PZ's Podcast

How does someone who is living, like it or not, in the last third of life, address everybody else who is living in the second third? It's an important question, cuz most of the time it's like two ships passing in the night. An older Episcopal priest used to come up to me about once a week -- he was assisting in a busy parish where I was rector -- and say, "Hey, Paul, relax. You're working too hard. Please, relax." Every time he did that -- and his "intentions were good" (The Animals, 1965) -- I'd get a-fib! Literally, my heart would jump and I'd get a-fib. What this nice man said was kindly intended, but it always had the opposite effect....: a-fib. So hey, how can Hewes Hull, my conversation partner this week, and yours truly say what our experience and our faith has taught us -- mostly through impasse and insuperabilities -- in such a way that it can get through to a normal, busy (i.e., stressed) listener? That is the Question. I think the podcast probably works. And mainly because of a story Hewes tells, from his own life, near the end. Oh, and there's the music, too, and especially the last, eternal track. So, hey, you out there,... Relax. LUV U, PZ

While one was within the second third of one's life, one had all these goals in view, of happy marriage, happy fathering, and (most of all, sadly) successful careering. That was the way it was -- and probably the way it is, at least for some who may be reading this. And in that (now) embarrassing order, too. But at this point it's beginning to look a little bankrupt -- at least the order of valuation. Maybe "superficial" is a better word. So "What Now, My Love?" (H. Alpert/M. Ryder/Sonny & Cher... ad infinitum). Is the last third of life, i.e., for those of us among the "new demographic", disillusionment and moping; or compulsed repetition; or possibly/impossibly "Behold, I do a New Thing" (Isaiah 43:19)? Today, and again next week, my friend Hewes Hull and I will be discussing this (to us, core) theme: What Now, My Love? Is it Marcus-Aurelian grinning-and-bearing it? Or maybe assisted suicide, even? Or again, "Something Better Beginning" (The Kinks, 1965)? Hewes has had a fine career practising law and then in private equity finance. He has an extraordinary wife, Trent, of 31 years. Hewes himself is 57 years of age. (A young man, as I now pronounce him.) His chief hobbies are theology, jujitsu and hunting/fishing. Hope you'll enjoy our conversation. Oh, and I hope you'll LUV the closing track, by... wait for it... Bobby Sherman! LUV U.

Every version or tradition of the Christian Faith offers an objective or corporealized dimension within a person's (longed for) relationship with God. For Roman Catholicism, it is the Real Presence of the Lord within the Elements of Bread and Wine. For pentecostalism, it is the embodied Gifts of the Spirit in miracles of healing and divine intervention, and often an accompanying gift of speaking in tongues. For many Protestants, it is the Written Word of the Bible -- the actual and specific words as dictated by God Himself. Personally, I like all of these 'doors' to experiencing God. During Covid I almost switched to Catholicism because only the Catholic parish where we lived at the time kept its doors open. So I could go there every day and pray. Earlier I had sort of already become a pentecostal Christian, partly because of a vision I received during a sermon preached by a pentecostal pastor. And I have always loved -- treasured! -- the Old and New Testaments as the continuing Word of God to one's hungry heart. Then, too, I have on three occasions seen dead people. Three times I have interacted with people I had known who were now dead. Each time I was being addressed by individuals who were speaking to me from God's Heaven. So Pixie Dust. Like in the Disney Peter Pan, animated - classic - perfect: Pixie Dust. We need Pixie Dust. As Ringo sang in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band": 'I Get By with a Little Help from my (Pixie Dust)'. It's not an optional extra. It's essential. LUV U.

It's been too long but here is my new episode. It started with the second-to-last scene in an 'Outer Limits' episode from 1963 entitled "The Human Factor". Brought yours truly straight to tears. Then we hurtled through time to 1996, to Cliff Robertson's touching redemption at the end of another 'Outer Limits' episode, entitled "Joyride". The combination of these two genius moments equipped PZ to talk about... yes... Anglicanism... and yes... the Episcopal Church... and yes... contemporary parish ministry. But I couldn't go there until my heart was ready. And that work was achieved by Sally Kellerman and Gary Merrill in 1963. Incidentally, I recommend you begin your sermon preparation -- maybe any public preparation -- by getting in touch with your heart. (People aren't really that interested in your mind.) Get in touch with your heart and you might actually convince somebody. Oh, and by the way, I'm an Episcopal minister and still glad to be one. (And we go to a great church.) LUV U.

This is a sort of "marker" podcast -- my 400th. It's kind of my summing up on the subject of human identity and the origin of human satisfaction. The cast cites a recent interview (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/im-a-new-kind-of-christian-jordan-peterson-on-faith-family-and-the-future-of-the-right/) with Jordan Peterson, and do note that the interviewer is almost as interesting as the interviewee I also quote John Zahl's distillation sermon from December 29th (https://events.locallive.tv/events/148984) -- which happened to be Mrs. Zahl's and my 51st Anniversary. The cast finishes with a little James Hilton (i.e., one's current fave) and... a 1978 cover of Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs. You'll see. I want you to think about the origins of your own psychic self. From where does "self-hood" come? Did you create yours? What do you want for yourself more than anything else in the world? What would you do anything to acquire? Oh, and is satisfaction in life about loving or being loved? When have you been happiest? (When have you been happy at all?) "All You Need Is (Be-)Love(dness)". Nothing else really matters -- or at least at the start of life (I mean infancy), and also at the end of (mortal) life (I mean death). Oh, and also at every felt point of need you have ever had to face. At the end of the day, a baby, a "disheartened" person (to quote Jackie Wilson from '68), and a dying person need one thing: Love From Outside. And may that Love ever "STAY" (J. Browne, '78). Podcast 400 is dedicated to Mary Cappleman Zahl.

Everyday I see how little I know. Everyday I see how little I've read, or seen, or heard. (Thought I had, but hadn't.) A prime example of this is Agnes Sligh Turnbull. Have you ever heard of Agnes Sligh Turnbull? (You probably have.) She wrote very successful novels in the 1940s and '50s, and later, too. But she was an optimist, she was a Christian, and she believed in redemption. (So she's more or less been "cancelled" by critical opinion, even tho' she sold millions of novels in her day.) Now you've got to read Agnes Sligh Turnbull's 1947 novel entitled The Bishop's Mantle. It's the inside story of a young Episcopal rector in a northeastern city -- "inside story", in that the author gets inside the heart and mind of a sincere man of God who is still completely human and vulnerable. Almost every page of The Bishop's Mantle has a moment of total insight into what it is like to be parish priest. The man happens also to be in love with a high flying young woman who is reluctant to marry a "parson". That problem needs to be worked out. Oh, and one more thing: The Bishop's Mantle describes a denomination that was, prior to 1979, about 90% "low church". The church observed by Agnes Sligh Turnbull is just so refreshingly not high church. (I think you'll love that aspect.) Oh, and it's 'Sligh' not 'Sly' -- tho' we sure loved Sly back in the day. LUV U.

