Leslie Leyland Fields on Creating Radiant Moments: Discovering Light in the Advent Season and Love in the Christmas Holidays

0:00 Welcome to the a World of Difference podcast. I'm Lori Adams Brown, and this is a podcast for those who are different and want to make a difference. I know that the holidays can be a happy time, and it can also be a difficult time. And if this time of year reminds you of any sort of loss of a loved one or friend or any sort of abuse or trauma that you have walked through and sort of difficulty, you are not alone. December 26 for my family is a very difficult day because that is the day we lost good friends in the tsunami and Banda ache, Indonesia. And so every year on December 26, we pause. And if you're one of those people listening that the holidays are complicated, just want you to know that you are in good company here.

0:47 And I also want to let you know that it's okay to reach out to someone who can help you walk through that. I've had to have professionals help me walk through in therapy some difficult moments in my own life, and I want to extend an offer to you through betterhelp because I have a therapist through betterhelp that's been really impactful in my life. As we continue to work through some difficult things that I experienced on December 21, 2020 and in the months leading up to that and some months after that, and that experience of walking through spiritual abuse and trauma in a religious environment is something I've needed a really strong professional to help me walk through. And it has made a huge impact on me. It's made a huge difference. So I'm happy to announce that the sponsor of this podcast is betterhelp and would extend this offer to you today. If you go to WW dot betterhelp.com difference, you can get 10% off your first month of therapy.

1:46 There's also classes, group therapy that you can sit in on and learn more and hear from other people and their perspective of what they're walking through, which is really valuable. So once again, if this is a very difficult time of year and you're feeling down, you're having some difficult thoughts, you're feeling stuck, and you're wanting somebody to help you walk through that, there is an opportunity for you to flourish. And I want you to be somebody who gives yourself the gift of flourishing because you matter and you are different in a very special way. And your life and your presence here makes a difference for all of us. So give yourself the gift of healing and walking through therapy today by going to www.betterhelp.com difference.

2:28 To get 10% off your first month, you welcome to our special Christmas Advent episode where we have someone who lives very close to the North Pole. On the show Today we have Leslie Leyland Fields. Leslie is an international teacher, speaker, and award winning author of 14 books, including your story matters, the Wonder Years, and crossing the Waters, which won a Christianity Today Book award in christian living. Since 2013, she's been leading the Harvester Island Writers workshop on her family's island in Alaska with guest writers that you may have heard of like Anne Voskamp, Philip Yancey, and many others that you would know. Leslie's other books include surviving the island of Grace, forgiving our fathers and mothers, and the Spirit of Food, which won three best book of 2010 awards. Her books have been translated into nine languages and her essays have appeared in publications including Christianity Today, books and culture, belief net, theatlantic, Orion, best essays, and many more, including earning her a number of evangelical press awards. Leslie has three graduate degrees in english journalism and an MFA in creative nonfiction, and has taught extensively, including being a founding faculty member of Seattle Pacific University's MFA program. She leads faith and writing retreats around the world and directs an online community in the craft and art of spiritual memoir. She's also

4:00 professional audio narrator, contributing regularly to the popular our American Stories radio network and audio recording books of the Bible for herbible.org. And I also just really enjoyed interviewing her today about her advent book that if you have not seen it, has a beautiful cover. And I've really enjoyed reading the different selections in the book, different types of reading from poetry to other just writings that relate to advent and finding a new way of exploring the season through her latest book. And really happy to have her on the show today talking not only about life in Alaska and writing and world travels, but also just to hear her experience about what Christmas means to her. I know many of you around the world have different ways of celebrating Christmas, different traditions that mean different things to you and how you celebrate. But we have her on the show today talking about her latest advent book, radiant birth. Advent readings for a bright season. So a very warm welcome from a very cold place to our friend Leslie Leyland Fields. Hi Leslie, it's so great to have you on the world of difference podcast today, all the way from Alaska. Thank you for having me. And is the sun shining down there in California?

