Ever felt like you needed to shrink parts of yourself to fit in, stay safe, or belong? Award-winning writer and cultural critic Danté Stewart knows that journey intimately. In this powerful conversation, Stewart shares his path from college football player to minister to finding his authentic voice, revealing what happens when we finally decide to stand in our full truth.
Through personal stories and profound insights, Stewart explores why young people are leaving organized religion in record numbers, what it means to metabolize suffering rather than avoid it, and how to navigate the delicate balance between personal growth and community belonging. You’ll learn why sometimes the bravest thing we can do is trust our evolution, even when it means leaving the familiar behind.
Drawing from his acclaimed memoir Shoutin’ in the Fire, Stewart offers a compelling vision of what it means to live authentically in a world that often demands we make ourselves smaller. This conversation speaks to anyone wrestling with questions of identity, faith, and becoming who they were meant to be.
Listen for:
• Why shrinking yourself for safety is different from shrinking to fit in
• How to honor your growth when others want you to stay the same
• What happens when the communities we choose stop working for us
• The relationship between vulnerability and courage
• A powerful definition of what makes a good life
You can find Danté at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
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photo credit: Michaela Mae & Co.
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Episode Transcript:
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So what happens when a college football player becomes a minister only to realize the very faith community he’s dedicated his life to isn’t actually where he feels like he belongs. And what if that moment of truth reveals something far bigger about why an entire generation is walking away from organized religion and what they might be walking toward? These questions kind of crackled through the conversation I had with Danté Stewart as we explored what it really means to stand in your truth, when the cost of authenticity feels devastatingly high. What started as a discussion about spirituality and religion and modern life transformed into a profound exploration of courage and belonging, and the fierce grace that it takes to grow beyond the boundaries other set forth. Danté is an award winning writer, cultural critic, and minister whose work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and more. His critically acclaimed memoir, shoutin in the fire, examines faith, identity, and belonging in a racially fractured America, and a former college football player turned theologian and essayist. Danté brings both intellectual rigor and just raw emotional honesty to every conversation. Through powerful, personal stories, he really shines a light on what becomes possible when we just trust our evolution, even as others want us to stay the same. In his surprising take on how to metabolize suffering rather than avoid it really got me thinking. So excited to share this conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:01:32] There’s a question that I would love to get your take on. I think it was just last week I saw one of the sort of like giant survey agencies came out with a poll that looked at religiosity over, you know, like a period of like a long window of time. And they broke it down for the first time that I saw by boomers, Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Z. And I think we’ve all heard that people on the whole are getting less and less religious over time. It was really surprising for me to see was that Gen Z in particular, there’s been a massive exit from religion, from basically all faiths. I’d love your take on that. Like what? What are your thoughts on that?
Danté Stewart: [00:02:14] I think first of all, thank you for having me on here. When I heard that I was going to get a chance to speak with you all is very much a welcome invitation, so I’m really excited to be here with y’all. I think for me to answer that question, I can’t kind of only answer out my own experience. I think on some level, people are tired. I think people are tired of the way in which, like religion, has not lived up to its own kind of ideals. And on another level, I think people we’re more connected, even though we’re more kind of disillusioned with one another in a very real way. We’re more connected between humans than we’ve ever been before, which means I think people are more sensitive to their religious experiences, to vast, really diverse religious experiences. And I think people realize that you got options. When you got options, you realize that you can kind of allow your expression, your expression of your spirituality, to kind of fit what you need. I think that that may be a part of it. I think people are exhausted. Young people are just tired of the way religion has gone. And, you know, we have seen the slow kind of leak of religious insufficiency, you know, and it has now turned into a kind of all out mass of poor. And you talking about the way in which and I’m particularly thinking of Christianity because I’m Christian, the ways in which people have linked in unnecessarily tied Christianity to politics in the most unhealthy way.
Danté Stewart: [00:03:39] And people are saying, well, if this is what you believe that your faith is to embody, then I don’t want anything to do with that. And I think people are, you know, just tired of the ways in which faith has been used as a weapon to be wielded, rather than a world to be ventured in and explored. You know, as I think about my own kind of relationship of faith and its ever, ever, ever evolving nature. You know, for me, I’m, I’m, I think as I get older, I get a little bit more sensitive and expansive to realize that, like, you know, I’m not the only one that got something to offer to this world. You know, we’re humans. We get to offer, you know, something to contribute to the good life. And that means that, like, we have to be diverse in our approach and in our experience. And whenever that doesn’t, you know, necessarily live up to this idea that we get a chance to, like, change it. And I think, you know, people are like, hey, I get another option. I get a better shot at this than the way I’ve experienced. I’m willing to take that shot.
