SEASON 1: EPISODE 8 TRANSCRIPT
The Power of Connection
Al Andrews:
There's something about a story that connects us all. We're built for it. We live it, and I think as we acknowledge that, that's a part of the empathy that we can have for one another because we know what our stories are like and we know the shape of them, and we know what's happened to all of us, and we can have hope that there can be change in healing and move toward resolve and revelation.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Our world is facing significant challenges, and at every turn, another conflict seems to await, yet we survive, we overcome, we even thrive by relying on an intangible and undeniable gift. Hope, it fills us, connects us, highlights our individual purpose, and unites us in the goal to do more together. Hope fuels us toward flourishing as people and as a community. My name is Greg Jones, president of Belmont University, and I'm honored to be your guide through candid conversations with people who demonstrate what it really means to live with hope and lean into the lessons they've picked up along their journey. They are the hope people.
This special episode features two agents of hope, Al Andrews and Janice Gaines, and was recorded live as part of our recent Hope Summit at Belmont University. Al and Janice joined me on stage for a conversation about the importance of fostering connections throughout our communities. Al, whom you heard from at the top, is the founder of Porter's Call, a non-profit in Franklin, Tennessee, that offers free counsel, support, and encouragement to recording artists since 2001. Janice is a Stellar and Dove Award-nominated recording artist, speaker, and a porter who works alongside artists on their journeys. Together, Al and Janice share stories that reaffirm that it's only through nurturing empathy and authentic relationships that we gain the perspective and understanding that's needed to make a meaningful impact on those around us.
Janice Gaines:
Music gets into places that sometimes conversations cannot, and so I found that even when I would be portering at Porter's Call, sometimes I would sit there and I would know the next thing to do was sing a song. That's what music does. It gets to a deeper place quickly, and settles into our hearts in a way that, man, it takes a longer time and a deeper connection to do with words.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Al, I want to begin with you. You were a Christian counselor, and then you decided to open Porter's Call. Tell us about that decision and about the image of Porter's Call as the framing for your metaphor.
Al Andrews:
Sure. Well, I moved to town in '97, started a private practice, counseling practice in Green Hills, and was just going along and clients coming in, and at the end of the first year, I noticed that my clientele was like 95% music-related. I realized something, one, they couldn't come regularly, and two, most of them early in their career could not afford to go to counseling, and also, after a while, I began to notice some uniqueness. Everybody struggles with the same thing, but it's ramped up a little bit when you're in the public eye, and they struggled with the distance between who their audience perceives them to be or fantasize fantasizes them to be, and who they know they are, and struggle with too much fame or not enough fame, and all these unique struggles, and I was going ... My counseling practice is just not working for them, and I wonder if there's another way, so I came up with this little entrepreneurial idea, that I would go to five labels and ask them to buy a day of my counseling practice and see their people for free.
First one I went to was Peter York, president of Sparrow Records, and he went, "Yes," which surprised me. I had no business plan or anything, which is awkward, but he said, "My board commissioned me six months ago to find a way to help the artists because we were asking them to live a very difficult life and weren't helping them," so they bought Wednesdays with the instruction that I had to see anybody from any label during that day, which does not happen in an industry like this. We did that, and then three months later they came back and said, "Would you like to turn this into a non-profit because we would love to shake the trees in the industry and get people to support y'all?" And that was 22 years ago. The name comes from, my wife found it in The Rules of Saint Benedict, a document written in about 500 A.D., and it basically, its rules on how to live in the monastery, and one of the rules, number 66, was inside the gates of the monastery, you shall place a porter.
A porter's job was hospitality to, when somebody knocked on the door, and he called out, the porter's call, "Thanks be to God," and invited them in, and helped them find the way to what they need. If they needed food, he'd feed them, needed a place to sleep, give them a place to sleep, if they needed wise counsel, he'd give them wise counsel. So we thought, "Instead of being therapists, let's be a porter," and so if an artist walks in our door today, we help them find the way to what they need.
Dr. Greg Jones:
That's beautiful. Thank you.
Janice Gaines:
It's beautiful.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Janice, you're a performer.
