Episode 89 - Season 4 Finale

[transcript automatically generated - cleanup in progress]

well we've done it everybody we've made it to the end of 2018. what a year and the loosely defined season 4 of the literature's podcast if you've been listening for a while you might say i've noticed that the seasons don't have a consistent amount of episodes or amount of time duration in them i think season four has been the longest we've done yeah seems like it seems like it's like almost a year or something could be a year and a half could be six months probably longer than six months yeah i feel like it's been longer than six months i think it's been like almost a year and what i'm learning listening to this conversation is that you and i don't have the temperament to organize the release of media content along a temporal access would that be fair that's very fair we do have the the skills to make great media content as we will see in this very show but we don't have any capacity to organize the two of us and especially not larger groups of people into making this podcast on a a temporarily consistent basis very consistent quality execution wildly inconsistent temporal execution so we need help and we're admitting that and it means for the first time ever the liturgists are hiring uh we're hiring an associate producer for the liturgist podcast you have to be in the la area uh too willing to be part of that or be willing to relocate yeah and we're looking for someone who's like really independent and self-guided who doesn't need a lot of who is more a person who leads than one who needs to be led someone is really passionate about processes and is really persistent but still pleasant in helping creative people stay on schedule and be aware of what needs to be done this is a great position for anyone who's been involved in media in some capacity especially as an assistant and is making to look to make a leap into more of the production side more the execution side and even the management side of media production obviously we're saying it on this podcast because we figure if you have media experience and you listen to the liturgist podcast you get what we're trying to do and for season five we have a big vision to expand the the cast of contributors to this podcast and we know how to do it uh on paper how to do it day by day there's not a chance in a non-existent hell that i could and that's where you come in so if you go to the liturgists.com slash careers that's a real that's a thing that exists in this universe now is a liturgist careers page uh you can see more about the position as well as in your cover letter and resume um and i'm super super nervous about what happens next but excited to potentially work with you so we're doing our first clip show yeah i was when you first brought this up i was a little like oh okay just kind of throw it away but i'm actually now that i've been listening to some of these clips we got patrons uh to offer and some people on the mighty networks to offer us some clip suggestions and just going back and and reliving it especially through the holiday season that we've been in here it's really nice we've we've had some really great moments on this show um i wanted to make one just because i wanted to hear it because i never remember anything that happens on the liturgist podcast or any podcast i record so i thought it was a nice retrospective for me personally so i'm glad it worked out for you and possibly the audience as well so what we're gonna do let's just we'll i'll i'll tell you which clips were recommended by the people and that we can kind of introduce them that way okay see if you see if you remember them at all um let's start with you know this one you'll definitely remember the tongues moment yes yes i remember that all right let's dive in here we go i'm gonna be real i've never heard anyone speak in tongues other than very short audio samples online really yeah southern baptist right not a thing i mean it's in the bible so it's okay but if you want like some real powerful quiet shunning show up to a baptist church for the first time raise your hands and start speaking in tongues and just the like the icing that will occur around you it's not subtle and then the pastor will come out of towards and say hey you have the gift of tongues did you notice that there was an interpreter or not oh there was no interpreter it's unbiblical what if you came with an interpreter i didn't put a real real conundrum for the baptist i think they would just resort to sustained social shunning wow like just no one would ever talk to you wow i would love to go to a southern baptist church and be one of your interpreters just keep it biblical just keep it biblical they would they would also test everything you're saying against the bible because if it's if you're speaking in tongues there's the interpreter but what the interpreter is saying has to be i'm just going to read like a backup or something like that oh that's what she was doing listen to this that was the first chapter this is just reciting the song false prophecy that's false prophecy hold on i want to be real we did a whole episode on tongues okay where 75 of the hosts have experienced speaking in tongues on three and yet no one has spoken tongues so the curious can't even understand michael what that might sound like let's go very well and this will take us out count us in into my nightmare in three wait are we really doing this yeah we're doing it yeah that's how we're gonna go out all right all right three two one and we're still waiting and believing for that miracle that literally scared the shit out of me i can see how that like produces guitar yeah uh an energy powerful response from the holy cow you had a whole room doing that it's a thing i was through the headphones i can't do it it's like no here we go up in here okay but if we do this long enough you'll speak in tongues here's the problem i'm the person who does what searches for and assigns linguistic meaning to literally everything and so you got you're just like hey here's some sounds you can't assign meaning to them oh cool you're just taking me off my map of the universe suddenly and involuntarily that's why we had you count us in yeah that's that's good i think it made good radiation you should have gave me a safe word i'm out was a pretty good one okay for this next one this wasn't actually requested but i'm requesting it because i you're my patron i'm a patron it's true i'm requesting this as a patron the epistemology episode where you describe um special relativity what do you discuss relativity in general relativity in general that i thought that was a good moment with richard growing rachel at evans as i recall that's correct they didn't know they were part of that segment but they were let's see how that one was there's two major ways to kind of undermine a single objective perspective as being valid in science the first is einsteinian relativity let's just do a little thought experiment that is completely valid and fit this is well demonstrated physics and so i want you to imagine for a second a railroad car you know like a train car but not like a boxcar one of the flat ones a flat railroad car being pulled by a very powerful railroad engine on train tracks and on one end of the car the front end of the car toward the engine i'm standing there and on the other end of this flat rail car michael is standing there the two of us are facing each other and we have incredibly high powered nerf guns these nerf guns have been specially made just for this live liturgist podcast duel so they fire a nerf dart at the speed of a bullet but without doing harm since michael and i are both largely pacifists now in addition to having high-powered nerf guns we're both wearing helmets with leds in them and sensors and these leds go off whenever they're exposed to a bright flash of light like you would get from say a flash uh photo are you with me so far me and michael obsidians of a rail car wearing funny helmets with leds holding high-powered nerf guns i'm with you mike in the middle of the rail car is rachel held evans i'm rachel evans and rachel held evans is holding a firecracker why is she holding a firecracker because her job is to start the duel by lighting the firecracker dropping it to the center of the railcar and taking a step back now once she drops the firecracker she just has one job to make sure there's no cheating she wants to make sure that neither michael or i fire our nerf gun before we get a signal and that we both get signals at the same time so she's got a pretty complex task but she can stand far enough back that you can see us both at the same time now we're all on a rail car together this rail car is going pretty fast up above the tracks is a tower and on the tower stands that great francescan richard rohr and richard's roar job is simply to back up rachel he's a second set of eyes to make sure that neither michael or i cheat because we're both really competitive so here's what happens rachel lights the firecracker drops it and steps back the firecracker goes off and of course michael and i both fire our nerf guns and rachel says oh wow good job that was a fair draw you both got the signal at the same time and you both fired at the same time and richard rohr radios in and says no no that wasn't fair because the light reached michael gunger first and so science mike was at a disadvantage richard rohr's got quite the eyesight there's no one to compete with you understand it's all embracing it's nature itself research well that's why we've got the flashing led helmets right so he could see that your leds went off first and my leds went off second rachel saw both leds go off at the same time so who's telling the truth they both are they're both telling the truth rachel and me and michael all saw the lights go off at the same time and had a fair draw richard father roar saw michael's lights go off first both are true because there is no such thing as a universally simultaneous reality and in fact the closer that railcar got to light speed the more pronounced that difference would be and that's just like one thing in relativity another idea in relativity is if you had a train that was traveling near light speed you could conceivably have it passed through a tunnel where the observer on the train would see the tunnel as shorter than the train but an observer not on the train would see the opposite one would see the train shorter than the tunnel the other would see the tunnel longer than the train that doesn't seem possible except that it's a proven aspect of reality that literally you can't agree on a universal basis the order in which events occur because there is no universal now that is my all-time favorite episode of the liturgies podcast it's not close that's a good one just like we said at the time if you listen that episode and you get it you don't need any additional episodes of literature's podcast ever that's the secret sauce underneath every episode uh all right let's let's move on here this one is a little bit more emotional um but it's also one of the core things that this without this episode and this story the liturgists would not exist so we want to go back to uh lost and found oh wow and just hear sort of the i mean your book came out of the sort of your career came out of this whole career pretty much leaping out of those two episodes and those still when i look at the analytics are are still well easily the most popular episodes ongoing basis from season one but consistently on a daily basis in the top ten of episodes downloaded i remember we were in a hotel room in where were we like ohio or something yeah i think and on some 58 mics sm58 friend brought us microphones yeah we didn't have microphones because i just did a show a gunger show and like let's just do a quick podcast in the hotel with our 58s and i uh the feeling it was it was a good one good feeling so some people walk up and just take the eucharist as