Jonathan Fields: [00:04:37] Yeah, I mean, that really resonates with me. And it kind of goes along with what I was thinking a little bit, too. I’m curious what you think about this, because I’ve kind of been looking at them. I was wondering about this, this stat. And I’ve always had this sense that even beyond religion, that young generation, Gen Z in particular, and even younger millennials, they’re less willing to toe the line, you know, and more willing to say, like to actually kick the tires and be like, how is this actually working for me? And if I look at my parents or like grandparents the generations above me, how has it worked out for them, too? And if this has been centered in their life and I look at them and I’m actually not, I’m not really seeing the outcomes that I’d love to see or the impact. And they look at my own life and I’m like, I’m kind of not buying into it. I feel like younger generations and maybe this has always just been younger generations, right? It feels like they’re less willing to basically just adopt what’s been handed down to them as a sacred transmission. Don’t question it. Don’t challenge it. Just do it. Abide by it. And they’re kind of like, now I need to figure out, like I want to know the why and I want to know the how. And I need to see if this actually fits for me. And a lot of them are deciding it doesn’t. I mean, what’s your take on that?
Danté Stewart: [00:05:46] Yeah, I think I think that’s true. I know that a lot of people, you know, you start talking about like philosophy and moral more philosophy. You know, there are people who say like there is not. They see the limitations of utilitarianism and the usefulness of a thing, you know. And I think there is something good about actually questioning. Is this thing actually working the way it was intended to work now for me? And I can only speak for Christianity. I think that we have to challenge what we mean by work. I think I think older generations, many of their ideas of working was, you know, I kind of have my kind of own individual relationship with God, or I have my relationship with my church community and, you know, my life, religion is just a part. Another aspect of the web of experience rather than like religion should actually like, do something to change the world we live in. You know? Now, granted, I’m black American, so you know, my my experience of religion would be very catered to, like being southern and black, which means that like religion is like almost totalizing in a sense that like God is in everything and everywhere and everything can be moved and altered and changed, and that religion can be a force for good, even if, you know the kind of oxymoronic ways religion is used as an instrument of control.
Danté Stewart: [00:07:13] You know, I think that, like younger generations, they’re more willing to be like, I bet, cool, that don’t work for me. I’m out. See you later, period. I think there’s something useful about that too, though, because I think, like, life gets boring, at least to me. I’m a writer, you know, I’m a writer. I’m a person that goes into, like, art museums. And I can sit in art museums and like, you know, like, just explore the art museums and find something generative that like sitting and returning and questioning and looking out in the world and, you know, being adventurous and things like that. So for me, you know, as a personality type, I’m kind of more adventurous. And I look forward to like, expansion and evolution. Some people’s personality types aren’t like that, but like for me, I’m like, the other day I was thinking about Jesus. And there’s a story in the Bible where Jesus says no to his parents and he says no to his parents. They’re looking for him. And he says, I’m going about doing my father’s business. Da da da da da. Their parents don’t went away. He’s doing his own thing. And I think about that story and the other part of that story where it says, like, you know, he Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and the religion of that day, going to synagogue and things like that.
Danté Stewart: [00:08:22] Jesus. If we look at history, that means that, like, yo, he matured. He was able to say no, and he was able to grow and expand and even be different than the kind of receive religion that his parents were engaging in, the rituals that they were engaging in. Not saying that, you know, he was one to like, uphold the system or tear it all the way down. But I think there’s something generative there to be thinking about. Okay, if Jesus could do it, you know, then why can’t we? Then why can’t I? You know, if he has to grow in wisdom and stature, and that growing for him allowed him to grow his theology, to challenge the ways that people would embody in their faith, even if it meant that, like, you know, people would think that his while he’s crazy, he was willing to do it. He was brave enough and crazy enough to do it. Then if it’s good enough for him, then he should. At least we should have grace enough for it to be good enough for young people today.
Jonathan Fields: [00:09:14] Yeah. I mean, it’s such an interesting take, what you’re describing as somebody who’s sort of like looking at something that was said, this is the way to be. And, and him saying, I’m going to get curious about that and it’s not resonating with me. So I need to actually I need to say no, and I need to go figure out, like what is resonant for me. And I feel like faith these days across so many traditions doesn’t create the room for that. They don’t create space for that. It’s sort of like, this is the way it is. This is the way it’s always been. There are a small number of sort of anointed people who will tell you what this means, and whatever that translation is isn’t really supposed to be challenged. And I think a lot of folks are not okay with that anymore.
