Podcasts about easter sunday

A month after catastrophic floods and glacial collapse swept through Nepal, thousands are still missing and entire mountain communities have been wiped off the map.The Australian's Asia Pacific correspondent Amanda Hodge, just back from the disaster zone, tells Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald what she saw on the ground — including a shelter where 70 children have lost every member of their family — and unpacks the stark contrast between Nepal's response and Beijing's heavily censored silence.Plus: a story that's had almost no coverage in Australia — how Sri Lanka's High Court has just convicted 14 men over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, and why a former president now faces imminent arrest over explosive allegations regarding the attack. Guest: Amanda Hodge, Asia Pacific correspondent, The AustralianGet in touch:We'd love to hear from you! Email us at global.roaming@abc.net.au

It's Thursday, September 24th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark Sri Lanka sentenced 15 men for bombing churches Sri Lanka's High Court sentenced 15 men to life in prison on Tuesday for bombing churches. In this island country off the coast of India in the Indian Ocean, the men participated in the bombings of three churches on Easter Sunday in 2019. Religiously speaking, nearly 70 percent of the 22 million Sri Lankans are Buddhist, 12 percent are Hindu, 11 percent are Muslim, and 7 percent are Christian.  The terrorist group, Islamic State, inspired the attacks which killed over 250 people. The Catholic Church welcomed the convictions. However, leaders are also calling for an investigation into alleged political involvement behind the bombings. South Korea to greenlight Abortion Kill Pill for mothers LifeSiteNews reports that South Korea is set to allow deadly abortion drugs into the country. The government made the announcement last week. Mothers will be able to get Abortion Kill Pills up to nine weeks of their pregnancies by early 2027. South Korea decriminalized abortion in 2019. It delayed legislation on abortion pills due to push back from Christian groups.  United Nations trying to criminalize pro-life & pro-family positions The United Nations General Assembly meeting opened in New York City on Tuesday.  Leaders from around the world gathered to discuss issues like the U.S.-Iran war, the Russia-Ukraine war, and Artificial Intelligence.  Member nations are also considering a proposal to criminalize pro-life and pro-family positions under international law. CitizenGO organized a petition against this which has been signed by over 140,000 people. You can sign it through a link in our transcript today at TheWorldview.com.  In the midst of the foolishness at the United Nations, U.S. President Donald Trump stood tall for common sense and condemned transgenderism at the U.N. meeting.  Listen.  TRUMP: “It is equally unacceptable that, with all the genuine atrocities in the world, the U.N.'s top human rights officials spend their time criticizing the United States for protecting our children from transgender insanity.” Dept of Justice gets two hospitals to stop transgender operations In related news, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that two hospital systems have agreed to end transgender operations. New York University Langone Hospitals and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center will no longer offer transgender drugs and surgeries to children.  Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “Today's resolutions send a clear message: Hospitals that target children in these practices and then fraudulently obtain payment for the procedures will be held to account!” Over 40 hospital systems have ended transgender operations since President Trump began his second term last year. 28 percent of churchgoers say Biblical truth becomes obsolete LifeWay Research released a new survey on what churchgoers believe about the Bible. Most Protestant churchgoers in the U.S. are confident in their ability to understand the Bible and explain it to others. However, most churchgoers also believe that the truth of God's Word can mean different things to different people. And a growing number share doubt or reject Biblical truths.  Specifically, 28 percent said some Biblical truths become obsolete as culture changes, up from 24 percent in 2019. Among churchgoers under the age of 30, 54 percent believe that Biblical truths become obsolete as culture changes But Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Microchip maker joins trillion-dollar club Another U.S. company joined the trillion-dollar club. Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, surpassed one trillion dollars in market capitalization on Monday. The computer chip maker has profited from the growth of Artificial Intelligence computing.  It's now the fourth chipmaker in the United States to reach a trillion dollar valuation. The others are Nvidia, Broadcom, and Micron.   Researchers discovered new species of wild cat And finally, researchers discovered a new species of wild cat for the first time in a century.  It's known as the Tilcayo tiger cat. The feline is spotted and smaller than most house cats. It's been living at a wildlife sanctuary in Bolivia, South America for years. Locals knew about it, but scientists had not identified it as a unique species until now.  Jonas Lescroart with the University of Antwerp said, “Even in groups that are very well studied, like the cat family, apparently there's still a diversity that is hidden.” Indeed, God continues to surprise us with His creation. In Psalm 50:10-11, God says, “For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are Mine.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Thursday, September 24th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Presidents Trump-Xi meet in Washington DC, Sri Lanka's High Court has given long jail sentences to 15 men charged with plotting the 2019 Easter Sunday bomb attacks, continuing trouble from the Indonesian wildfires, and Singapore bans playing loud audio on buses.

President Donald Trump says talks held in New York between US and Iranian officials were productive. Earlier in a speech to the UN General Assembly he threatened to annihilate Iran if a deal was not agreed. Also: the US introduces global sanctions that could ground most Iranian aircraft. A Sri Lankan court hands long prison sentences to 15 men in connection with the Easter Sunday bomb attacks in 2019 that killed 270 people. The British broadcaster Piers Morgan calls for a newly-released book by Earl Spencer about Princess Diana to be pulled from the shelves because of a factual error. Colombia's president sends the army into a city on the Caribbean coast to quell attacks by an armed group there. Scientists warn that the current El Nino weather system hasn't finished setting new records. A Ghanaian entrepreneur turns waste plastic into school desks. And a six-year-old girl sets a new women's world record for solving the Rubik's Cube.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.ukPhoto: US President Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in New York Credit: Toby Melville/PA Wire

Todays headlines include: A $1 million reward has been offered for information about missing toddler Gus Lamont, nearly one year after he disappeared from his family's rural property. Australian Federal Police (AFP) counter-terrorism agents have arrested a man accused of being an ISIS operative. A Sri Lankan court has convicted 15 people over a series of attacks that killed 279 people, including two Australians, on Easter Sunday 2019. And today’s good news: A six-year-old girl from China has set a rubik’s cube world record, state media has reported. Sign up to our newsletters here! Hosts: Emma Gillespie and Lucy TassellProducer: Avegail Matutina Want to support The Daily Aus? That's so kind! The best way to do that is to click ‘follow’ on Spotify or Apple and to leave us a five-star review. We would be so grateful. The Daily Aus is a media company focused on delivering accessible and digestible news to young people. We are completely independent. Want more from TDA?Subscribe to The Daily Aus newsletterSubscribe to The Daily Aus’ YouTube Channel Have feedback for us?We’re always looking for new ways to improve what we do. If you’ve got feedback, we’re all ears. Tell us here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David Letterman was one of the kings of late-night television for years. His offbeat sense of humor gave him a prime spot in America's entertainment constellation for a long time. But one day, suddenly everybody stopped laughing. David Letterman, whose family had a bad history when it came to heart problems apparently, went in for some seemingly routine cardiac tests. Suddenly, this comic king was rushed into surgery by his doctor and given a multiple bypass operation on his heart. The doctor saw major blockage in David Letterman's heart and he took radical action to save him. I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Only Hope For a Dying Heart.” We all have heart trouble—potentially terminal heart trouble—according to God. Even if you have perfect EKGs and cardiac test results, you may very well have the kind of spiritual heart trouble that can only be removed by the greatest Heart Specialist in the universe. Like David Letterman, if you don't allow the Surgeon to take radical action, your condition will be fatal—forever. God's Book, the Bible, says that our heart “is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9). Then God says, “I the Lord search the heart” (Jeremiah 17:10). Man, God knows all the darkness we've concealed from everyone else. His heart tests expose every lie you've ever told, every adulterous thought or relationship, all the anger, all the selfishness, all the prejudice, bitterness, everything you're ashamed of, and everything you wish you hadn't done. It isn't that you don't want to change—that you haven't tried to change—but there's this darkness inside of each of us that it seems nothing on earth can change; nothing on earth that is. In fact, a parent of yours, a grandparent of yours, may have had the same kind of heart trouble—the same sins. Those sins probably hurt you didn't they, and now maybe you're hurting people you love repeating those same sins. Without radical action, we die spiritually from our heart trouble. That's die as in being separated from God and His love forever in a place Jesus called hell. That's the penalty for our sin, but your hope is in this wonderful word for today from the Word of God in Ezekiel 36:26. God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit in you.” God actually says He wants to give you a heart transplant; a whole new perspective on life, a whole new power to change, a whole new eternity. He wants to forgive all the sin and remove all the sin that has clogged your heart for so long. It took His Son, Jesus, dying for your sin to make this miracle possible. And then Jesus walked out of His grave under His own power on Easter Sunday to prove He can give us eternal life. If you'll give yourself to Jesus Christ and trust Him to be your Savior from your sin, the healing heart miracle can begin in your heart that very moment. If you want to begin this life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ - and oh how I hope you do - you need to tell Him that right now. Tell Him, “Jesus, I know that I have sinned against You by running my own life. I know the penalty for that is spiritual death. Thank you for taking that penalty for me. Thank You for rising from the dead and for giving me this chance to begin a relationship with You. I want to, Jesus. Beginning right now, I'm Yours.” If you want that, and you'd like a little encouragement in that direction, go to our website. It's for you for a moment like this. It's ANewStory.com. See, religion can't do this. It can only make you look better on the outside. Jesus will change you from the inside. There's no need to hurt like this anymore. There's no need to go on flirting with eternal death. There is a Savior who loves you and who paid the price so you could have a new beginning today my friend!

Listen to today's top stories, including a woman has been charged with murder after an alleged stabbing in the Blue Mountains, fifteen men convicted over Sri Lanka's deadly Easter Sunday bombings, and Brisbane star Lachie Neale faces missing the AFL Grand Final after a one-match ban. - पश्चिमी सिड्नीको ब्लु माउन्टेन्समा कथित छुरा प्रहारमा एक बच्चाको मृत्यु र अन्य दुई बालबालिका घाइते भएको घटनामा एक महिलामाथि हत्या आरोप, श्रीलङ्काको घातक इस्टर आइतबार बम विस्फोटमा संलग्न १५ जना दोषी ठहर र प्रधानमन्त्री एन्थोनी आल्बनिजीले एआईसँग सम्बन्धित जोखिमहरूको सामना गर्न विश्वका नेताहरूलाई मिलेर काम गर्न आग्रह गरेको लगायत आजका प्रमुख समाचार सुन्नुहोस्।Subscribe to the SBS Nepali podcast here.You can listen to SBS Nepali's live broadcast every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 pm via SBS South Asian on digital radio, on television channel 305, through the SBS Audio app, on SBS On Demand, or via our website. You can also follow SBS Nepali on social media: Facebook, Instagram and X (@SBS Nepali). - हाम्रा थप अडियो प्रस्तुतिहरू पोडकास्टका रूपमा उपलब्ध छन्। यो नि:शुल्क सेवा प्रयोग गर्न तपाईंले आफ्नो नाम दर्ता गर्नु पर्दैन। पोडकास्टमा सामाग्री उपलब्ध हुनासाथ सुन्न यहाँ थिच्नुहोस्।एसबीएस नेपालीको प्रत्यक्ष प्रसारण हरेक मङ्गलवार र बिहीवार दिउँसो २ बजे SBS South Asian मा डिजिटल रेडियोमार्फत, आफ्नो टेलिभिजनको च्यानल ३०५ मा, SBS Audio एपमार्फत, SBS On Demand मा वा हाम्रो वेबसाइटबाट सुन्न सक्नुहुन्छ। साथै हामी सोसल मिडिया प्लेटफर्महरू फेसबुक, इन्स्टाग्राम र एक्स मा पनि रहेका छौं SBS Nepali का नाममा।

Bill Crowder admits to being a Christmas junkie. It's easy to feel the joy of celebrating Jesus' birth. But it's the message of Easter, and Jesus' resurrection, that fueled the growth of the early church. Join the group as Bill leads Elisa and Daniel and Rasool in exploring how and why The Message of Good News is still the transformative truth that Jesus conquered sin and death, and has proven His power to deliver us from eternal destruction. Jesus' resurrection is at the center of The Message of Good News.Receive The message of Jesus' resurrection isn't meant to be celebrated just on Easter Sunday. Every Sunday is Easter Sunday! Jesus' resurrection is what fueled the growth of the early church. The message of good news is still the transformative truth that Jesus conquered sin and death and has proven His power to deliver us from eternal destruction.   As we reflect on Jesus' resurrection, let's remember that the message of good news is the centerpiece of God's rescue plan for a broken world. And it's central to our Christian walk.  As we ponder how the good news of Jesus' resurrection was presented for the first time, let's rejoice knowing the resurrection really is the hinge on which all of history turns. Reflect  How do the events recorded in Luke 24:1–12 still impact our Christian faith not just on Easter but today?  According to Acts 1:1–3, how was Jesus preparing the Eleven during those 40 days? What was He preparing them for? What makes Peter's first sermon on Pentecost that's found in Acts 2:1–32 still so impactful? Why did Peter include Psalm 16:8 –11 in his sermon?  Respond (Use this prayer to start a conversation with God) “Dear God, thank You for sending Jesus to die for my sins. Thank You for raising Him from the dead on the third day! Help me to never take the message of good news for granted. Help me to keep Jesus' sacrificial death and glorious resurrection at the center of my life.” Discover more about the topics in this episode with these recommended resources Mentioned in this episode: God Hears Her Podcast: Understanding Easter  Our Daily Bread Ministries Publishing  Listen: Cross Stations - Week 1  Cross Stations - Week 2  Read: What Is the Easter Event?  Hunting for Resurrection Hope  Watch: Alive and Reconciled | Ephesians 2:16  The Empty Tomb - Matthew 28:6  

Bill Crowder admits to being a Christmas junkie. It's easy to feel the joy of celebrating Jesus' birth. But it's the message of Easter, and Jesus' resurrection, that fueled the growth of the early church. Join the group as Bill leads Elisa and Daniel and Rasool in exploring how and why The Message of Good News is still the transformative truth that Jesus conquered sin and death, and has proven His power to deliver us from eternal destruction. Jesus' resurrection is at the center of The Message of Good News.Receive The message of Jesus' resurrection isn't meant to be celebrated just on Easter Sunday. Every Sunday is Easter Sunday! Jesus' resurrection is what fueled the growth of the early church. The message of good news is still the transformative truth that Jesus conquered sin and death and has proven His power to deliver us from eternal destruction.   As we reflect on Jesus' resurrection, let's remember that the message of good news is the centerpiece of God's rescue plan for a broken world. And it's central to our Christian walk.  As we ponder how the good news of Jesus' resurrection was presented for the first time, let's rejoice knowing the resurrection really is the hinge on which all of history turns. Reflect  How do the events recorded in Luke 24:1–12 still impact our Christian faith not just on Easter but today?  According to Acts 1:1–3, how was Jesus preparing the Eleven during those 40 days? What was He preparing them for? What makes Peter's first sermon on Pentecost that's found in Acts 2:1–32 still so impactful? Why did Peter include Psalm 16:8 –11 in his sermon?  Respond (Use this prayer to start a conversation with God) “Dear God, thank You for sending Jesus to die for my sins. Thank You for raising Him from the dead on the third day! Help me to never take the message of good news for granted. Help me to keep Jesus' sacrificial death and glorious resurrection at the center of my life.” Discover more about the topics in this episode with these recommended resources Mentioned in this episode: God Hears Her Podcast: Understanding Easter  Our Daily Bread Ministries Publishing  Listen: Cross Stations - Week 1  Cross Stations - Week 2  Read: What Is the Easter Event?  Hunting for Resurrection Hope  Watch: Alive and Reconciled | Ephesians 2:16  The Empty Tomb - Matthew 28:6  

After a U.S. fighter jet was shot down over Iran 34 days into the war, the Air Force and American special forces rescued the two-man crew in one of the riskiest and most complex operations of its kind in U.S. military history. In his first interview, one of the rescued Air Force officers speaks to correspondent Norah O'Donnell about his harrowing ejection from the F-15E fighter and spending two days alone on the ground in Iran—injured, stranded, with a bounty on his head and the enemy closing in. 60 MINUTES tells the story of the two-day search and rescue operation that was completed on Easter Sunday, April 5.Presidents have pardoned criminals since the time of George Washington. It's a constitutional power that has been controversial from the start—but perhaps never more so than during the Trump presidency. Lesley Stahl and 60 MINUTES investigate the world of lawyers and lobbyists who have created a new pardon economy.Correspondent Jon Wertheim reports from the sidelines of a Los Angeles Rams' preseason practice and sits down with the organization's highest-profile voices: Head Coach Sean McVay, General Manager Les Snead, and MVP quarterback Matthew Stafford. 60 MINUTES gets an inside look at the Los Angeles Rams, hailed as a superteam and an early favorite to win the Super Bowl.

On Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023, 21-year-old Ellie Baxter went to check on her parents at their home on Mersea Island, off the Essex coast, 64-year-old Carole Baxter and 61-year-old Stephen Baxter. She knocked on the door, but no one answered. Ellie looked through the living room window and saw her parents sitting in their usual reclining chairs. But they weren’t moving – they were both sitting upright in their chairs dead. **This episode is in collaboration with Red Collar, a podcast by Catherine Townsend focused on financial crimes and con artists who kill. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Easter Sunday morning, April 19, 1914, the National Guard and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency set up a machine gun overlooking a Colorado miners' tent colony, murdered union leader Louis Tikas and two lieutenants who came out to negotiate a truce and burned the camp. Eleven children and two women died in one tent alone. They wanted an eight-hour workday and a safe workplace. The word redneck comes from striking West Virginia miners in 1921 who tied red bandanas around their necks to identify themselves against strikebreakers. It is a labor word. On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen National VP Tim Tarrant joins the Labor 132 series to trace those moments in labor history and connect them to the fights happening right now: fall protection still missing at Metra Chicago, clean air fought for in Port Authority of New Jersey tunnels and the May 2026 Long Island Rail Road strike that shut down New York commuter service east of Manhattan for three days. His message on AI and technology: it is a worker's tool and must be used responsibly with workers, not as a replacement for them. Visit brs.org for more.

Knowing Christ starts with counting all as loss in comparison, continues with growing in our knowing, and arrives at ultimately knowing Him face to face.On this Easter Sunday message, Paul recounts how everything he once valued—his heritage, status, zeal, and self-righteousness—he now counts as loss and rubbish compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. True knowledge of Christ is not merely intellectual or a one-time conversion experience. It is a lifelong pursuit that fuels how we live.The resurrection is not just a historical fact we affirm; it is the power that transforms daily life. We press on to know Him more deeply now, even as we look forward to the day we will know Him face to face.Preached by Rodney Brown Jr. at Rhome Bible ChurchWebsite: https://www.rhomebible.org#Philippians #BibleTeaching #RhomeBibleChurch #Sermon #ChristianPodcast #BiblicalPreaching #GodsSovereignty #NewTestament #Faith #ImpartingTheWord #Reformed #ExpositionalPreaching #ExpositionalTeaching #Easter #Resurrection #KnowingChrist

