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
“Speaking the Truth in Love” - Episode 45 in the series, “Letter to the Ephesians”
Dear Listeners,
Due to illness and other factors beyond our control, we have gotten behind our regular podcast production schedule here at the seminary. But, we didn’t feel like we could ask you to wait any longer to the next installment of our ‘Letter to the Ephesians’ series. Here is the audio - a full 90 minutes - on speaking the truth in love, a capacity we so desperately need today.
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.
Good morning Patrick, good morning Jonah. Maybe we just don't do it one time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, do we always have to say?
Speaker 2:We're not going to say anything about the topic we normally say right now. Those of our listeners will know exactly what we're talking about. Apologies to the newcomers.
Speaker 3:Welcome, but welcome To another episode of the Light in Everything.
Speaker 2:Yes, episode of the Light in Everything. Yes, this is a place where we have the great privilege to have an hour each week in conversation to seek the heart of the mysteries of Christianity, Amen. We'll begin, as we always do, with a reading from the Gospel of John, from the 8th chapter, verse 12. Again, Jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this light of life that Christ is carrying in the darkness of the shadow of death in our world. It reminds me of our last conversation, our last episode, where we spoke about this reality that Paul talks about in chapter 4 of Ephesians, which we're working through. Hopefully. I have in mind to come toward the end of chapter 4 today Okay exciting.
Speaker 3:But this light of life that Christ is carrying Paul speaks about there. We talked about that last time of taking off the old self and putting on a new self, a new human. You even brought that insight about the word. It's not just a self, it's a full human, yeah, a whole anthropos. A full human, yeah, a whole Anthropos, A whole Anthropos. And we talked about a kind of inner dynamic of how to start to understand to his light being of life. Put off your old human and take into yourself this new light being. And we talked about that in terms of repentance, of a kind of metanoia of turning, but also as the core kind of inner spiritual activity of being a Christian, which is to put on a new mind, a new heart, a new, refreshing, life-filled knowing that that's what really is the heart of the Christian way, Right from the inside out, this new Genesis in us.
Speaker 3:Yeah and that it really is not a knowing in the sense of just a kind of intellectual reasoning, but a real recognition and understanding where you really have the sense.
Speaker 2:I have a inner nature of our humanity or basis of his life, in his blood, organ through which one works in the world, takes impressions in the world and that mirrors, as the house, your spirit. He gives us his body, Like he just his self his soul, his life, his body.
Speaker 3:He gives us the whole package Right, and that was so beautifully named. I think also, if I remember rightly when you spoke about that being reflected as a reality in our communion practice, where there's this fourfold human being, his body, his blood, his soul and his peace and his breath, and through the speaking of the priest onto A word, the word onto a person, you can feel the spirit, the look of your eyes To look in the eyes yeah, the touch of your fingers.
Speaker 2:it touches that highest spot, Right yeah.
Speaker 3:So our very communion practice reveals, and you can tell as a priest also- and as a communicant which we are too we practice it that if you're receiving how you're receiving, that you can tell if you're thinking about something else and you're not really engaged in the moment, that you're kind of not there, not ready to receive that new garment in its fourfold fullness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the enhancement levels of the reception of the gift are infinite.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's why it's so important how you come up to communion, why it's so important how you come up to communion, whether or not you're ready for that metanoia, that turning to him and receiving a new life, a new human, a new spirit, a new heart from Christ, literally as the light of the world I mean it's just in the darkness of what we're working in it's so exact and fundamental, like that is the heart and core of our spiritual life, that communion experience which mirrors this. I am the light of the world, that communion experience which mirrors this. I am the light of the world which Paul is speaking about there in this fourth chapter.
Speaker 2:So clearly. Take off this old human, the garment of your old humanity, lay it aside, and what's left will be this just yourself and you come forward and he gives us all the garments of our new humanity. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Including a new spirit, like it's. So it's such a fundamental unmaking and remaking, yeah, beautiful, but that's just as a way to kind of link us into the flow of the conversation.
Speaker 3:And now I have this inspiration to just take one of these themes that comes up as a result of that and look further into this aspect, this further aspect of what it means to live in the life of Christ. So before he speaks of this new life in Christ, or as he's speaking of it in around verse 13, 14, 15, he's saying look, don't anymore be like children and that's kind of surprising because sometimes we think you should become like a child. But he's talking about this in a different way, a kind of spiritual maturity, a becoming mature in Christ. Spiritual maturity, a becoming mature in Christ. Don't just be tossed around on waves of every new doctrine and every new teaching, don't be overly influenced by all kinds of spiritual paths, kind of like a don't be a dilettante just dabbling in everything.
Speaker 2:Which he clearly says is coming from the snake. Verse 14 comes from human cunning, craftiness and deceitful schemes.
Speaker 3:That's a clear reference to the snake, yeah, but rather he says speak truth in love.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Speak truth in love. In that way we are to grow mature in every way into him, who is the head, christ. So this speaking truth in love is a fruit of spiritual maturity in Christ. And then he goes on later, in chapter 4, just after he says put off this old self. This is part of the new self, of putting on this truth and love capacity, as he then says, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new human created after the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness. And then, in verse 25, he says, therefore, having put away falsehood, so falsehood is clearly a part of this old human. Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. This is a deep mystery too. And then give opportunity, and give no opportunity to the devil. Yo, yo.
Speaker 2:This is some good stuff.
Speaker 3:It's like another aspect of what it means to put on this new human Speak truth in love. And speak truth to your neighbor Even if you get angry, don't let the sun go down on it. That's an aspect of it. But my focus, my question I want to pose to you, is really more to do with this element of truth speaking truth to our neighbor, speaking truth in love. But how do we do that in the sense of keeping with one, keeping connected with one body? So if I think about, if I think about just a kind of initial orientation to truth, I think many times that I've wanted to speak truth to my neighbor, or speak truth to the congregation, or speak truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the word neighbor is a little annoying, I find.