There is a roughly four-minute sequence in the middle of the first Superman movie (1978) that hits the stratosphere of movie emotion -- and of real-life emotion, too. It is the scene in which Superman takes Lois Lane's hand and flies her leisuredly over Manhattan Island. As the pair glide over the city, Lois Lane (played by Margot Kidder) confides her innermost thoughts to the viewer: she has fallen completely in love with Superman, and that is because he has singled her out as the object of his most personal regard. The sequence is monumental in feeling and memory because it sums up the sequence of romantic loving -- and also the sequence of God's loving of poor us. Because Superman has singled out Lois for his most tender regard, she responds with her entire self. She voices her feelings in this way: "Here I am like a kid out of school. Holding hands with a god. I'm a fool. Will you look at me? Quivering. Like a little girl shivering. You can see right through me. Can you read my mind? Can you picture the things I'm thinking of? Wondering why you are all the wonderful things you are. You can fly! You belong in the sky. You and I could belong to each other. If you need a friend, I'm the one to fly to. If you need to be loved, here I am. Read my mind." What this demonstrates is that love does not start with loving someone, but rather with being loved by someone. I need to be the object of someone's love before I can actually love someone myself. Now capitalize the 's' - S - and the analogy to the Christian Gospel becomes palpable. Instantly palpable! All love begins as One-Way Love: not love from me but love to me. So go now and look up that sequence in Superman from 1978. It's easy to find. And it's the truth of life. And not a truth of life. But the truth of life. LUV U.

I so want to connect with my hearers when I preach or speak. Yes, one has a Message -- the One-Way Love of God embodied in the Compassionate Christ. But if it doesn't really connect with the listener -- with the sufferer! -- it is not able to do its job. J.B. Priestley (d. 1984), who had basically lost whatever faith he had been exposed to as a child, spent a lot of years looking for... something. He would gladly have capitalized "something" (i.e., Something). In 1960 Priestley wrote specifically about the decline of Christianity in the West. He wrote that the only way the "Church" could 'come back' -- which he would have welcomed given the cultural despair and nihilism he observed everywhere around him -- was to get through to the unconscious. Christianity's original, great and contagious strength had been to reach individuals in their depth/s. I agree with JBP. For many years Mary and I have listened to sermons that are sincere, sound theologically, and well prepared exegetically. Yet we often leave the service untouched, un-addressed, un-healed. As Herr Kaesemann said once, after listening to a sermon during a conference at Yale Divinity School: "Es gibt keine Anrede!" In other words, the Word has to address me in the deeps. The preacher's "deeps" need to be calling out to mine (Psalm 42:7). This cast draws on Priestley's "Presence of the Absence"; a John Wyndham paperback from 1953; and -- wait for it -- Spanky & Our Gang. The last track, from 1969, is IMO pure perfection. Oh, and "Out of the Deeps" is dedicated to Mary Zahl, whose recent talk to the Women of the Advent in Birmingham, entitled "The Things That Remain" (https://talkingbird.fireside.fm/400) is as fine as anything I have ever heard her present. LUV U.

I'm thinking about ecclesiology today. Rarely do. But a combination of J.B. Priestley's "low anthropology", a couple of recent lightning bolts from outside space and (present) time, and a fresh glimpse of the touching statue of "The Compassionate Christ" outside Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham: Well, they got me thinking of what the Christian Church is centrally and anchoredly about. Add to that the third verse of Lou Christie's number-one song from 1966, "Lightnin' Strikes"; and it's probably all there. One's ecclesiology, I mean. "Dangerous Corner" by J.B. Priestley, which was first performed in London in 1932, unmasks the human tragedy of self-serving, manipulation, and deception in about as unrelieved a manner as could be imagined. The last scene but one, which leads directly to a character's suicide, surely rips the curtain off our world's endemic conspiratorial malice. It is almost a pure enactment of the "low anthropology" that is endemic to us. But the playwright offers us no hope. He actually, explicitly dismisses the antidote of faith in God. I so want to enter that scene myself, speaking sincerely and personally, and address the desperate "hero". He's got it mostly right, you see; his diagnosis is accurate. But we believe in God -- and not a "deistic"/hands-off sort of force, but rather: Pure Empathy, Pure Sympathy, Pure Mercy, Pure Grace. Our ecclesiology, therefore, is the Church, in whatever form, as Embodiment of One-Way Love. That's PZ's ecclesiology. That's Lou Christie's "chapel in the pines" (1966). That's the churches of refuge at the end of War of the Worlds (1953), that's 'Mr. Carpenter' in Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), that's the Isaiah 2, verse 4 climax of The Colossus of New York (1958), that's the hymn chorale at the end of The Space Children (1958), that's the Christ-figure at the conclusion of The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). And so it goes. When the curtain is ripped away on life as it really is and people as they really are, all that's needed is One Helping Hand, One "Next Voice You Hear" (1951), One... Man from Galilee (Ocean, 1971/Elvis, 1972), One Jesus Christ Superstar. LUV U.

Can't believe I got to see Irma Thomas in person a few years back. (Saw The Stones performing the same song in 1965 on their first American tour. Have to pinch myself that that really happened. But it did.) But time is on my mind just now. This is for two reasons: 1) Two old friends died under conditions that felt like almost the polar opposite of what we would have expected when we were all very young together. There was so much promise and so much hopefulness and so much enthusiasm and so much pluck. But then 50+ years later, aloneness and physical distress and self-despair. Terminal, in fact. Who would have thought? Not I. So I'm seeing each of these old friends as they were when they were 20, then comparing their circumstances at death decades later. Time was not on their side. 2) One of my heroes, J.B. Priestley (d. 1984), wrote plays about this. Especially his 1937 masterpiece Time and the Conways. He tried to understand the meaning, the constituent elements, and the implications of time, and us. I think he came very close. (Time and the Conways, incidentally, was filmed, and very well, in 1985. You can see it right now on YouTube.) Oh, and just to show everyone that time really doesn't matter, within eternal perspective that is, I've put at the end of the cast the absolute best cover version ever recorded of Irma Thomas' famous song. You'll see. Or rather, you'll hear. LUV U.

Every day these days I seem to find out something important that I didn't know before. For example, that Burton Cummings has just released a new album. Or that one of Joe Dante's favorite movies is a Spanish religious satire released in 1995. Or... that The Fantasticks is really good! Or that the creators of the latter wrote an uncommonly powerful musical about a Christian martyr. As I say, every day is a rebuke to one's supposed deep bench. This podcast looks at the abreactive power of music and the aspirations of live theater to get through to our real selves. Like a sermon is meant to do! The vehicle is the off-Broadway play entitled Philemon, which first opened in 1975 and ultimately ran for about 55 performances. The lyricist was Tom Jones and the composer was Harvey Schmidt. Here, in Philemon, two mainstream Broadway artists tried to encapsulate the story of a radical Christian conversion in Third Century Antioch, and with just seven performers and maybe two+ instrumentalists. Funny thing is, they succeeded! Sure, it could be cut by 40 minutes (!). Sure, the theology is a little sketchy, tho' entirely well meaning. BUT Philemon manages to capture the abreactive/cathartic form of "instant/automatic psychoanalysis" by which a converted person goes from death to life in concrete terms. Philemon manages to get under the skin of Herr Moltmann's Tod-Auferstehung (i.e., Death-Resurrection) dynamic -- which IMO is the true dynamic of life. (We are in Frank Lake territory, but it's Greenwich Village and it's 1975.) Oh, and the concluding track embodies the failure of the Law to create the response it intends -- Motown-fashion! LUV U.