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Sam Hamstra, Lead Pastor of Anthem Church, a fast-growing, multi-ethnic and multi-generational church serving Northwest Indiana and Chicagoland. Anthem became an independent church in March 2020—the same week the world shut down—and has since grown to multiple locations and thousands of people. In this conversation, Sam shares how clarity around mission, values, discipleship, and vision has helped Anthem develop a distinct ministry culture and sustain healthy growth. Does your church know exactly who it is and how it does ministry? Are your leaders aligned around a shared playbook—or are you borrowing someone else's model without adapting it to your context? Sam offers practical lessons on creating organizational clarity that shapes everything from calendars to leadership development. Move from imitation to innovation. // Sam is quick to acknowledge how much Anthem learned from churches and networks that came before them. But even before Anthem launched, he began recognizing that another church's model could not simply be copied and pasted into Northwest Indiana. The local culture, demographics, ministry environment, and people were different. Healthy leaders learn from others while also doing the harder work of discerning what God is uniquely calling their church to become. Clarity takes courage. // Copying an established model feels safe because leaders can see evidence that it works somewhere else. Developing your own approach requires greater faith because the outcome is less predictable. Sam believes churches must have the courage to move into that uncertainty. Rather than endlessly chasing the next successful strategy, leaders should prayerfully identify the unique blueprint God has given their church and commit to it. Define your “way.” // Inspired by Patrick Lencioni's The Advantage, Sam and his leadership team spent roughly nine months working through five foundational questions: Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How do we live? Where are we going? Their answers eventually became what they call “The Anthem Way”—a framework that brings clarity to mission, values, discipleship, spiritual formation, and long-term vision. Mission and vision are not the same thing. // Anthem's mission is to lead people to know Christ and make Him known. That mission remains constant because it flows from the Great Commission. Vision answers a different question: where is God taking this particular church? Separating those ideas has helped Anthem distinguish between the timeless calling of the church and the specific future they believe God is leading them toward. Let your discipleship pathway drive the calendar. // One of the biggest benefits of clarity has been simplifying Anthem's yearly ministry calendar. Instead of allowing every ministry to bring new ideas and events to the table, leaders evaluate opportunities through their defined discipleship pathway. The result is greater focus and consistency. Sam says their annual rhythm has remained largely the same for years, helping both staff and attenders understand what comes next. Boring can be a strength. // Churches often feel pressure to constantly create something new, but Sam has learned that repetition can be one of the greatest drivers of health. Anthem maintains a weekly prayer gathering, predictable discipleship rhythms, and recurring ministry events rather than continually reinventing the calendar. The goal is not novelty. It is consistency around the few things the church believes matter most. Create intentional invite moments. // Anthem builds four major invite opportunities into its annual rhythm: Easter, a Summer Kickoff, Homecoming, and Christmas. These predictable moments give the congregation specific opportunities to invite friends and family. Sam has seen the church grow following these events because people know when the church is intentionally creating space for them to bring someone who may not normally attend. Values have to become behaviors. // Anthem's core values include “We Love People,” “We Choose Joy,” and “We Bleed Passion.” But Sam emphasizes that values only matter when people can see them lived out. Loving people means creating a culture where people can belong before they behave. Choosing joy means approaching ministry with gratitude rather than obligation. Bleeding passion means refusing to settle for the status quo and remaining willing to change as God leads. Use clarity to protect multisite culture. // As Anthem expands to additional locations, the Anthem Way provides clear boundaries for what must remain consistent. Sam is not claiming Anthem's approach is the only way to do church, but he does believe it is important for every one of their locations to understand and embody Anthem's distinct way of doing ministry. That documented clarity gives leaders freedom while protecting the culture across campuses. Check out Anthem Church’s About page to see how their story, mission, values, and discipleship pathway fit together. You can also follow @SamHamstra and @ThisIsAnthemChurch on Instagram. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Really looking forward to today’s conversation. This is a funny one because literally yesterday I was talking to a church in a coaching call. We were talking about this exact issue that we’re going to unpack today. They’re wrestling with these things. I know that this is going to help you. So you’ve tuned in for a great conversation today with Sam Hamstra. Super excited to have him. He and his wife, Taylor, they founded Anthem Church in March 2020 with a vision and heart to lead people to know Christ and make them know known. Rich Birch — Over the past few years they have seen this mission become a reality, continues to grow. It’s a multi-ethnic, multi-generational family made up of thousands of people from all walks of life in Northwestern Indiana, Chicagoland, and beyond. It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country. So honored that you’re with us today, Sam. Welcome.Sam Hamstra — Rich, so honored to be with you. This is a full circle moment for me. I’ve been following you for quite some time. So super honored to be on your on your show.Rich Birch — Oh, come on. That’s I’m glad you’re here. We, we’ve got a lot to learn from you today. So March, 2020, it’s one of those dates that sticks in all of our brains. Cause like, we all know, what were you doing? March 15th, 2020. We all can say exactly what we’re, where we were. That’s a wild month to, to launch.Rich Birch — It’s funny because I keep bumping into people who are telling a similar story. They’re like, we started during the pandemic, right at the beginning, right after that sort of thing. Give us a picture today and kind of from that moment all the way on to today, kind of bring the story, bring us, tell us a little bit about Anthem. Give us a flavor of the church.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so we currently today we’re headquartered in Hammond, Indiana, which when we say Indiana, different people have different thoughts. But we’re we’re actually butting up to Chicago.Rich Birch — Yep.Sam Hamstra — Joking around right now, we’re going to be the future home of the Chicago Bears soon.Rich Birch — Nice.Sam Hamstra — Yeah. But um yeah, so we’re headquartered in Hammond. Our second location is in Merrillville, Indiana, about 30 minutes from here. So currently um our family’s grown to about 2,500 people in English. And we also have a Spanish service as well. And God’s done a phenomenal work over a six-year time frame.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so we did launch in March of 2020. Our first Sunday was the same Sunday the world shut down.Rich Birch — Wow.Sam Hamstra — And so the third week of March was our first service on the internet.Rich Birch — Dude, that’s amazing.Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — That’s incredible.Sam Hamstra — Yes. So in God’s divine plan, kind of underneath our origin story, we we were actually a part of a church in Tinley Park, Illinois. We were a location of that church called Christian Life Center.Sam Hamstra — And our senior pastor and I, Pastor Jerry McQuay, we had been having an ongoing conversation about him making us independent, which is a whole long story. And he decided to really lean into what he believed God was doing in our lives and in this region and made us independent in God’s divine plan. That started in March of 2020. Rich Birch — Wow.Sam Hamstra — And so we transitioned from being a multi part of a multi site church a location up to being independent in March. And yeah, we started with nothing. We didn’t have any cameras, didn’t have anything. I called our media guy and said, do you have anything at your house? And he brought it. Yeah.Rich Birch — What gear you got in your basement? Yeah, that’s amazing.Sam Hamstra — Yeah and he he brought a camera from his house. And yeah, that’s how we started. One continuous shot streaming online. And that was the start of Anthem Church in March of 2020.Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing.Sam Hamstra — So God’s done a great work.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s incredible. That’s cool to hear and fun to see where it’s come, you know, since then. When you look back on that experience, you know, a lot of what you’re trying to define in those early days of a church, you’re trying to bring clarity to like, what is our approach? And part of what we do is you know, we there’s ah there’s, I think, some good copying and pasting. You’re like, hey, here’s the way they do it over here. Maybe we could try a little bit that. But then eventually you start kind of coming up with your own way. You kind of birth your own a approach, playbook, you might call it. Rich Birch — When did you start to feel… ah the kind of transition from, hey, I just want to do it like in this case, either CLC or another church over there. And you started to realize, hey, there’s something unique here at Anthem. And we got to try to define some of that. Talk us through maybe from um a timeline point of view or from a revelation point of view, like, oh, this is kind of things I started to see. Talk us through what that looked like.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so about two years before we launched Anthem, God started to really kind of do a work in our heart just on unique DNA. And we were coming out of like heavily influenced by ARC, Church of the Highlands, and learned so much from there.Sam Hamstra — And we’re seeing just how like clarity really was so important on where we’re going.Sam Hamstra — And so we were coming in there and I just was really praying and seeking the Lord on, okay, this is great. But in our context here, there’s some some differences, there’s some nuances.Sam Hamstra — This is, um we’re over here. what What does this look like here? And so really took the foundation of that and started looking at what does this look like? So when we started Anthem, it was with the thought of, we really want to lean into this unique blueprint of how God designed us and what God has called us to here. Sam Hamstra — So it really started from the jump from from day one. And so but it was a couple years ahead of time to say, OK, this is great. Let’s let’s use this. Let’s we’ve been imitating. Let’s imitate now move to a little bit of innovation and what the Lord would have for us.Rich Birch — Yeah, and there’s obviously there’s like an art and science to that, right? There’s like the, the yeah, insert whatever church, Church of the Highlands is fantastic. They’re doing a great thing, but you’re not Birmingham, Alabama. And you know and so there’s cultural differences, there’s community differences, there’s different resources and all that. That’s like the kind of science-y part of it. Rich Birch — But then there’s the art part of it, which is a little bit more… like intuitives, it’s like vibes, that kind of thing. How did you discern, okay, what are those things that we should be thinking about that are different that you start, or maybe things you started to see, evidence you started to see like, oh, maybe this isn’t working, just importing. Was there evidence of that that you saw?Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so like, and it was like small things, you know, just on approach to Sunday service. Rich Birch — Right.Sam Hamstra — You know, like, hey, this is open door, we don’t do this on Sunday. And we had just been starting to see like pretty early on, we’re we’re reaching lost people through like a hard approach to the gospel.Sam Hamstra — And it was just like, it wasn’t really seeker sensitive. Rich Birch — Sure.Sam Hamstra — It wasn’t, not saying they are, but just, it was just a little bit different in in our context where people were coming from. On the multi-ethnic side, it was just some approaches being super intentional with sounds, sights, all of that in in our context. And so, and even on the discipleship model, you know, groups, what kind of groups are we doing? How are we setting these up?Sam Hamstra — And so it was definitely like these nuances in the different categories, I would say, of discipleship that we started to pay attention to. That that was really the start, I think, of innovating what we have now.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Why do you think so many of us just reach for someone else’s model rather than doing the longer, harder, deeper, like it’s more annoying work to try to define you know our own thing and and then ultimately to document it which we’re going to get to here. what What did you actually do to kind of try to codify that? But why do you think we avoid that as leaders?Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so I think on one end, what’s established, you can see that the model works. And so um there’s great success you’re seeing. I mean, it’s working everywhere. And so I think it’s safe. And so deep down, it’s like this is established. I see it work. And so I can kind of press play on this. And and I know to a level that this this works. Sam Hamstra — And so it takes courage to do something that you haven’t seen before. Rich Birch — Right.Sam Hamstra — And deep, deep down, i think in our hearts, to me, that’s probably foundational thing. It’s like, man, I haven’t really seen this so his is going to require some courage, require some faith to press into the unknown.Rich Birch — Right. Right. Sam Hamstra — And so I do think that unknown word leads to some different decisions sometimes.Rich Birch — Well, and your church is an interesting um example just because it’s grown so quickly. I, you know, even in the… the lead up to it, I was thinking about, you know, the word, the term church plant.Rich Birch — Like, I don’t know when that term, you know, I was talking with a church that had been around for 30 years and they’re a big church. They’re like 20,000 people. And they, the lead pastor was like, well, we still think of ourselves as a church plant. And I’m like, yeah, I don’t at some point you stop being a church plant and just be, you start being a church. Rich Birch — And I think actually this is one of those, one of those differentiations is when you start saying, okay, like we’re going to, we believe that kind of God’s called us to this unique thing. There’s something in there. You built something that I think you call the Anthem Way. Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Rich Birch — Walk us through what that is. How does it function? What is the Anthem Way? Help us understand that.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so this was actually birthed in an odd place. I was reading “The Advantage” by Patrick Lencioni,…Rich Birch — Yeah. Sam Hamstra — …and he was talking about organizational health, and one of the keys is clarity. Rich Birch — Yes.Sam Hamstra — And I had I have kind of, I’m somewhat of a mutt in church in my upbringing. Rich Birch — Love it.Sam Hamstra — So I’ve been in a lot of different environments and seen to a lot of different things. And so it was really just kind of like looking like, how can we just be crystal clear on who we are, where we’re going and different things. And so I read that book and in that book, he actually laid out these questions that he was like kind of pointing to every successful organization needs to answer.Sam Hamstra — And Iwas kind of seeing that with some of the stuff I’ve been hearing. And I’m like, and there’s a couple of missing pieces for me that he pointed to that I thought was so important in church world that I would actually point to that have been some of the biggest things I think that have been what I would call probably the secret sauce of what we’ve seen as far as clarity. Sam Hamstra — Just the separation of something simple, but the difference between mission and vision, you know, why we exist compared to where we’re going. And so, yeah, I read that book and in there he laid out questions that you need to answer. I took that to our leadership team and we wrestled with these probably for about nine months. Sam Hamstra — I’m just going back and forth on wording, how we say things. question by question in five different questions. We answered those and we gave it a name called the Anthem Way. And so that was the foundation, but I want to give credit where credit is due. It came through the book, The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. Yeah.Rich Birch — Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s fantastic. And I, you know, one of the things I love that you’ve hit on here is I’ve talked in other contexts that our vision, well, this is the problem with with vision, mission stuff is it’s like, first you have to have a conversation. How do you define vision? How do you define mission?Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — But the big thing that we’re called to, the big idea, it comes from Jesus, right? We’re supposed to reach people and grow them up in in in relationship with him. All churches should have that as their core. That is at the core of what we do. Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Rich Birch — But getting clear on how we do that, you know, these other questions I’m assuming has helped give you a bit of a more of an edge, something that’s a little bit different. Do you want to rattle through the five questions… Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and maybe some high level, I know we can’t get into all the detail, but kind of high level how you’ve answered it. And then the follow-up I’m going ask you is, which are those couple that have given you what you think are the biggest distinctives around Anthem… Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Okay. Rich Birch — …that kind of that that kind of, um you know, that provide that edge that’s a little different, you think.Sam Hamstra — Yeah. So five questions and I’ll rattle them off quick. But so first one is why do we exist? Mission – the mission question, um which you just said it, I 100% agree, you know, every church really is called to the same thing. Let’s make disciples who make disciples, the Great Commission is still our first priority.Sam Hamstra — And so the way we say that is to lead people to know Christ and make them known. That was something we just prayed into language. We want to share language that people could really rally around. Sam Hamstra — Next question is how do we behave? The values question. We wanted to boil down in our culture those not aspirational values like truly who we are. So we boil those down to three things and wrestle with the language a lot. We wanted them actionable, but we choose joy. We love people and we believe passion. Sam Hamstra — And those all have disclaimers and really feed into our culture of what we call multi-everything. We love people from all walks of life, belong before you behave, and all that falls in there.Sam Hamstra — What do we do? Patrick Lencioni was talking about how that’s really your your business definition, so to speak, not for external use, but internal. We answered that with, we provide defined discipleship pathway.Sam Hamstra — It’s what we do day in and day out. It’s why we wake up in the morning. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We’re not a country club. We’re not here to make money, we’re a church and and this is this is how we do, like what we do to ah to reach our why.Sam Hamstra — How we live is the spiritual question for us. We wanna make disciples. So we wanted to be able to weigh spiritually what a disciple is. And so we looked at Acts 2:42, which we felt like was a really good, definition of these handles on a disciple. And so we have five kind of disclaimers on what we want to see in our people at our church. And we offer resources on those, but from daily devotion to prayer to we share our Jesus story. How do you testify? How do we share? How do we make Christ known?Sam Hamstra — And then the last one is where are we going, which is the vision question. And we’ve we’re wrestling with the timing right now. We currently have a 10 year vision statement, which is just kind of pointers on like, this is where we believe God is taking us as a people.Sam Hamstra — And so those five questions are give us the framework for what we call the Anthem Way. What I’ve seen, as basic as it sounds and in our context. And I don’t know if this resonates with anybody. One of the most frustrating meetings I had in church context was the yearly calendar meeting.Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.Sam Hamstra — And I just felt like everybody was coming every year with their own ideas. Some of them had to do with our mission, some didn’t. And these are just in past experiences. And so it just felt like everybody was trying to, and some, you know, just different reasons, good, bad, indifferent.Sam Hamstra — And what what gave me great clarity was to look at our defined discipleship pathway and say, this is how we create our calendar. And um that’s been one thing that has simplified everything for us.Sam Hamstra — So every year in the last six years, our our yearly calendar flow has been the same. And our people are starting to understand it. The next steps fall within it when we even, you know, baptisms, we’re doing it this time. And So that’s been one thing is basically that sounds like what do we do?Rich Birch — No, no, that’s good. I like it.Sam Hamstra — I found a lot of confusion on that in the past, on like, how do we do groups? How do we have services? To define everything within that in the discipleship pathway, to me has been life-giving, not only for us as a team, but as as our church as well.Rich Birch — Yeah. Pull that apart a little bit more. I think, because I think this is where we fall down on this type of work is, you know, and, and I know it’s none of the people that are listening in, but there are churches that like, they do a retreat and we’re like, we’re going away. We’re going we’re reading Lencioni. We’re going to define the five questions. We even make a snappy poster and we put it up on the wall. And then we go back to business as usual. It’s the same thing we’ve always done. But you’ve been able to make the connection there, particularly with the calendar.Rich Birch — Maybe talk us through, give us some examples of how this work is shaping, how you’re actually defining, you know, how you operate as a church.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so one example I would say is prayer. I had somebody call me and I like to think our prayer culture is strong. And they said, how did you get your prayer culture strong? And I said, well, this is really mind blowing. We have a weekly prayer meeting.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Sam Hamstra — And so because of that, and and still as the lead pastor still today, I take responsibility for leading that because I believe it’s it’s a high value for the church. Rich Birch — Right.Sam Hamstra — So it’s on the calendar. We you know And we’re not adding to it. It’s just 6 p.m. to 7 every Thursday. And we support it, which I think is the secondary layer behind that because it’s important. Now we have staff support. We have worship team support. We’re, we’re like staying very focused, on a few things rather than getting broad and going to a retreat and saying, this is a silver bullet. I don’t think there, I think the whole thing is a silver bullet, the whole pathway.Rich Birch — Right. Sure.Sam Hamstra — And so we always say, you know, I took this from somebody, but, you know, we want to be Ruth’s Chris, not Ponderosa. We want a one page menu and we really want to just do that.Rich Birch — Yep.Sam Hamstra — And it might even get boring. And we we’re trying to learn that boring is good.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Boring stuff grows churches. I love it.Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — One of those five is sharing Jesus. Every disciple has one mission, to make Christ known. We don’t keep the gospel to ourselves. We share it through our words, our actions, our lives, wherever we go. We carry the hope of Jesus to a world that needs him.Rich Birch — Unpack some ways that that value drives behavior at the church, that actually drives calendaring and and you know what you’re talking about, that sort of thing.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so deep, you know, we always want to empower everybody to be inviters and not just share. I think the key word in that is share your Jesus story. You know, we have to be people who understand how to share a testimony outside the four walls with it, you know, with a pretty quick invite to be like, hey, come be part of this community if you don’t have a community.Rich Birch — Right.Sam Hamstra — And so that is really through calendaring. We that’s really probably intrinsically baked into what we’re doing. So anytime I bring a guest to church, I’m saying it from the pulpit. And this is my friend. They’re here. I invited celebrating those through baptisms.Sam Hamstra — We let people testify of so you’re hearing stories of that. And then really resourcing people to make Christ known by sharing their story, teaching them how to do that.Sam Hamstra — So In the context of the calendar, um you know I took this from your playbook, sir, so thank you. We wanted to create four big events in our flywheel… Rich Birch — Yep. Love it. Sam Hamstra — …that are big invite events, that these are the moments where you need to bring 10 people. Rich Birch — Right. Sam Hamstra — We have found in our calendar since day one that we are seeing people respond to that and our church grows after every single time we do a big event. Rich Birch — That’s great.Sam Hamstra — And so we’re we’re doing four quarterly things.Rich Birch — Are those are those four the same every year? Are they, are they, yeah.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, yes.Rich Birch — So what are they? What are those four? If you don’t want me asking.Sam Hamstra — So, you know, Easter, of course… Rich Birch — Yep. Sam Hamstra — …summer kickoff was something we just created… Rich Birch — Yeah, great. Sam Hamstra — …to start the first Sunday of June. We rented a football field and we just say, bring everybody. We don’t… Rich Birch — That’s great. Sam Hamstra — …in our culture here, this is one thing, like, we’re like, we don’t shrink in the summer. This is a great time to grow.Rich Birch — Keep going forward. Yep. Love it.Sam Hamstra — Yeah. And then we created something years ago called Homecoming, just, you know, it was really show up Sunday, invite day. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep. Sam Hamstra — And then Christmas. Rich Birch — Love it.Sam Hamstra — So those are our four homecomings in November on the calendar. It just kind of flows quarterly for us that way.Rich Birch — That’s great. I love it. Well, I love what we’ve seen in fastest growing church in the country, friends that are listening in, is, you know, lots of churches will get, they have two big days, Christmas and Easter. But what we see is the behavior that you’re doing, which is you kind of end up having to make up a couple other days where you’re kind of injecting energy. We’re recording this in the summertime. You know, lots of churches have pulled a page out of Life Church’s book around At the Movies. And they, at the movies is one of their biggest attended days of the year on the the front end of that.Rich Birch — It’s just made up. There’s no reason for you to come the first week of August… Sam Hamstra — Yeah, absolutely. Rich Birch — …but they’ve decided, hey, we’re going to do that. That’s great. So we’re going to link to your about page where a lot of this is on that that page.Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — On the how our core values, how we behave: We love people. We bleed passion. We choose joy. There’s some unique stuff in there. So talk me through. We love people, I think could be universally true of lots of churches… Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Rich Birch — …but I’m not sure that every church would say we bleed passion. We choose joy. Talk me through those as how those are kind of a unique thing that is helping you define what it means to be Anthem.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so you know on the love people thing, is you do hear that a lot. And I found there’s a difference between hearing it than living it out. And in religious environments sometimes, you know, I think we all pray we wanna reach the lost until you reach the lost. Rich Birch — True.Sam Hamstra — And our first service, our first Easter Sunday here, we only had one door into our auditorium. And I still remember we had the whole back of the auditorium smelled like weed.Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Okay. Love it.Sam Hamstra — And it was like this tense moment, you know, like of like, okay, this is what we pray for.Rich Birch — Yes.Sam Hamstra — And kind of diving deep into that. So we really own that language within that of we belong before we behave. And so we’re, you know, you can come from all walks of life and we believe Jesus died for all people. So we love all people.Sam Hamstra — And then the we choose joy…Rich Birch — I love that. Before we move on, the thing I love about that… Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Rich Birch — …that you’re calling out, that I do think is a nuance that we miss in too many churches, which is oftentimes we say we want to reach people. But what that comes with is messy pastoral care, hard conversations, stuff that doesn’t make sense, and long nights. Like, it’s just hard. Rich Birch — And, um you know, if you’re, it’s easy to reach Christians from the other church across town. It’s hard to reach people who don’t normally journey in this stuff.Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Yeah.Rich Birch — And I love I love that story, even of your opening weekend with the the smell of weed in the back of the room.Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — I love it.Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Definitely messy.Rich Birch — That’s great. Yes, yes, love it.Sam Hamstra — Yeah. You know, the “We choose joy” has just been, um i think one of the greatest testimonies we had was from somebody that just, it was their first time guest. So like, man, everybody feels like they’re the same here. Everybody’s so happy. And we just wanted to build in just this, we believe that, you know, joy should be a badge that every believer wears. It’s just been, you know, you go into the different environments and some people just, it seems like a chore to be alive.Sam Hamstra — And so we just wanted to drive in. This is a privilege to be part of what God is doing in the earth in this hour, even if it doesn’t look perfect. Rich Birch — That’s great. Sam Hamstra — And then with “We bleed passion”, um that’s really our way to say here, you know, if you’re looking for a place that’s content with status quo, you’re probably not going to like it here. We’re always going to be changing. We’re always going to be moving. We’re always going to be shifting. We always want to go with where the Lord is leading. And so we’re a sending church. Don’t get comfortable. There’s always going to be more services. There’s always going to be new churches. Sam Hamstra — So we tried to to really get that in the DNA from the front side.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it.Rich Birch — I love that “we choose joy”. When I was at Liquid Church, are one of our three in this in this coupling was “Church is fun”. And you know the way we would talk about that is we would say, you know we we we say good news or we say gospel. We’re like, we should be gospel people or we should be good news people. Rich Birch — But what that actually means, how that actually should work itself out in our culture is when people interact with us, those people are a lot of fun to be around. Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Rich Birch — Because they’re redeemed people who have figured out, man, we’re following a God who loves us dearly. So what that should actually like, I love the way you’ve said it, we choose joy. Joy should be the natural outcome of our churches… Sam Hamstra — Yes. Rich Birch — …which is, again, that should not be rocket science, but it’s amazing how much that is a cultural difference or can be a huge cultural difference in many churches.Sam Hamstra — Yes. 100%. Yep.Rich Birch — That’s cool. So um you’ve been using this really throughout your how you develop leaders, how you onboard people, how you, you know, how do you come back to this time and time again? What are you using? How are you using these tools in your leadership development, in your raising up of volunteers, that sort of thing?Sam Hamstra — Yeah, so foundationally, I got to give credit where credit is due once again on this. I heard University of Kentucky’s baseball coach say this about culture, and it was like the best thing I’ve ever heard. He totally transformed his program, and he said it was culture at at the root of it. He said culture is every day. Culture is what you accept, and culture is what you reinforce.Rich Birch — It’s good.Sam Hamstra — And so we try to keep that in front of us as much as we can. It’s you know not something we just say we want to lead the way every day. So within these three, we actually just came out with 10 leadership values that all fit within those three…Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool.Sam Hamstra — …that give a little more language to our leadership, like, you know, we love people, so we park in back. And so really speaking to the culture of, you know, we put other people first, we serve. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.Sam Hamstra — And so, you know, we try to outdo each other. You know, I park about a half mile away from church on Sundays. We don’t we don’t do pastor parking, you know, or anything like that. umAnd so just, it’s every day.Rich Birch — Yes.Sam Hamstra — We do a value at every single one of our pre-service huddles on Sunday. So we’re taking those three values every Sunday, one, here’s what we’re doing.Sam Hamstra — And then Leadership Pipeline, we implemented this two years ago and we’re teaching our Anthem way across the board to a new set of leaders three times a year. And so we really zone in on culture a lot. We’ve just realized people coming from a lot of different places and what makes our culture, our culture are these distinctives. And so we’re teaching those and then really trying to walk them out. And the best testimony we’ve been hearing is people say, yeah, we see that in the leadership of the church. So that’s been really cool to hear.Rich Birch — That’s really cool. I love it. And friends, this just reminds me of the like such a foundational thing we’ve all got to get right and work on and then repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.Rich Birch — We’ve got to keep on top of this language and and just come back to it time and time again. So you’re multi-site, you’re you’re going to launch more campuses down the road. Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — How does this tie into that conversation around, you know, there can be in you know, some multi-site churches, there’s like this tension of uniformity, you know, versus autonomy. And like, how how does that how does how does your thinking work out with the Anthem Way in multiple locations?Sam Hamstra — Yeah. So I want to preface this with I’m new, so I am figuring this out in real time. Rich Birch — Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Sam Hamstra — I’m coming from from being a campus pastor to now being in the position I’m in. We’re two years into our first ah plant location campus. So and we’ve seen it be successful.Sam Hamstra — But what we’ve agreed on is we are going to be uniform in the Anthem Way. So we’re choosing uniformity and everything that falls within that box of the Anthem Way. Um, and so that has been like the running lanes for us to define what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, the way we talk, the way we move, our style of church, um, and all of that. So that’s been, you know, we’ve been really struggling with, with, with what you just said, that uniformity versus unity versus, you know, autonomy. Sam Hamstra — And so, the Anthem Way is to become our framework on how we’re starting locations. And we feel like as long as everybody’s in sync with all, and it and it entails a lot, right? I mean, how we do church, our approach to a lot of things.Sam Hamstra — And so that’s been that’s been our overarching theme is we want to be uniform in this. Rich Birch — yeah that’s good. Sam Hamstra — And so that’s what we’ve been trying to make sure it’s documented, ready to go.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s an interesting, that’s like a, we could have a whole other half an hour just on on on that issue.Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — But one of the things we have seen over the long arc of the multi-site movement is churches that are choosing clarity and um and more, yeah, an understanding of, in your case, what is Anthem and how do we do what we do, those churches are the churches that, from my perspective, and not just statistically, are actually benefiting more from the multi-site movement. Rich Birch — The churches where they’re like, hey, let’s spend a lot of time. It can actually be the worst model because it’s like, we have a lot of people thinking about all the different ways you could potentially do church. As opposed to saying, no, no, like this is the way we’re not, we’re not saying this is the best way. We’re just saying it’s our way. We’re not saying that this is the only way to do it.Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — We’re just saying this is the way we do it. And, um and we’re okay with that. We’re settled on on that as an issue.Sam Hamstra — Yeah. That’s good. That’s good.Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Is there anything that changed or that has changed as you, I realize you’ve influenced ben to this from the beginning, but like, has there been anything that has kind of changed as you got clearer on the Anthem Way over the over the years? You know, something you cut or improved or, you know, is there anything that jumps to mind on that front?Sam Hamstra — Yeah, we’re would I might use the word refined rather than changed. Rich Birch — Sure. Yep, that’s good. Sam Hamstra — I was just talking to our discipleship director this morning just on, you know, is there is there a small group model? So like our three kind of handles in our discipleship pathway are know Christ, grow in Christ, and and make Christ known.Sam Hamstra — And, you know, our small group model isn’t working. We added what we call the Mosaic School of Ministry, which is is another thing in Grow. And we’ve actually seen way more interest and success in that. And so, you know, we have a way higher percentage right now going through what we call a School of Ministry, which is classes and and discipleship then we’re getting in small groups. Sam Hamstra — And so we’ve been just kind of wrestling with that a little bit. Like, is that culture, is it good, is it bad? And so I think those those refining moments have have really changed. We started off, though, I feel soft saying this, but it worked in our context. But we would start every year with 21 days of prayer and fasting in the beginning. And do 21 days again in the fall.Rich Birch — Love it.Sam Hamstra — We’ve actually gone down to seven days to start the year. There’s seven days in the fall. We just feel like we’re seeing actually better results with more people getting involved just with those minor tweaks, just to say this…Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Sam Hamstra — …his is we’re we’re seeing bigger impact there. Rich Birch — Sure. Sam Hamstra — But so I think those refining things have been really good.Rich Birch — Has there been any of that refining that has come not from you, but from a member of your team? Like, has anyone called you out or called the church out on like, hey, like on prayer or on any of these where, you know, like when that’s happened in my life, I kind of like that. Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — I’m like, oh, well, that’s a pleasant thing that just happened there, even though it feels weird to be the person being called out.Sam Hamstra — Yeah.Rich Birch — Have you had any experiences like that?Sam Hamstra — Yeah. Yes. I’m laughing because, yeah, I’ve had quite a few. I could point to the one with prayer fasting. Rich Birch — Yes. So somebody on our team was like, hey, pastor, you know that there’s really no a place in the Bible where there’s a three week corporate fast. Rich Birch — Sure. Sam Hamstra — Yeah like where the whole church is coming together for three weeks and I’m like well I got a challenge, I’m gonna look. And I’m like sure enough you know, I’m maybe somebody could find it, but it was like these times and seasons where people come together for specific things of like, oh man you’re right. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, love it. Sam Hamstra — So and so that was like one of those um yeah it’s it’s definitely happened quite quite a bit and so which I love that too and so it’s been such a blessing of solid team that feels free to speak when when they need to.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, this has been a good conversation, just as we’re kind of coming to land. If you think about a church out there that feels like okay they’ve listened to this and they’re like okay, we maybe they’ve opened up your website. And they’re like, hey, we’re not as clear on this that as we could be, we need to get much clearer on that.Rich Birch — What’s kind of one first step that you would encourage people to take? What would be kind of the best first step towards getting clarity on this front?Sam Hamstra — Write the vision, make it plain so that he that reads it may run.Rich Birch — Dude, I love it. And with that, we end the episode. That’s fantastic. No, that’s great. Unpack that a little bit.Sam Hamstra — Um, you know, I for so much of my life, I was always looking to be so unique and so different. Rich Birch — Right.Sam Hamstra — And I felt like I just needed the next best thing. And it was wasn’t until I just locked into this is what the Lord has for us. And it might sound like somebody else it might look and that’s OK, but this going to be very unique to us. And this is what we’re doing. And just to be very clear on that and then just this is for me, but I get bored so easily. And to just, just not get bored and just keep doing the same thing in the same direction day after day.Rich Birch — Right.Sam Hamstra — And in that that flywheel, to use your words, it does work. And just to see that go and to to get very clear and and simple and and let people know where you’re going and just keep saying the same thing over and over is so life-giving.Rich Birch — That’s so good. So good.Rich Birch — Well, I really appreciate you being here today. If we want to send people anywhere online to track with you or to track with the church, where do we want to send them?Sam Hamstra — So first name, last name would be all my personal stuff. So @samhamstra, last name H-A-M-S-T-R-A.Sam Hamstra — And all church stuff is weareanthemchurch.com. And then weareanthemchurch on social as well.Rich Birch — Love it. So good. Appreciate that, Sam. Thanks so much for being here. Honored that you take some time to be with us today.Sam Hamstra — Yeah, thanks so much, Rich, my honor.