Speaker 3:Because it's really friend right.
Speaker 2:Right, because I don't know. It sounds like in our world. It means like in the United States and Canada. It's like the person who lives in the house next to you, in your neighborhood. It seems to be something in the little bit of research I've done, also in the Greek. It's like your intimates, the ones who are in your circle, they're the ones near you.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So maybe like your wife or your child, or the people in your spirit circle, your spirit friends, not to say that you can't also include the person who lives next door. Right right, but it's not. That's become such an outer thing. Good point Neighbor and neighborhood. It had to do with the people you are inside something with.
Speaker 3:Right, which makes total sense.
Speaker 2:If you think about like a congregation, yeah, or you know you're just, you're circling, it would be really weird if we meant like you're at the grocery store and some people you don't even know, but they're next to you. Right, right and you're like, let me offer you some truth.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not. It seems to be very much meant. You know these people Right, You're already woven together and connected with them. Right, right On multiple levers, not just out of them.
Speaker 3:That's very helpful just to kind of orientate to who we're talking to. But also this whole, what I want to focus on, or ask you about to see if we can get into, is how do we relate to this speaking of truth, because it seems so fraught, even with so-called Christian communities?
Speaker 2:Maybe especially.
Speaker 3:Yeah, especially. For example, I was in Ottawa the other day and I'm walking down the street and a wonderful-looking, bright-eyed human came up to me and just said you know, do you believe in Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior? And so there's two aspects I want to say right now. On the one hand, I said hallelujah, amen, yes, I do, jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and hey, brother. And on the other hand, I also felt and knew that this person coming through this person let me put it that way coming through this person was a spirit that says I want you to agree with me, I'm going to put a certain kind of pressure on you, sharing the same perspective as me, I want you to have the same ideas as me and unite with me on the realm of agreement. So I did that. So I did that and I just allowed that kind of manipulative spirit to be there.
Speaker 3:But I guess my question is for you and I want to explore if Paul here is calling us to speak truth in love, to speak the truth with our intimates, how do we understand or get away with what seems to me to be an idol of what I would call the cult of agreeing that exists in so many circles, including ours, that to be successful as a truth speaker, the goal is to get everyone to agree with you. Is that what is meant by speaking truth? Is that the nature of the truth that Paul is speaking about? How do you, patrick, how would you enter this realm of so the task of speaking truth in love? Does the love part mean that I'm just patient until they agree with me? How do we relate to the element of agreement with this impulse to speak truth?
Speaker 2:Such a powerful question. It's a painful topic for me because I have a lot of sin here. Hmm, um, really really failing in the love department in my attempts to speak truth Very much, feeling like the only way we could be united would be we'd have to all have the same ideas. And so if I can't convince you gently or quietly, I might do so loudly, with all the spiritual weaponry at my disposal to defeat all your arguments and blast away the illusions that live in your soul, in order to come to unity of spirit, of mind and walking away from conversations and experiencing what happened afterward.
Speaker 2:The aftermath of such conversations, where I thought to pull out the sword of truth and to hack down these lies and illusions that might be living in the souls of another person, was hacking at that person, because part of the nature of ourselves is to actually live in the body of our worldview.
Speaker 2:Our inner being lives in our worldview. It's like our eyes, our ears, our mind. And actually then, the more I've become aware that human beings don't just live in a body, they live in their worldview, the more kind of holy respect I have for that inner body, you could say this kind of mind body in which people are incarnated. So if, then, if I meet someone who, let's say, is from another culture and another faith, another tradition and this is a little bit more understandable for many these days I have a kind of holy sense of respect that I trust there is great wisdom involved, far beyond my own mind, of what powers of God that have led this person to inhabit this mindset and worldview, and I have great faith that there is a purpose to it and I have no business changing it at all. The desire to change the inner mind and worldview of the other has been dying away in me through the years.
Speaker 2:I've been the one changed. God has been healing me of the unloving approach of the untrue approach to the inner mind of the other that I have had that. My sense of community and union is going to come about if your mind is exactly shaped like my mind.
Speaker 3:Interesting Right. Well, a beautiful confession, patrick. So two questions arise in me. I have similar experiences, but just in terms of the organic nature of this conversation, it seems like what you're saying is there's a holy sacredness to the way that a human self sees the world that you have experienced trespassing out of the false understanding, but perhaps also, somewhere, a good intention, of thinking that the ideal would be that everyone has the same mind as me.
Speaker 2:Right, there's a wound in the world that we're separate from one another. That's maybe we should start also there. We feel separated and alone in our separation and we have a deep sense that that the whole hope is to come together and feel and sense our bonds and belonging and community, which is, you know, paul's going on and on about in ephesians.
Speaker 3:this is unity, is a main goal right, and so if we look around at groups who are united, very often they're united around an ideology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some ideology idea yeah.
Speaker 3:Creed. It seems to be a very deep impulse in the human being to do that, to unite based on a worldview and an ideology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for now I think it feels helpful to separate the two. Things like just to feel the call to union after separation Right, and the question is how do we get there? How do we get there? Do we get there? What happens when we try to take different routes? And one of the routes could be if we all had the same shared ideas.
Speaker 3:Right, but it doesn't seem that Paul is saying that. He seems to be saying like. He's not saying speak truth and love so that your neighbor is convinced. No, he just says speak truth, speak truth and love. So is there a way, then, to let go of that need to make the other something? And yet still, because the question that would come up in me too, and I'm just kind of thinking into this, would be like well, what's the point of speaking truth then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if not to convince.
Speaker 3:If not to convince, like this guy out on the street who says Jonah, do you believe? Hey, sir, do you believe in Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior? His goal is to convince as many people as possible to say to join the team.
