In this engaging conversation, Kelly Leonard speaks with the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde about her experiences as a leader, the nature of courage, and the lessons learned through parenting, grief, and improvisation. They explore the importance of speaking truth to power, the challenges of navigating loss, and the role of risk in personal growth. Budde emphasizes the need for safe spaces for open dialogue and the significance of embracing the journey of life, rather than focusing solely on outcomes. 

You write in the book that becoming a parent gave you a masterclass in courage. I agree with that 1000%. 

“I have yet to meet a parent who doesn’t, right? I mean, we watch our kids from the time they are the smallest of infants every day doing something that they’ve never done before. And also facing into things that for them in their world are just enormous. And, in fact, they are enormous for us to watch. And we watch them and we support as best we can, but they are their own beings going off into the horizons that are set before them and it’s awe-inspiring. One of the reasons I wanted to write the book was to underscore for young people that they know a lot about this already, right?  They know this because it is the terrain of growing up as a human being.”

You also talk about loss and grief and the things that we can discover about ourselves and the world in light of those sadnesses. 

“It’s hard to talk about what we learn through suffering because who wants to suffer? None of us want to suffer. And if we could spare one another the suffering that we endure, we would do it. We’d walk over hot coals to spare our loved ones what they must go through. And so it takes a certain amount of care and timing, I think, to touch that tender space. But once you’re in the suffering club, and you name it, it’s almost like a secret handshake. You understand. And then you can also understand how people still get up in the morning and go about their lives, even though they’re carrying whatever it is they’re carrying, right? And the heroism of that, the cost of it and the sense of responsibility for it, the days you can’t do it and so somebody carries it for you. I mean, all of those things. And to acknowledge that as the terrain of our humanity that we will never fully avoid. And while we would never choose it, it does have priceless lessons to teach us, and it makes us more of who we are.” 

You have a chapter on deciding to go and then one on deciding to stay. And that stay chapter made me think of the improv phrase, ‘Play the scene you’re in, not the scene you want to be in,” 

“That’s the commonality, which is the crisis moments where we actually come to a decision. And even what you’re describing, and certainly in my experience, there’s a big part of me, of us, that wants nothing more than to get out of here, to get out, to leave. And yet, again, the call, the sense of playing the scene that you’re in, to use that great phrase from improv, is actually where you belong. And then the learning, and I think this is important: it’s not to stay the same. It’s not to stay and do nothing. It’s a call to stay and go deeper or to become a new version of who you are in this place.” 

Photo Credit: Magnus Aronson