Episode 62 - Names

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every week or two someone will send me a picture on twitter and it's this crazy picture of a kid eating ice cream in front of an advertisement for ice cream where the models and the ad are all smiling and laughing and this this kid is smiling and laughing as well and almost inevitably someone will tag this picture what i feel like listening to the liturgists right you're in your world in the subway walking on the trail whatever it is you do when you listen to the program and there's this weird divide where instead of real people we're a sound file what if we tore that barrier down what if we got in a room together and explored the world through the lenses of science art and faith together well that's exactly what we do at the liturgist gathering it's gonna be an incredible experience we've done several of these now and everyone is unique as the cities they're hosted in these gatherings i have a few things i can kind of guarantee that will happen and beyond that it's up to whatever happens in the room but you know at a religious gathering we'll record a live episode of the liturgist podcast we'll engage in spiritual practices together like meditation we'll sing beautiful songs and we'll gather around the table for the eucharist we're going to have the kind of mind-blowing conversations you expect from the liturgists only you'll contribute and i think most importantly of all you'll find a community of people like you people who are done with the judgmental aspect of faith in our country and who are yearning to have a more honest discussion about what our world is like today of course i'll be there to host you as will my co-host michael gunger and we're doing this in three cities los angeles september 15th and 16th boston october 6th and 7th and october 27th and 28th will be in seattle i'd love to see you at the largest gathering but don't wait tickets are moving really quickly in all cities seattle is almost sold out los angeles tickets are moving quite quick and uh we've only got about 100 seats left in boston so if you'd like to join us at the liturgist gathering head to the liturgistgathering.com today and secure your spot as many of you know i was raised as a pastor's kid i grew up in church and as both the kid of the pastor of that really weird charismatic church at the edge of town and being that fairly eccentric musician with a large unkempt hair i sort of stood out like a sore thumb in my town as a musician in a weird charismatic church on the edge of town i quickly began to spend a lot of my life on stage church services revivals youth events talent shows you name it and then when i was a senior in high school we moved to tulsa oklahoma and my world got larger i went to a larger christian high school but i was still that worship leader on the stage i somehow became homecoming king and won the coveted king david award in my school a man after god's own heart you know as this young passionate worship leader even though i was really introverted you know worship leaders can get a lot of social points in some circles so all of it it never really stopped it was always in this spotlight i felt like i got a job at this huge mega church where they gave me you know i was 20 years old the 20 year old kid with the unchem tear they gave me a staff and a company car and a clothing allowance so that i could stop into banana republic and make myself look a little bit more professional [Music] i made a worship album for that church ended up getting signed to a christian music label and through the next several years michael geiger kind of became a brand then michael gunger evolved into the michael gunger band amazing indeed and from there we cut off michael and banned and became gunger and we had written some songs that had gotten us some attention from christians we got nominated for some grammy awards and i won a dove award for one of my church songs and through all that we got written about in some christian magazines played on some christian radio stations but through that whole process there was something at the core of it that just wasn't working and my belief structures all had been crumbling [Music] again i had seen too much you know it peered behind the curtain and saw the little dude with the levers i'd seen the big christian rock stars that lived one way and spoke another and it made me sick i mean i just at one point i wrote this angry blog post about it calling out the hypocrisy and soulless nature of so much of the christian music industry it was uh it was written immaturely but i was so passionate you know and it didn't really go over very well for people in the industry especially and as a result gunger sort of became this black sheep of the christian music industry in a way and part of that was fine with me because i didn't really want to be part of the christian music industry per se i just short i was starting to come back to some of my language and practices of my youth in a new way i met this guy sciencemike and we had started this thing called the liturgists together as the liturgists begin to start taking off people start realizing that michael gunger is perhaps not the evangelical worship leader poster boy that some had hoped i would become some people wrote some news articles about me not believing adam and eve or literal people with headlines like you'll never believe who doesn't believe the bible anymore and a bunch of people got really upset and we lost a bunch of gigs and some team members and everything felt like it was falling apart i got to see what facebook looks like without her makeup on