Danté Stewart: [00:09:54] Not at all. I mean, when have we ever been. You know, we’re humans. You know, when have we ever been good at other people challenging us? Like, I’m in therapy and, like, you know, I don’t like when my therapist be like, well, let me challenge you on something that you deeply hold. And I’m a fighter, too. I love to fight. I mean, I love to squabble. I love to argue. I am a very opinionated individual. And I think that, like, you know, we as human beings, we aren’t really good at changing our minds or evolving or expanding. And I think part of it is about fear. Not even bad. You know, it’s it’s it’s like whatever we receive and whatever we embody and it works. And so it’s like it’s very difficult to allow yourself to go through changing your mind about something that your community when you think about. Like, for me, when I think about morality, you know, I think that morality is also like a communal project. Right? So the community, you know, determine what’s good, what’s right with fair. And that’s going to differ based on, you know, various communities. It’s me using my sociology degree from glimpse. So like, these communities are going to generate their own kind of standards of meaning and things like that. Not saying I’m not saying that they’re right.
Danté Stewart: [00:11:05] You know, it’s just sometimes it is now in order for, for you to be someone, to be like, I bet I’m going to try and like, explore, be more curious. You have the possibility of like making yourself like a recipient of punishment or ostracization or whatever they call it, and things like that. You can be like an outsider. I mean, some people like to be loners is cool, but some people who would want to generate like meaning and contribute to the community, sometimes they may struggle with being considered an outsider. And I think that like, like, like sometimes that fear is not about like what we actually believe. It’s about what we believe that people will become, if we reject projections that we’re projecting on the world about what we should be and what we should leave together. And so I think there is nothing wrong to me with changing your mind, saying like, I don’t know or I haven’t thought about that. Let me think a little bit deeper about that. But a lot of times we live in a culture, we just don’t have grace with one another. Hey, let me be real, real. Like, I believe I’m a gracious person, but in a very real way. Sometimes I’m not a gracious person.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:17] Just like all of us.
Danté Stewart: [00:12:18] Yeah, exactly. So if we could just be honest like, not all of us are gracious. And I think, you know, people struggle to be patient and not change or be courageous in being willing to change because we’re struggling to have this kind of communal aspect of grace. Communal morality means absolutely nothing without communal grace.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:44] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So you write about in in the book shouting in the fire. Like it really opens up with this metaphor of fire. And you’re using fire as a metaphor for spiritual fervor or internalized pain for grief and grace and then rage and redemption. Um, take me into this. Wow.
Danté Stewart: [00:13:05] I love the way you describe. Use those words to talk about my book, because the further I get away from it, and in some sense, the more I return to it. So there’s a distance, because it’s been written so many years ago, and I still have conversations like today about it, even as I’m working on other work. And it’s just so interesting now to hear the words that are, you know, use when it comes to like people thinking about my book and the word that you use, like, you know, I think you said something about grief and say it again one more time.
Jonathan Fields: [00:13:36] Yeah. It was like like grief and grace.
Danté Stewart: [00:13:38] I love that grief and grace.
Jonathan Fields: [00:13:40] Yeah. I mean, you could describe it in so many different ways, but it’s just the metaphor of fire. It’s really it’s it’s poignant. And I think people can kind of step, they can take that metaphor and make it feel right for whatever like it represents to them.
Danté Stewart: [00:13:53] Yeah, yeah. Because in a very real way, the book is a journey. And this is me kind of talking about my own book as I’m a character in the story. You know, the book is very much following a young man who is simply trying to find his way in the world, a young black man. And that’s from South Carolina, who grows up in a grows up in very rural, poor America. And I didn’t really address this in this particular book. The layers of like being from the black rural South when it comes to like economics and, you know, being from my small town of 2000 people. But here’s the story of a young man who’s attempting to find himself, and he’s fighting against the all these kind of voices of what he should become or what he should do, and he listens to those voices, and he becomes a thing oftentimes that he doesn’t want to become until those things doesn’t work anymore, and he has to make the decision whether he’s going to remain the same or whether he’s going to be courageous enough or vulnerable enough. Because for me, before there is ever courage, there’s vulnerability. And the only thing that protects vulnerability is courage. So there’s a relationship between vulnerability and courage. To me, that I think is woven through the book in which, like the fire is about the heat, the struggle of what it means to be young and black and American and Christian and Southern as it relates to going off to college or, you know, growing up in your own family life, going to white churches.
Danté Stewart: [00:15:24] That fire is about, you know, how hard it is and the challenges of, you know, the pain associated with fire and being burned. But it’s also about an internal fire, this kind of internal spark, like a force or an energy or a voice or compulsion in which that tells the young man like, this is who you are. This is what you must become. And as you are going through the fire outside of yourself, don’t forget to spark that lies within. And if you can hear the voice in the flickering that lies within, you will always find what you are supposed to be in this world. And I thank people who read the book. I think once they leave the book, they will be giving more of themselves. Because, you know, being young and black in American isn’t the only conditions in which, like, we have to encounter fire or have to be reminded of our internal spark and flame. I think everybody in their lives at some point have to go through their own particular fires. And for me, I think the book is just, you know, a metaphor of I’ve been through the fire, I’ve been burned by it. I’ve been changed by it. Now come along. Let’s go through it together.
