Kris & Scott’s Story

Nearly fifteen years ago, Kris and Scott, who have been married for 34 years, led their small, Tucson-based Christian church on a mission trip to Ethiopia. The trip would plant the seeds for a sea-change in their spirituality and their family. As Kris said, “It blew our worldview apart.” 

One day when Kris sat with the village’s women, holding children as the men built houses, an imam, the village’s Muslim leader, talked with her through a translator: “Why are you here?” he asked.

Kris paused and looked at him. At that moment, she realized her purpose for being there. So she spoke the only answer that felt true: “We’re just here to love you.” 

The imam reached over and put his hand on her leg. “This is God,” he said. 
A revelation dropped. “In that moment, we were not Christian or Muslim or Catholic. None of that mattered,” Kris said. “We were just people wanting to love on people. That became our religion: Love, period.”

*

Kris and Scott, who both grew up in the Midwest, were raised Catholic. “I think 90% of my childhood town,” Scott said, “was Roman Catholic. It was just the culture there in the 1960s and 70s; everyone had big families and went to church on Sunday.” Scott’s family is what he calls “back benchers”—they weren’t deeply devout, but they showed up every week and all the family’s children went to Catholic school, at least for some portion of their education. Kris’s story is similar; she attended church each week and CCD (Catholic education for school kids), which her mom taught. When Kris and Scott got married in 1990 in the Catholic church, they decided to continue the tradition, attending services weekly. 

By the time they moved to Tucson and started a family, they had become founding members of a new Catholic church in town. They remember gathering for service on Sundays in a cafeteria. “It was small, quaint, and comfortable,” Kris said. It felt like family. After the church broke ground, they helped fundraise to build the church’s Catholic school. Between their three kids (the last of whom is still in high school), their kids spent 19 years there.

It was nothing dramatic that led them to stop attending Sunday Mass. Scott was working nights and weekends and Kris remembers the stress of trying to corral their three active kids each Sunday morning. “The church didn’t have childcare,” she said, “and so I wasn’t getting anything out of the service. And the kids weren’t either.” She had been taking their youngest daughter to storytime at a small Christian church across the street from their home. “Maybe we should try it?” Kris said to Scott. “We didn’t go there thinking about theology,” Kris said. “We weren’t at that place in our journey. It was just convenience. Convenience in a chaotic household.” 

*

For years, Kris and Scott built a God-centered home for their family. This didn’t mean following—or even believing in—all the “rules.” Instead, for them, being God-centered meant feeling connected to God. “For us,” Kris said, “It was about love.” 

As they dove into this new Christian church across from their house, something else began shifting. Scott discovered Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and teacher who bears witness to the deep wisdom of Christian mysticism. It was an opening. Scott began reading Rohr’s daily meditations, awakening to Rohr’s calls for an inclusive, compassionate, just, and loving spirituality.  Scott started dipping his toes into “the unknowing.” The more they stepped forward beyond the safety of certainty, the more free they felt. They leaned in. As Scott said, “It was liberating.”

*

And then their lives were rocked. 

In his book The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, Richard Rohr insists there are “two universal paths of transformation…available to every human being: great love and great suffering.” Only these two, love and suffering, he says, are strong enough to “open us to Mystery.” 

Scott had just retired and found himself transitioning in his work and his beliefs when great suffering knocked on his family’s door. “It felt like a cruel game of dominoes,” he said. “Both of my oldest kids became ill with extremely rare chronic illnesses.” Scott went from retirement into caregiving. Then, in March of 2020 as COVID shut down the world, Kris found herself in the midst of her own unbidden diagnosis: cancer.

“It was a shock,” Kris said. “What we thought was our solid foundation was falling away.” Scott agreed. “It quickly became really clear to me,” he said, “that I wasn’t in control anymore. I always had a sense of control. I had a satisfying career. A satisfying family. And a beautiful marriage. And, suddenly, the rug got pulled out.” 