Eliot's line from 'East Coker', "Old men ought to be explorers", never gets... old. It is inspiring, counter-intuitive, awesome, and, yes, within our reach. And everyone's -- not just that of "old men". But I never understood it -- really -- until I met Los Straitjackets: their music, I mean. How did Los Straitjackets "shine a light" (CCR) on Thomas Stearns Eliot? Well, they did so because it doesn't take many listens to realize that Los Straitjackets are often at their best in the last 40 seconds of each track. At first you hear a fairly predictable riff on a familiar song, but then, in the last verse -- sometimes in the last 28 seconds -- they explode, and the song goes through the roof. Listen to "Christmas Weekend", which begins this cast; or "Linus & Lucy", or "Fury", or "Tempest" (which ends the cast), or "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah", or "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer (!), or... About 70% percent of their songs catch fire at the very end. Now, if I want to be a T. S. Eliot kind of a man -- and play my life like Los Straitjackets play their songs -- what do I do? What makes this happen in one life, such as yours or mine? The answer to the question comes in -- are you ready? -- the last third of this podcast. The images are (1) putting your life on the right foot (i.e., death/resurrection) rather than on the wrong foot (i.e., action/consequence); and (2) assimilating the negativities of your "Voyage of Life" (Thomas Cole, 1842), which can only really happen if you are in the presence of the Compassionate Christ (Bertel Thorwaldsen/Church of the Advent, Birmingham, 1966). Without God's Mercy (as in "The Green Pastures", 1930) it can't happen. Within God's Mercy, it can happen. In the blink of an eye. I never met T.S. Eliot. Would sure love to have. But I did meet Los Straitjackets! Really did. They all autographed my copy of their single, "The Sox Are Rockin'". One's still speechless. Wouldn't you be?

Mockingbirder Joey Goodall recently composed a public note of praise for 'PZ's Podcast', and his very act motivated this caster to record a new one. Joey's approbation instantly created within me the desire to put some fresh thoughts out there. Instantly! That's the way love works -- which is to say, "We love" (i.e., embody the fruit of outreach to others) "because He first loved us" (i.e., embodied one-way Love in our direction). Herr Goodall's endorsement instantly and spontaneously birthed the effect of my immediate response. Today's cast begins as an appreciation of a Joe Meek track from the days (in 1957) when he was not a record producer but just a lowly engineer. Yet even then, Joe was so possessed and inspired by Genius that his hand is all over this track. (You'll hear what I'm talking about. It comes in the last 30 seconds.) But my Joe Meek appreciation is just a set-up to what I really wish to say, for the cast is really about Prior Love (Stevie Winwood, 1986)! The cast concerns the Center of Christianity, God's one-way love for us confused and seduced racketeers. Oh, and that is not one of three or four key affirmations. No, it is The Center of everything. It stimulates other ideas and other principles and other consanguine affirmations. But it is the Center. Moreover, it is uniquely presented by -- are you ready? -- by the clumsy character named 'Ginnie Moorehead' in the movie Some Came Running (1958). Shirley MacLaine plays her. And 'Ginnie' oddly but perfectly embodies the sure and true character of One-Way Love. Which is anchored in Christ's Love. It's not a stretch. Today's podcast is dedicated to David Babikow.

I often think about persisting impasses and persistent patterns in life. How can you "live with" -- handle -- habitual defeats, whether from outward circumstance or inward personality, without wanting to throw yourself overboard; or, as Herr Moltmann used to say, without wanting to turn in your train ticket and get your money back. Seems there is almost always one thing, one situation, one frailty, which just won't go away. St. Paul talks about this in Second Corinthians 12 when he invokes his own "thorn in the flesh", which even a three-times repeated prayer for release has failed to take away. Then he hears the Lord say, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness." Paul therefore concludes: "When I am weak, then I am strong." I believe this. And not because one has come to idealize or enshrine persistent weakness for its own sake. But rather because I have seen God come in, time and time again, when I have given up, or rather, been forced by circumstance to give up. In this episode I invoke a movie from 1942, entitled The Big Street (starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, and based on a story by Damon Runyan). The Big Street is an almost perfect instantiation of St. Paul. A character goes down to the lowest possible point of weakness and then discovers a kind of triumph (within one-way love) that not only moves the viewer, but elates the viewer. You are literally weeping and exulting at the same time! There's even a secondary character at the end who puts our bi-focal reaction into timeless words. (See The Big Street.) If "I must decrease", as it says in John 3, Verse 30, then at the exact same time, "He must increase". Personally, that has proved consistently true in my own life. "Let me take you there, 'cause I'm going... to... Strawberry Fields". One now sees the tragic element within one's life ... optimistically. This cast is dedicated to Brent White, man of God and true original.

John Zahl recently said that God seems to be interested not so much in preventing our suffering as in redeeming us from it. (I might add, through it, even.) My long friendship with the theologian Jurgen Moltmann, who died June 3rd at the age of 98, began with a somewhat dramatic "happening" that lines up with JAZ's statement. This new cast describes what happened. When I went to Tubingen in early 1992 to begin doctoral studies in theology there -- with the warmest sacrificial encouragement of Mary, our three sons being "in tow" -- I got there only to find out that the actual man with whom I had hoped to study was pretty cool about the whole thing. He was perfectly nice, but it turned out his English was not up to his own standard. So he was (moderately) happy to help overseas students who came from other universities but was reluctant to take on a foreign student "full time" on his own ground. He was just cool -- in temperament, I mean. I did not know where I stood. In any event, Herr Moltmann observed this; and one day, during a kind of barbecue in his garden, when he saw that I was wrung dry from studying Hebrew durch Deutsch and was also receiving little encouragement from the other Great Man, he piped up and said this: "Paul" -- addressing yours truly by his first name was a wonder in itself within that setting at that time --"Paul, I like you. He won't help you. Forget about him. I will take you on, and yes, it will be about Justification!" Herr Moltmann added the last sentence because he knew that I was not "about" his own celebrated specialty, the Theology of Liberation. He knew that I was really not "about" any _of his principal interests. But that didn't seem to matter. Apparently _I mattered. Jurgen -- as he wanted me to call him forever and ever, amen -- never stopped helping me. And helping Mary, and helping John, and helping David, and helping Simeon. In fact, we made it! Our whole family made it. Herr Moltmann (Jurgen!) was the subject of Glenda's "Run to Me", and I was the object. One is beyond thankful. Forever. p.s. You can respond to the fundraising appeal by clicking here (https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/WebLink.aspx?name=E353807&id=2).