Janice Gaines:
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Greg Jones:
You are one of those artists that Porter's Call was founded to help, and yet, you became a porter. Tell us about that and how you manage both the artist's side of you and the porter connections.
Janice Gaines:
Well, and I'll start by saying honestly, that it was a new muscle, because when you're a recording artist, everything is designed to make you feel like everything is about you. So it was a new muscle to sit for an hour and only listen and ask questions about someone else, and to care for them in that way. So it was a beautiful, beautiful experience that I still carry with me, even in conversations with friends, because in artistry you don't have to use that muscle, but I was portered for years at Porter's Call by Beth Barcus, so Porter's Call already had a special place in my heart, but around 2020, because I was having conversations about unity and diversity, and a lot of artists were having questions and wanting to have that conversation, Beth and Al and everybody at Porter's Call reached out like, "Let's see what we can do together," and it really was a journey of me figuring out. They helped me to figure out how to describe my calling, because before that, you asked me, "What do you do?" I remember I'm a gospel recording artist.
I sing about Jesus, but after Porter's Call, I know that I'm a healer. I remember being a kid and I really, really, as a kid, wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. The heart was fascinating to me and I knew everything of every valve, everything, just a note, and so I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon, and then I got to college, and I was taking biology, and we got to the botany portion, and I was so bored out of my mind that I was like, "No thanks," so I switched from pre-med and I did economics, which is just weird, and then I went to seminary and got an MDiv, and none of those things seemed to match to me. And so the opportunity that Porter's Call gave me after I prayed and I thought, "Lord, is this something You're leading me to do? This seems kind of off the beaten path," and I know this whole career has been off the beaten path because I thought I would be a professor at a university or something.
It was then that I realized that the Lord brought me all the way back to the thing that I've always wanted to do, and the whole picture is that I am a cardiovascular surgeon. If I'm singing, it's healing. If I'm teaching about unity, it's about healing. If I'm sitting in a room at Porter's Call portering, it's about healing, and so it really helped me to clarify, or hear the Lord clarify for me, "Hey, there's a main idea in all of this. I know you're following a path, and it feels like it's snaking around to you, but your life is about healing so that people might find healing in Me."
It was a wonderful journey, learning a lot about myself and being able to serve people and hear their stories one-on-one, and it not be about how a room responds, but to see the light bulb come on in a person and that healing make a difference in a person's life and how valuable that moment was has just been life-changing for me, still.
Dr. Greg Jones:
That's beautiful. Not many people can juggle both the command of a room and engaging a single person. That's a gift to be able to do both. Al, Porter's Call is a beautiful example of building bridges and fostering connections for people. Talk about the sense of Porter's Call is building bridges and forging those connections for people.
Al Andrews:
When I think of the word, connection, it's such an essential word, because if you don't connect with someone, you live in a fantasy world, and that may be, "I don't like you," "I don't like the people you hang around with," but as soon as you make a connection, as soon as there's a face, things change, and I think that's true with artists, as we've connected with them and often connect them with one another, they find safety in that connection and walls fall down.
Dr. Greg Jones:
You shared a story this past Evening Of Stories, which we're privileged to host here at Belmont for Porter's Call. It's an extraordinary evening, but could you share that for us?
Al Andrews:
Sure. My father died about seven years ago and he was 93, and active up into the very end. He was a, I want to say a survivor of World War II. He was 19 years old when he landed on Omaha Beach, and went through the whole war. For all of his life, he loved connecting with people. That's just what he did. At his funeral, I asked people if they had some stories that I needed to hear, would they send them to me? I got letters and calls. It was really wonderful. One of them was from my friend, Julie. Julie and her husband have been friends for years and years and years, and she said, "There's a story I want to tell you that I don't think you know."
"About 20 or 30 years ago, my husband and I stopped off at your home, the home of your parents, to spend the night while we were going on to the rest of the trip." They'd met them before and said, "In the morning, it was a hot August morning, we got up and had breakfast, and your father said to me, 'Would you like to go out and see my blueberry bushes?,'" because he loved his blueberries. They were amazing. And so they started going outside, and they passed by a little water feature in our yard, where the water came down and landed in this little bowl of a rock, and then went down into a larger pool, and surrounding that little pool were honeybees from his hives, and they were circling it like cattle drinking water. She said, "We looked at it for a while, and your father looked at me and said, 'So, did you know that if you pet bees while they're drinking water, they won't sting you?'"