*

Illness is never a welcome guest. Those who have known it don’t ask for it and don’t wish it upon anyone else. And yet, sometimes, if we listen to its whispers we may hear something unexpected: guidance; a message.

Cancer threw Kris into what Richard Rohr calls the “second half of life,” a new and deeper task. “Up until that point, I had lived for everyone else,” Kris said. Realizing that life is short, she leaned into understanding who she was. “It was a busting open…If I could undo the opportunity, I don’t think I would.” 

For Kris, the “mess was the message.” The love that had always driven her and Scott “became bigger.” As they navigated illness and the global pandemic sent churches online, they stopped showing up to Sunday Zoom services and began reevaluating their spiritual life.

*

 “I like to call us seekers,” Scott said, describing themselves after their break with their church. For three years after they left, they sought. They found themselves navigating the wilderness on their own. “We missed community,” he said.

That’s when Aldea, a spiritual community that places love at its center, crossed their path. In December 2023, they clicked open the Washington Post to read about churches for ‘nones,’ a new way of gathering spiritual seekers like them. Scott remembers thinking, “Wow, this really speaks to me. I wish they had one of those in Tucson.” As he scrolled down in the article’s list of budding and innovative spiritual communities, Aldea jumped out at him: it was right there, in their hometown. He and Kris knew: this, too, was an invitation into Mystery.

Before jumping in headfirst, they found previous messages from Aldea on YouTube. After watching, they looked at each other: “We were like, Jake [Aldea’s lead pastor] is saying the things we talk about every day.” It was a revelation—and a relief. As the new year rolled in, they took their first steps through Aldea’s doors and into the heart of its community.

It felt like home.

*

For Scott and Kris, Aldea is a “refuge,” a place where you can come as you are. “You can leave your guilt and shame at the door,” Scott said. “And hopefully you walk out with a little less of it every time.” Scott feels like Aldea has helped him transform, discovering within himself heightened patience and mindfulness as a husband and father. Kris calls Aldea the “church of the unknowing” where it’s okay to grapple with the questions. “That’s what I love,” she said.

“We laugh about it,” Kris went on, “because Aldea is like communal therapy. There’s healing and growth that weave into your daily life…I’m a different boss now than I would have been. I’m a different mom. I’m a different wife. I’m in my mid-fifties and you kind of feel like you’ve lived your life and you know who you are. But this journey has changed how I know myself. I show up differently.” 

“That’s it,” Scott said, affirming her. “We’re different parents. Our youngest daughter is only a teenager and she’s saying that out loud to us. She sees it, the change in us. That’s incredible, right?” 

For Kris, this is the revolutionary potential of communities like Aldea: they call you into greater love and healing—and this healing ripples out. “As we heal ourselves,” Kris said, “we help others heal.” She paused for a moment and started to cry. “I think it’s just so beautiful. I’m crying because it’s having such an impact on our family.” 

The secret to their transformation has been willingness; in the face of existential questions, they haven’t looked away. They’ve invited the questions closer. “The therapist and psychologist James Hollis,” Scott said, “believes every person has an appointment with their soul, and it’s whether or not you choose to accept it. I feel like, wow, I’m on that path of accepting it. Aldea is one way I keep that appointment.” 

“And when you accept that appointment,” Kris added, finishing Scott’s thought, “it’s like God says, Oh, you’re open to this. I’ll give you more and more. We’re learning to just be open; beautiful things will come from that.” 

*

Today, Kris and Scott’s children have healed from their illnesses. In March, it will be five years since Kris’s cancer diagnosis—a momentous marker for any survivor. The joyous news? Kris has no evidence of disease. 

“On the wall of our home,” Kris said, “we have a saying: Faith is when you close your eyes and open your heart.” Together, they have embraced the Mystery. In return, they have been gifted glimpses of the infinite. 

And they have seen the truth: There is only love.

Written by Ashley Asti