and through all of it i guess it will suffice to say that my experience of being michael gunger has been slightly tumultuous for the first couple years of the liturgists i felt like i was in a good place i made very few metaphysical assumptions of any kind but my heart was largely open but then something started happening to me in 2016. i felt something significant starting to shift within me something emerging from deep down in my soul that i i couldn't really put my finger on exactly what it was but i had started listening to this guy named ramdas a lot if you haven't heard of him he's this amazing jewish hindu buddhist practicing christ-loving dude who talks about being here and now and the non-duality of all existence he's a pretty famous spiritual teacher who's been loving and helping people wake up since the 60s some of his teachings were pretty far out for me especially at first but for some reason the more i listened to him the more i felt that deep down thing something in the soil felt like it was about to break ground and finally it did it's hard to put words to but i suppose i'd say that some of the peak spiritual or mystical experiences that i had had in my life that had kept me interested in spirituality became a more permanent way of seeing i'm so grateful to teachers like ram das who taught me some more eastern perspectives on things that actually ended up helping me see even my own heritage and christianity in a new light through all that i had finally been able to see my ego's involvement in my faith journey up to that point and seeing it allowed the deconstruction of the idols of my faith up to that point to continue to the point where the deconstruction could deconstruct me and by me i mean who i thought i was it was tremendously liberating suddenly jesus started making sense to me and not the same kind of sense as i thought he did before my deconstruction but like for real i was suddenly like whoa jesus saw how it all is he was he was what people think of as enlightened and this may sound strange to some people that i've come to love jesus more because of hindu and buddhist thought but it's true this last year i have felt like i finally understood what it meant to be born again my spirituality has been more alive than ever the divine has been as close as the breath in my lungs the divine is the breath in my lungs and it's all been so incredibly beautiful so then late last year i came across this opportunity to have a private retreat with ramdas [Music] i felt like i should say yes to that i'm in maui it's sunny and perfect outside and ramdas sits in his chair looking out the window outside the greens yellows and earth tones spread out before us until they suddenly break the brilliant blue of the ocean stretching all the way out to meet the edge of the sky ramdas is 85 years old he's had two strokes his health isn't great his speech is slow but his mind is there and his heart is as wide and present as ever he's telling me about richard albert his legal and former name he tells me richard albert feels like a different incarnation in his mind richard alpert was the harvard professor trapped in his ego and obsessed with success not the same being who sat before me with nothing but love shining out of his eyes i told him that i feel sometimes a little like that myself with where i've come from i had told him a bit of my story and how drastically different i feel now than i used to and rahm das looked at me and surprisingly asked what sort of name would you like to have [Music] did you know that dolphin infants pick their own names at birth what so scientists have figured out that dolphins not only have names but that instead of being named by their mothers or fathers or members of their group they select their own name as infants that then other dolphins respond to and accept [Music] and i thought that's it's beautiful because i've noticed that people wrestle with identity their whole life and a big part of that is reconciling what their parents dreamed for them to be versus who they're discovering there are and sometimes that leads to name changes sometimes that leads to nicknames sometimes the internet dubs people science mike and in all cases it represents someone trying to reconcile what they're called with who they are sarah heath's on with us today hey sarah hi team sarah's the one that dubbed science mike science it's true i did name you i was like you can call me the internet if you want to that's true yeah sarah started the trend and it may yeah i think it's interesting because seals actually also know someone by the sound that they make but the response is not the sound back so that's what makes dolphins unique in that someone recognizes your name which to me is incredible that's the incredible part not just that you have a name that you've named yourself but when you hear someone else say it is the moment when it has this deep meaning when i was reading the account in john of jesus coming back there is this powerful moment where like mary doesn't know mary magdalene doesn't know who it is has no idea who it is until he says her name and then there is something about her rabbi her teacher saying her name that immediately causes recognition and then it started me kind of thinking about this idea of like name being this important even having a certain name mean something and not only that but hearing certain people use your name like as a pastor my biggest fear is calling someone the wrong name at a wedding or a funeral yeah those are the scary times and so i think the beauty of that and i think what's so magical as you as you were speaking for me was the idea