The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
Walking the Calling — Episode 42 in the series, The Letter to the Ephesians
In this episode, we the beginning of chapter four in the Letter to the Ephesians. It leads us into three of the qualities of character that the author names as humility, gentleness, and patience. We are led into the topic of intentional character development in and through Christ. This conversation on spiritual formation is stirred by Paul’s words in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, where he “urges” us to “walk in a manner worthy of [our] calling.” We hope and pray that these reflections might be an inspiration for your own resolutions and aspirations for spiritual growth in Christ-discipleship in the coming year.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
The.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Good morning Patrick. Hi Jonah, how are you this morning? You know pretty well, I've been up since 5.30,. So, Hi Jonah, how are you?
Patrick Kennedy:this morning. You know pretty well, I've been up since 5.30, so I'm feeling fresh, nice and I've been really in the day already, beautiful. Yeah, you're dressed well.
Jonah Christopher Evans:I'm even dressed well, your hair is combed.
Patrick Kennedy:Nice, I'm so glad we don't have a video perform yet we will.
Jonah Christopher Evans:We will at one point, it's true, welcome everyone, we will.
Patrick Kennedy:We will at one point, it's true.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Welcome everyone To the light in everything where two human souls speak about Christ together in a living conversation.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, and experience how we keep meeting new friends who are in the conversation. Amen, welcome.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Amen, Welcome, Welcome. And we begin, as we always do, with our gospel, the gospel of John in chapter 8. Again, Jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, walk, walk in darkness. This picture of walking with Christ, walking with this light, is also a key picture of the fourth chapter that we're in now. In the letter to the Ephesians, verse 1, I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. How would he like us to walk? Verse 2, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. So these large themes that he began his letter with, also bringing in the hierarchies and the heavenly worlds and the foundations of creation and the purposes god has laid down in us, these really big pictures are heading into this prayer in chapter three, kind of the middle of the letter has that beautiful prayer, and then his attention starts to really turn towards these two things.
Patrick Kennedy:It seems to me, jonah, who we are as members of him, in our new identity in him. How do I speak and interact and walk in this world? What is the trail I leave behind me as I move? That seems very important to him. On the one hand, and as it culminates here, the unity of the community and as it culminates here the unity of the community. How is that an essential part of now our orientation? How do we maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace? So, these bonds we spoke about last time, the prisoner who is bonded to Christ, that Paul describes himself as a captive. That Paul describes himself as a captive. We talked about how that is an utterly free bond, but he uses the strong picture, and we meditated on that paradox last time, and this time I'm really eager to look at this walking with you To walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.
Patrick Kennedy:So the I know in your life the extraordinary experience of discovering the ways of being in yourself that had darkness in them, that spread a way of walking and being and inhabiting your person, that revealed to you a spirit vision where you could see how not good to put it simply that was To put it simply, that was.
Patrick Kennedy:And then the experience of the grace in communion with him at the altar that you've had. And then there's this step three, which is well what happens as you walk away from the altar. Now, how do you live your life in light of that grace? Are you now utterly changed and transformed? And every step is an expression of humility and patience and gentleness and bearing with what, how, how.
Patrick Kennedy:Jonah evans, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you how have what has been the practice for you of um working on your walk that it express more and more these qualities and this life with him.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Yeah well, what a wonderful question. I think what comes to mind at first is this word that we hear in our communion liturgy, where we pray that the Lord strengthen us in our wrestling soul through his health bestowing blood. So my experience you referred to a kind of awakening, to a kind of dark one. That's not good in me. That was in my early 20s. But my experience is kind of like when Yahweh spoke to Cain said there's a beast crouching at your door. Is that feeling connection to this one that is not humble, is not gentle, is not full of peace, is impatient, wants to dominate and get its own way, is full of desires of all sorts, doesn't go away? It doesn't go away and yet I'm able to kind of. So I'm called to wrestle with it and notice it and try to, on the one hand, kind of like Michael with his sword, not let it rule the day, but try to tame it, know it's there and continually check it.
Patrick Kennedy:On the one hand, so just an increased awareness of its presence and desire and will than living inside it, right? So so being able to step out of it and notice it and see it just kind of a first freeing yourself from it and then some rulership energy.
Jonah Christopher Evans:I hear in there like keep it in its in a place where it isn't damaging too much at least you're constantly attempting that, yeah, and therefore also constantly aware of that possibility, which already is a humbling agent, right?