5:28 We are having a sunshiny day. We have a lot of those here in the Bay area, I must say. How about you? Well, we have snow and snow is beautiful and we have clouds. The only thing if I could wish, I'd wish for a little more sun, but it's a good day. I'm sure it is. How many hours of sunshine do you get in December this time of year? It is of course our darkest month. And we get six or 7 hours of light. So not bad. I'm in southern Alaska. If you're in northern Alaska, you get like zero to one or two. I can't imagine it must really lead toward people feeling a lot of sadness or even some depression at times. Because I think you need sunshine to feel happy at some level, don't you? Oh, absolutely. It's really true. Yeah. There's just a lot of struggle through the dark season here up north. Yes. Yeah. That's hard. Well, I know that probably some of the stuff we're going to talk about today is about the difference between darkness and light. And the things that we can talk about around Christmas time, which are pretty beautiful. And speaking of beautiful, I have the COVID of your book right in front of me. And this book is such a beautiful cover. A radiant birth, advent readings for a bright season. It's such a great time of year to think through the advent time. We have listeners who practice advent all around the world. And some that

7:00 maybe this word is new for them because they are different faith backgrounds. But I'd love to know what inspired you to write this book, this very unique advent book. Was there a specific experience or moment that sparked your idea for this? Know, I'd like to say there was, but no other than a friend saying to me, you know, Leslie, would you like to do an advent book together with me? And this is a good friend, Paul Willis, who's my co editor here. And we share similar sensibilities. And I thought this would be a wonderful project. So we joined together on this book. I joined him because I needed it. I needed the light. I need radiance in this dark time of the year.

7:56 Living in Alaska, as we just said, there's a lot of darkness and cold and winter. And I needed to remind kind of my heart and my soul about a source of light that's more than the light in the sky that we only see for a few hours a day. Yeah, I love that. And it can be a challenge in the darkest of times, whether literally or figuratively, to remind ourselves about light and advent. It really carries a deep significance for many people. And so you selected readings and themes for this advent book, but how did you approach that? What was your process there? Yeah, and our process is there are a lot of books out there for advent and for Christmas and a lot of them fall into what we would call devotionals. And there are many beautiful ones. I have a whole shelf of them myself. But Paul and I really wanted this book to not be another devotional. We wanted it to be a collection of readings, literary readings, of poems and stories and meditations that would not tell you what to think or tell you how to feel about the season, but would instead sort of crack it open so that you can feel your own feelings and

9:30 have your own profound moments and experiences and encounters with Jesus, with the birth of Jesus and all that that know into the world. That's beautiful. There are so many people that listen to this podcast, a particular segment of listeners that have experienced some maybe trauma in a religious environment or even spiritual abuse, where they've been in worship experiences, or even behind closed doors with maybe a religious leader or a pastor in an office where they felt coerced to feel something, or coerced to do something. And religion and spirituality in the wrong hands can be used to coerce. And it is a beautiful thing to allow people to discover the mystery and put some things out there that are even some writings from even church fathers and mothers that go way back and kind of ground us into a faith tradition that's long and beautiful. As you were writing this book, did anything in particular stand out to you in the writing of it, in the selections? That was one of your favorites, or just a special one for you? Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask me that, because I was afraid, because I said, how do I choose? I mean, we chose all of these readings because each one was

11:02 striking in its own way. They're striking individually, and then you put them together into this collection, and I've just been rereading it myself. So, Lori, the process is really interesting. When Paul and I were compiling this book, the process is that we just go out and read and gather as many pieces of beautiful writing that we can all around this season, which means, of course, we're overwhelmed by all of the richness and the goodness. But then to start to put it together in some kind of pattern or some kind of. So what we chose was kind of a three part process. And the first section of the book is called Jesus Born in Bethlehem. And this goes to the historical facts of this man, God man, I believe, who was born in this little tiny town in the Middle east. And it's all around that event, Jesus born in Bethlehem. And there's some incredible poems that sort of open that up. The wonder of this whole idea of God, the God of the universe

12:36 taking on human flesh and to come in the form of a baby, like the most powerful divine being, deciding to become a newborn, the most helpless of creatures possible. So there's all the wonder and mystery and beauty of that in Jesus born in Bethlehem. And then the next section is Jesus born in us. And that question of, okay, so know, baby born into the world, how does that change us? How does that make a difference in us personally? So it's stories and poems that kind of open up that. Again, I love your word, mystery, that open up that mystery and kind of invite us into that experience. What does that look like? What does that feel like?

