Podcasts about living wisdom

This week, Kat continues our New Way series and our focus on The Sermon on the Mount as we look at 'Wisdom in Relationships'. Jesus calls us to hunger and thirst for the right relationships! But do we just pay attention when things go wrong? Let's look at how we can try to get it right from the start.Join us on Sundays in-person, 10:30am at The Littlehampton Academy, UKGet in contactVisit our website at arunchurch.com@arunchurch on Facebook, Instagram and YouTubeEmail us on hello@arunchurch.comPlease note, while we aim for clear teaching on the Christian faith, the views, information and opinions expressed by individuals on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views held by Arun Church or its representatives.

How do you navigate a cluttered world when you can't see it?It's a question most of us never consider. But for Sarah Miloudi, a blind KonMari consultant, it's a daily reality—and she's thriving.In this week's episode, I had the privilege of sitting down with Sarah to uncover her unique perspective on decluttering, tidying, and creating a clutter-free home despite having less sight than the average person . Her story is packed with wisdom on intentional living, overcoming overwhelm, and finding small wins in everyday organization.Ever wonder how you'd declutter your life without relying on vision? Or what strategies could turn your limitations into superpowers?Sarah reveals it all—how blindness shaped her approach to home organization, why the KonMari method is more than “sparking joy,” and the simple declutter strategies that can work for anyone, with or without a disability.This isn't just about keeping a tidy home. It's about rethinking how we interact with our space, designing systems that support us, and embracing the possibility of change—even when it feels impossible.

Walking in Wisdom – Day 4 - Proverbs 4Pastor Jason Van Bemmel, Forest Hill Presbyterian Churchwww.foresthillpca.org• Get Wisdom: The repeated command to pursue wisdom above all else.• The Value of Parental Instruction: The importance of heeding the wisdom passed down from parents.• Wisdom as Skill for Living: Wisdom is practical knowledge, understanding, insight, and discernment applied to life.• Watch Your Feet, Guard Your Heart: Be mindful of your lifestyle choices and the company you keep, and diligently guard your heart against evil.• Fix Your Eyes on Jesus: Ultimate wisdom is found in Christ, who embodies and exemplifies true wisdom.

Pastor Eric Mounts Ephesians 5:15-21

Listen as Pastor Scott delves into the words Jesus spoke in Mark 4:40 and shares how we can trust God in the midst of our fears. Discover how to replace worry with faith and find true peace in Him.