a sacred moment but other people have like their moment with rob and i'm like ah this is this is strange i don't know if i can do this um but finally i get up because there's like a lull in the eucharist thing and i start walking up to rob and as i start to walk up rob's eyes turn all red and teary and i remember thinking like strange but as i'm thinking that i was tears were running down my face and i didn't even know that like my friend later told me that i had tears running down my face that's how dissociated i was and uh so i walk up and rob holds out this piece of bread he says mike this is the body of christ broken for you there's a couple things i want to mention here one is this is an act the way the eucharist is done where this is a thing offered that you have to then take they don't just like drop it in your hands they don't toss it to you they hold it out and you take it and i've had this moment of moral conviction because i was like i can't take a piece of bread that represents a body i don't think existed when you're wrestling with the idea of whether god is real or are past wrestling that jesus was just either an ordinary rabbi who was pumped up through a game of telephone or a myth without god jesus is just not very interesting so i'd spent no time thinking about jesus and only thought about god and so i was like i can't take this bread it's not it's a piece of bread and if i take this i'm lying to all these people they're going to feel like they've had this big moment where this atheist has become a christian again and they're going to tell their friends and i'm not that guy and i'm not gonna do it just for social pressure so i actually went to turn and leave and here's the part that's insane this is crazy it ruins the credibility of the story but it happened so i have to retell it i heard a voice and that voice said i was here when you were eight and i'm here now jesus like i lost it i took the bread i dipped in the wine i ate it and i literally ran from the room and i go to my hotel room it's a surfer hotel so it's just like beds and a place to put surfboards there's not even a desk and i want i don't know why but i wanted my my journal my notebook so i get it i have this really nice pen i got in san francisco that's an odd detail in the story i really like that pen and uh it's a tombow anyway so and there's nowhere for me to write i don't know what i'm gonna write but i know i need to write at this point in my life it's not even like i was a writer you know what i mean so i just kind of like wander around the back of the hotel because i'm so afraid to see anybody because i look crazy carrying a notebook and a pen and sobbing hysterically and uh so i finally figure well enough time has passed surely all these people have left the conference and there was a table right outside the venue so i sort of sneak over and there was nobody outside i was like score so i sit down and i open my notebook and i take my very fancy japanese pen and i write dear god comma like i'm writing a letter to god and then i just start crying again like all this grief that i'd sort of like buried over losing god and my parents collapsed marriage it was all just this toxic sludge in my psyche it just it's geysering out of me now and uh and i write a letter to god and i can't read it as i write it because of the tears i mean it's as hard as i've ever cried in my life and um and i close a notebook and uh this this methodist pastor named sarah comes out and sits with me and just holds me um welcomes me back and i remember thinking what do you mean welcome back welcome back to what i don't know what happened i don't know what's happening i think i hallucinated you know what i mean like it wasn't just this automatic there was no resolution the bible still seemed ridiculous yeah i still thought the jesus methodists were pretty compelling i just ate a piece of bread and had an auditory hallucination you know what i mean yeah like this is the uncut version guys so um now you don't get this part live so so i go out uh drinking with these pastors and i realized one drinking pastures are awesome because everybody just has like a beer and nobody gets wasted well you can get wasted on a beer though well i can but most people and the other thing is when you have a large group of plain looking men in a bar who are not drinking very much but look like they're having a blast that's like the most powerful evangelism possible because all these people are just attracted to you and i remember all these amazing conversations with people who weren't in the club they weren't christians but they felt this solidarity with us because they didn't feel judged by us really amazing stuff and so uh they all have to like go to bed at some point because i get flights the next day so it's like 2 30 in the morning and i don't feel i can go to bed yet i have that same seven-year-old unresolved feeling it's back so i walk down to the beach and um it's dark it's really dark it's laguna dark so there's still like an la light dome but if you just came from the street it seems very dark and i remember not being able to see where the sky stopped in the ocean began but i could hear the waves and i could see the surf when it was close to me and i realized like all i could see was one of the most powerful forces on earth but i could i i could sense it but not see it like the pacific ocean there's a lot of energy physically in the pacific ocean so i thought as a metaphor for god goes that's pretty good so i on the spur of the moment decided to start praying to god and like it was a throw down i said god you know i don't i don't know anything about you i don't know if you wrote the bible or the bible means anything um i don't know if you interact with the universe or not i know that if you do interact with the universe and you have consciousness or will or agency you've got some explaining to do because my mom prayed that i would know you again and a new york times best-selling pastor gave me personal attention and you know what i mean like it's crazy and at the same like literally right now some mother in a war-torn country is praying that her children will die and her prayer is not getting answered god that's that's evil i don't get it that's ridiculous so i can't tell you i'm gonna like follow the ten commandments and just pick up the gospels and and be what i was yeah i can't i can't say that to you but who is it good to talk to you again i don't ever want to not talk to you again and i never want to feel like we're apart from each other again so let's make a deal i will devote my life to serving you whatever that means i will do everything in my power to make life on this planet better i will study the bible again and see what remnants of you i can find in its pages all i know is that tonight i met jesus again and when i said jesus here's the second crazy part of the story i was standing kind of high up on the beach and the pacific rushed forward and soaked me up to mid calf and washed all the sand off my shoes and i was reminded of rob saying christ's final act of service was washing feet of his followers and i remember very clearly very vividly saying is this really happening and then the world fell away it was the opposite of the trapdoor it was like i don't know if like you when you're a kid you would ever hide under the blankets and if the blankets were stretched tight you could see through to the other side a little bit but it was hazy reality did that and on the other side of this stretched veil is what i can only describe as the glory of god and believe me skeptics i understand your confusion of that phrase but when you experience that like using a different word than god is like it's too weak it's too weak god is the only word that we have that is for that is intended for this experience like that's big enough when you talk about the incomprehensible mystery the incomprehensible uncontainable infinite god and you that's that's good language it's good language all right so since we're back then in the early days let's do one more early episode uh right here and i found this on my phone right as you were coming over mike but i found this but like a career suicide note oh that i recorded for myself right before we posted episode 20. i know episode 20. i i mean at the time i i did not know any christian people that came out as affirming that didn't lose their whole career yeah because of it um and i had just recently come out of starting to be okay after losing so much from my interpretations of genesis which looks like if that's what happened with genesis i was in this video preparing for the end i was like this is it and this is so i just found this here let me play it for you i'm about to push send on a tweet announcing a new podcast about the lgbtq issue i'm terrified i can't push it i'm afraid because i know it's probably going to do to us i know that it could potentially end our careers in the christian music scene and that sort of is our career but i don't know how i can say that i'm a christian and be in the christian music scene and follow this jesus who teaches radical love and revolution speaking against oppression from religious powers i don't know how i can just bow my knee to religious powers out of fear of not talking about a taboo issue not telling people that they're beautiful and there's so many other people telling them they're not i want to be a part of whispering love into people's ears that need to hear it and singing beauty over the ashes right over the people that have been devastated by what people told them god thinks of them so i guess i'm gonna do it i guess i'm gonna push send damn different days different days i mean in fairness it did destroy your christian music not at first it was a real slow burn yeah but that's a real difference that's only four years ago yeah which also four years ago i didn't know the difference between sex and gender and so i got this really extended science of gender thing in that episode and conflate sex and gender over and over it's a different world it's a different day but at the time that's what we we look back before like i mean obama and hillary clinton were not affirming several years ago that's true so it's a it was a different day but so if you really listen to that episode give us some grace please we were really new uh but we've hit the fruit that we've heard from this episode is you see more than me because i don't have email addresses accessible to the public but i mean from what you've heard this episode yeah far-reaching i've met many many many many many couples who came out of the closet accepted themselves and got married after hearing that episode um and parents countless parents accepting their children yeah finding a framework to hold on to a religious identity and christian that's important to them pastors rethinking their positions yeah that that episode um is one of the high water marks for societal or cultural impact that we've ever done because it really moves so many minds and you know i'm of the thinking that queer people don't need straight people's approval or affirmation but there are so many straight people and so many straight people in positions of social power and political power that i do think is an important form of advocacy in swaying enough of those minds to create the legal and societal space for queer people to thrive and from what i've seen in the data and in the stories that episode helped a lot of queer people accept themselves and a lot of straight people accept the humanity the dignity and indeed the morality and spiritual validity of their queer friends family and neighbors let's listen what would you say to the person listening right now who loves god and is a member of a church that believes and preaches that loving someone of the same biological gender is sin or an abomination and is wrestling with that in their heart right now what would you say to them i'm gonna i'm gonna say what i'm gonna say but i also want to just