Patrick Kennedy:that it doesn't go away, and now you are wholly an expression of your Lord, but you are having to live with the constant kind of threat of theling an ability to see and step back and look at it as other, but it's actually you Already, if I'm just constantly aware of this dark one that already is a humbling agent agent.
Patrick Kennedy:So the there's a humility, not as something you've exercised directly, like I'm going to work on humility today but by living in this relationship with the, the crouching beast that can take hold of you at your door. Yeah, you, there's a fruit. There's a fruit already of that work. So you're working over here and the fruit is humility, because you know you could at any moment right, become this thing and it's also.
Jonah Christopher Evans:It's also if anyone has ever lived with pain, persistent pain, one also knows whether it's a disability or whatever. It also has a humbling. It can have a humbling quality. So there's a kind of irritant that's constantly there that also, if it's orientated to rightly, the right relationship with it, can bring a kind of tender heart. Just the awareness of it Not enough, but it already can have that quality. And this is why the ancient mystic Christians would pray a certain prayer called the Jesus Prayer. Lord, jesus Christ, have mercy on my soul, a sinner, because they constantly wanted to not forget the beast crouching at the door.
Patrick Kennedy:So like that, as a kind of medicinal thought or word for the for the self-righteous, arrogant um dominator that wants to constantly assert itself in themselves. So like, by by naming themselves a sinner, they're trying to actually give a medicine to that.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Exactly. At least a part of a part of the humility and it can. It has all kinds of dangers, of course, but if it's real and if it really is a perception of your own true weaknesses, not exaggerated, untrue.
Patrick Kennedy:Right, like a put-down. You're insulting yourself. No, you're just trying to name reality. Very well said no you're just trying to name reality. Very well, say it to myself I oh yeah, this is so. The prayer only works because it's a fruit of your knowledge, exactly that's.
Jonah Christopher Evans:I think that's so important because many people know all too well the fake put down energy of I'm a sinner, yeah, or the real damaging, damaging, damaging. So it has to be a true knowledge-based, experience-based perception, yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:Can we take a moment on that Sure? Sure, because I feel like I get the feeling that there might be some reactions, which are understandable in our listeners who would just naturally feel like it's so damaging we already.
Patrick Kennedy:There is such a self-loathing sin. Dang it these words right. They're such religious words and they're heavy words for many. You and I have spent so long in our lives claiming them because they weren't naturally a part of our world either. We were. We were kind of grew up in a world kind of freed of a lot of this and and parents who threw off all the damaging effects of that kind of language where the church had used it to make people feel horrible about themselves and to control them and to damage their egos and their actual self-worth being damaged, Trying to cripple them so they could come crippled to the healing church, Rather than awakening them or participating with their awakening, as they come to know their crippledness and then being ready with healing.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Amen and then have an authentic, true longing for medicine.
Patrick Kennedy:So this is one of those things.
Jonah Christopher Evans:It's really a good point.
Patrick Kennedy:So if you were to just say to someone who has zero relationship to the Christian language, the biblical language of, I'm a sinner and tried this morning just to say, like what do you mean when you say that word or phrase about yourself and why? That's important, that self-knowledge?
Jonah Christopher Evans:Well, for example, maybe I can tell a story of another friend who I was just speaking with, who grew up with this kind of.
Jonah Christopher Evans:it's not only Catholic, we're not trying to just demonize Catholicism, the church and many, many, many expressions, so many expressions, but it can have this tendency of and for this my friend, he experienced growing up in it like he had to make up sins to please the priests, right, but just I, just, yeah, right. So he, he, he kept having like I've got to make. So he, he grew up and in his late teens he was like I can't take, take this anymore. This is, this is not healthy because it feels crippling, not in a good way, and so he went his life trying to find a spirituality that had nothing to do with this kind of sinner thing. And we just had a recent conversation and it was really. He came with this real interest anew. He's now post-70 and he's like you know, jonah, it seems like you have a different relationship to Christ than what I grew up with. Tell me about it.
Patrick Kennedy:Wow, that's so beautiful grew up with.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Tell me about it. Wow, that's so beautiful and he's long story short. He he described in his own practice he's a healer that he began to notice a very strong impulse in him that kept hindering his healing work to to. He would get frustrated and angry if the people wouldn't do what he said, like the protocol that he designed for them.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, and he kept getting more and more irritated. The healer's burden.
