the hard way that I can't do it alone. A little Chicago reference there for you musical fans. And so for me, the work then becomes not how do I have a great idea, but how do I find someone who cares about the questions that I care about enough to risk creating something together? How do we build the trust between us to be deep enough to navigate the conflict that will inevitably arise? And that's the thing I'm most grateful for in all of this. It's I've just been very lucky enough to find wonderful collaborators and friends. And I think we all need that to some extent.  

Beth Well, that's a great opening to ask you to tell us about The Nearness, what you're creating now, and what's going on with that project.  

Casper ter Kuile I mentioned my interest in how do we build the containers that holds relationships in a time where we're all drowning in fabulous content. And I listen and create my own pile of that, whether it's books or podcasts or YouTube videos or movies, whatever. And so we have access to content in a way that's totally unparalleled, but what we're so often missing are the containers of relationship within which we get to make meaning of that. Like, "Hey, did you watch that series three of whatever?" Yes. Okay, great. Me too. But how can we actually talk about it in more depth? Or what are the stories of my own life that I'd like to talk about more with other people who've shared similar experiences? And any place where we can really get to that kind of deeper meaning. And so The Nearness is designed to help us feel more connected to ourselves, one another and the world around us. And it does that through a sort of six week journey in small groups. And so you sign up to be in a small group with six or seven other people. You get together at the same time every week for six weeks, all happens on Zoom and we guide you through with a kind of guided conversation, a series of reflections and conversations and invitations to make a commitment to the coming week that hopefully helps people really nurture that part of their lives that speaks to the things of ultimate importance. So it's been really lovely to see. We've gone through a couple of these journeys now with people signing up . For any spiritual and religious affiliation, and none, it's really designed for a very diverse context, so there's no assumption of shared belief or practice. But what is shared is a commitment to be in a relationship with each other. So, yeah, that's what The Nearness is all about.  

Sarah I love that. And I wonder as you do this work-- it's inevitable, what we're talking about here as human beings, we will upset and disappoint too especially the more diverse the audience. And I wonder what you've learned as you've navigated that disappointment around J.K. Rowling. I mean, Harry Potter has all this wisdom and beauty. It's all here for all of us. I would actually particularly like you to just help me put words when I get into it about with my 13 year old about this. that'll be great. You just write some sort of script for me, even though this is supposed to be the stuff we do. But I think that's it's really hard because humans inevitably disappoint us or take positions, especially we're talking about politics, that we don't like. That lens of ritual and community, how do you navigate that?  

Casper ter Kuile Yeah. I love that, Sarah. In an info session for The Nearness just a few hours ago, I was saying you will fall in love with your small group and they'll disappoint you. And that is part of the experience. So we're very upfront because if there's anything I can be assured of, it's that we'll disappoint each other at some point. And it was really disappointing when when J.K. Rowling came out-- not with her first transphobic missive, that had already happened. But it was this doubled down vitriolic essay that had just gone into so much. There was clearly so much pain there for her, and I can't comment beyond that in terms of her experience. But I was very grateful that from the beginning we had said we're not interested in authorial intent, we're interested in a reader's engagement with the text. So to some extent we were protected by not being very interested in the author from the beginning. We cared about how people were reading the text. But we absolutely asked ourselves, can we ethically continue with this project? And so we did as best we could what I hope anyone would do, which is to ask the audience and say, "Hey, what are your thoughts? What do you think?" And in particular, we were interested in hearing from trans and non-binary listeners who are obviously the most impacted by J.K. Rowling's comments. And we did a whole episode where we just shared voice notes, voicemail messages from trans and non-binary listeners. And as ever, it wasn't like one community response. There were people who said, "I can never read this book again. I am heartbroken. This woman has ruined something that was so important for me. I can't be part of this anymore." And there were other people who said, "How dare she? This book doesn't belong to her anymore. It's our story. And she can't just take it away from us by going on this horrific, vitriolic rant." And other people landed somewhere in between. And so that's how we continued the conversation, was by making space I hope for all of those and inviting people to do what was right for them. We ultimately decided to continue with the podcast with some changes the next time we write it through. And so now that my co-host and co-creator Vanessa Sultan is reading it with my former literature and religion professor Matthew Paul, so the audience got a real upgrade that I got a Harvard professor leading them through the text now. But they have a real commitment to be more critical of the text because there's so much wrong with that as there is with normal text. Because guess what? There's a lot wrong with the world. And so that was our reaction to it. Probably not perfect, but I'm also really invested in the same way of creating containers is how do we cultivate a relational space in which, as you said, hurt and disappointment are not a threat, they are an expectation. And so, for me, the practice of covenant as a community is one that I'm really passionate about because I think it gives us a way back towards each other when or if we hurt each other. 

Sarah I love that so much. I think that's it. That's it, right? We call each other in instead of calling each other out, right? I think that the idea that we're not fixing it, there is no there is no perfect response available to us, that the only the only path forward is forward, not to some destination.  