kind of bring it back to context that so i'm in a i'm in my phd program right now i've finished all my coursework i'm i'm going i'm in the process of deciding if i'm going to take my qualifying exams and finish my dissertation when i came out to them i was told if you don't make a big deal about this you can stay if you make a big deal about this you we have to kick you out and what they mean by that is if i take a stand and advocate so by what i'm about to say could be seen as advocating for something that potentially has the ability for me to lose the last four years and hundred thousand dollars of my phd but here's the thing is that for people out there who are walking through this and belong to something and feel stuck i would say one god loves you you have people who love you you're gonna be okay and this is probably the hardest thing you're ever gonna do and i i would never call somebody to come out before they were ready to if i i couldn't have done it before i was 38 truthfully um but i would say to the people out there who might be listening who belong to a conservative church i was just with somebody a couple weeks ago who's actually been through shock therapy and um exorcisms because he's 55 years old and he's finally come to the point of where he's accepted his sexuality after 20 years of reparative therapy including electroshock and exorcisms um i would say that if you're in a context that that is kind of what is being taught as the only version of what biblical truth is that there's something more out there that there's another version of interpretation of scripture another understanding of who god is another understanding of who you are that is i'm gonna say at the risk now of being kicked out of my program more valid than what you've been told and has more truth to it um and you're not alone you're so not alone in this and there's so many people who have begun to walk this process ahead of you but will come alongside you and hold your hand as you walk this and it will be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life but it doesn't mean it's wrong and it's okay to say god loves me just as i am is 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 slash liturgists all right how about a little palette cleanser let's let's listen to some of the songs that have come out of this podcast and they assume you mean the silly ones facilities are some good ones i mean like every time you play vapor i cry because no i mean the ones for the podcasts these these epistemological breakdowns epistemological breakdown one who wrote this shit two who would publish it do they have an editorial review board three there's no date you see four cite that source five this bitch can't write so you better make it right and say it's fake do it again do it again do it again this bitch can't write so you better make it right and say it's fake i mean bitch in gender neutral terms it's fake yeah genesis exodus leviticus numbers deuteronomy joshua's ruth there's so much to perform so much to reform so much so much to perform so much so much so much ones on the enneagram are called the perfectionist or the reformer personally i am a two which is the helper on the enneagram i love you oh just let me serve you it's all about you and that makes me proud i am a three i've been pretty successful i put a lot of weight into being externally validated by others i need to do a lot of things my name is dylan and i'm a five five i hate personality tests because they never seem to describe me and instead they only demonstrate a couple of personalities i exhibit because i just told the test that i exhibit those traits heading into the sixes is happy life happy happy life being a seven is so much fun you can keep all your pain out of sight i'll take one of everything and let's just keep things light being a seven is so much fun you can keep all your pain out of sight being a savage is so much fun you can keep all your pain out of i'm in enneagram 8. what that means to me is that i have these strengths that are like effortless super powers and mine are aliveness immediacy and confidence in fact i can project confidence and strength even when i don't feel them it's just like a super power let me comb your trouble mine i relate to every side oh just please dear god don't fight i'll be your number nine i never met a soul i didn't like except maybe when the a kept trying to fight nihilistic optimistic about this state the history mystic maybe somehow all of you alright i'm talking about science mike we love you mr science are you ready i feel so welcome in this place here in the warmth of your sweet embrace here in your possum it's here i wait but if you don't mind while we wait i have a question about this what are we doing what exactly are we waiting for waiting ah right hand left hand right foot don't sit down me these open hands so we started the austin gathering with that song the whole gathering like we just came out mike played bass yes hillary played violin violin william sang i sang play guitar he had a drummer with us and a fairly significant percentage of the room didn't know what the hell was happening some people thought we live that was a real worship song yeah but they'd never heard well we also had we had the lyrics with the guy on the mountain with his hands yes remember but apparently it was like we went to poe's law yeah couldn't tell the difference between parody and extremism which for us was perfect i mean that was a win we counted that as a win huge win we probably took got a little dock on the score sheet for it but austin scored really high though we made up for it later made up and apparently it didn't define it's crazy to think how much music has been made for this podcast there's a lot um okay how about next let's go to william in austin his little sermon in austin that was pretty fiery i do love it when william preaches yeah he goes into preacher zelma you you and william both will go into preacher zone sometimes i only do it on stage yeah i've never seen hillary going to even the slightest preacher zone and i i rarely do i start cussing if i do i don't flights are getting worked up i'm just like fucking fuck fuck that's lacroix in my sciences that was the sound you just heard at home okay so my story do you guys remember elijah in the bible yeah yeah the prophet right you gotta say like that the prophet the miracle worker right and all these like tales and stories and you know there were oil running out of pots and you know he was healing people and he had this like magical mantle that he was you know given to his you know the next generation but i wanted to tell the story about uh elijah on mount carmel um so in the context i guess it's 9th century bc they say there was this king named ahab and ahab married a woman named jezebel who here has ever been called jezebel in church raise your hand so this is actually not about you i just want no just trigger warning this is not about you you have a jezebel spirit were you told you had a jezebel spirit that's what the music minister said when i was a senior in high school true story how progressive of him to call a man jezebel too for conservative christians that's progressive you know the jezebel spirit isn't just for women there's men that have it too show snap snap snap like you know what i'm talking about oh i've never thought of that before that's yeah like they were really progressive for spiritual warfare people right like that was wow man so there was a king named ahab who married a woman named jezebel here's the thing though jezebel the scripture that the king james version the new king james version i had they they called her cosmopolitan meaning she worshipped many gods so supposedly she you know worshipped the god of baal and she was bringing this influence into israel now far as i can understand which basically is what wikipedia told me come on y'all know what i'm talking about it's just as good as encyclopedia britannica was it's just as good y'all it's gotten there that's right i remember looking up menstruation in there do you remember what it said no but somebody had said something about that i was like and then i'm like i have no idea what that is up to the britannica when no one's around young michael's going to the britannica what is menstruation okay so right she worshipped this this god named bale um you know the origins of baal is are not fully known which basically means i refuse to dig deep enough to figure that out right that's all that says you know they're not fully known but you know you know because it's just a podcast um sorry we're not an authority if you thought we were we're not um but one thing is clear that wikipedia says is that at first the name baal was used by the jews for their god without discrimination but as the struggle between the two religions developed the name baal was given up by the israelites as a thing of shame and they actually changed you know a certain name that was called for god uh you know jeruba bell and they changed to uh jerobo sheth which means shame so what was the evil of baal why was jezebel and all of this you know why were they so bad this guy that wikipedia told me about named bratty kelly said basically i guess they were into occultic sexual practices which for the ancient world could really destabilize a whole community right especially you know and science mike has talked about this many times about hunter-gatherer societies and you know anyway and what marriage represents to that so here's the story this is the context so elijah with all this corruption going on elijah the prophet goes to see ahab the lord calls to him and says go see the king so he goes to see the king and this is what he says so obadiah who was the palace facilitator uh went to meet ahab and told him to meet elijah when he saw elijah ahab said is that you you troubler of israel i have not made trouble for israel elijah replied but you and your father's family have you have abandoned the lord's commands and have followed the bales now summon the people from all over israel to meet me on mount carmel and bring the 450 prophets of baal that's a lot of prophets and the 400 prophets of ashira who eat at jezebel's table not you mike i just like this story so ahab sent word through all of israel and assembled the prophets on mount carmel elijah went before the people how long will you waver between two opinions if the lord is god follow him if baal is god follow him and the people said nothing then elijah said i am the one and only of the lord's prophets left but baal has 450 prophets get two bulls for us let bale's prophets choose one for themselves and let them cut into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it i will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it then you call in the name of your god and i will call in the name of my god the lord the god who answers by fire for he is god then all the people said what say is good they like we good okay we let's do that what you say is good okay all right anyone right now want to get an audio version of the bible read by william thank you for giving me my next project i've never thought about that they called on the name of baal from morning till noon bail answer us they shouted but there was no response no one answered and they danced around the altar they had made at noon elijah began to taunt them shout louder he said surely he is a god perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling maybe he's sleeping or must be awakened i mean this is shade right here y'all like he was like oh where he out here here oh i thought you said he was going to be here though really really though really that was some pettiness right there so they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears as was their custom i guess because they were under the you know the blood sacrifice and the sex cults midday pass they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice but there was no response then elijah said to all the