Today, Jonathan and Sy talk with author and international speaker Mark Scandrette about:-        How Mark went from fundamentalism to loving his neighbor through political protest-        The cost of leaving a fundamentalist world and speaking out against injustice-        Why the beatitudes should guide our discipleship and voting-        How discipleship is practicing the way of Jesus, not learning doctrine-        And after the interview, a discussion on a really thoughtful article about how patriarchy harms Palestinian menMentioned in the Episode-            Our anthology, Keeping the Faith-            Mark's website, MarkScandrette.com-            His organization's website, Reimagine.org-            Frederick Joseph's article on Patriarchy and Palestinian menCredits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Editing by Multitude Productions-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscriptIntroduction[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Mark Scandrette: We all struggle with a sense of not enoughness, and what do we do with our lack. And we can either be closed handed, anxious, worried, and greedy, or open-handed and trusting. And that's blessed are the poor in spirit. It's hard to face the realities of a complex world, and so we wanna hide and escape, but Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn. And so that opens up opportunities for lament and confession and things like that. So in a way, I call it like the Beatitudes I think, and the Sermon on the Mount are like the psychology of how to live in the kingdom of God.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus confronting injustice. I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I'm Sy Hoekstra. We have a fantastic show for you today. First, we are continuing our series of interviews with authors from our anthology that we published in 2020 about Christianity and the election, which is still relevant because it's the same election we had, are having now. Time is a flat circle. This episode we have Mark Scandrette talking about his journey from a fundamentalist devout Republican upbringing in the eighties and early nineties until today, the cost that leaving that world had on his personal life, and his thoughts on living out the beatitudes practically in everyday life and in voting, and a whole lot more with him. That's a great conversation.And after that, hear Jonathan and my thoughts on the conversation, as well as our segment, Which Tab Is Still Open, diving deeper into one of the recent recommendations from our newsletter. This week, a powerful essay by the author Frederick Joseph about patriarchy and its effects on men in Palestine. You do not wanna miss that.Jonathan Walton: Yes. Such a great essay. And if you like what you hear and read from KTF Press and would like for it to continue beyond the election season, please become a paid subscriber, like and share our work and encourage others to subscribe as well. Our goal over the next six months is 1000 paid subscribers, and right now there are 167. So we've got a ways to go, but we believe this work is valuable and we hope you do too. So like, share, subscribe, and tell a friend. We'd really appreciate it and look forward to reaching that goal.Sy Hoekstra: Mark Scandrette is an internationally recognized specialist in practical Christian spirituality. He is the founding director of the ReIMAGINE Center for Living Wisdom, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops, and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in psychology, family health, and theology, have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. Mark teaches as contingent faculty in the doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary.His most recent books include FREE: Practicing The Way of Jesus, Belonging and Becoming: Creating a Healthy Family Culture, and The Ninefold Path of Jesus. That's the book from which a lot of what you will hear today come from. It's his most recent book. Mark is passionately engaged in sustainability practices and efforts to create safety in neighborhoods for all people. His essay in our anthology was called “Vote Like the Beatitudes Matter.”Jonathan Walton: Awesome. Let's get to the conversation. Here is the interview.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Mark Scandrette, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust today.Mark Scandrette: Great to be with both of you. Appreciate you guys so much.Sy Hoekstra: Same to you. Absolutely.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.How Mark went from Fundamentalism to Loving His NeighborSy Hoekstra: So let's just dive right in. In your essay in your anthology, you write about kind of your upbringing in sort of fundamentalist Christian nationalist kind of spaces. I remember you particularly saying that Billy Graham and Chuck Colson were considered too liberal for the places… or were suspiciously liberal.Mark Scandrette: Yeah. Yeah [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Which is, that is a niche community right there [laughter]. And so we have a lot of listeners who probably… you said that your view started to change basically after the 1992 election. You were very active in the Republican party, and then things started to change after that. And we have a lot of listeners who are either people who had their whole political outlook change from conservative kind of Christian politics recently, like in the past several years because of Trump in 2016. Or we have a lot of listeners who are kind of helping… who know a lot of people who are in that situation.And so as somebody who is at this point more than like 30 years out from your own political shakeup in your worldview, what would you say to people who are kind of experiencing the shock and confusion of that change, or who are trying to help people through the shock and confusion of that kind of change?Meeting People Who Didn't Fit StereotypesMark Scandrette: Yeah. When I… you tried to put a point on it of being like 1992. I think that was maybe towards the beginning of a very long process. It's not really a binary. So I think that there were some gradual steps. Like I was repeating the things that my community was saying and believing about the world and about politics. And maybe my first step was not… like pausing to not say those things anymore, or not feeling like I could say them. And the sense I got was that there was some very clear borders of what would be considered in and out ideas or perspectives in the Christian communities that I was part of, and in my family. And so I just, I was just quiet for a lot of years sifting through what do I really think about things?One of the key things for me was having experiences beyond the boundaries of the community that I was raised in. For me, being around… I'm a White male, so being around people of color and people in poverty and struggle. And actually meeting people that my community would've labeled as liberals and finding out that they weren't the, those people weren't the caricature that I had been given. And that there wasn't this clear, there wasn't this binary. Not all of them were atheists and not all of them… Like they still had values and ethics. And so these were like layers of kind of surprise to me and a little befuddlement that I'd been given a narrative that just real… like my experiences in the world did not confirm.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Mark Scandrette: And another thing that may be good to know about me, is I moved to San Francisco in 1998. And so you have this little house on the prairie, White, Midwestern pastor family moving to the mission district of San Francisco that was mostly immigrant in a very progressive city. And I could, like I would trot out some of those ideas about the world that I'd inherited and grown up with. And to see the reaction and the kind of check on those things was really powerful for me.Accepting Complexity, and Loving Your Neighbor PoliticallyAnd I think a lot of us who have spent time in evangelicalism, we like a simple world. We like it, we wish the world was really simple and that there's a couple of things that would fix everything [laughs]. And so I've entered into, in my neighborhood, into complexity.And that was a big part of my shift in perspective. I would say it all came to a head in 2015 when a young man on our block was shot and killed by the police. And I had enough information to know police broke their protocols. He was shot six times in the back. They didn't address him in his native language and they misread a situation. And that was a series of about 15 police killings over just a couple year period in San Francisco. And I think that prior to that, my sense was as a follower of Jesus… and I think, I don't think I'm alone in this. I'm just gonna be apolitical and try and live out the teachings of Jesus in my everyday life, love my neighbor as myself. And I'm not gonna participate in the political world because It's dirty. It's a dirty thing. It's full of crooks and [laughs]…Sy Hoekstra: Which isn't wrong. That's not a wrong thing to say about the political world [laughter].Mark Scandrette: But with the killing of my neighbor, I realized there was all kinds of complexities to this about police hiring practices, their own protocols, the police commission and the union and all these things. And then when I would go to these organizing meetings, I would find out that most of my Latin and Black neighbors had had similar experiences. Everyone had somebody in their family that had been mistreated or killed. And I would say, “When they broke into your house and woke you up with guns [laughs] to your faces, did you make a complaint?” And they said, “No. We were just glad that they eventually left and that we're still alive.”And so I was like there's an… if I wanna love my neighbor as myself, it's more than just my direct action to love that person. I also need to advocate for them, and that gets me into politics and public policy. And so that was kind of a huge learning curve for me, to go from being apolitical to actually feeling like I needed to have a voice and participate at a different level.Sy Hoekstra: That's a useful story for people to hear because I mean, a number of things that you've highlighted is like, I mean, the story highlights is proximity to marginalized people is the willingness to enter into complexity and not shut it down by making things simple. And the how loving your neighbor actually takes shape when you get involved with real people in the real world as opposed to what you've been told about them. I mean, all those points, there's probably more in there that Jonathan could point out, but at least those three points come out of that story [laughs].The Importance of Firsthand Experiences in a World of Secondhand MediaJonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest thing that stands out to me for folks who are on the like, “I want to help this person,” is that we can't help people who are unwilling to put themselves in close proximity with folks who are different.Mark Scandrette: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: The information is not gonna be the transformation. I'm sure you saw documentaries about what happened when your neighbors are hanging with you. But when you're breathing the same air in the same room, you shop at the same grocery stores, you get on the same public transit, you ride on the same bike lanes, it creates a different narrative, right? And that I think, particularly for folks who are like, “Oh man, I don't know how this person would change.” I think there's a powerful invitation that Jesus says when he says, “Come and see.” And you came and you saw. And the interpretation of that was what then you're able to respond to, which is great.Mark Scandrette: So one of the things I try and emphasize is that I want to have firsthand experiences rather than relying on second or thirdhand reports about things.Jonathan Walton: Exactly.Mark Scandrette: And I think that a lot of our media-fueled political discourse operates at that level of secondhand, thirdhand information. And I could see it in action. We spent a year doing weekly prayer vigils and walking from the site of his, the killing site to our local police station.Sy Hoekstra: Oh wow.Mark Scandrette: And on anniversaries there would be a particular attention from the media. And it would be mostly, it'd be a couple hundred grandpas and grandmas, observant Catholic folks from the neighborhood who were actually praying. And then a few radical communists would show up at the end with masks and hammers about six of them. And [laughs] that's the image that would go on Fox News.Sy Hoekstra: Right, of course. Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Mmhmm, yep, right.Mark Scandrette: Not these devout people praying and not saying mean things about the police, but saying our liberation is bound up with one another and calling on God's grace to help us learn to live together in love. And so yeah, firsthand experiences I think are really powerful. And I'll tell you, maybe a hard thing for me was when I shared my firsthand experience, how people would tend to go to rhetoric with me very quickly. And I would go around to churches and tell the story of my experience with my neighbor, and people would assume I was saying bad things about their uncle who was a police officer, or whatever.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Mark Scandrette: And I said, “I didn't say anything about your uncle. I'm a writer and a storyteller. I try to be very careful about what I say. And so you're really making assumptions and backfilling what I didn't say.” And it's hard to get to that. In conversations with family and friends, it's really hard to get to that person to person level if one of us is talking from rhetoric.Why Should the Beatitudes Guide Our Voting?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I feel like if the willingness and ability to resist relationship and go to rhetoric for simplicity's sake, which really means my own safety and my, I don't have to change, right? You, as a storyteller, as a writer, as someone who's shepherding folks in the way of Jesus, you landed on what you wrote in your essay for us, which was like voting in line with what you find in the Beatitudes. So there's these things happening in the neighborhood. You resist oversimplification, you make these things personal, and then you're like, all right, “I'm gonna step into the policy ring and vote from the Beatitudes.” So how did you land there, and why is that the passage of scripture as opposed to Isaiah 1:17 or Micah 6:8, or Matthew 25. For the folks who don't know the Bible, those are all the justice passages [laughter].The Beatitudes Are Some of Jesus' Most Important Teachings, and They Show Us How to Think and Live Like We Will in God's KingdomMark Scandrette: Sure. There's two layers to the question. One is I was mentored by somebody, by a philosopher named Dallas Willard, who would often say that the Sermon on the Mount is the curriculum for Christlikeness, the best collection we have of the teachings of Jesus. It was sort of like, if you have a favorite comedian, they do the same set hundreds of times, and you just, when they record the special you're getting the best hits. And I think the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' best hits. So the Beatitudes fall at the beginning of that passage, and I think the Beatitudes can be seen as a way of Jesus naming areas of the human condition and human struggle that his teachings address.So we often, we all struggle with a sense of not enoughness, and what do we do with our lack. And we can either be closed handed, anxious, worried and greedy, or open-handed and trusting. It's hard to face the realities, and that's blessed are the poor in spirit. It's hard to face the realities of a complex world, and so we wanna hide and escape, but Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn. And so that opens up opportunities for lament and confession and things like that. So it's like a, in a way, I call it like the Beatitudes I think, and the Sermon on the Mount are like the psychology of how to live in the kingdom of God.What's the inner work, a new way of seeing that allows me to show up in new ways in the world. And so I think there's just incredible richness there. The other part of the answer is I did get invited into a project in 2015 called Nine Beats, where a group in the UK invited me to spend particular time on the Beatitudes and I developed a curriculum around it that we've introduced to groups around the world. And my main, my biggest passion is how do I invite other people to follow the