All language subtitles for _Everything_happens_for_a_reason_and_other_lies_I_ve_loved_Kate_Bowler

foreign

there is some medical news that nobody

absolutely nobody is prepared to hear

I certainly wasn't

it was three years ago that I got a call

in my office with the test results of a

recent scan I was 35 and finally living

the life I wanted

I married my high school sweetheart and

had finally gotten pregnant after years

of infertility

and then suddenly we had a Zack

a perfect one-year-old boy slash

dinosaur depending on his mood

and having a Zack suited me perfectly

I had gotten the first job I applied for

in Academia land of a thousand crushed

dreams

and there I was working at my dream job

with my little baby and the man I had

imported from Canada

but a few months before I'd started

feeling pain in my stomach and had gone

to every expert to find out why

no one could tell me

and then out of the blue

some physician's assistant called me at

work to tell me that I had stage four

cancer and that I was going to need to

come to the hospital right away

and all I could think of to say was

but I have a son

I can't end this world can't end it has

just begun

and then I called my husband and he

rushed to find me and I said all the

true things that I have known I said I

have loved you forever I have loved you

forever I am so sorry

please take care of our son

and then as I began to walk to the

hospital I crossed my mind for the first

time

oh

how ironic

I had just written a book called blessed

I'm a historian and an expert in the

idea that good things happen to good

people

I research a form of Christianity

nicknamed the Prosperity Gospel for its

very bold promise that God wants you to

prosper I never considered myself a

follower of the Prosperity Gospel I was

simply an observer

Prosperity Gospel believes that God

wants to reward you if you have the

right kind of faith if you're good and

faithful God will give you health and

wealth and boundless happiness

life is like a boomerang if you're good

good things will always come back to you

think positively speak positively

nothing is impossible if you believe

I got interested in this very American

theology when I was 18 or so and by 25 I

was traveling the country interviewing

its celebrities

I spent a decade talking to

televangelists with spiritual guarantees

for divine money

I interviewed countless mega church

pastors with spectacular hair about how

they live their best lives now

I visited with people in hospital

waiting rooms and plush offices

I held hands with people in wheelchairs

praying to be cured

I earned my reputation as destroyer of

family vacations

for always insisting on being dropped

off at the fanciest mega church in town

if there was a river running through the

sanctuary an eagle flying freely in the

auditorium or an enormous spinning

Golden Globe

I was there

when I first started studying this the

whole idea of being blessed wasn't what

it is today

it was not like it is now an entire line

of hashtag blessed Home Goods

it was not yet a flood of hashtag

blessed vanity license plates and

t-shirts and neon wall art

I had no idea that blast would become

one of the most common cultural cliches

one of the most used hashtags on

Instagram to celebrate barely their

bikini shots as if to say I am so

blessed thank you Jesus for this body

I had not yet fully grasped the way that

the Prosperity Gospel had become the

great civil religion

offering another Transcendent account of

the core of the American dream

rather than worshiping the founding of

America itself

the Prosperity Gospel worshiped

Americans

it deifies and ritualizes their hungers

their hard work and moral fiber

Americans believe in a gospel of

optimism and they are their own proof

but despite telling myself I'm just

studying the stuff I'm nothing like them

when I got my diagnosis I suddenly

understood How Deeply invested I was in

my own Horatio Alger theology

if you live in this culture whether you

are religious or not it is extremely

difficult to avoid falling into the Trap

of believing that virtue and success go

hand in hand

the more I stared down my diagnosis the

more I recognized that I had my own

quiet version of the idea that good

things happen to good people

aren't I good

aren't I special somehow

I have committed zero homicides to date

so why is this happening to me

I wanted God to make me good and to

reward my faith with just a few shining

Awards along the way

okay like a lot of shining Awards

I believe that hardships were only

detours on what I was certain would be

my long long life

is this the case with many of us it's a

mindset that served me well

the gospel of success drove me to

achieve to dream big to abandon fear

it was a mindset that served me well

until it didn't

I was confronted with something I

couldn't manage my way out of

until I found myself saying into the

phone but I have a son

because it was all I could think of to

say

that was the most difficult moment to

accept

the phone call

the walk to the hospital when I realized

that my own personal Prosperity Gospel

had failed me

anything I thought was good or special

about me could not save me my hard work

my personality my humor my perspective

I had to face the fact that my life is

built with Paper Walls

and so is everyone else's

it is a hard thought to accept that we

are all a breath away from a problem

that could destroy something

Irreplaceable or alter Our Lives

completely

we know that in life there are befores