Speaker 2:So that gets back to the other side, which is it's not just the hope for belonging that inspired me and, I think, inspired others, but witnessing suffering in the world. Witnessing suffering in the world, witnessing suffering inflicted on the earth, on people, children, and you seek, well, what is the root of this behavior? I follow the actions that are doing this harm and I track back to the source. What is the source of these? What are the sources of these actions? I come back to ideas, Ideas living in souls, operating in humans that are causing harm. We talk about them all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We talk about them all the time. Right Ideas, for example, that if I have an expectation of what life should be, that's an idea about life.
Speaker 2:And if the expectation, for example, of life is if I were doing everything right, I wouldn't be suffering. That's an idea that can live in people. If I were doing everything right and if I was fulfilling what I was supposed to be doing as a human being, I would feel content, I would have no suffering, I would be happy and everything would be going well. And I know so many humans who are oppressed by this idea, who are miserable, depressed, full of anxiety, self-incriminating, beating themselves up because they think they're failing at life, because they're suffering. So that's an idea. I want to free them from that suffering, which is the oppression by an idea, not life. Actually, the greater suffering inside their being is I must be doing it wrong.
Speaker 3:The commitment to that way of seeing that idea.
Speaker 2:And knowing in myself the release from that thought, which is a being, that's another thing. It's a release from a thought that's occupying me and opening to the thought that in my suffering is the working of a God who is connected to my future fulfillment, and this suffering can transform me into the person I was meant to be. That's a thought that changes the entire way I orient towards my life and brings a happiness that I can't even begin to describe Right, and I wish that for every human soul. Of course I do.
Speaker 3:And now you're speaking truth. I'm telling you the truth, and that truth comes from the life of Christ. In my experience, yeah, Because that's what he's doing. That's who he is. And that's how he's relating to the world, he's not saying this suffering and this cross and this oppression and this persecution shouldn't be there Shouldn't be there he's saying actually, this is the way that I discover and find the deepest ground of the world, Right, it?
Speaker 2:is there because of the deceiver and I will use it to reach the goal. I won't abolish it. I will express the truth of God in my person, which will draw out the sickness of these thoughts which will turn on me because they don't like my. The thought that is me and I will die by their attack and my death will unleash my power. That's what christ's mind is. That's his mind, right, and I will pray for them while they kill me. Right, so he is. He is right. He shows me a totally different picture.
Speaker 3:So that's interesting because even in that, Christ Jesus is not shying away from speaking truth at every corner. Every moment, Like what comes up to me right now, is like unless you eat my body and blood and drink my blood, you have no life in you. John 6. And then lots of people leave.
Speaker 2:They're like I don't know what to do with that. We're out of here, we're out yeah.
Speaker 3:But he's not saying get back here.
Speaker 2:I want to prove to you that this is the case.
Speaker 3:I'm going to convince you You're going to die in hell. He doesn't say any of that no, no threats no, You're going to go to hell. He just speaks the truth and then allows. Do you love me, Peter? What do you say that I am?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it goes so deep, yeah, I am. Yeah, it goes so deep, I want so far, yeah, and then allowing so also in his mind.
Speaker 3:It's not he, I guess. What I'm saying is he's not under the picture, under the expectation, under the orientation that when I speak truth, agreement is the goal. There's something more liberated in the way that Christ is working with speaking truth, meaning he speaks it as an inner necessity for the way, but he's not dependent on an agreement body for the work, for the goal. The goal is not to create an agreement with everyone. It seems and the way you described it, he even seems to have a holy expectation that to speak the truth is going to mean an intensification of trial, of challenge, of suffering. So that's a very different orientation, it seems to me than what we normally think of in terms of the goals of speaking truth.
Speaker 2:But wouldn't you say, like, let's say, you're in a situation, jonah, now that you've kind of described the idea of it, kind of described the idea of it, if you're in a situation and you're hearing untruth, what your life, for whatever reason, has led you to see? For example, let's say you're in a board meeting. The board of that church body has come into a couple million dollars. They don't have a need for that right away, and so they have to face the question what do we do with this money? And in that moment many spirits enter the room and you start to hear them speaking out of the mouths of the people, from the world we live in. And I know you, you're going to be listening for the voice of Christ. Let's just say you're sitting in there.
Speaker 2:I know you want to be and you're sitting in there and you're not hearing him. You're hearing very familiar voices of what one could do with that $2 million to bless themselves, to increase the money, to make money off of money, for example. Or maybe you know there's a congregation. Then that regional church body knows there's a congregation in need of funds and they say, yes, we will lend it to them for at a 5% interest. And everyone, everyone seems to be like, yeah, that's great, that's really wise Cause not only will we make, you know, the depreciation back, we'll make a little extra at the end and we will have been wise with our money. Do you feel that moment? Do you feel like right? It's like something rises up in you, doesn't it? If you haven't yet heard it, his voice and it doesn't seem to be leading.
Speaker 2:Why do you speak a Christ word then, into that moment? What is your goal? Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think that's a really good question and example to pull up the challenge and complexity of this work of speaking truth in love. And for me what comes up immediately is a distinction between hope and a kind of aggressive expectation. So there's a difference to me, in my experience, word and a ironclad commitment to get everyone to agree with you yeah. So, for example, if the word came up, okay, let's. And actually this has been a real experience. You know that. I know when the idea of charging interest a 5% interest on a loan to a brother congregation has come up in the life of the leadership of this region, and I remember the inner fire arising in my heart that actually this isn't Christian, to charge interest to our fellow congregation on alone, Even though from some perspectives you would say, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Lots of logical reasons to do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, logical reasons to do it. So for me, then, I chose to really proclaim that say, look, friends, it's actually not a Christian practice to profit off our brothers and sisters, and I would really propose that we don't do that and that we try to build up, focus more on trust being the motivator, as opposed to some sort of outer leverage of threat, which is essentially what an interest is, because it's going to cost you.