teachings of Christ in the messy details of everyday life? Like, how does that work? Where do we start? What's the self-awareness we need to have? What are the practices that might help us learn to see and be like Jesus in the world?And so we created some labs around the… I call it a learning lab, a lab around the Beatitudes that would look at those principles from the Sermon on the Mount, and then we'd invite people to do experiments and practices around them. And actually it's, I'd say there's a political component to that because some of those teachings really confront our habits around how we show up in civic life. Like when we were looking at “blessed are the merciful,” we asked people to make a commitment to practice positive speech for one week. For one week, I won't say anything critical or disparaging about myself or another human being, including politicians.And we just asked people to do it for a week, and then notice how that changed the nature of their conversation and their attitudes. And most people, when we invite them to do this practice, they're like, “Oh, I don't know if I could do that.” Or there's a little bit of a chuckle knowing how much contempt is part of how we talk with each other.Sy Hoekstra: I literally just called politicians crooks. So yeah, I got you on that one [laughter].Jonathan Walton: And that piece, you said like “how much contempt marks our speech about each other and ourselves.”Mark Scandrette: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: It's good.Mark Scandrette: Yeah. We did another… when we looked at “blessed are those who mourn” or “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness or justice”, we just asked people to think about, consider who tends to be excluded or on the margins in their context, and get curious and meet someone from that group. Or with “blessed are the peacemakers,” who do you put on the other side of us and them? Go have a conversation with that person, be curious and listen. And it's exciting to see. We had like, some of my work is in Australia and a lot of older White Christians in Australia carry some pretty judgmental I would say racist attitudes towards the original peoples of that continent.And it doesn't seem to cause much conflict within them as followers of Jesus. But with this lab, we just say, who do you put on the other side? Look at how Jesus did this, hanging out with the Centurion and the Samaritans and the occupiers, would you be willing to meet someone who is from that original people group and get curious about them and to see the kind of changes in attitude and learning, “Oh, that's why they wanted to see the referendum go through.” And it's been really powerful. And I'd just say, what I've noticed is by inviting people into the Jesus practices, you can get a lot further in the conversation around politics than you can by pushing your agenda forward.Jonathan Walton: Right. Almost like if you lift him up, he'll draw all people unto himself [laughter].The Beatitudes Are sometimes Unintuitive, and They Challenge Privileged People to Think DifferentlySy Hoekstra: Almost like that. I think thinking of the Beatitudes as the psychology of what it means to be a Christian, that you just made something click in my brain. And that was because there… and the reason I think it clicked is there are so many things in the Beatitudes that I find helpful, but it's not necessarily immediately clear why [laughs]. Like even just “mourn with those who mourn,” it's like—"Blessed are those who mourn.”Mark Scandrette: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: It's like that was never a command. Like that's not a, here's what you do to be righteous, or here's what you do to live well or whatever. I don't know. Like why you need to mourn is not immediately clear versus why you shouldn't steal or kill or commit adultery [laughs].Mark Scandrette: Yeah. And it's right there. It's the second thing Jesus says in this great sermon, is blessed are those who mourn. So that's probably out of all the beatitudes, the one that's hit people the hardest from dominant culture, is the scriptural invitation to lament and complain. And that it gives us an opportunity to both mourn how we've been hurt by personal or systemic forces, and to also sit with how we maybe have been complicit in systems and structures of oppression. And that it's okay and good to do that. And our healing's gonna come by realistically facing mistakes in our past and collective mistakes that we've made.What Was the Cost of Leaving Fundamentalism And Speaking Out Against Injustice?Sy Hoekstra: So in your turning to this way of thinking, you made it clear in the essay you've had some strain in some of your personal relationships. And I don't, without obviously you getting into the details of your personal life [laughs], I'm just kind of wondering in general how your relationships with people who disagree with you have changed and how you try to continue to approach people who are close to your part of your community who disagree with you in truth, but also in love at the same time.Mark Was Misunderstood When He Left Conservatism, but Being Misunderstood Is Part of Following JesusMark Scandrette: Yeah. I find it to be challenging, and it's been with my immediate family and extended family and with people who've even been donors to our work and organization over a very long period of time. And some of it really surprised me because… and I think that it has to do with that acceleration of divides that happened over the last four to six years. It surprised me who would be so adamant around and defensive around issues of racism and racial justice and things like that. I'm a sensitive person. Like I will say and do what I believe, but I don't go out of my way to offend. And so I like to, I'm a nice guy [laughs], but so it surprised me when I'm met with such anger from people I love. And I spent a lot of time trying to talk through things.I had one friend who was very offended because we organized a group of people just after George Floyd's death to do a lab on anti-racism. And he was really offended by some of the Black voices that we had as part of that and what they said. And I just spent hours trying to compose a response to him that was gentle and helpful and non-reactionary. And one thing that brings me great comfort is that part of Jesus' spiritual formation was to be misunderstood by the people closest to him. And so his mother and brothers thought he'd become mentally unwell and should have been committed to a mental health ward during his ministry [laughs]. People in his hometown rejected him.And not that any, like, we could go the wrong way with this to be like, oh, just because I offend people that means I'm following the Jesus way. But I do think there might be something archetypal in that if you keep trying to follow the Jesus way, you will be misunderstood and you will be misrepresented, and that that is part of your formation. So instead of taking it personally, just go, “This might be necessary because I've liked being liked. I've liked people agreeing with me thinking that I had wise things to say, and now people are not giving me that affirmation. Can I still be at rest and centered as a person who's trying to listen to God's voice and God's spirit when I'm not getting rewarded for it [laughs] by my community?” And that's a, it's a hard, but I think a necessary spiritual development step.Practicing the Way of Jesus Is Discipleship, Not Learning DoctrineJonathan Walton: Amen. Amen. So, as we've had this conversation, you put a lot of emphasis on practicing the way of Jesus, right? Like following Jesus looks like this. The Jesus way looks like this, the kingdom of God is like [laughs]... And so your training and discipleship focuses on trying to exercise that muscle. That you, how you wanna behave in the world. You just talked a little bit about that, rather than just saying the doctrines about Jesus and what we believe is true. Okay? if you were to make it succinct for people, why do you do that? Who helped you get to that point?Mark Scandrette: You know, I came up in a faith tradition that emphasized having the right beliefs and doctrine. And I was a good student of my tradition, as a young person I was reading the Bible one to three hours a day, memorizedSy Hoekstra: Okay.Mark Scandrette: …chapters and books of the scriptures, sang worship songs for an hour or two a day. Went to church every time it was open, handed out tracks to my friends at school. I don't know if that is a thing anymore, but it was in the eighties [laughs]. But carried a bible with me wherever I went. And having a head full of scripture did not magically make me into a well-formed person. And so I came to a point of frustration where I was like, there's just a tremendous gap between how I know I'm being called to live and how I actually live, there's been a missing element here. And I think it's the missing element is a commitment to practice and to really considering how do I, not just what is the right thing for a Christian to do, but how do I learn to do that right thing?What are the belief structures that need to change? What do I need to be honest about where the gaps are? What practices? And so we created something that back in the early two thousands, a program to try and approximate learning to have that student apprentice to rabbi relationship with Jesus. And the earliest disciples took him that his social place was as rabbi, and he was teaching them how to live his way of life. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Learn from me. And so we called it the Jesus Dojo. I know that's a little bit of cultural appropriation. I don't use that term anymore, but it got to the point that to be a Christian in the way of Jesus looks more like being in a karate studio than in a college lecture hall.And I'd spent so many years in the college lecture hall of my faith getting a head full of information, but had not been in a gym or studio where I could work it out. And so I just found that when I'd gather groups of people and we'd say, how do we learn to not judge? Who are the Matthew 25 hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and lonely in our neighborhood? How would we care for the least of these? Let's meet them, let's share food. As we got active in trying to practice the Jesus way, that's when my heart and life really came alive, and it was so deeply transforming to me.Western Culture, All along the Political Spectrum, Privileges Words and Thoughts Over ActionsAnd I'll just also make this point that I think that this is not just symptomatic of people who identify as Christians, but I would say it's all Western culture, is our inheritance is that Greek Hellenistic way, trying to be objective and thinking that in our minds we can get the right picture together of life, and that words and thought is the whole game.And so I would say across the whole continuum, from conservative to progressive, there's a lot of rhetoric around words, and Jesus invites us into embodied practice. So some people, when they make the, if they've grown up conservative and Christian, and they're making a shift to let's say a more progressive way of being Christian, it's still just words. They just have different [laughs] slogans now.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Mark Scandrette: But you haven't changed the game. You haven't gotten up into the real thing yet. And the real thing is embodied love in practice. So there's a curious phenomenon where some people live better than their ideas. I would say I have family members like this. I don't like what comes out of their mouth about certain groups of people. I don't like the literature I see in their house. I have concerns about it, and I'm afraid of how they vote. But man, they live and love well. They live better than their ideas. And then I think some of us, maybe I'd include myself in this, I don't live as good as my ideas [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I agree with you.Mark Scandrette: And so, I think to people both on the… if you, I don't like these binaries, but across the continuum of right to left, we're all being invited by Jesus to live our values, to live love rather than just spouting rhetoric.Sy Hoekstra: Amen.Jonathan Walton: And who is one person that you're like, if you all hear someone talk about this, who's your person? Who are the folks that have helped you imbibe that reality?Mark Scandrette: Oh well, I think Dallas Willard to some extent was an early influence in that way, I think. I think Richard Rohr saying the best critique of what is, is to live a better story, has inspired me in that way. And to not…Maturity Is Moving Past Deconstruction to Synthesizing What Is Good from All Your ExperiencesI think the tendency when you feel like you're moving out of one community is to disconnect from it. You might feel rejection, but I think the mature posture of a Jesus follower would be to say, “I want to transcend and include.” Like I come from this community, I came up with these ideas, I'm moving beyond them. And maybe the first, let's say in a process of rethinking or deconstruction, it's very easy to disregard everything from your past, and to embrace the new.The more healthy approach would be to value whatever was good. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Value what was good, and then add to it more nuances in your understanding of reality, and not do this in a binary sort of way. It's hard to do that, it takes time. And maybe there's early stages where you have, it's like maybe even psychologically necessary to reject and renounce and disassociate, but eventually a Christlike maturity would be, I try to stay engaged. I don't create walls and boundaries.Jonathan Walton: Amen. Amen to all that.Interview Outro, and Where You Can Find Mark OnlineSy Hoekstra: Amen to all that. Mark Scandrette, this has been wonderful. We probably should've had you on the show earlier, but thank you so much for coming on [laughter]. We really, really appreciate you taking the time.Mark Scandrette: Yes. Yeah. I love what you guys do. I appreciate the way you show up in the world.Sy Hoekstra: Thank you so much.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Jonathan Walton: You can find Mark's work at Markscandrette.com and his organization at Reimagine.org. Lots of the content he talked about in this interview come from his most recent book, The Ninefold Path of Jesus. We'll have links to all of that in the show notes.Jonathan and Sy's Thoughts After the InterviewWe Can't Control When White People Respond Well to New Information, but the Spirit Is Always WorkingSy Hoekstra: All right Jonathan. After that interview, what are you thinking about?Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Well, I think the thing that both encourages me and frustrates me is that I can't control how and when, and exactly what happens when folks encounter deep suffering and then are transformed or not. Like his sharing of like, okay, I'm a White guy, middle upper class, living in the suburbs in San Francisco, and all of a sudden, boom, police brutality is at his doorstep. Fifteen people are killed by the police, and all of a sudden the statistics he may have heard, or in the 1990s with Rodney King, prior to that, growing up in the sixties and seventies and eighties, like, there's these things coming up over and over again, but they didn't impact him.But now, boom, it's in his neighborhood and now he's impacted. And then he makes radical, quote- unquote, radical choices in response to that. And it changed his life, it changed his ministry, it changed his leadership, changes his family. Like generations of his family are different because of how he chose to respond to the incidents in his neighborhood. I just wish I could control that for every White person that I know [laughter]. You know? But I can't. I can't. So I take deep joy and I love Mark. He's one of my favorite people, and I just wish that more people went on that journey. I just wish it was as simple as, oh, just put people in proximity to one another and their lives would change and they'll become empathetic and transformative leaders. But that isn't the case, you know? And so I think taking that to Jesus is what I'll do because I know that he is the power and the gospel is the power of transformation. I just wish it was my persuasion or oratory skills from lots of leaders, but it's not. And talking with him reminds me of the work that I must do, because who knows what God will do when these seeds are planted? At the same time, man, I just wish it was easier to control the bearing of good fruit for the seeds that are planted.Sy Hoekstra: Okay, but so question, you said at the beginning, the first thing you said at the beginning of all that was that everything you just said is both frustrating and encouraging to you. I understand why it's frustrating. Why did you say encouraging?Jonathan Walton: It's encouraging because if it was just me or just leaders then we're confined to space and time, but it's the Holy Spirit, so he can literally do it whenever he wants.