Speaking Of Our Faith In 2026

Summary

As the calendar turns and a new year begins, Bishop DeDe and Adam reflect on what it means to step into 2026 with intention, honesty, and hope. This episode invites listeners into a thoughtful conversation about endings and beginnings—what we carry forward from the past year, what we need to release, and how faith shapes the way we move into what comes next.

Together, they explore how intentional living is not about grand resolutions, but about clarity, truth-telling, and small, faithful practices that shape our daily lives. Healing, they note, often begins when we name what is real—our hopes, fears, wounds, and longings—and when communities create space that is safe enough for that truth to be spoken.

This episode also centers the importance of community in spiritual growth. Faith is not something we live out alone, and the journey into a new year is strengthened when we are supported by others who are willing to walk with us. Listeners are encouraged to reflect on the story they want their lives to tell and to make intentional choices that align with that vision.

As Bishop DeDe reminds us, time will pass whether we engage it thoughtfully or not. The invitation of 2026 is to live with purpose, grounding our faith not only in belief, but in practice.

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time, many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:01.884)
Hey friends, welcome to the podcast, Speaking of Faith. We're gonna talk about those things we believe and those things that we're not sure we believe and those things that we're trying to believe. And so this podcast really is meant to be conversational. This is not about coming to the fount of wisdom. This is about us sharing together and learning a new skill. I really believe years ago that when we decided not to talk about politics or religion or money,

It was successful because nowadays many people can not talk about politics, religion, or money. Well, we just want to dehumanize or yell at each other. so welcome to a place of curiosity, of humility, and of wanting to learn together by talking together about what we value most. My name is DeDe Duncan-Probe. am the Episcopal Bishop of Central New York. That is a geographical region from the

Canadian border down to Pennsylvania, Utica to Elmira and all the beautiful people and places in between. And I'm welcome to this podcast also. Adam Eichelberger is our director of communications and we are here to speak about things. So I welcome you to the conversation.

Ahem.

Bishop DeDe (01:28.434)
I welcome you to the conversation and I hope that you'll take this opportunity to engage in this conversation with us and that you'll take this conversation and speak about it with your friends, that you'll welcome other people to the conversation as well. So our topic today, it is the end of December and we're gonna be talking about the year ahead. Okay, so 2025, it's just about to wrap.

wrapping it up, now it's time to think about 2026. And most often people go into a new year with ideas or expectations or hopes or fears, all kinds of uncertainty because as we move into a new time, what will 2026 hold? And we all know that we can't know, we don't know. And it's interesting that in a lot of superhero movies, I'm gonna, Adam, you'll be excited about this, I'm gonna bring up like Marvel.

you know, the Marvel verse and all these things, the idea of knowing the future, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. And I think, you know, the thing about knowing the future, if we, even if we knew what it was supposed to be, we have import, we have the ability to change it, to be engaged with it. And so we never totally know what will happen or what will be about in the next year. The habit of making new year's resolutions is one that

A lot of people do that. The thing about resolutions that is good is to say, you know, I know I need to be doing these things or not doing those things. And so I'm going to make it, I'm going to intentionally change my habits. I'm going to, I'm going to make a resolution with myself to do a thing.

But the problem is we don't often address why we're doing the thing or why is it that we don't, you know, go to the gym every week to, to often judge ourselves too harshly and say, should be taller, smarter, faster, stronger than or greater. Instead of acknowledging that all change begins with a really honest assessment and an honest engagement with what is true and what is already.

Bishop DeDe (03:48.282)
exhibited in our lives. There's probably a really good reason we don't do some of the things that we think we should be doing that may be reasons we don't often honor, like that our schedule is too busy and that we need to make some really serious intentional decisions about how we spend our time. Are we numbing ourselves too often by watching TV or?

You know, even listening to podcasts, although this podcast is calling us to action, that we are too often doing things that are not in our best interest, whether it's drinking too much, eating too much, consuming too much of something, always buying more on the shopping channel. These behaviors stem from a disconnection within our deepest soul.

