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
Re-Post: Shadow as Preparation for Light — Episode 5 in the series, “Christian Shadow Work”
In this re-posted episode from our shadow series, Patrick and Jonah have an intimate and reflective conversation where they work to reclaim the true meaning of ‘repentance,’ or ‘metanoia’—a change of heart and mind that arises not through fear, but through the courage to face our shadows with compassion. They are inspired by the words that are spoken in the time of St. John from the altar in the renewed worship service: “The health bearing, guilt conscious” word that comes like a flame into our lives.
They begin the conversation by once more looking at one of the shadows Christianity itself has cast, naming how church communities have often wielded repentance as a tool of coercion, distorting it into a threat rather than a gift. Jonah shares a formative experience of being told, as a teenager, that unless he spoke the “right words,” he would burn forever in hell—an image he compares to having a spiritual gun to the head.
Yet rather than discarding repentance altogether, the conversation leads deeper. Through honest stories—such as Jonah’s moment of awakening when his daughter was diagnosed with a chronic illness, or Patrick’s encounter with a college friend who called him back to integrity—we glimpse the possibility of a repentance that dignifies rather than diminishes. It is a turning that doesn’t wallow in guilt but opens a path forward, grounded in love. When we find the courage to look at the egotism, denial, or failures that have been revealed to us, we can begin to recognize what Light is making these things visible. Illumined by the gaze of Christ who suffers alongside us, we may discover that even our darkness we uncover can become the ground in which true light takes root. This episode invites listeners into that quiet miracle: repentance not as punishment, but as preparation for this loving light of His gaze.
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.
Hello everyone. This is Patrick Kennedy from the Light in Everything. We're going to be heading into the summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere and, after a very big and full year of work and an incredible path through the letter of Ephesians, together and Jonah and I just want to send you a warm greeting and let you know that we are going to be reposting episodes from our five years of podcasts that we think will be enjoyed by you all over these weeks until we pick our work back up again in September or the end of August. In September or the end of August, if you'd like to find out more of what's happening at the Seminary of the Christian Community in North America, be sure to check out our website at christiancommunityseminaryca or go over to our Patreon site at patreoncom. Forward slash ccseminary to become a part of an incredible community of support of listeners who interact and engage with the podcast. Okay, enjoy. © transcript Emily Beynon.
Speaker 1:Hey, jonah.
Speaker 3:Good morning Patrick. Good to see you. Good to see you Long trip. Yeah. We just got back.
Speaker 1:Late last night, man, it's been a year Of traveling. There's more ahead. My goodness, we're getting old. We are, yeah, a little harder to move around.
Speaker 3:I don't get out of the seat After eight hours in a plane, like I used to. It is hard.
Speaker 1:It is hard in those seats.
Speaker 3:Good well, Welcome dear friends, to another episode. It is hard. It is hard in those seats. Good Well, welcome, dear friends, to another episode of the Light in Everything, where we explore Christianity as priests in conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as human souls, human hearts, as well as seminary directors yeah, two guys from California Welcome.
Speaker 3:And we will begin, as we always do, with the Gospel of John in Chapter 8. I am the light of the world.
Speaker 1:Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life yeah, so we've been in the middle of this series on working with the shadow element in ourselves and in the world, the parts of ourselves, the parts of human life, human community that inhibit this light, that inhibit that, block it, that casts shadows into the world, and how do we have a relationship to that that is really fruitful and christened, and and how do we have a relationship with it that's actually very difficult and actually leads to bigger problems. And we've been wrestling, I feel like, to really have a new articulation of what a rightful, healthy relationship to it could be. And we've been trying to talk about, I think, just how much richness and importance this element of our being and of reality has for our becoming.
Speaker 1:And we did a good bit of work also really looking at the no condemnation in christ question, like if, okay, there are shadows, so does that mean that the spirit of god relates to that in a condemning way, and I thought we did really beautiful work last time to kind of show how that's a big part of the metamorphosis and relationship that Christ brings to us and to the earth and to the world. With the incarnation there's a new relationship of spirit to darkness, a new transformation that's not utterly not there at all in the past or something, but it's a specially new relationship to it, this non-condemnation and actually integration of the shadow into the whole story of the redeeming hope actually, Hope actually. So I thought we could take another step this morning Jonah, Also really naming, I think, one of the dark shadows of Christianity and its history that many people are familiar with.
Speaker 1:A way of relating to shadow that is very condemning, and it's connected with also a season that we're coming close to, which is the season of St John's. Oh yeah, and this figure of John the Baptist and this word that is used, his whole work. There's a there's, there's a person called John the Baptist in the gospel tradition that is described as sent by the spiritual world, by God, to do work to prepare the ground for the word, which is a seed, to enter into humanity and the earth, this new life, new creation, which is to come into world history in Christ Jesus. The ground needs to be prepared, and so there's a forerunner, there's this being who's sent ahead to prepare the way. That's the classic, well-known description of this person's being, well-known description of this person's being.
Speaker 1:I had the great joy in my life to be a part of the musical God spell in my junior year in high school. We did it Shout out, jeff Spade, if you ever hear this great joy of my life to do that production in my school. And I got to play John the Baptist, which, who opens the whole play, and just sing with all my heart those incredible words prepare you the way of the Lord. I'll spare you that right now.
Speaker 1:But when you go into the gospels the Matthew, mark and Luke and read these descriptions of this incredibly intimidating, profoundly earnest descriptions of this incredibly intimidating, profoundly earnest, hardcore spiritual person out there in the desert, wrapped in camel's hair, surviving on locusts and wild honey, or whatever proper translation of those words you want to give it, but you know, really at the edge of existence, doing nothing but what he is called to do by God, and then he just emerges and just confronts his time and his culture, confronts it like a classical prophet With moral force, and it's all connected with this word repent. And I have still, although I grew up in a beautiful tradition where I never was guilted and never was like, or very, very rarely and lightly, and you could see through it quickly, so it wasn't too big of a deal you know, but pretty much it was not at all how we did religion.