13:29 And then the last section is, and maybe this is my favorite section, Jesus in us for the world. Jesus in us for the world. And the idea is, know, God came and took on human flesh to be with us, not just for our good and our benefit and our peace and our joy, but for the sake of the world, so that we could be empowered to love others, to reach out to others and to bring that peace and that love and that radiance, that radiance out into the world around us. So that's what Paul and I were looking for, were pieces that really just cracked all of that open so we could experience kind of that threefold process, each one of us. Beautiful. And I can just hear the passion in your voice of what it must have been like to read through all those readings. I mean, there's no shortage of things written on Christmas and advent, is there? But you were digging through a lot of that and making choices and carefully choosing which ones go into your book. How do you hope readers will kind of engage with your book during this Advent season?

14:50 And what do you sort of aim for? What are you hoping it will have as, like, an impact on them spiritually? Yeah. The book is set up to be a series of readings that walk you through day by day, through the whole season of Advent, which is about 40 days. So it's set up so that each day there's a reading and it's only a few pages. It doesn't have to take a lot of time. Many of the poems are just short. But what a poem does, it sort of takes you from TikTok time, from Kronos time. It drops you into Cairo's time, right where there is no TikTok. It's sort of, you just feel like you're falling into timelessness. So people can use the book that way, and many people are using it that way. Just the daily readings, I am not regimented like that. So my favorite thing to do, and this is what I'm doing, is I just pick it up and I open it up until I come to something. Oh, I'm going to read this piece Monday, Thursday, or I want to read this poem by Jeannie Murray Walker. And so I just sort of pick it up and turn to the piece that I think that maybe I need that very day. So for readers, I'm hoping that they will do some

16:25 of both. And I want this journey as we divided the book into these three sections. And I'm hoping that people will kind of follow that movement so that this radiance doesn't go away when the calendar we tear off December and we tear off January. And I want this radiance. I'm hoping that it will be birthed inside of us and it will go beyond the immediate season till it becomes part of us. Just the wonder and the mystery and the beauty of a God who loves us so much that he wanted to be with us in all things, everywhere and every time. Yeah. So beautiful. And there's also no shortage of things that have been written or spoken or even, I guess, sung about with Christmas, about how we can get so lost in the busyness of the season that we forget to be still and meditate on what this is all about. And it can get quite busy, especially for families listening with kids. You've got school, Christmas parties, and you've got church sometimes does so many events, you don't have time to breathe. And you're volunteering so

17:55 much in some of the burnout cultures of certain churches. And for any people who are on a staff at a Church, it's really hard to celebrate and take time. But I was wondering for you, as you think about people reading this book, or maybe for yourself personally, are there any particular traditions or practices you have found helpful? Or may you would suggest to readers to enhance their experience of advent along with reading the book? I think you're so right. That. Stillness and that quiet is really hard to find. I have several pieces in here. One of them is no silent night. And I have six children. I raised six children. They're all grown. And I have grandchildren now.

18:40 But I remember the Christmas, and I've written about that, such a frantic time. And I don't think there's joy in that busyness. There's joy in that giving to others, serving others. There's a lot of joy to be had in that, and that's part of the blessing of the season. But at the same time, if we ourselves are not allowing ourselves to just kind of sit in the radiance of God's love for us, which is not dependent on what we do and is not dependent on how much we give and how much we serve. God loves us simply for who we are. He loves us because he made us. He loves us and he came to be with us just because he wants to be with us. I think we need to just stop. And if we can, each day a few moments, that is wonderful and so good. I couldn't do that when all six of my children were at home. So it's whenever I could find that quiet time, it might be I was in the car waiting to pick up my kids from school, but I would bring a book with me and I would just take those five minutes, and again, five minutes of that quiet five minutes around a beautiful poem

20:12 can suddenly empty. It can suddenly open up into what feels like timelessness. And just this moment again, of wonder, of worship, of gratitude. And that's what feeds us and that's what keeps us going. So everybody take some quiet moments for yourself. Be sure and do that. And I hope you'll do that even with this book, because it's not going to tell you again how to feel. It's just going to break through that busyness and that noise. It's going to give you a few quiet moments with the God who loves you. Yeah. It's so hard.