Beth That calls me back to your activism time and thinking about how we have an audience of people who are frequently disappointed and heartbroken and find staying engaged with the news really challenging, but also a commitment that they've made to care about the world around them. So having integrated all of these experiences that you've had in all the work that you've done, I wonder if you went back in time and were advising your younger self at the beginning of that climate activism journey, what you would share?  

Casper ter Kuile I hope I could invite him to pay attention to the people who've stayed committed in the long haul. And I guess I did this a little bit as a young man, but one of the reasons I ended up in divinity school is because I kept noticing that the people who were still committed had some sort of spirituality thing going on. And I didn't know what to make of that, felt weird to me, especially with activists who've kept going a long time. You can burn off anger for a while, but that can't be the thing that sustains you forever. Or if it does, boy, is that going to be a difficult, difficult life. I think there has to be a wellspring of love from which you can be angry. It's not that anger has no space in activism, but there has to be a rootedness in something good that carries us all through; otherwise, I think we become pretty bitter and not good for each other, honestly, over time. So I hope I would encourage myself to notice who are the people who are rooted in goodness and to figure out how I can root myself in that same goodness, whatever language I'd use for it, to sustain me and not just to be going off the kind of indignant outrage that was definitely the  fuel at that point.  

Sarah I listened to an interview with Bill McKibben, a longtime climate activist. And it's like the climate activism community, all of us that care about the climate, are entering a new phase. It's like it's the building phase now. What you're doing is climate activism, finding containers for relationship and community organizations, because we are entering a new phase where we are not in this space where we're trying to get the data or convince people we have historical climate change legislation here in the United States, and we're on the cusp of all this renewable energy technology where it's time to pivot. It's time to move into a different place that is fueled by love and building and the future and not this sort of righteous anger at how things were done badly in the past.  

Casper ter Kuile Well, I really appreciate you saying that because that's how it works in my head as well. As you know, I was really involved in mitigation work. So how do you reduce the output of carbon emissions amongst other fossil fuel emissions? But now I think of my work as more about adaptation. So, look, we're already in a world where there are climate refugees. We know we're going to be resource strapped in terms of access to water and so much else. So what is the culture going to look like when that really arrives at our own doorstep? And Rebecca Solnit's work has been so important for me. And looking at immediate disaster responses when, yes, you see the worst of people now and then, but mostly you see the best of people in those immediate responses to disasters. The capacity for mutual aid and mutual support and the generosity and goodness that comes out of people in those moments is so amazing. And I want to cultivate that so that  when the time comes that we're asked-- like, I mean, my parents just had this, they're housing two Ukrainian refugees and have been doing since March, and as are 60 other households in the village that I grew up in because people needed a place to go. And so how can we train ourselves to be ready to give what we can when we need to, which is all the time. And I love that you mentioned Bill because he's a friend of mine and such an inspiration. And to see that man walk or ski or swim or do anything in the natural world is to see a man in love with nature. And so he's so fueled by that in his daily life. Maddeningly. So to hike with him is just like running behind him, keeping up, even though he's like four decades older than me. But he embodies that in such a beautiful way.  

Sarah Well, I think you do, too. And I think that this work you're doing is so important and it will fuel this next phase. And we thank you so much for your work. It's definitely affected both of us tremendously.  

Casper ter Kuile I so appreciate you both doing the work that you're doing. Thanks for having me. And everyone who is listening, I know they're fighting the good fight wherever they are. So really grateful for everyone.

[Music Interlude]     

Beth Thank you so much to Casper ter Kuile for joining us. Sarah, our Outsider Politics today is an obvious topic considering the conversation with Casper because he focuses so beautifully on community. And we got a very tangible manifestation of our community through their holiday cards that I finally got to read. I'm so mad that our P.O. Box is in Paducah and I had to wait so long to get there. But I finally got to read them and it was wonderful.  

Sarah We had that conversation in December. I don't really know how it kind of fell out that the P.O. box started getting shared and people started sending their holiday cards. But, I mean, the last time I went, there were 70 in there. And to hold this big fat stack with your handwriting and your faces and your beautiful children and families and vacations, I just cannot say enough about what an incredible blessing it was to receive these cards from all of you.  

Beth It really was. You all have excellent taste. You are so photogenic.  

Sarah I thought that was pretty.  

Beth So pretty. I loved seeing your handwriting-- just like you said, Sarah. Even many of you would stick a post-it note just saying hi to us with the Christmas card. It was so fun. You are clever and excellent writers. There was so many fun-- I read everybody's long letters about their lives. I know about your dogs and your jobs and your moves and the babies that you all are expecting. I really appreciated how many people included something that was kind of hard about the year. Memorial to someone who's passed away or sickness or just the fact that their lives are consumed by therapy appointments and doctor's visits. It just was very real. And I loved getting to feel that realness in my hands, in my living room.  