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I see.Jonathan Walton: He can have people all the time. Like God is sovereign, omnipresent, omniscient, can just be dropping stuff all over the world, and people are being ignited and lit up all the time. It's not just one organization or all those different things. And so as Tisch Warren would say, there's this mystery between what God is doing, what we are doing. And somehow that marriage of obedience and faithfulness creates an amazing transformation that we get to be a part of. And so I'm encouraged because God is at work. I'm discouraged because I wish what he did worked all the time. So, yeah. What about you? That was a lot. So tell us what you're thinking.How Listening Skills, Curiosity, and Proximity to Diversity Helps Us See Through False Media NarrativesSy Hoekstra: I'm thinking along kind of similar lines, or at least the same story of him kind of moving to the mission and having his perspective changed. But it's kind of how it affects the, how we engage with media in a certain way. But before I get to that, actually real quick, you mentioned that he's just a nice guy and one of your favorite people, I don't think I ever told you this. When we finished recording with Mark, you had to go. You had some scheduled thing, you had to leave. And then Mark and I just sat there and talked for like 45 minutes.Jonathan Walton: [laughter] That's awesome.Sy Hoekstra: Because he has this incredible… and he did not say, “I have time, let's hang out, Sy, let's catch up,” whatever. He's just one of those people who starts asking questions, and he does it in a way where he's like, “I'm fully engaged, I want to hear your answer. It's important to me, and I've got all the time in the world.” You can just tell that from his tone, and that's a really cool thing that not a lot of people are good at, and he's very good at it [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes, absolutely. He's genuinely interested in what you are saying.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, for real. And has been ever since I met him when I was like 19 and probably didn't really have anything interesting to say [laughter].Okay, but getting back to him going to the mission, right? So he goes into the mission, he gets proximate to people who are very different than him. He exercises listening, he exercises curiosity. And that's how he finds his way past the media narrative about the marches in his neighborhood, right? Because he's got these, I can't remember if he said weekly or monthly. Oh, no. It was annual on the anniversary of the kid from their neighborhood who the police killed. They were doing these marches.And he said it was mostly like older folks from the community, largely Catholic praying as they marched. And at the very end, there's these Antifa or whoever they are, guys show up and start breaking stuff, and there's like a handful of them and they're just being difficult. And that's always on Fox News, is the anarchists. Right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And it's so easy to get the completely wrong picture of people who are different and far away from you, that we need to get good at exercising the skills that he was sort of demonstrating, or at least that he demonstrated through the stories that he was telling about how his transformation happened.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: And that's really hard. There are so many people… I have a similar story to him where it was like I was just displaced from a lot of super White spaces that I was in and happened to randomly end up close to people who are really different than me in college and beyond. So there's a lot of people like that for where it just, you have some point of contact that's, you don't necessarily seek out, it just happens to you. And then like you said, people's responses are just so different. But if you wanna get to know people well, you have to be able to discern through those media narratives in a way that is really hard if you're not there.And I think a good example of that is all of the crime narratives that have been going on recently, not just because of the election, but have been going on for years now, that Trump is made into such a big deal for his whole political career. Is this idea that just basically if you live in the city, you're just, I don't know, you're just dodging bullets wherever you go [laughter]. You're just like, crime is up all the time, it's never gone down, whatever. And all the statistics are actually showing in general, crime going down, way down in 2023 actually, like murder and some other crimes have gone way down. If you looked at a graph of the crime in New York City from like 1990 until today, it would be comical to say that crime is up in New York City. It is so, so far down than it was when I was a kid coming into the city for Yankee games or whatever [laughs].And people just, I don't know, you and I had both had the experience of people who used to live in New York City years ago coming back to visit us and being like, “Is it safe to walk through your neighborhood? Are we gonna be okay?” And we're just like, “Yes. It has not changed. Nothing has changed. I'm walking down the street with my toddler on my back in a carrier every day and we are fine.” But you wouldn't know that if you just watched the media. And so I think take some lessons in discernment from Mark, I think is what I'm saying [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Which Tab Is Still Open?: Patriarchy and Palestinian MenSy Hoekstra: So we're going into Which Tab Is Still open?, our segment where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations that we posted recently in our newsletter that you can get totally for free at ktfpress.com if you wanna go there and do that. Jonathan, this one was your resource. So why don't you tell the people about it?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. The essay that I put in a newsletter a couple weeks ago is called “For Palestinian Fathers, Sons, and Brothers.” And I read it on Father's Day. It's by the bestselling author Frederick Joseph. It's about patriarchy and Palestinian men. That is the overarching container, but it goes so deep. And so Joseph argues that patriarchal power men receive from society is a devil's bargain because it robs men of humanity by making us people whose value comes from fitting a certain mold of being physically threatening, socially and sexually dominant, and emotionally unavailable. Like just a stoic figure. If you aren't those things, you don't get power and you aren't fully human.And then he talks about the various disparities in the ways that the media discusses Palestinian men. And we always talk about, we see this on Instagram. We see this particularly on the major, quote- unquote, major news outlets already, where it's the number of women and children are killed by Israel are propped up as though the number of men are less consequential or inconsequential. Because men who are victims are always put under the guise of terrorists, or they must be doing something evil, they're different, they are subhuman. And I think that is exacerbated even more when we talk about the level of sexual violence that's perpetuated against Palestinian men, while the many stories about Israeli soldiers or prison guards violating them just gets less airtime.When I encourage you, it is difficult, but to please go and read the New York Times' interviews of Palestinian male detainees. There's a long CNN article that also exposes just the terrible things that are happening to these men that are detained. And so this he argues, and I absolutely agree, that this is a pattern of dehumanization of what was largely like Muslim and Arab men coming out of 9/11, but especially true of just a campaign perpetuated by the West and Israel to dehumanize Palestinian men, specifically around the idea of occupation and giving Israel and the superpower allies just an excuse for their atrocities.One civil rights leader said the first step towards committing violence against someone is their dehumanization. And we've seen that pattern start from the beginning of occupation before the Nakba started up through till now. And so, understanding these men as fathers, and sons and brothers, and humans who value their lives and relationships and have deep grief and suffering due to war, can move us towards liberation.Mourning with Those Who Mourn Helps Us See the Humanity of Other PeopleI think Jesus's invitation command for us to mourn with those who mourn is a door for rehumanizing Palestinian men. It's a door for rehumanizing ourselves because we were actually made to be in relationships with one another, and our liberation is bound up in the liberation of all people.So when I'm celebrating Father's Day, I can hold the beauty that comes with that, but I can also resist the reality that I do not have to dehumanize other dads to make myself more of a Father. I don't. I don't need to do that. And so the pictures of men from all different backgrounds holding their kids in deep, deep, deep, deep suffering is something that I had to engage with. And this essay was a door to that, because the reality is they are men just like me. They're human just like me. I am no more or no less human than them. And God has made all of us in his image. And pushing back against narratives of dehumanization is a way to reflect that theology and make it more than just a thought, but turn it into a feeling and a practice. So yeah. Sy, what'd you think?Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] You just did a lot of really deep stuff and then you just ended it with, “So, yeah. [laughter]. This is how Jonathan and I talk, we get way too casual about very important things [laughter]. All that is so true and so good.Men Need to Understand How Patriarchy Hurts Them to Sustain the Fight Against ItSy Hoekstra: And I think another layer of why this essay is important to me is he's doing some really important psychological work that can feel awkward for men to do when it comes to talking about the patriarchy, because here's the background. I've been listening, I mentioned last episode I've been listening to Scott Hall, who's one of our previous guests from season three, and Erna Kim Hackett. I've been in a cohort with them from, with Erna's organization, Liberated Together, fantastic organization if you wanna go check it out.And one of the main points that they've made about Whiteness and White people doing racial justice work, and I'll connect this to patriarchy in a second, is that if you want to sustain motivation over the long term to do racial justice work as a White person, you can't be in it for altruistic purposes. Like you just can't. Because people, if you are there to help other people and not yourself, then at some point you are going to burn out, or you're going to demand that you be respected or rewarded or lauded in some way that makes you a bad ally. Right? You're going to burnout or be unhelpful, is what it comes down to because you're not doing what you just said, Jonathan, understanding that everyone's liberation is tied up together.So you have to say that White supremacy actually harms me as a White person and figure out how that happens, and then figure out how you as a White person need to heal yourself and participate in racial justice work for that reason. To heal yourself and other White people because basically that motivation will sustain you.It's kind of selfish, or it's kind of self-centered, but that's the reality of how humans work [laughs]. You need a personal motivation a lot of times to, or most of the time to do anything over a long stretch of time. The same thing is true of patriarchy. It's men need to understand how patriarchy harms us. And the reason it's awkward to talk about that is for two reasons at least. One is you can go too far with that and you can end up being like a men's rights activist, right? [laughter] Or like somebody who's just complaining about how men are victims and how women get unfairly treated, get stuff they don't deserve ahead of me or whatever. Go on that dangerous road. But the other reason it's awkward is when you think about patriarchy, obviously the first thing you go to is the way that it harms women.And you don't want to, you might not want to be caught complaining about how it harms you, because the harm on other people is so much worse. And the answer to that is, yes, it's worse. Fine, that's true. But the fact that somebody else got hurt worse than you doesn't mean that you didn't get hurt. Right?Jonathan Walton: Yes. Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. If I break an arm and you, Jonathan, break two arms and a leg, that doesn't mean I don't have to go to the doctor [laughs], right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: I gotta go to the doctor. And so what Joseph is doing is just some really good thinking, deep thinking, about how patriarchy hurts himself. He talks about himself as a Black man and how it hurts him, just like you did. And he talks about the Palestinian men and really digging into this so that you can feel the grief and then subsequently process those emotions and then be able to do the work afterwards that you need to do to fight patriarchy to help everyone. Help everyone get out of the snare that it is. That was a lot of talking. Jonathan, any thoughts?Jonathan Walton: Well, yeah. I mean, I'll just lean into, try not to go even more down a rabbit hole, but I agree with everything that you said. And it's like you've talked about this before with like just hierarchies of dominance and power. It's a very different thing if a woman or someone from the a non-binary person says I'm gonna resist patriarchy. Patriarchy doesn't necessarily end because the folks downstream of it decide to stop. Patriarchy ends when men refuse to participate in the system. When the master walks off the plantation, that's when the plantation stops. And so we actually need men to say, “I'm going to opt out of this system of oppression because I can see that the first person it dehumanizes is me.” Because I am not a person anymore as soon as I decide to put myself on top of somebody else. That's not how God made us.We were made for relationships with one another. We weren't made to dominate and rule over each other. And so, something that I wanna push back against too is like a soft acceptable misogyny, where it's like we just walk around with assumptions about women and assumptions about non-binary people. I think what Frederick Joseph is doing is like when he pushes back against these narratives, I think our response should be just like Mark had when he was first encountering these things, is radical interrogation. To say, “Where am I being complicit? And let me stop that.” And repentance is part of that. We say, I'm doing this thing, I'm gonna turn from that and do these set of things instead.We need to make that as practical and as clear as possible as we can so that we can move towards freedom, not just by ourselves, but as we already talked about, like our liberation is bound up together. So the men and the folks downstream of me don't have to participate either. So, yeah, great job Frederick Joseph. Amazing essay. Thank you so much.Sy Hoekstra: Great job [laughs]. He needs our validation, not multiple New York Times bestseller awards or anything, yeah.Jonathan Walton: Awards and thousands of followers and all that. I hope my encouragement means something to you [laughter].Outro and OuttakeSy Hoekstra: All right, cool. Well, we will end it there. This was a great episode. Thank you so much Jonathan, for being here as always. Thank you all for listening, we will see you in two weeks. Our theme song as Always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess. Our editing is by Multitude Productions who just started doing the editing for us. We are so grateful to them. Transcripts by Joyce Ambale, and we will see you all in two weeks. Thank you so much for listening, goodbye.Jonathan Walton: Bye-Bye.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra. We have a fantastic show for you today. First, we are going to be continuing our—I... didn't turn off my air conditioner. Be right back [laughs]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ktfpress.com/subscribe