Speaker 1:But for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years this was often used like to kind of like the classic American one, which is very famous, jonathan Edwards, who wrote a sermon, spoke a sermon that would just like ignited a revival. It was called sinners in the hands of an angry God.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's pretty. You know, it was like. It was like this this moral awakening power.
Speaker 1:That was intended and it did, it happened. It really lit people up and I just, I find I mean, like I just would, for example, never say to a human repent you know, like I just I find like that never, ever come up for me as a word.
Speaker 1:I would say to someone, but here it's being presented in the gospel as a kind of archetypal preparatory event in order for you to have a relationship with the one who's coming, you need to go through a process which is connected with whatever he's pointing out with this word, and it's like exactly why I think modern humans just like run away from christianity. Yeah, yeah, there's this kind of finger pointing, moralizing repent, you are bad, you are doing wrong things. You should feel bad about yourself. If you feel bad enough about yourself, then you're ready for Jesus. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's my brief attempt at the shadow sides of it. I wonder, I mean, if you wanted to add anything to that cause I want to ask you, I want today, I'd love to get, cause I know you've wrestled with this one what is really meant and what is this being John's relationship to preparing us for, for our encounter with Christ? Because my, my feeling in my life is he's very much still working, oh yeah, To always as a servant, to help open us up, to be able to see Him when he is near, to receive Him when he draws near.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah, no, you described the shadows very well. I think the connotations of this. It's basically a coercion In my experience growing up. For example, I remember the two humans that were my godparents in my baptism when I was 14, I went over to their house and they said to me and I still love them, but it's just also kind of a forgiving process they said to me look, jonah, we've discovered that the so-called Christianity that you were baptized in is not real Christianity and we've found Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And if you don't convert, we're not going to be your godparents anymore in that sense, because God is everyone's parent. And so I was. I mean, I was 14. Hearing that already was like whoa, it was painful, it's kind of an abandoning feeling. And second of all, if you don't convert, if you don't accept Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior, you're going to burn in hell, unless you repent, jeez, so you're going to lose us.
Speaker 3:You've already lost us.
Speaker 1:And you're going to have everlasting torture as your future.
Speaker 3:Everlasting torture.
Speaker 3:Unless you say this sentence Right, and already in my 14-year-old mind and I'm sure this many people will be able to relate to this type of experience because it's so prevalent my 14-year-old mind was like wait a minute, saying a sentence for God, saying a sentence is what it's all about, otherwise you're burning. And so I thought well, and I said well, what about Gandhi? You know Gandhi, you know this is a classic story. Lots of people have this story. You know, is he burning in hell? And they were just like, yeah, sure, of course he didn't accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Speaker 3:So that night I couldn't sleep. I was up crying all night, 14 years old, right, basically praying in a way to God, like, is this really true? Because I had, you know, of course, I had respect for my godparents, I loved them and my respect for my which is another story for my parents was kind of fading a little bit at that point in my teenage years. And at the end of the crying session and the praying and the wrestling, I decided Lord, it just doesn't make any sense to me and I can do no other. It's kind of like a luther moment. Here I stand in my bed. No, um, I can't go with that. Yeah, I just can't do it.
Speaker 1:So you know, whatever comes, I just can't do it yeah, so it's really like a spiritual gun to the head moment. Yeah, so it's really coercive.
Speaker 3:Deep violence and there's a kind of exaggeration of, like, a lot of the feelings of shame and guilt that I were feeling, which is an interesting key to our conversation. We're not mine and not real Meaning, exaggerated, kind of produced, produced through a kind of artificial setting up of a drama, right that, if you don't, then burning and ever and for it's a drama that's set up, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's an imagination that's set up, a kind of spiritual manipulation, yeah, putting you into a crisis to make a life or death decision. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think, yeah, I mean all that you said. In that experience, I'm sure people can very much relate to the shadow realities of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you've used the word exaggeration and that's interesting. You could definitely understand the feeling that might rise up and people's like let's just throw this entire thing out, right? I mean you could say it's. For me it's another signature of the enemy, whose goal is very much to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. That's the best move. The enemy's best move is not to show up as a wolf. Everybody know wolf, everybody run, everybody knows the wolf.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if the wolf can get dressed up as a sheep or, even better, a shepherd, that's the most significant maneuver that the wolf can do. Then you know you can actually have, you can achieve your, your aims so much more perfectly, because now you can have people naturally reject what would be something that is meant to be a blessing for them. So if the enemy of our true humanity could get inside nominal Christianity, have the name Christendom and Christianity on it, then it could be most effective. So people are just like I don't want anything to do, that's just.
Speaker 1:Christianity is bad and these events have happened the spiritual violence, the spiritual border crossing, the spiritual manipulation, forcing of a spiritual crisis and process in someone you know, I'm listening in and I'm hearing there may be humans who listen to this, who had an experience like this and had a breakthrough to God. I just want to say this oh yeah, I am not putting it past the workings of the angels that in the middle of something like this, however, they did break through to something that proved to be foundational for their life. However, the road to it has its own fruits as well, so that's what we want to talk about. Okay so if it's just an exact.
Speaker 1:If it's an exaggeration, what element in it is is true? Or if you took it down to its right size, or the what is the true process that you see in it, how is John's work to call towards the activity of whatever this word is pointing at with repent? Right. How is that a part of our preparing ourselves for the coming one? Sure.
