ASM166 Ask Pastor Betsy

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the bible spiritual formation and third eye seeing we're asking an actual pastor on this week's ask science mike science faith welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life only this week i won't be answering your questions i'll be discussing your questions with my good friend and pastor from tallahassee florida betsy willett zeardon who's united methodist pastor and well one of my best friends so instead of me rambling in the intro what do you say let's get it started okay before we get to the good stuff i do want to remind you that here in fall there are a few more chances for us to meet up in person and turn this podcast relationship into an actual friendship so i'd love to see you at evolving faith in montreat north carolina october 26th and 27th that's an event hosted by sarah bessie and rachel held evans and is full of honestly it's like a who's who list of my favorite thinkers theologians speakers etc so it's sold out if you don't have a ticket you can't really come but i guess i'm just bragging for the people who do have tickets and uh november 3rd and 4th at the first congregational church of christ in greeley colorado i'm doing a conference on contemplative spirituality in christianity that's november 3rd and 4th in greeley and then the liturgist gathering is going to be in minneapolis november 16th and 17th and in nashville november 30th through december 1st of course i'll have more events to talk about uh after that maybe in the next few weeks but let's not waste any more time with me rambling i am so excited for those of you who have not heard before who i'm about to talk to if you've read finding god in the waves i have a chapter in that book called take me to church where i talk about how the church broke my heart and how the church also helped heal it and i can't think of any person more instrumental in gosh me finding the church again me discovering that mysticism was acceptable and even orthodox within the christian movement truly a spiritual giant in my life and a dear friend i'm serious everybody this is this is betsy giant that i am you are spiritually and psychologically all right well i appreciate that i have a book a friend of mine wrote called fierce about women in the bible and uh you're properly fierce well thank you some of my congregation members don't think so but i'm going to get back and show them how fierce i can be that's right that's right so here's here's how this episode works we have asked um some of the patrons to submit questions for betsy kind of i said uh in the areas of spiritual formation spiritual direction and how the church can do its best work today but you know i don't know where they actually took these questions so we'll just have to see how it goes so we'll just start right at the top uh with aaron who had a question and she asked how would you best advise someone to start reading scripture again after taking a long time off to detox i feel ready but then get overwhelmed when trying to start and then we've got a same here comment right after that from jesse i would suggest that you learn lectio divina which is a different way of reading scripture i don't know if you've tried it before but it's really reading scripture contemplatively just opening your bible you can do it a gospel chapter and but you let the word catch you and then you just stay there um i think some of the reasons we stopped reading the bible is we're told to do you know every day read a chapter from the old from the new and from the psalms or maybe you've had a read through the bible in a year bible and while they have value they can also be really just just kind of discouraging oh you know i missed all of kings i'm confessing i really did miss first and second kings every time i've attempted it but i found that the the scripture is rich and meaningful and it speaks to our hearts our minds our lives when we prayerfully and with intention approach the scripture as a sacred book that connects us to who we are sacred beings and to who god is it's interesting when you talk about alexio because that became my one of my favorite types of meditation so i almost don't even put it in the reading box in my mind although i guess i certainly am reading yeah but it's a it's a radically different um encounter with the text exactly and i think if you have um stayed away from the bible and you're trying to detox from the bible it could be that you have been taught to read it a specific way with specific interpretations around certain chapters lessons etc but invite the spirit to show you new ways i show you new interpretations and trust that that will happen and i i really believe it will i don't feel like a forensic scientist during the lexio a lot of times if i just study the bible right it turns into this fact-finding journey well what really happened historically here well that surely this you know this exodus at this scale over 40 years in this narrow part of the desert is impossible um but when i sit with that text contemplatively the whole fact interrogation just kind of fades away and you find other messages the other way to read it and you kind of alluded to it remember their stories and i had a seminary professor that wrote a book called god gave us stories and remember these are some of these are historical stories but they're still stories so what can you learn from a story what can you learn from a parable approach the bible like that and that might be refreshing right on okay so now we have a question from brandon and brandon said i live in a town with really no open and affirming congregations what advice do you have for me in seeking a spiritual home for context it's a small town in tennessee and i'm married and straight and i have a young daughter i am passionate about lgbtq equality i like community but there's no community here that shares my values mostly we have been staying at home and you can see a lot of people liked this question so brandon is definitely not alone yeah and what he's feeling well first of all i just feel sad i feel sad when i when i sense in your question your desire for community your love of god and your love of what church means their what