Skillful living is learning to find and use wisdom.  Wisdom teaches you that you cannot live from what you learn only.   Most people want to live good, successful lives, but few are willing to do what it takes to have that.  Most of us want good jobs and great careers, but many of us are unwilling to do what it takes to have those things.  Do you want to live a more skillful life?  So what's it going to take?  How can you move from wanting to live greater to wanting to do what it takes to live greater.

Thank you for listening! Here are some ways to learn more and stay connected! New To Faith?⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our New To Faith page!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to email.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the daily devotional⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Explore recent messages⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This podcast was created by Pastor Derek Neider as a ministry of Awaken Las Vegas. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit⁠⁠⁠ our website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We are located at 7175 W. Oquendo Road, Las Vegas, NV 89113.  Our gathering times are 9am & 11am Sundays and 6:30pm Thursdays.

"You are the crowning emergence of your own process."This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!This is part of a series of daily invitations to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts' and ‘Shoulds' about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.Shame is the mind virus of our society, accidentally arrived at, as a result of tribal survival mentality designed to optimise for social cooperation. If you inspect closely any modern virtue, any fear you have, beneath all the masks, you will encounter the parasite of shame.Self-acceptance is not about being worthy by some universal standard; it is about becoming your own worthy leader precisely because no one else is coming. We are all imperfect. And all any of us can do is commit to the code that says “As soon as I know better, I do better.” You start from where you are with what you have.Sign up to my Substack: eyeswideopenlife.substack.comemail info@eyeswideopenlife.com