Speaker 3:I mean, to me it's just beautiful. This is probably, maybe the most important theme in terms of how we talk about Christian shadow integration and this term, repentance. That is an English word that's often used, most often used to translate the word metanoia metanoia from the Greek, and it is I mean just first. First off, if you look up the word metanoia, it means to transform, it means to change, it means to move from one thing to another, and the transformation takes place in the heart and the mind. Sometimes it's like change your mind.
Speaker 1:Right, but I think you also capture right. It's like there's this inner side of it that bears fruit in your life.
Speaker 3:That bears fruit in your life, Goes into the way you live Exactly. Yeah, so it actually comes from. You could say. The most important key of Christian transformation is metanoia, which is called repentance often, and it goes through from John saying transform your heart and mind. All the way to the end of the whole Bible. You find it even in the experience of the purification of humanity and the earth through the wrath of God. It's all there so that this transformation of heart and mind can be possible.
Speaker 1:So all of world history destiny is working to create circumstances so a transformation of heart and mind can be taking place in us can be taking place whoa yeah, beautiful, so it's a cornerstone it's a cornerstone.
Speaker 3:It's a cornerstone and the question then becomes well, how does real transformation take place that bears healthy fruit, real um relationship to your darkness? That's still true and not exaggerated. I remember talking to some of our congregants in this congregation who grew up Catholic, and the Catholic Church has a very deep connection to this repentance because it's at the core of the confession. It has to do with. You can't actually take any steps on the Christian path until you have confession, which, at the seed, is trying to get at this true transformation Right John comes before Jesus.
Speaker 3:Right, you have to go to confession before the sacrament of Eucharist. There's a real lawfulness there. But what the congregation members that I have in mind said? They used to make up sins Right, because you had to go to confession before you took communion and there were kids.
Speaker 1:There's also an appropriateness, that's another example, though, of a forced, coerced situation. It's like we can't give you the fruits of the tree of life until you say some words exactly.
Speaker 3:Say some words. Say some words so that it became such a powerful method based on a true lawfulness that it was just exaggerated, forced onto the human being, which created all kinds of problems. So you would make up lies like I stole a pencil or I lied to my sister. I was me, you know just, and they were exaggerations, not really true, but fulfilled the desires of the outer world so that they could have some, they wouldn't be punished. An experience where, in your heart and mind, you are revealed to a true, not an exaggerated, but a deeply true mistake or trespass and you're ready to see that truth. That's another….
Speaker 1:Right, it's a key scene we've talked about. You're not denying it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a key scene we've talked about. You're not denying it that experience of the truthfulness of my error can be maybe the only way that I can have a true change of heart and mind, at least to begin with, if I haven't truly seen what is sick and in need of transformation, felt it and not just exaggeratedly or made needs, help, needs, something different, then I can have the motivation and the openness and the possibility of a shift possibility of a shift.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what? What is it that? What is it that? Um leads to that, that desire? You said motivation. Yeah, like how, it's almost like that. How does, how does the will get sparked in that? I mean, it seems in some ways obvious, but I just feel like it'd be nice to just zero in there. Well maybe you've witnessed a truth. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You've had found the strength to stand in front of yourself and see a truth and stay standing and keep looking so that it strikes your heart and you feel something and that actually somehow triggers a next layer, Begins a process.
Speaker 3:It has to be true. So the two dangers are, just to say, is it can be exaggerated. This is a problem, and one of the forms of exaggeration doesn't necessarily just come from the outside. We also do it to ourselves. We whip, whip, whip, whip ourselves. That turns into an exaggeration of something that we don't like about ourselves, that we don't like about ourselves. So the exaggerated gesture make up a sin, you're terrible is actually coming from an inside process of the human being.
Speaker 1:That's so beautiful. So what you're saying is this scene of the community around the woman in chapter 8 of John, who all have stones in their hands and they've caught her in the act of a sin and they're saying she's done this sin and she should be stoned to death according to the law. She's been immoral, but Jesus is there. And what do you say? You're saying that community of stoneholders who want to throw and condemn and that woman in the center, that's actually one person. That's right. Also, that's a vision of the human soul, like we have the stone throwers ready to throw inside us.
Speaker 3:Right and to the ways to describe the cues in the Revelation. The accuser accuses us day and night.
Speaker 1:Right, chapter 12.
Speaker 3:So that's an outer picture, but it's also very much inner, and I think everyone can relate to staying up all night just beating yourself up about something. So that exaggeration is a real process, also the denial. Those are the two extremes. So that exaggeration is a real process, also the denial. Those are the two extremes. I can deny and deny, and deny also something that's really true and never therefore get to the place where I can make a real transformation because it's all not true. I don't take it up.
Speaker 1:It's other people's problem.
Speaker 3:It's other people's problem, it's essentially blame or just ignorance. But in the true process to your question, how does it really work? That that's a catalyst, that perception of my true error, true mistake. What's coming up in my mind and heart right now is just this experience I probably told it before, but maybe not in this way when my child, saskia, was sick and I got the news while I was walking back that she had this chronic illness lifelong and I was so deeply affected in my heart by the pain of that. But as I was walking and in a way walking home, in a way, not knowing what to do with all the pain, I cried out to Christ Lord, help me.
Speaker 3:And what began to unfold at first was this presence coming close. And this was an extraordinary experience, I realized, but it has within it some very helpful keys. But it has within it some very helpful keys, this presence that came close. First and foremost, what was revealed to me was my main concern. Actually, what I stood before was not so much Saskia, my daughter, or what was good or whatnot, but what a problem this was going to be for my own personal comfort and life. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so you suddenly saw I'm not just suffering for her suffering hurting for her, just suffering for her suffering, hurting for her. I'm anticipating hindrance that my child's destiny is going to be a hindrance to what I want to achieve, and that is what I'm actually worrying about.