Jonah Christopher Evans:He kept getting more and more irritated and, in the course of the conversation, became more and more clear this is part of my own sin, my own shadow. That I keep thinking it's me that's the healer and I have to make the protocol and you should take it, and that aggressive, dominating energy starts is starting to be perceived, in his own knowledge, as hindering from blessing.
Patrick Kennedy:Hindering the blessing.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Hindering any possibility. It's, and he's becoming more and more angry with his patients.
Patrick Kennedy:Right Subtly so something in him actually causing him to turn on his the ones who've come to him seeking healing.
Jonah Christopher Evans:That's it.
Patrick Kennedy:Which is therefore an energetic block to what could flow to him seeking healing. That's it, which is therefore an energetic block to what could flow to support their healing.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Right. So rather than saying, oh no, don't worry about that, there's no shame, you know rather than kind of dismissing that authentic shadow we talked about well, let's meet this and he felt an authentic, true guilt that was leading him away from what he truly wanted, which is blessing and grace. Yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:But as soon as he's doing that seeing it, naming, naming it, owning it something is in him that is freeing up from it exactly and he's beautiful so it's.
Jonah Christopher Evans:it's the same type of principle. It's starting to perceive it like something that he can witness, and even though it has a pain, because true shame kind of burns, as we all know. The key, though, there is that it's true, it's not exaggerated or pretended or made up or forced, so key.
Patrick Kennedy:From the outside before you're ready, somebody just making you feel terrible about yourself. When, from each other, love is what's asked.
Jonah Christopher Evans:So he says to me Jonah, well, what do I do with this shadow? Now, the other side of this walk I'm not just walking with a beast crouching at the door the other side is that it frees me up to also turn and see the light of the world. Who says you don't have to walk only in darkness? So the other side for me is also turning and looking at. How does he walk? What does his light look like? What does he do with shadow? What does he do with sin? What does he do with grace? How does he work?
Patrick Kennedy:with grace. How does he bear the sick who don't want to be healed? Exactly.
Jonah Christopher Evans:And so, as soon as we both turned our gaze and I felt inspired to say something like, to say something like when John sees him coming over the hill to go be baptized, behold the Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world upon himself. Or in the Gospel of Luke bring me your burdens. Bring me your burdens, Give them to me, I will teach you how to be humble and meek. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. And for him, this immediately awoke a new picture of what was needed with these unsolvable illnesses in his dear patients.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Oh, when I notice that the person is for some reason not wanting, I'm going to take this, just carry it, Carry it, Be patient and carry it. But then what? And then, just organically, it became clear well, I need strength to carry it and I also need the orientation that it's God who heals. So does Christ. Christ knows, the Father is the one that lifts him. The Father is the one that he's following. The Father is the one that gives him strength. So, long story short with my friend, he became so. It just was. It was so ripe for him to. Okay, I'm going to take up these a way to work with my hindering, frustration and anger toward my patients that don't want to do. What I say is I'm going to. When I notice that come up, I'm just going to bear and pray for strength from Christ to bear it and pray for the patience to wait till God deems the healing process to be fulfilled.
Patrick Kennedy:God, is the healer, so a kind of softening of his will to a greater will, making it receptive, rather than noticing that part of what was also hindering was a desire to push his will upon the universe. Do it Right.
Jonah Christopher Evans:And it made it was almost like a remembering for me, Right, right, it was like oh, I knew this somehow, yeah right. But I forgot yeah, I got entangled in another thought pattern will structure feeling life. That's not my true home.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah.
Jonah Christopher Evans:And so, and it's also not like that, then means there's no more wrestling Right. Not like that, then means there's no more wrestling Right. That tendency in me too comes up again and again. But the more I've practiced this perceiving, seeing myself, seeing myself taking responsibility for it. The things that hinder, turning to the one who walks in the darkness with light.
Patrick Kennedy:Seeing this human. Where the light isn't hindered, there you go. That's another way of saying it. Who is this one? Something through his whole humanity, light gets through.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Light gets through and he willingly takes up our darkness. That's not his, but he makes it his own.
Patrick Kennedy:Which is a further expression of light, right? He's like no, let's go, it's light all the way down, right?