She said, "I knew it was a prank because your father was a prankster, as are you." She said, "No, I didn't know that," and she said, "Your dad leaned down, got on his knees, and began stroking the backs of these honeybees," because there's a little furry place on their back. She said, "He just went down the line and stroked them," and she said, "On the way home, I said to my husband, 'What kind of man pets bees?,'" which I think is an excellent question. If you knew my dad, you know he'd figure that out, but I still never got a chance to ask him, "How did you discover this?"
Janice Gaines:
Right. Right.
Al Andrews:
But she said, "You know, now, I have a little farm of my own, my husband and I, and we have some hives of bees." I know the answer to my question, "What kind of man pets bees?" The man who pets bees is the man who believes it's worth the risk of a sting for the potential of a connection. It's worth the risk of a sting for the potential of a connection. If you knew my father, he did not have enemies, and it wasn't because there was not a potential for enemies, there was, but he would move toward them and find a way to connect, because when you have an enemy, most times, if you're face-to-face and you have a desire to move forward, you can. Two of his best friends he fought against in the Battle of the Bulge, and he met them when he lived in the mountains of North Carolina, and these Germans and this American would go to schools together and talk about the war, but he would also go to ball games with them.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Wow. I just had to write down that phrase, "It's worth the risk of a sting to make a connection."
Al Andrews:
Well, it's just so true because, again, you have ideas about what people are like, groups of people or individuals, and those ideas are generally wrong. A friend invited me to go with him to death row here in Nashville, and when he first made the invitation, I just felt my chest clench up because I had this vision of what that was like. When I went with him through about seven or eight different doors and bars, I went into this room, and this little guy comes out and he goes, "I'm a hugger," and I've met Terry. Terry is this delightful fellow that's come to faith, and truly, he was 19 when he went in, and he's 58 now. I've met so many of them in there, and I had this vision of what it was like, and it's untrue.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Amazing. Janice, how do you encourage people to take the risk of a sting to make a connection? What prevents us from that vulnerability or taking that risk?
Janice Gaines:
Yeah. I think there are very real dynamics in society that can prevent us from taking that risk. Like I present as a Black woman when I walk in the room, and I don't say it as my identity because my identity is in Christ, is my belief, and so who I am is a daughter of the King, but it's also, it's been intentional of the Lord to make my skin brown and for me to walk this life as a woman and each of those lens are important, and so I think I have experienced things that would give me pause to make connections in different spaces. Those pauses are very real in every society, and so I want to honor the listener who's like, "But sometimes a sting is really painful," and still encourage them to move toward connection, instead of making generalizations, that even though they are rooted in a true experience, cannot possibly be true of the world, and they only serve to isolate us and rob us of hope and connection, I think.
Dr. Greg Jones:
You talk about your identity being in Christ, and when you sing, when you listen, you're inviting people into a larger story. How does that story shape you, and how does that help you cultivate empathy with others?
Janice Gaines:
Yes, I am a question asker, and so I've asked God a lot of questions, and I call them kindergarten questions. I ask them a lot of questions that kindergartners haven't been socialized to be embarrassed to ask yet, and so I ask a lot of things like, "Why did that happen? That's unfair of the Lord," and so I've had to walk through, asking the Lord about pain and, "What do I do with this pain?," or, "What does that person do with that pain?" That's what I like to invite people into, is to ask the hard questions because I think the hard questions are actually where the rubber meets the road in faith. I think a lot of times, we approach faith as if, "If I have this faith, then it means I have all the answers, and I don't need to ask the questions," but I think faith comes by hearing, hearing comes by the word of God, and how can I hear if I don't ask Him what I need to hear? You know?