Speaker 2:Get back sooner. Yeah, get it back sooner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I just really strongly proclaimed that. But I also then didn't use machinations and manipulations to get my way. I tried to just appeal to the conscience of the people. Yes, knowing that even if there's two dangers, even if people agree it can be because of other influences it's not as if, just because someone agrees, they're coming out of a real transformative heart.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:They can be coming out of other influences and I've experienced so often that if you build something on that, it crumbles.
Speaker 2:That's exciting territory.
Speaker 3:And I think this is why Christ is also not so interested in just getting agreement, because it's not a good foundation, turns out, intellectual agreement is not a strong foundation.
Speaker 2:What I hear you describing is you could probably get to the outcome through argument that you're trying to get to, but the souls in the room would still be who they were and an inner event of knowing the truth in their own inner being will not have happened.
Speaker 3:That's it, that's it, and then it's not a good foundation.
Speaker 2:It won't be in them. After you leave the meeting no.
Speaker 3:It's like oh, we love Jonah and we kind of trust his Christian perspective and he's kind of the leader and da-da-da-da-da, which it's kind of a capitulation Right.
Speaker 2:Or Through a trust in authority.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a trust which is also part of it, to do so.
Speaker 2:This is the thing, right. It's like it all depends, I think, on circumstances, because I would think, probably in that meeting, if you were the one who was responsible to represent what Christian community is, you are the one who are responsible to represent what Christian community is, and that the rest of the Board of Trustees are all in union towards a decision that you believe is actually antithetical to the spirit of what Christian community should represent in the world you wouldn't let it happen.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't act. So this right, in that circumstances, you're a deciding body, an acting body. In some ways you're one body and that body actually has to have one mind in its actions and it needs to be Christ's mind. And that's different, right, than you gathered. Let's say, at an evening around the fire with some people you're just meeting and they say so what do you do? And they find out you're a priest and they want to hear about what you're up to and they say that's all hogwash. Actually, it's this. You would approach that situation very differently, wouldn't you?
Speaker 3:Very much so, because it's not representing Christ's community in the world. It's just an interaction with another brother and sister. But nevertheless it it would, I would still speak, even in the context of the board. I would still speak out of this hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:At least ideally, that that that this would inspire this Christian life, would inspire a kind of mind amongst us. Yeah, that's so interesting. But if it doesn't and there are many aspects that even right now I wouldn condemn that and be working to make that different out of an aggressive expectation.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Bearing what is not fully transformed, just as Christ also bears the unchristian elements in his group and in his people and in the world. Yeah, so there seems to be a double work there, though, which is this there is actually a goal that we would be of one mind. That's what I think is so interesting, actually, Because this is a being who says I am the truth and the way and the life. And the way and the life, there is a mind that is the truly human mind in utter union with reality, called God, and there is a long journey to having that mind permeate me down to my fingertips, Because there are other minds at work in me, and the complexity of that is that it's not a mind, it's not a that.
Speaker 3:the reality of that is it's a person. The truth is a being. Yeah. Not an ideology. Reality of that is it's a person. The truth is a being, not an etiology. So one perspective would be usury is bad Period.
Speaker 2:Usury the old term for doing interest on lending.
Speaker 3:Yeah, charging interest is evil and therefore anyone who does usury or does interest or works with. That is not of Christ's mind.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:That's more of an ideology. But Christ's being, his truth, is also bearing and walking with and living all kinds of other sufferings and realities and other minds. So it's a question of how do I walk with my brother and sister, my intimate, say, my spouse, or my child who thinks completely differently than me?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I want to pull out a couple things in this. First, I want to actually do a shout out. Oh great, and it's very moving to me and it's someone who our patrons of our patron know well, mostly through the fact that she serves to put together the notes and the write up and posts our podcasts on our Patreon site and serves and cares for our listeners and our and our wider community around the seminary, and that is Camilla Lake. So apologies, Camilla.
Speaker 2:I just feel really called to do this because I felt for many years so poor in doing this, because the truth, the truth burns in me very strongly, as you know. It's so powerful in my human experience. It comes into me and I feel like this. It feels like life and energy, and lies also affect me intensely. They hurt. I see the consequences where they lead. I see my brothers and sisters oppressed by them. Now that can also all sound, as it rightly should arrogant, as if I can see all this and others can't. And so right away you also notice it's lacking humility in me, even to be open to the fact that maybe I have it wrong as a practice, not that I necessarily fakely do that, but just when a person is talking, not jump into no, no, no, no, no, they're wrong, even as I'm getting the information that's opposite of what I know and think. Good.
Speaker 2:Like literally in that moment, take the idea as possible that God is trying to talk to me right now about a truth that I need to ingest. So maybe I'm reacting to what I think is a fallacy, something wrong, an actual practice of setting that aside and opening as if it could be true in the moment and taking the person seriously because they think this is how the world works.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. Okay, I love this direction, but why did you want to shout out camilla?
Speaker 2:well, I was trying to get there, yeah so that that that I was trying to talk about that experience of being so over powered by my own feeling life relative to truth, so not feeling free in my feelings relative to truth. So so then in conversation I'm all full of fire and, like you say your truth and I'm like ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba with my energy and think I'm doing this person a favor and they walk away burned and I'm like what happened so many times. And then I had these experiences with camilla in community. It was a very powerful. It kind of has a little bit of a legendary character, for for those of us who participated, we called it the tuesday morning breakfast, because that's what it was. We had a service on tuesday. There would be about between six and nine people would come to breakfast, maybe on big days, like 12 of us during the week, and my one kind of rule for Tuesdays was no rules.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to control the conversation too much. I didn't want to control the conversation too much. I wanted just to have a conversation, but to let it be open. Whatever is alive in someone, something from the gospel, from the thing, could be anything, just that it's open and we just let something happen.