In last week's episode, we met Marty and Missie Durapau and heard about the loss of Missie's 14-year-old son, Mason, after a golf cart accident on Easter Sunday in 2024. We also heard about the week they spent praying and believing God for a miracle ... and what it meant to keep trusting Him when that miracle didn't come in the way they had hoped.  If you missed the first half of our conversation, you can find it HERE.  Today, we'll talk more about Mason's decision to be an organ donor and the five lives that were saved through his gift. That part of his story has brought Missie tremendous comfort and purpose, but it has also brought some unexpected heartbreak that has caused her to wrestle with God in a whole new way.We'll also talk about why the second year of grief has been especially difficult, navigating birthdays and holidays, and the ways Marty and Missie are using their own experiences to come alongside others who are hurting.Through all of it, they are learning that still trusting God doesn't mean having all the answers. It means continuing to turn toward Him with the questions, the confusion, and the pain—and trusting that He is still faithful.Link to the Our Hearts Are Home fall conference information HERE!  I would love to hear your thoughts on the show. Click here to send me a message! ~Jill** IMPORTANT** - All views expressed by guests on this podcast are theirs alone, and may not represent the Statement of Faith and Statement of Beliefs of the While We're Waiting ministry.  We'd love for you to connect with us here at While We're Waiting! Click HERE to visit our website and learn about our free While We're Waiting Weekends for bereaved parentsClick HERE to learn more about our network of While We're Waiting support groups all across the country. Click HERE to subscribe to our YouTube channelClick HERE to follow our public Facebook pageClick HERE to follow us on Instagram Click HERE to follow us on Twitter Click HERE to make a tax-deductible donation to the While We're Waiting ministryContact Jill by email at:  jill@whilewerewaiting.org 

The Lord's DaySeries: Divine RestScripture: Luke 23:50–24:12 (Common English Bible)Preacher: Rev. Sarah Harrison-McQueenWhat if the pauses in our lives are not empty spaces, but an essential part of the story God is writing?In this message from the Divine Rest sermon series, we explore the Sabbath between Good Friday and Easter Sunday—the day when Jesus lay in the tomb, the women waited in grief, and the world seemed to stand still.The sermon begins with a simple illustration from music: a rest is a pause between notes, but that pause is not meaningless. Rests give music its rhythm and meaning. In the same way, the spaces and pauses in our lives can give meaning to what happens around them.Luke's account of Holy Week gives us one of those important pauses. After Jesus' crucifixion, his body is placed in a tomb, and the women return home and rest on the Sabbath according to the commandment. They are living in grief and uncertainty, waiting without knowing what will happen next.The Sabbath gives them permission to pause. They do not have to immediately move past the pain of Good Friday or fill the silence with activity. They simply rest faithfully, even when that rest may feel more like endurance than peace.And then Sunday comes.The women go to the tomb expecting to find death. Instead, they find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. The resurrection arrives in confusion, wonder, and the startling realization that God is doing something new.The first day of the new week became the Lord's Day for the early Christians—the day when followers of Jesus gathered to celebrate the resurrection and the new creation God had begun.Every Sunday when we gather for worship, we echo that first resurrection morning. We proclaim that the tomb is empty, death is not the final word, and new creation has begun.Sunday worship is more than a weekly habit or another item on the calendar. It is a weekly theological statement. It is a chance to gather as the body of Christ and become a visible sign of God's new creation.John Wesley described gathered worship as one of the means of grace—not because attending worship earns us points with God, but because something happens when the people of Christ gather together. We become a glimpse of God's kingdom and a sign of what God is doing in the world.But we can become so accustomed to Sunday worship that we forget how remarkable it is. We can arrive exhausted or distracted, already thinking about everything that comes after worship. The rhythm of rest creates space for us to notice what God is doing.Just as the women went to the tomb expecting death but encountered life, we are invited to come to worship with a sense of anticipation and wonder:What is God doing today?As we continue through Divine Rest, we are invited to consider the holy pauses in our own lives—the places where waiting, rest, and stillness may not feel productive, but may be creating space for us to notice God's presence and receive the new life God is bringing.Reflection Questions:• The women rested faithfully on the Sabbath, even though that day was saturated with grief and uncertainty. Have you ever had to be faithful through a season of waiting when obedience felt more like endurance than peace? What did you learn from it?• The sermon described Sunday worship as a weekly theological statement: the tomb is empty, death is not the final word, and new creation has begun. Does that description match how you actually experience Sunday morning? What would need to change if it doesn't?• If the rests in a piece of music are what give the notes their meaning, where in your own life do you see the opportunity for rests to add meaning to your life? Support the show

https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/family-devotions/20260831fam.mp3 Listen to Devotion Read: Matthew 16:21-26 Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:24 The Weight Is Worth It In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. What is the heaviest thing you have ever carried? Was it a gallon of milk because you insisted on pouring it yourself into your cereal? Was it your backpack as you got older and started getting more homework? Was it dumbbells as you started training for a sport? Let me ask one more question: Was it worth it? No matter what the object was, was there a good reason to carry something so heavy? Jesus tells us that following him sometimes means carrying something heavy—and that following him is always worth it. He calls that heavy burden a “cross.” When we think of Jesus and a cross, we probably think of how he died on a cross on Good Friday. And we should! In fact, Jesus wanted his disciples to think about that, too. He predicted his death when he said in our reading that he needed to go to Jerusalem to “suffer many things” and to “be killed.” One of the things Jesus suffered on Good Friday was carrying his own cross to Mount Calvary. But Jesus knew that all of his suffering would be worth it. He knew that “on the third day” he would “be raised to life.” On Easter Sunday, he rose from the dead, and he still lives! Because Jesus suffered and died in your place, your sins are forgiven. Because he rose, you will live forever with him. Even when you face death, your heart can be at peace. Jesus willingly carried his cross because he loves you and wanted to save you. And now Jesus tells us to take up our crosses and follow him. You can't weigh these crosses like a gallon of milk, a backpack, or dumbbells. But they can still feel heavy. That's because a Christian's cross is something painful or difficult that comes from following Jesus. Sometimes it's the struggle to say no to sin. Sometimes it's being made fun of because of our faith. Sometimes it's feeling like you're missing out because other people are doing something that God says is wrong. Carrying a cross does not earn us a place in heaven. Jesus already did everything necessary to save us. But because Jesus saved us, we follow him—even when following him is hard. And we never carry our crosses alone. The same Jesus who carried his cross for us walks beside us, strengthens us, and promises to bring us safely home. Some burdens feel heavy. But Jesus is worth following. He carried the weight that saved us, and he will help us carry every cross along the way. The weight is worth it because Jesus is worth it. Prayer: Dear Jesus, because you carried your cross for us and in our place, give our souls courage and strength to pick up our crosses each day and follow you. Give us confidence that you will lead us to eternal life. Amen. The questions below are to help families discuss this devotion. The questions are divided by age group as suggestions, but anyone could reflect on any of the questions as they desire. Questions for Younger Children What are some things that are heavy to carry? Jesus carried his cross because he loves you. How does it make you feel to know that Jesus loves you that much? Questions for Elementary Age Children What is a “cross” that someone your age might carry because he or she follows Jesus? What can you remember about Jesus when following him feels difficult? Questions for Middle School and Above Why didn't Peter want Jesus to suffer and die? Why was Jesus' cross necessary for our salvation? Jesus asked, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” What might someone your age be tempted to gain by turning away from Jesus—and why would it never be worth the cost? Download Family Devotions Family Devotions are brought to you by WELS Discipleship. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