Jonah Christopher Evans:Yeah, because it's this deep, godly picture of I'm going to freely give myself to carrying your burden too. It's love.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, you see some. There's a first humility you described that comes about through being humbled by the fact that you are in relationship to your darkness, how you block things. So you're like, whoa, I gotta, I'm naturally checked. It's hard to be arrogant if I'm noticing how much I'm hindering light exactly. But then there's another humility that starts to stream in. I'm hearing, because you look at him, who is light, willingly take on, kind of lower himself into the dark. Yeah, so that, even though he is a shining one, there's zero. Look at me, aren't I awesome, he bends, it's a light that is bending and carrying and you could say getting into garments of darkness. Yeah, willingly, willingly, he's humbling himself in the very gesture of his nature as a being. Absolutely, it's just so. The influence of being in the presence of a person who is like that is having its effect on you. That's what I hear you saying.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Amen, amen. And I love how you named it two different kinds of humility, because the first kind is kind of a humility through pain which has its place, but it can't be the only thing, otherwise we get obsessed with a kind of dark shadow of whipping ourselves. It turns into something unhealthy. Yeah, it's not enough, it's not enough higher.
Patrick Kennedy:There's a higher form of humility right that you see in him and then.
Jonah Christopher Evans:But it has to be combined, then with this humility born of the wonder and devotion to the beauty of this true human being. It's a humility born of beauty, heart breaking, tear generating, that is so good and true and beautiful that I want to be close to that. And then I was going to say there's a third kind of humility that connects with, then, the activity of prayer or reception that says I don't have the strength yet, I don't see myself a one that can do that kind of bearing, and yet, lord, give me your strength and just the. The activity of praying for something that you don't yet have, that you find so beautiful, is also a quality of humility and gentleness that, yeah, so that's part of then the walk.
Patrick Kennedy:I hear you describing how do you absorb and attain a character that is shaped and made by him and has his qualities? Your, your practice is a prayer practice of seeing that beautiful quality in him, recognizing what it is needed in a life situation, recognizing your lacking in it and asking for him to share some. Bring it, help me, gift me, please, to be your servant. I actually need this. So, prayer for what I don't have.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Prayer for what I don't have and experiencing more and more that it's available, that it's actually possible to receive it. It has its own kind of humility, born out of gratitude that I'm actually receiving my truer being more and more as a gift.
Patrick Kennedy:So you're in an intensified self-development practice whose character itself is lacking selfishness, because self-development always has this threat of like I'm going to personally develop myself, I'm going to become a master of something, but that your way to it involves ever and again coming as a beggar to one who has something you don't, and so the whole attainment process you're describing has humility baked in.
Patrick Kennedy:It's really beautiful. So I think I can picture a little bit how this practice looks, because we've talked so much over the years, but it might be nice to share again to the listeners to put it together. So I imagine jonah, all by himself in the morning or the evening in prayer, maybe seeing something from the day or wrestling with a challenging situation, and going through this prayer process of recognizing what you're failing at and lacking, intensifying that experience that can then be named taking the named need. I need more humility when I'm working in this situation, please, lord, and then turning it into this prayer, turning towards Him, seeing His beauty, asking for some of that to ray into you. Is that a fair characterization? Perfect?
Jonah Christopher Evans:It's amazing to hear it.
Patrick Kennedy:But is it not also, while you're in a board meeting or you're in a class or you're in, do you turn? Do you do these prayer processes also in the middle of life?
Jonah Christopher Evans:yeah, I mean, like last time talking about, you know, being at the airport last week, right, you know it can become a tool. Maybe even a tool is not the best word, but it can become a way of life, a way of walking. I think it's connected to why Paul says walk in this way, because it's also the way of Christ. So Christ is doing this same thing. The difference is it's not his personal sin that he's working with, like when I discover my own inner tyrant. It's my inner tyrant because of my personal sin, but Christ is doing that with ours. He's taken it up freely. It's not his brokenness, but he's also doing that. He's perceiving it, carrying it, noticing it and turning to the Father in his beauty, he says I only do what I see the Father doing.
Jonah Christopher Evans:He says in John 4. Beauty, he said I only do what I see the Father doing. He says in John 4. Receiving his life from the Father as nourishment. My nourishment, my strength, comes from doing it's. You could say this walk is imitatio Christi in many ways, but it's not the idea that I'm, I'm going to replace Christ as my, because I'm going to be Christ. It's just more following how he walks.
Patrick Kennedy:I think that's that's where he heads in this chapter. It's so beautiful. So we went down into the kind of details of your practice in the daily life with acquiring the qualities of the walk, of his walk, of his way I am the way I am, a way of being in this world, and that that is an active, lived thing rather than a one-time event like we talked about. So the one-time event starts, something that becomes a way, a walk, and then, as we go on in this same chapter, we'll just skip through a little bit, but we'll come back to these other things, but we may get distracted by them, because they're amazing.