Sarah Absolutely. And this is not a competition, but I have to shout out a couple very specific cards that delighted me to no end and I think speak to exactly what you're talking about. First of all, you guys MVP for a couple reasons. Liz Mobley, she does a singles card. We talked about how we love a singles card. We got so many. They were all so good.  

Beth The singles cards made me feel like I really need to up my game on our cards because they were so good. 

Sarah They're good. They can't lean on a cute baby, but you know what I'm saying. Like, they got to really bring it and they did. Liz, you guys, she writes new lyrics to a Christmas song. They are legitimately funny. And here's where she really shines, you guys. She said, "I know Sarah likes a collection," you guys. She sent all from the last five years. We got like all five since she's been doing this. I cannot. I had to take a minute. I had to just stop and just be in it. I sang along to the lyrics. I loved it, liz, to reference the collection and send them all. Because, listen, that's a big deal to say you have extras, to package up the complete collection of extras you have saved and send them to us. Liz understand that I feel it. I get it. Incredible.  

Beth I thought Crystal also deserved a shout out for having her adult children replicate their picture on Santa's lap.  

Sarah This energy you guys. And she puts a picture of all the previous years in a Christmas morning on the card and then the newest one on the back with her adult children sitting with Santa. I cannot. I cannot.  

Beth I noticed that Simba and Betsy's card just felt like an ongoing celebration because there are wedding pictures, there's the baby announcement. It was like someone jumping out of a cake and saying, "We have all the good news over here." I was so happy for them.  

Sarah Also, I have to shout out Abby.  The whole letter was hilarious, but y'all she described her toddler. She said, who has the emotional stability of a sleep deprived pre-teen and the communication skills of a domesticated bear. I've read it to like five people and it's such a good description of a toddler. Oh, my God.  

Beth Well, thank you for sharing your cards with us. It was just the most special surprise. I could never have imagined getting to know you all a little bit better in this way. And it was so much fun.  

Sarah Well, I have one more. I have to squeeze in one more shout out. This is like a level of life as represented by a Christmas card.  It was like the Mount Everest situation. Rachael has four children. She serves in the National Guard. She runs marathons. And then she also writes a letter where she assigns everyone in her family their own special song. Rachel, you're making all the rest of us look very lazy. No, she does. I just was very impressed and I was like that needs a shout out too because that's a lot. These are little kids, too. They're not grown.  

Beth And to the fact that it's not a competition, I equally love the people who just selected a beautiful card and wrote a note inside. It was very consistent with the conversation we had about cards before the holiday. It doesn't matter what it is or how it's done, it's just lovely to get mail from a person to you. It's just really lovely.  

Sarah There were homemade cards. You guys, Nicole sent us baklava because she makes 1000 pieces of homemade baklava to send out on the holidays.  I like the person, too, who was like, "You got a papyrus card. That's how you know I love you." We are sending these cards around to our team. Everyone is going to get to see and read them. I kind of wish I could just pack, like, maybe I'll just send them down the list of Christmas cards so you guys can sit with your own stack and just soak up the love because you are the most incredible community.

[Music Interlude]   

Beth Thank you to Casper. Thank you to all of you. Have such a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it. If you do not, we are holding you in lots of love as well. We'll be back with you again soon. Until then, have the best day available to you.  

[Music Interlude]   

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers: Ali Edwards, Nick and Alysa Vilelli, Amy & Derek Starr Redwine, Amy Whited, Anya Binsacca, Ashley Rene, Ashley Terry, Barry Kaufman, Becca Dorval, Beth Loy, Brandon & Jessica Krausse, Catherine Kniss, Chelsea Gaarder, Christi Matthews, Christian Campbell, Christie Johnson, Christina Quartararo, Connie Peruchietti, Crystal Kemp, The Adair Family, Ellen Burnes, Emily Holladay, Emily Helen Olson, Gabrielle McDonald and Wren, Genny Francis, The Charney Family, Heather Ericacae, Jacque Earp, Jan Feltz, Janice Elliott, Jeff Davis, Jen Ross, Jeremy Sequoia, Jessica Whitehead, Jessica Boro, Jill Bisignano, Julie Haller, Julie Hough, Karin True, Katherine Vollmer, Katie Johnson, Katy Stigers, Kimberley Ludwig, Kristen Redford Hydinger, Kristina Wener, Krysten Wendell, Laura Martin, Laurie LaDow, Lee Chaix McDonough, Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen, Lily McClure, Linda Daniel, Linsey Sauer, Bookshelf on Church, Martha Bronitsky, Megan Hart, Michelle Palacios, Michelle Wood, Morgan McHugh, Onica Ulveling, Paula Bremer, The Villanueva Family, Sabrina Drago, Samantha Chalmers, Sasha Egolf, Sarah Greenup, Sarah Ralph, Shannon Frawley, Stephanie Elms, Susanne Dickinson, The Lebo Family, The Munene Family, Tiffany Hassler, Tracey Puthoff, Veronica Samoulides, Vicki Jackman. 

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