INFO
Franciscan Spirituality Center
920 Market Street
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-791-5295

https://www.fscenter.org

Steve Spilde: Welcome. Today it is my strong pleasure to welcome Shannon Evans to the
podcast. Shannon is coming to the Franciscan Spirituality Center on February 26 th . The title of
the event is, “Sacred Listening,” which is a lot of what we do, but we’re going to hear her
perspective on it. She’s going to talk about how we hone in on the still small voice of God and
tune out the false self. It’s my pleasure to meet Shannon. It’s my pleasure to introduce Shannon
to our audience. Welcome, Shannon.
Shannon Evans: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Steve: I don’t really know you, Shannon, but we’ve been chatting before we started the
recording getting to know each other. You’re a pleasure to visit with, and I’m looking forward
to getting to know more about you. My first question is, who is Shannon Evans?
Shannon: That’s a loaded question, isn’t it? First and foremost, I think the essence of how I
would identify myself is a spiritual seeker. I find my most alive self in contemplation in nature
and experiencing God as present in all things and connecting all things. That’s definitely where I
find my main sense of being. I’m also a mom; I have five kids – one through adoption, and the
other four through my body. I’ve been married to my husband, Eric, for 15 years. We are
transplants to Iowa, but I think we’re here to stay – we’ve been here six years. I’m also a writer,
mostly spiritual nonfiction, although I dabble in poetry and fiction a little bit. Currently, I’m the
social media editor at National Catholic Reporter, so that’s my day job. I’m an animal lover, a
baby lover, a yogi wannabe – those are all little pieces of who I am.
Steve: You said you were a transplant to Iowa six years ago. What brought you to Iowa?
Shannon: My husband actually got a job at a parish here in Ames doing campus ministry and
music in liturgy – originally it was kind of a job that covered all of those things. He left that
position a year ago to do Spiritual Direction, and we’re still here, so I think we’re staying.
We’ve kind of made our home here now.
Steve: Where did you grow up?
Shannon: I grew up in Texas, mostly. I was born in Arkansas, but grew up in Texas. I got
married after college in Texas. My husband and I were actually Evangelical missionaries after
college before we had kids, so we lived in Indonesia for two years and traveled some other
places short-term as well. [We] moved back to Texas and got involved in a Catholic worker who
convinced us to become Catholic, then [we] eventually moved to Iowa. We’ve done quite a bit
of hopping around, hence the need to put down roots somewhere.
Steve: You grew up in more of an Evangelical atmosphere. How would you say your religious
understanding has evolved as you’ve grown older?

Shannon Evans Podcast
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Shannon: You know, it’s interesting. My parents are Baptists. My mom is a social worker.
My dad was a pastor and then taught theology at Baylor University. They actually would
probably never have identified as Evangelical. They were pretty mainline, so they weren’t
Southern Baptists [and] not super-conservative. I was really raised with a very balanced
spirituality, and one that was very much centered on what we in Catholic circles call “The Works
of Mercy,” or just helping people is probably what my parents would have said. That was very
much emphasized as part of what it means to have a Christian spirituality for me growing up. I
kind of had my prodigal years, and then when I sort of came back to the idea of wanting a
relationship with God, I was then drawn in college to a very charismatic Evangelical church and
sort of went through the whole phase of judging my parents for not being “on fire” enough and
all of that that is a pretty typical developmental stage to go through. As I kind of unpack my
spiritual journey, there are several distinct phases of it. I can’t necessarily look back and say, “It
is just not seamless or simple.”
The biggest change happened when we were in Indonesia and started really questioning a lot of
the reasons that we were there as far as salvation and this exclusivity of trying to get people to
cross over from one side of the line to the other. That was really, really healthy, but obviously
hard and isolating and lonely. Then we came back and kind of gradually began looking into this
“Theology of Suffering,” [which is] sort of like this Catholic idea that suffering can actually be
something blessed by God because we were really suffering with our son and the Evangelical
culture really pushed for praying for healing and praying for some sort of radical moment where
the page was going to turn. I think what we really needed was more to embrace the fact that the
incarnation means that God is with us in the present moment, whatever it is. It’s not about
having some miracle that totally changes circumstances by really finding God in the
circumstance and in our son and in ourselves. That’s a long answer to your question, isn’t it?
The funny thing is, I think I’m coming back more to probably being a little bit more similar to
my parents and how I was originally raised, although I’m Catholic and they’re still Baptists. I
think we were probably furthest apart when I was in the heart of the charismatic world.