Episode 85 - Christian (Part 3)

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so we were just talking mike and i were just talking we're doing this series called christian and what does it mean to be a christian am i a christian i don't know and then we were talking and we didn't realize that we're not sure if our wives are christian i don't have a clue if jenny identifies as a christian or not so people ask us all the time to have jenny and lisa back on the show it goes from questions and then crescendos into a roar we are nearing that roar-like demand for the return to the podcast and it'll also be good for us as people married to lisa gunger and jenny mccarthy to know what they identify with spiritually and if they believe in god and if so what they believe about god because i honestly have no idea [Music] wives are you christians um so when i was 16 my grandmother gave me a 14 karat gold cross necklace for christmas and i used to wear it every day until about four maybe five years ago i just gradually stopped wearing it more and more i used to sometimes wear it on a sunday but then even then i gradually stopped wearing it and it was because everything that that cross had represented to me and term christianity it no longer held that for me anymore instead it held judgment it held trauma it held everything that was the opposite of love and i felt like if i was wearing that that that was the message i was conveying to people who felt that way about christianity and they were saying they would see me as an enemy and as someone that couldn't understand them and i also didn't feel like in my own life that that term applied any longer because i think christianity has become so synonymous with evangelical and all the things of what evangelicalism has done and growing up in that and all the the working through that trying to figure out where what is my faith they're negative things i mean i would love to think of christianity as being the the beautiful ideals of jesus and what he spoke to in the gospels but that's not what christianity means to a lot of people um so i almost wish that we had a new term for it because i do feel like there's a lot of negativity with it a lot of negative association with it and so that cross necklace sits in my jewelry box still because it still holds a special meaning because it was a gift from my grandmother and it represents my special relationship with her but it no longer represents what it had in my life as far as a symbol of what i aspire to be [Music] no wwjd bracelets for you nope and that's hilarious in talking about that i remember when those came out i always was hesitant to wear that because that to me was an open judgment from people because if you weren't behaving like people thought you should behave as a jesus follower and they saw that bracelet it was like you would do this to yourself like thinking oh my goodness they're not i'm not acting like i should but they also would hold judgment against you and the same reason why i never had a cross hanging from my dashboard or the the review mirror or a jesus bumper sticker because when i'm on the road anything is possible when i'm driving behind the wheel i don't want people to know no i didn't because i was like they're gonna see i'm not going to be behaving really christian like on this like ellen you know her things be kind uh-huh and she's like she hates when she has road rage because the kids look over and they say it's her and then she has to be nice to them i mean it's that it's that exactly thing it's like the so yeah lisa are you a christian or or maybe i should phrase it this way lisa if you were to die tonight and stand before the father and he were to say why should i let you into my kingdom of heaven what would you say i would say first there's the father oh i know the father let's talk about all the he's that are gonna embrace us when we die oh man and he i want to say nah nope and just let that be i've what i've been saying when people ask me that is well who i think jesus's return was always really was a really good one who do you say i am i think we all want these definitions so that we know who's in and out and who's safe who to trust and i'm pretty sick of that especially with recent events like i had a buzzfeed video come out and the title was how pastoring a mega church which i'd never didn't pastor mega church well small detail led me to unbelief or led me no to not believe not believe in god and at first their title was going to be how pastor and omega church led me to atheism and i actually said this is untrue uh you might want to change that entirely untrue both both things i was like wow i think i think both things are untrue and they said yeah we'll change it and then so yeah so i had this video came out that i didn't have control over the title and needless to say it was pretty polarizing um the producer got death threats uh she's actually a friend of mine um something some people really loved it i mean it was kind of crazy some people thought it was really beautifully honest and they knew what i was saying they're like oh you don't say anywhere in there that you don't believe in god anymore and the whole point of the video was supposed to be like leading to this book i wrote it talks about what i believe now but then a lot of christians just hated it and i got a ton of hate mail a ton of hateful comments recently got one of my which has been one of my favorites this the woman yesterday on instagram was something how i'm soon because i worship satan i'm gonna be weeping like in my old age because my daughters are following the wrong path or something like that it was funny to me but that classical classic punchline because you worship satan you will weep as your daughters follow the wrong path welcome to the heretics club like i like i'm just like what do they think is happening like i get up in the morning instead of having a quiet time i just bow to this upside down cross that i set on fire and just like it's humorous to me because i don't exactly know how that works like how satanists worship satan i just believe the title of your video [Laughter] which i believe in god i get they equate if you don't believe in god that you immediately are are worshiping the devil that's interesting to me so anyway i don't really i don't know what to say about it i uh i'm i'm definitely not a christian in the traditional sense by any means i i recently had this experience where i went to the float tank the good old float tank huge fan big fan how long have you been in that three hours three or four yeah it's pretty well sensory deprivation float tank where you go when you float in saltwater naked in the dark and the quiet that's what you do and you just lay in there yeah the water and the air are body temperature that's how you feel nothing nothing that's the whole thing yeah yeah so normally when i go in there it's felt really peaceful and calm yeah like like everyone else goes in there for i go in there to unwind and meditate and so i went in there and had this it was really a difficult experience i'd never had such tension in the float tank before i was wrestling through