Episode 115 - Tabs & Wafers: Live in Los Angeles

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ladies gentlemen and people of all gender identities [Music] please [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] los angeles so good to be with you i mean i live here but so good to be with you while i'm on a stage that curtain opening thing is a funny thing to do when you're just sitting on a chair it doesn't feel epic enough i felt like i should have done a pose or something uh welcome welcome to tabs and wafers uh we're the liturgists and some of you are the liturgists as well uh so glad to be here you are so welcome here welcome it could be like sort of the mission statement of the liturgists in a way welcome what i think of well uh when i think about where the word comes from the word wellos in greek it means invitation and comey means spam i'm just kidding i have no idea where the word welcome means but i have a decent layman's understanding of the word and it's just that i'm happy you're here and i feel like i need to say it because there's been a lot of people on stages when you talk about spiritual stuff that have made people feel lesser than um and that they have to achieve something or be something that they're not in order to fully be welcome as you are and so that's part of why we've we made the liturgists because we didn't feel welcome in a lot of spaces that talked about spirituality and you are welcome here regardless of your gender or your orientation or your your religion your beliefs or lack thereof regardless of your ability levels or your body type or any of it you are you make us feel less alone and actually the weirder that you are kind of like the farther out of the norms that society has for what people should be uh in the power structures you know the farther out of out of that art you make me feel safer uh because i haven't typically belonged i mean you can see my pants here um but i so thank you for making me feel safe uh speaking of that can i tell you about the first time that i got drunk um it was at darlene check's house and that's really actually kind of the whole story darling check if you don't know who that is is like the shout to the lord the like the the worship woman of all time apparently she was like when i was when i was in high school she was the the worship woman and uh so if you would have told my 15 year old self that the first time he would get drunk would be at darlene check's house he would have flipped his shit it would have been an element of like you get to meet darlene check wow that's pretty cool but then there also would have been an element of like do you lose your salvation or what's going on with you and then of course if you would have told that 25 year old self that was first dipping his feet into having some wine with those crazy australians that drink wine um if you would have told him about the 32 year old self who was kneeling in a bathrobe in a luxury spa and letting go of god becoming an atheist that guy would he wouldn't have been okay with that and if you would have told the 32 year old self about the 35 year old self who was in a shamanic ceremony having some sort of spiritual awakening and there's magic mushrooms involved he wouldn't have been cool with that uh and i'm wondering i'm curious like how many of you if you thought about yourself 10 years ago would look at yourself here and now and see what you think and how you behave in the world and you'd that self would have been like perfect that's exactly what i thought was gonna happen that's exactly who i thought i would become uh and then vice versa how many of you would now would look at that person 10 years ago and be like oh i wish i thought more like that again i wish i was more like that person not a lot of us are in that space uh and for good reason like we move forward and we learn things and we learn things we and when you're moving and you're growing and you're evolving you're moving into spaces that were previously shut off nope don't go there and so we tend to look forward into whatever is beyond that beyond the pale with fear right we're like ooh uh and then we look backwards with disdain we look backwards like i was an idiot right you have this kind of disdain for where we came from a lot of us and i think that that thing that mechanism has something to do with why spaces where we talk about the big questions can tend to feel exclusionary and can tend to make people who aren't in the exact same place of the journey feel unwelcome because a lot of it's how we think about ourselves and our own journey and like this is how i feel safe this is the place where i find god or truth or beauty or goodness and outside of that no no it makes me think of communion like growing up communion was such a big deal for me i i loved communion but it was also kind of scary because they would tell us about like there was a verse in the bible where it says if you uh people have taken communion like improperly or whatever and they've gotten sick and some have even died holy shit like that's intense so every time communion i'm like when's the last time i masturbated did i really feel super repentant about it or that was my my evangelical shame and it was all this am i okay and it was very careful how every denomination does it you know it was very important and we get in fights different camps get in fights and it's like is it wine or is it welch's is it contra substantiation or is it transubstantiation is it is it the is it the bread you tear off or is it like crackers or is it the uh wafers or what all these different things that we do that we feel this is the way and on some level some of us feel post that but i get i get i get it on some level even after i was felt like i was post that i remember going to a mega church big like fancy rock show church and there were these little i don't know if you've ever seen them like the little uh like ready made like mick eucharists you know what i'm talking about like they're like a little plastic cup in the things in this cellophane and you and i was like come on i mean i had a hard time imagining jesus the last night of his life like before he's going to be crucified with his disciples it's like i have one final ritual that i'd like to leave you with that you can pass on for thousands of years if you just reach under your seat you can find this tiny plastic receptacle if you just remove the cellophane from the top here take the cardboard like substance that's at the top there and that's my body drink the purple sugary water underneath and that's my blood and just do this in remembrance of me for all time it was hard it was hard for me to imagine that it felt it felt dismissive it felt like come on it could be more than this but we get so attached to these things and it's kind of funny when you think about how it's not funny when you think about like how serious these divides get i mean people have fucking died from these debates these theological schisms these great no it's not this way we gotta do this way and there's been great devise and schisms and families torn apart and people died and uh but when we when you think about it what's happening i mean it's not like bird watching let's say like jesus said take this and remember yeah but he also said look at the birds right look at the flowers you don't have anything to worry about and we don't get all bent out of shape about bird watching we don't have these ceremonies where there's like these great robed men walking down aisles scattering seeds and a priest has a caged turkey above and everyone behold the great bird and other denominations are like turkeys turkeys are shit birds and then all the denominations like yeah we use the we use the sparrow like jesus said and not in the other denominations like actually in asian palestine they didn't have that particular species of sparrow we use the the finch actually in our denomination the episcopalians are fucking using penguins and shit i can't even fly we don't have wars over this we don't have like great schisms over this and maybe you think maybe you can see communion and different rituals in religion and feel like you're above that but some of you have a line that you might not know like if if we i think about my like donuts as bread right there's i have this favorite doughnut place called voodoo doughnuts and one of my favorite donuts there i don't think it's because of the name it's just i think it's because it's tasty who makes cause the name it's called the cock and balls but i i always feel a little odd when i order it especially if it's like a young woman at the register and i have to ask for cock and balls but what it looks like they've made it it's their thing but it's delicious but i imagine if we passed that out tonight for some communion and said this is the body of our lord we get a few emails we've crossed human gonads like people would be freaked out because because we we do we get attached to these the way things have been and i get it i i actually took communion a few weeks ago for the first time in like a couple years uh in an official way and like a organized church place and and it was amazing because we took our little girls we got a nine-year-old named amelie and a five-year-old named lucy and uh part of the hard time why we've had a hard time finding churches is because of the kids like i we're not interested in taking our kids to a place that's going to give them some of the same religious trauma as most of us in this room experienced uh with patriarchy and shame and like teaching them if they don't do or behave and believe certain ways they're gonna go to hell all that stuff like we don't want any of that in their life so it's been hard to find some religious structure that's can be nice in development and there's parts of church that i was really happy to experience but anyway we ended up going to this church and it was this tiny little episcopal church and at the