On today’s show, Fr. Kris Stubna talks about Confession: It’s here to help you. Break 1 Susan - I was at Confession recently and it was face to face. I confessed, but Father was looking at his phone and scrolling the entire time. I was a little distracted by that and didn't know how to handle it. Could you comment on how to handle that? Nancy - I am a senior citizen. Recently I've grown in faith and went to confession. It was a visiting priest. He was so gracious and loving. I was expecting the worst, but I truly felt healed. Miles - Concern I had from a prisoner is that the priest didn't have enough time to hear confessions. Can the bishop give him permission to have a shortened version of the mass and still have time for confessions? Patrick - I love confession. Break 2 Joanne - I had an experience on Easter Sunday and someone asked if there were confessions. I asked Father and he immediately went in and heard the man's confession before Mass. It was such a beautiful thing. Tony - It's changed my life over the years. I used to take it for granted. Carrie - I learned that the grace received in the sacrament has been such a help in avoiding sin in the future. It's almost like a little Christmas.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Join Host Miko Lee as she introduces Dr. Robynn Rodriquez's show “Spitting Fire.” Dr. Robynn speaks about Filipinx and colorism with Dr. Joanne Rondilla.   LINKS Dr. Robynn, The People's Professor   SHOW TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Opening: Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   [00:00:35] Miko Lee: Welcome to Apex Express. I'm your host, Miko Lee, and tonight we get to hear the podcast from Dr. Robin Rodriguez called Spitting Fire, and I'm so excited for you to listen to it. Check it out, and if you wanna hear more, we're gonna link in the show notes an earlier interview I did with Dr. Robin Rodriguez. So please listen to Spitting Fire with Dr. Robin   [00:01:01] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: I can't actually remember a specific episode when my parents or my Lola, who helped raise me, explicitly said, “Don't stay out in the sun.” But I always knew growing up that staying out in the sun was something I shouldn't do because being dark was something to be avoided. I remember being embarrassed by my mom who would bust out an umbrella on a bright and shiny day. “Mom, it's not even raining outside,” I remember complaining. I hated the big hats she would wear or insist I wear, or the comments of, “You're getting darker,” also in a disapproving tone. I remember, too, the high praises anyone with lighter skin was heaped, even when I didn't think they were that particularly attractive. Or how if my relatives knew someone was going to be marrying an American, basically a white person, they would exclaim, “Oh, they're going to have beautiful children.” When I brought home a hapa, a dude who was Filipino and white, I was told that if we got married, I would be improving the race. I've always known, whether I can remember being told, “Don't stay out in the sun,” that if there was a skin hue to aspire to, it was to be light.   [00:02:49] To be called mestiza was to receive one of the best compliments. To be a mestiza is always already to be beautiful. Of course, if anyone said I was mestiza, it was always qualified as mestizang morena. That is, someone who exhibits certain types of physical traits that are associated with a mestiza, like having a more pointed nose or being slightly taller than the average Pinay, but not the lighter skin of a genuine mestiza. So that's why I was sometimes called mestizang morena. Still meant as a compliment. After all, I could still enjoy the privilege of being associated with mestizaje, but only partially So many Filipinas in the diaspora, especially those of us who live in white settler colonial societies like what we now know as the United States as well as Canada, so many of us share experiences similar to the ones I've experienced.   [00:03:58] My dear friend and colleague, a fellow sociologist, Dr. Connolly De Leon, who currently teaches at Ryerson University in Canada, made this shared experience a topic of study in her book chapter, “Mas Maputi Ako Sa'yo,” I'm Lighter Than You: The Spatial Politics of Intraracial Colorism Among Filipina-Filipino Youth in the Greater Toronto Area. It was a chapter that was part of the very historic anthology, Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility, edited by Roland Coloma, Bonnie McElvaney, Ellen Ethel Dongohan, John Paul Katungol, and Lisa M. Davidson, and it was published in 2012. Now, I've taught, uh, Dr. De Leon's chapter, Connolly's chapter, in my Filipino American experience courses in the past, and it's always, always deeply resonated with my Filipina students. In Dr. De Leon's chapter, she starts off with a quote that so many of us are familiar with in some way. She writes, quote, “You're so dark. Yuck.' My cousin would say to me in disgust as she would place her forearm beside mine to compare her light skin to my dark skin.” End quote. Dr. De Leon continues, quote, “As early as the age of four, as early as the age of four, I was taught to feel ashamed of my complexion. I did not understand what was so shameful about being the particular shade of brown that I was.” End quote. The shaming that Dr. De Leon and so many of us experience comes from colorism, which scholars define as the discriminatory treatment of individuals falling within the same racial group on the basis of skin color.   [00:06:01] On this episode of Spitting Fire, Dr.- Doctora Robyn Speaks, you'll actually hear less from me and more from yet another friend and colleague, Dr. Joanne Rondilia, who I recently hosted as part of a lecture series jointly sponsored by the Bolosan Center for Filipinx Studies, of which I serve as the founding faculty director, and the School for Liberating Education, my platform for offering Filipinx or Filipinos and ethnic studies courses that are often only available to those who happen to be able to get accepted into the four-year, often elite institutions where they are taught. It's where I get to teach all of these amazing courses that I think all of us should have to the broader community. Dr. Rondilia has researched on colorism in the Philippines and the diaspora for over a decade. It was a topic of her 2012 dissertation, which was entitled Colonial Faces: Beauty and Skin Color Hierarchy in the Philippines and the United States. In her 2007 book, co-edited with Paul Spickard, entitled Is Lighter Better? Skin Tone Discrimination Among Asian Americans, she explores colorism as a phenomenon that no- not only plagues Filipinos, but Asian Americans actually more broadly. So now I'm gonna turn to Dr. Rondilia and her lecture entitled Don't Stay Out in the Sun: Understanding Filipinx and Colorism. Go ahead, Joanne. Take it away. So happy you're here.    [00:07:44] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: All right. Thank you so much, Robyn. It's, uh… Do you mind if I call you Robyn? Shall I call you Dr. Robyn?    [00:07:50] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: Oh my God. You only know me as Robyn. Okay.    [00:07:56] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: I will call you Robyn, but everybody else, you, you are required to call her Dr. Robyn- … Queen Robyn. You know, that's, that's how. But it's, it's such a, a joy to be here. Um, you know, before we opened the doors, uh, Robyn and I were talking about, um, you know, what it is to be an academic and the type of language and, and spaces in which we share our research. And I think one of the things that's really hard, especially for the soul of a lot of, uh, academics, is that we… it's so rare for us to really share our research, uh, with the community, right? ‘Cause I don't think of myself as a researcher. I think of myself more as a, a storyteller Right? And I think that that's really, uh, when students- when I have students who refuse to, like, engage in research, I try to remind them, like, research is not… I don't think of research as, uh, sort of like the white person's, uh, uh, game. I think of research as something that is connected to us, um, and it's our birthright. It's our ancestral birthright, right? Because storytelling is our ancestral birthright, and that's the lens in which I come into, uh, to exploring this issue of colorism.   [00:09:15] So show of hands, for those of you in the room, I'm curious to know how many of you were told, uh, were, were told this: “Don't stay out in the sun or you're- or, or else you'll get too dark.” How many of you were raised with that sort of mantra? Yes. Right. I, I almost feel like these words, uh, are so quintessential to the Filipino experience or the Filipinx experience. Like, “Don't stay out in the sun or else you'll get too dark.” And I'm someone who, I was born and raised on Guam, um, and so everybody on Guam is dark because we are always out in the sun, right? And my mother is very light-skinned. Uh, she came from a middle-class family from San Pablo City in the Philippines. My father's from Lucena, and he ca- he grew up poor, uh, and rai- was raised by a single mother. And so m- there was this definite class difference between my parents, uh, but there's also a, a skin tone difference between my parents. Like, my dad was someone who was very, very kuripot. He was very cheap, but he had this great love for my mother. Um, you know, and I think part of that was he saw her as like, you know, this, this wonderful, like, prize almost, you know. Because she came from a well-to-do family, and, you know, when they got married, her family did not want them to get married because, uh, he was not wealthy. But he was someone who, because he works on Guam as an engineer for the government of Guam, uh, and, and the US military, like that sort of… and, and he had, uh, I think in total like 13 deeds to his name. That's sort of what eased my, my mother's family into, you know, being supportive of their marriage. But there was… And, and on my mother's side of the family, this is a family, and mind you, I love them very much, but this is a family that, um, values beauty a lot, right? My mom and my aunties were all some form of provincial, uh, beauty queen And so this is why me and my brother and my sister were always told, “Don't stay out in the sun or you'll get too dark.” Because the idea was you had to preserve whatever, whatever it was our mother gave us, right? Even though, um, you know, like, uh, you know, even though, like, members of her family say didn't, didn't necessarily find us attractive , you know, the idea was, like, you know, as children of this, this woman or as chil- as, as, you know, members of this particular family, you had to, um, you had to sort of preserve yourself.   [00:12:18] So as a young kid growing up on Guam, I always wanted to go swimming, uh, 'cause my, my neighbors across the street, actually one of them, uh, represented the island of Guam, uh, during the 1988 Olympics in, in Seoul, right? So I always wanted to go swimming. I wanted to learn swimming, but my mother wouldn't let me because I would get too dark And so that, you know, like, there, there was so much of our lives that were limited because of this need to preserve beauty. And this is how I entered the research, uh, the exploration of colorism. So very quickly, for those of you who do not know what colorism is, simply put, colorism is a looks-based or, you know, um, you know, physical look, a looks-based system of discrimination where light skin and Eurocentric features are favored over darker skin and non-Eurocentric features.   [00:13:13] These discriminations typically occur within the same racial or ethnic community. Uh, the term colorism was coined by, um, the writer Alice Walker. And when she first started writing about colorism, she was talking about, she was talking about colorism in a very intimate way. She was talking about the way in which lighter-skinned Black women evoked pain, right, uh, onto darker-skinned Black women. And so this is where she comes up with this term called colorism. Colorism is intimate. It happens within the same racial or ethnic group, typically. And the reason why I say typically is because, um, in our society, we live in a very colorist society. So I'm sure some of you, and you can throw up reactions, some of you know people, may be related to people who say, “I'm not a racist. I don't have a racist bone in my body, in my body. I love Black people. I listen to Beyoncé. Halle Berry's my favorite actress.” Like, you know, they'll go on and on and on about how they're not racist. But when you look at the patterns of what they deem is attractive or, um, sort of civilized among, uh, the Black or African American community, they always resort to people who tend to be, like, lighter skinned, right? And that's also a way that, um, colorism manifests itself. It starts in the intimate space, but it manifests itself in a much larger, um, you know, in a much larger sphere. So for, um, the Filipinx community, when we look at popular culture, right? And, um, I don't know if any of you have heard of the show or are watching a show called, uh, The Cleaning Lady It's a new show that was, uh, it just premiered last week through Fox. And The Cleaning Lady, the reason why this is really big for, uh, the Filipinx community is because the… It, it's supposed… It originally was supposed to be a Filipino storyline, right? And it was a way to sort of introduce, uh, you know, Filipinx characters in the public sphere. But what happened was S- Shannon Sossamon, the actress Shannon Sossamon, uh, was originally slated to play the main character, who is an undocumented, uh, Filipina maid, right? But something happened during the initial table read, so they end up casting Elodie Yung, who's, uh, French Cambodian. So they changed the character a little bit, but when you look at the setting, it's set in Los Angeles. It's really a Filipino family. And my argument when I look at popular media and colorism is that oftentimes in popular media when they're trying to introduce Filipino, Filipinx characters, it's done through the mixed race body. It's done through a mixed race person, right? So for those of you who may be familiar with Shannon Sossamon, she's mixed race. She's a mixed race Filipina, but she's very white-passing, and it's usually mixed race white-passing or mixed race white-pleasing, what I call white-pleasing, uh, Filipinos that popular culture suddenly becomes interested in us, right?   [00:16:45] And that's what we see in a show like The Cleaning Lady. In the next few months, I think Jo Koy, uh, is going to have a movie called, um, I think it's called Easter Sunday. And again, Jo Koy, very Filipino, right? It, it's ingrained in his comedy. But what makes, what allows his fame to happen in the United States is that he's very white-passing and white-pleasing, very different from someone like a Rex Navarette, whose career is much longer, right, than someone like a Jo Koy, right? So there's definitely colorism at play, right? But when we're looking at the intimate spaces, the way colorism plays out in the Filipinx community, it's the lighter skinned Filipino discriminating against the darker skinned Filipino. In the Asian American community, it's the Chinese person discriminating against the, the Cambodian person, right? So there, there's these different levels of, of colorism at play. Colorism, um… It's important to know that colorism is the discriminatory system that makes anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism exist. It actually maintains anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism. And the reason why this is important is, one, when we look at anti-Black racism, and you, you're hearing this a lot, you know, um, either in academic circles or even in, uh, sort of, um, more popular conversations. I feel that it's important to talk about anti-Black racism in conjunction with anti-Indigenous racism because they happen hand in hand. And when we look at the founding of the United States, for example, the founding of this country happens through the genocide of Indigenous peoples as well as the enslavement of African peoples. So they're not separate. They come together. And so when we're looking at colorism, the system of colorism, right? Colorism is what, is what allows anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism to exist Um, what makes, um… And, and, and we see this through the different, uh, colonial periods of the Philippines. There's something very distinct about colorism in the Filipinx community, and it really has to do with our, um, our, our colonial history.   [00:19:25] And so on the worksheet, there's just a very sort of like quick and dirty kind of list of like these three major periods of colonization in the Philippines. What I really wanna ta- uh, point to is the role of the Chinese throughout these historical periods in the Philippines. Because, um, typically when you talk about colorism, uh, colorism is most prevalent in, um, the African American community and the Black diaspora. But there's something very distinct about Filipinx colorism, and it's that our notion of lightness is defined by Eurocentric standards of beauty, right? And this is because of Spanish colonization. But it's also defined by Chinese standards of beauty or East Asian standards of beauty, and this is because of the positioning of the Chinese throughout these colonial periods. Because the Chinese, um, historically were the, um, were the merchant class, they were often elevated above indigenous Filipinos, right? And so that's why today in the Philippines when you see people who are in power and you look at the mixed race or mestizo, you know, uh, the mixed race people who are in power in the Philippines, they're often, uh, mixed race Chinese, right? And that's because of the, the legacy and the presence of Chinese in the Philippines. And so it's, um, it's, it's the history of the Chinese in the Philippines, th- these notions of Chinese lightness that really make colorism in the Philippines and among Filipinx very distinct. Uh, it's a very distinct conversation.   [00:21:14] Um, uh, I wanted to pause and say if you have any questions or if I'm going too quickly, feel free to, you know, put this in the chat, and I will try to address it, um, as I go along. Um, in– At the beginning of the talk, I asked how many of you were told, “Don't stay out in the sun.” And for those of you who said that you were told this, by show of hands, how many of you heard this in the context of family? How many of you were told this in the context of friends or any other intimate, uh, setting? ‘Cause oftentimes these messages are circulated among the family. And so When w- uh, and again, like colorism, you know, relative to racism, colorism has a very… There is this intimate aspect because oftentimes how we understand our own value and our own self-worth has to do with the messages that are articulated in the family, right? So, uh, one of the interviews that I had conducted, uh, was this, with this woman who when I conducted the interview, this was in the Philippines, and she worked in the entertainment industry in the Philippines. And she, um She, uh, had talked about how her lola would address her and her cousins. So the woman I interviewed, very light skin, light eyes, light hair, and that's why she's an entertainer in the Philippines.   [00:22:47] She's a model, and at the time she was hosting a television show. And she said that growing up, her lola always called her Miss Universe, right? And it was because of the way that she looked. Her lola would call her cousin, who was, um, like Spanish mestiza, sh- so, uh, this person who I called Tyler, Tyler was Miss Universe. Her cousin was Miss Philippines 'cause she was mestiza, and then Tyler's sister was Miss Cebu. So here, you know, like… And this is very blatant, and I'm not saying that all families are like this, but here you have this very explicit example of, a lola articulating the differences between these three young girls. Queen of the universe, queen of the Philippines, queen of the province. And in her interview, Tyler had said, “Yeah, it was very clear that Lola had her favorites, and it was in the way that she designated you in this spectrum of, like, these sort of beauty queen titles,” right? In another interview that I had, uh, conducted there, and this was an interview here in, um, the United States, uh, I- in the research I called her Milen. Milen talked about how whenever there was a dance or prom or something like that, there was this whole process of, you know, her and her brothers having to go to Lola's house so that Lola could see, you know, what everyone was wearing and that there could be pictures. But what was very clear was, um, Milen's youngest brother was clear…   [00:24:29] You know, her words were, “He was clearly not a favorite,” and this was largely because he was darker. He was often omitted from the photos. Um, Lola didn't really care about what he was wearing and things like that. She always put attention to Milen, who was very light-skinned, uh, and her two brothers who are also very light-skinned. So there's a very central role in which the family plays in how we understand, um, colorism and how we understand personal value And so as I was, uh, exploring this, uh, in sociology there's a term called the beauty cue, and the beauty cue is a system of classification. It's a societal system of classification that classifies women from lightest to dark to, you know, from most valuable to least valuable. And so what I did using this theory that Margaret Hunter had wr- uh, she wrote about, I added to this conversation by talking about the intimate beauty cue, because the beauty cue itself is about a societal, uh, a societal structure, but the intimate beauty cue is how we understand our value, how our notions of beauty are created in the most intimate spaces.   [00:25:47] And the reason why this is important to look at is because I think each and every one of us can, um, we can look at the TV and we can look at societal messages and say, “Yes, that's how society understands beauty, but that's not me because I'm my own person.” But in the intimate space among family and friends, when you're getting the messages that you're not beautiful or you're not valuable and it's coming from an unconditional love space such as the family, therein lies the problem and why colorism is such an intimate issue, because these are messages that are articulated by people, usually by people that you love or by people that you're closest to.   [00:26:35] There is a gendered aspect to colorism. Women in families are often seen as being more responsible for, um, you know, for beauty or engaging in beauty practices over men. However, men do… You know, like, there is some pressure for men Uh, when we look at colorism in popular media, again, in the US sphere, the few chances we get to see Filipinos or Filipinx in popular media, they are oftentimes light-skinned, mixed-race people, such as, and again, the example of, um, The Cleaning Lady. We have the example of Jo Koy and his future projects. It's not until we get into the independent sphere that we can see more variation. But when major institutions such as, uh, a Fox network or Netflix is trying to introduce a public to the Filipinx community, they're gonna go with what they feel is safe, and it's usually someone who's light-skinned, someone who is white passing, someone who's white pleasing, right? You know, there is something about, uh, the way in which popular media uses the mixed-race person or the mixed-race body. When you look at skin-lightening advertisements, oftentimes it's a mixed-race person that is being used to model such products. Uh, this is over t- I think it's over 10 years ago now. Um, there is a company in the Philippines called Glutamax, and when they launched their line, they used a mixed-race, um, Black Filipina model named Jinkee Oda.   [00:28:27] And what they did was they showed the sort of before and after, and one of the taglines in the advertisement in Tagalog, it said, “You could be white like me,” because it showed this progression of her being dark-skinned and then being light-skinned. And again, like, here for this particular, um, product, you're seeing the usage of, um, you know, that, that progression. It harks to very old, uh, beauty advertisements that, um, sold products specifically to Black women, um, you know, especially skin-lightening products to Black women. So there's, there's a way in which the mixed-race person is often used to sell beauty, to sell product, to sell, to sell us our notions of, um, lightness Having said that, I'm not trying to demonize the mixed race person. I, you know, I, I don't think it's fair to, um, I do not think it's fair to, for example, um, boycott Jo- Jo Koy because he's so fair, right?   [00:29:35] Or, um, yes, I love that comment, how we lift up Olivia Rodrigo, but our love for her or Saweetie is very, is, it's fairly limited. Exactly. You know, um, you know, like, I, I don't want to attack the person, but if you're light, you cannot… You, you have to recognize the amount of privilege that you have, right? Um, and then when we're looking at skin lightening products, again, like this is a global, um, this is a, you know, a multi-billion dollar global industry. Um, in 2018 it was valued at 8.3 billion. 2022, those numbers have gone, have gone up. Um, and as of late there has been a lot of talk about, uh, skin lightening products for various reasons. Globally it's because that market is so high, but here in the United States this has become an issue because skin lightening products and the usage and sale of skin lightening products has actually reached our policies.   [00:30:41] So for example, uh, the CARES Act. Um, because of the work of… Excuse me Because of the work of Ilhan Omar in the CARES Act, what, um, what was able to happen was the enforcement of the usage of a particular ingredient called hydroquinone. So this ingredient, uh, it's a derivative of mercury, which is very harmful to the skin. Um, this is a very popular ingredient that is used by a lot of, uh, skincare professionals. Now there's an enforcement about how you can buy or have access to this particular, uh, ingredient. So skin-lightening products and the, the conversation about skin-lightening products has been a huge issue as of late. Um, I wanna end with two thoughts, and it's this. I want you to, to reflect, and I know this was a lot of me talking. I want you to reflect on the way in which we articulate ideas of colorism on a daily basis. I want you to think about, you know, just, uh, a few weeks ago, for those of you who may have gathered with family, what are the ways in which you've heard these, you know, certain ideas about colorism articulated? It's often, “Oh, this, uh, this person is so beautiful.” Sometimes there's a comparison of children. Sometimes when you're greeted by the people you love, there's comments about, oh, how dark or light you've gotten. Um, included in the conversations about colorism is body size, how much weight you have or have not lost. You know, um, the, this is all part of the c- colorism conversation. There's a daily… There's a way in which we articulate ideas of colorism on a daily basis. I want you to reflect on, um, the beauty practices that we engage in, you know? If we… You know, like, if I dye my hair blonde or if I wear, you know, green contacts, what is my reason behind it?   [00:32:50] Is it because I want to engage in a sense of play? Or is it because I'm trying to escape a part of my identity, right? These are, these are important questions for us to ask because these are the daily, everyday ways that we, um, sort of, we contribute to these ideas of colorism. Um, and that, um, I believe is connected to the everyday practice of anti-racism, right? Um, you know, it's important to understand that, like, there's no end because, you know, with respect to colorism, this is a systemic issue. And so what we have to do is tackle it piece by piece. Sometimes it's about the practices that we engage in, uh, individually, but it's also about the way in which we engage with the people around us. With respect to colorism, because it's so intimate, right, it's about having the hard conversations, um, with the people that we love the most, right? Our friends and family    [00:33:55] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Dr. Randilia. You know, I actually have a, a question. I'm wondering, Jo-Ann, do you feel, especially with increasingly more, um, kind of mixed race, uh, especially kind of Black and Filipinx, um, figures, um, you know, uh, in popular culture, is your sense that there is a shifting around colorism, um, or not?   [00:34:28] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: I think that there's small shifts, right? So I think of, uh, for… And I'm looking at the com- the comment, the Magandang Morenx, and then also, you know, we, we do have like, um, you know, the, the Black and Filipinx sort of mixed race entertainers like her and Saweetie. Um, also, uh, there's some no- notable athletes that are Black and, um, Filipinx. Like, I think of, I think of their popularity as moments as opposed to actual, like, movements, right? And the reason being is because white supremacy is so prevalent, it's going to take so much to dismantle that system, right? The magnitude of, of white supremacy is, is beyond anything that we can, you know, like, we can quantify, right? And so, um, I, you know, like, so I, I think of, uh, I, I think of something like the Magandang Morenx movement, I think that they're important. I, I think of them more as moments because… And it's not because, uh, they're not powerful. It's because white supremacy is just so prevalent, right? Um, and so, and I, I don't mean to be the pessimist in, in that, you know.   [00:35:50] Um, I think the way that we, the way we move forward is to do the heart and soul work, right? To do the anti-racist work, to recognize the ways in which, um, we contribute to anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, but to make the conscious decision that this is gonna, like, I, I'm going to work towards eradicating it e- while knowing that eradication may not happen in your lifetime. And I'd hate to be the pessimist. It's not gonna happen in our lifetimes. But our jobs right now is to plant the seeds towards that vision, right? It's to plant the seeds to make these moments the actual movement, to make it so overwhelming to white supremist systems that white supremist systems have no choice but to go away. But it takes so much, um, so much seed planting. Um-    [00:36:49] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: So Joanna, it looks like there's two questions that are sort of interrelated, and both, I think you probably saw them, um, kind of connect with concretely, you know, some ideas around or strategies around addressing, um, both colorism and anti-Blackness in the intimate space of the family or among friends, et cetera.   [00:37:10] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Okay. Think that is an excellent, uh, question and something that I have grappled with and, you know, is very close to my heart. The first thing I'll say is there's no easy way to bring this up with family and friends, right? Especially, you know, um, in our families, especially in our respective families. Um, how… I mean, you know your moms and dads, you know your lolas. You, you know them, and you know they're hella stubborn, right? Like… And so the advice that I have is this: It's impossible to change someone's mind. What you can do is model certain behavior, right? What you can do is model certain language, right? And that alone will speak volumes- Yeah because you are not gonna change, you know, maybe you're not gonna change, like, your lolo or lola's mind. But the people around you are listening. And so here, here's an example, right? Um- W- uh, for me, e- especially in, like, having these conversations with my mom, because she's very much the driving force, uh, for a lot of the research that I do, you know, um, I know my mom, and I know that if I make her feel like crap, like if I make her feel stupid or if I make her feel like, um, what she's saying is old and antiquated, I, I know that I'm not gonna get through to her.   [00:38:36] So what I had to do with my mom was event- was create a love language of understanding, right? Because by creating a love language of understanding the ways in which, like, some of her comments have hurt me, when I started to actually honestly articulate my pain, it's not that my mom let go of some of these ideas, but she started to create an understanding of the impact of her words. And what that did was it changed the way she would… Like, she wouldn't say the things she would say. She wouldn't tell me how dark I was. She wouldn't make comments about, like, me being fat or whatever, right? Because she understood, she understood the impact of that. And as I started to, to realize, like, okay, we may not come to an agreement, but there's a love language that we can speak to, that's how I started seeing changes in, in the way that we interact, right?   [00:39:33] Um, and so you can't change someone's ideas, but what you can do is plant seeds and sort of, and really stand your ground in terms of how you feel about certain ideas, right? But you have to do that in a love language 'cause Filipinos, the language we speak is love, right? So that, I, I think that's, that's what's important. It- You have to understand that you may not change someone's mind, but you're also making it so that the people around are listening. ‘Cause I see the way that, like, my niece, you know, my nieces and nephews, they had just… They have such a better way of dealing with my mom when she would say terrible racist things, right? They had a better way of communicating with her and articulating their, their frustration and their anger, and it would change. It may not have always changed my mother's ideas, but it definitely changed her behavior, and it changed her consciousness, and I think that that's all we can really do, um, is develop that love language.   [00:40:39] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: And if I may, if, uh, if I can just also add, you know, I, I, I think what you said is absolutely spot on and really resonates, um, Joanne. And, and I would add also, I think that there's something, um, really important about how these broader social movements can also-    [00:40:55] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Mm-hmm …    [00:40:56] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: become so important. I mean, so just in my own family, you know, my eldest was, uh, biracial, Black Filipino. And, um, of course, having a biracial, uh, grandson didn't necessarily mean that my mother could also grapple with her own deep anti-Blackness. Um, and it was always a struggle. And, and I agree with Joanne. Sometimes, you know, it is really understanding the particularities of the, of your own dynamic with, with specific intimates in your circle and understanding that certain kinds of lo-lov-love languages open up possibilities for conversation whi- whereas other approaches close off. But I do have to say, you know My mother, you know, is going to be 79. It really took, it took all the movements that happened- Mm-hmm … in response to the George Floyd murder, it took all of the movements around anti-Asian hate for my mother for the very first time, and this is some- You know, I'm her daughter. I've been teaching around race and talking about race. I, you know, I, I produced a biracial grandson for her, right? Um, and it– we could never have real frank conversations about white supremacy, could not really touch it, you know? There was a way that my mother didn't want to, to name white supremacy as something that actually shaped her life. And, you know, those are really com- there may be complicated reasons for that, but being able to name that was always really, really hard. Talking about anti-Blackness was hard. But all of those movements did something for her, and it shifted things in ways that I thought w-were going to be impossible at, by the time- Yeah you know, in her period of life. And not only did she– was she able to have some real kind of honest conversations, but she actually became a kind of advocate, and then used her own platforms to start conversations about white supremacy, um, and kind of race in our community. So I guess that's to say that it's not entirely hopeless, you know?   [00:42:57] I think- Yeah … it is true change can be slow. It can be incremental. It comes in these gentle kinds of ways, um, over time that require a lot of love and patience. And couple that with, I think, also kind of these movements that are also equally invi- uh, important to grow, um, that together that you can see change is, is really absolutely possible. Um, so, you know, just to kind of share that. But it, it is. You know, it's so hard 'cause even within a family where there are biracial, uh, family members, right? It– that isn't itself even going to necessarily change even when they have, right, a loved one, um, that ought to be- Yeah … challenging that for them.   [00:43:44] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, too, um, you know, another thing that helped me, especially, you know, like with my mom… So when I did the research, I did spend some time in the Philippines, and my mom came with me, right? So seeing my mom's very light-skinned, um, you know, uh, Filipina navigate the Philippines. And so I just wanna say for the record, I know I look really light, and it's because we're in COVID, and your girl has not had some sun, okay? Like just, just so that… ‘Cause I'm looking at them like, “God, yeah,” like I know I look light. I swear, you know, I'll show you pictures. But, you know, um, I, I didn't– At the time when my mom came with me to the Philippines, I did not realize how important it was for me to observe her in the Philippines because I was able to get these glimpses of my mom before she was a mom, right? And I was able to understand, like, okay, like… So one of the sort of things that I learned was, like, all these hurtful things that, like, my mom would say to me about the way that I look and what have you, I learned that part of the reason why she leaned in so hard to, with me is because when we would travel, you know, like go around to, like, malls or whatever in the Philippines, people would always tell her, “Oh my gosh,” like, “your daughter looks just like you.”   [00:45:09] And, like, if my mom were sitting next to me, and you can see this in, like, uh, photos with the two of us, like she's very vanilla, and next to her I look like burnt caramel. And I think that there was something about the embodiment of my body size, 'cause I'm big, you know, and, and my, my darker skin tone. It's almost like I was the physical embodiment of everything that she had feared and everything that she was told you should not. And for her, it was confronting, like, I gave birth to this, to this person who's everything that I, you know, that I was told was wrong, right? And so I think I, I… You know, like just watching her navigate, I began to understand, like, the context in which she was raised. I, I started to understand the messaging that she, uh, was, was given. Because when I finished the dissertation, I, I felt like I finished the dissertation at a place where I could actually forgive my mother for all the things that she would say about me. I c- I could forgive her for, like, the comments that she would make because all those things that she imposed onto me was a product of her own pain, and I was able to have something that she did not have, which is a sense of healing. ‘Cause until her very last breath, she was so trapped by these notions of beauty. She was so trapped by needing to be beautiful because this was the constant messaging that she was given, right? And so What we can offer, you know, and the way that we, um, the way that we engage in our sense of healing, especially with the people that we love, really comes down to I know that when my mom left the world, I planted all the seeds that I needed to plant in her, right? I know… Sorry. I know that I have this healing, something that she could not have. I know that her grandchildren don't have to suffer the pain that she did. So I think understanding our family, right? Understanding, like, um, you know, uh, the people, our family and friends, understanding them in that respect, putting into context the reason why they do the painful things we do, choosing how w- choosing the way in which we heal from the things that they did to us, that's all we can really do, right? And all of this, I think, and I'd hate to sound so cheesy but all of this is encased in, like, this deep, profound sense of the love that we have for ourselves, the love that we have for each other. In the midst of confronting immense colonial legacies that time and time again tell us that we are not worth it, right? If we can find that light, and if we can find that value, and if we can share that value with the people around us, that's all we can really do.    [00:48:20] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: Joanne.   [00:48:25] Thank you.    [00:48:26] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Sorry about that.    [00:48:27] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: You don't have to apologize. I think that's one thing about this space, Bulosan's space, the School for Liberating Education, is we all do this out of deep, deep, deep love, right? That that's the whole purpose- Yeah … of being able to host, um, share s- to create space like this, to share space like this. Um, we all know, um, people like you, me, uh, those of us who chose this path into academia, we didn't do this because we wanted to produce knowledge for an institution that wasn't built for and by us.    [00:49:00] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Mm-hmm.    [00:49:00] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: But it was precisely to produce knowledge that could heal and liberate our people. Yeah. And so, you know, so appropriate for you to feel all of those feelings, and that's why it was so important to have you here, because this is such, uh, for so many of us, a deeply, deeply hurtful kind of… We s- we struggle with this, and I think what I-    [00:49:25] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Mm-hmm …    [00:49:26] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: What's so valuable, what you bring to the table is it's so much more complicated than the colorism. There are all of the ways in which colorism intersects with class, intersects with body. I, I mean, you know, even the whole notion of, like, the magandang morenx. I mean, you know, that there are even these fine distinctions that exist in the Philippines about the morena mestiza. You know? Like, that was, like, the, the way that I would get, like, weirdly, like, sideways complimented. Like, “Oh, she's a morena mestiza, though,” you know? Mm-hmm. What does that mean? But, you know, our bodies, um, are subject to such scrutiny within at least that context, and even in this context, right? We're constantly dealing with… We're actually dealing with multiple contexts, right? Contexts, Filipinx folks in the diaspora, where our bodies are subject to examination and evaluation- Mm-hmm … every single day, and we subjected ourselves also, our bodies to- Yeah … these valuations all the time. And, you know, um, and we do this work because we're trying to find, you know, a way out, right?   [00:50:29] A way, um, to heal all those, um, bits of hurt and brokenness and, you know- I mean, thank you so much, uh, Joanne, for not just sharing your amazing research, but also your heart with us. And I think I can m- I can feel that, um, people came away with, uh, from today with just that much more, um, just healing. And, you know, that's the point. That is why we do what we do here. Yeah. Um, uh, that's why we created, uh, the Balosan Center and, um, why I launched the School for Liberating Education. Um, this is the whole, this is the reason why we do this. And so I, with that, I do wanna thank everybody for joining us, um, and, you know, really invite everyone to continue to follow, uh, the work, um, that we're doing at the Balosan Center, what we're doing at the School for Liberating Education.   [00:51:27] The next major thing actually is next week. So my next book is coming out, um, on Asian American activism. Uh, it's actually really cool to talk about coming full circle, Jo-Ann, because basically this is a collab between our professor, our old professor, um, when we were undergrads at UC Santa Barbara, Diane Fujino and I, um, ended up collaborating on a couple things, and this is the latest collab, which is a anthology on Asian American activism. And one of the things I'm doing is launching a mini course, um, on Asian American activism, uh, that's based on the book, but also stuff I've done, um, on activism. So next week, I guess on Thursday, we're officially launching, um, the, the new, uh, the registration for the new course. And so we're launching it with this conversation I have with, um, Art Nagin Concordia, who is the godfather of ethnic studies in the K through 12 system, basically the ninong of ethnic studies in K through 12. Uh, was one of the key authors for the ethnic studies model curriculum and does m- uh, ethnic studies work at Santa Barbara, actually, also with Diane. So anyway, um, that's coming up next week. But do keep following, um, you know, the, the work that we're doing. This is, uh, you know, such important work, um, supporting our scholars and our artists, our community historians. And again, thank you so much, Jo-Ann. Yeah, no. I really think we have our real, real conversation. ‘Cause one of the projects I always wanted to do is, uh –    [00:53:09] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Yes.    [00:53:09] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: No, thank you … a podcast that gets real, real, like real, real. Yes. Like, let's really talk about-    [00:53:13] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Just so you know, you're- … those    [00:53:14] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: real stories …    [00:53:15] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: you're looking at, like, 25 years- of friendship, so I know lots of, uh, Robyn's secrets. I have lots of pictures 'cause I- Yeah. Oh, my God … was very good at documenting these things.    [00:53:24] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: You, you did that photo shoot of my… I think you did a before and after of my ja- my, my, my eyebrows.    [00:53:30] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: I have a photo of you, like, in a, in a, like, a face mask.    [00:53:34] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: Yes. Yes, yes. You can- So- If, if, if I look this good coming on 50- … it's because Joanne taught me about makeup and skincare regimens.    [00:53:46] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch a course on my skincare regimen.    [00:53:51] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: Oh my God.    [00:53:54] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Skincare after your 30s, right?    [00:53:57] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: No, seriously, I'm about to launch, I'm not, I'm not even joking. I'm totally launching a whole, uh, journey to 50, so y'all can come because I, I'm, I'm, I'm going. I'm getting there. As of next, or the week after next, it's T minus 365 days to 50. So join in the fun. Anyway, Joanne, it's so great to see you. I wish I could give you a big hug. Uh,   [00:54:21] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: well, we'll see each other soon hopefully.   [00:54:23] Dr. Robyn Rodriguez: I can't wait to, like, really break bread with you because- Yes … you know, I always know I eat well when I'm with you. Like, I r- I will still- I still dream about the ice cream, that homemade ice cream you make. Like, nothing compares ever again to the ice cream that I consumed that you make. So thanks again. Thanks everyone.    [00:54:43] Dr. Joanne Rondilla: Thank you so much everybody. Hope to see you. Thank you.    [00:54:58] Miko Lee: Please check out our website, kpfa.org/program/apexexpress to find out more about our show and our guests tonight. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating, and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preti Mangala-Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by me Miko Lee, and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night.   The post APEX Express – 8.27.26. Dr. Robynn's Spitting Fire on Colorism appeared first on KPFA.