some some pretty emotional hang-ups and during the moment where i almost left the float tank i kept like pressing through and trying to get to like underneath this like fear come up and i was going underneath that and underneath that and underneath that trying to like dig to the bottom of my fear and um heard the voice of jesus what i understood to be jesus say i've always been with you i felt something like shift well i actually felt this shift right before that i was really struggling kind of freaking out a little bit and then felt something shift and heard an audible voice that said i've always been with you and felt so much peace and calmness and [Music] uh and even before that i mean i've all these years i've said i love jesus i love god but i never believed mike that he actually heard the voice of jesus it's fair and common i mean it wasn't like i didn't think you were lying i just was like really does that really happen to people or what is this and so i felt immediate calm and i was crying and then i thought i'm going crazy i just heard an audible voice and that's not good like psychiatrists would not think that's a good calming thing and that's when i thought of you because i remember you saying that exact thing and that brought me a lot of calm knowing that you had thought the same thing and then she saw the creepy pool cleaner that was just standing in the corner of the float tank oh i have always been with you i've been here for hours can they get out now that'd be a real bad vibe just saying so a lot of people would say oh that means it's you're christian you've heard the audible voice of jesus christ but here's an interesting thing it wasn't jesus's it was jesus the consciousness of jesus it wasn't it was also like this non-male non-female presence more consciousness even though it was a lower voice it was just the understanding this is the consciousness of non-gendered jesus christ i it makes perfect sense to me i'm just like yeah well cosmic christ speaking in the room yeah yeah like i i get it like that's i think it's a relatively small club that's audible jesus folks well and it was really and i like that someone else can now understand the self incredulity of the experience of like because somebody somebody like cares about it because they need a brain scan right cares about christians come to me and they're like i have prayed for an experience like that my whole life and i was like i snuck to a psychiatric care facility on lunch because i want to scare my wife who was excited that i was talking about god again but i was like i might be going insane and then and then there's been like a lot of doubt behind that days after did i really hear that i mean i haven't shared that with many people like my my family and you guys and now millions of people and now millions of people so this is how it happens with the podcast my children don't know this but but there's a lot of doubt after was was that real did i really hear that was i imagining things i was in a completely dark room by myself for an hour was that a hallucination of course it was a whole inspection but everything we experienced is a hallucination like i get the heart of that question yeah but like that's that's the landscape where all experiences happen anyway yeah so you're an i don't know or a no or a what are you are you are you pulling a jesus card and saying who do you say i am oh i'm pulling the jesus card i'm following jesus card and you said no jenny not in the terms if we okay so what are the terms that you are a christian maybe more in the ideals of how we treat people and how we show love to everyone and even then and i don't i'm kind of of the frame of mind now that it's not like professing a belief in jesus christ that that's not the determining factor to me in living a christ-like life yeah or being an example of christ in the way we interact with people it's funny that to say christ-like life that it is associated with believing in christ like like christ was walking around being like i believe in myself and that's what's christ like to believe in christ and so yeah so i don't think that it's that you know because as mike was he kind of was joking about it but like the whole if he were to die tonight uh stand before the father stand before the fuck i don't think that's i don't think that's what our level of christianity should be based on if we're gonna call it christianity because i just like i said i wish there was such a new term for it because i feel like it's been hijacked and maybe it's just like my understanding of christianity what's happened is it has changed i'm no longer the little girl going to sunday school and going to vbs and being told all these things of what's associated with christianity and so maybe it has been this thing that you know while on the surface it seems like things are good and it's professing love but underneath it is also saying if you're not this then this is bad and it's a judgment it's a full-on judgment anyway i just feel like it's not the place in which i had been i'm still searching i'm still trying to wrestle with the belief in god and maybe even the belief in jesus before i would have had this one like framework of of religion and thought everything else was was not if it wasn't fitting this framework it was not part of it yeah but now i'm kind of like giving the things that can be seen and the experiences that you can be can be had i mean buddhism is the big one to me that rings through i think there are other wonderful things about other religions that become apparent and things that cannot just be discounted and and that there's not just a one end-all-be-all road of life yeah it seems like for me which it seems like for all of us are these religions so christianity was the thread like there's all these threads christianity hinduism that can lead you to the truth and then you kind of drop you drop down into the truth that all of them hold so i i think i have this new found a greater love for christianity because it was the path that led me here that those are the stories i've been told and i still remember scriptures that are that really help me and why i think the thing that i've been asking myself is why did i hear the voice of jesus now because i've prayed for that countless times i was on the floor of the bathtub crying begging for the voice of jesus christ to speak to michael when he was an atheist why didn't that happen then why was it now when i actually still really love jesus and believe god is everywhere why now why not to someone else when they i know they've been asking for that for a really long time and why jesus why was that the voice i heard yes why wasn't it some other you know why was it not some other voice a lot of why questions but what i do know that i felt in that moment was belonging homeness tethered not in a constricting way but a free way and it gave me a love again for christianity not that jesus created christianity but for this path that i've been on i believe that it's led me to some really beautiful deep places that wouldn't be and i not follow that [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house 