Jonathan Fields: [00:16:40] Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting the way you, T.F., just the notion of fire. Also, it’s got these two qualities, you know, it’s like it’s the fire that, you know, it can it can burn, but it can also forge. And sometimes it does both at the same time.
Danté Stewart: [00:16:54] Oftentimes it does both.
Jonathan Fields: [00:16:55] Right. And we’re constantly trying to avoid it. But sometimes also we can’t avoid it. You know and it’s like there’s so often I feel like for so many of us, there’s another side we want to be on or we want to get to. And like, we’re trying to figure out how do we get there without going through this, how do we get there? Like there’s a I can see like there’s a fire in front of me on the other side. There’s something I really want. There’s a way I want to be. There’s something way I want to live there. Whatever it is. And it’s like, how do I get around the fire to get to that thing? And end of the day, it really doesn’t work. You kind of got to go through it.
Danté Stewart: [00:17:31] Yeah. You know, I think the poet Robert Frost is so helpful here. You know, he says the only way out is through, and I believe that to be true. I think the only way to get through the fire is to go through the fire. I’m reminded I was saying I sent my friend this poem the other day called, uh, I worried by, um, Mary Oliver. I’m actually, uh, doing my MFA in poetry now. Uh, and so I’ve been, you know, I’ve been kind of maturing as a writer, you know, not just, you know, minister, but like, journalist, poet, essayist and minister, you know, really trying to deepen my craft and voice and grow myself and challenge myself. And I came across this poem by Mary Oliver the other day. I sent to my friend, called I worried, and the poem is, is Mary Oliver, you know, worrying about so much, worrying about whether she was going to be able to make her worrying about her health, worrying about this, worrying about that. And at the end, the last two stanzas of the poem is her picking herself up and going out and standing up and walking and and moving. And I’ll never forget sending that poem, because it reminded me of an event that I did where someone asked me, you know, how do you metabolize suffering? And I think about, you know, any type of muscle or energy, the only way to get it going and to metabolize it is to move it.
Danté Stewart: [00:18:58] And I think so many people struggle. I’m I’m preaching to myself right now in this season of my life, you know, because as much as we would like the fire of of yesterday to never become the fire of tomorrow, the fact is like there’s we’re going to constantly and fire in counter fires in life. And the fire that we passed through before should. Like you said, for just to be ready to say, okay, I’ve been through this before so I can get through it again. And so I think that like, the only way to get through the fires of life that all of us are going to have to go through. The only way to, you know, metabolize our suffering or our fear is to utilize that energy to move us forward, to complain about things. You know, worry. Allow yourself to worry because so, so often, you know, we dissociate so much, you know, with our fear and our anger and our sadness that when it’s time to move, you know, we struggle to move because we have not allowed ourselves to feel what we feel. So I think, yeah, the only way out, as Robert Frost says, is through.
Jonathan Fields: [00:20:03] We were talking about, um, metabolizing suffering and how a lot of people are trying to just figure out how do I opt out of it entirely, basically. And the truth of the world is we don’t, you know, we’re going to experience it a lot. And but like, what do you do with that? I think is one of the big questions. You know, it’s interesting, right. Because part of what you write about also is this notion, and, you know, and you’ve written a bunch about how you’ve grown up, you know, kid in South Carolina and, and that part of the message that you took in was that in some way, shape or form, like part of your job was to shrink? It was like, if you want safety, you know, part of part of that comes with invisibility. And like for you, that’s something that sets a pattern in motion that becomes really fraught to live that way.
Danté Stewart: [00:20:51] Oh, it 100%. And what’s so wild is, you know, I feel like I feel like I’m always wrestling with the ways in which I feel like I’ve had to shrink. I don’t think we human beings ever get to a point. I think we do get to a point where, like, like Denise Levertov, now I become myself the poet. I think we get to a point where we are becoming ourselves, but we always, in some sense, fighting against the version of us that felt like we had to shrink in order to be ourselves. You know, and you talk about religion putting that, you know, you’re talking about, like the shrinking version of you is the more moral version of you. The version of you that’s more free, that’s more expressive, is the more immoral version of you. And so we’re dealing not just with, you know, wrestling through, you know, processing who we’re becoming, trying to, you know, generate language for our own journeys, but we’re also dealing with, like, dislodging ourselves from patterns of internalized shame and internalized guilt that don’t belong to us, you know? So it’s like I resonate so much with you thinking about shrinking because, like, I feel like I’ve I’ve always kind of been on a journey and we are always on the journey, especially, you know, I think if you’re the type of person who has a temper, like, you know, there’s always more to grow toward or there’s always more to learn.