21:03 It takes a lot of intentionality. My therapist told me the past couple of weeks we've been working on self care, and I live in Silicon Valley, and I'm a mom of three teenagers, and I'm a podcast. And it's, know, we're busy people. And so she has this thing where she's like, I know if I give you things that last too long, you're probably not going to implement them in your life. I'm like, yes, that was a good call. But she's like, if you could just do this thing and it's just called be. And even if you're sitting in your office chair, I just want you to sit there, even just 10 seconds, and don't look at anything, don't read anything. Just be like, try to empty any thoughts in your head just because your body needs to just calm. And I think that I always feel like as a mom, ever since. I mean, my oldest is now 19, almost 20. I think about his first Christmas up until now, and Christmas just changed all of a sudden.

21:59 When I had kids, it got busy, it was different. And finding the time to be still and know that God is God and I'm God's child and I'm loved. Those are such rare and special moments. And I do find that sometimes authors and writers can put together words and books like advent devotionals or a book like yours or radiant birth, and help give us a fresh perspective in a new way. And so, yeah, I agree. Sometimes even a sentence that you could repeat. My therapist told me this great sort of sentence she often repeats when she's meditating. And it's like, spirit, I'm one with you and loved, you know, just a little like breath prayer. I had a spiritual director when my kids were little and I was living in Indonesia. And she's like, you don't have time for long devotionals. She's like, I'm going to send you some breast prayers to just pray. So, yeah, I'm glad that you address those busy people because that's just the reality of our world. And as you are speaking of busy, you are not only an author, but you also coach authors and you help people to write their story, and you have people joining you for that. And so I'd love to know a little more about how you approach the writing process, maybe specifically with this book or any book. Like, what is your philosophy of writing, and how do you explain that to people who are thinking about writing? That is a really big question. Anywhere you want to take that.

23:30 But thank you for asking it. We're all wired a bit differently, right? So we all would probably approach writing differently. What I found is that many people want to write or know they have a story to tell, and they want to tell it, they need to tell it. But how? It's overwhelming. Just even the thought of a book, it becomes this really heavy weight that people are often carrying around on their shoulders. And I've heard so many times, someone will say, oh. People say to me, oh, you have to write a book. Because I've lived an extraordinary life, and I believe that we've all lived extraordinary lives, and I think everybody should write.

24:23 And so my starting point is first to say, you can do it. Everybody can do it. Anybody can do it. Because good writing is not actually about writing. It's not about the words on the page. It's about opening our heart. It's about seeing the story that we're living. And once our eyes get open to the remarkable stories that we are, each of us, living, oh, my goodness, it's like opening a dam and stories pour onto the page. And that's my goal as a coach, is to empower people to see past their fears, past the voices in their head and the voices in their heart and the voices in their past that tell them, you can't write or you're this kind of person, or you can't tell that story, or we will disown you. All of these voices, right? We carry them. So my first job is to silence those voices and then help people discover, oh, my goodness. Look at this incredible story that you are living.

25:52 Let's start getting it down on the page. That's incredible. I love that. So inspiring. And I'm sure that's the reason people love to be coached by you in terms of writing, because I think everybody. I wholeheartedly agree. I think people are fascinating. I've never met a single person that I thought, oh, you have nothing for me to learn from. Everybody has so much unique perspective. I do training, and I just have been training this leadership summit at the headquarters of the tech company where I work. And as I was researching for some of it, I was listening to the Stanford graduate School of Business professor, and he was talking with someone, and they said, the way we listen is so unique to us because the filters of our brains are based on our own narratives and our experiences. And so when we listen, we listen through those filters of our own life, which is as unique for every human as our fingerprint.

26:48 And it was fascinating. Like, we're so fascinating, our fingerprints are different. How we listen is so unique to us. And, of course, how we would write or express our story, our unique story would be really different. It's kind of why I started this podcast. I love talking with people and our differences, and I think we make a difference better together. Right. So, as you've been coaching and writing and helping people learn to write their story, do you see common pitfalls that people fall into, common obstacles, maybe, that you're helping people overcome on a regular basis as a writer coach? Yes, absolutely. One really common obstacle is the idea that I'm just living an ordinary life. I didn't run with the hell's angels and then get converted, and now I dig wells for orphanages in Africa. You think, okay, that's a story, okay, that your story matters. But me, I'm a soccer mom. I shop at Walmart. I live in Okie Fenoki, Florida. And I just have an ordinary life.

