With and For hosted by Dr. Pam King

Latest Episodes:

Longing for Peace - Advent Meditation (Week 2) Dec 24, 2024

Show notes

Welcome to the second week of our Advent Meditation Journey.

In this sacred season of waiting, we turn our attention to peace—not just as a feeling, but as a way of being rooted in God’s presence. This meditation invites you to pause, breathe deeply, and explore the longings that stir beneath the surface. However you are today—tense or calm, weary or expectant—you are welcome here. Let this be a moment to bring your whole self before God and receive the peace that passes understanding.

To receive all four meditations, visit

https://thethrivecenter.org/ and sign up for our newsletter

https://youtu.be/FYCPLepj1kU

We at the Thrive Center wish you a season filled with the hope, peace, joy, and love of Christ.

Check out our blog - Second Sunday of Advent: Peace.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Longing for Hope - Advent Meditation (Week 1) Dec 23, 2024

Show notes

Welcome to the 2025 Advent Meditation Journey.

If you are longing for a more meaningful Advent season, we invite you to join us in setting aside time each week to reflect, pray, and re-center. Advent is a season of preparation—a sacred invitation to slow down and open ourselves to the coming of Christ.

This is the first week of our Advent Meditation Journey. In this season of sacred waiting, we pause to reflect on longing and hope. Whether you’re feeling grounded or weary, hopeful or uncertain, you are welcome here. This brief meditation is an invitation to slow down, tune into your heart, and open yourself to the quiet stirrings of hope. Find a comfortable place, take a deep breath, and join me as we begin this Advent journey together—with honesty, stillness, and expectation.

Check out our blog - First Sunday of Advent: Hope.

https://thethrivecenter.org/first-sunday-of-advent-hope/

To receive all four meditations, visit

https://thethrivecenter.org/

and sign up for our newsletter

https://mailchi.mp/fuller.edu/sm-practices-for-spiritual-health-part2

https://mailchi.mp/fuller.edu/web-thrive-advent2025

⁠https://youtu.be/FYCPLepj1kU

We at the Thrive Center wish you a season filled with the hope, peace, joy, and love of Christ.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Experience Love — Advent Meditation (Week 4) Dec 22, 2024

Show notes

Christmas is about the love of God given to us in Christ. Love compels us forward through darkness and light—enabling us to grow and change, connect and relate, forgive and let go, and make a difference and seek justice.

This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

Jesus said, "As I have loved you, you must love one another.”
“Love compels us forward through darkness and light, with its power to connect and heal.”
Love for God, love for others, and love for yourself
You are beloved.
Breathing practice
Attuning to sensations of love in your body
What are these feelings of love saying about you, your values, your beliefs?
What does love say about your deepest beliefs about what matters most in life?
Who needs love from you today?
How do you live out love in the world?
What is one thing you can do to lean into love or to live out love?

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Embrace Joy — Advent Meditation (Week 3) Dec 15, 2024

Show notes

Joy is more than a feeling. It’s a virtue. And it’s something we can cultivate. We live into joy when we encounter who or what matters most to us. It’s associated with our life's deepest yearnings and connection.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

The Shepherd’s Candle—symbolizing joy
Joy is more than a feeling. It’s a virtue.
Cultivating joy through encountering who and what matters most to us
Breathing practice
Loving and joyful presence of God
How are you experiencing joy in your body?
Joy’s insight into our values, opening us up to creativity and connection
Does pursuing joy require you to step out of your normal routine?
What can you do to bring joy to another?

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Discover Peace — Advent Meditation (Week 2) Dec 08, 2024

Show notes

Peace can be elusive, but if set an intention to be instruments of peace—both in offering it and experiencing it—it has the power to transform us. Peace is often an indication that life is in balance and going well, either in the immediate or the eternal sense.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

“Peace can be elusive.”
Peace is more than a feeling—it’s an indication that “all is well.”
Consider the Prince of Peace, who comes to dwell with us this Christmas
Breathing practice
What brings you peace?
Where do you feel peace in your body?
What has been preventing peace for you?
“Peace is often an indication that life is in balance, and that life is going well, either in the immediate or the eternal sense.”
Setting an intention to pursue peace
“Peace I give you.”
“May the peace of God be with you and pervade your life this week as you anticipate the coming of the Prince of Peace this Christmas.”