spiritual community means and i feel sad because there is no such a place in your town and i know that mike's told me many times that this is the case with some of the people that come to the liturgist gatherings so all i could say is find find two other people or two other families that have similar views and gather on a sunday afternoon and immerse yourself in scripture sing songs with your children uh do spiritual art just create your own space that is uh good for you and good for your family i agree i know i know you're doing something similar i like the institutional church i'm kind of rare hosting these two podcasts and having huge numbers of listeners who don't like the institutional church like i do yeah but i i see the church in exile as john shelby spawn calls it or the diaspora church as others have called it as an equally valid expression of christianity i also thought what you said last night um at your ask science mike event which they'll know this as last week's episode okay well anyway the young woman who asked about children in sunday school and your answer to her was so beautiful the other thing i would say brandon is um you don't have to entirely throw the baby out with the bathwater if there's a place where you enjoy the singing or the band and you can go and enjoy that part and leave leave early or if the sunday school is good there and you want your children to be exposed to the stories of the bible and the songs of the bible you know start there i i am on one of my facebook friends who i think is one of your listeners posted something about uh his reticence to enroll his four-year-old in a faith-based preschool because of some of the trauma and baggage that he carried and and and it was so poignant that um he said what he did enjoy was hearing his little guy sing songs christian songs and as as they drove home he was asked daddy will you sing with me what do you want to sing jesus loves me and the two of them saying jesus loves me i'm going to cry jesus loves me on the way home yeah and the dad found himself crying so what is that about maybe you know you have to approach faith as the innocent with the innocence of a child which means you you don't you act like you don't understand the other stuff and just enjoy the stuff you do some of the most progressive friends i have one couple in particular here in la they go to church with their children and they go to like super conservative evangelical mega churches for the worship period and then they leave and then they leave but i i get it you know i um i went to gen hatmaker's church in austin texas which is um the structure of the service and the style of worship is very evangelical but the worship leader that sunday i don't know if it's every sunday was a lesbian and the theology was was was progressive and forward-thinking and open so it was like this very evangelical structure only with ways of talking about god and christ that i understood and resonated a lot and i didn't see as harmful but then to hear a lesbian sing some of those hill song songs i used to sing in the baptist church i just wept right it was so redemptive so there's something about being able to redeem those forms sometimes it's really healing well and if there's not hatred being spewed from the pulpit and you can get along with the teaching a general teaching of a church you may be surprised that the pastor of that church may be more affirming than he lets on or she lets on um but in a small town like you live in it's it's not easy to come out as a pastor about your views and it's getting harder all the time a shocking number of publicly known conservative leaders have talked to me in private about how different their views on marriage and their theology in general is and they feel trapped it's really it's it's afraid yeah yeah makes us thick and and fat well i'm healthy and fat so i'm i'm out so alan had two questions we're going to allow two questions here although that roger had a bunch of questions but we might be able to lightening around but alan here's a couple one how can we pastors especially by vocational ones help cultivate our own spiritual life that's a really good question well i think one of the most important things is that you broaden your view of what spiritual life is now what do you enjoy doing i mean uh do you love hiking hiking in the woods is a spiritual practice do you like playing with your children in other words embrace all of life as spiritual growth and be it and attentive to the beauty around you i i don't know that we need to schedule in an hour for quiet time i think that's some some old thinking that has not been necessarily helpful because it it limits our understanding of our spiritual care and spiritual well-being and spiritual practice so do you really like a certain band that blesses you put put the music on that makes you feel close to god simple things for me that's cardi b you've played it a lot you've played it a lot this week endlessly well you played her a lot i should say it's a tough one but embrace every moment make sure you spend time with friends make every meal around the dinner table whenever you get to have dinner together make that a a sacred time of encouragement for yourself and those around the table as soon as we hit stop on this podcast betsy and i are going to cultivate our spiritual lives with some pinot noir and some cheese yeah a cheese board uh and then so the second question kind of tails off that what is the best way we pastors can help our congregants cultivate their spiritual lives well i i would say a similar thing that i just said i i can remember um a parishioner years ago she came to me and said i just can't pray and i've tried and i can't pray and i just i'm such a she felt really down on herself like i i i can't believe i could even call myself a christian but i knew this woman and i and i told her i said you know what i know that when you stand at the sink and and wash dishes and look out the window that you are noticing everything out there i know how much you love your roses i know how much you love your children when you pay attention to the things you love you are praying you're praying you're growing in your spirit you're embracing the creation that god has