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 better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists who is or was jesus oh this was a youtube show [Laughter] that was a good facial expression best facial expression it wasn't happy but it was good to me if there was a sound for that face what would that be it'd be like like i feel like when you say that it requires like extensive knowledge of scripture and maybe i should list that as a disclaimer of all those the four of us in the room i know the least bit of scripture and that was even growing up in church i cannot remember scripture right off hand even after doing bible drills and memorization stuff like that i mean i don't know that i could speak that's who you think jesus is or was do you think he was a real person possibly yeah that's fair do you think he rose from the dead i think jesus rose from the dead do i do i actually do isn't that awesome it was awesome there was a time i really was like i don't know i mean did he was he born of a virgin virgin i slurred that word just a side note biologically there's no such thing as a virgin or virgin is a woman who belongs to herself an excellent sociological framing somebody's been listening to the literature's podcast i actually didn't get that from the liturgist podcast you got it from hillary though right uh no i actually i read i read books i read you know i read books i don't only listen to this podcast oh my gosh good lord self-centered bastard i feel like i didn't answer correctly there's nothing there's no way well i know but i feel like i'm i think the thing is is like i'm not so sure about things anymore essentially well it's just like uh welcome to every almost every listener i know but i've been on this i'm not so sure pat that's fine it's a great path i mean why would you ever want to leave the path if i'm not so sure i don't know maybe i don't want to miss out on whatever my end time will be i don't know i don't know like that like so what yeah there's a fear there what is it do you ever think about what happens when you die and how that relates to christianity i used to think about that more so like especially when you and i would talk more about your deconstruction and everything and like what had led you there and some of the paths of it that's one of the things to unpack is like when you start down this path it's the realization well if jesus is not real god's not real or none of that then what happens to our souls after death you know like where do we go and i think that's one of the things that like could be scary at first thinking that there is nothing if that's the possibility but again don't know if it's jesus but i feel like there is something now after death i just don't know if i'm not saying i believe in jesus is it going to get me there or not i don't know i think i just kind of just twisted all of it into your head are you i was starting off so strong on this thing like increasingly one to ten how confident are you in some sort of afterlife situation of conscious awareness five and then how confident are you that christianity has anything to do with that five and six i guess at the table i knew oh interesting what do you mean anything to do with it like that you have to profess jesus as your savior in order to experience an afterlife that it's it's the jesus story of the afterlife i'm assuming and so yeah like because you're not going to get there and see she gave us double coin flip she's like well 50 50 shot something happens 50 50 shot anything with christianity a five-headed sloth yeah like it's like so you say in algebra to you and are we saying that if you don't believe in jesus if you don't believe the path of christianity then you don't get this afterlife of whatever it can be that doesn't seem right you know i don't know how much more how much in depth to go on that i just have this feeling this gut feeling that it's just if you say it has to be this way or it's no way then that to me is puts too much limit on what we're saying god is supposed to be or what the universe is supposed to be and it's putting it in a box and saying this is your only way to get there though and that seems so unfair in this life that we have that god has given us if if god is our creator i just feel like god wouldn't put a stipulation of but you have to follow it this way in order to have this life again or the after of it so that means there's not a jesus that was sent to all the other life forms and all the other planets i remember thinking that oh that there was once i was like extraterrestrials are probable scientifically man jesus had to go to a lot of planets you have to ask jesus into your protoplasm but it wouldn't be jesus it'd be like ask zirgong into your protoplasm and squeak these pom-poms after me i mean man was involved in writing the bible yeah of course [Laughter] i am now going to forever live and the antennae of the great blog this is their uh they have more of a charismatic background than you and i do this allows moments like these these are aliens yes but i mean could we have been any more like southern baptist charismatic i mean this is where youtube would have been funny [Laughter] oh i'd be an alien charismatic sure so afterlife lisa um yes oh interesting confidence one to ten i have no confidence in it i mean i that's what i i think i don't know confidence level i have no idea what that range is which is like i know the earth is round okay i'm probably at an eight wow man amazing yeah that is amazing isn't it i just the thing that makes up this like i experience weird things all the time and whatever this is and this like body like this skin bag thing and bones once whatever this is gone whatever is making me talk and heartbeat i have a hard time thinking that that just forever ceases i mean this is the eternity this is right now michael knows this i've had like a pretty which is what i was wrestling with in the float take as a kid i would the idea of eternity would really freak me out i would kind of go around around in my head and it made me uncomfortable i was just i would sit there and i would go forever forever forever forever you know just freaked me out the sandlot kid for forever and i kind of squashed that and then i was like yeah it's gonna be awesome to be with jesus and a house forever that'll be great and then just recently as an adult that idea has come back around and really been messing with me and i find i've gotten in this weird loop that i couldn't figure out what was i'm trying to figure out like i've told all you guys i really felt like a five like the past maybe was it been two months like i could figure out and i was always trying to find the meaning in everything this means this and this means this so that means this is what's going to happen when i die and really getting all so caught up again and like the good things that you do now and that's the energy i'd never i'd never really given a lot of thought to even reincarnation and all of a sudden i found myself really believing in that what happens now and i'm stuck in this now oh god that means that's going to happen to me in the next life and i'm just gonna be stuck in this