Now "here's a howdy-do" (The Mikado, Gilbert & Sullivan). How does Joe Meek shed light on that ascendant movement -- and it still is ascendant -- within New Testament scholarship and interpretation? Let me say how. Admirers of Joe Meek's amazing productions like to say that he was way ahead of his time in terms of technology and recording innovation BUT that the songs themselves, almost all of them, in their many hundreds, are sentimental, corny and juvenile. But they're not! They may sound that way, but just listen to the words. They're about "guys and gals", the denizens of Grease and also of To Sir, with Love, and -- wait for it -- everybody. None of Joe's songs -- not a single one, except maybe, at the very end, one, entitled "It's Hard to Believe It" -- are about issues or groups or themes. Every song Joe ever chose to produce is about love: love gone wrong, love gone right, love fulfilled, love disappointed, love obstructed, love enabled. The evidence for this preoccupation is in the lyrics -- and oh, about 99.999 % of them. The same is true in relation to the New Perspective on Paul. The evidence that that movement is founded on an imposed "story" or paradigm, is overwhelming. That is, if you actually read the Letters of St. Paul. Or the Book of Hebrews, from start to finish. Christ came to give us a New Covenant, not a sort-of "expanded" version of the Old. The Old is passed away, behold the New is come. For years and years, I have tried to say this. (One is instantly accused of "supercessionism" if one says it. And that seems to end the argument. But the accusatory term is arbitrary, linguistic, and freighted.) The evidence of the New Testament is in fact overwhelmingly contrary to the evisceration of Grace that has been dynamized by the New Perspective. Joe Meek underlines this. His lyrics confirm it. A little "icky" at times they may be, but relationships that strive for mutual love can also be icky. Joe's songs mirror an odd truth: life is about individual men and women who are trying to find... belovedness, and therefore love in return. Dear New Testament interpreters, read the Letters of St. Paul. Read the Letter to the Hebrews. Read the Gospels -- all of them. And read 'em again in the light of Joe Meek! The subject and meaning is staring you in the face. LUV U.

Consideration of these (thousands of) new "Tea Chest" tapes from Joe Meek is such a blow to old assumptions. For example, I thought I knew his music pretty well. Even dedicated a book to him once, despite his having been dead since 1967. So now come out a Ton, a TON of new recordings by the Man Who Heard a New World. And almost all of them are fine. Many are actually spectacular. They have been sitting in cases, possibly deteriorating and entirely un-heard, for 57 years. "Self Portrait", performed by Glenda Collins -- and this cast begins with her solo a cappella rendition of the song -- is beyond profound. It almost says the entire Bare Essentials of what it is to be a human being. I would only root the singer's vision of herself in God. Funny thing is, I think she would have, too. I am certain Joe would have. (He was a believer, and grew up in the Church of England. He is interred at the parish church of his childhood.) We know very little, and whatever we do know -- really -- comes from outside ourselves. We know one thing, which we rarely know we know: we each need love, individual love for each one of us in our individuality. Everything else is "like the chaff which the wind blows away". Joe Meek, the Tea Chests, and his lightning-like inspirations -- they are a part of the "staff of life". LUV U.

The new release of hundreds of Joe-Meek tapes and tape-excerpts from the "Tea Chests" of yore is a fresh flashlight into the nature of reality within this broken/fallen world. Did any of us have any idea of how much good material is contained within these acetate tapes that were packed up in the aftermath of Joe's horrible death? Probably not. We either feared that the tapes had deteriorated over many decades of storage OR that the substance of them would disappoint us. Neither fear proved true! The surprise-factor within almost everything Joe Meek recorded is without equal. Everything -- and I mean, everything -- he touched came off strange, oblique, jaw-dropping, unexpected, contradictory, and memorable. His artistic achievement -- maybe like Mozart's -- reveals ceaseless inspiration from outside himself. His work is Sibylline. Now that the tea chests are giving us a chance to hear again, to hear anew, Joe's "New World" (1960), the triumph of "our" world, its flesh, and its devil over God's fire and Truth is seen through anew. All the world's "narrative"-making collapses in the light of Joe's uncommon fire. The Bible is confirmed, the New Testament is revealed, the fecklessness and "Wheel in the Sky" despair of everyday human life that is lived on its own terms -- all of that is lit and revealed anew. And, dear listener, do not forget to listen to the next cast. It is entitled "Self-Portrait". LUV U.

It was quite arresting, decades ago, when a young artist in New York City told me that, despite appearances -- she came across as confident and hopeful -- she felt inside herself as if she were an egg that had been hurled against the wall, broken in a hundred pieces and dripping down the white paint. In other words, she was "Shattered" (Rolling Stones, 1978). But you never would have known. Not in a thousand years. Gosh, I learned something that day. As in, appearances can deceive. As in, things are often felt more strongly than a person wants to let on. As in, "in bref", things inside are considerably more serious -- let's say, wounded -- than you (or anyone else) would ever wish to let on. This cast describes the human condition as more serious than we sometimes imagine -- maybe than we ever imagine. At least until it happens to us! ABBA makes a fresh appearance, via the refrain to "S.O.S."; and Rudyard Kipling, too. T. S. Eliot wrote once that some of Kipling's short stories feel divinely inspired. "On the Gate" may be one of them. You decide. Dear Egg Hurled Against the Kitchen Wall: I am with you. More importantly, He is with you. He doesn't turn away. (This eggman has experienced that Miracle himself!) LOL

I keep hearing the word "nimble" these days. It comes up in relation to declining and therefore merging church institutions, in which a press release declares that the sale of a church property or the merger of two diminished churches or dioceses will now enable the Church to be more "nimble" in relation to community outreach or the desire to build bridges to the world. What the word hides is institutional attrition. It is a way of putting a brave face on empirical defeat. (It's a little like the adjective "nuanced". Watch out.) I saw so clearly at the recent Mockingbird Conference that the renewal of the Christian Church is not tied to a horizontal strategy or even a quality of enterprise. The renewal of the Church consists in its re-affirmation of the One-Way Love of the Gospel of God. The pain of individual experience is so widespread that all it takes is a word -- a pastoral "position", we might say -- of empathetic attentive love for the person in pain to be helped beyond measure. Because the word of empathy and compassion is the Word of God's Grace. One saw this in almost innumerable one-to-one conversations at the Mockingbird Conference. (Didn't you?) Personally, I could not feel less "nimble" -- tho' you may remember that I was a total jock in PZ's school days! The fact is, helping is not about nimble. It's about One-Way Love and the Divine Compassion for sufferers in all shapes and sizes. That's the ticket. Oh, and even if Noel Coward was a committed agnostic, the scene between disconsolate mother and ghostly son in Scene Two of Coward's play "Post-Mortem" (1930) touches on the Greatest Thing in the World. I don't think he ever wrote a greater paragraph than the speech which the grieving mother makes to her ghostly son. LUV U. (And it's not "complicated".)