eucharist part the priest invited the kids to come forward and lucy has down syndrome and she also is part of why lucy's not really a she's just also a firecracker you don't you don't want to tell lucy to sit quietly in a service for an hour it just doesn't doesn't happen um but this church was super kind and they had stuff for her to play with and then when they asked the kids to go up i was like ooh are you sure because lucy would just ran right up like none of the other kids wanted to go it's like a pause and she's like she just ran right to the front so i kind of followed like is this gonna be okay i know the eucharist is touchy right i know that this is like the center of people's reverent space that this is the serious most serious thing um and who knows what lucy's gonna do uh i hope she'll keep her pants on you know like she's very she likes to party ah so so the priest is up there behind the pulpit and he's he's blessing and lucy just comes up right next to him and then a few other kids get some courage too and they'll go up and then uh and lucy's getting frustrated because she can't see and he goes get her a chair so she can stand it so she stands up right next to him and and he's up here doing the whole liturgy and like and and lucy's right next to watching him just mimicking him going close and just making sounds kind of like he's making guava and and i'm sitting in the front row like oh god are we okay uh like i hope they don't feel this is mockery or something she's just having fun but they everyone seemed fine with everybody smiling and loving it and and then he asked the kids to reach their hands out and bless the communion and lucy reached her hands out and blessed the eucharist and it was so precious it was so powerful to see them invite lucy into the center they didn't know us it's just here's a come on be right at the center and the most important part of their religious service and she blessed it and so we as a family took it and lucy took it for the first time and we're just as a family they're weeping just like kneeling at the in front and it was beautiful but i i'm not going to make a doctrine that every eucharist needs to have a baby with down syndrome blesseth it's taken it a little far like but there was something about how they experienced the moment that they were open to what was beyond the road what was beyond the here's how we do it and here's what's nice so they kind of opened up the door it felt open it felt like you're welcome here as you are and they've proved that by letting lucy up in the middle of it as she was and i was really inspired by that and i want it makes me wonder if we could figure out ways to talk about spirituality to practice spirituality to be together in ways that are less based in the fear of beyond our comfort zone and less based in the disdain of where we came from and somehow we're more open to what is in this moment i want to talk more about that for now i'd like to introduce you to my best friend the incomparable the beautiful science mike [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists y'all we fancy as hell [Applause] we got lighting effects we got musical transitions this is a goddamn show not only that is uh it's hot as hell in l.a so i know you could have gone to big bear you could have gone to palm springs you could have gone to the coast you could have got santa barbara you could go all the way to san diego but you didn't you went all the way into the city where it's hottest to come see podcasters on a friday night so let's be real y'all are my people i'm gonna assume most of you are familiar with me we can skip the formalities my fancy i'm science mic introduction we can go straight to the updates okay yes i have a talk planned but i like to just come out here and shoot the ship first [Music] uh you may know i was in the hospital recently and oh wow i felt that that was genuine compassion thank you like you got really quiet i'm okay no chest pains right now don't worry now if i do like this and leave the stage then you can worry but i've made a lot of lifestyle changes i'm eating a mostly plant-based diet that's right saving the earth and my body and uh i'm really proud to say that i've done it i like that you clap you don't even know what i'm gonna say i have the perfect body now i think some of you don't believe me that's okay [Music] [Applause] my wife the honey badger jenny mccarg is here right now and she's mortified by what's about to happen [Applause] perfect body now i've lost over 20 pounds but who gives a shit about weight loss that's some fat phobia propaganda bodies of every size are beautiful and we are here tonight to kick the fuck out of shame okay so when i say i've lost 20 pounds it doesn't matter that's not why i have a perfect body now i will admit we have a different view of my body and i don't mean psychologically i mean through optics and angles when i look at my body my stomach used to stick out like this pretty recently and now it does this so i look down you know what i see perfectly flat abs in my perspective me and chris hemsworth are body twins it's incredible now you look and you might see this section that's invisible to me unless i have access to a mirror but i'll be honest when i see my body in a mirror i think one thing every time holy shit i've still got it every time right every time the reason i've achieved the perfect body is i made a realization my body takes care of me all the time and i never take care of it i've used my body as the fuel to power a career in advertising and now a career in whatever the fuck it is i do some kind of internet d-list advocacy shit i don't know the reason i've achieved the perfect body is i've started to care for my body as much as it cares for me and it's one thing to say that i don't experience shame about my body it's another thing entirely to appreciate my body and i just thought i'd give you all the chance to appreciate my body as much as i do by being shirtless this long one last look here you go sorry jenny i love you [Applause] so i haven't always lived in los angeles i've lived in los angeles two years as of a couple weeks ago a couple months ago something i don't know not real good with dates don't know what month it is right now uh but it's been it's been over two years and uh if you've read my best-selling book finding god in the waves or listen to the liturgist podcast which has been downloaded over 100 million times this is what i call the numbers update portion of the show then you know i grew up not just christian but evangelical not just evangelical but southern baptists i don't know what to do with that response if you are currently a member of the southern baptist church you may not enjoy the rest of the evening so uh i'm still a southern baptist deacon to this day um i can't say with a straight face they were thrilled when i was like you know what's okay dudes getting married the church loved it they actually put up a mural of me at our church in tallahassee to deify that bold stand and said do not let this man in the building so yeah so we we stopped being baptist which was unfortunate i mean the baptism of all the cool things like we get training when we're middle schoolers on how to witness to people that's not indoctrination that's just that's just good old-fashioned book learning right we would not only be we were told how to reach lost people other than atheists who were dangerous and would send you straight to hell and our main point of focus was mainline in catholic christians because they don't know the lord in a personal way i mean they know the name of jesus but they don't know the person of jesus it was a match made in heaven i was a really good i actually was a good evangelical uh minus the witnessing part i felt real guilty so uh i became an atheist didn't go super well in the church then i stopped being an atheist and became a really liberal christian mystic which was yeah yeah that's not a real controversial thing in this room on mayhem drive in tallahassee florida however less exciting so we we left the church my family it was actually horrible because all our friends were at church all of our friends were at church i mean we had some friends from other churches in town and i had a couple of friends online who are atheists but let's be honest they weren't friends so much as sales prospects so how that joke should have killed or is it too close to home anybody else witnessed atheists on the internet paying of regret i feel you okay so so we left the church kids cried a lot she didn't cried a lot i cried a lot really tough times until we realized something there's a thing called brunch i don't know if you heard a brunch you wake up whenever the fuck you wake up you don't set an alarm or any goddamn thing and then you wake up and you just eat breakfast just right it can be two o'clock you're eating waffles like a goddamn boss have you tried waffles at two o'clock okay if i'm not selling you on brunch try this i know i know almost every person in here has been to church and a lot of you've been to church a lot did you know that after saturday is the second day called sunday and on that day you can also sleep in some of you don't know yet it's incredible i used to get up earlier on sunday then i got up monday through friday because i had to get to praise band rehearsal i heard that grown so let's just pause for a second i'm sorry this is not a joke i know we were just kind of a stand-up zone but i do this i feel your feelings whoever else had to get up early and go to worship practice and now has regret and pain because of the rejection you felt and the system you're aligned with the reason we're all in a room in los angeles together is to recover from that stuff and we're so glad you're here so we'd sleep in on sundays and it was incredible we'd have waffles at home on a sunday morning at like 10 30 and like what is this life what like i'm like i'm getting to know my children this is