Speaker 3:Totally. It was a confrontation with the reality of my ambition, personal ambition and personal egotistical need for comfort, no problems, and that you know. It says also in the John Gospel that the Holy Spirit calls you to account. The presence of Christ Jesus also calls you to account, but not exaggeratedly. This is important. It has to be true, and this was, according to my heart, seen and known immediately as deeply true, and that was what was so confronting about it. Actually, that was my primary concern, my own ambitious aims. That this was going to get in the way of me being a glorious priest yeah, and that it not only that glorious priest yeah, and that it would not only that, but that, just on the creaturely level, that it's just going to cause a lot of pain yeah, it's just going to be straight up there's going to be hardship.
Speaker 3:And last sleep. Yeah, and that came before me as as my main concern. So that was very important because if I hadn't seen that, there would be no need for any kind of change of heart and mind, why?
Speaker 1:And it would have remained actually as an active motivator inside you. This thing would be thinking in you. Thinking in me. This, this and this actually self oriented, non-loving power which would the way of a, my child and her death her authentic destiny, because that would make me resentful of her.
Speaker 3:I knew it. Yeah, these are all momentary boom, but you get all this and like a, it's like a fire hose of information and you have to unfold exactly, and I've been unwrapping it in a way for the last 10 years and at the same time this is the other key I do and I would submit that everyone actually does loves, love Right At the core At the core, yeah, loves God actually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at the core. And what I also saw in this moment was this rejection of my Saskia and her destiny, and this not wanting it because of my own arrogant pictures of what I could become was also blocking me from love who is a being Christ? Because I knew in that moment he was carrying her in her illness, he was fully with her as a divine task that would gradually reveal more and more of God, not an ounce of his being, is like oh come on, did that have to happen?
Speaker 1:Not right. It's like you just notice that. You just notice that.
Speaker 3:Oh. So it's not just confronting your egotism, your darkness, that's not enough Right. Darkness, that's not enough Right, that's never enough Right. We've experienced this. If someone just truthfully comes to you without love, but truthfully and says this is wrong with you or this is, it could be very true, but the love isn't there.
Speaker 1:It's usually very ineffective.
Speaker 3:Very ineffective, very ineffective, yeah. What spurred me to actually change? First, I needed to see what needed to be changed, but that was just like cracking open, breaking open, yeah, but that was just like cracking open, breaking open. What turned my? What asked, what really motivated me to turn my heart in a new way? Because, again, my metanoia was first I'm not interested in this illness or this problem. I want to be great, right? Yeah, I want to be a great priest and this is in my way. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it's shameful, priest, and this is in my way. Yeah, I mean it's shameful, but it's real, real shame not exaggerated.
Speaker 1:Then what I saw was the one who I love, yeah, the one who, the one who you think your great glorious purpose is connected to Christ is not doing that.
Speaker 3:He's doing the illness carrying, and he's basically saying to me inwardly if you want to be in love and with me, this is your cross, this is your task, and so that's what really called me to change my mind, meaning let go of the picture that this is a hindrance and open to the picture that this is where God is, that this is where God is. And as soon as I did that, my heart was like the stone dropped and the fleshy heart could be felt, the permeable, soft, life-filled heart.
Speaker 3:Life filled heart and I mean more love, more Christ. The love that's not my love, because I was interested in my own glory filled my heart and gave me a strength and a purpose to this that to this day I would say this illness, this relationship with Saskia Alexandra has been the catalyst, the doorway through which most my most profound God experiences has happened.
Speaker 1:Well, god experiences, it sounds to me also that are medicinal. I feel like that's what shines through for me in your picture. It's like yeah, 100%. There is an. There is a, there's a poison at work in you that is still, it is continued to hint, block our relationship and with who you actually truly want to be and who I truly am. Exactly. And my light is going to continue to reveal elements of that illness in you. Yeah, that will be, a part of actually healing the truth as healing Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. The fruit of that, then, is a bit more capacity to bear something that is painful and uncomfortable in love Right, and not think that is an ungodly activity that's getting in my way, that I still, I still, am tempted by that. Right. But it's much easier to, in the moment, change my heart and mind toward something that's difficult Because you're familiar with the territory, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Exactly Okay.
Speaker 3:So so the bearing mystery, I would call it, where you don't even know what this suffering is going to lead to. But you know Christ is bearing it and if I join him there will be a process, a fruit that I will get to know at some point maybe that was very much strong. However, I would also just point to this dynamic again that it wasn't as if that egotistical one in me just was banished forever.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:It was like it moved to the side and the light that came through Christ and Saskia into my heart the love light, made this egotistical one a little more like there was a little more of the light glancing off of its being. It started to melt a little bit more indirectly, but it's still there.
Speaker 1:That's interesting yeah.
Speaker 3:And so it is the same.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting, yeah, because I, as your, as your friend and brother, you know, I happened to be led into your life when and known you's glory is apparent in your work has been born of this experience and experiences that have followed. It's so interesting so it's like, well, it seems to me obviously the poison of selfishness, that that that was a part, that was a part of that, and of arrogance or of self-importance or whatever, all the different elements that were woven in there certainly continue to take effect and continue to be wrestled with. But it's like a certain part, portion, has become something else. Yeah, part portion has become something else, yeah, and it's like that story doesn't just have that. That part of you also is is now, how does this I have also witnessed. Now it's become a part of you, the fruitful way, healed way.
Speaker 1:No question, the bearing and working with it's like you're a different person. Yeah. You're not just the same person. And then, well, with that unique situation you had a kind of illumination and healing, but then every other situation since then you're still kind of doing the same thing and you can only get. You know like there's like a new organ or like a new part of you, like some of your lead became gold.