that not only do they have a name but others recognize it because there's so much power in hearing your own name [Music] yeah i thought that was interesting because we are born we're given a name we're giving a name in a cultural context so if you're a westerner you have this given name that's your first name then you have a family name which until very recently was passed down from your father's family so your name itself became kind of a reinforcement of a patriarchal society whether you were male or female and your sense of individuality was a given name that existed within a family but that's not even the way names have always been you know i think it's clear to anyone who's grown up in any kind of church context that names used to be different that you had a first name sure but your name was then associated with a destination so you know i would be mike of tallahassee that's how people would know of me and if i was in tallahassee there would be no need to say mike of tallahassee it would just be mike but today like our names now at least in recent american history have tended to come more from honoring family members so your first individual name was sort of placed in the context of honoring part of your family name so you have this very family-based identity whereas in biblical times and more ancient cultures names were often meant to be to some degree a prophecy about your character of course there are some contemporary societies that don't use names for individuals at all and i've noticed recently in american society parents are choosing less and less to name their children after a parted family member and more likely to name their children with a word or name which may not be a human name it could be the name of a place or a circumstance or something else that speaks to their dream or desire for the child's character but in any context it is still a matter of uh you accepting a name that has been given to you and not discovering what your name is on your own wow having my last name meant something not only was my father the town doctor and my mom a nurse but here i am coming after my brother who like he's so bright and so i always felt that pressure to try to be as bright as he was because of my last name if my dad hadn't been adopted my last name would be rodriguez and oh i didn't know that like what how different would my life be would i have a band named rodriguez right yeah would i have faced more challenges as a person in society with a name from uh from a latino sounding name than a then a white sounding name well there's that interesting study they've done where they looked at applications and they just looked by name have you seen that one they uh they did the exact same applications for jobs and they had names that sounded ethnic or different and found that more and like staggeringly uh folks who had names that sounded like your standard white guy were most often called back for an interview and they had the exact same credentials in american history with colonization and the fact that you know people were forced to take last names or different names or names that weren't their names my parents worked in the northwest territories with the native population and some people's last names were literally one foot in hell because they were named by missionaries think about the power of name and the power to both claim you and make you feel joyful when someone knows your name but also the shame a name can have you hear these stories of people who like either they have a serial killer in their family or some sort of horrible family member and then they're stuck with that name what do you do [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 ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions 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 i remember as i started to read scripture i noticed that oftentimes people when they went through something big their name would change i recently realized at least according to some scholarship i really butchered a name change in scripture well i guess i didn't but everyone who ever told me about this name change butchered it because there's saul paul yeah and there's this idea that paul had this profound experience on the road to damascus and a conversion experience and changed his name and i've read some scholars recently who say that's bunk that um it was really common in that time in history uh if you uh were a jew or you're from some conquered people group to have like your name in your native community plus kind of a romanized name yeah and so it might not have been that saul became paul but that um saul the family name diminished in public awareness as paul the public name grew in prominence oh interesting and yeah i've actually i've heard a little bit of that but i haven't thought about the the name not disappearing on purpose but by action i'd never thought about it being by action that is named so as he becomes a more and more public figure the other name just disappears as the identity does well i thought that was like really relatable not to me but um like when i've had friends who were korean or indian or some other non-anglo culture whose names are difficult to pronounce for western white people especially they have like a public name and a family name but then there's a way in which that that family name can either promote like shame or intimacy depending on how they relate to their family and their family's place in american culture well i have these uh two friends who um she's a really well-known actress and uh he is also an actor but um in public sphere they have uh she still has her name that she became famous