people come here to me they came and he repaired the altar of the lord which had been torn down elijah took 12 stones each one represented the tribes descended from jacob to whom the lord had come saying you shall be israel with those stones he built an altar in the name of the lord and he dug a trench around the large enough to hold two seas of seed he arranged the wood cut up he he basically did it and then he said do it a third time and he did and at the time of sacrifice the elijah prophet step forward and pray lord god of abraham isaac and israel you know you and your mama used to pray she used to call on like all the ancestors the lord the faith of my father and my father's father no one's okay that was my mom let it be known today that you are god in israel and that i am your servant and have done all these things at your command answer me and so these people will know that you are lord basically the fire came and then once the fire came like elijah went and like slaughtered everybody like the 450 prophets of baal gruesome story may the lord have a blessing to the reading of his word okay so i'll just say this real quick and be done because that story is just it's crazy so did he do by himself just him he just he says elijah slaughtered them yeah by himself yeah that's that is badass y'all 450 people just like they stood in line they didn't fight back like what was what was going on i need to know the practical dimensions of how they were slaughtered um it was like matrix he's like flying to the air slow motion neil well he was a prophet and a miracle worker so um yeah so this story registers to me because have you ever felt like you were like the only one elijah was like i am the only prophet of the lord left right you've been in this situation where there's some corrupt things going on or there's some people doing some shady stuff and you're like you see it and you're like i'm the only one that knows and and i've got to call it out have you ever felt that zeal don't leave me hanging on please not or say yes okay right you felt like elijah and i think that's why i love this story right because i get like that so i'm like you know especially if you are an intuitive person or you know for those of you that are really deep and spiritual you you would say you're prophetic you know you know like you feel things from god or from other people and so you're like this is right and that's wrong and you feel it so strong and then you challenge the powers right so imagine this here comes elijah he was a prophet during the reign of king ahab it's always crazy that god raises up prophets especially when they're most needed and usually in the bible it's when men set themselves up as kings over other men prophets according to walter bruggeman represents the alternative consciousness they provide us with the voice of god which is always the counter script to the false narratives of empire right sound familiar there's always a fight for the truest name of god especially as other names become known and associated with evil right so here's ahab and they're mixing kind of this other thing with the name of god right and and that's where the tension lies so what happens when a word or a metaphor or a perfectly good name becomes convoluted when a meaning or a metaphor becomes twisted to promote evil instead of good again sound familiar what happens when the truth fails in the public square and the ones in power are corrupt do we call it fake news and continue on our steady diet of entertainment and apathy like literally what do we do it is in these conditions that god raises up prophets those who cannot take the gnawing insanity of cognitive dissonance the ever so slight buzzing sound that you can't quite place mainly because it's buzzing all around you but the thing about elijah that i love is that truth eventually has a showdown and elijah's brave act ended up bringing about the restoration of a whole nation and my other favorite thing about this story is after it all happens after he does the brave thing he runs away like a little child jezebel's like oh i'm gonna get you you did what you killed all my prophets and then he runs into the wilderness and he runs into a cave and he's he basically goes into deep depression and suicide have you been in a situation where you spoke truth to power you said the thing that needed to be said not out of a place of rebellion but out of a place of love and then you ended up being the one that ran away and got afraid like that resonates right but what are we called to do we're constantly called to speak truth in that square we're constantly called to call down fire and to tell the truth at any cost because it's the truth regardless of the popular opinion even when you know jezebel's gonna come get you you tell the truth and you speak truth to power and that's what i love about that story this was requested the poison ivy story oh boy tender ears stop now or skip forward skip forward for 10 minutes or whatever trigger warning poison ivy gentle story in the next few moments and mike on the computer voice which is part of what makes it so perfect in case any of you doubted when mike says that he's not a viable organism i'm sitting there looking at him right now he's got like a cast on his foot and he's he's not talking my throat hurts so bad he's been recording his audio book so like he did six hours yesterday and six hours today and he's uh he's real tired he can't talk and i am a little baby he's a baby i did my audiobook in 24 hours now admittedly that's crazy but uh he's doing it all week and he's spacing it out six hours a day and he's still like losing his voice so he's got to save it so he's uh he's mr computer man today neither of us are in great shape though well i'll tell you what's been going on with me this is going to be an odd one to listen to maybe for people but um so this week we went on a my family went on a camping trip with uh amelie's school she goes to like this hippie school in l.a where you know her friend right now inside playing with her is with she's with aaron and pony inside these are you know it's like the typical it's so wonderful it's like it's a loving school if you ask about the school it's like all very a peaceful loving school love it um but we go into camp these camps every year or to go camping and uh to get a picture of this school like you have like one kid falls there's only like 13 kids or something but then all the other kids if the kids hurt and crying all the other kids go up and like rub their hands and then they heal they like stretch out their hands and heal the children when we first yeah hippie power when we went the first year um we were sitting next to one of the moms was like uh are we in a cult um but we laugh and enjoy it so anyway on this trip apparently one of the people grabbed some sticks for the um for the s'mores that night and they grabbed it from a poison oak bush and uh no shit yeah so everybody like almost everybody on the trip's got poison oak uh and so it's the adults the kids apparently in their throats uh i don't think so i from what i've seen you have to have a uh like if it goes you can get it oil can transmit to food well we're all i mean for that reason everybody's been freaking out a little bit like one guy's face totally did kind of swell up and shut down i thought that maybe i had it in my throat because i had i've had trouble swallowing a couple things but i'm not that was it and i've had some of that before with just my esophagus so i don't know if that affected it or not but i tell you what was affected and this is not an episode you should never have your children listen to this at this podcast by the way just so just but i'll tell you where i really got this guy what are you doing you don't even have to ask do i even need to say it but yes so okay so uh all of a sudden i'm getting real itchy i'm getting real itchy down below and i'm like what is going on because we didn't no it takes a couple days usually before poison oak to start appearing for people um but this is like the day after the camping trip and i'm like what is happening down down there and it's getting real bad and then i start seeing some like you know some red and bumps and and things and that's i'm like not i'm not messing with the penis you know i'm not messing with it so i'm like wonderful sound effects i was not expecting it sounds star wars um so i um so i call the doctor and my doctor can't see me and it's obviously getting worse and worse by the hour and i'm like i gotta go in so they and you know they're asking me questions like where what's what's happening what i mean i don't know what it is but it's my penis is not doing well i don't know if it's poison oak or something's happening and then so they're asking me all these questions and they found out so anyway i got in to this doctor and it was this young girl doctor and uh i mean she's from now she probably was like 25 or something like that i mean she looked like fresh out of medical school sort of thing um so we're talking about it and she's like do you have any bumps anywhere else i think it's poisonous i think by this time by the time i saw her some of the other parents are starting to talk and like i'm something's wrong one of the guys thought he had sunstroke or something and i was like i think it might be poison oak uh and i was like and she's like is there anything anywhere else i was like i think i have some bites in my arms and stuff and it seemed really like she was avoiding not wanting to look at the penis she just kept like you know maybe i'll take a look at your arms i think there's like not hardly anything on my arms it's like you really kind of have to see the penis i feel kind of sick um so then she like she's like all right let's see it take off the gown and she did like a straight up and by this point it's not looking great i mean it's like it's kind of weird looking you know so she's like pointing at she's like arm's length away from it and kind of stretching her head back and kind of pointing at it and touching it like a dead rat or something she's like yeah let's get some uh tesla oh wait actually no she just kind of didn't know what uh what it was she's like here take some creams or whatever steroid shot no she didn't give me that so she didn't do she didn't know what to do it was kind of but she didn't even take a close look at it um so then i was i went home with some steroid cream some lighter steroid cream and then the next day woke up and it was like a freaking balloon animal down there it was like all swollen and his face is cringing as it should and probably yours is as well and i was like on my elbow once you got it on your elbow that was bad enough oh right on your penis i mean it's like i'm not i don't i still i guess it's because the skin is just more sensitive than the other areas i certainly didn't run around the place with my pants off um so i don't know why it's only appeared in that maybe you can give me some science here but from what i've read that's just the more sensitive uh high moisture too uh so anyway it was it was real rough and so i had to go back to the doctor because i was like it's significantly worse and then she saw it the second time and she's like oh yeah i'm gonna get one of my colleagues to look at this too so then she had a nurse come in so now it's two young girls in there and she's snapping pictures of it with her iphone to upload for their server so they can share it with their colleagues i asked her if she wanted my instagram handle to tag me and uh she's like hey you're funny snap snap snap and then they get the dermatologist finally got back and they gave me some prednisone i said keep doing that cream and the prednisone really helped and it's been getting better but i've been i've been managing with like these i read the debates online between hot water some people say like hot water aggravates the rash but it definitely if you run it under really hot water it's like a motherfucker for a