A thousand times the waves will come and a thousand times you must say: Not Today!This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts' and ‘Shoulds' about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.The real trick is to invest the lion's share of your energy and attention, not for what seeks to unmake you—the silence from the gallery, the old stories of inadequacy—but rather on how resilient you are in holding together and mending, and the blessing of your life for making you so. You are either riding the waves, being tossed by the waves or you are perhaps making the waves. Either way, there will be waves.Every wave you ride becomes a wave you make!This episode includes a reading of my masterpiece of encouragement called Not Today!Sign up to my Substack: eyeswideopenlife.substack.comemail info@eyeswideopenlife.com

Opening the cage, and taking flight...This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts' and ‘Shoulds' about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.You get the dream you live, if you aren't daring to dream your own dream, you are living someone else's. Maybe that's why some of it feels like a bad dream?Overwhelm, Burnout, Depression and Anxiety are some of the Body's ways of waking up the Heart, out of the bad dream, and getting the attention of Attention into the dawning Reality of what is Unfolding and what is Possible.This is a 13-minute exploration of the essentiality and practice of Dreaming.Sign up to my Substack: eyeswideopenlife.substack.comemail info@eyeswideopenlife.com

The Power of an Examined Life.This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts' and ‘Shoulds' about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.It helps to think of your life in packets. There was the packet you spent in the womb. There was the packet of your infancy, then the toddler packet, and so on. In a way, this last cycle you have been through was a packet. And if you are open to the idea of renewal, it means you will be getting ready to pick yourself up and face a new cycle, a new packet. To live an examined life then, implies that you have to look back, and examine the packets of your life. How far back, is up to you. Your heart will tell you what magnitude of death and rebirth you are facing right now.If you want to move forward you have to plan forward. If you want what you have never had, you must do what you have never done. You need to look back to see forward more clearly.Sign up to my Substack: eyeswideopenlife.substack.comemail info@eyeswideopenlife.com

On Being okay with Not Knowing...This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts' and ‘Shoulds' about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.Trying to figure life out is like rummaging in a sack trying to pull a mystery object out, that you are looking for, without knowing what it is. Having a phone in your pocket means you never get to sit with a question and let it nag at you. You have become used to having instant answers on tap. You have normalised the abnormal.The recording is a short guided reflection on the necessity and power of Sitting with Questions, even ones that do not have ready answers. —there is a way that you can shape the hand of your grasping mind as if it knows what it is trying to grab and draw out. Sometimes the way you are holding a question is exactly what will make the answer evade your grasp. This is what the Zen Koan means: Not Knowing is Most Intimate. A Koan is in fact a tool used in the Zen tradition that poses a riddle or question, that is not meant to be solved. The work, if it can be called that, is done in the interstitial space of uncertainty.Sign up to my Substack: eyeswideopenlife.substack.comemail info@eyeswideopenlife.com

Forgiveness is both the province of the well and the door to wellness. You will notice those who struggle to forgive, struggle also to be well.This a recording from Just Be Like This Today!This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts' and ‘Shoulds' about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.Forgiveness is always so much less about someone else than it is about you. And yet paradoxically, only when you hold the same wish for the other person to also be made again both whole and free, do you find a way for yourself to be both whole and free.If the wound is great, we will have to let it go many times.The recording is a short guided reflection on the necessity and power of Forgiveness. Sign up to my Substack: eyeswideopenlife.substack.comemail info@eyeswideopenlife.com

Dr. Liza J. Rankow is an interfaith minister, educator, activist, and writer. Her lifework centers the deep healing that is essential to personal and social transformation. Liza is the founder and former executive director of OneLife Institute, a pioneering organization that served for 17 years to support the well-being of frontline activists, caregivers, and others working to lift up the community. Liza has been a spiritual counselor and teacher for more than three decades. She works with individual clients, facilitates healing retreats, and offers classes and workshops in a variety of community and academic settings. Her topics include: Mysticism & Social Change, Sustaining the Soul of Activism, Deepening the Well (multifaith spiritual formation), and several courses on the life and work of Dr. Howard Thurman. She is the producer and co-editor of the six-CD audio collection, The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman (Sounds True, 2010), and created Inner Oasis, a CD of her original guided meditations, in 2011. Previously, Liza practiced as a clinical PA in pediatric hematology-oncology at Duke Hospital. From there she moved into public health research and education, particularly related to LGBTQ+ issues. Liza was the project director on one of the first three federal pilot grants awarded under the Women's Health Initiative to study the health of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. Her professional publications and resource materials contributed to defining this then-emerging field. One of Liza's most profound influences has been her decades-long journey with chronic life-threatening illness. It cultivated a spiritual wisdom within her that informs her work with others, and gave her life a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Her intimacy with suffering allows her to engage the suffering of the world with a sacred tenderness. Her publications include anthologized essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry, and academic articles in both theological and medical journals. She is currently completing her first full-length book. Liza holds a B.A. in Human Development from Hampshire College, Bachelors and Masters degrees in Health Sciences from Duke University School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Social Transformation from Union Institute & University. She lives in Oakland, CA, where she enjoys deep and wide community relationships, and spends as much time as possible in her wildly magical garden. Website - www.lizarankow.org      Blog: Healing Conversations from the Front Lines of Activism - https://lizarankow.substack.com/ Guided Meditations on InsightTimer -  https://insighttimer.com/lizarankow LinkTree - https://linktr.ee/lizarankow