incredible small problem i started to get the itch now i don't mean like that marriage itch thing where people start cheating i mean i'd be like oh gosh these waffles are good but what if we sang really old sacred songs you know what i could go for some analysis of scripture this morning i'm not even fucking kidding i want to go to church on sunday morning so i was like hey family what if we go back to church universal response no why so i made a deal i'll go find us a church y'all can have brunch because i'm that kind of dad so i figured out something really quick there's like two kinds of churches church one is what i call sexy sexless church it's pretty fucking good isn't it [Music] sexy sexless church everybody's young everybody's attractive everybody's optimistic everybody's there to kind of hook up but not because that's wrong people like full-on huge band fog machines giant screens pastor wears a t-shirt because he's so cool they got a huge kids program they're like you got kids yeah how old are your kids whatever age you say that we have 250 kids that age and you don't have to see them for a whole hour so i was like that's pretty cool let me ask you sexy sexless church is everybody welcome to this church oh everybody is welcome at this church i mean is everybody welcome at this church yeah everybody's welcome in this church are gay people welcome at this church oh yeah gay people are welcome at this church can gay people get married at this church well we don't like to change people we just like to let jesus change people so in other words at sexy sexless churches where there are young people there's also horrible abusive oppressive theology that they don't even tell the truth about because they're happy to get the cultural credibility of queer people and women but they are not happy to put them on the platform and they are happy to take their tithe money but they are not happy to accept them in spiritual fellowship so i got the holy fuck out of churches like hillsong and bethel and whoever the fuck else is not here for queer people because if your body of christ doesn't have room for everybody it's not the body of christ it's some human bullshit so there's another kind of church and you can be like does your church welcome gay people and they're like yeah since 1972 what are you talking about coincidentally everyone is a member of this church was at this church in 1972 because it's a mainline protestant denomination we got beautiful old buildings we've got mystery we've got liturgy we've got thousands of years of rich christian theology and tradition and nobody under the age of 65. so when i would go to a mainline protestant church they'd be like young man it's so good to see you and i'll be honest can i be real i like being young man i go to literature's events nobody calls me young man people here call me grandpa a bunch of gen z millennials haven't heard of pearl jam god i can't handle it some young man but then if i take my family to a church of entirely grandparents and great-grandparents whose children live in other cities it's going to be like the beatles every sunday when i walk in with my kids those old people are going to lose their shit so you can go to a sexy sexless church of young people that's not multi-generational or you can go to a mainline church full of very kind thoughtful old people who would very much like to pinch your daughter's cheeks but there was no like integrated experience that really grieved me i didn't care about the cool church part right i was kind of over that at that point in my life so i was like that's just not going to happen i guess we're just not church people so i actually gave up the whole church thing and a friend of mine called me and said i should try a methodist church i said isn't that like the diet coke to coke methodist to baptist like aren't they the same thing just ones like a little weaker and then i found out like methodist churches their whole thing is that none of them are really like each other methodists are like if it's a b c or d and d is all of the above they just pick d every time how do i get baptized what's your theology just anything you want full immersion great you want sprinkling cool you want to take a shot of tequila no problem just please come to our church so i visited this church and by myself told the kids i was checking it out first person i met was a guy named dwayne he was like pretty old but he was an engineer on the apollo program i don't know if you know me but the first person i meet at a church put a human on the god damn moon that's all i need it's like dwayne if i keep coming to this church can i talk to you again and go what like do you still have one of the slide rules from apollo can i touch it other thing oh my god no no no no you might not know did you know women can be pastors did you know this this church the pastor was a woman it blew my freaking mind so i was like well i guess i'm fine with that i never thought about it it's a weird thing like men we're enculturated from a very young age if we're going to be we're supposed to be leaders right well unless you're a beta and then like fuck you but you're supposed to be a leader i'm a beta by the way which means we're supposed to how do we lead we dominate everybody else like oh there's some conflict how do you end conflict you be the alpha you scare the shit out of everybody until they submit and then we're like you know what i should do shepherd a flock of believers it doesn't go well like everything between like an elder and a church or a deacon and a pastor there's going who's got the biggest one it's just dick measuring is it too far for someone in here i feel like for some people in the womb when i did this we left a sacred space and got very uncomfortable it's okay people have genitals okay so then we take women and they have to survive the patriarchy which means women learn how to like support each other and they learn how to nurture people and they learn how to achieve this bizarre thing called consensus where multiple people share their viewpoints and then compromise together and then you can take that energy and make that person a pastor it's amazing right first sunday at this church pastor betsy just starts crying during the sermon because her heart is broken about something and it wasn't a performative cry she was really heartbroken so i fell in love with that church and i convinced the family to try it and there were various levels of resistance and i also didn't want to go back to like the old thing where like as long as you live in my house you're gonna go to church no i'm much more manipulative and subtle than that so i was a joke just for jenny but we actually like got into this church and really fell in love with it and as i went from being just a local like a like a tallahassee rob bell basically like where all the baptists were like this guy's not okay but if you leave tallahassee no one's heard of me uh as i started to that was a deep cut and i just want to say i appreciate those of you who are here for it [Applause] work starts to change i become a podcaster people like what's a podcast oh wait my nephew has won so you do what my nephew does what do you do for a living a podcast tallahassee didn't get it but this church supported me as the work grew they like kind of considered like my work a part of the ministry of that local church which let's be honest i say things like goddamn fucking shit on stage so it's really impressive that a church was like we're in and we fell in love again and we felt safe and we felt like we belonged we felt like we were part of community and then the liturgist podcast got really popular and i began to be aware that if i wanted to work to succeed and if i wanted to see my family on a regular basis we had to live in a city that did more than two flights a day and that people who do media moved to los angeles so we did and as we packed a van full of two adults and two kids and two dogs i started to wonder in los angeles will we ever find a community like this again [Music] so [Music] aside from what i learned about communion a couple weeks ago with that church i think one of the most important lessons i learned about communion was actually from psychedelics which you know i realize it's a controversial thing to talk about that the eucharist is not for everyone [Applause] um but to talk about what i learned i want to circle around to something first um so imagine me i'm like 20 20s and uh at a mega church so i'm like i still i still kind of this vibe like i didn't fit the i had a staff uh i had a like interns and there was like a brass section and the pastor hired me because he he liked what i could do musically but he's like can we get you to here's some money go to banana republic and buy some clothes for yourself make yourself look presentable so i was always trying to like fit in at this corporate environment of this church i was trying to be the worship pastor and uh one of the things that this pastor would have me do was show off for his he would bring in his buddies his big pastor buddies and there it was it was always like the dick measuring contest with a lot of these guys this this these pastor crew because they would all go on like check out you'll never believe the size of this youth facility we just bought we just built and go along like check this out we have nine pool tables like wow and then he'd be like check out this guy i hired watch him play guitar so he'd have me do the specials he would tell me in advance like so-and-so is coming to town can you play a guitar special because he liked to show me off check this guy out he's mine right and uh so i always wanted to i got paid well so i'm like all right i got to bring my a-game and i was always trying to up up the guitar specials because when i would do it well he'd come up afterwards like oh my michael that was amazing and that cash would keep coming you know um but it was i wasn't it wasn't that brazen