with but what's really neat is i went out to dinner with them one time and noticed her credit card had his last name on it and she said i haven't gone public with this last name because it's something between i am this person between the two of us and this is our life that is not for public consumption and um this family's incredible i mean they go to disneyland and they don't tell disney that they're coming so that their children will learn how to wait in line and they wear big sunglasses and they hide who they are but for her it's like it's almost the secret name that she has that he says but no one else uses that name and i just think that's also that idea of like who you are um is often defined by name yeah and it calls something up in you i think about how my dad would call me gill or gilbertross or mick or michael based on your behavior this this my behavior or the scene the setting and what needed to be addressed and called upon when it like it kind of sets the reality in a strange way and i think i i mean i do that with my girls and with my wife and my friends and you know if i say science mike that's calling up oh we're in a sort of a professional zone here we are in a public zone i don't call him science like when we're hanging out yeah it's like i don't even do that you just call me science [Laughter] but you have these names and they call up like essence or they come now you also think about like confirmation names or spiritual names and how those have played a part in religion through history it's how we engage with the world naming it's not just people we name everything in our world yeah if you from the very beginning if you look at the the story of genesis right what's one of the biggest jobs given to man is to name the the creatures around them and it's supposed to breed a familiarity it's supposed to breed this and we've gotten very very detached from that but we most often will not kill an animal that we have named even the creation story itself like this the the land separating from the waters and all all of it as the human comes into existence the experience that we [Music] so often experience through human consciousness through a human brain is this distinguishing of me from you of night from day of water from earth of a platypus from a house cat you know i mean and without names none of it exists in our brains in a way like you can just look at any object around you and you you see that as an object with a name but break that you know break that object into pieces like i just read this example about a fork we have names for like the tines the the little forky things at the top that uh the tines that have spaces in between them and we can see each of those as a separate thing because we have a name for it or you could think maybe like the handle at the bottom but what about the little curvy part in the middle we don't have a name for that so it doesn't not something that exists as separate from the fork in our brains it's just that's just part of the fork it's the but the tines can exist in our brain as separate from the fork because we can think of them as a name so our whole universe is created out of names and when you think of a person and you you think of their name you're recalling all of these mental constructs and memories that you have of experiences that you've encountered when you encounter that similarly shaped swirl of energy that you think of as a person and you name it and then that is a thing that exists in the universe in your mind it's fascinating to think of how and how inherent naming the universe is to our experience of it yeah well even like if you think of a fork and a tine uh if you are like a fork expert then you might also think of as you look at a fork the distinction between the handle the neck the root the tine the point the slots and the back as being elements that give each fork its unique forkness but without those terms and where's those terms you would literally judge forks in a more intuitive manner if you're trying to decide between two forks you would just kind of maybe see which one pleases your eyes at the most or feels best in your hand but as you learn the terms for the pieces of a fork you approach a fork in a different way and use different parts of your brain to evaluate forkness or what makes a better or worse fork yeah once we as a species begin to use language our cognition becomes very difficult to divorce from the labels that we use for things and what does that mean for people whose you know whose own names might involve some form of trauma or loss you know if i meet anyone named william i think of my departed grandfather immediately even though they're not the same william they've never met william wimberley the fact that they share the same given name means they will always evoke something in my mind that's other than their unique and personal identity based on what william meant to me as my grandfather you know i was even thinking about the first time someone called me pastor and how there's this profound moment where you go through ordination you know you become the reverend which is weird right the reverend oftentimes people ask me well what do i call you and because of the way that i like to do ministry which is very relational i i don't want to tell you i don't want to tell you what to call me so you can call me pastor sarah if i'm your pastor and that's how you see me i have these two amazing women who are similar in age to me but they don't call me anything but pastor like for them calling me sarah seems too um close and so it's interesting too how title can become identity i hear that with doctor too