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.
You can support our work and gain access to more unique content if you visit our Patreon: www.patreon.com/ccseminary
The Light in Every Thing
Taking, Giving & Receiving: Salvation & Bodily Union in Ephesians — Episode 55 in the Series, “The Letter to the Ephesians”
Patrick and Jonah venture into the spiritual territory of the body as they explore the mysteries of marriage through a Christological lens. Beginning with Paul's words to the Ephesians, they uncover how these ancient instructions offer not a rulebook but a transformative imagination for our most intimate relationships.
The conversation takes an unexpected turn when they reframe the traditional understanding of marriage roles. Rather than imposing abstract structures, they suggest that Paul is inviting us to "christen" our existing relationships—to infuse them with a consciousness permeated by Christ within the organic realities we already inhabit. This approach honors each person as an individuality first, recognizing the inherent dignity that precedes any gendered considerations.
Their most radical insight emerges when discussing physical intimacy. "I actually don't have a right ever to the body of another," Patrick reflects, suggesting that Christ models a complete absence of entitlement even within marriage. Just as Christ stands at the door and knocks but never invades our dignity, they propose that husbands are called to relinquish any sense of rights to their wives' bodies. This represents a profound shift from self-centered longing to Christ-like desire that seeks the wholeness and blessing of the other.
Perhaps most moving is their reflection on being understood and accepted despite our shadows. When our partner, who knows our darkest aspects, still chooses to bear us — to accept and even honor us — we experience a profound form of grace. "I feel consecrated through that," Jonah shares, pointing to how this mirrors Christ's unconditional love.
This conversation offers a tender, deeply thoughtful and rare approach to marriage that transcends rigid gender roles while honoring the unique challenges of embodiment. It invites listeners to reimagine their relationships through the lens of Christ's patient understanding and complete self-offering, creating space for a love that truly sanctifies.
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.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jonah.
Speaker 3:It's a very good morning because it's Good Friday.
Speaker 2:It's a very good day and when this goes out it will have already been Easter. Yeah, so Easter greetings to all the dear friends listening People we've not yet met aren't yet actual friends. It's a growing list. It'll be interesting to see you know, yeah, how and how and whether that might ever happen, to get to meet the different listeners around the world.
Speaker 3:That's one of my favorite new experiences, actually in the few that I've met that I didn't know. This experience right we've talked about it many times where someone comes up to you with just real gratitude in their eyes and just says I know you, yeah, and I say I don't know you, yeah, but somehow I can tell we know each other a little yeah yeah, it's just one of the things that keeps me encouraged to do this work yes, yes.
Speaker 2:So welcome everyone to the Light in Everything where two human beings.
Speaker 3:Priests speak in conversation about the mysteries of the risen and cruciform Christ.
Speaker 2:We'll begin by reading some words from the Gospel of John in the 8th chapter, which are guiding words for our work. Again, jesus spoke to them saying I, I am the light of the world.
Speaker 3:Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but me that the task of the Christian, the task of the one who wants to be in relationship with the risen Christ is called to follow him.
Speaker 3:He's called to see and have a relationship with his light and try to imitate that, submit to that, find out how that light is giving itself for the life of the world. It's a life. That light is a life. That light is a life and that submitting I'm able to receive that, or surrendering to it I'm able to receive that. And then, becoming like it, I'm able to offer, become the sacrificial light that I can offer into the world. And that double activity of receiving, surrendering, submitting and also learning to be like in terms of giving myself selflessly for something other than me, seems to also connect to this conversation we've been having about the dynamic of the marriage that Paul is talking to us about says wives submit, just like the church surrenders to Christ, to your husbands. Wives submit to your husbands like the church surrenders, the ecclesia surrenders to Christ. The Ecclesia surrenders to Christ. And husbands selflessly offer yourself, give yourself over to the life of the other. That is, your wife, like Christ gives himself up for the church.