lifetime of hell or pain no i don't want that i don't want that i don't want that why do i think that's true like so i would get stuck in this loop and then eventually this loop would unravel and then i'd feel like a breath and then i would get stuck again and then i'd get stuck in this loop thinking that if if something happened to me and i died then i would never see my girls again cause my whole life i've believed i'm going to die and then i'm going to see my children again i'm going to see my husband and then that's gone i i was completely terrified about that possible reality so these new fears were kind of surfacing that i didn't even know were there because it had always been answered with christianity so that's what i was wrestling with in the in the float tank uh then i heard the voice of jesus so i maybe there's nothing maybe this ends and there's it's just nothingness and then or maybe it all explodes again there's another it all starts again but i my guess would be there's something [Music] like it used to i used to be fearful about there not being something you know that used to bring me fear like what you said especially when going down the path well if god's not here if god is not what i thought it was or whatever so it used to bring me down a path of fear about what's gonna happen when i die same as you will i see my don't i'm not gonna see my children i'm just gonna go to the earth dust and then all that's left is like what i had been here on earth you know when i was alive and so that used to bring me fear but it doesn't anymore i don't think i don't i don't feel like i wrestle with that as much anymore like it's more of if there is something then i don't think i'm gonna be left out of that like i still think that i will be a part of it you know like whatever choices i'm making here in my life here on earth now that's not gonna keep me from being in whatever afterlife there is for me brought up and in the culture in which we were brought up in you're always working towards the afterlife like that's your reward instead of enjoying the life on earth and all that's part of it while you're here and being in communion with other people in your day-to-day life and making them making the most out of being in part of god's creation and all that is here on earth and i think it was always a striving for where your reward is in heaven you know and so when i started questioning everything and back and forth and back and forth and there was a worry there about oh no it was full front for quite some time until at some point i think it just kind of faded that worry faded and i feel like my enjoyment of life in this life right now is so much more than it used to be that's beautiful yeah you inspired me hey i didn't know that that's amazing a lot of information for me in this show i didn't say the same you and you inspired me i really want to write a uh a southern gospel song about the afterlife from a there is no after life component you know like because they have all these songs about going to heaven to be like you know like take me to the void suffering take me to the void where there's not anything well one day i know my consciousness will cease take me to the void where i can be in unknowing peace what was this pre-prepared it was not that was compiled on the spot [Music] i was on the gospel in these veins that was amazing do you have any preference on the scoring that's going to happen to that any certain kind of instrumentation yeah that's that zone right there [Music] [Music] i know my consciousness will cease take me to the void where i can be an unknowing peace [Music] so if you haven't heard by now we have a second podcast called the alien and the robot it's got a theme song that you'll find yourself singing in the shower and it's available to our patrons but we're doing something we've never done for the alien and the robot ever and we're doing that october 5th and 6th in london at the liturgist gathering we're doing a live recording of the alien and the robot with a special twist for the audience and only for the audience so if you're anywhere near london gosh tomorrow tomorrow then there's still some tickets available we do have a podcast only ticket available uh if you just want to come friday night um we'd love to see you we're really excited about it i'm actually kind of freaking out about how excited i am about how much fun this is going to be but i'm not going to tell you what it is and you'll never find out unless you're there or one of our patrons on patreon sorry will also be in case you can't make london if you're in the united states like a few of our listeners november 16th and 17th will be in minneapolis and will be in nashville tennessee november 30th and december 1st you can get tickets at the liturgistgathering.com and if you want to be a patron just go to the liturgist.com and click the button that says join us [Applause] [Music] any other uh there's one other line of inquiry that's necessary what is it can't talk about christianity and jesus without their child the church or actually i guess technically christianity would be the child of jesus and the church wait who's the church that's a great question this polyamorous relationship i do i do think yeah some of the the the first century language around the bride of christ is real polly it's real poly vibe we are the bride of christ so specifically what what is the church does it matter are you a part of it well jenny's like i'd like to play the fifth i mean i think yes i think i don't feel like i can be outside of the cosmic christ hmm so are you defining the church as the cosmic christ yes so everything is the church that was just a great sentence that just like just like my whole heart was just i'm serious that was beautiful lisa so yes i am i would be a part of that was that i love that it sounds nice it does but then it means nothing here comes the five the five swat teams crashing through the windows is it just a way of saying the universe the church the universe or is there anything more than i'm i'm not saying there should be i really am not i'm just kidding to why would one use the word church that's a good question uh i don't know i think it's helpful for human growth and certain stages of consciousness that's why people use the concept church yeah i also like it for places to belong structures to grow in mm-hmm i think we need structures but nothing means anything at the bottom i agree with you church how do you think about it really should have been a youtube episode just for just a jenny reaction camp well okay so lisa you said what structure well i think the idea i mean if when we were talking about like the church as the people who all gather and around this common belief that's this that's it the structure of it and i grew within that structure towards an understanding of love though there were a lot of really false and oppressive things within that structure false oppressive things are within every single structure that happens that's why like i won't sit here and be like the church sucks i don't i don't think that i think that there's a lot of poison within it and a lot of love within it