So when we start 2026 to start with an intention that we're going to connect with our inner being, that we're going to take stock of who it is we feel called to be and what we want our life to be about. And then to make one decision that helps us move in that direction, to turn off the TV, to call the friend, to write the letter, to apply for the new job, that we're going to intentionally make an action.

that aligns with our deepest souls. A good friend of mine was a, she was an art therapist. And one of the things that she would do and I've picked up and it's become a habit in my life is at the end of the year to draw a picture of the year that was. Now I want to say to you, I am not an artist. Really not. I sing, not an artist with my hands.

When I draw things usually have to label what it is, but anyway, let's not get into that said, tell a wall, but you draw a picture of the year that has been and celebrate the things that have been wonderful and good and give us ourselves space to grieve those things that were not what we wanted. We're hard, we're challenging. And then to think about how did those things change how we feel or who we are or what it is that is happening for us.

Bishop DeDe (06:07.42)
How has the year that has been impacted us? And to take a moment, doesn't have to be a long moment, just a moment to be present to it and think about it. And then my friend would say, now draw a picture of the year that is to be. What are the things we're hoping for? What are the things we're kind of afraid of? What are the things that we hope don't happen? And to draw a picture of the thing, how we want our...

I idealized version of 2026, what does it look like? And then to take those two pictures, hold them together and acknowledge our humanity in the middle of it, to acknowledge the things that maybe we do want to do different, not as a resolution or something that's trite, but something that we really honestly want to change and be intentional about. And then I would be remiss if I didn't say,

What in 2026 will you do that you've always dreamed of doing? think there's three things that we should make sure we do. One is something we've always dreamed of doing. How might we do it? If it's traveling to someplace, we don't have the ability to travel, to watch a really good documentary or set piece on it. And so what is it a thing we want to do that we've never done before? What is something we have always wanted to be?

part of, like we wanted to go to the New Year's celebration in Manhattan, or we wanted to have a party or whatever the thing is. And so to do something we've always wanted to do, to do something that would be a happy thing for us to do, that would really embolden us. And then what is something that we think would be good in our lives, but scares us? Where we just don't feel like we're good enough or we couldn't do it, or would be too outside of our comfort zone.

What is one thing we could safely do and safely do outside our comfort zone that will build capacity within us? Often as we get older, we just do things we're really capable of doing. And we stop doing the things that are a little bit outside our comfort zone, but we know would be a good thing. So those three things, something we've always dreamed of doing, something we hope to do that would be a happy, good thing to do, and then something that pushes us outside our comfort zone.

Bishop DeDe (08:30.844)
Those are some ways of moving into 2026 where we create space to be more intentional. We create space to dream a new dream and to be living, not to have dead people goals, as I say, you dead people goals or I don't want any stress and I want to sleep as long as I want to sleep and I don't want to have to do anything. Well, it's good to take a break if we're really busy and give ourselves space.

But every day can't be that way because we're busy living. Life is short. Let's get out there. Let's do the things and let's do it in concert with our deepest beliefs and souls. We've been created for a reason. How might we be, embody, be that in 2026? So I've talked a lot. So Adam, jump in here in the conversation and let's speak about this together. What is resonant for you in this conversation?

Adam Eichelberger (09:29.74)
I really liked that idea that you brought up about like drawing what the year looked like for you and then drawing what you want for the year to come. I have a similar thing that a friend introduced me to is what was like an image or a word that you kind of came up with for the last year and what's one that you came up with for this coming year. And I think that

Bishop DeDe (09:39.74)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (09:55.407)
For our last year, I'm just speaking from my own perspective. Listener, I don't know what you think when you think of a word or an image for the last year. I think a lot about the word fighting, and I don't necessarily mean that in a negative context, even though I think that maybe if we're honest in the world around us, there has been a little bit of fighting in the world around us. But, you know, just like so many people,

Bishop DeDe (10:15.495)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (10:18.126)
I don't know about you listener. There's been a lot of stuff going on in our lives. A lot of stuff that we're working through, not fighting in a negative way, but kind of, you know, getting through stuff. And so my, my word for 2026, which is crazy to think about that it's going to be 2026 soon is perseverance. So listeners, while you're thinking about that, Bishop, I wanted to kind of turn that over to you. If there was like a word or a phrase for us to kind of maybe dial in on, or maybe something that you're focusing in on.