Mary Zahl was recently the guest on an episode of a podcast known as "The Brothers Zahl" (out this summer). The subject of the cast was parenting, and I can think of no better illustration of a good parent. Mary listed three core themes of enduring motherhood/fatherhood that feel utterly right to me. They are (1) complete dependability when your child is little; (2) no control or pressure when your child is growing -- let them or her pursue their own interests; and (3) try to detach from your grown child's life most of the time, tho' not always. Sometimes -- if very occasionally -- you may have to intervene. I was awed by my wife's reflections, the mother of our three grown sons. I also couldn't help theologizing a little, for each of her three themes has a direct relation to the Christian Gospel. (1) mirrors the One-Way Love of God's Grace. (2) suggests the continuing solution of Grace to the problem of Law. (3) connects the "Eastern"-sounding insight of non-attachment with the Christian fact of God's Incarnation -- God's personal intervention in this septic world. This cast is also a sort of pre-op moment for the Mockingbird Conference, which begins this Thursday in Manhattan. Do join us if you can. Mary and I will be there, and hundreds of others, too. I'll speak about parenting, tho' Mary (by my side) is the best authority on that front. This cast is dedicated to Larry Brudi and Bob Smith, and reverentially, to Dickey Betts.

I wonder if you are ever struck by the ubiquity of this phrase at the end of every checkout line in the known universe: "Do you need a receipt?". Or, in grocery stores, "Find everything you were looking for?". Or, again in every cell-phone (business) call on earth: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" In an earlier day, it might have been: "Paper or plastic?"; or, even earlier, "VHS or Beta?" I believe these everyday reflexive questions are an expression of the World, the Flesh and the Devil's active desire to shut down anything that might resemble or enable a real exchange between persons. In this cast I tell some stories of interchanges at the 'cash point' in which the reflexive words of the cashier suddenly fell apart, and the real person came through. The truth was out! Now here's an either-or statement: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue. I used to think that was an overstatement, and should be diluted to something like: Most people at some point in their lives find themselves sitting on an engrossing inward concern that they are reluctant to share with anyone else. But experience has taught me the further truth: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue. You the Listener will need to decide what you think about that. But one thing I do know and for absolute sure: The answer to life is not bound up with the question of whether I need a receipt. LUV U!

You can't help noticing, if you study Soviet-Era Iron-Curtain sci fi illustrations and posters -- an activity which I feel sure governs your every waking minute -- that there are ZERO aliens or extra-terrestrial forms of life to be seen. The Soviets and the East Germans, who did in fact excel in graphics concerning space exploration, never ever bring UFOs or alien inhabitants of other planets into the narrative, either visually or narratively. Yes, maybe Tarkovsky "un tout peit peu" once, but he was exiled pronto from his homeland. There is a connection between the mandatory and aggressive atheism of Communism and the definite exile of any trace of openness to extra-terrestrial life. It's just an observable fact. So while you may enjoy Iron Curtain sci-fi for its pragmatism and occasional heroism, it is also totally un-cool, un-fun and un-hopeful. Where would you and I be without the possibility of answers that come from outside ourselves? As I say in the cast, relevant to a recent movie review of an old (but now Blu-Rayed) "film noir", nihilism, whether New or old, is ultimately suicidal. It is also self-sufficient in principle and therefore a crash-landing in real life -- with no survivors, by the way. So, hey, keep your mind open. Keep your heart open. And moreover, as Holy Week really teaches, God is Good; We Are Not Alone; and everything has a Purpose. LUV U.

I'm trying to put into words the core principles of accessible Christian theology. Not mentally or intellectually accessible, but feeling-accessible -- heart-accessible -- and therefore actually and experientially accessible! Karl Barth promulgated what was called a "theology from the top down". He saw himself as opposing theologies "from the bottom up". But it was a false dichotomy. We start from where we are -- and in base-level terms, where our hearts live (and die, sometimes daily); and then we are in a position to listen to Hope that travels from the top down. Theology, in other words, is neither from the top down (solely), i.e., entirely vertical; nor is it from the bottom up (solely), i.e., entirely horizontal. Christian theology is Up the Down Staircase! Oh, and I hope you like ABBA. "SOS" is one of the great songs of the Glacial Age. Not to mention Ash's track at the end of the cast, which is moving straight from the top end.

I don't tire of quoting Thomas Cranmer's 'meme' that goes like this: "What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies." That is so true to life. Now note its difference with the sentence quoted in part one of this cast by my old episcopal acquaintance in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed" (M. Leunig). But the heart always loves at speed! Perseverance and steady, thoughtful loving exists, yes, but as a fruit of heart-love: Its fruit -- its consequence -- its effect. And the heart, I say again, always loves at speed. You could almost say this is the secret of life. Cranmer certainly said it. You and I know it from experience. Almost all our core decisions were made "at speed". We didn't think them through before making them. Our heart was "caught", and so it went and "So It Goes" (B. Joel, 1990). When we said 'yes' to God, or when we first said a real prayer, it "Only Took a Minute, Lord'. We didn't "count the cost". We probably should have, but we didn't in fact. By the Grace of God, our hearts were so "warmed" (John Wesley on May the 24th) that the warm lasted. The warm kept heating us as long as life went on. "Listen to the Warm" (Rod McK., 1967). So, um, well, OK, I, ... Listen to your Heart. LUV U.

An old acquaintance, an Australian bishop, has been quoting recently from a popular cartoonist and kind of pop philosopher "Down Under" named Mike Leunig. The bishop quoted an aphorism from Leunig in relation to his long-term hopes for the Anglican Church in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed". When I heard my old colleague quoting Mike Leunig, a 1975 disco hit by Tavares flashed instantly into my mind: "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl (To Fall in Love)". What this sudden flash told me was: It's not true -- it is not true that "nothing can be loved at speed". One's heart in fact always loves at speed. Almost every big decision you've ever made was made "at speed"! The heart moves no other way. The heart loves at speed. Incidentally, people rarely say this, at least where they could be heard. You don't want to be thought to believe that "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl". That sounds un-wise, un-"nuanced" -- the worst possible thing you could ever be regarded as being -- and imprudent. Nevertheless, it is the way life is. When you review your life, how many decisions you made were actually made in a flash, in a lightning-like "AHA" ('Take on Me') moment? Please tell me. You didn't choose the college you went to based on ... thoughtful ratiocination. You didn't choose the profession you chose based on... weighing all the pros and cons. You didn't marry the gal/guy you married on the basis of... thought. (Did you?) This cast is about inward (heartfelt) truth vs. outward (rationalizing) truth. When you are dying, I believe you will only know the former. LUV, PZ

Personally, I think that one's most cherished tunes come from ... oneself. By which I mean that the music you love may say more about you than about the music itself. You hear a Pretenders single and it calls you instantaneously back to the person you were when you first heard it. "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds has the power to instantly recreate the mood you were in when you first saw The Breakfast Club in the theater. Or maybe it brings to mind and heart the person you were with when you saw it! I seriously ask you, Why do you like the music, and especially the rock 'n roll music, that you still like? Why does a particular song have the power to evoke tears -- like in two seconds? Why? Tell me, please -- I'm deeply interested. And why interested? Because I care about you. I care about your heart. I care about the assimilation of both your negativity -- which often has its origin in long ago experience of pain -- and your positivity -- which can boost you up when other things pull you down. How would you begin this podcast? I mean, with what music would you open it? And conclude it? Incidentally, the Spirit of God spoke to me during the recording of it. You'll notice a change which takes place near the end. So I left it in -- the unexpected change -- because, well, it witnesses. LUV U!