Patrick Kennedy:So he says he gives the community certain servants. He gives them, in verse 11, the sent ones, the apostles, the prophets who have this connection to the Spirit. The evangelists, those who are able to tell the story of the good news. The shepherds, who can walk with and guide souls towards the true nourishment of God and God's presence and to lead them back into the protective space. The shepherds and the teachers, those who can lead them into the wisdom, the Sophia of God, of God.
Patrick Kennedy:So, these five beautiful offices of the body of Christ, what's their job? They all, though they do different things, have one job, according to Paul in verse 12, to equip the saints, the holy ones. All the people in the church for Paul are saints, just so everybody knows. When he uses that that term, it is really the holy ones, the consecrated ones, and they're consecrated through their relationship with christ. So to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of christ. So we're all working on this holy building project and the people who have these offices are simply equipping everyone for the one work To build up this body.
Jonah Christopher Evans:So we're making a human.
Patrick Kennedy:A kind of full human. We are all on this project, like the elomi he had at the beginning of creation. Let us make the human being. We're building on the body of christ. It's so moving. Let us worthily consecrate the human being.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:The human being who is all of these things. But this is right. So until verse 13,. Let's do that work until we all, so we each have attained to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. So, pistis and gnosis of Jesus Christ, they're going to come together, knowledge and faith. And this is this thing they have trouble translating.
Patrick Kennedy:The ESV for me is a little unsatisfying.
Patrick Kennedy:Sure, what does it say? The mature manhood? It's like no. First of all, we need to know yeah, we got to slow this down just a little bit, but maybe go to some other translations here what is happening? What is he describing?
Patrick Kennedy:So, verse 13, in the literal standard Bible, the unity of the faith and the full knowledge of the Son of God to a, and now it's. It does say man rather than anthropos, but the word for mature is teleos. So the goal, so the goal you're trying to get, to the fulfillment of the goal of your humanness. How so? To the measure and the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. So we're all working on building up something that has the shape and nature of Christ in its community size. Why? So that each one of us can mature and grow into the like, literally, like measurements and what we say, like the dimensions of his person, so that our shape and character and nature would be an expression of the fullness, the pleroma of Christ, of Christ. So this picture that all of this work is for the maturation of human beings, like growing up into their full expression of their humanity which is Him.
Patrick Kennedy:So it seems to me that that's exactly where Paul is also leading us. The goal is not just imitation in the sense of mimicry, but to express him, to be representatives.
Jonah Christopher Evans:We connect back to the beginning to be in him, literally, and him in us, right. So that helps with this temptation to think of I'm just going to be like him, right, but I can't really be like him on my own Outside of him, yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:It's more. I'll take a little, separate it from him, put it in me.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Yeah, but yeah, this whole telos, this whole goal of being in him, him in us, we in him, in the image and likeness of the Son of God in all its fullness.
Patrick Kennedy:And I think that's a re-description of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. Nice, so a trusting. So I discover your beauty, I see you, which opens me to you more and more and more, and this is a thing for me like how many more ways I discover oh, I don't yet trust you. There I can, I can grow in this faith so incredibly much more than it is now. Oh, I do not know you. There I'm meditating right now on the scene this is such an example Just turning towards him literally by taking up a gospel passage and just meditating on that over and over again.
Patrick Kennedy:And how it starts to imprint my character, it starts to affect my heart and I can feel like something changing in me. He's in the garden. It's the night before Good Friday. It's Thursday evening. He's in Gethsemane before Good Friday. It's Thursday evening. He's in Gethsemane and Judas has arrived with people with weapons, torches. They're here to arrest him. And Judas comes and the whole scene is filled with gentleness and humility, greetings, rabbi. And they kiss in that scene, torches and weapons, and he says friend. That's his first word to this human. Who's doing this? Friend, do what you must do. He utterly takes it up, takes it in. This Judas sin will be incorporated in God's salvific work and the gentleness with which he receives his betrayer. I just noticed then how small and all the forces in me that would not behave that way when my betrayer comes to give me a kiss on the cheek Amen. How I couldn't say friend with any authenticity, right.