My guests on the podcast today are Marty and Missie Durapau, and if I had to describe the thread that runs through their story, it would be this:  Still Trusting God.Marty had already experienced devastating loss when his wife of 34 years, Angie, died suddenly in 2020. Missie had walked through difficult seasons of her own before she came to know the Lord as an adult. They married in 2023, blending their families and beginning a new chapter.Then, just over a year later, Missie's 14-year-old son, Mason, suffered a devastating brain injury after a golf cart accident on Easter Sunday. For the next week, Marty and Missie worshiped and prayed and believed God for a miraculous healing. But Mason's ultimate healing occurred when he went to Heaven on April 7, 2024.In this first half of our conversation, we'll hear how God brought Marty and Missie together, get to know Mason—a funny, tenderhearted boy who loved Jesus and loved his mama—and talk honestly about trusting God when He doesn't answer our prayers the way we hoped.This is a story of heartbreak, questions, faith, and still trusting God. I believe you'll be blessed by listening in.I would love to hear your thoughts on the show. Click here to send me a message! ~Jill** IMPORTANT** - All views expressed by guests on this podcast are theirs alone, and may not represent the Statement of Faith and Statement of Beliefs of the While We're Waiting ministry.  We'd love for you to connect with us here at While We're Waiting! Click HERE to visit our website and learn about our free While We're Waiting Weekends for bereaved parentsClick HERE to learn more about our network of While We're Waiting support groups all across the country. Click HERE to subscribe to our YouTube channelClick HERE to follow our public Facebook pageClick HERE to follow us on Instagram Click HERE to follow us on Twitter Click HERE to make a tax-deductible donation to the While We're Waiting ministryContact Jill by email at:  jill@whilewerewaiting.org 

He has risen!

“Believers have died with Christ and therefore are dead to sin.” —Rodney C. Brown Jr. On Easter Sunday the question is pressed: What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Paul's answer is emphatic—May it never be! Because believers have been united with Christ in His death and resurrection, the old self has been crucified. We have died to sin and are no longer its slaves. Baptism pictures this reality: buried with Him into death so that, just as Christ was raised, we too might walk in newness of life. The resurrection is not merely the empty tomb. It is the power that breaks sin's dominion and produces genuine transformation. Grace is not a license; it is the life-changing power of God that makes us new. Rhome Bible Church https://www.rhomebible.org #Romans #Resurrection #DeadToSin #BibleSermon #ChristianPodcast #BiblicalPreaching #Sanctification #UnionWithChrist #RhomeBibleChurch #Easter #NewnessOfLife #Gospel #ScriptureTeaching #ChristianMinistry #Refromed #Expostitional 

On Easter Sunday in 1955, Ruth Ellis waited outside a Hampstead pub for her lover, racing driver David Blakely, then shot him dead in the street as he walked toward his car. She confessed almost immediately, but the story behind that final act was tangled with years of domestic abuse, coercion, infidelity, violence, and a legal system that gave the 28-year-old nightclub manager just one route to the gallows.Her trial lasted only days, the jury deliberated for less than half an hour, and just three months after the shooting, Ruth was hanged at Holloway Prison, becoming the last woman executed in Britain. More than 70 years later, she received a conditional posthumous pardon, not because she was declared innocent, but because her case came to represent something far darker: how the death penalty could erase a woman's life story as easily as it ended her life.