Danté Stewart: [00:22:16] You know, I think that we’re always going to, you know, deal with the struggle of like smallness and growth. And I feel like being a football player is a part of that, too, because it’s, you know, I never forget, you know, like, what have you done for me lately? You know, yesterday really don’t matter. You’re always in competition against yourself and where you can grow and you’re always fighting against yourself. Sometimes that’s healthy, sometimes it’s not, because sometimes there will never be a point in which you come to the feeling that, like, I have arrived at who I’m supposed to be, there’s always this new self. It’s like you got a whole season to get better, and the way you start isn’t the way you should end up, sadly, is that once you get into life in football, you got the beginning of the season and you have it in the season with life. You know, life is such a long thing. And so I think for so many of us who are used to drinking, I think about myself. Yes. So much of what I write is about visibility is about human beings, you know, not streaming because I believe that, like, I don’t know, I’m just wild enough to believe that God like or life or our communities truly want the best for us, and truly wanting the best for us means that we’re becoming the version that we were always intended to be. You know, every day I wake up, have a picture that’s in the restroom of our home, and that picture simply says, God smiles at the thought of you.
Danté Stewart: [00:23:49] And every day I look at that and I try and ingest it. I don’t always believe it, you know, because, like to become who you are and to stop shrinking means that, like, you know, you really gotta deal with how people around you got used to a small version of you. And I think that so many people who go through that, we go through it and, and we we believe that like, some sense of rejection is going to take place if I become who I am. And I just believe that sometimes, man, we’ve created that may be true, but like, it’s the story we’ve learned to believe about ourselves. And as writers, Us. Our job is to challenge the story, to challenge the narrative, to challenge the metaphor, to challenge the narrative arc of our lives and our growth in hopes that we encounter things and are changed by it, and giving more of ourselves. So when I go to the page, my simple job is this it’s like I want to attempt to be more of myself, and I want to attempt to give you more yourself. And if we can do that, then like that is our whole job as humans. That’s love. Love is being able to be and give everything to ourselves that we believe we deserve.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:05] And that resonates really strongly. I guess my deeper curiosity, though, is this sometimes we shrink because we don’t want to be rejected, because we don’t want to be. You mentioned earlier like ostracized, kicked out, like we want to belong in community and follow whatever the norms are. Other times we shrink for very practical reasons, like safety, like you’re a kid, you’re growing up young black men in the South. Right? Part of this for you isn’t about being rejected, and this is part of what you write about. It’s about safety. Oh, yeah. You know, it’s like showing up in a particular way that’s smaller than who you are because you want to be alive. You want to be safe. Oh, yeah. That’s a harder problem to solve in my mind. Like, so when you say, yeah, it’s like when you say be more visible and you like, be who you are. And like, that is a huge amount of faith. If part of the reason you’re shrinking is because of the perception that’ll make you safer and maybe the very real, the reality that it will make you safer to then go out and say, no, I’m going to be more visible. I’m going to be more of who I need to be and who I am. It’s like you’re you’re challenging, not just rejection. You’re stepping into a place of faith that somehow you’re you’re going to be okay even showing up in that deeper, more real, authentic place. And this was your story. That’s big. That’s a big.
Danté Stewart: [00:26:18] Move. Yeah, yeah. No, you know, what’s funny is, like, I’m such a person that, like, I don’t like to talk about myself often, you know, in my own journey that like, you’re right, it is big. Because when I think about it, man, to be young and black and American like you really do, like gotta shrink and become invisible to survive this country, especially playing football on the level that I did and that we did. I’ll never forget, like when Trayvon Martin was murdered. Like I wasn’t one of the ones who was like, you know, protesting or things like that. And we had a small group who did, but I wasn’t one of the ones who did because I wanted to be safe, like I wanted. You know, I felt like I had too much at stake in order to put myself out there. And a lot of times, you know, it’s easier to put out yourself out there when you got a lot to lose. It’s much harder to put yourself out there when you got everything to lose. And oftentimes being black in this country, you know, we got everything to lose. You know, this country gave us so little and we made something of it. And what little we do have, this country is constantly attempting to try and take away. We think about right now and it’s in 2025 and we’re still dealing with the rolling back of rights.