Speaker 2:And I just, I watched often somebody saying something that you could feel was like they were stuck in something and it wasn't the first time they were stuck in something and you could feel maybe, for example, some people being annoyed by this person's stuckness, losing love for this person because of the way they're talking and being, and then watching Camilla. It really is so hard. It's so moving to me because it's like seeing. For me it's seeing my Lord speaking through a person Standing in her center, but she was sitting, but so centered and so retaining her love for this person while she spoke a truth to them about their stuckness. And she could do it in a way, and I could watch. This person feels loved and not condemned at all, understood, supported and thankful.
Speaker 2:And I would just say how'd you do that? How did you just do that so beautifully Keeping your center, feeling all of the impacts of the behaviors that were not pleasant or the way of talking or thinking that wasn't pleasant, bearing it but not reacting to it, retaining this unbreakable love for her sister at the table, and then just speaking a good word, a true word that you could also feel was released, and I think that's what you've been talking about. It's like I don't need you now to say yes, that's right, I don't need any. But I'm just going to say this, and you can take it or leave it. You can take it or leave it.
Speaker 3:That seems to be a really key thing. So what I hear there is the courage to speak truth, the recognized need for it. Right, but in a living way, related to the current reality that's happening, not kind of a preconceived doctrine. That sounds like what Camilla was doing. She's speaking really in the moment of a given reality that could be experienced right then, speaking truth, but letting it go, letting the take it or leave it. Yes, so that letting go seems to letting the take it or leave it.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that letting go seems to be also in Christ.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, he's not trying to make you.
Speaker 2:No, he does this. That's the next piece is like when you go back to the Gospels and watch him select his disciples and know they have wrong ideas in them. Yeah, he knows it. Yeah, he knows Peter's have wrong ideas in them. Yeah, he knows it. Yeah, he knows Peter's got wrong ideas in him. He knows Judas does. He knows Thomas does. He knows Philip does. He knows Andrew does. But he has all these conversations and it's very clear he knows they've got wrong ideas.
Speaker 3:Get behind me, satan. Even he knows the devil is in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he doesn't link that with his love for them he doesn't spend five, five years at like jesus university trying to convince them all first and then go do his job he has. He has a brief time on the mountainside and lays it down in a teaching and then moves on and he goes and heals. And that's also truth. He acts his truth in his healings and in his forgiveness and in his mercy. They're like look at him truthing he's living. What he was talking about was talking about Then, after they see him heal, they watch him live his truth, all the way down into how he loved and accepted them and washed their feet, even though they're not of one mind, and how his own people treat him. And how he lives the truth, all the way down to the very last drop, he lived it.
Speaker 2:He expressed it. He kept speaking it love, but it's different layers right.
Speaker 3:I love this because it just reminds me of like saint francis, who says speak the gospel always and once in a while with words and a while with words.
Speaker 3:So so I feel like we're broadening the idea the understanding of what speaking truth is learning from Christ. It's actually living truth. It's actually showing through deeds truth, and there are many kind of cutting-edge thinkers that are talking about Christianity today who actually say what you think you believe is not really your belief. It's what you do that shows your belief. How you live shows the truth that you espouse. So I think that's also so in the dynamic. Then, what he's trying to, he's what he's saying, he's letting go, but he's speaking it with passion and power and strength, yeah, but letting it go it matters, and living a gospel, showing and bearing a whole bunch of elements that don't necessarily line up or agree.
Speaker 2:And this is why it matters what the truth is. If the truth as it is, according to him, is love no-transcript meaning, I will speak it and allow you to reject it. If I don't leave you free to think whatever you choose to think, I'm not loving you.
Speaker 3:Because connected to love. One of the fundamental elements of love is to honor and respect the inner integrity of the will and freedom of the other.
Speaker 2:Therefore, jesus is interested only in a community of people who are of one mind because they themselves have come into that mind out of their own free activity. No, coercion. Coercion cannot exist in a field of love. It cannot, it cannot, and this is why I want to go back to this picture, discovering that actually, the worldview of a person is a body you inhabit. I think I've managed to learn that violence against your physical body is not okay. To coerce your physical body is a crime. Unloving, to grab you and move you into a certain room. You shouldn't be there, you should be over here. So if I reach in and grab your idea body, your worldview body, and yank it in a direction, I'm doing a violence.
Speaker 2:There's zero love in that. None. I have to bring my experience and truth to a kind of free space between us and let you approach it or leave it. It's taking the work of love that we've discovered from body to body, into the inner body of the mind, that that is an even more holy territory, that I have no right to force, coerce to do any of the oppression activities that we've done with bodies Right to do any of the oppression activities that we've done with bodies Right.
Speaker 3:Even if, passionately and strongly, christ is proclaiming a certain truth, he's also immediately letting that go in terms of trying to force you to think something.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I would say it gets beautifully interesting and differentiated once we come inside the body of Christ. How I am with a person I'm meeting who I hear and know is in another community, in another worldview and is not yet in an experience of belonging to him, that's a love approach that's different for me than our work together.
Speaker 2:It could come between you and me. If I see you doing something where I know you are off of who I know you want to be and the person I know you want to serve, admonishment becomes a possibility I can confront in love, because there's so much trust In love.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It is still a love question. Yeah, it is still a love question. Yeah, and this is again where I witnessed Camilla. Showing this sister where she's headed is leading to painful things, but what she saw in her sister was her goodwill. She saw my sister in Christ wants to get there. She's just headed over here and keeps banging into this wall and so I can point that out to her and she will feel I know she wants the good. It's like I know my brother wants the good, but what you're doing is hurtful right now, mm-hmm, and we can do that in humanity as well.