minute and then the itch goes away for like seven hours so it's like just going into traumatizes the nerve endings yeah and one person said it like eases up or gets rid of histamines for a while or something prevents histamine binding yeah so it i mean but when you first put it under there it's like it's just it's like all of the nerves are going crazy oh and then i'm wearing i'm doing this putting creams on and wearing a dress around the house so the other morning so the other morning emily walks in the door emily is our she helps us and she watches the kids sometimes uh and she walks in the door and i'm just there and i had no shirt on and i had a dress so i just kind of threw a coat on real quick so i just had like a coat and a dress she's like hi oh and then there's one moment so i'm in the middle of all this and the teacher's starting to freak out because you know all these parents are starting to have poison oak and stuff she's calling everybody and figuring out what's matter and she's freaked out about throat stuff or whatever and so i'm with somebody and she's really questioning me like where what's going on with the poison oh do you have poison oak i was like yeah i think so where and like i mean you know it's kind of here i'm with somebody and it's just my preschool teach daughter's preschool teacher i'm like uh you know i mean it's different exactly she's really asking uh real specific questions about it that fucking thing is huge yeah that's what i didn't want to say to my daughter's preschool teacher so i just kind of didn't say and then today at school when i dropped off family she's like oh my gosh emily came to school yesterday and told everybody that you had poison oak all over your wiener and that you've been wearing a dress at home let's get a good uh hillary speech in here here's one from man where she talks about how masculinity affects men this immediately leads me to think about men's emotional health and well-being and how much gets disconnected from the person when scripts like be a man come in come onto the scene so to back this up and give you a little bit of a developmental psychology perspective there's a woman named carol gilligan who started doing research with girls about what is moral development how do we make moral decisions because so much of the research particularly what was done by kohlberg and his theory of moral development said that people make moral decisions in a certain way and there's a hierarchy that you are more moral if you make decisions that reflect the top tier of decision making and whenever women were put through this grid they would always come up short as being morally inferior because they didn't make decisions in the way that it was represented on this grid so carol gilligan started doing this research with young girls and her work is documented in a really famous psychology book called in a different voice but what she found is that around puberty when girls were starting to be sexualized and their bodies were becoming something different it was changing the way that other people spoke to them and they were realizing something about themselves and what it meant to have a voice and so this the phenomenon of self-silencing started to show up around puberty that girls who could retain a sense of justice and a voice early on and say things like that's not right that's not fair around puberty would start to say things like well you know right or ah but you know what do i know after they would say something with some strength then there would be this kind of cutting down of voice so whenever i talk about that research people are really outraged and they think oh my goodness but the fascinating thing about gilligan's work and she talks about this in a book called the birth of pleasure at that shift of the self-silencing of i want to say the thing i want to say but i can't happens for boys around five that it's happening so young for boys that they're learning the script of be a man and shut down and don't share your feelings and if you're crying it means that you're weak and you're like a little girl as if that's something bad that that shift and that i know something inside my body i have a sense of knowing about what feels right about what feels good about connection about what i need that that switch gets turned off sometimes earlier than five but predominantly around five and so when we talk about the injustice for women about the scripts of femininity one of the things that i often talk about is i think that the patriarchal construction of masculinity hurts boys and men too but there's so many men that i see in therapy who talk about feeling like they are alone in life because they've always been told that they can't connect with other men except if they're angry about sports games or if there's a sense of violence or aggression and that they can sometimes connect with women but it's threatening for their wives or their partners if they're connecting with too many other women emotionally and so there's this isolation it's like these walls get built up to protect the narrative of masculinity but then inside there's a there's a person who just wants to be human like everybody else but has been so cut off from all of these dimensions of the fullness and the richness of an emotional life from sensing from being connected to the body and feeling and vulnerability that there is aloneness on the inside so this might be a good time to tell everybody about the next kin men retreat okay so we've got another ken retreat coming up and this is the third and you may be saying the third when did tickets go on sale for the second uh the second one sold out in pre-sales so the patrons and the waiting list bought all the tickets first so this time we are giving the patrons and the waiting list a shorter preview period before you the the public podcast listeners get a shot either way can men is a retreat we do about confronting the toxic aspects of masculinity via psychology and emotional recovery for men it is hosted by myself and michael gunger and facilitated by hillary mcbride of course it wouldn't be a liturgist men's retreat unless it was led by a woman and our next one's going to be in ohi california on may 24th 25th and 26th you can learn more and grab your ticket by going to the liturgist.com retreats now i do want to let you know there are only 30 spots available so those spots do go quite quickly so if you're thinking about joining us don't delay head to the website as soon as you can the liturgist.com retreats okay so here's another here's a good mic speech about church in the christian episode this was a good one i i felt obligated to have a crescendo of music while you spoke do you remember this is it the one that dropped the running one where you talk about why you're a christian you talk about you're unevangelical and then but this is why you're christian you lay it out really well okay it's quite beautiful i'll be excited to hear it i'd love to talk about that with the caveat that i am not evangelical anymore now i'm unevangelical like nothing interests me less than convincing other people that their lives should be more like mine nothing interests me less than convincing people that their faith should be like mine but with that said like and this might sound triggering at first so just preemptively assume i'm going a different way than these words will sound but i actually believe at this point in my life that we are all living in sin being gay and being in a gay relationship doesn't happen to be one of those sins but we are all living in sin if the best and most compelling theological description i've ever heard of sin is a culpable disturbance of shalom culpable meaning like something you do or don't do uh disturbance meaning the lack of creation or the resistance of and shalom being a state of wholeness and peace and if if shalom is that and culpably disturbing shalom is sin having any awareness of anthropomorphic climate change and not making an absolute and total reordering of your life immediately is a state of sinfulness uh because we are literally going to burn up the world right like and not in some distant 10 000 year timeline like a few hundred years potentially the globe is uninhabitable and we all keep flying on airplanes and eating beef and running air conditioners and doing these things that provide us a little comfort to get through the day at the expense of other people and so like and i listen to this conversation that we're having that's fascinating and i hear so many things i resonate with like is the resurrection a thing did that really happen that kind of sounds ridiculous to me what is new life what is freedom um and then i hear some people saying like i don't find that in church and i get that because church has been such an institution of oppression and persecution and danger for so many people but i didn't on accident compare the church to comic-con or to harry potter world at universal because at both comic-con and harry potter world people come together in a social consciousness and use a collective imagination to make mythology real when i walk down the streets of diagon alley in orlando yes god i am in the wizarding world i can point a wand at a window and utter a magic phrase objects will respond to magic when i walk around at comic con and i see people dressed up as characters from beloved mythologies i see my imagination walking around in flesh and in blood i dare say incarnationally and so when i contemplate the idea that at one point god took a physical body out of a tomb as a representation that it doesn't matter that we are born in sin that we are evolved organisms that are innately wired to look after our own needs first even if it comes at the expense of the other an empty tomb says creation itself has a plan for that and so the reason i like to go sing songs and take the eucharist is so that my imagination my imagination that there is some other way that there is some other story that leads to the redemption and not the destruction of creation becomes real in that space so i have a lot of caveats if i'm going to go to church i don't go to churches that aren't affirming of all sexualities and gender identities i don't go to churches that won't ordain women and queer people and have them in full and complete not only membership but leadership of the community but i have to go to a place personally where the imagination becomes real and then like there's this notion is the church exclusive if i go to a christian church am i saying that every muslim and buddhist and hindu and zen person and every non-religious person is in some fundamental way wrong about creation and i think about john philip newell's beautiful image that when faith traditions are young they are tiny saplings that have to be protected so they can grow but once they are full-sized trees they are meant to provide shade and comfort to all that come near them and that no great tree is any better than one or the other it simply matters which one is closest to you in proximity is a place that you can find comfort care and shelter so i like really resonate with people who feel that they are in some way the church in exile or in the christian diaspora they can't walk through the doors of a church building anymore but in some way are still fascinated with a story of resurrections told by christ with the weird strange teachings of paul the apostle this mythology and the hebrew bible all these things compel them but they can't use the word christian i don't care because for me i need a social collective imagination other people find liberation in silent contemplation alone and whatever leads you to that liberation to that freedom to that imagination that there is some way that humanity can be saved is freedom is the gospel is the church and i love it and i support it and i consider any person who seeks a better tomorrow for everyone and not just themselves my brother my sister my non-binary kin in this great tradition while we're on