when people are first called doctor they look around for like like where's the doctor and your kids are going through this mike because your kids are moving to an area where they can call people by more familiar names and madison and i were actually talking about this because she said i don't know what to call you she told me she said you feel like a friend someone call you sarah but i know you're a pastor so pastor sarah but then you're older than me so miss sarah but then you're kind of my dad's good friend so are you aunt sarah just whatever comes out of your mouth oh man that's well well thought through yeah yeah type titles that's interesting yeah the way people attach titles to respect or disrespect so like not saying mr or miss in the south was disrespectful oh yeah saying it here is like uniform anachronistic and strange yeah well kofi and none gave himself like have you ever read the title that kofi and i gave him oh my goodness it was just incredibly long i think people can give themselves title but i always think it's neater when someone else gives you a title um and that's why i don't force anyone to call me pastor or say you have to say rev sarah there's lots of people who do that because particularly as a woman oftentimes people don't see us as a pastor and so i understand why people want that title in front i completely get that but for me it's more about how are you in this space with me and are you i want you to self-identify what you feel like i am in this moment for you is that is that part of what feels for some people like imprisoning about names is because it's not it's not just a self-identification societally the names is like this cooperation between who you are and who people think you are and what they expect of you and so for me just to walk around and say hey i'm dr michael gunger uh without having any sort of other people substantiate that where'd you get your doctorate the liturgist seminary yeah that's true we could we could give him a doctorate right now is it accredited it is accredited by the liturgist board of accreditation which is so funny because that's all that any of it is it's just some people being like yup we have the authority to hand out doctorates well i remember when we were going through this like i was going through this time that was just like uh i was going to take an action like that i could have lost my um being ordained and uh i remember i was talking actually to rob bell and i was like telling i'm just worried you know like if i do this it could and he goes oh they're gonna take your piece of paper and i was like yeah oh that's true okay but if we if we admit that a doctorate is just a title assigned by people who've given themselves authority to assign a title yeah i want someone to have what's the difference between that and a birth certificate where your name is recorded originally anyway yeah answer that's still just people saying they have the authority to assign a set of letters and phonetics to your identity yep have you guys ever been around people who have like well obviously we've been around people who have changed their name but it's this uh interesting thing because you actually start to see them differently i had a friend who uh transitioned from uh female to male and i really struggled it was interesting i didn't struggle with the name i struggled with using the correct gender pronoun but i didn't struggle with the name because for me this was now my friend alex that was not a problem i had a friend who transitioned years ago and we were talking the other day and i realized i couldn't remember their pre-transition name anymore i couldn't even remember it and uh this person still has family who won't use her new name or her her new gender pronouns which so many trans people you talk about the significance of names um making that making that name choosing that name thinking about it as an adult to like choose that name and what that's going to mean for you that's been an interesting hearing actually saying how did you choose your name um and having that conversation of why you know that this name over another name it's kind of a beautiful moment of self you know identification of saying this is who i am now [Music] so can we talk about names in relationship to faith and different religions and the naming of god even and what how how do the how do the names that we use in relationship not just for each other not just for the world but that which is the deepest unspeakable underneath and uh encapsulation of all of it the great mysteries the divine how does our naming of those things impact our relationship with those ideas i've been reading a lot about moses and even the fact that uh you know this bush is talking the burning bush the story and uh moses goes what do i who do i tell people sent me because you can't be like oh a burning bush told me that i need to do this thing old uh oh baby and he says say i am which is this powerful powerful moment that will later be you know um set again not just by popeye um and i think there is this beautiful what do i call you i love love the fact that within many jewish traditions the name of yahweh is so holy that you can't say it instead you have to breathe it if you even say it and then i had friends who i went to seminary with that don't write the word god they still don't because to for them they want it to be such a place of mystery that they don't want to name it because naming god gives this identity that they don't want to it's like it's so vast and beautiful it's beyond naming or awe-inspiring so to say god is so flippant to them so they don't even use the name of god i