Speaker 2:That's the prophetic voice. It's not like it's not possible in love to say what you're doing is wrong. Yeah, yeah, so right. It's one thing to get into a discussion about ideas. In some ways that's a little bit safer. But when I see your ideas are really hurting something, I have a deep obligation to step up and say that's not okay, what you're doing to this person and yourself. By doing that, you're violating love, you're lacking honor. You must not do this. It is ruinous for your own spirit and ruinous for the human you are hurting. I have a because that's also love. That's also love.
Speaker 3:That's why, because it's the thought of love active in me, right, and even if because you and I both have had many experiences of that where we've said something in a way that's not helpful, where we've taken out the sword when there's not trust and there's not but also where it has been very helpful.
Speaker 2:We've had those experiences.
Speaker 3:And yet, even when there's a recognition from the other and a truth word that's spoken, that breaks through and someone really does receive it, so often it's not as if everything is fixed after that. Usually, it's often, then, a journey of love, of bearing and working with reorientating, re-coming into a new relationship with the habits of thinking and the habits of my life that I've been burdened by.
Speaker 2:So beautiful.
Speaker 3:Right. So there's a love component, even if your truth word works, just like with Peter, when Christ says get behind me Satan, and there's a kind of new orientation for Peter yeah. Like, oh, my Lord has to die on the cross. Yeah, he still goes through other-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not sure he gets it yet Right, but he keeps following him. He keeps following him. He stays in. He gets it on a certain level, but it's not deep yet. No, he gets it on a certain level, but it's not deep.
Speaker 3:Yet no, and that's so often the case in my experience, also with myself. Yes, when I come to a new insight, oh, my gosh, that's true and that's not true. Oh, and it takes me a life, a while, to live the new truth. Amen.
Speaker 2:That's it. To be claimed by it. To have that truth, take the territory of your entire person. It needs to permeate you and fill your habits. That's a long journey trickling down into all your things.
Speaker 3:And that's where I feel that many people have this aversion to a kind of agreement ministry. Just think this, believe this idea and you will be in God, Whereas in experience we know even to take in and say yes to the idea that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior is just a very small beginning of having that reality start to permeate me so deeply that my life reveals him. Yes, yeah. So agreement is at best just the beginning, and to me that starts to then give a feeling for what really this whole human, this new human, is. It's not just a, it's a mind that permeates the whole reality of life.
Speaker 2:That's it, and that's hard right, because we feel healed often when these truths enter us. If it's happened as an event in our person again, that longing for everyone to know what has happened inside us, yeah, and part of the truth that, for example, he's been teaching me now for decades is yes, patrick, and every illusion around you is also serving my purposes, just like it did for you. Wow, not that I'm causing them, but in terms of the ripening and maturity, we do need to face the deceiver and come to the truth on our own. For the maturation, it's a maturation.
Speaker 3:It's a maturation process. It's a maturation process.
Speaker 2:Otherwise I could just again this is where we are really People, I think. See, there are all these thoughts in human beings that are leading to all these poor behaviors. What if you could hook everybody's brains up to the right thoughts? Right, just have a direct channel. Right thoughts are in there.
Speaker 2:And then right behaviors occur, and then all these right behaviors will occur and you can see the hive mind idea is actually where we're headed. We'll just all have little implanted chips to the supercomputer and we'll never have the wrong thoughts anymore and the world will be healed. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right Cause, if right, if. If everyone agrees, all the behaviors will flow out of those thoughts, and then we'll be perfect. Right? If everyone agrees, all the behaviors will flow out of those thoughts, and then we'll be perfect.
Speaker 2:Right, you can imagine it. It's like Patrick's headed to the donut shop. He likes the donut shop. Perhaps some of our listeners already know that Even as he's turning into the parking lot, he hears inside his mind the supercomputer saying not a good idea, Patrick. Your weight's been up recently. This level of sugar and carbohydrates will not be a blessing for your overall health, and I can already feel what might come up in my own soul to such a mind that's now speaking into mine wagging its finger at me Like take a hike, Not interested, I'm going to be going and getting those donuts.
Speaker 3:And so we do all this, all the time we do it all the time right?
Speaker 2:Is it really that it needs to be my voice, my voice that says even if I hear it from my conscience or anywhere else some good advice? It needs to be my own inner conviction, because then it's transformation.
Speaker 2:I'm not the same person anymore, otherwise I will always be on the outside. The law can no longer work from the outside. The good can no longer approach us as outer wisdom. It has to be a new heart that comes to life inside us. Right, and that's the crazy mystery of this process. That means he had to choose to live it to the end and simply show it. This is what the mind of God looks like in a human life. This is what the truths of love look like embodied. If you think that's beautiful, follow me. But I'm not out here convincing y'all, because it's actually also about the work. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to tell you it and I'm going to live it, because I need to build a new world. We're under a big project here. We don't have time to sit around and convince everybody. You got to get to work.
Speaker 3:Right. That's so important this inner, this emphasis on the inner decision, the inner turning of the inner human being to the revelation in freedom. Of this beauty.
Speaker 2:And then, if my brothers and sisters around me don't do that right now and are choosing other ways, I need trust in the mind of God that's at work in all of life and destiny in the world that they're, for whatever reason, right now, clearly it's not time for them. It hasn't happened in them. Not my business, not my business. That's their holy journey, right With themselves. My job is to do, speak and act and live the truth as it is revealed in my being. Then you'll have a chance maybe to encounter it. But my job is not to convince, coerce or demand that you think like I think that is now a violence.
Speaker 3:Right, and there's another side of this mystery, and I know we're getting on in time here it's already been an hour but I feel like there's another important element to this mystery which Rudolf Steiner gives voice one of our inspirers and teachers gives voice to when he says one of the main ways to find the Christ today, one of the main paths to find the Christ today, is to find it through those whom you disagree with. So finding Christ is through those who think differently than you, and so one element of this mystery is exactly as you said. I can fully experience that where you come to something yourself and you and you practice bearing the right timing for everyone else and honoring their, their, their process, their integral process.
