I'm joined by Paule Patterson and Andy Luiten to discuss the state of the American church, and her relationship to prophetic voices calling her to account. How did the church get here? What factors are at play? Can we learn anything from the counseling professions as we think about whether the church can recover from its challenges?

You can also watch this at https://youtu.be/-cL9POzUh5k

Paule Patterson and I talk about awakening and enlightenment, then the very opposite: the idea of kenosis, of dying to self, of ego death. What does it mean for the Son of Man to experience a mystical awakening? How do we need to die to self, to experience a death of our "ego," to become truly alive? Is this an individual thing, or can it only be experienced in community? Paule and I explore these questions together.

You can also watch this episode at https://youtu.be/7CllsdnY9oc

In my fifth conversation with Paule Patterson about his book "The Coming of the Son of Man and the Mystic Awakening", we discuss ways that the Bible adopted language from the empire around them, but subverted that empire in the very adoption of that language.

You can also watch this as a video at https://youtu.be/HR9cRpFCxQQ

Life and death are impossible to separate. And inevitably, life itself springs from death. It doesn't ease the pain of loss, but we can take comfort in the rebirth inherent in the process of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXlIvBgsYmY

The MAGA propaganda machine is powerful and dangerous. More than anything I've seen in my lifetime, I've watched it successfully weaponize the human soul, taking the worst primal human emotions and using them to wound and even kill our neighbors and fellow citizens and the most vulnerable among us.

How dangerous a thing it is to claim a mantle of being God's chosen people living on God's promised land, and not scrupulously following God's laws! The land itself will spew them out.And yet, that's exactly what a massive number of American evangelical Christians are doing - even as they celebrate the horrible injustices being carried out by their government, violating the single most emphasized commandment in the Bible.

You can also watch this in video form at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6JCqc63Qwk

Perhaps you've heard of "internal family systems" or IFS. I had encountered that idea about a year ago, and found the concept intriguing. But what is IFS, and can it help us heal? Can it help us reveal the Image of God within us?When I started talking to Andy on BlueSky, and discovered he's a counselor that specializes in IFS, I really wanted to talk to him about it. So we spent some time today exploring the basics of IFS, and how it can help us understand what's going on inside ourselves. And we wrap up with a bit of geeking out about the bands he plays in.

Paule Patterson and I spend some time in Section 5 of his book, talking about two topics. The first is communion, where it came from, how we practice it today, and what we might be missing in our modern practices.

Then we switch gears and spend the second half of our conversation on the integration of consciousness and mysticism. I think I've always held a particular understanding of that word, mysticism, and I'm learning that it can be used quite differently than I had assumed. I grew up thinking of it as the weird old guy in the desert muttering to himself. But I find now that it's actually a core part of religious practice - or at least, it should be, if we evangelicals hadn't been taught to fear it.

So if we understand mysticism as a healthy spiritual practice, what about the less mystical practices? How do we integrate mystic practices with more liturgical, more Western, ways of relating to God and the Holy Spirit?