mean i just think we don't give aw to very much at all and the fact even uh it's interesting we uh have a guy who when he preaches he refers to god with female um you know so she and i think it's beautiful that he does that and he does it because he says you know sarah when you use male language it's different because it's coming from a female but i as a male using female language for god has a really interesting impact on people and one time in my writing actually i was blogging one time and i wrote you know god and i wrote he she and someone actually sent me an email that was like do you do you believe god is you know transgendered and i was like no you're missing the point i think god's all and i think that one of the reasons that women have been treated harshly is when we make it sound as if only males were created in god's image and we do that through language and naming yeah it seems like we tend to use language and naming to domesticate the world in a way that's how we make the world understandable and something that we can communicate with others about meaningfully which helps us to operate within it practically we tend to do that with the divine and our experiences of the divine we want to put names to it we want to put language to it right and then those names can really become idols in my perspective the name itself yes yes it becomes like a way of molding the experience into something that is understandable and it packages it and controls it a lot of my community or folks have been damaged by church and so it's so interesting how even talking to them about what what do you think about god and a lot of them because they were used to only male language or they were used to very aggressive wording or you know i remember one time we were singing that song there's a worship song that says our god is greater our god is bigger um and it goes on and on to describe this very like warrior god and um someone was saying that for them that was a huge stumbling block because the idea that god would be the god of war i mean it's really biblical it's really biblical yeah it is actually but yahweh was a war god correct and the l and and the l language in genesis correct was babylonian and so a huge thing scripture did was unify these distinct understandings of god and to making it one night as a a unified one the unnamed god even later in new testament you know the monument to the unnamed god and he just names it he says this is who you're worshiping but the beginning the beginning of the bible is not monotheistic language or structure and then you move towards this warrior god that's on your side yeah right with a zip code yeah he's on your side uh and there's this like one way to interpret the history is there was kind of a struggle between these factions the yahweh folks and the l folks and um some of the the later prophets and some of the edits to the torah are how this people were able to move forward by creating a revision of the folklore in which these were all just different names of the same same god it pulls it in yeah panic if people use or incorporate right other imagery or symbolism when it's the basic structure of the old testament and the crux of how paul expanded the early church in both cases was to transcend and incorporate the understanding and symbols of the divine for people and that's why the naming even of god is so interesting and almost i think fall short you almost can't and that's hard for people it's like a divine oh gosh so back to ramdas what sort of name would you like to have he asks he sits back closes his eyes and we just both sit there for a while of course i'm immediately intrigued i'm curious a little excited nervous but that's not the head space i want to be in so i take a breath and just settle into the moment and he just lays back utter peacefulness on his face what is a guy i mean so the idea in catholicism when you change your name is that you then try to live up to that ideal so as as you're learning to identify yourself is vishnu das what are what are those characteristics for you what does that and i think if you share that with people and you move towards that it gives the reason of name change that's why you take a different name um during that process there's a there's a before and and after it marks it's like a an ebenezer it's it's a marking of something um and there is a before and there is an after yeah where so where i've landed with it at this point is you know i mean this happened back in january and i the whole time like the first several months especially that was the question i kept asking like what does a guy like me do with a name like that um there's because there's multiple issues first of all there's the appropriation issue that i have been concerned about and thought a lot about um as far as not wanting to that's a sacred name for hindu culture and i have not been raised in hindu culture although hindu theology and and images and metaphysical ideas and philosophy and practices as far as like meditation and all that uh have tremendously influenced me um and i find very important and sacred in my life uh i'm not hindu hindu is a whole culture so that that's one part of it that's concerned me the other part you know is less less lofty is just like people here are not going to like that my tribe is not like that's my name i told i told you know i told the story to my mother i mean i i feel like for such a story she handled it well but she was like part of it is she gave you the other name yes of course and i expected it to be yes absolutely what it would feel like if you've given someone a name and then they changed that well and