the topic of christian here with this whole series there's a couple other requests from this series i'll just put them in a row here but i like doing a clip show and it's some of the most recent episodes yeah but it's good stuff there's five episodes of them i'm sure most most listeners didn't listen to all five in their entirety that's true um so one of them was the this the the fuck you i'm a goat moment from me and then uh and then a lot of people requested the the stories from the listeners that are not christian at the end some of their comments that i read at the end of the not christian episode there's a poem in there that's nice too um so we'll combine those two things so let's hear it for the goats let's hear it for the goats but there's something about it in my experience with christianity through the years that feels it is inherently when i say this it's not i'm not talking about jesus message i don't think christendom understands jesus's message i'm talking about christian dumb as it has developed through to millennia to me it is inherently exclusive as a whole as it's been practiced with most of its practice it has been seen as we are the ones who have the plan the word of god the one incarnation of god has come through this story through this text we're the ones with the secret and everybody else outside of that are the goats or the sheep and to me if you're going to ask me like are you a sheep or a goat or they're outside the table or whatever the party the wedding they asked me at the door are you a sheep or a goat i'm like fuck you i'm a goat well you've got your episode title so to me it's almost like the because i i believe too strongly in the message of jesus what do you think you're going to ask a goat what is a goat going to say that he or she is let's say i'm a sheep you want to be the in group you want to be to the exclusion of the out group are you going to go out with the guns are you going to leave the 99 to go to the one and to me there's something about that that rings so true to me the actual message of jesus that's saying no i'm inside i'm i'm one of the sheep don't worry i'm not one of those goats i'm like i'm not interested in that division if you're gonna if you need to put me in a camp put me in the outside fred said christianity has been used by politicians and companies to increase profits create an in-out group and control people by creating social pressure and rules susan says there are so many beautiful texts where you don't have to work as hard to interpret them in non-hurtful offensive and harmful ways in my opinion the bible is not one of them maria writes i don't want a religion that's about buying me a ticket out of this evil depraved world and escaping this sinful place i want to be present with mama earth rather than longing for jesus to take me away to a new heaven and a new earth tori writes the exclusivity the self-claimed monopoly untruth the requirement to believe things that are scientifically impossible the toxic purity culture the lack of affirmation for lgbtq plus folks the shame and guilt associated with being a sinner she goes on to say mystical christianity can certainly be beautiful but i still can't quite be a part of it because christian writings believe symbolism are no longer any more important to me than other types of spiritual wisdom that is i don't think christianity is any more true than other ways of seeing things so it wouldn't make sense to give myself that label lucy writes i cannot reconcile my hope that love is the driving force of the universe with a story that places a requirement on human beings to choose to follow repent and proclaim a god in a certain manner even if there is an emphasis on grace humans are still required to act move towards accept and receive god's love and buy into the story in order to be saved the essence of the christian gospel message seems exclusionary brandon said i spent most of my life trying to believe only to fall short it was only when i embraced the fact that i didn't that i felt free i like who i am and how i treat people better when i'm not a christian holly wrote for so long i was trying to find the perfect formulaic christian worldview and trying on several different theological hats for all life's big questions trying to hold on to christianity finally i realized i was choking on holy water while everyone else was bathing in it and i just needed to set down the christian title so that i could breathe and now i feel more free to know and not know and be known one of the patrons on there named steven actually wrote a poem at the end and i liked it i asked him to record it on his phone and email it to me god you were my child i raised you in the womb of my perceptions i coddled you with words like infinite one while i cradled you in my arms you brought me such comfort but then dreamer that i was stumbling through a corridor of false awakenings i awoke to find that the sweet one i held was a bundle of ideas and fleshed around your shadow you were never in my arms belief was in my arms what arms could hold you what word could speak you when every time we shape our lips around the air a tower collapses we say love and before the syllable is erected we have eroded its foundation with our needs we say god and you turn toward us only to realize we had been calling over your shoulder to our traditions jason writes beautifully christianity is a religion of we love you but i'm tired of your pruning snipping chopping at my roots i do not wish to be grafted into your vine or bred with careful selection so as to remove undesirable traits leave me wild intermingling with all those things not fit for your garden there's lots more like this there's like a hundred of them there are stories of abuse there are stories of shame their stories of freedom and i'm gonna be honest with you these people feel like my family i know what it's like to lose your community i know what it's like to have people think you're a heretic an outsider and ironically it is the christian faith of my upbringing that has taught me how god is with the outsiders and so that's where i've been hanging out lately out here with the outsiders and the heretics and the sinners but for those of you who do consider yourselves christians i would like to say something to you as well because you're my family too you're our family too i hope that you can hear the grace that has filled the hearts and voices of the christians that we've had on this series talk about their faith in a way that makes it safe for people like me people like these patrons whose words you've been hearing to follow our hearts and conscience and even for some of us to follow jesus into not being a christian and for a world that gets so bent out of shape about language as far as who's on this team who's on that team what i love about this space is that we share it together with people who are supposed to be on different teams believers and atheists catholic protestant agnostic mormon buddhists tongue talkers and psychedelic users we're all here to love to share to be connected in a place in a space that is brave where we can bring our true selves our true thoughts to the table and be welcome as we are may we never let labels get in the way of each other of love of synergy of creating a more beautiful world together thanks for listening everybody his name i wasn't recording when he said that unfortunately he said let's hear it for the uncle arts baby is it angela angelets i don't know how to say it it's me i've only read it you've read it yeah the that's the the what is not the species it's the what is that of goats it's it's what class what level of classification i believe it is the uh is it the genus or is it just a fancy name i don't know who cares uh well the thing is somebody somebody you do and somebody on this podcast is like an ungulate professor somebody that listens is like excuse me it does matter he's looking it um he's on his ipad folks this is this is how it works this is how you get to be science mike when somebody says a passing comment about angelets find that out immediately that's very important there's a it is a grouping of multiple orders that is not a full class are there so what other goats and um horses oh giraffes camel deer hippopotamuses rhinoceros hippopotami hippopotamuses is it hippopotamuses like this it's not hippopotamus it's not hippopotamus or no what and closely related to whales hippopotamuses um yeah hippopotamus hippopotamuses is correct not hippopotamuses yeah but hippopotamuses is the correct pluralization this is indeed how it becomes science mike okay we got a request for uh old bobby bell oh yeah a little segment from his bible episode what is what we can do there is he like the the godfather of the liturgist podcast yeah kind of he's definitely needs some sort of honorary degree or post emeritus yeah we should put a plaque on the wall for him or something that'd be good rob bell talking about the bible one of my first sermons this guy came up afterwards and he's like you missed it it's like i missed what he's like you missed that whole thing you did that whole passage about jesus but he says you realize jesus was jewish which i was like no he was a christian i mean i knew he was jewish but it was still like what he just goes into this thing about jesus was a jewish rabbi so he's having a last supper with his disciples that would have been a passover seder there would have been four cups so when he raises the cup which of the four cups does he raise because if you knew which of the four cups that would help understand the story and when he says the poor will always be with you that's a reference you realize that's a reference and there's actually that line where he says that's a romance you know what ramez is and what about triple taxation you know what mikvah is because that relates to the he just just starts going off and he's like you're missing it and so this guy's name is richard he started drop i was probably 25 he started dropping these articles off at my office like these photocopied articles by people i'd never heard of about the bible that this was written by real people in real places at real times so lots of people told flood stories and their general estimate in the galilee at the time of jesus is that people were taxed about 90 so people cannot afford to hold onto their family lands they literally don't have enough food which is the feeding of five thousand that's why people are following this itinerant mystic revolutionary rabbi because they're hungry why are they hungry like no one ever i never heard somebody say why are they so hungry oh because of this thing that was happening with the temple and the herodians and the romans so all this stuff just came to life and then that took me into oh this jesus tradition that i sort of grew up around it's almost like spirituality exists about six inches off the ground we're kind of passing through here the real action is somewhere else but when i dove into the jesus world and spirituality was a dimension of the material and we can even obviously take that apart a thousand ways but it's like oh no it was about sweat soil and sex and surfing i added that part but it was it was about this world and tikkun olam the healing of this world and olaba olam ava life in the age to come you know what i mean it all it like went it like a picture like sinking down into oh this is and that the bible was about politics and economics and how culture gets created and power and violence but the bible is actually about the things that everybody's talking about now so i think that sort of for me then the bible was no longer irrelevant the first line of the gospel of mark is a ferociously political claim so when people do that like sometimes you'll hear fancy pants christian pastors be like no we don't get into the political we just talk about the heart it's very well then you probably should avoid reading this book because when mark says this is the gospel that's a loaded