Jonah Christopher Evans:I love that is that the light of Christ, the beauty of how he walks in the world, of how he's working with God in the world, actually reveals a further weakness, darkness in us, but at the same time inspires us to want to get closer to that being. Be like that Right, because it's a different level. It's not just my own weaknesses that I'm encountering, like my friend with his healing practice, like my friend with his healing practice. It's now seeing that it's not just your weaknesses that are going to come at you and call you to your knees, so to speak. It's really objective other betrayal forces that come from someone else.
Jonah Christopher Evans:That is also part of the bearing and the loving activity that we see exemplified in the light of the world. But it awakens me to even further like there's so many forces in me that would not respond with love, like you said, to the betrayer. So I just find that interesting how the light of the world, the beauty of goodness and truth, of goodness and truth, the more we get close to it, the more the depth of the shadow and hence the more of the need for the light, reveals itself. This is one thing I mean. I'm constantly aware of an impatience in me, oh my Lord, and that's really hard and difficult, challenging to wrestle with. But the capacity to forgive and love my enemy, that's another level, exactly, yeah, it just shows also just the beauty of this way it's it's, it's dedicated to love, the power of sacrificial love all the way down.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah and in an extraordinary way for me, I start to discover oh, all these simple terms like gentleness, humility and patience are inside that action in the garden. The patience there for me is his patience with Judas' story. So I'm thinking of your healer. I know Jesus Christ actually loves Judas deepest beyond what I can imagine, and he knows that Judas is taking on a burden that no other human being could do. It's going to be hard not to weep.
Patrick Kennedy:We have a brother who took on a deed. We have a brother who took on a deed and if he didn't do it, the cross doesn't happen. He couldn't actually just go put himself on the cross. That's not how this works. He had to be betrayed, had to be handed over, put into someone else's power. He was protected by his own circle and there had to be a break in the circle. So somebody had to have a weakness inside him that could lead to this action that would save the world Right.
Patrick Kennedy:So he's got to have a view of Judas' trajectory as a healer. He's a healer and be patient that the sickness in Judas, the illness, the sin in Judas is going to lead to this now. But he will awaken to what he sees, even though he does and he takes his life, and I will be with him in death and through all future cycles of time for his blessing. I will never, ever leave his door.
Patrick Kennedy:I'm playing a long game. A long game and that kind of patience of like right now is your time of suffering. You're going to have to go through even more and more and more and more. He has this world perspective patient walk with us and me. This is what I find. Then I start to discover how he walks so patiently, like I come to a discovery and I'm like you've been trying to tell me this for years. That's what I discover. So, just as an example, my work with my patients is so small, but then I can discover a patience inside him which is so immense so immense and I I mean it's so beautiful the way you describe that.
Jonah Christopher Evans:A question rose up in me to ask you, as a kind of way of just discovering a new element, maybe. So does that mean or for Patrick, when you describe it like that, that betrayal is necessary for the salvation of humanity, does that mean that evil betrayal is part and parcel of love, is part and parcel of love, is it like? Is this bound together? Is this the yeah? Is that betrayal necessary for love to be?
Patrick Kennedy:Would you put it like that? I mean no, not in the law of love, no, no, but in the sicknesses inside humanity. It was so for our love process with him. For example, there's love in the soil we walk on and there's no betrayal in there. It was just an outpouring gift, because a lot of love is like doesn't need a reason. Actually, that's why it's so radical. It's like why do you love me? Because I love you, like I'm the reason. Not that it's independent, right, okay, it's just a radiance of his being.
Jonah Christopher Evans:It has no necessities, so to speak with him, with love, contains.
Patrick Kennedy:There is in us the part of me that betrays myself because it wants this other, it wants something that's not love, it's self-love, this self-absorbed, self-important, yeah, this self that isn't love. And inside that self is a betrayer, a deceiver, a denier, all of the elements that come in the discipleship circle, in the people around him, blind to truth. Just the whole gospel story is love coming into our world and doing its light effects, which is revealing all the things in us and around us that are not love, all the things in us and around us that are not love, and so we see love's radiance next to the darkness of betrayal.
Jonah Christopher Evans:It appears we can perceive it Right, so we can know it, we can know it, so that's maybe a purpose of the betrayer and to see at that most intimate place.
Patrick Kennedy:There's an image that shows itself to me. I have both of those beings in me and by being able to have them extracted into the story of the gospel, I can see myself and potentially, maybe make a different choice or live with the betrayer in me in a different way and live with the Christ in me in a different way. So the but that love is bonded with betrayal.