10.22.23 We all rejoice together as we worship in person and online at Imago Church! The one who calls us is Faithful! Today we will continues our series on 1 Corinthians entitled “New Creation!” as we learn about Living Wisdom. Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:18-30 Sermon Title: Living Wisdom https://linktr.ee/ImagoChurch

Dr. Liza J. Rankow is an interfaith minister, educator, activist, and writer. Her work centers the healing that is essential to personal and social transformation. Liza is the founder and former executive director of OneLife Institute, a pioneering organization that served for 17 years to support the well-being of frontline activists, caregivers, and others working to lift up the community. Liza has been a spiritual counselor and teacher for more than three decades. She works with individual clients, facilitates healing retreats, and offers classes and workshops in a variety of community and academic settings. Her topics include: Mysticism & Social Change, Sustaining the Soul of Activism, Deepening the Well (multifaith spiritual formation), and several courses on the life and work of Dr. Howard Thurman. She is the producer and co-editor of the six-CD audio collection, The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman (Sounds True, 2010), and created Inner Oasis, a CD of her original guided meditations, in 2011. Previously, Liza practiced as a clinical PA in pediatric hematology-oncology at Duke Hospital. From there she moved into public health research and education, particularly related to LGBTQ+ issues. Liza was the project director on one of the first three federal pilot grants awarded under the Women's Health Initiative to study the health of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. Her professional publications and resource materials contributed to defining this then-emerging field. One of Liza's most profound influences has been her decades-long journey with chronic life-threatening illness. It cultivated a spiritual wisdom within her that informs her work with others, and gave her life a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Her intimacy with suffering allows her to engage the suffering of the world with a sacred tenderness.   Her publications include anthologized essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry, and academic articles in both theological and medical journals. She is currently completing her first full-length book. Check her blog: Healing Conversations from the Front Lines of Activism - https://lizarankow.substack.com/. Guided Meditations can be found on InsightTimer -  https://insighttimer.com/lizarankow   Liza holds a B.A. in Human Development from Hampshire College, Bachelors and Masters degrees in Health Sciences from Duke University School of Medicine, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Social Transformation from Union Institute & University. She lives in Oakland, CA, where she enjoys deep and wide community relationships, and spends as much time as possible in her wildly magical garden.   Liza's social media (instagram and  facebook) and she also has her own website.  The songs picked by all our guests can be found via  our playlist #walktalklisten here.    Please let me/us know via our email innovationhub@cwsglobal.org what you think about this new series. We would love to hear from you.   Please like/follow our Walk Talk Listen podcast and follow mauricebloem on twitter and instagram.  Or check us out on our website 100mile.org.  We also encourage you to check out the special WTL series Enough for All about an organization called CWS.

CONNECT AT GREEN ACRESAre you new or want to know more about Green Acres?Click here: www.gabc.org/connectWant to give your life to Jesus Christ?Click here: www.gabc.org/connectDo you have a prayer request?Click here: www.gabc.org/prayerWant to give to Green Acres? Click here: www.gabc.org/giveFOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/GABCTylerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabc_tyler/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/greenacresbaptistchurch

TODAY'S GUEST One of the most tragic aspects of the accelerating pace of change, and rapid evolution of new technologies — is that we as humanity have lost our elders. We begin to see older generations as detached from the current world of innovation, and have to discount advice and experiences gained in an age that feels so different from our own. Whereas prior generations could count on a world pretty similar to that of their ancestors, when we look to the future, pretty much the only thing we're sure of is that it's not going to look like the past, or even the present. But we still yearn for some sage advice, at least I know I do. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we did have someone who could help us navigate a time of tremendous, accelerating change? That's why I was so excited to talk to Kevin Kelly. Kevin is perhaps the closest thing Silicon Valley has to such a sage. Someone who not only witnessed the tremendous rise of digital technology, but thought about it deeply as it was happening and developed models for thinking about it. In 1993, Kevin co-founded the groundbreaking Wired magazine, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. In 1994, he wrote  Out of Control, the classic book on decentralized emergent systems. In 2010 he published What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology and the complex, almost organic systems that drive it, and in 2017 he published The Inevitable, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller about the inevitable trends driving technology. His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, is an offering of 450 useful aphorisms or principles for living he's devised over his life amidst the changes.   EPISODE SUMMARY In this conversation we talk about: How did DIY culture shape Kevin's worldview from a young age? What inspired Kevin to co-found Wired magazine? Why does Kevin claim technology has a will of its own? What is his take on AI advances of today? Why did he decide to write a book of pithy life advice? What is some of Kevin's most counterintuitive advice around decision making and change? How can we live fully before our time is up? My favorite piece of advice in the episode is about choosing a path of change. Without giving away the content, I'll just say I've brought it up multiple times in conversation with friends about their dilemmas, and when considering my own life decisions.   TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS These timestaps are AI-generated and could prove inaccurate.  (Please let us know if you find any issues here: podcast@remakelabs.com ) Early Making and DIY Culture (00:08:17 - 00:10:16) The Origins of Wired Magazine (00:15:18 - 00:17:30) Technology's Inherent Tendencies (00:19:32 - 00:22:05) AI as Future Partners (00:25:11 - 00:27:02) Truth and AI (00:28:17 - 00:31:20) Advice for Living Wisdom (00:32:14 - 00:36:39) Giving and Getting (00:36:59 - 00:38:16) Learning vs "Can't Do" (00:38:57 - 00:39:42) Choosing Change (00:40:55 - 00:41:57) Embodying Your Full Potential (00:42:24 - 00:44:45)   EPISODE LINKS Kevin Kelly's Links: Website: https://kk.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly Organizations: https://kk.org/cooltools/ Books, Articles, and Resources Mentioned: Wired Magazine: https://www.wired.com/ Out of Control by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/out-of-control/ What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/what-technology-wants/ The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/the-inevitable/ Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/excellent-advice-for-living/   ABOUT US Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org

Welcome to the ALF Boss Podcast! In this episode, Pascal Bergeron introduces a special guest, Sheila Mobley, a seasoned facility owner-operator and consultant in the assisted living field. Sheila has over 20 years of experience and owns two facilities, one in Rockledge and another in St. Petersburg, both offering limited mental health services. Sheila shares her journey, starting with her first six-bed facility in Rockledge, which she opened after her father suggested the idea. She emphasizes the importance of having a supportive spouse and partner who understands the demands of the assisted living industry. Sheila also discusses the challenges of funding and staffing in the field, stressing the need for flexible hours and dedication to providing quality care. Sheila's passion for helping seniors and her commitment to providing excellent care shine through in the podcast. She highlights the significance of word-of-mouth referrals and community engagement. She also addresses the difficulties of working with limited mental health residents, including funding issues and behavioral challenges. The conversation delves into various aspects of the assisted living industry,the changing landscape of staffing, and the need for continuous learning and support from experienced individuals in the field. Sheila's dedication to her residents and her deep understanding of the industry make this podcast episode both informative and inspiring.