Bishop DeDe (10:36.134)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (10:46.466)
for 2026, whether it's in your own life in ministry or for our diocese, for our listeners, what's something that kind of comes up for you as like a, I don't want to say mantra, because I don't know if that's the right word, but like a phrase or something to key in on for the year.

Bishop DeDe (11:01.074)
Mm-hmm. Well, it's a great question. And listener, I want to encourage you, I think the word is a really good one. And it may be that our word for 2025 is dumpster fire. I mean, we need to let ourselves be truthful. Sometimes it's not a great word. But for 2026, you know, I've been really aware of trauma-informed systems and behavior, you know, and I'm not talking about necessarily, I've had a bad day.

Adam Eichelberger (11:15.0)
That's fair. That's fair.

Bishop DeDe (11:28.774)
That's not, talking about real trauma, deaths that have come too early, harm that's been done to others, the trauma that is alive in our world in some of the fighting and dehumanization and harm that is done to others. And so for 2026, something that I'm really thinking about talking with the staff about is healing. And there are words that might go without.

big term healing, like safety, creating safety in our churches and in our lives and in our world, building up our sense of wellbeing. But healing is truth telling, know, telling the truth of some things need to be said that this is, these are just bad behaviors. And then to seek help and community around that. So I would say healing would be the big word that I would pick, but it certainly has.

Healing in and of itself is a large word for a lot of smaller, significant though, aspects. Safety, communication, truth telling, reconciliation, forgiveness, taking new steps, but all under the branch of healing. Which as a Christian, I do see as God's redemption. That we are not called as Christians to be stagnant. We're called to liminal.

growing dynamic movement that we're always becoming the next thing. So, healing.

Adam Eichelberger (13:05.39)
I really like that healing for 2026. This is kind of a follow-up to a listener question that we had in the last episode. for those of you, if you have a chance, go back and listen to our last episode. But the question was kind of along the lines of how do I square up with the idea that sometimes Episcopal parishes can kind of wind up being very focused on the work that needs to be done in our communities, which is absolutely important, but sometimes can

Bishop DeDe (13:08.018)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (13:34.766)
become divorced from a Christian faith. And I'm going to be honest, the last week or so after we recorded that and we edited it, it kind of kicked me in the butt a little bit because I have found over the past maybe a couple months, my faith life in how I not only speak about my faith, but how I practice my faith and live my faith really became relegated to like that 50 to 60 minutes every Sunday. And I just kind of was like, all right,

Bishop DeDe (14:02.086)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (14:05.327)
Holy Spirit is saying something to me, so I got to do something with this. And so I wanted to try and make a commitment for 2026 to what's one thing that I can do that's maybe going to stretch me a little bit outside of my normal Sunday. I don't want to say commitment because commitments are not the right word, but what I do on Sundays when I worship with my community. And I decided to lean into something that is a little bit in my Catholic past. And one of the things that I got very excited about

Bishop DeDe (14:23.483)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (14:32.018)
Hmm?

Adam Eichelberger (14:35.213)
just recently was I learned about the Anglican Rosary. And I was like, ooh, because this is a thing that I really enjoy about my Catholic heritage, if you want to call it that. Listeners, you can see as if you're one of those who watch us, I have a lot of tattoos and I got a Mary tattoo right here in my arm that says mama's boy. So I liked my Mary and I liked my Rosary. I'm going to try the Anglican Rosary. All of this is to say this Bishop, what's, you know, we talk about speaking about our faith on the show.

Bishop DeDe (14:38.427)
Yes.

Adam Eichelberger (15:04.409)
but that also should inform how we practice our faith and living our faith. What are some things that we can maybe look at, something that's easy and accessible for us to practice our faith and live out our faith in 2026?

