What would make you leave your home and take your family on a dangerous journey, knowing you might still be turned away when you reached the border?

That question opens my conversation with Mary Fontana, author of Strangers in the Province of Joy: Practicing Radical Hospitality on the U.S.–Mexican Border. Mary has spent more than 20 years involved with Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, where migrants and refugees are welcomed as guests.

We talk about the families behind the immigration headlines, the risks they face on their journeys, and the ways U.S. actions and policies have shaped migration. Mary also takes us inside Annunciation House. Its volunteers do more than provide food and a place to sleep. They live alongside their guests, share meals, learn their names, and build a community together.

I was especially moved by how Annunciation House began. Its founders moved into a house near the border before they knew exactly how they would serve. They listened to their neighbors, recognized a need, and opened their doors.

Mary's stories ask us to consider both the courage it takes to seek safety and what it means to welcome someone when they arrive. I hope you'll join us for this conversation on Your Radical Truth.

Listen to episode 060: https://yourradicaltruth.com/060-Mary-Fontana

Learn more about Mary: https://maryfontana.com

What if the peace you have spent years searching for has been closer than you realized?

In this episode of Your Radical Truth, Deacon Margaret Mary O'Connor welcomes Paldrom Catharine Collins, author of Girl in a Box: Seeking Enlightenment as a Tibetan Buddhist Nun.

Raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, Paldrom left Christianity as a young woman and began searching for enlightenment. Her journey led her to Tibetan Buddhism, where she spent five years immersed in monastic life, meditation, and intensive retreat practices.

Paldrom believed spiritual discipline might free her from suffering. Instead, her experience became a deeply human journey filled with insight, physical challenges, difficult questions, and the courage to reconsider a path that once seemed to offer every answer.

During this honest conversation, Paldrom shares what she learned about meditation, spiritual authority, belonging, and finding meaning beyond rigid religious structures.

• Why Paldrom left Christianity and entered Tibetan Buddhist monastic life
• What daily life and intensive meditation practice were really like
• How physical practices helped her manage a wandering mind
• The meaning behind the meditation box featured in her memoir
• How spiritual communities can offer both support and limitations
• Why she ultimately decided to leave monastic life
• What her experience taught her about questioning spiritual authority
• Why having thoughts during meditation does not mean you are failing
• How Buddhist practice and contemplative Christianity can intersect
• Why spiritual peace may be found in ordinary, everyday life

Paldrom's story is a powerful reminder that questioning a spiritual path does not mean the journey has failed. Sometimes growth requires the courage to examine what we believe, trust our own experience, and recognize when it is time to take a different direction.

Listen to Episode 059:

https://www.YourRadicalTruth.com/059-Paldrom

Why are women still fighting for equal leadership within some of the largest Christian denominations?

In Episode 058 of Your Radical Truth, Deacon Margaret Mary O'Connor welcomes Father Anne back for a candid and provocative conversation about women's ordination, biblical interpretation, religious authority, politics, and the traditions that continue to influence the role of women within Christianity.

Father Anne was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 2021 through a reform movement. Because the Roman Catholic Church does not recognize the ordination of women, she was excommunicated. Today, she continues her work for ordination justice while pursuing her desire to serve as a parish priest in the Roman Catholic Church.

While the Catholic Church is central to the discussion, Margaret Mary and Father Anne make it clear that questions about women and religious leadership extend far beyond Catholicism. The episode looks at debates within the Southern Baptist Convention and the Seventh-day Adventist Church, including ongoing disagreements about whether women should serve as pastors and participate equally in Church leadership.

At the heart of the conversation is a fundamental question: If God calls a woman to ministry, who has the authority to tell her that call is not valid? Father Anne makes an important distinction. No one has an automatic right to become a priest, but everyone should have the right to discern whether they have been called.

The conversation also examines the experience of prominent Bible teacher Beth Moore, who left the Southern Baptist Convention following years of tension. Margaret Mary discusses Moore's advocacy for victims of sexual abuse and her criticism of evangelical support for Donald Trump.

Moore's experience opens a larger conversation about what can happen when women within religious communities challenge powerful institutions, question established authority, and speak publicly about abuse, gender inequality, and political alliances.

Father Anne takes the conversation directly into the relationship between conservative Christianity and the Republican Party in the United States. She shares her perspective on how religion and politics have become deeply intertwined, particularly around traditional ideas about masculinity, gender roles, authority, and power.

The discussion challenges listeners to consider how religious beliefs about gender can extend beyond the walls of churches and influence politics, institutions, and society.

Another fascinating part of the episode examines the way Christians have been taught to imagine God. Margaret Mary and Father Anne explore feminine imagery for God found throughout Scripture and Christian history, including descriptions associated with motherhood, childbirth, nurturing, and protection.

Father Anne points out that Scripture actually offers an extraordinary range of images for God, including fire, wind, living water, shepherd, gardener, mother, and father. Rather than limiting God to a single gender or image, these metaphors may offer believers a much broader understanding of the divine.

Episode 058 ultimately asks listeners to examine some difficult questions. Are long-held beliefs about women, leadership, and God truly rooted in the divine? Or have centuries of culture, patriarchy, politics, and institutional tradition influenced the way Christians have been taught to understand them?

This is a challenging conversation about faith, equality, vocation, political power, and what needs to change for women to participate fully in the future of the Church.

www.YourRadicalTruth.com/058-Father-Anne