Speaker 3:No, question and I think this is a deep mystery that we grapple with on the christian path is transformation in general that there are? They do take place like this, where you're different afterward. Before and afterward you're a different human. Yeah, but it's not as if it's all done so. It was like the. It was like the. The thorn out of the heart of it was taken out, and yet the.
Speaker 1:There are stingers all over the place.
Speaker 3:There are stingers all over the main thorn or something. I don't know what the best picture is, but something essential was removed or transformed or transmuted, or transformed, or transmuted, and then that's gradually becoming like a light in the darkness. That's starting to enlighten the whole thing, but the darkness is still tempting.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So to me, these are these fundamental processes Something core is changed, yeah, that then gradually begins to be like a heater that melts the ice gradually, or a light that gradually illuminates the darkness, and that's what it's like. So at that point it was like the core was taken out, and then I had multiple experiences and work with it over the last 10 years that I feel like have also grown. It's grown, but I felt different. Even Bastia and our colleague Bastia and Bob the next day said you look, completely different.
Speaker 1:Right, right, it's auric. Changes your whole field.
Speaker 3:So that is a mystery, how we live with this seed, which is interesting, and I just want to bring it one step further. And then I want to hear more, but in the John's liturgy.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry, in the season, the festival season, spiritual, liturgical festival season of St John's in the Christian community. That's what you mean by the St John's, that's right.
Speaker 3:That we're coming up to yes, that connects with how you began the conversation this being who calls us to transform our heart and mind in this light, in this way, through true guilt and authentic healing. In our liturgy it's described as a word of flame. Repentance is described as a word of flame like a seed of flame in you, of flame like a seed of flame in you, and it's described and I would submit, maybe like no other place in all of Christian history is it described in such a beautiful way this repentance reality, this metanoia reality, the word of flame, health-bearing, guilt-conscious word of flame. May it burn in our hearts. Yeah, may it burn May it burn.
Speaker 1:It's a prayer for the fire, that is a word that brings health and that is in utter awareness of guilt. That's an amazing mandala Right.
Speaker 3:Because, like so many, including my dear father, who I love to bits, he's also gone on this journey to try to get away from this exaggerated guilt.
Speaker 3:Because of experiencing how destructive it can be Destructive it is, and went on a huge journey to try to overcome this exaggerated guilt, which I think he's managed. But to go back to my story, so in the experience and it still burns in me is a flame. That memory, that experience is like a flame in me that contains a consciousness of guilt, true guilt, yeah, that is. I want something that's not love, that's not connected to Christ, that wants my own glory over loving my daughter and loving God, and an egotism in me that still, even though it's been helped, still exists, is there in my heart, as well as the health experience of the love through which I said yes to the love of bearing this karmic illness and joining christ in his bearing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a whole medicinal event which always involves diagnosis, totally like the first fact is, look, the presence of that which make, which which actually cripples me, wound, you know, causes me to be off and ill from my full health, which would be being a being of love. I'm aware, oh, guess what? It's the, the, a vision of it, an exact, an MRI, a spiritual MRI. You know, you're shown the, the, uh, x-ray. Look, and you can see. Suddenly it's outside you and you can see inside you. Right, it's, it's, it's just like that.
Speaker 1:There's an, there's a scan and you're able to see what you're normally not able to see. It's just active inside you and taking effect. Oh, I don't know, I have cancer because I don't see it. It's just there, but it's something funny, something off. And suddenly I get the scan and I can see, oh, look at those weird dots there, exactly what's. And then you, and then the doctor, in this case the world physician, lets you know, yes, through his presence, what that is exactly, and then he simultaneously, as soon as you get that, delivers the medicine of his love. Right, he's what, what is? What do you actually? Who do you actually want to become?
Speaker 3:that's it but. But what I want to emphasize, and what john's liturgy the liturgy emphasizes, is that they're side by side. Right, you're right, yeah, right. Because we have the tendency, like we've been talking about, to want to banish the guilt or exaggerate the guilt by whipping ourselves at night or deny the guilt, yes, yeah. Or the idea that, like, if I take this medicine, it goes away, right, but it doesn't actually go away, yeah, it becomes. If it was there on its own, it wouldn't be right, it would inevitably get exaggerated, or I'd want to If the guilt consciousness was just there.
Speaker 3:Just guilt consciousness? No, that's not the thing. Just health, just the love? No, that becomes luciferic very quickly, meaning it has no relationship to the human suffering. Yeah. But it's described as the word itself, the word of flame itself, health-bearing, guilt-conscious at the same time. Yes, word of flame, yes, so I think that's really it's like our symbol in the Christian community. It's like our symbol in the Christian community the cross together with the sun in the middle, the circle around Guilt, sun, cross, health, health bearing, guilt conscious.
Speaker 1:And it even continues after that, and that opens up to these fields of grace to which we suddenly want to pray, and may may the grace of your healing power pour into my being so important what you just said I wouldn't even ask for if I don't know I need it exactly I asked for, so that's another, that's such another aspect in a way, truly confronting this, the, the guilt, is its own process.
Speaker 3:That's what opened then to. I didn't produce christ in that moment. I didn't produce the fact that he's carrying this child's karmic destiny. I didn't produce the love that started to pour into my heart, that gave me the feeling I could change and draw nearer to him. And draw nearer to him. So I think I want to just emphasize your point that the health is fundamentally also grace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a gift. Even the vision was a gift, totally. But I want to, I want to. I want to say, like just how damascus formed this whole event is in your life, in the sense that part of its power is you were already aiming for him with all your being. Your whole goal was this being. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and wanting to be a servant of him. You were just unaware of just how mixed into that goal yeah, where's this other lead? Was this other stuff? Yeah, there's this other or in there which isn't of him. And so you're, you're aiming for him and he just shows you you're missing the mark, which is the technical term for sin. Like I'm, I'm all in.