27:52 But I really want to shift people's lens to not just the outer story that we're all living, an outer story where we live, where we work, the dinner that we fix at night, all of those things, but we're all living a very deep inner story and everyone has a profound inner story. And so one of my main goals as a writing coach is to help people find that inner story that twines through their life right back from their earliest memory. And when people start to tap into that, they realize, oh, wow, I am a rather remarkable person. I love that. That's incredible.

28:51 Yeah. And I'm sure you get to hear all kinds of fascinating things from where you sit and being able to coach so many people. If someone's thinking, because I know we're listening to this podcast here at the end of the year, it's Christmas time, and then we're headed into New Year's resolutions. If somebody's thinking exactly what you mentioned, people keep saying, you should write a book, you should write a book. And they're feeling this kind of urging, but they don't really know where to start. What's your advice to them on how to start? Well, I want to say sign up for my course. Yes, it's okay to plug your course. The other thing is something that's maybe easier and immediate is a couple of books ago, I have a book. Your story matters, and that book will walk you through this writing process that anybody can do. And I don't mean yes, it's simple. It's simple enough that anybody can do it. And yet the profundity is in the simplicity of the process. And when something is simpler, people are a lot more likely to do it. I'm not going to lay 25 rules on you. I'm going to just open up this path that is so doable and it's going to enable you to reach into that inner story and you're going to be amazed at what you can do. That's awesome.

30:20 I love that. Yeah. Just helping free people up and serve them as you're trying to help their stories be born. There's a lot of people online that when their book gets published, they'll treat it like a baby and have these cute little pictures on instagram. It's a girl. Yeah. There is an element of it that feels like birthing something new into the world. And we need our doulas and we need our nurses and doctors to help us give birth to baby. And we need sometimes coaches and people like you who walk people through the process and just to sit, cheer us on and be like, you can do this. So thank you for that role that you play because it helps us to get to read these exciting stories as readers as well. So I want to sort of finish out here with just some of your thoughts around the Christmas season. I know you raised six children. Now you have grandchildren. Do you have any favorite Christmas traditions? I mean, I think our stereotype is Alaska always gets a white Christmas. I'm not sure if that's true.

31:18 But what do you do at Christmas time? What's your favorite things? Yeah, so one of my favorite things is something that I started, boy, I'm going to say, at least 25 years ago, and that is we have this special Christmas Eve dinner. We often go to church on Christmas Eve. We have this beautiful candlelight service, and that's very common in my faith tradition. I think everybody looks forward to that, especially the kids. Like what fire in church we can have in church, right? But it's so beautiful. And we sing silent night, and we hold our candles up in the dark in church. It's really beautiful. And then we come home after that and we have this meal. And I've sort of created it. So it's actually pigs in a blanket, but we call it babes and swaddling clothes. So you take little sausages and you wrap them in, like, biscuit dough. So we have a whole sheet of babes and swaddling clothes. And then we have hay and straw.

32:27 So we have this meal of. It's green fettuccine and whole wheat. So it looks like hay and straw. Just very simple hay and straw. And then we have a coleslaw that I call Mary and Joseph's law. It's green and purple cabbage. And we eat with the lights off and with candles. So we imagine ourselves in the stable where Jesus was born. And it's a simple meal. And that's the idea, right? It's a simple meal. And I think of all our family traditions, that is probably my kids and my very favorite one. I love that. So unique to your family and something you came up just with all of you, that's obviously going to be special memories, even with the grandchildren. And some of the best family traditions are ones like that, that are just super special and unique to each family. And traditions really do draw family together and ground you. My family of origin, as well as the family where I'm the mom. We've lived in a lot of countries, and something that's always grounded us has been those traditions that we have carried with us and helps us know that if everything might be a little chaotic out there, but we're okay when we're still doing the thing we always do this time of year kind of thing.

33:47 So it's really special. As we kind of finish up here, I wanted to give you a chance to sort of give us some of your imagination a little bit, because I know as a writer, you have this creativity, a part of yourself, and obviously your tradition of food is showing your creative style as well. But sometimes we get so stuck in our ruts of living life, living this grind. And Christmas time can sometimes be a time, at least here in the United States, where we take Christmas day off. Sometimes people get Christmas eve off or they're lucky a little bit more.