Confession is not a shame ritual, it is the place where mercy meets your real life.This week we are joined again by Fr. Matt Wheeler who uncovers why this sacrament is one of the clearest gifts Jesus ever gave the Church, and why families who practice it together build something stronger than good intentions.Fr. Matt traces confession back to Easter Sunday, when the risen Christ enters the locked room, breathes the Holy Spirit on the apostles, and says, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them." He explains how that moment becomes the foundation for sacramental reconciliation, why the early Church handled penance so differently, and how the Church's practice developed over time under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We discuss why going to confession as a family forms children in humility, peace, and accountability and how to explain confession to young kids without making it terrifying.Connect with Father Matt Wheeler on Instagram and at Catholic Trojan Center

We are BACK, teacher besties, and I have SO much to catch you up on. It's the season three premiere of How to Survive the Classroom, and Gerry has arrived with a NEW nose ring, a PASSED edTPA, and a very concerning number of years since his last dentist appointment. Buckle up. We recap Gerry's full edTPA journey and then get into a real conversation kicked off by my 100-year-old grandpa, who was a teacher for seven years before he quit, largely because he was frustrated that pay was tied to years of service instead of actual skill. Fifty years later, that same debate is still going, and we dig into merit-based pay, the limits of standardized testing, and why electives teachers get left out of the conversation entirely. Then we jump into back-to-school fan questions: what NOT to do your first year, the worst icebreakers ever, and how new teachers can actually protect their time. Plus, an unhinged Two Truths and a Lie round where Gerry casually mentions being present for an Easter Sunday prison riot and I have some follow-up questions. ORDER MY NEW BOOK (AVAILABLE NOW)!!! — https://bit.ly/49CZ5A0⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Takeaways: Do NOT coach your first year of teaching. Even if you love the sport, the workload will bury you. Wait until year two if you can. Please do not become a teacher just because you want to coach. Coaching is its own career path, teaching kids just to earn a whistle isn't fair to the students in your classroom. Watch your icebreakers. Two Truths and a Lie in a class of 30 will take the entire period AND leave you exposed to whatever wild thing a student wants to reveal. Choose carefully. Do the work at school. Grading, prep, and lesson planning inside the building beats opening your laptop at 9 PM every night. Protect your home time. The teacher pay debate has been the same conversation for 50+ years. Both skill and years of service matter, but standardized test scores mostly measure the poverty level of an area, so any "merit-based" system needs a smarter way to measure real impact. -- Teachers' night out? Yes, please! Come see comedian Educator Andrea…Get your tickets at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠teachersloungelive.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Educatorandrea.com/tickets⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for laugh out loud Education! — Don't Be Shy Come Say Hi: www.podcasterandrea.com Watch on YouTube: @educatorandrea A Human Content Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jay Chandrasekhar is a filmmaker, actor, writer, and comedian best known as a founding member of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, where he co-created, directed, and starred in cult comedy hits including Super Troopers, Club Dread, Beerfest, and Super Troopers 2. Beyond Broken Lizard, he has built an extensive television directing career with episodes of acclaimed sitcoms such as Arrested Development, Community, and The Goldbergs, while also directing studio films including The Dukes of Hazzard and Easter Sunday. Be sure to check out his new stand-up special, Brown Supremacist, premiering on Veeps on August 20, and catch Super Troopers 3 when it hits theaters on August 7.IN THE NEWS: Republican Ohio governor says deporting Haitians is "a mistake" because they "came here to work", Dave Portnoy Goes Scorched Earth On Mamdani Over 9/11 Controversy, Kamala Urged Me To Stay Quiet After Affair With Newsom Exploded, Joy Reid Says Elon Musk Is An IdiotFOR MORE WITH JAY CHANDRASEKHAR:MOVIE: Super Troopers 3Out August 7th INSTAGRAM/X: @JayChandrasekha STAND UP SPECIAL - BROWN SUPREMACIST out AUGUST 20th on VEEPS FOR MORE WITH RUDY PAVICH:WEBSITE: RudyPavichComedy.comINSTAGRAM: @ Rudy_Pavich PUNCH UP LIVE: https://punchup.live/rudypavichLIVE SHOWS: July 30 - Freehold, NJ (2 Shows)July 31 - New York, NY (2 Shows)August 1 - Uncasville, CTAugust 2 - Albany, NYThank you for supporting our sponsors:Limited Time Offer – Make healthy eating simple. Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code ADAM at huel.com/ADAM New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at MenGoToMars.com oreillyauto.com/ADAMSHOPIFY.COM/carollapluto.tvPodcastOneSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Since 1976, Pastor Craig Loewen has served as a youth pastor, radio missionary in Quito, Ecuador, Christian camp staff member, and as churchSenior Pastor. Having retired on Easter Sunday of this year from Heidlersburg Church Of the United Brethren in Christ, he now enjoys pulpit fill and other forms of Christian ministry. He has performed […]

Read OnlineA Model of Holy Love and DesireOn the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him.” John 20:1–2When Jesus first encountered Mary Magdalene, she was afflicted by seven demons. Many Church Fathers interpret this number as symbolizing a complete domination by evil spirits. Though later traditions identified Mary Magdalene with the repentant prostitute or the woman caught in adultery, the Gospels themselves do not explicitly make that identification. What is certain is that she had been grievously afflicted by demons (cf. Luke 8:2).To fall into such spiritual bondage suggests a life marked by serious sin. However, diabolical possession is not always the direct result of mortal sin; at times, God may permit such affliction for reasons known only to His providence, allowing a greater good to emerge from it. Whatever the cause of Mary Magdalene's prior affliction, it is clear that God, in His infinite mercy, transformed her into a radiant model of holy love and desire. From her profound healing flowed a singular devotion to Christ.Today's Gospel beautifully portrays the emotion, desire, sorrow, and love flowing from Mary's heart. She was one of the few faithful disciples who remained with Jesus during His Passion and death. She stood by the Cross alongside Jesus' mother, the Apostle John, and a few other holy women. Her strength and devotion likely sprang from her heartfelt gratitude toward Jesus for delivering her from diabolical affliction. The freedom she experienced through Him enkindled in her an unwavering faith, recognizing Him as the Messiah and the Son of God.On Easter Sunday morning, before the sun had even risen, Mary made her way to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body. Since Jesus had died shortly before the Sabbath began—sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday—Mary and the other women had been unable to properly anoint His sacred Body. We can imagine that from the moment the Sabbath began, her heart was fixed on one desire: to return to the tomb and perform this final act of love. Her devotion could not wait. Love compelled her to act as soon as it was permitted, and in doing so, she became the first to behold the empty tomb—and soon after, the Risen Lord.We see Mary's holy love and desire also in her determination to remain at the empty tomb. After seeing the stone rolled away, she ran to tell the Apostles, and then returned with Peter and John. But after they departed, Mary remained. She stayed, weeping, loving, and longing. She was so consumed with desire for her Lord that, when she saw two angels seated in the tomb, she was neither startled nor impressed—not even when they spoke to her: “Woman, why are you weeping?” Her only thought was for Jesus: “They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid him.”Even when Jesus appeared, His identity veiled from her eyes, she still sought only His body. Yet it was His voice—tender, familiar, unmistakable—that pierced the veil and opened her eyes of faith: “Mary!” She responded with that beautiful, personal cry of recognition, “Rabbouni!”Reflect today on the transformed soul of Saint Mary Magdalene. She went from diabolical affliction to a heart overflowing with holy love and desire for our Lord. She is a model for each of us. We must allow ourselves to be filled with the same gratitude for His grace and reconciliation, cultivate the same unwavering devotion, and burn with the same longing to find Him. When our hearts mirror Mary's, we too will hear the Lord call us by name. Be grateful. Desire Him. Listen for Him. And like Mary, you will find that He is already standing before you.Rabbouni! With Saint Mary Magdalene, I give thanks to You with all my heart for the freedom You have mercifully bestowed upon me. You have forgiven my sins, restored me to grace, and kept me safe from the snares of the enemy. With Mary, I pray that my passions and every movement of my soul may be caught up in love of You, driving me to seek You with all my being. Speak my name, O Lord, call me lovingly, and open my eyes to see You always before me. Jesus, I trust in You.  Image: St Mary Magdalene, by Lawrence OP, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.Source: Free RSS feed from catholic-daily-reflections.com — Copyright © 2026 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. This content is provided solely for personal, non-commercial use. Redistribution, republication, or commercial use — including use within apps with advertising — is strictly prohibited without written permission.

Special Tisha Ba'av Episode with an all new introduction.  The 1903 Kishinev Pogrom was a tragic massacre, with reverberations within the wider Jewish world remaining until this very day. Goaded on by antisemitic newspapers with cries of 'Death to the Jews', a blood libel was fabricated and a mob was unleashed on Easter Sunday, April 19, 1903. Leaving 49 killed, hundreds maimed and injured in its wake, Jewish property was destroyed and looted as well. Claims of complicity of the police and government were voiced in many quarters. But it was primarily the after effects of this pogrom which had a long term transformative effect on Jewish society in Russia and worldwide. The great immigration to the United States was already long underway, but it significantly intensified in the years following Kishinev and the subsequent 1905 revolution. American Jewry was galvanized to assist the victims, and this cemented the relationship US Jewry was to have with their brethren back in Eastern Europe. Within Russia, many of the Jewish youth became radicalized as a result of the massacre, joining clandestine revolutionary organizations with the goal of overthrowing the Czar. The most profound impact was felt within the nascent Zionist movement. Chaim Nachman Bialik was dispatched by the historian Shimon Dubnow to gather testimonies from survivors. Following his five week stay in Kishinev, Bialik penned 'Be'ir Hahareiga' - In the City of Death, a poem about the pogrom. Powerfully written, it also included strongly worded accusations in regards to the perceived passivity of the victims. The poem and its message was to have an immense impact, as it was published and translated and became immensely popular. Vladimir Jabotinsky's conclusion was to organize Jewish self defense, and Theodore Herzl's conclusion was the Uganda proposal at the Sixth Zionist Congress. The shadow of the Kishinev tragedy was to hover over the many subsequent, and ever greater tragedies of the bloody 20th century. Subscribe to Jewish History Soundbites Podcast on: PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/ or your favorite podcast platform Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history or feedback contact Yehuda at: yehuda@yehudageberer.com

Friends of the Rosary,Today, July 14, the Catholic Church in the USA celebrates the Memorial of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), the "Lily of the Mohawks," the first native American to be declared "Blessed" and "Saint."Kateri was born in 1656 near the town of Auriesville, New York. She refused to marry a Mohawk man and, at nineteen, finally got the courage to take the step of converting. One year later, she was baptized by a Jesuit missionary on Easter Sunday in 1676, given the name Kateri (Catherine).She was devoted to the Eucharist and to Jesus Crucified, leading a life of prayer, penitential practices, and care for the sick.Kateri incurred the hostility of her tribe because of her faith while praying for the conversion of her nation.Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared, and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980.Ave Maria!Come, Holy Spirit, come!To Jesus through Mary!Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.Please give us the grace to respond with joy!+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New YorkEnhance your faith with the new Holy Rosary University app:Apple iOS | New! Android Google Play• ⁠June 14, 2026, Today's Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET

In this episode of Season 2 of The Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan, host Finghin Mac Cárthaigh (Flor McCarthy) sits down with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, one of the most celebrated poets writing in the Irish language and a former Ireland Professor of Poetry.Together, they explore how learning Irish (Gaeilge) can go far beyond grammar and vocabulary, opening powerful pathways into identity, heritage, and belonging.Thanks for your interest in The Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan! Subscribe for free to receive priority notification on future episodes and to access valuable Irish language learning resourcesThanks for your interest in The Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan! Subscribe for free to receive priority notification on future episodes and to access valuable Irish language learning resources.Throughout the conversation, they reflect on the emotional power of Irish — from family connections and memory to the deep cultural meanings embedded within words.This episode reminds us that Irish is not simply something to learn — it is something to experience, feel, and live.A Note on TimingThis episode was recorded on 29 March 2026. During the conversation, Finghin refers to an interview with Gabriel Rosenstock that had appeared in the Sunday Independent the week before, as well as to a documentary that was due to air the following Sunday, which was Easter Sunday.Since the recording of this episode, Gabriel Rosenstock has sadly passed away. Beannachtaí Dé airThis Episode Celebrates:* The role of storytelling in learning Irish* The power of etymology and folklore to unlock meaning* The emotional connection between language, identity, and heritage* The importance of accessibility and community in language revivalIf you've ever felt disconnected from Irish — or unsure where to begin — this episode will inspire you to start again.Thanks for your interest in The Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan! Subscribe for free to receive priority notification on future episodes and to access valuable Irish language learning resources. Podcast NotesGrowing Up Between LanguagesNuala Ní Dhomhnaill reflects on her childhood between England and Ireland and her early immersion in Irish upon returning to the Gaeltacht in West Kerry. Her experience highlights how language shapes identity and belonging from an early age.The Gaeltacht and the Power of StorytellingInfluenced by the rich oral traditions of the Gaeltacht, Ní Dhomhnaill developed a deep appreciation for folklore and storytelling. These formative experiences would later inspire her distinctive poetic voice.Thanks for your interest in The Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan! Subscribe for free to receive priority notification on future episodes and to access valuable Irish language learning resources. Mythology, Folklore, and the Creative ImaginationDrawing from Irish mythology and the National Folklore Collection, her work explores themes of transformation, memory, and the subconscious. Her iconic mermaid (merrow) poems exemplify her ability to bridge ancient tradition with contemporary thought.Writing in Irish: A Lifelong CommitmentNí Dhomhnaill discusses her decision to write primarily in Irish, describing it as a language of discovery, creativity, and authenticity. Her work has brought Irish-language poetry to international audiences through translation and has played a pivotal role in the modern literary revival.Free Irish Learning ResourcesIf you enjoyed this episode of The Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan and want to continue your Irish language journey:Access free Irish learning resources, stay updated on upcoming episodes, and receive exclusive content.Sign up here:Free ResourcesThe Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan Free ResourcesYou can also follow my writing on Substack:Thanks for your interest in The Language Question ~ Ceist na Teangan! Subscribe for free to receive priority notification on future episodes and to access valuable Irish language learning resources. A newsletter and community for anyone learning the Irish language as an adultSlán tamall,Finghin Mac CárthaighHost – The Language Question ~ Ceist na TeanganMore on Nuala Ní DhomhnaillNuala Ní Dhomhnaill is one of the most celebrated poets writing in the Irish language and a former Ireland Professor of Poetry. Renowned for her lyrical and myth-infused work, she explores themes of identity, folklore, femininity, and cultural memory through the medium of Gaeilge.Born in Lancashire, England, in 1952 to Irish physicians, she was sent at age 5 to live with relatives in the Kerry Gaeltacht. This experience profoundly shaped her linguistic and cultural identity. She later studied English and Irish at University College Cork in 1969, where she became a central figure in the influential Innti school of poets. Ní Dhomhnaill spent seven years living abroad in Holland and Turkey with her husband, Doğan Leflef, before returning to County Kerry in 1980. Her first poetry collection, An Dealg Droighin, was published in 1981.Writing exclusively in Irish, Ní Dhomhnaill uses language as a powerful tool to give voice to the marginalised and to challenge traditional narratives within Irish society. Her work often reimagines mythology and folklore through a feminist lens, presenting women as complex, empowered, and multidimensional figures. Through her poetry, she seeks to transcend the fragmentation of Ireland's colonial past and to affirm the vitality and relevance of Irish cultural identity.Her work has reached global audiences through translations by some of Ireland's most distinguished poets, including Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, Michael Hartnett, and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Ní Dhomhnaill advocates for creative freedom in translation, believing that English versions should capture the energy, beauty, and spirit of the original Irish.Widely acclaimed both nationally and internationally, her poetry continues to play a vital role in the modern revival of Irish-language literature and in shaping contemporary discussions on language, culture, and identity.Learn more:Poetry Foundation This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit finghinmac.substack.com

Full Text of Readings Memorial of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin [In the Dioceses of the United States] Lectionary: 390 The Saint of the day is Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Saint Kateri Tekakwitha's Story The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. Nine years after the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and Jean de Lelande were tomahawked by Iroquois warriors, a baby girl was born near the place of their martyrdom, Auriesville, New York. Kateri Tekakwitha's mother was a Christian Algonquin, taken captive by the Iroquois and given as wife to the chief of the Mohawk clan, the boldest and fiercest of the Five Nations. When she was four, Tekakwitha lost her parents and little brother in a smallpox epidemic that left her disfigured and half blind. She was adopted by an uncle, who succeeded her father as chief. He hated the coming of the Blackrobes—Jesuit missionaries—but could do nothing to them because a peace treaty with the French required their presence in villages with Christian captives. She was moved by the words of three Blackrobes who lodged with her uncle, but fear of him kept her from seeking instruction. Tekakwitha refused to marry a Mohawk brave, and at 19 finally got the courage to take the step of converting. She was baptized with the name Kateri–Catherine–on Easter Sunday. Now she would be treated as a slave. Because she would not work on Sunday, Kateri received no food that day. Her life in grace grew rapidly. She told a missionary that she often meditated on the great dignity of being baptized. She was powerfully moved by God's love for human beings and saw the dignity of each of her people. She was always in danger, for her conversion and holy life created great opposition. On the advice of a priest, Kateri Tekakwitha stole away one night and began a 200-mile walking journey to a Christian Indian village at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal. For three years she grew in holiness under the direction of a priest and an older Iroquois woman, giving herself totally to God in long hours of prayer, in charity, and in strenuous penance. At 23, Kateri took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for an Indian woman whose future depended on being married. She found a place in the woods where she could pray an hour a day—and was accused of meeting a man there! Her dedication to virginity was instinctive: Kateri Tekakwitha did not know about religious life for women until she visited Montreal. Inspired by this, she and two friends wanted to start a community, but the local priest dissuaded her. She humbly accepted an “ordinary” life. She practiced extremely severe fasting as penance for the conversion of her nation. Kateri Tekakwitha died the afternoon before Holy Thursday. Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980 and canonized in 2012. Reflection We like to think that our proposed holiness is thwarted by our situation. If only we could have more solitude, less opposition, better health. Kateri Tekakwitha repeats the example of the saints: Holiness thrives on the cross, anywhere. Yet she did have what Christians—all people—need: the support of a community. She had a good mother, helpful priests, Christian friends. These were present in what we call primitive conditions, and blossomed in the age-old Christian triad of prayer, fasting and almsgiving: union with God in Jesus and the Spirit, self-discipline and often suffering, and charity for her brothers and sisters.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Today's message comes to us from Easter Sunday. Join Pastor Ken in John 20 as he preaches "Resurrection Realities."

An Easter Sunday sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.These are the final days of our Lenten journey. We've spent these weeks marveling at Jesus' signs. He turned water to wine. What a wonder! He miraculous restored a man's legs lame for 38 years! What awesome power! He took a handful of fish and flatbread and fed 5000! Only God has done anything like this before (Exodus 16). Jesus made mud and anointed the sightless eyes of a man born blind who came back from the waters of Siloam seeing! The man exclaimed with amazement, “Never since the world began has… anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind” (John 9.32). He was saying of his healing, “Only God could do this!”When Jesus entered Jerusalem, riding on the foal of a donkey, everyone in the crowded capital—jam packed with pilgrims from across the world—was talking about Jesus' seventh sign. Everybody knew Lazarus was dead. Dead for days. Before their eyes he was wrapped and anointed and grieved into the tomb. Then Jesus proclaimed for all to hear, “I AM the Resurrection and Life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (11.25-26). Still people didn't understand. How could they!? They asked one another, “Could not He who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” (11.37). Then Jesus turned to the tomb, commanded the stone rolled away and “cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!'” and from the darkness of the cave, Lazarus stepped out, alive! Only God could do this!Friend, John displays for us the truth of Jesus who is the Word of God! There is no question in his mind these signs prove the divinity of Christ; and the resurrection of Lazarus is just a foretaste of what's to come (John 20). Following Jesus to the Table where He washes our feet, pause to marvel. Only God would do this. Follow Him as He stands judged by the people made in His image and endures mockery at the hands of the soldiers and wonder. Only God would do this. Follow Him to the cross where He dies our death; where He puts death to death. Only God could do this.