Amanda Elo'Esh is the Founder & President of Living Wisdom, a dogma free, psychedelic church created to provide safe & sacred spaces for her diverse community to learn, heal, and grow together. She is passionate about helping liberate folks from painful trauma and childhood wounding with Subconscious Success Repatterning and Plant Medicines.Living Wisdom ChurchlivingwisdomchurchCA@gmail.comFacebookInstagramYouTubeThe Psychedelic History of Mormonism, Magic and DrugsThe Immortality KeyDon Jose CamposB.O.T.A.AMORCMormons on Mushrooms – Ways to ContributeOur podcast is supported by our amazing listeners and magical community. If you'd like to energetically contribute to what we're creating, there are several ways to do so:Become a PatreonSend a Contribution (buy us a booch)!Purchase Mormons on Mushrooms MerchandiseCall to AdventureEmbark on your personal journey of self-discovery, with one of our qualified guides ready to assist you in depth coaching, dreamwork, tarot reflections, human design and more. Website: yourcalltoadventure.netInstagram: @yourcalltoadventure

Description: In this episode I am speaking with Kevin Kelly who is the author of Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. To his surprise, Kelly had more to say than he thought and kept adding to the advice over the years, compiling a life's wisdom into these pages. When I read this book, I was smiling the entire time. Here is the short version of Kevin's incredible biography: Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. His newest book is Excellent Advice for Living, a book of 450 modern proverbs for good living. He is co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, a membership organization that champions long-term thinking and acts as a good ancestor to future generations. And he is the founder of the popular Cool Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a subscriber-supported journal of unorthodox conceptual news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. Other books by Kelly include 1) The Inevitable, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, 2) Out of Control, his 1994 classic book on decentralized emergent systems, 3) The Silver Cord, a graphic novel about robots and angels, 4) What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology, and 5) Vanishing Asia, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia. He is best known for his radical optimism about the future. This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition. For the full show notes and resources mentioned in the episode click here.

Chris continues our series on Proverbs, this week discussing the topic of friendship.

This week Don continues our series exploring Proverbs.

Don continues our series on Proverbs, this week exploring the wisdom Proverbs provides on the topic of sex.

In this episode:In this episode of This is Beauty Podcast we sit down with writer and editor Kevin Kelly, to talk about his new book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. We discuss the inspiration behind the book and explore how Kevin's love for proverbs and wisdom led him to share this advice with his children and ultimately, the world. Join us for this lively conversation as we hit some of the book's highlights, touching on everything from optimism and imagination to beauty, art, YouTube, hot dogs and the future of A.I. Kevin Kelly:Kevin Kelly (@Kevin2Kelly) is a distinguished figure in the world of technology and journalism and holds the esteemed position of Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. As a co-founder of Wired in 1993, he served as its Executive Editor during the publication's formative years, guiding the magazine to its current prominence.Kelly's most recent work, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, offers a thoughtful compilation of 450 modern proverbs for a life of mindfulness and fulfillment. In addition to his literary accomplishments, he serves as co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, a membership organization dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsible stewardship for future generations.Show notes:On "Being the Only":"Don't aim to be the best. Aim to be the only, to do something that only you can do, to have a job that's hard to describe to your mom." (00:03:23)On Mortality:"Attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen to what people say about the departed...they mostly talk about what kind of person that person was, their character, while they were achieving." (00:05:07)On Parenting and Discipline: “Let your children choose their punishments; they'll often be tougher on themselves than you would be. “(00:08:39).On Remaining Youthful: The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.(00:11:07)On the Power of YouTube:The quantity, quality, and accessibility of information on YouTube is transformative. (Examples include brain surgeons learning new techniques from their colleagues and people learning how to fix things. (00:11:57)On Waiting in Line for Experiences (00:15:14)On Imagination and Fear: Fear is fueled by a lack of imagination. (00:16:58)On The Evolution of Humanity: Humanity is evolving physically and biologically faster than ever before. (00:20:50)On The Future of AI: There will be no singularity. Humans are not the center of the galaxy but and edge case. Our type of thinking is specific to this planet, and other artificially created alien species will have specific minds suited to specific tasks. (00:24:52)On Exploration vs. Optimization: Do you optimize...

This week Chris continues our sermon series on Proverbs, focussing on the importance of wisdom when it comes to our speech.

Don continues our series on Proverbs, this week exploring the common thread of sowing and reaping.

On this month's episode of Deeper and Wider we are talking all things beatitudes with internationally recognized specialist in practical Christian spirituality, Mark Scandrette. Mark is the founding director the ReIMAGINE Center for Living Wisdom, where he leads an annual series of retreats, workshops and projects designed to help participants apply spiritual wisdom to everyday life. His multidisciplinary studies in applied psychology, family health and theology have shaped his approach to learning and transformation. A sought after voice for creative, radical and embodied faith practices, he frequently speaks at universities, churches and conferences nationally and internationally and also serves as adjunct faculty in the doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary.   His most recent books include The Ninefold Path of Jesus (which, by the way, is THE book on the beatitudes), also three other book including FREE, Practicing the Way of Jesus, and Belonging and Becoming: Creating A Thriving Family Culture. Mark lives with his wife Lisa and their three young adult children in an old Victorian in San Francisco's Mission District. He loves walking city streets and discovering beauty in unexpected places. He is passionately engaged in sustainability practices and efforts to create safe neighborhoods for all people.   To find out more about the workshops that we spoke about today in the episode, head over to head on over to reimagine.org, go to the learning labs tab, and register your interest to be part of that. To learn more on Mark himself, he can be found at his website  www.markscandrette.com. 

Don begins our new sermon series on Proverbs.

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https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week7-11.pdf

https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week7-11.pdf

https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week7-11.pdf

We can only live wisely in the present through clear thinking about the future. This principle guides us through continuing our study through the book of Luke in our sermon series called Wisdom From The Master. This week we dive into Luke chapter 12 as we learn from Jesus what it means to be ready for his return. We need to keep our lamp burning and live as a faithful and active steward as we wait and watch. We also see what it means to not be faithful in stewarding what God has given us. Pastor Matt gives us 3 practical tools for ready living: to be aware of your calling, to be confident in Jesus' return, and to be faithful to your charge. Learn about how you can be ready living and be found a faithful steward as Jesus has commanded us. As always, if you've got questions, we'd love to answer them and take time to pray with you. Take the next step in your faith journey today by reaching out – burnthickory.com/next.

In this episode, I am speaking with Amanda Elo'esh about Entheogens as your spiritual healing allies. Amanda Elo'Esh is your Quicker Waker Upper helping spiritually driven folks to rescue your inner light from trauma and live your full human potential. She's founder of the sacred medicine Living Wisdom church and is committed to create safe and sacred spaces for her diverse community to learn, heal, and grow together. She facilitates sacred medicine ceremonies and spiritually elevating gatherings to strengthen community connections. https://eloesh.com

https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week1-6.pdf

https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week1-6.pdf

https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week1-6.pdf

https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week1-6.pdf

https://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week1-6.pdf

http://ccbcmedia.com/WomenintheWord/WIW_QuestionsFall2022_Week1-6.pdf

Bayou City Fellowship - Tomball Buzzsprout-11077686 Sun, 31 Jul 2022 12:00:00 -0500 2469

Bayou City Fellowship - Tomball Buzzsprout-11001425 Sun, 17 Jul 2022 12:00:00 -0500 3126

Message: Elijah Dally, Teaching PastorPassage: Passage: Proverbs 10:28, Ecclesiastes 2:1-2 and Psalm 16:9-11

Bayou City Fellowship - Tomball Buzzsprout-10950550 Sun, 10 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0500 2715 Bayou City Fellowship, Tomball, Kevin Barra, Skillful Living, Bayou City Fellowship - Tomball full

Message: Elijah Dally, Teaching PastorPassage: Psalm 22:1-2 & Psalm 130

Message: Drake Holderman, Missional Impact MinisterPassage: Ecclesiastes 5:10-20; Proverbs 30:7-9; Matthew 6:24

Bayou City Fellowship - Tomball Buzzsprout-10800306 Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:00:00 -0500 2760 Bayou City Fellowship, Tomball, Kevin Barra, Skillful Living, Bayou City Fellowship - Tomball full