Bishop DeDe (15:18.938)
it's a great question and really essential. think that is what we're talking about here where we're saying, do a thing, you know, that 2026 time will pass. mean, you know, one of the fallacies people will say, I don't want to go back to school. would take two years to do that degree. Well, you know what? Two years is going to pass whether you go back to school or not. So you might as well do something with the two years that's valuable to you. So in this regard, when you talk about, yeah, when you talk about time passing,

Nothing's going to change if we don't change something. So with that practice, think reclaiming something that's cherished you, the rosary, and saying the Anglican rosary, for some of our listeners it might be that we've gotten out of the habit of reading the Bible, that we go to church, listen to the readings, and go home. But the thing about scripture that really is so profound.

is the spirit moves in it. If we think of scripture a bit more like prayer, then getting up and just having the Bible by your bedside and getting up and reading one passage and just start with a book of John or start with the Psalms or start somewhere that when you get up and you read it, Psalms and Proverbs, those are great books to start with, where you say, I'm gonna read five verses first thing in the morning. And so you get up and you read your five verses and then you just let it,

journey with you and what will absolutely start to happen as you're going through your day, something will happen, know, and it will recall to your mind what you read that morning of the morning before. You'll be like, oh my gosh, this is like, you know, Psalm 57. And it just comes out. And so a practice like that where if you've gotten away from reading scripture to do a small thing, you know, often what we do is we say, oh, I like our New Year's resolutions.

I should work out more. So I'm to go to the gym for an hour every day. Well, that's probably not going to be successful because it's a lot, but we can say, I'm going to do, you know, 10, 10 setups and then I'm to do 20. And then I'm going to grow the same as true reading scripture, read a couple of passages every day for a day by day or something like that. Something that's, that's manageable. Read it, say with it, then carry it with you through the day.

Bishop DeDe (17:44.114)
prayer, a friend of mine uses their phone, they set little reminder pings every so often throughout the day. So four times a day, there's a little ping that's set at a time when this person naturally has a break in their day. And when the ping goes off, they take a minute and say, Emmanuel, God with me, God be with me here. Very simple, just a little touch point, because what will start to happen is that touch point will start to grow.

and it'll become a prayer and allow it to grow with you. You you're talking about, say, the Anglican Rosary, Lectio Divina, some of these wonderful sacred practices of the church that kind of got dropped during the Reformation, keeping a church calendar. For those of us who are in the Episcopal Church, we have what's called a church calendar. So every Sunday, there's seasons of the year. These seasons have meanings.

So to allow ourselves to live into those seasons. It may be going for a walk. It may be calling a friend once a week. It may be writing a letter of encouragement to a friend once a week. Whatever it is that would kind of build into your life a sense of connection with yourself and with God and with others to give yourself some small things to do that are doable and achievable.

And then to take time after a couple of weeks to say, how has this been going? Am I liking this? Is this working for me or do I need to modulate it? then instead of saying a prayer every four times a day, I need to read scripture four times a day or whether I need to, and just shift it up and what is meaningful. Always creating space in our lives.

The world's crafty. will push in and take all the noise and oxygen out of the room and we'll wake up one day and realize we've just been working some big to-do list that isn't getting us any closer to what we actually wanted to do. And so let's, let's have a better to-do list and let's, and on your to-do list, maybe you get paper that at the top says, what's my priority today, or don't forget, don't forget to pray or, um, get a Bible verse a day.

Bishop DeDe (20:01.804)
know, calendar thing or to build some structure into our life that helps us be who we really earnestly desire to be.

Adam Eichelberger (20:12.065)
I love all of those and I love that idea of time's gonna pass and time's gonna pass so what are you gonna do with it?

Bishop DeDe (20:17.138)
I mean, we have these bad ways of thinking like that. We're like, that would take six months. It's like, well, hopefully you have six months, you know? And so that's right. You could, you could be, you know, feeling good about this. So yeah, we've, need to tell ourselves the truth. We were pretty good at tricking ourselves, you know, I'm helping my neighbor because I really care about them. Well, sometimes we're helping our neighbor because we want to.