Speaker 3:But there's another direction, where there's another side of this coin, where I'm actually finding and experiencing Christ in and through someone who thinks totally different than me, and I just wonder if we can't also touch in on that? Yes, because it seems so vital to our love practice today, so vital it's radical that's very exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, and it's such a part of what we've been drawn into with even calling this the light in everything. That means we would want to trust that actually, it isn't simply about my own journey to truth in myself, but once I get to more and more, but once I get to more and more also, the practice of forgetting myself and living into the thinking that lives in you. Whatever that thinking is Not staying in the question why is he doing that? Yeah, which is like dismissive and not interested at all, but actually asking that question and seeking to live into the mind of the other. Why is he doing that? There must be an inner truth in there, a logic, a reality that maybe I don't yet know from the inside out. I'm judging it from outside with my truths.
Speaker 2:Again, that practice of actually forgetting myself and seeking to live inside the other this is in that prayer from the cross from Jesus and Luke. Forgive them, father, is not the only thing he says. He doesn't just say forgive them. He says forgive them for they know not what they do. So he's spent apparently some time trying to live into the sources of their behavior.
Speaker 2:Interesting, and he's come to a conclusion they're not understanding the sources. They're not actually free actors here who understand what they're doing, so you can't condemn them in the same way. It wouldn't be right. They're occupied by all these other thoughts that they're not free in. They do not understand what they are doing. They're just tools of an enemy. Don't hold this against them. So he's worked to understand the will of the other, the thinking of the other, and that has given him the capacity to forgive them. That's increased his capacity to love.
Speaker 2:So that's just a bit of a direction, at least from the gospel.
Speaker 3:That's a beautiful direction. Yeah, but that's a big theme.
Speaker 3:It's a big theme and I think there's another element there too, where it has to do with this quality of, where he says, like in Matthew 25, if you have loved another, if you've really seen the value and divinity of another, you have loved me.
Speaker 3:Or to Peter do you love me, care for other people? Essentially, feed my sheep. Yeah, so one aspect seems to be very true to enter another to such an extent that you can and start to understand are they free in this or are they somehow blind? That therefore, condemning them or dismissing them is not justified, but continuing to try to love and be bearing and forgiving, that's an element. But what about also, for example, the experience for me comes up where, especially around COVID time, my wife and I were really at odds, where we were thinking and understanding truth in a completely opposite way. Opposite way and, long story short, I went through a process to start where I really felt, through trying to hear a true Christ word in her, like really trying to believe that Christ is somewhere in her speaking, and I just have to open to hearing that that it was like blinders came off at a certain point. Every self.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of me. I think you even remember that because we were talking about it and I started to perceive that there was a true Christ word that had to do with an orientation to compassion for all people that I was dismissing and blind to as a Christ word and therefore I wasn't finding Christ in her, I was only seeing devil.
Speaker 2:Right and you're feeling that your job is to convince her to your side. Yeah, to see the world as you see it.
Speaker 3:There's a darkness there and you're not aligned with truth. Yeah, and therefore I'm going to use all my powers, because I love you, to get you to the truth. Yes, and there was an illusion in that.
Speaker 2:There was an illusion there powers, because I love you, to get you to the truth.
Speaker 3:Yes, Whereas there was an illusion in that. There was an illusion there.
Speaker 2:Of non-love truth.
Speaker 3:Of non-love truth. It was like the goal is to get you to agree with me, rather than this impulse inspired by Rudolf Steiner, who says actually, the way to find Christ is in and through someone who disagrees. It became real for me in that experience where it wasn't about finding the agreement. It was about unveiling a quality and aspect of Christ's truth that was living in the way and the ideals espoused by this sacred human being. It wasn't that, therefore, I agreed with everything. Ah, because that's a fear that everyone has.
Speaker 2:I think Right Now you're going to be convinced to their side Right.
Speaker 3:And now I have to take on all these other. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're approving of all the choices and thoughts of the other because you've sought to compassionately understand them.
Speaker 3:Exactly. No, I just there was an experience of the core motivation and the core orientation for this human, the aspect, the shard of light coming from the diamond of truth that is Christ Jesus. Many sides that this person is inspired by is actually of Christ, and it inspired in me a deep conviction that every human heart, every human word, somewhere, if I can just open to it, has something of that diamond, something of that light. And to even inwardly feel that and know that already builds a bridge of love, because I love Christ. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so you can remain actually in your camps of perspectives on the topic, but have found a bridge to each other's hearts where you can honor each other and keep each other close.
Speaker 3:Right, that's this mystery, then what I've experienced subsequently is that actually I'm enriched by wrestling with, still with, the multi-sided complexity of the truth of Christ, totally.
Speaker 2:For me this is like a part of my, I would say a big source of life for me is dying into the worldview of others, just like submerging myself into it. For example, right after I was ordained, pentecostalism was just popping. It was 2006, which was the 100th anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. That's just really launched the Pentecostal movement. It was the fastest growing church in the world. And here we were with this little tiny Christian community and I was like hey maybe they've got it.
Speaker 2:I allowed a thought in which was a dangerous thought. Maybe that's where the spirit is. And what if I took a true loving interest in this movement and what I see there, what people are experiencing there, and I just took it in truthfully, not just like I'm going to analyze it and prove them wrong? There's a way of quote unquote, taking an interest, but it's just so I can weaponize myself to win that argument again. So it really is a subtle practice of I have to be willing to actually be wrong, To so drink in the other. That that's the way I'm thinking for a time. It's why it's scary, Because it's inhabiting another mind. Yeah, and it's a fear that I might lose mine. The ground Right, so it means okay whoa, I might lose my mind, which is a body I live in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if we take that, for me it's a real spiritual experience. That means I will die Beautiful. To leave my worldview and enter yours means to exit my body Right and possibly come back and go. That's not habitable again. Yeah, that's why people are scared of church.