that's where i'm at i i don't see this as a change i see this more as like when you talked about the sole and paul thing you have different contexts or more like a spiritual name or even a nickname a nickname seems like to kind of devalue a little bit but but you have different places in your life to utilize different names i have pet names for my wife that i don't ever use publicly for her but they call up something and this name i knew from the moment that it happened that there was something i could just feel the the weight the this it was sacred it was a holy moment that i had with rahm das and that name i knew immediately would always have a place in my heart and it and i wanted to find places for it to happen in my life so since january i've been trying to find places for it without making it a weird thing uh like demanding that people call me that i recognize that my name is not just just my own thing but is a way of me interacting with my community and my world so i want to be gentle with it and i want to find places of i don't want to make it an ego fight i don't want to make it a press release i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to bastardize it and make it a a career thing either because that's part of that's actually the whole pro that was the whole thing with my relationship with my name michael gunger it had become so convoluted and packaged with all this career stuff it was my brand it felt it had lost some power to speak to my essence for me it sounded you say michael gunger and it sounds like my business i didn't want that to happen either and that as far as the appropriation issue i don't want to like try to use a name to benefit let's take it from another culture but that name calls up for me presence it calls up unity it calls up um mystery it calls up my experience of the divine that transcends the exoteric outer labels and languages of the religion that i had to deconstruct that had so much baggage and idols just broken shards of idols everywhere lying around that sometimes it was difficult for me to find spiritual practice without cutting my foot on the idols um so this was like a clean i don't have attachments and baggage with vishnu that's it immediately just calls up mystery it immediately calls up oneness and and presence reza aslan talks about how every religion has an exoteric and an esoteric component religions it's the experience of god let me illustrate with an analogy the iphone parable a 15 year old girl was picking berries from a bush one day in ancient rome and so it happened right before her eyes that a strange and mysterious wormhole opened up and presented an iphone 7 plus she gasped in shock at the incomprehensible sight that had materialized out of thin air right before her eyes was it a precious metal of some kind perhaps a gem or a stone it didn't look like anything she had ever seen before could it be an exotic plant of some kind a strange animal perhaps an extremely advanced tool she reached her hand out to touch it but then thought better of it she better get her sister to take a look at it as well she called out her sister was nearby and immediately ran over look at this she said her sister's face looked bewildered what is it i don't know it just appeared the sister picked up the phone she marveled at its simplicity and perfection the vibrant silver color and precise lines of its edges the small foreign writing on the metallic back with an image engraved in the finest handiwork of an apple that had a bite taken out of it this is magnificent she said and she touched a part of the object that had a small contusion in the otherwise perfectly smooth surface when she touched it a brilliant light shone from the face of the object like magic the girls were awestruck they thought they had better show this to their mother a few hours later the iphone 7 plus was in the hands of a robot centurion who was taking slo-mo video of his own face when the object disappeared suddenly as it had arrived a similar thing happened in two other places at two other times the wormhole had opened the iphone had appeared once in south america to a young man in a hunter-gatherer society and once to a middle-aged woman in manila in 1968 the result of these three temporary appearances of the iphone 7 plus shook the cultures that the iphone had presented itself to to the core each had named the event and the object in different ways the romans had interpreted the event as an act of caesar to display his power the phone ended up being named the de-leustricus they started a holiday to celebrate the gracious revelation their lord had bestowed upon them [Music] the south american hunter-gatherers had named the object what could be translated roughly as sun jewel they ended up worshiping the sun jewel as their prime deity sacrifice by fire was the deity's choice of preferred worship [Music] the filipinos that had encountered the phone had eventually come to the conclusion that the device was an alien machine of infinite power that they called the nakakat it had happened to appear on a tuesday precisely while the woman who had discovered it was overcooking a pot of rice the culture had since developed a custom of overcooking rice on tuesdays in order to appease the aliens and pray for the return of the mysterious and beautiful nakakat you see because this is what human beings do when we don't have words for something we make up words for them even if the thing we are trying to talk about is not a thing is beyond thingness but an experience that transcends all of our language and conceptions we still try to find words we still try to make meaning and tell stories