Speaker 1:Like Paul was all in the community of God Like he was, he had, he was doing everything he could under his power to to follow God's way as he knew it, up to that point, with as much as he could. So in many ways, you could say God was like well, yeah, I see I really appreciate how you're all in. So let me just show you some other facts of the situation. It's going to really be hard to swallow. Yeah, but you're all in is actually hurting me. Yeah, right, it's jesus. You're rejecting me, you're attacking, you're persecuting me. Yeah, and you're what you're thinking is loving me, right, right, it's so, it's so interesting and perhaps it would be.
Speaker 3:I mean, I would say that I actually think most human beings, at their core, are actually trying to find love and actually trying to find God.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, in a way we're all Saul, even though some destinies are more directly noticeable. So that's one thing that we're all actually aiming. And then it shows our karmic blows, or the things we experience as difficult, are actually there with this deep purpose for repentance, for transformation of heart and mind, trying to reveal in various ways as many as biographies there exist how we're missing the mark slightly. There's something in us that's arising that we thought was good but turns out proves to be a bit of a distraction, a block from God. I think that's very helpful, but there's another point also that I just want to say is that in this mystery of repentance metanoia, sorry.
Speaker 1:I've got metanoia. Sorry, john, I've got a little allergy.
Speaker 3:Sorry, it's working. Jeez, jeez, I had to say that is true, to my weakness. Yep, yeah, I had to say that is true to my weakness. Yep, yeah, I had to say it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you could have pulled up all kinds of maneuvers. No no no, no, it's not like that, and I just you know so there's some very important.
Speaker 3:Only the self can do activities in repentance. The first is I have to recognize the truth of my error. No one can do it for you, not even God.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work like a dog to take its nose to somebody's mess they've made on the carpet.
Speaker 3:No, you can kill someone, and if they don't recognize that, nothing can coerce that core door.
Speaker 1:It happens, in the sacred territory of the noose, metanoia, that that second part of meta, and the second part is made up of this word, noose, which is like your spirit. So that's, that's the heart of the, the sacred Holy of Holies of a human. That's, that's right, that's taboo territory, that's right.
Speaker 3:My earthly eye, I would call it, didn't decide in my consciousness at that moment for this illness to come to Saskia, didn't decide to have this profound experience, didn't decide any of that. But I had to decide that that was first true and the other absolute necessity. That has to do with my own activity. That only I and I can do is I also had to say yes to the love path, the love way that Christ was revealing to me through his bearing of Saskia's illness.
Speaker 1:So that arrogance is me, yeah, and I love you, and I love you and I want to go that way. You are the way.
Speaker 3:No one could have done that for me. Yeah. So that's very important as we tease out the spiritual anatomy, my part, god's part, no one can recognize the true sin, the true egotism, the true weakness, illness, but my eye. And no one can say yes to the love way, to the communion with God way, except my eye.
Speaker 1:I'm taking it You're now reaching out into the social relationship of these things. So then, if I'm a brother Christian, how do I stand in relationship to someone, let's say, who is blind to something that's happening in their life? It's a very if the old way of calling just attacking somebody, so to speak, with a condemning voice or a shaking your finger, you should repent. Look what you've done. If that's not, if the condemnation energy isn't fruitful, how do we walk with one another becomes a very high art, because we if, if you know it can only happen inside the other, can, I can?
Speaker 1:I get an example, this really interesting because the question would be like is there any, ever any uh moments anymore for john, right, let me just read oh, great, right. Yeah, this is from the gospel of matthew. John is described again with the garment of camel's hair, the leather belt around his waist, his food was locusts and wild honey. All of Jerusalem and Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him. Chapter 3, verses 4 and 5. And they're immersing, being immersed in the river Jordan and confessing their sins. So that's the. What I heard you just described is the identification process. I did that exactly. So I see, I see this thing, that was done and I, for me, the. The beautiful language in our time is I own it. I own it, not confess it. A confessing it it's not admitting it's owning. It's owning meaning I'm bringing it into the field of my ego. Yeah, I'm taking ownership of deeds done, yeah and I'm not gonna.
Speaker 3:I'm not too bent out of shape about it. I'm not whipping myself. It's, there's a cleanness. Yes, that's me and I take responsibility for it and that's just immediate spiritual maturity. It's, it's health it's health, so that's also.
Speaker 1:It's also health bearing, it's totally health bearing to to to be in that kind of relationship with your error yeah, the ego that's done nothing wrong, that's not an ego you want to be around or thinks they've done oh, that's that's torture for also that own that person yes, so.
Speaker 1:So just that experience of maturity, what we think about mature self as somebody who's like, yeah, and I did that. I'm going to take full ownership of what I have done. I'm going to really work on making amends for it and see if I can fix it Like I own it. I own that was me.
Speaker 3:And sometimes. I just want to say that sometimes, before we get to the quote that can be mistakes Some people have maybe really quickly We'll say, oh yeah, I'm so, I'm so bad, I'm so. That's not taking ownership, right, if you're obsessed with your own weaknesses and constantly saying how bad you are and how terrible you've been, that's actually not yet taking responsibility.
Speaker 1:You're actually just in a process of self-centeredness and glorification around your, your shame and very often the motive that I discover inside my own soul there is to elicit pity, exactly, which is just about me. Again. It's like I'm, the snake in me has once again slipped in. And it's like oh yeah, you know poor, you know, I know I'm so terrible, god, I'm so awful. And the next thing I know like, oh, everyone's saying it's okay. It's like, oh yeah, you know poor, you know, I know I was so terrible, god, I'm so awful. And the next thing I know like, oh, everyone's saying it's okay, it's okay. No, don't feel so bad in there. You know like, and suddenly I'm trying to elicit sympathy.