Speaker 2:Bleeds for her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, self like, without thinking of your own needs, giving your life for her life. That's what stayed with me from the last conversation, this first step into the mysteries of what the husband does. Yes, the husband yeah, husbands, love your wives. Verse 25.
Speaker 2:Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her. I just love this so much because I just see him like he's. I don't experience that he's trying to like come up with a manual for behavior at all, but he's rather seeing a world of behaviors around him in the congregation and he's trying to give everyone the christed imagination for that relationship. Like you all are in these different kinds of relationships to each other and they're asymmetrical. They're not all equal. In Christ we are all equal, but in these lived relationships there's a lot of differentiation. I'm going to give you images that can christen every one of those dynamics. It's just. My task is not to change structures but to christen you within the given Beautiful. Give you what you need to inside what you are already in. How can you find your way to the Christ imagination to live your life by it.
Speaker 3:So what I hear you saying, it's not like an imported abstract plan. No, that's it. So it's not like. Here's the diagram that we've created abstractly.
Speaker 2:We've worked out all social relationships somewhere With all the points, and then imported it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's it. Like you could imagine, sometimes colonialization is thought of like that you have your philosophy and you import it and abstractly impose it onto cultures. So that's not what I hear you saying. I hear you saying there is a reality, an organic reality, and we're trying to christen that within what is given. So this christening process that you just named, what I'm interested today to continue this conversation, it feels like we need to work a little bit more into this marriage picture.
Speaker 3:I'm wondering, since I kind of talked about how this husband work, there's two things that stick out for me Giving yourself, like he says, giving yourself up for her selflessly, loving her like you love your own body. These are two very salient qualities. I'm wondering if, from all the archetypes that we've also been talking about, if from all the archetypes that we've also been talking about, or from some other direction, how would you enter, talk about, from your own experience or your own thoughts, what comes to you today about those two or one of them? How do we get closer to this husband activity in the sense of we're called to be like Christ, giving ourselves up for her, that that also does something to her and meaning sanctifies. What is that? And also loving her like we love our own body. Is there anything from those two that we could get closer to? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think this work that we've been doing so far to try to see that the purely human which each human being has access to in their person, so the mystery of person or individuality is not gendered or sexed, and I think that basic idea that the church needs deeply and I think that our movement works towards, and it's in our marriage sacrament that each person in the marriage is first addressed as an individuality and they're addressed exactly the same way. That's a very good point. Yeah, and it has to do with this capacity to say yes and no inside us, each one of us, this moral ability to take something up or to leave it, to say yes or no, to close the inner door or to open it, to be held responsible to take it, to say yes or no To close the inner door or to open it, to be held responsible To take responsibility, right, which also connects to one of the archetypes from Genesis that you described.
Speaker 3:This capacity to open up to and kind of hover over is in us the capacity to receive Every person yeah, yeah, yeah. And also to speak a word, yeah, that's right. Light into the darkness, yeah, so that's. Everyone has that capacity in their individuality. Those two dynamics, yes, yeah, yeah, masculine, feminine, if you will right, and you could say.
Speaker 2:There's masculine, feminine gesture, and then there's the one doing those activities, whether I'm receiving or giving a word. There's another one, a third, one beautiful, which is the being doing it. There's a being, there's a place, above all this differentiation, into this self. I am that mystery, what is the core of our being? And that is what we share in common with the core of reality, the I am of the universe. Every human has an I am, but these I ams are embodied and through that they come into differentiation and one-sidedness and have an I am experience in a very differently shaped vessel that really can totally affect and make possible certain things for this particular person. And so this honoring of each other is first and foremost a person thing. The dignity of your being, male or female doesn't matter, or whatever, also, where you are in the experience of your embodiment on this planet, whatever you're working on, that I have the experience, my Lord, my highest Lord. Experience, my Lord, my highest.