and so we get religion with all of its different variations and forms and practices are all religions the same no of course not neither are all the explanations of the iphone they're actually quite different but is the iphone the same of course it is recently i watched the life of pi again i hadn't seen it since it was in the theaters originally i remember really liking it the first time but this was after my experience with rom das and the protagonist in this story religions i've been able to find what was really there the whole time christ vishnu the iphone call it what you will but for me the name vishnu das calls up something beyond just the exoteric part of a religion the names that i grew up with hearing of god father son holy spirit and all the variations that we use of that are beautiful but it can be easy to get stuck in literal thought it can be easy to get stuck in boxes that we create with our thoughts because we get so used to the words they become so comfortable so when i hear vishnudas it reminds me of the mystery underneath all of the language it reminds me of the unity with the divine that i have sensed and experienced so profoundly and it calls me all sorts of interesting conversation about names and language and religion and where we come from and where we're going and i just want you to be aware of it because this is that sort of space for me where i don't feel alone anymore on my spiritual journey because of you and to keep you out of this story entirely feels a little disingenuous that being said i'd prefer to not make this some sort of social media circus i'm sure the people that were offended at my genesis reading might not love me being given a hindu name as a spiritual confirmation name but as always here i am this is my story this is what i've been going through this is what i've been thinking about and i don't want to keep you out of it so please do if you would be gentle with it you don't need to share this with the world i'm not putting up press releases again that i have a new name but as a liturgist feel free if we meet in person someday and and you get what i'm saying and you kind of get what the point is and you're comfortable using the name vishnu das you are more than welcome to call me by that name and i will appreciate it because it will call up something in my heart so you're not the artist formerly known as michael gungor no no people can call me michael gunger i mean it's been funny because in in these months i've i've not known how how am i going to relate to michael gunger in fact so much so uh we used to we always used to sign off the program uh this is science i'm mike and i'm michael gunderson i'm michael i'm michael gunger i'm michael gunger thanks for listening i'm michael gunger i'm michael gunger thanks for listening i'm michael gunn is the collapsing set of probability waves known to some egos that are illusions within the universe as michael gunger and in this season you may have noticed it's been a little different aside from science mike and i the podcast team includes michael gunger and i science mike we're happy to host you in this conversation this weekend chester for helping me with some of the music i haven't known like do i really want to like affirm just keep affirming i am michael gunger i am michael uh and so that's been an internal thing for me but where i'm at now i'm fine saying that i can go back to doing that if it doesn't matter to me it's all it sounds right it's it's sounds that call up narratives and i had some tension when i talked with ramdas i had tension with the narrative of michael gunger in both my brain and others but having this name vishnu das for the last eight months that's been part of my life here and there um has actually brought some healing even to the narrative of michael gunger for me where i'm not i don't feel the same tensions as i did i i don't feel like michael gunger like i i love the incarnation and the narratives that i've experienced thus far in my life even all the drama and all the christian music weirdness it's all part of the story and it's a great story um so i i've this name has actually helped me make some peace with some of my earlier narrative [Music] so i'm not running from it michael gunger is perfectly fine to call me but anybody that meets me and wants to speak the secret the secret name that calls up the essence for me that's fine as well it's uh it's a really cool thing to think that there are people who know you as vishnu das that's what's in my phone it is it's true although siri just will have none of it no new desk siri vishnu das is pronounced vishnu das okay from now on i'll say vishnu das [Music] [Music] we'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode of the liturgist podcast and you can reach out to us in the comment section at theliturgis.com podcast you can also reach us at facebook.com the liturgists or on twitter and instagram at the liturgists we'd like to thank madison chandler corey pig and greg nordine for their contributions to this episode one final note this is the last show of this season so we'll be back after a break with more explorations of our world through science art and faith but if you'd like to keep hearing what we're up to in the meantime head to thelidudus.com and click the donate now button to check us out on patreon we have a second podcast there called the liturgist conversation that comes out every two weeks and you can participate in some really great meditations that we make for our patrons [Music] i don't plan on usually saying this but i guess for today i will i'm science mike i'm vishnu das thanks for listening everyone