Speaker 1:It's like, no, actually, yeah, yeah, I did that and I totally understand if you don't want to work with me anymore. That's like if you walk away from here right now, I get it, because that was wrong. Yeah, and I'm going to bear the consequences. That's it, and that's like that. And you feel a columnar gesture. If you could see it in an imagination. It's like I'm going to bear up and hold and the weight of what I have done. I'm going to take it upon me. I'm going to pick up my cross.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's my cross. I'm going to see if I can take it to the place where it can become transformative. That's right.
Speaker 3:And I would say that's the beginning of this health light, this healthfulness in the word of flame. That's the very beginning of it, if I can take clean, real responsibility for it. Yeah, but you were going to read it. Well, I was just going to say.
Speaker 1:So what comes next, of course, is then some, some of the spiritual leaders are like well, we better go see what's going on down there. So they come down, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, which are at that time, you, that time, you know, they are the elders of the Jewish people, they are the ruling class and they are those who are responsible also for the spiritual texts and interpreting the text, the Pharisees. And they come down to see John, and this is his greeting you, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
Speaker 3:Keeping with repentance Keeping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like, like he sees the snake in them and says that's your like, that's your like parentage Right now, you were just like, like the snake is like your mom and dad. You brood of vipers, yeah, yeah, I, I just. I had an interesting experience that this is part of the question. It's like are there still moments when the light comes that way, the love appears in my life, confronting me? Is there ever a time when that can be? And I think you mentioned it. He says the only question is whether or not it has love inside it. And I had this amazing experience this past weekend.
Speaker 1:I did this youth event at the youth section on spiritual development with Nathaniel Williams in Dornoch, switzerland, and we began to work with inner picturing. How do I begin to learn how to picture something in my soul? And we began to work with picture, inner picturing. What is it? How do I begin to learn how to picture something in my soul and then begin to feel something? So we just did the simple work of recall something in your life, a moment that happened, where you felt love, where you saw it, witnessed it between others, or where you felt the power from someone else coming to you but picture it vividly and then notice what comes in the feeling realm. And so we took time and were quiet and you can very quickly have this experience in the soul of like and you can very quickly have this experience in the soul of like. There's a whole carousel of memory slides that each of us has access to and they might just this memory comes up and this memory comes up and you're kind of looking which one is a good image for this love experience and you go well, that's kind of good, but I want to look for something else and you can kind of discard them. Look at a new one and I was so surprised at the one that came up for me.
Speaker 1:It was a moment in college I had a roommate, he in my first year at the UC Santa Cruz, california. They had like eight different college campuses and you could live on campus there within the university campus, and I was at Oaks Oaks College. I wanted to be there because I had grown up in extremely white circumstances and this was intentionally a multicultural, multi-ethnic community and he himself was of iraqi jewish heritage, growing up in israel and moved to canada and then the states and we just you know it was a very special relationship. We would often be up in the night just getting into it. He was just so passionate and truthful and so we could just always get into really good conversations. First year, you know, you move off campus, you kind of start drifting apart, and I remember it was something like my third year. I was back on campus or back at the university and we made a lunch date. So we're having lunch and we're talking yeah, what's up with you? And I'm like talking, I was like, yeah, I've had this new experience.
Speaker 1:And I'm not going to go into details right now because you know college related stuff. But I said, yeah, you know what, I really see it differently now. And I like started going on and like describing how I see this thing differently now from what we'd before ever talked about. And he goes well, I don't think I can, I don't want to, I don't want to offend anyone.
Speaker 1:But he swore because you are full of poop, just like full-on, just like looks me in the eye, just like like yells at me like I don't believe a word out of your mouth, and I was just like totally shocked and taken aback. And then he just starts laying into me and just like, just he just starts laying into me and and the experience was like it was so powerful the first time I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, like how do you even get to do that? Like you're supposed to just be interested, you're just supposed to be like you know quote unquote loving. But right underneath that I could feel he was like calling me back into myself and I heard in his own voice a true recognition of my own being and that I was like actually drifting. It was like a person who was watching me wander near a cliff and being like grabbing me and pulling me back from the cliff.
Speaker 3:Don't do that again.
Speaker 1:And it has a kind of violent gesture because you've got to run and grab the person and yank them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But in the yank I feel, I felt his total love for me and he wasn't like writing me off, getting rid of he would. There was no, it was just permeated with love. Yeah, but it was you brood of vipers Like it was. Like it didn't mince any wordsipers, like it was like it didn't miss any words, and it was. And then when I the next part of the practice was then to move move the picture away and just keep the feeling and then listen through that feeling and then what came through was God's love for me, working through this friend, calling me back to myself. It was so powerful and beautiful and so it was definitely like myself, outside myself. Yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 1:Another key thing is, sometimes it can be like that where, in a person, who, who, who does truly love you and can speak an authentic word of confrontation, I could feel the call to repent. Yeah, I was headed a direction that was going to be ruinous. I was, I was opening a door that was going to be ruinous. I was opening a door that was going to be ruinous to my true being. And it was like he just called me back to my first love, you know, to my right orientation, and really I swear like I don't know how far that would have gone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I believe it. I think that's really important, Patrick, I'm so glad you brought that, Because this mystery that through others, that in Christ, as he comes toward us in our life, bringing us the one who bears and orders the life of the world, or in anthroposophy as we call him, the Lord of Karma, the one who's bringing, he's also bringing us to ourself. He is bearing our true self, and so this experience that you just described so well, that your true being was like another, was in another, not messing around but came in with a hard love is also needed. Sometimes it's probably more rare, but I wouldn't judge it like that. It's just a part of what we need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like there's this living dynamic. It seems to me that, to deal with the exaggerated energies of condemnation that are so destructive, these stone-throwing bury people under guilt gesture the corresponding pendulum to accept and bless every behavior and choice in life, as if that's going to bring healing. Yeah, it's also a lie. Totally, it's just a deep darkness and it's really prevalent.