military propaganda term of the romans of jesus christ he's the christ are you kidding me the messiah that was oh my word so loaded and subversive and dangerous and that was making claims about everything do you know what i mean so when i began to realize that this jesus tradition was actually really big and really wide and a lot of the things that i was like why would i go with this when people over here are talking about this oh that's present in this tradition so i think just realizing that the jesus tradition was so much bigger and wider from the opening pages of the bible it's assumed that human beings have a proper relationship with the soil like that's an assumption and it's assumed that if human beings were to not have a proper relationship with the soil then your culture your economics your everything would fall apart so like the exile which is one of the major stories of the bible these people jerusalem is conquered these people are hauled away and in exile they're trying to make sense of why did our culture get completely destroyed and we get hauled away like this and the prophet jeremiah says oh it's because you didn't let the land lie fallow one of the prophets in explaining the total devastation of the nation says this happened to you because leviticus you know what i mean leviticus says farm the land for six years let it rest for a seventh this is sustainable farming practices you know what i mean so ideas that in 2017 people consider very progressive sustainability proper relationship with the soil are actually not even named at some level they're so assumed in the book of leviticus which is seen as primitive and barbaric so i just kept noticing that people would want to reject their christian heritage in favor of what appeared to be new and enlightened and progressive ideas that were actually fully present in their own tradition they just weren't aware of it let's do another heart heartful one this was uh lisa's poem on woman that ended up becoming part of her book the most beautiful thing i've seen but it was in the context of this woman episode i remember it was quite a profound beautiful moment called moment one moment one first moments the merging of two cells into one multiplying two four six eight rapidly growing and forming the information that will decide my hair eyes teeth hands my genetic dna everything i need to become a human and still i am invisible to the naked eye i'm grown from my mother's own body my blood from her blood my heartbeat from her choice making her belly swell and her hormones go crazy with rage and want for whipped cream filled donuts at 4 00 a.m my body grows and she puts her hand upon her belly to fill a foot kick her side the jerk of hiccups the round of my head she is proud proud of her body that is a force source of life to mine i grow her body tells her it is time and i come into the world with pain and euphoria as she breaks her beautiful body to give me life she sees me for the first time what she has made and it is good the intricacies of the human body is something staggering veins heart lungs synapses toenails chemicals eyelashes all good and beautiful she holds my body and breathes in i grow from a baby to a toddler toddler to a little girl i am four and i can run around with my shirt off and feel the fullness of the wind i could paint my belly and take baths with my friends slap my butt and laugh we sleep under stars run through sprinklers naked and wild we are silly and think our bodies are strange and wonderful i grow and i am six i am taught what i can and cannot do with my body i can no longer take my shirt off outside on my own front porch no longer run around naked with my friends outside with paint on our bellies because the man across the street stares so my mother takes me inside and tells me i am now at the age where i need to be careful a feeling comes i never knew before i learned later the word for it is this shame we are at our friend's house and the teenage boy keeps making me sit on his lap i don't understand this we are all sitting in a circle about 10 of us and no one notices i'm confused and try to get away from him but he holds me there and moves his hand in a way i don't understand i feel i should obey because he is a strong older boy and i a small girl inherently weaker than he i get mad that my body is not stronger that i cannot break free i feel it is my fault maybe i should not have worn shorts so my legs were covered and then there was the church deacon my friend's father who insisted he put lotion on my legs after our bath i didn't want him to but he made me obey because he was a man and i young and born the lesser of the sexes he's uncomfortable and i thought he must know what he's doing a respectable man let alone a church leader wouldn't do this but now now that i'm older and i know better yes he knew so i am six and i can no longer be free in this body i once ran wild in but i should cover it because there are predators and i don't tell because i am ashamed and it was no big deal really no reason to fuss i am 14. i feel my body changing on me and i no longer have the freedom of my youth blood comes and i am embarrassed hiding the grocery store runs keeping it a secret seeing my brother laugh when he looks under the sink it is a wonder of growing into womanhood but i am starting to hate being a woman i'm ashamed of what my body does this beautiful thing that i once ran free in is turning on me making me awkward and uncomfortable because even now you are uncomfortable with that thought boy's eyes consume rather than see i'm told this is my fault i am told god wants me to cover my body wear long skirts and shirts up to my collarbone and be sure it isn't tight but how much skin is okay because other girls cover their whole body in black and i heard of the day there were two separate staircases for males and females so that males wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of a girl's ankle now that i am 14 now that i am changing is god now ashamed with what he made the body formed in my mother so good and beautiful turned to shame with age and religious threads weaving and constructing my social identity oppression for something i cannot control something completely natural and good if this body is not holy in and of itself then god should have never made it in the first place it's the flower hating its vibrant petals the beautiful trees sprouting from the earth only to grow and be ashamed of its bark i am 20. i rejected the shy awkward aspects of womanhood and instead learn to joke about it to cope and be cool but when night comes i'm often afraid to walk down the street alone every walk i take is accompanied with fear because i see the eyes consume i hear the threats and am followed i have friends who are victims every girl i know has been afraid every one of them from taking a simple walk to rape and a child coming from it one hid in the laundry basket when she was nine one silently prayed every night from 13 to 16 that her father would be too drunk to come into her bed one was at a party with her friend he wanted something she didn't so he trapped her in the restroom one hid from her own brother another from her grandfather another from her co-worker some say it's the woman's fault the shirt was too low the breasts too big how can a man resist but here's a staggering idea maybe it isn't the victim's fault if in looking at the beautiful woman's body you cannot appreciate her beauty but must strip and consume then it is true our culture has poisoned your mind consume take be the animal take take take shame did my mother think that when she held me close to her chest at my birth was she ashamed the beautiful form becomes forbidden and lusted at a certain age all held together by a story of a serpent and a woman though some claim the curse is broken some still believe it the body is shamed cursed ever present i am 30. i made two girls within my own body felt the pain of bringing them into the world and when i saw their bodies i saw a miracle their skin and eyelashes perfect tiny lips tiny fingernails eyes embodying innocence and awe they grow and run around my house naked and scream wild without self-awareness or social concern i teach them about our culture and what is and isn't acceptable but what i will not teach them is shame of their body it was beautiful from moment one and that will not change not with age not with anything one daughter looks at her body in the mirror we talk about the organs and the skin how her body will change she is beautiful on every count i remember when i was six and i know i have to warn her not shame her but tell her how some people were not taught to love but take for themselves and she must be brave and aware it pains me as i tell her her innocent mind not knowing why one person would hurt another in such a way don't be afraid i tell her but this is our culture so be smart and be aware of my brave girl shame teaches us but i will not teach my daughters in this way i will empower them to be proud of their bodies respectful of their bodies in awe of how miraculous it is and what it is capable of i will tell my daughter that to be a woman is not to be lesser not object not the bed in the red light district nor the bitch in the hotel she is not the body to exploit or product to consume she is not shame she is beautiful woman with beautiful body capable of cosmic realities holding someone close experiencing love making love creating life accepting another human life as her own feeling pain joy giving strength healing with a kiss wholeness with a touch giving physical and mental nourishment with her own body she is grounded enough to follow still capable to lead from a child to a nation the woman's body is made in the image of love from love herself life herself so she herself is of god for my grandmother for my mother for my daughters my friends and as a reminder to myself be proud beautiful woman your body is intrinsically good perfectly good perfect from moment one i don't there's a couple that i haven't heard yet that were requested that i haven't listened to yet so i have no idea what they are was one from resurrection episode 22 i had a time called resurrection i don't think so it was episode 22 and it was about oh it was about resurrection it was about you talking about resurrection i wonder if it's like the early 22 was before your book still wasn't it yeah i wonder if some of that stuff turned into what you wrote about the resurrection in the book episode 22 is called who am i who am i well apparently talk about resurrection and the mystery of consciousness and the ways our perception of the world seems distinct from our physicality means most people believe their cross just transcends their bodies alone but what are we a spirit trapped in a body or an illusionary property of neurons and synapses we have the highest minded episode descriptions of any podcast i've ever heard just take that take a person off the street read them that description and then say hey what do you think this episode's about in the beginning there was a rapid expansion of a singularity 380 000 years later there was light and when there was light there was hydrogen and there was helium and there were stable fundamental forces of physics they worked together to birth the first stars and those stars lived for hundreds of millions of years before they died and exploded and spread their essence across the sky into clouds of heavier dust than existed before the forces of physics work together once again to craft new stars now tightly packed into the first galaxies and the cycle repeated that cycle had to happen several times before we could have planets planets could only exist because a few generations of stars died and were reborn and it was from that process that this planet that we live on was allowed to exist this planet we live on is covered with a film of life unlike any we've seen in the universe as far as we know today it's unique that life is fed by a process where carbon