but it was i wanted to make him happy it was my job and uh so one time a real big speaker coming in and i was like i'm i'm gonna bring like the best guitar solo that i've ever brought so i thought it all out i was like i got a got some looping pedals i got a guitar synthesizer i had one of those like britney spears microphones that i was gonna i think i had it looped in somehow and it was all it just was this whole setup i was kind of nervous because it was more it was more complexity than i had dealt with before and i didn't have a lot of practice but i was like i got this i'm gonna i'm gonna make it happen and uh so i got up and i started the first loop and it was with the guitar synthesizer and did this little bass thing and it feels pretty good bounces and then it loops like cool i walk away take the guitar off it's like oh it's a loop cool go back get the other guitar and all of a sudden when i set the guitar down the loop shuts off it's just awkward silence i'm like quickly back on do it again sorry everybody and now i'm a little frantic and so i loop it and i run back and get the other guitar and then i realize i clicked it a little too fast so now the loop is off i can't start again i'm just gonna go with it kind of in seven eight now i guess or whatever like i'll make this work so i get the other guitar and i start trying to add and it's kind of off and then like uh and then this shuts off again the loop other shoot loop shuts off i'm like so i just start playing like i don't know i just start making something up it's like oh no now the sweat's starting to beat on the forehead and i kind of look down and and the faces are getting a little like it's like a night you know audiences are generally they want you to succeed so they're like they're rooting for me but it's getting like oh poor guy and i'm like come on oh and i'm i'm freaking out i'm like how do i get back i'm trying to put the puzzle together in my head like get back to the original guitar start over no it'll be too weird i just make this up and i can't think straight i can't i'm playing rushing and it shuts off again i'm like i started another thing and i get down i loop it and then i get down i'm like what is going on i'm trying to go through the settings like why does this keep shutting off and then in all the movement my ear pack fell off so i can't hear and it's like dangling my microphone and i i'm wired my wires are starting to get crossed i take the other guitar off and like my britney spears microphone is like dangling like this and it finally it gets so chaotic i can't it's it's hard to describe how horrible the train wreck it was and and eventually everybody's face moves from like compassion to like oh my god what is happening and it's so bad i'm sweating profusely and i'm like i eventually just start scatting in the microphone like i didn't know my fight-or-flight response was scatting but apparently stuff gets if if shit really hits the fan in my life i'm like i don't remember how it ended i think i repressed that memory but it was it was just so chaotic and so embarrassing and it reminds me of a little bit how my deconstruction felt it's my deconstruction actually how many of you in this room i'm curious have either gone through in the past or going through currently some sort of deconstruction of the faith or belief system that you came from yeah okay almost everyone um thanks [Laughter] oh man um so when i remember when i first started the first thing like the first leak sprung and it's like oh okay how can i fix this like the first hole appeared in the boat and for me that was actually the mark of the beast i remember i was in high school and i was like we're talking about the mark of the beast and i was like why does all of a sudden at the end of the bible i thought the whole thing we've been learning is about like the heart and you're you believe in christ and then that's how you're forgiven through grace why at the end is that god looks at the mark on your hand and your forehead and then in a flash of insight i haven't even read joseph campbell yet and i was like hand forehead actions thoughts no no no shh that would be reading the bible metaphorically that's a slippery slope but it didn't make any sense to me why god all of a sudden would like make it all about external marks and some ruler of the earth you shouldn't get his mark i was like it doesn't i i saw i'm just i'm just going to secretly interpret this metaphorically and that's how i'll kind of make sense of it whole plugged no worries but then when the then other verses started coming up about you know seven days of creation and it's like how are there trees before stars and oh no i'm not gonna go to the metaphor reading again right plug it up it's like another glitch in the loop i gotta fix this i'm gonna figure out some sophisticated theological way of saying that by thinking of his poetry it's actually deeper and richer and more beautiful okay cool okay great fixed fixed okay but that story is kind of important for the genesis narrative like they keep talking about even jesus talks about adam and eve and if like humans aren't just six thousand zero of years old like we're going to this like sunday we're going to this tribe in alaska that's been there for 30 000 years like genesis 1 through 11. let's just call that metaphorical okay cool plugged gay people oh it says this but it also said that about women and we don't we don't oppress women like that we don't make women wear shit on their heads anymore maybe that's kind of not metaphorical well maybe it's just kind of wrong and the water is just pouring in the boat i'm like oh my god i'm just trying to plug the holes i'm trying to hold this whole house up and i'm just thing after thing after thing hell the problem of evil oh man and i had to hold it up and i didn't see how involved my ego was and all of that needing to hold it up so that i could be rewarded by my tribe with safety and with belonging and as that finally fell apart and the journey kept moving and i just kept searching everywhere to try to fix this thing to try to make the song work together i kept going with like what can i learn about from buddha from hinduism from i just desperate scatting and fucking microphones just being like well give me a chance what do i got to do i've got to hold this together i've got to be able to say yes i believe in god when i get that offer from the christian festival or whatever you'll be like yeah yeah i'm in i'm in with god and i'm like quote i've got all the the paste in the holes um so there's a story in the bible about this golden calf and i always used to think about idolatry that was kind of the main story that i would think about like some people take graven images and like objects and think that that is god and that's idolatry and that's like one of the worst things and then i got more sophisticated without being like oh even thoughts can become like objects i read people like peter rollins or whoever it says wonderful things like that and like here's these objects of thought and if you think those are the reality of god that's an idol and there was always like a real aversion to that for me i mean as a kid it was like obviously people like hindus were just way out of line i used to mow the lawn for this chinese restaurant in marshfield wisconsin they had like statues of buddha and stuff and i'd be like kind of pleading the blood while i'd walk by it you know bringing tongues or something you don't want those demons you want those chinese food demons taking over your body and your soul so that that's uh but i wonder the more i've learned about and practiced and looked around at these different cultures because even as a kid like even the catholics were like right i mean they're praying their statues around it's like come on guys are you really flirting with it here flirt with the idolatry thing and the more i've learned though and more i learned about catholicism and hinduism and all these people that use images that use objects to worship i realize none of them are actually like you know if they're praying to a statue of mary and then the mary falls over and breaks they don't think mary's dead you know if they don't think this ganesh statue is ganesha and that's it and then i think back about the golden calf and i wonder like in christian theology and judaism and any big religion that talks about god they don't uh there's none of the big religions that actually claim that god is located in one and only one space like god is omnipresent that's kind of a very orthodox thing like god is found everywhere the glory of the lord fills the heavens and the earth and it's god can be found everywhere so then what's the problem with the golden calf right because then it's like god can be found here too right if god is everywhere is god everywhere but here so what if the problem is not kind of flipped idolatry on its head for me in a weird way because like what if the problem is not finding god here what if it's finding god only here this is what i learned in my psychedelic journey that sometimes i not sometimes my whole life i like i was trying to see the all i was trying to see the big picture understand the entirety of reality and i would try to get big with my thoughts like i think about how big god is how big the stars are he's even bigger than that and i try to think big and close my eyes and then you see a statue like foolishness it's tiny but the thing is we don't ever get to see anything but tiny things like you don't get to see the all from here right now from this perspective there's trillions right now trillions of sunrises happening across trillions of galaxies from unfathomable vistas and skies with multiple suns and all there's all kinds of crazy stuff right now you don't get to see any of it you get to see this guy my apologies just kidding no you get to see this room right now you get to see the person sitting there you see a specific thing we have a very