and afters

I am asked all the time to say that I

would never go back or that I've gained

so much in perspective

and I tell them no

before was better

a few months after I got sick I wrote

about this and then I sent it off to an

editor at the New York Times

in retrospect taking one of the most

vulnerable moments of your life and

turning it into an op-ed is not an

amazing way to feel less vulnerable

I got thousands of letters and emails I

still get them every day

I think it is because of the questions I

asked I asked how do you live without

quite so many reasons for the bad things

that happen

I asked would it be better to live

without outrageous formulas for why

people deserve what they get

and what was so funny and so terrible

was of course I thought I asked people

to simmer down on needing an explanation

for the bad things that happened so what

did thousands of readers do

yeah they wrote to defend the idea that

there had to be a reason for what

happened to me and they really want me

to understand the reason

people want me to reassure them that my

cancer is all part of a plan

a few letters even suggests that it was

God's plan that I get cancer so I could

help people by writing about it

people are certain it is a test of my

character or proof of something terrible

I've done

they want me to know without a doubt

that there is a hidden logic to this

seeming chaos

they tell my husband while I'm still in

the hospital that everything happens for

a reason and then stammer awkwardly when

he says

I'd love to hear it

I'd love to hear the reason my wife is

dying

and I get it

we all want reasons we want formulas to

predict whether our hard work will pay

off

whether our love and support will always

make our partners happy and our kids

love us

we want to live in a world in which not

one ounce of our hard work or our pain

or our deepest hopes will be for nothing

we want to live in a world in which

nothing is lost

but what I have learned

in living with stage four cancer is that

there is no easy correlation between how

hard I try

and the length of my life

in the last three years I've experienced

more pain and Trauma than I ever thought

I could survive

I realized the other day that I've had

so many abdominal surgeries that I'm on

my fifth belly button and this last one

is my least favorite

but at the same time I've experienced

love so much love

I find hard to explain

the other day I was reading the findings

of the near-death experience Research

Foundation and yes there is such a thing

people were interviewed about their

brushes with death and all kinds of

circumstances car accidents labor and

delivery suicides and many reported the

same odd thing

love

I'm sure I would have ignored it if it

hadn't reminded me of something I'd

experienced something I felt

uncomfortable telling anyone

that when I was sure that I was going to

die I didn't feel angry

I felt loved

it was one of the most surreal things

I've experienced in a time in which I

should have felt abandoned by God

I was not reduced to ashes

I felt like I was floating

floating on the love and prayers of all

those who hummed around me like worker

bees bringing me notes and socks and

flowers and quilts embroidered with

words of encouragement

but when they sat beside me

my hand in their hands my own suffering

began to feel like it had revealed to me

the suffering of others

I was entering a world of people just

like me

people stumbling around in the debris of

dreams they thought they were entitled

to

and plans they didn't realize they had

made

it was a feeling of being more connected

somehow with other people experiencing

the same situation

and that feeling stayed with me for

months

in fact I'd grown so accustomed to it

that I started to panic at the prospect

of losing it so I began to ask friends

theologians historians nuns I liked what

am I going to do when That Loving

Feeling is gone

and they knew exactly what I was talking

about because they'd either experienced

it themselves or they'd read about it in

great works of Christian Theology and

they said yeah

it'll go

the feelings will go

and there will be no formula for how to

get it back

but they offered me this little piece of

reassurance and I clung to it

they said when the feelings recede like

the tides

they will leave an imprint

and they do

and it is not proof of anything

and it is nothing to boast about it was

just a gift so I can't respond to the

thousands of emails I get with my own

five-step plan to Divine health and

magical floating feelings

I see that the world is jolted by events

that are wonderful and terrible gorgeous

and tragic

I can't reconcile the contradiction

except that I am beginning to believe

that these opposites do not cancel each

other out

life is so beautiful

and life is so hard

today I am doing quite well

the immunotherapy drugs appear to be

working and we are watching and waiting

with scans

I hope I will live a long time

I hope I will live long enough to

embarrass my son

and to watch my husband lose his

beautiful hair

and I think I might

but I am learning to live

and to love

without counting the cost

without reasons and assurances that

nothing will be lost

life will break your heart

and life may take everything you have

and everything you hope for

but there is one kind of Prosperity

Gospel that I believe in

I believe that in the Darkness even

there

will be Beauty

and there will be love and every now and

then it will feel like more than enough

thank you

[Applause]