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Take Hold of Hope — Advent Meditation (Week 1) Dec 01, 2024

Show notes

Hope is powerful. It’s more than a feeling. It’s a foundation for getting us through even the darkest of times. The season of Advent provides the opportunity to attune to hope, become aware of our deepest hopes and desires, and then align our lives to hope.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

“Hope has the power to transform and involves our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.”
Take hold of hope with simple steps of attunement, awareness, alignment, and activation
Breath work
Attune, in order to feel sensations of hope in your body.
How are you experiencing or feeling hope in your body?
Notice, don’t judge.
What do the feelings of hope say about your deepest desires?
Where does your hope come from?
How can you align your day with your hope?
How can you align with hope to reflect God's desires for you?
What is one thing you can do today to lean forward into hope?

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Season 2 Trailer! Reconnect, Repair, Rebuild in 2025 Nov 25, 2024

Show notes

How can we reconnect, repair, and rebuild our fractured world?

We need grounded scientific insight that we connect us with what is good, true, and beautiful. We need wider perspective that guides us toward purpose, community, wisdom, and spiritual health.

Developmental psychologist, ordained minister, and professor, Dr. Pam King introduces Season 2 of With & For, which launches on January 6, 2025. Inviting guests with expertise in psychology, spirituality, and leadership, this new season will tackle practical questions with courage, openness, and hope—focusing on insights, stories, and exercises for how to reconnect, repair, and rebuild our fractured world. How to find psychological, emotional, and spiritual health, and how to find one another in love.

This season, episode topics include:

The power of positive emotions like awe, wonder, curiosity, and transcendence, along with other research backed practices that encourage them.

The dangers of spiritual and religious abuse, the psychological impact of childhood relational trauma, and how to heal from the wounds of the past.

The neuroscience behind our emotional health, its impact on how we develop, learn, grow, and make meaning.

The science behind core human relationships, the emotional vulnerability and power dynamics of intimate romantic relationships, as well as the challenge of parenting and being parented.

Why and how our moral lives and cultivating virtues are fundamental to joy and thriving.

The legacies of racial justice and consider the spiritual and moral underpinnings of nonviolent resistance. The healing properties of art, creativity, and beauty, and how they offer comfort and strength beyond words.

And much more.

Subscribe to With & For wherever you listen to podcasts and visit us online at thethrivecenter.org/podcast.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Individual, Relational, Aspirational: The Three Pillars of Thriving with Dr. Pam King and Nada Jones Nov 18, 2024

Show notes

Dr. Pam King joins longtime friend, entrepreneur, and inspiring podcast host Nada Jones on for a conversation on thriving and self-discovery in mid-life. Nada Jones is the founder and CEO of Liberty Road, a podcast and organization for entrepreneurial women focused on growth, wisdom, sharing stories, and finding purpose. She has a regular podcast where women in the middle third of their lives share their journeys of self-discovery.

Together they discuss Pam’s approach to thriving as a developmental psychologist; the adventure of women entering and exploring the middle third of their lives; Pam’s definition of thriving; and what might get in the way of thriving during this challenging period of life.

Pam shares resources from psychology and spirituality that can provide for people to grow and support others, describing three pillars for a thriving life: individual, relational, and aspirational.

Show Notes

About Liberty Road podcast and organization
“Pursuing your future doesn't end at 40. In fact, it may mark the beginning of knowing who you are, what you're capable of, and what you really want.”

Thriving at the intersection of three pillars of life: individual, relational, and aspirational.
“In the deepest part of my being, I really want to enable people to thrive in a very holistic way. And live more fully into who they are. Living more authentically, living with deeper connection and, and with deeper purpose.”
Not just another self-help platform
“How do you help us understand purpose or thriving when maybe we haven't put ourselves first?"