limited range of perspective you don't see almost everything like literally almost everything that is you don't see and that can be depressing but what about there's this say there's a saying in one of the upanishads that i like it says by one piece of clay everything of clay may be known lao tzu said without going outside you may know everything of the world something like that i'm missing the quote up a little bit but what if the all can be found in tiny ways like think about a hologram i don't know if you know how a hologram works i don't really know how a hologram works other than i know it's not little pixels that like you can't divide a hologram and say this is this part of the image and this part of the image any part of a hologram actually contains the entire image it's like a weird way that holograms work what if that's just how it is what if the only way that we could encounter the all is through specificity because how could you encounter how could you perceive all of it that includes your perception it's too it's too much you can especially when you're talking about brains you talk about these little three pounds of the most arrogant meat in the universe that's like i got this all this i got it just put it in here i'll take care of it i'll understand that but what if all the all and that's what i learned is like when you really pay attention that's what i saw on that journey i got so present to what is here that that actually helped me see the mechanism of seeing that this whole ego that was the one doing all this pasting and trying to hold everything together and i kind of saw the whole game that i was playing it was like just the the the perspective shifted enough to notice that there was a perspective if that makes any sense so it's like oh there's always i'm always seeing from a perspective and that kind of broke the power of of me being the guy to hold everything up for some reason and i so i wonder in a weird way if we can learn to make friends with our idols not in a way because what if the idolatry what if the part of our idols that is the dangerous part is not finding god here in this tab in this wafer in this bead in this mantra in this breath in this way that we practice in our religion what if that's not the problem what if it's okay to have your thing in a real specific way that's what meditation is it's just finding a specific thing to be with totally be with it here and now and what i found and what the mystics have talked about for centuries millennia is that yes when you go small enough when you fight when you get close enough to the specificity and you can use whatever you want and if you if you think of just that as it's that's where god is and that only then that's the idol thinking that god is only here in the golden calf that's the idol thinking of god only here in my tradition only here in my theology only here in this practice and you see jesus like just obliterating this shit like people had their ideas of where god was okay to be and he'd be like look out there you see that person that's in prison that's where i am look at the person that's the untouchable person that's where i am the person sick on the side of the road if you want to find god go there because that's where you think god cannot be that's the that's the lines of your idolatry that person's world thank you [Applause] so yeah i guess what i learned from psychedelics about communion is that it's not it's not necessarily the specifics of what you're attending to i don't think you have to take psychedelics to be present to what is for me that really helped in that moment in my journey with all the stuff i come from but now if i'm present enough this can all be the grace this can all be eucharist this can all be god if we just slow down come into this moment and get present enough with it where we stop trying to paste everything together we stop trying to turn everything into a concept to fix everything but instead just be present to what is in a weird way the all appears but it's through the specific it's through the small it's moving it's not i used to be disembodied because i thought this was the bad thing [Music] and then i needed to like transcend this and get to the good thing out there but then i began to learn from some really powerful people and women specifically in my life who taught me how like toxic my disembodiment was as a male who thought you could figure things out and fix it in the world and instead moving into my body into the specific i began to notice that that transcendence that i had been seeking by trying to ignore my body and get out of my body and see the big i actually found it inside the kingdom of heaven is within there's like a weird paradox about it the all is found in the small by not trying to ignore the small and move on and get more small things and keep piecing it together it's all actually just right here if there is a god where would she be but here if there's grace where would it be but now [Applause] [Music] so [Music] i am not fit enough to hold a pose like that oh my god listen we're real professionals i don't know if you know this we're professional podcasters we do this for a living so when we put together tabs and wafers we were like how can we build a sense of drama and anticipation i know only one of us will go on stage at a time until after the intermission and then everybody will go crazy because it's both of us on stage at the same time we like to call this the instagram portion of the evening so you can just hashtag tabs and wafers [Applause] i don't know if we're running for office or selling our bodies or what it's a weird vibe oh we weren't done sorry you got to be real quick with those shutters we're very self-conscious people podcasters not instagram influencers you know something's weird to me what mike we launched the liturgist on instagram we had like 9 000 followers we had never posted ever not one picture we are really bad at this i take back the professional part all right let's let's actually proceed with the program but tabs and wafers i mean that's like an intersection of ideas that's universally loved universally adored even in los angeles everybody was like let's be honest you're either here because you got the name or you're here because you didn't get the name but there are definitely some people who aren't here because they got the name jenny yeah that's jenny my wife i was hoping she would come on stage jenny okay we want to drink with you were the drinks good are you having a good time is anybody not drinking you can still fix that they are not out of liquor back there wow so are they strong for me i don't know that's good this is going to be a good second half y'all so best-selling author michael gunger wrote a book called this i did it was really good i liked it thank you thank you it's back there it's back there [Applause] it has stories about lou in it yeah really you heard it some people know that oh mike and lou are good friends we are we've got a we had a very routine driven friendship yeah this is how it goes i go over to gonger's house and lucy says hi mike do you know what i say back hey lou that's our entire relationship other people do things like pick lucy up take her away from lisa no but lou likes me you know why i never take lou away from lisa and i'm never the person that if like michael and lisa want to go out as grown-ups who's keeping lou you did once i did once that's true wasn't she sleeping yeah but it's like y'all come over while lou sleeps but she asks for for you she'll sometimes be like where's mike she loves mike she she called me once on facetime sang me happy birthday it was not my birthday but it felt like it so the book has got lou's stories in it which alone let's be honest a real missed marketing opportunity if you want to put a picture on a blue on the cover and call the book lose stories someone says oh my gosh yes yeah you'd be on your 12th represent so but you probably want to do that because in addition to wonderful lose stories you also talk about for the first time publicly your experience taking psychedelic mushrooms how has the reception been to that admission was it as good as the time you said noah wasn't literally real [Laughter] yeah against speaking of like universally loved and accepted it's that was like my parents were so proud of you son this mushroom thing exactly turned out exactly as we hoped you would everybody loves it uh no they don't actually the the and it's not just the mushrooms uh i had like a kind of a really obvious realization a couple weeks ago because for a while i've been in this space where i've been like trying to figure out why some people react in the way that they do to what i'm saying because what i feel like i'm saying is you are loved i love you you're perfect and you're beautiful and then what people a lot of times hear is like you're a crazy druggie heretic telling me that i'm god you're fucking crazy like and and worse i've actually had some some people like you telling me that i deserve the suffering that i'm getting i get it and they're really like oh no so i'm like what if i felt like most people maybe are misunderstanding me and that some of the reaction um to some of the things maybe that maybe they don't understand me i need to figure out how to say this clearer and i feel i was like i feel like i've been saying this with an open heart and then at the realization that i had a couple weeks ago i was like maybe maybe some maybe it's people that maybe it's not that they're misunderstanding me maybe they're understanding what i'm saying and just rejecting it oh i guess i guess when you are like everything you hold sacred it's just an illusion it's like maybe not the most popular mainstream things to say uh so yeah i don't know it's been it's been a tricky um dance to try to speak of what i already know is unspeakable like the dow that can be named is not a true and eternal dao did the doll pick out those pants you