Patrick Kennedy:I couldn't, I couldn't say but it's a part of the All of our darknesses and sin are absolutely precious and essential in our story of growing towards love, of knowing it, knowing it, of being matured.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Right, because it's such a much more mature love when everything's going fine. But when someone betrays you and to still love someone betrays you and to still love it, it awakens this. You know, that kind of love you could almost say is more actual love.
Patrick Kennedy:You're hitting. You're hitting the reality at another level, right? I mean, that's my experience. Yeah, it's basically what Jesus says If you love the people you love and are your friends in sympathetic relationships, how are you better than the heathens? That's a way of expressing it to his Jewish listeners.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Exactly so. He himself shows that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer I did a research on his and he calls it cheap love, cheap grace, or costly, Costly. Yeah, himself shows that costly grace, costly love through the cross, the cross is costly. Nobody can go to the cross as an expression of love without this kind of dynamic.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, and maybe that's also part of it. It it's total. It's utterly not self-preserving, utterly not right risking all for the one who currently might hate you, right with no apparent benefit.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Yeah, for yourself.
Patrick Kennedy:Yes, it's for, and then experiencing how that decision and identity overcomes death. It's the identity that is ready to utterly die for the beloved that is raised, to utterly die for the beloved that is raised by the universe. It is gifted life and that's the amazing thing. You have to go into it and say I may never come back from this. That has to be the consciousness. I'm ready to utterly die, right. And I have to go through it.
Jonah Christopher Evans:I'm ready to utterly die right. And I have to go through it, experiencing the betrayals, the powerlessnesses, the brokennesses. Which gives me the doorway to this raising beautiful, which gives me the doorway to this raising Beautiful, yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:so this conversation for me has been really interesting to hear from you. Development process and acquiring of attributes and qualities of being that are described here, for example, that should characterize our walk, are in this relationship with yourself in the light of truth, and your relationship with Christ in the prayerful request. Christ in the prayerful request, in the radiance of his beauty and the prayer to receive his character as your practice.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Thank, you for asking. I have this impulse to ask you, but then it's maybe we that could be a nice thing to do for next time. We'll see, or what time is it? It's only 815.
Patrick Kennedy:Okay, well, yeah, but we've been.
Jonah Christopher Evans:we've been at it for about an hour but maybe, but maybe there is an element, because I know you also know some of these it's not totally different for you but maybe there's an element, another quality of how you've come to walk that could be added.
Patrick Kennedy:Probably the only additional thing in my practice has been. So where do I discover the beauty that you've described? Sometimes I'll come across it in a list like this. So a list of these qualities humility, patience, gentleness and I'll feel in my heart oh man, it's put into words, Somebody has put into words what rays out from this being. Could I actively seek to cultivate these qualities daily and make them habits? So how do? Constantly, I think for me also suffering deeply Also, maybe I want to add this Okay, good, I grew up in the Christian community.
Patrick Kennedy:As you know, I grew up in a community that was utterly oriented towards the spirit and tried to be a spiritually informed culture, A Waldorf school inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner. Right nearby was the Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, California, with a bunch of training centers for people like drawn out of kind of mainstream culture towards a new, spirit-oriented culture, Not a past one but a new one, and tons of ideals and, uh, really amazing wisdom that was coming in and changing gardening and changing medicine and just this incredible initiative, Um, and I felt that and experienced that kind of the shining ideals. And I felt that and experienced that kind of the shining ideals. And then I also saw over time more and more and more the difference between what was said in wisdom and what was lived in life.
Patrick Kennedy:And even watching people turn on each other in arguments about that wisdom or really actually saying the words of these spirituality, but emitting and emanating destructive and dark forces and in some cases, in some communities, really really painful and dark and difficult behaviors from spiritual leaders, priests, teachers, doctors, people at the pinnacle of the spiritual leadership, and you and I came across a gift of one of the saints of God.
Patrick Kennedy:This is another place that I would say is a huge part, not just the beauty of Christ Jesus, but the beauty of his saints, hugely influential on me, and I'll mention one of them now, which we share, which is Dallas Willard. Dallas Willard, who has passed and was an amazing saint of God, I would say.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Amen, I would say Amen, I would too.
Patrick Kennedy:Who was a high-level epistemological scholar of philosophy and professor and PhD teaching at USC in Southern California, but was also a Baptist minister Unbelievable combination. And utterly renewed the evangelical tradition by connecting it back up to spiritual discipline. And he really, just for me, just absolutely played a role of naming a sin of the church by saying there's the great commission to go out and immerse people, baptize them, immerse them in the forces of the Trinity, father, son and Holy Spirit. I said well, we forget the part that's right before that, which is make disciples of all the nations, and disciples are students of a teacher who are seeking to be formed and express his character. So he really got kind of called the evangelical church to account by saying you've been focusing on conversion, which is nowhere in that commission, by the way.