Danté Stewart: [00:27:30] We’re still dealing with people trying to undo many of the freedoms that we so hard, uh, fought for. We still live in a country in which, like books are being banned. Funding is being cut. People don’t care how they about like what’s going on in rural America, no matter where you are in Wisconsin with you. In South Carolina, where I’m from, people oftentimes aren’t just like not caring, but they’re like actively against. So to me, to show up in spite of that, you write, is the ultimate expression of faith because there’s the possibility of loss. And you believe you begin to believe that even if I lose something, I don’t lose everything, and everything I don’t lose is who I am as a person. I never get so like my granddad. I love my granddaddy, right? I carry his obituary wherever I go. I have some friends who I’m Christian, but I have friends who practice hoodoo and they’ll be like, hey, bro. Like, make a cup of coffee to your granddaddy, you know, and sip coffee with your granddaddy. I do. You know, and and I’d be like, hey, hey, granddaddy. Like, I have conversations with granddaddy, everything. You know? And so, like, like, for me, it’s being generative in life giving. So one of the things about my granddaddy I love, you know, it’s like he’s a black man from South Carolina, born in the 1930s.
Danté Stewart: [00:28:42] In spite of, like, serving in this country, I’ll never forget when 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, happened. My granddaddy, born in South Carolina, born as a baby of the Great Depression, born in the time of was this country. You know, we’re just years removed from one of the bloodiest periods in American history for black people, the 19, the early 1900s to about to the 1920s, especially black southern folk. You know, 1919 was, you know, they were like lynching black people all over. And you talking about like, he has proximity to these stories and you talking about, like, being not far removed from Emmett Till. You’re not even talking about, like, the stories, the smaller stories of the ways in which black people live in a constant grip of American terror. All throughout the continental United States, in ways that are like for every one headline, there’s like 10 or 15 acts of small violence that people don’t report on. And people like my granddaddy in the small, rural South. When the Voting Rights Act came down in 1954, in 1964, uh 65, after the Civil Rights Act of 64, my granddaddy got up in his pickup truck. And you want to know what my granddaddy did? My granddaddy went around town.
Danté Stewart: [00:29:51] He picked up everybody and said that no matter what, we in South Carolina, I’m going to pick up everybody so that they can have a right to be fully human and to vote and make their voice known. That is a radical risk. Why? Because you are in a moment in a state where people really don’t just don’t want you to exist, they don’t want you to change anything. So for me, I think like, yeah, it’s showing up as your full self no matter who you are, whether you’re black, whether you’re this, whether you’re that like it is, you’re right. The ultimate form of faith. Because you can lose so much and yet you’re not willing to lose yourself. And so for me, I’m preaching to myself right now, you know, because it’s the older you get, I feel like the less brave you become. So it’s like, I hope that I become a person that as I deepen my understanding of life, it also deepens my commitment to radical choices. You know, because stability status quo would create a sustainable life. But like risk, choice, imagination would create a full and whole life. And I don’t just want a sustainable life. I want a life in which, like, we can take some risks to like, be everything we can be.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:09] I mean, I think so many of us want that also, you know, um, but it’s just, you know, fear stops you. And we all have different fears and we all like, come from different places and different histories where, like, the fears can be radically different. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. It’s interesting that your your story is sort of like this. And I know you don’t love talking about yourself, but I’m going to talk about you. Oh it’s fine. I’m smiling. That’s like that’s cool because it’s a really powerful example in a lot of ways. You know, you’ve talked to a number of times about, you know, playing football and establishing yourself and establishing a name for that and then sort of moving out into the world and moving into the world of faith. But the world of faith you first moved into was, well, the faith that didn’t fit you. Yeah. And you did everything. You basically were like, let me figure this out. I want to be a part of this. I want to be in community. Like, I want to try and make it so these are my people. You hit a moment where you’re like, it’s not working like this whole the community, the approach, the it’s just not working. And rather than, again, getting to this moment and saying, you know what, I’m going to shrink again. And because I want to. I want to fit in again. You said no, I can’t do this. You know, and really started. And it meant walking away from a community. A sense of belonging. A set of beliefs that had been kind of like wrapped around you for a window of time, a season of your life and really going out. And I’m going to make this analogy and maybe uncomfortable for you. You describe the story of Jesus earlier in a conversation about how he looked at his parents and said, no, I got to go like, explore and figure out what’s right for me. And it’s kind of like you had your own version of that.
Danté Stewart: [00:32:51] Oh, it’s not comfortable for me at all.
Danté Stewart: [00:32:52] Yeah, that’s that’s true.
Jonathan Fields: [00:32:54] But it’s not untrue. It’s I’m not saying I’m not comparing you to him and saying.