as well the poison isn't jesus the poison isn't what was meant to be the poison is power struggles of people oppressing people power over not power together and that happened it happens everywhere so people are leaving all these things for good reason and people are angry at the church quote unquote church for good reason but i mean i think it's hard to really frame how exactly all how i feel about it but i for me it is the hope and the looking toward of the cosmic christ that we are all within i believe that the heart of it is good but and sometimes it turns out poisonous things just like everything else i just wanted to say if anyone's listening in the vatican you just found your next pope just you can fix all the problems [Laughter] that was amazing wow that was amazing i found healing in a church where in one church i had found hurt and betrayal just complete sadness in another church i found healing and so i'm not against the church i just wish the church could own their role in how they relate and interact with people and that they could realize how much they affect people in their lives and their day-to-day lives and the power that they've been given to be able to do that and that they would hold it dearly instead of abusing it and that's what leads to so many people that do turn away from church because there have been so many things that have happened and their trauma associated with it and i feel like the church doesn't take ownership of that and try to do better and now that's a real generalization with church because there are a lot of good churches out there that i feel like they do speak for justice for every for people and they do try to encourage and lift up but i do think that the church is so flawed but we're all flawed it's made up of people and so i do get that and i understand that but i also think church can be found even within a community that doesn't meet in a building like what the traditional church is though to as well i think it can be found in a group of people that you do life together with yes there might be common interests common views maybe common faith patterns whatever it is but you grow and you do life together recognizing each person individually and that each person brings their own baggage their own trauma to the group and understanding that and holding that dearly and just loving one another in whatever place each other is at and whatever growth or lack of growth in the moment or whatever is happening and i think that can be just as beautiful as a sunday morning traditional church meeting in in a building and singing songs of worship yeah regardless of the shape of it i really like what that idea of it being a structure of sorts i think there's something really interesting to that because things don't grow without some sort of structure some sort of resistance some sort of oppression almost if you will like if you don't if you don't have a body that has tight enough skin to keep all the organs in and say nope you can't grow beyond this point you got to go this way there would be no body there would be no way the body could grow you need a planter if you're going to try to grow something in your house a little you need to confine things sometimes i've seen that creatively sometimes you have to like know i'm not just gonna let any idea into the room you have to have an idea and this chord this uh lyric this whatever that came into the room right now uh that's that doesn't quite fit the limited structure that we have to work with if we want this thing to grow into us something and i had this idea this morning that i might add to my book i always try to i've been trying to avoid ever using any of my book stuff on the podcast but this isn't quite in the book but it might be i don't know we'll see but only one way to find out [Laughter] but there's been people that ask me guitarists ask me sometimes after a solo or whatever you can tell kind of a newbie improviser then they're like oh what was like what scale were you using like what scale was i using and that's how you start that's how you start with improvising it says c7 and you're like okay these are the notes that you can play in the c7 this is the c mixolydian scale here's the scale and then maybe it gets you start improvising more and then maybe you learn another scale that could work you could use a g minor pentatonic scale i like where this is going you're like oh that's that's kind of cool that that gives an interesting thing that accents the four more than the three whatever and then you you can build now you've got this custom-made pentatonic scale it has the sharp 11 in it and the nine and the flat and you're like wow that's a really interesting thing at some point the scales dissolve into each other at some point the structures fall apart and you might still i can still recognize when i'm playing something that's kind of a mixolydian-ish thing at some point it just becomes the melody of that you're playing and the chords are the chords it creates a context but at some point it's you're not thinking scales you're thinking music you're being music you're experiencing music in a way that you don't have to be limited by the individual scales anymore one thing i've noticed with the mystics of every great tradition at some point it just becomes what is it just becomes presence it just becomes god whatever the words you use from the different traditions they start sounding a lot alike once you get into the mystical heart of it it's like you've been shredding your scales for 30 years you know the instrument at this point you are familiar with the terrain the territory and all the constructs all the structures that you needed to get to this point you don't need to use them as a crutch anymore jesus isn't just the guy in this guy who lets me into the gates of heaven anymore the christ consciousness is everything and everyone and everywhere even if you keep the structures like somebody like richard rory he's still in the structure but he transcends the structure his his spirituality his he's not threatened by other structures anymore he's not threatened by the ideas of buddhism or hindus or any other traditions because he sees how they're all talking about reality because he's in it he's living it and but like it makes his structure really more rich from my perspective that he he's not threatened by these other things but that he he chooses he chooses christianity he still chooses this vein yeah and the same as with mike yeah yeah i mean you know you and i have talked about that a little bit it's like i mean we're this is was our path like what am i gonna like start like trying to become like a buddhist teacher or like hindu like if it just feels weird that hasn't been my path i haven't been studying that my entire life and i'm not interested in slamming the path that i've come from or throwing it out because i see truth and love in these other paths but it makes my tradition richer for me to have that understanding i really i resonate with that and have these experiences during meditation where like this understanding came that it is it is all rhythm and so with what you just said you're learning