know it did um but yeah it's it's it's a hard thing to speak what i know is like medicine for some people because i hear the stories there are people that are like oh thank you and i've seen it in their eyes and i've heard stories of like people getting free of these stories that they've felt like imprisoned them and their attachments and their idols and the things that they've shut out love from their lives with and so that like makes me want to keep doing the work and saying the things but then there are people that when i say what's medicine for one person it's experienced as poison and that's hard uh i don't like that so it's been tricky to figure out how to handle that like the platform that has evolved in my life over the years and what what people expect from me and what they hear when i say certain things it's been really tricky and it's been kind of hard to know how to speak and if to speak you're really charming and funny and engaging um so i think that might mask something this has been really hard for you right yeah yeah it hurts it hurts really bad to see uh again me try it's if i'm trying to say you're beautiful and somebody is like experiencing it precisely the opposite way it just makes me go ugh why why bother how much of people's resistance do you think if you would talk about the same insights as coming from meditation or pilgrimage instead of psychedelics do you think the reception will be different yes and i tried to keep it out of the book i tried like for a little while i was like can i not say this but i felt i felt it would be like a dishonest move for some reason to keep that out of the story it was such a big moment for me and i wish i would have had that realization just for the sake of public acceptance and money and things to to have a realization in church worshiping the lord that would have been a much better selling book um yeah to have a vision of jesus you got lucky with that vision of jesus on the beach that's pretty good i did it's a real lucky stroke with the with the risen lord whispering in my ear and all i think it's really interesting uh have you noticed the liturgists aren't good at private thoughts he and i once we have a second podcast called the alien the robot that's just for our patrons and we recorded an entire episode in which the entire point of the episode was simply to not mention that he and i have done psychedelics and at the end of the episode i said we've done psychedelics and we laughed really hard and hit stop and then decided to just post that on the internet no further commentary or clarification just an admission at the end of 38 minutes that we've done mushrooms yes so we're universally loved um i get letters i don't i used to get emails from everybody but they stopped letting me read all your emails because they kept having mental health crisis it's probably good they took away my public emails because i would read them and if you were in pain and you told me you're in pain i would sit with it and i would get in pain with you that's hard to do with thousands of people at the same time and then if you sent me an email that you hurt me freaking whiskey if you sent me an email that said that i hurt you which is a much more interesting email but you emailing to say that you hurt me where did that even come from so when people would email me and say something i said hurt them you know like most people to protect their ego in the public eye are like well i guess you're just not mature enough to understand my teachings no i would be like god fuck me and hurting people i've got to stop i'm really careful and i'm still hurting people so i think i should probably retire from public work so the wonderful group of people that surrounded me were like hey what if you don't read all the emails we will read them for you and summarize mostly the pleasant stuff but i i can't help it i want to hear from you so i put my p.o box on the internet and i won't give them the key so i read all your cards and letters and most of them are really wonderful and beautiful but not all of them sometimes white dudes send me letters now someone's upset because i'm singing about white dudes not all white dudes are theobrogian assholes but most the abrogen assholes are in fact white dudes [Applause] so they write you a letter it starts out dear science did you really say that once [Laughter] i so appreciate the ways that you help people reclaim an understanding of the bible and although i disagree with your stances on evolution it's always important for the theobrosion to tell you they disagree with you that's an important part of the letter i love you and i disagree with you and you needed to know it so i disagree with you on evolution but i appreciate you helping to reconcile the bible with evolution for people who need that which by the way is that what we did i'm pretty sure our episode of evolution was basically like well evolution as a theory is correct you can still like the bible [Laughter] but yeah we were not formed by hand out of dirt so i get these letters and they'll say but this time you've gone too far so this time lgbtq that's too far you're affirming sin this time black and white the episode on racism in america you're being racist against white people no shit we're being racist against white people wow look at that white incarceration rate oh look at all those white people held up at the border aren't we racist against what the fuck are you talking about theobrosion here's my point everyone loves the litter just until we go too far and it's always for someone it's something else for somebody lgbtq was too far for somebody else they came to terms with their own sexuality and stopped hating themselves i get letters and my favorite letters are from people not who say they change their mind on marriage which i love but from people who came out and got married and the first step was hearing other people like them on that episode right i'm here for it black and white our episode on racism is the second most downloaded episode we've ever done behind the one on the enneagram come on people i'm a nine okay um by the way the enneagram was double the downloads of black and white 8 million to 4 million [Music] it's our fault the whole idiot cram thing god i can't sleep at night we're not pro-psychedelics we're not trying to get you to do psychedelics i actually don't think you should do psychedelics they're illegal unless you're part of a clinical program with a license with medical supervision then absolutely do psychedelics otherwise you're gonna buy something on the street that's not what it says it is you're gonna get really sick right i'm not saying do psychedelics the liturgies aren't pro-psychedelics but we are anti-oppression and you say well what on earth just talking about psychedelics have to do with oppression this is your brain this is your brain on drugs any questions yeah i got a question i got a lot of questions actually now that you mention it any questions this is so complicated after i drank to get this out of there it's a fucking sobriety test and i failed what does science say about psychedelic drugs well glad you asked nancy reagan told me that psychedelics burn a hole in your brain each and every time you try them oh okay well that's actually bullshit it turns out that psilocybin lsd and mdma are three of the most potent substances we've ever tested for treating depression anxiety and ptsd ever ever four people clapping in los angeles four people let's be honest 70 people in this room have done psychedelics it's la 12 people are on psychedelics right now so why do we like tighten up why do we tighten up why is it when the science says these substances have incredible therapeutic potential do we tighten up the war on drugs that's why we were all indoctrinated as children that all drugs are dangerous terrible substances all of them except prescription drugs which are wonderful take them they increase our stock portfolio it's wonderful [Music] the discomfort what i call the pucker effect every time i say mushrooms at least one person in this room puckers [Laughter] i thought we were here to talk about jesus not lsd mushrooms lsd ecstasy we're now we're doing kegels [Laughter] that i haven't done that joke anywhere that was just for l.a we were indoctrinated to be uncomfortable with drugs and the drug trade and we were given false science why so the government could wage war on brown people that's it that's the whole fucking war on drugs there is nothing else to the war on drugs but a war on brown people with a nice bonus of imprisoning the poor if you have those unsightly poor white people that's okay if you hook them on drugs if they're hooked on drugs and we put them in jail nobody complains white people do a lot of drugs y'all white people don't go to prison for it brown and black people go to prison for the same offense far more often the war on drugs is a war on brown people and our pucker is used to keep us silent and complicit as mainly black men are put in jail how many people have heard that because of incarceration rates black men are absentee fathers if you heard this before it said all the time guess what they actually did a study that was peer reviewed with statistical significance and do you know what they found no fathers in america spend as much time with their children as black fathers none none so the only reason you can get comfortable middle income or people drowning in student debt middle class white people to go along with this incarceration is to demonize these substances this is a tool of oppression and the liturgists will always be anti-oppression so we have to talk about psychedelics and we have to talk about the war on drugs because we are being used to destroy families because it's individual moral responsibility in individual moral responsibility was it individual moral responsibility when we took this city from the tongva tribe was it individual moral responsibility when we tore