And so even there's a passage that means a lot to me because when I first came to Porter's Call, I was pregnant, and then had my first, my eldest son, and I dealt with postpartum depression, and for the first time in my life, I didn't want to sing. I mean, singing was where hope came from for me as a kid, and I started feeling comfortable to write poetry of all things. Like Al is a poet, but I was a math and science person, so I was the person who, in school, when they would say, "And what do you think the poet means by that?," I'm like, "I don't know. They've been dead for 100. I have no clue." But through poetry and through just being portered, I started to feel alive again and actually be able to ask the questions through poetry that I couldn't ask through song.
And so when I talk about the passage of, "Don't be anxious for anything, but with Thanksgiving and with supplication, make your request known to God," I think to myself, "Oh, it's not a, "Don't be anxious," it's a, "No, no, no, no, no. Don't be anxious." You can with gratitude and real grief. The real asking of the questions find peace, and that's generally what I'm inviting people into, whether I'm listening or I'm singing. It's like, "Let's talk about the real stuff," because to me, that's where real faith is born and real connection between people. When you're talking about grief, how can you not connect, you know?
Dr. Greg Jones:
It's beautiful. Al, your Evening of Stories, Susan and I've been privileged to come to three of them, and it's an extraordinary evening because it takes you through pain, and joy, and music. What's the role of storytelling and listening on the journey with a porter?
Al Andrews:
We decided to do Evening of Stories way back when because everybody loves stories. It's just built in us. That's why everybody goes to a movie, because they want a story. I think I could pick out anyone in this room and I can say to them, "I don't know your story, but I do." I know the shape of it, and the shape of it is, really, the shape of our scriptures.
It begins in innocence, Genesis 1 and 2. Innocence ends when a snake comes in the garden and everybody has a snake come in their garden. Part one, innocence, part two, tragedy. Most of the rest of the Bible is contending with what happened in chapter three, and you contend and you're moving toward resolve, and that's the shape of my story, that's the shape of your stories, all of our stories. So there's something about story that connects us all. We're built for it. We live it, and I think as we acknowledge that, that's a part of the empathy that we can have for one another because we know what our stories are like, and we know the shape of them, and we know what's happened to all of us, and we can have hope that there can be change in healing and move toward resolve and revelation.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Beautiful. Thank you. Janice, St. Augustine was known for saying, "Anyone who sings prays twice," because it's both the words and the music, so much of what we struggle with when it comes to life and the stings that have hit our emotions. I imagine that music has played a role both for you, growing up and dealing with stings as an African American woman, and also in the ways in which you relate to people individually and in large rooms when you perform. How do you see music playing a role in your vocation as a healer to help maybe heal those stings that have happened to people?
Janice Gaines:
I think it's two-part, in the sense that I think people see a song and it's an acceptable chunk to digest, to address whatever the song is going to address, so they're willing to, for four minutes, take a journey. That's an emotional one, but then, I think there's something that music does that's hard to explain. People find ways to explain it. With my faith, I think I can explain it, and people explain it differently with different faiths, but there's something that gets down to the soul when it comes to music. Have you ever seen a baby respond to music emotionally?
We literally cannot help it. It seeps into our souls. Music gets into places that sometimes conversations cannot, and so I found that even when I would be portering at Porter's Call, sometimes I would sit there and I would know the next thing to do was sing a song. And so I asked permission like, "Hey, guys, is it okay if I have to sing a song to somebody sometimes?," and they were like, "Yes, we're porters. This is what it's all about."
And so sometimes it would just be that minute and a half that would say more in a song and a melody than I could ever ask questions to get to, and so I think that's what music does. It gets to a deeper place and quickly, and settles into our hearts in a way that, man, it takes a longer time and a deeper connection to do with words.
Dr. Greg Jones:
I suspect clients preferred to hear you sing than Al.
Al Andrews:
I knew that was coming.
Janice Gaines:
I don't know.
Al Andrews:
I was going to say I don't sing to my clients.
Dr. Greg Jones:
But Al, you accompany clients, and I doubt many people have shown up at your door who didn't have not just one sting, but multiple stings that were still painful.
Al Andrews:
Yeah.
Dr. Greg Jones:
And you accompanied them. I'm sure some of it was cognitive and talking, but it was also much deeper than that. Talk about the role empathy plays in story-listening and storytelling to try to turn from despair and pain to hope and healing.