the scales i just really thought that was beautiful and that's how i see it here like if there is a different life after this one whatever eternity is this is the song i'm singing now and this is the skill i've learned and it's it's a beautiful song right and there's the trauma even like the trauma there's no beautiful song without anything complex in it or sadness or if it's super plain and all in a major key but this song the pain and the the tension that happens and all this things playing at once and fighting trying to figure out where the song is going that's part of the beauty of the song but i guess that's that's how i see now and like after life now now i'm in this song i'm i've learned this scale broken out of this scale and i'm still learning these other these other scales that i'm honestly sometimes afraid of to i'm sometimes afraid to play because it's not the scale that i know why am i afraid to play that other scale it's just another scale am i afraid that it's going to lead me to something really terrible and evil why do i believe that i think if we believe that this other scale will lead us to something terrible and evil then we really believe the core of who we are is evil i don't know how to say this in the right way but the trauma of the church can be a beautiful thing because without that nobody would ever break out of the scale to see that it all leads to the same source but i realize that's a not great thing to say because the trauma of the church has some really evil things and i'm not saying those super evil things are wonderful things but like the cliche that still is very true making beautiful things out of the dust but you know something super traumatic has happened to so many people within the church and it's this terrible story right like look at what the church has done ah but i believe that the very trauma that we absolutely hate is the thing that's suffering that opens up a different perspective on all of it a different scale that you learn to play yeah i mean that's what i was trying to get out with the body the resistance like without resistance to saying you can't go beyond this point you're never going to grow strong i mean it's what working out is you're literally like pushing against the resistance that says you can't lift this yeah and you try and you try and you fail and the weights say no you are a woman you cannot do this you know whatever and that resistance over time if you believe it is one thing i love about christianity i think built into it is resistance built into it is like you can't you can't follow jesus and believe everything he said until it like turns against itself at some point or you're like love your enemies and then you'd say that and then the goats and sheep and all the like okay now wait wait what i'm i'm in what about all them um and at some point like it's the weights and you're in this structure and it's like no grow this way thou shalt not thou shalt not thou shalt not and by the way everything is permissible what what yes not everything's beneficial it's like in it it's kind of brilliant there's like a if you really believe it it offers enough resistance to you but enough openness that you can transcend its its limitations eventually [Music] when i was uh trying to figure out what that light on the beach had to do with my faith tradition of christianity i tried to work all that out while going on really long runs to train for a marathon and my favorite runs were in the woods uh just because it's beautiful and i was thinking about how you know whenever i read mystics it doesn't matter what faith tradition they come from what they're talking about well that really really makes sense to me um and if i get into like theologies there's a familiarity to non-mystic christianity but not as much of a resonance into non-mystical islam or judaism or whatever there's an interest but still not that great resonance and i was walking through the forest and i noticed there was a tree and there was a tree and there was a tree and there was a tree which is what i always saw running along this running path and i got really tired it was like a 18 mile run day which was a really dumb run to do off-road by the way uh and i got tired and i let my head drop back and i looked up and i saw all these trees i look at all the time if you lift your eyes just made this single canopy you couldn't tell where one tree ended or the other began and i watched his birds and squirrels and other life just zipped through the canopy with no awareness of what individual tree they were on i thought about how our faith traditions at the level we all walk on our path it looks like there's a tradition and there's a tradition and there's a tradition but at some point mystics look up and just see a divine canopy but then i look down and underneath the soil where all these trees come from is another unitive thing the earth itself and as these trees grow out of the earth and their roots spread their roots intermingle their origin comes from the same place goes through an individual experience we call a trunk and then re-merges at the canopy and so absolutely i call myself a christian i identify as a christian i love christianity and the church but i acknowledge embrace and celebrate the common divine origin and mystical destination to all of these trees [Music] i feel like i've had more growth in the last year and i haven't been in church one day except for when we traveled home for christmas and i kind of hate to admit that but at the same time i'm also i don't regret that that choice to be in church no to not be into yeah to not be in church like this year i mean it's just been kind of an automatic kind of thing i didn't i haven't had the desire to be there and maybe that's just for this season right now in my life but even not having church in my life i feel like i've done more growth as an individual and in my own like discovery of myself in the last year than i ever did when i was fully in a a church mentality and a religious mentality and living that life what i thought was good and right so i mean i don't know what that really says to anything but it's just my observation i got an email from the church i go to most often they said we're having a membership sunday coming up in case you and jenny want to join i was like well i don't think jenny's been here it's probably premature for me to raise the should we join conversation and this is something we've discussed with our girls because like um one thing that richard rohr bringing him back up who spoiler alert he's uh going to be on the christian series um but he he suggests parenting in some sort of structure like this for the i think the reasons we're talking about providing some resistance some avenue for growth um but we're not raising the girls in some strict one religious upbringing they've been to church we've brought them to church sometimes i explained the four noble truths of buddhism to homily at breakfast this morning uh try to give him a lot of a lot of stuff um but i think at some point like what you're experiencing now i'm trying to give credence to what somebody like richard would say about this in that