families apart and put people on ships and brought them across the ocean to work as slaves so we could get wealthier was it individual moral responsibility when land grants were given out in the west from land that was taken from native tribes enriching european families was it individual moral responsibility when the gi bill supported white gis but not black gis and when a racist system of home loans and redlining segregated black people into poor communities with less resources and then when people of color color take the legal risk to satisfy a market demand for drugs we put them in prison for their individual moral choice i don't care if you ever take mushrooms but you better bet your ass i care that we stop pretending the war on drugs is about drugs got a drink you don't hear sermons about that very much that was pretty good [Laughter] [Applause] the last sermon i gave was on climate change and now i do one about drugs oh boy i love turning evangelical tools back on the machine um so two things mike you left us with a cliff hanger at the the end of your last talk and i want to know because like you obviously see systems of oppression how they're used how they're weaponized against people and you also understand religion and how christianity specifically has been used to carry all those systems of oppression perhaps arguably more effectively than any other system of thought in the world that religion with its thousands of pulpits across the world has been a tool to spew this patriarchal bullshit and the white supremacy and the it was this it was the slaveholders had their preachers that were like justifying it with the bible and like homophobia and sexism all these systems of oppression religion has been very effective to spread it and put it in the bloodstream it was manifest destiny that allowed us to take this land from native people it was god's will so how do you as a person who can see all that you know the history your anti-oppression obviously why the hell are you so obsessed then with christianity like why do you still like it why are you still like driving around trying to find churches and worried about it um why are you so obsessed with jesus and with the church with christianity knowing all of this so back to theobrogen letters theobrosions they eat they they write letters sometimes they handwrite them sometimes they type them they always include a photocopy of the king james bible and they always use yellow highlighter to point out their voices not pink not green not blue yellow the official highlighter of white theologian bros i can just imagine them stroking their luscious beards drinking their craft beer pulling out their yellow highlighter and going this will bring him back to the lord by hitting too close to home i apologize okay the second most mortified the room has been since i named hillsong specifically and i forgot to say mosaic i'm so sorry [Applause] oh god i wish i loved that less i just just admit it up front god i get so pissed queer people are human shields in hollywood churches [Music] so theobros write me letters and they say so science i know that you say you're a christian i know that you say you're a christian but the son of man would ask that's a quote that's a fucking quote that someone wrote in the 21st goddamn century but the son of man asks who do you say i am so science mike who do you say jesus is i would love to discuss over coffee okay some of y'all haven't been stalked by evangelicals they love to invite you to coffee they love it if you go there's a bible on the table when you get there just sitting there it's waiting so i thought about writing back with a quill dearest theodore i have no fucking clue sincerely science look i gotta be honest some days i think richard dawkins goes too far by saying jesus was a real historical figure so what i did there is i started a sentence and then you thought it would go here and then i went here sometimes that makes people laugh other times it scares the shit out of them sometimes i'm not kidding sometimes i'm like what what real basis do we have to say jesus was a real person as opposed to a collection of first century figures if so why am i so into a collection of first century figures and then other times i wonder if the first easter sunday was like an avengers movie i don't think some of them understand the analogy let me demonstrate this is all stagecraft it raises intrigue while i move pieces around we've literally rehearsed this i will stand in for the body of our lord and savior jesus christ this is the first easter sunday right now woman why do you seek the living among the dead for i have risen there's a lot of buildup just for that moment that's a real paraphrase of scripture i'll be honest it's a real paraphrase supposedly an angel said that but i just like it that if in my story the first word of the risen savior after ripping off his grave's clothes and pushing the stone away just says woman woman why do you seek the living among the dead i just love my voice so much it's pretty good what i'm saying is some days i have absolutely no confidence divinity much less like an empty tomb right and in the other days i'm like ah totally happened totally happened but can i also be real and i'm not kidding some days i still think my toys from childhood are alive it's not a fucking joke i'm 100 serious i have every toy from my childhood here in los angeles individually wrapped up in boxes for their comfort and safety just in case they're sentient i've never parted with one so let's just say i'm not the paragon of objective theological certainty and if there's a belief-based metric to call yourself a christian i'm toast and i think so are most people i like how they laugh and then they stop do you know why i'm a christian there used to be well there's still a verse in the bible i didn't take it out but i i used to read that verse as an evangelical and think like why is this in the bible it was about the great cloud of witnesses and i was always like why do you need a great cloud of witnesses when we have eyewitnesses who saw jesus resurrected somebody got it it's my favorite joke of the whole night thank you cloud of witnesses eyewitnesses it's a it's a play on words i thought this were people a weak faith and then i lost my faith and then i got my faith back but it wasn't based on beliefs or ideas and let's be honest many people would take umbrage with me saying i got my faith back there's literally like seminary articles about how it's not accurate to say science might got his faith back what he did was construct his own convenient faith out of humanism give me a craft beer [Applause] here's why i'm a christian it's really easy rachel held evans [Music] we lost her may 4th and like so many people i have felt the ache of that loss every day since and i love it because of just imagine little rachel growing up in the evangelical church and they say here's how you're a godly woman know your bible serve people and bring them to god and never ever teach or have authority over a man and i can just imagine little rachel evans going hey i bet two out of three is pretty good rachel held evans with the most open compassionate heart with the highest possible view of the christian tradition god god self and the bible would wade into the arena of theological battle and kick the shit out of theobrogens with their own scriptural assumptions but she didn't do that because she wanted to be a celebrity or she wanted to be loved or she wanted to feel important rachel held evans believed jesus was who he said he was and rachel believed that god loved everyone period not god loves everyone asterix has anyone done more to fight for women in the church has any white person done more to fight for people of color in the church has any straight person done more to fight for queer people in the church spoiler alert no rachel who was growing up being told she couldn't possibly lead in the faith open this faith for millions of people that this faith tried to put down and she called herself a christian my non-binary queer friend kevin garcia calls themself a christian in a church that rejects their sexuality and their fluid gender identity andre henry and austin channing have grown up in proximity to the pain and trauma of being black people next to the white church and they call themselves christians such a great cloud of witnesses so if black and indigenous believers facing colonization claim christianity in the name of christ and queer and non-binary christians in the face of unbelievable persecution claim christianity and the name of christ and if an evangelical rachel held evans never gave up on this tradition then who am i to say i am not going to be a christian i am a jesus follower we have a great cloud of witnesses and that cloud has been surprisingly not only by its composition but where it is so i need some help if we could bring the house lights up just a bit sorry i did not warn the lighting director this would happen and that was an impressively fast response thank you who out here has had a horrible month anybody just raise your hand right here would you come over to the side of the stage there's a curtain they'll let you back and there's a motion sensing light it's super cool they'll turn on and you can join us on stage i will vamp so that you don't feel pressured to hurry it's okay i feel completely comfortable and at ease as i've never had a fear of public speaking and this is literally easier for me than talking to one person face to face it really is all right here we go welcome everybody this is trista hold on hold on hold that stuff trista right here right here trista's had a really bad month here's what i know that when i walk out on stage in rooms all across the world people cheer and they make me feel so seen and so special because they show me that they're excited that i'm here and i'm wondering if we could do the same right now can we all right show me take it in take it in that's