Speaker 2:Lord loves this person and is willing, regardless of what they think about him, to give his life to them and to take up residence within their heart. So this orientation towards that highest level of dignity is, for me, the beginning, and that's up before he gets into differentiation. He says you submit to one another as to the Lord, see Christ in one another. If you do so, you will be in a situation in your heart and mind and actions where you will want to serve and honor and bless. And so then, in all of our individual relationships. Then now it's about okay, well, what does that look like in the exact dynamics that form within this relationship, within that? So father to children we've talked about that one that comes up because we're still in our father initiation story. You know, our kids are definitely not done growing up. That means we're not done growing up as fathers. Like what does it mean to father teenagers and teenagers have a boyfriend, right? Like that's like a whole new world. I remember you came up like yo, I just drove my daughter and her boyfriend somewhere. Like what is happening to me? Right, it's a new level. We're done with diapers, it's really nice, and now we're moving.
Speaker 2:What does it mean to be a loving father who is serving Christ in my child, and I stand often before a feeling of powerlessness and helplessness. I'm trying to answer that question Because it's just not the same as being loving to my wife, or being loving to you, my colleague, or being loving to the students. Every relationship suddenly shifts who I am to them and suddenly what I need to activate in me to do this love story is different. I find that just amazing. And so, with this particular picture, then, of the female and male embodiment together makes the whole human first, and that their task is to become one flesh, which is the Easter hope that the reparations and healing of Christ will work so far that our individual spiritual person will have a vessel one day. That is actually a true reflection of both forces that you described, both the feminine and masculine powers will be united in a vessel, so that my eye will experience a true image of God in its body.
Speaker 2:Right now we don't. I have a partial image of God that I'm embodied in. That hurts like. That's so powerful. So that's why it's like so, so powerful when you see a wedding and you see a man and a woman choose to try to begin to love each other, even though everyone knows how hard that can be at a wedding right.
Speaker 2:And even though, even though everyone knows the the horrible stories of divorce and once again, everyone just erupts in applause like, give it a yay, someone's giving it another chance and one of the things I like to say also, when I'm working with couples too and I know we have different we're both in priesthood now it's like humanity's really easy to love. It's the people that are the problem, the actual people. Try living together in a house and just deciding what you're gonna all eat every day, what's the menu right? How you're gonna decorate the house, what are you gonna do on saturdays like why are you spraying stuff in the bathroom? You hate that smell. Well, I can't stand the way this bathroom smells.
Speaker 2:Now what you got one bathroom, what are you going to do? Like? This is where, like, love gets real in its difficulty and its work, once you're actually sharing life together. And so for me, it's such a hope of humanity when you're, when you're working on partnership in a shared life experience, and then that partnership within the embodiment of these polarities, the polarities that go right down into our bodies, and this is where I think things get exciting. I do not bleed every month. Right.
Speaker 2:I have a spouse who has a body that does that and that bodily experience leads to massive soul experiences for her and she has to navigate them herself. And those soul experiences bleed out into the house and they're not all lovely, right. This isn't shocking news, of course, to our listeners either. We know it's, it's a soup. But knowing that she's going through a bodily challenge really helps me bear the soul expressions, behaviors that come out in the household. Because yo, my dear one, is bleeding right now and having a massive thing just done with her body by the forces that are greater than herself, and she's trying to get through them. I'm slightly unpleasant just when I get hungry. You know well what if I was bleeding. So I'm working actually to to love this person. Part of what I'm doing is trying to know them right right, they start demonstrating behaviors that I can't fathom at first.
Speaker 2:Right, why is this happening right now? Yeah, and rather than reacting in that I try to make that question a real question. Why is this happening right now? Oh, oh, this is going on, this is, and that no, trying to know you rather than react to you already starts a compassion process. Next, then my feeling can come along oh, oh, oh, that's what you're working with Now.
Speaker 2:I can still be like maybe you need some time right now, like maybe we can contain this experience a little bit, because maybe it's hard for me to bear. That's my issue. It's hard for me to bear this right now. Maybe I can bear it, maybe I can work with it and take it for example. So I'm trying to understand you in your bodily experience and vice versa, so I experience it as so powerful in my life.