I've been thinking some about "borderland" states, meaning extremely strong states of mind and feeling that are not necessarily explicit, but are nonetheless real. Borderland states of mind are when you are in despair concerning your life, or your primary relationships, or simply the way you feel inside. Sometimes the borderland state is positive -- for example, when you fall deeply in love, or when somebody reaches out to you in selfless concern when you are "all fall down". More often, the borderland is negative, and can result in self-destructive acts or even suicide. Rod McKuen (d. 2015) was a magician of the borderland. His songs, performed with that hoarse, breaking voice of his, are almost all addresses to the borderland of human feeling. They are almost all slightly "abnormal", expressing laconic extremes of feeling. Their "kitsch" -- as they are sometimes pigeonholed -- is only as kitschy as extreme states of feeling are kitschy. We want to jump off a bridge or call up everyone we know to announce our euphoria or whisper our disappointment to the ends of the earth. Rod McKuen's songs are hymns to the borderland. You could almost say they are a little "off". But who is not a little off? His songs actually carry huge promise. Note that this cast references a recent sermon from Brad Knight, who spoke from his own borderland to the borderlands inhabited by his hearers. He hit the mark! Podcast 377 is dedicated to the Very Rev. James G. Munroe.

One just can't get over that repeating, concluding forcefulness of Los Straitjackets' music by which they almost always save the best for last -- like in the wedding at Cana, sort of. They light up the sky in the last third -- sometimes even the last fifth -- of their covers and their songs. Like you and me could do! And especially if we could take the heartfelt learnings of the last third of our lives and import them retroactively into our lives' stressful, burdened second third. Now that's what PZ is trying to do for you today. "For you the living/This Mash was meant, too". I am trying to impute what I believe has inspired me in recent times to one's listeners' stressful and demanding adult lives. I can't tell you, as my now deceased colleague in South Carolina used to tell me almost every time he saw me: "Relax, Paul!" He meant well, yes, but it only made me feel always worse when he said it. What I want to say is more like this: "Let me take you there" ('Strawberry Fields', 1967). Let me take you in your now to a place of focus on the Big Things, the Big Heart, the Big Connection/s. I feel sometimes like the character 'Emily' says she feels in the last act of "Our Town". Recently dead, she returns to the scene of her 12th birthday, and longs for her parents and brother -- and herself back then- - to see what's really going on. Not to-ings and fro-ings and "process", but rather real love and real care and real gestures and real connection and real feeling -- real heart! Will you let me be to you today, dear Listener, a surrogate for Emily? "Let me take you there" -- to a life not of obvious burden and exhaustion, but a life of optimism and promise and satisfaction and joy. That's what PZ's Podcast is all about. LUV U.

Heard a sermon last night that cut to the quick. It evoked the image of a "new priesthood" -- a new movement of God in the New Year. The preacher's vision of life and the work of God in the world felt inspired to the first power. And then I thought of Jack Kerouac -- right in the middle of her sermon. I thought of his amazing book, on practical Buddhism no less, entitled Some of the Dharma. Kerouac and the preacher were on the same line. Then something else came to mind: the jaw-dropping last act of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town". Each of these three 'productions', i.e., Paula White's sermon, Jack Kerouac's spiritual diary, and TNW's seminal play: they were all saying the same thing. To wit, the Truth of life lies in every case under the surface of the world. What you see, and even what you think you want to see, is not the Lasting Thing. God's work is infinitely higher than our desires and our ratiocination, tho' at times linked with those things. Ultimately, what God is doing is different from what we think is going on. What a relief! What a redemption (of our pasts)! What a Promise of real action! So I'm hopeful for 2024. Hope you can be, too. LUV U. PZ

On December 29th, 2023 Mary and I have been married exactly 50 years. What a marker for us! (I truly feel it and celebrate it.) This marker-episode concerns the primacy of individual belovedness over any and everything else, including career and professional achievement. This primacy becomes instantly apparent whenever you get sick, or find yourself in the neighborhood of death, or experience a catastrophic fall from perceived security. The cast goes on to echo Meister Eckhart's enduring maxim, that "If you cannot find God, go back to where you lost Him." Or, in everyday experience, If you cannot find belovedness in the marriage you have, go back to the point in time when you did have it, when you did feel it. That works in life-long marriage, and every time! Finally I give a brief synopsis of Mary's and my own marriage, of 50 years, from its "Peter Pan's Ride" beginning, to the "Pallisers Theme" return-to-basics. I sure hope you like this. Podcast 374 is dedicated to Mary Cappleman Zahl, the Girl I Married.

Bishop Colin Buchanan died November 29th in Leeds Infirmary, and there's been almost no coverage of it — not even in the Church press. Astonishing! Colin was one of the most influential ministers and scholars in the Church of England during the 20th Century. Yet it seems today as if he almost never existed. This podcast is a reflection on the anonymity of death. It also references Robert Blair's superb poem from 1743 entitled “The Grave”, together with the sublime illustrative plates that William Blake created to accompany the poem. And, believe it or not, this is a Christmas podcast! The cast is dedicated to the Very Rev. Laurie Thompson.

This Christmas podcast is in honor of Mary's and my 50th Anniversary, which comes on December 29th. She and I are both in thankful awe of having made it thus far. And happily! To me this is worth celebrating. The cast sets out two requirements, or better, signs, as I see it, for an enduring marriage. The first is the romantic connection. Our marriage began with that in first place. There simply has to be a romantic (i.e., male-female) connection for the relationship to start -- or, perhaps better, for a relationship to be able to turn towards marriage. And then, once married, you find yourself needing at almost regular intervals to return to that initial romantic foundation. It is not enough for him or her to be my "best friend". That is certainly true -- Mary is my best friend! -- but the romantic element is prior. Friendship is not marriage. (This is why, incidentally, boys and men wince to the core when a girl or woman tells them they want to be just friends. And believe me, even when your husband hears you saying that he's your best friend, he seizes up inside. He won't tell you that, but his heart is stopping the minute you say it. Even tho', as I report, he is in fact your best friend.) So point one of ""We've Only Just Begun" (1973) is to underline the priority of the romantic connection over all else. (This is true, believe it or not, even when you're 75.) The second foundation stone of an enduring marriage is faith in God. Natch', you may see the specifics of that in different terms from those of your wife or husband. He may be reacting against Five Point Calvinism and you may be reacting against Baptist rules concerning conduct. But a shared root-implanted faith in God who is "Higher Than I" is indispensable for the navigation of problems. For the record, Mary and I have read the Bible and prayed together every morning early for almost all the years of our marriage. It's not a law, and it's not even a recommendation. But it's an observation. I don't know where we would be -- especially in the stressful times -- if we hadn't had a shared faith in a personal God. Like Mary's totally enchanting smile (and the response it created in me -- in the Fall of l969, in fact), Mary's openness to God was core for me. It is still core for me. Oh, and listen to the closing track, a Christmas track of the highest magnitude. Do give it time until... that last third (per usual) with these artists. Merry Christmas to us all, and Happy Anniversary to my wife of 50 years, Mary Cappleman Zahl. This cast is dedicated to our three sons: John A. Zahl, David W.F. Zahl, and Simeon McLean Zahl.