Speaker 3:It's super, super prevalent right, as if everything that comes out of my being that is authentic is good, and I mean we should just say, like that is a lie. That's a lie, that that part of me that arose up, that didn't want Saskia's illness and didn't want that was also authentic and came out of me. But it was. Oh yeah, your child's a bird. It was a serpent, it was a bruise, it was a viper, it's a viper.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what you tasted, you, you noticed the venom yeah, yeah, and. But the key is in that true practice of well, it's a path, it's a road you can take. You can leave your people behind. I'll never forget that. Um credible podcast on the history of a church called Mars Hill. We've talked about. I think before, yeah, that was.
Speaker 3:Seattle Goodness.
Speaker 1:Where, the where the preacher, the main preacher, mark Driscoll, you know, literally said to people who were seeking to become pastors and build churches about his own work. You know, yeah, there's some dead bodies behind us, and by the time we're finished doing our work, there's going to be a pile of dead bodies. You're either on our bus or you're off. Just this like energy, of like I don't care who I have to mow over towards my goal, like that's just not the Lord's voice.
Speaker 3:And honestly, honestly, if I'm honest about that, that part of me that wanted my own glory there's some of that energy in there. Yeah. I Right Part of me would have done whatever it takes to mow over any of that problem.
Speaker 1:Kind of the holding up in the holy place, the zeal and utter commitment to the goal Right, which has a truth inside it, has a truth. That's why it's hard to discern. He showed you. Let me show you where the goal, which has a truth inside it, has a truth. That's why it's hard to discern. He showed you. Let me show you where the goal is, let me show you where my glory is. Let me show you where the work is Exactly. You just didn't include stuff you were excluding my work in your goal, exactly.
Speaker 3:And so it's also what you said Damascus shaped. It's also what you said Damascus-shaped. It's always this process, this love process, is always cruciform-shaped. So what I saw there was Christ wasn't in the mode of the means justifies the end. He wasn't trying to get humanity. He was carrying the suffering as well as itself, a way of revealing God. It's just because it's good, right?
Speaker 1:Just because it's beautiful, just because it's love.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it wasn't in order to get something, but itself was that. So I think that's also a very important discernment as we gradually come to a close today is Christ's judgments that can come through other friends. That can come through other friends that can come through our lives that call us to this repentance, this true seeing our guilt and finding the true grace of health, always bears the signature of how he is living, how he is working. It's not an aloof judger that tells you what to do and they suffer none of it. It's always in the form, even in the book of Revelation, as he judges the communities, as he judges humanity, it's always in the form of, for example, be faithful even unto death and you will receive the crown of life. That's what he is doing and what he has done. So it's always connected to his life, his way, his bearing. He's also suffering what he's judging. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1:That feels like a whole new powerful theme.
Speaker 3:It's in order to the repentance is never an aloof assessment outside of my own, what I'm also doing.
Speaker 1:Right, I see what you're saying in the sense that Jonah be a loving dad. Yeah, god says sitting way far up.
Speaker 3:Who's never had a dad experience in the world, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:Instead, like here's what's active in you and, by the way, you should know, I'm all in on your daughter. So while you're out there on your glory train from you know a priesthood, I'm going to be with your child, who's suffering Exactly. Just the true priest tells me that Just letting you know, just letting you know. Showing you.
Speaker 3:Exactly Letting you know, just letting you know, showing you Exactly Letting you know. So that experience, he is doing it and bearing her pain and he's teaching and judging out of that doing.
Speaker 1:Yes, right. As opposed to some theoretical aloof abstract principle and it's so interesting because a lot of people equate judging with condemnation. Yeah, and for me I think it's just super key.
Speaker 1:Your story shows it's discernment it's closer to our word, I think, being able to judge the truth of something. Yeah, it's like I can't judge something because it's foggy, it's unclear, and now I've come to a clear judgment. Ah, that was selfish. This is love you, you could tell those are. Those were now truths that you could discern and judge Exactly. Yeah, so the judgment was happening inside you through his presence. Yeah, that's another super key thing, right, it's not?
Speaker 3:outside. And this is why I say also, just to repeat, I am the only one that could confirm the truth of that, I'm the only one that could say yes to that grace, that type of love, that type of communion with God, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you've really taken us on, I think, a really powerful, recapturing regaining of this process in our becoming. That's connected with the shadows we cast. That in Christianity has traditionally been pointed at with the word repentance, but is something like how does, how do I get experience an inner reorientation, a shifting of my direction towards my true goal, again and again and again, to bear fruits out of that reorientation Because that's, I think, another. Just I think that's really amazing. Not only have you become more who you want to be, but, like you, have become more fruitful, yeah, and those fruits have been reflective of a repentance process. It's so exact, all these things right, it's not like some weird made up thing. These are real anthropological mysteries.
Speaker 3:They're like a part of what it means to be a human being on the way, yeah, and I would just to end, I would say that's probably for any of us that have gone through a real repentance in this mode of how we're describing, when I believe many of our people have if you're sensitive and observant, you will know there have been fruits, yes, you will experience fruits in your relationships, in your work, your relationships in your work. There are fundamental things that, if this happens, can't help but produce nourishment.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Thank you, David, Thank you Patrick. Organ PLAYS ©. Transcript Emily Beynon For ever.