Speaker 2:I look back and just different places where I could just experience these behaviors I'm doing or having or working with right now are not particularly pleasant for my spouse I can tell she knows I'm dealing with my man, male stuff and she's trying to understand that and bear me where I'm clearly not pulling off Christ-like love, I'm just kind of being a dude and she's bringing up patience and trying to keep her respect, even though I'm not necessarily in that moment worthy of it. I can look back and feel so much love which created a room for me to get better at it. It gave me room, her bearing with me, being patient with me, trying to keep her respect and not tearing me apart because I'm falling into something and not living out of a Christ-like orientation. A Christ-like orientation. Feeling how she's bearing me in a Christ-like way, oriented towards that Christ in me, as she bears my fallen man-ness, has been utterly transformative in my life. Like so powerful.
Speaker 3:There's some things that seem worthy of emphasizing. The first thing is this quality of knowledge, of understanding. If I look at this, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, trying to bear, trying to be selfless for her in her need, in her reality. It's not just an abstract behavior that I adopt because I'm pious Right. I think that sometimes, at least traditionally, where we've tripped up, I have to be this way, without the step of actually understanding the other that's sitting before you or standing before you. So I think that's a really huge key that if I'm going to offer myself and be selfless, I'm going to have to find some way to know what is truly needed. I remember for myself when my wife was first pregnant with our first daughter, Milena. She was like seven months pregnant or six months pregnant and she was pretty big. It was August, it was hot. We wanted to go out on a date If it was.
Speaker 2:August it was nine months pregnant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right when was it I?
Speaker 3:think it was July, it must have been eight months pregnant, because she was born in August and we wanted to go out on a date. And so I went out and I bought her a dress and this thing and I had this whole thing planned and we were going to go to this place to dance. And in my naive, you know, and I come back and I'm like and she's laying on the couch. I remember the scene. She's laying on the couch and I'm like look, I got you this dress and we're going to go out. And she looked straight in my face. She says I'm not going out to dance, you're going to rub my feet and we're going to get takeout or something. Yeah, yeah. And I remember feeling so hurt. It's like, oh, but I did all this for you.
Speaker 3:But the reality is my offering was all about me.
Speaker 2:You hadn't even seen her situation yet.
Speaker 3:And so I couldn't fulfill giving myself up for her without this key that you're talking about, of knowing, understanding the other. She's eight months pregnant, got swollen ankles. Have I checked in with what is actually real and needed so that I even can offer I?
Speaker 2:think. For me, this is how did Christ save humanity? That's what he's trying to say. He's trying to describe. This is the story of salvation. One of the main ways for me to characterize that is he gave up his godly nature and flowed into the human experience. He got to know us. I know that might seem small, but that's. I think the key to salvation is a God, but that's, I think, the key to salvation. Is it God getting to know mortality and sin, the sinful nature of the body and to live in the sinful nature of a human society? What does it feel like to be in the shoes of a human, to be in their fallen bodies and live in it with such love and interest that a new body can rise out of that?
Speaker 2:So for us, we would run into these big dramas together, and it was a drama of non-understanding. It was like why are you doing this? Why are you behaving like that? And it would be so hot, right. It'd be like because we'd be reading each other through our lens, like how I'm shaped and formed, I would never have done what you've done. So I can't comprehend why you're behaving that way or speaking that way or acting that way now. First, I don't think that's my problem, like it's my problem that I don't understand you, but I think that's your problem that you are not understandable. Right, this is like a core orientation, right, everything should be understandable. From my perspective, that's, that's like egotism in our consciousness.
Speaker 2:And so this work that we would do then is we wait, how do men and women work too? Like, and we would do a lot of work, like we'd study, we'd read books together too, like this wonderful book that's very instructive, called sexuality, partnership and marriage by wolfgang gadeke, one of the priests in the christian community, and it'd be like we come across things you know and we're in another place, another. We'll be like oh, we're not original in this at all. The issues we're having are like standard issue. These come about through these embodiments, these polarities that anyone who is in these bodies is in some variation or form of, and that brought incredible peace.
