Faith, art, and the courage to land.
Orange Ripcord treats personal rupture as a jump: free fall, ripcord, landing. Lori Slaymaker frames poems, paintings, novels, scripture, and theologians as companions for people learning to name pain without letting it become the whole story.
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Orange Ripcord is a spiritual storytelling show organized around one vivid metaphor: the jump, the fall, the ripcord, the float, and the landing. It returns to that image as a way of speaking about crisis without making crisis the final word. The register is devotional, lyrical, and searching. It often sounds like a spoken meditation moving through art, theology, scripture, and lived pain. Lori Slaymaker names the show in the opening and guides episodes with an intimate, encouraging cadence. The subject matter is heavy, but the posture is hopeful. Shame appears again and again as something carried in the body, learned through families, culture, religion, trauma, exclusion, and self-blame. Healing is treated as slow and embodied. In episodes on paintings, poems, and Frida Kahlo’s corsets, art becomes a way to look at wounds without turning away. A reflection on Nightcrawling brings poverty, grief, mental illness, and survival into the same frame as spiritual attention. The show is also deeply interested in contemplation. Howard Thurman and Barbara Holmes appear in a meditation on inner authority, stillness, and the guarded place within a person that cannot be breached without consent. Easter opens another path. Thomas Merton, Moltmann, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are brought together to consider resurrection as peace, future hope, and a divine yes to life. Orange Ripcord can be repetitive in its ritual language, especially around risk, courage, clapping, curiosity, and taking a step. That repetition is part of its shape. The show wants listeners to rehearse new language until it becomes livable. Its episodes rarely rush toward tidy answers. They circle an image, test it against faith, and then ask what it might mean for a bruised person trying to stand. The result is a tender, art-literate, Christian reflection series for people drawn to healing work with poetic edges.
Made for: Orange Ripcord is for reflective listeners drawn to Christian spirituality, contemplative practice, poetry, visual art, and healing after shame or trauma. It especially suits people who want gentle but direct language for fear, brokenness, courage, and repair.
What sets it apart: The show pairs devotional encouragement with concrete works of art, literature, and theology, moving from Frida Kahlo, Nightcrawling, Howard Thurman, and Easter theology into practical reflection. Its recurring skydiving frame gives each episode a ritual structure: fall, pull, float, land.
The instruction, the jump, the free-fall, the ripcord pull, the floating, and the landing. We embody and re-tell these stories of our lives where we pull the ripcord. Join me on this journey as we celebrate storytelling, great courage, and inspire each other towards new levels of healing and wholeness. For the full experience, this podcast is best enjoyed in a quiet space—perhaps even with your eyes closed—as you allow these stories to sink in and resonate more deeply within.Audio Production by Ryan Caldwell, Bird Garden Studio
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A fox-and-hedgehog image leads into a clear meditation on discernment and the Holy Spirit.
Orange Ripcord begins with a fox on the riverbank, flies gathering on him, and a hedgehog offering help before the fox turns it away. From there, Lori Slaymaker moves into Isaiah Berlin's fox-and-hedgehog distinction and uses it to ask how attentiveness, revelation, discernment,…
A devotional meditation on desire, landing, and the help hoped for.
Orange Ripcord begins with Lori Slaymaker framing free fall as a moment when help is needed for the landing, with hope for peace and calm carrying the image forward.
A reflective episode about fear, story, and learning to read anxiety with more care.
This episode treats fear as a kind of narrative pressure, showing how people build danger in their minds and how one vivid image can outrun better judgment.
Art historian Tamar Avishai interviews critics, curators, and writers about single paintings and ideas.
Creative practice, honestly worked through.
Lori Slaymaker uses Henry Amar's porcupine metaphor to examine boundaries, safety, and closeness in relationships.
Barbara Brown Taylor says ordinary places can become altars when people notice God in the world around them.
This episode uses the metaphor of pulling an orange ripcord to explore personal struggles and resilience, illustrated through a fable about a fox and a hedgehog.
This episode explores how women can rebel against shame and societal constraints by embracing their stories and taking courageous leaps toward self-discovery and empowerment.
This episode explores Easter through a spiritual lens, featuring a journal entry by theologian Thomas Merton that reflects on nature, rebirth, and finding peace during the holiday season.
This episode explores how trauma and pain, exemplified by Frida Kahlo's bus accident and her artistic transformation of medical corsets into symbols of resilience, can be confronted and retold through personal stories.
This episode explores the story of Kiara and Marcus, siblings in Oakland dealing with mental illness, poverty, and abandonment while trying to survive and find meaning.
Lori Slaymaker opens Orange Ripcord with Rome, the Vatican, and Michelangelo’s ceiling, then turns to "The Baptism of Christ" and the Jordan River flowing toward the viewer.
Orange Ripcord centers on Karen Thomas Walker's idea that fear is "an amazing act of the imagination," using the 1819 Essex wreck 3,000 miles off Chile as the main example.
This episode explores life's cyclical patterns through the metaphor of pulling a ripcord, drawing on literary and spiritual insights from Leo Tolstoy and Henry Nouwen to discuss recognition and hope in difficult times.
This episode explores the concept of living water through the lens of life's cyclical patterns and storytelling, referencing insights from the soil doctor on water's vital role in agriculture and existence.
This episode uses the metaphor of pulling a ripcord in life to explore personal stories and spiritual choices, illustrated by the host's 2015 trip to Rome where she faced a decision between seeing Pope Francis or visiting Florence's art.
This episode explores how life's patterns of crisis and resolution, symbolized by pulling a ripcord, lead to a deeper mutual relationship with God through listening and inner reflection.
The host shares a personal story about the sudden death of a family friend, reflecting on how unexpected tragedies interrupt life plans and prompt spiritual listening.