That's a fun movie, from 1976, in which a group of Victorian English people are mistakenly rocketed into inner space, right down to the core of the earth. (What they find, well, you can probably imagine.) But the title and the premise are good: There's newness to be found at the center of the earth -- our earth, our core. This is the heart of the Christian Faith. God will always speak to beleaguered humans, but rarely until we get to the earth's core. The core is where we live; the core is where our "Heart and Soul" (Cleftones, 1961) feel (as one); the core is where our pain comes undisguised, unmasked. There, in the core, is where we meet God; or better, where the Saving God meets us. The cast circles over 'Theron Ware', 'Babette', Lloyd Bridges as 'The Loner', right over to Rod Serling's superb "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar". But we are "Circl(ing) for a Landing" (Three Dog Night, 1968). I can never rest until we land -- land at the Earth's Core. Merry Christmas to you all, and God Bless Us Every One. Podcast 371 is dedicated to a true fellow traveler, Tom Agricola.

When I survey... not the Wondrous Cross, but the world as it's currently going, it's hard not to despair. So many things seem and feel wrong -- are wrong. Providentially (as I see it), I've been directed back to Rod Serling. He was so focussed on justice, and especially social justice; and also on fate and impassable destiny. But he also believed in One Big Miracle. Rod Serling believed in the Miracle of Christmas! This comes out in teleplay after teleplay, from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Serling honestly believed that One Miracle could change the fallen world. Go back and watch the 1971 'Night Gallery' episode entitled "The Messiah on Mott Street". It's easy to find online (https://archive.org/details/the-messiah-on-mott-street), and is also free of charge. The episode not only enacts a first-class human miracle, but it is also a high point of Jewish-Christian reconciliation in a network TV show. In short, "The Messiah on Mott Street" is a wonder. It will give you fresh hope. And not just hope in 'meta'-terms. But hope for that particular personal insolubility with which you are currently dealing. Oddly, Rod Serling has given me new hope today as I look out on the world. Oh, and read Ross Douthat's terrific recent column in the New York Times entitled, "Where Does Religion Come From?" (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/opinion/religion-christianity-belief.html). It has a Rod Serling quality to it. And a Simeon Zahl quality, too! LUV U.

God spoke to me recently. Not through a mediated form -- albeit it was through another human being. Not through concept nor reading nor paradox nor metaphor nor memory. But right Here and Now! I was truly blown away. It was neither expected (at all) nor on a subject about which I'd been thinking. This podcast gives the outline of what happened. There were even witnesses. In the midst of an otherwise delightful walk down memory lane with companions whom I cherish, one of these companions suddenly uttered some truths so powerful and demanding of attention that we were all suddenly stopped in our tracks. Stopped in our tracks. I still can't believe it happened. Mary's comment, when I told her the story, was simply: "You were sure plunged into very deep waters there." Now they were Good Waters, True Waters, Healing Waters. Moreover, they weren't "nuanced" or "complicated". It wasn't a case of "Both/And". It was a case of straight-up Either/Or. I was suddenly, indubitably JUSTIFIED. Listen to this cast and ask yourself if it's happened to you. Do you want it to happen to you? Do you care? Do you want me to tell you more? (I'll be glad to, and probably in another cast.) Oh, and the closing music is an excerpt from "Jesus Says", by our favorite Northern Irish Protestant rock band, 'Ash'. I just like the riff. And the title. LUV U.

I've been much affected by the pictures of murdered and bombed children from Israel and Gaza in the last week, and found myself comparing these unutterably tragic losses with some of the other issues on which our world is fixed. It almost seems like there's no comparison between the bloody burial sheet of a five-year old child and the concerns that dominate much of public life. So Christ's words in St. Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 23, verse 24 came to mind: "You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel." So much time and mental energy goes into straining out "a gnat" when there's a "camel" (for example the loss of a child) that's the real issue. The more contemporary phrase for this is "elephant in the room". I thought about the way I seize on making the bed every morning. One's ridiculous mental focus on that "gnat" of a task has become habitual. It is almost as if, if the bombs were falling and Mary and I had to get out of the building, I would feel I had to stop and make the bed first. (Are you kidding me?) So the point of this cast is to look at the "camel" that you're really needing and trying -- unsuccessfully, for sure -- to swallow (i.e., digest/assimilate) in relation to the ten thousand gnats that you actually spend your time ... processing. Down with "process" and Up with proportional focus! (Oh, and see that window (https://mbird.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_3610.jpg) in Cadeleigh Parish Church.) https://mbird.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_3610.jpg

If you want to get to the core, the very heart, of a person's -- say, your own -- experience of Grace, ask them (i.e., ask yourself) to tell you about an experience of acceptance or belovedness that came to them at a low point in their youth or childhood. Get them to tell you about that one experience of being loved personally, subjectively, for yourself, I mean, that changed... everything. Almost everyone you know can summon up a story, almost always when they were in a place of despair, when someone, usually unexpectedly, reached out and ... held them. Similarly, ask them (i.e., yourself) about an experience of personal rejection, either as a child or an adolescent, that forever troubled the waters of their life's course. Someone rejected them -- personally, I mean, and not because of an "identity" or ideology, but for yourself personally -- and this has haunted them, like Poe's 'Lost Lenore', forever. This podcast observes the power of personal rejection but, more importantly, the power of personal acceptance. Consider the relationship of 'Magwitch' to 'Pip' in "Great Expectations". (See the 1946 masterpiece movie of it!). Or consider the story I tell at the conclusion of the cast, of a two-hour ride being offered to yours truly by someone way back in 1972. And that, to quote Robert Frost, "made all the difference". These are anchor instantiations of God's Grace in your life. They verify what St. Paul describes in Romans 7, and what Christ spent His life, and death, doing. And then there's Michel Legrand... LUV U!

Written by Jimmy Webb and performed by Glen Campbell, "Our Movie" is a very touching song. It describes a fulfilled marriage from its beginning and right through. It really describes one's whole life in affectionate and thankful perspective. For me the song is pure Phosphorus! In the cast I talk about soul and body, true self and false self, physical life and physical death: the promise of these things and the limitations of at least three of them. I have in mind my own marriage of almost 50 years, yet also the yearning we all have to not be alone. Remember the need for belovedness -- and its direct consequent, loving -- and the need to be connected to another person, which points directly, finally to God: these are not secondary needs. They are primary ones. The cast concludes with a brief hommage to Olivia Newton-John, and also to our old friend and parishioner, Michael Beck(-Taylor). Episode 366 is dedicated, in warm thanksgiving and enduring affection, to David Babikow and Joey Goodall.