for you it's for you how'd that feel good really yes was it hard to receive yes yeah super hard actually i feel crippling shame almost every time people clap crippling oh god i'm an imposter did you feel like an imposter yes it's hard to receive love was it encouraging in any way yes yes yes thank you tristan one more time two years ago two kids two dogs two children got in a minivan in tallahassee florida and drove across the country to move to los angeles uh i'm autistic i found out fairly recently which i'm told is a disability because my people are prone to hyper focus and we're highly routine dependent which fine whatever the way i experience that is that most people have a hard time focusing on important things and live wildly unpredictable lives and they say i'm disabled do you know what you never hear from an autistic person sorry i'm late i didn't realize there'd be traffic because we did the fucking math and we built a model that let us know the variance probability of traffic and we schedule our departure so that even in los angeles we'd arrive on time or with a comfortable but not inappropriate margin i mean i i don't know how to eat if jenny's not home so maybe there is something to the disability language but i'm on time so as we move across the country we're stopping in different cities stopped in baton rouge san antonio el paso phoenix and then finally los angeles and i thought since we all only lived in tallahassee our whole lives it'd be nice to like really feel the culture of these cities for a night we have two very large docks so i thought well i'll just make playlists with songs about each city and i'll hit play when we see the sign for each town so some great music for baton rouge great music for san antonio a couple of couple of good ones for el paso phoenix was a challenge the only music about phoenix is about how much people hate phoenix but there's an embarrassment of riches for music about los angeles in fact like a third of all recorded music is about our fine city another third is about new york and the other third is about every other city in the whole world so it's quite a playlist so i tried to start with the deep cuts because you live in la you know what i'm talking about if you're coming in from the desert you get in an urban area for the first time you're like we're in la and then two and a half hours later you're still in la but not at your destination but as we crossed into la proper i knew there was only one song that could be playing for my family and because i'm autistic i tried to time it perfectly so that this song would be playing as we entered la i hopped off the plane at lax with my dream and a welcome to the lane of fame xs am i gonna fit and i won't sing the whole song but it would be lovely if i did now i notice about four people got real excited and the rest of you have deep cynical scars on your soul and i'm sorry because you haven't sang that song at the top of your lungs with pre-teen daughters as you move to la for the first time you haven't lived life so thank you miley [Applause] and i told my family moving to l.a our friends michael and lisa gunger we're actually friends outside the podcast they've started a meditation group they seem like nice people it'll be nice to have a head start on friend groups here's the important thing they meet on sunday nights and that group can't be our church they can only be our friends because church has the eucharist church has sacraments church has soteriology if you don't know what soteriology is frankly i'm happy for you that is the understanding by which a faith tradition believes one comes to salvation it's really important you have those things in church meditation group didn't have those things so these people would be our friends they can't be our church i started doing the same church search i did in tallahassee only i found out we have the same two categories of churches here sexy sexless friendly ancients then my life started falling apart and i hadn't found a church home yet i'd visited a lot of churches been outed as science mike a couple times didn't love that by the way i'm an internet d-list celebrity but i'm like a church sealess celebrity like i get a full letter grade so my life is falling apart our daughter madison she says i can talk about this now she uh was struggling with anorexia uh i got diagnosed with autism got diagnosed with cptsd that's a lovely cocktail by the way heart disease everything's just falling apart and the people who kept showing up in our lives was uh was this meditation group most of them don't identify as christians but they were the faces we saw when the shit hit the fan they were the ones who offered unconditional love and acceptance and empathy and i realized i'd been a real exclusionary asshole to believe the body of christ could only be in a building with a steeple and that maybe my great search for where to find my beloved lord was already complete and then i got a bill for 48 thousand dollars for heart disease we have insurance our family is financially cautious and conservative but the medical struggles we've had had wiped us out financially and put us in debt and as i looked at this bill i was like well i guess that's it we're done i guess we move out of our house i don't have any money to hire movers i'll need a deposit to get a new place anywhere we go i guess we just like ditch our stuff and drive home live with mom for a while and i never ask anybody for help because i'm a man and if i need help then i have failed but michael and hillary they're close to me and they could see my constant anxiety and worry and i'm not exactly a closed book let's be real i would end liturgical staff meetings with i don't know if i'll be at the next one i think we're going bankrupt that's not a joke and so hillary says hey we're going to do a gofundme for you it's like you can't do that you can't do that there's all these people i see the credit card declines every month there's people sending us five dollars a month who can't afford it if you put out a gofundme for me a lot of people are gonna give money they don't have and i can't deal with that and they always said i really appreciate you saying that i wasn't asking your permission i was notifying you as a courtesy i said okay that's fine i'm very clever i said but i don't have the final bill yet so let's just wait till i get the final bill and then we'll launch the gofundme which is really convenient because i just literally never have to tell her when i get the final bill so without me knowing this hillary talks to michael and michael's like hey i don't know if you know mike he's not going to tell you when that bill comes in this is what we call a ruse when they talk to our friend caroline who's an 8. so michael and caroline said what if we just launched the gofundme how much notice should we give them let's say 12 hours 12 hours notice it's on my birthday they launched the gofundme for fifty thousand dollars and uh you all raised that in like 30 hours yeah i mean you're clapping for you let's be real i should be clapping thank you i can't finish the show if y'all do that shit [Applause] it's it's really coming to a crescendo too it's really good i found a church i like it's tiny i was on easter sunday there were 80 people every seat was full and i walk in and they all gather in this little fellowship hall before they go into their little sanctuary and there were two guys in cowboy hats and cowboy shirts and i thought fucking hipsters even on easter sunday morning and one of them had a distressed jeans with the knee torn open i was like it's sunday morning man come on so i decided to do some enneagram 9 snark which sounds like being genuine and encouraging because we're not capable of snark face-to-face and only on twitter and uh i said aye where'd you get those distressed jeans and he said well i was shooing a horse this morning and she kicked wait are you like a cowboy cowboy yeah oh i'm an asshole and then they got at the prayer time it's like it's an open prayer time it's going to take four hours and a woman asked for a prayer request for her husband jose because he'd broken his leg he's a day laborer so they didn't know how to pay their bills this little church i love happens to be the one where lou blessed the communion and as we left my face was full of tears and their faces were full of tears i said what do you think about the sincerity here to michael and michael says what are you going to deconstruct the watermelon slices that church had realized something fundamental that it didn't have to be cool that it doesn't have to be theologically sophisticated that maybe sincerity is enough and i get this sense that a lot of people come to liturgical events because they're looking for a new church or something to replace church and yeah i met the body of christ at that little church which i will never tell you all the name of but damned if i didn't meet the body of christ in that meditation group and you might think well that's great science mike you're an internet d-list celebrity where do we find the body of christ and if we don't believe in christ where do we find fulfilling community trista had a bad month and we saw that and we all brought her on stage and we did our best to encourage her in a way that worked for several hundred people who don't know each other and when i found myself as the least of these you all became the body of christ to me what if we don't need a fancy new belief system a theology or even an enneagram what if we just need to see when people are hurt or have needs and then we just meet them where they are i actually know you can do that because you did it to me and so friends whether you find christ through tabs through wafers or neither may you be as richly blessed by the love and acceptance of others as i have been by the love and acceptance of you thank you for joining us tonight we so love you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you