your ability to grow here you've still got community here you still and you've learned at this point you've learned thou shalt not kill like you don't need to be taught that anymore you've learned love your neighbors yourself you've learned about community you've learned you shouldn't when you go to people's houses you shouldn't steal their stuff you know all the like 101 stuff that that you're taught as a kid in in a religious whatever whatever your upbringing is i think people figure out a structure whether they have religion or not because otherwise yeah how do you teach a kid don't steal your being able to grow like taking out taking you out of the planter and placing you in a backyard with some sprinklers oh all of a sudden you're growing more i think you're in a stage where that's working for you yeah a different structure you're still in a structure you're still in a context to grow yeah i was thinking that right before you were talking about the girls when we were in bloom i was we were raising them in that in the christian tradition and for the four years we've been here then we talk about god we talk about jesus what all of this is we are very open with our girls about spirituality and i haven't wanted to raise them in a tradition until very recently i haven't even talked to you a whole lot about this i've been pretty opposed to it a friend and i have talked a lot about this so this guy told her you need to raise the you need to have be in this tradition there needs to be a path i'm going well this this has been my path my path of christianity has led me here to a deeper love for christianity and other religions but what if my girls don't have that will they because what i've been hearing a lot of lately and it'd be interesting to know the research behind this if you don't raise them in a tradition is it so open in their childhood that they need somewhere in their life they need that structure so then therefore they go to super evangelical or some radical religion because i've i've been hearing those stories of uh mainly from women who have said this has been my path i grew up super conservative and i finally broke out but guess what my child is in now and they're an adult they just got married and why why is this happening uh i told my daughter she doesn't have to conform i told her she's not second of the sexes and she married a pastor of a church who believes there's no women shouldn't be leaders like how does that happen and so i've been thinking a lot about our girls and and structure how good that is for us and necessary i don't know so my ideals on that are shift are shifting a bit because i i want to believe we can just hand these girls all the truth right the truth from all of these religions but maybe that's too much and they don't know what direction to walk within within all of it maybe they do yeah so to your suspicion children of atheists non-religious and no specific religious affiliation parents are the most likely people to become religious fundamentalists that has that has been borne out in in research there's kind of a burgeoning movement the skeptical community of atheists considering raising their children in moderate religious traditions because moderate religious traditions inoculate brains against fundamentalism basically yeah because otherwise like but there's a reason religion exists independent of any fact claims about god and and oxford did a study that kind of revealed it's basically we have a an innate bias to believe purpose-based explanations uh we have an inability to contemplate the cessation of our own consciousness as a species there's these cognitive recipes that create religion and religion is so powerful at providing senses of communal belonging and meaning and purpose in life which are the main things humans strive for so children who are raised in like a really open environment when somebody introduces them to that like hit of fundamentalism it's almost drug-like in the kind of psychological relief it provides and that's how you see people who grew up with like you know socially progressive parents taking what seem to be via regressive postures because they find a sense of meaning purpose and belonging that they did not previously have and so that's why i was like pretty like when we left evangelicalism i was like how quickly can i get my family in a moderate religious environment that's interesting yeah i mean i feel like we tried that too and i just couldn't find a space that that valued women equally as men and and i'm not saying we visited all the places it was alone queer people or yeah yeah i i was also feeling all this stuff come up i needed to take a very long break we'd been we'd both been in church our entire lives but i would like to attend somewhere but i just don't know where to go i'd have to pick a religion to put up put like a little little face on it on my other podcast i do ask science mike i decided i thought there were a lot of people who wanted to try church again but they didn't because they didn't have anybody to go with so i put up like a form that people could fill out if you want and the whole thing was when i'm in town i'll email out to this list and we'll just go to church together that's it and over 800 people in la signed up whoa so so should you just start a church in l.a no absolutely not uh but my point is like there's something in this like post-post post-post post community people miss some things about church they don't miss the antagonism towards women and queer people and marginalized communities and disabled people uh they don't miss if you don't do the right thing god will send you to hell forever but there is something about that collective meaning making that i think people miss and that there isn't necessarily another cultural answer for today and just singing together just singing together i miss a lot yeah yeah the rhythm i mean there's the deep spiritual movement with a group of people that i miss and learning just even just singing together even just for me i'm finding recently it's it marks so much of the year like oh now it's fall and we're gonna decorate with leaves or we're gonna decorate with christmas stuff and sing christmas songs together and now it's summertime we're gonna do these kind of activities i'm finding i'm missing even these very what seemed like meaningless practices it wasn't like oh the eucharist and this it was you know now we decorate the nursery for this season it like marks these things in our life that i really miss it [Music] [Applause] so i love going to mainline churches because they change the banners and stuff and i just love it i just love it like oh yeah i'm like always ordinary time now all right here we go oh no it's lint what's up pentecost i love the red banners wow like i said i know that's like so that's just like a dumb thing but for me it's just like grounding i have no awareness of the passage of time so i can walk in a room and there's just a color indicator of what part of the year we are in spiritually yeah and i like it oh yeah i like it too i like the like little ceremonies where the children come up and like candles for advent yep and families