'We can’t counter what we aren’t willing to weigh.'

5 questions for writer and neighbor Shannan Martin

Thanks for commenting, sharing, and subscribing. This community of searching, insightful readers is a counterweight to the sadness I feel about so many things in the world. What a gift you are in a hard season.

In this time of such weighty headlines, is the answer to turn to lightness? Maybe. Maybe sometimes an hour or two eating artificial sugar and watching scripted reality is what the body needs to feel a sense of soothing control and numbness. But more often, for me at least, the answer to weight is something equally real and demanding of my attention, but is quieter—not the scream of headlines of war, but the soft hand on an elder’s shoulder at my dad’s memory care community. The bombs are real; so are the soft hands. I need to take it all in, at least some of all of it each day, if I am to mentally and spiritually survive this time. You, too?

Then Shannan Martin has written a book that may support you in that quest: Counterweights: An Essential Practice for Holding Hope in a Heavy World. Shannan’s writing sits at the intersection of so many things I love: humility, outrage, tenderness, neighborliness, conviction… She is a mother, a server, a truth teller, an unapologetic zealot about the beauty of the sky and even a beginner’s garden plot. I adore her. I think you will, too…

Courtney Martin: I love the idea of counterweights -- it really feels like it shares territory with Ross Gay’s delights and my own insistence on weird, small projects. In times like these, how do you distinguish the difference between a counterweight and a distraction? Or is distraction in times like these a-okay?

Shannan Martin: Well, I love you for drawing that comparison. I found Ross through Book of Delights when I was in the early dreaming stages of Counterweights and fell in love with his work. I feel a kinship with him as a fellow writer who sees the world most clearly in a backyard garden. No surprise, I ended up quoting him in the final pages of the book, “Joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die.”

His words echo the central ethos of Counterweights and the counterweights practice, where we get serious about naming both the things weighing us down and the things that help to lift us a little higher off the ground.

We can’t counter what we aren’t willing to weigh.

But these counterweights are not about distracting us from the pain and complication that arrive as part of the human project. Rather, they’re a reminder that while life comes with loss, it also comes with little bites of levity along the way. We get it all. I believe it’s a danger to elevate delights over challenges. Our task is to learn how to receive – and carry – everything life delivers. These offerings make up our particular lives, which means all of them deserve our sacred attention.

To your last point, it’s easy to constantly feel torn between the harrows of this present world and the things we still dearly love. Counterweights (the book and the practice) remind us they coexist – we don’t have to choose. However, we have a duty to each other that requires hope. There’s a time for leaning into rest, beauty, or joy, not as a distraction but because our wholeness demands it. We’ll never build a better world if we can’t remember why we love it in the first place.

You write about neighborliness so beautifully. Made me wonder -- have you ever had a neighbor you really struggled with, personality-wise, and what did you do to get to grace? (I was so moved by one of the lines in the book: “Grace does not equal access.”)

Living as neighbors means we all sow and reap belonging, no matter what. It’s not contingent upon personalities that vibe well. That’s the beauty and the challenge – we’re all just sort of flung together, left to deal with each other. I deeply wish I was more suited for this task. I’d like to be more extroverted and less awkward, but those were not the cards I was dealt. It takes real effort and endurance to figure it out.

Due to the nature of my work (on staff at a community kitchen) along with my husband’s (full time jail chaplain,) we are in the path of people who simply need help more often than we’re sustainably able to offer it. I realized I was starting to burn out a bit from frequent requests. I was also starting to feel resentful, which I knew wasn’t fair.

I learned saying no creates connection just as saying yes does. It builds trust. It sets the bar at an attainable place for everyone.

My line has become, “I can’t help this time, but always ask, and I’ll always be honest.”

Honesty is our way forward, regardless of the rub. Sometimes, honesty looks like creating boundaries or respecting our neighbor’s boundaries. Other times, it asks us to sit in discomfort longer than we’d like. Learning to live as neighbors is slow work. Every small movement toward each other generates empathy. It all counts.

You are a natural-born helper like I am. What’s your relationship to being helped these days? (Another one of my favorite lines: “We need help schlepping the hurt across the low terrain of lives we mostly love.”)

I actually don’t think I’m a natural-born helper. I wish I were! But I’ve come to see that I want to live in a world where help is within reach for everyone, which means I have to be more willing to do my part.

I’m also motivated to undo some of the harm I caused before I understood the beauty of mutual flourishing. (This is a nicer way of saying my politics have taken a sharp turn over the past fifteen years as I’ve become attentive to the struggles of my neighbors. Truly, when we know better, we do better.)

My favorite mantra for living in community is, “Ask for what you need. Offer what you can.” It’s not transactional, it’s reciprocal. We must be willing to live on both sides of that coin. Admittedly, many of us are more comfortable in the role of helper, but we probably learn more when we show up as the needy one.

The people around me have cared for me in a million ways. This changed my life. With time and practice, I’ve learned how rewarding helping is. I rarely regret it. I’ve also learned that everyone wants to be the hero. Part of the job is to lower our defenses and invite the vulnerability of need so that someone can save our day.

We can start small. Ask to borrow something. Ask a neighbor to collect your mail while you’re out of town. Trust the people around you. Be trusted by them. None of us has it all together, so we might as well learn to slump against each other for support. This “taking turns” is the flow I hope to live in forever.

You write very tenderly about making the choice to leave your church because of a cover up around someone’s abuse history. That must have been such a hard decision. What was your process like for discerning if there was room for repair and change vs. needing to move on? I think there are so many community settings where we have to figure this out and it can be so challenging.

It was brutal. Shock, followed by the belief that we could help fix a terrible situation, followed, eventually, by the awareness that we were not part of a system that wanted true healing. For months we locked into a battle that took a toll on our mental health, our relationships, and even our physical health. It was more difficult to let go than I’d imagined. We had been part of the church for more than a dozen years, actively engaged in leadership for most of them. It was the only church our kids had ever really known. Right up to the time it wasn’t, it had been such a special place for our family – a homey little church with few material resources but abundant in belonging.

The thought of walking away felt insurmountably tragic. But, as we grasped the systemic resistance to accountability and the dangers it posed to anyone within its walls, the toxicity became impossible to ignore. Toxic or tragic? Which would it be?

We knew we couldn’t remain in a toxic system without becoming complicit. We chose tragedy. Two years later, though it’s still painful (we pass the church many times a day), healing has come through an unexpected faith community with people who are incarcerated in the neighborhood work release facility. I’m not sure we’ll ever lower our guard when it comes to the institutional “Church,” but every Sunday we’re reminded of what’s possible when we reimagine community.

We have a shared love of thrifting. Will you send me a pic or two of your favorite things you’ve recently thrifted?

L-R are Marcie Walker (read her book it's sooooo good!) and Jen Hatmaker

90% of what I’ve worn on my book tour has been thrifted/secondhand. For my big “hometown event” with Jen Hatmaker, even my man loafers (not pictured, unfortunately!) were thrifted! There are enough amazing clothing items already in the world. Finding them is at least half the fun.

My mug rack is legendary! I switch my mugs out each season. These are my current, Spring mugs. All thrifted.

I believe in thrifting gifts! And more importantly, befriending people who don’t find this odd. I recently picked up this gorgeous, delicate suncatcher for my mom, for Mother’s Day.

---

What a special human sign post, Shannan is! A way to be and move and feel in the world—big and small. Buy the new book here. I’d love to hear what your relationship to counterweights are these days, and bonus for telling us your best thrifted find recently!