from the air minerals in the soil are attached together with the energy of photons through photosynthesis and so everything on this planet lives by the constant sacrifice and dying of the nearest star every single blade of grass every tree every bush on this planet is a resurrection of the sun's energy and i exist because i steal that energy by consuming other things that have died that dead matter literally returns to life in my body through my metabolism and one day i will die and a lot of my atoms will go right back to being alive in something else one day our sun will explode and spread its guts at its essence across the sky and will then form new planets and new stars resurrection is the pattern of the physical reality we see today resurrection is the language of creation death burial and renewal is the way that change occurs and so do i find it that incredulous that somehow the source of all left his signature on our civilization through resurrection i don't know that seems to be poetically appropriate all right so we've got two more here one from the pale blue dot episode that will title nerdgasm and then a pick from science mike so that day going back to uh 1968 which amazingly was a exactly a year after dr king gave one of the most profound sermons sermon of peace where he talked about the interrelated structure of all reality december 24th 1967 he gave that sermon exactly one year later with king no longer here those three astronauts took that picture and they i mean more importantly they saw it themselves lovell bulman anders they looked out the window they were the first human beings you know if you could imagine some kind of body sat for angel whatever looking at the planet from a deep time perspective to looking at life evolve right lava right father evolves starts to sing opera they're like wow this is cool that's from brian swim a mentor of mine you know he's an evolutionary cosmologist he says lava becomes opera which i think i love that yeah so they're looking at this lava becoming opera and they're like wow that's cool and then they see this little blip something leaves because there's all this stuff leaving and going around and then something leaves and goes all the way to the moon wow and it's not just the first human beings it's the first to acknowledge it's the first part of earth part of life right yeah right wow and if you think of human beings as being embedded within this living dynamic biosphere what's our function you know we're of the planet on it yeah that was the realization i had at 15 that gave me my peak experience i just realized wow we haven't been made over here and the planet made over here and they just dropped in and then no we've actually grown you know we're a self-reflective aspect of the biosphere itself it's like alan watts talks about the the planet is a peopling planet yeah yeah like a tree makes apple apples so in a weird sort of way that astronaut that jim lovell is in a weird sort of way is the is the from one perspective is the biosphere the planet itself looking back at itself right and for me that was a really big moment that's what happened at 15 i was like whoa i'm the guyer yeah it's not the gaia this theory of james lovelock and if you guys talk about on the show but you know this idea of the planet being like a meta organism that we are you know the planet has this kind of like homeostatic homeostasis where it regulates life and the conditions for life itself and that we've always been thought of you know the environment or the planet is there humanity's here suddenly that boundary going and realizing that's non-human nature yeah you know i'm an aspect of that same evolutionary life continuum but just in this kind of bipedal self-reflective form and so what happened on that day right a year after king's sermon on christmas eve when they look out the window they take that picture that two-dimensional board game suddenly changes and it becomes this fragile oasis that's one of that's ron jay garan our partner that's his term for it and what happens suddenly is we move into a new period of time where our civilization suddenly is completely and utterly out of sync with that reality yeah and those of us that there was people before that of course realize this but we now have an image suddenly we're like well we are totally out of sync and in 2018 right next year christmas eve next year is the 50th anniversary so what we're doing is bringing together a bunch of international astronauts to talk about that and to imagine what is the next 50 years like because we need a new earth rise but this is the crazy and trippy part we don't need to look at earthrise 1968. we don't even need to look at earthrise i feel like my voice should get deeper wait you don't even need to look at earthrace 2018. an american so what i mean by that is that what we need to do is we need to look at earthrise again but this time instead of looking 50 years backwards we need to look 50 years forward and and what we need is we need a visionary future we need a visionary future that inspired king to inspire president kennedy and that visionary future of 2068 that's what we need and the great thing about it is that astro underscore ron ronald j garan from yonkers new york who went to space twice spent six months once on sts-128 two weeks with the space shuttle it was a nice easy ride landed very lovely the next mission 2011 exposition 28 he went with the russians and they uh went on the soyuz which is like three dudes getting into the back of a vw beetle and plummeting through the atmosphere and smashing into the kazakhstan rocks so with rocket breaks so ron and i and jacob a number of other people we're putting together this this group called constellation which is a group of international astronauts but we're also and ron's putting on this they call it a mooc massive online course something or other and it's called earthrise 2068 and he wants to crowdsource a vision of that future because instead of being saturated by the dystopias of our science fiction right i feel like blade runner came out was very successful and everyone was like let's do that let's just keep doing that and the star trek vision completely lost so we need to bring back the star trek vision right um damn right i'm a big big tricky by the way okay there we go i knew it you know what i knew it and i mean that in the nicest possible way because people there's people that like star trek and there's people that don't like star trek and i was like that guy i've got the technical manual hello man i got the blueprints nice nc one 701 bro the d let me just ask you is it enterprise which enterprise is it which one for you gotta be the dude people go with the e nonsense they eat that no that's like i lived on the d you know what i mean i feel like after watching tng i feel like yeah i lived on the beach right now in a scale replica of the enterprise d and i could navigate i could go anywhere in the ship i got a new hero right now i'm not joking you've seen the new bridge crew game coming to vr dude we were on it but the future of storytelling we did it and i looked around no dude it's so cool i looked round and my mate mike had ceased to become mike and he was a black vulcan woman in a red outfit doing the phases yes and i just went i was like this is the greatest day of my life so you've got to do it dude it's coming up yeah this is what could be called a nerdgasm what just happened right there but just one last point on star trek so many one we we also released a film called planetary um which had two astronauts it's kind of an eco philosophy film which released at south by and and we started with two different astronauts one of them is ron the other is mae jemison it's one of the first african american women to get a space she is also the only person on star trek to have actually gone to space she played a transport chief on like i think it's like season two or season three and she like just called them up and was like can i be on star trek and they were like yep so the first question when i sat down with her to interview her she's just an incredible she's like one of these remarkable women she was like i was like was going to space difficult she's like no going to sierra leone after the unless they're doing triage was difficult and i was like oh right you're one of those like remarkable body sat for angel humans so anyway the interesting thing about it was i i said to her i was like what was it like being on the enterprise not the space shuttle so we had a laugh we had a laugh anyway sorry sorry sorry i feel like the nerdgasm is happening yeah all right so are there any uh before we go mike are there any clips that you would like to hear i requested the the epistemology on the spot here i requested the epistemological explanation of relativity anything prop said on episode 34 would be the clip i would add to the show that's good let's hear prop with some fire you know here's the thing speaking from a minority experience and i say minority i'm saying a person of color specifically in america and even more specifically the black experience but politics it can't be compartmentalized you know you can't say that yeah politics is a different conversation than family and church and music it's it's the same conversation that's just the nature of our experience in this country you can you can't it's very true and separate them i've been learning that the ability to not talk politics is an embodiment of what someone called privilege what i tend to call a little harsher label white supremacy yeah and what politics is really talking about how you arrange bodies and spaces that's what politics is and to say i don't want to talk about politics it means you don't have to worry about the spaces for your body yeah wow i mean facts in any entrance into black american and i'm and i'm being specific about that like the black american experience there's no time in our country where politics has not grossly shaped and informed it you know i'm saying whether it's the shape from negro spirituals which are because of slavery you know what i'm saying so like um rock and roll and ray charles and the chitlin circuit was because we weren't allowed in you know white clubs so it's like there's nothing you know funk and soul and marvin gaye singing mercy me he's talking about war you know i'm saying like there's no as no part of our experience that hasn't been shaped by the war on drugs and the crack attack and it's it's this is our experience redlining sharecropping jim crow there's no part of the black american experience that's not intimately tied to politics man it's a it what a good show it's a good show if i don't say so myself it's a good show we've been we've been blessed to be with in in contact and in proximity to amazing people and uh and that we've that we crossed paths and have this strange friendship of ours what a what a fortunate thing and as we move into season five if you haven't already joined our email list or a part of our patreon community i'd encourage you to do so because as we s issue a call for additional contributors onto the literature's podcast those are the avenues we will use so if you have any experience telling stories or in journalism or creating broadcast media and you'd like to be considered as a voice that we use on this program as we figure out precisely how we're going to do that we'll issue that again on our patreon page and on our email list you can join our email list just by going to the liturgist.com and we will do our best to annoy you with a pop-up in short order we will be back in season five with some things we're really excited about we're gonna be doing a buddhist series we're gonna be doing a god series we've got lots of ideas um that we're super excited about some of which have been in process for years years years we've got live episodes from uh nashville and minneapolis yeah are ready to enter your ears so we'll see you in 2019 with season five thanks for listening everybody