awkwardly read scripture i love it so much yeah me too and you're like oh that's the christmas wreath yeah we see every year we got it out again we went to this tiny church tiny church and the men's choir sang a song it was like four men like in their 70s and they they were terrible singers but their reverence and sincerity i was as moved by that as anything i've ever seen like the dorkiest weirdest things about church are my favorite things about church i love i went to a church and i sat in a seat and an older person came and asked me to move and i loved it i was like great i just scooted right over and said sit down yeah like i just i love the whole thing when we went to uh los angeles here in l.a i mean we loved it we were singing and dancing around the girls were dancing around and uh i'm not like things don't come up for me like they like they used to i can be there and have a great time but one of my favorite things about us going was the older woman in the background was giving lucy anomaly candy because they're like where else do we have in our lives even that there's such a these generations coming together we hang out with our friend group and we're all we all hover around pretty much the same age some of us don't have kids some of us have old you know teenagers we don't have any 80 year olds in our friend group and they're not going to come hang out with us because we don't understand i mean just in our friend group how hard is it sometimes for michael and i are going guys remember we have little kids we're in a different place than you and other people are going guys we have teenagers we're talking about sex and we're talking about all these other things and an 80 year old is not going to relate to anything that all of us are going through or so it is a beautiful place where all these you know there's all these generations together doing one thing together that just doesn't happen anywhere else not where i saw this one going like a really love letter for church i'm usually the love letter to the church guy that's it's nice to have a little a little company jenny and i are what's going on i'm surprised we've been bashing the church for years even when we were traveling like there was i mean not bashing the church there was just a lot of cynicism and i just and that's needed like i believe that's needed that's good that's necessary but i believe that happens anywhere if you're in church or you're in a mosque wherever you're at that's gonna happen you're we're the the teenager growing up and needing to get out of the house to experiencing something new and then we're like fuck i really miss thanksgiving dinner that mom made i'm surprised at where this conversation went too i have a lot of more love for the church coming up within my own heart than and has been there before i literally had never heard anything jenny said the entire episode well you know me though nothing this could change next weekend and then or the weekend after and we could end up being in church so don't take it as like that this is my end-all be-all oh yeah so you deserve the right to be where you are and we protect and preserve that right someday it's a dream that i have not spoken aloud dream because i hate it too i hate it but just a totally a temporary put a timeline on it where it dies and then just do the most idealistic either year or i don't know i don't know how long of like a church thing like a a weekly what you want at church and then you kill it well 800 people would probably show up the initial because the thing is once it starts going and you start getting powers or power starts happening people get attached to it and starts being oh god it's horrible if you just like no we're just going to do this and then we're going to kill it stab it get it well who knows what can be born from its ashes you could other people could start other whatever whatever that's how long i've been trying to quash that there will be a liturgist church rumor and and desires and you just throw that out there do you know what how much mail we're gonna get just so this could be a lot of mail a lot of mail i bet we will get letters letters not just emails guys i'm just going to be honest i would do that oh damn they go oh no and i know and i can't believe i'm saying that we did that our whole life and i was like i i really thought i'm never never gonna do that again i'm never ever going to church again i don't need that i don't like it i don't want it no sounds pretty great you say that it's a horrible idea you say that now it is a horrible idea and it's a it's a terrible idea and a wonderful it would be it would be fun there would be that middle in between time that would be everything would be you know oh the organization is setting up and all that but it's the the initial we used to do it all the time it was it's so much work it's so much work and you give and you give and you give and then it's not enough for people and then you just kind of hate people for a while but but if you remember you get some feedback a little bit of feedback but when you always think some of those moments oh i think early bloom there's nothing like it when you've the people are finally together and you're like you're seeing this dream without all the bullshit that you didn't want to happen and it's just people together singing and loving and it's like awesome and later bloom that happened then too yeah for me then it was i don't know i got tired of it by the end yeah it's a lot of fun no offense bloom oh it's anything like that has a lot of work yeah you just again people start like thinking they have jobs and stuff oh some of my favorite times they got to protect their territory their their area like uh we better kill this thing now and if you're curious what that might look like don't forget you can meet us in london minneapolis or nashville yeah there you go that's true for the liturgist gathering that actually was a good segue i can't help it no that's that is real that is the place that we start moving towards that and we want to find ways of you all knowing each other in those spaces and starting other things dinner groups and vr groups and sex pods oh i almost said birthing groups but sex pods that are just sexpods.com i'm pretty sure those already exist oh do they really i recently met a throuple of men who when they first started listening to the literature's podcast were evangelicals so yeah we're tearing some we're tearing some constructs down [Music] well i can tell you in all honesty i had never heard a single word that jenny said on that podcast today we do want to thank jenny and lisa for joining us on the program and we'd love to hear your thoughts about what we shared on this episode so you can go to the liturgist.com podcast and leave a comment or you can talk to us on social media at the liturgists on instagram or twitter or facebook.com thanks to greg nordine for editing your hosts have been science mike i'm michael gunger sorry for those of you that have been getting hillary withdrawal withdrawals she will be back sorry it's been one of the episodes for mike messed up anyway uh thanks for listening everybody [Music] you