Danté Stewart: [00:32:58] oh, no, no, but. Like, didn’t saying no and saying, let me figure out what works. I think that’s very true about my story. It’s like, I feel like I’ve always been this type of person, though for me it’s like, I don’t know what it is. I feel like I’ve never been a person that’s so tied to something, ultimately to where I can’t walk away. I think it’s partly because of the people around me is I love people, my friend said the other day. Bro, you just love people. And because I do love people like I pay attention to their stories. And I’m like, once you get to know people beyond your own kind of community and environment, then like you get to believe that there’s more possible for you than you’re settling for right now. You know, a lot of times we grow up or we come into environments in which, like, we believe this is the only thing for us, and then the story we receive about ourselves is that there are no other alternatives and options. There is nothing more for me here, and I just think that like that may be cool for some people to live that way, to be like, all right, cool. I’m good with where I’m at. And for me, I’m like that too. I’m good where I’m at until it don’t work. And when it don’t work I’m at least willing, you know, to challenge, like why it doesn’t work, why it doesn’t work for me. And it’d be like I at some point I’m just going to be like, I’m going to bounce and I’m gonna bounce out and I’m gonna just be like, okay, I’m gonna figure out what does work. And like, I think it’s all dependent on, like, having people around you who can become a safe place to land when you gotta jump. Let’s talk about my friend the other day, and she was using this narrative, the story of, like, a young man at a swimming pool. Imagine myself being a young man at a swimming pool, and I had jumped in the pool before. I had swim before. But time had kind of done his work on me and I wasn’t in the pool. And like, here she is trying to get me to believe that I can swim again. But then I’m at the edge of the pool. I’d say, oh, I can’t swim, I can’t do it, I can’t swim. And here are all these people who are in the pool who had seen me swim, who had jumped with me before, who had seen me, you know, do beautiful breaststroke and seen me freestyle. And they seen me even dip my foot into the water, and they saw the process of me jumping in one season. But then time had gone to work and I settled in. Forrest came in and she’s like, yo, do realize this? Is that like, you’re afraid right now to jump again because you believe that this time is going to be the time to ruin you without realizing that you’ve jumped and swam so many times before, and all you gotta do is trust that the people in the water will catch you and guide you where you need to go. Now, I think for me, I think for so many people, we get to the point where it’s like we forget that, like we have swam before and we’ve made it through and we didn’t drown and it didn’t destroy us. Big changes, big leaps, big bounds. It took something from us. It took a lot of courage. It took a lot of faith to do it. But like, there’s people in the water who’s like, hey, come on. Dip your foot in.
Danté Stewart: [00:36:18] Jump. It’s okay. And I think, like, for me, I’ve never really been a person to be like, I, I can’t jump, I can’t leap, you know? And I think for so many people, it’s not that like we get complacent or we settle. Is that like the muscle the faith muscle atrophies. The bravery muscle atrophies because oftentimes communities can in some sense make that bravery muscle atrophy. And when we’re so used to being somewhere that’s just like that doesn’t really challenge us or like, doesn’t really, you know, maybe we people who like I but I do master this stuff for me to bounce. I didn’t master this part of my journey. It’s time for me to go. And oftentimes we think that like, okay, you’re supposed to be somewhere forever, when in actuality maybe it’s just for a season and it’s time for you to jump again because somebody else needs your bravery. So on another level in this story, the more you jump, the more people that believe they can jump as well. And so it’s like if we lose that, we lose our sense of self, and maybe we are the ones who are to jump and not the ones that are supposed to stay on the sidelines.
Jonathan Fields: [00:37:31] So I have to ask you now if when your friend was sort of like sharing this story with you and saying like, okay, so like, here’s what’s going on. Was she talking to you about something that you’re grappling with right now, a jump that you’re thinking about?
Danté Stewart: [00:37:45] Yeah. She was in this moment.
Jonathan Fields: [00:37:46] Are you open to sharing?