God has sown Christ, the seed, into our lives. BUt we must plant it in good soil. (My Prayer Comes Before You - Colgan, sung by Contemporary Music MInistry in Rome , Easter April 1979, soloist - Fr. Bob Kropas, a classmate of Fr. Steve's who died this past week R.I.P. Bob)The homilies of Msgr. Stephen J. AvilaPastor, St. Joseph, Guardian of the Holy Family Parish, Falmouth, MAThanks for listening! May God's Word find a home in you.

April 5, 2026 • 9:30am

Read OnlineFaith Born of EncounterThomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” John 20:24–25Though Saint Thomas is best remembered for doubting Jesus' Resurrection, God used him in glorious ways. Because God is all-powerful, even Thomas' doubt was transformed into a source of grace for the Church and a model of true faith and conversion. In Thomas, we see the journey from doubt to faith, from absence to confession, from fear to peace—an invitation for each of us to make the same journey.Saint Thomas, called Didymus—meaning “Twin”—was not present when the risen Christ first appeared to the assembled Apostles. His absence was no accident but part of God's providential plan. When the other disciples testified, “We have seen the Lord,” Thomas struggled to believe. His absence symbolizes the effect of isolation from the Church or from an active life of prayer, which can leave us vulnerable to doubt and disbelief. His heart demanded tangible proof: “Unless I see the mark of the nails… I will not believe.” In this, Thomas articulates a cry that echoes in every human heart: we long for certainty, yet struggle to trust without the proof we demand.One week later—on the day now celebrated as Divine Mercy Sunday—Jesus once again entered the locked room and stood among them, radiating peace: “Peace be with you.” His first words were directed not to the whole group, but to Thomas, addressing his wounded faith with tender love: “Put your finger here and see my hands… bring your hand and put it into my side.” Jesus does not shame Thomas; He invites him. He invites him to touch the very wounds that conquered death, to enter into the mystery of Divine Mercy not only intellectually, but physically and spiritually.After being confronted by the Living Christ, Thomas is transformed. In that pivotal moment, he prays one of the greatest confessions of faith in all of Scripture: “My Lord and my God!” With profound clarity, he proclaims the divinity of Christ. The doubting disciple becomes the believing Apostle, who will later be sent forth to bear witness to the ends of the earth.Thomas' journey invites us to reflect on our own. Like Thomas, we are sometimes absent from encounters with the risen Lord. Failure to pray daily, to attend Mass faithfully, to confess our sins, to nourish our souls through spiritual reading, adoration, retreats, or parish missions can isolate us from Christ and diminish our faith. Absence from these means of grace can open the door to spiritual doubt and weakness.If these struggles are familiar to you, take heart in the example of Saint Thomas. If your faith has faltered—especially if you experience serious doubts—or if worldly concerns have drawn you away from the life of grace, then let Thomas' prayer become your own: “My Lord and my God!” He professed faith in what he saw, so that we might profess faith in Christ whom we do not yet see. That simple little prayer, prayed with the certainty of faith and with sincere passion in the heart, sparks greater faith and brings us the clarity we need.Reflect today on Thomas being absent from Jesus' first Resurrection appearance on Easter Sunday. Try to feel his disappointment and doubt. Thomas carried those feelings for an entire week until Jesus appeared again. See yourself in him by identifying any times you have felt the same. Then move forward to the moment, one week later, when Thomas was present as Jesus appeared to them. With him, listen to Jesus invite you to touch His wounds. Profess with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” Repeat that prayer and try to sense Thomas' newfound passionate belief. It is that belief our Lord desires from all of us who do not see with our eyes but come to know Him in our spirit.My Lord and my God! I do believe in You and profess that belief with all my heart. When I struggle with my faith, when I falter, or when I become distracted from my life of prayer and devotion, please remind me of Saint Thomas. Place his words repeatedly on my lips so that I may continuously cry out with him, “My Lord and my God!” Saint Thomas, pray for us. Jesus, I trust in You.Image: St Thomas by Lawrence OP, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.Source: Free RSS feed from catholic-daily-reflections.com — Copyright © 2026 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. This content is provided solely for personal, non-commercial use. Redistribution, republication, or commercial use — including use within apps with advertising — is strictly prohibited without written permission.

The United States is turning 250 this week, but the country is divided about the anniversary. Should the country celebrate or lament? Historian Robert Tracy McKenzie joins Skye to talk about the ongoing fight over how to tell America's story, why we reject nuance, and what he saw at the Rededicate 250 event in Washington, D.C. that made him concerned. Kaitlyn offers her take on a New York Times interview with Louise Perry about rethinking the sexual revolution. Perry argues, as a non-believer, for the recovery of sexual ethics that seem very Christian. What does that say about our culture's fatigue with secularism? Also this week—AI finds proof that your parents were right about the music you listen to, and the World Cup is revealing the decency of average Americans.   Holy Post Plus: Ad-Free Version of this Episode: https://holypost.substack.com/p/727-rethinking-the-sexual-revolution   Getting Schooled - Weddings 101: https://holypost.substack.com/p/getting-schooled-weddings-101   0:00 - Show Starts 1:50 - Theme Song 2:12  - Sponsor - Sundays Dog Food - Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to https://www.SundaysForDogs.com/HOLYPOST or use code HOLYPOST at checkout. 3:24 - Rededicate 5:12 - World Cup Brings World Together 11:24 - Pop Music's Moral Slide 20:39 - Sponsor - World Challenge - Want to help people around the world? Get involved today at https://worldchallenge.org/HOLYPOST 21:42  - Sponsor - World Relief - Help families overseas and refugees in crisis! When you give now before Easter Sunday, your donation will be doubled! Start your partnership today at https://www.worldrelief.org/holypost 23:08 - New Sexual Revolution? 54:09 - Interview 58:10 - Unblemished America 1:03:15 - Credal or Racial Nation? 1:11:40 - Founding Father's Private Faith 1:19:53 - Wanting a Positive Vision 1:28:08 - End Credits Links Mentioned in News Segment: Louise Perry on the Sexual Revolution: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/opinion/gender-sexual-revolution-men-women.html   Pop Music has Become Less Moral: https://www.newsweek.com/music-has-got-nastier-since-60s-study-says-12119675   Other Resources: How America Gave Up on Its Own History: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/07/american-history-common-narrative/687301/   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/   Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus   Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost   Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Sermon by The Very Reverend Anne M. Maxwell

What took place in the time in between Jesus' death on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday? We see how Jesus' disciples loved him and sought to honor him in death. We see the hopelessness and sadness of that Holy Saturday and what God was doing when he seemed so absent. This message was preached by Pastor Erick Cobb on June 21, 2026.

Send us Fan MailWe're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Frameline Film Festival (the world's longest running and largest LGBTQIA film fest!) with two films that shine a light on hypocrisy in religion in very different ways.Hunky Jesus is a wildly entertaining documentary about the annual Hunky Jesus competition that takes place in Dolores Park in San Francisco on Easter Sunday (amen). Director Jennifer Kroot joins us to share her thoughts on the displacement of counter culture in San Francisco, overcoming religious trauma, and why the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are part of the heart and soul of San Francisco.Leviticus is a queer coming of age horror film that is meant to be seen on the big screen! Director/writer Adrian Chiarella and actor Joe Bird join us to discuss making an original story with bold ideas, an opening scene that pulls you in from the start, and how religion (and beyond) uses fear as a tool to divide.Hunky Jesus is screening on June 26th at the Castro Theater. For tickets, CLICK HERE!Leviticus is in theaters right now! For showtimes, CLICK HERE!Follow Hunky Jesus on IGFollow director Adrian Chiarella on IGFollow actor Joe Bird on IGSupport the showThanks for listening and for your support! We couldn't have won Best of the Bay Best Podcast in 2022 , 2023 , and 2024 without you!--Fight fascism. Shop small. Use cash. Fuck ice.--Support Bitch Talk here!Subscribe to our channel on YouTube for behind the scenes footage!Rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts!Visit our website! www.bitchtalkpodcast.comFollow us on Instagram, Threads, and SubstackListen every Monday at 7 am on BFF.FM

https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/daily-devotions/20260620dev.mp3 Listen to Devotion When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36 Compassion Jesus was a man in motion. He healed a paralytic, a sick woman, and two blind men. He raised another man's daughter from the dead. He called men to be his disciples. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.” Why this activity, this urgency? Because the people were harassed by false prophets and the forces of evil. Because they were harassed by the guilt of their own sin and the fear of eternal death. And by themselves, they were helpless to do anything about it. Sound familiar? Aren’t we tempted by false prophets who promise a way to heaven other than through Christ? Aren’t we besieged by forces of evil that want to drag us away into the deadly sins of laziness, selfishness, greed, pornography, adultery, idolatry, and the like? Don’t we get depressed by our own sinfulness and guilt and wonder whether heaven can really be our home? And by ourselves, we are helpless to do anything about it. Thankfully, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who has come to guide, strengthen, and protect us. He lived the perfect life we couldn’t. He gave his life, taking the curse for all our sins. He moved beyond death and the grave, rising on Easter Sunday morning, and then returned to his throne in heaven. He assures us that his victory is ours. Because of all he has done, we are fully forgiven and headed for heaven. He did all this because of his compassion. Compassion has been defined as love in motion. That’s why Jesus was a man on the move. His love did not allow him to see us in our need and leave us there. He took action. Aren’t you glad he did? Prayer: Dear Jesus, I am amazed by your love and compassion. Thank you for taking action when I needed you to. Amen. Daily Devotions is brought to you by WELS. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/daily-devotions/20260620dev.mp3 Listen to Devotion When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36 Compassion Jesus was a man in motion. He healed a paralytic, a sick woman, and two blind men. He raised another man's daughter from the dead. He called men to be his disciples. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.” Why this activity, this urgency? Because the people were harassed by false prophets and the forces of evil. Because they were harassed by the guilt of their own sin and the fear of eternal death. And by themselves, they were helpless to do anything about it. Sound familiar? Aren’t we tempted by false prophets who promise a way to heaven other than through Christ? Aren’t we besieged by forces of evil that want to drag us away into the deadly sins of laziness, selfishness, greed, pornography, adultery, idolatry, and the like? Don’t we get depressed by our own sinfulness and guilt and wonder whether heaven can really be our home? And by ourselves, we are helpless to do anything about it. Thankfully, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who has come to guide, strengthen, and protect us. He lived the perfect life we couldn’t. He gave his life, taking the curse for all our sins. He moved beyond death and the grave, rising on Easter Sunday morning, and then returned to his throne in heaven. He assures us that his victory is ours. Because of all he has done, we are fully forgiven and headed for heaven. He did all this because of his compassion. Compassion has been defined as love in motion. That’s why Jesus was a man on the move. His love did not allow him to see us in our need and leave us there. He took action. Aren’t you glad he did? Prayer: Dear Jesus, I am amazed by your love and compassion. Thank you for taking action when I needed you to. Amen. Daily Devotions is brought to you by WELS. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Motion Church | Easter: "Does the Offer Still Stand?" What happens when you show up with an expired coupon? You already know the answer — and so does God. This Easter at Motion Church, we're looking at the Easter story through a slightly different lens: redemption. What does it really mean to be redeemed? And is the offer of salvation — purchased at the highest price imaginable — still available to you today? The answer is a resounding yes. The Bible defines redemption as "the act of God buying back or rescuing humanity from slavery to sin and death through the costly sacrifice of Jesus Christ." Romans 3 makes it clear: every one of us has sinned and fallen short, leaving us with a debt we can never repay on our own. But God, unwilling to leave his prize creation in that condition, set a plan in motion — sending his own Son to satisfy that debt once and for all. Jesus didn't just come to show us what it means to be human. "Jesus, from the moment that he entered into humanity, had a purpose, and that purpose was to redeem humanity." The cross was the cost. The empty tomb is the guarantee. As the disciples discovered on the road to Emmaus, the resurrection isn't just a miracle — it's the proof that the offer holds. "The resurrection guarantees your redemption. The offer still stands." And here's the thing about this offer: it doesn't come with an expiration date. God doesn't go out of business. "He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end… the offer stands from generation to generation." The coupon never expires — but you and I do. "It's a tailor-made offer that's just for you that doesn't expire, but you do." So the question isn't whether the offer is still good. It is. The question is: what are you waiting for? "Redemption offers freedom. Redemption offers peace. Redemption offers belonging, purpose, healing for the hurting, and being made whole to those who are broken. Redemption offers eternal life." Don't let your coupon go unredeemed.

In this drill-down episode, we are diving deep into the powerful intersections of faith, resilience, and transformation by looking back at four of our most impactful recent conversations. We revisit the inspiring stories of Rob Roozeboom, who turned physical brokenness into a 25-year ministry; my beautiful wife, Jessica, who pivoted her focus toward family health and accessible wellness; Chad Stock, who survived a near-fatal table saw accident on Easter Sunday to become a beacon of motivation; and Travis Shelton, an executive financial coach who walked away from a high-flying real estate career to pursue better over more. The major aha moment of this collective journey is that true success cannot be measured by worldly metrics like status, money, or material abundance. Instead, God often uses our deepest trials, physical limitations, and massive career pivots to reshape our minds and reveal our true Kingdom purpose. When life hits hard, staying stationary isn't an option—victory is found in choosing to get up, lean on community, and keep moving forward in the strength of Christ. Key Takeaways Brokenness Doesn't Erase Calling: Your physical or emotional limitations do not disqualify you from being used by God; brokenness can actually be the gateway to a hope-filled, purposeful life. Stewardship Includes Health: True wealth isn't just about financial assets; it includes how we nourish our bodies and help other families access wellness. The Mind is a Battlefield: The enemy will constantly tell you that you are invisible or insignificant, but resilience means choosing to believe who Jesus says you are. Choose Better Over More: True satisfaction comes from aligning your daily work with meaning and impact, even if it means making radical lifestyle sacrifices. Never Stop Moving Forward: When adversity strikes, you have to activate your mental, physical, and spiritual tools to push past the trauma and embrace the next chapter. To connect with Tyler: https://www.tylerkamerman.com/  

On Easter Sunday in 1991, 18-year-old William Little was murdered at a Bloomington, Illinois gas station for a mere $60. The initial investigation led veteran detective Charles Crowe to Jamie Snow, a man who passed a lie detector test and didn't fit the profile of a killer. The case went cold for years until two rookie detectives took over and built a case based almost entirely on the testimony of jailhouse informants and shifting eyewitness accounts. **The original release of this episode included discussion suggesting that Susan Claycomb confessed to being a part of this crime and told authorities Jamie Snow was guilty. However, that is not the case and the audio has been adjusted to reflect the reality that Susan always denied involvement and has fought to prove Jamie's innocence.    --For early, ad free episodes and monthly exclusive bonus content, join our Patreon! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business: join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER:  https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business: see if you qualify here.:  https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox: sign up here.: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast, Tom Bilyeu's Mindset Playbook —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Blinkist: Start your free trial at https://blinkist.com/impactQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodIncogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impactAT&T Business: Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.comNetsuite: Right now, get our free business guide, Demystifying AI, at https://NetSuite.com/TheoryKetone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription orderSumm: code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactCozy Earth: code IMPACT for 20% off https://cozyearth.comQuo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impact Tom is joined by a sharp geopolitical analyst to unpack Trump's latest ultimatum to Iran, including his jaw-dropping Easter Sunday tweet signing off with "Praise be to Allah" — and what it reveals about the White House's increasingly desperate mental map of a regime that simply will not capitulate. They dig into the parade of extended deadlines, Iran's jaw-dropping counter-demands (yes, including war reparations), and the backchannel negotiations Trump says are going well while Iran says don't exist. Joining Tom is Drew, who brings sharp, no-nonsense analysis to the rapidly shifting landscape of US-Iran negotiations. Together they unpack the two-week ceasefire brokered with Pakistan's help, the dueling 10 and 15 point peace proposals, and the fierce battle of narratives playing out across social media and mainstream news. Is this a win for Trump — or an unmitigated disaster in slow motion? The Anthropic source code leak. What started as a routine update to Claude Code turned into one of the most embarrassing moments in Silicon Valley history — a debugging file accidentally exposed roughly 500,000 lines of proprietary code in a publicly accessible archive. No hacking required. Within hours, mirrored repositories were spreading across GitHub and competitors had a detailed look at Anthropic's engineering roadmap, including unreleased features that were fully built but never shipped. Tom and Drew dig into why this matters, what the leaked features reveal about where Claude is headed, and whether this is survivable for a company whose core identity is "safety first." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.