Speaker 2:Knowing the experience for example, how much sperm is produced per day in the male organism a lot like it's an insane amount. That's helpful for the female to know. In the relationship. There are some bodily stuff going on for me. I'm not bleeding like I have to deal with a sperm production facility. Yeah, we're talking about this in our episode, right Right, it's a thing I have to come to terms with as a man and therefore, if you're in a relationship with me, you are going to also be dealing with this facility.
Speaker 3:It's not a nothing. It's not a nothing.
Speaker 2:It actually has an effect on the whole person Massive hormonal processes are involved in that for me that I don't feel very free in no and the same with the woman, although it's extremely different.
Speaker 2:There's just one egg produced every month, but it has a whole experience connected to it and we now know that the chemicals that are connected to our hormones, which are happening, which help stir these bodily activities, also have all of these soul effects. The soul in these hormonal processes experiences weather patterns of the soul which are very forceful, and the process whereby we become aware of them in our male or female embodiments and work to be lured within these storms of hormones and feelings is a thing that each one of us is in a journey with, and my partner is coming along with me in this. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is interesting because it's, it seems, also from from the important things that you said before not only is the understanding a key to being able to offer something.
Speaker 2:Because for me, the understanding is already offering. Okay, it's the beginning of the work where I'm stopping seeing my world, everything from my perspective, which is so righteous and right, and I'm trying to like flow into something that's other than me through, and it seems small, but it's already actually my consciousness, flowing out of my body, trying to flow into yours, flow into your soul, get to know you, and that understanding the other is already an offering.
Speaker 3:Already Okay, know you? And that understanding the other is already an offering, already okay, in a way, if I offer, like I did, a dance and a dress, yeah, without understanding, it becomes an imposition yes, right, there's a difference there, that's really good. Yeah, what I hear you say, it's not really an offering until understanding. But also, understanding is the beginning of an offering, of an actual offering.
Speaker 2:And your partner feels it. Yeah, oh, my God, totally so for me, and I could weep if we talk, you know, that's why I have to walk slowly around this, because it's very powerful. Yeah, the patience and understanding that I have received from my partner for my struggle with myself, with my embodiment, is up there with some of the most powerful love experiences I've had, because my partner is the closest one, right, whatever everywhere else, like nobody else, has to live with me. Share a bed with me, share a table with me, share vacation with me, share parenting, share it's your bath, right?
Speaker 2:it goes on and on. That person still married to me that those are very. Every once in a while she'll be like. She'll just say this little just emit out of her like you're a good egg. That's something my loved one likes to say, you're a good egg. And I was like my loved one likes to say You're a good egg and I was like am I? I'm like you think that If you think that, then I can receive that in a different way than if anyone else says it.
Speaker 3:Because she knows also all the shadows.
Speaker 2:More than any other human. Yeah.
Speaker 2:On the planet. Yeah, she knows my darknesses, she has to deal with them, not just know them, she has to deal with them. And that she finds her way to respect and honor in the middle of that is very holy. I feel consecrated through that, beautiful, beautiful. And so for me, then, I think what's really, really striking is the medicine that saint paul, as a servant of god, gives to the men about the wife as our body, and that can sound like, you know, like a control thing. Whatever I decide, my body does, right, oh, right, it sounds like, oh, I have control over my body, I can do with my body whatever I want. It's not at all what he's saying. He talks about care and love. You would never hurt your own body.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you nourish and care for it.
Speaker 2:And this gets back to the male experience which is so often the longing for union is not necessarily a soul longing. Just so often the longing for union is not necessarily a soul longing but a bodily one, like I want to unite with you and I'm looking at your body. It rises up and how would that be consecrated? The longing for the bodily union? And that's what, again, what? Christ actually comes to the earth. He longs for the body. How does he unite?