Danté Stewart: [00:37:48] No not really. No no no no no no no no no no no no I can’t share that. Yeah. No no no that’s still on the road. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Because it’s like because for me in this. Present moment, I mean I think, I think a lot of the junk is about like Don say what do you want in life. Mhm. And you know, are you willing to like allow yourself the vulnerability of saying what you want without the fear of like being considered a bad person, without the fear of like, oh, they’re not going to like me if I do this or, well, you know, it just doesn’t. Things don’t work anymore, or they don’t work the way they should work. Or maybe, you know, you want things to look different. And I think that, like, as I’m grappling with my own life, it’s so funny that this podcast is having at this very moment where I’m going through one of the hardest times of my life, and it’s taking a lot of bravery to show up for work, to show up for myself, to show up for my family, to show up for, you know, my dreams and my goals and my desires. I think it’s so funny that I’m going back to, like, shouting in the fire, because I felt like I was so brave when I was writing that book, and I feel so scared in life right now. And, um, she was dragging me a little bit in a way, to tell me, Dante, you’ve already jumped before. It’s okay to not know all the answers, to not know all the moves, to not know whether you, you know, going to swim or drown. But she’s like, hey, G is only three feet, my boy. You’re a five foot. You’re a five foot nine, five, ten. You’re acting like life is asking you to jump into ten foot water. No, bro, you jumped before and it’s okay to jump again. You know, I’m much different as a human, I think. Different. I talk different, I want different things than, like, you know, when I was younger and I think trusting the process of my evolution and my growth as a human being in this present moment is like those the big leaps of life to trust the process of my life. And I unfolded and she was like, in this present moment, you know what you feel you must do and you’re just afraid of the consequences. But trust yourself. You got it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:40:09] The end of that book that we’ve been referencing is a declaration of becoming. And there’s one line where you say, I became who I was always meant to be. Mhm. It feels like you’re dipping back into that as we speak.
Danté Stewart: [00:40:22] Yeah. Yeah. I’m thinking even like right now and as a writer, you know, you know as a writer I’m going through this right now where, you know, when I think about like writing, shouting in the fire, you know, it’s a very different moment. It was in 2020. You know, in 2021. And it’s just a very different moment for Americans. And as a young writer, you kind of speak in your mind or whatever you feel. You know and things like that, and it’s good. It’s right. But then like right now I’m like, I’m trying to be a storyteller in a way that, like, is more robust. I like different type of writing now. I like more like immersive journalism and poetry and essays and things like that, and like I want to Explore humans outside of myself, which is much different. I’m working on my second book right now, and it’s, uh, I’ll be done in about a month and a half with it. This book is the kind of next step in my journey as a writer and a human. You know, where so much of the same themes of shouting in the fire is being explored in this book, but I’m stepping back and saying, let me travel to you all day. Let me travel to Vietnam. Let me travel to Charleston, South Carolina. Let me travel to these different places in New Mexico. Let me travel, you know, to these different to New York and, um, begin to explore like heartbreak and what heartbreak does to us and what we do with it, and figure out how we can use our heartbreak as a force for creative good. You know, and of course, shouting in the fire is that you see that woven and shot in the fire where, you know, heartbreak and anger and grief is used for good and as a creative force, but like right now and it’s like for me, you know, I’m just a different human than all of us. And that takes a lot of bravery because, like people get used to, you know, you’re being a certain type of way or like, you know, my work on social media, it’s like sometimes you get tired as a writer and sometimes you’re like, well, I don’t want to talk about Donald Trump today, bro.
Danté Stewart: [00:42:28] I just, I want to I want to go watch some films and talk about Ryan Coogler or Alfred Hitchcock. You know, I want to go read some poems and let’s talk about poems and things like that. Let’s talk about basketball. You know, let me talk about sports. And of course, those other things are going to be layered in there. But it’s like, you know, life is so interesting. And I think, like, I’m such a curious human being that like, my desires and interests change, you know, every so often. And it takes a lot of bravery to accept that, like, okay, the person that was writing book one will be different in the person that I am writing book to. But like Ryan Coogler said the other day in the interview, he says, every movie I made, it was the best movie that I could make at that moment. And like, hey, this is the best I got to offer right now. And back then that was the best I got to offer then. And then in another year when I’m working on my young adult novel, that’d be the best thing that I can offer right then. And every version of The Self Matters. And I think a lot of times we think that like, okay, our journeys to becoming ourselves only matter when we become the thing we always wanted, and that’s just not the case. The journey matters. Every day we wake up and decide we’re going to take it. Mm.
Jonathan Fields: [00:43:46] Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So I always wrap with the same question here. And that is in this container of Good Life project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.
Danté Stewart: [00:43:59] For me to live a good life is to be okay with like the life is life and that every day, you know, life presents a new opportunity to be more of who you are. And then the good life is a life in which you can look at everything you became and look at everything you came from, and realize it meant something and an account for something, and that the only thing in the world demands of you is for you to just try and be yourself as much as you can every day. That’s the good life. That’s the life that counts it. No matter how much money you make and how many books you write, how many mistakes you make, how much failure you have, how much fear you possess. If you wake up in the morning and you begin to ask yourself, what can I do today to give me life? That’s the good life. To be able to ask that question, to make small steps, to like, live it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:44:52] Thank you.
Danté Stewart: [00:44:54] Yeah thank you man.
Jonathan Fields: [00:44:57] If you love this episode, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Rabbi Steve Leder about how to live, what really matters. You can find the link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by, Alejandro Ramirez, and Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring. Chances are you did, because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. Seven-second favor. Share it with just one person and if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.