Speaker 3:It's a death process.
Speaker 2:Of course, people are scared of church. Right, scared to come towards religion because they know it is true. Yeah, church Right. Scared to come towards religion because they know it is true. The person they were maybe laid aside and they might put on a new person. It's dangerous to live into the worldview of something else because you might die to who you were. Yeah, you might be wrong, I might right, and what I find is I'm always wrong to a degree.
Speaker 2:What's happening is I'm getting enriched beyond my wildest dreams, who have lived into the experiences, into the thoughts, into the perspectives of others, and these brothers and sisters start living in my heart and I, again and again, can't condemn. I feel blessed by having known them.
Speaker 2:I can now speak their language. I care about them If they were to get it, and I also know. Oh, and this is why we have our mission. What's come about is a strength and confidence in the truths that I've discovered. They're newly enhanced, but the things that weren't really true were also wiped away. Yeah, as a gift purged. Yeah, so I become willing again and again to pour myself into, for example, silicon valley. What inspires these people to barely sleep and spend all their energies coding? Something's driving them. I can't.
Speaker 3:So we could go on and on here. To practice this kind of way means that I'm called to die and become new in my mind all the time.
Speaker 2:As a source of life.
Speaker 3:As a source of life. So what that connects for me is, again and again, the gospel says metanoia repent, meaning change your mind or die, to let go of your current state of mind and enter into another state of mind, to be more enriched by the life of Christ.
Speaker 2:And it's so different than colonize others. Yeah. And bring them into your mind. Yeah. Which is the picture of the convincing, coercive, argumentative, spiritual warfare. Exactly, it's an incarnational. I leave my spot, exit the mind body that I live in to live into you. That's what Jesus did. He left his godly form, his majestic cosmic body, and entered into the body of a human so he could experience and know what it feels like to be a human from the inside out. Right, this is the Christian work.
Speaker 3:It is the inside out Right. This is the Christian work. It is the Christian work. And he was so familiar and inspired and connected to the mind of the Father. At the same time and I feel like that was also part of my experience with Katie, with my wife I was so in love with Christ's mind that I wasn't just dying into her mind and losing myself in her mind. I was actually seeking the mind of Christ in her mind. My orientation was there must be my Lord here in her heart.
Speaker 2:Right, because you were seeing a shadow section.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You were like oh, this stuff over here, I'm seeing that it was all black, Not of him. Yeah, Exactly, it was all dark. Where is he?
Speaker 3:So it's this double thing of dying into the other but also trusting so deeply that there is something of God there, yeah, and that means I have to actually know, be so immersed in the beauty of God's mind that I could even have the eyes and ears to find it there. That's beautiful. It's like a double, because that's what Christ is doing, right. He's like I only see and do what God is doing and I'm going to die into this experience.
Speaker 2:That's it, because the only way he rises on Easter, it wouldn't have worked if all he did was submerge into the earth, exactly, if all he did was submerge into our human experience, his bond always to the one who sent him, and that protects him through death. And that's why I think you could say let's let's re-say this story. It's so beautiful. The fear we have of submerging in the mind of the other is rightful. We could lose ourselves, we could become occupied by something. So this call we live deeply into the mind of Christ, who is connected with the Father, who is all reality, and that gives us the strength to leave our body and live into the mind of another, and we go into a breath, a rhythm. Ever and again I live into the mind of Christ. I die out of myself and live into him, and it's as safe as can be. It gives me something that is an indestructible life that allows me, actually, because it's shaped like this, to do what he did.
Speaker 3:I love it. Yeah, right, because I really did feel a resurrection. Right, as I entered into what I, it was scary because I was like, right, it's real fear. It was real fear because not only was it I could lose myself, but I could lose my marriage if I don't find something good, you got to find something, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I felt these two like I found the Lord, the beauty of the Lord in my wife is so dedicated to compassion much more than me Meaning suffering with other human beings. It's unbelievable to me sometimes how dedicated she is to that and that's her star, and I didn't see that as the source and motivation of all of her ideas. As the source and motivation of all of her ideas and some of the ideas I don't agree with.
Speaker 2:Right and she wasn't maybe necessarily able to see what you were seeing. No.
Speaker 3:But that becomes less important all of a sudden. But what was most important, what I focused on, was the revelation, and the resurrected revelation for me that gave me a new way of seeing and unblinded me, was this star of compassion well, I feel like that's a beautiful spot to end on, and I'm glad you pushed us forward past our usual hour time into this other side, this two, two works to speak a truth when it's asked, with words and my life and allow the other to take it or leave it as part of it.
Speaker 2:But also to leave my own mind and flow into the mind of the other. To flow into the heart of the other, the orientation of the other, the worldview of the other as a core love practice inside the mind-body experience, the body of the mind, that we live in a resurrection process of dying to myself and living into the other and then experiencing a rebirth of I'm a better human. For having done so, I'm consecrated. By that, I'm closer to God.
Speaker 3:Right, amen, hallelujah, hallelujah, all with the foundation of increasingly knowing and finding beautiful the mind and life of Christ, the gospel mind and life of christ the gospel.
Speaker 2:Sorry that it just suddenly comes clear that second practice leads you to agreement in yourself, like suddenly you're finding you can agree with the most important thing in them, right? And you feel unity even though you haven't convinced them of your mind, right.
Speaker 3:That's incredible. Then I feel, like this gift of unity that we proclaim in our sacrament, that he is the one who unites us Unites human beings. It's not necessarily the agreement sphere. What's uniting is the grace of seeing the beauty of Christ and knowing Christ in each other. That was my experience, yeah beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you, jonah.
Speaker 1:Thank you, jonah, thank you, Patrick © B Emily Beynon you.