Examples for each three pillars
Stay-at-home mom moving into a new phase of life
“Start with loving ourselves and giving ourselves grace.”
“Bring out the best in yourself. Love yourself.”
What images come to mind as positive memories of competency and strength?
Obligations in relationships
What are we actually living out? Is it consistent with our values?
Change your environment or change yourself.
What is spirituality?

Pam King on life in the “middle third”
Reprioritizing and making professional shifts
What keeps you grounded? 10 minutes of silence of meditation.
What are you currently reading? Open and Unafraid by W. David Taylor / Strength That Remains, by Tracy Kidder

About Nada Jones

Nada Jones is the founder and CEO of Liberty Road, a podcast and organization for entrepreneurial women focused on growth, wisdom, sharing stories, and finding purpose. Discover more of her work at www.liberty-road.com.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Human Relationality and Growth: Psychological and Theological Perspectives with Dr. Pam King & Evan Rosa Nov 11, 2024

Show notes

Dr. Pam King joins the Yale Center for Faith & Culture podcast, For the Life of the World, for a discussion of human development, purpose, relational intimacy, and spiritual connection—all through the integration of developmental psychology and theology.

With host Evan Rosa (Yale Center for Faith & Culture), she reflects on human change and plasticity in the midst of a whole complex life; relational attachment for the sake of intimacy and exploration and ultimate purpose or meaning; the proper place of self-love; God’s enabling and loving presence as the ultimate secure attachment figure; the importance of learning, gaining skills, and the pursuit of expertise; the prospects of regaining emotional regulation through relationships; the game changing impact of deliberate psychological and spiritual practices to move us well beyond surviving to a life of thriving.

Show Notes

Martin Buber’s I and Thou
John Bowlby and Attachment Theory
Trolick’s Still Face Experiment (Video)
Justin Barrett & Pamela Ebstyne King, Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing

Production Notes

This podcast featured Pamela Ebstyne King
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen Yun
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give‍
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Roots to Fruits: How to Live Out Love in Turbulent Times, with Rev. Dr. Pam King Nov 04, 2024

Show notes

If we want to bear good fruit in our lives, we must have strong roots. Good fruit must lead to love. As the Rev. Dr. Pam King offers in this episode, “Root into love so that you can live out love.”

Speaking on Jesus’s parable of the Tree and Its Fruits in Luke 6, she draws on theological and psychological resources to reflect on the role of active and intentional love in a thriving life.

Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”

Show Notes

Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
“I believe this scripture … redefines reality and redefines fruit.”
True love in *The Princess Bride — “Wuv. Twoo Wuv.”
“True love is the greatest thing in the world.”
“Root into love so that you can live out love.”
What is thriving? What New Testament parables of Jesus express thriving?
Redefining “Good”
What is good?
“Good” is a four-letter word
There’s always a right answer in Sunday School: “Jesus”
Defining the Relationship? Or Define the Reality?
A reordering of values
“… a radical reordering of values and a re sanctification of sanctioned behaviors. He describes the kind of conduct that is appropriate for this kingdom that he will be leading. It is love your enemies, do good out of love. Give generously out of love. Lend without expectation. Love your neighbor.”
Fruit is a symbol of love
Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, “The Home of God”—what is to come is coming now. “Inbreaking”
Flux in congregational or community life
The Reciprocating Self
Conformity is not synonymous with uniformity
“We are each invited to bear fruit out of our own giftedness.”
“Bear fruit as yourself.”
“Pam, you’re a good Pam.”
“We bear fruit by living out God's love. in this world as ourselves.”
Tree imagery in the Bible
“A tree firmly planted, or some versions rooted, by streams of water, that does not get blown when the winds come by.”
What kind of tree are you?
How do you root into God’s love?
Eli Finkel and third-person perspective taking
“When people take a benevolent third person view in the Christian worldview, God's perspective, and they actually write those things about a person, the conflict is still there, but they're able to interact and care for that person more effectively and see that person more wholly.”
“80 percent of Americans young people are lonely. We are in a cultural mode of despair in many ways. We are losing our relational capacity.”