Adam Eichelberger (20:25.775)
In six months from now, you could have been done with it.

Adam Eichelberger (20:39.471)
Mm.

Bishop DeDe (20:46.246)
coerce them into being nicer and doing what we want them to do. Or we have other ulterior motives. So we're pretty good at fooling ourselves.

Adam Eichelberger (20:55.535)
Yeah, we are sometimes. All right. So here's my last question as we are exiting out of 2025 and into 2026. One of the things I remember about my work outside of the church, I worked for a long time in the tech industry and I was introduced to the idea of the elevator pitch. That idea that you're around somebody, you got like 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds to give them your pitch to sell them on your idea.

Bishop DeDe (21:14.705)
Right.

Adam Eichelberger (21:23.949)
And I don't think that faith in Jesus is necessarily something that needs an elevator pitch or needs to be sold to somebody. But I'm going to give you the hypothetical Bishop Dee Dee. And when I'm going to, I'm going to ask you this and listener, I hope that you can maybe put this on in your own mind. Let's say in the year 2026, you get that 30, 45 seconds, one minute to give somebody an elevator pitch about our faith, how to talk about our faith, how to share hope with somebody in that quick elevator pitch.

I'm going to ask you, Bishop Deedee, and I want you listeners to join me in thinking about it. What would be your elevator pitch for 2026 when it comes to sharing our faith, living with hope? What's your elevator pitch?

Bishop DeDe (22:06.32)
Such a good question. really, really good because the reason we needed, and I'm backing up just a little, we need an elevator pitch because we need to have clarity. You know, we, if we don't have an L if we can't say in a couple of sentences, what it is we believe it may be because we aren't really that sure what we believe. And so we kind of don't know. So we kind of fish around, but spending some time with it and working on it and what our elevator pitch is.

You know, in 2026, my elevator pitch is that God loves us. God is with us and we are called to embody that love and that love transforms us. When we act loving, we feel loved. If we've been feeling cut off, it may be because we've cut off parts of ourselves. And so all of God is calling us to be whole and to be faithfully whole where we aren't cut off from our best selves.

but we are integrated. So my prayer for all of us is that through love and mercy, compassion, forgiveness, restoration, and especially through repentance, changing our mind, that we become whole beings. That would be my hope for 2026 is is wholeness, restoration. Now, I do wanna end this podcast with something that sounds a little odd. We talked about drawing a picture of the year. We talked about, you know,

practices, we've talked about what your elevator pitch is. I encourage you to consider this year, kind of sitting down and thinking, what would your obituary be? Your idealized obituary. If you were to write your obituary, what does it look like? Because Stephen Covey was right, we do need to start with the end in mind. I think Jesus is right, Jesus is talking about starting with the end in mind. I think it's a gospel message to think about the eschatology, the end of things.

We've been an advent here talking about birth and Advent is the time to talk about the end of things. So at the end of your life, what will you wish you had done? What do you want your life story to sound like and be like? And to say that you still have time to make your life story what you want it to be. So to take stock of that, to be intentional about that.

Bishop DeDe (24:29.612)
and to think about what it is your ultimate hope for your life will be and then to be that. No excuses, no, yeah, I wish, you I wanna be wealthy. Well, what about wealth is it that you want? And to recognize that most people who are super wealthy are super unhappy. And so wealth isn't really the thing. What do you want your life to be about?

And what are the stories even more pointedly that you want told at your funeral? What do you want people to be saying about you? And then be that. 2026 is your opportunity to start over. This is a big do-over. So let us start over with intentionality. Let us start over and be compassionate with ourselves. Let us heal together and let us think more clearly.

about what our life is and what we hope our life will be and become. So I pitched this to you now, dear friends, this is your turn to speak your faith. Talk with someone today about what your hopes are or your fears are for 2026. What would you like for your obituary to sound like? Invite someone into this work with you. Take a friend with you as you're doing new things. And for those those habits, bring people along with you that all of us together.

in 2026 may be healed, renewed and made more whole. May you be blessed, may you be a blessing and happy new year.