Al Andrews:
Yeah. Wow. For me, one thing empathy does is prevents you from being surprised by anything anybody says, because no one needs to see surprise on a face when they say something that has happened to them or that they've done, that they're ashamed of, but I guess when I think of coming along with someone, one of the first things that begins to happen is that I've never met an adult that correctly interpreted childhood trauma, because a child says, "It's my fault" because they said it was, or, "I caused the divorce," or all that. So to be able to go into a story to come alongside someone and find the truth, it really does set them free, and to me, that's the joy of coming alongside, is to be able to help someone discover the deeper truth, and in that, find healing.
Dr. Greg Jones:
We're in a time that mental health challenges are really intense across the country, especially for young people and young adults, and some of it has to do with that sense that we want to just suppress it or pretend suffering doesn't happen. How can we cultivate connection that doesn't try to bypass the brokenness and the suffering moves through it in ways that can open up that vulnerability and that risk of a sting to make those connections that we yearn for in relationship? How can we do that better?
Janice Gaines:
I have found that vulnerability begets vulnerability, and so I think we can do that better by being vulnerable ourselves. Any suffering that I've experienced has ... In the moment, when you're smack-dabbing some kind of grief, the only relief is that somebody sees you who's ahead of you, because if you're in it, you're just in it, and as much as you will want it to pass, you're just in it, and so the only relief I've ever found is that there is someone else who presents themselves to you and is ahead of you and says, "Actually, there is a down the road, and it doesn't negate what you're feeling, but it can get better." That's the only thing that you believe at that point because people, in the midst of grief, will tell you, they'll give you all of the superficial things like, especially if you lose a loved one, "You earned an angel in heaven." "Well, I wasn't looking for one, so ..." You know what I mean?
Dr. Greg Jones:
Yes.
Janice Gaines:
Like, "I was good," but somebody who has also lost someone who tells you, "I know that pain, and I am so very sorry, and I'm here to grab your hand and tell you, 'It's a road, and we can go together,' and I'll tell you, "Me too,' and it can get better." So I think being more vulnerable ourselves will help people to see that actually, there is such deep connection and suffering, that it won't be a bad word or it won't be taboo. It is actually what draws us together, and it does produce all those things that the Bible says it produces.
Dr. Greg Jones:
That's really profound, and I was just thinking as you were talking about that, that it goes back to Evening of Stories that Cody Fry, a Belmont alumnus came out and talked about anxiety and how debilitating and paralyzing it had been for him.
Janice Gaines:
I remember that.
Dr. Greg Jones:
And it helped name for me that I deal with anxiety, and I haven't always coped with it very well, and it's led to sleepless nights and sometimes doing destructive things that weren't very fruitful. Then, a few weeks later, he did an experimental concert here in the Fisher Center with a 60-piece orchestra, fusing genres of music, and he came out, and when tickets went on sale, they sold out in about a minute. Maybe it was like an hour, but they sold out very quickly, and he came out and said to the whole Fisher Center, he said, "I'm astonished that you all came."
Janice Gaines:
Well, he's brilliant.
Dr. Greg Jones:
It was the vulnerability, and then this virtuoso performance. It was one of those unbelievable nights that I'll never forget musically. I went back to him, talking about anxiety and helping name it for me in a way that I described it as other things, and that enabled me to start talking to Susan and others about anxiety. So that vulnerability begetting vulnerability, it probably took him doing it on stage, and then watching him perform and going, "Oh, you can admit it," and then still do something, pretty amazing.
Janice Gaines:
Yes.
Dr. Greg Jones:
I love that vulnerability begetting vulnerability. Al, how about you?
Al Andrews:
My thing is that we feel so alone when we experience something. We feel like, "Nobody knows this," and when you find out, somebody does know it. Just like you mentioned about Cody, when we started Porter's Call years ago, artists would kind of come with a metaphorical bag over their head. They didn't want to be seen because if you go get help, that means something's wrong, and over the years, I've seen that change, whether it's with artists or with other people to where, "Yeah, I'm going to get help, and it's good, and I need it." So there's something about the vulnerability of, "Me too," that opens the door to change.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Janice, how do you describe hope?