given you to enjoy we have just really messed up people's understanding of spiritual growth we've limited it so much to a bible or a devotional or a church while all those things are helpful they're just not enough if you really really want to know the greater bigger cosmic christ who encompasses everything yeah it's like confusing a ladder with the view you know yeah i mean i'm a jesus person there's no doubt about it but i believe that jesus was there creating all right roger has got a real lightning round for you so i'm just going to fire these off and i assume that these questions were specifically for betsy so i'm not going to answer them thanks question one what are you currently reading for fun okay i confess so i've been on a sabbatical and i read the entire crazy a a crazy rich asians trilogy trilogy i didn't even know it was they didn't know there was a trilogy oh my god now and the first one's a movie and i had which i still haven't seen so i so i don't read a lot of fiction and i read i don't know a dozen books on fiction this summer right on what are you learning the most from well certainly no he doesn't mean those books does he it may be well i i i from those books and the movie i learned that the best dumplings on the face of the earth are found in singapore or glendale california where we ate the other night if you ever want to run into science mike dentai fung and glendale is probably your best chance um all right who are you learning from that in principle you are not in agreement with oh wow that's a good question that's a really good question hmm well i'm on something called the god squad which is an interfaith clergy panel and um we have seven programs a year in our community and we discuss hot button issues um from our faith perspectives and i i think one of the times where i i didn't lose it but i got passionate i am passionately against the death penalty and my uh southern baptist colleague who's sitting next to me was for the death penalty and in my opinion misquoting scripture um so what did i learn from that i learned you can be passionately against your buddy i mean like i'm really i was i was mad because i couldn't believe that he was using the scripture to justify killing people i mean i was okay so what did i learn from that i learned that when the discussion was over i took a deep breath i said josh i will never be convinced of your position but i love you and i do and we went on to the next month to discuss something that we did have agreement in what are your unquestioned answers and why wow i don't even understand the question what are what are con what's a conviction you hold that is unshakable or unquestionable i think oh okay well i guess that's really easy god is love god is love okay if it's not loving it's not god why because god is love here's a question i can answer are your sermons available to listen to online or via podcast and brett already answered and you can find betsy sermons at goodsamumc.podbane.com wow also link in the description i can't believe people are listening out there i'm grateful thank you and brett says others too but betsy's are in there okay uh last question this one is important marvel or dc be careful not to trivialize this one with this awesome i know marvel but don't ask me why okay that's fair that's fair i'm also marvel with the exception of batman who i think is the greatest of all all right todd i love you you sent a lot of questions so i'm going to scan them real quick and pick one which is tough because you ask good questions oh but gosh this one is really good todd how can we embody love within a faith community context if we ourselves battle with conditions like depression anxiety trauma or autism which make it difficult to perceive the love which others believe they are giving which is in turn draining in its sense of always giving but not receiving so there's a lot there about mental health and the church and there's more culture there's actually one more than one question there um how can we embody love within a faith community if we ourselves battle with conditions that make it difficult to perceive love yeah so what makes i understand i mean so i would say the the main focus should be on embodying love and not necessarily measuring your ability to feel the love of um because if if you can't perceive their love then you're not going to be able to but that doesn't mean you you personally cannot embody love you embody love by being present as present as you can you embody love by caring for other people again last night you told the atheist that he was more like jesus than most christians um because he taught autistic children in a christian school where he didn't believe anything they believed embodying love is harder when you're anxious and depressed and not able to get out of bed it's really hard but the fact that you make an effort which an effort could be simply to say to someone i really need help or i don't feel love or your presence is draining and i'm sorry it comes back to being honest about where you are and what you're feeling and surrounding yourself with at least one or two people that let you feel how you feel i mean the most draining thing of all is to be around people that want to cheer you up when you just want someone to sit in the sadness with you sitting in the sadness with someone is embodying love invite that and and offer yourself to others in the same way all right here we go deep into the pool you ready you're the one doing seminars on this stuff jesse said what is third eye seeing i don't mind taking a swing in that one what is contemplation what is solitude is there a helpful definition for these or can you really only understand them through practice and experience i want to learn more about them they resonate with me but i'm not sure to what extent i already practiced them or what direction i need to go in to pursue them more gosh what well i'll i'll do a simple answer yeah you can go into the the deep end so a simple answer what is contemplation for me contemplation is simply being still and quiet with intention and that seems so simple that people go no no no there must be more to it well with intention might be a word that helps to center you with intention maybe