34:27 And in other countries around the world where there is enough christians, sometimes people will get that holiday off as well. But as we're thinking about time off at the end of the year and spending time with family, as you've seen some shifts in our world as a grandma, and you look back to your childhood and look forward to the world your grandchildren are going to be living in, what is some of your imagination of what you hope for people as they continue to love one another and live out the love of God in their communities? What is something you hope to see in your grandkids generation? I haven't told any of my backstory. I grew up without Christmas. My family was very poor, and we had no money, nor did we know about Jesus, the coming of God to be with us. I didn't know about that until later.

35:23 So I came from a place of no celebration and no joy and no traditions. And so that has made my own journey, especially as a mother and now as a grandmother, so much more thoughtful and so much more intentional. And that Christmas Eve dinner that I just described, that was from deciding, I want to start some traditions. I want to start some things that anchor our family. And there's no way that I want to prescribe to anybody what to do, what to say, what to think, how to celebrate.

36:08 But my vision and my desire and my hope is that one four letter word that you already said, and that is love. And that is to have love for one another and that our love for one another, that it would be so full within our families, but that it would spread outward from our families. I don't think that our love is intended to be insular, that it's intended to bind us together just to our families. I think it's to bind us together so that then we are strengthened and filled, to go out into the world, to go out into the world and to take this radiant light that's been born within us and to go out into the places where it's dark and where it's cold and where it's lonely and for us to grow out in love and serve together. And that is my joy. That is my vision. That is my hope. And I see my children and my grandchildren beginning to do that within their own families. So I am so thankful.

37:26 So beautiful, and I'm just so thrilled for you that you get to see that joy and hope fulfilled already. What a treasure and a gift. And I do hope that you and your families have a very special Christmas this year. I would love for you to let our audience know how they can find you in more of your writing. And if they want to sign up for coaching with you as well. Just let people know how they can find you. Yeah, so I have a website and it's just my name, so that's really easy. Leslie leylandfields.com and everything is on there, including photos of Alaska and fishing. We are commercial fishermen in the summer and we live out in the wilderness, so there's a lot going on in my life, but most of it is on the website.

38:19 So please go there and visit and say hello. Yeah, definitely hope people do that from all around the world. Such a special thing to be coached by you. You've written a couple of really great books that people have read and then also helping people and give birth to their own story in written form. So thank you for the work that you do, and we're going to have you continue the conversation with our difference makers in our other community. And I'll ask you another question there for the paid community. But for now, thank you so much for being on today. I wish you, Leslie, and your whole family a very merry Christmas. Thank you, Lori, and you as well. And to everyone who's listening well, as. You are sitting either in a warm or a cold or somewhere in between plays listening to this Christmas Advent podcast, I hope that it has brought some warmth and some light into your heart and your mind and your spirit today. As you heard Leslie describe her experience of writing this book, radiant birth, and also collecting all the writings that she read through to prepare for bringing all these writings together in this book, which, as she said, was not intended to tell people what to think or to put thoughts in people's heads, to sway them in a particular direction, but just to offer you the thoughts and the perspectives of the different writers who are writing about this advent season throughout the years. And I hope that you

39:50 will get your hands on this book. It's once again a beautiful cover and it has brought a lot of light into my life. A very special radiance this time of year, which for those of us who are in North America, I'm in northern California, which is about as north as I feel free to live. Being a tropical person myself and used to consistent amount of light all year round. As we get closer to the winter solstice, I'm always feeling the cold darkness and the longer, darker days in a very embodied way. And also just my own experience of the winter solstice was three years ago at this .1 of the darkest days of my life, of experiencing a very spiritually abusive environment in the office where two pastors kind of really mobbed me and ambushed me and berated me with questions.

40:42 And it was an especially dark day of December 21 and 2020 for me. And so every year I celebrate my freedom day and look for the light, remember that moment and the light that God gave me in the middle of that darkness. And also knowing that some of us experiencing this Christmas season are experiencing darkness, whether you've walked through spiritual abuse or emotional abuse or abuse of any kind, or also whether you are sitting right now in a place where peace does not reign, I know that many of our friends, including I have friends who are palestinian Christians from Bethlehem. And Bethlehem is not what it has been in years past this year. And even the Christmas celebrations that are public have been canceled because of the situation there. And there is a darkness that is really heavy in the place where Jesus was born and where we worldwide think about this city every year. And there is a darkness and a heaviness where we sing about joy and peace. And this year, it's not as easily or readily available to many of us, especially those in this part of the world that we are so mindful about right now. And I also am just mindful of those of you who have lost a loved one very recently. We have friends of our family, a beloved mother that passed away, a friend of my husband's