Speaker 2:to the body. One of the main ways is I have to be oriented to the person, that is, I can never take the body for myself of another. I can only be given, and so it's like the holiest gift, because it's the temple of a person in which God lives. Also for me, like the deepest religious practices that I have with God are all schooling me. From my relationship with my bride we say in our sacrament, at a certain moment during communion, the priest says Take me, as you have given yourself to me. He makes the first full offer of all of who he is, but he doesn't demand me, he doesn't take me. So if I'm the bride, to Christ.
Speaker 3:Right In that moment, you're the bride and you actually have to fully. It's your decision to say take me.
Speaker 2:He's on offer. The bridegroom has made himself fully available. He's going to actually also pay the bride price. He's going to give his entire inheritance for me, mm-hmm, which is all of his forces. Yeah.
Speaker 2:His body, his blood, his soul, his spirit. He's making an offer Constantly, always, always, for every human, all the time, but he's the one bridegroom who never takes. Yeah, he never crosses the line, he never violates my dignity. Hmm, whoa, I'm constantly being schooled. Just I think, as Paul is saying, being schooled. Just I think, as Paul is saying, if I attend to him and his relationship with me, I should be in the school to how I relate to my bride because I have the capacity to take. This is the key. Okay, I've been endowed with the power to overwhelm the power of the other. Physically. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Just like Christ actually has the power to annihilate everyone, for example, but he doesn't, you are his creation. Yeah, he doesn't. He doesn't invade without you saying please enter. He's constantly knocking at the door, even without me saying take me.
Speaker 2:This is why that's so moving. It's not because to be taken is also then consecrated. Yeah, there is something extraordinarily movingly loving to being taken up, taken in, to being embraced by the one who has more power than you. That's actually a longing in the human being to be taken Sure. However, it is immediately desecrated if the taker takes for themselves, yeah, at their own will. Yeah, right, we're right in the deepest territory for me here. Beautiful that trying to work in that territory for me with I'm actually I'm always schooling it in my life with Christ and then, as I live that life of partnership at the bodily level, that has to be the guide whereby I recognize if I'm failing or not the guide whereby I recognize if I'm failing or not.
Speaker 3:So that seems to me to be connected both to this giving yourself up for her and loving her as your own body. Those two can be interpreted in various ways. But if I'm giving myself all the time, but I'm always trying to be sensitive to if she says take me, or if she says this is what I need, I am ready now to unite.
Speaker 2:I'm ready to unite Because I think it's a similar.
Speaker 3:I've never framed these things this way until this conversation, I've never framed these things this way until this conversation.
Speaker 2:But it's like, actually, christ is bearing within him a longing to unite, yes, constantly With me, all the way to my body. That's a longing in.
Speaker 3:God yeah. Rudolf Steiner says Christ is doing everything possible right now to make himself known.
Speaker 2:He's longing but he's not trespassing the dignity of the yes or no, and in his longing is the knowledge that the gift of himself is for the wholeness of the person, that the person, that I cannot come into my full wholeness and maturity without what's missing in me, and he is what's missing. He is my missing. Better half, he is my better half.
Speaker 2:Therefore, his longing is also for me, and that's now at the deepest level, because my longing is so very much about me. You mean you as a husband, as a husband, as a man who's having body experiences yeah, longing for the body of my other.
Speaker 2:Right, so there's two different kinds of longing longing one that's about me and fulfilling my needs yeah and one that actually longs to offer, and offer in the way that christ is offering yeah, and so there can become a point then where you can be willing to totally die to your longing If it seems that will bless the bride that I will have. I don't have conjugal rights. This is to me a deep, a deep, deep, deep evil. At this moment in the world I actually don't have a right ever to the body of another, ever. That's what I've come to through this Christed relationship.