focusing on something in nature and just really really giving it your full attention my friend who's one of the god squad members father tim catholic priest he was converted came to know christ through focusing on the eucharist focusing on the host contemplation is being still and attentive solitude it's different than being alone i think all of your questions have to do with um intention and awareness solitude is being alone because you choose to be alone and letting that aloneness envelop you with good energy rest and the presence of god third eye seeing well when you meditate or when you practice contemplation it's the front part of your brain in between your two eyes that lights up but before they knew that mystics felt that we literally have a third eye as well the uh the pineal gland in your brain started out as an eye evolutionarily speaking uh which of course ancient mystics had no idea that that was the case kind of to dovetail off betsy's idea on contemplation uh meditation i did recently was a a quote from rom das which was i am loving awareness anything you're aware of you love and so i did a meditation i guess kind of a cross between a centering prayer meditation which you'd have a simple idea that you're focusing on or a single image and a mantra where you repeat something so i didn't necessarily just repeat that phrase over and over but i just rested on that phrase and repeated it as necessary until it became true where anything i became aware of i loved and on this desk on your desk is a book right now that says words can change your brain right and so in that practice which i was in solitude which meant i was in silence by myself not with my smartphone not with distractions but with intention and with presence i was contemplating sitting in contemplation with this phrase and it led me to a place that in an unguided way anything that caught my attention with my eyes closed that i thought of i loved and then when i opened my eyes i loved everything i saw in the room and then third eye seeing i don't really have any definition for that i know the first time it happened to me experientially i can only speak for myself here but it's basically with your eyes closed you look above your plane of vision and you see things and it only happens um i did have kind of third eye experiences before i ever tried any psychedelics i they're definitely easy to have if you are on any kind of a psychedelic dosage i did like a two hour mantra meditation was how the first time i had a third eye vision and and also i think these questions could be answered differently um by different people you know absolutely there would be some connection uh if if i ask my hindu friend what is third eye seeing their definition would be similar to what you said but with some added you know in insight yes because it's more part of their language yes i can only speak for me right like when you get into mysticism and contemplation you're gonna have experiences that you can't ever really articulate to somebody else well i remember when i first learned to do centering prayer i was at the monastery of the holy spirit in conyers georgia and uh we were i was taking sort of an introductory course with some of the monks there and a woman who was a psychologist or counselor and she said just be aware that when you begin contemplation your life might blow up and you might need a counselor and i'm like what i thought it was supposed to make me more peaceful well it makes you more aware yeah and eventually that leads to peace but it also may lead to insights that are not comfortable that happened to me like when i first started contemplative spirituality in a few months i was like i've found ultimate peace is this am i enlightened or something what has happened i take everything in stride i feel peace and contentment at all times oh this is marvelous and then i figured out i was in like the foyer of contemplation and i had just taken my coat off and it was nice but as i moved deeper into contemplative practice i learned more about myself not all of it pleasant exactly and much of it i figured out that there were rooms of my contemplative house that were very disordered and even dangerous but a transformational process that using a a word that's familiar to church people leads to sanctification it makes us holier as we become whole you're ready for this next question matthew's question is what are the things that keep you coming back to church as a pastor the children the children for sure them running to me and letting me sweep them up in my arms the teenagers that i once knew as children one makes me cry um the acolytes which have to be children that stand at the back of the church and wait for me uh with their little robes on and their candle lighters and wait for me with excitement and joy to carry the cross and the candles and when i say the children it really does include the reality that i've been able to be in one place for a long time so it's it's watching people grow in christ um people that are babies in their faith or have been wounded by the church and they stumble in the door and they learn to accept jesus as a little child and they shake off a lot of hurt and anger and bitterness and i watch them from the pulpits sometimes when i'm preaching and i see an or an aura of light around them what keeps me coming back are the people and the stories and the ways i get to participate in their stories all right a little bit longer question here from kate i've started going to a church of the brethren this year which i don't know what that is uh kate knows that's me science mike saying i don't know a church of the brethren where the former head pastor retired and was placed by an associate pastor a younger woman she wants our congregation to start becoming more involved in the community apparently we used to be famous for our activism in our town during the civil rights era but the past few head pastors have been more focused on denominational activities so the outreach has fallen off we've discussed various ways to help begin the process of helping people in our community but we are worried about falling into a white savior trap since all but two families in our church are white how can we help those around