Janice Gaines:
I describe hope as a choice, I think at this age and at this stage of life, and hope is my choosing to believe that there is good ahead, and I interpret that through my Christian faith, but I realize that I get to choose it because the circumstances of life will present themselves, and as the younger people say, "Life life's ... Life be lifin'." Right? It's going to happen, but in that, I choose to believe that there's good ahead for me and those that I love, and so that's how I would describe hope.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Who's an example of someone who's inspired you because of their way of life and given you hope?
Janice Gaines:
I think before Porter's Call, I would've given you a list of people you would've heard of. After Porter's Call, after being a member of that team, regular people who you would never meet, who deal with the hardest moments of life and still wake up with a smile, and with joy, and with hope. Those are the people that inspire me because they contend every day, and they make the choice to hope every day. Those are people who inspire me, single moms, people who are in seasoned stages of life, who go back to advocate for themselves in their own healthcare by themselves in a system that's hard for them to do it every day, children who are taking care of younger siblings because parents haven't shown up, and they do it with tenacity and love, people who have experienced deep racial, sexual pain and are still showing up and loving people, instead of wounding people. Those are people that inspire me, because that's when the real choice presents itself.
Dr. Greg Jones:
That's beautiful.
Al Andrews:
That is.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Real-life people often are the people who give us the greatest hope. Al, you talked about Terry and the relationship that formed. How has that inspired you to think about hope and live into it more?
Al Andrews:
Well, when I see a man on death row that is waiting for his execution date, and if you were to meet him, he would say to you, "Greg, I'm the most blessed man on this planet." When I hear that from somebody who has not stepped on a blade of grass for 50 years, who's not heard a baby cry for 50 years, has not pet an animal, when he says that, that inspires me. It makes me take a look around and go, "I'm a blessed man too," and I see the impact that he has on so many people. I always take people with me when I go visit him, and I watch how he inspires people.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Yeah.
Al Andrews:
To me, it just says, "It's not about where you live. It's not about your circumstances, it's about what's in your heart, and does your heart lean forward to what may be?" That's what inspires me.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Part of what I hear both of you saying in your descriptions is something I think that's really important that we often overlook, that hope isn't just a personal feeling, or even a personal virtue, it's an interpersonal virtue. It's a relationship, and that there's a dimension of being caught up in something that calls you out of yourself. How does hope take life in action, and how do you help people that you're working with and relating to envision hope in action? What does that look like for you?
Janice Gaines:
Hope in action starts all the way back at thoughts for me, choosing which thoughts I will land on for the day, and then it heads on down to my speech, choosing which words I will use to describe situations. Then, it goes all the way down to choices in actions as far as when my kids are as energetic as possible, because they are six and three. I have a six and three-year-old boys and-
Dr. Greg Jones:
Bless you.
Janice Gaines:
They don't sit and color for an hour, that's for sure, and when they are having a moment or a meltdown, choosing how I'm going to respond. And so I think it comes down to choices from my thoughts to my words, to my actions every day, moving in the direction of hope, instead of another direction. Yeah, so, but it definitely starts in my brain.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Al, how about you? How does hope take action?
Al Andrews:
Often, at the end of the evening news, when you go through a half hour of really difficult things, there's this little segment that they put in, and it's this hopeful story, and it's usually somebody that's doing something good in the world, and I go, "There's a reason for that," because that's hope in action. Hope in action is implanting something that gives someone a forward feeling. They're moving ahead, they're getting traction, they're moving towards something they never dreamed could happen. I just think it's people that are doing good in this world.
Dr. Greg Jones:
Wow, it's beautiful. Each of you is such a gift to others and to everyone you meet, and the ways in which that's been structured through Porter's Call and through your singing, it's just extraordinary. We're very grateful for the time you've spent, so thank you both.
Thank you for participating in this conversation with The Hope People. Our aim is to inspire you to become an agent of hope yourself, and to help us cultivate a sense of well-being for all. To join our mission and learn more about this show, visit thehopepeoplepodcast.com. If you enjoyed this conversation, remember to rate and review wherever you get your audio content.