So I was in Henley-on-Thames last week and there was this almost hidden bookshop next to a place called "The Ferret". (I kid you not.) High on a shelf there was an old leather-bound copy of Charles Dickens' lesser known Christmas stories. Not the long ones like "A Christmas Carol" or "The Chimes" or "The Haunted Man"; but short ones like "The Child's Story", "The Seven Poor Travellers", and "What Christmas Is As We Grow Older". What these stories all reveal -- for I started reading them on the airplane home -- is an explicit (tho' never didactic nor even artificial) dynamic of Christian Grace and One-Way Love. The author makes it clear in every tale that the core transaction of life in this world is the possibility of new beginning, new birth, resurrected hope, and empathic out-reaching love. Dickens always traces such dynamic beneficence specifically to Christ and His (Christmas) Goodness towards the lonely, the desperate, the poor, and even the rogues. In short, each story in this collection sets out the Whole Loaf. For many years -- many decades, it feels like sometimes -- I was perpetually mining my movies, my novels and my TV shows for implicit Christianity -- implicit Gospel, implicit Grace. And it can be found! But then one day I actually read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and found the Whole Loaf in that celebrated novel. And then one day I read Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection and again: the Whole Loaf. And now I read Charles Dickens' short Christmas stories and again, Behold: the Whole Loaf. Part of the Loaf can be very good. Say, General Public (1980s), Nik Kershaw (ditto), Frankie Goes to Hollywood (ditto). But the Whole Loaf is better. And how the world needs it now. LUV U.

Serving in full time ministry is as stress-full as any occupation can be. You get hit from all sides -- unendingly -- and just when you think things are beginning to stabilize, you get hit again. Plus, there is the in-built transference that is projected on you as a 'father'-figure (if you are male) which keeps surfacing, at least to some extent, in just about every interpersonal exchange you have. To repeat: serving in full time ministry is as stress-full as any occupation can be. I can't prescribe a way-of-being or way-of-doing to help you. (Prescribing rarely if ever works, even if it is accurate and worthwhile.) But I can describe what I have seen that works. I can tell you about the strengthening effects, for example, of The Crawling Eye (1959) -- aka The Trollenberg Terror -- in my own ministry. I can tell you about my fly-fishing colleague in North Carolina, whose pastorate benefits enormously from his serious dedication to that sport. I can tell you about John Zahl's DJ-ing or David Zahl's "Garbage Pail Kids" cards or Simeon Zahl's boxes and boxes of ... Orson Scott Card and friends. These things keep us sane. They are not primary -- the genuine self-giving of a redeemed human being is primary. But they are big-time secondary. You, dear reader and listener, probably have your own big-time secondary interest. I hope you do. If you don't, let me send you a copy of, oh hey, "The New Outer Limits", Season 3. That should get things going. LOL.

The quintessence of one's continuing love of popular culture that embodies heart-to-heart communication is the subject of this cast. What makes a work of popular art "Christian"? Does it have to be explicit to qualify? Or implicit -- and therefore under the radar -- to really qualify? One thing I know is that you have to love the work-in-question, whether a song, a novel, a movie, or a tv episode, on its own terms before you can communicate your particular personal attraction to its Christian element. (Seriously, I had to love Bride of Frankenstein (1935) for its own imaginative sake before I could go after -- and preach on -- the Christ-empathy in the sufferings of Boris Karloff. Similarly, I had to treasure the total coolness of the original "Outer Limits" (1963) before I could take advantage of the explicit sacrificial Christianity in its episode entitled 'Feasibility Study'. In this cast I survey some powerful episodes of "The New Outer Limits" (1995-99) as a sort-of exercise in Gospel interpretation, at least in the way I've tried to do it over the years. But again, remember: You have to like it first -- it has to connect with you heart-to-heart -- before you can theologize about it. Then, however, once it has won a place within your chest, it is ready for the pulpit. Or the breakfast table. LUV U.

It's interesting how far music drives this podcast. Fer sher, I've been "out of pocket" for a month or so, but what drove me to record this new cast was one thing: music. I'd recently heard a section of The Carpenters' single "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" (1977) and was made speechless by Karen C's vocal. One simply had to find a place for it on PZ's Podcast. Then another song came to mind, possibly even more explosive, from the Summer of '68. My friend Lloyd Fonvielle (R.i.P.) had played it for me in an apartment in the East Village. We were basically never the same after that. So I decided to excerpt it for "you, the living (this Mash was meant, too)". Once the music was set, the substance of the cast came down. Two "memes" that I composed recently while sitting on a beach somewhere with Mrs. Zahl seemed worthwhile to present here. Which I have tried to do. One of the memes relates to the unconditional nature of God's Grace; the other, to the exemption-less reach of God's Hand in everything that happens to us. It's a stretch, conceptually, but a requirement for a happy... death. Chest Fever! Listen to the Music (Doobie Brothers, 1972), and everything will probably turn out alright.

Verticality is a make-or-break attribute of the Christian Church. When we put horizontality before verticality, we run out of gas. Always. People cannot "keep up" horizontal good works and outreach if they are not being, as the English say, resourced. I saw this vividly last week. A men's prayer breakfast and Bible study was powerfully taught by a local pastor. He talked directly and winsomely about various problems with which the men present are dealing, in one form or another. I suddenly found myself taking notes. Hadn't intended to take notes, and even the notes themselves were not directly related to the actual content of his message. But I was being exposed. I was a being who found himself in the direct presence of God. When horizontality and even excellent words like "community" and "outreach" become privileged in the church, then the cart can easily overtake the horse. One saw this years ago in Westchester County. A woman from down the Hudson started to attend our parish in Scarborough. I asked her why she was willing to make the long trip from her house on Sunday mornings. She said that her Presbyterian home church had completely exhausted her with its endless calls for volunteers in the community. Then something really happened: her commuting husband threw himself in front of a train one day, and she was instantly widowed. In that moment, and in its aftermath, all the horizontality in the world didn't speak. She needed God. Today's cast ends with one of the great classics of exterior help in the face of interior need. It is probably enough in itself to make you fall down on your knees. LUV U.

I think we probably all need to get "outta gear", at least to some extent. 'Gears' are the attitudes, narratives, and exterior values that shape and define most of what we spend our time doing. We are trying to be successful, trying to win love, trying to be some image of ourselves that someone else has made us covet, trying, basically, to get nowhere fast! When you get sick -- which we all do at some point -- the gears fall off. When somebody breaks up with you -- which happens to almost everyone at some point -- the gears fall off. When you get fired unexpectedly -- which happens, again, to almost everyone at some point -- the gears fall off. Rejection of almost any kind pries off the gears of your life, and they fall off. For me, getting older has tended to feel like I'm getting "outta gear". Moreover, Los Straitjackets are outta gear in over half their covers. The wheels come off at the end of each song -- tho' that turns out to be great. Sparks fly and the music ascends. Like the big black cadillac driven by John Travolta at the end of Grease (1978). There's fireworks followed by Ascension. That's what I am talking about: the inspiration that comes when you get... outta gear. This episode marks a 360 degree history of PZ's Podcast. We're not done yet, but I'd like to give thanks for it anyway. And here's a shout-out, on Mother's Day 2023, to my Bride of almost 50 years, Mary Cappleman Zahl. The cast is dedicated to Mary.