us without it becoming us saving people who have less privilege than us well what a beautiful question it's a good question and it's a question that um is asked with awareness that you can really make some mistakes you know you can make some mistakes when you try to be a savior to someone you can go in with arrogance and try to help them be become what you think they should be or their neighborhoods what you think they should be and our congregation has certainly made some mistakes we have a ministry to orange avenue apartments transitional housing where we bring art lessons and dance and just basically we bring adult attention to kids after school many of them that come home to an empty house and we came there and told the folks there what we were going to do and we worked with them and i don't know that we did it right and i don't even know if it's really working in the overall big picture but i can tell you that the kids they love to see us come and the kids will tell us like we don't want to do that we want to do this the kids appreciate us coming so once again let the little child lead you um you have to have some sort of relationship with the neighborhood the person of peace in that neighborhood before you go anywhere you certainly can swoop in and be offensive and believe me people in underserved neighborhoods they are so used to people sweeping in it doesn't change anything they will they will come forward and receive the goods that you bring with you um with a smile and with grace but they know you're not going to keep it up they know you're not going to be there next week so what we have tried to do is even when we're short on money and we can't hire teachers we still show up just so they know that nope we're not going to be that that group that came in and really wanted you to change but they didn't see a change quick enough so they're out of there another thing that struck me the first time i visited good sam was that it was multi-ethnic yeah and uh i didn't know it at first because i got to know betsy when betsy had a vision for a multi-ethnic church that wasn't just a white church she didn't just sit around and ask why don't people of color attend she actively recruited families of color into church leadership yeah and put them on the platform they did and involved them in leadership making major decisions and oddly enough that works better well 12 years later we're still multicultural i mean not you know there's always work to do there's always room to grow but yeah i can remember distinctly um randy clay came to visit with his beautiful wife and came a few times when we had just gotten started and and i took him to lunch and i'm like i really need you i really need you in this church and i need you in leadership he's like why and i said well for one thing you're articulate uh you're smart you're you are really dedicated to christ and you're black yeah and he goes thank you for being honest i think katina and i will come back wow yeah you know and he even told me you may have heard this before he even told me okay good samaritan is going to be my church this is when he was my lay leader he goes when i asked him to be lay leader which was a few years later he said good samaritan's my church and i'll be the lay leader but just so you know about every five or six weeks i won't be there because i'm i need a little black church yeah i need to go back in my culture occasionally and worship in the way that i grew up you know i i just i think the honesty of that it makes me joyful i love randy loved randy all right chris your question it sounds like you might be a behavioral economist but we'll see what is the incentive for spiritual formation the traditional fundamentalist answer is to avoid hell and to get to heaven but i've come to see that as an unbiblical distortion is it even right to think in terms of getting something out of it when it comes to spiritual growth that's interesting super interesting well i'm getting something out of sitting here with you i'm enjoying our your company and really enjoying answering these questions i'm getting out something out of our visit so getting something out of something is is not a bad thing at all and regarding spiritual formation uh as some as a way to earn your way to heaven well obviously she's or he has determined that that is an unbiblical distortion so i would say the incentive for spiritual formation for me is to be more present with you to be more present with god to be more loving you know through the fruit of the spirit i asked my congregation occasionally i'm like how do you know if you're growing in christ ask yourself a few simple questions are you more loving are you less judgmental are you kinder are you more patient with your husband and your children and then it comes back to are you more loving as we grow in spirit as we grow in christ we're to reflect christ you know the other night when i went to dinner with jenny and her friends many of them from baptist backgrounds we started talking i can't remember the context but i quoted a scripture sort of a and fun and just to prove a point i was making again i don't even remember the scripture and she said to me now what what chapter and verse is that and i said i don't know i'm not baptist and they all like laughed their heads off because they were in it i kind of wish i had been in the sense of memorizing scripture but the point is spiritual formation is about forming your heart i like to say i with spiritual formation i came for the neurological benefits i stayed for the improved life in relationships this is a real nerdy way and what is spiritual formation you know yeah anything that forms you and so um one of my professors used to say the things in your life and the choices you're making are they deforming you or are they forming you there are things that deform us and there are things that form us i want the choices i make to form me so all things are spiritual formation because we are spirit in truth okay melissa who looks like she's another methodist asks this is probably too inside baseball i know but how do you deal with the controversy in the united methodist church right now what helps you have hope do you ever think about leaving and if not what would