Speaker 3:Well, it makes total sense. That's what I've come to through this Christed relationship. Well, it makes total sense. It seems to go exactly with the picture of giving yourself up. To me, no entitlements, zero, entitlements, zero. If you have entitlements to a certain taking of what your own needs violating, then I'm not giving myself up, no. So I think this is extremely important, also in our time, that actually the way he's describing it here says there are no entitlements. Otherwise you would not be giving yourself up like Christ gave himself up.
Speaker 2:This power of renunciation, of again not taking what I could, or demanding or manipulating to get what I want or whatever, but trying to take, and into this air territory, which is very difficult because it's so deep in our bodies and so affects our consciousness in ways that are very you know.
Speaker 2:It's just very powerful. I remember as a young man I had the longing prayer like could I just cut this out of me so that I didn't have to wrestle with this again and again? It's so powerful, don't feel free in a relationship. So this is a process towards freedom, myself and myself. It's healing for me too, and then, if it comes about that a union could happen. The feeling is that it's a blessing about that a union could happen.
Speaker 2:the feeling is that it's a blessing. Now I've left the realm of entitlements and something I can demand or have a right to because I'm a husband. Suddenly then, it feels like a gift of God, a gift from my bride, and it's not something I just get to have because I, because, because whatever. So this, this christening of my relationship right down to the body in marriage, schooled in my bridal relationship with christ, where he is ready to die for me, meaning fully be my husband to my soul but never breaks in and ticks, stands at the door and knocks, and that holy feeling of the incredible love that I feel because he has the power to take but doesn't, doesn't invade.
Speaker 3:Right and therefore.
Speaker 2:I am the door that can open to him.
Speaker 3:It's so beautiful because he also models this no-entitlement reality, this no entitlement reality, Even with his own creation. He is letting go of all entitlements and saying if you love me, I'm here, I'm here.
Speaker 2:I'm here. If you open the door and I will die for you, and I will take every arrow for you and I will right.
Speaker 3:I'll give you everything.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to stand here and say you should, or you, or I'm going to invade, or any of that fact. I'll let you reject me. Yeah, I will let you turn on me. I will let you crucify me and I'm still here. Turn on me. I will let you crucify me and I'm still here, Like he's the model. Yeah, he's the model. It's absolutely breathtakingly, mind-blowingly powerful.
Speaker 3:It's beautiful. I love the way you also brought that in into a very intimate area of our physical intimacy.
Speaker 2:I don't know how you talk about marriage and the male in the marriage without touching these things, and I've tried to be, as what's the word? Tactful as I can. And I want to say everyone is in a different spectrum with these things. Everyone's bodies are doing different things, and I want to say, say like I don't have judgment here towards brothers and sisters and where they are with this stuff no because these are very, very deep and powerful things and we're all built so different.
Speaker 2:So just after I've said these things too, like it would be such a sadness in me if suddenly there was a like now rule book made out of this. I think that's why this is so good from paul. It's like such it's an imagination for me to live with right and that he's trying to show me that I can work on being a good husband all the way down to the bodily level by meditating deeply on the salvific relationship Christ has to me. I think that's what he's trying to show me. That's a method, not a rule book. It's an orientation that grows over time, not a rule book.
Speaker 3:Amen Amen Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Jonah.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Patrick.
Speaker 2:Beautiful conversation. I'm very, very interested to hear how this next step lands in our listeners. Please feel free to share your thoughts. If you are a listener and don't yet know that we have a Patreon page, we really encourage you to find us at wwwpatreoncom. Forward slash CC seminary, because that's where our listeners also can interact with each other, reply to the episodes and comment and ask questions. There's a little bit of a sense of community, I think, over on our patron Patreon and you can support If you think this is something good in the world. This is a part of a school where people are going through a training into priesthood and the Patreon support is a big part of how we make it and fulfill our mission. So go there, check it out so we can also hear how is this landing, because I know Jonah and I never have encountered this spiritual theology of male-female in anything we've ever read anywhere. This has been an original deep work for us, so we're eager to hear how it's landing. Thanks everyone © B Emily Beynon.