Patrick Kennedy:Make disciples and immerse them in the Trinity. That doesn't say anything about conversion. That was the first call out. He said that's unbiblical. Instead, you should be bringing them into processes that should imprint them with Christ's character, because the worst thing about the church is when people meet Christians they're not meeting Christ, they're meeting people they don't want to associate with bullies of the book people throwing the Bible and violence at other humans or judging in self-righteousness None of the character of Christ the disciples should be giving the impression of Him.
Patrick Kennedy:So that really just landed deeply in me. Also because I think I was super lazy growing up. I just wanted it all to just kind of like flow and happen naturally. You know it's got to be just like. You got to like go with it. You know you love California, hey, hey, california. You know we rag on in California a lot. We really love it. We are children of it. Trust us, we are. But there is this, you know, a certain polarity of gesture. That was zero discipline and that discipline itself is somehow artificial and not good. Zero discipline and that discipline itself is somehow artificial and not good. And at a certain point I was like, oh yeah, look at the violinist, look at the Basketball player, look at the person who's making A rocket. A scholar, they're putting intense thousands of hours into their craft of who they're trying to be and what they're trying to build. And it was like what if we put that kind of effort and all of our ambition into that being formed and expressing him?
Patrick Kennedy:So I just, and it's a longer story but I won't get into it now but I was led to just start to see like you can really get very concrete with these things and, let's say, take up humility as a virtue you wish to acquire and work in your life, and this comes from the long tradition of the church. You can discover this is nothing new. But you can set the goal of working with humility for a month and then come up with very concrete meditative prayer and habit practices and accountability for it, review, standing, practicing this, standing in the light of how did it go with my practice of humility today, every day, let it echo back to you, do an examination of the day in the light of the one who is humble, and let it shine upon your day and what comes back to you. I mean, sometimes it might be in your dreams. What's been happening for me lately And's you know it's brutal, but because the dreams can show layers that don't maybe show up in life, people don't see what's all underneath there.
Patrick Kennedy:So the dream world. I've had behaviors in my dreams which are just like oh, the shame that is. And I know those things are hidden inside me. They haven't come to expression of my behavior in my outer life. But they're hidden in there. Why are they showing up? Because I asked to put on the virtue I I wanted to drop, so maybe that's another way to say it. It's like raying out from this being. Are garments of these virtues. They're like moral substances and I see one and I go. I want to acquire patience and so I daily try to put it on and walk in it and try to work out of it very concretely, usually very intensified, and then released at other times and then review, let's look at it in his light, and then let it go for a month and take on a new virtue Again. It's just like humility. Just is born as soon as I start trying to be gentle. It's like confrontation after confrontation with my crudeness and my lack of gentleness, so it awakens these processes that then enter into the prayer work.
Jonah Christopher Evans:I love it. I love that discipline element.
Patrick Kennedy:I heard in all that you described a discipline just by. I want to say that Good point. Yes, absolutely.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Right. But there's something about also a different gesture, a different quality of taking something up, working with it, reflecting feedback, with yourself trying again a kind of methodological, almost scientific gesture that also has a discipline and also belongs in this realm. But of course the prayer too has a discipline and a real and all of this for me, wouldn't work without it.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, yeah.
Jonah Christopher Evans:No, it's not one or the other.
Patrick Kennedy:It would be only my side. And so yeah, Right would be only my side. Hmm, and so yeah.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Right, good point yeah.
Patrick Kennedy:Beautiful. But that kind of activating, like if I really love this, what if I really invest in it, like someone invests in workouts, yeah, like just really give as much of my energy and effort to becoming, having my character and my walk express him. Yeah.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Yeah, beautiful.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, thank you Jonah, thank you Patrick, till next time. Till next time, and when this comes out, it will have been Christmas.
Jonah Christopher Evans:Yeah, Merry Christmas Blessings. So yeah, On our holy nights, your holy nights, dear friends, and the new year.
Patrick Kennedy:Yeah, maybe these thoughts could flow into your own reflections of resolutions and wanting to be shaped and express the character of Christ Jesus ¶¶ ©.
Patrick Kennedy:Transcript Emily Beynon.