the line in the sand be for you i'm in a deep southern umc church that is considered progressive for our city but the congregation is pretty evenly split between full on lgbtqia affirmation and non-affirming so i see the controversy at work every week it does not feel to me like the progressive stance is winning just that it's tolerated and allowed to stay and for those of you listening who don't know the eyes of methodists have been watching closely a dominant denominational discussion about whether methodists uh affirm same-sex marriages or not and whether uh non-celibate gay and queer persons can serve as clergy in the united methodist church well oh it's a tough one i um honestly good samaritan is is not an ultraly progressive church we've always tried to hold both ends to the middle i believe in unity i believe that people with differing opinions help one another grow in christ and grow as people it was easy for a while it's getting harder it's getting harder when the pastoral intern a young married lesbian woman was allowed to preach at good samaritan with my encouragement and with great joy i i mean she was awesome in fact i think we got 900 hits on our on our podcast only one person has had more than that that would be science mike with 1400 um anyway she did a beautiful job she served communion with me there was no overt pushback but people left quietly and some of most of them didn't tell me why and it's heartbreaking but it's not just the lgbtq affirmation people are are splitting over all sorts of issues um over gun control over global warming i'm exhausted i'm exhausted i don't know what's going to happen supposedly february we'll know more likely nothing's going to happen where would i draw a line in the sand you know i'm asking myself that and what i've told myself is that i'm going to give i'm going to give it till the end of february and then the rest of this year to see what happens and then i'll have to me and god will have to be together on some quiet place as i figure it out i'm i'm heartbroken i'm for full inclusion but i'm also aware that the older members of my church are struggling still you know they had just begun to embrace uh language of gay christian and now it's become queer christian now that's hard for them so i also don't want to be callous and hard-hearted because i believe i can bring people along bring people along in love because if you're growing in love you will be more inclusive i get asked this a lot just as a methodist and i cheat by saying well i'm in california yeah and in california you can do whatever you want but if but if you were in texas it'd be the opposite all right opposite stand so i like to say i uh in order to remain a methodist i moved to california uh what's the name of your bishop here vanessa i love my bishop i love my bishop ken carter he is trying gal bishop carter's amazing and i guess that's why one reason i stay is because here's a hopeful man that believes that uh we need to understand that there will always be varying viewpoints on all sorts of things and staying together in love under under the lordship of christ may bring us forward in a way that splitting wouldn't uh yeah so that i've i've been waiting myself as a methodist to kind of see how it goes it's actually kind of delayed me um the church i attend here first united methodist pasadena kind of reached out to see if i wanted to do like a think about membership luncheon and i kind of leaned back in a way i didn't expect but part of it is i kind of want to see where things go in february right to see if maybe i don't not with all love and support for the umc if maybe i'd be a better episcopal yeah right no um just basically because i there's so many gay lesbian and queer listeners to and even if there weren't uh it's just that i feel very strongly uh that those those folks are beloved by god and so like betsy i for the usual who sent me emails and i've kind of emailed one on one right now um and then some of you asked why i don't lean into the denominational discussion as a public figure and the reason i don't is i feel beyond the kind of private outreach and advocacy that i do the hashtag storm i would bring along with me would be less helpful than helpful so i think i don't think there's any question that anyone who's in leadership in the methodist church who knows who i am they're not going i wonder where science mike stands on right same sex marriage and and queer clergy but uh i i i specifically i don't get on facebook a lot when i do one of the things i do is go to bishop carter's personal facebook profile and just read the post because the work he's doing to not give up on justice while trying to hold everyone in community is maybe impossible but incredible and inspiring his hit what he's doing to try to create peace and reconciliation and understanding exceeds anything i've ever done in my life well you know i traveled to northern ireland with bishop carter just a year ago this month and we were there with gary mason who was instrumental in talking through the good friday agreement between the protestants and catholics in northern ireland and what we learned is that peace comes through compromise you might have to give up something to get something but the end result was peace not necessarily peace like you're my brother you know let's hang out although that did happen we saw that but the bombing stopped and i and so the way forward one of the things that's being presented is let's let let's let pastors decide and follow their conscience and that sounds like freedom to me and i think that freedom is really important for people in order to remain or to keep their integrity all right dang those were hard those were hard they hit close to home like really close like i live across the street from the church that's how close to home i was like oh can we even do this thank you for asking those questions annelise said i've been in church for most of the last 29 years i don't remember ever hearing god's voice or feeling his presence i've watched for years as people have all these spiritual experiences around me but i just feel left out am i doing something wrong what should i do wow see i would love to speak to her personally and spend an hour with her