42:13 where he was growing up in Thailand that passed away recently. I know many of you have lost loved ones this time of year, in past years, and this is a reminder of that loss. Or many of you are walking through difficult situations, such as a surprising health diagnosis in this season. And Christmas is not what it was in years past. And maybe you also are celebrating Hanukkah this time of year. And this has also been a time of loss and mourning and grief because of what your family has gone through, or maybe what through relatives have been going through in Israel at the moment. I know there are many perspectives, many tragedies, many losses that can come at a time of year where you're expecting joy and hope and peace and light, and if you're needing just to be reminded of that, I do really encourage you to pick up this book, radiant birth, because it's not one person's perspective.

43:07 It's many people's writings throughout time that have shown us where the light is and where the radiance iS. And even in the darkest of days, my experience is that if we look for the light, we will find it, and it will somehow bring us comfort and peace in a very embodied way. And so whether you're needing to take a walk outside in know one or 2 hours, where you experience light in northern Alaska right now, or whether you're blessed to be in the tropical warm zones of the world, experiencing a lot of sunshine, or particularly in the southern hemisphere where you're getting a lot of sunshine these days, I hope that wherever you are, that you will look for that light and the radiance, and that you will just allow it to soak into your eyes and into your body and into your soul in ways that give you just a moment of comfort and peace when the world seems to be a little bit out of control. And I know that many of you are in the zones of the world where you're making a difference and trying to bring healing and peace, especially those of you who are working in the area of Israel and Gaza right now. And I just thank you for the great work that you do and hope that you are also finding ways to experience light in that particular part of the world, especially when the whole world's eyes are on this location right now. And I pray that you find peace very soon for your loved ones and your friends that you are working with and trying to bring hope to there. We know that many decision

44:38 makers around the world are having to make hard calls, both politically and in the business world, the education world, the nonprofit world. And for those of you who are doing that, we also hope that you are looking for the light and making decisions based on the light, because the darkness can sometimes feel like it's overcoming us, or we don't feel we have good choices that we can make. So, once again, all the more reason to pick up this book and to just dig into the words of others throughout time. I'm so appreciative of Leslie and the work that she's done in this book, the way she's compiled these, the way she did so much research and reading to bring it together in this form, and it's such a gift to us. And to the world, and along with many of her other writings and other books. Check out her other books I mentioned in the intro. She is an award winning author and her books have really meant a lot to many people.

45:29 She's written 14 books, not just this one. So check out her other books as well and stay tuned. Those of you who are in our difference maker community because we are going to be dropping a special exclusive episode for you where she goes into a little more deeper about her experiences around the world. She has some kind of wild tales in there of things that she's experienced, both just her and her husband and as a family raising her six kids and choices they have made to make travel a priority and the educational nature of travel itself. So we dig a little deeper with her in our difference maker community. So we're releasing an exclusive episode for you there. And if you are not yet a part of our difference maker community, this is a very warm welcome for you to join. Maybe give yourself a Christmas gift this year. It's only $5 a month to join at our most basic level and you can cancel anytime. But just yeah, try us out for a month. There's tons of exclusive episodes in there and other content. You get to vote on some upcoming episodes. If you are interested in helping us plan for 2024 and want to see some particular topics covered, you can go in there and vote in our upcoming poll. And yeah, we'd love to have you in there to dig a little deeper with some of our guests where we go into these exclusive episodes with them. So that's www.patreon.com a worldofdifference once again, that is www. Dot Patreon comaworldofdifference where you can join for as little as a cup of your favorite

46:59 latte at your local coffee shop. $5 for a whole month of exclusive content and we'd love for you to join us today to go a little bit deeper with us there. Once again, thank you for all of you who are making a difference around the world, happy holidays to those of you that celebrate, whether it's Hanukah or Christmas, and of course upcoming New Year's Eve celebrations all around the world. So we are so grateful for each of you that listen, this means so much to me that you would listen and dig in deeper with us to make a difference. And I just want to say, may you have peace, hope and light in your life wherever you're listening to this podcast and keep making