that's what spiritual direction really is is having a spiritual companion and i i i get i ventured a guest that annalise has had am i allowed to say her name yeah you just said yes okay hey annalise i ventured a guess she's actually had more experiences with god than she realizes it she just isn't attributing them to god have you ever enjoyed a beautiful day and felt the breeze against your cheek and just felt joyful because god had made this creation and maybe god wasn't even in the equation you just felt wonderful i did today when i walked out of out onto your patio i'm like whoa this weather california weather but that's god that's that's god's presence no that's god's pervenient grace as we would say in our wesleyan theology it's one way god reaches to us before we could say his name before we pray we are recipients of god's presence and god's goodness and yet we sometimes don't attribute those things or count them as spiritual but they are a really good meal something have you ever savored something so delicious that it just made you feel content contentment is an experience with a god who created you to feel content so man i'd love to talk to you more it sounds like annelise might be wondering specifically about like charismatic experiences ecstatic experience and mystical experiences and i think something i hear that's valuable and wise in what betsy's saying is don't conflate those three types of spiritual experiences with all possible spiritual experiences um are you talking about like being slain in the spirit or well i mean like you know uh sure that's one i've never had there's ecstatic slam spirits speaking in tongues those kinds of things um i i i so badly want to be slain in the spirit i there was some the revival happening in pensacola years ago and i went over there i brought my kids i'm like i want i want to feel this i want to feel this and one of the pastors on the staff of this mega church that was experiencing this revival came up to me and put his hand on my head and he pushed so hard and i was standing up going this is not cool and i didn't fall dang it so i told you my theory about slaying in the spirit yeah hypnosis mm-hmm and i the reason the reason i really think that did i tell you about austin no we were in austin texas for the literature's gathering uh-huh and i decided to help people understand consciousness through hypnosis oh you hypnotized the whole group didn't you i started to hypnotize the room and some of the room went too deep too fast and people fell down and someone tweeted science mike is out here slaying people well i mean i've had spiritual experiences and i understand uh the joy of those but they they they're given too much weight yes although they're wonderful different but there's so many different kinds some of the most beautiful moments i've had spiritually is the awareness and the presence betsy's talking about even though i've had like mystical experiences or i've seen things and and heard voices or whatever and also don't miss that there's a neurological component to this i don't want to over spiritualize it because i'm speaking on behalf of my beloved neuroscience right now but if the bible talks about having different gifts that's not wildly unscientific different brains are prone to process spiritual experiences in different ways and at least you will probably find great joy focusing on those that come most naturally to you oh absolutely as opposed to chasing the ones that don't a an art gallery and looking at a painting that just captures you and doesn't let you go that's a spiritual experience okay oriole says for those of us survivors of spiritual trauma and abuse who are finally learning to take care of ourselves and have stepped away from our church roots and are finally finding spiritual practice to be necessary and communities to be essential but are reticent to go back to any of the christian places of worship and community and have begun to develop our own routines or practices but we need more options and would like community even with friends who are evangelical wow or quite a sentence my man how do we move forward in relationships with folks who seem to think that the traditional way of doing spirituality is the way and that our lives are going to suffer without it that's all one sentence similarly how do we engage and live out community and intimacy with those individuals and spiritual groups who tend to be more blue that's a spiral dynamics term meaning traditional and even red meaning needing ego validation through power and their approach to community or relationships when we are green or orange green meaning basically uh hippies or orange meaning scientifically minded i had to do a little translation layer there somebody really into spiral dynamics i see well that's for you to answer that's a heck of a question don't talk about religious things i mean i i spent last weekend at a music festival you know great music um camping with friends we were united around the music and the experience of camping and i wouldn't want to get into religion or politics for those folks but i'd want to but i really enjoyed their company and the laughter and the joy of the music and the dancing so i mean i don't know that you have to get along with people that are so different from you around the differences are there things that you can do that um unite you and i know this sounds cynical but why do you want to it's usually family it's usually family right it's we've moved on and and my mother or my grandmother are heartbroken that's part of your story um so there's a lot of friends i have who the only conversation we could have was how i was going to hell if i didn't change my ways that's not a friendship that's not a family relationship so right love you call me a favor change your mind yeah for friends but you still had to go to christmas dinner right yeah you still have to go to christmas dinner so you go to christmas dinner and you have dinner and you talk about how good the mashed potatoes are and you give everybody hugs and you play with the dogs and you get out of there quick before the conversation turns i mean you really do have to isolate yourself sometimes to protect yourselves not isolate yourselves from people in general but from conversations or accusations or hurtful um behaviors right yeah and that that in itself is hurtful i know that i know that what you went through mike it's tough or another option uh moved to los angeles i'm just kidding uh okay heiko says i've observed in the churches around me that they are either progressive and affirming or they have people my age youth but no church seems to have both oh you are speaking my life experience i go to church for the community so i lean toward those with more people my age who i can relate to and hang out with even if the churches themselves are relatively conservative why is it so hard to find people in their 20s in progressive churches huh well first of all i'd say where do you live because i think location geography is really really significant right because i went to what was that place i went to the other night all saints all saints and and they said they had 70 people in their youth group now i know 20s is things all science is a real unicorn of a church though yeah well right right i don't know i i don't know i don't know how to i know what i'm saying you know okay i've seen this we have 20s but in our church but we're good sam is rare that way this is totally a phenomenon holy progressive you have these like mainline churches the beautiful theology and everyone's 60 plus yeah and then you have these amazing rock and roll churches full of sexy young people who are turner burn theology oh so what the heck is going on i i mean i can immediately think of churches in tallahassee that that that you've just described yes the thing is the 20s the people in their 20s who are going to the conservative churches they're a tiny fraction of their generation what you're actually finding is that most people in their 20s an overwhelmingly massive majority of people in their 20s are not religious there you go they're not anywhere level so the only ones who are are the ones whose theology places such high stakes on falling out that it's worth paying the cultural cost of being bizarre okay i've certainly seen that even here in los angeles and san francisco two of the most progressive cities in the country most of the twenties are the nuns right those twenties are so that's why she can't find any uh and the ones who aren't are super evangelical they're very very conservative honestly i've kind of devoted my life to trying to help you um we went to a mainline church last night in orange county and i guarantee you they had a lot more people in their 20s last night than they've had in a long time yeah they did so we we i'm trying to and through the liturgists we are desperately trying to help fight those of you who are in your 20s in your late teens in your early 30s who have some kind of spiritual leaning and some kind of desire for spiritual community to be able to find that in a way that doesn't re-traumatize you if you've been hurt in the past in a significant way by organized religion but what what the reason it's so hard is sociology and what has made conservative evangelicalism so powerful as a religious movement in america is how good it is at describing god as personal so people stay in because they're afraid of going to hell but people don't come into evangelicalism because they're afraid of going to hell they come into evangelicalism at first when evangelicals first came on the scene because the main line presented a distant theological picture of god and a liturgy that was only made familiar through a repetition that's boring to children frankly so those mainline children grew up here comes evangelicals of the god who loves you personally lots of mainline people became christians quote unquote exactly right and that was the big boom you aren't a christian unless you walk down that aisle exactly and get baptized again by immersion and today what those sexy evangelical churches are doing is they're taking people raised in unreligious households but offering the same appeal god loves you personally they make it simple they make it accessible they put it in terms that someone who has bills due on friday has time to think about um and honestly one of the most powerful tools of modern evangelical mega churches is public ambiguity about theological and moral stances and so so that's why sociologically speaking i understand i've stirred a lot of pots and i'll get a lot of emails from what everything i just said but that's what's at play so the good news is even though most millennials aren't religious they aren't atheists you're not like the only spiritual leaning person in your generation who has this same frustration right and so while there wasn't a specific question about where i see the church going or the hope i i believe is happening the things that are happening there's a dinner church movement that's one one word there's home church movements i see people in their 20s two or three gathering around a meal and around the gospel and then enjoying it so much that they invite friends around a meal and around the gospel and they enjoy it so much that they invite a few more friends and that's that's church i mean our building a building is not the church the church is where two or three are gathered in my name so don't despair find somebody else to be with open the bible eat some good food see what happens right absolutely we have to we have to kind of broaden our idea of what church means it's the called out ones what have we called out to we're we're called out to help participate um walk alongside crisis the kingdom of god comes to earth my two favorite churches in tallahassee were good samaritan united methodist church on capitol circle and betsy's back patio yep that was yep you gotta come when it gets cold yeah okay well if you don't know by now why i love betsy so much i just can't help you mike i'm so kind i'm not i'm really terrible i only say things i think so uh if you've got questions uh you've got comments you can go to sciencemike.com leave a comment there we'll also uh i'll have links to betsy's a podcast feed as well as her twitter profile where you can follow betsy i i need to tweet more well i just put you on the spot now you have to tweet more okay okay so thanks for listening everybody and i'll talk to you next week